Planescape 5e Planescape

[Greenmtn]

Well they got me all excited and now I'm thinking.

What would you want to see in a 5e Planescape setting?

For me, I loved Sigil even if it is still intimidating for me. I would like to see it pre faction war or at least some ideas included for how the members/organizations still around are trying to maintain their power and beliefs.

The Blood War needs to stay I love the concept there.

I'd like to see the little quirks to magic depending on where you are come back.

The wierd playable races were always fun.

 

[Negflar2099]

I'm with you. All of this Plane Escape Extended Edition stuff has gotten me excited about a 5e Planescape. Of course Sigil and the factions are a must and the blood war is vital to the setting. I think we would definitely need to see a playable version of the Rogue Modron and the other weird races.

Key to it though is reconciling the current Great Wheel cosmology (that includes the Elemental Chaos as well as the original Elemental Planes) with the cosmology in Planescape.

That said I think you can do all of that with an adventure book (similar to Curse of Strahd) instead of a full blown campaign book.

 

[Quickleaf]

Well they got me all excited and now I'm thinking.

What would you want to see in a 5e Planescape setting?

For me, I loved Sigil even if it is still intimidating for me. I would like to see it pre faction war or at least some ideas included for how the members/organizations still around are trying to maintain their power and beliefs.

The Blood War needs to stay I love the concept there.

I'd like to see the little quirks to magic depending on where you are come back.

The wierd playable races were always fun.

It's great how much love PS gets, especially on ENWorld. I have some more developed ideas in my sig, but here's my short list:

• Since it's likely never to be released as a setting (after all, you can get the AD&D setting online), why not make it an adventure (or adventure compilation) with PS themes or a Manual of the Planes with stronger PS themes.
• The "gutter punk" aesthetic, along with the UK-derived cant, were a bit overdone in the original setting. It was was part of the whole package, but I think PS suffered a little from style over function. I'd love to see just a touch of that aesthetic, nothing overdone, and a greater emphasis on interesting content for use at the table.
• Sigil, City of Doors. It's the heart of the setting.
• Factions. They're the second heart of the setting. Examining the philosophies more deeply would be welcome; for example, the Harmonium were painted very unsympathetically due to the writer's biases, but "fighting for peace" could actually be a noble goal and maybe Harmonium agents act as peacemakers and ambassadors.
• Deeper explanation of precisely how belief shapes the Outer Planes. For example, Li Po's Guide to the Multiverse had a whole system that added the party's net levels in a certain faction to determine the %chance something pertaining to that faction's beliefs happening. How do gate-towns slide? That's interesting stuff that the books are silent on.
• Rejuvenate planes that saw little use, especially many of the Upper Planes, to make them more interesting adventure sites. Bytopia stands out in my mind – we had a great Planar Restoration Project thread at www.planewalker.com where we really came up with some poignant stuff about Bytopia that took it far beyond the pastoral gnome-land of the books.
• ELIMINATE the fiddly magic changes. Interesting changes that make sense for a plane/planar site are fine, but nobody wants to track whether their priest is at -1 or +1 casting levels, or how less magical their Arborean sword is in the Abyss. Replace that crap with actual interesting ideas about magic on the planes.
• Have fun with the races – bariaur, githzerai, rogue modrons, yes! Heck, maybe make some wilder stuff like a floating spellbook familiar or provide guidelines for playing monsters like animated armor.
• Don't retread too much old ground. Even though Planescape was born out of the older Manual of the Planes material, it was very innovative with how it put everything together. Whatever incarnation it might hypothetically see in 5e, I'd want it to be innovative. That's where PS is at it's strongest.
• Sense of wonder. One of the #1 questions when designing a planar site or NPC with a PS mentality is: What wondrous thing can the players discover here or about this site/NPC? And one of the great things about PS is how many of those ideas went off the rails of what was covered in the rules. PS:Torment had great examples of this.

 

[wwanno]

Apart from a mimir familiar, I think it is time for a Modron March + Dead God reboot, with Orcus banned from prime world in OotA, and maybe killed the moment he spawned in the Abyss.

The Modron March would be a spectacular way to show the planes to the PC.

But THIS Modron March shouldn't skip any plane.

I would like a little adventure (1-3 hours of play), and maybe some seeds left to the DM to expand, for each plane.

It would be great!

At the very least, even a bestiary with all PS creatures from 2nd Edition would be great, and just enough to run the old material.



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[Xeviat]

I'd like to see a Manual of the Planes set up for he next crunch book. Subclasses, feats, and races could all be tied in with Planescape. The DM section could have lots of Planescape material, and we could get a bunch of its iconic monsters back. But a "setting guide" will likely not happen in 5E.


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[Charles Rampant]

tl;dr that the book(s) are easy to use at the table and lead to easy and good DM experiences, rather than being cool shelf bait.

The factions could do with a rework to be easier to use, in my opinion as someone who is terrible at philosophy. The Planescape books were great fun to read but, like many RPG supplements at the time, were designed for the shelf rather than the table, and thus didn't always do a good job of explaining how you'd translate what you'd read into an actual campaign. Whether that means tweaking/changing the Factions, or simply giving concrete and easy-to-use examples of what it actually means to be a member of one, this is the biggest thing that I'd enjoy.

Another observation that I would raise is that many Planescape books were guilty of being way too high level in their descriptions. In other words, they'd take an infinite plane, and describe lots of places in it in very minimal detail. The end result is that you'd try to describe important towns and sites in the planes, but have surprisingly little to draw on. I think that the other direction is perhaps a better idea, like the 5e modules; describe a few places in a lot of evocative detail, and allow DMs who are keen to expand do so with a blank canvas.

