Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[Cyberen]

Because the Planescape Slaad is the "core" D&D Slaad (actually, the only D&D slaad). OD&D and 1e (the Greyhawk default setting) said "these monsters are from the Outer Planes."

"The only D&D slaad" is abusive, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said in the other thread concerning daemons/'loths.
I don't mean to be controversial, though. I just think it would be more inclusive to consider Planescape as a particular setting, rather than planar core.

 

[pemerton]

The name Great Wheel itself comes from PS if I'm not mistaken. IIRC, the 1e PHB had the planes in a box, not a circle.

A square in the PHB; a circle in DDG. And as far as I know you are right that "the Great Wheel" is a Planescape term.

I sooo like the name Outlands better than Concordant Opposition. Sounds like something a sage would call it instead of someone whose actually been there.

Concordant Opposition is a really clunky name. Wasn't it Jeff Grubb that came up with it in MotP rather than Gary? Not sure Outlands was great choice for a plane that was put in the middle of the other outer planes though.

To the best of my knowledge, "Concordant Opposition" first appeared in DDG - author credits are James Ward and Rob Kuntz. In Gygax's PHB there was no "true neutral" plane, which I think fitted with the idea that clerics couldn't be neutral and only druids could. But all the neutral gods in DDG obviously needed a home, as did Boccob and the other Greyhawk gods with true neutral clerics!

I prefer Concordant Opposition to the Outlands as a name for a plane of true neutrality - the former, but not the latter, actually conveys something of the thematic idea of the plane. The fact that is sounds slightly sage-y or outlandish (!) is a virtue, in my view, for the name of an outer plane.

On the other hand, especially for monster descriptions, I want it to be as detailed as possible. If you don't use Planescape lore, you're senselessly ignoring tons of detail that has been added over the years.

If there's only a little detail, then every DM has to come up with details for every monster they want to use. See the problem there?

Personally I don't see the problem. And I don't want as much detail as possible. For me, a big part of RPGing is (together with my players) creating my own fiction, rather than immersing myself in fiction that someone else already created. Monster details that are suggestive of trope and theme are good; monster details that answer all the questions before play even starts, less so.

If they commit to carrying forward established lore, they shouldn't contradict established lore.

<snip>

the Planescape Slaad is the "core" D&D Slaad (actually, the only D&D slaad). OD&D and 1e (the Greyhawk default setting) said "these monsters are from the Outer Planes." Forgotten Realms had those creatures, and said they were from those same Outer Planes. MotP and Planescape came along and said "You know those Outer Planes we're always talking about? Here's more details about them and the creatures that come from there." The Planes were never a separate setting.

Planescape didn't create its own new versions of these creatures; it built on the lore that was already there.

I personally don't care about the semantics of "new" vs "building". The point for me is that, having mostly skipped Planescape, when I picked up 3E planar stuff (eg the MotP) it was full of this lore that I didn't recognise from my old MMs and my old (Jeff Grubb) MotP.

For me, that lore is new, it's at odds with my game, and it's not really something that I care for. The fact that it doesn't contradict anything in my old books is neither here nor there for me; it contradicts what I was doing with those books.

Don't "repurpose" monsters, because then you are taking something away from the people who liked the previous version.

OK, but this applies equally to Planescape, which "repurposed" the daemons from D3, the DMG, Fiend Folio and MM2 into these "yugoloth" things that I don't really recognise. Why is that repurposing permitted, but other repurposings out of bounds?

From a Planescape perspective, the core game's vague descriptions represent what "everyone knows" about the Planes, and then the Planescape product goes on to show that it's not like that at all.

This is a big part of why I don't like Planescape. I don't mind backstory, but I dislike backstory that invalidates the known lore and tends to make PCs (and their players) look like fools. In Planescape, I find that this tends to be further combined with a slightly annoying form of cynical relativism.

 

[GX.Sigma]

"The only D&D slaad" is abusive, as @pemerton said in the other thread concerning daemons/'loths.

Point taken. Maybe "only" was a bit of an exaggeration, anyway--I haven't looked into it much, but the 4e slaads might be different enough to be considered a separate version.

I personally don't care about the semantics of "new" vs "building". The point for me is that, having mostly skipped Planescape, when I picked up 3E planar stuff (eg the MotP) it was full of this lore that I didn't recognise from my old MMs and my old (Jeff Grubb) MotP.

For me, that lore is new, it's at odds with my game, and it's not really something that I care for. The fact that it doesn't contradict anything in my old books is neither here nor there for me; it contradicts what I was doing with those books.

