The planes

[Dulenheim]

I'm getting to work on my campaign's rules errata and settings booklet, and i just started working on the idea of planes. The big issue i have is that I'm not entirely sure what the planes are.

I have thus far assumed that the planes work like separated dimensions or worlds that are somehow connected to the plane in which the players exist.

am I far from the truth?

[Arcane_Secrets]

I'm getting to work on my campaign's rules errata and settings booklet, and i just started working on the idea of planes. The big issue i have is that I'm not entirely sure what the planes are.

I have thus far assumed that the planes work like separated dimensions or worlds that are somehow connected to the plane in which the players exist.

am I far from the truth?

It depends on the setting and the concepts involved. In some game systems (oWOD I've got a lot of familiarity with) there were planes that were 'adjacent' and were reachable by characters depending on their belief systems. Their appearance and features were dependent on analogues in the common world, but there wasn't necessarily a clear correlation.

Other planes are more remote. I'd say that elemental planes tend to connect with a world, but belief planes of good or evil or of a specific belief system or supernatural beings tend to be more remote, and only connect at certain points.

Does that help?

[MesiDoomstalker]

I'm getting to work on my campaign's rules errata and settings booklet, and i just started working on the idea of planes. The big issue i have is that I'm not entirely sure what the planes are.

I have thus far assumed that the planes work like separated dimensions or worlds that are somehow connected to the plane in which the players exist.

am I far from the truth?

Partially. Depending on the plane, it may be directly connected or completly seperate.

Plane of Shadow and Ethereal Plane are directly connected to the Prime Material Plane and have certain areas that have weaker walls between them than normal.

Other planes like Fire or Celestia are seperate but some of those may be coexistant or adjecent to one another. If you have Planar Handbook, it has a nifty little diaghram that explains it all.

[Psyren]

Manual of the Planes has nice diagrams too.

Astral Plane is the sea/glue/space holding them all together.

[Tokuhara]

I adore the Realm of Dreams and Nightmares. People enter it every day. We had a "Mirror Campaign" that happened in our dreams.

The campaign was that the Quori of Eberron had infected the World of Greyhawk, and we had to fix both worlds. We started seeing creatures of our nightmares in the "Real World" and people started being trapped "Behind the Veil," forcing us to take naps during an adventure. Later on, we found out that if you cast an electricity spell into a pool of naturally forming water (such as a puddle, a lake, or a leaking water pipe), you could be transfered to the Realm of Dreams. To exit, we had to find a Quori Shard in the demiplane and smash it. It saved our butts in a few situations (namely, when 4 Dream Masters had us cornered)

[MesiDoomstalker]

Manual of the Planes has nice diagrams too.

Astral Plane is the sea/glue/space holding them all together.

Gah! Manual of the Planes has the diagrahm I was thinking of. Planar Handbook would be useful as well of course.

[Calanon]

I adore the Realm of Dreams and Nightmares. People enter it every day. We had a "Mirror Campaign" that happened in our dreams.

Today I played a game within a dream world that was inside of a dream world while we were sleeping inside of a dream world :smalltongue: We didn't even last 5 seconds into the game before someone made an Inception reference :smallbiggrin:

[Tvtyrant]

Today I played a game within a dream world that was inside of a dream world while we were sleeping inside of a dream world :smalltongue: We didn't even last 5 seconds into the game before someone made an Inception reference :smallbiggrin:

lol! I had a campaign end with the players discovering that they were one person as part of the god-dream cycle end recently. Each person lives out an entirely different life each time they dream, but are themselves a dream of a different person. However time doesn't work linearly in the system and everyone at all times is actually the same person in different stages of the cycle... And then they decided to kill everyone to wake themselves up :C

[Eldan]

I prefer this (http://zen79.deviantart.com/art/The-Planescape-Multiverse-35619350) diagram, generally.

Short explanation:

These are, basically, other worlds or other dimension that are loosely connected to the Material Plane, where most campaigns are set.

The Elemental or Inner Planes are the building blocks of matter. The four elements and two energies, from which everything else is built. These are hostile, monolithic and enormous, and inhabited by genies and elementals.

The ethereal plane connects the elemental planes to the material plane. It's a hazy quasi-realm inhabited by ghosts and ghostly creatures, and it is where spells like Etherealness take you. From here, you can see the material plane, but not really interact with it, which is how ghosts move through matter.

The Astral Plane is the plane of thoughts and ideas. Teleportation moves you through this plane, as does planeshift. It's the plane outside all the other planes, in which all others are contained. It has no time, no matter, and no real space, at it is, quite literally, the empty space that contains only the potential for other things to exist.

The Outer Planes are the realms of belief. Everything mortals on the Material Plane believe becomes real here. On the outer planes, you will find Heaven and Hell, Olympia and Hades, Asgard and Niflheim, and the divine realms of all the gods of your campaign setting. It is inhabited by angels, demons, devils, celestials, creatures of pure law and creatures of pure chaos.