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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krypter" data-source="post: 2186106" data-attributes="member: 15016">I think you have brought up a very legitimate problem in Planescape. As a PS GM myself, one who has run low-level and medium-level campaigns in this setting, the "sense of place" problem has come up before. The players sometimes feel like they are drowning in an ocean of exotic places and weird creatures, without being emotionally tied to any of them. This is not necessarily a problem unique to Planescape though. All "picaresque" campaigns of this type, whether set in Faerun or on the Elemental Planes, have this problem. Planescape merely encourages it. Another problem is that the mystique of Gods & Demons is reduced to banal encounters in a pub. I'm not sure whether PS encourages this or not. IMC there are few to none of such encounters, and the few times that the PCs have encountered gods or powerful demons, they have been awed and put in their place. You don't play darts and munch pretzels with Tempus. The PS sourcebooks make this very clear, and in fact do one better on regular D&D by not providing statistics for gods. In some places PS goes out of its way to encourage players and DMs to preserve the mystery of the gods and wonder of the Outer Planes. All in all though, the problems described here can be encountered in almost any campaign setting, and simply need good GM mastery to overcome. A Forgotten Realms campaign in the Time of Troubles can equally reduce the majesty of the gods to a caricature of brawling brats. Is that the fault of the FR setting? As for Umbran's question of "What do I get that I don't get in other settings?", I would reply that you get to delve into the mythologies of dozens of cultures, and see the framework of the universe. I particularly like the fact that you can find almost every Earth pantheon in PS. That's not the case in Faerun, or Dark Sun, or Eberron. You just can't plop the World Ash into any world you want, not just because you'd have to drag the entire Norse mythology into your world, but also because it would seriously affect the more medieval world's geopolitics, economics, etc. In Planescape, you can do it without effort. You also don't explore the questions of "Where do souls go after death?", "Why are demons evil?", and "How can a demon redeem himself?" on a regular prime material world. You have to venture to the planes to explore these metaphysical questions made flesh.So, yes, Planescape has some problems, but the campaign setting can be adapted to your preferences.</blockquote>

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