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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6415520" data-attributes="member: 2067">There's no real enforcement of that principle in play (portals are rather explicitly there or not there as the DM decides), nor mechanics for implementing it (it's not like "Portal to Bytopia" occurs more often on a Celestia encounter table than "Portal to the Quasiplane of Vacuum"), but I certainly wouldn't object to either eliminating that sentence or doing the PS-y thing of couching it in rumor and hearsay."Planewalkers seem to think that it's easier to get to 'adjacent' planes on the Great Wheel, as we know of more portals between them, but whether it is REALLY easier, or whether people just find the portals more often because they look for them, isn't really clear. At any rate, you'd be a fool for thinking you could just find a portal out of Acheron to Mechanus or Baator on the next cube over -- the next portal you stumble on might lead to anywhere in the multiverse! Portals don't always seem to take what you expect them to do into account."At least in the Real World, it's functionally impossible to tell objectively if they are flawed or not. There's no definition of "right" and "wrong" that isn't culturally, personally, and temporally bound, making those principles open to interpretation and open to debate (because one person's position to determine right and wrong isn't in any way privileged over another person's) and open to change (what is wrong in 1345 AD is different than what is wrong in 2014 AD). One has no real authority to condemn another's judgement as flawed, since there is no "neutral position" that one can occupy. The monkey wrench in that is, of course, if there's some omniscient being who has revealed objective moral truth to people, and then we have clarity that the omnscient being has declared some things right or wrong and we can accept that as authoritative because by definition, that entity knows. I think there's plenty of debate on whether or not there is such a being who has done such a thing and if so what that revelation says among actual people, too, though, making that position one of faith.There's also the much-discussed possibility of "rational morality" floated by certain prominent atheists as both objective and not relying on divine revelation, but it seems to really hinge on how specifically and narrowly one defines what is a "moral good" (and said definition is pretty culturally bound) and at any rate seems to be more about functional behavior than internal belief. In PS, there clearly isn't any such omniscient being, meaning that there is no position from which to judge one's interpretation of right and wrong as flawed. A belief that doesn't conform to the general consensus is just a different way of looking at things.That's pretty much the place I end up in, too. It's not really necessary to abandon alignment, and without alignment, the setting doesn't need to lose anything critical, so alignment just serves as a tool to get people used to D&D's black-and-white morality to start thinking in more subjective terms. If the audience is already used to more subjective terms, it's largely redundant. Which means in my hypothetical masterminding of a PS relaunch, I'd probably keep the alignments, presuming an audience familiar with D&D, but I'd present them in similar terms to <a href="http://easydamus.com/alignmentreal.html" target="_blank">easydamus</a>. In the 5e PHB, Chaotic Evil creaturs act with arbitrary violence, spurred on by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust. In PS, Chaotic Evil creatures do that because they are hedonists first, believing that their own pleasure and delight trumps all other concerns. They do what they want, when they want, without concern for others' lives or society's codes. Many Chaotic Evil characters follow the laws out of a simple fear of punishment, and make friends simply because of the utility of those friends. A heroic PS character who is Chaotic Evil might be a member of the Doomguard who believes that the world must fall apart faster, and so acts to destroy what she can. She doesn't want to attract punishment, so she isn't a wanton murderer, and she believes her fellow party-members are useful tools in a campaign of destruction, so she will ally with them, but she is always looking to cause collateral damage, and isn't concerned with the safety of bystanders. She imagines that someday she will die and become a demon, helping to spread entropy that way, but she feels like she is offered more freedom as a mortal, and is able to access places demons cannot go.Perhaps ironically, Planescape actually used this device pretty much everywhere, as part of its presentation of a very subjective world. The 5e MM doesn't...but it presents the stories not as world elements, but more as framing devices the DM can use. In the 5e MM, this is the origin of the Twig Blight, and you can change it, but it's not like it's rumor or hearsay, it's a fact (unless the DM changes those facts).</blockquote>

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