Lets build a multiverse...

[glass]

Inspired by the thread about the Great Wheel (or rather, some of the replies to it, including mine), I figured now would be a good time to create a planar structure that better fit my whims. And who better to help me with that endeavour than the assembled genius of ENworld?

So, things I want:

1) to retain the possibility of meeting gods (in their true forms)

2) to retain the possibility of meeting fiends in their own realms

3) to include some concept of the soul journeying to somewhere

4) to make ghosts make sense

5) to include planes of mirrors and the maybe far realm (just because I think they are cool).

6) spells still working more or less as normal (speak with dead, resurrection, reincarnation, teleport)

7) somewhere for celestial & fiendish animals, and elementals to come from

8) the ability to accommodate theological and metaphysical beliefs of different cultures

Things I definitely don't want:

9) living mortals wandering around in the afterlife.

10) the whole daemon/devil/demon/demodand divide.

11) vast numbers of outer planes.

Obviously, reconciling 1 & 8 or 1 & 9 is kinda tricky, so anyone have any ideas as t how this could be achieved? Any other comments? How might all this affect characters, spells, or monsters? Any other thoughts at all, really?


glass.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Let me tell you my cosmology, as it's pretty much in line with what you want. There are many material planes, each roughly planet-sized, all floating in the Ethereal. "Above" this is the Celestial Realms, and below is the Abyss. In the abyss, there are "homesteads" where the big bad demons (all fiends, no L/C distinction) live with their buddies. Almost all Arch-demons are deity-level power, and the only deities are the big-bad Demons, Angels, and "Other Things." Around all this is the Outer Darknessm roughly corresponding to the Far Realms, except that there's only one creature out there-Maledictus, the original King of the Hells. It's not all finished, yet. I've wanted to put a Mirror Realm in there forever, but haven't figured out what all it's going to be.

 

[Fieari]

In one of my campaigns, I've had some success with granting my PCs some time traveling capabilities in addition to planar travelling capabilities, and as such, I've had to deal with making a multiverse up. I never read planescape, so obviously I'm not using that.

My multiverse is considerably more vast, more unimaginably vast than what I've heard about the great wheel. It works by the iterativly expansive nature of dimensional mathematics.

Consider a world. Perhaps our world. And then all of the possibilities that could have occured had other events happened. If you consider all these possibilities to be points on a numberline, every world that can happen naturally without interferance is a Rational Number. Every world that requires outside interferance... such as someone leaving one world and entering another, altering it from that point on... those are irrational numbers like pi, or e. Between any two rational numbers, there are an infinite number of irrational numbers, and between any two irrational numbers, there are an infinite number of rational numbers.

Now, for any world described as such, the coordinate origin represents the most likely world... however, interestingly enough, the coordinate origin can be set on any given world... your homeworld, to be specific. Travel away from the coordinate origin is difficult, and the further you progress in either the positive or negative direction, the more difficult travel becomes. Eventually, the strain will become too much, and there is a point beyond which you may not travel. However, there are shadow realms you can travel too instead, which have slightly different rules.

These shadow realms, or etherial realms, or whatever... are represented by the COMPLEX number plain... that is to say, i and -i. For those that need a quick brush up on complex mathematics, 1i is described as the number such that when you square it, it equals -1. These numbers are perpendicular to the standard number line, forming a cartesian coordinate grid.

The point is that these worlds are combinations of worlds, and are mostly intangible, although they can be traveled too. ...er, that was an vastly inadequate explanation. Let me start using some math now.

Our homeworld is at the coordinate origin (0,0). For the sake of argument, let's say that the limit of physical is (-10,10). However, we wish to travel to 15. The point we need to travel to is the one such that a 90° angle is formed when you draw a line from your homeworld to the destination world, with a limited distance of 10 away from the homeworld.

Since 15 is the hypotenuse of our little right triangle, and 10 is the max of the "opposite" leg, the length of the "adjacent" leg is findable by the pythagorean theorem. c^2 = a^2 + b^2. b^2 = c^2 - a^2. b^2 = 15^2 - 10^2. b = (225 - 100)^.5 b = 125^.5 b = 11.18...

The longer b is, the more ghostly you appear in that world, and the more energy (magical or spiritual or physical, although the amount of physical energy required would be PHENOMINAL) must be expended in order to manifest in any capability. Positive i worlds are positive energy planes, and negative i worlds are negative energy planes. This provides an explanation for ghosts.

Side note: The length of a describes the similarity of the etherial world to your homeworld, in terms of what you see and move around with. The proportion of your homeworld to the destination world is a/(1/b), such that the shorter be is, the closer it is to the destination world. Alternatively, the proportion of the destination world to your homeworld is b/(1/a).

Also, if you feel like it, you could work out the exact coordinate position of the etherial world you're located on using sine or cosine, but I think that'd be an exercise in silliness as no real useful information would be derived from it. You could argue that there's no real use in calculating the above either, but it demonstrates the theory, and you can use common sense from there.

Now then, this all merely describes ONE WORLD. One plane, if you will (a 2d coordinate system is a plane, after all). One set of laws of physics, including flow direction of time and everything. If our one number line for physical worlds was the X coordinate system (and remember that the etherial worlds were i), then for other planes, we need the Y coordinate system.

---I need to break here, to get something to eat. I may or may not resume after I return depending on whether or not anyone is interested or cares.

