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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 3196469" data-attributes="member: 11697">I've been running a Planescape campaign every weekend since about 2002, and I've noticed a couple things:Planescape tends to have a really high learning curve if you're going to use the published material, especially given the history and political intrigue between the factions, sects, various religions on the planes, various races' interactions, etc. Your PCs can go anywhere in theory, so it's a very heavy burden on a DM to either know all that background or bluff their way around it and run it off the cuff without the players' being any the wiser.Planescape can have a very different feel from DM to DM and group to group, depending on if you're running pre-Faction War or post-Faction War, and what planes you'll be having the PCs go to. It can range from a very dream-like, almost Dunsanian fantasy atmosphere, to a horror campaign; you can also risk being too whimsical, too over the top, too X, depending on what parts of the planes you're going to play up. You're in a landscape of extremes made manifest, so it's easy to oversaturate a game with some topics.Subjective and objective truths exist side by side, and multiple versions of such truths might co-exist in blatant opposition to one another, and both or neither might be accurate. Things don't always make sense, some things flaunt obvious logic by their very existance and yet they exist regardless of mortal ability to rationalize them [the infinite spire is infinitely tall yet Sigil exists at its top, and you can see it on the Outlands, but you can never climb there or fly there because you'll never reach it].Above all, belief is power. Toy with the idea, embrace it and run with it, and you'll have one of the key elements of Planescape.Now my storyhour was mentioned as an example of the 'feel' of Planescape, and I'm flattered, but let me add a word of caution to using my work as an example: 1) My first campaign was brutally dark. In fact I made my players cry at one point.2) It was set entirely post-Faction War so to some people it might completely miss the kreigstanz of the Factions that was one of the centerpieces of the setting's feel. Don't look to my stuff if you want good examples of the factions. Politics in Sigil I do a lot of, but not direct faction/faction clashes.3) Back to that brutally dark bit...I featured the yugoloths as the primary antagonists, and for much of the plot they seem virtually omnipresent, with little opposition from anyone besides their own selfish selves, and at times some overwhelmed PCs (when the PCs aren't being played like chess pieces by the fiends). The upper planes feel neutered for a good while, and that seeming lack of opposition and justice versus evil might rub some people the wrong way before the tide begins to turn and I start to explore the celestials.</blockquote>

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