Why do most groups avoid planar games?

The Shaman said:
All of this is postulated on the idea that any of these things exist in the game-world I created - fact is, there are no planewalkers, no portal specialists, no keys.

You are sort of sidestepping the point. You are assigning an attribute to the use of portals in planar gaming that he is showing you is not true.

If you don't want planar flavor specialists in your game, that's fine. But that doesn't make his point any less valid. Players need not be any more constrained by portal travel than you make them. If distaste for implementing the required professionals in your world, fine. It's an obstacle, but its one based on your personal preferences. It says nothing about how portal can or cannot de facto be used to facilitate PC travel.
 

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Celebrim said:
Oryan77: I think your 2:15 post pretty much sums up precisely why I admired Planescape so much but never used it...

I agree 100% w Celebrim, I had the same reaction to Oryan's post - there's nothing wrong with the campaign he describes, it just doesn't excite me. The AD&D Planes beyond the Prime were designed to be weird & freaky, the home of Elements, Energy & Alignment - to me the idea of them as Joe Schmo's home doesn't appeal. OTOH I love alternate Primes and have created loads.
 


The Shaman said:
but you're really in no position whatsoever to tell me what I like and don't like, or the way something feels or doesn't feel to me.

Wow....calm down. I never did tell you what to like or how to feel. I was doing nothing but pointing out the similarities between a planewalking campaign and a traditional Prime campaign using your scenarios as examples. I just won't respond to you anymore after this if you're that sensitive in a discussion. I never meant to offend ya.

The Shaman said:
No, I don't want them to go anywhere - I want the adventurers to decide where they want to go and how to get there. I don't lead them by their noses - my game-world and my storylines simply aren't structured that way.

Which is what I assumed from your post. Which is also why I gave an example of how planar travel still takes that into concideration. Which is why it's no different except for the method of travel.

The Shaman said:
All of this is postulated on the idea that any of these things exist in the game-world I created - fact is, there are no planewalkers, no portal specialists, no keys.

Of course not because you don't run a planar game. I'm not talking about portals from your prime world TO the planes either. Even Planescape doesn't make prime to plane travel that easy unless you want it to be easy. I meant that if PC's did end up on the planes AFTER "somehow" leaving your world, those are the ways you'd handle travel from plane to plane (not prime world to the planes); which is similair to handling travel on a prime worlds kingdom to kingdom. I hope I'm making sense :p On a prime world, you have a cartographer and guides (ship captains or caravan guides). On a plane, you have portal specialists, key specialists, and guides. Unless you think of the planes as less civilized and run it that way...but Planescape is as civilized as any campaign.
 

Psion said:
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.)

Fairly familiar with Planescape (have the old box set) - like the design/art/lingo, but not inspired enough to run it. To answer your question, In my campaigns, the deities typically have no direct interaction with mortals - for example, it's a current theory of some in my current campaign that all magic is a single source (clerics are really a different kind of sorcerer). A planar structure wouldn't really fit, whether Great Wheel, Nifty Trapizoid, or Spectacular Circle. To clarify, I don't feel I *need* to bring the campaign plane hopping to bring to the table what I and my players enjoy, which is pretty much what it boils down to. :)


Psion said:
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.)

Cool.


Psion said:
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.

One thing I'm working on for my next campaign is that each island of the campaign area is (in a sense) something of it's own plane: i.e. the physics of the world of The 6 Elements allow (but don't require) for radically different physicalities within fairly close (tens of miles) proximity to one another (i.e. an island that is similiar to the Plane of Fire in many respects could be a day away from something the exact opposite). In that respect, I suppose I'm taking aspects of plane hopping that I like (different environments, different races, etc.) and putting them within a mono-planar context. :)
 

Psion said:
Say, Barsoomcore, I seem to remember you have a pretty cool little planar jaunt. Something about a dimension that was a prison that the players couldn't escape without freeing the goddess imprisoned therein? Refresh me.
At the end of Season Two of Barsoom, our heroes, battle-weary and bitter from betrayals, horror and loss, were targetted and captured by a force they hadn't faced before and dumped into a "prison world" called Kiriku.

They eventually figured out that Kiriku had been created long ago by a sorcerer who evidently needed to put a bunch of bad guys somewhere where they couldn't hurt anyone. More recently, some other folks figured out the trick to sending people to Kiriku (actually, they had no idea what they were doing. They just discovered that (basically) if they pointed this stick at their enemies, their enemies disappeared and were never seen again) and used said trick on our heroes.

