Planescape Planescape Pre-order Page Shows Off The Books!

You can now pre-order Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse from D&D Beyond. The set comes out on October 17th.

Scroll down through the comments to see more various peeks at the books!

Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse

An adventure setting spanning the infinite realities of the world’s greatest roleplaying game

www.dndbeyond.com

• Discover 2 new backgrounds, the Gate Warden & the Planar Philosopher, to build planar characters in the D&D Beyond character builder
• Channel 7 otherworldly feats, new intriguing magic spells & more powered by planar energies
• Explore 12 new ascendant factions, each with distinct cosmic ideologies
• Face over 50 unusual creatures including planar incarnates, hierarch modrons, and time dragons in the Encounter Builder
• Journey across the Outlands in an adventure for characters levels 3-10 and 17
• Adds adventure hooks, encounter tables, maps of Sigil and the Outlands & more to your game

This 3 books set comprises:

• Sigil and the Outlands: a setting book full of planar character options with details on the fantastic City of Doors, descriptions of the Outlands, the gate-towns that lead to the Outer planes, and more
• Turn of the Fortunes Wheel: an adventure set in Sigil and the Outlands designed for character levels 3-10 with a jump to level 17
• Morte’s Planar Parade: Follow Morte as he presents over 50 inhabitants of the Outer Plane, including incarnates, hierarch modrons, time dragons, and more with their stats and descriptions

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The Slaads aren't even good as a version of Chaotic Neutral, individually they are Chaotic Evil, as a society Lawful Evil.

How so? I already contested that.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The creatures I'm hoping for the most are Celestials, of you don't count Spelljammer or unique individuals like the Abbott, there are 11 regular D&D Celestial creatures to 10 MtG Celestial creatures. Spelljammer Reigar, Mercane (originally giants), Star Lancers, Star Apparition, Kindori (Astral Whales).

Guardinals, Archons, some CG paragon race of somekind, and new Angels perhaps. Maybe Baurbaiur too.

For perspective when searching by creature type, Celestial return 2 pages, plants return 4, Celestials are losing to Plants. Fey are also 4 pages, everything else is even more pages except for Oozes which are 2 pages, but it's Oozes so that doesn't count.

 

[michaeljpastor]

+1 for Zelanzy reference.

Thank you. I've been eyes deep in Amber lore lately, rereading all of the books (in some cases, for the first time), and lots of non-fiction about Amber, since they've been in development news. So this Planescape release has gotten my Ambervision up.

I approach Planescape like Amber meets Willy Wonka, with all of the Outer Planes acting as 16 Poles that cast Shadows onto the Outlands, and the Outlands an ice cream soup of those flavors mixed with Factions as candy toppings. The Outlands "substance" spins (simultaneously clockwise and counterclockwise), spiraling into the center (slower at the edges, faster at the center), until it becomes a font of pure flavor and sugar at the Spire, shooting into the Netherverse, only to be collected again by the pull of the Poles of the Outer Planes. Random chunks of the Elemental planes are found in the Outlands (bananas, fruit), and demiplanes like the Feywild act as toppings like whipped cream and fudge.

If you ever ordered the San Diego Zoo at Farrell's (30 scoops of ice cream, every topping under the sun, and little plastic animals throughout), then you understand my mind's eye view of the Outlands.

I've considered making a Willy Wonka inspired character like the Lady of Pain, but mixed with a Where's Waldo? feel, a Trickster archetype that takes on the attributes of whatever area of the Outlands he's in (except when he's not). And if I go that far, might as well introduce the Oompa Loompas. ;-)

 

[Tsuga C]

Unfortunately, it appears that fast food is what most people want. All we can hope is that they release the recipe.

Hmm, yes and no. It's tough to choose between two options when you are only presented with one of them for review.

I believe if more people today were exposed to and had direct knowledge of the lore and the richness of what was developed for AD&D and 2E, a sizeable percentage of current players would be willing to vote with their wallets for better world-building or adventure-crafting materials. Whether you make your own entire world or simply insert your own continent into a pre-existing world, I'm sure the wealth of lore would be of use to plenty of DMs to create their own campaigns which tie into or are completely independent of the campaigns offered by WotC currently.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hmm, yes and no. It's tough to choose between two options when you are only presented with one of them for review.

I believe if more people today were exposed to and had direct knowledge of the lore and the richness of what was developed for AD&D and 2E, a sizeable percentage of current players would be willing to vote with their wallets for better world-building or adventure-crafting materials. Whether you make your own entire world or simply insert your own continent into a pre-existing world, I'm sure the wealth of lore would be of use to plenty of DMs to create their own campaigns which tie into or are completely independent of the campaigns offered by WotC currently.

