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

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not sure how many other rules there are establishing the primacy of The Great Wheel - but Planescape would IMO be better served by removing all of them.

Yeah, I'm on your page with that. Certainly as I've played it and as I envision it at its most iconic, the Great Wheel is only one interpretation of how the planes might look. The rules I don't use that might work against that view might include the "Weapons lose plusses as they go away from their home plane," and I think there was a similar rule for clerics casting spells. I ignored a broad swath of the modifications of the planes on magic, and in 3e, I ignored the "alignment" traits of the planes.

Or possibly reworking the Faction War so it no longer changed the nature of the Lady of Pain from one of benign neglect - instead it involved a reality quake so that the Great Wheel itself was replaced by The World Tree or The World Axis or whatever else you like. So yes, there is something you can verify - but it can and has verifiably been changed. So whatever the new hierarchy that emerges is only currently the prime understanding.

In fact the more I think about it the more I think that that would make an excellent start for a Planescape Planeswalking campaign. A reality quake that destroys the primacy of the Great Wheel (which is presented as dominant in the books) and now no one knows the structures or even where the river Oceanus now leads.

Were I to mastermind a re-launch, I would take a "pre-faction-war" starting point (and perhaps describe a faction war as one thing a DM might do with the setting).

I'm not sure a "reality quake" is necessary, if there's no way to tell what the "shape" of the planes is, so that someone could propose the World Axis and someone could propose the Great Wheel and someone could propose the Orrey and it would all be possibly true. I'd prefer the PC's to make a reality quake. But that does sound delightful!

 

[Remathilis]

And everyone who doesn't want the 5e implied setting. You're confusing people who don't like the fluff with those who don't want any fluff and saying that 5e's fluff is the only way. I might think that the 2e Monstrous Manual is the single most overrated D&D book I have ever read. But that doesn't mean I want to deny 2e folks their approach to monsters. In the right setting. Which would be the wrong side of your line.

I've never said that DMs must adhere to the default fluff of the monster. My crusade is against those who want NO default fluff at all. You can take the 5e implied setting and love it, hate it, change it, etc all you want in your campaign. I'm not even against official settings changing it (i.e. Eberron) but I'm getting sick and tired of people coming in and saying that "The MM forces me to make kobolds draconic, have demons fight devils, and have dragon-men in my campaign. WotC should get rid of those things from my core books!"

At this point, I've said all I can about this. Maybe 6th edition will give people their fluff-free variant and me my fluff-heavy variant. Until then, we have what we have.

 

[Neonchameleon]

WotC DOES have a story. It always has. Its a vague story, but its a story. Its a story of chromatic dragons, Vancian (or neo-Vancian) magic, of elves and gnomes and dragonborn. Its a story where Mordenkainen and Tenser gave their names to spells, or Ehlonna and Boccob to magic items. Its a game that doesn't feel quite right without the Hand and Eye of Vecna (a story if there ever was one) isn't in the DMG.

What you are describing to me is the Nentir Vale - and there's a place for the half explored mythical and mystical world. The problem comes in when I want to do other things with D&D. I don't want Athas feeling like the Nentir Vale, I don't want Eberron feeling like the Nentir Vale, I don't want Ravenloft feeling like the Nentir Vale. And Kamikaze Midget and I are just discussing how making Planescape too like the central D&D mythology (by the inclusion of the Great Wheel) has messed that one up.

(It's the Nentir Vale now - because people insisted on mapping first Greyhawk then the Realms - so they have fissioned off from the core mythology to become their own things, and Greyhawk has a different playstyle; two more books like Threats to Nentir Vale and that will be too specific)

You're not providing a common point, you're proposing chopping D&D up into dozens of tinier D&Ds, each its own walled garden, and then selling a sterilized "core" that is broad and generic enough to accommodate Sword & Sorcery, High Fantasy, Gothic Horror, Fantasy Space, Oriental and Arabian adventures, and Planar Dystopia. No thanks. I'll take my blended option.

