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ATHATH
2018-05-21, 12:20 PM
I've noticed that some Outsider/Extraplanar civilizations in TRPGs (most notably D&D) are fluffed to have been around for millennia. Why do they only have medieval-level tech, then? Shouldn't they have ascended to some higher plane/state of existence and/or be throwing antimatter planets at each other by now?

Koo Rehtorb
2018-05-21, 12:24 PM
Lack of resources to progress further. In some settings gods are explicitly holding back the technology level.

M Placeholder
2018-05-21, 12:28 PM
To lower planar residents, listening to the agonized keening of those damned for eternity sure beats whatever is on the telly at the time.

Mystral
2018-05-21, 12:35 PM
I've noticed that some Outsider/Extraplanar civilizations in TRPGs (most notably D&D) are fluffed to have been around for millennia. Why do they only have medieval-level tech, then? Shouldn't they have ascended to some higher plane/state of existence and/or be throwing antimatter planets at each other by now?

Maybe the natural laws in those universes don't support such technology.

Maybe they are too busy with their duties or too chaotic for research.

Maybe they don't have the need because they don't need to eat or sleep and have natural magic.

Or maybe the diety in their universe prevents such developments from happening. For example, in many D&D universes gods like Oghma or Murlynd actively surpress the development and proliferation of firearms.

Bohandas
2018-05-21, 12:37 PM
Maybe it's being suppressed by the fantasy Illuminati

Mastikator
2018-05-21, 01:42 PM
Why would they? Science and innovation doesn't just happen automatically and can (and will) even regress if you as a society take it for granted.

The outsiders have supernatural powers that can easily overpower any simple technology they can invent so they wouldn't bother.

hamishspence
2018-05-21, 01:58 PM
The residents of the Far Realm (Kaorti, Daelkyr) are Outsiders that seem to specialise in biotechnology - they might count as a good example of non-medieval Outsiders.

The ethergaunts of the Ethereal Plane also seem to have tech of sorts.

Nifft
2018-05-21, 02:05 PM
The outsiders ARE technology.

They're artificial self-replicating weapons systems which have significantly out-survived their targets and their creators.

This is also why they don't get along with each other.

Knaight
2018-05-21, 02:10 PM
The roman empire was around for over a thousand years (counting the Byzantines as an extension), and when it ended they had medieval technology. The Chinese civilization went through a number of different empires and various other multi-state periods, and was around for several thousand years before hitting medieval technology. More to the point, medieval technology came very late in human history in general. Chimps meanwhile are just now entering the stone age, and there's a whole plethora of tool using species which never even really got to tool crafting.

Technology isn't inevitable, is my point.

Darth Ultron
2018-05-21, 07:09 PM
The vast majority of outsiders have magic and are magical, so they don't need technology. They have magic.

The Big Thing though is that Outsiders are Immortal. They don't need to eat or sleep or other such mortal things. The lack of the basic drive to survive, means outsiders don't need to ''do'' anything to survive.

More so, the vast majority of outsiders have some ''propose of existence'', so they only worry about and do that. So they have no time for anything else.

And along the same line, many outsiders have the view of 'forever'. They have existed forever...they will exist forever....and ever and ever. This makes no drive or need to do anything...and gives an outsider an odd view of time.

Mechalich
2018-05-21, 07:51 PM
D&D magic is a form of technology. It functions predictably, can be replicated, and even produces interchangeable parts in some cases. It's a cumbersome form of technology due to the level requirements imposed on practitioners, but it is also an absurdly powerful one. With sufficient magic available, a person can build their own private demiplanar utopia. They can also simply travel to the Outer Planes and live in whatever they imagine their utopia to be.

So the question is not why don't they have technology, it's why do they not develop an alternative form of technology not based in magical principles. Since magic is the obvious solution to any societal problem, the idea of developing a technological solution will only occur if there is a strong reason to reject the magical pathway. The Ethergaunts, for example, have advanced technologies because they reject the use of divine magic.

Most outsiders are intrinsically magical, so the idea of finding a non-magical solution to some problem is extremely illogical. If an outsider encounters some issue their inherent magic can't solve, the immediate option is to try and master sorcery or to beg spells from the paragon of their alignment, not to seek a technological solution. And since a magical solution will essentially always work - if you apply enough magic - there's never going to be a 'magic failed, let's try something else' moment.

It is worth noting that most of the Outer Planar civilizations that are fluffed as having been stable for a very long time are significantly higher magic than their Prime Material counterparts - which is exactly the sort of progression you'd expect.

Bohandas
2018-05-21, 07:55 PM
The roman empire was around for over a thousand years (counting the Byzantines as an extension), and when it ended they had medieval technology. The Chinese civilization went through a number of different empires and various other multi-state periods, and was around for several thousand years before hitting medieval technology. More to the point, medieval technology came very late in human history in general. Chimps meanwhile are just now entering the stone age, and there's a whole plethora of tool using species which never even really got to tool crafting.

Technology isn't inevitable, is my point.

