Planescape
AD&D® Boxed Campaign Set
TSR
Inc.
[sterling]21.99 - Boxed Set
<Body Text>Behind the drab, washed out purple mess of the box lurks a
startlingly designed and truly innovative new AD&D campaign world. The old
Manual of the Planes was designed to allow existing AD&D campaigns to
travel the many planes; Planescape is, rather, a new campaign setting. For the
hefty price you get a 32 page Player's Guide, a 64 page DM's Guide to the
mechanics of the many planes, a 96 page guide to the city of Sigil slap bang in
the middle of it all, plus new monsters and poster maps. A hefty package,
featuring some occasionally stunning art from Tony DeTerlizzi and fine, fine
design work. Al-Qadim looked great. This, if anything, is even better.
You can bring your existing characters into Planescape as "Primes," "Planars,"
however, are player characters native to planes other than the Prime Material.
Planars have the usual options for race and class, plus new ones; here's your
chance to be a Beastlands centaur-like creature or even one of the Githzerai.
The player's book, having briefed you on these options and given a good potted
tour of the of the basics, then invites you to have your character join one of
the many competing and plotting factions, groups of creatures united by common
philosophies and goals. There are oodles of these, and they all seem pivotal in
TSR's adventures-to-come, so sign up now. They're excellently designed, and
they vary from the Chaos-Idiots (Xaositects) to people who think we're all dead
but most of us haven't realised it yet (my favourite), the Fraternity of the
Order, the Transcendent Order (the best choice, because they have the fewest
enemies), and plenty more.
The factions give this campaign world a distinctive character and a strong,
well-characterised structure. They make the alignment system superior by really
bringing home the common goals, beliefs and principles of AD&D characters
and creatures.
Unfortunately, having designed your character and opted for your faction you
are then required to speak a bastardised version of antiquated English
underworld-speak, for some arbitrary reason. Berks, cutters, bashers, barmies
and the like litter the pages of the books. There is a glossary for this
drivel, but you'll spend most of your time trying to figure out what the text
actually means behind this screen of verbiage. It's dumb, affected,
tedious, time-consuming and just plain silly. Why on earth the designers
decided to have the many creatures of the multiverse all speak like
pre-Victorian low life is beyond me. This is the one major blunder of the
Planescape design. Note that even Rick Swan, Dragon magazines generous (and
very good) reviewer, balked at this nonsense.
Campaigns are likely to be centred around the city of Sigil, ruled - or rather
stabilised - by the enigmatic Lady of Pain (the magnificent Aztec-like mask
icon on the box and book covers). Sigil has portals to almost everywhere else
across the planes, and the book devoted to it details many key locations on
those planes and how to get to them as well as detailing Sigil itself. This is
the nitty-gritty reference book for the DM, and it's excellent. This book
allows the DM to run campaigns with the information he needs, and the notes on
scene setting and role playing are thankfully both brief and very much to the
point. They're an abject lesson to self-indulgent and pretentious writers
everywhere. The DM gets more briefing on the factions and what they're usually
up to (their key schemes), and enough meat on the Outlands (the planes beyond
Sigil). This is a fine, splendidly written book.
The DM Guide to the Planes does what the Manual of Planes did, in providing
rules for how magic works on other planes, travel across and between them,
hazards of surviving them, and suchlike. This is the context book, if you will,
and it also gives general notes on the planes as opposed to specific detail
about locations within them (in the Sigil book). This could easily have been a
bare-bones book, dry and dull, but it's livened by the design, art and side
chatter from a variety of jaundiced sources (this is a common feature in the
books, not unlike Shadowrun in someone else's game).
