Comparing Cosmologies – the 4E Manual of the Planes Explained
My luggage always gets sent to the Shadowfell.
Let’s face it, the Dungeons & Dragons cosmology has never really made sense. Each edition brings us another valiant effort to make something coherent out of several decades of uncoordinated shared universe writing. How has the Fourth Edition Manual of the Planes changed things, and how will it affect the market value of your summer home in Gehenna?
The most obvious change is that the Great Wheel is gone. The radial configuration of Inner and Outer planes presented an interesting way of perceiving other dimensions, but wasn’t especially easy to grasp. The best thing about the Great Wheel was probably the graphic that depicted it as a series of overlapping clockwork lenses. Instead, we have the Mortal World and a few parallel realms sandwiched between the predominantly fiery Elemental Chaos below and the decidedly celestial Astral Sea above. Neither of those areas are inherently good or evil, but it’s hard to dismiss the impression that they are “Heaven” and “Hell” due to the way they are depicted. Interesting choice.
It was pretty great, wasn't it?
So the Material Plane is now called the Mortal World, which could be any of the D&D campaign worlds or your homebrew world. The Transitive Planes (Ethereal, Shadow, Astral) are basically gone. In their place are two Parallel Planes that play a far greater role in the day-to-day activities of the Mortal World than the old Transitives did. The Shadowfell and the Feywild overlap the Mortal World directly. A location in the Mortal World exists in both Parallel Planes, but it may appear quite different. Feywild locations tend to be subsumed by wilderness, while the Shadowfell presents a gloomier, decrepit version. Elves and Eladrin are ostensibly from the Feywild, while undead and Bauhaus fans draw their power from the Shadowfell.
The Inner Planes of old are now part of the Elemental Chaos. There is no longer a specific Plane of Fire or Air or whatever, and the negative and positive energy plains are gone completely. Instead, the Elemental Chaos is dotted with Elemental Realms, formed out of raw elemental substance by powerful beings (sometimes deities). A given realm may appear similar to a “pure” elemental plane, but it will be bent to the whims of the creator, and can combine multiple elements. Notable Elemental Realms include the City of Brass and the Abyss. In fact, many of the old Outer Planes have found a new home as realms within the Elemental Chaos or the Astral Sea.
The Astral Sea is similar to the Elemental Chaos, except it’s more…astral. Instead of realms, it has dominions, and most dominions are created by deities. Theist characters who believe in specific locations for Heaven or Hell may actually be referring to dominions – don’t be deceived into thinking the Astral Sea is “celestial” or good. You’ll find the Nine Hells and Pandemonium floating around out there, along with Celestia and other happier places.
What about the Demiplanes, those weird little pockets that never seemed to fit anywhere? They still don’t fit, but they’re still there. Sigil, the City of Doors, makes an appearance as a Demiplane, and though it isn’t mentioned, one can easily imagine various Ravenloft realms floating around in their mist-enshrouded pockets.
That leaves us with the Anomalous Planes, those dimensions so alien and bizarre that mortal minds can barely comprehend their existence, much less understand or visit them. The best Anomalous Plane is the Lovecraftian Far Realm, home to freaky chaotic shambling oozing horrors with tentacles galore. There’s also a Plane of Dreams and a plane that exists on the other side of mirrors, which actually don’t seem all that bizarre to me.
As for other Mortal Worlds, they’re out there, just really far away. So if you’re playing in the Forgotten Realms, you can go visit the Faerûn version of Celestia. If you start swimming through the Astral Sea, after a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long journey, you’d eventually reach the Oerth version of Celestia. Or, as the book suggests, just make a portal.
There you have it, fellow planar travelers. D&D cosmology is still a confusing mess, but hopefully now you can see how it’s a bit different from the last edition’s confusing mess.
