Is Planescape Worth It? - The Lazy RPG Talk Show

[@Chardansearavitriol]

Bigby's Big Book of Big Boys 😂

[@jacobvardy]

It's what they started calling it on the EnWorld podcast. And I put it on my random loot table as an unreliable text :)

[@telarr9164]

I like the idea of "book lice" as well. No wonder WOTC are panicking!!

[@sowingtheseed]

Amen to Eberron. It’s both a full and balanced campaign guide. I have to think WotC said they’ll never give away that much for that little. What I don’t think they realize is that I bought a lot of WotC products because of how good Eberron is.

[@troyschnierer2940]

Absolutely on the Eberron book. There is just so much usable stuff in there. You read through and can just picture a myriad of different adventure possibilities. The writer's recognised the things you need and don't load up on too much detail. Enough to get you going with a direction but not too much that you feel you need to keep referring back. I received Spelljammer for Christmas and it couldn't have been a more different feeling. I was left wondering... How am I going to craft my own adventures with this? Where are the tools to support my campaign, outside of the provided adventure?

[@infernoeagles5812]

That’s because Keith baker is the goat

[@sowingtheseed]

@@troyschnierer2940 Precisely. That is the range of WotC products. I think the Magic the Gathering crossovers are an interesting moment to see Wizards play with the balance of what you describe. I keep hearing great things about Ravnica but haven’t checked it out. Theros reminds me a lot of Eberron but lacks the lived-in feel that Baker develops. Strixhaven has the opposite issue. It’s lived-in but doesn’t have many tools for building it out. With WotC owning D&D and MtG, they had twice the incentive to get the crossovers right. So it becomes an interesting case study in how WotC thinks about what makes for a good product.

[@sowingtheseed]

@@infernoeagles5812 Definitely among the best to ever do it.

[@brettyoung4825]

I'll say up front that I haven't extensively looked at the Ravnica book. But the biggest different with the Ravnica sourcebook and Eberron RftLW is the "lived in" feel. Ravnica has NO backstory. There is no history of the setting anywhere in the book. Possibly one line, which is something like "for thousands of years Ravnica has been a planet-sized city with these factions". And that's not deep enough for me to be compelling in a way that the Eberron setting, as built out by Keith and others over time, is.@@sowingtheseed

[@nawidayobi]

Hey Mike! I always preferred OSR products because they always have smaller word counts for the same amount of content. I love the Shadowdark RPG book for that reason. If we keep saying "theres not enough words in here" then they'll put more words in, but it'll just make it harder to get to the original words that mattered. I will always prefer less padding. I think instead of "bigger", we can use "useful", "organized", "deep", "actionable", or any other set of adjectives that describe quality over quantity.

[@condomsurlatete]

I also prefer terse, dense text in RPGs; it's easier to assimilate. However, if the page count is low and the writing style verbose then you do get less gameable content at the table. WotC writing style can't be described as terse, so a low page count does usually mean less content. Terse and dense examples are stuff like Electric Bastionland or Thousand Thousand Islands.

[@toddgrx]

@40:12… 🎵 I like big books and I cannot lie 🎶

[@MavenofPinetree]

You have the stunning ability to cover topics that I have been wondering how to research and haven't gotten to yet just as I am considering how I wish I had time to figure them out! Thank you so much! Your patreon has the most direct value of the four TTRPG ones I subscribe to. Thank you for all you do!

[@SlyFlourish]

Wow, thank you!

[@Throgmoyd]

Hi Mike - another splendid weekly podcast (thank you). WRT: Music, I agree that the fewest number of playlists you can get away with makes life easier. There are so many people out there producing free music, ambience and sound effects. You can spend a lifetime exploring that particular rabbit hole (never mind game music, film & TV music, classical, etc). One thing though - I tend to have a handful of playlists as follows: Travel, Rest, Exploration (akin to your suspense) and Combat. However, I try and vary the music dependent on the 'theme' of the adventure. You wouldn't necessarily want the same playlists for 'Tomb of Annihilation' as you would for 'Rime of the Frostmaiden', or an adventure set in a desert region. Thus, I ended up with four playlists (Travel, Rest, Exploration & Combat) but x several different themes: classic fantasy, desert, jungle, arctic, underdark, high seas and underwater. One could add Feywild, Spelljammer and other themes but so far my campaigns have yet to dwell too long on those or other themes. Once your playlists are curated, you're good to go, whatever the setting. A bit of work up front - but thereafter most definitely 'LAZY'! ;-)

[@Malthan]

I overall like the new Planescape (and love the art!), but the value really hangs on wanting to run the adventure. Most of all I'm excited, since Planescape coming out means a weave of 3rd party content and maps for it, which will make running homebrew campaigns much easier. As for the adventure, personally I like the gimmicks, they make it stand out from the other published adventures. I feel it can work out great, but depends on having the right players to run it with, ones that won't mind being given a brand new character on the spot and potentially discovering it's past while playing. It also feels like a campaign that can be run pretty quickly, and let player experience higher levels. Like you mentioned in quite a few of the towns the quests there are completly optional to fulfilling the main objective, so it's very reasy to adjust the pacing and legth of the campaign. One weird thing is the combats feel really easy, there's very rarely more than 2 opponents at the same time, which is doubly bizzare considering the campaign gimmick should be a perfect reason for Wizards to go all out making deadly fight designs.

[@edmundaubrey322]

Pillars of Eternity and it's sequel Deadfire has some really nice music relaxing and atmospheric music as well. Also the Banner Saga trilogy has some fantastic tracks for combat and nordic suspensfulness :)

[@badgerburns521]

Mike Another helpful video, we tried music on discord when covid hit the UK. I used the Discord main client for the group chat and Discord beta for the music streaming. It allowed players to have the music at a custom level via their own discord client. Generally there was little enthusiasm though and it interest in it petered off. Recently they have been asking for more so this was a very timely video for me. Thank you!

[@ShiniesAreCool]

The "waking up with amnesia" thing Planescape: Torment did was very much linked to it being a CRPG rather than a traditional tabletop RPG. In a tabletop game, you can have any history you want and the DM can work with it, but a CRPG just doesn't have that liberty. Understanding that limitation, Torment (and its finest heir, Disco Elysium) had the player character awaken without memory, allowing them to slowly discover who they were while giving them the freedom to choose who they become. Did the writers of this adventure understand that, or just grab a trope of a beloved classic without considering the context?

[@mackemdale]

I'm going to get so much value from the DM screen pages. Thank you, Mike!

[@joshuabrown-clay4858]

About the low-stakes adventures bit, this same feeling is also prevalent in the literary world and, because of this, cozy fantasy and cozy sci fi are now genres. Check out Legends and Lattes or The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet for great examples. I agree, low stakes can be fun, funny and emotional when interjected in!

[@shasta_creates]

Something about music I want to add; I have a "title song" that'll I'll play when we're kicking the game off. In a previous campaign, it was "A New Quest" by Magic Sword, and now it's "Omni" also by Magic Sword. It's just one more way to get the players in the RP headspace, and it adds some nice energy to starting the game.

[@Zr0din]

Title song... adding that one! Great idea!

[@oscargarciahinde4247]

I do this too! When the Baldurs Gate 2 theme begins my players know the time has come.

[@digitaljanus]

Mine is "Dragon Tales" by Butterfly Tea. Which is a serial-numbers-filed-off version of the OP for the anime Fairy Tail, but which I prefer to the Fairy Tail theme. But Magic Sword is awesome, you have some great picks there!

[@merck__]

I remember a recent wotc survey asking if people would buy monsters for $5-15 or so and how often they'd buy them. Also asked about adventures, player options, and dice. Wont be surprised to see those show up in the near future too

[@joshuabrown-clay4858]

I agree with everything you and other have said here about WotC. I did notice recently that they had a product spotlight for a third-party product, Kubo-toa, on DnD Beyond recently. I think this is a great way for them to encourage and steward the industry and would like to see more of that.

