Planescape Do You Care About Planescape Lore?

[Imaro]

My point was that you said that every other edition used the Great Wheel, which is wrong.

Ok, yeah, you are right and I mis-spoke. Point taken.

EDIT: One interesting thing I would note is that they had different cosmologies, and lore and in turn were considered distinct and different games... So I'm not sure they are different editions (in a chronological sense) of the same game. But again, I get and understand your point.

 

[pemerton]

until 4e every other edition used the Great Wheel.

[MENTION=23694]Alan Shutko[/MENTION] has already pointd out that this is not true. And original AD&D, while it used the same basic cosmological structure as Planescape, didn't use Planescape's lore.

I'm not sure they are different editions (in a chronological sense) of the same game.

Given that AD&D is a revision of OD&D + supplements, I think it's fairly described as a later edition of the same game.

 

[Alan Shutko]

EDIT: One interesting thing I would note is that they had different cosmologies, and lore and in turn were considered distinct and different games... So I'm not sure they are different editions (in a chronological sense) of the same game.

They're definitely a branch. But since I enjoy comparing editions and this thread loves tangents, I'll continue comparing them.

Cosmology and lore are a huge way the Basic D&D lines differ from the AD&D lines. The outer planes are different. Otiluke and Bigby never made an appearance. But the spell lists are extremely similar, and cross-pollenation happened while they coexisted. Tons of magic items were the same. The monster lists are very very similar, with many of the iconic monsters being in both editions (e.g. beholder) while some weren't (mindflayer, drow). Some monsters started in the D&D line but migrated to AD&D and 3e: nightcrawler, nightwing, nightwalker (were in the Mystara MC in 2e and in the MM in 3e).

Mentzer D&D contained the first example of prestige classes in the paladin, avenger, and knight. That experiment, and the simplified attribute bonuses, appear in 3e.

NWP were mimicked in the GAZ series and RCD&D as skills. In both cases, they weren't quite streamlined enough and were trimmed for 3e. Magic item creation was much more thought out in the GAZ series and I think some of the concepts translated to 3e, although there were major differences (notably, costing vs granting XP).

In the "Feels like D&D" test, I'd say these editions definitely had it, with the exception of the cosmology. (And maybe race as class, but that's easy to acclimate to.) I've seen ideas from that line of D&D appear in every edition since 2e, and hopefully some more will appear in D&D Next.

</tangent>

 

[Hussar]

But it's not just Planescape. There are a lot of people who weren't exactly thrilled with quite a few other changes in the lore when 4e's Monster Manual came out. I wondered what the hell happened to storm giants and wasn't thrilled with the change from gentle goodly sorts to brutal, scheming badasses. And the side of good wasn't exactly bolstered by turning unicorns unaligned either. There was backlash against those changes as well because WotC was changing the nature of things that had been relatively consistent... for what purpose? To give the presumably non-evil PCs more things to fight? I don't know.

You keep coming back to this being a Planescape thing, pouncing on any example of a bit of Planescape lore that comes up as if that's your proof of Planescape's "special" nature in this regard. But there are pervasive examples of this, and not limited to just lore too, but also rules, depending on what the complainant finds important or particularly vexing. Clerics and Fighters no longer getting the ability to wear plate armor as part of their starting package? I saw those complaints - and for some people, it contradicts their image of those classes. D&D's initial offering not including druids? I saw (and made) that complaint. No donkeyhorses? I saw that one too.

I'm not saying that this is solely a 4e problem at all. There have been some vociferous complaints about clerics losing the free heavy armor proficiency in Pathfinder too just as there were complaints about how druids were implemented in 2e and plenty of complaints about the 2e ranger (and 3e ranger) and two-weapon fighting fixations and crappy favored enemies. The examples I'm using in 4e are significant more because they're both relatively recent and came as part of a barrage of lots of other changes, including whole structures of the character rules, and served more as last straws rather than primary complaints. What I'm trying to point out is that this is a broad issue and calling out Planescape as some particularly special snowflake in this regard is really myopic. Change management is a tricky thing because you run the risk of changing the very things that appealed to some of the players in the first place. Or maybe you risk changing so many elements that loyalty to the continuity of the product line is hampered.

But, no one is talking about 4e. We're talking about 5e. I've still yet to see a large number of comments about how 4e lore is getting chucked out the window. No one seems to particularly care that much. Yet, as soon as we try to change Planescape, it's automatically bad.

I'd be just as critical of anyone trying to claim that dryads have to be female treants a la 4e, simply because that's the way they are presented in 4e.

