TheRPGSite

Just what the package says.

Is there really enough demand for it? If so what system would you like it for?

Pathfinder has quite a few supplements for totally not Planescape so I guess there is some demand for it.

Quote from: Shasarak;1112405Pathfinder has quite a few supplements for totally not Planescape so I guess there is some demand for it.

Well in the D20PFSRD there's a lot about planes, Am I correct in assuming that if it's in the SRD it's under the OGL?

Edit: If so it's just a matter of taking and converting, anyhow I have started with a totally not planescape setting 100% unrelated with either (since I wasn't aware of PF having it and I'm doing it from scratch.) but it would be easier and faster to just convert.

There is always a market for a great new setting.

To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

D&D 4e had the Astral Sea which was a good idea which allowed the "planes" to be islands, and you could drop islands from the Elemental Chaos into the Astral Sea or anything you could imagine. If I did a not-Planescape, I'd consider that approach.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112422There is always a market for a great new setting.

To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

D&D 4e had the Astral Sea which was a good idea which allowed the "planes" to be islands, and you could drop islands from the Elemental Chaos into the Astral Sea or anything you could imagine. If I did a not-Planescape, I'd consider that approach.

I'm approaching it from a totally different angle, still a multiverse but not much set in stone, more of a toolkit for the GM to make his own universes and worlds within them, but with enough pre-made provided for you to just read and play. I might borrow some from the PFSRD or not depending if I can come up with my own way to facilitate travel between universes.

I came up with an interesting (I think) mechanic that would allow the GM to adjust up or down the danger each universe represents to the players based on a "physics" law and the interaction of the universes among them and the worlds inside them. I think it has potential.

I'll be asking for some victims to playtest my OSR product.

RPGPundit just published a "make your own pocket planes" PDF. Might be worth a look.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/291929/RPGPundit-Presents-97-Pocket-Planes
http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2019/10/pocket-planes.html

I loved how Planescape dealt with doors, especially in Sigil. The idea that any portal had the potential to perhaps go somewhere was extra cool, and finding the right door was often a great mini-quest of its own. Especially when the door you needed was in a very inconvenient place.

I agree with the idea of some planes being more dangerous than others. Perhaps planes are not "all one thing", but have pockets of higher and lower danger areas. Planescape's border towns did something like this, as the outskirts of the plane wasn't as "plane-ish" as the deeper areas. AKA, the outskirts of the fire plane might have geysers of flame, but you can still maneuver through a bit, but the center area is 24/7 uber-inferno

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112436RPGPundit just published a "make your own pocket planes" PDF. Might be worth a look.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/291929/RPGPundit-Presents-97-Pocket-Planes
http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2019/10/pocket-planes.html

I loved how Planescape dealt with doors, especially in Sigil. The idea that any portal had the potential to perhaps go somewhere was extra cool, and finding the right door was often a great mini-quest of its own. Especially when the door you needed was in a very inconvenient place.

I agree with the idea of some planes being more dangerous than others. Perhaps planes are not "all one thing", but have pockets of higher and lower danger areas. Planescape's border towns did something like this, as the outskirts of the plane wasn't as "plane-ish" as the deeper areas. AKA, the outskirts of the fire plane might have geysers of flame, but you can still maneuver through a bit, but the center area is 24/7 uber-inferno

Yeah, I'm gonna buy it just because I'm doing for this project might get some cool ideas.

You're awfully close as to what I'm doing but still no cigar. It's a totally different approach while still remaining kinda, sorta similar.

WotC's new User Survey is up -- and it has Birthright, Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun in its "Favorite Settings" question. Who knows what the future might hold? You may want to start working quickly... and also take the latest WotC D&D survey. ;)

Quote from: Opaopajr;1112493WotC's new User Survey is up -- and it has Birthright, Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun in its "Favorite Settings" question. Who knows what the future might hold? You may want to start working quickly... and also take the latest WotC D&D survey. ;)

Thanks for that great piece of info, since I never go to WotC I wouldn't have seen it.

Bye for now, time to get cracking and putting all the other stuff on the backburner.

Don't know if it helps but Planescape for me is Sigil: the belief factions, the infinite portals and improbable keys, the weirdness of citizens, the alien geometries in architecture (and the Lady's spikes everywhere), the cynical Cant of the locals.

I think a big part of it's appeal was it's New Weird aesthetics and concepts, which seems much more common place in the hobby nowadays. Between the myriad weird OSR and crazy indie games, I don't think a new PS would hold the same appeal these days.

Quote from: Itachi;1112507Don't know if it helps but Planescape for me is Sigil: the belief factions, the infinite portals and improbable keys, the weirdness of citizens, the alien geometries in architecture (and the Lady's spikes everywhere), the cynical Cant of the locals.

I think a big part of it's appeal was it's New Weird aesthetics and concepts, which seems much more common place in the hobby nowadays. Between the myriad weird OSR and crazy indie games, I don't think a new PS would hold the same appeal these days.

Yeah, but would an original take on it? I mean, not taking PS and filling the serial numbers, but take the core concept and put a new spin on it. Anyway, since I'm already started on it I might as well see what I can do with it. It might not make me a millionaire, fuck it might not make me any money at all, but it's fun.

And I'm sure there are some people who would enjoy it and find maybe one or two things worth strip mining.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1112493WotC's new User Survey is up -- and it has Birthright, Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun in its "Favorite Settings" question. Who knows what the future might hold? You may want to start working quickly... and also take the latest WotC D&D survey. ;)

Ahhh yes, the new D&D survey where question 5 asks if you actually play the game!  WTF!

Quote from: Jaeger;1112515Ahhh yes, the new D&D survey where question 5 asks if you actually play the game!  WTF!

Well since it's a life style brand it's important to give those who don't play the game a voice isn't it?

Technically WOTC has been testing the waters with that "not planescape" idea with its Planeshift series of PDFs based on the various MTG worlds.

Quote from: Jaeger;1112515Ahhh yes, the new D&D survey where question 5 asks if you actually play the game!  WTF!

It's what pollsters call a "control question".

You have to have ways of telling what percentage of people are just clicking answers randomly, or just fucking with your poll. If someone answers a control question (a question with an obvious answer to anyone who is paying attention/actually cares) the wrong way, you can just toss their results entirely.

There is however another alternative, and that is that this question will separate those who answer negatively into a different analysis group that, depending on the other responses, checks for the preferences and habits of those that once did play the game, but are no longer playing (and the reasons for this decision).

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1112518Well since it's a life style brand it's important to give those who don't play the game a voice isn't it?

Its not a lifestyle brand yet except in the minds of a few who think that fan made knick-knacks somehow damns it as a WOTC lifestle game now.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112422To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

I like the Planescape explanation that out on the planes, you never know if that 0 level beggar is really Zeus out testing mortals. A demon who got a hair up his ass to roast a beggar might quickly find himself on the business end of a lighting bolt.
Or that beggar might be aligned with some planar plot. Really, the idea that angels and devils were restrained towards each other out on the planes is a really great contrast to their usual machinations on the prime planes. It goes from Diablo (the video game) to Screwtape Letters in tone. And I really like that.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112422There is always a market for a great new setting.

To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

D&D 4e had the Astral Sea which was a good idea which allowed the "planes" to be islands, and you could drop islands from the Elemental Chaos into the Astral Sea or anything you could imagine. If I did a not-Planescape, I'd consider that approach.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1112703I like the Planescape explanation that out on the planes, you never know if that 0 level beggar is really Zeus out testing mortals. A demon who got a hair up his ass to roast a beggar might quickly find himself on the business end of a lighting bolt.
Or that beggar might be aligned with some planar plot. Really, the idea that angels and devils were restrained towards each other out on the planes is a really great contrast to their usual machinations on the prime planes. It goes from Diablo (the video game) to Screwtape Letters in tone. And I really like that.

You see, here's where that "physics law" mechanic I have in mind plays it's role. It will allow the GM to decide just how deadly he wants his campaign/adventure to be. And it would not necessitate that latter campaigns/adventures retain the same level of danger, you could start with a danger level near to a 1st level party and move up or start at a higher level and move down, and any mix between those two extremes, you could have parts that are extremely lethal while others seem like a walk in the park by comparison.

This mechanic will allow for a "world" to be more or less dangerous and to change it's danger level even while the adventure/campaign is in progress or by the next time the party visits it.

Not gonna go into much detail right now but, there are only 4 planes, inside the planes there are spheres, the spheres contain realms and the realms worlds. Now, a sphere can be in more than one plane at the same time. How is that possible? You'll have to wait and see.

Quote from: Omega;1112677Its not a lifestyle brand yet except in the minds of a few who think that fan made knick-knacks somehow damns it as a WOTC lifestle game now.

Key word being YET, the push to make it so is there and it comes from WotC, because if they manage to make it so they have a huge untapped market, take comics/movies as an example, the sales for toys/ T-Shirts, etc are way bigger and more constant than the original IP. McFarlane didn't became a millionaire by selling his comics, but by selling the other connected merchandise.

I have no problem with they wanting to tap that market, as long as they don't fuck up the game trying to do so.

But, if other companies efforts are anything to go by they will fuck it up, and kick out their loyal consumer base to try and win more consumers. Which is good news for indie game developers and bad news for those who want to buy good D&D books for their games.

I don't think the Elemental Planes are copyrighted, let alone the Alignment Planes, because too culturally generic. But IIRC, the demi-planes, like the border elementals (Dust, Vacuum, Salt, etc.) were copyrighted by TSR, and thus now owned as part of WotC. Make of that rumor what you will. ;)

Quote from: Itachi;1112507Don't know if it helps but Planescape for me is Sigil: the belief factions, the infinite portals and improbable keys, the weirdness of citizens, the alien geometries in architecture (and the Lady's spikes everywhere), the cynical Cant of the locals.

I think a big part of it's appeal was it's New Weird aesthetics and concepts, which seems much more common place in the hobby nowadays. Between the myriad weird OSR and crazy indie games, I don't think a new PS would hold the same appeal these days.

The weird in D&D has become pervasive. Considering what the average party in FR looks like today,  Planescape has become mundane.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1112793I don't think the Elemental Planes are copyrighted, let alone the Alignment Planes, because too culturally generic. But IIRC, the demi-planes, like the border elementals (Dust, Vacuum, Salt, etc.) were copyrighted by TSR, and thus now owned as part of WotC. Make of that rumor what you will. ;)

Which is why you go with a different approach. Still not decide if I go 100% my stuff, 100% PFd20SRD or a mix. Also I'm gonna go really retro and Old School and publish the PFd20SRD planes conversion to OSR in a blog.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1112795The weird in D&D has become pervasive. Considering what the average party in FR looks like today,  Planescape has become mundane.

Perfectly put, yes. Or at least this is my take on the matter. I was talking to a friend the other day about WWI Stormtroopers (we were coming from a Battlefield1 session) and how they informed modern day small unit tactics, breaking from the napoleonic mass infantry of the time, and how having a modern "stormtrooper" doesn't make sense. It's the same case with Planescape aesthetics and D&D. For a PS to have any impact nowadays, it would have to innovate in some significant way.

Long story short, what you're asking for is the base setting of 4e. It tried to make the planes a suitable place for adventures from level one, and all the good ideas got erased by historical revisionists.

So I'm totally in favor of whatever you're selling. If you want to publish another book of the planes (Mongoose did one fifteen years ago (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/1673/)), even a whole product line exploring adventures on the other planes from level one, then I would totally back it on kickstarter.

What would be the best is if you created a combined "planejammer" setting where characters can ride spaceships literally to hell and back.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112422There is always a market for a great new setting.

To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

D&D 4e had the Astral Sea which was a good idea which allowed the "planes" to be islands, and you could drop islands from the Elemental Chaos into the Astral Sea or anything you could imagine. If I did a not-Planescape, I'd consider that approach.

This is probably the single most important thing to do. The standard D&D planes are intended only for high-level adventurers.

In order to do a planejammer setting, you need to construct the planes in such a way that they support adventuring from level one. By extension, this means that they need to be constructed with corresponding social, economic, and ecological factors. This means that the planes will, aside from the weird geography and such, resemble the material plane in many ways. On the elemental plane of fire, you will have villages of level 0 commoner genies, forests of candle trees (or whatever), ferries sailing rivers of lava, etc.

Basically, the selling point of the setting will be the extraplanar aesthetic. Everything previously mundane will be weird and unrecognizable.

So you need a really good art direction to capture that.

Quote from: Itachi;1112507Don't know if it helps but Planescape for me is Sigil: the belief factions, the infinite portals and improbable keys, the weirdness of citizens, the alien geometries in architecture (and the Lady's spikes everywhere), the cynical Cant of the locals.

I think a big part of it's appeal was it's New Weird aesthetics and concepts, which seems much more common place in the hobby nowadays. Between the myriad weird OSR and crazy indie games, I don't think a new PS would hold the same appeal these days.

You could market it as being all that weird stuff combined in one game.

