I simply do not understand the statement that 4E's cosmology is superior based upon the reasons given. While I myself do feel there are styles of play that the mechanical structure of 4E and the ideals upon which the 4E is built built clash with, I have no reason to believe the new cosmology is more poorly suited to exploration than 3rd Edition's Great Wheel.
Thanks for clarifying. My answer - 4e's mythology is built in broad brushtrokes and is transparent to the players (for example, significant chunks of it are set out in the PHB, in the discussions of gods, races and classes, and more big chunks are found in the sidebars in the Powers books - and the Monster Manual is full of more bits of it that players can learn by making skill checks). It has few nooks and crannies, few secrets (an attempt was made to keep Tharizdun secret from players, but that seems to have been abandoned).
It's also transparent to the GM - the MM entries are full of information linking various potential antagonists back to that same core mythology.
So suppose the part of the mythology you're interested in is Orcus vs the Raven Queen. There's no great backstory to discover here - the reasons for their hostility are front and centre! What that mythology does is not to support exploration of secret histories and the like, but to support conflicts to be set up and resolved in the course of play: "OK - as he is walking down the corridor, your paladin of the Raven Queen sees a statue of Orcus. You can sense it is imbued with necrotic power. What do you do?" The emphasis is not on mysteries to be uncovered, but rather situations to be resolved.
The treatment of journeying into deep myth in The Plane Above is similar: mythology is not something to be discovered, but an impetus to and even a site of adventure (ie the very thing that Shemska was critical of upthread!).
Even if you don't agree, or don't agree entirely, or think it's much more a matter of degree than I'm suggesting in my rather absolute characterisation, I hope the above at least makes clear what it is that I am asserting.
I like the 4e cosmology a lot but I'm really not getting your point.
Can you give an example of what you are talking about?
Is it that in 4e tiefling and warlock are core and so can have devil theme player options jumping out at you instead of simply being options from supplements like the MM/Races of Faerun/Complete Arcane? That devil themes are superior to druid ones to have in the core so 4e is superior to 3e?
I can think of many examples where 3e/d20 player options are diverse and customizable so player choices can fit well with PC chosen cosmology based thematics (a half-orc ranger chooses favored enemy elf to reflect Gruumsh-Correlon hatred for example).
Hopefully my reply to Johnny 3D3D helps a bit. I think there are at least two contrasts with 3E. First, the mythology in 3E is not as transparent to the player. Second, the monsters given to the GM to work with are not as embedded in that mythology in their core descriptions.
And once the GM turns to books like The Manual of the Planes to try and flesh things out, the focus (in my view) is more on nooks and crannies, and on scope and wonder, than it is on pressing situations of thematic conflict with which the PCs are expected to engage.
4e, for example, expects that the culmination of that elf ranger's career might be journeying back into deep myth to intervene in some fashion in the Gruumsh-Corellon fight - whether to finish the job, or perhaps to save Gruumsh's eye and therefore avert some present-day crisis. I don't feel that 3E has the same expectation.
I find it strange when you state an absolute like this. IMO, you are just more familiar, and enjoy, the tropes in 4e (based more on classical myths) than you are with the tropes that comprise Planescape (based more on Sword and Sorcery and pulp/weird fiction). Now if you want to see the types of tropes Planescape allows one to explore please read some Michael Moorcock, Fritz Lieber, even some Lovecraft and China Mieville.
In my view it's not about enjoying the tropes (or not only). It's about the way the story elements are set up as components of play - are they primarily in the hands of the GM, to be discovered by the players? or are they transparent to both players and GM, to be used as the basis for establihsing and resolving conflicts in the course of play?
The fact that the 4e tropes are so familiar is mainly a means to an end - it facilitates them being transparent to the players.
I find nothing in Planescape, or it's cosmology, that hinders playing a game in which player convictions and thematic concerns are the main drivers. Just by choosing or not choosing a faction PC's make thematic choices and place their convictions... In fact it's factions, and especially it's uncertain view of the truth of the multiverse, alignment, denizens, makeup and limits... seems to foster exactly the type of play you are speaking of.
Whereas I don't feel this at all. The Planewalker's Handbook, for example, is full of all this "secret lore" that it is expected players might have to work at, in game, to get access to. The very notion that "belief shapes the planes" seems to me to entail a type of relativism - "all beliefs have the same metaphysical weight" - which means that a player whose aim in play is to vindicate his/her concerns is already putting him- or herself at odds with the metaphysics.
I'm curious have you ever played a Planescape game? What exactly, and I'm talking about specifics now, created a barrier to player convictions and thematic concerns driving the game forward.
I own a range of Planescape products - from memory, Dead Gods, Tales of the Infinite Staircase, the Guide to the Ethereal Plane, and the Planewalker's Handbook. I also have Return to the Demonweb Pits, which as an adventure seems to me to be pretty much in the same vein as Dead Gods.
I've used bits and pieces of the Guide to the Ethereal (which, at least as I recall it, is more of a gloss on the 1st ed Manual of the Planes than anything radically new) in a Rolemater game that featured a heavy degree of ethereal travel. I've used one encounter from the Tales - there's a demon in a funny demiplanar castle with a crazy fighter and wizard NPC on the loose - although embedded in a very different story context.
I couldn't conceive of running Dead Gods, Demonweb or Tales as written, although Tales is better than the other two. The latter two, in particular, utterly presuppose the thematic and story interests of the players, and do not provide scope for the players to drive the story forward by expression of their convictions. For exmample, in Demonweb there is a sequence that will work only if the PCs cooperate with a servant of Orcus. Which is fine if what you want in your game is to explore "What's it feel like to do a deal with a demon?", but is potentially disastrous if your game is driven by player convictions - because what if one of the players' convictions is "Never do a deal with a demon!"?
Demonweb also has the old trope of "my employer is my enemy", which is also fine in exploratory play, but potentially explosive in a thematic-driven game - because unless the GM handles it very carefully, s/he is in effect robbing the players of their input, by making everything they thought had value turn out to be valueless.
In addition to my impressions from the Planescape books, which shape my reluctance to use them as written, and my impressions from the 1st ed and 3rd ed Manuals of the Planes, which emphasise - esp in 3rd ed, post-Planescape - nooks-and-crannies exploration rather than the players taking ownership of the cosmology in order to make their own points using it, there are my impressions from posters on these and other boards.
For example, one of the first things one typically sees said in an "introduction to Planescape" thread is that the players have to get used to walking into a bar in Sigil, seeing a devil (perhaps talking to an angel) and not killing it. This fits fine with the "metaphysical equivalence of value" vibe that I already commented on as a basic part of the setting. But it is completely at odds with thematically-driven play, in which the whole point is that the players are committed to
denying the metaphysical equivalence of value.
I'm sure Planescape could be drifted from its published simulationist orientation in a more narrativist direction, but I think work would be required. Because the "metaphysical equivalence of value" would have to be dropped. So it would have to be open to the players to try and drive the fiends from Sigil (for example), or to overthrow the Lady of Pain, or to bring the Blood War to some sort of conclusion. And in order to make these sorts of player choices meaningful - to avoid robbing them of value in the way I mentioned upthread (discussing betrayal by one's patron) - you'd probably have to get rid of a lot of the metaplot about Yugoloths and the like. Or else make all that transparent, so that the players can know where there are meaningful choices to be made.
It would be interesting to hear from any narrativist Planescape people how they actually did it!
