Oi! Get off my land!

[ThirdWizard]

I run Planescape. <_<

Outsiders tend to show up often. >_>

 

[Shemeska]

I run Planescape. <_<

Outsiders tend to show up often. >_>

Makes two of us.

But now if I'm on the Prime than I make certain that there's a reason for any extraplanar critter to be where it is. Storyhour #2 spoilers ahead for the 2nd plot arc:

Spoiler

For instance, recently I had my PCs in Toril in the Great Dale near the Rawlinswood, searching for something buried in the Great Barrow called the Codex of Long Shadows and Last Breaths. Several of the mounds had fiends bound to their structure in antiquity by the clerics of Nergal and Gilgeam. And as such there were several bound Vrocks, a Succubi and what may or may not be a Balor confined to the site.

Now if the PCs are in the Outer Planes I try to keep critters running around to things that are native or have legit reasons to be there. I won't likely have modrons running around in Limbo, nor Baatezu sitting in Arborea. Same deal with the inner planes and the transitives. I don't have stuff totally out of its element, and if I do it's probably intentional.

 

[Zappo]

Make that three. But I still make sure than anything and everything in an adventure, planar or not, has a reason to be there. No random unexplained stuff in my games.

 

[Kunimatyu]

If you're using Eberron, the notion of manifest zones and coterminality helps you out for certain planes. At certain points in their 'orbit', certain Eberron planes are connected to Eberron prime. For example, if I remember right, jumping in a volcano(!) during the height of summer will send you straight to Eberron's Plane of Fire. So it's not at all unreasonable to expect some outsiders to be hanging out near once-open portals, unless it's been ten thousand years since those portals were opened...

 

[SpiderMonkey]

My campaign is basically about Cthulhu-mythos-esque (how's that for a word?) beings who dwell in the "spaces between worlds" (think todash from The Dark Tower series) trying to get in. Add to that remote portals to Faerie, a PMP pass that leads to a misty "elsewhere" that can bring travellers to any number of planes (or let things through), abandoned temples to the now-dead Gods where the connections to the afterlife are a little soft, etc. The players have come to accept that the further they get from civilization, the more often they're going to encounter the Pseudonatural template.

 

[Arnwyn]

Do you feel the need to justify what your extra-planar critters are doing on your PMP or do you happily shuffle elementals into your random encounter tables (or encounter generating mechanism of choice)?

Yes, I feel the need to justify such creatures. They aren't randomly encountered IMC, and if they are (seemingly), then there is a good reason that they're in the vicinity.

Do your players ever take you to task (if you're the DM) or do you take your DM to task (if you're a player) when you encounter an alien entity without the proper travel permit (ie it hasn't been summoned, there aren't any suspect, ten-foot-diameter discs of swirling otherness nearby and the critter hasn't just crackled into existence with an accompanying aroma of ground-level ozone)?

Nope, never (because of the first question). My players understand the significance of such an encounter.

 

[kigmatzomat]

My game has been in a "low magic" period for a few centuries so undead, outsiders, and the like have been few and far between. Any such creatures have a backstory (maybe only 2 sentences worth) just for the off chance the party decides to figure out what's going on.

The players are catalysts and are heralding in a new era of magic, but that just means the incidence rate of extraplanars is rising; there's still been sufficiently little time that it's worth more than a hand-waive away.

 

[Arkhandus]

Do you feel the need to justify what your extra-planar critters are doing on your PMP or do you happily shuffle elementals into your random encounter tables (or encounter generating mechanism of choice)?

Well, in my current homebrew campaign, Rhunaria, I posted a Rhunarian Primer on my website that explains what any reasonably-educated (through stories mostly) Rhunarian native would know about the world in general, as well as some things that only scholars, leaders, and adventurers would be likely to learn through their studies and interactions. My Rhunarian Primer describes how folk generally agree on the existence of at least 3 planes, those being Rhunaria (the material), the Ghostlands (the ethereal), and the Great Rift Between (or simply the Great Rift; the astral).

