The danger of player boredom is one to
concern every DM. No matter how good
your dungeon is, there can come a point
when your players find it uncomfortably
familiar. In previous issues, DRAGON®
Magazine has offered many answers to the
problem, from new treasures and monsters
to tips for better refereeing. This article
offers one more answer ? the use in
AD&D® gaming of parallel worlds.
A short
hop to a strange land can do wonders in
removing campaign ennui.
The parallel-worlds concept is a classic
idea in science-fiction and fantasy literature.
It states that an infinite number of universes
are in existence, independent of each other,
separated by extradimensional barriers of
time and space. In fantasy, it has been the
basis for DeCamp and Pratt's Harold Shea
books, Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy sto-
ries, and various novels by Poul Anderson
and Michael Moorcock. (This is by no
means a complete list.) The official AD&D
material has very little to say about the
concept (except for the superb use of paral-
lel worlds in the Queen of the Demonweb
Pits module), but they can
add a lot to the
game. By leaving the worlds of ?normal?
AD&D gaming behind, the DM?s options
are expanded ? new environments, new
creatures, new forms of spell-casting, and
other surprises can be introduced to con-
found and intrigue your players.
Caer Sidi
Types of parallel worlds
To begin with, where do these alternate
worlds tit in the orthodox AD&D universe?
<revise: Deities && Demigods>
<revise: Manual of the Planes>
The answer, according to Legends & Lore,
is that the Prime Material Plane
encom-
passes the real world and all of its paral-
lels.-- I don?t think it violates the spirit of
the game, however, to suggest that there
may be other worlds existing outside the
Prime Material Plane on other, different
levels ? Alternate Material Planes, let?s
say. The difference could be that the powers
of the gods and the laws of nature will be
more or less consistent from world to world
within a given Material Plane, but there
could be great differences between that
Material Plane and any of its Alternates.
The might of the gods themselves could
change (more on this later) and ?reality?
might be very different from ordinary
AD&D worlds. While this is not a
license
for completely overthrowing the game, it
can justify some of the variant world-
concepts discussed further on.
The Frozen Lands
Whichever plane your parallel world
inhabits, there still remains the task of
building it and making it distinct and differ-
ent from the one used in the current cam-
paign. The world may be physically similar
to your old one, with the difference lying in
the monsters or magic it contains, or it may
have physical conditions unlike the ones
your characters are accustomed to seeing.
Maldev
For example, instead of a round parallel
world, how about a flat one? I use a flat
earth for my campaign, because of my own
desire to try something different. The most
obvious change, from the viewpoint of
someone from a round world, is that the
horizon extends to infinity; given an unob-
structed view, it?s possible to see much
further than on our own planet. Because
there is no earth-curvature, everything is
more or less the same distance from the sun
(which, in this universe, goes around the
earth). No polar or tropical regions exist,
and there are no changes in seasons ? a
perpetual temperate spring reigns through-
out the world. Bear in mind, however, that
spring in the American Midwest can in-
clude anything from summer heat waves to
winter blizzards; the weather isn't boring.
Differences in climate are caused entirely by
features of the land -- the center section of
my northern continent, for example, is
bounded by mountains on both sides, shut-
ting off the rain and creating a desert.
Lolth's Prison
All this, in turn, creates changes in hu-
man life. Consider farming: Instead of
having separate times of the year for grow-
ing and harvesting, farmers can plant and
reap year-round. Because of the erratic
weather, however, it?s more important for
the plants to be tough and durable than big
? in other words, they can grow more
plants, but smaller ones. Because there are
no seasons, the only measure for the calen-
dar is the moon, which waxes and wanes
like our own (but in relation to the power of
the moon goddess, not the angle of the sun?s
light). The moon?s cycle of exactly twenty-
eight days makes one four-week month;
fourteen months make a lesser year and two
such years ? twenty-eight months ? make
a Great Year (all of which makes it a heck of
a lot easier to keep track of days and dates).
The result is a distinctly different world,
with the differences evolving logically from
the basic decision to make it flat.
Some people may be bothered by the fact
that a flat earth isn?t scientifically feasible
(there seem to be a lot of arguments along
those grounds in "Forum" sometimes).