Au contraire. I'm trying to prevent you sticking settings with their own identities and into which a lot of work has been put into a blender. WotC's mistake with the Realms in 4e was thinking that it was a fundamental setting rather than something mapped heavily and with its own identity. If it stays around the same will happen to the Nentir Vale. Because it can't not unless you are very careful.

Yeah, I'm on your page with that. Certainly as I've played it and as I envision it at its most iconic, the Great Wheel is only one interpretation of how the planes might look. The rules I don't use that might work against that view might include the "Weapons lose plusses as they go away from their home plane," and I think there was a similar rule for clerics casting spells. I ignored a broad swath of the modifications of the planes on magic, and in 3e, I ignored the "alignment" traits of the planes.

Fair enough. All these sound like improvements on the default setting to me



Were I to mastermind a re-launch, I would take a "pre-faction-war" starting point (and perhaps describe a faction war as one thing a DM might do with the setting).

I'm not sure a "reality quake" is necessary, if there's no way to tell what the "shape" of the planes is, so that someone could propose the World Axis and someone could propose the Great Wheel and someone could propose the Orrey and it would all be possibly true. I'd prefer the PC's to make a reality quake. But that does sound delightful![/QUOTE]

 

[Remathilis]

What you are describing to me is the Nentir Vale - and there's a place for the half explored mythical and mystical world. The problem comes in when I want to do other things with D&D. I don't want Athas feeling like the Nentir Vale, I don't want Eberron feeling like the Nentir Vale, I don't want Ravenloft feeling like the Nentir Vale. And Kamikaze Midget and I are just discussing how making Planescape too like the central D&D mythology (by the inclusion of the Great Wheel) has messed that one up.

(It's the Nentir Vale now - because people insisted on mapping first Greyhawk then the Realms - so they have fissioned off from the core mythology to become their own things, and Greyhawk has a different playstyle; two more books like Threats to Nentir Vale and that will be too specific)

Its a good thing that Athas didn't feel like that during 2e, or Eberron during 3e, despite the assumptions of the implied setting still being in the 2e and 3e core books. Funny how that worked out...

 

[Mirtek]

Note that they did exactly that in 3e. It is called the SRD and some people even think that games based on it are still DnD.

And others are relentlessly proclaiming that Pathfinder is definately not D&D

 

[Neonchameleon]

Its a good thing that Athas didn't feel like that during 2e, or Eberron during 3e, despite the assumptions of the implied setting still being in the 2e and 3e core books. Funny how that worked out...

With an almost 15 year gap between the publication of books dealing with Athas? And no, Eberron doesn't feel like 3e's core setting to me. It feels like someone's taken the 3e core rules seriously and run with the technomages it produced while letting the Hand of Vecna fall by the wayside.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't see why that'd be so. I'm not aware of any "no philosophy" rule on EN World.







I'm always skeptical when one person ascribes a "mainstream view" to a group at large; that said, I'm not in much of a position to refute it either, so I'll say that if that's the mainstream view of English-language philosophy in general, then I find myself disagreeing with it strongly.



This is largely because while we can say that what we experience of the natural world is limited (via empericism, expert testimony, and logical deduction) to a set of beliefs, the reason we can purport that there is an objective physical world beyond our beliefs is that we have some degree of evidence for that, insofar as certain beliefs will not be born out by (what we understand as) interactions with the physical world, regardless of how dearly we hold them. One can truly believe that they can fly, but all evidence suggests that when a human jumps off of something, they'll fall (assisted-flying devices notwithstanding).



By contrast, there are no "moral truths" by which a person's moral beliefs can be applied against, and so even the circumstantial evidence that we have regarding the "perceived world" versus the "real world" is inapplicable in this regard. (Notwithstanding Descartes-level denial that what we experience of the physical world is at all credible in any way, and so we can ascribe parity to physical and moral truths e.g. we're all living in the Matrix.)

At that point, the question is, what do you mean by "morals" and "morality?"