Think tieflings, dragonborn, warforged and other freak galleries are old hat? Now you have tieflings from hell, elemental dragonborn, and warforged from the planes of order.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1112793I don't think the Elemental Planes are copyrighted, let alone the Alignment Planes, because too culturally generic. But IIRC, the demi-planes, like the border elementals (Dust, Vacuum, Salt, etc.) were copyrighted by TSR, and thus now owned as part of WotC. Make of that rumor what you will. ;)

In my opinion, the elemental planes are conceptually absurd (especially the extra pseudo-elemental planes, which got increasingly silly and torturous as more were added) and in practice bland and boring unless you completely re-conceptualize them. Like 4e did, and that got erased by the historical revisionists despite being a genuinely good idea.

Why re-do Planescape with all that baggage when you can just wait a bit longer for Age of Sigmar: Soulbound?  The Mortal Realms are already way more interesting than what Planescape was able to manage.

I prefer my own planar adventuring. Several of my RPGPundit Presents issues detail elements of the type of planar adventuring I like to do, either in Medieval-Authentic form or Gonzo form.

Quote from: KingCheops;1113466Why re-do Planescape with all that baggage when you can just wait a bit longer for Age of Sigmar: Soulbound?  The Mortal Realms are already way more interesting than what Planescape was able to manage.

Thanks, but no thanks.

You can take that pile of Age of Shitmar and shovel it elsewhere...

Planescape is one of those settings I see come up a lot in social media as one of people's favorite D&D settings, but conversely it's also one I sometimes see people crap on as well (usually cuz they didn't like the Factions, which I actually kinda liked and suspect people who loved the setting did as well). I think one of the challenges of designing a not-Planescape setting would be to capture whatever it was that people liked about it, which might require some polling to determine exactly what that is. Another issue is coming up with a proper cosmology people actually like that could fit in their campaign.

One thing about Planescape is that it was built around D&D's cosmology so it could readily fit into existing D&D campaigns ran within published settings. That meant that it could work as a proper cross-setting "multiverse" for D&D without problem. A "not-Planescape" setting might run into the problem of requiring its own unique cosmology (cuz copyright), which might not mesh with other people's games (whether they're D&D centric or not). It would need to have its own cosmology as well as its own hooks to draw people in.

Conversely it could also be a generic tool for building otherworldly realms or pocket worlds, but Pundit already did that somewhat recently, as some already mentioned.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1114077Thanks, but no thanks.

You can take that pile of Age of Shitmar and shovel it elsewhere...

Heh.  Did you see GW just announced they are bringing back the Old World?  It is a couple years down the road yet, but happening.  Square bases and all.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114084Planescape is one of those settings I see come up a lot in social media as one of people's favorite D&D settings, but conversely it's also one I sometimes see people crap on as well (usually cuz they didn't like the Factions, which I actually kinda liked and suspect people who loved the setting did as well). I think one of the challenges of designing a not-Planescape setting would be to capture whatever it was that people liked about it, which might require some polling to determine exactly what that is. Another issue is coming up with a proper cosmology people actually like that could fit in their campaign.

One thing about Planescape is that it was built around D&D's cosmology so it could readily fit into existing D&D campaigns ran within published settings. That meant that it could work as a proper cross-setting "multiverse" for D&D without problem. A "not-Planescape" setting might run into the problem of requiring its own unique cosmology (cuz copyright), which might not mesh with other people's games (whether they're D&D centric or not). It would need to have its own cosmology as well as its own hooks to draw people in.

Conversely it could also be a generic tool for building otherworldly realms or pocket worlds, but Pundit already did that somewhat recently, as some already mentioned.

One could take an ambitious route of creating a multiverse setting in which every imaginable model of the planes could coexist.

EDIT: IIRC 5e DMG mentions a planar model "myriad" in which there isn't a defined structure that applies to the entire multiverse.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114107One could take an ambitious route of creating a multiverse setting in which every imaginable model of the planes could coexist.

EDIT: IIRC 5e DMG mentions a planar model "myriad" in which there isn't a defined structure that applies to the entire multiverse.

Yeah, I haven't read the 5e DMG, but there's been various changes to the cosmology of the planes used throughout D&D's history (some more significant than others). So it stands to reason that they'd propose a model that tries to integrate all of them as a possibility. What I said probably applies more from a 2e POV in that regard. The trick then would be coming up with a rationale that explains a myriad planar models working together while keeping things consistent.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/269791/Troika-Numinous-Edition

Surely there's always room for a good plane-hopping RPG? :)

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114125Yeah, I haven't read the 5e DMG, but there's been various changes to the cosmology of the planes used throughout D&D's history (some more significant than others). So it stands to reason that they'd propose a model that tries to integrate all of them as a possibility. What I said probably applies more from a 2e POV in that regard. The trick then would be coming up with a rationale that explains a myriad planar models working together while keeping things consistent.

Multiverse? I'm pretty sure the explanation is in the name. Each world has a different set of planes.

Perhaps a better question to ask is: what do people like about the planes in the first place? I'm not talking philosophical factions, I mean the planes themselves. Why would players want to vacation there?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114241Multiverse? I'm pretty sure the explanation is in the name. Each world has a different set of planes.

Perhaps a better question to ask is: what do people like about the planes in the first place? I'm not talking philosophical factions, I mean the planes themselves. Why would players want to vacation there?

The word "Multiverse" on its own doesn't explain anything. It's just a concept, and a hypothetical and contentious one at that. There are dozens of theories (i.e. actual explanations) about how they would operate. Fantasy could have many more. How do all these places connect? What is the underlying cosmology that encompasses them? What is it's structure?

As for why people would want to go to the planes that would probably require polling. Though, we could speculate about people enjoying the weird factor or the thrill of traveling across multiple worlds, etc. Another way to answer that would be to answer why would people want to play this particular setting--i.e. what are its hooks? What is it about or makes it interesting? Its selling point, etc. Then see what people think about that particular idea.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114241Perhaps a better question to ask is: what do people like about the planes in the first place? I'm not talking philosophical factions, I mean the planes themselves. Why would players want to vacation there?

For the same reasons people want to travel to any other place thats not home.

Plus the extra normal DnD reason - to find the Macguffin.

Quote from: VacuumJockey;1114218https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/269791/Troika-Numinous-Edition

Surely there's always room for a good plane-hopping RPG? :)

Troika looks awesome. I'm itching to get it.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114250The word "Multiverse" on its own doesn't explain anything. It's just a concept, and a hypothetical and contentious one at that. There are dozens of theories (i.e. actual explanations) about how they would operate. Fantasy could have many more. How do all these places connect? What is the underlying cosmology that encompasses them? What is it's structure?

That's my point. There might not be an underlying cosmology encompassing them all, just transitional/transitory planes linking different cosmologies.

There have been a ton of 3pp exploring new concepts of the planes. Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes, Beyond Countless Doorways, Classic Play: The Book of the Planes, A DM's Directory of Demiplanes, Dark Roads & Golden Hells, Bastion Press' Fairies, Along the Twisting Way: The Faerie Ring, The Slayer's Guide to Elementals, and more.

For example, the Blood & Treasure "Land of Nod" campaign setting's cosmology is modeled after Aristotle's celestial spheres and Dante's Inferno. The Eberron cosmology has a planet orbited by planes (https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Planes_of_Eberron) like moons with various effects during conjunctions. The Forgotten Realms cosmology is a crazy flowchart (https://imgur.com/gallery/l8CcNhg). Glorantha has a cosmology (https://www.glorantha.com/glorantha/) based on the ancient cosmology of real religions with a flat earth, an underworld, a heavenly dome. Warhammer Fantasy has its "mortal realms (https://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Mortal_Realms)". The Alluria Campaign Setting Guide is written explicitly as a multiverse with multiple worlds connected by transitional planes, with its premise being characters from multiple worlds being in the same party.

Essentially, planes may generally be placed into one of several recurring categories and the cosmology just explains how they relate to one another. The categories include material/prime planes (planets, outer space, celestial spheres, etc), elemental/energy planes (air, earth, fire, water, positive, negative, elemental chaos, etc), transitory planes (shadowfell, feywild, astral, ethereal, luminiferous aether, world tree, etc), outer planes (upper planes, lower planes, planes of chaos, planes of order, neutrality, etc). The cosmology models include wheel, omniverse, orrery, ocean, rose, sephirot, etc. There's no reason why transitory planes can't connect different cosmologies.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114250As for why people would want to go to the planes that would probably require polling. Though, we could speculate about people enjoying the weird factor or the thrill of traveling across multiple worlds, etc. Another way to answer that would be to answer why would people want to play this particular setting--i.e. what are its hooks? What is it about or makes it interesting? Its selling point, etc. Then see what people think about that particular idea.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114254For the same reasons people want to travel to any other place thats not home.

Plus the extra normal DnD reason - to find the Macguffin.

Yes. But why use the other planes instead of the prime material planets and space travel? Most of the other planes are really boring (http://blogofholding.com/?p=3908) or only allowed for high level characters. To do a planehopping setting, you need to both make the planes interesting, distinct from the material plane, and support adventuring from level 1.

For example, Dark Dungeons redesigns the elemental planes so that they have actual geography reflecting the material plane, just composed of different flavors of their element. It uses a celestial sphere (https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DarkDungeonsSRD/Out_of_This_World) encompassing the solar system, and each elemental plane has its own mirror of the sphere.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114266Yes. But why use the other planes instead of the prime material planets and space travel? Most of the other planes are really boring (http://blogofholding.com/?p=3908) or only allowed for high level characters. To do a planehopping setting, you need to both make the planes interesting, distinct from the material plane, and support adventuring from level 1.

For example, Dark Dungeons redesigns the elemental planes so that they have actual geography reflecting the material plane, just composed of different flavors of their element. It uses a celestial sphere (https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DarkDungeonsSRD/Out_of_This_World) encompassing the solar system, and each elemental plane has its own mirror of the sphere.

Instead of me trying to read your mind, how about giving me an example of what plane you find the most boring and lets see if we can brain storm a reason why the PCs would want to go there?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114266That's my point. There might not be an underlying cosmology encompassing them all, just transitional/transitory planes linking different cosmologies.

There have been a ton of 3pp exploring new concepts of the planes. Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes, Beyond Countless Doorways, Classic Play: The Book of the Planes, A DM's Directory of Demiplanes, Dark Roads & Golden Hells, Bastion Press' Fairies, Along the Twisting Way: The Faerie Ring, The Slayer's Guide to Elementals, and more.

For example, the Blood & Treasure "Land of Nod" campaign setting's cosmology is modeled after Aristotle's celestial spheres and Dante's Inferno. The Eberron cosmology has a planet orbited by planes (https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Planes_of_Eberron) like moons with various effects during conjunctions. The Forgotten Realms cosmology is a crazy flowchart (https://imgur.com/gallery/l8CcNhg). Glorantha has a cosmology (https://www.glorantha.com/glorantha/) based on the ancient cosmology of real religions with a flat earth, an underworld, a heavenly dome. Warhammer Fantasy has its "mortal realms (https://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Mortal_Realms)". The Alluria Campaign Setting Guide is written explicitly as a multiverse with multiple worlds connected by transitional planes, with its premise being characters from multiple worlds being in the same party.

Essentially, planes may generally be placed into one of several recurring categories and the cosmology just explains how they relate to one another. The categories include material/prime planes (planets, outer space, celestial spheres, etc), elemental/energy planes (air, earth, fire, water, positive, negative, elemental chaos, etc), transitory planes (shadowfell, feywild, astral, ethereal, luminiferous aether, world tree, etc), outer planes (upper planes, lower planes, planes of chaos, planes of order, neutrality, etc). The cosmology models include wheel, omniverse, orrery, ocean, rose, sephirot, etc. There's no reason why transitory planes can't connect different cosmologies.

IDK, a lot that seems to support my point that multiverses need some type of underlying cosmology or structure to explain how they operate, cuz everyone of those examples you list has one and you even go into some of the details. Even if you limit it to just a transitional plane, you still have to explain what that plane is and what it's like. If there are any special dangers in it, any special methods to get there or leave, etc.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114266Yes. But why use the other planes instead of the prime material planets and space travel? Most of the other planes are really boring (http://blogofholding.com/?p=3908) or only allowed for high level characters. To do a planehopping setting, you need to both make the planes interesting, distinct from the material plane, and support adventuring from level 1.

For example, Dark Dungeons redesigns the elemental planes so that they have actual geography reflecting the material plane, just composed of different flavors of their element. It uses a celestial sphere (https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DarkDungeonsSRD/Out_of_This_World) encompassing the solar system, and each elemental plane has its own mirror of the sphere.

Cuz the material plane doesn't have any of the wacky, surrealistic stuff that may exist in the planes and generally neither does space travel, which isn't even a feature of most fantasy worlds. To a significant extent the reason people are attracted to plane-hopping settings is precisely because "boring" is a term that generally applies more to the mundane and ordinary material plane than other planes of existence.

As for planar adventures typically being more appropriate for high level characters, in a way I suppose that's true--specially in D&D (that might not be the case with other systems). But there ways around that:

• The setting could provide a wealth of low level planar encounters and/or guidelines for making planar versions of animals and other simple encounters.
• Weak magical weapons could be more commonplace (so you can damage enemies requiring magic weapons).
• Characters could start at higher levels to improve survivability.
• Etc.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114307Instead of me trying to read your mind, how about giving me an example of what plane you find the most boring and lets see if we can brain storm a reason why the PCs would want to go there?

