Planescape 5e Planescape- What would you like to see in the upcoming setting?

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

The undeniable and unavoidable problem with Faction War is that it explicitly WIPED OUT pretty much all the coolest and most interesting Factions.

Deleted: The Believers of the Source, the Mercykillers, and the Sign of One

Disbanded: The Bleak Cabal, the Dustmen, the Free League, the Society of Sensation, the Transcendent Order, and the Xaositects

Right there we've wiped out literally all the most emblematic and memorable Factions (except The Revolutionary League). All of them.

Again, probably my inherent bias as someone who came into the setting post-Faction War, but I think you're giving the word "disbanded" far more weight than is necessary here.

The Bleak Cabal disband as a Faction...and then proceed to continue running the Gatehouse as well as their orphanages and soup kitchens.
The Dustmen disband as a Faction...and then continue running the Mortuary. The Planewalker fan update has a number of their members form the Undertakers/Funerary Guild.
The Society of Sensation disbands and then continues running the Civic Festhall and the Gilded Hall in Arborea. Planewalker has the group running the Civic Festhall form the Entertainers Guild.
As far as most of the Free League are concerned, they've never been a Faction, and they just continue on as normal.
The Revolutionary League continues being the chaotic mess of squabbling Anarchist cells it always was.
The Xaositects also just collectively shrug their shoulders and continue on as they had been.
The Transcendent Order, a group whose underlying tenets boil down to "just do what feels right in the moment", continue to do exactly that.

These Factions "disband", but their philosophical belief systems live on just fine. Those Factions that formally left the Cage are still only a portal or two away (with the possible exception of the Athar - they've got a bit of a hike), and have much more reason to be active out on the planes themselves, rather than mostly just in Sigil.

You probably have more of a point when it comes to the Godsmen, Mercykillers, and Signers, but the Mind's Eye, Sodkillers, and Sons of Mercy pick up a lot of their baggage.

Things are different post-Faction War than they were during Planescape's heyday, sure, but still very much functional, and I personally find that working with the setting in the wake of the massive political shakeup introduces a lot of interesting wrinkles and plot developments that can be fun to play around with.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Again, probably my inherent bias as someone who came into the setting post-Faction War, but I think you're giving the word "disbanded" far more weight than is necessary here.

The Bleak Cabal disband as a Faction...and then proceed to continue running the Gatehouse as well as their orphanages and soup kitchens.
The Dustmen disband as a Faction...and then continue running the Mortuary. The Planewalker fan update has a number of their members form the Undertakers/Funerary Guild.
The Society of Sensation disbands and then continues running the Civic Festhall and the Gilded Hall in Arborea. Planewalker has the group running the Civic Festhall form the Entertainers Guild.
As far as most of the Free League are concerned, they've never been a Faction, and they just continue on as normal.
The Revolutionary League continues being the chaotic mess of squabbling Anarchist cells it always was.
The Xaositects also just collectively shrug their shoulders and continue on as they had been.
The Transcendent Order, a group whose underlying tenets boil down to "just do what feels right in the moment", continue to do exactly that.

These Factions "disband", but their philosophical belief systems live on just fine. Those Factions that formally left the Cage are still only a portal or two away (with the possible exception of the Athar - they've got a bit of a hike), and have much more reason to be active out on the planes themselves, rather than mostly just in Sigil.

You probably have more of a point when it comes to the Godsmen, Mercykillers, and Signers, but the Mind's Eye, Sodkillers, and Sons of Mercy pick up a lot of their baggage.

Things are different post-Faction War than they were during Planescape's heyday, sure, but still very much functional, and I personally find that working with the setting in the wake of the massive political shakeup introduces a lot of interesting wrinkles and plot developments that can be fun to play around with.

I feel like what you're actually doing here is proving my point in very clear terms. The disbanding bollocks was completely unnecessary and didn't actually do anything interesting or helpful, it just made the most interesting Factions into not-Factions. In some cases that's extremely bad - like with the Sensates - they make huge sense as a Faction, and reducing them to an "Entertainer's Guild" is absolutely dire stuff, which stinks of both a lack of imagination, and profound and truly deep failure to comprehend what their philosophy was actually about. In others it's meaningless, except they're not called Factions any more because reasons.

Also, where you getting your 'facts' from here? Because some of them don't match up to the end of Faction War, nor to the presentation of Sigil in 4E. Are you sure you're not deriving them from an entirely fan-created source, which sought to repair the damage of Faction War?

I definitely disagree that it's more "more interesting" when literally all the best Factions with the most compelling philosophies (seemingly picked on that basis!) are no longer Factions and thus are no longer dedicated to advancing their philosophical ideals in the way other Factions are. And again, what they did to the Sensates is outright gross. That's grim. That's profoundly not getting it. That's like having Pascal become a Catholic priest because of Pascal's Wager.

"Not getting it" was a huge problem with later 2E Planescape stuff generally I note. Just an awful lot of the people creating stuff for it were not interested in thought or philosophy or views of the universe the way Zeb Cook was. Which worked fine so long as they stayed out of Sigil, but when they went to Sigil, most of the later stuff makes Sigil worse, not better.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Also, where you getting your 'facts' from here? Because some of them don't match up to the end of Faction War, nor to the presentation of Sigil in 4E. Are you sure you're not deriving them from an entirely fan-created source, which sought to repair the damage of Faction War?

With the specific exceptions of mentioning the Entertainers Guild and Undertakers Guild, both of which were from the Planewalker 3e fan update and called out as such, I was reading straight out of the Aftermath section of Faction War. I will admit to not double checking to see how it matched up with what the 4e DMG2 had to say on the matter, but I'm not drawing from fan content or my own headcanon without saying so.

