D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

pemerton said:

What is the goalpost shifting? It's simply not true that D&D (eg Holmes, Moldvay, Mentzer, even RC) have significantly different lore from AD&D.

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I already posted the differences... are you saying those aren't true? Or are you saying an entirely different cosmology, totally different monsters and some monsters that exist between the two but have different backgrounds/descriptions doesn't count as different lore? If so I'm confused on what would?


EDIT: As to @Hussar's example,... I already admitted I was mistaken (which is more than some posters seem capable of doing in this thread) if he wants to compare them he can I was saying for my purposes, they are two separate games and his argument would not be furthered with me by using the D&D as opposed to AD&D comparison. You think it's a fair comparison, then more power to you because you are definitely entitled to your opinion... but I'm not going to get into a long drawn out back and forth with you when the company who produced the games considered them separate games and I've given plenty of examples of differing lore (I mean you just claimed the lore was different...with the gnoll example but now it's not different enough or something??).

Nivenus said:

Mostly Hussar's comparisons to 4e have been for the purpose of claiming fan put planat lore on a higher pedestal than other stuff. Again I don't really agree but that's the comparison that's being made I believe.

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Yeah I think this is right... though as I understand @Hussar 's view more... I honestly find it odd that @Hussar's go to for his complaints are the Great Wheel and Planescape when 4e, the axis, etc. were much more pervasive in dictating setting lore.

Imaro said:

I already posted the differences... are you saying those aren't true? Or are you saying an entirely different cosmology, totally different monsters and some monsters that exist between the two but have different backgrounds/descriptions doesn't count as different lore?

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The differences are no greater than between (say) Greyhawk AD&D (no Celestial Bureaucracy, no spirit sub-type for the purposes of spells and effects, no korobkuru, etc) and Oriental Adventures AD&D (no chromatic dragons, no classical elementals, no halflings, etc).

Rather few monsters that exist across D&D and AD&D have different backgrounds/descriptions. In the context of B/X, the only one I can think of is the gnoll (that I already mentioned). What other ones do you have in mind?

There are also relatively few monsters in Moldvay Basic that are not in AD&D: thouls, robber flies, living statues, maybe another small handflu.

Are you seriously suggesting that Erol Otus would have drawn that kobold differently had the art order been for AD&D rather than Moldvay Basic? Or that the thousands, probably tens or hundreds of thousands of players who have played Keep on the Borderland (a Basic module) using AD&D rules, and treating the kobolds in that module the same as AD&D kobolds, have been getting the lore of the module wrong?

Imaro said:

I already admitted I was mistaken (which is more than some posters seem capable of doing in this thread)

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What mistake are you accusing me of? Are you suggesting that I'm mistaken in my opinion about whether or not Planescape is a good setting for me to roleplay in?

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Campbell said:

For my part I love setting material that is directly relevant to game play, leads to conflict, and provides players with a meaningful tools to make an impact.

<snip>

Where Planescape material fails to excite me is that it hides the meaningful content and realization of setting themes behind walls of text that are not directly relevant to play.

<snip>

Don't give me ecology - give me narrative material that is directly relevant to player interests.

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I agree with this. As I said quite a way upthread, even if I could find what I wanted in Planescape by sifting through it, I'm not going to put in that effort when there is other material that more readily and obviously gives me what I'm looking for.

Of course others (eg [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], [MENTION=509]Viking Bastard[/MENTION], [MENTION=12037]ThirdWizard[/MENTION]) may have had different experiences - that's not all that unusual in literarary and similar aesthetic pursuits. Their campaigns sound like they were pretty interesting. I'm glad that they found something in Planescape that spoke to them, which they were able to run with: especially Viking Bastard's treatment of the "stability" issue as a fragile stasis disrupted by the PCs. The motif of "balance of forces disrupted by interlopers" is something I tend to associate more with westerns and other modern stories than with epic fantasy (it's found in REH, eg Red Nails, but REH is unstintingly modern), but it's a motif that I have now been led to think about more for my own gaming purposes.

Sadras said:

4e was the most intrusive cosmological edition ever, yet that passes as acceptable?

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I don't think [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] liked the 4e approach. But upthread, he said that he's not complaining about it, because 4e fans (unlike, in his view, Great Wheel/Planescape fans) are not up in arms about departures from the 4e cosmology in 5e.

