D&D 5E Sigil and the Outlands has Planar Rules

[Quickleaf]

IIRC the planar races in AD&D Planescape were Bariaur, Githzerai, and Tiefling in the Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set.
Then Planewalker's Handbook added Aasimar and Rogue Modron.
Githyanki appeared in the Astral Guide.
And there were 2 oddball races in the Ethereal Guide... the Nathri (small fierce clannish infiltrators/raiders of demiplanes) & the Neth's Child (flesh golem-esque spawnings of a specific demiplane).

I didn't play much 3e, but I looked up the Planar Handbook, which I think was the closest to a Planescape update, and it has a bunch of new races (omitting the powerful/level adjustment races)...

• Buomman (astral humans, more or less)
• Mephling (small mephit related version of genasi)
• Neraphim (slaad... that aren't slaad?)
• Shadowswyft (a lot like shades, the human equivalent of shadar-kai elves)
• Spiker (bladelings... that aren't bladelings?)
• Wildren (there was an UA with something like this celestial beast-folk)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not would a planar book.

Which the Planescape setting isn't, and never has been. It's all about Sigil. It competes with the Forgotten Realms for D&D's most miss-named setting.

I would like a new Manual of the Planes as much as anyone, but squishing it into Planescape is a terrible option. Say you wrote 5 times as much on each plane - the bare minimum that would qualify as a significant improvement over what is in the DMG in my opinion. That's 130 pages. Almost a whole book. Anything less than that isn't worth bothering with.

Planescape is good because it limits the focus to one city (and environs) and therefore can cover it in a reasonable level of detail.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Which the Planescape setting isn't, and never has been. It's all about Sigil. It competes with the Forgotten Realms for D&D's most miss-named setting.

I would like a new Manual of the Planes as much as anyone, but squishing it into Planescape is a terrible option. Say you wrote 5 times as much on each plane - the bare minimum that would qualify as a significant improvement over what is in the DMG in my opinion. That's 130 pages. Almost a whole book. Anything less than that isn't worth bothering with.

Planescape is good because it limits the focus to one city (and environs) and therefore can cover it in a reasonable level of detail.

Eh, not sure I agree - I've always viewed Planescape as Sigil and the Great Wheel cosmology working in conjunction, and my ideal 5e Planescape would have been a 300+ page book serving as both a city guide for Sigil and a Manual of the Planes.

But given the realities of the slipcase format and their page-space limitations, scoping down to focusing just on Sigil (and the Outlands) was the right idea.

Still want that Manual of the Planes, though...

 

[Parmandur]

Which the Planescape setting isn't, and never has been. It's all about Sigil. It competes with the Forgotten Realms for D&D's most miss-named setting.

I would like a new Manual of the Planes as much as anyone, but squishing it into Planescape is a terrible option. Say you wrote 5 times as much on each plane - the bare minimum that would qualify as a significant improvement over what is in the DMG in my opinion. That's 130 pages. Almost a whole book. Anything less than that isn't worth bothering with.

Planescape is good because it limits the focus to one city (and environs) and therefore can cover it in a reasonable level of detail.

I think that covering the Gayetowns will entail providing some Adventure hooks for the related Planes, at any rate, maybe just something like a table of ideas for what you might be doing in Bytopia or Ysgard.

 

[DavyGreenwind]

Here's what the 96-page book will probably be, perhaps in this order:
4 pages of general introductory info on Outlands and Sigil.
6 pages of character options: one species and a bunch of feats.
15 pages on factions. Each faction will get a page spread.
A 35-page gazeteer of Sigil. Adventure hooks, encounters, important people, etc.
The remaining 36 pages will be dedicated to Gate Towns. About two pages per town.

That's it. A book called Sigil and the Outlands will focus on Sigil and the Outlands, not other planes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Here's what the 96-page book will probably be, perhaps in this order:
4 pages of general introductory info on Outlands and Sigil.
6 pages of character options: one species and a bunch of feats.
15 pages on factions. Each faction will get a page spread.
A 35-page gazeteer of Sigil. Adventure hooks, encounters, important people, etc.
The remaining 36 pages will be dedicated to Gate Towns. About two pages per town.

That's it. A book called Sigil and the Outlands will focus on Sigil and the Outlands, not other planes.

Sounds about right. I don't think each gaytown (can we keep that?) will get two pages though. More like a paragraph. I expect to see one in described in detail in the adventure book though. Part of the point of the adventure is to serve as exemplar material. If you have one you can extrapolate the others.

 

[Parmandur]

Here's what the 96-page book will probably be, perhaps in this order:
4 pages of general introductory info on Outlands and Sigil.
6 pages of character options: one species and a bunch of feats.
15 pages on factions. Each faction will get a page spread.
A 35-page gazeteer of Sigil. Adventure hooks, encounters, important people, etc.
The remaining 36 pages will be dedicated to Gate Towns. About two pages per town.

That's it. A book called Sigil and the Outlands will focus on Sigil and the Outlands, not other planes.

Sounds about right.

Sounds about right. I don't think each gaytown (can we keep that?) will get two pages though. More like a paragraph. I expect to see one in described in detail in the adventure book though. Part of the point of the adventure is to serve as exemplar material. If you have one you can extrapolate the others.

I expect each Gatetown will receive a map, amd a SCAG level write up, so 2 pages is about right.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I expect each Gatetown will receive a map, amd a SCAG level write up, so 2 pages is about right.

I would be concerned that would get repetitive. There are 16, and ones for adjacent planes are pretty similar to each other.

 

[Parmandur]

I would be concerned that would get repetitive. There are 16, and ones for adjacent planes are pretty similar to each other.

I mean, that's an argument to give them a little more detail, to serve as distinct potential Adventure locales.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

There is, admittedly, more to the Outlands than the Gate-Towns, but the 2e Player's Primer to the Outlands was still only 32 pages...

I think they could dedicate roughly the same amount of page space to covering the Outlands and have a pretty solid baseline.

I would be concerned that would get repetitive. There are 16, and ones for adjacent planes are pretty similar to each other.

Honestly, they're fairly distinctive to me for the most part, especially if you give the towns themselves the space to show their individual character.