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

[pemerton]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how you're using the idea of "setting exploration" here, but I was pretty clear with how I was using the term "exploration" -- as "going somewhere cool, doing a thing, and coming home."

By "setting exploration" I mean play focused on discovering, and interacting with, the content of the setting, and seeing what is possible within the setting. "Let's pretend"-type play. Or what another commentator called "The Right to Dream".

The exploration I am talking about is not exploration in the fiction - not the PCs "going somewhere, doing something and coming home". It is exploration of the fiction by the players.

I was pretty clear with how I was using the term "exploration" -- as "going somewhere cool, doing a thing, and coming home."

Poking a hole in the fabric of reality doesn't have that goal. Rather, the goal is unleashing chaos into the broader world, making the fundamental instability of things a part of the whole multiverse rather than one bit of it. It is about furthering your aims (as the Xaositect I was projecting there) of making all of reality a fundamentally less coherent place. It's about changing the setting

<snip>

Again, it's about setting transformation. Your belief that the strong are in control means that you control others by virtue of having some strength that not everyone does. Others listen to you, the idea spreads, and you become a central figure for others to react to.

<snip>

They all fundamentally alter the face of the setting and change the tone and goals of the game played within it.

"Poking a hole in Limbo and seeing if it all drains out" is establishing setting through actions... if it fails you have determined through your actions that limbo will not change in that manner... if it does you have forever altered the landscape of Limbo.

"Leading my very own cult of sychophants" is establishing something in the setting... you've created and become the leader of an entire cult of fanatics, how is that not changing and impacting the setting?

This is setting exploration - it is the players (incuding perhaps the GM, if there is no strong railroading) exploring the shared fiction, learning its content and limits, and seeing what is possible within it.

The fact that, within the fiction, the PCs change things, doesn't make the game cease to be exploration of the setting by the players. Establishing those changes, their scope and limits, is part of that exploration.

(Setting exploration play in which the PCs can't change the setting is, in my personal view, probably the most low-grade form of RPGing. I gather some of the Dragonlance modules head in this direction, but that's not based on first hand experience. I'm not making this criticism of Planescape, although some modules - eg Expedition to the Demonweb Pits - come pretty close to this.)

It matters because Truth matters (to this hypothetical Athar character). Because now you have given people new eyes with which to see and revealed to them the actual layout of the cosmos, where the gods are merely tools. And no conflict? I mean, the implication there is that all the gods are going to pass away because people no longer view them as important.

As you describe it this is also setting exploration. But because Truth is a value not just for the protagonists within the fiction, but (at least potentially) for those who are authoring and enjoying the fiction (ie the RPG participants), it need not be that (as I noted in my earlier post).

Whether the passing away of the gods creates confict or not depends on what the significance of the gods is, and how that is expressed via antagonism in the scenario. That's one of the things that, depending on how it is developed, would affect whether or not this scenario was primarily setting exploration or something different.

I also don't totally understand how any of those are more "setting exploration" than sailing the Astral Sea to form an alliance of deities against a newly resurgent Primordial army

4e can be played as setting exploration: it's not completely straightforward from the core books (you'd have to develop your own setting), but the sort of stuff you would need is provided in the Plane Above (using the islands that surround the heavenly domains), from the Plane Below (which has a series of vignettes, like the travelling caravan) and from MV2 (which has a whole lot of setting detail for the Nentir Value).

Sailing the Astral Sea to form an alliance of deities against a newly-resurgent Primordial army also sounds like a setting-exploration scenario - again, without some of the supplements the GM would have to do a fair bit of world creation, but it's pretty feasible.

But that is not how I use 4e or its cosmology.

What I like about 4e's cosmology is that it is (i) laden with conflict that isn't simply meaningful within the fiction but is meaningful to those who read and engage with the fiction, and (ii) its PC build rules, plus GM-side story elements, tend to naturally position the PCs (and hence the players) within those conflicts.

This post expresses the point as well as I can:

I tend to view 4eC[lassic] as a visceral game about violently capable individuals who set out willingly or not to irrevocably enact change in their worlds who end up becoming mythic figures in their own right. This is highly reinforced in the assumed setting of the game with the backdrop of the Dawn War, tales of the fall of civilizations, and highly active Gods, Demon Princes, Primordials, etc. 4eC presents a world on fire in desperate need of heroes. Thematically it strikes the same currents that Greek Myth, the Diablo games, and Exalted does though tied to a more mortal perspective.

The following two quotes are from a thread I started years ago on The Plane Above, suggesting that it heralded the "Glorantha-fication" of D&D. They are both somewhat combative in tone, but I think they convey the contrast between setting exploration and what I think of as more thematically engaged play.

