Planar Popularity
September 26th, 2011
Hello, and welcome to an extraplanar episode of Dark Designs. If you’re wondering what makes today’s article extraplanar, the answer isn’t that I’m submitting it from Arborea (nor from a more necromancer-friendly plane, either, if there is such a thing. Generally, the sorts of planes one might think of as “necromancer friendly” really aren’t friendly to anyone, at all). No, today’s article is the first article in a theme week that I’m very excited about: Extraplanar Week.
Why so excited about Extraplanar Week, you ask? A fair question, to which there can be only one answer: “The planes are cool, stupid, what’s wrong with you?” This isn’t just me talking, either. One of the few things that’s as likely to excite your players as saying that you intend to run an epic campaign is saying that you intend to run a planar campaign (and more experienced players will probably be more excited about the extra planes than the extra levels).
The exact reason for this increased enthusiasm is difficult to pin down. After all, regular, boring, non-planar campaigns aren’t really all that regular or boring. They’ll likely contain powerful magic, nasty dragons, evil overlords, looming volcanoes, the whole nine yards. Even low-magic settings still manage to find plenty of room for excitement (albeit mostly by being gritty and dark). So, what makes the planes so special?
The first reason that comes to mind is the fact that everything’s bigger on the planes. I don’t just mean in gross, physical size, though generally speaking even a single infinitely-large plane will probably outsize any given material world. No, I mean that the spirit of things is larger on the planes. I guess it’s sort of like what the third edition Dungeon Master’s Guide had to say about the importance of cinematics: a fight is good. A fight on the edge of a cliff is better. A fight on the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake of lava, well, now, that’s interesting. But perhaps not quite as interesting as if that fight was, say, between a legion of devils and a horde of demons, and the lake of lava also, you know, consumedsouls. For some reason souls always make things more dramatic and interesting.
The planes are, in fact, defined by being extremes. The inner planes are extremes of elements: planes of nothing but fire, earth, air, and water, plus life and death (while there are a number of inner planes that aren’t really that extreme, such as the para-elemental plane of ooze, and these planes are often quite cool, this does not contribute to my theory, so I’m going to pretend they don’t exist. Perhaps someday I’ll examine it at length.). The outer planes, on the other hand, are extreme ideas. While the inner planes might have a plane that embodies pure fire, the outer planes have planes that embody, for example, pure freedom. Or pure suffering. Or pure honor. These sorts of larger-than-life ideals take the fantasy dial and turn it all the way up to 11. And then they keep turning it, until it flies off and loose cogs and springs go flying everywhere.
But there are other reasons why people love the planes. One of them, something that’s not necessarily intrinsic to the planes themselves, but which has become almost synonymous with them, is a handful of sourcebooks that were long ago abandoned.
That’s right, I’m talking about Planescape again. Planescape was a campaign setting for 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons, which took the existing D&D cosmology and re-imagined it in new and exciting ways, expanding it in the process. Though Planescape itself stayed behind with 2nd edition when the time came to make the big switch to 3rd (for reasons I’ll no doubt never understand), it continued to be the template for the outer planes throughout third edition, and, in a large way, its influence can still be felt in both the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons (despite some strong efforts on the part of that system’s designers to quash it out), and also Pathfinder. None of these had the full range of Planescape’s incredibly unique flavor, but they serve as a sort of watered-down version, and this is the extraplanar cosmology that most players are familiar with (the exception to this is 4th edition, which uses very different cosmology—Planescape’s legacy in 4th edition can be seen in Sigil, and a few other hold-outs, not in its overall planar structure). Because it had such a profound influence on planar cosmologies in D&D, a lot of players, when they hear that they’re having an extraplanar campaign, think of all the wonders of the Planescape setting.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading any Planescape, go do so. Right now. The rest of this article can wait. You haven’t left yet. If it’s because you don’t want to have to learn 2nd edition rules, don’t worry: you don’t have to. The sourcebooks drip with so much juicy, delicious flavor that they’re well worth reading just for the setting alone. In fact, all the best things about Planescape are in its flavor and setting anyway, so that while the fact that it’s for an outdated system means that a DM has to do a bit more work in order to use it (creating stat-blocks and DCs and things for various monsters, NPCs, spells, effects, and the like), this also means that the DM gets to sort of customize each and every monster, stat-block, spell effect, and so on, interpreting it in a way that aligns with his or her own preferences and tendencies as a DM.
But really, even if Planescape’s mechanical information were all drawback, with no plus side, the books would still be worth reading. Because they’re fun. The setting, the tone, the characters, the plots, the little details and the whole big picture: it’s all rich and rewarding in ways that I simply can’t do justice. So, if you’re not yet familiar with the Planescape setting, go make yourself familiar with it. It’ll have a lot more to say about adventuring on the planes than I can in this article, anyway.
There’s not really anything I can say to follow that, so I guess I’m done for this week. Thanks for reading, everyone. Be sure to stick around for the rest of Extraplanar Week, and I’ll see you next week, when I’ll be talking about Marchen der Daemonwulf II, its creation, and what lessons we learned from the original.