Something that tends to happen when
different people in an ADVANCED
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® campaign
take turns serving as the Dungeon Master is that alternate (or parallel) universes start to proliferate. I don’t know
how it is for the other AD&D™ groups out
there, but in all three of the groups I’ve
been with there seems to have been a
minimum of three or four different universes in operation at any given time,
with the characters travelling back and
forth depending upon who was the DM
at the time. In one campaign there were
no less than eight universes, and it was a
lot like living in Philip Jose Farmer’s
World of Tiers novels. This makes for a
wide variety of adventure, certainly, and
each DM gets to run things as he/she
would like to see them run.

I started the process of universe creation myself a few months ago, after
DM’ing an adventure in the City State of
the Invincible Overlord for the hundredth
time. As worthy and enjoyable as that
game world is, I and my players needed a
change. And I wanted to run my own
universe. Fortunately I had some vacation time coming up,
so I went somewhere quiet and near a MacDonald’s restaurant and began working up a world.

One of the most valuable assets one
can have in universe creation is a familiarity with other people’s universes. I’ve
read of places such as Urshurak, Wonderland, Zothique, Cimmeria, the Nightland, and dozens of others. I’ve also
played the GAMMA WORLD™ and BOOT
HILL™ games as well as AD&D adventures. I remember the feel of each of
these worlds and how it was created by
the author.

The first major problem I had was deciding whether I wanted to recreate one
of the fantasy universes I’d read about,
or make my world wholly original. This
was a difficult decision. I remembered
the fun on one expedition when we
crossed universes and became confused
about our whereabouts until someone in
the party noticed that the road we were
traveling on was composed of yellow
brick.

Doubtless, it would be great fun to visit
the Emerald City, or fight with Conan at
your side, or lift a glass of mead at the
Prancing Pony in Bree. The problem is
setting up such a “borrowed” universe to
begin with. Familiarity with some universes requires a working knowledge of
several volumes of literature. How many
Oz books were written? How many Elric
books? Tolkein’s Middle Earth books?
The amount of material from which one
must draw can be staggering.

Then the inconsistencies appear between aspects of the AD&D rules and
their namesakes in fantasy literature.
The elves of Middle Earth are
immortal,
not just long-lived.

The dwarves of The
Sword of Shannara’s world, Rocannon’s
World and of Carolingian Europe (Three
Hearts and Three Lions) are not alike at
all and only remotely resemble the AD&D
conception of them. Ourboros Mercury
uses completely new dominant races
called Demons, Witches, and Pixes, with
no similarity whatsoever to what the
game rules call a demon, witch, and pixie. Ad infinitum.

Universes taken from literature can be
excellent for limited adventuring, but
this way of playing can destroy balance
in a campaign unless it is carefully controlled. Conversely, reshaping the book’s
universe to fit the AD&D rules may distort or destroy the originality and balance of the former. Can you see making
Elrond not immortal? How could you
handle that?

I set aside my designs for a “book universe” — with some reluctance — and
turned to working out an original universe. Some broad rules were needed for
its nature. I decided at the outset not to
mess with the rules in the AD&D manuals to any great extent, because balance
and playability are the most important
elements of any successful game universe. I remembered playing in realms
where anyone (or anything) could be a
paladin, where gods walked among the
party and gave you artifacts and levels
for just tying their shoes, and where
magical weapons were so powerful that
the gods themselves could be slain with
impunity: gods, not just archdevils.

The game balance went so far out of
whack that we lost all sense of proportion. “Another million gold. Ho hum.”
Some people would argue that the
group’s power is balanced in a “give
away” campaign by tougher monsters.
Many DM’s (including myself) have fallen
to the temptation of matching firepower
with firepower, ignoring the regular monster charts. Beasties like lbathene and
Phase Dopplegancer Balor-Trolls start
making the rounds more frequently.