Do you think, that at the end of a Planescape campaign, the players can remove the Lady of Pain from power? Or that it is alluded to in the material that exists for the campaign?

I think that's a kind of thing pemerton talks about. It's not just about having myths in your background. It's interacting with them. It is effectively changing the myth. Becoming the myth.

Glorantha is amazing. Best rpg world evar, imo. Greg Stafford really knows his stuff when it comes to mythology, comparative religion and the like. It's a deep, rich world where the inhabitants have culture and religion and care about stuff real people care about.

For some reason D&D has never had good fluff, and I think the problem might be Gary's whole approach in the first place, which was very superficial. Sure, he knew a fair bit about myth and folklore but he just used it as a source for monster stats.

<snip>

Subsequent writers have taken Gary's <snippage> ideas and, nerds that they were, tried to make sense of it. Explain things, tie up the loose ends. Tell us what sort of hats gnomes wear and what flinds like to eat. Useless crap.

The best approach is to start again from the beginning, imo. Right at the very beginning - myth. I like how 4e has more of a mythic resonance - elemental giants, Celtic otherworlds, devils as fallen angels. It's good stuff, a step in the right direction. It's nothing like as good as Glorantha but it couldn't be because Greg Stafford is a genius.

Mustrum Ridcully's post notes that, in the sort of play I prefer, the PCs (and hence the players, vicariously) "become the myth". But Doug McCrae goes further in explaining the contrast with setting exploration: first, by noting that, in Glorantha, the culture and religion engages with stuff that real people care about; and second, by (pithily) contrasting "what sorts of hats gnomes wear and what flinds like to eat" with stuff that real people care about.

To tie this back to "forming an alliance of deities against a newly-resurgent Primordial army": in the sort of game I prefer, that would not be the main focus of play. The main focus of play would be determining whether or not to form an alliance of deities, to side with the Primordials, or to adopt some third path. The scenarios that took place as these decisions were being taken would be intended to push the PCs (and thereby the players) harder about their choice, whether they want to stick to it, whether it is the right choice, whether it is a choice that can lead to the outcome they desire.

If the players ultimately decided to side with the deities, the actual resolution of that alliance and its fight with the primordials would be well-suited to being a single skill challenge, perhaps with a level+6 combat as the resolution of it. Something like the way I handled the decision of the players to [take down Torog. It would be the culmination of an adventure, not the guts of it.

His reasons against your "petty reasons" are basically that the setting was purposefully designed to evoke a certain feel... more Moorcockian, Dickensian and Bas-Lag/New Crozbun than Greek Myth-esque.

<snip>

You judge Planescape on your own sensibilities but that doesn't make it inherently bad

Who has said that Planescape is inherently bad?

I think using Dickensian slang as the vernacular of an otherwordly fantasy city populated by angels, devils and their offspring is almost inexcusably silly, but that might just be me. (And the granting of pardons is inherently relational in any event. That I won't exuse the silliness doesn't mean others can't. Ducks in Runequest get a pretty mixed reception, too. Not to mention beholders.)

 

[Savage Wombat]

See, this is the kind of post where you lose me completely. I can't really penetrate your meaning, nor can I picture how you play any version of D&D that way.

 

[Hussar]

So, what does it matter if the Sword Mountains are, I dunno, some actual location in Dragonlance, or if you just take exactly that sentence as printed in the MM and just jam it into your own game?

How does what some other hypothetical table miles away might do with the word "Sword Mountains" affect what you're doing at your own table?

And from a publishing standpoint, this gives WotC a lot of flexibility. If they want to describe the Sword Mountains more in some adventure or something, they're free to, and if they want to do something ELSE with orcs, they're free to, and if they want to stipulate that other orcs share some things with these Sword Mountain orcs and are different in other ways, there's no Canon Police there to tell them no.



If I wanted to drop it into any other pseudo-european fantasy world basically as-is, nobles and wards and all, I can't see what would stop me.

In fact, if I wanted to drop it into Dark Sun, I could basically do it with this one change: replace the water with silt. BAM.

I dunno, I just think the distinction is kind of subjective and that makes it basically arbitrary.

Well, if the Sword Mountains are in Dragonlance, then WOTC can only ever use the Sword Mountains IN Dragonlance. You couldn't then plunk the Sword Mountains into any other setting. So, I'm not sure how this isn't inherently limiting. Well, just to be clear, you or I could plunk it into any setting, but, WOTC certainly couldn't. WOTC couldn't drop Waterdeep into an adventure set in Eberron, after all. WOTC must use giant iron cubes any time they want to use Acheron because that's part of the 30 year setting canon. They cannot plunk a living forest into Acheron because that would violate canon.

I'd say that the distinction is a spectrum, which makes it easy to see on the extremes, but, a lot more fuzzy in the middle. But, I do stand by the idea that The Planes, with their 30 years of canon, is not a resource at all, but a setting in and of itself.

