[DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I am interested in ideas for why the Prime Material Plane would be important in in a DF cosmology. There are so many planes like the Elemental, Divine Realms, the Hells, Astral, Ethereal, Outer Void and so on that it sort of makes you wonder why anything existing in this cosmology would even care what goes on in the Prime Material Plane because there is so much other stuff going on.

For me it seems that the Prime Material Plane is a place where wars are waged between the various other planes. And also the act of being mortal gives a chance for growth and development. Humans souls have no choice as they are placed into bodies at birth and during life they must decide where their souls will end up. Faeries like dwarves, elves, gnome and others decide to become mortal when they become bored of the Faerie Realm and experience life. But all in all, the Prime Material Plane provides more Free Will than other places of existence although it also results in death as well.

If you have any ideas then please feel free to post.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Perhaps, despite the seeming similarity of the various immaterial planes to one another, the Prime Material Plane is "between" them cosmologically, so you can only get from one to the other by going through the PMP.

Note that the planes aren't usually considered independent universes, so even mundane things that happen in the PMP may have ripple effects in the other planes.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I commonly view the material world as a giant fulcrum.
Other realms fighting for superiority can leverage it to increase their power base or make attacks on their enemies.
Also it typically has some resources the other planes lack and the inhabitants desire.
That could be souls, mana, worship, variety, or even strategic locations.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Well assuming you have D&D Elemental planes, the Prime Material Plane is only important to them as the source of all those summonings. Gods and demons have an interest in the Prime Material Plane because it's the source of the commodity which is the key to their power. It's like wondering why the Middle East is important. For a lot of other things, like creatures native to the Astral and Ethereal planes the PMP totally isn't important. PMP natives only interact with them when they pass through their territory.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

seems like a fair enough reason.

Though you could also say that it isn't... sure it matters the to the PCs but the threats they face from other planes are just random wanderers and losers that couldn't make it at their home base.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I would make the Material Plane essentially the outermost realm of each of the other realms, where it is impossible for any one realm to truly hold sway. All the elements are present, creatures have spirits that can be separated from their physical form (my elementals don't, while astral creatures are only spirit), and it's just kind of an area of overall disorder.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I second the interdimensional crossroad/shortcut idea. You can maybe get from the plane of fire to olympia, but you have to go through a bunch of intermediate steps. With physical reality there's only one step and you don't have to go from one "side" to the other to move on to your final destination.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I've always seen the prime material as cosmologically important because of its status as neutral ground, and its inhabitants status as useful intermediaries and proxies.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

In my cosmology it is because divine power cannot escape the material realm unless in-capsulized in a mortal shell touched by a soul. Therefore gods will not manifest there because then they could never leave. Faith becomes a bigger part of the world because power used to create miracles is power that can never be regained by the gods. Mortal beings are the only vehicles capable of transporting divine energy to and from the material plane (thus the importance of angels to the gods).

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

The Prime is the only source of new souls, it's constantly begetting them as part of the cycle of creation and life here. Other planes have to recycle theirs, they can only gain additional souls by convincing Prime dwellers to pledge their souls after death to leave the Prime and migrate away.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Or just mating grounds for them.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

A Planescape setting has to grapple with this question a lot. Here are a few of the answers:

*) There are a lot of mortals. It started with elves, but humans are prolific and orckind is even more fecund. Now they're coming on to the planes. A god who wants worshipers will be looking to the Prime; those who affect human history have a say in history, period.

*) The living are different. Elementals are too simple to affect the course of history, divine servants are focused by their god, and dead souls have lost an important mystical quality. There is something gods want from the living -- belief energy, or new ideas, etc. -- and it's the reason most religions either have an injunction against killing or regard killing as itself a holy act.

*) The Prime Material is the crossroads of the planes. Covered upthread.

*) The Prime Material is the most "real" of all the planes. (This may be a humanocentric view; an elemental may consider the elemental planes more real.)

*) Location, location, location. That is to say, only the Prime consists of physical locations. Elemental planes are a topology of elemental states and afterlife planes are a topology of spirits states. It may be that everything on those planes is a projection of something on the Prime that can be manipulated.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

In my gameworld, the Material Plane is the only place where stuff is real, solid, matter. Things from other realms are ectoplasm and spirit matter, so, for example, a gold coin from the Material Plane remains a gold coin if you take it to the City of Brass, Heaven, or Hell. A gold coin from the City of Brass might turn in to an acorn in the Happy Hunting Grounds, or a silver armband in Asgard.

