Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6324056" data-attributes="member: 2067">Sure. I don't think getting to the "meat" of what makes PS unique invalidates a longer story bible, it just means that maybe you play your "it's basically a dungeon crawl" adventure at a different point in the story, after you've already cemented the basic tropes of the setting that make it unique.It's something screenwriters do, too -- the first scene of the first act should telegraph the kind of themes and events we'll be seeing in the work. Having the first scene be "A demon walks into a bar and hires you to protect a plane of ultimate law from her minions" effectively telegraphs a LOT of what makes PS interesting and unique!The idea would be to make the personal planar. To be a PS character, they're going to need to have strong convictions that apply universally. Ideas like "Can the nature of a person change?" should apply universally. It's not just "I believe people can change and that history doesn't define you, so I'm Chaotic," it's "I believe people can change and that history doesn't define you, so I'm Chaotic, I want to make the multiverse a place where people are not defined by their past!" Your characters' beliefs are what drive them on to greater acts of awesomeness that change the planes. The important bit is that no one gets to wus out of having the big, powerful, far-reaching belief of a PS character. You can't go around saying "My most important conviction is that history does not define you, but if you think it does, that's not my problem." In PS, it IS your problem, because that person who thinks it does is making a world where her belief is TRUTH. Unlike in a normal D&D campaign, a character's beliefs and morals and convictions and ideals are forced into conflict with others', and there are winners and losers. It's a pretty important division from typical D&D, IMO, and part of what makes PS special. Factions serve as a short-cut to that and a training ground for it. You can say, like "My character is a member of the Free League, so her most important belief is that everyone should be allowed to shape their own beliefs!" and then BAM you hit the ground running with allies and enemies and and abilities and locations and plot ideas and you can figure out sort of what that means in a concrete way gradually. If you're, like, the 5e playtest wizard, and you think that knowledge is sacred and important, and that this is your most important belief that you want to change the nature of the planes, that works, too (it's basically making your own faction or sect from scratch!). What's less great is a character saying "I just really like books, it's cool if others don't," because that doesn't tap into the unique adventures that PS can launch. In PS, if you let others think that books are the sole tools of evil (or whatever), it will BECOME TRUE, because the setting is about the conflict of beliefs and a belief that don't conflict isn't going to be very interesting at the table. In fact, I kind of like putting it that way: "What belief do you have that you want to CHANGE THE WORLD with?" That mandates some conflict-of-belief stuff. It forces you to think about how you're going to change things up. It's not just "what do you believe in" in a personal way, it's "What do you believe the world is/should be like?" in a big, broad way that affects others lives. In a typical D&D game, you slay a dragon, and the peasants are happy. In PS, you fight for your ideals, and if you win, you shape the world according to what you want it to be. I feel like the mantra for players should ideally be like Dan Savage's mantra for good sexual partners: GGG. Good, giving, and game. They treat everyone well, they are interested in others' fun, and they are down to try new things. But people don't like Thing X for any number of arbitrary reasons, and you can't make the horse drink. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I would say PS's big selling points if I were writing back-cover copy are probably...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Beyond Your Tyical Fantasy: If you want something more from your fantasy RPG than orcs and elves and dwarves in a land of dragons and trolls, Planescape delivers that in spades. Weird characters, extreme settings, and your old favorites twisted in new directions, this setting gives your game a spellpunk grit in a world of limitless potential and variety. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Infinite Shades of Grey: If your usual Pretty Good Guys Shoot Blue Lasers / Ugly Bad Guys Shoot Red Lasers unquestioned heroic assumptions have you groaning a bit, Planescape will give you a world where your actual ideals matter much more than what cosmic team you're batting for. Are the angels your enemies? Are the devils your allies? It's up to YOU to decide. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Shape Reality: Planescape characters don't just save the kingdom, and one world is too small for them. Planewalkers send ripples through all of reality, and that power -- and responsibility -- is yours. It might be a long struggle, but if you can avoid the fate of so many who have failed and rise against those who would stop you, you can alter the fabric of reality itself, and define all of existence according to your own dreams and wishes. But be careful! Dreams have a tendency to turn into nightmares, and sometimes the worst thing about wishes is that they might just come true. </li> </ul>...and that doesn't sell everyone. Sometimes you just want a small, personal experience with clear morality in a world with elves and dwarves and dragons....and now I've gone and made myself sad that I don't have any clear PS groups on the horizon for 5e, because I really want to play that game now. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I think 4e gets a bad rap in this respect a bit -- Faction War did this to PS long before 4e arrived. 4e just treated FW as canon. As did 3e, though 4e arguably had more planar content than 3e did. I've been totally fine running PS with 4e's cosmological assumptions ("Clueless berks keep callin' Arborea the Feywild, now. Couple a years ago it was Olympus. Sodding dunces probably never even been there, just know what their greybeards tell 'em.").The more key distinction I feel is that Sigil was, in 3e and 4e, simply a setting for planar adventures, not Planescape. And its less cool that way. It's fine, I'm sure it's intentional (they didn't want to publish a PS setting), and someone who knows what they're doing will turn it into something awesome, but it's not highlighting the setting's own unique and interesting details. What I'd like from a 5e PS is that buzzing I've heard about how they did DS and FR -- "that's one possible way it could go." Maybe the factions DO degenerate into warfare and the PC's get to define who stays and who goes in the next big step in the kriegstanz. Or maybe they don't. And the baseline assumption is that if this goes down, it'll be opt-in, not an assumption that everyone needs to have.</blockquote>

Verification