Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[pemerton]

I don't understand why the Blood Wars are so reviled, and yet the Crystal Spheres and Neogi seem to pass without comment.

Spelljammer seems not to have had the same impact. I don't remember much presence of it at all in the 3E books I've read, and in 4e it seems to turn up mostly in the form of Spelljamming ships as a 30th level item, and as plane travel devices they're actually kind of cool.

I didn't find that Planescape Lore/Cosmology did any of that (not more than 2e did natively, anyway). Certainly its influence outside its own campaign setting was less than 4e's cosmology. Which makes it odd for me to hear 4e fans grumble about Planescape in that context.

I'm not carrying a torch for the 4e treatment of FR. (Nor the 3E treatment. I don't care about FR.)

In terms of the "occult/gnostic" features of Planescape, though, here's an example of what I mean (from the other thread):

For just a MM entry, I'm actually in favor of being silent on the subject. For a 'loth specific book, go all in, but the MM should present the core of their being as greedy, self-centered, devious evil that sells their services to the highest bidder, with some sages suspecting something deeper, darker, and more manipulative beyond that for the race as a whole. You can hint at earlier lore without strictly saying it's true, and giving both PS fans a nod and not locking everyone else into that body of lore if they choose to go a different route.

For clarity, my concern is not with secrets. It's with secrets that invalidate the cosmological assumptions within which the players have framed the choices for their PCs and their play more generally.

That's part-and-parcel of Call of Cthulhu, but CoC is expressly about hanging on for the GM's ride. I personally don't like it being generalised into D&D.

 

[Hussar]

You know, not to get into edition-wars (as opposed to setting wars), buuut... I'm finding it a little ironic that Planescape is being brought up as the example of intrusive fluff when alot of 4e's fluff and it's cosmology were not only applied to core but also to the other D&D settings that hadn't had it before.... even if that meant retconning the setting itself so that 4e's fluff and asumptions fit.

Just sayin... shouldn't 4e's fluff be the focus, as opposed to Planescape, if we want to send the designers a clear message that we want less intrusive setting assumptions and fluff... or is this just a smokescreen for planescape setting hate as opposed to a thread about the general principle of expressing that less setting canon and assumptions are better?

Actually, I would agree with this Imaro. I wouldn't want 4e angels to be forced into 5e any more than I want Planescape flavour forced into 5e.

But, the thing is, we're not seeing hardly any 4e flavour being forced into 5e, so, that's a pretty dead issue.

And, the other big issue isn't so much the flavour itself, it's the chilling effect of Planescape fans trying to force their one vision of how things are into the core of the game. Any change to any PS related element is judged, not on how good the change might be, but on how well it follows PS setting specific canon.

I have no real problem adding in PS flavour to the game. I don't like it particularly, but, I don't dislike it because it's from Planescape. I dislike it because any deviation is viewed as a bad thing. We cannot have any new ideas unless they are first vetted to be PS Compatible.

 

[Hussar]

I didn't find that Planescape Lore/Cosmology did any of that (not more than 2e did natively, anyway). Certainly its influence outside its own campaign setting was less than 4e's cosmology. Which makes it odd for me to hear 4e fans grumble about Planescape in that context.

OTOH, I'm not a fan of that sort of "lore bleed" in either case (despite generally liking Planescape). When I look at it, I wonder why Planescape "bled" so much more than Spelljammer. Especially since, to my eyes, Planescape seems to provoke disproportionate resentment. For instance, I don't understand why the Blood Wars are so reviled, and yet the Crystal Spheres and Neogi seem to pass without comment. ::shrug::

Spelljammer did breed a great deal of contempt. But, beyond that, Spelljammer never really bled into any other supplement. Spelljammer added a bunch of monsters on top of standard D&D, like Neogi, but didn't really change too many existing one. And the changes that they did make stayed specific to Spelljammer.

PS, OTOH, bled all over everything. Every single planar supplement had to deal with the Blood War or PS themes. You could no longer have demons and devils as anything other than enemies, despite there being no real reason, in core anyway, why that was. Why can't demons and devils work together? Makes sense to me. Team Evil works together to defeat Team Good. Why can't a Pit Fiend have Vrock bodyguards? Heck, go the other way around. I imagine that a Balor would trust devil bodyguards much more than demonic ones, just because of alignment.

But, I can't do that after 2e. Demons and devils must be enemies.

That's the problem I have here. It's that PS lore, unlike the lore of any other specific setting, has come to dominate an entire aspect of the game. All planar stuff must draw on PS lore and I can't, for the life of me, understand why. No other setting gets to do this. No fans of any other setting get to do this either.

 

[Obryn]

The sidebars reiterate that Athas's crystal sphere cannot be opened, and assert that trying to get through the Grey to reach the Astral or Ethereal is very hard - basically, you have a large percentage chance (larger for the Astral Plane) of failing, and getting lost in the Grey (at which point you can only return to your point of origin, and not continue towards your destination).

The silly part here is the assertion that Athas has to have a crystal sphere and exists in the same continuity as Spelljammer.

