When I first read them I thought: What else can we expect of clueless.
ut then came realization: Can not planars be also clueless? The outer planes are shaped by belief, so if faerunians think that's the outer plane arrangement, why can it not be so?
On the other side, all those "planes" mentioned could be realms within the planes. The connections are those that the deities allows to natives to see.
After all, the way we map out the outer planes is based on some idea of morality and some planar connections. If we change the planar connections chosen, wouldn't our mapping be different?
What do you think?
The Great Wheel cosmology is philosphically arranged. The Great Tree of Faerun is physically arranged just the way it looks, and it doesn't include any of the other worlds' Planes in its cosmology. It makes things definite. It's not like in Dragonlance where the Dragonlance people only "thought" that Takhisis lived in the Abyss (when she really lived in Baator). The 3E FR cosmology is set in stone and destroys everything that Planescape ever stood for - the ability for belief to shape the Planes.
No matter how hard you believe in FR, the Great Tree stays the way it is. If the Great Tree could be discounted as "just another barmy Clueless map," then it would be okay. But FR gives its tree as canon fact, and there's nothing in the Manual of the Planes/Planar Handbook that hints at the fact that it could all be wrong, and is just a matter of interpretation. So, it's not just the 3E FR Cosmology that makes it the problem... It's the overall 3E cosmology that does it, and the FR Cosmology just compounds the issue.
It's also that we've been told for years, all the way back to 1e, that the Wheel/Ring IS the planar cosmology and then all of a sudden in 3e a whole new planar cosmology was written up for FR that invalidates MOST of the 1e and 2e FR lore. Also WOTC has yet to give us a reason WHY the new planes are the new planes, however, we did get a explaination on why Lloth changed planes but for the rest of the new FR planes we are supposed to believe that they "have always been this way" and thus they invalidate all of the 1e and 2e FR planar lore that showed up in FR novels and FR sourcebooks.
Hells Ed Greenwood, the creator of FR, said to Shemmy a few days ago that he even doesn't want another planar cosmology for FR since the old one was what FR had since the beginning of being published but since there is another one then thats what is canon now even if we don't like it and it screws with the old material.
Other planes exists to other material planes and to the deities that are in the know, but as FR people don't believe in them
They should have put blanks in the Tree Cosmology, then. The way it is, it is - both from an in-game as well as an out-of-game viewpoint - a definite, final enumeration of the planes of existence. There is no "Faerûnian mages believe there may be other planes". There is no "perhaps" in that cosmology, and that makes me reject it, since it is one of the fundamental concepts of PS. Just a slight alteration to the Tree Cosmology would have made it believable as an ingame view by (apparently clueless ;)) loremasters.
Even if one were to take your standpoint, I do not think that there is a concept like "selective" existence, e.g. a thing exists for one person but not for another. The masses and masses of "believers in the planes" seriously outweigh the population of Faerûn, and that keeps the planes in existence the way they are.
In the Great Wheel cosmology, the astral is shaped as said great wheel. It's rather a great disc, in fact, allowing one to move from any point to any other point (save for lower layers of lower planes, and upper layers of upper planes).
In the Great Tree cosmology, the astral is shaped as a tree with two branches, that are then subdivided in smaller branches. In that tree, the upper planes are on a branch and the lower on another. You cannot move from an upper plane to a lower without going first to the trunk -- the material plane.
Now, you have two astral planes, who, their shape excepted, behave in all way exactly the same. Gods and mortals of Abeir-Toril know only of the Great Astral Tree. So, when they think of the Astral Plane, they use that Astral Tree. Gods and mortals of Greyhawk know only of the Great Astral Wheel. Likewise, with the Great Astral Wheel. Some exemplars know how to use the Astral Tree, some know how to use the Astral Wheel. Some know how to use the Great Astral Bicycle, the Great Astral Vacuum Cleaner, the Great Astral Cat-Pouncing-On-A-Great-Astral-Mockingbird, or the Great Astral Eniac. Some are utterly unable to use any of all the Great Astral Thingamabobs and stay in their home plane.
Now, the denizens of the Great Astral Carseat Cosmology knows everything about that, and are justified in calling everyone else -- Great Treehuggers, Great Wheelmen, and so on -- clueless. But they don't, because living in a Great Carseat is kinda lame. So they stay hidden and silent, and they sulk.
Everyone is linked to zero, one, or more, astral planes. It's the plane they go through when they cast teleport or planeshift. The poor souls linked to no astral plane at all cannot cast astral projection or teleport or planeshift or anything. It sucks to be them. Those linked to several plane go in each at the same time -- if you look at the mathematical notion of set, and see each Great Astral Thingies as a set, then people who are linked to several sets are linked to a merging of said sets.
Some people have discovered a way to travel from one Great Astral Gizmo to another -- a perilous trek through the Plane of Shadow.
Actually FR's new planes has at least 4 different and seperate Astrals connecting to Toril. Faeruns, Kara-tur's, Zakhara's, and Mazticas. Each pantheon has thier own Astral that is further seperate and different from each other.
Which seems kinda ridiculous to me. It deities things in seperate catagories too much- what happens if someone from Faerun worships a Mazticain deity, and wants to try and visit their deity's realm? Do they have to go to Maztica first? That's just plane messy.
The only reason I have for really being annoyed by all this is that I had to shell out extra money to figure out where Faerunian dieties live on the Great Wheel (getting a .pdf of a 2ed book).
In my game, only the most Toril-Centric fools believe that, and everyone who's ever had a prayer of traveling off plane knows better. Far worse- on other worlds there are people who think that the wider multiverse doesn't exist. At all.
It should be fun to have the players try to deal with that, when they come into that world via portal from sigil.
But my point is, you can have both cosmologies. If planar access in Faerun is limited mostly to their deities realms, a map from their point of view would be what is in the Player's Guide. I don't see where it invalidates the other planes lore, as is a cosmology of planes that are related to the FR. Other planes exists to other material planes and to the deities that are in the know, but as FR people don't believe in them they are not in their cosmologies.
Sorry, but wrong, wrong, wrong. Right in the Player's Guide it says that only the planes shown in the Great Tree are part of the FR cosmology. And only new FR products can add to that cosmology. That's what I tried to say. If it was really just the "ignorance of the FR people" (like it was in Dragonlance), then it would be fine. But it's not. It is a canon, OOC-printed fact that the FR Cosmology is a Great Tree, and there are NO Planes in it other than those shown there and those added by later FR products.
And the FR Cosmology "clones" the Abyss and Baator, among other things. So that means that there are two Orcuses, two Asmodeuses, etc. It is stated as a canon fact (NOT from the point of view of an ignorant Prime) that these Planes are different than those found on the Great Wheel. The same goes for the Inner Planes of FR, so we would have two Imixes, two Yan-C-Bin's, etc. And that's just idiotic.
Which seems kinda ridiculous to me. It deities things in seperate catagories too much- what happens if someone from Faerun worships a Mazticain deity, and wants to try and visit their deity's realm? Do they have to go to Maztica first? That's just plane messy.
The only reason I have for really being annoyed by all this is that I had to shell out extra money to figure out where Faerunian dieties live on the Great Wheel (getting a .pdf of a 2ed book).
In my game, only the most Toril-Centric fools believe that, and everyone who's ever had a prayer of traveling off plane knows better. Far worse- on other worlds there are people who think that the wider multiverse doesn't exist. At all.
It should be fun to have the players try to deal with that, when they come into that world via portal from sigil.
But the 2e books are better then then the 3e deity book.
And WOTC has yet to answer those questions about how other mortals from other lands access thier spells or if they die on Faerun and are from those other lands how do they get to thier deities realms.
It is kinda silly that there are 4 different and seperate astrals but thats just the way it is now. And as I said the first time the new planes totally retcon much of the old material. Sigh I so wish I had the list that some of us made over a year or so ago it contained over 30 errors on it because of the new planes.
And gives a nod to Gothic by agreeing with him that it's idiotic that there are hundreds of named beings that are now seperate from thier other named counterparts. Especially since, again, the creator of the setting wanted the gods from our ancient pantheons to be the same. Mielikki is the same finnish Mielikki, or so she was until 3e and now she is a seperate and different version of the same named being. Same situation for the other 4 or 5 dieties that are also from our pantheons.
The Great Wheel is NOT a STRUCTURE. It is a philosophical representation. Grrr.. 3E FR.. *Steam, smoke, fire*
I agree with the 2nd edition doctrine that I decide what is canon
A.K.A., Boccob was slain in my homebrew, so stop using him, he's dead. :P
You do not decide what is canon -- you decide what you use in your campaign. I understood what you meant, of course, but please do not change the meanings of words. Canon, by definition, is "official material set in the continuity of the work". (Well, that's not the actual definition, either, since "canon" was borrowed from religious jargon.)
And rule-zero is not a 2nd edition doctrine, it predates it, and survived it. :D
Ed's specific quote that I am referring to was:
The differences in cosmology are one of the reasons Planescape became a different product line: the fact that Planescape and the Realms are two distinct product lines allows two differing cosmologies to exist. You can certainly choose the one you prefer, but when writing a Realms novel set in, yes, the Realms, I'm going to stick to the Realms cosmology, and I'm going to disagree with criticism of that Realms novel advanced by you that tries to deem me "wrong" in my coverage of the Nine Hells because I in some manner don't follow Planescape cosmology. To me, it's as if you aren't happy that Captain Kirk doesn't seem to follow Darth Vader's command structure. :}
I just felt I should make that clear because Ed definitely does not prefer "the original." From what I took of his statement Ed Greenwood prefers a realms specific planar scheme for the Realms.
In other words, if you can actually walk from acheron to (Baator?) then that's not philosophy, that's how the multiverse is. Belief might change that, but that's the way it is right now. Since there's 2 sets of Demon Princes, Arch Devils, and Elemental Lords Fauerun is essentially gone. It is no longer a part of the multiverse. In other words it is no longer possible for the people of the realms to travel the REAL planes or even Sigil. Heh, maybe this is a good thing. I say good riddance.
Gray: I read from the above statement, and the rest of Ed's entire words, that he wants to use the Nine Hells as a Nine Hells separate from the Great Ring cosmology when writing Realms products because, simply put, the Realms now has its own Cosmology/Nine Hells. Later in that same reply you will see where it says that Ed Greenwood did not WANT there to be two separate cosmologies in the first place.
Okay, I don't want to mischaracterize what Ed said, I have to re-read it, but I got something very different from what Ed said than Kuje. He said that his version of hell is different from the Planescape hell and if they clashed, well then sorry, but his Realms version of hell would take precedence for the Realms.
Ed's specific quote that I am referring to was:
I just felt I should make that clear because Ed definitely does not prefer "the original." From what I took of his statement Ed Greenwood prefers a realms specific planar scheme for the Realms.
