New Cosmology: One Outer Plane; Thoughts? [Archive] - Wizards Community

New Cosmology: One Outer Plane; Thoughts? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
CryoSilver
05-12-07, 07:42 PM For myhomebrew campaign setting, I'm downplaying the significance of a alignment a LOT; so much so in fact that PCs and other mortal beings don't have them. To that end, I have decided to do away with the alignment-base Outer planes and replace them with a single "Outer Plane."

It would be of infinite size, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how it might be organized; as in, where do all the outsiders go?

The Inner planes still exist in a slightly modified format.
Lina_Inverse
05-12-07, 11:18 PM For myhomebrew campaign setting, I'm downplaying the significance of a alignment a LOT; so much so in fact that PCs and other mortal beings don't have them.

Then are you even playing D&D?
RavinRay
05-12-07, 11:50 PM Lina's got a point, but that aside...

I'd use the Spirit World (Oriental Adventures and Manual of the Planes) as a model, where aligned realms there correspond to areas of corresponding alignment in the Material World.
Theskippingman
05-13-07, 12:16 AM Then are you even playing D&D?

Many of the rabidly anti-alignment D&D crowd would seriously disagree with such statements. I used to think that it was bad form to attempt to remove alignment from any part of the game, but now I'm a bit more in the center. That aside...

Go for it, Cryosilver. It's a cool idea and I'd like to see it played out; you may want to drop the idea of mortals not having alignment, not only because it is limiting in a sense, but might create all sorts of pesky rules conflicts when it comes to interaction between creatures that lack an alignment and those that do not. It's much better to do mortals and outsiders as comparatively 'weakly' and 'strongly' aligned, which is just about the way it'd done anyway in standard Dungeons and Dragons.
CryoSilver
05-13-07, 12:30 AM The way I've dealt with that is that outsiders have alignment and mortals have Sanity. For all alignment based effects, mortals are treated as true neutral.
Naderion
05-13-07, 07:08 AM Should work, I think. Don't see why not.

The Idea of one great outer plane is an interesting one, too. Maybe you could have the good aligned outsiders live in the clouds and on mountain tops and the fiends living deep underground.
But I don't think it really makes that much of a difference. If a celestial uses plane shift to travel to the lower planes, or uses teleport to travel to a deep cavern... For me it's very much the same but I've always seen the outer planes as one great landscape that violates the laws of three-dimensional-space. But of course, if you strip the alignment traits from the oter planes, you practically are at the one outer plane of yours. So I think, this shouldn't realy cause any problems, it's just a matter of opinion where the borders are or if there even are any. I'm interested how you would make the place look like, but in general, there's no reason it shouldn't work as well as the classicer planar system.

But even though someone said it, alignment doesn't force anyone to do or not to do anyting. A small change that spells like Blasphemy don't work on all good creatures but on good outsiders, and even those few instances are fixed.
CryoSilver
05-13-07, 11:44 AM An idea begins to form. I think the Outer Plane, which the inhabitants of the Material Plane will refer to as Outside (for now at least) will be a sort of 'alternate Material Plane.'

In place of the standard races, outsiders will adopt the roles of normal people; there will be nations of fiends, nations of celestials, etc, and the geography will roughly correspond to the Material Plane, though greatly exaggerated and much bigger.

A Spirit World of sorts, as mentioned above, but slightly different, I'd like to think. Themain difference being, of course, that though the geography will be the same, the nations may not correspnd to the race that would be dominant on the Material Plane; an elven nation on the Material Plane might hold a nation of devils on the Outside, while a nation of hobgoblins might be replaced by a colony of eladrin.

This idea will be developed more later on.

New thought:
If you've ever read anything about my capaign setting, you know it is set 12 years after a massive war that mostly erased arcane spellcasters from the world. This means that there is a massive disparity between the Outside and Material Plane in terms of magical power. There are plenty of magical items and war machines left over from the Greater War, but not many real actual spellcasters.

I think this can become a significant point, where the Outside is a realm suffused with magic of all kinds, and the Material is world with only a little arcane magic and some divine.

The divide can be made greater if we throw technology into the fray; the military gap left by the absence of arcane magic would have to be filled by something, and tech seems the logical solution. However, since the War has only had such an effect in the last 50 or so years of the setting's history, it would still be pretty primitive stuff; gunpowder just invented and guns still dangerous and unreliable, manual printing presses, nothing steam-based, etc.

The Outside would be much more like the Material Plane before the War: magic fills every need in society, much like Eberron, but without things like the lightning rail (too steampunk for my vision, especially since so many outsiders can teleport anyways). In fact, all magic on the Outside might be enhanced.

Thoughts/comments?
CryoSilver
05-13-07, 10:40 PM Right, this is all getting kind of overwhelming in my head, so I'm just going to list some brief points of interest, as much for myself for tomorrow afternoon when I'll refine them as for you guys to critique.

The Material and Outside are separate and very hard to shift between.

The reason for this is a magical ward set up roughly 3500 years ago after the War of the Magus.

The ward is now crumbling, because it drew on the collective powerof all the arcane spellcasters on the Material.

Weakening barriers means that outsiders can now travel to the material, and mortals to the Outside.

Summoning magic is being rediscovered, having been useless for the past several thousand years.

At particularly weak points, outsiders roam the Material, many left stranded after the first major summoning since the ward weakened. See the history of Iliga (http://www.geocities.com/absolutecryogenic/dnd/history.html) for details.

War is again brewing, and in the weakened state of the mortal races, victory seems impossible.

Maybe this needs to be moved to a different forum, or split into 2 threads.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
CryoSilver 05-12-07, 07:42 PM	For myhomebrew campaign setting, I'm downplaying the significance of a alignment a LOT; so much so in fact that PCs and other mortal beings don't have them. To that end, I have decided to do away with the alignment-base Outer planes and replace them with a single "Outer Plane." It would be of infinite size, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how it might be organized; as in, where do all the outsiders go? The Inner planes still exist in a slightly modified format.
Lina_Inverse 05-12-07, 11:18 PM	For myhomebrew campaign setting, I'm downplaying the significance of a alignment a LOT; so much so in fact that PCs and other mortal beings don't have them. Then are you even playing D&D?
RavinRay 05-12-07, 11:50 PM	Lina's got a point, but that aside... I'd use the Spirit World (Oriental Adventures and Manual of the Planes) as a model, where aligned realms there correspond to areas of corresponding alignment in the Material World.
Theskippingman 05-13-07, 12:16 AM	Then are you even playing D&D? Many of the rabidly anti-alignment D&D crowd would seriously disagree with such statements. I used to think that it was bad form to attempt to remove alignment from any part of the game, but now I'm a bit more in the center. That aside... Go for it, Cryosilver. It's a cool idea and I'd like to see it played out; you may want to drop the idea of mortals not having alignment, not only because it is limiting in a sense, but might create all sorts of pesky rules conflicts when it comes to interaction between creatures that lack an alignment and those that do not. It's much better to do mortals and outsiders as comparatively 'weakly' and 'strongly' aligned, which is just about the way it'd done anyway in standard Dungeons and Dragons.
CryoSilver 05-13-07, 12:30 AM	The way I've dealt with that is that outsiders have alignment and mortals have Sanity. For all alignment based effects, mortals are treated as true neutral.
Naderion 05-13-07, 07:08 AM	Should work, I think. Don't see why not. The Idea of one great outer plane is an interesting one, too. Maybe you could have the good aligned outsiders live in the clouds and on mountain tops and the fiends living deep underground. But I don't think it really makes that much of a difference. If a celestial uses plane shift to travel to the lower planes, or uses teleport to travel to a deep cavern... For me it's very much the same but I've always seen the outer planes as one great landscape that violates the laws of three-dimensional-space. But of course, if you strip the alignment traits from the oter planes, you practically are at the one outer plane of yours. So I think, this shouldn't realy cause any problems, it's just a matter of opinion where the borders are or if there even are any. I'm interested how you would make the place look like, but in general, there's no reason it shouldn't work as well as the classicer planar system. But even though someone said it, alignment doesn't force anyone to do or not to do anyting. A small change that spells like Blasphemy don't work on all good creatures but on good outsiders, and even those few instances are fixed.
CryoSilver 05-13-07, 11:44 AM	An idea begins to form. I think the Outer Plane, which the inhabitants of the Material Plane will refer to as Outside (for now at least) will be a sort of 'alternate Material Plane.' In place of the standard races, outsiders will adopt the roles of normal people; there will be nations of fiends, nations of celestials, etc, and the geography will roughly correspond to the Material Plane, though greatly exaggerated and much bigger. A Spirit World of sorts, as mentioned above, but slightly different, I'd like to think. Themain difference being, of course, that though the geography will be the same, the nations may not correspnd to the race that would be dominant on the Material Plane; an elven nation on the Material Plane might hold a nation of devils on the Outside, while a nation of hobgoblins might be replaced by a colony of eladrin. This idea will be developed more later on. New thought: If you've ever read anything about my capaign setting, you know it is set 12 years after a massive war that mostly erased arcane spellcasters from the world. This means that there is a massive disparity between the Outside and Material Plane in terms of magical power. There are plenty of magical items and war machines left over from the Greater War, but not many real actual spellcasters. I think this can become a significant point, where the Outside is a realm suffused with magic of all kinds, and the Material is world with only a little arcane magic and some divine. The divide can be made greater if we throw technology into the fray; the military gap left by the absence of arcane magic would have to be filled by something, and tech seems the logical solution. However, since the War has only had such an effect in the last 50 or so years of the setting's history, it would still be pretty primitive stuff; gunpowder just invented and guns still dangerous and unreliable, manual printing presses, nothing steam-based, etc. The Outside would be much more like the Material Plane before the War: magic fills every need in society, much like Eberron, but without things like the lightning rail (too steampunk for my vision, especially since so many outsiders can teleport anyways). In fact, all magic on the Outside might be enhanced. Thoughts/comments?
CryoSilver 05-13-07, 10:40 PM	Right, this is all getting kind of overwhelming in my head, so I'm just going to list some brief points of interest, as much for myself for tomorrow afternoon when I'll refine them as for you guys to critique. The Material and Outside are separate and very hard to shift between. The reason for this is a magical ward set up roughly 3500 years ago after the War of the Magus. The ward is now crumbling, because it drew on the collective powerof all the arcane spellcasters on the Material. Weakening barriers means that outsiders can now travel to the material, and mortals to the Outside. Summoning magic is being rediscovered, having been useless for the past several thousand years. At particularly weak points, outsiders roam the Material, many left stranded after the first major summoning since the ward weakened. See the history of Iliga (http://www.geocities.com/absolutecryogenic/dnd/history.html) for details. War is again brewing, and in the weakened state of the mortal races, victory seems impossible. Maybe this needs to be moved to a different forum, or split into 2 threads.