Planescape General and Q&A

Sigil is the "nexus" of the multiverse. Since every bounded arch and threshold in the Cage is a portal that can be activated with the proper gate-key, and since those portals can lead to and/or from anywhere else in the multiverse, the City of Doors is the most well-connected place in the cosmos.

An efreeti from the Plane of Fire can take a trip through Sigil to visit the similarly fiery Muspelheim in the Upper Plane of Ysgard, a mortal paladin from the Prime seeking to rescue a lover from tanar'ri in the Abyss might use the Cage to get there, and a wolf-eared lupinal from idyllic Elysium might venture to the City of Doors just to visit a phase spider friend with a web strewn across a corner of the Deep Ethereal.

Because Sigil is so well-connected, anyone and everyone wants to control it, influence it, set up businesses there, and possibly live there. That is why innumerable outsider races and factions establish themselves in the City of Doors, and most of them provide services too, like the Harmonium who serve as police force or the Believers of the Source who comprise the City of Doors' industrial backbone.

Sigil is a great "default area" of the setting because it is a microcosm of the multiverse in a city-sized package. It is a place where literal angels and demons might sit at the same bar (leerily if they are just passing through, more laid-back if they are native Sigilians with cosmopolitan mindsets).

Those crossing the roads are a varied lot. There are mortals human and elven, majestic celestials and menacing fiends, towering dragons and teensy faeries, woeful wraiths and energetic elementals, polyhedral clockwork constructs and chaos-shrouded giant frogs, magical beasts and aberrations with shapes plucked from a madman's fever dreams, and multifarious other creatures still.

Sigil, as presented in 2e's books, is a grim and gritty place full of smog and crime... but that can be chalked up to the 90s writing. I prefer a cheerier Cage myself.

Two questions then:

1. How many doors are there? Has this ever been expressed in the 2e material? Is there at least a conception of magnitude?
2. Most of these portals are secret and one does require the key which can be nearly anything, is this correct?

"Pages of Pain" by Denning. The only Planescape novel which made a hardback debut and the only one I came to read. I'd wish I had read to other ones...

Another diagram of the planes, probably quite nice as a handout.

So... what's your favorite planar race, guys? Which ones have you ever played as? What's your party like?

I don't know all too much about the planescape typical pc races, but I do know at least a bit about the Tieflings. If I ever came to play in the setting I'd loved to be part of a well diversed group faction and race wise as well as regarding the origin in terms of prime material planes. But I always felt this maximal diversion would demand quite something from the players to properly act according to all these different mindsets, knowledge levels, cultural backgrounds and so on.

I learned some minutes ago, that the setting specific playable races were

aasimar
bariaur
human, planar
half-elf, planar
genasi (air, earth, fire, water)
githzerai
modron
tiefling.

Very interesting. Were players able to play as Tanar'ris, too? Mabye in the Hellbound mega adventure?

1. There is really no way to tell, in-universe or out. The closest you will get is the section on portals in pages 8 to 9 of In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil, and the map of the most well-known portals in pages 10 and 11.

2. It is easiest to assume that every bounded space in the Cage is a portal waiting to be opened with the right gate-key, however. For all intents and purposes, that is how the setting treats the portals anyway.

>2. Most of these portals are secret and one does require the key which can be nearly anything, is this correct?

Yes. The aforementioned pages in In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil make clear that only a handful of portals are well-known, though the Fraternity of Order likes keeping logs of portals. Page 31 of the same book gives us Ramander the Wise, an 18th-level neutral evil human wizard of the Fated who claims to be the "Master of Portals" and extorts people for access to them.

I have only ever played two PCs in the Planescape setting proper, a lilliputian Godsman aasimon of the ancient phoenix-god entombed in Cocytus, and a lawful neutral incubus of the Fraternity of Order who is the most productivity-enhancing secretary a Guvner could ask for. Both of them appeared as young boys in girls' clothing; what can I say.

I have GMed for dozens of Planescape characters by now. The vast majority of them were celestials or fiends of some stripes; few people are interested in playing other types of outsiders, though I have had a lesser constellate (Spelljammer-style) catgirl, a burly oni-girl and proxy of Amaterasu, and even a Cheshire catgirl (the Cheshire being an official 3.X fey).

Of all the exemplar races, I think that guardinals have the most potential as PCs. They are compassionate animal-people who enjoy relaxing in idyllic slice-of-life scenes, fight evil wherever it rears its ugly head, and love to travel; a perfect heroic PC, then.

Gehennan yugoloths probably make the best fiendish PCs.

Thanks.

Another two question, if I may:

1. Can you sum up background/reason/aim of the Blood War which is fought, I believe, between demons (tanar'ri) and devils (baatezu)?
2. Why is no side able to win?

Outsiders were never playable in AD&D 2e Planescape short of the very poorly-balanced Warriors of Heaven book, which opened up celestial PCs. D&D 3.X allowed for outsider PCs by way of level-adjusted monster races, but we all know how mechanically awful level adjustment was.

