Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Xaxor 09-26-07, 05:12 PM	The article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20070926a). Now, this is a very interesting take on the subject. It looks like a great deal of what already exists in the Great Wheel will continue to exist. There are new things as well, but I could easily see a Planescape campaign setting in a few years.
sciborg2 09-26-07, 05:21 PM	Seems there will be enough to salvage something out of it. Other than that, yeah they pretty much gave into MMORPG syndrome. Sadly, there are CRPGs with better cosmologies...
Zousha_Omenohu 09-26-07, 05:30 PM	I don't know, I found that the Great Wheel, while amazing and compelling was simply too large and overwhelming. While that wasn't so much of an issue for me, my brother (who plays with me all the time) has never liked the idea of planar travel, believing that the Material Plane is more than good enough. We haven't played very many sessions, but he's made it clear that plane-spanning adventures are out of the question. I think that this simpler construction may make it easier for someone like him to accept. And what is this MMORPG syndrome?
sciborg2 09-26-07, 05:35 PM	I mean planes like you find in Everquest - little realms in the Astral sea, realms that reflect the world, etc. The elemental tempest seems the worst to me, but overall it's not bad. There's enough there for old gamers, and perhaps you're right that for some the simplicity is a good thing - or rather, the option to make the planes as complex as you want.
Deacon Liadon 09-26-07, 05:43 PM	This makes me slightly happier. What it seems to me, is that there are four planes bordering the prime material. Shadow, Fey, Ethereal (They haven't mentioned it but we know it'll be there) and the Elemental. It's probably all floating in the astral sea. From the looks of it they'll probably keep the Elemental as the main four, with perhaps mixes here and there forming little sections of ice or steam before whirling back into the primal elemental vortices. Negative will likely be associated with Shadow, not a huge step. It's a cosmology that makes sense for someone new to the game which is what Wizards are aiming at. While I love the Great Wheel and all contained within, I realise that it can be a little overwhelming, especially for people who can't quite seem to grasp the concept of "everything".
Khadmus 09-26-07, 06:06 PM	I mean planes like you find in Everquest - little realms in the Astral sea, realms that reflect the world, etc. The elemental tempest seems the worst to me, but overall it's not bad. There's enough there for old gamers, and perhaps you're right that for some the simplicity is a good thing - or rather, the option to make the planes as complex as you want. One MMO makes such cosmologies "MMORPG syndrome"? But looking at your other posts, I think you have a point. How many years of development are they killing here? I, personally, don't care; but I can most definitely see how controversial this is.
Zousha_Omenohu 09-26-07, 07:11 PM	I mean planes like you find in Everquest - little realms in the Astral sea, realms that reflect the world, etc. The elemental tempest seems the worst to me, but overall it's not bad. There's enough there for old gamers, and perhaps you're right that for some the simplicity is a good thing - or rather, the option to make the planes as complex as you want. No offense, but could you elaborate? I've never played Everquest, or any MMORPG for that matter.
ArcTan 09-26-07, 07:34 PM	Seems there will be enough to salvage something out of it. Other than that, yeah they pretty much gave into MMORPG syndrome. Sadly, there are CRPGs with better cosmologies... I continue to be amused by people calling anything they don't like "MMORPG" just because it's similar to something they saw in an MMORPG, once. FWIW, the tone of this new cosmology feels a lot more like the Umbra from White Wolf's games -- particularly Wraith -- than it feels like Everquest, to me.
Altar_Boy 09-26-07, 07:43 PM	This makes me slightly happier. What it seems to me, is that there are four planes bordering the prime material. Shadow, Fey, Ethereal (They haven't mentioned it but we know it'll be there) and the Elemental. Actually, given the description for the Shadowfell, it seems ghost will be associated with this plane. All in all, a lot of planar necessities condensed into four realms. The only thing that bugs me is how well "The Temple of Elemental Evil" dovetails into this new cosmology. It's almost as if fans of the adventure retconned 1/5th of reality to make a good adventure even cooler...
