"I was raised on the Lower Planes" - on running Planescape

I have been thinking about the difference between Spelljammer and Planescape and to me Spelljammer is about having a mobile base for your road adventures while in Planescape you have a static one or none at all such as being a caravan. Here we are going to go a little deeper into my experiences running Planescape.

I got my hands on my copy of Planescape on a summer holiday and all my games after that were Planescape. Sometimes they might have started on or crossed the Prime, but anything I ran there were two guarantees - there would be planeswalking and somewhere a dragon was involved.

I ran three signature Planescape campaigns - one that started on the prime and then headed to the planes, two that were planar from the get go.

First was the Katharsis campaign - classic AD&D - running about a kingdom, fighting a goblin crusade, finding the portal that the demon-prophet had been trying to capture... then ripping it open and bailing offworld to dodge the coming demon invasion. From there it turned into a caravan across the planes, slowly losing hangers-on and gear, turning into a pure monster-of-the-week almost 'Sliders' style "what can we do here before we leave by the next portal". This was a mid-teens game, with a 3 core players and a rotating cast of others in a quasi-west marches style. Plane-hopping let me fold in whatever interesting turned up through Dragon magazine or whatever other inspirations crossed my radar at short notice.

The big 'Planescape signatures' I would tag here was the rapid switching between terrains, the continuous 'a stranger walks into town' effect and the chance to do some crazily epic things like hike up Mount Olympus to meet Ares (patron of two of the party).

The second campaign I ran - Kraken Mesa, a.k.a. Babylon 666 - was hung on the idea of the party getting abducted from their village on the Prime by a bunch of yugoloths on Gehenna who tasked them with clearing out and gaining control of an illithid fortress they had dragged to Avalas (first layer of Gehenna). This was supposed to be faction juggling, clearing out wierd aspects of their fortress, and trying to glean clues from what was going on around them. This was a college era game, initially 6 players, then 5 for the second year.

The big 'Planescape signatures' was being present on Gehenna, dealing with demons and devils on a regular basis who were too powerful to straight up fight, interacting with lots of the odder features of Planescape as parties interested in profitting off the Blood War made their way to their door. My players would probably recall the ridiculously over-engineered props I made up including a hand drawn cloth map of Avalas that was kept in a bag of soot for the authentic smell and filth.

The third campaign - JCQ - was entirely over AIM chat circa 2005. This had the player as fixers for an interplanar trading combine that had just gotten hit by some foes big play and they players made travelled the planes rescuing their colleagues, murdering their foes and trying to figure out who the enemy was.

This campaign was very dear to my heart because all the players were veterans of Kraken Mesa and as one would later say as in our title "I feel I was raised on the Lower planes" - and so I could push subtle lore stuff to them which would be picked up. "These brigands had green steel coin in their purses - Ba'atezu paid them, whats their angle here..."

The common factor among all these campaigns is the great freedom to throw anything you like at the party - next portal can lead to a dessicated sea where they face a mummified kraken, or to a jungle glade with a silent temple where a god sleeps, or through a hive of psychic wasps. Nothing was too strange because strange was to be expected. Planescape frees you from certain limits of versimilitude because Anything Goes on the planes, they are infinite. You just have to never flinch, keep your foot down on the accelerator and leave the players with the sense that they got away with something daring just by skipping through this place and surviving. Planescape should be plots in the shadows with angels and demons and sprints across the open to seize an opportunity before something of god-like power notices you.

To that note, for any DM thinking of running Planescape I would suggest spot the bits that really appeal to you and just do those bits. Some of what is out there will not appeal but there is so much good stuff and the to-ing and fro-ing of the infinite planes will generate so much material as you go that you will have a long, long campaign working through all the bits you really wanted to do.