Let's interpret the Planes using ONLY the 3LBB

[graelth]

The canonical understanding of the Planes is well known to all of us. The idea of astral planes, etherial planes, elemental planes, planes of law and chaos and so on were formally articulated in AD&D, but actually precede that by some time (going back to at least a 1977 Dragon article and, if I recall correctly, perhaps even the Holmes edition). Let's put all that aside, however, for the sake of a mental experiment...

What do the OD&D Planes look like using ONLY the three booklets of the White Box as a guide? We have elementals, for example, but there is no mention that they actually come from a separate plane of existance. The Efreet are said to come from the City of Brass, but likewise it is not obvious that this is not a place on earth. The only mention of Planes in the monster descriptions that I could find on a quick scan was the Invisible Stalker, who comes from a "non-dimensional" plane. I'd love to hear interpretations on what this might be and what are the implications of this brief description for the Planes of the 3LBB. For my 2 copper, it reminds me of something out of Lovecraft (who mentions non-Euclidean places, which feel similarly unfathomable and inimical as "non-dimensional" places).

The major reference to Planes, however, is the 5th level Magic-User spell "Contact Higher Planes," which suggests that the Planes are places where other entities live. There is moreover an interesting pattern in the spell's progression... the higher the plane, the more likely the entities of that Plane will 1) know the answer to the importuner's inquiry, 2) be unable/uninterested/unwilling to lie and 3) the answer (or the being itself) will drive the petitioner to madness.

The first element is rather counter intuitive... if we assume "higher" literally implies a physical distance from our world, why would the furthest Planes know the most about our world to correctly answer our questions? We could assume the highest Planes have simply more powerful, godlike beings, and thus they are simply more omniscient. But still this doesn't explain why there is an inverse relation of knowledge to Planar proximity even at low levels (that is, the lowest Plane knows almost nothing of our world). Furthermore, why do the Planes begin at 3rd (other than the obvious connection to the numbers of questions you may ask)? What is the 2nd Plane? Perhaps it is the heavenly bodies of stars and planets (which, according to volume III, might merely be lights in the sky, if outer space doesn't exist in your campaign world).

The second element is rather suggestive. One might conclude that the willingness, interest or ability to lie is a measure of law and chaos, thus providing a backdoor to the alignments to play a role in the Planes. That is, the highest Planes are the lawful ones (if we conflate honesty with order) and the lowest ones are chaotic (if we conflate dissimulation with disorder). That raises further questions, however, for if we again assume the order of the Planes is a representation of physical proximity (thaf is, if we presume "higher" is a literal, physical description), then it is not clear why the chaotic Planes would be closest to our world and lawful Planes would be the most distant. Also, why would lawful beings necessarily be more knowledgeable than chaotic ones?

Several different explanations for why that might be could be given, but then there is a further problem when you compare this trend to the third element: the higher the plane, the more likely the suppliant will be driven to madness. Now that doesn't seem to be lawful, particularly if we connect law to the flourishing of mankind and civilization (indeed, lawful monsters in OD&D are implicitly if not explicitly aligned with the good and with man). This again connotes, in my mind, a Lovecraftian mythology. That is, the truth of the universe... the real truth, will drive you insane. Your best protection from this revelation is the warm comfort of familiar lies, whatever we tell ourselves in order to fall asleep at night. Which is to say, contacting a higher plane is something like opening a book in the Cthulhu Mythos—you know you shouldn't do it, but you know you will anyway.

Finally, a side note to these open questions. It is not immediately clear how the spell Contact Higher Plane is meant to work. After all, if you knew there was a risk contacting the highest (and most veracious) planes, why not just contact the lowest planes and assume the entity is lying? If the entity lies most of the time, and you must ask only yes or no questions, you could safely assume the opposite of whatever the creature told you. I thought of one solution to this, but I'd like to hear others: for now, I will assume a failed "chance to know" roll simply ends up in a wasted question and a failed "veracity" roll simply ends up in a RANDOM yes or no answer (50% chance of either). Thus, the lowest 3rd Plane has a 65% chance of giving you the right answer and the penultimate 11th Plane has, at great cost, a 95% chance of giving you the right answer (either way, the players will always have to assume the entity is telling the truth, as the odds are always, if sometimes only slightly, in the favour of accuracy).

