The D&D campaign setting Planescape takes place in the realities beyond the mundane material world, a place of afterlives and cosmic forces. Because the planes are such a wildly, weirdly different place, without many of the touchstones of regular day to day life, the setting required A LOT of material for players to fully grok it. Much of the line is devoted this, in fact: a sort of massive exploration of the multiverse first laid out in Jeff Grubb’s Manual of the Planes.

This is the Player’s Primer to the Outlands (1995), also by Jeff Grubb, which aims to detail the region at the center of the ring of 16 outer planes (it was previously called the Plane of Concordant Opposition in Grubb’s Manual). It is an infinite plane that has a definite center (the Spire, atop which sits the city of Sigil, sort of). It is a place of no alignment, where randomness and magic are neutralized and change is constant. Its a weird place and I am not going to do it justice in this space.

The box set, amusingly, is pretending to not be a box set, but rather a magical metallic skull called a mimir that floats in the air and answers questions with magically pre-recorded answers, sort of like the D&D equivalent of those tours-on-tape you can get at some art museums. This is a novel idea for a book, but TSR went a step further, including an audio CD that had, well, pre-recorded responses to your Outlands questions on it. It was one of a number of products around this time that included audio CDs. I remember thinking this was a hoot at the time, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to play it now. Maybe on an upcoming podcast.

Just a little bit of Diterlizzi art in this one, which, I’ll take whatever I can get. I prefer his take on the mimr to the one on the cover.

Oh, just to clarify, Morte, the character who is the heart and soul the Planescape: Torment videogame, is NOT a mimir. In case you were wondering.