Why do most groups avoid planar games?

[Psion]

I think that this assertion goes back to my fourth point. If the planes are some place so ordinary that even first level players are running around doing rather mundane (if heroic) things, then the planes are reduced to being no more grand than any other world.

I'm not sure of the implications here. You can have as many or as few planes as you want. If you want to explore the ramifications of a plane with a few different rules or inhabitants than the norm, you can do that without necessarily taking them to more grandiose planes. The thing about the planes is that there are a lot of them. As someone once remarked (on a slightly different topic), it's a bit like a cow... you don't eat the whole cow, just take the cuts you need. And just becaue you stopped by for a hamburger doesn't make filet mingon any less special.

The temptation to introduce the planes at first level is not I would think particularly strong,

Again, you seem to be universalizing your feelings on the subject.

nor is it immediately obvious (unless you've read Planescape or Beyond Countless Doorways) how you might go about doing it.

Hold that thought, as you touch on it again, shortly.

But more to the point, I base this assumption about what is typical on a bit of common sense.

I mean no offense, but what you are calling "common sense" seems to me to boil down to several assumptions.

I'm well aware that some people have run planar adventures starting at first level with little mini-cutters roaming around doing mini-cutter stuff in little demi-planes. In fact, I happen to own a very old published module - UK1 'The Crystal Cave' - which is a quite good example of exactly that. But I doubt its very typical.

And to be fair, unless the campaign was explicitly started at first level as a planar game in a planar setting, you are probably right.

But there is a big gap between 1st and 12th level. I have been involved in many a mid level game in which the raid on the evil temple (or similar site based adventure) featured a gateway to another world. Published and tournament. I hardly consider such things scarce.

For one thing, all of the means by which a party could travel at will back and forth to the planes are fairly high level spells,

There is a fairly big assumption right there, and one that is by no means universal. You assume that most planar adventures will have the travel under the control of the players. My experience is that not only is this not true, but once players become capable of planar travel on their own, it becomes much more difficult to manage adventures. It is IME fairly common for the GM to provide the portal or gateway, a method that was formalized in Planescape and carried forward in 3e MotP.

and most of the monsters and challenges that one would meet on the planes are by thier common descriptions well beyond the abilities of low level characters.

This is another assumption that you need not go beyond the core rules to see is not true. A simple perousal of the 3e MM will reveal many outsiders that have CRs less than 12. Other books like the Fiend Folio and many third party books only pile more potentially appropriate challenges on the heap.

I can see that you have this image in your head that the planes are inherently greatly hostile places. Not only do the rules provide many appropriate challenges for lower level challenges, you also seem to have an assumption that they players are going to places where powerful outsiders are going to want to hurt them. Not all planes are personal stalking grounds for Balors.

Again, not saying that any of this should make you want to play the planes. The point being that, when you look beyond your own GMs screen, you will find that there are plenty of games out there that don't require you to be high level to explore the planes.

 

[billd91]

I think one of the strongest arguments against planar campaigning is the lack of enough depth to really relate to it. As others have said, it's easier to get the players to visualize things and get connected to the setting if there's some more shared experience or understanding than the planes.

Plus, for me, they are the site of mythology. Things like Blood war, the afterlife, and so on. There may be things that characters would be interested in, but mostly remotely as their final reward and not a place to go hang out now.

So I tend to use planar jaunts very sparingly when I run games, and don't really get much out of them as long-term adventures as a player.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

My gaming groups have all enjoyed adventuring on the planes. We never played Planescape, but the Manual of the Planes (1e and 3e) provided a great deal of inspiration.

I wouldn't classify planar travel as necessarily being a big pile of strangeness so much as a pile of extreme-ness. Environments, monsters, and events that would never be possible on the prime material are easily used in some of the other planes.

I consider planar adventures to be part and parcel of an old-school approach to gaming as well.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure of the implications here. You can have as many or as few planes as you want.

Sure, but even that is not immediately obvious.

Again, you seem to be universalizing your feelings on the subject.

One doesn't have to look much beyond this thread to see that my 'feelings' on the subject are not at all uncommon.

Hold that thought, as you touch on it again, shortly.

I'm still waiting.

I mean no offense, but what you are calling "common sense" seems to me to boil down to several assumptions.

Isn't that what common sense is? The difference between 'common sense' and an opinion is only that in one case, the assumptions are well, common.

And to be fair, unless the campaign was explicitly started at first level as a planar game in a planar setting, you are probably right.

Glad to see that you are conceding my major point in the middle of strongly disagreeing with me.

But there is a big gap between 1st and 12th level. I have been involved in many a mid level game in which the raid on the evil temple (or similar site based adventure) featured a gateway to another world. Published and tournament. I hardly consider such things scarce.

No, but I would consider them unusual. Let's be clear about what we are talking about. I'm fairly sure that in some campaigns might occassionally feature an otherworldly portal from time to time before 12th level, though I think that its far from a given that that is common. But that isn't at all what is being discussed here..

Read the topic again:

In discussing types of adventures with some people I had (again) the notion that planar games are boring thrown in my face. Time and again I encounter people that feel that planar games are either boring, too weird, or not fun. Any ideas why that is? In my opinion planar campaigns can be more exciting since they're open to a large number of unusual and non-standard adventures.

I think it's pretty clear that what is being discussed is not the occassional ethereal jaunt or wizardly or haunted demi-plane, but rather campaigns which revolve around planar travel as a central feature of the campaign. I very seriously doubt many such campaigns involve low to medium level characters.

