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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6395227" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is not correct. The "Great Wheel" was first mentioned in Dragon Magazine #8 (July 1977), where Gary Gygax had this to say about it (p 28):I foresee a number of important things arising from the adoption of this system. First, it will cause a careful rethinking of much of the justification for the happenings in the majority of D&D campaigns. Second, it will vastly expand the potential of all campaigns which adopt the system — although it will mean tremendous additional work for these DMs. Different planes will certainly have different laws and different inhabitants (although some of these beings will be familiar). Whole worlds are awaiting creation, complete invention, that is. Magical/technological/whatever items need be devised. And ways to move to these planes must be provided for discovery by players. Third, and worst from this writer’s point of view, it will mean that I must revise the whole of D&D to conform to this new notion. Under the circumstances, I think it best to do nothing more than offer the idea for your careful consideration and thorough experimentation. This writer has used only parts of the system in a limited fashion. It should be tried and tested before adoption.(One of the bigger issues - occupying much of Gygax's discussion on pp 4 and 28 - is how to handle the interaction between the "plus" bonuses on magic weapons and the planar location of a weapon and its target.)The scheme was also presented in the PHB, as an Appendix (number 4) and hence strictly optional. Neither the DMG nor the MM draws upon it - in the MM there are references to the Uppper Planes, and to the Lower Planes both in general and particular in the entries on Demons and Devils, but there is neither requirement nor reason to treat them as a "Great Wheel". (And the language of "Upper" and "Lower" does not particularly suggest a wheel arrangement, as opposed to something more like the 4e arrangement, with the heavens at the top and the Lower Planes at the bottom.)Concordant Opposition appeared in DDG (1980). To the best of my knowledge that was its first appearance, as somewhere for all the True Neutral gods to be located within the Great Wheel framework.MotP was published in 1987. That is 10 years after Dragon #8 and 8 years after the publication of the final core AD&D rulebook. MotP is not "canon", any more than DDG is "canon" - it is an optional supplement that most players of the original AD&D game would not have purchased or probably even heard of.Perhaps the biggest departure from what had come before in the MotP's presentation of the Outer Planes is that DDG had presented the various Mythoi as options for a GM to choose for his/her gameworld, whereas MotP treated them all as co-existing in its Outer Planes. This in itself is enough to flag MotP as just one way of handling planar matters in AD&D.</blockquote>

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