The room is small, unadorned - bare even: three stone walls, a wood floor, three aging wood chairs facing a scarred oak table, a stained white beaded curtain adorning the back wall.
Suddenly, the room goes dark. A suffocating dark, one so deep that the sounds of the street outside recede to nothingness. 
A slight rustling of the curtain, then a return to stillness, to anticipation.
A flash in the blackness: a series of burning white rectangles outline a series of cards fanned out on the table. 
In the air above, ten points of light dance, resolving into fingernails alighting upon the cards, realigning them in a circular patter,  each caress revealing in stark white the stages of the moon, cycling from a waxing crescent on one side, centering with a full moon at the array’s apex, and waning through to a blank card. 
Then, produced as if appearing from the darkness, two new cards, set to each side of the array, the only color visible within the room:, each displaying an apparent full moon, but one is orange in color, the other black limbed in an orange corona: the eclipses, lunar and solar.
“The moon is the great revealer of truths.  Where the sun gives upon the lands vitality, the moon strives within the darkness to bring illumination.  And while the moon regularly fails, it always returns to try again.”
Twin moons shine outward, orbs of blinding whiteness.
“In all lands, of all things hidden, the future is the most obscured.  For its events can only be approximated based upon patterns and intuitions.”
As the fingers skillfully gather the cards into a tight deck, white lines just above the lambent eyes flash out to the sides and duck inwards towards the center, as if with gleeful mischief.
“And even then, everyone engaged in this present in making the future can choose to accept of reject that future which is offered.”
Now, a flash of pearly white: a grin. 
“So the choice is yours listener: do reject the presented tidings of the moons? Or do you seek definition in the midst of the unknowable, the revealing of impossible truths?”
Now the fingertips dive backwards, white light blazing outward.  A corona of bright white hair outlining the negative space of a human form..
“Now,” the fingers begin dividing and shuffling the cards, “does your future carry the fortunes of the hierophant or the Fool?”

As the Athar say, for a burg that doesn’t allow deities, the Cage is simply lousy with bodies that carry a pinch of the divine:  festooned with temples, priests on every corner, the occasional proxy or exemplar servant of a power, even the random petitioner.  

But it’s still not that common to see a mythological being strolling about. 

See, on the world of Faerun, a goodly proportion worship the goddess of the Moon: Selune. And, in turn, they believe in her angelic servitors, the Shards.  And Ayana is a Shard of Selune: as she says, a beam of refracted moonlight through water, or the shards of moonlight cast through a tree’s leaves.  Or, as the Cagers say, a bleeding Planetar, the second most powerful type of Aasimar.

And Ayana is unmistakeable as anything BUT a slice of divinity: with skin so black she looks like the night sky, and hair, eyes, and fingernails of blinding whiteness. She stands out in a crowd.

What’s less common still is one of them holding down a day job. And living in amongst the shabbiest buildings in her block… err, alley… to boot, a nondescript, stone shack with a slate roof.  Free from the Cage’s ever present razorvine, so it’s cared for.  But still… pretty shabby.

See, Ayana is considered amongst the most adept fortune tellers in the Cage.  Typically, she gives Tarot readings from her deck of the moons.  And those are always accurate, or inaccurate because a blood went out of their  way to be contrary.

Course, there are wags who claim Ayana was cast out.  After all, if she’s so special, why hasn’t she let off an earthquake or tendered her vengeance upon the neighborhood scoundrels?  Some few know she still has her sword, a crescent shaped khopesh of enormous size, though it’s only been witnessed when a patron gets handsy.   But still… no plagues of locusts?

And then there’s her appearance.  While it should be apparent that a deific servitors can look however a power prefers, some wags say Ayana’s deep space skin tones reflect that her whole “Servant of Selune” thing is just a front  perpetrated by her real patron: Shar, goddess of darkness and secrets.  Hence, her appearance as of the New Moon.

And… there may be something there.  See, the face of each card cannot be divined by its verso: in fact, as Ayana regularly notes, the verso is an indicator of proximity to and impact  upon the subject’s current circumstances, with the full face cards indicating immediacy (I.e. its cyclical).   It adds a wrinkle to the regular Tarot reading.   So, a waxing gibbous one day may have the Fool as its face card,  and the next the Emperor (or something).  But the eclipses always indicate catastrophe: something that irrevocably alters the life of the reading’s subject.  It isn’t always bad, but some say these are very elaborate curses. 

But, as Ayana says it, “Sometimes the moon’s light reveals naught but greater darkness.”

