Traveling the Great Wheel

[Sammael]

My problem with the idea of outer planes "bleeding" together is that it makes gate-towns less important. Why use the creative and complex portals found throughout the planes if you can cross planar boundaries through sheer force of will?

Because, for the most part, it's a lot easier. I go to a gate town, I do a quest or two for the local high-ups (or simply grease the wheels), and into the portal I go.

I view the ability to walk from one plane to another as something that very few adventurers would likely try to do, and then only when in dire peril (i.e. being pursued by the enemies and unable to find an appropriate portal).

You still might want to stop in the various planar trading towns to resupply and find rumors and hirelings, but bargaining with the Master Trader of Tradegate, getting lost in the forest outside of Sylvania, hunting for the ever-changing portal in Xaos, venturing through the dreaded Razorvine Gate in Curst, garnishing the appropriate palms with jink in order to win the requisite papers to get through Ribcage's gate, and so on is to me an important part of the flavor of the planes, and allowing characters to simply walk from one infinite plane of existence to another takes away from all that.

So no, I think it's a bad idea.

While the gate towns are pretty cool, they are basically just watered-down (and somewhat sheltered) versions of the planes they lead to. Gate towns also rip the Outlands of its uniqueness, as the only time PCs are likely to spend in the Outlands is in one of the gate towns. Which are about 80% like the plane they are going to visit anyway.

It also takes away from the idea that the portals are DM tools to help steer your PCs in the direction of the plot, if it's possible to planewalk with no portals at all (in the Inner Planes, you need an elemental guide or a plot-specific magical device to get around).

I am not big on railroading, so this is not an argument that is likely to sway me. Pretty much all pre-made PS adventures contain an ungodly amount of railroading, which was common in that era (see also: FR modules, DL modules), yet I've been able to successfully run PS games with very little railroading for years. And I like giving players options.

Another potential problem with forcing the portal hopping is that adventurers are pretty much forced to spend an inordinate amount of time researching portals and going to and from the gate towns and Sigil. It's interesting the first few times but after a while... it gets old.

Another problem I have with the idea is that if having a personal outlook different from the plane around you is enough for you to slowly find yourself on a neighboring plane, how would a good-aligned party manage to stay on the first layer of the Abyss (or wherever) without continuously falling off?

They don't fall off, they just feel ill and cannot think straight, since the plane itself is trying to alter them. To beat it, they must be able to alter the plane around them - much like the deities do, just on a much smaller scale.

Moving between layers on the same plane, on the other hand, is different. In 1st edition there were regions where the different layers of a plane overlapped, and these could be crossed through force of will. I'd rather it was tied to changes in philosophy, as a character becomes more attuned to one interpretation of chaotic good (for example) than another, moving between the liquid mindfulness of Ossa to the faded dreams of Pelion to the vibrant passions of Olympus depending on their mood. Though that sort of thing is hard to judge, and it's a lot simpler to just use portals, just using portals means there's no real difference between a plane and a layer. A layer is another aspect of the same universe - a plane is another universe altogether, and walking from one universe to another should be an intimidating prospect.

Layers are really ill-defined for the most part anyway.

Yes, there are areas of the Outlands that are more Limbo-like and areas of Baator that are more Gehenna-like, but at the point of greatest similarity with the neighboring plane you find... a portal, which you typically need a key to cross. And each plane is infinite (or, at least, limitless), so beyond that point of similarity there's still an unending number of other things to see without ever leaving the plane.

See above for my view on having to depend on portals. As for the movement on infinite planes, which cannot be mapped, progress is (IMC) only possible through force of will and beliefs as well. If you are on Avernus, and you do not have a clear goal in mind, you will be doomed to spend an eternity walking across the blasted plains and foothills. This is why the Grey Waste is the most dangerous of all planes, really - it sucks that drive away from you continually, making you apathetic and complacent, which results in eternal imprisonment.

The actual moment when a town is ripped free of one plane and crashes into another is abrupt, per canon. I actually think portals might be the unhealed wounds left behind by the fabric of existence being torn open by the philosophical imbalance.

