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Blas_de_Lezo
2009-12-17, 08:21 PM
I used to play Planescape long time ago in 2n edition, but it looks like it was forgotten in 3.0, 3.5 and now 4th. It happened just the same with Dark Sun, but now it looks like they're relaunching it. So, has anybody some idea if WotC is going to re-release Planescpe? Or should we be satisfied with the Manual of the Planes?

Samb
2009-12-17, 08:24 PM
Hmm no idea if they are relauching planescape but if you want a 3.5 edition that is "offical" planeswalker.com has a campaign setting that is free. From the reviews I've seen it seems to be quite well made.

That being said, it isn't the same without the artwork. You never notice how much the art contributed to the funky feel of Sigil until its not there anymore.

erikun
2009-12-17, 08:28 PM
Unofficial 3rd Edition Planescape. (http://www.planewalker.com/) And you are right, Wizards of the Coast mostly ignored Planescape, along with several other campaign settings. Manual of the Planes (3.0) and Planar Handbook (3.5) are about all we got.

Nobody knows what WotC is planning for 4e. Dark Sun is confirmed for early 2010, but they're being tight lipped beyond that. There was quite a bit of fanfare for Planescape when WotC has mentioned "a new, surprising campaign setting" before announcing it was Dark Sun, so if they were just fishing to see what was popular, Planescape no doubt hit their radar.

Ravenloft was actually released for 3rd edition, although by a third party company. This is the unofficial 3rd edition Spelljammer (http://www.spelljammer.org/), if you're curious.

Belobog
2009-12-17, 08:34 PM
WotC has released some sparse information about Sigil in the 4e Planar Handbook, along with the odd Paragon Path here and there (Mercykiller, Knight of Celestia(technically)). Past that and the Spelljammers that exist in the same book, there's not much that screams 'nostalgia'.

Amiel
2009-12-17, 09:00 PM
3e/3.5e focused less on the Planes than on Campaign Settings (it may also have something to do with TSR folding and been bought by WotC); the 'status quo' was demolished in Faction War and later extinguished in Die, Vecna, Die when Vecna entered Sigil (a deity entering Sigil, something that the Lady of Pain specifically forbids against) and paved the way for third edition rules to be introduced.

It was also at this time that WotC granted other, third party companies licenses to IPs and allowed publishing rights; so we have Ravenloft and Dragonlance published by White Wolf and that other company.
Planescape and Athas, on the other hand, were granted to fans; since this was given to fans it was designated as non-profit and so two websites were designed and material was posted on there.


Apart from the Manual of the Planes, 3e/3.5e also published the Planar Handbook; a supplement that continues to divide fan opinions.

There was the game, Planescape: Torment; I urge you to get it. I would definitely play it more but I seem to have lost it ;_;

Volkov
2009-12-17, 09:04 PM
I'm more upset about Greyhawk. WOTC outright canceled it in 4e.

bosssmiley
2009-12-18, 09:13 AM
I used to play Planescape long time ago in 2n edition, but it looks like it was forgotten in 3.0, 3.5 and now 4th. It happened just the same with Dark Sun, but now it looks like they're relaunching it. So, has anybody some idea if WotC is going to re-release Planescpe? Or should we be satisfied with the Manual of the Planes?

Manual of the Planes 3E basically cannibalized its plane descriptions from Planescape. Unfortunately it threw the (theme and flavour) baby out with the (2E mechanics) bathwater and just made the planes into generic adventure backdrops.

Samb
2009-12-18, 09:23 AM
Manual of the Planes 3E basically cannibalized its plane descriptions from Planescape. Unfortunately it threw the (theme and flavour) baby out with the (2E mechanics) bathwater and just made the planes into generic adventure backdrops.

I wouldn't say that. Planescape was all about an adventure in the inner and outer planes, which in theory could be intergrated into any setting. The manual of planes and planer handbooks tried to do that.

