Planescape was Handholding. Forked from Plane Next Door/

[Charwoman Gene]

Forked from: from MM2: More fluff?--> The plane next door.

The whole 4e cosmology seems entirely artificial to me, in that it's set of for tiers of play, with the intention to adventure in one place in one stretch of levels, then another place in another set of levels, etc.

As opposed to the organic non-artifice of planes based off of platonic element combinations symmetrically repeated to utter bordeom, or the same for alignments? I'd say from my veiwpoint 4e's design choices are WAY less artificial than 1-3e's neat boxes.

There was no hand-holding, just a sense of vast wonder at the infinite, weird environments out there to explore.

Sigil was handholding! Clearly, it was done well, and by devious designers whose pulled the wool over your eyes, but handholding. Plopping a city ex nihilo into existence, connecting to all planes and then using deus ex machina "as powerful as the designers want" NPCs to keep the forces that should be warring over the portals from destroying things is handholding. Creating the town of Abyss-Lite and Nine-Hells lite on the plane of Concordant Opposition was so handholdy I nearly puked when I first read it.

Planescape IS handholding.

 

[Crothian]

What is hand holding in this context?

 

[Imaro]

Forked from: from MM2: More fluff?--> The plane next door.



As opposed to the organic non-artifice of planes based off of platonic element combinations symmetrically repeated to utter bordeom, or the same for alignments? I'd say from my veiwpoint 4e's design choices are WAY less artificial than 1-3e's neat boxes.

I'm going to have to disagree here, IMO 4e's cosmology is only original to someone who probably hasn't played many FRPG's or read much mythology besides D&D. In fact I would say one of the things that set D&D's cosmology apart in the past, from many of the fantasy rpg's out there, was the fact that it was based around alignment, alternate prime planes and a multitude of elemental planes... this IMO gave it a strangely Moorcockian feel that was very weird Swords & Sorcery in it's feel yet with overtones of true good and evil high fantasy that in the end gave D&D's planes an originality all D&D's own... Even now I'm trying to think of a game that has a similar cosmology (excluding games based of Moorcock's work... and even they miss key elements) that is similar to The Great Wheel.

The parts of the cosmology in 4e I read about in the corebooks... just leave me with a feeling that it was stolen piecemeal from games that pull it off so much better than the boring mish-mash of 4e... Exalted for the Shadowfell and Feywild... Talislanta for the elemental chaos (and in fact everything about D&D 4e's new demons scream Talislanta), etc.... IMO, it's just not original at all... add to that the fact that it has been made "safe" for adventuring as well as loosing much of it's variety, and it just feels as if it lacks alot of that weird stuff around every corner, moral strangeness, death at any moment, swords and sorcery vibe I liked about the Great Wheel. Of course this is all IMO, and YMMV, etc.

Sigil was handholding! Clearly, it was done well, and by devious designers whose pulled the wool over your eyes, but handholding. Plopping a city ex nihilo into existence, connecting to all planes and then using deus ex machina "as powerful as the designers want" NPCs to keep the forces that should be warring over the portals from destroying things is handholding. Creating the town of Abyss-Lite and Nine-Hells lite on the plane of Concordant Opposition was so handholdy I nearly puked when I first read it.

Planescape IS handholding.

Uhm, isn't this akin to saying any homebase (which is almost by necessity a needed component for a campaign setting in the game of D&D) is handholding... I mean honestly, in a PoL setting, why hasn't an army of humanoids sacked this lone village or town in the wilderness? Or better yet a dragon enslaved all of it's inhabitants? Why hasn't a warlord razed it to the ground yet?

I mean I guess, I'm agreeing with you too a point... but I'm also asking isn't this a feature of most campaign settings... and isn't it only considered "handholding" if the PC's actions are directed and controlled to prevent their choices from leading them into danger? I mean I don't remember The Lady of Pain being forced to step in when a clueless prime decides to step through a portal to the abyss.

