This months blog carnival from VDonnut Valley has the topic of Other, Between, and Under – The Worlds Beyond - which matches to some ruminations I have been having on minor planar paths.

The key aspect of the minor planar ways is harmony or coherence - when the natural world has conditions that are coherent with whatever planar other-where, a thinness forms and a path can be traversed.

The minor planar ways are long known to the ordinary folk of the realm - people know how to get there, people know the hazards and people know that by far and away these are ways to be treated with caution and respect. For the most part, foot, barge or faithful donkey is far more predictable and reasonable and so most folk stick with those.

Our shapeshifting wormlike friends the psurlons. Telepathic, carrion-eaters, worshippers of the cthonic gods of the far-realm. Friends of the mindflayers, since they want brains and the psurlons eat everything else. The below was considered as an astral/wildspace table since they are more often found there than groundside.

Delightful AD&D era image by Brian Despain, found in Planescape Monstrous Compendium III

d20 Encounters in psurlon-space

I have been pondering the encounter table for travel on the Astral Sea and comparing it to the old encounter tables for the phlogiston from back in the day. The 5e one is all about running into things from across the planes - a good 30% chance of running into another ship but otherwise all planar travellers or monster encounters - one single site, no weather.

The old phlogiston table had a same chance of a ship but it had 40% of non critter things - space debris, planetoids and space phenomena which I think has been dropped a little too quickly from the current table.

So I saw a post on Reddit that was positing that there are lots of powers kicking around on the astral that are pretty much keeping their heads down and being quiet because of the dark forest theory that posits, if you start getting too loud then the terrible things out there in the dark will come and stomp you flat.

Astral map from Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

The big difference for this latest iteration of the astral is that it means travel within systems is relatively slow (even with Spelljamming speed, ditching off Toril of Realmspace out to the Astral boundary is 30 days) but travel between systems is 'DM fiat' officially, 'speed of thought' by the Lore and looking at our last dedicated astral resource (The Plane Above of 4e) travel across the Astral point to point takes d4 to 2d6 days - a range of 1-12 which is still quicker than getting in and out of most systems. For 3.5e in the Manual of the Planes these travel times were 0.5-21 days - so even then travel time between systems was typically shorter than getting out to the Astral in the first place.

Checking what is typical for some famed systems - from the last planet to the Astral in Realmspace is 32 days - but from the Toril itself, 62 days. For Greyhawk this is 40 days from the Spectre - but Oerth is a geo-centric system so you are *80 days* from the Astral boundary to actually landing a Spelljammer on Mordenkainens lawn. Krynnspace is a bit smaller - 20 days from the stellar islands to the astral boundary, 39 days to Krynn. I generated a pair of systems for my Light of Xaryxis campaign and those had 60 and *76* days from the outer planet to the Astral Boundary. With a typical Spelljammer air-capacity of 120 days that makes it a risky business in some places to do the combined crossing of two 'outer systems' in a voyage - out from your start system - crossing the astral needs no air - then in at your destination.

All this suggests connecting Astral realms is simple enough but projecting power into systems is harder; suggesting you might have Astral based realms and powers who leave systems to themselves. Treating the Astral as an ocean and the spheres of wildspace as 'landmasses' seems broadly appropriate. However, almost all the 'landmasses' you come to on the astral sea have barren coastlines with all the interesting stuff in deep interior. The big difference between our perception of 'space is the high ground' from sci-fi is that we have three bits
- the astral which is really easy to traverse, if chaotic in how long it might take
- the wildspace 'expanse' between the astral boundary and any planets
- the various planets

Typical random rolled star-system

Given the fore-grounding of the githyanki presence on the Astral over the past couple of editions and in Baldurs Gate 3 - and given the new structure of the multiverse with all material plane systems floating as bubbles in the Astral, this makes them the 'universal' power - omnipresent but not omnipotent.

Going with 'Activities on the Astral' from 2e 'A Guide to the Astral Plane' we have explorers kicking about and hunting expeditions, essence mining on some select few dead gods and lots of attention to military patrols and campaigns. The primary foes for all this military activity are the githzerai and the illithids.

I thought a good model for this would be the Spanish in the Age of Piracy, an empire where reach has exceeded grasp - claiming all the astral but being a finite, if mighty, power. For inspiration, see the Spanish as portrayed in Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides. They seem like a decent model - relatively competent, fanatical, directed on religious grounds by a distant leader acting through devoted agents, lots of resources where they bring them to bear - a fearsome enough threat.

