Review: The Purple Planet!

John Carter meets Mad Max in the land of Dark Sun

The Purple Planet has finally been reprinted and its a beautiful looking book. Plus, the core content has been expanded with two new adventures and some great third party support. I even contributed to the Purple Planet Horde creating a one-page adventure on Tim Sattley's Random Acts of Violet. But we're going to do an overview of the Purple Planet book and all it contains. Because this is such a large book, this will be a high level overview with a focus on what I've used at the game table.

Peril on the Purple Planet (pages 4-37)

When I ran this, the PCs tried to avoid interaction with the kith as much as possible. They saw the ziggurat carried on the back of a thousand kith and its accompanying war band and noped right out of there. Fortunately for them, they noped right into the mushroom forest and got lucky on their rolls finding the right kind of mushrooms. The spell second sight got used a lot and soon led them to find a flying machine.

Overall, it was a fun hexcrawl that kept my players on their toes but after a couple sessions they were able to almost feel comfortable exploring. They were still very much wary of everything on the Purple Planet but achieved a level of knowledge where they felt like they knew what they were doing instead of just randomly exploring. I think this is the best way I can explain how the Purple Planet is well designed. It has excellent landmarks and interactivity that keeps the players interested and allowed them to learn instead of just constantly trying to surprise them.

Book of Handouts (pages 38-43)

These are art handouts for the Purple Planet. Not much to say here. It's typical high quality art that you expect from Goodman Games.

Lost Tombs of the Ancients (pages 44-69)

These are essentially a series of 5-room dungeons. Not all are 5-rooms but they're generally along those scope of dungeon size. I've only run the Tomb of Sotark the Destroyer, as it is the one that appealed the most to me with its theme. But all the others look pretty fun and could serve as good adventures that could be run in 2-3 hours in a convention settings.

Purple Planet Companion (pages 70-135)

This section provides rules for playing the Kith as a PC class, more info on kith houses and sub-houses, special Kith crits, and a random warband generator. Solid material and you'll find some of it on the Purple Planet specific judge's screen. It also adds extra artifacts (some of which are wild and some are more silly), extra monsters (some great ones too), and optional rules for magic. This includes a new mercurial magic table (hey, the stars are different here so the wizard gets to discover new changes), how the cleric's deity is more or less powerful on the Purple Planet, and how being in different regions can cause strange magical side effects each time that you cast magic. This material can be a lot to juggle and I think most judges are going to have to share this information with their players so that they can manage the mental workload.

Lastly, this section contains information on the Green Flow and the denizens that live beneath the earth. This particular section was super interesting to me, as it illustrates how the various aspects of the Purple Planet meet each other to create a interconnected environment. I do wish the Green Flow was expanded upon in the reprint, as there are some thematic pieces that strike me as similar to the Changelings/Great Link from Star Trek:DS9. But there's some obvious links to the conspiratorial nature of some of the original John Carter stories so that's probably the actual inspiration point.

Escape from the Purple Planet (pages 136-148)

This is a fun adventure, but does indeed allow the PCs to escape the Purple Planet aboard a magic longship (though the judge can very easily decide it malfunctions). It has a neat monster that can stalk the PCs, but I actually found it underwhelming against the massive number of PCs that the funnel provides. If I ran it again, I'd buff the monster a bit or give it a way to resurrect unless the PCs do something special. Solid funnel adventure with a good variety of challenges.

The Rock Awakens (149-157)

I have not played this adventure. Essentially a long-lost city reveals itself, and that city is built upon a giant spaceship so the PCs can theoretically return home. I avoided it because I didn't want my PCs leaving just yet. Its a relatively small adventure in scope that feels like it wanted to be larger, like closer to a Dragora's Dungeon in size. I think that I'd have fun running this adventure, but might actually mix it up with the aforementioned adventure to get what I want out of it.

Synthetic Swordsman of the Purple Planet (pages 158-171)

This adventure became the conclusion of my longest DCC campaign. It has the PCs travel to the northern pole of the Purple Planet and investigate a dying biosphere. And yes, it is full of synthetic kith. Lots of them. Prepare for a big gnarly fight because it is almost guaranteed to go in that direction. There's some fun machines to deal with that can grant crazy body and mental augments to the PCs. In the end, the PCs are confronted with a great choice. The biosphere requires an intelligent mind to run it. Someone must stay behind.

