Planescape, 4e, and the problem of worlds without history

[Shemeska]

You know, the entire "power of belief" thing is one of those D&D ideas that I never really liked. It just makes me cringe, and I always have ignored it whenever I start building cosmologies. There are simply far too many things that you can't do within such a system.

Wait, what? The freedom to mold reality by force of belief is a limiting thing? That's pretty much the 'anything can potentially occur' stamp on a cosmology, and that's a limit to what you could do? I'm confused. It's a lot more open to change and diversity than a much more limited, static system.

 

[rounser]

I'm a huge, HUGE fan of the practical. If it isn't practical, I don't want it in the game.

I think there's a fundamental disconnect here.

Arcane and eldritch, esoteric and mythologically resonant was a large part of AD&D's charm. Ripping out all those mythological obscurities in favour of contrived replacements misses that detail, IMO.

 

[Barastrondo]

Wait, what? The freedom to mold reality by force of belief is a limiting thing? That's pretty much the 'anything can potentially occur' stamp on a cosmology, and that's a limit to what you could do? I'm confused. It's a lot more open to change and diversity than a much more limited, static system.

I'm not TwinBahamut, but I'm curious as to how "reality not defined by belief" is by necessity more limited and static. The next step, after all, is asking what reality is defined by if not belief. Moorcockian powers of clashing law and chaos? A Celestial Bureaucracy with a thousand separate sub-ministries feuding for prestige in the eyes of the Jade Empress and the according power to extend their influence? Raw science? Whatever your answer, that will define whether the system is limited and static.

From my time in the old World of Darkness, I can report that a reality shaped by belief tends to run into troubles with other cosmological tropes you might want to establish. When I was helming Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I frequently found that I had to outright ignore or disagree with Mage: The Ascension if I wanted the themes of Werewolf to come through. Specifically, Mage had a very strong "humans are the most important creatures in the universe because their belief shapes the universe itself." Werewolf, on the other hand, was about "Humans are not the most important things in the universe, and in acting like they are, they're doing a lot of damage to everything else." You probably wouldn't get the same problem in D&D exactly, what with the consensus winding up including humans, gnolls, neo-otyughs, aboleth, couatl, devils, etc. (It would raise a lot more interesting questions, though. What if human belief is a minority? What would a world be like where what humans believe is not strong enough to overcome what the more numerous orcs and goblins believe, or what dragons believe?)

Having said that, I've got no trouble with consensual cosmologies myself. I tend to personally lean, however, toward cosmologies with certain bedrock truths that then have a lot of different manifestations and facets based on people's belief. An Underworld that is always the Underworld, but might look different depending on the local cultural touchstones. Gods that are pure archetypes yet wear different masks for different cultures. Things like that. I like to monkey around with the idea of a cosmology that mirrors different beliefs without having those beliefs actually define it. It adds an occult layer to things, differentiating between practical truths (crocodiles are sacred to the god Hedretha, and some may speak with his voice) and more fundamental truths (Hedretha is but one face of a powerful god of implacable nature; the Horned King is another).

I liked Planescape quite a bit (though I think it had a few flaws, such as the very specialized belief systems of the factions). I do have to think it was very baroque by design, though. If people sat down to create a D&D setting about consensual cosmology, but they didn't have the design tenet of "make it work with the pre-existing Great Wheel setup", I don't think it would look much like Planescape. Planescape's not really intuitive. It's quirky. That is, of course, one of its great selling points. But I quite understand why designers might want an alternate, more intuitive cosmology. Even if some of the names are a bit silly.

 

[Scribble]

Wait, what? The freedom to mold reality by force of belief is a limiting thing? That's pretty much the 'anything can potentially occur' stamp on a cosmology, and that's a limit to what you could do? I'm confused. It's a lot more open to change and diversity than a much more limited, static system.

What I find interesting is that a core "worldbuilding" belief seems to be everything MUST be defined. To me that's the thing that seems limiting. Once you decide on one idea, whether it be the power of belief or something else entirely, you sort of limit yourself to that idea.

