Table of Contents

At least one of the Player Characters is a normal mortal person from the material world. That person is lying sick somewhere, while his dream self is exploring the planes. This campaign has no time limit. It may seem like the characters are on adventures and training for years, but it all takes place within the few weeks or months in which the mortal is sick in a coma on the Material Plane. The ultimate objective of the campaign is for the mortal to become a powerful witch or priest.

In this campaign, the demons would respect someone who puts up with their tortures in a good mood, so on the occasions when the PCs are defeated by evil beings, the PCs may be horribly mutilated, tortured or even eaten, but the demons will always restore the PCs and send them on to their next learning experience.

The campaign doesn't have to end when the potential shaman heals and returns to his body. The character could go on to become a very skilled shaman and visit the spirit realms quite often, sometimes to retrieve the souls of other sick people and heal them, or sometimes to ensure that his people have good hunting or good harvests by doing favors for the gods.

Zoroastrianism, Tibetan Buddhism, or Hopi

At least one of the Player Characters is a pious and courageous mortal person from the material world. That person is lying in a drug induced coma somewhere, while his dream self explores the planes. This campaign has no time limit. It may seem like the characters are on adventures and training for years, but it all takes place within the few days or weeks in which the mortal is lying in a coma on the Material Plane. The ultimate objective of the campaign is for the mortal to see all the different heavens and hells, so when he wakes up he can report to all of his people the delights of heaven and the punishments of hell.

This type of campaign is best run if every person has a character, and they switch off being the game master every adventure. So in a group of five people, everyone has to write and GM 20% of the adventures. With the same GM every week, sightseeing can get boring. But if the GM switches every adventure, then not only will each person have more time to come up with good ideas and prepare heavens and hells that are interesting and have nice potential for adventures, but you get to learn about your fellow players, what they're into, what their fears and desires are, based on the specific realms that they add to your collective heavens and hells.

This campaign does end when the mortal that is exploring, dies or returns to his body.

Aztecs

At least two of the player characters are exceptionally good at something. They could have physically entered the planes, or be natives of one of the planes. All the gods, angels and devils want to challenge the PCs at their specialty, so the PCs are invited to all the different heavens and hells to respond to these challenges.

This campaign doesn't have to have a specific end, but if it gets boring, the PCs could train apprentices to allow another generation to carry the torch. Or the PCs could "retire", and for the rest of the campaign be these great retired "whatevers" that people still find in the park when they need help.

The Classics

Like the Zoroastrian story, Greek and Romans stories of the afterlife included a lot of exploring, in fact, the story of Er in The Republic was exactly an accidental Arda Viraf story. The other Classical Myths, unlike the Parsi story, had some goal other than to just see the place. The goal was to retrieve, or to talk to someone who had passed away.

It might be a good idea for the characters to retrieve or consult with a number of dead characters or this type of campaign can turn frustrating rather quickly. It would just seem like an extremely long "Who's got the Button" type of adventure. The GM could throw in a lot of adventures to distract the PCs, but if the PCs are supposed to be noble adventurers there would only be certain distractions that wouldn't seem ignoble.

Of all the campaigns this one has the shortest life span. As soon as the players start to get bored, allow the PCs to reach their goal and begin their climactic journey back to the mortal realm.

Judaism, Christianity or Islam

The Abrahamic religions believe in an all powerful, omniscient deity, who has the entirety of the spiritual world within his power. Therefore, the potential for planar adventures would be rather limited. Characters can visit Heaven and Hell, and be shown around, but there is nothing for them to do there. God has already done everything.

The one exception might be: there is this belief in Pop-Christianity that people who die and go to Heaven can become angels and "earn their wings". These angels might have a lot to do in heaven, making sure everything goes OK.

Japanese Buddhism or Chinese Religions

Amung the Chinese and their neighbors (not just the Japanese), reverence for the dead is a very important emotion. They believe that the dead watch over us and help us, and that we can help them.

So in this type of campaign, at least one of the PCs (possibly all of the characters) are from the mortal world, travelling to the world of the dead through some magical place (and possibly magical spell). Once the characters reach the spirit world they will want to find their ancestors and make sure that they are OK. It would be boring if they actually were OK, so they will be in some trouble, and the PCs will be able to help them out of this trouble.

One of the things that I especially love about this campaign is that because the characters have so much dealings with the past (their ancestors, some of whom would be ancient, and some of whom would be recent), they have plenty of excuses for returning to the mortal world for the classic dungeon crawls. "In the ruins of Kyuketsuki Shrine, in the catacombs, through the armies of undead that restlessly wander about, entombed there, you will find our family's lost martial arts manual, missing for these past 800 years." That's a bad example. I think I would just let it stay there. An army of starving vampires with 800 years to study a legendary martial arts manual? If I was made out of cast iron and didn't have blood then I might ask for it back.

As much fun as it may be to serve one's ancestors in the lands beyond death, fighting demons and devils, one of the duties of the characters' to their ancestors is that they do have to return to the land of the living and ensure that the family line continues.

An alternate and very cool thing that could be done is to allow the characters, all or some, to play animals. In Japanese and Chinese fairy tales, foxes, badgers, kites, and snakes are depicted as interacting with humans in a variety of different ways. Foxes possess women. Badgers used great magic. All of those animals at one time or another appear in human form. A little girl thanks the monk that saved her, when he only remembers saving a snake. A fox lives in a woodpile and invites a man in for tea, and the man sees that the fox has a wondrously appointed woodpile. These "animal characters" could spend most of the campaign in their human form, but assume their animal forms under certain circumstances. A fox may not be able to appear as anything but a fox in a scene with a virtuous person. A badger may lose his human form whenever he fails a Courage roll. A snake may return to snake form whenever he fails a Concentration roll.

Or characters could be part of a race of half man / half animals. Bariaur were men / sheep.

Hinduism, or Ancient Egyptian, or Mesopotamian Religion

Although I have no accounts of mortals wandering around in the lands of the dead, I do have the Puranas, in which mortals do have extensive interaction with the gods.

My ideas on a planar campaign inspired by any of these pantheistic religions is that the easiest way for the PCs to be wandering around the planes is for them to be some type of servitor being in service of one of the gods, and thus, native to the outer planes, or for them to be mortals from the mortal realm brought to the outer planes to solve some problem that the gods are facing that they are unfamiliar with, but that mortals might know more about. Mortals are so troubled in general.

In the Puranas specifically, mortals often impressed the gods and received favors because of it, sometimes even being elevated to god status.

Evidently Planescape was this type of campaign. The planar populations were composed of people that reached the planes through divine invitation or powerful magic and settled there, except for the Gith who apparently sprang from the chaos full formed.

African Religions

Egypt is in Africa, and Berbers have their own myths and legends, in some ways similar to the Southwestern Aboriginal Americans (humanity emerging from caves and what not), and Ethiopia has had it's own Christianity for the past couple of thousand years. In fact the book of Enoch was thought lost until it was found that the Ethiopians included it in their scriptures. All these religions are distinctly African and can easily contribute to an African planar campaign.

But as for the religions of the more southerly African cultures, I've only ever learned about the religion of the Yoruba, since that religion has spread so far beyond its original region and people.

My advice is, read Amos Tutuola's book, The Palm Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. This is admittedly only marginally within the traditional life of the Yoruba, but he was a Yoruba, and he grew up in a house where the old gods were still venerated.

One thing that I love about his stories is "the bush". This is a concept that doesn't exist in America. Evidently, even before Europeans showed up, America was a place where wilderness and civilization were not separate and distinct areas. Yes, we have wolves and bears, and yes they are dangerous, but the more you know about them and about the territory, the less dangerous they are. But I suppose you just can't know more about the territory than a leopard. Therefore, in Africa, "the bush" is a mysterious and dangerous place full of strange and terrible creatures. It is definitely not civilization.

Even in Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, which was about the Ibo, he talks about a haunted forest, and that each village had one, and taboo things were thrown in.

I think that any African planar dominion should have this, this idea that the mortal world borders on the other worlds in these haunted Bushes of Ghosts, even if other religions play a part in the campaign, like Berber myths, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc.

The characters could then accidentally wander into the other worlds, or be inhabitants of those places and accidentally meet people from the mortal world.

Inspired by Books

The plot of the Divine Comedy is that Dante's in danger and Virgil is sent to save him. But Virgil's a ghost, so he says, "Let's cut through Hell and Purgatory." Because, well, I don't know. Maybe when I'm a ghost it will seem like a better idea. It might make sense then.

A planar campaign based on Dante would be the quest for Heaven. Most adventures would have the characters simply striving to safely pass through some other area of Hell or Purgatory on their way forward.

This might turn into a tour, like in the Arda Viraf, and if so, then the GM should hand off his title every adventure or so, so the other players get their chance to each make up scary hells.

Lovecraft

In both Celephais, and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, the dreamers were in quest of some paradise that they received an intimation of in a previous dream. This is very similar to Dante's story, except that in the Dreamlands, the adventurers wouldn't know where their specific heaven would be found, so they have to ask around more often and look for more clues.

Modern Writers

Modern writers often only have dead characters wandering around the afterlife. But the interesting and new thing about that is that in traditional stories of the afterlife, the existence of the dead (their "lives" if you will excuse it) is never depicted as that interesting. They either go to Heaven, or they suffer in Hell, or they trudge through Purgatory on their way to Heaven. They don't have many important decisions to make once they're dead.

But modern writers depict the dead having adventures, and getting around quite a bit. Their adventures will probably fit into one of the religious patterns above, except that the characters will be dead, and thus definitely natives of the heavens or hells.

Oh wait. There was Flatliners, but that was a movie, not a book. And it was actually a number of stories all stuck together. At first, it was a rehashing of the Arda Viraf idea. Then it was an Icarus story, a story of scientific hubris. The flatliners were unworthy to trespass where they did. And that justified the rest of the movie, which was a number of ghost stories.

Inspired by Video Games

Do you remember that White Wolf game, Changeling, The Dreaming? I never got it. I never understood how one was supposed to play an interesting, exciting, and fulfilling campaign (or chronicle) with that game. That is, until I played Alice.

This game is a sequel to Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass. Alice has grown up a bit, but in a devastating fire, the rest of her family, including her cute little cat, is killed. She goes a bit crazy, and in her catatonic state, she revisits Wonderland and Looking Glass Land and begins to heal herself. She heals herself by beating the snot out of the monsters that represent her negative feelings.

Her parents are dead so she's afraid of substitute caretakers, which means she has to defeat the worst parent from the stories, the Duchess, who tries to eat her. Then she has to defeat some more scary authority figures: a centipede (complete with a Kaiser Wilhelm helmet), the red king, and the crazy old mad hatter. In the meantime she has to get over her fear of boys so the lays the smack down on Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. A couple of times she stands before the Jabberwock, who represents the feelings that got her in here, her survivor's guilt.

Finally she faces the red queen who is so weird and alien that I got the impression that the red queen didn't even come from Alice's mind. The red queen reminded me of the Taenia Spiritus from Dreamwalker.

