Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[Jiggawatts]

Just because strawberry is the officially supported flavor doesn't mean you cant eat orange, and if people tell you that you are wrong for eating orange then they are wrong. On the other hand, if strawberry is the "official" flavor, has been for decades, and still works perfectly in its role as such, there is no reason to change it for changes sake. Just enjoy your orange while most people enjoy their strawberry.

 

[JasonZZ]

Just because strawberry is the officially supported flavor doesn't mean you cant eat orange, and if people tell you that you are wrong for eating orange then they are wrong. On the other hand, if strawberry is the "official" flavor, has been for decades, and still works perfectly in its role as such, there is no reason to change it for changes sake. Just enjoy your orange while most people enjoy their strawberry.

The whole point is that strawberry *shouldn't* be the official flavor. There shouldn't be one at all--rather, a palette of examples and the tools to create your own.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Part of the problem, from what I understand of Hussar's perspective, is that you can like Strawberry all you like and you can order it all you want, but it becomes a problem when you demand that Strawberry flavor should pervade every other flavor of ice cream that he or others may order.

No one's forcing the flavor, though.

Even if we assume the strawberry's ubiquity, no one ever has to eat it. After all, what you put in your mouth is up to you. When you look at that menu, and see strawberry, you don't have to order it.

There's no Gaming Police. No one's going to come to Hussar's home and ensure that he is only playing with regulation lore in a regulation manner with regulation lore. No one can make him play Planescape. Every table is its own unique game, every group defines what it is going to use and not use for itself. If Hussar doesn't care about Planescape, no one can ever tell him that he has to play with any of it. Even if all WotC did was re-publish 2e Planescape forever, and condemn all non-Planescape materials as heresy, no one could make Hussar play a game with any PS in it whatsoever.

Because each game is local, what actually sees play at the table is self-selected. You get to order anything you want from the menu, or even make your own dish.

And while PS is certainly a popular flavor here, apparently, it's still just one flavor amongst many. You don't have to order it or eat it.

So in complaining about it's ubiquity, he appears to be complaining about the mere fact that it is even on the menu. Or even that there's a lot of variations on it.

To twist the metaphor a bit, it sounds a little like he's standing in a candy shop and complaining about all the chocolates there, and saying there should be fewer chocolates.

Chocolates are good. Chocolates are popular. Chocolate makes its way into a lot of things. But if you don't like chocolate, and no one can MAKE you eat chocolate, and you're not planning on getting anything with chocolate in it anyway, it seems inordinately mean-spirited to complain that there's too much chocolate in the shop, or even to decide you don't want the shop to sell ANY chocolate, unless someone special orders it. It sound a lot like "Other peoples' love of Planescape is not as important as my dislike of Planescape! I don't want any, and I don't want to ever be offered any!" You don't have to eat any of it, there's plenty of non-chocolate options, and it's a shop where you can make your own candy anyway, but because you don't like it, it needs to be banished to the back room? And anyone who happens to like chocolate is just an unthinking traditionalist?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a dentist's appointment.

 

[Jiggawatts]

The whole point is that strawberry *shouldn't* be the official flavor. There shouldn't be one at all--rather, a palette of examples and the tools to create your own.

Are you saying Planescape should have never been made, or do we go back further and you are saying Gygax should have never put the Great Wheel diagram in the back of the 1E PHB? Given the editions that actually used it (1E-3E), how much of the planar cosmology is actually baked into the core game....not much, usually only spells, most of which only deal with the Astral and Ethereal. But hell, if the DM says that demons and devils come from the Plane of Rainbowkittyland in his campaign, then bygod thats where they come from. The 3E PHB had the Greyhawk gods in it as the "default", and if a DM is running a homebrew then no one should be giving him crap about using his own deities and not the gods list from the book....though that doesn't mean Greyhawk gods, or Greyhawk itself, shouldn't exist.

The way I look at it is like this, the book says these specific places are the official planes, just like it says paladins can smite evil, well maybe a DM's campaign world is hugely focused on law vs chaos, with good and evil as a mere afterthought, that DM is totally free to decree that paladins in his world smite chaos instead of evil, even though the rulebook says otherwise.

And lastly, as has been mostly agreed upon in the "Is D&D a toolbox or setting" thread, D&D is not a toolbox, its not GURPS, at its core its a setting, its own genre of fantasy. D&D comes with many assumptions baked in, that doesn't mean one cant channel their inner Dragonlance gnome and use it as a toolbox to tinker to their hearts content, but there are far better game systems out there to do that with.

 

[pemerton]

Third edition gave us the shadowplane, it is just 4e labelled it differently.

The Plane of Shadow dates back to 1st ed AD&D DDG. Only in 4e is it also the plane of death and undeath.

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.

It wasn't arbitrary. Worlds & Monsters states the rationale in great detail.

And what can I say - in my view it gave a lot more than it took away.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes I do. Planescape rocks.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

You can have the best strawberry ice cream on the planet. But, at no time am I going to tell everyone else in the world that they MUST have strawberry ice cream.

You said "canon for canon's sake" in a manner that was dismissive of the idea that canon is something some people simply like. You don't. But stretching it into a metaphor that attacks people who like canon in the games they buy and play is absurd, unproductive, and insulting. Please stop.

 

[Savage Wombat]

True, I like strawberry.

But, I also don't run around telling every single restaurant that the MUST serve strawberry, and that that strawberry MUST be from a specific company, made from strawberries from a specific place.

And I don't think anyone is saying that. What they are saying is "why do you have to change the strawberry ice cream I love just because Hussar doesn't like it?" Honestly, I think the New Coke example is better.

 

[Hussar]

You said "canon for canon's sake" in a manner that was dismissive of the idea that canon is something some people simply like. You don't. But stretching it into a metaphor that attacks people who like canon in the games they buy and play is absurd, unproductive, and insulting. Please stop.

But characterizing me as hysterical and unreasonable isn't?

Yes, it is canon for canon's sake. I do believe that. The argument boils down to, "Well, it was established this way once, so, we must always do it that way and we can never revisit it because that will mean that maybe what we did back then wasn't as good of an idea as this new idea". And any criticism is brushed aside as "change for changes sake".

The recent articles and reactions are pretty typical. Why can't slaad be aberations? Well, the biggest criticism to the idea was that it changes what came before. The issue wasn't that the change is bad or stupid or anything else. It's that it changes what came before, therefore it's automatically bad and rejected. Is making Slaad a more Lovecraftian horror a la Shadows over Innsmouth out to corrupt the universe in the service to the Great Old Ones really a worse idea than inscrutable chaos frog demons? I don't know. Maybe. Could be.

My point is that I'd much rather the debate start and end from the point of view of game elements standing on their own merit. Because that's the way we did it twenty years ago isn't a merit. Even die hard canon fans will admit that much of the writing in D&D blows. So, if it does blow, then maybe we can do something new?

If a creature like, say, Modrons has not gained any traction outside of a single setting, in thirty years, either make sure that that element stays in that single setting, not bleeding over into other settings, or change the creature to give it a wider appeal. To me, that's the basic criteria.

We must not change things is why we got ten years of 2e and not a true rules revision until 3e. After all, if we cannot change what came before, that applies to more than just lore doesn't it? To me, what came before is a good starting place, sure. But, only a starting place. Not an ending place.

 

[Piratecat]

Agreed. No more insults, please.