The thing is that, unlike ancient rome and ancient china, a lot of fantasy worlds, especially in D&D, tend to have access to a lot of the things that help research to continue and information to spread, including instantaneous communication, fast travel methods, and widespread literacy. Some of these things are a bit pricey in these fantasy worlds, but they do exist

VoxRationis
2018-05-22, 01:30 AM
In D&D, outsiders are frequently described as being exemplars of particular philosophies, and rarely is "invention" or "progress" considered to be one of those things. Even modrons and inevitables aren't inclined towards technology because their technology is part of their form, not their culture and society. When your entire culture and entire native psychology, regardless of culture, is based on espousing a particular viewpoint of how people should relate to one another, technological innovation is easy to ignore.

The Jack
2018-05-22, 05:38 AM
They don't really have the people, will or resources.

Population and strain is a big part of technological development. But, say, the city of brass only has so Many Djinn thanks to cosmic law, they don't need to eat, and they can feed their slaves with magic. Their population will never really gain so they don't need new constructions and they have enough magic and slaves for convenience. They also live near forever so luxury items don't need to come to them particularly fast. Essentially, their ability to create already exceeds their need.

When we're talking outer planes, we have places defined by allignment, rather than places put into allignment, so:
Lawful realms don't like change
Chaotic realms would destroy anything they create.
Evil realms don't like nice things, and you kinda need the nice things to create the wicked things.
Good realms are ideal enough that they don't need anything better.

Kaptin Keen
2018-05-22, 06:58 AM
I'd have to say that certain outsider races do have technology. Mechanus (or whatever they call it these days) is a realm of clockworks, with clockwork creatures and clockwork people. But otherwise, when the various outer planes don't have technology, it's because .... they don't go to school. They also don't go to work. On the lower planes, all they do is A) suffer, or B) fight. On the upper planes, all they do is lounge about drinking wine and tanning themselves.

They don't need technology, they don't have the drive to invent it, they don't have the education, and they don't have the production capability.

Except on Mechanus, where they have it. Possibly in spades.

Another answer is that, as the GM, you decide whether they have it or not. You can always point to the Doom Mechademon as proof that tech on the outer planes is canon.

LibraryOgre
2018-05-22, 12:02 PM
I don't know about you, but the next Hound Archon that arrives is going to have a laser rifle.

After all, S3 showed that high tech does exist in the multiverse, and those from high tech worlds presumably go to the same set of Outer Planes when they die. I think we need a Hound Archon who ain't got time to bleed.

icefractal
2018-05-22, 12:26 PM
Technology aside, many of the planes "should" be overshadowing the material plane on every front. We're talking about millennia old societies with huge populations that are all immortal and usually also individually more powerful and skilled than the vast majority of living humans. Not just technologically, but politically, culturally, militarily, and economically speaking, all the material plane civilizations should be tiny third-world backwaters between the planar superpowers.

And you can play it that way, with the material plane only maintaining any independence because it's a DMZ between rival powers. But that doesn't fit the existing material so well, does it? Which leads to a possible conclusion:

Planar self-sufficiency is a lie. There /are/ no methods for Outsiders to reproduce other than by converting mortal souls. They use various methods to brainwash the inductees so they won't remember ever having been mortals, but that's the source; everything is dependent on the prime material. Those "infinite populations" are a lie too, although some outsiders swell their ranks with almost-sapient constructs.

But still, if they have all the best minds of history, why aren't they more advanced? Why would celestial visit the material plane to see a great musician, when they have all the best (good aligned) ones of the past there already?

Well, consider Liches. Wizards of great power, who have unlimited time to study, freed of all mortal concerns. Why haven't they invented more spells? Why do they spend more time puttering around moldy crypts setting elaborate traps than, say, running the world? Maybe because they can't. Maybe because in most if not all cases, undeath fossilized the mental processes - leaves the Lich unable to invent anything truly new, although they can flawlessly demonstrate what they've already discovered. I don't recommend repeating this theory around any Liches, but it fits the data pretty well.

And so the same thing could apply to Outsiders. Existing as echoes of the mortal world, they're unable to become more than the sum of their parts, despite eternity to do so.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-22, 12:53 PM
Technology aside, many of the planes "should" be overshadowing the material plane on every front. We're talking about millennia old societies with huge populations that are all immortal and usually also individually more powerful and skilled than the vast majority of living humans. Not just technologically, but politically, culturally, militarily, and economically speaking, all the material plane civilizations should be tiny third-world backwaters between the planar superpowers.

And you can play it that way, with the material plane only maintaining any independence because it's a DMZ between rival powers. But that doesn't fit the existing material so well, does it? Which leads to a possible conclusion:

Planar self-sufficiency is a lie. There /are/ no methods for Outsiders to reproduce other than by converting mortal souls. They use various methods to brainwash the inductees so they won't remember ever having been mortals, but that's the source; everything is dependent on the prime material. Those "infinite populations" are a lie too, although some outsiders swell their ranks with almost-sapient constructs.

But still, if they have all the best minds of history, why aren't they more advanced? Why would celestial visit the material plane to see a great musician, when they have all the best (good aligned) ones of the past there already?

