Clueless in the Cage: The Great Shift (Learn to Play Planescape)

Creating your character

Come with an idea. You do not need a finished sheet. We build characters together at Session Zero and I teach the system as we go. We start at level three. You are already someone by the time we meet you, with a history in the Cage or a very recent and very confusing arrival into it. Expect eleven or more sessions, so build something you want to live with. What helps to bring A concept you can encapsulate in a sentence or a short paragraph. Expand on it once it settles. The more backstory the better. What you are to Sigil. A Cager who has run these wards since birth. A faction member with a stake in what happens next, or a namer still deciding whether the philosophy is true. A Planar who came here from somewhere with a name. Or a Clueless Sod who stepped through a door and has no idea what a dabus is. How Shemeshka got you. She has her hooks in everyone at this table and she did not need you to be wicked to manage it. A deal that went sideways. A debt inherited from someone who died owing it. Information she holds that your faction would pay to bury. Or she was simply the first friendly face you saw, and she was very kind about it. What you believe. Sigil runs on belief and the factions are arguments made into institutions. Your character does not need a faction, but they need an answer to what reality is, even a wrong one, even a stupid one. That answer is worth more to me than your stat array. A rough sense of role. Frontline, arcane, divine, skills, or the one who talks. Nothing binding. Just so the crew covers its bases. How the system handles it Faction membership is open and so is refusing one. Both are interesting. Neither is safer. Bring that much and you will leave Session Zero with a character tied into the crew, into the Cage, and into whatever Shemeshka wants from you.

Preparing for the session

Once your seat is confirmed on StartPlaying, send me a message here on the platform and I will follow up with next steps. Alternatively, you may send a Discord friend request first if that is your preferred method. Discord is saithefae. When we have touched base I will send you a Discord server invite. This one asks a little more of you than my other tables. There is an onboarding packet, and I do need you to read it before Session Zero. It is not homework and it is not a rulebook. It is the chant. What Sigil is and why it cannot be conquered. What the factions actually believe rather than what their names suggest. The words you will hear at the table and what they mean, because a berk is not a bariaur and a cutter is not a clueless. Enough of the Cage that you arrive knowing which questions are worth asking. The packet ends with questions, and those matter more than the reading. What your character believes about reality. How Shemeshka got to them. What they want badly enough to keep paying her for it. Send your answers back and I build them into the campaign before session one, so the first door you walk through is one that opens onto your character rather than onto a generic Sigil. If you are new to Planescape, the packet is designed for you and takes about twenty minutes. If you have run the Cage since 1994, skim the first half and go straight to the questions. Nothing to buy. We play in Foundry VTT and everything we need is loaded there. Your sheet is built for you, the dice roll themselves, and the rules sit on the character when you need them. DND 3.5/3.75 is amongst the crunchiest systems I run, so I teach it in play and I keep teaching it for as long as you want the reminders. Every session brings a new issue of SIGIS, the Cage's own newsrag, so the city keeps talking whether or not you are listening. You need a Discord account and a browser. I pay for all hosting and provide every other material you will need. Read the packet. Answer the questions. The rest is the Cage's problem. Note- The only thing we are taking from PF1/DND 3.75 are a few monsters on my end as they expanded the Planar beings a fair bit with things like the Inevtiables.

What Yuthika 'Fey' brings to the table

I contributed materials to Planewalker.com in the years when fans were the ones carrying this setting. The 3.5 conversion this campaign runs on is one I had a hand in, so when a question comes up about how a Sigil concept translates into the Cage, I know the reasoning behind the choice rather than reconstructing someone else's intent. Thirty four years behind the screen, and Planescape has been home for most of them. I do not study the chant between sessions. I own every original printing, the boxed sets, Planes of Chaos, Law and Conflict, the Inner Planes, Hellbound: The Blood War, The Factol's Manifesto, Uncaged, the full run of SIGIS, and I have had them long enough that they are being reprinted into hardbound reference volumes so the originals survive the campaign. Fifteen factions and what each of them actually believes, including the parts where the belief does not survive contact with the street. Chase something obscure into the Outer Planes and there is a fair chance I already know what is waiting. Planescape was written for AD&D 2e, and the 3.5 fan conversion is the one this campaign runs. Pathfinder 1e is 3.75, close enough that the conversion sits nearly native for monsters I absorb back into 3.5, and it keeps the full nine point alignment grid the Great Wheel is built out of. It is the crunchiest system I run and it is the right one for this setting. If you want the version of Planescape where a badly chosen portal key ruins your week, this is it. I am a formally trained educator with a PhD in Psychology. I will teach you the system at your pace and I will never make you feel like the Clueless at the table, which is funny exactly once. Every NPC is voiced. I work professionally in anime and games. Shemeshka sounds like Shemeshka every time, and so does the factotum who keeps not quite answering your question, and so does the Dabus doing Rebus at you while you panic. I spent years as a costume designer and VFX artist on NBC's Grimm, and I have taught foam latex and prosthetic work on the convention circuit. I have built faces with my hands, so when I describe a tiefling you get the weight of the horns and where the skin pulls, and when I describe a street that is also a ceiling you get what that does to the light. A new issue of SIGIS lands every session, written for what your table did the week before. Full production in Foundry. Custom maps, tokens, ambient audio, animated effects. I pay for all hosting and provide every material you need to play.

