How to do a modern Planescape adventure without ripping off Planescape:Torment or getting into the whole "modern magical san francisco" of 5E, which had a very underwhelming adventure that made little sense?
Are there good homebrew Planescape adventures I can steal from? Should I use the Cant for flavor? Buy the old books?
>Buy the old books
Yes, buy the original set. I have not read the 5e tripe that came out, so I cannot fairly compare it to the original, but I feel its safe to say from your description that using the original material. It will be hard to not rip off some bits from Torment, but thats fine. Also depends on how much you want to deal with Sigil and its politics, which is the biggest part of the setting.
Thanks.
>Some of the absolute worst adventures written in the 90s, a decade that stands out for bad adventures.
Really? There's not a single good Planescape adventure? Wow, what a shame.
>Really? There's not a single good Planescape adventure? Wow, what a shame.
There is exactly one: Torment.
The 5e stuff is... Meh. It's not offensive, but they watered it down a lot. That the issue. It's just the old stuff but blander. They did make the different parts of Sigil a bit more distinct than before, which I enjoy. But even that feels... Less. It doesn't feel right for the setting.
>Buy the old books?
This is the way. The original Planescape books are full to bursting with characters and locations, even if I don't remember if they have actual adventures.
I'm a big fan of this one myself. It's just a book of NPCs, but besides being enjoyable reads each gives you a nice little insight into the day to day livings on Sigils. They also each come with their own sets of plot hooks and a few even connect with each other, so it'd be more than possible to extrapolate this into a whole campaign sort of deal.
AS A WARNING. When people say 'the old books', what we mean is 'the original boxed set. Because, that complaint about 5e?
>a very underwhelming adventure that made little sense?
That could also apply to basically the entire line by the end of it's life. Some of the absolute worst adventures written in the 90s, a decade that stands out for bad adventures.
>People give Monte Cook credit for Planescape like he invented it
>Not only did he not start writing for the line until it had been around for a while, but all of his contributions are the dirt worst
M Cook is a complete and utter hack and he's never been good at anything
It's when these comments beginning popping up that you know that Cooke's finally achieved the Gygax status.
>finally
He's been getting comments like this even when /tg/ was in its infancy. Also I feel compelled to remind everyone of his over engineered ttrpg Invisible Sun.
>his over engineered ttrpg Invisible Sun.
Writers aren't always the best at making mechanics.
Whenever I hear Monte Cook I can only think about his World of Darkness D20 where everyone’s a monster because like Milwaukee got destroyed or something? I dunno it seems very stupid and regular WoD already has a lot of stupid.
I've been saying it for over twenty years but you go ahead and be moronic, ig. Congratulations?
>That could also apply to basically the entire line by the end of it's life. Some of the absolute worst adventures written in the 90s, a decade that stands out for bad adventures.
Yeah I unfortunately agree with this as a huge Planescape fan and collector. The Planescape adventures came out around the time when TSR was really feeling the influence of the whole storyreller game genre that had become almost industry standard in the early 90s. They really really wanted to be vampire the Masquerade and the adventures are sometimes just basically stage plays. I think the Deva Spark is probably the worst one, but I am open for discussion on this because any of them could qualify.
>Not only did he not start writing for the line until it had been around for a while, but all of his contributions are the dirt worst
Signed. Faction War is utter garbage and Cook can go frick himself with his "oh but i was gonna write a sequel that fixes everything teehee" shit.
I still find it incredibly aggravating that Storyteller/WoD would be far more appropriate for the LeftyProgRainbowFolx than D&D, a game about killing things and taking their stuff, and yet these rainbow-haired fricks infest my fricking hobby and don't even know what VtM IS.
No.
Combat-oriented games are dike a dozen, and - seeing as combat is the lowest and the most artistically and intellectually worthless form of entertainment in all kinds of media - are and will always be the cheap sacrifice to tue freaks, the morons, and the casuals.
You don't get to play the Fortnite of /tg/s and complain.
>and don't even know what VtM IS.
That's the real crime. White Wolf's marketing department should all kys themselves for their utter failure.
>"But we made that video gake which was BIG DEAL 20 years ago!"
>White Wolf marketing department, probably
White wolf and Paradox have done nothing but disappoint me for the past ten years.
They should do that anyway? They've been pathetic for so long. That said, their run of Ravenloft was the true setting. Late 3E onward was just WotCslop. It's a shame that 5.0 of their games have been consistently mediocre, especially since a lot of the actual rules aren't terrible. But, uh, Planescape... It was a product of the '90s that shamelessly took from WW Games of the day. That's why it worked then and not now.
The Drinking Game
The setting reminds you how the Lady of Pain is SOOOOO powerful: 1 drink.
People from the Prime Material are portrayed as dumb rubes: 1 drink.
The rare sight of a smart Primer, or a Planar painted as a dumb rube: 3 drinks.
Pictures of Tieflings looking different and varied remind you of the terrible homogenization effect Draenei had on them: 1 drink.
A Bauriur shows up, and you try to figure out the logic behind goat centaurs: 1 drink.
Faction philosophy tries to be deep, man: 1 drink.
The Faction's plan actually makes no sense and goes nowhere: 1 drink.
Xaos faction shows up: 0 drinks; things are bad enough as is.
Stupid rebus-language: 2 drinks.
Modrons: Cheer, and 1 drink.
