The nature of Crossgate

[DocClox]

Wow Everyone references Torment and never references the D&D boxed sets.

Yeah, the Planescape books were about the time that TSR were releasing themed rulebooks every six months or so in the hopes of making us buy essentially the same material over and over. I got a bit fed with them, migrated to running a Champions game, and probably didn't give planescape the attention it deserved. PS:T on the other hand I did play, and I can certainly see the appeal of sigil as a setting.

ps:t had a serious, well thought-out universe, with a genius idea of planes, and planeswalking had serious, often terrifying consequences

crossgate is more in the "magic lol" category

Not the most flattering comparison I ever read, but I tend to agree. There's a formality and a sense of ritual and interconnectedness to Sigil that I don't get at all from Crossgate. Mundiga, in some ways reminds me of the Discworld which Terry Pratchet once described as only existing because "every probability curve has to have a far end". He also said something along the lines of the Discworld's creators having bags of style and flair, but not much in the way of technical know-how.

I think Mudiga is a bit like that.  It's a dimension where the builders didn't bother laying foundations, and now the whole edifice is on the verge of collapse.

hehe, just like to add that the world is pretty unstable.... perhaps a RPG is in order for some brave heroes to correct the instability and rescue the whores of crossgate.

Oh, don't let's fix it! It's much more fun to imagine the place as permanently teetering on the lip of a catastrophe curve.

[edit]

On the other hand, I could see some mileage though in a campaign where the task was to constantly keep shoring up Mundiga's metaphysical underpinnings. "OK, so what's about to destroy the universe this week?"

[fixet]

I didn't mean to say it's stupid or anything

just that it's more of a means to an end, than a foundation

[Lorde]

Yeah, the Planescape books were about the time that TSR were releasing themed rulebooks every six months or so in the hopes of making us buy essentially the same material over and over. I got a bit fed with them, migrated to running a Champions game, and probably didn't give planescape the attention it deserved. PS:T on the other hand I did play, and I can certainly see the appeal of sigil as a setting.

Oh, don't let's fix it! It's much more fun to imagine the place as permanently teetering on the lip of a catastrophe curve.

It's funny you should mention these 2 things in the same post Doc. Cause that's exactly what killed TSR to begin with. Not the initial "let's make a hundred new worlds", Darksun and Planescape where 2 of my favorite settings ever, but the need to make novelizations of those settings.

It was their way, I guess, of cashing in on the Dragonlance craze. At it's height, TSR had what amounted to the spiritual successor of LOTR. Instead of trying to push it mainstream however, they went the "Lets make a book every month that has surprisingly less to do with Dragonlance each release." They where just passing  notes on important points to new authors (Weiss and Hickman already moved on long ago) who knew next to nothing about the work they where adding to and the "changes" that inevitably came where pissing fans off. 

Then TSR developed a release formula that went like this. Release a new game world, release 5-6 novels to go with it, release game expansions to the worlds while the novels where being written and released. Problems arouse when the novels actually contradicted or outright destroyed parts of the game world the Expansion sets where trying to flesh out. Planescape got butchered in it's novelizations. But not as badly as darksun.  I already Ranted enough, so I won't devote keystrokes to why Troy Denning Needs to have his nuts stapled to his forehead. Lets leave it at, You aren't the only fan who got fed up. Why buy Expansion material that Denning is Gonna destroy in his next novel.

And to make it even stupider. TSR Would release new expansions to try and incorporate TD's Butcher jobs of the source material. Yeah, no one bought those. And the Authors of the source material where leaving in droves thanks to their work being destroyed by a "serial killer of fiction"

Well that's a bit of a TL;DR way of saying if you are going to "Let's fix it!" Then let the players do it. You will be surprised how many fans you lose when you change things like that as back story. If however you set the players up to do it, You retain them as fans since they felt they had a hand in changing the world. (Quick look back at the above. Dragonlance was popular because all of it's world changing event's where done by way of adventure module first, then novels.)

