#planescape planning

[ettawritesnstudies]

ik this isn't exaaactly about the characters but what are the different realms in your dnd campaign? and which one corresponds to which alignment :O cuz i saw in one of the descriptions there's a fey realm, like where does that fall alignment-wise? this all sounds super interesting btw!!

there's so many realms! The DnD planescape is a whole system that I'm putting my own flair on. There's even maps! To be clear, I didn't invent any of this, I'm just stealing it for my own game.

There are two main distinctions - the Inner Planes, which are neutral because they're unaligned, and the Outer Planes which *are* aligned except for the true neutral ground of the out lands, which are neutral because everything overlaps.

You're probably most familiar with the Prime Material, which is the core of the inner planes. It's where most DnD games take place, and it's home to earth, among other worlds. Surrounding the Prime Material are the elemental planes, which bleed into each other. Above and below (metaphorically speaking) are the positive and negative "reflections" of the material plane, which are the Feywild and the Shadowfell. Positive and Negative don't necessarily mean good or bad here: both are equally and oppositely dangerous. The Feywild is 100% emotion all the time, everything is dialed up to 11. The Shadowfell is 100% apathy, slowing to a crawl. I'm personally treating the Feywild like the Seelie Court in Runaways, and the Feywild like the Unseelie Court, if that's a helpful analogy!

These planes are connected by the Etherium - a kind of "in-between" space in reality. This is mirrored by the Astral Sea, which connects the Outer Planes, which are the realms of gods, monsters, demons, devils, and other powerful beings. These planes can have different layers too, so you have the single layer of Mechanus (LN), the clockwork that runs the universe, the 7 heavens of Mount Celestia (LG), the 9 Hells of Baator (LE), the infinite layers of the Abyss (CE), or the 3 layers of the Beastlands for day, night, and dusk (CG). I won't get into all of these, because there's a lot, but they're really cool!

Sigil is the city in the center of it all. It's run by a being called the Lady of Pain who hates all the other higher powers, bans them from the city, and refuses to be worshiped herself. Anyone who crosses her will be flayed alive, or sent to a pocket-dimension of infinite mazes to run around lost forever, but her iron rule keeps the peace and neutrality in tact. It's known as the City of Doors - there are countless hidden portals to all the different realms, most guarded by factions that represent their gods, and docks full of spelljammers - ships that can shift to any of the planes at will.

So far my players have been to the Plane of Air, and now they're splitting up to tackle the Feywild and the Shadowfell at the same time!

[femvaylin]

Gal that buys video games before finishing the ones she's bought previously: yeah I definitely need VTMB

[sandycookie]

look, i hate caesar and the legion, but I would pay money just to hear him talk about every nuance and detail in his philosophy and his thoughts on other philosophies. this game's writing is great

[thydungeongal]

Planescape fans when characters in a movie need to break out of jail and they begin to plan escape

[y-rhywbeth2]

Technically the ending where Durge rejects Bhaal is freedom in the same sense that Astarion was free of Cazador when a mind flayer shoved a tadpole in his eye-socket.

No, your master can't take direct control of your body anymore or take over your will.

Your master is, however, still very much out there. He is more powerful than you. He has plans for you. He is furious at you, his property, for defying him, running away and interfering with those plans.

WotC canon has twice overridden the original games to show that all the Bhaalspawn who were "freed" were pawns of Bhaal in the end.

There's that goddamn delightful letter you might get in the epilogue that flat out tells you that Bhaal's not done with you, and you will not escape your designated function as a stud in his plan to reboot the Bhaalspawn Crisis. (Strictly speaking, damaging your reproductive organs won't stop this: Bhaal's a deity. Who do you think is giving clerics their healing spells?)

Evil deities very much do punish transgressions against them by their followers and apostates, "if the offense [is] serious enough, major transgressions may even be punished by death in whatever form the deity has the power to arrange." Your best way to avoid that one, as far as I remember, is to get your way into the good graces of another deity who has the power to challenge your old boss and can protect you. (Although becoming a cleric did nothing to save any other Bhaalspawn from their father...)

Now is a good time to fucking panic. Hopefully, Jergal picking up the leash is good enough protection to keep them out of Bhaal's hands. Durge will likely look back on Astarion's willingness to risk his soul going to Raphael if it means escaping Cazador with great understanding - "..."better the devil you know." [...] And I'll take anything that saves me from that."

Time to start researching gods and Bhaalspawn and coming up with contingency plans!

Sure, you can kill Bhaal, but that's significantly harder than killing most things and the bastard does not stay dead, as he has illustrated. Vestiges are still dangerous, and Sarevok and the Other One were both taken over while he was dead. You are not freed by his death.

