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dnd.wizards.com

Looks like Spelljammer and/or Planescape is back on the menu!

 

[Chaosmancer]

I can walk to my local supermarket, but if I want to buy a week's shopping I take my car.

Wally the Wizard can take himself and his mates from A to B with the Plane Shift spell, but if he wants to shift a ton of cargo he will want a vessel.

For the most part, portals can be discounted for commerce. The are to random, too unpredictable, and two easy for a single faction to control. If you did happen to have stable portals, as in Sigil, then you have a Deep Space Nine set up, with all the politics that goes with it. But the vast majority of the multiverse doesn't live in Sigil.

A wagon is a vessel. It is not a flying vessel, but if you have a large enough and stable enough portal, it works. Then, you don't need to fly through all the dangerous stuff that a spelljammer has to go through.

Seriously, I know I've had some misconceptions about the settings, but the reason why portal technology is considered something immensly world-changing is this exact fact. It is the Holy Grail of transport.

Now, I'm not familiar with "Deep Space Nine" but I'm going to go with "Yes, that's my point". Yes there will be taxes. Yes there will be factions. Yes there will be politics. These are gold mines for adventures, and just how a setting like this would logically work.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay, let us say that you live in (flips through) Texas, and you want to go to (randomize) Kazan, Russia. Now, would a portal that takes you, in a single step, from Texas to St. Petersburg be superior than building a bi-plane that takes you through storm-wracked skies, past air pirates, and through the anti-air defenses of Europe? I say yes. Sure, it didn’t get you point to point exactly to Kazan, but even if you have to get on a plane in St. Petersburg, that plane trip is faster, safer and cheaper than the trip from Texas via plane.

That's just it. You're just making up that a portal to St. Petersburg exists, when far more likely the closest you will be able to get is South Africa and then you have to walk or find another way. An airplane from The U.S. to Russia would be faster.

So, yeah, I get that a portal isn’t going to take you exactly where you want to go, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still the superior choice.

Doesn't mean that it is, either. But yeah, if you can just whip up a portal to close to your destination(unlike Sigil), then portals are probably better, assuming the cost to activate the portal isn't prohibitive.

Considering that I saw it expressly said that there are portals from Sigil directly to other prime material planes, I find your odds of “slime to none” highly suspect.

You do realize that prime material plane is huge, right? So you take a portal from Sigil to Mazteca. Then you're stuck. Or maybe the portal is to Waterdeep, but you're trying to get to the planet H'Catha. And that's if you even know the portal exists AND is still there and hasn't wandered off.

There are very few reasons why people travel great distances. The majority of them have to do with making money or conquest. And surprisingly, building magical artifacts capable of carrying multiple people through insanely hostile territory is something that generally is expensive. There is a reason most ship captains during the Age of Exploration weren’t hobbyists, they needed monetary backing to even afford a ship, and people weren’t donating them out of the goodness of their hearts.

You've never heard of explorers? Or colonists? And D&D isn't the real world.

Trade by selling what? The plants that they barely had enough of to support their population?

The mountains of gems and gold that they brought with them? Unique skills? Whatever. Doesn't really matter. This is a game of the imagination. Use yours and you can come up with lots of ideas.

Long before they end up “spelljamming” they are going to explore the surface of the planet.

That would be stupid. They're going down to the planet and at the same time they will be sending out scout ships to see what else is around.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A wagon is a vessel. It is not a flying vessel, but if you have a large enough and stable enough portal, it works. Then, you don't need to fly through all the dangerous stuff that a spelljammer has to go through.

Indeed. But it's also very easy, and rather more profitable, to station burly guards in front of it and change an extortionate toll.

So, as the navigators of the Age of Discovery did, people will seek out alternative routes, even if they are dangerous.

And the only place you are likely to find a stable portal that goes where you want to is Sigil. And who wants to go there? Tolls aside, these are the people who call the rest of the multiverse "clueless" after all! Better to give the place a wide berth.

 

[Maxperson]

Indeed. But it's also very easy, and rather more profitable, to station burly guards in front of it and change an extortionate toll.

So, as the navigators of the Age of Discovery did, people will seek out alternative routes, even if they are dangerous.

And the only place you are likely to find a stable portal that goes where you want to is Sigil. And who wants to go there? Tolls aside, these are the people who call the rest of the multiverse "clueless" after all! Better to give the place a wide berth.

Even Sigil isn't much hope for that kind of trade. If it was, it would be swamped with traders from every prime world seeking profit, but it's not. Why? Because...

