Ok, please dont flame me for being about a light year behind the times. But why does Toril now have its own Cosmos and why do the realms exist independantly?
Can anyone suggest a way i can easily convert the Torilian cosmos to the Great Wheel, mainly with reference to which god goes where.
There's always the Manual of the Planes explanation that, if you go far enough across the Astral or the Plane of Shadow you can hook up with different cosmologies/alternate realities.
But that's probably more trouble than it's worth, so you might as well relocate the dieties back to their proper places on the Wheel.
It's a bit like the halls and rooms analogy listed in FRCS, where everu deity have thier own realms built on one of the outer planes. They say who goes in or out, and rule over their realm like a plane wihin a plane. Personally I'd use that method. So the "Barrens of Doom and Despair" would be in hell/Baator, or Cyrics realm would be in pandemonium. Ignore FR's prattle about Baator and the Abyss being planes seperate from divine beings, thats just more autor inspired prattle and screed.
And on a personal note, I'd like to take this time to say that this is what happens when you have a hundred overgods with their own little worlds and their own ridiculous notions about how to run them, anyone with out the bare minimum wisdom of an ardvark should not run cosmic affairs. :roll:
I agree. In fact I've always wanted to hunt down on Hallowed ground because of the problem mentioned above. I mean, c'mon, FR is a huge problem, but what about us little ol' dragonlance guys? I mean, the Krynish gods used to be everywhere, know the good ones are in the "Dome of Creation" what the heck is that?
So please, while your at it, please list where the Krynnish dieties where at!
The efforts there but your missing a large point of PS in the transfer. In adding additional planes your messing with the Ro3, and adding importance to the powers. Fact is the "gods" are placed according to thier alignment on the wheel, not the other way around.
A few errors: Warrior's Rest is based on Limbo, not Ysgard. The Supreme Throne is in Pandemonium, not the Abyss.
I checked his website and it is listed as an upcoming rant. I'll keep an eye out for it's posting but I warn you SKR's rants are at best self important "I'm a designer and players know nothing" or "my style is better than your style" write ups. I find them amusing but generally ignore them.
Anyway below is a link to the rpg part of his site.
http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/index.html
I suspect if I got an account on his boards I'd quickly get banned for PO'ing SKR. I don't agree with his opinion on the matter, nor his reasons for them. It'd be a case of an unstoppable ego meeting suddenly with an immovable position (and equally large ego).
I look forward to that rant if he posts it.
I actually joined his boards. I posted once or twice and never returned. I figured I would end up in an old school Plundy rant (ask anyone who has saw those...they are not fun. But, I am trying to do better 
) and get banned.
Like I said I read his rants for a laugh....but I stray from the topic...
I don't particulary like the idea of seperate comologies for seperate primes but if I was playing in a game that was that world only I could use it...grudgingly.
To be honest though I have severly altered Faerun and it's cosmolgy is under the knife since I do not use the Faerun Gods nor will I be doing much PS style gaming out of it.
However I am working on my first PS campaign (as the DM I have played in one other a few years ago) and Toril will take its rightful place in the great wheel.
But all in all they should have just left it alone and let the players decide what they wanted.
my take on the subject is that the given cosmologies are what the people of that world BELIEVE... the DM shouldn't take them as truth. the great wheel is the only true planescape.
Oh don't feel bad, I've severely altered some elements of the planes in my own Planescape campaign. In short I did a drive-by shooting on the upper echelons of the Yugoloth heirarchy and never slowed down. 
But, as with everything, Unity of Rings, or so they say. :twisted:
i'm going to check that guys site later. so, he's the one responsible for the non-multiverse thing huh... *cracks knuckles* grrr..ares attack...Ares smash..
anyway, thanks for the help with the wheel document...even though you couldn't help with the dragonlance guys *sniff*
I was really cheesed when I skimmed the Manaul of the Planes FAQ and half of them were B.S. Answers about how Forgotten Realms fits into the Planes. I mean crap do they assume all of us play in Frickin Realms who want to use the planes?
