#Planescape Dms Guild

[parallel-2-anywhere]

Book Covers!

Hey Folks! Here are what the front and back cover of Piranesi's Guide to Sigil will end up looking like! The art was done by the amazing @crowvaarts! I am so thrilled with how this is looking I am going feral .

I even love how stunning the back cover is! Since I have gotten gold on the DMs Guild in the past I may see about getting this book physically at some point! I am just so thrilled by it!

[daemons-and-deathrays]

A Planar Grimoire Update

A Planar Grimoire Update

Just letting everyone know, I’ve made an update to one of my initial works for DM’s Guild, a Planar Grimoire!  The following spells inspired by the Eberron setting, and also given a somewhat spooky Halloween vibe!  The following spells have been added:

Augment Natural Weapon

Dream Lock

Essence of the Living

Healing Light of Irian

Intensive Repair

Repair Damage

Silverflame Smite

Sporadic…

[utilitycaster]

Theory

The moon video is actually an elaborate fake-out designed to both offload old stock and drum up sales for Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, and indeed, other WoTC books.

Consider: 

“Understanding”, and I use the word loosely, the moon video and its many flaws is made much easier by the possession of a 5e DM’s guide (information about the Astral Plane), The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount (information about the Exandria setting), the Monster Manual (information about canonical creatures), and the Player’s Handbook (information about how playable races fundamentally work). While most players probably have some version of the PHB, only a DM necessarily needs the DM’s Guide and the Monster Manual. Meanwhile the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount has an audience with Critical Role fans already, but it’s still only a few months old; new enough that there’s people out there who haven’t purchased it yet. Also there are people who go on YouTube or Tumblr and watch whatever is trending, apparently, which may represent a small bump in purchases.

WoTC also still sells Spelljammer 2e content (source: DM’s Guild), despite the original Spelljammer setting having been discontinued in 1993 with Planescape, when D&D was still being published by TSR (ie, prior to acquistion by WoTC). There is a market for these PDFs, but a small one. Additionally, several assumptions made by the video can most reliably be addressed with further back editions of D&D books, dating back to the original AD&D. Interest in AD&D from Stranger Things and the population Gen X-ers with children who want to to introduce them to The Version I Played there is a small market for these books, but to really make it worthwhile one would need to expand. Why not pull in at least some of Critical Role’s viewership?

Finally, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is slated for release later this year, and was announced not long after the video was posted. Given the hinging of the “argument” on, among other things, outdated understandings of racial traits, what better way to drum up publicity for a book that promises to revisit the unfortunate implications regarding racial traits still in some ways present, though to a far lesser extent, in 5e? What better way to spark an interest in astral and psionic-centric classes such as the seeker and the aberrant mind, previously tested only in Unearthed Arcana than to lead thousands of people to look up the Gith and the Astral Plane?

Anticipated arguments against and rebuttals

1. WoTC is a professional company with a full-fledged media and would do a better job with video editing.

Counterargument: that’s exactly what they want you to think.

2. A quick scan of the Spelljammer wikipedia page indicates Spelljammer explicitly takes place entirely on the material plane (with sundry demiplanes). Given the repeated references to the Astral plane, divine gate, etc. and the fact that we know canonically that extraplanar travel is possible within Exandria, as well as deep and fundamental differences between 2e and 5e wouldn’t it seem that the Spelljammer setting would need to be so altered to fit into the setting of Exandria that you would end up with a sort of Theseus’s ship paradox re: the mythology, and anyway if you can figure this out from five minutes on Wikipedia, why would you buy a book?

Counterargument: Oh so you believe everything you read on Wikipedia? Next thing you’ll tell me is you believe anything you watch on YouTube.

3. Okay so let’s say I believe your premise. Will this really sell that many more books? Pirating D&D PDFs is as much a right of passage for some as slaying a dragon, or seducing an enemy, or creating 7 different characters solely because you couldn’t decide on a color for your tiefling warlock and you spiraled and came to 5 hours later with one of each. Will real people with real money spend it on a book in a system 99% of them do not know that’s like “well we needed a name for Orcs but Space so we just flipped around the word ‘orcs’ and then we drank so much beer the other Wisconsinites at Lake Geneva were impressed, which is saying something”?

