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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[Maxperson]

Disagree... The different D&D worlds have always been treated as being connected and able to be traversed. Wasn't there a series of Dragon articles where Mordenkainen (Greyhawk), Elminster (Forgotten Realms) and Raistlin (Dragonlance) would meet up on our earth and have a sit down where they talked and traded items? I've never read the actual articles but I've seen discussions of them.

The Wizards Three!!! My favorite Dragon articles of all time.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, and... it is what it is.

It really doesn't matter to me, but it potentially promotes laziness because you can just recycle old ideas with a minor variation.

In multiverse 1 Uncle Ben is dead
In multiverse 2 Uncle Ben is alive
In multiverse 3 Uncle Ben is lovers with Dr. Octopus....poor Aunt May

I think you mean The Golden Oldie, Herald of Galactus.

 

[Willie the Duck]

What setting do you think gets implied. There needs to be one. That is the default one ... per default. Its not even a discussion, its just a fact that there is automatically a default setting the moment you add lore to monster statblocks.

I would disagree that this is inherently true. I think the implied setting* for basic/classic D&D (BX or BECMI) is the default. Just the logical progression from the rules given (what classes exist, what monsters exist, how prevalent monsters or dungeon exist out in the wild based on the random generators, etc.) create a setting and the books pretty much encourage you to use that to make your world. However, AD&D 2e does it differently. It also had an implied setting emergent from the rules, but then makes clear where ever it can that each DM creates their own world and has to choose amongst all the potential options what they want in their game world. In effect, it is declaring the implied setting to not be what you should default to.
*which I'm distinguishing from the Known World in that there is so much more in the Known World/Mystara that you never encountered if you didn't get the modules, gazetteers, etc.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think anyone has asserted this? All I've seen is pretty much unanimous agreement that anyone can do what they want with their particular homebrew...

Well, you can read the post I was replying to and form your own interpretation of it.

 

[Hussar]

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

Sparse as in little to no active support.

Guidelines=diy. That’s sparse.

This pedantic nonsense has been brought to you by the letter mu.

 

[teitan]

Sparse as in little to no active support.

Guidelines=diy. That’s sparse.

This pedantic nonsense has been brought to you by the letter mu.

5e is DIY. That was the plan from the beginning of the playtest. Settings outside of The Sword Coast weren’t even a strong consideration and footnotes for conversion in the books were maybe a couple short sentences. So… the edition that has been a strong DIY until the last, what, 3 years, with sparse support by plan, not providing more than guidelines as a rule surprises you?

 

[Dire Bare]

What setting do you think gets implied. There needs to be one. That is the default one ... per default. Its not even a discussion, its just a fact that there is automatically a default setting the moment you add lore to monster statblocks.

I realize this is an ongoing conversation here, and it's not just @Retros_x, but . . . "default" and "implied" do not have the same meaning. Not in the dictionary, and not when referring to fantasy settings for the D&D game.

I don't like the word "default" when talking about D&D settings, but what this refers to is the official setting of the core game. The BECMI edition of D&D had the "Known World" (later to be known as Mystara) as the default setting. When 3rd Edition launched, Greyhawk was the default setting, although later that changed. During the run of 4th Edition, the Nentir Vale "points of light" setting was the default. No other edition of D&D has had a default setting.

An implied setting is when there is NO official, default setting, but the game comes with many setting tropes and expectation baked into the rules. EVERY D&D edition has had an implied setting. How does magic work? Does the color of a dragon's scales correspond to it's alignment? What's the difference between a high, gray, and wood elf?

The D&D implied setting overlaps strongly with Greyhawk, the Realms, and other "generic" fantasy settings developed for the game. But the two words do mean different things. In a two-circle Venn diagram comparing the D&D implied setting with the World of Greyhawk . . . the central, overlapping section would be huge! But the World of Greyhawk is not the implied or default setting for D&D 5th Edition.

Most of us are fine with D&D having an implied setting, as it has had one since Day 1 way back in '74. And since Day 1, the game has explicitly encouraged players to modify that implied setting (and the rules) as they see fit. Nothing's changed there nearly 50 years later.

The 2014 core books have referenced ALL of D&D past settings, and leaned into the long-standing implied setting developed since the White Box. The Forgotten Realms has been the default setting for most of the adventure books, but not the game itself. And the Realms plays very nicely with the implied setting of the game, of course. Nothing is changing here either.

