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

[pemerton]

I think bringing up subclasses having the same level title as the main class is reaching and a slightly disingenuous way to try and justify stealing names.

I don't understand your use of the word "justify". WotC doesn't have to "justify" it's use of a name to label a game element. It just does it, and people respond. It's an aesthetic issue, not a moral one.

As for whether level titles are comparable, that's in the eye of the beholder. Paladins, cavaliers and magic-users have always been more important to my D&D play than the archons introduced into the game by Jeff Grubb, which as best I can recall I have used once. (I think a lantern archon may have turned up once in a Rolemaster game I ran.)

 

[Hussar]

/snip

1) What you consider "minor details" are not considered minor details by a lot of other people, mainly because they considered them defining details. Again, this comes back to the cosmology, which was the default for three editions (and later Pathfinder) until 4e changed it. To a lot of players, the label "celestial" carries its own assumptions and lore, separate from that for "fey." As a result, changing eladrin to fey does mean something.

2) More importantly though, you're missing what I've observed as the main complaint about eladrin which is that they trample on the territory of elves. Specifically, a lot of players saw no reason to separate high elves and wood elves into two distinct races, with different origins and racial traits, and the idea that high elves weren't elves any longer is something a lot of people were never really comfortable with (which has since been retconned in 5e). I honestly think it's less "eladrin are fey now and not celestials" and more "eladrin are high elves now and not angelic outsiders" or even "high elves aren't elves anymore."
/snip

1) here is not entirely true though. 2e had, obviously, no Planescape elements in the beginning until such time as they decided to create an over setting to unite all the settings TSR had published. 3e rejected all Planescape material from Core. All of it was excised from the game. There is not a single mention of the Blood War, or anything even slightly Planescape in nature in the 3e core books. It isn't until the 3e Manual of the Planes that anything Planescape'ish starts to make a come back. With 3.5e, now you have full bore Planescape in the core and in the supplements, but, for a few years anyway, and certainly in core, none of that was the "default".

Just took a second and perused my 3e MM2. The only mention that I could find of the Blood War was that demons were at war with good beings, "as well as with the lawful evil devils and baatezu of the Nine Hells." Not exactly a whole lot of information there. The Devils section doesn't even mention relations with Demons. ((On a completely unrelated note, man, there were a LOT of completely forgettable demon and devil types in the MM2. The names read like a random letter generator.))

Go back and actually read your 3e Monster Manual. There's nothing related to Planescape at all in there. Neither is anything referenced in the 3e DMG or PHB. Other than some very bare bones points about the Great Wheel, virtually all Planescape material was removed from the game for quite some time.

And the funny thing is, back when 3e came out, I remember that being hailed as a good thing. No more over settings intruding on supplements.

But, over time, Planescape again reasserted itself as the default as WOTC tried to brand planar stuff. Since they owned all the IP, and since you had umpteen 3rd party publishers publishing all sorts of planar material, they had to do something to set itself apart from the pack. Why not incorporate Planescape. So you got things like mentions of Gwynhyvrr (sp) in the Book of Exhaulted Deeds as a PrC. Dungeon and Dragon became locked into Planescape to the point where, apparently, all planar material had to follow that canon. You couldn't even get published if you didn't bow to the oversetting.

2) Um, huh? Eladrin are elves. Says so right there in my 4e PHB. The only difference is now all elves are considered having fey origins. Not a really huge jump there is it? High elves and wood elves have a long history of being separated in the game and a long history of being separate in the genre. But, then again, I've seen how hard people will argue about the importance of a name, so, perhaps you have a point here.

 

[Nivenus]

Certainy, no one in this thread is confused - you're not, I'm not, no other poster is either as far as I can tell. Where have you encountered all these confused people?

My players find it confusing (I know I've asked them). Editors I've worked with on the FR Wiki find it confusing (I know, I had to fight to work a lot of said confusing lore into the wiki). Random people I've encountered online have found it confusing. Need I continue?


Most people in this thread know a fairly significant amount about the lore of D&D, both pre- and post-4e. Hence the discussion. That isn't true of most players.

Of course it was avoidable, but for whatever reason the designers chose not to avoid it. My point is that this doesn't "muddy" anything. I have never met a person, either in real life or posting online, who thought that the elemental archons of 4e were intended as substitutes/an evolution of the LG archons of MotP and other pre-4e material.

