the campaign encourages a DM to kill the players often, since the Glitch will just cycle them to their next incarnation. As such, I had a blast giving my players a whole bag of doomsday cookies. One of my players rolled "Rocks fall, you die" and immediately, the cliff he was standing on crumbled and he almost fell to his death (I allowed a high DC save for him to grab the ledge). Great magic item for gag deaths, and since the fortune turns into a scroll of revivify when it comes true, there's not even really a threat of actual death if the players have actual issues with an instant kill (even tho the first chapter has like, 5 or 6 auto kill traps iirc).

I'm planning to take my group through Dead Gods, and obviously I'm about to begin a thorough reading of the module. But I was curious if there was any background material I should read through to be better prepared, or if anyone who has run it has any advice to get the most out of this adventure.

So, I've made a number of posts on creating this campaign in the past, but I'm bringing a bunch of clueless primes to Sigil and running, amongst other things homebrewed, The Great Modron March and both parts of Dead Gods. As an incentive to my players to pick planetouched races for their characters, I offered a free feat (Scion of the Outer Planes) and minor magical item, without telling them what the feat and item were before selecting. Four of my five players took the bait, so I'm wanting to pick magical items that fit well for both their character's class and race.

The four that took the bait are an earth genasi monk (dwarven parentage), an aasimar fighter, an aasimar paladin, and an aasimar warlock. The fifth is a dragonborn rogue. Yeah, this party is not going to do hot outside combat or in terms of magical prowess.

One of the things to tie each character into the setting is that they have one parent they never knew, who will come up in play sometime. For the genasi, they assume their mother is a dao, but in actuality, I'm gonna have her be a dwarf like the father, who made a wish to a dao to be granted a child, and the dao agreed under the terms that she become its servant after the child is born and she is able to leave. So I want something that has both an earth elemental feel to it and works well for a level 1-3 monk to have as a gift their mother left behind with the planeswalker who helped her.

Said planeswalker will become the party's mentor among the planes, and is a horizon walker ranger, Candrian Rumorborne, a.k.a. the Adahn summoned by The Nameless One by saying his name was Adahn.

Any suggestions on minor magical items that fit for the monk or the three aasimar? Sadly, no one went tiefling.

EDIT: This is all taking place in 5.5e (e.g. backwards compatible 2024 rules)

Hi all! I think I have a premise for a mini-campaign set mostly in Carceri, likely at levels anywhere from 10-15. I think I have a storyline in mind but I want to see what you all think. I want to make sure I have everything ready to run so I can plan my first session.

The party starts off either looking for a quest or talking to the quest giver. They are given a guide that takes them to a portal. Then they get to Carceri, specifically Othrys, where the Bastion of Last Hope, the Revolutionary League’s headquarters is.

They still need to walk for a few days to get to the hideout, where they will receive stolen harmonium armor and get the chance to undergo cosmetic surgery to infiltrate the harmonium prison. Maybe they’ll need to go to another orb? Not sure at this time.

During the multi-day walk, I think they’ll need to encounter the Titans, a chain devil and demodand camp, and some other places such as the Botanical Gardens (suggestions are welcome!).

They’ll need to get to colothys to break out the questgiver’s friend and comrade from the Vault (the quest giver will then give the party lots of gold or magic items, and so that the quest giver can get information, etc.).

The party will have to travel to a different orb to get to the nearest portal to the Outlands, which requires some horrific sacrifice of a comrade as an act of betrayal.

That means the NPC they broke out, who is a higher level than the party must betray them. The final battle will probably be set on colothys, although I’m torn between this and the blood red, Martian-esque deserts of minethys, which I thought would make for a better scene/environment.

For the prison camp, run by chain devils and demodands, how many chain devils should there be? I thought about adding catoblepas as mounts and as some sort of “guard dog” type of creature. Should the prisoners be high or low CR, and how many should there be? I thought about adding all sorts of fiends but also hill (and other) giants, and other miscellaneous creatures. What could the party get there?

Could there also be a dungeon with a bunch of fiends that hate each other, but are forced to be in the same place by the demodands?

Please let me know if any of this makes sense, and what suggestions you all have! Thanks a lot!

Has anyone ever run any adventures or campaigns out of Glorium? If so what was it like or how did it go? Anything that could be of help to me would be greatly appreciated!

