I'm interested in hearing if this makes you more interested or less interested in playing D&D.
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For me it's not something that would make me interested in playing.

Ok, I feel this is defensible. 
If you know nothing, the juxtaposition does make you curious, right?  Do they really have an established world where this could happen? (pretty much yes!)  Does it make sense, is it coherent? (not exactly but I've seen way more popular fiction do much worse at that)

If you know enough to spot that there's creatures of various alignments, as part of their planar world building that mostly goes back decades, then you know you are seeing something out of Sigil, and that the central focus is there to be a little bit cringe and edgy.  But hold on, there's still something for you; WotC has been trying to make everything associated with the good-aligned planes described as pretty much anything except a normal white guy plus angel iconography, and here they have that as a central feature.  This one piece of art is already way better than everything in the PHB just for being willing to actually market the product instead of market an ideology.

Check the left and the right of the image and notice that they've packed two of their most Hasbro/WotC/TSR-specific monsters into the picture.  They've done what they can to make this picture involve all the iconography that separates them from the competition.

I think it probably is more a net positive than a net negative overall.  To the people it drives away, it's doing so by being honest; if you are telling a story that is traditional and makes sense, the rules of D&D are going to fight you a little on the edges.  If you don't want angelic and demonic beings (or their mortal descendants) palling around in a bar, you're going to need to set it in your own world and probably ban two player races from the PHB; it's gonna be extra work.

Quote from: Melichor on April 19, 2025, 12:40:05 PMI'm interested in hearing if this makes you more interested or less interested in playing D&D.
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For me it's not something that would make me interested in playing.

As Venka implied, this is really right out of 1990s Planescape's Sigil.

QuoteThanks to the Lady's strict forbiddance of open large-scale conflict, Sigil was a true neutral haven to all visitors. It was a location where no wars were waged and even the fiercest opponents, such as an angel and a fiend or a devil and a demon, could be seen sharing a drink and momentarily setting their differences aside.

I think it primarily appeals to a crowd today similar to the goth crowd of the 1990s - like fans of "Good Omens" - either the 1990 book or the series started in 2019.

Personally, I've never been a fan of Planescape, but I don't mind that it exists. I think it's good for D&D to have a range of possibilities that include this.

What this says to me is that playing D&D is like watching 'Cheers'. Everyone is a frenemy and nobody really does anything.
Where's the adventure?
To me this makes D&D look bland and unexciting.

Quote from: Melichor on April 19, 2025, 02:05:05 PMWhat this says to me is that playing D&D is like watching 'Cheers'. Everyone is a frenemy and nobody really does anything.
Where's the adventure?
To me this makes D&D look bland and unexciting.

Fair enough. Were you a fan of Planescape and/or Good Omens?

I enjoyed both the novel and at least the first season of Good Omens - and I thought it had interesting action, even though the pitch and promotion were mostly about the friendship of an angel and a demon. It's not to everyone's taste, though. And I didn't care for Planescape.

Coincidentally, I just played in a larp last Sunday called "Be Not Afraid" about angels who are newly given free will. It had a lot of projects and scheming, and we ended up making a truce with Hell to forestall the End Times while not abandoning our cause.

This looks like a very popular gacha meme from about 7 years ago when one of my kids was into that.  So maybe they're marketing to early teens?  And no, this does not increase my interest in the game.

Was the latest vtt attempt by Wotc (not to be confused with the earlier 4e one) named after that Planescape Sigil?

As far as I can tell, WotC has spent the past decade marketing D&D to people whose primary concern is being D&D players and who are willing to sacrifice anything else for the sake of that label.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on April 19, 2025, 03:22:08 PMAs far as I can tell, WotC has spent the past decade marketing D&D to people whose primary concern is being D&D players and who are willing to sacrifice anything else for the sake of that label.

Greetings!

*Laughing* Yes, my friend, I agree.

I never liked Planescape on the whole. Yes, I have a decent number of Planescape supplements for ideas, maps, whatever. Still, the cosmology is absolutely atrocious. Extending out, then, yeah, WOTC's whole approach to cosmology, alignment, and such is pretty silly, nonsensical, illogical, irrational, incoherent, and in the end, for myself, very disappointing.

It is why cosmology and alignment in my world of Thandor are very different from WOTC. That's always been true though, as I first started designing Thandor over 40 years ago. I have never liked WOTC's approach to cosmology and alignment. I was not thrilled about how TSR did alignment and cosmology in Forgotten Realms, either. It has been an exercise in frustration all the way around, which has fed into my own satisfaction with Thandor even more so. I just don't have to worry about or consider the "Official" approach anymore, because it is absolute rubbish.

