What are the best features about those games or campaigns that involve travel through different dimensions (parallel earths or fantasy worlds, or impossible/divine realms)? What do you want in such a game? What ideas do you have for these types of games to have their fullest potential?
RPGPundit
Well, there's a problem with them, which I'll mention in the other thread: lack of context/continuity. So I think one way to improve them might be to have some meta-dimensional continuity--like villains who are also dimension-hoppers, or interdimensional police forces.
Also, because of the lack of setting continuity, and relative lack of character ties to a given dimension, I think this type of campaign is well-suited to the mission of the week approach. I.e. characters don't have overarching stories (as it were), so a session is largely a matter of presenting an isolated problem or situation, using the particulars of a given dimension as backdrop. The real point is dealing with and adapting to those particulars.
**You can use a lot of stuff you have for different planets (modules or NPCs),
*you can create games with an epic scope or power level.
One of the best "multidimensional" campaigns I've seen actually wasn't multidimensional so much as built out of bits of other campaigns. The GMs world had areas in his campaign that corresponded to the standard D&D campaign worlds - all of them - with the idea that his campaign world was a "seed world" that all the others were created from. We trekked from the woods just outside Ravenloft, through Blackmoor and into Athasia, amongst other places.
There is space (permission even) to use highly divergent settings for what might only be a small part of a campaign.
There can be more than one "great king" without them all having to deal with each other.
There is by implication a meta-place that houses all these planes, and that's a cool place for gods and other beings (githyanki!).
You can manipulate physics and other essential laws without messing up existing places in your campaign. Need a Library of Babel, which is infinite in size but is just about books? Now it needn't use up all that space you wanted for jungles and deserts.
It encourages big stories, that are about entities capable of crossing between planes and, presumably, interested in issues that span them as well. Maybe "big" should be "Big" there.
I ran a multi-dimentional D&D game for a couple of years which is odd as it emerged out of a single ad-libbed one off game.
The good stuff was
i) There was an overarching 'divine' multi-planar quest which gave the game focus
ii) The recurring opponent came out of the idea that there were set archetypes across all worlds and so you encounters differing aspects of the same heroic figures which were recognisable but different
iii) I got to play with all sorts of cool worlds mixing technology/magic and restricted settings (a rennaisance world with gunpowder, a gormenghast castle, fairy, post apocolyptical etc ,)
iv) When a setting gelled I would extend that section and when a setting didn't work I would close that setting quickly and move the PCs on. worked really well
v) Because I had a quest 'chosen' pC background based on archetypes the PCs had a certain script immunity however I was able to counter this by killing them and then forcing the party (though their divine sponsors) to go and rescue them from hell, fairy, ghenna whereever they ended up.
We also ran another unlinked series of multiverse games where the players could bring their favourite characters from any system the GMs rotated through the group and everyone got to try out their old favourites and GMs got to other PCs fromty eh past as NPCS. Was really good but fell when one GM tried to explain the logic behind the linked adventures. Of course that game only worked becuase the Players had all been playing in the same group for 20+ years and the fun came when you heard that single quote from a classic game 15 years before.
World-hopping makes for a "quick and dirty" change of pace without changing games, or GM, or PCs. Take Rifts, nominally a post-apocalyptic RPG setting; you can have your PCs travel to Wormwood for epic dark fantasy with a touch of weird, or to Phase World for space opera. And that's only using the published "dimension books".
Alternate histories. I love them and I just can't get enough of them. The more fantastic and unlikely, the better. And a world-hopping campaign can explore several different histories. *drool* :D
Hey I'm gathering that you're doing research for your LoO game here. You might also expand the pleasures and pitfalls questions to include dream-based games since a lot of the same issues arise when genre hopping in dreams.
Pete
To me its all about Gonzo and Grandeur. Multi-dimensional games can have all kinds of really surreal stuff you just couldn't fit in a normal campaign, and can show spectacular "views" as part of its setting. They just operate on a huge scale.
RPGPundit
Quote from: The Butcher;397001World-hopping makes for a "quick and dirty" change of pace without changing games, or GM, or PCs. Take Rifts, nominally a post-apocalyptic RPG setting; you can have your PCs travel to Wormwood for epic dark fantasy with a touch of weird, or to Phase World for space opera. And that's only using the published "dimension books".
Yes, that's a very good point, and I think that the ability of such a campaign to provide for "changes of pace" without having to switch campaigns is one of those big strengths that has to be harnessed correctly as a counter-measure to some of the potential pitfalls of such a campaign.
RPGPundit
Taste of the Bizarre... though something weird on multiple levels might be too much for a long term campaign, a strange place with wierd conditions can make a great backdrop for a short term game.
