Questions about Planes

[Blue1005]

I am interested in having various planes in my campaign, but have always been shy to because I don't fully understand them. Does anyone have any cool tricks or things that make them fun and exciting, or ways to make them seem easier to DM?

Anything is cool, just not sure about what goes into it all. :smallbiggrin:

[Kelb_Panthera]

What is it about them you don't understand? Perhaps we can help.

In any case, it's important to try and highlight the "other"-ness of any of the planes. Little details can be important, and it's usually a good idea to pick just one or two planes to try and confine the campaign or adventures to. The great wheel is a big place and there's so much to see that none of it will be particularly memorable if you try to squeeze all of it in.

Oh, and unless the players are prepared, some of the planes are notably hostile to material natives, notably the elemental plane of fire and both of the positive and negative energy planes. The elemental planes of earth and water can lead to a quick suffocation upon arrival without making the proper travel arrangements. Of the outer planes; elysium, pandemonium, and hades pose notable dangers simply for being on them, and limbo is just roiling elemental chaos (read; quick death to the unprepared).

[HunterOfJello]

If you haven't heard of them, check out the Planar Handbook and Manual of the Planes. They offer a lot of cool information about the different Planes of existence and how to handle them in a campaign. They also provide information on Sigil and how to handle a campaign by including the city in it.

[Yora]

Planar Handbook is more like a Charakter Options book. Manual of the Planes is the one that explains what they planes are, how they work, and gives an overview of the 24 planes of Greyhawk and Planescape, which are the best known ones.

[Blue Lantern]

The way a see the planes is a concept given shape.
for instance I picture limbo like a Dali' painting, where everything is fluid and weird and changes all the time, or arboria as the enchanted forest at the beginning of Disney Sleeping Beauty, with fiendly intelligent animals and good faerie (or eladrin in this case) that take care of you.

[TuggyNE]

There's a nice project updating various of the Outer Planes' descriptions over at MinMaxBoards (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5581.0). Has some useful plot hooks and a good summary for each plane, detailing some of the major features.

[Blue1005]

I have them both and can reference them. The issue is like in hot and cold planes of others, how do you figure out the various effects that happen. Like people in Hell obviously must have a heat issue, no water, things like that. Or a plane like hoth that super cold temperatures and all that, how do the PC's survive and what should I as a DM be doing to make it seem different then terra firma.

[Ranting Fool]

I've always liked the different gravity types of some planes. In one of those books near the end it talks about a Beast/Plant plane. All on a massive endless tree trunk. Gravity is towards the center of what ever branch you happen to be on at that time :smallbiggrin:

The branches can be hundreds of miles thick as well.

Remember not everything HAS to be explained, as natives would just figure "That's the way things are" unless they are some big science type.

I'm quite tempted to do some sort of Halo world ring or Hollow planet with levels for my next campaign.

[Ashtagon]

If you haven't heard of them, check out the Planar Handbook and Manual of the Planes. They offer a lot of cool information about the different Planes of existence and how to handle them in a campaign. They also provide information on Sigil and how to handle a campaign by including the city in it.

Better than this (especially good for the fluff) are the old 2e Planescape sourcebooks. The 3e fluff was rather weak in comparison.

[Yora]

True, but the scope of the Planescape boxes is much bigger and they are a lot harder to come by.
Manual of the Planes is Planescape light, but I think in this case this is actually the better option.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I have them both and can reference them. The issue is like in hot and cold planes of others, how do you figure out the various effects that happen. Like people in Hell obviously must have a heat issue, no water, things like that. Or a plane like hoth that super cold temperatures and all that, how do the PC's survive and what should I as a DM be doing to make it seem different then terra firma.

In regards to this, you are aware of the rules governing starvation, thirst, and extreme temperature in the very back of the DMG? The environment books Sandstorm and Frostburn are also good if you want to really play up environmental factors.

Unless otherwise noted in the description of the plane or one of its layers, the weather and environmental factors work as normal on the outer planes. Naturally this doesn't hold for certain planes that are enclosed or otherwise wouldn't make any sense. Limbo, pandemonium, maybe acheron. Ultimately though it's up to the DM just like it is on the material.

[hoverfrog]

You could start with something like the Astral plane with its pockets of weirdness like Dead Gods and pools to other worlds or just demi planes where you can make it up and nobody can point to a rule book and tell you that it's wrong.

In fact why not pick a demi plane, some long dead wizards secret sanctum on the Astral where fire and evil magic is enhanced and there is no gravity and time runs at half the rate as the outside world or something equally strange.

[Absol197]

My ILR group is currently running a Planar campaign, and we got the idea because of brief stints that everybody loved when we visited the Elemental Plane of Fire and Arboria in a previous campaign (that I had run).

The big thing is making other planes feel both real, but at the same time completely alien and different - it should create a feeling of, "We're not in Kansas anymore..." The players just know they're not on the same world as they're used to.

In addition to the normal rules in the DMG/Manual of the Planes, make the alignment forces actual phyical laws there. A chaotic plane not only feels odd to lawful creatures, it actively resists order. Things that are straightened begin to spiral. If you try to set up a grid, a neat stack of papers, anything that you try to order, it slowly begins to unravel and become a jumble, because you're standing in a place where Chaos is a real force.

It should also become difficult (or at least, make mention of the fact that the characters have a hard time doing so, even if there's no mechanical effect) to act in ways opposed to the plane's alignment. On an evil plane, doing good acts is difficult, and it feels like the plane itself is resisting. Killing a demon might normally be a good act - you've killed a beast of the pit, and now people are marginally safer than they were. But in the Abyss, the same act of killing a demon feels wrong, even to a paladin. It feels less like the holy destruction of a spawn of true evil for the purpose of protecting others, and more like intentionally slaying another sentient creature for no other purpose than forwarding your own goals. Both are true, but in the Abyss, you can't help but feel the latter.

Use the weather and terrain to your advantage. In chaotic planes, the weather is unpredictable, changing in strange ways rather suddenly, while lawful planes it's even, easily predicable. There might even be odd and unnatural weather events, like rains of frogs in Arborea, or the rain falling up to balance things out on Arcadia.

Those are the sort of things that we do now, and it really gets the players into the feel of the place they're visiting. You just know you're somewhere different.

[Ranting Fool]

You could start with something like the Astral plane with its pockets of weirdness like Dead Gods and pools to other worlds or just demi planes where you can make it up and nobody can point to a rule book and tell you that it's wrong.

In fact why not pick a demi plane, some long dead wizards secret sanctum on the Astral where fire and evil magic is enhanced and there is no gravity and time runs at half the rate as the outside world or something equally strange.

hehe this is the basis of my campaign at the moment. Granted the players didn't start of knowing that the new land discovered across the endless sea wasn't on their own world (there were hints but they didn't pick up on them) and not just one demi-plane but three :smallbiggrin: It's gone down very well so far.

[Kane0]

Check out what you can about Sigil, or play Planescape:Torment for a little while. Sigil is an excellent starting point for the planes.

If you are still interested, this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=246430) has some very good stuff for you. I'm using it for my upcoming inter-planar campaign.

[Blue1005]

Check out what you can about Sigil, or play Planescape:Torment for a little while. Sigil is an excellent starting point for the planes.

If you are still interested, this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=246430) has some very good stuff for you. I'm using it for my upcoming inter-planar campaign.

That just gave me a DMgasm :smallwink: