D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[pemerton]

I do disagree with Pemerton on what primarily defines a setting in an RPG sense. Setting is defined, in RPG's primarily by canon. Sure, things like theme are part of it too, but, it's the setting canon that separates one setting from another. Thematically, there aren't a huge number of differences between Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms - they are pretty close.

<snip>

Imagine playing a Call of Cthulu campaign that never once references The Mythos. Would it be recognizable as CoC?

I'm not here to persuade you, just to reply in the unfolding conversation.

I think that there are noticeable thematic differences between FR and GH, although my description of them isn't neutral: FR is essentially polyanna-ish, whereas GH aspires either to a modest degree of seriousness (at least to the level of REH Conan and Kull) or else is just outright silly (Isle of the Ape, Zagyg etc).

As for CoC, I think the mythos is all about theme and trope. Monte Cook and John Tynes do a reasonable job of identifying the tropes in d20 CoC. (I don't have a Chaosium CoC rulebook - they might do this too.) The tropes include cursed families, mysterious books and relics, etc.

And Trail of Cthulhu does a good job, I think, of identifying theme. For example, here is its take on Cthulhu (pp 9):

* The Great Old One Cthulhu dwells in the sunken basalt necropolis of R’lyeh, miles deep at the bottom of the South Pacific. He sleeps eternally while there, sending horrifying dreams to mortal men, tipping some into madness and others into his fanatical worship. Someday R’lyeh will rise again and Cthulhu will wake, freed once more to raven and slay, freed to rule the world.

* Cthulhu is the titanic high priest and ruler of a species of octopoid beings from the star Xoth, who seeped down to earth during the Permian Era and battled the crinoid Elder Things to a standstill. Their civilization on Yhe fell to a cataclysm when the continent sank. Cthulhu cast the spell that preserved his and their life in suspended animation. In this long sleep, he telepathically recruits human cultists to raise his island again by means of unimaginably advanced alien science, which superstitious humans consider magic.

* Varying texts hold that R’lyeh and Yhe may have sunk around 250 million years ago, or with Mu and Lemuria during the first lost age of human sorcery around 200,000 BC. Some of Cthulhu’s powers (or genes) may have survived in the lineage of Kathulos, the skull-faced sorcerer of Atlantis.

* Cthulhu is the chief god of the Deep Ones. He is their “soul-symbol,” and their eons of telepathic worship and biotechnical experimentation have created Him in the flesh. They seek to spread His seed by selectively breeding with humanity.

* Cthulhu is the chief of the Great Old Ones associated with the element of Water, and the fervent rival of his half-brother Hastur, the chief elemental of the Air. His agenda not only includes his own liberation from his prison in R’lyeh but the defeat and diminution of Hastur’s earthly cult. Contrary to the maundering of some cultists, Cthulhu’s telepathic sendings are masked not by the Pacific Ocean, but by the seal carven on R’lyeh’s portals by the Elder Gods.

* Cthulhu is an Outer God, the incarnation of (or a sentient facet of) gravity, one of the four fundamental forces within our space-time.

* Cthulhu is a titanic entity created by the Old Ones for some unguessable purpose. As the Necronomicon says, “Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly.” Their creation draws his energy from long-lensing cosmic alignments vigintillions of years apart, and remains semi-conscious during his dormant phase. They created matrices and other hyper-geometries to limit his activities until their return, and he seeks to evade these restrictions.

* Cthulhu is an infra-dimensional entity that has only a conceptual existence within the human “R-complex,” the brain stem and limbic system left over from our primordial reptilian ancestors. This is why he appears only in dreams, high-stress encounters (such as shipwrecks), and artistic impulses. He is attempting to create a critical mass of believers so that he may “emerge from R’lyeh” and open the eyes of all.

* Cthulhu is a protoplasmic mass of squirming tentacles with an amorphous single-eyed head. An Outer God who has entirely filled his native dimension, R’lyeh, Cthulhu is shapeless and indistinct in our dimension. R’lyeh is tangent to our dimension at a number of hyper-geometric coordinates corresponding to locations on Earth, including Ponape and elsewhere beneath the South Pacific, Peru, Arabia, and off the coast of Massachusetts. The differential in energy between our continuum and R’lyeh creates discontinuities and madness in sentient life, even warping it into morphogenetic “fishlike” or “froglike” forms near the tangent points. This differential also creates unstable vortices at the tangent points, where human sorcerers can tap psychic or magical power.​

The rulebook (p 87)expressly states that it provides

as many contradictory explanations and alternate versions for the Mythos heavyweights as possible. Some of these versions come directly from Lovecraft, others from lesser Mythos authors, and still others from the Call of Cthulhu rules or the perfervid imagination of the present writer. You, the Keeper, can pick and choose among them.​

I think this is consistent with an understanding of setting as being concerned with trope and theme rather than canon details.

