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Planescape Best Planescape Book across editions and 3rd party publishers?

humble minion said:
I wouldn’t be getting PoDs of the old box sets, agreed. The maps etc just don’t work - but how much do you need maps of the infinite planes anyway? I’d be sticking with the pdf versions of those. The maps etc are still a mess, but it’s the source material from the books that you want.
Click to expand...

Oh, totally agreed. The Planes of... in pdf, despite the unusable maps and the degraded quality, constitue a very solid and complete set for any planar shenanigans. As I was saying in my first post here, they are quite hard to beat in this regard.

I was specifically making the comparison between the old Campaign Setting Boxed Set and the new Planescape : Adventures in the Multiverse, which are both mainly centered around Sigil, the hub you'll need for planar adventures, but not the planes themselves.
 

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If you are open to planes other than the Great Wheel, as @SlyFlourish mentioned, Kobold Press has their Guide to the Labyrinth coming soon, which has a bunch of new planes, a different planar structure than the TSR/WotC one, etc.

Older, but a good source of interesting non-traditional planes is Monte Cook's Beyond Countless Doorways for 3E, which was created by an all-star team of former Planescape writers. It's got an "orrey" style planar structure, where planes move around each other and into conjunctions, etc. It's got some interesting non-Western planes, some more sci-fi and horror-inspired ones and one or two that even connect to Ptolus (which is interesting, given that Ptolus is cut off from the multiverse unless characters do a level 1-20 adventure path that eventually changes that).

It and Guide to the Labyrinth are both designed for DMs to use in whole or in part, as everything is pretty modular in them.
 

Thank you for all the input! I might go and get the new box set at a discount somewhere and will add in the faces of sigil pdf, that looks like a really promising combo. Kobold Press' Labyrinth looks cool too, but I'll wait until that actually comes out. Do any of these products come with good advice on creating good "low level" planar adventures? I really don't want to play superhero kinds of stories and my system of choice would probably be Shadowdark or a version of OD&D. So I am really looking mostly for flavor, cool NPCs, nice locations and great hooks in these products.
 

I haven't plugged one of my pdfs for months, so I'll do so. I looked at every planescape item I had access to, and created summaries of most of the shops, inns, and taverns. I did NOT include stuff from Faces of Sigil, as that is much more detailed than most entries. It's not among the BEST products in planescape, but it is system free and has lots of stuff you can use for flavor and ideas.

To answer your question about low level adventure advice, I can't think of anything that does that, but I'll glance thru some things and double check. I really like Umbra as an adventure, but it is higher level.

Monte Cook games has some really interesting takes on the planes, but they are NOT planescape.

www.dmsguild.com

Shops, Inns, Taverns and NPCs of Sigil and Beyond - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Shops, Inns, Taverns and NPCs of Sigil and Beyond - This PDF is filled with shops, inns, and taverns, but mostly NPCs. We searched thru every 2e and 4e product we had acces
www.dmsguild.com www.dmsguild.com
 

You may or may not be aware of this:

Echohawk

Thread 'Planescape Collector's Guide'

Welcome to the Planescape Collector's Guide!

This is one of a series of Echohawk's D&D Collector's Guides, each of which aims to provide a comprehensive guide to D&D products published for a particular setting or era of the game. This particular guide focuses on the Planescape campaign setting, which was supported from 1994 to 1998.

This Collector's Guide isn't intended to be a comprehensive review of all D&D planar content, but is mostly limited to Planescape campaign setting products. It also includes a few of the...
  • Like
 

paradisebunny said:
Hi all, I am really interested in running a kind of planescape game and I am wondering what the best book is to set something like this up. I don’t particularly care about system specific mechanics, so feel free to list anything, this includes adjacent stuff like Monte Cook’s Planebreaker or @SlyFlourish ‘s City of Arches! The most recent wotc book got mixed reviews, which of the old ones stand out?
Click to expand...
If you're the sort of GM who can improvise mechanics and isn't looking for "devil in the details" but more of "vague and evocative to inspire your own adventures within the creative play space of Planescape", then I have two recommendations:

AD&D Planescape boxed set, and playing through Planescape: Torment CRPG.

