Planescape

• 1. Introduction

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  Planescape is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting built around a single unplanned image. Artist Dana Knutson sketched a robed figure with blades where her hair should be, before anyone told him what to draw. Designer Zeb Cook liked the sketch enough to make her the setting's logo, a figure named the Lady of Pain. TSR published the setting in 1994, weaving together many planes of existence into a single cosmology and centering it on one strange city. What does it take to build a world compatible with the game's own history yet unlike anything TSR had made before? And why would that world be pulled from shelves within a few years, only to keep resurfacing in Dungeons & Dragons for decades after?

• 2. The Great Wheel

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  Jeff Grubb first mapped this cosmology in the 1987 sourcebook Manual of the Planes. He built on ideas Gary Gygax had laid out in the 1978 Player's Handbook. Planescape adopted that structure wholesale and gave it a name, the Great Wheel. The Great Wheel divides existence into the Inner Planes, the Ethereal Plane, the Prime Material Plane, the Astral Plane, and the Outer Planes.

  The Inner Planes represent elemental forces such as Water, Earth, Fire, and Air, alongside the Positive and Negative energy planes. The Outer Planes represent alignments instead, serving as the primary domains of the game's deities, home to their followers in the afterlife.

  Among the Outer Planes are Baator, Mechanus, Mount Celestia, Carceri, and the Abyss. Others include Acheron, Arborea, Arcadia, Beastlands, Bytopia, Elysium, Gehenna, the Gray Waste of Hades, Limbo, the Outlands, Pandemonium, and Ysgard. Planescape is credited with solidifying this Great Wheel cosmology after it first appeared in the game's first edition. Fifth edition later brought it back as the dominant of three competing theoretical models for how the planes fit together.

  That sprawl of realms needed a hub where characters could cross from one to another.

• 3. The City of Doors

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  Sigil sits atop the Spire, an infinitely tall structure rising from the Outlands, and it takes the shape of a torus. The city itself sits on the inner surface of that ring. There is no sky above Sigil, only an all-pervasive light that slowly brightens and dims, standing in for day and night.

  Portals are the only way in or out of Sigil, which makes the city almost impossible for an outside army to invade. That same rule turns Sigil into a prison for anyone without a portal key. People call it the Bird Cage, or simply the Cage.

  Sigil is commonly said to sit at the center of the planes, since it perches atop the infinitely tall Spire. Some argue that claim is impossible, because the planes stretch infinitely in every direction, leaving no true center for any of them. From the Outlands below, Sigil appears to hang suspended above that endless spire.

  That question of true centrality would return, sharper and more violent, once the factions who ran the city went to war over control of it.

• 4. Faction Politics

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  Fifteen distinct factions once controlled the political climate of Sigil, each built on its own philosophy. Their belief systems put some factions naturally at odds with each other while binding others into alliances.

  In 1998, TSR published Faction War, an adventure that closed the book on Planescape as the company ended the product line. It capped a series of earlier adventures that built toward the conflict, and it ended the factions' hold on the city. Duke Rowan Darkwood, factol of the Fated, instigated the war in a bid to dethrone the Lady of Pain and rule Sigil himself. The fighting spread through the city until the Lady of Pain intervened, aided by a group of adventurers, the players' own characters.

  Sects work much like Factions but are not based in Sigil, tying instead to the specific planes where they originate. Many Factions began as Sects, and some Sects were once Factions themselves, before the two paths diverged.

  That question of whose worldview was correct would later formalize into three explicit rules. Planescape claimed these governed the whole multiverse: the Rule-of-Three, the Unity of Rings, and the Center of All.

• 5. Guiding Principles

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  The Rule-of-Three states plainly that things in Planescape tend to happen in threes. Even the principles that govern the planes fall under that same rule. The Unity of Rings points out that many things on the planes are circular, curving back around to their starting point.

  The Center of All, the third principle, states that a person's own location counts as the center of the multiverse. That holds true at least from that person's own perspective. Since most planes stretch on infinitely, no one could ever prove another person's claim to centrality wrong. Planescape means this idea philosophically as much as it means it as literal multiversal geography.

  Sigil holds a special claim to that title because of its unusual number of portals to other planes. Various factions stake claims to their own centers too, each one significant in their own eyes. The very idea that everywhere could be the center, and nowhere the sole true center, provokes real disputes and even bloodshed among the planes' inhabitants.

  Squaring that kind of infinite philosophy with a playable game fell to one TSR designer working under a strict creative brief.

• 6. Designing a Cosmology

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  Cook's assignment, in his own words, was to build 'a complete campaign world (not just a place to visit), survivable by low-level characters.' It also had to stay 'as compatible with the old Manual of the Planes as possible,' while still feeling vast without overwhelming the game's referee. TSR wanted the setting 'distinct from all other TSR campaigns' and free of the words 'demon' and 'devil.' The whole concept also had to be 'explainable to Marketing in 25 words or less.'

  For inspiration, Cook listened to Pere Ubu, Philip Glass, and Alexander Nevsky. He also read The Dictionary of the Khazars, Einstein's Dreams, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. At what he called 'Bad Movie Nights,' he watched films including Naked Lunch and Wolf Devil Woman, just for fun.

  Cook built the idea that all the action in Sigil would revolve around factions, each pushing one idea to its extreme. He also decided Sigil needed to work as a crossroads for the planes, an adventure site players could reach and leave quickly.

  Cook adapted the older Manual of the Planes but stripped out anything that made survival on the planes too difficult or complicated. What remained were, in his words, 'descriptions of twisted and strange creations.' He drew the setting's look from images such as the gloomy prisons in Piranesi's Le Carceri etchings and Brian Froud's surrealist illustrations.

