Planescape 5e Planescape- What would you like to see in the upcoming setting?

[dave2008]

Have one artist give a beautiful and unique look to the setting. Tony DiTerlizzi did a most excellent job with the TSR version. And while I maybe dreaming on this, recreating the box sets and maps that TSR did would be so nice to see in todays pdf world.

That is potentially problematic though. I didn't touch Planescape in part because of Tony's art.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Return of the original factions, but I did like the promotion that the Ring Givers got, so I'd keep that.

Focus on Sigil, the gate towns, and the planes of ideas. Save the elemental planes for a setting where they're actually important, like Darksun.

 

[James Gasik]

Bring back back the interplanar freakshow. The planar tieflings that only had the fact they had nothing common in common. Not the crayon box of demon boys but uncanny valley the race. Sentient wombats who only communicate through ululating. Clerics who worship the number 17 as a God. 8' tall half lings that are perfectly in scale with the rest of the races on their world. Make it weird But make it wonderful.

And for God's sake make it more than 64 pages

These guys!

I wouldn't mind seeing Shardminds back either.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No Modern Changes- I hope they can get through the setting with out making all kinds of changes they think might offend modern people. Like renaming every outer plane and every monster and deity.

Uh, that's how we got the 2E planes to begin with, though ...

 

[James Gasik]

Uh, that's how we got the 2E planes to begin with, though ...

Yeah who wants to go back to calling the Outlands "Concordant Opposition"?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Rip the bandaid off: replace alignment with factions entirely. Have faction-based spells. Include a robust faction system.

And while we're ripping band-aids off, just rewrite the thing from the ground up. Keep the base idea of a Great wheel with a hub super-city overrun with factions in a tenuous balance. Rethink everything else. Make the Lady of Pain a character instead of an unbeatable mask the DM wears to punch you into doing things the Planescape Way. Make the Heavens useful to the universe instead of just driving the Blood war and all the soul capturing that fuels it. Add upward mobility to the Upper Planes like there is in the Lower ones. Add an actual Chaos race instead of the Hell Frogs. They can stay, but they don't get to be the exemplars.

 

[edosan]

I would like it to not be some "half setting guide, half adventure, neither of which are good" book that clocks in under 200 pages with way too much art in lieu of actual content.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Rip the bandaid off: replace alignment with factions entirely. Have faction-based spells. Include a robust faction system.

I would also do this for capital letter alignments generally. Make Law, Chaos and arguably the other big three into cosmic organizations/forces/factions that player characters can align with or oppose. If your character wants to serve the forces of Law (no matter how they behave or what they believe otherwise), let them.

But don't automatically draft them into a cosmic war that may mean nothing to them just because they don't believe in paying their parking tickets.

 

[Scribe]

An actual style that is leaned into across the whole book consistently.
Heavy focus on Alignment.
Heavy focus on Gods.
Heavy focus on Planes.

 

[Irlo]

No Astral Sea- please, please, please have them make the Astral a PLANE again. And not some Sea of Stars that Spelljammers zoom up into 'space'. And...Planejammer is fine, but DO NOT mix Spelljammer with Planejammer. You DON"T take off from a moon in space, fly across the Astral Sea, slip into an Abyssal ocean to fight a Demon Kraken, then sail over to Ysgard for some drink and ship repairs, then zip back through the astral sea to land on the jungle planet.

I know it’s not your intent, but you just totally sold me on an Astral Sea Spelljammer/Planescape mash-up. I’d buy that!

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I'll just be watching this one from the sideline with a large bag of popcorn. Mostly I'm curious how WotC will solve the PS fundamentals of alignment etc - on paper it should be an even harder nut to crack that the Dark Sun "problems", at least if they want to preserve some of the meaning and feeling of the setting. But we'll see, we might get surprised.

Not really, Dark Sun's problems are very different.

I don't see how PS alignments are any issue at all.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I might as well add that Alignment was not that important in Planescape, the Factions in Sigil took members from a wide spectrum of alignments. Like they had leanings like Harmonium only accepting Lawful people, but it was more to show off differences between groups that theoretically could share alignments.

 

[humble minion]

I might as well add that Alignment was not that important in Planescape, the Factions in Sigil took members from a wide spectrum of alignments. Like they had leanings like Harmonium only accepting Lawful people, but it was more to show off differences between groups that theoretically could share alignments.

Alignment was not that important in Sigil, but in the broader Planescape setting it certainly was. A big part of all the conflict etc in the Outlands, for instance, was people of different alignments trying to nudge the general alignments of gatetowns in just the right direction that they'd tip over the edge and become part of Bytopia or whatever. And more notoriously (though I don't expect or want this to be a part of 5e Planescape) if you were a divine spellcaster in the planes, your connection to your deity got weaker the further away you got from their home plane alignment-wise, which made things REALLY difficult when your LG cleric of LG Heironeous took a quick jaunt to the Abyss and was suddenly casting all their spells at -4 caster level or something.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I've said this before elsewhere, but....