Based Xanxost: 1 drink.
Characters are thrust into a situation they have no understanding of: 1 drink.
...through circumstances they have no control over: +1 drink.
The Portal Key is something awesome: 1 drink.
The Portal Key is something stupid: 2 drinks.
Oh, hey, a really oddball, fun corner of the outer planes that shows interesting creativity: 1 drink.
Oh, hey, a bland presentation of a place that will just kill you, and you shouldn't go to, but we're going there anyways: 2 drinks.
Characters face something that they have no odds of defeating in combat, dialogue, or retreat: 1 drink.
At the end, characters got no tangible reward: 1 drink.
...Actually, the 'reward' was secretly bad, like a curse or an obligation or a 'favor' from somebody you don't want favors from: +1 drink.
...and no XP, because everything was too hard to kill but we're stuck with 2E's XP system: +1 drink.
...and the PCs have no idea what the point or purpose of their actions was: +1 drink.
...and there actually wasn't a purpose: +1 drink.
...because Unity of Rings, yo: groan, and +1 drink.
Fricking Orcus: chug.
>A Bauriur shows up, and you try to figure out the logic behind goat centaurs: 1 drink.
Also, why are goat centaurs the only other race aside from humans in all of 2e that can be paladins?
Dragonbait would like a word with you.
Plus Aasimar and iirc Earth Genasi. I can't remember if Flumph Paladins were actually a thing either.
My suggestion is to look into Electric Bastionland or Into the Odd for the flow of play. You can mine some published material for locations but the plots are just stupid.
Also wasn't Troika explicitly designed as a NuSR version of Planescape? So I heard.
Take it from a grog who bought the original box when it came out.
Planescape was always a leftie fantasy, you were just too young to get it until now.
Honestly, as nonsensical as some of the Factions are, I do like Planescape simultaneously embracing and taking the piss out of the whole Punk aesthetic with them by having both the Lawful and the Chaotic Factions be dangerous idiots.
On the Lawful side, you have:
>The Fraternity of Order, equal parts stuffy stuck up academics, obstructive bureacrats, and in-universe rules lawyers.
>The Harmonium, self-righteous jackbooted thugs with a veneer of respectability.
>The Mercykillers, who're basically Judge Dredd: The Faction at best.
But on the Chaos side, you have:
>The Revolutionary League, paranoid anarchists who literally do nothing but frick shit up for everybody. Including themselves.
>The Xaositects, literally Chaotic Stupid: The Faction.
>The Xaositects, literally Chaotic Stupid: The Faction.
sLaNdEr! !Slaudividni tnegilletni dna enas yltcefrep era Stcetisoax eht
Foorp ym s'ereh:
Technicolor corn shoots music at dancing moon. Frog.
>modern magical san francisco
Sigil is 90% drug addicts now?
In what way are you afraid of ripping off Planescape Torment?
A good Planescape adventure should consist of bizarre characters, drawn from wildly different worlds, and breaking molds half the time, should visit other worlds, and should involve philosophical concepts, since the Planes are shaped by belief. That's the basis of Planescspe. You are not "ripping off Torment" by doing all that.
Planescape Torment already did everything worth doing with the setting.
don't make it about Sigil but planar travel instead
But everyone here says planar travel is boring and dumb.
Planes can be dumb
Sigil can be dumb
Point is, setpiece doesn't matter. Its the characters that do. The mix of different, unique, absurd, and otherworldly.
If you go to Elemental Plane of Fire and only meet elementals and efreeti there, or stay in Sigil and interact with bandits and merchants identical to ones from Prime Material, you are doing it all very, very wrong. You should meet, I dunno, samurai from Earth, who got yeeted into Eberron, got himself a lightning-powered hover jet ski, and is surfing the Plane of Fire in search of perfect shard of volcanic glass, to meditate on its sharpness, so his karach blade becomes sharp enough to cut a god. Because he swore an oath to deliver a drop of divine blood to his daimyo. You get into hellish beaurocracy of Nine Hells, obtaining a permit after permit, to finally face Mephistopheles himself... because you need a stamp for a release form. To finally let a spelljammer captain (who is a halfling the size of a house, piloting a captured nautiloid) get his cargo of finest tuning forks, forged in Mechanus, which have to be delivered to a world of creatures that are made of pure sound.
In the middle you have to navigate Sigil, because a dude who looks like judge Dredd needs your help catching a serial killer made of smoke. So you track down a sentient avatar of letter S, and it teaches yiu a trick to turn Smoke into Solid. So you have a brief chase on contraband infernal war machines through streets of Sigil, Neverwinter, Feywild of Nentir Vale, Pandemonium, and eventually catch the thing in Ravenloft, where mists claim the smoke, and you run away before they claim you... to report to a crime lord (who is a celestial... a patron saint if thieves and robbers. he was brought about by belief that he exists, and he is very, very confused about his role in the multiverse)
that super-cop has been delt with. So he gives you a cog that one of his berks stile from an Inevitable, who was drinking in a bar around the corner. So you can give it back and thus prevent the multiverse being destroyed by Pandorym 2.0
Oh, and throw some guild politics in the middle also.
Holy frick, that sounds amazing. Can you be my GM?
homie why the frick would you not want to rip off Planescape: Torment that shit was baller
It was, but most of the people I know have played and don't want a cheap tabletop copy. They want something, original and innovative... which is hard to do.