whit
@whit asked:

what's the coolest shit in planescape? also, what's the dumbest shit in planescape

I’m sure I’m going to think of more stuff later but

Coolest shit:
-modrons! I love ‘em. They look cool and they’ve got good lore
-sigil, da city of doors baby greatest city in da planes. A good shape for a fantasy city (car tire), hotbed of cosmological intrigue, weird lookin buildings. Also: floating atop the Spire in the center of the Outlands but isn’t actually there, like atmospheric phenomena
-the factions. love a bunch of weirdos in a shadow war with each other and also serve some kind of municipal function. It is very funny to me that the design team got this idea from World of Darkness!
-belief shaping material reality in a very direct way, one of those ways being whole towns sliding into different dimensions because the alignment got too out of wack (literal vibe shift)
-the blood war! Some people think the blood war is stupid but I love it. two different groups of evil monsters are locked in an eternal war over who gets to control the multiverse and there are a multitude of other parties invested in keeping that conflict going? Cmonnnn
-rust dragons. answering the question ‘what if rust monsters, a creature everyone hates, were the larval stage of an even worse monster’

Dumbest shit:
-the “planar cant”. In the 90s ttrpgs suffered from something called “being written using entirely too much in-universe slang” and Planescape is no exception.
-schools of spells & magic items being more/less effective depending on which plane you’re on/how far away you are from your god’s home plane if you’re a cleric. This is easily ignorable especially if you’re not playing 2e but it all seems like a headache to track and not very fun!


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in reply to @ICELEVEL's post:

oh my god of COURSE the factions were inspired by World of Darkness. I was very fixated on those as a teen and here I am an adult with a five dots tattoo on my wrist. feels like the belief shaping material reality is probably pretty tied to Mage: the Ascension, which I was VERY fixated on as teen. tbh Mage: the Ascension and the planescape factions are pretty essential to the formation of my ideas about personal philosophy

also, ahh, the planar cant.... another thing very appealing to me as a teen, back when I was a real berk

Oh yeah it’s extremely Mage. As far as the cant goes I think it would’ve been fine as a sidebar! That said a campaign where no one talks in cant except for one NPC who only talks in cant would be very funny imo