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Home on the Planes

We can excuse the fact that you
slaughtered two yugoloths before you
realized
where you were, outsider, but
you pronounced the name of our fair city
'Sijil,'
not 'Sigil,' and there can be no
excuse
for that!
 -
Her honor Rastina Tollin of the Guvners

Smoking pits of fire, mountains of pure glory, tunnels of screaming wind - no sod can stand these for long and not get skewered, roasted, blasted, or just overwhelmed. Just how's a berk supposed to set up his kip in places like these? He can't do it and stay living, or sane at the least. No, a body - even the toughest planar - needs a quiet and safe place to call home. Baator and even Mount Celestia are definitely not that.

That's why most folks - at least those that aren't petitioners - make their homes in Sigil or somewhere on the Outlands, also called the Near Lands or just "the Land" by most folks. (To a planar's way of think-ing, a fellow's either in Sigil or he's not. On the Outlands he's near Sigil, hence "Near Lands." Bodies that hit the Great Ring are "out of town," while them that's crossed the Astral to the Prime Material or beyond are just plain "out of touch" - it all just a way to keep track of folks.)

There's a simple reason why Sigil and the Near Lands are so popular with planars. Compared to the rest of the multiverse, the Outlands (Sigil included) are "normal," the most mortal-oriented of all the Outer Planes, and maybe even the safest. That's because the plane's held by powers that limit the might of most other deities. Not only that, but the deities of the Outlands just tend to leave folks alone, too, probably because of their generally neutral natures. 'Course, if some addle-coved berk goes and tries to bob one of them, it don't mean they'll ignore him. Like as not, the gods'll squash him flat for his cheating ways. Still, a cutter on the Outlands has got a better chance of giving them the laugh than anywhere else on the Outer Planes. So, hey berk - welcome to home!

Before going any further with this book, the DM should first read A Player's Guide to the Planes and A DM Guide to the Planes. This particular text provides a campaign base and some quick-start adventures for a PLANESCAPE campaign. Al-though the material barely touches upon most of the planes, this base makes a workable beginning for the DM to build upon, and all the places a cutter could ever hope to explore will be well covered in the boxed sets and adventure modules to come.

Sigil and Beyond is divided into three sections. The first part, called "The Lay of 'the Land,'" describes just what a PLANESCAPE campaign can be and how to get one set up and running. The second part, called "Features of the Outlands," describes some of the places found on the central plane of true Neutrality on the Outer Planes. The third part, called "Doorway to Sigil," goes on at length about the perverse heart of that plane, the City of Doors. The whole thing finishes up with a few adventure suggestions and a list of terms a sod's likely to hear and use in the Cage and on the planes.

With this book, DMs not only gain an understanding of how a PLANESCAPE campaign can be run, but they also get the tools to put together their very own campaign settings. After all, the planes are different from here and there, and DMs can't expect to run them like any old campaigns. Do that and why bother at all? A good DM wants the planes to be a memorable experience, not more of the same old same-old.

A majority of the most powerful things in the AD&DŽ universe make their homes on the planes, so it's really easy to come up with an unforgettable adventure - send the poor player characters to the last pit of Baator or to the darkest layer of the Abyss and watch how fast they'll agree. Now, the players are likely to remember well an adventure where old Demogorgon chewed their party up and spit it out (which he should do if he's at all played right), but don't they expect to bring their prized characters back from the front? That kind of mayhem's memorable, but it doesn't do a bit of good if characters with any will to survive have to be dragged through the campaign kicking, screaming, and bleeding profusely all the way. Memorable means fun, intriguing and exciting, not just deadly.

'Course, it's easier to tell a DM all this than to do it. So in the spirit of telling, here's some things that will make the doing easier.

What's the point?

