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Old 10-23-2018, 09:38 PM   #11
JohnPaulB
 
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
The spell description explicitly limits to "as long as the wizard knows (approximately) the path." You can't go anyplace you don't already know.
I take that description to mean that if I'm going to Astral Project to Disneyland and I'd been to and know where the Main Street hub is, I should be able to go into Tomorrowland or Adventureland even if I've never been there before. I approximately know the path to get to Main Street.

Now if I had never been to Knott's Berry Farm, I wouldn't be able to get there.

But then again, it says as long as I know the path. So if I searched google maps, studied the bus schedules, plotted out each mile on a paper map, would I know the approximate path. And therefore might be able to Astral Project directly to the Knott's entrance.

I recognize that I couldn't do a "I go to Bin Ladin's Hideout" if I didn't know where his hideout was.
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Old 10-23-2018, 09:48 PM   #12
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

The party began to suspect that the map was a fake when their wizard awoke from his trance with a plan to seek out the calico cat who knew where the Mushroom Princess was.
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Old 10-29-2018, 07:10 PM   #13
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

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I'll say this for AD&D - they did a much better job defining Astral travel and visiting various alternate planes of existence. I'd almost recommend cribbing ideas from those rules rather than speculating on the miniscule information TFT provides.
And not just that... TFT is quite lacking in any kind of coherent cosmology. It certainly leaves GMs with carte-blanche to create their own and I've always been curious how others have addressed that gap.
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Old 10-29-2018, 09:45 PM   #14
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

What I like about it not being specified is that it means players can't just read a published source book to know the secrets of the universe. (Yes, GMs can change things, but if there's a developed published system for religions, afterlife, planes, etc., then many GM's won't bother, and/or you can tell as a player it's mostly probably going to be like a published system once you spot enough similarities.)

Of course, a sourcebook could be published that gives many possibilities and encourages variety.

As for actual cosmological backgrounds, our TFT PCs almost never got anywhere near discovering much about the secrets of the universe.

Some GURPS games that could have been TFT games did get into quite a wide variety of such things, but not so much in TFT.
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Old 10-30-2018, 07:59 AM   #15
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

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And not just that... TFT is quite lacking in any kind of coherent cosmology. It certainly leaves GMs with carte-blanche to create their own and I've always been curious how others have addressed that gap.
If you can hold out for a few weeks, I've already got converted spells and items and what not that present a kind of Moorecock-ian take on the multiverse for TFT, and I'll submit it to w23 as soon as that becomes an option. I'll circulate a beta of it in a month or so. I am currently getting it pared down to two concise supplements - one containing spells for a sort of variant of a 'dreamthief' and another for extending the concepts of gates to include dimensional travel. But build on the concept and mechanics of astral projection and gates. My main task at the moment is making sure what what I have is presented in a way consistent with official spells and with the RAW explanation of Cidri (and just general editing to make sure each can be presented in a few pages max).
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Old 11-01-2018, 11:17 PM   #16
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

I've been thinking of Astral denizens as an alternative method of magic - Goetia, effectively. This opens the door to ritualistic forms of magic that essentially follows its own rules, but "under the hood," advanced wizards who interact with the astral plane could figure out that it in fact uses the same mechanics - it is just that 'wizards' using 'spirits' for casting spells are in fact just outsourcing!
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Old 11-02-2018, 08:58 AM   #17
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

I've been working in a pretty focused way on this question over the last week, getting my old spells and items and so forth re-organized into bite-sized supplements. I feel like the best approach is to not introduce alternate forms of magic that operate with their own mechanics, but rather to shoe horn the effects you want to achieve into individual spells that all conform to the standard spell casting mechanics. The EFFECTS of spells already in the game are super diverse and I think can accommodate much of what you want to achieve with planar travel and so forth without fundamentally changing how magic works. But if you tried to stitch those things together into a sub system of magic that operates with its own rules, you would end up adding a lot of cruft to the game. Plus I doubt they would distribute the end result through w23, given what they've said about their goals with that prospective body of materials.
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Old 11-09-2018, 01:08 AM   #18
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Default Re: Where is the Astral projected?

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If you can hold out for a few weeks, I've already got converted spells and items and what not that present a kind of Moorecock-ian take on the multiverse for TFT, and I'll submit it to w23 as soon as that becomes an option. I'll circulate a beta of it in a month or so. I am currently getting it pared down to two concise supplements - one containing spells for a sort of variant of a 'dreamthief' and another for extending the concepts of gates to include dimensional travel. But build on the concept and mechanics of astral projection and gates. My main task at the moment is making sure what what I have is presented in a way consistent with official spells and with the RAW explanation of Cidri (and just general editing to make sure each can be presented in a few pages max).
Sounds intriguing! I'm a huge Moorcock fan...
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