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

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

On the subject of Limbo and Slaad, I always thought it was weird that 5e didn't find a way to combine the Elemental Chaos and Limbo. They seem pretty similar.

The Elemental Chaos was always just Limbo with the serial numbers filed off, but the real issue is that the Outer/Astral and Inner/Ethereal/Elemental Planes are on opposite "ends" of the cosmology from one another, regardless of whether you're looking at the Great Wheel or the World Axis.

In the classic Great Wheel setup, Limbo is one of the Outer Planes. Turning Limbo into the Elemental Chaos in 4e moved it to the Elemental side of the cosmology, which - in spite of my grumblings as a Planescape fan - worked fine since they were throwing out the Great Wheel as the default cosmological framework anyway and replacing it with the World Axis.

But bringing the Great Wheel back in 5e meant that Limbo's spot was opened back up on the Astral side of the cosmology again, so they were left with the choice of ditching the Elemental Chaos altogether, replacing Limbo in the Great Wheel with something else, or splitting the difference and keeping both even though they're almost identical. Needless to say, they chose option 3.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The Elemental Chaos was always just Limbo with the serial numbers filed off, but the real issue is that the Outer/Astral and Inner/Ethereal/Elemental Planes are on opposite "ends" of the cosmology from one another, regardless of whether you're looking at the Great Wheel or World Axis.

In the classic Great Wheel set up, Limbo is one of the Outer Planes. Turning Limbo into the Elemental Chaos in 4e moved it to the Elemental side of the cosmology, which - in spite of my grumblings as a Planescape fan - worked fine since they were throwing out the Great Wheel as the default cosmological framework anyway and replacing it with the World Axis.

But bringing the Great Wheel back in 5e means that Limbo's spot is back on the Astral side of the cosmology again, so they're left with the choice of ditching the Elemental Chaos altogether, replacing Limbo in the Great Wheel with something else, or splitting the difference and keeping both even though they're almost identical. Needless to say, they chose option 3.

Simple way around that - Limbo and the Elemental Chaos are just so chaotic that they defy the laws of the multiverse by actually being two parts of the same thing, even while being on different ends of the cosmological order. So, technically, you could go straight from the Outer to Inner Planes in that way, but the chaos is so much of a problem that no one does.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In some ways that's true, but also remember Ed created the Realms with the Great Wheel as the default, as it was for all settings at the time. He has plenty of Dragon Magazine articles from before the setting was published that used the Great Wheel for the Realms.

If we're going to go back to an all-Greenwood Forgotten Realms, then we'd better get out the scissors and start cutting a lot of the setting away.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

It works differently, and is easier to use for gamist purposes, but it's very clinical and built as a game construct first to my mind.

The world axis It is built more like a mythology IMO.

Conversely, the great alignment wheel seems very gamist.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It works differently, and is easier to use for gamist purposes, but it's very clinical and built as a game construct first to my mind.

You'll need to be sitting down when I tell you the real reason that D&D settings exist at all.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No worries, I think it's more my disjointed thoughts.

Got a chance to listen to the video, and that 84k is for big box stores only, excluding both hobby shops (so my purchase isn't counted) and Amazon. Also, apparently it outsold most everything from 3.5???

Yeah, the numbers are pretty direct. Ben Riggs got access to TSR internal numbers, and shared them last year:

View attachment 290940

TSR settings sales numbers from Ben Riggs, starting with Lankmar, Maztica, Al-Qadim and Planescape!

Ben is releasing quite a few settings today so I thought I’d do a mega thread for those. I’ll update when things are posted. Lankhmar is one of my favorite things. In fact after The Hobbit it was among the first fantasy I read. In 1985, TSR produced Lankhmar: City of Adventure based on the...

www.enworld.org

This chart is Jakandor erasure.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Conversely, the great alignment wheel seems very gamist.

Are you suggesting that ancient peoples didn't create cosmologies based on an nine-point alignment grid, including afterlives based on the boundaries between each point on the grid?

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

@Demetrios1453, @Whizbang Dustyboots, @Veltharis ap Rylix, @Micah Sweet and others:

I’m not familiar with the D&D plane of Limbo. How is it similar to the Elemental Chaos? I see no need for them to be similar, but everyone seems to agree they are, so how and why? The concept of Limbo doesn’t seem, IMO, to have much to do with the inception of the elemental chaos

 

[Demetrios1453]

If we're going to go back to an all-Greenwood Forgotten Realms, then we'd better get out the scissors and start cutting a lot of the setting away.

Well, it also continued using the Great Wheel cosmology right up until the 3e FRCS.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

@Demetrios1453, @Whizbang Dustyboots, @Veltharis ap Rylix, @Micah Sweet and others:

I’m not familiar with the D&D plane of Limbo. How is it similar to the Elemental Chaos? I see no need for them to be similar, but everyone seems to agree they are, so how and why? The concept of Limbo doesn’t seem, IMO, to have much to do with the inception of the elemental chaos

The DMG describes it as "a plane of pure chaos, a roiling soup of impermanent matter and energy." Intelligent creatures can temporarily create structure and temporary order with the power of their minds.

It's another plane that, by default, is pretty hard to use for gaming purposes without either the DM creating some special exceptions for an adventuring site or the PCs being prepared for a special mission there.