A DM Guide to the Planes talked about the tone of the planes, the feel that gives a unique character to the PLANESCAPE setting. Tone is important and goes a long way toward making the campaign memorable, but it's not enough. All style and no substance leaves the campaign world hollow - rich with quick flavor, but without the full satisfaction of real content. The first step toward a memorable campaign is to know the goals and purposes for adventuring in the PLANESCAPE setting. Huh? What's that got to do with running a good campaign? Well, whether a DM knows it or not, every exciting campaign world has built-in goals for the player characters. Ask this question before doing anything else: "What are the player characters trying to accomplish?" The answer affects the whole way the campaign is run. Take a look at some of the possible answers, along with their pros and cons, for a PLANESCAPE campaign.

Gold and Glory

This is about the most basic of campaign motivations: The characters want to get rich in treasure and levels, and adventures are ways of getting both. At this approach's most basic level, characters go into dungeons where large amounts of treasure are guarded by various monsters and take the former away from the latter.

Now, there's nothing wrong with this basic idea, but in a PLANESCAPE campaign (like many other campaigns) there are certain logic problems. Simply plotting to explore (loot, rob, clean out, etc.) Shekinester's Court of Light ruins the tone of the game, which the DM should carefully be fostering. Most treasures are owned by things that have a better right to them than the characters, and using wondrous magic simply as adventurer bait cheapens its value to the campaign and the players, who come to think of it as mere "inventory." Meanwhile, adventuring just to advance - with absolutely no other goal - robs the PLANESCAPE setting of the sense of wonder that fills the bizarre universe of the planes. So while advancement provides reward, it doesn't make an adventure memorable. A cutter needs another reason to step through the portal.

Sense of Wonder

Okay, so what about the wonder and majesty of the planes? Is that enough of a reason for adventuring? Certainly the planes have got more than their share of strange landscapes, fanciful towns, and bizarre personalities. Certainly colorful descriptions by the DM, along with an unfettered imagination, are going to create many memorable scenes for the players.

But that's all it is: just scenes, and scenes ain't an adventure. Player characters don't normally get worked up about going to see some strange land-scape or visiting a town just because it's different. They still need another goal to tie the whole thing together.

So where's it stand so far? Money and levels provide the reward, and a sense of wonder makes the scenery stand out, but what's needed is a long-term objective to tie it all together.

Long-term Objectives

So give an adventure a broad goal and the problem's solved, right? Doubtless, every adventure or cam-paign should have some kind of goal, if only to let the player characters know when they're done. Getting treasure and levels is a goal, though not a strong foundation for a decent plot. A proper goal should set up the plot. "Plant this rose on the 435th layer of the Abyss" is a clear goal, and a plot can grow quickly around it: How will the characters get there? Who wants to stop them? What happens if they succeed or fail? What will happen along the way?

The DM answers these questions and builds an adventure while the players have a clear objective for their characters to accomplish. Asking once again, the problem's solved, right?

Maybe, maybe not. A goal may answer the question of what characters are doing for an adventure, but does it answer why? Why plant a rose on the Abyss in the first place? What does that do? Why should the characters care? Yes, the characters may gain experience and money. Yes, they may have a memorable time crossing the horrid landscape of the Abyss. And yes, they may return alive and be able to say, "We did this," but they still need a reason to care, a theme that explains their adventures and gives their efforts meaning.

Theme

Plant a rose, gain treasure, visit strange places - why? What is a character doing all these things for? When the DM can answer that question, then he's got what it takes to make a campaign memorable. Not memorable in little, interesting scenes or a well-plotted adventure, but the whole thing - the why this town exists, the why they're carrying a rose, and the why it's important for the characters to keep trying. With a good theme, players do more than just adventure - they embark on a campaign and care about the role their characters have in it. Players remember not just the strange place their characters visited, but also the reason they went there.

So, what's a typical theme here? Well, a PLANESCAPE campaign's about beliefs: ideas, philosophies, morals, and attitudes. For the folks out on the planes, the meaning of the multiverse isn't an abstract question - it's a concrete thing that'll make a difference in the shape of everything they know and experience.

