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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 8210407" data-attributes="member: 5142">You are very likely misreading my point with Ravnica or my criticisms regarding Planescape's Factions, as I don't think either of these points are particularly relevant to my posts. My point with Ravnica is that I prefer how its Guilds extend from core ideas of the MtG Multiverse whereas I don't get that same sense from Planescape's Factions. The philosophy of the Factions comes across to me, for the most part, as being fairly disconnected from the wider ideas of the D&D Multiverse as a nature of their philosophies being fairly directly "cribbed" from real world philosophic ideas. And it is this disconnect and unrooted character of the Factions' philosophies that gives it a shallow, sophomoric feeling to me. This is not to say that Ravnica is a better setting than Planescape or anything of that sort: I'm not interested in whatever setting pissing contest that you want to this into. I nevertheless find Ravnica useful for illustrating my point as Ravnica and its Guilds have a similar niche as Sigil and its Factions. I have my own criticisms of Ravnica, but they are not especially relevant when putting forth one of my criticisms of Planescape. This is again not to say that people are wrong to like it or that there's anything wrong with people for liking it, but, rather, I don't personally find the Factions of Planescape to be particularly engaging, particularly in connection to D&D. I want to like it - it seems like a setting that I should enjoy based upon the basic sales pitch - but I don't. My problem is not with philosophy per se, but how it Planescape implemented it with their Factions. I'm not suggesting that the respective philosophies should involve treatise-long philosophic tracts, but, rather, that it should ideally engage the setting or address the D&D multiverse in more meaningful ways than they often do. The depth should come from how it extends outwards from the D&D multiverse. It's a city of magical doors to other planes of existence, where morality and ethics have ontological essences and the like, but the philosophic ideas such a magical multiverse produces are mostly copy-paste re-hashes of real world earth philosophies? It's personally a bit of a letdown.</blockquote>

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