Consider the idea yoinked.

If the question is "If a town can cross the planes, why can't an individual?" I'd say the answer is that an individual doesn't have enough momentum to tear open reality with nothing more than their own mind, but the accumulated belief of hundreds of people are a much more potent force. A gate-town is, in a funny way, kind of a mini-outer plane in its own right, with its own distinct philosophy. If the town of Fortitude ascends into Arcadia, then the platonic idea of fortitude, however it manifests in the infinite minds of souls throughout the multiverse, makes a conceptual shift from a neutral notion to an orderly notion. That's belief-as-power.

Yes, but shifting an entire area - or mini-outer-plane as it is - takes the belief and willpower of many individuals (particularly since their beliefs are so diverse). When an individual crosses planes, he only has to focus on his own beliefs and actions. At least that's the way I see it.

 

[The 1 and the Prime]

As I've said before, much of what your sages know of the Great Wheel is half-truth and conjecture based on maybe two or three traveller's accounts, not all of whom made it through all parts of the Wheel.

For Example: You may be shocked to learn that it is only one small region of Acheron that has the floating cubes. This was probably the only spot one traveller visited in that plane. Similarly, Pandemonium is not all tubes. Mostly not tubes in fact (again, a small section must have been visited). In these cases, it is possible that the chain of translator spells used to communicate with native inhabitants of these places may have produced inaccuracies in the original accounts, in addition to the standard possibilities of gullibility, lying and ignorance on the part of the traveler and his sources. Most likely the source of this prime world's knowledge was guided by a being not native to these planes whom was working off rumor and conjecture himself.

And Sigil: You clueless are so f---ing clueless. Sigil is a suburb of the main city of the Bureaucracy which takes up most of the "planes" of Acheron, Mechanus, and Arcadia. Sigil is actually in Arcadia and the "Concordont Opposition" is just a piece of Arcadia around Sigil. The developers who built it were trying to market it as the new rich suburb (as opposed to the old Republican rich suburb or old Democratic rich suburb), but when that didn't work, they just started marketing themselves to the Clueless, who seemed to be the only ones dumb enough to pay their exorbitant rents (still, nice views though).

Just forget the idea that the "Planes" are infinite. Each "Planes" is huge, but some are not more than a couple times the size of the Prime (which again, is not infinite). I'd have to dig it back up, but I did once estimate the size of the Great Wheel (it was big).

That Said, it doesn't take forever to walk from one place to another, since some places are fairly close on the Great Wheel. Travel times can vary greatly depending on which path is taken (consider: walking around the outside of a donut vs walking around the inside of the donut hole).

Let me explain the topology of it:

Imagine a flat piece of plane. Imagine three dots in a row on the plane (dot A, B, and C). Now raise up a pimple under the middle dot (B). We've now made the distance between A and B and A and C a little longer (now we have to scale the side of the pimple to get to B from A and we have to do the same to get to C, or go around the pimple).

Now, start inflating the pimple like a balloon, keeping the B dot on the top of the ballon. By inflating the pimple/balloon this way we can arbitrarily increase the distance of dot B from dots A and C without further increasing the distance between A and C.

This is kinda how the Great Wheel is structured. It is like a coiled tube, with pockets and ballons branching off and re-connecting. Some bubble off only one connection to a main trunck, many have multiple connections to main trunks. In some places, it is unclear which area is the main trunk of the Wheel with many large areas running in "parallel" with bridges to eachother. This also give rise to what may have misconstrued as "Layers" of planes. Typically, a realm of a Power is one of these bubbles off the trunks of the plane, giving the size of "border regions" between the realm and the rest of the "plane" very little direct relation to the size of the realm.

Additionally, the main circuit through the planes (the big hula hoop) is shortcutted and intercrossed with other paths, such as links between realms of deities in a given pantheon (Yggdrasil for example, which is like a branch laying through the middle of the hula hoop).

The lawful end of the Great Wheel is dominated by tight planes that are usually well connected and behave like one big tube. The Chaotic end has lots of tangles and branching. Generally these chaotic "planes" are less compact as well (they're bigger).

