Infinite Worlds Campaign with magic instead of tech

[Pannath]

I need some help with a problem that has been bothering me. A large gurps setting is the infinite worlds setting, which deals with jumping to other dimensions. This sort of setting interests me, however I didn't want to have to use technology to do this, and wanted to take go at it using magic in the campaign for dimensional travel. I figured with the ability in one of the largest settings to travel to other dimensions that there would be some gurps spells that detailed how to do this. I looked through the 4th ed magic, fantasy, infinite worlds, and basic books and there is nothing of the sort detailed.
The closest thing is the planar travel spells listed under the gate magic college. However these spells seem to be made for going to planes in the traditional fantasy setting sense as in 'Astral Plane' or 'Elemental Plane of Fire', etc.. And in the description it says you need to know a new specific spell for each plane that you're going to, even for your home plane of existence if you want to get back to it.
Are there rules for magic and just jumping to other dimensions? rules that would work in a setting where players were doing such. The closest examples off the top of my head would be like the Myth series by Robert Asprin. Or other things such like that.
Help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Kuroshima]

Well, I've been thinking at making a pseudo stargate campaign, using the IW concept (and in fact sharing the world with canonical IW, for extra fun when they meet), where the game is an ancient magical artifact enchanted with Draw Power, Beacon, and Gate. So far, I haven't found any major problems

[kaan]

The easiest to do, and hardest on the mages is to have a single spell per world, with a common spell to divine that world's existance. Heavy on the mage, all spells for non-common worlds must effectively be researched (and then sold to interested buyers). This means that a traveler has to spend LOTS of CPs to visit many worlds. What to require for divining a world is a problem though.

Or just decide that what matters is traveling through the dimensions. Going this route (with quantum been a single dimension of travel, you could have more than one):

• A single spell per level of quantum difference. Wizards can travel to many destinations easily.
• As above but you need different spells for going to higher quantums than to lower quantums. This means you have to know both to return to your destination.
• As the first option, but you only have 0 or 1 quantum travel spells. So now you need to cast the same spell many times to travel to your final destination. Traveling is now more interesting.

If you have more than one dimensions of travel, you need more spells. So one can only reach a world by knowing the spells for traveling through all the needed dimensions. Spells are combined in a lengthy ritual. If one or more fail, results could be interesting...

So you could have Planes (like the physical, the astral and the elemental), Locations (Earth Prime, mage's home world), Realms (human, lizard, ooze) and Time (past, now, future). So you could travel between Locations, between Realms (to land where mammals never took over), in the Time Realm (to "echos" of your world in the IW lingo), or combine it by traveling to a past Earth Prime Astral Plane of Lizards, to find weaknesses for the spirit manifesting as a T-Rex god in your world and time.

Hope this helps.

[Akicita]

Have you considered just using the Jumper (World) advantage, with the "special effect" that it is regarded as Magic?

[Rotwang]

The Cabalist template in Infinite Worlds contains several different options for a world jumping mage.

[Pesterfield]

Plane spells should for work alternate world travel as well.

Start with Divination 'Does a world exist where no intelligent life lives?' if the answer is yes ask for more information, since divination gives visions related to the question. You'll probable need several viewings to get ideas for what the spell needs. Then all that's left is researching the spell.

[William]

Originally Posted by Pannath

Are there rules for magic and just jumping to other dimensions? rules that would work in a setting where players were doing such. The closest examples off the top of my head would be like the Myth series by Robert Asprin. Or other things such like that.
Help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Magical knowledge, perhaps. If I understand correctly, in the Cabal setting it is possible to physically travel from one plane to another under appropriate conditions without using spells. A mortal can travel to Yetzirah or Briah via "points of tangency" -- such as certain stone circles under the moon, or caverns beneath the island of Create, or fairy highways -- and from there back to Assiah (the material world). If you want to run a magical multi-world campaign with no spells needed except possibly Plane Shift (Yetzirah) and/or Plane Shift (Assiah), consider having multiple material worlds as different parts of Assiah, tangent to parts of Yetzirah which normally are unimaginably remote from each other. A mage in such a setting would be restricted in where he could travel to on various planes, but divinations and specialized research might be able to tell him at least some route which can get him to a given plane, just by projecting to Yetzirah or Briah and then walking.

There's also psionics, which fits in a lot of fantasy campaigns.

[thastygliax]

Planar travel spells apply to parallel worlds as well as "unearthly" dimensions.

Jumper (World) can be defined as magic, psi, or other origin/mechanism with equal ease.

The IW book describes some locales and "demi-planes" that allow dimensional travel without special knowledge or technology (faerie trods, wandering cities, etc.). There is also a chapter on alternate, non-IW, set-ups for a dimensional travel game, some of which use (or can use) occult means rather than tech.