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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9349628" data-attributes="member: 907">This is a bit of a tangent to the Greyhawk stuff, but it's not like we don't digress every now and then.The original boxed set from 1991 didn't say much at all about planar stuff. There was a list of monsters from the MC appendices at the time that the designers felt appropriate, which included elementals and genies. It also had this text: "Fiends from the Outer Planes Appendix (MC10) can travel to and from Athas at will, but do so rarely, only when summoned by dragons or great wizards." The spells chapter, which does modify some spells to make them more Dark Sun-appropriate (mostly nerfing ways to create water or metal) has nothing to say about any planar travel or summoning spells. There are also several adventures in which you'll find monsters from other planes. My impression is that there's nothing preventing planar stuff on Athas, it's just that it's a backwater which doesn't have much to do with the planes.Dragon Kings expands somewhat on this, mainly by suggesting that epic-level clerics and druids should be spending a portion of their time on the elemental planes to deal with stuff there. There's also the priest sourcebook, Earth Air Fire and Water, which gives Athas an alternate set of para-elemental planes: Sun replacing Smoke as the fire/air plane, Rain replacing Ice as the air/water plane, and Silt replacing Ooze as the water/earth plane (Magma is still Magma). This is, I think, the first inklings of Athas cosmology not being D&D-standard.The revised boxed set from 1995 is much the same as the original boxed set with regard to planar stuff – that is, rather silent on the issue. It does however refer to the Monstrous Manual rather than the Monstrous Compendium for appropriate monsters, and it includes Baatezu, Githyanki, Tanar'ri, and Yugoloths in the list.The real change comes with Defilers and Preservers from 1996, a wizard sourcebook. This defines the planes of the Grey and the Black, which were first mentioned in the novels (I think the Grey featured some in the Obsidian Oracle, and the Black was definitely a thing in the Cerulean Storm and might have been mentioned as early as the Amber Enchantress). There's also a sidebar on how the Grey impedes planar travel to and from Athas, moreso toward the Astral/Outer planes than to the Ethereal/elemental planes. But this is the first mention that planar travel works differently in Dark Sun.</blockquote>

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