Manual of The Planes - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition

The original Manual of the Planes was written by Jeff Grubb, with a cover by Jeff Easley and interior illustrations by Stephen Fabian with Easley, and was published by TSR in 1987 as a 128-page hardcover. Easley's cover featured an illustration of a creature named in the book as an "ethereal dreadnought", although the book had no description or game statistics for the creature. This creature was later identified in 2nd edition as an astral dreadnought.

The book describes various planes of existence, and what creatures characters might encounter there, covering the astral and ethereal planes, the elemental places, and the outer planes. The book also details how to survive in the planes, and how combat and magic differ under the plane's special conditions. The Ethereal Plane, The Inner Planes -- including the Plane of Elemental Air, the Plane of Elemental Fire, the Plane of Elemental Earth, and the Plane of Elemental Water, the Para-Elemental Planes (Smoke, Magma, Ooze, and Ice), the Energy Planes (Positive Energy and Negative Energy), and the Quasi-Elemental Planes (Lightning, Radiance, Minerals, Steam, Vacuum, Ash, Dust, and Salt) -- and the Astral Plane. After these planes, the Outer Planes are briefly described, including Nirvana, Arcadia, Seven Heavens, Twin Paradises, Elysium, Happy Hunting Grounds, Olympus, Gladsheim, Limbo, Pandemonium, The Abyss, Tarterus, Hades, Gehenna, The Nine Hells, Acheron, and Concordant Opposition. Manual of the Planes explains how each of the outer planes is related to each of the character alignments. For example, "The Seven Heavens" is the final resting place for characters of Lawful Good alignment.