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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6397009" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.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.)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.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: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.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 [<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353496-First-time-godslayers-PCs-kill-Torog" target="_blank">take down Torog</a>. It would be the culmination of an adventure, not the guts of it.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.)</blockquote>

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