I thought I linked an article (http://blogofholding.com/?p=3908) that explains the problems with the planes, but if you need examples then sure.

Most planes suffer from being some combination of boring and redundant.

The ethereal plane is an infinite boring expanse of mist. Any adventure on the ethereal plane may be moved to any mist-shrouded moor on the material plane and would become more interesting as a result.

The astral plane is an infinite boring expanse of silver sky. It's identical to the plane of air, or even the material plane sky.

The plane of air is identical to the material plane sky. You can set air adventures in the material plane sky.

The plane of earth is identical to the underdark. You can set earth adventures in the material plane underdark.

The plane of fire is an endless field of fire. You can set fire adventures in any desert or volcanic wasteland on the material plane.

The plane of water is identical to the ocean. You can set water adventures in the material plane ocean.

Or, you know, compare D&D's infinite expanses of homogeneous pointlessness with elemental planes levels in video games. Telara, Warcraft and EverQuest have interesting planes IIRC.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114311IDK, a lot that seems to support my point that multiverses need some type of underlying cosmology or structure to explain how they operate, cuz everyone of those examples you list has one and you even go into some of the details. Even if you limit it to just a transitional plane, you still have to explain what that plane is and what it's like. If there are any special dangers in it, any special methods to get there or leave, etc.

You're putting too much thought into this. Go into the shadow plane, walk far enough, step out into another material plane's cosmology. It's that simple.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114311Cuz the material plane doesn't have any of the wacky, surrealistic stuff that may exist in the planes and generally neither does space travel, which isn't even a feature of most fantasy worlds. To a significant extent the reason people are attracted to plane-hopping settings is precisely because "boring" is a term that generally applies more to the mundane and ordinary material plane than other planes of existence.

Most D&D-based fantasy settings implicitly assume that real world space physics are in the background, accessible through portals and spaceships if available. Settings that don't follow real world physics to a T have to be specifically noted, like Glorantha.

If the material plane is boring that's because writers are too lazy to do anything interesting with it. I've seen countless children's cartoons that make the material plane vastly more interesting than D&D infinite expanses of a single substance. None of the D&D canon has ever made the planes seem remotely interesting to imagine myself visiting, and that's the fault of the writers for lacking any imagination.

I'm not convinced that there's a popular perception of the material plane as boring and the other planes as not. Besides the original Planescape, there's a huge dearth of material about the other planes. I can't recall any adventure paths which took place mostly on another plane. There just doesn't seem to be enough interest, sadly.

I don't see the "surreal" elements, sorry. As I mentioned above, most of the planes are just boring expanses of a single homogeneous substance or empty space. The elemental planes are just slices of the material plane, but far more boring. If I want surreal, then I have to imagine it myself.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114311The setting could provide a wealth of low level planar encounters and/or guidelines for making planar versions of animals and other simple encounters.

I've been saying this since forever. Gating off the planes behind high level is arbitrary and there's no reason why the planes can't be playable from level 1 if you put the effort into design.

However, in some ways that runs counter to your defense of the planes as being surreal. If we're serious about giving the planes geography, ecology, and society from level one, then that's going to make it more mundane. The plane of fire may have land of burning coals, rivers of lava, and a sky that is literally on fire all the time, but it still has recognizable geography. It's going to have forests of burning bushes and fire birds, villages of fire folk farmers farming their fire wheat, cities of fire people going about their daily jobs... it basically becomes the material plane except with everything on fire. Which is why I asked above why it can't be set in a volcanic wasteland on the material plane like Adventure Time's fire kingdom (https://adventuretime.fandom.com/wiki/Fire_Kingdom).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114311Weak magical weapons could be more commonplace (so you can damage enemies requiring magic weapons).

Why do we need enemies to be immune to non-magic weapons in the first place? In addition to being arbitrary, that is so commonplace in D&D that it feels just as mundane and boring as not being immune to non-magic weapons. The writers could at least try to be creative and use more specific qualifiers than "magic."

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114311Characters could start at higher levels to improve survivability.

This isn't exactly a solution. You're just skipping the boring early levels and going right to the interesting levels where planar adventures aren't gated off. But sure, whatever works, I guess?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114443I thought I linked an article (http://blogofholding.com/?p=3908) that explains the problems with the planes, but if you need examples then sure.

I dont need a laundry list of examples just your best one or, in this case, the first one.

QuoteMost planes suffer from being some combination of boring and redundant.

The ethereal plane is an infinite boring expanse of mist. Any adventure on the ethereal plane may be moved to any mist-shrouded moor on the material plane and would become more interesting as a result.

The Ethereal plane certainly is boring so how could we differentiate it from a mist-shrouded moor and provide reasons for Players to go there.

I always like the spell Leomunds Secret Chest.  One day after summoning the Chest the party finds it empty!  The only way to find out what happened to their precious loot is to travel to the Ethereal Plane.

Ghosts are the most "famous" Ethereal monster.  The Party has been tasked with traveling to the Ethereal plane to put a Ghost to rest.

The BBEG lives in a fortress full of Gaurds and Creatures and hardened against standard magical spells.  Maybe the party can find a way in through the Ethereal Plane?

So three adventure hooks to provide reasons for the party to want to go to the Ethereal Plane.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114453I dont need a laundry list of examples just your best one or, in this case, the first one.



The Ethereal plane certainly is boring so how could we differentiate it from a mist-shrouded moor and provide reasons for Players to go there.

I always like the spell Leomunds Secret Chest.  One day after summoning the Chest the party finds it empty!  The only way to find out what happened to their precious loot is to travel to the Ethereal Plane.

Ghosts are the most "famous" Ethereal monster.  The Party has been tasked with traveling to the Ethereal plane to put a Ghost to rest.

The BBEG lives in a fortress full of Gaurds and Creatures and hardened against standard magical spells.  Maybe the party can find a way in through the Ethereal Plane?

So three adventure hooks to provide reasons for the party to want to go to the Ethereal Plane.

That doesn't make the ethereal plane any less boring. It's just a shortcut for the material plane. You can get rid of it entirely, replacing it with a simpler ethereal condition (invisible, incorporeal, flying), and lose nothing of value. Same applies to all the planes. They're boring and worthless. Nothing more than the detritus of an autist's obnoxious OCD.

Making the planes interesting requires actual work. The first question you need to ask yourself is: if I was writing a video game, tv show, novel, whatever set entirely on plane X, how would I write it as remotely interesting, not a complete snorefest, and justified as being on another plane rather than an exotic region of the material plane?

This ain't rocket science.

Here's an example map of the plane of fire: https://www.reddit.com/r/inkarnate/comments/bfels5/plane_of_fire/

And a setting book: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/199348/The-Travelers-Guide-to-the-Elemental-Plane-of-Fire

You can play as fire elementals on the plane of fire from level one. It is surprisingly easy.

EDIT: Pandius has this covered: http://www.pandius.com/planejam.html#element

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114443*snipped for brevity*

You're just being pointlessly argumentative and nitpicky at this point. I'm saying I want apples (the planes) and you're telling me I should have oranges instead (the material plane). Oranges have more vitamin C and they're good for me, so WTF do I want apples for?

Maybe I want apple pie? But no, I should try orange pie instead. Don't you know you can make pies with oranges too?

And WTF do you need the recipe for the pie crust for (the multiverse cosmology)? You just go to the store and buy one ready made! You're over thinking this too much!

Except maybe this could be about making my own original, professionally baked pie (publishable game setting) and just buying some random store crust isn't good enough. And pie aficionados (people who actually like plane-hopping adventures and don't readily dismiss them as 'boring') aren't gonna go for some stale, generic, tasteless store bought crust. They want the real savory stuff made from the right ingredients to fit this particular style of pie (actual details about the structure of the planes and the multiverse that add flavor to the setting rather than "you just go into some transitional plane and eventually get to another material plane--cuz fuck the Outer Planes or the Demi Plane of Dread, the material plane is where it's at!").

Moving away from pie and fruit analogies and addressing some specific points:

FIRST: You're nitpicking transitional planes and elemental planes of raw energy and material, and extrapolating that because those specific types of planes tend to be mostly empty, may have material plane analogs in some cases or you don't know what to do with them that therefore the entirety of the planes must be boring, and people shouldn't go there. Ever.

No mention of the Outer Planes or Demi Planes, of course, cuz those ain't just some inter dimensional highway that takes you to an actual plane, or buckets of raw material and energy used to build reality. But then those places have material plane analogs too, so you'll probably just tell me to turn them into material plane worlds instead.

Why not just make Asgard a material plane cuz this is fantasy anyways? Why does the land of the gods have to be some distant heavenly realm most mortals can only dream about when fantasy worlds have unicorns and dragons in them? Why should worlds in the material plane retain some semblance of the real world so they can be grounded in reality despite having subtle magical underpinnings when you can crank the weird factor up to eleven and have the flying islands and endless spires right at home without having to cross some transitional plane to get them? Some select few fantasy worlds do that so why build a world where you can keep the otherworldly and the mundane separate, so you can keep a sense of wonder, when you can make the weird and the surreal commonplace and completely miss the point of having planar adventures?

And all this sarc isn't even getting into how the transitional and elemental planes could still be made interesting by having the occasional weird stuff floating in them that characters could explore or face otherworldly dangers, find lost travelers or a host of other things. But characters aren't supposed to constantly dwell in transitional planes anyways, which is why they're called TRANSITIONAL (i.e. planes in between actual places).

SECOND:

QuoteIf the material plane is boring that's because writers are too lazy to do anything interesting with it.

Interesting how the same thing could be said about the planes or otherworldly realms like fairylands and things like that. And children's tales are also full of them.

THIRD:

QuoteBesides the original Planescape, there's a huge dearth of material about the other planes. *snip* There just doesn't seem to be enough interest, sadly.

TSR was notorious for not even not listening to player feedback and publishing regardless of actual interest, which is why they went bankrupt and WOTC bought them. They had a wealth of setting material and novels not enough people actually wanted, cuz they went by their own arbitrary release schemes.

This is not to say that therefore the interest was there, but rather that TSR's publishing history can't be taken for anything but the publishers' whims at the time.

FOURTH:

QuoteI don't see the "surreal" elements, sorry.

You refuse to see them cuz you're too busy looking in places where they're not (or they could be, but you "are too lazy to do anything interesting with [them]") or dismissing them cuz why not just make wacky landscapes in the material plane instead?

FIFTH/Rest of your post:
You complain that making the planes suitable for low level characters somehow goes against things being surreal (cuz apparently weird wacky stuff must be level dependent). But then at the end also complained about increasing the starting level, which just highlights how pointlessly argumentative you're being. Integrating lower level characters is not good enough. Increasing character levels just for planar campaigns is also not good enough. Either way you're going to complain regardless.

And monsters being immune to non-magical weapons is a D&D trope. I only brought it up cuz this seemed to be veering towards D&D related questions, like "what about low level characters?" Monsters could just be affected by all weapons normally for all I care. But if we were to build this around D&D rules that might be a factor.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114492That doesn't make the ethereal plane any less boring. It's just a shortcut for the material plane. You can get rid of it entirely, replacing it with a simpler ethereal condition (invisible, incorporeal, flying), and lose nothing of value. Same applies to all the planes. They're boring and worthless. Nothing more than the detritus of an autist's obnoxious OCD.

If you use my example then they are not boring.  In one we have an exciting investigation scenario, in another an exciting (and uniquely DnD) Ghost story and the third an exciting and dangerous infiltration scenario which are all uniquely focused on the Ethereal Plane.  You specifically can not substitute a mist shrouded moor for any of those scenarios.  And while OCD is always welcome is not required.

QuoteMaking the planes interesting requires actual work. The first question you need to ask yourself is: if I was writing a video game, tv show, novel, whatever set entirely on plane X, how would I write it as remotely interesting, not a complete snorefest, and justified as being on another plane rather than an exotic region of the material plane?

This ain't rocket science.

Exactly.  It aint rocket surgery because TV has already invented the travel montage to show how you can go from Place A to Place 2 in way to advance the story without having to waste a lot of time.  You can apply any of these techniques to travel on the Prime as well as the Planes.

QuoteHere's an example map of the plane of fire: https://www.reddit.com/r/inkarnate/comments/bfels5/plane_of_fire/

And a setting book: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/199348/The-Travelers-Guide-to-the-Elemental-Plane-of-Fire

You can play as fire elementals on the plane of fire from level one. It is surprisingly easy.

EDIT: Pandius has this covered: http://www.pandius.com/planejam.html#element

I am glad that someone has done some work to make the Plane of Fire interesting for you.  I guess for extra trope inversion you could play as Elementals traveling to the Prime and trying to survive in the hostile environment where liquid water falls from the sky.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114500THIRD:

TSR was notorious for not even not listening to player feedback and publishing regardless of actual interest, which is why they went bankrupt and WOTC bought them. They had a wealth of setting material and novels not enough people actually wanted, cuz they went by their own arbitrary release schemes.

