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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default One World Cosmology

    On p.44 of the D&D 5e DMG in the section about the multiverse it outlines some of the different planar models you can use in your game. One that particularly stands out to me is the "One World" cosmology, where all the things attributed to separate planes is located somewhere on the physical world, like mount Celestia being an actual mountain or the Abyss lying deep under the earth. You might also call this model "mythic geography" since that line of thinking is common in old myths and legends.

    I'm very attracted to this kind of world because of it's imminence and reliability. Walking through a portal into the plane of fire feels routine, but scaling a volcano and plunging into its molten depths to reach the realm of fire is awesome and inspired because it doesnt separate the act of traversing the supernatural from actual traversing, like walking, climbing, diving, flying etc. You can literally dig your way into hell or fly up to the realm of upper air and converse with the spirits of wind and that just screams to me that its perfect for actual "at the table" play and helping players find the magic in the world.

    The question is, how best to implement such a planar system? The DMG itself outlines a checklist of fundamental conceits built into the bones of any D&D 5e world, and they are

    - A plane of origin for fiends
    Easy, it can just be The Pit, or some dying demon star, or whatever else.

    - A plane of origin for celestials
    Similarly easy, you could go for classic mount olympus, the stars, the sun, the moon, a mix of all, or anything else you want

    - A plane of origin for elementals
    A little tougher because we are avoiding separate worlds as much as we can, but you could easily say that elementals just exist as part of the elements they embody and "elementals" are just pulled forth from the raw matter, or maybe its that matter combined with a soul or spirit to give it animate form, but there are a lot of ways you can do it.

    - A place for deities (which can include the first three)
    This is infinitely flexible as are the concept of deities themselves. They could exist on the world, but remotely, or they could dwell in the celestial or fiendish realms respectively, although I think it might be a fun twist to keep the deities conceptually separated from LAW and CHAOS for once and have them act more as spirits.

    - An afterlife (which can include the first three)
    Also easy, although this is where traditional concepts begin to overlap with each other a bit to make things kind of messy. The classic concept of Hell is underground, but the same is true for Hel, or Hades which has a very different feel to it than a home for fiends, its really more like the Shadowfell. But you can still make it work if you tickle it a bit, although this is where I definitely see the advantage to the traditional planar model as it makes a lot of nice space to put whatever you want, the problem is they never stopped. But I think that the domain of fiends and celestials could possibly be the only exception to the rule here.

    - A way to travel between planes
    This isnt really necessary at all in this model, but I can see that this model does make some spells pointless (like Planar Shift) but honestly I'm ok with that, its easy enough to tweak in the game and I dont think it really changes much to not have those spells.

    - A way for spells and monsters that use the Astral and Ethereal planes to work
    This one actually does matter a lot more than the previous, but thankfully the Ethereal Plane is easy enough to explain, its simply the archetypal Spirit World, and maybe it can borrow some concepts from the idea of Faerie. Astral travel is more sticky, but I think I could explain it like traveling through literal space, or the outer air around the earth.

    So taking all those assumptions what kind of world can we build here? Comment your ideas for a One World cosmology, also comment if you've ever used this model and what you thought about it.
    Last edited by Trask; 2019-05-12 at 11:39 PM.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    I think that the four elemental planes should be actual places. In a gane that I am dming, the plane of water is effectively the ocean.

    The plane of air could be the sky.

    The plane of earth could be underground.

    A lityle trickier for the plane of fire, but maybe some form of desert/volcano?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Waterdeep Merch View Post
    Use your smite bite to fight the plight right. Fill the site with light and give fright to wights as a knight of the night, teeth white; mission forthright, evil in flight. Despite the blight within, you perform the rite, ignore any contrite slight, fangs alight, soul bright.

    That sight is dynamite.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Wizard_Lizard View Post
    I think that the four elemental planes should be actual places. In a gane that I am dming, the plane of water is effectively the ocean.

    The plane of air could be the sky.

    The plane of earth could be underground.

