Why They Can't Just Stay on the Other Side of the Portal

[ccs]

Have you considered just not bringing it up? I mean, you're all on board with the concept of hopping around to different places. If they don't hop then it'll crash the concept. would seem an odd approach to something you all came up with together.

Think of it this way. Do you ever stop & consider "What if the party just stays in the dungeon they cleared?" Nope. Because the party returns to town for some reason. To train, to sell loot, to take care of business at home, to resupply & head off to the next bigger dungeon, for the fame & glory of having gone to x brings, etc etc etc.
Why's living in this pocket dimension any different than venturing forth from town?

So just run your one-shots (however many sessions each actually take ) & don't give the players any option about where they start each one from.

As for just setting themselves up in the business of opening portals for other residents?
Because that's not an adventure.

 

[RangerWickett]

Did you ever watch LOST?

There was a buried hatch with a countdown clock, and if you didn't enter a code of numbers into a computer every 108 minutes, something allegedly bad would happen. It was unclear whether it would actually come to pass, so people argued about it, but thinking 'better safe than sorry' they kept plugging in the numbers.

Maybe the plane the party is on has someone or something they care about, or it's linked somehow to a place in another plane the PCs want to protect (or something they want to keep sealed up), and so they have to come back regularly to make sure all's well.

It doesn't necessarily have to have a strict timer. I mean, this is fantasy, not sci-fi. You can say that the portals between worlds obey strange tides, influenced by the shifting orbits of worlds unseen in an infinite aether. In-game, that means you can set a time limit for each adventure as it starts, or have no pre-stated time limit but have the PCs get a ping on their enchanted doodad* that tells them, "We'd better get back soon or else the conjunction will close." And once you go back, the portal seals up, so you can't go to Xuraxia for a few hours of adventuring, scamper home to rest, then go back to adventuring. It's a one-time round-trip ticket, so make your time there count.

This premise lets you have them escape really bad stuff with villains not being able to pursue, . . . for now. When the conjunction returns, the villains might show up. (Which happens whenever you, the GM, say it will.)

Or maybe there are currents between planes, and in one session the PCs could get stranded and have to start jaunting horizontally to try to find another world that will lead back to their hub home.

Basically, have a compelling character reason they want to check in on their home turf, and a convincing hand-wavium reason portals to other places won't always be open.

 

[akr71]

Or set themselves up in business opening portals for other residents?

Maybe they do set up such a business... I would think that opening a portal should be resource heavy (expensive components) or a higher level ability that they can only do once or a few times a day (teleport, arcane gate, etc). Give them a magic device if it is a lower level campaign.

Back to the business idea... they open a portal for some rich entity and let it through, only to discover how nefariously evil the thing is ... "What have we unleashed on the multiverse? We'd better go stop it!"

 

[Oofta]

If you want a mechanical reason, a simple one would be that their lives depend on staying in the pocket dimension for extended periods. Being away for a while (even quite a while) doesn't hurt, but after a period of time they start feeling ill. Nothing serious at first, just a slight headache and some nausea. The longer they stay away, the worse it gets and no spell will heal them. There's something they get from the pocket dimension, or perhaps the other dimensions emit some kind of radiation.

Or just go the other way, the longer they're away from their pocket dimension the more they become standard commoners with all their abilities maxing out at 10, no magic, no supernatural abilities.

The mechanics of it don't really matter too much, it may be something no one can explain. They could ultimately learn to treat if they want to permanently leave at the end of the campaign.

 

[AmerginLiath]

You might also play with rule options. Maybe the other planes they visit use Slow Healing Rules, so it behooves them to return to the Home Plane after major battles (perhaps that’s actually the normally metabolism of the Multiverse, but the Home Plane has an element that allows the adventurers to heal faster). Likewise, use the different options in the DMG to make foreign planes a bit more dangerous to stay in compared to returning Home.

 

[77IM]

Ooooooh here's one: You know how, if you kill a fiend it just respawns on its home plane, but if you kill it on its home plane it stays dead? Reverse it: Anyone who dies in the pocket dimension respawns on their home plane, so people WANT to live there! But if you die outside the pocket dimension, you just regular die. So really the PCs want to guard the pocket dimension, and get back to it as soon as possible, to avoid death. In fact, they are the courageous few who will go through portals and brave the multiverse and risk permadeath! IN FACT, their most common mission objective is to retrieve someone who died in the pocket dimension and respawned on some material plane somewhere.

 

[jayoungr]

Thanks for your ideas, everyone! I think I'll be able to combine a few of them to make something fun for the players. Let me know if you have any further inspiration!