And I have. Shall we weigh your anecdotal evidence against mine? Seems pointless to me. The truth is that no on would have been confused if they hadn't used the same name.

What happens if WotC decides they want to use both pre-4e and 4e archons in 5e? Do they call them both archons or do they rename one of them? It seems to me much more likely they'll rename one than keep the name for both. Which indicates the possibility of confusion.

I think the problem is that you're not recognizing the fact that - in pre-existing campaign settings like the Forgotten Realms - both types of archons now exist. And they're both called archons.

X-Men First Class combines the original X-Men story in which Magneto takes over a military base and launches its missiles with later Claremont-era material about the Hellfire Club. This is not "unnecessarily complicated" either. It's also an attempt at repackaging the old material as best it can be done.

That's not at all the same thing. First Class is an adaptation of the comics, not a continuation of them. If you want to make an argument using the film a much more sensible argument would be that First Class unnecessarily complicates the backstory of the first three films - by indicating a familial relationship between Xavier and Mystique never hinted at before, showing Xavier and Magneto meeting much later in their lives than the first film stated, and showing Hank turn blue well before his easter egg appearance in the second film, where he looked human. And those are, all arguments that have been made, but they're not the one you're making, which is, frankly, a stretch.

(For the record I actually like First Class more than the original trilogy and almost wish it was a reboot, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that adaptation =/= continuation.)

That's not in disupte. I am not misunderstanding what other people are doing. I'm expressing disagreement with it. For the sorts of reasons [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] articulated upthread, I think it is a detriment for the game to prioritise those sorts of details over theme and broad story function.


That eladrin come from the CG upper planes, and look like but are not elves, is part of an encyclopedia entry but it is not a guide to game play. That eladrin are mercurial, magical elven creatures who are aloof though generally benevolent tells me something about the role they can play in a game. I think it is a strength in RPG design to prioritise theme and story function over encylopedia-entry details.

I can see where you're coming from, but I disagree. These aren't just "encyclopedia-entry details." They're actually fundamental to a number of themes and metaplots that have been a part of D&D for decades. Whether or not you dislike such elements is a matter of opinion, but they aren't just obscure details: the concept of celestials, fiends, the Blood War, and the Outer Planes are all part of a cosmological story that was a large part of 2e and 3e's worldbuilding. Just as the Dawn War, the World Axis, and the contrast between immortals and elementals was part of 4e's metaplot.

The Planescape cosmology was not a default in 1st ed AD&D, which had no Concordant Opposition until DDG was published (so there are two possible interpretations of the Great Wheel already), had no Sigil, no "Gate Towns" and no obsession with portals in the Planescape fashion.

I don't understand where you get the impression that I'm talking about Sigil, Gate Towns, or portals? I haven't mentioned them at all. We've been talking about the Outer Planes, devils, demons, and celestials, which all date back to 1st edition.

I have already posted upthread, and will post again, that I do not find any great change between AD&D and 4e. Demogorgon, Orcus, Graz'zt, the archdevils, are all there playing much the same role that they always did. The changes are no greater than the changes between 1st ed AD&D and Planescape, which entirely repurposes daemons from a form of demon that lives on Hades and has slightly obscure magic resistance rules, to Machiavellian masterminds of a Blood War that did not even exist prior to 2nd ed AD&D.

And that may be a reasonable argument. But the changes from 1e to 2e continued and evolved over a period of a decade before they were incorporated into 3e. Yes, 4e might not be a major alteration of 1e (I actually think it's a bigger alteration than you're crediting) but it was a huge change to the lore that had existed throughout 2e and 3e, which were themselves built upon a foundation laid out by 1e. So it's kind of disingenuous to say that the change between 3e and 4e is equivalent to the change between 1e and 2e... because it's not.

4e's daemons - being treated simply as variant demons - is much truer to Gygax's use of them in D3 than the Planescape approach.