The arms race escalates, and game
balance and proportion collapse at the
same time Soon one day, you’ll hear one
of the players say, “Gee, remember the
old days when orcs were something to
think about?” If you want to avoid being
stung by such comments (like I was),
then you’ll try harder to keep the campaign balanced.

What’s your universe going to look
like? It’s generally a good idea to place
your campaign on a planet, enabling you
to define natural events like day and
night, eclipses, seasons, etc. The world
doesn’t have to be round, of course. It
can be any other shape you feel is reasonable, but it should be large enough for a
long period of exploration. Examples of
alternatives to the spherical-planet universe may be found in the World of Tiers
series by Philip Jose Farmer and in some
of the works by Larry Niven. (Ringworld,
A Hole in Space). Be sure you know what
you’re doing when you do it; it isn’t necessary to draw out the entire planet’s
surface before the adventurers get there,
but it may be helpful to have rough
sketches in mind of the major land masses, oceans, moons and suns, etc.

I chose a planet. I also wanted to give
the general environment a quality unlike
the usual campaign in the near-tropics
of the City State. I wanted a change in
the type of encounters the party would
have. The options I had included making
the environment hotter, colder, wetter,
drier, brighter, darker, more or less magically oriented (as opposed to more or
less fighter-oriented), more or fewer
elves/dwarves/orcs/trolIs/etc. I happen
to like winter, so I considered an earthlike planet farther from its sun than our
home. The consequences would include
a shorter and poorer growing season, so
that herding and hunting remain predominant ways of life. Cities might be
fewer in number, and nomadic peoples
might become more frequent. Much of
the fauna would likely be giant-sized to
offset the effects of the cold.

All of this would mean the campaign
might be tougher than usual, and I’d
have to make sure the party wasn’t set up
to be creamed in the first encounter. A
check in the Monster Manual and the
Dungeon Masters Guide gave some
ideas of the types of encounters the party would have, and I made pages of notes
on what was likely to exist on my world
(like sabertooths) and what wasn’t
(couatl, for instance). “Titan” was well
on the way to completion. Or so I thought.

The encounter table gave me more
trouble than I’d expected. It became
clear that men and gnolls would be frequent adversaries on Titan, considering
their natures and the relative abundance
of both races. Dwarves and elves, however, didn’t show up on the arctic or subarctic tables in the DMG, so I “created”
them in very small numbers and placed
them in generally limited areas. Kobolds,
gnomes, and goblins went into near extinction, with only a handful of gnomes
living with the dwarves. Trolls were more
common than usual, and giant animals
more abundant than any other type of
creature. Frost giants became dominant
among their kind.

Certainly I knew I wasn’t going to have
every creature in the Monster Manual,
but I balanced the whole in proportions
similar to those in the DMG and had
enough monsters to the point I felt variety
wasn't lacking. After some thought, I
created a few monsters of my own and
added them to the landscape. White
puddings (like the black ones, only
white), cryohydra (like pyrohydra, only
with a frosty breath), giant arctic spiders,
and so on, found their place in the world.

I assumed that Titan had been populated by greater deities or the like from
polar climates of other worlds, so the
mythos I used involved some gods from
Norse mythology, as well as any other
gods I felt might be appropriate. Since
the level of culture was rather primitive
and barbaric, war gods might be somewhat more frequent. The gnolls would
worship their demon prince, the dwarves
would go for Thor or Mahal (Aule the
Smith from The Silmarillion), and the
elves would like Norse and Tolkien gods.
The ice toads and trolls would likely
worship anything that looked unusual,
like ancient statues, big gems, or each
other. Some ice devils might find the locale to be pleasant, and they would bring
the worship of Geryon to their neighbors. An eclectic mythos would develop,
and possibly take on added dimensions
from the environmental factors and from
the history of the inhabitants
themselves. One or more deities either
terraformed the world or found it hatibale
by certain species (possibly already
inhabited), and then proceeded to colonize it with creatures found in an AD&D
campaign. The histories of individual
tribes and cities would vary, but would in
general be leading toward a more organized, centralized human civilization and
a more widespread area of gnolldom.

