Planescape Enhancing Turn of Fortune's Wheel

[Raunalyn]

I really enjoyed some of the previous threads that offered ideas to enhance an possibly improve some of the other WoTC Adventures. Considering that Planescape is one of my favorite settings, I'd like to offer a similar thread to brainstorm ideas to possibly improve and enhance the setting's introductory module, "Turn of Fortune's Wheel."

So, I will start with a brief assessment of the module. Warning, there are spoilers ahead.

Spoiler

The premise behind the module is that the player characters are "victims" of a multiversal glitch that prevents them from dying. Whenever a character dies, an alternate version of them soon appears and can continue the adventure. This means that at the start of the adventure, the players create 3 separate characters that all share some physical or mental trait, but can be different classes or even different species. These characters will all level together, and the players can rotate these characters in the case of death.

The party awakens in The Mortuary, where they meet the floating skull Morte. While it's a cool callback to Planescape: Torment, the only thing he's there to do is tell them where they are. The party must then proceed to escape The Mortuary and reach the streets of Sigil.

Once out in the open, the group gets a brief tour of the city's wards before they run into a troupe of Harmonium, who want to arrest the party for crimes against reality. The group must either fight, flee, or get captured. Either way, they eventually are rail-roaded toward the casino of a Yugoloth named Shemeska. The group can explore and play around in the casino, but eventually they meet the owner, who offers a deal to the party; go to the Outlands and search for a former accountant, a Modron named R04M, and in return, she will look into what is going on with the Characters' glitches. When they accept, she offers them a gate key to the Outlands.

The group emerges and begin their exploration, coming across a strange castle that is under attack by fiends. If the group helps with clearing out the castle, they discover that it can walk, and the owner of the castle offers to let the party use it as a base of operations as they explore. They also learn that R04M had been here and left a broken Mimir (a skull that stores information). The castle's owner suggests that if the players were to repair the Mimir, they could possibly trace R04M's steps and track him down. To repair the Mimir, they must go to 7 gate towns and observe and report on the gates they find there.

This chapter then really opens up, allowing the players to choose which gate town to visit, each providing their own set of cool little side adventures. Eventually, the players restore the Mimir and come to the conclusion that R04M is likely near the Spire. Tracking him down, the group comes to Dendradis, a city near the Spire that is ruled by beings of absolute neutrality known as the Rilmani. After meeting one of these creatures named Ascetelis, who offers to help the party find R04M. The group enters the Spire so that they can finish tracking down the wayward modron.

Upon finally discovering R04M, Asceletis attacks them; as a being of pure neutrality, she recognizes that the party, along with R04M are threats to the multiverse, so therefore, the Rilmani have requested that the party be destroyed. R04M then informs the group that he was a member of the Great Modron March, which normally occurs every 289 years, but for some reason began early last cycle. R04M explains that he was captured by Shemeska, and that she was trying to disassemble him. She has several modron captured in her casino.

Upon returning to Sigil and the casino, the party finds a secret area, where they must eventually meet up with Shemeska again. Here, they discover what happened to their characters; because of the disruption of the Great Modron March, there were glitches occuring throughout the multiverse, and for some reason, the party were victims of this. Each of the party members had run afoul of Shemeska in their previous lives, and she had attempted to kill them, only to discover that they kept coming back to life. So, she imprisoned their original forms, only to find them resurrected in new, weaker forms. She then dumped them in the Mortuary in the hopes that they would get lost in Sigil.

At this point, the party springs from level 10 to level 17. They learn that the missing Modrons are in the realm of the beholder god Gzemnid. The glitches are occuring due to the fact that the Modrons there are experiencing a collective belief that the Outlands is shifting toward evil and disorder. The party must traverse the Tyrant's Spire, find the missing Modron, and download the data from the Mimir they collected to the Modron leader X01 to restore order to the Multiverse.

Ok...I do have a lot of problems with the story here. While there are some good bones, there's some story elements that don't make a lot of sense. Why are the players the only ones affected by the glitch? Shemeska's motivations are weak (she wants to use the Modrons to start a new Multiversal war so that she can sell weapons to both sides), and her reasons for "helping" the party are even weaker. While the adventures in the Outlands are pretty cool, it feels almost disconnected as it only means that the party continues to follow the MacGuffin.

So, in my next post, I will outline some of the changes I would like to make, and I would love to hear your thoughts as well.

 

[Raunalyn]

The Glitch: Why does it only affect the players?

