D&D 5E Wandering Monsters 1/15/14: Reinventing the Great Wheel

[Desdichado]

Non "A" D&D does not have the great wheel and does not have demons, or at least B/X or RC does not have demons. So true.

That's not true. Eldritch Wizardry (1976) had the various Type demons. B/X had all original demons; croaking demons, whispering demons, howling demons, etc., or at least they were original names for familiar AD&D demons. If you took BECMI all the way up to I, you got Orcus and Demogorgon; although of course, clearly that was later.

What I don't remember was whether or not D&D demons came from The Abyss, or if that was specifically an AD&D convention, until the two lines were merged with 3e.

 

[TerraDave]

That's not true. Eldritch Wizardry (1976) had the various Type demons. B/X had all original demons; croaking demons, whispering demons, howling demons, etc., or at least they were original names for familiar AD&D demons. If you took BECMI all the way up to I, you got Orcus and Demogorgon; although of course, clearly that was later.

What I don't remember was whether or not D&D demons came from The Abyss, or if that was specifically an AD&D convention, until the two lines were merged with 3e.

First, I guess I should say welcome back to boards, I suppose.

I am not sure which B/X you are looking at. "I" might have those. The moldvay EDIT cook otus cover B and X sets do not. The Rules Cyclopedia does not.

You are right about 1 thing: Eldritch Wizardry introduces demons. (though not Grazz't, which Gygax actually used in play, and these may have been done by Brian Blume in a very non-Greyhawk specific way). The only planes mentioned are the ethereal plane and the astral plane. Demons come from a non-specified plane.

This plane was specified as the Abyss in the monster manual.

 

[TerraDave]

To be nitpicky, that's actually untrue. D&D had chaotic, neutral and lawful as alignments. AD&D had the nine alignment system.

...

To really nitpick: Demons, in supplement III, are described as "chaotic and evil". Hence chaotic=chaotic neutral. (and thats how it is described).

But thats not really the point. You mention "chaotic neutral" to a geek informed enough to recognize it, they think "D&D". You say chaotic, they may also think that, or think "disorganized" or think about a branch of physics (geek, remember), or moorcock (again geek)...

 

[Desdichado]

First, I guess I should say welcome back to boards, I suppose.

Thanks! We'll see if my comeback takes. Right now, I'm a little slow at work, and having something to read to break up tasks here and there is welcome. That isn't likely to always be true.

I am not sure which B/X you are looking at. "I" might have those. The moldvay cover B and X sets do not. The Rules Cyclopedia does not.

Immortals Rules set. Plus, Wrath of the Immortals.

You are right about 1 thing: Eldritch Wizardry introduces demons. (though not Grazz't, which Gygax actually used in play, and these may have been done by Brian Blume in a very non-Greyhawk specific way). The only planes mentioned are the ethereal plane and the astral plane. Demons come from a non-specified plane.

This plane was specified as the Abyss in the monster manual.

Yeah, that's kinda my point. AD&D isn't D&D--or at least, certainly it's not the totality of it (even if for many players, that's what they most strongly associate with the D&D brand.) For years and years, they were quite specifically different (although very similar, certainly.)

But thats not really the point. You mention "chaotic neutral" to a geek informed enough to recognize it, they think "D&D". You say chaotic, they may also think that, or think "disorganized" or think about a branch of physics (geek, remember), or moorcock (again geek)...

I don't disagree with your point really, I just think that there's room for more than the "traditional" way of playing D&D, and always has been, even according to official sources. Sure, the traditional way is traditional. The most well known. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I don't think Kamikaze Midget is claiming otherwise either. Just making the point that just because it's traditional and common doesn't mean that's all that there ever was. Or that that tradition has somehow become etched in stone and can't be presented as merely an option going forward.

Demons not coming from the Abyss--I don't have any problem with that as an option in D&DN (assuming fo rthe moment that I'd ever play D&DN--which is admittedly probably unlikely.) That's not such an integral part of the experience that it can't be changed, or at least made optional.

Which, lest we get lost in nitpicking each other's points, is the original premise under discussion.

