What is your favorite metaphysical setup for your campaign?
The starting settlement and surrounding lands.Having an opinion about cosmology means you're either involved with one religion or other or trying to rile up soneone who is.The correct answer is obviously the one that makes whatever plane-shifting artifact I came up with work, but that doesn't matter. If the players were concerned about planar layout in the first place it would be a campaign about a bunch of magical scholars in a university conducting ill-adviced magical research.
>>97057478What are the most important things to remember when creating an original planar cosmology for your own settings? And where do you look for inspiration?
the schizo dimensional belief system from Receiver
>>97057478Ask the worldbuilding general.
>>97062409If you're playing D&D, the 5e DMG has an important list of bullet points that a setting's cosmology needs to satisfy, in order to explain how various spells work and where various monsters come from.>A plane of origin for fiends>A plane of origin for celestials>A plane of origin for elementals>A place for deities, which might include any or all of the previous three>The place where mortal spirits go after death, which might include any or all of the first three>A way of getting from one plane to another>A way for spells and monsters that use the Astral Plane and the Ethereal Plane to functionIf you're not playing D&D, go wild.
>>97057478An indeterminate number of them so you can come up with new ones as needed instead of being restricted by a rigidly defined cosmology.
>>97063088>If you're not playing D&D, go wild.What are some non-D&D cosmologies you like?
>>97057478For DnD, I do like the wheel. But the version of it from 3.5, because I'm more familiar with those versions of the planes, and the gods that inhabit them. Having elemental planes and more elaborate planes is useful for this kind of setting, so I appreciate that they exist as sort of separate metaphysical layers of inner/outer ones.
>>97062441>the schizo dimensional belief system from ReceiverNot familiar with that whatsoever.
>>97057478depends on the game and genre.In terms of aesthetics, im not actually sure.
>>97072091>our 3D bodies are just shadows of our sleeping 5D true-selves which exist in a dimension of light>psychic weapons and mind-tech from the dimension of light can cast shadows in the mundane world which the human mind will resolve as mundane objects>aliens in the dimension of light can change the 3D world by manipulating things in higher dimensions, and they can weaken or even kill our sleeping 5D selves if they are able to corrupt our minds in the 3D world>psychic aliens are jealous of humans because were we to awaken, we would be impossibly strong in the dimension of light
I've never liked cosmology. The Elder Scrolls does it well I think.
>>97057478I read >>97068058 and it got me thinking, what are the settings (DnD or otherwise) with the best takes on elemental planes, and how would you make your own setting’s elemental planes more interesting and/or appealing to adventure in?
>>97057478I tend towards >it use to make sense in a familiar way but some sort of hypercatastrophic event fucked everything up and now time is out of joint so there can be magic and other mixed creatures and ideas I think are cool in linked themes without having to make it all into a cohesive unified mechanism.
>>97057478My current campaign just has the mortal world and the afterlife as full and proper dimensions. There are a variety of border worlds created where the afterlife and mortal world interact too closely, though such dimensions are not particularly stable.
>>97075546>There are a variety of border worlds created where the afterlife and mortal world interact too closely,Details please.
>>97078957The drawing of souls into the afterlife (and to a much greater extent the drawing of the souls back from the afterlife) can cause an erosion of boundary between the mortal world and realm of souls. These places end up being shaped by the souls passing through and the mortals calling them back, resulting in dream-like locales thematic to the thoughts and feelings of the deceased (and caller, if present). Of course, singular spiritual events cannot provide enough friction to properly erode these surfaces enough to produce this spiritual boreholes. Usually, great acts of necromancy or unusually tragic loses of life are required to keep the border realm active. Unfortunately, the sheer number of people, coupled with the expansion of necromancy and increasing death tolls from modern conflicts, have resulted in more permanent and long lasting border worlds fit to jettison various mental constructs and bits of spiritual chaff into the world.On the other end, these border worlds serve as a sort of crucible, taking even the basic detritus of both the material world and the afterlife and turning it into valuable magical artifacts, compressing these material, magical, and mental chaff into sought after thaumaturgical pieces. This has the added effect of compressing the offending material of these spiritual border world into a number of magical relics. Removing these is usually enough to completely destabilize the border world and return normalcy to its surroundings.Left unchecked, the border world 'putrescences' continue to grow as souls pass through them both to the afterlife and back to reality. This results in a greater accumulation of spiritual, mental, material chaff, the production of more artifacts, more monstrous creatures emerging, and a greater lingering effect on the surrounding lands. Eventually, surrounding areas can defacto become part of the putrescence itself, acting a bit like a haunting you might see in other fantasy fiction.
>>97057478The idea that each "caste" of beings (Mortals -> Magical Beings -> Gods) have their own dimension/layer, and they do not stray away from them because they either cannot sustain themselves in them, or they simply have nothing to gain. I prefer this more than just saying the Gods/Angels/Demons do not interfere with mortals because of obscure cosmic laws and what not.You see this more in Xianxia novels, where each rank of Cultivators stick to their own worlds because the lower ones have nothing to offer in their path to power and so on.
>>97072565>The Elder Scrolls does it well I think.That image isn't from there, but okay, how does TES do it well?
>>97057478Great Wheel cosmology. We're playing 5e because it's what the players wanted. But fuck that am I using anything but 2e AD&D settings. Spelljammer is in space motherfuckers, not the fucking astral plane.
>>97062409>What are the most important things to rememberNot to create something that you don't use. Do not develop a cosmology before you develop an adventure. Let the setting suit the game, growing as you play.
>>97062441If you are able to read this message it means that your mind has been fortified against the coming mind-kill. Anyone else will see this post as being nearly blank, containing only the reply link and the word "you" in parenthesis.
>>97057478Turtles. All the way down
>>97086893>Turtles. All the way downIsn't that also a movie title, lol?
>>97074610>sigmoid caboosekek
>>97072367Isn't this just neoplatonism with evil aliens? Not that that's a problem.
>>97057478I don't know, I find them all unsatisfying and don't know how to fix them.Like if magic and planar portals are common enough, then resource scarcity is not a thing especially not with accessible elemental planes, and resource scarcity drives a lot of conflict.Even non-elemental planes can suffer from that.
>>97057478desu, I think it would be far more interesting if those planes weren't all infinite dimensions basically overlapping each other and it just followed the classical mythology trope of you being able to do shit like literally walk into the underworld or get to the plane of air by flying upwards
>>97093404>neoplatonismWhat IS that in your own words?
>>97062409How is it relevant for the game and the players. To take 5e as example, never once have i ever seen a game set in Bytopia, Acheron, Elysium or Mechanus. They might as well not exist.
>>97096517>Even non-elemental planes can suffer from that.How is that now?
