Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1900863" data-attributes="member: 7240">I have a real problem with D&D planes and how they work so, for me, MOTP is a very useful text so that I can run D&D detatched from the incoherent hodgepodge of mess that has been generated. For me, some general principles that are always true when I run D&D: 1. Elemental Planes: I never use the elemental planes. Because I actually take the 4-element system seriously, I run with most of its implications such as: (a) the true home of the elements is, of course, in the material world and so no elemental planes are necessary.(b) the elements vary in lightness/heaviness in the standard Aristotelian way: fire is lightest, followed by air, then water, then earth. Thus, the outer edges of the material world are pure fire and the centre of the world is pure earth. (c) things from outside the material world are not made out of the four elements until they try to materialize into the material world -- then they elementalize2. Outer Planes: Because I find the alignment thing so hugely problematic, (I tend to keep it for game mechanical purposes but treat it as the elephant in the room.) I don't use any of the recommended cosmologies. There are fewer death compartments, as it were and what ahppens after one dies tends to be more shrouded in mystery in my worlds.More specifically, I have run two D&D worlds since 3E came out. The first, Kazuria, had the following "planes" (though they weren't really thought of this way):1. Kazuria: This term refers alternately to the crumbling world-spanning empire the characters adventure in. But, problematically, there are areas of the map that Kazuria does not extend to -- it is bordered by the Encircling Ocean, the Encircling Mountains and the First Wood. 2. The Gods' World: In the Encricling Mountains, there is the Secret Gate of Amnassem that only the gods can pass through. But, in their Great Covenant, the gods agreed to withdraw from the world, save for the two living gods who live in the world but are possessed by the spirits of two of the gods. Excerpt from text follows: After the Gods of the Veld locked the Nameless Gods outside the world, they too chose to withdraw from Kazuria and leave the realm to mortals. When they decided this, Ivno had already dug the Encircling Ocean and the Sky and Underworld had been taken out of mortal reach. Not wishing to permanently cut themselves off from the mortal realm, they could not withdraw beneath the earth, above the sky or beyond the seas so they raised the encircling mountains in the west of Kazuria and withdrew to a plateau beyond the impassable wall of stone. Because a time may come that the gods need to re-enter the world or a mortal needs to reach the gods, Rovnoth created the Gate of Amnassem, in a high pass which leads to the realm of the gods. As the god of the mountains and Keeper of the Gate, Rovnoth represents everything about the earth that the Four Sisters do not. Where the sisters are yielding and maleable, Rovnoth is hard and unbending; where the sisters are fertile and generous, Rovnoth is cold and inert. Rovnoth is the enemy of Hynand who holds him responsible for the Gods' decision to divide god from man and man from beast.3. Outside: At the beginning of time, Rovnoth, God of the Encircling Mountains locked the nameless gods outside the world. Nobody, not even the named gods has been to this place since and nothing is known about its nature.4. The Underworld/Moon: Excerpt from campaign materials follows:At the beginning of time, the gods were numerous and varied. A few protected the mortal creatures of the world but most hated or indifferent to them. To protect the mortals, the Gods of the Veld fought a long war against the other gods to expel them from the world of mortals. Most of the Gods of the Veld died in this war, sacrificing their lives for the lives of men and beasts. Of the gods expelled from the ordinary world, Kurauno is the only god whose name is still remembered. It is said that there were dozens of gods who were placed beyond the reaches of the mortal world, now worshipped only in realms far from Kazuria or not worshipped at all. These gods are known sometimes as the Other Gods or the Nameless GodsBut Kurauno is remembered because while the Nameless Gods joined the Gods of the Veld in battle, Kurauno wrought a deep magic binding himself to Zhivathavno, the God of the Sky, linking their fates for all time. For he knew that no matter how angered the other gods could become, they would never sacrifice the sky, being lovers of the stars and sun just as mortal man was. So while the Nameless Gods fought against the Gods of the Veld for dominion over the ordinary world, Kurauno retreated, betraying the Nameless Gods to cast his spell. As soon as the spell succeeded, the plan of Kurauno was laid bare to the Gods of the Veld but it was too late. Instead, the gods were forced to cast a counter spell, removing both gods almost totally from the world. The sun retreated high into the sky and the stars became little more than pinpricks, unreachable by man. The underworld, too, was withdrawn from the world and became almost totally unreachable by mortal man. Some speculate that the underworld now hangs in the night sky, too, a white ghostly presence chasing the sun through the heavens. Others say that it has been pushed farther down, leagues below the deepest mines. All followers of Kurauno seek to liberate their god and find a way for him and the Nameless Gods to re-enter the world.5. The Beast World: Excerpted text again:Hynand the Beast God was the deity who ruled the Veld in the days before the Four Sisters. In the days of Hynand, men lived like animals, without agriculture, cities or civilization. It was in those days that the gods erected the Encircling Mountains and dug the great trench which holds the Encircling Waters so that the beasts would not wander off the edge of Kazuria and into the realm of the gods. It is said that Hynand does not make his home with the other gods, still being greatly wroth at their invasion of his lands. According to his worshippers, he now rules a great wild plain filled with fabulous beasts beyond the edge of the world. The beasts who roam the plain are the followers (both man and beast) of Hynand in this world.6. The Astral/Ethereal Plane: I didn't really make this plane something people imagined as a place. I just shunted all the game functions requiring an Astral or Ethereal plane through this kind of scientific/intellectual construct.7. The Sky: Zhivathavno, it is said, loves mankind more than any other god. It is for this reason that he agreed to withdraw from the world to protect mortals from his sworn enemy Kurauno. It is said that each star in the sky is one of his children who died in the war against the Nameless Gods. On the anniversary of their deaths in the great war, he weeps for them, drenching the Veld in his tears. There is much debate whether Zhivathavno lives on the plateau with the Gods of the Veld or whether he is consigned to live like Kurauno, removed from the world, trapped in his own realm.</blockquote>

Verification