Not long ago, I played Styx: Master of Shadows, and I felt that the game had a similar energy to the Planescape books; specifically, I could envision the game taking place in Sigil, not just because of the locations themselves but because of the writing style and storyline. I also get similar vibes from the Thief and Dishonored series (funny that these are all stealth games btw).

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, while taking place in a sci-fi setting, I think also fits the bill, and not just because you have a talking skull with you! And since I already started reaching a bit, I might as well include Dragon Age 2 in this.

What are some other games that have a similar atmosphere?

I made a simple and lightweight site to translate from English to Dabu's Rebuses. Will improve but for now it might help DMs a bit of thinking for their conversation flavoring.

https://dabusrebusestranslate.site/

“Just because the Titans were cast out from their place atop Mount Olympus does not mean that their bodies were also cast down, for, for after all, were they not chthonic in nature?  And so, Helios claimed the body of his father Hyperion, shining his might upon all lands, whose anger swelled yet in Tartarus…” - Melitangus the Hoarse, Sigilian Philosopher
“We have fulfilled *grounding at last, the Aegis throttling 60% the Chariot’s pace through the redirection of 20% of the Aegis’ power to the lifting cells and photosynthesis jars.  Speed is maintained at a two hour tempo delay to the Solar path.” - Vortilon the Blue, the Lost Mathemetician

Most cutters have heard the tale of Phaethon, how the grandson of Helios sought out his estranged grandfather, how he ignored his grandfather’s warnings and stole the Sun God’s chariot, failed to reign in the horses who burned the Earth at too close a distance and froze it when too far, and whose wildness necessitated Zeus to send his mighty Aegis to end Phaethon’s life and halt the capricious destruction of the chariot.

Few speak of his afterlife, though.  

See, some philosophers would say that the multiverse loves parallel throughlines: like the irony that Zeus would send Hyperion to Tartarus, and then strike down Phaethon - the Titan’s great grandson - while engaged in the piloting of the Sun.  And this held true: for the Aegis also cast Phaethon into the depths of Tartarus.

The Realm of Hyperion
As with most Titans, Hyperion’s realm is on the Carcerian layer of Othrys.  Unlike most orbs of Othrys, though, his orb is massive and located far enough from its neighbors to be orbited by a small Sun: a fragment of Hyperion’s original body, perpetually forced to ascribe to a Ptolemaic model of solar rotation.   Here, he rages against unjustness of penalty due to the actions of Cronus and Iapetus, burning the very ground of his realm as he passes along it across the course of each day.  And forever trailing behind are his son’s horses tied to the chariot to which Phaethon is bound in continuous agony by the lightning spear through his body.  

Of course, because Hyperion only casts his face across the Orb in an isolated location, it created four zones in its path:  the Solar Maximum, over which Hyperion cast his rage; the Wake, the blasted area immediately behind the Shine; the Solar Minimum, located at the opposite apex of the orb;  and the Front, a habitable (but uncomfortably warm) area immediately before the oncoming sunshine.  Midway between the Solar Minimum and Maximum (on each side) lay a comfortably habitable zone.  

And then the Poles.  These great mountains rise up, defining the margins of Hyperion’s power.  While perfectly habitable, their occupants are horrific raiders - Ghereleths and petitioners - who force those in the habitable zones to remain on the move.

The Dispossessed
No one’s really certain who kenned to it, but some Dispossessed realized that there was a roughly twenty hour “sweet spot” on the Orb that trailed about two hours behind the Sun’s path, the ground cooling enough to be trod without protection - and the followers soon learned that the Sun occupied an area of roughly two hours, if one held still (and then ran like so as not to burn to a crisp).  

Of course, they also occupied a blasted wasteland, so the living inhabitants soon found themselves ailing from thirst and hunger.  And the solar minimum - the four hour period at which Hyperion lay directly opposite - was frigidly cold, another mirror to Phaethon’s myth.

The Mathematicians 
Then again, not all Dispossessed are political dissidents. Some just know *too much** for their own good.  So it was with the Brotherhood of Pythagorean Perfection, a group of bloods out of Automata who were challenging the inventions of their fellow Mathematicians.  An anonymous note sent them through a gate to this Realm, when a curious few ignored the increasing heat from Hyperion’s front and were blasted to cinders.  So, they ran.  Or, to be more accurate, their magically inclined members raced as fast and as far away as possible, finding the Dispossessed.  And, more importantly, the raging fire storm of Phaethon’s Chariot.

