Planescape II – Stealing low-level adventures

Apologies everyone, my new website appears to have already blown a gasket!

After three attempts to write this post, it’s now removed all the previous content and replaced it with a draft post I have set up, and I really REALLY don’t know why.

So now I have to RE-WRITE the entire post for a third time (because I committed the ultimate sin of not saving it whilst writing it the first time and having to do it all again!).

I genuinely don’t understand what’s going on, but OK, it’s only three hours of my life completely wasted now. Yay!!!

The post should have looked something like this:

Since I’m on something of a Planescape push recently, here’s a few low-level adventures taken from DMsGuild that could be adapted to play in Planescape.

Below are quick, hopefully spoiler-free overviews of the adventures and some quick ways that I’d adapt them to play in the setting.

A Boy and his Modron from Anthony Lesink

Well this one should be an easy jump for a planar adventuring point of view with a Modron in the tile.

The adventure revolves around a Modron who has shown up on a farm and befirended a boy. He wishes to escape back to the Outer Planes before a cohort of his fellow Modrons show up and destroy the boy’s farm.

OK, so small spoiler warning – there’s a portal to Sigil at the end of the adventure. As written, players are discouraged from joining the Modron as he leaves for the Outer Planes.

The obvious way of moving this to a planar adventure is to allow the party to head through the portal too.
Another option is for the portal to be slightly more unstable than the Modron thought – maybe it leads to somewhere else in the Planes and he needs the party’s help in navigating the next step.

That one was easy at least (especially since this is a rewrite!).

Blue Alley from Alan Patrick and MT Black

The Blue Alley is a treasure trove in the middle of Waterdeep, filled by a wizard of some nefarious stripe or perhaps new management. It’s renowned as a rite of passage in the city for young adventurers, as it’s often restocked with treasure, puzzles and monstrous denizens.
This is a pretty basic short dungeon crawl designed to fit easily with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist or maybe Dungeon of the Mad Mage.

So, how do we adapt it to Planescape?
We don’t do anything really, except change a few names and locations.

There’s plenty of potential for this kind of small dungeon in the middle of Sigil. Young Cagers run through puzzles and monsters for jink and renown, and highups in the Factions or those with some financing can gamble on their (un)successful adventure.
There’s also plenty of scope to drop one of these in a Gate Town, though you’d probably have to flavour it a bit more to suit whichever area it’s in.

Rats of Waterdeep from Lysa Penrose and Will Doyle

There’s a plague in Waterdeep’s Dock Ward, and then a murder happens. The guards aren’t interested in risking their lives to investigate, but the adventurers will.
There’s all kinds of stuff going on here, between NPCs like the Rat King and the Lady of Plagues, and a final showdown to stop the real threat.

Based on the way this adventure works out (and I’ll try and be very careful to avoid spoilers here but you need an analog for Skullport, the city under Waterdeep), I’d probably run this in Automata.
Nothing says ‘unprepared for the chaos of a plague’ like the guards of Automata – it won’t even have a permit to infect! – plus Automata has an undertown that could be used.

Yeah, that one is actually pretty simple, ish.

Murder in Skyway from Greg Marks – originally set in Eberron

Now we’re going further off the beaten track, leaving the Realms and heading for Eberron.

The party heads to the Skyway and comes across a dead body, right before the City Watch arrives. They have to clear their names and find the real culprit, but there’s also a time limit as the murderer will try and escape on the next airship.

OK, so how do we adapt this one?
The law is a little more cut-and-dry in Sigil, so if the party was caught ‘in the act’ of murder, they wouldn’t be able to prove their innocence by investigating themselves.
My best idea for Sigil is that they go to meet someone to take a job or a friend of the group, and find him being carted off by the Hardheads. If we move to the Outlands or one of the Planes, we’re definitely moving to the Upper Planes end of the spectrum.
The accused shouts his innocence to the party, and begs them to find the murderer. He yells the clue ‘Clueless’.

Basically, some Clueless berk just arrived in Sigil or the Outlands or the Upper Planes spots a nasty sort (probably a tiefling) and decides that he needs putting in the dead book.
Our wrongly accused friend is the only witness, and when he shouted at the murderer and demanded to know what he was doing, he got bopped spark out for his troubles.

The party will have to chase down leads and catch up to our Clueless friend, though he will be leaving a trail – he’s too ignorant to realise bragging about killing a body for looking like a bad guy might be a bad idea.
We can still use the time limit idea – take too long and the Clueless catches on that he might need to lay low or jump a portal somewhere safe.

A Zib for your Thoughts from WOTC – originally set in Ravnica

Another investigation, sort of. Someone should really look into different options for urban adventures than sleuthing.

The party is given a simple job – go and meet with three people and make them think about certain topics whilst nearby enough to copy those thoughts with a mcguffin – a vial of thought capture. These three people hold partial knowledge that somebody wants about the Grand Library.

The vial of thought capture has a tracking spell on it though – it belongs to a third party who wants it back, and will be able to track it after its first use.

So, how do we adapt this? There’s definitely Faction intrigue in play here, rather than the Guilds of Ravnica, but there’s something in Planescape that has three important factors to use – a Portal.
If someone needed to know the location, destination and key to a portal, especially a secret portal known to very few, they could use this method – as long as they knew that each of the targets knew one facet they needed.

Add in the real owner of the mcguffin and you have a potential blind chase across Sigil, and the potential to make a powerful rival or alternate employer.
And at the end of the adventure, the party might have been able to piece together the three clues themselves and now has access to a secret portal too – but who else is using it? And why?

OK, that’s another hour of my life gone to this bloody post. Hopefully it won’t happen again!