• he/him

A tabletop enthusiast, for better or worse.
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Projects & Campaigns:
Clouder's RPG Spreadsheet
dungeon23: The Tree & The Tower
D&D: Old Flames
Break!!: Mossgrave
Erasure Adventure Prep

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in reply to @Clouder's post:

I saw pdfs and they left me cold. Cant is gone. There are barely any references to Cage.
While factions are back, everything looks whitewashed to me (for example, no mention of Harmonium conformist history on Ortho). The writing is functional but very dry and uninspiring.

Everything also feels more glamorized: for example, Mind's Eyes is supposed to be a merge of Believers and Sign of One, but "Members of the Mind's Eye dress in sleek, opalescent robes and ornament their bodies with delicate, metalwork embellishments." and I am finding it hard contrast with Believers' previous association with Grand Foundry and blacksmithing, and the look.
I haven't read it yet in full, but pdf might be an abridged version of the book, as new spells, and magic items, and backgrounds just link to 5etools.

Books call back Torment a lot, I think (one book directly called with Morte's name), which is to me means that Planescape tries to ride trademarked nostalgia more than tries to be creative.

Thanks for the info!

And yeah, I recall Morte being used for one of the books. Spelljammer did the same thing - the creature book is named for Boo from the Baldur's Gate games. It's not the kind of nostalgia play that works for me, but I have friends I know who would enjoy it.

The glamour thing is not surprising, but is disappointing. TSR Planescape doesn't match WotC 5e house style, so it must be made to bend to that style. Much like Greyhawk was pulled into the Forgotten Realms. Brand identity over everything else. If that comes at the expense of vibes, then so be it says the WotC team.

The lack of cant is... geeze, I don't even really run a Planescape game and I use cant for some of my characters. It's flavorful, it's fun, and as far as I know not problematic in the ways a lot of old D&D stuff is. That's a real bummer to hear.

I am not a person who would ask for too much cant but not seeing any body called basher or berk is just depressing. They put Ignus (fire mage from the game) as a part of the Sigil as well as, I think, other nods from the computer game (as it is such highly acclaimed thing), but it is just it - nods. It is mere echoes without everything (artstyle of the book, writing style, anti-authoritarian nature of first Planescape) to make it work. Ignus is merely a tourist attraction and for people who liked the game to point and say 'Heey, I know this guy, he was in the game!!!"

IMHO, it is pandering and / or brand recognition and/or brand consolidation, given that Black Isle Studio created many of these characters wholecloth and they weren't the part of the initial TSR books.

And they are even more cowardly than I thought. Hands of Havoc is 'controlled burn', and while initially it is described as Revolutionary League in all but name, the next paragraph immediately pivots them into, basically, artsy innovators in a way of severely defanged Xaositec who only target certain 'outdated and oppressive' laws, but heavens forbid they will be dedicated to the actual idea of freedom. Do graffitti, wear rebellious clothes, this is all this faction is good for. No risk, no extremes. Revolutionary League itself is a minor faction barely mentioned, because we cannot have revolution in our sleek 5th edition book even as renamed main faction.

Blood War mentioned only four times, almost tangentially.

Basically, as I expected, bright but hollowed shell slapped with branded reminders of its departed soul.

The Blood War not being front-and-center is a legitimate surprise! It was one of the few things that kept being invoked across different supplements in the first few years of 5e. Or at least the ones I read before I stopped buying them.

It's not surprising they lean on the PC game characters - again, see how front-and-center Boo the miniature giant space hamster is in 5e - but it is a bummer to hear. I still page through Uncaged: Faces of Sigil from time to time because I like the cast that book built-up for the city, and how useful and fun they seemed like they'd be to run in a game. It gave Sigil the same kind of life and feel that the Shadowland BBS did in 2e and 3e Shadowrun supplements (another game with capital-P Problems, but also just a lot of life to it).

I'm guessing Shemeshka made it in, because I think I saw art of her in an article or review, and because she somehow made it into the little bits of Sigil that appeared in 3.5 and 4e. Also, she looked like a fox, and that fits the 5e art vibe, if I'm honest. I am worried she might be reduced to quips, in the way other characters have been in 5e books.

