[poll] Is it better to use an overarching cosmology?

[MythMage]

I work my CS into the Great Wheel (specifically, DF's Great Wheel) because it gives me the ability to be creative with my world while simultaneously getting to reuse significant amounts of material produced by others. But I also like the idea of putting my world at the center of a unique set of planes which obviously revolve around what happens in that world. If my game doesn't put an emphasis on crossover ability, is it better to go with or without unique planes? What are the pros and cons?

The Great Wheel is my primary concern, but thoughts on big multiverses in general could be useful too.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Hey Mythmage,
Good to see you around.  Just to let you know, polls in threads currently aren't working (that will be updated in CBG 2.0), so you may want to get just everyone to explicitly state in the thread how they do things.
Cheers!
[/end thread hi-jacking]

[Elemental_Elf]

All my worlds are at the center of their own unique cosmology. I get away with that because I tend to use only the scantest of cosmologies (meaning 1 or 2 other planes) rather than something like the Great Wheel with, what, 30 planes?

I never liked the idea of going from setting to setting unless I was doing something akin to Planescape, ie traveling from plane to plane, exploring the multiverse. To me, there are enough stories to weave and tell with in one world. When you get bored, its better to make a new setting than haphazardly string divergent settings together.

[Lmns Crn]

I like the Great Wheel well enough, but it doesn't fit with what I want for my own world. This is pretty much my standard response, and you can replace "Great Wheel" with the multiverse conception of your choice, and that sentence is still true for me.

If you want to think in terms of pros and cons, I see three pros, two of which you have already mentioned: 1.) crossover or travel between worlds, 2.) reusing existing material, and 3.) player familiarity with existing cosmologies. Crossover doesn't really appeal to me for a variety of reasons, and I am not aware of any existing material I particularly want to use. For really complex cosmologies, using a system that is familiar to players can be a huge advantage, because there is much less of a learning curve. (I would venture to guess that most seasoned D&D players are at least passing-familiar with the concept of the Great Wheel and how it works.) But unless you're running the sort of campaign where cross-dimensional travel is a big feature, it probably doesn't matter whether players understand the cosmology or not, since it doesn't have to see any use.

Drawbacks (con time!) include built-in assumptions you're forced to work around, primarily. For example, the Great Wheel makes a lot of statements about death, resurrection, and the afterlife, since it's full of planes that are various destinations for the souls of the dead, and descriptions of what might happen to characters after they die. If I wanted to use the Great Wheel and I also wanted different ideas about death and the afterlife (say, a different kind of heaven or hell, or an afterlife that is totally mysterious if it exists at all), I'd have to rig up a workaround (which would contradict player expectations about how the Great Wheel is supposed to work, and negate Pro #3 to using it in the first place.) I consider using these kinds of pre-made elements advantageous only if I am going to use them without any changes; if I am planning on changing details, I might as well start from scratch, because it's easier for me in the long run.

I have a concrete cosmology in mind for my setting, and I understand how it works in great detail. The world sits in the middle of a bubble of Ether, floating in a vast sea of Void. My cosmology accounts for things like why characters observe stars and the movement of the sun, and accounts for the singular instance of trans-world travel that is important for the world's history. It avoids getting overly complex, and it avoids answering questions I don't want answered (such as: "What happens to me when I die?") If I really wanted to do a crossover, I could, and if I want things to remain isolated and mysterious, I can do that, too. It may not be enough material to fill multiple books like the Great Wheel can, but it suits my purposes much better.

This is a good question, and I thank you for posting it. And since I haven't seen you around before, I'll take this opportunity to welcome you to our merry band.

:yumm:

[Slapzilla]

Drawbacks (con time!) include built-in assumptions you're forced to work around, primarily. For example, the Great Wheel makes a lot of statements about death, resurrection, and the afterlife, since it's full of planes that are various destinations for the souls of the dead, and descriptions of what might happen to characters after they die. If I wanted to use the Great Wheel and I also wanted different ideas about death and the afterlife (say, a different kind of heaven or hell, or an afterlife that is totally mysterious if it exists at all), I'd have to rig up a workaround (which would contradict player expectations about how the Great Wheel is supposed to work, and negate Pro #3 to using it in the first place.) I consider using these kinds of pre-made elements advantageous only if I am going to use them without any changes; if I am planning on changing details, I might as well start from scratch, because it's easier for me in the long run.

