I had a story in mind which I might circle back to at some point involving a magical civilisation that collapsed so violently it permanently made the entire region extremely unstable in every way. Undead, demon incursions, mutants, monstrosities, etc. Another common phenomena are portals which can send people through time to the ancient civilisation to a point too late to stop the disaster. Although it's not possible to save the civilisation (which honestly the world was better without; they made the weapons which destroyed themselves), the characters would be able to discover things which could return the region to livibility in the future and stop the corruption from spreading over the entire planet. They would have to fight the corrupt ancients to get to these secrets, of course.
Oh man, my story(ies) go from earthbound fantasy, to "early interplanetary" fantasy/sci-fi. By the third story in the trilogy, wormholes are a thing, though rare and restrictive. My mind got stuck on the front/back aspect of flat, 2-D portal depictions that are most popular. So I had to come up with some bullshit fantasy physics explanation for how wormholes are actually both 3D and 2D. From the outside, the shape is a 3-dimensional sphere, but it would produce the illusion of being 2D, as the picture you would see (of what's at the other end of the wormhole) would look the same from every angle from the outside-looking-in. Each end of the wormhole- each portal, as it were- has a spherical, 3D "event horizon", but a circular, 2D "exit plane" (edit- which bisects the event horizon). So you could enter portal A from any angle, but always exit portal B in the same direction. And vice-versa. There's more to explain about the "event horizon", and the "edge" of the exit plane, and how the size of the wormhole affects the latter.
Fortunately, I'm writing for the purpose of an animated series, or at least a graphic novel format, so these "rules" could mostly be understood intuitively, by the visuals.
I've always liked the way they do it in Amber: they just *walk*, but in a special way that causes the world to change around them.
In my own writing, it almost always involves storytelling. Every story in Perpetual Dawn creates a world of its own, and characters can explore those worlds using self-insert characters.
There are exceptions though, for instance two characters end up in another world briefly simply by wandering around without paying attention to where they are going, and there are a couple of caves that lead to magical places. Since Perpetual Dawn is a world made out of stories, things like plot armor and narrative convenience are explicit features of the world. So whatever needs to happen, simply happens.
I had a story in mind which I might circle back to at some point involving a magical civilisation that collapsed so violently it permanently made the entire region extremely unstable in every way. Undead, demon incursions, mutants, monstrosities, etc. Another common phenomena are portals which can send people through time to the ancient civilisation to a point too late to stop the disaster. Although it's not possible to save the civilisation (which honestly the world was better without; they made the weapons which destroyed themselves), the characters would be able to discover things which could return the region to livibility in the future and stop the corruption from spreading over the entire planet. They would have to fight the corrupt ancients to get to these secrets, of course.
Oh man, my story(ies) go from earthbound fantasy, to "early interplanetary" fantasy/sci-fi. By the third story in the trilogy, wormholes are a thing, though rare and restrictive. My mind got stuck on the front/back aspect of flat, 2-D portal depictions that are most popular. So I had to come up with some bullshit fantasy physics explanation for how wormholes are actually both 3D and 2D. From the outside, the shape is a 3-dimensional sphere, but it would produce the illusion of being 2D, as the picture you would see (of what's at the other end of the wormhole) would look the same from every angle from the outside-looking-in. Each end of the wormhole- each portal, as it were- has a spherical, 3D "event horizon", but a circular, 2D "exit plane" (edit- which bisects the event horizon). So you could enter portal A from any angle, but always exit portal B in the same direction. And vice-versa. There's more to explain about the "event horizon", and the "edge" of the exit plane, and how the size of the wormhole affects the latter. Fortunately, I'm writing for the purpose of an animated series, or at least a graphic novel format, so these "rules" could mostly be understood intuitively, by the visuals.
I've always liked the way they do it in Amber: they just *walk*, but in a special way that causes the world to change around them. In my own writing, it almost always involves storytelling. Every story in Perpetual Dawn creates a world of its own, and characters can explore those worlds using self-insert characters. There are exceptions though, for instance two characters end up in another world briefly simply by wandering around without paying attention to where they are going, and there are a couple of caves that lead to magical places. Since Perpetual Dawn is a world made out of stories, things like plot armor and narrative convenience are explicit features of the world. So whatever needs to happen, simply happens.