    A lityle trickier for the plane of fire, but maybe some form of desert/volcano?
    Like maybe the elemental home for each element is somewhere on the world as a place that represents the purest expression of that element? The home of water could be the purest lake or purest ocean, the home of fire could be the largest volcano, the home of sky could just be the upper atmosphere, and the home of earth could be the crust in general

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    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    The easiest way to do elementals would probably be to tie them to any location or instance of their element in sufficient intensity. So a large enough body of water has a water elemental, large formations of earth or rock an earth elemental, storms and hurricanes are host to air elementals and volcanos and scorched deserts are the domains of fire elementals.

    If you also make it possible to bring one into being by creating an artificial environment for it you can get some pretty cool ways to have non/low magic summoning. Imagine an army crafting a huge pyre, taller than a siege tower and soaked in oil and pine sap on the fields before an enemy city then setting it ablaze to call a fire elemental into being to help them raze the city to ash. Building huge burial mounds or stone tombs might create an earth elemental guardian to protect the dead, stuff like that.
    Sanity is nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    The Plane of Fire is the sun? Mythical geography allows you to have a sun that is relatively small and close, so you could fly there.
    Last edited by Eldan; 2019-05-13 at 01:10 PM.
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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Grim Portent View Post
    The easiest way to do elementals would probably be to tie them to any location or instance of their element in sufficient intensity. So a large enough body of water has a water elemental, large formations of earth or rock an earth elemental, storms and hurricanes are host to air elementals and volcanos and scorched deserts are the domains of fire elementals.

    If you also make it possible to bring one into being by creating an artificial environment for it you can get some pretty cool ways to have non/low magic summoning. Imagine an army crafting a huge pyre, taller than a siege tower and soaked in oil and pine sap on the fields before an enemy city then setting it ablaze to call a fire elemental into being to help them raze the city to ash. Building huge burial mounds or stone tombs might create an earth elemental guardian to protect the dead, stuff like that.
    I like that, very cool way to make elementals a more immediate presence and also fit them into the one world

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    The Plane of Fire is the sun? Mythical geography allows you to have a sun that is relatively small and close, so you could fly there.
    I've always liked associating the sun with divine things personally, whereas the lava floes and fires of earth are more elemental flames. But the sun could definitely work as a plane of fire, like the sparks from Muspelheim from Norse myth.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    A fascinating idea! Here are some thoughts of mine:
    • Deities: Either live on a Mount Olympus-like sacred region (Mount Olympus with option of TARDIS-like "bigger on the inside" realm), on a coterminus plane (ethereal, astral, or shadow planes), or are an aspect of the world (Gaia as the actual Earth, Nut as the actual sky, Tartarus as the living region of torment, Chaos as the void). No reason you can't have any or all of these either.
    • Celestials: The servants of the gods. They might swell alongside the gods in their courts, be ascendant mortals aligned with a specific cause, or manifestations/avatars of divine will.
    • Fiends: Possibly the same as Celestials, but I also like the idea of fiends being spawned either by acts of great evil or being the mature forms of the evil dead (in either case, bound to defiled locations or a spiritual prison).
    • Elementals: Avatars of extreme natural forces. Perhaps they are spawned through natural disasters (earthquakes and earth elementals, etc.) or as a primitive volition of the material world. They could be symptoms of the natural world as out of balance, or a sort of animistic immune system in response to exploitation or disrespect. Perhaps the Old Gods who make up the world (the Sky, the Earth, the Sea, the Night, the Sun) use Elementals as avatars or servants the way lesser gods use celestials.
    • Fey: Incarnations of non-sapient organisms, overlaping with animistic views of the world. Perhaps they are tied to masses of organic life (forests, grasslands, reefs) or personify the essential nature of a collective species or type (Spider, Tiger, Raven, Oak, Hedgehog, Platypus...). Perhaps they were people cursed by the gods or they were celestials who only fell from grace to a small extent.
    • Afterlife: Some people might dwell in the courts of the gods as celestials (mount olympus or fluffy clouds), or join with the godhead. Or become yet another star in the sky (depending on your cosmology, either as a pin prick or as as actual ball of nuclear plasma). Reincarnation is a possibility that neatly sidesteps the issue of space. Undeath, especially as ghosts, might not be abnormal, and some might hang around graveyards or monuments, even responding to their descendants or other worthies. Some might be tainted by suffering or their own evil, and become undead or even fiends. There might be realms of torment (magma in the earth, the lightless abyss of the sea, or the burning desert sands). Depending on the person, they might even get a meaningful afterlife as a spirit associated with the natural world.
    • Planar Travel/Summoning: Essentially, a mixture of teleport and a means to get to the pocket realms or coterminus planes (if such exist). Summoning simply calls forth the approriate spirit, though location might limit what is available.
    • Astral/Ethereal/Shadow: Interesting ideas for coterminus planes that are essentially alternate dimensional axes that mere mortals have issue perceiving (additions to length, width, breadth, and time, for instance). Could tie into the idea of mortal Dreams and maybe even Lovecraftian stuff for a bit of fun.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    The afterlife could either be in the stars, or in the realm of thought.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Waterdeep Merch View Post
    Use your smite bite to fight the plight right. Fill the site with light and give fright to wights as a knight of the night, teeth white; mission forthright, evil in flight. Despite the blight within, you perform the rite, ignore any contrite slight, fangs alight, soul bright.

