Gearing Up For Another Trip Into the Dark Place

 I've downloaded Alan Wake II to my PS5, so it's just a matter of waiting for Friday for the game to unlock so I can play it.

I'll be curious how I feel about the game. The original Alan Wake was inspired by the works of Stephen King and David Lynch (most obviously Twin Peaks for the latter) but in terms of gameplay, it was more of an action game, even if it had a weird horror aesthetic. The new game looks like it will be leaning more emphatically into horror.

My tastes, as I've come to discover in recent years, seems to align largely with the New Weird - an artistic/literary movement that incorporates elements of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy to present things that are strange more than they are necessarily terrifying (though these stories can get pretty scary).

The conceit of Alan Wake - a man waking up a week after he dove into a lake to rescue his drowning wife and then finds pages to a manuscript of a horror novel describing the exact events he's going through, apparently written by him - I'd say leans more into that "Weird" side of things.

Control, the Remedy Studio's 2019 game that first really established the idea of a "Remedy Connected Universe," explicitly drew its inspiration from the New Weird, and again, while the story has some disturbing and terrifying things in it, it really leans more into the idea that these things are strange and unusual more than there to elicit terror.

Of course, one of my biggest literary influences was Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which retroactively fits into that New Weird mold (or, it might be more accurate to say that some of the folks in the New Weird movement, like the creators of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, were heavily influenced by King's work, and particularly the Dark Tower). King is, of course, known as a horror writer, but the Dark Tower incorporates elements of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and of course terrifying moments of horror (cosmic horror being an element that often fits into the other two genres fairly easily).

Given the Dark Tower's prominence in my personal library, I sometimes have to remind myself that King is known more for straight horror - though even his horror stories often incorporate strange elements. The Shining, for example, involves the evil presence in the Overlook hotel infecting Jack Torrance's mind, but unrelatedly (yet serendipitously) Danny's "Shining" ability - some kind of psionic ability - is what allows him to survive the story.

Alan Wake of course has scary shadow-monsters, but the way in which it really feels "Weird" is its strange conceit that this is all happening the way that Alan wrote it - whether he did so as some kind of prophetic prediction or if his writing it made it happen that way (and inviting us to ask whether there's any difference between the two).

What I've seen of the sequel in previews suggests that the rhythms of the game are going to be different - each foe you face is going to be a significant drain on resources, but there will (in theory) be fewer of them. Visually, the game looks more gruesome - wounds inflicted with your various weapons upon the Taken and other monsters are gory and gross.

That, I'll admit, is a little less my style - I think it's fine to make a point about the reality of violence, but I'm perfectly ok with video game enemies showing no real "combat damage."

Interestingly, they've cited a number of survival horror games as inspiration for the gameplay here, such as Resident Evil IV. This is a genre I've never really played, so I have only a vague, secondhand sense of what to expect.

I've been playing a ton of Elden Ring lately, so while my reflexes are well-practiced thanks to that, we'll see how I adapt to this one.

Going Full Pyro in Elden Ring

 Leveling up my Prophet character, I generally pushed her toward a kind of tank-y shield-based build. Ultimately this led to my using a build that split her stats quite a lot - a mix of faith, strength, dexterity, tons of endurance, some vigor, and no room really for things like Mind.

The build was working out pretty well, actually - with a greatshield and the Barricade Shield ash of war, I was able to often tank hits even from bosses. But this wasn't really what I'd wanted to do with the character. My first Elden Ring character was an Intelligence-based spellcaster, and while I later re-specced him to have some Strength so he could use the Darkmoon Greatsword, he's still at 80 Int and can cast all kinds of sorceries, and that ranged magic caster vibe is pretty fun.

Faith and Incantations, of course, are somewhat less damage-focused, but you have some options. And among those options are the Giant's Flame incantations, which are all about lighting everything on fire.

While I'm only a few levels beyond 100 on this character, I'm far enough into the game that I have most of the pieces required to make it work.

I'm at somewhere north of 60 Faith, high enough that the Erdtree Seal is giving me the best Incantation Scaling (I believe this is the seal that does the best with a pure faith build when you get into high numbers) but I also use the Giant's Seal in my off-hand to give the damage boost to these spells.

There are three primary spells I cast.