Counterargument: actually you have a point. Let’s consider. Most of these books, especially past editions, are PDFs anyway. So it makes sense to have a repository of them. Perhaps an online D&D app. Wait. There is one. It’s called D&D Beyond. Critical Role is sponsored by D&D Beyond. This is an ouroboros of a publicity stunt. But who would come up with such a strange, labor-intensive, and convoluted ad campaign? That’s ridiculous! That’s never happened on Critical -

oh. oh my god. this goes so much further than that. The only possible answer is that Sam Riegel...

is from the moon.

[enddaysengine]

Want to inject some more Planescape into your 5e game? Amped Up Demon Lords 1 takes the stats from Tome of Foes and elevates them to the deep end of the CR pool! 

To help the RPG community during COVID-19, until May 17th, the DM’s Guild and the Storyteller’s Vault are running Play It Forward, waiving their usual commission and passing 100% of the earnings on community content onto creators! If you are able to help support some RPG people, please do so! 

DM’s Guild

Storyteller’s Vault

[whimsysgeekery]

Diagetic Music in D&D

So during my D&D game on Sunday, I needed to find a song that could be used for a concert. Not just ANY concert, a concert at Ren Hall, in the Civic Festhall, in Sigil, in the Planescape campaign setting. If you haven’t looked into Planescape at all, it is a blast. It’s an especially amazing setting for roleplay heavy parties. You can get the books through DMs Guild.

This is the Civic Festhall, as represented in The Factol’s Manifesto. Ren Hall is actually on the opposite side of this view.

Here’s the description of the theater from The Factol’s Manifesto.

Ren Hall, named in honor of the legendary prime hero of old, is the largest public theater in Sigil. Performances are staged twice a night, almost always to full houses. Productions vary: one night a githyanki play, the next a ballet performed by lizard men, the third an opera featuring the howlers of Pandemonium. The Sensates put on a lavish performance, sparing no cost in actors, settings, magic, music, and sensory enahcnes (such as producing odor where appropriate).

Those of you familiar with the map of the Civic Festhall, I drew over the additional labels and rooms in case my players see this!

I spent more time looking for the right song than I did on anything else for the session I think.

I kept going back and forth between choices. I almost went with Diva Dance (you know, the song from 5th Element). I probably WOULD have gone with that choice if I had been able to find a version by Dimash Kudaibergen that had the full song including the Il dolce suono aria. Mainly because his version would be different enough to through my players off a bit. If you haven’t listened to his version yet, here you go. You’re welcome.

I thought about using The Mystic’s Dream by Loreena McKennitt, but ultimately decided I didn’t want to use a song with English lyrics. Then I bounced around YouTube a bunch trying to find something.

So that brings me to Je te rends ton amour. A song that my French teacher from 10th grade shared with us (back in 2006). And even though at least one other person in the room had taken French and visited France, none of the players knew the song.

It ended up suiting the mood perfectly. It has some of the gritty undertone that matches up with the Planescape: Torment ambient music. Though not the Civic Festhall ambient music from the game since that’s more baroque inspired.

I wrote up narration that was pretty in line with the major musical moments and my players loved it. After I finished the narration and again after the session my players shared how much they loved that segment.

So yeah, just wanted to share how I managed to put a Mylène Farmer song into my D&D game as a diagetic song.

BTW, for any Planescape fans reading this, I chose Black Marian from Uncaged: Faces of Sigil as the performer. I know she’s most often found at the Singing Fountain, but this was a special limited time performance.

Anyone else have fun stories of using diagetic music in D&D?

[astriiformes]

Hello! I was wondering what resources you use to study the planar systems? If you don’t mind.

The “resources” I’ve used have honestly primarily been actual published books, from a variety of different means. I actually happen to own print copies of both the 3e and 4e Manual of the Planes (as well as Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, which is not an explicit planar manual for 5e but definitely has content that fits the subject, and is the most “up-to-date” when it comes to telling you things like who’s in charge of what layer of the Nine Hells now). Those kinds of things are definitely worth scanning used bookstores or even game stores that sell old sourcebooks for.

