Does anyone else hate the planes?

[Gnarlo]

Well, it really doesn't matter whjat other people are doing in their campaigns does it? I mean if that were a factor then all the core classes would have to go into this "Drow File" as well.

Very true, and I've never said otherwise and couldn't care less what other people do in their games. However, the topic of this thread is "does anyone else hate the planes" and I believed that giving a bit more of a reason than just "yes" would be a better answer to the question .

Actually, I didn't answer the question truthfully, as "hate" is too strong a word, "tired of" would be better. It's an irrational "tiredness", just like the hatred for that ol' Drow Ranger among certain people. But it's mine, and I take it out for walks and clean up after it, and there you have it

 

[Nellisir]

I've thought about dumping all the planes except the Ethereal. I mean, you don't "need" any of them. Shadow creatures are normal creatures infused with darkness -- like tainted creatures in Rokugan. Celestials and fiends are soulless pseudo-life constructs that embody ideals or beliefs -- they don't need to "live" anywhere. Elementals are created when they're summoned. Genies live in the desert.

I'd only keep the Ethereal because it's cool to have a place you can go to walk through walls or spy on people. Otherwise, you don't need it. All the "access the Ethereal" spells that don't actually take you there can just create an extradimensional space instead.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Crothian]

Actually, I didn't answer the question truthfully, as "hate" is too strong a word, "tired of" would be better. It's an irrational "tiredness", just like the hatred for that ol' Drow Ranger among certain people. But it's mine, and I take it out for walks and clean up after it, and there you have it

I can understand that, but when you say its because everyone does it, it sounds like that's the reason you are tired of it. If its an over used event in you own games that would make more sense.

 

[Lurker 2.0]

Yeah, Um, that would be No.

You'll have to forgive me for being biased, seeing as the first D&D book I ever touched was the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II. Nevertheless, the planes rock. (WARNING: the following post may contain far too much blather from my Ancient Philosophy class.)

Firstly, you have to have the right perspective to appreciate them. They're an infinite worlds thing. If you've got a campaign that's heavily into one tiny area and its peoples, then just ignore them.
Secondly, the Planes require just... a sort of appreciation of the nature of the Infinite. The Planes are, for the love of all that's shiny and distracting, not just "the abodes of the gods". Each Plane is described as infinite. The D&D Gods, while divine, are most definitely not infinite. You can shovel Bahamut, Heironeous (sp, stupid vowel-filled gods), the Celestial Hebdomad, Moradin, and every other god on Mount Celestia off to the side and still have a vast campaign world available to you. The Planes provide anything, with viable explanations as well. I'll admit a one-world campaign is capable of having the PCs go from a city ruled by holy paladins to a demi-nation of pure and despicable evil where the mad exert their power and the weak are fodder, but it ain't easy.
The appeal to me of the Planes is the Infinity itself. Even if there aren't infinite outer planar creatures except Tanar'ri (long story, subject for another thread), there's still hundreds of conflicts that have been waged for milennia, not to mention the all-encompassing (on the Lower Planes anyway) Blood War. You can thrust your party in between vast powers capable of smiting them easily, and then let them deal with whatever they can. You can develop intrigues in which Baatezu expatriots and fallen Asuras manipulate a druidic cult on the Outlands into rampaging across the encamped army of Yugoloths in Gehenna.
None of these themes are any different from those that you see in other campaigns or in the real world (World Wars, anyone?), but the Planes let you make the parties and locations involved truly Epic and amazing.
And I think probably the best part of the Planes is having little first level grunts figuring out stuff and dodging the millions of fatal obstacles out there, not just going with the 2e pre-Planescape "The Planes are a vacation spot for Elminster and Mordenkainen" idea.

Footnote: the Elemental/Para-Elemental/Quasi-Elemental/Energy Planes have gotten nowhere near the respect they deserve. Anyone interested in getting some really unique and exciting ideas about said locations, check out the theories on alternate natures of existance at mimir.net. (If it's still around... been ages since I checked the site.)

