Planescape, 4e, and the problem of worlds without history

[underthumb]

Although you acknowledge in your original post that's not the reason they did it.

The neckbeards who constitute much of the D&D population are just another few servings of 7-Eleven nachos from their final heart attack. Creating additional barriers to entry for new gamers is a bad idea, if you have any desire for there to be future generations that play D&D.

With respect to "change for the sake of change," you're correct, that was sloppy argumentation on my part. While some of the changes to the cosmology do feel arbitrary, the bulk of my post was about questioning the worth of changes that have clearer justifications.

I understand your point about graybeards, but I don't think that Planescape and its associated complexity are (or ever were) a barrier to entry for newcomers. The planes have always been "a place you can go" rather than something you are forced to deal with upon learning the system.

 

[underthumb]

"Maximize playability" = "Have more fun"

I know I'd like to have more fun than have less fun when I sit down to play with my wife and friends.

I think my point about maximizing playability could have used a bit more finesse. Basically, playability and accessibility almost always have tradeoffs, and I don't think they always have a positive correlation with "fun". They often involve decreasing complexity, which can make certain instantiations of rules and flavor more difficult to execute (see, for instance, all the frustration about healing surges).

As a different example, I consider GURPS Lite to be much more playable and accessible than normal GURPS. This does not mean, however, that GURPS Lite is necessarily the ideal version of GURPS, or that GURPS as a system should strive to simply become GURPS Lite. There are lots of cool things the core system can do that GURPS Lite cannot.

I suspect we could go back and forth with examples for a long time. I think the only point I really want to make is that you can't increase playability while holding all other good things constant.

 

[kenmarable]

Now that I am probably done making every Planescape fan hate me...

Arghh!! Where's my SMITE button on this frigging keyboard?!!

Instead, I got treated to the 3E Manual of the Planes, which carried over all of the traditional concepts of Planescape, without whatever details you think redeems the setting/cosmology. After all, they didn't just reprint all of the old stuff and convert it. They held to the ideas of Planescape, like you are asking them to do again, but that is not the same thing as keeping Planescape alive. Ultimately, the only parts of Planescape that continue to persist past the 2E era are those "contrived one-line descriptors".

Ah, I understand now. The 3E Manual of the Planes vs. the 2E Planescape campaign setting. It's like comparing cafeteria hamburgers to a steak at a fine restaurant - technically they're both cooked cow.

I can see the original poster's point, and felt exactly the same way - but I'm just recently managed to move past that and just accept that the 4e cosmology is not something I am interested in. Plus, as mentioned, it's easy to ignore and use the original Great Wheel and that's what I'm doing in my 4e Planescape campaign I'm starting up right now. It saves me money on having to buy the 4e Manual of the Planes, as well. Always a nice bonus.

But, yes, a part of me does feel sad that future generations of gamers might not get to experience the awesomeness of Planescape, but at this point, it's probably up to us rather than WotC to keep it alive and pass it onto those who will follow. And if the GSL ever gets updated to something more palatable, I'm hoping to start publishing some 4e material and you can bet much of it will have a quirky planar bent.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Planescape is the greatest campaign setting, bar none. It isn't just about the lay of the land. It's more than that. It's about interactions. The interactions between the PCs and planes, and the interactions between planes and planes. Belief becoming reality. It's about the darkness and moral grays. It's about a wider world than the PCs can ever begin to know, but how they can still have implications that are world shattering in their own right. It's made for vast campaigns that can be on a micro or macro level. My best games have been Planescape.

But, that doesn't mean I think 4e should have to use Planescape. I love the new cosmology. Everything doesn't need to be that which came before. Just because they aren't publishing "Planescape" things doesn't mean I won't be playing Planescape in the future, and that my Planescape games won't be benefited by all the new ideas in 4e.

This is what I don't understand: that if D&D changes from the Great Wheel somehow that means that WotC has committed some travesty against D&D canon. Nonsense. I want new ideas. I have no desire to see Planescape gutted and published in a hardcover based on the perspective of a Prime Material setting. That isn't what Planescape was about. All that can do is gut the setting like was done in the 3e MotP. The 4e MotP is a far, far, superior book by my reading mainly because of this.

Yes, Planescape took place on the Great Wheel. However Planescape is not the Great Wheel. Planescape is a feel, an icon, an entity. You don't just slap some planes in a circle, toss some elemental planes together, and say you're playing Planescape! The setting is in the details, not the overarching layout.

Perspective, people. Perspective.

 

[weem]

Planescape is the greatest campaign setting, bar none. It isn't just about the lay of the land. It's more than that. It's about interactions. The interactions between the PCs and planes, and the interactions between planes and planes. Belief becoming reality. It's about the darkness and moral grays. It's about a wider world than the PCs can ever begin to know, but how they can still have implications that are world shattering in their own right. It's made for vast campaigns that can be on a micro or macro level. My best games have been Planescape.