I do not use any d20 systems to run Planescape, which makes players free to play all of the outsiders they want. As I have said, however, they almost always gravitate towards celestials and fiends.

Of course, I run a moéfied Planescape where the pit fiends are sleek-horned ojou-sama devilboys/girls, arcanaloths are anime-style [hound/jackal/fox]boys/girls, higher-ranking modron hierarchs are anime-looking androids, guardinals are kemonomimi, outsiders in general are eternally young anime boys and girls, and so on. This has resulted in Shemeshka-style fox-arcanaloths being the single most popular race across all players, and even myself as a GM; few can resist fluffy-tailed fox-wizard-fiends with a mean streak.

>Gehennan yugoloths probably make the best fiendish PCs.

To elucidate, Gehennan yugoloths are distinguished by methodical ambition, which avoids "murderhobo"-style evil. They can interact freely with both baatezu and tanar'ri (a PC from either race would be on shaky terms with the opposite side), and, as the comic that came with Hellbound: The Blood War shows us, they even strike up deals with celestials from time to time.

I could easily see a literally foxy arcanaloth PC accompanying three celestial PCs as a "consultant on and facilitator of Lower Planar matters."

Man, this is hard to swallow. Mixing anime/manga style with planescape is the most ugly idea thing I came by the entire week. (this actually does mean something, because I do work in HR.)

It's a war continuing from an ancient war between Law and Chaos that consumed almost the entirety of the Great Wheel. Though the Good and Neutral participants eventually reached a truce the Evil sides continue to fight each other.

Nobody can win because its basically the unstoppable force vs the immovable object. You have infinite demons fighting the perfectly ordered armies of Hell and the yugoloths and upper planes doing their best to keep the conflict from resolving.

To simplify a trove of 2e canon from Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War and the Rod of Seven Parts mega-adventure, and 3.X canon from Dungeon Magazine #129 and the Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, it goes something like this:

1. The original war between law and chaos was conducted between the Wind Dukes of Aaqa (also known as the vaati), whose empire spanned the Inner Planes, the Prime Material Plane, and the Planes of Law; and the mostly obyrith and tanar'ri hordes of the Queen of Chaos from Limbo and the Abyss.

2. After the vaati won an absolutely pyrrhic victory, all was well for a while, though the baatezu and the tanar'ri still fought on. (Whether the tanar'ri were created by the obyriths or by the yugoloths' casting of law and chaos, nobody can say. Yugoloths will always take credit for it. Likewise, whether the baatezu were created by the ancient Baatorians or by the yugoloths, is also up for debate.)

3. The yugoloths stirred the pot and got the baatezu and the tanar'ri to intensify their fighting. (None can say what just how influential the yugoloths were at this point. The Blood War could have blossomed even without their influence, which could have been minimal anyway, or the daemons could have been instrumental in sparking total war.)

4. The Blood War gradually blossomed into the conflict it is today.

Getting a straight answer on anything related to ancient Lower Planar history is difficult due to historical revisionism from the fiendish races. Who is to say just how pivotal the yugoloths have been in the earliest days of the Blood War?

>Why is no side able to win?

Page 43 of Hellbound: The Blood War: The Dark of the War goes into this, but the short version is "they are evenly matched, with discipline and tactics going up against infinite numbers and ferocity." That page tries to explain the paradox of the demons' infinite numbers.

I will concede that moéfied Planescape is hardly for everyone.

This is some awesome info dude

If there is anything more you would like to learn, feel free to inquire, or you might read through the Planescape books or through previous threads.

I must leave now, however.

Bump, for the love of DiTerlizzi.

It wasn't just DiTerlizzi. There was plenty of other great art in the game.

Somewhat Planescape related but I'm planning on running a campaign in the Elemental Plane of Water. Want the campaign to emphasize survival in a distant, hostile environment and considering 5e fluffs the elemental planes as being a little more congruent to non-planar life thought this was a good opportunity.

Essentially the PC will be sucked into the plane in a Olhydra ritual gone wrong and, to increase initial survivability, arriving adrift in rowboat in an enormous bubble (not that they'll initially realize this) thousands of miles in diameter. Maybe the bubble was created by fire incursion eons ago or that the plane 'froths up' when it buttresses against the material plane.

Anyway inside the 'bubble' I'm thinking floating pirate 'cities' created from salvaged jetsam, enormous coral reefs, vast archipelagos of skerries (created from magma born Fire invasions?) and the like. Main NPC players interact with will be a 19th century British sea captain sucked down the Bermuda Triangle (not that they'd know that).

Initially I want to emphasize escape for the PCs - which will mean allying themselves with a power that has access to inter-planar travel. Olhydra will represent the big bad - I'm thinking murderous pirates and aboleth cults. As an overarching thrust Ishtishia is going to collapse the bubble for his own alien reasons- his elemental patrons are being corrupted by ideas of good, chaos, law etc/water abhors a vacuum etc. Ben Hadar is too arrogant to realize this and is more concerned with trivial fights with Imix. In essence all the powers will be scrambling for power as they realize the bubbles iminant demise. Perhaps the PCs can choose to escape but will have to leave there NPC companions to Ishitishia's fate - unless they can convince him otherwise

Realized I've rambled on a bit but quite excited for this campaign. The 2e Inner Planes sourcebook was really good for giving ideas but was wondering if there was any published adventures in the Plane of Water?