Planescape certainly fleshed out the geography, mechanics, ecology and flavor of all of them. It is natural that given the sheer scope of the multiverse, 2 books (manual of the planes and planer handbook) would be incomplete compared to campaign setting.

This thread has made me want to go to my local hobby store and buy the boxed set. I still get upset when I recall my father threw out my original when I went to college.

Kaun
2009-12-18, 04:39 PM
the big change i noticed in 4E was the factions getting kicked out of sigil or did that happen earlyer and i just missed it.

Honestly i still have my 2E books for Fluff alot and just tool the crunch myself which isnt to hard.

arguskos
2009-12-18, 04:45 PM
the big change i noticed in 4E was the factions getting kicked out of sigil or did that happen earlyer and i just missed it.

Honestly i still have my 2E books for Fluff alot and just tool the crunch myself which isnt to hard.
Yeah, the factions were thrown out of Sigil when Planescape was pretty much ended at the end of 2e, what with Die, Vecna, Die! and all.

Eldan
2009-12-18, 05:49 PM
There was the mega adventure "Faction War", which ended with the factions tearing each other apart in civil war and the lady mazing almost all the factols.
Planewalker continued the story with the guilds, advisory council and a few new groups around.

jmbrown
2009-12-18, 06:27 PM
TSR shot themselves in the foot with their multitude of campaign settings. As much as I loved the plethora of settings (Birthright, Al'Qadim, Planescape, and Darksun being my absolute favorite RPG settings) they were basically competing against themselves. Wizards did a smart move by only focusing on a handful of settings and expanding on them with tons of material.

As for Planescape, I agree that Tony D. and the other interior artists really carried that setting with a unique look like a cross between Dr. Seuss and Hieronymus Bosch. It had a black humor that's absent in every other D&D product and general design idea was to make every adventure as dramatically ironic as possible.


WotC has released some sparse information about Sigil in the 4e Planar Handbook, along with the odd Paragon Path here and there (Mercykiller, Knight of Celestia(technically)). Past that and the Spelljammers that exist in the same book, there's not much that screams 'nostalgia'.

Sigil is given greater detail in 4E's DMGII. They basically recommend it for paragon tier heroes.


I'm more upset about Greyhawk. WOTC outright canceled it in 4e.

TSR removed all Greyhawk material from 2nd edition when Gygax left although they still published the Gazetteers separately. Wizards took an unwise (in business terms) move by making it their "default" setting. It meant they had to pay Gygax royalties so when they created the d20 license and other reference material (spell compendium, magic item compendiums, etc.) they removed all Greyhawk IPs like Mordenkainen and Bigby.

Matthew
2009-12-20, 08:47 PM
I really wish I owned more Planescape stuff, though another part of me thinks it is just too big to handle.



TSR removed all Greyhawk material from 2nd edition when Gygax left although they still published the Gazetteers separately. Wizards took an unwise (in business terms) move by making it their "default" setting. It meant they had to pay Gygax royalties so when they created the d20 license and other reference material (spell compendium, magic item compendiums, etc.) they removed all Greyhawk IPs like Mordenkainen and Bigby.

Whoah, no this is not correct. Gygax left TSR in 1985 and they pushed Greyhawk for a good long while afterwards, only really abandoning it in the early nineties when the Forgotten Realms hit its stride. As for royalties to Gygax, there absolutely were none; whatever residual rights he had to D&D he signed away in 2000(ish) and none had much of anything to do with Greyhawk. The Forgotten Realms was just much more popular.

Tiktakkat
2009-12-20, 11:55 PM
Planescape had a lot of issues.

First, as already noted, it came at a time when TSR was consuming itself with multiple settings.

Second, Faction War caused a severe rift among the fans, too many of whom were too caught up in the Factions to understand they were not the setting.

