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GameMastery Guide / Creating a World / The Planes

Other Considerations

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 167
One of the biggest questions that comes up in creating planes of super-powerful (and in some cases deific) entities is why those beings don’t already control the players’ comparatively weak homeworld. Is it that planeshifting is forbidden, or too difficult for the creatures to attempt it on their own, or simply that it’s not worth the effort? Certainly some of the gods have managed to exert themselves on the Material Plane, and perhaps it’s these same gods that keep the borders from becoming too porous. Regardless, it also brings up the issue of the gods—do they reside on particular planes, and can you visit their shining cities in person? Or do they exist here and there, as ideas or manifestations, omnipotent but unconcerned with creating a physical home? Do they all reside in the company of their peers, looking down like the Greek pantheon at plots they’ve set in motion, or do they seek solitude in the farthest reaches of their chosen plane, bored with the constant streams of petitioners seeking their favor? For that matter, did the gods create the planes, or did some mysterious force beyond even them set the current celestial order in motion? Dealing with the infinite and omnipotent always begets such questions, yet it’s within these very tangles of cause and effect that a GM can unleash the most creativity.