And for the record, I never said Ed prefered the old one. I said he didn't want the new one because it messes with the old established lore of the setting. Ed is a big canon official continuity type of person who wants changes explained and if they are not explained he, like some of us, wants to know WHY.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO QUOTE SOMEONE, QUOTE ALL OF HIS REPLY, thanks. Not just the part that "proves" your theory.
Here's Ed's full reply:
"December 11, 2004: Hello, all. Ed replies to Shemmy:
Well, quoted out of context like that, yes, I can certainly see why you (and others on other boards) would find my contention puzzling. I trust you’ll pass this entire reply along to those same forums to clarify matters.
If you ‘got into D&D’, as you say, with 3e, then of course the Planescape that’s been available to you from your beginning is the complete, mature product line. Colin’s superb product (published in 1997) is an example of the necessary design infill work that had to be done to give gamers enough hard information so that they could run a campaign wholly or largely set in the Planes (as opposed to “your characters in a dungeon on the Prime Material step through a doorway and ZAP, you’re briefly visiting ‘Somewhere Else’” play that necessarily dominated D&D campaigns before Planescape came along).
I wasn’t discussing or disparaging the merits or collective achievement of Planescape. I was specifically disagreeing with your contention that the Nine Hells had been largely developed and detailed in Planescape products, speaking as an insider who knew just how many hundreds (yes, hundreds) of manuscript pages of my Hells material were tossed into the trash or put into computer files that got used in the Manual of Planes and/or passed on to the designers of the first few Planescape products. I was privy to design discussions in which the then-Creative Manager of TSR expressed his amazement at the level of detail (and sheer AMOUNT, which was what triggered the “hey, we could do entire BOOKS of this stuff, you know?”) that I’d generated for the Hells (and, with Stephen Inniss, for Limbo, a project that was never used, though Stephen’s lillend did squeak through into print, and still appears in the 3.5e game today). You can of course only see the published results, not eavesdrop on the design genesis from those (1982 through about 1989) discussions.
Some of the other posters on the Elminster In Hell thread were obviously active gamers back then (when everybody in FRP gaming read The Dragon every month, and game store owners carried the rumors from GenCon and Winter Fantasy and Spring Revel back to their local faithful, and “everybody discussed everything”) and obviously recall what leaked into public hearing of the saga of my Hells designs (involving Gary Gygax, Frank Mentzer, Kim Mohan, and Jim Ward among others).
My complaints with the early Planescape products centered on the problem Jeff Grubb wrestled with when doing the Manual of the Planes: the moment you introduce ‘different’ planar environments than the familiar Prime Material into the game, you are dealing with inspiring ‘sense of wonder’ (or ‘gosh-wow,’ if you prefer) settings and possibilities that can make for marvellous gaming, but published products covering such settings quickly become very hard to use, without a LOT of DM preparation, if you don’t clearly answer all the life-cycle, ecological details I referred to, from the outset.
If the approach had been from the previously-used “your characters get plunged from the Prime Material Plane into Plane X, now what?” then the “okay, I’m on Avernus and my character’s thirsty/has to go to the bathroom/wants to build a hut; now what?” questions would have been covered right away. Instead, the earliest Planescape products made the same mistake the Manual of the Planes (and many of our 3e Realms products) have done: setting too wide a scope, and as a result covering “too much too lightly.” What was intensely frustrating to me - - and to many others involved - - was the ‘too much white space, too much “cutter-berk style” where we wanted more substance’ appearance of the early Planescape products. That was my complaint when I posted here, and my complaint as a consumer as the Planescape line started to unfold - - and in the case of the Nine Hells, I KNEW a lot of the work I’d done was missing.
If you infer from this that I’m criticizing Colin or any other game designer, you’re wrong. I know (believe me, I know!) that the final title, size, scope, and specific content of gaming products are only rarely determined by the folks who design them. Designer (or designers plural) writes, developer or editor chops a lot of that and rewrites the remainder, someone else reviews and rewrites again, and the result may bear very little resemblance to what the designer initially handed in. This can be very good, because multiple viewpoints and scrutineers make for a better-written, more widely-balanced product, but it often results in lots of material ‘going away.’ Today we have the web enhancement, but in those days, losses were either shoved into a future product (and yes, this happened with Planescape as well as with the Realms) or vanished forever.
I have, so far as I know, all of the TSR/WotC published planar materials. I’m familiar with them all, have used them in (2nd Edition) D&D play, and all in all, I love them. Yet I would still have preferred, rather than the line we got, a succession (right from the outset, not now in 3.5e) of hardcover rulebooks (not boxed sets), starting with an overview book (call it, ahem, Manual of the Planes), a full-length book on Sigil, a full-length adventurers’ book (call it, ahem, Planar Handbook), and full-length books on all of the other planes, one plane to a book. (If the line started to ‘run out of gas’ sales-wise after the first dozen or so planes were covered - - and of course the Nine Hells and the Abyss and Limbo and Hades should be ‘right up there’ in the first few books of the sequence - - then certainly start putting shorter coverage of several planes into one book.)
You are looking at Planescape ‘from the other end,’ so to speak, examining its coverage once everything had been published and the details filled in. I agree that Colin’s FacesFiends is the definitive coverage of matters devilish, and I don’t disagree with “these planar adventures of Ed’s Realms should really go into a separate high-level campaign line, along with the other planar ideas we’ve been toying with” thinking that won the day back then (it was certainly superior to the other design approach of the day, which was to take many things that weren’t originally part of the Realms and weren’t “sandpapered down to fit,” slap a Realms logo on them, and so ‘make’ them part of the Realms :} ).
To give a purely design example of the problem I was speaking of in my original El in Hell explanation, let’s look at the 3.5e FR Players Guide to Faerun. Flip to the Cosmology section, look up Brightwater (nice place, my PC wants to go there!), and: I’m not given enough. Show me some sights, at least give me a paragraph describing my initial sensations (color of sky, smells, fauna and flora, topography). Why isn’t there enough? Well, because we’re trying to cover every plane in a little bit of this one rulebook, that’s why. Planescape was guilty of this too: PRECISELY the same problem or deficiency is obvious in ON HALLOWED GROUND. It provides much better coverage than the PGtF does, giving aerial views of planes if not maps, but there’s still not enough flora and fauna. Spare me the endless deity-games-stats stuff [which should be, and had been, previously covered in other rulebooks] and provide instead a couple of pages of “On this plane, Resident Deity X can do thus and thus, even if you try this, or Resident Deity Y tries this. Here on this plane, Resident Deity X tries to/wants to/spends his-her-its days doing . . .” (I believe this sort of focus is what you’re alluding to when you speak of Planescape’s philosophy, and combat often being suicidal.) In short, as a DM, I can’t pick up either expensive rulebook and quickly run an adventure set in a plane they 'cover' without filling in a LOT of details myself. And as you might have noticed over years and years of Realms products, filling in lots of details is the hallmark of the Realms.
You have every right to prefer the Planescape version of the Hells. I have the right to prefer mine (and yes, as a designer, “I speak for the Realms,” as enshrined in the original agreement that gave TSR copyright ownership of the Realms; TSR and now WotC can ‘correct’ me by subsequently publishing different details on topics [remember that, aside from here at Candlekeep, I can’t just “say whatever wild thing I want to” about the Realms; in DRAGON and on the WotC website and in Realms products, I’m always working through editors], so the 'first word' on an aspect of the Realms is often mine).
The differences in cosmology are one of the reasons Planescape became a different product line: the fact that Planescape and the Realms are two distinct product lines allows two differing cosmologies to exist.
You can certainly choose the one you prefer, but when writing a Realms novel set in, yes, the Realms, I’m going to stick to the Realms cosmology, and I’m going to disagree with criticism of that Realms novel advanced by you that tries to deem me “wrong” in my coverage of the Nine Hells because I in some manner don’t follow Planescape cosmology. To me, it’s as if you aren’t happy that Captain Kirk doesn’t seem to follow Darth Vader’s command structure. :}
I hopes this makes things clearer. I neither wanted Planescape to be a different product line nor did I want two different cosmologies to develop, but we’re stuck with them. If you’d like me to follow Planescape, then I need the Planescape materials republished with Nine Hells-specific details changed to match all of the already-published Realms work, because consistency MUST trump all. As it was, I danced around a lot in plotting and writing ELMINSTER IN HELL so as to contradict differences as little as possible, yet you obviously still weren’t happy with the result. Well, so be it, I’m afraid - - but if you’d like to e-chat about this some more, I’m perfectly happy to do so.
Good luck with the thesis work. Are you deep in writing, or defending?
So saith Ed. Who’s busybusybusy right now, but promises to continues answering scribes as usual.
love to all,
THO"
Personally, I don't like the FR tree. I wouldn't mind a FR-style cosmology, but the tree just doesn't say "FR" to me...more like "we wanted to do something different for the express purpose of being different."
One thing I've always wondered about is what was the big deal between PS's nine hells and the nine hells Ed crafted? What was so glaringly different between the two? Individual rulers of said planes, or something else?
My understanding is that the "new" Realms cosmology was largely Sean's brainchild and most of the other designers were against it. For good or ill, Sean won out the arguement.
Personally, I don't like the FR tree. I wouldn't mind a FR-style cosmology, but the tree just doesn't say "FR" to me...more like "we wanted to do something different for the express purpose of being different."
One thing I've always wondered about is what was the big deal between PS's nine hells and the nine hells Ed crafted? What was so glaringly different between the two? Individual rulers of said planes, or something else?
Pretty much spot on in the 1st 2 paragraphs.
And Ed's Hells, from what he has said, contained over 100 pages of material. It detailed habitat, geography, sleep habits, places to expel waste, etc. A lot of it was cut for space or other reasons. But the only one who can truly answer that is Ed since he wrote the article in Dragon and his manuscript that TSR didn't fully use.......
Ignore the new FR cosmology. I have a few 2nd edition FR stuff, and it features the PLANESCAPE cosmology. Plus all my games(Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, especially the former) also use a unified cosmology.
Pretty much spot on in the 1st 2 paragraphs.
And Ed's Hells, from what he has said, contained over 100 pages of material. It detailed habitat, geography, sleep habits, places to expel waste, etc. A lot of it was cut for space or other reasons. But the only one who can truly answer that is Ed since he wrote the article in Dragon and his manuscript that TSR didn't fully use.......
Heh, well, Ed is definately detail-oriented. Guess long winters up in Canada does that to ya when you're locked up in a cabin for months at a time. Just seems weird that he has this hang-up about the nine hells.
Baatezu are not Modrons, theres bound to be a few Chaotic Baatezu.