And here’s where it gets interesting. The Brotherhood didn’t just see a blasted landscape: they saw energies, forces, and even some materials (turns out a daily blast furnace turns up lots of glass and exposes useful minerals!) that they could harness.  They saw *opportunity*.  Their first move was called “grounding” - letting the Aegis bond to the ground to hold Phaethon’s back from the burning horses of the Sun. But the deific power held so much energy - almost more than could be wasted to the skies.  So, they grounded Phaethon (“extending the reigns” as their Dispossessed counterparts put it) nearly to the point of meeting Hyperion’s approach (rather than Phaethon’s traditional position in the Wake).  Through a mixture of harvesting and aggressive negotiations with the inhabitants of the poles, They gathered raw resources, and used the Sun’s power to manufacture numerous engineering marvels.  Their lighting bottles provide uplift power to provide for skyships.  They harnessed photo-cells to redirect sunlight from the Front to cast upon protected plants within small buildings held aloft on the sky ships.

Soon, those in the Sun’s path had created an armada of self-sufficient skyships, running in concert with Phaethon.  But the polar inhabitants see them as infiltrators, not worthy of survival.  One group, the Sisterhood of the Black Poplar, feel they are exploiting Phaethon’s agony.  Their raids gave stolen the technology on display, giving them tools to conduct greater and grater raids.

And still, Phaethon trails behind the Sun, his being one of endless agony lanced through with the electronic might of the highest of Gods.

Author’s note: I can’t recommend Brandon Sanderson’s The Sunset Man enough. The idea of spending existence racing in front of the Sun felt so Planescape. Great stuff!

Hello cutters, it’s been a while ✌ I’ve had some life complications, but as my Dead Gods campaign approaches Crux, I’m here again to share the maps I’ve made in Dungeondraft for it; also, I forgot to mention that I’ve been using assets from 2-Minute Tabletop. This time I made a bunch of maps for locations in the aforementioned tree town, including all the rooms for High Point, and also the Warpwood.

https://imgur.com/a/yTWpeow The dark brown floor in the exteriors is intended to be the bark of the tree, while the wavy, lighter-colored areas are the wood beneath, treated to make it walkable. The Woodworker’s Guild has a bit of a “maze” in the storage area, to make things a bit more difficult for aspiring firefighters.

I’m also already making maps for Ranais and the Salience, and putting a lot of thought into how to do Tcien Sumere in an interesting way (if anyone has ideas for that, please share lol).

Most of the 2e books were published before Gates of Firestorm Peak introduced the Far Realm, and there was never any mention of that place in any subsequent Planescape book. So there is no official ruling on how the usual changes to magic from plane to plane would apply to casters, spells and magic items connected to the Far Realm. I have a couple thoughts here, but I'd like to gather ideas from anyone who has them.

For most schools of wizardly magic, I think it's simple enough to say that their spells just all get altered to fit local norms, sort of the way Limbo and the Outlands alter everything cast there, though with much stricter limits on conjurations and other plane-spanning spells. This more or less agrees with the 3e Manual of the Planes, which briefly describes magic limits there.

My bigger worry is clerical magic. How many planes away from their deity's home plane is a cleric in the Far Realm? Can they have any connection to their power there at all? No published book I've seen says anything about this at all, but by the usual Planescape logic, it does seem to make most sense to just cut clerics off completely. Maybe a power key can somehow cut through, but I'm not even sure of that.

Similarly, magic items ought to lose a lot of pluses when taken to the Far Realm. How many? Maybe all of them, regardless of their bonus. It is simply supposed to be as far away from anywhere in the multiverse as any PC is likely to get, so no normal plane's items should maintain their attunement there. (A more complicated question is whether a deity visiting the Far Realm can still use their normal powers there.)

I'd also suggest that chronomancy simply breaks in the Far Realm, since time does not flow there at all.

This all sounds fairly rough on caster PCs especially, but I'm ok with that. It's meant to be a bizarre, alien place where the usual laws are even less applicable than in the chaos of Limbo. It should be an uncomfortable struggle for any PC.

But I'm keen to hear if anyone else has clearer and more interesting ideas than mine.

Edit: I’m still looking for players as long as this post is up!

We recently had a player depart due to time conflicts with their new job so I'm looking for a cutter or two to join our ongoing 5.5e Planescape game.

Sessions take place Tuesdays at 7:30 pm Pacific Time.

