Planescape

[Silva]

I'm a big fan of this setting, but never played in it (except if you count the amazing Torment videogame, which I finished 3 times hehe). I have a ton of books for it here, and love the aesthetics. My only criticism is that the books are excessively verbose (I wish Greg Stolze or Neil Gaiman had written it) and the official adventures are not really good in conveying the setting crazy surreal existential potential (the videogame is much better at this). Also, I think all that 2e AD&D crunch present in the original box (spell effects per plane, etc) is dead weight and could be discarded without remorse. In fact, most mechanic bits present in the line leaves a lot to be desired (and that includes the factional powers from Factol Manifesto, imo).

That said, I'm opening this so we can talk about the setting. Why do you like it? What do you consider good advice for playing in it? How was your actual play experience in it? Etc.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Obligatory links to Afroakuma's old Planescape threads.

I like it because it's full of outlandish stuff and you can interact with all of it, even at lowish levels. Plus it's got all the fun of a recently created mythology, with a lot of humour.

[Darth Ultron]

It's one of the best settings. I like it for it's Other World feeling and Quirky Style.

The Adventures are OK, but don't stand out much.

Planescape came, sadly as TRS was both publishing way too many settings and other books...and was starting to spiral downward.

The 2E crunch for Planescape was great, and really made the planes feel alien, exotic and dangerous. After 3E, the planes are a bit pointless as they are ''just like Earth". I still use the 2E crunch like planes for my game.

Planesacape games are always fun.

[Kaptin Keen]

Of all the settings I love to read, discard and reinvent in my own version - Planescape is the one I love reading, discarding and reinventing the most. It's also the one from which I actually use the most of the original content.

[Yora]

I was just reading in Planes of Chaos this week and thinking how frustrating it is to have this big world that has a lot of amazing stuff in it, but it just seeming really difficult to actually use for a game. As written, it seems almost unplayable, because there isn't any hints of what play in this setting might actually look like. Who are the PCs and what do they do?

[Beleriphon]

I was just reading in Planes of Chaos this week and thinking how frustrating it is to have this big world that has a lot of amazing stuff in it, but it just seeming really difficult to actually use for a game. As written, it seems almost unplayable, because there isn't any hints of what play in this setting might actually look like. Who are the PCs and what do they do?

That was Planescape's biggest problem. It had awesome stuff, and no direction about what to do. Planescape had hints, and the Factions were great if you could weave them into a game, but the setting material didn't give much in the way of advice. Eberron has advice about what to do, just from the list of inspirational material. Forgotten Realms is a largely kitchen sink fantasy setting with enough back story to just go with it, Greyhawk is a setting with political intrigue and dungeon delving baked in, and other more esoteric settings had clear thematic structures which could play to the type of game and goals they setup and encourage.

Planescape had clear themes, but never had clear goals laid out. It many ways it was too broad for a game and takes a very narrow focus to make it work. Planescape: Torment is my go to for a narrow focus on a game. Yes the protagonist is different than the normal PCs, but there are clear goals, clear themes and a reason to play the game. It runs on Planescape's completely gonzo tropes, but it makes them relevant to the game you're playing right now.

And I think that's the setting's biggest failure, it never answered the question" "How do I use this book?"

[Mechalich]

Planescape is gloriously weird, with all the awesomeness and all the trouble attendant to that. it is also stupidly huge, which creates its own problems. In fact, it's not really one setting its closer to forty-ish settings networked together in the form of each plane + demiplanes + Sigil. That's too much. Generally, even if you base your party in Sigil, you only want to use one or two other planes. Torment is actually a good example here: you only go to a couple of demiplanes, Baator, and Carceri in the course of the game.

This means that, in order to use Planescape, the GM needs to do a lot of work putting together the dynamics of whichever plane they wish to highlight for their campaign, and most of the planes in Planescape are not sufficiently detailed for the purpose of conducting adventures out of the box. In fact arguably only Sigil, the Outlands, Baator and certain portions of the Abyss actually are. The published materials, outside of those describing Sigil, are mostly presenting ideas, background, and campaign hooks. Significant GM labor is required to knit things together.