In addition, like in GURPS Cabal, beliefs in the Material Plane affect the other planes and the way they appear.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Is there a reference to the Prime Material Plane somewhere in a GURPS book that I missed? Are there any GURPS rules for discussion here? If no to both, what makes this a GURPS thread (as opposed to something that belongs in General Roleplaying?)

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Could be that the OP is looking for GURPS game mechanics he could use to explain why the PMP is important, for his GURPS campaign.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I like the "crossroads" idea that's been mentioned, but I think I would take it a step further. I might say that the Prime Material Plane is the foundation. Every other plane is just a branch off the PMP. Things that happen here can affect things in the other planes. Perhaps a spell caster is using some ritual to siphon fire from the Elemental Plane of Fire to use for a very destructive spell... and the siphoning is causing damage to the EPoF. So fire elementals would care about what's happening in the PMP. Just an example.

Maybe those branch realities are pale shadows of the PMP, and anything that lives in those branch planes will become more "real" if they can get to the PMP. So creatures like fire elementals have fairly average or below-average stats while in their native plane, but if they can get to the PMP... where the real power of creation and reality lie... their stats become better. Demons crave reaching the PMP to gain power (as another example). Gods are the only thing that aren't weaker for being elsewhere, but that's because they exist on all planes at once.

One other "general" reason might be to think of the other planes as having no form. You can exist and be conscious there, but there's nothing to interact with other than other conscious beings. Going to the PMP means having things to interact with.

For GURPS mechanics, I might create a campaign setting trait that says that anything native to another plane gets its normal stats in the PMP, but a -4 to ST, DX, and HT while in their native plane, and double that on other planes. Conceptually this is meant to suggest that everything is strongest in the PMP. This way I can just make the stats for the creatures and have them perform normally in the PMP without any calculations unless the PCs go to another plane.

Just some thoughts. I hope they help. It's an interesting question.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

That's what I assumed. Gurps has elemental planes, so what else would you call the base humanoid world other than PMP?

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Really? Is that a DF thing?

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

DF elementals are subject to the Banish spell, so that's at least suggestive of elemental planes, though the only definite implication is that elementals originate from some other plane, not necessarily specific elemental realms.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Perhaps it is as simple as the Prime Material Plane being the source and the wellspring. The Prime Material Plane (PMP) or Planes is the source of the essence that makes the other realms real and vital. Without the energy of the PMP the other realms grow stagnant and lose creativety.

It could be like TORG, the PMP is the source of change and new possiblities. Without new possiblities, a plane becomes spiritually and psychicly frozen and cannot adapt. The entities of that plane lose free will and identity becoming mere automatons and easily controlled. Forgotten demons and gods become the playthings of those who are remembered with fear or love.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Fair enough. I guess my point is that this thread so far has nothing to do with GURPS so far as the discussion could take with respect to *any* fantasy-esque RPG, thus making it a General discussion.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Except the originality poster did't say that he said he was interested it in the terms of Dungeon Fantasy, a GURPS line (that what the [DF] in the title means)

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

It's where all the prayers come from. Prayers and faith are how gods become divine and grow in divine strength in a good old-fashioned D&D-type universe.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

"Dungeon Fantasy" refers to a genre, which GURPS happens to have a line of books for. It'd be tantamount to asking "what do you guys think about FTL communication?" for a sci-fi setting. While it's roleplaying-related question, it's not specific to the system that is used to implement the setting.

That said, I'll stop being a curmudgeon and just ignore this thread. :)

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

DF doesn't use Gygaxian cosmology explicitly anywhere, no matter how much b-dog wants it to.

If he wants to use Gygax's ideas for D&D in his GURPS game, the game police aren't going to arrest him, but he isn't going to get an official blessing from Kromm either. As usual, I'm really perplexed as to what he wants.

In my current (non-DF) game, there are at least four planes:
Our universe.

