Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Sundragon 08-18-07, 09:39 PM	Hello, I know I tend to be the contrarian here because I am not much of a fan of Planescape (Loved the idea, hated the implementation). I was wondering, now that D&D is going to be setting neutral I was wondering if the Great Wheel is going to stay the default cosmology or will there be more of a push to individualize cosmologies based on the setting in question. Personally I believe that the alignment based Great Wheel cosmology should be nothing but one of many options available to the DM to craft his or her own setting. I would like a 4e Manual of the Planes to contain the Great Wheel, the Great Tree (FR), the orbiting planes of Eberron, Yggdrasil of Norse Cosmology, The Upper World and Lower Worlds of Shamanism, The Manichean duality of Christian Myth (sanitized to D&D PC), etc. as examples of possible cosmologies available to the DM so he can use them directly or use them as examples. Sundragon
ripvanwormer 08-19-07, 01:11 AM	Personally I believe that the alignment based Great Wheel cosmology should be nothing but one of many options available to the DM to craft his or her own setting. That's exactly how things are now. That was the whole point of the 3e MotP, in fact, which is why it contains a toolkit for creating your own planes and cosmologies, and many alternate sample cosmologies beyond the default one. I would like a 4e Manual of the Planes to contain the Great Wheel, the Great Tree (FR), the orbiting planes of Eberron, Yggdrasil of Norse Cosmology, The Upper World and Lower Worlds of Shamanism, The Manichean duality of Christian Myth (sanitized to D&D PC), etc. as examples of possible cosmologies available to the DM so he can use them directly or use them as examples. So, in other words, just like the 3e MotP, but with less room for flavor and detail because you've added in a bunch of other stuff that belong in Deities & Demigods and the various individual campaign settings instead. The point of having a default is adventures and accessories have to be set somewhere. It's not practical to write many adventures in so vague a way that they can be placed equally well in a "shamanistic" cosmology and in "Christian Myth." It's better to have a single cosmology, like the Great Wheel, that's more than flexible enough to encompass both. For people who want to play in an exotic, tailored cosmology, the tools exist, but they're going to have to expect to do a lot more work by themselves. For people who want to do less of their own work, or who want more inspiration for their own creations to jump off from, or who simply want to be able to easily use published planar adventures, a default needs to exist. I suspect this will always be the Great Wheel, in one form or another. Those who want a "Manichaean" cosmology have the least work to do, since they can simply strip Baator and Celestia from the core cosmos, ignoring the other planes. Of course, anything that mentions any other planes will be less usable in their campaigns. Of course, Yggdrasil is part of the Great Wheel as well, so someone who wanted to use only the Norse planes could easily strip those parts from the Wheel cosmology, and so on for the Greeks, shamans, and so forth. In any case, it sounds like Odin and Thor are going to be in the PH, existing alongside Vecna, Lolth, and other familiar D&D staples in the same assumed core multiverse. From the Wizards R&D seminar, posted by an attendee ( http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=204357). "Greyhawk will not be default setting in core We want to leverage the assets of the assumed parts of a D&D world – Mordenkainen, Bigby, Vecna, Lolth, Tiamat, Asmodeus, etc. However, we also want to call upon the great mythology that is more commonly known such as Thor, etc."
ArcTan 08-19-07, 05:55 PM	So, in other words, just like the 3e MotP, but with less room for flavor and detail because you've added in a bunch of other stuff that belong in Deities & Demigods and the various individual campaign settings instead. The problem is when you have only one "default cosmology" in the core book, and a lot of people don't buy the sourcebook with the variant cosmologies in it, people start saying the default cosmology is "canon" and using it to the exclusion of all else. Not just people in your gaming group, either, but game designers and people who write sourcebooks. (I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a 3e adventure that used the Asgardian Pantheon and its cosmology, for example.) The point of having a default is adventures and accessories have to be set somewhere. It's not practical to write many adventures in so vague a way that they can be placed equally well in a "shamanistic" cosmology and in "Christian Myth." So set different adventures in different cosmologies, with notes for conversion if you absolutely have to. It's better to have a single cosmology, like the Great Wheel, that's more than flexible enough to encompass both. ...Except it's not. You keep saying it is, but it really isn't. The existence of the Great Wheel imposes all kinds of assumptions and restrictions on what you can do with the world, and some of us are sick of it. (There is no "Christian myth", for instance, that really makes sense in the Great Wheel, which posits that Law, Chaos, Good and Evil are all equal opposing forces, in defiance of Christian theology.) For people who want to play in an exotic, tailored cosmology, the tools exist, but they're going to have to expect to do a lot more work by themselves. *Must* they? WotC doesn't want *any* of their money? At all? For people who want to do less of their own work, or who want more inspiration for their own creations to jump off from, or who simply want to be able to easily use published planar adventures, a default needs to exist. Why not more than one default, for more than one concept, for more than one universe? I'm actually kind of amazed it took until we got to Eberron for a game designer to be allowed by WotC to break the Great Wheel's chains and write his own damn planar cosmology. I suspect this will always be the Great Wheel, in one form or another. I hope not.
