Planar Handbook Chat Log

[I'm A Banana]

I dunno, man, the DiTerlizzi illo of the great sphere with tentacles and eyes standing over a hoarde of rather depressed-looking spheres cemented my image of the Modrons as creatures who knew your place in the world, and made you go into it, even if you'd rather not.

As for the rest of this, I dunno, it works just fine with my own homebrew PS setting, set 1,000 years after the Faction War.

* The Formians have split in two, and are challenging each other for dominance -- the ones on Arcadia have a distinct hatred for the ones on Mechanus.

* The Modrons have withdrawn from the world after The Great Modron March, fearful of their ability to be tainted that deeply. In response, they have begun constructing Inevitables and sending them out to the planes.

* The Harmonium are no longer the thought police. The Doomguard is experiencing a re-surgence after being completely written off as dead.

* New Factions have come to Sigil: The Escathon (who believe everything is a cycle), the Order of the Illusion (who believe sensory experience to be false), and the Expansionsits (who believe everything must grow) have been added to the roster, and the old 15 have changed (Children of Mercy/Sodkillers reside in the city, and the Mind's Eye has recieved an influx from many factions).

* New planewalkers are appearing. Mephits, Half-Slaadi, Outcast Demons...now all run through the streets of Sigil seeking their fortune...

It seeks to capture the essential feel of Planescape, unburdened by the "recent history." It's fun.

 

[Pants]

As for modrons being goofy -- you can make anything seem like anything. The art for modrons was usually with a light heart, but so was much of the PS art.

The art wasn't the true problem, the design is.

It helped to cut the edge of a cold multiverse. I seriously doubt anyone being struck by a quadrone's arrows or being trampled to death by a horde of monodrones ever giggled about it, however.

Neither do I, but I can't help but roll my eyes whenever a walking, talking geometrical planar shape appears

May as well say that cartoons can't be serious after watching The Wolf Brigade and similar anime.

Maybe if the Wolf Brigade wore cardboard boxes with eyes and arms pasted on as opposed to the dark, grungy military armor that they had, then maybe I wouldn't take it seriously.

 

[Gez]

I dunno, man, the DiTerlizzi illo of the great sphere with tentacles and eyes standing over a horde of rather depressed-looking spheres cemented my image of the Modrons as creatures who knew your place in the world, and made you go into it, even if you'd rather not.

This one? Yeah, it's not comical-relief at all, IMHO. It's in fact kinda sinister, in an Orwellian way.

 

[Benben]

This one? Yeah, it's not comical-relief at all, IMHO. It's in fact kinda sinister, in an Orwellian way.

Yes, it's like an Orwellian M&M commercial. I giggle when I see the despondent Modron in the middle.

Put me in the boat that Modorons are silly. Platonic polyhedrons should not need faces or limbs. They should float about and obliterate any error to their system. I find the Inevitables to be much more interesting.

Now, if we can just get a chaotic exemplar that's more interesting the Slaad, and doesn't get confussed with as an option at an all-you-can-eat buffet then I'll be happy.

 

[primemover003]

It's certainly chapping my arse to see a certain designer(s) with such an agenda. They keep talking about what sells and what market analysis has shown... blah, blah, blah.

Aren't most of us the Core customer of anything Planar? Aren't the old guard planewalkers out there (who play the new edition) the people you should be aiming at? Sure you need to nab new blood, but are you gonna risk killing off your more loyal supporters? We can be turned away and that would be very sad.

Modrons aside... what's up with the Neraph? Why yet another Froglike denizen of Limbo. You could start to confuse some folks after awhile! Nerapim, Slaadi, Hezrous, Hydroloths, Dire weretoads, Oh my...

 

[Shemeska]

It's certainly chapping my arse to see a certain designer(s) with such an agenda. They keep talking about what sells and what market analysis has shown... blah, blah, blah.

Aren't most of us the Core customer of anything Planar? Aren't the old guard planewalkers out there (who play the new edition) the people you should be aiming at? Sure you need to nab new blood, but are you gonna risk killing off your more loyal supporters? We can be turned away and that would be very sad.