 

[Nivenus]

And that's the something more. The setting takes something which (to my own mythic imagination) should be rare and wondrous, and turns it into just another place to go. 'Jaded and casual' is not an attitude I want to encourage toward a fantasy world.

Again, this is an element that really rubs me the wrong way, both aesthetically and philosophically. (I'm not a professional philosopher like @pemerton , I just play one at home. ) The idea that the great mythic wellsprings of the world are up for grabs, that they are less real than the material world, goes so completely against my grain that I don't find it fun. The strain of twisting my brain into that shape is just not worth the effort.

Actually, I'm going to have to disagree with some of the other Planescape fans here and say that I actually don't think the jaded and casual attitude of planar inhabitants clash with the idea of the planes as awe-inspiring and wondrous.

To me, there's nothing that says that a setting can't simultaneously be mundane and wondrous, depending on the context. Explaining something or repeated exposure to it does, to some degree produce a casualness in one's attitude to it, but that doesn't necessarily make it any less wondrous in of itself. Indeed, sometimes knowing the explanation makes things seem even stranger. Take real-life physics. The idea of the star as a massive globe of burning hydrogen whose structural integrity is maintained by a delicate balance the outward push of its own heat and the inward pull of its gravity is (in my eyes at least) a lot more wondrous than a flaming chariot that crosses the sky. Quantum physics is a lot weirder than probably anyone imagined the sub-molecular world would turn out to be. And so on.

Likewise, while some people in Planescape (namely, the urban inhabitants of Sigil) are fairly jaded about the world they live in that doesn't actually mean that the world they live in isn't actually wondrous, anymore than the existence of cynics in our world means the same thing. There's also plenty of people - best represented by the Factions - who have a much more mystical view of the world and the multiverse is filled with its own plentiful share of mystery. Planescape is still at it's core about a multiverse filled with infinite planes with strange geographies shaped by the collective beliefs of countless beings on innumerable worlds, some of which are inhabited by the souls of the dead, gods, and physical embodiments of good, evil, law, and chaos. The contradictions and paradoxes of Planescape - including the fact that some of the multiverse's inhabitants are jaded to the wonder around them - are part of what makes it wondrous, in my eye, more so than the comparatively simple structure of the World Axis.

Of course this is all very subjective and depends a lot on one's personal preference, so I'm not really trying to convince anyone else. But in my opinion, the fact that some people (namely those most exposed to the nature of the multiverse) are somewhat jaded about the planes doesn't subtract from their intrinsic wonder.

And while the idea of a place like Sigil, a city of doors to all sorts of places, is indeed really cool; it makes no mythic sense for me for it to be at the very center of the multiverse and off-limits to the gods themselves. (Of course, this is starting to edge into my vast distaste for the whole Great Wheel, not Planescape per se.)

I'll admit that Sigil's specialness can be a little off-putting but (and I'll admit this is my own personal head canon) the way I look at it, Sigil's inhabitants as are like to overestimate their own cosmic importance as the various Primes of the multiverse are. Sigil is only special because it's at the center of the Great Wheel in the Outlands... and the Great Wheel itself (as even official Planescape canon has it) is just a model - a very useful model, but a model nonetheless (and one the politics of Sigil likely favors).

@Nivenus, I think we have very different ideas about both the history of the game, and what it is about. That's not an objection to your posts, just a tentative observation.

I think you're probably right. And I don't really have a problem with your perspective; I just disagree with some aspects of it.

The Great Wheel is not presented as "core" (whatever exactly that meant in 1978). It was presented as an optional appendix, like psionics and the bard class.

And tieflings and dragonborn are "optional" in the 5th edition Player's Handbook. That doesn't mean they aren't core though.

Nor was it in any serious way canonical to Greyhawk as a published campaign setting. <snip>

Fair enough; I may have overstated my position (and I will admit I know far less of Greyhawk than either the Realms or Planescape or probably even Eberron). By 3rd edition though it was definitely canonical to Greyhawk in a way that it was no longer for FR (which instead played around with the details of the Great Wheel to make the World Tree). But insofar as 1st edition is concerned you are probably at least somewhat correct, though reading the actual text of the 1e PHB the Wheel seems just as optional or core as in the 5e PHB (where, again, it's in appendix).

This is just another respect in which the MotP does not establish Greyhawk canon, and is obviously optional rather than default or "canonical" with respect to D&D as such.

I'll have to disagree with that; the text of the MotP sells itself as the "essential" guide for explaining the various planes mentioned in prior supplements. While the option is of course left to use it or not use it, it's certainly canon to 1st edition's lore, at least insofar as any supplement is.

Planescape was supported by at least two 3E books I can think of: MotP, and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits.

