Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse

Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition

by Wizards of the Coast

An adventure setting spanning the infinite realities of the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

Infinite realms of immortals and impossibilities, the Outer Planes brim with celestials, fiends, gods, and the dead—and they’re all just a step away. Enter a portal to Sigil, the City of Doors—an incredible metropolis where portals connect to every corner of the multiverse. From there, venture to the Outlands, the hub of the Outer Planes, and discover wonders beyond imagination, as well as the secrets of celestials, fiends, gods, and the dead.

Adventures in the Multiverse contains everything a Dungeon Master needs to run adventures and campaigns set in Sigil and the Outlands, as well as new options for players who want to create characters prepared to explore the planes.

Includes: Sigil and the Outlands, Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, Morte’s Planar Parade , a 2-sided poster map of Sigil and the Outlands & a 4-panel DM screen.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Reference, Games

256 pages, Hardcover

Published October 17, 2023

About the author

Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC /ˈwɒtˌsiː/ or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington in the United States.[1]

Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the classic D&D setting, Planescape, translated and reimagined for the fifth edition of D&D. I said 'reimagined' but never fear. It just resets things to baseline and brings things in line with the 5e characters and creatures without fundamentally changing the setting. The factions are back as they were in the original box set, portals are the same, the overall philosophy of the setting is present, and Sigil and the Lady of Pain are much as they used to be.

This isn't the kind of thing you read from cover to cover so I'm slowly digesting it over the next few days. It's impossible to encompass all the 2e Planescape material in three slim books but this does a good job as a starter set. Hopefully there's an incoming book of planar locations and more player options but I'm not holding my breath. There are copious references to the 5e DMG, which makes sense since it's way planes heavier than early editions.

The books are well organized. The first details Sigil, the Gate Towns, Factions, and presents a couple new player backgrounds and some new feats. There was no bariaur as a PC race option but I don't know how popular they are/were. Also, I'm mostly reading this as a nerd and not someone who is going to play any time soon.

The second book is the usual monster manual. New creatures and some resurrected ones are present, along with stat blocks for things such as Githerzerai Futurist and other elevated forms of familiar creatures.

The third book is an adventure that starts in the Mortuary ala Planescape: Torment with the characters having little to no memory of their former existence. I only read the setup in the event I might actually get to play this some day.

There's also a DM screen and some maps included in this slipcase. The maps are of Sigil and the Outlands. The screen has the usual screen stuff.

As I said, I haven't fully absorbed the material just yet but I already like it better than last year's Spelljammer release. The setting is as I remember it and not a vaguely similar product with the same name like Spelljammer. Not to shit on Spelljammer, one of my favorite settings of all time.

Age apparently hasn't brought all that much additional wisdom for me re: Planescape, though. It seems a little overwhelming to conceive a campaign that maintains the flavor of the setting as opposed to more standard settings like Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms. Oh well, I'll figure that out when the time comes.

[Jeff Ginger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Core book
I grew up on this setting in the 90's and absolutely loved it. The quirky absurdity of the multiverse extremes feels very spot-on to me!
I'll cover the main critique I feel like people have up-front: Yes, it is light on character options, notably no Bauriar and Rogue Modron, but we all could just create those via lineage - or DMSguild has you covered: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/4575... I think people can find plenty of solid lore from the 2E material to expand and fill gaps, though admittedly I also wanted a DM's-only multiverse secrets guide that continues some of those narratives.

I like the concept of factions in D&D. The gazetteer of them is everything I knew and loved as a kid but condensed and better summarized, with a couple of new quirks. Waterdeep has always felt very vanilla to me, except Xanathar's crew. Eberron is IMO indisputably the most robust, interesting, realistic and diverse but it's a lot for people who don't want to deep-dive lore. Ravnica is comparatively just as imbalanced and ridiculous but I still love it, the stereotypes feel easier to play and less pessimistic-doomsday-pain-sadfaces. But the Planescape factions do make for good villains!

Beastiary
The Plane-touched adjustments are solid. It has a few classic monsters but is missing many I loved as a kid. The time dragon is thematically pretty interesting but how could you not have Githyanki? I'd like 1 more agent option for each faction. I'm glad they have material on outlands encounters.

Fortunes wheel adventure
Memory loss start is fun, like Dark Matter or any number of other popular stories. It really leans into the dark humor sort of absurdity of Planescape, the adventure is the right blend of deadly with chances for clever encounters, very Halloween-themed.