And I thought, "That's how Changeling should be played. A group of young changelings explore this dreamscape, travelling on trods and facing chimeras, and defeating enemies that represent the negativities and fears of the changelings. At the end of the chronicle they face enemies that don't even make sense, or are more terrible than could have ever been their own chimeras. These are the fomori, or bane spirits trying to turn the changelings into fomori, like strait out of that book Freak Legion."

Unfortunately, as Changeling supplements were published, it became clear that that wasn't how Changeling was being played, so I dropped it. But that would still be a great idea, to play Changeling as a psychomachia. In fact, I mention it here, because it makes a great psychomachia story for a planar dominion. Instead of a physical initiatory illness, this would be an illness of the mind.

At least one of the Player Characters is a normal mortal person from the material world. That person is insane and catatonic somewhere, while her dream self is exploring the planes. This campaign doesn't have to have a time limit, but it could have a time limit, if you want the adventurers to have an urgency to them. "We have to restore Alice to sanity before she's spent too much time in the asylum." The ultimate objective of the campaign is for the mortal to be restored to wholeness and sanity.

In this campaign, the demons would represent the negative feelings of the mortal and must be trounced. They must be humiliated, tricked, ground into the dirt, or otherwise humbled. The mortal must own her own feelings. She must be the boss of her own dreams.

The campaign doesn't have to end when the dreamer heals and returns to her body. As real life worries and stress intrude on the life of the mortal, this could pop up in her dreamscapes (in Wonderland), where she and her old adventuring companions will have to deal with the threats to the land again.

And if you want, throw in the occasional alien being that threatens the character's very soul and humanity.

Torment

Torment had to be one of the best video games I'd ever played. Sure it wasn't as exciting a shoot 'em up as Doom, Quake, or Alice. Sure it wasn't as pretty, and it didn't have as nice music as Myst, Riven, or Exile. But it was exactly in between. The Nameless one was already dead. It couldn't get much worse for him. You can't screw up this guy’s life any more than it already is. He's not getting any uglier either. He is at bottom. No pressure. And you could beat on other characters, so it was more fun than Myst and it's sequels. But it was probably better if you talked to the other characters in the game.

As far as a campaign based on Torment, it's probably better if you use the adventure from Torment as a number of introductory adventures, and continue the campaign from there. (He gets his soul back and must go to hell. His friends go to find him. They all have a number of adventures as they fight their way out of hell. Etc.) In Dominion Rules, death often looms over characters less than other games, so an undying Nameless one that can raise the dead is less fun in Dominion Rules than one would expect from other games. "Yes, the Nameless one doesn't die!" "Nobody dies. You're all defeated and they take you prisoner." "Doh!"

In case you've never played it, Torment is a game set in Planescape, in Sigil mostly. The main characters are the Nameless one, and Mort. They have both been dead a long time. Mort is just a floating skull, and the Nameless one is a seriously scarred zombie-like thing. Unlike a zombie, that is reanimated after it dies, the Nameless one had his soul removed while still alive, and now he can't rest until he gets it back. No matter how destroyed he becomes, he just gets right back up. If his brain is destroyed he grows a new one, but it doesn't have much of what was in the old one, so he has to start all over again gaining skills and memories. His goal is to discover why he can't die and why he's been flattened into paste so many times that he can't remember his own name.

Doom or Quake

These games are THE classic dungeon crawls. There are no monsters that can be reasoned with. There is nothing in the game that your not supposed to kill. A campaign based on these games will be munchkin paradise. Jump through the portal. Kill everything you find at the destination. Acquire what you came to get, and move on.

What I never understood about these games was why the monsters left so much ammo lying around. They couldn't tidy up the place? Nobody told them I was coming? Ostensibly, each game was about saving some human settlement, or even the Earth itself from these demons from the other dimensions, but realistically they were about engaging in munchkinism without annoying other gamers.

If you're going to do a campaign like this then you'll need hard core fighting PCs, lots of cool new weapons, and loads of bestial demons, unable to talk. Some of these demons should be half mechanical, and you may want improved rules for grenades, since in Quake much of the monsters were most easily defeated by bouncing grenades off of something else to get the baddie. Also, if you're going to put such horrible traps and ambushes in your adventures as was in the video games, then the PCs might want to invest in some Alertness or Stealth.

Myst, Riven, or Exile

These games were all about puzzle solving. In each game you arrive on a plane, or a number of different planes where everything is broken or shut off. The character (you in the video game) must figure out how everything worked and restore it to operation, so you can get what you came for and leave.

To do a RPG campaign based on these games you need to be very good at coming up with interesting puzzles. Also, almost everyone in the campaign should lie to the PCs. Then just sit back and let the PCs figure out what to do.

Unfortunately it would be very difficult in the context of a tabletop RPG to get such beautiful landscapes and music, but if you can compose music or digitally model scenes then go ahead. It would very much add to the game.

Inspired by Role Playing Games

Of course, this RPG inspired this whole web site, so I'll have to run down the campaign ideas presented in the Planewalkers Handbook.

Berk Without a Past

Usually only one character has amnesia, but clues point to a very interesting past. Or the character (but it can be more than one with this option) knows his past but doesn't want anyone else to know, because it's so horrible or so humiliating.

Cagers

One or more of the characters could be natives of an important city in the outer planes. This character would naturally be interested in the governing of the city, whether or not she has political ambitions.

Champion of Good

One or more of the characters is a genuinely helpful and good person. Or one or more of the characters are righteous hot shots eager to put the beat down on some baddies.

Chant Broker

One or more of the characters are professional journalists, investigators, or academics. Their primary goal is to learn as much as possible, some to specific ends, some just to have something interesting to talk about down at the coffee house.

Clueless

One or more of the characters are from the material plane or some other isolated spot. If the character left that isolated place then they must be of some merit, but they were big fish in a small pond. Now that they're in the big sea, they need to become big fish all over again.

Dimensional Explorer

Unlike a Chant Broker, a Dimensional Explorer just wants to see new places. This character is a tourist or just someone struck with wanderlust.

Disinterested

One or more of the characters are focused on developing a skill, a number of skills or a large bank account. The Aztec heroes, Hun-Apu, Xbalanque, Hunhun-Apu, and Vukub-Hunapu all fall into this category. They were only interested in becoming strong, clever, and devastating ball players. They weren't interested in the big picture.

Faction Slave

One or more of the characters are devoted to a particular faction. They do everything they can to further that faction's goals, and obey orders from the authority figures within the faction.

Knight of the Post

One or more of the characters want to become wealthy and renowned tricksters or thieves.

Planar Elitist

One or more of the characters think they are better than everybody else, often for some stupid and arbitrary reason, and will seek to maintain this sense of superiority and privilege.

Planar Hunter

One or more of the players are kill happy munchkins and this campaign idea is a means to justify their unholy lust for demon (or angel, or ghost, or whatever) snuff fantasies. These PCs are only interested in killing things and mounting them on large plaques.

Planar Trader

One or more of the characters just want to see their pockets filled with gold. They aren't interested in breaking the law. They will work for or trade for or recover their gold legally, but the point is the money, not the fame or the knowledge or whatever.

Prime Blood

These characters are Clueless who have become proven, experienced, competent characters. One or more of the characters are from the material plane or some other isolated spot. If the character left that isolated place then they must be of some merit, but they were big fish in a small pond. Now that they're in the big sea, they have become big fish all over again, and are interested in keeping things that way.

Proxy-in-Training

One or more of the characters actively serve a god and want to earn the right and the power to represent that god. This is akin to the Christian desire to become and angel and "earn your wings".

Refugee from Darkness

The character (usually only one per party, but may be more) has spent time in hell, but didn't fit in, so left (probably escaped). Hellboy fits this mold. He was sent from hell on a mission but wasn't really told what it was and now has no interest in accomplishing it. He occasionally meets demons who pester him respectfully (if they know what's good for them), but he doesn't really care, and he doesn't have any interest in going back. Some characters may not have left hell on so amicable of terms, so they may be terrified of or furious with demons should they meet them elsewhere. People who were sent to hell against their will may also be driven by vengeance on the person or people that sent them there.

Spiv

One or more of the characters are uninterested in any type of hard work. They will do everything possible to avoid unnecessary difficulty. Work smarter, not harder; that's their motto.

Rifts

This was a really great game. I encourage everyone to go right out and buy it. However it suffers from a peculiar strain of munchkinism that I like to call, "Way-too-bad-assed-ism". This is what happens when you craft an excellent game and then decide to publish numerous supplements containing new magic abilities and new equipment, without ever deciding on some limits for the game. The result is that all the supplements are interesting and well written and trump the previous supplements so that any old characters are seriously under-powered when compared to the characters that can be generated with the newest supplement. Therefore, if you are serious about playing a balanced and well thought out game, then stick to the core rules. But if you don't mind munchkinism, and would like a good read, some great art, and nice production values, then you should probably buy everything that has ever been written for Rifts.

The Palladium take on the different planes of existence is a lot less structured than the TSR take on the planes. First, there is no such thing as a Prime Material Plane. Every plane is a material plane to the people that live there. Some planes may be more hospitable than others. On some worlds the main inhabitants may have a particularly evil culture. But there is nothing about the place that is good or evil.

This goes against one of the most important aspects of planar dominions, that is that good characters have to end up in a heaven and evil characters have to end up in a hell. Everyone goes where they belong.

But if you want to write a planar dominion with planes set up more like Rifts, here's what you do.

1. Don't bother making a material plane. Characters will reincarnate on one of the planes depending on how they lived their previous lives (depending on their karma). If you want a plane of a typical fantasy world, then make that the true neutral plane.

2. Detail all the other planes normally. Palladium has an Astral Plane and a Dream Stream (first detailed in Between the Shadows). They never had Elemental Planes, but that's no reason for you not to if you want them.

3. Now further detail every plane. The boys and girls at Palladium write their butts off. If you want your planar dominion to feel anything like theirs you will have to at least intimate that each plane is a fully detailed world like any other, at least as complex as a real planet. Each world has good guys, bad guys, towns, villages, people, goods unique to that world, it’s own ecological and economic structures, everything. There are no poetic, metaphorical planes in Rifts.

4. Instead of portals, Rifts had, naturally enough, rifts. You could have portals, rifts, Myst books, whatever. But for that Rifts feel, you have to make them common enough for large amounts of creatures to go through by accident.

Presumably, you could preserve the evil leads to hell and good leads to heaven aspect by allowing random dimensional warps to suck away people that would fit in better in another plane. Ultimately you may find that it's not as important with the planes set up this way. The bad guys reincarnate in hell. The good guys reincarnate in heaven. Those reserved go somewhere in between. Now they can decide all over again to be good, neutral, or evil, and what they decide will determine where they spend their next life. (In Palladium PCs and important NPCs weren't allowed to be neutral. They had to be good, selfish or evil.)

Kult

This game is amazing. Man oh man, Europeans really got the jump on us Americans when it comes to thoughtful well written games that touch on religion and philosophy. Kult is a game about Gnosticism gone wrong. It is set in this world, but this is the horrible world that the Demiurge created. It is in this world that we are trapped. Now the Demiurge has gone missing and things are falling apart.

In a Kult style game there are four other planes, Inferno, Paradise, Metropolis, and Gaia. These planes function much like inner planes, but there are no outer planes. People are born, die, go to heaven or hell, are reborn, or put to work maintaining the illusion, etc. This is all part of the trap. None of it is real. It's all the illusion. Everyone is immortal. Everyone is a god. Fortunately this is seldom part of the game. Mostly characters muddle through the crumbling illusion, meeting angels, ghosts, and demons, occasionally stumbling through the barriers that seperate the illusion from one of the other planes.

To really capture that Kult feel, every character should have a Mental Balance stat. It starts at zero, and the more out of whack it becomes, the more saintly (higher mental balance), or the more fiendish (lower negative mental balance) the character becomes. At high or low mental balance the character will have a lot of trouble fitting into the illusion. Saintly characters will have a hard time engaging in violence. Fiendish characters will have a hard time stopping their rampages. At very high or low mental balance scores, the illusion will start to make allowances for the character. At extreme mental balance scores, time and space will bend and warp depending on the character's mood. Finally the illusion will shatter and the character will again realize his true divine nature, independent of the illusion, time, or space.

7^th Circle are the producers of Kult, but for a long time this game was out of print, supported by fans sites, here and here.

World of Darkness

If there was ever a definitive game about trudging around the afterlife this was it. All the characters were dead. Unfortunately they arrive in an underworld that's a bit of a shambles and ready to fall apart. They don't get their just reward. In fact, they're lucky if anyone seems particularly interested in them. Or sometimes, interest is unlucky.

Each character gets a number of ghostly powers (arcanos), things that the character is attached to (fetters), and desires (passions). Each character also has a personal villain of sorts, that is, himself. This villain is called the character's shadow. The shadow has desires that represent those things the character wants, but doesn't want to admit to himself (dark passions), and the shadow has dark powers (thorns).

It's important to understand Wraith to write a campaign in this style. The key thing is that the wraith and the shadow are one character. The wraith gathers pathos, and the shadow gathers angst. The wraith seeks safety, and the shadow seeks shame. The wraith wants stability and to continue his existence this way forever, and the shadow seeks insanity and oblivion. Neither will accomplish anything without the other. Without the shadow the wraith would stay chained to its fetters, ideas of who it is, and ultimately may end up in chains in a necropolis. Without the wraith, the shadow would quickly destroy itself. The job of the player is to navigate this whole character through these two extremes to accomplish fulfilling goals.

To run a Wraith-style planar dominion campaign, all the PCs are presumed to be dead. Each character also has a destructive alter ego. The kinds of thing the alter ego are capable of are left up to you. If you own wraith you can adapt it directly, or you can come up with your own rules. I think if I were doing it, as a base I would adapt the rules for dark passions, angst, shadow dice, and catharsis. Everything else is just clever details.

Changeling, The Dreaming

I had a hard time understanding Changeling. Part of the reason is my own failing. I had played Mage quite a bit, and I was spoiled. A carefully constructed Mage character can start out rather powerful. The conflict that mages are a part of dictates the nature of reality. Compared to Mage, Changeling seemed like it should have been a game called SCA on LSD.

But one day I had a dream about Changeling. I'd never played the game. It was just a dream. I dreamt that as I walked home (I lived in Jersey City at the time and walked from the Path station), I ate pistachio nuts and dropped the shells on the ground. Then when I got home I hung up my jacket in my closet, with the few remaining pistachios in the pocket and went to sleep. Then in the night I was awoken by an ugly little goblin going through my closet. I wasn't that scared, but I yelled because I needed to know what was going on. But the goblin was scared. She, because she was a little girl goblin, just wanted more pistachio shells. She didn't like eating the nuts. Because she was a monster, she didn't like normal food. She liked monster food, which is the opposite of normal food. Then I realized that she was a redcap, and that she was having fun being a monster, because she's one of those little girls that likes being contrary. And I realized that I liked being contrary, so I liked her. Then we finished off the remainder of the pistachios together.

When I woke up I told my friend about the dream, that the little girl liked being a redcap, because she was a changeling, and that redcaps were also all about creativity and joy. The fomori, from Freak Legion were exactly the opposite from changelings because fomori were all about rage and frustration, which is what attracts the bane spirits to corrupt the poor souls in the first place. Rage is the opposite of joy, and frustration is the opposite of creativity.

But he told me I had it all wrong. Redcaps were defined by their hunger. They certainly weren't happy about being hungry all the time. And the fomori from Freak Legion were different from the fomori that would eventually be introduced for Changeling. When he told me that, I was really disappointed because I thought I finally understood why he liked that weird game.

So because of my lack of understanding of this game, I'm probably not the best person to tell anyone how to create a planar dominion inspired by Changeling. But in some ways Changeling is similar to Planar Dominions. Characters can get to dream realms, and interact with their own dreams and fantasies. Characters can face and defeat their fears and nightmares. So if someone was really insistent, I might do something like this:

All the characters are normal children who also have a fairy form that they assume when they're in the planes. This fairy form is generated normally. (It's kind of like generating a fox character. You generate a character normally, but in certain circumstances you lose access to certain skills because in those circumstances, you're just a fox.) On the Material Plane the character is usually a child, and loses access to Witchcraft, Priestcraft, and Combat Skills (except Movement). The character's Withstand Injury is unaffected, but the character's Injury stat is reduced to zero (meaning no leeway; each injury point produces a penalty). There's no reason characters need to restrict themselves to the types of fairies presented in Changeling. New types of fairies were added numerous times (nunnehi, unseelie, inanimae, etc.)

Because each character is actually a child, they find different things Distracting and Frightening than adults do. Greyface is just as Frightening, but Succubi are generally not Distracting. I remember being a kid. Sneaking around and digging up my dad's old playboy magazines was interesting and fun, but not the distraction that pornography would become later in my life. However, children would find toys very Distracting. Whenever a PC fails a fear or distraction check specific to her childlike nature, then she reverts to her child form, until she can accomplish something important as a child (GM and other players make the call together), or retreat to safety.

The goal of the campaign is to defeat demons and dream monsters that make the character's life unpleasant in the material world. A character that wants to blow off homework and play would have a reoccurring villain that's a tempter demon that tries to waste the character's time. A character that tries to be too grown up and too serious all the time would have a reoccurring villain from the ranks of Greyface. Then they have to defeat the monster that makes mommy drink. It could be an evil Djinn. They also have to help daddy fight the cold that's got him.

Werewolf, The Apocalypse

This was actually a pretty strait-forward game. All the characters were people that could change into some horrible giant animal form. They could all also "step sideways", meaning physically enter the spirit world. Much of the action of the game could easily take place in the spirit world, and spirit creatures were an important part of the game.

To run a Werewolf-style planar dominion simply allow each player to generate at least three characters, a human form, an animal form, and at least one in between. In Werewolf, The Apocalypse, characters had 5 forms. The characters don't have to be wolves. Supplemental Breed Books introduced cats, bears, snakes, spiders, sharks, etc. Also, give each character a Dream Movement stat of 1, which they can increase normally, and allow them a bonus of 1 if using a mirror during the attempt. On a 12 the mirror breaks, or if using some other reflective surface it is fouled so as to no longer produce a reflection, or if not using a reflection at all, the were-creature is lost for 1 to 12 hours in the spirit world before realizing where he is. Also, all the characters will be Witches, but must learn specific spells from the spirits that they meet.

Of course, having three or more character sheets, each with their own Skill stats, some of which will contain Beast Skills, is a great advantage, but advancement for such a character can be a tad slow since each form must be improved separately.

Mummy, The Resurrection

This is another strait-forward game. One or more of the characters (this game lent itself to cross overs) was an immortal being. Every time the character dies, the character's soul returns to the underworld for a time. When finished, the soul returns to the body, patches it back up, and it comes back alive. Thus the game has two parts, the soul trudging around the underworld gathering what it needs to restore the body to life, and the soul back in the body, doing whatever it is it needed to do for all time. In Mummy, The Resurrection, that was hunt and kill vampires.

Mage, The Ascension

I admit, I have an inner munchkin, and it loved playing this game. The point of the game was to play a character on his way to arhat-hood, who, in the mean time, got the occasional chance to stick it to the guys who hijacked reality away from him.

There were really only three differences between the standard fantasy campaign and Mage.

1. Scale: Mages were far more powerful than witches or wizards usually are in fantasy campaigns.
2. Opposition: There were these enemies that were able to do the same things that mages could do, but they used technological super gadgets.
3. Subtlety: Obvious magic could hurt mages, cause unpleasant side effects, or attract paradox spirits

In any planar dominion, with all the surreal antics that come standard and all the factions trying to each remake reality in their image, to be honest, any elements from Mage that you might add, wouldn't be noticed.

Kill Puppies for Satan

I am such a scumbag. Once upon a time I lived in a city where 3000 people were killed all at once and this made the rest of the dozen or so million of them absolutely crazy, me included. My job really sucked, but the economy really sucked so I was lucky to have that job, and New York was really going down like it did back in the 70s, except now we had armed soldiers in the streets with assault rifles. I'm too young to remember the 70s, but I heard that if unemployment kept going up it would soon be back at that level.

Then when I was feeling really bad I read an excerpt from this game that seemed like it was written by this totally abusive jerk. But I'm from the Jersey Shore, so this guy was my hero. He was saying everything that I wished I had been saying. So I e-mailed him and he sent me a copy of his game for free, and I was on the honor system to paypal $5 to him.

And I never did. And I kept saying to myself that I should but I still haven't. So of course I'll invite him here to read this web site, but I owe him so I have to give him kudos, and links (and eventually $5). And even though I now live in Atlanta, which might as well be Firdous for how it compares to New York City, I still remember how that game let me know I wasn't crazy. Other people also get just as upset as I was. He, evidently, did. If he's ever in Atlanta, maybe I'll buy him lunch.

And since we're on the topic of touring the afterlife, 4 evil (that's 4 puppies done quickly or one puppy and a lot of creativity) and a lesser satanic ritual will get your characters a tour of hell, a la Divina Comedia. So Kill Puppies for Satan is technically a planar role playing game.

Unfortunately, there is no way to run a planar dominion campaign inspired by Kill Puppies for Satan, unless all the PCs are pathetic losers, working for the forces of evil and you make them recover Fervor, Zeal, Spell Points, Gnosis, etc. by sacrificing other people's pets.

But anyway, hit this web site. It would be hypocritical of me to tell you to pay $10 (the current rate) to get Kill Puppies for Satan, but I would have, if I had to. And while you're there, get Cheap and Cheesy (which is in actuality neither, unless the fact that it's free counts as cheap).

