Modrons!

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

As for more modron articles: For monsters with rabid lovers and also rabid detractors which modrons seem to have, in my view it usually depends on who is on the design staff to champion them rather than anything else that determines how much support they receive. It makes all the difference between they're awesome and 'everything thinks they're silly'.

That is probably true, and generally (regardless of rabidness or not) - having a "champion" for a particular race or monster possibly leads to more interesting and better articles.

Unless it becomes some kind of Complete Book of Elves nightmare, I suppose.

 

[Klaus]

I'm basically adopting this idea for my Planescape 4e Game.

In fact, I've managed to include all the old 2e planes in my 4e mock-up and relate most of them to existing 4e planes. Only really had to add new stuff for the Mechanus/Elysium/Celestia trifecta, which isn't TOO surprising, given (especially early) 4e's focus on the places in need of beating up, rather than the places with more subtle/nonexistent threats.

[sblock=plane notes]
PLANES
You can choose a planar origin instead of/in addition to a Faction background. You can still only gain the benefit of one background, but planar origins are also prerequisites for feats, PPs, EDs, etc.
The City of Doors
Sigil is the Crossroads of the Multiverse, where all realities converge.
Sigil Background: You’ve grown up in the alleys and politics of the City of Doors, so you know your way around a few different realities.
Associated Skills: Bluff, History, Streetwise
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in Sigil.


The Mortal World
The mortal world was created by the gods, who also created the races therein. Largely considered a backwater bumpkin-ville from Sigil’s perspective.
Mortal Background: You know the layout and history and environment of the mortal world
Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, History, Nature
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are on the Mortal World.


The Hinterlands
A place of seeming mortal-world normality where things quickly get weird; a sort of all-in-everything of the planes. From here, Sigil can be seen floating above the Spire, and approaching the Spire has the effect of nullifying great powers.
The Outlands: A place within the Hinterlands that strips power from the powerful, rendering even the gods little more than mortals, and nullifying the most powerful of magick.
Hinterlands Background: You’re handy in obscure and bizarre natural environments.
Associated Skills: Arcana, Endurance, Nature
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Hinterlands.


The Astral Sea
The “place between the Planes,” a silver void above the Mortal World. The realms of the gods often float about in this place.
Astral Sea Background: You know your way around an astral skiff.
Associated Skills: History, Insight, Religion
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Astral Sea.


The Elemental Chaos (“Limbo”)
The “place before the Planes,” a roiling soup of elemental matter where creation and destruction are entwined.
Ysgard: The place of the Creation of the World, where rivers of fire support oceans of earth, and death is only temporary.
Dischordia: A place in constant flux, a map that re-arranges itself at will, that seems to enjoy frustrating people.
Limbo Background: A random assortment of elements is your home field
Associated Skills: Athletics, Endurance, History
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Elemental Chaos.


The Feywild (“Arborea”)
A plane of rampant nature and arcane magic, where everything is charged with the energies of the fey spirits that dwell within, and the primal wildness of the place.
The Beastlands: A place of primal might where all creatures become savage animals, living free and natural and independent.
Pangea: A place of elemental primitives, where intelligence and technology are destroyed, and raw martial nature reigns supreme.
Arborea Background: You know your Oak from your Yew.
Associated Skills: Arcana, Nature, Stealth
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Feywild.


The Shadowfell (“The Gray Waste”)
A plane of death and shadow magic, where souls go to receive their final judgement. A dark mirror of other worlds, distorted and abstract.
Carceri: A place where the truly hateful beings are locked away, under the auspices of immortal spirits that keep them caged.
Nether: An endless, frozen, muddy graveyard of undead that spontaneously animate.
Shadowfell Background: You’ve been around the dead. You’re not that impressed.
Associated Skills: Heal, History, Stealth
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Shadowfell.


The Abyss
A cancer at the heart of the Elemental Chaos, constantly sucking at the world above. Infinite and evil, it spawns horrors whose only interest is destruction.
Pandemonium: A place of madness and panic, where mental illness is born.
Perdition: A place of selfish apathy, where instant gratification is the norm.
Abyssal Background: Screaming demons and alien suffering is your daily commute.
Associated Skills: Athletics, Dungeoneering, Endurance
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Abyss.


The Nine Hells
A deep tear in the Astral Sea, a place for endless diabolical machinations, and a resting place of the god Asmodeus as he schemes for multiversal dominance.
Gehenna: Floating “moons” of the Nine Hells, four volcanic slopes that produce a suffering grind.
Sheol: A place sloping “downhill,” a gravitational well around the Nine Hells, where the natives are in a constant state of cold-war.
Baatorian Background: You see schemes and plots and machinations daily.
Associated Skills: Bluff, Insight, Intimidate
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Nine Hells.


Mechanus
A world at the far end of the Astral Sea, where a seal protects against the Far Realm. A great calculating engine, home of various deities of law and order that seek to understand and puzzle out the nature of the multiverse.
Acheron: An astreroid-belt-like plane filled with geometric shapes, whose armies constantly battle in a never-ending exercise of order and obedience.
Purgatory: An infinite spiral staircase, said to reach all the way to the mortal world below, of folks who dedicate themselves to their work over everything.
Mechanus Background: The whirling gears of the multiverse are yours to traverse.
Associated Skills: Arcana, Diplomacy, History
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in the Mechanus.


Celestia
A great mountain in the Astral Sea that stretches higher than infinity, challenging the truly pure and good to climb it. A place of justice and crusading goodness.
Arcadia: Fields before the mountain, where folks pursue a life of virtuous order, hoping to be seen as good and useful citizens.
K’un Lun: A mountain range where peaceful people seek inner perfection.
Celestia Background: Shining virtue is rather old hat to you.
Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight, Intimidate
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in Celestia.


