Ideas for other Planes?

[Chimera245]

I need some ideas for other planes of existence in a campaign setting I'm making up.

Right now, I'm having the most trouble thinking up some good Alignment-based planes. "Outer Planes" as the Great Wheel labels them. I need one for each of the nine alignments, including TN, and I'm having huge writer's block.

Unlike the Outer Planes in the Great Wheel, the gods of this world aren't particularly drawn to these planes over others, and they're pretty evenly spread over all the planes of existence.

Anyone got any good ideas to get me started?

Also, if it matters, the general level of technology is about that of the wild west.

 

[Haltherrion]

It's hard to help without knowing more about the planes and your world. For instance, for the planes you aren't struggling with, have you already established a method by which you demonstrate the plane's alignment?

A short answer: consider just a single plane apart from the prime plane. In the same way that the princes of the blood in the Princes of Amber books influenced their local shadow, the local resident god could shape his region of the super-plane. Saves you the trouble of defining 9 planes. After all, how many of these planes are likely to get used in your campaign?

But some thoughts on aligned planes, these could be combined or used alone:

• Terrain expresses alignment
  • L/G has straight streams, regular mountain ranges, round lakes
  • C/G is a random jumble of terrains with little reason. Maybe the plane is just randomly wandering floating shards in the air.
• Weather
  • L/G has no weather extremes and a orderly progression of weather (sun, clouds, showers, clouds, sun, etc.)
  • C/G has sudden changes and wild extremes
• Creatures
  • L/G have friendly creatures who also keep an eye on visitors (maybe they need help, maybe they are going to do something wrong). Creatures tend to be social or in herds/folks with clear hiearchy
  • C/G creatures are mostly solitary, friendly enough but indifferent to what others do.
• Planes of ascending knowledge:
  • L/G is a spectacular massive ziggurat of many levels. Each level housing temples and a city. Passage to the next level requires clear, regular progression in terms of knowledge and deeds. Maybe everyone on one level wears the same color robe.
  • C/G there is a wild mountain, with greater knowledge higher up but while progress requires good deeds or knowledge, the seeker must hunt for someone to advance him and the requirements are capricious or at least different from supplicant to supplicant.
• Planes defined by a central city that personifies the alignment.
  • L/G ordered, well policed city with walls, gates, procedures for everything.
  • C/G randomly grown city were the citizens ensure no one suffers to much but there is no formal law, hierarchy, etc.
• Abstract planes
  • L/G is a 3D cubic lattice with each point an ordered city or formal garden and each path between points a regular road, straight river, path of trees, etc.
  • C/G every place is full of random and odd portals that can take you almost anywhere else in the plane. The first 'node' is a wild moor with rabbit holes and crossed trees that serve as portals, the second place is a jumbled city built in a series of twisting canyons, random doorways at as portals, often changing.

Just some thoughts...

 

[Diamond Cross]

The plane of spaghetti!

 

[Quickleaf]

It's hard to help without knowing more about the planes and your world. For instance, for the planes you aren't struggling with, have you already established a method by which you demonstrate the plane's alignment?

Ditto. Can't help offer something so intricately tied to setting as planes without knowing *something* about your setting.

 

[Stormonu]

Lawful Good = Paradise/Heaven; grand gardens, "expensive" homes for free, food and livestock give themselves over to use.

Lawful Neutral = Mechanus; An unending city of rules, law and lawyers. Everything has its place and its time, moving with clockwork precision.

Neutral = Happy Hunting Grounds; The natural order of the world, but a place far more temperate and fair. Every action feels the full brunt of its consequences; good actions are paid with goodness, evil actions with evilness.

Chaotic Neutral = Limbo; motes of earth tumble with streams of fire and stars that chase the moon across the sky; time passes in the blink of an eye, then slows, taking ages for a mere second to pass

Chaotic Evil = Abyss; the world is turned on its side into a great cliff; the weak are shoved downward, the strong dig caves into the side of the cliff and do as they will to any who intrude. Everything is against those who dwell here and the environment is meant to kill those too weak to do anything to survive. Blood and flesh of visitors is the only food available and bone and skin are the only implements with which to build.

Lawful Evil = Hell; Those with the will and the insight dominate their lessers, building empires in lands too hostile to support those who do not work together. The earth burns those who tread unprotected on it and plants and animals are poison to those who do not know how to properly harvest them. Unlike the Abyss, the world isn't out to kill those here - only to test them bitterly.

Hope this gets you started.

 

[TarionzCousin]

You could always borrow from Paizo's outer planes book: The Great Beyond. It is alignment-based, made for Pathfinder, with an almost 1E / 2E feel. IMHO, it is very well done and has many great ideas and hooks.

[MENTION=11697]Shemeska[/MENTION] wrote it.

There is also Beyond Countless Doorways by Monte Cook and other Planescape authors. It isn't as alignment-based, but has several interesting places.

 

[Chimera245]

I guess some background info would be good... Sorry, I kinda typed that up in a hurry.

For starters, there are three Material Planes. Each one is surrounded by a different theme of other planes. Another Material Plane is actually surrounded by the Elemental Planes, rather than the Alignment-based ones. The third Material Plane, I haven't exactly decided what its theme is yet, but I want it to be more subtle than alignments. I've thought up two planes so far, a plane based on the "Elemental Plane of Wood" from Manual of the planes, which I'm tentatively calling Yggdrasil, and a giant plane-sized snake wrapped around the world that I'm tentatively calling Oroboros.

The Astral Plane connects everything, as it does in the majority of cosmologies. Different planes will have variants of the Ethereal and/or Shadow planes, but they'll be different for different worlds/planes. I was going to design them last, and base them on whatever it is they connect to.

There will be a great big hub city, fulfilling the same general role as Sigil, that sits inbetween all three worlds.

The Gods aren't specifically drawn to any particular kind of plane, like the way you find the vast majority on the Outer Planes in the Great Wheel, so they're pretty evenly spread throughout the cosmology.

I haven't decided yet where the souls of the dead go yet.

 

[Haltherrion]

Given that description, I'm not sure I'd create alignment planes. You have plenty of planes to use already and specifically want your gods in unaligned planes. Since inspiration doesn't seem to be striking, just omit the extra planes. The lack of inspiration for aligned planes may be your subconscious telling you that you don't need the extra planes

 

[Scott DeWar]

This is just a thought expirament on a particular plane that may spark somone on your question. Forgive me if I step on toes for the divergent subject.

on the plane of shadow, do primaterial planer creatures look as shadows to the shades of shadow?

 

[Chimera245]

I do want the alignment planes to exist. If they didn't, I'd either have to say that Angels, Demons, Slaad, Inevitables and the like don't exist, or I'd have to move them onto other planes. Not to mention that the corresponding Material Plane would need a new theme.

This Material Plane is going to be the place where you run onto the vast majority of Half-Celestials and Tieflings and the like.

The Material Plane surrounded by Elemental planes is going to have Elementals and Genies and Dragons where that one has Angels and Demons, and so in that world you'd see a lot of Genasi and Half-Dragons and such.

And the last Material Plane is going to be a mismatched place where you see a lot of those half-human, half-something creatures, like centaurs and mermaids, as well as things like chimeras, owlbears, and whatnot.

I don't want to remove Angels, Demons, etc. because they're really cool, and I don't want to spread them into the rest of the cosmos, because it would steal a bit of the other worlds' thunder.