Planescape Campaign Setting Advice

[Zalphon]

About to DM Planescape for a group of Real-Life friends. Need advice. Anyone got wisdom for me?

[Tvtyrant]

Talk to your party about not attacking evil things on sight. It will end up with a very dead party, and breaks the concept of Planescape.

[Maglubiyet]

You've gotta know the chant before you rattle your bonebox -- you don't want to be a clueless cagestruck berk.

[BWR]

Planescape is about exploration, a sense of wonder at the infinite variety of the planes. It's also about how belief is the cornerstone of the uter Planes and strong enough belief can cause entire layers to slide from one plane to another, can elevate mortals to gods, where entire races of various good-aligned exemplars can spend eons locked in philosophical debate and strict opposition to eachother because they can't agree on exactly how to be Good.

If you treat it as just a fancier backdrop for random adventuring, you're missing the point. If your players treat it as just an excuse to kill stuff and take its loot, either you aren't conveying the sense of wonder well enough or they are Doing It Wrong.

Just read the basic boxed set and the Planewalker's Handbook, since they both do a pretty good job of conveying this.

Mechanically, you need to remember how magic works differently from plane to plane. Keep a small cheat sheet of changes for every plane they go to. E.g. the only way into the Cage is by portal, the only ways out are portal, death or Mazing. Casting chaotic spells on Mechanus won't get you very far.
Also, the problem of clerics being 'distant' from their god so they count as lower levels is an important issue.
The whole 'weapons and armor have variable pluses' was interesting enough but I would probably just drop it because it requires an un-fun amount of bookkeeping.
Play up Factions and Sects, and let your players join them. Factions are a great way of showing the importance and power of belief and Faction politics can be a fun game. If you play any edition but 2e, I would suggest keeping membership benefits as something freely received rather than feats, as so many conversions handle it. Mostly the abilities are fun but rarely worth a feat, especially for feat-starved characters, and their benefits are often more than offset by membership drawbacks.

[NichG]

My general recipe for a Planescape adventure is to take a particular abstract philosophical idea or thought experiment and make it literally real, then explore the consequences. So e.g. start with the idea of people having an ego, superego, and id and then create a place on the planes where those things become literally manifest, independent entities when a person is there. Would the original person be imprisoned by their own fragmented psyche, what happens when they directly interact with them, etc? That kind of thing.

[Eldan]

It's about the philosophy. There are conflicts in Planescape that can be won with violence. But usually, those aren't the ones you want to win.

How you win counts just as much as what. See, in Planescape, everything you do decides, in some way, the shape and nature of the world, from now to all eternity. And if you solve your problems with violence? It means you believe in violence as a problem solving tool. And everyone around you who saw you solve your problems with violence does, too. That doesn't just mean that they will solve their problems with violence, bad as that is. No, it means that from now on, because more people will believe in violence, violence becomes easier. It works, more often.

This is why you pay careful attention to what you are doing.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah but if the universe changes as you solve more things with violence, and it becomes easier to solve things with violence, and people don't think this is wrong, won't this create an exponential effect where it eventually creates a world where everything is solved with violence, yet no one has a problem with this? like won't it eventually create a reality where things really are improved by solving it with violence?

[Eldan]

Yup. The question is if you want that world. Usually, in Planescape, we call that world "The Abyss".

[JAL_1138]

Planescape is about exploration, a sense of wonder at the infinite variety of the planes. It's also about how belief is the cornerstone of the uter Planes and strong enough belief can cause entire layers to slide from one plane to another, can elevate mortals to gods, where entire races of various good-aligned exemplars can spend eons locked in philosophical debate and strict opposition to eachother because they can't agree on exactly how to be Good.

If you treat it as just a fancier backdrop for random adventuring, you're missing the point. If your players treat it as just an excuse to kill stuff and take its loot, either you aren't conveying the sense of wonder well enough or they are Doing It Wrong.

Just read the basic boxed set and the Planewalker's Handbook, since they both do a pretty good job of conveying this.

Mechanically, you need to remember how magic works differently from plane to plane. Keep a small cheat sheet of changes for every plane they go to. E.g. the only way into the Cage is by portal, the only ways out are portal, death or Mazing. Casting chaotic spells on Mechanus won't get you very far.
Also, the problem of clerics being 'distant' from their god so they count as lower levels is an important issue.
The whole 'weapons and armor have variable pluses' was interesting enough but I would probably just drop it because it requires an un-fun amount of bookkeeping.
Play up Factions and Sects, and let your players join them. Factions are a great way of showing the importance and power of belief and Faction politics can be a fun game. If you play any edition but 2e, I would suggest keeping membership benefits as something freely received rather than feats, as so many conversions handle it. Mostly the abilities are fun but rarely worth a feat, especially for feat-starved characters, and their benefits are often more than offset by membership drawbacks.