The 2024 books are leaning even more into that implied setting, especially the multiverse aspect of it. That's a SLIGHT shift in focus, doesn't make "Planescape" the default setting, or really even change things in any meaningful way.

All of this angst, this sturm and drang . . . . . you'd think after a couple of decades of online fandom, I'd be used to "the sky is falling" segment of our fandom, but . . . . Pelor's Beard! Y'all just need to relax. D&D is going to be fine next year, just fine.

 

[Imaro]

Well, you can read the post I was replying to and form your own interpretation of it.

I took it as a light-hearted joke but maybe I'm missing something...

 

[Remathilis]

I realize this is an ongoing conversation here, and it's not just @Retros_x, but . . . "default" and "implied" do not have the same meaning. Not in the dictionary, and not when referring to fantasy settings for the D&D game.

I don't like the word "default" when talking about D&D settings, but what this refers to is the official setting of the core game. The BECMI edition of D&D had the "Known World" (later to be known as Mystara) as the default setting. When 3rd Edition launched, Greyhawk was the default setting, although later that changed. During the run of 4th Edition, the Nentir Vale "points of light" setting was the default. No other edition of D&D has had a default setting.

An implied setting is when there is NO official, default setting, but the game comes with many setting tropes and expectation baked into the rules. EVERY D&D edition has had an implied setting. How does magic work? Does the color of a dragon's scales correspond to it's alignment? What's the difference between a high, gray, and wood elf?

The D&D implied setting overlaps strongly with Greyhawk, the Realms, and other "generic" fantasy settings developed for the game. But the two words do mean different things. In a two-circle Venn diagram comparing the D&D implied setting with the World of Greyhawk . . . the central, overlapping section would be huge! But the World of Greyhawk is not the implied or default setting for D&D 5th Edition.

Most of us are fine with D&D having an implied setting, as it has had one since Day 1 way back in '74. And since Day 1, the game has explicitly encouraged players to modify that implied setting (and the rules) as they see fit. Nothing's changed there nearly 50 years later.

The 2014 core books have referenced ALL of D&D past settings, and leaned into the long-standing implied setting developed since the White Box. The Forgotten Realms has been the default setting for most of the adventure books, but not the game itself. And the Realms plays very nicely with the implied setting of the game, of course. Nothing is changing here either.

The 2024 books are leaning even more into that implied setting, especially the multiverse aspect of it. That's a SLIGHT shift in focus, doesn't make "Planescape" the default setting, or really even change things in any meaningful way.

All of this angst, this sturm and drang . . . . . you'd think after a couple of decades of online fandom, I'd be used to "the sky is falling" segment of our fandom, but . . . . Pelor's Beard! Y'all just need to relax. D&D is going to be fine next year, just fine.

I'd like to muddy up the definitions a bit more by saying that D&D has never really had a default setting, but example settings. Example settings give the DM an example of what to build if that want to make their own stuff and a serviceable set of options if they don't. Every setting as described in the core books has been very lightly described. The 3e PHB, which used Greyhawk as the example, barely provided any lore on the setting itself. Some sample deities and the usual legacy proper nouns in spells and magic items. I'd not like the PHB discusses the Kingdom of Celene in the elf homeland section. The only edition that implicitly tied setting to rules was Nentir Vale, where Bal Turarth gets name checked in the tiefling race section. And the lore is so sketchy and scattered it's barely more than placeholders anyways.

 

[Hussar]

5e is DIY. That was the plan from the beginning of the playtest. Settings outside of The Sword Coast weren’t even a strong consideration and footnotes for conversion in the books were maybe a couple short sentences. So… the edition that has been a strong DIY until the last, what, 3 years, with sparse support by plan, not providing more than guidelines as a rule surprises you?

Ahh. Now I understand the issue. If you go back, I said DnD is sparse. I did not specify edition.

If you want to go planar but you don’t want to use Planescape lore in DnD there is virtually zero support. It’s been DIY for about thirty years or so.

5e was not the subject of my post. And additionally I’ll point out that 5e isn’t actually sparse for setting support. All the previous edition material is meant to be used in your 5e games. It’s very much not the DIY edition. There is virtually zero support for home brewing. A couple of pages in a ten year old book and silence since then is …. Wait for it… sparse.