-O

 

[Alzrius]

The silly part here is the assertion that Athas has to have a crystal sphere and exists in the same continuity as Spelljammer.

I disagree.

 

[Obryn]

I disagree.

Don't get me wrong - I love Spelljammer. I love Dark Sun more, mind you, but I think Spelljammer's pretty awesome. TSR's conceit that all its settings needed to exist alongside another, complete with crazy ways to jam Athas in the same continuity but blocked off in ways that it might as well not be, was not awesome.

Sometimes it's fine for a D&D setting to be its own thing, you know?

-O

 

[Alzrius]

Don't get me wrong - I love Spelljammer. I love Dark Sun more, mind you, but I think Spelljammer's pretty awesome. TSR's conceit that all its settings needed to exist alongside another, complete with crazy ways to jam Athas in the same continuity but blocked off in ways that it might as well not be, was not awesome.

Sometimes it's fine for a D&D setting to be its own thing, you know?

Once again, I disagree.

Slightly more seriously though, it's not a "conceit" that there was a meta-setting; I think that the meta-setting was a good thing, since it allowed for cross-setting elements to occur, but they never dominated (despite some people's hysterical claims otherwise). This is why you could have your cake and eat it too where, say, having Dark Sun and Spelljammer were concerned. Yes, they exist in the same continuity, but so what? There are enough barriers there that there's no practical impact unless you want there to be, in which case you have a vehicle for making it happen - everybody wins.

 

[Hussar]

Alzrius, I disagree that I'm being hysterical. Once TSR forced the meta-setting onto every 2e product, players started coming forward all the time wanting to play Race X from Setting Y in Campaign Z. Suddenly I had players clamouring to play Kender in a Greyhawk campaign. Or Krynnish Minotaurs in my homebrew.

And all the way along, TSR is telling them, "Go ahead. Your DM, if he's playing D&D, should allow this. After all, all the planes connect, so, why not yours?" It led to an awful lot of mix and match campaigns that I really think made for bad games.

I mean, if you're playing in a Forgotten Realms (2e) campaign, and the player is high enough level to cast planar travel spells, then, by the book, he should be able to start hopping around different settings.

I'd much, much prefer settings to remain distinct, at least in publication. If you want to mix and match your home game? Go right ahead. But, it's harder to start taking your chocolate out of my peanut butter after the fact. Particularly if I want to buy things like supplements and modules, all of which are going to assume a level of mixing that is not applicable to my game.

I don't get why I have to do the work of taking Planescape, or whatever, out of my setting, just so you can have it. You're the one who wants to play Planescape, shouldn't you be the one who has to do the work? Why does my Savage Tide AP end in a giant Planescape setting when it's set in Greyhawk? Shouldn't my Savage Tide AP end in a Greyhawk specfic setting? Sure, it might be in the Abyss, but, what's this Eladrin Court and Gwynharrwyf (sp) doing in there?

 

[Obryn]

Once again, I disagree.

Slightly more seriously though, it's not a "conceit" that there was a meta-setting; I think that the meta-setting was a good thing, since it allowed for cross-setting elements to occur, but they never dominated (despite some people's hysterical claims otherwise). This is why you could have your cake and eat it too where, say, having Dark Sun and Spelljammer were concerned. Yes, they exist in the same continuity, but so what? There are enough barriers there that there's no practical impact unless you want there to be, in which case you have a vehicle for making it happen - everybody wins.

I think this is a taste thing. I thought Spelljammer was at its strongest when it was just trying to be Spelljammer. Illithid nautiloids, neogi with dominated umber hulks, sailing on the phlogiston, the weird intricacies of helms, giff with pistols, giant space hamsters...

I thought it was at its weakest when it was mostly a tool to say, "Now there's tinker gnomes in the Forgotten Realms." If you wanted that sort of experience, we already had planar travel, which covered it adequately. Spelljammer was great because of Spelljamming.

-O

 

[Ratskinner]

Alzrius, I disagree that I'm being hysterical. Once TSR forced the meta-setting onto every 2e product, players started coming forward all the time wanting to play Race X from Setting Y in Campaign Z. Suddenly I had players clamouring to play Kender in a Greyhawk campaign. Or Krynnish Minotaurs in my homebrew.

And all the way along, TSR is telling them, "Go ahead. Your DM, if he's playing D&D, should allow this. After all, all the planes connect, so, why not yours?" It led to an awful lot of mix and match campaigns that I really think made for bad games.

That's the same effect "everything is core" had, IME. Although, I can't say I found the same to be true in the 2e era (outside of Planescape or Spelljammer campaigns). YMMV, obviously. I wonder if it correlates with usage of published adventures. I rarely use them and never found the PS stuff intrusive into 2e core materials otherwise.*

Also, Spelljammer (1989) was a meta-setting several years before Planescape (1994). Kender could happily make it to Greyhawk before the Blood Wars even made it into MC8 (1991). I think its just a (bad) side effect of a company trying to leverage productline A to sell productline B.

*Having recently perused a purportedly complete listing of all 2e products, let me just say....DANG! there's a lot of FR adventures.