# Planescape, 4e, and the problem of worlds without history



## underthumb (Jan 18, 2009)

4e's new cosmology has reduced the great wheel to a simplified core and removed many of the particular rules associated with planar travel.* The stated reason for many of these changes was to increase the accessibility of the planes to  PCs and remove outerplanar realms that were rarely visited.

This bothers me on many levels, and not just because I think there should be one great wheel to rule them all. Mainly, it means that many of the ideas associated with the planes as I understood them will not be carried forward into future generations of D&D players. That is, they no longer form a set of core assumptions that can serve as the basis of conversations and shared adventures.

Okay, so that's sad, at least to me. But what about the larger issue? I feel as though the designers of 2e's Planescape (in particular Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, and Colin McComb) succeeding in creating an amazing fantasy realm that simply has no modern equal. In its totality, Planescape was beautiful, dangerous and absurd. The complex histories and ecologies of outerplanar beings served as the backdrop for some of D&D's most impressive features, such as the Blood War. (The fiends, in fact, were easily the most fleshed-out creatures in Planescape.)

Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be  either redacted or cut completely? Was trashing most of the multiverse (as it was constituted) worth it to "maximize playability"? Maybe I've become a grognard in that I don't think significant chunks of lore should be dropped because they are measurably less convenient during play, especially when they form the backdrop of established creature ecologies (see, for example, baatezu and tanar'ri tactics described in Hellbound: The Blood War).

As a side note, _why the hell_ is the succubus suddenly a baatezu?

Anyhow, to side step an anticipated reply, yes, I understand that rule 0 exists, and that my game can be anything I want it to be. Still, I will no longer be able to purchase new gaming materials about the multiverse I had come to understand. A multiverse that I would argue is more colorful and more interesting than the one presently established.


(*Some changes to the outer planes and outer planar creatures also occurred with 3e, though they were less dramatic and more easily ignored.)


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## Wik (Jan 18, 2009)

underthumb said:


> Anyhow, to side step an anticipated reply, yes, I understand that rule 0 exists, and that my game can be anything I want it to be. Still, I will no longer be able to purchase new gaming materials about the multiverse I had come to understand. A multiverse that I would argue is more colorful and more interesting than the one presently established




Not to be harsh... but I haven't been able to buy any new DARK SUN stuff for years.  And if and when a new DS campaign setting comes out, it's not going to "be the same".  I mean, things change.


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## malraux (Jan 18, 2009)

Tradition for the sake of tradition is kinda pointless.


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## FourthBear (Jan 18, 2009)

I disagree that the 4e cosmology is simplified relative to the Great Wheel cosmology.  It is much less stratified, predefined and ordered, but every one of the planes of the Great Wheel can be placed easily in the Astral Sea, Elemental Chaos, Shadowfell, Feywild or World.  In fact, since there's no exhaustive detailing of the realms or assignment of the various planes to alignments, you can include many planes (such as those found in Beyond Countless Doors supplement) more easily than you could in the Great Wheel.  If any DM enjoys the structure of the Great Wheel, the entire kit and kaboodle can placed right in the Astral Sea, complete with all of the connections between the various planes.

I feel the Great Wheel was a well detailed *example* of a cosmology, but I don't think it makes for a good default.  I think the 4e presentation of cosmology lends itself much better to homebrewing, particularly for the starting DM who simply wants to add a few planes/domains here and there without having to worry about where they fit into some kind quasi-scholarly structure of alignment, elements and energies.


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## underthumb (Jan 18, 2009)

malraux said:


> Tradition for the sake of tradition is kinda pointless.




As is change for the sake of change. My argument is that much of that tradition became both color and background, and thus was something other than the route application of past ideas.


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## underthumb (Jan 18, 2009)

FourthBear said:


> I disagree that the 4e cosmology is simplified relative to the Great Wheel cosmology.  It is much less stratified, predefined and ordered, but every one of the planes of the Great Wheel can be placed easily in the Astral Sea, Elemental Chaos, Shadowfell, Feywild or World.




I see your point here and I agree--you can recreate the great wheel if you want to, and I effectively acknowledged this is my post. "Easy", however, is not a descriptor I would apply to the process. The fundamental ideas associated with the great wheel cosmology are not simply the _existence_ of its planar realms, but which creatures come from which realms, how the astral and the ethereal are associated with spell casting, death and petitioners, alignment, etc.

Anyhow, it's not my intent to argue that it's simply *too hard* to change things back, but rather that they didn't need to be altered in the first place.


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## Keefe the Thief (Jan 18, 2009)

God, i love Planescape. It is all the things i want out of a planar campaign: strange, creepy, non-standard, creative. 
And complex. Lots of work. Special - so special that from 10 people i showed the setting, 8 went "what", 1 said "interesting", and 1 said "is the pizza already there yet?"
Honestly: Planescape should be a special campaign addendum, not a core component that holds the multiverse together. Its simply TOO MUCH for most D&D campaigns.

And honestly, i love it that different editions use different approaches regarding to the planes. I can pick and choose this way.


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## nightwyrm (Jan 18, 2009)

The great wheel cosmology is reliant on the two axis alignment system. It makes the implicit assumption that alignment is a real cosmic force in the multiverse and takes a hand in shaping the planes. The nature and position of the each of the planes on the wheel are all informed by its alignment. Mount Celestia is the way it is because it's LG, the Abyss is the way it is because it's CE, etc. 

When the alignment system is changed in 4e, it makes no sense to keep the great wheel. There is no longer a reason for making Baator be next to Gehenna, and for Gehenna to border Hades, etc. 

The removal of mechanics related to alignment also means that the planes can no longer be defined solely by their alignment.


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## thundershot (Jan 18, 2009)

*shrug* I like the new cosmology MUCH better than the old one. I might actually USE the outer planes now.



Chris


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## malraux (Jan 18, 2009)

Keefe the Thief said:


> God, i love Planescape. It is all the things i want out of a planar campaign: strange, creepy, non-standard, creative.
> And complex. Lots of work. Special - so special that from 10 people i showed the setting, 8 went "what", 1 said "interesting", and 1 said "is the pizza already there yet?"
> Honestly: Planescape should be a special campaign addendum, not a core component that holds the multiverse together. Its simply TOO MUCH for most D&D campaigns.




Pretty much this.  If you love PS, and can find a group that also loves it, or a DM that can convey lots of background without being boring, then its a good campaign setting.  But those are necessary conditions.

The 4e planar setting works reasonably as both background and foreground.  In depth, in brief, or anywhere in between.  That added flexibility makes for a better general campaign setting.


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## FourthBear (Jan 18, 2009)

underthumb said:


> Anyhow, it's not my intent to argue that it's simply *too hard* to change things back, but rather that they didn't need to be altered in the first place.



  Obviously, nothing ever *needs* to be altered.  The cosmology of 4e differs from the default of 1e-3e for pretty specific and reasonably transparent design goals.  

1)  Create a more open cosmology that allows for the easy addition of new planes and regions.  This is the reason the Great Wheel was broken up: to eliminate a structure that led to a question for every new plane: where does this one go in the predefined alignment Wheel?

2)  Eliminate the cosmological axes of alignment.  No more explicit LG, CN or NE(chaotic tendencies) planes.  This allows more easily for heterogenous planes.  Many planes inspired by mythology (in fact, pretty much all of them) fit extremely poorly into the alignment grid.  The various realms of the Norse, Greek and Egyptian gods, for example.  Now Olympus can be a simple, single realm with a philosophically diverse population of gods, monsters and spirits without having to wonder why it's on a plane with the CG tag.

3)  Addition of the Feywild and Shadowfell, as planes which roughly parallel the World, as featured in fantasy stories too numerous to mention.

4)  To eliminate highly homogeneous elemental realms in preference to a mixed Elemental Chaos, allowing for both huge regions of "pure" elements as well as the mixed regions where most of the action of previous editions took place in practice.

Frankly, I believe that if the current cosmology had been presented back in 1e, the various past authors of D&D (both official and third party), would have created even more marvelous realms for campaigns and adventures.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 18, 2009)

underthumb said:


> As is change for the sake of change. My argument is that much of that tradition became both color and background, and thus was something other than the route application of past ideas.



However, a lot of both that tradition and the "color and background" of it was _awful_.

I have never liked a lot of the Planescape and Great Wheel concepts and ideals. There are countless things in there that were bad from the start, and holding on to them for tradition's sake doesn't change the fact that they can use improvement. It is not change for change's sake if you are changing something for the better.

I mean... the Blood War is contrived and pointless. The Great Wheel absolute order and symmetry lead to nothing but a huge excess of redundant and overly similar planes, as well as even more redundant and meaningless things like Yugoloths. We don't need a planar set-up with half a dozen variations on "the place where evil souls go". We needed half a dozen of variations of "where good/lawful/chaotic souls go" even less. The utter pointlessness of the Inner Planes was bad enough, but even hearing that things like the Para- and Quasi-Elemental planes even existed at some point is more depressing than I can bear. Don't even get me started on the boring stuff like the old Astral, Ethereal, or Deep Ethereal. The distinction between Evil Gods and Archdevils/Demon Princes is weak at best, and the entire concept behind the Lady of Pain is terrible beyond reckoning.

Now that I am probably done making every Planescape fan hate me, I think I may as well mention that I dislike the 4E Manual of the Planes in large part due to how it forces a lot of this old tradition and heritage back into a 4E cosmology that I was hoping would distance itself more from such old ideas (the other part I dislike is that a lot of the newer stuff isn't developed anywhere near as well as I would have liked). The changes they made, like redefining the nature of demons and devils somewhat, getting making the Succubus a Devil in order to match the new definitions, getting rid of the Great Wheel, and other such things, were all good steps towards cleaning up D&D's overly convoluted and messy cosmology and turning into something presentable and usable. However, the 4E MotP just ignores a lot of that and fits in older concepts straight back into the new cosmology like a square peg in a round hole.

Still, I really do like a lot of the elements of the 4E cosmology. Unlike the meaningless Inner Planes, the Elemental Chaos is very good. It embodies the idea of a primal sea of chaos that is seen in real-world myth and literature (it is practically taken straight from things like Greek creation myth and Milton's Paradise Lost), and embodies a true place filled with the "stuff of creation" rather than a stratified and sometimes limiting system of "pure elements", where anything that exists for more than a second has to fight to protect its right to continue existing. The Astral Sea is great for more reasons that I can list here. The Feywild and Shadowfell fill incredibly valuable roles that the Great Wheel never properly touched upon. The new cosmology isn't perfect, and the material that covers these places right now is far from adequate, but the changes in 4E are an important step forward.

Nothing is _ever_ good enough that it can be left unchanged indefinitely, so we should constantly look to see how things should be improved.


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 18, 2009)

I'm a huge PS fan, so let me try to tease out your actual points and see if they bug me, too, in 4e...



> simplified core




Kinda. But simplified core is, overall, a positive thing. The didn't go too far with the planes, because you still have a field where everything can exist -- the 4e model is only a model, just as the Wheel was, as mentioned, only a model.



> removed many of the particular rules associated with planar travel.




Positive thing. More fiddly rules means more annoying things I have to remember when I'm trying to run amazing plane-hopping adventures. It sacrificed some of the flavor, but there are other, more constructive ways to convey things like "Plane of Fire is Hot!"



> there should be one great wheel to rule them all




Why? I have issues with 4e making there be one Cosmic Sandwich to rule them all. Every DM should have the tools to define their own cosmology -- WotC should not tell you where your gods live, it's not for them to decide.



> The complex histories and ecologies of outerplanar beings served as the backdrop for some of D&D's most impressive features, such as the Blood War




I'll agree, but, dude, PS isn't a church, and you don't need to worship at the Shrine of Monte or anything. 



> Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be either redacted or cut completely?




There's a few things they gain from that. Whether its worth it or not is kind of subjective.



> Was trashing most of the multiverse (as it was constituted) worth it to "maximize playability"?




I honestly don't think they've trashed most of the multiverse. Seriously. Just 'cuz they don't have the pagecount to detail Bytopia (for instance) in the MotP doesn't mean it's not still hanging around somewhere, waiting to crop up when it would make sense to be used. I think they did a pretty good job in preserving (and even expanding on) most of the multiverse, actually. 



> I don't think significant chunks of lore should be dropped because they are measurably less convenient during play, especially when they form the backdrop of established creature ecologies




What was dropped that was inconvenient? Spell keys from 2e? "Plane of Forging" rules for magic weapons? These are all very good things to drop. 



> As a side note, why the hell is the succubus suddenly a baatezu?




To make demons and devils more distinct, so that when I'm fighting a devil, it is clearly a different experience from fighting a demon. Thematic. That said, alignments are very flexible. Make her CE and a tanar'ri if you want. 4e doesn't want that, but 4e and you have some different goals. That's fine. You can go your own way, and 4e can go its, and it'll be okay. 



> Still, I will no longer be able to purchase new gaming materials about the multiverse I had come to understand.




Tell ya what. Get yourself and 500 people who agree with you together. Then each of you gimmie $20. Within a year, I'll give all of you a 96 page pdf about the multiverse that you understand, brand new, referencing old stuff, all produced under the OGL, with new art, maybe up on Lulu so that you can print it/order it bound, and the most you'll hafta do is file some serial numbers off so I can dodge Wizard's IP Police. 

I'd be happy to do this as many times as you and those 500 friends want to give me $20 apiece.

Heck, I might even do it for $10 apiece!


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## Herremann the Wise (Jan 19, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> However, a lot of both that tradition and the "color and background" of it was _awful_.
> 
> I mean... the Blood War is contrived and pointless. The Great Wheel absolute order and symmetry lead to nothing but a huge excess of redundant and overly similar planes, as well as even more redundant and meaningless things like Yugoloths.



I mean are you like _trying_ to goad Shemeska onto this thread or what!? Damn it if that's not throwing the gauntlet straight into the face. 

As for the OP, I'm really split on this one. I think it was time to try something new as good as Planescape was and is. If they had changed it to something different, I would have been screaming but I think WotC have done a good job on this one as FourthBear has carefully pointed out. Some of the changes are jarring for some of us, but on the whole the direction and style of the change was pretty good in my opinion.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 19, 2009)

Herremann the Wise said:


> I mean are you like _trying_ to goad Shemeska onto this thread or what!? Damn it if that's not throwing the gauntlet straight into the face.



That wasn't really the intent, but I admit that I am somewhat prepared for the possibility, and the part of me that loves debates and discussions wouldn't mind the opportunity. 

Hey, if Shemeska can be so passionate about defending the Great Wheel and Planescape, then I can be passionate about not liking it, right? Well, as long as we don't get personal about it, but that goes without saying...


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## Hussar (Jan 19, 2009)

Herremann - I was thinking the same thing.  Shemeska, Shemeska, Shem...urk!  

I do want to focus on one line from the OP because, for me, it's the best argument I can come up with for the changes:



> Was trashing most of the multiverse (as it was constituted) worth it to "maximize playability"?




In a word, absolutely.  100% yes.  It was worth ejecting useless fluff that you couldn't use in game to inject useful fluff that can be used in actual adventures.  Traveling to the "plane of fast burning death" is pointless.  Either the PC's have the protective spells to counter it, making it pretty much just like the Prime, or the PC's don't and they die.

I'd much, much rather have the Elemental Chaos, where you have areas which are "fast burning death" but, the vast majority are areas where I can set an adventure.

I'm a huge, HUGE fan of the practical.  If it isn't practical, I don't want it in the game.


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## underthumb (Jan 19, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> I mean... the Blood War is contrived and pointless. The Great Wheel absolute order and symmetry lead to nothing but a huge excess of redundant and overly similar planes, as well as even more redundant and meaningless things like Yugoloths.




I doubt I can convince you that Planescape is actually cool, but I do want to comment on a few of your criticisms.

I think your points about some design decisions being driven by symmetry are correct. I also agree with you that the blood war feels contrived. My argument, however, is that the actual implementation of these aspects of Planescape is significantly more than their one-line descriptors. For example, the blood war, while given a weak premise, was fleshed out to become a viable campaign setting unto itself. Its value was in its ultimate execution, not simply its initial premise. The same goes for planes built to satisfy a symmetrical alignment system. Reading the original Planescape boxed sets, it's hard not to be impressed with how expansive and interesting these places really were.

Note that this is very common in D&D. No one is impressed if you say that you wrote an adventure about a death cult that must be stopped by the PCs. The payoff is almost always in the details.


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## DandD (Jan 19, 2009)

The only thing I like about the Planescape setting was the artwork in the 2nd edition for it. Wotc didn't use the Great Wheel anyway for its two best-selling campaigns, the Forgotten Realms and Eberron. 

I am glad to know that we won't get to see the return of the Blood War, one of the most stupid things proving how eternally stupid the demons must be, for being incapable of conquering Baator with their limiltless numbers... I want demons to be a threat, not a cosmic joke everybody in the multiverse hearing about that gets to laugh at.


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## Hussar (Jan 19, 2009)

The trick is, Underthumb, is when you start looking at those boxed sets and examine where they actually place the adventures.  Sure, Elemental planes are really bad for you.  But, they don't set adventures there usually.  Sigil is basically just another fantasy city.  You don't need any specific protections to wander around, you don't have weird gravity or non-Euclidean surfaces (by and large).  

In other words, what sets Sigil apart from say, Waterdeep or Greyhawk, isn't the fact that it's a Planar City, but that because of its planar nature, you get to create adventures that you really couldn't create in Waterdeep or Greyhawk.  That doesn't change with the new cosmology.


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## underthumb (Jan 19, 2009)

Hussar said:


> I'd much, much rather have the Elemental Chaos, where you have areas which are "fast burning death" but, the vast majority are areas where I can set an adventure.
> 
> I'm a huge, HUGE fan of the practical.  If it isn't practical, I don't want it in the game.




Here's a (half-serious) question: why should most campaign settings have a "sky" if most PC races cannot fly? After all, being in the sky means being in the place of "fast falling death". The same goes for the ocean, a place of "fast floating death".

I suspect that most answers to my above question would center on the idea that people find the ocean and the sky familiar, and we take it for granted that we'll need something extra to survive there. I suggest that it's just one small hop from that idea to the idea that the plane of _fast burning death_ is no different. You'll need something special to survive there, just as you would underwater or in the sky.


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## DandD (Jan 19, 2009)

underthumb said:


> why should most campaign settings have a "sky" if most PC races cannot fly?
> After all, being in the sky means being in the place of "fast falling death".



