D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[Savage Wombat]

Why can't Planescape be its own self contained setting? Why does it have to be the default setting for all D&D, regardless of setting? Dragons are different in every single setting. Undead are different in every single setting. Heck, ORCS are different in every single setting. Why does every single outer planar critter have to follow Planescape lore? Why does the Blood War have to exist outside of the Planescape setting? Why are my Githyanki, Planescape Githyanki and not a thing on their own?

Please, for the love of gaming, keep Planescape as its own thing and leave your peanut butter out of my chocolate.

Because, as before - you fail to make a distinction between the D&D Outer Planes default and the Planescape setting. There's going to be some default interpretation of what the planes are, and what the creatures there are like - but that's not the same as Planescape.

 

[Hussar]

Because, as before - you fail to make a distinction between the D&D Outer Planes default and the Planescape setting. There's going to be some default interpretation of what the planes are, and what the creatures there are like - but that's not the same as Planescape.

Fair enough. But, OTOH, we managed to define demons and devils long before the Blood War and Planescape. There's no particular reason for demons and devils to be at war. Nothing in the Great Wheel implies that at all. Yugoloth in Planescape are mercenaries in the Blood War. Daemons in the 1e Field Folio and Monster Manual 2 mention nothing about being mercenaries. Just that Yugoloths/Daemons inhabit a certain region of the planes and some of them serve Lloth. We can have four evil Elemental Princes detailed in the Fiend Folio, without a single mention of how this intersects with Planescape or planar lore. On and on.

There is absolutely no reason that Planescape cannot be like every other setting. Self contained with its own lore and its own take on D&D. Specific settings can piggyback on that setting, or they can do their own thing. Great. Eberron can have its own cosmology, completely decoupled from anything planar. Forgotten Realms can embrace Planescape lore. Also fantastic.

The only thing I want is the choice. Granted, I'll just do what I always do and completely ignore the listed canon and do my own thing. The only real problem is that if I buy any higher level modules that deal with the planes, I'm almost certainly going to have to strip out vast swaths of the adventure. Which I don't have to do for generic modules that don't deal with the planes.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Uh, I think I misunderstood the term multiverse. I took it to mean that all campaigns and all cosmology can exist together. There is linking in some quantum magic type way (Llolth in more than one place is the same but if killed in one setting doesn't die elsewhere). As in Multi - universes. So multiverse means monoverse, as in all settings use the same cosmology?

 

[Shemeska]

Fair enough. But, OTOH, we managed to define demons and devils long before the Blood War and Planescape. There's no particular reason for demons and devils to be at war. Nothing in the Great Wheel implies that at all. Yugoloth in Planescape are mercenaries in the Blood War. Daemons in the 1e Field Folio and Monster Manual 2 mention nothing about being mercenaries. Just that Yugoloths/Daemons inhabit a certain region of the planes and some of them serve Lloth. We can have four evil Elemental Princes detailed in the Fiend Folio, without a single mention of how this intersects with Planescape or planar lore. On and on.

There is absolutely no reason that Planescape cannot be like every other setting. Self contained with its own lore and its own take on D&D. Specific settings can piggyback on that setting, or they can do their own thing. Great. Eberron can have its own cosmology, completely decoupled from anything planar. Forgotten Realms can embrace Planescape lore. Also fantastic.

The only thing I want is the choice. Granted, I'll just do what I always do and completely ignore the listed canon and do my own thing. The only real problem is that if I buy any higher level modules that deal with the planes, I'm almost certainly going to have to strip out vast swaths of the adventure. Which I don't have to do for generic modules that don't deal with the planes.

I shouldn't engage on this, again, but I will.

We get that you don't like certain things, but they've been part of D&D for many, many years. You're free to strip them out, but that's how things have developed with the game for a long time now. There have been noted caveats there of course, such as Eberron being in its own cosmology -and for its sake I hope it remains so- and 4e trying to go off in a different direction, but 5e appears to wish to embrace that long-term legacy of 1e/2e/3e lore once again.

Before Planescape was a campaign setting there was a default D&D cosmology in 1e, with a presumption of connection to each campaign setting and some points to confirm that as more books expanded on things. That assumption became quite explicit in 2e, and as a natural outgrowth of that, Planescape focused on that common cosmology that was already in place, further developing it and those inter-connections between the various campaign worlds of (A)D&D. What you object to, I see as already explicitly there prior to Planescape, or as a natural outgrowth of what was there predating Planescape.

