Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

While working on the seventh level spells, I came up with an important question: How does BFRPG work with The Planes, and what are default assumptions about the planes that should be used when making Supplements and such. What do I mean by this? Glad you asked!

- Ethereal Plane: In most forms of the games, if a creature is incorporeal, they are really on the Ethereal Plane. It is usually part-n-parcel with being incorporeal (like a ghost). Is that true in BFRPG?
- Shadow Plane: Whether the Negative Material Plane exists or not, there is usually a parallel plane to the Material Plane (i.e. "the game world") that is a plane of perpetual shadow. Often times this can be a source for Illusionists when they get more "substantial" versions of their spells. It is also used for Shadow Walk and similar types of "not teleportation" shortcuts. Is this plane in BFRPG?
- Faerie Plane: This is the source of the fey and other faerie related creatures. This tends to be treated much less consistently than the Shadow plane, but it is usually included somewhere. Does this plane exist in BFRPG?
- Elemental Planes: Whether there are four (Fire, Water, Earth, Air), six (those four plus Positive and Negative), or more, these seem to be pretty common, too. Do they exist in BFRPG?
- Outer Planes: The realms of the gods. Without alignment, it is obvious that the Great Wheel (or its derivatives) don't exist, but is there an assumption that some kind of outer planes exist as the home of the gods and their agents (angels, devils, demons, etc.) in BFRPG?
- Astral Plane: If the Outer Planes exist, does the Astral Plane exist in BFRPG?

The reason this is important is because there are some high level spells that are appropriate if they do exist (e.g. Gate or Astral Projection) but shouldn't be touched if they don't exist. I am basically assuming that there is no official support form any kind of cosmology, as that is all "GM material", so I have not included any kind of such spell.

However, when looking at the Fey-Mage (and Libram Magica) spells, there is a "Faerie Ring" spell that functions as a limited Gate spell to the Faerie Plane/Realm. Is that purely outside the main scope? If so, then I should just ignore that spell, too, with my other efforts. If not, however, then I could easily look to include a Shadow equivalent for the Illusionist and a more general version for the Cleric.

So, is my initial inclination (to just ignore the existence or not of any kind of plane outside the "adventure world") correct? Or should these other types of extra-planar spells be included?

Thanks!

I believe, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, that there's no particular cosmology, pantheon, or even campaign setting tied in with Basic Fantasy, at least the core rules. (No Alignment either)

I'll let Solo give final ruling, but I believe Tazer is correct. By design, it's up to each GM/table to come up with whatever they'd like to use for their games.

As the supplements are self-sufficient add-ons to the Core Rules, I think those kind of references should be removed from New Spells (of course, on Workshop you're more than welcome to make one or more Planar supplements!

There is no coherent theory of other planes used in BFRPG. You describe the system that evolved in the 1E era, with some additions (Faerie Plane aka the Nevernever is not 1E, but the rest mostly is). If a GM wants to use that cosmology, that's their choice, but the game does not assume it; further, we try hard not to do more than hint at the greater structure of the multiverse. My preference is that there never be a coherent rule for this stuff that can become known to players; better that each player (and thus, each character) have his or her opinions that might be right but are probably wrong. Much like the real world...

OK, so other planes *do* exist, but you don't want anything published that players can use to impose something on their game masters. Instead, it must always flow from the game master. Gotcha.

So, just to circle back, that means there is no reason to include a Gate (or similar) type spell? (Or, more properly, there is reason to not include such a spell?)

Basically, yeah. Gate would have to be open-ended, since there is no "geography" of the other planes for the player to invoke.

IMO Gate should exist, though very flexible in its nature according to how the GM wants such extra-planar beings and their homes to exist.

For instance, I run a very Norse-like cosmology. I find this model flexible and covers really everything I want to do with planar thoughts and beings.

The prime is effectively the equivalent of Midgard and there are nether-realms where vile beings come from (Nifelheim = Hell = Hades = Abyss all depending on the particular 'region' of this underworld).
Likewise realms of elementals such as Muspelheim = Fire. Jotunheim and Nidavellir are Earth realms. Water and Air realms are the weird ones, as I assume these come from the outer edges of Midgard where the oceans and sky touch the edges of the planes or effectively the Astral/Ethereal areas "beyond" the Prime.
I even allow for "wood" and/or nature stuff having intangible contact with the world tree Yggdrasil.
Alfeim and Svartalfeim are my nearest equivalents of Fae Realms.

Then, I allow for other realms outside the classic Viking/Norse myths... working just the same. Just other realms that hadn't been mentioned by the stories... so really still anything is possible and I can just wing it when I need to.

So, planes are each a bubble to itself... some might be loosely connected and others remotely connected. While my main planar realms do have some connection to each other via ideas such as Yggdrasil or via Bifrost bridge (definitely not the MCU style), etc., others can be dropped in whenever and however I wish.

I really do appreciate the lack of design or forced cosmology... as I really dislike the full established D&D cosmology. Since we lack Alignment anyhow, having such a Ring of Existence is not necessary and to me always felt like some contrived way to somehow force different pantheons into a framework that is just unnecessary.

SmootRK wrote: ↑Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:33 am I really do appreciate the lack of design or forced cosmology... as I really dislike the full established D&D cosmology. Since we lack Alignment anyhow, having such a Ring of Existence is not necessary and to me always felt like some contrived way to somehow force different pantheons into a framework that is just unnecessary.

Amen.
And when I say amen, I'm not invoking any extraplanar entities.

Ok, I will check out Gate and see if there are any similar spells to adapt for New Spells.

Again, thanks!

Getting back to the whole issue of planes in general, BFRPG does have the hints of a cosmology implied. Basically, it is this:
- There are at least four elemental planes: Air, Earth, Fire, Water.
- There are planes where agents of good (celestials) and evil (infernals) come from. That presumably means at least two of those planes planes (one for celestials and one for infernals). (Dispel Evil calls them "nether planes", but then modifies it to be anything opposed to/by the caster.)
And ... that's it.

There is absolutely zero mention of any "transitive" planes. There doesn't appear to be any Ethereal Plane, as incorporeal creatures are simply just that: they have no physical (corporeal) form. They are not sitting between two planes; they are completely in "our" plane, but they just don't have a physical form. There also doesn't necessarily appear to be an Astral Plane either.

Also, how the celestial/infernal planes relate to each other, or to the elemental planes is totally unknown, so no "inner" and "outer" designations are implied. So, we are left with a minimum of six other planes and no understanding of the relationships between them. That doesn't seem too limiting.