Level Up (A5E) Planestrider's Journal: A New Cosmology for 5E & A5E!

[Queer Venger]

Ooh, this looks very compatible with Spelljammer, I wonder if it touches on that

 

[Scottymeboy]

Hopefully this has better ship mechanics and options than Spelljammer. We had high hopes, but found ship life and combat boring. There are many third party supplements that improved things though. Hopefully EN will improve on what is out there.

 

[Reynard]

Looks very Planejammer-y. Excellent.

 

[Toriel]

For me, the ships and exploration challenges are the parts I am most interested in.

 

[Morrus]

It’s more MotP than SJ. If I had to make a comparison, as it’s really its own thing. But I wouldn’t want people to think this will be a SJ alternative.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Anyone else remember WotC's humble beginnings when they were publishing the Primal Order books and Talislanta? Be willing to bet the Chessboards book still does planar shenanigans at least as well as anything modern WotC manages, and it's system agnostic to boot. And surprisingly, you can still buy it on DTRPG - even the softcover version.

Man, how many copies of those books were left in the warehouse when Adkison started up Hostile Work Environment, anyway? That was 12 years ago, and Primal Order came out in '92. Long strange trip for those books.

 

[Von Ether]

Anyone else remember WotC's humble beginnings when they were publishing the Primal Order books and Talislanta? Be willing to bet the Chessboards book still does planar shenanigans at least as well as anything modern WotC manages, and it's system agnostic to boot. And surprisingly, you can still buy it on DTRPG - even the softcover version.

Man, how many copies of those books were left in the warehouse when Adkison started up Hostile Work Environment, anyway? That was 12 years ago, and Primal Order came out in '92. Long strange trip for those books.

Sorry to digress but looking at this list of games made me feel old.

To eliminate guesswork, we have included specific conversion rules for integrating The Primal Order with the following popular game systems:

• The Arduin GrimoireTM
• Ars MagicaTM
• Castle FalkensteinTM
• Chivalry & SorceryTM
• CORPSTM
• EarthdawnTM
• GURPSTM
• HarnmasterTM
• Hero SystemTM
• KultTM
• PendragonTM
• RoleMasterTM
• RuneQuestTM
• ShadowrunTM
• TalislantaTM
• TorgTM
• Tri TacTM Games
• Warhammer FRPTM
• World of DarknessTM Games
• World of SynnibarrTM

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Sorry to digress but looking at this list of games made me feel old.

To eliminate guesswork, we have included specific conversion rules for integrating The Primal Order with the following popular game systems:

• The Arduin GrimoireTM
• Ars MagicaTM
• Castle FalkensteinTM
• Chivalry & SorceryTM
• CORPSTM
• EarthdawnTM
• GURPSTM
• HarnmasterTM
• Hero SystemTM
• KultTM
• PendragonTM
• RoleMasterTM
• RuneQuestTM
• ShadowrunTM
• TalislantaTM
• TorgTM
• Tri TacTM Games
• Warhammer FRPTM
• World of DarknessTM Games
• World of SynnibarrTM

Didn't they also include Palladium Fantasy until Siembeda sued them?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Settled out of court, but otherwise yep. The revised print run of the core PO book dropped D&D, AD&D, Warpworld and Palladium conversion notes and added a bunch of others. I remember the WotC newsletter asking for donations to pay legal fees thanks to Kevin being Kevin. The conversion sections were pretty brief anyway, the product range really was intended to be system agnostic and applicable to pretty much any system or setting where something like actual gods existed - and PCs could work for or even become one. How well it did that is debatable (and it didn't last long enough to get much of a tryout) but Chessboards was solid toybox of concepts and Pawns had some pretty nifty monsters for god-tier play. Sadly the whole range was unceremoniously dropped in '93 when the last books shared GenCon with the release of Magic the Gathering. We all know how that went.

Digressing slightly less egregiously, the Planestrider's Journal announcement reminded me particularly of Chessboards, which also included a number of ideas about different cosmologies and planar travel approaches. Never hurts to have more of that IMO, they make good idea mines even outside of fantasy gaming. Even if you never use them at the table "plane" books are usually decent reads and include some gonzo concepts.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Sorry to digress but looking at this list of games made me feel old.

If nothing else all those awkward "TM" notices are reminiscent of TSR's fondness for trying to claim copyright on every word they wrote.

To WotC's credit, I think all of those except maybe CORP$ are still going concerns thirty-odd years later.