A great product! This large scale adventure provides intricate yet clear intrigues, making up a coherent story in which the player really have a role to play, changing the large scale course of events, and not feeling "controled" by the DM. This is rich, varied and surprinsing, and really emphasize on roleplay.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Everything<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The scanning is a little poor, I had to darken my screen in order to read everything.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Without a doubt, one of the top three best adventure products TSR ever put out. A great new threat to the multiverse as a whole has arisen, one that threatens life on the planes in a way the players have probably never considered. As the PCs see what's going on and try to figure out how to stop it, they find themselves at odds with panicked planars, opposing groups, an evil plot and several of the Big Secrets of the Planescape universe. It's an epochal adventure, with plenty of big fights, clever puzzles and desperate negotiations.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: All packaged adventures need tailoring, but this is the only TSR adventure I've ever seen that doesn't need huge sections reworked. There is some serious playing with the PCs' minds going on, too, and that touch of surreality that distinguishes Planescape from most of TSR's other settings.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: In order to even understand what's going on at all the players are going to have to have a deep familiarity with the Planescape cosmology. Despite the low party level required, this is an adventure for experienced parties ONLY.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

I had some issues with the rating I wanted to give this module. Most of the adventures themselves are just fine; they look enjoyable and are pretty well written. The problem I have though, is that the Staircase itself is barely described at all. There is no real explanation of how to navigate the thing in general, like how the players would be able to find a portal leading to a certain plane or location besides the ones in the adventures, and being infinite in size, checking each doorway you come across to see where it goes could take forever to find someplace specific. Basically, it doesn't tell you how the Staircase might be used apart from the adventures presented with it, which I found very disappointing, because I was expecting it to go over the Staircase itself in more detail. As is, you could cut out almost all the information on it and it would barely affect the book, since only fairly minor alterations would be needed to use most of the adventures with more mundane planar traveling methods. Also, I thought before reading this that the Staircase potentially lead everywhere. According to this book though, it only leads to places of creativity, which means only places inhabited by sentient creatures, usually major cities and the like. This would actually reduce the number of places it can reach to by quite a bit. Most of Pandemonium would be off-limits to the Staircase because of this.

So me giving it a 3 star rating is basically a warning. It isn't poorly written and the adventures aren't bad. It's just that if you want some good info on the Staircase itself, this book won't really do that much, it is more of a backstory device to get from place to place without using traditional Gates or portals. It won't tell you how to incorporate it into your ongoing campaign or how to use it on a more general basis.