So, the question is, "What are the player characters trying to accomplish?" and the possible answers are "gold and glory, sense of wonder, long-term objectives," and "theme." But it's a bob question, berk - the real chant is "all of the above." Good thing, then, that the planes - Outer, Inner, and everything between - are loaded with all of those things and more. To make things really interesting, serious DMs can think up secondary treasure hunts, wonders, quests, and themes to filter into the ongoing cam-paign, so players'll have more choices, more involved stories to role-play, and more fun.

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Philosophers with Clubs

The average prime is likely to be a bit taken back by the enthusiasm of the factions on the Outer Planes. On the Prime Material Plane, philosophy's just one person's way of seeing things. Here's the real chant, and pay attention, berk: All this attention to ideology is important because it can actually cause the borders of the planes to change! If enough folks in a town hold a belief contrary to the rest of their plane, that town's going to drift away to another plane, slipping from the grasp of one reality to join another. To put it another way, if enough folks outside a power's realm start subscribing to that power's beliefs, then its realm's going to expand to include them.

That means anywhere on the Outer Planes could conceivably become part of somewhere else.

What a sod believes in, then - law, chaos, good, and evil - has a direct influence on the multiverse. Philosophy is more than just talk, philosophy is action. Hence, the Outer Planes are the site of an end-less struggle for the hearts and minds of everyone on them.

Think about it, berk. The Blood War is more than a mindless battle of extermination between fiends. It's a war to establish a single, united Lower Plane. To a fiend's way of thinking, those that can't be persuaded to its point of view must be eliminated, put in the dead-book, and so the War rages on. In the same vein, the factions in Sigil aren't there just because it's convenient; they're each trying to sway the city to their point of view. If they do, the whole Cage'll vanish off to some other plane. (That's why the Lady of Pain isn't just a figure - she's Sigil's anchor against the rest of the multiverse.)

All of this means something to the player characters, too. It means their actions can sometimes change the face of the planes. By getting involved with the philosophical politics - for instance, by either thwarting or supporting a faction's coup in a border town - they might keep that burg from the brink or give it the final push over the edge, sending it to another plane. When they choose, they make a difference a person can see and know.

So how's this work in play? Well, first it gives a whole new set of teeth to the old phrase, "a clash of ideas." Good, evil, neutrality, law, and chaos are all trying to gain new lands and new adherents at the expense of all the others while trying to hang on to what they've got. When two factols get to debating in Sigil, one may just decide the other's too dangerous and hit him, arrest him, publicly humiliate him, frame him, kill him, or hire adventurers to get the goods on him. It's not because the factols personally don't like each other, it's because this is a campaign where ideas have real power. That's a clash of ideas, planar-style. Like the headline says, factols are "philosophers with clubs."

Building on the Faction Theme

So, a PLANESCAPE campaign theme's a real battle of ideas, one where points of argument can be won or lost with tangible results. Fine, but what's that mean for the player characters and their adventures? Well, most players'll find that they enjoy the perspectives and attitudes of one or several factions. Even if their characters are leaf-green primes fresh off the Prime Material Plane, they can still join any faction after they learn a bit about the choices and meet a few recruiters, as long as the rest of the party can tolerate the choices. This leads to more enthusiastic role-playing - there's a faction for everybody, and the results of their convictions can have "real" effects on the very planes themselves. With that said, an ideal theme on which to build a campaign is the notion that "Player characters' beliefs can make a real difference - their actions based on those ideas can halt or ease the advance of evil or chaos (or good or law)." Being of a particular alignment and belonging to a faction have a purpose: They let characters do something. They give the characters something concrete to fight for or against.

Since any place where the characters fit in could change, there's a lot to defend. With all those factions, fiends, and powers out there, there's a lot of enemies to guard against. The threat's not always constant; sometimes the characters might have to stand against an outright assault by fiends, yet at other times they might have to somehow combat the subtle persuasions of a hostile power. The enemy's not always the same, either - it's pretty clear what needs to be done when the fiends attack, but what's a basher to do when a good power begins poaching on another's terrain? 'Course, the enemies are vulnerable, too. If evil can poach on good territory, good can return the favor.

