Where did the Great Wheel come from?

[InVinoVeritas]

Some of those buffer planes feel a tad extraneous though. That's how I feel about Twin Paradises/Bytopia, Arcadia, and Acheron. I've been mulling about just cutting them from my cosmology because it wouldn't matter (note that Bytopia is home to the gnome pantheon, how typical). Same thing with Tartarus/Carceri, although it has some cool sites which I'd probably just stick into the Abyss to save time. I thought I had made a post about this recently, but I can't find it anywhere.

Some of these planes were interesting in Planescape. Particularly the Beastlands. You don't want to call it the Happy Hunting Grounds in that setting, because only a clueless berk would want to go hunting there. Especially on the dinosaur plateau. Pandemonium also had some great stuff, but it's another plane that can easily get stuffed into the Abyss (since most of its layers are pretty similar anyway).

I quite liked the 1e Manual of the Planes. It described what each plane looked like, how to travel between them, etc. Acheron, in particular, was interesting--the land consisted of floating blocks. The deepest level consisted of floating, moving planes, so razor thin that there were rules for being cut by one as it passed.

I never saw anything from Planescape, so I never used any of that information. It's probably all built off the 1e info.

 

[Sammael]

Acheron has a lot of flavor. Bytopia does feel a bit extraneous, so I'd consider replacing it with an alternative plane from another cosmology. Arcadia was made to fit the "militant LG" archetype which seemed out of place in Mt. Celestia, and played a significant role in Planescape.

The one plane I always had trouble with was Gehenna. It always felt so... generically evil.

My favorite "buffer" planes include Ysgard, Acheron, and Pandemonium.

 

[Danzauker]

One thing that never made sense to me is the placement of Carceri and Gehenna.

Carceri, a prison plane, is chaotic? It seemed to me that lawful was more fitting.

Gehenna, an instable realm of magma is lawful? I think chaotic describes it better.

I used to swap them.

 

[Stoat]

My idle speculation is that Gary's development process was something like this:
1. Jot down a list of outer planes from mythology and legend that would be fun to include in the D&D cosmology.
2. Realize that there are more planes on the list than there are alignments.
3. Notice that by adding in one extra plane between each of the alignments, there is now space for everything on the list, with a few gaps left over.
4. Spend some time on wikipedia reading reference books to fill in the gaps in the planar wheel.

I reckon the planes added in step 4 are the ones that feel extraneous

One of the reasons I'm curious about the topic is because my idle speculation is that the thought process went more like this:

1. Draw out a diagram with space for 16 outer planes based on alignment.

2. Fill in the diagram with mostly classical references that relate more or less to the underworld.

3. Describe the resulting planes with flavor text.

Some of the buffer planes really appeal to me. Acheron, for example, is probably my favorite outer plane. But (a) the name originally applied to a river in the underworld, not to an underworld itself, and (b) I don't think anything about the plane of Acheron has any parallel in real world mythology. Thus, it looks to me like "I need a lawful lawful evil plane" came before "I need a place to put this groovy mythological concept."

 

[Orius]

I quite liked the 1e Manual of the Planes. It described what each plane looked like, how to travel between them, etc. Acheron, in particular, was interesting--the land consisted of floating blocks. The deepest level consisted of floating, moving planes, so razor thin that there were rules for being cut by one as it passed.

I never saw anything from Planescape, so I never used any of that information. It's probably all built off the 1e info.

It's the same in Planescape. Layer one is giant metal cubes. Layer two is more cubes, but the layer also turns anything there into stone after a while. Layer three is polyhedra of all sorts, as if the Far Realm dumped a stupendously gargantuan Crown Royal dice bag all open all over the layer. Layer four is the nasty shards of ice that can slice you in half, some miles long, some so small they can't be seen. I'm pretty sure Planescape took all the old 1e material and just added even more stuff to it. And 3e basically summed up that material in MotP.