I have to question your judgment there. The Fiend Folio, where daemons/yugoloths first made their appearance, explicitly states that daemons can enter the Nine Hells and the Abyss with equal amount of ease and that they will freely associate with either kind of fiend. Specifically:

[Mezzodaemons] freely associate with night hags and demons [see AD&D Monster Manual] and are not averse to devils' though they find devils' strict regulations very tiresome.

and

Like their cousins the mezzodaemons, nycadaemons are common to the planes of Tarterus, Hades, and Gehenna. Unlike their related creatures, they are able to enter the 666 Layers of the Abyss and the 9 Hells as they will. Nycadaemons are avoided by all lesser creatures - night hags, mezzodaemons, lesser and greater devils, and most demons (see AD&D Monster Manual) - for the race is totally wicked and domineering, caring not who or what they enslave or exploit, but always acting in an intelligent and carefully calculated manner aimed at maximizing personal power and safety. Thus, these creatures will co-operate with other evil beings and races whenever mutual actions are likely to prove beneficial to themselves.

That certainly doesn't sound all that far off from the "Machiavellian masterminds" you describe. Indeed, while 2e's treatment of yugoloths may be a change from 1e's, it's most definitely an evolution rather than a 4e-style rebranding.

I'm not touching on that at all. No where have I suggested that D&D is a generic fantasy game. 4e doesn't present a "generic" setting - it presents a very particular setting, designed to support a certain version of classic D&D play, which will also be able to handle practical matters like the perennial balance tensions between martial and magical PCs (eg by explicitly allowing martial PCs to become demigods).


What you seem not to realise is that, for me (and I believe not only me) 4e made good on, and deivered better on, D&D's assumptions than earlier presentations of the D&D cosmology.

Actually, I do understand that. I'm just not certain why. You seem to be holding D&D to a very particular standard, which is your interpretation of 1e's assumptions. Disregarding the fact that I don't think your interpretation of those assumptions are as accurate as you think, that doesn't even begin to account for 2e and 3e's assumptions, which were a firm part of D&D's legacy by the time 4e came along. By the time 4e was released, the themes and assumptions of D&D were not limited to those of the original Red Box. They'd grown and evolved.

I have no problem adding what 4e added into that box. Indeed, I hope 5e does incorporate some of 4e's lore into it. But 4e didn't add on to 1e-3e. It disregarded or rewrote large portions of 1e-3e, rendering a lot of previous information invalid. And that how the transition from 1e to 2e or 2e to 3e went (for the most part; there were exceptions).

1) here is not entirely true though. 2e had, obviously, no Planescape elements in the beginning until such time as they decided to create an over setting to unite all the settings TSR had published. 3e rejected all Planescape material from Core. All of it was excised from the game. There is not a single mention of the Blood War, or anything even slightly Planescape in nature in the 3e core books. It isn't until the 3e Manual of the Planes that anything Planescape'ish starts to make a come back. With 3.5e, now you have full bore Planescape in the core and in the supplements, but, for a few years anyway, and certainly in core, none of that was the "default".

I'm not quite sure why we're fixating on Planescape. Again, the Outer Planes, the Great Wheel, and the enmity between demons and devils is from before Planescape and it remained in 3e even though Planescape was dropped (for the record, I never D&D played until 3e, so I've never actually played a Planescape game outside of Torment). The Blood War itself was first mentioned by name in the Monstrous Compendium, Volume One for 2nd edition, four years before Planescape's debut, and is featured as an important component to 3e's cosmology especially if you look towards books dealing specifically with fiends or the planes more generally (both volumes of the Fiendish Codex mention it prominently).

The Great Wheel, as others have mentioned, is first detailed in the original Dungeon Master's Guide and is presumed whenever the Monster Manual mentions the home plane of a monster. It was finally elaborated on in more detail in the Manual of the Planes, again a 1st edition book, and at that point closely resembles its 2e/Planescape version:

The conventional view of the outer planes is a great wheel divided into 16 pieces. Each piece is the upper layer of a plane and is joined to the upper layers of the two planes adjacent to it. Planes have an (sic) variable number of planar layers, also called levels. In the center of the wheel, joined to it by the Astral plane, are the Prime Material, Ethereal, and inner planes.

It also goes on to explain that each of the planes (and their layers) are infinite in size and shape, that there exists an additional outer plane "that does not fit into the wheel concept, but has strong connections with four mutually opposing planes," and that the outer planes are "roughly aligned according to good versus evil and Law versus Chaos," with the additional plane (Concordant Opposition) as a place of balance. That all sounds very similar to the 2e/3e set-up for the outer planes.