Nivenus said:

It was mostly pemerton who said they preferred and that was because it was more "dynamic" and "dramatic"

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Dynamic, in the sense of having a direction of movement, and hence sources of pressure, inhering within the cosmology - ie the world was created, and the same forces that led to its creation, and reached a stalemate in the Dawn War, now threaten to tear it apart again.

The setting itself is not more dramatic - it is neither dramatic nor non-dramatic. I find that it provides better material for generating dramatic conflict, because more obviously and directly bringing real value conflicts into play.

Like [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], I'm not wedded to 4e, in the sense that I can conceive of other fun fantasy cosmologies (and have used them, and in this thread have even mentioned one repeatedly: Oriental Adventures). I would say that, once my 4e campaign finishes in a few months, there is a reasonable chance I won't use the 4e cosmology again, at least not for some time.

That's one reason why I'm not up in arms about 5e departing from it, although I tend to find that 5e's presentation veers a little close for my taste towards the "wall of text" style that Campbell criticises. (So did the 4e Monster Vault.)

pemerton said:

The differences are no greater than between (say) Greyhawk AD&D (no Celestial Bureaucracy, no spirit sub-type for the purposes of spells and effects, no korobkuru, etc) and Oriental Adventures AD&D (no chromatic dragons, no classical elementals, no halflings, etc).

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Lol, yeah those are some pretty big differences...

pemerton said:

Rather few monsters that exist across D&D and AD&D have different backgrounds/descriptions. In the context of B/X, the only one I can think of is the gnoll (that I already mentioned). What other ones do you have in mind?

There are also relatively few monsters in Moldvay Basic that are not in AD&D: thouls, robber flies, living statues, maybe another small handflu.

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So there are differences...

pemerton said:

Are you seriously suggesting that Erol Otus would have drawn that kobold differently had the art order been for AD&D rather than Moldvay Basic? Or that the thousands, probably tens or hundreds of thousands of players who have played Keep on the Borderland (a Basic module) using AD&D rules, and treating the kobolds in that module the same as AD&D kobolds, have been getting the lore of the module wrong?

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I am not suggesting anything you've posted above, context in a discussion is everything, and I clearly told you my reason for making the statement as it pertained to he discussion I and @Hussar were having...

pemerton said:

What mistake are you accusing me of? Are you suggesting that I'm mistaken in my opinion about whether or not Planescape is a good setting for me to roleplay in?

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Not just admitting D&D has different lore than AD&D and moving on...

EDIT: Just to b e clear I'm not trying to get you to admit Planescape is a good setting for you... as I said before I think you make alot of genralizations and broad statements about a campaign setting which you've never read the actual campaign setting material for... I think perhaps you should take the time to read the actual thing you're characterizing... instead of basing your conjecture on a sourcebook and a/some modules...

Nivenus said:

Actually I think Hussar has said they didn't care much for 4e's lore either.

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Pemerton said:

I don't think @Hussar liked the 4e approach. But upthread, he said that he's not complaining about it, because 4e fans (unlike, in his view, Great Wheel/Planescape fans) are not up in arms about departures from the 4e cosmology in 5e.

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Ah, my bad then, apologies @Hussar.

Then I gather, from my understanding, the reason @Hussar does not like Planescape is two fold.
(1) Primarily, because he doesn't like using other people's setting lore (I am assuming as DM)
(2) He doesn't like Planescape because of its over-zealous fans.

(1) Cannot hold true, because he admitted recently that as a player he wouldn't want to play in a Planescape setting.

So all that remains is (2), which we cannot further debate on as this is a personal dislike.

Hence @Hussar you would like a generic Planes book with no fixtures for Hell, the Abyss, Elysium and with no strong associations between planar creatures (all because of the fans).
That is similar in me asking for an adventure with generic dungeon levels, in a generic setting (no proper nouns), populated by monsters within no association with each other in said dungeon (all because the fans of Temple of Elemental Evil or Tomb of Horrors loved them too much and it annoys me).

Nivenus said:

It was mostly pemerton who said they preferred and that was because it was more "dynamic" and "dramatic" (two labels I disagree with here but that's neither here nor there).

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Funny enough I agree with @pemerton on this, I liked the 4e cosmology (most of it), for the same reason I agree with @Campbell's quote below.

Campbell said:

For my part I love setting material that is directly relevant to game play, leads to conflict, and provides players with a meaningful tools to make an impact.

