DMG2 blurb on Amazon. Attention Planescape fans!

[Dire Bare]

Doesn't 4th edition explicitly state somewhere that other prime material planes (aka "World" or "Krynn", etc) are on the other side of the Astral Sea. Way out at sea as it were. But probably this side of the Far Realms.

No, the Manual of the Planes states that if you travel "deep" into the Astral Sea, you'll eventually run into the astral dominions of other worlds, not the other worlds themselves. Although I'm sure you could travel to other worlds through via their associated astral dominions.

In other words, if you planeshift from "the world" into the Astral Sea, get into your well-stocked astral dromond and travel far, far past Hestavar, you just might find the Fugue Plane someday. If you enter the Fugue Plane, and planeshift back to "the world", you'll actually find yourself in the Forgotten Realms.

Or you could just take passage on a spelljammer and travel the void (or phlogiston) between the stars to Toril!

 

[FourthBear]

Part of it is that I think that the PCs' home base should be a place that is threatened by the forces the PCs' are fighting against. Sigil is a place that inherently can't be threatened by any kind of Paragon tier threat.

I think that's a good point about Sigil's nature being such that the city as a whole is unlikely to be threatened by anything less than a epic cosmic threat. I do think that there's still plenty of scope for a campaign for Paragon heroes working against threats to Sigil, since not all threats have to be of the "will wipe the city from the cosmos" variety. I could easily see the Lady of Pain and similar quasi-authority figures not reacting at all to any number of evil threats in Sigil (such as interplanar slavers, soul thieves, dream corrupters). I think as long as the goals of the villains don't actually involve gross mayhem and destruction in Sigil proper, the more powerful Sigil residents may not react and the less powerful, goodly quasiauthories may not be able to deal with it.

And, of course, the threat could be widespread throughout the planes in such a way that while Sigil is the home base, the primary threat is not to Sigil itself. For example, in the Age of Worms Paizo campaign arc, there are several home base communities (Diamond Lake, Free City, Magepoint). But with the exception of one adventure, the threats are not so much to the home base's existance.

 

[Wootz]

I don't quite understand most of these complaints. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought D&D was a game built in the imagination, without that it'd just be a board game, right? I read the manual of planes and for me it was a tool to help build exciting adventures off of. In fact, it even says you can just take what you learn from what's present in the book and create your own cosmology, so if that's the case, why worry about specifics? I see everyone who complains write up how they wish the cosmology should be, but nowhere in the book does it say you can't just take what you wished for and apply it to your game, so why not just take all the stuff you spent time ranting about and just stick it in the game?

 

[Dire Bare]

I don't quite understand most of these complaints. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought D&D was a game built in the imagination, without that it'd just be a board game, right? I read the manual of planes and for me it was a tool to help build exciting adventures off of. In fact, it even says you can just take what you learn from what's present in the book and create your own cosmology, so if that's the case, why worry about specifics? I see everyone who complains write up how they wish the cosmology should be, but nowhere in the book does it say you can't just take what you wished for and apply it to your game, so why not just take all the stuff you spent time ranting about and just stick it in the game?

Wootz, you are right in a way, but comments like this I find kind of missing the point. OF COURSE we can do "what we want" and create our own campaign worlds with our own cosmologies, and many of us do.

But just like some people are fans of Star Trek, some of us are fans of the "world" (or multiverse) that has grown up around D&D over the past 35 some-odd years. For better or for worse, 4e is a reimagining of that world. Some of us dig it and it makes a cleaner and more sensical fantasy world to adventure in . . . and some of us dislike it because it changes what we loved, in all of it's geeky quirkyness.

I personally love most of the changes brought with 4e, both in rules and in the setting. And I also tend to think some of the complaints get a little silly from time to time . . . but the advice of "just create your own" grates a bit sometimes (not that I'm offending or anything, or that I'm trying to offend back . . .).

 

[Wootz]

Wootz, you are right in a way, but comments like this I find kind of missing the point. OF COURSE we can do "what we want" and create our own campaign worlds with our own cosmologies, and many of us do.

But just like some people are fans of Star Trek, some of us are fans of the "world" (or multiverse) that has grown up around D&D over the past 35 some-odd years. For better or for worse, 4e is a reimagining of that world. Some of us dig it and it makes a cleaner and more sensical fantasy world to adventure in . . . and some of us dislike it because it changes what we loved, in all of it's geeky quirkyness.

I personally love most of the changes brought with 4e, both in rules and in the setting. And I also tend to think some of the complaints get a little silly from time to time . . . but the advice of "just create your own" grates a bit sometimes (not that I'm offending or anything, or that I'm trying to offend back . . .).

