Hi folks farealmer here i don't like the setting planescape. Not all of it, just major aspects of it. And i was wondering how many of you.
1. Don't like planescape period.(unlikey considering the board)
2. Don't like specific things about it.(and what that is)
1. Yugoloth Conspiracy--keep some of it, take out the solar-blob and the baern creating all the fiends.
2. Leave the connection between gods and worshippers more mysterious.
There's a lot of things about the planes that I don't like -in character-. For instance, going to any of the lower planes. Why anyone in their right mind would do that is beyond me. Grey Waste? HA! I don't think enough people have enough respect for a plane of existance that -IS- a flavor of evil.
But as a player and DM, I really don't have any gripes. The only thing that gets me going is when people try to stat the Lady... but that's another topic altogether. It just shows that some peopile "just don't get it".
Thats my problem with PS
They basically take the final resting place of souls and the most mystical places in the D&D cosmology and turn them into a tourist attaction. Sigil i can see like that, it's famous, many people accidently end up there, etc.
But everywhere else it's rediculous, an example is found in Shemeska'a Baern tales. The one about the guy who gets caught in the waste by the girl disguised one. I say when mortals feel comfortable enough on the planes to walk the heart of evil alone, it's been taken to far.
Planescape is a bad idea in of it'self. The planes were meant to be mysterious and awe inspiring. Instead, mortals from the various factions can come and go as they please. Making the planes easy and even amusing to travel around is a disgrace.
Thats why i like planeshift, even when you get there it can still be a adventure to get where your going. With portals a dime a dozen people can go everywhere as easy as a new yorker takes a subway. That sums up Sigil nicely, a planar new york city, complete with annoying "chat".
Then theirs the disgrace to outsiders. First on the planewalker download they give the option to play a rogue modron. This is just wrong, rogue modrons should as rare, rarer than all other exemplars that switch alignments combined. They are the exemplars of LAW for Krash's sake, and yet rogue ones are common enough to be considered for characters
. Rogues should be plot hooks in of themselves.Fiends are treated like thugs and angels like good citizens. Mind you these are living aspects of their alignment. Yet they are treated like an average group you could find in a standard prime city. True outsiders should be rare in the city of doors, they have mortal agents for that. Then to top it off they care about money
.Then the blood war AKA the stupid reason to make law and chaos important. Really that is a stupid way to make law and chaos important. Normally their not, after all good and evil deciede actions, law and chaos only deciede how those actions are done. While law and chaos should be given importance their are better ways of doing it.
The factions should be removed, pure and simple. They are created soully as a reason to make mortals important. But mortals are already important ON THE PRIME where they belong, not annoying the movers and shakers of the planes. Really the outers belong to the outsiders, the most primelike creatures with a large population out there should be petitioners.
Thats all for now, i am sick of complaining.
They basically take the final resting place of souls and the most mystical places in the D&D cosmology and turn them into a tourist attaction. Sigil i can see like that, it's famous, many people accidently end up there, etc.
It didn't have much flavor or atmosphere really before PS. PS gave flesh to the skeleton that was there before. But PS put the mystery, depth and grandeur of the infinities of the planes into those planes that had, in 1st edition, been big and ill detailed high level dungeons.
I really, to be honest, don't understand the point of view of some people who claim that PS removed what I perceive it as adding, and adding in droves, to the planes. Also, most of those people who feel it removed the mystery all played 1st edition, so interperet as you may.
But everywhere else it's rediculous, an example is found in Shemeska'a Baern tales. The one about the guy who gets caught in the waste by the girl disguised one. I say when mortals feel comfortable enough on the planes to walk the heart of evil alone, it's been taken to far.
Well he had come from the one truly safe spot on the plane that wasn't in the domain of a deity, the town/city of 'Death of Innocence'. He was also a member of the faction known as the Minds Eye. They feel as a core of their beliefs that the entire universe, planes and all, is one single massive test for each individual, it all revolves around them as individuals and trial upon trial of self improvement and self discovery to find themselves and become something greater.
That guy was going what he believed, and he was frightened and cold and alone, in one of the worst places you could imagine. But he was a true believer, and true believers regardless of creed, will do insane things in the name of their faith. He was no different. Perhaps Tellura picked him out simply because he -was- a true believer in something. She broke him and broke his belief perhaps, and that's something that she and her ilk perversely enjoy.
Planescape is a bad idea in of it'self. The planes were meant to be mysterious and awe inspiring. Instead, mortals from the various factions can come and go as they please. Making the planes easy and even amusing to travel around is a disgrace.
Not really, it's not that easy. They are mysterious and awe inspiring, and more so because of what PS did for them. To truly believe this, I honestly feel it's a lack of true exposure to the material, or exposure to it under a really **** poor DM.
Thats why i like planeshift, even when you get there it can still be a adventure to get where your going. With portals a dime a dozen people can go everywhere as easy as a new yorker takes a subway. That sums up Sigil nicely, a planar new york city, complete with annoying "chat".
Common portals are known. Most portals aren't going to any specific, useful spots on their target planes. You aren't going to spent five minutes and find a portal one block away to Aunt Emma's vacation home in Bytopia that exits one foot from her front door. You'll find one that goes to the right layer of Bytopia, sure, and once there you find your way to a specific portion of the plane.
Highly useful and specific portals are closely guarded and zealously cherished secrets of the rich and powerful, or the soon to be rich and powerful.
Then theirs the disgrace to outsiders. First on the planewalker download they give the option to play a rogue modron. This is just wrong, rogue modrons should as rare, rarer than all other exemplars that switch alignments combined. They are the exemplars of LAW for Krash's sake, and yet rogue ones are common enough to be considered for characters
Rogue modrons aren't unlawful to the extent that they aren't blindly lawful, they've gained a sense of 'self'. They'll also disturbingly, coldly lawful regardless of being rogue or not.
Archons can fall to chaos, and Asuras are printed up for player use in 3e. I see no different to be honest. And modrons march through Limbo every great cycle in the modron march, the plane is going to affect a fraction of them at the very least.
The factions should be removed, pure and simple. They are created soully as a reason to make mortals important. But mortals are already important ON THE PRIME where they belong, not annoying the movers and shakers of the planes. Really the outers belong to the outsiders, the most primelike creatures with a large population out there should be petitioners.
Bel was a member of the Sign of One, so outsiders can be members of factions. Factol Hashkar of the Fraternity of Order was a petitioner. ;)
The Harmonium as a faction began on the prime material and only moved to the planes when they started to look for the source of conflict, discord and disharmony that they felt was holding back the universe from perfection. With millions of members and frighteningly serious influence on one of the layers of Arcadia I'd say it makes you important even in the big picture.
Cirily would love you. Join the Planarists, she'd love you as only a fallen Eladrin can.
Consider this: most of the factions have been historically focused on Sigil itself. As you approach the spire, magic, psionics, deific power and the alignments gradually fade away into irrelevance and then nothingness. And then there's Sigil perched atop that point where those things are nothing, and what for so long has been a focus in Sigil? Raw abstract philosophies that aren't absolutely tethered to the alignments with rare exception*.
The Doomguard for instance. Entropy is without alignment, and some of the greater doomlords are chaotic, some are lawful, some are evil, some are good. It's a concept devoid of alignment, or encompassing them all depending on how you look at it. Sigil is the perfect nesting spot for these things of believe not tethered neatly to alignments.
I have things about the setting I'd change yes, but they're utterly outweighed by what I see as good about it. Far, far outweighed.
PS is what you make of it. No one is forcing the idea on your campaign, so why complain about it? The #1 complaint I always hear is, "Primes shouldn't tour the planes cause the planes are 'mystical' & 'too dangerous'".
