Customer Reviews

Planes of Chaos (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition: Planescape, Campaign Expansion/2603)

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The Planescape team isn't perfect. Not everything that they have done is brilliant. But even their relative failures are better than most of the stuff out on the market today.

'Planes of Chaos' isn't the best boxed set that the folks at TSR have ever done for Planescape. For that, you need to look at 'Hellbound: The Bloodwar', which is so good that it could stand alone as a campaign.

But 'Planes of Chaos' isn't terrible, either. Some of the sections on the nature of Limbo and the politics of the Tannar'ri are really, really good. Experienced planeswalkers will be looking for more, most likely, but as an expansion to a game like Planescape, where it's all in the mind's eye anyway, this box is good enough for jazz.

If you're dying to know a little bit more about travel conditions on Pandemonium, looking for a few new beasties to spring on berks who wander through the Chaos planes unprotected, or just want to get a bit more info on how the Githzerai and Sladdi really interact, buy this box. If not, save your money - and DON'T buy it for the art.

If you're really looking for a good investment, purchase the Planewalker's Handbook. No matter what you want to add to your game, it's got it. If you already own one, buy one for a friend. It'll make their day

The Planes of Chaos set seems to suffer from the same qualities & drawbacks as most of the planescape serie. What you get for your monney in the box is four booklet, the first one for the DM, the second one for the players,a very short monster supplement (probably the most interesting part of this set)and the last book is an adventure book filled with different scenarios for your players. This book,like so many dungeons & dragons book since the 2nd edition came out, follow the principle why make a book short and concise when you can make it longer and sell it for a higher price.To be more precise most of the information you will find in this book were already written in Jeff Grubb's excellent manual of the plane, and the remainder could have easily been condensed in a single 60 page book. However there are sufficient interesting elements to justify this purchase for the gamers who have a specific interest in the planes chaos and who aren't on a budget. Some of these features are : an excellent altough short monster supplement with great color illustrations by DiTerlizzi (introducing two new Tanari!), Some great maps, and interesting new descriptions of abyssal planes and the Pandemonium. Overall this is an okay book, but one I would only recommand it to fans of the topic and experienced players who will be able to use it to it's full extent.

This is a great campaign expansion for the collector or completist. I purchased this once in the late 90's and wasn't overly impressed by it, and recently purchased it again and found it to be slightly useful. Although it contains information about the Abyss, it does not provide a lot of detail for running a blood war related campaign.

One of the better things about this box were the possible adventures for each plane- with one for low level and one for higher level characters (if I remember).

The artwork and quality of design are great- I enjoyed simply looking through it.

Part of what i love about Planescape in general is its quirky, sarcastic writing style. You know what i mean berk? Or are you one of the clueless? Any cutter can see that this genre is particularly well suited for any number of gaming groups. The Planes of Chaos is no exception. Whether describing all the fun you can have in the Abyss, or the lush expanses of Arboria (at least, one level of it anyway), this set really helps to shape and define the Planes of Chaos. Did your group accidentally end up in Limbo? Sux to be them, but at least you can have some clue as to the exact best ways to torment your group as they try to get back to Sigil. Anyway, i find the writing style to be consistent with the Planescape setting, and the books themselves are quite informative. I do like to incorporate NPC classes into my campaigns, and so all the 0 level creatures/characters described end up as Experts or Commoners (and potentially Magewrights as well) with pretty much no effort on my part. In fact, converting anything 2.0 into 3.0/3.5 is really very easy. Anyways, if you can find this on the cheap, you are well advised to snatch it up. Generally, good sets are never less than $60, however, you can back into much better deals easily. Dont bother with new unless you are hoping for a collectible. You will pay way too much. Anyways,

Enjoy!

There our 3 lower plane box sets in Plane Scape. This one the Planes of Chaos is by far the worse of the 3 they do get better. It suffers form a poor format choice which is fixed in the later products. Planes of Law was much better done and Planes of Conflict is the best of the 3. If your going to run a blood war Campain Get Hell Bound The Blood War and Faces of Evil the Fiends.