D&D General What Does Your Cosmology Look Like?

[TwoSix]

In the TwoSix-verse, all of my D&D and D&D-adjacent games are connected in one vast multiverse, which expands in dimensions not even the gods or the philosophizers of the Fraternity of Order understand.

There are thousands upon thousands of Prime world, with trillions of souls. Many of them view the planes through the lens of the Great Wheel, others the cosmic Orrery, and many have their own distinct connections to the dimensions beyond. All of these are true; the planes are bounded infinitudes. A plane called Baator in one place might be connected to a plane called Fernia in another, which is connected to the Elemental Plane of Fire in both locations. Connections are based on concepts, not the limitation of Euclidian geometry.

What is true, although not widely understood, is that five great forces drive the multiverse: Arcane (Chaos giving birth to Concepts), Primal (solidity and physical form), Shadow (perception, memory, and mind), Divine (connection, truth, and idealism), and Astral (the soul and personal identity).

 

[Brendan Byrd]

Viewed through The Eye of Becmy⁽¹⁾while squinting.

I affectionately refer to this as Silly-string Theory⁽²⁾ and it provides enough of a framework to “explain” magic, planes of existance, and such.

~~
Unsoncy (IM3 pg15) a “Bermuda Triangle” of things, is the flip side of the Outlands “coin” (and Sigil is a “Bermuda Triangle” for sentient beings). Unsoncy’s magical singularity is the cause of the spire in the Outlands, and the disruptions to magic there.

~~
“Immortals” are to “God•esses” as Wizards are to Clerics.
Oranges and apples. Both are fruity.

~~
An infinite number of finite planes,
BECMI + 1e MoTP + Planescape + 3e MoTP, etc…
Mostly, it’s mechanics backstage, detailed as needed.
Planes/locations cherry-picked as needed.

Spoiler: Footnotes

(1) BECMI / WotI
(2) As opposed to super-string theory.
(3) Made you look.

Edit: accidentally found a shortcut for formatting code. Should be fixed now.

 

[Desdichado]

I actually don't prefer to give much thought to cosmology anymore at all. The "prime material plane" does connect to other worlds, but what exactly that connection is is vague and mysterious. Obviously outsiders, if I have them, come from somewhere, but if the PCs go anywhere, it's like the Plane of Shadow or Shadowfell or the Upside Down or tel'aran'rhiod, or whatever, which all kind of have the same basic gist to them. Deeper in this dark plane you can get to other planes that are more distant, and that's my handwavy explanation of where daemons come from, etc. but it's not really a feature of any of my games that the PCs would be expected to do much there. If they do to some extraplanar destination, that's a major thing, and they just go to the one place without necessarily having any context on how to get there.

I did once dabble in a "Wagon Train to the Planes" setting, where various planes were all connected kind of like soap bubbles, and the whole point was episodic travel across this planar landscape, but I never ran that or did a lot of development really on it, and I'm much less interested in it now.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Just a chat thread:

What does your planar/worlds/heaven and hell/etc cosmology look like in your D&D campaign?

I very rare use the official D&D cosmology. I just don't particularly like. it. If I am inclined to use it, I use at least the 4E version of the Astral Sea as opposed to the Astral Plane.

The one I use most that I much prefer is a Mirror World Cosmology. Every plane is a direct reflection of the Prime, down to the geography, but dominated by one particular cosmological force and faction (the Prime is Neutral). So the Faewild/Faerie is a world that looks almost exactly like the Prime, except everything in nature from forests to rivers to glaciers is just More, and the powers that dominate are faerie spirits and beings. Hell is where brimstone and chaos rule, while Heaven is where Order and Light rule. You can travel between them at points and places that are infused with the power of two (or more) planes, as well as by typical magic. And you might have to travel through, say, Faerie and then Hades in order to actually get to Hell (just as an example).

I also do like the Eberron cosmology, but I only use it if I am running in Eberron.

So, tell us about your campaign's planar cosmology.

Ever since I saw the 4E cosmology, I liked it the most and am mostly taking that as a base assumption for my ideas. I think the main reason is that I really like the Feywild and the Shadowfell. I generally vastly prefer the ideas of designing any planes as plausible adventuring locations, like the Elemental Chaos instead of having an Elemental Plane of Fire or Plane of Negative or Positive Energy. But the Feywild and Shadowfell just feel the best among them, some sort of distorted mirrors of the real world.

So your idea of a Mirror World cosmology appeals to me, too. Maybe food for thought.

Though currently I am running a Hexxen 1773 game, and the cosmology there isn't very prominently facing the players.

I might run a Diamond Throne/Arcana Evolved campaign, in which I'll adopt some of the 4E cosmology. Though domains aren't places with gods, becaus gods are distant (or, maybe, they are frozen in the Eternal Frost, as some adventure hint in the Arcana Evolved book implise). Angelic beings exist there, and the idea is that the Angels, Demons and Devils were once servants of the gods, but they kinda "left". The afterlife is still not known, but souls might spend some (unfortunate?) time with the demons or devils if they are unlucky.

 

[SkidAce]

"Planes", for the most part are other worlds in other solar systems. Basically a galaxy.
Some parts of the "space" in between are "wildspace" (magical, breathable, etc, like spelljammer).
Other parts of space are like real space.

Some are worlds like our own, or the like Faerun, etc. Others act like heavens/hells. So some of the Outer Planes from the Great Wheel are actually worlds out there in space.

