In this weeks Legends and Lore article Mearls writes how the cosmology for the D&D Next will look like. Most importantly when it comes to the outer planes, they are returning Planescape ...
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130701
Do you agree with him, or there are better ways to do this?
This makes me happy. I was skeptical when it was first mentioned that they were going back to Planescape for cosmology, but apparently it's true. So woohoo.
The Border Elemental is an interesting idea. It makes me think of how the elemental planes were described in Darksun. I wonder how they'll reconcile it with the Border/Deep Ethereal.
Hah. I actually mentioned a "Border Elemental" in the first post of Planestuck. I was essentially thinking of it as the Elemental Indwelling from Dark Roads & Golden Hells, but they seem to be going a slightly different direction with it.
They started to respect previous editions, that's good, tough with so many worlds the only cosmology for me is Sigil and beyond. Maybe if the planes had better names, I'd consider it.
Funny, I believe I proposed placing the Feywild between the Prime and Positive Energy on this very site a while ago. Good call, D&D!
This caught my attention:
"The next ring out consists of the deep elemental planes, which are areas of pure, elemental energy much as the elemental planes were portrayed in the Planescape material."
Does this sound like a somewhat cursory reading of PS's elemental planes? Their new elemental planes sound great, though not that different than I've always thought of them.
I wonder how people would feel about Spelljammer if they had never put out those Realmspace etc supplements. While I appreciated a Prime that accommodated all of the canon D&D worlds, I never saw any reason why they all had to be touched by space-faring all of a sudden and I can only imagine it rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way. That said, I probably would have put money on never hearing WOTC utter the word Spelljammer ever again and was very pleasantly surprised to see it mentioned here. This approach sounds like a good one.
Especially interested to see how Ravenloft fits into all of this. The 2e version feels far too idiosyncratic to fulfill the cosmological interstitial role that's described here (reviving elements of Ravenloft and putting them in the Shadowfell would seem a lot more obvious to me). But hey, Ravenloft!
I'll second the whole "never expected to see another Spelljammer reference ever again". On consideration, that's probably the most surprising revelation here.
Aside from the obligatory "basic set" which is bound to be first, what product/type of product do you hope they will work on first? New adventures? More detailed visitations to the planes? Character books (e.g. "Unchained: Faces of Sigil") What do you think will generate the most interest for new or lapsed Planescape players?
They'll probably use Planescape material like in the 3rd edition, not directly, books about the fiends and a few adventures. Nothing like a hardcover book for Sigil.
I don't understand the problem with Spelljammer, it hardly influenced anything on those Prime worlds.
Right, so if they specifically mentioned Planescape and not just the Great Wheel, does this mean there will be new mechanics for the Factions? And on that note - will they acknowledge the Faction War as an event? This is some interesting stuff to consider, since it might mean a revival for Planescape as a modern setting without DMs needing to do most of the conversion themselves.
It's an improvement, at lest demons are no longer elementals. Not sure if the fey should be in the inner planes. I'd rather see something new and revolutionary, without making older books obsolete.
But from what I've seen of the discussion on various creatures, it seems they might not have every Fey creature strongly tied to Feywild either in 5e (in much the same way that every aberration might not be from the Far Realm). It's already been hinted that they might make Eladrin and Guardinals fey of the outer planes, since there's no longer a generic Outsider type, and the celestial type seems to be only going Aasimons/Angels and Archons.
That works, I guess, e.g. creatures like the norns or nymphs should be fey of the outer planes. Personally I'd like to see a new name for CG exemplars, but I doubt that's going to change. It appears Mearls is using the rule of three, perhaps Feywild/Shadow will be transitive, between the inner and outer planes, and then the three regions within will be coexistent/coterminous, border Faerie with the Prime, positive energy plane with the elemental chaos, ''deep'' Feywild with the outer planes, where the Seelie Court used to travel, including the Ethereal and Dream.
How were the night hags and nightmares categorized in the 4th edition? I'd prefer guardinals as some other type of spirit, they don't act like fey, possibly with the foo creatures.
Have they mentioned the Astral and the Etheral planes yet? I'm wondering if they will have a Deep Etheral again in the new edition...
I don't really follow any news about it, but in the playtest pdfs we have one of the recent changes was switching the "ethereal" status to "incorporeal". I don't know if this means that they don't want any confusing during playtesting, or if they want to make it more clear or if they're maybe not going to use the Ethereal plane or what.
I'm very happy they've come to realize that Planescape/Great Wheel should be the default assumption of the D&D Cosmology.
I skeptical about the Negative Energy border plane being called Ravenloft, that's a case where 4e's Shadowfell ends up being a better usage of the term. I'm not big on Ravenloft being the border plane, because I liked the campaign setting itself where Ravenloft was very clearly a demiplane.
As Elemental Chaos was invented as some catch-all place for all the Elemental planes, Limbo and the Abyss back in 4e. Now that it's the "Outside of creation" (yes I know the Far Realm is also another outside) it needs to stand on it's own, as we have that plane and Limbo and the separate Elemental planes.
I very much agree on the points about Spelljammer too. One problem with that setting was the location of the default homebase the Rock of Bral, which I always felt needed to be in it's own crystal sphere, and "DM insert into FR, GH and DL spheres". And many point out that the best SJ product was the Astromundi Cluster, because it was some place where SJ was truly on its own.