D&D 4E How would you re-envision Planescape with 4e?
- Thread starter Najo
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The Little Raven
First Post
Lord Zack said:
In the cosmology article. It's the second sentence about the Shadowfell. People should read it before jumping to conclusions.
IanB said:
I would like to see all suggestions. Planescape 4e doesn't have to fit with the Core 4e cosmology like Planescape 2e fit onto AD&D 2e. You can rebuild a unique cosmology seperated from the both the 4e planes and the 2e model of the great wheel.
I would like to see peoples new concepts as well as working with 4e or 2e comosologies. I think they all can work.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I think it maybe works BEST if you combine them.
4e's planes alongside 2e's planes. The Feywild and the Shadowfell and the Ethereal Plane and Acheron and the Elemental Chaos and the Elemental Planes and the Abyss and....
All of them.
In fact, take the planes from Eberron, from FR, from all the other worlds.
Throw them in, too.
2e Planescape ostensibly included EVERYTHING in EVERY SETTING, EVER. I think 4e planescape, should, too. The Great Wheel was just a diagram. Sigil is still the center of it all.
Kamikaze Midget said:
You may be on to something here. But I would be a bit more obscure. You could have the setting be based on how belief shapes reality and that there is countless worlds out there. Sigil is believed to be this unaligned city of doors at the center of all worlds. Sigil moves, the outlands around it can shift and change based on the influences of the various planes and worlds influencing it. The factions are organizations that have a hold in sigil and seek to shape the planes to their will. Planescape could have plenty of old and powerful realms tied to certain phanteons and outsiders, along with other worlds and gates to places yet known about. The lore of the setting could imply that eventual, all worlds are connected through sigil and the gateways found across the planes. Suggestions in the campaign book could tell DMs and players how to work in other settings into the planescape worlds.
Gold Roger
First Post
What is truly the essence of planescape?
-The City of Doors. There's a city that is the hub of planar travel, filled over and over with doorways that lead all over the universe.
-The Weird and Bizarre. Everything about Planescape was weird and alien. The exotic beings and characters, a city formed like a halo, the emigmatic Dabu and Lady of Pain, all those fantastic places. The rule of three
-The Power of Believe. This was realy the central part the factions and conflicts about the setting where all build around the power of belief. I don't really think we need alignment for this, in fact alignment mapped badly when it came to certain factions, like the takers or ciffers.
If I was to redo Planescape it stick to these three principles, apply them to the 4th edition cosmology and throw everything else about planescape out of the window. I'd reinterpret planescape even moreso than 4th edition reinterprets D&D flavor in general.
I wouldn't call the city Sigil and I wouldn't call the setting Planescape.
Planescapes greatest fans would propably hate me, but they would do that if I or some other just tried to rehash the setting anyway. After all no one could fit everyones or even anyones vision of what revived planescape should look like.
-The City of Doors. There's a city that is the hub of planar travel, filled over and over with doorways that lead all over the universe.
-The Weird and Bizarre. Everything about Planescape was weird and alien. The exotic beings and characters, a city formed like a halo, the emigmatic Dabu and Lady of Pain, all those fantastic places. The rule of three
-The Power of Believe. This was realy the central part the factions and conflicts about the setting where all build around the power of belief. I don't really think we need alignment for this, in fact alignment mapped badly when it came to certain factions, like the takers or ciffers.
If I was to redo Planescape it stick to these three principles, apply them to the 4th edition cosmology and throw everything else about planescape out of the window. I'd reinterpret planescape even moreso than 4th edition reinterprets D&D flavor in general.
I wouldn't call the city Sigil and I wouldn't call the setting Planescape.
Planescapes greatest fans would propably hate me, but they would do that if I or some other just tried to rehash the setting anyway. After all no one could fit everyones or even anyones vision of what revived planescape should look like.
this is what i do...
so I do DM PS (since 2E) in 3.X currently.
The changes I have in my 'universe of D&D' currently and how I will go forward in 4E.
