How do you actually Planescape?

[Yora]

That certainly is true. Planescape does require a very evocative presentation to get the information across in a way that communicates the feel.
I get what they were trying to do, but I think they did a really poor job at it.

Information about individual things is scattered around various different books, and the organization is pretty terrible to let you find information on any topic you are interested in. And because not everyone has all releases, there is a great deal of redundancy.
And then you also get passages on the various subject that are very rambling while in the end not really telling the GM anything that can be used in an actual game.

I am currently trying to figure out the Dustmen. They have one page in the Player's Guide, half a page about the Mortuary in the Sigil and Beyond Guide, nine pages in the Factol's Manifesto, and half a page in the Planewalker's Handbook. And not a single word is spend to tell us about the activities of the Dustmen. Or any of their goals or plans. We do get a detailed description of both the private rooms and the office of the leader, and the magical guards that are in place, but not the slightest hint of why any players would ever go there.

Another example that springs to my mind immediately is the Mausoleum of Chronepsis, which is described in both the Sigil and Beyond Guide, and the Primer to the Outland. Which basically both say exactly the same thing: It's a ruined city that is completely empty, and the only thing in it is a dragon god that watches a collection of hourglasses. I had to look him up online, and apparently all he ever does is sit in silence and never engage in any form of communication with any other beings.
Why do I need this information? What can I do with this information? Yes, it's only one short paragraph (each), but this counts as a location in the Outlands worth telling me about when I am looking for material that I can use in adventures?

Most Planescape releases do a pretty good job at describing a world. But the utility for a GM who wants to run an actual game of D&D is very often negligible.

 

[squeen]

Most Planescape releases do a pretty good job at describing a world. But the utility for a GM who wants to run an actual game of D&D is very often negligible.

Probably because that latter is way harder to fill in and execute than telling a sweeping story. (Hence this blog.)

 

[Evard's Small Tentacle]

That certainly is true. Planescape does require a very evocative presentation to get the information across in a way that communicates the feel.
I get what they were trying to do, but I think they did a really poor job at it.

Information about individual things is scattered around various different books, and the organization is pretty terrible to let you find information on any topic you are interested in. And because not everyone has all releases, there is a great deal of redundancy.
And then you also get passages on the various subject that are very rambling while in the end not really telling the GM anything that can be used in an actual game.

I am currently trying to figure out the Dustmen. They have one page in the Player's Guide, half a page about the Mortuary in the Sigil and Beyond Guide, nine pages in the Factol's Manifesto, and half a page in the Planewalker's Handbook. And not a single word is spend to tell us about the activities of the Dustmen. Or any of their goals or plans. We do get a detailed description of both the private rooms and the office of the leader, and the magical guards that are in place, but not the slightest hint of why any players would ever go there.

Another example that springs to my mind immediately is the Mausoleum of Chronepsis, which is described in both the Sigil and Beyond Guide, and the Primer to the Outland. Which basically both say exactly the same thing: It's a ruined city that is completely empty, and the only thing in it is a dragon god that watches a collection of hourglasses. I had to look him up online, and apparently all he ever does is sit in silence and never engage in any form of communication with any other beings.
Why do I need this information? What can I do with this information? Yes, it's only one short paragraph (each), but this counts as a location in the Outlands worth telling me about when I am looking for material that I can use in adventures?

Most Planescape releases do a pretty good job at describing a world. But the utility for a GM who wants to run an actual game of D&D is very often negligible.

I actually created a matrix of products with notes for this purpose. Let me see if I can dig it up.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Truly, I think the best way to run Planescape is to use it as inspiration, and then throw out most of it, holding onto a few core concepts and reworking the rest yourself.

The good ideas:
1) A vast, sprawling semi-Victorian metropolis that is contested, but not controlled, by many factions and powers, and that as the central hub of a hub-and-spoke campaign where the PCs go on expeditions to fantastical places and return.
2) An abundance of magic and wonder found at multiple interpenetrating scales of power and scope, and only partially systematised which the PCs are rewarded for accumulating both in-character and out-of-character knowledge of.
3) A comprehensible social geography that reaches out to the most fantastical locations possible, anchored in that metropolis but not beholden to it, and which the PCs navigate as part of accomplishing their expeditions. This social network is held together by an unstable blend of ideological alignment, custom, realpolitik, mercenary interest, and interpersonal melodrama, and PCs become more and more embedded in it over time.
4) Frequent contact with entities or situations that are of overwhelming power and looming threat where stand-up fights are the least effective way to accomplish one's goals, and solutions derived from careful thought or cleverness are preferred.
5) The admixture of D&D tropes and cliches with all of this, but in unpredictable and often counterintuitive ways.

I have always thrown out the specific factions proposed in Sigil as irredeemably stupid and boring, and I'm not too fond of the Great Ring or the broader planar cosmology, either. Truth be told, if I had to run Planescape these days, I would probably use Openquest or Mythras or another generic BRP-derivative, especially one that had an integrated Passion mechanic of some sort, since I think the flatter power curve within an adventurer's career and the increased deadliness of combat serve these core ideas more faithfully.

 

[squeen]

integrated Passion mechanic? What's that?

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Characters in lots of BRP versions characterise their strongly held beliefs or values as percentile scores similar to other skills, and depending on the game, you might roll on them from time to time, use a fraction of them to augment skills, or do various other things with them. It's a way of representing potential character traits that manifest outside of the conscious control of the character (and by extension, the player).

 

[squeen]

That's some crazy talk.

Thanks.

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Like in Pendragon?

 

[squeen]

Like in Pendragon?

Book?

 

[TerribleSorcery]

Pendragon the game. Knights have various passions that may influence what they do, they have to roll for them a lot. I don't know too much about it though.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Like in Pendragon?

Yeah, sort of. Pendragon is BRP converted from a percentile system to use a d20 instead.

 

[grodog]

I haven't ever played a PS game, but I am trying to run a multi-planar 1e campaign starting at low-levels, leveraging some details from my Knockspell articles on gates: https://grodog.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-theory-and-use-of-gates-in-campaign-dungeons.html and https://grodog.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-theory-and-use-of-gates-in-campaigndungeons-part-2.html

The planar architecture I'm working up is starting to take form in the background at https://grodog.blogspot.com/2020/05/planar-architecture-for-grodog-greyhawk-campaigns.html and is grounded in-game via the Plane of Shadow's planar bleed into the second level of my version of the DMG Monastery Dungeon @ https://grodog.blogspot.com/2020/02/renovating-the-monastery-in-greyhawk-part-1.html and through the Zagygian weirdness of Castle Greyhawk.

Bringing the planes into play is difficult without some more tools in the PCs toolkits, which I'm still working on introducing....

And lots more to dig into here, so---without more ado than breaking the post into two parts, since I apparently hit a character limit---here we go:

My theory is that the player is looking for new rules to overcome to find a challenge. They know all the rules already...they know when to run or fight...a different dimension/plane brings weirdness, something they haven't experienced before, so it makes it fun.

Maybe magic doesn't work the same, maybe creatures aren't damaged the same....different rules = different challenges. You can still have the weird stuff like 'floating mountains of quartz with molten silver'--I think there is something there that players are looking for, but I also think different rules may attract players. Can everyone fly due to no gravity? People with black hair have powers over others? Do all spells do double damage or no damage or no effect?! How to overcome this new dilemma/challenge--thats where the fun is.

In the DMG Gary suggests that the planes are a good "stepping stone" for adventures after a year or two of play, as both a way to challenge higher-level PCs and as a change of pace (a la EX1-2, WG6, levels based on Planet of Adventure, Oz, Asgard, etc.)

I think that this is also part and parcel of the challenge of designing good higher-level adventures, where many high-level scenarios limit PCs out of the gate even when it's not a planar/demi-planar environment: no teleporting back to the surface from D1-3, no ethereal passing through the walls in S1, etc. etc. In a planar environment, it may perhaps be more justifiable to limit such powers/capabilities, but it sure feels mostly the same as I'm typing this....

Anyway, building out fun, planar environments is cool, and trying to figure out what makes a new plane/environment tick, and how to tackle it, is definitely part of the fun to me as a player. (And then later exploiting those locations again too: coming back to that "double-damage" plane to recharge your ring of spell storing, or whatever!).

I think there's three main elements that make Planescape different. [snip] The second one is that players can walk up to and interact with powerful planar creatures outside the context of combat.

I definitely like this, and enjoy this in non-planar play too: low-level clerics can make an appointment with their high priestess; thieves may be assigned a task by their guildmaster, druids will be inducted into the 1st Circle by a Druid-level NPC, etc.

