Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[Sepulchrave II]

In response to the OQ by the OP: No. I couldn't give a fig about Planescape. Never looked at it.

And if there is an "Environment" entry in the Monster stat block, I'd like it to look like the 3.5SRD entry; e.g.:

Barbed Devil

...(blah, blah, blah)

Environment: A lawful evil-aligned plane

(blah, blah, blah)...


I can fill in the blanks; tailor it to my needs.

 

[Siberys]

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION]

I can't speak for others, but it /has/ always been an issue with me. I have a number of houserules to switch races to the way I want them to work, to disallow elements that don't fit with the campaigns that I want to run, heck, to even make language run the way I wanted to, all because of how pervasive the core setting was. But while 4e was being regularly published, there wasn't much I could do about official lore than ignore it where it didn't intersect with rules, or houserule where it did. I swallowed the setting because I /really liked/ the rules. And, yes, given the option of picking which "forced lore" setting D&D would use, I'd opt for World Axis / PoLand. Now, though, I have the opportunity to tell Wizards, through their playtest, how I think it should really be done. If I had my druthers, 5e would be a polished, slightly streamlined, core-worldless 4e with a series of setting supplements. The fact that I prefer the World Axis over Great Wheel is, again, unrelated, as is the fact that I got along fine in 4e /despite/ it's core setting's pervasiveness.

EDIT: [MENTION=6722817]Weather Report[/MENTION] - If you don't see Law vs. Chaos in the 4e cosmology, I question whether you're even familiar with the conceit.

 

[Hussar]

Uhm... I get it, you like 4e's cosmology better than the Great Wheel... cool, I guess... but that's not switching any argument around that I made and it doesn't change the fact that it (4e's cosmology) is trite.

EDIT: I guess my problem with all the 4e fans suddenly claiming that no lore should be in the core is that I didn't see these same fans advocating for that when it was lore they liked... I also didn't see them advocating for no lore when the same lore they liked was pushed on to other settings. But now that it's lore others enjoy all of a sudden... lore shouldn't be in the core period... and lore should be setting specific. I mean I'm just calling it like I see it.

Can you point me to where 4e fans are demanding that 4e lore remain in 5e? Because, I haven't seen that at all. I've yet to see a single example where someone got told that their idea was not possible because it contradicted 4e lore.

I've certainly seen that from Planescape fans though.

 

[Weather Report]

EDIT: @Weather Report - If you don't see Law vs. Chaos in the 4e cosmology, I question whether you're even familiar with the conceit.

Hahahaha, not even, totally, I am a Planescape nut, maybe your Law vs. Chaos differs from mine, yours' being cheap, IMO.

 

[Hussar]

Hahahaha, not even, totally, I am a Planescape nut, maybe your Law vs. Chaos differs from mine, yours' being cheap, IMO.

I would just like to thank Weather Report for being precisely the example of what I'm talking about with Planescape fans shouting down any possible discussion of change. Thank you Weather Report for taking the time to give such crystal clear examples.

 

[Weather Report]

I would just like to thank Weather Report for being precisely the example of what I'm talking about with Planescape fans shouting down any possible discussion of change. Thank you Weather Report for taking the time to give such crystal clear examples.

Hey, don't use me for your bizarre, yet, transparent agenda.

If you want to play a D&D campaign, sans D&D lore (I do it all the time), go for it, ain't nothin' stopin' ya.

 

[Arkhandus]

I like Planescape's lore! I don't particularly care if it's used for every D&D setting's planar cosmology or not (nothing wrong with Abeir-Toril or Eberron or whatnot having their own cosmologies), but it was interesting to have Planescape serve as a link between different settings. If nothing else the possibility of travel through the Deep Ethereal or Deep Shadow to reach other Material Planes still allows for them to have different cosmologies, with only the Ethereal Plane or Plane of Shadow linking those alternate cosmologies to Planescape's Great Wheel. And it helps when a setting doesn't have any significant detail of its own regarding the planes and denizens of its own cosmology.

 

[Siberys]

I'm sblocking this because I'm not here to defend the World Axis cosmology, and honestly it's off topic. I just want very little setting material in the core rules, full stop. But I'm having fun writing about the World Axis, so I'd still like to post this.

[sblock]When I say "Law vs. Chaos", I'm not going after the way Planescape goes after it, because I think Planescape cheapens the respective concepts by using them unresonantly. It treats them more as "Patterned vs. Random". I'm going after the way Myth tends to treat it, which is more like "Creation vs. Entropy".

First there was chaos. Then something (a) changed that chaos into the world we live in. Now, something (b), which may have been (a), wants that chaos back. Something else (c) doesn't, because he/she/it/they likes reality as it is.

That's Law vs. Chaos, in a general sense, that I'm referring to. In Babylonian myth, (a) and (b) are Tiamat, and (c) is Marduk. In the World Axis, (a) and (b) are Primordials, and (c) are the Gods.

Long story short, my "resonant" is your "trite", and your "original" is my "overwrought". I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.[/sblock]

As an aside, Savage Worlds near perfectly does what I'm talking about. Solid core system, bloat is kept down, flavor in core is light to nil, and their main supplement lines are about using the core system with your choice of setting. If I got a 4e D&D version of that, I'd be in Heaven.

EDIT:

If you want to play a D&D campaign, sans D&D lore (I do it all the time), go for it, ain't nothin' stopin' ya.

Sometimes, though, there is. I don't wanna go through the rulebooks excising rules elements that depend on using the core setting if I don't have to. And I shouldn't even need to /want/ to.

 

[Weather Report]

Sometimes, though, there is. I don't wanna go through the rulebooks excising rules elements that depend on using the core setting if I don't have to. And I shouldn't even need to /want/ to.

From where I am reading, that statement means nothing, what are you actually saying?

And what is with this X/X/...means nothing to me, is this some sort of new vernacular I am not aware of, 'cause it sure ain't English (no punctuation I've ever seen).

 

[Siberys]

It's for emphasis, I have seen others do it (else I wouldn't). It's like italicising, in situations where italicising isn't an option for whatever reason. By force of habit I use it even if the option to italicise is there. I used to all-caps if I wanted to get the same point across, but a couple of times people interpereted it as yelling at 'em, so I stopped that.

As for that bit you /think/ means nothing; a good example of this is deity-specific divinity feats in 4e. They assumed you were using the core setting. They shouldn't have. As a result, in my non-core-setting 4e games, I had to either disallow or reflavor stuff in the PHB. I shouldn't have had to, it being the core rulebook. If they were in a setting book? Fine, that's what setting books are for. But the core book presented a challenge to using it in a D&D game 'sans D&D lore' that it shouldn't have by /dint/ of being core. Follow?