Taeldrin Laesrash 09-26-07, 07:49 PM	While I'm still not happy with what they're doing to the outsiders, it makes sense. In fact, the cosmology solves a couple of problems with the Great Wheel. Though it's not as organized as the wheel, it won't feel like various gods of many cultures are shoehorned into the cosmology, now they each have their own pretty much separate domains. I partcularly like the Shadowfell; to me, a land of the dead is far more evocative than the various petitoners shuffling around the Wheel. It's not perfect, though-The outsiders are far too devalued to me, and it looks very disorganized, whereas the Great Wheel had a majestic symmetry to it. I don't totally get the point of the Feywild either. Nonetheless, seeing this article makes the 4E switch far less painful.
Neutronium_Dragon 09-26-07, 08:35 PM	A couple of points... One, I wouldn't count on there being an ethereal plane. The way the cosmology has been described, it isn't necessary anymore. There's no "ethereal for inner, astral for outer" dichotomy there - everything is floating in the astral sea. And since the Feywild and Shadowfell fill the role of "reflections of the real world", you don't need the ethereal plane for that either. Two, I suspect that the Feywild will incorporate not just the eladrin, but everything nature-oriented, including killing and taking the stuff of Wheel planes like the Beastlands. As a bonus, you don't have the alignment weirdness (CG Beastlands full of TN creatures), and it's also perfectly set up to be the "nature power source" when the PHBs get around to describing that.
BrianCritchley 09-27-07, 01:17 AM	personally I think we're in for some trouble, old time d&d settings are apt to get some major changes, I mean if anyone has read the grand history to the realms we know the divine realms in FR are going to get a serious shake up. I frankly don't like it myself.
Bob the Efreet 09-27-07, 04:00 AM	While I like the Wheel, I like what they're doing here with the Astral Sea. Did you catch the part where there are as many outer planes as we want? That's reminiscent, in some ways, of Beyond Countless Doorways, which has a cosmology that I absolutely adore.
Naderion 09-27-07, 08:25 AM	It's not that bad a system, but unfortunately everytime someone looks on my homebrew cosmology they will say "Oh, you're using the default cosmology from the 4th Ed. core books?" :raincloud
The Eye of Kyi 09-27-07, 08:45 AM	What I am trying to figure out is how they are going to explain the change to this new cosmology from a story continuity stand point. I mean does the great wheel suddenly just collapse into these 4 planes through some great planar cataclysm? Maybe its been this way the whole time and the fey have tricked us all into thinking there was a great wheel in the first place! I dont know about all this. It seems cool in and of itself, but it how does this fit in with anything that has gone on previously? Yet one more tidbit about 4e that is going to make me want to scrap any and all previous story lines in campaigns and just start over with something completely new, and I the jury is still out on if that is a good thing or not.
Naderion 09-27-07, 08:58 AM	I think it will be retcon. It is assumed it has always been this way.
Skeptical Clown 09-27-07, 09:35 AM	If the default setting for 4e is a setting that doesn't currently exist, what need is there to even worry about retcons? People who want to run settings that explicitly require the old cosmology (Like say, Planescape) will continue to do so anyway. I doubt this cosmology is taking over Eberron's; it also doesn't sound that incompatible with the Forgotten Realms' current setup--and given the spellplague in Faerun, it doesn't seem like there's any reason to think the cosmology there couldn't change dramatically. I guess the only major change would probably be to assume that the Ethereal and the Shadow planes are pretty much one in the same. But from the perspective of the average game, that seems like a pretty small change.
sciborg2 09-27-07, 10:53 AM	<<I continue to be amused by people calling anything they don't like "MMORPG" just because it's similar to something they saw in an MMORPG, once.>> It's more than everquest, it's just this idea of each outer plane as an instance, where even the Nine Hells is a finite plane "as big as a Prime world" rather than a true afterlife. Asmodeus is the King of Mars more than LE incarnate. Players can now find it easier to justify killing Asmo as he isn't the master of LE - for some this is a good thing but I don't personally like it. Hmmmm, perhaps it'd be better to say CRPG than MMORPG. <<FWIW, the tone of this new cosmology feels a lot more like the Umbra from White Wolf's games -- particularly Wraith -- than it feels like Everquest, to me.>> Maybe, but this idea of quantifying the size of the outer planes removes the mystical nature of the Umbra for me. Again, this will work for some people but I don't think I'll be getting any 4e planar books.
