I have been thinking...

They released 3.5 three years after 3.0. I think the original plan was to do a new edition every five years, but I'd expect 4.0 in 2006 now. If they are going to release a 4e in 2006, we probably won't find out until Gen Con this year - 3e, you may remember, was officially announced at Gen Con 1999.

They always planned to release a 4th edition five years after 3rd edition whether it needed revision or not. It was part of their business plan. Sales were starting to slow down only two or three years after 3e came out, though, so they boosted them with the release of a version 3.5.

TSR went decades between revisions, but Wizards of the Coast isn't going to. There's too much money to be made from new editions. I say that not to be cynical or disparaging - that's just the way things are. Monte Cook said as much in his review of the new Player's Handbook.

I believe Monte said that they had planned on doing a revision (ie 3.5) five years after the release of 3rd, not a new edition. I still don't think we should expect a new edition until 2010, if then. 3.5 doesn't have nearly as many problems as 2nd ed.

Planescape is a little unfortunate in that it's a 'super-premium' kind of game. The target market for D&D is essentially the average roleplayer - the 'everygamer', if you will. The settings and the supplements come out targeted to this person, who likes their high fantasy style of game (or whatever else they happen to be playing).

Planescape sits in a different group, closer to Shadowrun, WoD or CoC. It's the kind of setting that would've made a perfect product line for a smaller company, but doesn't make much sense for a large company that's aiming to please a big slice of the market. These tend to feature systems highly customised to a given style of play, and get by on loyal customers who don't mind paying a little bit more for a game that suits their tastes. The upcoming Dresden Files RPG is another example of this (and it was something of a shock when Fred posted about how little RPGs actually make).

There's more realmsies than there are planewalkers, runners, vampires or investigators - and that's where the money lies for WotC. It'd be exceptionally hard to sell PS (or Ravenloft or Dragonlance or Dark Sun or Spelljammer) to the average WotC customer, so WotC decide to focus on doing what their market share wants.

Planescape will probably not be picked up again. I would be extremely (pleasantly) surprised if it ever were. Reviving old settings is just not what we've seen the company do. They continued Forgotten Realms, but just because it's been such a constant long-time setting. If they want to start over with the rest and start putting out new settings for a while, I can't fault them for that. It's a different company and they're allowed to do that.

I think we're all demonizing WotC a little bit too much. While it's easy to say, "TSR was all about making me happy and Wizards just wants my cash," they were both companies who wanted to make some money. TSR stopped producing material for plenty of settings while it controlled the franchise.

There is no need to produce a 4th Edition of the game, and it's not going to happen for years. 3rd Edition has a lot of life left in it. The d20 system has been ridiculously successful; there has never been so much DnD-compatible material, ever. 4th Edition wouldn't make them more money than 3rd Edition is making them right now. It would be a joke to completely overhaul the game system every 5-7 years, and they must know that. Game sales aren't slipping- Wizards puts out more DnD products each year than it did the year before.

There's also the factor that RPG writers would rather write completely new material for settings like Eberron than rehash old material for Planescape, no matter how cool it was.

People also seem to ignore that the due to the nature of the setting, and considering the changes WotC has made to its IP since 2000, the idea of republishing Planescape is infeaseable. First off, WotC has drastically altered the core cosmology by removing the Para- and Quasi- Elemental planes, and by changing the natures of the Ethereal and Astral planes. The only Prime World that is connected to the core cosmology is OErth.
These changes cause irreparable damage to Planescape continuity.

If a third party publisher were to pick it up, they likely wouldn't have access to a great deal of copyrighted/trademarked materials, causing the resulting product to be a mere shadow of the setting's former self. Planewalker's handling of the setting under the agreement with WotC is the only way that the setting has a chance of living.

Part of the appeal of PS was the way it integrated and elevated all the different D&D worlds, their gods and their prime NPCs. Sometimes this was done sloppily and people may have quibbled over where to place Lolth, but it provided a feeling of a meta-world for D&D. If you were to place PS into its own cosmology in a new edition, it would seem more like an isolated campaign world on its own.

Planescape is supposed to be about planar adventuring once you "graduate" from the prime worlds of Dragonlance, Faerun, Oerth or wherever. As a separate campaign world it would be just another goofy world, and one that regular D&D players would see no reason to visit. So while the damage would not be irreparable, the tone of PS would change and its role as the place for planar adventuring would be in question.

Not only that, but the branding and licensing people at Wizards aren't much interested in letting anyone else in on their IP. For the forseeable future, PW will stay the only source of new Planescape material.

I refuse to see this as a bad thing - we have a good community, people who almost know as much about Planescape as its original designers, and the people writing bits and pieces for the official setting or the fansite do so out of interest in and passion for the setting rather than for the balance sheet.

The only problem is that we don't keep very good schedules and don't have the profit motive to keep us sharp and timely. Professional-grade artwork is also in short supply.

A WotC 3.5E relaunch of Planescape would, I suspect, be a vast disappointment to the majority of those who love the old Planescape. The D&D landscape has changed, artists like DiTerlizzi have moved on, and there are too many constraints on what could be done with an official revision. Planewalker keeping the fire stoked is probably the best solution.

Part of its appeal, and one of the reasons some people hated it - the idea that Planescape could step in and make declarations about their favored setting's cosmology. And some settings never acknowledged Planescape - Dark Sun, for example, had its own set of planes. Even though Planescape "explained" Krynn's cosmology (they're all clueless), Aebrynis' cosmology (the Shadow World is a variant Border Ethereal) and Athas' cosmology (the Gray is a variant Border Ethereal) the various settings themselves never acknowledged Planescape's contributions. Except the Forgotten Realms, ironically enough - the Realms happily incorporated all Planescape additions to itself, which is why the idea that it's its own private multiverse now seems so strange.

But all our theoretical Planescape book has to do is explain Planescape's cosmology and say "At the DM's option, all campaign settings exist in the Material Plane and can be accessed through all the transitive planes and portals just as any other Prime world." That's it. I don't see the difficulty. Not only is the damage not irreparable, but I don't see any damage.

Planescape is a campaign setting with its own cosmology. Part of that cosmology includes Toril, Athas, Aebrynis, and Krynn, even if the Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Birthright, and Dragonlance campaign settings don't include Planescape. Confusing? Only very slightly. A map and a disclaimer clears everything up.

If we want to see more planar material published, why does the Planescape community tend to react so antagonistically whenever Wizards produces something planar? When the Manual of the Planes came out, it was clearly not intended to be Planescape released as a hardcover book, but rather to outline the planes for Clueless and to define planar characteristics. And yet, it is decried all over the Planescape board at the Wizards forums. The release of another planar book, the Planar Handbook--which seemed like a source aimed clearly at Planescape-type campaigns--is probably more than could be expected after those who should have been most excited about a 3e Manual of the Planes, Planescapers, put up such a fuss over it.

It seems, not even in subtle terms, that Planescapers want Wizards to re-release the setting, but only so that we can subsequently denounce the company for "ruining the setting, just like they did with [X beloved D&D feature]". How about we just continue on with Planewalker.com, use whatever we want from planar products in the future without badmouthing them for falling short of sublime Planescape, and content ourselves with the situation we have? I mean, if Planescape ever were re-released with full corporate backing, it would be largely the end of Planewalker's exaulted status, since we would lose the exclusive rights as official fansite to basically do whatever with the setting.

If I may be allowed to interject for the briefest of moments, it seems to me that the sheer simplicity of a re-released box set for the planes is something that will be a long way off, and this is no bad thing. I like the idea of not having to shell out pouches of jink for something that cann only be limited in content. The sheer limitlessness of webspace means that, though it may be a long and hard road to quasi-completion and by then the rules will probly have changed, it's all FREE! and subject to interpretation. Even the sundering of practically all the prime campaign settings from the much vaunted and ultimately obscure 'cosmology' can be overcome. (By the way, what about Ravenloft? Seems like a nice one i've heard nothing of since AD&D.) I'm luvvin' it all folks. Just a shame it takes so long for my slow-ass, box-of-phlegiston mac to navigate! :roll:

Yeah, that had me confused as well. While the new planar material may not be up to the high standards set by PS, it still had some original and interesting ideas in it. The vociferous reaction it received on the Wizards boards was astonishing to me. I don't see why Wizards would even bother including any PS material in future planar products, given that it probably confuses new-comers while enraging the old-timers.

Like I said, I'm happy with the current situation. We've got all the PS we need in old books and online material, and we don't have to worry about WotC "screwing up" with a transmogrified official 3.5E version. Let sleeping dogs lie.