Go back and actually read your 3e Monster Manual. There's nothing related to Planescape at all in there. Neither is anything referenced in the 3e DMG or PHB. Other than some very bare bones points about the Great Wheel, virtually all Planescape material was removed from the game for quite some time.


And the funny thing is, back when 3e came out, I remember that being hailed as a good thing. No more over settings intruding on supplements.

As I've stated earlier in the thread, I think WotC's best approach to take would be to try and A) incorporate as much of 4e and pre-4e lore as possible into 5e wherever they can and B) explicitly leave things open for DMs to change. I agree that the Great Wheel - like the World Axis - shouldn't be forced on anyone who doesn't want to use it. Eberron should get to keep the Orrery. The Realms should be able to go back to the World Tree if the writers like (though I expect it's getting the Wheel, which is fine because there's pretty good evidence it's what Greenwood prefers anyway). And if Nentir Vale ever resurfaces its head it should get the Great Wheel.

My own personal inclination is to look at all three of the major models - the Wheel, the Tree, and the Axis - as three different interpretations of a multidimensional system that even the most learned mages can't truly fathom on their own. So it doesn't really bother me overly much which system you prefer. The point I'm trying to make is that 4e forced its changes onto the existing lore, often in a lot of ways which were very jarring and upset a lot of people. And I think that could have easily been avoided.

2) Um, huh? Eladrin are elves. Says so right there in my 4e PHB. The only difference is now all elves are considered having fey origins. Not a really huge jump there is it? High elves and wood elves have a long history of being separated in the game and a long history of being separate in the genre. But, then again, I've seen how hard people will argue about the importance of a name, so, perhaps you have a point here.

Elves and eladrin are listed as separate races, and that's what most people pay attention to. That and the fact that the name was used by an angelic race prior. And while elves explicitly hang out in the Prime, eladrin primarily come from the Feywild and come with a lot of extra fluff that doesn't bear all that much resemblance to what existed for high elves prior.

When the change was originally made I thought it might be interesting. Separating drow, high elves, and wood elves does make a certain amount of sense. But really, it mostly ended up causing (at least within the FR fandom) a lot of grief and arguments for very little reason.

 

[pemerton]

The Great Wheel, as others have mentioned, is first detailed in the original Dungeon Master's Guide and is presumed whenever the Monster Manual mentions the home plane of a monster.

This is not correct. The "Great Wheel" was first mentioned in Dragon Magazine #8 (July 1977), where Gary Gygax had this to say about it (p 28):

I foresee a number of important things arising from the adoption of this system. First, it will cause a careful rethinking of much of the justification for the happenings in the majority of D&D campaigns. Second, it will vastly expand the potential of all campaigns which adopt the system — although it will mean tremendous additional
work for these DMs. Different planes will certainly have different laws and different inhabitants (although some of these beings will be familiar). Whole worlds are awaiting creation, complete invention, that is. Magical/technological/whatever items need be devised. And ways to move to these planes must be provided for discovery by players. Third, and worst from this writer’s point of view, it will mean that I must revise the whole of D&D to conform to this new notion. Under the circumstances, I think it best to do nothing more than offer the idea for your careful consideration and thorough experimentation. This writer has used only parts of the system in a limited fashion. It should be tried and tested before adoption.​

(One of the bigger issues - occupying much of Gygax's discussion on pp 4 and 28 - is how to handle the interaction between the "plus" bonuses on magic weapons and the planar location of a weapon and its target.)

The scheme was also presented in the PHB, as an Appendix (number 4) and hence strictly optional. Neither the DMG nor the MM draws upon it - in the MM there are references to the Uppper Planes, and to the Lower Planes both in general and particular in the entries on Demons and Devils, but there is neither requirement nor reason to treat them as a "Great Wheel". (And the language of "Upper" and "Lower" does not particularly suggest a wheel arrangement, as opposed to something more like the 4e arrangement, with the heavens at the top and the Lower Planes at the bottom.)

the additional plane (Concordant Opposition) as a place of balance. That all sounds very similar to the 2e/3e set-up for the outer planes.