* I do not use the great wheel as it is. I preferred to have the planes as separate dimensions almost, with a few intersecting and affecting the other's reality
* Outlands, where Sigil is located at the top of the infinately tall spire, is essentially a demiplane like ravenloft, except that this plane pocket dimension is located within the universe, but magically sealed off, at the center of time and space
With these 2 basic concepts, ANYTHING for me can be accomodated
What I am doing for 4E:
* I like the elemental chaos concept, but I have modified what I understand of it. for me, the elemental planes are their own dimensions however, they coexist almost at the same point, and thus, some areas overlap and affect the other, hence places like Dust, Ice, etc. At the center though, is a huge vortex that rends reality and goes down into the depths of the universe. THIS is vortex, if you were to fly a Ship of Chaos into it, goes down for millions of miles, and reaches a vortex that's inthe sky at the Plane of Infinite Portals (1st layer of the abyss) The abyss is still infinite like in current..instead of finite. I think the concept of an infinately 'deep' abyss is cooler
* shadowfell is an area where plane of shadow intersects negative energy plane. As well, Shadowfell/negative energy intersection is where I would place Manifest (the city in Ghostwalk)
* feywild concept I like, so it will be it's own plane, that has easy travel to Beastlands, Arborea, and maybe Elysium
* the astral sea..not a problem, I can place whatever other planes I want in there and have it turn into the general Astral plane if I see fit. I need to read more on this, but I have several envisions on what I can do with this.
As for alignment...I think it works well in 4E.
1) neutral is back...I will add it back. Since unaligned isnot the same as neutral. unaligned is like real people..we do what we want for our benefits essentially and for those closeto us, but we don't really think about, oh, we shoulddo this in balance, etc. well, some of us do, but most do not. Most people dont really feel world should be in balance, that good and bad are both necessary..that nature is important, etc. Neutral implies you believe in the sense of balance and keeping things in balance, which is different than unaligned.
2) after adding neutral back....the planes, since the creatures, many, are created from the powers of belief, magic, and the raw essense of reality itself they envision certain ideals (ie. alignment) as per what/where they are. Just like how christians may say heaven is paradise, etc and hell is bad. That's like saying those places are aligned, whether we are in real life is meaningliss as to them, those places are.
THe planes can take on each ideal as you see fit.
THose are my thoughts on it
Sorry for rambling.
Sanjay
so I do DM PS (since 2E) in 3.X currently.
The changes I have in my 'universe of D&D' currently and how I will go forward in 4E.
* I do not use the great wheel as it is. I preferred to have the planes as separate dimensions almost, with a few intersecting and affecting the other's reality
* Outlands, where Sigil is located at the top of the infinately tall spire, is essentially a demiplane like ravenloft, except that this plane pocket dimension is located within the universe, but magically sealed off, at the center of time and space
With these 2 basic concepts, ANYTHING for me can be accomodated
What I am doing for 4E:
* I like the elemental chaos concept, but I have modified what I understand of it. for me, the elemental planes are their own dimensions however, they coexist almost at the same point, and thus, some areas overlap and affect the other, hence places like Dust, Ice, etc. At the center though, is a huge vortex that rends reality and goes down into the depths of the universe. THIS is vortex, if you were to fly a Ship of Chaos into it, goes down for millions of miles, and reaches a vortex that's inthe sky at the Plane of Infinite Portals (1st layer of the abyss) The abyss is still infinite like in current..instead of finite. I think the concept of an infinately 'deep' abyss is cooler
* shadowfell is an area where plane of shadow intersects negative energy plane. As well, Shadowfell/negative energy intersection is where I would place Manifest (the city in Ghostwalk)
* feywild concept I like, so it will be it's own plane, that has easy travel to Beastlands, Arborea, and maybe Elysium
* the astral sea..not a problem, I can place whatever other planes I want in there and have it turn into the general Astral plane if I see fit. I need to read more on this, but I have several envisions on what I can do with this.
As for alignment...I think it works well in 4E.
1) neutral is back...I will add it back. Since unaligned isnot the same as neutral. unaligned is like real people..we do what we want for our benefits essentially and for those closeto us, but we don't really think about, oh, we shoulddo this in balance, etc. well, some of us do, but most do not. Most people dont really feel world should be in balance, that good and bad are both necessary..that nature is important, etc. Neutral implies you believe in the sense of balance and keeping things in balance, which is different than unaligned.
2) after adding neutral back....the planes, since the creatures, many, are created from the powers of belief, magic, and the raw essense of reality itself they envision certain ideals (ie. alignment) as per what/where they are. Just like how christians may say heaven is paradise, etc and hell is bad. That's like saying those places are aligned, whether we are in real life is meaningliss as to them, those places are.
THe planes can take on each ideal as you see fit.
THose are my thoughts on it
Sorry for rambling.
Sanjay
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