[Stormcrow]

You're thinking too physically. The higher planes of the spell are more like the higher planes of spiritualism or esoteric cosmology, not the parallel universes of later D&D. Think the Ancients of Stargate SG-1 or Obi-wan Kenobi bound to Luke after he dies. An ascended being has access to knowledge and power not possible in our own plane, and each level up is exponentially more powerful. Thus, an ascended being can answer questions you cannot, and the higher the ascension, the greater the knowledge, but the more likely that contact with beings so complex and powerful will simply be too much for your lower-order brain to handle.

[geoffrey]

Jan 7, 2018 9:57:46 GMT -6 graelth said:

The Efreet are said to come from the City of Brass, but likewise it is not obvious that this is not a place on earth.

In the Thousand and One Nights, the City of Brass is right here on planet Earth.

[foxroe]

It's likely that Dave/Gary et al had their own concept of the "planes" back before any official publication of rules regarding such, but they only had so much room to work with in the three LBB's, so their ideas may have ended up on the chopping room floor. It's also likely that the original intent was to leave such material to the imaginations of would-be DM's.

I like Stormcrow 's take, though.

Hmmm. I could swear that the positive/negative material planes were introduced in OD&D, but I can't seem to find a reference anywhere. Anyone know when they first seeped into the primum materiae?

[scottenkainen]

Jan 7, 2018 20:28:49 GMT -6 foxroe said:

Hmmm. I could swear that the positive/negative material planes were introduced in OD&D, but I can't seem to find a reference anywhere. Anyone know when they first seeped into the primum materiae?

I think it was 1983 that these were first mentioned. I look forward to being proven wrong.

[krusader74]

Jan 8, 2018 16:12:36 GMT -6 scottenkainen said:

Jan 7, 2018 20:28:49 GMT -6 foxroe said:

Hmmm. I could swear that the positive/negative material planes were introduced in OD&D, but I can't seem to find a reference anywhere. Anyone know when they first seeped into the primum materiae?

I think it was 1983 that these were first mentioned. I look forward to being proven wrong.

The positive and negative material planes appeared in Gary Gygax's article, "Planes - The Concepts of Spatial, Temporal and Physical Relationships in D&D" in The Dragon #8 (Vol. 1, No. 8) July 1977, on pages 4, 5, and 28. You can read it here in this post in the Gygax OD&D Additions thread -- click on the PDF attachment at the bottom of the post.

[smubee]

I've never understood what the heck "planes" were, so I just don't use 'em.

Interesting thread though!

[talysman]

It's interesting to compare Greyhawk to the LBBs, not only because several people have confirmed that Greyhawk was being used before the boxed set was published, but also because it does not add as much detail about planes as people would think. The Gate spell definitely refers to other planes and confirms that "plane" in OD&D basically means "where gods and demons are from", but the various astral and ethereal spells and items describe these more as physical states than planes of existence. So, if you use astral projection, you are still in the physical world, but you are in an invisible and immaterial state. This is the way I prefer to interpret them, and I wrote several old blog posts on playing with just one plane of existence (the material plane.)

It's also interesting that cursed scrolls in Monsters & Treasure can teleport you to a location thousands of miles away or to another planet, but not to another plane, as I seem to remember is possible in AD&D.

My interpretation of Contact Other Plane is that it's written to be as open-ended to interpretation in individual campaigns as possible. The "higher planes" may be undefined, or defined to fit the mythology of the campaign but still basically beyond physical reach. I figure either the player is supposed to specify the plane contacted by number, or the number is determined randomly. Some options I've considered:

1. Player says how many questions they will ask. That's the planar distance.
2. Player names the planar distance. The GM might adjust insanity chances for asking fewer than the maximum number of questions for that plane.
3. GM rolls 2d6 for secret planar distance. Player asks as many questions as desired. After the planar limit, all answers are automatically false.
4. Player asks all the questions first, then GM rolls secret planar distance, capping result based on number of questions asked.

I figure the insanity roll is only rolled once, at the end, but the knowledge and veracity rolls can be handled a couple ways. Options 1 through 3 can make both rolls on a per-question basis, but you can also roll knowledge just once, veracity just once, or both, to simplify the process. Options 3 and 4 can be modified so that you roll knowledge and/or veracity, and if a roll fails, follow with another 2d6 roll for the number of questions known and number of answers given truthfully before the answers start to fail.