Mapping the planes and estimating their size is actually one of the main activities of the Bureaucracy of Mechanus (and is somewhat guarded proprietary information). They actually provide much of the "interplanar" travel through their near monopolization of teleportation technologies (the "Gate Towns" around Sigil are actually examples of this commercial service, that's why the gate fee, I mean "key" for you Clueless is usually $3.50 or something of around that value; f---ing marketing). Mapping the planes through manual translation (i.e. walking) allows them to back up their data on the workings of their teleportation machinery and make new additions with more predictable orderliness (if all you know is that your teleportation machine takes you "there", how do you know where "there" actually is if it occassionally moves around from techtonic-like shifts? You strap on your hiking boots). The reasons why operating a teleportation service is good for Primus is a little arcane, so I'll leave it outside the scope of this discussion.

In any case, there are no doubt place that resemble the ones you described above, although guarding the border regions between planes is not usually practiced with special intensity (since these borders are not really demarcated). The planes are not really separate; where one ends and the other begins may vary depending on the weather, the day of the month, or who you ask. In fact, as I've explained before, entire planes are like the border zone between two combination planes on each side. "Gehanna", or The Place of Contempt and Hatred is just the area over which the front lines in the Blood War range usually between stuff crawling out of "The Grey Wastes" and the forces of "Baator". "Acheron" or the place of Boredem and Belligerence is where the seat of the Bureaucratic Governance lies and is fairly indistinct from "Baator" and "Mechanus" and arguably "Arcadia" (although Arcadia is clearly on the "right side of the tracks" in the supermetro area) in terms of borders. Only on the off cycle does Acheron become the battle ground between "Mechanus" and "Baator"ian forces. "Baator" or The Place of Anger is demarcated mostly by being the area inhabited by beings which fight Disgust in the On Cycle and fight Certainty in the Off Cycle. "Mechanus" or the place of Certainty similarly is working to stop the reformers from "the Heavens" in Arcadia (from messing stuff up in their view) in the On Cycle and struggling to preserve the Status Quo in the face of outpouring Anger from "Baator"[/COLOR] in the Off Cycle. "Acheron" and "Arcadia" really have no idependent identity apart from occasionally being a bridge of alliance or a site of conflict between Cardinal and Corner Cardinal "planes".

The tone of the planes, and what gives them coherent identity as Places is caused by their relative locations. Anger, or "Baator" is dominated by frustration and anger because it is constantly being assaulted by Disgusting things. It's not fear because they usually have everything under control. It is just repetitive, somewhat boring, and unpleasant. YOU as a DM must generate that atmosphere when the PCs are there. For example: certain regions of "Baator" require you to declare the ruling local autocrat is glorius and powerful every fifteen minutes in order to allow access to breathable air. This gets frustrating, but is an effective barrier for many Disgusting creatures that attempt invasion. "Baator" is in fact full of these somewhat ridiculous tortious obligations. You need a filled out form 32c for continued explanation on this topic, or I'll have to break your arm.

On the other side of the Lower Great Wheel, the Abyss induces fear. Go ahead. Have a seat in the Abyss. Oh there? That's actually a monster that's going to eat you, not a rock outcropping. There? Oh, that's covered in parasites. Maybe you should ask that guy. Oh wait, he's just gonna trick you and try to eat your soul. Really, the parasites are probably the worst part. "Baator" might be Hell, but at least it is clean. In the Abyss, you can't trust anything, everything is looking to get you and eat you. The birds, the trees, the dirt, sometimes the air, ALL of it is just looking to lull you into a sense of ease and then strike when your guard is dropped. You might get your soul eaten in Baator, but you'll have an exact date on that well ahead of time usually. In the Abyss, anything can happen at any time. You might feel like king of the Abyss and that you can do no wrong one moment only to discover that your enemies have only been playing dead all along just to mess with you. Not knowing what thing will jump out at you next or what the next thing to go wrong will be is the character of the Abyss.

You want an explanation of how Disgust (or "The Grey Wastes") is different?