To that one person in my dnd campaign on tumblr do not read this.

So my dnd campaign is a plane hopping adventure where the planes are falling apart from each other. Ao far they are just wobbling, but its gonna get worse.

They started out in the material plane, where its like a modern day earth with magic, although most magic is being processed to make if safer. Major cities also have barriers to make them safer. You know, because meteor swarm would be slightly bad.

The next plane is their home base where (unnamed organization) exists. They know the planes are being harmed (I have not made a name yet even after they got there.) not only does nature just hate anyone harming it, patching up in moments after a boat slammed into a part of the forest, most people there are anthro animals.

Then they are currently in the elemental planes, where some lesbian pirate elementals, a water one named dew and a fire one named shaday were helping them get transported to a peace party where the elemental lords are before dew got captured by the water lord and now they are in a sewer. I have plans for them to take over from the water and fire lord but im not writing that here.

Then there is the plane of magic where i have not gotten to yet, a plane that was colonized by other races into a futuristic city that runs on the mana there. That is going to be my gameshow arc, and it is the one i am very ready for.

Next up is going to be the plane of gods. I know we are moving fast, but i have an idea. So long ago the gods killed a creature that was destined to kill them, and the god of time is going to be the first to meet our party, telling them to gather things. Little does the party know that while no god has seen time for a while, not many people believe them that they saw it, time is planning to fuse with the creature to punish the gods for not taking them seriously, and time sees it in their fate, believing the future is unchangeable.

There are incredibly powerful magic entity in the planes that are currently chained up, and they are central to collapsing planes.

Planes! They are an essential part of the DnD experience but how can DMs use them in their homebrew worlds, specifically if you want to potentially publish your work and thus have it be compatible with the System Reference Document (SRD5) for 5e?

Because let's face it, if you want to use the Planes for a home game, then you can just copy the system described in the books word for word, but once you get into monetization (that goes beyond maybe streaming your games on Twitch), then you need to put some work into it. This post is the first in a (probably) two-part series which intended to give you something to work of, an off-brand cosmology primer for your personal setting.

This half of the series deals with the Material Plane and its echoes, while the next half of it will deal with

The Material Plane

The Material Plane is obviously the part of the setting where you have the realms of mortals and where most of your worldbuilding takes place. Go hogwild with it! Populate it with settlements, peoples, flora and fauna, all that jazz! In terms of astronomy, I recommend that the Material Plane is surrounded by the Astral Plane and that if one passes through the Astral Plane without ending up in an Outer Plane, you reach space. The final frontier. But how everything but the Material Plane can work, you gotta wait for a bit.

But, as a sidenote, you can't have an underground civilization area that you call the "Underdark", because that term is copyrighted by WotC. You can 100 percent have an inner world (the SRD does include the language Undercommon and lists its users as "underworld traders", for the record, so they are very much aware of that being something people want to use), you just gotta call it something else.

The Echoes of Material Plane

Now in regular 5e, the Material Plane has two echoes, the Shadowfell and the Feywild. The Shadowfell, which is the muted, dreary counterpart, is home to the Raven Queen and her fortress, and is also linked to the Domains of Dread (like Barovia), and undead in general. The Feywild meanwhile is home to lush wilderness, revelry and ectasy, and fey creatures.

Now I'm not a legal expert, but based on certain precedents in the SRD (I'm looking at you, Tiamat!), both of these terms are probably off-limits, too, but the ideas are fair game. Therefore you can use these two off-brand versions in your setting, the Graylands and the Sylphame.

The Graylands is one of two echoes of the Material Plane. It is infamous for its hostile towards life. Journeys through it feel longer and more draining than in the Material Plane, even if the same amount of time and distance is covered. Sometimes paths are even temporarily blocked through fog. Plantlife seems on the cusp of death, sprawling cities and mighty fortresses on the Material Plane are instead ruins, and lights are perpetually dim.

These lands are primarily inhabited by Shadows, amorphous undead that drain the lifeforce of their victims. Mortals and beasts who land in the Graylands often transform into Shadow-like entities themselves, and undead seem to thrive in the Graylands. Very few beings remain something resembling their old selves here, and those that do often become emotionally hardened...

Sylphame is the other echo of the Material Plane. It is lush with vegetation, in fact most inhabited places on the Material Plane are instead wilderness or at least mixtures of nature and settlement. Journeys through the Sylphame can be deceiving. Sometimes travel is nearly instant, sometimes you encounter intraversible wilderness instead, with no way of knowing how this echo will treat you when your journey begins...

In terms of its inhabitants Sylphame is home to beasts, plant creatures, and of course fey. Mortals who reside in Sylphame are often erratic in terms of mood, both quick to anger and to forgive.

ok so my players got hold of one of these amulets pretty early due to a random loot table (around level 6 or 7). shortly after they realized that if they had a safe place to plane shift to they could just use it too traverse the prime materiel plane. so they paid to use a demiplane from a powerful wizard friend they had and started teleporting around.

The thing about this is that the group consisted of a female drow rogue, a female halfling cleric and my very stupid aasimar monk DMPC (6 int). so the best suited to use the amulet is the rogue with a 14 int at that point. Now with the way the amulet works i roll a d100 when they fail to see how much they fail (as in if it is the desired plane or something completly different) i had even found a table so i could roll for random planes. 

so they ready up for a journey to a different continent this would require 2 planeshifts one too the demiplane (which is in what i call the arcane expanse cause homebrew stuff is fun) and then a second one with the monk wearing the amulet since he is the only one who had been to the continent. Now this sounds easy in theory but the one of the funniest moments i have had happen to date happend after this. 

guidance has been cast and the roles are about to be made and then they get a total of 14. I roll the d100 and it says somewhere different on the same plane. now i had not really given this arcane expanse to much thought cause i never thought it would actually become relevant outside of maybe a wizard talking about it but i had thought up two places in there. so i roll a d2 to see where they go and... they end up on a floating island in what is basically space just made of magic and they panic of course they can’t use the amulet immediatly cause it is an action so for six seconds they just stand the until one of them notice the big blue sleeping dragon on the other end of the island. Both the cleric and the rogue notice (the monk has his back turned too it and is oblivous) so they teleport as soon as they can and they fail again. 

they were trying to get back to their home but nope they ended up in the elemental plane of water deep below sea level in total darkness. i make them roll to make sure they still have a grasp on eachother as they teleport again and now they aim for the demiplane but once again it fails but it is still in the arcane expanse. so they go too the second place i had thought up in there which was a floating rock with a giant mansion on it and they seemed to be standing in the garden. they never went in they just got back to the prime materiel went home and took a break they all decided that the planes were too much for the day and they wanted unsoaked clothes after their trip to the water plane. 

Skye LOVES her souvenir shirt as a way to memorialise her trip to the Feywild, even when she can't remember it herself!