Planescapin' II

I have a lot of great memories about working at TSR back in Wisconsin, and so many of them revolve around the Planescape® team. From the moment I joined the team when I started writing The Planewalker's Handbook, Planescape began to shape my approach to game design and to writing in general. (You can read more of these memories in my first Planescapin' article.)

And now Planescape is 10 years old. (Yes, the campaign setting came out in 1994.) It's hard to believe that so much time has passed, but the friendships formed during the years of the line's active publication have never waned. I am still a big fan of the artwork of rk post (see right), Robh Ruppel, and Tony DiTerlizzi, all of whom contributed so much to the setting. I game every week with long-time Planescape editor Michele Carter. I see designer Wolf Baur around town and at get-togethers here in Seattle. I talk about comics in email with editor and designer Ray Vallese and about music with designer Colin McComb.

So it was a natural thing for us to come together again to write a new book of planes, in honor of Planescape's birthday. That book is Beyond Countless Doorways. Find out how the project got started here in our press release. While this is not, strictly speaking, a Planescape book, Wizards of the Coast has been kind enough to let us use many of the monsters from the setting in this new book. You'll even see the baatezu and tanar'ri make an appearance.

But, to be clear, there's no "cant" in the new book. Beyond Countless Doorways doesn't take you back to Sigil or the planes of the Great Wheel. Instead, it introduces you to 18 all-new, exotic planar locales to expand your game's cosmology. It's the imaginative nature of the planes that hearkens back to the classic Planescape.

My codesigners and I have been talking lately about those days in Wisconsin and how we feel about getting back to the planes today. It's been quite a trip. Here's a little bit from our conversation...

The Planescape Twist

There's a certain phrase that used to characterize Planescape around the TSR offices, even though it never made it into any product catalogs. That phrase is "The Planescape Twist." But what exactly is it?

	"Take a standard, freeform dance," Wolfgang explains. "Sway in time, emphasizing the hips. Then, throw knives at the dancer randomly. At the chorus, add bagpipes played by mutant sewer people."
	"I recall it best as an arm motion," Colin says. "Take your right arm, bend it at the elbow about 120 degrees, and extend your slightly cupped hand. Now, with a slight smirk on your face, say, 'It's the Planescape twist!' and rotate your wrist back and forth, corkscrewing.
	Ray recalls the concept evolving from the group's tendency to "give a familiar game element a new and unexpected spin. Either that, or an excuse to do whatever the heck we wanted."
	What I remember mostly is that we would sit around the office and plan out ideas for products, and sometimes one of us would say something another person found particularly surprising. "What are you talking about?" that person would say. The correct response would be, "See, that's the Planescape twist." For instance:
	Me: "I think that in this city, there should be orcs, but they all walk on their hands." You: "What are you talking about?" Me: "See, that's the Planescape twist."

Then and Now

By the time the Planescape line ceased publication with the final product, Faction War (although it was never meant to be the final product), the old team had pretty much moved onto other things. Ray was editing and doing graphic design for the University of Illinois, Wolfgang worked for Microsoft, Colin was off writing computer games for Interplay. And I was getting ready to start work on 3rd Edition. But no matter how interesting our jobs were, there were always things we missed about Planescape.

	What I miss most about working on Planescape is the absolute creative freedom that it provided, and the fun of sitting around with other incredibly creative people and just throwing out wacky ideas.
	"The best part was working closely with fun and crazy friends to come up with some really strange and wonderful stuff," Ray said. "The collaborations on Beyond Countless Doorways are long distance, but the same feeling is there."
	Even though the planes in Beyond Countless Doorways are not part of the Great Wheel cosmology but wholly new, working on the book was rather nostalgic, Colin says. "What I miss most is the daily interaction with Monte, Ray, and Michele. I reminisced my way through my chapters, and yes, this work definitely helped remind me of the mornings in Ray's cube."
	Wolfgang has missed the design opportunities the line gave him. "The complete freedom to start over on a new canvas was always a big part of the appeal of Planescape, and it was probably the reason designers (and artists and editors) always strutted their best stuff for it. There was often little or no backstory, canon, or previous design for a place, and that's exciting. Plus, the ability to play with pure, Manichean levels of Good and Evil. In 'realistic' campaigns, you sometimes played things down to allow for suspension of disbelief. Planescape players were always willing to follow you a little further around the bend."

So, that brings us to Beyond Countless Doorways. This new book is a Planescape reunion product in many ways. We've gathered together a lot of people who were influential in Planescape. We're missing two people, however, who were very important to the designers on the line. First there's editor Michele Carter, who was probably involved with more Planescape products than any other single individual. While she never did design work, she was always there for creative input, and she was always the person who kept lists of things and could keep track of what was where and what lived on what plane. We were glad to have her here to help proofread the final manuscript, if nothing else.

The other person was Tony DiTerlizzi, who not only illustrated a lot of Planescape products but contributed a lot to the feel of Planescape with his illustrations. I would say that the designers looking at his artwork probably influenced us as much as our writing influenced what he drew, if not more.

If you'd like to know more about Beyond Countless Doorways, this week we have a new preview for you in The Stuff. And keep checking back over the next few weeks, as we reveal more about the art and the new planes.

Happy Birthday, Planescape.

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