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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8737897" data-attributes="member: 7030755">Sort of...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the short adventures in the box sets are either a) fetch quests ("your factol sends you to this plane to do this specific thing for an unspecified reason") or b) glorified encounters ("while traveling through Arborea you meet...").</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the longer adventures are railroads.  Some are very entertaining railroads (Dead Gods), but it was peak 2e adventure writing.  It's really hard to do a sandbox when the amount of options are essentially infinity.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the outer planes box sets were evocative but no, not immediately gameable ("here's an infinite space consisting of howling, madness inducing caves!  No, there's no reason for the PCs to be here at all, why do you ask?").  Either they were too abstract, or, the material itself doubled down on dnd conventions ("while you are in one of the literal hells our setting has on offer, you can meet this dwarven blacksmith from Toril who got stuck here.  He makes swords.")</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the focus on distributing RL pantheons among the planes was in practice very cringe, as the kids say</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The belief-is-reality, philosophers-with-clubs things sounds great until you notice that there aren't really any mechanics for determining how and whether, say, a town in the outlands slips into a particular plane of existence or not.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sigil was the most gameable part of PS (and I agree that Uncaged is a great book), because you can run a city campaign, which is well-established campaign structure for dnd.  The idea of factions is great, but I think they need more practical goals and territory within the city.  And if the PCs aren't from Sigil...why do they care about the factions.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the videogame planescape torment ironically shows what a Sigil campaign can be at its best, which is a kind of weird fiction urban mystery scenario (in which a basic roleplaying/call of cthulhu type system or similar would be better).</li> </ul></blockquote>

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