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

[Turjan]

Hmm, I really liked the Planescape material. Such a unique atmosphere, and I also liked the art of the series. It was truly a time of wonderful stories.

Nevertheless, I never liked the Great Wheel cosmology. Too symmetric. Quite a few weird, but lastly uninteresting places. Other parts looked too lived in.

When I looked at the 3.5 book "Beyond Countless Doorways", I noticed that most of the really interesting places didn't need any planes at all. They were not large and could basically be put anywhere.

I haven't read the 4e Manuals of the Planes yet (I don't play 4e), but the cosmology looks now much nearer to that of my homebrew. It's not quite there yet, but already pretty close. No wonder that I like the direction .

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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's an online world. Check out how many registered users ENWorld has and how many are online at one time (it always makes my head swim, at least). Given the low post counts of most of them, a LOT of them are looky-loos coming here to read or to research -- and I know I always research here when I'm new to something.

So, no, it's not that small of a number.

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.

It certainly doesn't help.

In any case, the macro point is that the Planescape canon does not beckon invitingly to everyone, saying "pick and choose what you like, berk!" It's quite the opposite, much of the time, an attitude reinforced by many of the loyalists.

 

[Mistwell]

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".

I was paraphrasing, not quoting. They called out some of those great prior books, and explained how even with them, they felt those four points were valid (and gave reasons why). I wasn't going to quote the entire article!

 

[small pumpkin man]

4e's new cosmology has reduced the great wheel to a simplified core and removed many of the particular rules associated with planar travel.* The stated reason for many of these changes was to increase the accessibility of the planes to PCs and remove outerplanar realms that were rarely visited.

This bothers me on many levels, and not just because I think there should be one great wheel to rule them all. Mainly, it means that many of the ideas associated with the planes as I understood them will not be carried forward into future generations of D&D players. That is, they no longer form a set of core assumptions that can serve as the basis of conversations and shared adventures.

Okay, so that's sad, at least to me. But what about the larger issue? I feel as though the designers of 2e's Planescape (in particular Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, and Colin McComb) succeeding in creating an amazing fantasy realm that simply has no modern equal. In its totality, Planescape was beautiful, dangerous and absurd. The complex histories and ecologies of outerplanar beings served as the backdrop for some of D&D's most impressive features, such as the Blood War. (The fiends, in fact, were easily the most fleshed-out creatures in Planescape.)

Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be either redacted or cut completely? Was trashing most of the multiverse (as it was constituted) worth it to "maximize playability"? Maybe I've become a grognard in that I don't think significant chunks of lore should be dropped because they are measurably less convenient during play, especially when they form the backdrop of established creature ecologies (see, for example, baatezu and tanar'ri tactics described in Hellbound: The Blood War).

You need to understand that Planescape as a "shared experience" hasn't existed for almost ten years. Nobody who grew up playing 3.5 is nostalgic about Planescape because there are no 3.5 Planescape products*. There are 27 year old gamers who have being played D&D their entire adult lives, and have never been in a Planescape game and never read a Planescape book because nothing's been released for ten friggen years.

Yes, I know Manual of the planes uses the wheel, and yes I know there is non-Wotc stuff out there, but the first isn't Planescape, and the second is far to niche to "carry ideas forward to a new generation of gamers". I realise I'm being slightly emotional here, but people don't seem to "get" the fact that the horse left the barn some time ago, abandoning the wheel for 4e is just a sign of a larger sea change.

So I guess the question becomes, "just because 3.x didn't use Planescape, doesn't mean 4e can't." Well, the problem with that isn't that Planescape is it's own entire setting, with it's own feel and assumptions, and it's own complexities, many of which are inappropriate as a base setting, assumptions of by writers who left the company (well, left a different company) two or three "generations" of writers ago**, and honestly, I don't think the current writers could replicate that, nor do I think they should try, considering what attempting to force the writers at the time to did for the planes in 3.x, so they made an attempt to write a cosmology which contained themes and places and characters that they thought were interesting and fun, and playable, and I don't really think you can blame them for that.


*The exception being of course people who joined existing groups already using the setting who continued to use their 2e books for fluff.

**in the sense that the entire staff of DnD writers has generally changed two or three times since the late 90s.

 

[Shemeska]

You need to understand that Planescape as a "shared experience" hasn't existed for almost ten years. Nobody who grew up playing 3.5 is nostalgic about Planescape because there are no 3.5 Planescape products*. There are 27 year old gamers who have being played D&D their entire adult lives, and have never been in a Planescape game and never read a Planescape book because nothing's been released for ten friggen years.

*chuckle* Well my entire group and I clearly don't figure into your gross generalization. I grew up playing 3.x, and I'm nostalgic about Planescape. And I didn't join any existing group using the setting. Thank you magic of the internet for introducing me to the material.

I realise I'm being slightly emotional here, but people don't seem to "get" the fact that the horse left the barn some time ago, abandoning the wheel for 4e is just a sign of a larger sea change.

Given how thoroughly endebted to the 2e Planescape line every single planar supplement for 3.x that WotC released was, I don't see much abandonment of the Wheel. Some of those books were amazingly well produced like the Fiendish Codex books, and others fell flat on their own merits (Planar Handbook, BoED) but the influence is at a staggering level unless you're willingly ignoring it.

and honestly, I don't think the current writers could replicate that, nor do I think they should try,

But I agree with you on this point. I'd rather the 4e writers do their own thing, making completely new material for 4e rather than attempting to force-fit concepts from Planescape into a cosmology and set of setting and design assumptions that in many cases are anathema to its core. I'd rather avoid seeing pastiche like a "tales of the limited staircase" or anything else.

 

[TwinBahamut]

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.

This paragraph reflects an attitude about the new planar cosmology that I just don't think is justifiable.

