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    Canonfire :: View topic - Methods of travel between paralell Oerths (and the like)
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    Methods of travel between paralell Oerths (and the like)
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    Apprentice Greytalker

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    Wed Jan 04, 2017 12:17 pm  
    Methods of travel between paralell Oerths (and the like)

    Oerth is connected to at least four counterparts , such as Yarth and Uerth - including our own Earth - and at least one adventure involved travel to Earth (specifically, to London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984, to retrieve the Mace of St. Cuthbert). My question is, what methods have been used canonically to travel between these paralells? (I don't own the adventure in question.) I was thinking along the lines of creating some modern Earth PCs and having them travel inadvertenly or deliberately (or be taken/summoned, etc.) to Oerth... what methods should work? Plane Shift? Gate? A portal? Any help appreciated!
    Journeyman Greytalker

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    Wed Jan 04, 2017 3:57 pm  

    IIRC, a cleric used plane shift to get the PCs to Earth to get the Mace of St. Cuthbert, and the Mace itself would do the same to bring them back.
    Apprentice Greytalker

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    Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:43 am  

    Thanks. Also, forgot to mention magic items and Artifacts... the Well of Worlds magic item description specifically mentions "alternate worlds" as a possible destination.
    GreySage

    Joined: Aug 03, 2001
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    Thu Jan 05, 2017 6:40 pm  

    AnimeFan wrote:
    I was thinking along the lines of creating some modern Earth PCs and having them travel inadvertently or deliberately (or be taken/summoned, etc.) to Oerth... what methods should work? Plane Shift? Gate? A portal? Any help appreciated!


    Honestly, any of those things should work, depending on how you envision the cosmology. In 1st edition's Manual of the Planes, parallel Prime Material Planes were all accessible via astral color pools, so anyone who could access the Astral could travel to parallel worlds.

    According to Dragon Magazine #120, a plane shift spell will take characters to an alternate Prime Material Plane, but the material component is a steel C tuning fork made of metal from the plane the travelers wish to go to.

    Dragon #120 wrote:
    Reaching the Prime Material Plane requires a steel C-fork. The spell will take the travelers to the Prime Material Plane to which the metal is native. If the metal came from an alternative Prime Material Plane, then the fork will take the traveler to that plane. Such forks are normally used by those interplanar travelers who wish to return to their native plane.


    In 3rd edition, they changed it so that parallel Material Planes were only connected via the Plane of Shadow, and shadow gates were necessary to travel directly from one to another, or walking through the wilds of Deep Shadow on foot for those willing to go the long route.

    The earliest published example of characters from modern Earth traveling to the World of Greyhawk was Andre Norton's Quag Keep, in which a group of D&D gamers were drawn to Oerth and transformed into their player characters by the machinations of a wizard, who gifts the DM with a magical miniature figure.

    Vulcan wrote:
    IIRC, a cleric used plane shift to get the PCs to Earth to get the Mace of St. Cuthbert, and the Mace itself would do the same to bring them back.


    No, it's a permanent, keyed portal (or gate) of the sort commonly found in Planescape (by which I mean it's an archway activated by an object and passphrase). The PCs use it to get both there and back. Here's the quote from "The City Beyond the Gate" in Dragon #100, page 54:

    Dragon #100 wrote:
    The interior of this structure is quite empty and clean, as if it were swept regularly. It is bare of all furnishings and ornamentation, save for a massive stone arch in the exact center of the floor. This 12' tall, 10' wide arch is the magical, interplanar gate leading to London. Girard tells the party that the gate opens from either side by holding the detector disk toward it and commanding, "Open!"
    Apprentice Greytalker

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    From: TregMallin

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    Sat Jan 14, 2017 6:23 pm  

    What about the "Inner Plan Probability Lines (the 7th dimension)" referenced in Unearthed Arcana under Hierophant Druid?

    I thought I remembered--and it might be from the Gord the Rogue series--that all the various Oerth/Uerth/Yarth worlds were arranged along a line of probability from more to less uncanny.
    GreySage

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    Sun Nov 14, 2021 7:26 pm  

    TregMallin wrote:
    What about the "Inner Plane Probability Lines (the 7th dimension)" referenced in Unearthed Arcana under Hierophant Druid?

