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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6323114" data-attributes="member: 2067">I just figured we were quibbling over the tone some hypothetical re-launched setting might have (me: focused on planar characters; you/quickleaf: not necessarily focused on planar characters). I'd just change this slightly: chargen allows for planar characters of any origin, and maybe has one option for someone who wants to play a Clueless character. Which is to say: if you want to play a drunk dwarf, you play a drunk dwarf who is either a planewalker -- based out of Sigil, belonging to a faction, knowledgable about the basics of planar travel and locations -- or a drunk dwarf who is the one person in the party ignorant of the planes and going to discover them (a Clueless character). I'd prefer it not to be a pull, but rather a lure."You suddenly wind up in a strange land, and the goal is to escape! Adventures happen while you do!" is an adventure you could do anywhere. A game that leverages PS's more distinct feel would, I think, be a deliberate thing like A tanar'ri general -- a marilith -- is visiting Sigil, and looking to hire planewalkers. It seems her troops keep disappearing in the midst of combat, being conjured out of the Blood War battlefield and onto the plane of Mechanus at the behest of a mad conjurer, and she's looking to hire some people who will know how to get to that mage and stop it, because she is sick of half of her fighting force going suddenly missing. When the party arrives to the scene of mechanical carnage, they learn that the conjurer is a Xaositect trying to simply wreck as much of Mechanus as possible while he can, using some strangely augmented summoning skills to do so. While going up against half a tanar'ri army would likely be suicide, the party can learn about the artifact that allows him to summon so many demons at once -- an item that was placed into the Xaositect's hands by devils, who designed it to call away parts of an opposing demonic force at key moments. The devil who ensured that the Xaositect came to possess this item is present in Mechanus as well, and will certainly want to make sure this Xaositect continues his rampage, for the betterment of devils everywhere. If the Xaositect knew he was playing into a devilish plot, would he want to abandon his rampage? Or would he believe his rampage across Mechanus was for the greater Chaos, even if the devils happened to beneft? And what about the Modrons trying to stop the rampage -- are they going come down hard on the forces of Chaos, or do they side with the devils and actually encourage the massacre, knowing that a win for the devils is a win for Law? To accomplish the goal of stopping the conjurer and getting paid, the party must convince the Xaositect and the Modrons to set aside their deep, deep differences long enough to stop being pawns in the devils' game. Of course, maybe they decide to thwart the devil by allying with the Modrons to direct the mad conjurer into Hell...or maybe they side with the Devil and the Modrons, protecting the mad conjurer as the annoyed Marilith comes to deal with the situation herself, with some hired guns... The emphasis here is on what people believe to be true, what people do to act according to their beliefs, and how there's no easy answer about what one OUGHT to do. Yeah, I think that's kind of where the proposed adventure fails, because I don't think "You're suddenly someplace weird and dangerous, your goal is to escape!" is a particularly PS-unique experience. While that can and does happen in PS, I don't think it is an example what makes the setting unusual and interesting, it doesn't highlight why you'd play PS as opposed to any other setting. Someone who crashes their airship in Eberron or someone who falls into an old ruin in FR or someone present in a town that is suddenly flooded or earthquaked' or dragon-invaded gets the same basic "Oh no unexpected thing to deal with and restore normalcy!" adventure structure. PS can tell stories that you can't tell in other settings, too, and I'd prefer to highlight that. See, I think that if the goal is to have a PS campaign, as opposed to another sort of campaign with planar adventuring in it, having half the party want to go back to their home world and wail on goblins again deflates it. I'd rather have characters with strong ties to the PLANESCAPE setting as the default baseline, which means treating the Clueless planar first-timers like a normal D&D game might treat a character who plays a farmer fresh off the turnip truck -- a character given context by the fact that the other party members aren't that kind of character.</blockquote>

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