I'd include the god Bane as part of civilization as opposed to the darkness, not to mention one of the most compelling figures of 4E, the Raven Queen, who does not cleanly fit anywhere on the Great Wheel.
Agreed on Bane. Other Evil gods fit in here, too. One of the PCs in my game is a wizard/invoker of Erathis, Ioun and Vecna - as best I understand the idea, it is that Vecna is right to think that secrets are important, but
misunderstands the nature of their importance - one key to civilisation is that the right sort of information be known by, or kept from, the right people. (And interestingly, at the present juncture of the campaign, the whole party, including this PC, are working hard to keep a whole lot of historical information secret from an NPC wizard who is himself a Vecna cultist.)
I think Asmodeus and Tiamat, and perhaps even Zehir, can also be read in this sort of way.
The Raven Queen is very prominent in my game because one of the PCs is a paladin of hers, and another a Ranger-Cleric. The paladin see himself as an agent of death, and is very harsh in his attitude towards those who "count" (PCs, important NPCs etc) but protective of the innocent masses. The ranger-cleric sees himself more as an agent of fate than of death.
Presumably, in Planescape such a god would live on Concordant Opposition, or by N(E) and live in Hades. I personally tend to feel that that dilutes the thematic power of the god, by making the alignment of the home plane the more significant setting element.
I don't think it would change your view of Planescape either way.
I don't think it would make me want to play it, no. I don't want to play Nicotine Girls either, although it's a narrativist-oriented game with a strong endgame mechanic, which is the sort of thing I'm into.
But hearing from an actual Planescape narrativist could certainly help me get a better handle on how Planescape could be used for narrativist play, because at present I'm really not seeing it. (Similarly, I used to have a lot of trouble seeing how 4e could be used without drifting for gamist play, given its XP and treasure rules - LostSoul, for example, has had to change these rules quite a bit to support his gamist 4e game - but then [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] came along and showed me how 4e supports reasonably light-hearted "Cool move, dude!" gamism. I don't think I'm especially close-minded in this department.)
I look at the racial section and there is information on the cultures, lands, religions, alignment tendencies, names, etc. for the players to read that all tie them to 3.5's default world.
Except that is a default world with no history and no conflict. (At least in 3E. I'm assuming that the 3.5 PHB doesn't differ much from the original version in this respect.)
There is nothing equivalent (at least that I recall) to the dwarves' captivity in the hands of the giants, the conflict between dragonborn and tieflings, the sundering of the elves between the Feywild and the world, the rise and fall of Nerath, etc. And the point of this stuff isn't that it's good literature - of course it's pretty trite as fiction. It's job isn't to be good fiction in itself - it's to seed conflict
in game, in play. This is what 4e provides out of the box.
There is a chapter that discusses alignment, the gods (with some animosities cited like the one between Hextor & Heironeous or Corellon and Gruumsh).
Corellon and Gruumsh as enemies is there, yes. This is perhaps the clearest example of what I'm talking about - if I choose to play an elf cleric then right away I'm thrusting myself into a situation where dramatic things can happen - all it takes is some orcs to appear on the horizon.
Hextor and Heironeous is weaker, in my view, because there is no typical monster type that is, by default, associated with Heironeous. 4e's use of Bane is much stronger in this regard, because of the way goblins and hobgoblins are set up as worshippers of Bane.
The monsters in the MM are certainly tied to the default world, I mean the descriptions hint at the conceits of the world. Just by reading the Basilisk entry I know that the wealthy in this world sometimes keep them as pets, or that Archons come from Celestia and Demons are native to the Abyss. What exactly are you missing in 3.5 that you get in 4e?
This does not, on its own, establish a conflict between any PC and any potential antagonist. What sort of PC is the "natural enemy" of a basilisk - dwarves, perhaps? The rulebooks don't say. Are demons the enemies of all mortal beings? Well, sort of, except that many mortal beings are chaotic evil, and so allied with them - how exactly does that work?
Of course there are answers - every D&D GM has thought about how to handle the relationship between the Chaotic Evil thug on the street corner, the like-aligned servants of Demogorgon, and then the demon lords and princes themselves. But establishing these anwsers, and having the players work their way through them, itself shifts the focus from the pursuit of conflict to exploring the world.
Maybe this is because you are not looking at the complete package?
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Again check out the Planar Handbook or even the actual Planescape campaign setting (which if I am not mistaken, and I could be, I find extremely odd you are comparing if in fact you have never actually read it.)
