This also is vanity, and a striving after wind.
-- Ecclesiastes
Help yourself to my Planescape Character Generator for MS-DOS.
In some liturgies, worshippers renounce, or reaffirm their renunciation of, "the glamour of evil." On Pandemonium, the glamour of evil takes the forms of nasty-silly "creativity" and the sheer joy of unreason. In our own world, some people think this is what they really want.
Pandemonium is the spiritual home of our own world's
riffraff and street losers with attitudes. It is also home to the
spiritual forces that would corrupt souls through the
glamour of utter madness.
For the locals, even the ordinary loves of our world -- family, friendship,
and romance -- are muted.
For a sense of what the plane is all about, look to the
extremely bizarre, moderately nasty mind-set of much of contemporary
music aimed at adolescents.
A favorite motto is, "The whole universe is totally insane!"
Real-world mental illness is not funny, but madness is a major theme
of fiction. Players and referees have more fun if experience points are
awarded for role-playing the insane.
Perhaps Lawful Good behavior
will speed recovery and gain experience points.
Even if you profess chaotic alignment, please respect TSR's
copyrights. To undermine the rights of individual creative artists
would lead only to darkness and tedium.
"Pandemonium" is universes of dark,
lonely, iron-clad, lawless labyrinths full of cold and howling
winds. Most sounds do not carry over ten feet, but the sounds of
madness, loneliness and hatred are borne by the winds throughout
the planes. The winds pass through the gateways between layers.
In all known regions, gravity is away from the tunnels' center. The
native life is mostly cthulhoid monsters, and they are rare.
Most of the inhabitants are transplanted from other planes, and
almost all are dangerous lunatics. (Especially, beware of the ones
that seem perfectly sane.) Don't expect warmth, love, or
kindness from the locals. Upon entering, and during stressful
moments when the sound of the wind is present, check vs. wisdom.
After the first failure, the character is crabby and abrupt, with
a penalty of 1 on wisdom and intelligence. After the second
failure, the penalty no longer applies, but the character is
despairing, and is always surprised in combat even if others are
not, yet gets +1 on all "to hit" and "damage" dice. After the
third failure, the character is hysterical for a number of
minutes equal to the difference rolled, then returns to normal
dice rolling but now has some behavioral aberration based on
previous personal traits. Work this out with the referee.
The spirits of the dead have no body
heat, and are invisible to infrared vision. Evil deeds, or any use
of death magic or necromancer's spells invites trouble,
including personality deterioration.
The Bleak Cabal nihilists have their
headquarters here. Primitives will find sinners doing penance
for their anti-social deeds.
Public portals between the layers and to
remote planes appear as rifts in the cave walls, often guarded by
dread things.
One of the sixties "spiritual teachers", who is still much-admired
in some circles, presented himself as a popularizer of Buddhism, particularly
Zen.
However, he abused his family, chain-smoked, and died of alcoholism.
Privately, he ridiculed what he taught in his books.
Reasonable people will differ about whether this "de-legitimizes" him.
Pandesmos is a universe of great caves
(thousands of miles across, so that their walls appear to be
barren plains), turbulent, decaying cities and the citadels of
mad warlords. The city of Madhouse is operated as a public
service by the Bleak Cabal. There's plenty of traders, but
almost no craftspersons and no natural resources whatever. The
River Styx plummets into an abyss here. Those who drink from the
river lose all sense of purpose in life. Winter's Hall is an
arctic mead-hall hideout maintained by the banished Norse
character Loki, guarded by frost giants and white winter wolves.
Olive-drab pools to the astral
appear at random in the riverbank slime, and can
be moved freely. Portals to the Outlands, Limbo or the Abyss are often flat
squares drawn on the walls of the caverns. This is a common
location for cults of darkness, wind, madness, and hate.
Cocytus is a universe of extreme noise, where the sounds of
madness and lamentation fill the air. This causes permanent
deafness plus insanity unless protective measures (earplugs,
"silence", mind blank) are taken. Its tunnels are artificial,
but no one knows who or what carved them. This is a common
location for the headquarters of cults devoted to madness and
weird mental states. "Howler's Crag" is a mountain. An inn lies
at its base. Its peak dances with faerie fire, and at the top,
anyone can shout a message to anyone else in the multiverse, and
it will be heard by that one recipient. Sometimes the message
goes to the wrong person. "The Harmonica" is a huge, windswept
spherical hollow, miles across, with towers rising from its wall
toward its center. No one knows which one actually reaches the
center, but rumor has it that any party climbing this tower will
receive a "wish" (or perhaps something nasty, instead.) Bugbear
heaven is here. Skulls around the bugbear king's throne whisper
of their old lives as the wind blows through them.
Phlegethon
is a universe of darkness, where all the walls are
black and slimy, and all light sources are greatly dimmed. Small
black fires burn here, and they produce little heat. In some
areas, the gravity is all in one direction, and here dripping
water produces stalactites and stalagmites. This is a common
location for the headquarters of weird sects devoted to darkness.
The town of Windglum is unfriendly and unplanned, filled with
exiles. The Court of the Bad Fairies is here, dominated by an
evil artifact. Visitors will probably be charmed into perpetual
slavery or used in some foul magical experiment. There is a monster
who, in exchange for all your food, will give you a one-way
trip to your selected location in Agathion via her intestinal tract.
Agathion is
a prison universe of solid rock with only spherical bubbles, and
no tunnels. Undesirables are kept imprisoned here, which is
good. There are probably many more layers.
