Re: Planejammer

"Different regions of different outer planes" would imply that the 
Krynnspace Outer Planes are actually three regions in the Outer Planes of 
The Great Wheel. However, Dragonlance Campaign Setting implies that the 
Great Wheel is "gone" and is replaced by a Gate of Souls connected to 3 
different outer planes.

Any Outer Plane - from The Great Wheel, Dragonlance Cosmology or any another 
cosmology could be "infinite"*, in that it can go on forever in all 
directions. But if the Dragonlance Outer Planes are "converted" into regions 
they become *part* of something infinite rather than three planes that is 
infinite themselves.

* = Infinite planes are interesting if you favour the "Single-Material 
Plane" model of the multiverse. The model makes all planes larger than 
crystal spheres, which then, from a Planescape point of view, become small 
spherical windows where planewalkers (or gods) can access the Material 
Plane.

When I looked at the Forgotten Realms Cosmology a while ago, I decided it 
was a "Wonky Wheel" - a distorted version of the Great Wheel, so I'd be 
inclined to do the same thing as Bill there. But the Dragonlance Cosmology 
is so different that I'm not sure that approach is the best thing.

On top of that Dragonlance gives us a specific problem that a "region of the 
Great Wheel" solution probably doesn't fix - the theft of Krynn. The future 
history** of Dragonlance has Krynn stolen by Takhisis and taken to a new 
crystal sphere. After 30 years the gods are brought back and are said to 
"rebuild the Dome of Creation, Hidden Vale and Abyss". I think it makes a 
lot more sense to actually have the gods connect the new crystal sphere to 
the *existing* Dragonlance cosmology. And the only way to do that is to make 
the Krynnspace Outer Planes a lot larger that Krynnspace. I'm not sure that 
mere regions of other Outer Planes are going to be large enough to justify 
that.

** = Don't panic about the theft of Krynn. Dragonlance is ahead of 
Spelljammer, because it is ahead of Forgotten Realms. We can deal with that 
after we sort out Krynnspace.

So while I was originally thinking of doing the same thing as Bill with the 
Dragonlance Outer Planes, I don't favour that solution any more. I now think 
that allowing crystal spheres to have one of three types of cosmologies will 
let us convert more campaign settings into worlds in crystal spheres. Here 
are my three types of cosmology:
1) Great Wheel - as per Planescape. Greyhawk uses the Great Wheel, although 
different names have been applied to certain Outer Planes.
2) "Wonky Wheel" - this is actually a distorted view of the Great Wheel from 
a Material Plane point of view. You still get the same Great Wheel, but the 
non-planewalkers have a distorted version of it. This is how I view the 
Forgotten Realms Cosmology (and how Bill wants to view the Dragonlance 
Cosmology). In fact if you assume that the "clueless" (non-planewalkers of 
the "groundling" campaign settings) don't have a full understanding of the 
planes, then you can use the "Wonky Wheel" idea to explain how Planescape 
uses different names to standard D&D (and therefore why 3rd edition 
Greyhawk/Greyspace uses slightly different names to the "real" names that 
outsiders use at home).
3) Different cosmology - i.e. different to some or all of Planescape. If you 
look at the SRD, you will see that WotC included most of the planes, but 
excluded the planes of the Great Wheel. This means that a lot of 3rd party 
publishers have made their own Outer Planes that might not fit into the 
Great Wheel very well. I think that allowing different cosmologies, 
alongside the Great Wheel will allow us to build Spelljammer crystal spheres 
around 3rd party campaign settings without needing to make a "2.5e D&D" 
style conversion to their cosmology. I believe that the Mystara fans also 
have issues with the standard D&D cosmology***.

*** = The Mystara fans tired to make their own Mystaraspace that excluded 
the rest of the multiverse and hacked out important elements of Spelljammer. 
I'd rather see a Mystaraspace that works for fans of both settings and I 
think that allowing different cosmologies, where new planes can be dropped 
in and/or standard planes can be excluded, is more likely to create a 
Mystaraspace that fits in logically with both Spelljammer *and* Mystara. We 
could for example have a small cluster of crystal spheres that all feature a 
cosmology needed to connect Mystara to Old Alphatia and Draesten.

Allowing different cosmologies also gives us a logical mechanism to make the 
Contact Home Power spell succeed or fail. So cosmology can change from being 
something that really only works for Planescape games and start being a 
resource that helps a Spelljammer DM. The game mechanic for the spell can 
become:
1) Find out what plane a god/goddess lives on and,
2) Look up the cosmology of the crystal sphere a PC is in to see if that 
plane is available.

As for the Demogorgon: I had never heard of him, but here is a Wikipedia 
article about him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogorgon_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)

According to that page there is only one Demogorgon - it isn't a race of 
demons or even a small select group (of which one could be sent to the Abyss 
of Krynnspace's cosmology). So if Tasslehoff tries to summon him from Krynn, 
it implies some sort of connection between Krynn and The Great Wheel or some
sort of connection between the Abyss (of the Dragonlance Outer Planes) and 
the Great Wheel.

A lot of Dragonlance fans would probably call Demogorgon a "kender tale" and 
pretend the story didn't happen. But I think that Demogorgon can be a Great 
Wheel resident and still visit the Dragonlance Cosmology. (Maybe he was 
visiting the (Dragonlance) Abyss to try to recruit new soldiers for the 
Blood War.) All you need to do is give him the "interloper" subtype while he 
is there. I'm sure he has an uber-high saving throw.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/

From: "Bill Olander" <brainhurts@?????.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2007 3:34 AM

>I have yet to figure out how this is functionally different.
>
> On 8/24/07, Edward Swing <BlackDaggr@???.com> wrote:
>>
>> I am not as happy with the 3rd Ed. revision to the cosmology, making
>> every
>> world different. After all, Demogorgon did show up in Krynn (very first
>> Tasslehoff short story, in Dragon mag). I prefer to think that different
>> worlds may
>> have gates to different regions of the infinite outer planes.