22 Questions on Tharizdun

The "combination" is a collection of gods fighting and imprisoning Tharizdun.

The "dimensional sets" are like demiplanes, or that odd space in which vestiges exist: "that distant and virtually unlocatable place in which Tharizdun is imprisoned," to quote the article. Think of it as another class of plane alongside demiplanes, transitive planes, Prime, Inner, and Outer. You'd have to be (a) insane, (b) a genius, (c) of deity-level power, and (d) unimaginably evil to find the place, though it is theoretically possible.

"Dimensional sets" aren't a new class of plane; they're a way of defining the planes.

What Gygax meant was a multiverse with an infinite number of parallel Material Planes, each representing a subtle difference in one category (or dimension) or another - the continents might be shaped slightly differently, the magic or technology level might be higher or lower (these were mutually exclusive in Gygax's works), or history might have happened somewhat differently.

The spectrum of nonmagical to extremely magical is a dimension, like height or width or weight. The spectrum of nontechnological to highly technological is another dimension. The spectrum of slightly divergent from Oerth's timeline to extremely divergent is still another.

Now, imagine all of these possible different variations resulting in worlds nearly identical or completely alien to one another. Imagine you could use magic or technology to explore them if you knew what values to imput. Imagine that Tharizdun is imprisoned in one of them - how do you discover which? It's like figuring out a combination lock where each part of the combination contains all the numbers from one to infinity, including all the possible fractions.

Now imagine that the difference between a Material Plane and an Outer Plane was simply a difference in certain values. Outer Planes were more "astral" and Material Planes were more "ethereal." Some Outer Planes would be more material, and some Material Planes would be more astral. So that's another category whose value you'd have to guess.

A given plane might have an Astral rating of 5138.234343, an ethereal rating of 324343.4342343, a technological rating of 34342343.465765645, a magic rating of 9880.6878, a probability rating of 17438343.23434334, an entropy rating of 4323432.2343243, a cosmic heat index of 0783423.43234, and so on. There might be dimensions that indicate how quickly time passes, and what the local value of pi is, and how readily stars form. All sorts of things.

Those numbers are the "keys" to finding a specific plane of existence. You're effectively never going to find a specific plane if you don't already know its exact values. The chances are so low they might as well be nil.

Remember that Gygax's multiverse isn't exactly the Planescape one, and it isn't exactly the 1st edition one either. His ideas about the planes continued to evolve continuously even before he left TSR. Some of his ideas were elaborated in his non-TSR book Mythus Magic.

Ninja'ed by 4 minutes, verily as I typed!

shakes fist at Rip