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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6412118" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, this is another convo, but the reason we have goblins and orcs and red dragons and brass dragons is the same reason we have nine levels of spells, four classes, ranged and melee attacks, elves and dwarves, d6's and d10's: they make interesting variety. They're all unnecessary, but if we were interested in a minimalistic game where only the necessary rules existed, we'd all just be playing make-believe. Clearly there are things other than necessity we are interested in as players.Without alignments, PS is still interested in having places to explore how peace, altruism, justice, hard work, and idyllic splendor can be corrupt, dangerous, wrong-headed and simply untrue. The Upper Planes serve that purpose in PS, regardless of if one has characters and NPCs with explicit mechanical alignment. A variety of them still serves to demonstrate that the multiverse is very multifaceted -- that there are many ways to conceive of paradise (as many as there are ways to conceive of disaster!) and that they all have flaws. It creates a diversity of locations to explore the themes of utopia, perfection, and the desirability of things in. PS enjoys this because there might be a lot of time spent exploring that -- one tier of my PS structure is in exploring how getting what you want is not always what you want for a substantially similar reason. Personally, I think this is a bit of a weakness in the D&D idea of a dwarf. But I'm a fan of iconic stories -- I should use a dwarf as an antagonist only when being a dwarf adds something specific to the antagonist that other races would not as easily add. As an aside, I picked up the MM over the weekend, and I had much less problem with it than I thought I might. It seems like they present a story that you are free to take and leave, and the story has no real bearing on the stats or actions of the creature in play. There is a fence between the mechanics and the fiction in the MM. While it might not be how I would've done it, I'm hard pressed to say it's a mistake -- as long as WotC can follow their own advice here and not be overly married to the stories presented therein, there's a lot of optimism going forward. Some of the stories are quite good. I don't know that I'll use any of them (I've got my own stories to tell), but they're perfect for a newbie DM looking for inspiration, and they'll probably even influence my own.No, my yugoloths will not be using their MM story. Hopefully, when they get around to publishing something Planescape, those yugoloths will also not need to use their MM story. That story is not the PS yugoloth story. But it's not a bad story, necessarily. It's just not right for every setting. And if they want to chuck those 'loths into Eberron, maybe they'll have their own unique story there, too. As long as WotC treats the planes as just as modular as any other element of the game, it'll probably be just fine.</blockquote>

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