    That sight is dynamite.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Very interesting thread, since I'm just doing something very similar in my worldbuilding effort. I hadn't thought of going with the "one world" approach yet, but it could actually make sense.
    So I'll share what ideas I have come up with so far:

    • Astral plane: I changed this extensively. There no "astral plane" really, but rather a "realm of dreams" reminescent of Lovecraft ideas: this place merge Feywild and Shadowfell together as the place where dreams and nightmares come from, with Courts roughly aligned with Good or Evil (not really: Fey can be pretty cruel and "Shadow tainted Fey" tend to be more on the mischevious side than bloodthirsty). Portals or even zones where Realm of Dreams overlaps the real world can be found in certain places like enchanted glades deep in a forest or in blasted dead woods with blackened ruins.
    • Elementals: I'm going with a somewhat animist take, inspired by Asian mithology: elementals are simply present in our own world. The top of that mountain where big clouds swirl? That's where Air spirits dwell. The clear river is to be respected, because there are Water spirits in it. Lots of adventure hooks here, with humans that could despoil some place elementals call home and arouse their wrath. There could well be portal in places like those that bring you to some "home" of the spirits (castles above the clouds, or under the water, inside the fire of a volcano, etc.)


    Personally I like the idea of the different planes being more akin to the world we know. I think it makes these places magical, misterious, but still recognizable and not so alien that players can't even imagine where they are.

    Travelling between planes: easy, really. Portals, spells and the like do work, bringing you into those "enchanted places". Monsters and spells using the Astral Plane are simply into the "Realm of Dreams" instead.

    Monsters will largely be reworked: I find most to be too closely knit into the classical D&D settings, and I like crafting new stuff anyway. Also, there's some value in not having the players immediately know what kind of monster they are facing and what it can or can't do.

    Handling the gods-stuff is what I'm finding trickier, really.
    I liked the idea of "gods" not being the usual pantheon but rather something more abstract; mostly because I want "gods" to be something that can allow for hypothesis and speculations, rather than "oh, hello Thor! May I buy you a beer?" So I was thinking about Good and Evil as opposite forces with unknown (unknowable?) origin, while more tangible agents could be fiends and either angels or "saints" (ascended mortals).
    The above is good for the extremes of faith: more down-to-earth cults could just revere the forces of nature, and their agents could just be powerful elementals or fey.

    Since in this cosmology the "Realm of Dreams" would be a sort of alignment towards Good or Evil, that could be in itself a sort of "buffer zone" between reality and some Elysium or Hell: where both fiends and saints/angels reside, together with spirits of the dead. Also, it would then make sense for the "dreamlands" to also have ghosts and the like roaming around, maybe looking for a way into afterlife...

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    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    I've used a version of this where different "planes" were actually planets and souls soar or sink depending on how virtuous they've been in life. "Souls" without bodies are immaterial and capable of traversing void of space, so the way for "astral travel" is either to kill yourself or enter a state of deep meditation / slumber to visit the other worlds, in case you can't do it physically. In such a setting, beams of light can be tangible and serve as stairways between planets and it is also possible to fly (with wings or a spaceship) between realns.