To top this all off , the extra are a curate's egg. The monsters are fine, but
you'll need the Monstrous Compendium for most of the devils and demons (whoops,
er, you know what I mean). The four panel DM Screen is so-so, with summary
tables on how spells from various schools (and magical item function) are
altered on the various planes mixed in with bog-standard AD&D tables on
THAC0s and turning undead - in general, stuff that has nothing to do with
Planescape specifically. The maps are, however, poor. They look like the
drawings of a 10 year old and the colouring could be described as coming from
the art school of Vivid Unpleasantness. The city map is very weak, most of it
being taken up by crudely drawn hovels and huts, and it's a mess. It is very
surprising, given the fine design and art elsewhere, that the maps were allowed
to let this product down rather badly.
Overall: Excellent, with a couple of severe flaws (the dumb language and the
maps). If you actually enjoy the archaic and silly language here, you should
love Planescape. If you find it as tedious as I do it means you'll need longer
to get in to it. The books of this box have a depth and richness of character,
and they work; they give the DM what is needed to run a campaign here. There
are imaginative and appealing ideas littered everywhere; if an AD&D Prime
Material campaign has run out of steam, Planescape is a joyful new infusion of
imagination and wonder. It is also great to look at, once you've burned the
maps. It's a shame that the photo-repro didn't render the box cover properly
(the original artwork is great, many of its subtleties are wholly lost in the
box version). There are sigils and glyphs so subtle in the background you have
to look twice to notice them. Twenty two pounds is a lot to pay, but this one
is definitely worth it. This is TSR's best selling product this year, and
deservedly so.
Review by Carl Sargent
Product supplied by: Carl
Planescape Supplement
AD&D Monstrous Compendium
TSR
Inc.
[sterling]10.99 - 128pp
Ouch! Eleven quid is a lot to pay for a 128 page softback book of monsters,
isn't it? At least the wretched ring-folder page format has been abandoned in
favour of perfect bound, so the thing will have a decent lifetime. The price
looks even more excessive in view of the fact that the monsters here are almost
all just retreads of previously detailed creatures from the ranks of baatezu
(d*vils) and tanar'ri (d*mons) predominating. Lots of old favourites from 1st
edition Monster Manual II are here too - Grues, the Shadow Fiend, Mephits, and
the like. Good news, too, to have Imps and Quasits back as familiars for those
of us with priests and wizards of dubious alignments. The rewriting is pretty
minimal and, frankly, if you have 1st edition material or the old Outer Planes
MC appendix you may well like to think twice before buying this. The text that
tries to give the featured creatures more of an eccentric flavour of the
Planescape setting is a bit hit and miss, with some of the colour text and
anecdotes being rather lame (whoever wrote the story about the Marut was taken
with the theme of the Masque of the Red Death, but couldn't render anything of
the horror of the original tale, for example), and the writing isn't anything
to justify the price tag.
Having thought twice, buy it. Buy it for Tony DeTerlizzi's art, which is simply
stunning. His Molydeus (guardian) Tanar'ri and Shadow Fiend are truly
frightening to look upon, and his Cat-
lord shows how to rend a captivating,
attractive female portrait with no hint of cheesecake (you want cheesecake, but
still tasteful, head for the Alu-fiend or the Succubus). Character, flashes of
dark humour and occasional real beauty illuminate this exceptional art. It's
full colour throughout, and there's an illo on virtually every page. Even
allowing for the subjectivity of personal taste, I doubt there has ever been a
better illustrated RPG product than this. The standard even puts his work on
the Planescape box in the shade. All the artwork in this product is
DeTerlizzi's, which is just as well, for any other artist - no matter how good
- would surely have suffered by comparison.
Overall: For Planescape DMs, this is an essential purchase if you do not have
the old MC8 Outer Planes appendix nor the 1st edition Monster Manuals. Since
Fiends make great enemies, this is probably true for any DM who wants to use
them in AD&D without actually going plane hopping. But this package is
worth considering by anyone who can afford the price of some of the very best
art the RPG field has to offer. Even FASA, who have the highest average quality
of art in the industry, must be jealous of this one.
Review by Carl Sargent
Product supplied by TSR Inc.
