A Gateway to New Campaigns? Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse Review (D&D5e)
If you’ve been playing D&D long enough, you’ve probably heard of Planescape. Like Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, etc - it’s one of those “Iconic” D&D settings that you hear older D&D players talk about with fondness. Even newer people to D&D might be familiar with it thanks to the very popular Planescape: Torment video game. I have not played the video game or a tabletop game in the setting, but I’m a sucker for “portals” and “gates” so it is something that I’ve always wanted to look into more and just never had the chance to.
We now have the 5th edition version of Planescape to delve into. Just like Spelljammer, this setting comes with a box set of everything you need to play the game (at the time of writing this, it’s only $45 on Amazon!). I’m a fan of this method of content, as with previous settings being shoved into a single book, it feels like we don’t get enough time to really get into the world and experience what is different about it. Having three smaller books gives you plenty of information on the setting that you could use to create your own adventures in this setting.
Boeing Where No One Has Gone Before…
First up, we have Sigil and the Outlands. Although second in the box set, this book is the first stop for players interested in Planescape as it provides all the details on what this setting is all about. Planescape takes place in the “Outer Planes”, the more spiritual aspect of the D&D multiverse. While most D&D games take place on the “Material Planes”, which is the way of saying the “Worlds” that exist in the D&D like our world, Planescape and the Outer Planes exist “outside” those worlds. In the Outer Planes, encountering deities is not hard to do. In fact, it is sort of like the afterlife of the D&D world - it’s not unlikely to see souls from the mortal world wandering in the outer planes seeking their final destination(s).
At the center of the outer planes, there is the Outlands: wedges themed like each of the various outer planes that come together to form a giant wheel showcasing the outer planes. At the center of the Outlands exists Sigil, “The City of Doors”. Floating on top of a giant spire, the only way in or out of Sigil is through portals that are decorated all throughout the city. In fact, this rule is so enforced that all other types of summoning or teleportation do not work in Sigil (unless the target is already in Sigil). Want to summon a familiar? Nope, not happening unless it came to Sigil with you in the first place.
Think of Sigil like a Neutral Zone of the D&D multiverse - tons of different Gods/Demons/philosophies have footholds in the city and attempt to sway people to their causes. Not directly, as the “Lady of Pain”, or the overseer of Sigil, keeps out any deities from entering Sigil. The Lady is so neutral that while it has the power of a god, it punishes anyone brave enough to attempt to worship the Lady. One minor gripe with Sigil and the Outlands - it starts talking about the Lady of Pain, then waits to describe who the Lady of Pain is a few pages later. So I spent a few minutes confused wondering where if I had accidentally glazed over a section missing who the Lady of Pain is. As the big person in charge of Sigil, I would have put the description of the Lady of Pain right in the beginning of the chapter so that the rest of the chapter made more sense.
Sigil and the Outlands is pretty much by the math as it goes for D&D settings books. The book starts out talking about all the new player options that people can use to make their characters seem at place in Planescape. Then, it goes into detail about all the important places that players may come across. First, it talks about Sigil and all the different areas in the city, then heads out to the Outlands and looks at all the different sections of the Outlands and their corresponding “gate cities” - portals to the outer planes that each section of the Outlands are designed to represent.
A Gulfstream of Different Characters in Your Party
Turn of Fortune’s Wheel is the adventure inside the Planescape box. Right up front, I’ll say that this adventure does a really great job of demonstrating the outer planes and the types of adventures you can run in this setting. The crux of the adventure is that there is something “funky” going on in the multiverse, and it seems to be affecting your characters the most. Mostly that your characters have 3 different “versions” of their characters that they have the potential for switching between during the campaign.
Wait, what? Yep - the book says that when players are making characters, ask them a few questions about important life decisions that the characters have made to get to this point in life and how they were affected by those decisions. Based on those answers, players should make 2 alternate “incarnations” of their characters that show how their lives could have gone differently. Any time that a character dies, they can choose to come back as any of their incarnations. Effectively, the characters are immortal in a sense - any time they die, they will eventually come back in some form, it’s just up to the DM what makes the most sense story-wise for re-introducing the character back into the party.
The good news/bad news of this situation is that while the characters can’t fully “die”, that won't stop the adventure from trying. There are several sections of this adventure that are about as deadly to characters as Tomb of Horrors. Especially early in the adventure, as the book recommends not telling characters about the “incarnations” that the characters have until it comes naturally in the story. My favorite one of these is a random zombie worker that can accidentally lock players in a crematorium and burn them alive on a whim if the players aren’t careful.