Epic themes... on game we had (the end of the same one I mention in the best game ever thread) featured the players trying their foe to eternal judgment in the Courts of Thunder. The afterlife, spirits, gods, heavens and hells, these are heady themes that can add great feel to a game.
A Paladin in Hell. Sort of a subset of the above, but one extreme is the survival scenario surrounded by intense peril and evil. The abyss, the hells, what have you.
Variety. If the premise of the setting isn't limited by traditional physical constraints, a whole palette of worlds might be available to the players (and GM), either as source for adventure or for PCs.
Quote from: Caesar Slaad;397158A Paladin in Hell. Sort of a subset of the above, but one extreme is the survival scenario surrounded by intense peril and evil. The abyss, the hells, what have you.
Yes, epic scale is a big part of what makes a multiplanar campaign feel different from a regular one.
RPGPundit
In the Fringeworthy rpg, you can go to many different alternate earths to solve a problem. Many with differing rules of reality and physics. So you can ask a wizard to teleport an object inside a box to be presented to someone on another world as a puzzle present.
You can confir with people throughout history or get documents created by their hand without having to resort to forgery.
You can take knowledge of mineral deposits on one world and use them to stake claims on another becoming filthy rich.
You can find objects that were lost or damage, animals that have become extinct, and restore them to another world or at least provide information about them like pictures or video.
The impossible, physics-defying locales are the big draw for me. I think most of the time, unless you build the world around a gimmick, a world in a D&D campaign should be grounded in laws we understand---things like the day/night cycle, gravity, climate, should function more or less like you'd expect. When you have things like floating islands/cloud cities, impossibly vast cliffs or mountains it pulls the rug out from under the players and deprives them of a connection to the setting and having a basic idea of what to expect from it. But once you enter other planes all bets can be off. There you can have rock formations that defy gravity, endless cities, hollow worlds. It lets you set the action against whatever vista your mind can create and populate it however you like.
I've always taken it for granted as an aspect of the D&D game -- thanks to deCamp & Pratt, Moorcock, Farmer, Zelazny, even Fafhrd & Mouser -- but had only one D&D campaign that made it the focus: Cynosure, inspired by the city in the Grimjack comics (though it may have started before I encountered those).
My only other major RPG campaign along the line was Fringeworthy, sort of like the later Stargate movie/TV series but less military (though there were rules for lots of military weapons).
I think of it in terms of getting a bigger world than typical with "in dungeon" portals or spell/treasure jaunts. There are more long-term interactions among the worlds. From that perspective, it means more care going into their creation. Weirdness can get to be too much.
Depending on the setup, it might not be much different from a "space opera" or "paratime" theme.It could even be quite episodic, especially if there's no easy way to make repeated trips between given universes reliable.
Basically, as Gary Gygax observed, it's an open ticket to try whatever kind of game you'd like to try.
Quote from: Phillip;852189I think of it in terms of getting a bigger world than typical with "in dungeon" portals...
Does anyone else find that PCs these days NEVER seem to go through those in-dungeon portals unless they absolutely have to?
Quote from: RPGPundit;396942What are the best features about those games or campaigns that involve travel through different dimensions (parallel earths or fantasy worlds, or impossible/divine realms)? What do you want in such a game? What ideas do you have for these types of games to have their fullest potential?
RPGPundit
Different parallel "Earths" to do some touring in. Maybe to do some business in. Maybe to do some hired killing in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4MgpwKYQ1Y
Coming from a D&D background, most of the other planes are really boring except for the Shadow Plane. The inner planes are featureless expanses that exist only to power certain spells, the upper planes are too idyllic, and the lower planes are too deadly.
It took reading OGL books like Dark Dungeons, Classic Play: The Book of the Planes, Countless Doorways, Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes, and Dark Roads & Golden Hells to get genuinely interesting gazetteers.
In the end I adopted the Sephirotic model from CPBotP, but moved the inner planes to elemental poles in the plane of primordial chaos.
after all, the original d&d setting was a multi-universal spanning setup. what with the seven original Primes, after all.
even in the original boxed set, you had that crashed starship in the north-western corner of the world, and alternate dimensions of various origins. and they just expanded that as the editions progressed.
Quote from: nijineko;854067after all, the original d&d setting was a multi-universal spanning setup. what with the seven original Primes, after all.
even in the original boxed set, you had that crashed starship in the north-western corner of the world, and alternate dimensions of various origins. and they just expanded that as the editions progressed.