    Anyways, you can easily adapt that "souls soar or sink" part, with wicked people sinking towards the core of Earth upon death and good people soaring towards the Heavens until they leave Earth entirely and become Stars on the sky.

    More specific suggestions:

    Take two papers. Divide one of these in three portions vertically. Divide the second of these in three portions horizontally.

    The vertically divided paper is your surface map. The Plane of Water is the Ocean. Duh. Let's say it dominates the Western third of the surface map.

    The Plane of Earth is a vast desert, bordered by great mountains. It dominates the Eastern third of the surface map.

    The middle of the map is the "Humanoid world", where life goes as normal.

    The horizontally divided paper is your depth map. The Plane of Air is the Sky. This is the upper third of the depth map.

    The Plane of Fire is the fiery core of the world. This is the lower third of the depth map.

    The middle third of the depth map obviously contains the three realms of the surface map. You could obviously draw several depth maps from different perspectives: for example, if the depth map has the same East-West direction, you could make a depth map divided in nine sections.

    Let's focus on this nine-section depth map from now. So the center section is the "Humanoid world", or we could also call it the "Living world". Here, all four elements are in balance.

    Up from the center is "Heaven", where righteous spirits soar upon death. Down from the center is "Hell", where spirits of the wicked sink to burn.

    Left from the center is the Ocean, where water elementals roam, right from the center is the Desert, where earth elementals roam. At the borders of these two, you can have the living world mixing with the elements. At the boundary of the humanoid world and the Ocean, there can be mermaids and the like, at the boundary of the humanoid world and the Desert, there are dwarves and gnomes.

    You could add alignment to the mix if you wanted to. The Ocean is Chaos, the Desert is Order, Heaven is Good and Hell is Evil. This way, the realm of "Lawful Good", for example, would be top right, the Skies above the Desert. Concretely, this could be the highest mountain tops of your world, where greatest of gods live, unreachable to man. "Chaotic Evil" would be lowest left, where the Ocean pours into Hell. Concretely... well, think of volcanic vents in a deep abyss, surrounded by weird lifeforms not seen anywhere else.
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    I just had a thought about the moon (assuming we're in a setting with a moon like ours). What if the moon is the plane of origin for both celestials and fiends - the celestials from the bright side and the fiends from the dark? The intersection could be a one great circular battlefield. As the moon's phases shift it's easier to for one side or the other to influence the mortal world - or to escape the moon and reach it.

    Or maybe have the moon be the plane of the dead? With celestials and fiends claiming territory there in their eternal struggle for mortal souls.

    How about having the sun be the plane of fire, the moon be the origin of fiends and celestials and also the place most souls go right after death (like the Fugue plane) - with the ultimate destination in the afterlife being the stars, each marking the seat of a deity. Constellations could reflect pantheons.
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    You might be able to borrow or draw inspiration from the Exalted cosmology. It (in at least 2nd edition; haven't read 3rd) is almost one-world.

    To summarize with some simplification:
    In the beginning, was the random chaos of the Wyld.
    Some creatures decided to make Creation. So they took part of the Wyld and shaped it into stuff. In the center of Creation, they created the elemental pole of Earth. In each of the four corners, they placed the elemental Poles of Wood, Water, Air, and Fire. (These four poles move as Creation is built up or broken down.) The closer you are to a pole, the more idealized Creation is (at least before it becomes utterly alien in the Wyld.)
    Heaven is a spiritual plane linked to the Pole of Earth; it is the same shape and essentially overlaps the continent that the Earth Pole is on.
    The underworld is coterminous with Creation. Human souls go there (and ideally get reincarnated, though some get imprisoned or stick around.)
    Hell is a separate realm made from an imprisoned evil god.

    If I wanted to shift this into one-world, I would keep the idea of elemental poles and say that the location of the pole is where elementals come from.
    Fae come from the Wyld, or in small pockets of wildness they manage to cultivate in Creation.
    Make Heaven in the clouds or at the top of a high mountain.
    Merge the underworld and hell, and make it more like D&D's Underdark -- a literal underground -- but with magic/spiritual seals to (usually) keep the living from the dead.