The characters being a glitch in the multiverse as well as the plotting of Shemeska seem like they need a source book of back story. The GM can come up with it but that's a lot. I like that it's a tour of notable areas - extravagant casino to give players toys, then undersigil with an absurd tea party, Outlands traversed via a commandeered walking castle - fits with the over the top theme

The obligatory gate towns tour is a solid idea, though I wish there was a little bit more structure/content in each to play up the unique flavor of each plane. The gate towns guide gives you some of this but I'd like more scripted encounters, just my preference - I like turning things into mini-games. In all we have:

- Ambush/heist
- Escape
- Mystery
- Faction conflict
- Sabotage during war
- God having tantrum

All could be more complicated with intrigue, like hidden plots behind attacks or bounties, etc... At the same time I'm wary of social-heavy adventures that require real life people to be good at improv with high EQ. The maps could be bigger or more interesting - in a sense that's what the DMSguild and content creators can do but I'm surprised Wotc doesn't have people for it. Maybe because Hasbro wants to replace them with more lucrative videogames.

The Spire portion is weird. I find myself wanting images to explain physics, layouts and look and feel. Could have a fun boss fight if conducted as you climb or in a big tube or some strange lair. That infinite fall is dumb (a loophole in practice) with characters who die and revive in new forms, piercer is funny but also probably ultimately annoying. Love the multiverse secrets wish there were more - just give us more depth on possibilities!!

I won't say any more about the final portion of the adventure, but it comes together in a way that feels like good character development and multiverse-worthy.

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The latest of the Campaign Settings/Adventure Modules for DnD fifth edition is the revival of the Planescape module. Much like the Spelljammer set it consists of three separate books and a DM screen. Fortunately it's considerably better and more complete than the Spelljammer set.

The three books are split into what is basically a campaign setting (Sigil and the Outlands), a monster manual (Morte's Planar Parade) and an adventure campaign module set in this world (Turn of Fortune's Wheel). As I mentioned the collection is pretty good, doing a good job of covering the basics of the massive city of Sigil and the surrounding Outlands which are themselves connected through portals to 12 planes of existence. This means, however, that you do kind of need extra material to flesh this out completely. More information about those planes is present in the DM Guide and you would probably benefit from taking a look at previous material on Planescape from previous editions. That being said, with a little imagination it's not hard to bring this pretty fascinating set to life, with its competing factions and allegiances.

If you are, like me, a sucker for the history of DnD then I would vividly recommend the special edition set which you can get in your local shops (and not Amazon, for example) the art on the box, one each of the three cover and on the spectacular DM screen by Tony DiTerlizzi is extremely evocative, him being an artist synonymous with Planescape for DnD fans, having developed the look of the setting back in the 1990s. A worthy addition to your DnD collection, for sure.

[DW · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely reminiscence of the planes.

[Pádraic]

Like the Spelljammer boxset we got last year, this is another fan-favourite setting from the 2nd edition era, updated for the current edition. And like that last boxset as well, here we have three books: a setting guide, a bestiary, and an adventure. I should point out that I've never read the actual original Planescape core box, only sort of read around it with some adventures and the other planar guides. Anyway, let's take these one at a time.

Sigil and the Outlands is the setting guide, opening with some player options that are so slim they're not really worth mentioning. The meat of the book is devoted to describing Sigil, the city of doors, its competing factions, its varied districts, its many many portals to elsewhere in the multiverse, and its mysterious ruler, the Lady of Pain. It's a lot to take in, but I think it's worthwhile--the factions forming along philosophical lines rather than good/evil/etc is much more interesting than your usual D&D conflicts, and the Lady of Pain's rules mean that you're probably going to tend towards intrigue rather than open warfare. It's maybe the platonic ideal of an extremely high fantasy hub city setting.

The Outlands I'm less keen on. I'll admit to never really being a fan of the great wheel cosmology, I think it's a reductive way to think about morality, and that shades of grey lead to better adventures anyway. The gate towns are a neat idea, a sort of taste of what each plane is like, and there are some cool ideas going on in them. But they're let down by some of the planes being either very similar to each other tonally/thematically, or just not inherently interesting. Nevertheless, if you're not as grumpy about the alignment chart as I am, there's potentially a decent sandbox to be had here, once you've found your feet in Sigil.

