Last year, I wrote a post about what I'd want out of a Planescape sourcebook for 5th Edition. I know that Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft has its detractors, but it's my favorite 5E book published by WotC. People might have disliked the changes to some of the Domains of Dread, or the pages dedicated to talking about genre, or the notion that the Domains are now afloat in the Mists rather than countries bordering one another on a massive landmass.
Of course, those people are wrong.
The point, though, is that I felt the book was a great model for how to do campaign setting books in the future. Sadly, though, when Spelljammer: Adventures in Space came out, we saw that that model was abandoned. Spelljammer is probably the most disappointing product to come out of 5E - a setting that was very hyped, had been missing for 30 years, and promised to provide a really new and fun twist on the game and... we got some new playable races (one of which unfortunately, and I think unintentionally, though with a naivete that an established company like WotC should have known better about, replicated a few problematic racial tropes) and an actually pretty good bestiary, but practically no "setting" for the setting.
My Planescape proposal was very much based on using Van Richten's and to an extent Guldmaster's Guide to Ravnica as a way to cover the enormous amount of ground you'd want to with Planescape - covering the Factions of Sigil and the city itself, all 17 Outer Planes, the four Elemental Planes, the Feywild, and the Shadowfell, with monsters and playable races and subclasses.
But then, the actual title: Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse was announced, and that it would once again be a box set of three slim volumes (with more overall pages than Spelljammer, but still less than Van Richten's had,) I got worried. And those worries will remain until we actually get our hands on the product.
However, I've started to see it advertised on Facebook (I guess Glory of the Giants is close enough to release that they want to get it hyped up,) and the biggest draw the ad presents is new backgrounds and feats.
Let me be frank: that's not exciting.
Spelljammer foregrounded its playable races because, ultimately, those wound up being the most exciting part of the product (though again, Boo's Astral Menagerie does have substantial content). If mere feats and backgrounds (the latter of which is basically being eliminated in the One D&D playtest, with "background" really being just some free choices of feats, skills, and ability score bonuses when you create your character) is the best thing they're putting forward...
I mean, look, I'm probably getting it. While I'm not at 100% collection (I doubt I'll ever pick up Strixhaven and I don't have Call of the Netherdeep, though my roommate has both) I have gotten most 5E books, and Planescape is the setting I'm most excited to run something in (or play in, if I can find someone who wants to run it).
But I also think that the stakes get so much higher due to 5E's general approach to campaign settings - they don't really tend to revisit them. 5E has gotten a grand total of one Eberron book (at least from among WotC's products - Keith Baker wrote another one expanding on Rising From the Last War,) for instance. As such, you really hope that when they do a setting, you get something really substantial and good.
I worry about Planescape because the setting is so profoundly enormous - Sigil is obviously the centerpiece of it, but the setting also comprises all the otherworldly realms in the multiverse, and each of these is a universe unto itself. A place like The Beastlands is itself three layers (one always day, one always at sunset/sunrise, and one always at night) with realms and towns and characters and organizations.
There's a massive amount of ground to cover.
And, indeed, in the midst of writing this, I found an article from May of this year that breaks things down:
The three books will be Sigil and the Outlands, at 96 pages, Morte's Planar Parade, at 64 pages, and Turn of Fortune's Wheel, at 96 pages.
So, taking a step back and a deep breath: it looks like the "setting" part of the book will be laser-focused on... Sigil and the Outlands. To be fair, in the original Planescape campaign setting book, this was also the focus. The other planes were in later supplements like Planes of Law and Planes of Chaos. 96 pages is also... more than Spelljammer's 64 in the Astral Adventurer's Guide.
It's not huge, though.
However, another reason to have a little bit of hope is that one of the biggest problems with the Astral Adventurer's Guide was that an enormous chunk of those scant 64 pages were dedicated to two-page spreads for each type of Spelljamming ship, giving us deck plans and... yeah, just really deck plans.
I expect that, instead, we'll have the 96 pages of Sigil and the Outlands first giving us the player options (those feats and backgrounds,) which will probably take fewer than 10 pages, leaving us with 86 (well, subtract a couple for the table of contents and introduction, so conservatively say 80). We'll need to cover each of Sigil's factions, of which there are (or were before the Faction War,) 15. Giving each of these two pages would mean 30 pages total (or 45 if we're at 3 pages) leaving us with, say, 50 (or 45, but I think the feats and backgrounds won't take too much, so I'll err on 50).
Then, maybe we get a few magic items and/or spells, but probably not taking more than three or four pages.
So we're down to 46ish.
And then, well, if we're ignoring all the other planes, we can divide that between Sigil and the Outlands. Say 26 to the Outlands and 20 for Sigil.
And... I think that actually works out decently. Ravnica dedicated 22 pages to fleshing out the Tenth District, and Eberron took 32 to talk about Sharn, so if we maybe skew things a little differently (maybe giving Sigil 23 pages and the Outlands 23) we're in a similar ballpark.
I think I'd err on doing more with the Outlands, given all the locations out there - the Gate Towns in particular would give us a bit of a peak at the other Outer Planes, given that it doesn't look like we'll be covering them directly.
Now, if we compare this with the original 2nd Edition book, the "Sigil without a Guide" chapter is 21 pages. If we include the "Doorway to Sigil," which includes the fifteen factions, it's a lot more substantial, at a total of 53 pages, but we're also up at that number if we put in our 30 pages of Faction stuff.
Indeed, "Sigil & Beyond" is, in fact, 95 pages, which is shockingly close to our 96 here.
At least my PDF of the full original Planescape Campaign Setting box set from 2nd Edition is 236 pages - 20 pages short of Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse.
Now, of course, that one doesn't have over a third of it dedicated to an adventure, so it's not a perfect comparison.
The thing is, I think there's a high enough page count here that we could get something with actual substance here (and, again, if we don't have 35 fucking pages of nearly-identical deck plans).
However, it's the broader pattern that saddens me: Planescape was supported with tons of additional, massive products detailing all the planes, with adventures and monsters and stuff. Unless WotC leans heavily into Planescape moving forward, this might be the only Planescape thing we get for a decade or more.
So, I want to get the new Planescape stuff, but I'm really hoping that, at some point, we'll get a Manual of the Planes or other guide to the heightened fantasy of Planescape.
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