Flame, Fall Upon Them is the bread-and-butter, which tosses a whole bunch of fireballs out in a wide arc. This is very chaotic and unpredictable - if you're lucky, multiple balls will hit your target and they'll take an enormous amount of damage. If you're unlucky, they wind up in the gaps between them. But you can also hit a ton of enemies with this if you come across a big pack of them, and big targets often get hit by multiples.

Giantsflame Take Thee I've found useful when in one-on-one duels. This giant fireball explodes and knocks targets down, which can give you some precious time to run and get some distance.

Flame of the Fell God is very situational - you sometimes launch it at a target that's far away and if they're slow, they might be caught in the patch of flame they drop.

I haven't taken down the Fire Giant yet (and might focus more on lightning spells given that I doubt the Fire Giant takes a ton of fire damage) so I don't have access to Burn, O Flame! (I love the names of the Fire Giant spells).

Flame, Grant Me Strength and Golden Vow work as buffs for boss fights. And I like to put Blessing of the Erdtree on myself to keep my HP topped up.

I'm using light armor (really clothes) to let me Light Roll, so the idea here is that I should try to avoid being anywhere near the foes' attacks, and the little occasional nicks and cuts I get should be covered by Blessing of the Erdtree, so I can then allocate most of my flask charges to Cerulean Tears.

A lot of these spells can charge up, so Godfrey Icon is one of my talismans. I have the Faithful's Canvas Talisman (haven't gone to the Erdtree yet so I don't have the Flock's version) and then of course Fire Scorpion Charm. I think my fourth talisman is the Two Fingers Medallion just to pump up my faith a bit until I can level some more.

One of the fun and funny things about the build is that Flame, Fall Upon Them feels like it would be a more situational spell, but using it as your bread-and-butter means you're constantly blasting fire everywhere. (The Silver Tears in Nokstella never knew what hit 'em!)

Anyway, the build I'm using still has some Strength and Endurance to throw on some armor and a shield and greatsword if I need to, but for now being a pure caster is working out.

Planescape Review: Sigil & the Outlands

 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.

Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse First Impressions

 I got my copy of the Planescape box set.

When it was announced that Planescape would be released as a box set rather than a single volume, a lot of people reacted with dismay. The reason for this was that its antecedent, Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, was maybe the most disappointing release in all of 5E - not the worst, mind you, but most disappointing because of the incredible hype and then the let-down.

The problem with Spelljammer was primarily that there was very little "setting" in its setting. There was a Gazetteer for the Rock of Bral, but a huge portion of the Astral Adventurer's Guide was taken up by the deck plans of various ships.

To be sure, one expected that adventures aboard Spelljamming vessels would be a big part of a Spelljammer campaign, but we didn't get any mechanical ideas of how to, for example, run ship-to-ship combat, and we didn't get details on what the systems around existing settings were like. The emphasis of the book felt totally off. And on top of that, despite being broken up into three books, the total page count was significantly less than what we had gotten in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, the previous big return to a classic setting.

So, how does Planescape compare?

Well, I think we're definitely looking at a more useful product than the Spelljammer set. That's a low bar, though, so let's go through what the set actually gives you:

Sigil and the Outlands has a couple of feats and backgrounds as character options, but dedicates most of its page count to introducing the Factions, Sigil as a city, and the various Gate Towns. While the Gate Towns only get a two-page spread each, we do actually get a rundown of all sixteen of them, which is more than can be said for the old 2nd Edition set. Other realms in the Outlands do get touched on here, in a similar manner to the "other domains of dread" section in Van Richten's - a couple pages of single- or double-paragraph descriptions of various regions in the Outlands. There are a couple of spells that allow you to sense or close off portals, but that's it for those.

The Sigil Gazetteer is fairly thorough, going through each of the city's wards and introducing interesting NPCs and groups one could encounter there.

So, this book is not a great fit if you're just trying to mine it for character options - the feats could be good, but this is more lore-focused.