 

[Nivenus]

This is a version of @Aldarc's point about "status-quo". Planescape has no history. No dynamics. No Ragnarok.

It didn't begin in any meaningful way (there are the baernoloths, the ancient baatorians, etc, but they don't stand for anything) and it is not unfolding. The 9 alignments are eternal. Sigil has the Lady of Pain to enforce its status quo. The Blood War never ends. The whole setting is static.

To be fair, I think this is a criticism that can be levied at most campaign settings, particularly those that only existed for a single edition. The changes in the Realms from 1e to 3e were relatively minor, aside from the Time of Troubles (which was a controversial event, although nowhere near to the extent of the Spellplague). And Eberron changed very little in its transition from 3e to 4e. It's nothing particular to Planescape and indeed it may be unfair to single it out since it only had one edition to shine, during which time few settings implement any major status quo changes.

Incidentally, I also agree with you to a certain extent. I do think some change is good, though with shared universes it's best done cautiously and slowly (like the changes to the Marvel universe from the 1960s to now). To a certain extent I'm actually slightly annoyed at the amount of rollback the Sundering seems to be implementing - I agree with a fair amount of it but I would have preferred to see how some of the 4e elements could be rolled into a more traditional Realms (the sudden and inexplicable re-loss of Netheril seems particularly jarring).

In past discussions about techniques, often in the context of skill challenge resolution, posters who favour internal consistency as the sole, or pre-eminent, constraint on content generation have suggested that anything else must be Toon. But I think that this is to misunderstand the role of contrivance in dramatic fiction. "Of all the gin-joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." That's a contrivance, but I think it would be absurd to compare Casablanca to Looney Tunes (at least in respect of the nature of the contrivance). Gandalf arrives at Helm's Deep (with Erkenbrand or Eomer, depending on whether you're reading the book or watching the film) just at the nick of time. Obvious contrivance, but not Toon-like.

There's a time and place for contrivance and in the right setting it can be used for great dramatic effect (and coincidences do occasionally occur in real-life). But an over-reliance on contrivance, on things happening "just" the right way, does eventually undermine a narrative by making the stakes seem arbitrary: whenever something needs to happen, the plot makes it happen, even if it makes no sense. I have a lot more respect for authors who can bring events about events in a believable sequence with only a few "just-so" happenstances.

Some people get pleasure from reading imaginary atlases and travel guides (typically marketed as RPG setting supplements) but that is a different way again of gaining entertainment.

It's comments like these, I think, that give a lot of people the impression you think fans of Planescape are having "badwrongfun."

Not really, n. Your second example doesn't involve much other than setting exploration (although there is the heightened tension of having to defend your wife, which for some might be more intuitively compelling that defending yourself against a strangely-motivated vengeance seeker). Because you've left out the seductive nature of vampyrs. Here is where we move from setting exploration to dramatic conflict:

DM (at some other point): "The vampyr's trail leads right to your doorsetp. As you approach your house, you can see faces through the window. With a sinking sensation, you realised that your wife is [kissing, whatever] the vampyr."​

Now for Bram Stoker's audience that was probalby enough, but we live in a pretty libertine age, so maybe its "yeah, whatever, I kill the vampyr and release my wife from his spell." In that case, the GM needs to push a bit harder:

"As you draw your sword to srike down the vampyr, your wife calls out "No!". You realise that, even now that she is no longer mesmerised by his gaze, your wife is in love with the vampyr"​

Depending on GM and player mood and expectations, replace love with pity. Or perhaps prior context suggests a role reversal: up until now your wife has been a model of peace and piety, a contrast with the awful realities of adventuring; but she is the one calling for the vampyr to be slain (for a bit more lowbrow viscerality, she could lap up blood from the vampyr's wounds); or, the vampyr is slain, but your wife has become lusty and sexuaised in a way that previously she wasn't (again, this one may work better for Bram Stoker's audience than a contemporary one).