This is not to say that therefore the interest was there, but rather that TSR's publishing history can't be taken for anything but the publishers' whims at the time.

TSRs publishing history is even more interesting then that.

It is, however, unfair to say that TSR never listened to Player feedback.  More accurately you could say that the Designers never saw the sales data on the products that they were making and eventually Dragon Dice took down the whole company.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114500You're just being pointlessly argumentative and nitpicky at this point. I'm saying I want apples (the planes) and you're telling me I should have oranges instead (the material plane). Oranges have more vitamin C and they're good for me, so WTF do I want apples for?

Maybe I want apple pie? But no, I should try orange pie instead. Don't you know you can make pies with oranges too?

And WTF do you need the recipe for the pie crust for (the multiverse cosmology)? You just go to the store and buy one ready made! You're over thinking this too much!

Except maybe this could be about making my own original, professionally baked pie (publishable game setting) and just buying some random store crust isn't good enough. And pie aficionados (people who actually like plane-hopping adventures and don't readily dismiss them as 'boring') aren't gonna go for some stale, generic, tasteless store bought crust. They want the real savory stuff made from the right ingredients to fit this particular style of pie (actual details about the structure of the planes and the multiverse that add flavor to the setting rather than "you just go into some transitional plane and eventually get to another material plane--cuz fuck the Outer Planes or the Demi Plane of Dread, the material plane is where it's at!").

Moving away from pie and fruit analogies and addressing some specific points:

FIRST: You're nitpicking transitional planes and elemental planes of raw energy and material, and extrapolating that because those specific types of planes tend to be mostly empty, may have material plane analogs in some cases or you don't know what to do with them that therefore the entirety of the planes must be boring, and people shouldn't go there. Ever.

No mention of the Outer Planes or Demi Planes, of course, cuz those ain't just some inter dimensional highway that takes you to an actual plane, or buckets of raw material and energy used to build reality. But then those places have material plane analogs too, so you'll probably just tell me to turn them into material plane worlds instead.

Why not just make Asgard a material plane cuz this is fantasy anyways? Why does the land of the gods have to be some distant heavenly realm most mortals can only dream about when fantasy worlds have unicorns and dragons in them? Why should worlds in the material plane retain some semblance of the real world so they can be grounded in reality despite having subtle magical underpinnings when you can crank the weird factor up to eleven and have the flying islands and endless spires right at home without having to cross some transitional plane to get them? Some select few fantasy worlds do that so why build a world where you can keep the otherworldly and the mundane separate, so you can keep a sense of wonder, when you can make the weird and the surreal commonplace and completely miss the point of having planar adventures?

And all this sarc isn't even getting into how the transitional and elemental planes could still be made interesting by having the occasional weird stuff floating in them that characters could explore or face otherworldly dangers, find lost travelers or a host of other things. But characters aren't supposed to constantly dwell in transitional planes anyways, which is why they're called TRANSITIONAL (i.e. planes in between actual places).

SECOND:


Interesting how the same thing could be said about the planes or otherworldly realms like fairylands and things like that. And children's tales are also full of them.

THIRD:


TSR was notorious for not even not listening to player feedback and publishing regardless of actual interest, which is why they went bankrupt and WOTC bought them. They had a wealth of setting material and novels not enough people actually wanted, cuz they went by their own arbitrary release schemes.

This is not to say that therefore the interest was there, but rather that TSR's publishing history can't be taken for anything but the publishers' whims at the time.

FOURTH:


You refuse to see them cuz you're too busy looking in places where they're not (or they could be, but you "are too lazy to do anything interesting with [them]") or dismissing them cuz why not just make wacky landscapes in the material plane instead?

FIFTH/Rest of your post:
You complain that making the planes suitable for low level characters somehow goes against things being surreal (cuz apparently weird wacky stuff must be level dependent). But then at the end also complained about increasing the starting level, which just highlights how pointlessly argumentative you're being. Integrating lower level characters is not good enough. Increasing character levels just for planar campaigns is also not good enough. Either way you're going to complain regardless.

And monsters being immune to non-magical weapons is a D&D trope. I only brought it up cuz this seemed to be veering towards D&D related questions, like "what about low level characters?" Monsters could just be affected by all weapons normally for all I care. But if we were to build this around D&D rules that might be a factor.

I'm sorry for getting pointlessly argumentative. Planejamming is near and dear to my heart, so I'm constantly frustrated by how poorly Wizards has treated it for the last few decades.

You can't create a fantasy setting, much less a planar adventures setting, that caters to all tastes simultaneously. Different people have different tastes. Different settings have different baselines for what constitutes normal. One of my problems with D&D in general is that it can't decide what it wants its baseline to be, and can't be bothered to explain what kinds of baselines could exist, so it ends up tossing all fantasy tropes into a blender and pretending it works out. I hate that so much.

It's difficult for me to understand others during these arguments because I don't know what their baseline is. High magic? Low magic? Tolkien-esque? Cosmopolitan planejammer? Post-apocalyptic? So I try to limit myself to criticizing the planes as they are written in the books. Which don't do a lot to make the planes seem interesting on their own, which I why I am generally in favor of discarding the planes entirely (especially the transitive planes) unless you actually do something interesting with them.

That's why I like the Mystaraspace model of the planes (and also because Dark Dungeons made it OGL so everyone can make adventures for it). Depicting the elemental planes as their own solar systems with planets is truly inspired even today, since otherwise the elemental planes are extremely boring due to laziness on the part of the writers. I would love to have fantasy space travel adventures on the elemental planes! I would be happy to write an adventure too.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114508If you use my example then they are not boring.  In one we have an exciting investigation scenario, in another an exciting (and uniquely DnD) Ghost story and the third an exciting and dangerous infiltration scenario which are all uniquely focused on the Ethereal Plane.  You specifically can not substitute a mist shrouded moor for any of those scenarios.  And while OCD is always welcome is not required.

It still doesn't do anything to make the ether plane interesting on its own merits. The least you could do is give the place geography, wildlife, and civilizations. That's why I loved the suggestion from The Faerie Ring setting by Zombie Sky Press to condense all the transitive planes into fairyland.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114508I am glad that someone has done some work to make the Plane of Fire interesting for you.  I guess for extra trope inversion you could play as Elementals traveling to the Prime and trying to survive in the hostile environment where liquid water falls from the sky.

That sounds genuinely interesting.

Anyway, for the purposes of illustration I am going to think of a few possible cosmologies.

Cosmology #1: The Flat Earth

This will be a variation of the omniverse cosmology, but more closely based on the flat earth cosmologies of ancient civilizations like the Mesopotamian (https://juliadjurovitch.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/the-influence-of-the-ancient-near-eastern-cosmologies-and-the-genesis-cosmology/), the Greek (https://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Aither.html), the Norse (https://www.ancient-code.com/yggdrasil-the-legendary-world-tree-of-norse-mythology/), the Hindu (https://www.hinduscriptures.com/vedic-sciences/hindu-cosmology/27472/), the Mayan (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/29554941284962064/?lp=true), and the Flammarion engraving (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_engraving).

This is the cosmology used by settings like Exalted's Creation and RuneQuest's Glorantha. I don't know for sure, but variations of it may be used by a number of OSR settings such as the Auran Empire and the Dragon Empire.

In this cosmology, the earth or middle earth is essentially flat (even if it appears curved to observers standing on it). Above it is the sky dome or over world, the firmament of the stars and the empyrean heaven. Below it is the underworld, full of dwarves, chthonic darkness, the judge-gods and the shades of the dead. At the peak of the sky dome or even atop it is the throne of heaven, the palaces of the gods and heroes. At the nadir of the underworld, or even below it, is the hell in which the overthrown gods and wicked souls are imprisoned and tormented. There are also various pillars holding up the layers of the world, such as Atlas, Jormungandr, Yggdrasil, Bahamut, etc. Surrounding the three-tiered world is the primordial chaos, the waters of the firmament, ginnungagap, muspelheim, niflheim, etc. Depending on how detailed you want to be you could claim there are nine worlds linked by a world tree or something, but all the schemes are variations on the same basic idea. Many so-called "worlds" may be viewed as countries within the cosmology, such as the homelands of the giants, the elves, the dwarves, etc.

Compared to D&D omniverse, the planes map like so:

• Middle Earth = material plane
• Heavens = plane of air and upper planes
• Underworld = underdark, plane of earth, shadowfell
• Hell = plane of fire, lower planes
• Chaos = elemental chaos, feywild, limbo

Unlike D&D canon, in this cosmology you can simply walk from one plane to another because the geography is contiguous. You don't need spells or transitive planes to do so, thus transitive planes do not exist in this cosmology. It is possible for an adventurer to walk to the literal end of the world and find the seam where the sky or sea meets the earth. It may be possible to traverse this boundary, or it may take the form of an impassible mountain range or "ice wall." Both Norse and Chinese myth introduce the idea of elements associated with compass directions (e.g. Muspelheim to the South, Niflheim to the North, Middle Earth at the center), which may be useful in making the environments of the retaining wall more interesting. An adaption for general D&D may be found at this link: Enter the Elemental Borderlands (http://expeditiousretreat.blogspot.com/2015/05/enter-elemental-borderlands.html).)

Travel between this cosmology and other cosmologies generally relies on the surrounding chaos, which by nature is chaotic and therefore may have outlets in the planes of other cosmologies (e.g. Limbo, Astral, Deep Ethereal, Phlogiston). There may very well be many flat worlds of this kind floating throughout the primordial chaos.

Cosmology #2: The Aristotelian Universe

This cosmology was advanced by Aristotle, and later built upon by other authors.

This takes the form of a solar system like in real life, except geocentric and the night sky is actually a celestial sphere encompassing the system. Indeed, each planetary orbit is a giant concentric sphere. The four elements concentrate at the center to form the Middle Earth we live on, whereas the weightless ether forms the planets (Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The firmament of the stars marks the boundary of the universe: there may be nothing beyond the sphere, or it may be the same primordial chaos as the flat world.

Dante's Divine Comedy provided further elaboration tied into Christian belief. Hell is accessible though a hole in the ground and ultimately lets out at the Mountain of Purgatory, which is ascended to reach the Empyrean Heaven at the planetary spheres.

Even later scientists recycled the term "ether" to refer to a substance proposed to fill the space between planets. This was later discredited, but fantasy settings went off with it.

The only settings I know of which use any variation of this cosmology are Blood & Treasure and Voidspanners. In the former's case, the inner and outer planets correspond to inner and outer planes. In the latter's case, the planets are mundane planets that may be visited and traded with.

Depending on whether there is anything outside the celestial sphere, this plane could be accessed by simply traveling to the boundary of the sphere from whatever plane meets it (e.g. Limbo, Astral, Phlogiston, Deep Ethereal).

Cosmology #2b: Celestial Spheres and Luminiferous Aether

This cosmology was introduced by Mystara and went on to inform Spelljammer. The basics are recounted by (https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DarkDungeonsSRD/Out_of_This_World) the Dark Dungeons SRD.

This model is inspired by the Aristotelian universe, but changes things up to allow for interstellar space travel. Each celestial sphere encompasses a solar system and its mirrored inner planes (named because they exist inside the sphere). Outside of the sphere is the luminiferous aether, which fills all the space between the celestial spheres of the universe. Outer planes are artificial spheres created by immortals and anchored to natural celestial spheres in the prime plane.

As with the prior cosmology, traveling to this one from another typically takes the form of finding an outlet to the luminiferous aether. The luminiferous aether is comparable to similar planes in other cosmologies (e.g. Limbo, Phlogiston, Deep Ethereal, Astral).

---

[/HR]

That's all for now. If you're interested in reading more about planes, then you may be happy to learn that there are a ton of 3pp books dealing with the planes if you know where to look.

• Classic Play: The Book of the Planes
  
• A DM's Directory of Demiplanes
  
• Beyond Countless Doorways
  
• Dark Roads & Golden Hells
  
• Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds
  
• Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes
  
• The Slayer's Guide to Elementals
  
• Bastion Press' Faeries
  
• Along the Twisting Way: The Faerie Ring Campaign Guide
  
• The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire
  
• Fat Goblin Games' Traveler's Guide To Hell
  
• And more!

Some companies devoted more attention than others to certain planes. Zombie Sky Press devoted a lot of attention to the fairylands, and suggested that the various transitive planes are all part of the "preternatural planes" of faerie. Mongoose Publishing wrote numerous books exploring the lower planes, including the campaign setting Infernum where PCs were demons tormenting the damned in hell. Necromancers of the Northwest devoted attention to making the plane of fire playable from level one. Monte Cook has worked on numerous planes across numerous publishers dealing with planar adventures after being inspired by Planescape, such as the settings Ptolus and Midgard.

That's the sort of energy we need if we're planning on fleshing out a Planejammer setting for OSR.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114562IIt still doesn't do anything to make the ether plane interesting on its own merits. The least you could do is give the place geography, wildlife, and civilizations. That's why I loved the suggestion from The Faerie Ring setting by Zombie Sky Press to condense all the transitive planes into fairyland.