ripvanwormer 08-19-07, 07:46 PM	So set different adventures in different cosmologies, with notes for conversion if you absolutely have to. Or set them all in the Great Wheel, which can fit any sort of adventure inside it. Want to use Yggdrasil? Expedition to the Demonweb Pits used it, using the Great Wheel as a background. Loki's realm is described in the 3e Manual of the Planes. The various Asgardian gods have a place there as well. Want to explore the Olympian Underworld? The Savage Tide adventure path included elements from that recently, in Wolfgang Baur's "Enemy of My Enemy" adventure. The Upper and Lower Worlds exist there, too, as demiplanes connected to the Beastlands. The Great Wheel is used to the exclusion of all else because it contains everything else. It's a commonly accepted compromise that the largest group of people can make use of, and nothing else can say that. (There is no "Christian myth", for instance, that really makes sense in the Great Wheel That's true to some extent, but you don't really think WotC's going to publish a planar D&D adventure set in an explicitly Christian cosmology, do you? Do you have a better example? The closest you're going to get is Celestia and Baator, I think, with its angels and devils named for beings within the Christian cosmology. And that's pretty darn close, for most purposes. *Must* they? WotC doesn't want *any* of their money? At all? If it were possible for WotC to publish adventures and supplements that only appealed to tiny, tiny groups, I'm sure they would. But it's not. If you want a cosmology that varies radically from the norm, you're going to have to do some conversion work. It's not practical or desirable to write an adventure so painfully generic that it can be set equally well in the Norse Helheim, Dante's Inferno, the shamanistic Lower World, one of Eberron's planes, and the D&D Abyss. Either such an adventure would be so undetailed that it would be mostly useless, or it would have details that would jar with one of those settings to some degree. So it's best to establish a common cosmology that's useful for the largest number of people.
lord_zack 08-20-07, 11:33 AM	I'm not sure if the Great Wheel will be in the Core Rulebooks, but I'm hoping for a 4e Manual of the Planes that has it (and in a non watered-down form unlike the 3e one) or some sort of support for Planescape. For those who want alternate cosmologies there ought to be basic rules for planers in the DMG, more rules in the MotP and actual details in Deities and Demigods.
Sundragon 08-20-07, 01:12 PM	Or set them all in the Great Wheel, which can fit any sort of adventure inside it. Want to use Yggdrasil? Expedition to the Demonweb Pits used it, using the Great Wheel as a background. Loki's realm is described in the 3e Manual of the Planes. The various Asgardian gods have a place there as well. Want to explore the Olympian Underworld? The Savage Tide adventure path included elements from that recently, in Wolfgang Baur's "Enemy of My Enemy" adventure. The Upper and Lower Worlds exist there, too, as demiplanes connected to the Beastlands. The problem with the Great Wheel assumption is that it makes, by default, all others wrong if it is considered core. If one wants Yggdrasil one shouldn't have to consider it one way of looking at the Great Wheel but instead let Yggdrasil be there and let Asgard, Hel and Midgard be there exclusively. There is no need for there to be a Mechanus, Abyss, Carceri, Seven Heavens, etc. in this cosmology. If one wants to use a Manichean cosmology, a Shamanic universe, the Heavens and Hells of Buddhism, etc. then the Great Wheel is again inappropriate for the reason cited above. If the Great Wheel is the default cosmology then the metaphysicians of the mortal plane are all just "clueless berks" who don't have a real understanding of the planes. The Great Wheel is used to the exclusion of all else because it contains everything else. It's a commonly accepted compromise that the largest group of people can make use of, and nothing else can say that. The great wheel assumes a planar cosmology based purely on alignments, not on loyalties, family, or whatnot. Mythically all, or most, of the greek gods dwelt on Mount Olympus there was no silly alignment restrictions. If a god was forbidden to live on Mount Olympus it was because he offended Zeus not just because he wasn't CG. There is also the assumption within the Great Wheel cosmology of an eternal blood war which only makes sense in its cosmology. The CE demons, the LE devils and the NE Yugoloths all stuck in their tidy little alignment based realities only fits in the alignment driven Great Wheel. If it were possible for WotC to publish adventures and supplements that only appealed to tiny, tiny groups, I'm sure they would. But it's not. If you want a cosmology that varies radically from the norm, you're going to have to do some conversion work. You're right which is why the various possible cosmologies can serve as examples belong in the 4e Manual of the Planes so that a DM has a toolbox of ideas that he or she can use for their own setting. And from what I read, the 4e team wants to empower DMs to homebrew their own settings and not feel tied to any one setting and its assumptions. This is why they are jettisoning Greyhawk as core setting. There is no 4e core setting. The Great Wheel as a fully detailed cosmology needs to be the standard for the new Planescape setting if and when they decide to make a new setting book for it. Sundragon
ripvanwormer 08-20-07, 02:43 PM	The problem with the Great Wheel assumption is that it makes, by default, all others wrong if it is considered core. No, it doesn't, no more than Greyhawk as core made the Forgotten Realms "wrong." You don't need WotC's "permission" to do whatever you want. They provide you with the tools to make your own cosmologies. They're not going to tell you your campaign is "wrong." However, with all the infinity of possibilities out there, they can only do so much to support the more idiosyncratic choices. I think a MotP done the way you suggest would be useless to most people, and boring to everyone else. You don't need WotC to tell you how the Norse cosmology looks when you can look it up on Wikipedia. Unless they have room to actually develop it in a substantial way - and they won't, not with all the cosmologies you want stuffed in there - they're just giving you an endless series of diagrams that you could easily come up with yourself, while giving short shrift to the D&D cosmology that's hardwired into so much of the game. That would be incredibly short-sighted. If one wants Yggdrasil one shouldn't have to consider it one way of looking at the Great Wheel but instead let Yggdrasil be there and let Asgard, Hel and Midgard be there exclusively. Then do it. But don't expect published supplements and adventures to hold your hand. You'll have your own distinctive setting, and adventures set within the Great Wheel will fit into it somewhat, but by choosing to be that distinctive you're making the choice to make your campaign less compatible. If the Great Wheel is the default cosmology then the metaphysicians of the mortal plane are all just "clueless berks" who don't have a real understanding of the planes. No. If the Great Wheel is the default cosmology then it's the default cosmology. "Default" doesn't mean "only correct one." If my car comes with two-wheel drive as a default, it doesn't mean I'm a "clueless berk" if I have four-wheel drive installed. If my burger comes with pickles and mustard by default, the restaurant isn't going to complain if I ask for it without those things. The value of having a default is that it's something they can develop in detail. Without a default, they'd be forced into vagueness. People with more idiosyncratic cosmologies can use the default as inspiration - for example, if a book about the Gray Waste details the Greek Underworld, you can bring some of that into your purist Greek campaign, or into your purist Forgotten Realms campaign (as inspiration for the Fugue Plane). This is far superior to trying