Dungeons & Dragons’ Planescape marketing campaign needs to be performed, and rapidly

Wizards of the Coast is pulling out all of the stops from the runaway lightning rail prepare that’s fifth version Dungeons & Dragons. Its newest launch, Planescape: Adventures within the Multiverse, delivers what will be the trippiest, most white-knuckled thrills that D&D has seen in a decade whereas skipping gamers like stones throughout dozens of unique areas. But additionally, very like the Spelljammer-themed three-volume set that got here earlier than it, this one may use a bit extra meat on the bone.

That mentioned, that is the uncommon scenario the place that gentle contact may very well work to Dungeon Masters’ benefit — particularly in the event that they transfer quick and break issues. And by issues, I imply participant characters. Prepare for a surprising quantity of character loss of life, all within the service of a strange story.

Followers of the Planescape setting probably comprehend it from the 1999 PC RPG Planescape: Torment, which tells the story of a misplaced soul discovering their method to absolution. Planescape: Adventures within the Multiverse takes that online game’s narrative as inspiration, even going as far as to start out its participant characters in the very same location and in a lot the identical state, i.e., just lately resurrected and with out their reminiscences.

Picture: Charlie Corridor/Polygon

The boxed set contains three hardcover books and a useful DM’s display, all packaged inside a good-looking slipcase. At its core is Sigil and the Outlands, a setting e-book that feels each inch a love letter to followers of that unique online game. Nonetheless, at simply 96 pages, Sigil and the Outlands — very like the Spelljammer product’s Astral Adventurer’s Information that got here earlier than it — feels kinda skinny on particulars. Likewise, the included character backgrounds are nothing to jot down dwelling about. Whereas they do an excellent job of tying prepared characters to the realm the place this journey is about, I’m undecided they’ve a lot utility outdoors this setting.

Frankly, what Sigil and the Outlands may have used is extra pages with further particulars on town’s numerous factions, main buildings, and outlying Outland realms. As a substitute of that materials, although, DMs get Morte’s Planar Parade, a bloated 64-page assortment of monsters and stat blocks with numerous clean area left on its pages. The massive draw right here is the narrator, Morte, the plucky floating cranium that performed a central position in Planescape: Torment. Sadly, his humor doesn’t translate nicely from laptop display to the web page.

That leaves us with the boxed set’s 96-page journey, Flip of Fortune’s Wheel, and, except for just a few gaps right here and there, it completely delivers — albeit with just a few advisable modifications.

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for the plot of Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, the campaign included inside Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse.]

The massive gimmick in Flip of Fortune’s Wheel is that each time a participant character dies, they return as a barely totally different variation of their true self. It’s an excellent tweak to the common guidelines of D&D, and the best way it’s carried out offers slightly than takes company away from gamers. To drive the purpose dwelling, loss of life is seemingly behind each nook. The opening dungeon alone has not one, not two, however three no-bullshit traps that may kill off low-level characters right away.

As soon as lifeless, nevertheless, gamers want to sit down the motion out a minimum of for a short while earlier than one among their quirky alter egos rejoins the sport to combine issues up. Identical to going to jail in Monopoly, loss of life can actually decelerate a recreation of D&D. DMs capable of preserve the motion shifting will see way more engagement with their gamers than those that take their time. Performed proper, it’s a viciously virtuous cycle, with extra bizarre character variants exhibiting up over time the extra that participant characters get killed off.

Sadly, Flip of Fortune’s Wheel doesn’t do DMs another favors with regard to its pacing as written, which is languid at greatest all through. My largest grievance are the a number of sections the place DMs are requested to simply type of pad issues out by throwing semi-random and seemingly unrelated mini adventures at gamers earlier than the following story beat falls in line. The setting itself reinforces this lethargy, with an in-fiction timeline that may span “the course of weeks, years, or centuries.” Whereas it’s all fantastic and good to play D&D for a very long time, repeatedly and for a number of months and even years, taking that lengthy to inform a posh story tends to kill the momentum. That’s very true on this explicit narrative, which is simply as round because the donut-shaped metropolis of Sigil itself.

Picture: Charlie Corridor/Polygon

The underside line is that DMs who take too lengthy to get to the purpose in Flip of Fortune’s Wheel run the danger of neutering the marketing campaign’s largest narrative arcs. My suggestion could be — along with killing characters off regularly — to skip no matter feels off subject or nonessential in favor of pushing ahead towards the endgame. And what an endgame it’s, with vibrant cartography from Jared Blando and extra modrons — charming clockwork automatons — than you possibly can shake a stick at. Better of all, you’ll end the marketing campaign with Seventeenth-level characters preventing a number of the most difficult fifth version D&D encounters but printed.

Regardless of the unevenness of its mid-game and the relative paucity of its supplementary supplies, Planescape: Journey within the Multiverse delivers on the promise of D&D with an journey that’s each enchanting and tremendously difficult. It’s a garish, unsettling romp by way of the multiverse and the proper method to ship the basic role-playing recreation into the brand new yr — and its extremely anticipated 2024 guidelines revision.

Planescape: Adventures within the Multiverse arrives in shops and on-line as a bodily product on Oct. 17. The content material is already reside digitally for many who pre-order by way of Wizards of the Coast. The books had been reviewed with a pre-release bodily copy offered by the writer. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought through affiliate hyperlinks. You will discover further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.