Having just got
Dragon #321, and having read the editorial (and letter sections), I'm rather disturbed about a trend I'm seeing in how Paizo deals with established campaigns.
The editorial for that issue consisted of Matthew Sernett talking about the established D&D cosmology, the Great Wheel. He talks about how it's the best and worst feature of D&D...seems rather ambivalent so far. What irked me was that he posted a positive, and then immediately posted the same thing for a negative...I could be wrong here, but I got the impression he was undercutting what he'd just said on purpose, as though trying to prove a point.
The last few paragraphs seem to make that point clear. After telling us how much he enjoys the D&D Great Wheel, he then says that the "interrelations of gods, afterlife, the planes, and the concept of infinity never received the concentrated thought necessary for them to make any sense." He then also points out that most DMs only use the planes for high-level playing.
The part that gave me the shudders though was that, after making a pointed reference to the
Planar Handbook, he says that the entire cosmology needs to be redesigned.
Matthew, did you never play
Planescape? A significant portion of what you talk about was addressed in that campaign line. To go point for point:
Bad: The planes are infinite! Let's take Bytopia as an example. On that plane, the sky is filled with another plane. You look up and see distant lakes, forests, and mountains. This idea is great on the surface, but what's under all that infinite ground on two planes? Infinite earth. The interesting part of the plane is sandwiched between two areas of earth and stone that continue endlessly down (or up, dependng on your perspective).
How many angels are in Heaven? D&D doesn't say, but they must be infinite to keep the infinite number of evil creatures coming from their infinite planes. If there is an endless supply of angels, why don't they help out more on the Material Plane? They can't all be aloof.
The comments on Bytopia are probably the best example of thin logic in regards to the planes. That said, because there's nothing said either way, DM creativity is easily able to solve this. The solution I used was that, after burrowing down a number of miles (as a rule of thumb, I had that number of miles be equal to the distance between the surfaces of the two layers of Bytopia), you suddenly break ground...on the surface opposite the one you started tunneling from. It wasn't that hard to implement, and it didn't run counter to any established rules.
Likewise, in terms of distances and space (I'll deal with creatures next), Bytopia is perhaps the only real example that needs thought like this, because none of the others do. The next closest examples are Gehenna (four finite mountains in infinite void), and Celestia (seven mountains as part of a single mountain, all on an island in an infinite sea of holy water), and these have even received (albeit cursory) examination in regards to (in)finity in various
Planescape products.
Likewise, on the subject of angels and other denizens has been addressed. Numerous products talk about how the tanar'ri (probably just demons now), are infinite, versus the numerous but finite baatezu. That already breaks wide open the idea that angels must be infinite, or that any other race must be.
Likewise, the idea of Outsiders being infinite, and therefore should be helping the Material Plane in huge numbers, seems to ignore that the material plane is itself infinite. If you have only a subset of infinite creatures helping out on the totality of an infinite plane, you aren't going to see too many results personally...not to mention that we've also seen plenty of products, both about celestials (
Warriors of Heaven) and otherwise talking about why celestial aid on the Prime isn't overt.
Bad: You can adventure in Heaven and Hell! Sure, the planes are a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Wait a minute...yes you would! Why not simply go to one of the god planes and live out an idyllic existence free from care? It's where you'll go when you die. Heck, why not skip the whole life part and go straight to Heaven?
Again, this point just doesn't seem plane-specific. This is basically asking, "Why adventure when you can relax at home?", which is true of anywhere. People adventure because they want to...it doesn't make that much of a difference if they'd be cooling their heels in a tavern in their hometown, or a tavern in Celestia...PCs adventure because that's what makes the game fun, and in-character, because they have things that motivate them beyond living comfortably - even in an opulent mansion you can be bored, and want some excitement. Don't point the question of "why risk life and limb" as a problem solely for Heaven.
Bad: You can visit the homes of the gods! Pelor not answering your prayers? Why not ask him in person? What does Pelor do in Elysium anyway? Why doesn't he come down and help out? Why not ask him? If you don't like his answer, you an visit some other deity and ask her. What stops you from asking deities all kinds of questions and begging for varieties of aid? Do they all hide from you? Do they all have bureaucratic underlings that demand an appointment? Do they all get angry?
Again, this has been covered...the various PS supplements talked about the gods...usually over and over again.
On Hallowed Ground is just one example.
That said, does it really seem outlandish to answer "yes" to any of the above questions? Let's try something; in the above paragraph, replace the word "god" (or "deity") with "world leader", and imagine what it would be like if you tried to do that (be it in a D&D world or in the real world). Suddenly it doesn't seem so abstract, does it? Now multiply that by several orders of magnitude, since these beings are actual, honest-to-alignment GODS, and you see why these questions seem somewhat ridiculous.
Add this to the fact that most DMs consider the planes appropriate for only high-level play, and we end up with a situation where the most imaginitive apsect of D&D rarely sees use in most games.
I can't speak for "most DMs" (can anyone?), but my answer to this is just:
Planescape. 'nuff said.
...to truly suit the needs of play, the cosmology needs to be wholly redesigned. Sure we should keep the sacred cows, but the rest should find their way to the chopping block.
I don't know about you, but I'm hungry for hamburger.
There's a reason why hamburgers are bad for you (and I don't mean mad cow disease).
Having made all those points, the reason the thread title intimates doom is because Paizo's magazines are the last rallying points (official websites notwithstanding) for the discontinued campaign worlds (who else would give us new official material?)...and talk like this is making me edgy.
We've heard an editorial like this before, from Erik Mona just before the
Spelljammer mini-game was released...which contained almost no elements of the original campaign at all.
Likewise, the recent
Dark Sun articles, once digested by the community, were not well-received for how they were done...not because they weren't done well, but because they WERE done well, and then were edited to something that wasn't as good...so much so that Dave Noonan himself felt the need to distance himself from the edited version.
(Perhaps not so coincidentally, this issue contains four letters about
Dark Sun, three who loved it to death, and one who didn't. One of them even says that the "cranky whiners" of the WotC forums and EN World do not represent the majority of
Dark Sun fans...again, is there a national registry of fans of which I remain unaware?)
Paizo responds by pointing out that A) they have limited space for these articles, and B) even the old fans can't agree on what an update should look like.
While it's obvious that these are two very valid points, there is a difference between "breezing over details and cutting out concepts" and actively changing concepts...the same way that there are some concepts which most fans agree are too integral to cut out (at least without changing the setting in significant ways). It isn't breezing over details to say there are paladins on Athas...that's an out-and-out alteration. It isn't "cutting out concepts" to have spelljamming helms be able to be made by any spellcaster with the relevant item creation feat...it's a deliberate change. I'm not advocating that campaigns need to be frozen, but there is a very clear difference between changes made to the in-character features of a campaign (who is alive, who rules what area), and the mechanical aspects of it (what geography it covers, how magic works, the classes/races allowed, etc).
I'm not saying Paizo needs to give us more than they possibly could (be it altogether, or in terms of page count), nor am I suggesting that they need to cover every detail...what bothers me is when established parts of a setting are deliberately changed (and having something major to the campaign be completely absent is a change, since its too integral to just cut out). This has been done twice now, with results being mixed at best, to disliked at worst, and I'm worried that the wind seems to be blowing in that same direction for a third time.
Conversely, you don't want to change things just because you don't want to look it up.
