One of the most exciting books from the AD&D era, for me, was Manual of the Planes. It expanded wonderfully on the two pages of information in the… Player’s Handbook? Okay, that part never made sense to me.
Anyway! Manual of the Planes gave us information about other places that were wildly different from the regular campaign worlds. This opened my eyes to possibilities that never would have occurred to me. Wonderful!
Then D&D 3e came along. 3e gave structure, organization, and consistency to so many things that lacked consistency. Overall I think this was a great thing, from a play perspective. On the other hand, that same consistency took away a lot of the magic of the planes for me.
Consider planes with alignment traits.
- A plane with a mild alignment trait imposes a -2 penalty on Charisma checks by creatures with opposing alignment.
- A plane with a strong alignment trait imposes a -2 penalty on all Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom checks by creatures that don’t have the same alignment.
Exactly the same rule applies (adjust alignments as needed) for the four alignments. They all do the same thing, just targeting different alignments, and that’s the difference.
Surely we can do better than that.
This is where Planar Trappings comes in. It expands options for planar traits from ‘minor mechanical influence’ to ‘vivid narrative effect’, in a “show, don’t tell” manner. There are three primary influences or inspirations for this work.
- Portals and Planes (originally Fantasy Flight, now EDGE Games) is the most proximate inspiration. It presents options for how various planar traits manifest. A lawful plane doesn’t just cause -2 penalties to certain checks, but can have one or both of these effects.
- Edict of Law replaces the d20 with smaller dice plus a modifier, down to a static value. This reduces randomness.
- Strength of Pattern, on a failed save, causes a creature to repeat their last action if possible. The plane coerces creatures into fitting into a pattern.
- Classic Play: Book of Immortals (Mongoose) describes wellsprings, places of primal power, and each can have manifestations of that power. This aligns well thematically with what I’m doing.
- Classic Play: Book of the Planes (Mongoose) is surprisingly a lesser influence here. It expands on the traits as described in the SRD/RSRD, giving higher resolution to the descriptions. That is, a lawful plane isn’t just ‘mildly’ or ‘strongly’ aligned, there are ten grades. While it does give some examples of how various grades can manifest, it doesn’t have the depth I’m looking for.
I see an opportunity here. Portals and Planes gives manifestations of various planar traits. These manifestations are connected to single traits in the book, but many can actually be applied to multiple traits. Some reskinning is needed here and there, but it can be done.
Planar Trappings will consist of three main sections. One will be ‘manifestation building blocks’, describing how each manifestation works. Another will associate those manifestations with traits (including any reskinning needed). The last will contain planes defined using trait manifestations.
Other planes and other worlds should be wondrous places. Let’s make them that way.