I finally have a chance to run a Planescape campaign. Since I am new to the players and to DMing in general I'd like to start off slowly. I have the campaign setting, well of worlds and a few adventures, but aside from Eternal Boundary and a few small hooks I am having trouble finding low level adventures in Sigil, the outlands and the planes in general. Surely there are some safer trips to the good aligned planes.
BTW can some blood give me the dark on the search feature for the forum? I can't find it.
Thanks for the help.
In terms of actual pre-written adventures, I'm afraid that I'm not aware of any to run. Sorry.
Although I've never run Planescape (planning to this autumn though) I do have a couple suggestions. Sigil is the neutral meeting point of the planes, where everyone has to (at least pretend) to leave their hostilities at the door. This makes it a great place for your PC's to adventure without getting gutted by a Baatezu in a mood. Not that they shouldn't be afraid of that same prospect even in Sigil.
The Hive in particular makes for an effective low-level 'dungeon' - a bunch of cut-throats, a crowd of pickpocketing urchins and some drunken dreugar spoiling for a fight will all make your players wish they were back in the relative safety of the Lower/Clerks ward. Sure,they make be capable of destroying half the ward when they reach 12th level, but that isn't much solace to a 1st level group.
Other ideas would include to let your players generate their PC's, and then look at the factions, Alignments and backgrounds they have picked. Is there a Harmonium, Fated and two Indeps? Great, then make the Harmonium get into a scrap with another faction near the Great Bazaar. That gives three players a lead into the adventure. Possibly have the Harmonium and Fated head for a major fight, so as to put the pressure on the group - they know exactly who will be suspected as having turned stag if the fecal matter does hit the fan. They will be so desperate to avoid calamity that the sense of relief when they do will keep them begging for more.
The best piece of adventure writing advice I have come across (in Nobilis, as it transpires) is to know both your characters and your players. Learn what rocks your players boats, and learn what will motivate, scare and delight their characters, and then simply provide those things. Sounds simpler than it is, but can pay dividends.
"They won praises that never grow old, the most splendid of sepulchres – not the sepulchre in which their bodies are laid, but where their glory remains eternal in men’s minds, always there on the right occasion to stir others to speech or to action. For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions on their graves in their own country that mark them out.”
- Pericles’ Funeral Oration, 431BC.