The Campaign Builder's Guild

So, to use a popular TV show as an example, you would be refering the the Spirit World from Avatar. A place similar to our own where only your spirit/soul can visit?

What makes that any different than an alternate reality, especially if your soul is just a faded out representation of your own body?

How ever I agree with you the word planes has been corrupted by D&D, though far less than the word race.

I have no idea about Avatar.

The main difference between an alternate reality is 1) vertical hierarchy and 2) by definition everything beyond the physical plane is not physical.

So planes describe different levels of physicality and non-physicality while other worlds describe the same levels of physicality but in a separate location.

I've always hinted that the cosmology of Kaidan is it's most unique aspect, and what drives the odd mechanics of the setting.

Whatever cosmology existed before the great curse that attracted the Dark Power (?) that enabled, is not known. However, once the Shogun's wife flung herself and her grandson, the Emperor of Japan into the sea while under heavy naval bombardment after uttering the great curse, the universe as we know it came into being...

The Kaidan Wheel of Life construct (planar realms) are based on the Buddhist Sorrowful World, or what eternity without enlightenment would be like; an endless cycle of reincarnations in the gathering and expenditure of karma. The six realms of the Wheel of Life are: Heaven, Asuras, Human, Animal, Hungry Ghost, and Yomi Underworld (Hell). In Kaidan, four of these realms of existence are tied to the four social castes of Kaidan society: Heaven = Noble Caste, Asuras = Samurai Caste, Human = Commoner Caste, and Hungry Ghost = Tainted Caste. Though all those castes live in the same material plane, the social castes are determined cosmically by the rules of the Wheel of Life.

Of the two other realms of the cosmic construct, Animal exists on Kaidan's prime material plane in the form of the yokai barbarians and ryujin - the animal shape-changer races: kitsune, mushina, nezumi, etc, and the ryujin, which are submariner dwelling sea dragon blood humanoids.

The final planar realm is the only distinctly different, non prime plane, and that is the Yomi Underworld (Hell).

Quick overview on Death and Reincarnation. When a person is born they have a new born spirit (or soul), after reaching adulthood and attaining class levels, there is risk of an invading spirit trying to dominate one's body and taking over control - in Kaidan this phenomena happens, all the time. Defenses must be put in place to prevent one's spirit from being dominated.

At the occurrence of PC Death the spirit's link with the body is broken and it goes to a purgatory awaiting proper burial rites for their former bodies, in order to be fully released into the Wheel, then to become the dominating type spirits mentioned above, known as reincarnated spirits. With the aid of a Miko Shrine Maiden (Oracle of Ojigama Ancestral Spirits) the appropriate burial rites and spirtual transfer can occur.

The reincarnated spirit attempts to dominate a new body in a struggle with the new born spirit. (As a change in my last discussion here on the topic) Whichever spirit successfully dominates the body - the reincarnated spirit or the new born one, the loser spirit travels back into the Wheel of Life construct, awaiting to become a new born spirit to be the soul for a newborn.

Karma is the accrual of "points" scored for accomplishing tasks that help or hinder the world around them. Deeds that aid society at large provide positive karma points. Deeds that hinder society induce negative karma points. At the moment of death, 50 karma points (used to be 100, but I thought that was too high) in either positive or negative sum leads to movement along the Wheel of Life in reincarnation. 50 positive karma points forces reincarnation to the next higher caste or realm of the wheel (whichever applies). 50 negative karma points force downward reincarnation. Note one can accrue both positive and negative points, which in effect cancel each other out, only the total positive or negative 50 points induce spiritual movement on the Wheel. Less than 50 karma points of any kind at death, means reincarnation to the same caste.

That about fully describes the cosmology of Kaidan.

Quote from: Phoenix

Quote from: Elemental_ElfI'm not so sure. What are Heaven and Hell ...

Outside the scope of the real world esoteric cosmology referred to by "planes," which refers to specific layered existences (e.g. Astral, Etheric, Mental, Casaul, etc.) of a usually finite number (oftne 7). Part of the problem, of course, is that what Heaven and Hell mean is different in different doctrines. You could very well fit them into the basic idea of the planes provided the architecture provided they remained vertical. The big thing here is that they would be removed from the physical plane, and thus not physical places. So, you couldn't storm the gates of heaven using your +5 armor and +5 sword, because only consciousnesses, souls, or whatever would exist in something so far removed from physical reality (or rather closer to the true, non-physical reality in many esoteric visions).

If Hell is a place you (not just your soul, but your body and weapons and armies) can go, it's not a plane, it's an alternate reality. My original point was that the two concepts have been conflated, which is a problem for me when trying to use the esoteric definition of planes and everyone sees it as places you can go (other worlds rather than different levels of existence). I think the vertical structure is the real key, here.

It's along the same lines as the misconception that a dimension and an alternate universe are the same thing. It's hard to get the mind around the difference but it is actually quite marked once you understand it.

