Not quite a new idea – Planescape

So I’m starting to get withdrawal from my Planescape game.

I always wanted to play a game in the setting, and it was a really enjoyable experience. I have a whole host of other settings that I could run a game in, but I think I’d really like to run a planar game now, with the knowledge of having played in the setting with a good DM.

It’s a definite struggle to get some engagement with players. I joined the game after a session or two had been played, and the group had previously voted on what to play. I jumped at it because it was Planescape, but after not very long it felt like a lot of the group weren’t in to the setting.
The DM definitely had a hard time getting some to engage with the setting, and with Sigil itself. We always seemed to be leaving to go off on another adventure somewhere else, where the Factions didn’t matter or we could fight strange monsters, rather than do much exploration or social interaction.

Actually, that came up once. I went shopping, had all my plan prepped and previously sent to the DM. Everyone wanted to go out and go to a different plane but he wanted to drop some hooks and exposition on me.
It got me into a Faction in the end, or at least that shopping trip was the introduction to it. But because no one wanted to join me, wanted to go to the Market Ward and just check out stalls and have a random encounter or two, there was no real sense of buy in to what was going on.
It was very much a ‘stuff is happening out there, we have to go and stop it’, conveniently forgetting that the Centre of the Multiverse has stuff going on too, and it interacts.

That’s enough whinging about the old game.

So, I’ve been looking through Dungeon Masters Guild and looking at all the planar options people have been putting together, from Planescape conversions to 5e to just more information on particular planes to adventures that might easily convert, especially at lower levels (thank you Ravnica!).
I definitely want to try and work something together, so I think I might blog some notes for a low-level adventure shortly. I’ve found one for Ravnica that works reasonably well – change a few details and locations, use Factions instead of Guilds and voila.

I’ve found a ton of resources and it looks like some of them were being used by my old DM.
Random encounters for Sigil based on the different Wards, dictionaries of Planar Cant, an interactive map of Sigil.
Reading through the official Planescape adventures it looks like we came more than halfway through the Infinite Staircase, via Harbinger House and some adventures on the Outlands, including the first part of the Great Modron March. And all before 7th level.

The problem, of course, is finding the right group. One who will interact heavily with the setting and be invested in the changes they make, and aren’t as pushed by combat optimisation.
Yeah, going to have to work on this one.