• An ethereal plane that overlays the material universe; this is where immaterial spirits exist.
• A celestial realm that houses angels and demons that exists outside both the time and space of material universe; all points in this realm are apparently "next to" all points in our universe (including the past and future).
• An "in-between" realm that can access the ethereal plane, but cannot be accessed from our universe directly at all.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I think you're giving Gygax more credit than he deserves. Elemental planes are pretty basic ideas.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I was only curious as to what other players think of why the Prime Material Plane is important and how they set up their cosmology. GURPS DF doesn't go into this too much so I was just looking for ideas. If I wanted to use the official DF cosmology then I would just open my Dungeon Master's Guide and use that and would not ask people on the forums what their ideas are.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Three Reasons why the Prime Material Plane is Important.

Location, Location, Location!

Maybe cosmology say's it's in the "middle"... It has all the stuff! That's pretty big. Everyone's gotta cross through to get around. Or maybe its just close to the easiest "crosswalk" and it's not hard to wander off of into "our" world.

Or maybe they're not really real, they're just essential representations of our world scattered out like the light of our world passing through a prism falling out into the inter-dimensional dark...

The Prime is really important, because it is the one we play in. Probably why we refer to it as "Prime."

I've never really used other planes, I've never seen the attraction. I've had plenty of panachronic fun, but never to the elemental plane of BO-RING (Sorry, I had to, it made me chuckle) I adore world hopping, but most of the old D&D Planes stuff was just, for me, unfun.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I like the elemental planes as merely a subset of platonic like ideals.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I get what thulben and sir pudding are saying. The term "Prime Material Plane" is nothing but a technical D&D term. It's all but meaningless elsewhere AFAIK. It is not unlike asking about Magery on the D&D forum or muggles on the LotR forum. And while Gurps is certainly able to handle gygaxian cosmology, it is by no means the default cosmology for GURPS DF as the OP's first paragraph seems to suggest. /curmudgeoning.

I've never had a Prime Material Plane in GURPS DF. I've had one material plane and one spirit plane. And I've had one material plane and two spirit planes. In non-DF GURPS games I've sometimes had multiple material planes but none of them were considered prime.

Before I got into GURPS, I ran probably over a hundred games. Many of them had multiple material planes. And in some, one of the material planes was considered more central or in some cases, more real. So in these instances, there was a Prime Material Plane if you will. And I've played D&D.

As an attempt to answer the OPs question, I'll say that in the games where there was a PMP, it was "so important" because it was somehow more central or more real. In my view, the PMP is important by definition. It is Prime after all. Whatever makes it stand out as prime in your cosmology is what makes it important.

Some ideas on what might make a material plane "prime":

• It is what God or the gods pay most attention to.
• It is the place where new souls are first introduced.
• It is the largest or only hub/crossroads between planes.
• It is more lasting. Matter from it will remain material in other planes while matter from other planes will dissolve on the PMP and otherworldy creatures can't stay forever on the PMP.
• Material from the PMP is more potent. Its food is the tastiest, it's steel is the easiest to enchant, etc.
• Material, or even magic itself, is most potent when taken to the PMP (sort of the opposite of the preceding point). If everyone's magic items are more effective on the PMP, they will want to bring them there to use. It becomes the play field.
• While time flows at different rates in different planes, they use the PMP as their universal clock.
• Souls transmigrate is a special way on the PMP. Maybe you can choose what to become if you die there but if you die elsewhere you become something specific. If you die in hell, you become a demon but if you die in the PMP, you could become an angel.
• Thoughts/beliefs on the PMP have a formative impact on the other planes but not (or to a lesser degree) vice versa.

I think I'll stop there.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

The reason I was using Prime Material Plane was because the elemental planes could possibly be made of matter and there could also be other planes that are material instead of spiritual. I just meant the plane where the PCs live as opposed to the other planes of existence that are commonly part of fantasy.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

"Prime Material Plane" as a term of art is purely Gygaxian.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Eh, slang to restate something that's been around for centuries is not quite what I would call pure invention.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

If one is going to discuss a D&D/Gygaxish cosmology, the Prime Material Plane was never unique, any book referencing it also contained reference to Alternate Prime Material Planes, the number of which was implied to be large.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

What is wrong with referencing Gary Gygax? It is like saying you can not reference Newton or Einstein when talking about Physics.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

