WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Micah Sweet]

I re-played Planescape: Torment recently, and it made me realize that the setting should not return, at least not in it's past form.

The first problem is what Planescape was made for, which was to counter White Wolf's clan approach with Vampire: The Masquerade. That's why there are factions in Planescape. It was also supposed to be "hip and cool", and turn everything players thought they knew about the planes on its head. And also take the well-written but somewhat laconic "Manual of the Planes" and make it more interesting.

Like a LOT of things made for 2nd Edition AD&D, there's a lot of "squeezing that square peg and forcing it into the round hole" going on. The setting would have benefited from having its own rules set, but TSR was out of the business of producing different rules for different games at that point. Pages upon pages of rules on how spells work and don't work on the planes, and then they threw in spell keys as a means to just evade it all.

The biggest issue, though, is the Great Wheel doesn't work anymore. It was a product of it's time, and things have moved on since then. Alignment means even less now than it did then. And there's no concept of time anywhere in the multiverse, except as another raw element. Kids and fans have now had the whole multiverse concept explained to them by the MCU, and it's absent.

Finally, don't forget that Benjamin Riggs showed that to everyone's surprise, the setting sold really poorly. So what was done then didn't sell. That means to make it work now, you'd have to change it, and likely that's just going to make people angrier than Spelljammer did.

I don't expect to get an acceptable Planescape out of WotC next year, and that's ok. I have all the lore I need.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The latter. If something is default, then it exists in the background even if never mentioned or used. If you want it to be gone, you have to explicitly remove it.

So, if it IS explicitly removed then we are good. So, since it was removed from those games and those settings.... it is gone.

Wait. So the positive and negative planes had nothing at all to do with FR, but suddenly because in one single edition it was mentioned only in FR, it's an FR thing?

Well, you just said they aren't there once removed. They were removed from the other settings in 4e, so in 4e when the Shadowfell was made, they weren't in Nerath. Insisting that they WERE in Nerath just because the Forgotten Realms didn't remove them would be... causing the Forgotten Realms to override Nerath's lore, right?

And since the Shadowfell was created and explicitly for a setting where the Negative Energy Plane did not exist.... then claiming the Shadowfell requires the Negative Energy Plane to exist is nonsense.

Same with Eberron. Eberron did not have the Negative Energy Plane, it didn't exist. So claiming it existed in Eberron in 4e would be to claim that FR lore supersedes Eberron Lore. And claiming any of Eberron's lore requires the Negative Energy Plane would be nonsense. It was removed from Eberron.

Was there something about, "If you don't want it to be there you can homebrew it away" that you don't understand? Because where I come from, home brewing it away qualifies as another possible cause. Short of homebrewing it away, it remains in the background and that's how the prime worlds work.

This isn't about homebrewing though. This is about YOUR claim that things such as the Undead and things such as Fire cannot exist in the prime without the Elemental Planes being exactly how they are. And since you will try and claim "I never said that" since I'm paraphrasing, let's go back and requote you

Nothing in the game is really necessary. They do explain things like undead and radiant damage, though. They serve a very good purpose in being in the game, even if only as a minor mention. If you remove them and don't replace them with something to serve the same purpose, and the feywild and shadowfell don't do that, then the game has lost something that was beneficial to it.

Can you? The elemental planes are where the building blocks for the various settings came from. That fire(or the potential for it) your PC generated came originally from the plane of fire. The earth your PC walks on came from the plane of earth.

Page 52 of the DMG, "The Inner Planes surround and enfold the Material Plane and its echoes, providing the raw elemental substance from which all worlds were made."


There's magic and anti-magic. There's positive energy and anti(negative) energy.

So, I claimed that you did not need the Positive or Negative Energy planes for things to work. You responded "you don't need anything, these just explain X,Y,Z" I had mentioned that you could create fire without creating a portal to the realm of fire, giving another explanation to fire's existence than the need for the elemental plane. This was meant to mirror my example of positive energy being generated by living things, providing an alternate example for positive energy without the positive energy plane.