Who are the PCs and what do they do?

Planescape is a setting full of immensely powerful ideological (and non-ideological, especially in the Inner Planes factions) factions. However, these factions are generally extremely inflexible (yes including the chaotic ones). They have one way of trying to get things to work and if that doesn't work they can really only do one of two things, try plan A again, only harder, or get someone else with an alternate viewpoint to do it for them. That's the PCs - quasi-independent agents with just enough flexibility to operate in the cracks of the cosmic system that they can lever changes into happening if all goes well. And of course the PCs will have their own ideologies such that, when a rare moment of free choice does arise, they have to consider what this would mean and whether or not they should do it in addition to whether or not they can.

So the GM needs to pick two factions, one to support the PCs and one to oppose them, alongside some goal for the opposition faction that the PCs are in a position to oppose. Now the glory of Planescape is that these factions can be anyone for any reason. Embrace the weirdness. Planescape doesn't have tired kings or crotchety wizards as quest givers, it has megalomaniac Ethergaunts, bizarre hive intelligences, mutant dragons, reformed demons, chaos monks, and anything else you can possibly think of. Additionally, in Planescape 'you cannot achieve victory through force of arms.' Yes the PCs will occasional have to fight people, it's a combat game, and there are guards to beat down, traps to break, and nasty predators from alternate realities to face, but the overall goal is about changing some material aspect of the planes, not simply punching evil in the face, because there are lots of people more powerful than you will ever be already doing that.

Potential Planescape plots range from the extremely simple: the Fiends are trying to build a superweapon to destroy Mount Celestia, to the maddeningly esoteric: the wizard is going to mass-release basilisks into Dis so he can corner the interplanar market in gargoyle statuary. It is functionally impossible to be too crazy.

[Beleriphon]

Potential Planescape plots range from the extremely simple: the Fiends are trying to build a superweapon to destroy Mount Celestia, to the maddeningly esoteric: the wizard is going to mass-release basilisks into Dis so he can corner the interplanar market in gargoyle statuary. It is functionally impossible to be too crazy.

I like the idea of planting a rose on the 782nd layer of the Abyss while playing a heavy metal power ballad because... THE POWER OF LOVE!

Throw in Brutal Legend vibes for style points and you have a game.

[Darth Ultron]

Who are the PCs and what do they do?

Well, this is more of a Game Play of the Time, sort of thing.

Before 2000 RPGs, even more so D&D, were much more about the setting being just the bare bones to start from, not step by step instructions of ''what to do". This came up in your campagin setting thread a couple weeks ago, if you remember, a lot of people said that a setting book ''must have hooks" in it to tell them ''what to do". People wanted to open the setting book to page 11 and read "there are werewolves in the Red Forest...have your characters go kill them".

Of course, this is also from the time when most players did not have a character with a massive multi page back story, character wants and needs, and personal whims that they wanted worked into the game and played out.

[JNAProductions]

Well, this is more of a Game Play of the Time, sort of thing.

Before 2000 RPGs, even more so D&D, were much more about the setting being just the bare bones to start from, not step by step instructions of ''what to do". This came up in your campagin setting thread a couple weeks ago, if you remember, a lot of people said that a setting book ''must have hooks" in it to tell them ''what to do". People wanted to open the setting book to page 11 and read "there are werewolves in the Red Forest...have your characters go kill them".

Of course, this is also from the time when most players did not have a character with a massive multi page back story, character wants and needs, and personal whims that they wanted worked into the game and played out.

So you hate roll playing, but don’t want characters to have backstories or goals or quirks or anything?

[Tvtyrant]

If I was running a Planescape campaign I would probably go one of two approaches.

1. I would do a lot with Sigil as a politics heavy story. Don't go out of the city at all, the group is dealing with a series of internal conflicts. Sigil is cosmopolitan enough you don't need to add more stuff.

2. Futurama RPG style. You work for a Merchant-Mage of Sigil who wants you to either fetch things or take deliveries to other planes. This is basically an excuse to go everywhere on various campaigns and would explain why there are entries for the mineral plane or negative energy plane.

[Darth Ultron]

So you hate roll playing, but don’t want characters to have backstories or goals or quirks or anything?

Well, I'm not a fan of the Modern Way. Even more so the players that demand it's the Only Way.

The main things are the over attachment that players have to characters: "It took me forever to make my character and they are special and so nothing can ever happen to them!"

And the demand that the players whims, mostly the twelve page backstory, MUST be part of the game every second and have the character in a big spotlight.

[ahyangyi]

So you hate roll playing, but don’t want characters to have backstories or goals or quirks or anything?

The old school gaming style is different from both modern roleplaying and roll-playing. It was a game of mundaneness, high casualty, and unoptimized builds (because you rolled the stats), from what I heard about them.

And yes, I have a negative impression about the old school games, since their roleplaying part is superseded by modern TRPG, and the dungeon delving part superseded by modern Roguelike TV games.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is, in particular, free and fun. Or if you want more old-schoolness you can play Nethack. But there's no reason you go to a game table to play a dungeon delve with no interesting back story with you.

[Darth Ultron]

The old school gaming style is different from both modern roleplaying and roll-playing. It was a game of mundaneness, high casualty, and unoptimized builds (because you rolled the stats), from what I heard about them.

Well, that is the most popular often quoted style. But not the only one.

In a general sense classic D&D had less rules, for everything. Just about no ''crunch" other then combat. so anything else had to be done by role playing.

[Fable Wright]

2. Futurama RPG style. You work for a Merchant-Mage of Sigil who wants you to either fetch things or take deliveries to other planes. This is basically an excuse to go everywhere on various campaigns and would explain why there are entries for the mineral plane or negative energy plane.

Aaand sold. How hard would to be to get Hasbro and Matt Groening to make this?

[NichG]

Planescape is what got me into the hobby, but I never actually played it in its original form. I'd read bits of weird content from the mimir site and try to piece together what the heck this thing was. More so than any modern setting I can think of, I associate Planescape with the feeling of wanting to play in it so as to proactively explore the mysteries and contradictions presented in the written setting material. Probably in part because I'd never gotten a chance to do so as a player before GMing it myself.

That said, I tend to think that D&D (all editions) is a terrible fit for the setting. Something like 7th Sea seems closer, as those systems allow characters to be less combat-focused (and make it less suicidal to not be combat focused but still adventure around the planes). In general I think Planescape works much better as a setting when brute force is strictly off the table, to make it so that engaging with the nature of the plane one is on provides the bulk of a character's agency.

I did a '7thscape' adaptation once that I think worked pretty well...

[Eldan]

Good point, actually. I've also seen fan adaptations for Fate of the planes (Fate) and Unknown Factions (Unknown Armies) that worked quite well.

But it depends a bit on what you want. Most of those are for low-level play, where the player are mundane people stumbling around in a crazy world. But it works just as well to have the players being quite powerful.

[LibraryOgre]

Back in the day, we mostly used Planescape as a supplemental setting for higher-level play. Sometime in the mid-levels, you'd probably go to Ravenloft; at the high levels, you'd likely go to the planes.

[Florian]

So you hate roll playing, but don’t want characters to have backstories or goals or quirks or anything?

You're thinking way too "modern" about this. Part of the "old-school appeal" is the fact that the campaign world is at the front and center of the game and the characters are part of it, created to be played in a way that facilitates engaging with the actual content that is provided.

For example, if you lean more towards the "adventure game" roots, than as a player, you have the duty to create a character that is able and willing to engage more or less anything, maybe with multiple gms and tables in mind. Character, Backstories and such are nice, as long as they don't get in the way. What you don't want, especially when playing one-shots, are s**t like the "Reluctant Hero" types or answering the question "What motivation does my character have to go on this adventure?".

When we're talking about the "sandbox" roots, which is mostly based on free roaming exploration, then having goals, motivation and such to actively seek to fulfill as part of the game is a fundamental necessarily.

