Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[Alzrius]

How would you define gaining traction? If something only appears in a very small number of published adventures, and all those adventures take place within a specific setting, I'd say that it doesn't have a whole lot of wider appeal. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

I wouldn't define it, because that's not the term I would use. I certainly wouldn't use "how often it's been reprinted" as a yardstick, if only because that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy (e.g. using something that's been used many times before means that it's been used that much more, and so should be used again, ad infinitum).

Likewise, the presumption that just because a creature's appearances are all within a specific setting means that it has no appeal outside of that setting is fallacious. The recent discussion on kender helped show that. By contrast, the Tarrasque has appeared fewer times in published materials (ironically, several of those appearances were in setting-specific adventures, such as DL16 World of Krynn, SJR4 Practical Planetology).

If you want to bring something into core, it should have the broadest appeal possible. Shouldn't it? What's the point of bringing something into core that only appeals to a small subset of the general gamer population. And, as popular as Planescape is, it is still a specific setting.

Leaving aside the problems of measuring the broadest possible appeal, many if not most monsters are fairly niche in their applicability, being of use at certain levels, in certain environments, and having certain abilities. There's also the (perfectly valid) idea that if you want the Core as a whole to have the broadest possible appeal, there's nothing wrong with it serving several different niches, rather than trying to have everything be universal. Specificity isn't a vice.

So, if Planescape elements have never really gained any larger following, then Planescape canon arguments don't really apply when we're talking about adding them to core. It's not like no one has heard of Modrons, for example. They've been in the game since the early 80's. But, they've never really gained much traction outside of Planescape. Why not?

How do I know they haven't gained much traction? Well, for starters, they did not appear in core in any edition. Secondly, they have rarely featured in any setting material other than Planescape. Thirdly, they rarely are even mentioned in any gaming discussion.

Again, you've made several presumptions here. First, you are not privy to all, or even most, gaming discussions, so your third point can be discounted. Likewise, your definition of "gaining traction" as being "printed in the Core rules" is also fallacious, as described above, so we can likewise discount that. That leaves only your point about them "rarely" having been featured in any setting other than Planescape, which is easily countered by the Tarrasque vs. kender argument above.

You're attempting to legitimize your personal opinions as objective metrics by utilizing the question of how often things have been printed - and the unrelated notation of how often they're printed in the Core rules - to set some sort of baseline. However, those are facts that have no issue on discussions of the qualitative merits or flaws of a given creature.

It's also a very circular argument. "How do I know something has 'gained traction?' Because it's in the Core. Why was it printed in the Core? Because it had 'gained traction.'"

Saying that Modrons, or Yugoloths or Slaad are pretty niche monsters shouldn't be terribly earth shattering thing to say.

Suggesting that people who disagree with you find your statements "earth-shattering" is (another) gross mischaracterization of their opinion.

 

[Piratecat]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION], please see my PM.

 

[Alzrius]

Alzrius, please see my PM.

Read and replied, PC.

 

[SkidAce]

Change and canon.

Incremental evolutionary and organic change of canon usually seems okay.

Discordant jarring and contradictory change of canon usually seems bad.

Which is which usually seems to be the beauty in the eye of the beholder, and varies GREATLY from person/group to person/group.

That's my dogmatic assertion and decree for the day, and I'm sticking with it.

 

[Aldarc]

For me, this is admittedly a matter of preference in regards to flavor of the core rulebook meta-setting. Planescape is an open setting in so far as it provides a meta-structure for multiple core D&D settings that allows them to be linked via Sigil and the Great Wheel. But I feel that in the process of creating a meta-setting, Planescape also closes just as many doors as it opens. Little surprise, I suppose, from the City of Doors. It's obviously a setting in its own right, which inherently involves shaping the lore in a particular way. And when you say that these settings are linked via Sigil, it also says that these settings are not unconnected. And when Planescape imposes a metahistory on a shared cosmology, then it effectively shapes tangentially related settings via this planar link. My preference is for core materials to lack both materials and flavor particular to campaign settings to allow for a greater flexibility in the use of monsters. So yes, this would exclude the "Blood War" from materials on demons and devils. I would be more interested in how demons truly differ from devils ideologically and how they would play rather than any fictive meta history. Behavior material is great. In my opinion, setting materials should provide the flavor for how the creatures of the monster manual apply to the setting's own idiosyncrasies and history.