You didn't respond, "well, yeah, if you change the lore that works". You responding that the fire and the very potential for fire to exist comes from the elemental plane of fire, therefore claiming that the very potential for life to exist must also come from the Positive Energy Plane.

So, don't try and backtrack now by claiming that I can just homebrew things. I was talking about how things could work if you changed the cosmology (ya know, homebrewing) and you swept in to tell me I was wrong.

The existence of the positive and negative planes is not tied to the great wheel, so this is a non-argument.

The long and the short of it is that those two planes exist by default. If you want them gone, explicitly get rid of them.

You mean like the World Axis does? You... you do realize that the Positive and Negative Energy Planes only exist in the Great Wheel and maybe the Great Tree cosmology, right? So, they ARE tied to the Great Wheel.

This is like claiming that Bytopia isn't tied to the Great Wheel, it is just the default of all cosmologies. It isn't.

So you're saying that all violence in the game should be limited to those very, very few good reasons?

Are you saying that if you had a game where people randomly killed and tortured people for no reason, and one of your players expressed discomfort with that, that you'd just shrug and tell them that the door is over there, because random violence is perfectly fine with you?

 

[Maxperson]

So, if it IS explicitly removed then we are good. So, since it was removed from those games and those settings.... it is gone.

You said they weren't explicitly removed. You said they just ignored them and they never came up. Which is it?

Well, you just said they aren't there once removed. They were removed from the other settings in 4e, so in 4e when the Shadowfell was made, they weren't in Nerath. Insisting that they WERE in Nerath just because the Forgotten Realms didn't remove them would be... causing the Forgotten Realms to override Nerath's lore, right?

So this is 5e, not 4e. In 5e the energy planes are back as default, so they exist in all 5e settings by default, including Nerath if you are running it with 5e.

This isn't about homebrewing though. This is about YOUR claim that things such as the Undead and things such as Fire cannot exist in the prime without the Elemental Planes being exactly how they are. And since you will try and claim "I never said that" since I'm paraphrasing, let's go back and requote you

By default that is true. If you explicitly remove the positive and negative planes, you can leave undead and they work differently somehow.

So, don't try and backtrack now by claiming that I can just homebrew things. I was talking about how things could work if you changed the cosmology (ya know, homebrewing) and you swept in to tell me I was wrong.

I haven't backtracked at all. I'm talking defaults. By default all settings in 5e work how I described. You have to homebrew those planes out to make it different.

You mean like the World Axis does? You... you do realize that the Positive and Negative Energy Planes only exist in the Great Wheel and maybe the Great Tree cosmology, right? So, they ARE tied to the Great Wheel.

They exist in all cosmologies in 5e. 5e has unified things, including Eberron to connect all settings to the planes.

This is like claiming that Bytopia isn't tied to the Great Wheel, it is just the default of all cosmologies. It isn't.

So you do know that there's not really a wheel, right? It's just a description some old dudes came up with that was as good as any.

5e DMG page 43

"Once you've decided on the planes you want to use in your campaign, putting them into a coherent cosmology is an optional step. Since the primary way of traveling from plane to plane, even using the Transitive Planes, is through magical portals that link planes together, the exact relationship of different planes to one another is largely a theoretical concern. No being in the multiverse can look down and see the planes in their arrangement the same way as we look at a diagram in a book. No mortal can verify whether Mount Celestia is sandwiched between Bytopia and Arcadia, but it's a convenient theoretical construct based on the philosophical shading among the three planes and the relative importance they give to law and good.

Sages have constructed a few such theoretical models to make sense of the jumble of planes, particularly the Outer Planes. The three most common are the Great Wheel, the World Tree, and the World Axis, but you can create or adapt whatever model works best for the planes you want to use in your game."

Pick a cosmology and the positive and negative planes are there unless you homebrew them out.