    If you wanted to keep D&D-type spellcasting, you would need to handwave or modify some stuff like astral plane and shadow plane. But I think it'd be easy enough to keep most spells with the same end result by just shifting the fluff greatly and the mechanics slightly.
    One solution could be to make Heaven the literal heavens (e.g, the stars, moon, sun, etc.) and the realm of the clouds/upper atmosphere an intermediate and coterminous realm that is called the 'astral plane'. Make a similar level that is the barrier between earth and the underworld and call that the 'shadow plane'.

    That ends up with a layered cosmology such as:
    • The Heavens (realm of the celestials and gods)
    • The upper atmosphere, high mountains (astral plane -- barrier between earth and heaven, patrolled by celestials and lesser gods)
    • Creation (material plane, contains the elemental realms as extremes, bordered by Chaos)
    • The immediate underground (shadow plane -- a barrier set up by the gods to separate the underworld from Creation)
    • The deep underground ('Hell' or the afterlife -- fluff however you want it to fit your setting's needs)



    A cool thing with Exalted cosmology is that there originally was no underworld. Human souls just reincarnated automatically. Only during a rebellion of the second-generation gods against the first-generation gods was the underground and Hell created. (The first-gen gods didn't consider that they could die, so when they made reality they didn't put in rules for what happened if they died. Thus, their death sorta broke Creation and formed the underworld. Some others later surrendered and were made into/imprisoned in Hell.)

    edit: if you want to keep the D&D elements, you could just say that Creation is stabilized at the middle, perhaps by a Mount Olympus type mountain that reaches to the Heavens. Then make the four corners Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.
    Last edited by JeenLeen; 2019-05-14 at 08:41 AM.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    [snip]
    I was thinking more about something like elements being pure neutrality, but with Good and Evil that can (and often do) "corrupt" them: so you can have creature that are made of "holy water" or "fiendish air". There are things like "devil of the air" or benign creatures of the sea in mithology, after all.
    Also, the manuals already give us spells and monster attacks that deliver "Hellfire" (half damage Necrotic, half Fire) or "Holy Thunder" (half Radiant, half Thunder): it's easy to do the same with different damage to get the same effect.

    Quote Originally Posted by GaelofDarkness View Post
    I just had a thought about the moon (assuming we're in a setting with a moon like ours).
    This is a really interesting idea!

    I kept thinking about the Sun being some visible manifestation of Celestial power, fiends being hidden somewhere else... but couldn't really come up with what to do about the Moon!
    Now, what you say makes me think of Orlando Furioso, where Astolfo has to fly to the Moon to recover Orlando's wits, because it's there that everything lost on Earth can be found. Those old poems really are a mine to dig for inspiration, even though the narratives can be so naive to our eyes today.

    Making the Moon some place where Good and Evil battle with shifting fortunes could be really nice: especially if the phases influence things on Earth, with dark rituals needing a new moon...

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    I think that the gods should live wherever there wrship is most greatly condensed.
    Fire god in volcanoes.
    War gods watcb over battles.
    death gods live in graveyards.
    That kind of thing.
    I think a word where you can bump into a god on the street would be pretty cool.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Waterdeep Merch View Post
    Use your smite bite to fight the plight right. Fill the site with light and give fright to wights as a knight of the night, teeth white; mission forthright, evil in flight. Despite the blight within, you perform the rite, ignore any contrite slight, fangs alight, soul bright.

    That sight is dynamite.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Paleomancer View Post
    Fiends: Possibly the same as Celestials, but I also like the idea of fiends being spawned either by acts of great evil or being the mature forms of the evil dead (in either case, bound to defiled locations or a spiritual prison).
    I think the idea of Fiends being spawned through evil is quite a compelling one. To expand further upon it, what if anyone who died Evil turned into a fiend? This could lead to some particularly interesting moral complications for the PCs. Do they try to make their enemies atone - risking that they fail and allow the evil to spread - or do they instead kill them to prevent any more people being corrupted even though they will risk creating a fiend that could come to haunt them in the future. (Possibly a good way of bringing back old enemies for the PCs). This could also lead impetus to the PCs not becoming murder-hobos and rather try and play the long game by turning enemies into allies.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    The easiest way to handle the sun and moon is to make them two gods who fly through the sky like in Greek and Norse myth, they rest in the same place as the other gods* during day/night.