If we run with this analogy - mostly to get a sense of what the 'pulse' of the Empire is when things are just ticking along then we have a few parallels and a few differences.

Parallels
Treasure galleons - with Vlaakith on her throne serving as the draw for essence from scattered dead gods or booty from raids and conquests by her faithful - use all your treasure fleet tropes - incredibly valuable, very well guarded
Lost treasures - psychic storms, astral dreadnaughts, all these are hazards that could wreck an astral skiff and then roaming colour pools could see it cast somewhere odd on the planes
Treasure maps - grizzled githyanki survivors clawing their way back from being stranded on some Vlaakith-forsaken prime with a map of where their ship went down
A few big hammers - become enough of a nuisance and you will have nightmarish resources sent after you but conversely power is highly centralised and there are mostly bigger fish to fry
Not enough hands - For my own Spelljammer campaign I had my party set up with Letters of Marque to patrol/investigate various doings in the far flung reaches of the astral - from the Githyanki point of view they have regions of the astral that are not of critical interest to Vlaakith and so lightly held, where the local commanders need to draw on mercenary crews or wandering adventurers to keep tabs on things.
Hot and cold politics - depending on whether an envoy from the crown is present, those present in whatever far-flung outpost will indulge in less back stabbing for personal gain, plenty of 'more righteous than thou' front stabbing perceived weakness in the face of Vlaakiths will. Should an envoy with direct instructions from the lich queen arrive, people will fall in line

Differences
Hunting (astral-whaling) - long haul hunting voyages are a couple of centuries later strictly, but they are still age of sail so they work
Conquest of the locals - most sources talking about the githyanki make no mention of non-githyanki; implying they wipe out or drive off anyone they run into when they take new territories

tl:dr; chunky, gorgeous book - great ideas, somewhat heavy to prep but has made it to my table where lots of other stuff has not

I spotted this on Kickstarter and tagged it as a kind of Spelljammer substitute - it was marketed as Voyage Across the Astral, Adventures Across the Starlight Arcana Astral Plane - I read that as something in the "Planejammer" space and was definitely on board for what I didn't get from Spelljammer - ship combat and actual planets to go to. With this coming out of Krakow, Poland I was also happy to support my local game developers.

Art by Joanna 'Dusky Cat' Trzesniewska

First impression of Starlight Arcana is that it is a huge chonky book. About an eighth is the setting crunch, another eighth are the campaign mechanics, a third is the three acts of the campaign and then the back half-ish is the bestiary. It should probably be best conceptualised as a campaign book that comes with its own setting, bespoke mechanics and companion bestiary.

It is a gorgeous book, the artwork and production values throughout are very very nice. This is a beautiful piece of kit with some great work in here. There is a tarot-themed sorcerer and there was a whole tarot deck with campaign appropriate art as part of the kickstarter. The tarot is also used for a tarot-driven divining of the fates and implementation of game effects while adventuring across planets in the sandbox part of the campaign. I like the idea but my shelves groan with tarot decks so I could not justify getting this one, even if beautiful.

Reference d20 for scale

There is a lot of content in here, that maybe could have benefited from a grizzled editor snarling 'kill your darlings' at the writers. The layout is two columns per page for most of the first half of the book, the bestiary varies from two column/two monster to single monster/stat block per page. Comparing it to something else recent - 5e Spelljammer - you get more for your page count - smaller margins, smaller font, more words on a two page spread. I spotted a couple of typos but overall for a first publication out of a new outfit, pretty damn good. I might have liked things boiled down more in OSR style but stylistically it cleaves to 5e house style.

This months RPG Blog Carnival comes from Beneath Foreign Planets with the prompt WORDS! Etymology, Onomatology and Linguistics.

I have shied away from using language too heavily in world-building because I have not had much luck getting people to follow up on cues tied to language - the base assumption being that names, words, places and the like are the outputs of generic fantasyland slush and not actually backed by anything meaningful and thus not worth digging deeply into.

However, if I was to weave language into a setting more deeply a thread I would follow is the effect of connection to gods and to the planes. These provide a common seeding, almost a stabilising effect across settings - particularly with some groups (elves in particular) having extra-planar populations like eladrin and shadar-kai.

