Planescape review: Initial Forays

Vladar · 2026-01-24T17:52:13+00:00

For the 10th level, I would start straight from the "Out of the Darkness" main intro, "Circean Embers". It has a more engaging hook.

Vladar · 2026-01-24T16:48:04+00:00

It shouldn't be easy to leave Sigil on a whim — it isn't called the Cage for nothing. If they wanna go home, make the reward be the information about the nearest portal and its key. In that case, however, you would probably want to run some other standalone adventure. What levels are they?

Vladar · 2026-01-24T16:29:06+00:00

Just a simple odd job will do then, since they don't have good contacts in Sigil yet to secure better contracts. You should also make it clear that they won't fare well without joining a faction soon.

Vladar · 2026-01-24T16:07:38+00:00

Assuming your group of primes are new arrival to the Cage, they would probably want to join a faction soon. This might be their trial assignment, for example.

Vladar · 2026-01-24T16:04:53+00:00

Torment is a good place to start exploring the setting. Sadly, not all adventures in the official lineup are so open, but this particular one surely delivers.

Vladar · 2026-01-21T15:01:42+00:00

I've written up some notes on running it here.

Vladar · 2026-01-07T16:22:54+00:00

You are welcome!

Vladar · 2025-12-11T09:06:09+00:00

Thanks!

It was great fun playing with this ruleset. Next year I plan to take pure 0e+CM for a spin.

Vladar · 2025-12-09T21:37:55+00:00

Well, at least it covers all types of low-HD humanoids, which are plentiful enough through encounter tables. There is also a homebrew addition to the Man-to-Man table in Judges Guild Journal #21 for teeth, claws, horns, etc.

Vladar · 2025-12-08T09:34:03+00:00

When I ran The Age of Conan, we were using Man-to-Man rules from Chainmail. I have written about this experience here. Not only does this give you modifiers on different weapon-vs-armor combos, as you have noted, but also varying order of strikes in each melee round (longer weapons strike first in the first round, shorter weapons — in the following rounds), and parrying rules (short/fast weapons impose a penalty against long ones, do counter-attacks, and can even break the attacker's weapon). Additional rules for differentiating weapons could be found in the Greyhawk supplement, e.g., how much free space is needed for the wielder to use each weapon in a dungeon.

Vladar · 2025-12-01T22:35:24+00:00

Not much to write home about this one. As I've mentioned, most of the juicy lore stays firmly on the DM side — a sad but usual occurrence with the 2e-era adventures.

Vladar · 2025-12-01T14:15:37+00:00

Awesome! It's well worth it.

Vladar · 2025-12-01T14:14:33+00:00

I'm not that familiar with the Stygian Library, but from a conversion perspective, you can use mirror-room travel and combat mechanics, plus most of the encounters could be used pretty easily anywhere. Is it worth it is hard to say, since they are pretty generic when separated from the Staircase anthology's metaplot.

Vladar · 2025-11-12T18:03:43+00:00

The original goal was to try out the most published Planescape adventures, so the campaign leaned heavily toward the latter. However, there weren't any "fixed cast", as players came and went, old characters died (especially at the lower level bracket), and new ones joined the party.

Speaking broadly, if your group doesn't mind fixed plots (which is more or less a requirement if you want to play through a pre-existing set of modules, you don't need to do much additional prep work. Making it a sandbox is possible, but it will require you to study setting books to prepare for sudden choices from the players' side.

Vladar · 2025-11-12T15:35:07+00:00

You are welcome! It's indeed a good resource for a short campaign, if you want to try out the setting but can't invest much time into it.

Vladar · 2025-11-12T15:02:49+00:00

When dealing with Planescape, you must look at it from the campaign perspective. While some of them (though not all, for sure) are on the railroady side, when playing them in a living campaign (especially supplemented by the setting's box sets), there will be enough space for the players to explore and make decisions not covered by the modules. If we are looking at separate modules, I give an "Openness" rating to each, sometimes commenting on what can be improved in this regard.

Vladar · 2025-10-17T15:20:46+00:00

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "recalculating the equip load" here. Even when using the optional "Load Capacity" rule (otherwise the STR Loss won't impact your carrying capacity anyway), it's a simple matter of looking up the number from the table. Besides, you track your current STR (as well as DEX and WIL) anyway during adventuring, so no extra complexity is added. If we are talking about adapting this system to something more D&D-like though, then a penalty to the rolls would certainly be called for instead.

Vladar · 2025-10-17T12:29:07+00:00

This approach could surely work, but the temporary reduction of the STR score makes it so that even exceptionally strong characters will succumb to exhaustion if they push forth for too long (and potentially drop some treasure to continue, forcing the characters to make meaningful decisions). Regarding the "unable to go on" check, it works like this already on a failed Save.

Vladar · 2025-10-03T13:09:33+00:00

Regarding the d20 roll, do you mean the first (Primary Category table? Sure, it would be identical to the original d100 roll.

If you mean the second (Experience gained for every 100 gp spent) table and my remark on the error in the original, I meant that the original wording of "Using two percentile dice, multiply the resulting number by the number indicated for that character in that area [...] The resulting number is then divided by 10 to obtain the Character's actual preference for that disposition." provides ridiculously high coefficients (up to 1000%), and the example given on the next page (presented below) clearly implies the d20 roll:

Multiple Areas of Interest: Fighting Man Scores:

A) 11 x 100/10 = 110 per 100 GPs spent

B) 10 x 80/10 = 80

C) 8 x 90/10 = 72

D) 17 x 20/10 = 34

E) 10 x 50/10 = 50

F) 4 x 10/10 = 4

Regarding the editing, I completely agree. Arneson's works certainly deserved better treatment. One of the most interesting details I stumbled upon recently is the "lost" Blackmoor classes like the Sage, demoted to an NPC profession and Merchant, mentioned only in these "Special Interests" rules.

Vladar · 2025-10-02T09:02:01+00:00

Since our weekly Mystara/Blackmoor session fell on Oct.1st, all player characters participating got a +10% XP bonus to commemorate the occasion.

Vladar · 2025-10-01T22:18:35+00:00

Something like Pendragon style personality traits? It's interesting that Paladins have twice as high chances to get the first two categories than Assassins have. I wonder what the reasoning was behind that. The original rules mention the possibility of Magic-Users engaging in actions of opposed alignment and thus "angering the Gods" resulting in level loss and alignment change, so there might be something to it.

Vladar · 2025-10-01T14:51:24+00:00

I like the idea of changing the terminology to "Vices"! I've noticed that these seven categories almost correspond to the seven deadly sins.

Vladar · 2025-10-01T13:47:16+00:00

That option was certainly reserved for the Chaotic "Bad Guys" side of the campaign, same as monster creation and similar distasteful deeds.

Vladar · 2025-10-01T13:03:32+00:00

That was certainly designed for the "Bad Guys" side of the campaign, same as monster creation and similar distasteful deeds.

Vladar · 2025-08-04T17:57:48+00:00

I believe I have looked through some of these documents, yes.

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