Spelljammer and Planescape

The Forgotten Realms is hardly a fair comparison. If you talk the realms as a whole it had more than every other setting put together. Again, can't dispute that it is lacking, but only planescape even tried to expand what's on the planes. Some have more work done than others; Acheron, for example has at least a dozen listed settlements and adventure hooks.

I think looking back now, it was an impossible task. Planescape tried to have the best of both worlds. It has the multiverse entirely mapped out, but at the same doesn't really fill them up. It never could, becase they are all supposed to be infinite. The forgotten realms shows how hard it can be to just flesh out 1 continent (everywhere but faerun is almost always ignored, but even the non faerun continents like kara-tur have more fluff than the outher planes).

I think planescape should have listed extra dimensional locations, but then NOT said what planes those locations are in or what their nature is.

Let's take the city of brass. It could just be treated as a known city in another dimension. What other dimension? Who knows! Does it have planets and spheres like ours? Does it have some sort of metaphysical quality? Are there other cities there or is it a lone beacon in a desolate waste?

What planescape does is entirely kill the magic (at least to me), by going like, Nah its the plane of fire, here is where it is located in the great wheel, there are like 4 other settlements and some fire lizards here wahoooooo.

It was a difficult task certainly, but not impossible. Look at spelljammer, it's barely fleshed out at all - what's there is just enough to where my appetite and get me to work within it using it's ideas. I take the same view and approach to planescape. Knowing the general rules of the plane, and general information about likely inhabitants, i can craft a region as large as I want since there's nothing else there. That's a flaw with fr, to me, that it's too well defined. Less room to insert your own material.

>Let's take the city of brass. It could just be treated as a known city in another dimension. What other dimension? Who knows! Does it have planets and spheres like ours? Does it have some sort of metaphysical quality? Are there other cities there or is it a lone beacon in a desolate waste?

Anyway, the way you would answers these questions is by exploring! You could ask inhabitants of the city if they know of any other locations. Your party could set off to another city in a foreign universe, guided only by their skills and the rumors they have heard from the locals (who may be as ignorant of far off locations as people in the prime material plane).

When you put the multiverse on a big map, it feels so tiny.

I totally agree that Spelljammer does a great job with exploration. But the way it does this is by not having a map of literally everything IMO. You have your spheres, they feel big, exploring is fun, but there is an infinite sea of phlogistin out there with zillions of more spheres. You have no idea how many there are and what they contain.

With planescape you basically know what is out there, or at least it gives the impression you do. Look at sigil, if it is really the city in the center of the multiverse why are there only like 100k people there. There are likely more inhabited planets in the prime material plane than citizens of Sigil, which supposedly connects all planes. Seems a bit odd, and again makes the setting feel tiny.

I think maybe they should have made some unreachable planes. Like the truly outer planes could be places that influence the reachable planes, but in mysterious ways. Perhaps the adventurers even meet people who claim to have visited them, but don't say how they did. The philosophical aspect of planescape could still be kept, with different outerplanes representing ideologies. Players could start to wonder if these outer dimensions even were really places at all or just mental constructs of believers. Reaching an actual outer plane could be a campaign ending event if even possible.

To quote Tolkien

I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.

Spelljammer all the way. I wholeheartedly embrace the absolute silliness and strangeness especially since it allows plausible reason for using every single bit of cheesy 50's, 60's, and 70's sci-fi stories as inspiration for plots in SPAAACE.

That being said Spelljammer on its own (circa 2e) works a lot better as a tool for connecting settings as opposed to being a setting in its own right. Controversial as it may have been I believe the key to making a good D&D IN SPAAACE setting lies in the 4e books that explored it's cosmology (Manual of the Planes, The Plane Above, and The Plane Below).

>Controversial as it may have been I believe the key to making a good D&D IN SPAAACE setting lies in the 4e books that explored it's cosmology (Manual of the Planes, The Plane Above, and The Plane Below).

