Li Shenron
Legend
If you want your adventures to take place in a large fantasy setting that encompasses different civilizations, cultures, pantheons, technologies, perhaps even actual rules... do you prefer to set them in a different region/continent of the world on a single plane of existence (e.g. Forgotten Realms), or do you separate them further on different alternate material planes (e.g. Magic: The Gathering)?
For the sake of discussion you should not be thinking of extreme or obvious cases. Preferring the "different regions" approach doesn't mean you have to set also heaven & hell on the material world, and conversely preferring the "different planes" approach doesn't mean that every elven or orcish kindgom must be made extraplanar.
The choice is interesting when you have to choose what to do with a non-obvious case, since there are pros and cons to both approaches. Think for example of something like Ravenloft, oriental adventures, or other places strongly based on real-world civilizations of the past such as Maztica, Mulhorand or Al Qadim. Would you rather make room for these within your single-plane fantasy world or make them separate planes and why? Consider also whether it makes a difference if you are adding them before the start of a new campaign or during the adventures of an existing group.
I am asking because when I started DMing ~20 years ago I first followed the "Great Wheel" cosmology with a single material plane, but later I realized how boring it was for me to have everything so orderly organized, so I began watering down the cosmology to be less-defined and rewriting many outer planes as alternate materials (because I find them interesting to use for adventures, but fairly dumb as someone's "afterlife"). However, I kept assuming that I would add to the main material plane everything that wasn't differentiated by different laws of physics, or just couldn't fit together as a whole (for example, setting an adventure in a non-afterlife version of Acheron still required me an alternate plane because of its disintegrated geography), while adventures like Desert of Desolation would normally prompt me to just add an appropriately-themed region somewhere in the material world. OTOH the M:tG planar approach has its merits: it allows greater room for changing how things work in a new region without having to explain why nobody has previously heard about it or how it interacts with the rest through the ages.
There is also a third and somewhat intermediate approach, that of "different planets", although it can deliver too much of a sci-fi flavor to some. I don't think the core rules usually support this idea directly, and instead just suppose that the material plane is a single planet: when the RAW says that a teleport spell can take you anywhere on the material plane (no range limit) it's not really because it's designed to allow you to teleport to the other side of the galaxy, it's because it assumes you would never do it. Nevertheless, it's still a valid possibility, whether you decide to keep that teleport spell as-is, or amend it and then presumably add your own rules for travelling between planets.
So what is your take on the subject?
For the sake of discussion you should not be thinking of extreme or obvious cases. Preferring the "different regions" approach doesn't mean you have to set also heaven & hell on the material world, and conversely preferring the "different planes" approach doesn't mean that every elven or orcish kindgom must be made extraplanar.
The choice is interesting when you have to choose what to do with a non-obvious case, since there are pros and cons to both approaches. Think for example of something like Ravenloft, oriental adventures, or other places strongly based on real-world civilizations of the past such as Maztica, Mulhorand or Al Qadim. Would you rather make room for these within your single-plane fantasy world or make them separate planes and why? Consider also whether it makes a difference if you are adding them before the start of a new campaign or during the adventures of an existing group.
I am asking because when I started DMing ~20 years ago I first followed the "Great Wheel" cosmology with a single material plane, but later I realized how boring it was for me to have everything so orderly organized, so I began watering down the cosmology to be less-defined and rewriting many outer planes as alternate materials (because I find them interesting to use for adventures, but fairly dumb as someone's "afterlife"). However, I kept assuming that I would add to the main material plane everything that wasn't differentiated by different laws of physics, or just couldn't fit together as a whole (for example, setting an adventure in a non-afterlife version of Acheron still required me an alternate plane because of its disintegrated geography), while adventures like Desert of Desolation would normally prompt me to just add an appropriately-themed region somewhere in the material world. OTOH the M:tG planar approach has its merits: it allows greater room for changing how things work in a new region without having to explain why nobody has previously heard about it or how it interacts with the rest through the ages.
There is also a third and somewhat intermediate approach, that of "different planets", although it can deliver too much of a sci-fi flavor to some. I don't think the core rules usually support this idea directly, and instead just suppose that the material plane is a single planet: when the RAW says that a teleport spell can take you anywhere on the material plane (no range limit) it's not really because it's designed to allow you to teleport to the other side of the galaxy, it's because it assumes you would never do it. Nevertheless, it's still a valid possibility, whether you decide to keep that teleport spell as-is, or amend it and then presumably add your own rules for travelling between planets.
So what is your take on the subject?
