Quote from: The Butcher;759403You had archetypal monster patriarchs, the awnsheghlien

It was literally a decade before I realized you're supposed to pronounce that as "Unseelie".

It was literally until 30 seconds ago before I realised you're supposed to pronounce that as "Unseelie."

I love Planescape, Ravenloft and Dark Sun. I've run many campaigns in those settings, especially Planescape where I loved the combo of Politics + Exploration.

I loved the outer planes in AD&D, but it was all about high level play. Planescape opened the setting to low level play and in many ways, made the outer planes more dangerous with the addition of scheming factions and the Blood War.

As for Dark Sun and Ravenloft, I loved those for some dark fantasy gameplay. Ravenloft was D&D Warhammer for my crew who weren't into Warhammer.  Dark Sun was nasty fun, and the no water, no iron was a fun aspect.

I always used the Player's Option books for Planescape.

Quote from: daniel_ream;761863it was literally a decade before i realized you're supposed to pronounce that as "unseelie".

mind = blown

Quote from: The Butcher;761903mind = blown

I still can't decide if it's a clever use of Gaelic that suits the implied setting or just really, really pretentious.

Quote from: SteerpikeAwesome. How about explaining the setting to me. I expected to actually be playing in the planes but I got high concept like Mage the Ascension and Wraith. What the heck am I supposed to actually do? I ask because I want to love it but I don't actually get it enough to use it.

Shemmy did a great job of summing it up, but here's my take to add to that.

Basically, I think of Planescape as Sandman meets Dickensian London.  It plays as a big, gonzo mythological mashup but filtered through a kind of quasi-steampunk urban fantasy lens.  There's a bit of philosophy involved, but you don't need a Master's degree or something to understand it.

In my game we definitely do play in the Planes, not just high-concept stuff in Sigil.  I'd say for every session in Sigil we have 3-5 sessions elsewhere.  So far my players have visited:

Pandemonium
The Beastlands (a lot)
Limbo (briefly)
Ysgard (a whole lot)
Elysium
Arborea
Acheron
Baator
The Grey Waste
Carceri (for a moment or two)
Ravenloft/Demiplane of Dread (twice)
The Para-Elemental Plane of Magma
The Para-Elemental Plane of Ooze (to their chagrin)
The Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance
The Seelie Court
Dungeonland/The Land Behind the Magic Mirror (demiplane)
The Ethereal Plane (one of the Lady's Mazes)
The Astral Plane (Yggdrasil)
The Outlands (specifically Bedlam and Glorium)

That's in about 2 years of roughly weekly to fortnightly gaming.  They've seen the Lady of Pain I think twice in that time.

I really want to give them a good reason to go to Mechanus at some point, and at some point I'd love to drop them in Athas.  Before the campaign wraps I'd also really like to take them to the Far Realm.

We strike a pretty even balance between political intrigue - the bickering of the Factions, philosophical battles, diplomacy, Anarchist spies, all that fun stuff - and swashbuckling surreal fun in crazy places, like a Hobgoblin village spread across half a dozen Acheronian cubes floating through space, linked together by bridges and rivers flowing in peculiar directions, or a Vegepygmy hive-warren with walls of living slime in the depths of the Para-Elemental Plane of Ooze.  One session the players might be sneaking into the Dustman Mortuary, another they might be mediating a dispute between the Mercykillers and the Doomguard, in a third they might be hunting Trolls in Jotunheim.

Quote from: CRKrueger;761348And have honestly never even heard of Jarkandor before now.

Jakandor: I've heard of but never actually seen. It was a campaign setting based on a large Island or somesuch with a high magic kingdom on one side and a low magic barbarian nation on the other. Island of War was the first one I believe in the late 90s.

Sounded like it was supposed to be a smaller scope setting like Thunder Rift?

Quote from: Omega;761929Jakandor: I've heard of but never actually seen. It was a campaign setting based on a large Island or somesuch with a high magic kingdom on one side and a low magic barbarian nation on the other. Island of War was the first one I believe in the late 90s.

Sounded like it was supposed to be a smaller scope setting like Thunder Rift?

I think Jakandor's gimmick was essentially not having a good/evil alignment axis, highlighting the cultural differences between the sorcerous nation and the barbaric nation and making it okay for PCs to pick either side.

So it was essentially AD&D 2e Dragon Pass.

I liked Birthright, didn't care very much for the rest.
Except Maztica which looked snore-inducingly boring.

Quote from: daniel_ream;761906I still can't decide if it's a clever use of Gaelic that suits the implied setting or just really, really pretentious.

It's a tabletop game, therefore pretentious.

I'm fluent in French and used to be really into using authentic French spelling and pronunciation for stuff, but I realized all I was doing was slowing things down, making detail retention difficult, provoking blank stares, and providing fodder for "misheard hilarity" from my players. Now I just write everything phonetically and Americanize the pronunciation for their benefit. It's just a game.

Quote from: daniel_ream;761906I still can't decide if it's a clever use of Gaelic that suits the implied setting or just really, really pretentious.

What? It can't be both?

Quote from: Bobloblah;761865It was literally until 30 seconds ago before I realised you're supposed to pronounce that as "Unseelie."

Quote from: The Butcher;761903mind = blown

Quote from: daniel_ream;761906I still can't decide if it's a clever use of Gaelic that suits the implied setting or just really, really pretentious.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;762011It's a tabletop game, therefore pretentious.
..

Quote from: Bobloblah;762053What? It can't be both?

QFT, all of it.

I was even in a large Birthright campaign for a while (like 20 people, though not all at once) and NO ONE pronounced it that way.  I believe (it's been a while) we tended towards "awn-shay-len."

Gaelic should never have been transliterated into the Latin Alphabet, or if it was, it should have been done well.  I think it would be easier to pronounce with friggin cunieform symbols.

Quote from: Omega;761227Spelljammers problem is that it was all over the place. You had setting specific stuff which seemed like it would have been better as its own thing.

I'm surprised that Spelljammer hasn't gotten an OSR treatment yet; I guess because it's so marked as 2e.  But really, doing something that's somewhere between Spelljammer and Princess Ark but without any of the 2e-TSR-corporate crap would be awesome.