    I thought I remembered--and it might be from the Gord the Rogue series--that all the various Oerth/Uerth/Yarth worlds were arranged along a line of probability from more to less uncanny.


    I was just looking this up (over four years later) after searching the forums to see if it had already been quoted here.

    In his novel Saga of Old City, Gygax wrote:

    Quote:
    "What are the nine known dimensions of the multiverse?" the good doctor demanded.

    San managed the three obvious ones—length, breadth, height.

    "Astrality and etherality," Gord added proudly, but he was stuck after that.

    "Time, probability, extra-conceivability, and nonconceivability," Doctor Prosper finished, and both boys squirmed.

    "From whence came the Common Tongue?"

    "When was the Empire of the Aerdi overthrown?"

    "What is leverage?"

    "How can you explain technology?"

    Gord took a shot at that one. "It is a myth of the ignorant used to fool gullible folk and frighten children!"

    "Nonsense!" the elderly scholar retorted. "It is the counterpart of magic within the dimension of probability and works in inverse proportion to it."


    So yeah, the assumption here is that Oerth, Yarth, Aerth, Uerth, and Earth are all arranged according to their position along the dimension of probability (the seventh dimension, after length, breadth, height, astrality, ethereality, and time), with Oerth in the direction of magic and Earth in the direction of technology. This is the "inner plane probability line" that 23rd level hierophant druids are able to roam, and also why the psionic discipline that allows for travel between parallel worlds is called probability travel.

    The first edition Manual of the Planes did something similar by rating each alternate material plane by its physical factor (which governed how well technology worked), magical factor, and temporal factor (which accounts for their position along the sixth dimension, the dimension of time). Unlike Gygax, Jeff Grubb didn't make the physical factor and magical factor inversely proportionate, so it's possible by those rules for a plane to be high in both magic and technology, or low in both factors.
    Encyclopedia Greyhawkaniac

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    Tue Nov 16, 2021 5:39 pm  

    In Night Arrant the story A Weird Occurance in Odd Alley there are several ways to travel to Weird Way and from there portals to many other alternate and parralel dimensions.
    Apprentice Greytalker

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    From: 41°6'53"N, 73°24'21"W

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    Wed Nov 17, 2021 3:29 am  

    Not necessarily "canon," but I've a Suel sorceress with a cubic gate keyed to Aerth (Dangerous Journeys version), Earth (City Beyond the Gate version), Oerth, Uerth (Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk version), and Yarth (Hero's Challenge version); the sixth side is "shattered and inoperable" — presumably a link to "Learth" from Gygax's Lejendary Adventure system.

    EDIT: I also own a C-note steel tuning fork… just in case. Razz
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    Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:25 pm  

    I like the idea of the "dimension of probability" that separates parallel worlds.

    I do wonder about the astral/ethereal dimensions, though. The Inner Planes and Outer Planes are usually drawn as a circle, which would suggest two dimensions, not one, distinguishing those planes.
    GreySage

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    Fri Dec 24, 2021 5:20 pm  

    WingofCoot wrote:
    I like the idea of the "dimension of probability" that separates parallel worlds.

    I do wonder about the astral/ethereal dimensions, though. The Inner Planes and Outer Planes are usually drawn as a circle, which would suggest two dimensions, not one, distinguishing those planes.


    To fully map out the Inner Planes you'd need a negative/positive axis, a fire/water axis, and an air/earth axis.

    The ethereality dimension measures how deep in the Ethereal Plane you are: the border Ethereal is a little ways away from the Material Plane on that axis, while the Deep Ethereal is further away than that. Astrality should probably just be the other direction, measuring how far from the Prime Material Plane you are in the Astral Plane along the Astrality/Ethereality axis, rather than a dimension in its own right.

    For the Outer Planes, you need a good/evil axis and a law/chaos axis.
    Apprentice Greytalker

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    Sat Dec 25, 2021 9:41 am  

    Ah ok. I was thinking the idea was the inner planes being "strung along" the ethereality dimension and the outer planes "strung along" the astrality dimension in the way the parallel worlds/material planes are "strung along" the dimension of probability.

    I agree the usual representation of the inner planes is a 3-D structure (positive-negative, air-earth, fire-water) but that doesn't seem to match the idea of the listed 9 dimensions.
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