Close
Close
Please choose which option you would like to add to your cart.
Advanced Search

Planescape Campaign Setting (2e)Click to magnify
Full‑size Preview
https://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/17267-sample.pdf

Planescape Campaign Setting (2e)

ADD TO WISHLIST >
Selected Option:

Glory? Majesty? You don't know the dark of it!

Discover the multiverse! Enter infinite universes of infinite variety, worlds beyond the prime-material settings of the AD&D game. Explore Sigil, the City of Doors, filled with portals to every layer of every plane. All you need is the right key, including. . .

  • A Player's Guide to the Planes: A 32-page primer that introduces DMs and players alike to the grand design of the multiverse.
  • A DM's Guide to the Planes: A 64-page book of valuable information solely for the Dungeon Master.
  • Sigil and Beyond: A 96-page gazetteer that introduces Sigil and its surrounding plane as the starting point for planar adventures. From Sigil all the Outer Planes may be sampled by novice and veteran explorers alike.
  • Monstrous Supplement: a 32-page, full-color Monstrous Compendium booklet.
  • Four poster-size maps depicting the planes.
  • A four-panel DM screen designed especially for planar campaigns.

Until now, only the most powerful wizards could peek into the magnificent multiverse, but no longer! Gone are the unimaginable distances and the insurmountable obstacles that only the ultrapowerful could hope to overcome. Now even the greenest adventurer can enter the planes, though surviving long is another matter . . . .

Have at it, berk! Powers, proxies, planars, petitioners, and wondrous monsters await just beyond the portal. Step through and partake of the infinite excitement of Planescape.

Note on the Print Edition: This is not a box set. All of the booklets, poster maps, and the screen have been merged into a single print book. The maps and screen are cut into individual pages in the book. If you plan on using the maps and screen at your table it is recommended that you purchase the PDF+Print combo offer and print out the maps from the PDF.

Product History

Planescape Campaign Setting (1994), by David "Zeb" Cook, is the core sourcebook for the Planescape setting. It was published in April 1994.

Continuing the Settings. Throughout the early AD&D 2e era (1989-2000), TSR published a new setting each year, with the first four being Spelljammer (1989), Ravenloft: Realm of Terror (1990), Dark Sun (1991), and Al-Qadim (1992). TSR took a break in 1993, but when it returned the next year, it produced some of its most innovative settings ever. That all started in April with the Planescape Campaign Setting (1994).

Origins of Planescape. The story of the setting begins with Slade Henson, who wanted to revamp the Manual of the Planes book (1987) for AD&D 2e. He even had a name for the revision: "Planescape". Project lead Dori Hein and original Manual author Jeff Grubb kicked the idea around for a while, but nothing came of it. Meanwhile, TSR decided that the Spelljammer setting was fading out, and they wanted a replacement that would allow players to "travel across wide distances to visit strange and wonderful lands". You put these two facts together, and Henson's Planescape idea was suddenly turned into a full-fledged setting. In the process, it was almost totally revamped by a new developer, one who had the time and experience to oversee the new line: David "Zeb" Cook.

Cook had to meet a few other requirements while designing Planescape. First, it needed to truly be a setting, "not just a place to pop out and visit". Unlike Spelljammer, it also needed to have a home base. At first the designers thought about following a Spelljammer-like route, where the players would have an artifact that helped them traverse the planes, but Cook eventually settled on creating Sigil, a city of doors at the center of the multiverse, from which players could go anywhere.

Sources. By the time that he was working on Planescape, Cook had largely stopped reading traditional fantasy novels. As a result, he drew upon such unusual sources, particularly "experimental novels", which made the planes more "surreal". These sources included Dictionary of the Khazars (1984), Dreamtigers (1960), Einstein's Dreams (1992), and Invisible Cities (1972).

Cook also adapted historical sources while working on Planescape. Much of this shows up in his creation of the "cant" — a slang language used in Sigil that players either loved or hated. The cant was based on Elizabethan slang with some Dickensian slang mixed in. Cook's sources here included Cony-Catchers and Bawdy Baskets: an Anthology of Elizabethan Low Life (1972) and The Elizabethan Underworld (1977). Ironically, the books had been on Cook's desk for years and had already been used by Steve Winter as a source for HR4: A Mighty Fortress (1992).

