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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DMZ2112" data-source="post: 6384556" data-attributes="member: 78752">I love threads where I learn something.I don't see demons and devils like this, but thanks to Hussar I now realize that the reason why I don't is because  I don't see the Great Wheel as /being/ Planescape.  The Planescape materials greatly expanded (and altered) D&D's core cosmology because it had a far more intimate relationship with the planes, but fundamentally I think of the Great Wheel as being something that exists outside of Planescape the same way it exists outside of all the other official settings (or did, in AD&D2).  Planescape is just a lot more involved with it. You can go to Thunder Rift as part of a Mystara campaign, or to Zakhara as part of a Forgotten Realms campaign, but it's right and proper that the Thunder Rift and Al Qadim settings have the greater detail, right? References to demons and devils fighting the Blood War don't strike me as setting specific because the Great Wheel isn't Planescape any more than it is Greyhawk -- both settings reference a core cosmology but the core cosmology doesn't belong to either one of them.Please keep in mind that I'm not stating fact, here, just opinion, and it wasn't even opinion until a few moments ago when Hussar made me realize what I was subconsciously believing all along.  I have a new appreciation for Hussar's point.  If I think of the Great Wheel as /being/ Planescape, then absolutely, these references to the Blood War are out of place.  It would be just like saying all drow originated in Menzoberranzan, or all dragons come from the Io's Blood Islands.  No wonder you poor people are so disgruntled.I still disagree, mind you, but at least I understand your position now.It's far more than a favored concept.  Let me try to put this another way.Perhaps what Planescape /should/ have done is published an adventure that is hubbed in a different "center of the multiverse."  A city similar to Sigil but that conceives of the outer planes as... plateaus and valleys on a great mountain, to choose one of your examples.  Is that city a floating ring?  Not likely.  It might be at the summit of the mountain, but it won't be speared by it like a wheel on an axle.  The city is going to share aspects of its conception of the planes.  It's going to have its own truisms and philosophies that reflect that conception.  It's probably going to have its own factions, governed by an entirely unfamiliar alignment system.  And on top of everything else, it's probably going to have a completely new set of prime material worlds, all of whom conceive of the planes like plateaus and valleys on a great mountain.But Planescape didn't do that.  Planescape wove the Unity of Rings and the Great Wheel into every fiber of its being.  Saying that the Great Wheel is only one way of looking at Planescape is like saying the map of Toril is only one way of looking at the Forgotten Realms.  Technically true.  Practically false.Planescape absolutely insists that this is the case over and over again, but I do not agree that this approach in any way "tackles" the problem.(ssh!)We're not going to get any traction on this discussion; it's entirely a matter of preference.  KM is right in that Planescape and Dark Sun are ripe for change, and Pemerton is right that bringing that change by definition changes the setting.For my part, like Pemerton, if I'm running in a setting I am doing so because I have chosen to run in that setting.  If I want something different than what is published I simply write my own material.  Inflicting sweeping permanent change on a published setting just doesn't appeal.</blockquote>

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