Ok, on Planescape: Very important and often overlooked by people who came into the hobby with 3E: Planescape is a great setting, but (A)D&D is the wrong rules system for it, because it has the very strong core message of "Personal Power Means Nothing".

It´s actually funny, but despite being full frontal weirdness, it´s actually quite close to Lord of the Rings in that it actually allows you to play the "little people" that will come thru and carry the day.
It´s hard to pull off, but one of the best approaches is a 50/50 mix of sandbox exploration and story mode. I think the best example is actually the Great Modern March campaign, which is broken down into multiple seemingly unconnected adventures that you, as gm, should include nonchalantly as part of an entirely different campaign for full effect.

[NichG]

Good point, actually. I've also seen fan adaptations for Fate of the planes (Fate) and Unknown Factions (Unknown Armies) that worked quite well.

But it depends a bit on what you want. Most of those are for low-level play, where the player are mundane people stumbling around in a crazy world. But it works just as well to have the players being quite powerful.

I think the key thing in my mind is, it's fine to have extremely powerful and influential PCs in a Planescape game, but the nature of that power and influence should operate in such a way that it acknowledges the setting elements rather than via deleting or overriding the setting elements. Someone going to Baator and using their mastery of forgery to alter the Pact Primeval is one thing, but someone going to Baator and cutting the Gordian knot of the infernal bureaucracy by just killing wave after wave of infernal enforcer is sort of missing the point. So ideally, the system should present ways for characters to become very powerful via deepening their connection with the setting (I'd imagine for example a system chock full of mythological transformative experiences, pacts, bits of cosmic lore which carry power in their own right, quirks of planar geography, magical locations, etc across the planes that one could make use of in order to gain agency), rather than by having a horizon of power beyond which players can expect to become able to ignore the various planar details.

One of the examples in the old 2e stuff was that on Limbo, there is a very small chance for someone's illusion spells to become permanently real. So you can imagine even low level characters going and making illusions of various things they can imagine as sources of power in order to try to exploit that effect and achieve a moment of ascension.

[Silva]

Well, I think most styles work with the setting (sandboxes, story-driven, "modern" character-driven play, etc) as long as the group go CRAZY! You don't play a thief, you play f*cking Garrett the Masterthief out in the planes robbing and making a joke of the God of Thieves to take his place in the pantheon; or a Conan-like barbarian from Athas seeking a God of fertility to carry to his world even if he needs to drag It there by the neck. If you play Planescape as muh bearded dwarf with hammer n947, you're playing it wrong.

That said, I agree D&D rules don't add much to it. I think the ideal ruleset should challenge the characters convictions through moral dilemmas, and the consequences that entail. More or less what Torment videogame does. From the top of my head, Pendragon' passions and traits could be used here, as would Burning Wheel's Beliefs, Instincts and Athas, Fate with the conscious choice and challenging of Aspects, Unknown Armies with tailored Obsessions, or some Powered by the Apocalypse hack with some devious basic moves.

Obligatory links to Afroakuma's old Planescape threads.

I like it because it's full of outlandish stuff and you can interact with all of it, even at lowish levels. Plus it's got all the fun of a recently created mythology, with a lot of humour.

This is AMAZING stuff! Thanks.

[Arbane]

I was just reading in Planes of Chaos this week and thinking how frustrating it is to have this big world that has a lot of amazing stuff in it, but it just seeming really difficult to actually use for a game. As written, it seems almost unplayable, because there isn't any hints of what play in this setting might actually look like. Who are the PCs and what do they do?

I'd argue that's one of the bigger problems with AD&D's cosmology - for a game with plane-hopping, entirely too many of the planes will KILL YOU DEAD if you go there without first preparing like NASA making a moon-landing. Yes, it's 'realistic' (well, 'commonsensical', for planes based on the classical 4 elements anyway), but it's not very gameable.

[Silva]

I'd argue that's one of the bigger problems with AD&D's cosmology - for a game with plane-hopping, entirely too many of the planes will KILL YOU DEAD if you go there without first preparing like NASA making a moon-landing. Yes, it's 'realistic' (well, 'commonsensical', for planes based on the classical 4 elements anyway), but it's not very gameable.