[foxroe]

Jan 8, 2018 19:49:30 GMT -6 smubee said:

I've never understood what the heck "planes" were, so I just don't use 'em.

They are unknowable to we mortal few! (Or some such nonsense)

I've always viewed them as a mix of other-worldly realms of myth (places where only mythical heroes like Odysseus dared tread) and Zelazny's dimensional Shadow Worlds.

Rather than trying to dream up entirely new "worlds" for your players to tromp about in, it may be easier to just think of them as parallel dimensions/universes that are thematically different. Example: The elemental plane of fire would be exactly as your current campaign world is, but everything is burnt/burning and rivers/seas are lava and ash.

[Zenopus]

Greyhawk contains just two mentions of the astral plane in the description of the Astral Spell.

Eldritch Wizardry (first published 4/76), however, contains numerous references to both the astral, ethereal and "physical plane". It also includes random encounter tables for Astral and Ethereal Encounters, although these are divided into Underworld, Outdoor and "Space (Astral Only)".

The psionic discipline Probability Travel allows crossing into "parallel worlds" and "different planes" and "For each probability or plane crossed 10 energy points are psionically expended. The traveler is able to commune with friendly powers, for example — or risk entrance into planes hostile to his alignment, or attempt to explore the
probabilities following a course of action contemplated by him"

A demon can be "forced back to the plane from whence it originally came"

There is also the artifact The Codex of the Infinite Planes.

The impression in EW is of a multitude of planes of existence. This would then be formalized in the Dragon #8 article that krusader linked above, which starts: "For game purposes the DM is to assume the existence of an infinite number of co-existing planes". This is July 1977, so the reader is still firmly entrenched in OD&D at the time. A little over a year later, in August 1978, the PHB would re-introduce the same concepts for AD&D.

As with much of D&D, this follows Gygax's trend of mentioning something in brief that is expanded on in detail in a later publication (e.g. Drow in the Monster Manual)

[Stormcrow]

Jan 8, 2018 20:08:20 GMT -6 talysman said:

The Gate spell definitely refers to other planes and confirms that "plane" in OD&D basically means "where gods and demons are from", but the various astral and ethereal spells and items describe these more as physical states than planes of existence.

The astral and etheric planes are other examples of occult or mystical metaphysics along with "higher planes." Their exact natures are vague or subject to interpretation throughout history, though they are both proposed as explanations for why the world behaves as it does (the astral plane as an explanation for spirituality and stars; the etheric plane as an explanation of matter). As D&D developed, and we learned that various monsters and beings actually live in and come from these planes, they naturally took on a more physical meaning, turning them into the Planet of Hats parallel universes of D&D. Even as of Greyhawk they hadn't been clearly defined yet, though they would come to be later in the pages of The Dragon.

Basically, early D&D presumes you are familiar with modern occult and psychic ideas. It is hard for someone who knows the later stuff to jettison that baggage.

[talysman]

Jan 9, 2018 10:17:02 GMT -6 Stormcrow said:

Jan 8, 2018 20:08:20 GMT -6 talysman said:

The Gate spell definitely refers to other planes and confirms that "plane" in OD&D basically means "where gods and demons are from", but the various astral and ethereal spells and items describe these more as physical states than planes of existence.

The astral and etheric planes are other examples of occult or mystical metaphysics along with "higher planes." Their exact natures are vague or subject to interpretation throughout history, though they are both proposed as explanations for why the world behaves as it does (the astral plane as an explanation for spirituality and stars; the etheric plane as an explanation of matter). As D&D developed, and we learned that various monsters and beings actually live in and come from these planes, they naturally took on a more physical meaning, turning them into the Planet of Hats parallel universes of D&D. Even as of Greyhawk they hadn't been clearly defined yet, though they would come to be later in the pages of The Dragon.

Basically, early D&D presumes you are familiar with modern occult and psychic ideas. It is hard for someone who knows the later stuff to jettison that baggage.

Well, it presumes you are familiar with Dr. Strange and Weird Tales. Or picked up Fate Magazine once or twice as a curiosity. I doubt any of the early D&D writers were reading Blavatsky or other Theosophists, or similar schools of thought. But some of the fantasy writers they read did, and dropped a little of the lingo into their stories.

