Retcon the dumb "Faction War" and bring back the FULL on Blood War?

[Silverblade The Ench]

I've been playing Planescape Torment, and thoughly enjoying it once again, after all these years
(bar the bugs, as it's very buggy on new PCs, sigh)

However, it shows ot me once again, and fully, that the Faction War of end of 2nd ed run, and 4th eds screwing up the Blood War, and other stuff were totally *STUPID!*

1) Like the mess they made of Dark Sun, TSR should have left the hell alone with Planescape.
The Faction War ended up with the factions mostly all getting annihilated/driven out of Sigil...WHY?
Why for the love of Mike ruin such a damn good, well thought out and documented bundle of lore etc, eh?

The factions, thier goals, decals, characters and ideals, were awesome!
I adored the idea that Planescape wasn't about "super lewts n' and power by levels for munchkins only", but instead about belief, alignment, etc etc
Awesome stuff!

This gave you a counter point to the other thematic settings and their shtick:
Dark Sun, brutal, gritty, violent
Spelljammer, humorous, swashbuckling, ship and space heroics
Ravenloft, dark Gothic horror
Undermountain, ultimate dungeon crawl with a good campaign setting for such.

TSR managed to screw all of 'em up, grrr!!

2) 4th ed, much as I love it, screwed up by dumping the Law/Chaos alignments. BAD IDEA!
Alignment sure as hell is important..Hell...you know? devils, demons, angels, modrons etc etc.
All good stuff to play with!

Alignment for some of the supernatural beasties is almost hard coded, that is not a bad thing, nor should folk complain about it. It is good for D&D.
ALignement is a great, quick guide to the rough, general moral & ethical attitudes of NPCs, it's as important as AC, THAC0, BAB or whatever (depending on yer edition)

ALignment is a good thing as it shows, oddly enough, the game has maturity, as morals & ethics are important. It's a stage director's shorthand notes for the guide work he does to get the characters to act to what you'd expect..but this doesn't stop 'em having individual quirks.
Exceptiosn being the plaanr beasties may have absolute hard alignments, it's why they are the way they are.

A marut isn't some big metallic giant, it's Law and the application of the rule of law personified.

Devils ain't "Lawful but Chaotic on fridays to suit Bob the DM"
it jsut means Bob the DM shouldn't have them doing chaotic things without a heck of a good DM reason...but chaotic, and dirty backstabbing devious, ain't necessarily the same thing..and devils are the masters of duplicity and charm.

Ok, changing the Planar set up a bit was ok, as it could do with a bit of "Spring cleaning" for 4th ed, but without law and Chaos, you have problems: Mechanus...modrons..maruts? Get the dirft? :/

I like the planar travel by ship in 4th ed, and other things which I think improved it less boringly lethal nature to the ELemental Planes for example.



2) Having the Blood War on hold...is also dumb.
WHY? If there's no conflict, WHERE'S THE FUN?!
FUN..a complex, huge war on many planes with many agents etc, that characters can get involve in, and players have fun with.
Except now in 4th ed...it's not occuring.
like...duh? and Demons, holding to a truce...duh?


So, IMHO, recton it right back to the start of Planescape just like has been done with Dark Sun! Solves all the problems. At least, for those of us with original Planescape boxed sets

Just have the planes not currently in 4th ed as mega-astral dominions.

otherwise...4th ed and to lesser extent, 3rd ed Planescape (planar) stuff is a bit on the lacklustre side, by comparison, to what it once was.
Take the good bits from each, and mash 'em together


I gotta do some 3D art based on Sigil...mmm

 

[Kzach]

You realise they changed the Blood War because nobody liked it, right?

 

[Piratecat]

You realise they changed the Blood War because nobody liked it, right?

By "nobody" you perhaps mean "Kzach." 'Cause I loved it!

Incidentally, Faction War was supposed to have a follow-up product that ended the War and put things more or less back in their rightful places. The product line was canceled before it came out. You can probably ignore the Faction War without a whole lot of guilt.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Much as I hate the idea of disagreeing with P-Cat and agreeing with Kzach...

I hated the Blood War. Hated, hated, hated. I thought it was a horrible idea on half a dozen different levels. I can almost tolerate 4E's version, because at least it gives the factions something a little more concrete to fight over, but I still desperately wish they'd gotten rid of it entirely.

 

[Oryan77]

I gotta do some 3D art based on Sigil...mmm

Be sure to share those pics
I was just fantasizing about doing some 3d art of Sigil myself and animating a little cut scene with it. I doubt I will though.

You realise they changed the Blood War because nobody liked it, right?

I guess my name is Nobody, cause I like it and use it in our 3.5 game.

 

[Psion]

++ liked blood war.

But yeah. Faction War was a different issue. I did think the results of Faction War were dumb, and resulting in gutting the best factions. And as PCat said, when originally written, many of the changes weren't meant to be permanent.

But after Planar Handbook for 3.5, I pretty much accepted that WotC would never do right by Planescape again.

 

[DaveMage]

Blood war: good

Faction war: bad

 

[Crothian]

It would be cool to read a blog or something on how the Faction War was gong to be resolved. I know we'll never get the product but a bullet point apporach could be cool and useful. Anyone know who was going to be the author?

I also like the Blood War. It gave a big event for the planes that the PCs could witness and use but not really be involved in.

 

[Psion]

It would be cool to read a blog or something on how the Faction War was gong to be resolved. I know we'll never get the product but a bullet point apporach could be cool and useful. Anyone know who was going to be the author?

The insight about this came from Monte Cook's old blog, and I think he said that they had laid some stuff out for it. But I don't have a link handy.

 

[Diamond Cross]

You know, just saying something is good or bad is not helpful. You should do your best to define what you liked or didn't like about the two different wars.

And it seemed to me that there really was no real difference between them.