Personally, I don?t think feasibility matters
in the slightest. In fantasy, as Fritz Leiber
once put it, it?s not necessary to be reality-
consistent, only self-consistent. In other
words, it doesn?t matter if your new world
is ?impossible,? in the sense that it contra-
dicts the laws of nature, provided that its
own laws don?t contradict each other.
Another possible shape for a new world
would be an elliptical one. Because the
atmosphere of any world, no matter what
shape, will take on spherical form, the ends
of the ellipse, poking out of the sphere, will
have very little atmosphere ? or possibly
none at all, if the ellipse is extreme enough.
Either way, survival at the ends would be
difficult or impossible without magical
protection. It?s also possible the world
would wobble on its axis as it rotates, so
that the length of the days and seasons
would vary wildly ? some years might have
no winter, while other years could have
triple-length ones.
What if a world had two suns? The planet
could orbit one of the pair or both of them
at once, but physics dictates that it cannot
orbit one and then the other. Then again, a
flat earth doesn?t fit in with physics, either.
In an AD&D campaign, it?s possible
that
the local deities provided some powerful
artifact to protect a sun-changing world
from harm as it went through its climatic
alterations. If the local evil arch-mage were
threatening to destroy the artifact, that
would certainly be a challenge for the player
characters to deal with.
A world could be shaped like Burroughs's
Pellucidar, located on the inside of the
Earth, so that the horizon curves up in the
distance. One could pick an even stranger
shape, like Larry Niven's sun-circling
Ringworld, or the ziggurat-shaped planet in
Philip Jose Farmer's The Maker of Uni-
verses. Even on a spherical world, there
could be unexpected differences -- every-
thing could be a hundred times its normal
size, for example, so that the characters
appeared no bigger than rats. Suppose the
surface of the planet was airless, confining
all life to caverns and tunnels below the
ground, or it was unstable, with volcanoes
and earthquakes a part of daily life. What of
a planet covered by an ocean and small
islands, like LeGuin's Earthsea-- I think
you?ve got the picture.
Populating a parallel world
Once you?ve settled on the world you
want, the next step is to populate it. A new
world allows you to introduce an assortment
of variant monsters to surprise your players.
One simple but effective step is to reverse
alignments, presenting players with evil
unicorns and treants, and good fire giants
and werewolves. Monster powers should be
adjusted accordingly ? an evil unicorn?s
horn being poisonous rather than a poison
antidote, for example. A second possibility
would be to give more kinds of magical
powers to creatures, creating gnoll illusion-
ists and giant magic-users. One could go
even further and allow one or more of the
demi-human or humanoid races to have the
same range of classes and-lack of level re-
strictions as humans ? halfling arch-mages
would be pretty surprising, while a few half-
orc assassin/magic-users could be both
surprising and nasty.
For an even more alien world, this can be
taken even further. What if the race domi-
nating the new world ? in the sense of
having no class or level restrictions ? were
neither human, humanoid, or demi-
human? What if evolution had turned out
differently and the ruling race had evolved
from dogs, cats, birds, fish, insects, lizards,
or spiders? What would their society be
like? How would they react to humans?
Would elves and dwarves exist, or would
they be replaced, too? For example, cat-
people could fill the place of humanity,
while bird-, lizard-, and dog-people fill the
roles of races with limited classes and levels.
The AD&D game already has intelligent
forms of most kinds of animals, so it?s not
that great a jump for them to reach full
"human" status.
A different physical world will also pro-
duce different inhabitants. If your world is
an Earthsea-style world, adapt land-going
monsters for the ocean; the two Monster
Manuals have already presented sea-going
forms of elves, ogres, gargoyles, and ghouls,
and you can add to the list. Could there be
sea-dwarves or sea-gnomes to match sea-
elves? How about aquatic sphinxes, mino-
taurs, medusas, or puddings? Whatever
your new earth is like, see if there are ways
old monsters could adapt to it.
