Your Planescape experience

[Ambrus]

So I plan to run other modules within Dead Gods.

Such as?

 

[Southern Oracle]

Between Shemeska and yourself the two of you are largely driving the Planescape CS nowadays. It somewhat amazes me that your players have been playing Planescape for years and haven't given much attention to the factions; they're kind of the cornerstone of the setting. I'm wondering if I should bother developing them for my campaign.

I'd like the credit to go to planewalker.com and all its members as a whole...there's a wealth of useful material there that deserves recognition and use. I'm just lucky enough to have had some of my stuff published. I think the approach I took to my campaign as a whole might have contributed to my players avoiding the factions...most of the players were completely new to Planescape and, although their characters consider themselves seasoned planars at 13th level, they still feel separate from the "Big Picture." However, the factions are integral to the Planescape setting, and I'd recommend any DM wanting to capture the setting's "feel" spend some time on developing the factions...otherwise, you're just playing a generic planar campaign (which isn't bad, it's just not Planescape).

And I firmly blame you for a plot arc revolving around the Athar and their attempt to keep the Shattered Temple. Your writeup on them stuck in my brain.

Although I firmly align myself with the Sign of One, I've always had a soft spot for the Athar. I'm glad I was able to make them memorable. With the current game rules acknowledging the power of belief and the worship of concepts and abstracts instead of deities (even in other campaign settings, like the Church of the Silver Flame in Eberron), I think the Athar should be a more prominent force in the planes...the interaction of religions, factions, affiliations, armies, guilds, etc. makes for a rich and complex backdrop even if you just limit your game to Sigil itself.

 

[Oryan77]

Such as?

Well, this is spoiler info! *hidden black text*


The module doesn't give you much substance other than, "The PC's land here, an NPC will tell them this, they'll encounter that, & then they'll travel there". So for example, the PC's travel to the Vault of the Drow (Monte said he was a fan of the Vault of the Drow module so he stuck that city in Dead Gods). The PC's don't really do anything there other than enter the city, navigate through it and across a battle field without getting killed by any Drow that spot them, and then they talk to a specific Drow NPC. That's it! So I bought the Vault of the Drow module and I'm going to try and splice the two modules together. I haven't read through Vault of the Drow but hopefully it will make the Drow scenario more memorable to the PC's. Plus I'm dying to run the old classic modules anyway I also got a couple Dragon Mags that have info on the Vault.

The beginning of Dead Gods starts the PC's tracking down some Khaasta's to their base on a Demiplane. So I'm going to try and change it to where the Khassta's base is the caverns underneath the Hill Giants Fort in the module Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. I'll relocate it somewhere like Bytopia probably. But, I want to run a good dungeon crawl and I wasn't impressed with those caverns from the Giant module, so someone on Enworld suggested that I use the dungeon from the module Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. I bought that and read through it and I liked what I read. So I'll probably use it.

And I think the PC's have to travel through Lolths Demonweb Pits to get to the Vault of the Drow. So I bought the modules Queen of the Demonweb Pits & City of the Spider Queen so I can pull bits from those to spice up that portion of Dead Gods.

Basically Dead Gods will be the backbone to my campaign and it will help me link together several modules that I've always wanted to run.

 

[Southern Oracle]

I think players can appreciate the beauty and complexity of the Planescape adventures more if they're used judiciously and are interwoven with "normal" adventures adapted to the setting. As I mentioned earlier, my heroes are currently going through The Great Modron March, but that requires the modrons to make it ALL the way around the Great Ring...that takes a lot of time, and the adventure has a lot of gaps between detailed scenarios. I've filled in the holes with a combination of homebrew and published adventures adapted to fit. Some examples:

The heroes visited an alternate material plane world where dwarves were the most common race, and humans extremely rare...they helped a dwarven king break an old family curse. ("In the Dwarven King's Court" from Dungeon Magazine)

The heroes visited a world where humans were nearly extinct, thanks to a new species of sentient plant that was restoring the planet to its "natural" state. (The Forest Oracle, a 1E module; it was this adventure that introduced the adu'ja and t'kel player character races from Dragon Magazine to my campaign.)

The heroes accompanied the party's paladin to Mount Celestia for him to become a Fist of Raziel, and became embroiled in a train heist in Erackinor (the realm of Moradin and Berronar). ("Train of Events," from Dungeon Magazine)

The heroes journeyed to Graz'zt's realm of Azzagrat to rescue the Master Trader. (For Duty and Deity, a 2E Forgotten Realms adventure; I substituted the Master Trader for the kidnapped goddess.)

The heroes journeyed to the asian kingdom of Tatsukatsukai on Bytopia to sell the Abyssal bloodiron they acquired in Azzagrat. (Homebrew adventure where the heroes ran into the adu'ja again, making them regret not taking action against the plant people earlier in the campaign.)

As it is now, the heroes have only made it to the Sylvania scenario, where I substituted one of the player characters for the good doctor's experiment victim. There's still a LONG way for the modrons to go before The Great Modron March is finished.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

From a practicality standpoint, I say run a pre-FW campaign. If you decide the factions aren't important, you can gloss over them, but you've left the door open to using them and all the published adventures that hinge on them if you set it earlier in the timeline.