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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6384092" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think that the major planes that influence the Planescape setting can be conceived of as a ring. And this is a favored concept, thanks in part to the fact that it keeps the Unity of Rings theme. But it is explicitly only one conceptualization, only as useful as those who use it find it to be. The Great Wheel isn't True, it's just one view, explicitly. They could also be conceived of as islands on an astral sea.Or plateaus and valleys on a great mountain.Or landings on an infinite staircase.Or moons orbiting the material world. Or whatever.PS tackles these largely by insisting over and over again that this depiction of the planes as a ring is only a model, only one way some people conceive of them. A lot of people. For a good in-setting reason. But drawing a map is always an exercise in interpretation, and other people draw their maps differently. Thanks to the Center of All concept, there is no truly honest map, only maps that depict the multiverse from a given perspective -- we all see the world as if our experience is the center of it. PS wasn't in any real hurry to describe or define these other possibilities (because they were infinite in possibility and anyway weren't as resonant with the setting's specific themes as the Ring model...and because 2e was after all an edition of One True Cosmology), but it left plenty of room for that. Like this from the Campaign Setting:Again, explicitly stating that however one draws the planes, it reflects more on the presenter than it does on the actual relationship of things. Infinite space is impossible to map, and on a functional level, it's not like getting from Arborea to Ysgard is really any easier in a game session than getting from Arborea to the Quasiplane of Ash. So draw the planes however makes sense to you. The Great Wheel makes sense to a lot of people, but it explicitly is not eternal and inviolable gospel Truth beyond reproach. It's only a model.</blockquote>

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