Only insofar as the Great Wheel was supported, with a few details from Planescape thrown in as part of the "generic" D&D setting (by that point Greyhawk). Planescape the setting was by and large unsupported in 3e, as many disgruntled Planescape fans will attest.

Outside of Planescape I'm not sure where you see this prevalence [of law vs. chaos]. It is not part of AD&D, which posits the divide between Good and Evil as more fundamental (look eg at the paladin and assassin classes, and also at the way demi-humans and humanoids are presented). It is not part of Greyhawk - there are alliances between dwarves and elves (eg the Ulek states) but not between either of those peoples and orcs or goblins.

How about the original pre-AD&D rules, where alignment was defined solely as "law vs. chaos" and neither good nor evil came into it? Chaos was arguably the worse of the two, considering most monsters were either neutral or chaotic, but that doesn't change the fact that it was the definitive axis, before good and evil were added on AD&D. Not to mention the fact that Gary Gygax himself has attributed inspiration for D&D's alignment system to the works of Michael Moorcock, which among their central themes is a cosmic conflict between law and chaos... in which balance is the optimum status quo.

The balance of law and chaos is literally as old as D&D itself. It's one of its oldest tropes; far older than the balance between good and evil.

My point is that no reasonable person expects Todd McFarlane's Peter Parker to match Ditko's either. Just to give one trivial example, Peter Parker lives through decades of changes in fashion and technology while aging only 15 years or so. (In that respect he's like the Hardy Boys, who as an 18 and 17 year old (? going from memory here) cram more than one week-long adventure per day into their school break.)

Right, I get that. The problem is that again, this was a gradual evolution. Lee and Ditko's Parker may not be the same as McFarlane's, but it is fairly close to Lee and Romita's. And when Roy Thomas took over from Stan Lee it's not as if the character radically changed either. What you're glossing over is that, yes, there's a big difference between then and now... but it's a difference that occurred in steps over a long period of time, as new writers came on board and added their own touch to the character. That's quite a bit different (in my mind at least) from an adaptation, which, from the get go, is a new work.

Nothing in 4e is a comment on Planescape or the Great Wheel, let alone a declaration that it is "wrong". I'm not even sure what that would look like.

Sure it is, at least within the context of existing settings. Succubi? Devils now, not demons (a minor example I don't care that much about, but it's there). Kossuth? Primordial now, not a god. Moon elves and (celestial) eladrin? Same race now. Tieflings? Scions of an ancient empire, not outcasts and misfits. And so on.

Insofar as an original setting created by the DM is concerned, yes, you're right. But as far as actual canon goes you're wrong. The 4e lore in many cases did override and discard older lore.

Your insistence that "absolutely" there was a major shift is just having us going round in circles. Your criteria for "major shift" are my minor details. To give another illustration: when 3E changed orcs from LE to CE, someone from WotC (maybe Sean Reynolds?) posted something on the WotC website saying "In our games orcs have always been more wild and chaotic than militaristic like hobgoblins, and so we're changing their alignment from LE to CE."

I'd argue that changing the alignment of orcs from lawful evil to chaotic evil - while hardly a small change - is relatively minor compared to restructuring the multiverse. But your point is made and as I said much earlier in the thread, a lot of what counts as a "major" or "minor" change is subjective. The difference between kobolds as they originally debuted and as they are today is fairly large, but few people objected because (as I said earlier) the changes were A) mostly gradual and B) were made to a creature few people really cared about. The second criterion also applies to orcs' alignment switch from 2e to 3e: few people cared what alignment orcs were because their primary purpose in D&D (and most campaign settings) was to provide expendable hordes of low to mid-level enemies. On the other hand, a lot of people cared very much about the structure of the planes and what kind of creatures inhabited it.

I think I finally had an epiphany.

Let me see if I can work through this so that it makes sense, because, for me at least, it seems to explain why I'm having such an uphill battle trying to make my point.

The difference here is between a resource and a setting. The Planes (not Planescape, but all the Planes) are a single setting, not a resource.

I think that's mostly it really. I mean, I don't 100% agree because I do think allowances should be made (as in the 3e MotP) who'd rather not use the default version of the planes. But that's really what it's about when it comes down to it: whether or not you view the planes as a place to tell stories or elements to plug into (or not) your game.

I'd still argue that a lot of what is considered "generic" in D&D really isn't - orcs and elves in D&D actually differ in some pretty crucial ways from Tolkien's orcs and elves and a lot of other lore in the game's original iteration was made up whole-cloth - but it's true that some things are meant to be more interchangeable than others.

A character from Athas, or Ansalon, or Khorvaire or Faerun who travels to Acheron ALWAYS enters into The Planes setting. And The Planes isn't a resource where the DM is expected to create a campaign setting from the building blocks provided. It's a complete setting unto itself.