Spell alterations in
Pandemonium: Alteration spells always produce a
result that is a little bit nasty. "Find familiar", "Limited
wish", and "Wish" don't work. Divinations require a secret
Wisdom check to avoid wrong information; perhaps a spell key can
be discovered to prevent this. Necromancy that
produces life ("Clone", "Reincarnation") requires an intelligence
check. Roll twice for wild magic, and take the more extreme
result. All fire-based spells fail, and no spell keys are
available to produce fire effects. Clouds of any kind dissipate
immediately. Referees must judge the effects of sound-based
magic. Wizards using material components must check vs.
dexterity or the spell fails. It seems unlikely that any
magic will control the winds. Perhaps any magic
that affects the mind (even "Remove Fear")
would require a check, with failure causing another step toward
insanity.
Wizardly spell keys are
musical instruments or noisemakers,
made from the rock of the plane.
Third edition "Manual of the Planes" focuses primarily on simplifying
and encouraging individual campaign creativity. Ideas include:
I respectfully suggest that Pandemonium be regarded evil-tending
and thoroughly chaotic. These effects are additive
The Fourth Edition retains Pandemonium as an astral realm behind
"roiling magenta purple clouds". The Bleak Cabal (with its "insane masters" but
without its philosophy being explicated)
has moved here,
as have the frost giants formerly located in the abyss. The prison
realm of Agathion is still here as well. Perhaps visitors would get bonuses or penalties
to intelligence, wisdom, and charisma-based skill checks
depending on how much their behavior has been in keeping with the ideals
of the locals.
In keeping with the flexibility of the third and fourth editions and the
backgrounds of many players, perhaps Pandemonium is essentially a world
where like-minded spirits meet. It looks and works like our own world,
except that noise and wind mirroring the insanity of the locals.
NPC attitudes are typically "unfriendly", and may respond best if visitors
seem to share their craziness.
If there is a spiritual race native to Pandemonium, it is devoted to promoting the community's
ideals
among the living by encouragement and subtlety, rather than by force.
The dead find communities matching their own ideals and interests,
and continue to live much as they did on earth, though no longer able to visit the
Prime Plane. Instead of the "gods" of polytheism, each living evil-tending
chaotic divine spellcaster is
sponsored (and monitored)
by a prayer fellowship with similar interests based on Pandemonium.
For the fourth edition, I suggest no penalties for divine spellcasters from elsewhere. For earlier editions, I respectfully suggest that the only penalty for such a cleric
on a differently-aligned outer plane is the loss of one spell
of the highest available level for each plane removed, with the Outlands two planes from Mechanus, Elysium, Limbo, and the Gray Waste. When one level
is depleted, spells of the next highest level are lost. Thus a cleric
sponsored from Pandemonium would lose one spell on Limbo or in the Abyss,
six spells on Arcadia or Bytopia, and seven spells on Mt. Celstia. Moving to the Outlands loses three spells.
A world where the locals glory in sheer madness would be as
wild and disturbing
as any rules-intensive world ever visited by adventurers.
Referees might not want players to realize that they have
entered Pandemonium. Depending on the site of arrival,
visitors might simply recognize a bunch of ordinary, dimwitted criminals.
Some of the clergy will probably talk about madness and unreason as
the essentials of spirituality.
The
Plane of Hell --
full of abusive egomaniacs. "With a feeling of sick familiarity,
I recognized here my own thinking."
Gamers for Christ --
news group
How do you role-play an evil cleric?
-1 on all charimsa checks for all good creatures
-1 on all intelligence, wisdom, and charisma checks for all non-lawful, non-chaotic creatures
-2 on all intelligence, wisdom, and charisma checks for all lawful creatures
Good-based spells (non-lawful) require a Spellcraft check (DC 15) for success.
Evil-based spells (non-lawful) work as if caster were 2 levels higher.
Law-based spells simply fail.
Chaos-based spells work as if caster were 4 levels higher.
Near Death
Experiences -- including accounts of hell.
Hell's Dominion -- a near-death experience
Background from InfiniteFish -- thanks!
Unity of the Rings -- comic book art
Acheron -- Lawful, Evil Tendencies
Arborea -- Chaotic Good
Arcadia -- Lawful, Good Tendencies
Baator -- Lawful Evil
The Beastlands -- Good, Chaotic Tendencies
Bytopia -- Good, Lawful Tendencies
Carceri -- Evil, Chaotic Tendencies
Elysium -- Neutral Good
Gehenna -- Evil, Lawful Tendencies
The Gray Waste -- Neutral Evil
Limbo -- Chaotic Neutral
Mechanus -- Lawful Neutral
Mount Celestia -- Lawful Good
The Outlands -- True Neutral
Pandemonium -- Chaotic, Evil Tendencies
Ysgard -- Chaotic, Good Tendencies
The Inner Planes
What "Planescape" could be
AD&D and the Religious Right
Li Po's Hermitage (character generators, more)
Ed's character generators:
More good
Less extreme
Less good
Fourth Edition
Third edition: DD3.5, d20 Modern, Dragonlance, Eberron, Forgotten Realms, lots more.
AD&D2 Generic Character Generator for MS-DOS.
AD&D2 for very limited machines for MS-DOS.
Alternity Science Fiction Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Birthright Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Dark Sun 2 Character Generator and
documentation for MS-DOS.
Jakandor Character Generator
Lankhmar Character Generator
Planescape Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Psionics Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Red Death Character Generator for MS-DOS.
Skills & Powers Character Generator for MS-DOS.
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