What's the most boring outer plane in D&D and how can it be made more interesting?

The Shadowfell is the world of the dead. Undead draw their existence from its energies, and the souls of the dead are drawn here for their final judgement. Life clings on in the shadows, but often becomes twisted and warped as a result.

The Elemental Chaos is the Fundamental World. All of the building blocks of physical nature are present here; not strictly laid out, but constantly in flux, changing and swirling. Many Great Wheel fans liken it to somebody blending together the 16 Elemental Planes with Limbo. This is a place where rivers of fire form spiderwebs in the sky, where trees the size of continents rise from nowhere and pour water, magma or liquid metal from their branches, where an icefield today can become a lightning-spewing volcano tomorrow. The Chaos can be shaped and tamed by will and magic, allowing life to thrive here, elemental and otherwise.

The Abyss is a place that should not be. A sickness eating away at the foundation of reality. It is a festering wound seeking to corrupt and consume all of creation, a place of madness and evil run rampant, and with its ultimate origins beyond the multiverse as it is known.

Does this help?

>Plus, the Inner Planes tend to be dull as dirt. No pun intended. An infinite 3-dimensional expanse of fire is not exactly somewhere brimming with adventure possibilities.
Said by someone who hasn't actually read any of the published TSR-era material about the Inner Planes. Planescape's 'The Inner Planes' should be required reading for any GM considering a planar campaign.

Shit, even the 1E stuff had things with the Elemental Princes of Evil, all the shit the genies get up to, etc.

If you're that one troll who argues that the Inner Planes are boring because they're "just one element" but adding anything else to them is cheating and proves how boring they were, I'm just going to close the tab.

Some years ago there was an effort on Planewalker.com to revamp a number of planes. I quite liked what they did with Arborea, by adding additional layers with inspiration from famous children's stories, where visitors became younger and younger as they descended, and Arcadia, where the missing plane was detailed as a giant metropolis that just...worked. No one could figure out how but everyone continuously tried.

Basically, the Astral Sea, the Plane Above, is the plane of immortal creatures such as angels, devils, and (most) gods.

The mortal world is the home of most races, primarily humans. The world's creation by the primordials caused the Dawn War between them and the gods, ending after the death of many deities and primordials when the emerging primal spirits of the world banned gods and primordials from the plane.

The Feywild, the plane of fey creatures such as eladrin and fomorians, and the Shadowfell, the realm of departed souls and many undead, are the world's parallel planes, growing from pieces cast off during the world's creation.

The Elemental Chaos, the Plane Below, is the plane of elemental creatures such as genies, giants, the titans who created them, and the primordials, the most powerful of the elementals.

The Abyss, created when the mad Chained God placed a shard of pure evil in the Elemental Chaos, formed demons from elements and primordials.

The important part of the cosmology is that it is inherently designed to be played and adventured in - each plane has cities, dungeons, adventure sites, and inhabitants.

I would fix Ysgard by making it the front line between the good and evil planes. It's still mostly chaotic good, but invaders from the lower planes have a foothold on a few of the floating islands That way, the inhabitants have someone to fight besides each other and there are some stakes.

I personally think the Great Wheel is better than the World Axis for a number of reasons. The main one is that there's a clear difference between the physical Inner Planes and the spiritual/mental Outer Planes. The symmetry is nice too, although I wouldn't object to more sticking more planes/demiplanes/layers into the Great Wheel if it made sense. World Axis did introduce some things I really like though, like the Feywild, Elemental Chaos and Chernoggar.

>What's the most boring outer plane in D&D and how can it be made more interesting?