It does have geography, it is the same as the Prime plane, there are plenty of Ethreal creatures to round out a wandering monster table and inventing a new civilisation is beyond the scope of this article.

QuoteThat sounds genuinely interesting.

Thats interesting?  Where are the geography, wildlife or cilivisations?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114562I'm sorry for getting pointlessly argumentative. Planejamming is near and dear to my heart, so I'm constantly frustrated by how poorly Wizards has treated it for the last few decades.

You can't create a fantasy setting, much less a planar adventures setting, that caters to all tastes simultaneously. Different people have different tastes. Different settings have different baselines for what constitutes normal. One of my problems with D&D in general is that it can't decide what it wants its baseline to be, and can't be bothered to explain what kinds of baselines could exist, so it ends up tossing all fantasy tropes into a blender and pretending it works out. I hate that so much.

It's difficult for me to understand others during these arguments because I don't know what their baseline is. High magic? Low magic? Tolkien-esque? Cosmopolitan planejammer? Post-apocalyptic? So I try to limit myself to criticizing the planes as they are written in the books. Which don't do a lot to make the planes seem interesting on their own, which I why I am generally in favor of discarding the planes entirely (especially the transitive planes) unless you actually do something interesting with them.

That's why I like the Mystaraspace model of the planes (and also because Dark Dungeons made it OGL so everyone can make adventures for it). Depicting the elemental planes as their own solar systems with planets is truly inspired even today, since otherwise the elemental planes are extremely boring due to laziness on the part of the writers. I would love to have fantasy space travel adventures on the elemental planes! I would be happy to write an adventure too.

I don't necessarily disagree about Wizard's (or even TSR's) handlings of the planes or even their treatment of fantasy in general, which tends to take a haphazard kitchen sink approach. Although I don't necessarily share your preferences, which seem to be very peculiar and not entirely evocative of what I'd consider to be actual plane shifting adventures dealing with inter-dimensional/otherworldly travel, but more like magic spacefaring adventures with weird physical world cosmologies stretching across space. That sounds interesting as it's own thing, but I see it almost as it's own genre separate from traditional fantasy or actual plane hopping.

I also don't entirely agree with your take on transitional planes, although I can see where you're coming from. But those planes are not supposed to be places of adventure, but more like "in between" realms of unformed mass that facilitate the transition from one world to the next. Heavily populating them and giving them detailed geography would go against the implicit function of such realms. Although I'm not entirely adverse to stuff like adding the occasional floating island enigmatically rising above the mists in an otherwise empty landscape of flowing aether.

My actual preference (at least for traditional fantasy worlds) tends to be more in line with the idea of the Otherworld, treated as a separate layer of reality overlaid over natural world, nested in multiple layers for different realms. I wrote a thing a few weeks ago detailing some of the ideas I've considered for an Otherworld a cosmology for my RPG worlds, which I posted as a Minds blog in two separate installments.

The first blog post can be found HERE (https://www.minds.com/VisionStorm/blog/touched-by-the-otherworld-1036679753464500224), and the follow up post, expanding on some of these concepts, can be found HERE (https://www.minds.com/VisionStorm/blog/touched-by-the-otherworld-2-1039399526776061952). This is more in line with the idea of the mythological Otherworld, but with some modern/RPG underpinnings.

I've also considered a surreal science fantasy world about exploring endless pocket dimensions with alien creatures and landscapes submerged in a sea of misty energy. But that setting deals with a lot of original ideas I've had in the backburner for a while, waiting for me to finish my own game system I wanted to use it for, so it's not ready to be shared.

Quote from: Shasarak;1114596Thats interesting?  Where are the geography, wildlife or cilivisations?

On the material plane, right? The elemental PCs are aliens visiting the hostile material.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114599I don't necessarily disagree about Wizard's (or even TSR's) handlings of the planes or even their treatment of fantasy in general, which tends to take a haphazard kitchen sink approach. Although I don't necessarily share your preferences, which seem to be very peculiar and not entirely evocative of what I'd consider to be actual plane shifting adventures dealing with inter-dimensional/otherworldly travel, but more like magic spacefaring adventures with weird physical world cosmologies stretching across space. That sounds interesting as it's own thing, but I see it almost as it's own genre separate from traditional fantasy or actual plane hopping.

Do you mean that the other planes are flat surfaces that extend forever in all directions? I can play with that, but I find a planetary structure easier to grok. It's only really relevant if the characters have a spaceship, as otherwise the planetary surface feels the same as an infinite flat surface to PCs. Continents are big things.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114599I also don't entirely agree with your take on transitional planes, although I can see where you're coming from. But those planes are not supposed to be places of adventure, but more like "in between" realms of unformed mass that facilitate the transition from one world to the next. Heavily populating them and giving them detailed geography would go against the implicit function of such realms. Although I'm not entirely adverse to stuff like adding the occasional floating island enigmatically rising above the mists in an otherwise empty landscape of flowing aether.

I suppose that my problem is with the D&Disms. You don't need transitive planes to serve that sort of role. The concept of transitive planes are game conventions without much if any foundation in myth and folklore. Whenever Otherworlds appear in myth and folklore and even most modern fantasy fiction, they are written as interesting locales in their own right. Transitive planes as written are simply boring IMO, and that's probably why they don't show up outside of D&D.

The closest examples I can think of are the Wood Between the Worlds from Narnia, which has geography, and the Warp from Warhammer, which is both hyperspace and hell.

If the transitive planes weren't grandfathered in by D&D, then would you really imagine that you needed them when world building from scratch? I can't think of any reason why I would need them that can't be fulfilled by something simpler.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114599My actual preference (at least for traditional fantasy worlds) tends to be more in line with the idea of the Otherworld, treated as a separate layer of reality overlaid over natural world, nested in multiple layers for different realms. I wrote a thing a few weeks ago detailing some of the ideas I've considered for an Otherworld a cosmology for my RPG worlds, which I posted as a Minds blog in two separate installments.

The first blog post can be found HERE (https://www.minds.com/VisionStorm/blog/touched-by-the-otherworld-1036679753464500224), and the follow up post, expanding on some of these concepts, can be found HERE (https://www.minds.com/VisionStorm/blog/touched-by-the-otherworld-2-1039399526776061952). This is more in line with the idea of the mythological Otherworld, but with some modern/RPG underpinnings.

I've also considered a surreal science fantasy world about exploring endless pocket dimensions with alien creatures and landscapes submerged in a sea of misty energy. But that setting deals with a lot of original ideas I've had in the backburner for a while, waiting for me to finish my own game system I wanted to use it for, so it's not ready to be shared.

That sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing the links.

Just rip off Mortal Kombat:

Earthrealm, Netherrealm, Chaos Realm, Outworld, Seido/Order Realm, Edenia, theoretically countless more both known and unknown. If they merge, reality collapses; Outworld keeps merging with more and more by force at the behest of its despotic emperor Shao Kahn, so many of its inhabitants are non-native (and some criminals hide out there) and it has a variety of landscapes (though much of it is barren purple wastelands, deserts, pools of acid, mysterious mountain peaks, forests with animated faces, with small villages scattered throughout). It, along with Netherrealm (hell), are composed of thousands of different layers.

The whole of Outworld is teeming with magic, and people from there tend to have an affinity for it. In contrast, magic users and magical beings who enter Netherrealm slowly weaken. Vampires (which were annexed into Outworld) apparently have the ability to traverse the realms, and have a reputation for being excellent record keepers; they can travel by day in most realms, they are only highly allergic to Earthrealm's sun.

... in other news, some may find "GURPS Fantasy: Portal Realms" a nice reference for this topic; different types of 'portals,' how to run portal fantasy, appropriate character types, etc. As usual with GURPS supplements it is handy for reference and ideas regardless of what system you use.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114599My actual preference (at least for traditional fantasy worlds) tends to be more in line with the idea of the Otherworld, treated as a separate layer of reality overlaid over natural world, nested in multiple layers for different realms. I wrote a thing a few weeks ago detailing some of the ideas I've considered for an Otherworld a cosmology for my RPG worlds, which I posted as a Minds blog in two separate installments.

The first blog post can be found HERE (https://www.minds.com/VisionStorm/blog/touched-by-the-otherworld-1036679753464500224), and the follow up post, expanding on some of these concepts, can be found HERE (https://www.minds.com/VisionStorm/blog/touched-by-the-otherworld-2-1039399526776061952). This is more in line with the idea of the mythological Otherworld, but with some modern/RPG underpinnings.

I'm reading your cosmological conceits and I like it. There's a coherent logic behind it rather than the mindless iterating of D&Disms. I especially like your elegant articulation of the concept of "anima," as I planned on using something similar but never articulated it well.

Similar to what you proposed, I was planning an emanation scheme inspired by Kabbalah, Gnosticism, ancient cosmology, and Plato's allegory of the cave. I've still got to work out the details, but generally the descent of energy/souls passes through the upper planes, elemental planes, material planes, and finally to the lower planes. These would roughly correspond to Briah, Yetzirah, Assiah, and Gehenna in Kabbalah.

These planes of existence would determine the origins and ancestry of many kinds of monsters. For example: aberrations and celestials originate in Briah; giants and elementals originate in Yetzirah; beasts, humanoids and fey originate in Assiah; fiends and undead originate in Gehenna.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114586Anyway, for the purposes of illustration I am going to think of a few possible cosmologies.

*snipped for brevity*

This is actually pretty awesome. Don't know how I missed it yesterday! Going by the post times I probably had started writing my last post before this was posted, got sidetracked along the way--extending the writing time to one hour or more--and posted mine without noticing this.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114671I suppose that my problem is with the D&Disms. You don't need transitive planes to serve that sort of role. The concept of transitive planes are game conventions without much if any foundation in myth and folklore. Whenever Otherworlds appear in myth and folklore and even most modern fantasy fiction, they are written as interesting locales in their own right. Transitive planes as written are simply boring IMO, and that's probably why they don't show up outside of D&D.

I'm not entirely sure about that. I'm pretty sure I've seen formless misty chambers used when moving across worlds in fiction (can't think of specific examples right now--I usually have trouble remembering details from films or shows unless they're fresh from recent viewings) and the idea of transitive planes has some parallels with mysticism and Theosophical ideas. The Astral and Ethereal Planes are taken almost right out of Theosophy, and the Ethereal Plane takes its name from the Aether, which is one of the classical elements.

I think Celtic folklore also makes mention of mists as a prelude to traveling to fairylands and the Otherworld, and ideas similar to the aether are fairly common the world over. Granted, I'm not sure there's a fundamental distinction between the Astral and Ethereal Planes in real life occultism, so having them as separate planes might be a D&D-ism. But the idea of traversing such realms exists in real life occult/mystical believes and practices across multiple mystical systems from all over the world.

This Wikipedia article covers a lot of this concepts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_plane

My fundamental assumption when dealing with plane hopping and mystical conceptions of reality is that everything is made of the aether or some ethereal-like quintessential substance, which takes more specific forms when manifesting in the material world--leading to the various types of elements that make up everything in the world. And traveling across dimensions inevitably puts you in contact with that substance. The form that substance takes when not bound by the confines of the material world is like Ethereal/Astral Plane--a formless, misty place between realities--which I would handle as just one plane rather than separate planes like in D&D.

One thing I should clarify is that, even in fantasy worlds, I tend to operate under the assumption that (unless otherwise specified in specific settings) planetary cosmology operates like that of the natural world in real life and that any "Otherworld" or "Planes of Existence" operate as separate realities or dimensions transcending the natural world. People who live in these worlds may have myths and folklore that describe the world otherwise, but those are just primitive believes from scientifically illiterate people based on their limited understanding of natural law. And any actual "Otherworlds" that may exist, exist at separate layer of reality or "frequency" or whatever, beyond the natural world.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114676Just rip off Mortal Kombat:

Earthrealm, Netherrealm, Chaos Realm, Outworld, Seido/Order Realm, Edenia, theoretically countless more both known and unknown. If they merge, reality collapses; Outworld keeps merging with more and more by force at the behest of its despotic emperor Shao Kahn, so many of its inhabitants are non-native (and some criminals hide out there) and it has a variety of landscapes (though much of it is barren purple wastelands, deserts, pools of acid, mysterious mountain peaks, forests with animated faces, with small villages scattered throughout). It, along with Netherrealm (hell), are composed of thousands of different layers.

The whole of Outworld is teeming with magic, and people from there tend to have an affinity for it. In contrast, magic users and magical beings who enter Netherrealm slowly weaken. Vampires (which were annexed into Outworld) apparently have the ability to traverse the realms, and have a reputation for being excellent record keepers; they can travel by day in most realms, they are only highly allergic to Earthrealm's sun.

... in other news, some may find "GURPS Fantasy: Portal Realms" a nice reference for this topic; different types of 'portals,' how to run portal fantasy, appropriate character types, etc. As usual with GURPS supplements it is handy for reference and ideas regardless of what system you use.

