How do you deal with planar cosmology?
>follow the default?
>modify it a bit?
>homebrew your own?
Which are the steps to create a senseful cosmology?
I started with a tesseract and the number 24 and worked from there.
>>48007100
I generally use Great Wheel cosmology and do some studying on the levels of each plane to see what extraplanar creatures go where. Sometimes modification is needed to give life to levels with little information on them (Carceri for instance), and I'll occassionally homebrew big creatures to go in them, such as an Altraloth for Gehenna.
Just remember that funny names can get you far.
World Axis > Great Wheel
The "upper planes" and "lower planes" being Lawful and Chaotic respectively makes more sense than being Good and Evil.
I start by defining the best and worst planes. These are important, because those are the boundaries for the tone of stories you can tell within this cosmology. If the worst thing in the multiverse is a bunch of ravenous elder gods that want to torture all life forever and the best is a crapsack world of corrupt mortals, the tone isn't going to be the same as in a multiverse that stretches between the mostly just world of mortals trying their best and the shining paradise of the gods.
The farther apart the upper and lower bounds are, the wore story space you have. Be aware thiough, that sufficiently bad lower bounds will tend to undermine the good vibes at the other end. People will say "hey, things are nice here and all, but shouldn't we be doing something about the rape monsters three floors down?"
Next thing to decide is mechanics. why are there multiple planes, how do they interact, how difficult us contact or travel between them, how much of this are residents actually aware of, etc. It's important that this stuff make sense together too. For example, if travel is incredibly easy, like 'sprinkle a circle of goat blood and a gate opens" then at the very least knowledge that other planes exist should be common.
>>48007589
can I make the inner planes orbit as a part of a outer plane? Or there's some kind of problem there?
>>48007657
That sentence isn't very clear, but I think you're saying you want to have a sort on nested system with the 'inner' planes orbiting each other inside of a larger "outer plane"? Seems fine, sure. Pretty much any set up can do fine as long as it doesn't contradict itself internally and it has enough depth to look legit, and those we arent going to be able to help with unless you get exhaustive with the details.
The only rules that *every* planar cosmology needs to follow are tonal ones.
>>48007100
I came up with my own planar cosmology for a game I'm running and I'm pretty satisfied with it. It's barebones compared to the defaults but I also wanted to bring back some mystery and not have everything be explained and known.
The Astral Realm is the place where souls go when they die, and disembodied souls gather in great streams toward the Great Beyond, a wall of light from which nothing has ever returned, not even the most powerful and wisest planar explorers. Nobody knows what's behind it, spells can't reveal anything, and nobody who has gone in has ever come out.
The Void is the space between planes and all teleportation magic touches it in some way, which is why that type of magic is carefully regulated. It's a dark and weird place full of hostile and barely-intelligent and mostly-impossible creatures, and there are small islands of stable land inside that have an eerie resemblance to the ancient ruins that dot the land. Some are full of Void creatures, others are oddly empty.
That's about it. The key things here are that nobody knows shit about what the Astral Realm, the Great Beyond, or the Void are for, so anything discovered by the PCs will be new knowledge and they'll be the first to discover it, which gives their actions a sense of significance. I always hated when games would go "When you die, your soul goes here or here based on this and that" and explains absolutely everything about the afterlife, leaving no mysteries for anyone.
My cosmology consists of "Spheres" which are functionally planets orbiting around a sun; magitech space travel is available, but there are also worldgates.
>>48008535
similar to popoulous the beginning
>>48007100
This isn't really a step for when you're creating a cosmology, but for after. Don't share everything with the players.
Yes, make all the rules that govern the planes and the history of the universe and all that, but don't tell them everything. Mortals can only speculate, some of their beliefs might be right and others might be completely wrong.
Just remember to follow the rules you set, even when it defies what the players believe to be the truth. This is especially fun when some of the rules the universe follows seem contradictory to people who don't know them all.
>>48007100
Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, they don't actually exist in my setting.
When a person is born their soul is in a default "blank" shape (neutral). Their actions, and other peoples responses to those actions, shape their soul. When they die the shape of their soul influences where it drifts.
This means it is possible to cheat the system, or accidentally fuck yourself over. For example, one of my players is doing the whole "Act like a villain and let everyone hate me while I secretly save the world" shtick. Yeah, his actions have long term benefits and will ultimately make the world a better place, but he's done some terrible stuff and everyone that meets him thinks he's a monster.
Oh boy is he gonna be sour when he dies and goes to hell. I made this rule before he started doing that (and can prove it), but he and the other players don't know it's a rule.
>>48013621
Shouldn't actions be weighed more than "acting"? If his actions are ultimately saving the world, what does it matter what other people think of him?