The third thing is that Planescape creates a context in which characters can visit extremely strange and unusual locations fairly early on without them having to be big megadugeons or otherwise great affairs. In a regular campaign, going into the dungeons below the giant palace of a ruler of Hell would seem appropriate for a huge high level adventurer. In a Planrscape campaign, the party could just be handed release papers for a prisoner with an official seal and told to go to the palace, show the papers, and come back with the prisoner. Of course they would be surrounded by armies of devil that could wipe them all out in a single round, but since they are on official business, they won't be attacked unless they try something funny.

I like this concept too, and also try to leverage this in standard play, where possible, but it gets a bit more difficult logistically, so the planes really do seem to help here. A good AD&D example of this low-level PCs in a high-level environment is Anthony Huso's _Zjelwyin Fall_, which pushes 3rd-level PCs into a lich's Astral lair, or (a bit more story/railroady) Greenwood's "Into the Forgotten Realms" from Dragon #95 (which pulls a similar trick, but in the ruins of Myth Drannor).

The planes would have to be made relevant to each other in some way, so that the party's needs and desires on one plane can only be met by travelling to another plane, and then another and another.

Agreed: the relationship between the planes, how easily they are traversed, and what would motivate PCs to travel from one plane to another are crucial here. That's par for the course for getting players interested in any adventure in general, but breaking that notion that the planes are the sole purview of name+ level PCs is the hardest part, psychologically, I think of leveraging the planes more commonly in play.

[to be continued]

 

[grodog]

After completing my current N1/I1 campaign, I am planning to get a Planescape campaign going later in the year. The general idea I have is that the PCs start at first level as primes from a dying world with a dead sun, who followed a stream of other people fleeing through a gate leading into the Outlands. As they step out of the gate, they arrive at a newly founded town that is being build into some old ruins. (Players who are familiar with Planescape or want to do the homework can make bariaurs, githzerai, aasimars, or tieflings as well who ran into the town while wandering the Outlands.)

This is very similar to the intro set up for Tekumel, and is a great way to bring "newbs" into an environment: they don't know anything about it because their PCs know nothing too. Easy to setup and manage in play, and all exploration/learning then "fits" as the players and characters learn more from NPCs, from their observations, etc.

Since a new town is being created from scratch by people completely new to the outer planes, it is not at all certain yet if the town will actually remain in the Outlands, or if it will take on a character that shifts it somewhere else like former gate towns. I think that's a pretty solid foundation to build a theme based campaign on. Players could attempt to influence the other people of the town to keep this from happening, or choose to help it along in a direction they approve of.

This planar refugees idea reminds me a bit of David Hill's OSR Avremier setting (see https://www.facebook.com/MothshadeConcepts/ for some more info), where the PC races are all recent (in the past 100-200 years or so) planar invaders of the setting.

I think all of these ideas could be bundled together under a theme of finding purpose when everything that used to matter is gone, and you have unlimited possibilities because all obligations and commitments ceased to have relevance. Doomguard and Dustmen all lean to somewhat fatalistic outlooks on such a situation, while Signers and Fated would see it more as an opportunity to realize ambitions, with the Bleakers hanging somewhere inbetween. (Anarchists don't really play into this, I just think they are fun and have a presence in that general corner of the Great Wheel.

This is where I see fluffy background, factions and their relationships, history and magical lore, and other "setting fiction" details can come into relevant play at the table, as events are set in motion through PC interactions as well as motivated NPCs/groups with agendas and timetables of their own.

What I am still clueless about is how to connect the sphere of annihilation to the new town in the Outlands. It should have some relevance to the future of the townspeople, but I don't see why an arcanaloth would care about them while searching for a sphere of annihilation.

Perhaps some (undetermined/vague) number of the refugee townsfolk were granted a series of visions/omens/etc. about the daemon, the sphere, their danger, etc., and he's gotten wind of this, and has started to proactively hunt them down (by having night hags invade their dreams to see who knows what, among other things).

Planescape has a distinct style. A style that is key to the setting. By constantly absorbing information in that style, your are immersing yourself further and further in the milieu, picking up its particular argot until you can't help but pass that along to the players. What results is a role-playing experience quite foreign and otherworldly.

FWIW, I think that describes any good RPG setting/scenario. The cant is PS was absolutely what turned me off to the setting in the first place, along with 2e bastardization of demons, devils, etc. (not PS's fault, I know).