I never got into Mortal Kombat, cuz I never liked fighting games. But have found their cosmology pretty interesting when I've run into it when researching these types of topics.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114701I'm reading your cosmological conceits and I like it. There's a coherent logic behind it rather than the mindless iterating of D&Disms. I especially like your elegant articulation of the concept of "anima," as I planned on using something similar but never articulated it well.

Similar to what you proposed, I was planning an emanation scheme inspired by Kabbalah, Gnosticism, ancient cosmology, and Plato's allegory of the cave. I've still got to work out the details, but generally the descent of energy/souls passes through the upper planes, elemental planes, material planes, and finally to the lower planes. These would roughly correspond to Briah, Yetzirah, Assiah, and Gehenna in Kabbalah.

These planes of existence would determine the origins and ancestry of many kinds of monsters. For example: aberrations and celestials originate in Briah; giants and elementals originate in Yetzirah; beasts, humanoids and fey originate in Assiah; fiends and undead originate in Gehenna.

Thanks for reading! Yeah, I tend to take inspiration from a combination of mythology and mysticism/occult believes and practices, as well as going into my own philosophical musings on these topics then trying to come up with ways of integrating them into RPG worlds and adding elements specific to the world and what the setting is about.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114704I never got into Mortal Kombat, cuz I never liked fighting games. But have found their cosmology pretty interesting when I've run into it when researching these types of topics.

Same. I'm the person who can't memorize the simplest move, and mashes buttons to loss (or victory :cool:). But to your point, there is a pretty interesting history and cosmology to the setting that gives it a half-gonzo, half-edgy-grimdark-teenage-boy-fantasy vibe which I sort of dig! Legacy of Kain / Soul Reaver series is similarly inspirational to me, with its bizarre plot and villains and the mechanics of the world.

When it comes to travel-centric settings (including planar travel), I'd prefer to take inspiration from video games like Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies. If the transitive planes were like that, then I'd probably like them.

To me, cosmologies based on historical mysticism tend to just be more interesting than the D&D great wheel.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1115288To me, cosmologies based on historical mysticism tend to just be more interesting than the D&D great wheel.

I find that true too. I suspect that it may be due to religious cosmologies serving a more practical purpose to their cultures and being refined over centuries to reflect their religious needs. The great wheel was created to fill out a grid based on game conventions, rather than because it added all that much to the world building itself.

The Norse cosmology of nine worlds is probably the most complex of all the ancient mythologies. However, our only sources are accounts by Christian monks and reconstructions based on those texts. We don't know how accurately this "nine worlds" reflects Norse belief and it is likely a post-pagan construct. As an Indo-European religion, there's little reason to believe the Norse cosmology diverges all that much in the gross structure from other known Indo-European religions. Or, for that matter, any of the ancient cosmologies that all seem to roughly follow the same general structure of heavens, middle world, underworld (literally underground), and primordial chaos of some sort.

The nine worlds of the post-pagan Norse cosmology definitely fit into that model when you treat them as realms within a world rather than worlds themselves. Asgard and its Valhalla are the heavens, Midgard is obviously the middle world, Hel and Niflhel are the underworld, Niflheim and Muspelheim are the primordial chaos. So I strongly suspect that Norse cosmology followed the same model as its contemporaries and the "nine worlds" are either invented by scribes or conflated from what were originally realms within the three or four original "worlds."

It should be pretty obvious when you realize that Jotunheim is only home to some giants (and it's questionable whether "giant" is really an accurate translation when plenty of jotun were not gigantic or even humanoid), whereas others live in places like the sea, sky, or Muspelheim.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115299I find that true too. I suspect that it may be due to religious cosmologies serving a more practical purpose to their cultures and being refined over centuries to reflect their religious needs. The great wheel was created to fill out a grid based on game conventions, rather than because it added all that much to the world building itself.

That's the thing about D&D and modern kitchen sink fantasy stuff--it tends to get built around "It's a game!" or "It's Fantasyyyyyy (don't over think it too much)!" assumptions and watered down self-referential fantasy tropes, rather than solid, internally consistent ideas with a deeper symbolic meaning. It's like a copy of a copy of a forgery of a cheap knockoff that got distilled into some generic idea of what "fantasy" is that refuses to take itself too seriously.

Real world mysticism, religion and mythology tends to be richer because it has layers of archetypal meaning and cultural significance that speak to the human condition and a symbolic view of the world. This is not say that everything has to be based 1/1 on real world mythology, but rather that using that as basis before going off in your wild tangent tends to produce more authentic and inspiring results than going with stale, prepackaged templates that have already been so over used they lost all semblance of their original meaning and became "just fantasy".

Geeky, have you taken the plunge on this project yet? Any brainstorming or words on paper? :)

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115313That's the thing about D&D and modern kitchen sink fantasy stuff--it tends to get built around "It's a game!" or "It's Fantasyyyyyy (don't over think it too much)!" assumptions and watered down self-referential fantasy tropes, rather than solid, internally consistent ideas with a deeper symbolic meaning. It's like a copy of a copy of a forgery of a cheap knockoff that got distilled into some generic idea of what "fantasy" is that refuses to take itself too seriously.

Even so, the extremely derivative fantasy introduces fascinating ideas every once in a while.

For example:

• dungeons being alive or managed by dungeon lords, as seen in dungeon management simulators
• monsters being summoned from nowhere by portals or spawned by spawning pits, also seen in dungeon management simulators
• monsters transforming into more power monsters, like holometabolous insects or japanese monster catcher games

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115313Real world mysticism, religion and mythology tends to be richer because it has layers of archetypal meaning and cultural significance that speak to the human condition and a symbolic view of the world. This is not say that everything has to be based 1/1 on real world mythology, but rather that using that as basis before going off in your wild tangent tends to produce more authentic and inspiring results than going with stale, prepackaged templates that have already been so over used they lost all semblance of their original meaning and became "just fantasy".

A 1:1 basis isn't feasible anyway because mythology varies dramatically by culture and a key definition of it is the inconsistencies caused by branching oral storytelling. The Lovecraft mythos is considered literal mythology because so many other authors have built upon it without trying to maintain any illusion of consistency.

When I tried adapting mythology to produce a generic Indo-European/Flat Earth setting for the D&D rules, inspired by Roman syncretism, I based my ideas more on comparative mythology than a specific cultural mythology. I've been brainstorming on-and-off for a while now. I haven't really settled on a name yet, but as a placeholder and in-joke I'm currently using Ümläütiä as the name. (My planned fantasy space opera campaign settings would have different names. Yes, plural, because I'm distinguishing between settings with different space travel physics. Aristotelia would use celestial spheres, whereas Alhazenia would use outer space.)

As I said earlier, I found that burrowing a descending planar model a la Kabbalah is extremely helpful when trying to make sense of the idiosyncrasies of the 5e D&D rules and implied kitchen sink setting.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115709Even so, the extremely derivative fantasy introduces fascinating ideas every once in a while.

Oh, yeah. Sometimes derivative, kitchen sink fantasy can include some nice ideas, but it's usually when they step outside the box and add their own unique touch, spin or flavor that sets it apart from the generic haphazard stuff. The idea of druids using constructs recently came up in another thread, and I thought that druids building constructs (rather than calling on Nature Spirits or some such) was sort of a gamey idea that didn't fit how druids normally operate, but someone mentioned that druids in an Iron Kingdoms supplement had constructs, and they looked really cool. But Iron Kingdoms is a very specific steampunk-sword and sorcery setting with steampunk robots, where the idea of druids building constructs that could face the robots fits, and they made them using stones connected by wood, which fit the druid theme.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115709A 1:1 basis isn't feasible anyway because mythology varies dramatically by culture and a key definition of it is the inconsistencies caused by branching oral storytelling. The Lovecraft mythos is considered literal mythology because so many other authors have built upon it without trying to maintain any illusion of consistency.

It's also hard to account for regional variants and changes to a culture's pantheon throughout its history, as new gods come along and older gods lose favor while others gain on it, or become merged with new gods or altered over time in relevance or meaning. I've read that Odin was a later development in Nordic mythology, for example, yet he became king of the gods and father of a bunch of older deities. If you're building upon real life mythology how do you determine which gods to include, which aspects to highlight or what period to use?

I also tend to make up original worlds, so sticking in a real life pantheon wouldn't work. Best I can do in those cases is study existing pantheons to get a feel for how myths are constructed and what different gods tend to represent so I can adapt that to original pantheons, which I've been doing lately with a setting idea I've been revisiting after a conversation in another thread rekindled my interest in it.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115721Oh, yeah. Sometimes derivative, kitchen sink fantasy can include some nice ideas, but it's usually when they step outside the box and add their own unique touch, spin or flavor that sets it apart from the generic haphazard stuff. The idea of druids using constructs recently came up in another thread, and I thought that druids building constructs (rather than calling on Nature Spirits or some such) was sort of a gamey idea that didn't fit how druids normally operate, but someone mentioned that druids in an Iron Kingdoms supplement had constructs, and they looked really cool. But Iron Kingdoms is a very specific steampunk-sword and sorcery setting with steampunk robots, where the idea of druids building constructs that could face the robots fits, and they made them using stones connected by wood, which fit the druid theme.

Don't constructs already involve binding a spirit to animate it? I remember reading the Creature Collection books and they included several constructs created by druids, like golems made of live snakes.

Nature spirits aren't even a recognized monster in D&D. There's no spirit monster type and never has been, even though it would have been really useful to have. The closest might be elementals and fey, but their definition has never been clear or consistent. (Paracelsus, the guy who effectively invented elementals, described them as synonymous with fairies.)

Tangent: Am I the only person who finds it weird that D&D uses "golem" in an extremely restricted sense for higher level constructs immune to most magic, a definition that isn't used by fiction outside of D&D?

I suspect some of this goes back to D&D having weird definitions for its taxonomy. For example, I don't understand the distinction between constructs, generic elementals, and corporeal undead that D&D imposes. They're all collections of base matter animated by bound spirits or something. I've seen several monsters that straddle the distinction between them, like elementals made out of human society's junk, the animated last breath of a dying person, and execution devices like wicker-men and gallows that spontaneously animate as golems due to the emotional resonance.

4e introduced the most sensible taxonomy mechanic they ever presented (constructs and undead were both subcategories of "animates"), but unfortunately it got thrown out in 5e along with numerous other genuine improvements because WotC desperately wanted to attract the OSR and PF crowd.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115795Don't constructs already involve binding a spirit to animate it? I remember reading the Creature Collection books and they included several constructs created by druids, like golems made of live snakes.

I don't remember them mentioning spirits in regards to golems, and that sort goes against their "mindless automaton" schtick. In the Iron Kingdoms source I mentioned they powered them with Ley Lines, which at least sounded druidic. But golems as mythological beings are rabbinic in nature and aren't part of real life druidism, and building artificial constructs IMO seems to go against the druid's "nature priest" schtick used in modern fantasy.

Also, mythological golems were made out of clay--other types are D&D-isms. A "golem" made out of living snakes sounds like a fantasy kitchen sink invention made to stretch the number of things constructs can be made out of and add more gimmicky encounters to sell books. Though, I suppose you could work out an angle to make it cool, like maybe include a Conan-esque snakemen cult in your campaign capable of shaping a bunch of snakes into a "golem" to fight off invaders to their camp.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115795Nature spirits aren't even a recognized monster in D&D. There's no spirit monster type and never has been, even though it would have been really useful to have. The closest might be elementals and fey, but their definition has never been clear or consistent. (Paracelsus, the guy who effectively invented elementals, described them as synonymous with fairies.)

Yeah, they include a bunch of things that are supposed to be Nature Spirits (like Nymphs and Dryads), but always handled them as just another random type of creature found in the world, like almost everything else they include from mythology, and never actually defined Nature Spirits or Fey (till 4e for Fey).

I always hated the way they always seemed to gloss over Fey as a class of entities and the elves' relationship with the Fey world--treating them just as one more fantasy "species", while simultaneously implying that they go to the (totally undefined and mentioned only in passing) fey realm when they "die" or "retreat from the world" rather than actually dying from old age. I've always thought of elves as being basically a type of fey--hankering back to mythology.

If/when I ever get around making my own D&D-esque classic fantasy setting I'm making elves 100% fey and native to the Otherworld (and using that thing I wrote about the Otherworld for handling otherworldly creatures and realms), taking inspiration from a combination of Celtic and Nordic mythology. In an improvised setting I collaboratively made a while back I made the setting's main group of elves sort of like fey royalty, and all fey in the forest region where the elven city is hidden answer to the Elf Queen as the ruling monarch of all fey. They also have an Elf King as a dual monarch in charge of their nation's security and military, who acts more as a military leader who can overrule the Elf Queen on military or national security matters.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115795Tangent: Am I the only person who finds it weird that D&D uses "golem" in an extremely restricted sense for higher level constructs immune to most magic, a definition that isn't used by fiction outside of D&D?

Yeah, I always felt that golems were immune/resistant to magic "because reasons". I can sort of get their immunity to mind affecting spells because "mindless automatons", but I always felt like there should still be magic that lets you control animated beings--just not manipulate their minds per se.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115795For example, I don't understand the distinction between constructs, generic elementals, and corporeal undead that D&D imposes. They're all collections of base matter animated by bound spirits or something.