 
Of course, the valiant heroes would be justly 'rewarded.'   Unless they save that one snobby princess, 'cause you know, she was all hot for the first Knight in Shining Armor, but you're like... the 7th or 8th...

Congratulations! but the princess is in another Brothel!

[Abtakha]

not to spit in a kettle (or possibly resurect a dead thread) but this sounds kind of like what blizzard is doing to warcraft....am i off on that? the 'letting authors write the fiction in strange new directions that contradict known lore' part is what I mean...still not sure how i feel about the war of the ancients books.

[LordJerle]

not to spit in a kettle (or possibly resurect a dead thread) but this sounds kind of like what blizzard is doing to warcraft....am i off on that? the 'letting authors write the fiction in strange new directions that contradict known lore' part is what I mean...still not sure how i feel about the war of the ancients books.

The Warcraft franchise started going to shit when they decided to release a crappy toolkit MMO (Yes, it's a toolkit MMO, don't kid yourself.)

[Abtakha]

never claimed it wasn't , just that they seemed to be doing the same thing. (edit)
tho if you take a look at how blizzard got started, and the way they've continue to run their business...
you can only fly by the seat of your pants for so long before you crash.

[Bluebeholder]

Looking back on the franchise as a whole was the plot ever really good?  Warcraft 3 was pretty good but can 1 & 2 be considered anything other than generic?   Don't get me wrong they were great RTS games but the plot felt like an afterthought especially in the original Warcraft.

[Mehzerz]

Looking back on the franchise as a whole was the plot ever really good?  Warcraft 3 was pretty good but can 1 & 2 be considered anything other than generic?   Don't get me wrong they were great RTS games but the plot felt like an afterthought especially in the original Warcraft.

There was a plot?

[Abtakha]

sorta, kind of, maybe a plot, but like this thread (sorry!) it was hijacked from the warhammer tabletop game (edit) just checked, the first game seems to have started as a warhammer game that got dropped halfway thru production

[Lorde]

it was hijacked from the warhammer tabletop game

I say this about everything. >.>

Then again, I was a die hard Warhammer 40k fan so I'm heavily biased.

[megamanx]

it was hijacked from the warhammer tabletop game (edit) just checked, the first game seems to have started as a warhammer game that got dropped halfway thru production

well that would explain the elves/human vs orc premise

[Venusblue]

On the other hand, I could see some mileage though in a campaign where the task was to constantly keep shoring up Mundiga's metaphysical underpinnings. "OK, so what's about to destroy the universe this week?"

You know, I think that would be AWESOME.

Like a passive thing going on that is visible and gives you a bonus to something, like +10% probability of running into constructs this week because a dimension to an undead robot race (lolnecron) has been opened up.


Maybe you can have access to a mage council that you can attempt to influence to keep that setting for another week. Maybe sacrifice girls, or donate money to them for a chance at this. These anomalies could last several weeks at a time, or only one... Maybe have several different kinds, with week long extremes being uncommon and then have month long ones...


Some of the extremes will be like +10% customers/tips for a week due to exotic traders coming in through another dimension.
+5% chance of tentacle raep due to Cthulhu invading.... things like that. Perhaps the "month long" ones could be like 5% less injuries or tiredness from alien medicine, or even a moon phasing into existence that shined a healing light. If there were negative effects, I wouldn't make them devastating, and I wouldn't make too many positive ones either. Mostly just "different" occurrences to give the world a more interesting approach.


Perhaps there would be a 15% chance of an extreme event happening for a week, 25% chance of a "Different but not better/worse" event happening for a week, ect.




Some of the "different but not better/worse" ones could be like mostly finding girls that are small chested or have strange eyes for that week, maybe one week could be girls with more mana then others... things like that.


Of course i'm just talking out my ass since I let my imagination get me carried away... but I do think it would be cool.

[necno]

Hmmm those are some really good ideas but the current engine wouldn't incorporate them very well.