WotC also sells PDFs of lots of old sourcebooks and adventures via the DMs’ Guild, where you can find some of the old materials for the 2e Planescape setting for sale – lots of these are modules, but if you just want to learn about the planes, there are also a number of sourcebooks. Like, a pretty big number. The most useful ones at the start are likely to be the Planescape Campaign Setting and Planewalker’s Handbook, but you can also dive really deep into certain specific planes (or groupings in them) by checking out some of the related materials.

(As far as a starting point I also see that they have the 3e Manual of the Planes for sale, and that’s probably the best possible intro book – Planescape is great for detail, but it’s pretty intricate and dense and is not necessarily the greatest way to just learn the basics of the classic Great Wheel system. They also have the 3e Planar Handbook which is another good, relatively entry-level supplement – it’s the one that was marketed more towards players, while the Manual for 3e was more aimed at DMs.)

I don’t really like to actively suggest that people seek out illegal PDFs because that’s just… not the kind of thing I want to be encouraging people to do on my public internet blog, but if free is what you’re looking for… Wikipedia’s honestly got some stuff, as funny as it sounds. Their page on the planes gives a pretty solid overview of not only the Great Wheel, but the history of its development, which is useful if you want to quickly understand, say, what got renamed what and which editions had different ideas about how the whole system worked (hint: the answer is mostly 4th). From there, go ahead and click through links to what you’re interested in. A couple other good articles are their pages on the Inner Planes, the Outer Planes, Planescape, any of the individual outer planes, lots of individual planar races and monsters, and some of the major D&D deities and pantheons. Just be warned it’s as much of a rabbit hole as any Wikipedia reading spree – I once spent an insomniac evening reading through their lists of all the named demons and devils in D&D history!

[mantis-lizbian]

the thing that really gets me about 5e supporters defending its barebones-ness by saying “you can homebrew all that stuff yourself. it’s not necessary.” is that... in purchasing the book, i am basically paying someone - a professional game designer, no less - to make those rules for me. i am paying for their expertise to make rules that are less arbitrary and more balanced than they would be if i made them, especially off-the-cuff at the table. and if i’m not making them off-the-cuff at the table, then i’m writing them down and codifying them, in which case i’m essentially making my own supplement, and it would be so much more convenient for my players if all those rules could already be found in the same place as the rest of the rules.

especially considering, as any veteran D&D player knows: you can cut out and ignore pretty much any rule you don’t like, and it takes a whole lot less effort than making up new ones, even if you have to spackle over something that cutting that rule would otherwise imbalance. don’t like magic items in 3e or even 4e? that’s fine. replace them with a series of inherent AC, ability score, and other bonuses following along the same logic as BAB and base saves. the existing system gives you a framework to base the progression off of, so you pretty much just have to make a little table (neverminding the fact that WotC actually put out at least two official systems that you could use for this, straight out of the book). want a more down-to-earth game? set the level cap between 6th and 10th. want something more fantastical and over the top? start around level 15, and maybe give everyone a handful of spell-like abilities. want a magicless low fantasy game without spellcasters? there’s still enough variety within the non-spellcasting classes that you could have a party of just rogues or just fighters and every character can still have a distinct build (as a particularly clear example of this, a 3e rogue could be built with any one of the six stats at its core, and all six will be both completely viable, as well as very roguish, not to mention as distinct as you’d expect six characters with completely different stats to be). fantastical as it was by default, 4e could still go from Dark Sun to Planescape. and, of course, 2e was notorious for the countless official settings that were published for it. even if each had its own set of (sometimes conflicting) rules, at least those rules existed. in a day where “jokes” about how hard it is just to find time to play are as common as those about poly-pan bards, who can be expected to find the time to draw up their own rules for dread, kingdom building, honor, or spelljammers?

and before anyone brings up the DM’s Guild and community-made content, that certainly has its place, but no. that’s like trying to say Super Mario Maker is a perfectly suitable replacement for Mario Odyssey. mods are meant to supplement a game that is already good on its own, not make the game functional in the first place.

[sirpoley]

On Towns in RPGs, Part 5: Building a Playable City

In the first article in this series, I embarked on an ill-defined quest to figure out what, if anything, a town map is actually for in tabletop play.

In the second, I took a look at the common metaphor comparing towns to dungeons—unfavourably.

In the third, I proposed an alternate metaphor: that cities are more like forests than dungeons.