A Sign of the Times. One of the most notable innovations in Planescape is its inclusion of "factions" that players could belong to. Cook describes them as "the bad philosophy ideas that we used to argue about in college after a few too many beers". They were brought into Planescape because James Ward wanted to give players a "sense of belonging" and because Vampire: The Masquerade (1991) and its successors had proven that players were very interested in character organizations of this type.

Vampire publisher White Wolf was also innovating the industry with its metaplots. TSR had been playing with them since at least the Avatar modules (1989), the first of many "Realms-shaking events". Metaplot had also proven very important to the Dark Sun line. Unsurprisingly, the seeds of metaplot were planted in the Planescape Campaign Setting as well, primarily through mentions of the Blood War and the mysteries of the Lady of Pain.

An Artistic Setting. Earlier 2e settings such as Dark Sun and Al-Qadim had been created with heavy influence from artists, and this was the case for Planescape as well. Dana Knutson was the original concept artist, who created the image of the Lady of Pain and also originated the faction symbols. However, Tony DiTerlizzi is much better known for his published work in most of the Planescape artists. Together, Knutson and DiTerlizzi created a raw-edged, punkish style of art for Planescape that was unknown in the RPG industry and probably TSR's most innovative design style ever.

Expanding D&D. Planescape's main rules extension to D&D comes in the form of a few new character races: bariaurs, githzerai, and tieflings. Of these, the tieflings are the most notable, because this was their first appearance, and they've since become a major element in more recent editions of the game, particularly D&D 4e (2008).

Expanding the Outer Planes. The planes had already been well-described in Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes; Planescape does its best to adhere to those prior descriptions of D&D's Great Wheel cosmology while still expanding and modernizing them. Thus, the inner planes (including even the paraelemental and quasielemental planes) and the outer planes appear in much the same form as they'd been seen before.

However, that modernization resulted in some changes too.

The first big change from Manual of the Planes to Planescape was the updating of many outer plane names to what have became the new standards. Gladsheim became Ysgard; Hades became The Gray Waste; Happy Hunting Grounds became Beastlands; Nine Hells became Baator; Nirvana became Mechanus; Olympus became Arborea; Seven Heavens became Mount Celestia; Tarterus became Carceri; and Twin Paradises became Bytopia. Clearly, the goal was to get rid of planar names that might connect to existing religions, replacing them with original titles. Planescape Campaign Setting also adds a lot of detail to these planes and even describes new "paths" between the planes, such as planar rivers and the world tree.

The second big change from Manual of the Planes to Planescape was the inclusion of that new home base: Sigil (and the Outlands that surround it). The Outlands had previously been known as the Plane of Concordant Opposition (and were largely ignored), while Sigil was totally new.

Finally, Planescape also introduced a new point of view of the planes, presenting them (as planned) as their own setting. The cant helped with this by giving the planes their own culture, as did the clear distinction between "planars" and "primes".

Future History. Planescape was a major setting from 1994-1998. It was supported by numerous adventures, some of which advanced the setting's metaplot, and by many setting books, including major publications like Planes of Chaos (1994), Planes of Conflict (1995), Planes of Law (1995), and In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil (1995).

About the Creators. Cook continued to be a major designer at TSR through the early-'90s, but 1994 was his last hoorah, with his most important publications being the Planescape Campaign Setting and First Quest (1994), both released in April. That year, he left TSR, moving over to the computer industry.

About the Product Historian

The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.

We (Wizards) recognize that some of the legacy content available on this website does not reflect the values of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise today. Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were commonplace in American society at that time. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. This content is presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible. This part of our work will never end.

pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
 
 Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
Reviews (24)
Discussions (137)
Customer avatar
CK C February 01, 2024 3:32 pm UTC
Are these in the correct order, or are they again in "product code" order with the DM's material first and the players' material (which must be read first to understand the DM material) second?

