Planescape General and Q&A

Thread starter question: What do you consider to constitute "law" and "chaos" in the Great Wheel, exactly? What is it that archons, modrons, and baatezu all uphold in common? What can eladrin, slaadi, tanar'ri, obyriths, and loumaras all agree on?

Discuss Planescape and the Great Wheel here, whether the original AD&D 2e version, the 3.X version, the 4e version (traces of the Great Wheel exist in 4e, down to the baernaloths, the yugoloths, the Heart of Darkness, Maeldur et Kavurik, Tenebrous, Pelion, and the Last Word all being canon as of Dragon #417), the 5e version, or your own original blend.

I am exceedingly well-lanned on planar canon under a holistic blend of 2e, 3.X, and sporadically even 4e lore. If you have any questions at all about the setting's lore, feel free to ask, and I will give you direct quotes and citations from as many primary sources as I can, unlike afroakuma. I will note when something is open to GM interpretation, and explicitly note whenever I give merely my own personal interpretation.
If you would like to ask anything under the context of a single edition and nothing more, please mention such.

>Basic setting summary: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape
>Comprehensive Planescape reference index: rilmani.org/psIndex.txt
>Planewalker.com planar encyclopedia: mimir.planewalker.com/encyclopedia/plane
>Canonfire.com planar encyclopedia: canonfire.com/wiki/index.php?title=Outer_Planes
>Rilmani.org planar encyclopedia (contains unmarked fanon, so beware): rilmani.org/timaresh/Outer_Planes
>List of all the multiverse's gods (contains all gods mentioned in D&D products, but also has plenty of speculation and fanon for mythological deities and for powers with few details on them): mimir.planewalker.com/forum/list-dead-gods#comment-58090

Old threads with previous questions and comprehensive answers: docs.google.com/document/d/1EC4fQ7qW0dNveXRDD2UZsB2NXbyIpEm-jCtTjwBQH3I/edit

Other urls found in this thread:

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/48051883/#48056532
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/48051883/#48056379
planewalker.com/content/5th-edition-planescape-campaign
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/48051883/#48056030
lomion.de/cmm/lycawefo.php
certain-death.com/fatescape.pdf
mysidia.org/Planescape/OldDM/gods_list.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I don't think the idea is that all lawful or chaotic beings neccessarily agree on anything--it's that they are motivated by an underlying force.

It's like saying, "All humans are carbon-based lifeforms." That doesn't mean all humans share some deep bond with other carbon-based lifeforms.

The baatezu execution of law is inherently different from archons or modrons.

If they are motivated by an underlying force, then that force can be defined, thereby allowing us to determine what creatures driven by said underlying force have in common.

Which, of course, seems to be impossible to discern, thereby making the "law" and "chaos" distinction between the Outer Planes somewhat meaningless.

It's somewhat of a cop-out, but it's clear the alignment system was just something they had to roll with and try to make as much interesting fiction off the back of. Ultimately it's going to be up to the DM to interpret that system as either a really basic description of stereotypes or a fundamental facet of every part of the universe.

Personally I prefer the "stereotype, easy category" approach since it gives you more leeway, but to each his own.

The law/chaos axis in Planescape is handled rather poorly compared to the good/evil axis. This is ironic, because the former axis was supposed to be a major highlight of the setting (the Blood War, the Planes of Law/Chaos/Conflict boxed sets, and so on).

Consider the exemplars of Neutral Good and Neutral Evil respectively: the guardinals and the yugoloths.
The guardinals embody the ideal of compassion as they wander around Elysium to trick the plane into giving them opportunities to help others, and they crusade against those who would harm the innocent as well.
The yugoloths were pushed extremely hard in 2e to the point wherein they were the ultimate selfish manipulators of the multiverse, directing the fate of the Lower Planes all for their callous personal gain.
Both the guardinals and the yugoloths are very effective at good and evil, and can be used to define good and evil.

Compare this to the modrons and the slaadi, the designated exemplars of Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral respectively. Despite the best efforts of the Planes and Law and Planes of Chaos boxed sets in fleshing out their societies in a serious fashion, they are portrayed everywhere else as bumbling buffoons and comic relief.
Modrons are parodically bureaucratic, indecipherable, and unwittingly destructive towards themselves and others; 5e had given up on having them being taken seriously by giving them chibi artwork in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Slaadi society had been sabotaged since the beginning by the selfish actions of Ssendam and Ygorl as per page 96 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes (or Primus if you prefer to believe page 274 of the 5e Monster Manual), and outside of Planes of Chaos, they are invariably portrayed as dangerously random jesters.

Pure good and pure evil have strong exemplars who can be taken seriously, but pure law and pure chaos are saddled with the setting's comic relief. That bodes ill for anyone trying to define law and chaos under the Great Wheel.

To be fair, everything after 2e for Planescape is probably best considered non-canon. So 3e being fucked is no surprise.

I don't quite agree on modrons being poorly done joke material--there is certainly that aspect to them, but I feel like that's just the perspective of the players trying to simplify something that's basically beyond their scale. The whole vibe of modrons in 2e makes sense: they are the embodiment of law shorn of any bias, whether demon, angel, or human. I think modrons are actually a good example of where 2e Planescape did alignments right. It fits, modrons are a metaphor that becomes literal, the laws of the universe embodied by robots, which are to humans basically Law Elementals: creatures who are motivated purely by their internal programming, which in Planescape is the background programming of the Multiverse itself (Law). One of the touches I really like about modrons is how they self-regulate. The fact you can kill Primus and he's just instantly replaced by another modron who is elevated to that status really hits the spot.

Image unrelated.

2e made modrons famous via the Great Modron March adventure and showcased their more dangerous (to themselves and others) side, but it ultimately paints them as inefficient and bumbling buffoons and comic relief.

The Great Modron March revolves around the PCs having to prevent the modrons from causing mass destruction due to their rigid and unflinching thinking, while also having to save the modrons who are seemingly incapable of defending themselves despite their organized ranks. (The 3e Manual of the Planes's modron web enhancement even points out this logical conclusion: "Despite the regimented order of their armies, modrons do not fare as well in war as other planar beings. When it comes to combat and the sheer cruelty that often accompanies warfare, modrons usually come out the losers."

The slaadi do not receive much better treatment. Even in the 2e product that presented them most coherently, Planes of Chaos, they were still rigid enough in their "chaotic" thinking that they literally lined up to face opponents one-by-one rather than working together as a team.

It is not very fair to law and chaos if good and evils' guardinal and yugoloth exemplars are portrayed as efficient and dangerous, while the modrons and the slaadi are black comic relief.

Guy who only knows Planescape from Torment here.
What if you'd try to compare the Modron society to an anthill, or beehive? A highly organised society where the individual only exists as a functional being. Bureaucracy, at least as we understand it, wouldn't be necessary since every single member knows the society's rules (something that's actually expected but impossible in our own societies, hence the need for bureaucrats to figure it out).

Somehow I knew you'd bring up The Great Modron March. You seem to know your shit, so you also have to know that The Great Modron March was an Orcus plan. Kind of a dumb adventure and maybe it gave cashmere casuals the wrong idea about Modrons, but at the end of the day that wasn't their fault, it's literal abyss demons fucking shit up as per usual.

It's strange that the 3e manual of the planes says that, since if you go by the statistical basis of modrons in 2e, where they often show up in huge squads of 80+, they're actually pretty scary for mid-level adventurers. The higher tiers aren't really that powerful, but I'd imagine that is ameliorated by them having limitless numbers.

Slaadi I'll give you, they're an afterthought that always amounts to "heh, chaos frogs". To be fair, Planescape is such a massive setting that many planes amount to an afterthought. I wonder if that was intentional, though. It is kind of just giving huge canvasses for DMs to paint on.

There are already literal ant-people in Planescape, the formians of Arcadia. Judging from the fact that by D&D 3.X, they have already taken advantage of Nemasus's slide into Mechanus by establishing "formian hive cogs" in that plane (as per page 128 of the Manual of the Planes), they are actually efficient, unlike the modrons.

According to the Great Modron March and the follow-up Dead Gods, that particular Modron March was a result of Orcus/Tenebrous using the modrons to scout and gather data on the whereabouts of the Rod of Orcus. This is not too dissimilar to what the march normally does: gather data.

Orcus/Tenebrous had no reason whatsoever to sabotage the modrons or lower their efficiency; doing so would sabotage his own plans. Indeed, in the Great Modron March adventure itself, there is no indication that the modrons are operating at less than peak efficiency. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the modrons are like this in *every* march.

>The higher tiers aren't really that powerful, but I'd imagine that is ameliorated by them having limitless numbers.
Archons and tanar'ri are also literally infinite in number.

>Planescape is such a massive setting that many planes amount to an afterthought.
This is true. Some planes are far more developed than others. Even in the focus of the setting, the Outer Planes, there are planes such as Bytopia that have minimal (yet still existent) locations and plot hooks associated with them.

I was thinking of the Inner Planes in particular. There are quasi planes that have like a line of fluff and that's it.

>there will never be a CRPG set in the Inner Planes where your only goal is to stripmine one of the Mineral planes of delicious diamonds and gemstones

Life is painful sometimes.

The 2e "Inner Planes" book does a positively *valiant* job at fleshing out even the paraelemental planes and the quasielemental planes and giving them a handful of interesting adventure sites and adventure hooks. They even managed to insert frozen draedens into the Paraelemental Plane of Ice.