You can battle rocs, harpies and dragons in the air with at least fifth level, and have airfights, where melee-fighter swoop down upon the flock of ghoulish dire ravens, and magic-users like the wizard and the cleric shoot beams of elemental or divine energy at eagle-riding halfling barbarian raiders and air elemental hoodlums. Also, airships are cool. 
Yep, good ol' 5th level for clerics and wizards/sorcerors. Now's the time to go up and away. 

Just don't fly too high, because there's a limit to how much you float before you fall. 


> The same goes for the ocean, a place of "fast floating death".



Fast floating? Sounds kinda contradictionary... Aside from that, people can fish for food, or simply have fun swimming around (don't forget ranks in swimming), and sometimes pull up sunken treasures from whatever weird pirates lost them. 

Sea adventures are much more easier and accessible than sky adventures, but both are even more easier than planar adventures, where you swim in endless water, or simply get stuck in stone, unless you really have some serious mojo flinging around.


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## underthumb (Jan 19, 2009)

DandD said:


> I am glad to know that we won't get to see the return of the Blood War, one of the most stupid things proving how eternally stupid the demons must be, for being incapable of conquering Baator with their limiltless numbers... I want demons to be a threat, not a cosmic joke everybody in the multiverse hearing about that gets to laugh at.




I don't want this to become a thread about the blood war, but I do want to take a moment to clear up a common misconception. In Planescape, it is often acknowledged that the standard account for this or that feature of the planes is not necessarily the absolute truth. This is the case for the idea that there are an "infinite" number of tanar'ri (see Hellbound: The Blood War). Planar scholars argue that while the tanar'ri are significantly more numerous, they are not actually infinite, and they give the exact reasons you would expect. So, while commoners believe that the tanar'ri are infinite, they may very well be wrong.

This information, btw, is contained in a booklet that is labeled "for the DM only". It may partially explain why this point is not well known.


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## FourthBear (Jan 19, 2009)

DandD said:


> I am glad to know that we won't get to see the return of the Blood War, one of the most stupid things proving how eternally stupid the demons must be, for being incapable of conquering Baator with their limiltless numbers... I want demons to be a threat, not a cosmic joke everybody in the multiverse hearing about that gets to laugh at.



It should be noted that the Blood War is referenced in the 4e Manual of the Planes as a conflict between demons and devils that is currently in a sullen truce.  

It is also given an official motivation which, personally, I find more compelling than the previous explanations for the Blood War.  Of course, that's not saying much.  As I recall, the explanations tended to be: no reason whatsoever, LE hates CE and CE hates LE, they're alien creatures with utterly alien motives mortals can't understand and the explanation from the Blood War boxed set (my least favorite).  The current explanation centers around a conflict around the seed of evil that the god Tharizdun placed at the center of the Elemental Chaos, creating the Abyss.  

I would prefer it if 4e continues to keep the Blood War largely ignored.  I think both devils and demons work better in campaigns when their focus is centered upon the world of mortals.  I don't like them being focused more on the Blood War than corrupting mortals or wreaking destruction to the World.  You know, things a party of PCs might reasonably care more about than if Evil Outsiders Team 1 slaughtered Evil Outsiders Team 2.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 19, 2009)

Why have the heavens if no one can fly?
1) 
Well, some can fly.

2) 
Our real world has a heaven. We kinda expect it. Moreover, we can see it just by looking up. Likewise, we have deep oceans, and we sail on them.
But the plane of fire - there is no real world equivalent. We don't expect it to exist, so if you tell me it does, what can you do there? When will we see it, what's going on there? This can lead to interesting answers - but the answer in the "Great Wheel" seemed to be "it's pretty hot there and not much going on there, except the City of Brass, which is unlike the rest of the plane but at least fire-themed...

---

A thing that I never quite understood is what the Ethreal, Shadow and Astral planes where and what they do. They seem similar on some levels, but what's happening there, what's the most distinguishing feature?

The distinguishing features of the Astral Sea, the Feywild and Shadowfell are a lot easier to make out. And for me, they resonate with myth and folklore. (I must say, the strongest resonance I do have with the Feywild. It just makes so much sense to me, with the Fey Crossings and so on...)


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 19, 2009)

underthumb said:


> As is change for the sake of change.



Although you acknowledge in your original post that's not the reason they did it.

The neckbeards who constitute much of the D&D population are just another few servings of 7-Eleven nachos from their final heart attack. Creating additional barriers to entry for new gamers is a bad idea, if you have any desire for there to _be_ future generations that play D&D.

The Great Wheel and/or its various places, faces and stories can be incorporated back into the new cosmology or used as an alternative campaign setting -- it's not like the PDFs aren't easily available -- instead.

Let's not force the newbies to have to memorize the phone book before they can sit at the table. If nothing else, they've got nacho money.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 19, 2009)

underthumb said:


> Here's a (half-serious) question: why should most campaign settings have a "sky" if most PC races cannot fly? After all, being in the sky means being in the place of "fast falling death". The same goes for the ocean, a place of "fast floating death".
> 
> I suspect that most answers to my above question would center on the idea that people find the ocean and the sky familiar, and we take it for granted that we'll need something extra to survive there. I suggest that it's just one small hop from that idea to the idea that the plane of _fast burning death_ is no different. You'll need something special to survive there, just as you would underwater or in the sky.



So keep using the Great Wheel. WotC won't and can't stop you. But if you want everyone else to play the way you want them to, you're going to be disappointed no matter what it is you enjoy.


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## pawsplay (Jan 19, 2009)

malraux said:


> Tradition for the sake of tradition is kinda pointless.




Tradition for the sake of awesome, though, is awesome.


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## wedgeski (Jan 19, 2009)

I never got to play or DM Planescape, but as reading material, I love it. Beyond Countless Doorways was also one of my favourite Malhavoc products. Absolutely gorgeous. But I never liked the Great Wheel, and I hardly ever, ever ventured into the planes with any campaign that I've run, unless a published adventure called for it. The reason was pretty simple: I didn't think my narrative powers were up to it.

Now, that kind of thinking was a long time ago, probably around the time PS actually came out. I just spent much of the weekend with the 4E Manual of the Planes open in front of me, and it's made me reconsider this decision almost completely. There's something about the 4E cosmology... I can handle it without having to juggle it, I can fit the structure of the planes in my head in one go. I can actually imagine using it. Even the structure of the book reinforces this: here's some general stuff, here's the Feywild, the Shadowfell, the Astral Sea, the Elemental Chaos, here's Sigil, the City of Brass, oh and here are some monsters and a few new Paragon Paths. It all just *works*.

(If only the art had been just a *little* bit better.)

This is probably more about how much I've changed than the game itself, but IMO the newest MotP is a gem of a book, and I've come away from it with more campaign ideas than I know what to do with.


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## Mokona (Jan 19, 2009)

underthumb said:


> Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be  either redacted or cut completely? Was trashing most of the multiverse (as it was constituted) worth it to "maximize playability"?



Yes...there really are good reasons to redact and cut material.

Yes...it was a good idea throw out the trash.

The 4th edition cosmology is pretty much the perfect celestial space for *Dungeons & Dragons* players and the feeling of fantasy overall.  Even if it were true that amazing material was changed and the multiverse was gone, which are not true, it _would be worth it_ to make the game more fun.

"Maximize playability" = "Have more fun"

I know I'd like to have more fun than have less fun when I sit down to play with my wife and friends.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 19, 2009)

pawsplay said:


> Tradition for the sake of awesome, though, is awesome.



Well, I can't argue with that statement.

But I can say that not everyone agrees on what's awesome and what's not.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 19, 2009)

underthumb said:


> I doubt I can convince you that Planescape is actually cool, but I do want to comment on a few of your criticisms.
> 
> I think your points about some design decisions being driven by symmetry are correct. I also agree with you that the blood war feels contrived. My argument, however, is that the actual implementation of these aspects of Planescape is significantly more than their one-line descriptors. For example, the blood war, while given a weak premise, was fleshed out to become a viable campaign setting unto itself. Its value was in its ultimate execution, not simply its initial premise. The same goes for planes built to satisfy a symmetrical alignment system. Reading the original Planescape boxed sets, it's hard not to be impressed with how expansive and interesting these places really were.
> 
> Note that this is very common in D&D. No one is impressed if you say that you wrote an adventure about a death cult that must be stopped by the PCs. The payoff is almost always in the details.



This is a fair point, but you also have to keep something in mind: I never have seen a proper Planescape book in my life. You can criticize me for judging the setting so harshly without ever seeing an actual setting book for it, but I can counter that by asking you how I could possibly get a good feel for the setting in the first place. I started playing D&D at the same time 3E was launched, and by that time the actual Planescape setting was already an old, probably out-of-print product.

Instead, I got treated to the 3E Manual of the Planes, which carried over all of the traditional concepts of Planescape, without whatever details you think redeems the setting/cosmology. After all, they didn't just reprint all of the old stuff and convert it. They held to the ideas of Planescape, like you are asking them to do again, but that is not the same thing as keeping Planescape alive. Ultimately, the _only_ parts of Planescape that continue to persist past the 2E era are those "contrived one-line descriptors".

I guess, the question is: "Why hold to tradition and keep propagating the ideas of Planescape's Great Wheel, if the actual details that made the setting good are _not_ being continued as well?" At this point, trying to limit 4E cosmology to Planescape merely locks new players into playing a cosmology that is only really fun and useable for the people who have been playing since the 1E or 2E days.

On a totally different note, I will claim that, even at the "one-line descriptor" level, the 4E cosmology is better than the Great Wheel cosmology. The four main planes of the new cosmology have very strong mythological resonance and numerous other advantages. On the other hand, the core assumptions and nature of the Great Wheel often weakens and distorts the ability of the players and DM to understand the game world using their own experiences and preconceptions, since it is so unusual, abstract, and overly symmetrical. For example, the Blood War is inherently a bad idea for a core setting assumption because the idea of an absolute separation between "demons" and "devils" is very weird to someone unfamiliar with D&D, let alone the idea that this difference is somehow more important to the demons and devils than the battle between good and evil. On the other hand, the idea of a "world of the dead" like the Shadowfell is seen everywhere in myth and fantasy, so it is easily comprehensible and thus more easily adaptable and usable.


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## Sammael (Jan 19, 2009)

You know, whenever there is a Rifts or Palladium related topic, people always say "yeah, the rules suck, but the world is AWESOME." This has been a standard response for years now. The reason? Continuity. Well, that, and some pretty nifty ideas to begin with. And everything ties together in the Megaverse.

People almost never say that D&D has AWESOME worlds. One of the reasons, in my opinion, is that D&D has never been able to decide whether it wants to be a DM toolkit for creating homebrews, or a rich, detailed campaign setting. As a DM toolkit, it's always been... too detailed. Its rich, detailed campaign settings have never been... integrated enough. So each new generation of designers tries something new, and, in my opinion, fails to fix this issue. 

D&D needs a nice, richly detailed, fantastic campaign setting at its core. I thought for sure that's what WotC intended to do with Eberron, and I was fine with that choice, even though I disliked the setting. It also needs to produce one or more DM world-building sourcebooks, which would allow the DM to create his own world, cosmology included (for those DMs who even bother with the cosmology - we seem to be in a minority).

And finally, WotC needs to leave Planescape *alone*. For all the cries of hatred towards Planescape and the Great Wheel, it seems that WotC designers revert to plundering it for ideas _all the damn time_. Where's the creativity, gentlemen? If your target audience can't stand the Great Wheel and wants the Astral Sea and its domains instead, and if you don't know what the hell a guardinal is, and there is all this damnable symmetry (which is false, q.v. the Rule of Threes) please lay your hands off the setting _I_ happen to like. Leave it in the past and by all means, produce new and exciting and, above all, ORIGINAL material for your new customers. Those who want to plunk Great Wheel planes into the Astral Sea can do so easily.

EDIT: This marks my 2000th post on ENWorld. w00t!


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 19, 2009)

Sammael said:


> EDIT: This marks my 2000th post on ENWorld. w00t!



Congratulations. Onwards to the next 2000!


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 19, 2009)

Sammael said:


> And finally, WotC needs to leave Planescape *alone*. For all the cries of hatred towards Planescape and the Great Wheel, it seems that WotC designers revert to plundering it for ideas _all the damn time_. Where's the creativity, gentlemen? If your target audience can't stand the Great Wheel and wants the Astral Sea and its domains instead, and if you don't know what the hell a guardinal is, and there is all this damnable symmetry (which is false, q.v. the Rule of Threes) please lay your hands off the setting _I_ happen to like. Leave it in the past and by all means, produce new and exciting and, above all, ORIGINAL material for your new customers. Those who want to plunk Great Wheel planes into the Astral Sea can do so easily.



I don't entirely agree with the first part of your post, but I can get behind this paragraph. As I have mentioned before, one of the greatest weaknesses of the 4E Manual of the Planes is that it does nothing but mine the Great Wheel and Planescape in order to fill in the gaps of the new cosmology, and that just doesn't work. The Abyss is a good example of this, since it is supposed to be a region of the Elemental Chaos, but its actual description presents it as being nothing more than a slightly tweaked version of the Great Wheel Abyss, so it hardly seems like it fits the Elemental Chaos at all. The addition of the old Astral Plane color pool concept into the Astral Sea nearly manages to wreck the fantastic imagery of the plane and reduce it all to blandness again. Meanwhile, the excellent new planes of the Feywild and Shadowfell seem under-developed and lack detailed thought and imagination in the book. If nothing else, there is a surprising lack of discussion of the nature and role of the dead in the Shadowfell, which is bizarre considering its nature as the plane of the dead.


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## avin (Jan 19, 2009)

As a 3.5 and 4E DM World Axis doesn't bother me, Wheel or Axis aren't canon for me...

...what bothers me is this "everywhere is a playground, everywhere is a dungeon" 4E vision.

I like planar games in shades of gray and 4E fluff is too colorful for me.

Sammael has a point: Wotc, leave Planescape for Planescape fans. I want Planescape Torment, not Temple of Elemental Evil (which rocks from the rules point of view but sucks in story).


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## Keefe the Thief (Jan 19, 2009)

No, please Wotc, bring out 4e Planescape with changes as you see fit. I can subsequently do what i did with FR: use all the different versions as desired.


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## Jürgen Hubert (Jan 19, 2009)

I think Planescape was awesome, and it remains one of my all-time favorites.

However, it should be remembered that Planescape was primarily intended as a setting in its own right, and that's not what was needed for the new edition. Instead, what was needed was a planar cosmology as an adjunct to Material Plane adventures - somewhere where the PCs could go for a couple of adventures, and then return to. Since Planescape deemphasized the importance of any individual material prime world, there was always the risk that the player characters, upon discovering a door to Sigil, would simply stay there and _not_ return to their home plane, derailing any plans the DM might have had for his campaign and forcing it into an entirely new direction as they explore this new, alien environment.

In the 4E cosmology, the material plane is "the center of the universe" much more than in previous editions, thanks to the fact that both the Feywild and the Shadowfell strongly echo it. And for a "generic cosmology", this is a lot more useful than the highly detailed Planescape cosmology, no matter how well-crafted it was.

I am content with the existing Planescape material - it has managed to cover all the planes in detail and thus can be considered fairly "finished". The new cosmology has a lot of interesting ideas as well which take planar adventuring in new direction, and it has a lot of potential for the future. I will watch with interest how it will develop, even if it isn't Planescape.


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## timbannock (Jan 19, 2009)

FourthBear said:


> I disagree that the 4e cosmology is simplified relative to the Great Wheel cosmology.  It is much less stratified, predefined and ordered, but every one of the planes of the Great Wheel can be placed easily in the Astral Sea, Elemental Chaos, Shadowfell, Feywild or World.  In fact, since there's no exhaustive detailing of the realms or assignment of the various planes to alignments, you can include many planes (such as those found in Beyond Countless Doors supplement) more easily than you could in the Great Wheel.  If any DM enjoys the structure of the Great Wheel, the entire kit and kaboodle can placed right in the Astral Sea, complete with all of the connections between the various planes.




This is very true.  Before MOTP came out in 3e, I had my characters interacting with Sigil and the Planes.

Here's how I do it: there are several views of the Planes (just like in Planescape).  Some people believe in the Great Wheel as it was in 2e.  Some believe it's more nebulous than that, and the connections aren't quite that stratified.  This fits with Planescape's ideas of belief and perspective just fine.

And EVERYONE agrees that the crazy amounts of magic interactions and the depowering of clerics by planar distance to their deity's realm were stupid.


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## Dausuul (Jan 19, 2009)

underthumb said:


> As is change for the sake of change. My argument is that much of that tradition became both color and background, and thus was something other than the route application of past ideas.




I despise Planescape and always have.  I found the Great Wheel (in its 1E, pre-Planescape incarnation) fascinating to read about, very evocative, but in the end not something I'd want to use in an actual game. The 4E cosmology is the first time in my entire gaming career that I've been willing to use the "default" cosmology more or less as written... although that may change once I see the new Manual of the Planes.

I will concede that Planescape is a rich and detailed setting, and for those who are into that type of setting, it's brilliant.  But it's _way_ too detailed, intricate, and specialized to be D&D's default cosmology.  The default cosmology needs to be open, flexible, and not too detailed, leaving plenty of room for individual DMs to put their stamp on it.  I think 4E does a bang-up job with this.

If Planescape is ported into 4E, it should be as a separate setting in its own right, not shoehorned into everything else.  If that port doesn't happen, well, nothing's stopping you from taking your old 2E setting material and using it in 4E.


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## Nifft (Jan 19, 2009)

I spent lots of time trying to justify something that looked like the Great Wheel in my mostly-alignment-free homebrew setting.

Now I vaguely resent having to spend that time designing it again, but it looks like the building blocks are better suited to my purpose. I'll probably end up with something that looks like neither the Great Wheel nor the 4e cosmology, but will use the 4e mechanics.

Cheers, -- N


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## underthumb (Jan 19, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Although you acknowledge in your original post that's not the reason they did it.
> 
> The neckbeards who constitute much of the D&D population are just another few servings of 7-Eleven nachos from their final heart attack. Creating additional barriers to entry for new gamers is a bad idea, if you have any desire for there to _be_ future generations that play D&D.




With respect to "change for the sake of change," you're correct, that was sloppy argumentation on my part. While some of the changes to the cosmology do feel arbitrary, the bulk of my post was about questioning the worth of changes that have clearer justifications.

I understand your point about graybeards, but I don't think that Planescape and its associated complexity are (or ever were) a barrier to entry for newcomers. The planes have always been "a place you can go" rather than something you are forced to deal with upon learning the system.


