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Planescape Artist Tony DiTerlizzi Shares Planescape Playlist
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8287186" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>The way portals worked in Planescape was a stroke of genius, too, and again, very on-brand for the 1990s, and actually pre-figuring similar thinking in a lot of later fantasy including urban fantasy.</p><p></p><p>Specifically, prior to Planescape, the notion of fixed portals was present, albeit uncommon, but generally speaking, they were either always open, or closed and opened by a spell being cast or an elaborate ritual, or only opened when there was a specific cosmological alignment. They also tended to be very obvious things, like purpose-built gates in the middle of a room (or the middle of nowhere), giant symbols on the floor, and so on.</p><p></p><p>With Planescape, those are all still possibilities, but basically any doorway of any description MIGHT be a portal, and to use a portal, i.e. to travel through it to wherever it went to, the key could be anything - you might have to be carrying a specific object (like a certain sword), or a general object ("a red rose"), or being thinking a certain passphrase, or in a certain mood, or smelling a certain scent, or humming a specific or general tune, or really just anything. Suddenly, every doorway or similar in an entire campaign setting COULD be a portal. Familiar areas could easily have portals in them (because IIRC, they're not necessarily detected by Detect Magic, unless open, and they may only open as you step through them with the key), that have "always been there", but just have an obscure key. You could even have them be the subject of a mystery of the like - maybe people keep going missing when walking down a certain street with a few archways over it, and no-one can find that pattern, but eventually the PCs work out that there's a portal, that only activates between midnight and 3am, and only for people who carrying at a gold coin of a certain year or king. Then of course there's an adventure in rescuing them or whatever.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8287186, member: 18"] The way portals worked in Planescape was a stroke of genius, too, and again, very on-brand for the 1990s, and actually pre-figuring similar thinking in a lot of later fantasy including urban fantasy. Specifically, prior to Planescape, the notion of fixed portals was present, albeit uncommon, but generally speaking, they were either always open, or closed and opened by a spell being cast or an elaborate ritual, or only opened when there was a specific cosmological alignment. They also tended to be very obvious things, like purpose-built gates in the middle of a room (or the middle of nowhere), giant symbols on the floor, and so on. With Planescape, those are all still possibilities, but basically any doorway of any description MIGHT be a portal, and to use a portal, i.e. to travel through it to wherever it went to, the key could be anything - you might have to be carrying a specific object (like a certain sword), or a general object ("a red rose"), or being thinking a certain passphrase, or in a certain mood, or smelling a certain scent, or humming a specific or general tune, or really just anything. Suddenly, every doorway or similar in an entire campaign setting COULD be a portal. Familiar areas could easily have portals in them (because IIRC, they're not necessarily detected by Detect Magic, unless open, and they may only open as you step through them with the key), that have "always been there", but just have an obscure key. You could even have them be the subject of a mystery of the like - maybe people keep going missing when walking down a certain street with a few archways over it, and no-one can find that pattern, but eventually the PCs work out that there's a portal, that only activates between midnight and 3am, and only for people who carrying at a gold coin of a certain year or king. Then of course there's an adventure in rescuing them or whatever. [/QUOTE]
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