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D&D General Which was your favourite Forgotten Realms Cosmology?

Which was your favourite Forgotten Realms Cosmology?

  • Original Great Wheel

    Votes: 35 47.3%
  • World Tree

    Votes: 7 9.5%
  • World Axis

    Votes: 18 24.3%
  • 5e Great Wheel+

    Votes: 14 18.9%

Epic Meepo

Adventurer
No one is sure.

It might be all wrong anyway. Or the Great Wheel, World Tree, and World Axis might all be right, but no one besides the gods themselves (and maybe not even them) can fully comprehend how it all fits together.
Agreed. The cosmological model you use in your game says more about how spells like plane shift and teleport work than it does about the fundamental shape of reality. For all anyone knows, everything occurring beyond the Material Plane might be a shared hallucination approximating a multiverse mortal minds can't fully comprehend.
 

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Levistus's_Leviathan

5e Freelancer
My first introduction to D&D and Forgotten Realms cosmology was the 5e Great Wheel. After learning about the World Axis, I can say that it’s easily my favorite cosmology for the Forgotten Realms. The Great Wheel just has too much redundancy and grid-filling. Also I don’t like alignment, so a cosmology based on it is obviously not going to be my thing. You could very easily simplify the Great Wheel into a of way fewer and I think it would work better (Heaven, Hell, Limbo/Elemental Chaos, Mechanus, Feywild, Shadowfell, Material Plane). Simpler cosmologies are easier for players to remember and understand and allow for more adventure and setting diversity within planes.

So, my ranking order is World Axis, then 5e Great Wheel (because it added the Feywild and Shadowfell and got rid of the Para/Quasielemental planes), then old Great Wheel, and then World Tree.
 


Alzrius

The EN World kitten
I will always be a Planescape fan, but that said.... while I have verrrry little exposure to the FR novels, I've observed authors play around with the D&D cosmology as represented in the role-playing books... The one I'm thinking of is the Shadow Fringe described in the War of the Spider Queen books (multiple authors), which is very very cool, but doesn't really line up with any of the poll options.
Well, the "Shadow Fringe" was part of the Plane of Shadow, which itself only became its own full plane (as opposed to a demiplane) in 3E, but was flat-out stated to cross cosmologies, so it could be said to be part of all of the presented options.

Interestingly, the closest we ever got to a mechanical definition for what the Fringe was in the "City of Wyrmshadows" web supplement for Dragons of Faerun, which stated that (the one example of an area in) the Fringe was essentially still on the Prime Material Plane but had the planar traits of the Plane of Shadow.
 



Mephista

Adventurer
Okay, question time.

Who's actually dealt with the Elemental Planes, like, ever. And how? Across any of the editions.

I've never seen anyone really interact with them; even Planescape really didn't deal with them - its always the philosphical Outer Planes. The only time I know it comes up in a setting is Al-Q... something, the arabian inspired area of FR, and that is extremely niche for a visit to the City of Brass. In 4e, they tried making the Elemental Chaos, but no one I know ever did anything with it either.
 

Vaalingrade

Legend
Okay, question time.

Who's actually dealt with the Elemental Planes, like, ever. And how? Across any of the editions.
Back in our early days, we had a DM who had us land on the Earth plane exactly as portrayed in the 3e MotP. In that we landed in a pocket of air and had to wait until a summoned Xorn dig us somewhere that mattered.
 

TiQuinn

Registered User
Who's actually dealt with the Elemental Planes, like, ever. And how? Across any of the editions.

I've never seen anyone really interact with them; even Planescape really didn't deal with them - its always the philosphical Outer Planes.
To be fair, how many people have dealt with any plane that is not one of the Nine Hells or the Abyss, i.e. where one is going to encounter monsters to fight? I’m guessing very few have used the Good aligned planes.
 

dave2008

Legend
Okay, question time.

Who's actually dealt with the Elemental Planes, like, ever. And how? Across any of the editions.

I've never seen anyone really interact with them; even Planescape really didn't deal with them - its always the philosphical Outer Planes. The only time I know it comes up in a setting is Al-Q... something, the arabian inspired area of FR, and that is extremely niche for a visit to the City of Brass. In 4e, they tried making the Elemental Chaos, but no one I know ever did anything with it either.
There is one or two 4e adventure that travel to the elemental planes. In the Scales of War the PCs travel to the City of Brass in the elemental chaos/
 

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