I would treat constructs and undead as separate things because undead deal with death and necromancy, while constructs are more like enchanted creations. Even interpreting it as spirit-binding, I would treat them as separate because they're different types of spirits. Undead are dead spirits or shades, while constructs would probably involve elemental spirits or something to that effect.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115808I don't remember them mentioning spirits in regards to golems, and that sort goes against their "mindless automaton" schtick. In the Iron Kingdoms source I mentioned they powered them with Ley Lines, which at least sounded druidic. But golems as mythological beings are rabbinic in nature and aren't part of real life druidism, and building artificial constructs IMO seems to go against the druid's "nature priest" schtick used in modern fantasy.

According to this source (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Golem#Creation), golems are created by binding an elemental spirit to animate it.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115808Also, mythological golems were made out of clay--other types are D&D-isms.

Yes, golems by definition are made of clay. An animated figure of another substances would have a different name:

• The homunculus, an artificial little man created by an alchemist with blood, sperm, herbs, feces, and so forth.
• The Galatea, a stone statue of a woman created by Pygmalion and animated by the gods.
• The automaton, a metal figure forged and animated by Hephaestus.
• The Nephele, a nymph shaped from a cloud by Zeus.
• The Pinocchio, a boy made of wood and animated by the Blue Fairy.
• The Moowis, a man made of snow by an Algonquin wizard.
• The Frankenstein's monster, a variant of the homunculus that in movies is depicted as stitched together from corpses and animated by electricity.
• The Osiris, a man stitched together from dismembered body parts and resurrected as king of the dead.
• And so on.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115808A "golem" made out of living snakes sounds like a fantasy kitchen sink invention made to stretch the number of things constructs can be made out of and add more gimmicky encounters to sell books. Though, I suppose you could work out an angle to make it cool, like maybe include a Conan-esque snakemen cult in your campaign capable of shaping a bunch of snakes into a "golem" to fight off invaders to their camp.

IIRC that was exactly the idea. The CC series included plenty of gimmick golems.

The serpent golems were created by druids of the titaness Mormo, mother of serpents and several races of serpentfolk. It's no stranger than the D&D flesh golem.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115808Yeah, they include a bunch of things that are supposed to be Nature Spirits (like Nymphs and Dryads), but always handled them as just another random type of creature found in the world, like almost everything else they include from mythology, and never actually defined Nature Spirits or Fey (till 4e for Fey).

I always hated the way they always seemed to gloss over Fey as a class of entities and the elves' relationship with the Fey world--treating them just as one more fantasy "species", while simultaneously implying that they go to the (totally undefined and mentioned only in passing) fey realm when they "die" or "retreat from the world" rather than actually dying from old age. I've always thought of elves as being basically a type of fey--hankering back to mythology.

The thing about fairies is that they're a product of pre-Christian folklore surviving through Christianization. The fairies are adapted from the beliefs in pre-Christian gods, demons, and other monsters. The Greek nymph and satyr, the Norse valkyrie, the Arabic genie, etc are all fairies by the standards of comparative mythology. Folklore in general is vague and lacking in distinction. You could argue that fairies generally fall into two groups: nature spirits/gods and hidden folk, but that's not a hard and fast distinction.

I too have struggled long and hard with defining fey in D&D settings. My idea for fey has changed over time and taken inspiration from a variety of OGL books, such as The Complete Guide to Fey and The Faerie Ring. Plus some White Wolf books on fey, like Exalted and Changeling: The Lost.

In order to make sense of the fey you first need to define things that D&D doesn't define like nature spirits, theology, and such. Are nature spirits synonymous with elementals or fey? Something else? How do you reconcile fey as nature spirits and fey as extraplanar aliens? What about the primal spirits from 4e?

I took the idea from The Faerie Ring that the transitive planes and material echoes form a collection of planes known as the preternatural planes. These are alternatives to the prime, worlds that could have been the prime but are not. Or something, it's vague. Anyway, the fey are natives of these planes and somehow the prime sometimes too.

I took the idea from The Complete Guide to Fey that the fey are materialized spirits of sorts. While alive, they don't have any internal anatomy like mortals but operate on some bizarre magical processes. In a manner loosely similar to AD&D elves or Tolkien's elves, their souls are different from mortals: in this case, their souls are semi-physical objects that survive their bodily death. These are their souls originally, either: every fey is reincarnated from the soul of a mortal or an immaterial spirit like an elemental or a ghost.

I took from Exalted the idea that fey are spirits of the primordial chaos, similar to how 5e defines aberrations. Some fey were trapped in Creation when it formed, becoming the Jadeborn (basically dwarves, or maybe Tolkien's nameless gnawing things). The fey who remained in primordial chaos are able to enter orderly reality, but doing so forces their undefined chaotic essence to assumed a fixed physical form, similar to abominations from Legends & Lairs: Darkness & Dread or Tolkien's Ungoliant.

I took from Kabbalah the idea that the planes are a series of successive emanations, tracing the descent of energy from the wholly immaterial upper planes, through the material middle planes, and finally ending at the aborted lower planes. Each taxonomy is associated with a particular level: aberrations and celestials with the primordial planes, elementals and giants with the elemental planes, beasts and humanoids with the prime plane, fiends and undead with the aborted planes.

I combined these ideas. In my setting so far, the fey encompass both the nature spirits of the prime plane and the alien visitors from the preternatural planes. All fey are reincarnated from other souls and spirits, such as aberrations, elementals, and ghosts. Their souls are bound to the world and don't pass to any afterlife like mortals do, only be revived in new bodies should there be anyone to rescue their soul after death.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115808I would treat constructs and undead as separate things because undead deal with death and necromancy, while constructs are more like enchanted creations. Even interpreting it as spirit-binding, I would treat them as separate because they're different types of spirits. Undead are dead spirits or shades, while constructs would probably involve elemental spirits or something to that effect.

This is more an artifact of D&D's hierarchical taxonomy mechanic. There's no reason why a monster can't have multiple types: a junk elemental would be [construct/elemental], a last breath [elemental/undead], a spontaneous golem [construct/undead], etc.

One of the frustrating aspects of D&D's taxonomy is that it is very narrow and doesn't include "nature spirits", "materialized tulpas", "gigeresque biomechanoids", "native of a transitive plane", "native of a neutral outer plane", or anything like that (those are all types I've seen introduced in OGL products). The taxonomy mechanic can't even be extended to handle things like that except maybe in 4e.

As much as I praise 4e's taxonomy mechanic as one of the best (besides a wholly non-hierarchical taxonomy like Rules Cyclopedia or Fantasy Craft), it still has flaws of its own. I don't see the point of the magical beast type, and I really wish there was a spirit type.

I don't know if anyone else agrees, but in my currently informed opinion all monsters should be able to fall into one of the categories of animates, beasts, folks, or spirits. Unless you use a less arbitrary scheme like having different types for vitality (alive, undead, nonliving, etc), anatomy (meat/bone, homogeneous substance, clockwork, etc), psychology (mindless, bestial, civilized, AI, etc), and soul (mortal, spirit, damned, undead, etc).

Although that still feels a little OCD. D&D has made elementals immune to poison in several editions, supposedly on the pseudo-scientific basis that an animated mass of elemental material would be immune to poison... why, exactly? Because it has no circulatory system? It's magic! Why can't an elemental be poisoned? Poison isn't represented realistically in the rules (as of 5e it's a damage type), so why make an exception here? Elementals aren't realistic to begin with! Claiming that an air elemental is immune to suffocation in a vacuum or in quicksand because it has no lungs is absurd. Claiming a fire elemental can't drown is absurd. If you're going to be consistent about the classical elements, then an elemental should be injured or killed by their opposite. An air elemental will suffocate and disperse entombed in quicksand or floating in a vacuum. A fire elemental will be extinguished by a pool of water, and a water elemental will be boiled away by a fire pit. An earth elemental might not need to breath you think, but maybe it needs to maintain contact with the earth that bore it and would asphyxiate in air (outside a dust storm) or drown in (non-muddy) water.

That sounds like a much better way to distinguish constructs and elementals than the current way that treats them as largely identical. Elementals are alive and thus may die of deprivation or exposure regardless of whether they have any kind of anatomy, whereas constructs aren't alive and can't die that way.

What do you think?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115833According to this source (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Golem#Creation), golems are created by binding an elemental spirit to animate it.

Ah, missed that! I found a 2e Monstrous Manual entry that mentions the spirit, but it's very cryptic and vague about what these spirits are, stating: "The nature of this spirit is unknown, and so far eluded the grasp of all researchers."

So basically they don't tells us WTF they are. We just need to bind them "against their will" and "enslave" them to their creators, cuz apparently making golems is nasty business. And the nature of these spirits may have eluded researchers, yet they somehow still known how to find them and bind them into an artificial host body (which would imply that they would know something about them--but the authors have no clue about mythology or how spirits work in their own game, so they tell you they "eluded researchers" to sound mysterious).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115833The thing about fairies is that they're a product of pre-Christian folklore surviving through Christianization. The fairies are adapted from the beliefs in pre-Christian gods, demons, and other monsters. The Greek nymph and satyr, the Norse valkyrie, the Arabic genie, etc are all fairies by the standards of comparative mythology. Folklore in general is vague and lacking in distinction. You could argue that fairies generally fall into two groups: nature spirits/gods and hidden folk, but that's not a hard and fast distinction.

Yeah, part of the problem is that a lot of these classifications are kind of modern conventions that have been brought about by different authors or researchers and mystical systems, and there isn't any single commonly accepted category for spirits or fairies and stuff. Plus there also seems to be a lot of overlap conceptually between different types of entities. Fairies, for example, have been classified as both, Nature Spirits and Elemental Spirits (based around the four classical elements), depending on what source you use, or may also have a Seelie/Light (Helpful) or Unseelie/Dark (Unhelpful/Mischievous or Dangerous). They have also been proposed to be demoted pagan gods whose full function and scope became lost to the ages and barely half-remembered in fairy-tales and folklore passed down through oral traditions and re-written by Christians till they lost all original meaning. Though, such classifications are sometimes necessary when working with them in RPGs or as part of a coherent fantasy world, but even then some overlap may occur (like when dealing with Fey that are also strongly associated with one or more classical elements, assuming you want to treat Fey and Elementals as separate categories).

My general take is that Fey are a class of beings that are otherworldly in nature and belong to a race of beings similar to (or perhaps identical in some cases) to the race of beings Gods belong to. They are basically magical beings that belong to a world beyond the world of mortals, and are in many ways, as you refer to them "extraplanar aliens". Though, they can still have some degree of overlap with Nature Spirits and Elements, in that some of their characteristics are similar, but I would probably keep them separate for game purposes, as well as for purposes of constructing a coherent world. Much the same way that some humans may have an affinity for animals, for example, fey may also have an affinity for certain elements or aspects of the natural world, and since their nature is inherently magical, this affinity is reflected in a stronger capacity than humans simply having an easier time interacting with some animals.

For purposes of "It's a game!" I would classify spirits and otherworldly entities as follows:

• Ancestral Spirits--Deified spirits of the dead that may take the role of guardian spirits or intermediaries between mortals and the gods. Since ancestral spirits can sometimes become abstracted, I don't see these as being necessarily the actual spirit or soul of a dead person, but an idealization of them that resides in the Heavenly realms (as opposed to the Underworld).
  
• Fey--Extraplanar aliens and beings of magic, sometimes related to the gods or a race of otherworldly beings, generally taking humanoid form and often displaying magical abilities.
  
• Elementals--Beings of pure elemental substance, energy or mater, somewhat akin to D&D "elementals".
  
• Gods--Supreme beings that archetypically embody and may have influence over different aspects of the world and human experience, and may belong to a race of otherworldly magical beings (like Fey) or humans ascended through heroic deeds and/or spiritual enlightenment. They differ from Nature Spirits in that Nature Spirits are a direct personification of the aspect of the natural world they embody, while Gods are more like their own personalities, who happen to possess a deep connection and perhaps influence over such elements.
  
• Nature Spirits--Animistic spirits that embody or are a personification of different aspects of the natural world, such as animals, terrain (woodland, desert, arctic, plains, etc.), weather (rain, storms), etc. In the case of Animal Spirits, they usually take the form of idealized forms of a specific animal type, often presented as white (such as a White Stag) in mythology.
  
• Specters--Shades and spirits of the dead or the Underworld. Also, I tend to use the term "shades" to mean spectral constructs of the world of the dead that might not be the actual spirit or soul of a dead person, but more of a reflection of that state of being, the feeling of dread and being lost in the Netherworld, etc., which may feed on negative emotion of people trapped in that world. Though, perhaps another term might be more appropriate.
  

