D&D 5E Princes of the Planescopalypse?

[Charles Rampant]

Hey all,


A fairly random question here: how would you transport Princes of the Apocalypse to a Planescape setting? I use the term Planescape in both the 'set on the outer planes' and 'philosophers with clubs and Diterlizzi line art' senses. After finishing reading Princes, I switched to reading up old Planescape writeups for the Norse pantheon (useful for my home game), and I got to wondering. Could Princes be stuck into the Planes? If so, how?


I know, I know: madness. They didn't even mention the idea in the 'how to run in other settings' part of the Princes book! But elemental temples and an elemental theme don't not work for a planar campaign: just focus a bit more on the Inner, rather than the Outer. Perhaps the Dessarin valley could be quietly located on in the Outlands? Or perhaps, a little more elegantly, you keep the Dessarin valley in the Prime, and instead make portals to the Inner (and, obviously, Sigil) a major element in how the game works. Perhaps even just abandon the main Dessarin valley stuff, and use the dungeons within a reconstructed Planar framework?

Perhaps the real question is how do you make Princes - a dungeon crawl sandbox with a focus on elements - work in a planar campaign? Should you add factions? Do we worry about changing the theme of Princes, since it would naturally affect the workload as a DM, thus rather defeating the point of having a pre-gen adventure in the first place?


Anyway, what do people think? Would you bother trying this? What approaches would you take? What are the downsides and upsides, do you think?

 

[Mephista]

Well, we -could- have them transported to Sigil itself with a misaligned spell, which would cause issues. I don't know about transporting the storyline as a whole, though. The story is wildly involved in the Underdark as a setting. A drow archmage messed up the spell that summoned them, we have huge plot point with fungus-people, and there are existing devils and demons who would be making this whole "sudden appearance" to be a thing. The Blood war is a thing, so we'd likely have devils and angels fighting the demons infesting (alternatively, the Lady would just say NO! and stop fighting, and either banish the demon lords, or let them stay, and no one can gainstay her).

Actually, I'm not sure anything is stopping the demon lords from visiting Sigil in the first place.

Outside of sigil... I can't think of anywhere appropriate for the story to take place. Another Outer Plane? The demon lords would be set against other powerful natives, who likely could defeat the demon lords and take their power for their own or utterly destroy them. The Outlands could work... until the evil just shifts them all back into the Abyss in a matter of days. The Elemental Plane has beings that are a match for demon lords, and in some cases actual gods; demon lords also might not have a reason to want to be in the Elemental Plane. Not much call for undead elementals or fungus-queens. Grazzt could try to make half-elemental cambions, I suppose.

I think it really would have to be Sigil or Bust, and the nature of Sigil would require extensive rewrites.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@Mephista- I think you mixed up Princes of the Apocalypse with Out of the Abyss.
[MENTION=32659]Entsuropi[/MENTION]- I've kind of done what you said, but not in the exact manner. I have a campaign that is essentially a Planescape campaign. The central location is Sigil, and the players have gotten involved in a few different potential adventures. I was settin up PoA as well as the older Return to the TOEE (heavily modified) and also the Planescape adventure "Dead Gods".

I am leaving the Dessarin Valley intact and on Toril. I did think about moving some or all of the locations to other areas, and I may still do so, but currently I am planning on running as is. I do think that they are easily transplanted to other locations/planes/worlds. A simple solution would be to include portals in the Haunted Keeps that lead to the associated temples, but instead of being an ancient dwarven city, have the temples be structures on the associated inner plane.

Something like that.

My approach is to have the current situation from PoA taking place on Toril, but to fully understand what is happening, the players must travel to Oerth to research the original TOEE and Hommlet and all of that. So both locations are on prime worlds, but I bridge those worlds with Sigil and the planes.

I don't think that it would take much to make it an even more planar-centric adventure.

 

[neobolts]

Caveat: I own but have not read PotA, as I could potentially be a player in a PotA game. Adapting this seems like a stretch, but here it goes...

Outlands is an obvious choice. Or that crossroads city from 4e. Sigil is too much of its own beast to try adapting, imho.

Left field idea: The Feywild. Vaguely earth-like, possibly phasing in and out of the prime material like 4e eladrin cities. You could use keyed portals to let the party come and go from Sigil as part of the story.

 

[Mephista]

Doh! >.< I totally did! Ignore everything I said!

At its heart, Princes of the Apocalyse is a group of four cults trying to raise their elemental lords to greater prominance, and bring power to the Elder Elemental Eye (who might be a demon lord or god, depending). Totally work in the Outlands, or in Sigil, or anywhere really. If anything, its more prominant, given how much closer we are to the Elemental Planes.

 

[jrowland]

I could see it on the outlands. In fact, I could see it as a power play for the elemental princes seeking a foothold in the outer planes. I'd play as is on the outlands, but bump up the stakes. Once one prince is defeated, the other princes succeed, creating "outposts" for the other elemental princes. While the party deals with all this, the "Elder Elemental Eye" builds an outpost at the base of the spire. In fact, the elder elemental eye is pushing for the princes and the PCs to fight since the elder elemental eye has a secret: It plans on sacrificing the 4 princes in a grand ritual that will release none other than Tharizdun from his prison which is beneath the spire, destroying Sigil in the process...

If it were my campaign, I'd largely let Tharizdun win. Sigil is an over-rated slum

 

[Charles Rampant]

So the Outlands seems like a popular choice. That relegates Sigil to the role of a distant city, where the players can head for information and supplies, and maybe shortcuts to the temples.

