Planescape Planescape - what would you like to see?

[I'm A Banana]

I'm able to put a finger on something that was eluding me...

I've been thinking a lot about the first game session and how the PCs meet/already know each other. We all know the cliches (hired by party X, you all meet in a tavern, you wake up in a dungeo cell with no memory). I was trying to come up with interesting ways to start off a Planescape game that could be included in a published product (rather than a home game where the DM could just work with the players to figure out how they know each other).

My answer, similar to your answer Tequila, was to play out the meeting of the party members. Since that would involve potentially both prime and planar characters, then it had to be some trans-planar event.

Your answer, Kamikaze Midget, was to gloss over how the PCs know each other (or let each group figure out their own answer) and jump right into getting hired. Bam! You are a group. A Marilith is hiring you. That's all you need to know.

Yeah, that sounds entirely likely. While I like intro stories as much as the next guy, I think that I've been burned by playing a lot of "one session campaigns" that never get much past that, and so don't get onto the interesting things that I have in store for the party. So I tend to just say "We're starting almost in media res, how you get to that point is up to you, but that's the point we're at." I find that folks tend to like the convenience of getting right to the action. And the action unique to PS is all about what your characters and the NPCs believe and how they act on those beliefs. Since "Surprise! You're in the Abyss!" doesn't highlight that unique action, it's not as appealing to me.

Which isn't to say that adventure doesn't happen, just that it doesn't leverage the unique aspects of PS. Any campaign has adventures or sessions that don't touch on the larger themes in much of a way, but I'm into having a focus, at least, on those unique themes, so that they get brought to bear more often, so that what is awesome about playing in PS (as opposed to any other setting) is shown bright and strong, and people know that if they want that awesomeness, they can play PS.

FWIW, I think of Spelljammer and Ravenloft, also trans-setting settings, much the same way. Same with Eberron or FR or Greyhawk or DL or Dark Sun. I don't want an Eberron setting to sell the fact that you can have dungeon crawls in it, or a Dark Sun setting to sell the fact that you can kill bandits. Those are things that might happen in those worlds, but they aren't what makes those worlds special.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] Ah, that makes sense. I tend to go the other way and think in terms of long campaigns / "story bibles". Obviously advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. For me, the kinds of stories I like to set up (in a non-linear sense) work best as long campaigns. Maybe that's just cause I haven't had so many campaigns fizzle as you (then again I haven't played as much D&D as many on these boards, despite having been involved with it for a long time and thinking about and writing for it).

I do have a question about Planescape's main theme being factions. IMHO Planescape: Torment hit on the feel of the campaigns setting better than most of the written adventures, yet factions weren't a major part of that. The central issues were more personal..."what can change the nature of a man?" How would you approach backgrounds/hooks in a hypothetical 5e Planescape game for non-faction aligned PCs who are still distinctly Planescape-y?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'd prefer it not to be a pull, but rather a lure.

"You suddenly wind up in a strange land, and the goal is to escape! Adventures happen while you do!" is an adventure you could do anywhere.

A game that leverages PS's more distinct feel would, I think, be a deliberate thing like...

That sounds like a great intro adventure! I haven't been advocating making the intro adventure less Planescapey; I simply haven't DMed PS much, so I honestly just suck at coming up with PSey plots.

See, I think that if the goal is to have a PS campaign, as opposed to another sort of campaign with planar adventuring in it, having half the party want to go back to their home world and wail on goblins again deflates it. I'd rather have characters with strong ties to the PLANESCAPE setting as the default baseline, which means treating the Clueless planar first-timers like a normal D&D game might treat a character who plays a farmer fresh off the turnip truck -- a character given context by the fact that the other party members aren't that kind of character.

Yeah, players certainly need to be willing to buy into a PS campaign, even if they don't want to read up on the setting, in order to avoid derailing it with prime characters who just try to get back home 'Because that's what my character would do.' But then I'm a firm believer in "It's not the DM's job to drag your character into the campaign. If you truly can't think of a reason why your character would set forth with the others, just roll with it until you can, or make a new character."

At the end of the intro adventure, after arriving in Sigil, the prime characters should ideally either 1) be unable to find a way back home, or 2) realize that Sigil and the planes are a much more interesting place.

Yeah, that sounds entirely likely. While I like intro stories as much as the next guy, I think that I've been burned by playing a lot of "one session campaigns" that never get much past that, and so don't get onto the interesting things that I have in store for the party. So I tend to just say "We're starting almost in media res, how you get to that point is up to you, but that's the point we're at." I find that folks tend to like the convenience of getting right to the action. And the action unique to PS is all about what your characters and the NPCs believe and how they act on those beliefs. Since "Surprise! You're in the Abyss!" doesn't highlight that unique action, it's not as appealing to me.

