WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Micah Sweet]

Okay. After cooling down, taking some time to think things over, I think I'm ready to start this over.

I stand by my statement. However, in retrospect, I probably would have worded it differently. I was overly hostile and should have pushed back on your statement in a more civil way, and not make you feel like I didn't respect you.

Let's go over your statement:

You admit that you think setting consistency is more important than "raw playability". Unless I misunderstand you, "setting consistency" to you means "no retcons or rethinking older settings, unless they add to the setting, in which case I don't care".

And I understand why you value "setting consistency". I really do. I think it's often nice to have. If a future edition published an Eberron book that said that the Mourning was caused by Mordenkainen having a wizard battle with Urza, I would be more than a bit miffed because a huge part of Eberron that should stay consistent is that the Mourning is never given a canon cause (and the additional complaint that I think that would be a bad explanation). Hell, I would be upset if my version of what caused the Mourning was made canon, not because I think my answer is bad, but because I love that Eberron has "mystery boxes" that the DM is required to fill. Setting consistency should be respected, to an extent.

But here's why you're wrong. And I don't mean "I disagree with your opinion" wrong, I mean provably, absolutely wrong.

D&D is a game. It's meant to be played, not just have its lore and books discussed and read. "Playability" is a requirement for the game. It's necessary. It's not something that's nice to have or annoying when you don't have it, like with setting consistency. When you don't have "playability", you can't have a game. You can have a game and settings without "setting consistency". They aren't necessary, they're just often nice to have.

Playability is necessary. It's non-negotiable. Setting consistency is, whether you like it or not, negotiable. You can have a game and a world without it.

And, as was said earlier, you can fairly easily have both. They're not in conflict. The only person making it seem like they are is you.

Sorry for the overly-dismissive and rude original comment. I hope this helps better explain my view and why I reacted so harshly to your statement.

I respect your opinion.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I understand your opinion. However, I think "respectfully" is an awfully difficult bar to achieve when it comes to a religion that is still being practiced in the modern day, and any inclusion of them will be controversial. Especially if they're given listed alignments, which could go poorly disastrously easily.

I think it's better to just avoid it. There's no need to tickle the dragon's tail.

Okay, but "it doesn't bother me" isn't the metric used to measure whether or not something should be included in a book. Neither is "because I like it". Whether or not something that could cause controversy is included in a D&D book typically has stronger justifications than that.

It is the metric of the personal question I was asked.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you buy a bible-based game, you know you are buying a bible-based game. You are choosing to buy a bible-based game. You know what you're getting when you buy it.

There is nothing about Planescape that inherently says "will contain your actual, real-world god."

You include a real-world god, you will upset people, even if you intend nothing but complete respect. Better to just stick with the fantasy gods and, if you really need to include a real-world god, write a 3pp product for it that actually tells you what you're going to get.

Does Thor count as a real life god, or a fantasy god?

 

[Micah Sweet]

The PS supplement On Hallowed Ground took up placing real world pantheons among the planes, to the point of giving them alignments. For example, they give Shiva a NE alignment and put him in the negative energy plane, which makes nominal sense in great wheel logic but totally misunderstands the role of Shiva in the Hindu pantheon. Like with a lot of 2e products, it is writing about non Western cultures but not writing for people from those cultures (let alone writing by them). And I'm not even religious!

It updated the 1e Manual of the Planes in that regard.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nah man, nah. I 100000000000000% dont want to bump into Jesus in my game.

I don't think WotC should make a book like that no problem with 3pp publishers doing it or other extant religions.

Extinct religions are fine (including revived ones).

 

[vecna00]

Nope.

 

[Libertad]

Nah man, nah. I 100000000000000% dont want to bump into Jesus in my game.

In that case you better steer clear of this book!

 

[Faolyn]

Does Thor count as a real life god, or a fantasy god?

In D&D terms? Real life.

In Marvel comics terms? Fantasy.

 

[Bohandas]

George Lucas making Indiana Jones 4 says "hi"

Still better than a lot of the corporate crap Lucasarts has been making since they got bought out by Disney

 

[Zardnaar]

Still better than a lot of the corporate crap Lucasarts has been making since they got bought out by Disney

Maybe 1 movie and tv show was Indy 4 levels of bad (RoS and BoBF)