to create a generic underworld that somehow fits each of these cosmologies identically. In the latter method, nobody wins. In the former method, most people will get the maximum benefit, and those who willfully choose to be more distinctive will still get at least as much benefit as they'd get from the bland, generic version. Mythically all, or most, of the greek gods dwelt on Mount Olympus there was no silly alignment restrictions. If a god was forbidden to live on Mount Olympus it was because he offended Zeus not just because he wasn't CG. This is actually true in the Great Wheel, as well. The Great Wheel's Zeus isn't chaotic good, nor are most of the other gods in his pantheon, and yet all the Olympians live together on the same plane. There are any number of other examples of gods living in planes other than that of their alignment - LE Ilsensine lives in the Outlands, chaotic neutral Ratri lived in the Gray Waste, and chaotic good Utu lived in Mechanus until the death of Enki. Your relative ignorance about the things you're trying to critique makes talking with you difficult. There is also the assumption within the Great Wheel cosmology of an eternal blood war which only makes sense in its cosmology. The CE demons, the LE devils and the NE Yugoloths all stuck in their tidy little alignment based realities only fits in the alignment driven Great Wheel. And yet there's a Blood War in the Torilian cosmology as well, and an endless war between demons, devils, and yugoloths (with the addition of archons) in Eberron. If you're going to use a cosmology in which a war between these beings doesn't make sense, I would encourage you to use different creatures altogether. The demons, devils, and yugoloths of D&D were created for the Great Wheel - if you try to take them outside that context, distortions are going to result.
Sundragon 08-20-07, 03:49 PM	No, it doesn't, no more than Greyhawk as core made the Forgotten Realms "wrong." You don't need WotC's "permission" to do whatever you want. They provide you with the tools to make your own cosmologies. They're not going to tell you your campaign is "wrong." However, with all the infinity of possibilities out there, they can only do so much to support the more idiosyncratic choices. I don't NEED WoTC to do anything, I have played homebrew for years now because I don't expect anyone to share my vision completely. What I am getting is that there are many DMs, whose visions differ from the "party line" so to speak and they need empowerment. I have been doing this for over 2 decades but some DMs may be intimidated to create a cosmology of their own when their players may have expectations that things must be a certain way because the books say so. I think a MotP done the way you suggest would be useless to most people, and boring to everyone else. It may be boring or useless to hard-core PS fans, but that shouldn't be who the 4e Manual of the Planes caters to. It should cater to, to one degree or another, all DMs. Making it a planar toolset for the development of personalized cosmologies is more likely to do that than assuming that D&D needs the Great Wheel. You don't need WotC to tell you how the Norse cosmology looks when you can look it up on Wikipedia. Unless they have room to actually develop it in a substantial way - and they won't, not with all the cosmologies you want stuffed in there - they're just giving you an endless series of diagrams that you could easily come up with yourself, while giving short shrift to the D&D cosmology that's hardwired into so much of the game. That would be incredibly short-sighted. It isn't about what I need. Its about wat IMO the game needs. The game needs to have the broadest appeal possible to new players, many of whom have no knowldge or concern for the Great Wheel. Old timers like me and you (in playing terms anyway) can use the Great Wheel if we choose as the cosmology we desire. Plus, as I said in my previous post that the full Great Wheel can be fleshed out in the 4e Planescape setting. This IMO is where a fair and full treatment of the Great Wheel belongs along with ideas on how to use it as a setting connecting metasetting for those who like that kind of thing. But don't expect published supplements and adventures to hold your hand. You'll have your own distinctive setting, and adventures set within the Great Wheel will fit into it somewhat, but by choosing to be that distinctive you're making the choice to make your campaign less compatible. But you are assuming that WoTC should share your vision and hold your hand by officially supporting a planar cosmology that you and other PS fans prefer. My argument is that most homebrew settings can be made more compatible (thereby finding more materials from WoTC they can actually use) if there is no assumed cosmology. I can see the benefit to having a "core" cosmology. I get it, but by the same token if there is no core setting, then maybe there shouldn't be a core cosmology that new DMs feel chained to. The value of having a default is that it's something they can develop in detail. Without a default, they'd be forced into vagueness. People with more idiosyncratic cosmologies can use the default as inspiration - for example, if a book about the Gray Waste details the Greek Underworld, you can bring some of that into your purist Greek campaign, or into your purist Forgotten Realms campaign (as inspiration for the Fugue Plane). This is far superior to trying to create a generic underworld that somehow fits each of these cosmologies identically. In the latter method, nobody wins. In the former method, most people will get the maximum benefit, and those who willfully choose to be more distinctive will still get at least as much benefit as they'd get from the bland, generic version. Think about this. A PS setting book that details fully the traditional Great Wheel and its planes the way the 1e Manual of the Planes did with Sigil at its center. That was a cool book. Then we can have a generic Manual of the Planes in the DMs toolbox I am thinking of. Then we can maybe have a book of FR's Great Tree for FR fans. That could make everyone happy. And yet there's a Blood War in the Torilian cosmology as well, and an endless war between demons, devils, and yugoloths (with the addition of archons) in Eberron. If you're going to use a cosmology in which a war between these beings doesn't make sense, I would encourage you to use different creatures altogether. The demons, devils, and yugoloths of D&D were created for the Great Wheel - if you try to take them outside that context, distortions are going to result. I think it is silly myself. The Blood War has no place in a FR setting that is distinct from the Great Wheel. However demons and devils are not in any way Great Wheel property and can easily function outside of the Great Wheel setup. Devils are outer-planar horrors that make contracts and corrupt mortals. Demons are the brutal and savage outer-planar horrors. Yugoloths work in both ways as necessary. Heck, in a personalized cosmology, all of these creatures can dwell on the same plane. Devils dwell in infernal cities ruled by order and hierarchy. Demons are the barbarian hordes at the gates who, when not plotting to destroy/devour mortal souls, lay seige to devil cities for the thrill of battle. Yugoloths can be those beings who transcend petty concerns of chaos or law and act as information brokers, underworld bosses playing both sides against the other. Maybe the greatest of them seek the apotheosis of evil that transcends the petty bickering of devils and demons. A little creativity allows a DM to use these iconic D&D baddies to great effect even outside the Great Wheel. Sundragon
Johnny_Angel 08-20-07, 04:14 PM	I'd like something that is a combination of the Great Wheel and the way that Eberron handles the planes. Basically, it would be more like a clockwork wheel with parts that move. There would be default parts presented, but it would be presented in such a way that parts could be replaced with alternate parts; parts could be added, or parts could be removed.