True, but there's probably more risen (to neutral or good) Baatezu than chaotic ones largely because their conflict with the Tanar'ri is along the law/chaos axis. Viewing Baatezu society as a gigantic militaristic police state, chaotic viewpoints would be expunged utterly, and they'd kill anyone even suspected of harboring any chaotic taint.
A chaotic baatezu would be like finding a good yugoloth.
My understanding is that the "new" Realms cosmology was largely Sean's brainchild and most of the other designers were against it. For good or ill, Sean won out the arguement.
Yes. Well, Monte Cook wasn't against it: he was the one who intially pushed for not using the Great Wheel as standard in all campaign settings. And I don't know if anyone else was against it either, other than Ed Greenwood. But "yes" as in the Tree was specifically Sean K. Reynold's design.
When Ed Greenwood writes about the "Forgotten Realms cosmology" above he's not talking about the Tree, which he's said he didn't want; he's talking about one specific plane, the Nine Hells, and how it's portrayed in all previous Forgotten Realms products up to them, including the unpublished ones he himself wrote.
I saw a few striking differences between the Hells as Greenwood described them in El in Hell and Baator as Colin McComb described it.
1. Mystra was more powerful than the archdevils. That's the big one, and probably the one Shemmy has the most issue with. Colin McComb's Lords of the Nine are a match for the powers. Ed Greenwood was writing from more of a 1e/3e perspective in this regard.
2. Geryon was in El in Hell. In Colin McComb's Baator, he was replaced by Levistus, and it was implied in Faces of Evil that the two were alternate aspects of the same entity. The idea that Geryon existed in Baator, an exile in Stygia, appeared later on, in Monte Cook's A Paladin in Hell, and had nothing to do with Planescape or Mr. McComb. For that matter, El in Hell used a lot of 1e names for the archdevils (and the word "devil" itself) that were brought back in later 2e and 3e products but weren't part of Planescape.
3. Issues with food sources. Ed Greenwood's Nine Hells has weird teleport whorl things that deliver creatures from across the multiverse, randomly, for the devils to torment and eat. Colin McComb's baatezu eat larvae, lemures, prisoners captured in the Blood War or elsewhere, and drink from the rivers of blood and bile.
I'll note that Ed Greenwood's experiences as a freelancer are doubtless very different from Colin McComb's were as a core member of the Planescape Design Team. I think Colin had a lot less unwanted editorial or managerial interference, from what he and Monte Cook have since said online. Although, granted, he still might well have written a lot more than could be fit into the finished products.
It's a shame that Ed Greenwood's Nine Hells (other than in the form of three large Dragon articles and the unfortunate novel) and Limbo didn't see print, since he can be a good, creative game designer. His Five Shires gazetteer, detailing a halfing nation in the Mystara campaign, was pretty brilliant, full of flavor and interesting NPCs, taking halflings in a dozen unexpected directions. His Nine Hells articles were good in that they had a ton of detail, though they were mostly statistics for a seemingly endless number of diabolic nobles and got pretty repetitive quickly. And the third one was an interminable list of treasure found on the various layers. Good for inspiration, I've found, but little else unless you plan on an adventure that's all about killing all the nobles of Hell and taking their stuff. With 100 more pages, though, they might have been great.
There are many other differences between Greenwood and McComb's Hells/Baator if you compare the Dragon articles with Planes of Law. But they're all in the details more than in the broad strokes. Some of the baatezu stuff in Faces of Evil - the material on the Lords of the Nine and the nobles - was Colin backtracking a little, trying to reconcile his vision with the 1e one. Monte Cook and Chris Pramas ended up reconciling them in a different way, but really all you needed was in Faces of Evil.
If you’d like me to follow Planescape, then I need the Planescape materials republished with Nine Hells-specific details changed to match all of the already-published Realms work, because consistency MUST trump all.
So, Ed writes with what is canon, even if he doesn't agree with it. Which, I think, is the sign of a good game designer, as long as the previously established canon is not inferior work in the first place, which Planescape (and the 2E Realms) was certainly not.
I do not think that you can walk from one Plane to another. And if you can, I would posit that the physical distance you travel is a representation of a more philosophical journey - like climbing the layers of Mount Celestia. It states right in the Planewalker's Handbook that the Great Wheel/Ring is not "actually" how the Outer Planes are arranged, but rather a speculation based off of alignment and philosophy.
I hate to nit pick, but I just thought you might find this interesting. The following was cut and pasted from the PSCS.
"THE great road
. . . ain’t really a road and it ain’t all that great, but
that’s what folks call it: the Great Road, the Ring. Fact
is, it’s an idea more than a thing. There’s actually a road
on some planes, but mostly it’s the thought of the Ring,
the grand union of all the Outer Planes, that poets sing
about. What it really is is a string of portals, permanent
and unchanging, that link each Outer Plane to its adja-
cent fellows. Now, if a berk had the year? and the com-pliance of the fiends in his path, he just might be able to walk the whole thing in sixteen lifetimes, but, then, who’d want to?"
Since PS by nature represents the truth of the planes everything else is merely the misinterpretation of clueless primes. From their point of view they may see a "Great Tree" but it's not really there. Or else the planes have become a 2 way mirror where only the bloods on the Planescape side can see what's really going on.
The fact that the Great Ring/Wheel is NOT a physical structure like the Great Tree, and it never was meant to be, like it is in 3E.Consistency MUST trump all.
This was the reason why SKR managed to convince the other 3e authors that cosmologies have to be kept separate.
How can you keep cosmology consistency across a dozen settings and on the work of a thousand writers?
It's just not humanly possible. Keeping consistency amongst the FR line is already hard enough, but if, in addition, it has to stay consistent not only with old FR products, but also with old Greyhawk, Mystara, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Planescape, Birthright, Dragonlance, etc. products, then you'd need the designers to re-read old stuff for months before even starting to work on a new product, and then pass the drafts through the hands of a hundred proofreaders.
You'd end up with a couple of paperbacks published every year, and priced around $850 US for 32 pages.
Now what. You have separate cosmologies. Why make them different in addition? First, because it's better. Having cosmologies be clones of each others would be self-defeating when you aim to clearly separate them. Then because it's more fitting. It allows the cosmology to be designed to be “sandpapered down to fit” the setting, to paraphrase Mr Greenwood.
Look at Eberron's cosmology, with planes going in an out of conjunction and manifest zones. It's cool. It's nice. It's new. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE WITH THE GREAT WHEEL COSMOLOGY. Because "why does that prime world has these phenomenons and not Athas/Toril/Krynn/Oerth?" Because "so now that those things exist, they have to exist everywhere, and it will have to be retrofitted in the other settings, even if they are detailed enough as it is and it will just clutter and overcomplicate them." Because all this.
The Great Wheel is well and good, but it's not the Be All, End All of planar arrangements. It's well suited for Planescape (notably because Planescape modified it), but who can claim it should be used everywhere? It's pretentious to think it should.
The Great Wheel, like everything else, has flaws. It's set. Adding new outerplanes is difficult, you'd have to make them new layers of existing planes. And the only plane where you can add new layers without breaking continuity (consistency trumps all, remember? A third paradise of Bytopia or an 8th heaven of Celestia would be bad) is the Abyss. So, if you have a good idea for an outer plane, and that look nothing at all like one of the existing outer planes, you'd better make sure it's chaotic and evil and shockfull of Tanar'ri.
Unless, of course, someone will claim that it's impossible to have a good idea for an outer plane that couldn't fit as a domain for one of the existing outer planes. Go back to the "pretentious" comment.
The problem is even more blatant with inner planes. Want an elemental plane of acid? Where does that fit?
Another problem of the GW is its basic assumptions. Belief define reality, philosophy shapes the universe. It's a good premise, and is a good part the reason why Planescape is interesting. But what if you do not want to use that? Too bad. The Great Wheel Police says you can't publish your new setting because it does not use the Great Wheel.
Consistent with its arrangement by philosophies, the Great Wheel places the alignments above all else. A norse deity of thunder and an egyptian deity of cats would be put in the same plane, because they have the same alignment. The other deities of their respective pantheons are scattered in other places, and they never see each others. So you wonder how they are pantheons at all.
Unless you use the contrived mechanism of domains and says that, yes, the LE deity Mormoil is, with the rest of the Grogne pantheon, in the Grugnaga domain of Arvandor. His osyluth armies are barracked there, near the edge of the domain, just at an arrow's flight from this Eladrin city. Oh yes it is a perfect, logical, harmonious fit.
So, in the end, what? Enforcing a single cosmology is bad. It makes respecting continuity a nightmare, it prevents innovation and new ideas, it doesn't allow variety, and it forces the setting to be designed around the cosmology, even if in most campaigns the cosmology is just background noise.
"But how can we play crossovers without a single enforced cosmology?"
Well, you can always design your own ways to link separate cosmologies. The MotP suggests the Plane of Shadow for that. You can also try something else (I'd use the Far Realm, myself). Or, you can have an incredible idea:
Use the cosmology of your setting.
So, you want to play Planescape, but with a few trips to Toril? Well, use the Planescape cosmology.
And you, on the other hand, you want to play Forgotten Realms, but with a few trips to Sigil? Well, use the Forgotten Realms cosmology.
That way, you'll always have the cosmology that was designed to fit best your setting of choice! Weeeee!
(Do not come and say that the Great Wheel fits Faerûn best. You wouldn't be sincere. You're all Planescape players, there.)
Since PS by nature represents the truth of the planes everything else is merely the misinterpretation of clueless primes. From their point of view they may see a "Great Tree" but it's not really there. Or else the planes have become a 2 way mirror where only the bloods on the Planescape side can see what's really going on.
This is the perfect example of a pretentious post. Planescape "by nature" represents the truth of the planes. Yes, the truth of the Planescape planes. To have the truth on the Mystara planes, I'd look the setting material for Mystara, thanks.
"they may see a "Great Tree" but it's not really there."
To quote again what you yourself quoted: The Great Ring (the old name of the Great Wheel) is "an idea more than a thing." In other words, "poets" may see a Great Wheel, but it's not really there.
"Only the bloods on the Planescape side can see what's really going on."
No, it's false, and you should know it. As I revealed previously, only the zroungs on the Great Carseat side can see what's really, really going on.
I associate Acid with the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze, personally. Not that hard of a stretch at all. Planescape was never about logic, and that's part of what made it so fun. It was about Belief. You could toss logic right out the window. If it was all logical, you wouldn't have the Xaositects running around.
Part of the Great Ring's idiosyncratic nature WAS the fact that there were severe culture clashes. A Nors God of Thunder and an Egyptian God of Cats sharing the same plane? FANTASTIC! Imagine the philosophical debates that could arise from their worshippers meeting each other! Just because deities of the same pantheon are scattered throughout the Planes hardly makes them any less a pantheon. Remember, since the Great Ring is just a thematic structure, distance is moot. From Mount Celestia to the Abyss takes the same amount of time for a god to get from Mount Celestia to another layer of it. In Planescape, distance is nothing, especially for deities. You might as well consider the Abyss right next door to Mount Celestia.
