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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[vecna00]

While I like Planescape, I also like the fact in 3E that they went to different cosmologies for the different campaign worlds (such as in FR & Eberron) and encouraged creating your own cosmology, and then completely dumped the great wheel for 4E. I don't want to feel like I'm being pushed back into having to have a connection to Sigil, the Outlands and all that. In fact, for the last few campaign worlds I've been creating, I've been drastically playing with the cosmology beyond the material plane.

For example, for the latest one I've been working on has Hell, the Astral and Ethereal for outer planes. No elemental planes, no FeyWild, no ShadowFell and no other outer planes - and Heaven has been destroyed.

I have some good news for you: It's your game and you can do what you want!

 

[M_Natas]

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 don't know. I personally don't like the Idea.
Like with Spelljammer ... it just made all the settings worse to have it as just a way of connecting multiple settings instead of it being an extension of an existing setting or an setting in its own right.

Like it is to no interest to me at at all to jump from the forgotten realms to ebberon and than to Ravenloft and back.

Than it makes ... a lot of things feel insignificant. Like Gods. So this God is in this Crystal Sphere, but not in this? Now we have a different pantheon for every crystal spheres (or Plane in pmanescape) or even worse, the same Gods with different Names in every Sphere/Plane?

Like jumping Multiverses is Lvl. 20 kind of shenanigans and out of scope of most games I wanna run or play.

I prefer my games to be grounded in on material Plane, maybe with expeditions yo the Feywild or an elemental plane or to a Ravenloft Domain at Halloween, but not jumping to other material planes.

It just feels like that things lower level characters ( so.lvl. 1 to 12) don't matter, when you have a multiverse.

It's like tomorrow landing Aliens on earth, declaring us part of a big federation of spacefating Aliens, giving us the ability to leave earth and go to other planets and leave this broken planet behind. Suddenly all this stuff on earth wouldn't really matter any more.
Like with this 90ies TV Show Sliders? where the jump to a new parallel universe every week. The worlds in that TV show didn't matter anymore. They are just obstacles to overcome.

 

[teitan]

I'm fairly confident that was Jeff Grubb.

My mistake, brain fart, like bad LOL

 

[teitan]

Umm “make your own” is the definition of sparse.

guidelines is the opposite of sparse, don't be selective and read the manual.

 

[teitan]

Really? I remember the AD&D Manual of the Planes from 1987 has Jeff Grubb credited as the author, though there's a special thanks to Zeb Cook and Douglas Niles.

yeah I goofed

 

[teitan]

I don't know. I personally don't like the Idea.
Like with Spelljammer ... it just made all the settings worse to have it as just a way of connecting multiple settings instead of it being an extension of an existing setting or an setting in its own right.

Like it is to no interest to me at at all to jump from the forgotten realms to ebberon and than to Ravenloft and back.

Than it makes ... a lot of things feel insignificant. Like Gods. So this God is in this Crystal Sphere, but not in this? Now we have a different pantheon for every crystal spheres (or Plane in pmanescape) or even worse, the same Gods with different Names in every Sphere/Plane?

Like jumping Multiverses is Lvl. 20 kind of shenanigans and out of scope of most games I wanna run or play.

I prefer my games to be grounded in on material Plane, maybe with expeditions yo the Feywild or an elemental plane or to a Ravenloft Domain at Halloween, but not jumping to other material planes.

It just feels like that things lower level characters ( so.lvl. 1 to 12) don't matter, when you have a multiverse.

It's like tomorrow landing Aliens on earth, declaring us part of a big federation of spacefating Aliens, giving us the ability to leave earth and go to other planets and leave this broken planet behind. Suddenly all this stuff on earth wouldn't really matter any more.
Like with this 90ies TV Show Sliders? where the jump to a new parallel universe every week. The worlds in that TV show didn't matter anymore. They are just obstacles to overcome.

Elric was hopping planes in book 1. I mean fair enough, you can do that in your game, that's the one thing all this tooth gnashing is forgetting is part of WOTC's whole marketing, it is YOUR GAME, they just provide tools.

 

[teitan]

Why did we get all the intermediary steps between the alignments? What was the historical reason for that?

Gygax making AD&D, he needed to differentiate from BASIC D&D and added a moral compass to the alignments because the three classic alignments were too broad and because Arneson was suing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't know. I personally don't like the Idea.
Like with Spelljammer ... it just made all the settings worse to have it as just a way of connecting multiple settings instead of it being an extension of an existing setting or an setting in its own right.

Like it is to no interest to me at at all to jump from the forgotten realms to ebberon and than to Ravenloft and back.

Than it makes ... a lot of things feel insignificant. Like Gods. So this God is in this Crystal Sphere, but not in this? Now we have a different pantheon for every crystal spheres (or Plane in pmanescape) or even worse, the same Gods with different Names in every Sphere/Plane?

Like jumping Multiverses is Lvl. 20 kind of shenanigans and out of scope of most games I wanna run or play.

I prefer my games to be grounded in on material Plane, maybe with expeditions yo the Feywild or an elemental plane or to a Ravenloft Domain at Halloween, but not jumping to other material planes.

It just feels like that things lower level characters ( so.lvl. 1 to 12) don't matter, when you have a multiverse.

It's like tomorrow landing Aliens on earth, declaring us part of a big federation of spacefating Aliens, giving us the ability to leave earth and go to other planets and leave this broken planet behind. Suddenly all this stuff on earth wouldn't really matter any more.
Like with this 90ies TV Show Sliders? where the jump to a new parallel universe every week. The worlds in that TV show didn't matter anymore. They are just obstacles to overcome.

The basic scenario for Ravenloft has always been the PCs are transported from their home plane to Ravenloft, then trying to find their way back home. Planar travel has always been at the core of the setting. And the various domains are very like Sliders setting-of-the-week.

 

[M_Natas]

The basic scenario for Ravenloft has always been the PCs are transported from their home plane to Ravenloft, then trying to find their way back home. Planar travel has always been at the core of the setting. And the various domains are very like Sliders setting-of-the-week.

But Ravenloft is more like the feywild or the Shadowfell (or part of the Shadowfell, depending the Lore) and not like another Forgotten Realms, Ebberon, Greyhawk ...

Like, I would use ravenloft like the feywild in relation to the material.plane my adventure takes place in, let's say the forgotten Realms.
But now, If I would go planescaping and go to ebberon or exandria, suddenly I also have another feywild, another ravenloft another shadowfell, other gods that all have no relations to my stuff in the forgotten realms.

 

[ReshiIRE]

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).

Did it ever really die totally?

t didn't even die in the D&D sphere, as Paizo continued it with Pathfinder and Golarion; obviously that spun off into its own system, but at the very least*, all Adventure Paths are in some way 'canon' in some way and have had large effects on the world. While these effects don't have to matter and aren't really forced, other Adventure Paths have referenced them (mostly explicitly the Runelord trilogy), and in particular, Pathfinder 2e updated the world to take account of most Adventure Paths**, which added several new countries, set up new conflicts, and caused a major villain to rise up.

As well as that, the vast majority of books, rules or setting wise***, have the details of setting as it is in the current year in Golarion - e.g., the first Adventure Path for Pathfinder, Rise of the Runelords, takes place in 4708 AR (2008 was when the book was released); Pathfinder 2e's Core Rulebook's setting information matches Golarion in the year 4719 AR; books released this year match the year 4723 AR, etc. So nothing is frozen in place at-least from Paizo's perspective, so you can have lore changes that you may want to take account of when reading these setting books.

Now, Paizo doesn't really promote this or make this a huge aspect of the setting, and I haven't seen people advocate that you must follow the current status quo or setting changes. Some places have seen a lot more changes than others, and some you can just read old books and be up to date with an area's current status quo. Heck, there's a lot of still very relevant 1e books; the Inner Sea World Guide is often recommened for a reason.

... Yes, this is a long tangent, but to circle back to the main post: I think Wizards being clear that D&D in their concept is a multiverse and that worlds link together does allow them to do more expansive Adventures and have 'metaplots' in some settings while keeping others more loose. Following the Paizo model could work very well for D&D, by creating adventures that link together in a loose triology. That may require some endings to be 'canon' or not, but then Wizards could promote that as a great springboard for homebrewing settings: you played the previous adventure and came to a different ending? Well, here's some tools to identify how you could change this adventure, remix it, and make what your group previously did matter, while still being able to follow this adventure. Etc.

My impression from a number of people is that sometimes the adventures created by Wizards can be very hit and miss, particularly in the amount of work GMs have to do to prepare them. An idea like this could make certain aspects trickier, but I do think it could also bore fruit in engagement and making the next generation of D&D adventures even better.

* I believe the plots of each Pathfinder Society plot is as well, and probably many adventures, though they do not have the same effect on the world as most Adventure Paths due to not being as big of adventures as your typical Adventure Path (which tends to go from 1 to 20).

** To the point there was some controversy among older players, as Ironfang Invasions' canon ending and effect on the world is one a lot of players of the module did not opt for and did not enjoy. But that ending presents a lot of interesting narrative complexities for Paizo and GMs to indulge in. The Kingmaker Adventure Path has no canon ending due to it being mainly a sandbox as well as some story mechanics, so I don't know how it ties into anything.

*** The upcoming Season of Ghosts Adventure Path is a significant exception, and I think Kingmaker might be. It got a re-release this year, but unlike Season of Ghosts, there's no disclaimer stating anywhere that it takes place during 4710 AR~ like the original version did.