So now, this begs the COMPLETELY loaded question, do you have moral relativism in your world and if so, how do you handle the (DnD) absolutes of 'good', 'evil', 'law' and 'chaos'?  The Great Wheel effectively destroys moral relativism and makes morality and ethics absolutes.  A Blackguard is never 'misunderstood'.  The Great Wheel is what makes alignment possible.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled thread topic.

I think it is better to use an overarching deity scheme but adjust for each culture.  Would a warrior culture worship Athene or Ares?  Are they different faces of the same deity?  Would elves worship Demeter and would that be a third face of the warrior deity adjusted for race/culture?  It seems to me to be easiest to create different personages.  Recreating Deities and Demigods and Manual of the Planes could be entertaining, but I don't have that kind of time.

Ease and playability count for a lot, but so does the satisfaction of creating your own stuff.  I'm running a Faerun campaign right now just for playability's sake while I try to coalesce my own world.  Both have overarching cosmologies, so that's my vote!    

[Lmns Crn]

So now, this begs the COMPLETELY loaded question, do you have moral relativism in your world and if so, how do you handle the (DnD) absolutes of 'good', 'evil', 'law' and 'chaos'?  The Great Wheel effectively destroys moral relativism and makes morality and ethics absolutes.  A Blackguard is never 'misunderstood'.  The Great Wheel is what makes alignment possible.

Recreating Deities and Demigods and Manual of the Planes could be entertaining, but I don't have that kind of time.[/quote]quite[/i] that much time and effort on these facets of a world (multiple 300-page books' worth of material?) unless travel among the planes and up-close-and-personal teatime with gods is a major focus of your gaming style and a vital part of your setting (in which case I'd probably want to use my own, personalized material anyway.)

I think we have neatly split the thread into a discussion of two separate but related questions at this point: 1.) "Do you use existing published material for cosmology?" and 2.) "Does your cosmology allow for your world to be connected to others?" I think that they are both fascinating and entirely worthwhile questions to discuss.

[LordVreeg]

Yet another thread that I have started a response to and not had time to answer to my liking.

And as is his wont, the Master of Meta threads has thrown some curves in.  So my answers have also morphed accordingly, while still answering the original query as to what we do with multiple planes.

I will go out of order and start answering where it makes the most sense.  As to the use of other peoples works or cosmologies, I think it can be useful to save time or as LC mentioned to take advantage of the familiarity effect.  Even saying that, I will say I look down on it, honestly.  Not on the people or the users, but this is the Campaign Builders Guild, a workshop for Creators of Settings (caps intentional), not a site for just gamers.  We create here.

Now, my cosmology of the Void, the Houses, Stations, and the 'Waking Dream' that is Celtricia allows for some planar travel, but I have to be honest and say I really did not need to.  The House of Earth has been visited twice by my PC's in the really long history of the setting.  If you build the setting well enough, the crossover is not needed.  It can be fun, especially for those setting that go into epic scale, but it can also be viewed as a crutch for a game whose prime dynamics are not deep enough to keep the PCs interested.

I, like LC, do not have 'alignment' per se in my setting.  I do have a graph I keep that I score all the PC's on, with law and choas on one continuum and Woe and Weal on the other, that I use myself, but the PC's don't see it.  I use a classless, faction-oriented skill based system, so there are no 'class-alignment' restrictions.  Sometimes a faction finds out that a PC has been doing stuff they don't like, and they boot him out, so they have to deal with the realistic consequences of their actions.  But just as often, the PC's can hide stuff...which is realistic.
As LC said so well, and as has been mentioned is so many other threads, it is the human elements of behavior that makes the game so much more interesting.  I find a system that respects the character that has fate has thrown down and rises from face down in the mud to be be more enjoyable than one that expects moral perfection or sets absolue guidelines.  My world is hard and death comes fast, people make decisions as best they can.

So if a GM is going to create a cosmology, make sure that it doesn't step on the foot of your alignment system, morality system or lack thereof.

I hope that manages to answer the originl post while accounting for some great discussion.

 

 

[Lmns Crn]

AS LC said so well, and as has been mentioned is so many other threads, it is the human elements of behavior that makes the game so much more interesting.

So if a GM is going to create a cosmology, make sure that it doesn't step on the foot of your alignment system or lack thereof.[/quote]I think the reason the two issues are so intertwined is the idea that afterlife is a consequence of your behavior in life, and that you can earn yourself a heaven or a hell through your pre-death actions. This is a comfortable idea to most of us because of real-world religions we are all familiar with (whether or not we follow those religions ourselves.) But again, that's not necessarily something that has to be a given, either.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Regarding Panisadore I would have to answer "Maybe."

