Can someone explain the unified D&D cosmology? I understand some things within individual setting, like what planes Greyhawk has, but I have no idea where Planescape fits in and how the hell Spelljammer works and stuff like that.
D&D Official Cosmology
Wyatt Sanders
Leo Cruz
Once upon a fucking time the universe was made by two dragon sibling sucking their dicks.
One was a rainbow scaled neon-dicked futa dragon, and the other was her red-skinned tinier bottom bitch cuck brother, and they spun whilst doing this nasty-ass dragon 69 and created the laws of the universe whilst there was like, jack shit but the astral sea.
Then the fucking Great Old ones passed through, did some fission, and the Astral Sea was Space in this universe, so Yog-sothoth was on the Astral sea partially visible and stuff, but then at some point Shub-niggurath showed up, is some Fission and made Aboleths.
Actually fuck it, the Great Old ones were always involved, but during the time of this cosmic cock-suck they got kicked out because an Aboleth pulled a Prometheus or some shit and it hit the astral sea, making the Divine Spark which made deities in response to the maddened collective calls of bedlam and distress various races had due to being in Will save SAN check hell or some shit.
And before this Dragon Pre-deity entity and Outergod/Great Old one crap was going on, the entire plot of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne literally occurred and somehow this mixed up with so much shit with the Red cuck dragon, he fell to the lower planes in what was to be hell, hit the 8th layer, making the 9th, and remained there ever since, brooding, and eating fedoracore souls, and was involved in that Ashradorn shit if you read into the context.
And that's why it's called dungeons and Dragons.
Also, the Great Old ones sort of got kicked out, and are trying to get back in via proxies and memetic bullshit and stuff, but that's a while to go yet, because the warhammer 40k chaos gos are also making their way in.
It's a melting pot universe of planar shit from other universes in it's own bizzare metaphysical orbit because we never went to space and the earth is kinda flat and hollow but not flat flat.
Asher Campbell
Planescape uses the Great Wheel which divides the Multiverse into three major parts, the Inner Planes which are planes of matter and energy where Elementals and such live, the Outer Planes of emotion and thought which correspond roughly to the alignment chart and are where the Gods and Demon live and souls of mortals go after death, and finally the Prime Material Plane which is the physical universe of mortals.
Spelljammer is a way to allow players to cross from one setting to another without leaving the material plane and is basically fantasy space travel.
Nathaniel Barnes
Anyway to elaborate Planescape is a setting designed for PCs to explore the Great Wheel. The PCs are usually based out of Sigil which is the city at the center of the multiverse controlled by an entity called the Lady of Pain. The city itself is run by several factions each with their own philosophy on the Planes and is set against the backdrop of the Blood War which is a millennia old conflict across the Outer Planes between the Demons of the Abyss and the Devils of Hell.
Spelljammer is a setting set entirely on the Prime Material plane. It's space travel, but space travel based on 19th century science and fantasy. In it each solar system is encased inside of indestructible crystal spheres, between the spheres is a substance known as phlogostom that special vessels can sail through to reach other systems. The primary vessel runs on magic and is called a spelljammer.
Each Crystal sphere is under the influence of an Overdeity who determines how the rules in that sphere work and also which Gods can access it. This is how vastly different settings like Toril and Oerth can coexist in it.
Adam Cook
> Planescape
This is the largest-scale "setting". Basic conceit, there are many dimensions (Planes) that exist. The Inner Planes embody the primal elements of creation. Air, Fire, Water, that sort of stuff. The Outer Planes exemplify belief and concepts like good, evil, and various philosophies. The Material Plane consists of physical worlds governed by what we would generally think of as natural law. (According to Planescape, the various campaign settings like Greyhawk and Forgotten realms exist as material planes or "Primes") The Transitive planes bridge the gaps (Astral between Material and Outer, Ethereal between Material and Inner, and "Nobody can get there to confirm what it's like but by magic science we know it, like dark matter, must exist" Ordial between Outer and Inner)
Most Planescape campaigns take place on the Outer planes, at least nominally. These are realities that function as heavens and hells. The gods make their home there. The souls of the dead appear there. And a bunch of living folks like you also call it home.
The best detailed setting in the lot, though, isn't really one of the "Planes of Belief". It's Sigil, aka the City of Doors, aka The Cage, aka a city built on the inside of a ring that hovers above the top of a mountain of infinite height. Planescape is esoteric like that. The city is valuable because it has portals to just about everywhere. If you have ANY interest beyond your own plane, Sigil is the way to indulge that interest. It's not a total war zone because its 'ruling' entity, The Lady of Pain, is fairly hands-off and the biggest fish in the multiverse. Basically, she exists to enforce some weird, esoteric setting rules that are about as absolute as gravity though with more human-understandable punishments for trying to violate them.
Dominic Johnson
Da Rules of Sigil
>Don't fuck with Sigil as a whole
>Don't fuck with the Daubus that maintain the place.
>Don't fuck with the Portals
>Don't worship The Lady of Pain
>Don't worship Aoskar. (He's dead anyway.)
>No Gods Allowed in the City (Seriously, Lady of Pain will fuck up puny gods.)
>Seriously, guys, your infighting is mucking things up. You get fifteen flags/factions, tops
After an end of 2e extravaganza module/event called the "Faction War"
>No more goddamn flags, Factions get out reeeeeee
and
>*Mutters some other stuff GMs can mine for plot hooks*
The Factions, mentioned earlier, are/were the mortal scale movers and shakers of Sigil... and beyond: while they all want influence in Sigil they have and maintain interests in other planes, mostly the Outer though some will mess with the Inner or Material planes. Factions are distinct by their philosophies and in a surprising case of grey and grey morality in a world with LITERAL good and evil as present forces, any one of them could be a group the PCs join or your villains for the evening
Dylan Martinez
Factions are...
>Fraternity of Order believe in math and law and keeping everything tidy. They run the courts in Sigil
>Harmonium are Lawful "Good" Totalitarians who believe they'll make utopia when and only when everybody follows their way of life. They're standard cops. They're kind of assholes (more than most factions)
>Mercykillers believe in the punishment of wrongdoers above all else. They run the prisons and are the psycho judge dredd cops.
>Dustmen are weird psuedo-bhuddists who believe we're all already dead and the suffering of "life" means that we should strive to attain the peace of True Death by purging ourselves of all emotions. They run the mortuary
>Sensates believe in experiencing every possible sensation. They run the entertainment industry in basically all its forms
>Bleak Cabal believe the universe is inherently meaningless, so they're basically nihilists. They're nice nihilists, though, and run the soup kitchens and asylum because hey, if there's no meaning to anything, why not make the world a little better? They kind of inevitably go crazy though.
>Doomguard believe entropy is increasing and that's about all they agree on. Most want to help along the decay of everything, though, and they make weapons and handle the armory
>Fated believe that might makes right and if you can take something and keep it you deserve to have it. They are tax collectors, thieves, and general assholes. Not a bad faction for murderhobos though.
>Sign of One are solipsists. Each one of them believes that they are the center of the multiverse and everything else is their imagination. Since Belief in planescape has real effects, they can kind of warp reality like that. Predictably, they keep government running.
Aaron Ortiz
>Believers of the Source (Godsmen) believe that all souls are on a journey to eventually ascend to godhood and want to self-actualize. They run forges and do lots of crafts
>Athar believe that the gods are frauds not worthy of worship. They mostly just hide here in Sigil because of that No Gods Allowed rule.
>Transcendent Order believe in doing, not thinking. They act on instinct but tend to gain spidey senses.
>Free League are a faction of not caring about being a faction. Loose and informal, their 'uniting' philosophy is free will. They kind of control the markets and bazaar
>Revolutionary League believe that the power structure is corrupt. They want to tear it all down and bring the other factions to ruin. Nobody is openly Revolutionary League, they infiltrate other factions with sleeper cells then cause havoc.
>Xaositects believe in Lolrandumb chaos.
Josiah Brooks
>Spelljammer
Spelljammer, like Planescape, is an "oversetting". It actually exists within Planescape and covers the Material Plane. In Spelljammer, the Material Plane, which contains all the 'normal' campaign settings among other things, is explained to exists as sets of Crystal Spheres (Generally, Solar Systems. Campaign Worlds like Faerun and Krynn each get their own, but other Systems may have multiple habitable bodies) Spelljamming ships are space flying sailing ships that can traverse Wildspace and the Phlogiston (Existing inside/outside Crystal Spheres) to go places and visit other worlds.
It's basically a weird, fantastical space opera that Treasure Planet mined for its look and feel. Except Spelljammer is weirder. That's kind of rule 1 of Spelljammer when compared to anything except the most esoteric corners of Planescape. Spelljammer is weirder. There are gnomish ships powered by giant space hamsters running in (paddle)wheels, Nazi Elves at war with non-retarded Klingon Orcs, pirate monkeys, hippo men, like three flavors of mercantile assholes including the Neogi, and the legendary ship simply called the Spelljammer is shaped like a giant manta ray with a city on its back and might be alive/intelligent.
Samuel Walker
Noah Long
Ya know, it's been a few years since I really looked at the factions for the game, but all I can see is some of the stupidest shit now. You've managed to capture the essence of them and they look like shit some dumb college kid wanting to take everything to extremes would make. Why the fuck did I like the factions then?
Juan Torres
I post the Planescape General threads, and I fully believe that all of the factions are terribly written. Some are less awfully-written than others, and some have great potential and setting-changing implications (e.g. the Society of Sensation is pushing into sci-fi territory with the way it spreads knowledge and memories using the recorder/sensory stones).
When I run Planescape, I prefer to reenvision the factions that can be salvaged, and quietly shuffle the rest into the background.
Jackson Davis
Because they're fitted to their world. You don't run a setting like Planescape looking for intense ambiguity or Game of Thrones shit, generally you're looking for a smaller, simpler experience. Something that has a lot of bright colors (metaphorically speaking) but also a little brain.
It's a Philosophy/Comparative Religion 101 understanding of the topics but it's also kinda fun to see these extreme viewpoints collide.
Jayden Williams
All you really need to know is that people just want to play 2E Planescape.
Matthew Stewart
It helps that some of them have kind of notable counterpoints. Like how the Sensates aren't just hedonists and kind of look down on those who would avoid 'bad' experiences. Or how the Fated pretty much won't take charity because they believe in earning what they have as much as in having everything they 'earn'. Plus they get drawn into a bunch of cross-faction interactions that get entertaining.
Austin Russell
Varies by edition.
Here's the best one:
Inner Planes are essentially "layers" of the Ethereal (which is an Outer Plane in all but the name).
Ekemental Planes are just like the Prime Material, but everything is made if one type if thing.
(Cloud Peasants drinking Liquid Nitrogen in their Cloud Bar at the Cloud Village on the Plane of Air, etc.)
Elementals Planes have stars, planets, moons, the vacuum of space, etc.
When things overlap you get pocket layers.
The "Prime Material" is a pocket layer where 4 planets of similar size (on different layers) are overlapping.
The Ethereal is full of sticky, inert fog.
You can look into other layers from it.
Not really anything else to do there.
There are also "naturally occurring dungeons" in the Ethereal, that act as roads between layers.
The Ethereal is huge, but finite.
At the edge is the Astral.
Everything except Gods and Acts of Gods have one less dimension in the Astral.
It's something between "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" and the road-runner walking into Wile E. Coyote's painting of a tunnel.
You can walk in 1 dimension, jump into two, etc. Teleport moves (not teleports, moves) you through 3 dimensions "instead of 4", fly moves you through 2, levitate does nothing, etc.
The Astral is infinitely large, and contain many Outer Planes (which are to-scale within the Astral).
Aaron Watson
>Planescape
If you know how the planes work in the Great Wheel Cosmology, you know how Planescape works. The only major thing that's left out are the factions of sigil, but npc organizations are too important anyway.
>Spelljammer
So, in Spelljammer, there are planets and suns and moons and stars and stuff. Granted, stars and suns are actually large portals to the Elemental Plane of Fire or Radiance, but they still act like stars and suns. What's different is that Spelljammer adds the concept of "Crystal Spheres" to the equation.
Each setting has its own space, with its stars and suns and a couple planets, and that is literally contained within a giant sphere of crystal. Outside the Crystal Spheres, 'outer space' is made up of this stuff called Phlogiston, which is kinda comparable to the defunct theory of the Aether. Crystal spheres vary widely in size.
Anyway, all crystal spheres are considered to be the same Prime Material Plane; the whole lot of them go in the middle of the wheel.
nerik.orpheusweb.co.uk
Link related is the Map of all the known crystal spheres. Not all of them are established settings, but some of them are. For example, if you look in the very far right, you'll find the Spheres for Golarion (the setting of Pathfinder) and Shard (the sphere of the Eberron setting). I'm not sure where it is on the map, but if you see a sphere called Athas, that's where Dark Sun takes place.
Camden Barnes
>Granted, stars and suns are actually large portals to the Elemental Plane of Fire or Radiance,
Some suns are. Most are normal suns. Quite a few are normal suns *with portals on them*
What stars are varies from one sphere to another, but they're generally just glowy objects attached to (or resting on) the sphere
Landon Stewart
A little-known fact is that Oerth's sun (i.e. Greyspace's central body) has cool lakes and water elementals upon its surface, according to the Greyspace supplement.
Chase Myers
Greyspace's central body *is* Oerth.
Your right about the orbiting sun having lakes though.
Michael Mitchell
You are correct there.
Elijah Edwards
Man, Spelljammer is so cool and it theoretically gives you more campaign possibilities than any other setting. I wish people were actually playing it.
Lucas Rogers
I'd like to learn more about the setting called Ssss.
Hunter Nelson
Bear in mind that much of that map is fanon. It is one thing to include the spheres for Golarion (V9/10), and another to include spheres for Glorantha (U12) and Thedas.
If you want a list of canonical Spelljammer spheres and worlds, you can find one here:
spelljammer.org
Carson Perez
Yeah, Spelljammer needs more love.