The current implied D&D setting has a lot of planar interaction - if I take a look at the players that pass across my open tables we have a lot of tieflings, genasi, aasimar and the operating assumption most people have coming to table is that these things are unremarkably common.

One would assume this understanding of 'the planes are out there' would lead to a much more finer grained to say 'of planar origin' with the classic 'Irish have a lot of words for rain' higher fidelity around more common aspects.

One line to take would be that this make planar things unworthy of comment, so ordinary as to not need specific words. The other line to take would be that familiarity would be enough that common folk about your setting would have at least passing familiarity with planar effects.

A couple of ways that this could manifest:

tl:dr; a useful toolkit on making lawful good celestials interesting to play, as NPCs and as adversaries for adventurers.

From Sven Truckenbrodt, someone I've been following a while (see Wolpertinger, Wererat - Well!) we get a supplement talking about celestials and how to make them adversaries and/or use them to drive adventures. I am always keen to read into the topic because it is indeed a tricky one to address. The Lawful Good Seven Heavens are hard to pry adventure out of - the place is a fortress crammed with angels, what is an adventurers angle? The broader question of how to generate adventure on the good side of the upper planes can be a tricky one and this is a good delve into the residents to try and answer that.

Cover by WarmTail

First impression - good art, nice design, an interesting reds and golds general palette which is different to the usual celestial white and blue one might expect. It works well here.

tl:dr; surprisingly good return to the planes, anchored around what looks like a fun campaign.

So I threw in my order for this back in the late spring and I've been paying little attention to the hype since. I was going to be getting this no matter what - all I did do was look back at the old Planescape Core Set (AD&D, 1994) to be able to compare what we got then and now. My expectations were rock bottom after Spelljammer, I was expecting a hack job content-wise so I guess they were set up for success from that angle.

Cover by Tony diTerlizzi

First impression - gorgeous art - I expected no less, especially since I heard diTerlizzi was back on board. It is a slightly softer style than his harder edged 90's stuff - I can see the path through childrens literature such as the Spiderwick Chronicles to get here - keeping the weird but sanding off some of the sharper edges. His Lady of Pain looks a lot less arbitrarily lethal than the one on the main covers and she should be terrifying. Maps and layout are good, this is WotC, those things should be taken for granted. Stylistically there is less 'these places are inherently dangerous' than the previous edition, there is a bit more Bond-esque 'heists and tension against fabulous backdrops' style from the art - more glorious, less grim.

One odd thing though is the weird smell, enough that even the in-house testing team commented on it. Normally cracking the book and taking a deep breath is one of the nice parts of getting a book not a pdf but in this case I'm getting a touch of a headache from having the things sitting open in front of me.

All contents of the slipcase, art by Tony diTerlizzi

So what is all this stuff you get in the slipcase?

tl:dr; talking Planescape, the 800lb gorilla of planar settings on the eve of its re-issue. Factions are pitched hard but there is so much more in here.

Planescape is coming back this October and I wanted to take a look at what we got before to refresh our memories before that. So credentials - I was known as a Planescape GM for most of my 2e/3e time. This box set was bought on holiday in Italy, I saw it in a shop after having read about it in Dragon and persuaded my parents to get it for me. I was riveted from that point on.

What actually lives in my Planescape box after ~ 25 years

The books themselves are gorgeous, filled with DiTerlizzi art in its slightly fiercer whimsical incarnation. I think a major part of the setting appeal was the world portrayed through the art.

I picked up most of the major Planescape releases bar the adventures and as you can see the bestiaries from all the sets together with the Guide to the Outlands migrated into the main box over time. All the maps ended up in the Outlands box - I am sure I had good reasons at the time. That box has moved ~ eight cities., five countries, two continents. The saddle stitching used has gotten a bit ragged in places but mostly has held - I think only one sheet has come off in all this time.

Cards on the table, I got a ton of use out of this. I was known for most of the 90's/00's as a Planescape DM. I had a home game, then I got this box and it became a Planescape game. I ran Planescape in college, I ran a play-by-text campaign shortly afterward. I got a *lot* of use from the setting. Let us come back to this after a cold eyes review of what was *actually* in the box.

