As a parallel to the other thread, what are the ways that these kinds of universe-hopping campaigns can go wrong? What are the best ways to avoid common problems in these sorts of games?

RPGPundit

Lack of setting depth and development. It's very much like the Villain of the Week Syndrome that some series suffer from. If the only things that get developed are the Player Characters, then there's the risk of ending up with a group that only cares about itself.

If the world is really big, atrocities are by comparison small. There is a risk of evil inflation when the players stop caring about individual cities.

-Frank

Quote from: RPGPundit;396943As a parallel to the other thread, what are the ways that these kinds of universe-hopping campaigns can go wrong?

They become bad episodes of Sliders.

Quote from: RPGPundit;396943What are the best ways to avoid common problems in these sorts of games?

Don't do them at all.

Well, assuming the setup is much like Planescape, there exists the possibility that they players may want to go anywhere in the multiverse at any time. It could be hard for them to keep focused, and it might be hard to create coherent adventures in real time for players with a bit too much wanderlust.

Planescape did have a built in way to address this--portal keys--but that can be a bit heavy handed if you find yourself resorting to it much.

Monte Cook's Beyond Countless Doorways suggested that gates the players want/need to use be in different places on the plane of interest, and the adventure occurs on the journey.

Basically the first few posts nailed the problem. Settngs can be arbitrary with little continuity and not much to tie characters into a web of meaningful relationships. So you have trouble developing depth and the whole thing can just be an arbitrary tour through the GM's whims. I'm not too fond of plane-hopping, but I've put a couple suggestions in the other thread.

Lack of player character integration into the setting. When the PCs are on a different planet, their backgrounds and any backstory NPCs are also on a different planet. It makes it much more difficult to have a campaign where the plots are really about the characters.
Edit: sorry, I may be restating what EW said.

Unconvincing worlds that don't really make sense.  Nothing you do much matters.  No NPC continuity.

To be honest, I just plain don't see the attraction.

Quote from: JongWK;396952Lack of setting depth and development. It's very much like the Villain of the Week Syndrome that some series suffer from. If the only things that get developed are the Player Characters, then there's the risk of ending up with a group that only cares about itself.

Yes, this is something I'd identify as a major issue with this kind of game too; so what would you think would be the best way to avoid this problem?

RPGPundit

In my homebrew Empire of Myrann setting, I address most of those problems by giving the players a vested interest in one spot (the Empire's city, on whatever plane the campaign is "keyed" to) and then giving the ability to travel to other planes via portals or, if the players are powerful, access to a Pyramid of Myrann (which are like pyramid castles that fly through dimensions).  That pretty much addresses your problems.

You have several things to consider.

• Players have roots.  This gives them something to consider other than themselves.  My upcoming game will feature the players as Praetors of the Empire, given the task of developing a new world for the Empire.  Their power is limited, but they can still effect plane hops...however there will be good reasons for the characters to be motivated to visit planes I have prepared material for already.


• You HAVE to limit planar travel to develop enough content to be "enough".  Develop three or four scenarios dealing with "random" plane-hopping ahead of time and scale the encounter as appropriate.


• NPC continuity is maintained by having a base of operations.  Dimensional NPC's are considered itenerant or native to another plane, either way their episode count is by nature limited.  Either way, you design NPC's for this sort of game in the exact same manner you do so for other tropes.


• "Setting Depth" is a term I suppose you use to mean how developed the material is.  For homebrew games, this is solely the province of the DM.  If you aren't prepared to prepare, you should choose another trope that doesn't require so much pesky 'thought'.

When we world hopped in rifts, it was often more trouble than anything. The gm had two main points.

The first was that the worlds closest and most likely to be open were the most similar. We would run into the same npcs, and some of them would know or have magic and devices that let them know what was going on.

Secondly, people in his gem that time travelled enough, or world hopped, would end up becoming separate from the realities they were in. Some villains it barely mattered if we killed them because there were so many of them in one time period or plane, traveling, copying themselves accidentally. Our characters became like that.

Changes in place or time wouldn't affect us.

I've found no more problems than when running Traveller.   Instead of dimensions / planes, you got lots of planets.

If the campaign is just exploration or hopping about, then it's "Place of the Week", but if there is something tying the various arenas together, then you have a more focussed campaign.