ripvanwormer 08-20-07, 04:35 PM	What I am getting is that there are many DMs, whose visions differ from the "party line" so to speak and they need empowerment. The 3e MotP was plenty empowering. Nobody can read it and believe that the Great Wheel cosmology is the only way to go. Are you honestly thinking that someone read that book and thought, "the Spirit World/Faerie/the Far Realm/the doppel cosmology sounds really cool, but I can't use it because it's not 'default?'" It may be boring or useless to hard-core PS fans, but that shouldn't be who the 4e Manual of the Planes caters to. It would be boring for everyone. People like story hooks and interesting locales, not monotonous diagrams. The 3e MotP was a toolset for personalized cosmologies - the 4e version certainly doesn't need to go any further in that direction. It isn't about what I need. Its about wat IMO the game needs. The game needs a consistent default that modules and supplements can flesh out. But you are assuming that WoTC should share your vision and hold your hand by officially supporting a planar cosmology that you and other PS fans prefer. No, I'm not. I think WotC needs a consistent planar setting, as broad and tied to the basic themes of the game as possible. It can't wallow in generic-land if it's going to hold anyone's interest. Does that setting need to be the Great Wheel? No, but the Wheel is the setting that most of D&D has been designed around since 1977, so that'd be the most appropriate one. The main thing, though, is that there be a specific place that adventures and the like can take place in. Specific settings are always going to be more interesting than vague, unspecific ones. While Oerth won't be the default setting anymore, this isn't the same as having no default setting. We've been told that the PH and DMG will contain many specific proper names like Vecna, Mordenkainen, Bigby, and Thor. It won't be completely generic, even if it's not terribly defined. My argument is that most homebrew settings can be made more compatible (thereby finding more materials from WoTC they can actually use) if there is no assumed cosmology. That's not an argument, it's a statement. You haven't tried to back it up with reason or examples. I think it is silly myself. The Blood War has no place in a FR setting that is distinct from the Great Wheel. Yet it's part of the FR cosmology, regardless of what you think. That's why there's an entire plane called the Blood Rift whose primary purpose is to be the site of Blood War battles. And it works fine. I think, perhaps, it's not silly at all. However demons and devils are not in any way Great Wheel property and can easily function outside of the Great Wheel setup. They were created with the Great Wheel in mind. You can use them elsewhere, but it's not their purpose. I agree completely that you can warp them creatively in whatever way you want, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have any "default" detail on them for those who don't want to have to make up everything about them themselves. Devils are outer-planar horrors that make contracts and corrupt mortals. Demons are the brutal and savage outer-planar horrors. Many demons are also into corruption (for example, succubi and glabrezu). Many devils are good for nothing but savage brutality (barbazu, for example). In the end, the only real difference between them is that demons are chaotic and devils are lawful, and that implies something like the Great Wheel's set-up. If you use the statistics for demons in a non-chaotic way, they're not really demons anymore. And that's fine, but you shouldn't expect the descriptions of them in the MM to be so generic that the fundamental things about their design don't come across. A nod (like what appears in the Book of Vile Darkness) that things can be arranged differently if the DM wants is plenty. It's terribly condescending to think that beginning DMs are so weak and stupid that they need to have all distinctive flavor removed from the books if they're going to realize they can make stuff up.
ripvanwormer 08-20-07, 04:36 PM	I'd like something that is a combination of the Great Wheel and the way that Eberron handles the planes. Basically, it would be more like a clockwork wheel with parts that move. There would be default parts presented, but it would be presented in such a way that parts could be replaced with alternate parts; parts could be added, or parts could be removed. I'd be happy with that. In fact, that's pretty much how I see the Great Wheel right now.
Shemeska the Marauder 08-20-07, 04:58 PM	If they want to maximize the shared experience among gamers, and if they want to continue to mine and expand upon the wealth of around 30 years of material on the planes and their inhabitants, then I hope they retain the Great Wheel as a baseline, default cosmology. there's no need to reinvent the Wheel so to speak. That said, much like how the 3e MotP gave numerous optional planes, varient cosmologies, and suggestions on designing your own, that toolkit should be supplied alongside the material for the D&D cosmology and its inherent assumptions and wealth of detail. Nothing makes you use it, but without fluff and details to inspire DM's you set yourself up for little creative work riffed off of that baseline by the community. If the Wheel wasn't going to be present in 4e as a default, it seems silly to have released FC:I, FC:II, Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, and others in the year prior to the release, let along the increasing visibility of an assumed shared cosmology among campaign settings in Dragon and Dungeon. Dare I hope for a swing back towards the Wheel as a true multiverse ala 2e, rather than the limited, fractured setup we had imposed early on in 3e and only started to break out of near the end? Yes I'm hoping so. Still, that said, I'd keep Ebberon by itself since it was never part of the Great Wheel (unlike FR, Krynn, Ravenloft, Birthright, etc that developed with the assumptions inherent in the Great Wheel cosmology).
