Planar Travel
Planar travel should feel like crossing into a place with different assumptions. Gravity, time, morality, magic, weather, distance, and native powers can all change how the party prepares and acts.
- Define how the party reaches the plane and what makes the route reliable, costly, or dangerous.
- Choose one dominant environmental rule that changes play without overwhelming the session.
- Decide what local beings want from visitors: tribute, secrecy, service, trade, judgment, or removal.
- Make supplies, rest, navigation, language, and safe shelter explicit if they are under pressure.
- Give the party a way home, then decide what can threaten that way home.
The first scene should prove the plane is different: impossible skies, hostile physics, alien etiquette, strange time, or a local power noticing them.
Planar routes can depend on symbols, emotions, bargains, stars, portals, memory, or permission rather than ordinary maps.
Treat the return path as an asset. If it is damaged, stolen, delayed, or conditional, the plane immediately matters more.
Use one strong planar twist at a time. If every action needs a special exception, the plane becomes bookkeeping instead of wonder.
Access costs might be rare components, specific timing, a guide, a bargain, a true name, or a dangerous route.
Survival costs might be shelter, adapted magic, food, protection from the environment, local law, or avoiding notice.
Return costs should be clear enough that players understand what can strand them and what can bring them home.