Also if you know of any more resources other then the Planes of Chaos/Planescape boxed set/ Planeswalker handbook that would be of help to me, would alsoo be deeply appreciated as I have a adventure planed for this gatetown and into the first layer of Ysgard (Asgard Earthberg) planned

TL; DR: the concept and play of Faction War do not align. The book may not be playable for post second ed players.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've run many campaigns over my 30+ years of GMing, including three Planescape campaigns. (As I type this, the Rule of Threes occurs to me, and I promise that I had not previously thought of it until now. Weird.)

The last of those three, the start of which began August 21 of 2021, ends this afternoon. I wrote it with what were supposed to be three storylines:

1. The Iron Shadow (Tales from the Infinite Staircase with additions to cover where it was, what it was, where it came from, and how it related to the origin of Sigil and the Lady)
2. The Dead Gods
3. The Faction War

Overall, I've been happy with the campaign, despite various setbacks.

• One player flaked halfway through, quit the game, and went radio silent on all his other games, including ones he was running.
• Scheduling issues as one person moved halfway across the US, necessitating Zoom calls and Roll20 to bring him in to the game
• PCs out-leveling the story

I only feel I made one real mistake... I included Faction War. Part of my goal was to let the players re-design Sigil to some extent following the War, but one of the players was aware of the book and had wanted to play it for years, even knowing nothing about it.

So, I planned on bringing that into the game. I used a few other mods, all converted to 5e, to foreshadow it. At one point, the entire table clamored for me to add it. I explained I could not do it without a lot of in-game setup. One of them proposed I do the setup work and run a sequel campaign of just that book. My reply, "No, no no. That wouldn't work because... [pregnant pause, sly smile, pause]... OK.. I am not saying I won't, but there is no promise I will." This convinced them I would someday run it, which helped surprise them when the War started.

Despite that, I still feel running the book was a mistake. In the final act of the scenario on page 94 the book says why this was a mistake: "Up to this point in the game, the players characters have jumped (or been dragged) into a number of scenarios related to the sprawling faction war... they're struggling without really getting anywhere... nothing they've done has helped to calm the war."

While reading the book (multiple times over the years), I missed how exceptionally railroad-y the book is. As a GM who values player agency, I've been miserable running it. And the players have noticed. Some time back, one of them mentioned that they needed to shift their perceptions and goals when he realized the war was so big that the PCs cannot affect it. He said they can only try to mitigate what's going on.

I told myself that the lack of agency in the book is made up for where the PCs get to decide the fate of Sigil, and then the players get to help re-design the Cage. In hindsight: the juice was not worth the squeeze.

Looking back, I would not run this book again. It was designed at a time where player agency mattered less, where characters lacked the abilities of newer D&D (3.5 forward), and the book assumes too much that the party makes specific decisions at some pretty critical points.

All that said, is there anything which can be redeemed in this book, anything which could be used in a future campaign? Personally, I like the idea of the Factions not being in power; so what would Sigil be like without that?

It's slowly coming together.

I've commissioned a map, finished describing the different Wards and Undersigil, and added an appendix for the Planar Cant.

It still needs various character-building questions, as well as an Inciting Incident to get a campaign kicked off.

I gladly welcome any constructive feedback that folk have.

Kind of an odd idea, I know, but I have an idea and I'm curious what others think. The Diplomacy boardgame discussion got me thinking of the idea of a "meta-game" or maybe just "meta-plot" level for a shared campaign. Sort of living a "living" campaign in that elements are shared between different tables, but instead of it being the same modules different players can play in, it would be the same story arch and lots of different parties reacting to it.

Perhaps the best way to explain is with the first example that came to me. Common estimates put the population of Sigil at about a quarter million people. Imagine, one day, somewhere in the endless primes, Somewhere a world experienced a massive, world shaking danger... and the forces of good lost. The Demonweb Pits expanded by another devoured world, the far realm ate everyone's brains; whatever. But before they did, the heroes of the world were able to at least evacuate a few remnants of their world to Sigil: Three million people.

I picked that number because it's slightly below what estimates I could find for the absolute maximum number of people that could fit in Sigil square mileage, if it had the same population density as the Kowloon Walled City, and could be fed by 11 full sized sailing ships a day arriving via The Ditch.

But just imagine the adventures that could be gone on, trying to source all the new food and water the city would need imported. Suddenly all the places that *could* be the source for a boat full of food that could make its way up the Bridge that Spans Worlds, need to searched and shopped dry. So that's a ton of exploration. The Rock of Bral connects to the Bridge, so now you've can also introduce a ton of astral exploration and secondary routes. All of this activity becomes targets for Githyanki (and other!) pirates and need protecting. Back in Sigil, they need people trying to organize the dockworkers (and resist corruption skimming needed relief). You need to deal with a million points of friction as the newcomers try to find a place to sleep, the factions fight over the biggest recruit pool in millennia, and the old cutters try to peel them for all they're worth.

