Samy |
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(migrated from the Book of the Damned thread)
James Jacobs has indicated that with the ending of RPG/Campaign Setting "separation", now that the RPG line can include setting-specific content, this opens up the possibility for a "Manual of the Planes" type hardcover dealing with Golarion's setting-specific Great Beyond. This thread is for continuing the discussion started in the Book of the Damned thread.
Milo v3 |
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... Considering there were already Inner Seas Hardcovers, couldn't they already make a hardcover Inner Sea Planes Guide?
What does "RPG/Campaign Setting "separation" mean?
It meant they didn't talk about Golarion stuff in the RPG-line books. This didn't come up much outside of a few things where Golarion actually has a few different rules to RPG-line. Like how clerics of concepts cannot exist, or how in Golarion all divine magic requires faith despite that not being a requirement in RPG-line divine classes and divine archetypes outside of the ones who worship to get their powers, and the planes being different in golarion compared to the ones in the GMG/Old Bestiaries.
Though this separation never existed with gods, with them being referenced since the CRB.
Samy |
Yes they could, but that would not get the material into the PRD, and the PDF would be more expensive.
RPG/Campaign Setting "separation" meant that previously, the RPG line did not include setting-specific material (except for the deities), and that everything Golarion was kept for the Campaign Setting line. This line is now being blurred as started in the Adventurer's Guide. This thread is not for arguing whether this is a good thing or bad thing. It's happening and it's not changing, and it opened up the possibility for a Manual of the Planes. The Manual of the Planes is the topic for this thread.
Samy |
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I've actually been browsing the 3e Manual of the Planes and the Pathfinder Chronicles Great Beyond in order to better figure out what I want to see in a product like this.
Contrary to what I usually want out of products, turns out that from this product I actually want a really high flavor to crunch ratio. Like 90% flavor and only like 10% crunch. If it's, say, 256 pages, then about 220 pages flavor. There's a LOT of planes to cover, and while browsing the Manual of the Planes and Great Beyond, I constantly felt like both of their page counts per plane were just too small.
As an example, Manual of the Planes gives Baator 8.6 pages (although one of them is a full-page statblock for Tiamat and another is a full-page illustration of the nine layers), so only about six and a half pages of text content. On the other hand, Hades and Gehenna get about 3-4 pages, so it's not a fixed pages per plane.
The Great Beyond gives something from 0.5-4 pages per plane.
I think a proper hardcover should aim for a minimum of 8 pages per plane or so. 10 would be nice. More than that would be tough given the number of planes, unless we ended up splitting into multiples. Manual of the Planes 1, Manual of the Planes 2, like Bestiaries. But that's probably hoping for too much.
Samy |
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Regarding art orders, I've been a little frustrated with the "maps" of the planes in previous products. They're usually very vague, which is understandable given the shifting nature of the planes, but that also means they're fairly useless as play aids. Considering the infinite size of most planes, mapping is kind of pointless. You can map a small region accurately, or try to represent the entirety or near-entirety at a scale that makes the illustration unplayably vague.
Personally I would rather see the main artpiece of a plane to be a vista of a "typical landscape", a widescreen shot that's meant to illustrate what typical conditions on the plane look like. That could be used as a play aid to understand (and show the players) what the general environment of the plane is like.
Perhaps a secondary artpiece per plane could then be a map of a smaller segment, a subsection of the plane that could be mapped more precisely. Like a map of a particular city on that plane, for example.
ulgulanoth |
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I've been asking for a book like this for a long time. If such a book where to be made I would love it to have a few things, first I'd like it to expand a little on what the terrain in these planes is like. What are Jungles in the fire plane like? What are oceans in the earth plane?
Secondly I would like to see a bit dedicated to the ecology of these planes, but specifically non-sentient ecology. So what are birds like in Hell? What are fish like in Axis?
Finally I'd to see a short description of civilisations in the outer planes. Surely there are multiple kingdoms in each plane, different alliances and enemies within each plane and then there is multiplanar travel and wars.
