Quote from: Caesar SlaadSmack talk as you will, but the PS Boxed sets are products that I still use in my games to these days.

Going by your avatar, I figured you were a Planescape fan.

Do you use those PS Boxed sets more or the 3e Manual of the Planes?

Quote from: Caesar SlaadHmm. Well many of the planescape fans (not me, certainly) that I speak to sort of think of the campaign outside of Sigil sort of ancillary.

For me, that stuff is what the planes are about, and I would have felt jipped if they went to less trouble making a comprehensive overview of the planes and a guide to adventuring therein.

Smack talk as you will, but the PS Boxed sets are products that I still use in my games to these days.

Oh, I agree. I'm just saying I can understand why people not au fait with the setting got the impression that Planescape was a bigger investment in many ways than Forgotten Realms or what have you.

Quote from: LancerIf after buying the original boxed set and the Planewalker's Handbook, some people still didn't know what to do with the setting,and dumped it, I can't speak for them because the basic info really is in those products I mentioned.

If you believe that you need the "Planes of" boxes to run Planescape properly, and you've decided you're not up for that, you're not likely to lay out the cash for the basic box and the handbook (which, remember, came along reasonably late in the product cyclce) in the first place.

Quote from: J ArcaneThere were a lot of boxed sets, period, Planescape or not in that era.  Every bloody setting line got piles of the damn things, it's been stated in fact that the proliferation was so extreme that the cost of them was one of the factors burying TSR in debt.  The idea that someone of that era would somehow confuse them all as being core seems patently ludicrous to me, and would've spoken more to the idiocy of those possessing such an erroneous and delusional view of the gaming landscape at that time.

Not entirely. Remember that at the time that a lot of people were confused about what Planescape was for - I remember lots of people thinking it was going to be like the Manual of the Planes, only for 2E. The thing is, the information in the core PS box seems pretty sparse when you look at it side-by-side with the Manual of the Planes: it's no surprise that people who were looking for a MotP update thought "ah, rats, they expect me to buy more boxed sets when I've got the whole deal here in this 1E rulebook? No thanks."

Quote from: Caesar SlaadHmm. Well many of the planescape fans (not me, certainly) that I speak to sort of think of the campaign outside of Sigil sort of ancillary.

What wasn't helpful, of course, was that TSR seemed to be in two minds as to whether that was actually the case...

QuoteFor me, that stuff is what the planes are about, and I would have felt jipped if they went to less trouble making a comprehensive overview of the planes and a guide to adventuring therein.

Smack talk as you will, but the PS Boxed sets are products that I still use in my games to these days.

For me, a "comprehensive overview" of the planes is a contradiction in terms; they're supposed to be infinite, after all.

Personally, I like to have lots of detail on Sigil, as the PCs' home base, and just the bare bones and flavour pointers on the other planes. Other-planar jaunts should rarely, if ever, end up going to the same place twice. The problem I had with the "Planes of..." series was that there were just a few too many planes where, yeah, they were infinite, but only about a dozen places on them were actually important, so they were actually more constrained and less detailed than most Prime Material Plane settings.

What I think was called for, is broad brushstrokes to give GMs an idea of the general flavour of each plane, and guidelines for homebrewing your own areas on the plane in question. The core set provided the former, but not the latter, and I'm not sure that the "Planes of..." series provided the latter either. A core PS set with both would have kicked ass, but would probably had a much thicker DM's book (or just a little less artwork...).

Quote from: LancerSo you also kind of believe in a mixture of what Warthur and I were saying.
Part of it was the delay in getting certain key products out on time (i.e. Planewalker's Handbook) and the other being the non-traditional/surreal feel of the setting.

I'm not convinced that the PW's Handbook was necessarily planned from the first place - in fact, in a lot of places it reads like a somewhat expanded version of the player's book from the core box. I think TSR realised that Planescape looked horribly inaccessible and cobbled together a product to make it less so, but it was too little too late.

BTW, during my brief Planescape stint as a player, most of us found the Planes we visited to be actually plains in different colours, and with one or two cities on it.

It felt like visiting differently sky-coloured floating disks, the size of several square kilometers.

Quote from: SettembriniBTW, during my brief Planescape stint as a player, most of us found the Planes we visited to be actually plains in different colours, and with one or two cities on it.

It felt like visiting differently sky-coloured floating disks, the size of several square kilometers.

You must have had a sucky GM.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RYou must have had a sucky GM.

Or one who simply had slight trouble with the English language. That's not the first time I've heard of someone confusing planes with plains.

Quote from: WarthurFor me, a "comprehensive overview" of the planes is a contradiction in terms; they're supposed to be infinite, after all.

They are infinite. Having lots of detail didn't stop that, it just gave you, the DM, more to work with.

Planescape had the rare and greatly desirable characteristic for a published campaign setting: they could give you a lot of detail to play with without hemming you in like a traditional campaign setting would.

So I'd call this "feature" not "bug".

Quote from: Caesar SlaadPlanescape had the rare and greatly desirable characteristic for a published campaign setting: they could give you a lot of detail to play with without hemming you in like a traditional campaign setting would.

They could, but they didn't. Instead they went and hemmed you right in.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditThey could, but they didn't. Instead they went and hemmed you right in.

Except, you know, they didn't. Still infinite amount of room to plop down whatever you want. And the added utility of plugging into the setting's convention of portals to get PCs there easily.

I really don't understand the prevailing philosophy by the naysayers..

"The Planes are meant to be admired and talked about, but full-on exploration.. NAY.. BAR THAT BERK"

I say that's a whole bunch of addle-coved hogwash. The planes were meant to be explored, adventured in, kick butt in, altered as a response to one's beliefs (etc), and not merely a place where one just dawdles and dreams about in all its artistic beauty, (or argue about it endlessly like we are doing here).

Planescape was neat. It gave you far more information on how to run the planes than MotP ever did, and without over-detailing it to the point where the DM had no room to expand. How could you "overdetail" Planescape even if you wanted to? After all,  the planes were infinite and most of the setting hadn't even been touched at all-- So those that say the planes were "overdetailed" are looking at the glass half-empty instead of half-full (or the other way, you know what I mean).

Let's see, the Abyss literally had an infinite number of layers. The cause of the Blood War nor the motives behind the yugoloths' machinations are ever revealed.. Nor is it known who the Lady of Pain really is or why she guards Sigil; all left to the DM-- Overdetailed and hemmed you right in huh? The plot hooks in this setting are incredible.
 
Is the concept really all that different from say Starcluster? --- A ridiculously large universe (or multiverse) where the GM has room to unravel his own vision?
I personally loved that.

EDIT: For the record, MotP never impressed me. THAT was too sparse for any *serious* gaming on the planes. It was a mere book, whereas Planescape was an entire setting.

Quote from: LancerEDIT: For the record, MotP never impressed me. THAT was too sparse for any *serious* gaming on the planes. It was a mere book, whereas Planescape was an entire setting.

If ANY setting is "too sparse for serious gaming" in your eyes, you are doing it wrong.

Quote from: WarthurIf you believe that you need the "Planes of" boxes to run Planescape properly, and you've decided you're not up for that, you're not likely to lay out the cash for the basic box and the handbook (which, remember, came along reasonably late in the product cyclce) in the first place.

That just makes no sense to me. I would buy/read the original boxed set FIRST, and base my decision off of that, before making any judgements on any future purchases.