D&D 5E Re-Imagining the D&D Planes as MtG Color Pie

[Aldarc]

I quite like the shards of Alara model and it has the benefit of already providing details of these planes of existence if you can find the original articles. Other planes are mentioned in the cards, some of which might make the basis for a plane of existence (for instance, Serra's Realm is a plane of floating earth motes populated by angels).

Looking through the Alara model does give a nice sense for an alternate way to do a five planar model, one which allows each plane to have a bit more nuance and overlap with other colors.

As for entities, using the base 1 colour model:
White: angels/celestials
Blue: air/water elemental-typed (elementals, genies, etc). Also clockwork entities like the modron.
Black: any and all fiends, undead
Red: earth/fire elemental typed, chaos creatures (slaad).
Green: fey

There would certainly be a bit more nuance with more colour combos (for instance, maybe unicorns are celestials from the white/green plane and night hags are from the green/black plane), but for a basic 5 colour model this is how I would assign creatures to them.

Yea, having a "type" of each extraplanar entity associated to each color would make a lot of sense. Like fey would be Green, and angels would be White.

This may be the easiest way to go about this. Start first with what denizens would exist in the basic five colors and then shift around as appropriate, if one chooses to expand it to other models.

I kinda like the MtG setup for planes as one can frame conflicts in terms of the color pie. For example, fey oppose fiends and modron, while fiends oppose fey and celestials, and celestials oppose fiends and dragons (possible chaos representatives), while dragons oppose celestials and modron, and modron oppose fey and dragons.

 

[Aldarc]

Thinking about it further, I wonder if it would be better (or at least more interesting) to put psionics with Blue. So Illithids, aboleths, and a bunch of other psionic themed monsters may come from Blue, where thought, mind, and logic pervade. Illithids may venture close to Blue-Black, but represent the ambitious desire for the mind to move towards perfection.

 

[TwoSix]

Thinking about it further, I wonder if it would be better (or at least more interesting) to put psionics with Blue. So Illithids and a bunch of other psionic themed monsters may come from Blue, where thought, mind, and logic pervade. Illithids may venture close to Blue-Black, but represent the ambitious desire for the mind to move towards perfection.

Considering psionics has a strong thematic of "will becoming reality", it seems to mesh quite well with Blue. Illithids as Blue-Black also seems quite appropriate, as aberrations that subvert natural processes to maintain themselves seem like a perfect Green foil.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm sorry, my mistake, there are 31 combos, including 4 color and colorless:View attachment 123313

Looking back at this thread, one could potentially just grab this image for a diagram of the cosmos and use the names given here as those for the planes, including the ones that come from the Ravnica guilds.

 

[Cadence]

There is a faint correlation between colors and alignments: blue = lawful, black = evil, red = chaotic, green = neutral and white = good. This could be used as a basis draft for mapping.

Isn't white more Lawful than good?

 

[AliasBot]

Isn't white more Lawful than good?

It's both, in pretty much equal measure. I saw someone point out, a while back, that the D&D alignment system lines up perfectly with White's relationship with its enemy colors: White sees itself as the Good to Black's Evil, and as the Lawful to Red's Chaotic.

 

[Cadence]

It's both, in pretty much equal measure. I saw someone point out, a while back, that the D&D alignment system lines up perfectly with White's relationship with its enemy colors: White sees itself as the Good to Black's Evil, and as the Lawful to Red's Chaotic.

More on white:

What does the color care about? What does the color represent?
Caught between the nature of green and the nurture of blue, white is all about balance. White understands the importance of valuing the past but also sees the importance of planning for the future. More than any other color white makes use of symbolism. In addition, white is the color of civilization. As such, the list of things it represents is slightly longer than the other colors:

The Great White Way | MAGIC: THE GATHERING

Welcome to White Week! Several months ago we dedicated a week to green. I promised that this would be the first of five such “color” weeks. This week is the second in the series, white. As I did last time, I’m going to spend my column focusing on the f...

magic.wizards.com

On Black:

Amorality—Black is not immoral, as black doesn't believe in the concept of morality. Morality is a human construction meant to allow the weak to justify a false position of strength over those more powerful than themselves. Life is not divided into good and evil but rather into what must be done and what needn't be done.

In the Black Revisited | MAGIC: THE GATHERING

Mark continues his re-examination of color philosophy, this week taking a look at the mentalities that drive black to do the things it does.

magic.wizards.com

 

[Marandahir]

Rather than Red-Green, or Red-White or Blue-Black, I prefer to think in color wheel combos (with lightening or darkening based off of the addition of white and black).

So for the above combos, it would be Yellow, Pink, Navy, Grey.

Tri-color combos would get into tertiary colors and lighter or darker variants of secondary colors (or muted pastels of primaries).

 

[Wishbone]

It's both, in pretty much equal measure. I saw someone point out, a while back, that the D&D alignment system lines up perfectly with White's relationship with its enemy colors: White sees itself as the Good to Black's Evil, and as the Lawful to Red's Chaotic.

See, this is why I like RWB as a wedge because it just throws that all for a loop.

 

[Orius]

Some interesting ideas here, although I would put Arcadia solidly into White -- Arcadia is good, but also has a lot of very rigid order and that is very much the essence of White.