A Few Other Games

First, Little Fears is an amazing game. I'm not quite sure how I would play it. My gut reaction is to play Baby Cthulhu with it, because the villains are so cool, but the characters are a bit detailed, so coming up with new ones every few adventures might get tedious. I can't help it though. It probably says something bad about me as a person but I would want to play an eight-year-old kid struggling to avoid having her face peeled off by some demon king, only to eventually go crazy and be flayed. That would be so CREEPY!

However, that might get old quick, so you'd occasionally want to pull a Musashi, and go Lord of the Flies on some horrible monster. Musashi wrote the book of five rings, and at 13, he'd already killed an armed adult samurai, by beating him to death with a stick. I don't think the game really allows for much of that kind of thing however. If the characters go around carrying a butcher's knife, like in American McGee's Alice they lose innocence very quickly, and the monsters want that, because without innocence, the characters can't go into Closetland (hell) and mess with them anymore.

In planar dominions, I include some rules for getting around dreamscapes, using the Skills Lucid Dreaming, Oneiromancy, Authority, Communion, etc. So all of this stuff is already part of the game. The only thing one would have to add to have a campaign similar to Dreamwalker would be parasitic dream monsters, The Taenia Spiritus. But also, the Dreamlands (Empyrean in that game) are a bit more detailed in certain ways than the Dreamlands in Kharlo Chenpo, so if you're interested then drop $5 on these people too. It will but them lunch and you'll feel good about supporting the indie game design industry.

Deeper Dream is another game about mucking about in people's dreams. As far as I know it's not finished, but it has some very interesting stats and skills. One thing is that because some characters won't be physical at all, and so little of the action takes place in the physical world, there is only one stat for physical ability. The setting is sketchy to non-existent, and there is no implication that it would be anything unique for this type of game, so there would be no such thing as planar dominion campaign inspired by Deeper Dream. What is noteworthy is the list of stats and skills. It might be worth adapting your favorite generic mechanics to use those stats and skills to finish the game. A few options might be Fudge, Mnemonic, Alternate Realities, The Window, or Action! System.

Ghostlight is another one of those interesting games where the players don't get physical stats. It's worth a read just for that. But there is an idea that might add an interesting slant to a planar dominion in this game, and that is that in Ghostlight, there were all these different Shrouds that represented different ways of looking at the world. For instance a colonist that died might enter a jungle and the shroud that the colonist has access to is the jungle as a deadly wilderness bereft of people or inhabitability. But if another ghost could teach him to see the jungle differently, he would be able to access a different shroud that would contain all the necessities of life, and that would be where he could find the ghosts of the native peoples. If you choose to include an idea similar to this, think about how the factions would try to take advantage of it.

Adventures

The PCs meet the patron god of DJs, DJ 4x4. He is encountered coming down the street in a parade. He has blue black skin and four faces on his head, one face towards each of the cardinal directions. He has four arms, and he uses them to operated four turntables, from aboard a magic carpet. Each turntable (these are old style turntables, the campaign has no electric amps and speakers) has an enchanted horn that looks like a swirling ram's horn and increases the volume of the music tremendously. The music is booming through the streets, and is so lofty that everyone who hears it wants to dance. He recognizes the PCs, even if they don't recognize him. He motions to invite them up onto his magic carpet, or sends someone to yell in their ears to go up.

DJ 4x4 uses his power to talk to the players despite the lofty booming music.

"Tinkers have been experimenting with different ways to record sound, words, and music, and enchanters have devised these magic horns that sound very loudly. My worshipers have used them together to entertain the people of this city. But now my church is threatened. Newcomers, with hearts and stacks filled with evil music, have taken up the horn and the turntable. They will seek to play their music at the dance halls and clubs of this fine city. I have seen your appreciation for these lofty beats, and find you worthy. Please accompany my priests and save the city from a hell of unworthy DJs."

So the PCs team up with a number of priest / disk jockeys and hit a number of clubs and dance halls to prevent the evil DJs from playing their evil music. If any of the PCs can dance well, this is a great opportunity for them to show off. If any of the PCs can play a musical instrument they might accompany a DJ in his set. Think Sugar Craft or Church of Logic (by Medeski, Martin, and Wood, with DJ Logic. They also did a great cover of Crosstown Traffic.) Of course there will be fighting, unless the PCs can negotiate with, or trick the evil DJs, because the evil DJs won't go away willingly.

Saving a dance hall from bad and / or evil music is a great way to hook up, so let at least one of the PCs meet someone that seems very cool, useful, and helpful. (You can say he or she is cute, but I think that matters a lot less in a RPG.) Then the PCs are off, because they have to save the rest of the city. But they can arrange to meet that special someone at a different club that they will be hitting later. But when they get there, the PCs are too late. The evil DJs played their evil music and the whole club was dragged away to hell.

If the PCs are up to it, have them find out which hell it was. Perhaps witnesses can describe the music, and DJ 4x4's priests will know where to look. Perhaps they can capture an evil DJ and get it out of him. Then they need to find a portal. Then they can go to hell to rescue the abducted celebrants. If the PCs aren't powerful, clever, and confident enough to face fiends on their home turf, or if they've already taken a serious beating, they can be healed or reinforced by more DJ priests, or DJ 4x4 can perform some holy miracle where he retrieves the people from hell.

A passion play might be nice in that situation. DJ 4x4 screws up "is riding a dying horse" (in the real world mismatching the rhythm of songs is called "washing sneakers"), and the people choose an evil DJ to play their music. The whole club goes to hell, including DJ 4x4, but before the morning DJ 4x4 returns from hell with both clubs!

Ideally, when the PCs return to DJ 4x4 to report their failure, that is when DJ 4x4 "is crucified". That way the PCs are now in hell with DJ 4x4 and his priests. Then the PCs need to find the other club and return to DJ 4x4 with the other people. Then DJ 4x4 can rise triumphantly over the club with his magic carpet and four turntables spinning at once, and return everyone safely to their home.

If the PCs have a really hard time with this adventure then only do one club in an evening of game time. They could do two clubs, Friday night and Saturday night, then rest for the week, and then do two more clubs next weekend. This adventure lasts as long as it remains interesting. If the GM is very creative then the players might really like the NPC priests or the NPCs that the PCs are saving. They might face some outrageous fashion diva badguys with unusual tactics. Villains that the players really like should make encore appearances. If using the Down Time Rules then keep the duration of the adventure to less than 12 weekends (one season).

If any of the PCs played along with the DJs, then they may be asked to have their music recorded by the church, and they might earn some royalties or at least gain some fame. For participating in this adventure the PCs could get paid, or simply receive the eternal gratitude of (i.e. honorary membership to) the Church of DJ 4x4.

I can't take credit for DJ 4x4. My friend Kasmore Rhedrick made him up for a poem.

The old Lost Memory routine

The players are befriended by or hired by someone who can't remember their own name. This person has some special item or is rich or is extremely well equipped, or has some special ability or power. Maybe the person can't die, or was carrying lots of weapons that were concealed as something else (spy or assassin gear), or was carrying lots of expensive jewelry, or maybe was carrying a unique magical device.

So the PCs have to piece together the clues. Maybe they have a letter, a piece of a journal, a tattoo, etc. People may have known the amnesiac. Some people don't want to admit it though. Some people will admit to knowing the character even if they didn't. And there's no reason why material clues can't be red herrings as well.

In Torment, the amnesiac protagonist lost his memory periodically, after receiving the occasional severe beat-down. So when investigating his past life, he found clues from more than one life, that often contradicted each other.

Only write one Lost Memory adventure for each campaign, unless you want the players to feel like the planes are full of bubbly mind-shattered amnesiacs. If you're trying to give the planes a Cthulhu feel, then you might like that.

Personally I was disappointed with the end of Torment. I had such a great time playing that game that even though I knew the end was approaching, I held out a hope that he didn't remove his soul and lose his mind to escape hell. I wanted to think that he removed his soul to perform some, as yet unfinished amazing quest, that he could only accomplish if he was unkillable and his soul was elsewhere. Of course, there was no quest.

But this is the beauty of a role playing game over a computer game. Once the PCs find out who the amnesiac is, they could find out what the amnesiac was doing, and finishing that task may be another adventure, unless of course the amnesiac now disagrees with what he was doing back then. In that case, undoing what the amnesiac did may be a good follow up quest.

Drugs in Heaven

This is a weird topic. If someone is good and helps people and believes in god and goes to church, you would expect her to go to Heaven, right? But on Earth, this person really loved original recipe Coca Cola (which contained cocaine), and when she gets to Heaven and she doesn't find any cocaine, well, she's a little disappointed. The Muslims in the next heaven over get a whole river of wine; I mean, come on!

In my planar dominion, Kharlo Chenpo, there are drugs. There is a whole plane that is a little lawful but mostly evil, set aside for addiction, Engour.

But this isn't Cyberpunk. You won't find any rules here to for biochemistry. Drugs are ordinary (coco, tea, coffee, tobacco), or bad (heroin, opium, cocaine, LSD), or at best impair you enough so you can be entertained on a lot less (alcohol, marijuana, peyote). Certain brews and mixtures might be magical, but if you want it to be possible for characters to get addicted to healing potions then that's something for you to make up the rules for. Check out Rolemaster, by Iron Crown Enterprises. That game has some rules for stuff like that. E-mail me to tell me how it went. This might be interesting.

But here, I just want to mention that there are drugs among the planes. Because there are some interesting adventures that could spring from that fact.

Less good or scrupulous characters might try to gain some notoriety or money by smuggling drugs out of Engour. Not only would the law enforcement of the intended market try to stop them, but the authorities of any area that the goods pass through will try to stop the goods or demand steep bribes or taxes if they discover the nature of the cargo. Established avenues of supply may also be threatened by a new group of smugglers, so the PCs will have to watch out for other smugglers or drug dealers as well.

Good and scrupulous characters may find the number of souls emigrating to Engour, and seek to put a stop to it. They would have to find the people distributing the Engourish drugs and stop them, as well as find the clientele, and find ways to encourage them to stay where they are and not go to hell.

But dealing or smuggling drugs is a big investment of time and money. The characters may not want to get that involved. Another route to take is for the characters to befriend someone who is dealing drugs and for that character to disappear just when the characters need him (possibly for something entirely different). Now the characters have to root around in their friend's seedy drug underworld to find out why he's missing, dead, in hiding, or whatever.

Or the characters may be friends with the opposition. A city guard and friend of the PCs, who's trying to stop drug trafficking has gone missing. Maybe the disappearance has nothing to do with the drug trade, but maybe the investigator got too close to someone too powerful.

Of course the most classic drug story is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. See, Project Gutenberg does have some good stuff.

As an adventure, it starts out without the players unaware that it has anything to do with drugs, but as it continues the players come full circle and find that some "medicine" that one of the players or a close NPC is taking, is bringing out a totally different alter ego within the person who is committing the crimes or doing whatever mysterious thing the PCs are investigating.

To really give the players a dilemma and make them think about their actions have the Jekyll character be a rather shy person. Then have his Hyde persona be a mysterious champion of justice that does stuff that has the Jekyll a nervous wreck of worry and anxiety. Do the players deprive the world of this hero of law and order? Or will they decide to help their friend?

