Quote from: Chris24601;1123197Except they really don't. Cosmology is just how the supernatural world fits together. Very few fit together with the symmetry the Great Wheel employs, particularly with its completely post-modern focus on balance of all things.

Rather, most mythologies are radically skewed towards Order over Chaos (virtually every creation myth involves one or more of the gods defeating the forces of chaos) and of extolling the virtues that culture considers good.

While you make a certain point regarding the type of symmetry of the Great Wheel (as I pointed out in my previous post, it's a bit too "modernist"), you aren't making a great case for the "whatever thrown together any old way" of the 4e cosmology.

Also, you're absolutely right that classical cosmologies, being unquestionably about making order of the universe, tend toward the dominance of Order over Chaos (or in some cases, of good over evil). They presume a world of laws, of structure. If that wasn't true, why have a cosmology in the first place?  Yes, you can have the "everything in perfect balance and equal bearing" that the great wheel has, but that's a very modernist type of thinking.

But if you look at the greatest of classical world cosmologies, they usually tend to show a universe of Law and Chaos connected; order is superior over chaos, but chaos clearly has its place, and places where it rules.  This is true of the germanic/norse Yggdrasil, of the tree of life of the Kabbalah, of the Six Worlds of buddhist/tantrist cosmology, of Taijitu of Chinese Taoist/Neo-Confucian occultism, and many others.

i never liked that they tried to "map out" the outer planes at all, for me it was enough that there is an astral and ethereal through which others can be travelled to. i preferred to imagine the cosmos as infinite vague and always changing, i hate the tourist wizard, the way players can cheapen the whole thing with their sure-fire knowledge of how many layers of hell there are, the way it gets reduced to a metaphysical trip to the mall for them.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1123213I made 4e work for sword & sorcery (and it was awesome), but I took Kull's axe to most of the book for it to work.

I used 4e for a swords & sorcery Wilderlands/Barbarian Altanis campaign. But only the pregen PCs I made myself (all Fighters) really fit the tone; most classes didn't work that well. So when I ran my first 5e campaign as a sequel, I started off with all Barbarian Fighter & Rogue PCs to get the right tone.  I basically use the 4e cosmology though, at least as the what-is-believed-true.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1123220But if you look at the greatest of classical world cosmologies, they usually tend to show a universe of Law and Chaos connected; order is superior over chaos, but chaos clearly has its place, and places where it rules.  

This describes 4e's World Axis, with the Astral Sea above the Elemental Chaos, and the gods victorious over the primordials.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1123220While you make a certain point regarding the type of symmetry of the Great Wheel (as I pointed out in my previous post, it's a bit too "modernist"), you aren't making a great case for the "whatever thrown together any old way" of the 4e cosmology.

Except it WASN'T "whatever thrown together any old way." If you actually bothered to read it instead of maligning it sight unseen or even just read the developer notes (see the "Worlds & Monsters" preview) you'd know that.

The World Axis cosmology was designed specifically to feel more like a real mythical cosmology.

They established a Creation Myth that explains the origins of the primordials and gods. In the beginning there were two realms; one of Chaos amd elemental forces and one of Order, ideas and concepts. At the dawn of the universe those two came into contact. This gave thought to the elemental forces (the primordials) and form to the ideas and concepts (the gods).

The primordials began to create all manner of things, building them up and tearing them down endlessly. It was they who first formed the Mortal World, casting aside pieces that were either too bright or too dark in the process (the too bright pieces became the world's reflection; the Feywild; while the too dark pieces became the world's shadow; the Shadowfell).

They also ended up, almost by accident, creating life. Life that pleaded for mercy when the primordials got bored and decided to tear the whole thing down again. Though it fell on deaf ears with the primordials (who could have just used another section of their infinite realm to create, but didn't want to) the gods stepped in to answer their pleas.

Thus began the World Axis' Titanomachy/Chaoskampf; The Dawn War; where the gods battled the primordials for the fate of the World. The primordials were more powerful, but solitary, so the gods formed teams to overcome them one at a time (the cosmic origin that all mortal adventuring parties echo) and so they eventually slew or imprisoned the primordials and became the divine rulers of the Mortal World.

Many of the monsters and player races were the direct result of this conflict. The dwarves were created as slaves by the primordials, but were rescued by the god Moradin (some dwarves who remained slaves became the Azer and Galeb Duhr).

The elves and orcs were created by the gods Corellon and Grummish, but in the first case of inter-party backstabbing came to blows (it's all fun and games until Grummish loses an eye) and neither side has gotten over it.

The dragons were created by the god Io as war machines. Io was cloven in two by a primordial with his benevolent half becoming Bahamit and his malevolent half becoming Tiamat who each took half the dragons as their own. Where Io's blood fell, the Dragonborn race was born.

The many books of 4E are littered with myths and legends about the gods, primordials and great heroes of past ages. The Underdark was the creation of Torog; a god so crippled in the Dawn War that he can only crawl and in shame hid himself away in the depths of the World where his writhing and crawling about left vast caverns and tunnels beneath the world.

They also developed an eschatology for the cosmology; The Dusk War; when the Primordials will escape their prisons and again face the gods in a final battle (which, like Ragnorok, might just be the end of one cycle and birth of another).