The pantheon is clearly rather unique which necessitates some degree of insularity. Nevertheless, rather than entirely reinventing the Wheel, I perceive it interacting with the  Great Wheel pretty much iaw the RAW. Particularly in that Jessanak is in fact the Grand Sultan of the Efreet in the City of Brass on the Elemental Plane of Fire (accessing one of the binary suns in my setting via portal) masquerading very successfully as a god. So successfully that he has gained sufficient worshipers to function as a god in this particular patch of the Prime Material Plane. It follows then that planar travel is possible, and at least for now, I'm not making any significant changes to the structure or function of the Great Wheel. Published setting have already set a precedent by which local changes to planar geography/topography are possible without altering those of other settings - the natural conclusion being that the GW as rendered in the DMG is essentially the structure directly accessed from the 3rd ed. default setting of Greyhawk. The Planar topography as accessed directly from Faerun, while similar, displays some variant characteristics. Nevertheless, it has always been held as possible to travel from one setting to another - this is an inherent necessity in explaining the migration of such things as the various Bigby's Hand spells (by name) from one setting to another.

As a fan of the old Spelljammer setting (somewhat flawed but flavorful) I've viewed Panisadore as accessible from other setting via the Flow without planar travel. I have not at this point tried to outline further bodies whithin its Crystal Sphere however - leaving actual spelljamming as a potential element to be developed further should players desire to explore it. Certain deities could well be viewed as cognates to some appearing in other setting (Salistreah and Sune come most immediately to mind). In such an expanded setting I view Panisadore as the Homeworld ofmost, if not all major races. In this case the Elven Imperial Navy would be at great pains to keep it hidden, especially in light of the existence of a race of orcs which coexist rather peacefully with elves and were in fact originally their allies until they tried to enslave them in the distant pass. This last - the "true cause" of elven-orccish racial hatred is something they cannot afford to have discovered by the cosmos at large. . . Since no one would believe it until they saw it first hand, spelljamming access to Panisadore is of course proscribed to as great an extant as the Imperial Navy can possibly accomplish.

As for alignment, I use it pretty much iaw the RAW as well, but deliberately blur the lines - its perception with regard to any individual is very much subject to "spin" and few beings display any rigid dedication to any particular alignment. Such absolutes are relegated to the manifestation of abstract concepts giving rise to the various planes. On the Prime Material neutrality tends to be the order of the day, but is generally perceived and interpreted (i.e., projected upon others) from any individual's viewpoint in terms of supposed personal benefit.  

[Slapzilla]

I think the Great Wheel (or it's reasonable facsimile) must exist for Protection from Evil or Smite Good, etc, to also exist.  No alignments, to my mind, disallows demons and angels and makes the saints and sinners very Material.  Just my opinion but this makes Paladins a fairy tale.  Turning or Commanding undead just becomes another exercise in energy channeling.  Relying on the players to live out the expanse of good and evil, law and chaos seems like it's missing something.  Certainly not a criticism but I just don't get the lack of empirical G/E/L/C axis.  DnD, at least, needs it to function as it does.  They are Things that Exist, like elves or dwarves.  

Looking forward to the communal wisdom on this.  

[LordVreeg]

[blockquote=Slapzilla]Certainly not a criticism but I just don't get the lack of empirical G/E/L/C axis. DnD, at least, needs it to function as it does. They are Things that Exist, like elves or dwarves. [/blockquote]
Certainly honest and to-the-point.
Many games thrive on the existence of absolutes and boundaries.  It makes it easier to delineate evil and good, and makes it easier for PC's to know what to do.  I also think that some people like to roleplay to get away from certain facets of the mundane world, and one of those they might want to retreat from is the moral relativism we often face in everyday living, or at least on the BBC.

This is certainly an easy game to play.
"Look, it's an orc.  It's evil, so we can kill it!"

Easier than this.
"What do you mean, we have to take the coins and artifacts back to the tomb?  So what if it was a tomb of a good bugbear priest, we didn't know...Oh, COME ON!!!  You're really going to make me do this, aren't you?"

