Why do most groups avoid planar games?

[Mercule]

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

True.

I'm an absolutist, though. I find the notion of "belief shapes reality" to be rather distasteful to say the least. Not particularly interested in that idea as a foundation for a setting.

I see your point, though. And if it works for you, that's cool.

Edit: Just read Cerebrim's post. He does do a good job of putting the same thing on the Prime. And, it's an order of magnitude (or two) more compelling and interesting to me by throwing in his twists.

 

[Jolly Giant]

...next game I run will probably be set in the mythological norse universe meaning there will be 9 worlds.

That is so cool! But you need to wait a few months. I still have a little work to do on Vikings D20: Midgard, but I've already got extensive notes ready for the follow-up, Vikings D20: Beyond Midgard, which will be sort of a Viking Manual of the Planes.

 

[Oryan77]

when you refered to me - you specifically noted that I had 'limited' ideas.

Oh, sorry for offending you, I didn't mean it that way at all. What I'm talking about by "limited" ideas is that no one has given examples that explain exactly what planar life is. From what I've noticed, you were the only one that did give an example. But it WAS limited. Your example doesn't give much for PC's to use to make a good adventure. Which is why you don't run planar games right? You're saying that your views of the planes doesn't provide enough "worthy" material to allow an ongoing planar campaign, correct? I'm not saying you can't think of material because you not creative, I'm saying the material just doesn't exist due to your perception of the planes. Or am I totally off?

As for why I'm going to flame the next person that says something like that, I consider 'limited perceptions' and all its euphamisms to be a tactful synonym for 'ignorant' and I'm tired of hearing people who clearly don't get what I'm saying and who are willfully mischaracterizing what I'm saying accuse me of ignorance.

Get this once and for all. I don't believe what I believe because I have limited horizons, limited ideas, limited imagination, limited perceptions, or limited knowledge compared to you.

Maybe you are just used to people being argumentative with you, but I get what you're saying....and what I might not be sure of, I've asked you. You don't have to get huffy & puffy with me. I'm not critisizing your views, I'm defending what makes planar games cool.

 

[Celebrim]

If I was going to run a low level planar game, I'd probably spend some time fleshing out rules by which characters could more directly feel the impact of the universe being morphic to thought. I'd let even little 1st level characters roll against thier 'dream shaping' to impact the universes morphic properties. I'd add rules that made certain kinds of manifestations easier for players of different allignments, and I'd add as many feats requiring specific alignments as I could think of. I'd add rules for protecting your own alignment and beliefs from morphic attack, and alot of the 'combat' would consist more of trying to stay who you want to be than just hacking and slashing at things.

I'd make the character's normal joes, but I'd make them 'dead' normal joes. Everyone starts out as a petitioner with a limited ammount of Knowledge (Former Life), Knowledge (Dreaming), and Knowledge (Planar Traveling). Depending on your alignment, you'd get different starting natural attacks, immunities, innate spell abilities, and appearances. I'd take the Planescape setting as a base, but I'd clean out all the populations of mundanes ('burks', 'cutters', etc.) living out there and reduce the number of primes to one, and I'd probably assume that travel and commerce via portals was much harder than in the base setting, and that most other petitioners that you meet along the way have settled there only because they got lost and have given up hope of getting further.

Eventually, players would learn things (like the fact that they could take levels in Outsiders of various sorts alla Savage Species) and figure out what they were supposed to be doing in the afterlife (other than trying to keep thier spirit enough intact that they would be conscious to enjoy it). I'm not exactly sure at this point what 'adventures' would consist of, but I could probably think of something if I had some time to brainstorm.

The point is that anything you can do on the planes you can do on the prime, because there are not alot of deeply integrated rules for how things are different on the planes compared to the prime. Border Towns don't really 'move', because they are in effect infinitely far from everything both before and after the move. They move only in the sense that the DM says that they move. And great, it moved, but what does that really mean when its not a part of a fixed environment? It's not like a place in the Forgotten Realms being moved (something that did happen in a campaign I was in BTW), where the change in the geographic location has a tangible meaning it that it is now possible to sail a ship to a place that previously you couldn't or whatever.

 

[Mr. Kaze]

Lots of reasons for me to keep my feet on the ground:

1) Extraplanar games require more description to ensure that players know what they're up against -- if only because they expect everything to be wierd.

2) Extraplanar games kind of require ranks in Knowledge (Planes) to get to want to even go there, so there's a character requirement that has to be achieved first.

3) Even with copious description, players may either be disappointed with how normal the planes are if you don't surprise them and annoyed at how poorly you communicated the differences if you do surprise them.

Generally speaking, doing a major extraplanar game requires more enthusiasm and patience from the players than I've seen most players willing to give.

I must also admit that the post comparing the planes to planets in Star Wars rang true for me -- if they planes don't do anything particularly different or noteworthy, then they're nothing more than a different continent on the same planet, really. Maybe people would rather explore the far side of their own world before exploring the far side of somebody else's?

My $.02, anyway.
::Kaze()

 

[ThirdWizard]

No. I actually tend to think that I don't like planar games because I want some actual meat to the story rather than seeking shiny baubles like a ferret with ADD. But, too each their own.

[emphasis added]

Huh. I see this as a pro-Planescape comment. Interesting. Seeing as how PS is geared as an intrigue-based setting.

I think this is what Oryan77 is referring to, however, when talking about people not making informed decisions about the setting. It's kind of like me saying I don't like cars because you can paint them blue, and I hate blue.

Why does it have to be on a different plane?

It doesn't.
Oh sure, "Planescape" pretty much has to be on the planes, by definition. But, you could pretty much harvest everything, forget the Planes and the Prime completely, and just call it a different campaign setting like "Dangerous Days Ahead".

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.

Well, I'd say "Planescape isn't what I want the Planes to be" ranks up there. IE it isn't planar enough, but then if it were it wouldn't work. So you're at a catch 22. Thus, you will never like the setting. Which is fine, by the way, not everyone is going to like every setting, obviously.

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.

Preaching to the choir, in this particular case. Except for the whole impossibility of a Planescape game. That depends on your defination of what the planes are, which varies based on who you ask; I agree that your planes cannot be run in such a way, though, without sacrificing what you believe they should be. Luckily, my version is slightly different, so I have no heizenburgisms to worry about.

I'm not exactly sure at this point what 'adventures' would consist of, but I could probably think of something if I had some time to brainstorm.

I like the idea. In a slight nod to Sphere, I'd probably make their own thoughts and desires create the danger they are in. Maybe run it as their final test in the afterlife so that who they were in life is creating what they find around them. I would probably make them slowly remember scenes from life, and they would slowly come to the conclusion that they were slightly evil people in life, and if they want a peaceful afterlife, then they must atone for their ways. Or maybe they can fight against the test itself, or something along those lines, so that they can truly influence their own fates.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Planescape turned me off to the idea of planar adventures for a good ten years. At the very least it turned me off of planar adventures using the standard D&D planes.

Why? Two main reasons:

1. Price - I was in college when Planescape came out. I bought the boxed set and discovered that it really gave me no info. In 3E terms, there was no crunch. And then I realized they wer going to do a boxed set on each plane or set of planes, and there was no way I could afford that at the time. I just said, "Oh, well, that makes my decision for me, really."

2. Cant - God, I hated the cant. Especially since it permeated the boxed set and couldn't really be avoided. So not only was there no crunch, but the key fluff was obscured in flavor I couldn't stand. Not a good combo.

There was other stuff, like how I felt it was primarily taking what I saw as a pretentious WoD approach to the material that I also disliked.

I use the planes in my current games as elements to a prime game, but would never base a campaign in the "planes" as defined by WoTC. Never even been tempted even once in 26 years of gaming. And by that I mean it's never even crossed my mind. Thoughts of putting my eyes out with rusty forks have crossed my mind more often. Which isn't to say I'd hate playing in one, just that I've never once thought "Wouldn't that be neat?" on my own.

 

[jmichels]

This is a very interesting thread and here's my opinion. The reason why I only use the Planes sparingly goes back to 1st edition when I first started DMing. Back then the planes were presented as a high level playing field. IIRC the only reliable way to get there in those days was a Plane Shift or certain powerful magic items. So Planar games took place only when the PCs were true legendary heroes on the Prime.