This all seems very melodramatic to me in addition to playing into a narrative trope I've been generally advised to avoid if at all possible... which is defining supporting characters (particularly female ones) solely by their relationship to the protagonist.

Making the player's lover (whether it be a man or a woman) the "natural" target of the villain feels far too much like "damseling" or "fridging" for my tastes. Besides which: am I going to do that for every player? I realize this is but one example but providing such an intimate narrative where the villain is a personal adversary of every single PC isn't terribly practical and I don't think is one that a lot of players would really want. My experience suggests that, in most cases, players don't actually like to be burdened with a lot of specific relationships and specific motives: they like to figure things out as they go.

The key is putting real values into conflict, or otherwise making the choice enage with matters of real world significance. (That's why, in Luke Crane's example, the target of the vampyr is the PCs' wife and not, say, the PC's brother or mentor, either of whom might also be a completely typical BW relationship. Being a wife carries meaning with it, although what that meaning is changes with time and place.)

I'm not sure how much more "real" a conflict centered on a (fantastical) serial killer seducing your wife is then one centered on a clash of (fantastical) ideologies. Personally, I feel I'm much more likely to encounter the latter than the former, at least in mundane, non-fantastical form.

Yes. Wotan has to sacrifice. He gives up things of value. He doesn't reshape the world in such a way as to prove that they were really valueless, and hence not a real sacrifice.

There's no objective proof that most of our values have any intrinsic meaning (I believe some do, but where's my proof?). Does that mean sacrifice is meaningless in our world?

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, I think this is a criticism that can be levied at most campaign settings, particularly those that only existed for a single edition.

<snip>

I do think some change is good, though with shared universes it's best done cautiously and slowly

I think I miscommunicated.

What you are describing here is metaplot, or changes to canon.

What I was talking about, in relation to 4e and Glorantha, is a setting with inherent dynamics, that drive play.

It's comments like these, I think, that give a lot of people the impression you think fans of Planescape are having "badwrongfun."

OK. Do you think there aren't people who enjoy reading imaginary atlases and travel guides? Who buys all the Complete Guides to Middle Earth, etc, then?

I've got a 1980s Dr Who Technical Manual and Star Trek Space Flight Chronology on my bookshelf. And a couple of Middle Earth glossaries (Robert Foster's and David Day's). But personally I don't identify playing RPGs with reading or reproducing such material. I think at least some RPG material - eg Expedition to the Demonweb Pits - is premised on a contrary assumption.

There's a time and place for contrivance and in the right setting it can be used for great dramatic effect (and coincidences do occasionally occur in real-life). But an over-reliance on contrivance, on things happening "just" the right way, does eventually undermine a narrative by making the stakes seem arbitrary.

Practically everything in fiction, especially adventure fiction, is contrivance: that the villains engage a hero who has something to prove; that Gollum is captured and interrogated by Aragorn, but then escapes just in time to follow and hook up with Frodo; that Frodo and Sam make camp just at the same time that the Rangers of Ithilien attack the Southrons; etc.

The challenge in non-dungeon-crawl RPGing (and even some dungeon-crawling) is how to integrate authorship, which means contriving things, with the distributed labour across GM and players. Different approaches tackle this differently. One consequence of random generation - a time-honoured method of content generation - is a reduction in dramatic heft. Whether that is a good or bad thing is of course a matter of taste.

For instance, it would be ridiculous to look at a module like Tomb of Horrors and wonder about its dramatic heft: its more analogous to solving a crossword puzzle (another species of entertainment, in addition to those I listed in my earlier post). Or likewise White Plume Mountain - which as a play experience ultimately has more in common with Talisman, I think, than it does with a module like (say) Three Days to Kill, despite the fact that both WPM and 3DtK use D&D mechanics as their engine. Planescape seems to me to be offering something different again.

This all seems very melodramatic to me in addition to playing into a narrative trope I've been generally advised to avoid if at all possible

<snip>

Making the player's lover (whether it be a man or a woman) the "natural" target of the villain feels far too much like "damseling" or "fridging" for my tastes.

I'm assuming the objection here is political. I noted some of the political/cultural dimensions in my post, but there are board rules that put limits on such discussion. The example is from Luke Crane, and I think his conception of fantasy narrative tropes is pretty conventional. There are other ways to seed drama, but I was going with an example from a published RPG rulebook.

