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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6381750" data-attributes="member: 87792">The problem here is that we have a complete clash in tones between Sigil and The Great Wheel.Sigil (pre *spit* Faction War) is a war of competing shifting philosophies.  What you do, even what you argue, matters.  Philosophies can rise and fall - and even be all but wiped out.  If the Mercykillers were to decide that the whole of Sigil was impure and start cleansing it that would be a problem.  If you were to somehow engineer a merger between the Takers and the Heartless (not that difficult in some ways) and drive the Dustmen underground you would fundamentally change the nature of Sigil as it stands.  This is IMO sensible.The Great Wheel is a war of immutable symmetric philosophies.  The philosophies are opposed - but due to the symmetry of the wheel, Balance Is King.  In two Great Wheel settings this has been made explicit; the Avatar War started because the Gods forgot that Balance was King and in Dragonlance himself Palatine says that the goal was to free the pendulum, and that Good held sway just before the Cataclysm, implying that was the cause.  In Great Wheel settings, Gods represent their philosophies and those philosophies must be upheld by the God.  The God isn't the power, the God is a minion of the Great Wheel and they can be put on trial for not fulfilling their function.  Strike one down and they will be replaced (which is why we've had multiple Mystras).The Great Wheel is actually worse than that.  If Balance is King (as it explicitly is) then good is pointless.  If you do good and Balance is King then there's an equal amount of evil to balance it out.  If I set up an orphanage and save two dozen orphans that would be a good act.  An equal amount of evil would happen in order to balance it out.  And my actions have made that act necessary.  Which means that in the grand scheme of things my actions haven't done any good.  I can't even say "<a href="http://www.all-creatures.org/stories/starfish.html" target="_blank">It matters to that starfish</a>" without being aware that there are just as many starfish that my acts are making things worse for because balance.  By trying to do good I'm dooming starfish.  And it matters to those starfish.  The closest you can get to doing lasting good in the world is by utilitarian accounting along the lines of <a href="http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/dunnweb/rprnts.omelas.pdf" target="_blank">Omelas</a> - if you consider that to be an acceptable compromise.  On the other hand I can do evil freely.  If I launch a campaign of looting and pillaging I'm having fun and getting rich.  It doesn't bother me in the slightest that somewhere someone else is creating an orphanage that's cancelling out my evil.  I'm having fun and getting rich.Jam the two together and there's a huge clash in tones.  The only reason Planescape/Sigil works at all is that there is an Overgod (the Lady of Pain) who has this one city as her personal petri dish and is simultaneously as curious and disinterested as any good scientist in seeing what happens.  Sigil is the only place in the whole of Planescape where you can change anything important - and that only because of the protective umbrella of the Lady of Pain insulating Sigil from The Great Wheel.I'm of the opinion that Planescape works better with the 4e default cosmology than with the Great Wheel.  The World Axis is inherently unstable, and the Great Wheel, as I've argued, promotes evil and makes good pointless.I like the idea of a default cosmology - but settings each explicitly following their own.  Aebir-Toril for the Realms was not necessary.What is a fictional vampire?  Anne Rice?  Hammer Horror?  Buffy?  Stephanie Meyer? (Please, no).  Chinese Hopping?  Penaggalan?  Count von Count?  All very distinct.  And all types of vampire with things in common.</blockquote>

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