So when Planescape came out it said you can base your entire campaign from 1st level in the Planes. This challenged a lot of peoples notions of what the Planes were. Some people loved it while other people just hated it. The idea of some 1st level party even trying to survive where high levelers fear to tread was anathema to them. These planes are where the gods live, where all mortals go after they die, and where the very elemental forces of your Prime plane are created.

I know that there are lots of great Planescape sourcebooks and adventures that presented ways for lower levelers to survive and thrive on the Planes. Plus the City of Sigil is there to give you the flavor of the Planes (Sladdi and Demons walking down the street etc.) but without the terrible danger inherent there. I also know that many other DMs run whole campaigns there just fine as many other posters pointed out.

The thing is though, I still have this idea that the planes are where you go only after you have earned your stripes on the Prime. You can call this narrow minded or what have you but that is a core assumption that goes back to when I started the game. I know this may be a "wrong" assumption today, but I think it is an assumption that many 1st edition era Planescape "haters" have. So when I present the Planes in my game (Wheel Cosmology and everything) it is in the 1st edition style. A place where only the most powerful and resourceful heroes can even dare to go.

 

[Celebrim]

But it WAS limited. Your example doesn't give much for PC's to use to make a good adventure. Which is why you don't run planar games right? You're saying that your views of the planes doesn't provide enough "worthy" material to allow an ongoing planar campaign, correct? I'm not saying you can't think of material because you not creative, I'm saying the material just doesn't exist due to your perception of the planes. Or am I totally off?

You are partially off. I deliberately presented the scenario in as ambiguous and as confusing of a way as possible. I gave you as much information as the PC's get when the first go, 'Whoa. What in Limbo is going on?" Would it help if I told you that the Judge of the court was a Slaad, and that PC's needed to find a way to safely traverse the court in order to entire the domain of a Slaad lord? By trying to figure out the perverse logic of the court, which does have a method to its madness however backwards, the PC's have plenty of oppurtunity to interact (and yes if they fail to fight). And I could come back to that plain time and again and run adventurers for days on that sea of asteroid impacted junk before someone figured out that the entire landscape was made of discarded and forgotten dreams, if I so desired to do that. The Plain of Forgotten Dreams is one of the most singularly lethal things I've ever imagined (and I've come up with some meat grinders before), and there are more than enough strange things wandering around looking for something they've lost to keep people occupied for a very long time. I had more ideas for 'random' encounters than I ever could or would use.

So yes, 'worthy' material exists.

But it's one of those things where I feel if you use the material, you destroy it. Once it all starts to become comprehensible, and you start realizing that its really not all that fantastic at all, I think that the veil gets torn away and you find that its nothing more than a man behind a curtain pretending to know cosmic and mysterious magic.

The closest maybe I can explain it with is by another analogy. Back in the early seasons of the X Files, it was possible (if you didn't pay too much attention) to imagine that the truth was really out there. That there really was some secret behind all the mystery and that eventually the secret would be revealed. But, eventually everyone had to come to the realization that there was no fantastic secret. That the writers didn't have a big secret. They were just pretending that there was some big secret so that they could maintain a perptual aura of numinous mystery. I think that by definition the planes are place of numinous mystery. If I take the PC's there too often, the numinous of the place goes away no matter how good of a DM I am.

For me, the X Files ruined themselves early on because I figured out the big secret - there was no secret. Without that, I didn't see a point in watching. For others, they could suspend thier disbelief and keep up with the increasingly silly and internally inconsistant fun.

Or, maybe an even better analogy that I just thought of is 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. Adams keeps dangling the secret of the question of 'The Life, The Universe, and Everything' in front of the reader like a carrot. Now, at some intellectual level you know that Mr. Adams doesn't actually know the meaning of it all, but so along as he's clever and creative enough, you can half convince yourself that if you just keep reading eventually the big secret will be revealed to you and you'll know what 42 means.

But, of course you don't.

In order to play the planes right, IMO, you've got to carefully keep that 42 hanging there and never ever let the players find out what the question is.

Because you - the DM - just don't know.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

I don't think tangibility destroys that mystery..nor over exposure. Though, it most definitely may destroy curiosity and motive. Just a thought.