Homebrew rules

The base is DND 3.5 with some monsters and updated rules taken from Pathfinder 1e. The setting layer is the 3.5 Planewalker conversion, which sits close enough to 3.5/3.75 that most of what may come back to us from PF1e is without difficult translation, and where it does not, the translation is already done. The standing rule at this table is simple. If it appeared in original second edition Planescape, you can bring it to me. Either the conversion exists already or I will finish it before you need it. That covers the factions, the planar races, planar magic, portals and their keys, and the corners of the setting that never got a modern printing. Tell me the thing you want to play and I will tell you what it costs in 3.5/3.75 (Pathfinder 1e) terms. The same door swings the other way. Every prime world touches Sigil, so a Clueless does not have to come from nowhere. Krynn, Oerth, Toril, Athas (with strong justification and a path that came through the Inner Planes), a crystal sphere you shipped out of, a homebrew world you have been running since you were fifteen. If there is 3.5/3.75 material for it, or you can tell me enough about it, we will make it work. The Cage does not care where you are from, and the game is better when the door you fell through leads somewhere real. All fifteen factions are live and joinable, with the benefits of membership and the obligations that come attached. Standing inside a faction advances through play, and where you sit in that structure will matter more as the campaign goes on than any single roll you make. Alignment is kept in full. The Great Wheel is built out of the nine point grid and the setting does not function without it, which is one of the reasons this campaign runs on 3.5/3.75. Die Vecna Die is not canon here, and neither is anything downstream of it. The Lady unmade a god for taking worship in her city and left the ruin of his temple standing where anyone can walk through it. A setting that establishes that cannot then have Vecna just stroll in through the back. The Shattered Temple is still there and it still means what it always meant. Fel the Dabus still plies his trade and remembers his being cast down. Third party material is a conversation rather than a yes or a no. Bring it to me before session zero and I will read it properly and make a call.

How Yuthika 'Fey' creates a safe table

SAFETY Your safety matters more than any scene. A word about what this setting is. Planescape runs on belief. The factions are philosophical positions built into institutions, and the campaign will put your character's answer about the nature of reality under pressure and see what holds and what gives under pressure. That is the appeal and it is also worth knowing before you book. Expect scenes about faith, death, meaning, and whether any of it is worth anything. Expect the setting and factions to argue back. Those questions are asked of your character. Never of you. How the table holds that. Lines and Veils before we begin. Whatever you name as off limits stays off, permanently, and you never have to explain why. X card always available. Say the word or type an X and the scene changes. No questions asked. Open door policy. Step away at any point, mic off, return when you want. No judgement. Check-ins during play. If a scene runs heavier than expected I pause before we continue. Roses and Thorns at session close. Short debrief every session, and private follow-up afterward if you prefer. What this campaign contains. Philosophical pressure as a central feature, including nihilism, fatalism, and factions who believe your death is meaningless or that suffering is instructive. Fiends who bargain in good faith and mean every word. Belief capable of altering what is real. Slavery and indenture as practices of certain planar powers, referenced without detail. Characters can die, and in the Cage dying is not always the end of the problem. Moral vertigo. Sigil is not your world and it does not share your assumptions. Fiends drink where you drink. Practices that would be atrocities at home are legal, ordinary, and defended by people who are not villains. Cannibalism, indenture, and the buying and selling of souls exist as commerce here, described without lingering detail. Your character's horror is real and correct, yet the Cage will not agree with your view of it. What this campaign does not contain. Graphic gore or dwelt-upon injury. Sexual content of any kind. Harm to children. Torture as a scene rather than as something that happened offscreen. Real world religions used as the target of a faction's argument. Anything a player has named as a line. On the heavy questions specifically. If a philosophical thread lands too close to something real for you, tell me and it moves if it can. That is not a failure of the setting or of you. Sigil has fifteen major answers and dozens of minor ones (Sects) and we can use a different one. The multiverse is indifferent. The table is not. If something is not landing, say the word and it changes.