WormysQueue |
Contrary to what I usually want out of products, turns out that from this product I actually want a really high flavor to crunch ratio. Like 90% flavor and only like 10% crunch.
Which would again, beg the question why a book with such a ratio should appear within the RPG line (instead of the campaign setting line. So if this happens, I fully expect them to have a lot more crunch in the book.
Apart from that, I'm on your side regarding the crunch:flavor ration I'd prefer, because I'm not too fond of the concept of planes anyway (outside of the Planescape setting), so this would probably a book I'd only buy to read through, with no intention to ever use it anyway.
Todd Stewart Contributor |
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I've been hoping for such a product for a very long time, so yeah, get me on that bandwagon. :D
There are lots of ways that you could approach such a book, and there have been plenty of prior books to take inspiration from, both good examples IMO such as the 3e MotP (one of 3e's best), the Planescape Campaign Setting (I'm a gigantic fan of it), or even the 3e Forgotten Realms setting guide and the Inner Sea World Guide for things like flavor text versus crunch balance. I would also look at attempts like the 3.x Planar Handbook as perhaps more experimental attempts at such a product that didn't in hindsight work out as well.
Honestly I'd take The Great Beyond and expand the hell out of it while also refining some of that early material to incorporate changes and additions to the setting (Psychopomps being one big addition that weren't even a twinkle in the setting's eyes at the time, but also asuras, sakhils, aeons, and some other outsider types from for instance the Occult Adventures material). The good planes would also need some tweaking since subsequent books altered things in places from the original material in TGB, and you'd want to bring everything in line with more recent books like CotR.
I'd also present the obligate material of archetypes, feats, items, etc for PCs on the planes without perhaps going crazy.
Then a general guide for approaching games on the planes, both as a central setting unto itself or as a transient location between more familiar shores. Then perhaps focus on a few planar cities as locations easily used as loci for planar campaigns. Obviously in mainline D&D you'd have Sigil and that would be that, but Pathfinder you don't, so focus on something like Axis, the City of Brass, my personal favorite Galisemni, and then maybe one or two others depending on page count.
While fleshing out the planes, give each one a ton of both more fleshed out locations and just some names of a map to give GMs things to play with and future sources more stuff to pick up on as they see fit. Also add in a ton of demiplanes and more things on the transitive planes (Astral, Ethereal) which have largely been less focused on in terms of details and inhabitants/monsters.
Yeah, been thinking about this for a while.
DungeonmasterCal |
... Considering there were already Inner Seas Hardcovers, couldn't they already make a hardcover Inner Sea Planes Guide?
DungeonmasterCal wrote:What does "RPG/Campaign Setting "separation" mean?It meant they didn't talk about Golarion stuff in the RPG-line books. This didn't come up much outside of a few things where Golarion actually has a few different rules to RPG-line. Like how clerics of concepts cannot exist, or how in Golarion all divine magic requires faith despite that not being a requirement in RPG-line divine classes and divine archetypes outside of the ones who worship to get their powers, and the planes being different in golarion compared to the ones in the GMG/Old Bestiaries.
Though this separation never existed with gods, with them being referenced since the CRB.
Thanks for the explanation! I don't use Golarion as my setting, so I wasn't sure what the phrase meant.
MMCJawa |
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Planar Adventurers if RPG line, or The Great Beyond if CS line, is one of the biggest niches left to fill in the Pathfinder Line:
As an RPG line book, I would want to see:
Obviously a thick and meaty section on all the main planes, with perhaps a small section of interesting demiplanes that may be new
A GM section on how to run a Plane-hopping campaign.
A Character option section, with archetypes/prestige classes that would help certain classes be more specialized for a Planar campaign. Plus relevant items/spells/etc
Optional would be maybe a mini-bestiary.
Honestly I would buy this in a heartbeat, and this is one book that really does need CS specific information to be most effective I feel.
