Previews: November and Beyond

[JustKim]

Like I suspected, they're completely redesigning the planes, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing is that the entire book is only 160 pages. That is really not enough space to develop the new cosmology, in addition to the player options and monsters we'll probably see. And it's unlikely we'll see a second planar book, or much planar support outside of the occasional, infrequent Dragon article.

So ~80 pages have to sell the planes for an entire edition, with no help from Planescape or the enormous planar history of the game. It doesn't look good. I'm already anticipating having to adapt the previous cosmology to the 4E world.

 

[thundershot]

I get nothing but an error page... grrr....

 

[Nikosandros]

Like I suspected, they're completely redesigning the planes, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing is that the entire book is only 160 pages. That is really not enough space to develop the new cosmology, in addition to the player options and monsters we'll probably see. And it's unlikely we'll see a second planar book, or much planar support outside of the occasional, infrequent Dragon article.

So ~80 pages have to sell the planes for an entire edition, with no help from Planescape or the enormous planar history of the game. It doesn't look good. I'm already anticipating having to adapt the previous cosmology to the 4E world.

There aren't that many planes in the new cosmology....

Specific locations within each plane can appear in Dragon and adventures or left to each DM to develop.

 

[Rechan]

Like I suspected, they're completely redesigning the planes, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing is that the entire book is only 160 pages. That is really not enough space to develop the new cosmology, in addition to the player options and monsters we'll probably see. And it's unlikely we'll see a second planar book, or much planar support outside of the occasional, infrequent Dragon article.

I highly doubt we'll see player options. Monsters, yes, but players no.

Really, all I want is just a detailed look at the Feywild and Shadowfell, with some specific sites mentioned. I need inspiration fodder.

 

[ppaladin123]

I'm hoping for a githyanki/githzerai racial write up in MotP. Crossing my fingers!

 

[catsclaw227]

Like I suspected, they're completely redesigning the planes, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The bad thing is that the entire book is only 160 pages. That is really not enough space to develop the new cosmology, in addition to the player options and monsters we'll probably see. And it's unlikely we'll see a second planar book, or much planar support outside of the occasional, infrequent Dragon article.

So ~80 pages have to sell the planes for an entire edition, with no help from Planescape or the enormous planar history of the game. It doesn't look good. I'm already anticipating having to adapt the previous cosmology to the 4E world.

The only group they really need to "sell" the planes to would be the Planescape crowd, and, well.... this isn't Planescape. I imagine that they will be able to get quite a bit of fluff and crunch together to make the planes usable in any 4e campaign. It opens up opportunities for a 3PP to put out planar books.

EDIT: And one of the beauties of the 4e cosmology is that they don't have to worry about supporting and complying with hundreds (Maybe thousands?) of pages of Planescape text. I certainly don't want to have to do that as a DM. Not knocking Planescape, there were some awesome stuff in there, and we have some well-versed Planescape experts here on Enworld.

Now with regards to the Great Wheel crowd (those that aren't Planescape hardcore fans), I imagine that they would have to work more to make it fit into their cosmology, but you never know... they might have tips about how to make that work.

 

[Shroomy]

80-100 pages of fluff is more than enough for me, especially in tandem with Dragon. I mean, I don't need every square inch of every plane well-defined, just give me an overview, some cool locations, something about its inhabitants, some planar specific monsters, etc.

Also, I fully expect to see stuff from Planescape repurposed in 4e MotP (example, Sigil is now a demi-plane).

 

[The Little Raven]

This is a DM book, not a player book, so any player options will be kept to a minimum or not be present at all. We know there will be a monster written up MM-race style (for NPC use, not PC use), but other than that we haven't been told about player-related material.

In light of that, I think that expecting to lose fully half the book to those options is a bit unreasonable.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

This is a DM book, not a player book, so any player options will be kept to a minimum or not be present at all. We know there will be a monster written up MM-race style (for NPC use, not PC use), but other than that we haven't been told about player-related material.

In light of that, I think that expecting to lose fully half the book to those options is a bit unreasonable.

I remember reading somewhere that there were Paragon Paths in Manual of the Planes.

 

[The Little Raven]

I remember reading somewhere that there were Paragon Paths in Manual of the Planes.

I hadn't seen that, but would be interested in some planes-specific ones. Got any links?