My recommendation here is to say that it DOESN'T just affect the players. In fact, one thing I'm thinking about doing is introducing a villain to the party that is also being affected by the glitch...wouldn't it be cool for the players to meet the villain, defeat them in a grand battle, and then meet them again several chapters later in a different body?

Shemeska's Motivations:

I am still not sure how I would go about changing Shemeska's motivations. One thought I had was to use the characters from a previous adventure (I ran Out of the Abyss to pretty high level, and I'm currently running a higher level version of Light of Xaryxis) as the imprisoned higher level versions of the characters, but I have to think of a way they cross Shemeska.

The adventure is rail-roady...extremely so. The majority of the adventure is the party following the MacGuffin, and while the Outland adventures are not bad, I think being led around by the nose will be problematic (at least it will be for my group). I'm working on coming up with different ideas to provide the illusion that the players have more agency here.

 

[Zaukrie]

I agree with your big three issues here.....so I am going to make the glitch / whatever start effecting everything around Sigil....but NPCs will have to clue the PCs in, since the PCs don't know what is right or wrong....

The PC glitch is specific to being re-born, because the universe wants them to fix the problem, and the level 17 PC is a multi-class pc of their three incarnations.

I'm probably removing Shemeska as the instigator, and making it someone else. Can steal some of the end stuff, but very likely rewiriting that part.

The railroady part of moving from town to town? I don't know how to fix that part yet.....but it is the whole point, to see the gate-towns. I think, think, there needs to be McGuffins all over the Outlands and Gate-towns and the PCs go where they will, to find out what they will...not sure yet.

 

[pukunui]

This post from another thread includes links to two Reddit threads with some suggested improvements to the adventure:

It's a bunch of interesting encounters strung together by a story full of holes. There are a couple of posts on reddit trying to fix said holes and make it... make sense.
If your players don't take notes or ask questions and are just along for a ride, then you could just run it as-is if the holes don't bother you.

 

[pukunui]

I'm not sure I like the double whammy of the rilmani assassin's betrayal hard on the heels of R04M's reveal of Shemeshka's betrayal. That just feels unnecessary. When I run this, I might leave out the assassination attempt - or maybe make it so that someone (Shemeshka?) is blackmailing the rilmani into attempting an assassination ... or maybe there's a different NPC who shows up to do the assassinating instead of the rilmani. I dunno ... it'll be ages until I get to run this, so I don't have to sort it out now, but it's definitely something to think about.

Another comment is that I feel the whole Faunel section needs a bit of a rework. As written, it's just "talk to NPC A, who tells you to talk to NPC B, who tells you to talk to NPC C, who will only give you the information you seek with a bribe of some kind". It's just stringing the PCs (and the players) along. It could do with some more nuance and/or more options so it's less linear. If I was playing this adventure as a player, I'm fairly certain I'd find this part extremely annoying, so as a DM, I'd definitely want to spice it up somehow. Perhaps the simplest thing to do would be to give the players the option of which faction leader to talk to first, and then give each faction leader reasons to point the PC towards the other two, so the PCs have more agency and can maybe actually negotiate. Like maybe the albatross guy knows that the elephant lady has the magic statue and tells the PCs that if they can get it for him, he'll tell them what they want to know, but when they go talk to the elephant lady, she says she'll only give it to them if they go talk to the tiger guy and make sure he isn't the one killing the animals. Something like that!

 

[Space Cat]

I'm not sure I like the double whammy of the rilmani assassin's betrayal hard on the heels of R04M's reveal of Shemeshka's betrayal. That just feels unnecessary. When I run this, I might leave out the assassination attempt - or maybe make it so that someone (Shemeshka?) is blackmailing the rilmani into attempting an assassination ... or maybe there's a different NPC who shows up to do the assassinating instead of the rilmani. I dunno ... it'll be ages until I get to run this, so I don't have to sort it out now, but it's definitely something to think about.

Another comment is that I feel the whole Faunel section needs a bit of a rework. As written, it's just "talk to NPC A, who tells you to talk to NPC B, who tells you to talk to NPC C, who will only give you the information you seek with a bribe of some kind". It's just stringing the PCs (and the players) along. It could do with some more nuance and/or more options so it's less linear. If I was playing this adventure as a player, I'm fairly certain I'd find this part extremely annoying, so as a DM, I'd definitely want to spice it up somehow. Perhaps the simplest thing to do would be to give the players the option of which faction leader to talk to first, and then give each faction leader reasons to point the PC towards the other two, so the PCs have more agency and can maybe actually negotiate. Like maybe the albatross guy knows that the elephant lady has the magic statue and tells the PCs that if they can get it for him, he'll tell them what they want to know, but when they go talk to the elephant lady, she says she'll only give it to them if they go talk to the tiger guy and make sure he isn't the one killing the animals. Something like that!