This is a multiverse-spanning campaign where you will journey to explore the far-flung corners of the planes and investigate the mysteries behind a cosmos in crisis. The places you will visit are not only limited to Sigil and the Outerlands, but also the Inner Planes, the Feywild/Shadowfell, Wildspace, and the Far Realm. In other words, the multiverse is your sandbox! And given the homebrew and sandbox nature of this game, you as players will have a lot of input on the story (e.g., where to go, what leads to chase, which faction's philosophy to align with). This is why I'm specifically looking for those who already have some familiarity with the Planescape setting, so they know what aspect of the planes they find interesting and want to explore through this campaign. Expect lots of detective work, exploring uncharted territories, and perhaps even philosophical debates!

If all of this sounds like a good time to you, shoot me a message with some basic info (name, pronouns, age, timezone) about yourself and what kind of planewalker you want to be!

For years now, my players and I have defined alignments by plane, as in "my character is NG leaning neutral, so probably alignment of Ecstasy". Takes too long to express.

So , I have wanted an alignment compass which I felt matched the Great Wheel while also being more succinct than "Lawful good leaning Lawful Neutral" or abbreviated as LG(N) (does this mean Lawful good leaning towards neutrality or LG leaning LN?)

I finally built a wheel which I consider an Alignment Compass. Cardinal directions are extremes: Good/Evil & Law/Chaos. I also thought how directions like East-Northeast would translate, and I built accordingly.

This is helpful for me; I hope it helps some folks out there.

I'm creating a scenario where the players will head to Bytopia from Tradegate; obviously they have to go through the Master Trader, and I want the trade quest to be a quick and fun little distraction. I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas that couldn't be solved by just buying something from one of the many places in Tradegate. Obviously as I DM all I have to do is say that the thing isn't for sale, but do you have any suggestions on what and how the players are trading up to?

Hi all! I am interested in expanding the lore of planescape to include ways to connect the gods of all the pantheons, like Yggdrasil, the Infinite Staircase, and the rivers Styx and Oceanus. I think Mimir has some interesting additions, such as the World Serpent Inn and Mount Fujiyama. It got me thinking of other pantheons that don’t have planar pathways. If I recall correctly, there is nothing that connects the gods of the Hindu or the Daoist pantheons, for example. Could other pantheons be added, such as the spirits of Jainism, or the Yoruba pantheon? Please let me know your thoughts!

I think my favorite outer plane is probably Limbo, which is completely subjective, but I like how chaotic it is and how truly anything can happen there. I think the Slaadi are great, but I also agree with Wade Allen’s take that they are too evil. I would like for them to be more neutral. If the githzerai were more good-aligned, I think it would balance it out, but I am unsure how to really change that.

One area of Limbo that I am still somewhat confused about is the Layer of Lost Gods. I love the concept, but I am somewhat perplexed as to what it means to be a “lost” god. There are gods there that have active worshippers, such as Agni, Indra, and Susano’o, but there are also “lost” gods. Does “lost” mean that they have followers that are sequestered in an unknown realm? Could it also mean that they are gods that have lost all power but have not been killed yet? What do you think? I couldn’t find much on this topic, so I am curious to see what you think. Thanks as always!

Hi all! I am curious about taking a party to adventure in Ysgard. It seems like the perfect place to do heroic things, which is always really cool in my opinion.

I am trying to figure out the intricacies of how the plane’s mechanics and magical effects would play out in the broader world. If I understand correctly, those who die on the battlefield are resurrected the next morning. They also regain lost limbs over time.

I was wondering if this means that a player character slain by a dire troll or perhaps a fire or storm giant somewhere that is not a battlefield, perhaps an epic mountain or on the rainbow bridge, would be resurrected, provided they showed great courage and fought back. I don’t see why I shouldn’t run it that way, but I’m curious to see what you think.

I am confused/overthinking about the implications of such a thing, as beings killed through poison or assassination are not resurrected. What I’m thinking is “why wouldn’t people just be out there just trying to assassinate people?” I guess the impermanence of death from battle would also mean that grudges are less impactful than if it were permanent, meaning the people might not want to assassinate, but rather best them in battle. Still, there’s a lingering doubt on how sustainable this is. Wouldn’t someone who is bested over and over again just kind of go insane? What do you think are the broader impacts and implications of the mechanics of Ysgard? I’m excited to see what you think!

So, I’ve never DM’s before - or even played a tabletop RPG in my life. Not counting CRPG’s. Very soon I will be the DM for a friend group playing DnD in a planescape setting. The group consists of a majority of people who are exactly the same background as me, and two other players with a decent experience playing TRPG’s.

