Quote from: GeekyBugle;1112518Well since it's a life style brand it's important to give those who don't play the game a voice isn't it?

Its not a lifestyle brand yet except in the minds of a few who think that fan made knick-knacks somehow damns it as a WOTC lifestle game now.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112422To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

I like the Planescape explanation that out on the planes, you never know if that 0 level beggar is really Zeus out testing mortals. A demon who got a hair up his ass to roast a beggar might quickly find himself on the business end of a lighting bolt.
Or that beggar might be aligned with some planar plot. Really, the idea that angels and devils were restrained towards each other out on the planes is a really great contrast to their usual machinations on the prime planes. It goes from Diablo (the video game) to Screwtape Letters in tone. And I really like that.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112422There is always a market for a great new setting.

To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

D&D 4e had the Astral Sea which was a good idea which allowed the "planes" to be islands, and you could drop islands from the Elemental Chaos into the Astral Sea or anything you could imagine. If I did a not-Planescape, I'd consider that approach.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1112703I like the Planescape explanation that out on the planes, you never know if that 0 level beggar is really Zeus out testing mortals. A demon who got a hair up his ass to roast a beggar might quickly find himself on the business end of a lighting bolt.
Or that beggar might be aligned with some planar plot. Really, the idea that angels and devils were restrained towards each other out on the planes is a really great contrast to their usual machinations on the prime planes. It goes from Diablo (the video game) to Screwtape Letters in tone. And I really like that.

You see, here's where that "physics law" mechanic I have in mind plays it's role. It will allow the GM to decide just how deadly he wants his campaign/adventure to be. And it would not necessitate that latter campaigns/adventures retain the same level of danger, you could start with a danger level near to a 1st level party and move up or start at a higher level and move down, and any mix between those two extremes, you could have parts that are extremely lethal while others seem like a walk in the park by comparison.

This mechanic will allow for a "world" to be more or less dangerous and to change it's danger level even while the adventure/campaign is in progress or by the next time the party visits it.

Not gonna go into much detail right now but, there are only 4 planes, inside the planes there are spheres, the spheres contain realms and the realms worlds. Now, a sphere can be in more than one plane at the same time. How is that possible? You'll have to wait and see.

Quote from: Omega;1112677Its not a lifestyle brand yet except in the minds of a few who think that fan made knick-knacks somehow damns it as a WOTC lifestle game now.

Key word being YET, the push to make it so is there and it comes from WotC, because if they manage to make it so they have a huge untapped market, take comics/movies as an example, the sales for toys/ T-Shirts, etc are way bigger and more constant than the original IP. McFarlane didn't became a millionaire by selling his comics, but by selling the other connected merchandise.

I have no problem with they wanting to tap that market, as long as they don't fuck up the game trying to do so.

But, if other companies efforts are anything to go by they will fuck it up, and kick out their loyal consumer base to try and win more consumers. Which is good news for indie game developers and bad news for those who want to buy good D&D books for their games.

I don't think the Elemental Planes are copyrighted, let alone the Alignment Planes, because too culturally generic. But IIRC, the demi-planes, like the border elementals (Dust, Vacuum, Salt, etc.) were copyrighted by TSR, and thus now owned as part of WotC. Make of that rumor what you will.

Quote from: Itachi;1112507Don't know if it helps but Planescape for me is Sigil: the belief factions, the infinite portals and improbable keys, the weirdness of citizens, the alien geometries in architecture (and the Lady's spikes everywhere), the cynical Cant of the locals.

I think a big part of it's appeal was it's New Weird aesthetics and concepts, which seems much more common place in the hobby nowadays. Between the myriad weird OSR and crazy indie games, I don't think a new PS would hold the same appeal these days.

The weird in D&D has become pervasive. Considering what the average party in FR looks like today,  Planescape has become mundane.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1112793I don't think the Elemental Planes are copyrighted, let alone the Alignment Planes, because too culturally generic. But IIRC, the demi-planes, like the border elementals (Dust, Vacuum, Salt, etc.) were copyrighted by TSR, and thus now owned as part of WotC. Make of that rumor what you will.

Which is why you go with a different approach. Still not decide if I go 100% my stuff, 100% PFd20SRD or a mix. Also I'm gonna go really retro and Old School and publish the PFd20SRD planes conversion to OSR in a blog.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1112795The weird in D&D has become pervasive. Considering what the average party in FR looks like today,  Planescape has become mundane.

Perfectly put, yes. Or at least this is my take on the matter. I was talking to a friend the other day about WWI Stormtroopers (we were coming from a Battlefield1 session) and how they informed modern day small unit tactics, breaking from the napoleonic mass infantry of the time, and how having a modern "stormtrooper" doesn't make sense. It's the same case with Planescape aesthetics and D&D. For a PS to have any impact nowadays, it would have to innovate in some significant way.

Long story short, what you're asking for is the base setting of 4e. It tried to make the planes a suitable place for adventures from level one, and all the good ideas got erased by historical revisionists.

So I'm totally in favor of whatever you're selling. If you want to publish another book of the planes (Mongoose did one fifteen years ago), even a whole product line exploring adventures on the other planes from level one, then I would totally back it on kickstarter.

What would be the best is if you created a combined "planejammer" setting where characters can ride spaceships literally to hell and back.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1112422There is always a market for a great new setting.