Choices are easier, as well.  Characters try hard not to lose their alignment status, and so many situations which may be morally difficult through the lens of any realistic prism are made easier.
[blockquote=Slapzilla]Just my opinion but this makes Paladins a fairy tale[/blockquote] No, in my eyes, it makes them more heroic.  In some games, a paladin does the right thing because he has to, or he loses his Paladin-hood.  
*Yawn*  That sure takes some role-playing...
In a world where the shades of grey lick at the heels of every action a PC makes, I find it more heroic when a Knight ignores greater gain to perform an act of good because he is role playing the character, not because some rulebook says he has to or he loses his nifty powers.

SO there is nothing wrong with the Great Wheel or any other system that abets and alignemnt system.  And certainly, many great fantasy books lose a lot without their true evil villains.  The Lord of the Rings is little without Sauron, and that is a great example that favors true alignment systems.
But I prefer my games where the hard choices are made with real role playing based on in-game circumstances, not rulebook strictures.  And I like a world where the few creatures that have really sunk into depravity or reached a level of sainthood are magnificent, rare examples, not merely just another lich or vampyre.  

[snakefing]

In general, the over-arching cosmology has a big impact on what things are possible or reasonable in your game world. So from a world-building standpoint, the cosmology has a pretty big impact, and at least you need to have a handle on that. But what is important to the other players is a good idea of what is possible and reasonable for them to expect - they don't really need a lot of detail on the cosmology most of the time.

As a world-builder, you may start from the kind of world you want and build a very rough idea of a cosmology that supports it. But you can easily get away without a lot of details if your campaign won't require them.

I think the Great Wheel (or it's reasonable facsimile) must exist for Protection from Evil or Smite Good, etc, to also exist.  No alignments, to my mind, disallows demons and angels and makes the saints and sinners very Material.  Just my opinion but this makes Paladins a fairy tale.  Turning or Commanding undead just becomes another exercise in energy channeling.  Relying on the players to live out the expanse of good and evil, law and chaos seems like it's missing something.  Certainly not a criticism but I just don't get the lack of empirical G/E/L/C axis.  DnD, at least, needs it to function as it does.  They are Things that Exist, like elves or dwarves.  

Looking forward to the communal wisdom on this.  

I definitely agree that the existence of things like Protection from Evil, etc. can create problems with certain types of cosmology. In such cases, you'll probably need to re-interpret them. But you'd probably have to do that for any type of campaign that deals with moral complexity anyway. Plot lines that involve religious conflict, schisms, shifting alliances, or any kind of moral ambiguity are enormously constrained if you assume that alignment-based magic can give a clear, simple result. If you want to run those kinds of plot lines, you need to modify your approach to alignment a bit anyway, or at least be prepared to retcon some justifications for when you need to ignore them.

One thing I've toyed with from time to time is treating alignment as a supernatural, spiritual attribute, not a behavioral trait. So you can't really tell with alignment magic whether a person or monster is prone to evil deeds, only whether they are somehow tainted with a supernatural form of evil. Thus, a priest, blackguard, or paladin would have a defined alignment due to their supernatural affinities. Maybe a few others too. Most other types would not, unless they specifically do something (take a vow, enter a pact with a demon) to get themselves aligned. This supports a campaign in which there can be both ambiguity in day-to-day affairs, and still have some kind of over-arching alignment conflict.

Of course, this leads back to having a cosmology that supports the existence of supernatural evil and good.

[Slapzilla]

Without alignments, a Paladin simply has a strong moral compass, and in a world fully shaded in grey, (s)he would definitely stand out as a paragon of virtue.  Would Detect Evil be the same in such a world or would every Big Baddie with a somewhat radical New World Order vision get surprised with a Smite?

Not to be too argumentative LordVreeg, but I do think that having a debate on whether or not to ambush some sleeping Gnolls has no place at my gaming table.  The Gnolls would have no compunction about ambushing you.  They're Gnolls.  They're evil.  Kill them.  Nothing is ever quite that simplistic, of course and yes, I would expect the Paladin to participate.

Once you get down to parsing deeds vs nature, I'm out.  I realize that alignments are an imperfect system and PLENTY of games manage without them just fine, but I like them as it adds an element that in a DnD fantasy context, makes sense.  Evil is EVIL and Good is GOOD.

Of course, this leads back to having a cosmology that supports the existence of supernatural evil and good.  I agree with snakefing.

