Open Worlds vs. Closed Worlds

[glass]

I voted other. My homebrew world is fairly new (two sessions old so far), so at the moment there is plenty to explore there. Thus, it is fairly closed from a characters point of view. On the other hand, its quite a big world, and I try to include as many options as possible, so in that sense it is fairly open.

As time goes on, it will probably become more open. There are defininately other worlds out there, so a PC could conceivably come from one (once they know they exist). One of them might even be Toril, Scarn or Krynn (or then again, maybe not).

glass.

 

[Zappo]

When I DM Planescape, anything goes... with caveats. The setting may be vast, but it has its flavor which must be preserved. I won't allow a player to play a half-dragon awakened worg just because he asks. 9 times out of 10, he is just powergaming, or he will get bored with the character in 2 sessions. I really hate players that just have to be as weird as possible "just because". Give me a good reason.

When I DM a setting that's supposed to be closed, it stays so. External characters are disallowed by default. See above considerations about playing out-of-setting characters exactly because they are out-of-setting.

 

[ichabod]

*grabs calculator, fiddles with it for almost a minute*

Your world is *409 times* the size of Earth (in diameter)? Do you bother thinking about things like gravity, or is that all just so much handwaving?

I prefer to think of it as about 168,000 times the size of the Earth (in surface area), but yeah. The world is an interior world, like a small Dyson sphere, so that the sky is acutally the other side of the world. See, way back when, there was an interstellar empire with magic. Some explorers uncovered something they shouldn't have, and when the most powerful warrior gods went to face what was uncovered, they were totally slaughtered. Fearful for their lives and the lives of their worshippers (without whom they are nothing), the remaining gods constructed this world in order to hide from what was uncovered. Things like gravity are handled by divine magic for the most part, but that doesn't mean I just say "it's magic" and forget about it. The system requires upkeep and maintainence or things start to get weird. Much as wizards must put part of their essence (xp) into a magic item, the gods had to put much of their essence into the creation of the world. This left them weakened to the point where they were eventually overthrown. However, the new gods were clueless as to the required upkeep on the planet, and things started to get out of whack. This led to a large period of history where instabilities in the system caused consistent problems. It was acutally during that period that my last campaign was run.

 

[Minicol]

I run an open campaign set in Greyhawk within limits. I do not mind too much if someone comes with an outlandish character, provided it has a background, story and can explain how it got here. (preferably with lots of foes and weaknessess, yeessss my precioussss)...

But then I give bonus feats to the ones who make a real effort to write a background set in GH. Also, I intend to lead my players through a lot of plane-hopping soon, so they can get REPLACEMENT PCs from other worlds if something bad happens on the way.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think I am closed. I like planescape-like cosmologies but I don't simply allow something I haven't planned to have in the universe! Especially, I don't like having different published settings just at a portal's reach. If players want to play Dragonlance, let's play it totally separately... Incidentally it may be tied to the fact that while I like the idea of planes, I hate the idea of "more cosmologies linked together".

 

[dead]

Plane-hopping between d20 genres would be too annoying to bother with. Each d20 genre game has it's own idiosyncracies and power balance and it would be very irritating to re-jig it all.

I see no problems with plane-hopping between published d20 fantasy worlds. Planescape with its hopping between Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance was a lot of fun. Of course, this sort of thing tends to "sully" the integrity of the campaign worlds mentioned; particularly Dragonlance. If someone where running a Dragonlance campaign as their main world I'd keep it closed because plane-hopping doesn't work with the "feel" of this campaign.

 

[sparxmith]

Wide open

IMC, planar travel is commonplace at the higher levels. And this is set in the Forgotten Realms.

I have one character playing a Mul from Darksun and another playing a rogue from a plane that she's currently writing a short story about. I've read the story, liked the plane, and allowed the character.

I have a hard time imagining that the Simbul, Szass Tam, Elminster, and others wouldn't spend at least part of their time exploring the Planes to grow just a little more powerful back on their own. Why would I exclude PC's from doing the same thing.

I enjoy, nay, RELISH high fantasy and high magic. Planescape and Spelljammer are the ideals I live for. But then I was weaned on V:tM, and cut my teeth on Mage. I love roleplaying that involves power beyond the control of the characters. Not because I like being a Rat Bastich DM, but because I like the potential for awe and wonder.

Anyway, there's my two farthings,

Sparxmith