 

[Shemeska]

Uh, I think I misunderstood the term multiverse. I took it to mean that all campaigns and all cosmology can exist together. There is linking in some quantum magic type way (Llolth in more than one place is the same but if killed in one setting doesn't die elsewhere). As in Multi - universes. So multiverse means monoverse, as in all settings use the same cosmology?

It's a return to a common cosmology as in 1e and 2e (though there were also sources that followed along these lines in 3e while others did the exact opposite).

It remains to be seen if Eberron retains its unique cosmology if it appears in 5e as a campaign setting (I would hope so since it didn't start off as part of the Great Wheel, while virtually every other campaign setting did).

 

[Quickleaf]

My only bitch about this is it forces all planar material to be vanilla. Everything that has anything to do with the planes has to fit within the Planescape model. And I think this is extremely stifling for creativity.

I really hope they allow for different cosmologies to be used and refrain from kitbashing things together that don't belong together (or taking things out that are essential to Planescape's feel). This cuts both ways. One of the things you saw in 3e and 4e was lots of planar products with none of the Planescape feel.

The defining features of Planescape - abstract made tangible, Blood War, philosopher's with clubs, living and dead side by side, cynical worldliness, unity or rings - were quilts unique to that setting. As [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] pointed out in another thread, Planar does not necessarily equal Planescape.

 

[Quickleaf]

My only bitch about this is it forces all planar material to be vanilla. Everything that has anything to do with the planes has to fit within the Planescape model. And I think this is extremely stifling for creativity.

I really hope they allow for different cosmologies to be used and refrain from kitbashing things together that don't belong together (or taking things out that are essential to Planescape's feel). This cuts both ways. One of the things you saw in 3e and 4e was lots of planar products with none of the Planescape feel.

The defining features of Planescape - abstract made tangible, Blood War, philosophers with clubs, living and dead side by side, cynical worldliness, unity of rings - were quite unique to that setting. As [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] pointed out in another thread, Planar does not necessarily equal Planescape.

 

[Jiggawatts]

I for one welcome our new multiversal overlords.

 

[pemerton]

It's a return to a common cosmology as in 1e and 2e

Before Planescape was a campaign setting there was a default D&D cosmology in 1e, with a presumption of connection to each campaign setting

I don't think this is true at all. If you read Gygax's discussion in his DMG of travelling to other planes, to the moon (on the back of a pegasus!), to the worlds of Boot Hill and Gamma World, I think there is no assumption of a default. The assumption is that the GM will develop his/her world as seems appropriate. The placement of the planar scheme in an appendix to the PHB reinforces that - like bards and psionics it is optional, not a default assumption of the game (other perhaps than the astral and ethereal planes, which also figure in magic such as Astral Spell and Potions/Armour of Etherealness).

Some Monsters in the Monster Manual have planar locations specified which figure in the PHB scheme (eg there are references to the Hells, Gehenna etc) but in many cases this is the barest of flavour text (eg Demondands could be from anywhere), and in some cases, like Bahamut living "beyond the east wind" it is a flavour text that departs from that of the PHB appendix.

Manual of the Planes perhaps marks the turning point - Jeff Grubb, with his parable of Fibber McGee's closet (I only know the name of the character from Grubb's intro, and am trying to get it right from memory here), explains that his goal is to present everything planar that's been done in D&D as part of a coherent whole. One notable disply of this is his treatment of all the pantheons in DDG as co-existing, whereas DDG itself seems to assume that the GM will choose which pantheon or pantheons might exist in any given gameworld.

But MoP is 1987, which is a late product as far as 1st ed AD&D is concerned. If you look at Dragonlance, for instance, which predates it, the cosmology, including the notion of "The Abyss", don't correspond with the PHB schema at all.

I think that the original presentation of AD&D took it for granted that the GM would decide what cosmology to use, what parts of the PHB appendix might be included, which pantheons were "real" in that campaign world, etc.

2nd ed AD&D does seem to have begun from the get-go with a MoP-type orientation.

 

[pemerton]

The defining features of Planescape - abstract made tangible, Blood War, philosopher's with clubs, living and dead side by side, cynical worldliness, unity or rings - were quilts unique to that setting.

I think the "cynical worldliness" of Planescape is a natural extrapolation of the D&D alignment system and its cosmological realisation in the outer planes: evil is as real and "valid" as good, and the powers of evil are as real and "valid" as the powers of good, and the power they grant is as real and "valid" as the power granted by powers of good.

That's why I personally think that, if you want to avoid that cynicism (and personally I do in my games) then you've got to avoid the cosmological framing that underpins it. (And with the cosmology gone, mechanical alignment is the next on the chopping block!)