Just because your family (pantheon) doesn't live in the same house (plane) as you hardly makes them any less your family. Especially when you can visit them, as often as you like, in the blink of an eye.
As to sounding pretentious? I'm pretentious. Yup. I admit that on a regular basis. I believe that consistency from one world to the next is just as important as consistency from one FR product to the next, myself.
No one "sees" the Great Wheel. They only assume, philosophically, that it's the best way to arrange it.
On the other hand, FR claims that the Great Tree is the actual, real, only method of the cosmology being physically arranged. And I think that is far more pretentious than any opinions that have been brought up on this thread, especially from an edition which was supposed to emphasize the Prime Material Plane over the rest of the cosmology, and in which it was stated that there was the assumption that not many PCs would travel the planes.
The very reason for Planescape was to bring together desparate sources and make the truth out of them. It severely degrades the idea of the campaign setting as a whole to say, "Oh, those Planes exist in a vacuum." Planescape was meant to be THE PLANES. That's how it was designed.
How would you like if Greyhawk tried to tell someone that Elminster was a 0 level peasant, and this was a canon, OOC fact? Yes, the same Elminster in FR, even though it is an entirely different campaign setting. That's about the same thing as a campaign setting telling you that its version of Baator is where the Eladrin live.
Planescape was MADE to be consistent from one Prime world to the next, and that's why the whole "Primes see things as they think they are" thing came about. It was an integral part of the setting. In 3E, simply put, the priorities shifted away from continuity and more towards making each individual campaign setting new and shiny and unique.
I hardly consider a setting being "set" to be a flaw. Oh no, there can't be an 8th layer of Mount Celestia! Um... So? That's part of the campaign setting. It's part of the lore. You do not randomly change the lore for ANY campaign setting without an IC/story reason for doing so. That's one of the things that Ed Greenwood was talking about when he mentioned consistency. For instance, it makes NO sense that there are Chosen of every deity suddenly running around. Planescape has every right to be as consistent and "set" as a Prime setting should be.
If it isn't consistent, I say toss it.
I am personally glad that they didn't continue the Planescape setting into 3E, after seeing all of the ways that 3E has slaughtered FR (besides the planes themselves).
And as to Planescape not fitting FR the best? I don't see why not, considering it's used them since 1E. It would certainly be more consistent than throwing a new cosmology at us all of the sudden and pretending like none of the old stuff never happened, or that the new stuff is a "better picture" of the world than all of the old (I daresay better and more experienced) game designers created. Ed Greenwood himself worked on several of the Outer Planes. How can you believe that a few 3E game designers (who tend to put out extremely dry, boring work) could do better than the 2E designers, Ed Greenwood above all?
The Great Tree is undetailed. It is pretentious (to use your own wording) by saying that all of the work of past designers was "inaccurate." It creates tons of consistency flaws that we would have to go through and retrofit, and that really shouldn't be our job. It's cheap and uninspired (still having Baator, Arvandor, etc. - what's the point in making your own cosmology if you just have to rip half of your information off of the cosmology you considered inferior in the first place?). The Outer Planes are incredibly boring places to adventure, because each one is completely controlled by the deities that live there.
How in the world does this fit FR MORE when FR has been written to fit into the Great Wheel for decades?
EDIT: I apologize for my post being rambling and disorganized. I wasn't intending for it to be very long... Cough.
FR was a horrible choice to create a new cosmology, for a host of reasons. It has no history of differing planes; you can easily get by with new cosmologies for Dragonlance, Birthright, and Dark Sun and nobody would bat an eye. FR, on the other hand, has been deeply integrated with the Great Wheel setup from the beginning. Dumping it causes massive holes. Such as the Tree doesn't cover cultures beyond Faerun, so now Toril should really have 4-6 seperate cosmologies (Faerun, Mazteca, Kara-Tur, Hordelands, etc). Toss in the fact that FR's history has been built up of planet- and plane-hopping. Most human races, dwarves, elves, and orcs all come from other worlds. That just gets ugly.
Secondly, there's no reason for Eberron not to have a special relationship with the planes, either with existing planes (most of their planes bare little difference to pre-existing planes) or with new (demi)planes. The idea of a world having a different relationship with the planes is hardly new (DL, BR, DS anyone?).
Thirdly, I wouldn't claim the Wheel is the be-all, end-all of planes. Heck, I like the idea of different cosmologies, especially to handle the special cases of some worlds and to allow the playing with new planes (faerie, far realm). But the tree doesn't really offer anything new, other than headaches.
Well, that's enough of me rambling for now
Sure, consistency is important, but when it gets in the way of good game playing or storytelling, I see no reason not to shake things up. Make some adjustments.
I am partial to Gez's arguments. I think separating the cosmoi was a good thing.
Hey, I really loved Planescape and had as much fun as anyone romping around the Great Wheel back in the day. And I was surprised when the FRCS introduced the new revised FR cosmology.
I looked askance at the Great Tree at first. But then as I started looking at it more I wanted to know more about it. No Limbo? Hmmm, well then where do the Slaad live? Well they could go here... It intrigued...
The more I played with it the more possibilities opened up. It made more sense to me--and yes seemed more consistent to me to have a Faerun-o-centric cosmology without Greek gods and Norse gods (excepting Tyr of course! ;) ) or American Indian gods or Hindu gods running around where they had no place. Even the names of the planes and planar sites sounded plain wrong to an ear attuned to the names and languages of Toril.
Despite how I come across, I would have been fine if they had kept the Great Wheel for Faerun with the 3rd edition. I loved the Great Wheel in its day. However, I have grown to love the Great Tree and figuring out all the details of it has been half the fun for me. It suits my sensibilities and it makes sense and works well for my campaign.
That said I think people should stick with the Great Wheel if they prefer it for their campaign. Or dump the established planes and create their own cosmology if that is what works for them.
Good gaming and storytelling--even more than consistency--are what are most important for me, and guaranteeing your players a great night of fun should be the predominant consideration when creating your world and its cosmology.
Sure, consistency is important, but when it gets in the way of good game playing or storytelling, I see no reason not to shake things up. Make some adjustments.
And consistency did not get in the way of good gameplay or storytelling. 2E did just fine with it for many years, actually. I think that if anything the storytelling and plots of 2E were far better than the 3E ones.
The more I played with it the more possibilities opened up. It made more sense to me--and yes seemed more consistent to me to have a Faerun-o-centric cosmology without Greek gods and Norse gods (excepting Tyr of course! ) or American Indian gods or Hindu gods running around where they had no place. Even the names of the planes and planar sites sounded plain wrong to an ear attuned to the names and languages of Toril.
Which is really funny, considering they pretty much kept all of the divine realms with the same names that they had in 2E, and that's all that matters.
And the very fact that it is so Faerun-o-centric is what I hate about it. I personally WANT to have dozens of other deities and cultures on the Planes. That's like saying if they threw out Thay, Calimport, the Old Empires, the Serpent Kingdoms, and the Shining South, that it would make FR a better campaign setting because it was "Western European-o-centric."
.... Right.
I'm sure dumping all of those other pantheons' myths and deities made FR a better campaign setting, too.
Good gaming and storytelling--even more than consistency--are what are most important for me, and guaranteeing your players a great night of fun should be the predominant consideration when creating your world and its cosmology.
And the best thing is good gaming, storytelling, AND consistency.
The only thing I have to say to that is: Consistency trumps all... Even from one edition to the next. ESPECIALLY from one edition to the next.
Which is why you need to have things like the Time of Trouble to kill all assassins, because assassins aren't in the AD&D2 PHB, so, in order to make it consistent with the previous edition, you need to invent a contrived reason to explain the disparition of assassins.
Of course, you could just have said that they were now thieves, but then they would have been modified in the conversion, losing some abilities and gaining some others they didn't have.
Better to slaughter them all.
And likewise, when updating to the 3rd edition, make sure that there are not any single sorcerer, since this is a new class. There couldn't be any NPC sorcerer before 3rd ed. So, make up another contrived reason why sorcerers are appearing.
You end up with a setting that's more defined by the ruleset you use than by its "fluff". No, not a good idea.
A Norse God of Thunder and an Egyptian God of Cats sharing the same plane? FANTASTIC! Imagine the philosophical debates that could arise from their worshippers meeting each other!
And if you have no reason at all to include egyptian gods in your Vinland Saga All-Norse Viking-Only campaign? What if you hate Egyptian gods because you think they're filthy furry perverts? (:P) When you prepare your campaign, you have to read stuff about things you won't use just because it had to be hodgepodged with what you'll be using.
The very reason for Planescape was to bring together disparate sources and make the truth out of them.
There is no truth. Not when you're speaking about different lines written by different authors having different ideas. Why would Gruumsh be part of Dragonlance's cosmology, when there aren't any orc in Krynn? Why should the Forgotten Realms not use Lolth any longer because she was slain by adventurers at the conclusion of the GDQ modules?
Planescape and Spelljammer were proposed as ways to bridge other setting lines, true -- but they were foremost campaign setting in themselves. PS doesn't need Faerûn. And vice-versa.
It severely degrades the idea of the campaign setting as a whole to say, "Oh, those Planes exist in a vacuum." Planescape was meant to be THE PLANES. That's how it was designed.
And that's an impossible aim. What about the cosmology from the World of Darkness? Why isn't Planescape compatible with the Umbra and the Dreaming and all that? In which plane are Cain and Lilith? In which faction do the Traditions and Conventions belong? Why are there no Wyrm, Wyld, and Weaver spirits? Where is the Glasswalker community in Sigil?
Uh-oh... Seems Planescape isn't the TRUTH of these planes. Too bad. Because I was also wondering about Pendragon. And the Lone Wolf gamebooks. And Magic: the Gathering. And Star Wars. And Star Trek. And Twin Peaks. And the It's Walky! webcomic. And so on...
How would you like if Greyhawk tried to tell someone that Elminster was a 0 level peasant, and this was a canon, OOC fact? Yes, the same Elminster in FR, even though it is an entirely different campaign setting.
I don't care that much about old Elmo, but nonetheless, you've just illustrated why it is foolish to want one setting to impact on the cosmologies of other settings. Greyhawk has no reasons to say anything about Elminster. People who would use Elminster would find it really weird to have to buy Greyhawk stuff to find missing info about him.
Likewise, people who play in Planescape have no reason to buy the Forgotten Realms line to find Planescape info, and people who play in the Forgotten Realms have no reason to search Realmslore in PS products.
