What's the Philosophy behind Planar games?

[Wombat]

It's all about turning a fantasy game into a paranormal/sci-fi game

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Glad to see there are others who can understand how I feel! Yes, your ideas for alternative locales that can still provide a real challenge for PCs are good ones. And I think you have the rub of it, too, that it's locales that can challenge, and they don't need to be on some Outer Plane for it to be so.

How about other planets?

In terms of fantasy worlds, it is best to portray other worlds not as modern-day SF does, or as Spelljammer did, but how H.P. Lovecraft and other writers of his time did.

Lovecraft's universe was filled with myriad life forms - even the smallest planet, it seemed, had its own indigenous life (and not all of them were Great Old Ones, either... ). Most of them were very bizarre and alien - and none of them could easily fit within our notions of "Good" and "Evil".

There are many worlds out there to explore - and in theory, they are only a "Teleport without Error" spell away...

And this certainly fits into D&D as well. Think of creatures like destrachans, yrthaks, aboleths and others - how could they have possibly evolved in a terrestrial environment?

The logical answer is, of course, that they didn't - either someone summoned them here, or they arrived under their own power...

I've written up a sample D&D solar system here. Tell me what you think!

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

If everyone played in FR, then you don't need to go planar exploring, as every type of creature, magic and philosophy already exists there. For those of us with more plausible settings, the planes actually DO represent something foreign and exciting. Basically a "yes" to that question, Will.

Is it hard to "adventure floating around a plane" ? Sometimes! The hardest part seems to be getting a group of players together that wants to do it, quite frankly.

I like adventuring on the planes for many reasons. First and foremost is the sense of wonder and discovery for the PC. My most vivid memories as a child were when I gained new epiphanies regarding the size of this world/universe and my place in it. Who amoung us has NOT fantasized about exploring the planets, or living in the time of the dinosaurs? And the afterlife! Not to get too religious here, but many religions survive based on people worrying about what happens to their soul after death.

Adventuring on the planes gives PC's a look into the larger scheme of things, and even more, allows them to play a (albeit small) role in the eternal stuggle between X and Y.

Your last question is a toughie! : "How are other planes different from the Material in terms of impacting adventures and how PCs acquit themselves?"

I'm not sure there is a real difference in terms of a blanket impact ( you could argue for preperation I guess ) - probably no difference for the latter either. PC's are always gonna perfom at the level of their players.

 

[Trickstergod]

I believe I'm in much the same boat as BigFreekinGoblinoid.

I'm more a fan of essentially low to mid-magic games. A bit grittier, a bit more realistic, and a lot less Forgotten Realms (It saddens me that the Scarred Lands seems to be swiftly becoming another setting like it, I might add...bleah). I like peasants to be dirt poor, raising the dead to be a miracle, and magic to inspire awe and wonder, instead of being taken for granted. As such, the planes afford me the opportunity to say screw all that, and offer up the truly fantastic and impossible. It allows for contrasting gaming styles that still can reasonably co-exist. To draw upon inspiration such as Neil Gaimans "Sandman" and plunk it down into a game.

I will say I'm not much a fan of "plane-hopping," though. Sounds a bit too flippant, bit too easy.

But, there you have it. No need to go on for too long, as much for and against has already been stated. Off, off with me...

 

[Zappo]

I love planar adventures... that's why I play Planescape..
I enjoy presenting the players with awesome sights, incredible situations, philosophical dilemmas with real-world consequences, and the occasional moments of complete surreality. And the planes offer me all of that and more, while Planescape in particular offer a unique style, perfectly suited to enhance all of the above.

I have never had the problems Deadguy mentioned. Maybe I can see something in common between them. On prime material campaigns, often PCs travel the whole world, become powerful enough to single-handedly level a city, get assigned quests, and save the planet. The problem is that none of this translates well to a planar scale. I mean, what you get is PCs that travel dozens of planes (each infinite in size!) and get confused, attempt to become powerful enough to single-handedly level a tanar'ri fortress and get frustrated; and you get DMs that have the deities themselves assign quests which revolve around saving whole galaxies from total annihilation or preventing entire legions of dark gods from awakening.

The key is recognizing this and changing perspective. The planar adventuring I like isn't about visiting every cool location in the campaign setting, getting powerful and saving the world. It's about personal quests, freedom of choice, pursuit of knowledge, politics and philosophy, and dozens of other things more original than, yet again, destroyng the evil artefact and preventing the ancient evil god from awakening.

