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Author Topic: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?  (Read 4470 times)

ForgottenF

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #15 on: August 15, 2022, 06:40:40 PM »
Spelljammer 5e will definitely get the "current year" treatment. Can't find it now, but I already saw an article explaining about how "not all space vampires are bad, you know." And it looks like they're adding more new quirky furry races to play. Knowing WOTC, it'll be all about taking your crew of non-binary space hippos on a "so random" adventure to non-violently smash the space patriarchy.

You're most likely correct. I'm not even sure what to do about it anymore. Seems futile to try and fight it anymore, this nonsense seems inevitable.

I'm working on my own system for fixing the awful homogenization treatment they gave all the races that also gives a bit more freedom, so maybe just houseruling away all the SJW woke trash is the only real solution outside of abandoning D&D altogether.


Why not just use hard copies of the earlier print runs, for in person gaming?  Provide a handout, saying you are running the original 5E core content only.

When last I looked, WOTC was still publishing the old books unabridged, in print--on-demand. Much as I don't like giving them any money, part of me thinks it's worthwhile to buy them, just so the bean counters get the message that there's still a market for TSR material (and for archival).

Reckall

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #16 on: August 15, 2022, 10:26:36 PM »
For Planescape 2E there is an enormous wealth of material and adventures (four base boxes! plus scores ) The Manual of the Planes 3E basically it is a conversion tool for all of this (along with The Planar Handbook). These books, however, are also useful for creating your own cosmology

I loved Planescape and it was a key component of my long running campaign. I discovered it thanks to "Planescape: Torment" (which is one of the best videogames I ever played) so, since you can buy it for a bunch of peanuts, you can try it and see if you like the setting.

Or you can buy the basic box in .PDF on DriveThrough RPG: if you like that you will like the rest.
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

HappyDaze

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #17 on: August 15, 2022, 11:59:16 PM »
I think Spelljammer is a bunch of fun. Its very weird though. Not for those that want a more serious experience.

Its ship rules are eh.
That was my experience too. At the time Spelljammer came out, I wanted all my gaming to be  super-serious all the time, and it just didn't work well for that. Because of that experience (and because I had moved away from D&D), I haver gave Planescape a chance.

Reckall

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #18 on: August 16, 2022, 10:20:00 AM »
I think Spelljammer is a bunch of fun. Its very weird though. Not for those that want a more serious experience.

Its ship rules are eh.
That was my experience too. At the time Spelljammer came out, I wanted all my gaming to be  super-serious all the time, and it just didn't work well for that. Because of that experience (and because I had moved away from D&D), I haver gave Planescape a chance.

I have the basic box of Spelljammer, I read it and I never bothered to buy anything else from that line (or to run it). My players had their flying ship in 3E (the Alchemical Rainbow) and I wrote the rules for areal ships and fights with them - which worked well. Planescape gave me all I needed, including battles in the Astral Plane. I never included "other Prime Material Planes" (Krynn, Mystara) anyway. They once reached a "Dead Plane" where not even the Gods were present - and even then Planescape was all I needed. I understand the idea behind Spelljammer but Planescape killed it.
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

VisionStorm

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #19 on: August 16, 2022, 11:17:01 AM »
It's been ages since I've been able to play them, but Planescape and Spelljammer were my favorite D&D settings, after Dark Sun, back in the day (90s,). I never played SJ 100% RAW, but there was a period where every group we started had its own ship, and they were constantly flying around from place to place and characters could be from all over the place. I lost those books to a termite infestation, but I had the main boxed set and the Complete Spacefarer's Handbook (plus maybe a few others I can't remember), which added a bunch of races, kits and other stuff (recommended if you wanna play SJ 2e).

Planescape I couldn't play as much (that was around the time everyone in my group was growing up going off to work, or even moving away, etc), but it became of one my go-to settings during my last teenage years of gaming. Lots of interesting stuff dealing with the different factions and their philosophies, and such. I wish I could have spent more time in Sigil, but most of our adventures were random world hopping stuff, when we weren't playing Ravenloft, cuz one of my regular player I could always get a hold of at the time was obsessed with it (good setting too, I regret not getting the books now)

All of these settings will be crapped on by WotC. They weren't perfect by any stretch (except for Dark Sun, and even that suffered on its later supplements), but all four settings I mentioned in this post were the best D&D ever had to offer as far as I'm concerned. But WotC sucks at world-building, and now more than ever.

