![]() And before we talk about Planescape, we have to talk a little about the cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s the domain of the Lady of Pain, the city at the center of everything, and the home of many adventures of the realm.īut before we talk about Sigil, we have to talk about Planescape. A look back to the jewel on the crown of the Planescape. Today we’ll be taking a look to the past before our journey to the future. I, as always, am your humble Loremaster, Sokar. ![]() Welcome to Lore-Win, the Dungeons and Dragons lore series. In fact, from a certain perspective, it was at the middle of the universe itself. There was once a city that sat between the planes of good and evil, between law and chaos. This, however, is not the first city that we’ve seen between the planes. Multiple versions of a setting are a boon, not a bane.With the upcoming release of Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, we have a brand new locale to explore floating in the midst of the Ethereal Plane. And the GMs who love the original factions and setup of Planescape can just ignore this material.ĭon't like the disarray of the Imperium after the assassination of Emperor Strephon by Duke Dulinor? No problem, you can play in a pre-assassination environment instead of following that part of the Traveller timeline.įourth Corporate War get in your craw and ruin CyberPunk for you? Ignore it! Or do you want a more military style of game with more open fighting between the corporations? Then run with it. This particular change allows GMs who weren't fond of the existing structures of Sigil to play in a more chaotic, changing Sigil without having to deal with people telling them "that's not how it works". Prefer the "changing world" of Dark Sun 2 to the "quest for survival" of Dark Sun 1? No problem. It allows game masters and players to decide which VERSION of a setting they like best. In my opinion, changing a game setting through supplements is a great idea. Now I'm thinking about ways to avoid these problems while still providing support for a popular setting. Dragonlance is the poster child for this problem, but as Nymrohd pointed out, TSR did it to pretty much every setting they published.Įach of those cataclysms is likely to a) trash the setting's original concept, and b) sever ties with the setting's existing fanbase, since "their" versions of the world - the ones their campaigns are set in - are now fundamentally incompatible with the "official" version on which all future releases will be based. But any D&D setting with novel tie-ins, unless the tie-ins are rigidly controlled, is going to be torn apart and rebuilt - repeatedly, if the tie-ins keep going long enough. Novel tie-ins, if treated as "canonical," are the worst, because fantasy fiction has a long tradition of calamitous events and world-altering plotlines. Every time a new release fills in some blanks, it narrows the scope of the setting it also creates a headache for DMs running established campaigns in that setting, since some of the new material may clash with what the DM has created. In my opinion, a good D&D setting should have giant unexplored areas on the map, and grand mysteries that are never "canonically" resolved, so that DMs can fill in those blanks with their own ideas. ![]() I also think setting detail is overrated. ![]() I'm not convinced there was enough good stuff in the post-release materials to justify the havoc wrought upon the settings - havoc which would then persist into future editions and re-releases, as TSR/WotC felt it necessary to preserve the setting's established lore, however crappy that lore might be.
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