TQ: I played to 11th level, but it was in a BECMI campaign. Some of my friends have played to immortality in the eighties!

My friend thinks that Darksun has too much slavery and that our DM brings it up too often. To be fair, our DM does draw attention to slaves every time we're in a town, but I don't know if that's the setting or the DM.

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>>97568915
If your friend doesn't like it, he should tell the DM and not you.

Dark Sun does have slaves. A fuck lot of slaves.
And it's pretty relevant to the setting that they exist because it's not a happy place and everyone is struggling.
But, if your friend doesn't like that for whatever reason, he can just ask the DM to focus on something else when in town.

It's important to not that while Dark Sun has slaves, PCs are not expected to have slaves in Dark Sun. There's no rules for buying them, not even a gp cost. So, even people decades ago knew that they shouldn't go gung-ho on the slavery stuff in an RPG.

>>97568929
The fuck is wrong with you. Don't copy-paste posts that aren't yours, you weird shit.

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>>97568929
Players buying slaves is where I'd probably draw a line.

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>>97568963
It's a bit shocking they didn't have a table for slave purchases though, especially given you can play some downright unsavory characters in a Dark Sun game.

>>97568842
>I played to 11th level, but it was in a BECMI campaign.
Pretty cool! What class were you playing?

>>97569005
Fighter. Went Paladin at 9th. We were using Weapon Mastery. Pretty crazy shit. Pages and pages of magic items.

>>97568963
I know a group that actually had people who bought slaves for their PCs, and all I could think was "Fuck, this is what kind of fantasies they have?" I didn't even want to be judgemental, but in telling the story they were acting like the worst kind of stereotypical grogs combined with retarded virgins.

>>97568981
Slavery is one of those really unnecessary things for a PC. It's easy to justify even things like murder and torture, but it's kind of hard to make a case for owning a slave when servants/hirelings are cheap and plentiful, unless you're planning on the campaign lasting several years in game.

>>97569026
>Slavery is one of those really unnecessary things for a PC. It's easy to justify even things like murder and torture, but it's kind of hard to make a case for owning a slave when servants/hirelings are cheap and plentiful, unless you're planning on the campaign lasting several years in game.
I mean I can think of one justification; it's a common thing in setting.
Be it because the setting is a shitheap like Dark Sun or because it's borrowing some stylistic trappings from the Greco-Romans.
Either one would be a 'Well it's part of the setting' for me personally. I don't expect every character to have modern morality after all.

>>97568915
Its the setting. Slavery was a huge part of Dark Sun. Its the basis for most of the city state economies of the entire setting. Shit's bleak.

Do the changes between 1E and 2E racial modifiers make any particular class group less or more likely?
A lot of people talk about the compatibility between the AD&D or whole TSR/OSR games.
But some of those class requirements were pretty strict.

I was gonna wait ‘til I got home to post this because I didn’t want to phone post a general. You’re doing God’s work, OP, by beating me to the punch. Thanks for adding the Wiki link, too.

>>97568805
>TQ

I’ve sworn off high-level games, personally, after running one that took the players through the Inner Planes. The numbers become too big, and more importantly it became too hard for me to find monsters that I could believe were “mooks”. You can’t just be tossing mephits or lesser elementals anymore, but it feels weird to stock a dungeon with efreeti and greater elementals in the “cannon fodder” role.

>>97568915
Whats been happening in your dark sun game?

>>97569366
First adventure was down into some ruins and we found a small aquifer at the bottom. Pristine water. Really big deal apparently.
Since then it's been defending our base there and dicking around in the desert. Exploring lots of little ruins. We're looking for another big one but our group doesn't want to go too far from our base.

>>97569375
found any ruins yet? Whats the party comp, & what are their long term plans in athas?

>>97569379
Do not repost my post from >>97569326 Faggot
I did not ask nor want you to do so, now fuck off troll.

>>97569387
Don't claim my posts as your own, please. I simply posted in the wrong thread, and now I reposted here where the topic belongs as anon helpfully explained to me. Don't take credit for my posts, thanks and fuck off now.

>>97569266
Fighter, Mage, Thief, and Cleric are trivially easy to enter. The racial modifiers don’t really matter since all they need is one particular stat at 9; even if you’re a race with a -1 penalty to that stat, you’ll still qualify for the class 62.5% of the time with a 3d6 roll. At that point the only question is whether or not your race is allowed levels in that class, and almost no race bans Fighter, Cleric, or Thief.

The other classes are a little more esoteric, but the racial modifiers are small enough and mix/maxes are broad enough that really the only question is whether or not you’re allowed to take the class in the first place.

>>97569387
>>97569400
Girls, girls, you’re both pretty.

>>97569400
Haha, disregard that, 2e is OSR and i suck fishdicks

>>97569424
>he racial modifiers don’t really matter since all they need is one particular stat at 9; even if you’re a race with a -1 penalty to that stat, you’ll still qualify for the class 62.5% of the time with a 3d6 roll.
Very true; and if your highest stat is worse than a 9 you qualify for a stat reroll anyway.

>>97569379
The ruins we're finding are less than 10 rooms. We know there's something bigger, but I think we're searching too close to our base ruin.
I'm playing a thief, and we've got
a fighter who acts like a paladin,
another fighter who just fights,
a water priest who is a wet blanket and never wants to be too far from base,
and a ranger who has humans as his favored enemy and that's been really complicated.

>>97569026
>Slavery is one of those really unnecessary things for a PC. It's easy to justify even things like murder and torture,
What sort of sick game do you play where your PC has to torture someone? If you want information Dark Sun is a fantasy setting where there are literal mind readers and ESP is a second level spell. Are you fucking threatening to cut noses off an NPC's children when NPC doesn't comply with your demands? Then do you murder the children and the NPC to hide your traces anyway? Torture and murder okay but slavery bad. That's some sick mental gymnastics you're going through there.

>>97569501
> and that's been really complicated.

Useful but for the love of God that -4 penalty to encounter reactions has gotten you chased out of towns?

>>97569578
>What sort of sick game do you play where your PC has to torture someone?
It's just fun to imagine. It's like when I was a kid and I'd capture squirrels in the woods behind our house, set their tails on fire, and watch them run around. Or that time when I deployed to Afghanistan and we had to watch some teenagers we were pretty sure were insurgents, so we got to interrogate them overnight while the supervising officers were asleep. It's fun to see what you can make people say to make the hurting stop.

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>>97569883

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>>97569197

>>97569578
>What sort of sick game do you play where your PC has to torture someone
kek youre a milquetoast limpwrist

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>>97569501
why are you stealing posts form /osrg/?

>>97570324
NTA but why are you passive-aggressively posting about 2e in the explicitly-not-2e thread?

