22 December 2020

Review: Dark Roads & Golden Hells plus Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds

tl:dr; a solid planar guide in two parts, clear and readable with some good bits even for old planar hands.

I found out about this "sourcebook of planar adventure for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game" only recently and even more recently managed to get it printed along with Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds, a 25 page supplement.


(screen-grab of PDF covers)





All told we get ~140 pages of content. Strictly this is the planar supplement to go with the Midgard setting from Kobold Press but it is adaptable to any planar cosmology model. It is simplified compared to Planescape with fewer large planes and more smaller pocket realms.

Contents include:
6 pages of Lore - what are the planes
20 pages of Cosmology - core planes
44 pages of Fantastic locations
15 pages of Heroes: races, feats, traits and new spells
10 pages of - DMs guide to running a planar campaign
8 pages of Monsters

In the Lore section there is a version of how planes work in D&D that is similar to what I have read in other Manuals of the Planes - good for first timers. What is very handy here is a compilation of archetype personalities for outsiders which was new to me (or at least I have never seen so neat a compilation) and a very useful resource for running these strange and distant beings.

In the Cosmology section there are most of the usual suspect planes - a good plane, evil plane, elemental planes of fire, earth, etc. What stands out here is the treatment of law and chaos, in contrast with the relatively orthodox look at good and evil. I liked this "frenemies" perspective it gives a refreshing new angle to bring disparate and normally antagonistic forces to align for common purpose, which is always great fodder for planar adventures. All of the boxes are great in this section - some really chewy conceptual stuff with lots of ideas packed in. A whole book of these sidebars would have been chaos but they are the tasty fruits in this particular cake and lift the whole section beyond just another planar guide.

In the Fantastic locations section I found less that I loved; these are all demiplanes of various types - half of these I thought 'cool, I may use this', half were not for me. Of the half I liked there was Evermaw, the kingdom of ghouls, particularly as it balanced between classic horror Ravenloft and being dragged into the Abyss as a realm of the Undead. This idea of conflicting realms of the undead is compelling, this I can work with. Similarly mMrketplace, the infinite bazaar was a nice location, potentially serving as another planar nexus. I particularly liked that the Infinite Staircase is visible running through it - but there is no obvious access point. The Plane of Spears, as a realm of eternal battle, was another interesting interstitial realm in that here the fights of heavens, hells and all inbetween merge and all becomes the singlular battlefront.

In the Heroes section there were some chaotic, lawful and radiant planar races, some cool travel spells and lots of traits and feats that I did not dive deeply into. A skim showed there were some nice flavourful additions in here but I did not lick my pencil and figure out what was weak, useful or otherwise.

In the DMs guide section there was a lot to like - many different and unusual planar paths and some very interesting settlements. Beyond the usual rivers and staircases there were ley-lines and ways to travel through shadow lands. The settlement rules were inspiring, particularly about taking a few aspects and turning up the volume to get unique places. The examples given, such as the City of Flight and Folding, were great and the methodology was quick and neat. I also liked the planar exonomics - with prices for all the things you can bargain to demons and fey for - your voice, your soul. These provide great fodder for contracts, treasures and other high-flavour mcguffins to scatter through your game. There is also a template for creating fallen celestials (ok) and risen fiends (interesting, not often seen).

In the Monsters section there were some neat beasts - such as Cambrium, that preys on the four humours and gives a variant on a vampire to stumble across.

All in all; if this was your only planar book there is plenty to work with but if it is not your first planar guide, perhaps much of this will retread familiar ground. As noted above; each of the sections has some interesting and inspiring bits and pieces even for old planar hands.

Also available is Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds, a 25 page free supplement. This contains
6 pages of locations
10 pages of planar traps, hazards and afflictions
5 pages of Monsters

The locations section of this was prefaced by a 'we cut this out of the main supplement because it was a bit much, one of the team even quit the project over it' and I can see why. Mora is a horror realm about terrible things happening to children and while it may play well at a certain table, this is getting deep sixed for mine. I wouldn't want to run this, my current players have no interest in playing this level of gruesome. There is a deep enough bench of planar scary things out there for me to run gruesome things at my parties for a long, long time to come without getting to Mora.

The Planar Hazards section is the reason you pick up this supplement; tons of cool and interesting things in here - weird trade goods of the planes, like dead stone which cannot be worked and is likely to make dwarves cry if they find it. Non-euclidean angles - you can ship them. This is hilarious, I would love to spring a box of packed up non-euclidean angles on my party and have them try to figure out what the hell was going on. The section continues with drugs, poisons, diseases and effects which provide good fodder for adventures on the planes and inspiration for your table. One quibble is that one of the diseases listed here is mentioned in Golden Hells without any further reference to the fact that it is to be found in this supplement. Not a great problem but could be confusing. The magical items section has some nice flavourful things to turn up in hoards or as trade goods.

The monsters section has templates for the things that live in Mora, fine, but also a trio of NPCs who could be useful throughout which I liked.

Overall, this felt like a single product that was split in two to ring-fence Mora, with some other bits and pieces that were judged 'modular' also snapped off and included into Shadow Planes. Together the whole is a nice planar supplement, as good as most that I have seen. To me the point that holds it back from breaking into the top tier is the full throated inspirational art to really bring some of the ideas alive. The layout is good, clean, readable, and realtively easy on the eye. The great ideas packed into the sidebar boxes shows that the team was firing on all cylinders but I think it could have benefited from a few more big inspirational art pieces.

For some other views on it check out Lonely GM.

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