Morte's Planar Parade is the set's monster book, and has a whole bunch of outer-planar entities. What I appreciate is that it seems to focus a bit on B-side fiends - we get three varieties of Demodand (the jail-warden fiends from Carceri) and Baernaloths - a special type of yugoloth from Hades that might actually pre-date the yugoloths of Gehenna. We also get some expansion on Celestials (fitting as antagonistic celestials feel far more likely in a Planescape campaign) including three kinds of Archons (the celestials specific to Mount Celestia) and a few types of Guardinals (native to Elysium). Indeed, I can now really see why the Ardling from early One D&D playtesting was animal-themed. It does seem like there are a lot of animal-themed celestials. The monsters here run the gamut of CR, though I didn't see any super-high CR monsters that could be tier 4 campaign bosses. Still, if you want some beefy Modrons for a mid-to-high level party to face, this has you covered.

Turn of Fortune's Wheel is the included adventure, and while I haven't read the whole thing (that's true for all three books) it does seem to really go for a high-concept premise, which bears a resemblance to, but is not the same as, the beloved late-90s CRPG Planescape Torment. This is truly unlike any other adventure I've read for 5E.

    So, overall, my general feeling is one of mostly relief. There's meat on these bones in a way that Spelljammer lacked, and I think this does actually give you the proper material to run a pretty dense and lore-heavy Planescape campaign.

That said, I hope that in the future, WotC will move back toward the "big thick tome" style of campaign setting book that we got with Van Richten's and Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.

This set gives you a lot of equivalent content compared to 2nd Editions initial Planescape set - and if we're just comparing one with the other, I think there's no reason to be disappointed (at least in terms of bang for your buck).

But again, I think WotC's reluctance to expand upon these settings with supplementary products could be a big problem for Planescape in particular. From this product alone, you might think that "Planescape" as a setting is really just the Outlands and the city of Sigil. Now, the book explicitly tells you otherwise - that the setting is the entire D&D multiverse. But without getting old books (or pdfs) from the 1990s with a lot of rules text that is meaningless to a 5E player, there's nothing in the current edition that tells you what the various layers of Acheron or The Beastlands are. (Hell, I don't think that anything in 5E tells you that Acheron is a bunch of floating iron cubes or that Pandemonium is just a bunch of endless tunnels filled with howling wind where gravity just orients you to the nearest wall).

This is cool, cool stuff, and really important information for DMs who want to have a planes-hopping adventure or campaign.

I don't know if you would have been able to fit all of that in a book even if it had a page count comparable to Eberron or Van Richten's, but the choice to cram this setting into a box set that actually has fewer pages than earlier 5E setting books is... well, it's not the direction that I want the game to go in.

Still, if I don't let my pessimism get the better of me, and take this set on its own merits, I think you get a really great primer for the setting, with useful 5E-compatible elements (even if most of them are just monster stats).

I'll be honest: I wish that we got some of the Sigil Cant (the bizarre set of slang that the whole of 2nd Edition Planescape was written in - even the "just for the DM" rules and lore bits,) which is even seemingly absent in Morte's color commentary in the monster book.

Still, the set presents Planescape as the bizarre, weird, and deeply philosophical setting it's meant to be: there are no stats for the Lady of Pain and the book reminds DMs not to every try to give her them, and we've got the Unity of the Rings, the Center of the Multiverse, and the Rule of Threes, orienting us in the patterns and perspectives of planar folk.

But those of us who have read (or played back in the day) the 2E version will have to import knowledge about some other things, such as the planes themselves and ideas like Planars versus Primes versus Petitioners.

With the natural point of comparison being Spelljammer, I will say this, which I mean as an endorsement: the content of these books (or at least Sigil and the Outlands) prioritizes the right kind of content. I'd have happily had maybe like one or possibly two deck plans for ships in Spelljammer if we got those pages dedicated instead to the Wildspace systems around canon D&D worlds. Here, though, if the page count does limit how much of the setting they can actually fit in there, the choices as to what they include feels like it's much better this time around.

Tanking Godrick and When a Build Starts to Come Together

 While it's a build that I actually tried before, playing with a paladin-tank in Elden Ring has actually seemed to be working better for me than previously. With Barricade Shield on a Brass Shield, and the Curved-Sword Talisman, I was able to get through Stormveil Castle with little difficulty, even tanking the terrifying Grafted Scion in the big banquet hall with the painting of Godfrey and taking it down without any sort of cheesing.

