D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: Travelers of the Multiverse

Chaosmancer said:

But it is also the purpose of Planescape

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Ooh, as @Hatmatter says, it isn't the point of Pla escape either: the point of Planescape is to provide a framework for low level characters interacting with Outer Plane beings from the start. Hence the City thst connects Heaven, Hell, and the other Outer Planes as a Neutral ground.

AcererakTriple6 said:

It was my impression that when people talk about "Planejammer", they mainly mean combining the Astral Sea with the Phlogiston, not having Sigil/the Outlands be a part of Spelljamming or the Outer Planes being different "planets" that can be Spelljammed to. Not "merge Planescape and Spelljammer completely" and more "sail through the Astral Sea instead of the Phlogiston". I don't know exactly how 4e did it, but I know that "Sailing through the Astral Sea" is one of the main draws of the concept of "Planejammer", not playing a Bauriar or Rogue Modron, attacking the Lady of Pain from inside a Nautiloid ship, or anything like that.

And I do think that there is some merit to the suggestion of combining the Phlogiston and Astral Sea. If Crystal Spheres just float around in the Astral Plane instead of in the Phlogiston, does that really change the concept of Spelljammer that much? I know that I would like mining the petrified remains of Dead Gods to be a part of Spelljammer, because that's freaking cool, but isn't really possible in the 2e version of Spelljammer. Nautiloids versus Githyanki Raiding Ships would also be extremely cool to play out if Spelljammer and the Astral Plane were merged.

Feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong, though. I'm not the most familiar person with what people mean when asking for a "Planejammer" setting.

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I'm pro replacing Phlogiston with the Astral myself, but I don't really visualize that as Planejammer. I don't really know what Planejammer is at all really, except having both settings in one book.

Urriak Uruk said:

I'm pro replacing Phlogiston with the Astral myself, but I don't really visualize that as Planejammer. I don't really know what Planejammer is at all really, except having both settings in one book.

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Getting rid of the redundant phlogiston, and using ships* to travel between planes as well as worlds is about it.

*alongside portals and plane shift spells.

Sigil is just a location.

Neither setting boxed set was really what it pretended to be. Spelljammer pretended to be a D&D space opera, but was really an examination of how Renaissance ideas about cosmology would work in practice. Planescape pretended to be about plane-hopping, but was really about examining different schools of philosophy.

I'm pretty sure 2021 WotC would really only be interested in a space opera, and would want to drop both the outdated scientific ideas and the philosophy.

Chaosmancer said:

I would assume the faction controls the other side. Portals are doors. It is very rare that you control access out of a doorway, but not into a doorway



Permament, known portals would be easy to find in the same way that the Hershey Chocolate Factory is easy to find. People know where it is and can give you directions. I imagine Sigil would have a tourist pamphlet that includes a list of the best-known portals alongside things like the various headquarters for different organizations.

I also would note that Sigil has zero RAW materials. Everything has to be imported in, and then either maintained or replenished. So, trade between Sigil and a Prime would have to involve someone else providing the RAW materials to Sigil, then the item being made, then the shipment to the Prime. And I don't see a compelling reason why that less step is any different if the seller is not in Sigil itself.



Um... yes? They absolutely would begin shifting everything they could to go through that portal. The land on either side would be taken over by the Governments, and it would alter the flow of goods immensely. Especially if the portal was big enough to drive a truck through.

It wouldn't be a screeching halt of the current system, but the literal BILLIONS it would save would alter the entire structure of shipping between America and China.



Sure, you can handwave it. I find that to be a poor method though. Much more robust to work it out.

Also, to be pendantic. Spaceships are totally real. Portals maybe not, but Spaceships, totally.




I find myself a bit confused. Other than Modrons (we have them in the MM and the Autognome seems like it could be refitted), the Tieflings (have them), Genasi (have them) and Aasimar (have them) what Planescape races are you referring to? I'm not really familiar with any.

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I could debate you point by point, but I'll just say this; you're making a ton of logical assumptions for places that aren't logical, so they won't work.

For example, you say that in Sigil, folks would point you to portals to various worlds like asking for directions, and possibly have tourist pamphlets. This doesn't happen. Portals that are permanent are controlled by factions and used for specific things, they aren't just available for anyone to use. And other portals that they don't control are too temporary for residents to easily track like this; portals follow Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe rules (you fall into Narnia when the story/DM wants you to), not Star Trek phasing rules (you can phase anytime anywhere).

We can nitpick Planescape and Spelljammer for why they don't make sense all day... but we shouldn't! If you personally don't think Spelljammer doesn't make sense in a world with Sigil, fine. That doesn't mean the rest of us can't enjoy it.