I can't honestly say that I consider myself one of the old guard Planewalkers. I was new to DnD in 3e and only discovered Planescape after it had already been folded back into the main DnD line (aka abandoned largely). I'm the person they should be trying to cajole into their new planar material, but it doesn't work when I've seen the older material and enjoy it orders of magnitude more than anything that's been published in 3e. Yes the ruleset for 3e is much, much better, but it lacks the soul it used to have before I'd picked my first 3e book.

*sigh* I've gotten my own gaming group addicted to Planescape (under 3e rules) and all of them are new to DnD in 3rd ed except for one of them. And you know what? They've bought perhaps two or three books amongst them in the past year that weren't novels because of the perceived drop in quality. More PrC's, ECL +0/+1 races, reprinted templates, etc doesn't make them want to spend the money for a book when they're well accquainted with the quality that has come before and has since ceased to exist by and large except for glimmers for a few select authors who have done their best to tease our appetites (but it's not enough).

 

[Incenjucar]

I, on the other hand, -am- an old guard PS player, albeit not the most experienced. Indeed, because of the diversity in our playing group (we played DS, FR, the occassional non-D&D game, some truly odd homebrews...)

As such, we actually had a hard time getting around to Sigil (we mostly had the planar races in FR, ironically enough), but we all collected the materials for -reading- purposes. If I had never played a single D&D game in my life, I'd still have a whole collection of PS materials. As such, I'm a damned useful type of consumer -- the person who will buy something even when it's useless to them as a product, so long as it's on par with what they have enjoyed thus far. PS, as I have noticed, has a number of fans of this nature.

That also means that mere rules conversions aren't going to sell to us unless we like what comes with it, because we already -have- the good stuff, or can get it on PDF.

They've already failed to maintain my interest in the 3e FR, and while there's a rule or two in Eberron, I really don't care for the setting style. PS-related material is their best bet for my money.

As it stands, the money I would have spent on a book is likely going to go towards sketch books, or maybe some PS PDFs, so I can at least get some mental stimulation out of my dollar.

--

What's worse, I have a cousin who's in to LARPing, and another who's practically my student (I helped get him in to drawing, and later anime, and now he's twice as good as I'll ever be at it). I give him advice, and he follows it. I even left him my 3.0e MM to sketch from last I saw him. But as it stands, I cannot, with good conscious, aim him towards D&D, even though he could certainly use an ice breaker for college other than his guitars (did I mention that he has a good-paying job with his dad that could net him a D&D library rather easily?)

But someone's design says no.

 

[Piratecat]

I've decided to pick the best of both worlds. In my game this evening, the PCs were standing in the middle of Regulus (the modron capitol of Mechanus) surrounded by hundreds of thousands of modrons going about their normal routine, when they suddenly all keeled over. Every single one of them. Dead or deactivated, with monodrones falling from the sky like hail and quadrones tipped over in the street and hierarch modrons collapsed where they stood.

They were alone in the center of Regulus, surrounded by modron corpses. It was completely and utterly silent.

And then Primus' tower collapsed.

Best. Scene. Ever.

 

[MerricB]

They were alone in the center of Regulus, surrounded by modron corpses. It was completely and utterly silent.

And then Primus' tower collapsed.

Best. Scene. Ever.

Wow... I'm impressed.

Do you have any players left, or were they then hauled away to the asylum after that?

Cheers!

 

[Piratecat]

Heh - afraid that the cogs of Mechanus were going to grind to a halt, they used gate to flee to the Outlands and thence to Sigil.

"Who do you tell about these sorts of things?" asked the cleric. "There's no 'dead modron' department to report this to." They walk through the portal into Sigil, and the first thing they see is thieves picking over the corpse of a fallen quadrone.

"They may already know," says one of the paladins.

They are, needless to say, concerned about the consequences of 360 million + modrons suddenly dropping over dead. Power vacuums are seldom a good thing.