Oi! Get off my land!

Ranes · May 4, 2005

There are summoning spells. There are portals. There are other extra-planar transportation methods. And through them all come creatures that do not belong on any self-respecting (if you'll forgive the anthropomorphising) prime material plane. You see them in adventure modules everywhere.

My questions are these:

Do you feel the need to justify what your extra-planar critters are doing on your PMP or do you happily shuffle elementals into your random encounter tables (or encounter generating mechanism of choice)?

Do your players ever take you to task (if you're the DM) or do you take your DM to task (if you're a player) when you encounter an alien entity without the proper travel permit (ie it hasn't been summoned, there aren't any suspect, ten-foot-diameter discs of swirling otherness nearby and the critter hasn't just crackled into existence with an accompanying aroma of ground-level ozone)?

I'm just curious. And maybe that's the critter's excuse. But when I write an adventure, I don't use extra-planar natives, unless I can explicitly account for them. When I see such beasties lurking in a published adventure, I tend to either write them out or write in additional justification for them.

As always, I appreciate your scary thought processes.

S'mon · May 4, 2005

I agree.

I don't normally use extra-planar critters unless there's a gate/portal nearby. Even then, most portals IMC lead to parrallel primes inhabited by humans, not xorns.

shilsen · May 4, 2005

Ranes said:
But when I write an adventure, I don't use extra-planar natives, unless I can explicitly account for them.

I'm REALLY nuts - I do that for everything in my games. If I can't account for why those horrid apes got to rend my party in the undercity (they did, last session), I won't have them show up. So it's not just extra-planar natives but just about everything in the game. Everything happens for a reason. It may not be the obvious or apparent reason, and sometimes the reason may be sheer coincidence (a world with absolutely no coincidence would kill my suspension of disbelief), but there is always a reason.

As always, I appreciate your scary thought processes.

Sure.

*opens up head and shows Ranes what lurks within*

VirgilCaine · May 4, 2005

As an occaisonal random encounter or just another villain, no, not really. Presumably there are ways of getting "here" and it doesn't need to be explicitly stated where the demon comes from, IMO.
You could have an Imp or Quasit hunted by the PCs, setting up tragedies involving blackmail and such in various cities--causing misery and chaos to some end. Maybe disrupting marriages and agreements between the enemies of a merchant who sold his soul. No need for the Imp/Quasit to be explicitly summoned, he's just "here."

A whole adventure with outsiders or whatnot as enemies would need an explanation, but an occaisonal one, not really.

the Jester · May 4, 2005

Yeah, I usually know where the outsiders come from and how they got where they are now, if you know what I mean.

On the other hand, I have no problem with (for example) earth elementals in the mountains, water elementals at sea, etc. And some kinds of outsiders can get to the Prime on their own.

Ranes · May 4, 2005

Right. I've had my PCs encounter mephits on their PMP and the mephits' reason for being there was never discovered by the players (whose PCs went off on a tangent). The justification wasn't explicit, in that case, though it would have been had the players chosen to explore it.

I also wouldn't think twice about populating areas associated with specific elements with the appropriate elementals. I just assume that where there is a significant amount of water, for example, there's a reasonable chance of a connection of some kind to the elemental plane of water.

Shilsen, yer right. A world devoid of coincidence would be totally unbelievable. Good point.

palleomortis · May 4, 2005

Just one small question, where the hell did you get "OI!"

Ranes · May 4, 2005

Oi! It's an English word. It's a vulgar hail, derived from ahoy. People so often use it to address me that there are those who think it's my name.

Henry · May 4, 2005

"OI" as in "Hey!" perhaps?

Most of the time, I ensure that there's a reasonable explanation for every monster or being the PCs encounter. Every once in a while (about every 4 or 5 sessions), I'll put in a critter that has NO BUSINESS being in a certain location. Now, if the players want to search out why the critter is there, there will be a very convoluted chain of events that got the creature from A to B; otherwise, they'll usually say, "WHAT THE

WAS THAT ABOUT?!?!!??" and carry on. So if you want to know why an Awakened Resus Monkey was living in a secret door in the town well, then you'll just have to find out, won't you?...

palleomortis · May 4, 2005

Yea, you just dont hear that anymore, I guess the "refined" days are at their end.

Oi! Get off my land!

Ranes

Adventurer

S'mon

Legend

shilsen

Adventurer

VirgilCaine

First Post

the Jester

Legend

Ranes

Adventurer

palleomortis

First Post

Ranes

Adventurer

Henry

Autoexreginated

palleomortis

First Post

Similar Threads