Planescape Planescape IS D&D Says Jeremy Crawford

Planescape is Jeremy Crawford's favourite D&D setting. "It is D&D", he says, as he talks about how in the 2024 core rulebook updates Planescape will be more up front and center as "the setting of settings".

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[Older Beholder]

If Planescape is D&D, why waiting soooooo long to publish it. So much time wasted with other useless settings like ravinca.

Funnily enough, I think the Ravnica book will be even more useful to me with the release of Planescape.

 

[teitan]

Speaking about 2024 plans: "As we worked on Planescape, we were preparing it at the same time we were working on the 2024 rulebooks. We see it as a critical setup for those books, because those books are going to have the D&D multiverse even more front and center than in 2014."

The multiverse part does not concern me as much as the even more front and center part does. I guess you cannot be a billion dollar business without it though.


I would not want Manual of the Planes to take up more than a few pages in a DMG, but all the other stuff it needs gives Wizards a tall order to fill. Not holding my breath on how it turns out.

D&D was always celebrated for its multiverse. I am not understanding why there is a pushback for one of the original multiverses in pop culture. They were called the Forgotten Realms because the idea of a multiverse was baked into it with portals to other worlds randomly appearing in the setting allowing for you to port characters over from your old campaigns in 1e and later to switch settings if you wanted. Spelljammer is all about another way to explore the multiverse of D&D and then Planescape was the Moorcockian Multiverse writ large on D&D so it wasn't just jumping around the prime material plane but to different planes and even alternate primes. I am flabbergasted by the pushback. DOn't take offense, you just happened to be the person I click reply on.

 

[Dire Bare]

Perhaps not, but if that's the implication it would definitely represent a shift in emphasis. Like I said, haven't seen the video.

That's okay. I'm pretty sure most of the folks kvetching haven't watched the video either.

I mean, why worry about what Crawford actually said and meant when we can make up all sorts of stuff to be upset about? Amirite?

 

[Aldarc]

Etymology, it is latin, G is hard in Latin, it is never pronounced as a J sound. Comes from Sigillum, a sign or seal. Also Signature.

Etymology of "sigil" by etymonline

"a sign, mark, or seal," mid-15c., sigille, from Late Latin sigillum, from Latin sigilla… See origin and meaning of sigil.

www.etymonline.com

Pronunciations change. The original pronunciation may have used a hard ‘g’ as per the Latin, but that does not reflect its common contemporaneous pronunciation in English.

 

[Hussar]

My particular beef with Planescape is that it is the only oversetting. Doesn’t matter where you start from, as soon as you go into the planes, you MUST play Planescape. As @Remalthilis said, everyone meets in that bar in Sigil.

If you don’t actually like the Planescape stuff, DnD is really sparse on the ground for planar adventuring.

But I’ve got Spelljammer, which I can use to do the same thing and not have to worry about incorporating a bunch of lore I happen not to like.

So I guess that’s a win for everyone.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My particular beef with Planescape is that it is the only oversetting.

I mean, it's not though, as you point out yourself, you've also got Spelljammer, which actually predates it, and the Great Wheel cosmology in general is an "oversetting".

Certainly Spelljammer walked so Planescape could run, as it were. I think the issue is that Spelljammer has a much more niche appeal than Planescape, and is weirdly more complicated, conceptually, because it has so many ideas layered on top of each other.

D&D was always celebrated for its multiverse. I am not understanding why there is a pushback for one of the original multiverses in pop culture. They were called the Forgotten Realms because the idea of a multiverse was baked into it with portals to other worlds randomly appearing in the setting allowing for you to port characters over from your old campaigns in 1e and later to switch settings if you wanted.

Yeah it's kind of confusing to me.

Even as a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, the idea that these worlds were connected and so on always made sense and just seemed pretty straightforward and cool. So for people to be mad about it now like it's some kind of cash-in move is weird. Is WotC cashing in on this? Absolutely they are - but it's not something they're copying or stealing, it's something that was "ever thus" (or for at least 30+ years, which is longer than the average D&D player has been alive, I note!).

I will say I also always liked that some settings were cut off from the multiverse, which let them have much more together cosmologies and more unique vibes (Athas, Eberron, particularly), and I think any attempt to backpedal on that would suck pretty bad, but AFAIK that's not happening, it's just the worlds that have always been connected.

On the other hand, it is amusing to see that questionable '90s idea, the dreaded "metaplot", come back (and no amount of "it's not technically a metaplot" is going to stop it being one lol).

Pronunciations change. The original pronunciation may have used a hard ‘g’ as per the Latin, but that does not reflect its common contemporaneous pronunciation in English.

You're not wrong, but with words as relatively-obscure as sigil, they can easily change the other way too, so insisting hard on the j-style pronunciation (which, tbh, sounds kind of wanky) seems to me a bit silly. Both pronunciations are fine and not going to confuse anyone as to what is being discussed. English is absolutely full of soft-g/hard-g pronunciation disputes anyway, so let's not pretend it isn't (gif, gibbed, etc.).

 

[aco175]

D&D was always celebrated for its multiverse. I am not understanding why there is a pushback for one of the original multiverses in pop culture. They were called the Forgotten Realms because the idea of a multiverse was baked into it with portals to other worlds randomly appearing in the setting allowing for you to port characters over from your old campaigns in 1e and later to switch settings if you wanted. Spelljammer is all about another way to explore the multiverse of D&D and then Planescape was the Moorcockian Multiverse writ large on D&D so it wasn't just jumping around the prime material plane but to different planes and even alternate primes. I am flabbergasted by the pushback. DOn't take offense, you just happened to be the person I click reply on.

I'm more worried about the more front and centered part like they said. I do not want Planescape and Sigil to be the default setting. I understand that I can keep or skip as much as I want and I can still make my home games and play in FR if I want without using it, but I do not want to feel like I'm playing wrong if I do not want Space D&D or Visit the Gods D&D.

 

[Morrus]

they will take it as a personal insult and call themselves either discriminated against or canceled (their choice of words depending on their political leanings).

You know not to do this, yet you do it anyway. Don't post again in this thread, please.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

'90s idea, the dreaded "metaplot"

Metaplot is older than that. I used to get Traveller's Journal for Traveller RPG around 1983-86, and that included a metaplot involving the Third Imperium and the Fifth Frontier War.

 

[rgard]

but I do not want to feel like I'm playing wrong if I do not want Space D&D or Visit the Gods D&D.

Don't worry about it. It's your game. You play it the way you want. Don't allow yourself to feel like you are playing wrong. Your way is the right way.