Third, Planescape had a very distinct "feel". Part of it as noted was the artwork. To a huge degree Tony DiTerlizzi defined essential elements of the setting. A lot of that is lost with different artists. Another part was the slang, or as called in the setting, the Cant. Unfortunately while the Cant attracted a great many people it also alienated a lot of others as the first batches of material had Cant heavily interspersed in the text. Not everyone appreciates having to read slang to use a game product. Worse, as part of the flavor, this text was heavily biased against non-planar settings. More people are alienated when told, in the game product, that they are "clueless", and do not really know how things work. Of course ultimately this was turned around and used to show that many setting NPCs were equally uninformed about the "true" nature of things, but that wound up alienating some fans who had become rather self-satisfied with how people who adventured in the planes were portrayed.
As a lesser aspect of this, it should be noted that using the Cant, which has strong elements of rhyming slang, allowed them to include material that would otherwise have been deleted by a censor. The commonly used term "berk" being the best (or is that worst?) example of that.

Fourth, increasingly Planescape material had edition compatibility issues. There are elements that really do not translate well into 3.5, and the massive cosmology shift in 4E would require a total rewrite of monsters just to get to a vague starting point of similarity.

Altogether, it is not surprising that Planescape has become little more than a source of proper nouns, with any new version having little relevance to the classical setting.
Of course that does not mean Planescape is not an incredible body of material. It is generally of exceptional quality, and despite the conversion issues I would recommend it to all 3.5 players. Just be prepared for the effort needed to absorb it all.


TSR removed all Greyhawk material from 2nd edition when Gygax left although they still published the Gazetteers separately. Wizards took an unwise (in business terms) move by making it their "default" setting. It meant they had to pay Gygax royalties so when they created the d20 license and other reference material (spell compendium, magic item compendiums, etc.) they removed all Greyhawk IPs like Mordenkainen and Bigby.

As Matthew said, no.
There were some lingering issues with Gygax over AD&D, which is one reason 2nd ed. was published, just as there were some lingering issues with Arneson over OD&D. Those were fully settled after WotC bought TSR.
The reason all proper nouns were removed from the SRD was not royalties, but product identity. Those names are part of the Greyhawk IP package, and WotC could not let other people use them casually. That is why even the Dungeon magazine adventures done by Paizo that were "set" there had to have most uses altered for their adventure paths. It is similar to why monsters like the mind flayer are not in the SRD, because those monsters are considered product identity material for D&D as distinct from other fantasy role-playing games, and thus were reserved.

jmbrown
2009-12-21, 12:21 AM
I really wish I owned more Planescape stuff, though another part of me thinks it is just too big to handle.


Whoah, no this is not correct. Gygax left TSR in 1985 and they pushed Greyhawk for a good long while afterwards, only really abandoning it in the early nineties when the Forgotten Realms hit its stride. As for royalties to Gygax, there absolutely were none; whatever residual rights he had to D&D he signed away in 2000(ish) and none had much of anything to do with Greyhawk. The Forgotten Realms was just much more popular.

There is no Greyhawk material in the 2nd edition core books, that's what I meant. It was completely world neutral and probably the most "generic" of the editions in that it didn't assume anything about your world.

Tiktakkat
2009-12-21, 02:42 AM
There is no Greyhawk material in the 2nd edition core books, that's what I meant. It was completely world neutral and probably the most "generic" of the editions in that it didn't assume anything about your world.

There was no Greyhawk material in the 1st ed core books either, other than NPCs in spell names and extremely incidental references in various artifacts in the DMG.
Those same spell names appear in the 2nd ed PHB, and various Greyhawk setting references appear in the Book of Artifacts, where they wound up after being generally banished from the DMG.