In short, it's anything but "thrown together." It's probably the most coordinated effort to build a cohesive cosmology that anyone employed by TSR/WotC has ever attempted.

Quote from: Shasarak;1123214If everything is symmetrical then how come we have 9 alignments and 17 aligned Planes?  How come Hell has 9 levels and the Abyss has infinite levels?  How do you fit 17 infinite Planes into a Wheel?

How come we have places that can not access the Planes and places that access all the Planes?

Yeah, not so constraining or prescriptive unless it is by a Doctor who is in a real hurry.

Except I nowhere said or implied that everything was symmetrical. What I said is the Great Wheel has forced and literal symmetry, which it does.

The 17 aligned planes is a good example. The 8 extreme alignments are laid out in a wheel, with 8 intermediate alignments in between, and then True Neutral is the isolated hub in the middle. If it were envisioned as a 3x3 grid, or if the wheel had spokes, then there would be be an additional 4 intermediate alignment planes, connecting True Neutral with NG, LN, CN, and NE. Not every possible symmetry exists.

But the symmetries that do exist are constraining, because that's still a lot of space to fill out and it needs to be very precisely but arbitrarily ordered. There's not just a plane of evil and a plane of good, or chaos opposed to a universe of order, or even one plane for each alignment. There are 17, and they all need to be unique in terms of topography and populations. But there's no clear and obvious distinction between lawful good, and halfway between lawful good and neutral good, so there's no natural source of inspiration. As a result, creativity became strained, and we ended up not only with both demons and devils, but daemons and demodands; and the upper planes are even less imaginative, with the same relatively small set of spiritual beings scattered across them all.

And the Great Wheel is proscriptive, because everything is forced into one of those planes based an abstract and poorly defined alignment, instead of more natural affiliations, like those in the inspiring mythologies, or even a real theme. As a result, we have to figure out why Hades bumps shoulders with Hel but not any of the other gods of death or their own pantheons, and how mercantalist soul-trading hags who scatter their half-breed descendants across the Prime after nights of passion and terror, mercenary plague-d[a]emonlords in a tower and their motley servitor races, and a horde of inconsistent and random monsters not only fit into the Norse and Greek mythologies, but how they're related to a gloomy emotional imprisonment effect, not to mention their relations with all their planar neighbors and spill-over races. It's just a mess.

Quote from: S'mon;1123223I used 4e for a swords & sorcery Wilderlands/Barbarian Altanis campaign. But only the pregen PCs I made myself (all Fighters) really fit the tone; most classes didn't work that well. So when I ran my first 5e campaign as a sequel, I started off with all Barbarian Fighter & Rogue PCs to get the right tone.  I basically use the 4e cosmology though, at least as the what-is-believed-true.

I kept the cosmology for my 4e high fantasy campaigns, but ditched most of it for my S&S campaign. For my S&S, everyone was Human and the classes were Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, Warlord. Warlord was kinda pushing it, but it worked in actual play as our Warlord played him as a non-magical Bard / drill sergeant. No magic items either as the theme was "magic = evil & brings monsters out of hell". The no-magic items worked fine as I added the +X via levels.

But even then, it wasn't gritty S&S, but more Marvel comics Conan which for me, totally rocked.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1123244I kept the cosmology for my 4e high fantasy campaigns, but ditched most of it for my S&S campaign. For my S&S, everyone was Human and the classes were Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, Warlord. Warlord was kinda pushing it, but it worked in actual play as our Warlord played him as a non-magical Bard / drill sergeant. No magic items either as the theme was "magic = evil & brings monsters out of hell". The no-magic items worked fine as I added the +X via levels.

But even then, it wasn't gritty S&S, but more Marvel comics Conan which for me, totally rocked.

Yes! 4e s&s is VERY Savage Sword of Conan!

Quote from: Slipshot762;1123221i never liked that they tried to "map out" the outer planes at all, for me it was enough that there is an astral and ethereal through which others can be travelled to. i preferred to imagine the cosmos as infinite vague and always changing, i hate the tourist wizard, the way players can cheapen the whole thing with their sure-fire knowledge of how many layers of hell there are, the way it gets reduced to a metaphysical trip to the mall for them.

That's a legit complaint.

If I run a D&D/PF campaign again, there are going to be issues with going to an outer plane regardless of alignment. Elemental, astral, ethereal, and demiplanes? Generally not too hard beyond environmental restrictions.

However, because most outer planes (with one exception) are heavily aligned in one way or another, characters will not be able to go very 'deep' into the plane as its very nature pushes at them on a spiritual level. Even PCs whose alignment matches will feel the weight of their flesh and be disturbed by it. Worse, even the nicest denizens are going to be encouraging the party to move along - 'you shouldn't be here yet' if nothing else. On the upshot, this allows for some fun diplomacy action if the party's searching for some ascended soul who's further 'up the ladder' because they need a crucial bit of information.

The only exception would be the Underworld, aka the 'landing pad for souls not yet judged'. The danger there is that when souls present realize the party isn't dead, they might start getting pushy ('Tell my daughter I loved her' and it goes downhill from there). Worse, because the door to the Underworld (in a metaphysical sense) is always open, souls might try to follow the party back to the lands of the living. Greek mythology might be useful for ideas on this.