Truly, I think the best way to run Planescape is to use it as inspiration, and then throw out most of it, holding onto a few core concepts and reworking the rest yourself.

Since I'm not deeply interested in PS itself, but love planar adventuring, I'm happy to hear more!

The good ideas:

1) A vast, sprawling semi-Victorian metropolis that is contested, but not controlled, by many factions and powers, and that as the central hub of a hub-and-spoke campaign where the PCs go on expeditions to fantastical places and return.

What's cool about this idea is the underlying premise that there's some sort of rules/detente that define the limits of how planar powers can and do interact with each other, with mortals, etc. Some of this was covered well in the old WotC "Primal Order" D&D supplements via the relationships between mortals and their gods, but there's more to build on here to realize that truly multi-cultural melange of strangitude that embodies the multiverse.

2) An abundance of magic and wonder found at multiple interpenetrating scales of power and scope, and only partially systematised which the PCs are rewarded for accumulating both in-character and out-of-character knowledge of.

Like this abundance side of things too: magic isn't scare here!

3) A comprehensible social geography that reaches out to the most fantastical locations possible, anchored in that metropolis but not beholden to it, and which the PCs navigate as part of accomplishing their expeditions. This social network is held together by an unstable blend of ideological alignment, custom, realpolitik, mercenary interest, and interpersonal melodrama, and PCs become more and more embedded in it over time.

Love it! I wrote a piece about the latter for the Oerth Journal last year at https://greyhawkonline.com/sdm_downloads/oj31/ and would love to get some more ideas how factions in a PS (or generally-multi-planar) setting might differ from standard factions in dungeons and earthly campaign settings.

4) Frequent contact with entities or situations that are of overwhelming power and looming threat where stand-up fights are the least effective way to accomplish one's goals, and solutions derived from careful thought or cleverness are preferred.

This needs to be balanced carefully, I think, otherwise the PCs become puppets for NPCs who will always be swooping in to save the day, bail them out of jail, etc.

Allan.

 

[squeen]

Allan, I enjoyed your excellent post on the planes and went back to read some of the early references. (As you know, I'm already using some of your Gate spells!)

I got really excited when my players finally went for a short trek in (my take) of the Ethereal Plane. It seemed to open up unlimited adventuring possibilities without breaking the more mundane world of the campaign. I think it's really the "solution" for high-level play. A safe home-plane is the counter-point in Planear Adventures like a safe-city is to the Mythic Underworld of dungeons. On other worlds, the threat-level can be ramped up arbitrailiy and/or the local context can mess with the player's usual bag-of-tricks (a bit). Also, the thematic elements can take 90-degree turns without seeming out of place.

One of the things I found interesting in the Dragon article you pointed to in issue #8 was the following quote from Gygax

...the Etherial [sic] Plane (which co-exists in exactly the same space as the Prime Material Plane), and the Astral Plane (whichwarps the dimension we know as length [distance])

I really like this. The Ethereal plane is parallel, but the rules of travel/exploration feel normal even if other aspects might be twisted....but the Astral Plane is WAY more trippy/dreamy, where one's concept of distance is also distorted. The way I plan on using the Ethereal Plane is akin to how Outer Space is leveraged in the Marvel Universe---as a means of hoping between quasi-isolated Strange Lands with locally dominate cultures. As Gary says in the Drmg#32 article: milieux!

Do you know of a good published adventure that jaunts over to another plane for a large part of the action?
Something exploratory and fully-keyed would be nice.

 

[grodog]

Allan, I enjoyed your excellent post on the planes and went back to read some of the early references. (As you know, I'm already using some of your Gate spells!)

Thanks again!

One of the things I found interesting in the Dragon article you pointed to in issue #8 was the following quote from Gygax
I really like this. The Ethereal plane is parallel, but the rules of travel/exploration feel normal even if other aspects might be twisted....but the Astral Plane is WAY more trippy/dreamy, where one's concept of distance is also distorted. The way I plan on using the Ethereal Plane is akin to how Outer Space is leveraged in the Marvel Universe---as a means of hoping between quasi-isolated Strange Lands with locally dominate cultures. As Gary says in the Drmg#32 article: milieux!

I'm not really familiar with Marvel outside of the MCU but I grok what you're saying here. He does sketch a bit more about how the planes change dimensionality in the Gord books, and I think there's a summary in Krista Siren's Gord's Greyhawk at https://greyhawkonline.com/gordmain/ (if not let me know and I can track the relevant passages down; they should be in Saga of Old City).

