The Vacuum

From Tab Wiki

In which our heroes establish their good name, discover a troubling truth of the multiverse and forever leave their mark on the City of Doors, and the planes beyond.

This was a campaign about a group of adventurers making their way in Sigil, the City of Doors. In the end Sigil was destroyed and the party followed soon after. It ran from July 2008 to November 2008.

The Planescape campaign setting dates back to the wondrous year of 1994. It--like the Spelljammer campaign setting before it--connected the many different D&D worlds together into a singular multiverse. Unlike many other D&D settings, Planescape focused heavily on social conflict and philosophical differences beyond the simple alignment system. It broke with a number of traditional D&D assumptions, such as humans being the most populous race or wizards being more the exception than the rule.

Characters

• Charbon - Micah's Character (Died early on)
• Coal - Micah's Character
• Cog - Zack's Character (Wandered off)
• That One Prime - Zack's Character
• Augustus - Brian's Character
• Kiva 'Kiwi' Ironhoof - Adina's Character

Campaign Information

Unlike most of my other campaign information write-ups, most of the general campaign information can be found inside the Planescape Handbook PDF. So go ahead, download and read that. This page will contain mostly a supplemental FAQ for extra information, and stuff specific to the particular campaign that I am running.

Campaign Files

• Planescape Setting Handbook (Password: The name of my male cat)
• SM Playtest Rulebook (Playtest Notes)
• SM Character Sheet
• SM Reference Sheet
• SM Antagonists Sheet
• SM Status Cards

Supplemental Reading

• Planescape on Wikipedia
• Planescape 3.5e Handbook
• Tab-Neo Design Goals
• RPG Combat Tactics

Campaign Premise

The PCs will start in the city of Sigil as a group of people who already know each other. I would also like for all PCs to have a shared contact--one that can be used for information hooks--you know, more along the lines ofa knowledgeable old man the PCs are fond of, less small child they have to save from distress. PCs should also be good or at least generally sympathetic to the "good" side of things. The direction here I'm specifically trying to start things out with is to hearken back to the days of wandering D&D adventure parties that go out and do heroic deeds. Over the course of the game, the campaign ought to veer into more elaborative motives and plots. I certainly plan to bring the factions into play as meaningful political forces. But in the early part of the game--when much of the groundwork is being layed out--its useful, and with much precedent, to be able to rely on the good old "we're up-and-coming-heroes; there's people to save; let's save them!"

Campaign Structure

The campaign will be a mostly event-based campaign centered out of the planar city of Sigil, but with significant portions taking place outside of the city. Before the game begins players should receive a playtest copy of the rules. The campaign will be divided into a five different chapters, corresponding more or less to plot arcs. After each chapter a re-balancing of the rules being used may take place. The changes should be provided to the players on a Rules Update sheet. When this occurs, players may also do a rebuild of their character mechanically to reflect any changes they wish to make and the rules re-balance. In the event of an extreme rules imbalance (of which I hope we won't see any) I may call for an "emergency re-balance" and the aforementioned process will take place at a point which isn't a chapter transition.

Campaign Options

A full explanation of the different mechanical options available in the campaign can be found in the Planescape Conversion Document above, but in short, player characters may be either a Prime (from the world of Oerth, Abeir-Toril or Krynn) or a Planar (from Sigil by default). They may be of the Sign of One, Society of Sensation, Fraternity of Order, The Athar or the Clueless factions. Races available will be Humans, Half-Elves, Elves, Half-Orcs, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Tieflings, Bariaur, Genasi, Githzeri, Aasimar and Rogue Modrons. Player characters will begin at Novice level (80 XP) and should not be evil.

F.A.Q.

The following are questions that should be addressed about the campaign.

How does day and night work in Sigil?

Since Sigil is a tire-shaped city floating horizontally above a giant spire, in a plane which is flat, night and day work differently. Simply put, every "day" there is roughly 12 hours which are lighter than the next 12 hours. The day doesn't get as light as ours does, but neither does the night get as dark. The source of the light is some indiscernible point.

How does money work on the planes?

Planescape is not a game about money exchange. If it looks like money, and its made our of silver or gold, etc., chances are the local shops will take the coin without too much trouble. In all honesty that's kind of glazed over; they even come out explicitly in the campaign setting book and say as much. Trying to exploit inter-planar exchange rates is asking for trouble.

What's this about Vecna or the Faction War?

In the information on Wikipedia or in the D&D 3.5e Planescape books online you may read references to the Great Modron March, the Faction War or the entrance of Vecna to Sigil. This is all meta-plot stuff. In the campaign I am running, this has not happened yet, and indeed, may never happen. The Faction War and Vecna incidents were a storyline written to bring the Planescape setting to an apocalyptic end (seems to have been a 90's fad). Ignore them.

Why is the cosmology different?

The cosmology as presented in the Planescape setting is different from what is presented in D&D 3e in several different ways--most notably the shadow plane is a demi-plane in the ethereal rather than a full-fledged transitive plane, and there exist quasi- and para- elemental planes. These changes are due to the events in the Die Vecna Die! module. They are part of the meta-plot. Ignore them.

How will rule fixes work?

Every few sessions (usually correspond with some plot arc or adventure or something=-like a chapter) there will be a declared revision. Tweaks to the game mechanics will happen then, and everyone will have the chance to rebuild their character if they so choose. I expect that such tweaks will mostly be small adjustments to the way different subsystems work, and the repricing of traits that have been shown to be too powerful/weak for their current cost. At such breaks between sessions I will be awarding a few more XP than usual, to make up (more often than not) for any currently-possessed traits that have become more expensive as a result of re-balancing.

Summoning and stuff: How's that all work?

So since it's come up, I've thought about it some and here's the ruling on the setting physics of how summoning crystals and all that stuff works:

When a character summons something, a summoning crystal appears on the plane she is summoning from. This crystal seeks out and strikes a target of the specified type. That creature's essence is then trapped inside the crystal and is projected to the plane where it is summoned. They are held on that plane until either the spell is no longer sustained, or they die. If the spell ceases to be sustained, the crystal releases the creature's essence and the creature goes back to where it was summoned from. If the creature dies while summoned, the summoning crystal shatters and the creature appears back alive, but unconscious where the creature was summoned from. What allows summoned creatures to be commanded, whereas other creatures cannot, is that the summoned creatures have their essence held in the summoning crystal and thus having the essence trapped is a means that can be exploited as a means to command the creature.

Why summoning crystals exist that sometimes target random inhabitants of a plane is that on the prime material plane--on many worlds--planar things are not fully understood. Mages there have developed an alternate, defective version of the Summon power. This version doesn't have the underlaying understanding of how the planes work going for it, and thus cannot target a specific type of creature. Instead it can only target a plane in general and hope for the best. Mechanically, characters who are primes, or who have had the chance to learn this defective version of the power from a prime may take this power. Treat is just like the Summon power, which must be bought up separately. Instead of having the Summon Entity effect at Light-Overflow, it has that effect only at Moderate. You may specify an elemental plane, the lower planes or a nature demi-plane, as appropriate for your power source, replacing the lists of elementals, demons and animals, respectively. Then, you get a summoned inhabitant of that plane, which the GM may pick arbitrarily at his whim.

Banishing people from a plane may be done against any non-prime not on her home plane. If the target is either a prime, or on her home plane, the spell may be a success, but the effect is simply to do nothing. A character's home plane can be detected with the read aura spell--although some effects may mask this.