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## underthumb (Jan 19, 2009)

Mokona said:


> "Maximize playability" = "Have more fun"
> 
> I know I'd like to have more fun than have less fun when I sit down to play with my wife and friends.




I think my point about maximizing playability could have used a bit more finesse. Basically, playability and accessibility almost always have tradeoffs, and I don't think they always have a positive correlation with "fun". They often involve decreasing complexity, which can make certain instantiations of rules and flavor more difficult to execute (see, for instance, all the frustration about healing surges).

As a different example, I consider GURPS Lite to be much more playable and accessible than normal GURPS. This does not mean, however, that GURPS Lite is necessarily the _ideal_ version of GURPS, or that GURPS as a system should strive to simply become GURPS Lite. There are lots of cool things the core system can do that GURPS Lite cannot.

I suspect we could go back and forth with examples for a long time. I think the only point I really want to make is that you can't increase playability while holding all other good things constant.


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## kenmarable (Jan 19, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> Now that I am probably done making every Planescape fan hate me...



Arghh!! Where's my SMITE button on this frigging keyboard?!!



TwinBahamut said:


> Instead, I got treated to the 3E Manual of the Planes, which carried over all of the traditional concepts of Planescape, without whatever details you think redeems the setting/cosmology. After all, they didn't just reprint all of the old stuff and convert it. They held to the ideas of Planescape, like you are asking them to do again, but that is not the same thing as keeping Planescape alive. Ultimately, the _only_ parts of Planescape that continue to persist past the 2E era are those "contrived one-line descriptors".



Ah, I understand now. The 3E Manual of the Planes vs. the 2E Planescape campaign setting. It's like comparing cafeteria hamburgers to a steak at a fine restaurant - technically they're both cooked cow. 

I can see the original poster's point, and felt exactly the same way - but I'm just recently managed to move past that and just accept that the 4e cosmology is not something I am interested in. Plus, as mentioned, it's easy to ignore and use the original Great Wheel and that's what I'm doing in my 4e Planescape campaign I'm starting up right now. It saves me money on having to buy the 4e Manual of the Planes, as well. Always a nice bonus. 

But, yes, a part of me does feel sad that future generations of gamers might not get to experience the awesomeness of Planescape, but at this point, it's probably up to us rather than WotC to keep it alive and pass it onto those who will follow. And if the GSL ever gets updated to something more palatable, I'm hoping to start publishing some 4e material and you can bet much of it will have a quirky planar bent.


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## ThirdWizard (Jan 19, 2009)

Planescape is the greatest campaign setting, bar none. It isn't just about the lay of the land. It's more than that. It's about interactions. The interactions between the PCs and planes, and the interactions between planes and planes. Belief becoming reality. It's about the darkness and moral grays. It's about a wider world than the PCs can ever begin to know, but how they can still have implications that are world shattering in their own right. It's made for vast campaigns that can be on a micro or macro level. My best games have been Planescape.

But, that doesn't mean I think 4e should have to use Planescape. I love the new cosmology. Everything doesn't need to be that which came before. Just because they aren't publishing "Planescape" things doesn't mean I won't be playing Planescape in the future, and that my Planescape games won't be benefited by all the new ideas in 4e.

This is what I don't understand: that if D&D changes from the Great Wheel somehow that means that WotC has committed some travesty against D&D canon. Nonsense. I want new ideas. I have no desire to see Planescape gutted and published in a hardcover based on the perspective of a Prime Material setting. That isn't what Planescape was about. All that can do is gut the setting like was done in the 3e MotP. The 4e MotP is a far, _far_, superior book by my reading mainly because of this.

Yes, Planescape took place on the Great Wheel. However _Planescape is not the Great Wheel._ Planescape is a feel, an icon, an entity. You don't just slap some planes in a circle, toss some elemental planes together, and say you're playing Planescape! The setting is in the details, not the overarching _layout_.

Perspective, people. Perspective.


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## weem (Jan 19, 2009)

ThirdWizard said:


> Planescape is the greatest campaign setting, bar none. It isn't just about the lay of the land. It's more than that. It's about interactions. The interactions between the PCs and planes, and the interactions between planes and planes. Belief becoming reality. It's about the darkness and moral grays. It's about a wider world than the PCs can ever begin to know, but how they can still have implications that are world shattering in their own right. It's made for vast campaigns that can be on a micro or macro level. My best games have been Planescape.
> 
> But, that doesn't mean I think 4e should have to use Planescape. I love the new cosmology. Everything doesn't need to be that which came before. Just because they aren't publishing "Planescape" things doesn't mean I won't be playing Planescape in the future, and that my Planescape games won't be benefited by all the new ideas in 4e.
> 
> ...




This. Exactly. Every bit of it. Thank you - saved me some typing


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## Fallen Seraph (Jan 19, 2009)

I would consider myself a long-time Planescape fan, it has been my favourite setting since I got into D&D about a decade ago. I personally extremely enjoy having settings, including Planescape go through radical change and alterations it is enjoyable to me to see where a setting can be taken when it goes off in a different direction.

It is like alternative history books, the joy in them is to see, "how would things work differently" (and hopefully if the author is good then a good story as well).

As for the "feel" of Planescape. I personally have more ability in 4e to bring across my own-personal Planescape then I could before, since well. A good portion of my Planescape involved Sigil and escapades into the planes from Sigil. I however disliked the Great Wheel and how strongly alignment played a role (especially in the Factions) as such these were involved in my Planescape, so personally the changes in 4e Planescape-stuff is GREAT! I am stating this cause this probably does colour my above comments, so figured should be said.


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## Mistwell (Jan 19, 2009)

I am liking the new planes mythology more than the old one.

Though, I feel like using "old" and "new" doesn't fit.  

The Feywild is an older, more traditional concept than most of the Wheel planes.  Titania and Oberon and King and Queen of the Fey Wild in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Shakespeare was drawing on even older myths.

The Shadowfell, though not as old a tradition, also has a lot of roots in modern fantasy.  The "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series, for example, gives very extensive detailing of a shadowfell realm.

Both of these worlds feel much more real and accessible in a game than "The Elemental Plane of Earth", or "Carceri" or "Limbo".  I think a lot of those Great Wheel planes were thrown in there as placeholders to fill in the gaps for alignment or symmetry, rather than to further fun or gameplay.

You can still do most of the planescape planes if you want.  Rather than being their own plane of existence, they can just be "continents" within one of the existing planes of Elemental Chaos and Astral Sea.  And really I think the difference between making them actual planes vs. places within those two planes is purely a technicality.


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## underthumb (Jan 19, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> You can still do most of the planescape planes if you want.




Since this seems to be a recurring theme, I'll address it again. This thread is not a lament over the impossibility of house-ruling one's way back to the great wheel. Nor is my ability to do so particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. (As an aside, I could just as easily say that you can recreate the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos as demiplanes within the old cosmology. That doesn't take you all the way there, and we can trade further conversion ideas, but it's not really pertinent.)



> Both of these worlds feel much more real and accessible in a game than "The Elemental Plane of Earth", or "Carceri" or "Limbo".




The _Black Fortress of Doom and Evil_ is less accessible than the _Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience_, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a worse place to adventure in. Many places in the great wheel existed for purposes that were not PC-centric, and this made visiting them exciting. You, as a player, weren't supposed to be there. You were walking "behind the curtain", taking a look at the building blocks of belief and reality. Overcoming those challenges meant something important, at least to me.


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## Mistwell (Jan 19, 2009)

Here was some of the explanation for why the change was made, from Dragon 370:

1) With the exception of the Plane of Air, the Elemental Planes were essentially unusable. They were lethal, and adventures took place in pockets within those realms anyway.  Places you cannot really go to are not very usable.

2) Infinite planes are not useful or necessary.  You never use the "infinite" portion of it anyway.  So why not reduce it to a usable amount.

3) The "Good" planes were boring.

4) Demons and Devils were too similar.


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## Mistwell (Jan 19, 2009)

underthumb said:


> Since this seems to be a recurring theme, I'll address it again. This thread is not a lament over the impossibility of house-ruling one's way back to the great wheel. Nor is my ability to do so particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. (As an aside, I could just as easily say that you can recreate the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos as demiplanes within the old cosmology. That doesn't take you all the way there, and we can trade further conversion ideas, but it's not really pertinent.)




Then let me put it another way.  The rules specifically mention the existence of most of the planes already, as parts of either the Elemental Chaos or Astral sea.  It's not even a house rule - it's right there in the text.



> The _Black Fortress of Doom and Evil_ is less accessible than the _Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience_, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a worse place to adventure in. Many places in the great wheel existed for purposes that were not PC-centric, and this made visiting them exciting. You, as a player, weren't supposed to be there. You were walking "behind the curtain", taking a look at the building blocks of belief and reality. Overcoming those challenges meant something important, at least to me.




I think for most people, it meant not going there.  Ever.  Because they were either lethal, boring, or in most cases both.

They are not "PC-Centric" now, just more accessible by the PCs.


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## kenmarable (Jan 19, 2009)

Mistwell said:


> Here was some of the explanation for why the change was made, from Dragon 370:
> 
> 1) With the exception of the Plane of Air, the Elemental Planes were essentially unusable. They were lethal, and adventures took place in pockets within those realms anyway.  Places you cannot really go to are not very usable.
> 
> ...



And that mindset at WotC is the biggest reason I stayed away from 4e until now (not the only reason, but certainly the biggest). In fact, if I wasn't interested in some potential publishing opportunities I'd still stay away from 4e largely because of that atittude. (Yeah, I'm a sell out that way. But I sleep at night knowing that the 4e mechanics are cool, I just can't stomach a lot of the attitude used to explain design decisions - but that has nothing to do with the rules themselves or my writing.) 

I can list entire books published by TSR (and WotC!) that counter every one of those points, but there's really no purpose. WotC had a very distinct vision of where they wanted to go with 4e and much of the old material didn't fit with that (which I'm cool with), but to better "sell" the changes to the masses they decided to berate, belittle, and (be)ignore decades of great content (which I wasn't cool with). 

As for #2, I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase".


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## ProfessorPain (Jan 19, 2009)

I had issues with the old planar model, just too much going on there in my opinion.  But I think they went a little too far with the whole Points of Light concept (which we are all free to deviate from, so it isn't a huge deal).  But points of light is too readily built with the game in mind, which for me, hurts the suspension of disbelief.  Also limits settings to being Dark Age campaigns.


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## Shemeska (Jan 19, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> As for #2, I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase".




Dude, that's so getting quoted in my .sig.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

Sammael said:


> And finally, WotC needs to leave Planescape *alone*.



Why should good stuff be walled off, just because the less useful bits have been left behind?



> For all the cries of hatred towards Planescape and the Great Wheel, it seems that WotC designers revert to plundering it for ideas _all the damn time_.



"All the cries of hatred?" I think criticizing something's problems and clunkier aspects (most of them inherited from prior material) does not constitute hatred.

Nor, again, does it mean that they no longer have the right to grab the cool stuff and repurpose it for the the new edition.



> If your target audience can't stand the Great Wheel



Strawman. That's not why they got rid of it.



> please lay your hands off the setting _I_ happen to like.



WotC busted into your house and burned up your copies of Planescape and blocked you from getting to RPGNow to download the PDFs?

Their hands are off your copy of the setting. Unless you buy the setting from them, it's not your setting, it's _theirs_. When playing in someone else's campaign setting, caveat emptor.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> I don't think that Planescape and its associated complexity are (or ever were) a barrier to entry for newcomers. The planes have always been "a place you can go" rather than something you are forced to deal with upon learning the system.



You haven't been reading ENWorld regularly for very long, then. Well before 4E was announced, many times someone would write about their campaign that involved the planes, the Planescape militia here would crop up to explain what five PDFs they needed to buy immediately to get it right and how their stated campaign planes did not properly mesh with lore.

For all the moaning about how the Forgotten Realms felt constraining by the end of 3E, it was Planescape fans that were most dogmatic about the proper way to run the setting.

The message from Planescape fans was pretty clear: Get it right, or stay on the Prime.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> I just can't stomach a lot of the attitude used to explain design decisions



You "can't stomach" that they explicitly made changes so that more cool stuff could happen in actual games -- instead of in discussions on message boards -- and that DMs would be more, rather than less, likely to do all the cool stuff many felt intimidated by in previous versions?


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

ProfessorPain said:


> But points of light is too readily built with the game in mind, which for me, hurts the suspension of disbelief.  Also limits settings to being Dark Age campaigns.




I wouldn't be so sure about that. (Example #2, but with a British accent.)


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## ProfessorPain (Jan 20, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> I wouldn't be so sure about that. (Example #2, but with a British accent.)





I don't know about wraith recon, but Amethyst breaks from the points of light concept anyways.


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## underthumb (Jan 20, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> You haven't been reading ENWorld regularly for very long, then. Well before 4E was announced, many times someone would write about their campaign that involved the planes, the Planescape militia here would crop up to explain what five PDFs they needed to buy immediately to get it right and how their stated campaign planes did not properly mesh with lore.
> 
> For all the moaning about how the Forgotten Realms felt constraining by the end of 3E, it was Planescape fans that were most dogmatic about the proper way to run the setting.
> 
> The message from Planescape fans was pretty clear: Get it right, or stay on the Prime.




Okay, but I remind you that your argument was about making things harder for newcomers to the hobby, who are a much larger class of individuals than those-who-post-about-their-campaigns-on-enworld-that-involve-the-planes-and-are-assailed-by-planescape-fanatics. It doesn't seem to me that instances of the latter would ever have a significant chance of thinning future generations of D&D players.

But hey, you may beg to differ.


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## Shemeska (Jan 20, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> You "can't stomach" that they explicitly made changes so that more cool stuff could happen in actual games -- instead of in discussions on message boards -- and that DMs would be more, rather than less, likely to do all the cool stuff many felt intimidated by in previous versions?




I think Ken's probably talking about a number of instances where some (not all) of WotC's 4e designers made some statements about the 1e/2e/3e planes that can only come across as either A) astoundingly arrogant and disrespectful to previous writers and previous editions, or B) equally astounding ignorance of non-obscure prior material, which is disturbing when you're paid professionally to write material for the game's next incarnation.


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## Turjan (Jan 20, 2009)

Hmm, I really liked the Planescape material. Such a unique atmosphere, and I also liked the art of the series. It was truly a time of wonderful stories.

Nevertheless, I never liked the Great Wheel cosmology. Too symmetric. Quite a few weird, but lastly uninteresting places. Other parts looked too lived in. 

When I looked at the 3.5 book "Beyond Countless Doorways", I noticed that most of the really interesting places didn't need any planes at all. They were not large and could basically be put anywhere.

I haven't read the 4e Manuals of the Planes yet (I don't play 4e), but the cosmology looks now much nearer to that of my homebrew. It's not quite there yet, but already pretty close. No wonder that I like the direction .


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> Okay, but I remind you that your argument was about making things harder for newcomers to the hobby, who are a much larger class of individuals than those-who-post-about-their-campaigns-on-enworld-that-involve-the-planes-and-are-assailed-by-planescape-fanatics.



It's an online world. Check out how many registered users ENWorld has and how many are online at one time (it always makes my head swim, at least). Given the low post counts of most of them, a LOT of them are looky-loos coming here to read or to research -- and I know I always research here when I'm new to something.

So, no, it's not that small of a number.



> It doesn't seem to me that instances of the latter would ever have a significant chance of thinning future generations of D&D players.



It certainly doesn't help.

In any case, the macro point is that the Planescape canon does not beckon invitingly to everyone, saying "pick and choose what you like, berk!" It's quite the opposite, much of the time, an attitude reinforced by many of the loyalists.


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## Mistwell (Jan 20, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> And that mindset at WotC is the biggest reason I stayed away from 4e until now (not the only reason, but certainly the biggest). In fact, if I wasn't interested in some potential publishing opportunities I'd still stay away from 4e largely because of that atittude. (Yeah, I'm a sell out that way. But I sleep at night knowing that the 4e mechanics are cool, I just can't stomach a lot of the attitude used to explain design decisions - but that has nothing to do with the rules themselves or my writing.)
> 
> I can list entire books published by TSR (and WotC!) that counter every one of those points, but there's really no purpose. WotC had a very distinct vision of where they wanted to go with 4e and much of the old material didn't fit with that (which I'm cool with), but to better "sell" the changes to the masses they decided to berate, belittle, and (be)ignore decades of great content (which I wasn't cool with).
> 
> As for #2, I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase".




I was paraphrasing, not quoting.  They called out some of those great prior books, and explained how even with them, they felt those four points were valid (and gave reasons why).  I wasn't going to quote the entire article!


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## small pumpkin man (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> 4e's new cosmology has reduced the great wheel to a simplified core and removed many of the particular rules associated with planar travel.* The stated reason for many of these changes was to increase the accessibility of the planes to  PCs and remove outerplanar realms that were rarely visited.
> 
> This bothers me on many levels, and not just because I think there should be one great wheel to rule them all. Mainly, it means that many of the ideas associated with the planes as I understood them will not be carried forward into future generations of D&D players. That is, they no longer form a set of core assumptions that can serve as the basis of conversations and shared adventures.
> 
> ...




You need to understand that Planescape as a "shared experience" hasn't existed for almost ten years. Nobody who grew up playing 3.5 is nostalgic about Planescape because there are no 3.5 Planescape products*.  There are 27 year old gamers who have being played D&D their _entire adult lives_, and have never been in a Planescape game and never read a Planescape book because _nothing's been released for *ten friggen years*_.

Yes, I know Manual of the planes uses the wheel, and yes I know there is non-Wotc stuff out there, but the first isn't Planescape, and the second is far to niche to "carry ideas forward to a new generation of gamers". I realise I'm being slightly emotional here, but people don't seem to "get" the fact that the horse left the barn some time ago, abandoning the wheel for 4e is just a sign of a larger sea change.

So I guess the question becomes, "just because 3.x didn't use Planescape, doesn't mean 4e can't." Well, the problem with that isn't that Planescape is it's own entire setting, with it's own feel and assumptions, and it's own complexities, many of which are inappropriate as a base setting, assumptions of by writers who left the company (well, left a _different_ company) two or three "generations" of writers ago**, and honestly, I don't think the current writers could replicate that, nor do I think they should try, considering what attempting to force the writers at the time to did for the planes in 3.x, so they made an attempt to write a cosmology which contained themes and places and characters that they thought were interesting and fun, and playable, and I don't really think you can blame them for that. 


*The exception being of course people who joined existing groups already using the setting who continued to use their 2e books for fluff.

