Friday, May 7, 2021

Gygax's Inner Planes

I've commented before that, while I'm no fan of Unearthed Arcana as eventually published, I was conversely a big fan of much of the material Gygax was creating in preparation for his never-written second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This material appeared in the pages of Dragon over the course of several years, presenting new classes (like the barbarian, cavalier, and thief-acrobat), weapons and armor, spells, and monsters, along with expanded conceptions of other aspects of the game. At the time, I liked these articles simply because they provided me with more stuff to use in my AD&D campaign (and use them I did). Now, though, what I like about them is the way they seem to represent a maturing of Gygax's fantasy conceptions, the fruit of years of thought and play, not to mention the need for AD&D to find new frontiers of adventure.

His article, "The Inner Planes," which appeared in issue #73 of Dragon (May 1983), demonstrates this maturation process quite clearly, I think. In it, Gygax offers "a new way to look at the AD&D world." This new way was necessary because, as the game's cosmology evolved, there was a need to reconcile new conceptions to earlier presentations. The para-elemental planes, for example, arose out of wondering about what happens at the point where two elemental planes met. Gygax obviously liked the idea, but soon realized that the thought process that led to them was incomplete. After all, there were other Inner Planes, like the Positive and Negative Material Planes, the Ethereal Plane, and the Plane of Shadow (the latter itself a recent addition to the cosmology). How did they interact with the Elemental Planes and what was the effect of all this interaction?

The result is a cubic representation of the Inner Planes, as depicted in this cut-out included on page 13 of this issue:

"What a mess!" you might reasonably say and it is a mess – an ugly, convoluted, and probably unnecessary one at that, but I love it all the same. There are a couple of things I like about this, starting with the fact that it's clearly an attempt by Gygax to think about AD&D's cosmology in rational way. If para-elemental planes arise due to the meeting of two elemental planes, what happens when an elemental plane meets the Positive or Negative Material Plane? What about a para-elemental plane? The result is baroque, almost to the point of absurdity, but it makes sense. One might argue that this is little different than debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and I'm somewhat sympathetic to that point of view. At the same time, given what Gygax had already established about the game's metaphysics and the interactions of those metaphysical forces, this oddly colored cube is a natural, even inevitable, evolution of it all.

That's the second thing I like about this new presentation of the Inner Planes: it's evolutionary. What I mean by that is that it demonstrates that AD&D and the fantasy world it presented was growing and changing, not in a way that, strictly speaking, repudiated anything about its earlier self but rather in a way that added to and expanded upon what had come before. None of this was needed by players or referees solely interested in dungeon crawls or wilderness exploration or all the usual activities of fantasy roleplaying. However, players and referees interested in going beyond that would find it invaluable. Gygax was taking a lot more interest in the other planes of existence, seeing them as the next logical step in exploring the possibilities implied by AD&D's setting. To do that properly, he'd need to think about them more carefully, teasing out the implications and taking stock of all they could offer. Whether one likes the direction he was headed or not, I hope one can nevertheless appreciate the effort.

30 comments:

  1. While I agree that this is an interesting rational evolution of the structure of the inner planes, I never found it all that useful. The para- and quasi-elemental planes may be necessary (or at least logical) results of contacts between the elemental, positive, and negative planes, but they seem like just that: concepts rather than places to explore.

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    1. I agree wholeheartedly. I had hopes that Gygax would have eventually got round to describing all these Inner Planes and showing what dwells there and how they could be used in a high-level, plane-hopping campaign. Alas, it was not to be.

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    2. While I'd agree that the elemental planes (vanilla, para-, or quasi-) and energy planes aren't much use for adventuring as written due to being mostly lethal environs without serious magical aid, they did provide a decent array of new monsters. That by itself is enough to make me reasonably happy they exist. They alsi provide some truly unearthly settings for one-off excursions where the party does have the aforementioned magic available on a temporary basis, but I wouldn't want to set a story arc (or a whole campaign) on any of them.

      That said, Planescape did eventually show that you could run a whole campaign without setting foot on the Prime Material and have fun with it - but even it went light on elemental/energy plane settings compared to the Outer Planes or even the "transit" planes.

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    3. The elemental/inner planes being lethal environments and "one trick ponies" comes from Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes and AFAIK that's not what Gygax's conception of them was like. See, for instance, the original DMG cover depicting a scene on the elemental plane of fire. In early Dragon magazines he mentioned plans to write (and/or co-write with Steve Marsh) several adventures set in the inner planes so I really doubt his intent was for them to be boring, one-note, and totally inhospitable the way Grubb depicted them.

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  2. The pleasure of the cosmology being shaped like a D6 is also pretty nice.

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  3. I want an inner planes as evocative as the outer planes. I agree with John that it is not useful. Unless one invented politics in the elemental planes and something interesting was happening at these points of contact.

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    1. I suspect Gygax would have, had he retained control of the game into the mid-80s and beyond. He was already doing that with the Lower Planes, which became a great deal more interesting with the publication of Monster Manual II, for example. With time, I suspect he'd have done more with the Inner Planes. I know, for example, he'd written something about the Plane of Shadow.