Concordant Opposition appeared in DDG (1980). To the best of my knowledge that was its first appearance, as somewhere for all the True Neutral gods to be located within the Great Wheel framework.

It was finally elaborated on in more detail in the Manual of the Planes, again a 1st edition book, and at that point closely resembles its 2e/Planescape version

MotP was published in 1987. That is 10 years after Dragon #8 and 8 years after the publication of the final core AD&D rulebook. MotP is not "canon", any more than DDG is "canon" - it is an optional supplement that most players of the original AD&D game would not have purchased or probably even heard of.

Perhaps the biggest departure from what had come before in the MotP's presentation of the Outer Planes is that DDG had presented the various Mythoi as options for a GM to choose for his/her gameworld, whereas MotP treated them all as co-existing in its Outer Planes. This in itself is enough to flag MotP as just one way of handling planar matters in AD&D.

 

[Aldarc]

My players find it confusing (I know I've asked them). Editors I've worked with on the FR Wiki find it confusing (I know, I had to fight to work a lot of said confusing lore into the wiki). Random people I've encountered online have found it confusing. Need I continue?

Most people in this thread know a fairly significant amount about the lore of D&D, both pre- and post-4e. Hence the discussion. That isn't true of most players.

You're right. That isn't true of most players, but most players can figure out that eladrin are a variety of elf by reading the 4E PHB, even complete novices to the game who know nothing of D&D lore.

What happens if WotC decides they want to use both pre-4e and 4e archons in 5e? Do they call them both archons or do they rename one of them? It seems to me much more likely they'll rename one than keep the name for both. Which indicates the possibility of confusion.

OMG! So much confusion. Surely that would mean doomsday with cats and dogs living together. Call one 'celestial archon' and the other 'elemental archon.' Done. Or would the use of adjectival descriptors confuse your players and wiki editors too much?

I think the problem is that you're not recognizing the fact that - in pre-existing campaign settings like the Forgotten Realms - both types of archons now exist. And they're both called archons.

And? This seems to be as big of a deal as having different people with the title of 'king' or 'prince' in a setting.

 

[Hussar]

The Blood War itself was first mentioned by name in the Monstrous Compendium, Volume One for 2nd edition, four years before Planescape's debut, and is featured as an important component to 3e's cosmology especially if you look towards books dealing specifically with fiends or the planes more generally (both volumes of the Fiendish Codex mention it prominently).

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?356422-The-Multiverse-is-back/page46#ixzz3EnKViNi7

Just as a point of clarity, the Blood War is first mentioned in MC 8 Outer Planar supplement which came out in 1991. 2e D&D had no demons or devils at all for the first two or three years it was out. Mostly due to trying to placate some rather loud complaints linking D&D to devil worship.

And, really, if it was just the Blood War that made it over to the core of the game, I'd be pretty happy. It was certainly a cool idea when I first saw it. But, Planescape became the over-setting and thus all planar material had to then follow Planescape canon, no matter what. That's why I keep bringing up Planescape. You really can't separate the Great Wheel from Planescape anymore. Planescape completely took over all the Great Wheel and all things planar.

Which, rolling this back around, is where my beef comes in. I have zero problem with Planescape being an OPTION for planar play. Just like Forgotten Realms is an option or Eberron is an option. Where my beef comes in is that it's been cemented as the default. Not just the Great Wheel, which I have no problems with, but, all the Planescape baggage that has been appended to the Great Wheel over the years. It's all PS now regardless of what came first.

For example, I could probably sell a module to Dungeon magazine (presuming it comes back) that features an orc tribe that is working with an elf group, presuming the module was interesting enough. It's a generic, setting free adventure. But, I will never, ever be able to sell a module to Dungeon where a demon has three modron body guards and is working for a devil. It will just never, ever happen because it violates too much canon. I can never buy a supplement which features planar elements that doesn't obey Planescape lore, because, as you say, Planescape is now the default setting.

I never had a real problem with Greyhawk as default because Greyhawk is so generic that it can be plopped pretty much anywhere. PS is not generic. It is a very specific setting. People love it and that's great. I just wish that for gamers like me, who aren't interested in PS, that we could get planar supplements that weren't forced to follow a single setting.