>When people forget hollow earth, all the stuff that implies the D&D verse a cosmogly reserve with things in place that keep the original Great Old ones out because the cerulean sign, good and evil denying the course of nature, and a whole lotta other shit, filtering it to Elder evil if it gets as a part of a meta level cosmic butthurt passed down from generation to generation because they couldn't get the right to lovecraft post that 1e dragon magazine article

>When they forget that in fact, there are multiple planes outside the cosmology, but the deities don't have power there because dat weave don't extend dat far and Mystra a ho, and planet fucking earth is one of them, with entire shuman species popping over in multiple material planes because magic-portal bullshit
>When dey forget Murlynd, St Cuthbert, Meepo an entire egyptian peole, the fuckign Olmecs and mezzoamericans all migrated to fucking D&D one way or another

I bet you fucks don't even know the reason why Graz'zt has the extra digits is because he's the INBRED SON OF NYRALATHOTEP BY PROXY, his moms bein literally the nameless mist by proxy who fucks Nyralathoteps's Abolethian Elder evil proxy to make him and some ohter siblings, WHO THEN GONNA FUCK HIM WHEN HE KILL DEMOGOGRON AKA MONKEY TROYUBLE and HE BECOMES THE KANG of the BBC abyss.

There's a fuckign Reason why the Pale Night is the orgin of Pseudonatural creatures AKA "Okay, what if we took the cosmic nuclear concentrated tumour life equivalent of a bird (Byhake) and then we shoved it into it's completely normal to the human senses equivalent?" Now, we shall apply this concept to summoning everythign else, then fuck it up by making it work for Psionics, because a PrC based around sacrificign the normal conduit for monster summoning for class progression equivalent to the insight system from bloodborne works for a class dedicated to killing it off.

I once found this nice rewite of Alienist which basically made it the "Bloodborne become the Great One ending" class, except, now it's even more crazy because taking levels in Wild mage just made this that more fun, and now we gonna summon The "Demon Lord" Dagon, but o shit you an Alienist, so you fuck up the summoning just by interfering with it, and you summon the Far Realm equivalent, but wait, oh fuck, that means you literally destroy the alignment system and bring forth the REAL dagon, and not his limited proxy with no Deep ones to help, but his naked fish lobster worshipping crazy frog fish people that also worship an asshole shark.

You an alienist and you try to summon Ghaunadaur or Juiblex? Oh hey Outer god from where all the abominable things ever come from, what you doing in my setting where the alignment system is real, explaining all the hammy dialouge, 1-dimensional personalities and Evil literally has a radiation signature and it's various types too?

I love it when a bitch forget what Voidharrow is, then they brign it up again in 4e and now Tharizdun wanting everything blown up makes sense if you then read the manual to the planes and Lords of Madness on the aboleth with the gods showing up and 1e's Yog-sothoth, because you realize through the collective insight of madness in everyone that boy reviewd like a Tzeentch Data mining algorithm, he figured out the universe was limited by deific interupption, subverted, and if he killed everyone he scould shed his divinity and become a Great Old one.

That was before Pelor came in and kicked his ass, but not really, because that was Zarus before the name change due to everyone wanting a fantasy world but Zarus wanted Imperium but Curryman latheron wouldn't let him, Moradin didn't care either way, and he may have accidentally made vampires by accidentally racemixing, but that's another story.

Ghuanadaur does not make sense because he cannot exist as his true self, so in the event of him making sense, then the Old ones are breaking through, and one best start killing Aberrations by the droves because Aboleths are fission spawned imigrants from R'leyh, the Illithid are a 3rd species made from star spawn genes by the Elder things but were scrapped because elder things were dead by then and triggered the Shoggoth rebellion when their psionic abilities developed from eating the monkey men who later became mankind, and also Demogogron from the ones that didn't get-speed evovled by deities when they showed up and roamed around the jungle scaring cavemen until it died and got the Obrityh treatment, and their god is literally in the process of TRYING to unwittingly CHIM mantle Yog-sothoth by merging all the Elder brains everywhere.

Phah. Astral Sea is all your Spiritual Planes, Elemental Chaos is all your Physical Ones. Done, dusted, and without endless loops of layer upon layer.

Plus, don't forget the Inner Planes actually cover a mixture of physical (elemental & energy planes) and generic spiritual (ethereal, astral) to begin with. The Outer Planes are pure Alignment-based spiritual.

Jesus fuck, learn to write. You should get a job on a conspiracy blog or something. That's some epic freeform rambling.

Why pools of water and not mercury?