The Main thing I really don't want is for the content to be unevenly focus. I don't want to see 20 pages for each of the evil planes and like...5 pages for Axis or the Maelstrom.
Lathiira |
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I'd say a lot more, rather than a lot better.
I can always use more information on Succubi :3
Yeah, but who couldn't? Though maybe we'd finally get an official answer to the Succubus in a Grapple thread...wait, and end the most sublime, the most outrageous, most important of all threads? Hmmm, I see a problem there....
Davia D |
Honestly I'd take The Great Beyond and expand the hell out of it while also refining some of that early material to incorporate changes and additions to the setting (Psychopomps being one big addition that weren't even a twinkle in the setting's eyes at the time, but also asuras, sakhils, aeons, and some other outsider types from for instance the Occult Adventures material). The good planes would also need some tweaking since subsequent books altered things in places from the original material in TGB, and you'd want to bring everything in line with more recent books like CotR.
Working in all the newer outsider types- as well as fleshing out existing ones, you know I'm talking about Proteans ^^ is one of the things I most want to see here. I tried working out the creation order of the 'minor' outsider types and I got a lot of ??? (probably slightly after mortals) in my tentative listing. Some like manasaputra and asura are hard to place ^^
More on the good planes is definitely good too, like the order of formation and their leaders. The Damned books did a good job of fleshing out the evil planes to a larger degree.
And, hm, come to think of it Axis is a fairly interesting place too...
AmbassadoroftheDominion |
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As long as this manual of the planes doesn't become just another reason to give us between six and thirty new Outsiders. The Transitive Planes and the Abyss have both proven that not everything in the non-material planes have to be outsiders. Don't get me wrong, Outsiders are awesome, but planes that have [b]infinite[b] diversity of life (or unlike) should show in a diversity of creature types. If they decide to make this book, then fiends and celestials should be excluded, since they already have campaign settings of their own. bring on the Transitive plane equivalent of vermin, the sentient echoes of past heroes, the immortal beings created by the sound an avalanche makes, hey I'd even be alright with seeing celestial Oozes.
DM Beckett |
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(migrated from the Book of the Damned thread)
James Jacobs has indicated that with the ending of RPG/Campaign Setting "separation", now that the RPG line can include setting-specific content, this opens up the possibility for a "Manual of the Planes" type hardcover dealing with Golarion's setting-specific Great Beyond. This thread is for continuing the discussion started in the Book of the Damned thread.
My first thought was literally, "as long as its not Golarion specific. . ."
SIGH
Davia D |
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My first thought was literally, "as long as its not Golarion specific. . ."SIGH
So you're more into a generic, design-your-own plane type book?
I will note that while Golarion would consider it "Golarion's Great Beyond," the Great Beyond considers Golarion "one of a ton of worlds. Only really noteworthy for having Rovagug in it."
DM Beckett |
It's a combination of things, really. I'm not a huge fan of Golarion (as a setting), but also because I prefer Campaign settings to be left more vague, open to interpretation, and leave plenty of room for individual DMs to do things on their own, without stepping on canon's toes.
I also find more value in setting neutral material which can then be plugged and played, or even inserted into a given setting as needed rather than material that's designed and flavored out of the gate for some specific area of a setting, but, with work could be used somewhere else to do something else.
The Great Beyond was a great book, offering plenty of setting specific flavor (although a few rather important things have been retconned to hell), and is pretty ideal for a Golarion Manual of the Planes.
What I would love is a Setting Neutral, not assuming Golarion at all sort of Manual of the Planes that could also double as a sort of Ultimate Planar Adventures style book, especially if it filled in a lot of the gap that Ultimate Magic left for an ultimate magic style book.
Davia D |
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Honestly I'm not getting what you mean by 'setting neutral' here. The Great Beyond, as you note, was not setting neutral, not in the least, and adding more information to the less developed areas would leave it also non setting neutral but still leave plenty of room for DMs (because the planes are still huge), and it doesn't strike me as hard to use it for non golarion stuff either if one so picked.