I mentioned a while back that I think there is a trick missing in approaches to the lower planes and another idea has been scratching at my mind. Following Grumpy Wizards steer - if we want it done, we'll have to do it ourselves.

This is one that builds out from the infernal war-machines of Descent into Avernus, nods to some of the other appearances of huge, awful war-constructs that appear through-out Planescape lore (the Ships of Chaos from "In the Abyss", the many mentions of big ruined war machines through out the Blood War lore, etc.) Our core campaign is going to be hex-crawling the Plane of Infinite Portals, juggling wear-and-tear on the War Engine and picking the battles to fight in the deep Abyss

Excerpt from the poster map in Planes of Chaos, by Robert Lazzaretti

The key concept on this is that the party gets sent on a ground level planar run with an infernal engine out of the Nine Hells and off on some mission. The campaign conceit is that you are starting as weaker characters in a powerful machine, and would expect to get more powerful (levelling up) as your machine is battered to pieces beneath you. The trick will be to keep the thing running long enough to get you far enough back out that you can hike home.

Strictly speaking this would be a 'Planejammer' hybrid rather than true Planescape going by our grid but never mind. Parts of this would be to allow a tour of the truly awful parts of the planes, unsurvivable unless you are buttoned up in a dread engine of the Blood War. Parts of this would be to give a big, charismatic vessel that would not be easily replaceable - they get one and have to manage it.

tl:dr; a zines of planes, full of interesting variety from the many contributors. Add a few to any game or form a feywild/shadowfell campaign from all of them

Backed this one by Gnome Mage Games on Kickstarter looking for some planar action, something a little different. I had been tracking Fernando Salvaterra through his hex-art and that lead me to this one - pitched as "loosely connected fantasy demiplanes are all that's left of a fractured multiverse" for Those Who Wander and 5e systems. The various contributors of the individual planes were a who's-who of interesting creators so this whole effort harkened back to some of the great works of the 2010's OSR like Petty Gods.

Cover design by Joshua Mendenhall with art by Fernando Salvaterra

What we get is an 80 page book that covers 15 demiplanes and 6 pocket planes await in this original fantasy campaign setting." Each demiplane is a fragment of reality from a multiverse that shattered - each ranging from dungeon-sized to a few thousand square miles at most. These are all connected by interplanar gates to allow marvel-seekers to pursue adventure across these reality splinters.

tl:dr; a great, highly polished planar supplement crammed with locations and finished with two adventures to let you bring them to the table.

We have long standing form here for planar supplements - when I saw Monte Cook kickstart Path of the Planebreaker it was a 'take my money moment'. I went in hard on early Numenera and the Strange hoping for what I finally got in this book. I am a bit behind the curve on this as I was waiting for the Bestiary to become available so I'd only get walloped by shipping the once. Finally, all is here.

The premise of the book/setting is that the mysterious moon the Planebreaker smashes through the boundaries between planes and creates a link that can be traversed by those who know the art of it. The book is about the places so connected and the people who know how to walk this path - giving you all need for a planar campaign.

A chunky book, gorgeous production quality, a great distinct aesthetic to it - excellent stuff. We have a tour-de-force of MCG standard indexing, cross-referencing, world-building through random tables, all the good stuff. Details throughout like DCs for the checks to know parts of the text are woven in making it all very easy to use. This is a very high gloss production, obviously MCG in a groove, delivering solidly into an area of expertise. Just details like the chapter striping on the outside edge that lets you find a section while the book is closed are really handy touches of polist. I have one or two personal preferences that aren't aligned with how MCG does things but the quality of the stuff that I do like is really excellent. It has been a long while since I read through an RPG supplement this big with such sustained interest.

So what is all this stuff you get in the book?

This is a response to Monsters and Manuals WizardKnighting Planescape - where he posits an alternative Planescape with mechanics better reflecting the ability and imperative to shape the planes.

Read it all, it is good stuff, but the relevant piece for this is "In Planescape, one of the idealised things that PCs are supposed to be doing - it is suggested - is reshaping the planes through their actions [or] by acting in the name of a God (although the writers called these 'Powers') of one kind or another, they can literally physically enlarge his or her sphere of influence. And, of course, the PCs can themselves aspire to ascend to Godhood and carve out a realm of their own, individually or collectively. [...] There is an unwritten but much better version of Planescape out there in the ether, in which PCs' stats are largely to do with belief and values, and they roll against these stats in order to effect change in their surroundings."