This comment is based off of actually using Planescape books as my high-level-adventures sources; the time that it worked well for me was when I traced a route into an Abyssal adventure site using the most interesting places detailed in the Planes of Chaos supplement (Plague-Mort, Broken Reach, Fateless Harbourage, River Styx, Twelve Trees, Hollow's Heart), since I had lots of detail and roleplaying opportunities to work with from those places. When I sent the players into Niflheim, I thought that using pre-written locations would keep things simple, but it turned out to be a lot of effort since I was basically making it all up myself.

I'd definitely be very happy with a Great Modron March storyline, since that would allow them to provide some really cool locations in each plane and cover them with adequate levels of detail, rather than try to cover everything and detail nothing. Of course, something new would be good, so long as they hit the high notes (Sigil, Blood War, Factions/Power of Belief, Weirdness, Morals are a Choice).

As always [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] has the best ideas on this topic. I do agree that the Cant, though very cool to read, was in practice kind of overdone; I have however heard of a group who got so good at using it that their table was kind of incomprehensible to other tables in the gaming club, which is a cool idea.

 

[Greenmtn]

I've found a pretty good PS 5e book by "Chris Perkins" (I don't think it's that Chris Perkins) that had some great conversions for the "standard PS races" and some rules for making faction membership a background choice.

I've seen some monster conversions here. Even found a conversion for the Fires of Dis adventure online.

I agree that the quirks to magic needed to be simplified, Like on a Macro level instead of a micro level. Things as simple as on Chaotic planes there is a chance of you rolling on the wild magic table, or on planes of law you use average damage instead of rolling it, or on elemental planes spells associated with that element are stronger somehow.

My problem with loosing the factions is that their beliefs affected the multiverse on physical level, so if they no longer exist what happens? If they continue to operate outside Sigil what does that change?

The good planes absolutely need some love.

Mimir or cranium rat familiers would be pretty sweet.
@Quickleaf I missed out on planewalker.com, I did find them on Facebook but don't see much action on there.

I wouldn't at all be surprised IF they do a PS book for 5e if it were the Great Modron March. A lot like Cos is the Ravenloft book and OotA is the Underdark book.

 

[Rils]

[*]ELIMINATE the fiddly magic changes. Interesting changes that make sense for a plane/planar site are fine, but nobody wants to track whether their priest is at -1 or +1 casting levels, or how less magical their Arborean sword is in the Abyss. Replace that crap with actual interesting ideas about magic on the planes.

I agree that the quirks to magic needed to be simplified, Like on a Macro level instead of a micro level. Things as simple as on Chaotic planes there is a chance of you rolling on the wild magic table, or on planes of law you use average damage instead of rolling it, or on elemental planes spells associated with that element are stronger somehow.

I am very intrigued by this idea, as a DM who is looking at starting a PS campaign. The plus/minus rules from 2e for spells and magic items are way more bookkeeping than either me or my players are interested in. However, thematic "quirks" is something I'd be totally on board with! Some things, like elemental spells are cast at higher levels on a corresponding Inner Plane is easy to understand and track. But I like the concept [MENTION=6855102]Greenmtn[/MENTION] was driving at - wild surges in CN planes, averages on LN planes, etc is very flavorful without being hard to manage. Maybe this is a topic for a new thread, but I'd love to do some community brainstorming along those lines!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Another observation that I would raise is that many Planescape books were guilty of being way too high level in their descriptions. In other words, they'd take an infinite plane, and describe lots of places in it in very minimal detail. The end result is that you'd try to describe important towns and sites in the planes, but have surprisingly little to draw on. I think that the other direction is perhaps a better idea, like the 5e modules; describe a few places in a lot of evocative detail, and allow DMs who are keen to expand do so with a blank canvas.

Why not do both? I have no problem with good zoomed-in examples, but I need high level overviews so I have a consistent canvas on which to draw my own creations that isn't likely to be completely contradicted by later material. That's what broad setting materials are for--creating a skeletal framework so you can see where official things fit relative to other ones, and what open spaces there are to stick your own ideas in while still allowing you to respect official materials if you want to do so.

If I didn't know anything about the Forgotten Realms, I would have found LMoP infuriating in not telling me what's off the edges of the maps. Many people felt the same way about the paucity of information on what has changed in the 5e Realms before the SCAG came out (which wasn't totally satisfying to a lot of people, but it was a big step in that direction at least).

 

[Greenmtn]

I am very intrigued by this idea, as a DM who is looking at starting a PS campaign. The plus/minus rules from 2e for spells and magic items are way more bookkeeping than either me or my players are interested in. However, thematic "quirks" is something I'd be totally on board with! Some things, like elemental spells are cast at higher levels on a corresponding Inner Plane is easy to understand and track. But I like the concept [MENTION=6855102]Greenmtn[/MENTION] was driving at - wild surges in CN planes, averages on LN planes, etc is very flavorful without being hard to manage. Maybe this is a topic for a new thread, but I'd love to do some community brainstorming along those lines!

I really think the funky plane traveling feel can be done with the 5e KISS idea intact.

Another thing I thought of, reminded by rereading Quickleaf's post. I think the weird metals added alot. I remember being super excited when getting even a non magical Baatorian steel dagger. I'm not sure how to do that with KISS mechanics, maybe it just bypasses damage resistance for creatures from and opposite aligned plane but I can see that getting confusing... Maybe something else.

The group I ran through the "Fires of Dis" conversion had never done Planescape before, and I brought them in from LMoP where I planted a "Strange spear made entirely of a strange green metal" They were absolutely convinced it was super important, and constantly trying to figure it out. It really did add to the game for all of us. Maybe it wouldn't have if they had known right away what it was, but even though none of them actually used a spear they considered it something of value and had fun trying to figure it out. Which of course was easy, once they got to Avernus... [Insert evil laugh]