I wonder if moving to Sigil would work; gods can't access the city, but I'm not sure the Lady of Pain forbids them meddling with their followers/escaped servants from afar... I need to refresh my Planescape knowledge...

[wanderingnork]

I keep reminding myself that not everyone has read every possible githyanki/githzerai related source going back to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Fiend Folio. Not everyone has this level of Special Interest. Not everyone is actively trying to track down good hard copies of most of these books. Nor is anyone obligated to do so.

So here you go: I'm going to explain why "githzerai good/githyanki evil" is completely reductive, not in line with the lore, and would be ridiculous to add to BG3.

The githzerai are far, far, FAR from saints, and including them in BG3 would just muddy the waters further. They aren't just running around being the good to the githyanki's evil. And never have been. They've been chaotic neutral since the Fiend Folio, and they did not become Chaotic Good in the years since. In fact, I'd make the argument that, based on their canonical behavior right up to the present, "chaotic evil" would be an appropriate alignment.

Back in second-edition D&D, in the Planescape Book of Chaos, there's an entire section on a credible rumor that the githzerai are working on a ritual that will allow them to pull githyanki out of the Astral Plane into their city so they can "punish them for their evil." (Page 76, if you're curious.) Dragon magazine #306 (an official source), there's an article entitled "Killing Cousins." It details the gith-attala, or...cousin hunters, githzerai who specialize in hunting down and killing githyanki. They go after githyanki anywhere, but in particular strongholds on the Material Plane. As of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (again, official source), it's explicitly stated on page 305 that the githzerai are "always on the lookout for githyanki plots to foil and creches to exterminate."

If we encountered githzerai in BG3, the most likely place to do so would be outside the creche, planning an attack that would have targeted eggs, hatchlings, and children.

The githyanki aren't coming from a place of moral good. But neither are the githzerai. Simplifying it down to good vs evil does the entire story of the species a disservice.

[justablah56]

guys please I desperately need more professionals fics where vr la is just an absolute menace . I do think it would have to be after they're already together , but like . cmon guys . vr la finds out that maxim gets flustered easily by physical affection and makes it his personal mission to see how often he can do it before it becomes normal and no longer surprises maxim . vr la is using his conspiracy board to plan out when and where he's going to hop into maxim's lap throughout the next week for optimal maxim frozen like a very flustered deer in the headlights . he's taking note of how long he can trace his fingers up and down maxim's arm before his eyes can't get any brighter. I simply know in my heart that that robot would be the biggest menace in the planescape the moment he and maxim got in a comfortable relationship .

[three--rings]

Binderary 2024 wrap-up

When Binderary started, I hadn't touched any bookbinding since August when I broke my foot. Step one was getting my crafting space cleaned up enough to let me walk through it with crutches.

So my original goal was to get one single book done in the month, with a stretch goal of 4 total books, aka peaceful mode of the challenge.

I finished with seven total books, if you include the leather cover I made for my dnd notebook (which I do, it was complicated.)

Here are all my full books from this month on my shelf

I'm obviously most proud of my two large projects: the 999 script and the Planescape: Torment novelization. They were both involved typesets, and Torment was an experiment in binding style.

This month was about learning new techniques. From the entire k118 binding style, which I learned mostly from a couple blog posts, @spockandawe's advice, and at the end from the fantastic Binderary workshop on it. Plus I was using a guillotine for the first time, which I'm still getting used to.

And I very impulsively bought a Cricut Maker which arrived halfway through the month (thanks to enabling from Renegade folks and finding a used one for a good price.) So I had to learn entirely from scratch how to use that. My experiences with HTV Foil were BAD, but regular HTV is much easier. I then started working with stencil vinyl and paint, which was its own learning process, but worked pretty well on my leather books.

Meanwhile, I was also going through physical therapy for my foot and went from crutches to being able to walk unsupported in my boot, which is huge progress and made working on books much easier as the month went on. So this Binderary was a big time of growth and progress for me personally.

I also really love that Binderary is February because I get in a real creative slump in winter, and after two months of no creative impulses, Binderary always shocks me into high speed creation in a really nice way.

Thanks and love to everyone involved in planning and running this great event and everyone hanging out in the discord and workshop chats.

[enddaysengine]

To the Stars and Beyond!

A bunch of interesting things happened at PaizoCon this weekend, the most fascinating for me was something completely internal. Pathfinder wasn't the game I was focused on. Given all of the reveals about War of the Immortals, the announcement of Spore War, and about 9000 other things related to the planes, that may be surprising.

But no, this time the main event was Starfinder.