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115833Although that still feels a little OCD. D&D has made elementals immune to poison in several editions, supposedly on the pseudo-scientific basis that an animated mass of elemental material would be immune to poison... why, exactly? Because it has no circulatory system? It's magic! Why can't an elemental be poisoned? Poison isn't represented realistically in the rules (as of 5e it's a damage type), so why make an exception here? Elementals aren't realistic to begin with! Claiming that an air elemental is immune to suffocation in a vacuum or in quicksand because it has no lungs is absurd. Claiming a fire elemental can't drown is absurd. If you're going to be consistent about the classical elements, then an elemental should be injured or killed by their opposite. An air elemental will suffocate and disperse entombed in quicksand or floating in a vacuum. A fire elemental will be extinguished by a pool of water, and a water elemental will be boiled away by a fire pit. An earth elemental might not need to breath you think, but maybe it needs to maintain contact with the earth that bore it and would asphyxiate in air (outside a dust storm) or drown in (non-muddy) water.

I don't know about that. My general take is that beings need to be Organic at least in order to be affected by poison, disease or even suffocation. Granted, the case could be made for Elementals to be able to suffocate (or experience something similar) if submerged in their opposing element, but poison is a stretch, unless its some substance specifically poisonous to elementals (such as being injected with their opposing element or a substance made up of it). Even if D&D doesn't represent things realistically, I would still treat poison as affecting "Organic" beings generically (technically, not all things are 'poisonous' to all organic beings, but things classified as 'poison' could be treated as such vs all Organic beings in a RPG for "It's a game!" purposes).

I tend to separate beings into Constructs (purely artificial non-organic beings--Golems, Robots, even non-thinking objects or machines, etc.), Organic (Plants and Animals) and Ethereal (Spirits, Specters), with a possible 4th Undead category, though, that last one is probably more of a subtype, since some undead are "Constructs" (Zombies, Skeletons) and others are "Ethereal" (Specters, Ghosts), though, some more like death-defying (Vampires). I would probably need to spend more time developing these categories, and working out which subcategories could exist.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1115929I don't know about that. My general take is that beings need to be Organic at least in order to be affected by poison, disease or even suffocation. Granted, the case could be made for Elementals to be able to suffocate (or experience something similar) if submerged in their opposing element, but poison is a stretch, unless its some substance specifically poisonous to elementals (such as being injected with their opposing element or a substance made up of it). Even if D&D doesn't represent things realistically, I would still treat poison as affecting "Organic" beings generically (technically, not all things are 'poisonous' to all organic beings, but things classified as 'poison' could be treated as such vs all Organic beings in a RPG for "It's a game!" purposes).

Elementals only exist as a game convention anyway, so whether they're organic or not is entirely arbitrary. D&D seems to have invented the idea of animated masses of stuff that they're depicted as, anyway. Most other fiction depicts them as far less boring, like salamanders, sylphs, nymphs, gnomes, Pokemon, etc.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1116047Elementals only exist as a game convention anyway, so whether they're organic or not is entirely arbitrary.

It isn't if we're using the word "Elemental" to mean beings of raw energy or mater, or "animated masses of stuff". Then they can't be organic.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1116047D&D seems to have invented the idea of animated masses of stuff that they're depicted as, anyway. Most other fiction depicts them as far less boring, like salamanders, sylphs, nymphs, gnomes, Pokemon, etc.

The idea of animated masses of stuff still works conceptually speaking, even if limited to a wizard just animating stuff to turn it into a magic pet. It might also work if you want to illustrate a type of nature spirit that's the embodiment of an element itself, rather than a type of being that dwells in it.

I would tend to classify stuff like nymph and sylphs as a type of Fey rather than an elemental, and have seen them classified as fey before, as well as 'elemental' fey in systems that break fey down by elements (though, elemental classifications don't always work well and tend to be arbitrary). A lot of this depends on what type of naming conventions you used and how far you stretch the word "Fey" (which in my case it can be a lot). And it can vary by setting a lot, depending on how things are classified in any given world. A world with fey-elementals would definitely work.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116100It isn't if we're using the word "Elemental" to mean beings of raw energy or mater, or "animated masses of stuff". Then they can't be organic.

As of 5e, "elemental" is used both for any creature from the elemental planes (e.g. genies, xorns, azer, salamanders, etc) as well as the specific family of animated masses of elemental matter. I find this usage pointlessly confusing.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116100The idea of animated masses of stuff still works conceptually speaking, even if limited to a wizard just animating stuff to turn it into a magic pet. It might also work if you want to illustrate a type of nature spirit that's the embodiment of an element itself, rather than a type of being that dwells in it.

Firstly, a wizard's animated elemental object should be considered a construct just like any other animated object. Secondly, a nature spirit that embodies an element has no reason to appear as a mass of homogeneous substance; that's extremely boring and was invented by D&D to begin with (http://vaultsofnagoh.blogspot.com/2010/05/elemehntals-amirite.html). Every real world myth and religion that came up with elemental spirits prior to D&D generally depicted them as looking like people, animals, or acid trip nightmares rather than masses of a homogeneous substance.

Compare the French RPG Nephilim. It depicts its elementals as fantastical beasts: basilisks, gorgons, dragons, griffins, etc. Elementals only look like homogeneous masses of their element when they die.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116100I would tend to classify stuff like nymph and sylphs as a type of Fey rather than an elemental, and have seen them classified as fey before, as well as 'elemental' fey in systems that break fey down by elements (though, elemental classifications don't always work well and tend to be arbitrary). A lot of this depends on what type of naming conventions you used and how far you stretch the word "Fey" (which in my case it can be a lot). And it can vary by setting a lot, depending on how things are classified in any given world. A world with fey-elementals would definitely work.

This is another nonsensical D&Dism. No real world myth or religion ever distinguished elementals and fey.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1116113As of 5e, "elemental" is used both for any creature from the elemental planes (e.g. genies, xorns, azer, salamanders, etc) as well as the specific family of animated masses of elemental matter. I find this usage pointlessly confusing.

Yet you later complained that no myth ever distinguished elementals and fey (more on that later), so which one is it? Are we supposed to distinguish things that are magical humanoids (i.e. "fey") from raw elementals or keep things pointlessly confusing by lumping them all together?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1116113Firstly, a wizard's animated elemental object should be considered a construct just like any other animated object. Secondly, a nature spirit that embodies an element has no reason to appear as a mass of homogeneous substance; that's extremely boring and was invented by D&D to begin with. Every real world myth and religion that came up with elemental spirits prior to D&D generally depicted them as looking like people, animals, or acid trip nightmares rather than masses of a homogeneous substance.

That's not necessarily the case and just because an elemental nature spirit doesn't have to be a mass of homogeneous substance and you find that 'boring' that doesn't mean that they can't be depicted as such or that such a depiction wouldn't work for that purpose. This just throws the idea of animism out the window, which isn't about weird otherworldly beings or personifications of natural phenomena, but about features of the natural world themselves--like mountains, fire and rocks--having souls.

If I want to portray the element of fire itself as a life-like being (not in the organic sense, but in the sense that literal fire has a conscious will or spirit behind it) turning it into a salamander doesn't convey that sense like making fire itself come "alive".

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1116113No real world myth or religion ever distinguished elementals and fey.

Because they didn't even have those classifications to begin with and the idea of lumping fey and elementals together didn't start till alchemists made it up during the Renaissance, centuries after the cultures and religions those types of beings originated from had died out. Then people kept building upon those ideas till modern times, through various mystical systems and pagan religious revivals that were often based more on New Age wishful thinking than historical accuracy. But there's no inherent reason fey have to be classified by element, and elemental classifications don't universally work when dealing with fey cuz not all fey have a clearly associated element and the idea of classifying fey by element was a largely arbitrary convention to begin with.

Again, this is largely about name conventions, which can be highly setting-specific. It also relates to whether you want to use the term "elementals" as a class of being or as a special quality or subtype possessed by certain beings. But refusing to distinguish between "Fey" and "Elementals" when using the terms as classes of being (as opposed to qualities) only makes things more confusing, not less so.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1116113No real world myth or religion ever distinguished elementals and fey.

Come on, BoxCrayonTales.  DnD is just a valid source for real world myths and religion as well, any other story that some old guy made up to pass the time.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116155Yet you later complained that no myth ever distinguished elementals and fey (more on that later), so which one is it? Are we supposed to distinguish things that are magical humanoids (i.e. "fey") from raw elementals or keep things pointlessly confusing by lumping them all together?

Those are two different subjects I was talking about in distinct but related contexts.

In isolation, it isn't sensible for D&D 5e to use the name "elemental" for both the monster type and a specific family within that type. The latter should have a specific qualifier, like primordials, furies, atronaches, daedra, reactionals, eternals, or hipsters. (http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2013/03/on-ecology-of-elementals.html)

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116155That's not necessarily the case and just because an elemental nature spirit doesn't have to be a mass of homogeneous substance and you find that 'boring' that doesn't mean that they can't be depicted as such or that such a depiction wouldn't work for that purpose. This just throws the idea of animism out the window, which isn't about weird otherworldly beings or personifications of natural phenomena, but about features of the natural world themselves--like mountains, fire and rocks--having souls.

If I want to portray the element of fire itself as a life-like being (not in the organic sense, but in the sense that literal fire has a conscious will or spirit behind it) turning it into a salamander doesn't convey that sense like making fire itself come "alive".

That isn't the context I was referring to. I was criticizing the D&Dism of elementals being fairly boring animated objects, when this isn't the case in pre-D&D myth and fantasy fiction.

It's false to say that the D&Dism is similar to how real world animism personified terrain and natural phenomena. While animism and plenty of fairytales personify these things, the personification generally is more colorful than "an animated blob with vaguely formed features that exists for game convention."

Right now I can only give more recent example, but it should be somewhat illustrative. In Anderson's The Snow Queen, the titular queen is the personification of winter but appears as the perfect woman and the river that helps Girda is an ordinary river with agency. In Howl's Moving Castle, the fire demon Calcifer is a hearth fire with a massively expressive face and personality unknown to D&D elementals.

Also, Pokemon.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116155Again, this is largely about name conventions, which can be highly setting-specific. It also relates to whether you want to use the term "elementals" as a class of being or as a special quality or subtype possessed by certain beings. But refusing to distinguish between "Fey" and "Elementals" when using the terms as classes of being (as opposed to qualities) only makes things more confusing, not less so.

What I mean is that no cosmology invented in history by people who believed it true included fey and elementals as distinct classes of being. They were, as you say, more qualities anyway.

In anthropology and comparative mythology, stories are described in terms of archetypes. So beings like the Greek satyr and nymph, Norse elf and valkyrie, and Arabic genie all fulfill the fairy archetype (http://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/faeries.html). If the peoples who told these stories met in history, then they would have seen these as part of the same class rather than arbitrarily divide them into wholly different taxonomy the way that D&D does.

Quote from: Shasarak;1116164Come on, BoxCrayonTales.  DnD is just a valid source for real world myths and religion as well, any other story that some old guy made up to pass the time.

There is a clear difference. The D&D cosmology and taxonomy is known fiction and written by people who aren't the best world builders. Historical beliefs were invented by people who believed them true and were refined through millennia. The D&Disms are far more overly complicated and unwieldy than the equally fictional real world myth. Others have written at length about the oddities of the cosmology, which is why I personally focus on the taxonomy.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1116199What I mean is that no cosmology invented in history by people who believed it true included fey and elementals as distinct classes of being.

And what I mean is what I said in the paragraph before the one you quoted, which is that those cultures didn't necessarily see fey as "elementals" either, because that classification wasn't invented until thousands of years later and most of its refinement came from people who didn't necessarily even believe in such beings, or had their own takes (informed by different believe systems) that may have differed from what actual ancient people thought. The ancient Greeks didn't see Nymphs as "water elementals", they were just nymphs. But if the Greeks have had an elemental classification system they might have seen them as part of that category, or they might have just seen them simply as supernatural women who happened to live in water. The idea of "elemental spirits" as a distinct class of beings didn't come till later, and doesn't always work with fey.

But you seem to be pushing a very narrow interpretation of what these types of being are/should be, based on a very selective definition of them taken from sources speculating about their nature centuries after the cultures that originated them died out. And then extrapolating that interpretation into the entire gamma of supernatural entities that could be classed as Fey, Nature Spirits or Elementals, and saying they should all be treated as the same thing. And while I might be inclined to agree that some of these beings fall essentially within the same general category (Jinn, for example, are basically Arabian elves, and Oni are essentially Japanese ogres) that doesn't mean that therefore every supernatural being is a fey or that we can no longer treat natural spirits as manifestations of raw elements or natural forces, cuz now every supernatural being needs to look like an elf or have wings or something.

Not to mention that "fey" is a no longer a useful classification if we start calling everything a fey. I would at least try to limit it to just supernatural humanoids, then break them down into specific types or subclasses of fey (which might be setting-specific), and use different terms for other types of supernatural beings, like "magical beasts" for things like unicorns and griffons, "dragon-kin" for things like wyverns, hydras, sea serpents and actual dragons, and "nature spirits" for animal spirits and immaterial spirits that embody natural phenomena. And would probably use "elementals" (as a class of being) to refer to the subclass of nature spirits that embody raw elements, while possibly also using "elemental" as a quality that might be possessed by other supernatural beings.

Also, stop it with the Pokemon. :p

They're just a bunch of gimmicky made up animals without substance constantly churned out to sell more cards, merchandise or games. They're the embodiment of a gamey creation.