Chapter 6: Cosmology - Dungeon Master's Guide (2024)

Chapter 6: Cosmology. The Lady of Pain appears without warning in the bustling streets of Sigil, and the city's residents get out of her way The worlds of D&D are part of an immense cosmos. Most campaigns and adventures play out on worlds on the Material Plane. The rest of the multiverse consists of different planes of existence defined in relation to the Material Plane. The planes of existence are strange and often dangerous environments undreamed of in the natural world. Adventurers can stroll along streets of fire, test their mettle on battlefields where the fallen are resurrected with each dawn, and behold the terrifying majesty of the Lady of Pain as she floats above the streets of the ring-shaped city at the center of the multiverse. The Planes The planes of existence are realms of myth and mystery. They're not simply other worlds, but dimensions formed and governed by spiritual and elemental principles. They fall into the following categories: Material Realms Most D&D worlds are located on the Material Plane, which has two planar echoes: the Feywild and the Shadowfell. Transitive Planes The Ethereal Plane and the Astral Plane are boundless realms that provide passage between other planes of existence. Inner Planes The four Elemental Planes (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water), plus the Para-elemental Planes between them, are the Inner Planes. Outer Planes Seventeen Outer Planes correspond to the nine alignments and shades of philosophical difference between them. Positive and Negative Planes These two planes enfold the rest of the cosmology, providing the raw forces of life and death that underlie all existence in the multiverse. The Great Wheel The default D&D cosmology includes more than two dozen planes, detailed in this chapter. The most common understanding of these planes visualizes them as a group of concentric wheels, with the Material realms at the center. The Inner Planes form a wheel around the Material Plane, enveloped in the Ethereal Plane. Then the...