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However, I disagree with the rest of @Campbell's post, as part of my fun as DM in creating stories is to suss out themes from these so called "wall of texts" and I love reading about ecology and whatnot.
Case in point, The Lords of Madness - Book of Aberrations was a great book, IMO.
I guess I'm just a whore for lore.

pemerton said:

[-SNIP-]...especially Viking Bastard's treatment of the "stability" issue as a fragile stasis disrupted by the PCs. The motif of "balance of forces disrupted by interlopers" is something I tend to associate more with westerns and other modern stories than with epic fantasy (it's found in REH, eg Red Nails, but REH is unstintingly modern), but it's a motif that I have now been led to think about more for my own gaming purposes.

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I find that interesting, because I very much associate it with fantasy--but then, I tend to gravitate towards REH and Moorcock and the like, and was breastfed on the Sagas, many of which feature this motif (my favorite saga, Ormstunga, is centered around it).

Hussar said:

Whereas I view D&D as a toolbox for creating my own worlds and stories, rather than being forced to play in someone else's ideas.

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See, I've never seen D&D in those terms. Perhaps because I came from different entry point into D&D (by way of video games), but I always saw D&D as defining its own thing. It had halflings, which didn't exist outside Tolkien and wasn't anywhere in the fantasy I read, yet they are the third most important non-human race! Or Vancian magic. Or different varieties of dragons (defined by color, element and alignment). And these were the things I found in my old Black Box in 1994!

D&D never has been good at emulating "generic fantasy", it emulates D&D. Where it has excelled was at being amazingly hackable. So even when I make my own world and stories, I acknowledge I'm still playing with all of D&D's tropes, and if D&D's tropes have come to mean "kobold = dragon worshiper", then I either accept or hack it out.

Hussar said:

I mean, there are many ways you can differentiate demons from devils other than the way they do it in The Great Wheel. AD&D and 3e both managed to do it quite nicely in the Monster Manual without a single reference to The Great Wheel or The Planes setting. Don't forget that the Politics of Hell articles were printed in Dragon (well, The Dragon to be fair) and not in the core books.

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Wha? AD&D doesn't describe the great wheel? Where did this come from?



That is all references in the Monster Manual for AD&D 1e. 1977. I see specific references to other planes (adjacent on the GW), as well as descriptions of layers of Hell (abet brief).

and 3.5 is EXPLICIT in it: Both in their intro paragraphs describe them as being form the Abyss/Hell, a Chaotic/Lawful Evil plane.

Hussar said:

See, kobolds connected to dragons might be more interesting to you, but, to me, it's simply intrusive. Why does that have to be stated as a fact, rather than a possibility? Why do salamanders have to slaves to efreeti? Why can't that simply be one option of many? I don't have Hoard of the Dragon Queen, for example . Are there kobolds in that module anywhere? If there are, dollars to donuts, they will be the "linked to dragons" type kobolds. For those of us who would like an adventure featuring kobolds where they aren't linked to dragons, I'm concerned that WOTC will simply leave us out in the cold because "linked to dragons" is far easier to brand.

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I like it for the exact reason you hate it: I like the inter-connectivity of the monsters. It gives them a reason to be together. I don't need to explain why, nor do I have to feel like they are a bunch of "roughly CR equal monsters" living together like the Caves of Chaos. If I need to change it, I begin with "in my campaign..." or "These group of X..." I might never have used Salamanders (actually, in 17 years, I don't think I ever HAVE), but if I did, I have a great tie in to other fire-monsters (an efreeti leader, some fellow azer slaves) without relying on "Well, they all like fire..."

As to the kobold issue with HotDQ: DUH! The whole adventure is about taking down a DRAGON CULT. If they DIDN'T worship dragons; they'd be completely out of place. (Here's a spoiler: everything in HotDQ worships dragons). Bad example man. Now, if the next AP (which deals with elemental evil) still had dragon-worshiping kobolds, you might have a right to complain, but you picked literally the worst example for a module to stake the "kobold's shouldn't worship dragons" claim.

Viking Bastard said:

I find that interesting, because I very much associate it with fantasy--but then, I tend to gravitate towards REH and Moorcock and the like, and was breastfed on the Sagas, many of which feature this motif (my favorite saga, Ormstunga, is centered around it).

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I have commented before that I've always felt The Great Wheel and more specifically Planescape have a very Moorcockian feel which I think is why I was initially fascinated by it.