Skeptical Clown 09-27-07, 11:03 AM	It sounds to me like they're trying to get the Lawful/Chaotic axis out of the game--or at least they are trying to minimize it. It's one of the most contentious and least reasonable mechanics in the game, so I'm fine with that. They have to justify the existence of Devils and Demons as distinct entities if they do that though. What they've done sounds like a fine compromise--Hell now sounds like it might be plausible as a prison that evil souls go for punishment, rather than just a place where evil souls go to power up and become devils or demons. One of my real problems with the Great Wheel cosmology is that Evil didn't seem to be punished--bad people went to the unpleasant planes, yeah, but if they were evil enough they might end up running the joint. Now, the same thing might happen--but they're still stuck in Hell, so it is a hollow victory. Whereas now the Abyss sounds like a more "elemental" and pure form of evil. A dichotemy of Born Evil/Made Evil instead of Chaos/Law. I suppose that is speculative though. We'll see where it goes.
sciborg2 09-27-07, 11:06 AM	One of my real problems with the Great Wheel cosmology is that Evil didn't seem to be punished--bad people went to the unpleasant planes, yeah, but if they were evil enough they might end up running the joint. This is the best thing about the Great Wheel. There is no overriding cosmic force that rewards good. For those who are Good, virtue has to be its own reward. "I think it was then that I told why I truly was not on his side: Because the Good was more of an adventure"
Skeptical Clown 09-27-07, 11:08 AM	But yeah, there is a cosmic force of Good rewarding Good. There's just also a cosmic force of Evil rewarding Evil, and a cosmic force of True Neutral rewarding True Neutral, and so on. Fine for Planescape, but I think this will work better for more typical games.
sciborg2 09-27-07, 11:27 AM	The afterlife structure of D&D predates Planescape by a decade or so...
Skeptical Clown 09-27-07, 11:32 AM	I'm aware, but I didn't think it worked all that well for then either. The afterlife structure of the Great Wheel never made muchs ense to me. I think for the Planescape setting, it makes a certain amount of sense, because Planescape is a very distinct setting. But I think that this alternative makes more sense for a setting of medieval-typed fantasy, and it makes a lot of sense for a Points of Light setting. It's also very practical from a gaming standpoint--it's very easy to add more divine realms without much in the way of shoe-horning. Modular like.
dfarnsworth 09-27-07, 11:49 AM	I think I always found the GW to be a point of View or a way of explaining and simplifying the infinity that is the multiverse, and now the Astral Sea is another.
sciborg2 09-27-07, 01:24 PM	^good point
ArcTan 09-27-07, 02:13 PM	It's more than everquest, it's just this idea of each outer plane as an instance Okay, see, you're just throwing words around without thinking about what they mean. Do each of the Outer Planes re-create themselves for each party of adventurers who goes into them, so that there's a separate, parallel plane for each mortal who ventures inside, where one mortal's actions can't affect the plane the other mortal is in? No? Then it's not an "instance". Each plane is a separate *place*, yes, with one murky meta-plane connecting them, and an indefinite number of planes that could appear in the Astral Sea, without having to be plugged into a "wheel" structure. That's both *not* unique to MMORPGs and, frankly, a much better idea for how to make the planes in the first place because it's less inherently limiting. where even the Nine Hells is a finite plane "as big as a Prime world" rather than a true afterlife. The Book of Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as 12,000 furlongs on a side. A cube of this size would be about half the size of the Moon, which is *far* from infinite in size, but still a much, much larger inhabitable structure than anyone could possibly imagine (enough to fill several times the current population of the Earth, each with the living space of a palace). Nothing in the Bible talks about "infinitely large" afterlives. There's no reason the afterlife would have to be infinitely large, since the number of people who have ever lived and died on Earth is a finite number, and will always be a finite number, even if you have hundreds of thousands of Earth-sized planets. "Infinitely large" places are not a common feature of ancient mythology, because the concept of infinite size was not really extant in most ancient cultures and, when actually considered by certain ancient philosophers (like the Greeks) rejected as fundamentally invalid. Those medieval European philosophers who wrestled with the concept found it to be full of fundamental flaws and paradoxes and contradictions. (Notice that Dante's Inferno isn't "infinite" in size either.) Asmodeus is the King of Mars more than LE incarnate. Players can now find it easier to justify killing Asmo as he isn't the master of LE - for some this is a good thing but I don't personally like it. Can I have proof for this statement? Do you have to be the ruler of an infinitely large plane to be the master of Lawful Evil? Maybe, but this idea of quantifying the size of the outer planes removes the mystical nature of the Umbra for me. Realms within the Umbra did have finite size. They had to, because they had borders from which you could enter and leave, and because their size was directly limited by the power of the mind crafting them and the time they had to do it.
