Why I dislike Sigil and the Lady of Pain

[Tymophil]

Diogenes is not pre-Socratic.

That's why I added "so-called". In France, where I live, people are taught that philosophy began with Socrates, no matter what. All that was before was meant to lead to Socrates (as Plato portrays it, of course), so even some philosophers that where no pre-socratic are dubbed pre-socratic : archaic compared to the Plato's Socrates.
This was implemented in French education around the XIXth century, to rewrite the history of philosophy to make sure that most materialists would be seen as subpar philosophers. It was easily done as most materialist philosophers (Democritus, Epicurus, etc.) were almost wiped out of the history of philosophy (very, very few original writings remained). The fact that France was a massely christian country and that the country undertook a massive counter-revolution played a huge part...

That to one side, yes, Diogenes lived his philosophy. So did the Buddha, at least according to the received histories. It's not clear how many followers Diogenes had, but it's highly arguable that to the extent that later stoicism differs from Diogenes' own cynicism, this is in part to make it more digestible to the post-Alexandrian elite. Marcus Aurelius certainly didn't live in a barrel! (A similar argument can be made in respect of the evolution of Buddhism, although it also has a doctrine of rebirth to help explain why different members of society have different roles to play consistent with their overall pursuit of enlightenment.)

But in any event, Diogenes and Buddha and Marcus Aurelius all teach at least conceivable accounts of human flourishing, based on the relationship between human and natural order, and the attitude that humans should take towards the vicissitudes of the natural world.

This is what is missing, for me, from the factions.

You forget that, in the PlaneScape setting what you believe shapes reality. If the people of a certain place change their beliefs, the place will change its location in the Multiverse.

Anyway, what you conceive as true may or may not have any relation to what is or is not. Even when the evidence is given, many people stick to their beliefs however irrational they are. Palto's idealism is still seen as concievable, even though it is in plain contradiction with what little we know about the Universe. Still it is taught/believed in most advanced countries at one point or another as a great idea to look at the world.

See, this bears no connection to any pre-Socratic, Socratic or Hellenistic philosophy that I can think of - none of them contend that the world is shaped by belief, and certainly not by wishful thinking. They all insist that belief and behaviour has to be brought into conformity with the world's demands, although they differ in their accounts of what exactly those demands are, and what conformity with them might require.

And even the more idealist schools of Buddhism, like Yogacara, don't regard the character of the world or the content of belief as chosen. And they emphasise the necessity of practice in order to cultivate beliefs consistent with flourishing. They don't suggest that, having formed from the get-go a belief about how the world is (which is also how it ought to be), one then goes out into the world and starts acting on that belief as if it were true.

I was not clear there. You don't choose most illusions you actually use to portray reality. Almost nobody does. Even the most materialist amongst us have a hard time disbelieving that there is something "more" about the reality that could be called a "soul".

I guess most people believe that there IS a sky. Even though there is only an illusion created by the interaction of light and the atmosphere. You don't wake up everyday, believing or disbelieving that there is a sky. Yet it comes as a shock when you are taught that there is no sky, and some people don't even believe it when they are given some evidences.

Many people believe that the ARE laws of Nature. This is a largely widespead illusion amongst our societies. How many time do you people saying that objets fall BECAUSE of the law of gravitation. It IS an illusion many people live by, and none of them chose it.

If you live by believing that there is an ideal/divine world and a corrupted one. You live in an illusionary world. Did you chose to believe this ? A platonic view of life is clearly an illusion for us nowadays. It was not in his days. Plato did know/believed that the spheres did exist and were perfect, one could argue that he never chose to believe it.

In our world, many people guide(d) their lifes on beliefs that litterally shape(d) their reality. Just look at food : the pythagorians simply never ate beans because... it would be... embarrassing, and not as pythagorean as they wished to be in some situations. Others chose to feed on uncooked, raw food because it paralleled their beliefs. The world around them is shaped by the crop they grow, the livestock they choose to cattle, etc. The world, the reality they live by, is shaped by their conscious beliefs and their unchallenged/unconscious beliefs (illusions they don't, and never, disbelieve) shape their world too. In the end, it is difficult toi see what is real, illusionary, self-delusion, etc.

We don't know much about some philosophies, but it seems from the scarse texts that survived that Cyrenaics and Epicurians did live by their doctrines on an everyday basis. They chose their food, cloths, etc. according to their philosophy.

In PlaneScape you can shake all these kind of beliefs/illusions because they can be challenged. They can be challenged because they can be true or false /dispelled depending or your faction. When you chose the faction for your player character, you don't simply say that the PC chose to believe this or that. He simply believes this or that.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

If everything has something above it, then it follows that nothing is at the top, and there is no Source.

Oh, it's turtles all the way down, mate. But I've only got 60' of Darkvision, so anything further down than that might as well be "the Source" instead of just a slightly bigger terrapin.

 

[DracoSuave]

And that's the true power of the gods, the real test of faith.

HHAhahaahahahaHAHAHAHHAhahahahahHAHAHAHHAHAHhahahahahaHAHahahahahAHHAHaHAHHAhahahahHAHAHAHhahahahHAHAHHAHHAHAhahahhAHAHHAhahahahHAHAHHAHAhahahaHAHAHhaho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho hoHAHAHAHAhahaahahahaha ha ha ha ha ha ho....

ho...

hee...

um...