Yeah, Nomadic hit it on the head.

@CC, yes, that's it.

Well regardless of the perversion of a particular word (which is hardly a unique occurrence in fantasy) this is a topic concerning Cosmology, a term that is perhaps not perfect but can reasonably extend to the D&D concept of- as well as the ancient/archaic meaning of planes.

Quote from: the dwarven cosmologyThe dwarven cosmology concerns heavenly bodies and forces. The dwarves perceive the world as extremely fragile, because it exists in the center of a small bubble within an infinitely vast sea of Void.

The Void, dwarves claim, is an inky black substance that exists beyond the stars, viscous and caustic. Void makes impossible not only life, but also matter and energy, by dulling and slowly dissolving everything it touches. Void is opposed only by Ether, an invisible, weightless fluid that displaces Void as a bubble of air displaces water. Marebo exists at the center of an Ether bubble, protected from the consuming clash of the Void only by this intangible substance.

It is theorized that other Ether bubbles must exist out in the infinite Void, but none have so far been discovered. Many suppose that Indirai, the homeland of the wayward human exiles, must be somewhere in a foreign Ether bubble, and that Andubei's bridge between worlds could somehow have traversed the Void.

The boundary between the Void and the Ether bubble is a membrane known as the Celestial Sphere, which slowly rotates around the landmass of Marebo at its center. Discharges of energy cross this membrane as the Ether and the Void react with each other. These writhing bolts of energy hang in the span of the Sphere like pillars of slow-motion lightning, but viewed from Marebo, they are distant, twinkling points of light: stars.

The sun and various Wandering Stars move through the Celestial Sphere on constant paths, and here the dwarves begin affixing religious significance. The red Wandering Star Siert, for example, is understood to be both a celestial object and the literal heart of Jatta Skyfather, set into the sky to prevent the Red Hunger from breaking free again from his prison in the Void and scouring the world with flame.

To understand the goblin worldview, you must understand the Sea, the Storm, and the Rock.

The Sea is both a literal and metaphorical reservoir: vast, infinite, and eternal. The Farras religion teaches that water is the form taken by souls between lives, as they rest and wait to be reborn into new creatures. The Sea, sometimes called the Cauldron of Souls, is more than simply the sum total of all Marebo's oceans, lakes, rivers, and waterways-- it is also a spiritual limbo where souls mix and blend before being drawn out and poured into new living vessels. It represents balance, tranquility, and most importantly: indestructible, eternal stability.

The Storm is a primal force of motion, energy, and chaos-- it stirs the tranquil Sea into turbulent, violent life. Goblins believe that the Storm is inside all people, making them restless and curious, motivating them to action. When it departs them upon death, their soul-water is free to return once again to a becalmed state. The true Storm occurred long ago, at the beginning of things; what we notice today are only the faintest echoes of its terrifying might.

The Rock arose from the Sea, and to the Sea it will one day return. It encompasses not only the land we walk upon, but all things solid and tangible that we see and touch. (Some Farras scholars extend the concept of the Rock to include even our physical bodies.) The Rock is easiest to feel and understand, but it is treacherous-- though it seems most substantial to our eyes and hands, the rock is temporary and will one day be gone. Only the Sea, and the eternal cycle of the souls it contains, is eternal.

In the beginning of things, the Sea was eternal, peaceful, smooth as glass, stretching from one end of infinity to the other. The Storm stirred the Sea, splitting it to its infinite depths with lightning and winds, and up from those dark fathoms, brought forth by the Storm, arose the Rock. When the rain of the Storm struck the Rock, the droplets became living things: birds, beasts, trees-- even the goblins, who warred amongst themselves until most of their Thousand Tribes were slain by the hands of their kindred. The Storm stirred them to action and violence and restless wandering, and will stir them still, until the Rock at last sinks back below the waves of the Sea at the ending of things, and the Sea is becalmed once more.[/quote]

It should be noted that there's no real afterlife, not to speak of. The dwarven faith speaks of a "great Beyond" in nebulous and indistinct terms-- it is referred to neither as a place of reward or of punishment (nor, notably, as a place of any awareness whatsoever), and is generally spoken of as an unknowable future from which return is impossible. The Bethan Healers teach that the Beyond is free from pain and suffering, and although many believe that it is free from pleasure and sensation in general as well, the Bethans emphasize the positive: that death is a permanent release from pain and is not to be feared. Would that we could all be so brave.

The goblins, of course, find "afterlife" as a concept meaningless, there are merely other lives. When you die, your soul returns to the Sea in the form of water, and it mingles and mixes with all the other souls there. When each new creature is born, whether a tree or a bug or a sentient being, its soul is drawn from the Sea and poured into a new mortal vessel. The mixing of the waters between lives means that no discrete soul is born twice, the same soul reincarnated into a new body. Instead, portions of many past lives are present in each current life, and those who die do so with the comfort that their souls will pass on into innumerable living things until the end of time, eternally present in the world, as parts of the souls of fish and ferns, wolves and willows, even simocs, humans, and goblins as yet unborn.

