Union in your game

[fnork de sporg]

I'd like to hear about people's experiences with the city of Union in their games. What people think of it as a setting. How they've integrated it in to their campaigns. How they think it compares to other similar setting like Sigil, or maybe Dis or the City of Brass.

 

[Shemeska]

I used it briefly. As the butt of a joke.

It always struck me as a cut-rate Sigil, but without much depth, without any significant reason as to why it hadn't been turned into a field of cinders by warring fiendish armies wanting to access what few portals it had, or destroyed by groups opposed to its mercane rulers (such as the Planar Trade Consortium and others).

It wasn't given enough depth to convince me of it having much inherent worth outside of 'It's [booming voice]EPIC!!11!!!!!![/booming voice] where the streets were cleaned by 50th level streetsweepers, you bought fish from 32nd level fishmongers, and the place was teeming with 21+ level Union Sentinals who rather than serving as deific proxies, or ruling empires or fighting for higher philosophical ideals, they instead were pulling a 9 to 5 arresting epic pickpockets in Union. Apparently the job market for epic level fighters was poor, so that was the best they could get.

It had too many flaws for me to take seriously, plus that it attempted to replicate many of Sigil's attractions, but without its context, depth, and living setting mechanic in The Lady of Pain to justify its continued existance.

If I were to ever actually use it, I'd have to seriously rework the place, and give it some hidden, behind the scenes backers: such as perhaps a proxy of a draconic deity of wealth, or an exiled archfiend, or even a cabal of titans to provide a bit more than mercanes and their uber level traffic cops protecting a city that looks more like uber level disneyland than a realistic planar metropolis.

 

[Dirigible]

[Union]where the streets were cleaned by 50th level streetsweepers, you bought fish from 32nd level fishmongers, and the place was teeming with 21+ level Union Sentinals...

And the police lived in mortal terror of an uprising of the Fishmonger's Guild, which would ahve been able to unleash a horde (school?) of Paragon Dire Haddock of Legend.

Um.

The ELH has the distinction of being the the only 3e book I've ever deliberatly mutilated; what's more, I didn't feel guilty. I tore out the Union map to scan, edit, and use as a city built on a series of islands in my campaign world. That's about all I found it good for.

 

[wingsandsword]

I also used it as a cut-rate Sigil. When my last D&D game went planar for a while, the planar adventuring centered around Sigil, and Union was thrown out and talked about as some background information.

Union was the place where malcontents who didn't like Sigil went, or were exiled or on the run. It was a place for high-level characters who upset the factions and wanted a place to lay low, people who for one reason or another feared going to Sigil because of the Lady, or quasi-deities who were a little too divine to enter Sigil. It is a cluster of demiplanes created by the Arcane (yeah, they try to call them "Mercane" now, but my players remember them as Arcane) as competition for Sigil, which isn't anywhere nearly as popular or successful.

I could never quite accept the entire concept of Union. It always stuck me as a little too MMORPGish to have a "high level zone" that effectively you have to be 21st level or greater to enter. A place where the average city watchman is a better fighter than the grand champion knights of most material-plane Kingdoms, and even the beggars are 20th level Commoners. If everybody there is EPIC, Epic loses a lot of meaning, and the demographics of a city where everybody is supposed to be 20th or higher level fall apart rapidly (how do the children of residents rapidly level up to 20th level?)

 

[andrew_kenrick]

the demographics of a city where everybody is supposed to be 20th or higher level fall apart rapidly (how do the children of residents rapidly level up to 20th level?)

They're exiled at birth and have to make their own way in the world. If they survive til epic level, they can come back for a joyous family reunion ... Hey, maybe there IS something in Union after all?

 

[mythusmage]

They're exiled at birth and have to make their own way in the world. If they survive til epic level, they can come back for a joyous family reunion ... Hey, maybe there IS something in Union after all?

You get experience for interacting with others. So just getting the paper for Dad at the corner stand should get most any 8 year old to 2nd with no trouble.

 

[Mercule]

Since I find the concept of planar cities to be a bit absurd in the first place, Union does not see the light of day IMC. Honestly, I find Sigil to be as silly as most people seem to view Union. Union is downright slapstick, IMO.

 

[Rystil Arden]

You get experience for interacting with others. So just getting the paper for Dad at the corner stand should get most any 8 year old to 2nd with no trouble.

Nope--Daddy is too high off the charts, so there's a ** double asterisk and Junior's GM is advised to carefully adjudicate the XP from the paper-getting adventure. Then again, if he does get the paper at the corner without getting killed by that epic Assassin's Guild run by a Leshay, maybe he does deserve level 2

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Sigil was the City of Doors, the Cage, the place where all realties met. It was gritty and tough. You could have two Neutral Good elven wizards in Sigil and they'd still try to kill each other because they belonged to opposing factions. Sigil was mostly made up of underclass and the poor who struggled to get by while the upper classes struggled not to slip back down.

Sigil was a city.

Union is the suburbs.

For adventure, I choose Sigil, but Union probably has a Orange Julius

 

[fnork de sporg]

How exactly do Union Sentinels get payed?

Is there really no one who has had a positive experience with it?




I like the description of it as an uberlevel Disneyland. Or one of those Gated Communities. With everything being built and run by the mercane the place would have seem very artificial, unnaturally clean, and overly pleasant to the point of being creepy. I bet there would be a huge tourist trace from people who just want to catch a glimpse of the epic levels. (Of course that would make the whole thing like ten times more silly.)