**in the sense that the entire staff of DnD writers has generally changed two or three times since the late 90s.


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## Shemeska (Jan 20, 2009)

small pumpkin man said:


> You need to understand that Planescape as a "shared experience" hasn't existed for almost ten years. Nobody who grew up playing 3.5 is nostalgic about Planescape because there are no 3.5 Planescape products*.  There are 27 year old gamers who have being played D&D their _entire adult lives_, and have never been in a Planescape game and never read a Planescape book because _nothing's been released for *ten friggen years*_.




*chuckle* Well my entire group and I clearly don't figure into your gross generalization. I grew up playing 3.x, and I'm nostalgic about Planescape. And I didn't join any existing group using the setting. Thank you magic of the internet for introducing me to the material.



> I realise I'm being slightly emotional here, but people don't seem to "get" the fact that the horse left the barn some time ago, abandoning the wheel for 4e is just a sign of a larger sea change.




Given how thoroughly endebted to the 2e Planescape line every single planar supplement for 3.x that WotC released was, I don't see much abandonment of the Wheel. Some of those books were amazingly well produced like the Fiendish Codex books, and others fell flat on their own merits (Planar Handbook, BoED) but the influence is at a staggering level unless you're willingly ignoring it.



> and honestly, I don't think the current writers could replicate that, nor do I think they should try,




But I agree with you on this point. I'd rather the 4e writers do their own thing, making completely new material for 4e rather than attempting to force-fit concepts from Planescape into a cosmology and set of setting and design assumptions that in many cases are anathema to its core. I'd rather avoid seeing pastiche like a "tales of the limited staircase" or anything else.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> The _Black Fortress of Doom and Evil_ is less accessible than the _Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience_, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a worse place to adventure in. Many places in the great wheel existed for purposes that were not PC-centric, and this made visiting them exciting. You, as a player, weren't supposed to be there. You were walking "behind the curtain", taking a look at the building blocks of belief and reality. Overcoming those challenges meant something important, at least to me.



This paragraph reflects an attitude about the new planar cosmology that I just don't think is justifiable.

The new planes don't have giant welcome mats in front of every portal. They are not safe, and they are not even remotely "PC-centric". Sure, the new planes are engineered by the game designers to be adventuring grounds, but that is no different from the goal of the people who designed the old planes. The Great Wheel is a giant organized system of adventuring sites, and always has been. At the same time, from the perspective of the actual world and the characters who dwell there, the planes are just as unknown, mysterious, and dangerous as they always have been (or not been, I guess). In this sense there has not been any change at all between cosmologies.

The difference is that the challenges presented by the planes are no longer on/off switches. In order to explore the Plane of Water, you pretty much had to either grow gills or give up. If you have gills, then the basic challenge of the plane is gone, and all that is left is a fairly homogenous and relatively mundane place. If you don't have gills, then all you can do is either find the closest portal out or drown. There is no middle ground, and the middle ground is where things are interesting. As a comparison, think of a kingdom in which, unless you cast a certain spell, every citizen of the kingdom would be compelled to kill you on sight, but if you cast that spell then every citizen of the kingdom would treat you as if they were your best friend. It is certainly weird and novel at first, but ultimately it is not as interesting as a kingdom with complex political divisions and people with unknown motivations who may or may not try to kill you depending on complex factors. 

I mean, ignore your interpretations of various WotC comments and just look at the Elemental Chaos as it is presented. It contains every last challenge and cool place that the old Inner Planes did, except now you are forced to deal with these threats all at once, with the addition of a lot of demons. It is not the "Black Fortress of Minor Inconvenience", it is a place where you may find yourself slogging your way through a morass of slime and mud, when suddenly giant fireballs the size of houses start crashing down around you, and you look up to realize that the fireballs are carrying an army of Fire Archons desperately trying to flee from a giant, partially-frozen ocean that will smash right into the mudball you are on and drown you unless you do something quickly. It is not inherently "PC-centric" or "PC-friendly", it is an alien, unpredictable, and indescribably dangerous place, and unlike in older editions of the game you don't have a wizard who can just cast any spell you need in order to solve any problems as they occur. If you get hit by an ocean out of the blue, you won't have time for the Wizard to pull open his ritual book and take ten minutes to cast a water-breathing ritual. It is not safe by any stretch of the imagination.


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## freyar (Jan 20, 2009)

Reading this thread, I wonder if the people who dislike the Great Wheel also (generally speaking) dislike alignment as a fundamental component of the game world.

Speaking of alignment, it also seems that a lot of this discussion comes down to Law (tradition, respect for the old authors) vs Chaos (change, freedom to create something new).  Which is sort of ironic, given that the Law-Chaos axis was largely removed in the 4e rules.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 20, 2009)

freyar said:


> Reading this thread, I wonder if the people who dislike the Great Wheel also (generally speaking) dislike alignment as a fundamental component of the game world.



That may be partially true (I hate many aspects of the alignment system myself), but it really is more complicated than that. After all, to a certain extent the Law/Chaos axis resonates just as strongly in the new cosmology as in the Great Wheel, except now Chaos is embodied in the Elemental Chaos and Law is embodied in the Astral Sea, rather than leaving the elementals true neutral and putting all alignment in the Great Wheel.



> Speaking of alignment, it also seems that a lot of this discussion comes down to Law (tradition, respect for the old authors) vs Chaos (change, freedom to create something new).  Which is sort of ironic, given that the Law-Chaos axis was largely removed in the 4e rules.



Now this really is untrue. 

By all typical metrics, I am an _extremely_ "lawful" person myself, but I easily fall on the "like the new cosmology, doesn't bother with respect for old authors, likes freedom to create something new" spectrum. I guess this is one more example of why the Law/Chaos axis can be problematic in actual use, even if it is good in theory.


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 20, 2009)

> 1) With the exception of the Plane of Air, the Elemental Planes were essentially unusable. They were lethal, and adventures took place in pockets within those realms anyway. Places you cannot really go to are not very usable.
> 
> 2) Infinite planes are not useful or necessary. You never use the "infinite" portion of it anyway. So why not reduce it to a usable amount.
> 
> ...




I went more into this in the article's thread, but there is a deep level of wrongness to these assumptions.

That said, making demons and devils more distinct, making good planes more exciting, and concentrating on hospitable environs for adventures are all good things (the "infinite" thing is one of the poster children of pointless, nonsensical, grudge-match changes in 4e, like 3/4th lings) in my mind. 

I've got the hots for PS as bad as the next sycophant, but all of these changes are not only positive, they are entirely capable of being contained within a PS4e.

The 4e designers have gleefully kicked a lot of beloved icons in the nads, but the planes, I feel, are relatively intact.

Sigil is still around. Planehopping is more common than ever. Factions still exist and now reach to all planes. The biggest loss is the loss of the idea that belief = reality, but that's something that kind of comes with the factions to one degree or another, so anywhere the factions are, that idea is. 

What did we actually loose? I'm a vocal critic of 4e, and there's a lot of things that annoy me to the ends of the earth about the game, but PS4e is viable, fun, and interesting...dare I say better than ever? Quite possibly.


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## underthumb (Jan 20, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> This paragraph reflects an attitude about the new planar cosmology that I just don't think is justifiable.




Long(er) threads such as this one can quickly devolve into quote-wars and splitting hairs about this or that analogy. So in the interest of avoiding that, I just want to make a few points about your post.

The elemental planes didn't deprive anyone of adventure just by existing. Crazy cool things analgous to your examples were always available elsewhere in the great wheel, or even the inner planes if you were an enterprising DM. It's important to remember that, in Planescape, the inner planes were the building blocks of the multiverse. Visiting the inner planes was like visiting the world's most dangerous tool shed. Their explicit purpose was something more than awesome PC adventures, and that, to my mind, is okay.

My point about the fortress of minor inconvenience was not intended to describe how pleasant the elemental chaos is. I simply wanted to show that increasing accessibility can remove interesting challenges, such as those associated with the inner planes. Your argument that these challenges were not meaningful just doesn't ring true to me. They were meaningful in their connection to their in-game justification (see my above paragraph) and in their binary, unforgiving nature, an aspect that you don't enjoy. But that's how many serious dangers work--you can either swim in lava, or you can't.


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## Taureth (Jan 20, 2009)

I've been a big Planescape fan since the materials were first released and I do understand your feelings.   

That said, the best part of PS for me was always Sigil, less so the planes themselves.   And I -like- the new structure of the planes, in a number of ways, which is quite an admission -- because I don't care for 4e and have no immediate plans to play it (Of course, it also took me years to finally warm up to 3e, so, we shall see...) or buy the books.  Manual of the Planes may be an exception, though, because I am intrigued with what they've done.   

Bottomline:   So many gamers out there are familiar with the Great Wheel cosomology that it sure ain't gonna go away overnight.   If you still have a hankering to go a roamin' the Ring, I'm certain you will be able to find companions for a long time to come.   And don't rule out the younger generation of gamers, either.  Some of those are taught older RPG systems by siblings and parents and end up preferring them, just as there are some teens today who would rather listen to Led Zepplin than the Kings of Leon.


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## Toras (Jan 20, 2009)

As someone who has played in Shem's planescape games, there is a sense of wonder and history you really don't get from any of the current stuff.  Frankly I've yet to see a 4e book that I would ever just read or get excited about. (There weren't alot of 3e books either, but as I said, wrong way shamus)

The world builders are gone and those who remain can only scavenge from their bones. Which now that I think about it is a bitching idea for a campaign setting, but I digress.   

The Good planes were not boring, though I will admit that they never got the full fleshing out that Evil did.  Of course, this assumes that this is a party of less than moral people have never tried to raid the heavens or those slightly more moral have never tried to steal from the Gods.  I was working on some material for that, but College has a way of interfering.  

Infinite planes meant there was no end to the exploration, and in truth that was what Planescape was, an exploration.  You were as much an explorer and trailbraker as adventurer.   While some of the older settings might come with a similar history but there was a sense of wonder and the unknown that you just can find at your local kobold den.  

Planescape is like a high performance supercar with a manual transmission. Do it wrong, and you'll strip the thing down and leave yourself wishing for a more accessible and dependable honda.  But get it right, and it will sing for you and be like nothing else on the road.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> The elemental planes didn't deprive anyone of adventure just by existing. Crazy cool things analgous to your examples were always available elsewhere in the great wheel, or even the inner planes if you were an enterprising DM. It's important to remember that, in Planescape, the inner planes were the building blocks of the multiverse. Visiting the inner planes was like visiting the world's most dangerous tool shed. Their explicit purpose was something more than awesome PC adventures, and that, to my mind, is okay.



The inner planes may not have "deprived" anyone of adventure, but I don't really think they _provided_ much adventure, which means they were something of wasted space in a book and were certainly a waste of a good concept. After all, the "building blocks of the cosmos" concept is indeed a solid one. It has been around in myth and literature forever. However, in the vast majority of myth and literature, such a realm of the building blocks of the universe more closely resembles the Elemental Chaos than the Inner Planes.

Just as the Inner Planes were the building blocks of the Planescape setting, the Elemental Chaos contains the stuff of creation that was used to form the worlds of the 4E cosmology. It has the same element that you praise about the Inner Planes, but it also is a somewhat more accessible adventuring site. What is more, it has several advantages on top of mere accessibility, such as its more dynamic nature and greater visibility within the cosmology.



> My point about the fortress of minor inconvenience was not intended to describe how pleasant the elemental chaos is. I simply wanted to show that increasing accessibility can remove interesting challenges, such as those associated with the inner planes. Your argument that these challenges were not meaningful just doesn't ring true to me. They were meaningful in their connection to their in-game justification (see my above paragraph) and in their binary, unforgiving nature, an aspect that you don't enjoy. But that's how many serious dangers work--you can either swim in lava, or you can't.



I don't see the logical connection between increasing accessibility and removing interesting challenges. I will claim that the Elemental Chaos is both more accessible than the Inner Planes (using multiple definitions of the word), and at the same time contains every interesting challenge from the Inner Planes, plus several more interesting challenges that are not possible with the Inner Planes. If anything the unpredictability of the plane simply makes those kinds of challenges more pronounced and actually challenging. Finally, as I just wrote above, the Elemental Chaos has the same meaningful justification, except it has stronger mythological resonance backing that justification than the Inner Planes do.


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## avin (Jan 20, 2009)

Again, it's "more acessible", it's a dungeon playground, all colorful.

Elemental Chaos should be the place where all elemental planes collide, in my opinion, not this big dungeon.

Come on, I have the books, I have the DDI subscription and it's just "dungeon everywhere" so far.


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## kenmarable (Jan 20, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> You "can't stomach" that they explicitly made changes so that more cool stuff could happen in actual games -- instead of in discussions on message boards -- and that DMs would be more, rather than less, likely to do all the cool stuff many felt intimidated by in previous versions?



No, I believe I said "I just can't stomach a lot of the *attitude* used to *explain* design decisions." There's a difference. Obviously the new cosmology works for people, and I'm fine with that. 

I have tried very hard not to say the new cosmology sucks, or that the *decision* to change the cosmology is stupid, or that the Great Wheel is the One True Cosmology because I don't believe any of those. 

Does the new cosmology work *for me*? No, not in my current campaign. I really like the Great Wheel.

Was I annoyed by the "everything before 4e sucked" undercurrent to a lot of the marketing? Heck yeah, and I'm glad they've backed off of that.

Am I sad that decades of great D&D lore and material are being left behind with 4e? Sure. That doesn't mean WotC is wrong or stupid for doing so. I was also sad there wasn't a 6th season of Babylon 5 (another decade old cult favorite that is teh awesome), but anyone familiar with the show would know that a 6th season just wouldn't have worked as well. Now, I may disagree with how necessary some of the changes are in 4e, but I can certain stomach them and/or ignore them easily in my campaigns. 

My rant was just against the attitude defending the changes, not the changes themselves. The worst reaction I had to the changes themselves was scratching my head and letting out a "Bwuh???"


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## underthumb (Jan 20, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> The inner planes may not have "deprived" anyone of adventure, but I don't really think they _provided_ much adventure, which means they were something of wasted space in a book and were certainly a waste of a good concept.




I suggest that this is the crux of the disagreement. The mental model being applied is one of implicit zero-sumness. You write that the inner planes took up space that could have been used by something else, something more fun to adventure in. But, as many have been quick to point out, the total amount of content devoted to the inner planes was much smaller than that devoted the outer planes. Further, as I stated, this didn't constitute a net loss in adventures, because the rest of the planes existed.

We didn't need to sweep away the inner planes, or turn up the volume on their coolness. Some things in the multiverse can just "be", like the Lady of Pain.


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## hexgrid (Jan 20, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> I think Ken's probably talking about a number of instances where some (not all) of WotC's 4e designers made some statements about the 1e/2e/3e planes that can only come across as either A) astoundingly arrogant and disrespectful to previous writers and previous editions, or B) equally astounding ignorance of non-obscure prior material, which is disturbing when you're paid professionally to write material for the game's next incarnation.




Or C) willfully misconstrued by internet diehards looking for something to be upset about.



kenmarable said:


> As for #2, I can just see the 4e adventure anthology "Tale from the Limited Staircase".




Sorry, the Infinite Staircase has already been described in 4e as the Infinite Staircase


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## hexgrid (Jan 20, 2009)

Toras said:


> Planescape is like a high performance supercar with a manual transmission. Do it wrong, and you'll strip the thing down and leave yourself wishing for a more accessible and dependable honda.  But get it right, and it will sing for you and be like nothing else on the road.




That sounds like a good argument against using Planescape as a core cosmology. Something more more accessible and dependable is exactly what the 4e designers decided to go with.


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## ThirdWizard (Jan 20, 2009)

avin said:


> Again, it's "more acessible", it's a dungeon playground, all colorful.
> 
> Elemental Chaos should be the place where all elemental planes collide, in my opinion, not this big dungeon.
> 
> Come on, I have the books, I have the DDI subscription and it's just "dungeon everywhere" so far.




I have no idea what you're talking about, unless Sigil in 2e PS is a "dungeon" because you can go there. Just because you can go there doesn't make something a "dungeon." I have no clue how people can make this assertion with a straight face.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> My point about the fortress of minor inconvenience was not intended to describe how pleasant the elemental chaos is. I simply wanted to show that increasing accessibility can remove interesting challenges, such as those associated with the inner planes. Your argument that these challenges were not meaningful just doesn't ring true to me. They were meaningful in their connection to their in-game justification (see my above paragraph) and in their binary, unforgiving nature, an aspect that you don't enjoy. But that's how many serious dangers work--you can either swim in lava, or you can't.




Basically, spells like _Resist Fire_ or the MotP _Avoid Planar Effects_ spell take the meaningfulness out of a challenge. It's a binary thing, and the solution is not problem-solving but reading your spellbook. Maybe this is indeed a thing people just won't agree, but I think if the solution to a problem is "find the right spell", it is a very disappointing challenge to me. The solution needs to be more intricate. It's not just finding the right tool(s), but to use it effectively. 
Take the "pool of lava" problem. You need to cross it. You don't have a fly spell or a Resist Fire spell. But the Barbarian owns a Ring of Fire Immunity (let's pretend it exists and isn't broken  ). So the Barbarian could cover it, but he can't just slap his comrades on his back. So maybe you use a portable hole (3E style) to carry his allies with him. Or the Wizard uses Telekinesis or Mage Hand to move the gauntlets back from the Barbarian to the rest of the group. 
If the Barbarian didn't have the gauntlets, maybe they would have needed to secure help, or find a different path to their goal. 
The solution is not just as obvious "use the spell designed for my problem" but "combine tools to find a solution to my problems."


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## Mallus (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> That is, they no longer form a set of core assumptions that can serve as the basis of conversations and shared adventures.



I think the real core assumptions about D&D are setting-independent (then again, I'm also an inveterate homebrewer who's never used the Great Wheel as a backdrop cosmology).



> In its totality, Planescape was beautiful, dangerous and absurd.



These are wonderful qualities in a D&D setting. And Sigil rocked!



> Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be  either redacted or cut completely?



As others have noted, it's overly complicated (for a baseline), even to people who are genre-conversant. That make it harder for individual groups to mod/customize, and I strongly feel that's the wrong way to go.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> I suggest that this is the crux of the disagreement. The mental model being applied is one of implicit zero-sumness. You write that the inner planes took up space that could have been used by something else, something more fun to adventure in. But, as many have been quick to point out, the total amount of content devoted to the inner planes was much smaller than that devoted the outer planes. Further, as I stated, this didn't constitute a net loss in adventures, because the rest of the planes existed.