Again, that isn't completely true but it isn't completely wrong either. A lot of settings - Eberron in particular - play very fast and loose with the usual assumptions about D&D's cosmology. But at the same time a lot of the old ideas do hold true, more so than perhaps with other elements of "generic D&D." Devils and demons may not inhabit the Hells or the Abyss and there may be no Blood War, but they're still by definition lawful evil and chaotic evil respectively and celestials are still divided into most of the familiar races. And other settings like the Forgotten Realms play much closer to the default, even when using their own cosmology (such as the World Tree).

Note, not all Prime Material monsters are resources either. Drow come to mind as something that are much more of a setting than a resource. If I feature drow in an adventure, that comes with all sorts of pretty strong expectations based on the lore surrounding Drow. I wouldn't expect to find a Drow castle aboveground, for example. Planar creatures and elements are far more like Drow than orcs or kobolds.

That's a very good point. Again though, I'd say the dividing line here is a bit subjective. The main reason drow are so untouchable (at least in core, again, Eberron plays with things) has a lot to do (or at least so it seems) with the popularity of Drizzt Do'Urden. If Drizzt books weren't as popular as they are (or R.A. Salvatore never invented the character) we may well have seen drow undergo a major 4e revision the same as duergar did (to name another subterranean race). As it was, they mostly just got shifted off into a separate race (probably because high elves did too).

This may be a reflection on my own shortcomings as a gamer, but I can't say that I agree, and I think that's because of my own association of the name 'archon' less with a creature and more with a historical office, and one that I could see used by various creature types. So for me, 'archon' is a generic title. An 'archon' has never existed in my imaginative consciousness as a mythical creature, not like unicorns, angels, demons, or giants have. Celestial archons strike me as a just another subset of angels, though I'm sure some Planescape fan will condescendingly tell me how wrong I am about that. An 'archon' was always an official, a 'lord' or 'ruler' of ancient Athens. So regardless of the past editions, I don't see 'archon' as a creature nor do I see it akin to an octopus being used to apply to both a cephalopod and a flying mammal.

Right, but the name "archon" in the context of both celestial archons and elemental archons has little do with the ancient title. It's just what the creatures are called - they have no other name (at least none that's mentioned in any of the lore I've read). It's sort of how tyrannosaur means "tyrant lizard." That doesn't mean tyrannosaurs were literally tyrants or that it would be unreasonable to be confused if you heard of some entirely different creature with the same name.

As for celestial archons being angels, that's not entirely incorrect. But in 1e-3e lore angels and archons were actually separate kinds of celestials (which is, to a certain extent, calling a rose by any other name). The lore here was actually somewhat inelegant - angels could be of any good alignment whereas most celestials (like devils, demons, and daemons/yugoloths) corresponded to a particular type of good alignment (archons were lawful good, guardinals were neutral good, eladrin were chaotic good).

Furthermore, that analogy is incredibly silly given how animal names are in fact reapplied to other unrelated animals, both in English and many other languages.

Not really. Most creatures that share names in real-life biology are related or at least seem similar or connected in some way (there are exceptions, but that's the rule). A fox bat looks like a fox. A tiger shark has stripes like a tiger (and is also a swift and deadly predator). An osprey is sometimes called a fish hawk... because it eats fish. On the other hand, pre-4e and 4e archons share little except their name (and the fact that they live outside of the Prime).

 

[pemerton]

the text of the MotP sells itself as the "essential" guide for explaining the various planes mentioned in prior supplements. While the option is of course left to use it or not use it, it's certainly canon to 1st edition's lore, at least insofar as any supplement is.

But that's just marketing speak. Read any GH material - you'll see that the deities whose planer hangouts are described in MotP are not part of Greyhawk.

The MM2 incorpoated Greyhawk references (eg in the Valley Elf description) but that doesn't mean that the Valley of the Mage was "canonical" in 1st ed AD&D. I really think the whole notion of "canonical" lore for 1st ed AD&D - as opposed to, say, certain settings pubished during the 1st ed era - is problematic.

How about the original pre-AD&D rules, where alignment was defined solely as "law vs. chaos" and neither good nor evil came into it?

In that framework, "chaotic" equated roughy to CE and "lawful" roughly to LG. Moldvay even comes out and says it: lawful is usually good, chaotic usually evil. You can see it in the magazine discussion of the time, too: clerics use healing spells and raise dead, while anti-clerics use harming spells and finger of death (the precursor to slay living); lawful characters rescue villagers, chaotic ones murder them and sacrifice them to dark gods.

The 4e alignment framework is very much a harking back to this sort of single-axis alignment, only it inserts a couple of extra gradations on the axis.

