PLANESCAPE WELCOME THREAD AND FAQ
Welcome to the best, most surreal campaign setting ever made for the Dungeons & Dragons game! You've probably got a lot of questions, right basher? We've got the answers, or the chant as it's known around here. We'll let you in on the secrets (the dark of it) and where to go to find useful resources on this site.
What is Planescape? It's a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game (2nd Edition), published by the now-defunct TSR company between 1994 and 1998. The setting describes various outer, inner and other planes of existence centered on the impossible city of Sigil.
What is Planewalker.com? A fansite for the Planescape setting officially designated as the torchbearer of the fan community by Wizards of the Coast, the company that now owns the Planescape property. What that means is that Planewalker.com can legally use any of the Planescape material, trademarks, logos and intellectual property of the brand, the only fansite that can do so. Planewalker.com serves as a repository for the 3.5 Edition of the Planescape setting as well as fan material of all kinds.
QUICK PLANESCAPE Q&A
Want the 3.5E version of Planescape? Right here.
Want monsters? Check out the Creature Codex or the Denizens of the Inner/Transitive Planes.
Looking for cool NPCs to place in your game? Cutters has them lined up.
Need gossip and news for your Sigil adventure? The Lady's Sharper Eye, SIGIS and the Eye of Xaos have what you need.
Desperate for a quick answer or definition? The Planewalker Encyclopedia will have it.
Want a quick intro adventure? Desire and the Dead is being developed in this thread.
FIRST THINGS - THE BOOKS
If you want to play Planescape you'll probably need a few sourcebooks. You don't need every single one because the setting has been converted to D&D Third Edition on this very site, but it's always nice to have something physical that you can hold in your hands and drop on your toe. So what's essential? Probably only the Planescape Campaign Setting (PSCS), but you could run a good game without even that as long as you familiarize yourself with the basics of the Factions, Sigil, planar geography, the Rule of Threes and the Unity of Rings. Unfortunately most of these books are out-of-print, but you can still find used (and sometimes mint condition) books on Ebay and Alibris. Downloadable PDF versions of most books can be bought at RPGNow Which book will be most useful to you will depend on what kind of game you'll be running, so here's a brief description of the major books and their contents.
* Planescape Campaign Setting: introduction to campaign conventions, overview of the multiverse, overview of Sigil, the gate towns, the Outlands and the inner and outer planes. Includes two short introductory adventures.
* Planes of Law: details Acheron, Arcadia, Baator, Mechanus and Mount Celestia. Includes a monster supplement and short adventures.
* Planes of Conflict: details Carceri, Gehenna, the Gray Waste, the Beastlands, Bytopia, and Elysium. Includes monster manuals and short adventures.
* Planes of Chaos: details the Abyss, Arborea, Limbo, Pandemonium, and Ysgard. Includes a monster supplement and short adventures.
* The Factol's Manifesto: the secrets of the factions revealed, their headquarters ransacked for info, their followers grilled for information.
* In The Cage: The Guide to Sigil: a comprehensive look at the City of Doors and some of its inhabitants.
* Uncaged: Faces of Sigil: descriptions of dozens of interesting NPCs, from Kylie the Tout to A'kin the Friendly Fiend, with accompanying plots, subterfuges and treacheries.
* The Planewalker's Handbook: a player's guide to races, classes (2nd edition), equipment, belief systems, travelling, spellcasting on the planes, and other miscellanea.
* Hellbound: The Blood War: both a source book and an adventure which centers around the conflict between demons and devils.
* Faces of Evil: The Fiends: a detailed examination of the history, origins, psychology, biology and behaviour of these nasty critters.
Book Recommendations
Everyone has their favorites, but these should at least help to guide you in the general direction.
The original Planescape Campaign Setting (PSCS) boxed set outlines the basics of the world and has two good introductory adventures that may be useful if you only have one evening to show this world to your players.
The three alignment boxed sets - namely Planes of Law, Planes of Conflict and Planes of Chaos - lay out the glory of the planes in exquisite detail. These sets explore many fantastic locations on the planes, have small monster manual booklets that are full of flavour, and contain several short adventures of varying quality.
Those three sets are great if you're planning a picaresque, plane-hopping campaign. If you're planning on mainly staying in Sigil - which is almost a campaign world in itself - you should get Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, which details the various NPCs of the City and the plots that they're engaged in; In the Cage: the Guide to Sigil, a complete guidebook to the locations in the City of Portals; and The Factol's Manifesto, which not only explains the intricacies of the Factions but also reveals the secrets of the Factols and their influence on other planes. The adventure Faction War also has a lot of information about Sigil.