Are you looking for a planar toolkit? Or just less detailed planes...?
Or to put it another way, can you give an example of what you mean by non setting specific setting info?
MMCJawa |
That's a good question. I really have trouble imagining what a "Manual of the Planes" that was setting neutral would actually be like. The only way I could see such a book working is if it was almost entirely player options and maybe monsters. Describing any plane in general, including layout and major NPCs, requires some setting context.
In contrast, I don't really see any reason why most Adventures or Ultimate line books need to include rules content. So I don't completely disagree with the concern about crossing rules lines.
DM Beckett |
Honestly I'm not getting what you mean by 'setting neutral' here. The Great Beyond, as you note, was not setting neutral, not in the least, and adding more information to the less developed areas would leave it also non setting neutral but still leave plenty of room for DMs (because the planes are still huge), and it doesn't strike me as hard to use it for non golarion stuff either if one so picked.
Are you looking for a planar toolkit? Or just less detailed planes...?
Or to put it another way, can you give an example of what you mean by non setting specific setting info?
What I was saying is that we already had a more setting specific book in the Great Beyond, which I think was great and one of the better Campaign products. There are plenty of folks (not me, generally) that play Pathfinder, but do not use Golarion, and so find setting specific material much less useful or interesting, whereas material that's not tied to or automatically written to follow all of the Golarion-only rules, (for example godless Clerics, non-evil undead, etc. . .), is much better for everyone involved, just needing to change minor things to incorporate it into Golarionverse if that's the setting you are playing in, and still exploring great ideas and mechanics that don't work in Golarion, but do in others.
I'd love to see some groups detailed for the Planes that might not exist in Golarion at all, but could be squeezed into the Blackfire Adepts or Riftwardens if a DM was inclined, or even be viable rivals/competition for those groups.
So, an example,. . .
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In the Plane of the Duality, both Good and Evil Magic effects, as well as both Positive and Negative Energy effects and Shadow and Light are all enhanced. Elemental Energy effects, as well as those of Chaos, Law, and all magic that does not have an associated Alignment type is impeded.
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The newly formed Plane of the Duality had no native lifeforms (or unloving denizens), although when it broke from it's parent Planes, it did take some of the structures and architecture from those locations, no sentient beings made the trip. It is unknown how long the Plane of Duality existed before explores found pathways to it, (it can only be accessed through areas of the four original Planes it was made from, not directly), but once the discoveries where made, those ancient denizens attempted to claim it as an outpost for their own reasons, likely intent of exploring the benefits of Negative Energy being empowered without being in such a hostile environment as the Negative Energy Plane, for instance, or even finding the ancient structures and discoveries that had been ripped wholesale from the other Planes very interesting historical finds.
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However, it quickly became apparent that, as it is said that all Planes seem to have a mind or a will of their own, the Plane of the Duality encouraged certain extremes, but, perhaps paradoxically undermined efforts at conflict between those extremes, which over time was developed into a Philosophy fairly unique to the area, where priests and ascetics, regardless of the basics of their faith or morality, learn to harness and channel both Positive and Negative Energy, Shadow and Darkness related magic and effects alongside, if not in unison with Light.
The idea is to twist the idea that Good divine characters use Positive Energy and Evil ones use Negative Energy, and similar concepts in the basic rules. This plane could exist in Golarion, although it very well might mess/contradict with some of the core assumptions of the setting, or need to be altered to fit in, but it's not intended to. Rather, it's just there as an option that anyone could pick up and use, develop as they wish, or not.
Davia D |
What I was saying is that we already had a more setting specific book in the Great Beyond, which I think was great and one of the better Campaign products. There are plenty of folks (not me, generally) that play Pathfinder, but do not use Golarion, and so find setting specific material much less useful or interesting, whereas material that's not tied to or automatically written to follow all of the Golarion-only rules, (for example godless Clerics, non-evil undead, etc. . .), is much better for everyone involved, just needing to change minor things to incorporate it into Golarionverse if that's the setting you are playing in, and still exploring great ideas and mechanics that don't work in Golarion, but do in others.