As for "most" generic, that is difficult to tell with any version of D&D prior to 3E.
Original D&D had no setting. It did have Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements, but aside from the titles the actual setting references in either is less than half a dozen words, the adventure in Blackmoor excepted.
BECMI also had no setting. It did introduce the Known World/Mystara, and it used it repeatedly for examples, but it in no way was set there. If you wanted to out a version of the Black Eagle Barony in your own world, "converting" it required virtually no effort. It stripped personal names off of spells, making it "more setting neutral" than either edition of AD&D.
And when it comes to it, except for those continued spell names and artifact backgrounds, all 3E added was using a bunch of Greyhawk deities as part of the "sample"/default pantheon. Beyond that, nothing actually established it as the setting for the rules.

sonofzeal
2009-12-21, 03:09 AM
I should mention that "Expedition to the Demonweb Pits" takes the heroes through Sigil, which to my little uneducated mind means Planescape.

jmbrown
2009-12-21, 04:20 AM
I should mention that "Expedition to the Demonweb Pits" takes the heroes through Sigil, which to my little uneducated mind means Planescape.

Sigil has more or less been homogenized into the default D&D "canon" as a city where all outsiders can hang out without killing each other. Sigil was a big part of Planescape but the flavor, factions, and play style are what drove everything together. Without it you're just playing in a planar neutral city overlooked by a floating omnipotent god(dess).

Haven
2009-12-21, 04:27 AM
Though honestly I always thought that Sigil got a bit too much focus compared to the infinite planes.

jmbrown
2009-12-21, 04:44 AM
Though honestly I always thought that Sigil got a bit too much focus compared to the infinite planes.

To be fair, it's difficult to focus on something that's infinite. You can list the creatures, terrain, and events you may encounter but it eventually boils down to the DM finding cool ways to challenge the players.

Sigil is the equivalent of a planar rest stop complete with tourist traps and quirky souvenirs.

Tiktakkat
2009-12-21, 04:59 PM
I should mention that "Expedition to the Demonweb Pits" takes the heroes through Sigil, which to my little uneducated mind means Planescape.

To a degree, it does.
And, not unsurprising given the author, the Sigil based bits and the majority of the non-dungeon crawl elements of the adventure are extremely "old school" Planescape.
Which should not be taken to say the other elements of the adventure are not good, again not unsurprising given the author, they are excellent. They are just less Planescape and really more "old-old-school" high level crawl.
Between those two elements, it is definitely an adventure worth buying and running.
It should be noted though that those two distinct elements highlight the reasons why 3.5 has issues with doing Planescape as a setting.


Though honestly I always thought that Sigil got a bit too much focus compared to the infinite planes.

Heh.
Yes and no.
Sigil got a lot of attention, but that is mostly because it was supposed to sort of a city-sized tavern the PCs meet in, get quests from, and use for R&R and outfitting. As such, it "needed" a lot of background material to provide tons of adventure seeds.
If you read the published adventures, you will quickly notice that a majority of the action in most of them takes place outside of Sigil. Even Faction War has major elements that take place outside of Sigil.

In many ways this is something I think the fanbase got "wrong", and contributed to why Faction War was so poorly received. People confused Sigil with the setting, and when something happened to change Sigil they felt is "ruined" the setting. I see it otherwise; it freed the setting from the lock the Factions and Sigil had been getting on it, reminding people that the setting was about all the other stuff out there, and not just focusing on only being an insignificant bit player in the grand machinations of Sigil, which themselves are insignificant because the Lady of Pain exerts ultimate deus ex machina control over the whole place.
As I noted before, the later setting products strongly hinted at this, reversing the previous presentation of Sigil being the be-all, end-all, center of all knowledge, blah, blah, blah, exposing it as just another refuge of poseurs.

Tiki Snakes
2009-12-21, 05:07 PM
To a degree, it does.
And, not unsurprising given the author, the Sigil based bits and the majority of the non-dungeon crawl elements of the adventure are extremely "old school" Planescape.
Which should not be taken to say the other elements of the adventure are not good, again not unsurprising given the author, they are excellent. They are just less Planescape and really more "old-old-school" high level crawl.
Between those two elements, it is definitely an adventure worth buying and running.
It should be noted though that those two distinct elements highlight the reasons why 3.5 has issues with doing Planescape as a setting.