Unfortunately, since there were a grand total of 18 Inner Planes to cover in a relatively small book, most of the planes therein still have only a few pages of lore.

In this previous thread, I try to help a GM flesh out an adventure in the Quasielemental Plane of Dust:
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/48051883/#48056532

I take a lot of my inspiration on "law" from this quote:

> Every city in the world has the death penalty for stepping in front of a bus. How do we live with this draconian, irrational, and instantly enforced rule? By not violating it. Most of us never give the matter a second thought.

(there's more, but the man has logorrhea)

My "law" in the planar sense is characterized by 1) this kind of enforcement, 2) this kind of attitude.

It may be fortunate or unfortunate that law enforcement happens to you, but it happens _predictably_ enough that it's much less a matter of Good or Evil. To take a nicer example, apple pie may taste delicious, and Good characters may attempt to ensure apple pie is widely available so people can enjoy it, but there's no alignment-goodness inhering in the fact of you enjoying the apple pie. The pie is just tasty, not holy.
Ruling Lawful exemplars attempt to make their domains and their code of law behave like a law of physics or a force of nature in a similar manner: you don't fuck with it, you don't argue with it, preferably you don't even _think_ about arguing with it because arguing will get you absolutely nowhere. You just gotta deal. When there's a bus going at fifty miles an hour on the highway and you run out in front of it, arguing that the bus "shouldn't" hit you is part nonsense, part irrelevance. It's going to hit you. It lacks the power to do otherwise. You lack the power to prevent it.

So with that background explained... Archons, modrons, and baatezu uphold in common a principle of "and then it was written that we should crush it, so we crushed it". Their courts may have an appeal _process_, but there's no such thing as a _personal_ appeal.

Chaos creatures, OTOH, have no such inevitability. You can always try personal negotiation with one. Precedent, rule and principle be damned, if an eladrin takes a shine to you, it'll do a lot to ensure your future welfare as long as it stays interested.

Relatedly, I view the alignment field as being philosophically "bounded" by a circle, not a square. Lawful exemplars are at "coordinates" (-10, 0), Good exemplars at (0, 10), and Lawful Good ones around (-7, 7). There's no such thing as (-8, 8), because when you go far enough out on one axis, and you start to narrow the available scope for the other. This doesn't usually come up for humans, though, who rarely stray more than about 5-6 points in any direction from (0,0) unless they're dealing in Exalted or Vile stuff.

I have done further research on the modrons' alleged combat ineptitude, and it seems that even page 13 of 2e Planes of Law: Mechanus agrees with the 3.0 Manual of the Planes web enhancement:
>But games are one thing, and warfare quite another. In terms of combat and sheer cruelty, modrons're usually the losers.

One can see why the Arcadian formians were able to take cogs so easily, and why Mechanus had eventually churned out the inevitables in order to have a more efficacious fighting force against cosmic lawbreakers.

Such a principle might make sense for modrons, but it certainly does not apply to baatezu. The politics of the Lords of the Nine and the dukes under them clearly show that they are willing to flaunt laws and processes in order to further their own machinations. I do not see this applying particularly well to archons either, if only because there is no precedent for such in Planes of Law or any other product where archons are detailed (yes, even the much-maligned 2e Warriors of Heaven).

> Such a principle might make sense for modrons, but it certainly does not apply to baatezu.

Partly, that's because baatezu only have a 7/10 law score compared to modrons' 10/10. That leaves some room for excuses and loopholes and lawyering up. But I hope you'll agree with me that low-ranking baatezu are still relatively likely to crush-because-the-boss-said-so, whereas low-ranking tanar'ri frequently don't even have a boss, certainly not one whose orders they obey on principle even when the boss is away, and if they don't feel like crushing today they probably won't.

Partly, this is how I'd run it, regardless of what canon says. Maybe baatezu aren't that way in the book, well, they are in my game. Even junior baatezu soldiers, for instance, would have the belief drilled into them that they're better than tanar'ri because tanar'ri are unruly mobs and baatezu are a well-trained, well-disciplined fighting force that can hold formation under pressure without needing the whip (or the commissar, or other equivalent) behind them every second. So they do.

>if they don't feel like crushing today
Is the joke here that tanar'ri always feel like crushing you?

>What do you consider to constitute "law" and "chaos" in the Great Wheel, exactly?
>in the Great Wheel

Hey something I noticed,
While the planescape setting never excitedly states it, it's pretty blatant that the setting itself generally considers:
Lawful to be unity, Unified, putting the group above yourself. Good examples are the the modrons, archeon's strict reliance to military status, Mt. Cel, Baator's hierarchy.

While chaos tends to be about "Putting the individual first", great examples is this weird almost hierarchy social behavior Slaadi have in 2e where the strongest and the baddest is considered the leader (very 40k Ork like). Creature's following other's orders is not something i consider chaotic myself. Especially on the things we are suppose to consider beings of pure chaos.
The "putting the individual first" in chaos is seen through all the chaos planes. How they explain tanar'ri advancement. How Arborea & Ysgard value single heroes over a groups of people. The Rager sect, the Fated Faction which generally considered themselves chaotic.

Not universal across all PS material but pretty damn pervasive. I don't subscribe to this way of breaking down LawVChaos, just something I thought I'd mention.

>I hope you'll agree with me that low-ranking baatezu are still relatively likely to crush-because-the-boss-said-so
Of course. They do not have a choice in the matter from a pragmatic perspective.

I would argue that Baator is not particularly "unified" given the internecine strife and rivalries between the Lords of the Nine, and indeed, even within smaller subsets of its rulers. Page 18 of 2e Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War mentions assassinations within the Dark Eight, and page 36 of the 3.5 Fiendish Codex II makes clear that the Dark Eight loses members due to "internecine struggle"; these are the top echelon of Baator's military, and yet they still infight and literally kill each other.

Conversely, the Chaotic Good eladrin seem unusually unified and sworn to Morwel's service judging from their writeups in the Planescape Monstrous Compendium II, 2e Warriors of Heaven, and the 3.5 Book of Exalted Deeds. They are arguably more unified than the baatezu, and that is bizarre.

Baator is hierarchial. Hierarchial and lawful doesn't mean there can't be disputes or betrayals. But who, for example, is really ready to dispute Asmodeus' authority? It's a very lawful system overall. I mean, it is Lawful Evil. There is a HUGE gulf in classic D&D between Lawful Evil and Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil is the stereotypical "using the law to skullfuck your enemies or competitors", it goes without saying they do not live up to the spirit of the law 100%.

In regards to chaos and its emphasis on individuality, when I run planescape I tend to depict the slaadi not as the true denizens of Limbo, but rather hordes of parasites that feed on the beings of enormous power and ever changing nature that are the true denizens of that plane.

If there are disputes and betrayals, then that goes against 's theory that the common element to law is unity and putting the group above oneself.

Slaadi are already *not* what the true denizens of Limbo are supposed to be like. As per page 96 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes, Ssendam and Ygorl not only designed the Spawning Stone, but later deliberately sabotaged it such that no other slaad could ever spawn or evolve to be more powerful than them.

Page 274 of the 5e Monster Manual offers a different interpretation:

>The Spawning Stone. Long ago, Primus, overlord of the modrons, created a gigantic, geometrically complex stone imbued with the power of law. He then cast it adrift in Limbo, believing that the stone would bring order to the chaos of that plane and halt the spread of chaos to other planes. As the stone's power grew, it became possible for creatures with ordered minds, such as modrons and githzerai, to create enclaves in Limbo. However, Primus's creation had an unforeseen side effect: the chaotic energy absorbed by the stone spawned the horrors that came to be known as slaadi. Sages refer to Primus's massive creation as the Spawning Stone for this reason.

>The slaadi wiped out every last modron enclave in Limbo. As creatures of utter chaos, slaadi loathe modrons and attack them on sight. Nonetheless, Primus stands by his creation and either doesn't perceive the slaadi as threats or chooses to ignore them.

This seems like a reasonable alternative to Ssendam and Ygorl having created it.

One could have it both ways: Primus had created the Spawning Stone, but Ssendam and Ygorl then tampered with it to restrict the power level and shapes of all other slaadi.

Any advice for running planescape in 5e, aside from the obvious, I was wondering how best to capture the feel of a planescape adventure, without making the PCs feel insignificant in the vastness of the setting.

Firstly, I would like to direct you to a previous post of mine concerning premade low-level adventures, some of which include activities as lofty as negotiating with a greater god in person:
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/48051883/#48056379

Running Planescape in 5e will be somewhat of a challenge, as you will have to cobble together various homebrew monster conversions. However, it opens up a major opportunity for low-level PCs: social encounters against creatures as powerful as solars, balors, pit fiends, and ultroloths. In 3.X or 4e, this would be nigh-impossible due to the rift in numbers; 5e has bounded accuracy in combat and *extremely* bounded accuracy out-of-combat, so with a series of Help actions, a party of 1st-level PCs could engage even a pit fiend in a social conflict.

Thus, while combat encounter-building will not be too different from regular 5e, social encounters can be held against the minor lords of the Great Wheel right from the beginning.

You may wish to look into this homebrew mega-adventure and conversion of Planescape for 5e:
planewalker.com/content/5th-edition-planescape-campaign

Thanks, my main concerns are how long the
Party should remain in one place for, or whether they should be constantly plane hopping as part of the adventure, and also how to have recurring npcs considering the vastness of the setting, having pcs constantly bumping into the same people may feel a bit forced.