One nice thing about this theme is there's often a way for the player characters to go on the offensive and hurt the enemy without drawing a drop of blood. For instance, the characters may be just influential enough to tip the balance and pull some village on Carceri across the border to the Outlands. Their beliefs set into action may be enough to weaken a tanar'ri lord's grip on a town in the Abyss. This battle of beliefs will never end, but it's not futile. It's like life, and most folks don't consider making it through another day futile. Best of all, it doesn't have to end. There's not going to be one big last battle that makes the whole campaign finite, not to mention pointless.

Theme can be a matter of background and day-to-day circumstances, too. This thought's important. Not every adventure has to be about the struggle of ideas. Sometimes player characters are just going to go adventuring for money, experience, wonder, or the short-term goal. Good! Variety is important. If a person eats nothing but boiled potatoes and roast beef every day, sooner or later he's going to get tired of boiled potatoes and roast beef. If every adventure is about shaping the planes, sooner or later the player's going to yearn for a break. Variety truly is the spice of role-playing. DMs take note: The rest of this book is full of adventure hooks that hinge upon the interplay of the factions. The gazetteer of the Outlands and the section on Sigil are both full of adventures and ideas for more exploits. If a DM gets stuck for ideas, he can always flip through those pages and see what sparks his interest. See The Roles of the Factions in Sigil for information on the roles of the factions in Sigil.

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Structuring the Campaign
It's better for some berks to be
in chains than to be free.
You,
for instance.
- Tall Tally of the Mercykillers

Knowing the theme and tone of the PLANESCAPE setting still doesn't guarantee a wonderful campaign. There's still a lot of nuts and bolts to work out. The theme is like a blueprint to a house: It's nice to look at, but it won't keep the rain off. A blueprint's only as good as the house it builds, and a theme's only as good as the campaign that's run. To that end, here are some practical pointers to help make game play smoother and more exciting.

Getting Started

Although players (on both sides of the DM's screen) don't give it much thought, a good group of player characters is the essential key to any campaign. To be honest, players shouldn't be allowed to pick things like class, alignment, race, and faction willy-nilly. Rather, they should be guided into choices that both keep them happy and serve the overall needs of the party. This is especially true in picking factions and alignments in the PLANESCAPE campaign.

Face it, berk. Not every one of these factions is going to get along. Mixing Xaositect and Harmo-nium player characters is a sure recipe for trouble. They'll spend more time quibbling with each other than adventuring - if they don't, they're not playing their roles. A certain amount of party friction is good, since it keeps everyone awake and creative, but too much ruins the fun for everyone. When players choose factions, remind them to look at the allies and enemies that go with them. If the group's split between friends and foes, there's going to be a problem. Encourage players to change factions until about 75 percent or more of the party belongs to groups that are either allied or neutral to each other.

Once they've chosen their factions, it helps to create a reason for the characters to work as a group. A first adventure might create a situation where everyone meets and discovers a common purpose. If the DM doesn't have that planned, he might give the job to the players. Let them come up with the background of their party. The result is usually more interesting, and it makes the players feel more involved.

Finally, the DM's got to assume that characters who grew up on the planes know the dark of things. That's what A Player's Guide to the Planes is for. Encourage the players, particularly those with planar characters, to read it. That'll save a lot of time having to explain things later on.

1st- to 3rd-level Adventures

Early on, characters don't have many hit points or much magic, so it may seem that adventuring on the planes is impossible. It's easy to assume that only the powerful bashers stand a chance out there - until now, most players have seen the planes only through the eyes of the mightiest primes. Well, that just ain't the case, berk. There's a lot that low-level characters can do. Sure, the player characters can't face off against tanar'ri and their like in battle and hope to live, but that's no different from fighting dragons in a prime-material campaign - green adventurers who wish to live a little steer clear of the bone-strewn lair where the mightiest basher in town got lost last week. At these levels it's a good idea to keep the characters close to home.

