Over a dozen Planes
Beyond Countless Doorways is a planar sourcebook by names that should be familiar to old Planescape fans. See, we not only have Monte Cook adding his work, but also Wolfgang Baur, Colin McComb and Ray Vallese with an introduction by Planescape creator, David “Zeb” Cook. Strangely enough, David doesn’t contribute anything to the book, which is a shame as it’d be interesting to see his take on things.
The book is 224 black and white pages for $34.99. The way prices fluctuate on books, especially in hardcover, it’s hard to say if it’s an average price or what. Generally only WoTC produces hard covers of similar size in full color for the same price, and I’ve seen hard cover books range in page count from 160 to 272 for the same price. Even with the two pages of advertising, it seems to be the standard as the Complete Book of Eldritch Might, when it came out, was the same size, price, and had the same number of ads.
Internal illustrations are done by fan favorites all around including rk post, Ed Bourelle, Kev Crossley, Eric Lofgren and Tyler Walpole. The book isn’t an entity in and of itself, sitting alone in the pool of Malhavoc books, but rather, makes references to others like the Eldritch Might series as well as Hallowed Might. Thankfully, those books are non-essential for using the material in this book.
Broken up into twenty chapters with an appendix, the book includes two ‘general’ chapters, Chapter One, the Countless Worlds and Chapter Twenty, Through the Looking Glass, that provide the GM with an overview of different ways to use the planes. The first chapter includes different ways of moving through the planes including a different core cosmology and methods of using planar gates and definitions of how the planes connect to each other.
The last one includes ideas on using your core campaign as an alternative plane, but make it different by changing something. This can range from having one of the various great evils win, giving you a setting like Midnight, to having no magic in the hands of the intelligent races. Dragons and other native monsters still have their abilities mind you, but humans, elves and others? Nope. It’s more or less a chapter to get you thinking and in some ways, is similar to one of Malhavoc’s Event Books in that it’s going to require some fleshing out by the GM, but you might not have thought of the events in the first place.
One thing I don’t like about the book is the organization. See, the other chapters, two through nineteen, each cover a plane and in doing so, include new game mechanics. I’m one of those guys who like to have all my crunch of a specific type grouped up in one area. That’s one of the things I did like about the Complete Book of Eldritch Might, that if I wanted to see prestige classes, I flipped to that section. This book is more like Eldritch Might III in that each section has it’s own mechanics and since there is no index, it makes finding any specific item problematic.
The number of planes included means that no single plane gets a ton of details. It’s a very flesh it out yourself type of deal, but it does provide game stats for important NPC’s, maps of important locations (done by Ed so they’re easy to read and understand. The art, while great, repeats itself a bit. For example, the cover is reproduced in black and white on the inside so a whole page is gone to art that’s better in full color and on the cover.
Outside of that, the book is a treasure trove of ideas. Want to pit the players in a world where there are no other humans or other friendly races? Send them to the Lizard Kingdoms where “ogre-sized lizardmen and human-sized kobolds are the dominant races”.
Want to see how one of the author’s decided to actually use the artifact Book of Eldrtich Might? Flip to Tevaeral, a land where magic is fading and those who cast spells are dealt only death. The Book, being a highly intelligent item, uses this conflict to put those who own it into its debt and to in essence, control them. Things aren’t perfect for the book though as there’s no one left who can use the book to it’s fullest and it may need some high-powered mercenaries to insure that magic isn’t wiped out before it can set itself up in a manner it chooses.
One planar type not really covered in d20 style products, is the Ten Courts of Hell. Now long ago I remember the old Role Aids book and their various books of Monsters of Myth and Legend and they covered some of the Chinese Hells. This has some of the good old elements like the Yama Kings, Ox Headed Demons, and Vampire Demons. All the elements you need to get you’re Kung Fu on.
Each plane includes a paragraph to quickly describe it, background, inhabitants, and ideas on how best to use the setting. Other bits are throw in here and there, but are not consistent in each section. For example, Carrigmoor, a city from a destroyed world, starts off with a quick background, then goes into physical description, while Avidarel, the Sundered Star, started with how it might look when you arrive, to The Death of a Plane and the Mountains of Five Winds, goes into it’s history right away.
The section on Using, includes ideas on what type of adventures are best suited for the plane as well as a few ideas on adventures, and a few actual adventure seeds with recommended levels. For example, Palpature requires survival skills to thrive in the alien environment, and also includes adventures starting at 4th level, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth, where the PC’s are captured by the local animal life which has developed speech and sentience and wishes to have their own lands, to the 10th level Ominous Portents, where the demonic and devilish outsiders stranded here are not only successfully breeding new broods, but also summoning aid in the form of armies to finish the plane once and for all. Can the players help the tieflings save their world?
Because Malhavoc is a part of Sword & Sorcery, they make mention of several books like Tome of Horrors, which actually gives the GM some opportunity to use those books that might note have found the right spark yet. These bits are generally in reference to random encounters like the Khargra or Pech being on the Crystal Roads of Deluer, or making mention of Eldritch Feats from the various Books of Eldritch Might. A nice touch though, is that they do make use of College of Necromancy and Jade Dragons and Hungry Ghosts and show the true strength of the d20 license in using appropriate resources.
Unfortunately for those OGL purists out there, this book is almost all protected content. For me, as a GM and gamer, it really doesn’t matter. I’m in it for the ideas and that’s what this book is all about.
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