The 2e Planescape premade adventurers almost always opted for the "one quest, one plane" method of plane-hopping, which is a sensible guideline.

>also how to have recurring npcs considering the vastness of the setting, having pcs constantly bumping into the same people may feel a bit forced
Recurring NPCs should ideally be based in Sigil in a plane-hopping campaign, and should be bumped into there.

> I wonder if that was intentional, though. It is kind of just giving huge canvasses for DMs to paint on.

Personally I find this a cop-out. It's just fans covering for lazy game design. Every edition and even pathfinder have always favored some planes over others. They do not get a pass and neither does planescape. If the writers weren't up to the challenge of the Great Wheel they either should of passed on the project or got more help.

One of the many things I dislike about planescape is this apologist attitude towards any of it's flaws. It has good points and bad points like anything else. Saying "well the bad stuff was intentional so it's not bad" is rather silly to me.

PS dropped the ball on a lot of stuff, some because of orders from above and some because they took too much stuff from WoD. But also because they spent too much time wanking the lower planes. No other outsider groups got the same treatment as the fiends in PS. Warriors of Heaven was the closet the upper planes got and it was neither PS nor particularly well done.

Especially since planescape fluff Is often given legacy priority over the nonPS fluff in planar matters. Which makes the bad stuff less likey to be changed less it draw the wrath of PS grognards.

I am a major critic of the setting precisely because I am so invested in it and can thus point out its flaws. I have run literally over 200+ Planescape sessions since December 2014, and I had to heavily distort the setting into something more cohesive, appealing, and actually usable in a long-term campaign.

If I could, I would revise the cosmology in its entirety. Remove, reshuffle, rearrange planes. I do not think anyone can agree on why the Beastlands is in the Upper Planes, what makes planes like Arborea and Ysgard even remotely "good" (Arborea is described in 2e Planes of Chaos and the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide as a place where the inhabitants literally kill each other on a regular basis due to their uncontrolled emotions), why the Inner Planes had to have so much useless chaff planes, why there are so many useless filler factions (e.g. Transcendent Order), or why so many of the alignment-related practices of the exemplars do not make sense at all. These grievances are just the tip of the iceberg, truly.

However, I am *forced* to use the nonsensical Planescape cosmology in my games because I use visual aids very often. All of those dazzling maps of the Great Wheel would be for nothing if I rearranged the planes. It is a shame.

I know exactly how you feel. The Great Wheel has great potential. And with some small but important changes all the outer planes could not only stay right were they were but also be great for adventure.

The problem is the 1st manual of the planes really felt like it was thrown together. Then when PS came it, rather than taking the singular opportunity it alone had to fix the problems The Great Wheel had instead, added more than it fixed.

A lot of this was order from above though. Having to minimize the religious aspects when talking about the afterlife was a massive mistake. Inventing Sigil for the sole purpose of giving a base to low level adventurers was a mistake.

For example i'd of preferred a Sigil run by the outsider groups instead of made up factions. That way we could see how they functioned in their interactions with each other. Because I see enough of the mortal races in the prime settings. I don't want to go to the most important city in the multiverse and see yet again another city run by mortal races(which most factols were).

PS was a prime example of the phrase "The hunter that chases two rabbits, catches neither". Adding in the factions meant less room for the outsider groups. Adding in Sigil made less room for the planes. Adding in the blood war meant less room for other major conflicts. PS had a lot of books but not enough for all the old AND all the new. The setting suffered for it.

The factions are a major point of contention for my players and me. We have all but agreed that the 2e Planescape books focus far too much on the factions (roughly half of which are one-dimensional parodies with minimal plot potential whether as PCs or NPCs, such as the Free League, the Sign of One, and the Transcendent Order), and that the exemplars should have been the focus instead.

Indeed, in my own games, I heavily deemphasize factions and instead play up exemplar races, to the point wherein they comprise the "standard races" of the setting, including the majority of PCs. Planescape is simply more fun when PCs include arcanaloths, succubi, trumpet archons, tulani eladrin, bizarre half-celestial half-fiend hybrids, lesser ancient Baatorians, and stranger creatures still (e.g. lesser constellates). Yes, even if it means they are simply roleplayed as quirky humans with sporadic nods to their alien natures; it certainly beats the usual fantasy race milieu.

If I could, I would replace the factols with exemplars and other outsiders, but I feel as though I would receive far too much flak for doing that, as it would be too blatant an alteration.

So any tips on running low level adventure in signal, before sending the players off elsewhere.

Should Planescape allow Paladins and Clerics who tollow and ideal, rather than a god? I think Eberron introduced this and I really like the idea.

Do you think a Templar (from Dark Sun) would keep their powers if they left Athas, or are they too far away from their Sorcerer-King patron?

Are there any canon anthropomorphic animal races in Planescape?

Why do Earth gods exist in Planescape?

>signal
Would you perchance be this fellow?
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/48051883/#48056030
If so, then I had already lent you aid in that thread.

Otherwise, I would suggest downloading In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil and Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. Skim through those two books, see which locales and NPCs spark your imagination, and then run an adventure based on that.

One simple adventure you could run is this. The party is minding their own business in Sigil, when all of a sudden, a one-way portal opens up behind them, depositing onto the street a hapless mortal from the Prime. The PCs must discern where the mortal is from and help them find their way back home; this will involve locating a proper portal and the gate-key of that portal.
The party should be given a strong motivation to assist the NPC. Perhaps the NPC is from the same home town or religion as one of the characters. Maybe they simply offer money. It could be that they are described as quite attractive and helpless, triggering "white knight" instincts.
This should help give a tutorial to Sigil's portals and how they function. Afterwards, the NPC could very well return to Sigil from time to time as a recurring NPC.

>Should Planescape allow Paladins and Clerics who tollow and ideal, rather than a god?
This has always been allowed in 2e Planescape. Have a look at the Factol's Manifesto and On Hallowed Ground. There are Athar clerics of the Great Unknown, Believers of the Source clerics of the Source, Dustmen clerics of Death, and more. In the Dead Gods adventure, there is even a cleric of the World Ash Yggdrasil, despite that not being a true god.

>a Templar (from Dark Sun) would keep their powers if they left Athas, or are they too far away from their Sorcerer-King patron?
Page 13 of the original 2e Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set's A Player's Guide to the Planes explicitly allowed Athasian defilers, preservers, elemental clerics, gladiators, and bards. I imagine templars would work just fine under this paradigm. After all, they are merely priests (2e priests) of a Prime Material Plane-dwelling power, and other priests of such divinities work just fine in the planes.

>canon anthropomorphic animal races in Planescape?
Yes. Absolutely. The Outer Planes alone are *full* of anthropomorphic animal outsiders. The entirety of the guardinals of Elysium are anthropomorphic animals, and they are that plane's exemplar species. The animal lords of the Beastlands are also anthropomorphic animals, although they are much more human-looking, and almost kemonomimi-like. The slaadi of Limbo are frogs (save for their lords), the molydeus tanar'ri of the Abyss are wolf-snakes and the marilith tanar'ri are serpents, the arcanaloths of Gehenna and the Gray Waste are hounds or jackals (or foxes in Shemeshka's case), the warden archons of Mount Celestia are bears and the noctrals are owls, the gelugon baatezu are insects, and I have only scratched the metaphorical surface.

2e's much-reviled Warriors of Heaven supplement even allowed you to play one of Elysium's guardinals from levels 1 to 20+, although that book had horrifically broken balance issues even by 2e standards.

>Are there any canon anthropomorphic animal races in Planescape?

You bet there are, little prime. From those disgusting Guardinals in Elysium to cute and cunning Arcanaloths like myself to backwater kitsune from obscure prime worlds. There's all kinds of anthropomorphic creatures across The Great Wheel. Just pay a visit to Sigil and you'll see all kinds of interesting faces.

>I can play my fursona in Planescape

Thanks for making my day, anons.

Not a lore question, but what system do you suggest running Planescape in since D&D is a poor fit?

I'm leaning towards Fate Core.

The 2e On Hallowed Ground sourcebook explains this.

Many pantheons, such as the Babylonians and Sumerians (separate pantheons in Planescape), the Celtic Tuatha Dé Danann, the Chinese Celestial Bureaucracy, the Egyptians, the Finns, the Greek Olympians, the Japanese kami, the Norse, and the Vedic Indians are comprised of "multi-sphere powers." That means they are worshiped in multiple crystal spheres, which are the multiverse's equivalent of solar systems. There are many versions of Earth that have appeared in various D&D products, so it is reasonable to assume that such gods have a presence in those Earths' crystal spheres, but Spelljammer shows us that these "multi-sphere powers" have a presence all over the Prime.
It is my personal inference that there are many places called "China," "Egypt," "Greece," "India," "Japan," and so on in the Prime.

Other multi-sphere pantheons in On Hallowed Ground include the draconic gods, the dwarven Morndinsamman, the drow, the elven Seldarine, the gnomes, the goblinoids, the halflings, the orcs, and the Seelie faeries, but those surely never had a presence in any of the Earths.

>backwater kitsune from obscure prime worlds

There is actually a mortal "foxwoman" ( lomion.de/cmm/lycawefo.php ) who appears in the 2e Dead Gods: Into the Light premade adventure. Her campaign role is, quite simply, to mind control the PCs and send them off on a wild goose chase.
>Daniphe's also a lycanthrope — a foxwoman — and her disarming beauty Charms males with a Wisdom score of 13 or less. Even those able to resist (Wisdom 14 or higher) still find her very attractive and are likely to listen to her pleads. Daniphe uses this gift to her full advantage as she plays the hapless damsel in distress.

