I've always admired Planescape because the artwork inspired a D&D different from my Elmoresque or Easleyesque visions.

I like Planescape. Its one of my favorite settings.

 Pundit have some valid points. The one about "making the planes mundane" is very very true. The moment they dissecated each plane, each realm within its own "fauna and flora", its society, etc. they made them like the mundane realm in the corner.  ( the idea of some pal here - dont remember the name - of making the planes like the mythic realms of Glorantha is good, and very fitting in my opinion. )

- - -

  Now, I would add another point to Pundit list - a pont that is, in my view, much more important than all of his (and may upset a LOT of people here):

 - h) system.

  Ad&d (or any d&d by the way) really dont fit the setting at all.

  A setting grounded in abstract themes (belief shapes reality, meaning of the universe, philosophical conflict, post-life questioning, etc. ) with a system grounded in structured-martial-tactical-heroism-and-power-progression. (or in other words, a system that dont promotes/supports the setting main themes. )

  A setting that inspires your imagination, inciting you to be anything you want, the way you want - an undead hero, a god wanting to be mortal again , the clerig of a abstract concept (lust), a modron gone rogue, a cranium rat splinter cell, a signer painter that paints realities...

 ...and a system thats totally about "balance" (!!!), that says you to be pick a "class" - that is nothing more than a martial specialization ( fighter, mage, thief, clerig, monk ), set some "martial" stats (Thacos/BaBs, Armor Class, feats, talents, weapons, etc. ), and you are good to go (gaining XP by the measure of monsters stomped!!!! ).

  WTF???  Planescape is the most archetypical example of bad marriage between setting and system. Or bad design, if you prefer.

Planescape never interested me in the least, in any way. When it came out I took to skipping great chunks of Dragon every month, and eventually stopped subscribing.

-clash

Planescape always struck me as one of the two D&D settings that I might have chosen if I'd continued to run the game after the Eighties, the other being Ravenloft which I did convert to Tri-Stat later on.

The whole "berk"-style arrogance actually destryoed two campaigns and basically ended some gamer relations.
Some people who were "in the know" regarding "the Planes" were so condescending (as characters) to two of my friends and me (we were dabblers in 2e at the time) when they wanted to get us play a Planescape campaign...

We never came around playing with them again, but there´s still birthday parties and such were we gather.

It was really, really annoying and stupid.

All the more as us three noobs (we had played Star Wars and Traveller on a constant basis at the time) were really motivated to experience "real men" dungeons and wanted to explore the Fantasiest Fantasy setting of all time: Forgotten Realms. We thought the 2e Veterans could show us "real men fantasy". But we got Desert of Desolation 1st, and Planescape after that.
What a trainwreck...
All we wanted was THE medieval western european fantasy experience, cause we didn´t have it, being Sci Fi and Wargamers. And all the veterans and NPCs wer CONSTANTLY annoying the shit out of us for being "clueless" and so "Forgotten Realmsy". :rolleyes:

EDIT: And THEM the FR-afficionados explained to us that only the Savage Frontier or the Desert or whatever else non-european was worth adventuring in. They said the european part was boring and not for adventure...*triplerolleyes*
We started playing Harnmaster shortly therafter, what a relief!


Although: I really have come to love some of the Artwork: Some of the maps and Landscapes are alien and open-ended enough to fuel the imagination.

Quote from: silvaWTF???  Planescape is the most archetypical example of bad marriage between setting and system. Or bad design, if you prefer.

Swine much?

Quote from: SettembriniSwine much?

:haw:

Quote from: PseudoephedrinePlanescape was the film noir setting of AD&D 2e. It was tremendous at evoking that feeling, and I loved it for it.

A perfect description.

Regards,
David R

EDIT TO ADD: Dang! I didn't realise the thread had been necroed.

Oh well, at least silva added a new viewpoint to the debate. And my ideas about Planescape have evolved a little since then, so the below reply stands.

Personally, I really like Planescape, although I'm mainly keen on the Planescape presented in the core boxed set and in Planescape: Torment. I think a lot of the supplements (aside from the Factol's Manifesto and In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil) were misguided, and went too far in nailing down all the details of the planes - if you stick to the core box, the Planes can still be epic and mysterious, but then again if you have easy access to them their majesty and mystery is always going to be lessened somewhat.

On the other hand, I agree with a lot of Pundit's points (and I have a couple of points about Maw's). Here goes:

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.