Well, consider Liches. Wizards of great power, who have unlimited time to study, freed of all mortal concerns. Why haven't they invented more spells? Why do they spend more time puttering around moldy crypts setting elaborate traps than, say, running the world? Maybe because they can't. Maybe because in most if not all cases, undeath fossilized the mental processes - leaves the Lich unable to invent anything truly new, although they can flawlessly demonstrate what they've already discovered. I don't recommend repeating this theory around any Liches, but it fits the data pretty well.

And so the same thing could apply to Outsiders. Existing as echoes of the mortal world, they're unable to become more than the sum of their parts, despite eternity to do so.

I get the sense that in canon the outside realms suffer from being locked into their patterns. Instead of being free to change and grow, they're fixed in a rut by being exemplars of abstract concepts. Stasis is the very meat of their existence.

In my (very non-standard) setting, outsiders can't generate their own anima (the stuff of existence), because that requires a physical, mortal body and soul learning, growing, and developing. Instead, they skim off the flow from the mortal realm to maintain their "lives". This keeps them interested in cultivating mortal life and not stifling it. It also provides an astral economy based on the flow of anima, which replaces the whole alignment rigidity. Angels get theirs for protecting the universe from threats and maintaining order, devils get theirs by being the gods' messengers to the mortal plane (and directly from mortals by way of contract), elementals get theirs from the Great Mechanism as they maintain the Material Plane (replacing mined minerals, making sure water cycles around and the winds blow, maintaining the weather, etc.). Gods oversee the whole process and handle the more spiritual needs of mortals through their agents (including clerics).

Demons, on the other hand, get their power by devouring souls (willingly sacrificed or not). That's why no one wants anything to do with them.

All the Outsiders do have technology, but it's...odd by comparison to earth tech. Because when everything's made out of energy held together by belief and the physical laws themselves are mutable at a thought, having scientific tech is difficult. The entire universe is held together by the Great Mechanism--alternately a clockwork engine of cosmic proportions or the veins, heart, and organs of a being from outside reality that happens to be dreaming the entire realm into existence. Both and neither are true.

Slayn82
2018-05-22, 07:21 PM
I think most Outsiders are actually like Xuanhuan cultivators in Asian novels: Mortal souls elevated to a new form, who care little for the world they originally came from. Instead, they spend their time contemplating the laws that compose the planes where they spawned, and seeking oportunities to advance in power to a higher form of existance. It's significantly easier to to it on places like the Abyss and Hell, where you can more or less directly challenge your superior and take over his power, or arrange for an accident to happen, if you have enough preparation and backing.

But on other planes, where competition isn't so much cutthroat, they need to take limited oportunities, often dependant on something found or happening on the Prime Material Planes, in order to advance. Maybe after being a good luminous archon and protecting a sanctuary for years, some of the faith of the people who prayed there goes to Celestia, empowering the essence of that plane, and a small part goes to the luminous archon, allowing him to evolve to a higher existance.

As such, the kinds of needs they have usually have little to do with Technology, and much more with Arcane Knowledge. When you expect to live forever, waiting 100 years for the next time a gate to the Prime Material opens naturally, probably feels more like waiting for the next flight, and looking at the events of the prime for 10 years is like making a short netflix binge. They should spend quite a bit of time researching some oportunities for themselves, and probably because of that they can answer so many questions through Contact Other Plane.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-22, 07:46 PM
Wait, if an Outsider casts contact other plane, is he talking to mortals? #notsureifjoking

Raphite1
2018-05-22, 07:50 PM
Did their plane have ancient geologic epochs like the Carboniferous where trees evolved, flourished, and sank into swamps in great numbers to create coal that could be used as fuel for industrial development millions of years later? Did their plane evolve an analogue to the rubber tree, which provided a key material to create gaskets that allowed the development of tightly-fitted machinery? Do they have large populations dependent on food or other resources who can be compelled to provide labor in exchange for access to those resources? Does their plane have access to iron, a source of carbon, and a source of flux in order to create steel?

If they don’t have these things and many others, which may well be unique to Earth even in the real universe, then they’ll never have an industrial revolution, and they’ll never have any technological development that later grows out of that.

Mechalich
2018-05-23, 02:45 AM
Technology aside, many of the planes "should" be overshadowing the material plane on every front. We're talking about millennia old societies with huge populations that are all immortal and usually also individually more powerful and skilled than the vast majority of living humans. Not just technologically, but politically, culturally, militarily, and economically speaking, all the material plane civilizations should be tiny third-world backwaters between the planar superpowers.

Many are. A huge number of Crystal Spheres (D&D solar systems) are ruthlessly dominated by a particular planar faction. Those demon invasions that periodically occur in the various established settings - in the countless possible other worlds they sometimes succeed. The Ethergaunts are out there cleansing the Prime Material one Crystal Sphere at a time and they are better than you. The Formians are busy converting a number of worlds to the service of the hive, while the Clockwork Horrors are doing the the same thing in a slightly less organic way. The Harmonium - ultimately a bit player on the scale of the Outer Planes - conquered a world called Ortho mostly to prove that they could.