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    2. Even Planescape focused more on the Outer Planes than the Inner Ones. Suspect that may be due to the Elemental Planes being seen as one-trick ponies. 4e's radically different cosmology actually fixed that quite nicely with the bubbling stewpot that was Elemental Chaos IME, and the edition's take on elemental monsters (most of which were mashups of two or more elements) was far more interesting than the conceptually similar para- and quasi-elemental types.

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    3. IIRC Gygax did write quite a bit about the Shadow Plane in his Gord novels, so we have at least a decent idea of what he wanted to do with it in the long run. He obviously had something in mind for the Elemental planes too, going by the whole Temple of Elemental Evil thing. If there were baddie elemental lords, the overall neutral nature of the planes suggest there must have been good ones planned as well.

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  4. Gygax could well have been the greatest OS blogger of them all (if only he'd lived in a later time)!

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  5. I found his original planar article (that was later reprinted in Best of Dragon Volume 1), interesting. And I've pretty much ignored all of it through 1E, and especially 2E (BERK!) and 3E. A few bits and pieces I like, but IMO 4th Edition probably had the most Home DM Friendly approach to the planes (barring OD&D's non approach), and I still ignored most of 4E's version too.

    As a DM the planes have never interested me from a "canon" standpoint. I've never felt that a make believe set of "otherworldly dimensions" for a made up fantasy world needed any kind of structure or "rational" description. It seems counter productive to me.

    If anything has interested me, it's Ravenloft's Domains. Small pocket dimensions that make contact with the material world. They don't need to make sense or have a structure- they are simply there to provide an adventure-even when they are on the epic scale in the grand scheme of things just like Moorcock's Young Kingdoms/Elric novels.

    Not that I don't find Gary's Great Wheel interesting, but it seems so restrictive and codified for something that really should'nt be. IMO of course. OMMV.

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    1. Things like Ravenloft's pocket dimensions were/are my preferred approach to extra-planar adventuring as well, although I do feel that 4e's cosmology managed to make that style of play far more accessible than it ever had been even at low levels, more so than even Planescape IME.

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    2. Agreed. I really do care for 4E, if I am going to adopt something official. Unlike many, I'm a fan of the edition. The break from D&D tradition, cosmology included,is why.

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    3. @JEFFB As unpopular as that opinion is among many grognards, I'm with you on 4E. Underrated edition with many good points, and I far prefer it to 5th - and its spiritual successor 13th Age takes many of the best aspects of the game and runs with them while adding some strong new ideas.

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    4. I "13th aged" 4E before 13A came out- simplifying it for ToTM style games. I am a big fan of 4E's framework. And when 13th Age came out, I was instantly a fan. 13th Age has become my preferred "modern D&D" ruleset along with Dungeon World. It's that or OD&D (in it's various forms and clones" for me. Give me new and different (4E/13A), or give me the originals- all the stuff in between, I've no use for.

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    5. @JEFFB Think we're pretty much on the same page here. Can't really see going back to 3/3.5 (or the similar Pathfinder rules) at this point, although I enjoyed them when they were new-ish. 2nd could conceivably tempt me back in through sheer nostalgia if someone ran a Spelljammer campaign, but even then I'd rather play the setting under different rules.

      13th Age has some stuff that's really easy to crib for other engines too. Escalation die mechanics, Icon relationships, the entire Background system in place of restrictive skill lists, and the use of d20 resultsto determine when "rider" effects trigger.

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  6. This post lines up with a lot of my feelings about why I really like the often-maligned 80s-era Gygax/AD&D flavor, of which this Dragon #73 article is a key element. You can see in the stuff he published in Dragon magazine, most of which was eventually collected into the MM2, World of Greyhawk boxed set, and Unearthed Arcana - all of which was supposed to be leading up to the big AD&D revision planned for 1986-87 - that he was continuing to think about the game and how to keep developing it and broadening its horizons to present new types and venues for adventure and flesh out concepts that had been hinted at or sketched-in earlier, and that the whole thing became fuller and richer and more complex and mature BUT was still a natural evolutionary outgrowth from the original dungeon/wilderness adventuring paradigm that still existed more-or-less unchanged at the core. He wasn't changing the game (mostly, and it's widely agreed that those things he added in this period that did change the game - like weapon specialization, were the most ill-advised) but rather was expanding it, presenting new options for people that, like him, had been at this for a few years and were continuing to think deeply about it and take it seriously and had an appetite for something both broader and deeper. That just like the scope of D&D expanded with the supplements, and expanded again with AD&D, it was continuing to expand. They're all just snapshots of points in an ongoing process of growth and development.

    And yes, it's a real shame that his split with TSR was so acrimonious that there wasn't a way for him to have continued to do more of this kind of development independently - that was never saw Gygax's Book of the Planes as a generic-statted "AD&D Compatible" product.

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  7. I too am of the mindset that "other planes" should not be over-rationalized. I even feel the distinction between Astral and Ethereal Planes is a bit unnecessary.

    This is what the non-creative fan-base typical does to comic book canon too---sucking all the mystery and wonder down the drain. It's a human foible to want to explain the unknown.