 

[Klaus]

For no other reason than the fact that it's been presented in AD&D, 2e and 3e, the Great Wheel earned its place as the baseline D&D cosmology. But a lot of D&D settings never used the Great Wheel (and suffered when shoehorned into it):

- Dragonlance;
- Dark Sun;
- Eberron;
- Nentir Vale;

(I don't know enough of Birthright and Mystara to comment on their cosmologies, and Red Steel never spoke about extraplanar adventures)

Plus, as James Wyatt mentioned in the article, the Great Wheel is just a mortal's attempt to make sense of the different planes. During the 3e era, Ravenloft boasted "mistways", which were semi-reliable paths through the Mists, linking the Core to certain Clusters and Islands of Terror. Back in the day, I did a mapping exercise where I tried to imagine how a RL denizen would make sense of the "mistways" (since the denizen would have no idea he lived in a "demiplane"), and created a RL "world map" which attempted to rationalize these "mistways" as actual, physical connections. Like the Great Wheel, it was just a mortal's attempt to wrap his brain around something that shouldn't make any sense.

 

[Mournblade94]

I think it's a mistake to say that stuff that is in Greyhawk and FR is what defines D&D. It's a reasonable starting point perhaps but this is 2014 and it's incandescently transparent that Greyhawk and FR are NOT equivalent with D&D. They're particular flavors of D&D -- the first, the most popular -- but not all of the thing.



But they're not OA or Dark Sun, so they are obviously not D&D. D&D exists independent of those elements. D&D doesn't require those elements. A D&D edition being designed today would be kind of narmed to assume that the games played with it include those elements.

But an FR setting being designed today could safely include those elements, since they are part of FR.



Yeah, all that, by what 1e said, was pretty much descriptions of how things were in Greyhawk. When FR came along, they were also often how things were in FR. But by the time we're seeing 2e's alternate settings and 3e's alternate cosmologies (not to mention the galaxy that the OGL opened up), D&D > Greyhawk, or Greyhawk + FR. Now, when you talk about D&D, you need to make a distinction: sometimes it's Greyhawk. Sometimes, it's about FR. Sometimes, it's something else.

That something else may make use of Greyhawk elements if it wants (as FR often does). This is D&D, after all: stealing what works is how this game was born. But I don't think we should loose sight of the idea that these things are particular and local (even if they're early and popular). When you take the Warforged, you're taking a part of Eberron. When you grab a Red Dragon, you're grabbing a part of FR or GH or DL. You can't just wedge a chromatic dragon into anything the D&D logo and call it good (it wouldn't really fit in Dark Sun, for instance). You can't just put demons from the Abyss in any D&D game and presume that it'll be a welcome addition.

D&D is the platform more than any setting. But it's a platform with rich and interesting settings that examples and ideas can come from. And if it's in FR and GH and DL and Eberron, there's a good reason to put it in the MM! But there's also a good reason to maybe describe how it's different in different worlds, without presuming that any one description speaks for D&D as a whole.

The Dragon Magazine articles on Dark Sun's development made it clear that Dark Sun was specifically trying to break D&D tropes to be a unique setting. It is therefore indirectly reliant on the standard D&D tropes.

Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance represent D&D BEST because they contain the common tropes. Those found in the core and not in a unique campaign sourcebook. Darksun, and Eberron, and even Planescape are the exceptions which derive their popularity from Absence of those tropes.

It is clear that Greyhawk can represent the MOST tropes found in D&D better than Eberron or Darksun. I played through all the second edition campaigns of Darksun, and made many of my own. Darksun in itself (though ties with Forgotten Realms as my favorite setting) is not representative of the core of D&D it is a unique derivative that is trying to be different., and its strength is its difference.

Not having chromatic dragons in Darksun does not make the trope of chromatic dragons any less important and representative of D&D. People see the chromatic Dragons and the thought stirs thoughts of D&D. People see the Dragon Kings and the thoughts are first to Darksun. THat is the difference. Greyhawk and FR will stir up thoughts of both common D&D and their campagin world. The unique tropes to Eberron like steam/mage punk, the unique tropes to Darksun like defiling magic, those will stir up thoughts of the uniqueness of the campaign world.

I think if for example D&D online went with Greyhawk, FR, or DL it would have made alot more money than it did with Eberron, which sets itself very separate from the rest of the D&D Multiverse. Many people wanted to see the common tropes of D&D in the online game, and the magetech of Eberron was pretty far gone from the core tropes.

 

[Mournblade94]

Well, the Nentir Vale doesn't have it. And that's still D&D, right?

Was Nentir Vale really even a setting? It seems more aking to Keep on the Borderlands. There does not seem to be much setting, it just seems it is a location for the points of light idea.

 

[Mournblade94]

And the AD&D DMG where, and correct me if I'm wrong here, the Great Wheel was first published, wasn't until August 1979. So Greyhawk would predate the Great Wheel (again, in print--in EGG's mind and home games it could have been very different) by more than four years.

The great wheel was first published I think in 1976 in a Dragon Magizine.

