WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Micah Sweet]

So... nothing has been done with these planes for a minimum of 23 years... but they are absolutely vital and if I just used the search function I could find them.

Also, funny how I need to get the 2e material, when I have asked multiple times for stuff from the Elemental Plane of Salt and.... neither of you provided anything. Except to tell me that the 2e material is just, waaay better. I guess if I saw the 2e version I'd go "wow! this makes this entire plane of salt very interesting and something I totally want to use!" but I'll have buy the book to find that out for myself.



Yeah, maybe instead of rambling about what I need, you focus on what I was asking. If WoTC has never made an adventure set there, and no 3rd party person has published an adventure set there.... why would I WANT to set an adventure there? What is there to do? See a large plain of salt with big salt pillars? Talk to people made of salt? Might as well go to the Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing, it has just as much content it seems.

And, remember, my entire point that started this was that instead of having an Elemental Plane of Salt, you could have the Great Salt Flat of the Shadowfell. Instead of the Swamp of Oblivion being the Elemental Plane of Ooze, it could be a location in the Feywild. Planes of existence actually being used, and being fleshed out with more diverse set piece locations. I'm not talking about erasing anything, just redistributing it in a way that is better for engagement with the locations actually worth visiting.

Sounds great! You go do that. Let us know how your players like the adventure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right. If I go to rando #345 on the street and ask them "who lives in Asgard" What do you think their response will be?

Sure, they renamed it Ysgard and it only contains Asgard, but it is the Norse Pantheon plane. That's what anyone is thinking when they first read that name. And they are right. It contains Asgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Jotunheim as well as the World Tree Yggdrasil (that is how it got the name Ysgard, which they claim is just Asgard in the Norse tongue. They combined Yggdrasil the world tree and Asgard, the home of the Aesir into one name)

It doesn't matter who else lives there, it is clearly the norse plane and contains 90% norse mythos by weight.



And look at this in response. The Egyptians don't get an entire realm of existence, they get part of Arcadia. And their plane is called Heliopolis.

Do you know much about Greek Myths and history? Like how "polis" was the greek name for city, and Helios was the Greek god of the Sun. Wanna guess what Heliopolis' other name is in DnD? Oh, and Arcadia is... a realm in Greek Myths.

So, the norse get an entire plane of existence, containing the vast majority of their myths. The Egyptians live in a greek plane of existence in a greek city, named after the Greek god of the Sun. Do you see why I think that is not great?



Definition, scope, and weight.

Sure, a portal in the astral could drop you in Asgard, that's not the problem. The problem is that Asgard is a full plane of existence with multiple sub-planes. Meanwhile the Egyptians are bumming off the Greeks secondary realm, and The Olympian Glades of Arborea contains both the elven realm of Arvandor and Mount Olympus, because obviously Zeus and Corellon are neighbors, right?

Well, the greeks also get the Grey Wastes of Hades (weird how an entire plane is named after a single god) and Elysium and Tartarus in Carceri (which is an italian word, tying it to the romans I bet)

So, the Greek myths have half a dozen planes of existence, the norse have a plane of existence. Now, who wants to make a guess as to the two most popular mythologies when DnD was being made? Even if the realms are shared, or can be found in different ways, they are still listed as entire fundamental planes of existence.


However, in the World Axis model, where all divine realms are just places in the Astral Sea, then they all have the same weight. None of them are more important than the other, because you can place all of the locations needed for the divine mythos of the pantheon in a single location (their divine realm) and those Divine Realms are all equal. It is a far cleaner and more balanced version.

Then use the World Axis. No one is saying it's bad (like you are saying about the Great Wheel), just that they have a different preference. Is it ok with you for us to feel that way?

 

[AnotherGuy]

Are you saying that if you had a game where people randomly killed and tortured people for no reason, and one of your players expressed discomfort with that, that you'd just shrug and tell them that the door is over there, because random violence is perfectly fine with you?

Max was hinting that there were other reasons violence may exist within the game besides the ones you listed.
Bullying may exist - for example - a town guardsman could be flexing their authority on some common folk, exerting some level of violence, and the PCs are there to see it. The DM could be using that scene as colour to reflect how in this area the authority is oppressive.
Common folk could be cartered off to be questioned (read aggressively questioned) because the authority is looking to stamp out dissent. Again could be used as colour. There is a lot more.

Your specific instances for permitting violence in D&D seemed too limiting, especially given the vast breadth of stories we DO already tell, Max rightly so, was questioning that.

 

[Maxperson]

Your specific instances for permitting violence in D&D seemed too limiting, especially given the vast breadth of stories we DO already tell, Max rightly so, was questioning that.

Not just too limiting, but utterly impossible. You can't possibly do violence in self-defense or defense of another if someone else isn't engaging in non-permitted violence first. No non-permitted violence = no permitted violence of the sort that @Chaosmancer said was okay.

 

[glass]

Except FR, which should be forced to use the GW if it's going to pretend to be default D&D.

That'll learn 'em.

FR (as a published setting) used the the GW before it used anything else. There is no "forcing".

So... providing evidence to back up a position is the same as providing no evidence to back a position? Strange take.

In a lot of cases, evidence is vitally important, but when talking about feelings not so much. No evidence is required for how you feel about various cosmologies, and no amount of evidence is going to make other people feel the way you do.

Why do I hear this so often?

A question you should certainly reflect on..

Why involve yourself in a discussion forum if the only form of discussion you want is to constantly remind people that they aren't better than you?

I do not "want" to do that; I really wish it was unnecessary. But people who think that their personal taste is superior to other peoples', and that those with inferior taste are to be bludgeoned into submission, are depressingly common.