Ah, it all makes sense now.

Honestly, I wouldn't object to the kind of planar-exclusive intro adventure you suggest...but with my luck, I'd surely get one or two players who would.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Well that's a bit harsh, given that I got paid for a 4e planar piece in Dungeon #205.

Maybe, but you'll forgive me for assuming the worst. There are a lot of fans who oversimplify, exaggerate, misinterpret, and outright lie about 4e around here, and I've noted your critical opinions on 4e in the past. Unless Quickleaf's concise description of 4e's take on the BW is inaccurate, I think that claiming technicalities is splitting a hair or two. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. never directly attacked each other during the Cold War, but it was still a war, and as I understand it, that peace-time sense of safety was rather scarce.

In any case, I shouldn't be relying on others to tell me how 4e handles the BW -- to the MotP!

 

[Quickleaf]

That sounds like a great intro adventure! I haven't been advocating making the intro adventure less Planescapey; I simply haven't DMed PS much, so I honestly just suck at coming up with PSey plots.

To be fair, your plot outline was about on par with many of the PS mini adventures from the boxed sets

Actually, you reminded me to pose a question here that I also posed on Dragonsfoot:

What makes a good adventure uniquely Planescape?

Yeah, players certainly need to be willing to buy into a PS campaign, even if they don't want to read up on the setting, in order to avoid derailing it with prime characters who just try to get back home 'Because that's what my character would do.' But then I'm a firm believer in "It's not the DM's job to drag your character into the campaign. If you truly can't think of a reason why your character would set forth with the others, just roll with it until you can, or make a new character."

At the end of the intro adventure, after arriving in Sigil, the prime characters should ideally either 1) be unable to find a way back home, or 2) realize that Sigil and the planes are a much more interesting place.

My thinking was option 3) the threat/dilemma introduced in the first adventure is so great, and the answers are only on the planes, that of course the players go after it. But maybe that's a bit too close to the DM dragging the players in, as you point out.

I guess my thoughts are also colored by the sorts of gamers I've played with...they are the sorts when I ask "what sort of D&D game do you want to play?" typically answer "D&D you know, a little bit of everything." And also the same type of gamers who don't put a lot of thought into party creation from a story standpoint. Perhaps that is in part because I usually don't force the issue and tend to be very laid back when running games.

Honestly, I wouldn't object to the kind of planar-exclusive intro adventure you suggest...but with my luck, I'd surely get one or two players who would.

I'm actually curious what sort of anti-Planescape adventure feedback you've gotten in the past? Is it of the "don't get Mieville in my Tolkien!" sort of complaining?

Maybe, but you'll forgive me for assuming the worst. There are a lot of fans who oversimplify, exaggerate, misinterpret, and outright lie about 4e around here, and I've noted your critical opinions on 4e in the past. Unless Quickleaf's concise description of 4e's take on the BW is inaccurate, I think that claiming technicalities is splitting a hair or two. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. never directly attacked each other during the Cold War, but it was still a war, and as I understand it, that peace-time sense of safety was rather scarce.

In any case, I shouldn't be relying on others to tell me how 4e handles the BW -- to the MotP!

See the sidebar on page 89. What you notice compared to the 2e source material, which had the Blood War all over the place - Hellbound, Faces of Sigil, Fiends, the Monstrous Compendium, mini-adventures, etc - 4e relegated the Blood War to a sidebar in one book and didn't really pursue it (even in the Cold War style) in any of their adventures or other releases. Definitely a missed opportunity IMHO. Maybe what is more technically accurate to say is: "4e provided no support for a DM wanting to run a game featuring the Blood War, even in its current Cold War-esque variety. 4e only set the general stage, but provided no real detail."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

[MENTION=40398]Tequila Sunrise[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] have said most of what I'd like to see from PS in 5E. No point calling it PS unless you feature Sigil and the Factions (LoP works better as a background figure than a personality, too).

What happened to Sigil in 4E was truly sad - it went from being the hub/Manhattan/London of the multiverse to resembling some smug-but-unimportant city in the US Midwest, with pathetic-seeming internal politics between three-letter-acronym-based organisations and with the Factions gone in all but name. Belief is apparently nothing in the face of tedious US-style bureaucracy.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=40398]Tequila Sunrise[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] have said most of what I'd like to see from PS in 5E. No point calling it PS unless you feature Sigil and the Factions (LoP works better as a background figure than a personality, too).

What happened to Sigil in 4E was truly sad - it went from being the hub/Manhattan/London of the multiverse to resembling some smug-but-unimportant city in the US Midwest, with pathetic-seeming internal politics between three-letter-acronym-based organisations and with the Factions gone in all but name. Belief is apparently nothing in the face of tedious US-style bureaucracy.