And when you do have to destroy the evil artefact and prevent the ancient evil god from awakening (see the beautiful adventure

Spoiler

Dead Gods

), you certainly won't do it by crawling through a dungeon, slaughtering hordes of enemies and smacking him around.

That's why I love the planes.

 

[Yair]

Zappo: And when you do have to destroy the evil artefact and prevent the ancient evil god from awakening (see the beautiful adventure

Actually, my party will be trying to do the reverse, if all goes according to plan (find the evil artifact, awaken the dead god...) we are running it in reverse, sort ot...

On topic, what I like about planar adventures is that they are cosmic in scale. You do get to wake up ancient gods, battle satan himself, bring war to the gates of heaven, and so on... changes on this scale shape the "world".
In effect, the "world" of D&D is already planar; with summoning, deities granting spells, and so on there is no escapig that. So any changes to the non-planar world are confined to only a small part of the world. Profound changes to the setting can only be made on the planar scale. And I'd like my characters to have impact, to change the setting.

That said, most my adventures are not planar. While there is generally a planar long-term plan, the characters genreally don't make it that long.
(E.g, the characters in my current FR campaign are level 6; they should start getting "visitations" from planar patrons at around level 8, retrieve the evil artifat at about level 12, and only then embark on their first planr adventure... yet so far they rose 2 levels, in a year of game-time, and with one PC death...)
Yeah, I suppose planar adventures do bring out the "god" in me... but its for a good cause...

 

[Deadguy]

Hummm, I think I like that idea too, actually... especially since I give xp for roleplaying (I have a codified system for it, actually).

Maybe each town or city should have a 'mean level' and extrapolate both upward and downward from it...?

I think that you have to design a general distriubtion of levels in a 'typical' locale and then give factors for modifying it. Something like saying the 'average' craftsman is level 4, with a master being level 6-8, and mere apprentices levels 1-3. I'm sure that either a table or a simple equation could suffice for generating the actual level distribution of a town. Still, we are drifting off topic here!

 

[Deadguy]

How about other planets?

In terms of fantasy worlds, it is best to portray other worlds not as modern-day SF does, or as Spelljammer did, but how H.P. Lovecraft and other writers of his time did.

Lovecraft's universe was filled with myriad life forms - even the smallest planet, it seemed, had its own indigenous life (and not all of them were Great Old Ones, either... ). Most of them were very bizarre and alien - and none of them could easily fit within our notions of "Good" and "Evil".

There are many worlds out there to explore - and in theory, they are only a "Teleport without Error" spell away...

And this certainly fits into D&D as well. Think of creatures like destrachans, yrthaks, aboleths and others - how could they have possibly evolved in a terrestrial environment?

The logical answer is, of course, that they didn't - either someone summoned them here, or they arrived under their own power...

I've written up a sample D&D solar system here. Tell me what you think!

I actually quite like your approach to the planets - and I could easily adapt some of your ideas to my own Shattered World campaign. In fact that campaign's cosmology does make use of planets to represent the 'planes'. I have the Sun and its opposite, the Darkheart, being the energy poles, and the residence of strange, abhuman beings (Celestials for the Sun, Undead for Darkeart). And there are also the four elemental planets, from whence many strange creatures arise, and are called to the Shatterd World itself. But I have indicated that humans find reaching these worlds in person to be extremely difficult and dangerous... notably to their sanity (so I guess I am borrowing from Lovecraft! ) Though are are faint rumours, from before the Cataclysm that Shattered the world, that some beings were building Voidships to explore.

Importantly this system is entirely self-contained. There are no other worlds, no other planes, and no outsider beings (not even gods). So I don't have an open-ended setting where all my hard work on the Shattered World itself becomes irrelevant the moment the PCs get powerful enough. Rather than being constraining, I find this design liberating. I don't have to worry about limitless Great Powers, which would've changed everything if I had included them sooner. I know what my palette is, and I can work with it.

But, lest I am criticised as judgemental, I hasten to add: each to his own. If the Great Wheel Cosmology works for you, then at it with heart!