Right, ol cutter's bones clicky clankin' away in its locked box, spillin the darks where the light'll get at it. The sixes and sevens be showin' ya the one way, which is seventeen ways, but then that's all good cause those ways have ways, and you're likely to get lost if you're don't use a map as the papers for your petition, right?

But enough jink and some knight'll scribble drawings on yer little pocketbook of dogma. The worst cross trade is tradin' crosses, as me mum used to say before the slaad popped her chesty. Or was it 'OHGODTHEPAINGETMYPILLSBOY?'

Right, where was I? Does it matter, when the past is all some big pie, no fillin' to it, just crust and the hope of molten cherries or lava to greet the tasting tongue, tripping over its testimony. What does it all mean? You can preach on about yer powers or yer source or yer sauce or yer self or whatever... and the catch of it is everyone's got the right of it. And everyone is so barmy about their incorrectness it makes a Bleaker sane and a Sensate to cross her legs.

Ain't that the rub eh? When you can find any answer you seek, every answer becomes tossed salad, even when two people's answers are opposite. They combine together and explode in a bright hellish flash of philosophy and a cacophony of argument.

And what is left?

Hats. Fine felt hats, made from the finest felts. And hatstuff. In the end, that's all you need to care about. Is your hat nice? With a nice hat, all the chaos of the 'verse ain't so bad? This one suits you nicely. It even has a feather, which will ward off Mercykillers and other fashion police, or my name isn't Three-Tongued-Quasit of Xaos.

And here's a dark for you... that name's as made up as the rest of this place.

 

[Ryujin]

My concern is that it is not only a failure of role play, but that it puts limits on the game that I'm not sure work. I don't think I want a game in which every person of conviction thereby becomes a divine power wielder - I quite like the idea of my non-spellcasting sage who won't leave his tower/library as the orcs approach, because of his conviction in the value and potential of reason over brute force.

Then you need not have such a game. Consider Divine certitude to be a transcendent belief structure, that goes beyond simple conviction, to the level of being able to warp reality. If a non-Divine character wants to demonstrate that sort of conviction to a cause, then perhaps he should do so by multi-classing into Cleric, Avenger, etc.

 

[Balesir]

I love Planescape, but I think it is actually a fairly poor fit for the D&D systems, oddly. I think this is because I find it quite "Simulationist" biased (in the Forge sense); it seems to me to be at its best when explored for its own sake, rather than when it is used as a context for fronting up to challenges or addressing 'themes'. As an exploratory setting, the thing to explore is ideas - what could be cooler?

As an aside, they called the factions "philosophers with clubs"; had Planescape been developed later I think "internet philosophers" might have captured the sense better

Does that mean many or most factioneers are simply argumentative and largely ignorant of actual philosophy? Well, of course!

 

[pemerton]

I love Planescape, but I think it is actually a fairly poor fit for the D&D systems, oddly. I think this is because I find it quite "Simulationist" biased (in the Forge sense); it seems to me to be at its best when explored for its own sake, rather than when it is used as a context for fronting up to challenges or addressing 'themes'.

This I agree with! (Which is why I personally don't like it.)

 

[DracoSuave]

How is it simulationism?

There's no attempt to simulate anything; the tone of the books were that everything was so unreal and epic there was no WAY to simulate everything.

And any attempt at simulation would run into so many exceptions that there's no point doing that either. Outside of a short set of rules on how magic functions in each plane... it pretty much left it at that.

It was 3rd edition Manual of the Planes that was simulationist... but Planescape itself never was. There were never rules for how many believers would cause a planar shift. There were never rules for how many portals would be in a given area and where they must go in Sigil. You'd buy thick boxed sets with maps that had no scales, that were just very pretty diterllizi art of a rendering of a plane, with hundreds of pages which might boil down to ten pages of crunch if you were lucky.

A lot of the point of the campaign was that there couldn't BE such rules. Only the Guvners believed in that nonsense. The designers sure as hell didn't.

Ask any cutter, it was a narrative paradise, not some clueless simulationist hell.

 

[pemerton]

How is it simulationism?

It's a version of high concept simulationism (as described at The Forge). That is, it's about exploration of pre-determined material.

 

[DracoSuave]

It's a version of high concept simulationism (as described at The Forge). That is, it's about exploration of pre-determined material.

In otherwords 'simulationism' through 'stripping out the simulationist elements of the game system.'

Is it just me, or did that essay just find a way to define simulationism as simply a complex term for make-believe, stripping out the game system elements itself that attempt to aid in simulation, as opposed to the common definition of a game system being used to simulate elements of a world in opposition to arbitrarianism.

By their reckoning, a game like Amber is more simulationist than a game like Rolemaster...

In other words, by that definition, you hate games that let you pretend to do things?

Help me figure this out here.

 

[S'mon]

In otherwords 'simulationism' through 'stripping out the simulationist elements of the game system.'

Is it just me, or did that essay just find a way to define simulationism as simply a complex term for make-believe, stripping out the game system elements itself that attempt to aid in simulation, as opposed to the common definition of a game system being used to simulate elements of a world in opposition to arbitrarianism.

By their reckoning, a game like Amber is more simulationist than a game like Rolemaster...

In other words, by that definition, you hate games that let you pretend to do things?

Help me figure this out here.

The Forgey definition of "simulation" is extremely broad, yes. It should probably be called "exploration".