While I never got to play as much of 1e as I would've liked, I've been eagerly awaing Starfinder 2e, both as the playtest and in its final form. Starfinder's blend of science-fantasy from properties like Star Wars, Doom, and 40k took a while to grow on me, but it has solidly become one of my favorites. Plus, even in 1e, Starfinder had a lot of planar content baked into the setting. Made an argument on Twitter and BlueSky when I'm feeling spicy that between Pathfinder and Starfinder, it is the latter that is better set up to be a successor to Planescape. And oh boy that has not changed at all from the titbits they got dropped at PaizoCon. Both the playtest and 2e seem poised to lean even harder into the weird and strange parts of the setting where science fiction and fantasy overlap. I am 100% here for it.

The point that I am getting to that Paths Beyond wasn't the only project I had sitting on the back burner. There is also Star Beyond, a science fantasy take on the same weird and wonderful genre we know from Planescape. I can never predict which games my brain is going to latch on each week, but I expect I'll be writing Starfinder content for the blog in the very near future. Not just because it's fun and because Starfinder literally calls its player organizations factions, but because I have an ambition. My aim is to have Stars Beyond ready for Starfinder Infinite by the 2e launches. I actually have an outline and I'm aiming for a companion in the 40,000 to 50,000 word range. That's a big project, if I finish it, it will be easily the most words I've written for a single book, but I figure I have time on my side. It may actually be doable, but nonetheless wish me luck.

See you in the stars.

Post-Script: We also got confirmation that while 2e was in the works when OGL-gate hit, there were supposed to be more 1e books: the Faction Guide (which was being written) and the Extraplanar Archive (which was in outlining). It's a bummer we don't have either yet given what I plan to do, but it does make me feel like Stars Beyond is on the right track.

Post-post-script: I also have a place where I reblog inspirational media for this project over at @stars-beyond-sf! Check it out.

[saintrabouin]

i love coming back to your page and seeing all the planescape art you create : ) are you planning on doing planetober next year ?

Thank you so much ! Glad you like what you see over here when you come back ❤️ I was planning to do it this year but inktober's list 2024 wasn't very inspiring (all around the same theme). But who knows, maybe next year !

[ettawritesnstudies]

about your new what now? elaborate.

I'm running a DnD campaign for my friends that takes place in a multiverse called the planescape! There are a bunch of different planes of existence with different alignments on the scale of good -> bad and lawful -> chaotic, and my players are exploring them to fulfill the last wishes of their late friend, Annabelle Keay, - a treasure hunt as laid out in her will. I've got 6 players, and so I set up 6 NPCs to compete with them and act as foils, originally intending them to stay as just npcs in this silly little game, but I've grown really attached to some of them so I might turn their backstories into short stories at some point! So far we've got the following:

Lief Linwood: an angel who got stuck in the fey realm for years and learned how to navigate and hunt as a ranger. Annabelle came to the feywild on a mission and hired him as a guide, promising him freedom in exchange for his help. But when he got home, only seconds had passed, and he was expected to return to his normal life. Dissatisfied, he turned to a life of adventure, eventually falling out of touch with Annabelle, until he retrieved one last letter from his old friend, asking him to pick up the rest of the team for her funeral, and he realized it was too late to go back and catch up.

Shula Najm: An upstart from the plane of fire, trained in martial combat, and a member of a group that specializes in causing trouble for the police state in the City of Brass. She eventually got captured and landed in a prison cell with Annabelle. They hatched a jailbreak plan together, and haven't spoken since.

Becky Smith: A high elf paladin who was doing a co-op kind of program through her university as Annabelle's bodyguard in her old age. She fell in with a group that uncovered Annabelle's old crimes and convinced her the best way to deal with the threat was to assassinate her charge.

Isolde Halle: A human bard and a protege that Annabelle chose to sponsor from the university. She has a rather low self esteem, despite her craft, and has no idea why she's been selected for this mission.

Hartwig Vanhanen: A dwarven fighter from a plane where all the warriors who die in a day of battle are revived the next day to continue the fight. All wars here are more like elaborate playground games because there are no consequences, but each warrior is incredibly skilled from a lifetime of unrestrained constant practice. Annabelle went to this plane looking for warriors to draft into a cause of her own, and Hartwig volunteered to go with her after she insulted his bravery saying "he didn't know true pain." Only after going off-plane, to worlds where people *do* die, did he realize the gravity of war, and he realized he couldn't return home after seeing what he's seen, not until he's dead himself. He continues lending out his skill to causes in need.

Shaw Gagnon: A shifter pirate who tried to rob Annabelle one time. She let him keep the magic item in exchange for a favor, to be cashed in at a later time. He never heard from her, assuming he got out of the deal, until many years later he received a summons to adventure in her name.

[klerothesnowman]

The Reason the Jedi Suck is Because Conflict is More Interesting Than Peace

Okay, here I go defending the Jedi.