IME (ran Planescape for 5 years), those two products capture the feel and what makes Planescape unique more than any other products released for the line or adjacent products. I recommend the CRRG because I never felt like any of the adventures for Planescape (including the 5e one) really explored what makes the setting more than "D&D session on a weird plane." Whereas the CRPG does a great job of exploring those unique themes in a way that's fun to play through. If you've got GM experience, I would use those two products as your lighthouse / governing principle/example of how to do Planescape.

Edit: Also, search for "planar renovation project" - this was a fan effort that started on Planewalker.com or maybe Mimir.net - which has some really vividly reimagined Outer Planes with the objective of making them more adventuresome in an actionable way for the GM (Rather than the PS books which tend to be very vague/abstract to the point of being difficult for some GMs to implement).

Edit Edit: Planar D&D and Planescape are distinct. Planar D&D is A Paladin in Hell or other fun bizarre journeys to the City of Brass or what have you -- 3rd party products already mentioned do that very well, and Hellbound was a standout adventure from the PS line for "planar D&D". Planescape is rooted in books like Perdido Street Station, Bangsian/afterlife fantasies, landscape and culture being directly influenced by belief, metaphysics, theories of multiple selves, the eternal return, and a lot of other heady topics.
 
Last edited:

Zaukrie said:
You may or may not be aware of this:

Echohawk

Thread 'Planescape Collector's Guide'

Welcome to the Planescape Collector's Guide!

This is one of a series of Echohawk's D&D Collector's Guides, each of which aims to provide a comprehensive guide to D&D products published for a particular setting or era of the game. This particular guide focuses on the Planescape campaign setting, which was supported from 1994 to 1998.

This Collector's Guide isn't intended to be a comprehensive review of all D&D planar content, but is mostly limited to Planescape campaign setting products. It also includes a few of the...
  • Like
Click to expand...
I wasn't aware of this thread, thank you!
 

This might be a little off topic, but do people generally think the 5E Planescape set is worth getting? It is in the $50 range now and is one of the few 5E books I don't own and I'm not remembering why I avoided it.
 

Quickleaf said:
If you're the sort of GM who can improvise mechanics and isn't looking for "devil in the details" but more of "vague and evocative to inspire your own adventures within the creative play space of Planescape", then I have two recommendations:

AD&D Planescape boxed set, and playing through Planescape: Torment CRPG.

IME (ran Planescape for 5 years), those two products capture the feel and what makes Planescape unique more than any other products released for the line or adjacent products. I recommend the CRRG because I never felt like any of the adventures for Planescape (including the 5e one) really explored what makes the setting more than "D&D session on a weird plane." Whereas the CRPG does a great job of exploring those unique themes in a way that's fun to play through. If you've got GM experience, I would use those two products as your lighthouse / governing principle/example of how to do Planescape.

Edit: Also, search for "planar renovation project" - this was a fan effort that started on Planewalker.com or maybe Mimir.net - which has some really vividly reimagined Outer Planes with the objective of making them more adventuresome in an actionable way for the GM (Rather than the PS books which tend to be very vague/abstract to the point of being difficult for some GMs to implement).

Edit Edit: Planar D&D and Planescape are distinct. Planar D&D is A Paladin in Hell or other fun bizarre journeys to the City of Brass or what have you -- 3rd party products already mentioned do that very well, and Hellbound was a standout adventure from the PS line for "planar D&D". Planescape is rooted in books like Perdido Street Station, Bangsian/afterlife fantasies, landscape and culture being directly influenced by belief, metaphysics, theories of multiple selves, the eternal return, and a lot of other heady topics.
Click to expand...
Ok, you seem to be hitting the nail on the head! I am really looking more for vibe and ideas than for detail, that i can figure out on the fly and I have no interest in running a verbatim canon version of planescape. I just want to figure out what makes it so unique and lean on that. Also: you have given me permission to do prep on my Nintendo Switch, haha. I haven't played it yet, so that should be fun!
 

from what I gather from my research is this: adventure itself not so great, but good as a resource. The other books are great. Overall not worth it's full price, but well worth it if found at a discount.

meant to be a reply to @renbot above
 

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