The new planes don't have giant welcome mats in front of every portal. They are not safe, and they are not even remotely "PC-centric". Sure, the new planes are engineered by the game designers to be adventuring grounds, but that is no different from the goal of the people who designed the old planes. The Great Wheel is a giant organized system of adventuring sites, and always has been. At the same time, from the perspective of the actual world and the characters who dwell there, the planes are just as unknown, mysterious, and dangerous as they always have been (or not been, I guess). In this sense there has not been any change at all between cosmologies.

The difference is that the challenges presented by the planes are no longer on/off switches. In order to explore the Plane of Water, you pretty much had to either grow gills or give up. If you have gills, then the basic challenge of the plane is gone, and all that is left is a fairly homogenous and relatively mundane place. If you don't have gills, then all you can do is either find the closest portal out or drown. There is no middle ground, and the middle ground is where things are interesting. As a comparison, think of a kingdom in which, unless you cast a certain spell, every citizen of the kingdom would be compelled to kill you on sight, but if you cast that spell then every citizen of the kingdom would treat you as if they were your best friend. It is certainly weird and novel at first, but ultimately it is not as interesting as a kingdom with complex political divisions and people with unknown motivations who may or may not try to kill you depending on complex factors.

I mean, ignore your interpretations of various WotC comments and just look at the Elemental Chaos as it is presented. It contains every last challenge and cool place that the old Inner Planes did, except now you are forced to deal with these threats all at once, with the addition of a lot of demons. It is not the "Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience", it is a place where you may find yourself slogging your way through a morass of slime and mud, when suddenly giant fireballs the size of houses start crashing down around you, and you look up to realize that the fireballs are carrying an army of Fire Archons desperately trying to flee from a giant, partially-frozen ocean that will smash right into the mudball you are on and drown you unless you do something quickly. It is not inherently "PC-centric" or "PC-friendly", it is an alien, unpredictable, and indescribably dangerous place, and unlike in older editions of the game you don't have a wizard who can just cast any spell you need in order to solve any problems as they occur. If you get hit by an ocean out of the blue, you won't have time for the Wizard to pull open his ritual book and take ten minutes to cast a water-breathing ritual. It is not safe by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[freyar]

Reading this thread, I wonder if the people who dislike the Great Wheel also (generally speaking) dislike alignment as a fundamental component of the game world.

Speaking of alignment, it also seems that a lot of this discussion comes down to Law (tradition, respect for the old authors) vs Chaos (change, freedom to create something new). Which is sort of ironic, given that the Law-Chaos axis was largely removed in the 4e rules.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Reading this thread, I wonder if the people who dislike the Great Wheel also (generally speaking) dislike alignment as a fundamental component of the game world.

That may be partially true (I hate many aspects of the alignment system myself), but it really is more complicated than that. After all, to a certain extent the Law/Chaos axis resonates just as strongly in the new cosmology as in the Great Wheel, except now Chaos is embodied in the Elemental Chaos and Law is embodied in the Astral Sea, rather than leaving the elementals true neutral and putting all alignment in the Great Wheel.

Speaking of alignment, it also seems that a lot of this discussion comes down to Law (tradition, respect for the old authors) vs Chaos (change, freedom to create something new). Which is sort of ironic, given that the Law-Chaos axis was largely removed in the 4e rules.

Now this really is untrue.

By all typical metrics, I am an extremely "lawful" person myself, but I easily fall on the "like the new cosmology, doesn't bother with respect for old authors, likes freedom to create something new" spectrum. I guess this is one more example of why the Law/Chaos axis can be problematic in actual use, even if it is good in theory.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

I went more into this in the article's thread, but there is a deep level of wrongness to these assumptions.

That said, making demons and devils more distinct, making good planes more exciting, and concentrating on hospitable environs for adventures are all good things (the "infinite" thing is one of the poster children of pointless, nonsensical, grudge-match changes in 4e, like 3/4th lings) in my mind.

I've got the hots for PS as bad as the next sycophant, but all of these changes are not only positive, they are entirely capable of being contained within a PS4e.

The 4e designers have gleefully kicked a lot of beloved icons in the nads, but the planes, I feel, are relatively intact.

Sigil is still around. Planehopping is more common than ever. Factions still exist and now reach to all planes. The biggest loss is the loss of the idea that belief = reality, but that's something that kind of comes with the factions to one degree or another, so anywhere the factions are, that idea is.

What did we actually loose? I'm a vocal critic of 4e, and there's a lot of things that annoy me to the ends of the earth about the game, but PS4e is viable, fun, and interesting...dare I say better than ever? Quite possibly.

 

[underthumb]

This paragraph reflects an attitude about the new planar cosmology that I just don't think is justifiable.

Long(er) threads such as this one can quickly devolve into quote-wars and splitting hairs about this or that analogy. So in the interest of avoiding that, I just want to make a few points about your post.

The elemental planes didn't deprive anyone of adventure just by existing. Crazy cool things analgous to your examples were always available elsewhere in the great wheel, or even the inner planes if you were an enterprising DM. It's important to remember that, in Planescape, the inner planes were the building blocks of the multiverse. Visiting the inner planes was like visiting the world's most dangerous tool shed. Their explicit purpose was something more than awesome PC adventures, and that, to my mind, is okay.

My point about the fortress of minor inconvenience was not intended to describe how pleasant the elemental chaos is. I simply wanted to show that increasing accessibility can remove interesting challenges, such as those associated with the inner planes. Your argument that these challenges were not meaningful just doesn't ring true to me. They were meaningful in their connection to their in-game justification (see my above paragraph) and in their binary, unforgiving nature, an aspect that you don't enjoy. But that's how many serious dangers work--you can either swim in lava, or you can't.