The Outlands Odyssey, Part 1: Behind the Screen

None of my players have played Planescape before, so it seemed a shame to hand-wave the journey from Chariamur to the Norns. Ask your players how much they are interested in travelling encounters, if at all. Mine averaged out at wanting a maximum of 3 encounters per day. Travel’s also a great time for roleplaying prompts. Ask your players what are your characters’ bad habits? What do they talk about? Who does the cooking? Do they share any secrets? How did they become a wizard? And so on.

Travel Encounters

Using a d100, I rolled 3 checks for encounters in a day. There’s a 35% chance of an encounter at any time of day. For every period where no encounter occurs, the odds of an encounter increases by 30%. If an encounter occurs, the odds decrease by 30%, to a minimum of 35%. Roll once a night for night-time encounters, with a 35% chance of an encounter at night. If you only have one encounter in a day, don’t always put a combat at the end of the day, where players know they can go nova. I used the Outlands encounter tables from reddit, making some changes for my own liking. Find the curated table and my Outlands magic rules here.

It’s fine to roll randomly in advance, and curate the encounters that happen. Aim for a mix of Combat, Exploration, and Roleplaying encounters. Throw together a few rough NPCs for encounters, and hide treasure in places that only the curious will find. If you’re using roll20, use whatever online battlemaps you can find, and take them as inspiration (try the subreddits /r/battlemaps and /r/fantasymaps).

I rolled as follows:

Day 1: Wastrels attack. I didn’t roll this, I just liked the CON-draining abilities of the Wastrels, and they’re only scary if you’re a long way from civilisation, so I made them the first encounter. Finding a fun map with a statue high on a cliff, I put some hidden treasure in the ground in case the players scaled the steep cliff and searched well round the statue.

Night 1: A merchant caravan approaches. Coming from Ironridge, it’s full of dwarven weapons and armour of decent quality, as well as some bub and smoked meats. It's heading to Rigus via some Indep villages. It has four wagons with 6 drivers, 12 guards, a dwarven commander (Kathra Stonefist), a half-elf scout (Guy), and a tiefling wizard (Chant). Chant and Guy are in a relationship. The traders saw the khaasta and will trade goods and local knowledge, but will go to good lengths to avoid the party if wastrels still fly overhead.

Day 2: 5 Leomarh attack today. Some of them stand intimidatingly in a narrow pass, in an attempt to funnel the party into a channel where their near-invisible kin lie waiting. No night encounters.

Day 3: I rolled “Earth-berg” for their first encounter today, and as I used a rock field battlemap for the Leomarh encounter, I figured that a patch of land had broken into Pandemonium, leaving traces of madness in its wake. You can find the rules I devised for it in the next chapter.

I plan to run the Rotting Oracle section as normal, but change some of the facts from the psychic wind to something more personal.

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