Your description makes the "bubble" out to be more akin to a hemispherical air pocket where people sail upon the convergence point of air and water (i.e. the "surface of the ocean"). I do not see why Olhydra, Ben-Hadar, and Ishtishia would actually care about this bubble any more than the innumerable other dominions of the Plane of Water, such as the main population centers of the marids like the Citadel of Ten Thousand Pearls or the City of Glass.

I know of only one premade "adventure" set in the Elemental Plane of Water: the City of Glass chapter of the "Vortex of Madness" module, and that is more of a setting piece than an actual quest.

I would mix up the campaign by gradually introducing more and more planar bodies of water: the Silver Sea of Lunia, the River Oceanus that stretches from the calm ocean of Thalasia to the raging waves of Ossa/Aquallor, the River Styx that connects all the Lower Planes, the ice floes of Stygia, the poisonous volcanic rivers of Khalas, the watery prison of Porphatys, the Abyssal waters of the Ice Floe (#70), the Gaping Maw (#88), the Shadowsea (#89), the Scalding Sea (#245), Shendilavri (#570), and so on. If you want to keep party to the waters and the ports, you could say that Olhydra has laid a curse on them that makes them unable to set foot more than X miles from a large body of water.

Also, have a description of an aquatic scene I had used in a game once. The aquatic area in question is the (completely non-canonical) "Great Khalas Reef."

>As CHARNAME steps outside into the elevated walkways of the Crawling City, they notice that the towers of onyx and obsidian are cast in faint hues of blue. The source is clear as their eyes catch sight of the force-dome above: rather than the black void and the constant rain of Chamada's debris, the many-legged metropolis is submerged within one of the many volcanic rivers of Khalas.

>Visible through the barrier are magnificent formations of infernal coral, taller than even the miles-high towers of the Crawling City. The city scuttles through a great barrier reef of leviathanic proportions! Every so often, a plume of steam comes crashing down towards the coral; the steam scatters to reveal a humongous hunk of freshly-cooled lava. The miles-long crag crashes into the coral, breaking it off and crushing it to sand.

>Through the dome, CHARNAME also glimpses whole colonies of aquatic dragons of many sizes, from that of a dergholoth to those great great great wyrms of colossal stature. Their scales are lustrous brass, marking them as metallics... but those scales are mottled with dark, infernal patterns that mark them as half-fiends. Where the sand builds up in this barrier reef, the dragons breathe brilliant arcs of electricity, forming hellish patterns of fulgurite that accompany the towering coral.

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.
>I, I, I, I, I, My.

Wow, what a self important little shit. As if OP is the only person to know anything about Planescape.

They're letting people know that they can ask questions and get help/answers.

Nothing self-important about that.

Apologies if you think this is unrelated,

Greatest thing in the 2nd Edition was how interconnected every setting was. It was not a mishmash but the possibility of travel was there, albeit rare. I always loved the mage stronghold in Baldurs Gate where you had Solamnic Knights from Dragonlance and Halfling cannibals from Darksun. They were rare anomalies but it was nice touch.

Move over, it gave cohesion to all settings, all settings had the same material space (through spelljammer) and same places (through planescape)

One of the worst things 3rd edition did was to seperate them. Darksun, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Planescape, Dragonlance, Birthright were cut off from official support. Greyhawk and Forgotten realms being the only ones standing, even then Forgotten Realms dropped the planescape planes and created its own. This only distanced the settings even more.

I'm not saying that campaign should mix different settings but this unified concept was nice to had, even though the connection was very vague and it was not a regular thing to see kenders in faerun it was nice that the possibility existed. Its a shame spelljammer and planescape, the glue that connected the settings, had vanished in 3rd ed.

To give 3.X and 5e some credit, they *do* have plenty of planar material in their respective core Monster Manuals and Dungeon Master's Guides, from various entries for celestials to a well-rounded overview of the many planes.

Few know that pages 151-167 of the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide offer rock-solid summaries of the planes and advice for crafting interesting tactical battle maps in planar environments.

They do have material, I enjoyed 3rd ed Dm's Guide and Manual of Planes for that reason. But the material is lacking and not enough.

I wish there was a 3rd ed Planescape-Birthright-Darksun-Dragonlance etc etc and I wish all had shared the same planar structure.

But I guess 90s spoiled me, in 2016 I should be thankfull if Wizards will even bother to publish a 5th Ed Campaign sourcebook for FR, something they have yet to do.

>I do not see why Olhydra, Ben-Hadar, and Ishtishia would actually care about this bubble

well ok more like the proxies or aspects of these powers

thanks for the input though

What the fuck is Penumbra? The one at the middle top with son in the middle?

Is it a prime material plane? Or something different? google search come up with nothing

Proxies, avatars, and aspects are still important resources to a god, outsider lord, or elemental lord. What makes this bubble so special that Olhydra, Ben-Hadar, and Ishtishia would allocate vital resources to directly influencing it?

Do bear in mind the other gods that dwell in the Elemental Plane of Water:
Ahto, NG greater god of seas and water; who dwells in the Curling Wave.
Blibdoolpoolp, NE intermediate goddess of darkness, insanity, and revenge; who dwells in the Murky Depths.
Osprem, LN lesser goddess of sea voyages, ships, and sailors; who dwells in the Whirlcurrents.

Likewise, consider how the marids and their thalassic empire would fit into this scenario.

Penumbra is related to the mind flayers.

There are multiple conflicting versions of illithid history scattered throughout various D&D editions. The main sources for lore on the illithid empire would be 2e's Astromundi Cluster (specifically, pages 19-21 and 48-54 of Book 3: Adventures in Shattered Space), 2e's Illithiad, and 3.5's Lords of Madness, which were produced in that order, so the lattermost of these is the most "up-to-date" if that matters to you.

According to the version of illithid history presented in 2e's Illithiad quadrilogy, then, Penumbra was the discworld capital of the illithid empire, centered around a sun.

Penumbra is definitely detailed in 2e's Illithiad quadrilogy, but it is not mentioned in 2e's Astromundi Cluster or 3.5's Lords of Madness. It does, however, receive a mention in page 180 of the 3.5's Expanded Psionics Handbook in the entry for the "Staff of Penumbra" artifact.

Thanks, may I ask how do you come up with your sources so fast? Do you have a pdf collection for Planescape?

A decent knowledge of the setting, a collection of PDFs, and this convenient index:
rilmani.org/psIndex.txt

upload pdfs and share them please, novels are esspecially hard to find

Outer planes and gate towns.

This seems rather lazy, you know. You are aware of this thing called PDF thread, yes? Btw.: I uploaded most of the non-official stuff above, because it makes sense to share these rare items with the people. But the default items? Man, get your google going, lazy ass mofo.

It's Touhoufag, what did you expect?

>something they have yet to do.
Have you not heard of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide?

Agreed with that. Although, as both a regular GM and player, the other GM and I have both decided to keep to connections.
He's mostly DMing Planescape campaigns, while I'm doing custom prime material plane settings (with the odd planar travel), but it's agreed they all have the potential to crossover if we feel like it. It hasn't happened directly so far, although one PC on his campaign and one other on mine were cousins, and on the occasion of a trip to the City of Brass I've alluded to events in Sigil that tied in to his campaign.

Planescape seems intimidating and hard to wrap my head around.

What kind of adventures will low level, midlevel, and high level adventurers have?

Purely from a "useful and essential to running a campaign" perspective, what books do I need? I no longer have the free time to absorb and read a lot of books.

You can run a PS game with only the Planewalker's Handbook, but you should probably read the core box as well. MC8 - The Outer Planes Appendix is really useful, as is the plane book for whatever plane you're using (Planes of Law/Chaos/Conflict, Guide to the Ethereal/Astral Plane, In the Cage - Guide to Sigil, The Inner Planes).

There are a number of published adventures about which you can use to get an idea of things for your players to do.

If you would like to learn about the 2e Planescape setting through just a single book, I would recommend avoiding the original boxed set. It is not particularly vital to playing or running Planescape. If anything, it is rather unpolished and unrefined.

The single most important book for Planescape 2e is the "Planewalker's Handbook." It is the most up-to-date summary of the entire setting, useful for both players and GMs, and everyone who intends on using the setting should read through it as much as possible.

If you are interested in reading more after that, you will want "In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil," "Factol's Manifesto," and "Uncaged: Faces of Sigil" for running the City of Doors.
"Planes of Law," "Planes of Chaos," "Planes of Conflict," and "A Player's Primer to the Outlands" will acquaint you with the Outer Planes.
"Inner Planes," "Guide to the Astral Plane," and "Guide to the Ethereal Plane" should cover the remaining planes.

Those are the primary books you will want. If you wish to understand fiends and the Blood War, you should also download "Faces of Evil: The Fiends" and "Hellbound: The Blood War." Likewise, if gods and other divinities interest you, "On Hallowed Ground" should serve you well.

As far as what low-, mid-, and high-level adventures are "supposed" to look like, the books are highly idiosyncratic about this.

Pages 10 to 12 of "Sigil and Beyond," from the original Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set, has a rather narrow-minded view of what adventurers should be doing, such as low-level characters being restricted to Sigil. Fortunately, successive books went back on this. "Planes of Law," "Planes of Chaos," "Planes of Conflict," "Hellbound: The Blood War," "Well of Worlds," "Tales from the Infinite Staircase," "Doors to the Unknown," and "Great Modron March" all contain many examples of low-, mid-, and high-level adventures within a single book. I would strongly recommend collecting as many of those as you can, then.