>>97570367
idk what you think youre refenencing, but the post in my pic was made 8 minutes before the one here, clearly stolen to create the smokescreen of fake engagement.
very scummy

>>97570374
Speaking of very scummy, why did you dodge the question?

>>97570380
I didnt dodge I said "I dont know what youre talking about", because im not posting anything about '2E'

That was my first post in the thread, and I made it because I noticed the blatantly stolen post.
Are you okay?

>TQ
A campaign usually last as long as the players are willing to play. I usually find levels 2-5 to be the best part of the game. I'm trying to get my campaign back on track. We have been playing for a year or so and the Cleric in the party just reached level 5. We had several deaths in the early parts of the campaign due to players being retarded, they learned quickly.

Holy swords are cool in 2e and I think it's awesome that paladins get a lot of powers when they get a hold of one. I know about the Holy Avenger and Hallowed Redeemer, but are there others?

>>97570374
>very scummy
It's extremely scummy.
It's one of the scummiest things I've seen on this board.

>>97569347
>I’ve sworn off high-level games, personally, after running one that took the players through the Inner Planes.
Based!

I've always been too scared to run games in the planes, honestly. Can you tell us LOTS more? Did you use a source book or make them up? What does each inner plane look like EXACTLY? Are there (floating) islands in the air, fire, and water planes? Is there a ground? Is there an up? Are there planets, or are they largely undifferentiated?

Does the plane of Earth have Caves? Are they connected to one another by tunnels, or are they isolated?

Did you also do the positive and negative planes?

>>97554186
Repostan in case anon missed it.

Know this, parts are missing. I mean that as in, the way it's written, you can tell there was supposed to be set up and it's not there. Such as the Formorian giants part where you're supposed to go seek help from the green dragon an negotiate a deal. But there's no where that any of the 'solution' is even vaguely hinted at, yet the way it's written you get the feeling that there was a bunch of info the party was supposed to come across.
So read the whole thing. Yes, all of it. Before starting. You've got some lifting to do,
The kidnapped apprentice. Let them find her early. Not right away, but with some other captives of the orcs. Otherwise the 'payoff' is a sarcastic one-liner and a gimped npc. Not worth it.
Be ready for the pcs to reject the whole "you need to work with evil against a greater evil!" theme that they press so hard. Don't force it. Don't rail road.

>>97569375
How important water is depends on the location (and the DM). It's not like Arrakis where people nut over the idea of taking a bath, but it can get pretty Mad Max Fury Road about water.

>>97569501
>water priest
very cool, it's something i've been meaning to play myself. And yeah there's definitely some bigger dungeon out there i'd wager, you guys keep looking for it and you will find something great.

>>97569266
>Do the changes between 1E and 2E racial modifiers make any particular class group less or more likely?

You mean like how of the PHB races common to both editions the only one that has different modifiers is gnome?

Either I made a mistake when I checked which races changed or you didn't do your homework when you formulated your question.

Yes, it makes a tiny difference as gnomes can be clerics but the -1 Wis really only matters for something like 3d6 in order. For a method like 4d6 rearrange it makes next to no difference, somewhere around less than 1 in 20 000.

The bigger thing is that prereqs changed. Ranger 1e needs Int instead Dex and illusionist 1e takes much higher Dex. Even fighter 1e needs two prereqs.

>>97570942
Secrets of the Lamp is invaluable for insights into genies and the City of Brass, while I used Manual of the Planes, Monstrous Compendium: Planescape Accessory Volume III, Planescape: The Inner Planes, and Vortex of Madness and Other Planar Perils as additional sources of information. I also made up a bunch of stuff, yeah, as well as pulled some stuff from later editions. Notably I pulled the idea that the Inner Planes are more hospitable the "closer" you are to the Material Plane and only start becoming made purely out of a given Element as you move away from it. Broadly each Elemental Plane has a Near, a Middle, and a Far region. The Near region has all four Elements but one dominates and its opposite is rarer, but if you didn't know any better you'd think you're on the Material Plane; the Middle region has the opposing Element essentially gone and the other two in much reduced quantities; once you get to the Far region, you're in the "literally everything is made from this Element" part of the Plane.

That being said I loved the idea of subjective gravity and so kept it for Air. Up and down are where you think they are, and since objects don't think, they don't move unless something acts against them. If you let go of something, it doesn't fall. If you throw or fire something, it doesn't arc, it just moves in a straight line until something acts against it to make it stop (air resistance, natch).

I also established that genasi aren't rare on the Elemental Planes, in fact just the opposite: they're the default. The "common" races like elves and dwarves are the freakshit there; in Elemental Air, say, their common races are air genasi, air mephits (with ice, steam, and smoke mephits also known), and aaracockra.

>90% of the posts are just posts copied from the /osrg/
I think I'm just gonna post in the /osrg/.

>>97571874
>The Near region has all four Elements but one dominates and its opposite is rarer, but if you didn't know any better you'd think you're on the Material Plane; the Middle region has the opposing Element essentially gone and the other two in much reduced quantities; once you get to the Far region, you're in the "literally everything is made from this Element" part of the Plane.
What is that distance relative to? Gates? Or is it the other way around, that gates only open on the Near region? Did you make maps? Or is movement there abstracted?

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>TQ

DnD definitely has a "sweet spot" between levels 3 and 11-12. Skipping levels 1-2 always felt like cheating to me but battles always felt too long and complicated at higher levels.

This feels true for all editions except maybe 4th which had some good low-level content like Keep on the Shadowfell.


>>97568915

I always thought this line of thinking was weird. If there aren't bad things in the world, why are heroes necessary? That said, don't be a gross coomer and have enemies threaten to enslave/rape female PCs. You do have to have a certain level of decorum and not go overboard even if it happened historically etc.

>>97572272
Relative to the Material Plane. Imagine the Inner Planes as a sphere wrapped around the Material. The parts closest to the Material are "near", the parts furthest out are "far".

I imagine gates are more common in the Near regions though, yes.

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So if I can effortpost, do you think you could save TSR if you could go back to 1992 with all your current memories and be appointed CEO? If so what would you do?

I'm thinking:
>So no to oddball ideas like Dragon Dice and Terrortrax
>Make a separate division making RPGs for college aged and older gamers who are being lured away to White Wolf games at the time(eg I'd try hard to make Dark Matter more of a thing given how big X-Files got).
>Launch Spellfire as the anti-MtG. Sell it in fixed sets like a modern LCG instead of random boosters. Put more effort into making the rules good.
>Refuse vanity projects like the tourist guides for Forgotten Realms cities. That said, have some colorful box sets and collectibles aimed at collectors with too much money and people who still love games but can't actually play often because they're busy small children etc.
>Require splatbooks to have some character options so it's not just the DMs buying them, but don't allow power creep like we saw in 3.5 set in either.
>Encourage subscriptions Dragon and Dungeon Magazine. It's important to keep people thinking about games when they're not playing. And it must have been cheap to make since they were mostly fan submissions.

>>97572493
>and have enemies threaten to enslave/rape female PCs

Alright, enemies will not threaten to rape/enslave *female* PCs.

>>97572576
I wouldn’t do anything to try and compete with MtG, as that’s a great way to lose money. Instead I’d be looking to partner with Wizards of the Coast early in order to get some crossover stuff from the get-go.

Now mind you, if you had only said 1991 instead of 1992, then instead what is try to do is poach Garfield and make Magic a TSR joint instead of a Wizards one. By 1992, though, it’s probably too late to do that.

>>97572576
Yeah, in retrospect going back and saving TSR is easy since you know what was a pointless money waster and what wasn't.
What i would personally be invested in doing are probably these:
>First of all i would focus or more dnd novels. Basically build a publishing house. It was by far the most profitable part of the company and got severely neglected. Get novels for every published setting.
>Try to keep a good relationship with all the kino artists unlike what they did.
>I also wouldnt force stuff into Forgotten realms like Maztica, Kara-Tur etc but have them stand as their own mini settings.
>Allow the people in the company to playtest stuff and generally have a decent work environment unlike what happened.
>Stop using the stupid ass system they used of preordering books that bled them dry.
>Take every video game opportunity available, or other media as well
>make dnd movies that dont suck
>open a publishing house in germany probably and get more stuff for the eu market that was completely abandoned out there

>TQ

When in doubt, have a finale. It's better to leave the players a little wistful and jazzed about playing again in the future than for the campaign to overstay its welcome get slowly bogged down by apathy.

>>97572728

>>First of all i would focus or more dnd novels. Basically build a publishing house. It was by far the most profitable part of the company and got severely neglected. Get novels for every published setting.

Very good point. I've met tons of peole who loved Drizzt or Dragonlance novels but never/rarely played DnD.

>>97572940
I ve got more than 100 drizzt and dragonlance novels in my bookcase from my childhood. It is literally the reason i got into dnd

>>97568915
That's the setting. Your DM is bringing it up because that's a fucking adventure hook. You're MEANT to be baited by that into action jesus. Your friend should actually channel that energy into trying to stop the problem. God it's so surreal to watch the weirdly complacent mindset permeate fucking everything where someone would rather complain about something bad happening in the game than try to play the game with the goal of fixing it.

>>97573266
You're replying to a post from a different thread.

>>97573287
ok

>>97573292
Just in case you wanted to discuss the topic with people discussing it and not a guy who's just copying and reposting everyone's posts.

>>97573357
He might be that guy.

>>97573419
>says ok to playing darksun.
>isn't ok with the essence of darksun
i mean this is a problem of either dishonesty or faulty expectations.

>>97573535
the essence of darksun is survival in the face of adversity with a lot of exploitation going around and the pc's can either fight it, ignore it or join it.
either way if it aint there it aint that much dark sun is it now?

>>97572571
>Imagine the Inner Planes as a sphere wrapped around the Material.
So the Material and Inner planes have a physical boundary separating them that you can go / walk / fly across, without needing gates? Where is this boundary? Somewhere in space? Do you have other stars and planets in your world? Or the Sun the only Sun?

Sorry I'm asking all these questions, but I've always found the official descriptions quite unsatisfactory.

>>97573266
>You're MEANT to be baited by that into action jesus. Your friend should actually channel that energy into trying to stop the problem.
How? Imagine trying to stop slavery in Ancient Rome or the Middle Ages or today in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates lol. It's not very realistic for a party of adventurers to change the whole culture of a setting, is it?

Or are you thinking it's only some cultures or groups practicing slavery, so it's actually LESS prevalent in that setting than in the real word today?

>>97573834
you can act out against a thing when given the opportunity and when you encounter it anon. people who help others dont go
>BUT HOW ARE YOU GONNA ELIMINATE THIS PROBLEM GLOBALLY
they just act and sometimes small acts by a large enough group of people have an impact

>>97573865
>have an impact
I guess my actual problem is that when I hear about character parties fighting against slavery in an ancient/medieval setting I get this feeling of anachronism that breaks suspension of disbelief for me.

>>97573996
Opposition to slavery didn't magically appear out of nowhere when Uncle Tom's Cabin was written, anon, it goes way back in history

>>97574013
I've never read read Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In Europe, as far as I understand and simplifying things a bit, literal chattel slavery was phased out very gradually mostly during the Renaissance. And it didn't take the form of civil wars or anything dramatic like that, there was a gradual change in sentiment that manifested itself at the private level with e.g. people setting their slaves free in their last wills, or with laws granting freedom to the children of slaves, or to baptised slaves, and as far as I understand that was mostly during the Renaissance.

Chattel slavery was gradually replaced with serfdom (which was hereditary but wasn't chattel slavery, serfs had many more rights) and war captives being held for ransom and being forced to work until set free or exchanged (and this status was not hereditary).

I don't believe that there were any Django Unchained style "freedom fighters" setting slaves free in Europe in Classical Antiquity or the Middle Ages simply because the change was much more gradual and nowhere as dramatic as in the USA.

But if there was such a thing that I'm missing, which is completely possible (I'm not a historian), I'd love to read about it.

Do notice that I'm talking about slavery practice in Europe, not by Europeans outside of Europe. For many centuries after the Middle Ages Europeans were trading slaves on a large scale, but those were only used in the colonies.

I am wanting to start playing 2e ravenloft, but am only familiar with 3.5e and 5e. Anyone know resources for crash courses on 2e mechanics? What is transition to 2e from later editions like?

>>97574123
slavery wasn't hereditary in most places in ancient europe. Celts weren't really big on it for example.
The Romans were big on slavery and much worse as far as their treatment is concerned and their slaveowning ways eventually dominated europe.
It began getting phased out with the advent of christianity because different religious figures campaigned against it during the ages.
It was banned in the Merovingian empire in the 600s
Simply put historical progress isn't linear and at different times and at different places slavery was somewhat between the norm and a rare form of punishment etc
And obviously it was the works of different people that were against it that caused these changes

>>97574123
>>97574173
Because actual chattel style slavery of humans was illegal by both British Common Law and French law.
That is where you get the 'they aren't actually human beings under the law' argument that was advanced in America.

>>97574155
>What is transition to 2e from later editions like?
Junky. Especially getting around non weapon proficiencies.
Classes are really simple. Feats don't exist. Neither do builds really.
I guess kits can be called protobuilds but not really.
Thac0 is easy once you get your head around it but some people never do.

>>97574123
Well yeah, opposition to slavery historically wasn't like that, it was often religious, and it grew slowly, and didn't manifest as violent freedom-fighter type stuff, mainly because slavery in much of ancient history wasn't really like the race-based chattel slavery of the American south, which is about as awful as slavery can get.

It's hard to get too worked up about it in, say, early Rome when poor Romans are voluntarily selling themselves into slavery because they figure it's a good deal and a way to avoid starving or whatever; but slavery changed over time, even in the Roman Empire.

>>97574183
>Feats don't exist. Neither do builds really
Unless you add in the Skills and Powers book. Protip: Don't use Skills and Powers, it's utterly god-awful. Like a terribly conceived proto-3e.

The other one, Combat and Tactics, has some neat stuff, and a lot of janky or OP stuff, but you could steal a few things from there and it'll be cool.

>>97574155
Welcome, Anon!

>Anyone know resources for crash courses on 2e mechanics?
Yep, the three core rulebooks: PHB, DMG, and MM.

>What is transition to 2e from later editions like?
Can't help with that, I started with 2e.

>>97574200
>Don't use Skills and Powers, it's utterly god-awful.
yyup

>>97573815
No, there's no physical boundary between the Material Plane and Inner Planes, the "nearness" is a metaphysical concept. That being said, the Inner Planes *are* physically traversable between each other, if you have the means and the time. That's something from Planescape and the Great Wheel itself.

>>97575489
I'm familiar with those descriptions, but that's still MUCH too fuzzy, imprecise, and unclear for my taste. Like, if I draw a map of the inner planes, WHERE in physical space are the "near regions"? If you can physically travel from one inner plane into another without going through gates or wormholes, then the boundary in physical space has to be somewhere in space. And that in turn implies that the the inner planes are either finite in volume or semi-finite (like the half-plane, but in 3d).

Did you have maps drawn of the inner planes? Or did you abstract travel? It seems to me that those rules assumes abstract travel, no map, and not asking yourself too many questions. Which I'm sure works at many tables, but it's not my cuppa.

>>97576266
the metaphysical nature of the planes makes for abstractions necessary. Also consider that the further inwards you get in a plane the flow of time changes.
You can't run a traditional hexcrawl unless you yourself get down to defining stuff clearly and enforcing your own rules and interpretations.
They planes are just better as a point crawl

>>97577052
Yeah. Honestly when looking over stuff for the Inner Planes the weirdest part to me was that the location of Jabal Turab relative to the City of Brass was so clearly defined (80 miles). To my recollection there’s no other instance of that in the Inner Planes.

All these posts just sound like those really obnoxiously dull osrg bump posts.

>>97577213
That's because 2e is osr and always will be, and these threads should be banned for spamming the catalog with repeat threads. If they want to talk about 2e it should only be allowed in osrg.

>>97577221
I'm fine with talking 2e in more than one thread.

I just wish I didn't have to sift through posts that sound like someone asked ChatGPT to summarize a rulebook in the voice of a 60-year old with no friends.

>>97577176
I think that hey didn't have a clear idea about the planes and some treated them like a regular region and others didn't till the second camp was what became dominant so somebody wanted to put down the distance between major cities the way Judge's Guild for the major cities in the Wilderlands which was the prevalent way of doing hexcrawl prep in the adventure for dm's

What are some underrated settings for 2e games?

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>>97577622
Birthright. it's the domain play setting.

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>>97577622
Barsoom.

>>97577641
No shit, there's a Barsoom 2e setting book? Do you have a PDF?

>>97577622
Dark Sun is a great setting primarily due to its huge swathe of underground ruins of previous eras. You are spoilt for space to make dungeons.

>>97577810
retard

>>97577810
The one in the image is actually a boardgame
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3369/john-carter-warlord-of-mars

But there's a few fan-made setting books for various D&D editions if you want stuff like monster stats.

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>>97577622
I like Mystara personally.

>>97577622
I like Mystara. I know it isn't a 2e setting exactly but conversion from rules becmi is trivial imo

>>97577622
Eberron for sure.

>>97577888
There's actually a couple of Mystara box sets for 2e. Karameikos and Glantri.

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>>97577904

>endlessly conversing with himself to make it look like the thread is alive
kek

>>97577213
What do you regard as a non-dull post, trollanon?

>>97577213
something that isnt self-reply bumpfagging

>>97578053
That just presumes your conclusion that the posts are fake. I'm saying, what would the *content* of the post be like? What's a good conversation in your mind?

>>97577913
Feel free to contribute at any time, Anon.

>>97578067
>no answer
So the whining anon had no real complaints, he was just an inane troll trying to stir shit with low-effort bait the whole time? Well, color me shocked.

>>97578053
It's impossible to instruct you on how to make genuinely interesting posts. If someone did, you would just take the most superficial aspects of what was described and make posts that would ironically feel even more soulless.
Get a soul first.

>>97577052
>better as a point crawl
Okay, that makes sense, but I still have a bunch of questions. Please be patient. It's certainly my limitations, but here we go...

You said that the Near regions are hard to tell apart from Prime. I guess this means that both the Fire and Earth planes have skies above them in the Near regions? With clouds and something like a sun? Conversely, I presume this means that Near Air has a ground. Does near Water have a surface and a rock bottom?

What happens if characters start flying upwards in the Near regions? Do they end up in the plane of air? What if they start digging downwards (for example with an earthship of some kind), do they end up in the plane of earth? Or do they come out of the opposite side of a planet-like structure?

And what do the transitions look like? Since Far regions are practically 100% their respective element...

Do you encounter a rock wall in the Plane of Earth, which is where the Far region begins? Or does that already happen in the Middle region, which is mostly interconnected caves, and then the caves end? Or is Near Earth a system of caves already?

What is Middle Air like, a system of floating islands? Do you encounter a precipice when you reach Far Air and no more floating Islands?

Is Middle Fire and and Far Fire like Air, with floating islands, only the air becomes progressively hotter and more fiery as the floating islands become more rare?

What about Water? If there's a bottom, bottomless chasms might become more frequent in Middle Water, and then completely take over in Far Water. But what about the surface? Perhaps there's no surface in Near Water after all?

And when players want to travel from one region to another, how do you determine distances? Do you have a table of some kind?Dice to roll? Are the relative distances and directions between locations in each Inner Plane constant, or ever-shifting? If they're ever-shifting, how do non-natives orient themselves?

>>97578184
More or less everything n’t you described. Near Water for example is basically just the Material Plane with higher average rain fall and more rivers, lakes, streams, glaciers, humid jungles, temperate rainforests, etc.

As you move “outwards” you encounter a vast ocean dotted with island-continents, then gradually regular islands, then smaller and smaller islands as you keep going. Additionally you keep encounter more and harder and larger rainstorms (without accompanying wind). Then you start encountering literal, not metaphorical, sheets of rain. You also encounter what seem like swells and waves but are actually just the water projecting upwards It becomes harder and harder to tell the difference between the surface and the sea - especially once you encounter places where water falls up - until eventually the just isn’t a difference, everything is water. And that expanse of endless water continues infinitely outwards.

The idea is that the plane is infinite *in that direction*, but it is bounded on either side by the para-elemental planes of Ooze (Earth + Water) and Ice (Air + Water).

As for determining travel times between planes, the PCs used plane shift, so it didn’t come up.

>>97578337
Oh, also Water is bounded by Steam above (Positive + Water) and Salt below (Negative + Water).

>>97578337
This is helping me a ton, Anon.

>Then you start encountering literal, not metaphorical, sheets of rain.
Ah, right! Hadn't thought of that. Makes a lot of sense.

>You also encounter what seem like swells and waves but are actually just the water projecting upwards It becomes harder and harder to tell the difference between the surface and the sea - especially once you encounter places where water falls up - until eventually the just isn’t a difference, everything is water.
Excellent! Sounds like what happens around the triple point of water in the real world.

>As for determining travel times between planes, the PCs used plane shift, so it didn’t come up.
Okay, I'll ask the next question anyway, maybe you can brainstorm something, or someone else will chime in.

Is the Near portion of each elemental plane contiguous? Meaning: Say the players have discovered a wormhole and want to get from Krynn to Toril (Faerun). For this, they want to find a second wormhole leading to Toril. Maybe the have magic item of sorts or elemental to act as a guide or something, so let's say navigation isn't an issue. Can they get to a wormhole leading back to Toril while staying in Near Fire? Or do they have to travel through Far Fire to get a different wormhole?

In the second case, I'm thinking that each wormhole connects to an isolated "Near Pocket" within a plane that is mostly Far Stuff.

In the first case, there's a vast "Near Fire" that is all contiguous and adjoining all Prime Material planes, and Far Fire can be avoided altogether unless one wants to go there specifically.

Clearly the implications of choosing between these two options are vast. In one case, people might wander from one planet to another going by travelling from an Inner Plane without even realising! In the other, using the Inner Planes as shortcuts to get around the multiverse (or even just the galaxy) would be extremely difficult if not impossible.

>>97578345
>Oh, also Water is bounded by Steam above (Positive + Water) and Salt below (Negative + Water).
Mmmh that's interesting but also confusing. Where are Earth and Air, then? In a more "horizontal" direction?

>>97578456
>They Inner planes could be thought of as being on the surface of a sphere with Positive Energy at the north pole, Negative Energy at the south pole and Fire, Earth, Water, and Air on the equator, equidistant from each other. The para-elemental planes were found on the equator between the boundaries of Fire, Earth, Water, and Air (Magma was between Fire and Earth, for example). Four of the quasi-elemental planes were found between the boundaries of Positive Energy and the four elements (Steam was between Positive Energy and Water, for example). And the other four quasi-elemental planes were between Negative Energy and the four elements (Vacuum was between Negative Energy and Air, for example). The Inner planes were surrounded by the Ethereal planes, which connected them to the Prime Material planes

>>97578456
Imagine a flat pizza pie cut into eight slices, but they’re not all evenly sized. Instead, four of the slices are fairly “wide”, and they’re opposite each other. Then between each “wide” slice is a thin strip-slice.

The “wide” slices are the Elemental Planes. The “strips” are the para-elemental planes.

Let’s place Water at the top. The pizza goes:

Water (Element)
Ooze (Para-element)
Earth (Element)
Magma (Para-Element)
Fire (Element)
Smoke (Para-Element )
Air (Elementh
Ice (Para-Element)

And then ice loops back around to Water.

Okay? Now to complicate things, imagine this in 3D. There are two more “Major” Planes: Positive (above) and Negative (Below). And where the Positive or Negative planes touch an Elemental Plane, they create the eight Quasi-Elemental Planes (Lightning, Radiance, Mineral, Steam for positive; and Ash, Dust, Salt, and Vacuum for negative).

Finally, imagine that this three dimensional pizza extend outwards in every direction infinitely.

>>97578489
>They Inner planes could be thought of as being on the surface of a sphere
I'm familiar with that idea, but I've always taken it to be metaphorical because it doesn't make any sense otherwise.

If it's an actual sphere, what's its radius? Does it wrap around Prime? Does that mean that there's two poles in the universe that give actual literal directions where the Positive and Negative planes are? And if I travel in space I will get there?

(Notice my universe is not Spelljammer-like. I have planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and so on.)

>>97578528
>If it's an actual sphere, what's its radius?

Infinite. The sphere has no actual edge. You just conceptualize a sphere because it makes it easier to imagine, but there isn’t actually an outer surface to the Inner Planes, they extend outwards from the center infinitely, which means that their sphere’s radius is infinity.

>>97578520
I think the purpose of the sphere thing is only to illustrate what is adjacent to what, meaning what inner planes you can travel between directly.

If it's LITERALLY A SPHERE the way it's described it, it means that there's a "hub" in the centre of the infinite sphere where all the elements meet, at r = 0. Either that, or we're back to >>97578528: if the "core" is an actual material plane, then there's a boundary to the material plane. But it can't be, because the boundary is ethereal. So what, there's a ball of ethereal plane inside the inner planes sphere? So the ethereal plane itself has a finite volume, it's just a ball inside the elemental planes?

This whole sphere thing, taken literally, has never passed the most casual of analysis for me.

I'd much rather have the planes be in ever-shifting positions to one another, in some kind of non-Euclidean space. And the sphere is, again, only a metaphorical way of visualising which elements are next to one another, meaning you can walk/fly/swim/dig between them, and which are in opposition to one another.

>>97578549
Okay so it's not just an infinite sphere, it's not a sphere at all in reality.

>>97578549
>there isn’t actually an outer surface to the Inner Planes
It's the INNER part of the sphere that concerns me if it's a literal sphere, not the outer one. Unless you're saying it's infinite both going "in" and going "out", which means it's not in a Euclidean space, which means it's not really a sphere

>>97578528
you can use this anon's >>97578520
explanation.

they are infinite, but the near portion can be finite
if you want to define it.
Don't think of it as literally encircling the prime like an atmosphere encircles earth. It is all metaphysical. The inner planes are separated from Prime by the ethereal plane and to travel between them you have to cross the ethereal plane.

>>97578576
If you have to define it consider the ethereal plane as a veil behind which lies the backspace of reality and through navigating this you can cross over to the inner planes.
And not, it doesn't conform to our understanding of physics or math. It's a made up magical thing. The sphere part is for representation in a way someone could possibly understand it.
>>97578588
If you want the inner sphere to correspond to something consider it an infinite space of prime planes surrounded by ethereal planes

>>97574123
Chatel slavery and slavery in the colonies was perpetrated overwhelmingly by jews, who are genetically Middle eastern

>>97578798
Who was it perpetuated by in Athas?

>>97578923
Gnomes, obviously

>>97579103
>big noses
>funny hats

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>>97577622
Hyboria.

>>97578566
>>97578616
This was a great conversation, Anon(s). I now have a much clearer picture of how to run my inner planes. Will be working on a few tables to generate areas and run point crawls.

>>97580200
Oops I just quoted myself but meant to quote another post. Well, you know who you are. Thanks a lot!

>>97580202
I was also interested in you guys' conversation but I still feel shaky on how exactly the elemental planes work in that one anon's setting. Is the Material Plane just a flat disc that turns into the near elemental planes at its extreme edges or what? Do you have to plane shift to get somewhere that's just a bit rainier than normal? I din't really get any of that, maybe I'm a brainlet.

>>97580251
The Material Plane doesn’t physically coexist with any of the Inner Planes. They exist in separate planar layers. Aside from using portals, you cannot physically traverse from anywhere on the Matrrial Plane to one of the Inner Planes.

The “closeness” is just a shorthand for explaining a metaphysical concept.

>>97580359
>Aside from using portals
There are various spells and magical items that nowhere describe a portal or gate or conduit but still allow access to the inner planes, plane shift for one. Going to the prime border ethereal, then through the deep ethereal to the border ethereal of an inner plane also doesn't need a portal.

>>97580535
Plane shift is *shifting planes*. It's not physical travel - you cannot from the Material Plane pick a direction, start walking, and end up in Elemental Fire.

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>>97581500
>you cannot from the Material Plane pick a direction, start walking, and end up in Elemental Fire.
You can if there's an open gate in the direction you're walking!

>>97581500
>you cannot from the Material Plane pick a direction, start walking, and end up in Elemental Fire
Somebody hasn't studied their Planescape. People in the Border Ethereal are in both the Prime Material and the Ethereal. A berk there just walks into the Deep Ethereal, and then he walks from the Deep Ethereal to the Inner Plane of his choice. Back in the Manual of the Planes they talked about colour curtains but I don't recall that from Planescape.

>>97568929
Killing and tyranny is also 'le heckin bad'. I asked my DM in Dark Sun to tone it down with all the evil. We got a lgbtq+ crossing installed in Tyr and the paladins have become more diverse.

>>97581653
>Somebody hasn't studied their Planescape.
I don't think anybody's setting has to comply with the Planescape "laws", though. Mine certainly doesn't.

>>97582109
The idea that tyrants are bad dates back at least to Plato and Aristotle, though. It's not an anachronism like opposition to slavery or trans Paladins. (Gay Fighters are not an anachronism either, just look at the Sacred Band of Thebes.)

>>97582370
Then you aren't playing D&D correctly.

>>97581653
If I’m standing in Greyhawk, where do I walk to physically enter the border Ethereal, without using a portal?

>>97582383
Opposition to slavery can be found at least as far back as the Roman Empire.

Trans paladins is more just the natural result of the fact they D&D is a game where girdles of masculinity/femininity are known to be given out as gag gifts between adventurers. I’m a setting where sex change magic is both easy and easily reversible, why would Terran hangups around sex change exist?

>>97582660
>Opposition to slavery can be found at least as far back as the Roman Empire.
I presume you mean questioning the status of slavery as a form of philosophical investigation. Because there was never any active political or material movement to abolish slavery as an institution in Ancient Rome, that's complete bollocks.

>D&D is a game where girdles of masculinity/femininity
Completely different things.

D&D magic alters the physical body of a person. A human polymorphed (or "girdled") into the opposite sex is not a trans man or trans woman, just like an elf polymorphed into a dragon is not a "trans dragon" or a "trans elf".

The state of being trans is one of identifying with the opposite sex with respect to the one that somebody was born with.

Polymorph-type magic is about objective reality, trans is about subjective identification.

>I’m a setting where sex change magic is both easy and easily reversible, why would Terran hangups around sex change exist?
Exactly. Real-world, modern day trans is a cultural phenomenon rooted in a specific culture, time, and place. It just doesn't translate into a D&D setting.

>>97579103
>>97579106
That's Arcanum.

>>97582796
RE: opposition to slavery:
The point is that it's completely in-keeping with the vaguely Medieval/Renaissance cultural milieu of D&D to have characters who are opposed to keeping slaves or to the idea of others keeping slaves. It factually existed in the real world, so there's no reason why it couldn't exist in the fantasy one. And it could even be organized, because if we're willing to accept the existence of people worshiping objectively Evil deities in D&D and pursuing objectively Evil plans, knowing full well that they're doing Evil and being fine with it - which never happened on Earth, people make excuses for why they're not actually the bad guys - then why couldn't an anachronistic anti-slavery organization exist?

RE: Trans Paladins:
The main takeaway is that, if a player wants to play a character who is a female but used to be male, or vice-versa, or wants to play a male who wants to be female, or vice-versa...that's an express option in D&D. It's an achievable goal. So there's no reason to refuse a character on that basis.

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Too much? Currency in Ye Olden Times was rarely decimal.

To convert from standard D&D to this, you convert all prices to copper, then recalculate from there.

Longsword: 15 gp standard
= 1500 cp
= 125 silver
= 6 gold, 5 silver

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>>97583211
>which never happened on Earth

>>97583236
By the way the platinum is 8 gp instead of 10 gp on the idea that it was *supposed* to be 10 gp, but corruption and debasement cut down on the actual platinum content of the coin, and assays over the years have determined that the typical platinum coin is more likely to be physically worth 8 gold than 10.

Also thieves actually hate them because they're impossible to spend despite their value. Most commoners can't make change for a platinum coin, and most merchants, on seeing some rando off the street trying to use a platinum coin, will say "you stole that" and refuse to do business with the person, assuming they don't just outright call the guard.

>>97583250
The Thuggees believes themselves to be forestalling divine disaster and preventing Kali's return to Earth or at least stave it off. They thought they were the good guys.

In D&D you have people actively saying "yes, I am Evil, I am doing Evil things, because Evil. I am not the good guy even in my own worldview."

>>97583259
Typically in organized violent organizations there are members who believe the ideological basis and there are those who are just there for the violence and found a group that will enable that desire.

>>97577622

Planescape definitely seemed like what the cool college aged people were playing in the 90's. The whole aesthetic confused/annoyed me as a kid but I like it as an adult.

Al-Qadim seems like it had such positive vibes too.

>>97583211
>It's an achievable goal. So there's no reason to refuse a character on that basis.
That's a reason to kick a player from a campaign. Don't bring your sexual kinks at my table, thank you very much.

>>97582660
>girdles of masculinity/femininity
Are a cursed item, which afflict you with a terrible and humiliating condition. They're also not that easily reversible. It's understood that in the D&D setting, which lacks internet pornography and degenerate anime (even the Forgotten Realms doesn't have a Weimar Republic) troonism fetish isn't a thing, just as it wasn't in the historical middle ages.

Maybe in Fag Edition the belts are rainbow-colored and easily removable, IDK, but in 2e they're a curse.

>>97583211
>people worshiping objectively Evil deities in D&D and pursuing objectively Evil plans, knowing full well that they're doing Evil and being fine with it - which never happened on Earth
Not true, the Huguenots even dressed in all black to be more identifiably villainous.

>>97583684
They’re a curse, yes. But an easily reversible one, and it’s a *long* tradition in D&D that a cursed item can actually be useful in the right circumstances (dust of choking, natch) once you know what it does.

This is setting aside that even without curses we have spells like Alter Self. No “curse” needed.

>>97582370
You're right no one has to follow Planescape laws, but you're changing the topic to one that I think almost everyone everywhere has agreed, that players do get to change the rules of D&D to suit their tastes, though at some point if you make enough changes you'll be playing something no longer recognisable as D&D.

However, the claim was characters can't walk from a Prime Material to an Inner plane and this shows they can in 2e. I made a point relevant to the discussion and you're changing to topic. Planescape is the de facto Manual of the Planes for AD&D 2e. There's no reason to suspect that this is a Planescape setting only statement, especially as a core idea of Planescape is that it connects existing settings with their Prime Materials. That you want to be a contrarian doesn't change facts.

>>97582653
This almost looks like it's a genuine question and that you're not just trying to be a dick and prove the Planescape rule book wrong and show how clever you are. If you bothered to read the thread you'd see that the exception "Aside from using portals" was part of this debate so your challenge fails because it's simply not pertinent.

The Ethereal plane is accessible at every point of the Prime Material plane it touches so there are no free-standing ducts, gates, or portals. Question answered.

>>97583236
I love it but many people I play with would spergout.
But you are right

>>97585246
> This almost looks like

I feel like we’re talking past each other. My point in bringing up that, sans portals, you can’t simply walk from the Prime to the Inner Planes, was in furtherance of me talking about how the Inner Planes aren’t *really* a sphere wrapped around the Prime in any physical sense - it’s just that this is the easiest way to conceptualize how the Material Plane and the Inner Planes interact. But the answer to the question of “does the Prime Material turn into the Inner Planes”, as brought up here, >>97580251, is “no”. Because barring magical tears in the fabric of reality, in the form of portals or spells, there is no way for you to physically walk from any point on the Material Plane to the Inner Planes, no matter how far you travel.

>>97580359
>>97585472
Thanks for answering my question! I guess my followup is, does the same apply to the near vs. far regions of the inner planes, i.e. you have to planeshift between layers? Anon's post made it sound like if you start in the "near" plane of Water, say, you can then physically travel into the "far" plane of Water.

And along the same lines, that post made it sound like (and sorry if I'm just misinterpreting it, I just never understood this stuff well) you always go from the Prime Material to the "near" inner planes, never the "far" planes. Which I guess makes sense in a way since that seems to be the entire meaning of "near", metaphysical closeness to the Material plane, but at the same time it seems to clash with that sort of classical conception of e.g. opening a gate to the plane of Water and masses of water just spewing out of the infinite ocean.

>>97568915
Dark Sun is about slavery. You're meant to fight the system, organize anti-slave raids, liberating caravans, mines, slaughter slave owners, stop the arenas and raise a revolution.

>>97574123
Spartacus. He rebelled and organized a horde of slaves fighting across Italy, trying to go back home to Thracia, but not to liberate all slaves from Roman Republic. More like the Warriors than Django Unchained.

>>97586301
>You're meant to fight the system, organize anti-slave raids, liberating caravans, mines, slaughter slave owners, stop the arenas and raise a revolution.
Gay.

>>97586321
>but not to liberate all slaves from Roman Republic
Exactly. This is such a common major misunderstanding of Roman politics that it bears elaborating upon.

Spartacus wasn't opposed to slavery on ideological principles, he only wanted to liberate himself (and his buddies). If roles had been reversed, he would have been very happy to be the slave owner.

>>97588113
True, but you also have to remember that D&D is not remotely historical Earth, and "anachronism" is an almost meaningless term when talking about a world with an entirely separate history

>>97585246
>you're changing the topic to one that I think almost everyone everywhere has agreed, that players do get to change the rules of D&D to suit their tastes
No, I haven't.

Planescape is a setting, not D&D rules, so it's a very different kind of freedom we're taking about. Ignoring Planescape is not changing any rule of D&D.

>though at some point if you make enough changes you'll be playing something no longer recognisable as D&D.
I can play 2e by the book in my own setting. It's not only perfectly recognisable as D&D, it not an ounce less D&D than a game that uses Planescape.

>>97588126
>"anachronism" is an almost meaningless term
I strongly disagree with this. D&D is still based on a medieval world. It has magic and dragons, so you could even argue that it is the middle ages as the middle ages imagined themselves to be.

If your D&D setting has most of the population using smartphones, everybody will see it as an anachronism. Because under all the magic and dragons, we still need some kind of cultural reference point to make sense of the setting. If it's free for all, it quickly becomes incomprehensible

MY OWN personal issue, and you don't have to agree with this, is that "freedom fighters who liberate the slaves" is a uniquely US trope, because it is at the foundation of the US Civic Religion as much as the war of independence is, if not even more. No other country has that. And as a non-American I find the concept foreign to the setting and anachronistic. Like smartphones.

So, to be clear: I'm not saying you have to see anti-slavery activism to be immersion-breaking. If you like it, more power to you. Ditto smartphones, if you want them in your setting.

But "it is immersion-breaking for me because it feels anachronistic to me" is a perfectly valid argument.

>>97588151
>No other country has that.

What? That’s not true at all. Most of Latin America freed the slaves at the same time that they declared independence from Spain. Their wars of independence were also wars of liberation, and framed as such.

>>97583236 >>97585286

>Copper Pennyweight
>AKA weights, browns,or coppers
>The coin of taverns, toll‑gates, ferrymen, and the dirt poor. “Not worth a weight” is a common insult.

>Silver Shilling
>AKA shills, brightmarks, or moons
>The backbone of the economy. A “full moon” is slang for a silver shilling, and “moon‑poor” means someone who can’t keep even a single silver on them.

>Electrum Mark
>AKA half‑sovereigns, gleams, or tens
>The respectable coin. Used for rents, guild dues, temple offerings, and wages. “Pay your mark” is a phrase meaning settle your obligations (financial or moral).

>Gold Sovereign
>AKA crowns, suns, or nobles
>The coin of merchants, adventurers, and minor nobility. A “sun‑heavy purse” is someone who’s doing very well indeed.

>Platinum Imperial
>AKA stars, whites, high crowns, eights
>Rare and horded. Not minted in the modern era (there's no need). Originally supposed to be worth 10 sovereigns but debasement and shaving has reduced their actual average value to 8. Difficult to actually spend, treated more like heirlooms than currency.

Pennyweights are also often physically broken to make smaller change, into halfweights and quarterweights. Shillings can also occasionally be broken in this way, but it's less common, and any merchant will "trust but verify", i.e., break out the scale.

Merchants don't trust broken marks or sovereigns without full proper authentication (not just weighing, they'll want to verify the metal itself), and rarely trust imperials in any condition.

Fuck it's like he's actually trying to bore people to death.

>>97588816
Oh come on, I find the coinage stuff fun. Plus it teaches players how to do division in their head. This is actually a fact - Brits used to be a lot better at mental math back before decimilization, because the currency system forced it.

More worldbuilding than 2e stuff, though, I admit that much.

>>97588846
Actually on the subject of worldbuilding and 2e, I was curious how common members of each class are. The DMG suggests classed characters are about 1% of the total population.

Let's assume a region with a population of 100,000 people, so 1,000 adventurers. Assuming 3d6 arranged to taste, and given ability score and alignment restrictions...

About 6-8 Paladins
About 12-14 Rangers
About 40-44 Druids
About 70-80 Bards
The remainder are split evenly between Fighters, Clerics, Thieves and Mages - between 212 and 218 of each of those.
(And of those Mages, 52-54 have one other scorea t 15 and so can be Specialists)

This does not take things like literacy rates into account, which would probably depress the number of Bards, Clerics, and Mages and thus boost some of the others.

(This also assumes that every Lawful Good adventurer who met the Paladin requirements became a Paladin, every True Neutral adventurer who met the requirements became a Druid, etc., but this isn't necessarily true)

>>97586301
It *is* gay but this is also true, the Prism Pentad really shows this clearly.

>>97595619
It also shouldn’t be that shocking that a game that features slaves, published in the 1990s, concerns itself with ending slavery.

>>97595704
It's proof that the liberal jewish agenda was being enacted early, because there's nothing wrong with actual slavery. Some people are just inferior and deserve to be enslaved.

>>97598585
>because there's nothing wrong with actual slavery

I know a moral argument won't work against you, so instead I'm just gonna point out that I've gots me centuries of economic data that says different. Freer societies are more economically successful societies, every time, without exception. That's not morality. That's just math.

There can't be this many people baiting on one edition of D&D.
There is a lot more to any RPG than comparing the first and 2nd editions of it.

>>97602614
The differences are a sore point with many anons, due to a shithead who's been harassing /osrg/ with "2e is too an OSR system!" for years now. At least he's stopped trying to convince people to leave this thread and go post there.

>>97602816
>goes to bump the troll thread by samefagging
>"i'm not trolling and inflicting the board with ny presence, HE is!"
Every accusation is a confession.

>>97602832
>irony level: maximum

>>97602816
No one's been bothering with this thread once it became clear you're the only guy posting in it. And the only reason you bump it is to erroneously misdirect people out of the /osrg/ and to here.
The jokes mind of on you though, because people can post about 2e in both threads, because 2e is an OSR game.

>>97568805
My last campaign lasted 10 months. Characters went from level 2 to level 6-7

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I like 2e but my group balks at anything that doesn't have autistic builds, makes me sadge.

>>97603630
No, I'm the guy who posted about 2E settings, the anon who created the thread is the troll guy.
I have reservations about 2E but it also has the most stuff in it with 3E's poor attempts at balance.

>>97604061
>the anon who created the thread is the troll guy
Nonsense

>>97604061
The would mean there’s at least three posters. I’m the guy who posted about the Elemental Planes a bunch. I wasn’t the OP and I’m obviously not you.

>>97604280
i also posted about the elemental planes a little but i wasnt the anon asking the questions so there are a few more of us

>>97604280
>>97604544
Same, I'm the confused anon who asked whether the Material plane is just a flat disc.

>four days dead thread
>it's pointed out
>no, no look it's real it's real

>>97604963
You just think everybody else samefags because you do it yourself all the time.

>>97603993
Seriously question: how to build unique characters without autistic builds? Is the only choice using those player options booklets?

>>97605443
You can do a fair bit with proficiency choices, assuming your DM uses proficiencies (they're optional, but they're optional in kind of the same way 5e's feats are optional - most DMs run them anyway).

For example, my thief character has proficiency with Cooking, because she grew up in a tavern and learned to cook.

Weapon choice, mundane and magic items you acquire, etc., all also play a role without having to get into Skills & Powers or anything.

Most Fighters, Mages, Thieves and Clerics will start out pretty similar at level 1 to every other Fighter, Mage, Thief and Cleric. They differentiate as they level up. This is intentional.

>>97605443
>player options
Combat and Tactics is a mixed bag, but some of it is pretty cool. Skills and Powers is a garbage fire, don't even bother.

>>97605443
You build unique characters by playing and making them unique. If you need special options to tell you you're unique, you'll never be unique.

>>97606058
In a tiny bit of fairness: Clerics, Mages, and Thieves all have some ability to customize built into their classes thanks to Clerics and Mages getting to select prepared spells (and spells known for Mages), and Thieves getting to set their skills. A Thief who prioritizes Pick Pockets is pretty different from one who prioritizes Open Locks.

Fighters, conversely, don't have anything to really set them apart form other Fighters. Particularly if you're playing without nonweapon proficiencies or if your DM doesn't do a good job giving you opportunities to use your proficienices.

So I can sympathize with the frustration.

>>97605443
Mechanical uniqueness is simply overrated. Seriously, it's not that there's some secret, hidden way of doing it in 2e, it's just that before 3e people didn't care about this.

Or, I guess there were plenty of players who cared, judging by the success of 3e, but there wasn't much rules support for them, anyway.

>>97606293
I believe the optimal build in 2e was a dart-throwing fighter.