According to page 176 of On Hallowed Ground, the foxwoman lesser goddess Eshebala has Abyssal layer #193, Vulgarea, as her divine realm. She is a divinity of "vanity, charm, cunning, greed."

And what, pray tell, would this fursona of yours be?

Those 200+ sessions I had run in Planescape had been conducted in myriad systems, from a strange blend of Fate Core/Accelerated, to a simple PbtA hack, to a heavily modified Strike! RPG.

I would pick your favorite generic system and use it. If you are feeling lazy, however, this is a reasonably well-written Fate Core hack for Planescape:
certain-death.com/fatescape.pdf

D&D is the only fit.
The setting was designed for D&D and it's alignment system, and every planar creature was designed to be statted in D&D.

A transgender cow priestess of Osiris.[/spoilers]

>setting about philosophy and ludicrously variable power levels
>using a game about linear progression and dungeon-crawling

Nah. D&D can't handle a party with a human paladin, a fiend, and a plane-travelling mummy.

I disagree; the 2e Planescape premade adventures continuously blustered vehemently about how the setting is supposed to encourage noncombat solutions over direct fighting, and yet D&D and its ilk are much too combat-centric for such.

D&D systems are also awful for actually playing outsider races.

The Egyptian gods certainly exist in Planescape. Hathor is not listed in On Hallowed Ground; you will have to turn to the 2e Forgotten Realms book Powers and Pantheons for her. She is a Neutral Good lesser goddess who lives in Elysium, plane of compassionate animalpeople, so your character would be a good fit for her.

I am unaware of any overtly bovine outsiders, but it would not be unreasonable to think that Hathor might have shaped a unique breed of cow-like guardinal servitor. Your character could be one of those, or a half-breed thereof.

Ah, you had mentioned Osiris, not Hathor. I had misread you.

Osiris does, in fact, have a full Planescape writeup in page 90 of On Hallowed Ground, and his realm (and those of Ra and Isis) are illustrated in the previous page. Their tripartite realm of Heliopolis is further detailed in pages 19-21 of Planes of Law: Arcadia. I particularly enjoy these quotes:
>Since Ra's purview includes destroying the undead, and Osiris is a protector of the dead (and nondestructive undead), the two don't exactly see eye to eye on how undead should be handled.
>Each of the tripartite realms has special rules governing it, sometimes directly contrary to one another. For example, undead cannot venture into Ra's realm into any circumstances at all — they wither, explode, and die one round after crossing the border into his land.

Your character might still be a rare breed of bovine guardinal or a half-breed thereof. They could also simply be a mortal cow-person from the Prime.

Thanks for the surprisingly serious reply!

Does Planescape have good waifus?

>tfw you realize the SMT series runs off of similar philosophical mechanics as Planescape

Of course. The Great Wheel has all the 'waifus'. I could set you up with one of my vassals right now! All I ask for is a moment of your time. Pick whichever one you like, sign this piece of larva skin, and let's get you ready for your date!

>If I could, I would replace the factols with exemplars and other outsiders, but I feel as though I would receive far too much flak for doing that, as it would be too blatant an alteration.

Yeah that's the biggest problem of PS. That it can't be improved in the minds of many of the fans. PS has become the great wheel so completely that any change at this point is heresy. Regardless of if the change is warrented or not.

For example: As much as I respect him even Todd Stewart aka Shemeska the Marauder has tried to shut down ideas against conventional PS lore by quoting the book at someone as a reason it can't be changed. It's really unfortunate the setting does that to people. PS fans are second only to edition warriors in their inflexibility in the D&D player base.

Maybe because they really like it as it is? Just because they have a different opinion than you doesn't mean they're wrong. Tabletop is so highly personal it shouldn't be a problem anyway, you can homebrew as much as you want. But some of the things I see being proposed here as "improvements" are highly questionable.

For example, promoting PCs being highly powerful planar races as a default has a lot of fucking awful knock-on effects, I'm shocked anyone would consider that a good thing.

I have no issue with differing opinion. It's when PS fans are the most toxic in virtually any thread in every forum I've ever been that I take offense to the fans of it. Only edition warriors are worse in relation to thinking their way=the only way.

Are all of them like that, no. But then no fanbase is all bad, memes aside. It still doesn't help with the vocal ones shitting up threads and acting like any change to their precious books is like trying to tell a religious fanatic their holy text shouldn't be taken literally. The reaction is disproportionate to merely a difference of opinion. Like literally any thread on 3rd compared to 4th edition turns into anywhere I've seen it discussed.

In short it became a problem when PS fans don't believe any verson of the planes is better and come where their not wanted to to let everyone know it. When any planar lore discussion is PS=only way it can be done. When even criticizing any aspect of it or wanting it changed is viewed as heresy.

Especially since regardless of any ones opinion on the material PS is objectively incomplete and lopsided in it's focus.

>For example, promoting PCs being highly powerful planar races as a default has a lot of fucking awful knock-on effects, I'm shocked anyone would consider that a good thing.

Which is a good example of what I was talking about.

Or to again quote you.
> Just because they have a different opinion than you doesn't mean they're wrong. Tabletop is so highly personal it shouldn't be a problem anyway, you can homebrew as much as you want.

The way I see the outer planes is that they're a place where the Alignment system is an accurate representation of people's behaviour - to an extent that should feel utterly alien to anyone from the prime or even inner planes where alignment is a bit more of a vaguer map on general intentions. (outlands people keeping little journals where they record every action according to whether it was chaotic or lawful or good or evil to make sure they balance things out is one example of this taken to a surreal extreme).

(also, what are the examplar races of the major planes, ignoring the prime - do the inner and astral/ethereal planes have exemplars too besides elementals and githyanki?)

I didn't say he was objectively wrong, I said I'm shocked he thinks that's a good idea. It's my opinion, famalam. I guess I should have added a further disclaimer "in my opinion, that has a lot of bad knock-on effects". I'm kind of curious now, though: since you seem to have such a low opinion people who prefer 2e Planescape and 2e in general, did you play it when it was contemporary?

No I didn't, but in my experience that matters little as I've seen PS fanatics that didn't get into it until well until after it's run. So it's not something I consider you needing to be there for it. Much like someone doesn't need to have been there at the crucifixion of Christ to get fanatic enough to dislike people who question the new testament.

But I do like 2nd edition though, I think it has the best fluff of any edition. I got into D&D and RPG's in general thanks to the monstrous manual, which, IMO, is the best monster manual D&D has ever produced. 2nd edition has a lot of flaws like any edition of D&D. But I don't dislike it. I don't even really dislike PS come to it. I just feel PS and the Great Wheel would of been better off separate than together.

The consensual reality aspect in particular is one of those all or nothing things. That because of the nature of the multiverse couldn't be unilaterally applied because only the outers make sense to work like that. So the whole "change belief and change the planes" tagline PS had with the factions seemed silly because only half the planes worked like that. Some of which the factions had headquarters in despite not being made of belief.

No, but it implies cognitive bias. You see this all the time in the abandonware/retro gaming scene too. "All people who like old games are just wearing nostalgia glasses, those games were only the way they were due to the technological limitations of the time." It's a self-justifying attitude so the person doesn't have to investigate why some people prefer the older stuff.

I only asked out of curiosity because it's a trend I've observed repeated over the years.

I like plenty of things from "back in the day". Even among RPG's I like the old WoD and Rifts both of which predate Planescape.

Planescapes age isn't the issue. And many of it's issues have nothing to do with it's age anyway. Other than the diminishing of the afterlife aspects(because of the satanic scare), none of the other issues(even those handed down on PS conception) were a product of the times. They were deliberate design choices, including the choice to focus more on some planes than others and some outsider groups than others.

I like too much old stuff to hold that against someone, but just being old doesn't make it above criticism either. That's the issue with way too many PS fans. The way they tell it the planes were perfected in 1994 and anything less than reprinting PS material in every edition is a disservice to the Wheel and PS. Which is bullshit.

I wasn't that big a fan of 4th edition but I did like the idea of cleaning up the planes even when that meant going against PS canon. Even if the execution left something to be desired. But many panned it exactly because of that, not because of anything else.

So it's kinda like a flip in this case where the old is given special treatment and anything new is condemned when it goes against the old regardless of it's merits. That's a big issue with PS(and D&D in general). To much legacy priority, not enough redesigning to making the "ugly step children" of D&D into something useful. Because people bitch if things are changed. Hence caster edition, hence planes with no purpose, hence poor mans creatures, etc.

qt arcanaloth

One thing I like to do to enable character concepts and adventures is to search through canonical sources for *prior precedent*. That is exactly what I did in and to help enable their concept, regardless of what said concept was.

The likes of Todd Stewart and afroakuma are more the type to use canonical sources (when they do cite them) to shut down ideas rather than allow them to blossom, which is counterproductive.

>PCs being highly powerful planar races as a default has a lot of fucking awful knock-on effects, I'm shocked anyone would consider that a good thing.
There is no reason at all why they would have to be creatures of near-godlike power. 2e Warriors of Heaven and 3.0 Savage Species alike set precedent for playing young tulani eladrin or underdeveloped trumpet archons, and even 2e Planes of Conflict and 2e Faces of Evil: The Fiends explicitly mentioned the existence of weak, liveborn arcanaloths.

