Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse is the latest release from WotC for Dungeon & Dragons. It is a three-book box set that contains Sigil & The Outlands, which is primarily a lore book describing the ringed city of Sigil and the sixteen Gate Towns on the edges of the Outlands, along with a handful of new backgrounds and feats and some portal-themed magic items and spells. Morte's Planar Parade is a bestiary that provides stat blocks for various planar creatures as well as some options for how to transform other stat-blocks into creatures influenced by various Outer Planes, and Turn of Fortune's Wheel, an adventure book that draws on some of the philosophical concepts explored in the beloved computer RPG from the late 90s, Planescape Torment.
The first of these books, Sigil & The Outlands, is probably the first one that people who purchase this product will read through (though, if you're like me, you'll probably browse through Morte's Planar Parade first).
The book's primary purpose is giving a feel for the setting and the lore of it. Most prominent is the city of Sigil, which sits on the interior of a massive toroid (ring/donut shape) that floats above an infinitely-tall spire in the center of the Outlands, the True Neutral outer plane.
Sigil is home to many philosophical Factions, which perform certain important roles in the city but are also unified by shared philosophical premises. The factions are often at odds with one another, and will defend their perspectives with force if necessary, though some factions have good working relationships with one another if their philosophies are compatible with one another. For instance, the Harmonium (who believe that peace must be enforced at all costs, even at the expense of freedom,) the Fraternity of Order (who believe that by learning all the metaphysical laws of the multiverse, you can achieve ultimate power) and the Mercykillers (who believe that justice must be carried out with no room for mercy or forgiveness) collectively serve as the city's law enforcement.
Among the backgrounds in the book is the Planar Philosopher, which gives you the Scion of the Outer Planes feat at 1st level, which then unlocks various other feats depending on the alignment of the plane that fits your philosophy. Likewise, there is the Gate Warden background, that gives access to that feat as well, but represents people who spent a formative time in one of the Outlands' Gate Towns or anywhere with a planar portal. The backgrounds are a little one-size-fits-all.
Naturally, there's a comparison to be made with Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica - Ravnica being another setting with an impossibly huge city that is ruled over by various factions with extreme philosophical positions. Planescape of course pre-dates Ravnica by about twelve years, so I would not be shocked if the latter was inspired in large part by the former (while D&D had been owned by Wizards of the Coast at that time, there was very little crossover between it and MTG). GGR arguably spends more of its length going into dense detail about its guilds, but admittedly, Planescape has more ground to cover. Again, though, I think that I would have liked to see a longer book that could really get into all of the details.
Nevertheless, if you were worried that this would be a repeat of the Astral Adventurer's Guide, I think anyone looking for usable lore and locations is going to get far, far more out of Sigil & The Outlands. The city is described in reasonable detail, and then we get a couple pages for each of the Gate Towns.
The Gate Towns are cities found ringing the massive disk that is the Outlands, and each contains a portal to one of the other outer planes. The towns thus take on much of the character of those planes, but each has something couter-balancing it to keep it tied to the Outlands instead of getting sucked into the plane it is tied to. For instance, Automata, which has a gate to Mechanus, has a chaotic underbelly filled with crime and disorder that allows the town to remain neutral enough not to simply become part of the Lawful Neutral plane. Not all of these counter-balances are as fleshed out as others, and certainly some of the gate towns are given more compelling descriptions than others, but there are enough hooks here for a DM to be able to come up with some fun adventures in any of these locations.
There are additional Outlands locations that are mentioned, but this is a little bit like the "Other Domains of Dread" section in Van Richten's, meaning that you get a little glimpse of these realms - such as the Caverns of Thought, home to the Ilithid deity Ilsensine, or some of the homes of the Rilmani - the true neutral celestials native to the Outlands.
What we, notably, do not get is an overview of the other Outer Planes themselves. In fairness, this was also the case with the 2nd Edition original Planescape box set, which got later supplementary materials to flesh those out. I do think you could run a pretty extensive campaign set only within Sigil and the Outlands, but I would hope that any Planescape campaign would involve traveling between the many planes of existence.
The book does convey the weirdness of the setting, with numerous little details about how things don't always work the way you'd expect them to. As an introduction to the setting, this will give you plenty to work with. While the book is short at 96 pages, there is not a sense that any of those pages are wasted.
I'll maintain that I would prefer a return to the single-volume campaign setting books we were getting in earlier 5th Edition releases. Breaking this into multiple books is not as big of a boon as WotC seems to think it is, especially given the degree to which people use digital tools running games these days.
It's impossible to talk about this without returning to the disappointments of Spelljammer, but again, whereas the Astral Adventurer's Guide seemed to be filling its scant 64 pages with a ton of ship deck plans I really didn't care much about, and only really gave us details on the Rock of Bral location, rather than telling us what we might find in Realmspace, Krynnspace, Greyspace, etc., this book focuses on the setting itself.
And that does mean that it does not focus a lot on player options. If you were hoping for new playable races or subclasses, you'll be disappointed. Still, as much as I love getting new options like that, I also think that we've got a lot of options that already exist, and missing out on them for one release of this sort is not the end of the world (also, in terms of playable races, some of the classic "Planescape" races have already seen print in 5E, such as the Gith and the Tiefling. Perhaps we should have gotten Bariuar to round out the original three, but as a DM I'd definitely allow you to just re-skin a Centaur and change its hooves to a horn attack).
What I am very curious about is to what degree promises that, 2024-onward, D&D will be focused on its "multiverse." That term has gotten a bit of overexposure, especially with both major comicbook-movie studios getting really into stories about alternate timelines and versions of their characters. But I suspect that the intent here is more to explore the various planes - and that's something that I'm definitely into.
But Sigil and the Outlands is more of a primer - giving you the introduction to these settings. The Outlands is the Outer Plane that most closely resembles the Prime Material Plane, due to the way that all of its elements are in balance, but it is also infinitely large, and as a crossroads for planar entities from literally everywhere, there's a broad "welcome" sign for anything you ever wanted to include in a D&D campaign.
This book implies, and I'd explicitly allow, that anyone running or playing in a Planescape should be able to let their imagination run absolutely wild. Have a party that's got a Dhampir descendant of Strahd von Zarovich, a Plasmoid space-traveler, a Warforged veteran of the Last War, and a plucky Halfling cook-turned-adventurer from some small town in Exandria go tracking the Great Modron March.
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