ArcTan 09-27-07, 02:16 PM	I think I always found the GW to be a point of View or a way of explaining and simplifying the infinity that is the multiverse, and now the Astral Sea is another. If this is true, then it seems pretty clear, actually, that the Astral Sea is the more neutral, less dogmatic way of classifying the planes, and that the Great Wheel is the invention of some scholars who cared a lot more about their arbitrary labelling of things as "Lawful/Chaotic" and "Good/Evil" than they really should've. Hades and Acheron, for instance, could actually be *farther apart* than Hades and Elysium are in the Astral Sea, but the Sigil scholars who made up the Wheel insisted on calling them "bordering" regions because of their false assumptions that all the planes they didn't like were "Lower Planes". (And their obsessive conspiracy theory about the Yugoloths and Baernoloths that probably isn't true.) Oh, and of course they had to put their own city right in the middle, for no good reason. (Y'know, it feels good to give back to Planescape some of the condescension and "Well, they're just wrong about this" that Planescape always gave to every other published campaign setting.)
Alas 09-27-07, 02:48 PM	I get the sense that, just as ancient texts used "thousand" and "ten-thousand" to imply "more than you can count," the various Manuals of the Planes used "infinite" to imply "more than you can experience in a life time." For example, a desert layer (realm?) of the Abyss doesn't have to be infinite in size to be horrible-- it just has to be one or two increments of travel longer than the party's water supply will last. :devil:
ArcTan 09-27-07, 03:21 PM	Yeah. It was always clear that "infinite" just mean "really, really big" when they said it, but this didn't seem to register with certain fans and forum posters. It is, after all, true that if the number of Angels in the Upper Planes is literally infinite, then there is *no good reason* the Upper Planes can't send an army of 100,000 Solars to the Prime right now to kill off Iuz for me. There's also no good reason the Lower Planes can't send a trillion Pit Fiends and a trillion Balors to counter, of course. But *that* means... Enh, whatever. You can figure it out for yourself. It's annoying. A lot of the setting flavor presupposes that things can't be "infinite". The justification for the Blood War -- that if the Demons and Devils teamed up, they would overwhelm the Upper Planes -- is *impossible* if all the planes are infinite. There cannot be "more" Demons and Devils than Archons and Eladrins if the numbers of all those parties are infinite, and countable. Or take the Modrons -- if the numbers we have for Modrons are accurate (so that there's, say, a paltry 400 million overall) then Modrons, no matter how hard they work, can only occupy an *infinitesimal speck* among the gears of Mechanus, if Mechanus is "infinite". If the Modrons themselves are infinite, and each Modron only does exactly what it's told by a higher Modron, and yet there are only a few hundred Hierarch Modrons overall, then to control the Base Modrons the Hierarch Modrons -- *all* of them -- need to be able to give an infinite number of commands in a finite time by thinking and acting infinitely fast. Go Modrons. Or the "Infinite Layers of the Abyss". There is absolutely no way we can have infinite layers of the Abyss and yet keep running into layers with relatively low numbers like 489 and 510 and 663. If there are infinite layers, and the layers all have a number, and the numbers are all in some kind of order, the *vast majority* of the layers have numbers that are too large to write down within the expected age of the physical universe. (Having just 666 Layers *made more sense* and *still* left the Abyss ridiculously big in size, especially since each of the *Layers* is supposed to be unbounded and infinite in size -- but still drew lots of flak from people who wouldn't let go of the word "infinite". FC:I made even more sense, although then the name should've really been changed to the "Indefinite Layers of the Abyss" -- and since the implication was that there's a finite number of Demon Lords capable of "drawing" layers out of the Abyss, the number of layers that exist *at any one time* had to be finite.) Aagh. You don't need more examples. You get what I mean.
