Friday, April 6, 2018

Revising the transitive planes

As the D&D rules and campaign settings have developed over their history, so too has the planar cosmology changed over time. This has left numerous irregularities, such the existence of several transitive planes with almost identical utility. More below the break...

There are numerous transitive planes given over the history of D&D and their utility has changed over time. We have the border ethereal, deep ethereal, shadow plane, astral plane, phlogiston, dream plane, spirit plane, world ash, etc. All of these essentially boil down to one of two things: a distorted reflection of the campaign world or a means of travel between planes and planets.

Based on observations and suggestions made by a few others with the same idea, I have decided to condense all these planes into about two or three. For simplicity I will refer to them using the traditional names. The cosmology layout is presented in the following image:

Condensed transitive planes

A brief description of the revised transitive planes:
  • The shadow plane subsumes the border ethereal plane into a twisted reflection of the campaign world. It is a place where shadows, reflections, and memories have physical substance as ectoplasm and shadowstuff.
  • The astral plane is a realm of thought, emotion, belief, and so forth. As in 3rd edition and beyond, its vast expanse connects all planes and planets like destinations on a road. The bodies of long dead deities float through its silvery skies while dreamscapes drift along its rolling seas of dreamstuff.
  • The deep ethereal plane subsumes the role of phlogiston, the traverse, dark tapestry or whatever else passes for interstellar space. Upon it the planes and planets sit like islands on a sea. It is full of infinite blackness and colorful rolling clouds, upon which etherships or voidships sail between the sun and stars.

Although barely marked, I have added two other landmarks for my personal cosmology (to be detailed in future posts):
  • The orange circles represent inner/outer/demi planes and planetary systems. The borders themselves represent pale aether as in Aether & Flux: Sailing the Traverse.
  • The green circle represents the vault of the stars from the cosmology presented in Classic Play: The Book of the Planes. It is literally the night sky and dotted by the fixed stars, similar to a gigantic crystal sphere from Spelljammer.

The resulting cosmology is fairly simple and should work well as a basis for all kinds of other additions, such as the elemental planes, the outer planes, the aborted planes, the preternatural planes, and so forth.

Research links

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