Sure, but that's not unique to Planescape. If you'd been playing with planar creatures and planar travel for years (making up your own details) before the MotP came out, you might have found its new lore to be contradictory to what you were already doing. Does that mean it was wrong to publish the MotP? Does it mean we should retcon it out of existence? If you'd been playing in the Forgotten Realms for years before Waterdeep and the North came out... etc. This happens whenever you add detail to anything.

 

[Cyberen]

Maybe, but my point was the same as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] (but I can't write as well, so I rely on him conveying the point !) : Some of us were playing with those planar buggers before PlaneScape invested them with secret agendas, and it was definitely intrusive, and unnecessarily heavy-handed (as 2e take on cosmology was, as was said, to keep silent in the core and over detailed in Planescape). Giving every monster a couple of hooks is definitely a good idea (I would say a requirement). Stuffing them in an overarching story is IMO over the top in the core, and self-defeating in an inclusive edition.

 

[pemerton]

Sure, but that's not unique to Planescape. If you'd been playing with planar creatures and planar travel for years (making up your own details) before the MotP came out, you might have found its new lore to be contradictory to what you were already doing. Does that mean it was wrong to publish the MotP?

No, but MotP is not a core book. Also, on one or the other of these threads, multiple posters have talked about a MotP that emphasises options. A simple example is the 4e MotP, which explains how to reproduce the Great Wheel using 4e mechanics and conventions; a more complex example, I think, is the sample cosmologies in the 3E DDG.

 

[Campbell]

My primary issue with Planescape, and I know this will not go over well here, is it advocated a view of the game in which setting material became important for its own sake rather than as a tool to create an interesting adventures. Particularly galling to me was the notion that it connected every setting, and that Sigil was the true center of the multiverse. Add in elements like the Lady of Pain, raising Demon Lords to the heights of deities, etc. All together it was as deprotagonizing as early Vampire.

 

[RichGreen]

My primary issue with Planescape, and I know this will not go over well here, is it advocated a view of the game in which setting material became important for its own sake rather than as a tool to create an interesting adventures. Particularly galling to me was the notion that it connected every setting, and that Sigil was the true center of the multiverse. Add in elements like the Lady of Pain, raising Demon Lords to the heights of deities, etc. All together it was as deprotagonizing as early Vampire.

There was a lot of setting material, but there were also around a dozen adventures. I ran quite a few of these and they were pretty good. My one regret is I never got a chance to run Dead Gods.

Cheers


Rich

 

[pemerton]

My primary issue with Planescape, and I know this will not go over well here, is it advocated a view of the game in which setting material became important for its own sake rather than as a tool to create an interesting adventures. Particularly galling to me was the notion that it connected every setting, and that Sigil was the true center of the multiverse. Add in elements like the Lady of Pain, raising Demon Lords to the heights of deities, etc. All together it was as deprotagonizing as early Vampire.

I tend to agree (although the bit about demon lords being deities goes back to the 1st ed AD&D DDG - so I don't think Planescape can be blamed for that).

But I do find it more about setting for its own sake, than play. I have a copy of the much-vaunted Dead Gods, and it strikes me personally as unplayable because of the degree of railroading that would be required; likewise Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which at least presents itself as being in the Planescape style.

For a contrary view, though, I'll call on [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], who took me to task a couple of years ago when I first expressed an opinion similar to yours!

 

[Balesir]

What, Specifically, I Liked About Planescape

Well, there seems to be a whole slew of reasons folks dislike Planescape - some of which I see as good reasons, others seem to be picking on PS as a symptom of wider issues and others still seem to me to be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So, I thought I would explain a couple of angles which contribute to why I liked Planescape. It's not that I don't think it had flaws - and I have already said that I think the old "nine point" alignment system and the associated "Great Wheel" cosmology was unneccessary and even unhelpful for it - but I think it got a few important things right.

1) The "Economy of Souls"

Much as I like the 4E World Axis cosmology, it introduced one feature that I really dislike; that the majority of the souls of dead folks just "disappear". One of the great things, for me, in Planescape was the idea that all dead folks' essences go to the plane of the core of their belief. The reason is simple.

If every dead soul is another pair of hands for the core of their own belief, then just killing folk will never win the ultimate conflict - that between ideals. If the dead just "go", then "just kill them all" becomes a viable strategy; attrition is the logical way to fight the war of beliefs.