Haha true. And this counts even for some apparently harmless planes. Ie: Elysium and it's highly addicting vibrancy that eventually entraps visitors and make them petitioners.

[Mechalich]

I'd argue that's one of the bigger problems with AD&D's cosmology - for a game with plane-hopping, entirely too many of the planes will KILL YOU DEAD if you go there without first preparing like NASA making a moon-landing. Yes, it's 'realistic' (well, 'commonsensical', for planes based on the classical 4 elements anyway), but it's not very gameable.

This is, in large part, a legacy effect. The D&D cosmology was designed all the way back in 1e, with the planes as a backdrop that you could only visit, if at all, with some really high level spells. The magic needed to survive on any of the planes was consequently well within reach of someone able to cast Plane Shift in the first place. The Planescape setting acknowledged this in the primes/planars divide. Primes don't really understand the planes and have to try and brute force every problem with magic. Planars, by contrast, no all sorts of dirty tricks to get around established problems. They also know that the planes are infinitely big. As a result, even if you can only survive in 0.01% of a plane, there's still a ton of interesting places to visit there.

That being said, it is hard to survive most of the planes at low-levels, even without environmental issues. For instance, if you're below a reasonable level a visit to any of the lower planes is simply going to result in the PCs being dominated/eaten by even relatively minor fiends. From a 3.X perspective planar adventures function best around levels 7-12, which actually works as a nice jump up since Prime Material adventures function best in the 1-6 ranges.

However, certain planes are more accommodating to lower level characters, including a number of the inner planes. The Ethereal, of course, is ideal, allowing the GM to generate numerous demiplanes arranged to taste.

[Silva]

Something I really really like are the setting's aesthetics, both in the twisted-faery-tale-like Diterlizzi art, and also in the overall gothic/punk/"new weird" vibes from Ruppel and Knutson as seen on small ilos, maps, icons, textures and color palette. That Lady of Pain big image in the core's GM screen is emblematic to this, I think.

Edit: this one..

Spoiler

Show

I understand part of this visual ID became the norm for D&D 3E and it's "dungeon punk", dropping definitely the classic fantasy aesthetics of previous editions. Makes sense sayin Planescape was an influence in this?

[Yora]

I had not made the connection, but 3.5e Wayne Reynolds art seems very much like a straight continuation of that style.

[Beleriphon]

Well, that is the most popular often quoted style. But not the only one.

In a general sense classic D&D had less rules, for everything. Just about no ''crunch" other then combat. so anything else had to be done by role playing.

Sort of. The original D&D rules generally assumed you were dungeon delving and that was the motivation: cash, money, jewels, prizes, maybe some fame, but mostly fortune. Most of the rules involved stabbing things to take its stuff, or sneaking paste it to take its stuff. Essentially they only covered what the assumptions of the game was going to do. Otherwise, the rules were built around late 60s/ early 70s understanding of history and Gygax's/Arneson's views of reasonableness for different situations that were eventually codified into the rules at some point.

In terms of Planescape it is a pretty substantial departure from the tone and expected game play for the D&D settings up until that point. Most of them still revolved around dungeons, killing dudes for their stuff, and gain treasure. The game was well designed to accomplish this, and radical departures like Birthright made it very clear what the players were doing and had new rules to support those new goals. Planescape however made it clear that stabbing dudes as a solution was not going to work (if only because you can't stab ideas) and that dungeons probably didn't factor into the game very much. In many ways Planescape was two products: 1) a setting useable from level 1 for new characters and 2) an update to the planar structure developed until that point for existing high level characters. On the later it succeeds because it really all you need are more monsters and the rules to operate on the planes, which Planescape offered in spades. For first level characters it didn't do as well because it never did a good job of telling the players or the DM what the core idea behind Planescape was. The books said what it wasn't about, but never gave any alternative to what Planescape was about. Just saying "the planes" wasn't a good answer, since D&D games aren't about places, they are about what the players do in the game. It isn't even about "hand holding" at this point, even Gygax's first D&D booklets told the players what the game was about!