The content of low-, mid-, and high-level adventures in each plane can be idiosyncratic across the books. For instance, the low-level Abyssal adventure in "Planes of Chaos" is simply solving a case of cranium rats poisoning everyone in an Abyssal inn... whereas the low-level Gray Waste adventure in "Planes of Conflict" involves low-level characters speaking to a greater deity (Hades) and his wife (Persephone), in person, in their own divine realm in Pluton, which sets quite a bar for low-level adventures in the Great Wheel.

However, context is key. In the case of the adventure with Hades, the party is simply bartering for the soul of a single unexceptional soul who has mistakenly been claimed by Hades. While negotiating with greater gods is grand, the ultimate impact of the adventure on the planes as a whole is minimal, just like the adventure with the cranium rats poisoning the Abyssal inn.

Meanwhile, the highest-level fully-detailed official Planescape adventure, Squaring the Circle, concludes with the PCs successfully stripping all fiends across the entire multiverse of all teleportation-based abilities.

With this in mind, what truly matter are the stakes of the adventure (low-level PCs tend to impact the multiverse in slightly less meaningful ways than higher-level PCs) and the opponents the PCs absolutely must battle head-on (Planescape was designed for 2e, wherein "social encounters" between neophyte adventurers and tremendously powerful entities were relatively fair due to a dearth of hard-coded social rules).

Please stop faggotting around by posting mongoanimass cancer pictures every fucking time, keep it ps instead.

>I would recommend avoiding the original boxed set.
Ignore this, the original box set is the only place you're going to find half the published shit on the Outlands (most of the rest is in Player's Primer to the Outlands), as well as a bunch of monsters (including the Dabus, Modrons, and Cranium Rats).

Yeah, but the question was about learning the setting in its entirety with as few books as possible.

I hold all of your guys posting's in high regard, but we really should focus on how to repair the aesthetic damage inflicted by the animu cancer... How to get this out of my head? I really don't want to believe there are people combining planescape with animu...

You may be even more triggered to learn that Touhoufag runs his moeshit Planescape game in FATE.

Nah, sry. I do not believe you. Plansescape implies logicaly 2e and for some nerdy reasons at best 1e + house ruling, but there is nothing else possible. I actually am able to prove this in a formal system.

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/44686178/#44686647

Although I don't remember if that one is actually a moeshit one.

Entirely disgusting!

Honestly, don't do "animu bullshit" x "planescape"! It'll prove you to be a major faggot. I really can't believe someone would do this without being forced by anything minor but hannibal lector, or hitler or something. DO YOU ACTUALLY KNOW HOW BAD A TASTE YOU HAVE?!

hmm yeah you're right

perhaps, because it's near the periphery of the Prime Material, there are relatively a lot of portals to the Prime (plus who knows) hanging about making it a very important place to have influence over

In terms of other powers I was interested in exploring Eadro - the missing merfolk god. The merfolk have sunk into a decline and searching for signs of portents of the lost god would make some interesting quest hooks.

I was going to play the marids as aloof and haughty more focused on their grand works of art and slave *ahem* servant artisans. Perhaps will aid the PC contingent on them entertaining them first.

It's good typing this all out and refining my ideas

If you're just starting a campaign, your best bet will be to keep the focus on Sigil, one or two other Planes and a gate-town.

A super basic adventure structure would be something like this:

1. A contact from one of the player's factions arrives and offers the party a job.
2. The party learns which Plane they're going to be headed to, and how to get there.
3. The party acquires a portal key and access to a portal taking them near their ultimate destination.
4. The party prepares for their destination (protection spells/wards/etc).
5. The party goes to and has an adventure. This can be a dungeon, but there are plenty of locations and environments in PS that make for effective adventures anyway. Make sure to give them one or two beautiful, awe-inspiring vistas to stare at when you do.
6. The party returns to Sigil and gets a reward from the faction in question.

Note that in all of this, all you really need to know how to describe is a single Ward in Sigil and a single location in another Plane. Keep the other books/pdfs handy, but if you take this approach you only need to really read up on a tiny fraction of the setting.

Does anyone else dislike the worldbuilding of Mechanus? The clockwork/steampunk design seems like a shallow interpretation of Lawful-Neutrality.

Dude, are you for real? Because really, i am not sure if you are seriously angry (and stupid) or just pretending.

Doesn't Mechanus also have that disturbing mouth/eye imagery like in ? I would agree that just making it big cogs is somewhat shallow but it getts better if you go and try to comprehend the scope of it.

I'm not crazy about the eye/mouth stuff either. It doesn't seem particularly lawful desu.

Mechanus is a giant clockwork mechanism because it is the "mechanism" that actually runs and interprets the rules of the multiverse (which is why it is an interlocking series of mechanics arbitrated by a bunch of living dice).

Including a missing god is a perfect excuse to take your adventure into the Astral at some point. Have someone claim that Eadro's body has either appeared or vanished, and have the players go take a look. There are tons of encounters you can have in the Astral, and you can make them a lot easier to represent when they take place on the body of a Dead God.