    The desire to classify planes-of-existence is like rules-tinkering, a casual endeavor with a low bar for entry.

    Here's what I think would be much cooler --- detailing fantastic, playable, LOCATIONS in other planes, but that take way more effort.

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    1. I'm with you, squeen. No mater who was writing them, the AD&D cosmologies tended to be rational and orderly, with a sort of implied predictability about them. And I feel like a fantastic cosmology should be none of those things.

      Also, IMO to keep the flavour of of a faux-medieval setting, the people in the world should have no better or more rational understanding of the universe than their historical medieval counterparts.

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    2. Thank you Squeen for saying what I was trying to, much more eleoquently.

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    3. @JEEFB: That's one of the nicest compliment I've ever received on the internet. You are most welcome.

      @Beoric: Hi bud. :)

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  8. I love the lethality of the original elemental planes (and some of the outer planes) because it is so high-concept. It’s really cosmic in a sense— here are realms where humans cannot travel! You’ll just die immediately! In 5th edition the elemental planes are presented as a little more earthlike and habitable, but the idea of a realm of pure fire, or a completely underwater world without air, is so epic. In my last D&D campaign I decided that the entire Earth, the “prime material plane”, was in fact a bubble of earth and air floating within the Plane of Water, and when the players flew high up enough in the sky they realized the blue of the sky was the dome of water high above. This was inspired by reading that this is an interpretation of how the writers of the Bible actually viewed the world (there is a line in Genesis about how god ‘parted the waters’, and apparently this is one interpretation of what that meant).

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  9. What a lot of posters here are missing is that "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" was where Gary tested a lot of his ideas and concepts. This was by no means his final word on the Inner Planes; it was merely a beginning. Even the materials that were taken from FtSS for Unearthed Arcana were not complete at the time of publication -- it is well known that UA was thrown together because TSR needed money at the time, so they threw together whatever they had at the time to make some bank, regardless of its completeness.

    Regarding the Inner Planes and their usefulness as adventuring sites under the existing rules and the new materials provided in the article -- of course it was not done! Of course it was not ready to play! Gary was throwing the spaghetti on the wall to see if it would stick. It was only still in the cooking phase. There was a lot more development to be done. He even acknowledged that in the last paragraph of the article:

    "With both more Inner Planes to visit and an easy-identification system offered for them and the Outer Planes as well, the range of AD&D adventuring is poised on the brink of new frontiers. More is needed, no doubt, regarding ethereal travel, creatures of other planes, and so on. Certainly the more venturesome DMs can begin here and now to include broad-scale adventures in the Inner and Outer Planes as part of their campaign repertoire."

    What Gary presented in the article is the beginnings of a framework, not a complete milieu. Any DM worth the shield knows that to create an effective adventure, let alone a campaign, you have to build a framework first, especially with something so complex as the Inner Planes (or any planes/dimensions). One or two adventures, sure, you could get away with running those without any breakdown. But if you do not have a framework -- an overarching understanding of how the planes work and how they relate, as Gary is just *beginning* to build here -- any long-term adventures and campaigns are doomed to failure.

    Y'all are complaining that Gary lost the game, when all you see here is the first inning... and Gary never even got to start the second inning as the game was called due to financial disaster.

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    1. Fair point, a framework is nice, and EGG never really had a chance to finish telling his story.

      Still, what came after (Manual of the Planes, Planescape, etc.) did include a lot of pointless over specificity --- the product of smaller imaginations?

      When the framework generates more creativity, I would personally see that as a benefit. But when it reduces to the mundane (e.g. the Inner Planes as Cyberpunk/Ren Fair, per Planescape), then it's gone too far IMO.

      Your quote ("With both more Inner Planes to visit and an easy-identification system offered for them and the Outer Planes as well, the range of AD&D adventuring is poised on the brink of new frontiers...."), was never truly realized was it? Not only by EGG, but by the hobby as a whole.

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    2. @Squeen Planescape realized it quite nicely IMO. So did Spelljammer, albeit in a very different way. Both of them opened up some very different types of campaigns from the traditional format. The fact that neither has been revisited in any meaningful way since TSR's collapse is a shame IMO.

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    3. I was under the impression that Planescape landed in the "fun to read, impractical to play" category. No?

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    4. @squeen YMMV but I didn't find that to be true. I certainly enjoyed my time with it as both player and GM, and would probably have stuck with Planescape longer if the huge local surge of interest in White Wolf's WoD games hadn't put me off D&D for a few years in the later half of the 90s. Really didn't come back to D&D until 3.0/d20 dropped.

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  10. Agree with Squeen here; why on earth (or of it) would you want or expect logic & rationalism to apply where plane hopping is concerned? It's midichlorianising the whole thing.

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    1. Philosophically, I don't expect there to be anywhere where logic and reason don't apply, apart from realms of pure chaos. More importantly, if logic and reason don't apply there can be no game and no fun.

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  11. Thanks for writing this, James! I added it to my OSR newsletter: https://questingbeast.substack.com/p/the-glatisant-issue-15

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