Comments on: When Good Ideas Linger Too Long: Compacting plotlines

By: Mike Bourke

Mike Bourke — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:37:47 +0000

Nothing to apologise for, I heard nothing that sounded like an insult. And your english is excellent, I could not tell that it was not your first language! Well done.

By: TheLemming

TheLemming — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 07:03:28 +0000

Thanks again for sharing and refining. My apologies if anything sounded like an insult, it was never meant that way - after all it's not my native language but I'm tryin'. TheLemming’s last blog post..epic preparation - p9 - Conclusions

By: Mike Bourke

Mike Bourke — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:18:02 +0000

@ Masteh Casteh: Thanks very much. But Shhhh…. the players havn’t figured out the “everything’s alive” implications yet…

By: Mike Bourke

Mike Bourke — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:05:32 +0000

@ TheLemming: Feel free to take the ideas and expand on them in your own way. It was not quite that straightforward, the concept was simplified somewhat because the purpose of the post wasn’t to articulate the idea, but to discuss some unwanted consequences and how I solved them. Here are some of those additional elements (briefly) to add to the depth: The four primary elements are shaped into a 3D puzzle cube like a huge three-dimensional tetris puzzle. Negative Energy effectively acts as the opposite of the mask of a 3D cosmic printed circuit board; where it goes, life withers and dies, and the material componants are washed away into the outer planes as detritus. Positive energy is repelled by Negative, and so infuses life into everything that has not been killed off by the negative energy. Do it right, and the result will be a self-sustaining ecology/biosphere/material plane, do it wrong and planes of necrosis and other unpleasantries result.

Life energy is attracted to life energy, and so holds everything together; everything that exists is alive to some extent – think of it as akin to The Force in some ways!

The microplanes that need to be constructed therefore need small amounts of all the other elements to give them form and hold them together. The problem is that they are inherantly unstable perpetually trying to blend prematurely.

But the very thing that gives them form, the impurities in each plane, also inherantly weaken and destabalise the whole system; you don’t have forever to complete your design, once the switch is thrown the countdown is running.

The presence of impure elements results in the creation of impure elementals – Mortus Elementals (elementals of shadowy death), Flensing Elementals (dust elementals plus the rules on a flensing sandstorm), lava elementals, steam elementals, and so on.

It takes many attempts to get it right, so it needs to be something long-lived that is running these experiments; and because new breeds of nastyness and evil get ‘washed away’ into the outer planes as a byproduct, they will typically not be of the ‘good guy’ variety. I used Ilithids.

Note that in this context, ‘outer planes’ refers to anywhere and everywhere that is not the new prime plane or the source microplanes – so that includes the ‘old’ prime material plane. Hence the origins of many dungeons and the strange, never-before-seen creatures that inhabit them.

As for the whole thing being obvious, it’s D&D Canon through most editions (I can’t speak to 4th ed on the subject). This just gives an interesting concept of HOW it might happen.

By: Masteh Casteh

Masteh Casteh — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:54:19 +0000

It sounds ‘dense’? Isnt that an insult? But I digress.

Your setting is amazing, Mike, I would love to play in a campaign like yours, especially if its a living world campaign! I think that the amount of planning you put into this world is amazing! Gr8 job!

By: TheLemming

TheLemming — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:37:01 +0000

What an interesting approach, I’ve been working on a few plane-heavy settings lately and if you don’t mind I’ll copy a little from here. It just sounds to deep to let go without taking this in. I have to admit when I think about it – four elements + pos/neg planes to form something new sounds rather – common/easy/(lacking a word to describe it) – perhaps obvious…
…though I haven’t thought of anything the like yet and it really sounds dense, deep – great.

thanks a lot for sharing.

TheLemming’s last blog post..epic preparation – p9 – Conclusions

By: Mike Bourke

Mike Bourke — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:45:48 +0000

Thanks, satyre. The results so far have shown that the approach has been effective (we’ve had our usual session in late January and an extra one for the big battle scene) and the players have found themselves getting back into the plotline like it was for the first time. They are actually looking forward to the next session, and lingering in each scene to milk as much ambiance from it as possible!

By: satyre

satyre — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:04:34 +0000

Wow. This is intense stuff, cleverly written. Kudos. satyre’s last blog post..inferences and inferiae