/tg/, I come to you with a matter of obscure planar lore. VERY obscure planar lore. "More obscure than Temporal Prime, hassitor, and aphanacts" obscure.Afroakuma, stay out.
What are "probabilities," "probability lines," and the "7th dimension" under the context of the D&D cosmology?
These are mentioned in 1e's Unearthed Arcana druid:
www.angelfire.com/games/Oerth3/Druids/AppendixA.html
>At 23rd level: Enter any of the Inner Planes. Roam the Inner Plane probability lines (the 7th dimension). Enter the Plane of Concordant Opposition.
And are also alluded to by the AD&D 2e Complete Psionics Handbook's "Probability Travel" psychoportive science, which physically transports a psionicist to the Astral Plane:
www.supersutter.net/Alcirya/Tools/Psionics/Psychoportive/Sciences/Probability%20Travel.html
The only things I can bring up regarding them are that they were part of Gary Gygax's original cosmology work:
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=563
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16762
>This is part of Gary's emerging conception of the AD&D cosmos (the planar structure in the PH was not supposed to be exhaustive). Saga of Old City (and in a slightly different form, Mythus) lists the nine dimensions of the multiverse: length, breadth, height, astrality, ethereality, time, probability, extra-conceivability, and nonconceivability.
Does anyone know anything else about these mysterious "probabilities," "probability lines," and "7th dimension"?
>>43587985
>Temporal Prime
That's a thing?
Sweet.
>Does anyone know anything else about these mysterious "probabilities," "probability lines," and "7th dimension"?
I don't fucking know, something to do with dice rolls or something?
>>43588425
It most likely has nothing to do with dice rolls.
Further research shows me that in 1e, Probability Travel was originally used to allow a psionicist to travel directly to other worlds and planes, rather than just the Astral Plane. It is likely that "probabilities" and "probability lines" have something to do with planar travel. If astrality and ethereality are valid dimensions, then in some respect, "plane" is another valid dimension.
>>43588688
Man, lore back then was much better.
>>43587985
That is some obscure shit.
I don't know, I can only speculate that probability travel would be related to the quantum universes theory, where you could travel to a version of a world where only a single thing has changed. Eg, a world where the Nazis won. Travelling along a "probability line" would involve travelling in one of the other dimensions, like time, within that probability universe. Eg, forward or backward in time in the universe where the Nazis won. Like the Sliders tv show.
>>43589758
I would think that traveling along a probability line would *not* involve actually traveling forward or backwards in time (that would be traveling along a *time* line), but rather, traveling along the different permutations of historical variables that "already happened." In other words, rather than traveling back and forth between a single timeline, traveling from timeline to timeline.
Thus, if a druid traveled along a probability line in the Quasielemental Plane of Salt, they would still be in the same point in time (e.g. the first day of the year in the 127th year of Factol Hashkar's tenure, three hours past antipeak as per Sigil Standard Time), but they would be traveling along different "alternate timelines," such as a timeline where the marid conquered the Quasielemental Plane of Salt, or a timeline where the Imperial Elven Navy or the khen-zai conquered it instead.
>>43588708
Not necessarily.
>>43587985
There are multiple cosmologies for D&D so it's a bit more complex than OP realises, but by the sound of it the 7th dimension could be sort of a metafictional realm representingthe table the dice are being rolled on, possibly conceivable as a vast euclidean plane upon which platonic solids continually roll and crash together (sort of like Planescape's "Clanging Acheron" where vast armies fight on the sides of immense metal cubes and other 3d shapes until they ultimately smash together.
>>43587985
Hold on, you know Afroakuma? And he plays dnd?
>>43587985
>Afroakuma, stay out.
Does he hang out on /tg/?
>>43595705
>Hold on, you know Afroakuma? And he plays dnd?
Yes? He hangs out on the GiantITP forums homebrewing stuff and answering Planescape questions.
He was also on the design team behind Legend, IIRC.
I'm guessing it is what we would today call parallel worlds.
>>43595649
This is a good theory, but under the same metagame logic, what would the 8th dimension of "extra-conceivability" and the 9th dimension of "nonconceivability" be?
>>43599957
>what would the 8th dimension of "extra-conceivability" and the 9th dimension of "nonconceivability" be?
House Rules/Homebrew stuff ("stuff beyond what we thought of") and the stuff inadvertantly banned by the core rules ("stuff we didn't think of but which the rules and setting don't allow to exist"), respectively.
