D&D General Sir Plane "Not Appearing in this Cosmology"

[QuentinGeorge]

They’re all pretty dull which is why
I basically eliminated all of them from my home brew.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Thing is, when you look at published material outside of the 2nd edition Planescape product line, how many planes did actually ever get mentioned or covered in adventures or even novels and videogames?

The plane of Dust (Negative Earth) was in the Torment game, wasn't it? Or at least mentioned?

I've moved towards alternate primes using some of the Outer, and some Inner, planes for inspiration.

 

[Incenjucar]

You can build any of these into interesting settings for a campaign with enough creative license, but some of them would require a LOT of extra work, especially anything that's basically "If you are here you die in 1d4 rounds". Demi-planes and portals are cheap fixes for a lot of it. "Welcome to Bytopia, please do not sneak past the paladins in front of the Hellmouth sign, they are there for your protection." etc.

 

[grimslade]

The planes are boring. Even Hell is boring. The problem is that planes are infinite, but we treat them as different mono flavors of Prime Material.
Hell is Lawful and Evil Prime. The Plane of Fire is hot and flickery Prime. The Feywild is Extra Prime and Shadowfell is faded, depressed Prime. You don't need an infinite space to be a BBEG lair.

 

[Incenjucar]

From a design standpoint, "infinite" just means you don't need to find a gap in the setting map to plant a new point of interest.

 

[Staffan]

Since way back in AD&D 1st edition, D&D settings generally were assumed to be part of a planar system consisting of 17 outer planes, 14 inner planes (later reduced to 6), an astral plane, and a variable number of other planes bordering the material plane. In 3rd edition it was decided to throw all of these out for Forgotten Realms and replace them with roughly as many new planes. Eberron also got its own planes and there were quite a number of them. Then 4th edition changes things and I believe introduced the Feywild, but otherwise still mostly just shuffled things around without meaningful changes, unless I remember wrong.

Thing is, when you look at published material outside of the 2nd edition Planescape product line, how many planes did actually ever get mentioned or covered in adventures or even novels and videogames?

There's the Abyss, the Nine Hells, the Astral Plane, and maybe if you are lucky the Elemental Plane of Fire or Limbo. The Forgotten Realms deities all have their respective home planes, but again, except for the Abyss none of these ever appear anywhere.

I do remember the main characters in the Avatar Trilogy going to Hades to recover the Tablets of Fate, which had been stashed there by Myrkul who didn't consider that Ao might force the gods to stay off their planes. And the Obsidian Oracle had a brief jaunt into the Grey. But yeah, there's a lot of cosmology that goes unused. I blame the fact that the Great Wheel cosmology sucks.

Eberron, as usual, has a special relationship with its planes. Not only does it have its own cosmology outside the Great Wheel, but there's a different emphasis on the planes. In most settings, the planes are primarily sources of monsters, and secondarily a place where high-level characters go to adventure. But in Eberron, they influence the material plane directly. The reason they can build the towers of Sharn, and have local flying transportation, is that the city is in a location with planar influences making that sort of thing easier. Manifest zones with the influence of Irian, the Eternal Day, are believed to be what makes the Deathless possible, as well as creating some of Aerenal's unusual flora. Basically, planes create manifest zones, which the inhabitants of Eberron treat as special natural resources.

 

[Incenjucar]

A setting could be built that makes the outer planes a bit more relevant, it just hasn't been. It's a lot of work. Personally I'm working on something to make the inner and ethereal more accessible, but I am but a humble hobbyist.

 

[Yora]

The plane of Dust (Negative Earth) was in the Torment game, wasn't it? Or at least mentioned?

Which is one of the mentioned 2nd edition Planescape products.

 

[Vaalingrade]

They’re all pretty dull which is why
I basically eliminated all of them from my home brew.

I kept the Elemental Chaos from 4e, as a Strip Mine of the Creator Gods, a place where they took material to build material planes, still in flux from both lands and people being ripped to shreds to be turned into metaphysical bricks.

 

[Scribe]

A setting could be built that makes the outer planes a bit more relevant, it just hasn't been. It's a lot of work. Personally I'm working on something to make the inner and ethereal more accessible, but I am but a humble hobbyist.

I have high hopes for Planescape to get us there this time.