Consider the less exotic "animal-person with a twist" races. Mariliths, six-armed serpent demons. Ursinals, sacred bear-wizard guardinals. Arcanaloths, hound/jackal/fox-wizard yugoloths.
Cnsider fantasy staples such as angels/aasimon and succubi.
If such creatures are the bread and butter of Planescape's denizens, then why are they barred off from players by default?

Planescape allowing only generic mortal races is like opening up an ice cream store with three hundred and three flavors, but then allowing customers to select from only a small subset of a dozen, under the flimsy logic that the rest are simply for display.

In my opinion, more Great Wheel fans should also be receptive to ideas introduced in 3.X, 5e, and, yes, even 4e. Those editions all introduce bits and pieces of interesting lore to the planes, such as the new climate in the Abyss with the obyriths and the loumaras (3.X), the clashes between Baator and the yugoloths (4e), and the possible link between Primus and the Spawning Stone (5e).

Okay, well, fair enough.

>That's the issue with way too many PS fans. The way they tell it the planes were perfected in 1994 and anything less than reprinting PS material in every edition is a disservice to the Wheel and PS. Which is bullshit.

If that's an argument you hear, then I agree. That's bullshit. My opinion of Planescape has always been that the new stuff is BAD, not that the old stuff is perfect. Admittedly that might be my own in-built bias (you can't change Sigil, we already know how it is!). I admit, whenever WOTC starts changing integral stuff of a setting I get my hackles up because they have such a history of doing a godawful job of it and for no reason other than to justify selling new editions. ("Baatezu/Tanar'ri and Celestials are now angels and demons BECAUSE WHY NOT, LOL.")

I'm not saying it isn't fun to play as planar races, especially non-half-breed ones. Of course it is. It's fucking GREAT. I come at it more from the perspective of... just because something is fun and a player says they want it, doesn't mean they really will like the end result. I mean, homebrewed setting, you've played Planescape a few times already, you want something new to spice things up, sure. Go wild. But the baseline experience (which is what you are talking about affecting when you are talking reforming the setting) should remain prime and human/mortal focused, I'd argue. There are so many characteristic things about the setting that revolve around that. Throwing it out is sort of like... have you played X-COM/XCOM? People are constantly thinking, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we played as the aliens?" It sounds cool. But a game about fighting extraterrestrials where you ARE the extraterrestrials saps it of the horror and suspense and mystery. It completely changes the core conceit. Maybe that's a bad metaphor, but I hope I am getting my point across. If you want Planescape from the perspective of all the powerful, supernatural races... >>

...well, more power to you, but to me that's getting into becoming an entirely different sort of game. Sigil and the Planescape campaign setting revolve around the "fish out of water" aspect of being primes. Even if you're not primes, there's still the concept of you being a small fish in a big pool. I am not against the occasional, homebrewed campaign that is along the lines of what you are describing for a different feel, but I think it would be a HUGE mistake to change the core campaign setting to be about that.

Also, it's a bit of a niggle, but I highly doubt most players are properly prepared to play a planar creature accurately. It's already hard enough for smart DMs. Expecting a player to understand the internal politics of the Baatezu, Yugoloths, etc from the get-go... again, maybe good for a home-brewed campaign for veterans, but as the core experience? How would that NOT be a clusterfuck?

Sigil always struck me as a very byzantine feel. You go to this strange city floating in the middle of nowhere and are surrounded by demons, angels, and worse. It's an exotic city of exotic creatures and exotic morality. It's supposed to be about facing that mindboggling infinite expanse as the little insect that is a human being. If you don't have that feeling of "other"--well, I'd argue it's less exotic. Not an entire dealbreaker, but what are you gaining by changing the core campaign setting in this way? Just more official support for home-brewed stuff at the cost of alienating new players? (Heh, not that Planescape has to worry about new players much...)

I disagree with virtually all of your assertions here, but there is one in particular I would like to address.

>But the baseline experience (which is what you are talking about affecting when you are talking reforming the setting) should remain prime and human/mortal focused, I'd argue. There are so many characteristic things about the setting that revolve around that.

What characteristics of the setting: (1) are compelling enough to constantly highlight, and (2) absolutely require the player characters to be generic mortal humanoids?

Suppose I have a rough character concept: a member of the Believers of the Source who is a devout priest of an Elysian deity. Due to the way the faction simultaneously deglorifies gods as "just some bashers who occupy the next-to-last rung on the ladder of evoltuion" (Factol's Manifesto p25) yet reveres some as role models for the climb up the cosmic ladder (On Hallowed Ground p46), the character struggles to reconcile their Godsmen beliefs and their faith in their gods.

The player then decides for their character a personality, relationships, goals, other beliefs, and so on.

But wait, the player has neglected to select a race for this character!

If the character is a human, a halfling, or an elf, then the character works fine. They still have plenty of roleplaying potential and adventure hooks.

But what if the character was a guardinal? Then they would have a strong connection to one of the major races of the setting. A species to find support in, a species to be judged as a member of, and a species with a culture to uphold the traditions of (or flaunt). Since guardinals come from Elysium, they might have even been to their god's realm at some point.

The character could instead be an angel/aasimon of the god. Then they would have an even stronger link to their god, making their crisis of faith even more salient. Since aasimon tend to flock together as per 2e Warriors of Heaven, they might seek out other aasimon to learn of how they dealt with similar crises.
It is possible that they might not have been created by the Elysian god in the first place. They could have been a servitor of another god who had then perished; after wandering the planes aimlessly, they might have been taken in by that Elysian god, giving a more personal connection.

What if the character was a redeemed fiend? Then, in addition to their quest to reconcile their Godsmen belief with their faith, they could struggle with their primal instincts as a being of cosmic evil. That could be one of their grand tests as a Believer. Of course, being a fiend is sure to earn one much prejudice from mortals and celestials alike, and they are sure to be reviled as traitors by other fiends... prompting them to put on a show of "being evil like the rest of you guys" when they visit the Lower Planes.

The guardinal, aasimon, and redeemed fiend versions of the character all have the same depth as the human/elf/halfling version of the character. However, because the outsider versions have tied themselves to actual facets of the setting, they have that much more grounding in the game world, possible plot hooks, and roleplaying opportunities.

>there's still the concept of you being a small fish in a big pool.
The planes are infinitely expansive, and the exemplar races have mind-bogglingly high population numbers. There will always be lower-powered versions of trumpet archons, arcanaloths, ursinals, and the like, many of which could live in "backwater" areas of the Great Ring or were otherwise sheltered in some way.

As per page 74 of 2e Faces of Evil: The Fiends, liveborn arcanaloths are weaklings who serve as lesser scribes in the Tower of the Arcanaloths. There is no reason why one of those could not be whisked away via portal or via magic to another section of the Great Wheel, whereupon they will embark upon a grand adventure.

>doubt most players are properly prepared to play a planar creature accurately. It's already hard enough for smart DMs.
This is an unpopular opinion, but I do not actually mind outsiders being played as exotic-looking humans with sporadic nods to their alien natures, so as long as such nods are given a token effort.

>the internal politics of the Baatezu, Yugoloths, etc
If the party is supposed to have the power level of weaklings, then it is perfectly understandable for weaker guardinals, yugoloths, and the like to have a poor grasp of the "big picture." If the party is supposed to be higher-powered, then players should familiarize themselves with the setting, mortal characters or otherwise.

>It's supposed to be about facing that mindboggling infinite expanse as the little insect that is a human being. If you don't have that feeling of "other"--well, I'd argue it's less exotic.
If it was "supposed" to be that, then I would wonder why the original Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set allowed you to play bariaurs from Ysgard or githzerai from Limbo.

It is completely absurd to propose that Sigil should showcase a vast variety of exotic species, but bar the players from actually playing those species and instead relegate them to the same old fantasy races of D&D.

I personally do not subscribe to the notion that outsiders should be completely alien. In a setting that is supposed to encourage conflict resolution other than combat, it is self-defeating to have an abundance of creatures who cannot be entreated on human terms and who have irreconcilable differences with one another; it simply encourages a "We should just fight them" paradigm.

If the streets of, say, Sigil are supposed to be a place where one can buy groceries from a gelugon shopkeeper and then receive a manicure/pedicure from a firre eladrin, it is imperative that these outsiders should be able to think, talk, and generally act on a human and understandable level.

Even in canonical material, the vast majority of exemplars are more or less human-like. Even the rilmani have vaguely understandable motives: support whichever side is losing so as to even the playing field. It is only the modrons and the slaadi who consistently wind up as alien, ineffable comic relief.

>The consensual reality aspect in particular is one of those all or nothing things.
This is a deeply unpopular opinion, but I think that Planescape would be better off *without* the vague theme of "belief shapes the planes." The factions searching for evidence to prove their claims is pointless if they can just get enough fanatical members to retcon themselves as "right all along." The planes also have so many ironclad, objective truths (e.g. "Mechanus is made of cogs and gears" or "Heading towards the Spire in the Outlands shuts off mystical powers") that belief does not influence in any way, except in the distant background.

In my opinion, the Outer Planes should be molded by people's collective thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and philosophies, but it would take place on so grand a scale that it would simply be a background detail in most campaigns.

