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<blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 6403691" data-attributes="member: 5142"><p>Moorcock was part of my early experience of fantasy reading as a kid. I scoured my father's old collections of fantasy novels that he still had stored at his parents' house. Elric and Moorcock's Eternal Champion universe was a big part of that. But for me, that's where some of my dislike for the Great Wheel comes from. D&D tends to focus more on the moral Good vs. Evil axis as opposed to the mythical Law vs. Chaos axis of Moorcock, which itself feels like the cosmological framing of real world mythologies. I'm not even a fan of having Good vs. Evil, though Law and Chaos often, respectively, carry these moral qualities. Civilization, which is looked upon favorably, is only possible because of Order that is formed out of Chaos, usually by the deities representing order defeating representation of primordial chaos. Even biblical priestly cosmology of Gen 1 is a presented as a stripped down version in which Yahweh creates order out of the primordial chaos, and this chaos - both a moral and metaphysical reality - constantly threatens to undo creation (cf. Gen 6). That's a big part of why I liked the 4E cosmology. The Order vs. Chaos motif was at the forefront, and the Prime became the chief battleground where this metaplot unfolds. </p><p></p><p> [MENTION=509]Viking Bastard[/MENTION] much earlier referred to Planescape as a "cosmic stalemate," which resonates close with what I meant about Planescape veering towards preserving the status quo. The metaplot just continues, but it feels timeless. Wait, you say, every setting has its metaplot that it preserves. True, but this is again where I would point to the matter of scope, and I think that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] touches upon this as well. 4E cosmology has a starting point and a trajectory, and the Prime is a critical point of this progressing cosmic drama. Eberron's metaplot is the potential outbreak of war again between the Five Nations. How then is Eberron's status quo any different from Planescape's? Probably because there was a clear starting point and there was an end point that was within living memory for living people who were caught in this war. The scope feels, at least for me, far more at a ground level and focused. The stakes feel real and meaningful. </p><p></p><p>Let's take Star Wars as an example as well. We are thrown in the middle of the Galactic Civil War metaplot between the Empire and Rebel Alliance, but we learn from Obi-Wan Kenobi that it was not always so, and even within his living memory. What does this metaplot mean for the little guys? Luke Skywalker is our everyman on the far edge of the universe. This metaplot got Luke's adoptive parents killed and his lifestyle irrevocably altered. We see jawas killed. An entire planet was destroyed. Luke's mentor was killed. Luke's childhood friend died. But the first movie ends with the hope that the Empire can be defeated. (Arguably one of the flaws of the prequel series is that it moved away from this ground-level to focus more on the larger metaplot of this space opera setting. E.g., does anyone actually die when the droid army invades Naboo? Does anyone even live in the Naboo capital city that's mostly CGI because the city looks bereft of life?, etc.) </p><p></p><p>In the Planescape materials, the primary focus is on Sigil and its inhabitants, a cosmopolitan city of doors that revels in the co-existence of outsiders and its place as a hotbed of planar activity. But when demon lords are resurrected, planes shift in a manner reminiscent of adjusting decimal points in accounting software, and factions are ejected from Sigil what does that mean for the little guys on the Prime Material plane? The focus of the Planescape materials seems so much on Sigil and the outer planes. For the sort of games that I like to play, having read through the Planescape materials, the setting, however cool and inspiring it is, does not feel like a good fit. The stakes feel too ideological - with the Factions being much like a bunch of philosophy undergraduate guys fapping to the sounds of their own voices - as opposed to real human stakes found in other settings. The stakes of Planescape come across to me as the stakes of people with high privilege. </p><p></p><p>That does not mean that I do not want planar materials nor that I think that Planescape is a bad setting, but the Great Wheel and Planescape seem too embedded in these metaplots that are unsuitable for my campaigns. If there is a future planar manual, I would not be opposed to descriptions of the Great Wheel planes, but I would like less of it in favor of it being a resource book (and less of a setting book) that was more focused on being a toolkit for running planar campaigns, means of traveling between planes, planes touching the prime, planar hooks for campaigns, and creating your own cosmologies. The Great Wheel setting material would probably be better for a Planescape book that fully embraces all the quirks, inhabitants, and metaplots of the Great Wheel. </p><p></p><p>As a bit of an afterthought, I'm also confused as to why, if Forgotten Realms is indeed the new default setting of D&D, the Great Wheel would therefore be the default cosmology. Shouldn't it be the World Tree cosmology of Forgotten Realms?