[@lonic123]

Thanks

[@PhilipDudley3]

About 18:50, I've been digging the method that Chris Macdowall, maker of Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland, and Mythic Bastionland, uses to generate encounter tables or other details of a region. He uses 4 Thematic Key Words, combines them into 6 combos, embellishes them with some thoughts or random word pairs, and then uses that.

[@gbnilsson6212]

Chris McDowalls writing is both very evocative and very succinct, everyone should check out his stuff!

[@geoffdewitt6845]

That sounds similar to Kevin Crawford's Sine Nomine games. That's awesome!

[@PhilipDudley3]

@@geoffdewitt6845 I could also see using this method to generate Tag Sets like in Sine Nomine products! Good thought!

[@baronkimble5378]

Reality is no one knows where 6e is going. Good stuff Mike.

[@dylanwatts1045]

Van Richtens guide is still 16.50 on Amazon, that's still a really good deal

[@jeffw991]

"Video games soundtracks... don't usually have vocals." Keyword: usually. 😉 Lives... all mortal lives... expire...

[@digitaljanus]

Not me blasting "Daughter of the Dark God" from the Octopath Traveller soundtrack. 😄 At least those vocals are gibberish.

[@CitanulsPumpkin]

The main problem with the Planescape boxset is that one of the main aspects of Sigil and Planescape is the factions. This book doesn't have faction rules or support. If you want to play faction politics campaigns in D&D, you need to buy the 5e factions rulebook. Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. I can't imagine running Planescape in 5e without taking the Ravnica book and swapping out all the names. That's a problem. Why buy an $85 boxset when the rules for running the Factions of Sigil only exist in old online forums and an unrelated setting book that is one-third the price or less in multiple retailers. Why pay double for a product that requires me to heavily modify the rules from a book I bought 4 years ago. The setting fluff is nice, but it's been online for decades.

[@TheodoreMinick]

The Warframe soundtrack has some excellent suspenseful and combat tracks.

[@Skimmer951]

The first 5e game i ever played in was a amnesia game with the whole party at first not having any recollection of who they were, slowly but surely unlocking more and more memories getting acess ot th ebackstories we had established? The Dm wrote memories we could unlock in certain situations to flesh the characters out even more and they were so wellmade it felt like christmas getting one. For this planescape adventure premis eo twork i think a similar tactic might have to be used to slowly unlock memories than just having everyone remember at th eend (if I understood correctly) but yeah that is a premise thats gonna need a lot of player buy in and trust.

[@IncaSteppa420]

Which is funny because in Planescape Torment what you described is exactly how memories are delivered to the player, but somehow this adventures that's inspired by PST forgot to incorporate this very important notion. It's like the writers didn't even play said game.

[@Skimmer951]

@@IncaSteppa420 oh that explains a lot. Im a bit young on the dnd scene so have sadly never played planescape torment but ey if a method works it works!

[@JunMiyazaki]

Some Mass Effect tracks are pretty good in fantasy settings too. Also suggest Thomas Bergensen and Two Steps From Hell playlists - these are really epic scores, pairs really well with an epic bossfight.

[@Konstrukto_spons]

I have to say though, amnesia campaigns can be a lot of fun! It's great to have to gather your story together piece by piece, I was once a player in such a campaign and had a tremendous amount of fun. On the other hand I much enjoy creating my own characters with all their quirks, and that time I couldn't. Maybe it depends on how you actually retrieve your memories in the campaign and how long that takes? Of course I don't know the planescape adventure...

[@joyful]

i like that special edition cover

[@apatheticrabbit]

I'm lucky enough to still have my 2e boxed sets 😅. So I'm going to try running those as Shadowdark.