See, this is the kind of post where you lose me completely. I can't really penetrate your meaning, nor can I picture how you play any version of D&D that way.

I'm not 100% sure what the puzzle is. Do you mean "How do you play D&D with an emphasis on conflict that isn't simply meaningful within the fiction but is meaningful to those who read and engage with the fiction" - or, as [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] put it, turns upon stuff that real people care about?

I'll try and give an examples drawn from a different medium, then bring it back to D&D.

Consider Blade Runner. In a relatively early scene, Harrison Ford meets the replicant Rachael. At that point in the movie, the audience is invited to engage in setting exploration: we discover how realistic replicants can be, learn about the emotional response test for identifying them, etc. The audience knows that the characters within the fiction care about who is a replicant and who is a human. But the audience has no reason of their own to care about this, other than curiosity about the setting.

Then, in the culmination of the movie, we get Rutger Hauer's monologue which suggests that the apparent human-ness of replicants goes deep. This in turn informs our understanding of Rachael and Deckard's elopement. At this point the film is not mostly leading its audience through an exploration of the setting. It is expressing something, or perhaps posing a question, about a topic that does matter to the audience: namely, what is it to be human?

(Blade Runner is pretty classical in its storytelling style. It is possible to subvert the distinction between setting exploration and commenting/posing a question: for instance, American Psycho is superficially an exploration of a murderously insane financier, but the very choice of that subject matter as an object of exploration is itself an invitation to the audience to reflect on topics that matter to them, such as the nature of commercial and consumerist culture. I think only rather avant garde RPGs attempt this, with the possible exception of CoC which you might argue does attempt this without being avant garde - I personally think it mostly fails as anything more than setting exploration, but due to weaknesses in the HPL source material rather than weaknesses in the RPG design.)

In an RPG, moving the focus away from setting exploration, and onto subject matter that people care about for reasons other than mere curiosity, is no harder than in a movie. And in someways easier, because if an RPG is working right than the players (due to author participation) will have a higher level of immediate buy-in than the typical movie audience, and therefore more tolerant of what would otherwise be rather banal storytelling. (I think it was earlier in this thread, but perhaps in a recent post in a different thread, that I compared RPGing to jamming with friends. At least in my case, the music I might produce when jamming with friends is really very poor, but is nevertheless pleasing and enjoyable precisely because of the identity of creators and audience.)

For instance, in the case of law/gods vs chaos/primordials, what people care about (or, at least, my players) is fairly classic stuff like creativity vs order, change vs comfortable conservatism, hope for the future vs the weight of the past, etc. Because several of the players in my game are playing devotees of the Raven Queen, the issue of hope vs the past is also focused through a particular prism that carries its own thematic and value weight, namely, the significance of mortality and the nature of death. And it is also easy to bring into play related issues like free (self-)expression vs loyalty (to others)/honour (which can be seen as a type of loyalty to onself).

All you then have to do is frame the PCs into situations where some of these issues are in play and they probably can't get everything they want. Here is a link to an actual play report that shows the sort of thing I have in mind: the setting elements (Ometh, the Raven Queen's name, etc) aren't simply objects of curiosity. The confrontation with them matters to the players (via their PCs) because of the sorts of connections I have described: loyalty, the past vs the future, madness vs civilisation, the orientation towards death.

(Also, in case it needs saying: it's abolutely key to this that the players get to choose whether their PCs try to defeat Ometh in battle, or negotiate with him, or trick him into some sort of concession, or whatever. If there is a "right answer" pre-determined by the GM, then the players aren't getting to respond in a way that expresses their own conception of what matters in the situation. They're back to exploration, this time of the GM's conception of what matters in the situation. The analogue for a film would be substituting the reading of someone else's criticism of Blade Runner for reading Blade Runner itself.)

It's not especially high brow! (I leave that to Vincent Baker and Paul Czege in games like DitV or My Life with Master.) But it's something I find 4e is better suited to than Planescape - the sorts of conficts I have described above (law/chaos, and everything that can hang from that) have an inherent significance for most people that, at least it seems to me, issues like the history of the Spawning Stone and the Ancient Baatorians (two plot points I remember from Tales of the Infinite Staircase) do not. The latter topics are much more about setting exploration.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think I finally had an epiphany.

Let me see if I can work through this so that it makes sense, because, for me at least, it seems to explain why I'm having such an uphill battle trying to make my point.

The difference here is between a resource and a setting. The Planes (not Planescape, but all the Planes) are a single setting, not a resource.