Ditto to this, especially the advice to read through the 2e boxed set and Planeswalker's Handbook. Although I would argue it works very well as a fancier backdrop to adventuring, once the tone has been set and they're not just a bunch of clueless Primes anymore, depending on how you define "adventuring" anyhow.

And there's the Lady. She's not a boss to fight. She has no stats, except maybe "YOU LOSE." She can kill a god just by thinking about it, no save. And has done so. There's no remnant of the ex-god Aoskar left anywhere, even in the astral plane where dead gods go, except for a ruined temple used as a faction headquarters, and a cautionary tale. Her shadow flays the flesh from the bones of anyone it falls upon. No save. She can trap you in an extradimensional maze on a whim, if she decides not to kill you outright. No save. NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WORSHIP HER OR EVEN *CALL* HER ANY KIND OF DEITY. Even the mightiest of the gods are afraid to do that. She never speaks, she has no known abode within Sigil, and her expression never changes. She is Sigil's protector, in the sense that nobody f***s with it because they'll die horribly if they tick her off.

[Anonymouswizard]

It's about the philosophy. There are conflicts in Planescape that can be won with violence. But usually, those aren't the ones you want to win.

How you win counts just as much as what. See, in Planescape, everything you do decides, in some way, the shape and nature of the world, from now to all eternity. And if you solve your problems with violence? It means you believe in violence as a problem solving tool. And everyone around you who saw you solve your problems with violence does, too. That doesn't just mean that they will solve their problems with violence, bad as that is. No, it means that from now on, because more people will believe in violence, violence becomes easier. It works, more often.

This is why you pay careful attention to what you are doing.

So after enough work, I can create a world where any problem can be solved by punching a peasant? Just remember that, while you're creating your world where everything can be solved by violence, someone else is creating one where diplomacy, and another where running and hiding works.

And there's the Lady. She's not a boss to fight. She has no stats, except maybe "YOU LOSE." She can kill a god just by thinking about it, no save. And has done so. There's no remnant of the ex-god Aoskar left anywhere, even in the astral plane where dead gods go, except for a ruined temple used as a faction headquarters, and a cautionary tale. Her shadow flays the flesh from the bones of anyone it falls upon. No save. She can trap you in an extradimensional maze on a whim, if she decides not to kill you outright. No save. NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WORSHIP HER OR EVEN *CALL* HER ANY KIND OF DEITY. Even the mightiest of the gods are afraid to do that. She never speaks, she has no known abode within Sigil, and her expression never changes. She is Sigil's protector, in the sense that nobody f***s with it because they'll die horribly if they tick her off.

And is under no circumstances a load of squirrels in a robe, what gave you that idea.

Where is that theory from.

[Eldan]

Dunno. It's popped up in several places.

I'm of the opinion that those who talk about the Lady's power are overselling Her. Yes, she's powerful, but that's not the important part. The important part is that she's mysterious. No one knows about Her, or how she does things, or why. Sometimes things will annoy her, sometimes not. You don't know which you'll get. It's not even quite sure if she killed a god. It's not sure if she could do it again. But she might. But she hasn't let any gods into the city, so we'l lprobably never know. Some say she's afraid of another confrontation.

However. The Lady has no place in an actual game. She should never show up "on screen". She's a setting element, like, say, the sun. The sun is there to answer the question "why is there heat and light"? The lady is there to answer the question "If Sigil is so valuable, why isn't it a divine warzone?" She's not there to punish your players. She's not there to be challenged. She's there to be inscrutable in the background and make the existence of the setting possible.

[Maglubiyet]

And is under no circumstances a load of squirrels in a robe, what gave you that idea.

Where is that theory from.

I think the Lady of Pain being an irresistible and inscrutable force in Sigil is pretty much canon. Various quotes to that effect are scattered throughout the books.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think the Lady of Pain being an irresistible and inscrutable force in Sigil is pretty much canon. Various quotes to that effect are scattered throughout the books.

I meant the squirrels.

[JAL_1138]

I know OF the squirrel theory, and that it's been around a long time now, but I can't for the life of me think of where I heard it first.

The Lady is confirmed to have killed Aoskar. She got mad at him when one of her Dabus started worshipping him and he promptly ceased existing. That's in the campaign box set, I think, although I may be misremembering which book it came out of. Might have been Faces of Sigil instead.

