The Outer Planes of D&D

There's an unfortunate problem in D&D's treatment of the outer planes and the gods and demigods who reputedly live there. This problem was somewhat apparent in AD&D 1st Ed., and I think it has been exacerbated in 3rd Ed. (having recently perused the current Manual of the Planes for the first time). It's partly a result of both (a) AD&D dividing its treatment of deities and planes into separate projects, and (b) the desire to leave "the gods" specified on a per-campaign basis, and therefore not dictated (or even defined) in the cosmology as a whole.

The gods, and the outer planes on which they reside (as described in WOTC's Manual of the Planes) seem curiously bloodless, and detached from the actual happenings in the planes. While the planes are near-infinite expanses, the gods situated within them basically only rule a single building, and only a few miles around their headquarters. They seem to huddle like hermits in the vastness of the outer planes, while creatures such as celestials, devils, and demons, are said to "rule" them. This fails to sync up with classical mythology, where the greater gods rule their homes, usually having created both heaven and earth. It turns the usual mythology on its head where gods are served by angels and demons; in D&D, angels and demons rule, while the gods satisfy themselves with managing small corners of existence.

It's even more odd considering that in D&D 3rd Edition (as presented in Deities and Demigods), the gods are so vastly more powerful than any celestial, demon, or devil. Any true god can instantaneously destroy any other creature in existence if they so choose, regardless of power level - and even otherwise the gods have enormously higher statistics, abilities, and powers than any devil or demon lord. In AD&D 1st Ed., this was not so great a problem, since all the archdevils and demon lords were themselves deities - but 3rd Ed. has officially stripped that status from them, making the radical power separation utterly impenetrable.

We are left with the following conundrum: deities are immensely more powerful than any non-deities, and yet it is non-deities who rule and shape the outer planes, not any of the gods living on them. For example, the Nine Hells are ruled by a series of archdevils - while the evil monster-deities Kurtulmak and Sekolath are forced to hide in the hinterlands of those planes, even while either could easily destroy one and all of the archdevils if they so chose. Yugoloths (formerly daemons) rule the 20-mile high citadel of Hades (with no deity in sight), and in Tarterus, demons, devils, and yugoloths roam freely -- while the greater god Nerull is given only a single temple on the farthest, tiniest layer of that plane. In Arcadia, animals, dwarves, formians, and even Material Plane mortals hold sway, while the deity Cuthbert has only a single fortress. Lolth, a lesser demonness in AD&D, has uniquely retained her stature as a deity, and so become more powerful than any demon lord in D&D 3rd Edition. In the Outlands, the greater god Boccob has a remote library, while he is completely helpless in the face of the "Lady of Pain" who rules a "trader's city" at the center of the cosmos. And so it goes everywhere - mundane races rule, while the gods hide, each in some isolated hall or abbey. According to the current Manual of the Planes, the primary focal points for Law, Chaos, and Evil (Nirvana, Limbo, and Hades) have no gods residing in them whatsoever, and neither do any of the Inner Planes (including the Elemental).

Obviously, part of the reason this is done is to allow DMs to place their own pantheons in the Outer Planes - however, that implies more labor for every DM in his or her campaign, which is not a good thing. The new Manual of the Planes is clearly more of a toolkit to allow DMs to set up cosmologies unique to their own campaign. However, it would have been much more inspiring to see examples or suggestions for the gods actually ruling their domains. For example, the few gods of Oerth from the core rules could have been specified as rulers of their celestial lands, with the outsiders serving them, and a suggestion given that a DM could replace them with his or her own deities. Alternatively, a regime of outsiders serving nameless deities could have been set up, allowing DMs to insert their own gods in the appropriate places. As it is, however, the status of gods versus outsiders on the Outer Planes is oddly inverted compared to their actual power levels and importance.

The Outer Planes of Mythology

Clearly, the cosmology of D&D is a work of fantasy made nearly out of whole cloth. It is a creation specifically for the game, an expansion of the two-axis alignment system, and a shorthand way for allowing the gods of all possible pantheons to have a shared place in the cosmos. Therefore, it is a synthesizing project for a multitude of mythologies, not synchronous with any actual classical or fantasy mythology.

Most real-world mythologies only have a very reduced number of "other planes" of existence. The common alternatives are as follows:

1. One Spirit World. Some mythology systems, particularly more "primitive" ones, speak of only a single "otherworld" or "spirit land" or "shadow realm", coexisting with the real world, in which variously nature spirits, ghosts, and the undead walk. Examples: American Indians, Celtic mythos.

2. Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld. A great many mythologies describe one "upper" celestial home of the gods, a "middle" region of the mortal land and its oceans, and a "lower" realm where the dead normally reside, and shadowy gods oversee them. In myth, the "upper" realm may be said to exist on top of a mountain, cloud, or the sphere of the sky (but for our purpose we'll call it an extradimensional plane). Usually the "underworld" is assumed to be inside the Earth. These regions are almost always connected in a physical sense, whether by a huge mountain, pillars at the edge of the world, a cosmos-spanning tree, etc. Spirits and demons are the servanrs of the gods in each of these places. Frequently there is one greater god in charge of each of these separate realms (e.g., Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades - air, water, and earth). Examples: Greek, Babylonian, Finnish, Christian myth, etc. (The Norse mythos might also look like this, with Asgard-Midgard-Nifleheim, and yet they also refer to the "nine worlds".)

The official D&D cosmology is one that attempts to provide a place for every mythology's different realms. Usually it places a myth's "spirit world" in one of the upper planes, while a myth's "heaven" becomes an upper plane and its "hell" becomes a lower outer plane. At the same time as it provides for these classical myths, it also provides detailed places for Christian demons and devils independent of such gods (although the Seven Heavens and Hell can be considered as one more myth's placement in the Outer Planes).

Finally, the D&D cosmology is also informed by more recent works of fantasy literature, which generally have a more complicated and sophisticated cosmology, often one of many alien dimensions and planes. The D&D cosmology incorporates these ideas with its large number of planes and portals, which are not generally seen in classical myth. Examples: the works of Lovecraft, Moorcock, and Leiber. Indeed, "Greyhawk is bursting to the seams with alternate planes and worlds", as one writer put it (see links below).

Origin of Outer Planes Names

Out of personal curiousity, I looked up the origin of the various names given to the D&D Outer Planes. In some places, historically, D&D has tried to place real-world mythologies in the planes of the appropriate name. You'll see below that this can't be extended as a rule, since the majority of names are from either Christian (and Muslim) or Greek myth:

Christian Mythology

Greek Mythology

Norse Mythology

Buddhist Mythology

American Indian

Reference Links

Three different Greek afterworld myths:

Different interpretations of Christian myth and translation from Greek:

Catholic definitions of Hell and Limbo:

Etymology of Pandemonium:

Norse cosmology:

An in-depth comparison of different fantasy milieu (including Greyhawk):