Heh.
Yes and no.
Sigil got a lot of attention, but that is mostly because it was supposed to sort of a city-sized tavern the PCs meet in, get quests from, and use for R&R and outfitting. As such, it "needed" a lot of background material to provide tons of adventure seeds.
If you read the published adventures, you will quickly notice that a majority of the action in most of them takes place outside of Sigil. Even Faction War has major elements that take place outside of Sigil.

In many ways this is something I think the fanbase got "wrong", and contributed to why Faction War was so poorly received. People confused Sigil with the setting, and when something happened to change Sigil they felt is "ruined" the setting. I see it otherwise; it freed the setting from the lock the Factions and Sigil had been getting on it, reminding people that the setting was about all the other stuff out there, and not just focusing on only being an insignificant bit player in the grand machinations of Sigil, which themselves are insignificant because the Lady of Pain exerts ultimate deus ex machina control over the whole place.
As I noted before, the later setting products strongly hinted at this, reversing the previous presentation of Sigil being the be-all, end-all, center of all knowledge, blah, blah, blah, exposing it as just another refuge of poseurs.

I find this post to be both interesting and useful.
In fact, the sigil-as-hub set up mentioned happens to be how I am intending to utilise it in my own Campaign.

I think I might try and ramp up the level of poseurism in the place, actually. I think I enjoy the implied misdirections.

Gamerlord
2009-12-21, 05:11 PM
My feelings on Planescape are rather strange IMHO.

I never cared for 2e or earlier. Never have and never will play it.


And yet, this Planescape thing sounds so interesting,even though I have heard so little about it.

So, at least from what I understand on it, there is no material plane, just hundreds of planes and demiplanes.

My feelings on spacejammer or whatever it is called are the same.

Megaduck
2009-12-21, 05:14 PM
Though honestly I always thought that Sigil got a bit too much focus compared to the infinite planes.

I think that was part of the problem. The bigger part was that the planes themselves were just to high level. When Demons and Angels are running around in the millions it's hard for a level one to survive.

The result was that everyone ran around Sigil for 10-15 levels before they even COULD leave.

What planescape needed desperately was work on how to adventure at low levels in the planes (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Tome_of_Fiends_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Campaigning_on_the_Lower_Planes) like in the Tome of Fiends.

Another problem was that half the planes were pretty much off limit to adventuring. I mean, how are you supposed to go adventuring on Mt. Celestia as a good person anyway?

erikun
2009-12-21, 05:17 PM
There is a Prime Material Plane. It's just considered the backwater, uneducated plane of the multiverse. Heck, when even basic elementals can find their way around the Astral, then Prime berks look pretty ignorant.

Gamerlord
2009-12-21, 05:22 PM
There is a Prime Material Plane. It's just considered the backwater, uneducated plane of the multiverse. Heck, when even basic elementals can find their way around the Astral, then Prime berks look pretty ignorant.

Ah, I see, then what makes Planescape different from every other campaign setting?

erikun
2009-12-21, 05:35 PM
Ah, I see, then what makes Planescape different from every other campaign setting?
Generally how in-depth they went with the various planar settings. The Nine Hells was always a "place with devils" and the Abyss a "place with demons", but the individual sub-planes in each one weren't as fleshed out. Specific cities, such as Tu'narath and the City of Brass, not to mention Sigil, were either created or fleshed out. A lot of creatures, hazards, and other encounters were added to all planes, so you didn't just find fire elementals in the plane of fire, or just lanturn archons in celestia, or just githyanki on the astral.

Really, you could ask, "What makes Greyhawk different from every other fantasy setting?" A lot of the time, Greyhawk isn't different from generic fantasy - it's the specific locations, characters, and history that makes it different. In that sense, Planescape isn't that different from the generic D&D planes system - it's the people, the locations, and the history that makes it different. Well, and specifically having stuff to encounter.

