Shardstone
Hero
As someone from a different generation than most here who has tried to run Planescape, I can safely say that using the old books provided me almost nothing for my table.
It is very, very hard to run Planescape using old material. It says taverns in Sigil, for example, are filled with planar creatures, but how do I play that out? If I have devils in dive bars chilling with seedy angels, tame demons, and a random Gith, what does that mean is happening? How do I show those interactions? How do I make sense of that?
Then I look at the old art of Sigil and...its just a normal mid 19th-century looking city. You're telling me that the famous City of Doors, which is host to literally every planar creature, looks like London shortly after the industrial revolution but before electricity was a real common thing? I find it so weird, and not in the fun Alice in Wonderland way, but in the "This is literally unrunnable" way because I didn't know how to segway my players into it. There was no opening, no passage for them; even though I gave them a guide, I still didn't know how to show the city, because the city itself makes no sense to me. I can't fathom how it works other than making everyone they meet "human" which seems to fly in the face of what the center of the mutliverse should look like.
If Planescape is going to come back, Sigil needs another look. They need to focus more on how crazy it is, and the constant nonsense that players can get into. Keep all the cool terms like berk etc, but make them not so totally human. Devil bodyguards should not act like meatheads from Baldur's Gate, and if they do (which in core Planescape they are portrayed as, at least going off the old books and art), it takes away a lot of the magic for me. It feels like an Adult Swim cartoon through this lens, and not like a crazy, philosophical adventure through mulitple afterlives, Hells, and everything in between.
But now we run into the problem. Planescape is big enough to be its own game.
I can envision a faction-war adventure book that's like the Ravnica book just for sigil, complete with rules for manipulating the city with ideas and beliefs and joining factions. But then that takes up a lot of space, so where do I put the stuff for all the other planes? Or the enormous bestiary? I guess Mordekainen's has us a little bit on the bestiary aspect but...we need more.
Always more. Planescape is a gluttinous, greedy setting when it comes to needing DM materials. So many planes, each their own universe with their own problems and story and niches and lore and epics, each one deserving of its own adventure. I can imagine a gameline with a "Planescape PHB" and then just adventure after adventure after adventure in the model of Strahd where you go to planes or cities or whatever and get into stuff. That's a lot! And that's what I need to run Planescape.
But this isn't feasible. So what I'm left with is reading lore about things that lack story seeds. Yes, the Lady of Pain once had a talk with Vecna. Ooooh! So what? What can I do with that? If I really thought, I guess I could come up with something, but I need more actionable bits in order to compel me to put in the work to the setting.
As for the art, I find it more important for the NPCs than the city. Whenever I see art of Sigil from the books, its just bland. Its a spiky, dingy, trench-filled and ratchet London where everything is dirty and I don't know, Angels just sit on city steps drinking a fifth of hennesy or something. Hell, this idea alone is more evocative then anything I've actually read or seen in Sigil.
I understand a lot of people on this forum like the aesthetics and the ideas, but honestly, I just don't know how I could get into it without something new. Not a total reimagining, because the foundational ideas of Planescape are solid, but from my perspective, the old boxsets and stuff (all of which I've read) are entirely lore with nothing to do and it feels like they half-ass the imagery a lot of the time.
It is very, very hard to run Planescape using old material. It says taverns in Sigil, for example, are filled with planar creatures, but how do I play that out? If I have devils in dive bars chilling with seedy angels, tame demons, and a random Gith, what does that mean is happening? How do I show those interactions? How do I make sense of that?
Then I look at the old art of Sigil and...its just a normal mid 19th-century looking city. You're telling me that the famous City of Doors, which is host to literally every planar creature, looks like London shortly after the industrial revolution but before electricity was a real common thing? I find it so weird, and not in the fun Alice in Wonderland way, but in the "This is literally unrunnable" way because I didn't know how to segway my players into it. There was no opening, no passage for them; even though I gave them a guide, I still didn't know how to show the city, because the city itself makes no sense to me. I can't fathom how it works other than making everyone they meet "human" which seems to fly in the face of what the center of the mutliverse should look like.
If Planescape is going to come back, Sigil needs another look. They need to focus more on how crazy it is, and the constant nonsense that players can get into. Keep all the cool terms like berk etc, but make them not so totally human. Devil bodyguards should not act like meatheads from Baldur's Gate, and if they do (which in core Planescape they are portrayed as, at least going off the old books and art), it takes away a lot of the magic for me. It feels like an Adult Swim cartoon through this lens, and not like a crazy, philosophical adventure through mulitple afterlives, Hells, and everything in between.
But now we run into the problem. Planescape is big enough to be its own game.
I can envision a faction-war adventure book that's like the Ravnica book just for sigil, complete with rules for manipulating the city with ideas and beliefs and joining factions. But then that takes up a lot of space, so where do I put the stuff for all the other planes? Or the enormous bestiary? I guess Mordekainen's has us a little bit on the bestiary aspect but...we need more.
Always more. Planescape is a gluttinous, greedy setting when it comes to needing DM materials. So many planes, each their own universe with their own problems and story and niches and lore and epics, each one deserving of its own adventure. I can imagine a gameline with a "Planescape PHB" and then just adventure after adventure after adventure in the model of Strahd where you go to planes or cities or whatever and get into stuff. That's a lot! And that's what I need to run Planescape.
But this isn't feasible. So what I'm left with is reading lore about things that lack story seeds. Yes, the Lady of Pain once had a talk with Vecna. Ooooh! So what? What can I do with that? If I really thought, I guess I could come up with something, but I need more actionable bits in order to compel me to put in the work to the setting.
As for the art, I find it more important for the NPCs than the city. Whenever I see art of Sigil from the books, its just bland. Its a spiky, dingy, trench-filled and ratchet London where everything is dirty and I don't know, Angels just sit on city steps drinking a fifth of hennesy or something. Hell, this idea alone is more evocative then anything I've actually read or seen in Sigil.
I understand a lot of people on this forum like the aesthetics and the ideas, but honestly, I just don't know how I could get into it without something new. Not a total reimagining, because the foundational ideas of Planescape are solid, but from my perspective, the old boxsets and stuff (all of which I've read) are entirely lore with nothing to do and it feels like they half-ass the imagery a lot of the time.