D&D General What role do the planes play in your games?

[Li Shenron]

I just wrapped a short campaign where the party was trying to find a secret armory on the other side of a portal to the land of the fey, because someone who dreamed inside that armory could create magical weapons and monsters out of their dreams.

But the campaign before that was just overland travel and local adventures with no weird planes stuff. And the one before that was Star Wars.

How often do you go to other planes in your games? Is it a one-off excursion, or is traveling between planes of recurring element? How do you think about planes and what makes going to another plane different than just going to another location on the same world?

Like, that armory could have just been a magical location. It didn't have to be in another plane. So why did I put it there, I wonder?

Anyway, please brag about cool stuff you've done in your games.

It is always part of my campaigns eventually, but I try not to drop it too soon, typically I prefer that planar travelling enters the story after the characters have adventured in the core world for a while. It's been a long time since I ran a game at high level enough however. Generally speaking I prefer expeditions to other planes rather than spending long times there, because this makes it easier to have the quest "stand out" from the rest without running too easily into inconsistencies.

The challenge is to make other worlds different enough. I don't think I am very good at that, but at least I try. Mostly I try to mess up with the laws of physics, logic or life a little bit. It doesn't necessary take that much, some basic ideas already work for me, such as altering gravity or the speed of time. For example, we've had some short quests in the plane of Air and Water: naturally, the PCs can't do much in Air without specific flight abilities or spells, or breathing in Water, but even having those available to the PCs doesn't trivialize the quest, it already feels strikingly different when you have to think of everything in 3D and there is no "up" and "down" and I think one of our players almost got seasick

The afterlife always offers good quests opportunities even at moderately low levels, you can easily find ideas in classic literature, but to me it is important to once again emphasize how un-earthly these places are. First of all I want to avoid any normalizing/trivializing things such as having communities of mortals "living" in the afterlife (this is a pet peeve of mine, I have always found it a huge dealbreaker). Then I make sure to tell the players that the afterlife doesn't follow the same rules... for example, hint at the possibility that if you are still alive and die in the afterlife, then you can't be resurrected by any means and have to stay there, or you are destroyed forever like it happens to devils when "killed" in hell. It doesn't even have to be true, as hopefully the PCs won't die.

Other planes which I liked using because they already work in wacky ways are the plane beyond mirrors and the plane of shadows.

 

[NotQuiteANoble]

I just wrapped a short campaign where the party was trying to find a secret armory on the other side of a portal to the land of the fey, because someone who dreamed inside that armory could create magical weapons and monsters out of their dreams.

But the campaign before that was just overland travel and local adventures with no weird planes stuff. And the one before that was Star Wars.

How often do you go to other planes in your games? Is it a one-off excursion, or is traveling between planes of recurring element? How do you think about planes and what makes going to another plane different than just going to another location on the same world?

Like, that armory could have just been a magical location. It didn't have to be in another plane. So why did I put it there, I wonder?

Anyway, please brag about cool stuff you've done in your games.

In my game, Dragons and Giants have been at war for all eternity. So Tiamat and Annum didn't slog in the streets, they were each banished to an empty plane. Their sheer hatred and will transformed the plae into the Nine Hells and the Feywild. My party just ventured into Avernus, for (in my opinion) little reason, and my god are they dying. This is the first time planar travel has been used for me, because I tend to leave it to higher levels.

 

[Shiroiken]

I'm generally interested in cosmology, but I don't really use planar adventures all that much. I ran Queen of the Demonweb Pits as the climax of my first 5E campaign, but before that I haven't used them since 1E. I've generally preferred to use demi-planes and alternate worlds.

 

[Lanefan]

What do I use planes for in my games? Not much, as non-magical fixed-wing powered flight has yet to be invented in the setting. (though one of my PCs is trying to work on that)



What?

Oh, you mean those planes!

Yeah, use 'em all the time. Sometimes as adventure sites, sometimes as waypoint en route to/from somewhere, sometimes as destinations that strange gates might take those foolish ehough to enter; and two PCs in my current campaign have Amulets of the Planes that they haven't quite figured out how to reliably operate yet. Also, several PCs have Planeshift as a spell.

 

[Puddles]

Generally they are way too high magic for the style of game I like to run. Our Tiefling Druid does Peyote rituals, and so I say those take place on the Astral Plane, but that’s really just D&D lingo for what is essentially a dream sequence.

Also, both Demons and Devils are playing a big role in the story. There’s a tale of an evil Dwarven priest that has opened a portal to the abyss, brought a Dwarven hold to ruin and flooded the land in demons. Elsewhere, they are fighting devils and understand they are only banished to their own plane when slain and so need to be imprisoned. But I have no plans for the party to entire either of those planes. Closing the portal to the abyss might be the end of the campaign, but I don’t plan that far ahead.

 

[jasper]

I bomb my party with F15 last week. They thought was a dragon.

 

[Oofta]

I use a cosmology loosely based on Norse mythology so the Shadowfell becomes Nifleheim, the Feywild becomes Alfheim. Basically the planes are for the replaced by my version of the 9 worlds.

On the other hand, planar travel is not as simple as casting a spell. For the most part you have to find a portal to the other worlds and getting past Heimdal to get to Valhalla is probably not going to happen for a mortal. If you get to Helheim it's a one way trip, even for Baldur.

On the other hand Nifleheim and Alfheim are mirrors of the prime material and relatively easy to cross over.

Nifleheim is the land of spirit and dreams, it's where most mortals go first when they die before they go on to their final destination. Origin of ghosts (usually people who refuse to move on and slowly lose their humanity), and other shadow creatures and undead, people can also sometimes send their spirit there when they dream. If someone dies, you have a relatively short period of time to get them back via Raise Dead which just opens a portal to the plane so you can retrieve their spirit.

Nifleheim is, for the most part a gray and dreary place with all the color washed out and senses dulled. Think The Matrix when people are not in the "simulated" world or the Upside Down from Stranger Things. It's also a very malleable place and can sometimes record "echoes" of important past events if you know where to find them. It's dangerous here those because in the long run, the numbness and despair will wear you down.

Alfheim is home to the Sidhe, their courts and all sorts of fae creatures. In some ways it is just as dangerous or more dangerous than Nifleheim because it is so enchanting. The dew on the grass catches the sun to make brilliant jewels of light, the brook makes music so beautiful it can literally enchant you and so on.

So those are the planes people travel to on a regular basis. I've used Svartleheim as my version of the underdark with it's portals deep beneath the surface and the group will soon travel to Jotunheim with it's own distinct regions.

So I use the planes, just not all of them and not in the way described in the books.

 

[jasper]

Hello last season. Descent to Avernus. And pre5E not much since about time I wanted to DM plane travel, the group fell apart.

 

[collin]

None. Extradimesional spaces are as far as I have gone in the adventures I have run.

 

[RangerWickett]

I bomb my party with F15 last week. They thought was a dragon.

I did literally air strike my players in a d20 Modern game.

And in a high-level ZEITGEIST adventure someone has invented biplanes that require magical levitationals to stay aloft. No bombs, but they did have heavy repeating rifles.