Your Planescape experience

[Tzarevitch]

I have run it in both 2e and 3.5e. My 2e game ran for years. For 3.5e I did a Planescape/steampunk game with Sigil as London and dwarven steam trains and gnomish zeppelins traversing the planes.

I modeled the Bloodwar on WWI with Hellish and Abyssal forces clashing with fiend-possessed ironclads and tanks. The PCs got a real susprise with a goristro with half-fiend halflings manning the machine guns mounted in the pillbox on its back.

Truthfully, in Planescape anything works as long as the DM can sell it convincingly.

I also recommend Eternal Boundary and Harbinger House as adventures to run. They are both fairly low level. Tales from the Infinite Staircase (or something like that) is not bad either. Dead Gods is fun too. Avoid Deva Spark and Something Wild. They aren't worth your time. Doors to the Unknown is great too but the ending falls flat. You just need to fix it. (You can get all of these cheap as PDFs)

There is also an anthology of short Planescape adventures whose name excapes me at the moment. Most of them are only ok as is, but they do well as adventure seeds with some alterations and expansion. They just aren't beefy enough for 3.5 as is.

The Hellbound set is also a must. The adventures inside are good. You will have to read them first and carefully decide if you want your campaign to go that way though.

Personally, I didn't like Faction War. I only ran it because I was ending the campaign.

Lastly, download WotC's 3.0 info on the modrons. You may need it.

Tzarevitch

 

[Ruined]

I can echo the sentiments of many PS fans who've posted already. Love the setting, didn't really enjoy the shakeup that Faction War provided. Dead Gods and Eternal Boundary are my favorite modules, and the must-have books are Uncaged: Faces of Sigil and the Factol's Manifesto.

Oddly enough, my situation mirrors yours somewhat. Just finished a 4-yr campaign (Scarred Lands), and have turned my eye back to the Planes. I'm also working on some affliation-based mechanics for the Factions. The original material mentioned earlier was posted here:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=164529

Good luck with your game, and keep us abreast. Maybe we can run ideas off one another.

 

[Shemeska]

There is also an anthology of short Planescape adventures whose name excapes me at the moment.

That would be 'Well of Worlds'. It has some nice short adventures, and I'm rather partial to the one inside the maze of Vartus Timlin.

 

[Psion]

There is also an anthology of short Planescape adventures whose name excapes me at the moment.

Well of Worlds.

It has some classics in it. Like the Romeo and Juliet with the families being replaced by Tanar'ri and Baatezu...

 

[Voadam]

I've only run or played planescape in 3e. I played a fire dwarf spontaneous casting monk style variant druid using options from Unearthed Arcana. His summoned mount was some wierd planar creature using a normal animal companion stats. Planescape is great for wierd magical races and classes.

In my high level game I'm running lord of the Iron Fortress (greatly expanded). I bought pdfs of the 2e PS CS, the outlands book, planes of law and the outer planes monstrous compendium. I already owned the 1e Manual of Planes and use material from all these sources plus planewalker.com. They decided not to go to Sigil but went to Rigus in their hunt for a planar murderer and have been doing city adventuring there since.

For some urban adventures get the Ptolus adventures pdf. Freeport stuff is city-based as well and bluffside. Foul Locales Urban Blight by MEG is short city adventures.

 

[Voadam]

What I did with the Outlands was make them Concordant Opposition a TRUE NEUTRAL Plane. Meaning everything counts as neutral for effects here and alignment DR is useless, making outsiders wary of travelling there and the plane more subject to rule and habitation by wierd mortal races.

Outsiders consider it the Center of all and incursions are common as planar forces try and take or make inroads into controlling the multiverse.

It has made for interesting play, and the murder mystery in a LE gate town is hampered slightly with no effective detect evil from the paladin. I had the gate town populated with LE and LN mortal or minor planar races (hobgoblins, fire giants, azer, bladelings) and no core PH races and it felt appropriately wierd and exotic.

 

[Wik]

Way back in 2e days, when I was a crazy Dark Sun nut, my friend Noah turned to me and said "Hey, what about Planescape?"

"Enh. That's the one with the planes, and the city, right?"
"Yeah."
"Does it have half-giants?"
"If you want it to."
"Um.... Screw it. You can run a game, if you want."

And so, we ran a single-player "intro to planescape" game. I wound up playing a human fighter (wooo!) who was a "Prime" from some unnamed world. Within a few minutes of starting play, my lovely little human got involved witha tiefling's plot to steal enchanted glaives from the armory, and sell them on the black market. I can't remember my character's stance on the whole thing, but the session turned into a "stop the tiefling, take the profits" type thing. All in all, it wasn't a particularly fun session, and afterwards, we went back to Dark Sun.

There was another GM in the area who was a PS nut, and Noah played with him constantly, always talking about how cool Planescape is. But I'd just shrug and say something like "That's nice. The Thri-Kreen is ripping your arms off".

 

[Ambrus]

Good luck with your game, and keep us abreast. Maybe we can run ideas off one another.

I'd be happy to share what plans I have at the moment in hopes of getting feedback and maybe some shortcuts ideas for pulling them off.

My first idea is to have the PCs be native cagers all having been raised in the same small neighborhood, most likely somewhere in the Market Ward. I'd like to map and flesh out the neighborhood in great detail with NPCs made up of the PCs' families, friends and an assortment of colorful neighborhood personalities. The idea is to give the players a solid sense of belonging and intimate insight into the daily life of the cage by having them start their PCs' lives in a tight-knit Sigilian ghetto; sort of like Sesame Street on crack with various outsiders instead of Muppet!

If the players are amenable I'd even propose running a short intro adventure in which the players play their future heroes as tweens out to explore the ins and outs of their home stomping grounds. They could get familiar with the various city's factions as they discover the larger city surrounding them. It'd help them pick their alignments, eventual careers and possible faction affiliations. We'd then fast forward a few years later when they'd start the dangerous adventuring stuff.

For some urban adventures get the Ptolus adventures pdf.

I've already purchased the Ptolus CS and was thinking of porting large sections of the book into Sigil to help flesh out the greatest city in the planes. It just makes sense really; they're both "the city by the spire".

Any advice on these ideas is welcome.

 

[BOZ]

I played PlaneScape in 2e pre-faction wars. If I were to run again and concinve the group to play I would probably have the setting be pre-FW, mainly out of familiarity.

same here - i've been considering it, and just wish i had the time to get something together.

 

[JustKim]

What about it did you like so much?

I liked the way the Godsmen were used, the way the Lady of Pain was used, a lot of little things that felt authentically Planescape. I felt Sougad was a strong villain and the encounters with him were memorable. The house, its history and the villain Sougad seemed to be Planescape's own Castle Ravenloft, in a good way. Sougad's becoming a deity depends on the PCs failing, and it wasn't an issue with me. I had thought about making him a recurring villain, killing Godsmen to stop others from ascending, but it never came up.

The first few adventures are spent demonstrating what a menace the GMM is, and then they start expecting the PCs to help them when someone starts experimenting on them. It sounded to me like there was not a deep grasp of player motivation there...

I definitely agree, and I never use the second chapter in the GMM adventure, where they stampede an orphanage, for that reason.