Not talking about Planescape: Torment specifically (pay no attention to the thread tag), but rather the D&D setting that tried to unify all of their various different settings into a single systematized cosmology. Is it an interesting setting in its own right? Would you want more games set in Planescape?
Personally, I enjoyed reading about it from various dungeon master manuals a lot, but it could also use some trimming. The elemental planes, for instance, are fairly bland and don't need to be described in any amount of detail. Oh look, the elemental plane of water, it's... infinite water, like a bottomless ocean with no shores or surface. How extremely... less fascinating than an actual ocean.
The "Prime Material Plane" is a neat idea, basically medieval cosmology with a myriad of worlds floating inside a luminipherous aether-like substance, instead of the cold, dark space of modern mythology. Don't remember if the "demi-planes" were part of it, but they certainly should be. Most of the various D&D settings, e.g. Forgettable Realms, Ravenloft, Greycawk, etc. were established to be various planets or "demi-planes" inside the Material Plane.
Of course, the real meat and bones of the Planescape setting are the Outer Planes and Sigil, and that's where I've always felt the authors had made a grave error. With so many different realms, most subdivided into even further "layers", it is overkill to also make each one of them infinite. Extremely vast, sure. Constantly expanding to accommodate new arrivals, fine. But infinite from the get-go? That's just too much.
And then, of course, there's the mindbendingly cosmopolitan city of Sigil, written at a time when people were still intelligent enough to realize that a city full of so much dieversity could never sustain its existence for more than a millisecond, unless there was an omnipotent figure artificially maintaining the status quo (Lady of Pain) for some unknowable reason. Dieversity is NOT our strength in Planescape or the real world, but it does make for an interesting setting for adventure and exploration. Note what makes Sigil interesting: it's unique, finite, and fairly small. How it hasn't collapsed under an infinite number of entities pouring in from infinite portals out of the infinite planes is beyond me.
But what do YOU think about Planescape?
Personally, I enjoyed reading about it from various dungeon master manuals a lot, but it could also use some trimming. The elemental planes, for instance, are fairly bland and don't need to be described in any amount of detail. Oh look, the elemental plane of water, it's... infinite water, like a bottomless ocean with no shores or surface. How extremely... less fascinating than an actual ocean.
The "Prime Material Plane" is a neat idea, basically medieval cosmology with a myriad of worlds floating inside a luminipherous aether-like substance, instead of the cold, dark space of modern mythology. Don't remember if the "demi-planes" were part of it, but they certainly should be. Most of the various D&D settings, e.g. Forgettable Realms, Ravenloft, Greycawk, etc. were established to be various planets or "demi-planes" inside the Material Plane.
Of course, the real meat and bones of the Planescape setting are the Outer Planes and Sigil, and that's where I've always felt the authors had made a grave error. With so many different realms, most subdivided into even further "layers", it is overkill to also make each one of them infinite. Extremely vast, sure. Constantly expanding to accommodate new arrivals, fine. But infinite from the get-go? That's just too much.
And then, of course, there's the mindbendingly cosmopolitan city of Sigil, written at a time when people were still intelligent enough to realize that a city full of so much dieversity could never sustain its existence for more than a millisecond, unless there was an omnipotent figure artificially maintaining the status quo (Lady of Pain) for some unknowable reason. Dieversity is NOT our strength in Planescape or the real world, but it does make for an interesting setting for adventure and exploration. Note what makes Sigil interesting: it's unique, finite, and fairly small. How it hasn't collapsed under an infinite number of entities pouring in from infinite portals out of the infinite planes is beyond me.
But what do YOU think about Planescape?
Last edited:
And 2025 DnD will supposedly kick off with Vecna doing some Planescape stuff.