Hey, Wha Happened?

I guess that title isn't funny unless you've seen A Mighty Wind.

This adventure can take place anywhere. The point of it is that the PCs weren't expecting the adventure. It just kinds of happens to them or their friends. Wherever the characters are hanging out; it blows up. No one can remember why or how.

Download the Planar Gods file with rules detailing possible powers to assign to gods in a planar dominion. There's a Divine Skill Stat there, called Obscurity. What happened was that two gods had it out and the characters got caught in the crossfire. But one or both of the gods had a really high Obscurity stat. If the PCs investigate they can't find anything. In fact, as they dig deeper they start to experience lost time, and can't remember what they did for whole chunks of the day or week. But if they start to investigate themselves, what they did during that missing time, then they can find out who they talked to and what they read. Then they might be able to guess who would be in the know.

If they can convince someone that they would be useful, then they can get past the veil of Obscurity surrounding the events. But because of all the secrecy, the PCs would not know right away if they're on the right side. Are they now serving a god who tried to kill them at the beginning of the adventure? Or are they serving the god who tried to stop it from happening? Or was the explosion just an accident? Is there no good guy here? Maybe the PCs can find a way to help one god against the other, or find a way to take them both down. They might need some help. And remember, a PC can't even write or speak a god's name without the god seeing or hearing it, so it may be a number of adventures before the PCs can get everything arranged for them to get the payback they want.

Who's got the button?

This is a pretty standard chase adventure. The characters are asked to retrieve something or someone. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe it was accidentally left behind, maybe intentionally. Maybe whoever was bringing it, only made it half way.

When the player characters arrive at the last known location of the objective, it's not there. Now the PCs have to uncover the clues as to where it went or who has it. When they get to that location, it's not there. Now the PCs have to uncover the clues as to where it went or who has it next. Iterate as needed.

This is another of those adventures that lasts only as long as it remains interesting. If the PCs are racing after an ancient holy treasure and they have to find it before an evil cult, a mercenary, and a rich collector then it might just last one evening. If the PCs are trying to save princess Bizhina, lost in Kevna, then they might meet all sorts of fascinating demons along the way, who will each "help" the PCs if they do something in return. This could last many evenings of real time, and by the end of it the PCs or the princess might have actually or just feel like they sold their souls.

When you want to tie up the adventure and put the time crunch on the PCs, have the objective fall into the hands of someone that will return the item, at a ridiculous price, or in pieces, or in some other unpleasant manner. Then the PCs can go there to find a way to get the item in a more agreeable manner (using the standard tools of PCs, negotiation, trickery, or violence).

An especially cruel GM may want to set the PCs up for a showdown once, and then when the PCs get there, the objective is gone, or has been moved again. Then the PCs are back in the chase. Don't do it a second time though. It's funny the first time. "Reshai Bang! has the princess and he sent a letter to her father telling him that once the princess is fully a demon, he would send her to claim her own father's soul." But once the PCs get to Reshai Bang!'s place (creepy!) he's had a change of heart (as usual) and gave her to some circus folk who needed a stable hand. Maybe one of the PCs should go back to calm down her father.

Closing up Shop

Often PCs can succeed at an adventure through sheer determination. The PCs go up against odds that they can't match, because they're fighting for the underdog against a great evil. GMs generally don't like to kill PCs for being virtuous, so the GM will arrange, through some coincidence, for the PCs to be spared or escape from the clutches of the powerful enemies. Eventually, enough of this can wear down the most powerful villains.

So it's a good idea to sometimes lower the stakes. In this adventure, the PCs are trying to save a friend's business. Their favorite pub or mah jhong house or pizza shop or beer garden or cafe or etc. has lost a lot of business. The PCs have to find out why people stopped coming and encourage them to do so again. They may have to outdo the competition, which would create an interesting contest to create the most amazing attraction. Be careful that the place doesn't become too amazing. Outshining a nearby temple may anger a god. Their favorite business may become so majestic that it attracts a cult who start to perform their austerities right on the premises, causing a whole new set of problems.

Perhaps the problem is only temporary. The proprietor always has a slow time this time of year, but this year, there are unexpected expenses, a tax hike, a rent increase, or something, and if he can't get his hands on a large sum of money quickly then he'll loose his lease. If the PCs have a treasure map lying around then they could try to raise the money that way. Otherwise they may attempt something in the neighborhood. Maybe they appeal to the community.

Ultimately the PCs may not be able to attract new business or raise the money quickly enough. It's too bad, but they'll just have to find a new place to hang out. A series of adventures following this one could all start in some new place where the PCs are trying to relax, but an adventure always happens and that sours the place, so the PCs have to move on to another place to hang out. "Why don't we hang out in Warde's any more?" "The bartender is a fallen angel and the rest of her angelic host keep trying to get us to do stuff to redeem her." "Why don't we hang out in that ratskeller anymore?" "The priestess of Natarani that sings there keeps geasing us to go on quests for her." It may be quite a while before the PCs find someplace to relax again.

Did You Bring the Whatzits?

Somehow the PCs get roped into bringing a shipment from one place to another. This is a good opportunity to show off some of the interesting planes to the PCs, but they are not meant to bring the cargo to the destination. The cargo is insured, and defective. So if it reaches market it will not sell and the merchants will lose their money. If it is lost in shipment then they can at least recover what they paid for the goods.

So as soon as the PCs take possession of the goods they will begin to be plagued by misfortune, sick animals, leaky ships, bad weather, hostile natives, disease, poorly made and old maps or directions, etc.

If the PCs deal successfully with all that then the merchants may actually pay bandits to steal the cargo from the PCs and destroy it. Or they may put some other people in jeopardy to distract the PCs so that the bandits can steal and destroy the goods without a fight. The merchants may also distract the PCs with hospitality. Perhaps the locals show the PCs a very good time at one of their stop overs, and when they awaken, hung over and exhausted, they find their cargo gone.

The players have to be good sports for this kind of adventure. Players don't like being kept in the dark. And after all, you are out to get them this time around, so when they accuse you of being an adversarial GM, it's entirely valid. They might forgive you if you let them figure it out so that the PCs can show up on the doorstep of their employers, dirty and angry, and dish out some justice.

Of course, if the PCs manage to handle everything you throw at them, then they can arrive with the cargo and then you can reveal the truth, and the fact that they caused the merchants to lose so much money may be reward enough for all the trouble they went through getting it there.

Did you bring the Hoozits?

As you may be now surmising, getting goods from one plane to another, or from one part of one plane to another part of the same plane may be quite difficult. Characters that can move quickly and reliably will be in high demand and will be paid highly. Managing shipments is big business. The difficulty is further compounded by the necessity to move goods by different means to get them to different places.

For instance, a shipment may need to be transported by ship for part of its journey. For another part it may need to go by caravan. But then the goods need to pass through a portal that only thinking beings may pass through, so all the goods need to be loaded off the animals and carried through the portal. Fortunately there's a train station near the exit from that portal, so the goods need not be carried far before being loaded on a train. At the end of the train line the fastest way to go is for the goods to be loaded onto a sky ship or dirigible. But if no air transport is available, then the goods could go by caravan again, over the mountains. Etc, etc.

And all of that is assuming that the cargo itself doesn't give the PCs any problems. The cargo could spoil if transported too slowly or handled incorrectly. The cargo could seem spoiled and inedible even if it is still good (durians). The shipment could be infested with harmful bugs or vermin. The bugs or vermin could be the shipment, and the PCs don't know that the other stuff is just food for the critters. The cargo could be illegal to own or transport at the destination or at certain points along the destination. If the PCs know, then they can take precautions against being discovered by the authorities, or they can take the goods by some other rout. The characters could be transporting the goods for someone else who dies, goes missing, or loses interest in the shipment before it arrives.

There is also no guarantee that the PCs will have all the information or the proper information to transport the goods successfully. They could be told that the shipment is illegal at its destination, and decide not to take it, thus losing out on a profitable venture. They could be told that the shipment is perfectly legal at its destination, and then be arrested by the police. They could fail to get instructions on the proper handling of the shipment and thus ruin it before it arrives. The PCs may not even know how the shipment is supposed to look, sound, or smell if it is good, so they may not know when it is ruined.

The PCs could be in competition with another party also attempting to move goods to a certain location. For instance, the PCs might be moving weapons to Redhell to help one of the Blood Kings fight Greyface colonialism. But by the time they get there with the weapons, they find that another arms dealer has already arrived with more cheaper and better weapons. If the other merchant shipped enough to eliminate the demand, then the PCs are going to have to take their weapons back.

Even if PCs don't want to make a career out of shipping, it's often a good idea to involve the PCs occasionally. There is often not a better way to learn the reliable portal routs than to hook up with shipping managers or caravans.

These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For

PC have weird lusts that normal people just don't have. Normal people want wine, women, and song. Normal people want a house, a wife, two kids, a minivan, and a hemi pickup truck. Normal people want a job that pays them at east $100,000 a year. PCs want a +5 sword and a treasure map.

Well just the same way I have yet to be paid $100,000 a year, sometimes the PCs can't have what they want.

This adventure should be run if the PCs decided to do some research to find a specific thing, or if they've just been too good at collecting stuff. Sometimes PCs will rob their fallen foes with such regularity that you wonder if it would be justifiable for you to lower the price of weapons in the campaign, since there's been such a glut in the market. And now you need to really stick it too them.

Don't just stick it to them out of the blue. Of course warn them. Have at least one NPC tell the PCs, "Don't go on this adventure." "This bold endeavor is better left undone." This should be nobody is a position of authority over the PCs. The choice should remain entirely their own.

Prepare another adventure, just in case the PCs take the hint. If your players are anything like me and my friends, then they don't need to be told twice not to do something dangerous. "You heard the man. He said, 'Do not recover the lost sword of Kualatec.' Well then, on to easier scores."

But if they do not take the hint, the adventure consists of two things.

1. Hit them with all you've got.

2. Curse the goal of the adventure.

Nobody wants the PCs to succeed, so the PCs should encounter every difficulty you can think of. They should have to bribe everybody and then all their grandmothers. This adventure should absolutely ruin the PCs. Ideally, the PCs should start the adventure, realize its a losing proposition and turn back, but always keep an ear open to anyone who may know a way to accomplish this legendary "impossible" mission.

Of course, they could return home broken men.

Or they could beat everything you throw at them. But then not really enjoy what they've won. After all, they were warned. Now they have a cursed intelligent malevolent sword that will hurl fireballs at them if they attempt to abandon it, and it demands the occasional ritualistic murder. The weapon can dream travel so every time they die, they padmasambhava with it. They can't get rid of it!

Maybe that old guy that warned us knows how we can put it back. You stay here and don't let the sword catch on that we're trying to ditch it.