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February 4th, 2009 3:26 PM
I sure hope they made a “Great Wheel” supplement for 4e; I am fond of it (Planescape being the best DnD setting of all…)
February 5th, 2009 10:37 AM
*twitch twitch* I hate dimensional travel… So far my group has gone from one mortal plane to another then to Hell and back to the second mortal plane. Its almost as bad as time travel.
February 5th, 2009 10:59 AM
Lady Shada: I’ve never been a fan of visiting other planes myself. I think they work best as plot hooks, the sources of problems the PCs need to solve on the material…er, mortal plane. Leaky portals and extra-planar bad guys are cool. Floating around in the Astral Sea? Yawn.
February 5th, 2009 5:39 PM
“”I sure hope they made a “Great Wheel” supplement for 4e; I am fond of it (Planescape being the best DnD setting of all…)”"
I really doubt this will happen, WOTC staff will not want ways to travel the planes running around. Also they have done work to make this system of planes work in both FR and Eb.
However with that said it’s not hard to do it your self, and just use the 3e version of the planes.
Normaly i would agree with Lady Shada and Ed, dimensional travel can be a real pain in the butt, however one think i like about 4e is the Fey and shodowfell both really work well with having “hot spots” or as they call them Crossing that can lead you to some interesting places with out having to go far. Also they have a good mechanic to limit Plane travel, in order to Hop from one plane to another you must know the Runes that lead to that plane, this is an easy way as a DM to limit where they go.
February 5th, 2009 5:45 PM
venport: Good point. Now that you mention it, I think the Parallel Planes would make fun places to explore because they’re more concrete and based on the mortal world, rather than abstract realms of elemental jibber jabber. Interesting…I’ll have to read over those chapters again.
February 5th, 2009 7:37 PM
Time to dust off the cosmic treadmill
February 6th, 2009 4:13 PM
I always find this sort of arbitrarily complex arrangements interesting. Like, if the functions of the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos are basically the same–as a sort of undifferentiated quintessence or something that can be molded into any particular realm or shape–then why do there need to be two? Why isn’t there just one big pile of astral goop in which Ravenloft and the City of Brass hang out?
I guess the Feywild and Shadowfell provide a similar question, though probably not as bad. At least it makes a kind of sense that the plane of “Everything is overrun with plants” would be fundamentally dissimilar from the “Just like this one, except eviler” plane.
Though it begs the question as to why there isn’t a “Everything here is a giant city” plane and a “Just like this one, only everyone is NICE” plane.
February 6th, 2009 4:26 PM
braak: Part of the seemingly arbitrariness of it stems from the fact that it is a legacy system. While they made a new system, they tried to take into account some elements of the old systems that have been around forever, such as elemental and astral planes.
The Feywild and Shadowfell work out pretty well in practical terms – I just recently switched over to DM of our 4E campaign, and those planes make nice origins for a whole bunch of cool monsters. I think it’s more interesting to have monsters that are weird denizens of another dimension just stopping by to f with us, rather than every other monster being the result of “an insane evil wizard’s forbidden experimentations,” which is how old Monster manuals often read.
February 6th, 2009 4:37 PM
I don’t know–I think there’s a lot you could do with a setting that took place directly after some kind of “Age of High Wizardry,” that was all just full of crazy old wizards filling the place up with weird mutants. Just owlbears and cloakers all around.
February 6th, 2009 4:48 PM
The owlbear is my favorite monster ever. Except instead of a mad wizard, I always figured the origin involved several drunk male owls and a sleeping bear.
February 7th, 2009 8:15 PM
Everything is better with owlbears.
February 11th, 2009 12:03 PM
A great example of using the Feywild (or Shadowfell) in new and interesting ways is about to come up in my next game.
The Players are about to attack a Fortress that has been assembling an Army. They know where the Fortress is but want to scout things out in more detail. It was established that there is a feywild crossing (place where you can just step into the feywild) about 2 days away from the Fortress.
Their plan is to go into the feywild, and scout the area out, know that things should be the same but different. This will give them a lay of the land that can help them later on. Should be fun time!