An excellent point - and one that I hadn't spotted. But on thinking about it the reason is obvious. And once again it comes down to my pet hate in D&D Worldbuilding. The Great Wheel. Yes, I could remove Bytopia or The Happy Hunting Ground/The Beastlands/Narnia without too much trouble. But for The Great Wheel with its implacable symmetry to make sense I'd have to replace them with something else of my own devising or The Great Wheel ceases to be round. If I'm using The Great Wheel, I need sixteen spokes for the sixteen outer alignments and compromises and I probably need The Plane of Concordant Opposition.

If we even go by the 3.5 Realms World Tree - or the 4e World Axis - this ceases to be an issue. You can put whatever you like in there. But The Great Wheel, by virtue of its symmetry mandating the existence of planes turns the planes from resource into setting. Their existence and nature is a logical consequence.

 

[Imaro]

Who has said that Planescape is inherently bad?

Perhaps I am remembering incorrectly, or I mistook your statements of opinion as being objectively stated but I thought you had stated that Planescape and the cosmology weren't good for actual gaming as opposed to reading. If so, I retract my statement

I think using Dickensian slang as the vernacular of an otherwordly fantasy city populated by angels, devils and their offspring is almost inexcusably silly, but that might just be me. (And the granting of pardons is inherently relational in any event. That I won't exuse the silliness doesn't mean others can't. Ducks in Runequest get a pretty mixed reception, too. Not to mention beholders.)

Well to an American (this American at least) it doesn't sound silly at all but then at the age I encountered the slang at it wasn't and still isn't a part of my everyday vocabulary. As to silly, I agree that everyone's threshold is different... personally my group and I couldn't stand the Duergar in 4e with their shootable beard quills, it is, IMO, one of the silliest things ever done to a formerly cool villainous race... but I readily admit it's my own biases at work.

For instance, in the case of law/gods vs chaos/primordials, what people care about (or, at least, my players) is fairly classic stuff like creativity vs order, change vs comfortable conservatism, hope for the future vs the weight of the past, etc. Because several of the players in my game are playing devotees of the Raven Queen, the issue of hope vs the past is also focused through a particular prism that carries its own thematic and value weight, namely, the significance of mortality and the nature of death. And it is also easy to bring into play related issues like free (self-)expression vs loyalty (to others)/honour (which can be seen as a type of loyalty to onself).

What I never get in your discussion of Planescape is why you figure this type of game is impossible to run in Planescape, or even all that difficult. Are you claiming adventures centered around "what people care about" can't be facilitated in the Planescape setting (if so please clarify why you believe this to be true?), or are you claiming that the published adventures didn't address this type of adventuring, which is a totally different complaint and one that could be leveled at the published modules of almost any edition. IMO, I would argue the factions themselves help facilitate this type of play quite easily in Planescape but maybe I'm missing something here...

All you then have to do is frame the PCs into situations where some of these issues are in play and they probably can't get everything they want. Here is a link to an actual play report that shows the sort of thing I have in mind: the setting elements (Ometh, the Raven Queen's name, etc) aren't simply objects of curiosity. The confrontation with them matters to the players (via their PCs) because of the sorts of connections I have described: loyalty, the past vs the future, madness vs civilisation, the orientation towards death.

Again this seems more a function of the DM and type of adventures/techniques he uses than anything inherent in the particular setting... In other words I'm still not seeing what you describe above as being inherently difficult to play out in Planescape...

(Also, in case it needs saying: it's abolutely key to this that the players get to choose whether their PCs try to defeat Ometh in battle, or negotiate with him, or trick him into some sort of concession, or whatever. If there is a "right answer" pre-determined by the GM, then the players aren't getting to respond in a way that expresses their own conception of what matters in the situation. They're back to exploration, this time of the GM's conception of what matters in the situation. The analogue for a film would be substituting the reading of someone else's criticism of Blade Runner for reading Blade Runner itself.)

Again this seems more a commentary on GM style/decisions than on any particular setting insofar as this can be done in virtually any setting if the GM wants...

It's not especially high brow! (I leave that to Vincent Baker and Paul Czege in games like DitV or My Life with Master.) But it's something I find 4e is better suited to than Planescape - the sorts of conficts I have described above (law/chaos, and everything that can hang from that) have an inherent significance for most people that, at least it seems to me, issues like the history of the Spawning Stone and the Ancient Baatorians (two plot points I remember from Tales of the Infinite Staircase) do not. The latter topics are much more about setting exploration.

That is a published adventure, which seems to be your fallback in these discussions, it does not in any way represent the only type of adventures a GM could facilitate in Planescape any more than KotS is representative of every type of adventure the Nentir Vale could facilitate. This is also one of the reasons I think you should actually read the campaign setting material when discussing what a campaign can or cannot do.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, if the Sword Mountains are in Dragonlance, then WOTC can only ever use the Sword Mountains IN Dragonlance. You couldn't then plunk the Sword Mountains into any other setting. So, I'm not sure how this isn't inherently limiting. Well, just to be clear, you or I could plunk it into any setting, but, WOTC certainly couldn't. WOTC couldn't drop Waterdeep into an adventure set in Eberron, after all. WOTC must use giant iron cubes any time they want to use Acheron because that's part of the 30 year setting canon. They cannot plunk a living forest into Acheron because that would violate canon.

