Boxed Sets
Other AD&D
Books
Inspirational Reading
Consult
the
Mimir
Planescape Boxed Sets
Product:
Planescape Campaign Setting
(2600)
Designer:
David "Zeb" Cook
What's
It About? The first Planescape
product, and vital for any DM. It contains all the dark
you'll need to know to start a campaign in the Planes,
mainly focussed on Sigil and the Outlands.
What
Do You Get? A DM Guide to
the Planes (64 page book detailing each plane briefly),
Sigil and Beyond (96 page book describing Sigil and
the Outlands and two short adventure ideas), A Player's
Guide to the Planes (32 page booklet featuring factions
and planar basics), the Monstrous Supplement (32
pages with modrons, dabus, cranium rats and other beasts),
poster maps of Sigil, the Outlands, the Great Ring, Sigil's
faction symbols, and a useful four-panel DM screen designed
especially for Planescape.
Merits:
Pretty much all of it,
cutter.
Flaws:
You'll love it so much you'll
have to buy more!
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Product:
Planes of Chaos (2603)
Designers:
Lester Smith and Wolfgang
Baur
What's
It About? The five planes of
the Chaos side of the Great Ring, in full and gory
detail.
What
Do You Get? The
Travelogue (32 page player's booklet giving brief guide
to each plane), The Book of Chaos (128 page DM's book
with extended sections on each plane), Chaos
Adventures (32 page booklet with three brief adventures
for each plane), a Monstrous Supplement (32 page
booklet including Abyssal Lords, new tanar'ri, and
fensir), and poster maps of the Abyss, Pandemonium,
Limbo, Ysgard, and Arborea.
Merits:
Good attention to details; useful
planes, all.
Flaws:
I found Ysgard a bit dull. The
books are also quite hard to find information in...that
was the intention, apparently, but it's still a
pain.
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Product:
Planes of Law (2607)
Designers:
Colin McComb and Wolfgang
Baur
What's
It About? The five Planes of
Law, naturally.
What
Do You Get? Five plane books,
one each for Mount Celestia, Arcadia,
Mechanus, Acheron and Baator (32 pages
each, including three short adventures for each), plus a
poster map of each, a Monstrous Supplement (32 pages,
including archons and bladelings) and The Player's Guide
to Law (32 pages containing chant on each plane plus two
new sects, the Order of Planes-Militant and the
Mathematicians).
Merits:
Five more great planes, and some
incredible secrets revealed.
Flaws:
Arcadia didn't quite have enough
"attitude" for my taste; I was left with the feeling a lot
more could be done with the plane. More detail on the lower
layers of Baator would've been nice.
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Product:
Planes of Conflict (2615)
Designers:
Colin McComb, Dale Donovan and
Monte Cook
What's
It About? The rest of the
Great Ring, namely, Bytopia, Elysium, the Beastlands,
Gehenna, the Grey Waste and Carceri.
What
Do You Get? Liber
Benevolentiae (64 page booklet covering the Upper Planes
of Conflict), Liber Malevolentiae (64 page booklet on
the Lower Planes of Conflict), A Player's Guide to
Conflict (32 pages, briefly touching on each plane),
Adventures in Conflict (32 pages, four short
adventures), Monstrous Supplement (32 pages, lots of
great monsters), six poster maps, one of each
plane.
Merits:
Even the Good Planes aren't
boring. Elysium's got some great secrets, and the Lower
Planes are excellent. Great maps.
Flaws:
The adventures are good (longer
than the usual two page ideas in Planes Of.. sets)
but aren't great.
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Product:
Hellbound: The Blood War
(2621)
Designers:
Monte Cook and Colin
McComb
What's
It About? Anything you could
possibly want to know about the Blood War, its combatants,
battlefields, tactics, weapons, magic, bystanders, history
and on.
What
Do You Get? The Chant of
the War (32 page player's book with an overview on who
thinks what about the Blood War), The Dark of the War
(80 page DM's guide to all things fiendish and warlike),
War Games (96 page book with three adventures, the
last one - Squaring the Circle - is simply amazing),
Visions of War (24 page mini-booklet full of scenes
from the adventures), Hellbound: The Bargain (16 page
visually stunning comic telling a tragic story of the War -
also serialised in Dragon Magazine)
Merits:
Fantastic adventures and lots of
Lower Planar background. Squaring the Circle is a
terrific and potentially planes-shattering adventure. A
must-buy.
Flaws:
It's a shame there wasn't even
more!
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Product:
A Player's Primer to the
Outlands
(2610)
Designer:
Jeff Grubb and Colin
McComb
What's
It About? What it says, berk:
A brief guide to the main features of the Outlands; the
gate-towns, realms, sites and so on, plus a new magical
item: the Mimir. Ring a bell? Why yeah, that's what I named
this site after ;-)
What
Do You Get? A 32-page
softcover book, a poster map of the Outlands, and a 41-track
audio CD.
Merits:
Useful booklet, though more for
DMs than players in my opinion. Information tends to be
brief and pretty sparse...DM's Dark sections would
have been useful. The Mimir's voice itself and the sound
effects on the CD are amazing.
Flaws:
The other accents on the CD are a
bit cheesy. The art is very sparse in the book, though the
maps of the burgs are useful. On the whole pricey for the
amount of information the booklet contains, though for sheer
cool value the CD can't be beaten. A lot of people have
criticised PPttO but I have a real soft spot for it
myself :-)
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