Planescape review: Initial Forays
For the last three years, I've run a Planescape1 campaign through almost all of its modules. Now, after successfully finishing it, I want to look back and review these adventures, highlighting the pros and cons of each one.
Each module will be rated in three categories, up to 3 points in each:
- Presentation: how easy it is to understand and run the adventure.
- Openness: how open the adventure's scope is, regarding the freedom of choice.
- Quality: Overall quality of the adventure, including the originality and richness of its content, and players' enjoyment.
The full list of currently published reviews is available under the planescape tag.
Dead Gods Introduction
First, a couple of words need to be said about the Dead Gods book. Being a direct sequel to the Great Modron March, it combines two parallel adventure lines: Out of the Darkness — the main attraction, and Into the Light — a supplementary course of three parts. The book provides a flowchart with the suggested sequence of modules, and the reviews will follow it for the most part. Moreover, some of the Out of the Darkness chapters are so tied together that they will be reviewed and rated together, as a single module.
Initial Forays
In which the Heroes look into the Strange matter of an old church, seek Aid at a place known as the Ubiquitous Wayfarer, and discover that certain Forces would kill to ensure that their Secrets remain dark.
- Designer: Monte Cook
- Source: Dead Gods:2 Into the Light, Part One
- Party: 4-6 characters of any level
- Play-time: 1 session
- Locations:
- Sigil
Overview
The overarching plot of the adventure revolves around the feud between the Sign of One and Athar over a mysterious ruined temple. Since the entirety of this adventure takes place in Sigil, the faction politics play an important role here, so the DM should freshen up on what factions the player characters are in. Three possible hooks/hirers are included to pick one from, the most suitable for the particular party. The characters are hired to investigate strange disappearances linked to the ruins of a tiny church in the Lower Ward.
Other groups are working on this case as well. Particularly, a secret splinter group of Signers, and a party of Athar troubleshooters who are currently assigned the authority over the area. Positions of the other factions are presented in a neat list — a helpful tradition that continues from the previous adventure books. As this is a completely sandbox-style adventure, a brief timeline of the upcoming events is included.
The rest of the adventure describes various areas of the church's neighborhood and adjacent locations the characters may visit, following leads and clues available to them. The highlights of this module are NPCs the characters meet on the way, including a recently uncovered Revolutionary League spy and a mad street preacher from Athas.
There isn't some unexpected twist or grand reveal at the end. The characters learn the details of the situation, gather some rumors, sneakily spy on some suspicious individuals, and figure out a way of getting into the church, which is currently guarded by a squad of Athar. With all the meager information they manage to gather, they can return to their hirer and receive a modest reward. The stage for the following events is set, but it might take a while before the characters return to it.
Presentation
🖋️🖋️🖋️ superb
Top of the line production, containing three detailed street maps (with each street labeled, no less!) and the Ubiquitous Wayfarer tavern map with side view included. Needless to say, all NPC statistics are present, assembled in a hefty appendix grouped by chapter where they appear.
Openness
☀️☀️☀️ open
A proper and nicely presented city investigation sandbox for a single play session.
Quality
★★ good
A miniature yet quite enjoyable module that gives the characters freedom to explore and investigate on their own, without holding their hand. The only thing keeping it from getting a third star is its shortness and lack of truly engaging events, which are delegated to the further parts of the overarching adventure.
Since all three parts of this adventure take place in the Lower Ward, I would highly suggest making a custom map of it for the players to make them engage more deeply with the events going on. Below is the map I had assembled in Roll20 using the excellent Wonderdraft Town & City Tokens.3,4,5
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