Are you saying that if you had a game where people randomly killed and tortured people for no reason, and one of your players expressed discomfort with that, that you'd just shrug and tell them that the door is over there, because random violence is perfectly fine with you?

ROFL Wow. Went waaaaay out into left field with that question. I'm not going to bother to answer that question as it doesn't warrant one.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Same with Eberron. Eberron did not have the Negative Energy Plane, it didn't exist. So claiming it existed in Eberron in 4e would be to claim that FR lore supersedes Eberron Lore. And claiming any of Eberron's lore requires the Negative Energy Plane would be nonsense. It was removed from Eberron.

Eberron has the planes of Irian and Mabar, which are the setting's equivalent of the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. They are the sources of positive and negative energy, respectively, and are the foundation upon which elven necromantic practices are built.

 

[Chaosmancer]

While I agree, it is also fair to say that violence in RPGs is hardly used even by the PCs always to defend their lives or the lives of others. Certainly not by the bad guys.

And? I certainly hope you aren't trying to argue "but bad guys do bad things" as some sort of excuse to include sexual assault in your games.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If the best response you can up with is "you're wrong", then better if it did stop there.

So... providing evidence to back up a position is the same as providing no evidence to back a position? Strange take. I obviously disagree, because evidence is this thing to show we have a foundation beyond just disagreeing with people.

Nobody is trying to change your position on anything, except maybe to convince you that you preferences are not superior to other mine or @Micah Sweet's.

sigh

So, no discussion can possibly be had, except to tell me that I am not a tyrant and my preferences are not superior to other peoples. Why do I hear this so often? Why involve yourself in a discussion forum if the only form of discussion you want is to constantly remind people that they aren't better than you? By the way, I notice you never tell this to people who agree with you, only people who disagree with people you agree with, and only after they seek to end the discussion by making it only about their preferences, and nothing else.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Because in an elemental chaos world the elements collectively are the building blocks, not the individual categorized elements. Fire would be part of the elemental chaos the same way acids would be or lightning or storms. There is nothing fundamental to the four element division in an elemental chaos. You can map individual things in an elemental chaos to the four elements, but it is not necessarily inherent to the concept.

In Avatar the Last Airbender there are the fire benders of the fire nation and there are philosophies and martial arts connected to the fire theme. Same with air, earth, and water. It is different to think of this as connecting to the four elements than to think of this as tapping into fundamental primoridal chaotic power and just choosing and sticking to four specific themes.

So acid isn't fundamental to the world? Lightning?

There aren't acid spells or lightning spells, or specific spells tied to storms.

Maybe there aren't creatures tied to acid (Black Dragons) or Lightning (Behir) or Storms (Storm Giants)?


Also, yes, the show Avatar the Last Airbender had a world divided into four parts, with four very different philosophies. And the Avatar, master of all four, and able to combine them as the bridge. And in the Legend of Korra, the sequel series, the four nations... largely don't exist. The setting focuses on Central City, a metropolitan area where all four groups can mix and mingle.

And, just because the Chaos exists, doesn't mean people can't be more likely to tap into one aspect of it and focus on a theme of just fire.

 

[Chaosmancer]

As usual, get the 2E material for the rules and locations because the newer editions fail at that.

So... nothing has been done with these planes for a minimum of 23 years... but they are absolutely vital and if I just used the search function I could find them.

Also, funny how I need to get the 2e material, when I have asked multiple times for stuff from the Elemental Plane of Salt and.... neither of you provided anything. Except to tell me that the 2e material is just, waaay better. I guess if I saw the 2e version I'd go "wow! this makes this entire plane of salt very interesting and something I totally want to use!" but I'll have buy the book to find that out for myself.

I really can't empathize on the need to have pre-built adventures. To me, those are just for padding out books so they look better on the shelf. If you need someone to write adventures for you for a setting to be useful, that's fair, but that has never been something I judge information on.

