The 96-page adventure module coming with Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, is summarized on this blog post thusly: "In the 96-page adventure Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, your character returns to life in Sigil. There, you’ll explore this curious city at the center of the multiverse as you aim to rediscover who you are."
If you are at all familiar with the 1998 computer game, Planescape Torment, this ought to sound... also familiar.
Torment sees you playing as the Nameless One, who wakes up in a morgue in the city of Sigil - you're totally covered with scars and have dead, grey skin, but no idea who you are. The game (which, I'll confess, I've only played the first couple minutes of because I just cannot get my head around that Baldur's Gate style of gameplay - hoping that BG3's turn to more D&D-like turn-based combat will be easier on me) follows the Nameless One as he uncovers the secrets of his past and starts walking a path toward redemption.
Spoilers to follow:
The Nameless One lost his memory because, ages ago, when he was a powerful adventurer (I think a Wizard,) he sought to become immortal - and he did so, by essentially excising his own mortality and fate from himself. However, each time he would otherwise die, he loses all of his memories, and so in your investigation into his past, you discover the acts of different "incarnations," who used different strategies to try to resolve their issues - often harming a lot of people in the process.
The game is deeply philosophical, asking the question "What can change the nature of a man," and pondering what it means for someone to have and take responsibility for their actions.
The "good" ending has the Nameless One merge once again with his mortality and then die, condemned to fight in the Blood War for the rests of eternity, but now at least taking responsibility for the things he had done.
So...
This adventure seems to have us "return to life in the city of Sigil," just like the Nameless One (incidentally, I read it initially as return to "life in the city of Sigil" rather than "return to life" in the city of Sigil - as if you'd just been living abroad for a while and come home and are now getting back into that urban lifestyle).
Furthermore, the adventure takes player characters from level 3 to level 10 - and then jumps to level 17 at the end.
What could that mean? I suspect it means that that 10-17 jump represents a rediscovery of memories. (I think the end of Planescape Torment also involves a sudden super-high level jump as individual acts award thousands of XP).
Now, Planescape Torment is considered one of the best-written video games of all time, so I'm not shocked that WotC would want to borrow ideas from it. And it could also function to emphasize the more philosophical style of campaign that Planescape is meant to encourage.
Naturally, though, I could be reading too much into this. It's possible that the similarities here are only meant as an homage, and that we'll be getting a totally different story.
Still, I'll be honest, playing a campaign that involves more complex themes and players having to discover things about their own characters is something I've been really eager to try.
96 pages is certainly less than a typical adventure book, but it's also nearly 50% longer than Light of Xaryxis, so I have some hope we get something really meaty here.
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