1. It took the majesty and dangerousness and grandeur of the planes and turned them into somewhere that 1st level adventurers can make out just fine in.

2. It turned the planes from archetypal places of sweeping majesty or terror and turned it into a "regular joe" place; the Demons of the lower planes are no longer trying to destroy all life on earth, they're just accountants or whatever; you get the sense that they're just regular folk doing their job, just like the guys on the higher plane are, and its really not an Epic sweeping struggle for the destiny of existence itself anymore. It took the planes and made them mundane.

3. It made the planes utterly post-modernist. Everyone is just misunderstood, everyone has a point of view that's valid. The Demons and Devils (sorry, Tanari and Whatevertehfucke) are not creatures of infinite evil, they're just the representatives of their particular alignment who act according to their alignment, the metaphysical equivalent of having "grown up in the bad part of town".

4. On that note, it treated the Planes like it was the realms or greyhawk, like it was a setting.  It was clearly written by people who either utterly failed to grasp the concept of Myth, or who actively hated said concept and wanted to intentionally deconstruct it.

5. And on that note, it actually misunderstood the "great wheel" to be a literal wheel.

6. Fucking Planescape-lingo and made up words and the whole dungeonpunk style.  Trying to claim that the center of the universe is a place that would be all 90s-comicbook-hip.

7. They made the fucking goddamn modrons annoying little shits, and then focused way too much time on them.

8. Metaplot.

It was, in short, an example to me of everything that was absolutely WRONG about TSR in the mid-late nineties, and an example of everything that was wrong with the influence of the Story-based Gaming movement.

Feel free to add your own reasons.

RPGPundit

Well, damn. I have the misfortune to agree with every single one of your reasons. If any one of them perfectly embodies all the rest, it's the cant. Flashy,  self-consciously pseudo-hip, grating on the nerves.

I'm somewhere in the middle; I always liked Planescape but I agree with many of the points made.

I do, however, think it's cool to have a planar or weird setting for all level characters (including low-level). And I like the dungeonpunk style. I also love the idea of a setting that implies travel as a major feature of the campaign.

The cant embodies all that is wrong with the planes. Keen observation.

Anyhow, other reasons:

The stupid Lady of Pain or whatever. I guess this could go into Metaplot. But that includes "faction war", and a bunch of other crap.

The way everything was shoe-horned into Sigil. Here's all the entire planes! But you'll have to hang around in this city area for most of your career.

Removing the deities as the main motivator of the planar world. The planes were the homes of the gods. Except you never saw one.

The factions were pretty lame in concept. TSR never seemed to be able to figure out if the factions were mainly meant as NPC organizations or organizations that players should belong to. It was a White-Wolfization.

I have no Planescape expertise whatever, just intuitions based on what one reads about it on the innerweb. Your #4 sounds accurate. Subjectively, I liked the art even less than Jeff Easley's. But I bet that, as apparently with the Realms, the initial publications had potential.

I bought a lot of Planescape stuff before I soured on it. The thing that finally got to me the most (besides the cant) was just how small and finite it made the planes seem. Centering everything on Sigil is what created this feeling, in my opinion. We'd been using the planes pretty extensively since sometime in the early 80s, after we got hold of both Queen of the Demonweb Pits and Deities & Demigods. To us, the planes were mind-boggling.

In the Abyss, for example, we'd have evil-soaked jungles that literally were  infinite in size - and that would just be one layer of 666! There was no great war which engulfed all this - it was all too huge. I remember the guy who liked this stuff the most (we all rotated as DMs) running campaigns where we could literally travel so far afield on a layer of the Abyss that we'd be beyond the province of demons. The stuff he threw at us out there was increasingly bizarre, enough so that regular old demons kinda seemed comforting to come back to and fight.

I agree with some of those reasons, but still liked it. To each his own I suppose.

Yeah the weird idiomatic crap was a major turn off for me too.

What also didn't help was that in England the word "berk" was a largely outdated term signifying an amiable, bumbling fool.

The only thing I agree with is #8.

But damn, if that metaplot isn't one helluva stinker.

