Just curious...how many of you are using 2e for Planescape, and how many are running 3/3.5 Planescape games?
How many of you are using 2e, and how many 3e?
House rules mostly, based partly on 3E. I try to keep the rules to a minimum.
2e...for everything.
Kind of a hybred but mostly 3/3.5 with adjustments made on the fly by myself (The DM). I never really used the stats as heavily per say in the books as most would. I use it as a basis and use the story/information outside of stats as the real information so to speak. Makes it much easier to simply use without a ton of messy conversations.
Mostly 3.5... some 3.0 (not upgraded the characters yet...), and ONE 2.0 group (they refuse to convert... we only play about once every six months... might change next year!)
I really like 3.5 for new players. A lot easier to explain. But, I still miss THAC0 and -10 AC... (Teaching negative numbers to my 8 year old was EASY using AC... When my grandsons get old enough, I don't think they'll grasp it as easily with the new AC...)
For all of you out there that still play 2.0... Keep the faith! Don't let the name TSR become a forgotten hulk on the Astral!
Blitz
3rd, but its what I came into as well
3e for now...but we haven't been playing all that long, and as the game progresses we'll probably implement some house rules (I've already outlawed the use of diplomacy, bluff, and in most cases sense motive checks)
3.5, with house rules.
Some D20 Modern and Future elements (It's planescape, why not?) and lots of other things.
3.5 no house rules, but I am trying to get my campaign which was in the UnderDark for the first scenario to move to a more Plane-based campaign, and I find hard to get information about Planescape for 3.5
3,5 with a 3,0 npc generator. I'm not a rules facist and i let the players make just about anything (wanna be a green ooze wererat? No problem ) because i like it mostly for roleplaying and some simple combat to let them blow of some steam after having to talk to my weirdo NPC-s
I also try to use the 3ed rules for planar magic/aligment restrictions, but add a few flavory things from 2e (illusions don't work on arcadia, low air pressure in sigil, using int as dex and wis as str on astral...) just to surprise them with some weird conditions they didn't bother asking NPC-s about
3.5 DND rules heavily modified with converted spelljammer material, planescape material, and a liberal dose of supplements from d20 publishers Malhavoc Press, Mongoose, Press, and others.
-loki de carabas
DungeonMasterLoki aka George Williams
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I use the HERO system. Or, rather, I will. A friend has my book right now.
Pants of the North!
Me, I use GURPS in my planescape campaigns. I already did most of the tedious job of converting/redifining stuff when I stumbled over this brilliant site.
http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/Omar/planescape/gurps/
It has got some basic ideas from which one can spin off easily, alas, it hasn't seen any change since two years.
I play gurp occasionally and i love the detailed combat, hit locations, fatigue loss, block, parry and everything else. But planescape is, to me, the perfect setting for dnd because the world is based on aligments and aligments are the fundamentals of dnd roleplaying. Gurps has no good, evil, law or chaos, it has mental disadvantages instead, so i don't see it as a very suitable system for planescape
Then again, planescape in gurps... Sounds almost crazy enough to work. What would be the point cost for chaotic-neutral-good?
I use Tri-Stat. I realized that it was open-ended enough to allow for me to just make stuff up without having to worry about the players knowing what I was doing before I was even finished. It also leaves it so that you don't need separate systems to make psionics and magic coexist when they are, essentially, the same thing. Frankly, I 've never been that pleased with d20's homogeneity and 2nd ed's a bit "loose" on some spots where they [TSR] had cool ideas but really just seemed to pull things out of their asses during the development stage. Nonetheless, I enjoy 2nd ed very much and, if I could find enough gamers with the encyclopedic knowledge of all the idiosyncrasies of that system, I wouldn't pause to work it through again. The diversity of that platform never ceased to amaze me. It would take me a while to get back into arbitrary Saves, though.
Glorm!
Oh, describing alignments in GURPS is easy....ahm, well, no, it's not, since there is no such thing as 'Alignment' in GURPS. But I don't think that you need aligmnent for planescape. Planescape is IMHO primarily based on beliefs. And you can formulate beliefs easily in GURPS as disadvantages or advantages. Take a lawful good aasimar paladin for instance. You don't need to say the two words "lawful" and "good" to describe him, instead you could give him (GURPSlike) a code of honor, a sense of duty, an inability to harm innocents, a higher purpose - all of which are given point values in GURPS.
Chaotic-neutral-good. Characters who don't depend on their alignment, but on their individuality to be played well, they can be built without paying much attention to alignment at all.
What I really like about having alignment put out of the picture is that it's much harder to pin labels on people. Baatezu, Harmonium, etc will be judged only by their deeds and the beliefs they spread, not by the tag Lawful or Evil.
I try in my campaigns to let the rules fade into the background and to let the unfolding story speak for itself. I think that's possible with every available set of rules.
I used to find aligments a stupid idea because good and evil is way too unrealistic, even for a world full of dragons and magic and whatever. But planescape is weird enough to show aligments as something perfectly logical and i find concepts of good-evil-law-chaos as integral part of PS
Not that i would mind trying it in gurps, at least as an excuse for a GURPS character to have four legs and ram horns
I looked at the 3E Manual of the Planes and such, and thought it was pretty much universally rubbish. Like all 3E products, I don't see a labor of love and creativity and story, but simple 'I AM TEH UBER' mentality - banal and boring.
I recently bought nearly the entire library of 2E Planescape books off eBay, and they're just as good as I remembered. They're works of art and story, and I love them. And while I may never play or DM Planescape again, I just love having the material. It's sublime.
As far as rules go, I'm attempting to adapt the WFRP system for use with Planescape. Failing that, I'll just use old 2E rules.
I've never actually played a Planescape campaign. I have all the books, but nobody to play with.
I find myself in a similar situation, Xan.
Though I play D&D with a group of people (3.0/3.5), I never actally got them interested in the Planes. Then again, the actual roleplay-factor in our campaigns is kinda low, and most scenarios are limited to combat.
Pity.
You guys should join or start a campaign online here. Remember that Planescape is not about rules, but about boundaries. It is an infinity game, and the fun isn't in beating up big demons but in playing with beliefs and travelling to exotic locales. It's primarily storytelling, so you don't need a lot of dice-rolling. This makes it perfect for online play-by-mail or play-by-board.
If you don't have players in your neighbourhood, you could also check out the Bone-box Rattler and Umbrasa Gravelands boards. There are quite a few GMs running games there.
cheers
I've been running a PS campaign in 3.5 (My players are all in their low to mid-twenties), and it's been working out fine for me. I've found that its not the breadth of Planescape to be tied down with rules lawyering and concerning issues of game mechanics. Most of my players are playing things they normally wouldn't touch in a "standard" setting, and they're having a blast. The material is what's important for a PS campaign, not the version of mechanics you run.
Krypter, many reasons why I don't engage in online play:
1: I don't have the time with school and my book project.
2: I don't have the patience with PBM formats of any sort.
3: I absolutely cannot stand gaming without the people in the same room as myself. I have Open RPG and never use it because I don't like the lack of physical interaction.
i use 2e (playres option) for planescape, and for every campaign really. quite happy with that. me and my players didnt like the third edition too much so we sticked with the second. i think were a dying species though. i hardly meet 2nd edition gamers anymore