Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[Cyberen]

I have an agenda which I think is transparent. Namely, I don't think that Planescape is "neutral" or "generic" lore. It is a particular gloss on the basic AD&D planar framework, with its own idiosyncracies that have no greater claim on being generalised than any other lore or setting.

This

I'm definitely in the "minimal lore" camp. With the prevalence of fantasy material available today, I would find it very surprising to find new players lacking in inspiration. Although I also recommend good advice in the DMG and/or MotP (should there be such a thing) in setting up worlds with conflicts and problems for the players to engage in. The FATE Core book includes this type of thing as part of the process for starting up a game. However FATE works pretty solidly as a "no myth" game, so that may be inappropriate for D&D.

When I look at the "good lore" path, I guess I just don't see an upside to it. At least, no upside that can't be replaced by other/additional products. I'd love to see "Setting Guides" or something that detailed the major players, conflicts, etc for a given campaign setting. It'd be like getting a Worlds and Monsters for your favorite setting. ....and each one could start with a big disclaimer page about how this information is only valid in this setting. If the Core system is flexible and generic enough, that'd be a distinct possibility. (Of course, the risk you take there is that I can pick up that book and run FATE or Savage Worlds or some other system with it just as well.)

And this, exactly. I would go as far as to advocate a SRD core for Next + setting guides (being able to run them in another rules framework is imho a feature, not a bug) + top notch online tools.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I have an agenda which I think is transparent. Namely, I don't think that Planescape is "neutral" or "generic" lore. It is a particular gloss on the basic AD&D planar framework, with its own idiosyncracies that have no greater claim on being generalised than any other lore or setting.

There is no such thing as "neutral" or "generic" lore. Any piece of lore has an agenda.

Which is part of why I don't agree with your framing in this post. It's not a choice just between minimal lore and good lore. You can also have maximal lore, which posits a lore that makes no strong decisions about what is, and simply offers up a buffet of selections for individual groups to decide upon. Every group naturally weeds through all the options the game contains, anyway, no point in deciding how that must look for everyone. Much better to give you ideas about how it could look, and let you go with what you like.

Some of it's gonna suck, some of it's gonna rock, some of it is going to get niche fans, some of it is going to get ignored, but rather than a definition, the books can present an ecosystem.

 

[Cyberen]

KM, how would you do that in the core books ?
D&D specific IP is huge, and the external lore (ie "Appendix N" 2.0) the game (should) support is even bigger...
I agree with you in a virtual way, but I don't believe in its practical implementation.

 

[Jiggawatts]

I guess my answer to this is... what is the point of having lore if it changes with every edition? I play D&D to play D&D if I want a fantasy roleplaying game with different lore... there are literally thousands of them out there (or I can ignore it and make my own up), why would I want D&D lore to continuously change with every edition. I'm actually trying to think of another rpg that does this throughout editions and I'm coming up kind of blank, it seems much more common to revise mechanics and keep lore the same (Exalted, Earthdawn, Call of Cthulhu, Unhallowed Metropolis, L5R, and so on) ... or when changing lore significantly, they create a new game (oWoD vs. nWoD) We've allready had one major split in the customer base due (at least in part) to lore changes why is it necessary to continually change things? The only way I see this as feasible is if the majority of fans don't like the lore... but I don't think that was the case for the D&D traditional lore. YMMV of course.

Well said, this sums up my feelings perfectly.

The thing is, with all its changes to the lore, mechanics, and "feel" of the game, if 4E had been a smashing success, then we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. Instead Pathfinder, which built upon what came before, took the reigns and became the #1 RPG in the world. Not saying different style games aren't merited, there is a place for Savage Worlds, GURPS, Exalted, etc, but those aren't "Dungeons & Dragons", which is its own genre and brand.

If 4E had been called DungeonQuest: The Action RPG (or something), its entirely possible I might have enjoyed it, probably not as my main game, but many people would have. They would of been free to create and change anything they wanted without any fuss, because it wouldn't have been bogged down with 35 years of D&D tradition and lore, and it would have been a completely separate line.

 

[Ratskinner]

This

And this, exactly. I would go as far as to advocate a SRD core for Next + setting guides (being able to run them in another rules framework is imho a feature, not a bug) + top notch online tools.