Morte's Planar Parade is the bestiary, and it's pretty dull. I don't know why there are so many animal-headed peoples in the multiverse, and I've always hated modrons. The time dragon is underwhelming too, its powers not really, um, timey enough. The new yugoloth however, the baernaloth, is a top-tier messed up demon and your players are going to hate him so much.

Finally, the adventure is Turn of Fortune's Wheel. Much has been made of the "glitch in the multiverse" mechanic that allows player characters to, if they meet death, return as alternate versions of themselves. This is neat in concept, but seems to me in practice it would just result in more bookkeeping--5th edition character creation is a convoluted and overlong process that I'd rather not do more than I have to, so I'd recommend just cosmetic/personal changes to keep from going nuts (also, one of my personal rules is no amnesiac characters, which rules out the central premise here, but that's a me issue).

That aside, the actual content in the first part of the adventure is decent--the escape from the mortuary and the investigation of the titular casino are good stuff, lots of strange things to talk to and weird levers to pull. Once you get given your proper quest, it's essentially: go to seven specific gate towns and hold a skull near their gates, then you'll unlock the next bit of the quest, sort of. Obviously there's plenty of scope here for expanding this traversal of the Outlands into something grander--the book literally says it could take years if you liked--but the actual content provided is thin and bland. The incidents in the gate towns are lame, poorly designed, and often feel like time-wasters.

But the final section goes some way to redeeming things again, with insane arcane games to bet on, a sudden level jump (yet more bookkeeping, but at least levelling up is bookkeeping with a good ending), and a delightfully awful planar trip for the final confrontation/rescue/disaster, depending on how the players choose to approach things, and how they've behaved throughout.

There's some great stuff to steal throughout--particularly in Sigil--but I can't see myself running any of this as it is out of the box, and the absence of Planescape's iconic cant renders all the books rather without personality.

[Benjamin]

How? I got it on sale and gave it to myself to have something to open for Christmas, so the kid doesn't think Christmas is just for him.

What? Like the Spelljammer box set, this is 3 books: a setting guide, a monster guide, and a campaign. Planescape is the "let's go to the places where the gods and angels and devils are" setting, but this setting guide focuses purely on the city of Sigil and the Outlands, the neutral space that leads to all the planes. The monster guide is -- honestly, I don't even remember it. And the adventure is sort of the classic and disappointing "we've told you about places in the setting guide, so go there and do the most obvious thing."

Yeah, so? Look, I sincerely hope that this is lighting a creative fire for the younger kids for whom this is their first exposure to Planescape. It is a profound failure for me, with some bright sparks. So you know where I'm coming from, for me, the core of Planescape is:

* belief and philosophy matters -- if a city on a border with a Lawful plane becomes more lawful, the city might just slip over the border
* it reframes all the other campaign settings -- you might be a big important wizard, but out on the planes, you might just be a guy
* it's full of magic and grime -- the central city of Sigil has people from all over, but it's also got rats and vines and poverty and striving

What is the new Planescape about? Well, first off, there's the same sense of humor in the Spelljammer book (where they made a joke about whether the "giff" pronounced their names with a hard or soft g).

So here: angels play a baseball game with a modron ump named "G041" (which is l33t replacement for "GOAL" -- all the modrons have pun l33t names like that); there's a faction that believes everything is actually cake (but they also bake cakes?); there are Vecna impersonators at a casino, etc. Nothing is taken seriously. It's like the authors expect the PCs to be streamers trying to do comedy or take their cues from Marvel superheroes who are too cool for the story they're in.

OK, but sense of humor/tone aside, what else has gone wrong with this iteration? And I'll say again: I sure hope people find something here that excites them about the possible weirdness inside even a traditional fantasy world. But that's kind of the thing for me: Planescape was a new way to view a traditional fantasy world, but a lot of the wonder of Planescape _already_ exists in D&D worlds like Ravnica or the Radiant Citadel: giant cities full of factions and/or links to other worlds. When Planescape first came out, it allowed you to see behind the curtains of traditional fantasy, but that particular curtain-pull hasn't been new for a while now even in D&D. So to really be exciting, Planescape 5E would have to do something totally different.

