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New face with a bunch of questions.

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Sun, 2006-07-30 06:22
#1
Bran Dawri
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New face with a bunch of questions.

Hi everybody. Not sure this is the right place for this kind of thing, but here goes:

First, please excuse my over-wordiness. I tend to get carried away in that respect.

After a hiatus from roleplaying of about a year, I have finally found a new roleplaying group. It has been decided that I will DM :shock: , so I'm busily writing a campaign.
I have decided to run a planescape campaign, and to that end have been scouring "teh Intarweb", and naturally ended up here.
I will probably be posting a bunch of questions here and there over the next few weeks as I rope together the first introductory adventures.

I already have a few questions of course, but I've decided to do the right thing and introduce myself first.
I'm 26, male, and Dutch, and kind of weird even for a Dutchman Sticking out tongue . I've recently decided to quit college and start doing what I really want to do, which is writing. Depending on how durable and roleplaying-intensive the campaign is going to be, expect some stories on it sometime in the near future. (Hey, it's fun, and I can use the practice Cool ).

Okay, down to my newbie questions (sorry, but the FAQ link seems to garner a pretty empty page):

Where can I best post questions about my up-and-coming campaign?

I understand you have a bunch of Planescape sourcematerial downloads available. There's quite a lot of them, so please forgive me for not checking them all out immediately :oops: .

Are these (background-wise, not ruleswise) digital versions of the paper books that are sadly virtually unavailable to me?

If not, does this site include said material in some other way, or can anyone direct me to this information?

How can I distinguish between official PS content and non-canon info on this (and other) sites?

Is there a timeline available on which I can cross-reference important events and decide when exactly I'm going to place my campaign?

Okay, I think this is enough for now.

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Sun, 2006-07-30 11:00
#2
Fidrikon
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New face with a bunch of questions.

Welcome!

You found the right place, RPG Discussion is probaly the best place for your questions. However, to keep the boards from getting clogged, it would probably be best to stick to this thread.

While the PW downloads are not the same texts as the TSR publications, they do contain the basic planar material thet you will need to run a 3.0-3.5 campaign.

While we do not have the TSR book available for download, a few other sites (such as RPGnow.com) do, for a price. However alot of peaple here have the books, and can probably answer your questions if your looking for a specific bit of info.

as for the cannon/non cannon... if your that worried just ask. But all in all, use waht you feel like using and ignore what you don't like. Its your campaign, just go with it! The only time you have to worry about cannon is if your submiting articles or something.

I dont think there is a timeline, but the two periods you need concern yourself with is pre faction war and post faction war. Nothing else is terribly fleshed out as far as I know.

Sun, 2006-07-30 12:23
(Reply to #2) #3
Xaos_Bob
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New face with a bunch of questions.

Welcome, Bran!

As to being new here, don't worry--we were all new at one time or another. And really, there isn't a better website you could have found for all your planar needs--this is the official website for Planescape, after all.

Your best bet is to download the Planescape Campaign Setting material first. With luck, they'll be getting some illustrations soon. Laughing out loud

To help your Dutchie tongue get around all the wierd American made-up words, there are .wav files of some of the stranger (and more common) words, so you can hear just how to pronounce them. Go to the Lingo page, and 'way at the bottom is a szip file with all the sounds, or you can get them one by one (if you just have a few you're fuzzy on).

What is canon and what isn't? Well, like Fidrikon said above, that really only matters if you're going to write articles for Dragon or Dungeon magazines or for this site (not a bad idea, by the way--both links lead to pages with links toward author guidelines for the magazines). Otherwise, do what you want! It's your game, and as DM, you have the right to do things how you want, canonical or not.

As to timelines--the planes are eternal. Timelines as such are nearly irrelevant. You need to know about the Faction War (but use it only if you care) because a lot of people reference it, but that is The pivotal event rather than just another event in a long and detailed history.

Forgive me if I made things seem much bigger and open-ended. You'll get accustomed to it.

Welcome to the planes!

Mon, 2006-07-31 23:44
(Reply to #3) #4
Bob the Efreet
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New face with a bunch of questions.

'Bran Dawri' wrote:
How can I distinguish between official PS content and non-canon info on this (and other) sites?

Official canon is what was in the Planescape books and boxed sets put out by TSR. They all say 'Planescape' at the top and have a picture of the Lady's face.

Now, there are only two things that matter: what a man can do, and what he can't do. Some people have written a lot of good planar material that isn't at all canon, and you can either use it or not, savvy?

Quote:
Is there a timeline available on which I can cross-reference important events and decide when exactly I'm going to place my campaign?

I have seen Rip post a fairly extensive planar timeline a couple times in various places, hopefully by invoking him he will show up on the thread and share it with you.

__________________

Pants of the North!

Wed, 2006-08-02 07:37
(Reply to #4) #5
Bran Dawri
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New face with a bunch of questions.

Thanks for the welcome guys. As per fidrikon's request, for now I'm goign to stick to this thread for my questions.

(My question on what is and isn't canon, by the way, was more for bookkeeping reasons, not out of some purist desire or something. I know at least one of my players has a tendency to go out and look things up elsewhere after they've happened in a session, and I want to be able to surprise him.)

*Attempts to invoke ripvanwormer for his timeline* .

...

Hmm. It seems I really should have done my homework for summoning 101.

More or less technical questions:

I've currently read through the planescape manual up to chapter 3, and I do have a few comments. Where can I best put those, as they're kind of outside the scope of this thread?

Question on the campaign itself

Anyways, since I don't know half the players, I've decided to start the campaign with a fairly normal Prime Material adventure, so I can get to know them and their playing styles.

Short synopsis:
The players are asked to help uncover the dark about the civil war between the two princes fighting to succeed their recently deceased father that's plagueing a kingdom.
Whichever side they decide to join/investigate, will turn out to have some demonic backing. When they're forced to run for their lives with this information to the other side, that one will have netherworldly influence running through it as well.

I am, however, undecided as to whether I'll have both sides draw their support from the same source (so the conflict will bring in souls/petitioners to the Lower Planes to serve as basic resources in the Blood War - driving home the relative unimportance of the party's home plane), or to have the whole conflict mirror the Blood war and have each side be sponsored by an opposing demon.

What are your opinions on the matter? Which do you think is best, and why?

After that, I have a prewritten side-adventure lying around that seems almost tailor-made to bring an adventuring party into some planar locale or other - probably Sigil (Penumbra's Save the last dance by Chris Aylott if you must know). Hilarity will probably ensue Cool .

After that, it's pretty much an open end as of yet, though at some point I will allow the party to resolve matters on their home plane at which point I'll leave it up to them whether they'll keep their characters or retire them and create new ones with the planescape book.

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