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.

Both of these points, to my mind, underline the essential schizophrenia of the Planescape line. Going from the Realms or Dark Sun or Dragonlance or Greyhawk or Homebrewdia, where the Planes are mythic otherworlds where the gods dwell, to Planescape, where they're, you know, just places, is always going to be horribly jarring. I would never use Planescape as the metaphysic for another campaign world - it lacks the necessary gravitas and mythic basis that it needs to be the Heaven and Hell of a campaign world.

The problem is that the guys at TSR never quite seemed to be on the same page on what Planescape was supposed to be - was it meant to be a complete campaign setting in itself, one where you could start out at 1st level and work your way up, or was it supposed to be something like the Manual of the Planes, a realm for super-high level adventuring? The former attitude seemed to get its way, most of the time, but then the latter kept popping up here and there.

To my mind, Planescape works best if you consider it to be an entirely separate thing from the Planar realms of a standard D&D campaign - oh, the aesthetic is the same, the place names are still there, but it really needs to be treated as its own place, as a separate campaign setting rather than a grand overarching metasetting that contains everything else. The Great Wheel of Planescape acts fundamentally differently from the Great Wheel of Greyhawk or Homebrewdia. I'm rather glad that Wizards moved away from trying to fit every campaign world into the same metaphysic during the 3E days (am I right in thinking that the 3E Realms have an entirely different cosmology from the Great Wheel?), and if I have one concern about the new metaphysic it's that it seems to tie everything into the same cosmology again. I have no interest in transporting characters from Homebrewdia to the Planes, or to the Realms, or to Spelljammer, or whatever. Characters made for the setting in play are always going to be, to me, more interesting than characters ripped forcefully from the context they originally existed in. D&D doesn't need a grand, overarching metasetting.

Quote3. 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.

Pretty much all of these points arise from the schizophrenia I talk about: All of these things are just fine if Planescape is another campaign setting, but they fall over horribly if you try to use it as a metasetting containing all the different D&D campaign worlds.

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.

Yeah. Planescape: Torment seemed to get by just fine stripping out almost all of the slang.

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

8. Metaplot.

No argument here.

QuoteIt 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.

I agree that it represents the ultimate error of TSR, but to my mind the biggest problem was TSR's constant attempts to tie all of its campaign settings together (Spelljammer suffered from this too). Planescape was a hip cool setting for the mid-1990s, and there's nothing wrong with that: what's wrong is trying to also incorporate the glorious old settings of the 1970s and 1980s in it too, and trying to set it up so that the Planescape setting was the metaphysic of those settings. Planescape isn't helped much by the inclusion of the Realms or Greyhawk (how often did Planescape PCs really visit the Prime Material Plane anyhow?), and the Realms and Greyhawk really didn't need Sigil.

Onto Maw's points:

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

I think it's best if the LoP is kept way way way off-stage and she never actually does much unless people seem about to break Sigil. She's essentially a giant plot device to make sure Sigil is neutral ground, as soon as anyone tries to make her more than that it begins to hurt.

QuoteThe 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.

I actually liked Sigil as a home site. It made a lot of sense to have a well-developed home ground, especially since if you're going on a lot of Planar Jaunts you're often not going to be visiting the same place twice. It gives the players something to care about. "Who cares if this Limbo-city made of Slaad vomit and angel tears gets blown up? There's plenty more Slaadi in the sea." Ah, but there's only one Sigil. (It's kind of like Amber in that way).

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

Again, an artifact of trying to use Planescape as a metasetting for other campaigns.

QuoteThe 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.

Yeah, it's notable that in Planescape: Torment the factions are almost entirely delegated to side quests. I found that the Factol's Manifesto did a really good job of making them excellent NPC organisations or PC organisations, depending on the wishes of the GM; it's a shame that the descriptions in the core set were so sparse, and the Manifesto came so late in the product line. It's tainted very slightly by the Faction War metaplot, but that's nigh-trivial to remove.

Quoteswine much ?

hmm... what? :confused:

EDIT:

QuoteI'm mainly keen on the Planescape presented in the core boxed set and in Planescape: Torment. I think a lot of the supplements (aside from the Factol's Manifesto and In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil) were misguided, and went too far in nailing down all the details of the planes

I agree.

This thread was brought back from the dead!

Quote from: RPGPundit3. 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".