I'm surprised Acheron is so popular. It's an interesting place to send a party (like all the lower planes ) but I really can't figure out how to fit something like that into my cosmology. I think the real problem is that it doesn't have it's own race of outsiders, except the bladelings, but they're not really that significant.

I think maybe that's the problem with the buffer planes. They don't have their own major planar races, which makes them feel less important. Celestia had/had the archons, Elysium has the guardinals, Arborea has the eladrin, Mechanus has the modrons, the Outlands have the rilmani, Limbo has the slaadi, the Nine Hells have the devils, and the Abyss has the demons. The yugoloths use both Gehenna and the Gray Waste. There are the gehreleths on Carceri, but they're nothing in the grand scheme of planar affairs.

The buffer planes sometimes are home to various pantheons, so you've got orcs and goblins on Acheron, gnomes on Bytopia, and the Norse gods on Ysgard. And I'm more interested in a cosmology where the gods' realms are seperate planes away from the rest of the outer planes themselves.

Or maybe it's that some planes for me just don't have as strong a hook. That's why I'm thinking of just dropping them in a more customized cosmology. That's the case with Arcadia, Bytopia, and Acheron, they just don't have enough for me to put them into my campaign. Celestia works pretty well as the main good outer plane, and the same for the Nine Hells and the Abyss for evil. Bytopia and Elysium feel redundant, and while I like some of the aspects of the guardinals, good outsiders are already pretty well covered by angels, archons, and eladrin. Ysgard has some cool stuff, but I'd probably just use the top layer as a divine realm of a war god. Pandemonium is also a plane I like, but the layers are similar enough that I could probably just use it as a single Abyssal layer, using the wind-filled caverns as the main layer, while the bottom layer of Pandemonium is on the outer edge of the network of caverns, or maybe there's bubbles and pockets in between the caverns. The lower Gray Waste would be turned into the realm of the god of death, while I'd combine Oinos and Gehenna into one plane: have the volcanoes floating above a bleak and blasted disease-ridden landscape where the armies of the devils and demons perpetually fight the futile battles of the Blood War, while the yugoloths watch over them from their citadels above.

 

[Shemeska]

I think the real problem is that it doesn't have it's own race of outsiders, except the bladelings, but they're not really that significant.

Well it used to have its own race of outsiders, the Hassitor, who true to some of the themes of the plane, drove their race to self-extinction by perpetual war. The only thing left behind were their massive, mobile fortress constructs (the Hassitoriums) which were amalgums of iron and animated flesh. I spent an entire campaign that partially revolved around their relation to the bladelings of Zoronar and the possibility of their return.

I think maybe that's the problem with the buffer planes. They don't have their own major planar races, which makes them feel less important.

It's an in-game artifact perhaps from the so-called buffer planes arising much later in the grand scheme of things versus the planes of the pure alignments. Some of them perhaps arose naturally by the gradual mixing of the pure alignments, or possibly by intent such as Carceri perhaps forming as a result of the exile of Apomps from the Waste. No or few native races because they don't represent any of the true basic alignments (whose original natives predated pretty much anything else in the D&D/AD&D cosmos).

Some of the buffer planes had some seriously cool ideas however. I personally found Arcadia a lot more interesting than Mount Celestia, and Pandemonium, Gehenna, Carceri, and Acheron saw massive use in my home games.

 

[Lidgar]

One of the reasons I'm curious about the topic is because my idle speculation is that the thought process went more like this:

1. Draw out a diagram with space for 16 outer planes based on alignment.

2. Fill in the diagram with mostly classical references that relate more or less to the underworld.

3. Describe the resulting planes with flavor text.

Perhaps that was the case. But reading Gary's early writing, I think it likely that the "buffer" planes were developed initially to act just as their names imply - buffer between the alignment extremes. Gary notes that you could just walk from plane to plane along the great wheel:

A traveler could also move to into an adjacent Plane...just by walking. Travel, by walking, could or should be limited to only one Plane to either side of the Plane that the traveler started in.

Based on the above description, it makes sense to include the buffer planes initially to give some space between disparate alignments.