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Hungry for more info on Planescape: Torment?
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Recently, Phil Bordelon/Sunfall to-Ennien had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Avellone, Lead Designer for the wildly popular recent Interplay release, Planescape: Torment. Find out even more of what you always wanted to know about PS:T. If you missed out on PART 1, click HERE on on the link at the bottom to check it out. Stay tuned for Part 3, coming soon!

Planescape is officially dead in the eyes of TSR (erm, Wizards of the Coast, erm, Hasbro). It looks like Torment's going to be madly popular, though. Do you think that Torment's almost assured success may prompt a resurgence of the campaign setting? And if not, would you be willing to fill out the copious worlds of the Planescape setting even more with other games or expansions?

Torment's success may spur a re-surgence in the setting, but only Wizards of the Coast would really know for sure. I know that they have resurrected some game worlds in the past and made them better than before. As for future expansions and games, I don't think Interplay would mind doing more, but I don't know for certain.

Torment fits into the Planescape mythos pre-Faction War (which is a good thing, in my opinion -- Faction War changed a tad too much). The setting of Planescape leaves a whole lot of room open for expansion, never explaining anything so concretely as to not let the Gamemaster change it up a bit (or a lot). Did you find it constraining?

Not in the slightest. The fact that even Sigil itself is described as constantly changing and rebuilding itself, along with the fact that the setting itself is set up so as to be really open-ended, made it a beautiful license to work with. There was plenty to work with and build on, and never once did I feel like any creative freedom was being limited. Zeb, Michelle, Monte, Ray, Colin and the rest of the Planescape crew set up a beautiful campaign setting.

Did many of the 'common' characters from the books (notably Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, which detailed tons of characters, and the recurring 'quote' characters such as Gorad Drummerhaven, the planar biologist) find their way into the game? Fell, the fallen dabus, is already known to be in it. Any others you'd be willing to share? Kylie the tout? Harys Hatchis? -nudge, nudge-

There's at least one other famous one you're likely to recognize, but we can't talk about him yet – it'd ruin a section of the game. You'll know him when you find him. As for Kylie, we wanted to use her as an NPC ally (hey, cute chick with tail!), but there were more than likely going to have horrible, perhaps fatal things, happen to certain companions, we just decided to make all the NPC allies our own creations and not endanger established Planescape characters.

Planescape is all about major non-player characters with no stats, such as the Lady of Pain Herself (erm, herself, don't want to get flayed) and the multitude of gods and goddesses spread across the realms. Did many of them find their way into the game as well? (Nameless One excluded, of course.)

We toned down the God aspect in Planescape by a conscious choice – we were already throwing too much at the player character as it was with the composition of the multiverse and all its races, that we kept the Gods intrigue toned down in Torment. Perhaps in future products, if we ever do any.

What was the most fun part of making Planescape: Torment?

Designing the NPC allies. Writing a million words.

What was the least fun part?

Localizing a million words.