Why do most groups avoid planar games?

[Krypter]

I think one point that hasn't been brought up is the issue of the party having a homebase.
[...]
Plane hopping tends to imply a lot of traveling and NOT returning home. Basically, the PCs have no sense of place.

I think you have brought up a very legitimate problem in Planescape. As a PS GM myself, one who has run low-level and medium-level campaigns in this setting, the "sense of place" problem has come up before. The players sometimes feel like they are drowning in an ocean of exotic places and weird creatures, without being emotionally tied to any of them.

This is not necessarily a problem unique to Planescape though. All "picaresque" campaigns of this type, whether set in Faerun or on the Elemental Planes, have this problem. Planescape merely encourages it.

Another problem is that the mystique of Gods & Demons is reduced to banal encounters in a pub. I'm not sure whether PS encourages this or not. IMC there are few to none of such encounters, and the few times that the PCs have encountered gods or powerful demons, they have been awed and put in their place. You don't play darts and munch pretzels with Tempus. The PS sourcebooks make this very clear, and in fact do one better on regular D&D by not providing statistics for gods. In some places PS goes out of its way to encourage players and DMs to preserve the mystery of the gods and wonder of the Outer Planes.

All in all though, the problems described here can be encountered in almost any campaign setting, and simply need good GM mastery to overcome. A Forgotten Realms campaign in the Time of Troubles can equally reduce the majesty of the gods to a caricature of brawling brats. Is that the fault of the FR setting?

As for Umbran's question of "What do I get that I don't get in other settings?", I would reply that you get to delve into the mythologies of dozens of cultures, and see the framework of the universe. I particularly like the fact that you can find almost every Earth pantheon in PS. That's not the case in Faerun, or Dark Sun, or Eberron. You just can't plop the World Ash into any world you want, not just because you'd have to drag the entire Norse mythology into your world, but also because it would seriously affect the more medieval world's geopolitics, economics, etc. In Planescape, you can do it without effort. You also don't explore the questions of "Where do souls go after death?", "Why are demons evil?", and "How can a demon redeem himself?" on a regular prime material world. You have to venture to the planes to explore these metaphysical questions made flesh.

So, yes, Planescape has some problems, but the campaign setting can be adapted to your preferences.

 

[Sejs]

Part of the problem I have as both a DM and as a player, with planar adventures, is one of scope.

Things get too big and I lose my ability to fully wrap my mind around them. In the end I find myself breaking the planes down into bite-size chunks that I'm able to understand, and that feels like a disservice, and not particularly honest to the material.

When the scale get too large I stop being able to experience it, and instead compartmentalize and rationalize things. Things stop being an adventure and start becoming an exercise. That's just not nearly as fun for me. I can deal with planar adventures by reducing the cosmology from infinite planes, infinitly large, to something more digestable, but that takes a good ammount of work to set up. Not to mention having to work it so it all hangs together thematically.


Example of a 'Bad' (for Sejs) Cosmology: Planescape. It's too big for me to handle if you include everything and everywhere.

Example of a Cosmology I'm better able to handle: World of Darkness. WoD's Umbra is pretty analogous to D&Ds Etherial Plane. The near-umbra (border etherial) mirrors the real world due to its proximity, and the farther out you get (deep umbra/etherial) that likeness stops and it begins to have its own features. For the most part, it's akin to a fog-choked sea. Beyond that you have the Far Reaches (the outer planes) but very, very little is known about them because, for the most part, if you go there you don't come back. That's a scale I can deal with. As a DM, that's a scale I feel I can present to my players honestly, and make cool.

 

[jasper]

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…
Cool Hey Dm Shemeska do you have a map of the citadel? No Then just another description yawn. All these bad guys hopefully they will ignore little old me.

First level plane hopping hmm next week can I buy a plane ticket to ride on the river Stynx or visit Thor at door number 4.

Happy hunting grounds next stop. Please note that the following spells are not allowed on this plane, and the ones marked in red will get you such a beating.

Don't send PC's to the Gray Waste to fight in the Bloodwar, send them to the Gray Waste to deliver battle plans to a Platoon of fiends. The PC's could fight low level stuff on the trip and get picked on by higher lvl stuff...good roleplaying keeps you alive on the planes. Let change this Oryan 77 Don’t the pc’s to Plain states to fight in the Oil Rumble between the People Republic of PirateCat vs. The Empire of Jasper Send them to Plain states to deliver beer to troops. Why throw in plane travel if I just minion and can to the same on the Prime.

