I don't know about planescape in general. But it seems that many, if not most, of the elements tied to it are special. They existed altered but unbroken in DnD for many years.
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So, yes they have a special place.
They existed "altered but unbroken" in Planescape material. And in the 3E MotP. Not in the core - as in, there was nothing in (say) the 3EMM that suggested that a devil and an angel might have a drink together in a bar in Sigil.
I don't see why the WotC authors should regard themselves as never bound to writen anything planar that does not adhere to Planescape. (And it's not as if 4e can't be pretty easily retrofitted. The 4e MotP even has a whole page devoted to telling you how to do it.)
every edition, I would assume, tried to make their lore good. I fail to see how 4e was the exception here.
My point is that (i) it didn't aim for minimalism (which is the other main alternative) and (ii) it didn't make many concessions to tradition (ie it prioritised "goodness" over continuity).
How many times I would have to STOP using my existing game/cosmology and start using 4e. And how many elements were retconned or wildly changed for no good or apparent reason. Eladrin as grey elves, Tieflings as human-devil pact makers. Dragonborn (with or without mammary glands).
Well, Planescape does all that for me. It makes me rewrite how I use demons, daemons and devils. It makes me rewrite how I use the Happy Hunting Grounds, and slaads, and Nirvana.
Which is my point. Unless you go for minimalism,
someone's game is going to conflict with the lore. Planescape has no special status in this regard.
What did they ADD? They simplified but what did they add? What made it good lore as opposed to different lore?
I though I explained that in some detail - it presents a world in conflict in which nearly all story elements are implicated, but the resolution to which is not yet settled - but the resolution of which will emerge through play. It's pretty much the opposite of the "metaplot" style that I associate with Planescape. The players don't discover the pre-established secrets; they (via their PCs) author the resolution to the cosmological fate of the world.
You don't want to have to run someone else's game.. err.. endevour.. but you have no problem if all the races and classes are directly tied to a random cosmology involving the gods, primordials, etc. Interesting. Double-standard much?
There's no double standard. What you've described isn't a game. Nor a plot. It's a thematically-laden starting point. 4e gives you that starting presmise, and then sets things up so that play will resolve the premise. (I take it for granted that it's not as tight as Dogs in the Vineyard, or Sorcerer; I think it probably is pretty close to the tightness of HeroWars/Quest played in Glorantha, though.)
all the races are directly tied to specific gods and the history of the world. That is fine if you prefer it. If not you suddenly have a whole bunch of gods that likely to not exist in people's homebrew settings being inextricably linked to the core races. Again, seems like "someone else's endevour" is much more heavily involved here.
If you don't like the tropes, or the thematic premises, then you won't like the game, sure. Likewise if you don't like Marvel Comics you probably won't like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. But that's pretty orthogonal to the points I was making, which were about what happens in actual play - do you explore someone else's fiction, or make your own? 4e is set up for the group, via play, to make their own fiction.
Which ones? Bane, who led the gods to victory in the Dawn War? Torog, whose imprisonment and torture of primordials is crucial to the endurance of the gods' victory? Lolth, whose webs held the universe together after Tharizdun's attempt to destroy it? Gruumsh, who (a bit like the Hulk) is an engine of destruction whom the gods need on their side?
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "over the top", but by the standards of D&D pantheon design, alignment rules and cosmology these strike me as fairly sophisticated characters whom (for instance) unaligned or even good PCs could revere for meaningful reasons.
I guess I don't really understand the particular way in which this is Disney-esque. These are pretty classic fantasy tropes, and the tensions between necessity and morality reflected in some of these gods are pretty standard material for both political/military drama and the philosophy of political action.
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