As for races, I was pointing out how the UA races are all explicitly Spelljammer related, none of which have ties to Planescape. They aren't even attempting to hide how Spelljammer they are. It would be extremely odd to get a Planescape book that had plasmoids walking around, who have no history with that setting. Or giff or hadozee either.

Paul Farquhar said:

Neither setting boxed set was really what it pretended to be. Spelljammer pretended to be a D&D space opera, but was really an examination of how Renaissance ideas about cosmology would work in practice.

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Hi Paul,
If you have time, could you clarify, as I do not understand?

The initial Spelljammer box set was about setting D&D in space. The subgenre was space fantasy, which could easily be called space opera. If it wasn't the space fantasy/space opera subgenre, or if Spelljammer failed in some respect with regard to that, I missed how it failed. Spelljammer has interstellar empires, adventures, a mysterious Flying Dutchman ghost ship (The Spelljammer), pirates, giffs with their arquebusses and cannons.

Jeff Grubb and Zeb Cook used some notions of Medieval cosmology as inspiration, but I do not see how Spelljammer is "an examination of how Renaissance ideas about cosmology would work in practice." Of the 192 pages of the original set (adding together the two books and not including the ship cards), only 9 pages are devoted to the chapter on "Arcane Space." And, even then, although I am no Renaissance scholar, I am pretty sure "Arcane Space" looks unlike how the historic notions of the heavens might have been envisioned. In his Foreword from 1989 for the Lorebook of the Void, Grubb writes, "Zeb Cook pulled out some medieval woodcuts showing a traveler passing through the spheres of the world to discover the sun and planets on tracks, and with that the idea of crystal shells was born." I think these medieval woodcuts were a simple starting point to create a fun environment for adventure. I am pretty sure there was no serious attempt to replicate the historical ideas behind some of these concepts.

It might just be that you wrote this post in haste and you were trying to make a slightly different point. But, I think Spelljammer succeeded as space fantasy within the scope of D&D quite well. Better than if someone from TSR had tasked me to do "D&D in space," (in the Foreword, Grubb writes: "The design directive for the SPELLJAMMER supplement was simple: Take the AD&D game into outer space.") that's for sure. I thought much of it was positively inspired.

Urriak Uruk said:

As for races, I was pointing out how the UA races are all explicitly Spelljammer related, none of which have ties to Planescape. They aren't even attempting to hide how Spelljammer they are. It would be extremely odd to get a Planescape book that had plasmoids walking around, who have no history with that setting. Or giff or hadozee either.

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Well, I'd have to say that considering how weird Sigil is, I don't think it would actually be all that unusual to see any of those races in Planescape. Or at least, they wouldn't be any more unusual than any other creature in that setting. I mean, Planescape is the game with living, thinking two-dimensional mathematical equations.

Astral elves weren't part of Spelljammer, and are probably the most Planescape part of that UA. And thri-kreen were only Spelljammer inasmuch as they're basically xichil with a more recognizable name. But the other three are totally Spelljammer.

Faolyn said:

Well, I'd have to say that considering how weird Sigil is, I don't think it would actually be all that unusual to see any of those races in Planescape. Or at least, they wouldn't be any more unusual than any other creature in that setting. I mean, Planescape is the game with living, thinking two-dimensional mathematical equations.

Astral elves weren't part of Spelljammer, and are probably the most Planescape part of that UA. And thri-kreen were only Spelljammer inasmuch as they're basically xichil with a more recognizable name. But the other three are totally Spelljammer.

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Sure. I'm just saying, the UA included 6 races that were all at least "more Spelljammer than Planescape." So it would be extremely weird to get a book that combines Spelljammer and Planescape into one thing, but only adds races that are all really Spelljammer influenced.

Planar portals are like the medieval bridges where you had to pay special taxes if you wanted to go across. Possible but too expensive for "ordinary" trade. Or these have to be locked almost always to avoid possible intruders with bad intentions.

Maybe the crystal spheres are retconnected because some domains from the Feywild are "sent" to the material sphere. For example an orb of "oxiwater" where water-breather and air-breather creatures could live together (really both are breathing "aether").

Urriak Uruk said:

Sure. I'm just saying, the UA included 6 races that were all at least "more Spelljammer than Planescape." So it would be extremely weird to get a book that combines Spelljammer and Planescape into one thing, but only adds races that are all really Spelljammer influenced.

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The real kicker is that there are no indisputably Planescape-specific races in the UA. If they had thrown in bariaur or rogue modron, then we would conclude that there's a mix. All we have is the Astral Elves, which are an unknown quantity here. The other five are definitely Spelljammer races (although not exclusively though), so it makes sense that the sixth is as well...

Paul Farquhar said:

I'm pretty sure 2021 WotC would really only be interested in a space opera, and would want to drop both the outdated scientific ideas and the philosophy.

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I think you may misjudge the interests of WotC writers, especially Perkins, Crawford, and Wyatt.