Planescape (+) What would you want for 5e Planescape?

[Leatherhead]

For example, one of the premises of Planescape was that "belief could literally move mountains" and there were politics around gate-towns shifting from the Outlands into the neighboring planes. How did that occur? DM fiat. What did it look like when that happened? The books were silent.

Yes, this is what they should focus on.

The two core points of the setting are:

There are a bunch of weird places and people in D&D, now you can go visit and have tea with them at level 1.
And
There is a subtle multiverce spanning Memetic War, even more important than the often maligned Blood War, where ideas are swords and beliefs are shields.

You could totally modify the factions to an egregious degree (it wouldn't be the first time!) as long as it sticks to the "Philosphers With Clubs" angle.

DiTerlizzi's art really helped sell the idea you could have tea with monsters though.

 

[Malmuria]

They did stop using DiTerlizzi after a while. Whether you liked the replacement art or not doesn't matter; it just means that they can do it without him.
...I really prefer his art, though.

yeah those products just didn't seem as planescape to me, even when the writing was good/interesting

Sadly, that game seems a bit too expensive for me.

There's a free version: Electric Bastionland Free Edition by ChrisMcDee. And his blog: BASTIONLAND
Troika! has takes Planescape as a thematic starting point (though ventures very far away).
There's a kind of a minor theme of OSR designers who take planescape as an inspirational starting point but feel the need to take it apart and put it back together again. Scrap Princess has a whole project around this: Plane Scrap

Finally, since I'm on a roll now, there is this product which looks really interesting but I wonder how it came out: Sig: City of Blades - Genesis of Legend Publishing | DriveThruRPG.com

 

[Malmuria]

You could totally modify the factions to an egregious degree (it wouldn't be the first time!) as long as it sticks to the "Philosphers With Clubs" angle rings true.

You could make factions tied to each plane of existence, with the express purpose of trying to drag parts of the material plane or other planes into their home plane. But then again, aren't religions just factions in that sense?

 

[Faolyn]

Urdlen and/or its minions attempting to burrow their way into the Golden Hills.
Epimetheus just being his normal stupid self and accidentally letting the evil in (remember, he accepted Pandora as a gift from the gods).

That's just two I came up with (other than your typical weather/creature issues found anywhere) without even digging up my copy of Planes of Conflict...

You don't even really need to bring in evil creatures. There's undoubtedly going to be something that's illegal, and deservedly so, in Bytopia--maybe some sort of exotic and actively diabolical drug from the lower planes that slowly causes demonic possession, maybe something as mundanely evil as dog fighting. Somebody is going to be doing it.

Or, to take a page from Arcadia, maybe something is happening that's going to shift part of the plane elsewhere. Bytopia is between lawful good and neutral good. It can easily go too far in either direction. Removing the whatever that's causing the alignment shift, and not through violence, is adventure-worthy.

 

[Faolyn]

There's a free version: Electric Bastionland Free Edition by ChrisMcDee. And his blog: BASTIONLAND
Troika! has takes Planescape as a thematic starting point (though ventures very far away).
There's a kind of a minor theme of OSR designers who take planescape as an inspirational starting point but feel the need to take it apart and put it back together again. Scrap Princess has a whole project around this: Plane Scrap

Thanks!

 

[Faolyn]

There is a subtle multiverce spanning Memetic War, even more important than the often maligned Blood War, where ideas are swords and beliefs are shields.

That's a good point. Nowadays, memes are, I think, much more firmly-embedded in the general consciousness (memes went memetic!) than they were when PS first came out. I think they could really capitalize on that by making this a much more central point to the game.

 

[Orius]

I'd like to see them dump the stupid Faction War, but I doubt that'll happen. What 3e material covered Sigil kept that untidy loose end around after all. Like the factions or not, they all played a practical role in the city. Well except maybe for the Xaositects who at the height of 2e's CN=Chaotic Stupid approach were little more than Sigil's answer to Fishmalks.

Anyway, permanently booting the factions out of Sigil does mess up a fundamental underpinning of the setting. There was no real good reason for it anyway, as previous material made it fairly clear that the Lady of Pain didn't have a serious problem with them around. They took care of a lot of the day-to-day aspects of running the city, and she could always manipulate them here and there so none would be able to seriously challenge her. Besides, some were fundamentally opposed to others, so they managed to keep each other in check pretty well.

 

[Malmuria]

I'd like to see them dump the stupid Faction War, but I doubt that'll happen. What 3e material covered Sigil kept that untidy loose end around after all. Like the factions or not, they all played a practical role in the city. Well except maybe for the Xaositects who at the height of 2e's CN=Chaotic Stupid approach were little more than Sigil's answer to Fishmalks.

Anyway, permanently booting the factions out of Sigil does mess up a fundamental underpinning of the setting. There was no real good reason for it anyway, as previous material made it fairly clear that the Lady of Pain didn't have a serious problem with them around. They took care of a lot of the day-to-day aspects of running the city, and she could always manipulate them here and there so none would be able to seriously challenge her. Besides, some were fundamentally opposed to others, so they managed to keep each other in check pretty well.

I think faction play is a big part of what makes urban campaigns fun, but the "philosophical" nature of ps factions make their motivations and interests a little abstract. They get reduced to patrons that send you on quixotic quests into the planes to recover some object or something. Whereas Sigil's factions could get themselves involved in all sorts of interesting things, like interplanar drugs and weapons dealings, etc.

 

[Zaukrie]

I think most people have covered what I'd want.....but in terms of detail, I don't need a TON of stuff on each plane. More like a paragraph or three, with one interesting location getting more details. Sigil and the surrounding area should get much more detail. Also, I do like the IDEA of factions and belief being important, I'd want a bit more out of how that really effects the world/multi-verse. Given the light hand WotC has taken on that kind of thing in the past, and in 5e, I doubt I'll get that.

How magic is different on each plane....I agree with someone that said more fantasy/steampunk is good. While I don't usually have goofy stuff in my games, Sigil is at the center of all creation (or something like that), so there should be more unusual/goofy/failed/succeeded ideas/stuff. Or maybe that is in the outlands?

 

[Yora]

The one thing that Planescape always desperately needed was more stuff that works as plot hooks.
It's supposedly the setting where everything is possible, but as always with these things, it ends up actually being there's nothing to do.

The Factions are all cool, but they mostly have no goals. The Harmonium can just randomly terrorize some village because of ORDER! and Doomguards can randomly decide to wreck somethig, but even then there's no real plan or purpose behind it, other than order and destruction being their own reward.
What does a Dustman or a Cypher want? What kind of things are they working on that gets them into conflict with other factions?

Planescape has incredible style and texture, but under the surface there is actually no substance.