This is a very interesting take - I agree with the critique in that the setting and a bunch of the adventures made it clear that such things should be happening - Recruiters in Well of Worlds is about exactly that. Sig

My immediate reaction to 'other stats about belief and values' is to think of Spire/Heart. There Dark Elfs start a revolution with all the different stats like wealth, blood, magic to stress to get things done. For this ether-Planescape it could be belief (strength thereof), alignment, might, whatever - a bunch of stats that would fit to different circumstances to stress/flex. Playing Spire for me it took a lot to get away from 'I hit it' to 'stress silver to just pay the guy to look the other way' but once I got into the groove it gave a much better sense of getting things done without going blades drawn all the time.

Spire had stats of -
Blood: Physical damage and exhaustion.
Mind: Mental stress, instability and insanity.
Silver: Loss of money or resources.
Shadow: Loss of secrecy, damage to cover identities, police and government attention.
Reputation: Loss of social standing in a group or community.

I like the range there, lots of different ways you can get burnt, which I would like to flip to become what are the many ways that one can mystically affect the planes. Sig, City of Blades is nominally a Blades in the Dark refit of Sigil that is kind of the right system in kind of the right setting but is not looking to achieve the effects we want - it does have the stress system but it is focused on personal prowess, kinetic action and the like - not this more cosmic, warping of realms idea.

My initial thoughts are on a model with axis of matter/mind and dominating/persuasive:
Strength of Will = push through resistance, shape the stuff of a place around you like a cloak
Arcane Cunning = twist to shape, recognise the threads of fate and pluck and tease them to your preference
Belief = resonance, pull others to your vision, be as a beacon
Dreamworking = envision the thing and convince others they perceive it too

Continuing thoughts on how to make the inhabitants of neighbouring planes feel distinct, following a prompting comment from the Lower Planes post. Setting up for a new Planescape campaign I was putting some thought into how to make the inhabitants of the Lower Planes feel different one from the other. There is already a good distinctiveness between the terrains of the different levels of the different planes and while it is fine if the many celestials feel similar wherever you run into them the general inhabitants of the planes should have something to differentiate them.

For the upper planes the challenge is slightly different in that you are probably not here to just murder the locals so that means there is no adventure to be had, right? Well, probably not but you do need to work a little harder to set up adventures that make sense. Following on from our previous example, each of the upper planes should best typify some virtue though none of these will be exclusive to that plane.

The key point of upper planes is concern for and helping others - not the selfishness of the lower planes - and a high trust of each other. This may not extend to outsiders but amongst one another the denizens of the upper planes are living in a high-trust society. For outsiders there can be problems - Mount Celestia is unclimbable by those who do not abide by its strictures - but assuming that the locals spend most of their time interacting with each other, these aspects will govern their outlook and attitudes.

This means that whenever outsiders get roped in, it has to be some problem that either slipped under the radar of the locals, is something so weird that they cannot deal with or is something that the locals do not recognise as a problem. This last is especially high risk as this has a high risk of the adventuring interlopers slotting into the role of extraplanar reavers and drawing a robust response with every local turning against them.