To be fair, the modrons are pretty goofy-looking.

Yeah but at least they're creative. I like them. Denizens of an alien plane should look alien.

I have run only one campaign of "Moéscape" in Fate, and a modified version of Fate, at that.

I have run two more campaigns of "Moéscape" in Strike!'s beta version.

All three campaigns were dismal failures due to my ineptitude as a GM, having lasted only 17, 6, and 24 sessions respectively. Nevertheless, I am constantly striving to improve my GMing skill, and I have had more success when running Moéscape games as of late.

Every other Moéscape game of mine has been under a very simple PbtA hack.

I did not mention Eadro in specifically because he had gone missing, but you are correct in that that is a very interesting plot hook to explore. It would be a good excuse to interact with all sorts of merfolk and locathah. I would recommend reading through pages 85 to 95 of the 2e book Monster Mythology; Eadro is associated with a pantheon of sea and sky gods (mostly sea gods) called the "asathalfinare," and it is possible that other gods from that pantheon would assist in the investigation for Eadro, while the pantheon's enemies would sabotage the search.

This poster is correct in that the Astral Plane would be an interesting place to take the campaign. The Athar could be trying to convince people that Eadro is dead and that his corpse is in the Astral, thereby retconning him as "dead for real."

The party could investigate the potentially sapient Living Sea detailed in pages 87 to 89 of the Guide to the Astral Plane, which is said to be home to merfolk and locathah. They could also look into the corpse of a recently slain god of rivers and oceans, Enki (see page 62 of On Hallowed Ground), and travel to the ruins of his divine realm in Mechanus, the Waterwheel.

This is a very good guide to running a basic adventure in Sigil. For this, you will only really need:

1. The Planewalker's Handbook for a basic overview of the setting.
2. The Factol's Manifesto to study a single faction.
3. In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil to portray a single ward of the City of Doors.
4. Either the Sigil and Beyond book of the original Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set or the Player's Primer to the Outlands to showcase one gate-town.
5. Whichever out of Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos, or Planes of Conflict contains the information on the one or two Outer Planes you will be using as part of the adventure.

Consider experimenting with cogs made of different materials to lend a more whimsical feel to the clockwork nirvana: a gear of ice that demonstrates idealized order and symmetry in snowflakes and glaciers, a cookie- or cake-cog themed after molecular gastronomy, a flower-gear that hosts a forest of lawful fey, and so on and so forth.

I know that this is every bit as clichéd, but I am also fond of including computer- and electronics-themed imagery in addition to the gears. Imagine countless circuits conducting gleaming axiomatic energy along the surface of each cog; the gears' teeth push against each other in such a way that they consistently complete a discrete and different circuit with each passing moment.

Page 5 of Planes of Law: Mechanus clarifies that nobody actually knows what purpose the gears of the plane serve, or if they even have any purpose beyond being a visual metaphor for order and consistency, no different from Gehenna being four floating hell-volcanoes or Carceri being a string of pearls.

I want to run a plotline in a moéfied Planescape that essentially amounts to Zoolander: A group of the most glamorous (and personally powerful) of fashion models are being blackmailed, coerced, and/or brainwashed into seducing high-ranking outsiders for information and/or assassinating them.

1. How do I put a Planescape twist on this? Obviously, there will be many erinyes, succubus, arcanaloth, aasimon, eladrin, and guardinal models, and perhaps the information could be Blood War-related.

2. How do I get a PC who is simply an investigative journalist involved?

3. What would be an interesting, non-Sigilian location for one such fashion show? I am considering the boughs of the World Ash Yggdrasil, or perhaps the Crawling City, though celestials may be reluctant to come to yugoloth-town.

4. How would I incorporate the idea that the models are being used to seduce and gather information outside of fashion shows (a relatively plausible scheme) and the idea that the models are also being used as part of absurd, Zoolander-style assassinations?

Bump?

You don't even need all of those. A simple reading of the setting book will give you all of the information you need.

It isn't essential that you use canon npcs or well established locations - throw in your own or crib them from somewhere else/some other adventure if you want. People were entirely capable of playing the game before all the splats came out.

I prefer to use canonical locations for a greater sense of "authenticity," even if those locations are as obscure and as undetailed as the Darkflow and the Stormvault in Arcadia (Tales from the Infinite Staircase p37 and 3.5 Planar Handbook pp167-168 respectively), or Mottlegrasp's Orchard in Bytopia (3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide pp164-165). It satisfies my lore standards to be able to claim that certain locations are, in fact, canonical.

Canonical NPCs are a different story. I have a very distinct style of portraying the (inevitably cute) NPCs in my game, and the published Planescape NPCs would not work well for that. I make an exception for outsider lords, however; I believe them to be irreplaceable and iconic, so I will freely use heavily distorted versions of Talisid and the Five Companion, Morwel's Court of Stars, the Lords of the Nine, and so on.

The characters I have GMed for have had tea with gods and outsider lords on more than one occasion.

I actually came around to liking them. I think it's because this picture is so cute.

