I hadn't seen this mentioned before, so I thought I might mention it here: A companion book to the MotP due out in July, with some 3E coverage of Sigil. Anyone have the dark on this? I wonder how much it's going to borrow from Planescape... Cordell is the co-author, though, which is a good sign.
Secondly, we'll see how it does since the WotC product blurb does mention Sigil as a site to be at least mentioned by the book. I'm looking forward to it, being as how I'm an Arcanaloth and we know everything, plus I'm the King of the Crosstrade so it goes without saying here...
To tell the truth, I'm deathly curious about how they'll be handling the citadel at the center of the plane of shadow which is also mentioned. That's something I don't have a clue on, and I'd love to know.
Planescape, as an explaination to life, the universe, and everything, was great. But the info in MotP was just some clueless berk rattling his bonebox trying to keep us from being well lanned.
In any game I run, any campaign setting, "Planescape" is the true cosmology, and every other sodding imitator can just pike off.
Other than that, I will of course cough up the jink for this product. If nothing else, It can be useful for fighting off a Hardhead patrol.
Hopeful!
This could be the best thing ever.
(of course it could be the worst, but as I stated before, I am hopeful.)
Originally posted by Nordom the Rogue Modron
Well, since they aren't above reworking the entire system (3e & 3.5) I suppose there IS hope the Planes will be reworked to better fit classic Planescape cosmology.
Oh, there is hope that the book will be more planescapey, but... Well, it isn't a great amount of hope.
It's just a shame... I was turning away from D&D towards other games because all D&D seemed to be set in The Realms. Dark Sun was the only interest in D&D that I had until Planescape came out. Such a fresh and intuitive new campaign setting, it made me break out my players handbook all over again. Whereas before I hated AC and Thac0, saving throw progressions, WPs and NWPs... I found myself so in love with the flavor of the setting that I was willing overlook the downsides of the game mechanics.
Then 3.0 is announced, and the Conversion booklet presented all these fresh changes. Finally you no longer had to be a calculus student to understand what number you needed to roll to hit any particular AC! No longer were high rolls good most of the time, except for initiative, or when trying to perform skills, then low rolls were preferred! All aspects of rolling were being standardized! YAY! The system was being changed to make D&D good and player friendly!! Yay! But then. . . Only campaign settings they were sticking with to start were Greyhawk and the Realms. BOOOO! What about Planescape? Oh, most of the planescape material was to be incoporated into the general D&D framework........ :hoppingma
Well, we all know how well they performed in that department.
Personally, until I see actual product that says "Planescape" on it, I don't expect anything to be Planescapeish, without having to either
A) Alter it myself to Planescape, or
B) Get it from Planewalker.com
Originally posted by Shemeska the Marauder
I'm an Arcanaloth and we know everything, plus I'm the King of the Crosstrade so it goes without saying here...
"Oh, but how little you really do know, Miss Shemeska..." -- Center-of-All, Rilmani Leader
In all honesty, I'm rather looking forward to the book. I'm not expecting any character out of it -- I'm expecting something similar to MotP. But I expect that some of the glaring inconsistencies with Planescape will be repaired. I don't expect it to follow Shemeska's well-written writeup of Sigil, but I do hope it won't completely contradict what she has written. I think it'll be worth reading, but whether it's worth buying after the read is debatable.
I'd be amazed if it was something like 'Uncaged: Faces of Sigil' for planar locations but I expect that it is simply more of what has come before. I.e. to make planar adventures part of generic D&D by getting rid of the Planescape flavour and attitude. If it sells then good luck to them, perhaps it will encourage people to research earlier planar material published.
Simmo
-Fringe Fartale, Tiefling Planewalker-
Or the rotation is through a dimension higher than 4.
Originally posted by Gilliard DeRosan
Personally, until I see actual product that says "Planescape" on it, I don't expect anything to be Planescapeish, without having to either
A) Alter it myself to Planescape,
There's almost no work required in adapting 3e planar material to Planescape. Adventures like Bastion of Broken Souls or monster books like the Fiend Folio meld with the Planescape cosmology effortlessly (oh, you have to decide if the skeroloths are true yugoloths or 'loth creations, but that takes only a few seconds. They work well as demoted dergholoths). Anything 3e can be raided for interesting monsters, spells, classes, and races without muss or pain, largely because the designers seem to have liked Planescape and quote from it often.
The only differences between the default Great Wheel cosmology and the multiverse of the Planescape boxed set are the way the transitive planes work and the number of intermediary inner planes, and neither of those things is likely to affect much.
That is, if you aren't worried about things like clerical spell levels and magic item bonuses changing as you cross planes, but I personally think we're well rid of those rules. I like spell keys, but it's no trouble to keep using those (except for the players...)
The new Forgotten Realms cosmology is also very close to the old Planescape cosmos, with the same names for divine realms and everything. Just substitute "Pandemonium" when they say "the Supreme Throne," and so on, and everything else is the same.
3rd party d20 stuff can be a very different matter, but that's part of the point of d20.
As for spell keys and such, I never used them. The thing I liked about Planescape was the virtually no limits aspect, and yet power keys and the like just served to limit the limitleness nature of the planes. I do like the varying power for magical items of course. Considering that most players hoarde magic weapons anyway, this gives them a reason to hoarde different weapons from different places (and when you limit them on just how much that they can actual carry, it means some careful planning before they leave their base of operations)
The main work I found in the conversion was the little tidbits on planar effects that were in 2e regards that really didn't have 3e counterparts (not to mention that a lot of the alterations in 2e were really not to scale, yer 3e tries to keep everything to an equivalent scale - Personally I like that some Factions provide bonuses that other faction's bonuses may not compare to in usefulness or power - And once I gather my PS stuff from the next state over, I will add that back into my game, balanced or not). But again, most of the overall stuff out there for Planescape is simply Fluff. It's easy to take a creature from the Monster Manual and change it's fluff from "This creature hails from such and such" and make it specific to your PS game. I just hate having to hunt through.. what is it now, MM, MM2, FF, BoVD, etc etc etc trying to track down all my Planescape critters.