In the fourth, I looked at how forests are used in D&D to see what we could use when thinking about cities.

Now, we're going to get to the nuts and bolts of designing cities for use in D&D.

Think In Terms of Districts, not Distance

No player is ever going to remember, or care about, the actual distance between their current location and the tavern they're trying to get to. Similarly, they won't remember, or care about, the roads they have to cross to get there.

The absolute most you can hope for is that they'll remember and care about some of (but not all of) the neighbourhoods they have to go through. In Terry Pratchet's Ankh-Morpork, the Shades is an extremely memorable and dangerous area. Like Pratchett's characters, players are going to avoid it wherever possible and yet always find that they have to go through it. Planescape: Torment's Hive and Fallout: New Vegas's Freeside have similar qualities. If you grimly tell the players: "the quickest way to the princess is through—oh, dear—the Shades," they'll have a reaction to it.

Don't overdo it with districts; keep the number small enough for them to be memorable. I'd recommend seven as an absolute maximum, but as few as three is perfectly acceptable. Lantzberg, from City of Eternal Rain, only used three (one each for lower, middle, and upper class—end elevation). A district can be as big as you like; feel free to simply scale them up for larger cities.

Forget Thee Not House Hufflepuff

It's no secret that in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, only two of the four houses matter at all. If you're not Gryffindor or Slytherin, you're lucky to get any screentime at all. However, if they were simply cut from the series, then Hogwarts would feel terribly small, as if it were built solely for Harry to gallivant around in, and not part of a living, breathing world. Your city can't just have people to tell your players who to kill and people to be killed, it needs someone to clean up the mess after, also. From a narrative standpoint, these people don't matter, and will rarely be mentioned, but they can be used to pad your world out. When dividing up your map into districts, include a few that, as far as you're concerned, will never see an adventure, and give it maybe one or two notable characteristics. These are areas that are primarily residential, or involve industries not relevant to adventure (i.e., anyone other than an alchemist, blacksmith, or arcane university). Feel free to leave these places utterly devoid of points of interest.

In the adventure written for Lantzberg, for instance, there's little to no reason to ever visit the castle at the peak of the hill. It's there for verisimilitude (someone has to be in charge) and for the GM to hook later adventures to (which I'll elaborate on in my next point), but mainly it's just there to make the city seem larger. Similarly, most of the buildings in Castleview are manors of rich and important citizens, each one of which might have any number of use for a band of adventurers, but only a handful are actually fleshed out. After all, it would hardly feel like a living, breathing city if every single building was tied into a single adventure, would it?

Gaming is full of Hufflepuff Houses: the 996 Space Marine chapters that aren't lucky enough to be Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, or Space Wolves; D&D fiends that are neither lawful nor chaotic, Morrowind's Houses Dres and Indoril, and any of Homeworld's Kushan other than Kiith S'jet. This isn't laziness; they're there for a reason: they make the world feel larger.

Leave Room to Grow

Try to design a city large enough, and versatile enough, that once the current quest is wrapped up, you can inject some more content into it without serious retconning. This is part of where your Hufflepuff-tier-neighbourhoods come in—maybe one of them has been under the heel of a violent gang the whole time, but the party never found out because they never went there. Once the players have started to clear out your adventure ideas and points of interest, there's still plenty of room to pump some more in without the city bursting like an over-inflated balloon.

The map I posted earlier probably represents the upper limit of how detailed you should make your city. A GM could run a few more adventures out of Lantzberg, but a long-running campaign would probably benefit from a bit more room to breathe.

A Few Key Details

What are the kinds of things a DM really needs to know about a city? D&D3.5 had little statblocks for cities and settlements that broke down the demographics of different areas, but that's probably more granular than is actually necessary. Remember—every bit of detail that you include has the potential to distract the GM from finding the fact they actually need. It isn't for instance, particularly important to know that 12.5% of a neighbourhood's population are halflings while 54% are elves, but it might be useful to know that a neighbourhood has a notably large elf population and an often-overlooked halfling minority.

Who are the Watchmen that the Watchers Watch?

