D&D 5E Planescape shows up in the wild. Tease from Chris Perkins.

[eyeheartawk]

A problem with spelljammer was, that 50% of the book was ships. While they are important, they took up so much space that everything else fell flat.
Is their something similar in Planescape that could eat a lot of page real estate without giving us a lot of useful information?

I can see it now.

"What you want to know how to travel between the planes? Just walk up close to hit them, don't worry about it."

 

[Stormonu]

A problem with spelljammer was, that 50% of the book was ships. While they are important, they took up so much space that everything else fell flat.
Is their something similar in Planescape that could eat a lot of page real estate without giving us a lot of useful information?

In the prior version of the Planes, lots of changes to spells and magic items ate up a lot of space. I don't suspect we'll see any of that thankfully and the "lose a +1 per planar layer" should go the way of the dodo.

As for Spelljammer, travel by ship is/was a huge thing. The problem is they needed another 25-50 pages to also flesh out planetary expeditions, systems and other exploration mechanics, systems and examples.

 

[Micah Sweet]

A problem with spelljammer was, that 50% of the book was ships. While they are important, they took up so much space that everything else fell flat.
Is their something similar in Planescape that could eat a lot of page real estate without giving us a lot of useful information?

I'm not sure what you mean by, "useful information".

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Interestingly is that the whole shemozzle about the hadozee was driven by the combined multiple edition lore on the wiki being interpreted, not just what was on the Spelljammer wiki.

That's actually one of the three issues with the Hadozee, and by far the most minor one, and the one WotC (for obvious reasons) did not address,. It certainly helped raise the other issues, but it very much was not the whole shemozzle.

The two big ones, which WotC did address were that:

A) The background of the new Hadozee in the new SJ did have them essentially as ex-slaves, just not quite as explicitly. This got errata'd.

Here's the original 5E new Spelljammer, in which they were essentially uplifted slave-soldiers:

Which got changed to:

The other main problem was the very "Minstrel"-esque (in the Black racial stereotype sense) art pieces of which there were a couple. I believe they've been removed from the digital version and future printings.

However I think what your main point is that people get a lot of their info from wikis today, and that's absolutely right.

 

[cfmcdonald]

The two big ones, which WotC did address were that:

A) The background of the new Hadozee in the new SJ did have them essentially as ex-slaves, just not quite as explicitly. This got errata'd.

Here's the original 5E new Spelljammer, in which they were essentially uplifted slave-soldiers:

Why is that a problem? Is it just not acceptable to even hint that slavery exists or existed? Do the neogi no longer enslave people in 5E? The original background was somewhat interesting and provided some actual story hooks. The new one is not and does not.

 

[Vaalingrade]

First principles D&D, the DM creates the setting. Setting books can make a useful time-saver, but they are peripheral to the game of D&D.

And this thought process (and maximizing profit at the cost of quality) is why we're not allowed to have full setting books anymore.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why is that a problem? Is it just not acceptable to even hint that slavery exists or existed? Do the neogi no longer enslave people in 5E? The original background was somewhat interesting and provided some actual story hooks. The new one is not and does not.

Yeah, I've never thought that slavery as a concept in fantasy gaming needed to be excised. WotC over-corrected here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Is it just not acceptable to even hint that slavery exists or existed?

Whether that's the case for WotC is debatable.

However, the issue with monkey-people specifically is that historically they're closely associated with anti-Black racism and tropes, across many cultures.

Thus, if you ignore the giant red flags and choose to do monkey-people as a race/species in your game (which you should not, frankly - weirdly ape-people tend to be better-handled, which I put down largely to Gorilla Grodd), one thing you definitely need to 100% avoid is any kind of connection that could be made to Black people. Thus them have a background which involves slavery is, I think you can see, if you look at it from this perspective an extremely bad idea for that species specifically.

Do the neogi no longer enslave people in 5E?

They still have an ability called Enslave, even in the recent MotM, so yeah they do. WotC never uses the term slave or enslave in their description, instead talking about what they do, but the ability is still called Enslave and I very much doubt that was an accident or oversight.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why is that a problem? Is it just not acceptable to even hint that slavery exists or existed? Do the neogi no longer enslave people in 5E? The original background was somewhat interesting and provided some actual story hooks. The new one is not and does not.

1) They made the ape people who they drew in minstrel poses ex-slaves. Like, seriously.

2) D&D loves slavery too much. Every third intelligent species is either ex-slaves or active slavers (never any ex-slavers, curiously). If you count it all up, slavery is the primary economic system for the D&D world. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming prevalence of slavery is offputting at best for a lot of people affected by it historically, or just find the constant refrain distasteful.

It would be like if a fantasy game made constant casual reference to sexual assault... like that came. You know the one. Don't be like that game, D&D.

 

[Birmy]

It would be like if a fantasy game made constant casual reference to sexual assault... like that came. You know the one. Don't be like that game, D&D.

I, too, was shocked by the dark turn that  Toon took.