WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Incenjucar]

You bring in new people and convert them into hardcore fans, then try to get them to follow along with the next edition, rinse and repeat. I have over $2k invested in 2E, which for me was a brand new shiny game, and I spent quite a bit on 3E/3.5E and 4E. They want more of that to happen, but the market has changed a bit, so they need to attract 2020s folks instead of 1990s folks, while keeping as many older fans on board as they can.

BUT, if they have to choose between them, the new folks are more numerous, have more years of gaming ahead, and are less likely to just use old books, so biasing toward them is sensible.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ironically, the Gods (or Powers, as the Cagers call them) weren't a big part of Planescape. The Greeks and Norse and all the Deities and Demigods powers are out there, but they didn't factor much into the day to day life of the setting. You could easily say "the planes are where the Powers live" and never say which powers live where. If you need examples, D&D has all the Oerth, Faerun, Krynn and Monstrous powers to use at will. You don't need to say if the Celts are out there or not.

You don't need to, but I always liked how all the different pantheons had their spaces on the Planes, and I would hate WotC to just cut that because some people don't like it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And 5e really doesn't have much detail for the Great Wheel. Most of the planes get a handful of paragraphs or fewer detailing them in the 5e DMG. And no one reads the DMG. It's just logical that their main target audience (the huge group of people brought to the game through 5e) aren't deeply familiar with the Great Wheel.

They've had 8 years to update fans on the Great Wheel. They have chosen other paths, unfortunately.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You don't need to, but I always liked how all the different pantheons had their spaces on the Planes, and I would hate WotC to just cut that because some people don't like it.

What are your opinions of the Hindu gods being included? They're an existing religion that has been around for thousands of years.

 

[Incenjucar]

I do think an updated Planescape would do well with current audiences. It's an inherently diverse setting with endless potential visual and tonal variety, and it's basically an internet debate as a city, with the scariest mod ever.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What are your opinions of the Hindu gods being included? They're an existing religion that has been around for thousands of years.

That sounds like a trap to me, but I'll bite. They would need to find a way to do it respectfully for today's market, but otherwise I have no issue. For the record, I would likely have the same reaction about gaming material based on any other religion. It just needs to be done respectfully.

 

[humble minion]

The big problem with the Great Wheel cosmology is that it is inextricably intertwined with Law and Good and Evil and Chaos being actual cosmic forces in the universe, rather than convenient labels to stick in the 'alignment' box of your PCs character sheet to describe a bit about their outlook on life. This is something that WotC has been de-emphasising for the entirety of 5th ed, and probably earlier, because they REALLY don't want to be in the business of defining what behaviour or actions or ideals are or aren't objectively, cosmically 'Good' in RPG books. But it's at the absolute core of Planescape and the Great Wheel.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's so much safer to leave living, continuous religions out of it, no matter how cool some of their stuff is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The big problem with the Great Wheel cosmology is that it is inextricably intertwined with Law and Good and Evil and Chaos being actual cosmic forces in the universe, rather than convenient labels to stick in the 'alignment' box of your PCs character sheet to describe a bit about their outlook on life. This is something that WotC has been de-emphasising for the entirity of 5th ed, and probably earlier, because they REALLY don't want to be in the business of defining what behaviour or actions or ideals are or aren't objectively, cosmically 'Good' in RPG books. But it's at the absolute core of Planescape and the Great Wheel.

Another reason that 5e Planescape is almost certainly going to be a disaster.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's so much safer to leave living, continuous religions out of it, no matter how cool some of their stuff is.

Safer, sure, and I don't ever expect them to do it, but it wouldn't bother me personally.