[@jpmilligan213]

I read through the Planescape boxed set stuff. I'm to this day a huge fan of the 2e Planescape. This box set, not considering art that thankfully tries to capture DiTerlizzi's original concepts, feels so immensely lazy. Just completely phoned in and a passing nod to the creativity of the original. It ties too much of your character to a plane through feats; select a feat, feat ability tied to the alignment of the plane, done. Super generic dmg resistance and some spells/abilities. Even then it ties you to the planes alignment, not the planes PHILOSPHY which was the entire crux of the setting. The planar influence in Morte's was a decent attempt, but it's only a small gesture. Nothing that makes being a member of a Faction feel significant either. None of it represents what it means to embrace the philosophy of the faction (things like I believe the Ciphers granting a bonus to initiative because your body and mind act as one). And why did they just go back to the original story characters. It would have been fantastic to see that the story had progressed and we get the Sigil of post-Rowanwood trying to take over, post Vecna breaking out of Ravenloft. There could have been Factions/philosophies that appeared just because of those two events. Changing the Xaositects to "Hands of Havoc" and the Dustmen to "Heralds of Dust" /puke. Yes the adventure REEKS of being a lightweight rip off of Torment. Hard pass. Some people hated how clerics were nerfed by being further from their god on the Great Wheel, I loved it. Finding the correct Power Key could be a mini-adventure itself. Even wizards suffered to an extent since summoning elementals was off limits unless your elemental was corrupted by the plane you were on. All summonings were affected. Sure, it's more for the DM to keep up with, but it was worth it. Try to summon a wolf in the Abyss, hope you like your wolves with bone spikes, acidic saliva, and just as hungry for you as your enemies...hope you can control it. So many RP opportunities lost. I could go on and on, but once I saw the absolute garbage their handling of lunar magic in Dragonlance was it was inevitable they wouldn't be able to compare to what made the original Planescape so unique and creative. If you can find the original 2E version, just buy that. The first boxed set alone is worth 10 of this version.

[@paulbigbee]

Sigh…I agree Mike: Planescape is another nostalgia trip. Hasbro/WotC and Disney/Marvel have the same lazy business model: beautiful images with little to no actual story. Contrast this with WFRP or DCC or Runequest or Symbaroum, all of which have a unapologetic point of view that I can rely on in terms of tone and mechanics.

[@geoffdewitt6845]

Jesus, Amazon knocked like a third off the price after less than a month? Sheesh...

[@kylinsky]

It kind of feels like WOTC are so in love with sharing their setting lore, that they get lost in their product development with regards to delivering a pragmatic and functional product for DMs to use at the table. When they try to cram Campaign Setting guide, monsters, player customizations, setting lore and a sample adventure all in one product, the lore especially seems to be competing with the game we are attempting to play. It feels more like they are telling us about stories from the adventures they used to run, as much or more than giving us the tools to tell our own stories. They need more people in the room, and in their testing that are completely unfamiliar with the settings to give them feedback.

[@paigehellbaum5232]

I have seen QR codes in some of the recent books where you can leave feedback - I hope you have done so because I agree with a lot of the improvements you suggested!

[@Headless_Hessian]

I like to use SoundTale for music. It has some variety to pick music, but its not too much, and it has background noises like forest sounds or town sounds you can pick on a wheel. Same with the music it has good variety, but its not too much.

[@mattoliversd]

Some other soundtracks that I find to be excellent for atmosphere are both Ori games and Starbound. I also will probably play the Candela Obscura soundtrack for Curse of Strahd. I've used Pillars of Eternity quite a bit, and would use the World of Warcraft soundtracks more if all my players weren't hardcore WoW players, which makes the music more distracting than anything. I'm honestly always listening to game soundtracks and thinking about how they would fit my games.

[@damiansein860]

Lol i handled the basement rats in BG3 the exact same way

[@kencutpro]

55:29 no dragon age soundtrack? It’s pretty solid… any of them really. Movie soundtracks are also fantastic. Inception is well known but great, Gladiator is really good, especially heroic right moments, I really liked the most recent Robin Hood movie with Jamie Foxx.

[@ElderGoblinGames]

They're disguising 1 book as 3 so they can drive the price up. Making thicker pages, increasing the font size, adding 3 covers to pad the size and feel. I stopped buying their books after Thasha's and started spending my money on smaller publications who are still interested in giving you a product worth your money and I haven't looked back once. Get the old Planescape book by Monty Cook. There's more content in it anyway and it's probably half the price.