I've mentioned it in a previous ramble, but my primary engagement with Star Wars for the past year or so has been a Neverwinter Nights roleplaying server set during Knights of the Old Republic. It is the most niche of niche corners in the overall Star Wars fandom, but it's given me a really great example of why a lot of people have the opinion that the Jedi are massive fuck ups who are responsible for all the problems in the galaxy.

If you somehow don't know, the big twist of KotoR 1 is that the player character is an amnesiac Darth Revan, the previous Dark Lord of the Sith who ruined everything. The Jedi concoct this big plan to mind wipe him, train him as a Jedi again, and then use him to turn the tide of the war. There's a lot of details to this that are up in the air, like if this plan was entirely premediated, or something spur of the moment when an amnesiac Revan exploded into their laps when Malak betrayed him. One of the Jedi Masters who is absolutely not on board with this plan is Master Vrook. Vrook is a real dick, he's crotchety and angry and he shoots down all of your achievements. At one point he flat out says that training you is a mistake because Revan will just come back. Homie does not care about OpSec.

In KotoR 2 one of the more shocking, yet extremely understated, twists is that Jedi Master Atris has fallen to the Dark Side and is partly responsible for the slaughter of the Jedi Order after she gave the location of the Order's meeting place away to the Sith in an attempt to lure them out. Because KotoR 2 was less about big twists and more about an unfolding of events you could see coming a mile away, the fact that Atris is evil isn't surprising, the first time you meet her she flips off the handle about how much she hates you and you watch a recording of her flipping out about how you should be dead later. The reason Atris' fall is shocking isn't because "Oh man, this character who I had a positive outlook on is evil? Say it isn't so" but more because she was all over the marketing for this game, she's on the box art fighting Sith, she's the one who juxtaposes the game's iconic Sith. She, metatexually, represents the light side for Kotor 2. Everyone who played Planescape Torment noticed that her name was an anagram of Trias and sniffed her ass immediately however.

These twists and characters are extremely well known, basically common knowledge to anyone who cares for KotoR. Like, for instance, the kind of reprobates who would roleplay KotoR in a 20 year old D&D RPG.

There was a time on this roleplaying server where, not getting into details, the Jedi players fucked up. The DM team deemed that their behaviour was unjedi, and that they needed to intervene to push them onto the right path. The method of doing so was to have their enclave be audited by Master Atris. When the announcement was given the Jedi characters panicked. Characters who were from Coruscant told horror stories they knew about how mean Atris was, one in particular described her as "The Worst".

There was another time where players ran into Master Vrook. Vrook was a dick, he smacked down any attempt to have fun, he seized on any attempt to criticize characters and completely wrote off particular characters as lost causes, almost gleefully rattling off lists of their failings. Vrook actually was The Worst.

These portrayals of Vrook and Atris were not challenged. Why would they be? They lined up with how players remembered them. Of course Jedi Master Atris is mean and awful, she was mean and awful to the Jedi Exile.

The issue with that should hopefully be extremely obvious. You're not the Jedi Exile.

Atris being an evil hateful shit is a twist, it's a reveal. Immediately after Atris flip out one of her Handmaidens steps up to her and asks "Are you okay? I've never seen you act like that before." The Jedi Exile was her hero, if you plan as a male PC she loved him, he stood as a testament to what the Jedi should be. And then the Exile betrayed the Order and joined Revan in the Mandalorian Wars. The Exile hurt her in a intensely personal way that only the Exile could. Atris acts mean and awful to the Jedi Exile and only the Jedi Exile.

Vrook is angry and dismissive of Revan because you're Revan, he thinks this entire plan is a mistake and that you're just going to fall to the dark side again and then everyone will be right back where they started. And yeah, he's angry, stubborn and dismissive of the Jedi Exile too, but again that's because you're the Jedi Exile, the guy who joined Revan. The guy who, in a very rare out of the way bit of dialogue that often gets missed, used to bully his Padawan.

Every time Vrook and Atris are interacted with is when they're at their worst, we the viewer never get to see them at their best, we just get to have the little not-Yoda's word that Vrook is actually pretty cool. The entire fanbases perception of these characters are tainted by whose perspective they were seeing these characters from, and the moment you are seeing them.

This is something that the Jedi get screwed by in the entire franchise.

Starting from the prequel trilogy, it's pretty oldhat to point out that these movies are about the Jedi Order falling for a trap, after being manipulated for over a decade. It's a story about good people having their flaws and fears preyed upon by an enemy they're unprepared for. The severity of the war, combined with the knowledge that the Sith are behind it somehow, pushes the Jedi to get involved. The Clone Army falling into their lap is too good to be true, but its discovery is intentionally timed with a sudden urgent need for an army. The Jedi are forced to make compromises on their ideals and convictions, and that's what leads to their downfall.