Once your world is built and populated,
you can civilize its inhabitants. Even if the
people of your new realm are humans and
demi-humans, you can still give the world
special qualities through their cultures. For
example, what if the world is in a more
advanced era than the usual setting? It
would be a novel experience for most play-
ers to find their characters in societies like
Elizabethan or Victorian England, or
France during the revolution. Coping with
new customs and a different class structure
would be challenging. (The Victorian class
system was, if anything, harsher than that
of medieval times, while the French Revolu-
tion sought to dispense with the aristocracy
completely.)
A culture could be developed that has no
connection at all with Earth history. Sup-
pose that the new world had once reached a
peak in science and technology and then
deteriorated; its ?magicians? now combine
real magic with advanced science. (The
Thundarr TV cartoon series used this con-
cept extensively.) This would allow use of
many new forms of techno-magic, such as
robots, lasers, holograms, and so on.
On Dragonworld, dragons taught witch-
doctors and magic-users their spells and
offered to protect tribes and towns against
the rest of the world ? in return, of course,
for food, shelter, and lots of treasure. Today,
every village, town, and tribe has its own
dragon, of variable age, power (the stronger
the city, the older and more powerful the
dragon), and appropriate alignment (brass
dragons with elves or chaotic good humans,
black dragons with chaotic evil men or
gnolls). The dragons receive food and trea-
sure from their allies and, in return, protect
them in time of war. (If it looks like its meal
ticket is going to be wiped out, a dragon
will do whatever it takes to protect the
gravy train.) Not everyone believes this
benefits humans as much as it does dragons
? but no one wants to be without a dragon
protector, nonetheless.
All this has made Dragonworld different
from my primary campaign world. Where
my regular game world has only a few
varieties of dragons (mostly those
from the
Monster Manual), Dragonworld has them
all. All the official species and many of the
unofficial ones (like the neutral crystalline
dragons, the yellow,
orange,
and purple
dragons, and the landragons
from
DRAGON issues #37, #74, and #65, re-
spectively) exist, for every species has a
good chance to survive and breed. Simi-
larly, while most of the humanoid species
have been wiped out on my earth (only
goblins and gnolls exist in large numbers),
almost all races survive on Dragonworld
under their lizardly protectors. Where the
regular campaign world has been domi-
nated by a succession of empires, Dra-
gonworld has become the province of
innumerable independent city-states and
tribes; conquest by the sword has, of neces-
sity, been superseded by political and eco-
nomic pressure and Byzantine intrigue.
In some ways, even the basic outlook is
different. A human from my main world
would be totally confounded by the affection
most Dragonworlders have for dragons,
while a Dragonworlder would be equally
bewildered by the idea of subduing a
dragon, let alone selling one. It?s in these
ways that parallel worlds can be built and
differentiated.
Magical variations
Even after your world is built, populated,
and civilized, still more can be done to
make it unusual. One way to give your
players some new experiences is to intro-
duce variations in the way magic works.
Suppose that boundaries between your
new world and the Positive and Negative
Material Planes are weaker or stronger than
in most worlds. This could affect the
amount of energy drawn from the planes by
spells and magic items, so that they would
only have one-half or one-third of their
normal power (where the barriers were
stronger) or be increased to double or triple
force (if weaker barriers existed). With
lessened magic, PCs would find adventur-
ing far more difficult (and more challeng-
ing); enhanced magic could be a lot of fun
for a short while, like giving players high-
level characters to run for one adventure.
Of course, if they were going to be in an
enhanced-magic world for some time, game
balance might dictate pitting them against
equally enhanced opponents ? like double-
strength ogre magi.
A second possibility is that power from
the energy planes seeps constantly into the
new world (instead of being drawn there
only by spells). As a side effect, the natives
could have built up ?immunity? to the
magical energy ? in other words, even the
weakest of creatures have developed some
degree of magic resistance.
It?s also possible that a different world
will have new, different spells. In the
?Earthsea? world described earlier, druid
spell lists might be expanded to include
predict tide, summon current, and call sea-
being. Magic-users and clerics would also
have new spells, along the lines of create
whirlpool, tidal wave, or neutralize drown-
ing, and might have spells such as water
walking or water breathing at 1st or 2nd
level. If the DM allows PCs to learn a
lower-level version of a regular spell like
water breathing, it might be wise to reduce
the power and duration to make it fit a 1st-
level listing.
