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

[kenmarable]

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.

And that mindset at WotC is the biggest reason I stayed away from 4e until now (not the only reason, but certainly the biggest). In fact, if I wasn't interested in some potential publishing opportunities I'd still stay away from 4e largely because of that atittude. (Yeah, I'm a sell out that way. But I sleep at night knowing that the 4e mechanics are cool, I just can't stomach a lot of the attitude used to explain design decisions - but that has nothing to do with the rules themselves or my writing.)

I can list entire books published by TSR (and WotC!) that counter every one of those points, but there's really no purpose. WotC had a very distinct vision of where they wanted to go with 4e and much of the old material didn't fit with that (which I'm cool with), but to better "sell" the changes to the masses they decided to berate, belittle, and (be)ignore decades of great content (which I wasn't cool with).

As for #2, I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase".

 

[ProfessorPain]

I had issues with the old planar model, just too much going on there in my opinion. But I think they went a little too far with the whole Points of Light concept (which we are all free to deviate from, so it isn't a huge deal). But points of light is too readily built with the game in mind, which for me, hurts the suspension of disbelief. Also limits settings to being Dark Age campaigns.

 

[Shemeska]

As for #2, I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase".

Dude, that's so getting quoted in my .sig.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And finally, WotC needs to leave Planescape alone.

Why should good stuff be walled off, just because the less useful bits have been left behind?

For all the cries of hatred towards Planescape and the Great Wheel, it seems that WotC designers revert to plundering it for ideas all the damn time.

"All the cries of hatred?" I think criticizing something's problems and clunkier aspects (most of them inherited from prior material) does not constitute hatred.

Nor, again, does it mean that they no longer have the right to grab the cool stuff and repurpose it for the the new edition.

If your target audience can't stand the Great Wheel

Strawman. That's not why they got rid of it.

please lay your hands off the setting I happen to like.

WotC busted into your house and burned up your copies of Planescape and blocked you from getting to RPGNow to download the PDFs?

Their hands are off your copy of the setting. Unless you buy the setting from them, it's not your setting, it's theirs. When playing in someone else's campaign setting, caveat emptor.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

You haven't been reading ENWorld regularly for very long, then. Well before 4E was announced, many times someone would write about their campaign that involved the planes, the Planescape militia here would crop up to explain what five PDFs they needed to buy immediately to get it right and how their stated campaign planes did not properly mesh with lore.

For all the moaning about how the Forgotten Realms felt constraining by the end of 3E, it was Planescape fans that were most dogmatic about the proper way to run the setting.

The message from Planescape fans was pretty clear: Get it right, or stay on the Prime.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I just can't stomach a lot of the attitude used to explain design decisions

You "can't stomach" that they explicitly made changes so that more cool stuff could happen in actual games -- instead of in discussions on message boards -- and that DMs would be more, rather than less, likely to do all the cool stuff many felt intimidated by in previous versions?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But points of light is too readily built with the game in mind, which for me, hurts the suspension of disbelief. Also limits settings to being Dark Age campaigns.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. (Example #2, but with a British accent.)

 

[ProfessorPain]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. (Example #2, but with a British accent.)

I don't know about wraith recon, but Amethyst breaks from the points of light concept anyways.

 

[underthumb]

You haven't been reading ENWorld regularly for very long, then. Well before 4E was announced, many times someone would write about their campaign that involved the planes, the Planescape militia here would crop up to explain what five PDFs they needed to buy immediately to get it right and how their stated campaign planes did not properly mesh with lore.

For all the moaning about how the Forgotten Realms felt constraining by the end of 3E, it was Planescape fans that were most dogmatic about the proper way to run the setting.

The message from Planescape fans was pretty clear: Get it right, or stay on the Prime.

Okay, but I remind you that your argument was about making things harder for newcomers to the hobby, who are a much larger class of individuals than those-who-post-about-their-campaigns-on-enworld-that-involve-the-planes-and-are-assailed-by-planescape-fanatics. It doesn't seem to me that instances of the latter would ever have a significant chance of thinning future generations of D&D players.

But hey, you may beg to differ.

 

[Shemeska]

You "can't stomach" that they explicitly made changes so that more cool stuff could happen in actual games -- instead of in discussions on message boards -- and that DMs would be more, rather than less, likely to do all the cool stuff many felt intimidated by in previous versions?

I think Ken's probably talking about a number of instances where some (not all) of WotC's 4e designers made some statements about the 1e/2e/3e planes that can only come across as either A) astoundingly arrogant and disrespectful to previous writers and previous editions, or B) equally astounding ignorance of non-obscure prior material, which is disturbing when you're paid professionally to write material for the game's next incarnation.