Going plane by plane
Arcadia - a place of harmony and service of the greater good. Everyone is working in their assigned way for the greater good of all. The Needs of the Many are held as a cardinal virtue. The system is held as good because good people are working within the system. Ones role is strictly delineated and life is highly predictable and this is all held as good.
Mount Celestia - someone has to do it, that someone is us. The beacon of justice tempered by mercy, Celestians see their way as the best way, good and ordered, and if anyone else thinks differently they are wrong (mistaken in the case of other good entities, dangerous or maliciously wrong in the case of others). The team works, with the rules adjusted where the letter would violate the spirit. Most engaged with the rest of the outer planes, certainly in awareness, though the sheer scale of the task of bringing justice to the multiverse has led to a tendency for the perfect to become the enemy of the good and what actions happen not making all that much of a dent.
Bytopia - doing what you can so that all may have what they need, indulging in the pleasure of an honest days work for a just reward. Work in good cheer, help from the neighbours and everyone pitching in are the hallmarks of Bytopia. Can also manifest in a slightly Pleasantville style approach of everyone making assumptions that you will fall in with their plans. At its best, all for one and one for all, with people helping selflessly to overcome your problems. The proactive problem solving can come across as intrusive to outsiders.
Elysium - where rest has been earned and one need only have faith that all will be well. The denizens here lived a good life and have come to their reward in the hereafter. The attitude here is acknowledging your concern but seeing it as just another cycle. They fought their demons in their time, all this has been seen before. Can come across as complacent or patronising because your urgent concerns are tiny against eternity. The local celestial guardians, the Guardinals, are likely to firmly send you away if you disturb the locals earned peace too much. Everyone should care, but because this is a balance point it can stall into 'be at peace' without any impetus to act.
Beastlands - harmony with nature. The locals attitude is take only what you need, leave as light a trace as you can, be generous with what you have, welcome the stranger. The rules are the changing of the seasons, the cycles of life. The locals will be happy to host you, to welcome the respectful to their campfires but they will be hard to persuade that the frantic flailings of most civilizations are worth concern. The great cycle of nature will turn and all will return to the wilderness in good time.
Arborea - following your heart, where passions reign. The locals are ruled by passions greater than themselves, joys, sorrows, they wear their hearts on their sleeves and act upon it. Fast friends but also demanding. Words are not as important as people but balancing the needs and wants of many people absorbs a great deal of energy. At best this is spontaneous, joyful living, however everyone can be individually well intentioned but the result can be a mess that noone wanted, so getting anything done can involving going around in circles and a lot of cat herding.
Ysgard - freedom and courage are held highly. They welcome any to their hearth but respect must be earned to get beyond the feast-and-tales level. The telling of tales is held in high regard, but of the valour of heroes not the bloody grind of the uncaring battlefield. Fighting the good fight is the highest virtue; with a strong bias to action and seizing the day to live gloriously. Quickest to action, trusting in their prowess and courage to win the day, trying to plan with Ysgardians is like trying to restrain an avalanche.

Thinking up scenarios to showcase a planes aspects and the attitudes of the inhabitants we could suggest some of the following:

Arcadia - the plane of harmony, participating in the great good could have some kind of puzzle about figuring out how to get to where you need to go by learning timetables and patterns - a maze but in time - where the hazards are all delays. Something akin to around the world in 80 days?

Mount Celestia - the Bastion of Justice - here you will have to contend with navigating the heavy-handed locals who will want to know what you are up to, where you are going and why they should let you do anything on their plane. Expect to have to convince a number of powerful entities and frame all your actions in how they contribute to furthering Law and Good in the multiverse.

Bytopia - land of collective endeavour and freedom of opportunity - noone is an island, so expect the locals to help, even without you asking. The challenge becomes managing the locals all getting involved - if you are here to take something, you may need to trade or earn your right to take it after they help you get it.

Elysium - here the challenge is getting somewhere without getting mired in the many, many momentum sinks. Do not eat of the lotus, nor join the meditation circle, nor take the offers to lay down your cares. You have a mission! Like threading your way through a maze of traps but these traps are unending hospitality and the loss of all impetus.

Beastlands - here hunter becomes the hunted. Stalk a predator on their own terrain, or traverse the hunting grounds of something big to get where you need to go. An example I ran can be found here.

Arborea - expect a quest in the Olympic tradition, something involving conquering difficult odds. You may be able to get help to come along with you but the great deeds will need to be yours. Expect the opposition to be those roused to passions and acting counter to you - for love, glory, the best of reasons. A quick calm chat would probably solve things but this will be moving far too fast already.

Ysgard - quests and raids, with honor at stake. You will need to prove your worthiness for passage or assistance and expect the locals to be very territorial. After all, any Ysgardian that falls in battle wakes again at the following dawn - death here holds no fear for them, so violence often wins out over patience.

Third of the one-shots visiting the planes (see Great Planar Scavenger Hunt) and trying to improve my one-shots from feedback on the Mechanus jaunt and the Beastlands hunt.

Inspiration was to do a battlefield crawl as outlined in Burgs & Baliffs Warfare Too article Battlefield Events - Reviewed here. I wanted to try a combat grind, something where there was long, low intensity combat and no chance to rest. The hordes of goblins, orcs and hobgoblins loose on the battlefield were not going to be an individually mortal threat but in their mass maybe?