Yeah, maybe instead of rambling about what I need, you focus on what I was asking. If WoTC has never made an adventure set there, and no 3rd party person has published an adventure set there.... why would I WANT to set an adventure there? What is there to do? See a large plain of salt with big salt pillars? Talk to people made of salt? Might as well go to the Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing, it has just as much content it seems.

And, remember, my entire point that started this was that instead of having an Elemental Plane of Salt, you could have the Great Salt Flat of the Shadowfell. Instead of the Swamp of Oblivion being the Elemental Plane of Ooze, it could be a location in the Feywild. Planes of existence actually being used, and being fleshed out with more diverse set piece locations. I'm not talking about erasing anything, just redistributing it in a way that is better for engagement with the locations actually worth visiting.

 

[Incenjucar]

Yes, buying books is how you get material. Or you can read the big ol' text on Pathfinder Enchanter Wiki which I would link to if I was in a position to check to make sure it's not from anything else.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Asgard is a realm within the broader plane of Ysgard (as are Alfheim, Vanaheim, and Jotunheim, for that matter). Just because the Norse gods are a major presence on the plane, that doesn't mean it belongs to them alone.

Right. If I go to rando #345 on the street and ask them "who lives in Asgard" What do you think their response will be?

Sure, they renamed it Ysgard and it only contains Asgard, but it is the Norse Pantheon plane. That's what anyone is thinking when they first read that name. And they are right. It contains Asgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Jotunheim as well as the World Tree Yggdrasil (that is how it got the name Ysgard, which they claim is just Asgard in the Norse tongue. They combined Yggdrasil the world tree and Asgard, the home of the Aesir into one name)

It doesn't matter who else lives there, it is clearly the norse plane and contains 90% norse mythos by weight.

Heliopolis, the major realm associated with many of the Egyptian gods, is in Arcadia.

And look at this in response. The Egyptians don't get an entire realm of existence, they get part of Arcadia. And their plane is called Heliopolis.

Do you know much about Greek Myths and history? Like how "polis" was the greek name for city, and Helios was the Greek god of the Sun. Wanna guess what Heliopolis' other name is in DnD? Oh, and Arcadia is... a realm in Greek Myths.

So, the norse get an entire plane of existence, containing the vast majority of their myths. The Egyptians live in a greek plane of existence in a greek city, named after the Greek god of the Sun. Do you see why I think that is not great?

Also, there's no real reason divine realms within a broader Outer Plane can't be accessed directly from the Astral anyway. Passing through a color pool to Ysgard is going to drop you at a specific place within the plane anyway, so why can't that place be within Asgard?

There's no reason the Spelljammer/4e model of Divine Realms accessed directly from the Astral can't function just fine alongside Planescape's Divine Realms accessed through the various Outer Planes.

Definition, scope, and weight.

Sure, a portal in the astral could drop you in Asgard, that's not the problem. The problem is that Asgard is a full plane of existence with multiple sub-planes. Meanwhile the Egyptians are bumming off the Greeks secondary realm, and The Olympian Glades of Arborea contains both the elven realm of Arvandor and Mount Olympus, because obviously Zeus and Corellon are neighbors, right?

Well, the greeks also get the Grey Wastes of Hades (weird how an entire plane is named after a single god) and Elysium and Tartarus in Carceri (which is an italian word, tying it to the romans I bet)

So, the Greek myths have half a dozen planes of existence, the norse have a plane of existence. Now, who wants to make a guess as to the two most popular mythologies when DnD was being made? Even if the realms are shared, or can be found in different ways, they are still listed as entire fundamental planes of existence.


However, in the World Axis model, where all divine realms are just places in the Astral Sea, then they all have the same weight. None of them are more important than the other, because you can place all of the locations needed for the divine mythos of the pantheon in a single location (their divine realm) and those Divine Realms are all equal. It is a far cleaner and more balanced version.