And that's not the game they're playing, the game they (WotC/Hasbro) is playing is "let's play the greatest hits," which is why the opening to the adventure is basically the same as the great and successful video game, Planescape: Torment: you wake up in the Mortuary in Sigil, with no memory of who you are. Now, in the video game, I think you pretty soon get into a fight with someone who thinks you should stay dead, but then there's a lot of talking and meeting weird people and figuring out their deal. In this adventure, it's almost all fighting and almost all really boring set-ups.

I'll say it again: I hope someone likes this, and even I would be disappointed if this was just a retread of the 2e stuff. But the precise mix of retread/legacy-fluffing with tonal mismanagement makes this one of the most disappointing books I've seen in 5e.

[Ismael Jalal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A competent rendering of the setting, but heavily marred by the 5e tendency to leave an enormous amount of the creative and cognitive labour up to the DM.

Nearly all of the random tables in this book - things that you might turn to when your mind goes blank - contain what are essentially unfinished writing prompts. Perfectly decent ones, but not at all what you need in a moment of panic.

Fifth edition has been out for years now, and continues to throw an absurd amount of work at the DM's feet with a shrug and a "You figure it out, I got bored of writing". D&D is very much no longer king of the hill, and with other RPG writers putting in the work to support their GMs, this is no longer good enough.

[Ross Kitson · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the slight disappointment of last year's Spelljammer triple set (enjoyed the bestiary, adventure was mediocre, campaign setting rather scanty) I was pleasantly surprised by this update of Planescape for 5th edition.
Once more it's 3 books, with a pull out map (Sigil one side, Outlands on other), and DMs screen.
First book, which is the important one, is the campaign setting. They've retconned the Faction War, which is fair enough I suppose, as factions are one of the more flavoursome aspects. The description of Sigil is supported by incredible art, plenty of key locations (they'd never describe as many as the original 2e book), and NPCs. Maps vary in usefulness as most are too tiny for my eyes, but as I play digital it's no big deal. There's an 'undersigil' (of course), and some fun stuff on portals.
Second half of the book details the Outlands and the Gate towns and I loved this section. Some quirky and interesting settings, with enough bare bones to build upon. Some of the non gate town locations are mentioned, and the time dragon mausoleum must be my fave.
The second book is a bestiary. The first section talks about modifications to stat blocks to represent planar denizens, influence of aligned gate towns and regions, and after-life Vs planar natives. There's a ton of encounter tables, and then a bestiary which I felt could have had more inside. I liked some new fiends (demodands which I recall from 1e, maelephants, baernoloths etc), and some of the celestial creatures, and the (obligatory) dragons; I also like the faction member stats. But overall I felt it could have been 20 pages bigger.
Final book is the adventure. Forgiving the rather video game idea of three lives, as it played into the amnesic trope nicely, I thought the adventure well designed to give a tour of Sigil and the Outlands, with a nod to 2e Planescape with the Great Modron March. Some of the gate town mini-adventures were fun, with a mix of combat and competition. Shemeshka was a great choice for antagonist, and you can't go wrong with a casino in a DnD adventure IMO. The finale is bizarre and suitably tough; although the bump from ?10/11 to 17th level was a fairly blunt tool. Mind you the lair of a beholder god with a wigging out Modron who belches a planar incarnate might be too harsh for a 11th level party, I suppose.
Overall, I'm glad I got this..typically I'd run an adventure in Sigil already last year, but there's definitely chunks of this I'd use for a return visit. It'd be 5/5 with more monster content, and a touch more Sigil detail.

[Julian Meynell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of all the settings that Dungeons and Dragons has published over the last 50 years Planescape is my favorite. This review is very much coming from someone who loved the original setting when it was published in second edition. It is possible that new players will enjoy the product more, but what this is a dumbing down of the PLanescape setting.

The setting book - Sigil and the Outlands is perhaps the best thing about it, but it is still a little disappointing. Sigil itself is simplified and a lot of the strangeness of the setting is toned down. The factions are strongly toned down and the Cant is entirely gone, which is a lot of what gives Sigil its flavour. The Outlands have always been a good candidate for most boring of the Outer PLanes, although I understand why they limited it to this Plane. There is a great emphasis on the Border Towns. There are few new player options and obvious choices, like a Bariaur player race are not taken. The book simply lacks a lot of the magic of the old Planescape box sets.