One thing you saw in early material (Eldritch Wizardry and the first three AD&D books) was the concept of higher vibrational planes. Occultists, especially the theosophists, explained that the invisible world they were talking about was vibrating at a higher frequency. If you could attune your senses to those frequencies, you could see spirits all around you. This terminology shows up in a couple Lovecraft and CAS stories, among other places, and is the origin of the use of a tuning fork in the 5th level AD&D spell Plane Shift, among other things.

I kind of suspect that this might have something to do with the way the Contact Other Planes spell is described. The spell numbers the planes from 3 to 12. Why that range? If you were supposed to use a d12 or 2d6, that might make sense, but why pick 12 in the first place, instead of just 6, or 10, or 20? I think Gygax was linking the planes to musical notes of the chromatic scale. Which would explain why you can't contact the 1st plane -- that's the first semitone, the plane you are on. The 2nd plane is the "next door neighbor" plane where out of phase creatures are, when out of phase (ethereal.) Perhaps that's just too similar to our own plane to be useful? So the first useful plane is the third semitone, rising up to the 12th semitone. There is no 13th plane because that's just an octave, putting you right back where you started.

[Stormcrow]

Jan 9, 2018 11:19:49 GMT -6 talysman said:

Well, it presumes you are familiar with Dr. Strange and Weird Tales. Or picked up Fate Magazine once or twice as a curiosity. I doubt any of the early D&D writers were reading Blavatsky or other Theosophists, or similar schools of thought. But some of the fantasy writers they read did, and dropped a little of the lingo into their stories.

Or you just know a bit about New Age occultism and psychics. You don't have to have a PhD to know something about these things. I haven't read Dr. Strange, Weird Tales, Fate Magazine, or any Thosophists, and I've picked up a basic understanding of "planes" just from hearing some of the mumbo-jumbo you hear from psychics and the like. Not everything in D&D has a straight-from-pulp origin. Some things just come from folklore and popular mysticism. Maybe these things came from Dr. Strange, but there's really no way to tell.

One thing you saw in early material (Eldritch Wizardry and the first three AD&D books) was the concept of higher vibrational planes. Occultists, especially the theosophists, explained that the invisible world they were talking about was vibrating at a higher frequency. If you could attune your senses to those frequencies, you could see spirits all around you. This terminology shows up in a couple Lovecraft and CAS stories, among other places, and is the origin of the use of a tuning fork in the 5th level AD&D spell Plane Shift, among other things.

Sure thing. But you don't have to assume that the D&D creators knew about these things only through the lens of speculative fiction.

I kind of suspect that this might have something to do with the way the Contact Other Planes spell is described. The spell numbers the planes from 3 to 12. Why that range? If you were supposed to use a d12 or 2d6, that might make sense, but why pick 12 in the first place, instead of just 6, or 10, or 20? I think Gygax was linking the planes to musical notes of the chromatic scale. Which would explain why you can't contact the 1st plane -- that's the first semitone, the plane you are on. The 2nd plane is the "next door neighbor" plane where out of phase creatures are, when out of phase (ethereal.) Perhaps that's just too similar to our own plane to be useful? So the first useful plane is the third semitone, rising up to the 12th semitone. There is no 13th plane because that's just an octave, putting you right back where you started.

I don't know why the range 3–12 was chosen, but you've jumped to a conclusion on very little evidence indeed. The author of this spell hadn't worked out his own esoteric cosmology; he was obviously adapting something. The thing to do would be to find out what belief or story includes planes 3–12 as "higher" ones.

[bravewolf]

The Ur-Beatle hit on something awesome irrespective of whether vibratory planes are what Gygax (or Arneson) had in mind: I diagramned the chromatic scale real quick & it checks out. I will be using this!

[smubee]

Jan 8, 2018 20:09:02 GMT -6 foxroe said:

Jan 8, 2018 19:49:30 GMT -6 smubee said:

I've never understood what the heck "planes" were, so I just don't use 'em.

They are unknowable to we mortal few! (Or some such nonsense)

I've always viewed them as a mix of other-worldly realms of myth (places where only mythical heroes like Odysseus dared tread) and Zelazny's dimensional Shadow Worlds.