The conflicts of law and chaos, good
and evil, would still go on. Because of
alignment and material needs, I had men
and dwarves be closely allied in general,
with elves being somewhat distant but
providing assistance because of their
basic good nature.

Gnolls, ogres, and trolls banded together and formed a powerful chaotic
evil coalition, which caused a general
shift in human alignment toward lawful
good. The villains’ alignment being what
it is, of course, the evil coalition is unstable and its broad plans of conquest are
often hamstrung by infighting.

I also created a small list of special
personalities that might be found in the
local playing area, such as the local gnoll
chieftain and the humans and dwarves of
high levels (like that 16th level Wizard in
the tower on a mountain peak, and the
dwarven armorer for the adventurers’
town). The towns, lairs, and wanderers
in a 100-mile radius were developed in
detail, and the place where the adventurers were to “pop in” was set near a
small town with a wooden palisade wall
and large herds of livestock.

However, there is now the question of
how to get people from Universe A to
Universe B. The Dungeon Master can
arbitrarily declare the party to be transported to the new universe without any
explanation, but this chops up the continuity of the campaign and is too ambiguous. The groups I’ve played with at
Mannheim, Germany, and Fort Bragg,
N.C., came up with a number of methods
for universe-shifting that we found more
“realistic” and comfortable. Group travel
became more consistent in our campaigns, and it’s not as hard to get to
Mars, Titan, Oz, Gamma World, Shem,
Xenex, or Parthon from Middle Earth as
it used to be. These universe-shifting devices include:

1. Cross-universal caves: These are
great because they fit right into the local
geography, and adventures can be set
up for the party on the way to the cave to
keep the players on their toes. Just go in
one entrance and you exit in the new
universe.
 

These caves are usually assumed to
have been created either by “natural”
forces or by arch-mages or gods. They
are open all the time, but are nearly always well hidden, to prevent excessive
cross-universe “contamination.” It is possible to find the location of a cave, however, by the large number of unusual
creatures in the general area of the cave
which have found their way through to
the players’ universe.

2. Teleport chains: This developed
from an idea given in one of the “Monty
Haul” stories published in an old issue of
DRAGON™ magazine. The group finds a
length of chain, made from an unidentifiable material; when the chain is laid
upon the ground around the group and
the ends are joined, everyone inside the
chain is “popped” into the new universe,
with chain. Reconnecting the chain (possibly after a minimum wait of a day or
longer) sends everyone back to the original universe.

3. Rings or amulets: The ring may resemble the fabled Ring of Gaxx, except
that turning the stone to one of its faces
and activating the ring sends the wearer
and everything within so many feet of the
wearer to another plane or world. The
ring may serve as a gate to several
worlds. The amulet may work in a similar
fashion, or may have small buttons or
gems to be pressed, individually or in
sequence. Note that an Amulet of the
Planes can shift people from one parallel
universe to another, but this item and
those like it would be far more valuable
than simpler devices connected to only
one other universe. Items like these,
which are portable and may be used
from any location, should have a minimum time delay between uses of the
item to prevent impulsive “popping,” and
give the DM a chance to show the players his/her stuff, so to speak. I’d recommend a delay of one day at rock bottom
and up to several weeks maximum.

4. Rooms and corridors at the bottom
of a dungeon: This is a variation on (1).
Everyone goes through a doorway or
down a long hall and is sent to the other
world. Getting to the transfer point can
be as exciting as what goes on after you
pass through it, especially if the gateway
area is heavily guarded.

5. Cursed scroll: This is self-explanatory; basically a one-way deal, though
the players may discover a way home at
the DM’s option. The major drawback to
this device is that when players are sent
somewhere against their will, it could be
a potential paradise for them but they’ll
still want to leave and may not want to
come back. Players like — and deserve
some measure of control over where
they go.

6. Angry Wizard with a new spell: This
is an arbitrary way of achieving the objective. It usually occurs at the start of an
adventure when someone in the party
inadvertently bothers some insane old
man in black robes, who then throws a
ninth-level universe-shifting spell at the
party or tricks them into reading a cursed
scroll. How the players get home again is
up to the DM, as in (5). As a “DM Special,” this suffers from the same problem
as (5), unless everyone had expressed
some interest in visiting a different plane
to begin with.

7. Wish: A few words, properly put, and
everybody shows up in Hyborea. Unless
the wording is carefully done, however,
you could end up hanging from a tree
limb, 100 feet off the ground (as we did
once). You’re there, but . . . DM’s love this
sort of thing, as one of our paladins
found out when he popped into the second floor of a women’s boarding house
on another plane. He was in a safe place,
just as he had wished for, though he suffered considerable mental duress and
was nearly arrested as a peeping Tom.

8. Magical items causing etherealness:
Ethereal plate, Oil of Etherealness, and
the like may allow a shift to a parallel
world, since all parallel worlds are said to
co-exist on the prime material plane, and
any of them can be reached by traveling
through the ether.

9. Psionic probability travel: Passage
space may be a bit limited, and there’s
the risk of attracting thought eaters, but
this method will work nonetheless. Not
many people are going to have this power, though. Psionic etherealness will
work, too, but for the user only.

10. Magical spells: Clerics can use the
Astral Spell or Plane Shift to go universehopping, though there are limitations
here, too. Theoretically, a Word of Recall
could send the cleric between universes;
check with your Dungeon Master. Mages
have the Astral Spell, too, and may come
up with other spells of high level that
would serve equally as well.

11. Mutational “planar travel”:
Creatures such as GAMMA WORLD™ mutants
may be capable of this activity. It is
also possible for an AD&D character to
catch a dose of radiation and develop
this particular mutation (among others).

12. An artifact’s powers: One of the
pretty songs that Queen Ehlissa’s Nightingale sings may cause a random plane
shift to send the party elsewhere, with or
without bird (artifacts are notoriously
untrustworthy). The rings and amulets
mentioned in (3) may come under this
heading if they connect to a very large
number of universes and planes, or possess other special powers. Unless you
can control the artifact (DM’s laughter in
background: Hahaha!) or you don’t care
where you go next, this method is not
recommended.

13. Advanced technological devices:
Somewhere in the wilderness may lie the
ruins of an ancient spaceport, with a teleporter to other alternate universes or
planets. The device may be a large booth,
a door, a platform, a hollow sphere, etc.
It may or may not be in good working
order, possibly sending users to an undesired universe.

14. Acts of the gods: This is one way to
get a (generally) guaranteed round-trip
ticket to another universe. Everyone is
asked to perform a task for a greater being in that other universe, and is sent
there through the being’s own powers.
How well the task is completed may determine whether or not the group is returned. One group I was with made a
foray into Jotunheim (the Norse giantland) to seek out “the roots of stones.”
The task was given us by no less a personage than Odin. What we found, after
a long search, was a small pile of stones
in the back of a cave. Each one had a
permanent Magic Mouth on it, and would
repeat various cheers such as “G-R-AN-I-T-E. Granite! Granite! ALLLLLLLLL
THE WAY! HEY!”

“Rooting stones, get it?” said the DM
before we chased him into the kitchen
and tried to throw him out a third-story
window. He escaped.
 

These are by no means the only possible methods of travel between universes.
Anything might work. Dorothy tapped a
pair of ruby slippers together and went
from Oz to Kansas. Remember how she
got to Oz to begin with? In The Lion, The
Witch and The Wardrobe, the children
entered Narnia through the back of a
coat closet.

In any event, how you get characters
there is not nearly as crucial to the campaign as what they find when they arrive.
A well designed world will repay the
playing group with many more hours of
enjoyment than it took to create in the
first place—and creating it is a lot of fun,
too!