 

[pemerton]

My players find it confusing (I know I've asked them). Editors I've worked with on the FR Wiki find it confusing (I know, I had to fight to work a lot of said confusing lore into the wiki). Random people I've encountered online have found it confusing. Need I continue?

<snip>

Shall we weigh your anecdotal evidence against mine?

I can honestly say that this is the first time I have ever heard of anyone being confused, in the sense of thinking that 4e archons occupy the same story role as Jeff Grubb's archons.

The Fiend Folio, where daemons/yugoloths first made their appearance, explicitly states that daemons can enter the Nine Hells and the Abyss with equal amount of ease and that they will freely associate with either kind of fiend.

<snip>

while 2e's treatment of yugoloths may be a change from 1e's, it's most definitely an evolution rather than a 4e-style rebranding.

The first time I used a nycadaemon it was allied with both a demon and devil to try to advance the cause of an evil god. There seemed to me that there was no greater barrier to demons and devils cooperating than dwarves and elves - and everyone knows that in extremis dwarves and elves will align against orcs and ogres, whereas we never see elves and ogres aligning against dwarves and (LE) orcs!

When I later acquired a copy of D3, I saw that, in it, mezzodaemons and nycadaemons were hanging out in the Vault much like demons. 4e's treatment harks back to that. (And that is no obstacle to nycadaemons playing both sides for those who want it - for instance, a nycadaemon could ally with a force of devils to betray a force of demons fighting on the Plane of 1000 Portals. Nothing in 4e makes that sort of scenario impossible.)

What happens if WotC decides they want to use both pre-4e and 4e archons in 5e? Do they call them both archons or do they rename one of them?

They'd probably have to rename one or the other. Just as in the Fiend Folio, creatures first published as Imps in White Dwarf magazine were re-labelled as "mephits". Or Balrogs got re-labelled as Type VI demons (with Balor as a proper name of one of them) and then re-labelled again as Balors.

I think the problem is that you're not recognizing the fact that - in pre-existing campaign settings like the Forgotten Realms - both types of archons now exist. And they're both called archons.

Issues of continuity in FR aren't something that I personally worry much about. I don't have to edit a wiki about them, and I don't and never have used the campaign world.

When I do use published worlds - eg Greyhawk or Oriental Adventures - I pick and choose my material from the various versions I have (in the case of Greyhawk, 5 of them, or 6 if you count the City of Greyhawk boxed set as its own thing), and don't worry too much about what the precise popuation figures are (this being one of the things that varies across versions). These campaign materials are grist for my game; my game is not a vehicle for showing off these materials.

To the extent that WotC has to treat campaign world continuity as an important commercial reason - eg because it makes more money selling FR novels than it does selling RPG material - I think that has an unhappy, if unavoidable, effect on the game, as it subordinates the design of material that is well-suited for play to what is the authoring of (in effect) a series of chain novels.

First Class is an adaptation of the comics, not a continuation of them. If you want to make an argument using the film a much more sensible argument would be that First Class unnecessarily complicates the backstory of the first three films - by indicating a familial relationship between Xavier and Mystique never hinted at before, showing Xavier and Magneto meeting much later in their lives than the first film stated, and showing Hank turn blue well before his easter egg appearance in the second film, where he looked human. And those are, all arguments that have been made, but they're not the one you're making, which is, frankly, a stretch.

<snip>

I have no problem adding what 4e added into that box. Indeed, I hope 5e does incorporate some of 4e's lore into it. But 4e didn't add on to 1e-3e. It disregarded or rewrote large portions of 1e-3e, rendering a lot of previous information invalid.

<snip>

the changes from 1e to 2e continued and evolved over a period of a decade before they were incorporated into 3e. Yes, 4e might not be a major alteration of 1e (I actually think it's a bigger alteration than you're crediting) but it was a huge change to the lore that had existed throughout 2e and 3e, which were themselves built upon a foundation laid out by 1e. So it's kind of disingenuous to say that the change between 3e and 4e is equivalent to the change between 1e and 2e... because it's not.

This all rests on premises that I don't really accept.