I understand this, but the way I see it is that each D&D edition is a game system with its own unique way of playing, each set in the D&D universe, which is where the fantasy and storytelling come in so it's no longer just a game of numbers. But from what I've seen, each edition of D&D retells the D&D world in it's own flavor. Kobolds are always kobolds, but in each edition they look a little different. But if you like the kobolds from 2e, then why can't you play those same kobolds in any other edition? It's no less D&D than before.

Things are going to change, if they didn't there'd be no point in publishing new versions of D&D. But if the flavor of older editions gets you going, then just play that setting with the new ruleset.

 

[Shemeska]

I don't quite understand most of these complaints. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought D&D was a game built in the imagination, without that it'd just be a board game, right? I read the manual of planes and for me it was a tool to help build exciting adventures off of. In fact, it even says you can just take what you learn from what's present in the book and create your own cosmology, so if that's the case, why worry about specifics? I see everyone who complains write up how they wish the cosmology should be, but nowhere in the book does it say you can't just take what you wished for and apply it to your game, so why not just take all the stuff you spent time ranting about and just stick it in the game?

Because whatever comes out in the new edition and whatever changes and assumptions it creates for the game will frame whatever subsequently comes out in future books. So let's talk ice cream.

If I like rocky road and twists upon it, and the new edition declares that rocky road was a silly flavor that needlessly included marshmallow and peanuts when obviously people only wanted chocolate, therefore all future stuff will be chocolate only including ice cream selections that had earlier been based around rocky road or even strawberry sorbet, it's going to have a downstream effect on getting new twists on rocky road.

It then comes off as a bit insulting when somebody comes along and says, "Well just make rocky road at home for yourself." That's just rubbing someone's face in changes that they don't like on a very basic level - effectively saying, "Well that's tough. I like just chocolate and so should you." People might not mean to say that or have it come off that way, but it does.

 

[Wootz]

Because whatever comes out in the new edition and whatever changes and assumptions it creates for the game will frame whatever subsequently comes out in future books. So let's talk ice cream.

If I like rocky road and twists upon it, and the new edition declares that rocky road was a silly flavor that needlessly included marshmallow and peanuts when obviously people only wanted chocolate, therefore all future stuff will be chocolate only including ice cream selections that had earlier been based around rocky road or even strawberry sorbet, it's going to have a downstream effect on getting new twists on rocky road.

It then comes off as a bit insulting when somebody comes along and says, "Well just make rocky road at home for yourself." That's just rubbing someone's face in changes that they don't like on a very basic level - effectively saying, "Well that's tough. I like just chocolate and so should you." People might not mean to say that or have it come off that way, but it does.

I think the thing that gets left out in your little analogy is that D&D does not go away once you play it. Ice cream, once eaten, is not worth getting back.

So suppose you've been eating Rocky Road for the past 10 years and then the company that's been making the rocky road comes out and says "okay, y'know, we've been making rocky road for the past 10 years, and along side your core rulebooks, you have plenty of supplemental material to last you another several decades, not to mention the 3rd party support, so I think it's safe to say you guys have enough to yourselves, so we'll leave you to it. We're gonna start making strawberry flavor for the guys who don't eat rocky road but still want their 10 years, and after that we'll try sherbet. So let's pass the torch, and hell, if you like strawberry too, feel free to come along." I don't see what's wrong with this. Everyone who complains about 4e not being as OMGROXXORS as 3e should realize if WotC and TSR decided they didn't want to move their game along you wouldn't even have a 3e.

 

[catsclaw227]

I think the thing that gets left out in your little analogy is that D&D does not go away once you play it. Ice cream, once eaten, is not worth getting back.

The other part that gets left out is the fact that there is already a TON of rocky road out there readily available to be bought and enjoyed, along with some more rocky road already being made by other companies. Ironically, some of the people that get really upset about this change in rocky road already own enough rocky road to last them two lifetimes.

 

[darjr]

enough rocky road to last them two lifetimes.

Wooha! Stop. There is never ENOUGH rocky road.

 

[I'm A Banana]

That mixing of material plane visitors may be a casualty of 4e's cosmology changes sadly, since the default assumes a single world as "The World". Of course that runs counter to classical Sigil with people from Toril rubbing shoulders with those from Greyhawk, Ortho, Krynn, Cerilia, Mystara, many hundreds of unnamed worlds, and even a small ghetto from Athas.

Actually, if the Dragon magazine entry on the Mercykillers is anything to go by, there will still be this aspect of Sigil -- Arwyl Swan's Son was mentioned as specifically from Toril.

It's not exactly pure canon, but it puts the idea of "alternate Worlds" in 4e, so there is precedence.