A quick look on Dungeon Master's Guild informed me that apparently there have been many editions of Manual of the Planes, such that it might as well be a standard book for every edition like the DMG, PHB, and Monster Manual (do we call that the MM?) 2nd Edition did not have one, it seems, but there were many Planescape products that detailed the many planes (as a 5th Edition baby, I'm sometimes blown away by all the publications TSR put out for individual campaign settings.)
Anyway, as I've written about before, I think it would be great if we got an updated Manual of the Planes. Not every campaign that travels to the Outer Planes needs to involve the specifics of Sigil and its various factions - we've seen how campaigns can just touch on various ones, like Critical Role's first campaign involving sojourns to Elysium, the Nine Hells, and eventually Pandemonium.
The DM's Guild page for the 4th Edition Manual of the Planes details some of the philosophy behind the revamped cosmology - the "World Axis" - that was a big controversy and was basically reverted by 5th Edition (though 5e has also emphasized that the universe is whatever you want at your table).
And while I've gotten used to the idea of the Great Wheel, I do actually kind of get the idea behind smashing it - the complaint was apparently about "needless symmetry" - that there were so many good-aligned planes where it seemed unlikely for players to get into the sort of conflicts that drive adventures.
And frankly, I get it. I think you could have easily made only nine outer planes, with just one for each X,Y coordinate on the alignment chart. Are Bytopia and Arcadia all that necessary, or could they have just been folded into Mount Celestia?
Humans love patterns, and complete sets, and that structure can sometimes lead to great things, such as the Guilds in Ravnica, which are only the combination of each two-color combination in MTG. 4th Edition tried to boil the planar system down to the necessities.
The concept of the World Axis is that the Material World exists between the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos. The Nine Hells and The Abyss are both preserved here, but it places the Hells within the Astral Sea - a realm of gods - as a plane/world within the Astral Sea that is home to corrupted divine servants - aka Devils, whereas the Abyss is in the Elemental Chaos, and it defines Demons as corrupted elementals.
The Feywild and Shadowfell were mixes of existing concepts like the Plane of Faerie and Arborea (though Arvandor, part of Arborea, also exists in the Astral Sea) in the former case or the Plane of Shadow and Negative Energy Plane for the latter.
I can understand the backlash, but at the same time, if this were the cosmology that were presented to me when I first got into D&D, I would probably find it just as cool.
While I think 5e is going to stick with the classic Great Wheel as established originally in the 1st Edition Manual of the Planes, I'd love to see a new take on it, perhaps one that explores the potential for nuance.
For example, when we say that one of the Planes is Good - take The Beastlands as an example - what does that mean for mortals?
I think it's important that places like Carceri or Gehenna are clearly bad places to be, as they're evil planes. And in contrast, I think it's important that the Upper Planes are truly good.
But there's potential for the idea that pure goodness is not exactly compatible for the complexities of mortal life.
Humans (and humanoids as seen in D&D) are complicated, and even people with the best intentions have their own flaws and faults. I think you could get plenty of mileage out of the notion that any mortal who has not died and undergone the purification process of being reborn as a Petitioner carries danger into the Upper Planes, and that the denizens of those planes will fight to contain the contamination. Sure, they might be quicker to cast spells like Banishment than outright kill people, but there could be plenty of well-intentioned (and even possibly well-resulting) actions that Celestials of the Upper Planes take that is at odds with a D&D party's intentions. You might encounter an Angel who knows that a good-aligned party member will wind up a Petitioner in a heavenly plane, and thus decides that it'd be best for everyone if the angel killed that person now, sent their soul through the process, and got them fast-tracked for heaven - but in a way that could seriously disrupt, you know, their life back on the Material Plane and the mission that the party is on.
What I'd love is a source to talk about these sorts of things.
Naturally, the Lower Planes are much more obvious adventure locations, given the malevolent hostility of most creatures you're likely to encounter there (though hey, you might need to buy something at the markets on Grazz't's layer of the Abyss - doesn't all have to be demon-slaying).
Anyway, this isn't to complain or anything - I'm still really bubbling with excitement over Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which is freaking good. But I hope that we get a Manual of the Planes or something like it in 5th Edition.
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