ArcTan 08-20-07, 08:40 PM	Or set them all in the Great Wheel, which can fit any sort of adventure inside it. Want to use Yggdrasil? Expedition to the Demonweb Pits used it, using the Great Wheel as a background. Loki's realm is described in the 3e Manual of the Planes. The various Asgardian gods have a place there as well. Want to explore the Olympian Underworld? The Savage Tide adventure path included elements from that recently, in Wolfgang Baur's "Enemy of My Enemy" adventure. The Upper and Lower Worlds exist there, too, as demiplanes connected to the Beastlands. The Great Wheel is used to the exclusion of all else because it contains everything else. It's a commonly accepted compromise that the largest group of people can make use of, and nothing else can say that. It's a *compromise*. Not all compromises are good, and they're certainly not all balanced. As others have pointed out, the Great Wheel makes all kinds of assumptions, the main one being lumping things together based on their D&D alignment. That's true to some extent, but you don't really think WotC's going to publish a planar D&D adventure set in an explicitly Christian cosmology, do you? Do you have a better example? An explicitly Norse mythology, where Ragnarok is a certainty and only the harsh reality of the Norse deities exist (in which our ideas of "Good" and "Evil" don't really apply)? One where, for instance, you had the idea of Muspelheim and Niflheim being the true, big, uncaring two cosmic planes between which all reality existed merely in a gap (Ginnunngagap, to be precise)? That doesn't fit with the idea of the "Inner Planes" and "Outer Planes" *at all*. Yes, you can *say* that Muspelheim is the Elemental Plane of Fire and Niflheim the Quasielemental Plane of Ice, but you can see why doing this and saying you're "still using the Great Wheel" is silly, right? If it were possible for WotC to publish adventures and supplements that only appealed to tiny, tiny groups, I'm sure they would. But it's not. If you want a cosmology that varies radically from the norm, you're going to have to do some conversion work. Why do you assume that having a variant cosmology would only appeal to "tiny, tiny groups"? If it's good, for what it is, then it's good. Not everyone has been playing D&D since 1977 and is eager to shoehorn all the Great Wheel crap that's been written over the years into every new supplement or adventure that comes out. I'd venture to say the majority don't. It's not practical or desirable to write an adventure so painfully generic that it can be set equally well in the Norse Helheim, Dante's Inferno, the shamanistic Lower World, one of Eberron's planes, and the D&D Abyss. Either such an adventure would be so undetailed that it would be mostly useless, or it would have details that would jar with one of those settings to some degree. So it's best to establish a common cosmology that's useful for the largest number of people. Why should every adventure "fit" into some setting or another? Or, let's turn this around. If we have multiple published settings, why can't some adventures fit into some settings and others fit into other settings? Why does everything have to cross over? Why can't some adventures be written for the "default" Greyhawk/Great Wheel setting, others written for Forgotten Realms, others written for Eberron, others written for Dark*Matter, others written for Star Wars? Isn't that already what they're trying to do?
ArcTan 08-20-07, 08:44 PM	The 3e MotP was plenty empowering. Nobody can read it and believe that the Great Wheel cosmology is the only way to go. Are you honestly thinking that someone read that book and thought, "the Spirit World/Faerie/the Far Realm/the doppel cosmology sounds really cool, but I can't use it because it's not 'default?'" It would be boring for everyone. People like story hooks and interesting locales, not monotonous diagrams. The 3e MotP was a toolset for personalized cosmologies - the 4e version certainly doesn't need to go any further in that direction. So give *all* of the four or five possible cosmologies in the MotP an *equal* number of story hooks and interesting locales. Don't have the bulk of the book be all about one "default" cosmology and less than a chapter apiece be about the rest of the cosmology. Why can't the 4e Great Wheel book be a *setting* book for *one particular setting*, and the equivalent of MotP be an *overview* book of various cosmologies, some of which are attached to an existent setting, some of which aren't?
ArcTan 08-20-07, 08:55 PM	No, it doesn't, no more than Greyhawk as core made the Forgotten Realms "wrong." You don't need WotC's "permission" to do whatever you want. They provide you with the tools to make your own cosmologies. They're not going to tell you your campaign is "wrong." However, with all the infinity of possibilities out there, they can only do so much to support the more idiosyncratic choices. I want them to stop thinking of any choices other than the ones made since 1977 as "idiosyncratic". I want *more diversity* in the products people can buy. I want WotC to be in the business of making a toolset you really can do anything with, not one single, kind of crappy setting that's been around for decades that happens to have a toolset attached. I want more support for the relatively large number of people who like bits and pieces of D&D's flavor but don't care for the tottering and unwieldy "default setting" of D&D and want to read stuff from smart designers starting from a clean slate. The idea that Eberron was starting from a clean slate was what really drove so many gamers, including myself, to look into the setting, not any specific thing Eberron was about -- just the thought that for once we'd have something *fresh*. I think a MotP done the way you suggest would be useless to most people, and boring to everyone else. You don't need WotC to tell you how the Norse cosmology looks when you can look it up on Wikipedia. Unless they have room to actually develop it in a substantial way - and they won't, not with all the cosmologies you want stuffed in there - they're just giving you an endless series of diagrams that you could easily come up with yourself, while giving short shrift to the D&D cosmology that's hardwired into so much of the game. That would be incredibly short-sighted. Do it like Deities & Demigods. Four (or maybe three) cosmologies. Each one has equal time and space. Each one is equally important. Don't need hundreds, don't need fifty, just four. Four equally fleshed-out cosmologies, not one really fleshed-out cosmology and three or four tiny sketches of cosmologies. Then do it. But don't expect published supplements and adventures to hold your hand. You'll have your own distinctive setting, and adventures set within the Great Wheel will fit into it somewhat, but by choosing to be that distinctive you're making the choice to make your campaign less compatible. Or we could have supplements and adventures that use the setting *most suited to that adventure* rather than everything shoehorned together for "compatibility's" sake. Every adventure has to be altered to fit into someone's campaign anyway. Best to start that adventure on its own ground, so to speak -- in a setting where it makes the most sense, so you know what to change and what not to. Pre-shoehorning everything into the Great Wheel just assumes everyone "should" be all playing in the same setting even if they aren't. No. If the Great Wheel is the default cosmology then it's the default cosmology. "Default" doesn't mean "only correct one." If my car comes with two-wheel drive as a default, it doesn't mean I'm a "clueless berk" if I have four-wheel drive installed. If my burger comes with pickles and mustard by default, the restaurant isn't going to complain if I ask for it without those things. It does make it more of a pain in the ass to try to find stuff that fits non-default ideas and concepts. Three or four defaults is better than one. Sales jumped up for spaghetti sauce when they made several flavors of spaghetti sauce you could buy that tasted different out of the jar, rather than making one flavor that "everyone likes" and forcing anyone who didn't like it to add seasonings himself. The value of having a default is that it's something they can develop in detail. Without a default, they'd be forced into vagueness. *Multiple* defaults. Or *no* default, just settings that come and go for the moment. d20 Modern's sourcebooks are *full* of "campaign settings" that only exist for the sake of the sourcebook in question (like d20 Apocalypse). People with more idiosyncratic cosmologies can use the default as inspiration - for example, if a book about the Gray Waste details the Greek Underworld, you can bring some of that into your purist Greek campaign, or into your purist Forgotten Realms campaign (as inspiration for the Fugue Plane). This is far superior to trying to create a generic underworld that somehow fits each of these cosmologies identically. In the latter method, nobody wins. In the former method, most people will get the maximum benefit, and those who willfully choose to be more distinctive will still get at least as much benefit as they'd get from the bland, generic version. Give each cosmology its *own* underworld, or have some cosmologies with no underworld at all and another cosmology that's all underworld. Variety. This is actually true in the Great Wheel, as well. The Great Wheel's Zeus isn't chaotic good, nor are most of the other gods in his pantheon, and yet all the Olympians live together on the same plane. There are any number of other examples of gods living in planes other than that of their alignment - LE Ilsensine lives in the Outlands, chaotic neutral Ratri lived in the Gray Waste, and chaotic good Utu lived in Mechanus until the death of Enki. Your relative ignorance about the things you're trying to critique makes talking with you difficult. 3e's Deities and Demigods has Zeus as Chaotic Good, actually. Or must we now have read every version of every 3e book in every edition in order to be able to express opinions on these boards? And yet there's a Blood War in the Torilian cosmology as well, and an endless war between demons, devils, and yugoloths (with the addition of archons) in Eberron. Yugoloths aren't in the eternal war on Shavarath. They live on Mabar, and, in Eberron, have no relationship to the Demons and Devils of Shavarath at all. (Nor do all Demons and Devils live on Shavarath -- only the "warlike" ones do. Demons and Devils of Fernia, Risia and Mabar are simply evil creatures with no particular instinct to fight an endless war, and no particular relationship to each other except that they're all Outsiders and all either Lawful or Chaotic Evil.) If you're going to use a cosmology in which a war between these beings doesn't make sense, I would encourage you to use different creatures altogether. The demons, devils, and yugoloths of D&D were created for the Great Wheel - if you try to take them outside that context, distortions are going to result. Demons and Devils existed before the Blood War existed, and I don't see a damn thing about the stats of the Babau, for instance, that imply that a "Blood War" must exist. Hell, I don't see anything about its stats that imply that it is Chaotic, other than Alignment: Always Chaotic Evil. (Yes, it's nasty and mean and kills people and is slimy. Er, so what?)
ripvanwormer 08-20-07, 09:46 PM	As others have pointed out, the Great Wheel makes all kinds of assumptions, the main one being lumping things together based on their D&D alignment. Others have pointed that out because, frankly, they don't know what they're talking about. As I proved above, with examples of some of the many divine realms in the Great Wheel that aren't lumped together. There are many other examples: Sutr's realm in Ysgard, Ares' realm in Arborea, Gruumsh's realm in Acheron, the prison of the Mother of Serpents in Belieren, the malevolent stain in the waters of Thalasia. An explicitly Norse mythology, where Ragnarok is a certainty and only the harsh reality of the Norse deities exist (in which our ideas of "Good" and "Evil" don't really apply)? That's easy to do using the tools provided in the Great Wheel cosmology, which describes Muspelheim, Niflheim, Asgard, and the other worlds of the Norse pantheon. No one says you have to use the rest of the Wheel with it. The Wheel is flexible enough to include all that stuff, though. Now do you understand how this works? This sort of reasoning applies to everything. If you want a cosmos that only includes Heaven and Hell, the Great Wheel provides you with a fantasy Heaven and Hell you can use as a base. If you want a Spirit World, the Great Wheel has several of those. And so on. you can see why doing this and saying you're "still using the Great Wheel" is silly, right? Who cares if you're still using the Great Wheel or not? You're missing the central issue here: what should WotC publish? Because the Great Wheel contains within it anything anyone would ever want to play in, it makes the most sense. Naturally, if you want to use a narrower cosmology, you can. Why should every adventure "fit" into some setting or another? I've explained this in this thread already, many times. Adventures generic enough to fit anywhere are bland. Because a non-bland adventure needs detail, it makes the most sense to use detail usable by the largest number of people. An adventure set in one of the idiosyncratic cosmologies you're describing (Christian, purist Norse) would likely be hard to use in Oerth, Toril, or any other popular setting, while an adventure set in the Great Wheel works pretty well with Oerth, Toril, Skarn, Krynn, Green Ronin's Freeport, and most other D&D things. There's no question which is the superior choice. If we have multiple published settings, why can't some adventures fit into some settings and others fit into other settings? They can, but that's not the best of business schemes. It's in WotC's interest to publish adventures usable by the largest number of people, rather than publish niche products out of some lunatic obsession with "purity."