Meanwhile in the Original Trilogy, a similar narrative is playing out. The Jedi are defeated and in hiding, traumatized by life under The Empire. When Luke's friends are in danger Yoda urges caution to continue hiding, saying he's not ready to face Vader and that he's rushing into it. When Luke says that he can't bring himself to kill his father, Obi-wan laments that if he can't do it then the Empire has already won. But the thing is, Obi-wan and Yoda are wrong, their beliefs influenced by their fear. Luke isn't rushing to face Vader, he's trying to save his friends, Obi-wan thinks Vader cannot be redeemed but Luke holds onto that hope to very end. And in that end he's proven right, Luke redeems Vader, and the galaxy is saved. Luke stands true to his ideals and convictions and is rewarded for it.

Both of these narratives require that the Jedi falter, require the Jedi to not meet their own ideals for both tragedy and Luke's eventual victory as one of the greatest Jedi who ever lived.

Furthermore, once Luke can make a new Jedi Order, he makes one that has learned from the mistakes of the previous Order but also, crucially, understands why certain decisions that he wrote off as mistakes were done. There's an entire ass story about Luke coming to the realization that a lot of Star Wars fans have to make, that Attachment and Relationships are not the same thing, and that the Jedi Order were right to bar the Jedi from them.

The thing is about Luke's Order though is that the stories told within it could not be a three part movie series. They're episodic novels and adventures, where the writers have room for the smaller, day to day operations of the Jedi Order. Missions where Jedi swoop in and save the day, and it doesn't need to feed into a narrative that only has one to two hours to wrap shit up. Where they protect people, not lead armies against their enemies. Where they get to be everything they're supposed to be.

These novels are also a lot more niche. It's more of an investment to read a book than it is to watch a movie, meanwhile the movies are one of the most successful blockbuster franchise ever made, everyone watched the movies, no one read the books. So it's the movies that influence people's perception and ideas. And then it's those perceptions and ideas that make people go "It would be interesting to explore how the Jedi are actually not that great." which perpetuates the image of Jedi as fuck ups.

And it IS interesting to explore how the Jedi are actually not that great. You should always be critical of institutions, it's how you keep them honest and watching institutions fail makes for interesting storytelling. The institutions failing is the inciting incident for the movies. But the movies still maintain that the core of the institution was something good.

[done-dm]

I really hope we get to see DX-TR again before the season ends because the bits and pieces we know about him are fascinating.

Like, he gets brought onto this elite group of mechanites for a very particular skillset. As K-LB so eloquently puts it at the end of season three, "The thing about DX-TR... MR-SN's superpower was making you believe in his dreams. DX-TR's superpower was making you believe his lies."

He's an invaluable member of the team and then betrays his party to the githyanki only to work on the exact same thing they were working on before: traveling beyond the planescape. We see in VR-LA's vision via MR-SN that DX-TR specifically wanted the whole crew to be captured, but don't really get an explanation beyond DX-TR saying to Endellion "We need them! All of them, alive! Especially him. This wasn't the deal!"

And it doesn't seem like he gets much from the githyanki aside from resources. Again, drawing from what K-LB has said...

"In some ways, DX-TR seemed as much of a prisoner as us. Like, he could go and come back, but mostly he was summoned [...] He was stuck in that same room with us, a little more space to walk around..."

And he keeps working on the project. For three years he keeps his old friends in a cell, watches as AS-TR deteriorates to the point of not speaking at all, and keeps at it.

Until he doesn't. According to K-LB, there was a certain point when he "stopped working so hard" and goes on to say "I just feel like it wasn't because he hit a dead end. It was because he didn't need to be working hard on it anymore. He was just biding his time."

But why bide his time? Kyana points out during the conversation with K-LB and the others that DX-TR probably used their attack as a distraction to escape, that he could have taken more hits at them and chose to run instead, but there might be another reason.

When VR-LA asks K-LB if they succeeded in their work under the githyanki, K-LB responds "We're still here, ain't we?" VR-LA quickly figures out this meant that the githyanki would have killed the old Per Aspera crew when they finished, which likely includes DX-TR. So he fled to save his own skin but also (either purposefully or inadvertently) saved his old crew by stalling with the githyanki.

Instead of playing on this angle with the crew during the rescue attempt, he comes across as a cut and dry villain the first time we meet him. He kills Dani while she's unconscious and no threat just to send a message to VR-LA not to come after him.

And then, once he's free and has the most valuable information in the planescape, he goes to work for the mindflayers??? Why? Why would he choose to go work for one of the most universally hated and dangerous species that exists? What's stopping them from eating his brain and using his knowledge without that pesky individuality getting in the way?