Another possibility is that the magic-users
in your new world are not generalists, as
they are in regular AD&D gaming,
but
specialists. In this case, fire magicians, ice
magicians, healers, shapechangers, and so
on make their appearance, perhaps grouped
into colleges or guilds like the spell-casters
of the DRAGONQUEST game. This can
be fixed by regrouping AD&D spells
along
guild lines; thus, a fire magician would
know not only burning hands, fire shield,
and fireball, but non-magic-user spells like
produce flame, flame scimitar, fire strike,
and fire resistance, with most of them avail-
able at lower levels than a character would
get them (for example, getting a 1d6, small-
area fireball at first level).
Consider the confusion when a wizard
like that meets an orthodox AD&D
en-
chanter. To the fire-wizard, the latter will
seem like some super-spell-caster, capable of
using spells from every college; a conven-
tional magic-user, on the other hand, will
assume someone who flings around walls of
fire and flame strikes is a much higher-level
character than he actually is. This could
lead to some intriguing situations.
It?s also possible to make some simple
alterations in the spells themselves. Under
the natural laws of the new universe, cast-
ing time might be altered, different material
components required, or spell duration
prolonged or shortened. Perhaps there?s a
particular material component essential to
all magic-user spells, the way druids are
dependent on mistletoe. Changes like these
could bewilder and surprise the spell-casters
in your party, in some cases making them
virtually powerless until they learn how the
new rules work.
Suppose there is one kind of magic ?
enchantment/charm spells, illusions, poly-
morph spells, or weather-control magic ?
that simply doesn?t work in the new world.
Perhaps, at some time in the long-gone
past, a foolishly arrogant magic-user at-
tempted to charm one of the gods; as a
result, the outraged deity declared the use
of such spells forbidden for all time. If a
character casts one, it might simply fail, the
caster might fall under the spell himself, or
some other penalty you deem appropriate
might take effect. Nor need the classifica-
tion of taboo spells be as simple as ?charm
spells? or ?illusions?; it can be based on
any rationale you wish. For example, the
gods could ban any spell of magic item that
does damage outside the range of hand-to-
hand combat. In order to attack someone,
you have to get close enough to him to risk
being hurt yourself.
Finally, what about a world where every-
one ? not just clerics and magic-users ?
can cast spells. Perhaps everyone is capable
of learning magic-user cantrips (which are
some of the most useful spells in non-
combat situations) or casting at least one
particular useful spell ? cure light wounds
or enchanted weapon being common knowl-
edge, for instance. Alternatively, everyone
might possess one unique spell of his own,
like the inhabitants of Piers Anthony?s
Xanth ? one has magic missile, another
can haste himself, while a third can purify
food and drink. In either case, near-
universal use of magic could make a fight
with even zero-level characters hazardous.
It would not be advisable to let player char-
acters learn these special spells. At the very
least, the DM should have PCs forget them
when they return to their own world.
Variant psionics
Having touched on magic, let?s consider
a closely allied topic ? psionics. Even if
your regular game doesn?t use them, creat-
ing parallel worlds that do could prove
intriguing for your players. For example,
some of the ideas given above for magic
could be reused for psionics ? everyone
native to that world could have one random
psionic ability, or they could all share one
common power, like ESP, teleportation, or
telepathy. Then again, perhaps only one
branch of humanity possesses special
powers ? a race possessing innate mass
domination, for instance, could become
master of its world.
A new world might also affect the player
characters, perhaps stimulating any latent
psionic talents they possessed. A character
who is potentially psionic (having charisma,
intelligence, or wisdom above 16) will be-
come psionic while on this world; but with-
out being in control or even aware of his
powers at first. Awareness might only come
when some condition is fulfilled; after a set
period of time, a developing talent might
start to function but randomly so, or there
could be a percentile chance of activating a
talent during moments of intense stress.
The latter would make the PCs? first battle
pretty bizarre ? imagine trying to fight
while talents like reduction, dimension door,
or etherealness were activating randomly!
Needless to say, game balance usually dic-
tates that the PCs lose these powers on their
return home.
