Additional Tidbits

I've gotten some more commentary (via e-mail and other forums), and again, I'll throw it up here for all to read:


From Raptor:

The role of the planes in D&D is to allow for a format that could significantly change the rules without altering the basic set of rules that everything and everyone must abide by (the prime material plane). By level 12 or so, you are getting bored of the rules and need to change things up a little. If a croup walks into the room and fireballs out the bad guys, in order to force them out of the box, you take them to a place where fireball doesn't work. If you want to have unspeakably powerful and evil villains that just show up without having to deal with the fact that they would completely unbalance the PMP just by being on it, you can do that. For instance, if all powerful devils and demons exist, why haven't they eradicated the PMP? Answer: they are too busy being at war with each other. It's contained. A conflict that big in the PMP would be world changing, but with planes, you can take and leave it in adventure sized pieces.

Again though this is the function of zones. If these magical beings are anchored to a thing in a place, they can coexist in the pmp without affecting it too much. If all devils are linked to the Court Stone of Evil, and moving too far away from it's influence weakens them to the point that the lesser gods will pick them off easily, they are also containable, even with epic power levels.

In a play scenario, it gives the storyteller/DM a lot of flexibility to scale the power level of the usually extraplanar foes, because by placing the foe closer or further from their power source, they can be more powerful or less powerful as the party power demands, and the foe can be scaled up merely by moving them further into their zone. This is better, I think that merely having planes because it's not an all or nothing "you're playing in their back yard, so they rule, or your back yard so you rule" situation.

Picture an adventure for a level 7 party. You go into a small town and uncover a Devil trading the local townsfolk as slaves. The party fights him in a weakened state, and relatively easily drives him off. They pursue, and he gets closer to his zone, and gains power. They fight him again, and he's much tougher. They drive him off again, soon he's well within his zone, and more powerful than the party. The party realizes that in order to fight the foes, they have to think about not just how to fight, but also choosing the battleground as well. You can also make the zones of power have distorting effects on magic, or divine spellcasting. The key is to maintain the flexibility without having to enforce hard and fast planar rules all the time.

For your epic world events, one side could attack the center of power for another side to attempt to wipe them from the plane. Or conduct secret raids into the center of the foe's power. Fully scalable, fully compartmentalized, and on a single plane.


More than agreeing or disagreeing with anything from this post, it brought to mind a few things that I should clarify before I get too deep. Overall, I (likely) will go with a reduced magic campaign. This isn't to say that it will be completely medeival without wizards, dragons, and fireball spells - but that I plan to reduce the frequency of said things. When I run this world as a campaign, I'll likely ice out druids and sorcerers as PC classes. This comes up in relation to Devils/demons/and the like. Their appearances (as well as crap like the abyss and layers of hell) will have nearly nil impact. I've long been of the opinion that humans provide more than enough eeeeevil, and if I need something particularly awesome to rampage the countryside, then I have dragons for that.



From Casey:


About gods being only as powerful as their followers.
I think this is a good way to include something True in the game world. In real life a group of people can be completely powerless, or be a force of nature that changes the course of history forever. Which will turn out to be the case depends on the drive of those people. Are they motivated to act? Are they inspired? In the real world it does you no good to have 100 people if they're all content enough that they are not willing to fight for change.
In terms of the game world this translates nicely. You can illustrate this true aspect of humankind through an analogy using the religions. (And if your game has hidden messages like that, it's a good thing imo.) The gods are stronger based on their followers, yes. But it's not so much the number of followers, but the strength of their faith and their emotional devotion. 10 people who live for their religion (i.e. fanatics) should be much more influential than 20 people who believe but just live normal lives. It's good for a god to have such followers, but their passion for their faith is where the strength really comes from.
I think this makes sense if you backup and ask a more fundamental question: Why do the gods need strength (and therefore followers)? It's because in fantasy pantheons the gods are in opposition to one another. They are struggling to see who will dominate, and this is one of the basic assumptions in the cosmology. You can change that assumption and go a different way if you want (which has really interesting possibilities itself). But if you don't (and it sounds like you aren't), then it implies this answer to the question:
Gods need strength because they are in conflict with one another by their inherent nature. Therefore the strength that comes from their followers should be directly related to how that faith enables the fundamental goal of becoming more influential over the material world. This would explain why a culture that fights to spread its religion would have a strong god. It's almost by definiton.
But remember the analogy. In real life this causes an opposite reaction. Other cultures who may not have been "activists" may become a force to reckon with in response to a more imposing group. In the game this explains why a powerful god with a slew of crazed fanatics who want to take over the world does not simply become more and more powerful. It's not a closed system like a board game, where once I get a small advantage it just grows and grows. (And the only way the clearly superior bad guys lose is through a stupid, crushing mistake.) Instead it's like real life, where the fact that I become strong may be the exact catalyst that makes you strong enough to stop me. That's a HUGE difference in the underlying workings of the world.
The bottom line is that instead of modeling the cosmology after a fantasy game, work on ensuring that the mechanics of the cosmology are a model of the real world. You don't want them to function like units or armies in a game. You want them to function like people and cultures do in life. It brings to mind the way world events were explained in the Shadow series of Ender books, with India and China and the Muslims and the Hegemony.


Abso-FUCKING-lutely.

Also, from Casey:

I like the idea of toning down the planes, like with summonings pulling from other areas of the material plane. I'm biased because I've never found the planes interesting at all. Here's one way you could go that route:

The planes are not "alternate places" where the gods live. You don't travel there when you get a high enough level, and summoned creatures don't technically "come from" there. Instead they're more like idealized or Platonic forms that only exist as part of a specific god. So for instance, dead souls return to the god of their faith and become one with them (or whatever), but that doesn't have to imply a whole plane of existence (or even an actual place). Fantasy writers know the afterlife does not need to mimic material life in function, so why in form? Oneness with god after death may not be something analogous to material life at all.
On the other hand, the gods are what allow Law/Chaos (and Good/Evil if you include that) at all. Their very existence emanates such forces into the material world, and their fundamental purpose is to maximize that effect (as discussed above). So even though there's no Plane of Chaos that's the "source" of all chaos, there IS a god which serves the same purpose. When that god becomes stronger, more chaotic happenings are seen in the world. More chaotic creatures, spells, even weather. Go with what you like. But remember that this does not cause a snowball effect leading to domination by one god. It's more likely to cause a backlash that ultimately adds up to balance as the teeter totter sways to and fro over the eons (again like real life). The 3 gods are really part of one whole, and that should mean something. Otherwise rewrite the cosmology so they don't come from one parent. (If you want it to be possible for a god to ultimately defeat another one, it should be the main plot of the entire game that culminates in either preserving balance even though you lose the chance to "win", or culminates in discovering what happens when that balance is lost. It may not be what the players think would happen...)



Based on all the feedback so far, I think I'm going to cruise ahead with what I have so far, in an "in the beginning" sort of way. I should note that I intent to make this a "most commonly accepted" version of the creation myth, which leaves me both the options of turning it upside down at my option, as well as allowing players to add to it at will:

The universe started with the Primordial (a relatively unidentifiable presence, implied to be both vastly ancient, and primal).
As a being of omnipotence (although not omniscient), it splintered itself into 3 lesser gods, in an effort to both better understand it's own condition and to provide itself with some other beings with which to communicate. Due to its splintering, the Primordial was rendered no longer omnipotent.
The 3 lesser gods, the Shaper (law), the Spirit (Neutrality), and the Destroyer (Chaos) were then gifted by the primordial with the material plane (as opposed to the Astral Plane, from which they originated).
It is from these 3 gods that the (many) lesser Gods were formed, as well as the 3 Immortal races.

Which will bring us to the next topic...