An alternative great wheel

As a temporary break from my planar musings for 13th Age, I have decided to take a crack at building an alternative cosmology for 5th edition. The cosmology in the DM's guide is a bit more complicated than it needs to be in order to please Planescape partisans. I do not wish to insult that setting, but I think that many of the planes suffer from either being too hostile for adventuring or too similar to other planes. This post will explain where my cosmology departs from the canonical cosmology.

The canonical planes

The canonical cosmology, as laid out is the SRD (and some popular 3pp, marked with an *), consists of:

• Material Plane
• Transitive Planes: Astral, Ethereal, Dream*, Faerie*, Shadow*
• Inner Planes: Elemental Planes (Air, Earth, Fire, Water), Elemental Chaos
• Outer Planes: Upper Planes, Lower Planes, Middle Planes*

My inspirations and revisions

The changes I will be making, in order of planes affected, consist of:

Transitive Planes

Taking a suggestion from Malhavoc Press' Beyond Countless Doorways and Bastion Press' Faeries, I will be condensing the Astral, Ethereal, Dream and Faerie planes into a single "Ethereal Sea" or layers thereof. (This is to account for the expanded range of the Astral Plane between 2nd and 3rd edition.)

Taking a suggestion from Kobold Press' Dark Roads & Golden Hells, the spot formerly occupied by Faerie will be filled by the Plane of Radiance. The Radiance and Shadow planes take over the roles of the Positive and Negative Energy Planes from 3rd edition.

Inner Planes

Taking a suggestion from Gurbintroll Games' Dark Dungeons and Necromancers of the Northwest's The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire, the Elemental Planes are organized into geography mimicking that of the Material Plane except composed of platonic ideals of that element (e.g. pure elements, para-elements, quasi-elements, etc).

Taking a suggestion from Fantasy Flight Games' Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore and, Mongoose Publishing's The Slayer's Guide to Elementals, Frog God Games' Tome of Horrors series, the Elemental Chaos contains a number of paraplanes, quasiplanes and demiplanes. For example, at the center of the Inner Planes is the demiplane of Nexus where the Elemental Lords hold court.

Outer Planes

Taking a suggestion from Mongoose Publishing's Classic Play: The Book of the Planes, there are nine outer planes or one for each of the nine alignments. Souls originate in Tarássein and travel through the Astral and Radiance to incarnate in the Material. When mortals die, their soul passes to the Halls of Order where they are judged and sentenced: evil souls are cast into Chasm and land in Infernum, other souls are ferried to Afterworld where they receive their just reward, and those souls too chaotic to judge are cast into Tarássein to be reincarnated.

Putting it all together

Taken as a whole, this gives us a slightly revised set of planes. These are similar enough to previous editions to be familiar but different enough to hopefully provide a better environment for adventuring on the planes themselves.

• Material Plane
• Transitive Planes: Astral, Radiance, Shadow
• Inner Planes: Elemental (Air, Earth, Fire, Water), Elemental Chaos
• Upper Planes: Afterworld, Firmament, Questing Grounds
• Middle Planes: Halls of Order, Vault of Stars, Tarássein
• Lower Planes: Chasm, Infernum, Mâl

This is all for now, but I will be revisiting and detailing more in the future. I would suggest consulting the original sources I cited for any information I do not include here.