We have long standing form here for planar supplements - when I saw Monte Cook kickstart Path of the Planebreaker it was a 'take my money moment'. I went in hard on early Numenera and the Strange hoping for what I finally got in this book. I am a bit behind the curve on this as I was waiting for the Bestiary to become available so I'd only get walloped by shipping the once. Finally, all is here.
The premise of the book/setting is that the mysterious moon the Planebreaker smashes through the boundaries between planes and creates a link that can be traversed by those who know the art of it. The book is about the places so connected and the people who know how to walk this path - giving you all need for a planar campaign.
A chunky book, gorgeous production quality, a great distinct aesthetic to it - excellent stuff. We have a tour-de-force of MCG standard indexing, cross-referencing, world-building through random tables, all the good stuff. Details throughout like DCs for the checks to know parts of the text are woven in making it all very easy to use. This is a very high gloss production, obviously MCG in a groove, delivering solidly into an area of expertise. Just details like the chapter striping on the outside edge that lets you find a section while the book is closed are really handy touches of polist. I have one or two personal preferences that aren't aligned with how MCG does things but the quality of the stuff that I do like is really excellent. It has been a long while since I read through an RPG supplement this big with such sustained interest.
So what is all this stuff you get in the book?
32 pages of 'the Planebreakers Path' about the moon and the connection it makes across planes
92 pages of locations, planar sites along the path
20 pages of 'briefs' - more sites but less fully articulated
24 pages of Monsters and Planewalkers
26 pages of Character options
26 pages of Planar adventures - two of them
15 pages of Appendices at the back.
So what is in here chunk by chunk?
The Planebreakers Path is the high concept about how it all works, the moon itself including the great sea of debris spreading across its surface and the city of Timeborne upon it and the path and how to use it. Timeborne and the Planebreaker could become a base of operations, a slightly bleak one, but they could also feature as a crossroads for plane-walking adventurers. Not a heaving metropolis but still a lot of adventure hooks here stemming from its central location.
Locations and briefs are great you get a big block of planar sites, suitable to do a planar campaign if this is the only book you have or great to be dropped into any existing planar cosmology. This is the heart of the book, the reason to buy it. We get 20 main locations, each with about five pages of description, all of them with hooks to draw people to them. These could all be smoothly overlaid into any other planar campaign or deployed as a standalone set of planes. Following this we get another 20 'additional planar locations' which get about half a page each, and the section closes out with another eight microplanes which are all crammed into two pages. Plenty of great stuff in here to go on.
The large locations are a joy to read - including things like Urians Stair, a place to gain redemption for ones sins - a rare example of effort being put into making an upper planar location interesting. While it is unlikely to be the scene of some campaign finale clash, I could see it featuring as part of a party quest or players arc and it is all the more handy for that. I loved Tyrant of War - an abandoned infernal warcraft, terrible if in the hands of people of ill intent, a hazard to be aboard under any circumstances - but a mighty, world-conquering weapon who's location would be highly sought after.
There are a bunch of these locations that are planes of various sort and a good few that are 'the planes come to the prime' which offer ways for a prime party to get to the planes in the first place - the Tyrant of War, the walking city of Ethergard, the Planes of Mirror and Shadow and Storm of the Styx being my favourites.
Monsters and Planewalkers - here are 21 monsters and 5 NPCs - some strange stuff to keep players guessing and things to populate the new locations appropriately. I did not see any of the monsters that inspired me as I have seen in some other places, more because the actions-drivers in the book and the setting are organisations, factions and realms which are populated with creatures from the Monster Manual.
Character options - part of the book where I pay least attention - there are three new Species, Subclasses for the Fighter, Cleric, Rogue and Wizard, four Feats, eight Spells and 25 Items. The spells are some nice planar-related additions and the magical items are cool and flavourful. The more player facing stuff is not for me - it looks interesting but others will get more mileage out of this than I.
Planar adventures - two of them. Both adventures flex the locations section well to pack a lot of adventure into relatively short wordcounts - you will spend a chunk of time flipping back an forth between the adventure and the locations traversed but I think no great inconvenience for getting these meaty adventures.
The Tyrants Key is a about reconstituting the activation key for the Tyrant of War a dread weapon of the lower planes - one of the locations detailed. We get some interesting NPCs and a scavenger hunt across three other interesting locations and Timeborne on the Planebreaker itself.
Sword, Sphere and Cube is about chasing down a malfunctioning magical item, visiting some locations as part of finding a solution and others as part of chasing the item down - again good reasons to get out there and tour the planes.
Appendices are pretty great - Random Planar Encounters, Random Planar Landscapes, things you can fish out of the Sea of Uncertainty which doubles as miscellaneous planar junk and an index; solidly useful stuff each one of them.
To wrap up this is great, I don't know why this hit the spot so well - I think because it crammed the 'how it all works' into 32 pages and spends the rest of the book giving me stuff I can use. MCG has long had a solid focus on player options - new races, classes, feats and so on which has never quite been my cup of tea, but when they do address the things I am here for - locations, factions, hooks and DM toosl - they deliver in style.
Other reviews can be found at The TTRPG Factory and Gnome Stew.
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