D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Travelers of the Multiverse

New free content from WotC - the latest 4-page Unearthed Arcana introduces six new races: astral elf, autognome, giff, hadozee, plasmoid, and thri-kreen.

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

Looks like Spelljammer and/or Planescape is back on the menu!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You believe Planescape was not commercially a success??

It did okay, but not spectacularly enough to save the company. Spelljammer sank like a lead turkey.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Reviewers and critics like high brow stuff. But the mass market does not.

Reviewers and critics like high brow stuff. But the mass market does not.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Not if you think that you're somehow refuting what I said. You didn't. A portal to the middle of the desert isn't going to take you to the moon or to another continent. Just having a few portals to an entire plane doesn't somehow make planar travel superior to flying.

Okay, let us say that you live in (flips through) Texas, and you want to go to (randomize) Kazan, Russia. Now, would a portal that takes you, in a single step, from Texas to St. Petersburg be superior than building a bi-plane that takes you through storm-wracked skies, past air pirates, and through the anti-air defenses of Europe? I say yes. Sure, it didn’t get you point to point exactly to Kazan, but even if you have to get on a plane in St. Petersburg, that plane trip is faster, safer and cheaper than the trip from Texas via plane.

So, yeah, I get that a portal isn’t going to take you exactly where you want to go, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still the superior choice. The only point in time it would seem to be inferior would be if traveling in that world is WORSE than traveling via Spelljammer.

The odds of finding a portal directly to Sigil from the prime plane is somewhere between slim and none. The vast majority of travelers have to go to the outer planes and then find a portal to Sigil. The journey will easily take as long or longer than just flying in a ship.

Considering that I saw it expressly said that there are portals from Sigil directly to other prime material planes, I find your odds of “slime to none” highly suspect.

I also don’t understand what this has to do with the Hordes of Fiends you were talking about before. Since this seems to be a non-sequitur from the discussion.

Not everyone is a trader trying to make money.

There are very few reasons why people travel great distances. The majority of them have to do with making money or conquest. And surprisingly, building magical artifacts capable of carrying multiple people through insanely hostile territory is something that generally is expensive. There is a reason most ship captains during the Age of Exploration weren’t hobbyists, they needed monetary backing to even afford a ship, and people weren’t donating them out of the goodness of their hearts.

Your logic leaves a great deal to be desired. Once they get there they are going to have to explore and find trade, which most likely means Spelljamming.

Trade by selling what? The plants that they barely had enough of to support their population?

Long before they end up “spelljamming” they are going to explore the surface of the planet. Set up towns and build infrastructure. It may take generations before they have settled enough to even have resources worth trading to others, let alone the free time to stop building a civilization to go and see if a different planet nearby has neighbors, who could well be hostile.

 

[Bolares]

Reviewers and critics like high brow stuff. But the mass market does not.

Yeah, that's not a thing

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Okay, let us say that you live in (flips through) Texas, and you want to go to (randomize) Kazan, Russia. Now, would a portal that takes you, in a single step, from Texas to St. Petersburg be superior than building a bi-plane that takes you through storm-wracked skies, past air pirates, and through the anti-air defenses of Europe? I say yes. Sure, it didn’t get you point to point exactly to Kazan, but even if you have to get on a plane in St. Petersburg, that plane trip is faster, safer and cheaper than the trip from Texas via plane.

So, yeah, I get that a portal isn’t going to take you exactly where you want to go, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still the superior choice. The only point in time it would seem to be inferior would be if traveling in that world is WORSE than traveling via Spelljammer.




Considering that I saw it expressly said that there are portals from Sigil directly to other prime material planes, I find your odds of “slime to none” highly suspect.

I also don’t understand what this has to do with the Hordes of Fiends you were talking about before. Since this seems to be a non-sequitur from the discussion.



There are very few reasons why people travel great distances. The majority of them have to do with making money or conquest. And surprisingly, building magical artifacts capable of carrying multiple people through insanely hostile territory is something that generally is expensive. There is a reason most ship captains during the Age of Exploration weren’t hobbyists, they needed monetary backing to even afford a ship, and people weren’t donating them out of the goodness of their hearts.



Trade by selling what? The plants that they barely had enough of to support their population?

Long before they end up “spelljamming” they are going to explore the surface of the planet. Set up towns and build infrastructure. It may take generations before they have settled enough to even have resources worth trading to others, let alone the free time to stop building a civilization to go and see if a different planet nearby has neighbors, who could well be hostile.

I can walk to my local supermarket, but if I want to buy a week's shopping I take my car.

Wally the Wizard can take himself and his mates from A to B with the Plane Shift spell, but if he wants to shift a ton of cargo he will want a vessel.