Hi! I also don't like the rilmani betrayal. They are neutral and I think it would be cooler if they helped set the plot in motion and supported the PCs in an effort to defeat Shemeshka and whomever else. I'm not certain how I'm going to revise the adventure BUT I was thinking about the rilmani Jemorille the Exile in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. In that book, it describes Jemorille as a powerful rilmani operating many schemes and plots - one of which is a tiefling alter ego known as 'Colcook'. Colcook is one of Shemeshka's 'groomer-guards' and she sends him out on missions not knowing he's secretly spying on her. There are details about him in both the Jemorille and Shemeshka write-ups in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil.

Changes I'm thinking about making (tentative/super rough ideas): I think I'm going to have Colcook replace Farrow as the agent Shemeshka sent to get the PCs. Colcook would also be involved at the end instead of Ascetelis. Since Turn of Fortune's Wheel seems like it was inspired by the Great Modron March, I'm trying to think of way to tie them together. Shemeshka is a fiend, the last march was early to help Tenebrous locate the Wand of Orcus, perhaps the plot is to find RO4M, who knows where the wand is. I think it would be cool if they have to deal with X01, as a fiend-influenced Hexton modron mini-boss. I think then the PCs confront Shemeshka who admits she was manipulated/pressured by Tenebrous (stats are Planar Incarnate) still trying to get the wand and is the ultimate BBEG.

 

[Zaukrie]

The more I think on it, the less I want Shemeshka to be the BBEG at all......I just want to rewrite the ending completely.

If you are running it, how are you adjudicating the whole "if the description is good" part?

 

[Raunalyn]

The more I think on it, the less I want Shemeshka to be the BBEG at all......I just want to rewrite the ending completely.

If you are running it, how are you adjudicating the whole "if the description is good" part?

I am also not going to have Shemeshka be the BBEG. I am pondering having the BBEG being a glitched NPC, but not sure how I'm going to do that yet.

I am thinking I'm going to have the story play out with a few modifications, but when the players finally reach Shemeshka and discover their imprisoned bodies, she will instead tell them that their souls are confined in the nine hells, which will segue nicely into Chains of Asmodeus.

 

[Charlaquin]

“You wake up in the Mortuary in Sigil with no memory of how you got there, and whenever you die, an alternate-universe version of you shows up to take your place” is an incredible adventure hook, but then the actual adventure is just… Sorry, your exposition-bot won’t work until you’ve visited all of the gate towns and flailed around in them for a bit. And after that, the payoff is that the exposition-bot tells you the most basic of information about the modron march, and adds that the last one happened early “for teneberous reasons,” and that’s apparently why you keep resurrecting? The Shameshka reveal seems like it’s supposed to be a shocking twist, but it’s completely unearned. Like, the players only actually interact with the character once before the reveal, so they really have no reason to care when it turns out the Arcanaloth was a bad guy.

I think the best use of this adventure would be to disassemble it and use it for parts. Like I said, the hook is great. The casino is awesome and could be tossed into any adventure in Sigil as a point of interest. Any of the gate town sections could be repurposed for an Outlands sandbox. And mimirs are a cool idea, and a broken one is a nifty tool for giving players lore a bit at a time. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts here, so just break the parts up and use them separately wherever they seem appropriate.

 

[darjr]

I'm OK with the story. I think it's fine.

What I will do is at the end of chapter 1 I'm going to work in a lot of shenanigans inside of Sigil. When I ran Dragon Heist I regretted not hanging out more in Waterdeep. I won't make that mistake again. There are a few things I'll nab to help me. Encounters Enhanced from dmsguild for one for a bunch of little encounters and hooks. I'll use Forge of Foes to create any potential combat antagonists. Also Shops Ins and Taverns on the DMSGuild.

Also I might extend chapter one with the mortuary.

I'm looking at Guildmasters Guide Ravnica too, see if I can steal some stuff from there.

Oh and the Train heist. In fact after chapter 13 the Train Heist will be the way they get back to fortunes wheeel. A particular fiends name is a portal key into Fortunes Wheel.

they might also stumble upon someones homestead within the outlands and have a chance at a game of cards.