I got a copy of The Plane Above last week, and so far am very impressed with its attempt to make the D&D mythos something that the players can engage with. There is lots of description of complex and overlapping motivations, historical details and so on, with multiple suggestions of how the PCs (especially at Epic tier) can get involved. And there is an explicit eschewing of metaplot (eg in the comments on the freedom of individual groups to ignore the Scales of War adventure path as being canonical for Githyanki), which fits with the player-agency orientation by removing the danger that player choices might be undone by subsequent changes in canonical setting descriptons.
But one bit that particularly struck me was the suggestion of heroquesting as a way to engage the players in the cosmology at the epic tier. (They call it "travelling into deep myth" rather than heroquesting, but what's in a name?) I'm certainly hoping to use this in my own game when the time is right - I have a player with a Drow PC who worships Corellon and hopes to reunite the sundered Elven races, and in the section on Arvandor there is a description of the very myth that he would need to journey into and change in order to achieve this result.
Between the engaging cosmology, the attempt to link PCs into it via the descriptive text for power sources and the flavour text on paragon paths and epic destinies, and now heroquesting, does anyone else feel that have we finally got to the point of D&D being Glorantha-ised? (Not in level of detail, but in the integration of myth and cosmology into gameplay.)
But one bit that particularly struck me was the suggestion of heroquesting as a way to engage the players in the cosmology at the epic tier. (They call it "travelling into deep myth" rather than heroquesting, but what's in a name?) I'm certainly hoping to use this in my own game when the time is right - I have a player with a Drow PC who worships Corellon and hopes to reunite the sundered Elven races, and in the section on Arvandor there is a description of the very myth that he would need to journey into and change in order to achieve this result.
Between the engaging cosmology, the attempt to link PCs into it via the descriptive text for power sources and the flavour text on paragon paths and epic destinies, and now heroquesting, does anyone else feel that have we finally got to the point of D&D being Glorantha-ised? (Not in level of detail, but in the integration of myth and cosmology into gameplay.)