Planescape Planescape Pre-order Page Shows Off The Books!

You can now pre-order Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse from D&D Beyond. The set comes out on October 17th.

Scroll down through the comments to see more various peeks at the books!

Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse

An adventure setting spanning the infinite realities of the world’s greatest roleplaying game

www.dndbeyond.com

• Discover 2 new backgrounds, the Gate Warden & the Planar Philosopher, to build planar characters in the D&D Beyond character builder
• Channel 7 otherworldly feats, new intriguing magic spells & more powered by planar energies
• Explore 12 new ascendant factions, each with distinct cosmic ideologies
• Face over 50 unusual creatures including planar incarnates, hierarch modrons, and time dragons in the Encounter Builder
• Journey across the Outlands in an adventure for characters levels 3-10 and 17
• Adds adventure hooks, encounter tables, maps of Sigil and the Outlands & more to your game

This 3 books set comprises:

• Sigil and the Outlands: a setting book full of planar character options with details on the fantastic City of Doors, descriptions of the Outlands, the gate-towns that lead to the Outer planes, and more
• Turn of the Fortunes Wheel: an adventure set in Sigil and the Outlands designed for character levels 3-10 with a jump to level 17
• Morte’s Planar Parade: Follow Morte as he presents over 50 inhabitants of the Outer Plane, including incarnates, hierarch modrons, time dragons, and more with their stats and descriptions

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That sounds extremely annoying.

It is. I far preferred it when we get one setting book (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft) and one book for an adventure taking place in that setting (Call of the Netherdeep, Curse of Strahd).

 

[Henadic Theologian]

If that much of the total page count is an adventure I don't want or need, then the quality of the entire product goes  way down for me.

The adventure should be a separate product from the slipcase, I really eats up way, way, way too much space.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Recent adventures have been where they've stashed setting information, for good or for ill. So even people who won't use the adventure will likely find stuff they want in there. Strixhaven, for instance, puts a lot of info about the campus in their adventure, annoyingly.

Agreed, it's the worst way to explore an setting.

 

[Parmandur]

It is. I far preferred it when we get one setting book (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft) and one book for an adventure taking place in that setting (Call of the Netherdeep, Curse of Strahd).

You seem to be misremembering what was in those books, particularly Wildemount.The only Setting product in 5E that doesn't include a significant Adventure module is Sword Coast Adventurers Guide:

• Guildmasters Gyude to Ravnica: 12 page intro Adventure at the end of the Adventure generation chapter
• E erron: Rising from the Last War: 15 page module at the end of the Adventure
• Mythic Odessey's of Theros: 11 page module
• Explorer's Guide to Wildemount: 4 Seperate Level 1-3 modules, totaling 60 pages
• Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft: 20 page intro Haunted House Adventure at the end of the Adventure generation chapter
• Spelljammer: 64 page Campaign book (a chapter like that is Ravnica and Wberron would have been appreciated)

Strixhaven and Dragonlance were Adventure books.

Point is, including Adventures in Settings has been the standard, and Wildmoint .au have been what convinced Perkins to go full 64-96 page campaigns for Spelljammer and Planescape (he edited Wildemount before those projects took off).

 

[humble minion]

Chaos laughs at style guides. Actually, it rips up style guides and eats them.

The plural of "Slaad" is "7" or "banana" or "slurpidoop."

* Stares pointedly at the orderly hierarchy of slaad, neatly colour-coded by power level *

Recent adventures have been where they've stashed setting information, for good or for ill. So even people who won't use the adventure will likely find stuff they want in there. Strixhaven, for instance, puts a lot of info about the campus in their adventure, annoyingly.

Yeah, and that's not something that makes me feel more optimistic about this product either. The adventure is apparently level 3-10 with a stopover at 17, and is 96 pages long. That's EXTREMELY compressed. Even Light of Xaryxis allowed 64 pages for a 4-level adventure, and many (including me) found it sparse and railroaded. And now Planescape intends to go double the level range - including a very high-level component which tend to be very space-hungry - in only 50% extra pages? Compared to the earlier 5e books like Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation etc etc, which had well over double that page count for adventures in the range of level 1-10 or 1-12, it's very scanty indeed. IF you're looking for setting detail, I wouldn't be holding out too much hope for the adventure. Sandbox adventures are the best medium for detailing setting details inline in a module, but you can't even pretend to do a 7+ level sandbox adventure in 96 pages. I suspect the adventure will be a spartan, jumpy railroad from encounter to encounter like Light of Xaryxis was, with minimal time and space left over for smelling the roses.

