Planescape Campaign Setting Book

Before China Miéville brought the New Weird to a widespread fantasy readership, Planescape was rocking the boat in the RPG world. Controversial when it was published, Planescape has nevertheless demonstrated a lasting impact on fantasy role playing.

The premise of Planescape was to take the somewhat clunky cosmological "multiverse" of Dungeons and Dragons (most notably the "Outer Planes" where the heavens, hells, and other afterlives existed) and attempt to describe life in that surreal venue. The core theme of Planescape is that, in a world of pure thought, belief overtly shapes reality. As a result, the politics of the setting are quite literally philosophical, because strong beliefs manifest as real-world power. These philosophical debates and battles are fought most fiercely in Sigil (rhymes with wiggle), the setting's central metropolis.

Taken superficially, Planescape was an attempt by TSR (the makers of D&D) to respond to the growing market for more "mature" material, best exemplified by Vampire: The Masquerade, published by White Wolf three years earlier. Taking a page from the White Wolf playbook, designer Zeb Cook made the central conflict of the setting a political and ideological free-for-all between fifteen "Factions," each subscribing to a very specific philosophical creed. The "Believers of the Source," for example, are self-improvement-driven reincarnationists. By contrast, the "Harmonium" are unity-driven pseudo-fascist militarists and the "Bleak Cabal" are overt nihilists. Each Faction has its own special advantages and disadvantages, much like a White Wolf game.

What makes Planescape remarkable is that it is essentially the first attempt by modern roleplaying to directly address the role of ideology, faith, and debate in politics. Set in a sort of "high fantasy industrial revolution," Planescape dares to ask questions normally taboo in vanilla RPGs. These questions include such real-world-relevant issues as "is faith in the divine justified?" and "what is the role of protest and revolution in government?" Further, because the setting itself embraces (rather than shies away from) the darker side of the industrial revolution, questions about social responsibility toward the poor and the costs of high-density urban living are implicit to the setting.

It is said that conflict is the engine of narrative, and that our ability to sympathize with that conflict creates the emotional bond necessary to invest in a story. Where traditional D&D fell flat by recycling the same grade-school cliches of knights and monsters, Planescape was boldly inventive and brimming with conflicts that held strong emotional resonance. No matter your political outlook, Planescape laid the groundwork for stories you could invest in.

Without question, Planescape was met with intense skepticism by some gamers. Fantasy literature is famously conservative (in that it has, historically, avoided making central themes out of progressive issues), and Planescape had an in-your-face character that insulted traditional D&D gamers. Planescape went so far as to make "clueless" part of the setting's slang for describing the inhabitants of D&D's other settings. Despite alienating less intellectual gamers (who didn't want a gray area between Good and Evil), Planescape also formed an avid, possibly even rabid fan base. A testament to the durability of Planescape's following is that its fans remains active even today, updating the rules to the latest versions of D&D.

Since Planescape's release, a host of similar forms of dark urban fantasy have become popular. Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (1996), China Miéville's Perdido Street Station (2000), and M. John Harrison's Viriconium (2005) are just a few examples of bringing fantasy both into a more modern context and into a darker urban world-view. In a very real way, Planescape primed me for this new spate of speculative fiction by giving me a much more interesting world to explore than had existed prior.