I know its supposed to be a complete contradiction of sanity and reality. Horrors beyond the minds comprehension. Nothing that should be easily written down, but none-the-less.
I have a lv 30 campaign about to wrap up and its going to end in said realm.
I have a few ideas of ever constantly shifting corridors, rooms, and open expanses. Everything bleeding. Constant howling, screaming, and roaring from inside, outside, everywhere and nowhere.
I'm just looking for outside theories about how to play it out or if anyone else has developed anything on it.
I figure there would be no better place for 4 epic destinies to meet a final end and I'm looking for a little inspiration. Anything would help.
I actually plan on using the Far Realm as a part of a campaign I'm planning on starting to write soon. Essentially the party would come to find that that Far Realm is a sort of... "Border plane", for lack of a better description. Basically the maddening soap film that encircles the bubble that is the planescape. It's the barrier that would mark the border between the universe (planescape) the players are from and the far-off, other universes that make up the vast multiverse as a whole.
I don't know how much that helps what you're doing, but that's my take on it.
Basicly, nothing from the crazy Abyss could even come within ten miles of the brain-rolling weirdness they would find in the far realm.
Again thanks much.
annex.wikia.com/wiki/Far_Realm
I agree on the Lovecraft inspiration, if you ever read any of it, use it abundantly, especially on the madness part of the world. Heavy metal album covers I can recommend some if you are not really into that kind of music, I know of some which would perfectly fit.
-MawOfAcamar
Exerpts taken from the manual of the planes
"Vast shapes drift at the edge of sight through the realm’s substance, blurrily reminiscent of creatures from the deepest sea trenches of the mortal world. Many of the blurry forms are as large as cities—and those are the small ones."
"The most powerful Far Realm entities are comparable to deities or primordials in their power."
At 30th level the party is just this close to ascending to the place of being almost deities themselves so the worst dangers of the far realm would be of the mind and less of the inhabitants themselves. The group would have to and will be undergoing constant attacks of the mind and therefor will be defending against such dangers at every turn.
That being said. This final march into the far realm is just that, FINAL. It IS a suicide mission from which they will never return. Whether the party knows that or not doesn't change the commiment made to venture through. I'm just trying to figure out how it will be played out.
The feedback I have recieved is overwhelmingly great. I didn't expect this much in response and I'm loving it. I'll be keeping an eye on the threads I've posted and will be compiling all the data to post a full synopsis of what transpires.
I would never expect for any source material to be published for reasons said. It would change the whole concept of the realm itself and give it more substance than it should have. My job now(and it will be fun) is to get all these ideas together and make it as continuitous as possible.
Thank you all again.
PS - I absolutely love metal and am quite fimiliar with the idea put forth on that topic. I have a firend with more metal albums then I can shake a stick at and will be thoroughly examining his collection for ideas.
Playing Lovecraft-type games I recall there was always some sort of "keep your sanity in check" mechanic and part of the fun was finding your mind on the precipice of falling into final, irreversible madness.
Are there any sanity mechanics for the Far Realm?
Playing Lovecraft-type games I recall there was always some sort of "keep your sanity in check" mechanic and part of the fun was finding your mind on the precipice of falling into final, irreversible madness.
They use a sanity check, which is basically a check against your sanity score and if it fails you take damage to it. The best way this mechanic worked is it slowly ground your sanity down over the course of the campaign, because most losses of sanity were permanent and the more sanity you lost the easier it became to lose more sanity faster. Of course it isn't all purely mechanical, like a DM could rule after a while some monsters and things just wouldn't bother you anymore as your mind was so screwed up.
Meeting something like Cthulhu never ended well though.
my idea was that (in Forgotten Realms) Cyric was looking for a way out of his imprisionment, and he was trying to go to the Far Realm and from there back to the world. of course, Cyric is insane - only an insane person would think of that or even try it.
to make the story short, the main plot was that if he was able to do it, he was going to bring all kinds of creatures and monsters that would destroy this reality.
maybe your PCs have to stop an 'old one' like Cthulhu from coming here (or Cyric's realm for example) before it destroys the worlds or something . . . go into the Astral, bypass a couple of Gods, get into Cyric's castle & fight a huuuuugeeeeee lvl 36 aberration
It's made up of all the sourcebooks and gaming material deemed completely irrelevant by new editions (does anyone remember the player's option books from late second edition?)
It's rules are the rules of a ten year old's second edition adnd game!
I actually plan on using the Far Realm as a part of a campaign I'm planning on starting to write soon. Essentially the party would come to find that that Far Realm is a sort of... "Border plane", for lack of a better description. Basically the maddening soap film that encircles the bubble that is the planescape. It's the barrier that would mark the border between the universe (planescape) the players are from and the far-off, other universes that make up the vast multiverse as a whole.
That is much akin to how I am interpreting the Far Realm in my Forgotten Realms campaign. I still buy into the old Planescape/Great Wheel notion that the "Outer Planes" (or their 4e equivalents) and much of the cosmology is created and shaped by the beliefs and concepts of mortals from the Material universe - so if the Far Realm is fundamentally incomprehensible to mortal minds, how then could it have been formed by mortal concepts as are most of the other planes? The answer being that the Far Realm is not. In my campaign, the Far Realm isn't a plane, so much as it is what exists between and outside the planes.
I've also hooked the Far Realm in with the Spellplague. In my Realms, the Weave wasn't just the fabric of magic in the Realms - it was the fabric that maintained the planar structure and the separation between the Far Realm and the planes. Other planes maintain this separation in their own ways, but in Toril's material plane, Mystra was the custodian of that separation. With Mystra and the Weave gone, the Far Realm has begun to encroach on Toril in the form of the Spellplague, turning creatures into aberrations, along with all the other bizarre effects that the Spellplague caused. Among other things, all teleportation (other than short distance, line-of-sight player teleportation) has ceased to function, as have all planar portals to or from Toril except for those that lead to Sigil. The party has recently managed to reactivate two points in an old teleportation network, and found that anything passing through it also passes through the Far Realm. Their bodies may make it through intact, but their minds do not.
As to the original question... I don't think I can help much. I lack the ability to describe the indescribable. Although the Far Realm will be a prominent element in my campaign, the players won't actually go there.
Something as mad as that?
Just changing the basic function of things and waffling on about things that contradict themselves is what the Far Realm is all about!