Isn't Planescape full of beings that can just shapeshit or cover themselves in glamers and other illusions? I'm sure the are some designers working exclusively with purely illusory garments.

Illusory garments are a terrible choice when some outsiders can and do see straight through illusions and polymorphings even without thinking about it.

Perhaps that's part of the allure of wearing them.

You could have an amusing plotline focused on a crotchety fashion designer who weaves illusions, glamers and actual fabric together in order to design elaborate outfits that can only be truly appreciated by powerful outsiders.

A plot by a group of mortals to somehow render those illusions transparent while in public could make for a somewhat climactic/tense encounter, especially if there were other secrets that needed to be kept hidden.

Clothing tailored to appear different to mundane sight and to true seeing (or, for that matter, people simply perceptive and strong-willed enough to see through the illusions) seems like exactly something a Sensate would produce to challenge and please the perceptions of various outsiders.

What other perception-challenging tricks might a Sensate designer operating behind several layers of irony pull?

They'd be able to mess around with the inverse of illusory garments - purely magical ones that can only be seen with true sight.

I imagine that the height of fashion would be outfits that are completely different when viewed with true sight on or off.

What's everyone's favorite Outer Plane right now? I've been digging Mount Celestia lately.

My favorite is and really always has been Limbo.

A world of chaos, change, disruption, impermanence and a bizarre obsession with frogs.

Veeky Forums?

Here's something to mull over. The chaos gods of the ancient Egyptian Ogdoad have the heads of frogs and snakes. In D&D, the Chaotic-Neutral plane is inhabited by frog-like the slaadi and in Pathfinder the Chaotic-Neutral plane is inhabited by snake-like proteans. Two of the protean races are even named after the deities of the Ogdoad. Pic and filename related.

No, that's a literal and explicit description of Limbo, the plane of Chaos.

It's populated by the Slaadi, the exemplars of chaos (much like the baatezu are to lawful evil), and they're all giant frogs for some reason.

I had already suggested that the post you are replying to.

I imagine there would be three "modes" of viewing: pure illusion, disbelieved illusion seen completely through, and disbelieved illusion seen as an overlay over the true form.

What other sense-challenging tricks could apply? Invisible stalker- and aerial servant-woven clothing from the Plane of Air, perceptible only to those with invisibility-piercing senses? Blur- and displacement-augmented clothing that likewise looks different to those who can see past it?

As I have mentioned in , I have been growing to like Bytopia's *concept*, though I will admit that its execution in Planes of Conflict is bare-bones and leaves much to be desired.

I am also fond of Elysium. An idyllic wonderland of verdant pastures, rolling hills, and seas so crystal-clear and holy that they serve as the headwaters of the River Oceanus, populated primarily by cute and kind-hearted animalpeople. A realm where everyone is a kindly neighbor, to the point where travel is facilitated by charitable deeds.

A native of the plane might visit the passionate City of the Star and party with the angels of Ishtar, visit the enchanted item shops in the magicians' city of Dweomerheart, or play with the coy aquatic faeries of Selkies' Grotto. But even this Gensokyoan fairyland has great dangers, for the dismal swamp of Belierin is the prison of a thousand abominations, up to and including the primordial Hydra of Legend! Elysium is a heart-warming and noblebright plane. A good place to live in.

Gehenna is swell too. Four sun-sized hell-volcanoes float in an outer-space-like void. One mount is of steaming poisonous water, another is a raging volcano of lava and pyroclastic flows, the third rains down corrosive snow onto its nearly violet slope, and the fourth is a dead furnace of the gelid void. Infernal meteors shoot overhead. A fiendish metropolis skitters and leaps across the volcanoes on countless magmatic legs.

There are two canonical explanations for the slaadi all being frogs, and both of them are post-2e lore.

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.

The first explanation could be seen as pro-lawful, anti-chaotic propaganda that paints the slaadi as far more self-destructive than the tanar'ri could ever be. The second story could conversely be viewed as anti-lawful (though not necessarily pro-chaotic) propaganda that tries to stain the reputation of the modrons.

Still, exemplars of chaos having one, color-coded form is somewhat strange. And why FROGS of all things? Why not, I don't know, squirrels? One could expect something more... mutable.

>What other perception-challenging tricks might a Sensate designer operating behind several layers of irony pull?
Synesthetic clothes? Made either for beings with strange senses, psions or just because they can (they could handle synesthesia-inducing trinkets for fashion gala participants). Remember, fashion is often art for the sake of art so the clothes don't even have to be practical and clothing yourself in few drops of perfume and the sound of bells could be interesting.

>exemplars of chaos having one, color-coded form is somewhat strange
Either Ssendam and Ygorl did *that* good a job of screwing over the other slaadi, or Primus's Spawning Stone managed to constrain the slaadi's forms through its axiomatic energy.

>And why FROGS of all things? Why not, I don't know, squirrels? One could expect something more... mutable.
Nobody knows. One may as well ask why aasimon have avian wings, why fiends tend to have bat wings, why gelugons are insects despite being ice-themed, or why arcanaloths are hound/jackal/fox-people.

