Planescape

Because-nu-males have no writing sense- if we got it, they'd merge it with MtG and fuck everyone over.

I had a friend tell me a couple years ago that the most memorable game he ever played was the Planescape game that I ran in high school (circa 1997). Really surprised me, because I didn't think I did a very good job running it (in fact, I know I didn't). I think he just really liked the setting.

I've been thinking of starting a new game for a while, but I don't think any of my friends would be into it. I probably wouldn't use AD&D for the system if I went ahead.

Do you realize planescape was basically the most "cucked sjw numale" setting of all?

>Do you realize planescape was basically the most "cucked sjw numale" setting of all?
Is it because you think famously reputedly-memed penis-eater Monte Cook had anything to do with the setting besides a couple of modules?

I don't suppose random portal sometimes open in Planescape?

I think he's getting confused with the based Zeb Cook (no relation to Monte)

Do it. 5e works great.

I think Planescape and it's attitudes are a product of the time. It had a sort of dry-humour and cynicism that belonged in the 90s.

We still have plenty of that.

Heh

Wry skeptical cynicism and modern self-congratulatory "if you're idealistic then you're a fucking moron" cynicism aren't the same thing.

Maybe if they'd stat out of the Lady of Pain so she wasn't an unkillable GMPC/plot device, people would be more OK with revisiting the setting. If you put something in a setting, the PCs have to be able to kill it. That's what D&D is about.

Because WotC is trash

I second that it is for advanced DM's only to pull off.
Really lets you pull off some crazy stuff and keep your gamers humble when they feel unstoppable at 14+ level

>only teens think true sandbox games where they can destroy the DM's world are fun more then once.

DnD is back and forth story telling. "I kill it" gets boring after the 30th time.

>Planescape is for unique story telling and giving your players a world of wonder after being jaded on DnD/Pathfinder for years.

It was the worst setting TSR made, and TSR made some BAD settings.

The Lady of Pain really isn't a major part of the setting. She's one of the pillars of the city, holding it up, but you're not expected to interact with her.

I played a Planescape campaign from level 1 to 12 and we never even saw her. She's a bit of background fluff. Doesn't need to be more.

Actually scratch that. Forgotten Realms as just the first box set decent, but gets progressively worse as you add material.

It's gets worse than Planescape pretty quickly. I'm not going to look for the exact cutoff point. Sounds painful.

Now I'm not very good at detecting bait, in fact I fall for it all the time.
But this is bait.

Going by my logs, I have run about ~385 sessions of "Planescape" in a heavily bastardized version of the Great Wheel. (It is mangled enough to bring in World Axis elements ala 4e and 5e.)

I have modified the setting heavily, because, frankly, I hate the vast majority of it and completely agree that most of it is nonsensical dreck, particularly many of the factions and the underdeveloped planes (e.g. Bytopia). On the other hand, there are several shining gems in the setting that I enjoy, like the overall concepts surrounding Elysium and the Society of Sensation.

I know enough about the 2e setting from having pored over the 2e books for inspiration, and I know my way around 3.X lore like obyriths, aphanacts, and whatnot. If there is anything anyone would like to ask about the setting and what about it I disliked, feel free to inquire.

I previously had gone over several of my points of dislike and praise in various, scattered posts in this thread:
archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/55808906/#55810028

There are also these threads:
docs.google.com/document/d/1EC4fQ7qW0dNveXRDD2UZsB2NXbyIpEm-jCtTjwBQH3I/edit

You filthy Berk. Terrible bait.

Hey 2hu, could you weigh in here ?

I am unfamiliar with the Wilderlands setting, unfortunately.

Do Spelljammer and Planescape cross over at all? I am a novitiate in terms of D&D settings but both interest me because of their esoteric and bizarre natures.

Because the PC game was much better than the setting is on paper or at the table.
It needs a lot of work to run and fix the shoddily executed ideas and frankly i'm not at all convinced that it's worth it.

They are both part of the same meta-setting, yet there isn't much cross-pollination. Planescape books occasionally make references to the crystal spheres of Spelljammer, but nothing much aside from that. Spelljammer was a tremendous flop sales-wise, even by the standards of 2e-era TSR settings, so they didn't want Planescape to rely heavily on it.