For instance, I don't agree with your contrast between "continuation" and "adaptation". Todd McFarlane's Peter Parker married to Mary Jane is not in any meaningful sense a continuation of Ditko's nerdy photo-journalist getting beaten up by Flash Thompson. They're different riffs on the same character and his tropes.

I've never heard any of the criticism of First Class that you mention. They don't resonate with me at all. The point of the movies (or the comics) isn't, primarily, to present a history of an alternative universe. It's to tell stories, with the alternative universe background being a tool to that end.

4e didn't render past material "invalid". Material doesn't become invalid, because there is no relevant test of validity. It is all just story elements for use in an RPG. Did the Caves of Chaos become "invalid" when AD&D rewrote most of those humanoids as LE? Was its validity partially restored when 3E rewrote orcs as CE?

This is what I took to be (part of) [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]'s point (though, like [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION], I don't really see how he reconciles it with his apparent enthusiasm for preserving an ever-more detailed canon): if I am using orcs in my campaign for a certain purpose, and part of my use of orcs involves them using scimitars a la Tolkien, and then TSR publishes the Monster Manual which has a weapon list for orcs on which scimitars do not appear, the fact that TSR's new material doesn't contradict its older published material is irrelevant to me. Because the new material contradicts what I am doing in my game.

Conversely, if I am busy ignoring yugoloths because I think they're inane, and am using daemons in the same way that Gygax did in Vaults of the Drow, namey as variant demons, then when 4e comes out and makes that approach to daemons part of its lore I have an edition that is more suitable for my purposes, daemon-wise, than the two that preceded it, even if that new lore contradicts what came before.

This is why I have said that the criterion for evolution from what came before is not consistency of detail that may well be irrelevant to most players, but consistency of theme and story function which is likely to be what draws game players to particular elements. At least in my experience, D&D players don't use orcs, or goblins, or hobgoblins because they like the weapon and armour specs provided for them in Gygax's MM. They use orcs because they are familiar with Tolkien or Tolkien-derivative material.

These aren't just "encyclopedia-entry details." They're actually fundamental to a number of themes and metaplots that have been a part of D&D for decades. Whether or not you dislike such elements is a matter of opinion, but they aren't just obscure details: the concept of celestials, fiends, the Blood War, and the Outer Planes are all part of a cosmological story that was a large part of 2e and 3e's worldbuilding. Just as the Dawn War, the World Axis, and the contrast between immortals and elementals was part of 4e's metaplot.

As something of an aside, 4e doesn't have a metaplot - all the material you mention has already happened in the default setting, and is part of the background known by the players.

To the extent that this is more than just an aside, the point would be this: as with my comments upthread about "chain novels", I don't regard metaplot as conducive to RPG play. It tends to turn RPGing just into another form of experiencing someone else's story, which reduces what is peculiar to RPGs - namely, participant authorship - whilst driving home what is perhaps weakest about RPGs - namey, the stories typically aren't all that good. A bit like jamming with one's friends, being a participant author goes a long way towards making an otherwise ordinary story enjoyable and interesting. Whereas being a reader/viewer of someone else's story removes those pleasures of creation, at which point the story better be pretty good! And in my personal experience this is not true for most RPG metaplot.

Perhaps it is true that, for the majority of D&D players, the most salient fact about eladrin is that they are from the planes of Beastlands, Arvandor and Ysgard (planes that have, in their canoncial Planescape labels, already lost much of what made them engaging in their original AD&D presentation). WotC have the market research to know whether or not this is so. But a story in which the plane of origin of a being - rather than, say, its role as a mercurial, magical elven being - is the most important thing about it is in my view a story that has already degenerated into an encylopedia entry.

When I play 4e, Kord lives on Mt Celestia with Bahamut (who, in the original MM, lived behind the East Wind) and with Moradin. But if WotC were to publish a version of the game in which they reimagined these things - and, say, put Kord (= Thor) into Ysgard (= Asgard) and placed Moradin in the deep caves beneath Thor's home, and made Bahamut the guardian of the rainbow bridge, that wouldn't bother me. I could even have both stories be legends in the same campaign world if I wanted to! Or adapt them in some other way. Or even ignore them if I wanted to.

The bottom line, for me, is that TSR/WotC is not engaged in worldbuilding. They are presenting me (and other D&D players) with the material to put together my (our) games.