Also, "hating" an entire setting and vast conceptualized reality is really stupid and childish. Unless it's FR. In which case it's fine. Toril sucks. (FR lovers feel free to bash, I don't check the forums much anyway. Just FYI (OFF TOPIC, anyone who only cares about snarling about the Planes... well, you've probably already stopped reading), my beef with FR is that it has epic powered characters much like the Planes, but their world has none of the parallels - instead of incredible heroes in the midst of immesurable demon armies, you end up with level 800 Elminster sitting around in his tower while an army he could destroy with a finger slaughters loads of innocents. Also the Mandatory Divine Worship is bull.)
Rant completed. Planescape rules!

 

[jasamcarl]

This isn't really my type of thread, because i'm not into judging the 'fluff' factor of other peoples campaign, but here it goes. I have no problem with reading references to the planes, especially when its in the context of a pretty standard adventure based campaign; in that context, they act as something great, majestic, and powerful and 'out there'. This holds true even upon reading the Manual of the Planes, because, though detailed and in some ways clinically rational, they are arbitrarily so. A Great Wheel, 'its so simple, its fantastic'.

Its when I read posts about other campaigns which involve convoluted politcal schemes and the like that my mind does the following: "And then the fiend armies fought the even more powerful fiends, WHO ARE THE PCs, who had to negotiate a trade deal with the Titans blah blah blah blah blah!!!" Applying bad social science concoctions to something so abstract gives me a headache.

I do stress that this is my taste however, and I'm sure my dming could be picked apart and shown as evidence of hypociciy, so I'll back off now.

 

[DragonLancer]

I love the idea of the standard D&D planes. It fits so well with the rest of the game.

I do feel though that some mysticism needs to be kept to prevent them falling to the Planescape-esque "just another campaign area." The planes represent the epitome of alignment, they are the realms of the gods, and where the souls of the dead go. Don't just make them another place to adventure.

Saying that though, I have on occasion thought about designing a fresh planar cosmology, just never done it.

 

[Oryan77]

as "hate" is too strong a word, "tired of" would be better.

I'm trying to understand where you're coming from when you say you're "tired" of adventuring on/in the planes but I'm having a hard time making sense of it. I can understand getting tired of playing with a particular race/class (drow ranger) because maybe it's been over-used in your game and there's plenty of other options to play as. But tired of playing in a wide variety of environments? I'm just not seeing the argument here.

There's too many planes and too many levels on planes to have played them all enough to where it's being over-used. A plane is just a different environment with different natives inhabiting that environment. I don't understand how you can say you're tired of adventuring on the planes (a wide variety of environments) but be contempt with playing on the same prime material world (also just a wide variety of environments)....it's basically the same thing (an environment). Now if you're DM made you always play on the same plane and the same layers of that plane, I can see the annoyance.

The only thing I can come up with is that the complaint isn't really about PLAYING on the planes, it's just the typical argument of: "this subject is played-out now & I no longer feel special being a part of it so I'm going to shun it now". Ya know, like people do with musicians when they say they "sold out" & became too famous so they stop listening to them.

Please let me know if I'm just over-looking the reasons for the complaint. I really am interested.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I never really liked the planes for the simple reason that I refuse to believe all the cultures on a given world look at cosmology in exactly the same manner. Instead, when I am forced to use the planes, I use them with a Belief Defines Reality filter -- you see more or less what you expect to believe, but different members of the same party may see different things (re: "Erik the Viking").

Alternately, they're there, no matter how many cultures you have on how many material planes, but there's SO MUCH ROOM in the, ahem, infinite planes, that anything anyone can expect is there, somewhere.

Brad

 

[Gorilla726]

Well, I don't hate the planes but I really have a hard time understand how they work. My friend Carl loves them though.

Gorilla

 

[Buttercup]

Eh, the planes are a tool like anything else. They work in some campaigns and not in others.