Planescape Memories

I've written before about the joys of working on the Planescape D&D line. It amazes me that it's already been five or so years since this product line ended.

Thus, I couldn't be happier to reunite with part of the Planescape team -- Wolf Baur, Colin McComb, Ray Vallese -- to work on Beyond Countless Doorways, a new Malhavoc Press book announced today. These were some of my favorite people to work with (although to be entirely accurate, Wolf and I never worked directly together on a Planescape book, but we did work on Dark Matter together). These are all writers whose work inspired me or wowed me during what I think of as the renaissance of my own writing career. (Working on 3rd Edition was the second renaissance, but that's another story.)

See, I started working in the industry in 1988, and I was just thrilled to be doing anything. I worked as a designer and editor and did what I think of as some adequate products. When I came to TSR in 1994, the Planescape boxed set was just coming out (it was one of my first free products I got for being an employee, actually). Reading through that campaign setting made me realize that game writing could be more than just passive descriptions, staged fights, and game stats. Planescape evoked mood and emotion as well as creating story and character. I knew from the moment I saw it that Planescape was something I wanted to be involved with.

Wolf worked on Planes of Chaos and In the Cage, my two favorite early Planescape products. These were a wonderful inspiration to me. When I joined the Planescape team, Colin was already hard at work on so many great products, and he and I codesigned things like Hellbound and The Great Modron March. Ray Vallese co-wrote Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, probably the best NPC book that's ever been written for any edition of the game and was my editor on a lot of the Planescape stuff I wrote (my other editor was the equally incredible Michele Carter). Colin, Ray, Michele, and I, along with Creative Director Andria Hayday, would spend literally hours together coming up with incredible concepts for Planescape products. That was a great time of my career, and certainly one of the most creatively satisfying.

Further, to have David "Zeb" Cook writing the preface of the book simply could not be more appropriate. Zeb, of course, wrote the Planescape boxed set that started it all. He was also one of my early inspirations to get into the game industry as a career. I'm surprised I haven't mentioned that in this column before, actually. When I was 11 or 12 years old, I picked up a copy of Dwellers in the Forbidden City. As I studied the cover like an archeologist examining a rare new find, I saw the words "By David Cook." It caught my attention because, of course, we shared the same last name. It was the first time I thought to myself, "Hey, some actual living person writes this stuff. It's his job."

And now, about 24 years later, here I am.

Plus, as I have written here, I'd met Zeb before I ever got a job at TSR, and chatting with him helped convince me that working at TSR would be a good idea. I'm pretty sure he put in a good word for me there as well.

I hope you're as excited about the prospect of Beyond Countless Doorways as I am. I've already seen some of Wolf and Colin's work for the book, and it's really, really cool. I'm also psyched to have the whole project wrapped up in a cover by rk post, who illustrated many cool Planescape covers such as The Great Modron March and Tales From the Infinite Staircase.
If you're a fan of Planescape sensibilities and style (and by that, I mean highly imaginative settings, situations and characters -- not specifics like the cant or factions, which for obvious reasons are not a part of this book), you'll like Beyond Countless Doorways. If you don't care a whit about Planescape, or just don't know anything about it, but you like games with a palpable sense of wonder and a lot of unique flavor, you'll like it too.

If you'd like to check out some classic Planescape titles in PDF form, visit the Planescape store at RPGNow.