What Makes PS Cool?

DiTerlizzi.

 >_>

<_< 

I love planar fantasy (of all kinds). The wide (and weird) possibilities are just so much better than vanilla fantasy.

 I also like that PS is about the power and nature of belief. It pushes play naturally towards being more about RP and exploration (both literal and metaphorical).

 And diTerlizzi, yeah.

Forgotten Realms: "My father is a wizard!"

Birthright: "My father is a king!"

Planescape: "My father is a balor!"

Eberron: Lets go to Xen'drik. Its relatively unexplored.

Planescape: Which of the mutiple infinite places should we check out?

For me it is the absolute crazyness + incredible writing + the infinite possibilities.

For crazyness, the creators didn't hold back. The developers continue the tradition. Even the cant is enough to make it a unique game. Theres a Titan in Sigil, and she has two sword archon guards. In FR, a titan is some serious trouble.

In a regular dnd game, what you do is basically go dungeon diving and killing monsters. If someone is trafficiking with demons, you kill him - possibly with aid of the local paladin order.

In Sigil, there are Celestials trafficking weapons with both sides of the Blood War. This is just crazy. But if you think in PS terms, it is actually quite normal. Expectible, even.

So in PS, creatures that you use to wipe your sword, get up and become people. There are  conditions and hints for visiting Maglubiyet's realm in official books. Plus, you can and do visit the planes from very early on. So even a lemure can potentially own you. What do you do? Use diplomacy, and your head.

Writing. Every town description in PS has a "character" before it. Turn back and read them again, some of them really hit the spot. For Mercykiller capital in Acheron for example, this is "when the number of Martyrs is great enough, resistance collapses".

Check out the Inner planes guide. All 18 planes are described by natives or long time planewalkers, its as if you are really looking through a tourists guide, with the occasional  editorial cut. You've all read the manual of the planes and you probably got bored half way through it. But if you were reading it as a Slaad wrote it, you wouldn't be half as bored.

to top all this off, it comes with a nice package of DiTerlizzi artwork. What more could a body want?

The planes are a massive canvas and the planes are paint - it gives us a central idea on which to base others. Morality plays, waxing philosophical about government and religion, and other explorations are opened up.

 There are few RPGs that really offer such a variety of options...

The thing I most love about Planescape that really sets it apart from other roleplaying games is that the whole setting is really about the nature of ideas. While other roleplaying games tend to be thematic, or allow you to play on a theme, Planescape is asking you to think about Truth. That is to say, whereas a game like, lets say Shadowrun has a vision of the world already sort of laid out for you, and limits the moral scope of the universe accordingly, Planescape is boundless. It is up to us as game masters and players to consider the real meaning of our actions and the world around us. It is a game that challenges you to really think. After all, one of the central preoccupations of the factions and of any planar players is to determine What Does It All Mean? That is a pretty ambitious concept for a roleplaying game to throw out, and I applaud the designers for it.

For me it's a combination of the variety of places and the character of the setting.

 Planescape can't be beat by anything for the sheer number of places, mysteries, ideas, concepts, and venues to explore.  The possibilities are endless, and if there's something you need or want somewhere, then a body's well within his rights to make it exist there.  Spelljammer's got a great handle on physical exploration, but even it can't quite reach the expanse Planescape hosts.

Then there's the character that all the books have.  The planar Cant, the canny bloods writing the books from a first person perspective instead of just typing on like they're writing classroom textbooks.  Don't get me wrong, it was neat to read some of the places in the 3e Manual of the Planes, but the tone can't beat what the cutters in Planescape said.

Behind the scenes: The initial concept art for this was a long-haired guy struggling to avoid falling through strange cubes in an outer blackness-type environment. If you can find a copy of the previous year's retail schedule, you can find the prototype.

As the time drew near for the actual creation of the art, I approached Robh and asked when he was going to get started. He said he'd thought it over and wanted to change up the concept a bit, for much the same reason you've outlined above: he wanted to use Carceri, and wanted to make someone who looked like an explorer, not an adventurer. He told me he wanted to use me for the model, but that we'd need to get some props.

Robh had me dress up in my black canvas duster, put a kerchief over my bald head, and punched out the lens of a cheap pair of sunglasses. Then he took me to the hill behind TSR and poured some Slime over my head and told me to act like I was being pulled over a cliff by demons.

 And that is the story of  the cover of Well of Worlds.

"Then he took me to the hill behind TSR...."

Were you worried at that point? 

I enjoy the extreme variety of Planescape, the huge array of options, and the freedom to run a game where weirdness is expected.