You seem to be misremwmberimg what was in those books, particularly Wildemount.The only Setting product in 5E that doesn't include a significant Adventure module is Sword Coast Adventurers Guide:

• Guildmasters Gyude to Ravnica: 12 page intro Adventure at the end of the Adventure generation chapter
• E erron: Rising from the Last War: 15 page module at the end of the Adventure
• Mythic Odessey's of Theros: 11 page module
• Explorer's Guide to Wildemount: 4 Seperate Level 1-3 modules, totaling 60 pages
• Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft: 20 page intro Haunted House Adventure at the end of the Adventure generation chapter
• Spelljammer: 64 page Campaign book (a chapter like that is Ravnica and Wberron would have been appreciated)

I'm personally of the camp that believes any space spent on adventures in a setting book is a waste, but still, I find it much easier to stomach buying a book like VRGtR or Eberron and getting 10-20 pages of wasted space, than buying Strixhaven or Spelljammer and finding the wasted pagecount is a third or more of the product - especially since these newer products are very noticeably thinner than the earlier books to begin with.

 

[Parmandur]

* Stares pointedly at the orderly hierarchy of slaad, neatly colour-coded by power level *



Yeah, and that's not something that makes me feel more optimistic about this product either. The adventure is apparently level 3-10 with a stopover at 17, and is 96 pages long. That's EXTREMELY compressed. Even Light of Xaryxis, allowed 64 pages for a 4-level adventure, and many (including me) found it sparse and railroaded. Compared to the earlier 5e books like Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation etc etc, which had well over double that page count for adventures in the range of level 1-10 or 1-12, it's very scanty indeed. IF you're looking for setting detail, I wouldn't be holding out too much hope for the adventure. Sandbox adventures are the best medium for detailing setting details inline in a module, but you can't even pretend to do a 7+ level sandbox adventure in 96 pages. I suspect the adventure will be a spartan, jumpy railroad from encounter to encounter like Light of Xaryxis was, with minimal time and space left over for smelling the roses.



I'm personally of the camp that believes any space spent on adventures in a setting book is a waste, but still, I find it much easier to stomach buying a book like VRGtR or Eberron and getting 10-20 pages of wasted space, than buying Strixhaven or Spelljammer and finding the wasted pagecount is a third or more of the product - especially since these newer products are very noticeably thinner than the earlier books to begin with.

OK, so for you personally, that may be "wasted space"...but WotC has to chase what sells in general terms.

Apparently, Adventures have been working for them, inserting Setting into Adventures and putting Adventures into Settings.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Think it’s too early to decide if the adventure is compressed or not.

 

[Parmandur]

Think it’s too early to decide if the adventure is compressed or not.

Back in The Day, a 96 page module would have been considered quite large.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

* Stares pointedly at the orderly hierarchy of slaad, neatly colour-coded by power level *

Yeah, if I were in charge of Planescape, I would have a random appearance system for slaadi. No one should have any idea which color of slaadi they're dealing with. (In fact, I'd probably change their colors to descriptors for quarks -- up, charm, top, down, strange and bottom -- just to drive that home.)

 

[humble minion]

OK, so for you personally, that may be "wasted space"...but WotC has to chase what sells in general terms.

Apparently, Adventures have been working for them, inserting Setting into Adventures and putting Adventures into Settings.

Well, maybe. We do know there's a long development pipeline for WotC, if they make a change and it gets badly received, it's hard to wind that change back. This was discussed heavily in the wake of the poor reception of Spelljammer. I can't find the link, but I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere WotC saying in coded language that they heard the negative feedback on the slipcase format, but that Planescape was too far advanced in production and it was too late to make any changes there.

Also, the real hybrid products, neither quite a setting book or a full-on adventure - are a relatively new thing. It really only started with Strixhaven - many setting books before that has a small adventure attached (which I personally don't like but I'm only one guy, and which i can live with anyway), but Strixhaven was a major change in direction. The most recent full-on hybrid product was Spelljammer, which was poorly received enough that it's one of the reasons Winniger left WotC, and Strixhaven was received in a fairly lukewarm manner too (except for Silvery Barbs...). So I'm not sure we can really say that the mingled product is 'working' for WotC at this point. With the caveat of course that only WotC sees the sales numbers etc so only they really know and we're only speculating.

Regardless, I've got no problem with WotC selling adventures. I just wish they'd stop letting adventures parasitise setting books. Curse of Strahd and Shadow of the Dragon Queen I could deal with - they were adventures that just included the minimum setting material to make them work. Something like Spelljammer where I buy a product that claims to be a setting, but I have to comb through the monster book and the adventure to find bare scraps of setting material are just frustrating. Choose to write an adventure or a setting, don't mess about in the middle.

Back in The Day, a 96 page module would have been considered quite large.

In the context of the past decade or two, it isn't. Especially when it's a full-on multi-level campaign rather than just a module like so many of the back-in-the-day adventures were. A 2e product of compatible scope might be something like Night Below, which was three 64 page books in an era when stat blocks were much smaller.