Godrick has given me a little trouble in the last couple playthroughs, but I one-shot the mangled psycho this time, largely by trusting to my ash-of-war-enhanced Brass Shield to survive his strikes - including his big wind-storm ones - and striking back. I actually finished him off with a guard-counter while Nepheli Loux and my trusty jellyfish poured damage into him.

I'm currently using a +7 Lordsworn Straight Sword with the Sacred Order ash of war and Sacred scaling, so I'm getting a bit more holy damage out of my Faith. That said, at this level the scaling bonus to the damage is really tiny compared to the base damage. I've got, I think after Godrick, 24 Faith, which I'm planning to pump up to 28 so that I can use some of the Incantations I've found.

I did get Hurl Flame, which is a far better general-use Incantation than Catch Fire on the virtue of its being ranged, but I'm still getting way more of my power out of the tanking-and-guard-countering.

Anyway, apparently my copy of Planescape is available for pickup at the store, but we've got the game where I'm a player tonight, which hasn't met in I think over a month, so I'll probably get it tomorrow. You can expect that I'll have my comments on it once I've read through it (my roommate has his own copy, and I thumbed through the monster book).

Returning to Elden Ring With a Prophet

 I've got a lot of Elden Ring characters. And while most of them at this point are either in the post-game (not going into New Game Plus until they can check out the DLC) or close to it (I have a Strength/Arcane character who I recently got to Ephael) I decided to play around with a low-level character, and took an existing Prophet character I'd started but kind of stalled out in one of the very first mini-dungeons (the first Catacombs you can reach in Limgrave).

Especially early on, the game had a reputation for really screwing Faith-based characters. While Sorcery was plenty powerful (my first character was a pure mage, though respecced to use the Darkmoon Greatsword for the very last leg of the game - I think after beating Melania - though he still has the Intelligence to cast every spell that doesn't require Faith or Arcane) those who tried to go in as Incantation-focused spellcasters had a lot of difficulty.

In truth, if you could get a weapon that scaled with Faith you were kind of ok. Indeed, the second-easiest time I had beating a bunch of high-level bosses was when I specced into a Strength/Faith build using dual greatswords (Blasphemous Blade being the main one.) (The most absurdly easy build I ever used was Fextralife's "Gravity God," which just has you spam the skill on the Fallenstar Beast Jaw and kill basically everything by stun-locking them. I believe I one-shot Melania with it, because I just kept her staggered the whole time, and being a ranged skill, on phase 2 I could start blasting her as she recovered from her Scarlet Aeonia attack).

The thing is, Sorcerers (Astrologers, I think technically) start with Glintstone Pebble, a really solid main ranged damage spell. While casters don't make the game trivially easy, it was certainly a more straightforward style of play.

Prophets start with only one damage Incantation, and it's the melee-range Catch Fire. It's plenty powerful when you can land it, but it has a very short reach and, well, if you're casting spells usually you try to keep your distance.

So, very quickly I decided to alter course and build more of a melee combatant character, going with a Block-Counter focus, which required a lot of farming (for one, just to get decent armor) for the Brass Shield, which is a rare drop off of the guards at the ruins by the third Site of Grace, though seems to drop much more frequently if you get to Ephael.

She's still using Faith as her main stat, though I upgraded her Strength and Dexterity to let her use some of the weapons I've found. Indeed, I'm actually pushing hard on leveling Endurance so that she can fully kit herself out in heavy armor, but thanks to the Golden Vow ash of war, she's got a sacred weapon (with a pretty powerful buff, too!) and now feels if not totally ready to progress into tougher areas, at least on the road there.

As usual, I try to clear just about everything, so I'm working my way through the Agheel Lake environs and eastern Limgrave (I cleared Fort Haight with ease and need to go fight the Tibia Mariner and do a couple of caves and catacombs.) Then it'll be off to the Weeping Penninsula, culminating in Castle Morne, and then clearing out Stormcliff before heading into Stormveil Castle.

I actually did a build somewhat like this before, which used the Treespear as its main weapon. I might revist that, but that's a ways off. I think what I intend to do here is keep this character a faith build (which should also cut down on respecs) but we'll see to what extent she focuses on melee combat versus spellcasting. I'd kind of like to make her more of a caster, but it'll be a little before she can get her hands on the really solid ranged damage spells (not super long - I think you get your basic "hurl a ball of flame" spell early on in Liurnia).