Elysium
A vast field in the Astral Sea full of light and color, where the innocent and virtuous go for their afterlife reward.
Bytopia: A peaceful, rural place of rugged wilderness and fraternal cooperation.
Avalon: Misty islands in the sea that reward the virtuous with rest, and conceal powerful good magic.
Elysium Background: Idyllic beauty and peace are your home life.
Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Heal, Insight
Benefit: +1 to all skill checks when you are in Elysium.
[/sblock]

I'd stick Elysium into the Feywild, as a more "tame" version of Arborea. It's where the fairy tale heroes go to live happily everafter.

Celestia is already in the 4e cosmology. Hestavar is located there.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'd stick Elysium into the Feywild, as a more "tame" version of Arborea. It's where the fairy tale heroes go to live happily everafter.

Celestia is already in the 4e cosmology. Hestavar is located there.

Not bad ideas! I didn't stick Elysium in the Feywild since I didn't want to de-fang the Feywild that much, and wanted Elysium to function as a place where all virtuous souls go to rest (including things that would normally hate the feywild). I think I'm going to go with the "elite gated community of Good" idea, where Elysium is a plane of rest for those that did good deeds, lead virtuous lives, and were generally Great Folks, but not everyone gets to go there. You've gotta EARN your eternal rest...and those that have are not going to be interested in leaving (the Guardinals are almost as much jailers as they are protectors of that peace).

[sblock=Using the Good Planes]
The "Good Planes" have had a historical problem of not being very useful in the game because there's not a whole lot of reason to use them. Aside from a few narrow adventures, the party didn't have much of a reason to travel to Bytopia or Arcadia, or Elyisum. This is a problem we can remedy in this new layout.

Firstly, there are fewer of them. "Mashing together" some of the planes at least in name has added some underlying conflict to places that didn't have much. Arcadia being inside Celestia puts the "Law vs. Good" conflict more starkly in the face of any travelers to that mountain, and can be cause for the party to go in and beat upon some well-intentioned extremists. K'un Lun inside Celestia keeps competing philosophies in close contact, giving rise to disagreements that party members can mediate. Bytopia inside Elysium keeps the place rugged and challenging to move over (and a little monster-infested), giving ample opportunity for risky exploration and the occasional wandering beastie, while Avalon inside Elysium is a place to hide powerful artifacts or forgotten heroes who can reveal information. This makes it easy to use the conflicts of other planes when visiting the Good Planes.

Secondly, emphasizing that the planes are not based on alignment, but on a cosmological need brings more possible types of beings into the place. Celestia is not a plane of Lawful Good, it is a plane of militaristic crusades and dramatic self-sacrifice. It honors the zealous as much as the over-zealous, and since one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist, it is likely to contain some villains in its noble peaks, and ENTIRELY likely to contain some "heretics." Elysium is not a plane of Pure Good, it is a plane of rest and reward for the virtuous, who shut themselves off from the rest of the multiverse and live life in idyllic splendor, with war and death and destruction on the other side. It is implied that even in these places of reward and justice, of peace and purity, that the multiverse is broken, and that it is up to the party to change that, to put their own stamp on the way reality works.

Thirdly, the Planescape idea of player characters with deep philosophical convictions going out and changing the planes generates its own conflict with these places. How would the party change Elysium or Celestia? How will they fix what is broken, and how will the existing planar residences react to that? The characters bring conflict with them, wherever they go.

Of course, none of the planes need to be used at all. Celestia and Elysium can also be places that heroes are only from, paladins and clerics (and warlocks and assassins and whatever) who have left paradise to help those outside of it, heroes for that alone. They don't need to feature in any plot, and can be safely "out there somewhere" without needing to be necessarily present in the game in a big way. They're still useful concepts for a Planescape game in this case, giving a way that a largely unadulterated old-fashioned Good vs. Evil heroism can come into the game, which can serve as an interesting point in a philosophically heavy game that explores the limits of that way of viewing the world.

As an aside, the "other good planes," Arborea and the Beastlands and Ysgard and the like, always were a bit more dangerous and interesting because of their chaotic bent. Melding them with the Feywild (or in Ysgard's case, the Elemental Chaos) brings all of the Feywild's troubles with it, including fomorians and worldfalling eladrin and flesh-eating feybeasts and everything else.
[/sblock]

 

[A2Z]

I was just looking though my Planescape stuff and the 3E Dragon article that detailed the modrons and I was surprised to find that at most they only have pictures of the base modrons. Where the hierarchs ever given more detail? I know they're given stats in the PS Campaign setting, something I don't know if we ever got for 3E, but did they ever get their own art?

 

[Scribble]

In the 1e books they did..

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Where the hierarchs ever given more detail? I know they're given stats in the PS Campaign setting, something I don't know if we ever got for 3E, but did they ever get their own art?

Planes of Law in one of those bonus pamphlet posters which detail the Modrons, all the varieties were given art. Except for maybe Primus which was more of a symbol of Primus.

 

[Klaus]

Dragon 354:

[sblock]

Monodrone, Duodrone, Quadrone, Rogue Modron (top), Tridrone, Pentadrone (bottom)
[/sblock]

 

[webrunner]

I always wondered, were Modron's designed originally as a method of using dice as miniatures?

 

[bryanlo]

Nice one Klaus. Would love to see the rest of the Hierachs.

 

[A2Z]

Planes of Law in one of those bonus pamphlet posters which detail the Modrons, all the varieties were given art. Except for maybe Primus which was more of a symbol of Primus.

I pulled these out last night and, indeed they do have pics for all the modrons, most of the hierarchs are just busts. Still doesn't give you a good idea of what they're supposed to look like. Thanks though!