Planar Configurations; How Do You Design The Multiverse?

[Xetheral]

Basic Structure
In my setting each material plane "stack" consists of the upper levels of the Pit, an Underdark, a Material plane, and a set of Heavens. The stacks are conical: each layer is larger than the one below it. Heavens are thus vast and diffuse, while Hell is cramped and dense. Teleportation is only possible within a layer, and plane shift/gate is only possible across layers. Where the boundaries are weak, it is also possible to change layers by physical movement: (e.g.) dig a deep enough hole in a weak spot and you'll reach the Underdark. The boundaries of the layers in each stack are curved, so line-of-sight on the Material works the same way it does on Earth.

There are many (theorized to be 666) such conical stacks, arranged in a sphere such that their points converge in Nessus at the bottom of the Pit. Otherwise, the stacks don't touch. The space between is filled with the elemental planes: fire between the levels of the Pit, earth between the Underdarks, water between the Materials, and air between the Heavens. Teleportation does not work in the elemental planes. Reaching an elemental plane simply requires physically travelling far enough away from the center of a stack. The only ways to navigate from one stack to its neighbors are to physically cross an elemental plane, journey through Nessus, find some way to navigate the Astral, or relay through the Outlands (see below).

Downwards
Nessus is a massive city on a series of islands (each corresponding to a stack) separated by rivers and small lakes of elemental fire, with the whole thing set on the inside surface of a sphere. The stacks project outwards ("down" from the perspective of Nessus) from each island. The Abyss hangs like a sun far "above" Nessus in the center of that sphere (and thus the center of the multiverse). Imminent demonic attacks on Nessus look like solar flares, and eventually culminate in aerial assaults. (Nessus has a lot of ranged weapon emplacements.) Because scale gets wonky the closer you get to the center of the multiverse, the Abyss is far, far larger than Nessus despite being both far away from it and contained within it.

At the center of the Abyss (physically unreachable due to asymtotic scaling) is the unaware Creator, the last of its kind, who created the multiverse to hide within from Abominations, the ill-fated result of its kind's attempt to create other "real" life (e.g. life with souls, as distinct from Demon-stock including Devils and Angels). Ironically, such "real" life arose spontaneously inside the Creator's multiverse cocoon. Such life was not part of the original design, which is somewhat problematic: the Creator created Demons as a potent defense against any Abominations that breached the multiverse, but the demons see spontaneously-occuring life as just another abberation (albeit one less-threatening than true Abominations). Devils and Angels are "descendents" of Demons who rebelled against their cosmic purpose.

Upwards
Far above the Heavens is the outer shell of the multiverse (the "Firmament"). Scattered on its inside surface are various miscellaneous planes with unpredictable physics called Outlands. These appear as stars to those below. The only way to reach them from the Material is Gate (with a difficult Arcana check with messy consequences for failure) and only to those Outlands that the slow rotation of the Firmament has brought above the horizon. Some of the Outlands have sizable populations, but because they are so isolated, Nessus is the only true planar metropolis. Outside the Firmament are the Far Realms, containing countless Abombinations trying to force their way into the multiverse to devour the Creator.

Celestial Bodies
Each stack's sun is an arcing projection from the Abyss that each day burns its way up through Nessus's fire lakes, through the Elemental planes, arcs over the Heavens, and then crashes back down on the other side of the stack (patrolling for Abominations). Moons are physical, softly-glowing bodies in complicated movement paths floating in the vacuum between the Heavens and the outer shell.

Coexistant and Coterminus Planes
Each Material plane and Underdark pair has coexistant Ethereal and Shadow planes. Feywilds are demiplanes coterminus to a Material plane and to other Feywilds within the same stack. The Astral plane is coexistant with the entire Multiverse, but a lack of one-to-one correspondence makes using it for planar travel extremely difficult.

There's a lot more, but that's enough to understand the physical arrangement of the planes. I call this the "Sphere of Stacks" model.

 

[generic]

I don’t know if I’d say that. Honestly I’m not sure what “too formulaic” might mean in relation to a cosmology.

For me, the great wheel is too complex to use at the table. I can’t remember it’s configuration, I can’t explain it to anyone else in under 5 minutes in a manner that increases understanding, and it kind of fails as a metaphor (for me) because it conveys only a surface level of the overall concept (where a strong metaphor might contain additional layers of understanding).

By contrast 4E’s “world axis” (also a weak metaphor) is at least easy enough to visualize and explain. Way more functional.

By "too formulaic" I simply meant that The Great Wheel is a carefully thought out, perfectly arranged, cosmology that corresponds to the nine alignments. I agree that it can take a while to explain The Great Wheel-- alignment-focused planes, positive and negative 'shells', transitive planes-- it can get complicated.

 

[Bawylie]

By "too formulaic" I simply meant that The Great Wheel is a carefully thought out, perfectly arranged, cosmology that corresponds to the nine alignments. I agree that it can take a while to explain The Great Wheel-- alignment-focused planes, positive and negative 'shells', transitive planes-- it can get complicated.

In that case, yeah - I agree with all that. I’m a simple man and I like a simple cosmology.

 

[Zardnaar]

I don't worry about it to much, plane of light/darkness and the elemental plane is more or less it otherwise just default to the great wheel if it matters (PCs want to cast planeshift, gate etc).
Otherwise KISS

Plane of

Light (heaven)
Darkness (lower planes)
Shadow (transitional plane)
Elemental Planes (building blocks)
Astral.
Something similar to the World of Magnamund.

http://lonewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Aon

Planar structure.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

As the title says, I want to know how others organize their planes. Do you use The Great Wheel, are all of your planes alternate versions of the Prime Material, do you have other planes? I wish to know what you have done.