Planes, Philosophy, and Breaking the Great Wheel

 One of the problems you run into with the Great Wheel cosmology is that there's kind of a clear answer to what plane is best and worst. Definitionally, Elysium is the best plane. And Hades is the worst. See, I'd wondered for a long time about how you reconcile the relative goodness of planes. Is Mount Celestia not as good-aligned as Elysium because it splits its values to also, equally, embrace Law?

In other words, is it a Great Wheel or a Great Square? See, if it's a Wheel, then Mount Celestia needs to sacrifice some of its goodness in order to value law. Likewise, the Nine Hells become not quite as evil as Gehenna because its adherence to Law diverts it away from pure evil.

If it's a Square, then, we only see the "in-between" planes forced to compromise on one of its values. It means that the Nine Hells, Acheron, Mechanus, Arcadia, and Mount Celestia are all equally Lawful, but on a spectrum of good to evil, with Mount Celestia perfectly good and the Nine Hells perfect evil.

And... I think that the Great Square fits the way that these planes are portrayed in most prime material-focused campaigns. The Abyss is certainly a realm of unmitigated evil, right?

Granted, in Planescape, the implication seems to be that these different values can dilute one another. The Order of Planes-Militant is a Sect (similar to a Faction but with no major presence in Sigil) based in Mount Celestia that seeks to expand the plane by incorporating parts of neighboring planes into it. As the name implies, there's a zeal to their work, and while they primarily try to accomplish this via campaigning and persuasion, they're still trying to basically rip away parts of neighboring (also good-aligned) planes to add to the Seven Heavens.

Notably, as well, Powers (the term used by Planars to refer to what Primes call Gods - probably as a response to the Satanic Panic but it's something I like about the setting, like how Devils were renamed Baatezu and demons Tanar'ri, and Daemons to Yugoloths, the latter of which stuck) don't have to match the alignment of a plane to have their realm within it. Gruumsh is typically portrayed as Chaotic Evil, but his realm of Nishrek is on Acheron, a Lawful Neutral/Lawful Evil plane.

And for this reason, I had an idea of how one might portray the planes in a different way. While we tend to arrange them in a wheel (and some means of traversal, like the River Styx, seem to reflect this,) there are also ways in which the planes seem more free-floating and not really physically existing in relation to one another.

And so, this alternative makes each a plane that focuses on a singular value.

Here's my initial list:

Elysium: Selflessness

The Beastlands: Instinct

Arboria: Passion

Ysgard: Glory

Limbo: Mutability

Pandemonium: Madness

The Abyss: Hatred

Carceri: Betrayal

Hades: Despair

Gehenna: Greed

The Nine Hells: Ambition

Acheron: Discipline

Mechanus: Logic

Arcadia: Harmony

Mount Celestia: Perfection

Bytopia: Industriousness

    Admittedly, some of these might be more of a stretch than others. Carceri is given Betrayal because the way that it traps people seems to drive them toward back-stabbing. The Abyss could easily be rage or anger, but I think Hatred does seem to drive a lot of what the inhabitants do there, and allows for more calculated by still chaos-driven expressions of evil. Mount Celestia's value is perfection, because the inhabitants believe their goal is to ascend and refine themselves to become ever-better.

What I think re-imagining the planes in this way does is that you open the door for more nuance. Elysium is no longer the ultimate good, but it's one expression of goodness. For certain sometimes selflessness does not achieve the best good outcome, but Elysium's whole vibe is that the plane encourages it - you'll get to your destination on a road there faster if you stop to help someone in need.

It also creates these weird little nuances that really fit with the Planescape factions. Hades is the plane of despair, and that's usually portrayed as the ultimate evil - and evil that doesn't even seek to accomplish anything except drag everything else down into its bleak darkness. But if you're a good-aligned member of the Bleak Cabal, you might see a kind of freedom in despair: by accepting the darkness of the cosmos and recognizing that it's never going to get better, you can live better in the moment and see things for how they are rather than how you wish they would be. Hades might be a place that reminds you of the need to find that compassion within, rather than without.

Alignment is one of the biggest cultural legacies of D&D, but I think that using it as a jumping off point, rather than an endpoint, can make for some far more interesting stories.