If it has Sigil, themes like "the meaning if the multiverse" or "the power of belief", and features factions as an important element, why not call it Planescape? I mean, it is partially rhetorical...I could see WotC wanting to sell more books to a wider audience and thus making it "planar but not Planescape"...but I think we all agree there's a difference and something is lost if you do that.

The complaints you have about Sigil in 4e are really the outcome of 2e's Faction War. What are folks thoughts on what the official take should be? Faction War never happened? It happened but the Factions have made their way back in a more secret society capacity? There exist both pre- and post- Faction War continuums? Release an adventure which undoes the damage Faction War did? Embrace Faction War and make adventures in Sigil different in other ways besides factions?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If it has Sigil, themes like "the meaning if the multiverse" or "the power of belief", and features factions as an important element, why not call it Planescape? I mean, it is partially rhetorical...I could see WotC wanting to sell more books to a wider audience and thus making it "planar but not Planescape"...but I think we all agree there's a difference and something is lost if you do that.

The complaints you have about Sigil in 4e are really the outcome of 2e's Faction War. What are folks thoughts on what the official take should be? Faction War never happened? It happened but the Factions have made their way back in a more secret society capacity? There exist both pre- and post- Faction War continuums? Release an adventure which undoes the damage Faction War did? Embrace Faction War and make adventures in Sigil different in other ways besides factions?

Faction War never happened, imo. The "outcome" was not even an outcome, according to Monte, it was the unfinished result of a multi-part adventure series of which only the first adventure got finished!

I mean, we have dozens of other adventures which end in various Big Bads being wiped out, for various settings, which we consistently assume didn't actually happen, so why not this one?

 

[Quickleaf]

Faction War never happened, imo. The "outcome" was not even an outcome, according to Monte, it was the unfinished result of a multi-part adventure series of which only the first adventure got finished!

I mean, we have dozens of other adventures which end in various Big Bads being wiped out, for various settings, which we consistently assume didn't actually happen, so why not this one?

Wow! I would love to see a link to where Monte said that!

I mean, I knew about this one: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?201299-The-quot-Lost-quot-Planescape-Sigil-Book/page4 But that was never meant as a sequel to Faction War.

And, from a personal opinion standpoint, I agree with you that Faction War was not a good qdventure nor do I use it (or it's fallout) when I run PS games. I guess I'm thinking of published product, whether WotC or license, in the PS setting....how do they treat Faction War (and the DMG2 Sigil writeup)? Pretend it never happened?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Obviously advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. For me, the kinds of stories I like to set up (in a non-linear sense) work best as long campaigns. Maybe that's just cause I haven't had so many campaigns fizzle as you (then again I haven't played as much D&D as many on these boards, despite having been involved with it for a long time and thinking about and writing for it).

Sure. I don't think getting to the "meat" of what makes PS unique invalidates a longer story bible, it just means that maybe you play your "it's basically a dungeon crawl" adventure at a different point in the story, after you've already cemented the basic tropes of the setting that make it unique.

It's something screenwriters do, too -- the first scene of the first act should telegraph the kind of themes and events we'll be seeing in the work. Having the first scene be "A demon walks into a bar and hires you to protect a plane of ultimate law from her minions" effectively telegraphs a LOT of what makes PS interesting and unique!

I do have a question about Planescape's main theme being factions. IMHO Planescape: Torment hit on the feel of the campaigns setting better than most of the written adventures, yet factions weren't a major part of that. The central issues were more personal..."what can change the nature of a man?" How would you approach backgrounds/hooks in a hypothetical 5e Planescape game for non-faction aligned PCs who are still distinctly Planescape-y?

The idea would be to make the personal planar. To be a PS character, they're going to need to have strong convictions that apply universally. Ideas like "Can the nature of a person change?" should apply universally. It's not just "I believe people can change and that history doesn't define you, so I'm Chaotic," it's "I believe people can change and that history doesn't define you, so I'm Chaotic, I want to make the multiverse a place where people are not defined by their past!" Your characters' beliefs are what drive them on to greater acts of awesomeness that change the planes.

The important bit is that no one gets to wus out of having the big, powerful, far-reaching belief of a PS character. You can't go around saying "My most important conviction is that history does not define you, but if you think it does, that's not my problem." In PS, it IS your problem, because that person who thinks it does is making a world where her belief is TRUTH. Unlike in a normal D&D campaign, a character's beliefs and morals and convictions and ideals are forced into conflict with others', and there are winners and losers. It's a pretty important division from typical D&D, IMO, and part of what makes PS special.