One infamously common thing that comes up in D&D is the city watch. It's shadow looms large over every action the party, and your villains, will take, so it's worth thinking about them a little bit. Its best to err on the side of making them too weak rather than too strong, as a powerful, well-organized law enforcement group can really put a damper on the opportunities for adventure. The counter-argument is that if the city watch isn't strong enough to threaten the party, then the party effectively has the run of the city; my preferred answer to this problem is to give the local lord a powerful knight or champion who can be used as a beat-stick against major threats to law and order (like the PCs) if need be, but can plausibly be busy enough with other problems to leave some for the party to handle.

When deciding who the local authorities are, almost anything you can come up with is more interesting (and historically plausible) than a centralized, professional police force. Here's a few examples:

A militia organized by local guilds

A local gang that provides protection in exchange for money and doesn't want outsiders muscling in on their turf

A semi-legitimate religious militant order

A mercenary group funded by a coalition of wealthy merchants (who just so happen to overlook their own crimes and corruption)

Don't get too bogged down in their stats; just pick a low-level NPC from the back of the Monster Manual and write down who they work for. Different neighbourhoods can share the same organization, but try to prevent a single organization from policing the entire city.

By breaking up law enforcement by district, you also prevent the entire city dogpiling on the party when they break a law, like you see in video games. If the party robs a house in the Ironworker's District, they can lay low in the Lists, where the Ironworkers' Patrol has no jurisdiction, until the heat dies down.

Points of Interest!

All those numbers you see scattered over D&D cities? Now's the time to add them. Each one should correspond to a description in a document somewhere. These descriptions can be as long or as short as you wish. For example, on the short end, #1 from Lantzberg just has this to say:

However, and I won't get into too much detail for fear of spoilers, some of those numbers are elaborate, multi-page dungeons.

While you should endeavour to keep the number of districts low, there is no ceiling to how many points of interest you should put into the city. Don't burn yourself out. If you can come up with six, put in six. If you can come up with fifty, put in fifty.

A point of interest can be anything from a scenic overlook to a toll bridge to an elaborate sewer system packed with kobolds and giant rats and treasure. They can be as fleshed out or as minimal as you are comfortable with. There's a sweet spot that varies from GM to GM, as if you include too much detail you suffer from information overload as the party approaches the point of interest (sixteen pages of description, for instance, for a single shop is less than helpful), while too little information might lead to you having to do too much on the fly. I like maybe one to three sentences per point of interest, or per room in a point of interest if it is important enough to warrant its own map (I typically only map dungeons).

Random Encounters

I'll write a series on handling random encounters later, but for now, breaking up encounters by district is a convenient way to do it. More dangerous districts, for instance, might have muggers or even monsters that attack (especially at night). If you're going to use random encounters in your campaign, creating a table for each district lets you use your local colour to affect actual game mechanics. Castleview, for instance, is very safe due to constant patrols by the Lady-Mayor's Watch, while the flooded Lists are full of man-eating fungi, ghouls, criminals, and who knows what. This lets you follow the age-old advice to "show, don't tell." You don't have to say "this area is full of crime," you can show the players this by throwing some criminals at them.

This post has already gone on way longer than intended. Next time, we'll use what we've learned to answer the original question and make better town maps.

[doctornecrotic]

Do you think Planescape will return in full?

I doubt it.  But hey, it was one of the most heavily requested settings, next to Spelljammer, Greyhawk and the like.  (Personally, I think Mystara needs its dues more than any of them!)  The team said they wanted to open things up.  Hell, teasers are all around!  PS centric monsters in various books, Commander Holly’s recorded games on the official YouTube, more references in DCA (in part thanks to Holly), and so on.

Though, I don’t think I’d enjoy whatever Wizards creates.  I’m not a fan of the post-shadowfell addition for Ravenloft, let alone most of the lore edits for 5E.  I sure as hell hate the post-4E tieflings that remain core.  And short of me being a grumpy old grognard, a lot of players won’t understand my take on the game sans the new additions…  So,I dunno.  If there’s updated crunch that I didn’t think of?  Cool, count me in!  Otherwise, I don’t entirely care.  At least I could craft up some old school flavored stuff on DM’s Guild, as WotC are a bunch of Clueless Primers.  That’s enough out of my rusty bone-box, hehe.  A sore wound will make me gripe like no one’s business and you didn’t need that.  But yeah, I think it’ll be leaked further in some capacity.  I’d imagine they’ll do some big adventure thingy that briefly touched on Sigil, like the Demonweb Pits adventure in 3.5 does.