sciborg2 09-27-07, 03:51 PM	Okay, see, you're just throwing words around without thinking about what they mean. I mean instance as in little areas existing solely for the players, rather than a living cosmology in which the PCs aren't the center of all things - and yes we disagree on whether this makes the game more/less fun. In any case, I'll accept these bubbles aren't instances when they tell me touchstones will be retconned into oblivion or something not ridiculous. Anyway, it just feels more computer game in the context of what we've heard about 4e's mechanics. Can I have proof for this statement? Asmo is trapped in his little world because he killed a mere god, he's hardly the ruler of LE he was in the past. Hopefully my feelings on this are wrong, maybe I'm jumping the gun and it'll be a font of creative unseen since Mage the Ascension....unless they bring back touchstones. Then it WILL be a CRPG without the C. (Y'know, it feels good to give back to Planescape some of the condescension and "Well, they're just wrong about this" that Planescape always gave to every other published campaign setting.) That's not what I recall - in fact it was really only Krynn that got hit hard. Toril and Oerth were respected planar nexuses and people feared beings from Athas after they repelled a githyanki. Krynn deserved it too since the writers conflated Abyss and Nine-Hells to no end.
ArcTan 09-27-07, 04:18 PM	I mean instance as in little areas existing solely for the players, rather than a living cosmology in which the PCs aren't the center of all things - and yes we disagree on whether this makes the game more/less fun. I still don't see how the Astral Sea cosmology makes PCs "the center of all things". In any case, I'll accept these bubbles aren't instances when they tell me touchstones will be retconned into oblivion or something not ridiculous. Touchstones are a Planar Handbook, 3e thing. Why would you start out assuming they're some kind of basis for the 4e cosmology? Anyway, it just feels more computer game in the context of what we've heard about 4e's mechanics. No, it doesn't. This is really bothering me. Every single time someone changes something people throw out the word "computer game" or "MMORPG" or "World of Warcraft" and it doesn't *mean* anything. Asmo is trapped in his little world because he killed a mere god, he's hardly the ruler of LE he was in the past. Only because gods in Planescape were demoted to "mere" beings created by mortal thought, rather than the actual progenitors and creators of the entire multiverse. Which was, in my view, a really lame thing to do. It seems that in general the idea of a "deity" is being moved back into the center of creation, with the Abyss being created by Tharizdun and Asmodeus himself being a god. I like that. Hopefully my feelings on this are wrong, maybe I'm jumping the gun and it'll be a font of creative unseen since Mage the Ascension....unless they bring back touchstones. Then it WILL be a CRPG without the C. What, because you can go from place to place without dying? That's not what I recall - in fact it was really only Krynn that got hit hard. Toril and Oerth were respected planar nexuses and people feared beings from Athas after they repelled a githyanki. Krynn deserved it too since the writers conflated Abyss and Nine-Hells to no end. "Waterdeep?... Never heard of it." And Krynn "deserved" to have its cosmology undermined and declared to be a misunderstanding because it dared to throw out D&D's stupid two-axis cosmology in favor of a one-axis one?
sciborg2 09-27-07, 04:29 PM	I'm expressing a feeling, one I've said isn't necessarily the case. I just feel like 4e is getting to be like a CRPG. Not sure what else to say about it.
ArcTan 09-27-07, 04:54 PM	Okay. Then riddle me this: Why is it *bad* to be like a CRPG? I play CRPGs. CRPGs are fun. They make a lot of money. They often create more realistic, compelling worlds than tabletop RPGs. If 4e successfully makes me feel like I'm playing Knights of the Old Republic or The Elder Scrolls IV or Final Fantasy VI or Ultima V, I'll celebrate.
sciborg2 09-27-07, 05:13 PM	it's not bad at all. my point is that if a tabletop feels like a CRPG to me, I'll just go play a CRPG instead. It's cheaper by far in terms of buying new products than tabletop is, so why bother with 4e. For me, tabletops are only worthwhile if I can deal with concepts like those in Planescape and Mage or the tabletop provides a level of flexibility and character interaction I can't get from a CRPG.
ArcTan 09-27-07, 05:17 PM	Yes, but the part of a CRPG that you seem to be talking about (that CRPGs are... what? Focused on the PCs? Like D&D isn't?) has nothing to do with precluding "flexibility and character interaction". Moreover, I don't see how CRPGs preclude dealing with "concepts like in Planescape or Mage". Planescape: Torment was a CRPG, and a very good one.