I've run a Rifts Russia / South America / Atlantis campaign.   All the rifts are chained to those locations (except for a possible wild rift) and thus, there is a bleed over of tech / people / troubles and the players do lots of moving about, but still within a coherent framework.   If I just said "go anywhere", then I think the campaign would lose some story strength.  

Planescape always worked well for me.  Sigil was a great hub for most campaigns and if not, picking one of the Outland towns was great too.   The PCs had a home base and that home base was always under threat from both internal and external issues.

One big problem I run into is the whole "magic vs technology" thing.
I mean, it's like the players encounter a vampire, and promptly whip out their plasma guns. Now, vamps are traditionally vulnerable to fire, except in rifts, and plasma weapons generate more heat than any fire. So one good volley of plasma  and Transylvania's most famous nobleman is ashes in the wind, right?

 But some twit will argue that only "natural' fire affects vampires,  so neither plasma or lasers work, yadda yadda yadda.

 Likewise some goober puts up a magical wall of force and we get to argue about whether or not an armor piercing round has a better chance of getting thru it than a normal one...

 Then someone slips on his ring of invisibility and a player from a tech universe demands to be able to see him on IR because the ring only works on normal vision, or wants to pick him up on his tricorder, etc.

 Did have one neat bit where a guy in power armor with visual augmentation (I.E. a visor screen in his helmet) killed a gorgon just by walking up to her and shooting her head off with hollowpoints to the throat. The rational was you could see a reflection of a gorgon and be OK, and his suits systems had sensors on the front that displayed an image to a visor on the inside of his helmet so he was not seeing her directly, so was safe on the same grounds as a guy using a mirror was.

 I just don't do these much, too many conflicts between magic and science. I was in a game once where the Gm basically let magic users screw over technology and technology basically was useless against magic, and I didn't like it at all.

Quote from: Cylonophile;397128I just don't do these much, too many conflicts between magic and science. I was in a game once where the Gm basically let magic users screw over technology and technology basically was useless against magic, and I didn't like it at all.

RIFTS is a tricky beast.  If the GM makes his magic/tech divisions very clear to the players, there isn't a problem.

In my Rifts games, magic trumps tech because sorcery exists outside the realm of science and its very existence can break all known laws of reality.  However, magic is unpredictable and draws the attention of enchanted beings.  Tech is solid, reliable and easily reloads.  

If you hose down my Vamps with a plasma gun, they will suffer some from the ambient "normal fire" heat.   Some fraction of the normal damage.  

In the original Rifts book, there was an interesting discussion about how all demons had unique vulnerabilities - AKA, some odd thing that chained them here but if broken, would allow them to easily be destroyed.   I use this in my Chaos Earth games.   You can hose down lots of the demons with lots and lots of bullets and plasma bursts...or you can do some trial and error to find out what its vulnerability may be.

Quote from: Spinachcat;397136RIFTS is a tricky beast.  If the GM makes his magic/tech divisions very clear to the players, there isn't a problem.

In my Rifts games, magic trumps tech because sorcery exists outside the realm of science and its very existence can break all known laws of reality.  However, magic is unpredictable and draws the attention of enchanted beings.  Tech is solid, reliable and easily reloads.  

If you hose down my Vamps with a plasma gun, they will suffer some from the ambient "normal fire" heat.   Some fraction of the normal damage.  

In the original Rifts book, there was an interesting discussion about how all demons had unique vulnerabilities - AKA, some odd thing that chained them here but if broken, would allow them to easily be destroyed.   I use this in my Chaos Earth games.   You can hose down lots of the demons with lots and lots of bullets and plasma bursts...or you can do some trial and error to find out what its vulnerability may be.

Heh, that last bit reminded me of a really old episode of "The adventures of superman" with george reeves. A scientist had theorized that superman had to be vulnerable to something, so he made a lot of bullets of various materials, loaded them up into a machine gun, tricked supes into walking into a room where the machine gun was trained on the door and it opened fire.

A reel to reel camera was synced to the maching gun, taking a frame every time the gun fired.

 One of the bullets was made of a meteor fragment, and, sure enough, when THAT bullet hit blueboy he winced in pain and raised his arm up to the impact point, it had actually hurt him a little.

The scientist retrieved the film and the bullet, notable because it was the only one that wasn't flattened by hitting superman, it was in pristine form.

So, if you need to find a demon's weakness, you now have an idea on how to start.