They took the space of the Elemental Chaos. Not by page count, but merely by existing they made the concept of the Elemental Chaos - and it being an important part of the cosmology and not just a fringe region - difficult or even impossible to exist.


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## Kobold Avenger (Jan 20, 2009)

I only use what I like:

-For example, I think the new alignment system really really sucks, they either should have left the nine alignments it since it doesn't affect game mechanics much anymore or completely dropped it.  

-I mostly stick with the Great Wheel, except in places where there's something else that's neat that the Great Wheel doesn't cover such as Feywild or Shadowfell, which I simply drop into the Great Wheel.  And my explanation for the planes as defined in the Great Wheel is that they were what a bunch of Philosophers used to map a bunch of unknowable planes.

-My vision of Sigil and what's there varies quite a lot from any of the published versions of it.  And I have a very good understanding of all of it's source material.  This ranges from things such as demographics (I put millions in population) to the existences of Feywild and Shadowfell reflections that exist as part of Sigil.


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## glass (Jan 20, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> You haven't been reading ENWorld regularly for very long, then. Well before 4E was announced, many times someone would write about their campaign that involved the planes, the Planescape militia here would crop up to explain what five PDFs they needed to buy immediately to get it right and how their stated campaign planes did not properly mesh with lore.



I've been on ENWorld for a fair while and I have never encountered the "Planescape militia". And I talked about my homebrew cosmology plenty back in the day.


glass.


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## ThirdWizard (Jan 20, 2009)

glass said:


> I've been on ENWorld for a fair while and I have never encountered the "Planescape militia". And I talked about my homebrew cosmology plenty back in the day.




In fact, I've seen lots of people take Planescape ideas in totally new directions and been praised for it many times!


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

glass said:


> I've been on ENWorld for a fair while and I have never encountered the "Planescape militia". And I talked about my homebrew cosmology plenty back in the day.



Read some more threads talking about Planescape or core cosmology campaigns. No one throws the wrongbadfun vibe around more strongly than certain members of the First Church of Sigil.


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## Stogoe (Jan 20, 2009)

The mere existence of Shemeska the Marauder gives the lie to your claims, glass and Third Wizard.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

In any case, and in summation, WotC did not change the planes as change for their own sake. Everyone knows their reason -- make the planes more playable at all levels -- even if they don't agree with it.

Some folks feel proprietary about what's come before, as people do about stuff that they care a lot about, but WotC has said at least as early as their preview books that they intend to take a greatest hits approach to D&D lore and incorporate it into 4E (which I guess is the reason for the tacked-on ending to Expedition to Undermountain, come to think of it). They are creating new stuff, even if none of it has particularly set the world on fire yet. (I don't remember anyone being particularly excited about Keep on the Borderlands when it first appeared, either; people mostly loved it in retrospect.)

There are obviously plenty of people who liked the old cosmology and didn't find it problematic at all. There are also plenty of people glad to have something new. *Neither group is wrong: These are opinions we're talking about.* (And most people on all sides are very nice about it, if passionate.)

Personally, I'm glad this is all happening in the Internet era, rather than before, because that means nothing really dies. If Mystara is going strong, and there are competing Al-Qadim fan hubs and Dark Sun keeps soldiering on, then Planescape is unlikely to vanish either, especially with official PDFs out there.

And, for the record, back in the 2E era, I felt my skin crawl with all the "Return to" modules "ruining" the 1E and BD&D classics. Now it turns out that people adore several of them. It's entirely possible that the same process in 4E will likewise turn up a few new gems. I think planejamming seems like a potential gem, for instance.


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## Drkfathr1 (Jan 20, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> I think planejamming seems like a potential gem, for instance.




I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.


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## Dausuul (Jan 20, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.




I like the idea of ships that ply the Astral Sea and the Elemental Tempest, perhaps even a campaign setting built around that idea.

However, if they actually call it "planejamming," I too will be choking down bile.


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## kenmarable (Jan 20, 2009)

Stogoe said:


> The mere existence of Shemeska the Marauder gives the lie to your claims, glass and Third Wizard.



I know what you mean - that guy is a jerk! Not to mention I'm surprised he wasn't permanently banned years ago. He's so indoctrinated by this Great Wheel garbage I doubt he could even consider someone using another cosmology. 

(Hey, Todd/Shemeska - thanks for the sig quote! I'm honored!)

Maybe I've just been blind, but I recall many threads of "I want to run some planar adventures, what do I need?" being answered with essential pdfs to buy and Great Wheel explanations. But I'd be surprised to see someone talking about their homebrew cosmology being told it is wrongbadfun and that they must buy those pdfs and use the Great Wheel or else they are doing it wrong. But I did leave EN World for a few months when the edition wars made the signal to noise ratio not worth it, so maybe they all happened during that time? 



Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> You haven't been reading ENWorld regularly for very long, then. Well before 4E was announced, many times someone would write about their campaign that involved the planes, the Planescape militia here would crop up to explain what five PDFs they needed to buy immediately to get it right and how their stated campaign planes did not properly mesh with lore.
> 
> For all the moaning about how the Forgotten Realms felt constraining by the end of 3E, it was Planescape fans that were most dogmatic about the proper way to run the setting.
> 
> The message from Planescape fans was pretty clear: Get it right, or stay on the Prime.



Normally, if someone is going to call an entire group of fans intolerant, I'd demand some links. But whatever. This thread is taking a nose dive fast if we are dropping into arguing over which group of fans are cool and which are jerks. I bet you could pick any random topic and I can google up some rude fans of it.

And underthumb, I feel your pain, but I've found it healthiest to let it go and move on. When 4e first came out I typed many a rant at the changes I disagreed with (might have even posted one or two, but I tried not to). But 4e is what it is, and most importantly your game can be whatever the Lawful Evil Baatezu-laden Nine Hells (right next door to Acheron and Gehenna and across the Wheel from decidedly non-boring Arborea*) you want it to be! You want to support the Great Wheel or any cosmology that you feel is more complex/richer/whatever - then post story hours and fan material. It's one thing to say what you think WotC did wrong, and another to do your part to support what you think needs supporting!
(Sorry, trying not to put on the motivational speaker hat. Not to delve into politics, but I did watch some oath being taken by someone or other today and then blasted Beethoven's 9th - "Ode to Joy", so I'm in that kinda mood. I beg your pardons.) 

* That reminds me - someone (Gary Ray?) had a whole site dedicated to their Arborea campaign at Tales of the Bariaur. I'll have to dig around at archive.org and see if it still exists somewhere. That had some fascinating ideas. _*Update:* Found it!_


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## underthumb (Jan 20, 2009)

There have been many considered and interesting comments that I have not replied to: Kamikaze Midget, kenmarable, Taureth, and others.

I must admit that it's a bit disheartening that nearly everyone seems to be less enthusiastic about the wholesale resurrection of Planescape and its associated cosmology, but I suppose that is the way of things.

And I do continue to GM in Planescape, though I do so with GURPS rules these days. (This does not mean, however, that I would not purchase 4e books that were about Planescape as I knew it). Also, I would post story hours, but my time for sharing the details of my campaign necessarily cuts in to my time for creating them.


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## ThirdWizard (Jan 20, 2009)

Stogoe said:


> The mere existence of Shemeska the Marauder gives the lie to your claims, glass and Third Wizard.




I'm not sure what you mean. Can you point out any examples of someone wanting to change the Planescape canon in their game and being shouted down? I've posted to that effect and have never had that experience. For example, once I made a post about how I made the efreet Chaotic Evil and tied them to the Wind Dukes' war of Law vs. Chaos (which IMC is the origin of the Blood War), and if I'm not going to get shouted at for that, I don't know what I'll get shouted at for!


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## avin (Jan 20, 2009)

Yeah... moving from AD&D to 3E was smoother and edition war was on a better tone (I rage wars against Thaco hehe)... now, even DMing 4E and enjoying it a lot I am surprised seeing that some older stuff is considered *wrong* instead of *different*...

I don't think Elemental Chaos is wrong, I just dislike the way thing at 4E are made to everywhere be a playable place (the *dungeon* hyperbole)... now, if you play / DM 4E and doesn't think it's "dungeon everywhere", well, we are having a different experience while reading.

No problem at all.


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## ThirdWizard (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> I must admit that it's a bit disheartening that nearly everyone seems to be less enthusiastic about the wholesale resurrection of Planescape and its associated cosmology, but I suppose that is the way of things.




A Planescape campaign setting would be great! A watered down Planescape consisting of only the bare trappings and Great Wheel cosmology with a focus on the Prime Material Plane as the focal point of the game? Not so much. You wouldn't be getting Planescape. And, really, without the Planescape setting, what is the Great Wheel cosmology? Not much, by my reckoning. But, perhaps others disagree.


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## malraux (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> There have been many considered and interesting comments that I have not replied to: Kamikaze Midget, kenmarable, Taureth, and others.
> 
> I must admit that it's a bit disheartening that nearly everyone seems to be less enthusiastic about the wholesale resurrection of Planescape and its associated cosmology, but I suppose that is the way of things.




Is it in need of resurrection?  I can buy all the published books on it in a matter of minutes of any of the PDF sites.  There's a health online fan community.  I can't think of any major difficulties that would result from saying that in your campaign the default cosmology is the great wheel.  In what way is PS in need of a resurrection?


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## kenmarable (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> There have been many considered and interesting comments that I have not replied to: Kamikaze Midget, kenmarable, Taureth, and others.
> 
> I must admit that it's a bit disheartening that nearly everyone seems to be less enthusiastic about the wholesale resurrection of Planescape and its associated cosmology, but I suppose that is the way of things.
> 
> And I do continue to GM in Planescape, though I do so with GURPS rules these days. (This does not mean, however, that I would not purchase 4e books that were about Planescape as I knew it). Also, I would post story hours, but my time for sharing the details of my campaign necessarily cuts in to my time for creating them.



That's understandable. I'm just getting my 4e Planescape campaign rolling now. I'm hoping to post module conversions as I do them (I'm going to be largely just running the old 2e Planescape modules starting with part 1 of Great Modron March and then Eternal Boundary), but if push comes to shove, you bet I'll focus on my group before posts.

I am definitely enthusiastic about Planescape and its cosmology, but I also know it ain't coming from WotC any time soon. Although with it typically being right up with Dark Sun as one of the top campaign settings fans want to have brought back (according to many an EN World poll for whatever value you put in those), I wouldn't be shocked if it did come back officially sometime during 4e considering their "one campaign setting a year" model. I'm not expecting it to, but I wouldn't be shocked. And all things considered, I think I would prefer Planescape as a full blown campaign setting than as the background in the Manual of Planes. 

If I had to wager on what the campaign settings would be from WotC, I'd say the two years after Eberron would be Dark Sun and a new setting (not sure which order) with the new setting probably being from the two finalists in the setting search that gave us Eberron (remember WotC did buy the rights to all 3 but never revealed anything about the other two). Dark Sun has always ranked very high on popularity polls, around that time they should be covering psionics in the PHB 3 (or 4), and that setting really feels like a great fit with 4e.

Then my magic 8 crystal ball gets fuzzy, but I'd probably put Ravenloft higher on WotC's re-do list than Planescape since it seems more workable in the 3 book model. And I would think WotC would mix in another brand new campaign setting or two in there if for no other business reason than to build more IP.

But considering how tieflings are a core race in the PHB, aasimar (sorry, devas) will be a core race in PHB 2, the emphasis that genasi have been getting, and having a Manual of the Planes out within the first few months of the new edition, it appears the planes are getting more loving from 4e than they did from 3.x even if it is less Planescape-canonical. So you never know.

If they did a 4e Planescape, and they did a good job with it, I would certainly buy it. (I can accept sensible changes to the setting if they make it better - heck I created a Modron civil war in Dragon mag.) If they published a 4e Planescape that disregarded too much and changed too much for the worse (in my opinion since there's no way to quantify that), yeah I'd probably let loose a rant or three. But as for the 4e Manual of the Planes and current cosmology, I'll just shrug, not bother buying it, and use my 2e books for my campaign.


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## kenmarable (Jan 20, 2009)

ThirdWizard said:


> I'm not sure what you mean. Can you point out any examples of someone wanting to change the Planescape canon in their game and being shouted down? I've posted to that effect and have never had that experience. For example, once I made a post about how I made the efreet Chaotic Evil and tied them to the Wind Dukes' war of Law vs. Chaos (which IMC is the origin of the Blood War), and if I'm not going to get shouted at for that, I don't know what I'll get shouted at for!



WHAT?!!

That is SO wrong, I don't even know where to begin. The genies are totally Inner Planar critters, and the law vs. chaos battle is completely an Outer Planar issue. EVERYONE knows that the Outer Planes are created out of belief matter, and the Inner Planes are from physical matter. Law vs. Chaos has no bearing on the building blocks of physical reality. If you want to know the real origin of the Blood War, you better buy this PDF, read it, and then write "Never trust a yugoloth, but at least the fiends can't teleport without error, right?" 100 times on the chalkboard. 

Go!

(Seriously however, that is a good idea you have there. I always meant to read up more on the ancient Wind Dukes. I'm looking for ways to incorporate more Inner planar adventures into my campaign since there weren't many modules produced for them.)


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 20, 2009)

Dausuul said:


> I like the idea of ships that ply the Astral Sea and the Elemental Tempest, perhaps even a campaign setting built around that idea.
> 
> However, if they actually call it "planejamming," I too will be choking down bile.



Planejamming: The new "Gish." 

Better might be riffing off "Kubla Khan," although Gygax got there first, and it's more Underdark than it is Astral Sea:



			
				Samuel Taylor Coleridge said:
			
		

> In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
> A stately pleasure-dome decree :
> *Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
> Through caverns measureless to man
> ...




And riffing off "Sea of Stars" gets into Forgotten Realms territory.

Surely "Planesailing" isn't taken, though ...


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## Lord Zardoz (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be  either redacted or cut completely? Was trashing most of the multiverse (as it was constituted) worth it to "maximize playability"? Maybe I've become a grognard in that I don't think significant chunks of lore should be dropped because they are measurably less convenient during play, especially when they form the backdrop of established creature ecologies (see, for example, baatezu and tanar'ri tactics described in Hellbound: The Blood War).
> 
> As a side note, _why the hell_ is the succubus suddenly a baatezu?




The Manual of the planes does address some of these questions.  They changed the motive for the Blood War, but it still exists.  In 4th Edition, the Blood War was the result of the Devils trying to seize control of the Abyss, and continues because Asmodeus stole a part of the 'core' of the Abyss and made it the 'Ruby Rod'.  

As for the broader question of why was so much cut, the simple answer is that much of the original description for the planes caused useless duplication or useless symmetry.  Elemental planes could essentially not be traveled in unless you had pockets of survivable space.  Some of the para and quasi elemental planes were useful, others were not.

As for why the Succubus is suddenly a baatezu, that was answered some time ago in the run up to 4th edition.  Demons and Devils were too interchangeable for what they did.  The off hand answer for which does what is now simpler.  If you want a demonic chess master who has plans that take centuries to come about, who uses guile and corruption, you want a Devil.  If you want a super natural force of destruction to appear and wreck up the place, sue a Demon.

The Succubus / Erinyes served the same role, so why waste the page space when one monster can fulfill the role just as well?  The modeus operendi of both was to seduce and corrupt, so that made it a Devil.  Succubus is the classic name for that kind of monster, so the Erinyes killed the Succubus, and took its stuff, and its name, leaving the demon version lying in a gutter bleeding to death.

END COMMUNICATION


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## lin_fusan (Jan 20, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> * That reminds me - someone (Gary Ray?) had a whole site dedicated to their Arborea campaign at Tales of the Bariaur. I'll have to dig around at archive.org and see if it still exists somewhere. That had some fascinating ideas. _*Update:* Found it!_




Hey! I played in that campaign! I thought it was a lot of fun until our group roster became unstable, and I had decided that my Mercykiller wouldn't be able to adventure due to belief differences.

My two coppers is that I am neutral about the new cosmology (which is good because I can mod, keep, or throw out whatever I like or don't like). Planescape to me is a setting with all of its own thematic assumptions, whereas cosmology is cosmology.

In all honesty, I've decided that a Planescape campaign might be better utilized with a different ruleset to reflect its design philosophy. For example, I've wanted to try and port over _Dogs in the Vineyard's_ mechanics in a Planescape setting.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 20, 2009)

underthumb said:


> I suggest that this is the crux of the disagreement. The mental model being applied is one of implicit zero-sumness. You write that the inner planes took up space that could have been used by something else, something more fun to adventure in. But, as many have been quick to point out, the total amount of content devoted to the inner planes was much smaller than that devoted the outer planes. Further, as I stated, this didn't constitute a net loss in adventures, because the rest of the planes existed.



Someone beat me to saying this, but I may as well say it myself.

There is more than just "page space" (which is limited) and "adventure space" (which is indeed unlimited no matter what you do, since you can always adventure _somewhere else_ if one place is bad), since there is also "conceptual space". This is a truly zero-sum realm, since creating too many things that fill the same conceptual space leads to redundancy, contradiction, and a general weakening of concept. The Elemental Chaos  and the Inner Planes take up the same conceptual space, and are incompatible with each other. At the same time, one is superior to the other for a number of reasons (that you may or may not agree with, but are clear to me and many other people).

Also, while "adventure space" may indeed be infinite, the relative value of how much adventure you can get out of any given page count does have its own value, and in that case the Inner Planes are a total waste. Even if they have a small page count, that page-count is still vastly in excess of the usefulness of those planes.

As a note, I can use very similar arguments to describe why I don't a great many of the old Outer Planes. For example, most of the Outer Planes occupy the same conceptual space, even given the alignment wheel. Theoretically, the Great Wheel would work at its best with just eight or nine planes (one for each alignment), and could properly work just fine with as few as four (either one each for law, good, chaos, and evil, or one each for LG, LE, CG, and CE). If the Blood War is central to the Great Wheel, and the vast majority of evil outsiders are from either the Nine Hells or the Abyss, then why do the many other evil planes like Gehenna and Pandemonium even exist? If Celestia is the Lawful Good plane, and Mechanus is the Lawful plane, why do we need to have Bytopia sandwiched between them?



> We didn't need to sweep away the inner planes, or turn up the volume on their coolness. Some things in the multiverse can just "be", like the Lady of Pain.



Actually, the Lady of Pain is one of those things that can severely alter a cosmology and the core assumptions of the game simply by existing. There is no way that she can just "be". I don't really want to get into the details, but the Lady of Pain is one of those elements of the Great Wheel and Planescape that leads to the "gods are just cosmic squatters" concept, in which the fundamental structure of the cosmos is presented as being more permanent and fundamental than the actual gods, who are often depicted as impotent and temporary with the greater cosmology and are certainly unable to effect real change upon the cosmology. This is one of my harshest criticisms and dislikes for the Great Wheel/Planescape cosmology, so I certainly won't let you say that you can just let it "be".