Either way, in terms of overall clout, influence, and development as a society, the slaadi are perhaps the weakest among the Outer Planar exemplars. Their civilization is even more disjointed than that of the tanar'ri, and they have had essentially zero accomplishments of note.

>Synesthetic clothes?
A good idea perfect for the Sensates, though I am unsure of how well it could be portrayed in a pure text medium.

The frog is a symbol of change. It starts life as a tadpole and grows into a frog. It can live in both water and on land. It's an appropriate animal to be associated with the ever-changing plane of Limbo.

I like the Primus origin. It helps make sense of the more orderly elements of the slaads, such as the color coding.

> I am unsure of how well it could be portrayed in a pure text medium
That could be a problem, yes. But I think the idea itself is compelling enough to at least get some mention, just to better convey that otherwordly, fantastical twist of high fantasy fashion world.

Another idea: a model that refuses to show themselves in a given creation more than once. Makes sense, right? Well, but they are a shapeshifter of some kind and for them a "creation" includes overall shape and appearance. They are very offended when someone pierces their magics as for them its akin to stripping them naked.

>The frog is a symbol of change.
USA will get plenty of change, that's right.

One of the things in Planescape that doesn't really get brought up all that much is that a lot of the current exemplar races aren't actually the true/native exemplars of their given plane. The baatezu, for example, aren't the native inhabitants of Baator. Under this interpretation, the slaadi are another 'new' exemplar race, which leaves open the possibility of a more primal race of chaos exemplars.

By that logic, butterflies and moths would be just as appropriate, and the former could even be tied to the "butterfly effect" some Xaositects might preach about.

Note, of course, that all the canonical information we have on progenitor races is as follows:

- Mechanus: Aphanacts, from Dragon Magazine #341, page 52; they are quite possibly the same "avenging angels" that would become baatezu, mentioned in page 4 of the Fiendish Codex II

- The Outlands: Kamerel, from Tales of the Infinite Staircase, chapter 7

- Limbo: Whatever the original inhabitants of Limbo were, if the theories are to be believed, from the 3.0 Manual of the Planes, page 96; and the 5e Monster Manual, page 274

- Acheron: Hassitor, from Planes of Law: Acheron, page 4

- Baator: Ancient Baatorians, from Faces of Evil: The Fiends, pages 12-13; Hellbound: The Blood War: War Games, pages 74-75; and Tales from the Infinite Staircase, pages 125-127

- Gehenna and the Gray Waste: Baernaloths, from Planes of Conflict: Monstrous Supplement, pages 30-31

- The Abyss: Obyriths, from all over the Fiendish Codex I, though the Queen of Chaos and Miska were originally detailed in the 2e Rod of Seven Parts mega-adventure

You may notice that the Upper Planes have no known progenitor races. Before you bring up Mithardir/Pelion, do note that page 98 of Dead Gods makes it quite clear that that layer was previously inhabited by gods, not some Arborean exemplar species.

Brief question, out of curiosity.

What information do we have on the Prisoner in Elysium, on Belierin? Any theories, hints, clues, or something that the creators might have said at one point?

Ysgard. It's Murderhobo paradise.

We know that the ancient hydra IS imprisoned down there, but there's a bit of disagreement as to whether or not it's actually THE prisoner.

This deserves some elucidation, because there are two canonical sources on this matter.

As per pages 61-63 of Planes of Conflict: Liber Benevolentiae, Belierin's most famous prisoner is the Hydra of Legend, whose influence spans the layer. In 2e, the "monster of legend" is the primordial monster from which all other monsters of that species arise, and such a creature is incredibly powerful:
lomion.de/cmm/monsoleg.php

Page 141 of the 3.0 Manual of the Planes takes a different view. It discards all mentions of the Hydra of Legend altogether, and leaves it up to the GM:
>Belierin is the prison of some deadly creature or creatures. Some tales say the prisoner of Belierin is a powerful monster along the lines of the tarrasque or monster of legend. Others say that it is a deadly archduke of the lower planes, a deposed elemental prince, or even a wounded deity. The indisputable fact is that evil creatures are sometimes caught lurking here, and the native guardinals are constantly fighting back attacks against this layer.
>The true nature of the prisoner of Belierin depends on your cosmology and your campaign.

Why did 3.0 retcon away the hydra? One could be optimistic and say that the writers wanted to give GMs more freedom in running the planes. A much more pragmatic explanation is that the 3.0 Manual of the Planes was released in September of 2001, while the 3.0 Monster Manual II (which contained the Monster of Legend template) was released in September of 2002, and the writers of the former could not reference such a major monster for which there were no rules at the time.

Who the "main" prisoner of Belierin is depends on whether your GM would like to prioritize 2e's hard-coded "It is the hydra"or 3.0's looser "the GM decides who it is."

As for me, I prefer a more complex plotline involving the sheer interest that the prison-affine gehreleths and Apomps of Carceri would take in the grand planar gaol that is Belierin.