Well, its a feature for you and I, both. Not so much, WotC.

 

[pemerton]

You know what I'm going to say about metaplot and Planescape

By way of compromise, I wonder if these two modes of play: discovering secrets vs. authoring resolution are really in opposition as you seem to suggest? For my part, I always saw Planescape as having a nice blend of the two.

I'm sure that the opposition/contrast I'm drawing is at least as much a reflection of my own abilities/preferences (I am not and never have been very good at running mystery scenarios) as anything objective.

I think I mentioned upthread that you took me to task once before for too quickly pigeonholing Planescape - so I know my experience of that material is not the universal one. Still, it is what it is, and I think my point that Planescape is not generic/universal lore, and so can't simply be generalised as if it was, survives the fact that you got more and better out of Planescape than I have.

 

[pemerton]

the DMG when it talks about the planes, and in pretty much every supplement in 3.x that focused on the planes, and in Dragon/Dungeon material as well. It was omnipreset.

The 3E DMG doesn't, as best I recall. The 3.5 DMG may have been different in this respect.

Other sources did, I'm sure, but they're not core, are they?

If you wanted to write planar D&D material that was one of the major sources you did your homework on since it was the most in-depth source covering the topic.

It's one the issues with writing for a shared world, you need to be aware of the material and its continuity if you want to write for it.

I don't write for RPGs other than the material I prepare for my own game.

From the point of view of a player/GM like me, D&D is not a "shared world". I am not trying to ensure that my game maintains continuity with anyone else's game. I don't need continuity across my own campaigns - in my current (4e) campaign I follow the core cosmology pretty closely, whereas in my previous campaign (Oriental Adventures run using RM) the chief "evil" outsider was a fusion of Asmodeus, Demogorgon and the Ordainer (a demon from RM), and the planar structure was a homemade version of one RM scheme.

what is the point of having lore if it changes with every edition?

So we can run different games? To try and to speak more powerfully to potential new players? In the case of 4e, the lore was part of what brought me back to GMing D&D.

I agree with your first assertion

<snip>

If new lore is created it invalidates games... so that's really a non-point, it's going to happen regardless if any specific lore is chosen.

You agree with my first assertion. And in the other bit I've quoted you seem to reiterate my main point, namely that any lore, even Planescape law, will invalidate something somewhere.

And that's all I'm saying. Or to flip it around, you seem to be agreeing with me that Planescape lore is not in any special, neutral, universal and hence unchangeable category. The decision to keep it or drop it is simply a decision about whose games to validate and whose to invalidate.

What choice WotC makes is of course up to them. If they think Planescape is where the big money is, they'd be silly not to go for it. That doesn't mean that they're not invalidating other games, though. Opting for Planescape isn't opting for universality. Even if we put 4e to one side it wouldn't be, because Planescape isn't neutral or generic with respct to original AD&D either.

You can also have maximal lore, which posits a lore that makes no strong decisions about what is, and simply offers up a buffet of selections for individual groups to decide upon.

Fine, but in that case the mere fact that some option would contradict Planescape wouldn't be a reason not to add it to the buffet, would it?

 

[pemerton]

we are talking to the same thing from different sides and so far you haven't shown me why yours is special.

Mine isn't special. Neither is Planescape. That's my point: Planescape isn't universal or generic, anymore than any other piece of D&D lore that people have been playing with since the game was first published.

that isn't the conversation here. It isn't just planescape vs. non-planescape. It is great wheel vs. world axis.

No it's not, at least not for my part. Hussar, in the OP, asked about Planescape. The "Great Wheel" dates back to the late 70s. Planescape is from the 90s. There is 10 to 15 years of the AD&D planar structure which is independent of Planescape, and Planescape doesn't have a monopoly over, or ownership of, all that.

If you were watching a show for 3 seasons and the fourth suddenly replaced or severely altered EVERY aspect of it then you would be pissed.

For me, playing D&D is not "watching a show". As I said upthread - in a post you replied to - I am not playing D&D to explore and experience someone else's fiction.

Also, metaplot? Raven queen had what to do with the shaddarki? Tharazdun is doing what and where?