Planescape's connections to Spelljammer are shaky afterthoughts.

By default, Spelljammer *is* part and parcel of Planescape. Spelljammer and every other published setting (save for Ravenloft) cover what goes on in the Prime, while Planescape describes the rest of the multiverse. Planar adventurers are going to have to visit the Prime sooner or later, and for that, a GM is well within their rights to bring in Spelljammer material.

Planescape acknowledged Spelljammer a few times, such as the mentions of crystal spheres and phlogiston in page 5 of the original boxed set's Player's Guide to the Planes, page 32 of the Planewalker's Handbook, and page 160 of On Hallowed Ground.

However, the Planescape books were always reluctant to go into detail with regards to Spelljammer elements, and for a good reason: the latter product line was already dead. Thus, the integration between the two settings was minimal, even in Prime-focused elements of Planescape.

A good example of this is the initial faction overview for the Harmonium in pages 90-91 of the Factol's Manifesto. This establishes their home world of Ortho as a single Prime world. It contains no mention of crystal spheres, spelljammers, or wildspace. Canonically, the Harmonium dominates one world in the Prime, and that is it.

(Meanwhile, Dark Sun, which *was* an active product line at the time, inexplicably received plenty of spotlight in that very entry. Apparently, people in Sigil regularly compare the Harmonium to the champions of Rajaat, as if Athas's secret history was common knowledge in the Cage?)

In other words, while Spelljammer and Planescape are canonically integrated by default, the integration is minimal, and you are going to have to do the hard work of tying together setting elements yourself. (For example: Does the Harmonium have a crystal sphere empire? Does the Elven Imperial Navy stop by Arborea often? Do the illithid travel to Ilsensine's divine realm in the Outlands frequently?)

It seems I have a mountain of reading before me. I presume most worthwhile information is limited to 2e?

For what it's worth, I am currently running a 5e campaign where the players are all half-orcs, and part of a faction dedicated to opposing the machinations of eldritch forces. I am dealing in a lot of alien and lovecraftian themes, using illithids, beholders, and a liberal smattering of aberrations, and their latest dungeon is a hollowed out asteroid used as a beholder's lair, replete with a planar gate inside. Spelljammer, and to a similar extent Planescape, interest me for this reason. I am a little less interested in simple swords and sorcery and these two settings seem like they could give me a lot of the "through the looking glass" sort of feeling I am after.

Ostensibly, but no. Access to Sigil trivializes shipping to the point that Spelljamming is a joke.

More importantly, the settings had no overlap in publication.
The whole reason Planescape got made was to fill the role of Spelljammer after Spelljammer got axed.

>Do Spelljammer and Planescape cross over at all?
Funny story about that!

...

Damn you. I went and dug out my boxed set to scan that story exactly.

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.

You do not actually need the original Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set for much, aside from descriptions of a few areas of the Outlands. It is unpolished; the writers did not know what they were doing at the time. All you really require it for is a description of some areas in the Outlands (which the Player's Primer to the Outlands already covers quite well) and some monster entries (which can be accessed through lomion.de instead).

Wow, this is fantastic, though I suppose it says more about the cosmopolitan life of Sigil than anything specifically Spelljammer. Thanks!

>Ostensibly, but no. Access to Sigil trivializes shipping to the point that Spelljamming is a joke.

How so?

Thank you! If it helps, I am most interested in Mechanus itself; the clockwork aesthetic is charming, and the concept of strict order as a force makes me think they would be an excellent faction to put in opposition to the inscrutables horrors tearing apart reality by their mere existence.

>How so?
You can ship any amount of crap from anywhere to anywhere else through Sigil in an afternoon.
Shipping through Wildspace takes weeks. Shipping through the Phlogiston can take months.

Perkins was describing Sigil for the Wafflecrew in Ep69, where the antagonist was a mercykiller with buddies. Maybe we'll be getting Planescape in the future.

>How so?
Because Sigil contains a portal to about every place in the multiverse. Why walk all the way around the world to arrive 10 feet behind your current position?

You should have a look at Planes of Law: Mechanus, but also Dragon Magazine #354's article on the modrons.

The way I usually justify spelljammers for shipping is by making them much faster.

I also, of course, ramp up the "naval" warfare potential of spelljammers considerably.

