Lankhmar was fucking awesome! I ran a great campaign of it in the 80s.  Loved it.  We loved its low-magic vibe.

Quote from: S'mon;723853Why did Space: 1889 still have land armies, when you could just fly over (eg) Sudan in your Liftwood fliers and machinegun the fuzzy-wuzzies from on high? That was my problem with the setting - being able to deploy Liftwood fliers over land changes so much that the designers didn't seem to consider. I've thought of running it with Stargate type interplanetary tech; maybe restrict Liftwood to Mars only.

There were still land armies after the invention of the zeppelin or the airplane. You still need land armies.

Your real point is that it didn't do a very good job of exploring just what effect the presence of flying vehicles in the late 1880s would have had. Never mind space travel and colonies on other planets.

There would have been opportunity for all sorts of interesting exploration on those subjects.  In terms of air power, it could have led to a world war.

In terms of alien colonies, it would have brought tremendous wealth to the great empires but also serious logistical problems.  Would they have really been able to colonize Africa and Mars and Venus and keep India pacified, and hold back China, all at the same time?

Socially, would the discovery of entire alien races had seriously changed Victorian-era concepts of racism?   There were people in the 1890s in real-life who believed that Indians needed to be given representation in parliament, they were laughed at; but maybe if there were also martians, and we needed to have a pacified and co-operative bunch of colonies on Earth in order to really exploit mars, just maybe they'd have ended up changing things around and altering their treatment of colonial humans, maybe even giving some of them full partnerships in the empire.

RPGPundit

Quote from: S'mon;723853Why did Space: 1889 still have land armies, when you could just fly over (eg) Sudan in your Liftwood fliers and machinegun the fuzzy-wuzzies from on high? That was my problem with the setting - being able to deploy Liftwood fliers over land changes so much that the designers didn't seem to consider. I've thought of running it with Stargate type interplanetary tech; maybe restrict Liftwood to Mars only.

Even if you have fliers, tanks, or what have you. You still need infantry. Infantry take and hold positions and objectives. If I remember correctly the setting the liftwood only really works on Mars. It slowly degrades because of whatever on earth. It degrades very rapidly on Venus.

Quote from: RPGPundit;724397There were still land armies after the invention of the zeppelin or the airplane. You still need land armies.

Your real point is that it didn't do a very good job of exploring just what effect the presence of flying vehicles in the late 1880s would have had. Never mind space travel and colonies on other planets.

Zeppelins and airplanes don't give the kind of solid fire platform a floating ship does, or the ability to transport lots of soldiers over land. I would expect war would be completely dominated by the flying ships, far more even than modern warfare is air dominated.

But yes it's a particular issue for an 1880s setting. No Battle of Omdurman or Isandlwana is possible or necessary if the imperialists have flying ships and the natives don't. No "Dr Livingstone I presume?" if you can just fly over Darkest Africa, no need to trek through jungles.

Quote from: Ronin;724428Even if you have fliers, tanks, or what have you. You still need infantry. Infantry take and hold positions and objectives.

You might still use infantry & artillery to garrison settlements and associated fortifications. You would never deploy a field army. Many objectives of modern warfare - all "take that hill" stuff - become unnecessary when you have flying ships.

The setting's flying ships are not the same as modern airplanes & helicopters & zeppelins. They float indefinitely, can be heavily armoured, can be as large as you like.

Quote from: RPGPundit;724397Socially, would the discovery of entire alien races had seriously changed Victorian-era concepts of racism?   There were people in the 1890s in real-life who believed that Indians needed to be given representation in parliament, they were laughed at; but maybe if there were also martians, and we needed to have a pacified and co-operative bunch of colonies on Earth in order to really exploit mars, just maybe they'd have ended up changing things around and altering their treatment of colonial humans, maybe even giving some of them full partnerships in the empire.

There were Indian members of Parliament in the 19th century - but representing British (UK) constituencies, of course. The French treat overseas colonies as Departments of France, I'm not sure it makes much difference in practice. If Britain had given India full voting rights, India would outvote Britain due to larger population, so that wouldn't happen.

Quote from: Ronin;724428If I remember correctly the setting the liftwood only really works on Mars. It slowly degrades because of whatever on earth.

I think it needs to be effectively unuseable on Earth. The problem is that it's the main source of interplanetary transport.

Quote from: S'mon;724474Zeppelins and airplanes don't give the kind of solid fire platform a floating ship does, or the ability to transport lots of soldiers over land. I would expect war would be completely dominated by the flying ships, far more even than modern warfare is air dominated.

But yes it's a particular issue for an 1880s setting. No Battle of Omdurman or Isandlwana is possible or necessary if the imperialists have flying ships and the natives don't. No "Dr Livingstone I presume?" if you can just fly over Darkest Africa, no need to trek through jungles.

There are allways reasons why one might not. Weather being the big one. Fuel being another. Also Africa is huge and the jungles can conceal alot from the air. Same as South America. Things you dont see till you nearly trip over them.

