(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995
part 2/8
Godsmen, bleakers, guvners and takers: Hello, planescape factions. You're making quite the waves amongst gamers. Ok, so they're essentially D&D's answer to Mage:the Ascension, taking exactly the same idea that reality is subjective, and it's our belief that can shape it, right down to the laws of physics, and then having a bunch of philosophies duking it out for control of the universe. Actually, I think I prefer the planescape factions to the Mage traditions. It's more obvious what they stand for, and easier to build a party consisting exclusively of one faction, as you still have the full class/race axes to play with. But the benefits you get from them are pretty minimal. Shouldn't the higher-ups in a faction get some additional abilities? Oh, you powergamers. :waves hand: You do keep on. Any excuse for a little more than the rules normally let you have. So each faction gets a few bits and pieces, be it new innate powers for everyone of higher rank, new spells, or donated magical items given to those in their good graces. Most of these will appear again in a few months time in The Factol's Manifesto, making this into a teaser of sorts. So this was damn cool on first reading, but loses a bit of it's impact in rereading because I do know it's just another extracted promotional tool, rather than something created specifically for the magazine. Once again we see the fact that they're relying more and more on staff writers these days.
The demiplane of shadow: Ahh, now here's another thing it's been way too long since. A complete overview of a so-far left nebulous plane. A really cool one too. Let's face it, shadow is one of those themes that's inherently dramatic narratively. Caught between light and darkness, unable to exist without both, ephemeral, mysterious, brooding, morally ambiguous. Fangirl bait onna stick, in other words. it's no surprise that this is one that actually gets followed up on, actually becoming a full plane next edition as they hint it might here (with an extra special place in the cosmology at that), and one of the few survivors to make it to 4th edition. This is further reinforced by the fact that a good half of this article is devoted to updating Shades, one of our easier ways of becoming an immortal brooding world-travelling badass, as last seen in issue 126's ecology. So in retrospect, this article may have slight pacing issues, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's both awesome, useful and historically significant. The demiplane is an excellent place to adventure, and when you get to really high level, you have the tools to make it into your homebase, and move the game from dungeon crawling to manipulating the world from the shadows down the generations. (why should bad guys have all that fun? ) I still wuv this article.
Planar personalities: Somewhat less universal and more rehashed is this little bunch of Sigil's NPC's, most of which appear elsewhere in various supplements. Goddammnit Bill, Rich, et all, there's no way you're going to catch up with Ed in terms of world details at this rate. How can a whole team of writers working on a line be producing less and recycling more material than a single guy? Well, I suppose it's more focussed, game useful material than another round of magical pranks and details of food.
So say hello to A'kin, the friendly fiend, Lissandra the gate-seeker, Estavan of the planar trade consortium, and Kylie the tout. All quite morally ambiguous characters, both good and bad guys can do business with them, or quite possibly wind up opposed to them. Despite the setting weirdness, they all fill fairly mundane roles, shopping, information, both buying and selling. As long as sigil is mostly comprised of things that need to eat, breathe, etc, economics will mostly work the way it does on the prime material, despite the things being bought and sold being a little odd. Actually, this feels rather banal in retrospect. I guess I'm spoiled by the more alien Exalted, Nobilis and WoD creatures, which manage to be several orders of magnitude more developed in terms of self-consistent alienness. Even the mid 90's already seems very dated in some respects.
part 2/8
Godsmen, bleakers, guvners and takers: Hello, planescape factions. You're making quite the waves amongst gamers. Ok, so they're essentially D&D's answer to Mage:the Ascension, taking exactly the same idea that reality is subjective, and it's our belief that can shape it, right down to the laws of physics, and then having a bunch of philosophies duking it out for control of the universe. Actually, I think I prefer the planescape factions to the Mage traditions. It's more obvious what they stand for, and easier to build a party consisting exclusively of one faction, as you still have the full class/race axes to play with. But the benefits you get from them are pretty minimal. Shouldn't the higher-ups in a faction get some additional abilities? Oh, you powergamers. :waves hand: You do keep on. Any excuse for a little more than the rules normally let you have. So each faction gets a few bits and pieces, be it new innate powers for everyone of higher rank, new spells, or donated magical items given to those in their good graces. Most of these will appear again in a few months time in The Factol's Manifesto, making this into a teaser of sorts. So this was damn cool on first reading, but loses a bit of it's impact in rereading because I do know it's just another extracted promotional tool, rather than something created specifically for the magazine. Once again we see the fact that they're relying more and more on staff writers these days.
The demiplane of shadow: Ahh, now here's another thing it's been way too long since. A complete overview of a so-far left nebulous plane. A really cool one too. Let's face it, shadow is one of those themes that's inherently dramatic narratively. Caught between light and darkness, unable to exist without both, ephemeral, mysterious, brooding, morally ambiguous. Fangirl bait onna stick, in other words. it's no surprise that this is one that actually gets followed up on, actually becoming a full plane next edition as they hint it might here (with an extra special place in the cosmology at that), and one of the few survivors to make it to 4th edition. This is further reinforced by the fact that a good half of this article is devoted to updating Shades, one of our easier ways of becoming an immortal brooding world-travelling badass, as last seen in issue 126's ecology. So in retrospect, this article may have slight pacing issues, but that doesn't negate the fact that it's both awesome, useful and historically significant. The demiplane is an excellent place to adventure, and when you get to really high level, you have the tools to make it into your homebase, and move the game from dungeon crawling to manipulating the world from the shadows down the generations. (why should bad guys have all that fun? ) I still wuv this article.
Planar personalities: Somewhat less universal and more rehashed is this little bunch of Sigil's NPC's, most of which appear elsewhere in various supplements. Goddammnit Bill, Rich, et all, there's no way you're going to catch up with Ed in terms of world details at this rate. How can a whole team of writers working on a line be producing less and recycling more material than a single guy? Well, I suppose it's more focussed, game useful material than another round of magical pranks and details of food.
So say hello to A'kin, the friendly fiend, Lissandra the gate-seeker, Estavan of the planar trade consortium, and Kylie the tout. All quite morally ambiguous characters, both good and bad guys can do business with them, or quite possibly wind up opposed to them. Despite the setting weirdness, they all fill fairly mundane roles, shopping, information, both buying and selling. As long as sigil is mostly comprised of things that need to eat, breathe, etc, economics will mostly work the way it does on the prime material, despite the things being bought and sold being a little odd. Actually, this feels rather banal in retrospect. I guess I'm spoiled by the more alien Exalted, Nobilis and WoD creatures, which manage to be several orders of magnitude more developed in terms of self-consistent alienness. Even the mid 90's already seems very dated in some respects.
