This article originally appeared on RPG Counterpoint.
Now that the System Reference Document for D&D’s 5th edition has been released to the Creative Commons, it should be easier than ever to write D&D material for your own or generic settings. However, not only are there large swathes of 5e material outside the SRD, there’s also a select amount of material that Wizards has specifically called out as Product Identity. Product Identity was (and is) specifically part of the Open Gaming License, but it still represents the material that WotC seems to be particularly protective over, and you might want to avoid using it outside of a community content agreement like DM’s Guild. The list of Product Identity includes a few monsters like the beholder and mind flayer, named characters (specifically calling out the Lady of Pain), and a list of locations. Including an exhaustive inventory of the outer planes from the Great Wheel cosmology: The Heroic Domains of Ysgard, The Ever Changing Chaos of Limbo, The Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, etc, etc… This would seem to preclude any sort of planar adventure in the D&D multiverse, then, wouldn’t it?
OK, quick aside to point out that I am NOT a lawyer, on Intellectual Property or otherwise. What I am is somebody with a lot of random knowledge on religion and mythology. You know who else had that? Gary Gygax. When Gygax first laid out the planes of existence in the pages of Dragon magazine, he drew on real world religion and mythology. So while WotC can claim that the “Heroic Domains of Ysgard” is part of their product identity, “Asgard” or “Gladsheim” as it was originally known are very securely in the public domain, predating D&D as they did by over a millennium. While planning my own generic planar romp, I got curious as to where all of these various planes came from. I thought it might be useful to collect their original inspirations, some obvious and some less so.
First, a brief history of how the planes developed: Gygax first laid out nine alignment-based planes in an issue of the Strategic Review from February 1976, then added another nine intermediary planes in Dragon Magazine no. 8 in 1977. In these articles, the planes were only named and associated with one or two alignments and no details were given other than what could be deduced from the names themselves. Individual planes would get more details here and there over the next decade in Dragon magazine and various sourcebooks, but it wasn’t until 1987’s Manual of the Planes that the majority of these locations were really fleshed out. This book also added the Concordant Opposition as the plane for True Neutrality. The planes would get much more detail in 1994’s Planescape setting, which also added the city of Sigil and gave some planes new names like “Arborea” and “Carceri.” Third edition is where the outer planes received their current long titles, possibly to ensure that every plane was specific enough to be claimed as Product Identity per the new Open Gaming License. D&D’s fourth edition codified the Feywild, Shadowfell, and Far Realm within the D&D cosmology, and 5th edition has primarily just shuffled things around a bit.
So where did the names and ideas behind these early planes come from? Two sources are predominant: The largest group (7 or so) came from Judeo-Christian tradition, often filtered through literature. The second largest group (at least 4) are straight out of Greek mythology, with other religions and mythologies filling out most of the rest. If one looks at the overall structure, there is a clear pattern where Judeo-Christian influenced planes tend to lean towards the lawful side of the ring while those from classical mythology tend to lean towards the chaotic. This likely draws on the fiction of Poul Anderson such as Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword. While the general conflict of Law vs Chaos is mostly based on the works of Moorcock, the way they played out in the identity of the outer planes probably owes more to Anderson and Gygax’s own conception of the Middle Ages.
Probably the most obvious in their origins are Heaven and Hell, the Lawful Good and Lawful Evil planes. When they appeared in the Strategic Review, these planes were singular, but by 1977 they had become seven and nine, respectively. There are Seven Heavens listed in the Jewish Talmud, and this number may have been influenced by Mesopotamian astronomy which counted seven heavenly bodies in the sun, moon, and five visible planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The Nine Hells, meanwhile, come directly from Dante’s Inferno, which also lent names to some of its archdevils and locations like the city of Dis. Dante also gave his Heaven nine layers, but his first seven line up exactly with those in D&D’s Manual of the Planes.
Acheron, which Gygax eventually used as the Lawful/Lawful Evil plane, was actually the border of Hell in Dante’s Inferno; however, it ultimately comes from a river in Greece which was sometimes conflated with the river Styx in mythology, so this counts as a sort of dual influence. In either case, it seems appropriate for a “not quite Hell” plane, though there’s no real resemblance to the metallic plane of battle that would develop in the D&D cosmology.
Gehenna, Gygax’s Evil/Lawful Evil plane, is a term for a place of torment sometimes synonymous with Hell in Judaism and Christianity, but derives its name from the real Valley of Hinnom near Jerusalem.
Paradise is somewhat synonymous with Heaven, but usually refers to the earthly paradise or Garden of Eden as opposed to the afterlife. It is also the top of Mount Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the first stop on the way to Heaven. In Gygax’s original conception, Paradise was the Neutral Good plane. It became Twin Paradises for unknown reasons in 1977, before being shuffled into the Good/Lawful Good position in the 1987 Manual and having its name changed to “Bytopia” in Planescape. A mixture of Thomas Moore’s Utopia and the plane’s established twin nature. This plane’s dual nature might be a reference to dualistic concepts in mythology, or it might allude to the pair of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton.
The quintessential Lawful plane in the Great Wheel is Nirvana. This concept from Indian religious tradition is most associated with Buddhism in the West, where it signifies enlightenment and the escape from the cycle of reincarnation. This makes a certain amount of sense if you consider the Lawful alignment to be the belief that there is a rational order to the multiverse: the ultimate Lawful plane here represents becoming one with the machinery of the cosmos, to “make me one with everything” as the old joke goes. However, we can’t be sure the exact reasoning behind Gygax choosing Nirvana as the Lawful plane (he didn’t talk much about planes besides their game functions); nor is it the only logical placement of Nirvana on the alignment chart. Pathfinder, notably, calls their Neutral Good plane Nirvana and their Lawful Neutral plane Axis. If you’re not sold on it, it’s also worth noting that, “Mechanus” was included in the Creative Commons as an outer plane where native creatures, “such as modrons, are constructs shaped from the raw material of the plane by the will of more powerful creatures,” though any other lore connected to the name is excluded.
One more stop among the planes of Law, there’s Arcadia, Gygax’s name for the Lawful/Lawful Good plane. Arcadia is a region in Greece where, according to myth, the deities Hermes and Pan resided. These are the most chaotic deities of a chaotic pantheon, which makes this an odd choice for the Lawful side of the Great Wheel. “Arcadian” can also refer to an artistic and philosophical idea that gained prominence during the Renaissance which idealized a supposed golden age of harmony with nature, which I suppose fits better, but is lacking in the mythic and religious provenance of the other planes. Arcadia’s levels of Abellio, Buxenus, and Nemausus are all named for Celtic deities, but these weren’t added until the Manual of the Planes. Like many of the planes between the main alignment ones, Arcadia is somewhat lacking in identity. Planescape made this plane the home base of the Harmonium, giving it much more character than it had previously, but this group, along with other Planescape inventions like the Outlands and the city of Sigil, are firmly parts of WotC’s Product Identity.
That’s all we have room for in this article, but next time, we’ll foray into the planes of Chaos, and beyond!