As I read the book, I thought of one way of keeping the “incarnations” piece a secret without impacting the flow of play. It requires a bit more planning on the DM’s part, but I would make an incarnation for the player based on the information they give on the questions about their character. Then, when character(s) die the first time, you can describe them coming back and slide them a new character sheet across the table so they can continue playing. At the end of that session, you can then have players make two incarnations of their own choosing, either “fixing” the incarnation you gave them to the choices they want or tossing it away and making completely different versions. It’s a little wonky, but I think it’ll make the reveal of the incarnations a much more memorable experience without stopping play or keeping a player out of play until they have time to make their incarnations.
In the adventure, players wake up in the morgue of Sigil knowing only having fragments of their memories. They know who they are, but have no idea how they died and/or arrived at Sigil. They quickly end up on the run as the “authorities” realize the characters are glitching between versions and want answers. So do the characters, so they quickly get sent on a quest throughout the Outlands while the quest giver investigates what is going on with the characters. The quest is to track down a missing NPC but the only clue to where said NPC went is basically a “Pokedex” of the Outlands (called a Mimir) that has pieces of its database missing. Players have to take the Mimir to each of the gate cities of the Outlands so that it can regather its data on each city, then provide characters with the information on where the NPC went.
The middle 7 chapters of this book are simple adventures around each of the gate cities that help the Mimir regain its information while helping out the peoples of each city. The adventures are laid out so that players can visit them in any order, so there aren’t a lot of higher level challenges in these chapters. When I first read through the book, my gut told me that the level-neutral nature of these encounters might make this section of the campaign very bland and “fillier-y”. However, the chapter following these 7 chapters has a lot of side plots that you can introduce in between these sessions. These side plots will definitely help flush out the other encounters to make them less bland.
I won’t spoil the ending, but I thought it was a rather unique way of finding out what is “wrong” with the characters and how the “incarnations” get fixed. One thing I will say, since it refers to it on the outside cover and thus not technically a spoiler is that this resolution ends up with the characters quickly advancing from level 10 to level 17 before they fight the final boss. So if you’ve ever had players who have wanted to see what higher level D&D characters are like, this could be a cool adventure to run for them.
Air-bus Full of Monsters…
Lastly, we have Morte’s Planar Parade, the Monster Manual to this box. One bit that I found very interesting is that the book doesn’t immediately go into talking about the unique monsters of this setting. No, the first thing it does is lay out all the outer planes and what traits creatures from those planes tend to take on. What this means is that you can use monsters from any of the other D&D5e books and apply a new coat of paint on them and tweak them to appear to be from a particular plane. This isn’t needed as much for the built in adventure, but gives DMs tools for making their own unique Planescape adventures.
Like many other monster manuals/bestiaries, I tend to “review” these books by picking out a few of my favorite creatures in the book and showing them off:
Eater of Knowledge
It’s a walking brain! Not only that, it's a hulk of a beast that casts spells based on the amount of brains it has eaten. So, it uses its giant body to hold creatures in place so it can gnaw at their tasty brains. Plus, when it does so and the creature drops to 0 HP, it kills it immediately - no death saving throws here!
Kolyarut
A lawyer robotic construct? This machine’s sole purpose is to create contracts or investigate contracts that have been called into question. When said inquiries are made, it breaks off a part of itself and sends that piece into the various planes to figure out the truth of the contract and report back. A creature with a very specific use-case, but could make for an interesting NPC that the players come across time and time again.
Sunflies
When you need that cute “awww” moment in your game. These little flies look like they would be great visual fodder when you want to get a sense of wonder and amazement into your players about the different landscapes they are seeing. Just don’t let them bother the flies too much, or they will get poisoned with their stingers!
time dragons!!
I’m a big fan of time travel stories and a big fan of dragons, so mashing them together sounds like the best of times (har har)! They can even make portals to different times/places in the multiverse - heck you could have your very own Doctor Who themed D&D games using a Time Dragon as a basis. That sounds pretty cool to me.
Hands of Havoc fire starter
This one got me on the artwork, followed by reading the description. Hands of Havoc are one of the many factions that reside in Sigil, one that is all about freeing people from oppression through as much chaos as possible. If I were playing a chaotic cleric of some kind, I would love to find a way of getting one of the “Havoc Hammers” that these guys wield.
Conclusions
At $90, there’s a lot of stuff inside these three books for several months of D&D fun (at $45 is an absolute steal). I like the box set approach for new settings that D&D has taken recently. The settings feel richer than some of the other adventure settings that have left me wanting more.
When I wrote the line about sections of Turn of Fortune’s Wheel being as deadly as Tomb of Horrors, I suddenly wanted to run a version of Tomb of Horrors with the incarnations of Fortune’s Wheel just for the fun chaotic nature of characters flipping between versions of their characters when they die in the various traps and how they would use that to their advantage.
As a big Warhammer 40k fan, I couldn’t help but notice that Mimirs look an awful lot like servo skulls from 40k…
Notes/Disclaimers: This review is based on the product itself, I have not had the chance to play this adventure. Also, I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon. Lastly, thanks to Wizards of the Coast for providing a review copy of the book.