Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3287278" data-attributes="member: 2067">1) "Urban." Sigil is quintessential, but many other planar cities will work as an element, too. The idea is, however, that the city serves as a hub point for a scattering of many different types of people and (especially) ideas. You need a reason for fiercely opposite things to exist side by side and want to achieve harmony with each other. Cities force that. This leads into politics, personality, kriegstanz and many other elements. This means powerful rulers (again, the Lady of Pain being iconic of this), where strength is important but perception and control are perhaps even more important. It also means urban concerns like labor, organized crime, enterprise and economy, and class struggle come to the fore. Limited space makes you live next to things you otherwise wouldn't.This first note gives PS the feel of Imperial London or Turn-Of-The-Century New York, or Imperial-age Shanghai or similar: there's a wide world out there, and a lot of it is represented in the neighborhood, forcing you to contact the ideas that are radically different from your own. This is the stage in which beliefs conflict, and from where they can launch themselves to change reality. It also makes PS vaguely industrial and scholarly.2) "Exotic Mundane." The Planes are some of the most exotic and bizzarre places in existence, and they're quite up-front about it. The Forbidden Zone shouldn't be a year's journey to the West, it should be just down the alleyway, right in your face, spilling over into your world and risking it becoming part of the Forbidden Zone. Creatures you have heard about in legend may be available for sale in the marketplace. Peoples you know only through hearsay are becoming next door neighbors. Meanwhile, the world keeps getting more exotic. As Tanar'ri dive bars pop up, people realize it isn't the creatures themselves that are so evil -- it is their beliefs, their minds, their actions, and their *culture*. This is the Culture Clash on a massive scale, so many ways of thinking and doing that work perfectly by themselves suddenly facing off against each other for control of the cities. You might be able to visit a restaurant at the end of the multiverse, but what it *means* is more important than what it *is*.This gives PS the whole "look deeper" method to its madness, and gives real meaning to "belief is power." The beliefs of those who control, rather than their particular species, is what gives them power. Nothing is ever just what it seems -- the Tanar'ri dive bar is not just a place for fiends to let off steam, it is actually a plot to unseat the powers of government driven by the Anarchists. The gym isn't just a place to get fit, it's a philosophical meeting hall, where the body is trained to be one with the mind. This is where the "Center of All," "Rule of Threes," and "Unity of Rings" theories come into practice.3) "Clueless Know-It-Alls" This motif is most powerfully presented in the form of the Prime Mage, a spellcaster who thought he knew the dark of things, but turned out to be more green than a devil's copper, but it's born out by planewalking bloods every week: you don't know anything about this world. A portal that took you to a safe haven could shift to a deadly inferno overnight. A plane you understood so well could throw a surpise at you with infinite possibility. A contact you know may die, a coup may upset your puppet-king, and though true knowledge is power, it's also impossible to truly have. The world is an uncertain place -- you can't be sure if the Godsmen are right or if the Heartless are right or if they're both nuts, or if they've actually both got the truth. You can't depend on a leader you can't know. This is an important part of PS's "Big fish, MASSIVE OCEAN" feel: no matter what you can do, there's always more. This motif emerges all the time in heroic adventure: you're the one-in-a-million, the exception to the rule, the girl who gets to see the balor's compassion, the lantern boy who gets a break by tripping the blooded planewalker (and walking away with his cursed mimir), the tiefling who can't stop his schoolboy crush, the modron gone rogue, the factolholic who OD's tripping on philosophy and reaches a higher state of awareness, the prophit for profit. The planes are filled with cutters with a story worth being told, but this is your game, and your story, and you get to see things no one ever has or ever will again, because no trip through the planes is ever the same twice.</blockquote>

Verification