  That brief eventually reached store shelves as a boxed set. It was the beginning of a publication history that would run for years and outlive several editions of the game.

• 7. Editions and Revivals

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  The Planescape Campaign Setting reached stores for AD&D 2nd Edition in April 1994. A series of expansions followed, detailing the Planes of Chaos by Wolfgang Baur and Lester W. Smith, the Planes of Law by Colin McComb and Baur, and the Planes of Conflict by McComb and Dale Donovan. The line stood as a major setting for Dungeons & Dragons in the years that followed, and it also produced a small number of novels.

  When 3rd Edition arrived, Planescape was discontinued along with most other campaign settings. Fan sites such as planewalker.com were still allowed to keep the material alive and update it for the new rules. Three later books borrowed that general layout and reused details like Sigil. They were the 3rd Edition Manual of the Planes in 2001, the 3.5 Edition Dungeon Master's Guide in 2003, and the Planar Handbook in 2004. None of them counted as official Planescape products.

  Sigil resurfaced in the 4th edition Manual of the Planes in 2008 and expanded further in Dungeon Master's Guide 2 the following year. Author Shannon Appelcline, writing in Designers & Dragons, noted that Sigil 'had been largely ignored during the 3e era' but 'was faring better in 4e.' Dungeon Master's Guide 2 brought back what Appelcline called 'the fan-favorite setting of Sigil,' laid out as a full paragon-level setting. The factions that had driven the Faction War, though, were now gone. The book also included 'A Conspiracy of Doors,' the first Sigil adventure to see print in many years.

  The 5th Edition Player's Handbook in 2014 briefly explains the planes and mentions Sigil, with more detail appearing in that year's Dungeon Master's Guide. In July 2022, Wizards released Unearthed Arcana: Wonders of the Multiverse as part of its public playtest series. Both Polygon and ComicBook.com noted that a new character race, the Glitchling, along with other Planescape references, might signal a coming reboot. Polygon's Charlie Hall wrote, 'this wouldn't be the first time that Wizards used playtest materials to tease a reboot of a classic setting.' Christian Hoffer of ComicBook.com pointed out that the playtest book, despite being framed as multiverse-wide material, repeated references to Mechanus, Sigil, and the Outlands. Hoffer wrote that Dungeons & Dragons seemed to be 'gearing up for some sort of multiversal book in the near future.'

  October 2023 brought a three-volume box set for 5th Edition, Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse, back to store shelves.

  That 2023 return showed up decades after critics had first sized up the original boxed set. Several of them had called it unlike anything else on the market.

• 8. Reception and Other Media

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  Pyramid magazine reviewer Scott Haring called Planescape 'the finest game world ever produced for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.' He praised the writing as 'wonderful.' He also said the setting had 'one of the most distinctive graphic looks I've seen in any game product,' comparing the drawings to Dr. Seuss.

  Trenton Webb, writing for the British magazine Arcane, called Planescape 'the premier AD&D world,' pointing to its 'bizarre juxtaposition of legend and nightmare.' Game designer Rick Swan said the old Manual of the Planes had been 'reincarnated as the Planescape setting.' He called it 'TSR's most ambitious campaign world to date.' Swan added that the set 'reads less like a textbook and more like a story,' with characters taking precedence over game systems.

  Author Curtis D. Carbonell wrote about Planescape in his book Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic. He described it as 'D&D's answer to its own simplistic medieval-European-inspired fantasy settings.' Carbonell also credited Planescape with channeling 'the Weird' before China Miéville brought the 'new weird' genre into focus. He summed up the setting's core idea: 'The greatest commerce isn't loot, treasure, magic items, etc.; it is belief so strong it can shape reality.'

  Backstab magazine contributor Philippe Tessier, reviewing The Great Modron March, called the presentation of Planescape products superb in general.

  RPG historian Stu Horvath, in his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, admitted Planescape's biggest problem was its own 'vast strangeness.' Horvath wrote that there was 'a lot to explain and not nearly enough space to fit it all in.' He praised the artwork instead, noting that Dana Knutson developed all of the concept art. Robh Ruppel turned that art into covers, and Tony DiTerlizzi used it to fill the interiors. Horvath concluded that Planescape 'often feels built for something besides conflict.' Its art, philosophy, and infinite reaches, he wrote, encourage players to 'just walk off into the multiverse until they find something to wonder at.'

  The Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set won the 1994 Origins Award for Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement.

  The Planescape universe also became the computer game Planescape: Torment, portraying Sigil, the Outlands, Baator, Carceri, and the Negative Energy Plane. It had been merely a cult game, out of print for years. A DVD budget re-release brought it back in 2009, followed by a GOG.com download in 2010. On GOG.com it quickly became the 'second most wanted game' on the site. Beamdog released an enhanced edition on the 11th of April 2017. Torment: Tides of Numenera, marketed as a spiritual successor, followed in February 2017, though it is not set within Planescape itself.

  TSR also published a collectible card game called Blood Wars, built around Planescape's major locations and personalities. The game introduced new creatures that were later folded into the roleplaying line.

  A handful of novels rounded out the setting. These included Fire and Dust by James Alan Gardner, a rejected title he later published for free online, and Troy Denning's Pages of Pain. J. Robert King's Blood Wars trilogy included Planar Powers, which won the Origins Award for Best Game-Related Novel of 1997.

  Torment, the 1999 novel by Ray Vallese and Valerie Vallese, was based on an early script for Planescape: Torment. That script existed before the game itself had finished taking shape.