Then you have the process of finding a long term home for them. What kingdoms, prime or planar, would take them in? Or could you find unclaimed space to build new realms together?

These are all problems that a hundred (or, to be realistically hopeful, a dozen) different tables could all try tackling at once, and never run out of things to do. The DMs of the tables in the "Megagame" would have a discord or post thread, and just update each other every month or so on what's going on. "Hey my table has convinced the Planar Trade Consortium to finance the purchase of fifty boats full of food; they're now hiring anyone who wants to be the privateers trying to make a profit off finding, buying, and getting one of those back to Sigil safely can, or if no one wants to we can just roll to see how many the Githyanki pick off and if enough ships make it through to prevent a famine. Then next month we post missions to guard the ships."

Every month or so, we look at overall progress, if more tables had successes or failures, what interesting complications popped up, and decide how to move the event forward.

What do people think, neat, total pipe dream, both?

So I watch a lot of Matt Colville’s videos and he used the game *Diplomacy* to outline the interactions between factions in his city and then worked down to the player level.

I’m wondering if anyone has done something like this with Sigil and its many factions? I think it would be a good way to help visualize the high level politics of the city and then that could be brought down to a player level as things happen.

TL;DR- What creatures do I put in Carceri, or any other plane, that make sense lore wise?

Hi all! I am trying to worldbuild for my adventure in Carceri, and I plan on visiting the other lower planes. I am specifically trying to put different evil creatures in the setting and I want to make sure the setting makes sense lore wise. I know that there are demodands and tanar’ri in Carceri, as well as hill giants, undead, petitioners, and miscellaneous fiends that are specifically native there, but I don’t know if any other creatures scheme there. I am interested in using yugoloths as villains and dubious merchants of magic items, but I recall that they are DESPISED by the demodands.

I am aware that creatures are native to other planes, but can (and do) often migrate to different planes. For example, I know that arcanaloths originate from the Gray Waste, but migrated to Gehenna. Does that mean that they’re never found in Carceri? I know that they’re never really found in the Gray Waste, but otherwise, I’m not sure. I also know Yugoloths made a living tower in Carceri, but I don’t recall the specific subspecies of yugoloth that live there or in Carceri. Thank you for answering all my questions and helping me worldbuild!

Fire cannot operate on the Plane of Water correct? Even in bubbles of air or enclosed, water tight structures?

If so, how far does that extend? Is there no combustion at all? Would a blunderbuss just not fire and a campfire not light up?

Hi all! I am developing a setting with a bunch of quests, including a rescue mission in Carceri. Essentially it’ll be a quest to break a close ally out of prison in Carceri, where the party will have to work with the revolutionary league to get surgery to help them disguise themselves as harmonium agents and get into the Vault.

They will then rendezvous with someone to meet them at the portal to Carceri (maybe he and the guy who the party had to rescue betray the party later since, y’know, Carceri). The blood of someone you trusted might be the key to the portal, and it might actually be a cool end to an arc.

The setting is actually really epic- glowing red sand under a blackened blood-red sky, all these details. Are there any maps of the Vault, or any locations in Carceri that are helpful for DMs? Any support helps; thank you for helping me develop my setting so far.

I saw someone here on this sub say that the Bleak Cabal are essentially Existenialists. A real life philosophy.

I was wondering if there is someone with the knowledge as to what other factions, planes have real life philosophical counterparts.

I’m running the Excelsior: Lost Souls mystery from ToFW and I built out the encounter with Uncle Longteeth into a small dungeon crawl with a creepy vibe. When the party encountered him, he offered to negotiate with them but the party refused to negotiate with a hag. I feel like the party hasn’t really understood that things aren’t always what they seem in Planescape and are very hung up on “traditional” expectations, so I’m thinking this might be an opportunity to get them thinking a little outside the box.

I’m considering having an NPC in Longteeth’s wagon who initially appears to be a prisoner, but it turns out is actually a sort of confidante who has been trying to encourage the hag to live by his own rules rather than “what is expected of hags.” Longteeth is collecting souls to turn into larvae because that’s “what hags do” and as a male hag, he’s always been held in lower regard than female hags and struggling to prove himself. The friendly NPC could explain this to the party and tell them that what Longteeth really wants to do is just farm and sell mushrooms. I don’t think the party will suddenly want to deal with him, but hopefully it will get them thinking about not taking everything at face value.