Adventures generally come in two types: plane-hopping or stay-at-home. Plane-hopping adventures include: Tales from the Infinite Staircase, The Deva Spark, Fires of Dis, Something Wild, Well of Worlds (adventure anthology), Dead Gods, The Great Modron March, In The Abyss, and Doors to the Unknown. Adventures mainly set in Sigil include: The Eternal Boundary, Harbinger House, and Faction War. The Great Modron March and Dead Gods are two mega-adventures which are perfect for long, involved campaigns, and come highly recommended.
Players who want to delve deeper into the Blood War between demons (tanar'ri) and devils (baatezu) should probably get Hellbound: The Blood War, and Faces of Evil: The Fiends. Hellbound also includes an adventure. Unfortunately both are hard to find and quite expensive. On Hallowed Ground is a Planescape version of Deities & Demigods that explores alternate pantheons, Power structures on the planes and how to turn players into proxies.
The Manual of the Planes published by Wizards of the Coast contains 3E updates to all the planes and standardized rules for environments, magical conditions, etc. The Planar Handbook presents a hodgepodge of faction prestige classes, planar races, updated (though brief) versions of Sigil, the City of Brass, Tunarath and the City of Glass, as well as many planar touchstones (places of power which grant special abilities if you defeat the guardians). Recently two books have been published which delve into demons and devils in 3.5E: Fiendish Codex 1: Hordes of the Abyss and Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells.
Planescape Novels
Four novels have come out for the Planescape setting: Pages of Pain, Blood Hostages, Abyssal Warriors and Planar Powers. The official novelization of Planescape: Torment is also available (ISBN 0-7869-1527-7), though Rhyss Hess completed an unofficial novelization that adheres more closely to the game.
GAMING ONLINE
The Planewalker forums regularly host play-by-post games. Inquire at the Behind the Scenes section and someone should be able to hook you up. There are also some games being played on the Wizards of the Coast forums.
Rogue Dao Studios is in the process of developing a trilogy of modules for the popular Neverwinter Nights 2 videogame. The first part, Purgatoria, is set for release in Q1 2007 (around March).
PLANESCAPE: TORMENT
A lot of people arrive in Planescape via the Torment portal, that is, the videogame developed by Black Isle in 1999. Considered one of the best computer roleplaying games ever made, PS:T still has an avid following online, here and on many other sites.
* A Universe Where Ideas Can Trump Actions - an interesting New York Times article about the game.
* A novelization of Torment by Rhyss Hess that can be printed and bound into a hardback.
* A megapatch that fixes many problems with the game.
USEFUL RESOURCES
* One of the best resources on Planewalker is the encyclopedia. Detailed entries help you to quickly find that obscure reference to Cirily or Center-of-All.
* Since Planescape revolves around belief, the gods and their agents are an integral part of the setting; the Complete List of Gods helps DMs to sort them all out.
* Adventuring in Sigil can also be confusing for new players, so the Sigil Primer was written as a handy one-page crib sheet that your players can use to acclimate themselves to the City of Doors.
* Ambrus has compiled a nifty list of 700+ NPCs in Sigil in a handy (and sortable) Excel file.
* For DMs the Sigil Location Guide is a quick tabular reference to most of the locations and some of the NPCs in the city.
* Sects are ideological groups smaller than factions, and there's a good guide to them [url=/manager/files/Planescape%20Sects%20(converted).pdf]here[/url].
* The old mimir.net contributors also made a handy [url=/manager/files/Planescape%20Cant%20(converted).pdf]Cant reference guide[/url] if you can't get enough of it.
* Zen79 has created a large map of Sigil that can be printed and folded to create the "tire torus" of the city. He's also created a very pretty and unified map of the multiverse.
* The Planescape Conspectus is a short visual intro to the planes (circa 2002). (needs link)
* Here's a handy one-page reference map of all the planes.
* Rapture is a free, short 2E adventure by Greg Jensen for the Planescape setting.
* If you'd like to see where Planewalker forum members live in the real world, check out the Frappr map.
* The Unity of Rings Planescape comic is a visual morality tale of how the Planescape multiverse works.
* Two webcomics highlight the funny side of Planescape: Clueless Adventures and Planescape Survival Guide.
* A partial list of portals, with gate-keys and descriptions, can be found at the Portalseeker site.
* Many additional resources can be found in the Planewalker links section.
If you have any questions about the site or the forums, please contact Clueless. If you have general questions that haven't been answered in this FAQ, post them in this thread and we'll try to help you out. Safe portal-jumping, cutter!
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You know, I was just thinking recently that something like this would be handy. And it's so very complete! Bookmarked!