D&D General What is your favorite D&D cosmology?

[see]

Please show me a MotP that devotes pages space to the stratosphere and the mantle.

If I were disputing your view of publishing priorities, I'd have argued with your previous post.

There is a not-remotely-subtle difference between saying "Eliminating the existence of places in the setting where people don't adventure is good game design" and "Spending more space on Bytopia than the literal one sentence the 1e Player's Handbook or 1e Deities & Demigods each used on the Twin Paradises was a bad publishing choice". Proving the second proposition doesn't actually say anything about the validity of the first.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If I were disputing your view of publishing priorities, I'd have argued with your previous post.

There is a not-remotely-subtle difference between saying "Eliminating the existence of places in the setting where people don't adventure is good game design" and "Spending more space on Bytopia than the literal one sentence the 1e Player's Handbook or 1e Deities & Demigods each used on the Twin Paradises was a bad publishing choice". Proving the second proposition doesn't actually say anything about the validity of the first.

That in no way follows what you actually said.

You made a slippery slope argument that 'the next step' from cutting the planes that didn't make good adventure locations was inexplicably making a point of saying the mantle of the plane didn't exist.

Which is hilarious when one realizes there's at least one official setting that straight up does that and goes full Hollow Earth.

 

[Aldarc]

And what I'm highlighting is that 99.99+% of the Material Plane is places where people can't adventure, or even live. If the "whole point" of the World Axis is eliminating places where people don't adventure, then the next step is to demand that the Material Plane be changed to eliminate 1) the stratosphere on up and 2) the mantle on down. After all, nobody adventures in those parts of it.

It's perfectly fine to find the World Axis more aesthetically satisfying than the Great Wheel. But if people are going to try to argue from a pseudo-objective premise that places should not exist in a game multiverse if they have "little utility", I'm going to point out the places of "little utility" they don't actually seem to have any problem with.

Much like how I will point out that this is less of a well-thought out good faith argument and more of a bad faith logical ad absurdum.

 

[see]

That in no way follows what you actually said.

You made a slippery slope argument that 'the next step' from cutting the planes that didn't make good adventure locations was inexplicably making a point of saying the mantle of the plane didn't exist.

Which is hilarious when one realizes there's at least one official setting that straight up does that and goes full Hollow Earth.

That last sentence, there? That's my point, right there. We have people making the argument that getting rid of planes where nothing happens makes the World Axis superior to other cosmolgies, right? But they don't turn around and argue that replacing a huge volume of solid planet where nothing happens makes Mystara's setting design superior to other D&D worlds.

Why not? Because the existence of places within a setting where adventuring doesn't happen isn't an issue in need of correction.

The problem of a Manual of the Planes spending two thousand words on Bytopia isn't a problem with the cosmology having a LG-NG afterlife plane any more than a setting book spending two thousand words on "Adventuring in the Planetary Mantle of Faerûn" is a problem caused by Faerûn having a planetary mantle. In both cases, the problem is entirely the decision to publish two thousand words about the place. The lesson in both cases is the same: "Don't bother publishing two thousand words of boredom" not "Eliminating parts of the setting where adventures don't happen is good."

 

[dave2008]

Is it really? It always came across to me as a really thoroughly nailed-down, "it must be this way, and this is a comprehensive accounting of what there is."

Yes, that is how it is explained in the books, IIRC. However, it is not strongly reinforced so I can understand how one might assume otherwise.

 

[Voadam]

The Great Wheel and the World Axis do not strike me as that far apart.

The prime is mostly the same in both, the World Axis has some Underdark as a separate realm aspect.

The GW Outer Planes are generally the Islands in the WA Astral Sea.

The Astral Plane and Wildspace are combined into the Astral Sea.

The Negative Energy Plane and the Ethereal and the Shadow plane are kind of condensed into the Ravenloft and dead soul housing Shadowfell with the Positive Energy Plane mapping very loosely to the Feywild. The transitive plane aspects are lost and fey stuff is accommodated as a big deal rather than a minor aspect of some outer plane.

The elemental planes are no longer individual separate planes but smashed together in a huge Chaos and the Abyss is a corrupted part of that instead of a part of the outer planes.

Cosmologically dead souls in GW go ethereal if undead otherwise astral to end up outer planes, in WA they go Shadowfell to an unknown and do not form into petitioners or outsiders.

Cosmologically GW has elementals and outsiders as fairly different things, while WA does as well but makes demons corrupted CE elementals instead of CE outsiders.

A lot of overlap.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That last sentence, there? That's my point, right there. We have people making the argument that getting rid of planes where nothing happens makes the World Axis superior to other cosmolgies, right? But they don't turn around and argue that replacing a huge volume of solid planet where nothing happens makes Mystara's setting design superior to other D&D worlds.

Why not? Because the existence of places within a setting where adventuring doesn't happen isn't an issue in need of correction.

The problem of a Manual of the Planes spending two thousand words on Bytopia isn't a problem with the cosmology having a LG-NG afterlife plane any more than a setting book spending two thousand words on "Adventuring in the Planetary Mantle of Faerûn" is a problem caused by Faerûn having a planetary mantle. In both cases, the problem is entirely the decision to publish two thousand words about the place. The lesson in both cases is the same: "Don't bother publishing two thousand words of boredom" not "Eliminating parts of the setting where adventures don't happen is good."

You're not understanding what actually happened though. Sure some useless planes got the axe because the game no longer needed to fill alignment boxes. However, the main appeal (and apparent detractor) is that the other planes got a makeover that made them somewhere interesting to adventure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're not understanding what actually happened though. Sure some useless planes got the axe because the game no longer needed to fill alignment boxes. However, the main appeal (and apparent detractor) is that the other planes got a makeover that made them somewhere interesting to adventure.

While simultaneously changing the world from a place that could be extrapolated from myth and legend (categorized by mortal minds) into an amusement park where the only people in the universe who matter are the 3-6 characters being played by folks at your table.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Again, how is the World Axis being built for adventure any more or less mythical or legendary than the Great Wheel built for alignment?

If I build a house where none of the bathrooms have doors and you need an axe to use the WC, that doesn't make it Mt Olympus.

 

[Staffan]

The Great Wheel and the World Axis do not strike me as that far apart.

The prime is mostly the same in both, the World Axis has some Underdark as a separate realm aspect.

The GW Outer Planes are generally the Islands in the WA Astral Sea.

The difference is that the Great Wheel is a mostly-closed cosmology. There are exactly 17 outer planes and they are defined by alignments. Since alignments are a bad idea and should not be part of anything at all, I don't like that. The World Axis, on the other hand, says "Here's the Astral Sea, and within that you'll find all sorts of planes. Some, but not all, are homes to gods. Some have weird cosmic phenomena. Some look much like the world you're from, others look entirely different." That leaves a lot more room for fun stuff.

I mean, just look at all the weird dimensions that have popped up in various Marvel comics over the years. That's what I want in a cosmology, not mindless box-checking.