NeoGrognard

There are many things to admire about the 4e cosmology. First and foremost it’s far simpler than the convoluted cosmology of past editions. It’s both easy to use and to navigate. Did anyone understand the reasons for the form and the idiosyncratic ties of the Great Wheel cosmology anyway? Now we have the world, the Feywild, the Shadowfell, Far Realm, the Astral Sea, and the Elemental Chaos, that’s it simple, neat, and infinitely more memorable.

And the more I use it, the more I don’t like it. Not only that, I’m not certain that its relative simplicity serves the game in any way.

At first I really adored the new and simple cosmology. But while I always look for simplicity in rules (or at least simplicity enough), I find that my story I like muddied and full of potential conflict. I wanted something more cluttered, more…well…occult. Realizing that this may just be a purely grognardish tendency being pushed to the surface by the quickly approaching middle age mark and a desire to recapture my youth (even the geekiest parts). I decided to go back to reexamine the cosmological shifts of D&D. What could I learn from them, and how could I discover, maybe rediscover, or cobble together the D&D multiverse I really wanted.

The first diagram of the D&D multiverse from The Dragon #8. Here’s the key: 1) Purple, The PRIME MATERIAL; 2) Yellow, The POSITIVE MATERIAL PLANE; 3) Grey, The NEGATIVE MATERIAL PLANE; 4) Lt. Blue The AIR ELEMENTAL PLANE; 5) Red The FIRE ELEMENTAL PLANE; 6) Green The EARTH ELEMENTAL PLANE; 7) Blue The WATER ELEMENTAL PLANE; 8 ) Orange, The ETHEREAL PLANE; 9) Lt. Blue, The ASTRAL PLANE; 10) Blue, The SEVEN HEAVENS; 11) Lt. Blue, The HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS; 12) Blue, The TWIN PARADISES; 13) Lt. Blue, OLYMPUS; 14) Blue, ELYSIUM; 15) Blue/Grey, GLADSHEIM; 16) Grey, LIMBO; 17) Red/Grey, PANDEMONIUM; 18) Red, The 666 LAYERS OF THE ABYSS; 19) Lt. Red, TARTERUS; 20) Red, HADES; 21) Lt. Red, GEHENNA; 22) Red, The NINE HELLS; 23) Red/Grey, ACHERON; 24) Grey, NIRVANA; 25) Blue/Grey, ARCADIA

Of course I had to start at the beginning–with the outline of the multiverse presented by Gary Gygax in issue 8 of The Dragon. And it was a bit different from the one some of use grew accustom to playing the game early on. One thing, the Great Wheel wasn’t one. It was a rectangle. There was no Concordant Opposition (later to be renamed the Outlands in the Planescape setting). The area of neutrality seemed to be the Inner Planes. They seem to be the battlegrounds where the “religious and/or philosophical goals (or anti-goals) of mankind and ‘the other intellectual species’” played out.

It’s not a bad idea, actually, and one that 4e grabbed and ran with the creation of the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos. They are two ideas about the world in conflict, and the idea is that conflict creates better stories. So by adding more points of views, you add more potential for conflict, and that’s good right? I think so, but during the course of 4e design and development there was some level of dissatisfaction with the mudded state of the multiverse. Evil fought with evil. Good fought with good. You had the Blood War, the Modrons, more gods than any one religion could sustain, and more celestial servants than could fit on the head of a million pins. The idea was to create a multiverse that you could wrap your head around.

I’m not quite sure that is a feature of multiverses. Hell, we are still trying to wrap our head around ours (which may or may not be “multi”), and we don’t have mystical critters and magic.

So what kind of words of wisdom can I find in that original article about what would become the Great Wheel? Ah, well. Not much.

Gary talks a lot about swords…magical swords…and how they exist simultaneously in multiple planes. I’m not kidding. Nearly half the article is about how magical swords work in regards to the planes. He talks how a sword exists on as many planes as it has pluses (sort of) and each sword is attuned to its plane of origin, and the more you move away from that plane the less effective the sword becomes.

Really, I’m not kidding.

Now I have a rather cynical theory that Gary spent much of his DMing career giving out too much treasure, and then finding ways of taking it away. Drow weapons and armor crumbling in sunlight. The aptly named Endless Shaft of Dungeonland, and the entirety of the Tomb of Horrors were all ways in which Gary could just take back what he gave out (or worse still, some other Monty Haul DM gave out) like candy in the past adventures. When I first read the “Planes” article in The Dragon #8, I got the impression that he wrote it as a response to why his player’s magical swords didn’t work when they went to another plane in last week’s adventure.

Yes, it is fun to limit your character’s abilities at time. Yes, you can challenge your players by closing off strategic bits of design space they may have grown accustom to using. It’s just bad to do that with the frequency that is often found in early editions of the game. Who knows, maybe those were just the adventures that were published because they were more challenging than the run-of-the-mill modules.

But while much of the article deals with the planar potency of magical swords, it also attempts to describe the D&D universe as a home to the endless diversity of D&D critters. One of the strengths of D&D is its ability to assume and absorb just about all of myth and fantasy fiction. You remember a fairy tale that use to scare you as a child, shoehorn that bitch in. You just read a series of novels with a cool evil race…plop, they’re in your game.

It’s actually a little bit harder to do this in 4e. Everything is tied up in a neat package so if it isn’t fey, shadow, immortal, or elemental, or things from space you have to jump through some hoops to get there. They are not crazy hoops or unimaginable by any stretch of the imagination, they are actually pretty good as far as categories go, but I like a universe with more…space. Spaces that’ll surprise you. Spaces with strange and evocative names. I think their abundance actually adds to the fantastical sense of the multiverse, and crates a depth that you and your players can get lost in. And I thnk that’s one of the goals of RPGs—to get lost in them. They are not some games you play for an hour and turn off the device. Unless you are getting your sole D&D fix from Dungeons & Dragons Encounters, RPGs are not those kinds of games. They are games that you should want to ponder, to dream, and to create. And if you are the hour-a -week player, well you aren’t going to care how simple or complex your cosmology is because you only interact with it though your character and characters take things in stride.

So all those crazy little planes…I think I’m going to keep’em…well, most of them.