Redoing Alignment/Metaphysics for 4E

Wait-- slow down. I don't want to redo the metaphysics from the ground up. We spent a lot of time on it, it's well reasoned, and it works. My main goal is to adjust it to fit the 4e rules a bit better, not scrap it entirely. As such, my vision is to tweak it more than anything.

Sorry. Just trying to help.

So, bring it down to four Alignment forces then? Good, Evil, Order and Chaos?

That way, the polar opposites still never touch, and you can have some interesting interplay in the planes.

Again tho, I'd still suggest not co-opting the plane names. "Deva - Natives to the Feywild." could be too confusing.

I generally agree with what you've said so far, Phoenyx. I agree that we need to change the plane names. I think we can keep LG, G, UA, E, and CE. I think we'll just need to collapse and rename some planes. Something like this:

Heaven stays and stays lawful good, but gets renamed. It now includes realms for all LG gods
Elysium and Gladsheim collapse together and get renamed. This new G plane now contains Faerie.
Maybe Limbo and Nirvana go away entirely.
Hell and Gehenna collapse, are renamed, and become E.
The abyss stays CE.

The Concordance stays as the unaligned plane and perhaps gets renamed.
The Maelstrom stays the same and accounts for the elemental planes.
The astral river need not change.
The ethereal barrier can likely go.

I don't yet know about Farland shadow plane-- the Penumbra. I kind of like the idea.

So this is a write up of how I sort of envisage the changes being made. Nothing too radical, except maybe in the conception of what the planes are like. The outer alignment forces stay too-- they just collapse into G, LG, E, and CE.

Can we add a neutral alignment? Unaligned makes sense (Tanarus/Sulis, for example), but I think there is some call for true neutral -- ie Dekk, who is truly centered on maintaining a balance between those two. If you are opposed to this idea, you could put Dekk into the 'Good' column, as he is putting all of his energy into good to reshift the balance away from evil.


HERE IS ANOTHER THOUGHT...
I was thinking we could keep the planes as they are in the 4e world, but the Gods would be unable to leave their demi-planes in physical form. The only exception to this would be the Walker, who can move between the Shadowfell and Elemental Chaos -- hence the name 'The Walker'.

The Walker started as one of the gods in the Shadowfell. He tricked the gods of Evil and Chaos to give them his power, now he travels between the Shadowfell and Elemental Chaos.

The other gods could have their own 'demi-planes' within each plane. So we would have the following (obviously, names would change to more Farlandish types.

Lawful -- Astral Sea
Heshtail
Khuldul
Neltak
Khuckduck Gemcutter

Each one could live on a plane (with their demi-god), the Farlandish versions of Archon, Heaven, Nirvana, Mechalus, etc.

Good - Feywild
Kantor
Tal-Allustiel
Bestra
Bunga

Each one could live on a plan, the Farlandish versions on Elysium, Gladshiem, etc.

Bel & Grlarshh would be hiding in small Demi-Planes within the Chaos plane. Bel could live in the Farlandish Demi-plane of Limbo, Grlarshh could live in the demi-plane of the Abyss.... The nature of the Chaos plane has made them impossible to find, although Vornoth is constantly seeking them.

Salystra would live on a demi-plane seperated from the others, unconnected to the planes of the gods.

I like thos ideas, Squeak. I think we are coming to an agreement. I will do a write-up and post it for perusal.

How about if we changed the name of the Astral Sea to the Astral Plane. When I think of 'Sea', I really don't think of lawful at all...

We could, in turn, use a term such as the 'Cosmic Sea', which would represent the stuffs that most of the universe was made of at one point and is now concentrated in the Malestrom.

I think I will keep it as the astral river, which is what it is in Farland 3.5 and which fits well with our metaphysics. Yeah, i see no reason for "sea."

But will it really be a river -- or will it still be the same 'wheel' that we've been using? Are you thinking Astral=Lawful?

I am still thinking of it as a wheel, so the spokes of the wheel will still be the river of the stral plane. No, I was thinking about getting away from astral=lawful.

So what would be opposed to the plane of chaos???