Sunday, 21 March 2021

Planescrap : Tower of Babel

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 And so we reach The Tower of Babel, the "Lawful Neutral " , the scrap take on Mechanus.

It as modrons too , which I didn't bother renaming. Modrons weren't listed as a brand identity for d&d last I looked, but a)likely I'm wrong b) might have changed . YET c)this is free.

 

TOWER OF BABEL

 

 

  Travelling the Train needs a lot more fleshing out, maybe an encounter table , and a better bureaucracy system . Travelling outside the Tower (i.e falling) needs mechanics and an encounter table too.

If Grind was close to 100% , Babel is about 30%. Not quite the climax to end on , but it does take us in a complete circle.

 That's a total of 10 "realms" (aka planes) , which doesn't match the 9 alignments or the 16 Outer Planes of planescape (17 if you include the Outlands ).

 The Grind and Erebus are meant to be "transitional" realms , realms that are halfway from becoming a realm of their own and just being a feature in another realm.

The Infinite Library is an example of something that could become a realm at some stage, but for now is just a feature of an existing realm.

 So the imbalance of realms hopefully suggests something like continental drift on a metaphysical level.

It's also because both Archeon and Limbo were too interesting to not include a version but fuck trying to make Bytopia , Arcadia, Elysium, Arborea etc distinctive adventure rich places.  

In regard to the remaining planes..

So Bytopia, Arcadia, Mount Celestia  , Ysgard*, were converted into Pinnacle of Virtue ,

Elysium , Arborea, Elysium, Beastlands  were converted into Serene Night

Canceri and Nine Hells became Heart of It all

The Abyss and Gehenna became The Flesh Rift

Limbo, Pandemonia, Mechanus, Acheron got a 1 for 1 translation.

Outlands and Sigil had some influence on Vermin Road. 

 I tried to make up new stuff as much I could, yet still used core concepts that I felt were too perfect to try and redo. Like the Lawful Neutral plane being clock work , or a Void of Floating Cube of rusted weapons crashing into each other.

I didn't even try and do anything with Sigil however. There's little I would add to it ,and it feels too Planescape to just keep it.

*yeah I know it's a chaotic plane , but that's just what happened


So that's it, that's all I managed to do with before the burn out. I absolutely don't  recommend doing a project of this size, not unless you can manage any project bloating tendency and/or have a clear template to work to. Otherwise the project will become vast and unwieldy and one loses the ability to hold it all in memory and you'll find yourself rewriting things , failing to connect bits , or disproportionately expanding  aspects.

I guess the question is will I ever come back to this? I definitely needed to kicked out of aspect of my psyche that's responsible for nagging about projects, so basically No, but, hypothetically , what it would it need to finish it would be :

a) Looking at Grind to make a Template 

b)Then use this Template to work out whats missing from other Realms , and also converting existing content to closer match Template.

c)Trim existing Content that seems unfinished , doesn't match Template , doesn't convert to Template , unless it can finished quickly

d)Add content as determined by Template

e)Go through and make sure cross references between Realms match

And most of all

f)Someone who isn't me , is a ruthless editor, is adequately professional* ,and is extremely resilient to project drift/bloat, to  do steps a ,b ,c and possibly e.

g)I guess some more art to match the art already? Like a collage landscape +2-3 pieces depicting a creature from the realm? SEE IM ALREADY ADDING TO THE LIST

*the bar in DIY rpgs is incredibly low fyi. But if this sounds like your kind of hell, email me at toiletworldultra@gmail.com to discuss time frames, your rates , previous experience (if any),etc

THE USUAL LINKS 

Here's the links to the planescrap primer:

1,2,

Other Realms:  

Pinnacle of Virtue 

Serene Night 

Blazing World

Mount Erebus 

Ocean Protean 

Flesh Rifts 

Planes of Revelation 

Heart of It All  

Grind

Sunday, 14 March 2021

Planescrap : The Grind

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The Grind , not to be confused with "Grindr" ,though pretty sure I've called this place Grinder a few times in the other texts somewhere. It's modeled off Acheron which I think was Lawful Neutral Evil but honestly you could make a case for it being near the Chaotic planes too.
Canonically in planescrap it sits between The Tower of Babel and The Heart of It All but also drifts out over the Plains of Relevation. 

 This one basically got done.  Monsters, Distinctive & Vast Spectacle, Weird Ecologies and Economies, Valuable Goods, Unique Hazards, Rules for Exploring it, Encounter Tables, and Art. Even got an Appendix N at the end.

 

THE GRIND

 

 

 

Here's the links to the planescrap primer:

1,2,

Other Realms:  

Pinnacle of Virtue 

Serene Night 

Blazing World

Mount Erebus 

Ocean Protean 

Flesh Rifts 

Planes of Revelation 

Heart of It All 

Saturday, 6 March 2021

Planescrap : Heart of It All

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 Heart of it All. The scrap take on the lawful evil hell/ Baator. Previously named Heart of Iron and there might be a couple of spots were its still called that.

 

All got about 30% done and had several major revisions (i.e delete everything but a couple of tables) to it.

 I never came up with a good city crawl mechanic for it either, and those were some of biggest obstacles to getting this one done.  I also struggled trying to get mortals, souls and devils to be all interconnected in a economy that kind of made sense. Might of just over thought that one .

Meant to do a lot more with post-life debt and weird soul punishments, plus give this place its own currency and play with the idea of money as distilled suffering.

All that I manged to do is some broad descriptions and a lot of niche tables.

 

 Heart of It All

 

Here's the links to the planescrap primer:

1,2,

Other Realms: 

Pinnacle of Virtue 

Serene Night 

Blazing World

Mount Erebus 

Ocean Protean 

Flesh Rifts 

Planes of Revelation