Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: StarManta on <05-14-13/0436:38>
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This week, I am sending my players into a metaplane in search of someone whose spirit was "lost" there. As this will be my first time doing anything at all with metaplanes, I would like to gather some input from people who have used them in their stories.
The team is getting to the metaplanes by way of a rift that a more powerful theurge is "holding open" for them. The metaplane will be the metaplane central to Shamanic tradition (focusing largely on Earth and Beast), and will use a sort of woodland metaphor. I plan on having the team come across a town of "animal people". Just outside of town will live a "tinkerer" - a human mage on a metaplanar quest of his own, who will come into play later in the story.
So, with all that in mind, what suggestions do you guys have for describing the metaplane? Should I play up its strangeness, or act like it's just a forest? Beyond the description in Street Magic, are there any sourcebooks that detail the metaplanes?
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Harlequin's Back is set in the metaplanes. One of the adventures in Artifacts Unbound is set in the metaplanes.
You could just have it be a fucked-up forest. That is a thing.
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You go on a jaunt through the metaplanes during the Survival of the FIttest campaign (even get to meet Lofwyr face to face in the astral as he informs you that if you don't betray Hestaby, your employer, he will personally make sure your life is a living hell).
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The sky's the limit in this scenario. Its a chance to be really, realy creative.
I have used the Chinese Hells as inpiration, and the old Werewolf book on the Umbra was useful as well, but its just a case of coming up with something really interesting and going with it.
A world which is just a giant tree, with a whole civilisation in its branches?
A world of floating rock islands?
A world of tunnels, earth and short people and something firey down below?
Your call. Have fun, make it interesting.
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You go on a jaunt through the metaplanes during the Survival of the FIttest campaign (even get to meet Lofwyr face to face in the astral as he informs you that if you don't betray Hestaby, your employer, he will personally make sure your life is a living hell).
Wait, wait, wait, wait.... wait............ wait. Wait.
You're telling me that there are pregenerated Shadowrun campaigns? How have I not heard of this before. I would love to run one of those.
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Isn't that the campaign where you can get a billion nuyen as reward from Lofwyr?
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Mtfeeney, that is what the SR Mission campaigns are as well as several others like Ghost Cartels, Dawn of Artifacts, Boardroom Backstabs, The Horizon series and then there are others from previous editions you could run, like Harlequin's Back if you want something that is a pure astral quest. Many of the source books contain adventures or adventure seeds as well.
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Do you have any player characters or NPCs with a tradition & background the players know anything about? It would be cool to use that as a tie in to get some inspiration, since this metaplane could actually end up being the home of any of the mentor spirits, free spirits, and summoned spirits the players have encountered. Even if they just beat up some random mage's summoned spirit in a past game, remember that spirit is sapient and could live on this metaplane, and be pretty ticked off at the PCs.
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Do you have any player characters or NPCs with a tradition & background the players know anything about? It would be cool to use that as a tie in to get some inspiration, since this metaplane could actually end up being the home of any of the mentor spirits, free spirits, and summoned spirits the players have encountered. Even if they just beat up some random mage's summoned spirit in a past game, remember that spirit is sapient and could live on this metaplane, and be pretty ticked off at the PCs.
Or love them for it, maybe that guy was an a-hole.
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A world which is just a giant tree, with a whole civilisation in its branches?
Yggdrasil? That would be appropriate for SR.
Mythological/Religious afterlife worlds are good. Different alien worlds and timelines and mashups of genres and tropes are fine (and have been done). One of the memorable aspects of Harlequin's Back is that at one point you're riding horse-sized T-Rexes in a post-apocalypse wild west.
The AU adventure I wrote and mentioned above was a trip through planes that got "older" and less "human" the deeper you get until they reach a primeval forest and have to face down a spirit named Delduwath (Its stats are posted on this forum somewhere) all wrapped around the political and historic landmarks of a psychically significant area of upstate New York.
There's a story I posted in the Fiction subforum that describes a part of The Aerie, which is a region/sub-plane/something of the Plane of Beasts. HERE (http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=6591).
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Thanks for all the input - it's helped me clarify the image of the metaplane in my mind. I'll post back in the thread tomorrow and let you all know how it went!
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It went pretty great! The only thing that I really didn't think of ahead of time was how magic would work - I ultimately decided to treat the plane as aspected against him (it was a Shamanic plane, he's hermetic) and made summoning spirits act unpredictably.
But yeah, they saw all the things I needed them to see and heard the things I needed them to hear.
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Awesome!