The core piece of the Battlefield Events piece is that you get into an encounter then you have d6+2 rounds before the next bunch rolls over you. Given that the received wisdom is that on average a party of PC's is going to crush peer foes in ~ 3 rounds I wanted to see how this played out in practice.

Second of the one-shots visiting the planes (see Great Planar Scavenger Hunt) and trying to improve my one-shots from feedback on the Mechanus jaunt.

The pre-game brief was: "elves are dying, you are one who has answered a call for aid by the local temples trying to do something about it - whether for coin, glory or favours I leave to you. Only steer at this point is
- build someone who can work as part of an adventuring band
- you will be venturing out onto the planes, far from your networks

Build classic adventurers of whatever stripe, going to run 5e, start at level 3. This is going to be more puzzles and exploration than high crunch combat."

** Inspiration

This was inspired by 'Hunting Displacer Beasts' by Dael Kingsmill, which is perfectly on theme for the 'hunter becomes the hunted' aspect of the Beastlands. I watched through the video a couple of times, took some notes for the systems then figured out how to get a nice lead in to the core 'grid hunt' set piece. The stats for the original 'Night Beast' can be found on GM Binder. u/NathanKellen also had a go at this, also adapted it and did a big write up on r/MonarchsFactory.

The set up I went with was that long ago a seelie courtier had a pet tiger with an icon on its collar made of wood from this lost elven world at the heart of this campaign. When the seelie court visited the Beastlands the tiger broke free and ran off into the forests of Brux, the layer of eternal twilight. All traces of this wood are precious so our heroes are sent to track down the remains of this tiger.

Since we are about to receive a new planar nexus in June, this is a round-up of various variant takes on the planes I have found over time (plus resources for Planescape itself at the bottom).

A pair of magnificent planar cosmology variations for your sages to argue over - Hexian cosmologies by Bearded Devil and Planescape variations by Locheil.

Scrap Princess did an extended take on the planes in 'Planescrap' with a lot of great stuff in there including a generator for Sigil in "Planes scape some tables for Sigil (Scrawled over mix)".

This post on settings that deal with the underworld, Hell, or the afterlife to some degree by Ynas Midgard.

Mystara's Plane of Fire with Map on the Piazza.org.

u/Insanely_Lucid has worked up a fantastic map of the elemental plane of fire in Inkarnate

First of what I hope will be a couple of one-shots visiting the planes (see Great Planar Scavenger Hunt) I also took this as a personal project to get better at running one-shots. My natural home is long run campaigns so there were a couple of learnings for me in this.

The pre-game brief was: "elves are dying, you are one who has answered a call for aid by the local temples trying to do something about it - whether for coin, glory or favours I leave to you. Only steer I would give at this point is
- build someone who can work as part of an adventuring band - no lone wolves
- you will be venturing out onto the planes so will be far from your networks - a character who's whole schtick is their networks will likely be cut off from those
Build classic adventurers of whatever stripe, going to run 5e, start at level 3. This is going to be more puzzles and exploration than high crunch combat."

The puzzle, that they needed to figure out was that the thing, a long forgotten remnant from a lost elf world, was going to be crushed in the turning of the gears of Mechanus. The players would get a 128 cog 'local atlas' list and then eliminate various places the thing could not be and arrive with a singular location. I hoped that the process of elimination would allow exploration of the nature of Mechanus and flex the unique conditions of the plane.

I built this as a hex-crawl to give lots of freedom to discover new things. The players got an opening clue, an oracular vision that the thing they sought was going to be lost in 30 days.

Some sample clues I thought up:
Clue 1: access is lost abruptly, which eliminates all the slow turning cogs (target cog must be one within an escapement group, moving suddenly at intervals).
Clue 2: the thing is still here, so is on a cog which has a long turning cycle - eliminating any cogs that have cycled within the time frame since the item was lost.
Clue 3: it is on a cog unoccupied by locals - modrons, formians and inevitables all fully adapt the cogs the occupy, consume or use everything they find.
Clue 4: the thing is still accessible today and therefore is not on a cog with a climate that would prevent decay - either hot/dry or very cold or bare metal.