But you still specifically need portal keys. There might innumerable portals but you can't access through them unless you have the right key.

Probably cheaper than starcharts. Certainly orders of magnitude cheaper than a helm.

HAH.jpg

Saved.

No, all throughout 3e, whenever anybody talked about why we were supposed to take Monte Cook seriously, they shouted ZOMG PLANESCAPE, even though his only contributions were some of the shittiest adventures ever made for DnD. So bad, that I sometimes forget that Planescape itself was actually good. Though in all seriousness, we remember it being way better than it actually was. A lot of really good ideas, but a lot of stupid shit too.
(Seriously, fuck 'Dead Gods'. It's the DnD equivalent of the 'Samuel Haight takes over the Underworld of Wraith' adventure that fucking White Wolf had the good sense to not make.)

While I agree that they're different, the difference between them isn't a matter of time, it's a matter of writing skill. Good Planescape writers pulled off the 'wry skeptical cynicism' well, but there were a whole lot of Planescape books that went the 'if you're idealistic then you're a fucking moron' route, especially as the line went on.

One of the (many) reasons that the later adventures in the line were so terrible is because they went out of their way to get the Lady of Pain actively involved in proceedings. When you have to deal with her as an NPC, rather than just an odd sentient macguffin/mascot, she can wear rather thin.

>even though his only contributions were some of the shittiest adventures ever made for DnD
Planewalker's Handbook is also Monte, along with the Astral Plane and Inner Planes books (though the latter was with William W Connors, Ravenloft man).

See, I don't remember the quality of the first two, but I know for sure that the Inner Planes book was shit. Another of those periods where a Planescape books spends too much of its word count telling you about places that it sucks to go to, are super-boring, super-lethal, and there's no reason to go there anyway.

Why does everyone living in the greatest city in the Multiverse talk like a fat American nerd's impression of a cockney accent?

Are they really though? The maps to the portal keys would be worth a shitton.

Aren’t quite a lot of portals too small to be useful for shipping in any quantity?

Won’t the ones that ARE useful for shipping in quantity— and are widely known, and have convenient portal keys— be expensive to use?

It seems like the logical niche for spelljammers is bulk, not speed. Jets are much faster than cargo ships, but it’d be a stupid idea to fill one with shipping containers.

>telling you about places that it sucks to go to, are super-boring, super-lethal, and there's no reason to go there anyway.
I actually really like this. It shows you there is a living, breathing world where the PCs, while actors, aren't the main actors and the planes don't revolve around them.

>Tells you all about these places that only work as bad villain origins
There's enough meat elsewhere for your PC hateboner to go into, no need for trash fluff like this.

PCs can still be special, they don't have to have the multiverse revolve around them. That's fucking retarded and makes no sense at all.

>there's no reason to go there anyway.
Allow me to draw your attention to the end of Azure Bonds.

>This is the elemental plane of void
>What is to be found there?
>Literaly nothing.

>Because Sigil contains a portal to about every place in the multiverse. Why walk all the way around the world to arrive 10 feet behind your current position?
I don't think you understand how Sigil works.

Vertigo comics were really big in the 1990s.

Someone said it earlier in the thread as bait, but some people unironically cannot stomach the Lady of Pain and refuse the entire setting just due to her existence and the fact that you can't kill her. Their autism can't handle it.

The city of sigil an the lady of pain were adapted to the core setting of 4e. I'm not familiar with the rest of panescape cosmology, but those are the most distinctive features for most people. If you don't care about the exact specifics of the rest of the setting, then you could consider planescape the default setting of 4e.

the elemental planes are more there to explain how elemental magic works - the only problem is that elemental magic isn't a big feature of the setting.

You really need to have a rework of core aspects of D&D to fit the setting, and while the idea of "all D&D campaigns are happening somewhere" almost seems nice, it misses that the purpose of having campaigns be their own homebrewed universe is so GM's can rearrange core aspects of the cosmology and rules of the game to fit whatever they're aiming for (or just to fit houserules they like), so having a wider "canon" cosmology defeats the purpose of that.

so the GM can call the PCs a bunch of idiots in various silly accents without them realising he's not entirely roleplaying.

The only setting supposed to fit with Planescape out of the box is Greyhawk, i believe. The Forgotten Realms has that stupid wall thing plus some other stuff.

