Best System for Planescape

I'm reading the Planescape books and I'm loving it. I'm excited to try run a Planescape campaign in the coming months.

What would be the best system to run Planescape?

Lots of the setting seems to be integrated with D&D mechanics of alignment and the magic that deals with alignment (like protection from evil).

Also, Planescape thread in general.

bump

Risus with AD&D alignments.

>even in a landscape piece, dat ass dominates the scene
>wut can change the nature of a man
>dat ass can

According to my logs folder, over the past few years, I have run literally ~275 sessions of a "Planescape" to date. I use the scare quotes because it is actually a "modern-day/sci-fi by way of ultra-advanced magic" setting, and I mix in the World Axis and some other elements of my own making, so it is not quite vanilla Planescape.

I have used everything from homebrewed PbtA hacks, to Fate, to Strike!, to D&D 4e, to D&D 5e for these games. So far, I have had the most luck with homebrewed PbtA hacks and Strike!, and the worst luck with D&D in general.

In my experience, it seems that D&D handles the Great Wheel poorly, and that narratively-grounded systems are more suited to the job. When you are dashing from one plane of existence with its own set of physics to another, trying to pin down the precise nitty-gritty of each set of physics is a fool's errand.

More importantly, from my market research, people *really* want to play celestials and fiends. Given the opportunity to play just about any race, players will gravitate towards celestials and fiends, possibly because Planescape focuses on the heavens and the hells, and there is an immediate appeal to being an exemplar of one of those heavens or hells. In a D&D system, it is really quite hard to play a full-blooded celestial or fiend without wonky mechanics and/or heavy reflavoring (4e is about the friendliest you can get for this, and even then, it is not quite a perfect fit), so it is more ideal to use a system more flexible in character creation.

This is a comprehensive, chronological list of all of the Planescape characters I have ever GMed for, whether in one-on-one games or group games, with the exception of D&D games.

Peafowl the Elysian goddess*
Iseri the half-arcanaloth, half-leonal†‡ (half *, half #)
Astolfo the ancient Baatorian#, Shuten-doji the fiendish oni#, Vala the cervidal†*
Nevenoe the succubus#
Fenn the mortal werewolf†, Hiromi the mortal kitsune†‡, Nana 1.0 the arcanaloth†‡#, Sybyl the Abyssal al-mi'raj†#
Oro the vivacious vulpinal†‡*
Astra the Celestian lesser constellate cat†*, Liriel the throne archon*
Noirel the ultroloth#
Nana 2.0 the arcanaloth†‡#
Varvara the loup-garou†
Chessie the Cheshire cat†
Anja the arcanaloth†#
Tomoe the Bytopian divine servitor kitsune†‡*
Roxy the blink dog†
Emi the arcanaloth†‡#
Nox the arcanaloth†‡#
Jin the half-fire-elemental and half-homunculus
Zoayarisa the Celestian radiant dragon
Astra 2.0 the Celestian lesser constellate cat†*, Cherophilia the arcanaloth†‡#, Forge of Perpetual Creation the half-fire-elemental and half-positive-elemental†‡, Silvana the mortal vampire
†Kemonomimi
‡Kitsunemimi
*Celestial
%Fiend

This is a total of 28 characters across 19 games. Of those 28 characters:
6.5 of them (~23.21%) of them have been arcanaloths
19 of them (~67.86%) of them have been kemonomimi
9 of them (~32.14%) of them have been kitsunemimi
7.5 of them (~26.79%) of them have been celestials
11.5 of them (~41.07%) of them have been fiends

Not a single one of the characters above belongs to a D&D core race (e.g. human).

Arcanaloths are by far the most popular Planescape race in my circle of players. Perhaps it is because I flavor them as kemonomimi with the ears and tails of dogs, jackals, or foxes (Shemeshka is a canonical fox-arcanaloth as per page 96 of Uncaged: Faces of Sigil). It seems that many players are instantly sold on a race of cute and evil canid-wizard-daemons.

So, you're surprised people aren't playing D&D races in your list, when you've excluded all games of D&D from your list.

I assume they had access to every race that would be considered reasonable in the fluff, I don't see your point

>So, you're surprised people aren't playing D&D races in your list, when you've excluded all games of D&D from your list.

And that is exactly the point I am trying to drive at: why *would* people play dwarves, elves, humans, and so on, given the freedom to play otherwise in the Wheel?

Let us say I do include the D&D games in my list.

One of the games above had, for a single session, switched to D&D 4e for the combat, so that does not quite count as a proper game.

Another one of the games above is a D&D 5e game (the system was chosen to deliberately annoy me and all of the players involved, who were 4e fans). There, I gave the players the following restriction:
>Dwarves can be draphs. Humans can be reinterpreted as kemonomimis, dragon-blooded, and/or as generic petitioners. "Celestial" and "fiend" and so on apply only to "recognized" celestial and fiendish races, as opposed to more generic petitioners. A non-tanar'ri, non-obyrith, non-loumara petitioner of the Abyss, for example, would be considered a demon, but would not have the fiend type.

So, what does the roster of characters look like including that 5e game?

Peafowl the Elysian goddess*
Iseri the half-arcanaloth, half-leonal†‡ (half *, half #)
Astolfo the ancient Baatorian#, Shuten-doji the fiendish oni#, Vala the cervidal†*
Nevenoe the succubus#
Fenn the mortal werewolf†, Hiromi the mortal kitsune†‡, Nana 1.0 the arcanaloth†‡#, Sybyl the Abyssal al-mi'raj†#
Oro the vivacious vulpinal†‡*
Astra the Celestian lesser constellate cat†*, Liriel the throne archon*
Noirel the ultroloth#
Nana 2.0 the arcanaloth†‡#
Varvara the loup-garou†
Chessie the Cheshire cat†
Anja the arcanaloth†#
Tomoe the Bytopian divine servitor kitsune†‡*
Roxy the blink dog†
Emi the arcanaloth†‡#
Nox the arcanaloth†‡#
Jin the half-fire-elemental and half-homunculus
Zoayarisa the Celestian radiant dragon
Astra 2.0 the Celestian lesser constellate cat†*, Cherophilia the arcanaloth†‡#, Forge of Perpetual Creation the half-fire-elemental and half-positive-elemental†‡, Silvana the mortal vampire
SPECIAL: D&D 5e game with the following stipulation: Dwarves can be draphs. Humans can be reinterpreted as kemonomimis, dragon-blooded, and/or as generic petitioners. "Celestial" and "fiend" and so on apply only to "recognized" celestial and fiendish races, as opposed to more generic petitioners. A non-tanar'ri, non-obyrith, non-loumara petitioner of the Abyss, for example, would be considered a demon, but would not have the fiend type. Dolce the silverbrow human (reflavored variant human), Felicia the draph (reflavored hill dwarf), Suzette the... I am not sure what she is supposed to be, and the player can never seem to settle on anything (reflavored variant human), Tora the fiendish oni (reflavored variant human)#.
†Kemonomimi
‡Kitsunemimi
*Celestial
#Fiend