There's not metaplot. There is backstory, but there is no metaplot. This is particularly striking in the Plane Above, which notes that one of the Dungeon APs (Scale of War?) may have changed stuff about the githyanki in your home game, and then explains how the material presented in the sourcebook can be used to fit with those different possible backstories.

Tharizdun's role in the cosmology is backstory. There's no Tharizdun metaplot.

The party must be involved because the core books say they have to be. My problem here, outside of being "4e's version" is that is that planar/godly stuff are overly involved in PC's lives right from the get go. That IS metaplot my friend.

That's not metaplot. It's just backstory and framing. There is no predetermined series of ingame events which unfold despite the actual course of play.

It is a slighyly oldschool approach IMHO.

<snip>

It is saying that even if the evil gods are evil they aren't really that bad they aren't CE. It takes all nuance out of the equation and becomes disneyesque.

Are, so old school, and "not all evil are equally bad" takes nuance out of the equation and is Disneyesque.

I have to admit that I took "Disneyesque" to mean black hats vs white hats - I didn't realise that having two categories of evil made a game less nuanced and more Disneyesque.

 

[pemerton]

I'm definitely in the "minimal lore" camp. With the prevalence of fantasy material available today, I would find it very surprising to find new players lacking in inspiration.

I still think inspiration can help. For instance, the way BW presents its lore (through the lifepaths, and the emotional attribute rules for demihumans) is part of its appeal to me.

 

[Hussar]

Boy do these goalposts keep shifting, that said...

I guess my answer to this is... what is the point of having lore if it changes with every edition? I play D&D to play D&D if I want a fantasy roleplaying game with different lore... there are literally thousands of them out there (or I can ignore it and make my own up), why would I want D&D lore to continuously change with every edition. I'm actually trying to think of another rpg that does this throughout editions and I'm coming up kind of blank, it seems much more common to revise mechanics and keep lore the same (Exalted, Earthdawn, Call of Cthulhu, Unhallowed Metropolis, L5R, and so on) ... or when changing lore significantly, they create a new game (oWoD vs. nWoD) We've allready had one major split in the customer base due (at least in part) to lore changes why is it necessary to continually change things? The only way I see this as feasible is if the majority of fans don't like the lore... but I don't think that was the case for the D&D traditional lore. YMMV of course.

Again, you're missing the point. It's not that the lore must change between editions. It's that the lore can change between editions. But, whenever any planar discussions come up, it's canon uber alles. You cannot even discuss changing the lore without people flat out telling you that you are wrong.

I mean, look at dragons. Every edition has radically changed dragons. Dragons went from a fairly low level threat in AD&D to massive airplane sized beasties in 2e to virtual gods in 3e before getting clawed back pretty hard in 4e. And everyone seems okay with that. But, make fairly minor changes to Planescape lore and we get 50 page threads.

underlining added

I think the critical thing to realize here is that, when discussing whether or not something is "more interesting" in this context....the answer is totally subjective and thus any setting/cosmology is entirely devoid of any intrinsic merits that one could call "its own" for the purposes of linear comparison. Calling for Planescape or the World Axis or anything else to appear or not based on "its own merits" is a meaningless position.

I obviously disagree. There are certainly metrics that can be used and those metrics can be discussed. However, simply throwing up our hands and saying, "well, since it's all subjective, we might as well just keep what came before, never changing anything" isn't really useful is it? Look at the evolution of a Paladin from 1e to 3e. Why do we get the summonable mount for 3e paladins? Is it more flavourful? Is it more in keeping with the class? Or is it because mounts are a PITA in game and having a pokemount is a lot easier to use at the table? I'd argue that it's the latter.

So, we get pokemounts in 3e. Radical alteration of the paladin lore. Pally's no longer have to quest for their mount and no longer have to take care of it after they do. But, that's okay apparently. Sure, discussion over the pokemount has happened, but, at no point was it, "Well, paladins never had this power so we must never change the paladin lore". I saw lots of arguments that the pokemount didn't fit with the flavour of the paladin. That it was too overtly magical. This and that. But, I rarely saw the lore for lore's sake argument trotted out.

Merit in this case, for me anyway, means how it's used at the table. A Plane of Fire where it looks like the surface of the sun, isn't terribly useful. Either convince me that an unending Plane of Fire can be used at the table, or let me change it.