Yup, this was a feature of D&D pretty much from day one. It's not surprising given the sci-fi that was popular at that time; both the "planetary fantasy" type stuff (which for example Tekumel plays off of; where Tekumel is actually an alien world that a human colony ship landed on long ago), and the multiple-reality stuff that Zelazny and others were really developing right then.
Quote from: nijineko;854067after all, the original d&d setting was a multi-universal spanning setup. what with the seven original Primes, after all.
even in the original boxed set, you had that crashed starship in the north-western corner of the world, and alternate dimensions of various origins. and they just expanded that as the editions progressed.
Seven Primes and crashed starships in original D&D? Has somebody been messing around with the timeline (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=32686) again? :confused:
Quote from: rawma;856031Seven Primes and crashed starships in original D&D? Has somebody been messing around with the timeline (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=32686) again? :confused:
Not that I'm aware of. That stuff was in there from the beginning. Earth itself is supposed to be one of the seven primes, the least magical one (Gygax was always cagey when speaking of them as they represented potential future IP, one of them was going to be an action setting; the named ones are Oerth, Aerth, Uerth, Yarth and Earth. There is also the possibility that they were going to stop with the five. And maybe I just mis-remembered 5 in favor of 7.)
However, most timelines I've seen simply fail to include those parts. I guess that would imply that most timelines skip it due to ignorance or maybe a little rewriting to suite their personal preference? After all history is "his-story".
Quote from: nijineko;856084However, most timelines I've seen simply fail to include those parts.
I meant the timeline of the real world. What do you mean by "original D&D"?
Quote from: RPGPundit;397145To me its all about Gonzo and Grandeur. Multi-dimensional games can have all kinds of really surreal stuff you just couldn't fit in a normal campaign, and can show spectacular "views" as part of its setting. They just operate on a huge scale.
RPGPundit
You can also do the reverse. Go from the fantastical to a more grounded and mundane setting. Or near featureless plains, empty worlds, and other things that make back home look great by comparison.
I am currently trying to write up one of my own planar campaigns into a publishable pdf for others to use as background story to their campaign.
What I found so fascinating about my story was that it was spread out across not only all the planes but also time and then i added in re-incarnation for the protagonists.
So i could do flashbacks to a previous life that had the same focus as the current campaign as well as have a time travelling antagonist running around sowing seeds for the future and doing this all over the planes.
I never got to finish it, but the last scenario i ran in this campaign was the party running around a drow city now under control of a priestess of kiriansalee and they were eventually transported 30.000 years back in time to the land where Kiriansalee were once a 'mortal' elf queen and was framed for murder which led to her banishment from the kingdom. She was consumed by hatred and rose an army of undead which ended up engulfing the entire world, this was the stepping stone for Kiriansalee to become a demigod. If the adventurers could somehow prove she was framed and prevent her banishment, she would not become a demigod and her priestess in the drow city could not be her priestess.
This kind of entanglement is fascinating to me, but that is more or less just time travel paradoxes in a nutshell and not so much planes.
Another thing i did was have an artefact every once in awhile transport the adventurers into a dreamworld, which was built around the double morality standards of the party wizard and eventually they would have to deal with a manifistation of this.
While also being visited by someone they don't know, except he knows them, rescuing them and taking them to another plane as if it was perfectly normal business and sending them back.
but like many others have said... it is about being able to do what you do your typical material plane only bigger ;D
Deities fighting over power, villains executing plans across several planes, chasing someone from plane to plane, changing enviroment and laws of physics.. but also it is like it is abit more legal to create the even more bizar and extravangant and wild.. although it is ourselves that sets those limits in any setting ;)
Quote from: rawma;856356I meant the timeline of the real world. What do you mean by "original D&D"?
OD&D or "original" typically refers to the original boxed set released in the mid seventies to include reprintings, with the three base booklets and four expansion booklets which made up the entire game, at the time.
Quote from: nijineko;856617OD&D or "original" typically refers to the original boxed set released in the mid seventies to include reprintings, with the three base booklets and four expansion booklets which made up the entire game, at the time.
Alternate Oerths and a crashed spaceship were in that original 1970s D&D stuff?
Quote from: rawma;856625Alternate Oerths and a crashed spaceship were in that original 1970s D&D stuff?
Temple of the Frog. Aliens from another world setting up shop and using advanced tech. That is in the Blackmoor book. I believe somewhere there is mentioned the Egg of Coot might have originated from another dimension or space? Or did that come later? One of the players from OD&D crossed over to Boot Hill and back even. So it was going on fairly early on.
Quote from: rawma;856625Alternate Oerths and a crashed spaceship were in that original 1970s D&D stuff?