.. It's just a different way to describe doing the exact same thing. Like everyone keeps saying, it's "weird". Planar games are really no different than other games… Oryan 77 So In this multiverse PirateCat is female and Dialgo loves d20 and Hong is twins and both are nice guys. But the next plane over Piratecat is Piratedog (from Spike from Tom and Jerry), Dialgo is church mouse who hates d02 and Hong was hung for crimes against the Enworld in 03. So how great is it if you just switching Pepsi with Coca Cola or Coca Cola with Lime.


I don’t own any plane books or care for the blood war. When I and my players decide to go to the outer planes I will decide what is out there I don’t need no stinking book telling me what is there. Of course I may steal from parts of stinking book. Why got me is once the stuff was written it became oh goody here is new monster and I can use because we on plane x and the book says so..


If you like traditional fantasy, you can run it in PS. If you like harsh environments like Darksun, you can play it in PS. If you like Ravenloft, you can simulate it in PS. If you like the Underdark, you can run something similiar in PS. Found some cool monster you'd like to "…easily" throw at the party? PS is great for that… again what is difference so instead of being two kingdoms over Darksun is two planes over.

 

[Oryan77]

I don’t own any plane books

When I and my players decide to go to the outer planes I will decide what is out there I don’t need no stinking book telling me what is there.

Then why are you critisizing my examples of how the planes 'can' be run? You're making stuff up on your own (which is fine)...but you think your material is more legit than mine? How is that? I forget sometimes that DM's who make up their own material are better and more accurate on how material "really" is supposed to be played....but cut me some slack.

Repeatedly, I see people telling planar fans that "your way is wrong, the planes don't work like that, that's why I dislike PS...they are more epic & mystifying than that". And all the planar fans have done was point out various ways it can be run (I haven't noticed any saying you're wrong if you think differently). Yet, Celebrim is the only one that has given a descriptive example for how his perception of the planes are. And even he agrees that his ideas are pretty limited and would only be fun for a couple sessions until it turns into prime window dressing.

Have any of you guys thought that maybe you don't like planar games because your perception of them is limited & will eventually become boring pretty quick because it's not very creative? Everything everyone is complaining about actually exists in PS. It has it's epic qualities, it has it's mystifying qualities, and it has it's beyond comprehension qualities. It also has much more than that to make it more fantastic. I guess I wouldn't like planar games either if all it offered me was epic monsters doing nothing but twiddling fingers waiting to be attacked or summoned by high level PC's.

 

[werk]

Then why are you critisizing my examples of how the planes 'can' be run?

<cheers> THANK YOU! Saved me the trouble.

 

[Mercule]

You can start a regular campaign on Arborea or the Outlands or most of the lawful or good planes and not even tell the players they are not on prime (clueless). Run that like a regular campaign and then have the 'dark' of it all revealed when you are ready...berk.

And I'd walk out of a game that did that without warning (if I'd built up some trust with the DM, I might give it a go). It goes back to what I said earlier. If it can be done on the Prime, it probably should be. That goes doubly or trebly for something that's actually indistiguishible from the Prime.

That is something that is a cornerstone to me. If it looks like the Prime, smells like the Prime, and quacks like the Prime, then it's the Prime -- or at least it should be. Other planes are only there to provide for something that the Prime can't. Period.

Any point about planar games that involves doing something in the planes "just like it could be done on the Prime" or "just with different factions" or "the same, but bigger" doesn't even get off the ground, IMO. If it works for you, great. But I'd would rather be dealing with two human kingdoms at war than with the Blood War. Just a better setting, IMO. (Again, more power if you prefer it the other way.)

If you want to sell me on planar games or Planescape, tell me what I can do with that sort of setting that I can't do in Greyhawk (as a baseline). Tell me what I'm missing without using the word "same", "like", or any synonym. Give me an example that I can't just file the serial numbers off and put it on the Prime. Why does it have to be on a different plane? Because, until someone can do that, I see no value in setting my campaign anywhere but the Prime.

 

[Mercule]

Repeatedly, I see people telling planar fans that "your way is wrong, the planes don't work like that, that's why I dislike PS...they are more epic & mystifying than that".

We were asked why we don't like them. You expected us to shower you with sunshine and lollipops? I, for one, haven't said anyone was wrong, nor have I seen anyone else among the non-planars do so -- although I'll admit there were a few messages I've only skimmed.

And all the planar fans have done was point out various ways it can be run (I haven't noticed any saying you're wrong if you think differently).

And we've said, "No, that doesn't fit with why we want to include planes. We want something else from them." At least, that was what I said.

Truthfully, it feels more like the planar fans are evangelizing. And doing so in a rather poor way, or, at least, in a slightly passive-aggressive manner. I don't think any of the non-planar folks is going to be satisfied or interested in just moving our standard campaign to the planes. In fact, that's just exactly what I want to avoid.