Don't Mind Us (Just Passing Through)

Don't you just hate it when the PCs do everything inappropriately dressed? They wear plate armor down to the corner pub. One might go to the bathroom at the pizzeria with his magic polearm slung across his back. Another might have a priceless, enchanted, demon necklace that glows with malevolent power, and she wears it while babysitting for her sister. The party might go hiking while wearing their full armor, and at the end of the day when you figure they must be hot and tired from hiking in armor all day, when they're attacked by bandits and you give them penalties for their idiocy, the players protest with, "But there's no rule that says that."

So hit them with a few adventures to make them get in the habit of wearing armor and carrying large weapons only when appropriate.

1. The characters have a late night meeting at a palace or temple or wherever, someplace with good security. Ask the players exactly what they're taking with them. The PCs will not be able to take weapons or armor inside the temple or palace or wherever. On the way there, the characters will be attacked by a couple of brigands. Heavily armed and armored characters will be able to dispatch these brigands with ease, and it will make them feel good about going to the palace with all their armor on. Less well armed characters will have a bit more of a challenge, but the PCs aren't expected to lose this fight. Once they arrive they will be deprived of all their arms and armor, naturally, since security is very tight here.

   Then they have their meeting and leave. On the way out the guards fully intend to return their equipment to them, but it's gone. It's been stolen or they lost it or something. The characters can raise whatever fuss they want. They can't get their stuff back or be recompensed tonight. The church or noble or whomever will replace their lost equipment, except for magic items, in a few days. (Please, they were going to meet a VIP. They knew they would have to check it. Why did they decide to bring their magic items?) In the meantime it is even later at night and the characters now have to walk home unarmed and unarmored. Characters who brawled or knifed the brigands earlier won't be harassed on the way home. (They look just as tough as before.) Characters that are noticeably unequipped will be subject to an extra attack. ("Not so tough now, are you, without your magic sword and armor?")

2. The characters have to sneak in somewhere and steal something that is very fragile, and of worth only to a rather limited clientele. It could be a unique piece of origami or other work of art, or an old book or poem. There is no reason to expect it to be guarded. Perhaps the building could be abandoned. Perhaps the building could be a restaurant or factory or store or temple that closes in the evening. When the PCs break in they find the place is being used to house meetings for some big baddies.

   If the PCs busted the door down the baddies will be terribly upset and throw them out on their ears. If the PCs are famous do gooders or heavily armed then the baddies will attempt to capture or kill them. Of course, if the PCs exercise caution and operate with discretion then they should be able to get in and get out right past the baddies, or to wait until the meeting is over and then get the stuff. To exercise caution, the PCs will have to "case the joint", meaning hang out inconspicuously for some time in front of their target. Then they will notice the baddies coming and going and they will know about the meeting. To operate with discretion, the PCs will have to get in through a window even though they "know" the place is empty. Presumably they don't want to leave a mess, make a lot of noise in the neighborhood, and a lot of clues for the police. Once in through a window they will be able to hear the meeting going on and they can lay low for a while. Even if the baddies find them having broken in through a window, the baddies will question them, and if the PCs are honest, the baddies will give them what they came for and extract promises that the PCs keep their mouths shut. If the PCs broke in though a window and the baddies find them, and the PCs are well armed and fully armored then the baddies will assume that the PCs are assassins and try to kill them.

3. While the PCs are en rout to somewhere else, bandits spy them. If the PCs aren't wearing their armor, the bandits attack immediately. If the PCs are wearing their armor, then the bandits will wait until the PCs make camp for the evening. It would be better for the PCs to fight when fresh, than for them to be ambushed while most of them are sleeping.

I hope you remember that line from Conan the Barbarian, when King Osric said, "There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father's love for his child."

In this adventure the players are asked to intercede for a father with his child. The child has joined a faction or sect that is diametrically opposed to the faction of the father. If you add sects to the campaign and take away sects occasionally then you could add a new sect for this adventure. That would make the credibility of the sect suspect.

We all know the stereotype, that the father's sect would be one of law and order and the child would have joined a chaotic or unusual sect, but to add an interesting twist, have the situation reversed. The father is in a sect like the Doomguard or the Ciphers, and the child joins up with the Leatherheads or Guvners or some such organized lawful bunch. The father claims that the child has been brainwashed, etc, etc.

This could go down exactly the Conan way, i.e. the PCs break in get the kid (young adult) and break out chased by the faction, who may or may not be baddies. Or it could be handled a number of other interesting ways. My favorite is for the PCs to approach the kid at some outreach function, someplace with pretty lax security, but the sect gets wise to what the PCs are doing, and they amass en force at the exits. Then the PCs try to talk to the kid, and get the kid to go home to the father. If they fail with words, they may just have to knock the kid out and carry the kid home. But of course the sect will not let the PCs out with their newest member. And here's the interesting part: a PC who's a skilled debater will be able to talk their way out of trouble. Don't just do it with rolls. Rolls are good, but make the players come up with some points of philosophy. "Total law is impossible to establish. We all eventually get old, get sick, and die. There is no way to control that." "Impermanence is one of the laws of the universe, immutable, unbreakable. We do not pass laws; we discover them." Etc, etc.

Of course, PCs with low Philosophy stats, and players who lack interest in debate will have to fight their way out. The sect security, even if chaotic or unusual will fight as a team, which means that the PCs will have to fight as a team and use group tactics as much as possible to win the day. (One person Blocks and Protects while the other just Strikes. Combat in Dominion Rules is extremely exciting. It's like Riddle of Steal without the annoyance of dice pools.)

And it may be annoying, but it would be realistic if the father and child fail to resolve anything once reunited. They simply have two different points of view. Even if they can admit that they love each other, they may not be able to abandon their respective beliefs. The conflict could crop up again, or the PCs, by bringing the two together, and at least trying to help, may have earned themselves two allies on both sides of the fence. The next time the GM needs a deus ex machina, the PCs may meet the father or child and they repay the favor that the PCs did by trying to help them resolve their differences.

Star Crossed Lovers

Of course the previous adventure presumes that the father would respect the child's wishes, and only wishes to ensure that the child is well and not being taken advantage of. It may be that the father is an oppressive tyrant of a parent and will imprison the child rather than let the sect have their member back.

Then the PCs are contacted by a friend of the child who informs them that their friend or employer (the child's father) is unreasonable, at least, and possibly criminal and evil. Moreover, the child's "friend" is something more than that. The two are lovers, and they want desperately to be reunited and to get back to the work they do with the sect that they had both joined of their own free will.

Hopefully the PCs will feel like total heels, and want to right any wrongs they may have just committed. Perhaps the story of parted lovers will tug at their hearts. If they still won't budge, offer them money or charge them with kidnapping. Cash or the threat of arrest are two great motivators.

Again, conversation may allow the characters to sort things out without any more fuss, but if there's been too much talking, and the players get bored, then the father gets offended, and a duel ensues, or the PCs can't even get in to see the father, so they must sneak or fight their way past the guards just to see the old man. The PCs may try to talk to the old guy, only to have themselves kicked out, so then they'll have to break in and free the kid themselves. They may get kicked out and while preparing for the daring rescue realize that a price has been put on their heads. (It's pretty obvious once a bounty hunter comes at you with a weapon.)

The sect may also be working on their own rescue attempt, with or without the PCs. This may complicate things tremendously, especially if the sect still thinks of the PCs as working for the father. They may end up defending themselves from attacks on all sides. If the PCs want to avoid future harassment, they may have to do something highly impressive to prove that they are also big dogs and not to be trifled with, like defeat a number of big shots in duels or debates, or double cross everyone in very public and embarrassing ways.

Nobility Must Be Served, I Suppose

The player characters receive word that they could do a favor for someone that they were trying to impress. The NPC could be some big shot, or simply some cutie that one of the PCs has been courting. This NPC wants to go on a tour of someplace potentially dangerous, not Hell. That is definitely dangerous. A better place to tour would be some wilderness area of a material plane, or some section of the invisible mazes, or some remote dream realm. The NPC doesn't want to go alone, so if the PCs volunteer to go with the NPC, then they might finally earn that favor they wanted, or get in the NPCs good graces.

Of course once the PCs get there, it definitely does become dangerous, but unexpectedly, the NPC has read up, and usually knows exactly what to do to lessen the danger. Finally, the party is shown a means by which they can escape all the dangers and return home, but at the same time the party is shown a way to accomplish another of their long standing goals. (A legendary magic item is also lost in the jungle and the PCs find a clue to its location. Or some fabulous treasure is in a hidden temple that the PCs could find if they pressed on farther. Or Shangri La awaits. Etc.) The challenges that the PCs will face are:

1. Try not to be pig headed. Realize that they should follow directions.

2. Keep track of each other. Often they will have to separate to accomplish some task that will keep them alive, and they will have to make sure that their friends are OK, off on their own.

3. Don't get greedy. They should quickly catch on that they can't get the treasure. If it takes them a while to learn their lesson then they spend more and more time lost in the wilderness.

But what if the PCs are out in the wilderness on their own? A number of adventures can end with the PCs stranded on some desert island. You could force the PCs to spend their first season in a strange environment "adventuring", before they can take any down time.

Basically this boils down to:

1. What is the weather like? Will the PCs need shelter immediately? Will they need to migrate?

2. What plants are available? Can they be eaten? Do they need to be prepared? How quickly do they grow? Are they useful for other things? Is it necessary for the PCs to leave some plants alone so that other useful plants can continue to thrive? (The PCs can't cut down the trees to build shelters, because then the storms would uproot their food plants that grow in the forest.)

3. What animals are their? Can they be eaten? Do they need to be prepared? How quickly do they reproduce? Are they useful for other things? (Sniffing out other food? Hunting companions? Blubber, oil, bones, leather?) Do the animals carry any disease that might affect the PCs? Will some animals need to be left alone so that the environment will continue to thrive? (The animals pollinate plants. The animals feed on dangerous vermin. In the sci-fi novel Legacy of Herot, the colonists encounter a dangerous animal, and by exterminating it they release a horrible plague of monsters on themselves. Maybe the animals eat a dangerous plant they would quickly choke out all other plant life?

4. Are there natives that could instruct the PCs? Is their language understandable? Can they support the PCs in their community, or will the PCs tax their ability to provide for the population? Will the PCs offend them in some way? (Maybe it's their smell, or their eye color. Maybe the PCs can't use their weird eating utensils properly.)

Dying might help. If the PCs fail the adventure they might just padmasambhava back to Norbu. But there might be something about this place such that if the PCs die then they just wash up back on shore. That would be scary. Imagine dying because you think you'll end up back in your comfortable heaven home, safe, and then washing up on shore after weeks of facing the worst nightmares you've ever had? You stumble back to camp and discover your rotting remains. Now this is scary because you have to figure out the environment and eventually get out of there. If you screw up the environment beyond any ability to support you then you just keep washing up back on shore until you become a lost soul or unskilled vegetable.

This is called the artichoke adventure because if you've never seen an artichoke before it would be very difficult to figure out that they are edible and how to make them edible.

What We'd Do For Love

Have you ever wanted to run your PCs on inscrutable or embarrassing errands? Sometimes they're just asking for it. You know, like when you let slip that such and such person is the princess or that such and such person has the map of the lost kingdom, or whatever, and they just can't get enough of plotting ways to get in that person's good graces.