That being said, the x factor in the equation is deities, and to some extent overgods. Asmodeus would very much like to try and conquer the Forgotten Realms, but all of the other FR deities - including the evil ones - would very much like him to get bent, and they have the power to make this so. The (otherwise terrible) novel Elminster in Hell makes the point that when deities decide its time to break face, they can throw down with plane-shattering force. As a result, a sort of MAD holds for the various planar powers. That's why they fight each other so hard. Achieve dominance in the Outer Planes and you can roll up the Material Plane like its nothing. Until then, that pesky mortal 'faith' thing keeps getting in the way. Also Overgods. Lord Ao can just 'yeah, no' any extraplanar incursion he wants.

zuberitalal
2018-05-23, 03:32 AM
You can go with your technology at a certain extent after which the Gods take over and noi matter what technoly you have it will mean nothing

Bohandas
2018-05-31, 02:47 AM
In D&D, outsiders are frequently described as being exemplars of particular philosophies, and rarely is "invention" or "progress" considered to be one of those things.

IIRC Greyhawk and Eberron both have gods of innovation

Dragonexx
2018-05-31, 03:56 AM
I generally run it that the Outer Planes are reflections of the Prime. Thus despite all their posturing, no new ideas or concepts can really come from the planes, they all originate in the prime material and then find their way into the outer planes and then sometimes find their way back from there. Thus, if no advanced civilizations exist on the prime, then no such things can exist on the outer planes short of things like mechanus where it's really more cosmetic than anything else.

This also handily explains why outsiders take the forms that they do. People on the prime imagine forms like that, then they appear to them like that, reinforcing the belief, creating a sort of loop.

Zombimode
2018-05-31, 04:27 AM
I generally run it that the Outer Planes are reflections of the Prime.

Isn't that, like, the actual canon?
It's just frustratingly often forgotten/ignored by eople leading to such inane questions like the premise of this thread, but canon nonetheless.

Dragonexx
2018-05-31, 07:50 AM
Heck, it's not like the game writers themselves are any better at remembering that.

Eldan
2018-05-31, 07:56 AM
I generally run it that the Outer Planes are reflections of the Prime. Thus despite all their posturing, no new ideas or concepts can really come from the planes, they all originate in the prime material and then find their way into the outer planes and then sometimes find their way back from there. Thus, if no advanced civilizations exist on the prime, then no such things can exist on the outer planes short of things like mechanus where it's really more cosmetic than anything else.

This also handily explains why outsiders take the forms that they do. People on the prime imagine forms like that, then they appear to them like that, reinforcing the belief, creating a sort of loop.

This. Planescape goes a bit further: the Outer Planes are specifically a reflection of what mortals believe. If you have a million peasants on the prime material believing that a demon is a two-headed snake with baboon heads and that the worst weapon it has is a stronger version of the spells that wizard they once saw commands, then that is what happens. If they think an angel is their local noble, except more chivalrous, twice as tall and, like, glowing, then guess what. That's what angels look like. Swords are scary and powerful. Angels would have them.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-31, 08:05 AM
This. Planescape goes a bit further: the Outer Planes are specifically a reflection of what mortals believe. If you have a million peasants on the prime material believing that a demon is a two-headed snake with baboon heads and that the worst weapon it has is a stronger version of the spells that wizard they once saw commands, then that is what happens. If they think an angel is their local noble, except more chivalrous, twice as tall and, like, glowing, then guess what. That's what angels look like. Swords are scary and powerful. Angels would have them.

Of course, that runs into issues. If there are a very large number of prime material worlds, each with a large number of people, you likely have <big number> of heavily believed (ie by a lot of people) conflicting beliefs about what angels, demons, etc are. Since (by default cosmology) there's only one set of Outer Planes shared for all prime worlds...whose belief wins? Or do you have an <big number> of constantly shifting types of demons and devils and angels? Makes a coherent cosmology rather difficult.

It's why for my setting I abandoned the "shared Outer Planes" model. I also abandoned the idea that the horrific forms we see for fiends are their actual shapes "back home". Those are contractual forms created by the summoning spells, since they don't naturally have physical bodies in the way we think they do. If you go to the Astral, what things look like depends on your frame of reference and the local circumstances.

Eldan
2018-05-31, 08:35 AM
Of course, that runs into issues. If there are a very large number of prime material worlds, each with a large number of people, you likely have <big number> of heavily believed (ie by a lot of people) conflicting beliefs about what angels, demons, etc are. Since (by default cosmology) there's only one set of Outer Planes shared for all prime worlds...whose belief wins? Or do you have an <big number> of constantly shifting types of demons and devils and angels? Makes a coherent cosmology rather difficult.

It's why for my setting I abandoned the "shared Outer Planes" model. I also abandoned the idea that the horrific forms we see for fiends are their actual shapes "back home". Those are contractual forms created by the summoning spells, since they don't naturally have physical bodies in the way we think they do. If you go to the Astral, what things look like depends on your frame of reference and the local circumstances.