A different, less loaded example from my own 4e game, that points to an ongoing backstory element as well as an element in the framing of a particular scene: the player of the dwarf PC wanted to use a superior polearm, so we designed a Black Peak halberd - a halberd that does d10 damage rather than d8. (The superior spear in Adventurer's Vault instead does regular spear damage but with +3 to hit.)

In an early encounter - the 1st combat encounter of the campaign, I think - that PC duelled with a NPC weapon-master wielding a Black Peak halberd also. In the course of that fight, the NPC taunted the dwarf, and revealed a backstory detail that hadn't previously been known (I can't remember for sure, but I think I made it up on the spot): that the dwarves, when freed from the slavery of the giants, had had a sort of tutelary relationship with the minotaurs who had once ruled the Black Peaks region (the idea of a lost minotaur kingdom was inspired by H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth); and it was from the minotaurs that they had learned the techniques of forging and wielding Black Peak halberds.

The dwarven PC defeated the NPC, but the stakes were already shifted: is part of his motivation for defeating this NPC to affirm dwarven competence, even superiority, against the taunt's of dependancy?

This new backstory element also introduced a dynamic into a whole range of future situations involving this PC: when he is promoting dwarven virtues, or (heaven forbid) dwarven chauvanism, there is the lurking question of the extent to which the values and virtue he is espousing are really those of the minotaurs. Ethno-nationalism, for that PC, breeds immediate tensions around cultural cosmopolitanism and cultural transmission. Choosing one value implicates others.

It doesn't strike me as terribly melodramatic, but no doubt melodrama is largely in the eye of the beholder. Some people find the Ring Cycle overblown; I find it incredibly moving.

In the case of Planescape, though, I don't think it's just that I'm not moved: no one has yet pointed me to the actual drama inherent in the setting. Where is the conflict between values, that forces hard choices?

I'm not sure how much more "real" a conflict centered on a (fantastical) serial killer seducing your wife is then one centered on a clash of (fantastical) ideologies.

Which is more dramatically compelling: Casablanca, or Star Wars? My view is: if Star Wars makes you cry you're sentimental; if Casablanca doesn't make you cry, you're hard-hearted.

I posted examples upthread. Choosing honour over justice is a real choice. It's a commitment, expressed by authorship. Choosing to persuade an angel to let herself be killed in the name of her oath, rather than just cutting her down, is a real choice: it's choosing persuasion over force, a type of nobility over expedience, and also enduring a type of sacrifice - because in persuading the angel, the PC becomes close to her - and not just in the fiction but as part of the experience of actually role-playing out the scene, which puts the player in a certain emotiona state - and then has to choose to kill this person he has befriended precisely so she will let him kill her.

Those are real emotional experiences. That's how narrative art works - by inducing real emotion. And authorship involves making choices about which values to favour and which to subordinate. RPGing combines authorship and audience in a distinctive way.
[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] gave the example, upthread, of a Xaositect being confronted by a vengeance-seeking Guvnor. Where is the value conflict? In Casablanca, for instance, we don't get moved (except perhaps to concern or fear) by the fact that Rick clashes with the Germans - we know the Germans are wrong, just as the Xaositect knows the Guvnor is wrong. The Germans, or the Guvnor, are just a procedural obstacle. Although they are motivated by ideas, those ideas carry no weight for the Xaositect PC and therefore (in the context of the game) no weight, I assume, for the player.

What is moving in Casablanca is when Ilsa clashes with Rick - because we care about her and Rick cares about her. What is an example of something from Planescape which would motivate a Xaositect to consider not unleashing chaos upon the multiverse?

am I going to do that for every player?

In my case, yes. That is what RPGing is about. As I put it in another fairly recent thread (on the old D&D forum, not the 5e one): in indie-style, there is no such thing as a sidequest because the whole game is player-driven sidequests.

The focus of the game is the focus of the PCs' struggles, driven by the choices the players have made - initially build choices, but over time, as the game unfolds and the characters develop, choices made in the course of play.

My experience suggests that, in most cases, players don't actually like to be burdened with a lot of specific relationships and specific motives: they like to figure things out as they go.

I don't get the contrast with "figuring things out as one goes" - the player of the PC in Luke Crane's game has to figure out as he goes what to do about his wife's flirtation with the vampyr, and the player of the dwarf in my game has to figure out as he goes what to do about his newly-acquired knowledge of the history of the dwarves.

