Planar Renovation Project

I don't think you guys are disagreeing as much as you think you are. In fact, I think the root of your disagreement is circular, and is based on one great misreading about Planescape, largely perpetuated by the literature itself. Always people talk about how the planes are shaped by belief, and how belief is power on the planes as if this is something that sets Planescape apart. This is misleading for two reasons.

First, it underemphasizes how belief is a two way street. Belief may change a place, but a place can change a basher's beliefs too. If a place is isolated and covered in forest, it isn't going to attract many urbanite social butterflies, and those that get stuck there will be altered by the experience. After all, if they dont accomodate the place by adjusting their outlook a little, it won't be long before they end up in the dead book. A blood can't exactly order his meal from the local restaurant in the Beastlands or expect the Harmonium to protect them from a stalking Jaguar. There is a circular process there, a give and take of belief and believer. Perhaps it's a part of the unity of rings. Whose to say?

Second, because the effects of belief can be so direct in Planescape, people sometimes forget that the primary way belief changes things in Planescape is the same way belief changes things here on Earth. Action. Even in Planescape, a bunch of cutters can get together and reshape a place the old fashioned way, and whose to say that the elemental planes are any different?

Think of it this way. The plane of fire is, funnily enough, largely made of fire and other hot stuff. So naturally, it's gonna attract folks who are attracted to that kind of force. People attracted to that kind of thing will undoubtedly share some common perspectives. After all, people with common interests usually have other things they share as well. So you get a bunch of fiery Efreets hanging out in a big ole' plane of fire. One thinks "Hey, you like fire, and I like fire, maybe we could make a club!" Sooner or later, these bloods make a City of brass. Thing is, they will probably find they share a lot more than just a love of fire. And so they make a city to suit their outlook on life. After all what kind of barmy would live in a plane made of fire if he didn't identify with it a bit? And if he identifies with it, its only natural he will build things to reflect that identity.

So in the end, regardless of whether people actually bend the elemental planes with their mind, the elemental planes will inevitably be shaped by belief, just perhaps not in quite the same way as the outer planes. And if it is shaped by belief, and we can accept that people attracted to an element will tend to share a set of traits (not one trait mind you, but a range of traits that any given individual will have to varying degrees) enough so that you can say, fairly, that the place has a certain character.

Really, how's much different is that from talking about real world culture? I mean, China and the U.S. are both made up of human beings that are perfectly capable of coming to a common cultural consensus, but most people would agree that there are a distinct set of cultural values of each people, and that each place has its own character. This doesn't disallow for individual variation, but it does allow us to make broad characterizations of a place. So why should the elemental planes be any different?

""After reading your latest post, I realized we're starting to talk past each other.
We're both saying the same thing in different ways.""

Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I'm out of ideas for now. (Well, I have a lot of specific ideas, but no more general ideas about the planes)

As someone who has run a few Inner Planar campaigns, and done an extensive amount of work regarding the Inner Planes, I don't really feel they need some kind of great, overarching thematic re-branding. They ultimately have a theme: the struggle for survival. All the Inner Planes are in some way hostile to non-natives (though Air and Water are easiest to work around) and so functioning on the Inner Planes is about struggling to survive and accomplish anything in a backdrop that is inherently hostile. The Inner Planes emphasize the frontier spirit of wresting something from the wilderness and potentially making it your own.

One reason that I feel the Inner Planes did get ignored in many people's minds is that unlike the Outer Planes, the developers did not create good work-arounds to their infinite nature. The ultimately reality of Planescape is that the setting is unbelievably, impossibly huge, and that your characters, even at extremely high levels, are insignificant. This is the reverse of Prime material worlds where a few epic-level characters (ie. the Chosen of Mystra) can exert profound influence over the entire planet.

Personally, I think a number of the 2e planescape adventurers allowed characters to have way more impact in the multiverse, largely due to nothing more than being in the right place at the right time than they rightly should have. However, they did successfully pinpoint what might be called 'load-bearing points' for belief, power, change and all the good stuff that makes for great campaigns. Sigil of course, is the ultimate such resource.

What's needed for the Inner Planes is to develop those conflicts and similar points of concentration wherein PCs can have a real impact despite the cosmically vast forces arrayed on either side. This is a little tricky in the Inner Planes, because society is by nature disperse there, but it can be done.

Oh, and as far as setting, perhaps I should re-post the Slaan stuff sometime

I feel kinda silly bumping this five months after the last post (and a full 9 or 10 since the first one), but I really enjoyed scope and direction of this project while it was going. Just curious if any of you folks would still be interested in revisiting any of the other planes. I personally would rather concentrate on the outer planes initially rather than the inner planes, but I'll follow wherever the conversation flows.

On consideration, I'm going to rescind my earlier comment about wanting to concentrate on the Outer Planes. Of all the places, the Inner Planes are really the ones that need some work, especially some of the more neglected, para- and quasi- elemental planes (Ooze, Vacuum and Lightning spring to mind).

That said, I'm gonna start a new thread in a similar vein to the two earlier ones (Arcadia and Bytopia if anybody is curious in taking a look). My focus? The Paraelemental Plane of Ooze.

People must have got off a good few ideas and then had other things to work on. This thread could use the bump... It seems like it wouldn't mind being an ongoing process.