For the most part, portals can be discounted for commerce. The are to random, too unpredictable, and two easy for a single faction to control. If you did happen to have stable portals, as in Sigil, then you have a Deep Space Nine set up, with all the politics that goes with it. But the vast majority of the multiverse doesn't live in Sigil.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I understand now. You are working under a misconception. The purpose of Spelljammer is to have space adventures in D&D. I bought Spelljammer the day it came out. I read the old Spelljammer comic book (yes there was one), and I have DM-ed using it. It's a blast.

The person who explained Spelljammer to you took one of the secondary characteristics of Spelljammer and elevated it to "the purpose of Spelljammer." The purpose of Spelljammer is to have fun by having space adventures using D&D. That would be about it.

There was always the possibility to go from Oerth to Abeir-toril using magic or traveling through the planes well before Planescape was a glimmer in Zeb Cook's eye. I would also contest that the "purpose" of Planescape is to "take characters from FR to Krynn or something similar," as you suggest in your second paragraph. The purpose of Planescape is to have a D&D campaign setting focused on multi-planar travel and multi-planar philosophies and politics. The travel between different Material Plane worlds like Abeir-toril, Oerth, or Krynn is a consequence of that.

Concerning, "This thread it quite literally the first time I've heard it said that they don't cover the some conceptual space." Well, at the risk of shoulding all over you, perhaps you should try to look up the old Spelljammer & Planescape material? It's fun.

I haven't specifically sought out a lot of stuff on Spelljammer, but I have heard things. Like about how the Phlogiston works and stuff like that. Planescape I'm more familiar with, I know a bit of how Sigil works and some of the Philosophical ideas in it.

I don't use sigil though because I don't usually do planar travel, and therefore having super easy planar travel doesn't appeal to me. Additionally the bit I've heard about some of the philosophies and groups... I don't know. I find philosophy aggravating at times, and many of the ones I've been exposed to in Planescape material are extreme enough to make things less fun, so I haven't really bothered with them.

You have been responsible for a lot of conversations here and have put a lot of energy into making arguments and clarifications all stemming from an apparent misconception.

Once again, a character can travel from Krynn to Oerth with Spelljammer and also through multi-planar travel, but that is not the singular purpose for why Spelljammer or Planescape exist by any means. Gary Gygax in the Dungeon Master's Guide makes it clear that having characters visit different worlds can be a fun part of the game, to such an extent that he provides mechanics to convert D&D characters into Boot Hill characters, and that was 1979.

We were moving characters from world to world well before Planescape, well before Spelljammer, well before The Manual of the Planes.

I suppose it has been a misconception, but I find it an odd one. Every proponent of the two settings I have ever talked to have highlighted the aspect that you seem to be waving off as relatively minor.

I never would have said it was the "singular" purpose though. Just a major one. No successful setting ever had a "singular" purpose.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Additionally the bit I've heard about some of the philosophies and groups... I don't know.

Certainly my take on the Sigil factions is they are all a bunch of idiots, and I wouldn't want to join any of them.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We should remember Planescape was a videogame, and one of the few times a no-Forgotten Realms with enough success.



It is relatively easy to publish a planar handbook, and the faction war can be reintroduced by means of a new adventure module, or an updated adaptation of some old glory.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We should remember Planescape was a videogame, and one of the few times a no-Forgotten Realms with enough success.

It was, and I rate it as one of the greatest CRPGs ever, but commercially, it flopped, and finished off Black Isle.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I could debate you point by point, but I'll just say this; you're making a ton of logical assumptions for places that aren't logical, so they won't work.

For example, you say that in Sigil, folks would point you to portals to various worlds like asking for directions, and possibly have tourist pamphlets. This doesn't happen. Portals that are permanent are controlled by factions and used for specific things, they aren't just available for anyone to use. And other portals that they don't control are too temporary for residents to easily track like this; portals follow Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe rules (you fall into Narnia when the story/DM wants you to), not Star Trek phasing rules (you can phase anytime anywhere).

We can nitpick Planescape and Spelljammer for why they don't make sense all day... but we shouldn't! If you personally don't think Spelljammer doesn't make sense in a world with Sigil, fine. That doesn't mean the rest of us can't enjoy it.

As for races, I was pointing out how the UA races are all explicitly Spelljammer related, none of which have ties to Planescape. They aren't even attempting to hide how Spelljammer they are. It would be extremely odd to get a Planescape book that had plasmoids walking around, who have no history with that setting. Or giff or hadozee either.

I guess I don't understand why we should go forward under the banner the places aren't logical. That seems to play into an assumption that people are somehow different in Sigil than anywhere else.

But honestly, the more people talk and explain, the more it seems like my initial point that started people arguing with me... was 100% correct. Spelljamming should focus more on stuff out in space. Dead gods, asteroids, wrecked hulls, ect ect. Space Mining (as a general term) as the main driver of people going out and doing things. Then Sigil can focus more on connecting places and the interactions between those places and those people via the portals.

Honestly, it sounds like not only was I right about that being a solid way forward... but that those were even the primary and original purposes of those settings.