My problem with Planescape is that what was presented wasn't particularly well fleshed out. The art was amazing and it had good ideas, but....

1. The factions were presented as having ideologies but not as having goals. This kind of left them as nebulous religions without deities more than living organizations. They feel like chess pieces that you don't know the rules for moving or capturing.
2. Too many of the factions feel too similar, as well. There isn't quite enough identity to each faction, IMO. I don't feel like the Faction War helped anything, either, even if we set aside that it wasn't well received.
3. The Lady of Pain is a terrible NPC. She's iconic. She's memorable. She's mysterious. And the DM and players are told that PCs should never ever interact with the Lady of Pain. That is an awful NPC.

Now, I know some people like the above choices. I don't. To me it feels like a campaign setting under glass. Like a ship in a bottle, it's meant to be looked at and admired rather than played with as a toy. And sure, you could use Sigil like a city-sized World Serpent Inn, but then you're kind of ignoring all this world building that makes Sigil interesting.

My other complaint is that the nature of portals to other planes feels like the DM has direct control and the PCs have less agency. Like portals can be anywhere and go anywhere, but where they go isn't up to the PCs. And they're not necessarily two-way portals, even. That takes a lot of control away from the PCs in ways I don't really like.

All in all, it feels very easy to ignore the world building that makes the setting unique or interesting. Almost to the extent that you're supposed to ignore all the lore and backstory of the setting. It's just a strange choice.

 

[cbwjm]

I'd like a good focus on Sigil, before the faction war. Factions similar to the guilds of ravnica could work, though I'd like to see benefits gained through ranking up beyond just room and board, actually gain some special abilities as you further align yourself with your factions beliefs

Some information about the outlands and gate towns, also some about the that the gate towns lead to, but I think the planes shouldn't be the focus of the setting as they'd take up a lot of space.

More planar races, make tieflings random again! Subclasses, planar monsters.

I wouldn't mind a small adventure, but if this is too much adventure then I might actually skip it, or wait until I can get it in sale.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

And more notoriously (though I don't expect or want this to be a part of 5e Planescape) if you were a divine spellcaster in the planes, your connection to your deity got weaker the further away you got from their home plane alignment-wise, which made things REALLY difficult when your LG cleric of LG Heironeous took a quick jaunt to the Abyss and was suddenly casting all their spells at -4 caster level or something.

The those rules on losing spellcasting levels dependent on your deity and current plane, losing your class abilities because your current plane, and losing +1's from your magic weapons, are things I'm 100% sure they're ignoring for a 5e Planescape.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

1. The Lady of Pain is a terrible NPC. She's iconic. She's memorable. She's mysterious. And the DM and players are told that PCs should never ever interact with the Lady of Pain. That is an awful NPC.

The Lady of Pain is effectively the Goddess of Sigil (though yes I know she isn't a Deity), you aren't supposed to directly interact with Gods in most campaigns.

 

[Corinnguard]

The Lady of Pain is effectively the Goddess of Sigil (though yes I know she isn't a Deity), you aren't supposed to directly interact with Gods in most campaigns.

I liked the fact that the Lady of Pain was capable of keeping the deities out of her home turf. For her to do that she would have to be an overdeity.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I've said this before elsewhere, but....

My problem with Planescape is that what was presented wasn't particularly well fleshed out. The art was amazing and it had good ideas, but....

1. The factions were presented as having ideologies but not as having goals. This kind of left them as nebulous religions without deities more than living organizations. They feel like chess pieces that you don't know the rules for moving or capturing.
2. Too many of the factions feel too similar, as well. There isn't quite enough identity to each faction, IMO. I don't feel like the Faction War helped anything, either, even if we set aside that it wasn't well received.
3. The Lady of Pain is a terrible NPC. She's iconic. She's memorable. She's mysterious. And the DM and players are told that PCs should never ever interact with the Lady of Pain. That is an awful NPC.

My main interest in Planescape is the factions! Love them, but I absolutely agree with your criticisms. The idea that adherence to an ideology brought some amount of power was intriguing. Writing more about them and fleshing them out for Planescape was a goal of mine, bue education and life goals got in the way.

I didn't mind the Lady of Pain, actually. She was... more part of the set than an actor, and the lines to not cross her seemed pretty clear. But, yes, you couldn't interact with her so that prevented her being more than set dressing.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The Lady of Pain is effectively the Goddess of Sigil (though yes I know she isn't a Deity), you aren't supposed to directly interact with Gods in most campaigns.

'Not supposed to'.

So the PCs 142% absolutely will.