Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

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Wretch's picture
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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

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So you're saying that your opinion based on limited information allows you to make a conclusion when more information is available?

So I'm saying that after listening to Hip Hop once and not enjoying the experience, I don't find it necessary to listen to a hundred more hours of the stuff to justify my preference.

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Also if you don't like infinities of a single element explain how a mush of elements is automatically better

As stated (Third Time) the existance of the Big Four (Fire, Water, Air, and Earth) are fine as iconic representations. One can even envisions "oozy" sections of Earth (if you really HAVE to) There can be a hell of a lot of variation within a single mass of element without making para, pseudo, quasi planes.

That said, friction makes not just heat, but stories. Stories are conflict and it's easier if big slabs of reality smack against one another instead of just sitting in one place. Rocky Road is a more exciting flavor then a big jug of vanilla. The PCs, needless to say, are the crunchy bits.

This is not (NOT) to say that there isn't enough material in PS canon with the elements seperate to make good stories, but it certainly makes it easier with them smacking around.

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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

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So I'm saying that after listening to Hip Hop once and not enjoying the experience, I don't find it necessary to listen to a hundred more hours of the stuff to justify my preference.

If you don't like them that's fine, but your stated reason for disliking them as boring masses of element is contradicted by the PS Inner Planes and PC MC III.

Not really railing against you, but it just reminds me of the designers bitching about "How can you breathe in the City of Brass" and ignoring the mention of Air Pockets in the FIRST edition MotP.

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ripvanwormer's picture
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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

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So I'm saying that after listening to Hip Hop once and not enjoying the experience, I don't find it necessary to listen to a hundred more hours of the stuff to justify my preference.

Not all hip-hop is of the same. Just because you don't like Ludacris doesn't mean you won't like N.W.A. They sound completely different. If you give up on an entire genre after discovering you dislike a single song, then I question your ability to accurately judge your own preferences. Just as you can't decide you won't like "Stairway to Heaven" because you disliked "Hooked on a Feeling" and you don't know you hate Steve Earle just because you didn't enjoy Patsy Cline.

It's a similar situation here. If you don't like a single paragraph in the Planescape Campaign Setting, this isn't a reliable way of discovering whether or not you would like a chapter on the subject, written by different authors several years later with an accompanying monster book. The Inner Planes wasn't the best Planescape book - it should have been much longer, for one thing - but it's a decent foundation to start with.

The Elemental Chaos, as it happens, isn't something I think makes the 4e cosmology inferior to the Great Wheel. It's different, but not better or worse. I do think the 18-plane model of the Inner Planes has qualities that are interesting in their own right beyond their deadliness - I don't think the fact that the Plane of Ash is deadly is what makes it interesting. It is deadly because it would logically follow that a plane made out of fire and negative energy would be deadly, but it's interesting because it's full of interesting races and locales tied together by a consistent theme, and this would remain true whether it was inhospitable or not. So I think you're missing the whole point of the quasielemental and paraelemental planes - they're not about being harsh environments, but about being coherent and exotic campaign settings.

Before I recommended The Inner Planes, I would point you over to mimir.net to see some of the fancy negative quasielemental stuff they have over there. Or ask Mechalich to share some of his wonderful stuff.

Wretch's picture
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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

rip (pay attention sci, cause your post is answered as well)

Exactly. I don't like transitive, quasi, pseudo, para planes (though the same folks who are bitching about "mixed elements" seem to be the ones defending planes where things are mixed)

But I do like a few (defined SEVERAL TIMES SCI are you reading what I am writing?) and would incorporate them into my campaigns. So (pay attention sci, last time) I AM NOT WHOLESALE DISMISSING THE ENTIRE INNER PLANES. Just most of them.

One wonders why they needed so much fluff added to make them interesting Eye-wink

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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

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defined SEVERAL TIMES SCI are you reading what I am writing?

Again, you specifically mentioned traveling through an infinite, empty puddle. Last I checked that suggests the Plane of Water, one of the Big Four.

The specific reason suggested is that they are incredibly empty places which is untrue. I merely pointed out the fallacy.

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ripvanwormer's picture
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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

'Wretch' wrote:
One wonders why they needed so much fluff added to make them interesting

Everything needs fluff to make it interesting. The one-paragraph description of Sigil in the 3.5 DMG isn't interesting, but In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil and The Factol's Manifesto are very interesting. And you're not going to know that those books are good just by reading the 3.5 DMG.

That's why the 4e planes aren't interesting yet. I don't think anybody's going to marvel over the description of a basic armature of the planes alone. They might one day, in some hypothetical future, become interesting, but as things are now, there's nothing that makes me think, "Wow! Shadowfell!" It's not inherently any more interesting than the Plane of Shadow was, except there's less detail on it. Therefore it's not as good. The Feywild, as I said near the beginning of the thread, is very promising, and is the thing I like best about the 4e cosmology so far. There's more detail on it already than there was on the 3e Plane of Faerie or the 2e Seelie and Unseelie Courts, so it's been able to become more interesting.

On the other hand, I really like David "Zeb" Cook's writing, and, for sheer poetic succinctness, I think the descriptions of the paraelemental and quasielemental planes in the Planescape boxed set are the most brilliant summaries of them ever. The Plane of Ooze wasn't just a big sea of mud, to Cook it was "the Plane of Chambered Madness," a place where prisoners are left to go insane in bubbles within the infinite mud. And he has this gift with most of the planes, finding one hook that turns something mundane into something fascinating and surprising.

But yes, I think it should be obvious that more fluff (when that fluff is good) makes something more interesting than less fluff.

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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

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Don't make me pull this thread over.
[/mod]

Wretch's picture
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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

Not a problem.

sciborg2's picture
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Anything you actually LIKE about 4E?

On topic, what do I like about 4e. A lot actually, in fact its really their fallacious advertising I have a problem with - the latest being Evil gods didn't have servant races....someone missed all those Spawn of Tiamat entries. :roll:

But good things. Shadowfell and Feywild are interesting places which allow for low level plane hopping that eases people into the Multiverse. As copies of Changeling and Wraith, I can get mileage from those old settings too. The Raven Queen is another gem in the bleh, provided great story potential for a whole campaign.

The Elemental Chaos provides for an interesting nexus of the Elemental Planes, perhaps where treaties are brokered or certain nature gods live (might make more sense than the Outlands for some) At its core such a nexus might be gestating the Elemental Plane of Wood. Again, using Scion and Exalted I can add to the EC where what was shown in Worlds and Monsters looks to fall flat.

The Astral Sea opens up the possibility of more planes and removes the sense of constraint people might feel by the Great Wheel. Anything that adds potential stories is good, and this is likely among the few decisions that doesn't feel like someone chucking their homebrew down my throat.

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