You seem to be holding D&D to a very particular standard, which is your interpretation of 1e's assumptions.

No. I'm saying that a version of the game that develops AD&D assumptions in a certain direction isn't "disrespecting" or "disregarding" what came before. It is building on it.

I'm also saying that, in my view, D&D is not primarily a "metaplot" or campaign world. It is primarily a set of tropes and themes, and the job of the monsters and the cosmology is to express those tropes and themes in ways that players can use to play their own games.

When you think of the game in that way, changing the details of the lore in the pursuit of better expressions of those tropes and themes is good design. And prioritising details over tropes and themes is getting things backwards.

Obviously I don't think my opinion is a universal one. But I think it's a tenable one. And I think it's that the 4e designers seem to have shared, or at least adopted as a working hypothesis. Which was the basis of my point, stated upthread, that they were not "disrespecting" what had gone before, or (as is often said) changing it for change's sake. They were trying to make it the best version of what it already was.

 

[pemerton]

You really can't separate the Great Wheel from Planescape anymore. Planescape completely took over all the Great Wheel and all things planar.

I agree with this.

One feature of the take-over, not often commented on, is the change in planar names. The original names conveyed ideas that are lost in the Planescape make-over. In his controversial review of the original PHB on rpg.net, Lev Lafeyette made this comment about Appendix IV:

The final section of the book includes an alignment graph (without systematic suggestions for use) and the planes of existence, including the rather evocative assignment of Earthly polytheistic pantheons within the AD&D alignment system.​

This "evocative" feature of the Great Wheel was already diluted by DDG, which suggested that pantheons should be split up among the planes based on individual godly alignments. It is completely lost once (for instance) Gladsheim/Asgard becomes Ysgard, the Seven Heavens become Mt Celestia, the Glooms of Hades become the Grey Wastes, etc.

I never had a real problem with Greyhawk as default because Greyhawk is so generic that it can be plopped pretty much anywhere. PS is not generic. It is a very specific setting. People love it and that's great. I just wish that for gamers like me, who aren't interested in PS, that we could get planar supplements that weren't forced to follow a single setting.

My reason for not favouring Planescape is similar. I rarely use modues as written - I pick and choose bits and pieces from them, combining different modules together, to get material for my games. The main thing I want in a module is interesting backstory and compelling motivations that will drive an RPG scenario.

And personally I don't get very much of this from the Planescape books that I have read. The backstory is arcane but, to me at least, not that compelling, and seems to offer very little that is compelling to players unless their main desire is to learn the backstory. (In which case they could just read the books.)

The 4e backstory is better for my purposes: the more the players learn of it during play, the more pressing the choice between divine order and primordial chaos becomes. I've used other cosmologies, too, and have adapted Planescape-style material (eg Bastion of Broken Souls) into them.

So unlike you I don't avoid Planescape stuff, because I can turn it to my own ends. But I am very happy to have non-Planescape stuff available too.

 

[Imaro]

My reason for not favouring Planescape is similar. I rarely use modues as written - I pick and choose bits and pieces from them, combining different modules together, to get material for my games. The main thing I want in a module is interesting backstory and compelling motivations that will drive an RPG scenario.

And personally I don't get very much of this from the Planescape books that I have read. The backstory is arcane but, to me at least, not that compelling, and seems to offer very little that is compelling to players unless their main desire is to learn the backstory. (In which case they could just read the books.)

I'm curious I see you comment on Planescape (mostly negatively) alot have you so much as ever read the actual Planescape boxed set? I mean if not I have to take your views of it with a large grain of salt and wonder if it's possible that may be why you feel the way you do about it, especially compared to the 4e stuff which you seem to have taken the time and effort to actually read up on... Just saying.

 

[Nellisir]

I'm curious I see you comment on Planescape (mostly negatively) alot have you so much as ever read the actual Planescape boxed set? I mean if not I have to take your views of it with a large grain of salt and wonder if it's possible that may be why you feel the way you do about it, especially compared to the 4e stuff which you seem to have taken the time and effort to actually read up on... Just saying.

I owned the original Planescape boxed set and a bunch of the additional material. Honestly, it always seemed pretty meh. There were good parts, but overall, not something interesting.