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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5448405" data-attributes="member: 2067">Not bad ideas! I didn't stick Elysium in the Feywild since I didn't want to de-fang the Feywild that much, and wanted Elysium to function as a place where all virtuous souls go to rest (including things that would normally hate the feywild). I think I'm going to go with the "elite gated community of Good" idea, where Elysium is a plane of rest for those that did good deeds, lead virtuous lives, and were generally Great Folks, but not everyone gets to go there. You've gotta EARN your eternal rest...and those that have are not going to be interested in leaving (the Guardinals are almost as much jailers as they are protectors of that peace).[sblock=Using the Good Planes]The "Good Planes" have had a historical problem of not being very useful in the game because there's not a whole lot of reason to use them. Aside from a few narrow adventures, the party didn't have much of a reason to travel to Bytopia or Arcadia, or Elyisum. This is a problem we can remedy in this new layout.Firstly, there are fewer of them. "Mashing together" some of the planes at least in name has added some underlying conflict to places that didn't have much. Arcadia being inside Celestia puts the "Law vs. Good" conflict more starkly in the face of any travelers to that mountain, and can be cause for the party to go in and beat upon some well-intentioned extremists. K'un Lun inside Celestia keeps competing philosophies in close contact, giving rise to disagreements that party members can mediate. Bytopia inside Elysium keeps the place rugged and challenging to move over (and a little monster-infested), giving ample opportunity for risky exploration and the occasional wandering beastie, while Avalon inside Elysium is a place to hide powerful artifacts or forgotten heroes who can reveal information. This makes it easy to use the conflicts of other planes when visiting the Good Planes.Secondly, emphasizing that the planes are not based on alignment, but on a cosmological need brings more possible types of beings into the place. Celestia is not a plane of Lawful Good, it is a plane of militaristic crusades and dramatic self-sacrifice. It honors the zealous as much as the over-zealous, and since one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist, it is likely to contain some villains in its noble peaks, and ENTIRELY likely to contain some "heretics." Elysium is not a plane of Pure Good, it is a plane of rest and reward for the virtuous, who shut themselves off from the rest of the multiverse and live life in idyllic splendor, with war and death and destruction on the other side. It is implied that even in these places of reward and justice, of peace and purity, that the multiverse is broken, and that it is up to the party to change that, to put their own stamp on the way reality works.Thirdly, the Planescape idea of player characters with deep philosophical convictions going out and changing the planes generates its own conflict with these places. How would the party change Elysium or Celestia? How will they fix what is broken, and how will the existing planar residences react to that? The characters bring conflict with them, wherever they go.Of course, none of the planes need to be used at all. Celestia and Elysium can also be places that heroes are only from, paladins and clerics (and warlocks and assassins and whatever) who have left paradise to help those outside of it, heroes for that alone. They don't need to feature in any plot, and can be safely "out there somewhere" without needing to be necessarily present in the game in a big way. They're still useful concepts for a Planescape game in this case, giving a way that a largely unadulterated old-fashioned Good vs. Evil heroism can come into the game, which can serve as an interesting point in a philosophically heavy game that explores the limits of that way of viewing the world. As an aside, the "other good planes," Arborea and the Beastlands and Ysgard and the like, always were a bit more dangerous and interesting because of their chaotic bent. Melding them with the Feywild (or in Ysgard's case, the Elemental Chaos) brings all of the Feywild's troubles with it, including fomorians and worldfalling eladrin and flesh-eating feybeasts and everything else.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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