>Other than the diminishing of the afterlife aspects(because of the satanic scare)

It is truly a shame that these were downplayed heavily in the original Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set and the books that immediately succeeded it. The afterlife aspects were restored to a degree by the writeups on conduits in the 2e Guide to the Astral Plane and the section on petitioners in 2e On Hallowed Ground.

Whenever I run a Planescape game, I occasionally try to remind the players that the Outer Planes are Saṃsāra-themed afterlife realms by showing them conduits that pour out mortal souls, which are then reincarnated into petitioners.

For example, during the first session of one campaign, the characters were in Mount Celestia, and I described this:

>The main attraction in this mead hall is its array of magical glass-optics that catch light and sight from the Silver Sea. The walls of the tavern give a magnificent view of the waters: from the Silver Sea snake out dozens and dozens of serpents of pale, white radiance--soul conduits. They deposit into the waters naked, virtuous souls, from humans to elves to dragons to magical beasts to the rare principled aberration.

>Upon being dunked into the waves, varicolored light wreathes their forms and transmutes them into shining globes of celestial energy. They then soar out of the waves on metallic wings; each bears a unique, intricate pattern. Some lantern archons instinctively fly towards the Citadel of the Stars, while others soar off elsewhere on the slopes of Lunia.

The planar races really do deserve to be playable. Obviously not every game is going to be made better by having outsider pcs, but I don't think anyone's arguing that they be made mandatory. The fact that you can play as an eladrin doesn't mean that elves and humans stop being possible choices. Given that a GM can just say "No exemplars in this game" and they'll never have to deal with it, there's no good reason for them to be unplayable.

How would you stat playable outsiders in Pathfinder then?

Create a custom class for the type in question, where they gain a level in a class which has the statistics of outsider hitdice, and ration out their abilities (maybe even expand them slightly if they're underwhelming) by level so they're capable of being useful in combat.

>Sigil and the Planescape campaign setting revolve around the "fish out of water" aspect of being primes.

If this was the case so much wouldn't be placed on being "cutters" in "factions". Many factions of which are just poor mans versions of outsider groups.

We are just cutting the middle man. You could play free ranging petitioners and get the same experience as a planarized mortal race. with a far more interesting connection to the setting.

That's how it should of been.
Petitioners=NPC's/low level PC's
Exemplars=PC's
God/exemplar lords=royalty/nobility

That's a game i'd play.

>This is a deeply unpopular opinion, but I think that Planescape would be better off *without* the vague theme of "belief shapes the planes." The factions searching for evidence to prove their claims is pointless if they can just get enough fanatical members to retcon themselves as "right all along." The planes also have so many ironclad, objective truths (e.g. "Mechanus is made of cogs and gears" or "Heading towards the Spire in the Outlands shuts off mystical powers") that belief does not influence in any way, except in the distant background.

I agree, it was also too arbitrary in it's application. Case in point the scrub layer of Arcadia getting knocked off it's perch by the Harmonium. But the lawful outsiders not ruling the known multiverse despite that they could certainy muster more believers than what dropped that layer. It has this get a lot people together who believe the same and things change. But doesn't follow it to it's natural conclusion with lawful outsiders who are very much capable of doing that very thing on a grand scale.

I would allow "heroic mortals" to be played alongside exemplars here, certainly.

Could you please express yourself more aptly here?

>I would allow "heroic mortals" to be played alongside exemplars here, certainly.
Of course obviously plane traveling mortals are part of that. I didn't mean to imply cutting mortals out all together, rather they should be exceptions rather than the rule. The planes are vast after all.

>Could you please express yourself more aptly here?
PS makes it clear that if more people believe in something it's easier for it to happen. Not only should that mean lawful outsiders and planes which would be far more unified in their belief more easy be able to effect planar changes. But it also means conflict should be less about fighting on a grand scale and more about changing peoples belief in that scale.

For example despite the conflict in Hell it should be relatively easy for Asmedeus to get the Baatezu to believe in things enough to change things on the planes. Such as out right stealing layers from Gehenna or Acheron. Or even layers from The Abyss. A mode of attack the Tana'ri cannot fight because no leader could ever get together the numbers to create counter belief.

It's not like the neutral belief of everyone else that the layers they were targeting can't be in Hell. Since Arcadia's third layer slide just fine without the multiverse being informed it needed to believe that the third layer was now in Mechanus. This means that with high enough local belief you can override the majorities belief that keep the planes as they are. So the lawful groups only need to get enough of their forces on nearby layers and it will cause a slide.

Consensual reality favors groups with higher cohesion. Which in PS is the lawful groups.

For example in Mage the Awakening the technocracy has an easier time getting sleepers to believe in "science" over magic because they have a singular belief they are trying to place on reality and in the minds of it's people.

While the traditions can have very conflicting ideas about reality and how people should view it. It's what made the technocracy more able to place their view of things as the norm for consensual reality.

And in PS it would be the lawful groups that would more easily be able to influence policy on such a scale because they work together. Even the Baatezu would work together en masse if it meant they redefined fiend and evil to mean Baatezu and lawful evil. The Tanar'ri could never even agree on a template for reality let along get together enough numbers that believe in that template to counter baatezu influence.

That's the logical end point for consensual reality. Those with purpose and cohesion over ruling those without it.

Let me clarify my position here. If you're writing in an official capacity, it's incumbent upon you as a professional to be aware of prior lore and incorporate it as best you can into a cohesive product. If you want to go crazy, I think it's best to go crazy through the use of unreliable narration, rumors, legends, and sketchy, biased in-game sources. 2e Planescape was itself good with this.

In your own games, please by all means feel free to go wildly off the tracks. Violate PS lore. Ignore special snowflakes of mine or anyone else. Lord knows I do this in my own games at home.

D&D by virtue of its long history and instances of authors overwriting material either by intent or ignorance presents a difficult case of sometimes having to choose which canon you go with. It's not an easy thing.

I see what you mean now.

Yes, I can agree with you on this count entirely. I dislike "belief shapes the planes" as something that can be voluntarily influenced by a relatively small group of people in the setting. If belief turns the planes into putty, then the archons, modrons, and baatezu should drop everything they are doing, retreat into monasteries, and apply autohypnosis to make themselves think that their respective planes are almighty utopias where everything is perfect and they rule supreme over their enemies. To a lesser degree, the Athar, the Believers of the Source, the Harmonium, the Fraternity of Order, and the like should likewise retreat into monasteries to meditate and retcon swaths of the setting with their concentrated belief.

That just should not be how it works. Consensual reality should exist, but on a scale far grander than any exemplar species can even hope to meaningfully influence. After all, the 2e Inner Planes book claims there to be an infinite amount of crystal spheres... and are all of the outsiders ready to unify themselves and outvote those innumerable mortals? I think not.

>writing in an official capacity, it's incumbent upon you as a professional to be aware of prior lore and incorporate it as best you can into a cohesive product.

Ah, but can this not be done to create new concepts? As I explain in , one thing I like to do to enable character concepts and adventures is to search through canonical sources for *prior precedent*. That is exactly what I did in and to help enable their concept, regardless of what said concept was.

This way, the older, canonical sources are respected and expanded upon in a new way: by taking bits and pieces of precedent from them and combining them into a new concept for the setting, be it a cultural practice of an exemplar species, a new race outright, a new locale, or what-have-you.

For example, I had read in Planes of Conflict: Liber Malevolentiae: Gehenna about how the plane has extremely limited real estate (despite the mountains each being hundreds of thousands of miles long, tall, and wide) and how only "the powers" can maintain stable ledges along the Fourfold Furnaces. I turned that into a major plot hook: Gehenna is running out of space for the yugoloths to live in! It falls to the bravery of the yugoloth lords (who count as "powers") to barge into the realms of the gods, slay them, and reclaim land in the name of daemonkind. They will make Gehenna great again.

Also, you might be pleased to know that one of the Planescape games I run once or twice a week involves the adventures of an arcanaloth-turned-baseline-yugoloth-lord. She is certainly climbing up the ranks in the Crawling City and earning herself many vassals and blackmailed allies, and she has made progress in starting up her own mortal cult too. She has started up a godhunting project of her own, although she may be biting off more than she can chew as she aims to tackle three demigods simultaneously; let us hope her foxy wiles let her trick them into infighting first!

First i'll say hi Shem, if this is indeed you it has been awhile since the days we talked on the wizards boards and I hope you are doing well. Really enjoyed reading the Horseman of the Apocalypse book and your Baernoloth stories.

When I named dropped you it wasn't as a dig against you. It was more to show that people that are otherwise completely reasonable can become unreasonable at times because of PS.

It's a setting that inspires great admiration in people because it did things very differently than other D&D settings. However that admiration can also turn bad especially in case of themes. This I think occurs because PS fans can some time not understand that just because 2nd and PS did something one way. That is doesn't mean that other editions, who specifically do things differently, can't do it because PS didn't.

A big one is a matter of combat and hack n slash gameplay. PS went a long way in evolving the planes outside the super dungeons they were before. But that doesn't mean they can't be super dungeons again nor that they cannot be both. But I've seen quite a few, you included, chomp down on "power gamers" for wanting to play hack n slash on the planes. Which is as good a way as any to play the planes. And in editions outside 2nd where even gods and godlikes are statted and within the realm of fighting. This doesn't make those players wrong for the planes or the game. And this is one of many hurdles PS fans have in conversations.

