Planescape was Handholding. Forked from Plane Next Door/

[Nymrohd]

The great wheel and the inner planes were the biggest issues with needless symmetry in D&D. The inner planes barely made sense. The para and quasiplanes were often unimaginative, ridiculous, and practically impossible to adventure in without a specific array of spells designed especially for them. The negative and positive planes wanted to kill you, and fast. Moreover they had scant few features even condenscing all known sources. The great wheel had some planes that were there just to feel in the grid (Bytopia? really?), and some planes were simply forced into a specific position to feel a hole (Yes beastlands just screams NG-CG to me . . . not). I love planescape but it had broad issues, especially about playability and a massive number of completely arbitrary rules, especially in its original and only version of AD&D (everything else is fanmade, or about the planes, not planescape). End rant.

 

[Imaro]

A big point for me here is: The Lady of Pain is an entity that is visible to the players in some way. They know that she could, if she (and by extension the DM) wants to keep things stable. She is a tool for stability.
In a way, the PCs know they can't really screw up, but they also can't really change things, either, since the Lady of Pain is more powerful than the gods! And the Lady of Pain (despite the dramatic name) doesn't seem to be a particularly evil creature either, so it doesn't seem required to oppose her order, either. But with Points of Light, it is pretty obvious that you should do something about all that evil around, even if you don't know if you can succeed and powerful entities might be working against you. There is no one stabilizing the current situation. If you don't do anything, things will get universally worse, and even your home base isn't safe.

Wait a minute, the PC's know for a fact what The Lady of Pain can and cannot do? How? Again, The Lady of Pain is an NPC, and her reputation could be mostly smoke and mirrors for all anyone knows for sure. Who, except the DM, is to say she doesn't have weaknesses of her own to be exploited by enemies? Or that she can actually keep the city stable? You're talking as if The Lady of Pain is an entity seperate from the DM or like she even has stats that define her. Just like any NPC he decides to stat out or control... the DM decides all of this. Sigil as presented in the Planescape box set is a starting point and it is up to the DM to decide it's details.

Also there was reason enough for the factions to oppose her order, so I wouldn't make general statements as far as whether her desires and the PC's automatically linning up. Order and stability do not equal just, fair or good... The Lady of Pain is also alien in her motives and outlooks and thus could easily do things the PC's may want to oppose or change.

So you would say that doing something different than the Great Wheel is a good idea, since it has been done, you are just not happy with the particular choice what they choose to do?

First I've already said I liked The Great Wheel, so I would have been happy with it staying the default and also being given guidance and rules to design my own cosmology... However I don't think I would have been adverse to a cool cosmology that at least tried to do something original or different from the numerous fantasy games already out there. As an example... IMO, Exalted does the whole "underworld" and "land of fae" in a more interesting and coherent way than D&D 4e, and it's perhaps because it was done so well in this game that 4e dissapoints me in it's efforts.

I personally think that it is a great idea to reuse myths and folklore concepts in a more... direct way. Just half an hour ago or so I read up on Erinyes in real folklore and then considered how D&D (until 4E) interpreted them - they seem very different. I like seeing them back closer to the original concept.

And even if something like the Elemental Chaos or Feywild might have existed in other games and settings, they haven't been combined this way yet, and particularly not with D&D.

So tell me what is making them especially original in the way they are being used in D&D 4e... I'm not being snarky, I am genuinely curious about what elements you view as different or used better than the multitude of other games who have used and developed the same tropes?

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Needless Symmetry is one of the most overused terms right now, and even when there was symmetry between the planes, they weren't exact opposite duplicates of each other.

 

[Nikosandros]

Needless Symmetry is one of the most overused terms right now, and even when there was symmetry between the planes, they weren't exact opposite duplicates of each other.

Not to mention the obligatory "the elemental planes are boring". I've used them for years of very entertaining adventures... good thing that now I've learned that I wasn't actually having any fun.

BTW, I also happen to think that the 4e cosmology is pretty cool... I just don't see the need to put down the Great Wheel in order to promote it.

 

[Crothian]

practically impossible to adventure in without a specific array of spells designed especially for them. The negative and positive planes wanted to kill you, and fast.

Not everything in the game is designed for the PCs and should be easy on them.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Wait a minute, the PC's know for a fact what The Lady of Pain can and cannot do?

I used "players" in the first sentence. After a few years around, players will know a little about the setting, regardless of whether the character know.

But even with the smokes and mirrors, the PCs know that the Lady of Pain has enough power to keep the gods out.

First I've already said I liked The Great Wheel, so I would have been happy with it staying the default and also being given guidance and rules to design my own cosmology... However I don't think I would have been adverse to a cool cosmology that at least tried to do something original or different from the numerous fantasy games already out there. As an example... IMO, Exalted does the whole "underworld" and "land of fae" in a more interesting and coherent way than D&D 4e, and it's perhaps because it was done so well in this game that 4e dissapoints me in it's efforts.

I have read Exalted 2e, and the cosmology did not inspire me. In fact, it bothered me more and it would probably have been the first thing I would have thrown out. And the Great Wheel was very similar to me - I never reused the concepts in my homebrew.