Do you know of a good published adventure that jaunts over to another plane for a large part of the action?
Something exploratory and fully-keyed would be nice.

While titles immediately leap to mind, what levels are you looking for?

Allan.

 

[squeen]

While titles immediately leap to mind, what levels are you looking for?

I would like something that is a self-contained adventure on the ethereal or astral plane (or elemental plane...or Abyss) suitable to add to a campaign. Not some railroad-y thing with elaborate set-up.

I don't care too much about level (mid/upper?), but would just like to see how it was handled---when it was handled well. Ideally it would evoke an alien world vibe and not just feel fun-house dungeon-y. I'm searching for a master-class.

 

[The1True]

I would like something that is a self-contained adventure on the ethereal or astral plane (or elemental plane...or Abyss) suitable to add to a campaign.

Tales from the Outer Planes came highly recommended, so I picked it up recently. It's got some good stuff in it, but I havn't play-tested it. Vortex of Madness is pretty good, but it's high level...

 

[squeen]

Tales from the Outer Planes came highly recommended, so I picked it up recently. It's got some good stuff in it, but I havn't play-tested it. Vortex of Madness is pretty good, but it's high level...

I will check them out. Thanks!

 

[EOTB]

FWIW, I don't find Tales from the Outer Planes to be all that wondrous. But MMV. I like Huso's Zjelwyin Fall, but all the TSR published stuff suffers IMO from authors who didn't have either the time or the talent to create a different reality. It all feels like prime material plane adventuring with some modifier(s).

 

[grodog]

Well well, my draft post wasn't eaten after all!

I would like something that is a self-contained adventure on the ethereal or astral plane (or elemental plane...or Abyss) suitable to add to a campaign. Not some railroad-y thing with elaborate set-up.

Well, here are some ideas:

• Anthony Huso's Zjelwyin Fall (Astral) or the upcoming (very soon to be available) Abyssal adventure Dream House of the Nether Prince at https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/anthonyhuso
• "Fedifensor" from Dragon #67 (Astral)
• RJK's MoZ2 Dimensions of Flight which offers 4 mini (mostly Elemental) realms as planar sub-levels off of the MoZ1 Maze of Zayene module; RJK's "To the City of Brass" freebie at https://web.archive.org/web/20200216173437/https://www.acaeum.com/library/citybrass.html (Acaeum site is currently down due to ISP outage, should be back soon) and some of RJK's notes from City of Brass are in his DVD/USB archive at https://www.threelinestudio.com/store/el-raja-key-archive/ but the full 190-ish page manuscript isn't in there (the bungled Kenzer version isn't worth it from that POV)

I can't think of any easily accessible Ethereal adventures, offhand. Some Living Greyhawk modules focused on an "Ethereal Threat" that was tied back to Castle Greyhawk some IIRC, and I think there was an Ethereal library episide in the Age of Worms (perhaps set on the Isles of Woe??), and more-recently Carlos Lising wrote a Greyhawk-themed dungeon that touches upon the Ethereal a bit (bit it's definitely not in the Ethereal Plane, just in Greyhawk). But that's all that really comes to mind on that front.

I did a quick search at http://www.purpleworm.org/tools/DungeonMagazineIndex.htm and didn't see any adventures involving the Ether or Astral, too.

I don't care too much about level (mid/upper?), but would just like to see how it was handled---when it was handled well. Ideally it would evoke an alien world vibe and not just feel fun-house dungeon-y. I'm searching for a master-class.

Based on that criteria, I think you'll likely be most happy with Huso's newest scenario that's about-to-be-available, Dream House of the Nether Prince. It's pretty brutally high-level, is firmly grounded in his vision of the Abyss, and presents the whole enchilada, not just a dungeon in planar dressing. If that sounds interesting, some details at (chronologically from early to current) https://www.thebluebard.com/post/ad-d-demonic-treatise and https://www.thebluebard.com/post/what-do-you-think-of-this and https://www.thebluebard.com/post/dreams-of-darkness

FWIW, I don't find Tales from the Outer Planes to be all that wondrous. But MMV. I like Huso's Zjelwyin Fall, but all the TSR published stuff suffers IMO from authors who didn't have either the time or the talent to create a different reality. It all feels like prime material plane adventuring with some modifier(s).

Agreed. Espresso shops in Limbo aren't my idea of making Limbo cool

Allan.