I agree that if you are a writer you have a responsibility to know your stuff. And that in any given edition all the lore be consistent. But once a new edition flies off the drawing board all bets are off. And they need no more be consistent with previous lore than if it was an entirely different game. That I think is the biggest point of contention between generalist fans and PS specific fans.

My school of thought is that a group of players should try to determine what kind of Planescape game they would like to play, and then make their selection of system afterwards.

If the players simply want to have a generic D&D combat-centric adventure with mortal humanoid races, only set in the planes, then they could hardly do worse than use a D&D edition or a retroclone.

If they would like to play something with a strong focus on D&D 4e-like grid-based combat, but have the freedom to have their characters be whatever crazy species suits their fancy, Strike! would be ideal (although its noncombat mechanics are poor).

If they do not wish to run a particularly combat-heavy game, then Fate, a PbtA hack, or something similar could do the job, while also having combat mechanics in a pinch.

Hey Todd, tell us a new story about qt arcanaloth foxes here! Pretty please?

Yeah I need to update my storyhour again. But most of my recent personal work has been with proteans and tieflings. I haven't run a Planescape game for some time now, and my last one was in Pathfinder's Golarion setting.

The closest thing to a qt arcanaloth was a meladaemon NPC named Insulia the Lady of Wasting Intoxication, but I think smelling of bleach, bile, and vomit in your true form removes you from being even vaguely attractive. There was also Tegresin the Laughing Fiend who happened to have a fox head (and dragon-like arms and legs, and a scorpion tail) but I think being a baernaloth (without ever actually calling him that) likewise removes you from any qt consideration.

I try to make my fiends abominations that you shouldn't like, except when I try to make them attractive explicitly in order to make you feel a bit of self-loathing for feeling that. They're supposed to be disconcerting. They're supposed to be unnatural.

Fuck it, here's a preview of a scene from a future storyhour update. Work in progress obviously.


Shemeska sits outside at a restaurant, surrounded by her groomer-guards.

She pursed her lips and blew at a strand of hair that had drifted from its proper place at the edge of her razorvine crown and fallen across her muzzle. Without so much as a word from the fiend, one of the tieflings stepped forward with golden tweezers and delicately placed the strand back in the precise place it was intended. As if nothing had happened, the Marauder continued her meal of poached kobold brain in a broth of lemongrass, citron, rice wine, and the chef’s own tears.

“Greetings my beautiful monster.”

In the blink of an eye six blades were drawn and at the throat of the woman that stood before the Marauder’s table. A tiefling beggar with filthy, matted hair interspersed with black, iron-hard quills like those of a howler, her flesh was marked by signs of extensive torture: burns, razor marks from the flensing of her flesh, and the ugly depressions of acid spattered across her face and opened holes in her left cheek such that her black and rotting teeth could be seen.

The Marauder’s nose twitched at the reek of unwashed mortal flesh, but neither did she sneer, nor fly into a rage, or simply order the woman to be killed and hurled off the roof of the present establishment that she in fact owned along with the lives and half the souls of its employees. Instead, without even a frown or twitch of her nose, she calmly and delicately put down her golden knife and fork and dabbed her lips with a napkin.

Beneath the woman’s odor of sweat, pain, fear and filth, the familiar scents of Khin-Oin, Hopeless, and the Lower Ward painted a picture of her journey from the Wasting Tower to Shemeska’s gilded Cage. Beyond that of course, only one creature had ever referred to her by that specific name and title: the Oinoloth himself.

How much of Pathfinder's proteans and daemons be backported into the Great Wheel? Proteans would be easy: they are simply pre-Spawning Stone slaadi, what the slaadi "should" be like. The daemons would be more difficult, especially given their death themes, but 3.X already introduces many "miscellaneous" types of yugoloths such as voors, corruptors of fate, echinoloths, and battleloths, so surely Pathfinder's daemons could be included there as well?

What about the other way around? What statistics would you use for, say, nycaloths, arcanaloths, and ultroloths in Pathfinder? There are several conversions available on the internet, but all of them are problematic for their own reasons (i.e. shoddy writing and inconsistencies).

Your writing seems, frankly, mediocre even all of these years, but you conjure up some reasonably exotic imagery. How would Shemeshka describe the taste of this "kobold brain" dish?

I also appreciate your application of a character's sharp sense of smell to make Sherlock Holmes-like deductions with respect to other characters. I will certainly have to pitch the idea to my arcanaloth player, whose character is supposed to have supremely keen senses as well.

>
That just should not be how it works. Consensual reality should exist, but on a scale far grander than any exemplar species can even hope to meaningfully influence. After all, the 2e Inner Planes book claims there to be an infinite amount of crystal spheres... and are all of the outsiders ready to unify themselves and outvote those innumerable mortals? I think not.

The only bit of concern I have there is that too much consensual static could undermine the feats of gods and the exemplar leaders. Which was an area I felt PS canon unrepresented by making them far and away like they are in prime centered settings.

Gods and their peers IMO should be the biggest reasons why the outer planes are like they are. It would've been nice to have more god centered adventure hooks. Rifts did a good job of that in Pantheons of the Megaverse.

>The only bit of concern I have there is that too much consensual static could undermine the feats of gods and the exemplar leaders.
Having consensual reality take place in the distant background means that the deeds of heroes, lords, and gods are *even more* important.

By pushing "belief is power" into the distant background, the ideal method of instigating a major change in the Great Wheel veers away from "round up a group of believers and get them to collectively meditate about something, in order to retcon it into existence," and more towards "round up a group of believers and march off to enforce your beliefs through steel, spell, sneaking, and speech."

Which is how it should be given a heroic fantasy setting, really.

>It would've been nice to have more god centered adventure hooks.
There are several, scattered around the Planes of Law/Chaos/Conflict book and, of course, Dead Gods.

IIRC Dead Gods is a rather large shakedown with Orcus taking over the Modrons and the like.

What I meant is more small scale things. Gods and their peers are the top tiers of the planes, true. But they are also the leaders and rulers. Their presence should have more mundane effects. Or to put it another way when a god or their like show up on a prime world it is a major event maybe even The Event. But in the outer planes it should just be tuesday.

That's not to say they should be mundane exactly. Rather them showing up of doing things doesn't need be an automatically plot device mega event. Like having adventure opportunities you'd normally get from kings and emperors on the prime. It's kind of hard to describe what i'am saying. But have them accessible in a way that wouldn't make sense for prime settings.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on this matter, and I have some unpopular opinions to add to it.

Firstly, I do not believe gods should be all that powerful personally. The 2e-D&D-onwards paradigm of polytheistic gods always being über-powerful cosmic overlords is nonsensical. There is no mythological basis at all for greater gods being able to reshape vast swaths of reality with a mere thought, let alone minor gods doing the same.

Even the likes of Odin and Thor had to travel around physically, hunt for food, and cook that food. Transforming into a bird is considered impressive for a god, and teleporting willy-nilly and with few restrictions is very rare. Yes, they can perform truly godlike feats like reshaping mountain ranges or raising continents, but that tends to be the result of "deific plot magic" in the climax of a long and arduous work-project or quest, not something any god can do on the fly.

From 2e onwards, gods suddenly became these cosmic, reality-reshaping juggernauts that made high-level wizards look like chumps. Even the avatars of the gods in 2e and 3.X can wipe the floor with a high-level optimized party. 4e gods are level 34 solos at minimum. Nothing but some vague notion of "deific warfare MAD" is stopping them from reshaping the multiverse like putty on a whim.

How did this arise?

Perhaps because of people conflating a god's "divine plot magic at the end of a great work-project/quest" with their on-the-fly abilities while adventuring out in the field?

Maybe because AD&D 2e wanted to move away from "gods are just strong monsters who can be killed," so as to placate the moral guardians of the time?

It could be because of the 2e-onwards paradigm of "there always has to be something stronger than the PCs who can keep them in line," which is why avatars can curbstomp any party.

It may be because the capacities of mid-level D&D characters are already on par with that of many mythological gods, so the actual gods in D&D had to be power-creeped to even greater cosmic power.

It could be because of preconceived notions of the nigh-omnipotent Abrahamic god leaking into these polytheistic gods' D&D interpretations.

Whatever the case, I personally think this needs to go and leave in Planescape. Yes, gods and lords should certainly be more powerful than any, say, solar aasimon, but only *just* above them.

By making gods merely high-end outsiders just above solar aasimon, they are that much more feasible to use in a game even when they appear in person and not in avatar form.

My second unpopular opinion is this: gods should be allowed into Sigil. From a meta perspective, the only reason why gods were barred from the Cage was so that 2e could avoid drawing the ire of moral guardians. "Banning gods from Sigil prevents it from turning into a battleground" is a flimsy justification; Sigil can accommodate an arbitrarily high amount of balors and pit fiends, the nearly-quasi-deity-like generals of the Blood War, and they still behave out of fear of the Lady anyway.
Allowing gods into the City of Doors in addition to lowering their power level everywhere would go a long way towards making them be more accessible to players.

Also, whenever I say "god" above, I also extend that to outsider lords as well.

Did you just... copy-pasted the OP of the thread we had a few days ago? Was that you then?

>My second unpopular opinion is this: gods should be allowed into Sigil. From a meta perspective, the only reason why gods were barred from the Cage was so that 2e could avoid drawing the ire of moral guardians. "Banning gods from Sigil prevents it from turning into a battleground" is a flimsy justification; Sigil can accommodate an arbitrarily high amount of balors and pit fiends, the nearly-quasi-deity-like generals of the Blood War, and they still behave out of fear of the Lady anyway.