The Lady can be used in campaigns. E.g., tensions are brewing in Sigil between the factions and the general population and if nobody defuses the situation before the otyugh hits the fan, the Lady will be annoyed and kill the factions in question (including the players, most likely), because she expects Sigil to remain somewhat stable. There's a pretty fun module to this effect, although I'm blanking on the name.

Or the players meet her on the street and she Mazes the lot of them; the adventure is in escaping the Maze somehow. Good for a dungeon-crawl.

Or the you can have a Dabus say to the party, "Do this thing ASAP or the Lady will kill you if she's feeling merciful, and Maze you if she's not." This one's best used sparingly, if at all.

[Maglubiyet]

I meant the squirrels.

No squirrels in Sigil -- too much razorvine.

[BWR]

The Squirrel Hypothesis was in the Lady's entry in the PS:T bestiary.

[NichG]

Or the players meet her on the street and she Mazes the lot of them; the adventure is in escaping the Maze somehow. Good for a dungeon-crawl.

Or the you can have a Dabus say to the party, "Do this thing ASAP or the Lady will kill you if she's feeling merciful, and Maze you if she's not." This one's best used sparingly, if at all.

I'd advise against these, personally. The more hands-on the Lady is, the less mystique you preserve. The Lady without mystique is just another overpowered NPC.

[JAL_1138]

The Squirrel Hypothesis was in the Lady's entry in the PS:T bestiary.

Ah, that explains it. Yet another bullet point on its "Best CRPG of all time" entry

I'd advise against these, personally. The more hands-on the Lady is, the less mystique you preserve. The Lady without mystique is just another overpowered NPC.

Aye. Although I suggested them, I'd also rather not use them much (if at all); can be used =/= should be used, at least not often. That said, the Lady as the force-of-nature level Sword of Damocles hanging over a situation ("Fix it before she gets mad and kills-or-Mazes us all and everyone we've ever known and loved and anyone unlucky enough to be in several city blocks surrounding, remember what happened to that one dead god and all his worshipers at the Ruined Temple") is a great motivator IMO, if it's not done repeatedly for a bunch of different things but as the backdrop of the campaign. She hasn't intervened and hasn't sent a messenger, but you know she'll get involved if things get completely out of hand, and they're about to get completely out of hand unless you Get S*** Done pronto, and if she gets involved, well, best not be in Sigil when it goes down. You can always cut ties with your faction and leave them to the Lady's wrath, while you go elsewhere. As far away as possible. No, father than that. No, keep going. Farther. I hear Ravenloft is nice this time of year.

[BWR]

The Lady works best as something spoken of in hushed whispers. The PCs should really never come across her in any practical sense unless they do something stupid like worshipping her or killing dabus. Maybe once they should see some addle-cove worshipping her on the street and witness a flaying. The Lady giving jobs to PCs is just wrong.

[Eldan]

The Lady has sent, like, two messages in a thousand years or more. I just don't think the players are usually that important. "Not the biggest fish" is an important part of the setting, too.

[JAL_1138]

The Lady works best as something spoken of in hushed whispers. The PCs should really never come across her in any practical sense unless they do something stupid like worshipping her or killing dabus. Maybe once they should see some addle-cove worshipping her on the street and witness a flaying. The Lady giving jobs to PCs is just wrong.

Not so much "giving jobs" as....the setup to that one module, really. Defuse the tensions in Sigil before it gets out of hand, or she'll step in and that will NOT end well.

And in the third case (which again, "can be used" does not mean "should be used"--do note I said "use sparingly, if at all") where "she" has a Dabus tell the PCs to do something... the Dabus giving the job could be lying. They do have free will, and one has defied her before (leading to the aforementioned incident of a god exploding when she found out about it).
...In fact, how do you know it was a Dabus at all, and not an illusion cast by a mage (assuming you didn't try to Disbelieve and/or didn't make your save, depending on edition), or a Polymorphed mage using Silent Image to make the rebus, using the false threat of the Lady's wrath to get you to do something the mage wanted? Doesn't have to be what it seems, as long as it gets the party moving. Still, it's not an ideal setup, just a possible one.

[NichG]

The problem is, if the Lady goes around giving quests or depending on the inhabitants of Sigil to get things done, it's sort of like Elminster walking up to a party of Lv3 characters and tasking them to save the world. Sure, its something that she could do, but: why does she care about this thing getting done, why does she care about the PCs being the ones to do it, and if she cares why doesn't she simply do it herself?

