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".

​

 

[Reynard]

I didn't intend to detract from the joke. I should rather have replied to Morrus's post. Sorry!

No worries. it was not a very good joke.

 

[Incenjucar]

You are free to set your game in a different multiverse. If WotC publishes an alternative there will just be pressure to combine it with Planescape for a Multi-multiverse omnisetting, and every new cosmological layer just makes it go deeper.

 

[Remathilis]

You are free to set your game in a different multiverse. If WotC publishes an alternative there will just be pressure to combine it with Planescape for a Multi-multiverse omnisetting, and every new cosmological layer just makes it go deeper.

It's tortles all the way down...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

This is true.

However I feel like it was the mid-late 1990s when metaplots got so central and important that people actually started to get annoyed by them.

Be interesting to see how far WotC takes it in the end. My guess is "Slightly too far"!

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is true.

However I feel like it was the mid-late 1990s when metaplots got so central and important that people actually started to get annoyed by them.

Be interesting to see how far WotC takes it in the end. My guess is "Slightly too far"!

I liked them more when they became more important. It was the story of D&D. Doesn't have to affect how you play the game of D&D.

 

[Kurotowa]

However I feel like it was the mid-late 1990s when metaplots got so central and important that people actually started to get annoyed by them.

Indeed, there are always precursors if you look closely, from before something becomes really popular. In this case, it was mainly White Wolf that really popularized the RPG metaplot in the 90s. I've still got a box full of their books from that era and they went hard on the metaplot. TSR, as was often the case in those late days, tried to chase the trend.

 

[ersatzphil]

Indeed, there are always precursors if you look closely, from before something becomes really popular. In this case, it was mainly White Wolf that really popularized the RPG metaplot in the 90s. I've still got a box full of their books from that era and they went hard on the metaplot. TSR, as was often the case in those late days, tried to chase the trend.

I'm always a bit torn when the topic of metaplots comes up:

One one hand? I definitely had a shelf of White Wolf books that I genuinely enjoyed reading, and I think back on very fondly. I got a lot of enjoyment out of those books, both reading, cross-referencing, and dreaming about the worlds they described.

On the other hand, my group played D&D 95% of the time, because we really had no idea what to do with all those White Wolf books - the metaplot was really, really hard to translate into a game for us at the table, even laying aside the metaphysical implications of trying to run Mage at the table.

So... eh? I can't discount how much I enjoyed reading those books and thinking about them, but I have to acknowledge that it never helped me and my friends actually play anything.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm always a bit torn when the topic of metaplots comes up:

One one hand? I definitely had a shelf of White Wolf books that I genuinely enjoyed reading, and I think back on very fondly. I got a lot of enjoyment out of those books, both reading, cross-referencing, and dreaming about the worlds they described.

On the other hand, my group played D&D 95% of the time, because we really had no idea what to do with all those White Wolf books - the metaplot was really, really hard to translate into a game for us at the table, even laying aside the metaphysical implications of trying to run Mage at the table.

So... eh? I can't discount how much I enjoyed reading those books and thinking about them, but I have to acknowledge that it never helped me and my friends actually play anything.

Plot is fun: so a well written metaplor can be a fun read.

But for a game product...?

Thing is, I reckon, TTRPGs are still so new as a medium that after 50 years designers are still trying to figure out the design space and how to serve gamers wirh products. Metaplot was one approach, that I don't think has panned out as a prep tool.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So... eh? I can't discount how much I enjoyed reading those books and thinking about them, but I have to acknowledge that it never helped me and my friends actually play anything.

Yeah this. We ran some official stuff for Vampire for example, but none of it really furthered or even relied upon the metaplot. The Time of Thin Blood came closest, but who even wanted to play a thin-blood? Not any player I ever met.

Metaplot-heavy stuff tended to be the ultimate expression of written-to-read, not to run. And interestingly that's been an issue with some (not all) of WotC's 5E campaigns - they're seemingly focused on being fun to read, but not well set up to actually run, requiring a ton of effort from the would-be DM. And that's BEFORE WotC started introducing metaplot elements, so I kind of feel like we maybe about to see something even more extreme.

 

[Reynard]

Plot is fun: so a well written metaplor can be a fun read.

But for a game product...?

Thing is, I reckon, TTRPGs are still so new as a medium that after 50 years designers are still trying to figure out the design space and how to serve gamers wirh products. Metaplot was one approach, that I don't think has panned out as a prep tool.

One of the weaknesses is that the GM kind of needs to know what the ultimate outcome is intended to be if they are going to seed the thing in play. But WW wanted their customers to be surprised and experience the unfolding of the metaplot over the life of the line. Those customers were GMs. So in order to do a metaplot justice you would have to do it after it is complete and hope your players had not also followed it.

It is a similar situation with APs: in order to make that thing actually work, especially when talking about BBEGs and ultimate stakes, you kind of have to have all of the information available to you as GM from the beginning.