Monero

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #20 on: August 16, 2022, 12:21:26 PM »
Reviews are coming in for the new Spelljammer books…not good so far. Minimal and nonsensical rules for ship combat with more rules dedicated to crashing than naval combat as a whole. Guess I’ll be pillaging from older material instead. Glad I didn’t waste my money.

mAcular Chaotic

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #21 on: August 16, 2022, 04:30:26 PM »
I've been looking forward to Spelljammer in 5e for years, since I never got a chance to play it back in the day. But it looks like WOTC already mangled it just like all the other settings they've been putting out lately. Either the lore gets changed for no reason to its detriment, or it is basically an empty book with nothing of real value to offer, and it looks like Spelljammer is both right now, unfortunately.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.

Corolinth

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #22 on: August 16, 2022, 07:33:56 PM »
Spelljammer was never my bag. Not all great tastes taste great together. There's a certain type of genre mixing that just doesn't pop off for me, and getting on your magic spaceboat and flying from Dragonlance to Dark Sun to Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms never sat well with me. I like these worlds better without visitors from another planet arriving on their magic spaceboat. I'm not much more enthusiastic about cross-pollinating these worlds through planeswalking, either.

I've lightened up a bit over the years. Spelljammer as a concept seems fine, but it kinda needs to be its own thing. Everything I've heard about the original Spelljammer has been positive, and that it's a fun gonzo adventure. I'm willing to take those reviews at face value.

I wanted to enjoy Planescape. It definitely set the cosmology in D&D. There were a few things about it that didn't jive with me. I didn't really like the factions and I wasn't all that interested in Sigil. Looking through the boxed set, I'm seeing the cracks. Some quick head math has this boxed set with about the same page count as the 3E Manual of the Planes. Over half of the boxed set is Sigil and the factions (so basically, Sigil). It doesn't really talk all that much about the other planes. If you don't have the other boxed sets (which I didn't back then) that's what Planescape is - Sigil. The other planes, which should be the interesting part of the setting, feel like a footnote. I think if the Planescape boxed set had contained the material that's in Manual of the Planes, I'd have liked it a lot more. All the infinite planes, and we're talking about this one city in the Outlands. Which, because it sits in the center of the plane that sits in the center of all the other outer planes, is the most important place in the multiverse. It makes Planescape feel small.

If I sat down and read through this again, I would probably like the factions more now. Having read Manual of the Planes definitely helps with that, and I can see how somebody who had the 1E version of that book might have been more interested. I now know things about those other planes that aren't presented to me in the original boxed set. I'm sure being in my 40s rather than high school makes a difference as well. I'm not a big fan of how all of the D&D game worlds are kind of shoehorned together to fit the Great Wheel. I prefer allowing each world to have its own cosmology that doesn't have to fit neatly with the others, but that's a tradeoff that probably has to be made in order to do Planescape as a campaign setting.

If WotC is going to do Planescape, I'd prefer for them not to try to do 2E Planescape. That's exactly what they're going to do, and it's going to be terrible, because WotC fundamentally doesn't understand what fans love about their favorite game worlds. This is entirely separate from any problems they have with the Seattle virus. WotC mangled the Forgotten Realms from 3E-4E-5E. What they're doing to Dragonlance also looks stupid. Trying to rewrite old Greyhawk modules to cram them into the Forgotten Realms is stupid. It's like they don't have anyone who knows how to write fluff, and they keep wanting to change fluff thinking it doesn't matter and nobody cares.

Planescape is built into WotC's flagship product. Release a full length book on Dominaria. That's the default game world where all your modules are set in. Your "Prime Material Plane". Then release Planeswalker's Guide to the Multiverse. Bam. 5E Planescape. Yeah, the old heads won't be happy that they didn't get their Planescape updated for 5E, but they all know they weren't going to get that, anyway. At least they won't be pissed off that their cool setting got butchered and mangled by incompetent buffoons.

ForgottenF

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #23 on: August 16, 2022, 07:55:30 PM »
Spelljammer was never my bag. Not all great tastes taste great together. There's a certain type of genre mixing that just doesn't pop off for me, and getting on your magic spaceboat and flying from Dragonlance to Dark Sun to Greyhawk to Forgotten Realms never sat well with me. I like these worlds better without visitors from another planet arriving on their magic spaceboat. I'm not much more enthusiastic about cross-pollinating these worlds through planeswalking, either.

It's funny, when we ran Planescape as kids, whatever base setting we were using (usually Faerun) just was the material plane. It's probably because none of us had the Spelljammer books, but we basically assumed that only one D&D setting was canon at a time.