It was the same in the run up to 4e. I don't care about what came before. Coming before, IMO, does not give anything any special status. So, gnomes have always been the red-headed stepchild of the PHB? Fine, chuck them to make room for something else. And, I actually LIKE playing gnomes. But, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that gnomes got reworked. Same with virtually everything else.

I judge based on what's being presented. What came before doesn't enter into the equation for me. I simply don't care.

 

[Hussar]

Perhaps we should examine the point and see how strong it is.

1e dragons did end up being fairly weak, although there was a fair amount of variability and some could bloody pretty powerful adventure groups. 2e greatly expanded the range of their power, giving them a much higher peak. 3e translated that into 3e's terms, making them some pretty dense sinks of hit points (although also making them very vulnerable to a touch AC-based attack) and fitting them in the CR structure (usually at the high end of each rating). A great many of the powers were consistent between 2e and 3e so I'm not seeing much radical change here.

So how did this play out? I'd have to say largely positively. But it's important to see what's going on. The name of the game is Dungeons and Dragons, so the role of dragons in the core game has always been pretty iconic. I daresay most people investigating 2e from their 1e experiences saw the ramping up of dragons as an appropriate response to dragons being too weak for higher level adventurers. The prestige monster wasn't living up to its threat and that needed to be corrected.

Moreover, the weaker dragons of 1e could still be largely covered in the rules by just making the dragon encountered be fairly young. In other words, what it meant for a creature to be a dragon was expanded - but not invalidated by the new structures. The same is true for 3e. There are plenty of dragon encounters suitable for low level characters just as there were in 1e. The most 'radical' changes wrought by 2e and 3e were that dragons were now viable creatures to encounter at any level.

So how strong is the point? People were receptive to changes here because of the nature of the changes. They were largely additive rather than transformative. This isn't anything like the appropriate of the term eladrin to make blink elves. This isn't turning good giants bad. This isn't some grand unification of infernal creatures.

But, you've talked, at great length, about how easy it is to translate 1e modules into 3e.

So, let's take DL 1 Dragons of Despair, the first Dragonlance module. Now, you'd think Dragonlance, being an iconic use of dragons should be pretty easy to translate.

At the end of DL 1, the party will encounter Khisanth according to the module (DL1 P 28), an "Ancient Huge Black Dragon". This is the biggest and baddest of black dragons in AD&D. They don't get any bigger than this.

By 2e, to make the same size dragon, Khisanth becomes a Very Young Black dragon. I'd say that's a pretty major change.

By 3e, Khisanth gets to be a young black dragon. By 4e, the same.

In 1e, there's a pretty good chance the dragon can't cast any spells. In 2e, black dragons top out at 12th level MU, in 3e, it's 15th level Sorc. 4e dragons don't get wizard spells.

So, what's my chance of subduing a dragon in 3e? What's his chance of being caught sleeping? Oh, right, that was changed.

I think you are saying that changes you like are additive and changes you don't like are transformative, because, as far as I'm concerned, a 1e dragon looks pretty much nothing like a 2e, 3e or 4e dragon.

 

[Hussar]

FWIW, I had a tremendous problem with how they handled dragons in 4e. They're basically tied up with my deeper problems with the concept of the 4e MM as "a book of stuff to fight," though, so it's a broader concern.

It's also not unique to PS. Ask FR fans how they feel about the spellplague, or the time of troubles. Ask 1e fans if they like the 2e bard. Heck, the last 5 years of acrimony and edition wars were in part caused by the changes wrought by 4e to the lore of the game and how a lot of people really didn't like them (at least, any better than their previous lore).

And it might be worth mentioning that most of this 50 page thread consist mostly of you and me trying to hash out why it's a bad idea to just change a creature willy-nilly. It's the whole 4e lore debate: "Why is or isn't it a good idea to change the lore for Creature X?" PS, by this point, is a bystander.

I'd largely agree with you here actually. It is the same debate. But, again, for the same reasons, we're disagreeing. You see value in continuity. I do not. Continuity because what came before works well and is the best way of doing something? Fair enough. Totally agree. There's a reason orcs don't get changed terribly much between editions. Orcs work. Same with most humanoids. There aren't enormous differences between a goblin in any edition. They all fit the same sort of role.

But, for some reason, it was perfectly acceptable for 3e to reject a vast swath of what came before. 3e radically changed every class, many of the monsters, and pitched out the window, at least in core, most of the lore of 2e. Heck, look at the writeups between the old loose leaf 2e Monster manuals, with 1 page per monster, filled with habit/society writeups and whatnot, and 3e's several monsters/page Monster Manual.