I will have to go home and dig up the article. I think it was 76 or 77. It was published in Dragon BEFORE it was published in AD&D. Though I think it was designed during AD&D development.

 

[I'm A Banana]

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] : I'm trying to understand (from a practical viewpoint) your stance here... are you arguing that there shouldn't be a baseline?

There's a few different ways this could look from a practical WotC standpoint, but I might prefer a building-block approach:

For the planes. The DMG mentions the planes in the context of introducing what planes are, why a DM might want to use one, and how you might want to use them in your games (possibly in a Worldbuilding chapter). Then it provides a few planes that you can use out-of-the-box. The Abyss. The Nine Hells. The Feywild. It doesn't talk about how these go together so much (it maybe reference the Great Wheel as one model, and has a picture). You can probably do that in 3-5 pages, depending on art and whitespace and level of detail.

For alignments. The DMG mentions alignments by talking about how they might be used, what they're good for, what they're not so good for (this maybe happens in a Characters or NPC's chapter). It gives you a few alignment systems out of the box. Law-Neutral-Chaos, Nine Alignments, LG-CE axis. You could probably get away with 2 pages on this.

Then you have the MM. The Intro (or chapter 1 or maybe the Monsters chapter in the DMG or whatever) lays out what monsters are, what they're used for, how to make one. How to customize them by filing off the serial numbers and descriptions. The list of monsters is a list of examples you can use out of the box, like alignment systems or planes. When Demons come up in the MM's alphabetical list, it says something like "The Demons of the Abyss are creatures of chaos and evil incarnate, destructive monstrosities that strive to tear apart the world, obliterating it in an bacchanalia of destruction and anarchy. The Abyss that they live on is thankfully isolated from the mortal world, but wicked priests and debauched cultists practice dark rituals that bring these creatures from beyond into roiling, fleshy being in the crypts, dungeons, and dark temples that they inhabit."

And then you have the Marilith and the Hezoru and the Vrock and the Balor.

And then maybe you also have a sub-heading: "Elemental Demons," and this says that "In the Nentir Vale setting, the Abyss roils at the center of the Elemental Chaos, and this elemental nature infuses the demons that come from it." It then maybe has a template that you can add to the above four demons to give them a more "elemental" cast (Marilith: Earth! Vrock: Wind! Hezoru: Water! Balor: Fire! Galbrezu: Heart? Go Planet?) that maybe changes their type and gives them an elemental attack.

And, hell, if you have the page count (and if you think a variety of demons is an important goal), maybe you have a sub-heading for "Demons of the Blood War" that says something like "In the Planescape setting, demons have an ongoing war with the devils (q.v.), and the demons' edge in this war is their endless chaos and variety." Then we've got a template that you can add that gives them an alignment subtype and lets them smite law or have chaotic fecundity or something.

Someone who doesn't want to bother building with the blocks has this slot-a-in-tab-c kind of match. Okay, there's the Demons, and there's the Abyss, and there's Chaotic Evil, and these all work together. Sounds good. And ooh, I like the sound of that Blood War stuff, cool, now I've put together a whole thing.

Someone who wants to play D&D without demons or the abyss or Chaotic Evil (or who wants to separate out those things) doesn't see any suggestion that they're not doing D&D right if they exclude them. Maybe we've got a DM going with a vaguely Christian Mythos kind of world and he just crams demons and devils together as different shades of the same monolithic evil, doesn't use the Blood War, doesn't use the Abyss, but otherwise leaves them basically unchanged. A 5e written like that makes it easy, because it doesn't say "All D&D Demons are from the Abyss and they are like this," it says "If you want to use demons from the abyss in your D&D, they might be like this."

This really shows the magic when dealing with, say, the Eladrin. You can have an entry like "Eladrin of the Feywild" that is basically 4e Eladrin, and "Eladrin of Arborea" that is basically 3e Eladrin and a DM can use one or both or neither. And if none of the core sources mentioned the Feywild or Arborea? Well, those gaps are for DMs to fill in...or they can wait for the Manual of the Planes...or whatever.

 

[Yaarel]

De facto, D&D today is a diversity of cosmologies with no one having hegemony.

The problem is, socalled ‘traditional’ D&D is uncommon. According to the article’s poll, only 27% of players actually use the Wheel. Even support for it as a default seems devastatingly low, only 40%. Since most D&D players are aware of the Wheel, the majority are knowingly and actively rejecting it.

It is probably a mistake to impose a specific cosmology as a default. At least, the core rules do well to avoid setting-specific assumptions.

Diversity is the new reality and requires a culture of sensitivity.