Planescape is built into WotC's flagship product. Release a full length book on Dominaria. That's the default game world where all your modules are set in. Your "Prime Material Plane". Then release Planeswalker's Guide to the Multiverse. Bam. 5E Planescape. Yeah, the old heads won't be happy that they didn't get their Planescape updated for 5E, but they all know they weren't going to get that, anyway. At least they won't be pissed off that their cool setting got butchered and mangled by incompetent buffoons.

Plane Shift Dominaria was probably my single biggest 5e disappointment. I read the Urza novelizations back when that line of cards was current, and Dominaria is a legitimately interesting setting.  They didn't even try to do it justice. At this point, I wouldn't buy a Dominaria source book if they published one, but I wish they'd done one for 3rd edition, back when they were still doing proper setting books.

Corolinth

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #24 on: August 17, 2022, 12:55:54 AM »
Plane Shift Dominaria was probably my single biggest 5e disappointment. I read the Urza novelizations back when that line of cards was current, and Dominaria is a legitimately interesting setting.  They didn't even try to do it justice. At this point, I wouldn't buy a Dominaria source book if they published one, but I wish they'd done one for 3rd edition, back when they were still doing proper setting books.
I'm not the world's biggest MTG fan. I played a bit in the 90s, and read two or three novels. I have a very rough understanding of several of the sets and their associated worlds, most of which I've acquired through osmosis. Dominaria is the world I'm most familiar with, because that's around the time I played. I understand your disappointment. I myself was pretty disappointed with the entire Plane Shift series. I think the concept had a lot of potential, and they threw it away on several free 24-page PDFs.

I would grouse about how WotC shits the bed on all of their world books, but I'm pretty sure they had that problem in 3E, too. That's why they needed that contest to get Keith Baker to make Eberron for them. Most of the 3E FR releases were just 1E and 2E books condensed, consolidated, and updated for 3E mechanics. It's clear to me now why so much stuff just sat on a shelf.

After looking over 2E Planescape and refreshing myself on the factions, I realize they've already done that in 5E. Ravnica is Sigil. The ten guilds are the factions.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #25 on: August 17, 2022, 10:38:03 AM »
Spelljammer and Planescape tried to do new things with the stagnant fantasy genre and didn't get much traction because Tolkien clones sell way better. It's disappointing.

tenbones

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #26 on: August 17, 2022, 10:45:32 AM »
I've run a decades-long Spelljammer campaigns that have lasted years. I've converted *every* player that's played in one into true fans of the setting. It's D&D + Star Wars + Pirates of the Caribbean in Baron Munchausen-Space. Sounds insane I know, but it works.

Ironically it actually allows for the modern freakshow style gaming, but again, as long as you as a GM curate the status-quo of wherever you're playing. There's politics galore and it's the setting that's the Matroyshka doll of sandboxes within sandboxes within sandboxes.

This new Spelljammer? Looks like complete dogshit to me.


Reckall

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #27 on: August 17, 2022, 06:50:45 PM »
I've run a decades-long Spelljammer campaigns that have lasted years. I've converted *every* player that's played in one into true fans of the setting. It's D&D + Star Wars + Pirates of the Caribbean in Baron Munchausen-Space. Sounds insane I know, but it works.

Well, I, with Planescape did The Iran-Contra scandal + Clear and Present Danger + Jason Bourne if it counts :D
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #28 on: August 17, 2022, 06:58:18 PM »
Overrated garbage that is a mile wide and a foot deep.

When I was a young lad, I thought it was the coolest shit ever. "Wowee," I thought. "A literally infinite multiverse for my players to play and romp in!" Then I realized that the massive scope is actually a detriment to storytelling. When everything is infinite in scope, then your contribution doesn't really matter as much. You're not small fish in a big pond, you're big fish in an endless pond. And it's not just that either. Ultimately all the Planes is still just filler material until you get to the next interesting event. So maybe you're involved in Jinn politics and so you're moving around from the City of Brass, to the Coral Palace, to whatever the other two were. Great. Fantastic. After the first two times of the Elemental Planes being a hurdle, it stops being one -  the players just say "Okay we do the thing we did before" and you fast-forward to the actually important thing. Unless you have a random encounter.

So ultimately, I don't see the point. Why not have these cool fantastical elements on the Prime Material then?

Zalman

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Re: Spelljammer & Planescape: How do you all feel about these two settings?
« Reply #29 on: August 17, 2022, 08:03:35 PM »
As campaign settings I think both are ambitious and ultimately kinda silly. Each has one great mechanic though: Planescape's doors, and Spelljammer's space physics.
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