    *Mount Olympus basically. Could be anywhere or appear as anything, but atop a mountain is a good way to keep it remote.

    I'm a proponent of making the more spiritual realms inhabited by gods be just slightly out of shift with the mortal world. In greek myth you couldn't just walk down a hole and get to Hades, you had to know one of the proper entrances, but these entrances were physical things and the destination was a physical place, similarly a mortal couldn't just climb Olympus to meet the gods, there were conditions that applied. These hidden paths can be used in place of the Ethereal/Astral planes in a D&D game, beings just step sideways into a place intangible to most mortals.

    So to actually find the gods you need to tick some mystical checkbox or know the hidden paths they walk. This keeps them beyond the reach of normal people but is still achievable for heroes, who can climb eldritch mountains, know the secrets of the dead and sail the strongest currents and avoids the potential oddness of riding a starbridge to Jupiter to speak with Zeus or something that other planets might involve.



    So my brief checklist would be that the gods mostly live in a notable geographic location on the planet, a mountain range, a deep chasm, an unreachable island in the ocean, whatever.

    Some gods live apart from here to serve their duties as things like god of the dead or of the ocean, or leave occasionally like the sun and moon gods.

    Lesser spirits like elementals, dryad/naiad nature spirit analogues live in places thematically suitable, like lakes, deep forests, large hills and volcanoes. In D&D terms this would include most Fae.

    Angelic/Demonic beings live somewhere tied to the gods depending on how they're distinguished, minor ones may dwell in the rafters of temples and keep watch over people for their god and be called upon by the priests on occasion, more powerful ones would dwell around sites of great importance to the god they serve, places where events took place long ago, and the rest would dwell with their god in direct service of their domain, acting as psychopomps, heralds and servants.
    Sanity is nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Trask View Post
    - A way for spells and monsters that use the Astral and Ethereal planes to work
    I never really understood why the astral would need replacing if removed. Unless a LOT has changed in 5e. Outside of the spell Astral Projection and adventures actually taking place on the astral plane specifically, the astral plane exists purely for flavor purposes. It's an unnecessary epicycle; an answer to a question nobody asked. The summon monster spells, for example, make exactly as much sense without it as they do with it.
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    As does dimension door. You don't need to travel through anything. You just teleport.
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    I mean, even Planescape basically acknowleged that. They described the Astral as the place no one is supposed to go. It's the blank space the rest of the multiverse is supposed to be set in. It's behind the stage. They then tried to build it up a bit again by making it all Lovecraftian and surreal, but essentially, for most settings, you don't need it.

    Ethereal is a bit different, but I think you can mostly use it as just a kind of dimension that is slightly off from reality. Ditch the Deep Ethereal and most native ethereal creatures, and just say that Etherealness moves you into a grey, lifeless, incorporeal version of the real world. Half a step in a fourth dimension, you're just slightly out of phase with reality. Like, say, when Frodo puts on the Ring and sees the Nazgul for what they are.
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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    One problemabout the sun and moon being taken from myths is thwn you couldn't have an omnitheistic culture.
    The un can' be a chariot, a boat, and a dung beetle at the same time.
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    Use your smite bite to fight the plight right. Fill the site with light and give fright to wights as a knight of the night, teeth white; mission forthright, evil in flight. Despite the blight within, you perform the rite, ignore any contrite slight, fangs alight, soul bright.

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    It can, if you go weird about your religion. It's either of those, depending on who looks at it.
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    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    "All myths are true" is a stupid trope anyway. Here's a wild thought: the people who think the Sun is a dung beetle instead of a flying boat can just be wrong. Existence of supernatural does not mean everyone has accurate knowledge of it, nor does it mean non-existence of faith.
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    to grow old and wither and die."

