About this Website

Web Standards

The layout of this page is done with XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0. To see the full layout requires a browser which properly supports those standards. Note that Netscape 4.xx does not. It claims to, and it tries to, but it falls down flatly on its face, rendering most pages that use the modern standards unreadable. As such, much of the CSS has been hidden from older browsers with buggy implementations (including NS4.x and IE less than 5), hopefully leading to a more basic (but still readable) layout with them. These browsers with their buggy implementations are holding up adoption of the standards on the web; please upgrade to the latest version of your browser, or even better to Mozilla, which is the most standards-complaint browser out there.

Fonts

Some of the titles on this page try to use the Planescape font; you may see them in that font if you have it installed. The web page tells your browser first to look for Exocet; if you don't have that commercial font, it then tries to use Avalon Quest, a very similar font which may be found on the net and downloaded. (It works with my Linux machine and these pages.) If you don't have that font, no biggie, everything should still be readable.

The main title at the top of each page (which reads "The Rule of Threes") and the main navigation buttons are all images, created with the Avalon Quest font. Since they're images, they'll show up in that font in any browser that loads images; for them, you don't need the font installed on your system. It's only for the occasional additional title that you would need it.

Name

The Rule of Threes is one of the three principles (or heuristics) that describe how things work on the planes. It's not really a hard and fast rule, but just something to look out for, as often things come in threes or are found in threes. If you're on the planes, especially on the outer planes, and you see two things in a set, look out for the third.

The second principle of the planes is the Unity of Rings. Many things on the planes are circular, coming back around to where the started. This is true geographically as well as philosophically. Sometimes, it may be very obscure how it happens, and only those with sufficient perspective could notice it: see the Unity of Rings Web Comic on the Wizards of the Coast site.

The third principle (remember the rule of Threes?) is the Center of the Multiverse. That, specifically, there isn't one... or, rather, wherever a basher happens to be is the center of the multiverse. Interestingly, this is one case where the rules of this fantasy world mesh with the rules of cosmology in the real world. According to standard expanding universe theory, there is no "center" of the universe, but every point in the universe acts like the center. In Planescape, this is meant philosophically just as much as it is meant in terms of multiversal geography. Lots of berks think Sigil is the center of the multiverse; not only is it apparently at the center of the Outlands, which is in turn apparaently at the center of the Great Ring on which all of the outer planes reside, it is also a crossroads where everybody from everywhere else goes. Well, sure, and to the bashers who live in Sigil or spend a lot of time there, it may well be the center of the universe. An efreet on the Elemental Plane of Fire who never bothers to muck about with the outer planes might have a different perspective....

I decided it would be a bit much to call my website "The Center of the Multiverse"; indeed, already it's a bit arrogant to pick one of the central Planescape themes for the site's name. And, there already is that comic called the Unity of Rings which may be found on the web.

Blather

I started putting this together one weekend when I decided that I wanted to play around with a different look for my Planescape page. I also decided to give it a Planescape-centric "name" rather than it's previous name (which was effectively "my Planescape page"). It seems to be getting harder and harder to find Planescape pages on the web; some of the good ones still have a huge amount of great information, but have become moribound. (Some of those good ones also have a layout that is so beautiful that it's nearly impossible to figure out what is there.... Planescape seems to attract the "presentation before usability" philosophy of web design more than most gaming sites.)

I decided to start putting together my own Planescape site. Even if nearly nobody out there cares about Planescape any more, I still do, and this at least narcissitically lets me scratch my own itch. I wanted a site out there with a summary of the Planescape products available.

More importantly, though, for a long time I've been wanting something like what the Planescape Master Index will hopefully become. I don't think there's anything like that out there, so I decided to bite the bullet and start building it myself. I've created the database and written the code, and now it's a matter of getting everything entered into the database. That will take a long time, but it should be useful once it's more complete. I just hope there's still somebody out there playing something approximating canon, pre-Faction War Planescape by then!