I have used a few different planar arrangements, The Great Wheel, a Myriad selection, a sci-fi style arrangement of planar 'moons', a simple system with only a few planes, and a world where all of the traditional planar locales were on the same 'plane', with the Ethereal Plane, or Atmos Ethereae, as an atmosphere.

I don't.

The various "theories" presented in the sourcebooks over the years are just that, theories, in my campaign. Those and many others exist. The reality is, since characters rarely visit the planes in my game, it's all irrelevant, until such time they do.

Where it does matter is in magic use. Specifically any magic that reaches out to the planes (as most witchcraft does in my campaign). Anything that opens a conduit to another plane provides an opportunity for a creature of those planes to utilize the conduit. The most common creatures to take advantage of this, of course, are fiends. So casting spells that meddle with planar magic risks an encounter in one way or another with fiends or other creatures.

Regardless, the structure of the planes is largely irrelevant in play of any sort. What really matters is the connections between them. How do you get from here to there. For example, the River Styx flows through many of the lower planes. Whether those are in the shape of a wheel, a tree, etc. doesn't really matter. What matters is that you can climb into a boat to get from one to another, should the conditions be right.

Can you get to an outer plane directly, or do you have to utilize the astral plane to get there? Can you go between the outer planes, or only between adjacent ones? If so, the exact arrangement doesn't matter, just a description of which planes are adjacent, or more specifically, defining which planes have connections to which other planes.

Also, like everything in my campaigns, none of this really becomes canon until it enters play. And even then, it doesn't mean that it's the only way, just the one that matters right now.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I've never met anyone in the real world who has ever been to Heaven or Hell. Someone who has journeyed to the afterlife and back. And unlike a D&D world, we have no idea if those places are even real. And yet we still know a lot about the layout of heaven and hell, with lots of depictions in art and lore.

All of which are entirely guesses or artist's representation. Dante's Hell--which is, perhaps, the most common image--is pulled from his own imagination and the current events of his time (made metaphoric), and bears little resemblance to anything from religious texts, let alone a provable reality. Ditto popular representations of Heaven. And that's just drawing on one the world's many religions.

In D&D, mortals being able to travel the planes might mean that a human can go to Hell and back, but it still doesn't mean he'll have any idea "where" Hell is in relation to, say, the world of the fey. And frankly, the number of people capable of doing that--the casters who are of sufficiently high level that they can both plane travel and have any likelihood of surviving the trip--are vanishingly small.

I certainly have no objection to people who want to detail their cosmology, and as I said, I do so myself if/when it matters (or I just feel like it). But I hardly believe it's essential, or likely to be common knowledge--assuming there even is a truth of "planar locations" in any form the human mind can comprehend--and I certainly don't believe that the many and varied imagined/artistic versions of it in the real world suggest there must be a single known truth in the game world. At most, it implies that a fictional world should have many varied imagined/artistic versions of its own--which it can have whether or not the DM has decided what the truth may be, or even if there is one.

 

[Imaculata]

But I hardly believe it's essential, or likely to be common knowledge--assuming there even is a truth of "planar locations" in any form the human mind can comprehend--and I certainly don't believe that the many and varied imagined/artistic versions of it in the real world suggest there must be a single known truth in the game world. At most, it implies that a fictional world should have many varied imagined/artistic versions of its own--which it can have whether or not the DM has decided what the truth may be, or even if there is one.

This is the reason why I left the exact location of the Eternal Depths in my homebrew setting a mystery. Sailors call it 'the depths', because it is believed to be a place deep beneath the oceans, where anyone who died at sea ends up. But is it actually a physical location on the material plane? Or it is another dimension entirely? Such questions don't always need answering, and sometimes no clear definition makes it far more compelling.

 

[generic]

All of which are entirely guesses or artist's representation. Dante's Hell--which is, perhaps, the most common image--is pulled from his own imagination and the current events of his time (made metaphoric), and bears little resemblance to anything from religious texts, let alone a provable reality. Ditto popular representations of Heaven. And that's just drawing on one the world's many religions.

In D&D, mortals being able to travel the planes might mean that a human can go to Hell and back, but it still doesn't mean he'll have any idea "where" Hell is in relation to, say, the world of the fey. And frankly, the number of people capable of doing that--the casters who are of sufficiently high level that they can both plane travel and have any likelihood of surviving the trip--are vanishingly small.

I certainly have no objection to people who want to detail their cosmology, and as I said, I do so myself if/when it matters (or I just feel like it). But I hardly believe it's essential, or likely to be common knowledge--assuming there even is a truth of "planar locations" in any form the human mind can comprehend--and I certainly don't believe that the many and varied imagined/artistic versions of it in the real world suggest there must be a single known truth in the game world. At most, it implies that a fictional world should have many varied imagined/artistic versions of its own--which it can have whether or not the DM has decided what the truth may be, or even if there is one.

Well of course it wouldn't be common knowledge! I certainly hope that no one makes it such in their campaign (unless they're playing Planescape), as that would be quite unrealistic in terms of fantasy norms.

 

[generic]

This is the reason why I left the exact location of the Eternal Depths in my homebrew setting a mystery. Sailors call it 'the depths', because it is believed to be a place deep beneath the oceans, where anyone who died at sea ends up. But is it actually a physical location on the material plane? Or it is another dimension entirely? Such questions don't always need answering, and sometimes no clear definition makes it far more compelling.

Yes, an unclear definition does make things more compelling, but I believe that the DM should have at least a few more answers than the players need.

 

[guachi]

I don't find that an elaborate multiverse is really even necessary for most games. In fact, I really don't like the idea that all D&D worlds are connected.

Other planes do give the PCs somewhere to fight new challenges but that assumes the campaign gets that far.