The Lady has to be really overpowered in order to make Sigil work in a setting with lots of deities who'd want to grab it. But at the same time, that only works because she doesn't really have desires - or at least, whatever she wants is so alien that it doesn't really matter. If she wants things on the same playing field as mortals and gods then she becomes overbearing, because with the level of power she's given she could just reach out and take whatever she wants. So if you give her desires and have her use mortals to accomplish them, she's just another petty god.

[JAL_1138]

Ok, ok, bad example. This is what I get for firing off too quick on a cell phone instead of taking the time to word something properly. Despite my poorly-worded suggestions, keep her a force of nature rather than an NPC.

Another Planescape thing to keep in mind is the weirdness with planar travel itself. Distance is often variable. It may take you six months to go from Point A to Point B in the outlands one trip, and two weeks the next time. You may spend months sailing the rivers Oceanus or Styx (and don't mess with the yugoloth boatmen on the Styx) on one trip, and on the return, it may take a couple of days. Planes shift and drift and are spatially infinite, divided by metaphor and metaphysics rather than mapped boundaries.

Spoiler: tangent to the thread at this point

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The problem is, if the Lady goes around giving quests or depending on the inhabitants of Sigil to get things done, it's sort of like Elminster walking up to a party of Lv3 characters and tasking them to save the world. Sure, its something that she could do, but: why does she care about this thing getting done, why does she care about the PCs being the ones to do it, and if she cares why doesn't she simply do it herself?

The Lady has to be really overpowered in order to make Sigil work in a setting with lots of deities who'd want to grab it. But at the same time, that only works because she doesn't really have desires - or at least, whatever she wants is so alien that it doesn't really matter. If she wants things on the same playing field as mortals and gods then she becomes overbearing, because with the level of power she's given she could just reach out and take whatever she wants. So if you give her desires and have her use mortals to accomplish them, she's just another petty god.

...I'm not disagreeing. Her only known desires are "Not being worshipped, no gods allowed, nobody messes with the dabus, keep Sigil stable." At least, she kills or mazes anyone who acts contrary to those things. Don't have her hand out quests; have the threat of her intervening motivate the party to act--say, to resolve faction tensions before a war/riot breaks out and she kills the whole faction responsible and all the rioters too. At no point in this scenario does the party interact with her unless they fail and are around for the fallout when she kills everyone. It's like stopping a nuke from going off--the ICBM doesn't give you a quest, it falls on a city that you happen to like and turns it to glass, unless you remove the conditions that will cause it to be fired in the first place. Make more sense now?

Or in the example everyone's flipping out over, you have a dabus telling the players to do something or she'll kill them, have the dabus be either lying (getting them to do something for that dabus' own purposes by using its association with the Lady as a bluff; abusing its authority, so to speak) or an outright fake (disguise, shapeshifter, illusion, etc., etc)., then reveal later that the Lady didn't have any involvement (because you're beneath her notice as an inscrutable force of nature even gods fear, etc.). Say it's "go kill this guy." The players will probably ask why she doesn't just do it, like with the Eleminster problem, exactly as you say. That's good, either they'll figure out they're being had, and then possibly try to figure out why they're being had, and unravel the murder plot; or they'll remember asking it when the reveal comes, after they're elbow deep in an innocent's blood and being chased to the ends of the multiverse by their victim's associates while a mage who prepared Silent Image that day sits back and laughs, having not only gotten a rival killed but also thrown the authorities off his trail. You've used the threat of her to move the party, without making her an ounce less inscrutable.

[Eldan]

Her Serenity is powerful in Her domain, Sigil. She can't, as far as anyone has found out so far, do anything outside of it.

[JAL_1138]

Her Serenity is powerful in Her domain, Sigil. She can't, as far as anyone has found out so far, do anything outside of it.

Except kill the god Aoskar, who merely had a temple there and was not, IIRC, present himself.

...best not to chance it.

[Sith_Happens]

Yup. The question is if you want that world. Usually, in Planescape, we call that world "The Abyss".

Really? I call it "Nine out of ten D&D settings."

[BWR]

Except kill the god Aoskar, who merely had a temple there and was not, IIRC, present himself.

...best not to chance it.

He was in the Cage. That's why the Lady could kill him.

[Anonymouswizard]

Really? I call it "Nine out of ten D&D settings."

Ah, but Planescape is setting number ten

[JAL_1138]

He was in the Cage. That's why the Lady could kill him.

...I recall him having a temple there that was destroyed mid-sermon but I'm not sure he was actually in Sigil himself.

[BWR]

Well, On Hallowed Ground lists his home as the Astral (because he's dead), but has Sigil in parentheses, which indicates where he resided before death.