There wasn't a lot of 'official' scenario stuff from TSR pre-AD&D. Temple of the Frog was for a while the commonly available example, rather than exceptional. There was more stuff in the magazines (Tractics WW2 Germans meeting the minions of a D&D Evil High Priest, for instance).
The original set had encounter tables for Barsoom (no stats, but I think TSR briefly had a miniatures rules set for that on the market).
Empire of the Petal Throne and Metamorphosis Alpha were early follow up releases.
MA was the inspiration for Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. The Giants-Drow series of modules concluded with Queen of the Spiderweb Pits. Later scenarios included Wonderland (Dungeonland and Land Beyond the Magic Mirror), King Kong (Isle of the Ape) and Averoigne (Castle Amber).
The Dungeon Masters Guide included a section on worlds colliding, with conversion notes for Boot Hill and Gamma World.
The unofficial Arduin Grimoire (1977) mentioned a Multiversal Trading Co. (which idea I developed on lines similar to Niven's Flight of the Horse).
My memory of what the Judges Guild offered is hazy, but I'll bet there was more plane-hopping than just Dante's Circles of Hell.
Quote from: Phillip;856883There wasn't a lot of 'official' scenario stuff from TSR pre-AD&D.
That's how I remembered it; some science fiction elements like Barsoom encounter tables (maybe tied to Warrior of Mars from TSR, or maybe they just expected you to make it up if you were going to use it) and robots and androids (but no stats). The only crashed spaceship I know of was Expedition to the Barrier Peaks which was after AD&D was out, and Oerth et al were only mentioned even later. So take "original D&D" with a five to ten year sized grain of salt.
Quote from: Phillip;856883The original set had encounter tables for Barsoom (no stats, but I think TSR briefly had a miniatures rules set for that on the market).
Yes. And yes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_of_Mars_%28game%29).
The original Blackmoor setting had at least two artifacts of science origin, the crashed starship ala "city of the gods", which is where the clone spell was introduced to d&d from, and the "egg of coot", some sort of renegade AI of unknown origins out to control or destroy everything. When Blackmoor and Greyhawk were combined to form d&d, both locations made it into the setting, and have remained in the editions at least up to 3rd edition.
Quote from: nijineko;856977The original Blackmoor setting had at least two artifacts of science origin, the crashed starship ala "city of the gods", which is where the clone spell was introduced to d&d from, and the "egg of coot", some sort of renegade AI of unknown origins out to control or destroy everything. When Blackmoor and Greyhawk were combined to form d&d, both locations made it into the setting, and have remained in the editions at least up to 3rd edition.
But they were not actually in the "original boxed set", except for a mention of the fearsome "Egg of Coot" in the Foreword.
Quote from: Omega;856385You can also do the reverse. Go from the fantastical to a more grounded and mundane setting. Or near featureless plains, empty worlds, and other things that make back home look great by comparison.
Well, I guess; but that sounds quite a bit more boring, doesn't it?
Quote from: RPGPundit;857814Well, I guess; but that sounds quite a bit more boring, doesn't it?
Depends on how its played. Going from Greyhawk to Battersea England. The fantastical to the mundane. But to the PCs its all strange and your powers may be diminished.
Or can be used to set up feelings of dread or unease.
Or can set up the big reveal that this desolate landscape is the future.
TORG is pretty much all about multi-dimensional coming to Earth and how it impacts the PCs. It can be a bit of a shock tansiting from the Living Land to the Nippon Tech zones or even going to the home cosms. And it can be played the other way, going from those cosms to mundane earth.
Quote from: Omega;857829Depends on how its played. Going from Greyhawk to Battersea England. The fantastical to the mundane. But to the PCs its all strange and your powers may be diminished.
I don't really see the awesome here. Yeah, sure, it's all strange to the PCs, but it's still just as routine and mundane (in every sense of the word) to the
players.
(Note that I'm not saying an RPG in the mundane world can't be awesome. It absolutely can. I just have doubts about the idea that, after starting out in an awesome fantasy game, you can then make it even better by taking away the fantasy elements.)
Quote from: Omega;857829Or can be used to set up feelings of dread or unease.
I can see this one, although I'd expect it to be more on the level of "OMG! My character just got hit with the nerf bat! How will he cope without his full abilities?" rather than focusing on things being strange and different.
Quote from: Omega;857829TORG is pretty much all about multi-dimensional coming to Earth and how it impacts the PCs. It can be a bit of a shock tansiting from the Living Land to the Nippon Tech zones or even going to the home cosms. And it can be played the other way, going from those cosms to mundane earth.
