Elemental Planes Killed

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I disagree that an elemental plane of water with a bottom is believable. If anything, that makes it less believable.

There are already planar boundaries between the inner planes. If you call the boundary with Earth "the bottom," all you're doing is making a semantic change from how it's been since 1E.

To have a "ground" to walk on in the plane of air makes it no longer the plane of air.

Well, it's had "pockets of earth" in it since 1E, since floating in space is A) boring and B) the Astral Plane's schtick.

The planes need work, no matter if you like them more gameable or more philosophically pure.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, I would imagine that there are a number of gamers who have transitioned through the versions. Anyone can throw out the updated fluff and revert back to an older generation for the sake of continuity, but sometimes it is a pain - especially when recruiting new players.

Why not keep it if there is a large enough population who are going to throw out whatever is put in there in favor of that which makes their games continuous from prior versions? I don't think all the DMs who are converting to 4e and have a reason to keep an elemental plane of _____ really deserve to be considered as stagnating. I think they have a realistic stake in the discussion.

If they survived the quasi- and para-elemental planes going away -- which really were very "pure" planes and hard to game with, despite the excellent write-ups they got in The Inner Planes -- I'm sure they can handle this sort of change, too.

They'll either say "huh, that IS better" or they'll say "screw that, I'm sticking with the old version," and that'll be that.

 

[Mercule]

They can do whatever they want to the elemental planes, as I have never, ever used them and don't even include them in my setting's cosmology.

Seconded. The whole "four elements" thing is rather boring, IMO.

I'm good with making the planes adventure-worthy so long as it isn't Planescapy. I absolutely love the idea of pocket realms and deific or underworld realms that touch the prime at certain places. Those are much, much, much better images than having to gate about or playing politics in Sigil (ugh, I loathe that city).

 

[Shemeska]

My hope is that the cosmological changes will excite players and actually encourage DMs to set adventures in these far-flung locales.

Based on what I've seen so far, I'm not very excited.

 

[Av3rnus]

If I were doing it (and I can be had, cheap, WotC!), I would make the Plane of Fire, I dunno, the Burning Sands of ________, a magical Arabian nights desert where actual flames lick off the sand where a terrestrial desert might have mere ripples in the air. The efreet would be the dominant race and other standards, like the azer, would be remade in more of an Arabian mold. The entire plane would be remade into caliphates and emirates and the like.

All genies would be here (and I would get rid of the Anglicized "genie" and "djinn" meaning two different things, probably by giving a new name to the latter), or in the skies above, in the mountains that border the desert or along the massive river that runs along its center.

There would be the ruins of ancient pharoanic progenitor races, including ancient pyramids, terraced cities, giant monoliths covered in ancient laws and the like, but the primary focus would be on flying carpets, sinister viziers and clever peasants. I would also have lots of mortals (what 2E would have called "primes") living at the bottom of the social structure in the genie realms as slaves and barely free peasants.

I would keep all the Arabian flavor in just this one plane and go very different directions with Earth, Water and Air.

That sounds pretty cool - I'd go for it.

I could also see combining elemental planes. Perhaps combine water/air into a single plane with a vast ocean, continents of pure ice, and relentless storms. Maybe fire/earth planes become endless underground caverns and tunnels carved by shifting rivers of fire and magma. Not only would adventurers to these planes need to worry about a wider variety of foes, but they might get drawn into conflicts between both types of elementals dwelling there.

 

[Celebrim]

Let me translate:

"We've looked around the cosmology, and there are alot of places that don't make for traditional 20'x30' or 30'x40' rooms with two doors. We couldn't see the point of all that, so we are taking them out."

Ok, that's not entirely fair. I sacrificed a certain amount of fairness in the interest of sharpening the wit. But this is entirely fair:

"Over the years, we've sold at least a half-dozen books full of fluff that show how the elemental planes can be very interesting places to adventure. Then we realized something: we aren't selling those books. So in the interest of selling these books, we are going to ignore all that fluff that has been written, pretend that there is a problem that most DMs don't actually have, and then tweak that fluff to sell new books. Great plan, huh?"

 

[pawsplay]

In BXCM D&D, all we had were the Prime Material, the Etherial, and the the Elemental Planes. It would be completely weird to me not to have them.

As for the inhospitable comment... other planes of existence are not supposed to be vacation destinations. It's supposed to take legendary magic to travel the planes, survive, and thrive.

 

[Kurotowa]

"Over the years, we've sold at least a half-dozen books full of fluff that show how the elemental planes can be very interesting places to adventure."

They have? Really? I don't think I could name two books that managed that, let alone six.

Look, they've been pretty blunt about what their goal is. Observe what people actually do with the game, and make it easier for them to do that. Of course the elemental planes have a few die hard fans, everything does. But have most groups used them regularly? Used them ever? The only time I've ever brushed against them in actual play was Bastion of Broken Souls, and that barely mattered for the actual adventure. So why not ditch them for something that has more game potential? Cause I can't argue that as they currently stand, the elemental planes are a pain in the ass to visit and don't have anything worth seeing anyway.

Sacred cow, it's what's for dinner.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Based on what I've seen so far, I'm not very excited.

I can't imagine 4E is going to mean less planar content than 3E had. Planescape fans are in the same boat as Greyhawk fans have been for almost a decade now: Hold onto the 2E version, grab anything worthwhile that comes along and can be shoe-horned in.

The fluff in someone else's game shouldn't affect yours -- lord knows there's enough truly terrible campaigns out there as-is, and hopefully no one lets them leak into their games anyway.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They have? Really? I don't think I could name two books that managed that, let alone six.

Hmmm.

1) The Inner Planes
2) Vortex of Madness
3) Book of the Lamp
4) Manual of the Planes
5) I guess Planar Handbook, but I haven't heard real praise of it.
6) I suppose Stormwrack and Sandstorm might sort of count, but they barely addressed planar locales.

Of those, I'd say 1-3 tackled the Inner Planes reasonably well, although #2 is a real mixed bag, and #3 is great only if you're interested in Arabian flavor. #4 didn't spend terribly much time on the inner planes, not enough to constitute a big sell job for them, anyway.