The social implications of psionics should
also be kept in mind. How would a society
of telepaths react to a party of nontelepathic
characters? Would they mock them? Treat
them as little more than cattle? Subject
them to ?treatment? for repairing what
they assume are damaged telepathic facul-
ties? (What effects that could have would be
anyone?s guess.) Legality might be another
important factor; a world where psionics are
commonplace may have firm laws about
what is and is not permissible (no reading
minds without a warrant, no taking over
someone else?s mind, etc.). Violating these
rules would bring a great deal of trouble to
the PCs ? and this would probably apply
to spells like charm person and ESP, too.
Borrowed game worlds
These suggestions cover some of the
possibilities for creating an original parallel
world of your own. But there is another way
besides building your own to provide your
players with new and different earths, and
that is to ?borrow? your new world from
somebody else.
One means of doing this is to use another
gaming system as the basis for the alternate
world. The DMG discusses this on pp. 112-
114, working out the possibilities and
details
for sending AD&D characters into
a
GAMMA WORLD® or BOOT
HILL®
game. The appeal of this approach is natu-
ral ? the laws of nature and much of the
background for the new world are already
worked out for you, yet your PCs will still
be thrust into a-totally different setting
offering a variety of new adventures.
There?s no need to stop where the DMG
does ? you can use just about any gaming
system if you?ve a mind to. How about
setting adventurers loose in the Roaring
Twenties of the GANGBUSTERS? game?
Why not have them join forces with the
agents and spies of the TOP SECRET®
game? The heroes and criminals of FGU?s
VILLAINS & VIGILANTES? game?
(Perhaps some super-criminal is recruiting
evil magic-users for a sinister plan, driving
the heroes to seek the assistance of the
player characters.) One could also put them
into another magic-based game system, like
that of the DRAGONQUEST? game or
the RUNEQUEST® game.
Whichever system you pick, using it will
require the same sort of work the DMG did
for the GAMMA WORLD and BOOT
HILL games. If the new game uses a differ-
ent set of character abilities, one will have
to generate the statistics that the characters
don?t have. If the range of stats is different
(5-25 for normal humans, for instance,
instead of 3-18), the equivalent in the
AD&D system has to be calculated.
In
addition, one has to answer a dozen other
questions. How do you adapt characters to
a different initiative system? How do special
rules covering fatigue or critical hits apply
to the PCs? What are the effects of new
weapons or powers, such as machine-guns
or the V&V absorption ability, on AD&D
characters? If characters from other games
and worlds pass into an AD&D universe,
all
of the same questions must be asked in
reverse.
Borrowed fiction worlds
An alternative to borrowing an estab-
lished gaming system is to borrow an estab-
lished fictional system. Players who read
fantasy are bound to have favorite charac-
ters, be they Fafhrd, John Carter,
or
Conan; think of the pleasure your players
can find in visiting their favorite heroes in
their native worlds. For my taste, it?s best
that they be in their native worlds. Seeing
Elric without Melnibone or the Mouser
without Nehwon just wouldn?t seem right;
their worlds are part of their charm. Rather
than establishing these heroes in one?s own
world, where they can never really fit in,
one can use a parallel world system to let his
players meet whom they wish, going to
Covenant's Land or Amethyst's Gemworld
with no trouble.
Even more than an ordinary game, how-
ever, one using an established fantasy re-
quires preparation. To begin with, do you
know the mythos you?re using? It might be
fun to take your players? characters to Mid-
dle Earth, but it could be disastrous if they
all know Tolkien better than you; the odds
are they?ll catch every error you make in
handling their favorite work and scream
indignantly at all of them, which is hardly
conducive to an enjoyable evening. One
must also not only be familiar with the
personalities and histories of the characters
from the book but must translate their
powers and abilities into AD&D terms
?
what level magic-user is Glinda the Good,
for instance? There are many resources to
help out here ? Legends & Lore and many
articles in DRAGON Magazine have given
stats, powers, levels, and descriptions for
many fictional and legendary heroes.
Then too, how much change are you
willing for the PCs to bring to the estab-
lished course of events in the fiction-world?s
saga? If you have them enter Elric?s world
during the events of Elric of Melnibone,
for
example, suppose they revise the entire
Elric canon by killing Yrkoon? If you?re not
ready for that (and I can vouch from a
similar experience that it can be extremely
unsettling), it might be better to involve
them in a minor adventure that won?t affect
the major hero?s destiny.