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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post
    "All myths are true" is a stupid trope anyway. Here's a wild thought: the people who think the Sun is a dung beetle instead of a flying boat can just be wrong. Existence of supernatural does not mean everyone has accurate knowledge of it, nor does it mean non-existence of faith.
    I once had a lot of fun playing a superstitious character in a roleplaying game. A fighter. I mostly just made up his superstitions out of a hodge-podge of real world ones stitched together weirdly. He'd spill some salt over his shoulder before every meal, knock on wood before crossing a treshold to a new building, only walk clockwise around lone trees, avoid certain plants and leave food out for the faeries. Because doing otherwise would bring evil spirits down on him. It annoyed the party wizard and cleric to no end, but he refused to believe their explanations of how spirits really worked.
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Wizard_Lizard View Post
    One problemabout the sun and moon being taken from myths is thwn you couldn't have an omnitheistic culture.
    The un can' be a chariot, a boat, and a dung beetle at the same time.
    I agree. That honestly bothers me about a lot of the published campaign settings where there will be multiple contradictory sun gods on the same world
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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: One World Cosmology

    Quote Originally Posted by Wizard_Lizard View Post
    One problemabout the sun and moon being taken from myths is thwn you couldn't have an omnitheistic culture.
    The un can' be a chariot, a boat, and a dung beetle at the same time.
    The Sun cant be a chariot, a boat, and a beetle at the same time, but if all those mythical conceptions have the sun as an entity that travels across the sky, finally descending into the sea then the particularly aesthetic form of the sun can just be a cultural conception. The sun god might be content to reveal himself to different peoples in different ways as pleases him.

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    Ettin in the Playground
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Because doing otherwise would bring evil spirits down on him. It annoyed the party wizard and cleric to no end, but he refused to believe their explanations of how spirits really worked.
    It's not like the real explanations sound any more plausible. "No, throwing salt over your shoulder does not work! But drawing a circle on the ground does! No, steel does not ward off faeries! But cold iron totally does. What do you mean, 'what's the difference'? Cold iron is totally different from steel, or any other type of iron! Totally different!"
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    Thumbs up Re: One World Cosmology

    I think the Greeks did most of our work for us already.



    - A plane of origin for fiends
    Welcome to Tartarus, Hades, Hell, the Underworld. There's a cave entrance somewhere near Athens. Fiends come up to collect the souls of the dead or make hell for the living. Deeper down is the blackest pit, the Chaos, where pure entropy resides and demons are born.

    - A plane of origin for celestials
    Olympus, Heaven, Home of the Gods, even further up than the Sun and Moon and within a sky held up literally by mountains (and one poor doomed titan).

    - A plane of origin for elementals
    When Law and Chaos combine, I am Captain Elements! The world is full of places where the divine sparks mingle and create raw elemental states. Calderas of fire and lava are where fire elementals were born from. The sky itself and infinite oceans and deepest caverns make up the rest. There's no one location for these things, they're as mingled as the Ethereal Plane and connected through bendy laws of physics and warped space-time.

    - A place for deities (which can include the first three)
    They live wherever they damn well please. Olympus might be where most reside but the god of death prefers living with his wife in Hell and the god of the oceans prefers his island of Atlantis. The blacksmith god never leaves his volcano forge and the war god is at home on the battlefield.

    - An afterlife (which can include the first three)
    The bad souls go to Tartarus while the good souls go to Elysium. Tartarus as we know is in the underworld but Elysium, according to Homer, is a group of islands on the western edge of the world. Paradise Island sounds like a great place to spend eternity.

    - A way to travel between planes
    Walk. Or take a pegasus. Or a flying chariot. Or a boat. Actually, most of the traveling happened with boats... even souls are ferried across the River Styx with a boat. And Odysseus and Perseus had all kinds of crazy adventures in weird places. Boats are just magic. This is officially the Spelljammer campaign setting.

    - A way for spells and monsters that use the Astral and Ethereal planes to work
    Ethereal Plane is the hidden side of the world that can only be seen by the dead and gifted. Souls wander until they're collected and returned to their proper afterlife locations. The Astral is simply Oceanus, the titan that encompasses all rivers, lakes, and seas again connected through Möbius logic. You can get anywhere by sailing the River of Ocean, which yet again makes boats the best way to plane travel.

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