Sure, if you aren't creative enough to make an adventure for lower lvl PC's on the planes, and still keep the planes "mystical & dangerous", then I can understand why you'd say that. But for us, we don't have a problem in the creative department. My players have never thought, "Man, these planes sure are dull now that I've been adventuring on them...I remember when they were mystifying back when I only played Greyhawk".
It's also funny to me when clueless say that fiends and celestials shouldn't have social lives and shouldn't be living similarly as primes do. Again, there's that thinking inside the box attitude. If being immortal only means sitting atop a volcanic rock waiting to be summoned or hoping epic level primes will come visit; no wonder fiends are always so mad....they are bored out of their minds. Whipping slaves 24/7 can get dull after the first 3000 years. Again, there's the lack of imagination & creativeness.
I like how people like to strip PS of all that makes it a setting so they can prove to me that the planes are supposed to be special & mystifying. So special & mystifying means lifeless & boring?
I'm still waiting for an anti-PSer to tell me how it's less mystifying once PC's are there. And what do their versions of outsiders do day in & day out? How do they interact with other outsiders? What do celestials do all day, play the harp on clouds?
Portals make travel too easy? That's like me complaining that horses & boats make travel for primes too easy. Waterdeep is like the Kentucky Derby man, that's lame! People should be crawling from Waterdeep to Baldur's Gate because it's more difficult!
Then there's the hatred towards Sigilian Cant. People don't have a problem with Krynn folk having fake Scottish accents knowing none of them have even heard of Scotland, but Sigilian Cant annoys them? :D
What I hate about it-
1. Petitioners. The concept here just mystifies me in some cases. If, after you die and go to your patron deity's plane, you just become a part of the scenery, then what is so glorious about the afterlife? Planewalkers, especially, who have visited these realms, and know the petitioners fate, should start questioning this process more, and the Athar should be far larger than it is...
2. Yugoloths-behind-it-all storyline. Especially the bits of Hellbound and that take-their-teleport-away beast. I always played this as screed from Yugoloth mouths to try and make themselves seem more in control of things, and outright disregarded the Darub Il Shamiq thing.
blah blah blah
Your posting of this topic here on the PS board is a blatant trolling attempt.
edit: Flame removed. After all "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all".
"they": third-person subject pronoun
"they're": contraction of "they are"
"their": possessive form of "they"
"there": adverb
"its": possessive form of "it"
"it's": contraction of "it is"
"itself": pronoun referring to the one identical with it
You've mixed all of these words up in your post.
Rogue modrons show up rarely. Just because player characters can be rogue modrons does not at all mean that they are common. On Faerun a player character could be a rogue drow or a half-drow, but does that mean that these are common adventurers? The reason that rogue modrons are not unheard-of is that a rogue modron is not one that has abandoned the ideals of law, but rather one that has become slightly imperfect. Now, another exemplar race would just continue on, with one glitchy individual. But modrons can't allow imperfection, so they expel the deviant unit and attempt to destroy it. It's not any conscious choice (usually) on the part of the rogue, it's just some small thing that throws off it's ultra-lawfulness. And just a tad, too. Rogues are still ultra-lawful (with exceptions). Now a modron that abandons law, that's a rarity. But, then, so's a tanar'ri that gives up evil, or an aasimon that gives up good.
So, the only acceptable means of planar travel is plane shift, because searching for a portal and then traveling the destination plane is too easy, unlike shooting off one spell to get you there. No mortal should be able to survive any extended period of time on any non-Prime plane, because there's nothing more mysterious and awe-inspiring than not being able to see the planes. The gods should be statted so that they become less of a "tourist attraction" and remain outside of mortals' reach. Outsiders should despise mortals and never interact peaceably with them. There shouldn't be conflicts between law and chaos. Factions should be removed, because mortals as a rule should not be able to do anything outside of the Prime.
Sounds like you have less of a problem with Planescape and more of a problem with "interesting campaigns."
Bring back planar dungeons in '05!
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