Definitely a shock for the characters, sure, but, in my (admittedly somewhat limited) experience with Torg, I can't recall the changes from one cosm to the next ever having a significant impact on the players.
Quote from: nDervish;857864I don't really see the awesome here. Yeah, sure, it's all strange to the PCs, but it's still just as routine and mundane (in every sense of the word) to the players.
Dragon 100. The City Beyond the Gate does exactly that. The PCs end up gated to the major island in the Boating Lake of Battersea Park, London. With "luck" much mayhem ensues as they explore London.
Quote from: Omega;857829Depends on how its played. Going from Greyhawk to Battersea England. The fantastical to the mundane.
Have you been to Battersea recently? :D These days like most of London it has more of a Mos Eisley Cantina vibe. Battersea ca 1985 in City Beyond the Gate (or 1995 - it was the post-97 immigration policy changed London), yes.
Quote from: rawma;857066But they were not actually in the "original boxed set", except for a mention of the fearsome "Egg of Coot" in the Foreword.
The original boxed set consisted of three booklets, so no, technically you are correct in that it was not included in the box. the second supplement booklet was the Blackmoor setting material. my boxed set has all seven books in it, but that's probably because my dad stored them in the box as he acquired them. ^^
Judges Guild published a trilogy of 'Portals' scenarios by Rudy Kraft:
Portals of Torsh - a world in which lizard men have the human role and iron is scarce (but guess what the portals are made of ...)
Portals of Irontooth - an iron-rich world, focusing on a region with special iron-fanged creatures
Portals of Twilight - Halfworld, one face always day, another ever night, a twilight realm between
Quote from: nijineko;857964The original boxed set consisted of three booklets, so no, technically you are correct in that it was not included in the box.
It's more than that; there was no intrinsic setting in the 70s, not in OD&D or even AD&D, except everything and the kitchen sink that the books implied (even beyond the fair use line). (Also, the adventure in Blackmoor didn't have a crashed spaceship, although it did have science fiction elements.) Settings for all campaigns to share were really a later development.
Quote from: rawma;858269(Also, the adventure in Blackmoor didn't have a crashed spaceship, although it did have science fiction elements.) Settings for all campaigns to share were really a later development.
No crashed ship. But definitely aliens with advanced tech.
QuoteStephen the Rock. Is not from the world of Blackmoor at all, but rather is an intelligent humanoid from another world or dimension.
QuoteThe High Priest (Rock) must report to a hovering satellite station
QuoteCommunications Module: An interstellar radio with entertainment and instructional modules
Quote from: rawma;858269It's more than that; there was no intrinsic setting in the 70s, not in OD&D or even AD&D, except everything and the kitchen sink that the books implied (even beyond the fair use line). (Also, the adventure in Blackmoor didn't have a crashed spaceship, although it did have science fiction elements.) Settings for all campaigns to share were really a later development.
That is not quite correct. Arneson's campaign was quite distinct in both setting and content, and had been running for many years before he meet Gygax and they both contributed places and people to the shared setting. "The city of the gods" adventure was where the crashed spaceship was revealed in Blackmoor. A lot of early elements were only had by actually meeting and gaming with them in person, and were only later published into some form or another.
In any case,I didn't reread my od&d booklets before posting so if I'm miss-remembering details, I apologize. I have a lot of old stuff and it gets jumbled in my head sometimes.
Quote from: nijineko;858314That is not quite correct. Arneson's campaign was quite distinct in both setting and content, and had been running for many years before he meet Gygax and they both contributed places and people to the shared setting. "The city of the gods" adventure was where the crashed spaceship was revealed in Blackmoor. A lot of early elements were only had by actually meeting and gaming with them in person, and were only later published into some form or another.
They're not in the original boxed set if they weren't even published until well into the 80s or later. It's a huge misrepresentation of 70s D&D to suggest that there was a common setting with crashed spaceships and multiple parallel worlds; even things actually in the rules didn't exist in every campaign. Shared settings were a later thing.
Quote from: rawma;858727They're not in the original boxed set if they weren't even published until well into the 80s or later. It's a huge misrepresentation of 70s D&D to suggest that there was a common setting with crashed spaceships and multiple parallel worlds; even things actually in the rules didn't exist in every campaign. Shared settings were a later thing.
I might be more productive if the two of you agreed on whether you were restricting your discussion to published D&D material as rawma is doing or including unpublished material like the house campaigns of Gygax or Arneson as nijenko seems to be doing.
Shared settings certainly existed from the beginning and OD&D included Martians (or Barsoomians to be technically correct). However,
published shared settings were definitely a later thing.
Arneson's The First Fantasy Campaign was published in 1977 by The Judges Guild.