Gamerlord
2009-12-21, 05:39 PM
Generally how in-depth they went with the various planar settings. The Nine Hells was always a "place with devils" and the Abyss a "place with demons", but the individual sub-planes in each one weren't as fleshed out. Specific cities, such as Tu'narath and the City of Brass, not to mention Sigil, were either created or fleshed out. A lot of creatures, hazards, and other encounters were added to all planes, so you didn't just find fire elementals in the plane of fire, or just lanturn archons in celestia, or just githyanki on the astral.

Really, you could ask, "What makes Greyhawk different from every other fantasy setting?" A lot of the time, Greyhawk isn't different from generic fantasy - it's the specific locations, characters, and history that makes it different. In that sense, Planescape isn't that different from the generic D&D planes system - it's the people, the locations, and the history that makes it different. Well, and specifically having stuff to encounter.

Good point.

Aron Times
2009-12-21, 05:40 PM
I am hoping for a Planescape/Spelljammer book for 4e that links the established campaign settings. We already have stats for Spelljammers in the 4e Manual of the Planes, so all we need now are the planes and crystal spheres that go with them.

Tiktakkat
2009-12-21, 05:49 PM
Really, you could ask, "What makes Greyhawk different from every other fantasy setting?" A lot of the time, Greyhawk isn't different from generic fantasy - it's the specific locations, characters, and history that makes it different. In that sense, Planescape isn't that different from the generic D&D planes system - it's the people, the locations, and the history that makes it different. Well, and specifically having stuff to encounter.

That is the same answer I gave when asked what makes Greyhawk different. :smallbiggrin:
So definitely, seconded!

Tiki Snakes
2009-12-21, 05:50 PM
Well, the planes are apparently getting a series of books in addition to the Manual, so really Planescape style stuff is really not looking difficult to see happening these days. (I really must pick up the Planes Below this week, actually.)

A pseudo-setting book detailing the interaction of the Settings/Matirial Planes and the others could be interesting, though it's really the kind of thing that personally I'll be blagging, bluffing and generally handwaving around to my own taste anyway.

The Tygre
2009-12-21, 05:58 PM
Oi, berks! You need to be asking us cutters from around before there were tieflings 'bout the Cage! Wha's with all these sods chatterin' their brain boxes off bout' the planes like they's Athar at the Spire? It's a demi-plane, or I'm hotter than a balor's breath, ye sodding sods of sodses...

FFTGeist
2009-12-24, 12:52 AM
I heard from someone somewhere something about Planescape.

It seems to have disappeared from 3.0 but a strange change happened, it got an upgrade.

In 2.0 it was its own campaign, while in 3.0 it was upgraded into core.
Alot of the fluff that we loved in planescape disappeared, but Sigil made it into core.

So if you miss planescape just go buy the old books and get the fluff from there. Or take the advice from the above users.

hamishspence
2009-12-24, 04:57 AM
3.5, not 3.0. Apparently Manual of the Planes is not considered "core"

That said, plenty of D&D sourcebooks in 3.0-3.5 have planar-related info. The aforementioned Manual of the Planes, the Planar Handbook, Fiendish Codex 1, and Fiendish Codex 2.

Aquillion
2009-12-24, 06:45 AM
My feelings on Planescape are rather strange IMHO.

I never cared for 2e or earlier. Never have and never will play it.


And yet, this Planescape thing sounds so interesting,even though I have heard so little about it.The easiest way to get its flavor nowadays (since you're unlikely to just randomly find people playing a game that uses it) is to play the PC RPG Planescape: Torment, which was very well done, using an engine similar to the Balder's Gate series. It does a decent job introducing new players to the world and guiding you through some of its key points.

And it has a good plot and good writing on its own merits, which is important.

Thrawn4
2009-12-24, 09:19 AM
The easiest way to get its flavor nowadays (since you're unlikely to just randomly find people playing a game that uses it) is to play the PC RPG Planescape: Torment, which was very well done, using an engine similar to the Balder's Gate series. It does a decent job introducing new players to the world and guiding you through some of its key points.