I mean the arrangement of personal behaviors to achieve a good life. And yes, I think it is empirically provable, that is objective, that being fit and healthy is morally superior to being a drug addict, for a low-hanging example.

That some pursue self-destructive behavior does not argue against an objective nature to ethics, any more than someone believing the world is flat argues against objective physics.

 

[Imaro]

At that point, the question is, what do you mean by "morals" and "morality?"

I mean the arrangement of personal behaviors to achieve a good life. And yes, I think it is empirically provable, that is objective, that being fit and healthy is morally superior to being a drug addict, for a low-hanging example.

That some pursue self-destructive behavior does not argue against an objective nature to ethics, any more than someone believing the world is flat argues against objective physics.

But then how do you define a "good" life?

 

[Remathilis]

With an almost 15 year gap between the publication of books dealing with Athas? And no, Eberron doesn't feel like 3e's core setting to me. It feels like someone's taken the 3e core rules seriously and run with the technomages it produced while letting the Hand of Vecna fall by the wayside.

Huh? What are you arguing here?

Not sure what the 15 years between 2e and 4e Athas has to do with anything. Both versions did moderately well reshaping the assumptions the 2e/4e PHB/DMG/MM made, all while keeping the core assumptions of the game in the books. When the Dark Sun box set came out, they didn't replace my PH with an Athas-based one (or a generic one lacking gnomes, named spells, and metal weapons); they let the box set tell me what was different. Hell yes in contradicted the default assumptions of the PH, that was the point.

The same was true in Eberron; "if it exists in D&D, it exists in Eberron" was a selling point to the setting, but they should have added "but not in form you might remember." Eberron, like Dark Sun (or Ravenloft, or Dragonlance) plays with D&D's expected tropes and signatures. But to play with the default, you have to first establish the default! You can't deviate from the norm if there is no norm. So setting a default and then letting Eberron or Dark Sun or whatever deviate from it is perfect. And if I don't use either? I have a perfectly usable fallback to rely on.

Pity the fool who has to make the PH generic enough to work seamlessly with both of them.

 

[Alzrius]

At that point, the question is, what do you mean by "morals" and "morality?"

Actually, I disagree - I think that at that point, the question is what do you mean by "objective morality," since I don't think that it's empirically provable.

I mean the arrangement of personal behaviors to achieve a good life. And yes, I think it is empirically provable, that is objective, that being fit and healthy is morally superior to being a drug addict, for a low-hanging example.

Leaving aside your undefined nature of what constitutes a "good life" - let alone what "arrangement of personal behaviors" you're talking about - that example is a rather poor one, since it defines anyone who has a particular medical condition (which is what drug addiction is) as somehow being less moral that someone who doesn't have that condition. By your example, anyone who is struggling with drug addiction is living a less morally-worthwhile life than someone who hasn't had to; that's not an example of objective morality, but of personal judgment over another person's worth.

That some pursue self-destructive behavior does not argue against an objective nature to ethics, any more than someone believing the world is flat argues against objective physics.

The idea of "certain behaviors arguing against the objective nature to ethics" sets up a faulty premise - it presumes that there is an objective nature to ethics that needs to be argued against to begin with. Rather, the premise of objective ethics in the first place is a positive assertion; those who argue that such a thing exist have the burden of proof placed on them to show that it does, rather than the burden being placed on others to show why it does not. (That's not even getting into the point that "circumstantial evidence of an objectively physical world" is not directly comparable to "circumstantial evidence of an objective morality," as I pointed out in my previous post.)

Even if that weren't the case, the premise of this stance is undone by its lack of definitions anyway - does someone who doesn't eat the healthiest option at every meal, even if they'd enjoy a less-healthy meal more, "pursue self-destructive behavior"? Is your life less moral if you skip exercising and decide to order a pizza?

This entire rational is based on little more than lionizing a set of norms to such a degree that they're eventually characterized as "so good it just has to be external to myself!"