Since I'm a little starved on time I'm gonna just sum it up really fast.
I am making a campaign and I think it will have the first event include the Shadowfell manifesting itself/bleeding into the Material Plane. This will start becoming a major focus of the plot, but should I
A - Make this focused on the border between the Material and Shadow Plane blurred more and more
or
B - Include multiple planes, with a huge mix-up of the different realities?
I don't want A to be too boring, but I'm curious as to whether B would just feel cluttered?
My biggest tip would be you don't have to decide right away. To me, the bleeding over of the material and shadow plane does NOT sound boring, and could easily have a full campaign around it. Conversely, a "best of" montage / traveler's view of a ton of different planes seems like it wouldn't do any of them justice, and wouldn't give players time to get invested in what truly makes those planes unique, beyond the aesthetics. However, I'm not one of your players. So, I'd start with the "simple" planar crossover, explore that initially, and judge your player's reactions. Are they interested and engaged? Cool, keep with it, and build on what you're doing. Are they bored or uninterested with the environment? Change it up!
Note too that you can do the transition from the one to the other in many different ways, if and when you feel the time is right, and doing so can make it feel FAR more impactful than just having it all out in the open initially (such as a "killing the clowns" trope where the up until now major threat bad guys are totally obliterated by new bad guys, and the mechanics they used to weaken the barrier are exploited by far more powerful foes, or the "my boss will get my revenge", where the villains they have been fighting they finally defeat but all through the final arc there are hints dropped left and right that these guys are working for someone else with far grander plans, and this was just the initial staging or experimentation).
The thing that's great with starting with the Shadowfell as well is that (at least in standard cosmology) Shadowfell is one of the few planes directly adjacent to the material plane, rather than relying on the astral seas for travel to and from it. So it actually really makes sense it'd be the first one to bleed over (that or the ethereal realm), and moving "up" from that to some outer planes or elemental planes later on won't seem incongruous. Hope that helps, and good luck!
Thanks tons, this is really helpful and informative! Thanks for the suggestions, I really appreciate it. I think I'll definitely go in depth and then choose some of my favorite planes and go from there (assuming we get that far, ofc. Thanks again
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Since I'm a little starved on time I'm gonna just sum it up really fast.
I am making a campaign and I think it will have the first event include the Shadowfell manifesting itself/bleeding into the Material Plane. This will start becoming a major focus of the plot, but should I
A - Make this focused on the border between the Material and Shadow Plane blurred more and more
or
B - Include multiple planes, with a huge mix-up of the different realities?
I don't want A to be too boring, but I'm curious as to whether B would just feel cluttered?
Thanks in advance.
My biggest tip would be you don't have to decide right away. To me, the bleeding over of the material and shadow plane does NOT sound boring, and could easily have a full campaign around it. Conversely, a "best of" montage / traveler's view of a ton of different planes seems like it wouldn't do any of them justice, and wouldn't give players time to get invested in what truly makes those planes unique, beyond the aesthetics. However, I'm not one of your players. So, I'd start with the "simple" planar crossover, explore that initially, and judge your player's reactions. Are they interested and engaged? Cool, keep with it, and build on what you're doing. Are they bored or uninterested with the environment? Change it up!
Note too that you can do the transition from the one to the other in many different ways, if and when you feel the time is right, and doing so can make it feel FAR more impactful than just having it all out in the open initially (such as a "killing the clowns" trope where the up until now major threat bad guys are totally obliterated by new bad guys, and the mechanics they used to weaken the barrier are exploited by far more powerful foes, or the "my boss will get my revenge", where the villains they have been fighting they finally defeat but all through the final arc there are hints dropped left and right that these guys are working for someone else with far grander plans, and this was just the initial staging or experimentation).
The thing that's great with starting with the Shadowfell as well is that (at least in standard cosmology) Shadowfell is one of the few planes directly adjacent to the material plane, rather than relying on the astral seas for travel to and from it. So it actually really makes sense it'd be the first one to bleed over (that or the ethereal realm), and moving "up" from that to some outer planes or elemental planes later on won't seem incongruous. Hope that helps, and good luck!
Thanks tons, this is really helpful and informative! Thanks for the suggestions, I really appreciate it. I think I'll definitely go in depth and then choose some of my favorite planes and go from there (assuming we get that far, ofc. Thanks again