[AD&D game adventures are available
for Conan's Hyboria (modules CB1 and
CB2) and Fafnrd's Nehwon (Lankhmar:
City of Adventure). Chaosium's Thieves'
World game setting described the famed city
of Sanctuary from the anthology series in
AD&D terms as well. -- Editor]
Character problems
Whether one uses an established alternate
world or an original one, and whatever
surprises the world contains, the same PCs
will visit it. Some player character classes
are going to have problems no matter which
world they go to. Of them all, clerics will be
the hardest hit, for they must deal with the
fact that residents of other worlds and Alter-
nate Planes may not worship the same gods.
This is entirely understandable (with an
infinite number of worlds, even the most
energetic deities can?t proselytize them all),
but it still gives clerics a problem. When
they enter a parallel world, it?s entirely
possible that no one there has even heard of
their gods. The native deities will probably
want to keep it that way; who needs the
competition? If clerics of the Greek gods
were to try preaching their creed on a world
ruled by the Celtic deities, they would
probably be ridiculed (?Zeus? Hephaestus?
Where?d you make up those names??) and
would certainly run into heavy opposition
from the established churches. At best,
they?d simply be forbidden to preach; at
worst, they?d be outlawed, condemned as
heretics, hunted by the church, and possibly
threatened with divine wrath as well.
It?s also unpleasantly feasible that on
some worlds the clerics will find their
powers diminished. According to Gary
Gygax (in an article in DRAGON issue
#97), the powers of the gods depend
on the
number of their worshipers on the
Prime
Material Plane; a deity without
such wor-
shipers ?is consigned to operations on some
other plane of existence, without the means
to touch upon the Prime Material.? Logi-
cally, this should also apply to Alternate
Material Planes ? if a god has no wor-
shipers there, he has no powers. Thus, if a
cleric arrives on a world in such a plane, his
god would be almost completely unable to
aid him and ? as happens on the planes of
Hell or the Abyss, where clerics are simi-
larly cut off ? the cleric would be unable to
recover any spells above 2nd level, since
anything higher draws upon the divine
power. Needless to say, this could prove a
dire situation.
Another possible problem (on a world in
any plane) is that the ruling deities are
active enemies of the cleric?s god. Imagine
the position of a good priest, for instance,
on a world where daemons and devils were
the greatest powers, or the danger to a
priestess of Athena on a world where her
arch-enemy Ares was the dominant deity.
Clerics could wind up making some uncon-
ventional alliances ? a lawful neutral cleric
might join forces with devils or rakshasa in
order to break the grip of demonkind on a
world where those chaotic beings held sway.
A cleric?s life definitely won?t be easy, but it
won?t be dull, either.
The other classes with problems will be
those with limited membership at high
levels ? assassins, druids, and monks.
There is only one 10th-level monk in a
campaign area, for example, so if a player
takes his own Master of the North Wind
into another world, he may soon be tagged
as an impostor or a fraud.
Maintaining the balance
No matter what you have planned in
your new world, it?s important not to over-
look game balance. With parallel worlds so
full of special surprises, there?s always the
risk the PCs will come into possession of
(From page 42)
something a little too special; the thought o
a character returning to his homeworld
bearing Stormbringer should be enough to
make any DM blanch.
The problem is hardly absurd; there was
the article in DRAGON issue
#82 citing
characters who?d acquired everything from
battlestars (as in Galactica) to Thor?s ham-
mer. One has to be as careful giving out
treasure on parallel worlds as he would be
in his primary campaign. While a reason-
able amount of caution should protect the
mightiest artifacts (it shouldn?t be very hard
to keep your PCs from getting
Stormbringer unless you actually want them
to get it ? in which case, you deserve the
results), it?s sometimes harder to make
decisions about low-powered ones.