Rather than trying to dream up entirely new "worlds" for your players to tromp about in, it may be easier to just think of them as parallel dimensions/universes that are thematically different. Example: The elemental plane of fire would be exactly as your current campaign world is, but everything is burnt/burning and rivers/seas are lava and ash.

So the planes can be reached "by foot" so to speak?

I've always thought that they were like other planes of existence.. Worlds that exist "overtop" of our own.

[graelth]

I just had a thought... what if we cannot contact the 2nd Plane... because it is not a higher Plane? That is, without any further evidence, we have to assume that we exist on the 2nd Plane and the 1st Plane is a lower Plane. The higher Planes therefore start at 3rd.

So what is the 1st Plane? I am thinking something like Sheol or Gehenna, but maybe it is one or two dimensional space?

[scottenkainen]

Jan 9, 2018 17:01:21 GMT -6 smubee said:

So the planes can be reached "by foot" so to speak?

I've always thought that they were like other planes of existence.. Worlds that exist "overtop" of our own.

I've never used this yet -- because my campaigns all end before the PCs get to 10th level -- but I have considered a reworking of planes for a while now where, when someone hits 10th level, it "unlocks" extra parts of the world around them that they couldn't see before where they might find demons, elementals, or just other high-level people living. The "higher" plane was always there around them; but now they can interact with it.

[foxroe]

Jan 9, 2018 17:01:21 GMT -6 smubee said:

So the planes can be reached "by foot" so to speak?

Why yes, young padawan. But only if you approach at the proper angle of bilateral transmogrification...

Jan 9, 2018 17:01:21 GMT -6 smubee said:

I've always thought that they were like other planes of existence.. Worlds that exist "overtop" of our own.

Above? Beneath? It is all relative, grasshopper.


Seriously though, it's OD&D. What "planes" are is not explicitly defined (as evidenced by this thread), so it's up to one's own twisted imagination how they work. There are some great ideas here in this thread.

I'm happy enough with how it became treated in AD&D and beyond, and travel to such places has rarely come up in the games I've played in, so I tend not to worry too much about it.

[tetramorph]

graelth, thanks for starting this thread. It is a great topic. I've thought about it from time to time but I only recently got really interested in it as I started reading and preparing Anthony Huso's A Fabled City of Brass (which you guys really need to check out. It's an AD&D module available on Lulu).

When I returned to the hobby a few year's ago, I was with smubee. I couldn't imagine what was meant by the "planes," at least in any gameable way. So I just ignored it or hand-waived it.

The LBBs provide no guide for discerning the "planes." They just mention them because of their use in esoteric language popular in fantasy as already pointed out by talysman and Stormcrow. The term "plane," in this sense, comes to us via late Platonism and was then taken up by the esoteric tradition and modern occultists, and then, from them, by the pulp and fantasy writers. I agree with foxroe, original edition is loose and open, intentionally, so you can take and leave stuff and, if you take it, modify it and imagine it as per your fantastical medieval wargames campaign.

In a way, AD&D is Gygax's house rules (and tournament rulings), published. They are awesome. But I find his take on the planes unappealing for my campaign.

I started trying to imagine "planes" in my campaign as I started trying to fit Ant's City of Brass into my campaign world. I always lean on C. S. Lewis' Discarded Image as my go-to for a description of the world-project of ancient christendom. So I use the term "plane" to refer to the font of the elements, including the quintessence (earth, water, air, fire and aether). I also use the term "plane" to refer to the various heavenly spheres, all 9 of them (moon, mercury, venus, sun, mars, jupiter, saturn, the Stellatum and the Primum Mobile (the "first moved," by God)). The Stellatum, the sphere of the "fixed stars," is the so-called "astral plane." The Primum Mobile, the "Pure Sphere," is also, by paradox, the Prime Material, or "Pure Matter," plane.

I do not use planes of "positive" or "negative" energy, nor planes of law/chaos. The planes are what happens when the powers bring cosmos out of chaos.

I house rule "contact higher plane" to the 9 spheres of the heavens. You are contacting the entities that are the powers / principalities of those spheres. "Higher," means closer to the divine and therefore more knowledgeable and more overwhelming. Although, I love talysman's chromatic scale thing! So I might go back to 3-12!

I agree with Stormcrow that it is best not to think of things too physically. I agree with others that these planes exist, invisibly, all around the character's plane of existence. But I think, for game-playable reasons, that once the PCs actually arrive on one of these planes, they would be able to interact on that plane in ways they would perceive as physical, even if miraculously so.

