Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[Mournblade94]

I'm well aware of the topic of the thread, thank you, and I am disagreeing with you. People got over the cardinal sin of WotC changing names and lore around in 4E. No one is particularly beating their breast about WotC's treatment of gnomes anymore, or insisting they revert to the lore of Top Ballista, Dragonlance or the 2E Complete Handbook.

But in the minds of some partisans, no planar content can contradict 14-19 year old material, even three editions later.

So yeah, we are disagreeing.

Cheers!

Alot of those people that 'got over' the cardinal sin of rewriting lore, are now giving Paizo their money. If DNDNext does not do a good job of bringing the old lore back, many will still give Paizo their money.

 

[Mournblade94]

But, that's the thing. It's not just "window dressing".

Quick, name 3 pre-4e modules that have an eladrin in them, outside of a Planescape module. I can think of one that comes from the tail end of Paizo's Savage Tide AP. But, outside of that? Nothing.

Yet, people are still bothered by the fact that eladrin means grey elf in 4e. But, if you take Planescape out of the equation, all they've done is take some obscure monster that was virtually never used, and repackaged it as a player race. But, since that counters Planescape lore, we have been told that 4e is doing it wrong.

On and on with every single monster. Yugoloths have to hate the gods or they aren't yugoloths. Thing is, in core, yugoloths never hated gods. That's pure Planescape setting canon. Yet, we are going to be repeatedly reminded of this unless we make sure that every single Yugoloth entry in 5e squares with Planescape canon.



By and large, planar monsters in the Monster Manual shouldn't have any more "story text" than any other monster. Why should they? If the Yugoloth's schtick is "They hate gods" then fine, that's a cool enough schtick. But, we must have god hating yugoloths so that they square with Planescape lore isn't fine. That's the problem with Yugoloths as mercenaries. Mercenaries in what fight? Take a look at the original Fiend Folio entry for Mezzodaemon:



That works for me. Now they have a mercenary schtick (note this doesn't apply to daemons, but only to Mezzodaemons) and a pretty decent reason for using them in an adventure.

To me, this is a yugoloth description based on the Great Wheel but completely devoid of any reference to the Blood War.

People were not miffed at the Eladrin becoming the Grey Elf. They were miffed about the Grey Elf becoming the Eladrin. It was the first arbitrary lore shredding Rob Heinsoo and his ilk made. Suddenly Grey Elves can now portal to fey. All for the sake of a kewl ability. Was that really an iconic ability of the elves?

I think not.

The problem was not what they did to Eladrin, the problem was what they did to Grey elves and then extending that to every campaign world.

 

[RichGreen]

The feywild was always alluded too since 2nd edition. Third edition gave us the shadowplane, it is just 4e labelled it differently. The elemental Chaos was given at the EXPENSE of previous lore. A new theory of the bloodwar was given at the EXPENSE of the old one.

New: Bale Turath, Akhosia, and Nerath.

Just because something was added does not mean the sum is Positive. 4e took away from lore more than it gave. It arbitrarily rewrote lore for no other reason than to fulfill the petpeeves of the new designers. Thankfully those new designers are gone.

We've had a lot more detail on both the Feywild and the Shadowfell in 4e products though. These two planes have been one of the best things about the 4e cosmology.

Dave Noonan and Rob Heinsoo are no longer working for WotC but James Wyatt who wrote the 4e DMG is the chap posting the 5e Wandering Monsters articles who is trying to combine the best monster lore from earlier editions. Mike Mearls also worked on 4e and is now the man in charge of D&D. I don't think any of the 4e designers were "new" and nor are they all gone.

Cheers


Rich

 

[Mournblade94]

Which may be one of the reasons why I stuck with Spelljammer.



I understand the cant, I just find it distracting, particularly when mixed into "rules text". I like the way Games Workshop handles this sort of thing. Rules/game information is presented in (relatively) clear, straightforward language. Flavor is provided in sidebars and illustrations, and there are a ton of flavor sidebars and illustrations in the text.

De gustibus, etc. etc.

I loved planescape, but I never ever used the cant. I found it distracting as well. Of all the things to eliminate from that setting the Cant is it.

 

[Hussar]

I'm well aware of the topic of the thread, thank you, and I am disagreeing with you. People got over the cardinal sin of WotC changing names and lore around in 4E. No one is particularly beating their breast about WotC's treatment of gnomes anymore, or insisting they revert to the lore of Top Ballista, Dragonlance or the 2E Complete Handbook.

But in the minds of some partisans, no planar content can contradict 14-19 year old material, even three editions later.

So yeah, we are disagreeing.

Cheers!

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] Just wanted to repost this little quote to show that I'm not the only one who sees this.

But, fair enough. A bit over half think that Planescape continuity is worth preserving. A pretty sizable minority sees it as a bad thing.

 

[Kinak]

But, fair enough. A bit over half think that Planescape continuity is worth preserving. A pretty sizable minority sees it as a bad thing.

So who's the vocal minority exerting a chilling effect on conversation, then?

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Alzrius]

Alzrius Just wanted to repost this little quote to show that I'm not the only one who sees this.

I'm not sure what you think it proves to quote someone else who's also disingenuously misrepresenting the people who think that adherence to canon is not an inherently bad thing.

But, fair enough. A bit over half think that Planescape continuity is worth preserving. A pretty sizable minority sees it as a bad thing.

Just so long as we can agree that a more sizeable majority sees it as a good thing.

 

[Mournblade94]

We've had a lot more detail on both the Feywild and the Shadowfell in 4e products though. These two planes have been one of the best things about the 4e cosmology.

Dave Noonan and Rob Heinsoo are no longer working for WotC but James Wyatt who wrote the 4e DMG is the chap posting the 5e Wandering Monsters articles who is trying to combine the best monster lore from earlier editions. Mike Mearls also worked on 4e and is now the man in charge of D&D. I don't think any of the 4e designers were "new" and nor are they all gone.

Cheers


Rich

I was following the development of 4e in 2007. James Wyatt is now doing a good job of bringing the proper lore back. Mike Mearls I know was one of the original designers of 4e. Thus far he is doing a good job with Next.

 

[Mournblade94]

@Alzrius Just wanted to repost this little quote to show that I'm not the only one who sees this.

But, fair enough. A bit over half think that Planescape continuity is worth preserving. A pretty sizable minority sees it as a bad thing.

56% is quite over half.

35% would qualify as a bit over 1/3. I think the dominating philosophy is clear.

 

[Hussar]

People were not miffed at the Eladrin becoming the Grey Elf. They were miffed about the Grey Elf becoming the Eladrin. It was the first arbitrary lore shredding Rob Heinsoo and his ilk made. Suddenly Grey Elves can now portal to fey. All for the sake of a kewl ability. Was that really an iconic ability of the elves?

I think not.

The problem was not what they did to Eladrin, the problem was what they did to Grey elves and then extending that to every campaign world.

Y'know Mournblade, this is the first time I've ever seen anyone complain that Grey Elves got changed. After all, Grey elves only exist in Greyhawk, AFAIK, so, who is this "they" that got miffed?

Granted, I did see a lot more Planescape criticisms flying about changing Eladrin.