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Riding on the coattails of the equivalent question on Spelljammer...

Is there anything happening on the Planescape front?

Both Wizards-related as well as independent updates are interesting.

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Unfortunately this question is too localized and probably won't help any future visitors. – Pureferret Feb 10 '12 at 7:16
@Pureferret It does serve to direct visitors interested in using the Planescape setting in their games to a variety of resources that would help do exactly that (especially Bryant's "Planewalker forums" answer), so I'd say it's likely to remain useful. – GMJoe May 29 '12 at 4:16

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There was no mention of Planescape in any of the Gencon WotC seminars. As you're probably aware, Sigil appeared in the Dungeon Masters Guide 2, and you could cobble together some useful material from the various planar books that WotC's put out over the last two years -- but not a lot of Planescape-specific support.

Since they did mention a Shadowfell-specific box set coming next year, I suspect they'd have said something if there was a Planescape book in the works. I'm going to keep hoping for 2012, cause it's an awesome setting.

The Planewalker forums are pretty active, though!

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up vote 3 down vote

Planescape won't exist as it was known. As a setting it was tightly tied to 2-axis alignment wheel of AD&D, with inner, outer, elemental and the like planes. The 4th Edition cosmology just isn't compatible with that.

There is support for planes but with the changes they might as well be the Internection of Legends of Anglerre.

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Wasn't Sigil written about in one of the 4e sourcebooks? – Judd Mar 17 '11 at 2:45
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It was, but Sigil wasn't the whole of Planescape. Planescape really was the great wheel cosmology fully fleshed out, and was intrinsically linked to the 9 alignments. 4e has done away with the alignments and the great wheel. As a general cosmology it's certainly more up to date with modern ideas, but it's not Planescape. – migo Mar 17 '11 at 4:39
up vote 2 down vote

For D&D 4e, there are three planescape-y sourcebooks:

Manual of the Planes

Plane Above

Plane Below

This month, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos will be released, a supplement for elemental characters with an elemental chaos theme.

You could also group the Shadowfell, Heroes of Shadow and Heroes of the Feywild books in there, as the Shadowfell and Feywild planes are the 4E analogues to the Plane of Shadow and the Beastlands.

Then there's always Planewalker.

A very interesting new project is Dark Roads and Golden Hells over at Open Design (Note: I'm a patron).

I myself prefer the great wheel cosmology to the 4e one, and therefore use the material mainly as an extension and addition to the existing planescape stuff. Recreating planescape with only 4e material is probably a futile endeavour, but it's easy to get the best of both worlds.

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This was touched on in migo's post and the comments it generated, but while Fourth Edition includes planes, planar travel, and (apparently) Sigil, those are just exotic adventure locations. The Planescape campaign setting had all of that (in fact, it had a fair bit more of it, seeing how simplified the 4th edition cosmology and alignemnt systems are), but it treated it as a setting, with its own themes, rules, conventions, cultures and metanarratives. – GMJoe Feb 10 '12 at 5:29
That Dark Roads and Golden Hells does sound like it might be useful for running Planescape in 4th edition, however - and Planewalker is, of course, still alive. – GMJoe Feb 10 '12 at 5:30
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That is correct, but this does in no way mean that the 4E material is not useful for planar campaigns. I run a 4E planescape campaign myself, and while I use the cosmology from the original AD&D planescape, I often use the 4E sourcebooks during preparation. Many things are still the same, or are easily converted, and IMO the wealth of planar material for 4E should not be discarded just because standard 4E has varying assumptions. – Mala Feb 10 '12 at 15:11
Ah! How did it not occur to me that 4th edition planar material could be viewed as an addition to the Planescape, rather than a more limited version of it? I must have been suffering from heatstroke when I wrote that. Thank you for pointing that out. – GMJoe Feb 14 '12 at 6:47
Oh, and perhaps you should add that to your answer, just in case there are other people wearing the same blinkers as me. – GMJoe Feb 14 '12 at 6:48

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