Fortunately, there's plenty of adventure in Sigil. Back alleys, the underground, the slums, and even the Mazes are all good places for the inexperienced to explore. Short and simple adventures to the other planes, heavy on role-playing and light on combat, can give fledgling player characters a nice taste of the variety the multiverse offers. Besides, players need time to learn the different factions, who's in charge, and who's a threat. Meanwhile, the DM can use visitors to Sigil to give the characters a feel for the other planes. Perhaps they might even deal with a yugoloth mercenary of the Lower Planes or an einheriar of the Upper Planes, if only to get a sense of future challenges.

4th- to 7th-level Adventures

By now the characters have enough levels, spells, hit points, and wherewithal to venture out of the nest and explore the Outlands. There's plenty to do out there, keeping gate towns from slipping off to other planes, dealing with baatezu and tanar'ri proxies, and (of course) searching for wonder and riches. The characters probably still aren't ready to tackle fiends in combat, at least not until they reach the upper range of these levels. However, the DM might allow the group to move beyond the relative safety of Sigil and set up a permanent outpost somewhere on the Outlands.

A good series of adventures at this range of levels can begin testing the beliefs of the player characters, as well as their dedication to their factions and alignments. At the lower levels it's too soon - the poor sods won't have developed planar personalities yet. But now's a good time to pitch them into moral dilemmas, adventures where the faction line between right and wrong is gray. The DM shouldactively encourage the group to role-play. The player characters' solutions, based on their philosophies, will build more interesting personalities and provide the DM with rich material for later adventures.

8th- to 10th-level Adventures

By now, the characters are ready to decide their own fates and really explore the other planes. At this point the DM's job is less required to create specific adventures - ones with absolute beginnings, middles, and ends - than to set up a problem and introduce the actors in the game. The choices of the player characters will more actively determine the course of the plot, and perhaps they'll even change the shape of some small part of the planes.

The player characters may want to become more involved with faction politics and assume more responsibility for events. They understand more of what's going on around them, and they've had their personalities well tested by now, so it's natural for them to gain the attention of the powers. It's not like the powers are going to pluck them up and give them great abilities, though, or squash them like bugs either. Instead, the player characters start getting temporary "jobs" as henchmen of proxies of this power or that, along with temptations and offers from competing powers...

11th-level Adventures and Beyond

Having survived all else, the player characters should be ready to take real charge of their own lives. What happens now is more a matter of player desires and previous history in the campaign. Characters may become full-fledged proxies or attempt to found a barony of their own. One of them might try to become a factol and change the shape of the multiverse. Wizards might try to create their very own demiplanes in the Ethereal. It's even possible that some player characters might aspire to become lesser powers. In that case, they still have a long way to go and many adventures to accomplish, but the sheer opportunities before them should be very exciting.

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Dealing With Problems

Campaigns are like true love - the course of neither never did run smooth. Problems are going to occur because problem always occur, no matter how well managed the campaign. Most are the same things that plague every campaign: character feuds, lack of new ideas, too much magic, too much treasure, and so on. However, there are a few troubles that are particularly unique to a PLANESCAPE campaign.

The Size of the Multiverse

It bears repeating: The multiverse is a big place! Juggling literally several dozen universes can easily become more work than a DM can handle. There's lots of planes and lots of choices, so the quick solution is to arbitrarily limit them, which is what the gates, conduits, and portals are for. The DM controls all those things, so he or she can open and close areas of the planes as needed. If the characters aren't strong enough to handle an adventure on the Abyss, don't give them a doorway to the Abyss! If the DM hasn't prepared any details about Mount Celestia, then there needn't be any paths leading to it. When the DM and the player characters are ready, pathways can suddenly be found.

Even within a single plane, distances can be vast and appear unworkable. Getting from Glorium to Curst on foot looks like it would take forever (see the map of the Outlands), but it doesn't have to. First, days of travel can be compressed down to a single sen-tence: "You ride in a mystifying blur with the strange planar caravan for three weeks before reaching Curst." Second, the DM can always open more doors in Sigil, to conveniently zip the characters from one point to another. Remember, these transplanar shortcuts are meant to cut out the boring parts of any adventure, not to give the player characters an easy out!