This is particularly true on technologi-
cally oriented worlds; since most items will
not be found in the DMG, it may be diffi-
cult to decide what?s safe to give them. An
anti-matter bomb may be clearly too power-
ful, but what about a light-sabre or a jet-
pack? To decide such questions, translate
the items into the nearest AD&D equiva-
lents. A gas mask might be equated to a
necklace of adaptation, a jetpack to wings of
flying, or a robot to an iron golem. Then
decide if the analogous magic item would be
acceptable as treasure ? if a necklace of
adaptation is line, so is the gas mask, but if
a cube of force seems unreasonable, a force-
field device probably will be unreasonable,
too.
Keep in mind charges ? or the lack of
them ? while you?re evaluating the items,
since this can make a big difference. An
anti-gravity belt with unlimited usage is
clearly worth more than wings of flying,
while a force-field projector with only two
or three charges remaining is a long way
from being as valuable as a cube of force (a
closer equivalent might be a scroll with
three wall of force spells on it).
Once you know what is and isn?t accept-
able, it will be relatively simple to set up the
adventure with a suitable selection of trea-
sure. If the PCs do manage to get their
hands on something you don?t want them to
have ? or if you want to let them use an
item in the adventure but not keep it for-
ever (they may actually need a force-field
device at some point, for instance), there
are other steps that can be taken. The sim-
plest is to rule that technological items
above a certain level of complexity simply
don?t work on the PCs? native world (the
laws of nature don?t permit it to operate
there), or that passage through the dimen-
sions has damaged them so that they?re no
longer functioning. The same principle can
be used to keep spell-casters from retaining
any special spells they may have acquired in
other worlds.
If PCs do bring something back in work-
ing condition, they will still have problems.
Knowledge, for instance: can they learn the
secrets of controlling an android or an anti-
gravity platform? If it?s damaged, can they
repair it? How will they recharge charged
items? To keep their treasures working, it
may be necessary to return to the other
world again. . . .
Of course, one can reward player charac-
ters adventuring in parallel worlds with
special treasures to fit the occasion, prizes
that are both unusual and game-balanced.
Any item from a technological world will
appear special in an ordinary AD&D
world,
even if it isn?t devastatingly powerful.
Magic items can be distinctive, too; adven-
turers might return from an Egyptian world
with one of Isis? special charms, or from an
American Indian plane with a sacred medi-
cine bundle. These items that would appear
quite out-of-the-ordinary on worlds without
those mythologies. Carefully chosen, such
items can give the players real satisfaction
without overloading their characters with
power. This is not to say you should never
give a group a spectacular magic treasure
? but think it through carefully first. It?s
far better to give PCs too little and to make
it up later than to give them too much.
The parallel world ideas given here are
not ? I repeat, not ? intended as the basis
for anyone?s primary campaign. It?s one
thing to encounter illusionist kobolds or
DRAGONQUEST air mages as a special
feature of a parallel world and quite another
to establish them as part of your regular,
primary earth; you can?t rationalize a vari-
ant game by saying it?s set on an Alternate
Material Plane: Just passing through an
unorthodox world shouldn?t wreak game
damage if you?re careful, but making some
of these ideas part of your regular game
could lead to major imbalances and distor-
tions. The same applies to starting an ordi-
nary AD&D world and then shifting
permanently to a variant one.
There is also one final warning that
should be added: Always keep the players?
satisfaction in mind. No matter how differ-
ent or original your world is, don?t assume
the sheer novelty of the setting will make up
for any flaws in dungeon design; setting a
dungeon beneath Lankhmar will certainly
enhance the game, but it won?t make your
players overlook any shoddiness in your
work. This is true even if you?re using an
original fantasy world or an established one
they don?t know about ? in those cases,
you can?t count on your world holding their
interest without a good adventure to go with
it. If players dislike a world, don?t use it at
all; the best DM on earth can?t make me
enjoy a trip to a BOOT HILL campaign (I
do not like Westerns). Also, make sure the
game balance doesn?t tilt too far against
your players. New worlds should be exciting
challenges, not killer dungeons on a grand
scale,
Caer Sidi <check to see if demi-plane or full PMP>
The Frozen Lands <check to see if demi-plane or full PMP>
Like any artistic performance, a
dungeon?s success depends on the judgment
of the audience. Don?t be content to have
your players admire your artistry. Reach
but and invite them to become part of the
scene.