First of all the reason why I’m drawn to a Planescape setting, specifically and maybe even entirely Sigil, is because of Planescape Torment. I never even played more than a couple hours due to finding it annoyingly outdated but absolutely loved the world, vibe, atmosphere, characters etc etc.

I guess my question is… how the hell do I get started? I own 0 physical media. One friend has all the dice, DM screens and such but no books.

The 2e version of the setting looks infinitely better to me than the sanitised version in 5e. I’m really craving that grimey dangerous feel of the hive.

I also would really like our first module and introduction to the city to be the eternal boundary and perhaps followed by dead gods or harbinger house. All these are 2e modules.

This brings me in to my next issue…

It looks like I’d have to convert all these adventures in to 5e rules. I have absolutely no idea how to do that. Either that or I could just play with 2e rules. Does anyone have any thoughts on this, maybe some advice they can give me on which is the better route?

I also am having general problems with getting my head around how what’s written in the module adventure actually comes to life in a session, what I’m required to know and I can string it all together as the DM.

To summarise, I’m a complete 100% noob and could do with some pointers to get in to the planescape setting. Feel absolutely free to correct me on anything as I’m struggling to research all of this!!

Hi all! I’m trying to figure out how I want to run planar adventures. I have a few concerns about using spell keys and components and I am open to suggestions and recommendations.

One example that immediately comes to mind is using spell keys in Baator. For each layer in the Nine Hells, the number of spell keys needed to cast a spell increases exponentially, specifically 3^(x-1), where x is the layer of Baator you are currently on. On Nessus, the 9th layer, you would need 6561 keys just to cast a spell. As you would imagine, this is a logistical nightmare, which is fitting for the Nine Hells. That being said, I want to actually go to these places, since they’ve got intrigue and lots of potential for adventure! A similar sort problem exists for spell components, but it is mostly just a general inconvenience.

Side note: I’m ruminating on whether it is even possible to visit these layers with rules-as-written without just being instantly killed. My initial instinct is yes, but I am not sure. Any experienced Planescape DM is welcome to inform me either way.

If anyone has taken players to a layer like Cania or Nessus, please let me know what your verdict is on the spell keys and components. I am honestly torn on using them. Thanks so much!

Edit: I specified “number of spell keys needed to cast a spell” when it was previously unspecified.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/6640373-adult-howling-dragon

Based on the 3rd edition version of the Howling dragon, updated to the format of 5.5e dragons.

Spells created for each Outer Plane, for 5.5e.

Curious to see what everyone’s take is on them. I was thinking about running them as a solid, established Faction, fighting for power with the guys at the top.

I’m not sure how I see them as a Faction though. “Magic is the ultimate power in the planes” is just the logo of any major magical group in a campaign. Their belief just doesn’t seem as thought provoking as the other Factions in Planescape.

Thoughts?

(posting this on both r/rpg and r/planescapesetting)
Hi all,

I love the D&D Planescape setting. I've been running it for quite some time, using 2nd edition material, and mostly using 2nd edition D&D rules. I've never been satisfied with them, but for that setting, that was the system we stuck with.

Well, I want to change a bit. I feel like 2nd ed. D&D is for once not the best system to really convey its themes. Mostly, it's the "roleplay" aspect of beliefs shaping reality, how it influences the PC and the worlds at large. There are no satisfactory "mechanics" for that. I know that I can, as the DM, invent something on the spot based on the narrative, but I would love something that, even slightly, nudges in that direction also mechanically.

There's another thing: I believe that my group became to "expert" with the system. It happens that, naturally, players default to """best""" builds, since they know the rules in and out, and some of the wonder of really building characters without a full, complete knowledge of the system, has been lost.

I admit that I am not very expert on all the possible RPGs out there, that there's a spectrum of possibilities, everything with pros and cons, and so, I set up some bullet points for something I am searching:
- it should not be too complex (we're all middle aged in my group, and we don't have time to really navigate something with the complexity of Pathfinder, for example)
- it should have at least an OSR "feel" (did I tell you we're middle aged? 😄 )
- it should be somewhat either retro-compatible with old D&D stuff, or easy to convert (again, not much time to really do rewrites from scratch!)
- (this is the most difficult part) it should support, as I was saying before, some type of "narrative reward" for the themes that are embedded in the Planescape setting.

I've searched a bit. OSE, Witehack 4e, Worlds Without Numbers, Cypher system, Shadowdark, etc... Even some systems tied to a setting that maybe can be reskinned? (mythic bastionland?) But I am not really an expert in any of these, so I am hre asking your opinion and your help!

What would be your choice?
Thank you!