Open Worlds vs. Closed Worlds

[barsoomcore]

What Wombat said. There is no multiverse in Barsoom. There is the Living World, there is the Shadow Realm (which immediately destroys any living thing that enters it) and there are the Dream Worlds (which immediately destroy any living thing that enter them). So any kenders on their way in will be destroyed before they arrive.

Less fun than actually having exploding kenders show up, I admit, but easier to keep clean.

 

[Blue Sky]

I chose "It's a big multiverse: Dragonlance characters in my FR game? Sure, just drop em' in a portal!" I tend, when running campaigns, to choose what I include, based on what the players want to play. If someone wants to play a character from another world, it's not that much different from someone wanting to play a character from another continent, another country, and so on.

Of course, anyone wanting to play a more powerful race/class/juju bubble would have to pay for it in terms of ecl and whatnot, but the option's there.

 

[s/LaSH]

Closed with caveats. Everything I work up has a nice solid cosmology that certainly doesn't mesh with other cosmologies. That said, it is possible to move to other cosmologies, as they all exist as part of the set of infinite diversity (in my mind, hence in my worlds); it's just that navigating the angles and distances necessary is a little bit harder than juggling galaxies. Fortunately, I don't intent to allow any PC of that magnitude into a game, so it's a moot point.

 

[FungiMuncher]

I kind of consider my game's universe as a poor man's planescape. I have a finite number of alternate material planes - there are four of them, all of my own making. There are also two transitive planes. The typical outer and elemental planes have been off limits to the players, and are likely to remain so.

However, I'm pretty flexible with adopting material from other sources - if it seems even slighlty reasonable, I'll find a place for it in my campaign.

 

[WayneLigon]

Closed, with Caveats. I'll adopt things in from other worlds, depending on the nature of the world I'm buildings.

For instance, right now I'm constructing a new campaign world and I wanted it to be a 'testing ground' for a few concepts. So I'm putting in Litorians and Giants from AU, the Witch and Shaman classes from the Green Ronin books, the Infiltrator class from Kalamar, and adding a couple optional rules for UA. I'll put in different things, and adapt them. But someone can't just come to me and say 'I wanna play a priest of Lathander'; I'd point him to a couple gods that might be somewhat like that.

 

[adembroski3]

I keep a very tight leash on things in that respect. Planescape drove me nuts because it's gave players a sense that the "Beyond" wasn't all that Beyond at all. It just became a part of the living world around them.

The Heavens and Hells, Purgatories and Limbos of my campaign worlds are mysterious places not thought so much as "extra dimentional" but more beyond comprehension. I don't define any sort of cosmos... what is simply is, it can't be explained.

I like to create a sense of awe about the unknown, and I try to hold to a very strong Dark Age feel in my game (A Dragonlance game, btw, which is best played closed. I can see Forgotten Realms being left very open, but a good DL campaign is usually going to be closed).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, part of the tone of PS *is* that sort of 'well, I've seen Pelor's palace, what's this field got?' jadedness......of course, it usually turns out that the field is just as important, if not more important, than Pelor's Palace, after all....(Center of All and all that).

 

[CRGreathouse]

I picked the third option, but I'm sort of between the second and the third. My campaign world is closed. However, it is also huge. About 33,088,400,000,000 square miles. Obviously, I have not gotten around to detailing all of it. So if a player wants something that would reasonably fit with the backstory, I'll put it in somewhere for them. But it's not like Greyhawk exists somewhere on my world. The only published world that exists anywhere in my cosmology would be Cidri, for which there is minimal information anyway, and nobody is going there for a long, long time.

*grabs calculator, fiddles with it for almost a minute*

Your world is *409 times* the size of Earth (in diameter)? Do you bother thinking about things like gravity, or is that all just so much handwaving?

 

[Sir Elton]

I'm completely dissatisfied with anything that I run, I'm finding these days. Especially when PCs force you to split the camera and divide your attention. Stupid PC, the next time he does that I'm going to have an NPC target him and kidnap him for the purpose of Chaositech experiments!

Anyway, the reason why I am so dissatisfied is because I build off the wall worlds (using Anime as inspiration) and say they're fantasy. No body is at all interested in playing them. So it doesn't matter what I allow or disallow; my players only stick to one scenario --- Pseudo-medievalism.

I hate pseudo-medievalism!

 

[adembroski3]

So it doesn't matter what I allow or disallow; my players only stick to one scenario --- Pseudo-medievalism.

I hate pseudo-medievalism!

Perhaps you should try working on that issue. No offense, but if you cannot adapt to what your players are looking for out of a game, then why do you DM?

I personally run a very psudo medieval campaign... in fact, I run a fantasy version of the medieval British Isles in between Dragonlance and Ancient Ireland (legendary history being my personal favorite genre). I find most anime to be, well, to be blunt, dumb, and thus try to stay away from it. One of my players, however, is a huge anime fan and tends to play his characters in that style (though I refuse to allow him to have natural blue hair!). It's a stretch for me as a DM to try to work in those sorts of elements, but I do my best because it is my job to make the game fun for everyone involved, not just myself.

If your players are interested in psudo medieval settings and you refuse to run them, you run the risk of DMing for empty chairs.