I don't own it, no. I don't buy things I suspect I'm not going to use or enjoy. I think I've got a reasonable working knowledge of it's basic conceits, though.
IMO, the planes symetry seems very much based around being a backdrop for thematic conflict
My view is that they already resolve that conflict. That is, they already tell the participants in the game who/what is good, and who/what is evil. Like much of post-classic D&D play, and especially 2nd ed D&D play, it's high concept simulationist. The setting answers certain thematic or genre questions, and the purpose of play is to explore those answers, but not to push against them. Without significant drifting, for example, it would make no sense in a Planescape game for the players to commit their PCs to proving that the Upper Planes are really wickedness incarnate, and true salvation lies with the Lower Planes.
while the players themselves need look no further than the Planar Handbook and the races, heritage feats, faction prestige classes and so on to build a character that expresses the type of thematic conflict they wish to explore or engage in if they want that to be the focus of play.
I don't know the Planar Handbook very well, although I think I've read it (it's 3E or 3.5, yes?). From how you describe it, it sounds like PCs could be built that would be thematically loaded,
if the backstory of the campaign setting supported that. My comments are directed primarily at that backstory.
I don't think Planescape gives credence to the fact that all beliefs have the same metaphysical weight. What Planescape says is that in order to give these beliefs metaphysical weight it will cost you blood, sweat, and tears. You are all opposing philosophers with blades and the actual chance to make sure your beliefs affect the multiverse or fail trying... at leats IMO.
But does a Planescape game
test those beliefs? Does it
challenge a paladin's conviction that Mount Celestia is at the heart of all that is worthy and good?
My impression is that it doesn't - that it begins with the thematic questions settled, rather than in play. Again, accounts of actual narrativist play in Planescape would be interesting here.
Sooo, because the Angel and Devil aren't in an out and out brawl... they aren't in conflict. this seems like a lack of imagination on your part.
Tell me more about the conflict you have in mind here.
My own feeling is that this sort of stuff - which suggests that "the dark of things" (have I got my cant right? I mean the truth) is primarily under the GM's purview, and not transparent to the players - pushes play away from the players' making their own thematic statements, and towards the players exploring the GM's own views on the matter (such as, for example, "What is the nature of moral conflict such that an angel can drink in a bar with a devil without feeling morally compromised?")
How do 4e's rules, in any way, set this "expectation". This sounds more like you read the 4e fluff and liked it so you came up with a cool adventure hook... which I might add would work just as well in 3.5. But nothing in the PHB Ranger class or the PHB Elf race even hints at this. Is there even a mechanic that would allow a player to do this?
How do 4e's rules set this expectation? Via the Epic Destiny mechanics, which are a core part of PC build. Because The Plane Above discusses journeying into deep myth (which is what 4e calls heroquesting) over a page or so - leaving the mechanics loose, but (from memory) canvassing both Rituals and skill challenges as avenues for doing so.
Would it work as well in 3E? Well, 3E doesn't have Epic Destinies, and seems to maintain a stricter boundary between the mortal and the divine. Related to this, 3E does not present the present world as a consequence of past mythical events - whereas this is central to 4e (and not unique to 4e, of course - Glorantha is the first RPG setting I know of to use this idea - hence why I have in the past talked about The Plane Above of completing the Glorantha-fication of D&D). 3E also doesn't have quite the same default orientation towards "one off" or esoteric magic as does 4e - there's more of a vibe that magical effects should be explicable (even if via the item creation rules) as consequences of either arcane or divine spells.
Again, if anyone has run a 3E heroquesting campaign it would be interesting to hear about it.
The thing is I could run a nooks and crannies exploration just as easily in 4e as in 3.5.
Perhaps, although personally I have my doubts - 4e's core action resolution mechanics (eg skill challenges - and I have in mind here especially some of the skill challenge ideas in The Plane Below and The Demonomicon) don't support this approach as well, because they favour glossing over detail that is not part of the framing of an encounter, whereas nooks and crannies play tends to favour attention to detail for its own sake.
You do realize that everything that happens in Planescape once play starts is up to the individual players right? Who said you can't try to drive all the fiends from Sigil... and succeed if you are clever enough. Who said there isn't a way to overthrow the Lady of Pain? but also who said that whatever you decide to do will succeed. Where others have just accepted the Lady's rule...just the act of trying to overthrow her is a meaningful choice.