Do you see any room to change the themes of the campaign to suit a planar environment? I mean, how do you dick about with the cults to make them suit the factions? This is, I think, probably the harder bit.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=32659]Entsuropi[/MENTION]
If you're serious about doing this, I'd consider picking up a copy of the 2e Inner Planes book, and possibly the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix III which had an elemental focus.

My impression of PotA is that it works as a modular sandbox only if you pull out the dungeons and reassemble them for your own campaign.

Since the elemental cults are all about Tharizdun (or being manipulated by him?), who is all about destroying the multiverse...you could do worse than tying them to a group of Doomguard extremists. A lot of Planescape DMs don't convincingly portray Doomguard as having a legitimate philosophy anyway, so you could just run with the whole "they're f**ing crazy" assumption and make them Tharizdun cultists.

The Doomguard traditionally have 4 citadels bordering the Negative Energy Plane which are very evocative of the Fortress of Regrets from PS:Torment. These could synch up very nicely with the 4 POTA elemental cults, and at least could be places you introduce POTA dungeons.

There were also two sects from the PSMCAIII which have potential: the Opposers (who are into conflict) and the Primals (who are an ultra-secretive secret society). Personally, I think you could rework the Primals as the network connecting the 4 elemental cults in POTA, so they've got a secret language, encrypted mephit messengers, arcane divination/sending/teleportation networks. Maybe make their goal the obliteration of the Outer Planes and the Prime Material Plane - to reduce everything to its "prime" elemental state.

Another thing I'd consider adopting from PSCMAIII is a monster called the entrope which was supposedly a creation of the Doomguard (another Doomguard tie-in for you!). The entrope was basically eating away at the boundary between the various elemental planes, leading to steam pockets between Fire and Water for example. Basically they were slowly reducing the structured elemental planes into something that resembles the Elemental Chaos (which is what I associate with Tharzidun).

So that gives you some nice options about how to incorporate POTA into Planescape

 

[hawkeyefan]

Those are all some really good ideas, [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]. I'll probably incorporate some of that into my game.

 

[Charles Rampant]

If you're serious about doing this, I'd consider picking up a copy of the 2e Inner Planes book, and possibly the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix III which had an elemental focus.

My impression of PotA is that it works as a modular sandbox only if you pull out the dungeons and reassemble them for your own campaign.

Having read PotA, but not run it, my impression is that - like Lost Mines of Phandelver - it has a lot of sandbox elements at the start, with lots of freedom (and potential confusion); but once you start the dungeon delving then a lot of that open wandering disappears. Or, rather, the sandbox exploration is more a focus of the first section than the later sections. The dungeons are fairly non-linear themselves, though. And the non-linearity of the adventure as a whole comes from the lack of a storyline in the background going A-B-C.

The bit that I like the most is, sadly, the sandbox! The dungeons are cool (nicely themed) but building dungeons is not necessarily very difficult. Of course, any pregen adventure is ultimately just saving time and buying professional quality ideas. Of course, by trying to transpose the adventure, I most risk losing the sandbox and keeping the dungeons, which are themselves easy enough to insert somewhere else.

Since the elemental cults are all about Tharizdun (or being manipulated by him?), who is all about destroying the multiverse...you could do worse than tying them to a group of Doomguard extremists. A lot of Planescape DMs don't convincingly portray Doomguard as having a legitimate philosophy anyway, so you could just run with the whole "they're f**ing crazy" assumption and make them Tharizdun cultists.

The Doomguard traditionally have 4 citadels bordering the Negative Energy Plane which are very evocative of the Fortress of Regrets from PS:Torment. These could synch up very nicely with the 4 POTA elemental cults, and at least could be places you introduce POTA dungeons.

Using the Doomguard is an interesting shout. Their citadels are on the quasi-planes, rather than the full elemental ones, but changing either Princes or the Doomguard is easy enough. I wonder, though, if the PS Factions are not best put in the same role as the FR Factions, that is as driving elements behind the players. They could be reduced to three or six primary ones, with the players suggested towards those, in order to tie into the rule of three.

I was also wondering whether the forts of the cults (Rivergard Keep, etc) could be transposed full-form into Sigil itself. You lose much of the sandbox open map element, but being located in a major city has the benefit of allowing a lot of wandering anyway. They can all be shoved into different parts of the city (the Spire into the Lady's Ward, Monastery into Lower?), giving some impetus to wander, and then all ultimately serve as the location for portals out to the relevant temples. Or, in order to avoid the problem of players jumping into a far-too-difficult temple, they each hold part of a portal key, needed to access the temples? So each one only opens up the temples once you've done all of the first level stuff.

The delegation isn't a hugely strong hook anyway, so that can be changed fairly simply; just make them a group of unconnected people, who all happened to be returning from a conference in the Inner planes, and who disappeared shortly after arriving into Sigil.

The big part will be, I think, trying to decide what to change about the cult to better suit Planar ideas. Clearly the elemental princes have to stay, for the end-boss element if nothing else. But it could be that their being summoned is more about them being corrupted? As in, they are normal elemental princes prior to the cults involvement, but that the ritual is basically them being twisted into a corrupt form. That way it ties a bit better into the power of belief, rather than good vs evil, to suit the PS theme.

Some of the temples are candidates for various Outer Planes, as well. Pandemonium for Howling Hatred, obviously.