This is why I tend to regard Planescape as an ultimately nihilistic setting.
XP covered.
D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....
They are more important to them as monsters, yes. Imix, Yan-C-Bin, etc have histories and resonance in the game that predate, and extend well beyond, the 4e cosmology.
And there can be evil/amoral creator gods without the particular 4e set-up of Astral Plane, mortal world and Elemental Chaos.
The Raven Queen could be used in a game, as the good of death and fate, without using the Shadowfell. For instance, you could move Letherna to one of the poles of the mortal world, and the streams of souls flying there would be the Milky Way and St Elmo's fire.
Because the games use different cosmologies, both for reasons of flavour and of stakes.
In my last Oriental Adventures campaign, unicorns were celestial beings, members of the Celstial Bureaucracy. That game had no Feywild or Faerie - nature spirits live in the mortal world (in D&D terms, they live in "pocket dimensions" associated with their respective natural phenomena) and are also accountable to the Celestial Bureaucracy.
This different flavour supports different stakes in the campaign. In this particular case, those stakes ended up including ancient pacts reached between Heaven and the Lords of Karma.
It means that he is the son of Tou Mu, the chaotic god of the North Star, and that he has a place in her schemes, and in the series of unfolding events that are central to the campaign.
I'm not sure they are distinct. That was my point - that what makes unicorns, or Graz'zt, distinct is not the plane they come from. So changing that plane doesn't ultimately change their character as monsters/NPCs.
Somewhat similarly, many of the same stories can be set in different "worlds" - Westerns, space operas, feudal Japan, Kung Fu fighting china, etc.
Mouseferatu
Hero
If all the DM wants is a big monster at the end of the dungeon, it doesn't. But it provides a different variety of games you could easily build around the dragon. Also, I'd be inclined to have them behave differently. If the dragon is extra-planar, does it want the same things? Live in the same sort of lair? What does this say about other dragon types? What does it say about Tiamat? And so forth.
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Elderbrain
Guest
Hussar, the Fraz Ur'blu and Grazz't entries that mentioned Greyhawk events were in the AD&D 1st edition MMII. Does that somehow not count as a core rulebook for you, especially since it contains the original Daemon/Yugoloths entries you are trying to protect from having material added to...? I don't understand...
Also, succubus were demons in 1e, the same 1e lore you seem to want to preserve from any additions when it comes to Yugoloths and demon/devil relations. So... Yugoloths being more than simple mercenaries is too much for you, as is the thought of demons and devils being at war, yet you don't bat an eye at a demon being turned into a devil?!?
Heck, according to 1e, the Devils were all plotting against each other to become top dog, and likewise any demon lord would happily slay another... yet demons and devils hating each other was too much of a stretch, when neither type of fiend could get along with those of his own kind?!? If a demon Lord would stab Demogorgon in the back to be Prince of the Abyss, how you think he's gonna treat devils? Hand out gifts?
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Elderbrain
Guest
- I second that. While there is a certain amount of equilibrium and balancing of forces on the Great Wheel and in Planescape, that doesn't mean that the writers are personally advocating that good and evil are morally equivalent, nor does it mean that one force or the other can never someday overcome the other. The problem is that if they actually published an adventure where the forces of good finally permanently defeated the forces of evil, that'd be the end of the adventures. There's nothing stopping any Planescape DM from running his own campaign where the heroes find a way to finish evil once and for all, anymore than in the World Axis cosmology. (You will notice that evil was never defeated in a final battle in the World Axis, either? Same reason - an end of conflict means the end of the game.)
Are you talking about unicorns with multiple origins within a given campaign, or across campaigns?
Within a given campaign I would generally want unicorns to have a common origin - part of how you know what the Feywild is about, for instance, is that unicorns come from it!
But across campaigns it's not the same at all. If I want to convey what a given cosmological element is about, I generally do that by drawing on the NPCs and monsters that are found there. For instance, you can quickly communicate something about the Shadowfell to someone familiar with modern fantasy tropes by telling them that it is the place that ghosts, wraiths etc come from. But this doesn't mean you're changing the mechanics of ghosts or wraiths.
The theme of a unicorn isn't where it's from. As per the earlier part of this post, the relationship is actually a reverse one: the fact that we know what a unicorn is, or a pixie, is what then lets us work out what the Feywild is about when we are told that it is the home of unicorns and pixies.
This is true too. For many monsters - eg ghosts and wraiths, to recycle an example from upthread - you don't need to change their mechanics to indicate whether or not they are from the Shadowfell or just the mortal world. Placing them on the Shadowfell isn't (typically) about changing the way they play when encountered - it's about changing, in some way, the broader significance of an encounter with them, by changing the backstory that accompanies them.
This is correct, in my ongoing Planescape campaign of 9 years, there is a growing chance that part of Tir Na Og in the Outlands and Bedlam might be sucked into Pandemonium. The Rilmani are not pleased.
Imaro
Legend
But doesn't this go both ways? Don't you also communicate something about these ghosts and wraiths by making them come from the Shadowfell as opposed to the Feywild? These places are already defined (that's kind of the point of a cosmology)... it's like saying the people in America define America... well yeah they do to a point... but having been a part of America in turn defines and differentiates them also.
Again this seems to be more rooted in how you look at things than in an objective way of defining things. If I say this Unicorn is from the Shadowfell it is going to be different from a Unicorn spawned on the Feywild in nature, mechanics and personality. All of these things will be informed by where it originates from. However the Shadowfell is not going to change because I put unicorns in it... they will just be Shadowfell unicorns.