Doing so, however, would require far more effort than WotC has given any indication that they are willing to put in.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now I feel inspired for a crossover Zendikar(Magic: the Gathering) and Planescape with the giants. In Sigil planar portals toward Zendikar, or a "mirror universe" have been discovered, and the exploration has started, but the different groups of giants are the main settlers, because the migration is necessary (at least to gather the new sources of mana), and dragons don't want to travel to other regions without their threasures. Lots of towns have been built, but now they are "ghost zones" because evacuation was necessary in some moment of past caused by the Roil.

 

[BB Shockwave]

Those things are explicitly what drew me to the setting (that and an abiding love for the 1st/2nd cosmology). Without that, and considering WotC's lack of interest in setting detail in general, this product holds no value to me. 5e Ravenloft burned me hard, and WotC's version of Spelljammer and Dragonlance hasn't made me feel better about their ideas about setting.

Ravenloft is a book I never even bought, they neutered the whole concept by removing alignments and leaving too much freedom for the DM to change the setting. I feel that book will get a re-release online once they transition to OneD&D or whatever, because as we have seen in later releases like Monsters of the Multiverse, they went back on the "any alignment" thing, only keeping that for humanoid races, most other creatures are "usually this and that alignment" and NPCs now have a set alignment.
Spelljammer was sadly, heavy on mechanics and light on lore. But Planescape does not have super confusing rules (there are portals and maybe the magic changes in the Outlands and that is it) so I am hoping this book is more heavy on lore. Fizban's certainly was.

Chaos laughs at style guides. Actually, it rips up style guides and eats them.

The plural of "Slaad" is "7" or "banana" or "slurpidoop."

LOL that is a good one.
Indeed it probably changes every day.
Though I'd wager on most days, the plural of Slaad is "Oh sweet Primus there are MORE of them?" followed by screams.

I noticed that the "Time Dragons of Chronepsis" are mentioned in Candlekeep Mysteries' disclaimer text, and now we have time dragons mentioned in the description of the Planescape books, and Chronepsis on the Outlands map. Neat!

They are probably going to be associated with Chronepsis now. Seeing as he is a Greatwyrm in 5E, probably they are his children.
Apparently until now Time Dragons only existed in 3E, the new artwork for them looks quite different from that - there they looked like White Dragons with a domino mask and stripes.

"The chaos creatures from the universe of chaos have a rigid color-coded hierarchy" is a tough one to defend.

I suspect it's because slaadi weren't meant to be from Limbo, but were just a cool monster originally.

But it is not rigid at all. In fact hierarchy among Slaadi is completely chaotic. It isn't like Devils who advance from a lower form to a higher one.
For starters, the Red and Blue Slaadi both have reproduction methods that spawn a Slaad of the OTHER color. Does not make it better that Red and Blue Slaadi tend to dislike each other.
Green Slaadi can happen as an accident in the above reproduction system, if the human infected was a spellcaster of high enough level. So it is again, completely random.
It only gets more orderly after that, since Green Slaadi can grow more powerful and become Gray and then Death Slaadi. But your average Red and Blue Slaad will never advance further. Also, last I checked, the powerful Slaadi don't really command the lower ones, they are mostly doing their own thing. It's not even like with Demons where the stronger ones press the weaker ones into their service.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What could be more chaotic than a name that is constantly auto-corrected to "salad"?

 

[BB Shockwave]

Going with Morte for the bestiary instead of Xanxost is a disappointing choice, if only because a bestiary written by Xanxost would be the best thing. Another thing I will have to put on DM's guild! (I do have a book of archon conversions up there, if WotC doesn't do it...)

Xanxost would have been tailor-made to do the bestiary, agreed. Well, we can hope he is in the book in some form. Maybe adding small footnotes like Elminster did in Volo's, to correct Morte?

What could be more chaotic than a name that is constantly auto-corrected to "salad"?

LOOOL. I like this. It reminds me of the old auto-translators like Babelfish and early Google translate, which always translated "dressing up" to "salad dressing upwards!" from english to hungarian.

 

[Tsuga C]

Doing so, however, would require far more effort than WotC has given any indication that they are willing to put in.

That's the maddening part of their sloth. The work has already been done and done quite lavishly, in fact. All they would have to do is update the number crunching and some tertiary and quaternary elements of various planes of existence and their inhabitants to merge smoothly with the latest incarnation of D&D. Some 85-90% of the lore could be transferred to the new edition without changing a thing.

Small investment, big payoff--what's not to like from a corporate and a TTRPG community perspective?