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

5 comments:

  1. The temptation to massively overcommit myself is rising, and rapidly...

    Maybe if I lose my day-job :D

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    Replies
    1. I am working with someone at the moment, and aim to test the waters with some small pdf releases, so you'll see something at some stage

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    2. Are you still working on the planescape stuff? I love the idea of a multiversal train... I am running a a planescape campaign which totally needs to feature this

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    3. Yo Ecowatcher, sorry about the slow response. But basically no. I've tried a few methods to trying and wrangle this project into small steps and methodically work through them , but to no avail .
      I think also my passion for it has dissipated , and so far I haven't found a way to manage my adhd induced project "fractal blooming", especially when it comes to such a sweeping and open ended project like this. Hope you can find something useful in the stuff that did get done thought!

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    4. Thank you for the reply. Its been great inspiration, my PC's are doing it next. Have you heard of the concept of the Unreal Market? A place / plane only accessible via psychedelics or the like. Its like the market within Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, I ran it last night and it was amazing, it was inspired by AJ Pickets video about it.

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