D&D General Differences Between Limbo And The Far Realm?

[TwoSix]

Of course... now that I say all this... it makes me again wonder why Mechanus, Elysium, Limbo, and Hades would need to play second-fiddle to these metacosmoses? Why can't they just be their own ultimate versions of Law, Good, Chaos, and Evil, rather than needing to go beyond them, LOL? Thus I end up right back at my original question... why isn't Limbo good enough to be the premiere realm of chaos and madness-- alien or otherwise? Feels like we're licking Limbo in the shins for no good reason.

You certainly could; I think the original conceptions of Limbo where the slaad originated (slaad certainly feel like a Far Realm creature!) map up pretty nicely with the narrative beats of the Far Realm.

But the overall tones of "creation chaos" and "insanity chaos" are distinct enough to support two different planes if so desired.

 

[TwoSix]

Of course... now that I say all this... it makes me again wonder why Mechanus, Elysium, Limbo, and Hades would need to play second-fiddle to these metacosmoses? Why can't they just be their own ultimate versions of Law, Good, Chaos, and Evil, rather than needing to go beyond them, LOL? Thus I end up right back at my original question... why isn't Limbo good enough to be the premiere realm of chaos and madness-- alien or otherwise? Feels like we're kicking Limbo in the shins for no good reason.

Thinking about it a little further, I could totally get behind the Far Realm being another multiversal "branch" that's also fed by the infinite creative energies of Limbo. And in that multiverse, parasitical infestation (like slaad and illithid) is the standard method of reproduction.

 

[Voadam]

I see the far realm as an alien universe that works on alien principles normal planes do not really understand and comprehend so it appears chaotic but just because we can't put a framework on it. Things are different but do run on unknown alien laws that are not apparent so it seems very chaotic. The insanity aspect is the inability of those in the normal universe to process the alienness when interacting with Far Realms and the alien mind set and purposes of things from there are so different it seems they are insane from our perspective.

Limbo is outer plane Chaotic Neutral so conceptual Chaos with Slaadi metamorphosing metaphor frog beings and change and freedom and entropy and individuality. Madness comes in as part of the individual characteristics of the planes, the madness is the instability of chaos warping the reality of the plane and the minds of people entering the plane and changing them. AD&D also went kind of hard in on characterizing CN being random in ways that are not sane so this could have been a contributing factor for Limbo having aspects of Madness in the 1e Manual of Planes and Planescape which set up and fleshed out defining features of Limbo.

The 4e/5e Elemental Chaos is just the maelstrom of mixed fundamental elements swirling and remixing and interacting. It is not spiritually and intellectually conceptual, it is primally physical. It is not alien but natural and it is not inherently insanity inducing.

 

[Laurefindel]

I see limbo as a place where potential is present but unrealised. It's a "potential" that can be imagined by the gods (which can be a LOT of things!) but that still bound by their laws and understanding. Only, its a place where such "laws" are difficult to impose both in space and time, hence limbo. Pockets of reality are small, changing, and short-lived.

The potential of the far-realm is fully realised, only, it's not one that can be comprehended or that obeys the "laws" of the gods. Madness doesn't come from the far-realm - the gods can imagine and rule that - madness is what mortals and even gods experience when exposed to it. We see chaos because we can't make any sense of it, not because there isn't any order.

 

[Corinnguard]

Pockets of reality are small, changing, and short-lived.

The only exception to this are the areas surrounding the Githzerai towns. They're maintained around the clock through sheer discipline.

 

[Scribe]

Limbo has more in common with the Elemental Chaos than the Far Realm, IMO. In my approach to the Far Realm, it’s literally impossible for a mortal’s mind or body to survive traveling there. It’s the realm of extremely alien and incomprehensibly powerful eldritch beings. Limbo is more of a sea of evershifting elemental magic than of Lovecraftian madness.

Same.

 

[Laurefindel]

The only exception to this are the areas surrounding the Githzerai towns. They're maintained around the clock through sheer discipline.

I'm sure there are others as well but yes, the point is that maintaining reality in limbo is a constant effort and the plane probably "attacks" it in myriads of new ways. I can also imagine that these town, existing for hundreds of generations at a time, are still short-lived and morphing on the grand scale of things.

I always liked how githzerai exist as a paradox between law and chaos. They're so chaotic that they don't fit the description of chaos!

 

[Corinnguard]

I'm sure there are others as well but yes, the point is that maintaining reality in limbo is a constant effort and the plane probably "attacks" it in myriads of new ways. I can also imagine that these town, existing for hundreds of generations at a time, are still short-lived and morphing on the grand scale of things.

I always liked how githzerai exist as a paradox between law and chaos. They're so chaotic that they don't fit the description of chaos!

It's the chaos that becomes orderly.

 

[Sorinth]

For me Limbo is chaos for chaos sake, whereas the Far Realms isn't chaotic, it's just so foreign/alien that it appears like chaos.

For example, say you are organizing a bookshelf, in our world we would organize it alphabetically by author's last name. Limbo would just be completely random and the books would change order every time you looked away, and even change which books are there. Far Realms the books would be organized by a numbering system, to get the number you take the numerical value the 3rd letter of author's first name and cube it, except if that letter is a vowel in which case you take the 7th letter, if there is no 7th letter then you look at the title if it's 3 words or less you multiply the number of letters in those words and add them together, if it's 4 words or more it's the number of words + 5. The tie break first involves going to the number of words on the last page of the book, the next tie break involves something else and so on. At first glance it seems random, but if you look closer you start to see the patterns, but everytime you think you've understood the pattern you find another exception which leads to new patterns and more convoluted rules that seem non-sensical but clearly were made with a purpose. Studying the patterns/purpose becomes a compulsion and leads to madness.

That said, in effect they both provide a chaos/madness element to a game and so generally in a generic campaign you'd probably only use one or the other or have the differeniation not be all that relevant.

 

[Umbran]

So that being said... the question I'm curious about pretty much is in the thread title-- are there (or should there be) any appreciable differences between Limbo (the outer plane of ultimate Chaos), and the Far Realm (an alien plane of "madness" "outside" of the known multiverse)?

Yes, primarily because "madness" has squat all to do with randomness.

Limbo is part of the spiritual makeup of the rest of reality. Its chaos is the chaos of what is, and can be. It is unpredictable, but its nature is still comprehensible.

Slaad are a fine example here - frog-monsters are just, you know, big monstrous frogs. Nobody with a lick of sense would make these frog monsters, but they aren't fundamentally incomprehensible.

The Far Realm, meanwhile, is not part of the rest of reality, spiritually or otherwise. It doesn't follow the same rules, and so interaction with it exposes one to things that fundamentally should not exist. The rules by which is works are not knowable to the mortal mind. The result of exposure to it, to trying to make sense of that which cannot be understood by mortal minds for lack of context, is psychic trauma - what laymen refer to as "madness".

So, the difference is thus:

Limbo - nobody with a lick of sense would do this, but here we are.

Far Realm - I am looking at an object, possibly "living", rotating through more spatial dimensions than my brain can grasp, and so my brain breaks when it tries to work out what is going on.