A Walk Through the Planes
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 9: Planescape Campaign Setting
I figured that after eight of these essays about D&D‘s planar setting, with I don’t even know how many thousands of words between them, I’d have some sort of idea by now about how to…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 8: The Plane Truth
It feels fitting that as we finally come to the first appearance of Planescape itself, I find myself invoking one of the setting’s three, somewhat nonsensical yet still-guiding principles: the unity of rings. The…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 7: MC 8 Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix
With the release of AD&D‘s second edition, TSR made more than a handful of sweeping changes to the game. Rules updates were one of the more obvious of these, but just as immediately noticeable…
A Walk Through the Planes – Side Story: An Interview with Jamie LaFountain about the Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix
While researching my next essay in this super-niche series, which focuses on Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix (also known as MC8), I found myself hitting a wall as far as learning where its more…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 6: The Throne of Bloodstone
By 1989, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would go through a colossal change as it headed through its second edition, a revision that would last more or less until 2000. As such, the prior year…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 5: Tales of the Outer Planes
Because this column began by covering some quite early pieces of roleplaying game writing, I’ve tried not to be too judgmental about the material. Some of it has been rough, some of it has…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 4: Manual of the Planes (First Edition)
If Gary Gygax’s first Dragon article announcing the existence of other planes of reality in his game’s multiverse was Planescape’s big bang, the origination of everything that would one day become central to that…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 3: Dragon Magazine
Given that Dungeons & Dragons‘ concept of the planes of reality was originally cooked up in an issue of Dragon Magazine, it’s no surprise that most of the early development of what this really…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 2: Dungeons & Dragons Gets Advanced
Most people did not play, and for that matter have never even seen copies of, the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The original box set’s first printing was only a thousand copies, and…
A Walk Through the Planes – Part 1: Gary Gygax’s Goofy Proposition
The original Dungeons & Dragons may be the progenitor of modern roleplaying games, but it has very little actual roleplaying in it. Which isn’t to claim that I was alive back when it came…
Exposition Break Series
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