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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8207535" data-attributes="member: 18">Monte Cook is responsible for murdering the Factions.He did so in an elaborate-but-bad late-2E adventure (Faction War) where he systematically murdered or exiled the Factions, and replaced them with incredibly boring three-letter acronym organisations, which made Sigil seem like a down-at-heel American city in the Midwest, rather than the nexus of the multiverse*. This was made even worse because he also removed everything that made Sigil chaotic, interesting, exciting, and so on, most of which was driven by the Factions and their interactions, and replaced it with the Lady of Pain being far more directly in-charge than previously.(Adding insult to injury, in an earlier and much better PS adventure Cook wrote, the PCs managed to stop the titular faction war, but Cook apparently decided it was too brilliant and idea to leave alone. Sigh.)It was an incredibly bad take. It's like if someone got Star Wars, removed the Empire and the Rebels (and variants thereof), and removed the Force (and all associated traditions), as well as the Mandalorians and basically anyone who wasn't "standard" and said "Tadaa, I fixed Star Wars!". I know someone would like that, but that person is a person of bad taste.Now, Monte Cook's defence is the classic "I was gonna put the money back, yer honour, honest, but see them police stopped me before I could!".Specifically he claims he had another mega-adventure planned (he'd done at least two already), where the Factions (or the ones he hadn't wiped out entirely, anyway) would be brought back to Sigil, and everything would be restored the glorious chaos and complexity of the original Sigil setting (as immortalized in Planescape: Torment). But WotC buying TSR stopped this from happening. As far as I know, we only have his word for this.Worse, in Dragon 315, we have a piece (not by Cook admittedly) outlining WotC's idea of the results of Faction War, none of which involves any Factions going back to Sigil. Instead, it basically has several of the Factions just becoming totally different and much less interesting things, and the ones that don't change are all basically massively reduced in numbers.Then 4E doubles-down on Cook's dreadful vision, when it briefly goes over Sigil. Together these make me skeptical there was any actual plan to bring the Factions back.But there's no reason 5E couldn't go "To hell with that nonsense!" and bring back the Factions. None of that is "canon" in any true sense. It's just what previous editions have gone with.* = I can't remember if this happens in the adventure of was a 4E "addition", if so, he's still bad, but the real vandalism is on whoever wrote the 4E bit.</blockquote>

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