FR and PS are two separate settings, who have no business trying to enforce themselves into the other.
That's about the same thing as a campaign setting telling you that its version of Baator is where the Eladrin live.
Yes. Fortunately, no one, outside of people on this here board, are proponents of such settings. If you look at the FRCS, it tells you about what the cosmology OF TORIL is, and do not say anything about the cosmology of Planescape. Unless your copy of the FRCS is different than mine, nowhere is it written that you have to burn the Manual of the Plane and tear any page in any non-FR book that hints at the default D&D cosmology.
Likewise, nothing prevent someone to write that there is a 1st-level goblin commoner named Elminster in Oerth. That's all fine and well. In fact, it's very possible. And FR players would have no reasons to feel offended by that.
Planescape was MADE to be consistent from one Prime world to the next, and that's why the whole "Primes see things as they think they are" thing came about.
Planescape was made to facilitate planar campaigns, rather than the existing default of a couple of planar jaunts at the end of an high-level campaign. The consistency from one Prime world to the next was attempted (and it was failed, anyway, since the cosmologies of Mystara, Aebrynnis, and Athas where too different to integrate easily without inventing special barriers and exceptions), but it wasn't the first goal.
It was an integral part of the setting. In 3E, simply put, the priorities shifted away from continuity and more towards making each individual campaign setting new and shiny and unique.
What a disaster. Sure, they should have worked hard to make them old and bland and uninspired.
I hardly consider a setting being "set" to be a flaw. Oh no, there can't be an 8th layer of Mount Celestia! Um... So? That's part of the campaign setting. It's part of the lore. You do not randomly change the lore for ANY campaign setting without an IC/story reason for doing so.
Let say for a moment that WotC, bolstered by Eberron's success, decide to make a new campaign setting search, and I win this one. In my setting, gnomes and kobolds are not bitter enemies, in fact, they're best buddies. Kobolds are LN rather than LE, and gnomes are LG rather than NG. There's a lot of Gnome & Kobold monastic and chivalric orders, and all that. Of course, in this all-new campaign setting, gnomes would not have a +1 to hit kobolds.
ALARM!
This is an all-new campaign setting, unconnected to any other, but here I'm told that I must not break continuity of other settings that have nothing in common with mine. I'm just not allowed to create a new setting with different gnome traits, and a different gnome/kobold background, than the one you find in Greyhawk, because it would be, somehow, considered as breaking Greyhawk's continuity?
Likewise, if my setting has 12 heavens and 10 courts of Hell, I'm not allowed to, because of Planescape.
But I don't care about Planescape! It's my setting! My own genius setting, the one that won the new setting search! It has nothing at all to do with Planescape, and is not intended to affect Planescape nor be affected by it!
But no. Continuity across all game lines and all editions.
Then I'm told that I must also comply with the GI Joe continuity.
It's cheap and uninspired (still having Baator, Arvandor, etc. - what's the point in making your own cosmology if you just have to rip half of your information off of the cosmology you considered inferior in the first place?).
The point? Consistency... :P
It's not that the Great Ring is inferior. It's that the Great Ring is Greyhawk's cosmology, with St. Cuthbert and Incabulus and Tharizdun and all that, and that it's not the Realms' cosmology.
Both have a lot in common, and they may even be merged thanks to all those things they have in common (see the multiple astral comment far above), but, by their nature, they are not supposed to influe on each other. Because Lolth's silence in the Realms should not extend to Greyhawk or Sigil.
The Outer Planes are incredibly boring places to adventure, because each one is completely controlled by the deities that live there.
That much is false. First, there are planes that aren't inhabited by deities, and second, only a plane inhabited by a single deity could be under complete control.
How in the world does this fit FR MORE when FR has been written to fit into the Great Wheel for decades?
Yup, there's bound to be a number of contradictions. Very minor, on the whole -- unless you play in a planar-intensive campaign, that is to say, a Planescape campaign rather than a Realms one. So what if in a 2e sourcebook's deity statblock it says that Mistra resides in Nirvana, when all the rest of the statblock has also changed since?
The Tree was an attempt at making a Torilian cosmology that would be more adapted to the Realms. You can debate about the implementation, argue it has succeeded or failed.
But the principle is sound.
Which is why you need to have things like the Time of Trouble to kill all assassins, because assassins aren't in the AD&D2 PHB, so, in order to make it consistent with the previous edition, you need to invent a contrived reason to explain the disparition of assassins.
Of course, you could just have said that they were now thieves, but then they would have been modified in the conversion, losing some abilities and gaining some others they didn't have.
Better to slaughter them all.
And likewise, when updating to the 3rd edition, make sure that there are not any single sorcerer, since this is a new class. There couldn't be any NPC sorcerer before 3rd ed. So, make up another contrived reason why sorcerers are appearing.
You end up with a setting that's more defined by the ruleset you use than by its "fluff". No, not a good idea.
Exactly. And the fluff of 2E says that there aren't assassins (unless they are the assassin kit), there aren't Monks (the 1E monks were probably changed to 2E monks), there are no sorcerers, etc. So, that's how I would play my Realms game.. In keeping with the fluff.
Now you begin to understand why I hate the 3E Realms. Because they add things into it with no explanation that shouldn't be there, according to previous editions. They don't add anything to the mood/story of the Realms at all, so why should they be there in the first place? Just to give the consistency supporters a headache?
If I ran the Realms, there would be no sorcerers, among other things.
And if you have no reason at all to include egyptian gods in your Vinland Saga All-Norse Viking-Only campaign? What if you hate Egyptian gods because you think they're filthy furry perverts? () When you prepare your campaign, you have to read stuff about things you won't use just because it had to be hodgepodged with what you'll be using.
Which is true for every campaign setting, taking into account the Planes or not. I don't give a hoot about the Sword Coast (not my favorite area of the Realms), but I am still glad that it is in there - because it shows that the Realms is more than a video game. It shows that it is a world that has been detailed for years, and that it is reeking of culture, whether or not you like that culture.
This was a major thing that people couldn't understand about the Nimbral articles. "There is nothing to fight! It's boring! Stop printing it!" People need to realize that the Realms are a story setting first and foremost, and then a game setting. And that would include the Planes of the Realms, too, extraneous material and all.
There is no truth. Not when you're speaking about different lines written by different authors having different ideas. Why would Gruumsh be part of Dragonlance's cosmology, when there aren't any orc in Krynn? Why should the Forgotten Realms not use Lolth any longer because she was slain by adventurers at the conclusion of the GDQ modules?
Lolth is multispheric, so even if she was slain in GH, unless she was slain on her home plane, she would still be in FR. The questions you're positing are like, "Why put Japan on a map when I'll never visit there?" Answer: "Because it's still there, even if I'm personally ignorant of it." 3E's view on things is if you don't directly need something for a game, don't put it in.
I hate that. A lot. I want information. I want knowledge about every little innuendo of the Realms. The Great Tree and the chapter about it in the PGtF tells me nothing. Worse than that, the blame can't be laid on the fact that they only had "so much space," because Planescape personally captivated me within the first few pages of the campaign setting booklets themselves.
Planescape and Spelljammer were proposed as ways to bridge other setting lines, true -- but they were foremost campaign setting in themselves. PS doesn't need Faerûn. And vice-versa.
You are very hooked on the fact of "necessity," when in fact nothing about PS or the FR cosmology is a necessity. FR was the most planar-heavy Prime setting ever and it used the Planescape cosmology in novels and supplements regularly. Whether or not it "needed PS" isn't the question. The question is, "Is it more consistent to make FR fit Planescape as long as it doesn't hurt the FR story itself?" PS didn't hurt Forgotten Realms at all, especially considering the creator of Forgotten Realms was also a regular adviser to the PS crew.
And that's an impossible aim. What about the cosmology from the World of Darkness? Why isn't Planescape compatible with the Umbra and the Dreaming and all that? In which plane are Cain and Lilith? In which faction do the Traditions and Conventions belong? Why are there no Wyrm, Wyld, and Weaver spirits? Where is the Glasswalker community in Sigil?
Uh-oh... Seems Planescape isn't the TRUTH of these planes. Too bad. Because I was also wondering about Pendragon. And the Lone Wolf gamebooks. And Magic: the Gathering. And Star Wars. And Star Trek. And Twin Peaks. And the It's Walky! webcomic. And so on...
.... Those are not AD&D. I'm not sure where you're going with this. Unless something is supposed to be written in AD&D, it has nothing to do with Planescape. And if it is written for AD&D, it should have conformed (at least behind the scenes, if not in the knowledge of your average NPC) to the Planescape cosmology. It's really not that hard to do.
And, for a different matter, WhiteWolf did indeed try to make their cosmology consistent, too, even if they made different groups see things in different ways, or call certain places/things by different names. Which is exactly what Planescape did.
I don't care that much about old Elmo, but nonetheless, you've just illustrated why it is foolish to want one setting to impact on the cosmologies of other settings. Greyhawk has no reasons to say anything about Elminster. People who would use Elminster would find it really weird to have to buy Greyhawk stuff to find missing info about him.
Likewise, people who play in Planescape have no reason to buy the Forgotten Realms line to find Planescape info, and people who play in the Forgotten Realms have no reason to search Realmslore in PS products.
FR and PS are two separate settings, who have no business trying to enforce themselves into the other.
I agree. And Planescape was The Outer Planar setting. So, as far as I'm concerned, all Planes outside of the Prime Material Plane are part of the Planescape campaign setting, except for perhaps the Inner Planes, but since the material covered those too, the question is moot. You never saw Planescape trying to detail what level Elminster was, or what level Raistlin was. Why? Because they were not part of Planescape. The Abyss, however, and all of the other Planes, were part of Planescape, because Planescape was set down in the beginning as the cosmology for the AD&D universe.
Yes. Fortunately, no one, outside of people on this here board, are proponents of such settings. If you look at the FRCS, it tells you about what the cosmology OF TORIL is, and do not say anything about the cosmology of Planescape. Unless your copy of the FRCS is different than mine, nowhere is it written that you have to burn the Manual of the Plane and tear any page in any non-FR book that hints at the default D&D cosmology.
The Manual of the Planes disgusts me too, but that's besides the point. You are coming from a point of view as if the Cosmology of Toril was originally separate from Planescape, and it is not. It never was meant to be. The cosmology of Toril in 2E WAS Planescape, and it was the BIGGEST proponent of the Great Wheel out of all Prime settings.
In saying the above, you are assuming the fact that I think it was right/okay to have a cosmology of Toril separate from Planescape, and that is simply not the case, because THAT is what I'm arguing in the first place.
And Toril doesn't have it's own cosmology. Every bloody continent does. Zakhara, Kara-Tur, Maztica, FR... Jesus, it's a mess.