Nothing exists in a vacuum, so everything that exists has implications. Often, these implications are more important the the thing itself. This is particularly true for settings and cosmologies, in my opinion.


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## Mokona (Jan 21, 2009)

The Great Wheel existed in my 1st edition *Advanced Dungeons & Dragons* _Dungeon Master's Guide_.

_Planescape_ didn't enter the scene until 1994!  That's almost two decades later.

I think it's important to note that _Planescape_ was written to take the Great Weel and finally make it interesting/work.  Obviously _Planescape_ succeeded to some extent at working around or with many of the problems of the Great Wheel.  The Great Wheel led to the need for _Planescape_.  If _Planescape_ had come first (an admittedly odd thought) there is no reason that the Astral Sea & Elemental Chaos couldn't have been the cosmology created to support _Planescape_.  As far as I can tell there isn't any conflict between different layouts of the planar structure and the core concepts of _Planescape_.


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## underthumb (Jan 21, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> Nothing exists in a vacuum, so everything that exists has implications




This seems to be the point of your post, and I never denied as much. You took my brief statement about letting something "be" and spun it out into an argument about whether something can exist in some conceptual space without affecting others things in that conceptual space, which is an incredibly detailed elaboration of a relatively brief statement. It was so elaborate, in fact, that I'm not quite sure why you didn't first seek clarification as to my meaning.

The way I see it, aspects of a cosmology can exist as justifications, building blocks, and leverage points for other aspects of the same cosmology, especially if your goal is to create a certain _feel_. The Lady of Pain, for instance, has little in the way of in-game influences, as her interactions with the PCs are supposed to be shallow. But her _mere existence_, as you point out, creates interesting effects. Similarly, the mere existence of the inner planes creates interesting effects. Letting something "be" is not tantamount to denying those effects, it is rather the willingness to embrace them.

Obviously, we differ as to what the full extent of all of these effects really are.

Separately, you note:



> while "adventure space" may indeed be infinite, the relative value of how much adventure you can get out of any given page count does have its own value, and in that case the Inner Planes are a total waste. Even if they have a small page count, that page-count is still vastly in excess of the usefulness of those planes.




At some level, I think everyone agrees that these books are about generating cool places to adventure. The question is what tolerance you have for generating a "feel" or generating interesting and cool backgrounds that have no immediate utility. My tolerance is greater than yours, and my taste is clearly different as well.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 21, 2009)

underthumb said:


> This seems to be the point of your post, and I never denied as much. You took my brief statement about letting something "be" and spun it out into an argument about whether something can exist in some conceptual space without affecting others things in that conceptual space, which is an incredibly detailed elaboration of a relatively brief statement. It was so elaborate, in fact, that I'm not quite sure why you didn't first seek clarification as to my meaning.



Err, no. I didn't do that at all.

I had two points in that post. The first was a description of "conceptual space" meant to explain why it is impossible (or at least unsatisfying) to have both the Inner Planes and the Elemental Chaos in the same cosmology. I then expanded my use of the idea to explain one of my criticisms of the Great Wheel.

Only my second point was related to your offhand comment about letting something "be", and that point had nothing to do with "conceptual space".

I am fairly sure I understood your meaning quite well, really.



> The way I see it, aspects of a cosmology can exist as justifications, building blocks, and leverage points for other aspects of the same cosmology, especially if your goal is to create a certain _feel_. The Lady of Pain, for instance, has little in the way of in-game influences, as her interactions with the PCs are supposed to be shallow. But her _mere existence_, as you point out, creates interesting effects. Similarly, the mere existence of the inner planes creates interesting effects. Letting something "be" is not tantamount to denying those effects, it is rather the willingness to embrace them.
> 
> Obviously, we differ as to what the full extent of all of these effects really are.



You misunderstood me. I was not denying that the Inner Planes and the Lady of Pain have effects upon the feel of a cosmology. My statements depended upon that assumption, actually. Rather, I was trying to make the claim that the Elemental Chaos has the exact same effect as the Inner Planes in this regard (and thus nothing is lost in the conversion, though there is a different feel, I admit), and I was claiming that I _don't like_ the quite noticeable effect the Lady of Pain has upon the D&D cosmology. The Lady of Pain creates a certain "feel", but it is one I totally loathe (though I suppose it would be hard for me to persuade you about this part). I have no problem with something existing purely for the sake of flavor as long as it doesn't occupy the same conceptual space or page count of something that has both flavor and function, but I do have a problem with things that create a flavor I simply don't like.



> At some level, I think everyone agrees that these books are about generating cool places to adventure. The question is what tolerance you have for generating a "feel" or generating interesting and cool backgrounds that have no immediate utility. My tolerance is greater than yours, and my taste is clearly different as well.



I think the difference really is more of a matter of taste than tolerance for things without utility. At the same time, I don't think that improving utility limits flavor, like you seem to. If something has flavor, there is no reason it can't also have utility, and vice-versa. Overall, there seems to be an inherent assumption in many of your posts and arguments that "Inner Planes = flavor but low utility, while Elemental Chaos = utility but low flavor", that I just don't agree with. For me, the Elemental Chaos has just as much flavor as the Inner Planes (though more to my taste), and also more utility.


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## resistor (Jan 21, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> Instead, I got treated to the 3E Manual of the Planes, which carried over all of the traditional concepts of Planescape, without whatever details you think redeems the setting/cosmology. After all, they didn't just reprint all of the old stuff and convert it. They held to the ideas of Planescape, like you are asking them to do again, but that is not the same thing as keeping Planescape alive. Ultimately, the _only_ parts of Planescape that continue to persist past the 2E era are those "contrived one-line descriptors".




For what it's worth, it was leafing through the 3e Manual of the Planes in a Borders that convinced me to try this D&D thing.  It was that awesomely cool.  It wasn't until much, much later that I read a real Planescape book and discovered how much EVEN AWESOMER they are.

Just goes to show how much tastes can differ.


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## avin (Jan 21, 2009)

Lord Zardoz said:


> As for why the Succubus is suddenly a baatezu, that was answered some time ago in the run up to 4th edition.  Demons and Devils were too interchangeable for what they did.  The off hand answer for which does what is now simpler.  If you want a demonic chess master who has plans that take centuries to come about, who uses guile and corruption, you want a Devil.  If you want a super natural force of destruction to appear and wreck up the place, sue a Demon.
> 
> The Succubus / Erinyes served the same role, so why waste the page space when one monster can fulfill the role just as well?  The modeus operendi of both was to seduce and corrupt, so that made it a Devil.  Succubus is the classic name for that kind of monster, so the Erinyes killed the Succubus, and took its stuff, and its name, leaving the demon version lying in a gutter bleeding to death.




Not 100% on topic but I particularly dislike motivations that fit a whole race. 

See, we humans don't think the same way, disagree and act in different manners all the time.

Demons and Devils, in my games, are more *human* than in D&D, no matter what edition.

They are evil, check, but that doesn't mean they have a racial purpose, this is just silly in my opinion... they fight the blood war the same way a soldier is sent to a battle he doesn't understand and sometimes doesn't even want to fight


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## glass (Jan 22, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> Read some more threads talking about Planescape or core cosmology campaigns. No one throws the wrongbadfun vibe around more strongly than certain members of the First Church of Sigil.



Care to provide some links to back up your allegations?

Actually, don't bother. Even if you can cite a few instances, the fact that I have never seen it despite 6 years and over 3000 posts here puts a lie to the assertion that it is "every time".


glass.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 22, 2009)

glass said:


> Actually, don't bother. Even if you can cite a few instances, the fact that I have never seen it despite 6 years and over 3000 posts here puts a lie to the assertion that it is "every time".



Please do not accuse me of lying, especially when I never said the phrase you're accusing me of using in my alleged lie. (If nothing else, it makes it hard to argue your bonafides when it comes to six years of reading comprehension.)

In a thread where I've repeatedly defended Planescape fans' rights to keep on with their preferred version of the planes -- and recommended it, for fans who don't like the 4E cosmology -- and said that most fans are perfectly cool about people going their own way, I wrote the following in response to Underthumb, who said that he didn't believe the old structure was a big issue for anyone.


			
				Me said:
			
		

> Well before 4E was announced, many times someone would write about their campaign that involved the planes, the Planescape militia here would crop up to explain what five PDFs they needed to buy immediately to get it right and how their stated campaign planes did not properly mesh with lore.



"Many." Not "every." And the point there was that there was a lot of material to new DMs to get their arms around. Wikipedia lists 30 2E Planescape products, not including stuff that doesn't appear like it was ever released, novels, the trading cards and the videogame. (I've never seen any Planescape fans cite any of that as canon, which certainly differentiates them from many Forgotten Realms fans.)

I don't think it's terribly controversial to suggest that some people might be intimidated by that, especially when they're just putting a cautious toe into Oceanus for the first time.

Now, when it comes to my assertion that there are certain Planescape fans who throw out the "wrongbadfun" vibe, if you haven't seen it, great. But I've certainly seen it and felt it. The Fiendish Codex discussion threads at times got incredibly shrill, with the idea that deviation from even the more obscure bits of Planescape canon was a slap in the face of fandom by WotC.


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## avin (Jan 22, 2009)

_(to be read in a light heart mode)_

Great, now there's:

1. Edition Wars
2. Planar Wars


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## Taureth (Jan 23, 2009)

Nobody loves the internet more than me.  

Yet, sometimes I think we gamers would be better off not -quite- so plugged in to each other!   

Pre-WWW, people largely did what they wanted to in their little groups and didn't worry a copper piece about how some other group in Kalamazoo was doing it.    I think searching for solidarity on these matters is itself erroneous.  These are matters of opinion, taste and aesthetics and broad agreement just ain't gonna happen!    

I feel one of the worst things 4e did (even over the paltry, lame, watered down alignment system that should have just been scrapped altogether) was attempt to establish a consistent world for everyone who plays the game.  Planescape is an exception for me, in that I usally prefer home-brew settings, both as DM and player.   World building has ever been a big part of the fun, for me.   I realize they attempted to create a place that was "plug n play" in nature and that this will (in theory) enable D&D players to jump on line or go to a convention and all be (at least somewhat) on the same page.  

Who cares.   It's not as creative and therefore not as fun for me, period. 

And, at the end of the day, who cares what the current release of the game is doing.   Back in the day, my group ignored plenty of the god awful 2E stuff that was being churned out.   I don't recall that being a problem, in any way.   

As for Planescape, it was always more of a cult following than a mass appeal item anyway, and I think that will go on being the case.   There are enough people that still love it that it will survive into the future, undoutedly.   

Yes, things will surely change or be "officially" discarded  given the passage of enough time.  This is usually in the name of publishers wanting to move more product, and more power to'em.  Any business, of course, seeks to be as prosperous as possible.  If my paycheck and livelihood depended upon successfully breaking into certain gamer market segments such as WoW players, then I'd surely sell out and bastardize my favorite RPG system, too (sorry, brutal truth!).  BUT, I'd also keep all of my old books and use those in my own games.    

Anyway, not trying to interupt the wonderful debate in progress!  I remain ever impressed with the number of thoughtful, creative, articulate and passionate people who participate in this wonderful hobby.    

Party on!


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## ProfessorCirno (Jan 23, 2009)

Whizbang, if I might offer some advice?  Don't make very purposeful derogatory comments about people on this board and then, when asked to back them up, get all belligerent and accuse others of trying to fool you?  It makes you sound like those guys who think the Earth is hollow and run by lizard people.


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## Shemeska (Jan 23, 2009)

kenmarable said:


> I know what you mean - that guy is a jerk! Not to mention I'm surprised he wasn't permanently banned years ago. He's so indoctrinated by this Great Wheel garbage I doubt he could even consider someone using another cosmology.




Oh absolutely! 



> Maybe I've just been blind, but I recall many threads of "I want to run some planar adventures, what do I need?" being answered with essential pdfs to buy and Great Wheel explanations. But I'd be surprised to see someone talking about their homebrew cosmology being told it is wrongbadfun and that they must buy those pdfs and use the Great Wheel or else they are doing it wrong.




This. I remember a lot of threads where people asked for resources, ideas, and inspiration for planar campaigns, and lots of folks -myself included- gave them lists of various Planescape books/pdfs when relevant to the particular sort of campaign they were trying to run. I can't think of a single instance when someone with a homebrew cosmology had anything try to force them into using the Great Wheel. And I've never seen any antipathy towards campaigns like started out using a cosmology distinct from the Wheel (like Eberron). 

The only friction I recall was directed against instances where a campaign setting previously using the Great Wheel was retconned into something different (like FR), and in those cases I think the rancor was directed not at all against the idea of settings using different cosmologies, but against forced retcons. If I ran Eberron for instance, I wouldn't try to force fit it into using the Great Wheel - I'd use its own cosmology, and I think the retcon it appears to have looming on the horizon is a bad thing (and I'd say the same if that 4e cosmology retcon was going to place it into the Great Wheel cosmology).

As for alluded rage against anyone using something other than a canonical Planescape setup for a campaign's cosmology, well the Planescape mafia is going to have to come after me, because my home campaign is not in any way using the Wheel as written. I've got my own spin upon the original 2e material, and I happily included a number of the 3e changes to the setup. And of course, there's the Great Beyond for Paizo that's very much its own thing. Oh yes, I'm obviously demanding people use the Great Wheel as written in Planescape and never straying into any alternate cosmologies at all. Only a jerk would design something different for a new campaign setting. Obviously!


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jan 23, 2009)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Whizbang, if I might offer some advice?



May I offer some advice? Butt out.


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## DandD (Jan 24, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots, it might be better to rewrite your post to sound less snippy. The mods don't like reading something like that. 
It would be bad that you might perhaps be kicked out of this thread (or getting a warning).

Just write that you're not interested in ProfessorCirno's comments, that is alright.


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## Umbran (Jan 24, 2009)

I am going to offer some advice - everyone here be 100% nice and respectful.  Get rude or snippy at your own risk.


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## underthumb (Jan 24, 2009)

Taureth said:


> As for Planescape, it was always more of a cult following than a mass appeal item anyway, and I think that will go on being the case.




TSR had many product lines back in the day--do you know of any sales data on Planescape or qualitative statements on sales by TSR insiders? I don't mean this in a hostile way, I'm genuinely curious. While TSR failed as a business, it would be interesting to see how their various product lines performed against one another.


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## Shemeska (Jan 24, 2009)

underthumb said:


> TSR had many product lines back in the day--do you know of any sales data on Planescape or qualitative statements on sales by TSR insiders? I don't mean this in a hostile way, I'm genuinely curious. While TSR failed as a business, it would be interesting to see how their various product lines performed against one another.




From what I've heard, the Planescape line sold rather well, but due to the larger number of colored inks used in its printing, each product sold was on a lower profit margin than other lines at the time. Of course I've never seen any kind of sales data from the time, just heard that anecdote bounced around.


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## avin (Jan 24, 2009)

I got a question for people who like the Great Wheel and for people who like World Axis: it's just me of you guys also think this new reason for the Blood War is kinda silly?


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## I'm A Banana (Jan 24, 2009)

> I got a question for people who like the Great Wheel and for people who like World Axis: it's just me of you guys also think this new reason for the Blood War is kinda silly?




I think it's fine. The Blood War was always ambiguous and mysterious in origin. This explanation works for 4e's cosmology in a pretty epically nifty way (PC's can acidentally/intentionally repair the seed of evil!). I would prefer a little more ambiguity so that you could fit in your own ideas, but the 4e designers have an odd habit of needing some things very expressly spelled out ("infinite planes were confusing! Two-foot halflings were unrealistic!"), so I can forgive them that, and it works as AN explanation, even if it might not be THE explanation, depending on how much you like it.


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## TwinBahamut (Jan 24, 2009)

avin said:


> I got a question for people who like the Great Wheel and for people who like World Axis: it's just me of you guys also think this new reason for the Blood War is kinda silly?



I will agree with you there. It seems forced. If they _had_ to put the Blood War in there, they could have at least made it around the general difference between Demons who want to destroy all of creation and Devils who want to bend all of creation to their own ends.

The bigger issue is that the changes to Angels and Archons in the new cosmology makes their exclusion from the Blood war even more strange than it was before. Ultimately, the _real_ Blood War of the World Axis cosmology is the endless battle between the beings of the Astral Sea who are led by the Gods and the beings of the Elemental Chaos who are led by the Primordials, and the old Demon/Devil Blood War feels rather cheesy and petty in comparison (especially since they are already on opposite sides of the broader conflict).


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## Sammael (Jan 24, 2009)

I don't own the new MotP, but did they make an effort to tie the battle between gods and primordials with the war between the Wind Dukes and the Queen of Chaos? Or did they turn that into an all-primordial conflict?


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## FourthBear (Jan 24, 2009)

avin said:


> I got a question for people who like the Great Wheel and for people who like World Axis: it's just me of you guys also think this new reason for the Blood War is kinda silly?



It's a bit basic, but I don't think that makes it silly.  As I wrote earlier, I greatly prefer it to every previous explanation used for the Blood War.  The majority I've been exposed to are pretty much non-explanations (and proud of it).  I utterly dislike the primary Planescape boxed set explanation, which makes the devils and demons into manipulated chumps.  At least the current explanation gives both sets of creatures:

1)  Clearly defined objectives that are utterly opposed to the other.
2)  A objective that is so clearly difficult that it appears reasonable that it hasn't been achieved after countless ages.
3)  A goal that will result in forays of each group into the other's territory, which will result in mutual enmity.
4)  An objective that has clear benefit for the various leaders of the groups, but a benefit which could lead to infighting.
5)  It is something that a party of heroic PCs will almost certainly oppose either achieving.
6)  Gives both sets of fiends both active and defensive goals.
7)  Is intimately tied into the 4e World Axis cosmology's ancient history.
8)  Doesn't have either group of fiends acting as tools of a third party (although depending on the sentience of the seed of evil, this could change).

I mean, fighting over a cosmic seed of evil is fairly simple.  But, then, so is fighting over land, food or power of any sort.


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## glass (Jan 25, 2009)

_EDIT: I don't think there was anything wrong with my original post, but in the light of the mod warning I think I'll just say; WD, I didn't accuse you of lying, and leave it at that._


glass.