Is this a crazy idea?

I’m also thinking the NPC could keep the party from messing with dangerous things in the hag’s wagon, but I still need to “populate” the wagon with some hag stuff (I’m thinking stuff that is dangerous and may appear to be “typical” hag stuff but is not actually evil per se). Suggestions on things that fit the bill here are welcome!

Hi all! I have a general idea of a quest line for a campaign related to Driller’s Hives, and connecting the quest with Orcus, as stated before. Since Orcus and Tharzax are coplanar beings, reaching Orcus after defeating tharzax would be as “simple” as going deeper into the abyss.

My idea for the Tharzax quest is to introduce the party to the insect swarms in the slags, and have the swarms keep coming back, each time with more and more powerful insectoid obyrith demons. Eventually they will need to confront tharzax head on, but they won’t be able to until they reach the epic tier of play. I haven’t found a stat block for tharzax but I think I can make one based on similar demon lords and a little bit of creativity. I’m not sure how to give the party that information, which is one reason why I’m posting this.

My idea for the overall campaign and world is to introduce the party to several different events simultaneously that relate to different planes while they’re at a low level, and gradually open up the planes from “friendlier” to objectively more dangerous planes.

Now I’m thinking about what quests the party can take that start in Sigil, and lead directly to Bytopia, Mount Celestia, Arcadia, Mechanus, Limbo, Gehenna, Carceri-all the planes. Please let me know what ideas you have for some unique questlines! I’m not sure which details I need to give to the party to advance the questlines and how to give them, so any help is appreciated. My interpretation is to have some random people the party talk to give details piecewise, and let them piece together the details. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as always!

Just going off of 5E there is almost no info on setting specific items for Planescape. The Mimir is big of course, very central to the 5E adventure, but that’s it. You would think individual planes would have very powerful artifacts native to them but I can’t really find much.

Hey everyone! Planescape is very interesting to me, and as a relative newbie in DnD, I only know 5e. After reading through the Adventures in the Multiverse, I decided I wanted to run a Planescape campaign that uses the "glitch character" concept of Turn of Fortunes Wheel, but have it be an original story.

Glitch characters basically mean that when your PC dies, you become a variant of your character from a timeline where something changed im the backstory. My basic premise was going to be that Savros died in the outlander close enough to the PCs that the instability of the god of fate threw a piece of him into each PC, filling them with the power to accidentally access versions of them where their fate changed. The killer of Savros is trying to take advantage of both a huge following of Kua Toa and the Great Modron March to trick and rewrite reality to ascend without the normal huge ritual, form a new pantheon, and rewrite reality into a FlashPoint paradox type of alternate world with the new pantheon.

Basic structure:

Act 1: Players discover their ability to glitch to new versions (there will be rare rifts that can let them switch without dying, but mobs will be tough so the switching is discovered early on). Probably some faction and backstory quests in Sigil, Outlands, and various planes. Players learn of who killed Savros through quests to info.

Act 2: Players either aquire weapons or potential other glitch characters needed to oppose the group trying to form a new pantheon. Or they try to travel tl divine realms to stop dieities from being killed by the villaims so their domains are not replaced.

Act 3: Reality is rewritten, PCs are protected due to the lingering power of Savros and players must traverse this new reality, eventually confronting the false pantheon before reality "sets into place" permanently.

This is the bare bones of a multi year campaign plan, but my main concerns are how to make Act 2 feel meaningful if the story will go towards the rewriting of reality anyway. Sure the PCs might keep the weapons or new allies, but such a failure to make Act 3 happen feels railroady. My main thought would be to have the new reality occur in Act 2, and once reality is fixed, the party can spend Act 3 beating the villains.

I also want to incorporate the factions without over stuffing the campaign. The plot allows planar travel, fun npcs, and a grand quest, but having factions factor in the party's favor or detriment would help it truly feel like Planescape.

Hey all! I am trying to develop my planescape campaign, and I just had an idea for a campaign quest for the abyss, more specifically, Driller’s Hives, the 2nd layer of the abyss.

This probably has been done before, and if it has, please let me know. I was thinking that the party could observe insect plagues pop up all over Sigil without a discernible source. Over \[timeframe\] the party observes abyssal influence, which could be something the Doomguard could be involved with, specifically concerning Tharzax’s influence. Perhaps these could disrupt their alliance with the xaositects, such that a good-aligned subset might choose instead to align themselves with the revolutionary league, or some other good-aligned anarchist faction in Sigil.