Planescape was made to facilitate planar campaigns, rather than the existing default of a couple of planar jaunts at the end of an high-level campaign. The consistency from one Prime world to the next was attempted (and it was failed, anyway, since the cosmologies of Mystara, Aebrynnis, and Athas where too different to integrate easily without inventing special barriers and exceptions), but it wasn't the first goal.
I really don't see how it failed. Trying to make a cosmology consistent should NOT be easy. But maybe that's just because, from the point of view of a physics major, nothing about the universe is "easy" to figure out. I personally like things that aren't "easy." It was "easy" to make an entirely new cosmology (with poorly veiled references to the old cosmology) and make every player/DM fix all of the consistency problems. That is certainly not what I'm looking for.
What a disaster. Sure, they should have worked hard to make them old and bland and uninspired.
A) What's wrong with old?
B) Bland is a completely subjective term.
C) They were inspired in the first place by something else.
I hate when things are made unique/special/nonconformist just to draw attention, and that's exactly what WotC is doing. Players should appreciate stories, settings, etc., for the innate artistic value put into the work. They should appreciate it because of the time put into it, the consistency, and the complexity. They should not appreciate it just because it's "new."
At least, that's my own personal criteria for playing with a person.
I'm sure that many people out there disagree, but that's my opinion, as pretentious as it sounds.Let say for a moment that WotC, bolstered by Eberron's success, decide to make a new campaign setting search, and I win this one. In my setting, gnomes and kobolds are not bitter enemies, in fact, they're best buddies. Kobolds are LN rather than LE, and gnomes are LG rather than NG. There's a lot of Gnome & Kobold monastic and chivalric orders, and all that. Of course, in this all-new campaign setting, gnomes would not have a +1 to hit kobolds.
ALARM!
This is an all-new campaign setting, unconnected to any other, but here I'm told that I must not break continuity of other settings that have nothing in common with mine. I'm just not allowed to create a new setting with different gnome traits, and a different gnome/kobold background, than the one you find in Greyhawk, because it would be, somehow, considered as breaking Greyhawk's continuity?
Since it's not connected to any other campaign setting, as you said, I wouldn't give a darn. But if, in your campaign, the Kobolds traveled from another world in which they were LE, I would want a reason why they had changed, over history, to become LN.
And that's part of the reason why 3E FR is so horrible. Because there was a LOT of Planar travel, from the very beginning. Elves are planar interlopers. Dwarves are. Halflings are. TONS of deities are. So they are NOT disconnected from the other settings, so YES, I do want a reason why they are now different (or rather, why they would be different, if they were).
Likewise, if my setting has 12 heavens and 10 courts of Hell, I'm not allowed to, because of Planescape.
But I don't care about Planescape! It's my setting! My own genius setting, the one that won the new setting search! It has nothing at all to do with Planescape, and is not intended to affect Planescape nor be affected by it!
If you make an AD&D setting, then it has to do with Planescape. It's as simple as that. Because Planescape was meant to connect all settings in AD&D.
12 Heavens and 10 hells? In YOUR setting, you can pretend like they're different planes or whatever you want. But, just like in Dragonlance, when all things from all worlds are brought together into one cosmology (the Planescape setting), things have to be ordered to fit properly. So you're 12 Heavens are shuffled into Layers of Mount Celestia.
Big deal. No one other than those who play Planescape will even know the difference, and your PCs have absolutely no reason to know the difference unless they travel into the Planes.
But no. Continuity across all game lines and all editions.
If you willingly sell your idea to a gaming company, you have no right to complain about any enforcements they make on your ideas. Do you think Ed Greenwood is terribly happy with what they did to his Realms? No, he's said on multiple occasions that editors slaughtered what he originally detailed. Did he make a big hoop-la about it? No. Because he DECIDED to sell it to TSR, KNOWING that they would do whatever they wanted with it, with him as head designer.
The point? Consistency...
No, it's a poor attempt at consistency.
It's not that the Great Ring is inferior. It's that the Great Ring is Greyhawk's cosmology, with St. Cuthbert and Incabulus and Tharizdun and all that, and that it's not the Realms' cosmology.
And it's Toril's cosmology. And Ansalon's. Etc. And it has been that way since 1E. Ed never detailed Planes for Toril different than the Planescape ones. And he said that he never wanted Planescape to be a separate cosmology from Toril. So that's saying, right there, that the Great Ring WAS FR's cosmology, as much as certain other designers like to pretend they know more about Ed's creation than he does.
Both have a lot in common, and they may even be merged thanks to all those things they have in common (see the multiple astral comment far above), but, by their nature, they are not supposed to influe on each other. Because Lolth's silence in the Realms should not extend to Greyhawk or Sigil.
And in 2E, it wouldn't have, unless Lolth's silence was not specific to events/situations dealing with Abeir-Toril. You're looking at this from the prospective of FR is one game, Greyhawk is another, etc. I'm not. I'm looking at all of it as one big, complex, beautiful tapestry of a game.
That much is false. First, there are planes that aren't inhabited by deities, and second, only a plane inhabited by a single deity could be under complete control.
Not many of the Outer PLanes are uninhabited by deities. Second of all, thanks to another wonderful invention of 3E - Divine Rank - deities that are of higher DvR can pretty much undo anything a lesser deity does. So Bane can trump any other deity's actions in the Barrens of Doom and Despair, unless a deity with a higher DvR comes in.
Yup, there's bound to be a number of contradictions. Very minor, on the whole -- unless you play in a planar-intensive campaign, that is to say, a Planescape campaign rather than a Realms one. So what if in a 2e sourcebook's deity statblock it says that Mistra resides in Nirvana, when all the rest of the statblock has also changed since?
Forgotten Realms, once more, was THE most planar-intensive Prime Material setting, no matter what the 3E designers tell you. And what do you mean 'so what?' The entire discussion is ABOUT CONSISTENCY, and that is NOT consistent. That's the ENTIRE point. There was absolutely nothing hindering the plot/story of FR with Mystra in Nirvana/Mechanus, so why the heck did they change it?
The Tree was an attempt at making a Torilian cosmology that would be more adapted to the Realms. You can debate about the implementation, argue it has succeeded or failed.
But the principle is sound.
You can pretend like it's sound, but it's not. Toril wasn't set one way or the other into ANY cosmology when Ed made it. Then, over 1E and 2E, the designers adapted it to fit into the Great Wheel, and this was easily possible and even plausible because there was NO other previously established cosmology to clash with. That is NOT the same for 3E, where we have had decades of being in a previously established cosmology already that, as far as I'm concerned, fits the Realms perfectly, because any references to cosmology in FR were made to already fit into the Planescape cosmology.
1. Planescape is my favorite setting.
2. Planescape does not exist for D&D 3+ edition.
Why a new official-setting book would have to reference a no-longer-official setting? Planescape is being developed now by its fans and therefore the opposite could also be true.
3. Having setting-specific cosmologies makes perfect sense.
Because every culture tends to think of itself as the center of all. Why should the FR's Tree include things that no one in Toril knows about? If that's what they teach at schools, maybe just a few enterprising and high level Clerics and Wizards are IN the know. The "know" being PS's Great Wheel of course! ;)
So maybe Planescape was the Einstein's Great Unified Field Theory (?) for the first two editions' settings, but no more. Wizards now wants its settings as individual as possible in all aspects.
4. The DM has Absolute Power over his/her campaign.
If the DM thinks its funnier to climb the tree than go around the wheel, that's what it'll be present in the campaign. The DM may decide too that the tree is a no go. D&D is not Magic: The Gathering where the official rules and rulings have to be followed (at least in official tornamentes).
The thing, I think, is about Planescape's elements being cannibalized by other official settings to suit their needs and those elements not being transplanted AS IS.
Just my 2 undervalued cents.
Just my two cents here-
I would find the illogical, oddly-constructed, "highest DvR trumps all" Tree much easier to deal with- if it weren't a colossal heap of vomit upon the existing history.
Seriously.
The Realms has a long and proud history written within the context of the Great Wheel.
And now, in typically hamhanded fashion, WotC is saying "no, it's always been this way. Really."
It's a waste of piles upon piles of superb published material.
(I'll save my anti-Faerunocentric rant for another time... oh, who am I kidding.)
There was a specific feel the Realms had, right from its inception, which it maintained pretty well up until the "reboot." That feel is what drew me to the Realms. Frankly, if they're just going to turn it into an even more stale retread of Greyhawk, why bother? I do not mind change. I mind hijacking the setting away from the very ideals that drew me to it. The rise of an orcish power in the North? Very cool. The end of the Elvish Retreat? Rock on. The Red Wizards decide to try mercantilism instead of outright conquest? Sweet. Bane returns, he and Cyric essentially split the Zhentarim? That works.
But- Arrogating to the Faerunian PAntheon the status of "truth" flies in the face of everything that had been presented up until that point. Spitting in the face of the multicultural feel, where every culture's cosmology had the potential to be right in some way, is, quite frankly, sheer idiocy.
Exactly. And the fluff of 2E says that there aren't assassins (unless they are the assassin kit), there aren't Monks (the 1E monks were probably changed to 2E monks), there are no sorcerers, etc. So, that's how I would play my Realms game.. In keeping with the fluff.
So, let me get that straight. You have no problems with all the assassins getting killed to adjust to the new rules, so you wouldn't either had any problems with the Great Tree if there was some sort of other half-back RSE to explain it. If they said the new cosmology was the result of Vecna destroying the former, you'd say "yay, great".
If I ran the Realms, there would be no sorcerers, among other things.
Why? You wanted the sorcerers introduced by something like the apparition of a new deity of magic, rather than by saying, as the FR3e designer said, that the dichotomy between learned arcanists (wizard) and intuitive arcanists (sorcerer) allows to depict more precisely than before several spellcasters.
One way needlessly introduce a change in the setting, why the other merely keeps the change to the rules. And you prefer the setting to be modified. For consistency? Because that way, the faerûnian NPCs are aware they are now statted in another ruleset?
Lolth is multispheric, so even if she was slain in GH, unless she was slain on her home plane, she would still be in FR.
Ohoh! So there's GH-Lolth and FR-Lolth. FR-Lolth isn't affected by what happen to GH-Lolth. It means that they both are separate? Not the same, maybe? As in, living in different cosmologies?
The questions you're positing are like, "Why put Japan on a map when I'll never visit there?" Answer: "Because it's still there, even if I'm personally ignorant of it." 3E's view on things is if you don't directly need something for a game, don't put it in.
So, Japan should also be put on the map of Toril, since Japan still exists, even if none of the Japanese people can go to the fictionnal world of the Forgotten Realms, and none of the NPCs of Faerûn can go to Japan. It still exist, after all.