Quote from: Warthur;710451EDIT TO ADD: It occurs to me that a big issue with Planescape is that it wants to do all that funky Mage: the Ascension perception-and-belief-make-reality stuff with its whole "philosophers with clubs" idea, but it screws up a little by applying the concept to a multiverse where actually there are obvious objective truths which don't actually change. For instance, Gods can come and go based on who believes in them, fair enough, but Law and Chaos and Good and Evil are undying and the Outer Planes are directly tied in with them, right to the point where if a part of the Outlands gets sufficiently Evil it slips into the appropriate lower plane. That's clear, demonstrable, and empirically repeatable proof that Law and Chaos and Good and Evil are actual things in this cosmos, which implies an objective reality untouchable by the factions' philosophy. Were I to run Planescape my temptation would be to either embrace the postmodern entirely, ditch the D&Disms,  and have the characters wandering through a cosmos which genuinely does remould itself to fit whichever faction(s) is/are currently on top on Sigil, or make it clear that the factions are to a large extent bunk, a reaction by jaded people who've had too much exposure to the majesty of the Outer Planes and spent too much time trying to work out what it means as opposed to accepting it for what it is.

I think one of the aspects of Planescape's fundamental charm is that it makes no fucking sense at all.  I've often been tempted to ditch the D&D isms entirely, but I keep coming back to them, without them there's to much of the weird and mythic and not enough of the banal and familiar.

I've seen a lot of attempts to iron out the inconsistencies of the setting which end up draining it of life, rather like what the 4E team did when they ditched the great wheel for their own designed by committee cosmology.

I always felt the best approach to Planescape is to simply de-emphasise the points one doesn't like, something which is easy to do.

My take of the factions was always that they're real and they have power, but the parts of the factions who live in Sigil and think they run the factions are actually deluded in that regard, they're just mortal reflections of much more cosmic struggles.  (Although if they could actually deliver Sigil for their faction that might change.)  The Harmonium is really run from Ortho and Arcadia, the Doomguard is really run from it's fortresses on the edge of the negative material plane.

Quote from: RPGPundit;724394Lankhmar was fucking awesome! I ran a great campaign of it in the 80s.  Loved it.  We loved its low-magic vibe.

I agree.  I had the 1e version, and had a great time with it.  I thought it did a good job of modifying the AD&D rules to fit the setting, and it had a great swords-n-sorcery feel, IMO.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;724744I agree.  I had the 1e version, and had a great time with it.  I thought it did a good job of modifying the AD&D rules to fit the setting, and it had a great swords-n-sorcery feel, IMO.

Yes, this.  I think that it was maybe the first D&D product I got where it was Official and where it changed the rules in significant ways.  It turned me on to the fact I could do the same, that really anything was up for grabs.

Not to mention that along with Port Blacksand and Sanctuary, it cemented my love for city-based setting in grubby dark lawless metropolises.

RPGPundit

I should probably get Lankhmar if PDF is available - while I did not own the setting book, Leiber's works were of great influence on my vision of D&D in general.

While I don't want to say I hate it, Ravenloft and I have a difficult relationship. It never actually seems to work the way it's supposed to, and I interpret the 3rd edition book Heroes of Horror and the domains of dread element of 4e's cosmology as WotC attempts to revamp/reboot the best parts of that setting.

It doesn't help that it's my brother's* favorite setting by a considerable margin and he's constantly badgering me to run it again.

Oh, and I loathe undead these days.

* Not the one who's given up on tabletop.

Quote from: RPGPundit;524197So which one was it, out of all the ones they made?  Which was the worst piece of shit in the bunch?
 
Blackmoor?
Gygax-era Greyhawk?
Tekumel?
Mystara?
Kara-tur?
Dragonlance?
Forgotten Realms?
Ravenloft?
2e-era "From the Ashes" Greyhawk?
Al-qadim?
Hollow World?
Dark Sun?
Spelljammer?
Planescape?
Birthright?

I'm sure there's a few I'm missing in that list.  Say which one you thought was a total waste of paper that the designers should be shot for having written.

RPGPundit

With the caveat that most of these I never read or played since they were published long after I had moved on to other systems... I'd vote that the worst, most disappointing setting was Dragonlance. I liked some of the ideas which TSR began the series with: no gods, no dragons, a huge, epic campaign to be laid out. But then it all went south quickly. DL1 was alright but DL2 was 90% the DM reading text aloud. DL3 was damn near unplayable, others were just large collections of maps with little point. The music was useless. The DM couldn't dare let a PC die else it would screw up the story line. Just horrible in every way.
I think I was suckered into purchasing up to DL 7 or 8, then I stopped.
I know some people love the novels but its doubtful I'll ever care enough to try them.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;725605While I don't want to say I hate it, Ravenloft and I have a difficult relationship. It never actually seems to work the way it's supposed to, and I interpret the 3rd edition book Heroes of Horror and the domains of dread element of 4e's cosmology as WotC attempts to revamp/reboot the best parts of that setting.

It doesn't help that it's my brother's* favorite setting by a considerable margin and he's constantly badgering me to run it again.

Oh, and I loathe undead these days.

* Not the one who's given up on tabletop.

Technically one could run a Ravenloft game without any undead.