[@buddyblueyes]

I notice a lot of comentors on the new Planescape are asking for more material, or new material considering the price. While I agree, it seems like the WOTC business model is to release the template, then make money off all the DMs Guild supplements for the campaign setting, as designed by a gazillion contributors and contractors, without paying internal employees.

[@StrifeCL]

What is/are the best random encounter book(s) with context as the examples of this video?

[@MrAmorphis666]

Planescape is by far my favorite campaign setting for D&D. So having a 5E version of it is something I've wanted since 2014. Comparing the original to the new one I think its pretty close. Like you I really wanted a book like Eberron. I would have preferred to have not gotten the adventure and had a book detailing all the outer planes instead. But, considering I am going to be running a Planescape campaign, I am happy with the set overall. It is well written with beautiful artwork and has a good amount of useful information for even newbies to the setting to be able to run a campaign. I do miss the stylized writing of the original and I don't understand who made the call to not include a glossary for the Chant which is important to capturing the flavor of the setting. My hope is that they do put out a book about the outer planes in the future but I have all the original books to reference as needed. Your review is fair though. The only thing I think you are wrong about is the comment about alignment not being important as that is a very big part of Planescape. That is another thing I think that should have been expressed in the new version. You have all the gate towns being tied to alignment, ( and the planes they are tied to), so it was a missed opportunity to not stress alignment's importance to this particular setting. It is one of the many things that make the setting so different from anything else.

[@paulunderhill550]

I wish they'd bring back the actual boxed sets and not these skinny hardback books in a slip case.

[@leonardoraele]

26:44 God, I get SO MAD when these books leave empty space on purpose like that. It feels lazy. You buy the book with the implied promise that it will help you run your games and then they do this.

[@Zr0din]

You see me comment on this all the time, so you know what'scoming. Did we contrast this with Planebreaker books (1 or maybe Monte Cooke made 3 books, I only saw one)?

[@Aliktren]

Is this good ? , I own ptolus which is great but has its own issues I did wonder about it instead of planescape

[@paulbigbee]

@@AliktrenI think it depends on what you and/or your table is looking for. By analogy, Planescape is oatmeal: nourishing, wholesome, offends no one and capable of supporting a range of small additions/changes. Planebreaker is seafood curry: it might upset some people’s tummys but it really has FLAVOR. If I had to pick, I’m much happier with Planebreaker than with Planescape (but I still think Planescape has reusable bits and pieces, especially with Sigil).

[@minimoose7890]

What adventure ending did they spoil and ruin?

[@fortunatus1]

My problem with backgrounds is that WotC already did make them unbalanced. Some backgrounds have feats attached but most don't. It's power creep that should not be in the game. EDIT: At least not until the next edition comes out.

[@Paul-TheHappyRecluse]

The Mortuary is an up sale item. Like paying extra for sour cream on your burrito. It boils down to how much they can monetize D&D.

[@Aiglos78]

Yeah that and the recent Monster Compendium they did with the fey creatures feel...more like video game microtransactions. If the plan moving forward is to dribble out "content packs" like this and you're planning on charging me 10-ish dollars for 10 monsters or whatever, multiple times per year, that's absolutely a no-go for me. On one hand, I can see *some* value in giving wider and broader options for people who want these very particular supplements. Maybe this is the way we get to see MORE content across a broader swath of lore, but I'm suspect that they'll just end up planning out traditional sourcebook content and slicing and dicing it up for these kinds of "packs" -- for example, we'll never see another book like Bigby's, I think. You're NEVER going to see sourcebooks like that again. They're going to break that book up even further, dole it out over time, but people will perceive it as a more steady stream of cool giant content. If you like giants, that might please you greatly. But you're going to end up paying a bit more on the physical side and significantly more, I'm guessing, on the digital side for ALL of that content -- like probably 15ish dollars more if you presume breaking a book like that up into 4 individual content releases at 10 dollars each? So, after tax, you're looking at about 15 dollars more overall. Maybe people will like the feel of that? Like the choice? Maybe they want to be able to a la carte that kind of thing? I don't, though. I'm very much in Mike's camp here. I think DM's buy the vast majority of this content. I think players don't purchase these options individually...DMs do and then share that content out with their players. This is definitely true on the physical side. My own anecdotal experience tells me it's also true on the digital side. So, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that's a genuinely sustainable model for *most* DMs. I already feel like we're being more and more nickel-and-dimed by WotC. Books are getting smaller, these slip case triptyches seem to be the preferred format moving forward, and they're a miniscule amount of content compared to previous releases like Eberoon and even the curated sourcebooks like Fizban's. So that's definitely going to be a no-go for me in terms of being a super user/buyer moving forward.