So they found themselves trapped in an artificial-created "world" where the fundamental instabilities of the place began to seep into the inhabitants, so that over millenia they transformed into bizarre inhuman forms (so there were spider women, and centipede guys, walking worms and stuff). They spent an entire season traversing this freakish place, discovering long-hidden secrets about what had actually happened when Kiriku was originally created (since pretty much everyone who'd been stuck in it 2,500 years ago was still there), and eventually figuring out a way to get free of it WITHOUT (they hoped) unlocking the whole prison and letting the bad guys (big draconic humanoids who are natural sorcerers, tough as raw nails and think humans are yummy) get out behind them.

At which point the PC who had been transformed into a terrible were-creature (on Barsoom, lycanthropes are about as super-powered as vampires are -- and vampires on Barsoom are uber-super-mega-powered) immediately began to crave human souls. And the vampire who'd helped them to escape did so, likewise.

Hilarity ensued.
 

Oryan77 said:
What's this PDF you're talking about? I'm interested.

There's two: six planar gates and six living planar gates. I'd dig up the link but I have to run. Phil will probably point you the right direction.
 


Psion said:
I mean you as the DM probably drew the map, and put the nations there. That's still you controlling the directions they can go. And you are further limited by (usually) 2 dimension. A nearby huge influential empire limits what else you could put in that direction and it's enimies.
This is what a friend of mine would call, "Picking the fly[expletive] out of the pepper."

On one hand I have a portal - it goes to one place, regardless of where the players want to go. On the other hand I have a harbor full of ships - they go anywhere the players want to take them. Are you really suggesting that from the perspective of the players there is no difference? Are you really suggesting that?
Psion said:
While I would not deny the fact that portals gives you more control is a matter of great appeal to me, there is also a great deal of room to give the players more latitude. That said, as a practical matter, it seems to me that the GM realistically needs to restrain or cajole the players motion anyways.
There are many different way influence players choices that can be accomplished with a lighter hand - what you're describing does not appeal to me.
Psion said:
I'm just saying... portals can be either more or less flexible than a standard fantasy world on the issue. Which is the good thing. Flexibility
As I stated in an earlier post, there are as many creative ways to approach planar travel as there are GMs. That doesn't make them any more desireable to a GM, like myself, who doesn't view the planes as just another world for adventures.
Psion said:
And if that's your preference, there is really not that much I can say about it. If you don't like portals, you don't like portals.
Thank you for recognizing that my preferences are my preferences. However, you go on to oversimplify what I already said - I do use portals in a few places in my game-world, but it's somewhat irrelevant as the planes in my cosmology offer nothing resembling the 'standard' or Planescape cosmologies in terms of who lives there, what they are like, and what kinds of adventures are likely to occur.
Psion said:
However, I would hasten emphasize that it need not be that simple. Even in PS it wasn't -- you needed portal keys. Phil's planar gate PDFs also provide some great examples of intriguing gates with great flavor and story potential. Getting through a portal can be an excercise for the party to pursue their goals. (Not only can it, I would go so far as to say occasionally, it should be, to keep portals from becoming, well, pedestrian.)
Psion said:
If you don't want planar flavor specialists in your game, that's fine. But that doesn't make his point any less valid. Players need not be any more constrained by portal travel than you make them. If distaste for implementing the required professionals in your world, fine. It's an obstacle, but its one based on your personal preferences. It says nothing about how portal can or cannot de facto be used to facilitate PC travel.
I started playing D&D twenty-seven years ago - I've homebrewed three game-worlds from the ground up, including different cosmologies, and I've run adventures on other planes several times. I understand that there is more than one way to approach the planes and planar travel, and your pedantic insistence on 'correcting' everyone's approach to the multiverse is growing tiresome.

I'm done here before I say something I'll regret. :mad:
 

eris404 said:

Hey, thanks for posting the links! A DM's Directory of Demiplanes also includes twelve more planar gates (but they're not as creative as those found in Six Living Planar Gates).

For those that are interested and don't own it you can use the following link to save $1 on A DM's Directory of Demiplanes.

http://www.rpgnow.com/?coupon=80323&SRC=EnWorld

A DM's Directory of Demiplanes is also available in print.


Anyway, sorry to hijack. This has been a very interesting thread.
 

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