Apparently, different religions and philosophies get different amounts of outer plane real estate and the broad structure is a sort of consensus. Which is why you have all the various afterlives of many, many religions scattered all over right next to each other. And yeah, Planescape books strongly imply that all the planes have weird corners where things are entirely different from what you might expect based on the books.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-31, 08:54 AM
Apparently, different religions and philosophies get different amounts of outer plane real estate and the broad structure is a sort of consensus. Which is why you have all the various afterlives of many, many religions scattered all over right next to each other. And yeah, Planescape books strongly imply that all the planes have weird corners where things are entirely different from what you might expect based on the books.

But it's not the afterlives that are the question here. It's the natives. If everything is shaped by mortal belief, then how do you have any kind of coherent planar history (Baatezu, Tanarii, etc?) You'd have <big number> of "founding races". Of "Demon Lords claiming to be X". Etc. I find the whole thing (the enforced shared planar structure) to be a pointless exercise in symmetry for the sake of symmetry, with a side order of straitjacket fries and a kitchen-sink shake.

In my opinion, treating Planescape as if it wasn't a particular setting is the problem. Planescape is a setting that contains copies of other settings. But the multiverse that Planescape inhabits is not the same as the "stock" renditions of the other published settings. And Planescape is certainly not authoritative (or even persuasive) outside of 2e, except where imported by other materials.

Eldan
2018-05-31, 09:02 AM
But it's not the afterlives that are the question here. It's the natives. If everything is shaped by mortal belief, then how do you have any kind of coherent planar history (Baatezu, Tanarii, etc?) You'd have <big number> of "founding races". Of "Demon Lords claiming to be X". Etc. I find the whole thing (the enforced shared planar structure) to be a pointless exercise in symmetry for the sake of symmetry, with a side order of straitjacket fries and a kitchen-sink shake.

In my opinion, treating Planescape as if it wasn't a particular setting is the problem. Planescape is a setting that contains copies of other settings. But the multiverse that Planescape inhabits is not the same as the "stock" renditions of the other published settings. And Planescape is certainly not authoritative (or even persuasive) outside of 2e, except where imported by other materials.

I'm not saying it's the best approach. But I still like what they did.

My personal headcanon is that we're seeing the planes after a few millennia of competition. It's self-reinforcing. We know from the setting that some gods are more successful than others, like the Greeks or Norse and that their pantheons spread to many worlds. I imagine something similar for many outsiders: a demon is summoned to a world, locals see it, they believe that is what a demon looks like, so there's more demons looking like that and so on. What we're seeing is survival of the fittest that trends towards a few archetypes.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-31, 09:14 AM
I'm not saying it's the best approach. But I still like what they did.

My personal headcanon is that we're seeing the planes after a few millennia of competition. It's self-reinforcing. We know from the setting that some gods are more successful than others, like the Greeks or Norse and that their pantheons spread to many worlds. I imagine something similar for many outsiders: a demon is summoned to a world, locals see it, they believe that is what a demon looks like, so there's more demons looking like that and so on. What we're seeing is survival of the fittest that trends towards a few archetypes.

That's exactly the picture I don't like. It homogenizes everything. I prefer my fantasy gods local, and my demons and monsters varying.

In computer science terms, that model is "forget namespaces, stick it all in mutable global variables" and is a recipe for spaghetti. I prefer a strongly namespaced design with explicit imports. I'll borrow ideas that I like, but selectively. The other approach leaves me (and my games) vulnerable to unwanted influence from outside and sets things up for bad expectation conflicts when I do change things. It does help to sell books, though, I'll admit.

Eldan
2018-05-31, 09:16 AM
Well, I mean, the cynical out of game answer is that TSR proved that you can't just write setting specific books, so we get shared monster manuals for all worlds, so the market isn't split.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-31, 09:56 AM
Well, I mean, the cynical out of game answer is that TSR proved that you can't just write setting specific books, so we get shared monster manuals for all worlds, so the market isn't split.

True enough. It's why I doubt we'll ever see a 5e setting guide. They're content with laying out broad principles mixed in with stat blocks or other mechanical pieces and letting DMs build their own. Which I'm a fan of. Behind rules lawyers and munchkins, setting hard-liners are my least favorite types of players.

Knaight
2018-05-31, 11:06 AM
Well, I mean, the cynical out of game answer is that TSR proved that you can't just write setting specific books, so we get shared monster manuals for all worlds, so the market isn't split.

On the other hand SJG has pretty much proven that you can write highly specific books that deliberately split the market and be fine, to the point that they survived an FBI raid where much of their equipment got stolen because they were researching a cyberpunk book.

Bohandas
2018-05-31, 11:34 AM
This. Planescape goes a bit further: the Outer Planes are specifically a reflection of what mortals believe. If you have a million peasants on the prime material believing that a demon is a two-headed snake with baboon heads and that the worst weapon it has is a stronger version of the spells that wizard they once saw commands, then that is what happens. If they think an angel is their local noble, except more chivalrous, twice as tall and, like, glowing, then guess what. That's what angels look like. Swords are scary and powerful. Angels would have them.