I don't doubt it's up to the players. I mean, everything is up to the players in a Classic Traveller game, too, but if someone wanted to play a narrativist game Classic Traveller isn't the first place that I'd suggest they start - I'm sure someone has drifted the random trade goods chart in a narrativist direction, but I'm personally at a bit of a loss as to how this might be done.
Part of the issue is the story elements that are available to the players, and the degree of control they have over the meaning that they bear. I feel that Planescape - with its nooks and crannies, its convoluted metaplot, its "ah, but what's the dark of it" nod-and-wink to the GM's secrets - is more interested in settling the thematic issues before play rather than in the course of it.
As always, actual play accounts of narrativist Planescape would help here!
4e has really made each of their alignments truly and utterly meaningless. They are no longer cosmic forces one can align themselves with or fight for or strive to follow the tenets of... they are a hollow, pointless choice for a character to make... Of course this is what makes tham all equally valid in 4e's cosmology, since they affect nothing.
It's not that they're all equally valid in 4e's cosmology. Rather, it's that
it's up to the participants in the game to work out what they mean. Meaning is to be worked out in play - not settled prior to play. That, for me, is the difference between 4e and Planescape.
It comes through in so many little things - like the suggestion that an unaligned mercenary might worship Bane as the god of soldiering, or that a dragonborn invoker might serve both Bahamut and Tiamat. In 3E, with it's system of mechanical alignment, neither of these options is viable in the same way (supplicating Hextor would itself be an evil act, tending to drift the supplicant from neutrality, and simultaneously worhsipping Heironeous and Hextor would be incoherent).
As far as PoL and civilization vs. "the darkness" (whatever this means)... I find it slightly simplistic and, contrary to permeton's claims... even more suited to the exploration style of play.
Maybe you misunderstand what I mean by exploration. I'm not talking about exploration of the fictional world by the PCs - a fantasy story about imaginary Sir Francis Drakes and Captain Cooks. I'm talking about exploration of the fiction
by the players as participants in the game. What the Forge calls "simulationism". One reason PoL doesn't support this sort of exploration-focused play is that the relevant fiction doesn't exist (unless the GM does a lot of work to flesh it out). It's a collection of hints about situations, ripe with conflict, that the players might engage via their PCs.
I'm curious, how can you have "the darkness" which in and of itself implies something unknown and yet everything is fully transparent to the players for rich thematic-conflict play???
Because the sotry elements - the building blocks - are transparent, but where they lead to in play is not known until play occurs. This is the essence of narrativist play.
I've been reading the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner recently, and it's a very good read for the 4e GM. And it talks in similar terms about the BW lifepaths - they imply a default setting, of a gritty faux-medieval world with great contrasts of wealth and poverty, slaves and princes, faithful priests and sneering bishops, village witches and mad summoners. But what the players and GM
do with this world - what it means, what is ultimately good in life - is left to be resolved in the course of play.
The "lifepaths" of a 4e PC are far less gritty and far more epic than in BW - less Conan, more Silmarillion (in spite of the long history of fallen empires) - but the general orientation strikes me as very similar. (And interestingly, 4e D&D is cited in the bibliography to the Adventure Burner.)
As you said, we've talked about some of this stuff before. And as is often the case, I'm curious. Are you saying that you've GMed or played in a narrativist Planescape game? If so, feel free to tell all! I'm not going to contradict you - I want to hear about how you did it. (For example, how did you handle alignment? In my mind mechanical alignment is the number one obstacle to narrativist play in the traditional D&D mechanics. When I've GMed narrativist AD&D we've just dropped alignment altogether. But I don't see how that could be done in a Planescape game.)
Or, if you haven't GMed narrativist Planescape, then I'm puzzled as to how you can be so confident that it can be done. To be honest, I don't get the impression from your posts that you are into narrativist play (I could be wrong though - I seem to recall that you play HeroQuest). And if you're not into narrativist play, why does it matter to you that someone who is has views about what systems and what settings offer better or worse support for it?
New recruits are growth, and hope for the future. It is why I was disappointed that the 4e Essentials starter box did not do all that well locally. Hopefully the Pathfinder Beginner Box will fare better, even if some later switch to 4e. 
My 'Ignore' list has increased in size largely to avoid my need to shoulder my warclub. I don't think that I used it at all before 4e... (and it is not just f