Yes.
Also what's up with these new worlds coming out? I mean I thought they dumped Planescape and sold Ravenloft so they could refocus on core books. I mean I assumed they would continue the ones like Realms that are best sellers and make them tons of cash but why come out with new worlds after dumping old ones?
Ive heard a little about Ravenloft. What is it? I know its a campaing setting... but whats the differance between ravenloft and greyhawk?
Greyhawk is the old generic Gygax created setting.
Ravenloft is a horror setting- one of these things were people do evil things and get imprisoned in Ravenloft, The Demiplane of dread. Except sometimes not evil people wind up there. (I don't know too much about it, as I'm sure you guessed)
oh, okay. I knew Ravenloft was some sort of prison. Hrm... harder or easyer to get out of than Carceri?
Harder. That's the point of the setting actually - you're trapped, you're not getting out, and there's worse things than you trapped in there with you. Entire campigns often revolve around the "We want OUT of here!" idea. It's the Demiplane of Dread after all. I'll see if I can't convince someone who knows more about it to post here...
I played gurps ravenloft for a while. Cute setting. It has many gothic horror elements, border ethereal, many tech levels (some places are downright barbaric while others have things like gunpowder), ethereal traveling gipsies... ... .. .
There are two ways of playing it.
1'st way is going around meeting vampires, zombies, licanthropes and things like that. Also, making deals with them to take sides and stay alive, but if you do something evil, you get a power check which can cripple you or give you weird powers or both. Paladins don't live long in ravenloft
2'nd option (so i hear) is being lawful good level #517200 fighter or whatever and just hacking through thousands of zombies :twisted:
Hi there, I used to DM in Ravenloft and it is an excellent setting for those who are into gothic horror. As other people have already said, Ravenloft is a prison demiplane, also known as the Demiplane of Dread. It floats in the Deep Ethereal and is governed by the Dark Powers.
What is interesting about the setting, in my opinion, is the fact that players can be transported into Ravenloft from almost any Prime Material setting that has connections to the Ethereal Plane. The mode of such transportation is through the "mists".
Also interesting in the setting are the Darklords, these are pitiful evil beings who have given themselves fully into their evil. The Darklords each rule their own domains, a piece of land given to them by the Dark Powers. Each Darklord is taken from a prime material world because they did an "act of ultimate darkness/evil".
So who are the Dark Powers? What are their objectives? That is completely up to the DM.
***
Anyway back on the topic, we see the planes as a Great Ring, but we need to remember that each of these planes are infinite. We see it as a ring, simply because we are standing from Sigil. I haven't been able to peruse the FR book(not a big fan of FR in the first place), so I'm not sure exactly what Wizards has done to the setting.
Also remember that the primes are Clueless with a capital C. Their version of the planes may not be the same as the planars. (That's why they're clueless, right? 
)
Personally, I chalk up the Forgotten Realm's "Tree" to be the parlayance of some Clueless berks. But, given that this is a realm of fantasy, change what you want and bar the rest. There's no "Law of the Planes" that says you have to agree with everything published.
I'll spare you my rant on that entire sordid subject. Suffice to say it was changed not out of an perceived need to change it, nor any problems that the change could fix, but rather it was changed for the sake of change because they could.
Somewhere SKR has a rant about why he pushed for the change, and from what I know it's largely his own brainchild.
I ignore it like the plague. Just ignore it entirely and you'll be fine. Treat each of the FR specific planes as what they used to be, deity domains out on the planes of the Great Wheel at large. Otherwise the entire 'Great Tree' of FR is a cluster(insert naughty word) of biblical proportions. My loathing of the change is that large.
The 2e Planescape book 'On Hallowed Ground' details where each FR deity exists on the planes, and you can use that to easily switch over the new and utterly unimproved 3e FR cosmology to the Great Wheel planes. I'll try and find that listing and post it here.