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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DMZ2112" data-source="post: 6383805" data-attributes="member: 78752">As a big fan of Planescape, Neon, I for one am picking up what you're putting down.  There are absolutely interpretations of the Great Wheel that render the core concepts of Planescape irrelevant, the AD&D2 setting material does not do a good job of selecting interpretations that do not, and I do also prefer the World Axis as a greater setting for Sigil for that reason (among others).Frankly, the position of Sigil at the "center" of the "center" of the "wheel" itself is a metaphor for balance; if not the balance of a set of scales then certainly the balance of a -- wait for it -- wheel, which must be weighted properly or it will rock itself right off its axle.  This is not a subtle metaphor; Sigil is shaped like a tire; it sits atop a long pole; every single depiction of the city and its environs ever shows those environs radiating outward from it in a spoke-like fashion.But your interpretation of the nature of the balance of the Great Wheel is just that -- an interpretation.  Paladine's comments in particular imply that the "pendulum" /can swing/ and further /needed to be freed/, which suggests that the tet-for-tat* you describe can at the very least be obstructed for a short time or in a small area by the efforts of mortals, if not stopped entirely by cosmic events.My interpretation of the Great Wheel is that the balance is permanent, but not by any design.  There's no inherent desire on the part of the good or the evil for a neutral outcome, but rather the neutral outcome is the result of an infinite number of struggles on an infinite number of battlefields.  No tet-for-tat, but rather a cosmic balance sheet.Good and evil are well matched, in a cosmic sense, and we know this because if they weren't it would literally shake the foundations of fantasy roleplaying as a genre.  Likewise, they are constantly at odds.  If the planes themselves seem static, it's because they are not really places at all, but rather the distillation of the ideas and beliefs of an infinite number of people across an infinite number of worlds.  Those people -- those minds -- are constantly changing.  But like any gauge, the planes only give the reader a simplified, easily understood notion of what's going on under the hood.You don't change the planes by changing the planes -- you change them by changing minds.  And a lot of minds, at that.  I always found it kind of comical that the Planescape authors thought Plague-Mort would slip into the Abyss because of the outcome of a local political struggle -- that's absurd.  Plague-Mort, like everything else on the planes, is a symbol.  You want to change the symbol you have to change what it symbolizes.  And that means visiting a lot of prime material worlds.  A whole lot.One thing I definitely disagree with you about is the idea that the Sigil faction kriegstanz is in any way dynamic.  I think it's interesting that you spit at the notion of the Faction War while trumpeting the opinion that factions should change.  Nothing in the setting material until that book suggests that the factions have any interest in or motivation toward disrupting the kriegstanz in any real way -- it's right there in the word kriegstanz.  Sigil mirrors the Great Wheel perfectly, in that regard.  At least in my opinion.  Note that I'm not necessarily saying that's a selling point.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is right in that there is a fatalism to Planescape.  No part of it is a story of change.  It might be better as a story of change, and the World Axis might be the place to tell that story, but as written it's more about doom by status quo than any other setting with the possible exception of Dark Sun.On a final note, for what it is worth, unlike [MENTION=1288]Mouseferatu[/MENTION], I find the idea of a good deity who prefers a carefully adjudicated balance for centuries over even the risk of one single day of complete domination by evil forces to be eminently practical and believable.*Yes, I know it's not tet-for-tat, but you knew what I meant immediately and <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />-for-tat would have been unnecessarily confusing.  Sigh.</blockquote>

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