Planescape Manual of the Planes for 5e on DMSGuild

New on the DMSGuild is the Manual of the Planes for 5th edition. The cover is stunning.

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It's over 300 pages and the credits page includes folks from The Draconomicon, The Dragonlance Companion, Tasha's Crucible of Everything Else, Planescape: Metropolis, The Honkonomicon and Planewalker.com

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I love the special thanks.

This project was made possible by Roll20. Thank you for unlocking new horizons for the latest generation of planewalkers, bashers, berks, and touts. We’d also like to thank the giants on whose shoulders we stand when writing this book: Justice Ramin Arman, Richard Baker, Wolfgang Baur, David “Zeb” Cook, Bruce R. Cordell, Jeff Grubb, David Noonan, F. Wesley Schneider, Rick Swan, and all others who helped create and cultivate Planescape and the planes.

I've just bought it and am reading it now.

Manual of the Planes (5e) - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Manual of the Planes (5e) - From creators behind The Draconomicon, Tasha's Crucible of Everything Else, Planescape: Metropolis, The Honkonomic

www.dmsguild.com

Here is the table of contents.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I feel curiosity about the PC species. Someones seem to be new.

Other point is the "backrooms" of the World Sepert Inn. If a "reality glitch" could cause troubles...

Mount Olympus as an interplanar landmark? And what if Theros had got its own interplanar landmark?

Yes there is some kind of rift or delve on Mount Olympus that connects to other Greek Themed outer planes, Outer planes that are big mountains like Gehenna, the two Planes on either side of Aborea (Ysgard and the Beastlands) , and portals to every world were that Pantheon is worshipped. If the Feywild and Shadowfell were a thing in 2e or 1e, they'd also like have portals to world in the echo planes with their worshippers in them.

It's one of the reasons why the Olympic Pantheon is the most powerful Pantheons in D&D, it's why they fought the Greater Titans to conqueror Mount Olympus, it's an invaluable resource with which they can expand their territory (which the Church of Arborea helps with).

 

[Corinnguard]

A couple of the species in this PDF are Planetouched who embody Law and Chaos rather than Good (Aasimar), Evil (Tiefling) or one of the four Elements (Genasi).

 

[Henadic Theologian]

A couple of the species in this PDF are Planetouched who embody Law and Chaos rather than Good (Aasimar), Evil (Tiefling) or one of the four Elements (Genasi).

Shyfs are if I remember correctly Ethereal Planetouched as well.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

And as one of the people who worked on this Manual of the Planes, I am extremely curious to hear honest opinions of what people like and don't like with it! With a fully digital release having no page count limit and not including a campaign-sized adventure, there are certainly things we could do that Planescape (PAM) couldn't, and it's 100% intended as an extension to PAM filling in where it couldn't (like 200 pages on all of the planes), not a replacement of PAM

That’s cool to hear that it’s meant to compliment WotC’s Planescape book as I am loving all the ideas that I’m getting from it. I already have several Manual of the Planes style PDFs from the DMGuild and even a few that focus on specific planes, so I was originally not sure if I wanted another one. However, this makes me more interested in checking it out.

 

[Corinnguard]

I've never heard of the Eventide species and their subraces. Anyone know who and what they are?

 

[Scribe]

A couple of the species in this PDF are Planetouched who embody Law and Chaos rather than Good (Aasimar), Evil (Tiefling) or one of the four Elements (Genasi).

Neat, I wonder how close they are to my Law/Chaos plane touched.

 

[WhatLiesBeyond]

I've never heard of the Eventide species and their subraces. Anyone know who and what they are?

Author of most of the species here. The Eventide are a collection of some incredible planar deep cuts that I compiled together into a single species which encompasses the energy and reflection planes. All four of them have their origin somewhere in D&D's vast history.

Diurge is the oldest by far, originating in Dragon Magazine 141 as a humanoid reshaped by the Negative Energy Plane. I will say that they were the strongest of the four and the most challenging to balance for players.

Lumi originates in 3.5's Monster Manual III, and I've adapted some of their traits to make them fit for play. They've been brought up in Keith Baker's Exploring Eberron as well, although they aren't given mechanics.

Fairling is my renaming of Feytouched, which originated as a playable race in 3.0's Fiend Folio. The name adjustment is a nod to a certain other RPG that prominently features fey characters.

Finally, the name Gloaming is first used in 3.5's Underdark supplement, and I've used it as an umbrella term for Shadowfell Planetouched (less of a mouthful than Shadowswyft and Shade felt too generic for my taste).

 

[Storyteller Hero]

It's great to see another large project completed, but will the title for the book be okay? I vaguely recall someone having to rename their project, possibly due to trademark issues or titles earmarked for official WotC products.

 

[Morrus]

So far I've only read the 17 page free preview because I literally just dropped $47cad on the Scarred Lands PDF Bundle of Holding with Thrust hold or level up whatever its called ($270+cad value) and a $70 on Amazon for Midgard 5e Worldbook physical copy because I wanted at least 1 pretty much complete setting (was part of the Southlands kickstarter so between worldbook and city book I got that is 930 pages roughly if setting material and a city or two that gets in depth treatment.

So I'm low on cash and honestly the exchange rate isn't my friend.

And I want to see if they came out with Pod + PDF option later on.


BUT based on those 17 pages and the ToC, it's already clear that this is far closer to what Planescape Setting product. I will note it tries to not to step on P: AitM's toes, which means they made this amazing product in around 3 weeks at most, VS years for P: AitM.

I really like the flavour and mechanics of the feats in the MP5e that we get to see in the preview.

I'd do a reread of the Preview and ToCs for a deeper dive. I know that's not the whole book, but it's enough to get a taste of the quality and the ToC tells me exactly what the book includes, so between that I feel reasonable confidant in my a assessment of MP5e VS P: AitM.

I will say that MP5e doesn't have much in the way of art in the first 17 pages, but if they had the budget that WotC, that would not be an issue, so I cut it alot if slack on that issue.

Honestly toying with doing an Aborea focused book myself.

I'll also note long before P: AitM was announced there was a 300 page Acheron book on dmsguild, but under I believe from a general/FR umbrella, not Planescape, I don't have that one either, but I find the idea intriguing.

So you haven't read the book?

 

[kenmarable]

There was a lot of work put into this beyond even the writing itself - with researching planar material from every D&D edition, cat herding coordinating this wacky team, hours of debate on the nature and theme of each plane, even more hours of debate on balancing old lore with new lore, sensitivity reviews and guidance*, etc.. Some of all of that effort was the Project Lead talking with the DMs Guild rep pretty regularly, including checking on the title.

So putting that much effort into it, we didn't want to just a gamble that the title would be ok, but some due diligence was done. A few years from now, who knows. Maybe WotC will release their own Manual of the Planes and we will have to rename ours. But part of the Herculean effort in Project Leading this beast was being in contact with DMs Guild about it (since proper procedure is talking to DMG, and they are in contact with WotC rather than the hundreds of DMs Guild writers spamming WotC directly).

* Pandemonium was a big challenge and massive kudos to Eleanor Tremeer, our amazing Sensitivity Reader (and Consultant since much of this work is best done before putting words on the page)! Hey, publishers, hire her!!