ArcTan 08-20-07, 11:34 PM	Others have pointed that out because, frankly, they don't know what they're talking about. As I proved above, with examples of some of the many divine realms in the Great Wheel that aren't lumped together. There are many other examples: Sutr's realm in Ysgard, Ares' realm in Arborea, Gruumsh's realm in Acheron, the prison of the Mother of Serpents in Belieren, the malevolent stain in the waters of Thalasia. ...Which means that these things stand as exceptions to the overall framework of the Great Wheel, which is based on D&D alignment. The fact that the Great Wheel sets up one giant annoying rule about how alignment works and then proceeds to violate it in order to shoehorn everything in doesn't make it "flexible". That's easy to do using the tools provided in the Great Wheel cosmology, which describes Muspelheim, Niflheim, Asgard, and the other worlds of the Norse pantheon. No one says you have to use the rest of the Wheel with it. The Wheel is flexible enough to include all that stuff, though. ...Yes, but do you see how, if my hypothetical Norse adventure admits that the rest of the Great Wheel exists, it dilutes and destroys the point of using the Norse stuff there in the first place? Now do you understand how this works? This sort of reasoning applies to everything. If you want a cosmos that only includes Heaven and Hell, the Great Wheel provides you with a fantasy Heaven and Hell you can use as a base. If you want a Spirit World, the Great Wheel has several of those. Yes, but IF IT'S PART OF THE GREAT WHEEL, it's not what I want anymore! It's like saying "I want a story where I play the last human in a world full of Undead", and saying "Well, Greyhawk has humans and Undead, use that." Who cares if you're still using the Great Wheel or not? You're missing the central issue here: what should WotC publish? Because the Great Wheel contains within it anything anyone would ever want to play in, it makes the most sense. Naturally, if you want to use a narrower cosmology, you can. The Great Wheel does *not* make sense for *precisely* the reason that it tries to shoehorn multiple highly contradictory ideas into one unified cosmology. I've explained this in this thread already, many times. Adventures generic enough to fit anywhere are bland. Because a non-bland adventure needs detail, it makes the most sense to use detail usable by the largest number of people. An adventure set in one of the idiosyncratic cosmologies you're describing (Christian, purist Norse) would likely be hard to use in Oerth, Toril, or any other popular setting, while an adventure set in the Great Wheel works pretty well with Oerth, Toril, Skarn, Krynn, Green Ronin's Freeport, and most other D&D things. There's no question which is the superior choice. Yes. The superior choice is an adventure that makes sense *on its own* that a DM can *choose* to adapt to a different setting if he wants. It should be my choice to shoehorn if I want to try to shoehorn. The Great Wheel forces me to start with everything pre-shoehorned. They can, but that's not the best of business schemes. It's in WotC's interest to publish adventures usable by the largest number of people, rather than publish niche products out of some lunatic obsession with "purity." Since when is playing just one adventure, by itself, a "niche" concept? Since when is the standard or default way to play D&D to have one ongoing campaign you've had since 1986 in which the same characters have progressed through the same setting and everything is all interconnected? If that *is* in some sense the "standard" way to play D&D, it shouldn't be. I play campaigns that last maybe a year at most, and then *switch* to a *new* campaign that, if necessary, has a completely different premise for a completely different story. Everyone I know does the same. I would *love* to have more books with their own, separate stories so that each new campaign could be more different than the next one, and it didn't take months of prep time in between campaigns to set up a new and interesting world to explore (which is, after all, the point of buying setting books in the first place). Where did this idea come from that having just one setting to rule them all is the best way to do things and the way that will sell things to the most people? Because I think it's awful.
Rerecros 08-21-07, 12:20 AM	If they want to maximize the shared experience among gamers, and if they want to continue to mine and expand upon the wealth of around 30 years of material on the planes and their inhabitants, then I hope they retain the Great Wheel as a baseline, default cosmology. there's no need to reinvent the Wheel so to speak. I tend to disagree, I definitely think they should throw the whole system out and start from scratch. There has been quite a problem of fluff and mechanic holdover's or contradictions from previous editions. I feel this new edition is going to bring in some drastic changes with no backwards compatibility, hopefully eliminating the whole alignment system from which the great wheel is based. By reinventing the cosmology they can create a far more unified system. On the subject, they need to more exact definitions, what is a soul for example. D&D doesn't have a good definition of a soul, actually. Sometimes it means life force, sometimes it means mind, etc. Souls are often described as the part of you that is immortal and can't be destroyed, yet D&D is bursting at the seams with soul-eating or soul-destroying things. The spell magic jar highlights the reason why D&D should have a better definition of "soul." Outsiders and elementals don't have a soul/body division, but you can magic jar and possess an outsider... if the outsider's body really was the same as its soul then you'd think the whole outsider would disappear and get trapped in the jar. The same with undead; you can magic jar undead, even though many undead are, fluff-wise, described as being soul-less. Or you could magic jar a spectre...but a specter is just a soul, right? Does this mean a soul has a soul? Regarding awaken; there is no reason to assume that animals and trees don't already have souls. Types need far more destinction. Like what's the difference between a fey and an outsider and an outsider with the native subtype? Outsiders have a weird population problems. They are born of the plane and simply appear, some reproduce (formians) some infect (slaad), some transform humanoid souls while other's are apparently infinite in number (demons). Now do any or all of them die when killed? Do they have to be killed ony on their home planes like in previous editions? Which is stupid because one outsider race can invade another plane and conqure it because the just return to their home plane when they die, but the natives on the plane die for good. How do their numbers maintain any sort of stability? Why hasn't an outsider race already conqured everything? The lazy answer is because the gods wouldn't allow it, but Hellcow put out a much simpler solution. To me the eberron system is just taking the great wheel and putting actual thought into it. To speak the the reasoning behind it: in Eberron, outsiders that don't reproduce are true immortals. They cannot be killed. When they die, their spiritual energy is reincarnated over time (and it can take time) to create a new outsider of the same type. Thus, the point is that their numbers remain constant. Thus the war on Shavarath will never end. They don't take time off to reproduce. They can't create new outsiders by reproducing. But they fallen will always return, in time... though only the greatest among them possess the memories of their predecessors.
