Philosophers have asked the question since the first Great Rectangle was released all those years ago. Just how big is the multiverse?
Well, it is not only infinite, it’s a number of infinite planes, so pretty damn big. Don’t think about it too much. It’s fantasy. In our own universe we are still struggling with the concept that an infinitely small singularity created the swirling massive explosion that is this place. Fantasy has a lot of room for WTF moments. I mean mysteries…that’s right…it has a lot of room for mysteries.
The planes, much like campaign settings, are just narrative hocus pocus. There is no definitive correct answer to their perfect form. Just like movies, books, and television shows, you are going to like some things and not like other things. I know this might come to a shock, but your tastes are the farthest thing from universals you can have. I can look back and respect the Dragonlance setting as a novel concept, but I’ve never had the urge to run a long-time Dragonlance game. I’m also not a big fan of Dark Sun. Those settings just do not sing to me. But I love Greyhawk (both its gritty side and strangeness—Barrier Peaks, Murlynd, and Lum the Mad), I love the Forgotten Realms, I like Ravenloft, and Planescape. From my preferences you can probably imagine the type of multiverse I like.
I like a porous sort of Aleister Crowley meets H.P. Lovecraft multiverse filled with competing powers and unimaginable danger. Sure there are powers for good in the universe, but they tend to be distant and the powers that you deal with more open are selfish, malicious, or both. That’s just the kind of fun and havoc that gets me going.
Dragonlance and Dark Sun benefit from a simple and closed cosmology. Their stories are clear, their issues intrinsically tied to their cosmology. They may also be harder to design for in the epic tier. But I’ll get to that next week.
See one of the reasons that I like a cluttered and sometimes confusing multiverse is that you basically design epic level adventures in the same way that you designed regular adventures—the enemies are just, well, epic. Now when I mean design, I mean it purely on a structural level. Often I can take a combat encounter from a lower level, change the monster, turn the terrain up to 11, and I have a game for the night. The important things is that there is a mess of critters and iconic NPCs within the entire canon (oh, and I hate that word in D&D btw…it just fits here) of D&D design, and come up with something fun. In a closed cosmology, you are often shoehorned into a small set of stories and conflicts predetermined by the setting. Hey, if you like those stories and conflict don’t let me dissuade you. They are fine, dandy, cool…just not my thing.
In fact, it is pointless to find the one size fits all multiverse for everyone. Just like you should not have one setting for every D&D fan. Heck most research I’ve seen suggest that most DMs run a homebrew and steal judiciously from many sources (as they should!) to create their own sauce. And that’s another reason that I think large multiverse systems are better for the game. It’s easy to close off areas of a large system to create the close system you want than it is to add complexity to a closed system. In many ways the cosmology of Dragonlance and Dark Sun were created by strategically closing off areas of the Great Rectangle. Dark Sun goes as far as chucking out the entirety of the Outer Planes. To be honest, that was a bold move that created a very distinct setting.
Here are the other sections of the Great Octagon: 1) the Worlds and its demiplanes including the fey realms; 2) The astral which actually overlaps the entire thing. 3) The elemental planes, which are a chaotic soup of churning elemental matter.
So what does my infinity look like? I do like the concept of the Great Rectangle/Wheel. I especially like the idea of a multiverse without an Outlands or a Concordant Opposition in the Outer Planes. A multiverse where the world and the surrounding elemental planes are in constant conflict, unaligned, the board of play for powers beyond the pale. Positive and negative energy planes…blah, I threw them out. I just don’t think they are necessary or fun. I’m keeping the astral as the strange place in between everything. I don’t think I’m going to define how it works, because there is no definition to how it words. It’s a magical resource, it is a place of threat. As for stealing from the new cosmology, you know I’m keeping the Feywild, although have it scattered, more dreamlike, something that seems more out of myth. I’m ditching Shadowfell, but I would keep some of tone and theme and ship them to Hades. Rather than having discrete elemental planes, I’m going with the Elemental Chaos, sans the Abyss, it gets returned to the Outer Planes. Here’s my list of the Outer Planes. I made some cuts.
4. The Seven Heavens (LG)
5. Elysium (NG)
6. Ysgard (CG)
7. Olympus (LN)
8. The Abyss (CE)
9. Hades (NE)
10. The Nine Hells (LE)
11 Pandemonium (CN)
Ah, ha! Look at me contradict myself. I tout the need for a complex multiverse and I cut it down to this Great Octagon. To be honest, some of the old planes were boring or repetitive. Happy Hunting Grounds, the Twin Paradises and Arcadia? Limbo and Pandemonium? Gehenna, Acheron, and Hades? It was only the evil sound ones I missed when I started snipping, and I’m still torn on whether or not to use Hades or Gehenna. But the buffer planes are just strange an unnecessary.
My map of the planes is a relative one. It’s a scholars representation of their location based on the fact that, not counting the astral, there is only abundant planar contact between those planes shown adjacent on the map. So while there are many gates to The Abyss and the Nine Hells on Hades, there are few to other planes.
The planes, of course, correspond to the traditional alignments, which I think only become interesting in the epic tier of play, but more on that later.