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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dave2008" data-source="post: 9227982" data-attributes="member: 83242">Manual of the Planes Review - Episode 02[HR][/HR]General Comments:Before I get into the review of chapter 2 I wanted to make some general comments on the whole book that I failed to bring up previously. Just thoughts on two things really:Art. There is no traditional art in this book. As an amateur artist and someone who will buy am RPG book primarily for the art, this purchase was an outlier for me for sure. I do miss the art and I think creature and location art would be a great value add. However, I appreciate the cost / expensive of good art and the fact that filling this book with WotC levels of art could easily expand it to close to 600 pages.Graphic Design. Though I don’t necessarily consider a Manual of the Planes book a Planescape book, this book uses the torn ribbons motif of 2e planescape books. It is otherwise a pretty traditional WotC format, which I appreciate. Initially I was a bit put off by the ribbons; however, I have come to appreciate them as a break from a wall of text and providing a color / theme for each chapter. They make it easy to understand what chapter you have dropped into. I also appreciate the more technical text of the book versus the cant-style verse of the 2e planescape products (which I found extremely annoying). The change of font and for color commentary that is sprinkled throughout the book is a nice nod to the OG books.[spoiler=Previous Episodes]<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/manual-of-the-planes-for-5e-on-dmsguild.700597/post-9220728" target="_blank">Chapter 1</a>[/spoiler]CHAPTER 2 – Planar Principia.General.This is a short chapter (18 pages) that for me if is both mostly useless information*, and yet I could see it being expanding to greater depths. I guess that sort of conundrum is what one should get in a planescape product. One of the surprises for me was the amount of discussion connecting D&D to MtG settings vs traditional D&D settings. I feel more information could have been used to discuss how to connect traditional D&D settings rather than only really covering the tricky aspects of connecting to Eberron. I also thought the lack of mention of Dark Sun was glaring, but that may because of DMs Guild restrictions. I can’t recall if Athas has been mentioned in any 5e WotC books.*The reason I say mostly useless to me is very specific. This chapter provides a lot of helpful suggestions for particular aspects of planar adventures. Which I don’t personally need, but could be very helpful for others.Now on to the slightly more detailed review!PLANAR ADVENTURESThis section is pretty much a table with 20 ideas on how to launch a planar adventure. Some interesting ideas, but not a lot of room to give depth to the ideas in the tabular format. These are really just adventure hooks / seeds. Ideas to inspire DMs, nothing more or less. Some of them seem fairly typical or generic and others a bit more original or specific. My only real issue is that the table is spans 2 pages when I think it could be on one.NATURE OF EXEMPLARSWithout a background in the planescape setting I found this section a bit hard to understand at first. It wasn’t until I read the Side Bar “The Big Nine” that I understood what exemplars are supposed to be. If this sidebar was at the beginning of the section or more explanation giving in the first few paragraphs I would have grasped the concept a bit more. One of the issues is the book doesn’t tell what Exemplars are, but gives options on what they can/ could be first. Without first understanding what an Exemplar was the differing explanations were more confusion than helpful options on a first read.Also, wouldn’t guardinals be exemplars?AGENCY AND AFTERLIFENow that I understood the format of providing different options without a default or standard, this section, and those that followed it, made more sense and was easier to grasp than the Exemplar section. This section has some good ideas, but is very short. No issues with the content, but feel it could be expanded more.I did appreciate the hook this section provides to connect Dragon Heist to a planar adventure. This was more interesting and useful to me than the more generalized hooks in “Planar Adventures.” I hope there are more of those.WHEN SETTINGS COLLIDEThis is the largest in most detailed section of this chapter and it delivers a lot of good ideas on how to connect different settings as part of a planar adventure. Cover things I hadn’t really thought about (what do you when your power source isn’t present in another setting) and giving a little background info on the settings included. There is a lot of fun stuff here, but this is felt, to me, like it was to MtG specific. It covers Ravnica, Arcavios, Theros, and Eberron (with some Krynn too) I would have liked to have seen more D&D settings covered. As a person who mostly homebrews I don’t necessarily know how to connect greyhawk & krynn & forgotten realms & ravenloft, etc.CREATURE THEMESThe last section of this chapter is mostly a series of tables that include different monsters (arrange by CR) grouped around a particular theme: Afterlife, Air, Chaos, Cosmic Horror, Dawn, Earth, Echo, Fey, Fire, Nature, Order, Prison, Shadow, Thought, Want, Water, Weird.From a certain perspective I appreciated that these themes are more abstract; however, I also wanted them tied to more specifically to certain planes. Maybe this will be a in a later chapter, but table of creatures I can expect to find on a particular plane is something I want from a product like this. If this this is just another option – great, but if this is the only option I will be a bit disappointed.[HR][/HR]That is it for chapter 2 – let me know if you have any questions or comments. Next time:Chapter 3  - The Great Wheel!</blockquote>

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