Mindful of the three-clue rule, I tried to make sure that there were multiple routes to get to the same answers.
- players thinking it through themselves
- interviewing locals for how things work around here
- accessing local observatories or archives to do some research
- doing observations of the cogs

** What worked well:
- Captured the flavour of Mechanus, the gears, the strange terrain, the 'not in Kansas any more' side. I think those that participated really felt they got a jaunt to elsewhere. The instant nightfall, instant dawn shift was a good part of that.
- The few mechanics I threw in to make the place feel different worked well - checks to cross the between gears and average damage in combat.
- The mission / central puzzle was interesting enough that it kept folk engaged and let them explore the environment.
- Great fun role-playing was had; two completely different flavours from the pair of core groups that went through.
- Feedback on the NPCs was good, interesting and reflected the locale well.
- The different groups founds lots of different ways to eventually get to the answer which showed it did not bottleneck too badly anywhere.

** What needed improvement
- I tightened up the launch significantly, the first run burned a chunk of time getting to 'boots on the ground' which was my fault. They got background briefing and 'why this matters' flavour which is good for long-form campaigns, needs to be skipped for one-shots. Start in media res - "you step out of the gate. The reason you are here is..."
- Need to clear more time so be ruthless with interactions. The flip-side of having fun with NPCs is recognising when the interaction is no longer giving them fresh info or moving things along. At that point zoom back out and wrap it up, otherwise it can be a time burn that leaves you squeezed later on.
- Kill random encounter tables - they were good sources of flavour, great for multi-session crawls, great for me getting my head around the setting, not good for one-shot format. You can see the Mechanus Encounters table I created here.
- Better clue hand-outs to really highlight critical information.
- Inject energy with combat, hazards as needed. Particularly with a puzzler, if the players get stumped you can either feed them the answer which doesn't feel great or kick them into a different activity which ramps up the energy but also sets their minds working on something else. When they return to 'what were we doing?' after the combat then someones subconscious will likely have some fresh thoughts to get them going

Group 1 - In House Testing Team: Ran the theory with a stats generated average group of nameless adventurers led by a Cleric of Kord

Group 2 - Scholars and seekers
Quogon - tortle cleric of twilight
Nar Norsa - firbolg druid
Jan - dwarf ranger
Lykoe Errie - high elf Warlock
Ivy - eladrin Oath of the Ancient Paladin

Group 3 - Planars
Parvina Loren - Human Barbarian
Kayleigh Evendur - Valkerie Paladin from Ysgard
Dak'hal - Githzerai Monk from Limbo
Leddwi - Gnome Warlock (Celestrial patron)
Zanna "Muffins" Tusen d'Sivis - Gnome Druid

** Most favoured moments:
- The Scholars, independently came up with a pair of wise old scholars, a scout for hire and a pair of lore-hunting elves - when these seekers of knowledge ran into some of the sages that dwelled in Mechanus there was a wonderful meeting of minds and deep discussions
- When the Scholars stepped out and caught sight of the skyful of gears for the first time, there was a beautiful OC table-wide in-draw of breath and an IC flask of hard liquor was handed around
- When the planars figured out that their attacks were doing average damage every time - "I hate it but I love it"
- The Planars, unaware the mission would be Mechanus, cooked up the most chaotic bunch possible, hailing from Limbo, Ysgard and other points on the opposite side of the Great Ring. The table masterfully played them *hating* the place, with laser-tight mission focus so they could get the hell out and go home.
- Both groups like the sites they ran into - these are written up in the Hinter-Cog sites post.
- The Guvnors gravity clipper: every party, given the choice between trekking out to the cog once it was identified or taking the scary short cut of a ride on the Guvnor experimental gravity clipper took the ride. This was fun, recognising that a gravity sling-shot around the flat, double-sided gravity of the cogs that are sometimes at angles to one another would be a both something fanatical mathematicians would try to master and would be nerve wracking to put in practice.
- I was pleased the players came up with an in-hindsight obvious question of 'which cogs will complete a turn soon' (compared to my thought of which ones have not completed a turn yet. This let them narrow down a shortlist and skip another filter.

So, despite some squeaky moments and sessions ending in a rushed montage once the objective had been found, I count these as success - people got to see Mechanus and it was fun.

tl;dr: things you can run into on the move in Mechanus. Tends more towards chaotic than the sites because they keep on the move.

Inspired by the old Monstrous Compendium II, the 3.5e Manual of the Planes and boosted by a sweep up of creatures that are lawful. Use these as the wandering component between hinter-cog sites described previously.

Roll 3d10