Also, what material is correct? I know, for example, that after the faction war the mercykillers faction ceased to exist and split into the two groups which comprised it etc. etc.
Item 3, anyone got any good ideas on what sort of hooks I could use once the players were on the planes?
I have a fair amount of DMing experiece having DM'd three games and a campaign in my own homebrew.
Thansk for helping out a newb.
IMO Sigil was more interesting place before faction wars. If you are able to buy Planescape - boxed set for AD&D you should do it. Here you can purchase it for $6.
You can also purchase an already made adventure. Try here.
If you're going to start on the prime go ablout it with whatever you like, heck don't even give the players a hint that they will eventually end up on the planes.
Now what I do reccomend is getting some 2nd ed Planescape books, they will help a lot. I personally recommend the Planewalker's Handbook, very few books have ever been more interesting or useful and it's very rules light so you should have no trouble using it in 3rd ed, and the few rules it does have are VERY easy to use in 3rd ed, well with the exception of the race rules.
Item 3, anyone got any good ideas on what sort of hooks I could use once the players were on the planes?
I really like the campaign hook of "questing primes who find their way to the planes". Maybe one of the PCs serves a god who gives him a special quest or maybe it's a family thing. Either way, the PCs can't go back home until they find something/talk to someone/visit someplace. Once they complete the quest, of course, they may decide to stay around and make a living on the planes. I like this because it plays on the Clueless Prime concept of the planes as a giant dungeon and you can turn them on their heads. "Travel to Pandemonium," has the same ring to it as "Travel to Skull Keep," but once the primes reach the planes they find out it's a much more complicated situation. First of all when they get to Sigil and ask the direction to Pandemonium, folks just laugh at them then knick their purses. Then maybe to find out where in Pandemonium they need to go, they need to talk to Magroshel (from the Cutters section of planewalker) who won't give them the time of day until they find a priceless item hidden in Arborea. While they're in Arborea then, some elven petitioner gets wise to the operation and appeals to the goodness of the adventurers' hearts not to steal the item. If they play their cards right, the eladrins might help them but in the mean time you have some nice moral dilemas... You get the idea.
Of course, this could also work with planars or primes-turned-planars in the form of a master quest for something that leads them all over the planes. This adventure concept allows you to travel far and wide and to introduce many many personalities, which are the two hallmarks of the Planescape setting. If a character does have religious ties (as mentioned above) you probably want to bring the powers into the mix as well. These are the three hallmarks of the Planescape setting: travel, personalities, powers, and Sigil. I almost forgot Sigil, they should come and go from the Cage on their adventures, allowing them to get some of the other hallmarks: travel, personalities, powers, Sigil, and factions. The five hallmarks of Planescape... Alright, now I'm just being silly.
Check out some of these, or look for some on your own:
Climbing the Tree
Drained
Frozen Things
Innocence Lost
Thingpin
Tyranny Reigns
The PC's (1st Level)are members of an investigation agency/adventurer's guild in a major trading town and are hired by (Important NPC) to find out what happened to some shipments of silver ore that never turned up.
They arrive at the mining town to find that a large portion of the mining population have recently vanished, no-one knows how or why - various rumours, etc.
In reality, a one-way portal to some other plane (for preference one of the lower planes) has opened up on the road between the town and the mine and has thus been causing the disappearences.
PC's will naturally go to investigate the mine and unknowingly step through the portal in the road, thus transporting them to outer plane and to a landscape that looks similar. From here they can do what they will...
What do you think? Any suggestions on the plane I could send the to? I would want it to be reasonably mountainous since that's the type of terrain around the mining town. Also, I'd prefer for it not to be carceri or the grey wastes. Perhaps Gehanna?
What do you think? Any suggestions on the plane I could send the to? I would want it to be reasonably mountainous since that's the type of terrain around the mining town. Also, I'd prefer for it not to be carceri or the grey wastes. Perhaps Gehanna?