After all, if you empty a pitcher into a basin of water and draw it out again, you'll never get all of your pitcher's original water. You'll get some of it, and you'll get some from the basin at large, left there by the emptying of myriad pitchers before. The waters, new and old, mingle together into a new pitcher of water, unique. So is it with souls and lives.

I tend to prefer simple cosmologies to complex ones.  The reason for this is that too many complex cosmologies, in my opinion, emulate Planescape - and though I do love Planescape, an essential feature of the Great Wheel was that it was funny.

No, no comedian is going to get up and tell jokes about Acheron and the Spire of Sigil, but there was a pervasive vein of ridiculousness that ran through the Planescape setting.  The very idea of a stratified heavenly (or hellish) bureaucracy with every thought and philosophy stuffed into its little nook is itself pretty funny, but on top of this the whole cosmology is basically a theme park that will kill you.  The bewildered patrons are either ignored by the theme park employees having street fights under the ferris wheel, or variously kicked around and ripped off by psychotic carnies dressed up as angels, demons, slaadi, modrons, and a thousand others.  All the beautiful abstractions and desires of the mortal experience are personalized in bizarre and grotesque physical caricatures with their own personal derangements who exist without point or goal other than to variously reign over and/or torment the poor little prime schmucks who somehow thought "all this" was in their minds.

The problem is that sometimes people take inspiration from this arrangement without the comedy, and it tends to drown in its own complexity as a result.  Instead, you get the "terrible template worlds" that CC mentioned, alike in terms of individual themes but totally devoid of the grand farce that made Planescape so special.  I've made plenty of sterile cosmologies in my time that were wholly guilty of this.

Personally, I've been drifting away from complex cosmologies for some time.  CJ has no other planes (save, perhaps, the Spirit World, but that isn't a place you can visit - it's purely a religious/mythological tradition of the Tahro that may or may not "really exist").  Its gods are either of uncertain divinity or uncertain reality (if you can touch/see it, it might not be a real god; if you can't, it might not really exist).  I feel that 100% Real Knowable Gods destroy the concepts of faith and doubt, turning priests and prophets into salesmen and spokesmen.  If your goal is a grand spoof of faith, fine, but if it's not, I think more faith and less certainty is almost always better.

The drawback to all this, of course, is that it requires a certain complexity all its own.  If your setting doesn't have a real, actual, universal War God, it means that every race and every culture within that race probably has its own idea of war as it relates to divinity and spirituality.  One only has to peruse briefly through the library to be awed by the sheer diversity of religious belief on Earth today, let alone throughout the entire history of human civilization.  It's a daunting task to come up with something even a fraction as comprehensive and believable, and far easier to just have a universal themed pantheon.  If you have a real, objective deity for something, there's much less need to delve into many varied religious experiences - there is an unquestionable, undeniable Truth, and the Truth is a lot simpler than faith and doubt.

Whether the extra work involved is worth it in the long run is something I do not know the answer to.

Quote from: PolycarpWhether the extra work involved is worth it in the long run is something I do not know the answer to.

For most, the effort is simply wasted for they are neither as verbose nor as witty as yourself.   :)

Quote from: Elemental_Elf

Quote from: PolycarpWhether the extra work involved is worth it in the long run is something I do not know the answer to.

For most, the effort is simply wasted for they are neither as verbose nor as witty as yourself.   :)

Nobody is as witty as PC

Personally, I prefer for a more focussed setting for my games. This doesn't mean no cosmology, or even just a simple cosmology, but just that, for the most part, that cosmology is not important. For example, in my Iron Heroes game, there are demons. These demons come from somewhere Else - another Plane, Hell, the Other Side, the Spirit World, the Umbra, whatever... but that's not the point. What matters is what they're doing now that they've got HERE, to the human/mortal world. Their origin, other than the fact that it is Other, is really unimportant to the plot and the characters.

That might actually be a good approach. Preserves a lot of the mysticism of such planar entities. Unfortunately, I have a habit of needing justifications for most everything in my own setting...

One thing that I fervently believe with cosmology is that it must serve a purpose, whether that purpose is for the souls of the dead to wander, the gods to live in or for untold treasure to lie hidden in, the planes must serve a tangible purpose. With out that purpose, there's really no reason to even mention a plane since it will only serve to dilute a given setting's themes and sense of purpose.

I want to add a little something to this topic, a topic CC sent me on superstition. I think it ties in nicely with the topic, and might be too narrow for its own.

If you have interesting superstitions in your setting, share them here. Do you make much use of it in your writing? Do you assume most of the mystical is true, or is it just peasant superstition?