Maybe these plagues can happen on and off throughout the course of a campaign, and the party needs to sort of “put out the fires” and exterminate pests of increasing deadliness.

I think the abyss has so much cool and unique content, that I can’t just choose one layer to add to the campaign. Orcus is a great villain too, so I think adding him would be a great finale to a campaign. Please let me know what you think!

TL;DR- how do I run the xaositects, and a conflict between the xaositects and [lawful faction] in a way that engages my players and isn’t a lore dump?

Hi all! I suppose this is somewhat of an update as to how I’m building my setting. Also I am using 5e’s mechanics because it’s more convenient for me and potential players. I mention this because the xaositects merged with other factions to form the hands of havoc, which I, and I assume some number of planescape DMs, dislike or disagree with. I am just using planescape’s 2e lore and settings with 5e mechanics.

I have decided that one of the factions is the xaositects, as you have likely figured out. I think they are very intriguing, and I think they have potential for some wild and funny interactions with a party that would make for some very memorable sessions at the table. I have not decided which other faction would be fighting with them. I am torn between the harmonium, the fraternity of order, and the mercykillers.

I will give a little bit of a disclaimer, and that is that I am not a Moral Philosopher, or an experienced DM. If what I am saying is not correct or does not make sense in some way, I am willing to learn from you all. I think in a lot of cases the “evil” option has more impact than a “good” action, making it difficult for me to determine what “neutral” is. At least this is how I “meta-interpret” people and the law at large. A lot of times “amoral” essentially means “without qualms for doing evil.” Many times this could be openly having a conflict of interest. I think I want to run the xaositects as an organization that does not commit egregiously good or evil acts, but more like “sour patch kids” level “kind and mean” acts, at least in Sigil. This would be how I personally view a neutral alignment, but I am open to new ideas and changing accordingly. As I’m reading this I am getting some second thoughts but this is how I feel, at least in the moment. Honestly it could be that I just really want to make this work and I’m just using motivated reasoning to try and make it work.

One more thing: how do I run a conflict between factions that isn’t just a lore dump? How can I run the xaositects in a sympathetic way? I think that there is actually something to work with here, as individuality and individual expression is important to those who don’t align with broader society, and change is actually important to keep culture alive and fresh, at least to me. Obviously this is just a game, and I understand the need for some stability, but I think that my group will resonate with the themes of self expression and individuality. Please let me know what you think!

Hi everyone!

I'm gearing up to start running a level 11+ campaign, and it's going to be involving the planes. I've been reading old 2E Planescape stuff, as well as all the planar 3E, 4E, and 5E books I have. One of the players is a fey pact warlock, and Titania specifically is her patron, so I'm definitely going to be involving the seelie courts. I am using Forgotten Realms as my base setting, with 2E planescape approach to the outer planes, but with 5E Dawn War and First World history.

I've long struggled with differentiating the Feywild and Arborea. It seems D&D struggles with it too, since they've been moving the Eladrin around a ton. I want to stick with a more 2E approach, with Eladrin being the exemplar celestials of Arborea, but I keep running into issues. Arborea has its own fey, and the Seelie Court spends time there. By using the Feywild, the Seelie Court will be on the Feywild, but they're said to be allies of the Seldarine.

If elves descended from fey, then why are the elven gods Gods and not Archfey? Why is Arborea described so similarly to the Feywild? Would it be simpler to remove the Feywild and just have it be Arvandor/Olympus? (Similarly, the Shadowfell could just be part of Hades).

The solution I'm entertaining is that the Archfey are the remnants of the Primordials (I do like the notion of Primordials and the Dawn War from 4E and 5E). The way I see it, when the gods waged war against the primordials, they did so to protect mortals from the primordials destroying their material worlds. The Archfey were Primordials that sided with the gods, wanting the preservation of the world. They could even be the neutral party that pushed the celestials and fiends out of the material world when the divine started warring against itself.

But, part of me keeps thinking that fey as chaotic outsiders would be interesting, and that it would help set Eladrin apart from their celestial cohorts. The seelie Court being in the CG planes and the unseelie court being in Pandemonium fits.

How do you, or would you, reconcile the Feywild with Planescape?

Pretty much what the title says. I want to make a playlist to listen to while I'm doing the planning and be able to get into the right mindset.