 

[glass]

Let me tell you my cosmology, as it's pretty much in line with what you want. There are many material planes, each roughly planet-sized, all floating in the Ethereal. "Above" this is the Celestial Realms, and below is the Abyss. In the abyss, there are "homesteads" where the big bad demons (all fiends, no L/C distinction) live with their buddies. Almost all Arch-demons are deity-level power, and the only deities are the big-bad Demons, Angels, and "Other Things." Around all this is the Outer Darknessm roughly corresponding to the Far Realms, except that there's only one creature out there-Maledictus, the original King of the Hells. It's not all finished, yet. I've wanted to put a Mirror Realm in there forever, but haven't figured out what all it's going to be.

Sounds kinda cool, but a couple of questions if I may.

What happens to people after they die?

How do you handle elementals?

glass.

 

[Zappo]

If I were in your situation, I would start from the Great Wheel and make some changes to accomodate your requirements. Since you don't seem to want this, I'll give a shot at adapting the cosmology I used a long time ago for my OD&D games. The basis is that the Material, composed of elemental matter, is at the center of creation, surrounded by the Ethereal, which is surrounded by the Elemental planes. The Ethereal is a sort of black hole which pulls matter from the Elemental planes into itself, thus creating the Material. Beyond these lie (at the same metaphysical "distance" in opposite "directions") the plane of the celestial realms and the plane of the nether realms. They are largely composed of elemental matter, but not only - they are also made of faith, belief, good and evil. As a result, mortals cannot perceive these realms entirely, but they could get around well enough if they got there (a bit like looking at the 2d image of a 3d object). Beyond these are uncountable Abstract Planes, the vast majority of which lack the complexity required to be of any use (for example, lots of abstract planes consist of an infinite geometric plane and nothing else; many more are just void). The few abstracts that have any sort of complexity are always extremely alien, being entirely composed of non-elemental substance. Perceptions struggle to project them into something a brain can understand; even gods are uneasy here. Certainly though, whatever lives here would feel just as bad on the material plane. The Astral is simply where you are if you are not on any plane. You are on the Astral while traveling between planes, for example (or while teleporting, or while dying, or while being resurrected).

1) to retain the possibility of meeting gods (in their true forms)
2) to retain the possibility of meeting fiends in their own realms

This seriously contrasts with #9. In any case, in the cosmology described above, I ruled that it was practically impossible to enter either the celestial realms or the nether realms unless the local powers allowed you to do so (what, back then, passed for epic magic could do so though). I can see fiends doing so on a regular basis, to capture, corrupt and torment visitors.

3) to include some concept of the soul journeying to somewhere
4) to make ghosts make sense

Tie a stone to a rope and spin it very fast; your soul is the stone, your hand is the material plane, and the rope is the body. Picture the rope snapping. See what happens. The soul is literally flung into the Astral; depending on its faith, beliefs, goodness or evilness, it is drawn towards either the celestial realms or the nether realms as if by gravity (it doesn't go towards the elemental planes; being a soul it is unrelated to matter and not pulled towards it). Once there, since it is on plane not limited to elemental matter, its faith, beliefs etc actually take up a physical form. Incorporeal undead can happen for a number of reasons; according to what exactly happened, you'll end up with a different type of undead. Sometimes the soul isn't caught by either of the afterlife planes, and it is lost in the Astral for some time before becoming self-conscious again. Sometimes the soul is refused entrance into the realm it was drawn to, for who knows what reason. Sometimes the soul simply doesn't leave the Material; this can happen if the dead has left some incredibly important unfinished business, so important that its pull is stronger than the one of the afterlife planes. Sometimes the soul simply gets stuck in the Ethereal.

5) to include planes of mirrors and the maybe far realm (just because I think they are cool).

Check. They are Abstract Planes. Because of the gods' ban, the afterlives can't really be visited, but these are accessible. Being very far, it takes powerful magic, though.

6) spells still working more or less as normal (speak with dead, resurrection, reincarnation, teleport)

The soul's voyage strips most of its memories from it. These memories are left on the Astral. Any kind of resurrection magic does its best to find them and reattach them to the soul as it gets back, but that's no easy task so you usually end up with one less level. Speak with dead doesn't actually speak with the dead; it goes on the Astral, pulls together as much of the dead's memories as it can, and shakes the information out of them using the corpse as a way to manifest them. The whole construct also "remembers" a few traits of the soul which once kept it together, and might dislike the caster, so it may have right to a Will save. Teleport means getting on the Astral and then back on the Material (or whatever plane you were in) on a different point. Depending on the method you use to orient yourself in the Astral, and how far you can travel in there, you end up with different spells. Negative and positive energy effects aren't tied to any particular plane; they deal with a life energy which is something of a background radiation present everywhere, which pushes whatever stuff it can find (elemental matter, metaphysical matter, abstract matter, whatever) to organize itself in lifeforms (though most abstract planes are just too simple for any sort of life).

7) somewhere for celestial & fiendish animals, and elementals to come from

Celestial and fiendish creatures are created by the powers of the celestial and nether realms in imitation of Material life. As planar creatures, they are partially composed of metaphysical matter, which explains their traits. Elementals are native lifeforms of the elemental planes.

8) the ability to accommodate theological and metaphysical beliefs of different cultures

Both the Celestial Plane and the Nether Plane are infinite in size, and have infinite regions or "realms". Each realm has different characteristics.

9) living mortals wandering around in the afterlife.

Not unless someone wants them to.

10) the whole daemon/devil/demon/demodand divide.

You can organize the celestial and infernal hierarchies however you want.

11) vast numbers of outer planes.

4 elemental planes, the ethereal, the astral, 2 arbitrarily complex outer planes. And a vast number of abstract planes, but only very few are significant.

That's almost exactly what I played with back in the days; there were demons and elementals and gods and whatever, but the characters hardly ever travelled the planes (save for the ethereal and astral, but that's easy, they are the closest).