By the way, I notice you never tell this to people who agree with you, only people who disagree with people you agree with, and only after they seek to end the discussion by making it only about their preferences, and nothing else.

Speaking of "strange takes"; yes I do not spend a lot of time arguing with people I agree with, what a revelation! You really got me there! And again, asking you not to tell people their preferences is wrong and bad is not "end[ing] the discussion".

 

[Staffan]

Eberron has the planes of Irian and Mabar, which are the setting's equivalent of the Positive and Negative Energy Planes. They are the sources of positive and negative energy, respectively, and are the foundation upon which elven necromantic practices are built.

But notably, they are not "energy planes". Keith Baker has a highly evocative description of Mabar and how it works here, and another one partially about Irian here. The energy planes in the Great Wheel cosmology are places of pure positive/negative energy, but that's not how Irian and Mabar works. Rather, Irian is the font of creation, and Mabar is the planar graveyard. But they still have actual substance and inhabitants and such.

 

[Voadam]

So acid isn't fundamental to the world? Lightning?

Depending on the cosmology, it could be, but under most cosmologies no. They are generally just things in the world.

There aren't acid spells or lightning spells, or specific spells tied to storms.

Maybe there aren't creatures tied to acid (Black Dragons) or Lightning (Behir) or Storms (Storm Giants)?

There are lots of spells and creatures that are not tied into big cosmological themes. I do not expect everything in D&D to be. But I would generally expect some big cosmological tie ins to support the cosmological themes.

For instance 4e has the elemental chaos and they have a lot of mixed element elementals. Dwarves and Giants have a lot of narrative elements tying their history to the primordials and the Elemental Chaos.

Also, yes, the show Avatar the Last Airbender had a world divided into four parts, with four very different philosophies. And the Avatar, master of all four, and able to combine them as the bridge. And in the Legend of Korra, the sequel series, the four nations... largely don't exist. The setting focuses on Central City, a metropolitan area where all four groups can mix and mingle.

And, just because the Chaos exists, doesn't mean people can't be more likely to tap into one aspect of it and focus on a theme of just fire.

Yes, it can just be a coincidence that lots of things align on multiple axes with classic greek elements and we don't really see bending that does not fit the elemental paradigm, but such a cosmology would have a different narrative impact than tying those elements into a specific elemental cosmology for the setting. The four element division is a big deal in setting IIRC from the original series intros, though it has been a number of years. If you had say acid benders it would feel a bit jarring, particularly with no narrative tie in to the four elements.

You could make elemental acid work with different paradigms, maybe acid is the conjunction of earth and water and the negative energy material plane to represent its corrosive elemental nature instead of being one end of a PH axis for physical reality.

Or you can have a cosmological model that does not care, where acid, like other things is something normal you can summon or magically create. There are more fire spells and creatures, but that is not a reflection of the cosmological setup of the universe.

 

[AnotherGuy]

And? I certainly hope you aren't trying to argue "but bad guys do bad things" as some sort of excuse to include sexual assault in your games.

I do not believe anyone is arguing for the inclusion of SA, HOWEVER it is not off the table.

Now before you rush off and say AnotherGuy is promoting SA - that is NOT what I'm doing. Let me explain - I just had a quick look at part of my DVD shelf and I saw the movie Devil's Advocate (spoilers to follow)

Spoiler: Scene

In one particular scene Charlize Theron's character reveals to her husband, played by Keanu Reeves, that she was raped by Al Pacino's character (Reeve's boss who is also Lucifer). Keanu Reeve's believes she is suffering a nervous breakdown as he informs her that Al Pacino was in court with him all day long.
This is a scene about SA, and we are dealing with Lucifer who reveals throughout the show that his powers do bleed into the supernatural so there is a strong possibility that Charlize's character was indeed a victim of SA.

If you are militant a scene/story similar to this could never be used and that might be fine for your table, some tables though have a higher tolerance and could include a scene such as this which backgrounds the darkness but illuminates the power of the BBEG.

Personally, I do not think it is valuable to be discussing SA in D&D, and certainly not here - not among enthusiasts who are here to share experiences/knowledge, homebrew rules and upcoming material. I would think, we know better. So, I think its best we do not accuse fellow posters of arguing for the inclusion of the vilest material.

 

[Remathilis]

Finally, don't forget that Benjamin Riggs showed that to everyone's surprise, the setting sold really poorly. So what was done then didn't sell. That means to make it work now, you'd have to change it, and likely that's just going to make people angrier than Spelljammer did.

It's easy to look at Ben's charts and conclude settings were a failure, but I think that there was some other factors at play:

1. Buying a setting was a commitment to the setting, assuming you had any interest in the supplements. If I was already interested in Dragonlance, I wouldn't want to buy Dark Sun since that is a commitment to buy two settings worth of splat.

2. Settings weren't compatible, despite being built for the same rule set. Dark Sun PC rules didn't work with Birthright and vice versa. That made it a lot less useful to buy stuff for other settings.

3. Settings are smaller niche products anyway. Most DMs homebrew settings. To invest in a setting, you either have to intend to run it or it has to have something worth scavenging from it.

The Old model didn't work because it was a bunch of different games competing for the same niche market. The current model (one and done) might not sate purists, but it allows settings to serve a purpose beyond being completing lines (SJ and DL were modules, Ravenloft was a genre book, etc). I predict PS will be a Manual of the Planes plus city guide.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Then use the World Axis. No one is saying it's bad (like you are saying about the Great Wheel), just that they have a different preference. Is it ok with you for us to feel that way?

Sure, you can feel that way.

Do you mind if I feel like advocating for the World Axis to be the default is okay? Is that fine with you that I advocate for that to be the model primarily used in the DMG and the adventures, rather than the Great Wheel?