Likewise, you can be sure every takes on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table make extra sure to relate the parrallel events occuring in Japan. And in Tenochtitlan.
I hate that. A lot. I want information. I want knowledge about every little innuendo of the Realms. The Great Tree and the chapter about it in the PGtF tells me nothing. Worse than that, the blame can't be laid on the fact that they only had "so much space," because Planescape personally captivated me within the first few pages of the campaign setting booklets themselves.
If you're captivated by Planescape, by all means, play it! I won't hold that against you. I like PS too, that's not a problem.
... Those are not AD&D. I'm not sure where you're going with this. Unless something is supposed to be written in AD&D, it has nothing to do with Planescape. And if it is written for AD&D, it should have conformed (at least behind the scenes, if not in the knowledge of your average NPC) to the Planescape cosmology. It's really not that hard to do.
Newsflash: FR3e is not AD&D. Yup, it's D&D without the A. The A isn't there. Not for a gratuitous reason, either.
Anyway, why should all AD&D settings conform to Planescape? What if the setting creator want to make a cosmology that is all nice and tasty, but unfortunately utterly incompatible with Planescape? They can't? Not allowed?
And why should only AD&D settings conform to Planescape? Why not non-AD&D setting? Why?
And, for a different matter, WhiteWolf did indeed try to make their cosmology consistent, too, even if they made different groups see things in different ways, or call certain places/things by different names. Which is exactly what Planescape did.
No, they didn't. Vampire's cosmology was very different from the one in Werewolf and Mage. Changeling's cosmology was somewhat close to WW and Mage, but not enough. The inclusion of Hunter and Demon further messed up the bit. I know, I was a WoD ST and player. I've tried to manage a crossover umbral campaign with Mage, Werewolf, and Changeling bit. A nightmare of contradicting and incompatible informations.
The Manual of the Planes disgusts me too, but that's besides the point.
I haven't precised which edition of the MotP...
You are coming from a point of view as if the Cosmology of Toril was originally separate from Planescape, and it is not.
And now it is.In saying the above, you are assuming the fact that I think it was right/okay to have a cosmology of Toril separate from Planescape, and that is simply not the case, because THAT is what I'm arguing in the first place.
And Toril doesn't have it's own cosmology. Every bloody continent does. Zakhara, Kara-Tur, Maztica, FR... Jesus, it's a mess.
Yup. Each culture has its own beliefs about what the cosmology is. And in a very Planescapy BDR way, everyone is right. The Faerûnian cosmology exists. The Zakharan cosmology exists, too. As well as the Maztican one and the Kara-Turish one.I really don't see how it failed.
The cosmology of the Known World (Mystara) was incompatible with Planescape.A) What's wrong with old?
Nothing. But the old is old, and you already have it. Why should you buy something new if inside you'll only find old stuff you already have? The old is well and good, but it won't sell.B) Bland is a completely subjective term. C) They were inspired in the first place by something else.
Those were just, following old, the antithesis of your rejection of "new, shiny and unique".They should not appreciate it just because it's "new."
True, but making it new is a requirement for WotC. Unless you succeed at a coup d'état and create the United Communist Welfare States of Americaia, the people at Hasbro will still need to earn their living in true capitalist fashion: by selling things. So WotC still needs to do things that sell.If you make an AD&D setting, then it has to do with Planescape. It's as simple as that. Because Planescape was meant to connect all settings in AD&D.
And again, Planescape can connect all the AD&D settings it can try (it would have problems with Dark Sun and Birthright, though, and the aforementionned Mystara but this one was an OD&D setting), but now we're in D&D.Ed never detailed Planes for Toril different than the Planescape ones.
And they are still there. The only thing that's different is the connection between planes. The Great Ring that isn't even supposed to really be in Planescape. What a big deal!And in 2E, it wouldn't have, unless Lolth's silence was not specific to events/situations dealing with Abeir-Toril.
Once again, if Lolth-FR isn't Lolth-GH, then they are two distinct Lolth. So there are two distinct Demonweb Pits, and thus probably two distinct Abysses in two distinct cosmologies.
A single, unique cosmology means that every campaign setting is in fact the same.You're looking at this from the prospective of FR is one game, Greyhawk is another, etc. I'm not. I'm looking at all of it as one big, complex, beautiful tapestry of a game.
So, you're just saying that a AD&D2 FR DM had to buy and read every single book about any setting he never DMs, because they're all important. As important as learning Japanese geography in English 101.
And one wonder why TSR went bankrupt, and why WotC was so scared to referencing any book outside of the core three, fearing it would drive players to shun them.
This was also the reason they were so shy with regards to Psionics, or Oriental, or Vile stuff. The backlash they would get for cross-referencing book, a practice that always annoy heavily anyone who gets told to go buy yet another book to have the full info about something.
Now, they have found about the right balance, I think, between providing support and avoiding cross-referencing.
But if they had to extend cross-referencing to setting lines, they would step on the red line again. Some people are eclectic (and wealthy!) enough to own several different campaign settings. In 3e D&D products, I have generic stuff, FR stuff, Eberron stuff, OA, and third parties material (for Scarred Lands and Arcana Unearthed). But I am in the minority here. Most people do not have so much books. Do not believe what the Net can told you about that -- people who speak on the Internet about their RPG collection are usually wealthy geek, so they are part of a minority.
So, you're just saying that a AD&D2 FR DM had to buy and read every single book about any setting he never DMs, because they're all important. As important as learning Japanese geography in English 101.
And one wonder why TSR went bankrupt, and why WotC was so scared to referencing any book outside of the core three, fearing it would drive players to shun them.
This was also the reason they were so shy with regards to Psionics, or Oriental, or Vile stuff. The backlash they would get for cross-referencing book, a practice that always annoy heavily anyone who gets told to go buy yet another book to have the full info about something.
Now, they have found about the right balance, I think, between providing support and avoiding cross-referencing.
But if they had to extend cross-referencing to setting lines, they would step on the red line again. Some people are eclectic (and wealthy!) enough to own several different campaign settings. In 3e D&D products, I have generic stuff, FR stuff, Eberron stuff, OA, and third parties material (for Scarred Lands and Arcana Unearthed). But I am in the minority here. Most people do not have so much books. Do not believe what the Net can told you about that -- people who speak on the Internet about their RPG collection are usually wealthy geek, so they are part of a minority.
And yet WOTC has changed that policy. Take a glance through the Player's Guide, Serpent Kingdoms, and Shining South. They all list monsters, psionics, vile and exalted feats from books that are not of the three core books. That was another of SKR's ideas that got tossed (thank the gods!). New monters in new monster books should be given examples where they can be found.
And I don't understand your Lloth comments. In 2e they were the same being but what happened in one Crystal Sphere didn't affect her in the other Crystal Sphere's she was worshipped in.
Also drop the remarks about the other RPG's made by other companies because they are no way related to this discussion. And yes that's just silly that Japan wouldn't exist even if no one used it. That's like saying WOTC should drop the other continents of Toril because they were used less then Faerun. Hogwash! They still exist even if they probably will never be detailed again.
So, let me get that straight. You have no problems with all the assassins getting killed to adjust to the new rules, so you wouldn't either had any problems with the Great Tree if there was some sort of other half-back RSE to explain it. If they said the new cosmology was the result of Vecna destroying the former, you'd say "yay, great".
No, because I think that Die Vecna Die was a horrible, horrible supplement. I would have certainly been more open to the change, at least, if a decent story had been given to it. An entire cosmology change is NOT something that can be easily written off as a change in the rules, because it's NOT. It's a change in the actual setting itself, NOT the background mechanics running it.
Why? You wanted the sorcerers introduced by something like the apparition of a new deity of magic, rather than by saying, as the FR3e designer said, that the dichotomy between learned arcanists (wizard) and intuitive arcanists (sorcerer) allows to depict more precisely than before several spellcasters.
No, I don't want them introduced AT ALL.
One way needlessly introduce a change in the setting, why the other merely keeps the change to the rules. And you prefer the setting to be modified. For consistency? Because that way, the faerûnian NPCs are aware they are now statted in another ruleset?
No, because in FR, those with an inborn talent for arcane magic were still wizards. They did not get any special abilities different than any other wizards, and if they did, they were unique cases and not something that could be easily codified in the rules. Karsus, for example, cast his first cantrip at, what, 2? 3? And he still functioned, mechanically, like every other Arcanist.
The change to sorcerery is completely unneeded. Differentiate with flavor and technique, NOT mechanics, I say.
Ohoh! So there's GH-Lolth and FR-Lolth. FR-Lolth isn't affected by what happen to GH-Lolth. It means that they both are separate? Not the same, maybe? As in, living in different cosmologies?
Do you really know anything about Planescape? As I said, she is a MULTISPHERIC deity, and what happens to her avatars/manifestation on one Plane does NOT affect the one on another. ONLY if things happen to her on Planes outside of the Prime does it work across the board. I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand.
So, Japan should also be put on the map of Toril, since Japan still exists, even if none of the Japanese people can go to the fictionnal world of the Forgotten Realms, and none of the NPCs of Faerûn can go to Japan. It still exist, after all.
No, it should be on the map of the Prime Material Plane/Earth, though. It's not part of Toril. It's part of the Torillian Cosmology, according to 2E rules. Just as Japan isn't part of America, but it is part of Earth.
Likewise, you can be sure every takes on King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table make extra sure to relate the parrallel events occuring in Japan. And in Tenochtitlan.
Because we should really be like WhiteWolf and write all sourcebooks from a completely in-character, ignorant-to-everything-else perspective, right? Out of sight, out of mind? Um, no.
Anyway, why should all AD&D settings conform to Planescape? What if the setting creator want to make a cosmology that is all nice and tasty, but unfortunately utterly incompatible with Planescape? They can't? Not allowed?
And why should only AD&D settings conform to Planescape? Why not non-AD&D setting? Why?
Because Planescape was the default, consistent cosmological setting for all 2E settings. Different Primes had different perspective on the Planes, but it was Planescape that showed everything from a larger, more accurate point of view.
Why not non-AD&D setting? Because they're not AD&D. It's as simple as that. I really have no idea if you're trying to go any further with this. If you become part of a company/gaming system, you obey the rules of that company/gaming system when they tell you to. If WhiteWolf was made into an AD&D game, then yes, it would have to conform to the Planescape cosmology, as far as I'm concerned, unless there was a reason for it NOT to.
No, they didn't. Vampire's cosmology was very different from the one in Werewolf and Mage. Changeling's cosmology was somewhat close to WW and Mage, but not enough. The inclusion of Hunter and Demon further messed up the bit. I know, I was a WoD ST and player. I've tried to manage a crossover umbral campaign with Mage, Werewolf, and Changeling bit. A nightmare of contradicting and incompatible informations.