This is something I agree with as well. I personally would put some kind of penalty for gods going there(for example in 3.x losing access to abilities giving by divine ranks) thus making gods uncommon because it weakens them. But also making it a good "neutral ground" where they can meet other powerful entities without it going "nuclear".

It could also give an adventure where PC's(especially if the god has a cleric in the party) could be there for security without drawing the attention the gods usual servants draw.

I rather like gods and their like a part of the setting rather than just plot devices to be brought in and out as the DM requires.

It's another problem with planescape, too many 11's on the power scale. If it can't fit in the great wheel do we really need it? There are enough chaff planes as is without adding the Ordial, nightmare dimension, etc to steal thunder from a wheel already stretched to be unilaterally interesting.

Their are enough gods and outsider lords without bringing in yet another beyond the gods, beyond those that are beyond, etc. into it to trump everything. It's like some kind of 80's show where they bring in another villain never heard of before that is somehow way beyond the villain that the whole planet/universe/multiverse was afraid of before. Obviously every being on the planes isn't known by everybody. But PS(and in many cases D&D in general) could use some restraint in bringing in yet another mega thing beyond all those other things before it.

The far realm is my favorate plane and even I don't like its 11ness. The planes are cheapened when they are so easily "surpassed".

>I personally would put some kind of penalty for gods going there(for example in 3.x losing access to abilities giving by divine ranks) thus making gods uncommon because it weakens them. But also making it a good "neutral ground" where they can meet other powerful entities without it going "nuclear".

If gods are downgraded to be *just* above solar aasimon in terms of power level, then there is no reason whatsoever to depower them in Sigil.

The Cage can accommodate an arbitrarily high number of balors, pit fiends, and solar aasimon; there is no reason why anyone else would need depowering.

I dislike the sheer amount of outsider lords and gods as well, but for a reason different from yours. Namely, the outsider lords are supposed to be the true rulers of the Outer Planes, and yet that is simply impossible given the sheer number of extant gods.

mysidia.org/Planescape/OldDM/gods_list.pdf

This is a list of over a thousand gods that have appeared in D&D-related products, and there are bound to be thousands more unspecified gods in the planes. They outnumber the outsider lords and outstrip them in power as well (at least under 2e, 3.X, and 5e logic), so why have the gods not already taken over the Outer Planes?

>If gods are downgraded to be *just* above solar aasimon in terms of power level, then there is no reason whatsoever to depower them in Sigil.

Of course, I meant taking them from their write-ups as opposed to the power down you proposed. In that case it would be unnecessary.

>I dislike the sheer amount of outsider lords and gods as well, but for a reason different from yours. Namely, the outsider lords are supposed to be the true rulers of the Outer Planes, and yet that is simply impossible given the sheer number of extant gods.

Agreed my solution would be to make the underused 8 planes the sole realm of the gods and keep the outsider centered planes the domains of the lords. Basically put all gods into Bytopia, Beastlands, Ysgard, Pandemonium, Carceri, Gehenna, Acheron, and Arcadia.

And leave Mechanus, Celestia, Elysium, Arbora, Limbo, Abyss, Hades, and Baator to the outsider lords. And have the Outlands be unique in having both. That way you don't have them stepping on each others toes and have plenty of deity and divine realm based hooks for the underused "middle" outer planes.

Also making some gods the same god with just a different name based on where in the prime you came from. Which would add even more plot hooks for them.

Arcadia is vaguely supposed to be the dominion of the storm lords.
The Beastlands is already claimed by the animal lords.
Carceri already has an exemplar species with a single lord, the gehreleths (demodands) and Apomps.
The yugoloths had a schism splitting their ranks between the Gray Waste and Gehenna, and the latter is where the vast majority of the yugoloths now hold sway. Thus, Gehenna is already exemplar-occupied.

That would leave only Acheron, Bytopia, and Pandemonium for the gods. This is an undesirable scenario.

Additionally, I think that there absolutely should be gods spread all over the Outer Planes, if only to give the Athar some level of vindication. Even archons, guardinals, and eladrin might be deeply concerned that their respective planes' energies and petitioners are being siphoned away by gods.

A drastic reduction in the number of extant gods is the only feasible solution, I believe.

>While the traditions can have very conflicting ideas about reality and how people should view it. It's what made the technocracy more able to place their view of things as the norm for consensual reality.

Actually no, the Technocracy basically "won" the consensus war in the rennaissance by being the only mages who were willing to make heavy use of sleepers and to basically care about what the sleepers thought and felt (even if that was more often about controlling how they thought and felt) while the traditions were all pissing about in their wizard towers feuding amongst themselves.

the trouble the technocracy has is that for all their organisation and self thought-policing and mind control schemes they use on the sleepers doesn't keep their hyper-science entirely free from paradox - their paradigm doesn't allow themselves to really exist.

Planescape isn't that consensual a reality by contrast - the consensuality of it all is limited by the non-consensual nature of the prime, and the way the fundamental (and unchangable) nature of man enforces a basal layer of foundation on to which the consensuality builds off of.

Lawful forces then have a slght problem; Small differance in the how of lawfulness are the paradox that limits law from allying, becaise lawfulness requires conformity which causes friction, while chaos is able to krump anyone who doesn't follow them until all that's left is a disturbingly (and paradoxically) well organised waaaagh! pointed straight at Law's heart.

>Arcadia is vaguely supposed to be the dominion of the storm lords.
The Beastlands is already claimed by the animal lords

Well I really meant more established examplars. The storm lords and animal lords(and the other natives of the forgotten 8) are really an afterthought as far as planar matters so it really wouldn't be that difficult to either make them servants of the gods or replace them with appropriate gods.

Obviously this would require a massive change to how the planes work, but the up side would be it would actually make the forgotten 8 interesting.

>Carceri already has an exemplar species with a single lord, the gehreleths (demodands) and Apomps.
The yugoloths had a schism splitting their ranks between the Gray Waste and Gehenna, and the latter is where the vast majority of the yugoloths now hold sway. Thus, Gehenna is already exemplar-occupied.

That doesn't preclude it and in fact opens up some rather interesting adventure ideas. With this idea the the gods and examplars are largely in their own corners. Then the loths, (and the leths are an extension of that via Apomps) not really caring about the delicate peace this brings, just decide to out right start moving in the gods planes and damned be the potential consequences to the multiverse. Seems like the kind of thing pure evil would do.

>if only to give the Athar some level of vindication.

Well as long as gods were mettling in mortal affairs the Athar would have a rally call regardless of where the gods lived.

I do not see why the gods should be given priority over the animal lords of the Beastlands and the storm lords of Arcadia; those exist and are already Beastlands/Arcadia-specific, whereas the gods of mythology and generic D&D settings could feasibly be relocated elsewhere.

>Then the loths, (and the leths are an extension of that via Apomps) not really caring about the delicate peace this brings, just decide to out right start moving in the gods planes and damned be the potential consequences to the multiverse. Seems like the kind of thing pure evil would do.
The yugoloths are pragmatic. They know that Gehenna has limited real estate, and they would have no reason to willingly move into a plane that has such limited space *and* is already occupied by many gods.

>Well as long as gods were mettling in mortal affairs the Athar would have a rally call regardless of where the gods lived.
Having gods be spread around the Outer Planes gives the Athar another point of contention, namely, that the Outer Planes are having energy and petitioners siphoned away.

I wasn't really going for a canon convergence. More a what if possibility.

>I do not see why the gods should be given priority over the animal lords of the Beastlands and the storm lords of Arcadia; those exist and are already Beastlands/Arcadia-specific, whereas the gods of mythology and generic D&D settings could feasibly be relocated elsewhere.

Well it's not like storm/animal lords would be missed to the setting if they were gone or changed to be linked to nature gods.

>The yugoloths are pragmatic. They know that Gehenna has limited real estate, and they would have no reason to willingly move into a plane that has such limited space *and* is already occupied by many gods.

Well obviously the question would be why they are then doing it. Again a more what if scenario that necessarily canon converging.

>Having gods be spread around the Outer Planes gives the Athar another point of contention, namely, that the Outer Planes are having energy and petitioners siphoned away.

Well granted that would give exemplar Athar something to do. But I don't really see mortal Athar caring to much. Since they are all about the great beyond I would be surprised if the Athar really cared about what happens to the souls of the "false believers".

>Well it's not like storm/animal lords would be missed to the setting if they were gone or changed to be linked to nature gods.

The Storm Kings and the animal lords are not quite conventional D&D gods. Pages 4-6 of Planes of Law: Arcadia makes clear that the Storm Kings pass down their titles through circles of acolytes, effectively making them non-hereditary monarchs. There is also the curious mystery of why a plane so focused on "the common good" and law has rulers themed after facets of the storm.

Page 50 of On Hallowed Ground makes clear that the animal lords know the disposition of their keyed animals across the entirety of the multiverse, something explicitly said to be daunting even for a true god.

The Storm Kings and the animal lords are gods in all but name, and I do not see a point in removing them in favor of other gods.

>Well obviously the question would be why they are then doing it.
They probably would not do it in the first place, if Gehenna was so crowded with deities.

>Since they are all about the great beyond I would be surprised if the Athar really cared about what happens to the souls of the "false believers".
Every soul that goes to a power is a soul that has been forevermore won to that power's side, and will eventually merge with the deity's own godhead as per page 32 of On Hallowed Ground.