Zousha_Omenohu 09-27-07, 06:50 PM	What I don't understand is why people decry these changes as making it into an MMORPG or a CRPG. Those can be pretty high-quality thing, and besides, it's not like D&D doesn't have its fingers in that market anyway (Planescape: Torment, the Baldur's Gate series, the Neverwinter Nights series, Dragonshard, D&D Tactics and D&D Online). This isn't a jab at you, sciborg2, since I believe you bring up a good point in that a CRPG would be a lot cheaper than D&D rulebooks, but some people seem to think that D&D will eventually leave the tabletop and be for computer only. That just seems paranoid to me.
Xaxor 09-27-07, 09:14 PM	I know this is kind of an odd tangent, but this miniature preview (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mi/20070927a) shows the new Osyluth design.
18DELTA 09-27-07, 11:03 PM	Rich Baker said this (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=13926345&postcount=16) on his blog to day.;)
Zousha_Omenohu 09-27-07, 11:09 PM	Well, I guess that effectively finishes the debate as to whether or not the Great Wheel will be ruined. It can still be there!:w00t:
Raymond_Luxury_Yacht 09-28-07, 02:55 AM	it also doesn't sound that incompatible with the Forgotten Realms' current setup--and given the spellplague in Faerun, it doesn't seem like there's any reason to think the cosmology there couldn't change dramatically. I'm not sure if FR would survive another round of massive retcons. Lots of people got annoyed the first time around, and they're even more annoyed because everything currently indicates that the 2e -> 3e retcons are remaining.
sciborg2 09-28-07, 11:28 AM	I'm going to say that this cosmology has some promise, given that one can reconstruct the majority of the wheel without too much trouble. We might also see some new planes of interest.
ripvanwormer 09-28-07, 12:18 PM	Rich Baker said this (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=13926345&postcount=16) on his blog to day.;) Sounds like the Forgotten Realms and the "generic world" will definitely share a cosmology, then - they'll just have different "astral dominions." But they'll likely share the same Nine Hells, and the same Elemental Chaos. That fits with the line in the end of The Grand History of the Realms that says the planar structure is changing.
Zousha_Omenohu 09-28-07, 02:51 PM	Does this mean we can relax now?
ripvanwormer 09-28-07, 04:27 PM	Does this mean we can relax now? Not yet. Hold that pose for a little longer.
ArcTan 09-28-07, 04:35 PM	Of course, that's the point -- when there are big objective poles anchoring everything in place, they devalue everything not connected to or defined by those poles. The Outer Planes' wheel structure forced us to decide exactly how "Lawful" or "Chaotic" or "Good" or "Evil" any individual god or goddess that we wanted to give a divine realm to was -- and, sure, we could ignore that and create blatant contradictions if we wanted to, but at the cost of continuing to have things that felt awkward and out-of-place for no good reason. Just like the Inner Planes having a "structure" forced us to arbitrarily decide what one, specific substance you get when you have "Negative Water" or "Water mixed with Air", no matter how half-baked or arbitrary that substance was. (*Salt* is "negative water"? *Ice* is "Water and air"? WTF?) If I wanted an Elemental Plane of Wood, or Metal, or Wax, or Furniture, that would have to be a demiplane or whatever. Can't mess with the objective, structured definition of the Inner Planes, 'cause that's, like, *real*. It was annoying. And constraining. If we *must* have a meta-setting of some kind, let's have it be *truly* meta-, with nothing about the "world above the worlds" definable or set in stone whatsoever. Asmodeus and Tiamat are now two LE beings whose primacy over each other is a matter of opinion -- Tiamat is not *objectively proven* to be a pissant little being whose power is relegated to a small portion of the first layer of the realm Asmodeus holds total dominion over. Krynnians can believe in the cosmic importance of Takhisis without it being so easy for planars to mock them for not knowing the real "dark" of Baator. Eberron can have some connection to the rest of the world through the Astral Sea without Eberronians being laughably confused about Ice being its own Elemental Plane and linked with Evil. Etc. It's not *perfect* -- I honestly would rather have no meta-setting *at all* -- but it's *better*.
Zousha_Omenohu 09-28-07, 07:39 PM	Not yet. Hold that pose for a little longer. My arm is getting tired. Can I stop now?
