Planar Configurations; How Do You Design The Multiverse?

[Shiroiken]

Not something i normally think about, since it almost never comes up, even in games with planar adventures. Unless the connections are relevant for an adventure, the information needed about the planes is fairly limited (mechanical changes, description, denizens, etc.).

That said, the Great Wheel (which is really a rectangle from 1E) is my default. I like the idea of switching things up for specific campaigns though, as universe building is a hobby of mine. My current idea I've floated around is that there are only three planes of existence: the Heavens (home of the gods, celestials, and redeemed souls), the Mortal Realm (material plane), and the Underworld (basically Hell, but with the Abyss underneath it). Mortals who die go to the underworld to be tortured by devils (under the rule of the god of the underworld) until the god of Justice feels they have suffered enough for their sins and are taken to Heaven. Souls driven insane by the devils are tossed into the Abyss to be torn apart by demons (who are the remnants of the nothing that existed before the All-Father brought the universe into being)

 

[jgsugden]

How often have we watched a TV show and noted an inconsistency? "Wait, I thought he was from Chicago, not St Louis?" "Why was he on a date with Stella - he's married to Ellen!" "He struggled to lift the back end of a car off the ground last week, but this week he is lifting and throwing a garbage truck?"

When you don't have specific answers to a question when it arises and wait to establish the answer "As needed", you often end up creating these types of inconsistencies. Further, knowing your world can make it easier to pull the PCs deeper into the story. You can spin more complex tales together when you're not making up everything as you go along.

 

[cbwjm]

Normally I would use the great wheel. When our campaign was moving briefly I to the elemental planes I decided that it was a mix of the 4e elemental chaos I the centre where all elemental planes mixed and the elemental borders formed para elemental planes (I think this might actually be the 5e version)

Recently, I've been playing around with having the actual cleric domains the greater planes of by the universe. Where these planes intersect, other lesser planes are formed. The material plane is formed from the intersection of all of the greater planes.

 

[TwoSix]

How often have we watched a TV show and noted an inconsistency? "Wait, I thought he was from Chicago, not St Louis?" "Why was he on a date with Stella - he's married to Ellen!" "He struggled to lift the back end of a car off the ground last week, but this week he is lifting and throwing a garbage truck?"

When you don't have specific answers to a question when it arises and wait to establish the answer "As needed", you often end up creating these types of inconsistencies. Further, knowing your world can make it easier to pull the PCs deeper into the story. You can spin more complex tales together when you're not making up everything as you go along.

The worldbuilding threads are in the other subforum.

 

[TwoSix]

I use a modified Great Wheel arrangement (found here), with the following changes:

1) Limbo IS the Elemental Chaos; the 4 elemental planes are stable large pockets within Limbo.
2) Limbo is the birthplace of material reality. The chaotic planes in general are home to faeries, demons, and other primordial monsters.
3) Arborea and the Gray Waste are close to the Material Plane; functionally, they are the Feywild and the Shadowfell.
4) Mechanus is replaced by Nirvana, which is an endless ocean that dissolves into stars. It's functionally the Astral Sea, and the home of all platonic concepts. (Limbo is the birthplace of physical reality, Nirvana is the place where conceptual reality is held before slowly being recycled back into Limbo.)

 

[Hussar]

How often have we watched a TV show and noted an inconsistency? "Wait, I thought he was from Chicago, not St Louis?" "Why was he on a date with Stella - he's married to Ellen!" "He struggled to lift the back end of a car off the ground last week, but this week he is lifting and throwing a garbage truck?"

When you don't have specific answers to a question when it arises and wait to establish the answer "As needed", you often end up creating these types of inconsistencies. Further, knowing your world can make it easier to pull the PCs deeper into the story. You can spin more complex tales together when you're not making up everything as you go along.

And yet, and yet, despite these inconsistencies, those TV shows remain incredibly popular and people keep watching them. IOW, other than a small handful of folks, no one actually cares. It's inconsistent? So what? Most folks couldn't give a rat's petoot.

 

[Yaarel]

The problem is, the 5e Players Handbook fails to support DM world-building. If the official rules-as-written support DM world-building, then it will happen. If the official rules-as-written fail to support the DM, then creative worldbuilding will diminish and go extinct.

 

[Sunseeker]

The elemental and energy planes are the material plane as seen through a prism.

The Plane of Fire is the material but the mountains are constantly erupting volcanoes, rivers of lava, etc..
The Plane of Earth is like that scene of the earth changing from Fantasia on a constant basis. Less volcanoes and more earthquakes.
The Plane of Water is like a Waterworld version of the world.
The Plane of Air is constantly storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, duststorms, etc...
The Celestial Plane is everything in its most pure and ideal form.
The Plane of Shadow/Abyss/Shadowfel is everything in its most corrupt and debased form.
The Ethereal Plane is a ghostly version of the material plane. Sort of like a planar limbo.
----
And I add two more planes:
The Plane of Energy (arcane energy as opposed to positive and negative energy). It's like a magical fairy version of the world.
The Plane of Life, which is a savage version of the world, with life taken to the extreme, everything bigger, faster, meaner and hungrier.

I use a more standard IRL cosmos though, there are other planets out there, other stars, and planes are not "infinite borderless expanses". So you can both travel to other worlds, and to other planes of other worlds. As long as the world exists in the material plane, it exists in the energy planes. The planar version of the world can be destroyed (or altered) which will then have mirrored consequences for the material plane. Total destruction of a planar counterpart would mean that element is effectively stripped from the Material version of the world.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The problem is, the 5e Players Handbook fails to support DM world-building. If the official rules-as-written support DM world-building, then it will happen. If the official rules-as-written fail to support the DM, then creative worldbuilding will diminish and go extinct.

Why on Earth would world-building be in the PHB? It's in the DMG, where it belongs, and they devote quite a bit of space to world-building, plane-building/planar configuration, etc.

 

[Oofta]

My world is based on norse mythology, the great tree Yggdrasil. The 9 worlds of that mythology have been tweaked a little bit so the prime material plan is Midgard, the ShadowFell is Nifleheim and so on.

So the planes exist, but they don't exactly map to the traditional D&D planes. It's also a little more difficult to get between the planes than a simple plane-shift spell. The spell opens a door, you still have to travel the "tree" of existence and there may be guardians along the way. Heimdal guards the Bifrost bridge as an example.

Of course you could also view the tree merely as a representation of the planes that mortal minds can comprehend.