Factions serve as a short-cut to that and a training ground for it. You can say, like "My character is a member of the Free League, so her most important belief is that everyone should be allowed to shape their own beliefs!" and then BAM you hit the ground running with allies and enemies and and abilities and locations and plot ideas and you can figure out sort of what that means in a concrete way gradually. If you're, like, the 5e playtest wizard, and you think that knowledge is sacred and important, and that this is your most important belief that you want to change the nature of the planes, that works, too (it's basically making your own faction or sect from scratch!). What's less great is a character saying "I just really like books, it's cool if others don't," because that doesn't tap into the unique adventures that PS can launch. In PS, if you let others think that books are the sole tools of evil (or whatever), it will BECOME TRUE, because the setting is about the conflict of beliefs and a belief that don't conflict isn't going to be very interesting at the table.

In fact, I kind of like putting it that way: "What belief do you have that you want to CHANGE THE WORLD with?" That mandates some conflict-of-belief stuff. It forces you to think about how you're going to change things up. It's not just "what do you believe in" in a personal way, it's "What do you believe the world is/should be like?" in a big, broad way that affects others lives. In a typical D&D game, you slay a dragon, and the peasants are happy. In PS, you fight for your ideals, and if you win, you shape the world according to what you want it to be.

I'm actually curious what sort of anti-Planescape adventure feedback you've gotten in the past? Is it of the "don't get Mieville in my Tolkien!" sort of complaining?

Honestly, I wouldn't object to the kind of planar-exclusive intro adventure you suggest...but with my luck, I'd surely get one or two players who would.

I feel like the mantra for players should ideally be like Dan Savage's mantra for good sexual partners: GGG. Good, giving, and game. They treat everyone well, they are interested in others' fun, and they are down to try new things. But people don't like Thing X for any number of arbitrary reasons, and you can't make the horse drink. I would say PS's big selling points if I were writing back-cover copy are probably...

• Beyond Your Tyical Fantasy: If you want something more from your fantasy RPG than orcs and elves and dwarves in a land of dragons and trolls, Planescape delivers that in spades. Weird characters, extreme settings, and your old favorites twisted in new directions, this setting gives your game a spellpunk grit in a world of limitless potential and variety.
• Infinite Shades of Grey: If your usual Pretty Good Guys Shoot Blue Lasers / Ugly Bad Guys Shoot Red Lasers unquestioned heroic assumptions have you groaning a bit, Planescape will give you a world where your actual ideals matter much more than what cosmic team you're batting for. Are the angels your enemies? Are the devils your allies? It's up to YOU to decide.
• Shape Reality: Planescape characters don't just save the kingdom, and one world is too small for them. Planewalkers send ripples through all of reality, and that power -- and responsibility -- is yours. It might be a long struggle, but if you can avoid the fate of so many who have failed and rise against those who would stop you, you can alter the fabric of reality itself, and define all of existence according to your own dreams and wishes. But be careful! Dreams have a tendency to turn into nightmares, and sometimes the worst thing about wishes is that they might just come true.

...and that doesn't sell everyone. Sometimes you just want a small, personal experience with clear morality in a world with elves and dwarves and dragons.

...and now I've gone and made myself sad that I don't have any clear PS groups on the horizon for 5e, because I really want to play that game now.

What happened to Sigil in 4E was truly sad - it went from being the hub/Manhattan/London of the multiverse to resembling some smug-but-unimportant city in the US Midwest, with pathetic-seeming internal politics between three-letter-acronym-based organisations and with the Factions gone in all but name. Belief is apparently nothing in the face of tedious US-style bureaucracy.

I think 4e gets a bad rap in this respect a bit -- Faction War did this to PS long before 4e arrived. 4e just treated FW as canon. As did 3e, though 4e arguably had more planar content than 3e did. I've been totally fine running PS with 4e's cosmological assumptions ("Clueless berks keep callin' Arborea the Feywild, now. Couple a years ago it was Olympus. Sodding dunces probably never even been there, just know what their greybeards tell 'em.").

The more key distinction I feel is that Sigil was, in 3e and 4e, simply a setting for planar adventures, not Planescape. And its less cool that way. It's fine, I'm sure it's intentional (they didn't want to publish a PS setting), and someone who knows what they're doing will turn it into something awesome, but it's not highlighting the setting's own unique and interesting details.

What I'd like from a 5e PS is that buzzing I've heard about how they did DS and FR -- "that's one possible way it could go." Maybe the factions DO degenerate into warfare and the PC's get to define who stays and who goes in the next big step in the kriegstanz. Or maybe they don't. And the baseline assumption is that if this goes down, it'll be opt-in, not an assumption that everyone needs to have.