Pathfinder 1E Paizo - Scourge of Old Worlds?

[barsoomcore]

This was a light-hearted joke. I really have no problems with 3E.

Except for those stupid skinny halflings, right? I hate those little bastards.

 

[Alzrius]

A technical query for the moderators: why is it that though I started this thread, Kravell's post is now the first post on it?

 

[Nightfall]

Al,

Server timer screw up. Therefore some how you got bumped down...

 

[Alzrius]

Server timer screw up. Therefore some how you got bumped down...

Well that's annoying! I want credit for being the divisive one here!

 

[Nightfall]

You're an Archfiend. You're already divisive.

 

[Alzrius]

Hi guys.

Hi Matt!

I love this discussion. It's exactly the kind of debate that should occur around such core elements of the game.

Now this I agree with!

But I want to make it clear that Paizo is not revamping Planescape and has no plans to do so.

I didn't think you did, at least not yet, since that'd be something you yell from the rooftops. What I was trying to say was that the proverbial writing seemed to be on the wall for what would happen if such a revamp happend.

The comments in my editorial are about the core cosmology (A.K.A. the Great Wheel), not about the Planescape setting.

All things Planescape deal with the core cosmology, but not all things dealing with the core cosmology are about Planescape.

That being said, I felt this was a case where a cosmology discussion warranted mention of the setting; since something as integral as they way they're setup seems to mandate that all aspects of that cosmology be looked at, and PS is too large to ignore in that regard. You can't have a major alteration to the cosmology and not have it affect that campaign setting, in other words.

That said, my trouble with the Great Wheel cosmology (and by proxy, the Planescape cosmology) is that it doesn't provide DMs with solutions to the problems it creates, problems I alluded to in my editorial. What happens when you fly up in the Beastlands? Infinite air.

I guess I just don't see these as being problems. How many DM's had to deal with a character who did fly up in the air as high as possible? Is there anything really wrong with letting the character do that, since nothing's there? Heck, what's to stop them from doing that on the material plane (and head out into space)? This just isn't something so crippling to a campaign.

A creative and experienced DM can solve some of these problems, but the game should equip players with ways to solve problems it creates, or it should eliminate the problems (the strategy I favor). Not every DM who thinks sending the PCs to the outer planes would be cool is a DM with tons of products and years of experience, and not every experienced DM wants to deal with finding solutions to the problems.

I guess I just don't see infinity, in this regard, as being that troublesome...the other things you mentioned I responded to in my first post.

Also, please keep in mind that a magazine’s editorial is often an opinion piece meant to drive thought about a topic and debate (and letters to the editor, too). Just because the editorial appears in the official D&D magazine, it doesn’t mean that my opinions are the official stance of Wizards of the Coast (or even of all of Paizo). I’m sure there are plenty of folks at WOTC who would disagree with my assessment of the planes.

A lot of this thread has spilled over into being about WotC.

The point I was trying to get across was that I viewed Dungeon and Dragon as being the last really official place for new material on old campaign settings (again, official fansites notwithstanding). However, after feeling burned on SJ, and somewhat burned on DS (honestly, the fact that Dave Noonan's article sounded better and it was edited into something not as good is what hurt the most), I'm now feeling lukewarm to even the idea of the magazines trying to reintroduce an old campaign in anything other than bits and pieces (because the bits and pieces articles, such as Al-Qadim's Sha'ir, were great) which is really a shame, because I want to be excited and not anxious when I hear you guys are going out on a limb with something so bold and overarching in regards to the settings that I miss.

Seeing you calling for a complete overhaul of the cosmology now has me out-and-out worried that if you guys ever did a PS reintroduction, it'd have revisions (or perhaps edits to someone else's relatively faithful conversion) that'd make it practically a different animal.

 

[Desdichado]

This was a light-hearted joke. I really have no problems with 3E.

The new-look halflings are an improvement and make sense.

The separation of cosmologies is an improvement and makes sense.

Just to be technical, though, the original poster's complaints aren't against 3E; they're against campaign-setting continuity.

I know that, hence my post. That's even easier to change, especially if you have all the old material. Changing from 2e to 3e changes the rules, the "soft" aspects of the setting can be pulled from anywhere.

 

[Faraer]

I don't think the new Realms planes are either necessary or terrible. Ed retrofitted that planar structure into the Realms when he adapted the setting into D&D in the 1970s, and he wrote the seminal Nine Hells articles and came up with other now-standard 'Great Wheel' (a Planescape neologism) lore. But the argument that the law-chaos and good-evil grid, and the names of the Outer Planes, aren't a good match with the Realms gods and pantheons is certainly true. I can't get upset about it either way because -- and this is Ed's position too -- the published descriptions of the planes are partial, unreliable maps of infinite realms that should be mysterious to players. The planar connections described by the two cosmologies can easily both be true, or largely true.

The myriad links between worlds, on the other hand, are a basic pillar of the Forgotten Realms, giving rise to their very name, and trying to negate that idea is a brutal compromising of the setting.

I don't at all agree that locking down exhaustive minutiae of planar geography and mechanics is easier for new DMs. Some people like such definition, others are happier making it up, and we don't need to pretend only one of these categories exists.

Of course this thread opens big questions about creator authority and legal ownership, and how later developers should go about contributing to existing milieux, different kinds of fidelity, etc. etc.

 

[Staffan]

Someone could argue that including sorcerers in Dark Sun was indeed a "direct port". You might think they're wrong, but we're back to "It would be nice if they did it my way," again.

The thing about sorcerers, specifically, is wrong. In Dark Sun, arcane magic just doesn't naturally come to people. They have to work at learning it. Heck, it took a lot of work inventing it in the first place, and if there were natural mages around (that is, sorcerers) that wouldn't have been necessary.

So the sorcerer thing in Dark Sun isn't just "There never were any before" (like in FR), it's "this goes against the setting's actual history."

 

[Napftor]

The thing about sorcerers, specifically, is wrong. In Dark Sun, arcane magic just doesn't naturally come to people. They have to work at learning it. Heck, it took a lot of work inventing it in the first place, and if there were natural mages around (that is, sorcerers) that wouldn't have been necessary.

So the sorcerer thing in Dark Sun isn't just "There never were any before" (like in FR), it's "this goes against the setting's actual history."

And so we come down to one of the golden rules of roleplaying: Don't like something? Don't use it.

And even if you are one of the folks who feels that *everything* official that is written must be in your setting, then--as DM--make something up to explain their appearance. Creative DMs should be able to do an off-the-cuff explanation easy. And if you're not the DM, why in the heck would you even worry about such a thing?!

Apply this post to the topic at hand, stir briskly, and chill.

(Not picking on you in particular here, Staffan. Just using your view as a generalization for other such arguments.)