So it might just be a matter of taste. And I think there is nothing wrong in creating something new with a different taste. There are tons of D&D material for the Great Wheel. Now it's time for tons of D&D material on the Points of Light setting. Maybe 5E will be the time for tons of the Graylands setting. (Maybe 5E will focus on "morally ambiguities", a good opportunity after ditching the alignment system entirely.)

So tell me what is making them especially original in the way they are being used in D&D 4e... I'm not being snarky, I am genuinely curious about what elements you view as different or used better than the multitude of other games who have used and developed the same tropes?

I don't know all those other games, so how should I compare? For me, the Feywild and Elemental Chaos are something new, and it seems to be something new to D&D in general, too. The Great Wheel is something old (and more, it is something old I didn't care for.)

The important part is not necessary whether a single element is "innovative" in that there is stuff I have never seen before. The composition of rules framework and setting is something new. And I love it. It inspires me. I love the elements that tie back into real world mythology, fairy tales, and modern horror (almost an oxymoron, I guess). I am eager to explore the Feywild, sail the Astral Sea and fight off the Far Realms intrusions, survive the bleak Shadowfell and best demons from the Elemental Chaos. I want to do it with my characters, I want to send other players characters there. It's exciting.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I didn't say 4e's stuff was more interesting. Planescape really well explored ideas to a depth 4e has a WAYS to go to match.

I just wanted to respond back to some 4e bashing but not poison the well of the OT.

Everyone who disagreed with me in this thread has valuable insight. I may not agree on evert point but good thoughts are always good.

I'm a big 4e supporter, but at the same time I think 3e (influenced by 2e holdovers) is a simulationist heaven and the part of me that likes that sort of world building thinks 3e is better for it. 4e is better for gaming for me.

 

[aurance]

I loved Planescape (I have nearly every supplement) but I'm perfectly fine with 4e cosmology as well. You can have a good game in one, as well as the other. The preferences for each are so subjective that I can't see this debate going anywhere but general sniping of other posters.

 

[Shemeska]

As opposed to the organic non-artifice of planes based off of platonic element combinations symmetrically repeated to utter bordeom, or the same for alignments? I'd say from my veiwpoint 4e's design choices are WAY less artificial than 1-3e's neat boxes.

There's a big difference as I see it between the Great Wheel and the 4e default cosmology: a cosmology focused around in-game elements of that universe such as metaphysical alignments, versus a cosmology designed from a metagame notion of 'the planes must be places to adventure in and if they can't be adventured in, they have no reason to exist'. One cosmology is centered around in-game concepts, the other around a set of precepts that don't have anything to do with the in-game universe.

That latter notion really strikes me as doing a disservice to making an immersive cosmology. It feels artificial, and seems to restrict many avenues of what should or shouldn't be in the game because of a 4e design law that everything in the setting should be designed to focus around the PCs. That seems to handhold in and of itself, because PC success and PC 'special snowflake' status seems to be written into the game as a primary point. I prefer to see a cosmology that exists on its own in a wider, more in depth universe, with the PCs accorded no special status by default. The planes exist independant of whether they want to or can survive going to one place or another to adventure in a more classical kill things and take their stuff manner. The PCs aren't mandated special status, the PCs make that status for themselves and they earn it, rather than see it as part of the design of the very cosmology surrounding them.

When I worked on the cosmology for Paizo's The Great Beyond I went for a more immersive cosmology, influenced by Planescape certainly, but without as much of the symmetrical focus. The outer planes don't have any set relationships with one another, as they all exist suspended in an almost literal manner within the chaos of the Maelstrom (a plane more of raw potential than randomness). Many of those planes are death sentences to low level PCs if they just hop through a gate, but with the right preparation, allies, circumstances, patronage, you could use them as adventuring locations. But they have an ecology all their own outside of any potential for using them for a weekend dungeon excursion. I wouldn't send level 5 PCs to the daemon city of Awaiting-Consumption for instance, but that's perhaps an extreme example. There are tons of planes to go, more than could possibly be used in a single campaign, and more challenging places are just that, challenges for PCs rather than a pointless "antithesis of fun". Anything can be potentially used for PCs to adventure in, but they shouldn't be engineered for that purpose above all else, it cheapens it for the PCs and dilutes the setting.

The 4e cosmology seems designed with a very different set of design principals in mind versus those that went into developing the Great Wheel during much of its 2e tenure, and some very bright points during 3e (FC:I I'm looking at you). It's not my ball of wax.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm a huge fan of the planes, other dimensions, alternate universes, whatever you want to call them. A huge fan of Michael Moorcock. That's why I hate Planescape so very much. There's not a single thing about it that's good.

It makes what should be the most unknown, strange and extraordinary features of the game universe - the planes - into the mundane, the commonplace. The Lady of Pain is a lazy writer's tool to explain that for which there is no good explanation. Why are things as they are? The Lady of Pain did it. The thieves' cant is intrusive, the writers love it far too much. Worst of all, the belief systems of the factions are implausible. No sentient being could actually be a solipsist. It wouldn't work for five seconds. It's a philosophical term intended to represent a position to be argued against, not actually held by a real being.