Wasn't that stuff about spelljammers in the outer planes though, as opposed to in space? Or are you saying you just adapt what they came up with for planar travel to space travel.

Here is how I personally handle things in my own Planescape game. Is it sensible?

On the Numbers of Things:

There are a total of 27 planes.
• 17 Outer Planes
• 6 Inner Planes (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Negative Energy/Shadow/Shadowfell, Positive Energy/Faerie/Feywild, and the para-elemental and quasi-elemental border regions of each)
• 3 Transitive Planes (the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane/Elemental Chaos, and the Region of Dreams/the Veil of Sleep)
• The Prime Material Plane (no Phlogiston; you leave a crystal sphere, you directly enter the Ethereal Plane/Elemental Chaos)

Demiplanes are most common in the Transitive Planes. The dreamscapes of the Region of Dreams/the Veil of Sleep are a specialized type of demiplane, as are the divine realms commonly found in the Outer Planes.

There are two parts to the multiverse: the finite, known multiverse, and the infinite, uncharted multiverse. The power figures of the known multiverse have no political power whatsoever over the uncharted multiverse, except to extend their reach through expeditions, which slowly convert sections of the uncharted multiverse into new additions to known multiverse.

The only way to go from the known multiverse to the uncharted multiverse is through manual travel, which often entails using a spelljammer. Absolutely no portals, conduits, vortices, or other planar pathways connected the known multiverse to the uncharted multiverse; however, when a portion of the uncharted multiverse finally becomes charted, a multitude of various planar pathways abruptly link it to the known multiverse.

The Prime Material Plane's known area has only 7 million crystal spheres within it. Of these, 60% belong to mortal empires, 10% are planar protectorates, 10% are wartorn spheres, 10% are free spheres, and 10% are newly-accessible "frontier" spheres (or "backwater" spheres, more derogatorily) that have only recently been discovered, and thus added to the Prime Material Plane's known area.

The mean and median sophont population of each plane's known area is 70 quadrillion, including demiplanes. The one outlier is the Prime Material Plane's known area, whose sophont population is roughly 700 quadrillion across its 7 million spheres. The mean and median amount of sophont-inhabited worlds per crystal sphere is 10, and the mean and median population for a sophont-inhabited world is 10 billion. Although the typical sophont-inhabited mortal world is comparable in radius to Oerth or Eberron, such worlds ofttimes have habitable oceans, atmospheres, and Underdarks and are almost always populated by more than just mortals.

You did it. Seriously that is pretty good. By having the uncharted multiverse mechanic you've kept a good sense of scale and exploration.

Out of curiosity, are any of the other planes in the uncharted multiverse material planes, or are they all inner/outer-type planes?

There are only 27 planes in my multiverse, not counting demiplanes.

There is only one Prime Material Plane. The vast majority of its spheres belongs to the uncharted multiverse, but even then, there are literally millions of spheres (almost all inhabited) in the known area of the Prime Material Plane.

oooo gotcha. So the number of planes is set but its the locations on them that are either charted or uncharted. Makes sense.

In mine the outer planes are unreachable save by astral travel. The inner planes are planets, and the outlands are a rock spire floating in the asteroid belt.The gates are places where you can visit the outer planes by falling asleep.

Interesting, so you can only get to the outer planes in your sleep? Is it like an astral projection thing?

How do the illithids have enough brains to be a populous group in spelljammer?

In the astromundi cluster there are apparently 3 billion illithids. Are we supposed to assume they are eating tens billions of humans a year? This seems a bit ridiculous, as they would go through the entire population of the sphere in a few months.

maybe brain mold? it some sort of sentient fungus they can eat :(

The latter. Take the planes make them locations in space and have some plains fundamental to reality leak through in places. I prefer some of the stranger planes (shadowfell, fey wild, etc.) to still be separate planes though.

The fungus you describe exists and is sentient in large enough quantities.