18DELTA 09-28-07, 10:19 PM	Sounds like the Forgotten Realms and the "generic world" will definitely share a cosmology, then - they'll just have different "astral dominions." But they'll likely share the same Nine Hells, and the same Elemental Chaos. That fits with the line in the end of The Grand History of the Realms that says the planar structure is changing. Yeah, Rip. Rich Baker said this (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=13932726&postcount=554) today on a FR forum today.;)
primemover003 09-28-07, 10:51 PM	I know this is kind of an odd tangent, but this miniature preview (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mi/20070927a) shows the new Osyluth design. And how is this Devil more human looking???
yrogerg 09-29-07, 12:39 PM	Huh. The more I think about it, the more it seems like they're trying to just remove everything that was poorly-articulated and caused the biggest arguments on these boards. Positive Energy and Negative Energy look like they're being folded into the Feywild and Shadowfell, making them much more morally neutral "growth" and "decay" planes. This would eliminate any issues with alignment of positive or negative energy, as well as Darkness/Negative Energy/Shadow confusion, as well as all the confusion over what, exactly, Fey are. Meanwhile, the Astral Sea seems to break the old framework of planes and planar factions being categorized specifically by alignment, replacing it with a more 'good guys' and 'villains' set of factions, with a huge, amorphous gulf in between the two, and downplaying, if not outright removing, the law/chaos planar axis. This will likely also remove the need for so many "why is X alignment Y?" debates, as well. Add to that the possibility that the 4e paladin's going to be based on either the crusader or the knight, and you have the end of alignment debates as we know them. Can't say I disapprove.
BOZ 09-29-07, 03:31 PM	well, i still don't like it. but i dislike it less than i did before. it sounds well done, and it doesn't sound totally incompatible with a good bunch of stuff that came before. however, i will assert that it would have been better to have no defeault cosmology (or merely hints at a cosmology, ala early 2E and early 3E) and simply leave it up to DMs to develop - or, have a "planar options" book that gives examples such as this cosmology, the Great Wheel, a few others, and how to make one of your own - it seems to me like it would have been better to take one of those routes than to monkey with the system and change it and make the changes integral to the system, for people who liked it just fine the way it was. not committing to one particular cosmology leaves the doors open for everyone.
ArcTan 09-29-07, 08:23 PM	I think this is a decent middle ground between "no cosmology" and "Return of the Great Wheel", though. As has been said, there's nothing preventing you the DM from saying "And only *these realms* actually exist in this so-called Astral Sea and they're *all arranged* in this wheel-like alignment-based structure, and you'd better respect that in my campaign or get kicked out!" It just makes it more obvious how restrictive that system really was.
BOZ 09-30-07, 10:14 AM	yeah, but the middle ground sucks, in this case, and isn't really a compromise. like i said, it would have worked better if they had provided a book of planar options for those interested in exploring such things, rather than set a default cosmology and ask you to change it around if you don't like it. here, let me put it another way. when you see the MM, it will say that devils come from "the Nine Hells", demons come from "the Abyss", etc. the DMG would expand on that a little bit more, but leave it mostly open. then, a "Planar Options" book would come out later, explaining how you could design your own cosmology, and provide a few "example" cosmologies (which would include what we now know as the "4E cosmology", the traditional Great Wheel, modern FR's Great Tree, Eberron's setup, and some out-there stuff that has never been used in D&D before) for DMs to use as they please if they do not wish to design one of their own from whole cloth. there, then there would be no default cosmology for anyone to resent. this debate would then be just an argument of preferences, and i don't think guys like Rip or Kain would care to discuss it for long. i've never restricted anyone from my game before for having a different opinion of any kind than my own. you seem to make such baseless attacks regularly; do you find in your experience that other people like to lord things over you or try to make you feel worthless or stupid? i haven't had that experience so it's hard for me to understand where you're coming from.
sciborg2 09-30-07, 02:53 PM	Boz just touched in on what I'm feeling. Though part of me has to admit I'm warming up to the new cosmos. It's not as interesting as the Great Wheel for me, but it has potential.
BOZ 10-01-07, 08:37 AM	agreed, but as for me i still doubt that i'll use it when i liked what we had before perfectly fine. :) for those who didn't like the old setup, or never bothered to use it (and may continue to never bother with the new one), it should work just fine.