It's not like much in the current planes specifically only works with those rules. I mean, specific to the great beyond, I can think of almost nothing that'd be altered if you altered those details, save you'd have a few undead on different planes than normal.
I'd love to see some groups detailed for the Planes that might not exist in Golarion at all, but could be squeezed into the Blackfire Adepts or Riftwardens if a DM was inclined, or even be viable rivals/competition for those groups.So, an example,. . .
The idea is to twist the idea that Good divine characters use Positive Energy and Evil ones use Negative Energy, and similar concepts in the basic rules. This plane could exist in Golarion, although it very well might mess/contradict with some of the core assumptions of the setting, or need to be altered to fit in, but it's not intended to. Rather, it's just there as an option that anyone could pick up and use, develop as they wish, or not.
That... isn't that just a brand new specific place? Like, just a separate specific cosmology? I don't really see how that's easier to use with other settings than the existing planes, save that it doesn't fit with Golarion.
Your example strikes me as setting specific, just non-golarion setting specific. You couldn't use it if you're trying to stick with the current Great Beyond, but nor could you use it with a Great Wheel cosmology or 4ed's Points of Light cosmology.
Or do you just want a bunch of different planes that don't necessarily go together (and can even be contradictory) for people to pick from in a laundry list? Like, a plane full of good undead, a plane that's the resting place of clerics who died without gods, a plane full of evil undead, etc.? I can definitely see the appeal of a book that is full of new planar settings, I just wouldn't call it setting neutral.
Setting neutral would be, to me, like the Ultimate (X) books with their classes, or the Bestiaries with their fairly generic infoblocks (especially the first two), or cities and locations that don't make much reference to where they are/their neighbors and have a couple alternatives for the type of foreign relations they can have. It's very hard to do that with entire planes, I feel- save small demi-planes and pocket realms.
I'm sorry, I'm just really not seeing what you're trying to say here with 'non-setting specific.'
Rednal |
By default, planes are a setting. The question is whether or not they rely on a specific setting to function.
The old Beyond Countless Doorways book, for example, has a bunch of planes that can be squeezed into almost any game. For a more general book, Edge of Infinity: The Scarred Planes is pretty easy to adapt to your own setting, and has fairly general descriptions of most areas.
Samy |
The problem with Great Beyond is the same as with Distant Shores and Distant Worlds. It tries to tackle way too many places in too little page count and resultantly, manages to flesh out none of the places sufficiently to make any of them playable (by my subjective standards). You get a very bare bones glimpse into the places but no real meat to any of them.
If you want to do anything worthwhile with 20+ different places in a single product, you need hardcover page count.
MMCJawa |
I mean the very concept of Planes, and that people will be adventuring across them...to me that is very much a DnD setting trope. Just having multiple planes, many keyed to alignment, assumes a lot about the default setting.
That said I wouldn't mind new planes, especially weirder. But I expect you would have to look to 3rd party support for those (Kobold Press has one book devoted to the topic...not sure if others exist).
Milo v3 |
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A setting neutral version would have been great, would have been able to do things like show alternate cosmological structures and how to alter the spells in the game so that they still work.
It could go "Here's the default model from the GMG, we'll mainly be focusing on it", and then have a chapter which had things like "Okay, heres a setting where all the planes are a tree, and another where it's colliding spheres, and another which uses the Shadow vs. Light option from Unchained rather than Alignment, etc. etc."
Davia D |
A setting neutral version would have been great, would have been able to do things like show alternate cosmological structures and how to alter the spells in the game so that they still work.
It could go "Here's the default model from the GMG, we'll mainly be focusing on it", and then have a chapter which had things like "Okay, heres a setting where all the planes are a tree, and another where it's colliding spheres, and another which uses the Shadow vs. Light option from Unchained rather than Alignment, etc. etc."
Honestly I'd just rather seem more of the Great Beyond cosmology.
