Anticipating Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse

 So, Spelljammer was a letdown.

It's not that what was there was really flawed - we got cool new playable races, interesting fantasy-space-physics (which I... tend to ignore for a more sci-fi style worldbuilding) and a book filled with cool monsters that is actually larger than the bestiaries we typically get with campaign setting books.

But there was a problem, which is that there was so very little "there" there. There's a description of the Rock of Bral, a cool location to be sure, but very little discussion of how one is to build an adventure that feels "Spelljammer-like." It felt in some ways like it was just telling you to use the ships to get from one established setting to another.

Calling the Planescape book for 5E "Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse," which is so similar to "Spelljammer: Adventures in Space" makes me a little nervous. Because this nomenclature suggests that Planescape could be seen as a sort of "transitory" setting that you simply use to jump from one world to another. Also not helping that idea is that the idea of "multiverse" has kind of been blurred - are we talking about different worlds of the Prime Material Plane, or are we actually embracing the weirdness of the Outer Planes and Inner Planes?

I never played D&D until 5th Edition was out, but as detailed on this blog, I read through the "Planes of Law," "Planes of Chaos," and "Planes of Conflict" products from 2nd Edition, along with, of course, the Planescape Setting book. The stuff in these is really, really interesting and cool.

What I hope for in a 5th Edition Planescape book is something that will at least touch on the weird and wild locations of the planes.

What I don't want, and what I'm nervous we might be getting, is simply a description of Sigil as a location and a vague "and there are portals there to just about anywhere in the multiverse!"

Now, sure, Sigil is a beloved part of the Planescape setting, and would certainly have to play a role in any sourcebook. It is designed to be the hub from which your adventures radiate into the planes.

But given that 5E does not have a Manual of the Planes or really much description of the planes outside of a few blurbs in the DMG, I'd be sad if they went unexplored.

Now, I'll keep my fingers crossed that we'll get something more in line with Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which is to date my favorite 5E supplement - a book that went deep on how to run adventures in that setting and really zeroed in on tone and vibe while simultaneously throwing in a lot of cool character options and monsters.

I realize, of course, that having read all that 2nd Edition stuff, I'm versed enough to run a Planescape game that has the feel I'm looking for. And WotC's philosophy on how much they publish is very different than how TSR's was in the 90s. Inevitably, the 5E Planescape sourcebook is not going to be able to cover as much ground as the many books that came out in the 90s.

But I'm hoping they learned some lessons from the response to Spelljammer: Adventures in Space.