(Seriously, there's no need to repeat the mistake made when the original codes were assigned ...)
Customer avatar
J​ Y October 02, 2023 5:50 pm UTC
PURCHASER
The new scans are much darker, as Nicholas M mentioned below; many details in the artwork are lost as a result.
Customer avatar
John W September 04, 2023 7:35 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Just downloaded the new scans. Quite an improvement. For those concerned about POD, this may bode well for reintroducing that option.
Customer avatar
Daniel D September 01, 2023 1:23 pm UTC
PURCHASER
POD please!
Customer avatar
Anthony W August 23, 2023 2:03 am UTC
Interested for online play.
What resolution is the 4 panel dm screen image scan?
Customer avatar
Byron S August 13, 2023 12:36 am UTC
PURCHASER
Ok so drivethrurpg themselves dont seem to be reading the comments and answering questions so i thought id share:
I contacted them a few weeks back through their facebook page about the disappearance of the Print On Demand version of the book, and they said it was taken down for review and to try get a better scan as there had apparently been a large number of refunds requested and issued due to the print quality being unreadable. Apparently TSR books in general can be difficult to get a legible scan out of and planescape in particular is extra difficult.
They said they're attempting to get a better new scan, but they had no way to determine whether the new scans would be approved for sale or when they might be back up.
Hope this clears some stuff out there for yall who like me were keen as hell to get their hands on an AD&D copy of planescape to fill in the gaps 5e is likely going to leave (if spelljammer was anything to go by :/ )
that all being said hopefully its a good sign that...See more
Reply
Customer avatar
Andrew S August 22, 2023 9:25 pm UTC
PURCHASER
For what it's worth, a new scan seemingly went up today. With luck that will translate into reopening PoD relatively soon.
Reply
Customer avatar
Nicholas M August 23, 2023 1:06 am UTC
PURCHASER
While it claims to be a new scan, it appears to be the -original- scan posted on DTRPG, but with some poor auto-leveling done to the images. It's much darker, and a large amount of background bleed through the pages is visible. All the creases and shadowing on the GM screen is still present, and now the background of the screen is way darker, obscuring the text. The one improvement is the fact that the posters are now both split and unspilt, allowing easier use on screen.
Customer avatar
Ryan R August 10, 2023 7:17 pm UTC
I can't wait for WoTC to butcher this incredible setting.
Customer avatar
Brandon C July 27, 2023 10:53 pm UTC
Was POD option removed because WOTC is putting out their own 5e version of Planescape? Come on.
Reply
Customer avatar
Ryan R August 10, 2023 7:15 pm UTC
What's POD?
Reply
Customer avatar
Brandon C October 20, 2023 7:59 pm UTC
I stand corrected, and apologize.
Customer avatar
David P July 27, 2023 12:51 am UTC
PURCHASER
Print on Demand, please.
Customer avatar
rocky M July 24, 2023 7:00 am UTC
Can you please bring back pod?
Customer avatar
James B July 20, 2023 12:54 am UTC
People may have bought both, now they will probably buy neither.
Customer avatar
Dave R July 19, 2023 1:16 am UTC
PURCHASER
I noticed this isn't POD anymore. Will it come back soon?
Reply
Customer avatar
Michael R July 19, 2023 3:09 am UTC
PURCHASER
WoTC is releasing 5e planescape, my guess is this is gone forever because its better than the new set
Reply
Customer avatar
Luca Z July 20, 2023 11:45 am UTC
That is unlikely: Spelljammer 2e is still available in POD even though they released the 5E version.
Customer avatar
Thomas S June 26, 2022 2:06 am UTC
PURCHASER
Is there a way to track the packages for this and hellbound? I bought this 3 days ago and just wondered if I can.
Customer avatar
Adrian S May 08, 2022 8:57 am UTC
Hi
It says this is in the sale, but there is no discount visible.
Can the discount be added, please?
Customer avatar
Neil S July 18, 2021 2:25 am UTC
PURCHASER
Does this have info on quasi and paraelementals
See 16 more
Narrow Results
$ to $
 Follow Your Favorites!
NotificationsSign in to get custom notifications of new products!















Product Information
Adamantine seller
Author(s)
Pages
236
Edition
1.0
ISBN
1-56076-834-7
Publisher Stock #
TSR 2600
File Size:
254.89 MB
Format
Scanned image Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.
pixel_trans.gif
Original electronic format
These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.
File Last Updated:
August 22, 2023
This title was added to our catalog on January 06, 2015.