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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 2168967" data-attributes="member: 3051">Not quite.  Under our system you can't physically travel to a HIGHER plane.  Plane Shift, or its equivalent, can take you from one Basic plane to another, conditions permitting.  And that last clause is the kicker; the spells that give planar travel are a lot less reliable in our setup.  There's a system of "planar turbulence"; a good caster can force his way through it, but the more people you bring or the further you try to go, the more likely it'll fail.So, a Human from the Plane of Life (Gaia) could physically travel to the Plane of Death (Svarga), and vice versa.  While he couldn't actually travel to the Plane of Force (Elysium), he could astrally project there (although it's not as good as being there; think of yourself as a 2D creature in a 3D world).  And he couldn't do anything involving the Plane of Time (Amber); it's completely out of bounds.The idea in our cosmology was that Gaia was the "garden of Eden", the only lower plane with an intelligent race, and then the protohumans discovered magic (the whole Tree of Knowledge thing) and figured out how to cross the planar barriers.  The planar boundaries strengthen and weaken in cycles, and during one of the lulls they spread to the six Basic planes, and eventually evolved into seven intelligent races appropriate to their surroundings: Humans (Life), Dwarves (Earth), Nymphs (aka Elves, Water), Sylphs (aka Fairies, Air), Salamanders (Fire), Gargoyles (Death), and Shades (Death).  None are inherently good or evil, other than the Shades (completely xenophobic).The point is, what does planar travel get you?  Going to the Plane of Water sounds all well and good, until you realize that the reason it's called the Plane of Water is that the entire surface is underwater.  The Plane of Fire is a big desert world (it's called Arrakis, you can get the rest of the concept from that).  The Plane of Earth is, well, the Underdark.  And so on; most of these places aren't really suited for anyone other than their inhabitants, so most adventures just naturally end up taking place on the Plane of Life.  It's worked well, actually.</blockquote>

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