Shemeska the Marauder 08-21-07, 12:44 AM	Outsiders have a weird population problems. They are born of the plane and simply appear, some reproduce (formians) some infect (slaad), some transform humanoid souls while other's are apparently infinite in number (demons). Now do any or all of them die when killed? Do they have to be killed ony on their home planes like in previous editions? Which is stupid because one outsider race can invade another plane and conqure it because the just return to their home plane when they die, but the natives on the plane die for good. How do their numbers maintain any sort of stability? Why hasn't an outsider race already conqured everything? Answers, or various reasons to rationalize those issues already exist actually. The gods have little to no say in any of them.
ripvanwormer 08-21-07, 01:10 AM	The fact that the Great Wheel sets up one giant annoying rule about how alignment works and then proceeds to violate it in order to shoehorn everything in doesn't make it "flexible". Yes, of course it does. Room for exceptions is the definition of flexibility. ...Yes, but do you see how, if my hypothetical Norse adventure admits that the rest of the Great Wheel exists, it dilutes and destroys the point of using the Norse stuff there in the first place? So don't admit it exists. What's the problem? Yes, but IF IT'S PART OF THE GREAT WHEEL, it's not what I want anymore! Okay, you clearly have no idea what I'm talking about. It's not part of the Great Wheel if you don't want it to be! But it's more useful to more people if it's presented that way in the published products. It's simplicity itself to remove it from the Great Wheel in your own idiosyncratic campaign cosmology, though - a trained monkey could do it. Since when is the standard or default way to play D&D to have one ongoing campaign you've had since 1986 in which the same characters have progressed through the same setting and everything is all interconnected? Since when have monkeys invaded your house and stolen your electronics with the power of rock? Oh, wait - you didn't say that. I just made that up. Kinda like what you just did, in the quote above. Your hyperbole isn't helpful or conducive to the discussion; it's not relevant or clever, and it's not a logical parallel. To a lesser extent, yes, it's useful to be able to make connections between adventures. When adventures are connected together, you get a campaign. It's useful when multiple adventures help build a world, and it's very useful when there are lots of other resources available to help flesh out the adventures. It's also useful to be able to connect campaigns, if you so choose, and it's useful to have a default that most people are familiar with. These things are all more useful than a series of completely unconnected adventures taking place in entirely different realities. You call it "shoe-horning," but I call it D&D, which has always been a chimerical hybrid of different fantasy tropes. If you want to artificially separate everything, have at it, but don't expect WotC to do it for you. That said, I wouldn't object to something like a RAGNAROK hardcover that existed in some purist Viking universe. It will never happen, though - D&D's been moving further and further from traditional myth and legend. It's become its own thing. Really, the kind of thing you seem to be asking for is what smaller RPG companies like Green Ronin and Sword & Sorcery (and others) sometimes do - publish one-shot campaign settings based more closely on myth and legend than is standard in D&D. It's not something WotC has ever done.
Johnny_Angel 08-21-07, 03:33 AM	I'd like something that is a combination of the Great Wheel and the way that Eberron handles the planes. Basically, it would be more like a clockwork wheel with parts that move. There would be default parts presented, but it would be presented in such a way that parts could be replaced with alternate parts; parts could be added, or parts could be removed. I'd be happy with that. In fact, that's pretty much how I see the Great Wheel right now. Sweet, I was beginning to think I was the only one. I have some notes scattered across various notebooks which detail planes I'm working on, but I'm a detail freak and a procrastinator, so it's hard to tell if I'll ever get done. The other problem is that it's hard to change people's minds from assuming that every world has the same Gods and cosmology.
Daydreamer 08-21-07, 06:11 AM	"Greyhawk will not be default setting in core We want to leverage the assets of the assumed parts of a D&D world – Mordenkainen, Bigby, Vecna, Lolth, Tiamat, Asmodeus, etc. However, we also want to call upon the great mythology that is more commonly known such as Thor, etc." That is exactly what i hope they do not do, I HHHAAATTEEE!!! when they directly translate from real life mythology like this. I dont think there should be ysgard-heck i have trouble with heaven and hell. NOt for religious reasons, i just think its incredibly cheesy and antiquated. I really think D&D should completely avoid as core anything like hercules or zues, or thor, or mars, or any blasted ancient mythology from earth. I dont mind hydras which have there origins in myth i know, but a creature type is different than a specific person/entity in my mind. i really really hpe d&d avoids as core anything like this, if it doesnt i will have to houserule that crap outta there. I would actually rather they dont have any default cosmology or realm, but release those details in campaign books. And in the dms guide simply detail how to make a realm-perhaps providing an example, but not anything official. i love the idea of 4th edition being a clean slate and starting from scratch. Heck i would ditch the spells such as bigby's this or that. (lkeep the spell ditch the caster name). Leave the realms a completley blank slate, except for guides to creating them with examples. NOTHING OFFICIAL AS CORE. I will simply vomit if they do some pseudo real life mythology.
ORC_Paradox 08-21-07, 06:35 AM	All 4e posts belong on the 4e board. Thanks. http://forums.gleemax.com/forumdisplay.php?f=686