Does anyone else hate the planes?

[rounser]

I think the planes offer an excellent way to expand the campaign when the PCs grow too big for their prime material world's booties, and challenging 15th level characters would destroy verisimilitude if it's the same stomping grounds they were in at 1st level. A single tough demi-plane or pocket dimension (e.g. a little plane in a chest) would be more than enough, though; or maybe catch a spelljammer to those desert moon(s) which the githyanki are preparing to invade from.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'll admit I really hate the concept of the various planes in D&D. I've always hated monster statistics that state that the monster "comes from the elemental plane of X". I've always hated spells that allow the user to contact the "plane of Y". It just seems like the whole D&D cosmology is so complicated. Admittedly, the current version of D&D allows for custom cosmologies. However, it often seems like D&D requires the DM to master complex, fantasy metaphysics to play the game. I never understood the whole planar concept; all the "prime material planes", "ethereal planes", "elemental planes", and "quasi-elemental planes" seem extremely convoluted. Moreover, I never understood the imperative for all the various planes in most settings. Sure some of the heroes of Greek myth visited the underworld and some sci-fi features parallel dimensions, but why does that seem to entail a complete and complex metaphyics for every campaign setting?

I love planar adventures, but I have several gripes about how the theme is developed in D&D books. My knowledge is limited to 3rd edition, so I cannot say if it used to be the same, better or worse.

First the minor gripes:

1) The idea of planes appeal me a lot to add wonder to adventures, although they should be visited only at high levels. Greek heros who visited Hades or Olympus were few and legendary for example. The concept of a whole plane-hopping campaign since the start is not completely bad but usually doesn't appeal me very much. IMO planes come too early in the typical setting.

2) Overload of planes! They are just too many. It looks like every single idea of a place weird enough is made into a new plane or a new layer, why can't planes have diversity as the material plane? It looks like you can have a desertic plane, an ice-frozen plane, a volcanic plane... well these area also exist on earth, all on the same planet.

3) Planes are too much organized... I liked the idea at first, but nowadays I think it's dull to have one outer plane for each alignment, plus one extra outer plane in the middle of each 2. Forgotten Realms cosmology feels fresher than the great wheel.

Then the bigger gripes. Below are the MOST interesting things about the planes, and the reason why an adventure on a plane could be really different and awesome. They are really good ideas, but for some reason the authors of the book really screw them up often! :\

4) Planar dimensions. The basic of "how planes are dislocated" is simple and yet brilliant: basically each plane has its own 3-dimensional space, so you cannot travel from one plane to another by just moving in any direction. Some planes are more complicated (ethereal and shadow) because they are coexistent with the material planes. Distances don't work at all between planes or they work but at a different "rate" than expected (shadow) and so do directions: you could have an archway which lead you to another plane, but if you enter and then go around the archway you don't come back.
IMO the authors have spoiled these often. For example, sometimes they say that 2 different planes are connected as two pieces of land, so how are they still 2 separate planes? The other way around: they divide planes into layers which work just like different planes, so what's the point of being layers if they are planes?

5) Planar traits. They should be THE reason why it's different to adventure on a plane. Many traits are easy, like the ones which just bestow a bonus/malus, or some continuous damage, or give spellcasting some tweak. My gripe is that they're just too little to be really interesting. There's an infinite number of ideas that the authors are too scared to throw into the game, because they'll be difficult to handle of course, but they should try! Ysgard and Limbo traits are probably the only ones which are already challenging IMO.

6) Life & Death, or my biggest gripe of all . What is the point of having outer planes which are said to be the realms of afterlife and yet they are full of LIVING people? And UNDEAD? What is the point of petitioners, which can be easily destroyed?