My concept is that it's only important to creatures that live off souls because it has a lot of them. The rest of the planes couldn't give a toss.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I recall it as referring to Alternate Material Planes with Prime being reserved for only he campaign's home plane... that is to say an any given campaign there was only one prime the rest were all alternate.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Actually, he's right. As far back as first ed. D&D, there were conceivably infinite PMPs. An inhabitant of a PMP called their home the PMP and all others alternate PMPs. Each of these had their own Ethereal plane. Thus, travel from one PMP to another was tricky. The PMPs could be widely different in terms of physics, mana-levels, TL, inhabitants, etc. Basically, the infinite worlds game concept for table-top was developed for D&D in the 80s.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

There's nothing wrong with referencing him. What I don't understand is why you expect GURPS DF to do so as a term of art or to have Gygax-derived specific features as hard rules instead of setting specific choices.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

This. The entire presupposition of this thread is "let's talk about something that everyone has in their DF setting" when, in fact, it's not stated anywhere in the books published to date.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I'm just gonna accept that in the spirit it's meant, and let it slide by, since I would hate to sound like I dislike Gary Gygax, which I don't, but the comparison is just - off. I would accept "like saying you cannot reference Tony Hawk when talking about vertical skateboarding", however. :)

The point people are making by saying this is that you're asking a settings specific (i.e.; a "Roleplaying In General") question in the GURPS forum.

The answer you your original question is, therefore; Per RAW: The Prime Material Plane does not exist by default in DF. If you're using it your campaign, it's up to you to determine that. If it doesn't cause any effects - it's pure flavor/plot, and so, no rules effects.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I can't believe there's this much verbiage dedicated to whether the question was proper. It was clear what the poster was asking, and picked no one's pocket if there was a term of art shanghaied for the purpose, don't you think?

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Since this is the internet I must ask you, "What do you really mean by that? Is that some kind of insult?"
;)

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

Well, the thing is, since he's asking in the GURPS forum, he's limiting his audience, and going to get a smaller group of people than if he asked in the Roleplaying In General forum.

It'd be kind of like me asking "Hey, I'm running a GURPS game set in the Bronze Age - what do you guys think motivated the Milesians to invade Eire?" (As god is my witness, no one actually answer this. :))

It's certainly no skin off anyones nose to said question(s) here - just maybe not as fruitful, since there're no GURPS crunchies involved. :)

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I've got a sneaking suspicion more people read this forum.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

To be "exact": the ethereal planes are interplanetary space connecting a PMP to its ethereal planes and the other planets in its solar system, the astral plane is interstellar space connecting all the APMP's to eah other and to the sixteen base levels of the aligned outer planes where the deities live. ("True Neutral" deities apparently live on PMP's)

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

I think the obvious answer is the one The Tick gave Omnipitus for why he shouldn't eat the Earth "That's where I keep my stuff!" If the PMP is the plane that the game takes place on, in other words the campaign setting, then of course the character's are invested in it. Most typically they were born there, they live there, they have vested interests there, their loved ones are there, and all their wealth is there. Really why should they care about events on other material planes that don't affect theirs? The only possible answer is the one thay never seems to apease you: it is entirely setting dependent. I've already described the Newton\Dee derived cosmology of Desolation Road, which doesn't need a "prime" material plane since it lacks any alternate material realms. My next game The Pheonix Imperitive is going with a Crowley-esque perceptual reality, as I need to support multiple traditions. I may use the Seprioth as an underlying model but I haven't decided. It too will not feature world-hopping, planar travel will only involve higher or lower mystical states, so "prime" is again meaninglesss.

Really, I don't see the point unless the campaign is going to feature player directed travel between different worldlines. in which having a homebase makes sense.

Is it? I remain perplexed by these threads. He seems to be demanding that GURPS give hard answers to setting metaphysical questions that would somehow apply to all campaigns. He certianly doesn't accept, "it is setting dependent, do what thou wilt and have fun" as an answer. Perhaps I am misunderstanding him. Can you clarify it?
RPG.net has even more, and seems to be a better place for AD&D cosmology.

Re: [DF] Why is the Prime Material Plane Important?
 

If you are speaking metaphorically, then yes. But D&D cosmology was never restricted to the type of celestial order we have in the real world. In the rare cases when things like planets and solar systems were used (e.g. Spelljammer), it wasn't either the ethereal or astral planes that separated them.