[teal-deer]

That is pretty neat stuff! 

With that said, @manycats and @dreadbeasts, like... would you guys be interested in a short D&D 5e booklet about Lawful & Chaotic based races? I unfortunately think that Modrons are Product Identity for WotC, so if we wanted to publish it (and potentially make... probably a total of $5!) we’d have to use the DM’s Guild (publishing platform that lets you use WotC’s IP; caveat is that they take a LARGE cut of the sales, but you don’t have to worry about getting sued) but this is a thing we could do. 

*edit* Technically, stuff for the DM’s Guild has to be setting-neutral... *however*, the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide discusses the Outer Planes, so we could hypothetically claim that it’s Totally Not Planescape (TM)

why arent there LN/CN versions of tieflings/aasimar. how am i meant to accurately make symmetra

[parallel-2-anywhere]

Hi folks! So I have been working on Piranesi's Guide to Sigil for the DMs Guild to come out with the release of Planescape on the 17th! The final book will have 12 new species, 4 new lineages and alternate features, and 8 new subclasses meant to make the players have more things in line with multiversal nonsense and strange kinds of magic! All revolving around a very strange library in Sigil and the enigmatic librarian who seems able to retain endless lost knowledge.

Here is a preview page of the kinds of things that will be in there with art on this page done by the amazing @anatthema-art and layout done by @sunevial who are just helping out so much with this project!

This is my way of adding a lot of the things I have made with friends over the years into the D&D multiverse by using the central point of all of it as a gateway!

[parallel-2-anywhere]

Planescape Homebrew Book

I am working on a better name, but I have loved Sigil and the Planescape setting for so long. I am so excited to put out a book on the DM's Guild for it. I am aiming to put it out on release day. It's going to be a lot of additional player features for existing species, new species and subclasses! Just the sorts of things that won't be in Planescape proper that all bring a fun multiversal vibe! Headed of course by an enigmatic librarian named Piranesi!

I am so thrilled to put this together and I am getting to bring in some amazing concepts that my awesome friends have created as well! Like the thoughtborn you would see in @mind-or-matter and other amazing stuff!

I am probably going to be posting updates here and on other socials to build hype for the book because there is a lot of content here!

[daemons-and-deathrays]

Small DM’s Guild Updates! Since I made my post on Eladrin, I wanted to do another thing or two.  For starters, I thought the Lilend from Tales of the Infinite Staircase were pretty cool, so I wanted to bring them back. 

[parallel-2-anywhere]

HOLY SHIT!?!

UHHHHHHH???????????? So We are a Number 1 best seller in the Under $5 Dollar Section and Number 9 on the whole site?!?!?!?! Thank you so much!

PIRANESI AND THE LIBRARY OF SIGIL IS NOW LIVE ON DMSGUILD!!

10 new species 8 subclasses and 4 species altering lineages and features are here alongside lore on the strange Library of Sigil!

With amazing art from folks across the community and layout done by @sunevial and art from incredible folks like @crowvaarts @mind-or-matter and more! This book has been so big it’s an intense labor of love for the DND multiverse, our little collective multiverse that my friends and I run the game and tell stories in, and those stories we’ve told together! It’s 4.99 on DMs Guild and Day 1 is always kinda important so either picking it up or spreading the word is such a big deal and turbo appreciated! There is so much in here I think players and DM's will be into!

[daemons-and-deathrays]

Defenders of Arborea: The Eladrin All of this talk about Planescape has gotten me quite nostalgic.  Plus, I did a couple of Eladrin stats on a whim a year around two years back. 

[daemons-and-deathrays]

HALLOWEEN SPELL UPDATE

Greetings, goblins and ghouls.  I added a small handful of spells to my Planar Grimoire document.  It’s a heaping helping of darker spells throughout the multiverse, as detailed below.  Enjoy. Jutting Bones – Conjure bones from the ground to pierce foes Sylvan Soul – Sample an aspect of the fair folk for a brief moment Psychic Projectile – Reach into the Far Realm and pull out some power to hurl…