What's your multiverse like?

[Matthias]

The stock "Great Wheel" cosmology has the advantage of tradition (both gamist and mythological) and is intimately linked with the alignment system. However, the cosmology topography of the "great wheel" may not work for all campaign styles. The old "Manual of the Planes" described several alternate cosmologies: Myriad Planes (planes randomly intersect and may form "clumps", "necks" "archipelagoes", and so on); Doppel Cosmology (a.k.a. 'mirror universe'), Orrery Cosmology (planetary system) and Winding Road Cosmology.

What cosmology topography do you use for your campaign's multiverse?

 

[Kaisoku]

The cosmology for any homebrew campaign setting I would run things in is a mix of 3.5e Manual of the Planes and the Golarion setting.

Basically all the different planes can be drawn along two axes: positve to negative energy, and sentience to instinct.

Along one line, you have Positive Energy flowing towards Negative Energy, with the Material Plane in the center. Transitional planes are the Fey (between Positive and Material) and Shadow (between Negative and Material).
Mirroring all this is the Ethereal plane. It allows for easier transition to the Fey and Shadow planes, and even has connections where the Fey touches Shadow without needing to pass through the Material plane.

Along another line you have the Wheel and the Maelstrom. The Wheel (rather, a broken wheel) takes sentience (souls) from the Material Plane; it isn't a completely accurate wheel because it follows the alignments, one half being more and more ordered, while the other half breaking into constantly changing regions.
The Maelstrom feeds the elemental forces into the Material Plane, basically the building blocks of substance (elemental forces), and is a whirling mess of matter driven by natural forces and instinct, shaped like a spinning hurricane or tornado. It touches on every plane in the Positive/Negative axis, and is a great way to travel if you can survive the harshness of the regions.

Life basically flows from the positive plane, picking up the elements, and decaying into the negative energy plane, while the more sophisticated sentience that develops is saved from annihilation by moving onto the wheel.


The reason for having it this way? It keeps most of the written material intact, with little change required, but gives me a sense of internal consistency that I can draw on for writing new material.
I'm not sure how that fits in your examples there... it seems to draw on a few concepts.

 

[Bluescale_Kobold]

The cosmology to homebrew I'm currently designing is specifically being made vague enough so that things from the Great Beyond or the Great Wheel can be added, though its origin story is quite different. The framework of the universe is based on duality, specifically Potential (Chaos) vs. Actual (Existence). The Actual arose from Potential like an iceberg rising from the ocean. An ancient being of chaos saw so much possibility forced into a single form as an affront and tried to destroy it, but only succeeded in releasing the four states of existence: Solid (Earth), Liquid (Water), Gas (Air), and Plasma (Fire). These interacted to form the material universe, and the remaining elements grouped together to form four of the elemental planes. There are a total of seven elemental planes (though some scholars think that the Positive and Negative Energy Planes are two sides of the same plane and it should really be six planes):Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Positive (Energy), Negative (Void), and Ice (everything that was left after the four elemental planes left. It's also referred to as Solidified Order, but Ice is more easily understood).

The material plane and multiple demiplanes are also mirrored by two dependent planes (meaning these planes cannot exist without some quality of the material plane existing): the Shadow Plane (where the only semipermanent things there are three-dimensional solid "shadows" of objects in the material plane), and the Plane of Dreams (a plane created out of the thoughts and imaginings of all life the the material plane).

The outer planes do exist, as Hell, Heaven, and a mysterious plane of absolute law were responsible for creating a prison demiplane named "Tartarus", and the Abyss has been mentioned, but not too much has been done with them, and I will probably just use things from Manual of the Planes and The Great Beyond to flesh them out if needed.

 

[gamerprinter]

The cosmology of Kaidan - my published setting, adventures and supplements for Pathfinder is both simple and complex.

First of all it's a closed multiverse, meaning you can't get to the various outer planes from other prime material planes, you can only get there from Kaidan, and can only return from there to Kaidan. (Kaidan being the prime material Japan-based setting).

Kaidan uses the Buddhist Wheel of Life as the model for it's cosmology. The Wheel of Life being 6 different 'hells' that all peoples are doomed to follow in a reincarnation cycle, unless they escape by finding enlightenment. The 6 planes of the Wheel of Life (and their related sins) are: heaven (apathy), asuras (jealousy), human (free will), animal (primal instincts), hungry ghost (greed) and hell (rage and torment.)

I've taken the Japanese social caste system and rebranded it to represent part of the Wheel of Life itself. Heaven = the noble caste, Asuras = the samurai caste, Human = commoner caste, Animal = yokai non-humans, Hungry Ghost = hinin caste and yakuza, Hell = Jigoku, the Japanese hell (actually one of the levels of the Abyss).

Thus five of the six Buddhist hells are represented by the four social castes, with yokai being included, but not really part of the social caste system. Thus the social castes are more than a distinction of birth, rather a cosmic difference from one caste to another.