The setting's real issue is how none of the author's could deal with infinity well.

You can easily insert homebrews, the fundemental aspects of each plane can vary wildly, or maybe they're in/on a construct in Limbo. Explains the Slaad incursions.

Your hell can be a layer in the abyss, there's plenty of lawful things in there, hell there are even some celestials pass the gate, or a part of Baaltor.

The big 9 are at the center of the axis, there are infinite planes between any two.

So yeah, no big deal.

I would only want Planescape back if DiTerlizzi is involved, the art was just as important to how much I loved Planescape as anything else about it.

Because the Great Wheel was Byzantine as shit and a lot of it tended to be just empty space?

Because, for a game promising the ability to travel across the planes from 1st level, the setting was so ridiculously hostile that the only way to pull that off was as the dogs-bodies for some Mighty NPC who could provide the party with Amulets of Not Dying Instantly and shit?

Because too many of the Factions were poorly designed and infuriating to work with ("oh, this Faction wants you to play Chaotic Stupid! And this one wants you to play a Lawful Stupid Rules Lawyer!")?

Because the overemphasis on Alignment, a topic that 3 people with have 4 opinions on, as the integral core of the setting detracts from the exciting idea of traveling the multiverse?

Because the Blood War was 90s edgy-punk at its worst and made it look like a rip-off of the Old World of Darkness?

Because the default "tone" of the setting is full of smug, elitist NPCs and One-True-Wayism?

Because the overuse of setting slang was distracting and made it hard to figure out what was going on?

Take your pick.

In a nutshell, not really; Spelljammer is supposed to be Cosmic Fantasy focused on exploring the Prime Material Plane, whilst Planescape is supposed to be Cosmic Fantasy focused on the Multiverse.

This is literally the stupidest argument in favor of dull planes that I have ever seen. Yes, we have Antarctica in real life. But nobody gives a shit about Antarctica in real life. If it comes up at all, it's a single sentence mentioned in passing.

There is no reason to devote page upon page upon page to repeating just how deadly and empty and vast and barren some place is.

In a book that is supposed to serve as a tool for actually giving the DM exciting ideas or to make the players excited to go there, saying "there's just a big nothing there" is literally a waste of space, and a waste of the buyer's money.

Actually, you could do that pretty easily in the World Axis; its planes were *designed* to be accessible from low level, to the point you could literally start out at 1st level making forays into the Feywild or the Shadowfell.

Yes, you would get killed very, very quickly if you just charged at everything, especially in the Elemental Chaos or Astral sea, but the environments themselves didn't require epic-level magical protection to keep you from dying the moment you set foot there.

>Spelljammer is supposed to be Cosmic Fantasy
Spelljammer is Age of Sail.

>Because the Great Wheel was Byzantine as shit
I bet you found THAC0 complicated.

That wall didn't exist at the time. All of them are specifically mentioned at least once in the books, from Athas to Cerilia to Krynn to Ravenloft to Spelljammer.

>I hate the settings.

Get out of here, Berk. Worse. Weaboo berk.

Man. I generally scroll past 2hu. I never realized he had decent taste.

weeaberk

The planes don't care about your meaningless existence. What's not to get? You are a flash in the pan.

>If you put something in a setting, the PCs have to be able to kill it.

Nah nigga. Nah.

Because it was a art-book masquerading as a campaign setting.

It selling like shit didn't help.

All the time, Sigil is lousy with the damn things

The planes don't care, sure. But the READER cares, or doesn't care, and if there's nothing there to care about, in a book you spent $50-$100 on, then it is NOT a good book.

Why are you as player reading the book? It's meant to be for the DM, and the book should have enough plothooks to entice a and inflame the player's imagination.
The inner planes are fundamentally different to the outer planes because they're fundamental building blocks of existence, there will be empty patches, there will be completely inhospitable places.

Sure, there's empty and inhospitable places. But the book spends most of its time talking ABOUT those empty and inhospitable places.

The Plane Below, for the World Axis? It spends most of ITS time talking about the places that are worth exploring, and how you can add more stuff to the plane to make it exciting for players to visit. It acknowledges the existence of places too hostile or barren to visit, but it wastes no time talking about them in detail, because we don't need to know about them. Even the githzerai fortress-monastery caught between an ocean of flame on one side and an ocean of utter-frost on the other has shit to do in it and reasons to visit.