For whatever reason, he gets to remain himself and is set to eliminate other threats to the mindflayers' plan. He kills Casimir, but not C-RA or K-LB. Which, as K-LB tells VR-LA outright, he easily could have done so since he caught everyone off guard. Instead, he lets C-RA take his arm (which, granted, probably isn't as big of a deal for a mechanite and can probably be repared, but if I were in a situation as dangerous as working with mindflayers on a daily basis I would want to be in tip top shape at all times in case one of them gets hungry) and runs again.

K-LB and E-DN have explicitly stated that they want him dead despite knowing he spared K-LB and C-RA's lives. VR-LA's on the fence about it, but–even if he did fully commit to killing DX-TR–his devil deal is still up in the air and there's a very real possibility that VR-LA can't kill him. Whether someone else on the crew can do so on his behalf remains to be seen, but since he technically only gave the order to kill the mindflayer in the last episode with Kyana and Vhas doing the dirty work and Austin still almost used the deal to stop him, I think that might not be a loophole he can take advantage of.

Which means by the end of this campaign there's a fair chance that DX-TR is just going to be out there in the planescape doing who knows what. We don't know what his motivations are beyond finishing the project, what don't know how much his old crew still means to him (enough to lose an arm but not enough to keep them imprisoned for three years?), and we don't know what he plans to do after this.

Rambling aside, I want to put him under a microscope to study.

[vykodlak]

im sick and dont know what to do with myself. got any rpg recs?

I’m still replaying baldur’s gate 1 and am planning to replay bg2 when I’m done with that and they’ve always been The cozy rpgs for me, though might just be deep nostalgia talking. If you don’t mind some oldschool jank I think they still hold up.

Divinity Original Sin 2 is larian’s best game imo mainly ‘cause it lets you fuck around a lot, teleport everywhere and explode everything. I remember an exploit where you could rupture enemies’ tendons, turn them into a chicken and then let them run around until they bled to death. Not sure if they patched it. Also has Ifan my husband Ifan is there.

Tyranny is an underrated obsidian title where you get to play an absolute asshole if you want (it’s one of those “the evil won and You’re working for it now” premises), and it has a more unique setting than the typical ye auld medieval fantasy. It’s pretty short and the lack of budget can be felt sometimes but it’s got some interesting ideas and great worldbuilding. And a big hairy werewolf woman. There’s also pillars of eternity 1 ofc which I liked a lot, mainly for the companions & the writing - I only played a little bit of the second game but I liked what I saw of it.

If you like cyberpunk the Shadowrun games are pretty easy/short and sweet, they sort of mix scifi & fantasy so you’ve got orcs running around with laser guns and shit. Dragonfall is my favorite of the three and has the best characters.

Planescape Torment is one of my favorite settings in an RPG ever, also just lets you be kinda wacky (or evil, if you want) and you’ve got a floating skull companion. It really feels like the most “escapist” type of game because it’s setting is so unlike most other fantasy rpgs.

I have not played this personally but I’ve watched my bf play Kenshi and it seems fun? You get a lot of freedom to do whatever, it can be extremely busted mechanically (in ways that work in your favor), but it’s still absurdly difficult at times and comes with a pretty dark/edgy setting. They just cut off both his legs.

(Also I’ve been keeping my eye on this early access title -with a free demo out- called Banquet for Fools, mainly because of the claymation style, overall atmosphere and the oldschool vibe & intriguing world, it’s looking really good so far)

Hope you feel better soon!

[zakamore1]

Working on a new Planescape campaign; Door to Dolores

I put most of the info I came up for it on reddit but most of the people there are… narrow minded at best. So I'ma copy stuff over here.

So the primary idea for the adventure is based on this one old Polyhedron article and picture that went with it, as well as a disgusting amount of research into The Lady of Pain and her origins not just in setting but as a character.

Basically, when The Lady of Pain decided to spare the child (her name being Dolores) on that mythical day, she was actually selected to be her successor; The Child of Pain. She's then taken by Dabus' and pampered by The Lady, a ritual taking place to attempt to ascend her with the pains of the multiverse that The Lady herself exudes; Misery, Agony, Aguish, and Despair. However this ritual went wrong, destroying Dolores' body but trapping her soul within Sigil and The Outlands to reincarnate endlessly. With each new incarnation The Lady of Pain has tried again and again, fine tuning the ritual in the hope of getting it right and having the daughter she so desperately wants.