 

[Particle_Man]

I miss the modrons.

Also, for some reason this talk of "planes that don't make sense" made me think of Traveller world-building, where you randomly rolled up features of a world and then had fun trying to figure out how it could possibly exist like that.

 

[Shemeska]

What I find interesting is that a core "worldbuilding" belief seems to be everything MUST be defined. To me that's the thing that seems limiting. Once you decide on one idea, whether it be the power of belief or something else entirely, you sort of limit yourself to that idea.

Heh. By no means do I hold to the idea that everything must be defined. I go out of my way to include open questions, contradictory notions about portions of a cosmology or its history, and mystery. Ambiguity can be seriously evocative when done right.

And the core Planescape idea that belief was power, wasn't absolutely sacrosanct, because it was sometimes questioned.

Of course, either my own take on the topic, or something more in line with classical Planescape, seems to go out of its way to remove limitations in many ways. Everything is potentially mutable. That's limiting? What can you not do within a cosmology with that idea that you could do in another cosmology in which belief or perception has absolutely no power over reality, and everything is in that respect, fixed and static?

 

[Barastrondo]

Of course, either my own take on the topic, or something more in line with classical Planescape, seems to go out of its way to remove limitations in many ways. Everything is potentially mutable. That's limiting? What can you not do within a cosmology with that idea that you could do in another cosmology in which belief or perception has absolutely no power over reality, and everything is in that respect, fixed and static?

Seems to me that "everything is mutable" is also a limitation: you forbid the presence of immutable things.

I'm curious why it must be either-or, actually. I see arguments for why everything being static is troublesome, and why everything being consensual is troublesome. I'm just not sure why it's everything or nothing. Wouldn't an option for "some things are mutable and some things are anchored" harvest the best of both worlds?

 

[EATherrian]

The trick is, Underthumb, is when you start looking at those boxed sets and examine where they actually place the adventures. Sure, Elemental planes are really bad for you. But, they don't set adventures there usually. Sigil is basically just another fantasy city. You don't need any specific protections to wander around, you don't have weird gravity or non-Euclidean surfaces (by and large).

You may not have done adventures in these places, but others have at least I have. Personally I prefer the Great Wheel because I like the idea of alignment being real in the cosmos and I like symmetry. I haven't done anything that really goes out into the planes lately so I don't know what model I'll use.

 

[avin]

Maybe the notion of "everything is immutable" in multiverse is so cemented on some of its inhabitants minds that prevent the universe from (to?) change.

I remember some Neil Gaiman's story about cats, where the Cat King explain to a cat that once the universe was dominated by the felines but, one day, human's dream was so strong that changed things since beginning.

There was never a world dominated by the cats because humanity dream rewrote the whole story.

That's how I like to portrait the multiverse.

The process of changing is so subtle that some things really look like immutable.

What wouldn't work for me is the notion that player X reaches level 30, choose a feat / power and start changing the universe with no further explanation (I never saw a rule like that, I'm just illustrating).

 

[Scribble]

Seems to me that "everything is mutable" is also a limitation: you forbid the presence of immutable things.

I'm curious why it must be either-or, actually. I see arguments for why everything being static is troublesome, and why everything being consensual is troublesome. I'm just not sure why it's everything or nothing. Wouldn't an option for "some things are mutable and some things are anchored" harvest the best of both worlds?

I think that's kind of what I was trying to get at. Once you make an "either or" choice you limit yourself. It doesn't matter which choice is more or less limiting, it's just making a choice and saying "THIS" is the true of things, limits you.

Personally for world building, I only like to make that choice when I absolutely HAVE to- when it matters in some way to the game at hand- and that rarely happens.

I don't mind starting with on set of ideas, only to have them tossed on their head later on if the adventure would be more fun to do so. (And back and forth.)


That's one of the things I've always liked about the White Wolf stuff btw. The various books all have "core assumptions" but they hint at the fact that well... they might not b so core after all is said and done. (Or at the very least they might have elements that you don't yet know that if you did know them, would change the way you view things...)