There is a fairly big assumption right there, and one that is by no means universal. You assume that most planar adventures will have the travel under the control of the players

No, I assume exactly what you assume, and for the very reason you assume it...

My experience is that not only is this not true, but once players become capable of planar travel on their own, it becomes much more difficult to manage adventures.

Bingo. That goes right back into my point. Most DM's have a hard time managing things when players get that much freedom to travel anywhere they want. It becomes increasely hard to prepare anything in advance and keep track of all the things that might happen or all the things players might do and all the stacked up bonuses and defenses. Managing high level campaigns is often just a head ache, and planar campaigns are more often high level than not.

This is another assumption that you need not go beyond the core rules to see is not true. A simple perousal of the 3e MM will reveal many outsiders that have CRs less than 12. Other books like the Fiend Folio and many third party books only pile more potentially appropriate challenges on the heap.

Ok, sure. Conceivably, you could throw a single Imp, Mephit, Hordling, Howler, Hellhound, Rutterkin, or Dretch at the players. But such creatures are the Orcs of the otherworld. You don't have to throw that many of them out before the CR gets reasonably high, so they most often show up in small groups in 'bad places' on the prime.

I can see that you have this image in your head that the planes are inherently greatly hostile places.

Are you suggesting that that image is an uncommon one?

Not only do the rules provide many appropriate challenges for lower level challenges, you also seem to have an assumption that they players are going to places where powerful outsiders are going to want to hurt them. Not all planes are personal stalking grounds for Balors.

The question becomes though, if they are the stalking grounds of mundane things, why bother? The issue here is not whether or not some people run planar centric campaigns, or even whether some people run planar centric low level campaigns, the issue is why don't most people run planar centric campaigns.

 

[Psion]

But then, in the end I'm of the "old school" as Psion puts it, and cling to the "pilgrims in an unholy land" view of Outer Planes adventuring rather than the more "cosmopolitan" view,

The idea of "pilgrims in an unholy land" is, to me, a very appealing scenario for a game. It's practically the model behind Sam and Frodo's journey into Mordor.

 

[alsih2o]

Too amorphous.

It is the same reason Batman will ALWAYS outsell Dr. Strange or the Silver Surfer.

Players and DMs relate immediately to the concrete in their worlds. Planes seem to take that away.

 

[Celebrim]

The idea of "pilgrims in an unholy land" is, to me, a very appealing scenario for a game. It's practically the model behind Sam and Frodo's journey into Mordor.

Sure. But, since the setting of the game was already fantastic, there was no need to appeal to an otherworld in order to have an unholy land to journey into. If you look at most published settings, I think you'll find such places generally exist on the 'world', and I suspect that that is true of most homebrews as well.

 

[Galethorn]

I've got my reasons...

1. Planar travel just doesn't fit with the sorts of campaigns I like running/playing in, just like robots, psionics, dinosaurs, and samurai don't fit. It's a flavor thing.

2. Often times, the planes and their denizens are too...weird. In small doses, their weirdness is an asset, but (like anything exotic) the weirdness becomes mundane if it doesn't have enough 'normalcy' to be balanced against. I mean, multi-tentacled psionic dino-robots with eight eyes can add that perfect bizzarreness to a planar adventure, but if they're as common in the campaign as orcs and goblins in a 'generic' campaign, they've effectively lost all of their specialness, and just seem contrived.

3. The 'hospitable' planes in D&D are way too...normal. If you're going to have alternate realities, they shouldn't be ANYTHING like the prime material plane. Sure, we've got incredibly weird places and creatures, but we also have a plethora of humanoid-like races that are (ignoring strange color-schemes) more human than dwarves or elves. I don't think that any beings with 'normal' even remotely human-like mindsets should exist naturally in an alternate reality. I want more sentient clouds of energy, vague, formless entities, and otherwise completely alien stuff. Oh, and no cities. Cities (in any familiar sense of the word) as an abstract concept are too familiar for what should be really weird places.

4. A lot of the planar stuff has really, really dumb names. I'm not going to name any of those names, however, as I'm sure others have different opinions.

 

[Evilhalfling]

So a question for the people who have run planescape at lower levels, I think there have been some good points, about difficulty of even the smallest of planar entites - What is a good level to start adventures on the planes?

btw. where do all those evil fieldish vermine Sum monster 1-3 come from ?
and why to I itch to send my players there?
is there a demon king of centipedes and scorpions?

 

[John Morrow]

In discussing types of adventures with some people I had (again) the notion that planar games are boring thrown in my face. Time and again I encounter people that feel that planar games are either boring, too weird, or not fun. Any ideas why that is? In my opinion planar campaigns can be more exciting since they're open to a large number of unusual and non-standard adventures.

If they say "boring", then my vote is that either (A) they aren't getting enough combat, (B) the combat that they are getting is tactically uninteresting (either because the same things are done again and again or because the outcome is decided by single powerful spells), or (C) the bad guys all teleport or plane shift away, leaving lots of battles ending without clear victories or defeats.

If they say "weird", we're probably talking about a violation of one of S. John Ross' five elements for a commercially successful RPG setting -- "cliche". Cliche let's people know what's possible and what's going on without the players having to do a lot of homework to learn something new and unfamiliar. It's why the quasi-Medieval D&D game appeals to more people than games like Jorune, EPT, or Tribe 8.

If they say "no fun", it's probably either of those reasons or it's just no a genre that interests them. Not everyone wants to play a science fiction, cyberpunk, or Old West game because they don't like the genre. Planar games can also feel like different genre. Don't be surprised if some people just don't like the genre because they don't like the feel or trappings of it.