 

[billd91]

But, you've talked, at great length, about how easy it is to translate 1e modules into 3e.

So, let's take DL 1 Dragons of Despair, the first Dragonlance module. Now, you'd think Dragonlance, being an iconic use of dragons should be pretty easy to translate.

At the end of DL 1, the party will encounter Khisanth according to the module (DL1 P 28), an "Ancient Huge Black Dragon". This is the biggest and baddest of black dragons in AD&D. They don't get any bigger than this.

By 2e, to make the same size dragon, Khisanth becomes a Very Young Black dragon. I'd say that's a pretty major change.

Not from the perspective of the players. They can fight a dragon that's about as tough, relatively speaking, in 2e or 3e as they would have fought in 1e.

 

[Shemeska]

But, for some reason, it was perfectly acceptable for 3e to reject a vast swath of what came before. 3e radically changed every class, many of the monsters, and pitched out the window, at least in core, most of the lore of 2e. Heck, look at the writeups between the old loose leaf 2e Monster manuals, with 1 page per monster, filled with habit/society writeups and whatnot, and 3e's several monsters/page Monster Manual.

Yes it was. But it's completely disingenuous to claim that 3e rejected earlier lore wholesale.

Because while 3e presented much less flavor text in the MM, it largely didn't present anything that radically conflicted with prior lore. It was just less detailed. Then in later 3.x books that had the space to really expand on specific things, you saw more and more of that prior lore appear for integration and continuity. Rather than doing that, 4e presented both less detail than 2e initially and it gave details that conflicted with prior lore, often in a very radical way in its butchering sacred cows thing. Even later when it started to give more flavor text to monsters, it redefined many, many classic creatures. When earlier lore was integrated (like the 'loths for instance) it had to be oftentimes pushed into place like square pegs into round holes to fit the tropes and in-game history, cosmology, and ecology of 4e's default world with differing levels of success.

 

[jonesy]

At the end of DL 1, the party will encounter Khisanth according to the module (DL1 P 28), an "Ancient Huge Black Dragon". This is the biggest and baddest of black dragons in AD&D. They don't get any bigger than this.

By 2e, to make the same size dragon, Khisanth becomes a Very Young Black dragon. I'd say that's a pretty major change.

It's not actually. That's a really bad example. Dragonlance gets bigger and bigger dragons as the timeline advances. Khisant is a large adult in the latest version of the rules (Sovereign Press, Dragons of Autumn) simply to account for this. And as far as her age goes, she has never been even close to the eldest dragons. In Dragonlance some dragons have surpassed five thousand years (and this was during 2nd edition AD&D).

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'd largely agree with you here actually. It is the same debate. But, again, for the same reasons, we're disagreeing. You see value in continuity. I do not. Continuity because what came before works well and is the best way of doing something? Fair enough. Totally agree. There's a reason orcs don't get changed terribly much between editions. Orcs work. Same with most humanoids. There aren't enormous differences between a goblin in any edition. They all fit the same sort of role.

See, the same thing is true for different bits of D&D in different people's games. In some games, kender work. Yugoloths work. Celestials work. 3e bards work. Magical-only healing works. Big-nosed gnomes work. There's probably even a game out there where the ythrak works, and is vital to the play experience for that table. Rather than telling those games that they don't matter, I think it's important to say: "Okay, lets see how these things work in your game, and help them work better at more tables." There's a value to these things, a value found in scads of tables over decades, using and loving these elements. They shouldn't be disregarded just because the number before the e goes up.

I mean, check out some work Paizo has done on some of the most laughable of D&D monsters. There's even value to be found in the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing.

But, for some reason, it was perfectly acceptable for 3e to reject a vast swath of what came before. 3e radically changed every class, many of the monsters, and pitched out the window, at least in core, most of the lore of 2e. Heck, look at the writeups between the old loose leaf 2e Monster manuals, with 1 page per monster, filled with habit/society writeups and whatnot, and 3e's several monsters/page Monster Manual.

That condensation doesn't always mean a drastic change. I mean, halflings in 3e went through a pretty drastic change, and that was pretty controversial! Lots of people miss their hobbitesque halflings (so much so that there's widespread relief at the signs of them coming back in 5e). But 3e, kept a huge chunk of what came before in terms of lore. So much so that it's not very hard to port your 2e charactrs over to 3e in concept, if not in specific mechanics.

In terms of mechanics, 3e was more revolutionary, but the lore itself is fairly consistent, with a few bold exceptions (such as halflings).