This is your opinion. I am very familiar with the rules for Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage, and I have a general idea for the rules of Changeling, Wraith, and Mummy. They DID try to give things a semblance of consistency, and I think one of the faults with the entire WhiteWolf line (besides being overbearingly pretentious and preachy) is that they did NOT succeed as well as Planescape did.
I haven't precised which edition of the MotP...
I'm going to assume this means you want to know which edition I'm talking about. I'm talking about the 3E MotP.
Nothing. But the old is old, and you already have it. Why should you buy something new if inside you'll only find old stuff you already have? The old is well and good, but it won't sell.
Do you really thing I give a damn about how well something of WotC's will sell? I don't. I don't think they should have continued FR at all if they were going to muck everything up; I would have been happier if they had not. And I AM happy, as I've said, that they discontinued Planescape, because I dread to think what they would have done to it.
Those were just, following old, the antithesis of your rejection of "new, shiny and unique".
What's your point? I countered your counter to my statement.
True, but making it new is a requirement for WotC. Unless you succeed at a coup d'état and create the United Communist Welfare States of Americaia, the people at Hasbro will still need to earn their living in true capitalist fashion: by selling things. So WotC still needs to do things that sell.
I'm really not sure where you're getting the idea that I have an iota of sympathy or care for the well-being of WotC. Just because WotC has to make money doesn't make their products any better, so I have no reason to be any more approving of them.
Yup. Each culture has its own beliefs about what the cosmology is. And in a very Planescapy BDR way, everyone is right. The Faerûnian cosmology exists. The Zakharan cosmology exists, too. As well as the Maztican one and the Kara-Turish one.
And this is not any better than Planescape's way of doing things. In fact, it's worse because it brings up a number of consistency errors. For example, how the heck do deities from Kara-Tur grant the worship of any followers they may have in Faerun?
And read between the lines. WotC didn't do this to make things more "culturally correct." They did it because they don't give a damn about the other campaign settings of the world, so by separating them completely from Faerun, they could shove them into a dark closet, never to be opened again. The designers have SAID, specifically, that they are NOT going to detail these other settings in the forseeable future.
Yes, FANTASTIC way of making things more culturally independent. Let's just pretend that they don't exist by separating them completely from what we want to focus on!
The cosmology of the Known World (Mystara) was incompatible with Planescape.
I am not familiar with the Mystaran campaign setting, but I"m sure it could be reconciled. Just hand it over to one of the numerous, wonderful writers on the Planescape board (Rip, anyone?) and they could fit it into the Planescape cosmology so beautifully that it would make our eyes bleed for joy, I'm sure.
And again, Planescape can connect all the AD&D settings it can try (it would have problems with Dark Sun and Birthright, though, and the aforementionned Mystara but this one was an OD&D setting), but now we're in D&D.
And, once more, you insinuate that I am actually okay with being in D&D. I'm not. I hate everything about it besides the very bare mechanics. So, as far as I'm concerned, AD&D was the right way (IE: the way that I preferred) to do things, thematically, and the majority of stuff in D&D is just pure trash.
And they are still there. The only thing that's different is the connection between planes. The Great Ring that isn't even supposed to really be in Planescape. What a big deal!
No they're not. Have you even looked at the Great Tree? Ed Greenwood did not work on the Player's Guide to Faerun at all. In the Faerunian cosmology, the Planes from Planescape are NOT all there - not even close to all of them. They also completely took ALL deities out of the Abyss and Baator? What the hell is with that? WHY would they do that? To make things "easier"? To make things "more defined and less complex"?
If anyone ever tries to present an easy, clean-cut and sectionalized cosmology to me, I will shoot them in the forehead and them beat them with the pistol in rage after their sorry corpse has hit the floor.
Once again, if Lolth-FR isn't Lolth-GH, then they are two distinct Lolth. So there are two distinct Demonweb Pits, and thus probably two distinct Abysses in two distinct cosmologies.
You really didn't read the Great Tree, did you? The Demonweb Pits aren't even in the Abyss anymore. And I think it's DUMB that there are multiple Abysses/Lolths/etc. There should NOT be.
A single, unique cosmology means that every campaign setting is in fact the same.
Just because we all live on the same planet hardly means that every culture is the same.
So, you're just saying that a AD&D2 FR DM had to buy and read every single book about any setting he never DMs, because they're all important. As important as learning Japanese geography in English 101.
First of all, let me just say how hard I laughed that you grouped Japanese geography in the same level of importance as English 101, in a Western cultural setting.
Second of all, no, they didn't have to read every single book about any setting that he never DMs... But would I prefer it? Yes. And if he's going to go Planehopping for an extended period of time, he should look into Planescape. Just like if he's playing an FR game and goes to Greyhawk for an extended period of time, then he should look into some Greyhawk stuff. Unless, of course, he doesn't WANT canon information, then I don't care what he does.
If a DM is too lazy to read a few books, then AD&D/D&D is better off without him. AD&D is ALL ABOUT BOOKS. That's why there are hundreds (thousands?) of them.
To use a real life analogy: If you don't know anything about what you're talking about, stay out of the conversation.
And one wonder why TSR went bankrupt, and why WotC was so scared to referencing any book outside of the core three, fearing it would drive players to shun them.
TSR went bankrupt because they flooded the market with so many books (read: LORE) in so short a time that they didn't make enough sales back. That makes them far more respectable than WotC, as far as a world-building team goes. They may not have been a competant company, but they cared about giving players lots and lots of information. And they gave me so much, personally, that I really never would have to look at a 3E book if I didn't want to.
But if they had to extend cross-referencing to setting lines, they would step on the red line again. Some people are eclectic (and wealthy!) enough to own several different campaign settings. In 3e D&D products, I have generic stuff, FR stuff, Eberron stuff, OA, and third parties material (for Scarred Lands and Arcana Unearthed). But I am in the minority here. Most people do not have so much books. Do not believe what the Net can told you about that -- people who speak on the Internet about their RPG collection are usually wealthy geek, so they are part of a minority.
This is a blanket statement that just annoys the heck out of me, personally. I grew up in a low income district in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and I've never held a job in my life. I would hardly consider myself "wealthy," and I have every Planescape product in hard back except for 2 (Planes of Conflict and the Great Modron March), I have some of the 3E products, a great number of the 2E Realms products, some of the Ravenloft products... I could go on, but that would be superfluous.
Awile back there was a science fiction series called Sliders. In this series, the four cast members traveled to alternate Earths, which had a different history, and sometimes different laws of physics. Sometimes these worlds were VERY similiar to our own earth, with just a few minor differences that it would be hard to recognize them at first. For example, in one episode, they thought they had finally arrived home, but realeased it wasn't home when they saw the Goldengate Bridge was Blue.....
In some worlds, they even ran into duplacates of themselves.
This could be applyed to Planescape as well. The Multiverse we know and love from 2nd edition is only one Macroplane if you will. There exist an INFINITE amount of other Macroplanes, beyond the Far Realm, which separates each Existance.
In the Planescape Multiverse we are familiar with, BELIEF is the one defining factor. Other Macroplanes could have their own, different defining factor, such as LOGIC. For example, the old Alternity game's Stardrive setting could be in such an alternate Macroplane.
3rd Edition didn't get rid of the Multverse, it just made it a HELL of a lot bigger....
In fact, this would explain alot of 2nd edition Planescape adnormalities, such as the Keepers and the Chasium. According to the 2nd and 3rd Planescape Monstrious Compendium, The first supposibly came from another Multiverse, and nobody knows where the Chosium comes from, although one man claims it came from a unknown plane which connected to somewhere else
This restores the sense of mystery that was missing in Planescape after all the Planes were reveiled. This is what one of the authors of the "Beyond Countless Doorways" book was talking about.
An interesting hook would be that most of the alternate Multiverses/Cosmologies have a Sigil counterpart, and of coarse, a Lady of Pain....hehe
You could use Sigil as a nexus for running a Sliders type alternate reality adventure!
That would be an interesting hook. Especially if there were only one Sigil! Just think, you take a portal into Sigil and go back to your world through a different portal in Sigil, except when you get there things are not quite right. Everything is slightly out of whack. Perhaps Azoun IV has not died and still rules Cormyr, or Thay has conquored Mulhorand and is mobilizing for war in the South. Turns out you are in an alternate version of your homeworld and will have to get back to Sigil if you want any hope of getting home.
You could use Sigil as a nexus for running a Sliders type alternate reality adventure!
Exactly! Basically, the Planes just got a whole lot bigger....hehe
No longer is it "Oh Toril, that backwater Prime world..." now its "Which Toril?(looks over shoulder in fear).
You also can introduce an element of the paranormal into Planescape. Perhaps beings never before seen have begun appearing here and there on the Planes, and some high-ups accross reality have begun to disappear, including high up Celestials and Fiends(even Loths). Sometime later, then return, with no memory of where they've been. Some have vague recollections however, and they remember a reality they can't even begin to describe, a reality that makes the Far Realm look like a pastorial mundane farming village on the Prime by comparison.
Um there is only one Sigil and the Sigil of FR's Tree is still the same exact Sigil of the Wheel/Ring. Oh wait, somone in this thread doesn't believe that even though Rich has been quoted at least twice saying exactly that. :P
No, no, of course you are right, I just meant that if there are alternate multiverses with different versions of the same Toril but where history was a little different on each one, you could also have alternate Sigils in each of those multiverses too. You could have a Sigil where the faction war never took place, you could have a Sigil where Aosokar was never killed and so on.
But I was just suggesting that if you were going to run such a campaign then another way to go would be to keep Sigil unique as the one constant, exempt from all the alternate realities and it could be a nexus point with portals linking to all of them. That way you could run your Slider style alternate-reality adventure through Sigil. That's all I meant.
But my point is, you can have both cosmologies. If planar access in Faerun is limited mostly to their deities realms, a map from their point of view would be what is in the Player's Guide. I don't see where it invalidates the other planes lore, as is a cosmology of planes that are related to the FR. Other planes exists to other material planes and to the deities that are in the know, but as FR people don't believe in them they are not in their cosmologies.
Of course. Use what you would like for your campaign.
Because he was never born the Building and Loan went out of business and evil Ol' Man Potter took over the town and renamed Bedford Falls as Potterville. The town was filled with slums because George's Building & Loan wasn't around to lend money to people to build houses. George's brother Harry died at the age of 9 because George wasn't around to save him from when he fell through the ice, and because Harry didn't grow up to fight in WWII a whole ship full of men died when a plane crashed into it because Harry wasn't around to shoot down the plane. A lot of people lived very different and not so happy lives just because George Bailey had never lived.
This may be the very first movie I ever saw that introduced the concept of alternate realities into my consciousness.
The deities have been relocated to fitting domains and all was in order.