Aside from Hell, being one of the few outer planes of Kaidan cosmology, there is also Yomi, the land of the dead, which is kind of a pocket ethereal plane. Both Jigoku (hell) and Yomi (ethereal) only connect to Kaidan and do not connect to any other plane.

So you could say Kaidan has 7 planes of existence, and 5 of them share the same material space on the physical islands of Kaidan.

To Kaidanese point of view, the other planes of the D&D Great Wheel do not exist. (Even though as a portable setting, Kaidan can be placed in the ocean of any given setting - it still has it's own cosmology).

 

[Systole]

At the moment, I use a very basic good-and-evil cosmology. Sort of. There's the Prime Material plane, various elemental and para-elemental planes, and then there's presumably a "heaven" and a "hell." I like to keep my cosmology vague until it becomes important, so I can screw over my players in the most creative and frustrating way possible.

 

[Tovec]

For my games, I've found it useful to use the 3.5 versions of the gods, with slightly modified versions of outsiders, elementals, dragons and monsters.

I've done it this way due to the ease of just using stock 3.5 (and to a lesser extent PF) creations straight out of the book. The more I have to modify to snap into an alternate definition the more difficult it is for my players to follow.
--Multiply this by the fact that I often run a game for a group who play in several games at once. Being the sole game that has a wacky list of gods, domains and outsiders can really throw them.

ALL THAT being said, I do tweak things as much as possible after that. While my players can probably expect red dragons to spit fire and white ones ice, they have no way of knowing what alignment that dragon may be. They won't know what powers, personalities or tactics to expect when dealing with these creatures either. It adds a little spontaneity and creativity to adventures when they still have to learn something beyond a simple knowledge (arcana) roll.

I spent a bit of a detour getting here... But as far as the cosmology, I use a modified version of the great wheel. Again, I use the wheel because my players would get messed learning something new just for my game, and because I use the default gods too.
However, I do the same thing for the planes I do for dragons. While you may expect Elysium to be good and Hell to be evil, I use all the tricks I've learned to make the planes as dynamic, mysterious and interesting as possible after those well known bits.
For example, mixing up the demonic power structure has been wonderful for RP options and campaign twists. The lords of hell have changed a half dozen times in a half dozen games, just because I want a different list.

The few things I have done which are completely new or unique to my games include; making archons LN by default, as opposed to Good. I have also added another plane (well a few but..) on the "material" axis, naming it the "battleground" and using it as such for when creatures of all alignments need to spar.

Oh, I've also slightly jogged how the planes connect to one another. For example, when one climbs Mount Celestia and reaches the top, they enter Elysium instead of just the last mount. Also, I've squished the good planes together and evil planes closer together, treating them more or less as two "infinite worlds". This has helped travel between them. It still isn't easy, but plane-hoping spells aren't necessarily required.

Kind of a half baked response, I apologize. I am very sleepy and operating off 6.5 hours of sleep over 2 nights. I should go crash now

 

[Munktar]

The world of course is flat. Not like a pancake, but it is the top of an 20000 mile high pillar, that sticks out of the Sea of Chaos.

The sun travels thru the pillar about half way of the pillar, this is the place where chaos and fire meet. Better known as the hell, abbys or eternal inferno. When traveling to the sky one slowly passes into the void of the astral and celestial bodies. the points of light are shinging angels aka stars.

 

[Tzi]

For my setting, the cosmology is intentionally vague from the players perspective. Several "planes," are explicitly just variables in some arcane formula, they mathematically exist, but physically nobody knows for sure or has actually seen these planes. Theoreticians conjecture that there are elemental planes of fire, water, earth, ect, and some planes existence is debated. Scholars from one school argue that Positive and Negative energy originate or generate from their own separate planes, others argue that they are merely forces in the material world.

The main planes that are semi-confirmed to exist from the players perspective are the "Ethereal Shadow," which is a multilayered alternate dimension consisting of many Demi-planes that often exhibit their own consciousness. Within the ethereal shadow is the realm of the dead (Which the player briefly wandered into) and the Realm of Spirits (Also known as the realm of the Fey) and other such strange pockets in reality.

All the other planes besides that and the material world are more or less theoretical conjecture from the players perspective.

 

[Mark Chance]

My campaign's cosmology takes inspiration from Michael Moorcock's Million Spheres. Within each sphere, there can be multiple worlds.

 

[Matthias]

I've been working on refining my cosmology to be posted to my own thread. I haven't got it all worked out yet but in the meantime I wanted to mention that Li Po’s Hermitage (Li Po's Hermitage) includes some wonderful examinations of the traditional D&D cosmology (Planescape: The Outer Planes). He also has a Pathfinder javascript character generator (Javascript Pathfinder Character Generator (Core Rules)).