These are the all sentences about Blood War I've found in my pdf version of Planescape and Outlands:
"The city doesn't take part in the Blood War, it doesn't throw its weight behind the shiningrighteousness of Mount Celestia or contracts originating in the Nine Hells, and it's never a battleground for the conflicts of Material Plane worlds." (section about Lady of Pain)

"The Slags were just another part of the Hive until a portal to the front lines of the Blood War, the eternal conflict between devils and demons, opened in the middle of the neighborhood." - description of Slags, probably the most weight the war itself has in Sigil.

"Koe, a fiery-winged, chaotic neutral deva imprisoned for smuggling weapons forged on Mount Celestia to Fiends on bothsides of the Blood War" (reminds you of Trias?) in the description of prison inmates. Also the Celestials fuelling Blood War for the benefit of good was a part of the previous Planescape and a big moral conundrum on what is lesser evil in this situation (and also some allegory to USA fuelling conflicts), but here the deva is chaotic neutral, i.e. labelled as renegate and not a part (if hidden) of Celestial policies, i.e. to me it is the same strain of cowardice again where the setting is forbidden say anything risky or anti-establishment. Yes, we have this one deva that smuggles weapons, but on no, he is just a lone player.

"A portal to the front lines of the Blood War opens in the Lower Ward, bringing the conflict to the city." - from a table of Sigil Calamities.

Oh, geeze. Yeah, I remember Koe. That was one of the folks in that Faces of Sigil book that had a good hook. And yeah, double-checking that book the little plot thread for Koe (a CG character there) was explicitly moving weapons from Elysium to the various fronts of the Blood War.

I am glad the plot thread is acknowledged, but they really did sanitize it, huh. Do the 5e thing of making it clean and safe. That's... not surprising, but is disappointing.

Re: using of computer game characters. Ed Greenwood (creator of Forgotten Realms) mentioned that WotC is very keen to fold in (not precise words he used) all auxiliary identities (such as his first ever character for Forgotten Realms) into their brand. Grabbing characters created by somebody else (Ignus and Morte were created by Black Isle) and saying 'it is ours now' seems to be on-brand for them.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. That's been the trend for pretty much all of D&D's life - WotC just accelerates it in some ways. There's a fun in recognizing this stuff - see us talking about Koe - but a decade or so into the push across all creative industries to mimic superhero comics and have a capital-C Continuity is exhausting and demoralizing.

Like... It's fun to read old 2e and 3e books by Bruce Cordell and recognize he's situating his adventures in a single setting. It's not fun to think about how 20 years on, all those ideas are or will be transplanted into the 5e Forgotten Realms and presented as if that's all they are and shall be. Is the 2e and 3e stuff corporate art? Yes. But the context it was written in was less corporate in some ways I can't really pin down, and that felt better then where we're at. Maybe that's nostalgia, but I feel like it isn't.

Yes, I am still amazed how much Planescape and Dark Sun (and some other TSR-era books) were allowed to do in contrast to official WotC as it is now. I don't think it is nostalgia talking, because if you look at the new Planescape, what is really new there? Characters, plotlines, even the new adventure just mimics the old stuff, which is why, I think, it feels as pandering more than a tribute. I am glad factions are back (as I really disliked their treatment in 3rd edition where they were expelled from Sigil) but they are so smoothed out now and beige, Bleak Cabal should ask for their colours back.

New Planescape also feels to me as Minimum Viable Product. It comes from the writing but 2nd edition Planescape felt as if writers actually went extra mile to try to create evocative and unique place and this new one just gives you cliffnotes on their work.

I also come to dislike official capital-C continuity (which is funny because when I started reading the comics I complained how much I need one big timeline where everything fits together). Since then I like 'runs' format more than One Big Timeline, i.e. when specific author(s) has a specific vision for the story and character but another author might have a different vision; second edition Planescape, in hindsight, feels more like such run, as compared to, for example, Gail Simone's run on Agent X.

As an example Ultraviolet Grassland RPG embraces anti-canon idea, but 5th ed seems to be the opposite of it.