This is also why alignment works the way it does In the places where it's messed up.

And why all folktales are true in D&D

Nifft
2018-05-31, 12:31 PM
That's exactly the picture I don't like. It homogenizes everything. I prefer my fantasy gods local, and my demons and monsters varying.

In computer science terms, that model is "forget namespaces, stick it all in mutable global variables" and is a recipe for spaghetti. I prefer a strongly namespaced design with explicit imports. I'll borrow ideas that I like, but selectively. The other approach leaves me (and my games) vulnerable to unwanted influence from outside and sets things up for bad expectation conflicts when I do change things. It does help to sell books, though, I'll admit.

One of my settings had:

- Gods are planetary. Gods are local to a single planet, and can answer followers who travel for a while but not forever. You need to return home periodically for reinvestment.

- Demons are universal, but the slice you know about is probably not the same slice a different planet knows about. There are a lot of demons.

- Devils are universal, and there aren't enough of them for planet-to-planet variation. But they are liars and trickster so different planets might think they see other types -- or your planet may be wrong about infernal reality.

- Celestials are universal, but mutate under local conditions. The nature of the local planetary divinity will cause them to manifest in different ways. The specific relationship between divinity and celestial power is unknown, but it is known that celestials were around before the local gods of Earth.


Might be useful for you.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-05-31, 12:51 PM
One of my settings had:

- Gods are planetary. Gods are local to a single planet, and can answer followers who travel for a while but not forever. You need to return home periodically for reinvestment.

- Demons are universal, but the slice you know about is probably not the same slice a different planet knows about. There are a lot of demons.

- Devils are universal, and there aren't enough of them for planet-to-planet variation. But they are liars and trickster so different planets might think they see other types -- or your planet may be wrong about infernal reality.

- Celestials are universal, but mutate under local conditions. The nature of the local planetary divinity will cause them to manifest in different ways. The specific relationship between divinity and celestial power is unknown, but it is known that celestials were around before the local gods of Earth.


Might be useful for you.

I've gone with everything is local. As in almost all planes are of fixed extent (about the size of the inner Solar System).

Angels and devils are actually the same type of creature, just with different roles and sources of energy.

Angels get theirs from the Great Mechanism in exchange for being the police force of the planes. They fight a constant war to keep things from Outside (one group in particular) from getting Inside and keep the elemental planes in check. They don't work for the gods, and rarely are involved in mortal affairs. And when they are, they tend to take the "I had to destroy the village (and the surrounding terrain for miles down to bedrock) to save the village)" approach. The number of angels is fixed--when old ones are killed they are reborn.

Infernals took their name as a bit of a mutated insult. They get their energy by either serving as the gods' messengers--if you see an "angel", it's probably an infernal in pretty clothes--or by making contracts with mortals for bits of energy. The forms we associate with them are contractual combat forms that their essence gets poured into when summoned. Those contracts also contain clauses that let them go back home when the combat form is badly damaged instead of dying. Many of them love to fight on the mortal plane, since they can always absorb part of the power released by death and thus feed on that (instead of the much more limited rations that they get through official channels). Their social structure is quite akin to the movie versions of the 1920's Mafia. Occasionally they will "uplift" a mortal at death, turning their soul into one of them. A chunk of memory and personality is destroyed by this process, however.

Demons are creatures, whether of astral origins or not, who subsist on the souls of mortals. Whether they're voluntarily given or devoured unwillingly doesn't matter. They have taken residence in the pocket realm (the only plane not full size) called the Abyss, formerly a prison for beings, later emptied due to a cosmic realignment. Demons tend to have aims and motives that are hostile to the continued order. I freely mix the stat blocks for demons and devils.

Gods are ascended mortals, tasked by the keepers of the Great Mechanism with keeping portions of the universe in line and dealing with mortal issues. They have a direct tap on the Mechanism, and so are extremely powerful in their bailiwick. The Keepers (who don't interfere with mortals at all) keep them from in-fighting.

There are many demi-gods--ascended mortals who have found foothold in the Astral by relying on worship of mortals. Much less powerful than the true gods, but also much more free to act.

There is no such thing as alignment in my setting. There are evil angels, good demons, and everything in-between.

As far as other planets, there are uncountable other such pocket universes drifting in the Dark Beyond. Each one is different. Travel between them is difficult, if possible at all. And then there are creatures (mostly sentient thought-forms) that live in the Dark itself. Each pocket universe was dreamed into existence by a Dreamer, a fragment of the universal consciousness of the Dark itself.

Bohandas
2018-06-04, 11:00 PM
The vast majority of outsiders have magic and are magical, so they don't need technology. They have magic.

The Big Thing though is that Outsiders are Immortal. They don't need to eat or sleep or other such mortal things. The lack of the basic drive to survive, means outsiders don't need to ''do'' anything to survive.