The beastiary is alright. It has sensible choices for what is included and it is the best part of the set. It is about average in quality for WoTC 5th edition monster development. A lot of the best monsters had already made it into the Monster Manual. It's OK.

The Adventure is very innovative. If player character's die, they come back to life changed into a different character. It has a vaguely sandbox middle and tries to channel the weirdness of Planescape. That being said it did not work for me. I did run Planescape adventures back in the day, but I cannot imagine running this one, although it is very eccentric.

Overall, the box set was a disappointment. WoTC is capable of doing a good update, as they did for Eberron, but this isn't it. However, the Planescape setting is so good, that some of that magic still comes through. The main thing it did for me was to get me to reread a lot of my old second edition material. When you read that stuff side by side, the second edition material is far superior.

[Haakon · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a big AD&D setting guy, it was a pleasant surprise when they announced they were gonna do something with Planescape for 5e. Being a fan of previous material, it's a bit hard not to do any comparisons however.

So there's some lore (mostly Outland, some Sigil), some monsters and an adventure - plus a map and a GM screen. Over 250ish pages. Obviously hard to put in the wealth of info we had back when. This is pretty much a "have a sip" release.

I think the it comes across as decently presented, reasonably clear language for the material, vibrant high fantasy art some of which would make good posters, and enough stuff to get you started. But that's all I get from it.

All the personality, all the inspiration and the *point* of it all is not here to me. No cant or language shenanigans. The factions are mostly background stuff. Outland was always the boring stuff in the old days too, and now its mostly a town with a gate and some supernatural thingie going on and a subversive plot (the monsters are the good guys, while normally good people are now bad) going on. It's high fantasy/multiverse variation of Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

I spent over a year getting through it all, I doubt I will finish the adventure and see no reason to not just stick to the 2e material since stuff got lost in translation here. Or simply made to be something else, which is fair enough.

Since the book is light on actual mechanical bits too, and made redudant whatwith D&D2014 being dumped too, there's even less point having this thing.

[Francisco Becerra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I eas expecting a lot less of this reboot of one of my all time favorite D&D settings. However, although it’s presented to noob DMs on mind, it does a pretty decent job of moving forward the serting from 2e, giving more neutrality to the Factions and updating nicely Sigil and the Outlands. Things like character options like Bariaurs and Rogue Modrons are greatly missed, as more in-depth info about the planes; but the art is fantastic and the included Adventure is pretty decent and very imaginative. As with most of these setting updates, it works better with the 2e lore added. But all in all, very good.

[Andy Schwartz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading about the different factions in Sigil and the various gate towns in the Outlands. Though perhaps the book could have been more thorough. The new creature are all interesting, especially the faction agents. I am curious about where the time dragons fit within the hierarchy of dragons previously disclosed in 5e; they are not mentioned in Fizban’s. The accompanying map is beautiful and I had it framed and hung on my wall. The screen is also very nice. I actually prefer the standard addition for this set over the special addition.

[Antonio Roda Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a very complete set of books, that includes everything to play. The only think I dislike is it should contain a warning that it’s the adventure is not for new players. One of the best things of 5e is the learning curve, and the adventure starts in level 3, leveling up way faster than other published books.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think this book gets quite deep enough to be an excellent guide, but I thoroughly enjoyed the lore that is here. Planescape is very cool, and introduces some very fun ideas that I think should be considered for just about any D&D campaign.

[Ανδρέας Μιχαηλίδης · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, when I first leafed through this book, I was like, "OK, they haven's mangled one of my two favorite settings in the history of D&D (like they did with Ravenloft)." It also has some DiTerlizzi art, and the interiors don't look too bad, the slight Faction changes are reasonable, and Undersigil is an interesting bit of addition. There's also some updated stuff about portals, keys etc.

All of which is fine, BUT...

...when in fact I read the new set more carefully, side by side with the 2nd Edition material in preparation for an adventure, I realized the inescapable truth: it is shallow and dumbed down. Not bad, mind you, but as regards Planescape, there is very little about the planes themselves, their special conditions, changes to magic etc.

Lore-wise, the set focuses on the Outlands and Gate-towns, a fact not bad in and of itself, but even those have been watered down. At best it is Planescape X-Lite, so maybe not a bad entry point for Clueless berks, but not especially useful as an edition update for old players.

[John Stinebaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A long awaited return, and a worthy start to a bold new future.