I liked planescape in the 90's, when it was the "what if" setting of: "what if all the published settings were linked in some giant clusterfuck that culminated on a giant city uber-setting"

The rise of internet ubiquity, and autistic early-adoption, took it from "A cool what-if mashup setting" to "the objective setting/cosmology for everything." This is less the fault of the creators as it is the fault of the fandom.

You know that Dark Sun characters were supported since the original boxed set, right?

And why wouldn't it? IT wouldn't be a very good what-if kitchen sink setting if it didn't include the most deviant from the "medieval standard" of the well-selling settings.

iirc they don't actually need to eat that frequently, they just like to eat, especially sentient brains.
They're also interplanetary slavers.

They also can easily breed lots of smaller races like goblins or whatever to eat if they need to. I don't think they need to eat too often anyways.
They also have a fucking huge space empire outside the Astromundi cluster, just like most of the factions. This cluster is more like the Carribean than Europe, in that it's relatively minor colonies compared to back home.

do you have any info on this brain mold. I've seen reference to it in legend of the spelljammer box set but nowhere else.

I like it for what it is, since there is just so much lore and setting in it.
The link worlds is an amusing foot note that you can literally just drop and still have a full setting.

>same setting
Uh, user...

does anybody have favorite locations in either of these settings that are often overlooked?

The Inner Planes have a lot going for them, but they are always, even more than the outer planes, treated as 'meh, it's empty'. The Ethereal Plane is also a cool spot for adventures, sailing on the foggy sea of potential realities.

All sources I've come across merely say it is a yellow mold called brain mold which to quote the Legend of the Spelljammer, "is to real brains what soybean steak is to real beef steak-edible, but hardly as palatable as the real thing. As a result, the mind flayers are always on the lookout for brains, which they consider a delicacy. ...the mind flayers’ brain mold is sentient, much like large colonies of yellow mold are reputed to be. it is this property that makes the brain mold nutritionally sufficient food for the mind flayers. However, literally floors of the illithids’ domain must be devoted to the molds growth-individuals are without sentience and must be in colonies to provide the nourishment needed by the mind flayers. Since the brain mold is sentient, it deserves the rights of other intelligent races. However, the illithids would no more want to see rights given to their food than would humans want to see their cattle and vegetables voting against them. Thus the mind
flayers will lie about the nature of the brain mold
and, if questioned, offer nonsentient chunks for examination. They will not allow any investigators onto the growing floors."

That is all I got user. Hope it helps.

Does the Shadowfell count?

thanks!

It definetely does. I always welcome new planes when WOTC adds them. Something I've been thinking of lately is how to work the eberron planes into a planescape game. Especially now that in 5e eberron, toril, and oerth all explicitly exist in the same material plane.

One idea I had was that where you physically are in the material plane affects what planes are accessible. So when you are on oerth, you can reach the great wheel, but when on eberron, you can reach the 13 (14 in 4e) planes. Some planes can be reached by both locations.

Another way to handle it is what is implied in the 5e book, which is that all of the planar maps are just interpretations of the planes but not actually true. The mortals who created those maps themselves can't answer if the plane of ice on eberron is the same plane as the paraplane of ice on the great wheel.

>The Ethereal Plane is also a cool spot for adventures, sailing on the foggy sea of potential realities.

I personally merge the Deep Ethereal with the Elemental Chaos, and have it be such that there is no Phlogiston. Once you sail out of a crystal sphere, welcome to the land of seas of fire from which trees of frost and lightning grow.

Is there a higher quality image of this so I can actually read it? Reverse image search does zip.

Hi, if you right click the image and click open link in new tab you should be able to read it.

Here is the image if you can't get it to open:

mcmagnanimus.deviantart.com/art/Map-of-the-Dungeons-and-Dragons-2e-Multiverse-v1-0-483817880

Here is the better updated version of it which is too large to upload to Veeky Forums. This is the better version

mcmagnanimus.deviantart.com/art/Map-of-the-Dungeons-and-Dragons-2e-Multiverse-v2-0-629694362