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## SKyOdin (Jan 27, 2009)

Sammael said:


> I don't own the new MotP, but did they make an effort to tie the battle between gods and primordials with the war between the Wind Dukes and the Queen of Chaos? Or did they turn that into an all-primordial conflict?






The who?

Goes to show how little I know about Planescape. I don't even recognize who those characters are.

In response to the question, there is no mention of any Wind Dukes or of a Queen of Chaos in the 4E Manual of the Planes. For that matter, I don't remember any mention of them in the 3E Manual of the Planes either. I can only assume they are relatively minor Great Wheel characters.


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## Sammael (Jan 27, 2009)

The Queen of Chaos and Wind Dukes of Aaqa are not Planescape characters. They date way back to OD&D. However, their conflict was interplanar in nature - hence my question. 

The two were generally detailed in conjunction with the multi-edition-spanning Rod of Seven Parts campaign. In 3.x, the war served as a historical backdrop for one Dungeon magazine's Age of Worms adventure path.

Rod of Seven Parts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## glass (Jan 27, 2009)

SKyOdin said:


> In response to the question, there is no mention of any Wind Dukes or of a Queen of Chaos in the 4E Manual of the Planes. For that matter, I don't remember any mention of them in the 3E Manual of the Planes either. I can only assume they are relatively minor Great Wheel characters.



The Wind Dukes and the Queen of Chaos were originally from the backstory of the Rod of Seven Parts. I don't know if they were mentioned in PS, they probably were, but it wouldn't have been as major figures as they haven't been around for millennia.

In 3.5, they were featured in Hordes of the Abyss, and the story was also touched on in The Whispering Cairn, Paizo's first Age of Worms adventure*.

_EDIT: Or, what Sammael said. _

glass.

(* and probably later ones too, but my group didn't get that far, sadly).


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## Ariquelle (Jun 2, 2009)

I agree with UnderThumb in that I like 2e and do not 4e. 
I prefer the Great Wheel set-up because I like how the power of belief could quite literally shape reality.


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## Piratecat (Jun 2, 2009)

Ariquelle said:


> I agree with UnderThumb in that I like 2e and do not 4e.
> I prefer the Great Wheel set-up because I like how the power of belief could quite literally shape reality.



If you're going to bring this thread back from the dead for your first post (and welcome!), I'm going to make you work for it.

I'm pretty sure that the Great Wheel is mutually exclusive from the power of belief to shape reality. I'm using the latter with the 4e cosmology, and having no trouble at all. Can you explain where you're seeing problems?


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## TwinBahamut (Jun 2, 2009)

Hey, I remember this thread! I forgot I made so many posts in it...



Ariquelle said:


> I agree with UnderThumb in that I like 2e and do not 4e.
> I prefer the Great Wheel set-up because I like how the power of belief could quite literally shape reality.



You know, the entire "power of belief" thing is one of those D&D ideas that I never really liked. It just makes me cringe, and I always have ignored it whenever I start building cosmologies. There are simply far too many things that you _can't_ do within such a system.

Of course, I doubt that I could persuade any fan of that particular concept to change their mind.


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## Shemeska (Jun 2, 2009)

TwinBahamut said:


> You know, the entire "power of belief" thing is one of those D&D ideas that I never really liked. It just makes me cringe, and I always have ignored it whenever I start building cosmologies. There are simply far too many things that you _can't_ do within such a system.




Wait, what? The freedom to mold reality by force of belief is a limiting thing? That's pretty much the 'anything can potentially occur' stamp on a cosmology, and that's a limit to what you could do? I'm confused. It's a lot more open to change and diversity than a much more limited, static system.


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## rounser (Jun 2, 2009)

> I'm a huge, HUGE fan of the practical. If it isn't practical, I don't want it in the game.



I think there's a fundamental disconnect here.  

Arcane and eldritch, esoteric and mythologically resonant was a large part of AD&D's charm.  Ripping out all those mythological obscurities in favour of contrived replacements misses that detail, IMO.


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## Barastrondo (Jun 2, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> Wait, what? The freedom to mold reality by force of belief is a limiting thing? That's pretty much the 'anything can potentially occur' stamp on a cosmology, and that's a limit to what you could do? I'm confused. It's a lot more open to change and diversity than a much more limited, static system.




I'm not TwinBahamut, but I'm curious as to how "reality not defined by belief" is by necessity more limited and static. The next step, after all, is asking what reality is defined by if not belief. Moorcockian powers of clashing law and chaos? A Celestial Bureaucracy with a thousand separate sub-ministries feuding for prestige in the eyes of the Jade Empress and the according power to extend their influence? Raw science? Whatever your answer, that will define whether the system is limited and static. 

From my time in the old World of Darkness, I can report that a reality shaped by belief tends to run into troubles with other cosmological tropes you might want to establish. When I was helming Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I frequently found that I had to outright ignore or disagree with Mage: The Ascension if I wanted the themes of Werewolf to come through. Specifically, Mage had a very strong "humans are the most important creatures in the universe because their belief shapes the universe itself." Werewolf, on the other hand, was about "Humans are not the most important things in the universe, and in acting like they are, they're doing a lot of damage to everything else." You probably wouldn't get the same problem in D&D exactly, what with the consensus winding up including humans, gnolls, neo-otyughs, aboleth, couatl, devils, etc. (It would raise a lot more interesting questions, though. What if human belief is a minority? What would a world be like where what humans believe is not strong enough to overcome what the more numerous orcs and goblins believe, or what dragons believe?) 

Having said that, I've got no trouble with consensual cosmologies myself. I tend to personally lean, however, toward cosmologies with certain bedrock truths that then have a lot of different manifestations and facets based on people's belief. An Underworld that is always the Underworld, but might look different depending on the local cultural touchstones. Gods that are pure archetypes yet wear different masks for different cultures. Things like that. I like to monkey around with the idea of a cosmology that mirrors different beliefs without having those beliefs actually define it. It adds an occult layer to things, differentiating between practical truths (crocodiles are sacred to the god Hedretha, and some may speak with his voice) and more fundamental truths (Hedretha is but one face of a powerful god of implacable nature; the Horned King is another). 

I liked Planescape quite a bit (though I think it had a few flaws, such as the very specialized belief systems of the factions). I do have to think it was very baroque by design, though. If people sat down to create a D&D setting about consensual cosmology, but they didn't have the design tenet of "make it work with the pre-existing Great Wheel setup", I don't think it would look much like Planescape. Planescape's not really intuitive. It's quirky. That is, of course, one of its great selling points. But I quite understand why designers might want an alternate, more intuitive cosmology. Even if some of the names are a bit silly.


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## Scribble (Jun 2, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> Wait, what? The freedom to mold reality by force of belief is a limiting thing? That's pretty much the 'anything can potentially occur' stamp on a cosmology, and that's a limit to what you could do? I'm confused. It's a lot more open to change and diversity than a much more limited, static system.




What I find interesting is that a core "worldbuilding" belief seems to be everything MUST be defined. To me that's the thing that seems limiting. Once you decide on one idea, whether it be the power of belief or something else entirely,  you sort of limit yourself to that idea.


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## Particle_Man (Jun 2, 2009)

I miss the modrons.

Also, for some reason this talk of "planes that don't make sense" made me think of *Traveller* world-building, where you randomly rolled up features of a world and then had fun trying to figure out how it could possibly exist like that.


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## Shemeska (Jun 2, 2009)

Scribble said:


> What I find interesting is that a core "worldbuilding" belief seems to be everything MUST be defined. To me that's the thing that seems limiting. Once you decide on one idea, whether it be the power of belief or something else entirely,  you sort of limit yourself to that idea.




Heh. By no means do I hold to the idea that everything must be defined. I go out of my way to include open questions, contradictory notions about portions of a cosmology or its history, and mystery. Ambiguity can be seriously evocative when done right.

And the core Planescape idea that belief was power, wasn't absolutely sacrosanct, because it was sometimes questioned.

Of course, either my own take on the topic, or something more in line with classical Planescape, seems to go out of its way to remove limitations in many ways. Everything is potentially mutable. That's limiting? What can you _not _do within a cosmology with that idea that you _could _do in another cosmology in which belief or perception has absolutely no power over reality, and everything is in that respect, fixed and static?


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## Barastrondo (Jun 2, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> Of course, either my own take on the topic, or something more in line with classical Planescape, seems to go out of its way to remove limitations in many ways. Everything is potentially mutable. That's limiting? What can you _not _do within a cosmology with that idea that you _could _do in another cosmology in which belief or perception has absolutely no power over reality, and everything is in that respect, fixed and static?




Seems to me that "everything is mutable" is also a limitation: you forbid the presence of immutable things. 

I'm curious why it must be either-or, actually. I see arguments for why everything being static is troublesome, and why everything being consensual is troublesome. I'm just not sure why it's everything or nothing. Wouldn't an option for "some things are mutable and some things are anchored" harvest the best of both worlds?


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## EATherrian (Jun 2, 2009)

Hussar said:


> The trick is, Underthumb, is when you start looking at those boxed sets and examine where they actually place the adventures.  Sure, Elemental planes are really bad for you.  But, they don't set adventures there usually.  Sigil is basically just another fantasy city.  You don't need any specific protections to wander around, you don't have weird gravity or non-Euclidean surfaces (by and large).



You may not have done adventures in these places, but others have at least I have.  Personally I prefer the Great Wheel because I like the idea of alignment being real in the cosmos and I like symmetry.  I haven't done anything that really goes out into the planes lately so I don't know what model I'll use.


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## avin (Jun 2, 2009)

Maybe the notion of "everything is immutable" in multiverse is so cemented on some of its inhabitants minds that prevent the universe from (to?) change.

I remember some Neil Gaiman's story about cats, where the Cat King explain to a cat that once the universe was dominated by the felines but, one day, human's dream was so strong that changed things since beginning.

There was never a world dominated by the cats because humanity dream rewrote the whole story.

That's how I like to portrait the multiverse.

The process of changing is so subtle that some things really look like immutable.

What wouldn't work for me is the notion that player X reaches level 30, choose a feat / power and start changing the universe with no further explanation (I never saw a rule like that, I'm just illustrating).


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## Scribble (Jun 2, 2009)

Barastrondo said:


> Seems to me that "everything is mutable" is also a limitation: you forbid the presence of immutable things.
> 
> I'm curious why it must be either-or, actually. I see arguments for why everything being static is troublesome, and why everything being consensual is troublesome. I'm just not sure why it's everything or nothing. Wouldn't an option for "some things are mutable and some things are anchored" harvest the best of both worlds?




I think that's kind of what I was trying to get at. Once you make an "either or" choice you limit yourself. It doesn't matter which choice is more or less limiting, it's just making a choice and saying "THIS" is the true of things, limits you.

Personally for world building, I only like to make that choice when I absolutely HAVE to- when it matters in some way to the game at hand- and that rarely happens. 

I don't mind starting with on set of ideas, only to have them tossed on their head later on if the adventure would be more fun to do so. (And back and forth.)


That's one of the things I've always liked about the White Wolf stuff btw. The various books all have "core assumptions" but they hint at the fact that well... they might not b so core after all is said and done. (Or at the very least they might have elements that you don't yet know that if you did know them, would change the way you view things...)


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## EATherrian (Jun 2, 2009)

Particle_Man said:


> I miss the modrons.
> 
> Also, for some reason this talk of "planes that don't make sense" made me think of *Traveller* world-building, where you randomly rolled up features of a world and then had fun trying to figure out how it could possibly exist like that.




People don't seem to like random much anymore.  I love it.  I still prefer rolling for a character and figuring out how to make the scores work then making a character and setting the scores such.  It's a problem I see more now, all characters have the same scores, just in different attributes.  And I'm also sure I'm not the only one who made a sector with random worlds.  OK, it was a domain.... 

edited to add:  I didn't think this needed a different post but I whole-heartedly agree with that Cat story.  These models are just a way to see the Cosmology, maybe they all exist together from different points of view.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 3, 2009)

> From my time in the old World of Darkness, I can report that a reality shaped by belief tends to run into troubles with other cosmological tropes you might want to establish. When I was helming Werewolf: The Apocalypse, I frequently found that I had to outright ignore or disagree with Mage: The Ascension if I wanted the themes of Werewolf to come through. Specifically, Mage had a very strong "humans are the most important creatures in the universe because their belief shapes the universe itself." Werewolf, on the other hand, was about "Humans are not the most important things in the universe, and in acting like they are, they're doing a lot of damage to everything else." You probably wouldn't get the same problem in D&D exactly, what with the consensus winding up including humans, gnolls, neo-otyughs, aboleth, couatl, devils, etc. (It would raise a lot more interesting questions, though. What if human belief is a minority? What would a world be like where what humans believe is not strong enough to overcome what the more numerous orcs and goblins believe, or what dragons believe?)




I think the big leap of logic that needs to be made to see it in PS-style is this:

There is not just one universe.

The universes overlap. According to my understanding of the "consensual cosmology," in a world where humans believe they're the most important and werewolves believe that humans aren't the most important, *they're both right*. The world responds to both of those beliefs as if they were true.

The only time that can't hold is when they come into direct conflict in the narrative somehow (when humans are blatantly disregarding the laws of nature and the werewolves have to stop them; or when the werewolves ar exterminating humans and the humans have to fight them off). Where they come into conflict, the answer is often academic in the face of the tooth and fang and sword and gun. 

I mean, how do you even prove the truth of something like that, from the standpoint of a native? You can't, really. You're not in any position to ask the Creator with any sense of certainty (and, in D&D, even the Creators could be lying out their wazoo, according to certain beliefs).

I tend to think that overly defined universes kind of cut the creative threads and philosophical disputes before they get going. From the perspective of the role we're playing, there's no reason that mutually exclusive things can't be simultaneously true.


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## TwinBahamut (Jun 3, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> Wait, what? The freedom to mold reality by force of belief is a limiting thing? That's pretty much the 'anything can potentially occur' stamp on a cosmology, and that's a limit to what you could do? I'm confused. It's a lot more open to change and diversity than a much more limited, static system.



You really are twisting around what I was trying to say into a totally different point.

Basically, you are taking one thing you consider to be an advantage to the "power of belief" system, which is the "infinitely mutable" idea, and then you saying that I am arguing against that advantage rather than the system which has that advantage. Or rather, you are simply implying that the only way to have an infinitely mutable setting is to base it on the power of belief, which is totally false. There are countless ways to have an infinitely mutable setting without relying on that assumption. As other people have pointed out, the easiest way to do so is to simply make no such assumption at all.

Besides, the "infinitely mutable" nature of the "power of belief" is false, since by its nature what people don't believe to be true can't be true, so there is no real way to create a conflict between people's beliefs and the actual truth of the world within such a setting. That means there are certain plots and stories that can't be told within such a setting, so it is not truly infinitely mutable. Once you place a limiting guideline or rule of any sort upon something, then it can no longer be said to be all-inclusive, no matter the kind of rule you place.

However, if you want to know what I really meant, my comment was directed much more at the very specific idea that the power of a god, or even the very divinity of a god, is directly related to how many people worship that god. I detest that concept with a passion, for a variety of reasons ranging from general gut reaction to my preferences for alternative systems and stories that can only be told in alternate systems.

Besides, I may as well say that I don't consider infinite mutability to even be a valuable trait in a setting, since I prefer to simply create a large number of settings that each have a much more specific feel and limited set of traits. The overall mutability of the game is basically the same either way (since the only limitations on any game of D&D are the limitations placed upon it by the players and DM), so neither approach has any advantage whatsoever.


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## Hairfoot (Jun 3, 2009)

If the OP is still relevant at this point, I do like that the 4E cosmology makes the physical negotiation of the planes more accessible, but it seems to come at the expense of some of the mysticism of planar travel that could be had with the Great Wheel.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 3, 2009)

A thing that doesn't work in a "Belief is power and shapes reality" setting: 

A dead god returns. Nobody worshipped him anymore. Those that even remember him consider him dead and gone. But yet, he does. How can he ever get back to "reality" if that would require someone believing in his return? 

The hidden truth about the origin of the world (or another, important thing). Nobody knows it anymore. But there are still some ancient texts speaking of it. The texts were gone, and nobody expected to find the. But digging up the ruins of an old temple unveils some of them, and unveils a terrible secret that no one would have believed. 

How could such a scenario work without anyone already knowing about it and believing it?


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## avin (Jun 3, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> A thing that doesn't work in a "Belief is power and shapes reality" setting:
> 
> A dead god returns. Nobody worshipped him anymore. Those that even remember him consider him dead and gone. But yet, he does. How can he ever get back to "reality" if that would require someone believing in his return?




The dead god should not return by himself.

The dead god returns when people start worshipping him again.


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## CapnZapp (Jun 3, 2009)

FourthBear said:


> I feel the Great Wheel was a well detailed *example* of a cosmology, but I don't think it makes for a good default.  I think the 4e presentation of cosmology lends itself much better to homebrewing, particularly for the starting DM who simply wants to add a few planes/domains here and there without having to worry about where they fit into some kind quasi-scholarly structure of alignment, elements and energies.



I agree. 

Now the cosmology is much more undefined, ad hoc and therefore mysterious (as in "not bound by laws or predictability").

All good, IMHO.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 3, 2009)

avin said:


> The dead god should not return by himself.
> 
> The dead god returns when people start worshipping him again.



What's with the _should_? Aren't you in the end telling me that this is a story I can't do under the assumption of "Belief is power and shapes reality"?


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## avin (Jun 3, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> What's with the _should_? Aren't you in the end telling me that this is a story I can't do under the assumption of "Belief is power and shapes reality"?




The "should" was more like a suggestion for "a campaign where belief is power and shapes reality, the worshipper's belief that their god would return awoke him", not a rule for every campaign around.

In your campaign you could do anything you want. (editing) The texts could be the trigger. Even if that gods name is unknown by now, the text refer to him, to what he has done. The guy who read that is really impressed with what he reads and the god slowly is triggered to woke up. Maybe he made that on purpose, like a guarantee of comeback


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 3, 2009)

Don't be to focused on this example. The main gist is that stuff can exist that no one knew or believed. A dead god returning is an example for that. If believe shapes the reality, that cannot happen, because the point was no one believed it. (Of course, if only a _few_ believe it, it stands to question why their singular belief is so much stronger than that of the rest of the world.)

The dead god returning on his own can have special consequences - first, he might be without allies. No one expected him, no one wanted him. But yet he is there, taking an interest in things, defying expectations, wrecking plans. The unique thing might be contacting him peacefully and figuring out what he wants, how or why he came back. You can't hope for proxies to help them (like cultists that still worshipped him.)