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aldarc, post: 6403691, member: 5142"] Moorcock was part of my early experience of fantasy reading as a kid. I scoured my father's old collections of fantasy novels that he still had stored at his parents' house. Elric and Moorcock's Eternal Champion universe was a big part of that. But for me, that's where some of my dislike for the Great Wheel comes from. D&D tends to focus more on the moral Good vs. Evil axis as opposed to the mythical Law vs. Chaos axis of Moorcock, which itself feels like the cosmological framing of real world mythologies. I'm not even a fan of having Good vs. Evil, though Law and Chaos often, respectively, carry these moral qualities. Civilization, which is looked upon favorably, is only possible because of Order that is formed out of Chaos, usually by the deities representing order defeating representation of primordial chaos. Even biblical priestly cosmology of Gen 1 is a presented as a stripped down version in which Yahweh creates order out of the primordial chaos, and this chaos - both a moral and metaphysical reality - constantly threatens to undo creation (cf. Gen 6). That's a big part of why I liked the 4E cosmology. The Order vs. Chaos motif was at the forefront, and the Prime became the chief battleground where this metaplot unfolds. [MENTION=509]Viking Bastard[/MENTION] much earlier referred to Planescape as a "cosmic stalemate," which resonates close with what I meant about Planescape veering towards preserving the status quo. The metaplot just continues, but it feels timeless. Wait, you say, every setting has its metaplot that it preserves. True, but this is again where I would point to the matter of scope, and I think that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] touches upon this as well. 4E cosmology has a starting point and a trajectory, and the Prime is a critical point of this progressing cosmic drama. Eberron's metaplot is the potential outbreak of war again between the Five Nations. How then is Eberron's status quo any different from Planescape's? Probably because there was a clear starting point and there was an end point that was within living memory for living people who were caught in this war. The scope feels, at least for me, far more at a ground level and focused. The stakes feel real and meaningful. Let's take Star Wars as an example as well. We are thrown in the middle of the Galactic Civil War metaplot between the Empire and Rebel Alliance, but we learn from Obi-Wan Kenobi that it was not always so, and even within his living memory. What does this metaplot mean for the little guys? Luke Skywalker is our everyman on the far edge of the universe. This metaplot got Luke's adoptive parents killed and his lifestyle irrevocably altered. We see jawas killed. An entire planet was destroyed. Luke's mentor was killed. Luke's childhood friend died. But the first movie ends with the hope that the Empire can be defeated. (Arguably one of the flaws of the prequel series is that it moved away from this ground-level to focus more on the larger metaplot of this space opera setting. E.g., does anyone actually die when the droid army invades Naboo? Does anyone even live in the Naboo capital city that's mostly CGI because the city looks bereft of life?, etc.) In the Planescape materials, the primary focus is on Sigil and its inhabitants, a cosmopolitan city of doors that revels in the co-existence of outsiders and its place as a hotbed of planar activity. But when demon lords are resurrected, planes shift in a manner reminiscent of adjusting decimal points in accounting software, and factions are ejected from Sigil what does that mean for the little guys on the Prime Material plane? The focus of the Planescape materials seems so much on Sigil and the outer planes. For the sort of games that I like to play, having read through the Planescape materials, the setting, however cool and inspiring it is, does not feel like a good fit. The stakes feel too ideological - with the Factions being much like a bunch of philosophy undergraduate guys fapping to the sounds of their own voices - as opposed to real human stakes found in other settings. The stakes of Planescape come across to me as the stakes of people with high privilege. That does not mean that I do not want planar materials nor that I think that Planescape is a bad setting, but the Great Wheel and Planescape seem too embedded in these metaplots that are unsuitable for my campaigns. If there is a future planar manual, I would not be opposed to descriptions of the Great Wheel planes, but I would like less of it in favor of it being a resource book (and less of a setting book) that was more focused on being a toolkit for running planar campaigns, means of traveling between planes, planes touching the prime, planar hooks for campaigns, and creating your own cosmologies. The Great Wheel setting material would probably be better for a Planescape book that fully embraces all the quirks, inhabitants, and metaplots of the Great Wheel. As a bit of an afterthought, I'm also confused as to why, if Forgotten Realms is indeed the new default setting of D&D, the Great Wheel would therefore be the default cosmology. Shouldn't it be the World Tree cosmology of Forgotten Realms? [/QUOTE]
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