I had not made the connection, but 3.5e Wayne Reynolds art seems very much like a straight continuation of that style.

You mean thick ankle, pointy foot upfront Wayne Reyolds? I'm not sure I see the link at all between the styles. I could see similarities between Todd Lockwood's style and Planescape, but not Reynolds.

[Mechalich]

In terms of Planescape it is a pretty substantial departure from the tone and expected game play for the D&D settings up until that point. Most of them still revolved around dungeons, killing dudes for their stuff, and gain treasure. The game was well designed to accomplish this, and radical departures like Birthright made it very clear what the players were doing and had new rules to support those new goals. Planescape however made it clear that stabbing dudes as a solution was not going to work (if only because you can't stab ideas) and that dungeons probably didn't factor into the game very much. In many ways Planescape was two products: 1) a setting useable from level 1 for new characters and 2) an update to the planar structure developed until that point for existing high level characters. On the later it succeeds because it really all you need are more monsters and the rules to operate on the planes, which Planescape offered in spades. For first level characters it didn't do as well because it never did a good job of telling the players or the DM what the core idea behind Planescape was. The books said what it wasn't about, but never gave any alternative to what Planescape was about. Just saying "the planes" wasn't a good answer, since D&D games aren't about places, they are about what the players do in the game. It isn't even about "hand holding" at this point, even Gygax's first D&D booklets told the players what the game was about!

Planescape was supposed to be about the PCs picking ideologies and trying to bend the planes collectively closer towards the goals of those ideologies. The problem was twofold. First it was highly unlikely that you could talk a group into all picking a single faction or sect and many of the factions did not play well with others. Second, many of the factions they came up with weren't really very invested in the 'go adventuring!' gameplay that D&D supports, which meant that the PCs needed a fair bit of railroading to get them onto any sort of adventure path (Planescape: Torment also does this, the Nameless One spends the entire game being railroaded by his past).

To make it work you kind of have to pare down the available options. A party where all the PCs belonged to closely aligned factions operating on one or two closely aligned planes could be prevented with adventure hooks and be expected to follow them in a reasonable way, but it requires the DM to put their foot down hard during chargen. This is actually similar to the issues with Mage: The Ascension (which shares at least some DNA with Planescape and which there is a conversion to run Planescape with).

[Mordaedil]

I mostly know of Planescape from the Manuel of the Planes printed for 3e, but I love how every plane is it's own world in a sense, with limitless adventure possibilities just in that contained space. Some are extremely dangerous by just their nature like the elemental planes, even ones you wouldn't really suspect to be so like the plane of positive energy, and going to Hell is strangely a more positive experience than you'd expect. While not extremely recommended, it isn't that unusual to strike up a conversation with a devil and get something out of it without it costing you your soul, albeit how verifiable any information you get is, is more questionable. And if you want a risk-free adventuring experience, there's even a plane just for that, where you are resurrected every dawn.

There's just a lot of potential and I'd like to once do an entire adventure just leaping from plane to plane, but I am having issues figuring out how to do that from a low level.

[Florian]

There's just a lot of potential and I'd like to once do an entire adventure just leaping from plane to plane, but I am having issues figuring out how to do that from a low level.

MotP was actually really a disappointment, at least when you are a long-time player and were into Planescape when AD&D 2nd was still alive and kicking.

I quite adore the PF update of the Great Wheel cosmology, The Great Beyond, which is a lot more coherent, less monolithic and makes way more sense.

Basically, don't fall into the typical 3E thinking of the characters having to have native and inbuilt access to certain options, like Plane Shift. That doesn´t matter. There're portals, rifts and planar traveller anywhere, even if you don't want to use the Infinite Staircase as a means of travel (I don't because it is dumb). Want to get to the Dreamlands? Research which harbors regularly deals with Black Ships, hitch a ride to Leng and proceed from there. Or maybe there's a trader with a Planar Skiff who´ll make a round-trip thru certain planes and planar trading posts, who´ll let you come on board very cheap, but woe to you when you miss the departure time....