The Gaming Den

ok seriously.. where is the game at with the I (Immortals)?

if the characters are immortals.. then what risk do they have? i always thought this a bit funny, and as someone recently mentioned it is just mental masturbation.

i never owned I or M, but used a little from M.

so if your D&D game had the characters as immortal, what would you really have left to play for?

what goals would an immortal have, and would you really still be playing D&D?

this goes for all (A)D&D, high-level related play.

can it include in the game both mortals such as the dirt-farmer done good, or even hero-born; and the immortals PCs in the same gamespace?

Cyric and Raistlin offer two good characters to look at as to what happens when a mortal battles the gods...and wins. what left could there be for them to do in the world that isnt completely just outside of the system?

Huh? What?

As far as immortals go, I will point you to Planescape: Torment, where being immortal and "killing" yourself was the only way to solve certain puzzles.

And really, honestly, it's one of the finest RPG experiences I've *ever* had, tabletop or cRPG.

If the threat of death being eliminated ruins the game for you, step up your storytelling skills.

Immortals have all the same motivations as every other character. They even have extra motivations since they can do long-term stuff like protect a family dynasty or lead a nation over centuries.

In the DnD universe, death is not even the worse thing that can happen to you. In fact, dungeon-delving would be terrifying for immortals because being trapped unground and unable to die would be Hell.

Add that to shapechanging, mind-rape, being turned to stone, being cast into Hell planes, infested with evil parasites..... there is a huge amount of threats still left for immortals.

Now, if you are actually asking about "gods" and not immortals, then DnD has to be played like any God-game. It looks more like Civ or Dominions or Black and White and instead of fighting dragons you fight god-things like titans and other gods.

If you use their published mods (IM1-3) as a guide to what the game was supposed to be like, they were going for a combination of save-the-world scenarios and PVP (with maybe some dominion-sim/world-building mixed in although I don't remember the rules support being all that detailed). So similar to a superheroes game, I guess (or perhaps a "great power politics" wargame if you want to look at it that way).

I'll agree that it wasn't really very D&Dish once you started using those rules. It wasn't clear why you really needed a "party" at that point because every PC could produce every spell/effect in the game. So you maybe needed a bunch of immortals cooperating to fight "bosses" but that was it.

As I alluded earlier, I wasn't particularly fair in my disliking of Immortal rules. Granted this is 20-25 years ago when I likely was about 13 years old. I didn't like it because it seemed like it wasn't D&D anymore and it was just too out of control. I didn't formalize those opinions back then, it was just "wrong", so much so that I didn't even bother to buy the book (whereas I had a habit of buying RPG books even when I know I'm never going to play them).

ScottS wrote:PVP

and this is something that D&D just never needed to develop. again WTF is the point of immortals adding something that doesnt belong or doesnt make sense with everything else?

@planescape.. its just total shit it explains why Monte did the Star Wars rip-off D&D setting called Alternity: Star*Drive, and probably why i cant stand 3rd on many levels because it reaks of the same stupidity from Monte Cook.

shadzar wrote:what goals would an immortal have

To unleash the power of the quickening?

The 2nd revision of the immortals rules (Wrath of the Immortals boxed set) which went with the Rules Cyclopaedia version of Basic, cleaned up the rules and actually has a fair bit of information on immortal campaigns (it also cleaned up the cosmology and got rid of the n-dimensional-space stuff). Immortals there looks like a more social game. They do stuff like having to work for higher level Immortals of their sphere (particularly their sponsor), setting up plots against their enemies (which can let them steal power points from them, sponsoring new allies of their own to Immortality, and occasionally meddling subtly in mortal affairs.

They get limited by social limitations rather than ability - direct intervention on the prime plane or attacking other immortals directly is forbidden. Immortals can actually be destroyed on their home plane though (which makes them absolutely annihilated, rather than just dead) or can fade away if they lose all of their worshippers. Misbehaving immortals can also be stripped of power points/levels or get locked in prison dimensions by higher-ranking immortals.