"But thing is, these portals do not open when a cutter simply passes by (with the rare exception), for each requires a special key to open. What is this key, you may ask? Well, it can be anything, really: a literal key made of a specific material, a thought or simple gesture, or a complex ritual like playing the flute and skipping back and forth three times whilst doing so. The Lady of Pain herself governs these portals, and it is on her whim that they disappear or reappear in new and unexpected places, more often that not causing trouble for a berk who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time."

There are very few stable portals and even if you manage to find a portal to where you want to go, good luck figuring out what out of everything in the multiverse will trigger it, AND before it up and vanishes on you.

And...

"The only way in or out of Sigil was via its innumerable portals. Any bounded opening (a doorway, an arch, a barrel hoop, a picture frame) could possibly be a portal to another plane, or to another point in Sigil itself. In addition, portals could be permanent or temporary, linking to fixed or shifting locations. Thus, the city touched all planes at once, yet ultimately belonged to none. Those characteristics warranted Sigil the other names it was known for: it was called "the City of Doors" for the sheer number of portals, but was also called "the Cage" for the difficulty to enter or exit the city"

 

[Bolares]

So... does anyone know when the survey for this UA comes out?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Even Sigil isn't much hope for that kind of trade. If it was, it would be swamped with traders from every prime world seeking profit, but it's not. Why? Because...

"But thing is, these portals do not open when a cutter simply passes by (with the rare exception), for each requires a special key to open. What is this key, you may ask? Well, it can be anything, really: a literal key made of a specific material, a thought or simple gesture, or a complex ritual like playing the flute and skipping back and forth three times whilst doing so. The Lady of Pain herself governs these portals, and it is on her whim that they disappear or reappear in new and unexpected places, more often that not causing trouble for a berk who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time."

There are very few stable portals and even if you manage to find a portal to where you want to go, good luck figuring out what out of everything in the multiverse will trigger it, AND before it up and vanishes on you.

The thing is though, if there aren't sufficient stable portals in Sigil to support some degree of trade, then there is no reason for anyone to live there, and the chances of anything interesting happening are slim. Cities grow up where there is trade. So it really needs to be a Deep Space Nine to work as an adventuring city, rather than a haven of philosophers disappearing up their own intellectual wormholes.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

When I ran Planescape, the only portals stable enough to support trade were between the Outer Planes. There was one portal to the Prime Material Plane, in the doorway of a privy house.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm trying to read up on some spelljammer lore the last few days and from what I've heard the flow seems so.... outdated? I like the idea of the flammable substance existing and all, but it filling the space between the crystal spheres sounds weird. I'd bet they keep it as something that you go into sometimes (something like the faerzress in the underdark) but isn't around all the time. Would this break something fundamental about the setting?

Yeah, I don't think that the Phlogiston is a core part of Spelljammer. It could easily be replaced with the Astral Sea and work just as (if not more) effectively as a concept. The Phlogiston could just be currents contained within the Astral Sea connecting the Crystal Spheres, or something like that.

 

[jmartkdr2]

There had definitely been advocating for Planejammer prior to that post, but it was largely in the context of "Well, WotC won't publish both Spelljammer and Planescape, so lets hope they do both in the same book."

But I think we are way past that now, where WotC actually is interested in doing them separate... classic settings sell well, and this is two separate popular classic settings. Double the sales!

I don't know if people were really 'advocating' for Planesjammer - the impression I got was it was simply seen as much more likely that either a complete Planescape or a complete Spelljammer - and a mashup would be a lot better than nothing, so people talked it up.

But some recent stuff - especially the UA this thread was started about - indicate that a pure Spelljammer book is possible. (Maybe an adventure path?) - and that's got the people who would like to see Spelljammer hyped (and is a ray of light for the Planescape-wanting crowd, since if Spelljammer can happen Planescape can definitely happen.)

That's my read of the convensional wisdom here.

 

[Maxperson]

The thing is though, if there aren't sufficient stable portals in Sigil to support some degree of trade, then there is no reason for anyone to live there, and the chances of anything interesting happening are slim. Cities grow up where there is trade. So it really needs to be a Deep Space Nine to work as an adventuring city, rather than a haven of philosophers disappearing up their own intellectual wormholes.

Stuff gets in, and other stuff is produced there. The portals are not sufficient, though, to be a good way to efficiently travel across the multiverse, let alone conduct trade from one prime to another that way.