But, that doesn't mean I think 4e should have to use Planescape. I love the new cosmology. Everything doesn't need to be that which came before. Just because they aren't publishing "Planescape" things doesn't mean I won't be playing Planescape in the future, and that my Planescape games won't be benefited by all the new ideas in 4e.

This is what I don't understand: that if D&D changes from the Great Wheel somehow that means that WotC has committed some travesty against D&D canon. Nonsense. I want new ideas. I have no desire to see Planescape gutted and published in a hardcover based on the perspective of a Prime Material setting. That isn't what Planescape was about. All that can do is gut the setting like was done in the 3e MotP. The 4e MotP is a far, far, superior book by my reading mainly because of this.

Yes, Planescape took place on the Great Wheel. However Planescape is not the Great Wheel. Planescape is a feel, an icon, an entity. You don't just slap some planes in a circle, toss some elemental planes together, and say you're playing Planescape! The setting is in the details, not the overarching layout.

Perspective, people. Perspective.

This. Exactly. Every bit of it. Thank you - saved me some typing

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I would consider myself a long-time Planescape fan, it has been my favourite setting since I got into D&D about a decade ago. I personally extremely enjoy having settings, including Planescape go through radical change and alterations it is enjoyable to me to see where a setting can be taken when it goes off in a different direction.

It is like alternative history books, the joy in them is to see, "how would things work differently" (and hopefully if the author is good then a good story as well).

As for the "feel" of Planescape. I personally have more ability in 4e to bring across my own-personal Planescape then I could before, since well. A good portion of my Planescape involved Sigil and escapades into the planes from Sigil. I however disliked the Great Wheel and how strongly alignment played a role (especially in the Factions) as such these were involved in my Planescape, so personally the changes in 4e Planescape-stuff is GREAT! I am stating this cause this probably does colour my above comments, so figured should be said.

 

[Mistwell]

I am liking the new planes mythology more than the old one.

Though, I feel like using "old" and "new" doesn't fit.

The Feywild is an older, more traditional concept than most of the Wheel planes. Titania and Oberon and King and Queen of the Fey Wild in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Shakespeare was drawing on even older myths.

The Shadowfell, though not as old a tradition, also has a lot of roots in modern fantasy. The "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series, for example, gives very extensive detailing of a shadowfell realm.

Both of these worlds feel much more real and accessible in a game than "The Elemental Plane of Earth", or "Carceri" or "Limbo". I think a lot of those Great Wheel planes were thrown in there as placeholders to fill in the gaps for alignment or symmetry, rather than to further fun or gameplay.

You can still do most of the planescape planes if you want. Rather than being their own plane of existence, they can just be "continents" within one of the existing planes of Elemental Chaos and Astral Sea. And really I think the difference between making them actual planes vs. places within those two planes is purely a technicality.

 

[underthumb]

You can still do most of the planescape planes if you want.

Since this seems to be a recurring theme, I'll address it again. This thread is not a lament over the impossibility of house-ruling one's way back to the great wheel. Nor is my ability to do so particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. (As an aside, I could just as easily say that you can recreate the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos as demiplanes within the old cosmology. That doesn't take you all the way there, and we can trade further conversion ideas, but it's not really pertinent.)

Both of these worlds feel much more real and accessible in a game than "The Elemental Plane of Earth", or "Carceri" or "Limbo".

The Black Fortress of Doom and Evil is less accessible than the Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a worse place to adventure in. Many places in the great wheel existed for purposes that were not PC-centric, and this made visiting them exciting. You, as a player, weren't supposed to be there. You were walking "behind the curtain", taking a look at the building blocks of belief and reality. Overcoming those challenges meant something important, at least to me.

 

[Mistwell]

Here was some of the explanation for why the change was made, from Dragon 370:

1) With the exception of the Plane of Air, the Elemental Planes were essentially unusable. They were lethal, and adventures took place in pockets within those realms anyway. Places you cannot really go to are not very usable.

2) Infinite planes are not useful or necessary. You never use the "infinite" portion of it anyway. So why not reduce it to a usable amount.

3) The "Good" planes were boring.

4) Demons and Devils were too similar.

 

[Mistwell]

Since this seems to be a recurring theme, I'll address it again. This thread is not a lament over the impossibility of house-ruling one's way back to the great wheel. Nor is my ability to do so particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. (As an aside, I could just as easily say that you can recreate the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos as demiplanes within the old cosmology. That doesn't take you all the way there, and we can trade further conversion ideas, but it's not really pertinent.)

Then let me put it another way. The rules specifically mention the existence of most of the planes already, as parts of either the Elemental Chaos or Astral sea. It's not even a house rule - it's right there in the text.

The Black Fortress of Doom and Evil is less accessible than the Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a worse place to adventure in. Many places in the great wheel existed for purposes that were not PC-centric, and this made visiting them exciting. You, as a player, weren't supposed to be there. You were walking "behind the curtain", taking a look at the building blocks of belief and reality. Overcoming those challenges meant something important, at least to me.

I think for most people, it meant not going there. Ever. Because they were either lethal, boring, or in most cases both.

They are not "PC-Centric" now, just more accessible by the PCs.