I think they could. I don't think there'd be any reason that it'd be prohibited. If Waterdeep is just a city anyone can plunk into any campaign (and happens to be an FR native), and WotC makes a new campaign setting, they can plunk Waterdeep into it, too, if they wanted to ensure that their new Waterdeep sourcebook can be used there. Just like if they wanted to make sure their new Nine Hells sourcebook can be used in Eberron, they could drop the Nine Hells there somehow (recommendation: part of Eberron's underdark).

More likely than Waterdeep, we'd see this with things like the Barrier Peaks, or the Temple of Elemental Evil, or other adventure sites. And those get plunked into new settings all the time (most recently, the Nentir Vale!).

Hell, they've crammed all of FR onto Eberron in DDO.

Want to drop a living forest on Acheron? It's an infinite plane, that'd be cool. Continent-sized drifting cubes totally have room for a living forest.

And all of those places totally have room for the Orcs of the Sword Mountains.

What I'm trying to avoid here is being broadly definitional -- writing "Orcs are X" means that if you want orcs to be Y, you have to tangle with folks invested in orcs being X, expecting them to be X, for one reason or another.

If you write "Specific Orcs are X," that means if you want orcs to be Y, you just change the "specific" part. And if you want them to be X, you just drop the specific part into your game. That's true if you're WotC or if you're a homebrewer. And if for some reason that specific part doesn't really fit (though there's a LOT more flexibility there than people assume), you change the "specific" part and leave X alone.

 

[pemerton]

If Waterdeep is just a city anyone can plunk into any campaign (and happens to be an FR native), and WotC makes a new campaign setting, they can plunk Waterdeep into it, too, if they wanted to ensure that their new Waterdeep sourcebook can be used there.

If I've understood you right, this was the 4e approach to a significant extent: the Tomb of Horrors, the Temple of Elemental Evil, the Isle of Dread, etc all exist in the PoL without too much fuss about their original home.

 

[pemerton]

I thought you had stated that Planescape and the cosmology weren't good for actual gaming as opposed to reading.

I don't think they're especially well-suited for the sort of RPGing I want to do. But not everyone wants to do what I want to do. And perhaps some of those who want to play in a similar way to me can see virtues in Planescape and its cosmology that I can't. That wouldn't be very surprising.

What I never get in your discussion of Planescape is why you figure this type of game is impossible to run in Planescape, or even all that difficult. Are you claiming adventures centered around "what people care about" can't be facilitated in the Planescape setting

<snip>

this seems more a function of the DM and type of adventures/techniques he uses than anything inherent in the particular setting... In other words I'm still not seeing what you describe above as being inherently difficult to play out in Planescape...

<snip>

Again this seems more a commentary on GM style/decisions than on any particular setting insofar as this can be done in virtually any setting if the GM wants

I don't agree that this can be done in virtually any setting. For instance, there is really nothing in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, as presented in the Expert rulebook, to support the sort of play I describe. The GM and players would have to write it all themselves.

As I've posted in other threads that you've participated in, I don't find that Planescape frames the players (via their PCs) directly into the sorts of conflict/value questions I am interested in; nor that it provides the GM with story elements to frame such conflicts. A simple example: 4e presents the gods as antagonists the PCs might overcome, whereas in Planescape (as per [MENTION=710]Mustrum_Ridcully[/MENTION]'s post that I quoted upthread) there is no expectation of, nor real provision for, PCs overthrowing (for instance) the Lady of Pain.

The general tendency of Planescape is towards asserting and presenting a type of relativism, and presenting individual beliefs/perspectives as merely partial: as [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] has suggested in this thread (or, at least, that's what I've taken from his posts), the symmetry of the Great Wheel plus the whole "beliefs shape the world" implies that all persepctives are equally valid and hence that any attempt to cling to a particular perspective is a partiality that is ultimately arbitrary, even indefensible.

I also find that Planescape makes a big deal of secret backstory (eg the yugoloth stuff that [MENTION=11697]Shemeska[/MENTION] and others love) and quirks like angels and demons drinking together (and perhaps falling in love) in Sigil, the Great Modron March, etc.

As I already posted in this thread, [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] is the only poster on these boards who has outlined an approach to Planescape closer to my preferred approach. But Shemeska in practically everyone of these threads, and [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] in this thread, when they point to the sorts of play that Planescape supports, point to setting exploration of the sort that Planescape seems to me to treat as its core focus, and that I personally am not all that enthused by.