Pathfinder 1E How much info would you want in a planehopping Adventure Path?

[Dog Moon]

So I'm writing an Adventure Path that involves jumping around from Plane to Plane for various reasons. I don't know if it'll ever get published. Would be cool, but if nothing else I am enjoying writing it, but these questions ARE being asked for the intention of publishing it and to see what other people would want because I'm a little torn on what to do.

Simply put, my question is this:

How much information should the Adventure Path have regarding the Planes?

I know a fair amount of information regarding the Planes, but unfortunately due to copyright stuff I don't know how much I can actually use. And to be honest, I wouldn't enjoy sitting here either writing stuff that has been done before or sitting here trying to rewrite the entire Planar cosmology.

So for example the PCs have to go to the Abyss, have a short adventure and then have to go somewhere else. So my longer question is this:

Since I know there are LOTS of miscellaneous sourcebooks regarding the Abyss filled with information that I wouldn't need to duplicate, how much information should I give the DM? What kind of information would you want as a DM in order to run a brief adventure on Abaddon without needing to look at any other sourcebook? And how much information would you want OUTSIDE the scope of the Adventure Path? Would you want further adventure ideas or locations or is it better to leave those to the other sourcebooks?

Thanks everyone who takes a look at this thread and thanks even more for those who respond!

 

[Starfox]

The GM needs the same as she needs in any setting; a visual and gut feeling for the place, interesting NPCs, and any setting-specific rules. Say we're in Hell. It of medium interest to know the name of the lord of the level. It is of low interest to know the hierarchy between the lord of the level and Asmodeus the king of devils. It is a lot more interesting to know of the local hierarchy, and the plots various local devils spin. It is essential to know that this place is cold and dry rather than the usual hot and cloudy, and it is also essential to have interesting descriptions of the NPCs that actually are in the scenario.

 

[PurpleDragonKnight]

Forget the usual level 1 start if you do a planehopping AP... unless you want the usual tropes and excuses as to why a one hit die human would stay alive more than 1 min there. If you do such an AP, have the bloody thing be a bold step towards something new and start the AP at level 12 or 13... this way people could jump on that one after running a level 1-12 homecampaign or right after Council of Thieves, or drop an boring AP mid-way to then enter this more exciting level 12-20 AP.

I agree with Starfox though in that the DM should be provided with all the tools he needs. If he needs to read 3 books beforehand that defeats the purpose... might as well run his own homecampaign instead...

 

[Dog Moon]

Forget the usual level 1 start if you do a planehopping AP... unless you want the usual tropes and excuses as to why a one hit die human would stay alive more than 1 min there. If you do such an AP, have the bloody thing be a bold step towards something new and start the AP at level 12 or 13... this way people could jump on that one after running a level 1-12 homecampaign or right after Council of Thieves, or drop an boring AP mid-way to then enter this more exciting level 12-20 AP.

I agree with Starfox though in that the DM should be provided with all the tools he needs. If he needs to read 3 books beforehand that defeats the purpose... might as well run his own homecampaign instead...

Actually, the AP starts at level 1, though the PCs aren't actually exploring the Planes until level 5. The first few levels are based on the Prime as rumors and strange happenings start occurring [due to a Planar War] as well as the appearance of Outsiders [literally and figuratively] that eventually leads them to a relic that transports them [and the entire town!] into the Planar adventures.

And I do have some sort of handle on the situation due to your guys' comments, from what other people have mentioned and my own thoughts. Essentially, since the Planes are vast and essentially limitless, I just need to focus on what the DM needs to know to run the PCs through the areas. If the PCs go to the Abyss, I only need to deal with enough information so the DM has a feel for the area as well as important locations and NPCs that live in the area. Knowing the Demon Lord of the layer might be useful, but going into detail greater than that isn't going to be useful unless there's an actual chance the PCs are going to meet the Demon Lord. This is better than my original thought to detail as much as possible!

So yeah, I figure this is all I really need to detail:

A brief description so the DM is familiar with the appearance [and other senses] of the Plane
How Magic is affected on the Plane
How to travel within the Plane
Other Miscellaneous things the DM should know regarding other important rules
Brief descriptions of locales/NPCs in the areas the PCs are going to explore.

So at a certain point the PCs are going to a tower in Abaddon. What they need to know about Abaddon is a picture of the environment, what the landscape is like, how magic is affected, the tower [and inhabitants] and if there's anything of importance around the tower that might affect the PCs in any way.

Otherwise, any information really isn't needed. That's about how I'm handling it. Fairly simple, doesn't take a whole lot of pages for each Plane, but should give the DM enough info to run the AP.

 

[Cristian Andreu]

One of the best things Planescape did for describing the planes was to avoid delving too much in the details, and instead focusing on explaining the style, flavour, and tone of each. Since planes are potentially bigger than all D&D settings combined, this made it much easier for DMs to just get a grasp of the place and then make their own stuff up.

So for an Adventure Path, I would go the same route, only giving detail when you absolutely need to, such as key locations the plot should visit, and instead making sure the guy running the story knows well how the place should feel. Along with that, if you include some paragraphs of rumours/legends regarding the plane or section of the plane, you should give the DM enough material to both quickly make stuff up and remain consistent in his depiction of each dimension.