Hey, you don't even have to return him alone. It could just be that the cultist that returned him find themselves surprised that he is decidedly not how they or the rest of the world expected or believed him to be. He doesn't see them as allies, but as pathetic weaklings and destroys the cultists first. He doesn't enter a fight with Bahamut as everyone would have expected, aind instead destroys Vecna. So, what's really going on? How did he trick the cultists? Did he change? How could he, if he was dead? Is he even himself or did something else came through that summoning circle? Again, what does he want?


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## avin (Jun 3, 2009)

Mustrum, I'm not on the "belief is the only cause" wagon. 

If there's a good story to be told then it shall be told, the "why" is adjusted on the fly.

What I'm saying is, in *most* of my campaigns *gods* are slaves of belief. I won't wake up a dead god, unless somebody believes he would return. The god of dwarves did not create dwarves but he's there when the first dwarf starts believing that there is a dwarf god. And then dwarves start perceiving creation as something made by this dwarf god and, for dwarves, is how it works. Much like the Endless and the gods work on Sandman's mythology.

So, I would never deal with this example you gave me, because, in *most of* my campaigns, that god will be dead until people start thinking of him again. 

Maybe, for my campaign, that god was never dead, only forgotten and weakened somewhere. (There are several cases like that on the mentioned Sandman mythology).

I praise the freedom of ideas. If I wake up some morning with the desire to run a game where there's only two gods, that existed before anything, created all races and are not subject to belief, hey ho, let's go!

TLDR: it's not to me you should address this questions, cause I don't think there is a "correct" way to rule how gods, belief and the multiverse works.

I use what has better timing for the campaign I'm running.


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## Kwalish Kid (Jun 3, 2009)

underthumb said:


> This bothers me on many levels, and not just because I think there should be one great wheel to rule them all. Mainly, it means that many of the ideas associated with the planes as I understood them will not be carried forward into future generations of D&D players. That is, they no longer form a set of core assumptions that can serve as the basis of conversations and shared adventures.



The reason that these ideas will not be carried forward is that the original products are not sold and therefore not read or played.


> Okay, so that's sad, at least to me. But what about the larger issue? I feel as though the designers of 2e's Planescape (in particular Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, and Colin McComb) succeeding in creating an amazing fantasy realm that simply has no modern equal.



I believe that these claims are factually wrong. First, there are many detailed fantasy settings out there, some good, some bad. Second, the designers of Planescape adapted an existing fantasy realm, so their creation is not their creation alone.


> Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be  either redacted or cut completely?



There are a host of good reasons. 1) It eliminates the need to reproduce earlier material in later books or to reproduce books for systems that are no longer supported. 2) It makes the game simpler for those just getting in to 4E. 3) Those who have the earlier books and wish to use them can easily adapt the material themselves for 4E. 4) ...


> Still, I will no longer be able to purchase new gaming materials about the multiverse I had come to understand. A multiverse that I would argue is more colorful and more interesting than the one presently established.



It's time to leave the nest and create your own works for this world.


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## Desdichado (Jun 3, 2009)

underthumb said:


> I will no longer be able to purchase new gaming materials about the multiverse I had come to understand. A multiverse that I would argue is more colorful and more interesting than the one presently established.



In other words; "I like Planescape a lot, and I don't like how they aren't using it specifically."

You sound like you're trying to make an attempt at objectifying your tastes, but really... that's just your taste.  It's not true that Planescape is an objectively better cosmology than other alternatives.  It's not true that the current set-up "has no history."  It's not true that there are no longer shared assumptions that gamers across the globe can all use.  None of those things are true.  The only thing that's true is that there a superficial resemblance to Planescape has been removed from the existing 4e core cosmology.

As someone who's _not_ much of a fan of the Great Wheel and how tied it is to the bizarre and clunky nine point alignment system, and a host of other D&Disms that I neither want nor support in my own games... I think it's a good move.  In fact, they didn't divorce themselves _enough_ from the past in terms of cosmology.

So, clearly YMMV.  And when that happens, you can bet that for all your attempts at objectification, you're really just talking about "this is what I like just because I like it."


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 3, 2009)

avin said:


> Mustrum, I'm not on the "belief is the only cause" wagon.



Well... Then you were not actually the target audience of my post. 

But don't let that make you feel as if I have fired you as a reader, please!


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## avin (Jun 3, 2009)

delete me (some pdf comment).


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## tomBitonti (Jun 3, 2009)

A couple of points ...

First off, ironic, and sad, and partly making the original poster point, PDFs of the earlier material are no longer available as original purchases.

Second, much of this discussion would be avoided if 4E had adopted less _badwrongfu_ about anything not 4E.  (I think that is fair to claim.)  One of the nice features of the _Manual of the Planes_ was the section on alternate cosmologies.  The game actively encouraged the players and GM to invent their own cosmologies.  On of the issues that I have with 4E is the loss of that open approach.  Why _not_ have a section that explains how the 4E cosmology is the _default_, but other cosmologies are possible, with examples and ideas of setting up other cosmologies?


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## avin (Jun 3, 2009)

tomBitonti said:


> Why _not_ have a section that explains how the 4E cosmology is the _default_, but other cosmologies are possible, with examples and ideas of setting up other cosmologies?




Manual of the Planes 4E has a section on how to use the Great Wheel.

To me the problem is how fluff are presented now. Planescape fluff were less straight, more sinuous, there were more mistery around. Maybe its the kind of writing that is used.


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## tomBitonti (Jun 3, 2009)

avin said:


> Manual of the Planes 4E has a section on how to use the Great Wheel.
> 
> To me the problem is how fluff are presented now. Planescape fluff were less straight, more sinuous, there were more mistery around. Maybe its the kind of writing that is used.




Hi.  I didn't know that!  I've basically stopped buying D&D books since the core PHB, MM, and DMG.

I'm thinking that I've diverged from the initial point:



> Okay, so that's sad, at least to me. But what about the larger issue? I feel as though the designers of 2e's Planescape (in particular Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, and Colin McComb) succeeding in creating an amazing fantasy realm that simply has no modern equal. In its totality, Planescape was beautiful, dangerous and absurd. The complex histories and ecologies of outerplanar beings served as the backdrop for some of D&D's most impressive features, such as the Blood War. (The fiends, in fact, were easily the most fleshed-out creatures in Planescape.)
> 
> Is there really a good reason for all of this amazing material to be either redacted or cut completely? Was trashing most of the multiverse (as it was constituted) worth it to "maximize playability"? Maybe I've become a grognard in that I don't think significant chunks of lore should be dropped because they are measurably less convenient during play, especially when they form the backdrop of established creature ecologies (see, for example, baatezu and tanar'ri tactics described in Hellbound: The Blood War).




So I suppose that I should ask: Is it at all likely that at some point we might see a _Planar Landscapes: Planescape_ book?  With all the editions of books that are being produced, could we see such a book at some point?

I'm finding, when I go back to that original point, is a resonance with the sense of loss in regards to having access to the older material, and that new players will see much less of it.


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## underthumb (Jun 3, 2009)

Hobo said:


> So, clearly YMMV.  And when that happens, you can bet that for all your attempts at objectification, you're really just talking about "this is what I like just because I like it."




If you're concerned that I might regard my opinions as something other than opinions, I am only too happy to assure you that I do not. At the same time, this is a discussion forum, and we may benefit from exchanging ideas and perspectives, even when there are no final and objective criteria on which to settle disagreements.

Also, I would encourage you to engage a more charitable reading of my posts, which were given from a distinctly personal perspective, and had at least some opinion markers such as "I feel".


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## underthumb (Jun 3, 2009)

Kwalish Kid said:


> The reason that these ideas will not be carried forward is that the original products are not sold and therefore not read or played.
> 
> ....
> 
> I believe that these claims are factually wrong. First, there are many detailed fantasy settings out there, some good, some bad. Second, the designers of Planescape adapted an existing fantasy realm, so their creation is not their creation alone.




I'll be honest, the matter-of-fact tone of your post in combination with your odd interpretation of my comments (did you think I believed 2nd Edition products to be in print?) doesn't motivate me to respond. Like Hobo, I would encourage you to engage a more charitable reading of my comments.


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## Shemeska (Jun 3, 2009)

tomBitonti said:


> So I suppose that I should ask: Is it at all likely that at some point we might see a _Planar Landscapes: Planescape_ book?  With all the editions of books that are being produced, could we see such a book at some point?




We might, but my question then is would we recognize it? Planescape doesn't conform to a number of baseline assumptions that 4e design has thus far forced settings beyond the core PoL to change, massively if needed, to incorporate and fall in line with. You'd have to be able to return to the massive amount of lore that 4e dropped off of a cliff and made a ton of changes to, and even incorporate material that according the 4e's marketing and even some designer comments was bad or even the antithesis of fun.

I think we'll see more planar material for 4e, but I think it'll strictly conform to the core 4e default, or else it won't be published.

Of course, Great Wheel/Planescape, default 4e world axis, etc etc... I'd love to sell you on a third option I wrote for Pathfinder.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 3, 2009)

> A thing that doesn't work in a "Belief is power and shapes reality" setting:
> 
> A dead god returns. Nobody worshipped him anymore. Those that even remember him consider him dead and gone. But yet, he does. How can he ever get back to "reality" if that would require someone believing in his return?
> 
> ...




Well, firstly, belief doesn't have to be the ONLY cause of reality in the multiverse.  It's quite possible that gods animate and ancient texts exist totally independent of what people believe to be the case.

But the bigger matter is mostly: how does it affect the game?

IMXP, the consensual multiverse model means that you can go slay demons in a million different hells and it never gets old. That you can fight waves of a billion different types of angels and they all look different. That you can go to heaven and be reincarnated, both.

A more authoritarian model of existence wouldn't have that level of wiggle-room. 

Not that one is necessarily better than the other, in my mind, just that a consensual multiverse gives you an open playing field. Others can be appealing in their own way.



			
				Shemeska said:
			
		

> We might, but my question then is would we recognize it? Planescape doesn't conform to a number of baseline assumptions that 4e design has thus far forced settings beyond the core PoL to change, massively if needed, to incorporate and fall in line with. You'd have to be able to return to the massive amount of lore that 4e dropped off of a cliff and made a ton of changes to, and even incorporate material that according the 4e's marketing and even some designer comments was bad or even the antithesis of fun.




Of course, I hold to the view that 4e's cosmology is "only a model" and that everything that was once in PS is still out there, even if they don't write anything about it. 

It works pretty well...I'm looking forward to my PS4e campaign. I might do it via MapTool, so if people want to get in on it....


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## avin (Jun 4, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> I think we'll see more planar material for 4e, but I think it'll strictly conform to the core 4e default, or else it won't be published.




4E need something like Beyond the countless doorways.


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## Lord Mhoram (Jun 4, 2009)

Just a quick question if someone knows offhand - are the terms Baatazue and Tanari gone in 4th? I don't really recall seeing them.


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## EATherrian (Jun 4, 2009)

Lord Mhoram said:


> Just a quick question if someone knows offhand - are the terms Baatazue and Tanari gone in 4th? I don't really recall seeing them.




Weren't those mostly gone by 3rd edition?  I don't think I've noticed it in the 4E MM, so I believe they are finally gone.


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## Lord Mhoram (Jun 4, 2009)

EATherrian said:


> Weren't those mostly gone by 3rd edition?  I don't think I've noticed it in the 4E MM, so I believe they are finally gone.




Yeah, in 3rd they were something like subraces of Demons and Devils IIRC.

I'm also happy the terms are gone - they always seems a relic of WotC being afraid of religious extremists ... they could say "See we don't have demons or devils in the game anymore".


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## nightwyrm (Jun 4, 2009)

Lord Mhoram said:


> Yeah, in 3rd they were something like subraces of Demons and Devils IIRC.
> 
> I'm also happy the terms are gone - they always seems a relic of WotC being afraid of religious extremists ... they could say "See we don't have demons or devils in the game anymore".




You can't blame WotC for this one. That began in 2ed by TSR.  WotC just continued it when they bought D&D.

Although to be fair, MtG had stopped making demons and demonic references for a number of years because of the same reasons.


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## Shemeska (Jun 4, 2009)

EATherrian said:


> Weren't those mostly gone by 3rd edition?  I don't think I've noticed it in the 4E MM, so I believe they are finally gone.




They were still present through all of 3.x, but as the proper names of the two major demonic and diabolic races. All tanar'ri are demons, but not all demons are tanar'ri. Demons as a group for instance contained tanar'ri, loumara, and obyriths as distinct races, and also tons of other CE fiends that didn't fall into specific groups. Same for devils, less so for 'loths but that fit their flavor.

I haven't noticed the names in anything in 4e, but the 4e material junked the history and lore of the fiends developed over the past thirty years, so they might as well change their names while they're at it if they want. Different creatures, different name.


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## Lord Mhoram (Jun 4, 2009)

nightwyrm said:


> You can't blame WotC for this one. That began in 2ed by TSR.  WotC just continued it when they bought D&D.




Wrong Company Acronym. I meant TSR - I knew that all started with the advent of 2nd edition. Strangely the only edition of D&D I didn't play. And the only setting for it I loved was Spelljammer.


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## Lord Mhoram (Jun 4, 2009)

Shemeska said:


> I haven't noticed the names in anything in 4e, but the 4e material junked the history and lore of the fiends developed over the past thirty years, so they might as well change their names while they're at it if they want. Different creatures, different name.




Yeah, that about what I was seeing, and why I was happy to see the 2nd ed names go. I skipped 2nd ed (and pretty much all of their settings, the only one I really liked was Spelljammer). So I got third edition stuff and read it and was like Tanari, Baatezu, Sigil, Lady of Pain.. what is up with this, this wasn't in the D&D I remember (I remembered it pretty well, we played our houseruled 1st ed rules until 3rd came out). 

Starting 4th with a clean slate and new cosmology was gutsy, and I love what came out of it... as I never really got into the stuff for 2nd (or Planescape), I didn't feel much loss.


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## carmachu (Jun 4, 2009)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:


> No one throws the wrongbadfun vibe around more strongly than certain members of the First Church of Sigil.




Really? I'm pretty sure some of the armed camps of the 4e crowd or 3.x crowd with the edition wars/debate give them a strong run for their money, at least as I've seen around here the last year and a half.


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## Drkfathr1 (Jun 4, 2009)

EATherrian said:


> Weren't those mostly gone by 3rd edition?  I don't think I've noticed it in the 4E MM, so I believe they are finally gone.




I don't think I have seen them anywhere so far, but I did think the 4E Manual of the Planes still refers to the Nine Hells as the Nine Hells of Baator.


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## Desdichado (Jun 4, 2009)

underthumb said:


> If you're concerned that I might regard my opinions as something other than opinions, I am only too happy to assure you that I do not. At the same time, this is a discussion forum, and we may benefit from exchanging ideas and perspectives, even when there are no final and objective criteria on which to settle disagreements.
> 
> Also, I would encourage you to engage a more charitable reading of my posts, which were given from a distinctly personal perspective, and had at least some opinion markers such as "I feel".



Huh?  I was responding the first post.  And I still say that that reads like an attempt to objectify your tastes, which is fundamentally quixotic thing to attempt.

Plus: I like the word quixotic, so thanks for giving me an excuse to use it again.


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## Hussar (Jun 4, 2009)

carmachu said:


> Really? I'm pretty sure some of the armed camps of the 4e crowd or 3.x crowd with the edition wars/debate give them a strong run for their money, at least as I've seen around here the last year and a half.




Yes, because 4e fans every single time, in every single thread, nearly on every single page of those threads will feel the compulsive need to tell everyone who will listen that 4e planes suck and WOTC are a bunch of bastards for having junked the history built up over the last thirty years.


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## carmachu (Jun 4, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Yes, because 4e fans every single time, in every single thread, nearly on every single page of those threads will feel the compulsive need to tell everyone who will listen that 4e planes suck and WOTC are a bunch of bastards for having junked the history built up over the last thirty years.





Really? Any chance you or wizbang are actually going to provide links or proof, or is it just going to be this all the time?


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## Hussar (Jun 4, 2009)

carmachu said:


> Really? Any chance you or wizbang are actually going to provide links or proof, or is it just going to be this all the time?




Oh come on.  Do you really not see it?  Gimme a break here.  Hell, ON THIS PAGE, we've got it.  Hell, in the quote you quoted, I was quoting exactly what I was talking about.  If it's not how craptastic the "Limited Staircase" or whatever the phrase, is, it's how they've completely bajoogered demons stripping out all the meaning of the planes, yugoloths have been bastardized, angels are neutered, on and on and on.

We get it.  Some of you don't like the 4e cosmology.  Ok, message received.  Can we move on please?


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## carmachu (Jun 4, 2009)

Hussar said:


> Oh come on. Do you really not see it? Gimme a break here. Hell, ON THIS PAGE, we've got it. Hell, in the quote you quoted, I was quoting exactly what I was talking about. If it's not how craptastic the "Limited Staircase" or whatever the phrase, is, it's how they've completely bajoogered demons stripping out all the meaning of the planes, yugoloths have been bastardized, angels are neutered, on and on and on.
> 
> We get it. Some of you don't like the 4e cosmology. Ok, message received. Can we move on please?




No, apparantly you DONT get it.

Wiz was asked, by a few few people, for links to his hard core planescape mafia type. He blew them off. As are you.

Are there folks that dont like what 4e cosmology? Sure. Are there folks here that loved planescape? Sure. Hell are there folks that love or hate pathfinders cosmology? Sure there too. I love planescape. I dislike both 4e and pathfinder cosmology. But I dont think I fall into that catagory of hard core planescape Wiz talked about. Nor do pretty much all the folks in this discussion, whether they liked planescape or not.

But that isnt the message. One asked another to, basically, back his accusations up. He blew them off. We get it, some of you are just more interested in hit and run in your opinions, then actually back them up. message received, you not interested in debate, just ranting.


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## Umbran (Jun 4, 2009)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

One warning - that's more than enough edition warring here.  Move on.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2009)

((Umbran, this is not meant as another salvo in the Edition Warz.  If it is too close to the mark, please delete and smite me.  Just a point I want to get out there.))

Post removed by admin.

From our rules:

"Finally -- if you break a rule and admit to knowing it at the same time, we won't bother asking questions. Posts which include phrases like "this will probably get me warned or banned" show you're pretty much sticking your fingers up at the rules and the moderators, and will result in a banning. We probably won't even bother emailing you to let you know in these situations."

Hussar is taking a summer vacation. Don't do this, folks, ever; we _really_ hate it.

As always, feel free to email me or send me a PM if you wish to discuss this. 

 - PCat


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