World Tree

This article related to Dungeons & Dragons is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it

Doesn't look anything like a tree does it?

The World Tree is a cosmology option in Dungeons & Dragons, mostly associated with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It is fundamentally a reworking of the Great Wheel cosmology.

Planes

Unlike the Great Wheel cosmology, there is no attempt to balance the alignment of the World Tree model, nor are they defined by a set of moral philosophies; the planes are not necessarily situated next to their closely aligning neighbors, nor are they situated across from their diametric opposites if they have one. Planes are organised more according to the deities which inhabit them and what links they have made with each other and these links are forged and broken as the plot advances.

This has the advantage of making the cosmology quite fluid, where planes can move and shift as deities rise and fall, rather than being locked into an aligning location. Indeed, different depictions of the World Tree model have different numbers of planes on each side of the tree, and in different positions. The downside is that it is practically impossible to apply any kind of consistent logic to it: In the World Tree Cosmology, gods tend to inhabit the realms of their sponsors or allies regardless of their own alignment and can create areas that would otherwise overlap in a Great Wheel, but are kept separate in the World Tree.

Inner Planes

Fundamentally the same as the Planescape versions, the realms of Fire, Water, Air and Earth, as well as Positive and Negative energy are all represented unchanged.

Trivia

In real-world mythology, the World Tree is known as Yggdrasil, and was integral to the multiverse of the Norse.