D&D General Which was your favourite Forgotten Realms Cosmology?

[Scribe]

The Great Wheel is a great reading piece of esoterical cosmology

This is why its my favourite.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is why its my favourite.

Which sort of invites the question: if the cosmology is only there to be read, what's the point?

 

[Scribe]

Which sort of invites the question: if the cosmology is only there to be read, what's the point?

It isnt.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It isnt.

But that was the point of the post you quoted, that the Great Wheel was designed purely for being read, without really any care at all for whether it is functional (as in, useful to the people playing the game), whether it works the way a mythic or medieval cosmology worked, or whether it actually leads to better gameplay experiences. It prioritizes box-filling, systematization, and symmetry over any other goals, and is aggressively unrealistic for the sociocultural context in which it appears (being far more like a late-Renaissance, early-modern cosmology).

 

[Aldarc]

The Great Wheel is a great reading piece of esoterical cosmology,

I would not go anywhere near that far. Obviously your opinion may vary, but I found it quite stale to read. My interest in the Great Wheel quickly dried up once I got past the initial learning stages of the game. Much as @EzekielRaiden said earlier, I didn't really see much point in most of the planes:

crickets

But there was a weird sense of grid-filling that I had with the Great Wheel, with planes existing just for the sake of needing planes between planes, but I found the planes mostly uninteresting and uninspired. The only part of the 3e Manual of the Planes that I found useful was the part about making your own. It wasn't really until Eberron's Orrery that I had an interest reading about the planes in the lore.

 

[Yaarel]

The 4e World Axis and the 5e Great Wheel are moreorless the same.

The main difference is, the alignment planes within the "Astral Sea" are more fluid in 4e and more fixed in 5e.

In this case, a prefer the more fluid of 4e.

I feel 5e can still emphasize a more fluid approach.

Emphasize that each alignment plane comprises many separate "dominions". (I would call them "domains" same as in the ethereal Deep Feywild and Deep Shadowfell. Dominions for now)

For example, 5e has the Chaotic Good plane of Arborea.

Part of Arborea is the elven dominion of Arvandor, an other part of Arborea is the Greekesque dominion of Mount Olympus, an other is the dominion of the sea caverns of Aquallor, an other is the dominion of the desert storms of Mithardir. The Good river Oceanus flows thru these.

These dominions are separate demiplanes, some of infinite size within. Some dominions are accessible directly as islands floating in the Astral Sea, where the inside of the island is greater than the outside that one sees from the Sea. Other dominions might be nested inside, so one must go thru one or more dominions to access it.

Within the Astral Plane of thought, paradigms, symbols, ideals, all of the Chaotic Good dominions link together via portals that emerge because of their shared ethical ideal. But otherwise, each is entirely separate and represents disparate cultures.

The dominions are fluid because each Chaotic Good dominion can, by itself, represent the entire Chaotic Good plane. Likewise, each dominion may or may not exist in the multiverse of a particular setting. Each D&D setting is free to reinterpret the concept of an Astral realm of ideas.

 

[Scars Unseen]

But that was the point of the post you quoted, that the Great Wheel was designed purely for being read, without really any care at all for whether it is functional (as in, useful to the people playing the game), whether it works the way a mythic or medieval cosmology worked, or whether it actually leads to better gameplay experiences. It prioritizes box-filling, systematization, and symmetry over any other goals, and is aggressively unrealistic for the sociocultural context in which it appears (being far more like a late-Renaissance, early-modern cosmology).

I think things existing only for lore purposes is fine, personally. Not everything has to be explicitly accessible as long as it has either enough written about to inspire potential adventures or, conversely, be open and empty enough for DMs to fill with their own designs.

That said, there just so happens to be an entire setting in 2E devoted the the Great Wheel cosmology with plenty of adventures, books and box sets exploring the entirety of the existence it describes, making it technically the most playable cosmology from a prewritten material standpoint.

 

[Scribe]

But that was the point of the post you quoted, that the Great Wheel was designed purely for being read, without really any care at all for whether it is functional (as in, useful to the people playing the game), whether it works the way a mythic or medieval cosmology worked, or whether it actually leads to better gameplay experiences. It prioritizes box-filling, systematization, and symmetry over any other goals, and is aggressively unrealistic for the sociocultural context in which it appears (being far more like a late-Renaissance, early-modern cosmology).

I disagree. Yes some of the planes are pretty much fully unplayable, but I find the grid filling as you call it not a downside. Then again, I do modify it some, but I'm also a fan of Alignment, so perhaps our views just dont align.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think things existing only for lore purposes is fine, personally. Not everything has to be explicitly accessible as long as it has either enough written about to inspire potential adventures or, conversely, be open and empty enough for DMs to fill with their own designs.

I just don't think the Great Wheel is able to inspire potential adventures in the vast majority of its planes. The inner planes in particular are completely worthless for that purpose--most of them are outright deadly to even visit briefly, let alone adventure in, and literally don't contain anything but infinite stretches of uninterrupted nothing (empty air, leagues of literally just water, miles of uninterrupted stone, an ocean of fire and genuinely nothing else). Meanwhile, the 17 outer planes are pretty profligate; you could easily reduce them to just nine (one for each alignment grid square) without losing...anything, as far as I can tell.

Consider: Arcadia becomes the foothills of Celestia. Bytopia becomes the name for the hinterland region on the "far side" of Celestia, which connects the "planar shores" of Celestia to Elysium. Then the Beastlands become the hinterlands of Arborea, which fully absorbs Ysgard. What, actually, is lost by doing this? You can still have those regions, they don't need to be their own distinct planes. Cuts waste by a huge margin and costs, as far as I can tell, nothing except that there are now more places you can reach without needing to cast plane shift.

That said, there just so happens to be an entire setting in 2E devoted the the Great Wheel cosmology with plenty of adventures, books and box sets exploring the entirety of the existence it describes, making it technically the most playable cosmology from a prewritten material standpoint.

Again, fundamentally disagree. I would in fact be extremely surprised to hear if there's even a single adventure set in one of the para- or quasielemental planes. And that's twelve planes. Certainly the Ethereal isn't getting any either.

If you can go 20, 30 years without getting a single adventure, I think that's unequivocal proof that the plane only exists to be read about. And, in the case of the Ethereal, it literally DOES only exist to be read about!

 

[TiQuinn]

I think things existing only for lore purposes is fine, personally. Not everything has to be explicitly accessible as long as it has either enough written about to inspire potential adventures or, conversely, be open and empty enough for DMs to fill with their own designs.

That said, there just so happens to be an entire setting in 2E devoted the the Great Wheel cosmology with plenty of adventures, books and box sets exploring the entirety of the existence it describes, making it technically the most playable cosmology from a prewritten material standpoint.

Totally feel this as someone who’s been enjoying going back to all that 2e lore and then finding lots of inspiration inside of it. And yeah, Planescape was just amazing.