I couldn't disagree with you more. The tanar'ri and baatezu became what they are due to their atrocious actions in life. They weren't  just accidentally "born into the wrong part of town." There are reasons why planars and primes, after death, can become petitioners on certain planes and not others.

The tanar'ri and baatezu aren't evil? They're "accountants?" Have you ever read the "Hellbound:The Blood War" boxed set or "Faces of Evil"?

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

I didn't care much for them because to me they felt out of place. I agree with you here, but I disagree with you entirely that they were much of a focus on the setting. Just don't stage adventures in Mechanus or take the little buggers out.

Quote8. Metaplot.

To each his own but you didn't HAVE to use Faction War if that is what you are referring to.

QuoteIt 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.

Nah, you are comparing apples and oranges. The relative failure of Planescape (compared to TSR's more successful settings) just merely reflects the fact that people generally tend to dismiss what is different and weird, in favor of what is familiar.  In the case of Planescape, the other settings were more successful because they were merely manifestations of familiar tried and true Tolkien fantasy tropes. Planescape tried to be  original and different, by tossing out most of that, and paid the price, unfortunately.


The rest of your points seem to be more on personal taste, and all I could do is *shrug.*

Quote from: LancerI couldn't disagree with you more. The tanar'ri and baatezu became what they are due to their atrocious actions in life. They weren't  just accidentally "born into the wrong part of town." There are reasons why planars and primes, after death, can become petitioners on certain planes and not others.

The tanar'ri and baatezu aren't evil? They're "accountants?" Have you ever read the "Hellbound:The Blood War" boxed set or "Faces of Evil"?

To be fair, it's slightly unfair to expect Pundit to have read late-period supplements for a product line he didn't like from the start, especially products which were put out shortly before PS vanished. Hellbound is far and away the rarest (or at least the most expensive to buy second-hand) of the Planescape boxed sets, in my experience.

QuoteTo each his own but you didn't HAVE to use Faction War if that is what you are referring to.

The mild problem is that a few things pointing towards the events of Faction War are seeded in various supplements. But they are easy to take out, and even easier to push towards a different conclusion.

QuoteNah, you are comparing apples and oranges. The relative failure of Planescape (compared to TSR's more successful settings) just merely reflects the fact that people generally tend to dismiss what is different and weird, in favor of what is familiar.  In the case of Planescape, the other settings were more successful because they were merely manifestations of familiar tried and true Tolkien fantasy tropes. Planescape tried to be  original and different, by tossing out most of that, and paid the price, unfortunately.

Counterpoint: Planescape: Torment is a widely-acknowledged classic, a masterpiece of the CRPG genre. Are you really saying that CRPG players are willing to recognise the unacknowledged genius of Planescape while RPGers are blinkered to it?

QuoteCounterpoint: Planescape: Torment is a widely-acknowledged classic, a masterpiece of the CRPG genre. Are you really saying that CRPG players are willing to recognise the unacknowledged genius of Planescape while RPGers are blinkered to it?

Warthur, do you really think Planescape Torment is that popular? I dont know, I feel its more an underdog, than a topdog.

- - -

  About my previous statement of Planescape´s bad design issue (system <> setting):

  Its worth to mention that in Planewalker Handbook there is an mechanic of Belief Points, made to address the issue a bit. Its a bit lame, but is a step in the right direction.

 ps: Thinking better, I think the Unknown Armies system would be much more fitting to Planescape, than D&D. Just link the Adept/Avatar mechanics to the Faction Philsophies, and you have a system that really supports the theme "Belief Shapes Reality".

Quote from: silvaWarthur, do you really think Planescape Torment is that popular? I dont know, I feel its more an underdog, than a topdog.

Pretty much anywhere you go on the internet where CRPGs are discussed, if you raise Planescape: Torment large numbers people will gush about it at great length. It's not attained widespread popularity beyond devoted computer gamers, but the same is true of just about all the various Forgotten Realms-based computer games.

Quote from: silvaWarthur, do you really think Planescape Torment is that popular?

It is widely recognized as one of the finest CRPG efforts among the slightly older games, as it happens, and hearing gamers every now and then actually quote snippets of the dialogue isn't all that uncommon.

Hey, Wikipedia agrees: "The game sold about 400,000 copies, according to game designer Scott Warner, [1] and received almost universal critical praise;[2] it has since become a cult classic. The game was added to Gamespy's 'Hall of Fame' in August 2004,[3] and to Gamespot's 'Greatest Games of All Time' list in October 2005."