Quote from: DrewYeah the weird idiomatic crap was a major turn off for me too.

What also didn't help was that in England the word "berk" was a largely outdated term signifying an amiable, bumbling fool.

That's cause the cant wasn't made up whole-cloth like Pundit claims, but was based off archaic English slang.

Actually, Pundit's wrong on a lot of those points, and the others are matters of pure taste. But that's never stopped him before.

It is a weird, cheap, low-brow, anti-intellectual comic-book setting, that took complex myths and made cardboard characters out of them.

Yet I like it just for this reason (in the same way I like Spelljammer and Montes WoD).

#7 and #8 were a real problem, though.

Quote from: Thanatos02That's cause the cant wasn't made up whole-cloth like Pundit claims, but was based off archaic English slang.

Indeed, but it was expressed with very little sense of what contemporary slang was like in the UK at the time, and how certain words were still in limited use. "Berk" sounds every bit as hokey and anachronistic to my ear as "Gee Willickers" would to an American if it were to suddenly become part of Greyhawk's argot.

Quote from: RPGPundit1. It took the majesty and dangerousness and grandeur of the planes and turned them into somewhere that 1st level adventurers can make out just fine in.

:wtfsign:

The planes are a still a place where you can end up very dead very quick. Doubly so for 1st level adventurers. You have to be very careful where you go and who you piss off. The next doorway could be a portal to a demon infested plane.

That sense of dread is, well, awesome.

Quote2. It turned the planes from archetypal places of sweeping majesty or terror and turned it into a "regular joe" place; the Demons of the lower planes are no longer trying to destroy all life on earth, they're just accountants or whatever

Pure hyperbole with no basis is reality. Show me one planescape reference with reference to demon accountants.

Quote3. It made the planes utterly post-modernist. Everyone is just misunderstood, everyone has a point of view that's valid.

Oh, the pure irony. We had some post-modernist innovative who came to told us how great it would be if we made Planescape alignmentless. We (the PS mailing list at the time) did not greet him warmly.

QuoteThe Demons and Devils (sorry, Tanari and Whatevertehfucke) are not creatures of infinite evil, they're just the representatives of their particular alignment

So, the fact that a vrock would rip your face off just as soon as look at you doesn't make him evil?

Try this on for size too: if you really think that's what planescape's about, read the flavor text for the Vaath who encounters a druid who just thinks he's another animal/predator. Planescape acknowledges evil, it doesn't excuse it.

Quote4. On that note, it treated the Planes like it was the realms or greyhawk, like it was a setting.

So you disagree with the premise. Gotcha. Most verifiable thing you've said so far. Utterly subjective, but verifiable.

Quote5. And on that note, it actually misunderstood the "great wheel" to be a literal wheel.

Buh?

Quote6. Fucking Planescape-lingo and made up words and the whole dungeonpunk style.  Trying to claim that the center of the universe is a place that would be all 90s-comicbook-hip.

(shrug) Just a flava, man. But FWIW, it's actually based on RL slang.

Quote7. They made the fucking goddamn modrons annoying little shits, and then focused way too much time on them.

One module? Man, if a module constitutes "too much time", then this is true of any module with a focus or flavor.

Quote8. Metaplot.

If you speak of faction war: I agree. 1/8 ain't bad.

Course, I just ignore Faction War. Too bad that the (extremely limited) 3e PS material acknowledged its existing.

Any setting that puts clothes back on the Lady of Pain has its priorities all screwed up.

Quote from: jrientsAny setting that puts clothes back on the Lady of Pain has its priorities all screwed up.

Meh. She's no Morgan Ironwolf.

Quote from: DrewIndeed, but it was expressed with very little sense of what contemporary slang was like in the UK at the time, and how certain words were still in limited use. "Berk" sounds every bit as hokey and anachronistic to my ear as "Gee Willickers" would to an American if it were to suddenly become part of Greyhawk's argot.

But dude!

Berk:- Noun. An idiot, objectionable person. Derived from the rhyming slang Berkshire Hunt or Berkeley Hunt, meaning 'cunt'.