My players decided that the Purple Planet deserved to die and spellburned to cast a max level planar shift. They stole the biosphere and returned it to the formerly demon haunted swamp that the dwarf owned (the events of Bride of the Black Manse led to that). If I ever create a megadungeon, it'll be inspired by this. Overall, it's a pretty straight forward adventure but it offers a couple routes into the biosphere, cool combats, wild rewards, and interesting choices. Solid adventure.

Sky Masters of the Purple Planet (pages 172-189)

This adventure proudly shows its John Carter roots in its premise. Haven't played/run it but it seems like a cool multi-session adventure. The first half has the PCs flying their own sky ship and a kind of mini-game for ship-to-ship combat. The PCs then find the sky-spire of the sky masters, which is aboard one of the Purple Planet unbroken moons. The map leaves something to be desired, as it seem so practical that it is not particular interesting to explore. That said, it does still look like a pretty fun adventure. There seems to be some possible intrigue and elements that can lead into further campaign play, but that is something the judge would need to flesh out for themself. However, getting a sky ship from this adventure would lead nicely into Synthetic Swordsmen. Except that this is a level 6 adventure and that one is a level 5 adventure. I suggest judges just tweak some stats if they want to run both of these in their campaign.

Chessmen of the Purple Planet (pages 190-211)

This is the first of the new adventures and is meant for level 3 PCs. They essentially warp/time travel and get entered into a multi-day gladiatorial combat tournament. It reads like it would play out similar to Enter the Dagon. Personally, this style of adventure isn't quite to my taste, but that's just a preference. However, I must note that the adventure's end can drastically change the course of your campaign and is very, very cool. But I won't spoil that, reader.

Invasion of the Purple Planet (212-223)

This one the second of the new adventures and I have not played/run it. It's a 3rd/4th level adventure that can bring the PCs to the Purple Planet, which is a brilliant addition. The PCs are essentially in a semi-typical fantasy city when a huge portal opens up and kith being invading. The PCs need to do 2/3 of the following things to stop the invasion: close the portal, kill/control the death orm, and/or take over the invaders sky ship (called a barque) and defeat their leader. The invaders move around the town so the PCs must also keep moving around. A lot of the challenge is about fighting flying enemies, fortunately the city has seven towers so you can climb and try jumping onto the flying invaders. Reads like a cool adventure with some sweet set pieces that stays fast paced and hectic.

Glossograph of the Ythoth (pages 224-247)

This section collects bonus content from the original crowdfunding campaign from a decade prior. These focus on the Ythoth, who are interdimensional raiders who take human (and inhumane) captives. You'll also see them in some areas of Journey to the Center of Aereth. Here we see details on their teleporting longships (and some ghostships), new mushrooms, legally distinct lightsabers, magic crystals, notable ythothian captains and liche kings, artifacts, and the ythoth raider as a PC class.

Appendix (pages 248-257)

This short section has a repeat of a few handouts, an expanded warband generator, a notable location that can be put into any hex, variant greenstones, and kith doom dice rules. These all serve as optional content that feel like crowdfunding stretch goal content. I'd put the variant greenstones as the highlight in this section.

Conclusion

While not all the adventures feel like 10/10s to me, that's a tough standard to measure up to for any book. The Purple Planet provides a fantastic way to switch up your campaign setting after you're PCs have had enough of traditional fantasy. The Purple Planet is a great and wonderfully unique campaign setting and well-worth the money.

What kind of vibe does your Purple Planet games veer towards: pulpy John Carter or gritty Mad Max/Dark Sun?

What Else Is Going On?

March Madness - Round 3 - The Sick Sixteen

Vote in the latest round!

Dungeon Denizens 2

I’ve got eight monsters in there (including the walking eye that you can see on the campaign page), plus three more in MCC #15. I promise at least one 10,000-year-old billionaire vampire for you to kill in that one!