To do a planar setting, you need a planar concept where 1st level PCs can somehow survive. This is tough as the planar beasts who show up on the prime material are usually extremely tough monsters. Sigil in PS and the planar border towns work great because they are dangerous places, but not auto-death zones.

D&D 4e had the Astral Sea which was a good idea which allowed the "planes" to be islands, and you could drop islands from the Elemental Chaos into the Astral Sea or anything you could imagine. If I did a not-Planescape, I'd consider that approach.

This is probably the single most important thing to do. The standard D&D planes are intended only for high-level adventurers.

In order to do a planejammer setting, you need to construct the planes in such a way that they support adventuring from level one. By extension, this means that they need to be constructed with corresponding social, economic, and ecological factors. This means that the planes will, aside from the weird geography and such, resemble the material plane in many ways. On the elemental plane of fire, you will have villages of level 0 commoner genies, forests of candle trees (or whatever), ferries sailing rivers of lava, etc.

Basically, the selling point of the setting will be the extraplanar aesthetic. Everything previously mundane will be weird and unrecognizable.

So you need a really good art direction to capture that.

Quote from: Itachi;1112507Don't know if it helps but Planescape for me is Sigil: the belief factions, the infinite portals and improbable keys, the weirdness of citizens, the alien geometries in architecture (and the Lady's spikes everywhere), the cynical Cant of the locals.

I think a big part of it's appeal was it's New Weird aesthetics and concepts, which seems much more common place in the hobby nowadays. Between the myriad weird OSR and crazy indie games, I don't think a new PS would hold the same appeal these days.

You could market it as being all that weird stuff combined in one game.

Think tieflings, dragonborn, warforged and other freak galleries are old hat? Now you have tieflings from hell, elemental dragonborn, and warforged from the planes of order.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1112793I don't think the Elemental Planes are copyrighted, let alone the Alignment Planes, because too culturally generic. But IIRC, the demi-planes, like the border elementals (Dust, Vacuum, Salt, etc.) were copyrighted by TSR, and thus now owned as part of WotC. Make of that rumor what you will.

In my opinion, the elemental planes are conceptually absurd (especially the extra pseudo-elemental planes, which got increasingly silly and torturous as more were added) and in practice bland and boring unless you completely re-conceptualize them. Like 4e did, and that got erased by the historical revisionists despite being a genuinely good idea.

Why re-do Planescape with all that baggage when you can just wait a bit longer for Age of Sigmar: Soulbound?  The Mortal Realms are already way more interesting than what Planescape was able to manage.

I prefer my own planar adventuring. Several of my RPGPundit Presents issues detail elements of the type of planar adventuring I like to do, either in Medieval-Authentic form or Gonzo form.

Quote from: KingCheops;1113466Why re-do Planescape with all that baggage when you can just wait a bit longer for Age of Sigmar: Soulbound?  The Mortal Realms are already way more interesting than what Planescape was able to manage.

Thanks, but no thanks.

You can take that pile of Age of Shitmar and shovel it elsewhere...

Planescape is one of those settings I see come up a lot in social media as one of people's favorite D&D settings, but conversely it's also one I sometimes see people crap on as well (usually cuz they didn't like the Factions, which I actually kinda liked and suspect people who loved the setting did as well). I think one of the challenges of designing a not-Planescape setting would be to capture whatever it was that people liked about it, which might require some polling to determine exactly what that is. Another issue is coming up with a proper cosmology people actually like that could fit in their campaign.

One thing about Planescape is that it was built around D&D's cosmology so it could readily fit into existing D&D campaigns ran within published settings. That meant that it could work as a proper cross-setting "multiverse" for D&D without problem. A "not-Planescape" setting might run into the problem of requiring its own unique cosmology (cuz copyright), which might not mesh with other people's games (whether they're D&D centric or not). It would need to have its own cosmology as well as its own hooks to draw people in.

Conversely it could also be a generic tool for building otherworldly realms or pocket worlds, but Pundit already did that somewhat recently, as some already mentioned.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1114077Thanks, but no thanks.

You can take that pile of Age of Shitmar and shovel it elsewhere...

Heh.  Did you see GW just announced they are bringing back the Old World?  It is a couple years down the road yet, but happening.  Square bases and all.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114084Planescape is one of those settings I see come up a lot in social media as one of people's favorite D&D settings, but conversely it's also one I sometimes see people crap on as well (usually cuz they didn't like the Factions, which I actually kinda liked and suspect people who loved the setting did as well). I think one of the challenges of designing a not-Planescape setting would be to capture whatever it was that people liked about it, which might require some polling to determine exactly what that is. Another issue is coming up with a proper cosmology people actually like that could fit in their campaign.

One thing about Planescape is that it was built around D&D's cosmology so it could readily fit into existing D&D campaigns ran within published settings. That meant that it could work as a proper cross-setting "multiverse" for D&D without problem. A "not-Planescape" setting might run into the problem of requiring its own unique cosmology (cuz copyright), which might not mesh with other people's games (whether they're D&D centric or not). It would need to have its own cosmology as well as its own hooks to draw people in.

Conversely it could also be a generic tool for building otherworldly realms or pocket worlds, but Pundit already did that somewhat recently, as some already mentioned.

One could take an ambitious route of creating a multiverse setting in which every imaginable model of the planes could coexist.

EDIT: IIRC 5e DMG mentions a planar model "myriad" in which there isn't a defined structure that applies to the entire multiverse.