[LordVreeg]

I certainly like Snakefing's take on moral taint, as a possible outcome of a cosmology, and can agree with the comment's made that the complexity of the cosmology, or at least the level of detail, has much to do with the player's interaction with it.
I also agree that typical alignment systems need to be modified if the game that is being played deals with the more adult themes of 'religious conflict, schisms, shifting alliances, or any kind of moral ambiguity', to paraphrse Snakefing.

[blockquote=Slapzilla]Not to be too argumentative LordVreeg, but I do think that having a debate on whether or not to ambush some sleeping Gnolls has no place at my gaming table. The Gnolls would have no compunction about ambushing you. They're Gnolls. They're evil. Kill them. Nothing is ever quite that simplistic, of course and yes, I would expect the Paladin to participate.[/blockquote]  It's not argumentative.  It's just stating how your game would run. And I respect that.
  Since creatures with any intellect in my setting might be good or evil, no knight with a moral code could ever attack sleeping gnolls.  They have a brain, so they might be good or evil.  And randomly attacking anything without knowing that would be against their moral code.
Please, don't ever worry about arguing with me.  I'm old, rotten, arrogant and set in my ways.
The above example might have no place on your gaming table now.  But it might some day.

[Snargash Moonclaw]

Either approach can work well or come across as very artificial and contrived in game depending on the DM's handling of them. The alignment axes always seemed too absolute to be realistic. (esp. in the original DnD form with only Law vs Chaos as stand-ins for Good vs Evil; throw in the "alignment languages" which everyone of a given alignment was somehow inherently fluent in and it seemed absurd.) The biggest problem in applying them as descriptors to complete, rounded characters is that they simply don't cover enough real variation. My biggest problem in handling Law & Chaos has been the possibilities of distinctly opposing applications with regard to personal and societal ethics and mores. It is quite possible for say, a dedicated political/social anarchist (chaotic) to adamantly adhere to a very rigid code of personal ethics and conduct (lawful) without any real contradiction in their viewpoints. (A monk's dedication to personal attainment with little concern for social structures or codes is a good example of this.) It is also possible to value the function of law/order in society on the grounds that it is believed to provide the greatest range and degree of freedom of personal action by limiting the possibilities of external interference to certain fixed conditions.

How active the gods are (and how distinctly alignment polarities manifest in the world) will have different effects on questions of ethics/morality in game. Where these things are clearly manifest, issues of faith may be less problematic to individuals, as there is a distinct body of divine precedence to provide a basis of comparison. This I think will produce less intense fanaticism than the opposite. When someone does not have such external proof of the operational validity of their beliefs, when experience appears to challenge them - cases of moral ambiguity - one response is to actually relax the logical standards/criteria used to justify/uphold the beliefs in order to preserve the person's psychological construct/model of reality. The greatest extremes of fanaticism can only occur when the foundation of belief is irrational, as this is needed to motivate the desperate clinging to a belief structure in the face of rational evidence which, if not to the contrary, at least clearly denies the possibility of establishing rational certainty because ultimately the alternative is a radical tear-down and rebuilding of the belief structure - something many with an intense, longterm psychological investment in its maintenance are rarely willing to undertake.

The flip side is that more extreme acts are more easily carried out as the actors are free of a great deal of uncertainty. When there is a clear model of functional evil active in the cosmos - which obviously is able to remain active in spite of opposition, someone desiring the same things then has a definite role model to emulate providing the certainty that it is at least not only possible to get away with evil, but to actually benefit from it. Introducing moral/ethical dilemmas then becomes a matter of incorporating differences of interpretation of many of the examples of the various alignments. e.g., the LE god of tyranny in my setting is actually worshiped by an entire nation as a LN god of authority. The fact that some of his clergy can be revealed as evil isn't necessarily indicative of his true nature - after all many of his clergy can likewise be revealed as good - and both have rational (if different) reasons to support the LN ethos proposed as a desirable social model. Likewise the LN god of time and entropy is perceived by his few worshipers as a LE god of forces of destruction - he simply doesn't care. Regardless, many of his direct actions in the world would clearly reflect his LN nature, again creating cases of ambiguity for those who think they oppose him (when they really only oppose his worshipers,) when confronted with clear evidence of common goals and a definite need to cooperate with him in attaining them. The simple fact that good and evil are detectable and quantifiable in certain ways does not ensure that someone attempting to do so will actually understand what is really going on. Instead they will be faced with unique dilemmas which can only arise from rational certainty when factual evidence appears contradictory.

Clear as mud yet?  :explode: