Why do most groups avoid planar games?

[Psion]

I also tend to run campaigns that ignore the standard religions of D&D (more home brew than Greyhawk/FR)

Why do you associate this with planar games? I see no inherent connection between the default pantheon and planar adventures unless you are strictly fixated on the subset of the Great Wheel sites represented in the 3e MotP. (If that's the problem and you are still interested in planar gaming, do yourself a favor and download some of the Planescape Boxed Set PDFs from RPGnow.)

and feature a lot of "local" politics/adventures/problems for the party to deal with, so it's much harder to work in trips to other realities and have the players care about them.

In my current campaign the last FIVE levels or so of planar adventuring have revolved around recovering a kidnapped prince key to a political marraige of the party's leige's sister. (Though I must admit, considering all the other things that have happened, I'm surprised this particular maguffin has remained central to their planning.)

I've done it a few times in my current campaign, but the plane trips have all been to "quaans" (term borrowed from The Banewarrens), which have been pockets of reality (a swamp, a city, etc.) shifted into their own finite space rather than genuine planes in the traditional sense and generally smaller parts of larger adventures.

That's cool.

I used to be fixated on the great wheel cosmology, but ever since Portals & Planes and Beyond Countless Doorways, I have broadened my horizons. IMC, the great wheel is "out there", but the players have yet to visit any of the great wheel or other Planescape/Great Wheel cosmology elements (though next adventure they will visit Yggdrassil).

MotP 3e really did throw open a lot of doors with its plane classification system. You really don't need to visit The Plane of Fire to visit a fire themed plane, etc. A concept that the two aforementioned books took and ran with.

 

[Psion]

You have bascially 2 groups of DM's: those that want the planes as mysterious, intangible things of awe, myth and mystery, that only the highest level priest & wizards know a thing about (and that ain't much).

Me, I see the planes as a things of awe, myth, and mystery, but see D&D as a game of awe, myth, and mystery and would consider it a terrible waste to not ever go there.

 

[Celebrim]

1) The more alien the environment, the less able the players are in interacting with it, and the less able they are able to understand and relate to the characters.

2) Planar play is almost invariably 12th level or higher. D&D has traditionally had balance issues at high levels, and the vast majority of DM's prefer low level and more intimate play.

3) Planar play tends to have the same problems that Sci-Fi play has with the issue of scale. Everything is just too big for a DM to really put any detail in it, and so whole plane(t)s boil down to a few small scale locations where the action takes place. So the real grandeur of the scale of planar settings never really matters, because its impossible for a DM to do enough work to really convey it well.

4) There are some real issues of cosmology involved planar adventures. No 'world' is infinite. The games 'world' is finite, with finite populations, and finite resources, and finite threats. But if _each_ plane is infinite, or at least really really huge, then the population of the planes approaches infinity, the resources of the planes approaches infinitiy, and the threats on the planes approach the infinite. All of this leads to a really big problem. If the planes are that much bigger and grander than the 'world', isn't the stuff that happens on the world relatively unimportant? Typically, instead of making things seem more important, and making stories seem more compelling, setting the adventure out in the planes just tends to trivalize what the players do. In fact, the whole campaign 'world' tends to become irrelevant. If lots and lots of beings just 'live' ordinary lives out in the planes with bars, politics, and ordinary squabbles, what does it really matter what people do on a 'world'. To paraphrase a very good movie, "If everyone is special, it's just another way of saying that no one is." And if there are infinite words, any carefully planned cosmology with a wonderful compelling pantheon of deities becomes rather ho-hum, because the implication is that everything is true somewhere - and hense that nothing is really True.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Dunno...all I know is that when I've tried to run excursions to other planes, it's usually met with rousing rounds of apathy. My group has always told me I'm a great DM, so I don't think it's my game-mastering of other planes...Planes-hopping is just not their bag, I guess.

 

[Psion]

2) Planar play is almost invariably 12th level or higher.

That seems like a pretty broad assertion. I mean, I see many people who think it should be that way. That's one thing.

But that it is? What do you base this on? I've run multiple forays into the planes at low levels, one starting at 1st. Do you not know anyone who runs low level planar games? Do you know anyone who planar games? Turning to published adventures as a standard, only one planescape published adventure that I know of is above 12th level (but it's a doozy...). Or do you only base this assertion on what has appeared in dungeon recently (shame on Dungeon...)

 

[Mystery Man]

I love de planes!

I think I'll try starting a low level plane jump next campaign just to shake things up.

 

[Torm]

Millions of Tanar'ri and Baatezu swarming like red and black ants across the ashen, bleak landscape of Oinos, living and dying under the shadow of the Wasting Tower of Khin-Oin, a 22 mile high citadel carved from the spine of a god. Shapeless, formless entities locked within the ice of Cania or swimming unseen beneath the bottomless mire of Minauros. A fiend redeemed through a single spark and imperfection of good, finally after millennia escaping imprisonment by his fellows and making his way to Elysium where when he steps through the gate and the sunlight touches him, his former form melts away in the sunlight to leave him in the form a lesser guardinal; redeemed in every way possible, and he weeps in happiness.

Does that lessen mystery or does that leave you wanting more? A properly run planar game should evoke grandeur, mystery and the manifest extremes of alignments and philosophies. The planes aren't just big extraplanar dungeons to go kill higher level monsters for more kewl loot and gain mad XP. If they are, please get off my internet, now.

LOL. But your (very talented) writing just illustrates what I'm talking about - I like it, but verbosity like that would leave many of the players in the gaming groups I've played in wondering when they're going to get to roll dice. It is difficult to give the planes the sort of detail and feeling they deserve without taking away from the pace of action (particularly, interaction) that a lot of players like. I'm not saying it is impossible, just that I have only rarely seen it done well.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Another point: The planes are where powerful entities live (gods, outsider lords, etc.). This makes the players feel dwarfed in comparison. Many of the above-mentioned reasons make sense too.

 

[philreed]

(I'm not sure but Princess Quadira may be a little TOO wierd. One things for sure, if I end up using her in a game, the players are sure not to forget it anytime soon.)

I've been considering expanding that idea into a short comic. It is certainly weird.

The sad thing is I've been making notes for "101 Planar Secrets" and so far they've been as weird as the Princess (or weirder in some instances).

 

[Psion]

Another point: The planes are where powerful entities live (gods, outsider lords, etc.). This makes the players feel dwarfed in comparison. Many of the above-mentioned reasons make sense too.

Don't get me wrong here. I know I can't make anyone like anything they don't, but there seem to be a few foregone assumptions about what the planes must be like, and are avoiding the planes because of it. Perhaps if you realize that there is more to planar gaming than the Great Wheel, more people would try it. Some of you that are thinking of the planes strictly in terms of the Great Wheel might consider the likes of Elric instead.

Planescape was set primarily in the outer planes. I don't think that's unmanageable, yet many people profess not liking the feel that if you march three days that way you'll end up on Zues' doorstep. Okay, I can't question your feelings on the issue even if I don't share them.

But here's the thing: Not all planes are homes to gods. Beyond Countless Doorways doesn't have any planes that house deities (though the Ten Courts has the lords of each court, but they are not deities.) Classic Play: Book of the Planes has a few classical heavens and hells, but also has planes like Mal, that are simply meant to be explored and be a challenge to the players.

In my current planar campaign, my players have not yet visited the realm of any living deity.