I needed to think about this to figure out how the PCs could get to the City of Brass. Ant has it situated "between the plane of earth and magma." Well, I have no idea what that would mean IMC, so I had to think it through. I've decided it exits on the elemental plane of fire -- but they've got to pass through the elemental plane of air in order to get there.

So, smubee, it would not be accessible "by foot," exactly. They would have to reach certain resource-depleting conditions and deplete some high-powered spells in order to achieve the magical conditions for entry into that plane. I really like scottenkainen's idea of allowing these invisible planes to "unlock" for top-level characters. I think my idea is similar to his in the sense that they could not possibly amass the resources or have access to the spells necessary until they were top-level.

So, for example, to reach the Aerial Plane, they would need (I'm just making this up right now, so, players in my campaign, don't start making notes!) to cross a vast desert waste until they spotted the highest mountain they had ever seen. They would need to mount the summit of that mountain. They would need to wait til dawn on the spring equinox and then cast levitate and blessing on the entire party (including pack animals). At this point they could step off onto the clouds and start walking. They would have to deal with castles full of cloud giants, air-elementals, djinni, etc.

From there they would need to walk along the clouds until they came to the furthest and hottest part of the desert where the earth seemed to end. They would need to wait until sunset on the winter solstice and then cast protection from fire and commune on the entire party. (Oh, and by the way, they would need to have hoisted up there a sailing vessel made of brass to sail on the Lake of Fire.) At that point the Lake of Fire would appear to them and then they could launch their vessel and set sail. They would need to be ready for fire-elementals, salamanders, efreeti, etc.

Needless to say, they would need to do a lot of research and store up a whole lot of resources they were willing to blow in order to take on a journey of this nature. But the treasure that Ant has in his City of Brass would be well worth trying to figure something like this out.

Again, thanks for getting this thread going. Fight on!

[talysman]

Jan 9, 2018 17:01:21 GMT -6 smubee said:

So the planes can be reached "by foot" so to speak?

I've always thought that they were like other planes of existence.. Worlds that exist "overtop" of our own.

I mentioned upthread that I don't use distinct planes in the AD&D cosmology sense anymore, but treat ethereal and astral as states, rather than planes. All "planes" are "prime material" locations. (Well, Sort of...) Here's some more detail.

Things and beings in an ethereal or astral state are invisible and immaterial to physical things and beings. They can still perceive the physical world, however.

Ethereal things can sometimes be glimpsed as a ghostly outline at sunrise or sunset, or under other unusual lighting conditions. They are unaffected by gravity, remaining at the height they were placed at until moved. Physical objects and forces cannot move them. Ethereal beings pass through liquid as if it were air, and pass through solids as if they were liquid. They can "swim" upwards through solid physical matter, but can't otherwise fly.

Astral things are completely invisible to physical or ethereal beings. Astral beings can perceive both physical and ethereal beings, so in a sense, the ethereal is "above" the physical, and the astral is "above" both. Thoughts can become real in the astral state, so illusions persist without concentration, and astral beings can fly in any direction they think of, or even teleport to any location they can imagine (called "conceptual travel".)

Hallucinatory Terrain can be used while in the astral state to create "pocket dimensions" or pseudo-planes that obscure the physical world for those that enter these domains. In effect, they are finite planes reachable by conceptual travel.

Fantastic locations like The City of Brass could exist either in an ethereal or an astral state. An ethereal City of Brass would exist at a specific real-world location, for example in a volcano in the desert; you would have to travel there, perhaps carefully scan the volcano at dawn or dusk to find the exact location, then become ethereal to enter the city. An astral City of Brass would have been created by astral efreeti casting illusions over centuries to "build" its spires and palaces, and would only be reachable by clearly imagining the locale to successfully travel to it conceptually.

[delta]

You may want to look at parts of L. Sprague de Camp's The Fallible Fiend (1972), esp., the very start and end. To wit: "They refer to our plane as the Twelfth, whereas from our point of view, ours is the Prime Plane and theirs, the Twelfth." My theory is this was the kernel of the idea from which the Contact Higher Plane spell got its terminology and chart going up to the 12th Plane.

[Stormcrow]

That sounds extremely likely.