But I think you are right that many players don't want to play the way I want to play: I think many prefer setting exploration, and many others enjoy WPM-style dungeon delving (perhaps with a veneer of dramatic motivation laid over the top, like "rescue the princess" to motivate the dungeon crawl, or "find/create/deliver the McGuffin" to motivate the setting exploration). I'm not sure, though, how the preferences of others bear upon the question of whether or not Planescape is well-suited to what I'm looking for in an RPG.

There's no objective proof that most of our values have any intrinsic meaning (I believe some do, but where's my proof?). Does that mean sacrifice is meaningless in our world?

This is going a long way off topic. Suffice to say that (i) the nature of value is hotly disputed both among philosopher and among political actors, and (ii) the relationship between the metaphysics of morals and the meaning of sacrifice is a complex one.

But even if one thinks that the conception of value at work in a piece of fiction such as Casablanca, Hero or any similar romantce is flawed, that does not preclude it being moving: emotions often don't follow reason and belief, and in the case of art I think that can be particularly so.

This is why even moderate, measured liberals can enjoy, and be moved by, vigilante fantasies such as Dirty Harry or Batman; why those who embrace the values of democratic republicanism can nevertheless be moved by tales of true kingship like LotR or Excalibur; why those who regard 19th century romantic revolutionary ideals as passe can nevertheless be moved by Wagner.

RPGing, at least as I conceive of it, isn't primarily a political act, or a piece of value theory; it is an aesthetic experience.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I know it's a bit late to add a comment, but I've always thought of PS as *the* dynamic D&D setting. My take has always been that we're presented with a grand cosmic stalemate, with the assumption that if you disrupt any of the established relationships between the greater powers, it will unbalance the whole shebang, sending everything to hell in a hand basket.

And the factions are the entry points for the PCs to engage with the setting--their different stakes.

The very first session of my old PS campaign ended with the players inadvertently disrupting the Blood War--knocking over the first domino--triggering a countdown to the unraveling of reality as we know it. And being from different factions, they had different ideas on how to respond to this--how to further their own agendas.

• The Sensate was the most gun-ho, as he saw a multiverse ransacked by fiends as a paler (more hellish) alternative to the current one--he wanted to stabilize the status quo, or replace it with something richer. (And while whether the new status quo was "richer" is debatable, things were stabilized)
• The Godsman mostly saw this as an opportunity to rise to godhood. (He did)
• The Athar saw this as an opportunity to weaken the stronghold the great powers have over the lives of mortals. (And he was more-or-less successful)

By the end of the campaign, the Great Wheel was broken, several outer planes had been engulfed by their neighbors, and all the greater powers were locked in a new "Eternal War" in Limbo, draining everybody's resources to meddle in the lives of mortals.

 

[Imaro]

I know it's a bit late to add a comment, but I've always thought of PS as *the* dynamic D&D setting. My take has always been that we're presented with a grand cosmic stalemate, with the assumption that if you disrupt any of the established relationships between the greater powers, it will unbalance the whole shebang, sending everything to hell in a hand basket.

And the factions are the entry points for the PCs to engage with the setting--their different stakes.

The very first session of my old PS campaign ended with the players inadvertently disrupting the Blood War--knocking over the first domino--triggering a countdown to the unraveling of reality as we know it. And being from different factions, they had different ideas on how to respond to this--how to further their own agendas.

• The Sensate was the most gun-ho, as he saw a multiverse ransacked by fiends as a paler (more hellish) alternative to the current one--he wanted to stabilize the status quo, or replace it with something richer. (And while whether the new status quo was "richer" is debatable, things were stabilized)
• The Godsman mostly saw this as an opportunity to rise to godhood. (He did)
• The Athar saw this as an opportunity to weaken the stronghold the great powers have over the lives of mortals. (And he was more-or-less successful)

By the end of the campaign, the Great Wheel was broken, several outer planes had been engulfed by their neighbors, and all the greater powers were locked in a new "Eternal War" in Limbo, draining everybody's resources to meddle in the lives of mortals.

Cue the "None of that is significant enough change to count" brigade that still won't provide a measuring stick for what is "significant enough" to meet their arbitrary line in the sand...

 

[Parmandur]

Dungeons &. Dragons alignment system, and the Great wheel, are complete metaphysical absurdities. The 4E designers tried to fix that, but by providing coherent metaphysics they trampled all over well-beloved stories. Hence anger.

Also, though they are metaphysically ridiculous as categories, the nine-point alignment set-up works well as a quick short-hand for helping a player get "in character", which is the direction 5E is taking alignment.

4E = good metaphysics

Traditional alignment = good acting tool

 

[Quickleaf]

In the case of Planescape, though, I don't think it's just that I'm not moved: no one has yet pointed me to the actual drama inherent in the setting. Where is the conflict between values, that forces hard choices?

I don't know if there is singular clearly identifiable conflict built into the Planescape setting...perhaps the closest thing to an overarching conflict is pragmatism vs. holding onto one's ideals. That seems to be behind a lot of the faction stories and planewalker quips in the boxed set.

I think your criticism that the setting's treatment of philosophy is "childish" could more precisely be described as "opaque" (in that the writers don't lay the philosophical conflicts out clearly). IMHO that's a very valid criticism. In the Planar Renovation Project (at www.planewalker.com) myself and others have put a lot of effort into clarifying, identifying, and creating conflicts for each plane and faction.

Planescape broadly is about the "clash of ideals", but which ideals depends on the individual gaming group and the current adventure.

@Kamikaze Midget gave the example, upthread, of a Xaositect being confronted by a vengeance-seeking Guvnor. Where is the value conflict? In Casablanca, for instance, we don't get moved (except perhaps to concern or fear) by the fact that Rick clashes with the Germans - we know the Germans are wrong, just as the Xaositect knows the Guvnor is wrong. The Germans, or the Guvnor, are just a procedural obstacle. Although they are motivated by ideas, those ideas carry no weight for the Xaositect PC and therefore (in the context of the game) no weight, I assume, for the player.

What is moving in Casablanca is when Ilsa clashes with Rick - because we care about her and Rick cares about her. What is an example of something from Planescape which would motivate a Xaositect to consider not unleashing chaos upon the multiverse?

Love the Casablanca comparison

For your Xaositect example, I would use chaos theory. 

My layman's understanding is that chaos theory says you can't predict cause and effect with highly dynamical deterministic systems. 

So that creates tension right there, if a Xaositect were to create/plan a reliable change to a dynamical system (e.g. Weather or Politics) in advance. By relying on predictable cause and effect (which might be really helpful in an adventure) the Xaositect would be refuting his or her belief in Chaos. However, the benefits of prediction might motivate the Xaositect to consider not supporting Chaos in that situation.

 

[Parmandur]

No, the philosophy really is insane; unlike Permeton, I can see it being good story material in the right hands, but the whole system is fruit bat bananas when you start applying any coherent form of ontology.

 

[Savage Wombat]

... when you start applying any coherent form of ontology.

Well, see, there's your problem.

 

[pemerton]

I know it's a bit late to add a comment, but I've always thought of PS as *the* dynamic D&D setting. My take has always been that we're presented with a grand cosmic stalemate, with the assumption that if you disrupt any of the established relationships between the greater powers, it will unbalance the whole shebang, sending everything to hell in a hand basket.

And the factions are the entry points for the PCs to engage with the setting--their different stakes.

<snip campaing/PC summaries>

By the end of the campaign, the Great Wheel was broken, several outer planes had been engulfed by their neighbors, and all the greater powers were locked in a new "Eternal War" in Limbo, draining everybody's resources to meddle in the lives of mortals.

That sounds like a good campaign! That idea of imbalancing is not a vibe I've ever got from Planescape materials myself, but it's an interesting take and I like what you did with it.

For your Xaositect example, I would use chaos theory.

My layman's understanding is that chaos theory says you can't predict cause and effect with highly dynamical deterministic systems.

So that creates tension right there, if a Xaositect were to create/plan a reliable change to a dynamical system (e.g. Weather or Politics) in advance. By relying on predictable cause and effect (which might be really helpful in an adventure) the Xaositect would be refuting his or her belief in Chaos. However, the benefits of prediction might motivate the Xaositect to consider not supporting Chaos in that situation.

I'd want to turn the screw one more bit: when the Xaositect starts making the plan, beings of law somehow get dealt into the situation. I'm not sure how I'd do that - modrons don't strike me as having the write vibe, but maybe inevitables do - but I like where you're going.

For me, these are the sorts of things that leap of the 4e page at me, but don't when it comes to Planescape. It's good to hear stories from others who did have that page-leaping experience.