 

[Deadguy]

I have never had the problems Deadguy mentioned. Maybe I can see something in common between them. On prime material campaigns, often PCs travel the whole world, become powerful enough to single-handedly level a city, get assigned quests, and save the planet. The problem is that none of this translates well to a planar scale. I mean, what you get is PCs that travel dozens of planes (each infinite in size!) and get confused, attempt to become powerful enough to single-handedly level a tanar'ri fortress and get frustrated; and you get DMs that have the deities themselves assign quests which revolve around saving whole galaxies from total annihilation or preventing entire legions of dark gods from awakening.

That does seem to be a fairly common 'affliction'. In many ways, the presentation of the Planes seems to encourage this. Rather than 'different' they seem to be 'more': 'more weird', 'more powerful', 'more lethal'. In other words they are just a tool for scaling up adventures to high level parties, not an end in themselves. Now I appreciate that Planescape tried to remedy this, but it doens't seem to have carried over to MotP and the 3.5e DMG.

The key is recognizing this and changing perspective. The planar adventuring I like isn't about visiting every cool location in the campaign setting, getting powerful and saving the world. It's about personal quests, freedom of choice, pursuit of knowledge, politics and philosophy, and dozens of other things more original than, yet again, destroyng the evil artefact and preventing the ancient evil god from awakening.

I just think that it ought to be possible to do this on one world, without adding the complexities of a zillion planes and planar dominions. Doesn't the 'Material Plane' have the scope to explore eternal verities, engage in large-scale politics, enjoy personal quests of self-exploration? I think broadly that it can, so long as you set things up right from the start. And that may mean moving away from some of the assumptions in the DMG.

 

[Psion]

There are several things which combine for me to make Planar adventures a good deal duller than 'Material Plane' adventures:

BFG pointed this thread out, and I feel compelled to respond. I'm not about telling you what to like, but on an objective basis, this sounds like someone who has labored under a DM who executed the experience poorly vice anything inherent about planar gaming.

If today's Thursday, then this must be Limbo: several people have talked about the sense of wonder that the Planes evoke. But my experience has been that by the time you've dealt with the fifth whacky plane the DM has come up with, the names are blurring, the details muddying, and all the lustre has rubbed off!

If the DM is sending you to five planes in a week and you are not familiar with them or he meant to invoke them in more than a "passing through" sense, then it seems to me that this is nothing inherent about the nature of planar games, but rather, the DM is getting a little too excited about using some planar resource he has found. This is a common syndrom among some DMs who are a little too eager to use as much new source material as they can, and is in no way limited to the planes.

Planes can be too much a crutch

I immediately suspect any gaming argument that calls something a crutch. Gaming is a leisure activity. Anything that makes the game easier is usually a good thing. Applying denigrating titles like "crutch" is rarely appropriate.

for DMs who want to set aside consequences and mess about with some dumb idea they pillaged from TV, film or book!

Again, this reflects on the DM and/or your tastes on what is "dumb."

It can be a convenient venue to allow logical incorporation of good ideas as well.

Small Fish in Infinite Ponds: as a PC it gets frustrating when you finally develop some power, only to have ti all natched away from you again by a DM who goes 'but in the Abyss you're nothing!' No matter what you seem to do you are but a mere pawn in the schemes of immortal powers that outmatch by by many many degrees of potency, so there's no use in arguing with them!

I don't see this as being the case, at least using Planescape as a reference. Sure, there is less "world/universe" saving, but for some, that is a refreshing change of pace. Saving the world can get old.

Citing PS and other adventures, I think there are several examples of adventures in which the PC's actions are important:

Spoiler

In Dead Gods (for Planescape), the PCs struggle to stop the ressurection of a deity who is killing other deities.
In Tales of the Infinite Staircase (for Planescape), the players try to defuse the riddle of a malignancy that is spreading across the universe.
In For Duty and Deity (for FR), the players quest to save a goddess from a demon lord who plans on pulling the realms into his own plane.

That's some pretty significant stuff, I think.

Cogs in the Great Machine: there's something about D&D planar adventures that brings out the worst in DMs.

Again, I can't help but feel like you are speaking about a specific DM you had a bad experience with.

Everything Matters... So Nothing Does: tying in with the remarks about 'absolutes' and eternal factions, planar adventures seem to generally involve really bad things happeneing to the Multiverse unless the PCs intervene.

Waitaminnit. Weren't you just complaining about the insignificance of PCs in planar gaming?

That said, there is nothing that requires multiversal calamaties in planar gaming.

In short, I feel like this is a complaint about a bad gaming experience you had, nothing that is general or compulsory about planar adventures.