As I said before, I prefer the Great Axis over the Great Wheel. But i generally do not use the Great Axis as presented. My real preference in regards to cosmology is that neither the Great Wheel nor Great Axis are core but are instead presented as options along with other models.

 

[Hussar]

Phew. This is yet another thread that got away from me.

Look, my basic point is pretty much exactly what Aldarc said. I feel that setting specific canon belongs in that specific setting and should not bleed over into other settings. I would go a bit further and say that setting specific cannon should not be a consideration when talking about core elements. If changing something in core makes it more broadly appealing, then that change should be done. If it's wrong, then change it back. But, simply dismissing change because it doesn't conform to what came before is never the right thing. If an element cannot be justified on its own, then that element should be changed.

Maybe it's my own biases. I dunno. I just believe that Planescape fans have been very, very vocal about PS canon and how it must never be changed. Maybe it's just because of two or three planar monster articles recently from WOTC. I do know that I've had this discussion more than a few times over the years.

But, hey, the majority has spoken. Planescape lore is important. More than I would have though. Fair enough. I'll bow out now.

 

[Balesir]

I think I've come to the conclusion that what's being argued about here is terribly slim - it comes down to names, in the end.

I understand the desire to have different settings segregated and sealed, but at some level we have to see that D&D is a single game. Having the same label applied to different things in the same game is essentially unhelpful.

That's why I've reached the conclusion that 4E's Eladrin were done badly. Not that the race isn't good in itself - it's a super addition to D&D, in my opinion. But calling them "Eladrin" was a mistake, because the game already contained something by that name. I mean, how difficult can it be to re-label something? Call them sidhe, or faerie elves - or lemon curry for that matter - it's a minimal cost to make sure different game elements don't share the same label.

Same with Yugoloth. That label is taken, is all. If you want something different, great! Go for it. But don't call them the same as something already in the game - it's just confusing and (thus) irritating.

 

[pemerton]

Same with Yugoloth. That label is taken, is all. If you want something different, great! Go for it. But don't call them the same as something already in the game - it's just confusing and (thus) irritating.

But for me, if the Planescape crew get to have mezzodaemons and nycadaemons, then what am I meant to do when running Vault of the Drow or using the city encounter table in the (original) DMG? I don't want my mezzodaemons and nycadaemons to default to the Planescape conception of "yugoloths".

 

[Balesir]

But for me, if the Planescape crew get to have mezzodaemons and nycadaemons, then what am I meant to do when running Vault of the Drow or using the city encounter table in the (original) DMG? I don't want my mezzodaemons and nycadaemons to default to the Planescape conception of "yugoloths".

Well, I didn't exempt PlaneScape from my "complaint" and, if I'd thought more carefully, I would have realised that the "original sin" was with PS, here!

In other words, this proves my point that PS shouldn't have used the same label for a changed monster - although, in truth, they didn't (quite). That leaves two options:

1) Say mezzodaemon = mezzoloth (and so on) and use the new creatures instead of the old, or

2) Say mezzodaemon and mezzoloth are, despite the apparently similar names, not the same thing.

The only thing that would screw this up is if some "official" source explicitly stated either case as true (oops - don't read the PS monstrous compendia!)

 

[Shemeska]

Well, I didn't exempt PlaneScape from my "complaint" and, if I'd thought more carefully, I would have realised that the "original sin" was with PS, here!

In other words, this proves my point that PS shouldn't have used the same label for a changed monster - although, in truth, they didn't (quite). That leaves two options:

1) Say mezzodaemon = mezzoloth (and so on) and use the new creatures instead of the old, or

2) Say mezzodaemon and mezzoloth are, despite the apparently similar names, not the same thing.

The only thing that would screw this up is if some "official" source explicitly stated either case as true (oops - don't read the PS monstrous compendia!)

The thing is though, it wasn't a distinct setting taking something from the core game and making it its own thing. Everything was set within the Great Wheel cosmology at the time in 2e (and before that in 1e even), and there was never any distinction between a Planescape mezzoloth and a core mezzoloth. There didn't need to be. It's a false distinction.