My Rhunarian cosmology is still mostly mysterious and not something that Rhunarian folk are familiar with, beyond these three simple distinctions, though I do have much of the general stuff figured out myself. The Ghostlands includes various things mixed in from other books and my own ideas, such as having an equivalent to the Deep Ethereal, and being chiefly like the Spirit World variant ethereal from Oriental Adventures and Manual of the Planes. It also has elements akin to the Plane of Faerie and Plane of Dreams. It is where spirits come from, and all souls reside on the Ghostlands superimposed over their physical bodies in Rhunaria, since the Ghostlands overlaps Rhunaria just as the Ethereal does the Material in standard D&D cosmology. But the Ghostlands extend beyond merely overlapping the physical world, they have depths and heights that don't even come close to touching the material plane of Rhunaria, places where the great spirits reside and where the spirits make war on one another, in some cases.

This is where many spirit creatures come to Rhunaria from, finding gateways between and traversing the Great Rift to arrive in Rhunaria with a physical body, since spirit creatures can't just spontaneously go from Ghostlands->Rhunaria without a physical body waiting for them in Rhunaria..... So they cross the Great Rift and in the process acquire a material body from that mysterious plane, and if they survive the journey, they enter Rhunaria to do what they will. Sometimes hordes of fiends come through to make trouble, but are often followed by celestial hosts trying to mitigate the damage and force the fiends back to where they belong. Elementals, Fey, and Outsiders are these spirit creatures that cross the Great Rift, though Dragons, Plants, and Undead are also spirit creatures of a sort native to the material plane Rhunaria, so to speak, in that their bodies are born, created, or animated in Rhunaria rather than coming from the Great Rift. Spirits are an important part of Rhunaria.

Do your players ever take you to task (if you're the DM) or do you take your DM to task (if you're a player) when you encounter an alien entity without the proper travel permit (ie it hasn't been summoned, there aren't any suspect, ten-foot-diameter discs of swirling otherness nearby and the critter hasn't just crackled into existence with an accompanying aroma of ground-level ozone)?

When I'm a player, I generally don't question the presence of such creatures in most cases, nor have players questioned me on such things in the past except for one time (where I gave them the short version of what I had been working on for posting to the website). The one time I was asked was in my current homebrew campaign, when the PCs fought a bunch of minor demons (one kind from the Monster Manual II, and another kind from Monsters of Faerun), and the sorcerer PC was wondeirng what that host of demons was doing in the area, after the party slew the demons. Generally, if there are extraplanar creatures about on the Prime Material or something, I figure that they came through (or were brought through) portals, Gates, or Plane Shifting casters elsewhere in the world, at some other time, such as a wizard long ago bringing forth some demons to do his bidding, then dying before he could force them back to their home plane, leaving them stranded for lack of any Gate/Plane Shift spells themselves. There are portals between the Ethereal, Astral, and other planes, for instance, though few if any there lead to the Prime Material (there are some though if I recall, from reading the Manual of the Planes). Of course such transportation methods are high-level generally, so there usually aren't tons of extraplanar critters roaming the Material Plane. And keep in mind that certain Outsiders and such actually do have personal Plane Shifting, Ethereal Jaunting, or similar abilities, allowing some to meander onto the Prime once in a while by chance or with a purpose.

 

[The Shaman]

Elementals are native to the prime material in my game and carry the [spirit] sub-type, so it's not uncommon to find a pool that is inhabited by a water elemental or a geyser with a steam elemental in it.

All 'outsiders' such as fiends are simply ancient, powerful spirit creatures originally from the prime material as well, and they can cross over to and reside in there if they can cast the necessary spells. However, as they are pretty rare (no teeming armies of devils in a vast Nine Hells in my cosmology, for example), they are unlikely to simply appear to a group of adventurers while walking along a trail in the woods unless they have a specific reason for being there...

 

[Arkham]

I run Undermountain.
Nothing needs Rhyme or reason.
( Or apparantly physical capacity to exist... I mean a Giant Gar in 3 feet of water? WTF?!?!?? )