 

[Rechan]

Oh yeah, this is going to go over well.

 

[Amadeus Windfall]

I'm going to have to disagree here, IMO 4e's cosmology is only original to someone who probably hasn't played many FRPG's or read much mythology besides D&D.

He didn't say it was original, just more interesting, and I'm inclined to agree; by condensing down the planes into just a few, I think that Wizards was bound to create (in my view) a more interesting cosmology. This is because, with less planes to be detailed, each gets more focus, and the result is that there's more interesting elements for each plane.

In the post which led to this topic, Shemeska claimed that Planescape opened up the planes -

all of them, to any stretch of levels, but which was very open that many of them were blatantly hostile or antithetical to non-natives, and you would probably die if you didn't prepare yourself properly.

Personally, I don't see making it less likely that the PCs will go into an environment that instantly kills them to be any different than having the PCs fight (at least mostly) encounters that are appropriate for their level - it's not hand-holding, it's just evening the odds.

 

[Cadfan]

I kind of like the idea of the planes being designed so that the more easily accessed ones are more familiar, and then, as you grow in power and venture further into the wild yonder, you come across the more hostile ones. I don't really see why a negative spin should be placed on that as a concept. I don't have a dog in the fight of which edition did this more, but I think its a good thing, whoever's doing it.

The idea of having really, REALLY hostile planes that kill you if you go to them without the right protections is kind of neat, because it gives you a sort of "suiting up" feeling, like you're astronauts putting on your space suits. Except that in true earlier edition style, "space suit" really meant "casting a suite of spells," and it just reinforced the whole "cast a spell to fix a problem" mentality that masqueraded as and debased creativing thinking (and in any case just reinforced the supremacy of cancelling your opponent's magic as an auto-win). So I wouldn't mind if that sort of thing was brought back, but with a more elegant solution than a suite of spells with really long durations.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Uhm, isn't this akin to saying any homebase (which is almost by necessity a needed component for a campaign setting in the game of D&D) is handholding... I mean honestly, in a PoL setting, why hasn't an army of humanoids sacked this lone village or town in the wilderness? Or better yet a dragon enslaved all of it's inhabitants? Why hasn't a warlord razed it to the ground yet?

They hadn't had the time yet. But without the PCs, they eventually might. There is no powerful entity keeping a status quo, and the PCs are not really interesting in the status quo, since it, frankly, sucks. That's the thing. The Status Quo is not really a status quo - it is actually a transitional phase. It is the time and place between the fall of the last empire and the rise of the next. The heroes have the opportunity to shape the next empire.

It is not just stopping the evil cultist from destroying the world, it is changing the world. I am not sure yet how the H/P/E series will end, I fear it won't satisfy my "grand vision", but I do hope it will bring a permanent, lasting change.

Spoiler

Hopefully with killing Orcus for good. It seems more likely at the moment that a freed Primordial will be the final enemy, but we'll see.

In my homebrew campaign, that is certainly the goal.

 

[Imaro]

He didn't say it was original, just more interesting, and I'm inclined to agree; by condensing down the planes into just a few, I think that Wizards was bound to create (in my view) a more interesting cosmology. This is because, with less planes to be detailed, each gets more focus, and the result is that there's more interesting elements for each plane

Well honestly, IMO... reading rehashed ideas I've already seen done better in other roleplaying games is less interesting than seeing something original (unless of course that original thing is really bad, but then I didn't think the Great Wheel was a bad cosmology)... also I guess the question is how many books one is willing to purchase in order to get "more focus" because so far from what I've read in the corebooks and heard about the MotP there still isn't much detail about the individual planes as of right now. I think your reasoning of less planes equaling more interesting elements is flawed as well, since they actually have nothing to do with each other. You're drawing an unsupported conclusion without any evidence.

 

[Imaro]

They hadn't had the time yet. But without the PCs, they eventually might. There is no powerful entity keeping a status quo, and the PCs are not really interesting in the status quo, since it, frankly, sucks. That's the thing. The Status Quo is not really a status quo - it is actually a transitional phase. It is the time and place between the fall of the last empire and the rise of the next. The heroes have the opportunity to shape the next empire.