Yet, Celebrim is the only one that has given a descriptive example for how his perception of the planes are. And even he agrees that his ideas are pretty limited and would only be fun for a couple sessions until it turns into prime window dressing.

I must be on your ignore list, then.

Most of what Celebrim said goes for me, too. At least enough of it that I don't mind the association.

 

[barsoomcore]

The title of this thread is "Why do most groups avoid planar games?", isn't it?

It looks like the answer is "Because planar games are perceived as goofy and more work for the DM than they're worth."

But carry on.

 

[Celebrim]

Have any of you guys thought that maybe you don't like planar games because your perception of them is limited...

If I hear this one more time, I'm going to go into outright flame mode.

[RANT]Have you ever thought that maybe you do like planar games because your perception of them is limited?[/RANT]

The reason I don't do planar campaigning isn't that my perception of the planes is limited; rather, the reason I don't do planar campaigning is that in my opinion a mortal's perception of them should by definition be limited, and in my opinion if you make the planes limited enough that normal joes live in normal communities within them then you have betrayed what makes 'the planes' have a unique character and in fact they are not longer 'the planes'.

In other words, I don't consider that the claim that you have 'portals to universes in which dwell incarnate beings and ideas shape reality' to be a true statement if those universes have the same essential character of the normal universe. Or put even more simply, I don't consider what you do to be true 'planar campaigning' at all. What you are doing is colorful and probably fun, and I'm sure you get alot of milage out of convienent metaphors, but its no more 'planar campaigning' than Forgotten Realms is 'medieval campaigning'.

To take another example, if you have a 'demon' that's not utterly evil, then however conveinent of a metaphor you may find the word 'demon', you don't actually have a demon because they thing you have violates the implicit and explicit definition of a demon. Demons are incarnated evil. A demon has less capacity to do good (even in its own interest) than a Paladin has to commit evil in the service of good. A demon that's just a litte bit evil and a little bit good is basically a person, and the tag you've labeled it with is just a conveinent tag for evoking all the mythic baggage of the word without having to do the heavy lifting of creating that content for yourself. You haven't been 'nuanced', you've reduced the concept down to the level of the juvenile - and the best you can probably manage is to make 'demons' a semi-ridiculous metaphor for the trials of growing up alla 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.

Again, because you are still not getting it despite all the times I've tried to make this clear, I think a 'Planescape' campaign is impossible to run and stay true to the source material because every real DM is 'clueless' and doesn't know the 'dark' of it by definition. It's a beautiful stylish idea filled with well executed color, and I found alot of its stuff very intriguing, but I don't think its an idea that can be executed on a practical level without violating the idea. I'm a glad that you enjoy it. I think its swell that you are having alot of fun, because I'm sure that that is what the writer's intended. But, again, in the same way that I became very disenchanted with Vampire: The Masquerade because in practice on the whole it ended up being a Supers game with different costumes rather than the intriguing but nearly unexecutable idea held within the original text. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that latter supplements abandoned the original idea and gave the player community what they really wanted (but dared not think to themselves that they wanted it) - more of a combat oriented supers game in which the players were increasingly allowed to not think about the philosophical issues raised by the original text.

And I'm not just picking on Planescape. I think that the basic problem would remain true of every campaign that tried to go into the planes on a regular basis. I love the H.P. Lovecraft 'Dreamlands', but I'd never run a campaign there because it would violate alot of what I think makes a Cthullu game cool to have player's romping around in the 'Planes' delving into the secrets of the universe.

 

[Oryan77]

If you want to sell me on planar games or Planescape, tell me what I can do with that sort of setting that I can't do in Greyhawk (as a baseline). Tell me what I'm missing without using the word "same", "like", or any synonym. Give me an example that I can't just file the serial numbers off and put it on the Prime. Why does it have to be on a different plane? Because, until someone can do that, I see no value in setting my campaign anywhere but the Prime.

The planes are all about beliefs. Take the PS module Fires of Dis for example. The Harmonium Faction on the Gate Town Fortitude is planning a ceremony that will unite the entire cities citizens together (similiar alignments) and cause the whole city to slide from the Outlands and into Arcadia. Gate Towns sliding into another plane happens when the citizens of that city begin to change the balance of alignments in one direction (the gate town will slide into whatever plane relates to that alignment). If a city slides, a new city takes it's place on the Outlands. The Harmonium WANT Fortitude to slide because it shows they have more followers of their alignment. The PC's are sent on a quest to retrieve an item that will give support to a Paladin that everyone in Fortitude idolizes. Depending on events, Fortitude could slide or remain on the Outlands. If it remains, the PC's have made some enemies (the Harmonium). If it slides, they have been a part of a major event, and they will make some good allies (the Harmonium).

I don't think this is a typical scenario for Prime worlds unless you do some hefty tweaking to the setting.