But it also means that they they keep accumulating knowledge forever and ever

Eldan
2018-06-05, 02:22 AM
But it also means that they they keep accumulating knowledge forever and ever

One explanation could be that our conception of technology just doesn't work in a fantasy world. Perhaps in a universe of crystal sphere firmaments, people shooting fire from their hands and the four elements, transistors just aren't a thing. All those great works of magic that we hear about from The Ancients (tm) are this universe's tech.

Bit of a lazy excuse sometimes, I know, but perhaps we just need to go for that.


Alternatively, there was an old project on Planewalker for Urban Planescape, based on the idea that a lot of prime worlds had an industrial revolution and started seeing the afterlife as being high-tech, so it became that. So you had Mechanus, the Infinite Computer, or the Radioactive Wastes of Hades.

TeChameleon
2018-06-05, 02:54 AM
Infernals took their name as a bit of a mutated insult. They get their energy by either serving as the gods' messengers *snip*

Sorry, just had to comment because I was slightly amused- the root word of 'angel', the Greek Angelos, literally translates as 'messenger', so them wandering off to be celestial cops while the infernals deliver the messages ends up reading to me like they're shirking their actual job to go smack things :smalltongue:

And outsiders might understand, say, computational theory, just fine, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll have the ability to create a computer; the ancient Greeks understood how to build a steam engine in 10 A.D.... but they just thought it was a novelty, a neat toy, and I'm fairly sure that the state of their metallurgy wouldn't allow practical construction of a model large enough for practical use. Speaking of which, there's also the fact that almost all technology is built on an enormous foundation of other technologies- I have a hard time imagining, say, the Neogi Empire trying to figure out how to properly vulcanize rubber.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-05, 03:39 AM
Sorry, just had to comment because I was slightly amused- the root word of 'angel', the Greek Angelos, literally translates as 'messenger', so them wandering off to be celestial cops while the infernals deliver the messages ends up reading to me like they're shirking their actual job to go smack things :smalltongue:



Yeah. That wasn't the original design of the universe, but when needs must... Originally infernals were the jailors of the (original) demons, and angels had both messenger and protector duties. Since
the original demons are gone now in a general realignment of the planes, things had to change. It's still not a comfortable thing for any of them yet.

Nifft
2018-06-05, 03:44 AM
It's still not a comfortable thing for any of them yet.

They need to read the modern business fable Who Moved My Chaos? by Spenser F. Modron.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-06-05, 04:27 AM
They need to read the modern business fable Who Moved My Chaos? by Spenser F. Modron.

Heh. Funny.

But really, it's only been 200 years. They're still figuring this whole thing out.

Andor13
2018-06-05, 12:27 PM
There is also the question of what is technology for an outerplanar being?

If you're going by Planescape cosmology, Outer Planar "technology" is far more likely to be philosophical than actually technological. Tech, after all, is going to be of limited application among the weirdness of the outer planes. And a laser cannon capable of vaporizing a pitlord might only titillate a Lantern Archon, plus it gets shut down cold by a mere darkness spell, so why bother?

Micro-circuits might not be such a fabulous way of doing things among beings who can juggle lightning bolts as a party trick. ESD you know. There was that fad for Mecha-combat for a while, but then some one remembered about Rust Monsters and that ended badly.

And don't even get me started on what happened to the Mechanical Man invasion of Limbo.

You're talking about a group of places that can't even get a collective agreement on how to gravity. You think Ohm's law is faring any better?

Frozen_Feet
2018-06-05, 02:38 PM
In my games, Outsiders regularly double as Extraterrestrials. The difference of being from a different plane versus different planet is frequently semantic at best. Related, Outsiders rarely have medieval technology and certainly don't exist in technological stasis. It may appear that way to someone who doesn't understand the technology or cannot identify sideways development.

For a real life example, Incas apparently didn't have wheels and carts in the same form as Europeans. They used knots instead of writing for recordkeepikg. They also lacked metallurgy of steel. Yet they could still build massive cities on the mountains and hold together a vast empire.

So if you see angels and think they're primitive because they're without weapons and clothes - while ignoring that an angel in its natural state can fly through vacuum of space and breathes nuclear fire - you've committed a fallacy. Civilization and technology do not follow one set track. Sometimes inventions are absent because they would not work or are not needed. Sometimes they have been replaced by something incomprehensible. Angels have no roads because they can all fly. They have no fields for they are sustained by sunlight. They have no houses because they do not suffer from the elements. They keep records by etching them on surfaces of airless moon or in caves deep within mountains. They perform calculations by arranging ice crystals in rings around gas giants and watching light reflect from them.

Rockphed
2018-06-05, 02:52 PM
In my games, Outsiders regularly double as Extraterrestrials. The difference of being from a different plane versus different planet is frequently semantic at best. Related, Outsiders rarely have medieval technology and certainly don't exist in technological stasis. It may appear that way to someone who doesn't understand the technology or cannot identify sideways development.

For a real life example, Incas apparently didn't have wheels and carts in the same form as Europeans. They used knots instead of writing for recordkeepikg. They also lacked metallurgy of steel. Yet they could still build massive cities on the mountains and hold together a vast empire.

