I still run the great wheel, because planescape has room for every thing. Plus Sigil is just to cool to give up. But i was wondering what everyone else is doing especially in Golarion. I just figuer that the old "clueless don't know anything" still works.
I even make my characters think that what is in the Pathfinder campaign setting is what is true until we inter act.
All the stuff in the world wound and in Cheliax just seem like the blood war spilling over in to the prime. I am hopeing to tie that into the BloodWar Box set. should be fun.
But what are you doing with the planes
Moved to the appropriate forum.
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I'm a huge fan of Planescape, so I continue to use the "Great Wheel" cosmology, including Sigil, in all of my games except the Eberron one, since that setting is highly dependent on it's alternate cosmology. One thing I do prefer about Eberron is the way that setting handles the afterlife - that is to say, there really isn't one for the average person, mmaking the fear of death and the promise of immortality that much more meaningful. It helps that Eberron has several variations on the immortality cult in order to drive the point home.
I'm using the Great Wheel, but I've made a few modifications and made it larger. The wizards on your home plane might not know about some of these details, however.
1. I've eliminated the Prime Material Plane. I decided I didn't need it. Instead, I moved all the "normal" worlds to different locations into "bubbles" or demiplanes. The World of Greyhawk exists on a 8,000 mile diameter rock in the Elemental Plane of Air. Arol and Earth are in a demiplane more than 250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across, orbitting the Negative Material Plane in the Quasi-Material Plane of Vacuum. Sereph is in a 40,000 mile across cavern in the Elemental Plane of Earth.
I moved Ravenloft to Carceri.
2. I've added other plane types, such as half-material planes and tainted planes.
3. I've added new dimensions to the "giant teacup", giving space for things like the Plane of Discordant Opposition, Sheol, and the Plane of Sheer Hatred.
4. I've made all the outer planes much larger. I guess they always were "infinite is size", but I determined to mean it. The first level of the Abyss, for example, has seas billions of miles across. In fact, the "infinite plane" of the Abyss is really a sphere 2,700,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. The Abyss is also occupied by other spheres of similar size, as well as stars and planets the size that you find in our own universe, as well as stars and planets much, much larger.
One of the lowest levels of the Abyss is inhabited by dragons ten times larger than galaxies are in our own universe. No, I don't suppose it is likely that PCs would be able to interact with them in a meaningful way.
5. A couple of the levels of the outer planes, I didn't like they way they were laid out. Given the great size of the outer planes, I determined that the Greyhawk wizards who described these only visited one limited area of the plane, which is not typical of the rest of the plane. One example is Carceri, which is described as consisting of neat rows of "planets". That seems too organized for a plane near the borders of chaos.
6. Every possible variation of everything is in the multiverse. This means that you can theoretically find every variant of the Asgardian pantheon -- the Marvel version, the version described in a wonderful book I read in the 6th grade, the version described in the Deities and Demigods sourcebook, and alternate versions where Loki is lawful good and Heimdal is chaotic evil.
7. The gods regard the Blood War the way that humans regard the wars among the ants of the world.
8. I've applied Einsteinian theories about time an simultanity to determine that, from the point of view of Audor, Raganarok is both in the future and in the past.
9. There is a demiplane of the Ethereal Plane which is organized like 4th Editions little universe.
10. The multiverse is really a lot larger than I've described it here. It is actually larger than I can describe it.
I really dislike the great wheel and planescape it feels so anti-fantasy to me, I much prefer to have planes with some more individuality and not so neatly adressed in little niches. Eberon's planes are quite a bit more lifely, at least what I got from first glance.
(Grrr... post eaten...)
In over 20 years of gaming in a "homebrew" world, I've made it a point to /not/ know everything about alternate planes. They're like atoms - that is, something we can model based on known behaviors, but will never really "know." (A sage will tell you "the outer planes are like a wheel, see..." while at the same time knowing that assigning them "postions" in "space" isn't quite right.) Players have visited other planes a few times, but they're more like the ultimate expression of the "here be dragons (and demons, and angels, and elementals and other crazy stuff)" part of the map. While I completely understand the opposite preference (and make no end of detailing monster behavior and so on), where planes are concerned I try to keep the mysterious mysterious.
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I ran a 3.5 conversion of Dead Gods merged with March of the Modrons. One of the best campaigns I've been involved with. I kept a few rules from 2nd Ed, chiefly spell keys which are a nice flavour element. The PC had started in a Forgotten Realms campaign and I transitioned them to Sigil via a keyed one-way portal to the Fugue Plane where they had to strike a deal with a Devil to leave, which lead them to Avernus. I then used the 2nd chapter of the Well of Worlds to get to the Cage.
The use of cant was a highlight is getting that otherworld flavour and the crazy and sometimes comical portals and keys kept everyone on their toes. A lot of fun.
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I'm currently using the Great Wheel model with Paizo's planes. Inner planes consist of positive/elemental/negative. Outer consist of nine aligned planes surrounding neutral one. Prime is prime. Rest are transient (ethereal, astral, shadow) or demiplanes.
Makes it simple to keep track of in my head. Then again, I loved Planescape.
YMMV
FP
I like to imagine, for myself, that the great beyond is actually the same cosmology as the great wheel, but before or after some kind of spectacular cataclysm that reshaped reality.
