The Articles of Dragon: "Plane Facts on Gladsheim"

Judging by the fact that this is the third post in a row about Dragon issue #90 (October 1984), I think it’s safe to say it was a good one. The funny thing is, before rereading it for these posts, I don’t think I’d have singled it out as anything special. I have a pretty good visual memory, especially for the covers of books and magazines I read as a kid or teenager, and recalling a cover usually brings the contents rushing back. I certainly remembered the cover of issue #90, but, until I revisited it, I doubt I could have told you much about what was inside, let alone why it might be worth talking about all these years later. Go figure!

In the case of the other two articles from this issue I've already discussed, that makes some sense. However, in the case of Roger E. Moore's "Plane Facts on Gladsheim," I'm a bit surprised. I was always a huge fan of Moore's articles, many of which are among the best ever to appear in the pages of Dragon. Likewise, I was fascinated by AD&D's planar cosmology from the moment I first saw it in Appendix IV of the Players Handbook. I wanted to know more about all these strange otherworlds that Gary Gygax mentioned there. Consequently, Moore's article on the Astral Plane was like catnip to me. Even now, I'd easily list it as one of my Top 10 Favorite Articles – probably even Top 5. 

That's why I'm surprised I didn't remember that issue #90 included Moore's attempt to do for Gladsheim what he had done earlier for the Astral Plane. Rereading it, though, I begin to remember why. But before I get to that, I'd like to talk briefly about the article itself. At over a dozen pages in length, there can be no question that Moore has been thorough in describing the realm of the Norse gods and other "chaotic good neutrals," to use Gygax's gloriously baroque terminology. He presents the overall "geography" of the plane, with its various realms associated with gods, giants, and other beings, as well as how they relate to one another. It's useful stuff but, if you're already well versed in Norse mythology, none of it is new information.

What is new are his notes on how various AD&D spells and magic items operate on Gladsheim. Indeed, the bulk of the article is taken up by these notes, as Moore describes a wide range of changes, tweaks, and restrictions in how these things work here. On the one hand, this is very much to be expected. Starting with Queen of the Demonweb Pits, AD&D largely took a game mechanical approach to describing the planes. The planes were places where the rules of the game worked differently than they did on the Prime Material Plane of your home campaign setting. That is what set them apart (along with some new random encounter charts). Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that approach and I think, in the case of both Lolth's layer of the Abyss and the Astral Plane, it works reasonably well. In the case of Gladsheim, though, I don't think it does – or at least, it's not enough to do so.

For me, the problem – then and now – is that Gladsheim is boring. As described, it's a realm that's not too dissimilar to most vanilla fantasy worlds. That's not Gladsheim's fault really; it's more a consequence of the fact that Norse mythology is so rich with cool monsters and magic and gods and so forth that fantasy writers, including the writers of Dungeons & Dragons, have been looting them for decades. Unlike, say, the bizarre void of the Astral Plane or the malevolent chaos of the Abyss, Gladsheim is just like northern Europe – which is what a lot of fantasy settings are already like. What really sets it apart?

Moreover, as a realm populated by lots of gods who are worshiped on the Prime Material Plane, the scope of what characters can do in Gladsheim is necessarily limited. Cause too much mayhem and they'll draw the attention of Odin or Thor and that's not likely to end well for them. I get the sense that Moore might have recognized this on some level, because he also wrote an accompanying adventure, "Aesirhamar," that's set on Gladsheim as an example of the kinds of things he expected characters could do here. I appreciate that, even if I'm not convinced his answer is an especially good one. However, I'll save my comments about the adventure till next week, because I think it's worthy of a separate post. For now, I'll simply say that I can now see why Planescape opted for such a strange and idiosyncratic approach to the planes. Like it or hate, at least it's different.