And it has a good plot and good writing on its own merits, which is important.

Agreed. It is argueable one of the best RPGs ever and the sole reason why I want a copy of "A Guide to Sigil".

Gamerlord
2009-12-24, 09:36 AM
The easiest way to get its flavor nowadays (since you're unlikely to just randomly find people playing a game that uses it) is to play the PC RPG Planescape: Torment, which was very well done, using an engine similar to the Balder's Gate series. It does a decent job introducing new players to the world and guiding you through some of its key points.

And it has a good plot and good writing on its own merits, which is important.

I tried to play the game, but I cannot figure out how to get out of the first area(That morgue thing)

Eldan
2009-12-24, 09:57 AM
Agreed. It is argueable one of the best RPGs ever and the sole reason why I want a copy of "A Guide to Sigil".

A Guide to Sigil isn't a bad book, but it's one of the less interesting ones of the Planescape books... it has endless pages describing slightly non-standard taverns and similar locations. I'd recommend Faces of Sigil, actually. That thing is the greatest book ever.

Tiktakkat
2009-12-24, 07:43 PM
I tried to play the game, but I cannot figure out how to get out of the first area(That morgue thing)

Ummm . . .
Listen to the skull and kill a zombie to get the key?

Or the whole Mortuary as a three-level area?
After that first bit of killing, do not kill anyone, just talk to them, and pay attention to them describing the way to get out.

SaintRidley
2009-12-25, 02:32 AM
3.5, not 3.0. Apparently Manual of the Planes is not considered "core"

That said, plenty of D&D sourcebooks in 3.0-3.5 have planar-related info. The aforementioned Manual of the Planes, the Planar Handbook, Fiendish Codex 1, and Fiendish Codex 2.

Indeed. The Codices in particular contained delicious information for Planescape fans.

JonestheSpy
2009-12-26, 05:16 PM
Though Planescape:Torment is in fact the best computer RPG ever, I did have a problem with the overall feel of Planescape. It just made the whole planar setup entirely too mundane in my opinion, and too small-feeling. The Outer Planes are supposed to be infinite spaces embodying the powers of good, evil, law, and chaos - Planescape made it all seem like just different neighborhoods in a big city. Nothing...transcendant, shall we say...about it at all. Worked for Sigil, but not the rest of it.

I suppose that was part of the point of the whole attitude/cant thing - that the ignorant primes think the outer planes should be all holy or mystical or whatever, and really it's just the same as anywhere else, berk...but that doesn't suit my particular ideas about the nature of the multiverse.

And really, who cares if the company wrote some module/story/whatever that "changes" Planescape - a DM is free to use whatever version they like, with factions, without, whatever. Though I understand the annoyance of no updating to new rule systems.

Blas_de_Lezo
2009-12-30, 12:38 PM
Indeed. The Codices in particular contained delicious information for Planescape fans.

Yeah, i particulary liked MotP, the Planemaster PP is awesome!! The open portal utility has lots of smart uses!! :smallbiggrin:

Lapak
2009-12-30, 12:55 PM
Nothing...transcendant, shall we say...about it at all. Worked for Sigil, but not the rest of it.

I suppose that was part of the point of the whole attitude/cant thing - that the ignorant primes think the outer planes should be all holy or mystical or whatever, and really it's just the same as anywhere else, berk...but that doesn't suit my particular ideas about the nature of the multiverse.
I always understood that the attitude, the cant, and so on WERE exclusive to Sigil, and that the Outer Planes did encompass all of the transcendence and wonder you describe. That's why Sigil was introduced; to give the PCs a hub or base of operations that fell within the range of what they understood as a leaping-off point to the incomprehensibility of a place that was, for example, built out of the essence of Lawfulness.

I think 'Sigil' and 'the Planes' got too intertwined in people's heads, and that was a flaw in the execution, but I don't think it was the intent of the setting.