Have you ever travelled to the goodly upper planes? I was thinking

>>53190766
In my setting I call the upper/godly planes "Paradiso". Most of the time when someone would want to go to these places they would do it for pilgrimage or monetary gain by stealing the precious metals and magic materials these planes are often made of.

However, when you planes walk you leave a sliver of "soul crystal" behind that connects you to that plane of existence. So a thief stealing jewels from the golden halls might find themselves more inclined to be altruistic, despite selfish tendencies. The same effect happens when travelling to planes of hate, fire, nature etc.

>>53190766
The Beastlands and Ysgard are both great places to visit for adventure. Bytopia, or Mt. Celestia, not so much. At least, not for anything but really spiritual stuff. Oceanus is pretty cool, too.

>>53190766
Yes. You have NO IDEA how annoying as fuck the locals of the upper planes can be. Think televangelists. Think born-again Christians. Think Jehovah's Witnesses. Then make it worse, because they KNOW they're right.

...Needless to say, that campaign ended messily.

>>53194465
ha sounds like a lot of fun

>>53190766
>goodly

I know you used it correctly, but never use that term. Never ever.

>>53190766
you can visit, but you cant stay

paradise is for those who no longer have business on the mortal world

the evil are barred entry obviously, although proper lodging for lesser evil will be prepared at purgatory, which is like paradise, but everything is one step lower, the truly evil are taken away by angels downstairs, to the bad place

>>53197374
why?

>>53194465

Too many Jews.

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>>53190766
There has to be a way to make running a game in heaven interesting without making the inhabitants dangerous or resorting to a demonic invasion from the lower planes.

>>53200385
Most of the inhabitants ARE dangerous. There's also neutral beasts of all sorts there, and the actual environment is dangerous to non-petitioners as well more often than not.
Travel through many of the upper planes should rely on spiritual tests, rather than combat.

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>>53190766
>>53200385
The chief mistake is assuming that everything in the the "upper" planes, or the planes themselves, are Good-aligned.

>>53201351
Let me rephrase: there should be dangerous things in the upper planes, but they're not dangerous the way a demon is dangerous. Of course, this depends on which plane you're on - Ysgard and the Beastlands should be much more dangerous than Elysium or Mount Celestia. You're 100% right about spiritual tests rather than combat; the trick is making it interesting.

>>53202494
You're not wrong, but making the upper planes interesting by importing githyanki and other monsters is cheating. It doesn't solve the underlying problem because the focus is still on the lower planes.

>>53204390
No it isn't. Angels, devils, maruts, Bane worshipers, Gruumsh worshipers, even githyanki and illithids have no connection to the lower planes.

>>53205047
Devils have no connection to the lower planes? You sure about that one?

>>53197620

It triggers those of lesser constitution, and summons rational debaters who will derail any thread at a moment's notice.

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>>53205136
Yes. Heaven is a lot more interesting if Hell is inside it.

>>53190766
No, because I prefer to use the World Axis, which is built to be a source of adventure rather than just a grid-filling map to "this is where creatures of X alignment come from and go to".

>>53205047
OP is talking about the Great Wheel's upper planes, not the World Axis' Astral Sea. Very, very different beasts.

>>53205136
Anon was referring to the Astral Sea, which redefines "Heaven" as "the place where Gods, Angels and other Immortals exist" rather than as "the varying gradients of Good mixed with Law/Neutral/Chaos".

great wheel > world axis

>>53207625
If the Great Wheel is "greater than" the World Axis, how come you never see debates like this about how to actually use any of the planes of the World Axis?

You'd have to *pay me* to use the Great Wheel in place of the World Axis. It's nothing but a clunky, grid-filling mess.

>>53207891
How come you never see anyone (outside of 4e) discussing how to use the 4e world axis?

The Great Wheel >> World Axis any day of the week, even fridays.

The Beastlands are great, Ysgard is great, Oceanus is great, Mt Celestia, Bytopia, Arcadia and Arborea can be tricky yo use in the same way any good aligned plane can be, but even they have some baked in troubles.

What 4e did to the planes, I cannot forgive! Murdering the elemental barriers, mooshing the outer planes into a gunky mess, and effectively killing the Outlands... vile sins, all!

>>53207982
Because people playing other systems are not bound to as bad a cosmology and AD&D players dislike change.

>>53208037
Sorry dude, but Shadowfel and Faewild are shit.

No one was bound to anything, anyways. Homebrewed cosmologies have always existed. The nightmarish implementation of 4e's cosmology, along with the way they handled the massive lore changes in FR, were the worst thing about that edition.
But that's not all 4e's fault, even by the end of 2e, with the Faction War and Die, Vecna, Die adventures they had already fucked over the Planescape setting beyond usability, so you have to ignore all that if you want to run the setting in it's prime.. and if you're not running Planescape, the way the planes are aligned doesn't matter at all.

>>53208091
I can never bother to get mad at a post that misspells "feywild".

>>53201351
How would you exactly handle spiritual tests in a pen and paper RPG though?