Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
What is canon about older-edition settings in 5E?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8353117" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Count yourself lucky.</p><p></p><p>It's one of the worst adventures in D&D history, not because it's a terrible adventure - it's a somewhat mediocre one, or perhaps even a good one with a crap ending to rival Battlestar Galactica or pre-patch Mass Effect 3 - but because of the lasting vandalism it did to Sigil and Planescape.</p><p></p><p>Monte Cook had written a number of Planescape adventures previously, ranging from "good" to "amazing". So people had high hope for him. Faction War destroyed literally everything good or interesting about Planescape (except the Blood War, but I forget if that predates Planescape). Swept it away. All the in name of drama. Basically took a giant crap on the setting from a very great height. Imagine if someone took Dragonlance and just killed off all the dragons, and said they were permanently dead and never coming back, oh and also the Knights of Solamnia and the Wizards of High Sorcery all died or quit their jobs. And so did the bad guys. Except it's worse than that. Or like Eberron, and suddenly Dragonmarks all stop working, and everyone with a Dragonmark gets murdered, and there's no mystery, everyone knows why it happened, but Dragonmarks are over, and also the magical technology? That stopped working too.</p><p></p><p>That's basically what happened in Faction War, because Cook has (almost) all the Factions either wiped out entirely, or driven out of Sigil, never to return.</p><p></p><p>As I've noted before, Cook swears blind that he didn't mean the situation to end this way, that most of the Factions would have been restored in the next adventure (which never happened), but frankly, I'm skeptical, because he killed off some Factions outright, disbanded others, exiled the rest, and many of the most interesting ones were wiped out or disbanded.</p><p></p><p>Basically it was massive vandalism. Monte Cook had absolutely nothing to do with conceptualizing Planescape (that was all Zeb Cook), and it seems to me like he wanted to do "Monte Cook's Planescape", just like he did Monte Cook's this and that later (like his hilariously bad take on World of Darkness, which is near-legendary, and not in a good way - I love his Arcana Unearthed though). Anyway, it was a crime, and should be put right. Ignoring crummy canon from the past would allow it to be put right.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, when people say how much they like Planescape, they're referring to pre-Faction War Planescape. The vast majority of D&D fans, even deep lore ones like you often have here, don't know much about Faction War or even that it happened in many cases, let alone that 4E (psychotically) canonized it (I think 3E did too, to be fair, but 4E really dragged Sigil through the mud lol - and in such an otherwise-good book as the DMG2!).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8353117, member: 18"] Count yourself lucky. It's one of the worst adventures in D&D history, not because it's a terrible adventure - it's a somewhat mediocre one, or perhaps even a good one with a crap ending to rival Battlestar Galactica or pre-patch Mass Effect 3 - but because of the lasting vandalism it did to Sigil and Planescape. Monte Cook had written a number of Planescape adventures previously, ranging from "good" to "amazing". So people had high hope for him. Faction War destroyed literally everything good or interesting about Planescape (except the Blood War, but I forget if that predates Planescape). Swept it away. All the in name of drama. Basically took a giant crap on the setting from a very great height. Imagine if someone took Dragonlance and just killed off all the dragons, and said they were permanently dead and never coming back, oh and also the Knights of Solamnia and the Wizards of High Sorcery all died or quit their jobs. And so did the bad guys. Except it's worse than that. Or like Eberron, and suddenly Dragonmarks all stop working, and everyone with a Dragonmark gets murdered, and there's no mystery, everyone knows why it happened, but Dragonmarks are over, and also the magical technology? That stopped working too. That's basically what happened in Faction War, because Cook has (almost) all the Factions either wiped out entirely, or driven out of Sigil, never to return. As I've noted before, Cook swears blind that he didn't mean the situation to end this way, that most of the Factions would have been restored in the next adventure (which never happened), but frankly, I'm skeptical, because he killed off some Factions outright, disbanded others, exiled the rest, and many of the most interesting ones were wiped out or disbanded. Basically it was massive vandalism. Monte Cook had absolutely nothing to do with conceptualizing Planescape (that was all Zeb Cook), and it seems to me like he wanted to do "Monte Cook's Planescape", just like he did Monte Cook's this and that later (like his hilariously bad take on World of Darkness, which is near-legendary, and not in a good way - I love his Arcana Unearthed though). Anyway, it was a crime, and should be put right. Ignoring crummy canon from the past would allow it to be put right. Anyway, when people say how much they like Planescape, they're referring to pre-Faction War Planescape. The vast majority of D&D fans, even deep lore ones like you often have here, don't know much about Faction War or even that it happened in many cases, let alone that 4E (psychotically) canonized it (I think 3E did too, to be fair, but 4E really dragged Sigil through the mud lol - and in such an otherwise-good book as the DMG2!). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
What is canon about older-edition settings in 5E?
Top