So that's essentially the set up, the adventure starting with the party discovering the current incarnation of Dolores and effectively adopting her as she slowly develops her LoP powers. I think it could be a really fun adventure with some heartwarming bits and a heart-wrenching ending planned, but I wanna know what kinda stuff around Sigil/The Outlands that could gel well with it. The best I've thought of, with the limited knowledge I've been able to research, is a few of the factions that would have any amount of interest in Dolores being a thing;

Athar; cause she’s proof that the gods aren’t the only way to power

Doomguard; cause she’s allowing The Lady of Pain to cheat entropy

Fated; cause she’s the ultimate prize to control Sigil

Fraternity of Order; cause they keep records on everything

Heralds of Dust; cause she’s died so many times they’d be fascinated by her

Mind’s Eye; cause she’s the realization of their ideas

Incanterium; cause she’d be how they might siphon Sigil of magic

With all this kinda laid out and me being kinda stuck in how I wanna run the adventure, I humbly ask any planar scholars on here that know more of the setting if you've got some fun lore bits or anything else that could make this adventure more fun. Anything that could help is appreciated! ^w^

Here then is Dolores' statblock that I made

[howtofightwrite]

My character learned to fight with staves and spears, what would it be better for her to take to a “DnD style” dungeon? (The world is similar to DnD world, although the spear is seriously underpowered in the rules)

So, I'm going to start with a couple nitpicks.

As someone with tabletop RPG experience, labeling it as, “D&D world,” is a really weird thing to read. D&D is primarily three distinct things. The rule systems themselves, and at this point we're up to the sixth or seventh major rules iteration. D&D as settings, except you'll almost never hear this one phrased that way. Finally, D&D as branding, which is extraordinarily nebulous, and tends to pick iconography out of the rules or settings. Simply identifying something as D&D could refer to any of these.

Officially, D&D has roughly 20 campaign settings. Any one of those could be categorized broadly as, “a D&D world.” Depending on the edition, the default setting is either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. These are entirely different worlds. Greyhawk is more of the conventional medieval fantasy world, while Forgotten Realms is a setting with mountains (in some cases, literally) of fallen empires, and the world is filled with ancient ruins, in addition to the current civilizations. Both of these are extremely detailed settings with thousands of pages of background lore.

Beyond that, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, Ravnica, Eberron, Spelljammer, and Urban Arcana, all come to mind as official TSR/Wizards of the Coast settings. And it's extremely likely that even players with an extensive familiarity with the ruleset missed at least one of the above names. This isn't even counting a lot of minor settings, or the fact that Planescape and Spelljammer are both multi-world settings, and the fact that a lot of these settings technically cross over. There are Spelljammer ports on Faerun (the main continent of Forgotten Realms), and races native to Planescape (in particular the Tieflings) have become a mainstay of the games, as they wander across the planes, to the point that Planescape's Tieflings and Aasimar exist in Pathfinder.

So, “The D&D world,” doesn't really say much.

With a lot of tabletop RPGs, the setting is analogous to the ruleset. When you're talking about running a Shadowrun campaign, or a Vampire: The Masquerade chronicle, those are specific worlds. The biggest ambiguity is which edition. However, when you say you're participating in a D&D campaign, that doesn't tell you much on its own.

If you're asking from a rules perspective, that's going to depend on the edition, and this is where stuff gets a little complicated.

If you're working with the idea of a D&D style dungeon, it's probably best to consider what era of game design you're looking at. There are a couple ways you can approach dungeons.

So, basic thoughts on dungeons.

Small dungeons are designed to be finished in a single session or two. You're probably looking at a few combat encounters. But, the main arc is that your characters travel to a dungeon, they do whatever they were planning to, and get out. You might have as many as four rooms, but generally these are pretty compact spaces.

Large dungeons can either be designed around the adventurers spending multiple days in the dungeon itself, or they may be traveling in and out and resting somewhere outside. (In some cases, you'll even have towns or inns set up over the dungeon. So your adventurers are all in one compact space.)

Additionally, large dungeons can be designed around the idea that the players will penetrate a few levels at a time, gradually working their way deeper over time (as they deal with other events and problems), or it can be a very long excursions, with adventures scavenging and hunting in the dungeon for days or weeks as they progress.

In the case of truly monstrous dungeons, they might even be bringing enough personnel and resources to set up various base camps and have a full supply lines running back to the outside world, as they gradually expand their control over the dungeon.

Sort of in parallel to this, it's worth thinking about what the dungeon is. The basic concept is often, as the name implies, some kind of semi-ruined castle prison. But, you'll also frequently see crypts, and caves as dungeons. Especially as small ones. At the same time, it's worth considering expanding your concept of a dungeon a bit. Ancient ruins, old fortresses, necropolises, abandoned mines, and sewers are common. (Sewers are a little unrealistic, as real ones don't tend to be massive underground pipes you can walk in.) What's less common are massive shipwrecks, overrun cities, entire islands with dangerous flora and fauna (or just pirates), fallen cities (where entire city districts collapsed during an earthquake and now exist below ground), plague ridden city districts (plagues can actually be a lot of fun, because it will let you transform familiar territories into hostile ones as the campaign progresses. Pathologic does this extraordinarily well.) In a rather famous D&D adventure (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks), one of the dungeons is a downed spacecraft. This is before we consider dungeons with impossible geometry, such as ones that leak over into another dimension (possibly as a result of magical experiments gone wrong, or ones that exist in the dreams or psyche of an individual. (For the record, I'm not a huge fan of psychic dungeons as a play experience, but they can be done well. I've simply had some bad experiences with the concept.) Shadowrun had a related concept, with cyberspace (called, “the matrix”), as a parallel space where hackers would engage in combat parallel to the events happening out in the real world. It's weird concept, but one that you might get some millage out of, and having a parallel battle on the astral plane wouldn't be that weird for D&D.

Moving beyond that, there are some semi-common dungeon settings that you don't often see in D&D, for obvious reasons, but might fit if your setting accommodates them. Abandoned research labs, abandoned industrial areas, abandoned villages or suburban areas at the edge of a city. Bonus points if the reason it's abandoned is related to why your players are wandering into it now. City districts under lockdown, usually this will either cater to a stealth focus, and might work if you have a group of thieves or something similar, (though, at that point, Blades in the Darkmight be a better RPG pick), this setting also works when the group enforcing the lockdown are acceptable targets, such as gangs or cultists, and for bonus points you can organize these setups with multiple factions and your characters may even be able to play groups against one another, all of this also works for feral cities (which also work as large area dungeons.)

With any dungeon, you probably want to consider how it fit into the world before it became a dungeon, and how long it existed as a dungeon before your players wandered in and started ripping the place apart.

So, ultimately, the question is about the spear and staff in the rules, as you're probably looking to approximate the rules to some extent. The problem is the rules have changed a bit over the years. One problem is that the default spear is not a reach weapon, meaning you can't use it to hit targets more than a space away from you. D&D splits that into the longspear, which is a reach weapon, and you can hit targets two spaces away from you, though you do need to use a 5ft step to back away from someone in an adjacent space before you can attack them. Both spears and staves are simple proficiency weapons though some editions do let you use the staff as a double weapon (meaning you can effectively treat it as dual wielding, if you have the feats.) If you do have a second attack with the staff, or you expect to be dealing with enemies that resist non-blunt damage (like skeletons) the staff starts to become a lot more attractive.

If you're using a different ruleset from standard D&D, there may be other considerations. I'm thinking of Total War's Anti-Large rules in particular, which do make spears very attractive against larger foes as they'll deal additional damage, similarly if you have some kind of homebrew piercing damage bonus against armor, that could make the spear conditionally more appealing. And, if your character is expecting to face down minotaurs or giants, then a longspear would be a much better choice with those modified rules. Though, this comes with another consideration, back in 3.5e the longspear was a simple proficiency weapon (just like the staff and spear), but was upgraded to martial proficiency in 4e, and seems to be missing in 5e (or it was replaced with the pike, which is also a martial weapon.) The longspear (and pike) do have special rules which allow them to be braced against a charging foe dealing increased damage. So, that might be worth considering for your choices. But, again, unless you're getting proficiency for the entire spear family, this might not be a practical option.

Usually, when you're arming characters for D&D, the primary consideration is going to be the overall thematic style of the character. Sometimes you do need to go out of your way to ensure a character gets the relevant proficiency (such as a rapier wielding wizard), but generally speaking, that theme is going to inform whether a character gets a spear or staff. If you've got a druid, then the spear might make more sense. If you have a wizard or sorcerer then maybe the staff is preferable (particularly if you can use it as an arcane focus.) (Though, wizards and sorcerers don't get spear proficiency in 5e, so, that's a factor.)

That said, you're not wrong, D&D has not done a good job with the spear. Part of that is because the default D&D spear is remarkably short. In 5e, the weapons are mostly interchangeable aside from the damage type, but the staff has more potential utility (specifically the ability to get staves crafted as arcane focuses, and a wider range of enchantments for staves.) Both are 1d6 with 1d8 versatile (if wielded with 2h the damage die is increased.) This is in contrast to 3.5 where the staff was 1d6, but was a double weapon, while the spear was 1d8, had the ready against charging characters action baked into the item (without the reach keyword), and had an increased crit multiplier (x3, meaning the weapon did triple damage on a crit, though it shared this with most axes), but it was a two-handed weapon.

I suppose if your character is a spellcaster, the staff is a better choice, as it gives you more options. But, when you're talking about someone who spends a lot of time out in the wilds, a spear might be a better thematic choice. If you're working within some version of 3rdedition, then the spear does look more valuable, but in 5e it is an underwhelming choice.

-Starke

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