It is not just stopping the evil cultist from destroying the world, it is changing the world. I am not sure yet how the H/P/E series will end, I fear it won't satisfy my "grand vision", but I do hope it will bring a permanent, lasting change.

Spoiler

Hopefully with killing Orcus for good. It seems more likely at the moment that a freed Primordial will be the final enemy, but we'll see.

In my homebrew campaign, that is certainly the goal.

I don't know if you missed my point Mustrum... but The Lady of Pain is an NPC and thus, like everything in any campaign setting, controlled by the DM. Sigil gives one a homebase that is relatively safe for adventurers, this is the status quo for most D&D games... however nothing prevents a DM from changing that... in the same way nothing stops the DM from having a dragon conquer the lone village. In other words if the DM wants Sigil to be in a transitional state it can be, there are more things and more powerful things in all the planes than The Lady of Pain... if the DM wants it to be so.

The campaign setting, like most published campaign setting creates what most people need to start their default D&D game... a stable homebase, what happens to said homebase once play begins is entirely up to the group. I guess I'm not getting what stops this from being so in Planescape as opposed to any other setting? The Lady of Pain is a tool for the DM to use in producing the type of setting and stories that entertain his players... like everything else in the game.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't know if you missed my point Mustrum... but The Lady of Pain is an NPC and thus, like everything in any campaign setting, controlled by the DM. Sigil gives one a homebase that is relatively safe for adventurers, this is the status quo for most D&D games... however nothing prevents a DM from changing that... in the same way nothing stops the DM from having a dragon conquer the lone village. In other words if the DM wants Sigil to be in a transitional state it can be, there are more things and more powerful things in all the planes than The Lady of Pain... if the DM wants it to be so.

The campaign setting, like most published campaign setting creates what most people need to start their default D&D game... a stable homebase, what happens to said homebase once play begins is entirely up to the group. I guess I'm not getting what stops this from being so in Planescape as opposed to any other setting? The Lady of Pain is a tool for the DM to use in producing the type of setting and stories that entertain his players... like everything else in the game.

A big point for me here is: The Lady of Pain is an entity that is visible to the players in some way. They know that she could, if she (and by extension the DM) wants to keep things stable. She is a tool for stability.
In a way, the PCs know they can't really screw up, but they also can't really change things, either, since the Lady of Pain is more powerful than the gods! And the Lady of Pain (despite the dramatic name) doesn't seem to be a particularly evil creature either, so it doesn't seem required to oppose her order, either. But with Points of Light, it is pretty obvious that you should do something about all that evil around, even if you don't know if you can succeed and powerful entities might be working against you. There is no one stabilizing the current situation. If you don't do anything, things will get universally worse, and even your home base isn't safe.

Well honestly, IMO... reading rehashed ideas I've already seen done better in other roleplaying games is less interesting than seeing something original (unless of course that original thing is really bad, but then I didn't think the Great Wheel was a bad cosmology)... also I guess the question is how many books one is willing to purchase in order to get "more focus" because so far from what I've read in the corebooks and heard about the MotP there still isn't much detail about the individual planes as of right now. I think your reasoning of less planes equaling more interesting elements is flawed as well, since they actually have nothing to do with each other. You're drawing an unsupported conclusion without any evidence.

So you would say that doing something different than the Great Wheel is a good idea, since it has been done, you are just not happy with the particular choice what they choose to do?

I personally think that it is a great idea to reuse myths and folklore concepts in a more... direct way. Just half an hour ago or so I read up on Erinyes in real folklore and then considered how D&D (until 4E) interpreted them - they seem very different. I like seeing them back closer to the original concept.

And even if something like the Elemental Chaos or Feywild might have existed in other games and settings, they haven't been combined this way yet, and particularly not with D&D.