Because, where else are we going to get it detailed? It's already gone over in brief in the existing Great Beyond book, plus selective development elsewhere.
And, also importantly? Flavorwise, we've already got multiple other cosmologies already made for d20 3.X, with planar environment rules even *Points at D&D products which detail the Great Wheel, Eberron's cosmology, and some brief ones like you mention in it's Manual of the Planes*, and more for just the flavor end *Points at 4ed's World Axis*. Different planes normally don't need much different rules, they're mostly setting information, and it's not actually hard to move the existing planes around even.
Keep in mind if you have a "Here's a planar tree, here's colliding sphere, and one with shadow and light,"? None of them get detailed, all the more-so if it's fit in alongside trying to flesh out the Great Beyond some (basically you'd be reducing TGB's space by... half, I'd say? Then giving each of these just a few pages each).
That sounds pretty cool as a product I'd like in addition to this one, but I'd also like at least one cosmology that has real focus on it.
I'd go as far as to bet most of you barely remember the sample alternative cosmologies from the 3.X Manual of the Planes. Ideas for cosmologies are nice, but it's the well-developed ones that get used.
Kalindlara Contributor |
BenS |
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Honestly I'd take The Great Beyond and expand the hell out of it while also refining some of that early material to incorporate changes and additions to the setting (Psychopomps being one big addition that weren't even a twinkle in the setting's eyes at the time, but also asuras, sakhils, aeons, and some other outsider types from for instance the Occult Adventures material). The good planes would also need some tweaking since subsequent books altered things in places from the original material in TGB, and you'd want to bring everything in line with more recent books like CotR.I'd also present the obligate material of archetypes, feats, items, etc for PCs on the planes without perhaps going crazy.
Then a general guide for approaching games on the planes, both as a central setting unto itself or as a transient location between more familiar shores. Then perhaps focus on a few planar cities as locations easily used as loci for planar campaigns. Obviously in mainline D&D you'd have Sigil and that would be that, but Pathfinder you don't, so focus on something like Axis, the City of Brass, my personal favorite Galisemni, and then maybe one or two others depending on page count.
While fleshing out the planes, give each one a ton of both more fleshed out locations and just some names of a map to give GMs things to play with and future sources more stuff to pick up on as they see...
Decloaking to voice my support for this product, w/ Todd given the chance to expand on his excellent work in The Great Beyond, including incorporating races and such that didn't exist at the time, and fixing other things that have changed.
I would love a much higher fluff to crunch ratio than typical PF hardcovers. And for any Bestiary entries, please don't give us more examples of over-represented races (demons and devils come to mind). Rather, flesh out the under-represented races.
Davia D |
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I was just getting ready to mention the ones from the MotP (partly for that reason).
That said, a hardcover could probably justify throwing a page each at describing some variant planar structures.
Yea, like, if they wanted to throw 2-4 pages in the back for it? Sure, go for it, that'd be fun! It just is lower on the priority pile than, say, fleshing out Elysium or the Boneyard and what the Psychopomps are up to or some details on some planar movers and shakers.
The Gold Sovereign |
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Honestly I'd take The Great Beyond and expand the hell out of it while also refining some of that early material to incorporate changes and additions to the setting.
This. I would love to see the Great Beyond expanded. It's supposed to be endless after all, right?
As for how the planes could be presented in the book, I would like to see something similar to what was done for the Elemental Planes in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Planes of Power.
An introduction describing the specific plane, followed by subsections similar to those that follow:
1) "Exploring the Plane", detailing the common way to adventure in the plane;
2) "Inhabitants", fleshing out the plane main races and population;
3) "Gazetteer", write-up about the many notorious places and mysteries of the plane;
4) A detailed entry for a "capital" city, from where we could easily start playing campaigns of any levels in the plane.
While I was a little disappointed with the fact that there are no illustration nor entries for each of the Elemental Lords in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Planes of Power, it's still one of my favorite Paizo books, and I really liked how the planes were fleshed out in that book.