Well, I'd be the first to say that I am not an expert on the intricacies of gameplay mechanics and accurate challenge levels... And Planescape, bless its heart, was all about giving players accessibility to the Outer Planes... But dumping a bunch of 1st-levellers onto any of the four furnaces of Gehenna unprepared still seems a bit... harsh... And the landscape would probably be quite different from the one they just left.
From what you write, I'd say somewhere near the Dwarven Mountain on the Outlands is a good place, as it'd seem to give a reasonably easy and flexible start for them on the planes.
I remember us finishing faction wars and all the players were really bummed out. I just flat out said : they ruined it. I even asked the DM why he ran that quest, even the DM felt the change was bad. We never played PS again after this.
The players we didn't know what the quest was about, and most of the time we didn't know the name of the quest we were doing not to spoil anything. The group ( over the course of 2 party ) ran every published modules exlcuding : In the abyss, or something like that because the DM said it was just monsters stats and no story.
We liked all the modules but Faction Wars killed it for us.
If you are starting a new PS campaign, make it before Faction Wars and make it so that Faction Wars does'nt ever happen in your campaign, so the factions are still very much alive in Sigil.
Only after they reach the town do they realize it's Ribcage/Torch/Hopeless, and that those clouds of smoke that looked like tanneries are a little more sinister...
The "Well of worlds" introductory adventure tossed the players onto the first layer of Baator. Its basically a stupid thing to do to the players, but it makes up for it in drama and flair. You'll probably end up "dumbing" the plane up a little, but the players don't know anything about what to expect.
I just ran that adventure. At one point my players were considering paying Bel a visit to ask how to get home.
Eventually they cut a head off the pillar of skulls and promised it freedom from Hell in return for showing them a way off the plane.
Eventually they cut a head off the pillar of skulls and promised it freedom from Hell in return for showing them a way off the plane.
I've always liked Morte.
Looking at the rough map in the Manual of the Planes, there're plenty of mountain ranges I can use, probably closer to one of the gate towns.
I'm considering either Automata, Ribcage, or Rigus as destinations. I have ideas for what I can do with all three thanks to various bits and pieces I've read.
Which would you all say would be the best? My ideas for Rigus and Ribcage both ivolve the blood war so I'm slightly less sure of that since I'm not entirely familiar with it. Automata will be slightly more localised, dealing in some slight way with either the council of order or the council of anarchy, depending on the party's wishes.
The map in the MotP isn't very much like the Outlands as it was in Planescape. The most glaring omission is the lack of the Tir fo Thiunn, a great inland sea or ocean.
Here's some web pages on the Land:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/9974/hinter.htm
http://www.mimir.net/outlands/index.shtml
Are the divine realms, like the one of Boccob, inside the magic-inhibiting rings on the Concordant Opposition?
A Player's Primer to the Outlands says the divine realms are all in the sixth, seventh, or eighth rings outward, since in 2nd edition divine spells were generally unaffected in those rings.
Too far from the spire, their domains could slip into another Outer Plane; too close, and they couldn't grant their worshipers all the magic they'd like.
In 3e, gods can grant eighth and ninth level spells, so they'd probably be beyond those rings as well.
Harsh, I know but carceri is one of the most desolate lower planes and it isn't inherently dangerous unlike the gray waste. Some things I've done to make the game more akin to planescape of old are making bane weapons vs. outsiders race specific, not alignment. So instead of evil outsider bane, you could have yugoloth bane or tanar'ri bane. I've also jacked up the number of languages to those present in the original setting and to drive a point home, the racial names listed in the 3rd ed books are the prime names for the races, and as we all know, calling a Cornugon a devil will not put you on it's good side.
Personally, I think if you are running your first PS campaign, it should start in Sigil and stay there for quite a while. Planescape PCs are a cut above the average berk and should look it. One of my favorite characters was a half-giant psy-warrior wielding a gargantuan mercurial greatsword, I even gave him a +2 circumstance bonus to intimitate because of that weapon.
(The tale has actually been chronicled in my comic, now, lol.)