Well I say, give it to them. You don't have to take them on safari, like in the previous adventure, just have them pet sitting, or purchasing extremely obscure items that they have to pay large amounts of money just to find out where to buy the stuff, accompanying the stuffed shirt to such and such function where the PCs are treated like crap.

If the PCs don't tire of that quickly then tell them they were mistaken. She's really the princess of Outer Boondockia. The map is actually a map of the Moss Kingdom, a very well known and infamously boring humble forest land.

You're One of Us Now

A variation on the previous adventure would be for the PCs to fall in with some group that won't let them go until they perform a number of initiation rituals. I hope you read Amos Tutuola’s first marriage day in the bush of ghosts. He was baptized with fire and hot water, and he tried but he couldn't get out of it.

It would be especially apropos for a shaman experiencing initiatory sickness to be adopted by a group of demons that insist on "initiating" him with all sorts of horrible tortures.

There are a number of possible openings for an adventure of this sort.

1. The PCs could caught in the middle of some trouble and when the trouble makers make their get away, they drag the PCs along, mistaking them for their own members. When everything is cleared up, the PCs must still prove themselves to the troublemakers before they can leave (or before being dragged off on another adventure).

2. The PCs could be accidentally trapped or imprisoned with the troublemakers and in the process of making their escape, the troublemakers adopt the PCs and bring them to their lair where the initiation begins.

3. The PCs were trying to accomplish something in territory controlled by the troublemakers, and the PCs must then jump through numerous hoops before being allowed to continue (or to get out at all). "Since you have entered this church you are to be baptized with fire and hot water before you will go out of the church, willing or not you ought to wait and complete the baptism."

And there are two possible goals for an adventure of this sort. The PCs could have to escape before they are completely initiated (and turned into whatever horrible monsters the troublemakers are). Or the PCs could just have to live through the initiation so they can leave or at least be treated as equals by the troublemakers.

Ruins

There's no such things as ruins in a standard planar dominion. If the area is truly abandoned and nobody cares about or thinks about it anymore, then it would simply fade from existence. There may be some area of the planes where abandoned places go before being totally sucked off to oblivion, but the PCs would have to look for that place specifically, which would be difficult because, of course, nobody cares about it so routes there would be rare and difficult.

So if a place appears to be in ruins, there's usually more going on than is immediately apparent. In the adventure module for Planescape, entitled Dead Gods, the PCs encounter two ruins: the ruins of Amun-Thys, and the ruined Temple of Badir. Amun-Thys continues to exist because it is ontologically necessary for the functioning of the universe. All those words have to be kept somewhere. And the temple of Badir continued to exist because it is haunted by the soul of a dead god that needs resolution.

Characters in a planar dominion should probably assume that all ruins function like this. Either they are inhabited and only in disrepair (like the whole plane of Joush), or they were inhabited very recently (keep an eye out for whatever chased off or killed off all the people), or they are some necessary place for the proper functioning of the universe (keep an eye out for guardian creatures), or they are haunted in some way, and some issue needs to be resolved before the place can be destroyed or fade away (keep an eye out for ghosts).

Murder on the Rahy Ohan Express

In planar adventures, PCs may occasionally travel by means of a large conveyance that carries many people for a long time. In Planescape it was often easiest to book passage on a ship that traveled the river Oceanus through the heavens, and in this way reach different heavens or different layers of the heavenly planes. In Kharlo Chenpo there is a mystical railroad that connects all the lawful planes from Kutule to Engour.

The beauty of this adventure is that it has a very limited, controlled cast of NPCs, and it takes place in a very limited area. The GM will never have an easier time of preparing for any action the PCs might attempt. Technically it doesn't have to happen on a train or a boat. It could happen in a dirigible, a space ship, anywhere that the PCs will be cooped up with the suspects for long enough that the PCs will want to figure this out themselves rather than wait for outside help.

And the crime need not be murder. In Kharlo Chenpo death is extremely inconveniencing, but permanent less than 8% of the time. A more serious crime might be theft of a unique object. Of course, the criminal would use some method of rendering Divination or Guidance ineffective. There are spells and magic items that protect against that sort of thing. The use of Communion as a mind probe, or Enchantment or Authority to force a confession from the guilty party would be socially unacceptable. Characters that come forward and tell everyone that they read the Duke's thoughts, should have their own claims come into question. "Why were you mind probing the Duke without his permission? (It's not nice to probe anyone but consenting adults.) How can we trust you?"

The characters will have to solve the crime through investigation of the crime scene, and interviewing the suspects. Guidance can certainly be used to improve one's Lie Detection Skill stat. But if you catch someone in a lie, then you have to find a way to get that person to admit it, or find material proof that they were lying.

A variation on this theme is for the PCs' conveyance to be hijacked, or help prisoner by terrorist criminals. The hijackers may divert the vehicle, or stop it, or refuse to let it stop. The PCs would then have to discover what the terrorists want. If you know what they want, then you know what they're going to do. It may not be important for the PCs to actually foil the terrorists. They may be working against Greyface or the Blood Kings or something. But it is important for the PCs and victim NPCs to escape unharmed, recover their equipment from their captors and get on their way (presumably they were going somewhere when this awful thing happened).

How Do You Steer This Thing?

Of course it could be a very exciting adventure for a group of player characters to defeat a terrorist cell, but not before the terrorist cell takes out a vehicle's crew. Then the PCs would be on a vehicle that they may not be able to pilot well if at all, and most likely the terrorists weren't holding the vehicle or taking the vehicle somewhere where it would be safe for the PCs.

The PCs could just kind of fall into this adventure. I remember an adventure in Nutcracker Prince where the PCs just wake up and find the crew of the ship has died, and then the ship falls under attack from sea devils, and it all goes from bad to worse. However the best way to strand PCs on a vehicle is for the crew to take off with emergency vehicles (life boats) and leave the PCs aboard. "Why did the crew go ashore in the longboat without furling the sails or dropping the anchor?" "Maybe that thing breathing down the back of your neck has something to do with it?" "If we could stop the boat or find another longboat, it might be a good idea to join the crew."

Unless the PCs have already dealt with the problem then the main hazard or mystery will be whatever got rid of the crew, but other things could crop up. The vehicle may encounter hazardous weather that threatens to wreck the vehicle. The vehicle could threaten to crash unless properly maneuvered around some solid obstacle. The vehicle could be attacked. The vehicle could be damaged or sabotaged when the PCs take over its operation. It could require maintenance that the PCs do not know about and the PCs then break the vehicle. The vehicle could enter territory under some form of restriction, and then have to puzzle out how to contact the authorities of the territory they just entered, or risk attack. The PCs could try to convince others to help them, either allies (or presumed allies) they encounter, or defeated terrorists.

If the adventure lasts long enough then the inability of the PCs to steer and navigate the vehicle may severely restrict the ability of PC operators to restock the vehicle with consumable supplies. If they can't pick up food and water, they'll die of hunger and thirst. This adventure might even lead into the Artichoke Adventure, mentioned earlier.

It Was the One Armed Man

A PC or a NPC that's a friend of the PCs is accused of a crime. All the evidence certainly seems to point to that character. If it's a PC that's been accused of the crime then the PCs have to avoid the law while clearing their names. They must also avoid breaking any other laws. Do not let the PCs kill the town guard and when they clear their name of the other crime this further crime is excused. "Yes, you had to become a cop killer, because you were innocent. We understand." If it is a NPC that is accused of the crime, then chances are that the NPC will already be in police custody and the PCs will have a certain amount of time before the trial to find the actual culprit, or at least find evidence that clears their friend and gets the police back out on the street looking for the true crook.

This can be a challenging adventure to write because Priests and Witches often have investigative techniques that exceed the capabilities of modern day forensic scientists. The criminals will have to find clever or magical methods of deceiving supernatural investigation of their actions. Perhaps the real criminal disguised himself with an illusion. Perhaps magic is preventing scrying from revealing the location of the stolen goods or the murder weapon or the kidnappee, etc. Which means that the PCs will have to find clues normally. Maybe you should read a lot of Sherlock Holmes or watch that TV show, Monk, before you get into it.

Maybe the PCs' friend really did commit the crime, but doesn't remember for some reason. Or maybe he had a very good reason for committing the crime and now he needs to get out of jail so he can finish his quest. Or maybe he committed the crime, and knows that he did but is upset because he was too subtle trying to set up someone else. Now he needs the PCs to help him set up a scapegoat. Will they realize that they are being used before they incriminate an innocent person?

The Precrime Agency of the Federal Westbloc Government

In any fantasy campaign the biggest deterrent to committing a crime would be the ability of the authorities to know that a crime would be committed before hand. In the Planar Witchcraft and Priestcraft rules, I tried to constrain the skills Divination and Guidance to prevent them from easily being used in this way, but as usual, a clever player will find a way for a PC to receive precognitive warnings about impending danger to the character. In the Dominion Rules Digest, the Priestcraft Skill, Prophecy implied, but did not explicitly state such restrictions, so it was possible for a temple to maintain a coven of Priests that do nothing but pray to their god for visions of impending crimes. "Oh lord, who will commit the next crime? What will it be? When will it be? Where will it be?" That just cost 4 Fervor. Off to vespers for you, brother.

In the movie version of Minority Report, the police only had who and when. The only crimes they knew of were murder. The temple could chose to specialize, to save their Fervor, or it could chose a wider view, like the precogs in the story, who predicted all sorts of crimes.

The classics are full of these kinds of stories. Oedipus was prophesied to kill his father, King Laius. Perseus was prophesied to kill his grandfather, King Acrisius. Teiresias states that Odysseus will land on Thrinakia, and that if his shipmates eat Helios’s cattle they will be destroyed.

With the planar Priestcraft document, the Skill Prophecy is subsumed into the Skill, Guidance, and Prophecies were changed from being questions to being the first half of if-then statements. "If we do nothing to prevent the next person from being murdered, then..." The GM then has all the leeway in the world to answer that question as he sees fit. He could answer, "...then that person will be murdered." or he could answer it, "...then John Anderton will kill Leopold Kaplan, in the General's villa."

Presumably the GM would allow priests to specialize in Prophecy or Guidance, and allow these priests to, with the proper rituals and accoutrements, regularly get a high level of detail. The system would involve three Priests to check each other's prophecies, and even then it would only work under certain circumstances. There would be a less than 1% chance of getting a false prophecy (assuming two false prophecies related the same events, which would be astronomically unlikely), but in the story, Minority Report, all the precogs predicted futures that were true to an extent. Precog one predicted what would happen if Anderton didn't know the future. Precog two predicted what would happen if Anderton knew the future without knowing all the details of why. Precog three predicted what would happen after Anderton figured it all out and read all three reports.