[@telarr9164]

​@@Aiglos78 yeah it feels like this content is worth boycotting to let WotC know this model isn't viable. Monetise your brand by making quality good value stuff not with sneaky micro stuff that we're leasing

[@MilieuGames]

I missed the bundle of holding by 5 hours. 😥

[@SalsaDoom1840]

My Doctor said I needed more fiber, so I guess I have to buy it!

[@gedece]

That bundle is not for me, I don't run horror adventures. That beings said, it looks tempting anyway. Love the advance 5e SRDs, I need to get the CC ones, those are the more secure ones. If you are wizard of the coast, you should understand that from overseas we LOVE PDFs. Why? Because PDFs will last far beyond what a site like D&D beyond will. I'm not saying get rid of D&D beyond, it's perfect for the people that love it. It's simply not for me, as it lacks two things: great filters for content so that you can filter the options for your players, and 3rd party or custom content, so I can't use is as character keeper. And then having to read about something long with links was never the way I prefer to read. I prefer more sequential read.

[@firstwatch3285]

i wasnt happy with the map it was perforated into the book and i had to tear it out so the edges are raggy now.

[@joshuabrown-clay4858]

I tore a corner from mine, too, mate.

[@NegatveSpace]

Uhoh, now we have to worry about book lice!

[@michaeljpastor]

LOL@ Bigby's Book of Big Boys

[@Aud_the_Odd]

All I would want from an updated Planescape is just setting stuff and bestiary stuff. I don’t want a rehashing of the crpg I played decades ago. I want a campaign book that is a framework for crafting my own campaign. If they want to release a campaign adventure it shouldn’t take up space in the campaign setting set. I want it to be optional.

[@reddburg]

"We need to monetize more" is very dystopian. The short term solution is for people to not buy the junk or unnecessary products.

[@dmportella]

Alll i want from Planescape is more lore of the setting, more details about how to run adventures in the setting, more races WHERE IS BARIAUR? I bought the pre order didnt ge tthe special edition. I will still refer to the 2ed books this edition has not really added much to it.

[@OfHollowMasks]

24:00 which is why i heavily dislike amnesiac characters

[@pdubb9754]

WOTC no longer commands my FOMO.

[@fraqtl]

$85 really isn't that much money for the amount of time you'll spend playing any of these things. You'll spend the same amount or a bit less on a AAA gaming title and not get as much time out of it.

[@GordonDS]

the mortuary = micro transactions.

[@adbirk19]

As a magic:the gathering player I gotta say... That's some cheap cardboard as far as Wotc is concerned.

[@dallisjohnson662]

They are really trying to normalize these expensive products. The Book of Many things is supposed to MSRP for 100. I think it's a bad idea to buy these products at these prices. It communicates that these prices are appropriate.

[@victordevillers3899]

Crossovers weren't worth and probably aren't worth it... It feels like Spell Jammer..

[@NegatveSpace]

The answer to how to pronounce something that's non-fiction is what sounds cooler to you. It's fantasy, it doesn't have proper pronunciation.

[@jpri26]

… book lice…?

[@IanPanth]

So, The Mortuary is a great location for horror but the adventure suggestions are goofy. Why create a horror setting and release it around Halloween but make the adventure suggestions horror spoof at best? I will use the location but the rest is worthless.

[@ATron9k]

Only berks pronounce it as sijil