So if you see angels and think they're primitive because they're without weapons and clothes - while ignoring that an angel in its natural state can fly through vacuum of space and breathes nuclear fire - you've committed a fallacy. Civilization and technology do not follow one set track. Sometimes inventions are absent because they would not work or are not needed. Sometimes they have been replaced by something incomprehensible. Angels have no roads because they can all fly. They have no fields for they are sustained by sunlight. They have no houses because they do not suffer from the elements. They keep records by etching them on surfaces of airless moon or in caves deep within mountains. They perform calculations by arranging ice crystals in rings around gas giants and watching light reflect from them.

I'm fairly certain that angels make records by writing in 100 ft tall books wreathed in holy fire (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0490.html).

Bohandas
2018-06-05, 06:10 PM
One explanation could be that our conception of technology just doesn't work in a fantasy world. Perhaps in a universe of crystal sphere firmaments, people shooting fire from their hands and the four elements, transistors just aren't a thing. All those great works of magic that we hear about from The Ancients (tm) are this universe's tech.

I get that, but why are the simple machines so rarely combined to make complex ones?

Why is nobody running waterwheels with decanters of endless water?

Rockphed
2018-06-05, 06:44 PM
Why is nobody running waterwheels with decanters of endless water?

Because the cost to create a decanter of endless water is higher than the benefit they expect to receive over the expected lifetime of that set-up?

Mechalich
2018-06-05, 06:51 PM
I get that, but why are the simple machines so rarely combined to make complex ones?

Why is nobody running waterwheels with decanters of endless water?

Because it breaks the game, no more and no less. D&D has long had the problem that there's too much magic running around and the only way to avoid industrializing into a magic utopia is by the setting designers and GMs simply making fiat rulings that say 'you can't.' This has been the case since at least 2e - to the point that the 2e DMG had a long section about various ways to elide this problem.

Now, the Planescape explanation is that people absolutely are doing this - in particularly weird spots on the planes. You can go to the quasielemental plane of lightning and harvest infinite amounts of energy and nobody cares because the multiverse is full of bonkers values set equal to infinity and 'moar power!' doesn't actually get you anywhere. On the prime material the answer is simply 'the gods say no, now get back to plundering ancient ruins.'

MarkVIIIMarc
2018-06-09, 09:31 PM
In regards to why doesn't technology advance, an all out attack by an ancient dragon every few hundred years sure will dent your civilation and technological level. Think about Western Europe after the fall of Rome.

Also, the brightest minds of my D&D world are apparently studying spell books and channeling healing spells, not developing germ theory.

JoeJ
2018-06-09, 09:47 PM
My immediate thought it that technology on the outer planes is already as advanced as is possible there. I doubt very much that antimatter exists, and it's pretty iffy whether the laws of chemistry will even allow for gunpowder; probably it works in some locations but not in others. Electrons probably don't exist either, so nothing electrical will work (lightning is a paraelemental force that has nothing to do with our concepts of physics).

In short, each plane is its own universe, with its own natural (and unnatural) laws, and none of them match up to the ones that scientists in our universe have deduced.

Tanarii
2018-06-09, 11:26 PM
I dunno. All the illustrations in 2e Planescape hinted at a certain level of magitech + steampunk in the planes. Not to mention the Cant. Definitely a touch of magical Victorian London is what they were clearly going for, not medieval.


The outsiders ARE technologyCertainly seems to be true for Modrons. They always make me think of the Borg.

Bohandas
2018-06-09, 11:37 PM
Because the cost to create a decanter of endless water is higher than the benefit they expect to receive over the expected lifetime of that set-up?

I think ypu could do quite a lot with that, especially if it was at the top of a very tall tower.

Or if it was powering something mobile. You see a water source, I see the power supply for some kind of vehicle, or perhaps for an inevitable or other robot. (Perhaps it could be an inevitable designed to make sure that swamps and oceans are wet. It's a plausible concept considering that there's an inevitable in Sandstorm designed to make sure deserts are dry)

Bohandas
2018-06-09, 11:45 PM
The outsiders ARE technology.
Certainly seems to be true for Modrons. They always make me think of the Borg.

I agree that the Modrons are technology, but I'm not so sure about the Borg. In a fanatsy setting the role of the borg would most likely be played by zombies, spawn creating zombies led by an evil necromancer with undead grafts.

Tanarii
2018-06-09, 11:53 PM
I agree that the Modrons are technology, but I'm not so sure about the Borg. In a fanatsy setting the role of the borg would most likely be played by zombies, spawn creating zombies led by an evil necromancer with undead grafts.
Does the necromancer create zombies by applying undead grafts to humanoids?

We may have an adventure premise in the making here. :smallamused:

Mechalich
2018-06-10, 04:23 AM
Modrons aren't really technological though, they just have the appearance of being technological. The Modrons are a life force that is divided into a specific and unchanging number of units dedicated to the pursuit of a singular goal. They cannot be measurably reduced in any way, they can only be halted.

As for the borg, the D&D Borg are the Formians. They are a hive species that assimilates all things into their collective.