Planescape Planescape to languish in purgatory?

[Mercurius]

You know, now that I've made this post and have been reading and thinking on this (the OP was an impulse) I realize that I probably wouldn't like a more modern version of the classic settings. I'm a social conservative and am allergic to the dominant woke culture that WotC has wholeheartedly embraced. I'm not inviting nor will I engage in a political conversation here, people believe what they believe and have every right to do so, but I've stopped purchasing the newer books over it. Now I have to ask myself why I'm wanting them to revamp the old settings in view of their new philosophy, and the truth is I'd rather just play the old settings themselves.

I would think based on this, you most definitely don't want WotC treatments of classic settings, unless they're in a very retro style, but even then there are probably going to be irking points for you. Maybe you can satisfy your hankering by searching for obscure and out-of-print stuff in the back catalogue of AD&D?

Furthermore, as I'm sure you know, there are a ton of old school games and products out there, although not as many that make material for 5E. The OSR is alive and well, with new stuff coming out. Recently I've been getting into reading the Megadundeon books from Hack and Slash Publishing, which are very old school but also offer dual stats for Basic and 5E. I also really like the Planet Eris Gazetteer, which is very old school and has one of the best world maps I've seen.

There's new stuff out there with an old school vibe, but you've got to dig for it.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

I would think based on this, you most definitely don't want WotC treatments of classic settings, unless they're in a very retro style, but even then there are probably going to be irking points for you. Maybe you can satisfy your hankering by searching for obscure and out-of-print stuff in the back catalogue of AD&D?

Furthermore, as I'm sure you know, there are a ton of old school games and products out there, although not as many that make material for 5E. The OSR is alive and well, with new stuff coming out. Recently I've been getting into reading the Megadundeon books from Hack and Slash Publishing, which are very old school but also offer dual stats for Basic and 5E. I also really like the Planet Eris Gazetteer, which is very old school and has one of the best world maps I've seen.

There's new stuff out there with an old school vibe, but you've got to dig for it.

You don't even have to dig very far! Just go to the OSR section on DriveThruRPG.com and they've got enough to keep you busy for a long time.

I have a lot of OSR stuff - I convert or adapt it to 5E rules.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I thought that perhaps someone in the community here might have an inside view, or just a generally more educated understanding on these old settings (Planescape, Hollow World, Darksun, Spelljammer, Greyhawk, etc) ... .

FYI, in the way that Kara Tur and Zakhara belong to Forgotten Realms, Hollow World (with Red Steel/Savage Coast) belongs to Mystara.

 

[Redwizard007]

I'd like to see one of the settings that had some crunch specific to the setting. Darksun would be ideal, but Dragonlance could be a close second. Most of what I liked from Planescape and Ravenloft was fluff. Hell, most of what I liked from DL and DS was fluff, too, but it would be nice to get an official conversion of defiling to 5e.

 

[tetrasodium]

Planescape has a couple big problems it needs to somehow resolve

• It's very specific planar/cosmological structure is incompatible with the planar/cosmological structure of eberron & at least current day athas(darksun) yet it claims to apply to both.
• Sigil is dramatically more advanced than greyhawk & faerun so at the time it was only written to be dramatically more advanced than all settings. The ancient halfling empire of Athas, parts of current day eberron, & multiple fallen civilizations that once held power on eberron are/were just as if not more advanced.

Those two points need to be rectified in such a way that the people of sigil can still laugh at the burks from toril & such who are looking for a literal outhouse instead of a self prestidigitating pot & such because they can't figure out how to activate the enchantment without help.

Just saying that each sphere has it's own cosmology & planes that may or not connect to another sphere might be a solution for the first but the second will be more difficult & need some depth along with sidebars for how individuals from advanced vrs primitive worlds see/handle/interpret some stuff

 

[guachi]

The DMs Guild Eberron book showed WOTC the way forward with settings books that may not be ready for a mass release. Get someone really tied to the setting to write the book and put it on DMs Guild as a pdf. Maybe even do a Kickstarter if Hasbro would even do such a thing. Give customers a print on demand option.

Contract someone to write a few supplements to keep things going. Make them smaller and also print on demand in softback format.

For example, I'm sure WOTC could get Bruce Heard to write something for Mystara.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Get Luke or Rob to write it, since they can probably bring back most of Gygax's vision. The tone of the setting should be a low magic swords & sorcery style, but I'm aware that style is passe. I think the primary selling point would be "see where it all began," which is the exact same selling point they had for the folio and boxed set. I can't really see it being as successful as their setting books so far.

IMO if they want to explore Greyhawk, they should simply create an AP or two for it. Ghosts of Saltmarsh wasn't bad, but only 3 of the adventures were originally from Greyhawk. I could see an updated version of the Temple of Elemental Evil as an AP, as it's heavily rooted in the Greyhawk setting. Part of the problem with doing APs with Greyhawk is that the classic stuff would need a higher starting level than 1, and WotC is loathe to do that. If they did, the Queen of Spiders would be amazing as a high level AP (I did this as part of my 1st 5E campaign), and the Slave Lords series could be expanded into a mid-level AP.

Actually all of the adventures in Ghosts were originally in Greyhawk, except for Isle of the Abbey, which was Mystara.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

What's great about Planescape is that you can plug it into any existing campaign. It is a campaign setting in its own right, but WotC could also market it as "put a little Planescape in your Forgotten Realms / Eberron / Wildemount". Done right, I think this approach could be very popular. You could even present it as a Planescape / Manual of the Planes hybrid, with material that could be used by every kind of group.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That would be an easy solution, to be sure. For some, including myself, I tend to avoid including DMs Guild stuff in my games. Granted, we've seen things like Ed Greenwood publishing FR stuff on DMs Guild, but on the whole there's a difference between an official release and some rando coming up with stuff for a setting.

Now, if Wizards were to curate content for lapsed settings on DMs Guild, that could certainly bridge the divide. A degree of quality control would assuage a lot of my own concerns, anyway. But that hasn't really been their model to date.

Well, given that it's 2020 there's a really easy fix to that problem - the DMs Guild. The books could do a better job tying in DMs Guild content though, and making new content accessible (for instance, elsewhere I theorized about a Mystara revival as the "Airship" setting - the core book could include a page on every region, and refer to the existing gazetteer for details - which is already up on DMs Guild. Then modules could be plugged in as "missions" approved by a committee in charge of the setting. It would be possible to go even further and just tie things to setting Wikis as well.

We have better ways of doing things today - why aren't we using them to their fullest extent?

 

[Burnside]

That would be an easy solution, to be sure. For some, including myself, I tend to avoid including DMs Guild stuff in my games. Granted, we've seen things like Ed Greenwood publishing FR stuff on DMs Guild, but on the whole there's a difference between an official release and some rando coming up with stuff for a setting.

Now, if Wizards were to curate content for lapsed settings on DMs Guild, that could certainly bridge the divide. A degree of quality control would assuage a lot of my own concerns, anyway. But that hasn't really been their model to date.

It can be daunting to separate the wheat from the chaff on DMsGuild because there is just so much stuff, but there are products on there that compare very favorably to official content.