I am focusing on mechanoids and variant planes of technology, but I also have an idea for a hook line that involves Aphanacts, Paraii, and a mysterious and passionless maternal deity named Matrice, as well as one other deity that I have not yet decided - some lawful neutral male deity that is a hedonistic playboy and would play a game according to specific rules. Which means that the Aphanacts will be available for more large-scale plots involving law vs. chaos elements.

I am also working on a material plane world (that is divinely morphic like the outer planes) which is directly connected to the ongoing activities involved in the Beastlands, which means that soon enough even that plane will not be as much of a mystery anymore either. Please wish me luck - as this is my next big publication project involving a full campaign setting full of material surrounding prehistoric and bestial ecologies. There will also be culture civilization elements there, so that it does not remain redundant hunting grounds for a player character looking for a storyline not involving hunting or being hunted. I have a homebrew neutral good variant of guardinals called dinopriminals which represent the outer planes aspect of the culture behind this world. The activities that take place here would have direct effects on the Beastlands Wilderness Beyond, and vice versa.

I can make a Quasi-elemental plane of time that will take the current one and blow it out of the astral plane in comparison. This one would much more dangerous to anyone mortal and/or non-deific, with the planar traits being very real dangers to someone thinking that they will simply toy around in an elemental plane to fool with the challenges of moving through time... Some elemental/genie of time or something could have a residence there is an adventure site was needed, or else we could have some new outsider to fill it with. What would a temporal creature look like or do? I can think of the temporal filcher ('Expanded Psionics Handbook') as an inspiration off the top of my head.

Each plane should get its own forum thread, with an index posting here on this one listing all of the ones made. I am working on Mechanus/Variant-tech, Beastlands, and Time. I will edit this posting and add the links in here at a later time.
-will

Since the wigwagging about Ooze has been dying down, I'm thinking about switching out to another Inner Plane. Currently, I'm thinking Lightning. It's described as being pretty much empty of any interesting features, much like Ooze. Plus, the idea of the whole plane being filled with nothing but impressive storm clouds and whipping winds just lends itself to a really evocative atmosphere.

If anybody has any other recommendation that they'd rather see talked about, feel free to make them!

Don't take my comments to heart. Mostly I was just tossing ideas out and seeing what stuck. I suppose my intent was to try breaking us of the notion that an Inner Plane has to be composed entirely of one solid element through and through, just so long as whatever surface/landscape is conceived of is appropriate for the plane. Such a thing might actually make sense for some planes (though it seems like it wouldn't for most planes).

I like the point about the border regions. Some of the more interesting landscape'y locations on the Inner Planes exist at the borders. Like I said in the Ooze thread, I envision the Choking Gale border region between Ooze and Steam as being a sort of open sea filled with mist and clouds and unpleasant things floating in the mire. Sail towards the Ooze/Water/Steam confluence and you're end up sailing through the Choking Gale and onto the Bile Sea.

That sort of thing might not be canon, but it stirs me and my imagination and gives me something to sink my teeth into when envisioning how adventures across the Inner Planes might play out. Coordinating a passenger transfer between a semi-aquatic vehicle bobbing on the surface of the Choking Gale and a Gnomish steam-powered flying contraption from Steam, all while having to deal with environmental hazards and/or enemies just sounds like it could make for a really interesting scene.

In any case, a thing to keep in mind about this renovation project is that we can break with canon to a degree if it helps to expand the concept of a plane into a place where somebody could conceivably set an adventure.

Obviously I'm coming very late to this conversation, but I would like to share my two cents. It looks like a great idea overall.

I like the idea for Arcadia (I haven't had a chance to read the Arcadia thread yet), but I disagree with your idea for Celestia. To me, that kind of evangelism is Lawful Neutral, not Lawful Good. If a given religion or power is already Lawful Good, trying to harrass or worse, restrict with laws, those who practice it isn't Good at all, in my opinion. It's just intolerance. That's behavior I might expect in Arcadia or Nemausus, not Mount Celestia which is supposed to be fully on the Good "side" of the Great Wheel.

Instead of arguing which religion is "superior," and claiming that there is only "One True Religion," they should be tolerant of all Lawful Good religions, but have lots of spirited arguments of how best to embody the goodness and lawfulness of those religions by refining and purifying the practices and improving their devotion. Less of an intolerance, and more of a comparison of methods.

Regarding Slaadi, I remember reading an article describing the discoveries of a guy who got amnesia on Limbo and "went native" with the Slaadi. It describes the way Slaad minds work and how they communicate, and it was brilliant. I wish I could recall the name of it.

I can see both sides of the disagreement regarding the Inner Planes. I always thought that belief only affected the Outer Planes, but I can see the residents of Inner Planes embodying different personalities or philosophies, like Hyena describes. And I definitely agree that restricting each element to one single philosophy or personification is not good. Fire isn't just evil destruction; it is also be creative construction, and purification, and the limited destruction that makes room for more creation. In both nature and in human philosophy and myth, fire can be both a destructive and a creative force.

Same with ice. It can destroy, especially if it repeatedly melts and freezes (although I wouldn't expect much melting on the Plane of Ice...), but it can also be built up into layers that form glaciers, tunnels, and who knows what fantastic-looking structures on the Plane.

I can see your point Archdukechocula, but a Plane is an enormous world, and should have many different cultures. Even Outer Planes can have multiple subcultures, though they should all be tied into the Planar philosphy. I just don't see the Inner Planes being so shaped by belief that the very land and air conspires to influence people directly.