In the movie Anderton didn't have a minority report, which was extremely clever, because if you read the short story you were as surprised as he was that he didn't have one. The movie was more like King Laius's prophecy, by seeking to avoid or understand a predicted future, the subject of the prophecy fulfills it. If King Laius raised Oedipus, not fearing for his own life then Oedipus would never have killed the man he knew to be his father. If Anderton, in the movie, had not sought to clear his name he would have never been in the same room with his victim.

There's just too many great stories to tell, too many twists and turns this can take. The PCs may be prophesied to commit some crime that they have no motivation to commit, and then they would obviously seek to avoid the opportunity to commit the crime or seek to figure out why they would want to do it. Perhaps it is a lesser evil (like kill a man to avoid freeing numerous people that actually did intend to commit crimes).

Remember GMs, this adventure is not a wrestling match. The important thing is not to test the stubbornness of the GM vs. the players. It is a set up and a sit back and watch. If the PCs chose to avoid the prophesied situation all together, OK. But when they meet NPC who are big heroes for replacing the characters in the prophecy they have no right to be jealous. When the PCs meet crippled orphans who they could have helped, they might want to then figure out what went wrong, what part of their destiny didn't they meet? And what will they have to do to make everything right?

The Great Conjunction

In the central African plains, every spring, termite nymphs swarm out of towering termite mounds. These termites make good eating, or so I'm told. Here in the south, the termites are smaller and make good eating of our wooden houses. On both continents, the advent of the termites swarming to mate causes a flurry of activity. In Africa they break out the termite roasting baskets, and in North America, they break out the pesticides.

In Planescape, termites were the least of their worries. Certain things happened cyclically, and the PCs could get involved if they knew where to go and what to do. Sometimes they got involved unless they knew how to avoid entanglement. Two adventures that featured this were The Great Modron March and Doors to the Unknown. In the Great Modron March, the PCs got to watch the Modrons malfunction and parade around the great ring to the dismay of many a folk. However, some folk broke out with the Modron roasting baskets, metaphorically. And in Doors to the Unknown, a portal that only opens for a short time, once in a long while has released something the PCs would rather not have loose, and they have to put it back before the door closes again and traps it with the PCs.

Any adventure revolving around a great conjunction in a planar dominion should be a bit complicated. These events are many things to many people. The planes are largely built out of faith, so a lot of people will be absolutely convinced of their interpretation of the portent of the event. But there are some things you should decide on beforehand.

1. How long does the event last? An instant? A few hours? A few days? A few weeks, months, years, decades?

2. How often does the event occur? Has it never occurred in anyone's memory, but it has been foretold? Or did it happen just last year and the carnival surrounding this year's event will prove to be just as exciting. Perhaps somewhere in between. It's been a decade or two. It's been many hundreds of years. It's been many thousands of years. If it's been foretold, was the prophesy detailed or vague. If it happened before, can people remember a lot about the event, or are their memories not so clear. Historical records may leave a lot of questions unanswered.

3. Is the event on time. The Modron March was a malfunction. It shouldn't have come for many years.

4. What exactly is the event? What does it do? If the event is some cosmological alignment, it may not be necessary to state exactly or unequivocally what it does.

5. How subtle is the event? Will it effect everything or will it only cause one small thing to happen?

6. Will the event cause some lasting change, or only change things for it's duration. How big will the change be. The Modron March was a big, but temporary change. Doors to the Unknown was a temporary and subtle change. The Faction War could have been foretold if anyone cared to listen to the barmy Darkwood. That caused a big, lasting change.

7. Who is looking forward to the event? Who is dreading the event?

8. Who wants to study the event? Who thinks studying it would be a heresy?

9. Is the event unstoppable, or is the process very delicate? If information is sketchy, different parties may have different opinions about this. The PCs may be entreated to stop or ensure an event that can't be stopped.

10. Will the event be easy to see from many different places, or is it mysterious and hard to find? Even a small and stupid event may draw a crowd if there are plenty of people that know where to be and when.

Sometime the PCs can win the day just by being in a certain place at a certain time. In Planescape there was a lot of talk about towns, realms, levels, and sometimes whole planes, "slipping", from one plane to another. The planes were slowly rearranging themselves, in accordance with the ideals and beliefs of the characters that lived there.

And that was exactly the point. Since the planes fluctuated based on who lived there, the PCs regularly heard about these mass migrations of good, evil, lawful, or chaotic people to a place that they want to slide, or to stay where it is. So they become the people that live there, in the hopes that the place where they now live will end up closer to where they came from.

What I couldn't figure out was, why nobody ever invited my characters. I mean, my characters were interesting guys. They had adventures for crying out loud. They were capable and level headed in a crisis. If my characters were real people, I would want to hang out with them, especially if I were moving to a town that might or might not slip into hell at any minute.

So next time there's a mass migration and people are flocking to some berg because they want it to or don't want it to slip into some other heaven or hell or whatever, have someone invite the PCs. When are you, as GM, ever going to get such a good excuse to through everything, including the kitchen sink at the PCs? I assume the place will be absolutely crowded with people. Getting groceries will be an adventure. It would be like trying to walk down Bourbon Street, New Orleans, during Mardi Gras. Presumably, all the characters have to do to win the adventure is not get killed.

But why aren't more adventures like that? I may be wrong, but I assume that most villainous plots are rather delicate affairs. I mean in the real world, selling Mexican sex slaves to evil uber-pimps can be foiled by talking about it too much, or not talking about it at all. No talk = no customers. Too much talk = police coming to get you. And fantasy movies often have the villain foiled by some smudge that he missed in the corner of his Satanic pentacle. Hellboy beat one of his villains by ripping his little paper badge. The US Army defeated Rasputin and all the forces of Hell, by feeding Hellboy pancakes.

So make sure there are also a few adventures where the villains are extremely annoyed just to see the PCs hanging around, getting in the way. Lets face it, real villains are often very very far from unstoppable.

Changing Minds

Somehow, for some reason, there was never a Planescape adventure about brainwashing anyone. Every faction had a specific goal, like destroy everything, become gods, or overthrow gods, or attain total harmony with the universe. But aside from that, every faction wanted to swell their ranks, to add members to their roster, the better to accomplish that other stuff.

But there was no adventure where the player characters had to indoctrinate anyone. There was no adventure where the PCs had to brainwash someone and let them lose to assassinate the head of a rival faction. There was no adventure where the PCs had to go somewhere and drum up popular support for their cause.

But there should have been.

In any adventure of this sort, the PCs are introduced to one or more NPCs and the PCs have to win the NPCs over to their side. The PCs could walk into a village with the intention of winning the village over. The GM would have to come up with a number of important NPCs and detail them enough so that the GM knows the kinds of things that it will take to make the NPCs like the PCs. A village elder may need to be debated philosophically. A matron may require that the PCs marry off one or more of her daughters, even if they have to marry the PCs. A farmer may need the PCs to clear off some monsters so he can have an easier time of farming.

The PCs could simply be put in charge of training new recruits. Armies back then weren't the brilliantly marketed indoctrination machines that they are today. But modern armies were based on the legendary military of ancient Sparta, so if the players want to indoctrinate their apprentices the way any modern cult or military indoctrinates its members, they can go ahead.

As creepy as that sounds, the creepiest would be to take an ordinary person and turn that person into a faction assassin. This adventure would play like the end of 1984, only the PCs would be in charge. This might be a good adventure to let your players have if you've been playing lots of tricks on them. Let them make their own human weapon and get some pay back. Let them be in control for a change, running your carefully constructed and detailed character through a ringer. Of course this can get a little malicious. Good PCs may not be able to convince themselves that they're doing the right thing. But hey, nobody told you to pick an alignment. This isn't D&D; this is Dominion Rules. Let your character be a little bad once in a while. It's interesting. We promise not to dock you experience points. Just don't take it too far.

Putting the Fear Back Into the PCs

If you set up your planar dominions the same way I've set up Kharlo Chenpo, then the PC could get used to dying. You die, and a few days to a few months later, you padmasambhava and end up back home. Highly skilled characters get knocked down a peg, but inexperienced characters usually just lose time. There is a 1 in 12 chance of becoming a lost soul, but the odds of all the PCs becoming lost souls at the same time are pretty slim, so the one's that make it back can eventually fish out their friends who get "lost" along the way.

The PCs may have a hard time getting back all their gear, but that might be an acceptable loss if the PCs are awaiting intern training in Ketabehay. Besides, if they planned ahead they will have a couple of stashes of gear and money around the planes that they can go get. To player who can plan well, it can all get to be a bit routine.

Which is unfortunate, because there are some great adventure ideas that involve a population being terrorized by some monstrous threat, and the PCs coming to the rescue. The first part of the adventure is easy to translate into a planar setting. An isolate population of peasants may not be able to handle much padmasambhavas before their skill levels are too low to support them. And if they have no means to find portals or guides around the dream lands then they'd have no way to retrieve lost souls and they'd lose almost 1 in 10 people who died this way.

But it can be difficult to make the second part of the adventure exciting. If PCs don't take dying seriously then they'll try talking to the beast. If they are killed doing that, then once they get back, they'll attempt different tactics to trap, neutralize, scare off, destroy, or otherwise get rid of the threat.

And since the PCs can die without much hardship, this adventure can quickly turn into the scene outside of Curst where the Nameless one and the demon wail on each other until it gets boring and the Nameless one can't die, and this demon stubbornly refuses to, and you get so bored that you think about restarting from a saved game and trying to avoid or otherwise sneak around this demon, and then the demon dies. And the last thing you want is for your players to get bored so if they don't take dying seriously, then don't threaten their characters' lives.

You have to make the players Fear losing again.

What if the monster didn't care about killing the PCs? Sure, it might kill them, but that's not the point. What it wants to do is learn about the PCs, so it can make them afraid. It craves something about scaring, really terrifying other beings. It could feed off of the fear, but that would just make the monster seem excusable. What's it supposed to do, starve? I think the monster should like the power it feels when others are truly afraid of it.

Now here's where the PCs should start to worry about their characters because every time a character gets a 4 on a Fear Check, that character gets a permanent personality quirk, decided by everyone but the player. Every time a character gets a 5 on a Fear Check, that character develops a physical sign of the fear and trauma, which could be temporary, like puking, but could be permanent, like a twitch or grey hair, and again, it's decided by everyone but the player. Every time a character gets an 8 on a Fear Check, that character gets a permanent insanity (delusion, phobia, obsession, etc.), decided by everyone but the player. Every time a character gets a 9 on a Fear Check, that character suffers a terrible and drastic physical effect from the fear. The character could cripple itself, attempting to flee from the source of the fright.

Don't tell the players what's going on. Just ask them to make Fright Checks against higher and higher Frightening values. Sooner or later they'll notice their character sheets filling up with quirks and odd habits and twitches and ticks. Then they'll start to notice insanities that really cramp the characters' styles. They may start to think about retiring these characters, as certainly the characters would naturally desire it for themselves. They may realize too late that they've acquired too many handicaps to be able to defeat the monster and save the village. Indeed, they've acquired too many handicaps to continue adventuring at all.

And what really scares the players is how it crept up on them, how the monster didn't just kill their characters, it ruined them, slowly.