The Tenth Dimension
There is a video on U-Tube that goes into the theory that there are 10 Dimensions of space and time.
It gets foggy on the higher ones, but I have used D&D to fill in the blanks.
1: Length: This chart has length as does a fight in a narrow hallway.
2: Width: Chess, checkers, and most encounters take place in 2D.
3: Height: Aerial battles and multi level dungeons all use all 3D.
4: Time: From birth to death, creation to destruction, or start to finsh.
5: Parallel Time: Time is a river.
6: Elemental: Depends on the Game World you came from.
7: Ethical Afterlife: Astral Plane or Outland around Sigil
8: Truely Variant: Like normal but all kinds of different gates.
9: Far Realm: Weird areas controlled by maddening gods.
10: Hyperspace: A blurred space where everything overlaps.
1: Length: This chart has length as does a fight in a narrow hallway.
2: Width: Chess, checkers, and most encounters take place in 2D.
3: Height: Ariel battles and multi level dungeons use all 3D. This is normally all a being is aware of.
This is also how a being perceives their surrondings even when outside normal space.
4: Time: From birth to death, creation to destruction, or start to finsh. Measured in turns, rounds,
encounters, adventures, days, years, and adventure paths. Some spells effect the flow of time,
but to travel through time requires special spells not normally available. Basically, in the 4th
dimension, you are out of phase. Phase spiders can lurk invisably, sliding forward till a time when
someone enters their lair. That's why you can enter a sealed vault and be attacked by a phase
spider. If nornal space is a table top, then Phase Spiders are crawling around under the table.
You could mount a hook under the table and claim the contents of your bag of holding are in
a bag tied to that hook. The farther you get from normal time, the more blurry and grey the
world seems. Looking at the entire flight of an arrow it seems to be a streak from the bow to the
target. If a character (Such as a Cronomage) goes back and warns someone of the ambush
they were involved in, then that creates a split in the timestream, and that happens in the 5th
dimension.
5: Parallel Time: Time is a river. Actually its a branching cluster of rivers all braching from the
highpoint where the world was created. This is what the planeshifter sees. They only see the
major branchings. Did a character expect an ambush? Did the Nazis lose WWII? Did dinosaurs
become extinct? Note that what you had for breakfast creates a very temporary fork in the river
that quickly merges again. The tributary where the Nazis won kind of died out when their economy
collapsed when there was nobody to conquer, and then their gene pool was too limited to support
human survival. If you move, and you use your character with a new gaming group, the new campaign
is a different branch of the same timeline.
6: Elemental: The middle is effectively like your home but with Mefits, Elemenals, and Animentals. You
can go outward to the more pure elemental areas such as Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, if you believe
in that, and you make a DC10 planar knowledge check. If you come from a place that believes only
in an Elemental caos you need to make a D20 Planar knowledge check to reach the pure planes.
Obscure planes such as the plane of Phospherous require a DC25 check.
7: Ethical Afterlife:
8: Truely Variant:
9: Far Realm: A caos of strange lifeforms and objects being formed and ripped apart. Some areas
have been claimed by dieties and like formed things have settled there. When they become sick
of battling other entities, they move to a less complex space and leave behind a sealed portal.
A few of these portals have been breached already.
10: Hyperspace: A blurred space where everything overlaps, you can effectively return to your
homeworld anywhere.
1: Length: One Track Mind.Cyclopses, animals, and some Barbarrians think like this.
2: Width: Chessboard Stratigist
3: Height: Normal
4: Time: Prophet or Historian
5: Parallel Time: Outside the Box. Cronomancers think on this level.
6: Elementalist: Arcane spellcasters are trained to think on this level.
7: Ethical Afterlife:Altruist. Clerics, Angels, Demons and suchlike think in these terms.
8: Truely Variant: Paranoic
9: Far Realm: Alienist.
10: Hyperspace: Illuminati. It's a feat. The illuminated can locate any plane without getting lost.
1: Length:
2: Width:
3: Height:
4: Time: Time elementals and time phantoms.
5: Parallel Time: Time travelers from paralleles. Sarians, Tech savvy cavemen, ect.
6: Elemental: Elementals, Mephets, and Animentals
7: Ethical Afterlife: Fiends, Cellestials,Modrons, Slaads,and petitioner spirits.
8: Truely Variant: Talking animals, Animated things such as Scarecrows and hollow Tin Men.
9: Far Realm: Abberations of all kinds. Unnatural lifeforms such as meat plants or metal bugs.
10: Hyperspace: Evolved beings may want to teach, torture, or do both at once..
Feat-Illuminated.
Prerequisites: Must have been affected by an encounter with a planar native or have one as an ancester.
Benifit.Can find any plane while planewalking, adds 6 to planar knowledge when identifying planar aliens.
This way, the DM or GM can follow the rule books but still create whatever they want as Gary Gygax intended.
The last time I did anything with the planes, I was running a 3.5 edition Planescape campaign. However, I've come to terms with the fact that no one will ever care about the Planescape CS as much as I do, or did. No one I've met really wants to play in that setting. If I do anything with the planes in the future, I'll probably stick fairly close to the Pathfinder version.