I like my game world to be realistic; harsh, savage, brutal. Mysterious, and yet, overall, consistent. Relatively low-magic, high magic occasionally, in a more mythical and epic sense, but defaulting to a relatively normal approach. No plane hopping trips for Players. No Resurrection or Raise Dead spells. I've even strictly controlled Flying as a spell. Flying, anything like resurrection, that is all epic, unusual, and not typically available or controllable in any way by Player Characters.

Yeah. Time for some fresh coffee!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jhkim on April 19, 2025, 02:03:59 PM

Quote from: Melichor on April 19, 2025, 12:40:05 PMI'm interested in hearing if this makes you more interested or less interested in playing D&D.
You cannot view this attachment.
For me it's not something that would make me interested in playing.

As Venka implied, this is really right out of 1990s Planescape's Sigil.

QuoteThanks to the Lady's strict forbiddance of open large-scale conflict, Sigil was a true neutral haven to all visitors. It was a location where no wars were waged and even the fiercest opponents, such as an angel and a fiend or a devil and a demon, could be seen sharing a drink and momentarily setting their differences aside.

I think it primarily appeals to a crowd today similar to the goth crowd of the 1990s - like fans of "Good Omens" - either the 1990 book or the series started in 2019.

Personally, I've never been a fan of Planescape, but I don't mind that it exists. I think it's good for D&D to have a range of possibilities that include this.

I think there's a huge difference in tone and that the similarity is more superficial. In either case it's not my thing anyway.

In context, Planescape is notable in that it's the kind of campaign where diabolical and sinister forces coexist with noble and angelic forces in a kind of jaded cold war. It's an interesting idea and notable because it's out of the ordinary.

Making it ordinary is what reduces it's impact. As Syndrome said, when everyone is Super, no one will be Super. And when everyone is quirky, no one is quirky.

This image just reinforces to me that WOTC is coasting on the imagination and world building of greater developers, and have little, if anything to contribute to the hobby themselves.

I loved reading about the Planescape setting and letting my imagination loose on what could happen.  Playing in it was not actually that great of an experience.  It seems a better setting for books than an RPG.  The problem I had with it was that so much detail of what it was like to actually live in a Planescape region was left undefined, and it's different enough from RL that it's hard to draw on actual experience for that.  I think a couple of setting books covering just a region of PLanescape might have helped, like continental size regions in Avernus, Arboria, or the Outlands.

I enjoyed Good Omens.  It has conflicts.  I didn't much care for Planescape as it was, though it had its own kind of conflicts, rife with the brand of sophomoric pseudo philosophy so popular in the '90s. 

Watered down Planescape reduced to a vibe would naturally have even less appeal.

That art doesn't do anything for me, but frankly almost no RPG art does. These days, the only new fantasy art I see that really speaks to me is on album covers.






Stick an image like that on the cover of an RPG book and I'll buy it in a heartbeat.

Quote from: SHARK on April 19, 2025, 03:39:25 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on April 19, 2025, 03:22:08 PMAs far as I can tell, WotC has spent the past decade marketing D&D to people whose primary concern is being D&D players and who are willing to sacrifice anything else for the sake of that label.

Greetings!

*Laughing* Yes, my friend, I agree.

I never liked Planescape on the whole. Yes, I have a decent number of Planescape supplements for ideas, maps, whatever. Still, the cosmology is absolutely atrocious. Extending out, then, yeah, WOTC's whole approach to cosmology, alignment, and such is pretty silly, nonsensical, illogical, irrational, incoherent, and in the end, for myself, very disappointing.

It is why cosmology and alignment in my world of Thandor are very different from WOTC. That's always been true though, as I first started designing Thandor over 40 years ago. I have never liked WOTC's approach to cosmology and alignment. I was not thrilled about how TSR did alignment and cosmology in Forgotten Realms, either. It has been an exercise in frustration all the way around, which has fed into my own satisfaction with Thandor even more so. I just don't have to worry about or consider the "Official" approach anymore, because it is absolute rubbish.

I like my game world to be realistic; harsh, savage, brutal. Mysterious, and yet, overall, consistent. Relatively low-magic, high magic occasionally, in a more mythical and epic sense, but defaulting to a relatively normal approach. No plane hopping trips for Players. No Resurrection or Raise Dead spells. I've even strictly controlled Flying as a spell. Flying, anything like resurrection, that is all epic, unusual, and not typically available or controllable in any way by Player Characters.

Yeah. Time for some fresh coffee!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Shark,

Excellent concepts! I also prefer low magic. I preferred the 4E cosmology to the Great Wheel (isn't that the basis for Planescape?)  These days I do my own "5 plane model" but they aren't places where you want to hang out. Rather, the planes are the sources of monsters and magic.

4E's cosmology below: