Why was planescape discontinued

After TSR got bought out, I remember reading an article by one of the high-ups at WotC explaining why the company had nearly gone bankrupt.

One of the main contributing factors was that they'd spread themselves too thin; when you're publishing a half dozen different series simultaneously, only a tiny fraction of your customers are going to buy any given product.

That's why it's just not profitable to have your fingers in too many pies. Clearly WotC is trying to avoid the same mistake. How good is it? It's really pretty good. The low screen resolution means it looks very dated now, but it's great fun to play. I found the graphics a bit weird. A bit toy-or candy-like, but not disturbingly so. It's a great game.

I've never finished it, due to technical reasons. I think I've gotten to the last quarter of the game in Curst. So far the story was superb. I really can't spoil the fun by telling it. What was very interesting game-mechanics wise, was how there were a lot of ways to earn xp in non-combat ways. I found the uses of stats interesting ex: wis let you learn faster, STR and DEX let you snap someones neck early in the game without having to fight him. I can't call myself an expert on planescape, but I heard say more than once, by the experts, that the game is very very true to the setting.

It was the first thing that sparked my curiosity into the setting. When I first played it I had already played baldur's gate and knew a bit about the forgotten realms. But it took a long time before I understood that Planescape was a campaign setting, and torment just took place in it. EDIT: Oh yeah, and all women have big boobies in planescape torment. Heh, maybe. But I'm serious about the women in torment. Some of them are really freaky when you see them from the side. You can also look at more detailed big photos of all the creatures and NPC's you encountered in the game, in a sort of encyclopedia.

The outfits they wear in there make you wonder, why one are called harlots, and others upper-class-townie-females. I always wondered if they did all that on purpose, as sort of a joke maybe, or if the graphic designer thereof was just a perv.

Depends on the artist. Mialee, for example, is shown to be "small" and busty. The only consistent thing is that she's uglier than a medusa with a facial rash. Anyway, I guess she has the Enlarge spell memorized a few times, to adjust the size of her I could be wrong, but I believe the books were a heckuvalot more expensive to print - and considering the company wanted maximum profit from minimum cost as all companies are obliged to do, and as usual subject to elasticities etc and ideal levels yada yada , they weren't that popular at the office.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I'd hazard a guess that th stuff WotC puts out these days'd be similar cost if not higher. Yeah, I loved the old Spelljammer, too.

It wasn't WotC, it was TSR that discontinued the setting, along with all the other settings they were publishing at the time. Even Dragon Magazine wasn't being published for a while. In part, at least. That much is accurate, but it's misleading. Wizards of the Coast did continue publishing Planescape products for several years after they bought TSR. So yes, it was Wizards of the Coast who finally decided to discontinue the line. Now, if you were talking about Birthright, then yes - it was TSR who ended it and WotC who simply decided not to bring it back.

But Planescape enjoyed quite a bit of WotC support. The Planescape line used a larger set of dyes yes, and was more expensive to print versus other product lines. So regardless of total sales, they made proportionately less money per individual unit sold, which in the end wasn't exactly a selling point when product lines were being dropped like Dark Sun or consolidated like Planescape being folded back into what would later be the 'core' product line.

Planescape was great, but now it is where it should be: as part of the background for other campaigns. Anyone who wants to run Planescape still can by downloading the books or borrowing them, and visiting the many Plaescape resources available online.

Giving a nod to aspects of it in the various core books is great, so all of that stuff is still canon on most other worlds. It is home to the construct-like geometric modrons, the law-enforcing inevitables and the regimented giant ants called formians.

Mechanus consists of a single infinite plane, there are no constituent layers. Why was Planescape discontinued? Is Planescape Torment in the Forgotten Realms? How do you speak Modron? Gaming Hangouts. EtcetEra Forum. EtcetEra Hangouts.

Trending Threads. Latest threads. Open new ticket Watched. The winners of this year's E3 bingo contest were promised site logo changes for game launches of their choice. Read here for the full schedule! Why aren't there any other games besides Planescape Torment in the Planescape Setting? Thread starter Bebpo Start date Jul 29, Forums Discussion Gaming Forum.

JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Topic Archived Page 1 of 2 Last. Sign Up for free or Log In if you already have an account to be able to post messages, change how messages are displayed, and view media in posts. User Info: ElDudorino. I think the audience is kind of niche compared to generic but broadly appealing games about climbing towers and stealth-killing guards.

And not just anybody can write an engaging story about universes with weird rules. Even Torment is the kind of thing the original writers probably wouldn't have been able to nail twice. There is definitely a crowd of us who would go nuts for a new Planescape game but I think a lot of us would also be really critical of one if it came out and didn't totally knock it out of the park writing-wise. User Info: Dragon Nexus. I'm possibly wrong but I believe planescape basically doesn't exist any more in the DnD world, and Wizards of the Coast would probably rather you focus on stuff they make they can still sell rather than old crap they think no-one cares about.

User Info: metaphysician. I'd say its a little of column B, but mostly column A. Wizards probably does want to focus on video game tie-ins for stuff they currently sell. Basically, Planescape is a really weird setting, from a general market perspective.

Its not fantasy in any traditional swords-and-sorcery genre sense, but its also not urban fantasy, or science-fantasy, or horror. Planescape is its own very specific thing, and thus hard to market except as "Here is a weird fantasy variation to move beyond your standard murder hobo dungeon crawling". So this means the primary audience for a Planescape game is. Which isn't nobody, but its not a vibrant and vital audience, either.

User Info: Kinoringan. Probably did not gain many fans hence the discontinuation.