The 'Feel' of the Campaign Setting

In the PLANESCAPE setting, attitude is tangible! Attitude requires more role-playing by both players and DMs. Sadly, some players either struggle miserably with or don't even bother to get into their roles. If they don't play the part, then a lot of what makes a PLANESCAPE game fun and interesting disappears.

First, don't fault the players when this happens. Role-playing starts with the DM. Make sure the tone - arrogance, cynicism, even the slang - is getting across. Role-play nonplayer characters with gusto and style. By seeing attitude in action, players will pick up on how the parts are supposed to be played. If a player still isn't getting it, though, encourage him to look at his choices of faction, class, race, and alignment. Sometimes a player picks these without fully understanding how to play the part. Most often the player grows into the role, but sometimes the elements just don't click. If there's a better choice, the DM should probably let the player switch. Sure it breaks the rules, but the DM's always got the right to do that, and gaming's a learning experience.

Sometimes players (and DMs) just don't understand role-playing. They've grasped the mechanics of dice rolling, character classes, spells, and all that, but not the leap of creating a part like an actor in a play or movie. A good DM can help these players along, and they'll get the hang of it sooner or later. Put the party in situations where they decide things based on their alignments and factions, situations where spells and weapons don't cut it. Remind them to think like Bleakers, Godsmen, Signers, Lawful Goods, or whatever. Get them to describe things their character might like and dislike. Gradually their choices will build into a part they can understand and play.

Mega-monster Bashing
They're gonna give him
the rope if he don't pay the music -
well, actually they won't
give him the rope;
they'll put
it around
his neck - except
he's got no neck,
so they might
have
to just give him the rope
instead - what kind
of music
was he listening
to, anyway?
- Nohut, a Xaositect,
at the trial of a friend

"Hey, the planes are the homes of the gods, really powerful fiends, and monsters like we can't imagine, so let's go out and kill them!"

This is a problem, berk. A PLANESCAPE campaign is not about beating up Thor and taking his job, or about eliminating every baatezu there is. It's not a power trip, where characters are supposed to fight the toughest, baddest, and biggest beings around. If the DM is running the campaign that way, he's missed the point. Go back and read the sections about tone and feel again.

'Course, the DM may be running a great campaign and still have players who are in the kill-everything-in-sight mode. It's hard to deal with - these types typically attack everyone they're supposed to talk with before a role-playing situation can develop. That's when it's time to use the arrogance and power of the planes, to put these leather-headed berks in their place. Bullying sods quickly draw the attention of hostile bashers all around them - when a body walks and talks too loud in a place where attitudes shape the universe, there's always challengers eager to put a body down. And no matter how big and bad the troublemakers are, there's going to be someone or something tougher around the next bend - especially in the planes, where the powers themselves are closer at hand than a berk might think. Remember, a greater power in its home territory can do anything the DM wants it to. When it comes right down to it, there's no way to win against one of these beings if the being really wants to win.

If the player characters are just a bit battle-happy, the best solution is to put them in situations where fighting and killing don't work. Their assignment might be to forge peace between the denizens of two good planes or to negotiate for the release of prisoners held by the baatezu. The DM should keep at this until they become accustomed to actually role-playing and not just rolling dice.

If the characters are really bloodthirsty and just won't change, there's yet another strategy: Perhaps the only thing more cruel than killing player characters is ignoring them. Put them in positions where their intended victims are either too powerful or too inaccessible to hurt. As the player characters fruitlessly strike out at their declared enemy, it merely yawns and leaves the area, in search of more interesting company. When they find they can't kill their enemy, can't even bother it with their best shots, the player characters will eventually have to look for other ways to get results. That just might push them into role-playing. It's a roundabout method, but players need to learn that their characters can't just kill everything in sight.

     

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Sigil and Beyond