One of my favourite storylines in the PS I ran concerned a powerful devil. This was actually the result of a random encounter in the upper layer of the Nine Hells when the PCs were quite low level. I thought it was a TPK, for sure, until I realised that the devil had, literally, nothing to gain by killing the PCs. If the PCs died, they would go to the homes of their respective gods' domains and swell the armies of good there - a net loss for the devil! If, on the other hand, the devil could somehow trick or suborn the PCs - corrupt them or have them help in some evil plan - result!

2) The Battle of Beliefs

The Factions' beliefs and the Sigillians' outlook, whether you want it to be "the Truth (TM)" or not, makes sense from the perspective of a neutral demi-plane with links to all "outer" planes. None of them - given D&D's "facts" - were demonstrably false. That makes for interesting conflicts - and interesting conflicts are the core of roleplaying, in my view.

Take the the Guv'nors and Athar, for example. They raise questions that are actually interesting. Is there a schema or "set of rules" that act as the "physics" that explains how all the planes work? What is it that makes the gods more than just "very powerful monsters"?

3) The Blood War

Having lots of nasty, powerful demons and devils is fun for a D&D-type game. They make great foes and represent something primal in the human psyche. But I wondered for a long time why they didn't make the cosmos a grim and hopeless place throughout.

If you have actual planes of existence full of demonic hordes, it follows that every non-demonic creature has to become a grim, hard warrior, ready at any time to fight the demon foe or simply face extinguishment. "Parallel planes" actually means that they are everywhere. Always. You just can't interact with them. Yet.

Unless something else distracts them. And that's where the Blood War comes in. It makes sense of a universe with hordes of powerful creatures bent on conquest/destruction with no restraining features that is not either overrun or in perpetual war.

It also contributes another interesting conflict. By that I mean that, if a setting is to have a war as a feature, having the war one of evil vs. evil (or of good vs. good) is far more interesting than having it be good vs. evil.

To the question "what do heroes do about the situation?", in the latter case the answers are already writ: "help the white hats and kill the black hats" (for whatever your own definition of hat colour might be).

In a war between two sides for whom you have roughly equal revulsion (or sympathy), however, the question is much more interesting!

Finally - The Not

To round off - what are not the reasons I like Planescape?

First - the names. Look at the real world around you. We might like to keep neat labels and clear definitions, but it just doesn't happen "out there"."The Outlands" is just what the folks in Sigil call the "Plane of Concordant Opposition" because they have a model in their heads with some mad scheme of Sigil being atop a big mountain in the "middle" (now there's a BS concept for an infinite plane!!) of the plane. They are the "outlands" because they are "outside Sigil". A daft notion, to be sure, but even the most cursory glance at the "real world" will show you that being daft is hardly a bar to a concept having common currency! Eladrin, Archons - whatever - I don't really care what stuff is called in the rules texts. Different folk in my imaginary worlds will call stuff by different names anyway. In the meantime, if you go to Paris looking for the Eiffel Tower and some guy in a ten gallon hat looks at you funny - tell him Ms. Hilton sent you.

Second - the arrangement of "the planes". The idea that three-dimensional concepts like "above", "below" and "distance between" can be applied to infinite planes of existence is just plain barmy (and, no - that's not "cant" - it's good old English!).

Third - the "cant". I can't say that it bothers me that much - it's almost entirely cockney rhyming slang, and even though it's highly anomalous at least it represents recognition that world separated by "dimensions" would very likely develop different habits of speech. I find it mildly entertaining (at best), but it's not really a "feature" that attracts me. I guess my neutrality might possibly be because I understand it perfectly well at first reading - maybe if my native habits of speech were further apart from it it would bug me more? I don't know.

 

[Balesir]

My primary issue with Planescape, and I know this will not go over well here, is it advocated a view of the game in which setting material became important for its own sake rather than as a tool to create an interesting adventures. Particularly galling to me was the notion that it connected every setting, and that Sigil was the true center of the multiverse. Add in elements like the Lady of Pain, raising Demon Lords to the heights of deities, etc. All together it was as deprotagonizing as early Vampire.

My post above I think explains what I think PS had that went beyond the (very in-vogue at the time) "spoon fed story" and "railroad-esque" elements that, I agree, would be well left behind. But some of the stuff you cite I think is a question of perspective. The idea the "Sigil was the true center of the multiverse", for example, I see as something that the natives of Sigil think and maybe even believe - typical bloody nationalistic twaddle!! The idea that Sigil is the "centre" of an infinite universe - never mind an infinite multiverse - however just shows that someone doesn't really understand what the word "infinite" means!!