The Plane Below is an inherently better book than The Inner Planes. It's as simple as that.

Are the books talking about different aspects of the planes? If it is, the comparison isn't exactly the same.
I've had use of the Inner Planes, which caused me to be able to come up with a lot of things of interest, it's just that these planes don't care about PCs or the rest or existence.

The Inner Planes is *the* sourcebook on the Elemental Planes of the Great Wheel. It is every single possible thing that you should need to know about the Elemental, Energy, Paraelemental and Quasielemental Planes.

The Plane Below is *the* sourcebook on the Elemental Chaos of the World Axis. It is every single possible thing that you should need to know about the plane from which the fundamentals of creation arose, complete with elemental umblicals that still provide the metaphysical nourishment that keep the entire prime material plane alive.

So, are they talking about different aspects? You tell me, because I have no idea.

The Inner Planes don't care at all about metaphysical connotations, it just focuses on the classical four greek elements and any admixtures created. These inner planes are also anachronistic, because you also have shit like vacuum.

Honestly, when it comes to Planescape, if I had to sum up my feelings in a few short words, it'd be "great idea: lackluster execution".

See, I really like the concept of planar fantasy. The idea of traveling between magical realms out of the melting pot of the multiverse is just inherently awesome, and really sparks the side of me that like truly gonzo fantasy. Where else can a character concept like "vengeful dragon-hunting kobold who eats her draconic foes" feel perfectly reasonable? Where else is it perfectly normal to have a hexslinging cowboy, a cyborg samurai, a pyromantic pirate and an undead ninja all hanging out in the same bar? Exploring the realms of fiends, angels and faeries, traveling to worlds unseen, battling opponents who can shake the very order of creation itself - this is a concept that just sparks my imagination!

And then I actually got to look at real Planescape material... I think the best simile I can come up with for my presumably mostly-American audience is this: imagine you order a buffet at your favorite local style BBQ joint. Then imagine that, after you've paid, you sit down to your meal, and find that 90% of what you've been given is spam, tofu, and soy-products.

(broken for length)

I went in expecting epic adventuring across a fantasy multiverse. What I got was a baroque and clunky backdrop that reeked of grid-filling and similar try-hard "edge-punk!" to the Old World of Darkness, and where most of your "adventuring" amounted to being pawns, puppets and dogsbodies of "Iconics" whom you were told you would never, ever, ever be a threat to, so don't even try.

In the end... what I want out of a planar setting is far closer to Planescape: Torment - the game where you midwife a pregnant street, traverse the subterranean streets of a necropolis full of civilized undead, interact with the prostitutes at an intellectualistic brothel, and explore a fortress built from crystalized regret, all with the aid of a wisecracking skull, a fiend-blooded street urchin, an alien warrior-wizard with a deep secular religion, a chaste succubus, and Nordom. I want the kind of setting where I can truly embrace the wonders and weirdness of the multiverse.

And not, say, the kind of setting where I faff about as a lowly errand-boy in a party of "the generic races but from fancier lands!", running around a smokier, edgier Waterdeep full of jaded, stuck-up cynics and avoiding run-ins with lunatics from a bunch of philosphical gangs were many of their ideologies don't even make sense if you spend a few minutes thinking about them. Which, sadly, is generally how Planescape came off to me in execution.

So, what from Planescape is actually worth using?

Nothing. Stick to the earlier Manual of the Planes.

Sigil as part of the world axis is aight. Dungeon Master's Guide 2 details the location and how it fits into a campaign. It's a relatively convenient way for paragon level characters to explore other planes.

Sigil works pretty good for what it's supposed to be - the early 1900s New York of the multiverse, the great melting pot where all of the plane's cultures ultimately meet.

It works better still if you use the post-Faction War or 4e version, if you find the Factions themselves not to your liking. Because, let's face it, some of them were really daft ideas - Xaositects and Guvners in particular.

I really liked the factions but found Faction War absolutely retarded. Rowan Darkwood can go die in a fire, no fucking way he is CG.

>Man. I generally scroll past 2hu. I never realized he had decent taste.
When you learn about what changes he made to the setting, you'll stick to your old opinion.