Distances in space are like the real world, so in most cases you will not physically travel through space to other worlds.
However, the Astral overlays most everything (conduit for reality, magic, and thought)
You can enter the Astral and treat it like sci-fi hyperspace. Some areas have strong conduits, taking you to a specific place.
(sometimes in some areas, its like Warhammer 40K hyperspace, or even The Void)

There is no ethereal, specifically there is no Deep Ethereal, and ethereal is just a state of being, a transition between two areas that overlap cosmically (thanks Keith Baker, you are the best!) called minglings or border zones.
Faerie and Shadow realms are mirrors of reality, formed during a seismic event.

The worlds at the center of the galaxy are either being formed from the elements or are reality being broken down into the elements. So at first you have fire worlds, air worlds, etc, then as you get closer to the center, things start becoming more broken and mixed, eventually becoming an area that you can walk/travel from world to world, and at the very center is basically the "Elemental Chaos". Beyond that no one knows, a black hole? The positive energy plane? Azathoth sitting blindly surrounded by musical pipers?

The Abyss is a slowly growing meta-cosmicly connected web of corrupted worlds, slowly spreading.

Last but not least is Limbo...seemingly not fitting the concept as well as I would like, but basically the "bowl or foundation" that the rest of the stuff was built from lying underneath it all like a fluid foundation.

BL:
Planes are worlds.
Heaven/hells are worlds.
Inner Planes are worlds and fragments.
Astral is a transitive plane
Limbo is a formative plane

 

[DragonLancer]

My homebrew setting uses the standard cosmology and I've used that for most settings I have run. However in the past I did try to do away with most of the outer planes because they somewhat superfluous at times. I left the elemental and odd ones like Shadowfell and Feywild alone, and just changed to the outer planes to be just five - Silver Heavens (good), Nine Hells (evil), Outlands (Neutral), Primordia (chaos) and Mechanus (law). It worked but it didn't at the same time but I put that down to just being too tied to the standard great wheel cosmology.

 

[Barner Cobblewood]

Nothing as organised as planes. The cosmology is continually being produced, like the way an image appears when laying down tiles to produce a mosaic.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I've used as a basis Marco Dalmonte's Mystara Codex Immortalis where the Old Ones created the Barrier, also known as the Dimensional Vortex. For what purpose was this Barrier created? One can only speculate...but the name Barrier is ominous.

The Old Ones decided to begin life anew on this side of the Barrier, but as things go, they disagreed amongst themselves and so a few of them created their own Multiverses, distinct from the Mystaraverse, which could explain the similarities that exist between different Creations.
It also perhaps explains who Ao was answering to at the end of the Avatar trilogy, a superior being that exists beyond the universe, in a place before time (an Old One)
It also allows for unique creations such as Dark Sun.

These Multiverses are connected by The Bleed (a term I stole from Green Lantern) which is a deeper version of the Astral Sea.

This allows for many of the cosmological theories to exist simultaneously within various Multiverses/Creations.
Each Creation has its own laws of governance as crafted by its Old One/s.

As to where these Old Ones are now? Many (if not all) have left their Creations...

 

[cimbrog]

My favorite was the old "corrupted layers" model I used for a Diablo-inspired game years ago.

At the center is the Earth. Surrounding it is the Ethereal where spirits and ghosts live "alongside" the Earth. Deeper into the Ethereal is the realm of Dreams which sometimes touches the Earth but also touches the realms above. Beyond Dream is Heaven where the Creator and their angels live along with the souls of the deceased.

When Lucifer fell from Heaven after their revolt, they crashed through the Earth and began corrupting the planes they passed through once they came out the other side. On the "other side" of the Earth, Ethereal became Shadow, Dream became Nightmare and Heaven became Hell. (The "other side" of the Earth isn't physical, it's more conceptual. But people still assume someone from the physical "other side" of the earth is also corrupted.)

The game took place near the cursed spot where Lucifer crashed down and was trying to establish a way to crawl back out.

 

[Distracted DM]

Originally I kept things vague to my players, but high level DnD tends to lead to planes-hopping or at least visiting other planes, so that ends up with some stuff getting nailed down. Or defined, at least, for the moment. I do like my players to have the feeling that they have some idea of the world, setting, planes, n' such- some of them really jive with that. On the other hand I don't want to be restricted to the definitions that they've made previously about such places.. so it's complicated.

Basically I take inspiration from a bunch of things: great wheel, eberron, elder scrolls, pillars of eternity, michael moorcock, MCDM ... whatever's cool and can mesh together in my head.

Some stuff becomes vestigial over time as my tastes change or as other needs arise: I ran a campaign in my setting's local version of Sigil, but I'm a lot less enamored with that place now that we finished that game... so I might just axe it, or change it.

In one campaign the players traveled to the City of Brass and found that it was a place where many magic items could be bought, acquired, won etc. and that soon became a destination in future games (because I try to avoid magic shops in games)... but I really didn't love the idea of being able to so easily acquire powerful magic (once they could plane shift), they were even fine risking their characters lives (and thus sort of the campaign) in a death match arena there for powerful magic prizes... so I have since steered away from that, and I think if it does come up there'll either have been a regime change which will makes things tougher for mortals there, or I'll need to have a hard look at some city of brass sourcebooks (I have a couple different ones :'D) to get a more concrete idea of how other folk have handled it.

All that to say... it's flexible.