A Faction no longer referring to itself as a Faction while otherwise largely continuing on as it had been previously seems like a minor issue to get hung up on. The Factions have always been a kind of philosophical "religion" at the end of the day, and if you'll forgive the IRL comparisons, those that "disband" are primarily just shifting from a "Roman Catholic" style centralized authority to a more disperse, "Protestant" style setup.

Saying they're no longer dedicated to advancing their philosophical beliefs simply because they've "disbanded" as a Faction is like saying they're no longer worshipers of <Insert God Here> because they stopped worshiping in the local temple and started a half-dozen weekly meetings in various members homes instead. It's an argument that can be made, certainly - the Catholic/Protestant divide caused a LOT of friction, to be sure - but I'm not sure it's a meaningful distinction in terms of world-building unless you're looking to set up a conflict between, say, the Sensates who relocated to Arborea and those who maintain the Civic Festhall over which are the "true" heirs of the Society of Sensation if/when it comes time to reconstitute the Faction.

You don't have to like post-Faction War Sigil by any means, but there's still a solid foundation to work with. What it needed was for someone to build on top of that foundation, which is what WotC essentially never did. Even the 4e version was mostly just a restating of the post-Faction War status quo. If the upcoming release is post-Faction War, hopefully they will do just that. If it's instead a remix of pre-Faction War Sigil, a la Dragonlance/Ravenloft, then that will work too, although those of us who happen to like post-Faction War Sigil for whatever reason will have to decide how we want to integrate things.

EDIT: Apologies. Seems you responded while I was fiddling with my wording.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A Faction no longer referring to itself as a Faction while otherwise largely continuing on as it had been previously seems like a minor issue to get hung up on.

It really isn't. There's a profound difference between being an organisation dedicated to a philosophy, with an actual name, leadership, and so on, and just being a bunch of people with similar ideas.

Human history is a flawless illustration of this. Particularly every union, formal religion or army in history.

The Factions have always been a kind of philosophical "religion" at the end of the day - this feels like griping that some of them are no longer proper worshipers of <Insert god here> because they stopped calling their home base a temple.

No. It's the equivalent of a formal religion or organisation like Catholicism becoming just a bunch of guys with similar beliefs. Again human history illustrates the difference extremely well.

History does illustrate that groups that disband can and often do band back together, too, at least.

With the specific exceptions of mentioning the Entertainers Guild and Undertakers Guild, both of which were from the Planewalker 3e fan update and called out as such, I was reading straight out of the Aftermath section of Faction War. I will admit to not double checking to see how it matched up with what the 4e DMG2 had to say on the matter, but I'm not drawing from fan content and my own headcanon without saying so.

Hmm. That's different to my reading of it. Either way, you're illustrating how Monte Cook selected the most interesting and philosophically strong Factions and intentionally destroyed them or watered them down, which is not good on any level, and very definitely doesn't make the setting "more dynamic" or the like. Indeed quite the contrary.

Especially as he retained the conceptually weaker and less philosophically-oriented Factions like the Fated. Presumably he "got" those.

You probably have more of a point when it comes to the Godsmen, Mercykillers, and Signers, but the Mind's Eye, Sodkillers, and Sons of Mercy pick up a lot of their baggage.

This is a particularly good example - all of those are quite literally "dumbed down" versions. Yeah, they have some of the same concepts, but they're totally unnecessarily destroyed in favour of a much dimmer and less thoughtful/challenging take on the same sort of ideas.

Further, by booting them all out of Sigil, and from the places of power they'd gained, he made Sigil itself vastly more boring and generic, leading directly to the 4E "Des Moines" version.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Have a tendency to fiddle with my writing well after it's been posted, so I may have edited something to my previous post that addresses your comments here already and/or edited something out that you are responding to. My apologies. Regardless...

No. It's the equivalent of a formal religion or organisation like Catholicism becoming just a bunch of guys with similar beliefs.

Such as when large chunks of the Catholic world broke away from the church in Rome in the Protestant Reformation movement that famously fizzled out and faded into obscurity?

The biggest issue with the Faction War isn't that it happened, but that it was never officially followed up on (until the upcoming release, perhaps). Rather than showing how the Faction ideologies evolved, splintered, blended, etc. as time passed and situations changed, they were left hanging in the state they were in at the end of the Faction War module - which is to say, largely shell-shocked, burned out from losses suffered in the war, and either uprooted or formally disbanded in response to The Lady's Edict.

The Factions are weakened and boring post-Faction War because they've never been given the chance to recover from the Faction War in any meaningful sense - at least not in an official capacity. Sigil is similarly boring for the same reason - until now, it's barely been touched since the Faction War.

Previously, those who wanted to carry on in a post-Faction War Sigil had to do the work themselves, and I'm pretty happy with what I've cobbled together from the Planewalker fan update, my own headcanon, and various other sources of inspiration. Perhaps the upcoming 5e Planescape release will repair the damage from the Faction War in a similarly satisfying way.

Or perhaps they'll just retcon it. Impossible to say, at present.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The biggest issue with the Faction War isn't that it happened, but that it was never officially followed up on (until the upcoming release, perhaps). Rather than showing how the Faction ideologies evolved, splintered, blended, etc. as time passed and situations changed, they were left hanging in the state they were in at the end of the Faction War module - which is to say, largely shell-shocked, burned out from losses suffered in the war, and either uprooted or formally disbanded in response to The Lady's Edict.

If Zeb Cook had done it, yeah, maybe that would be the biggest issue.

But Monte Cook (no relation) did it and would have done the follow-up.

And I don't think he has the mind, or the taste level, or even the basic interest in philosophy as well demonstrated by his own works - which are often excellent in many regards, but philosophically vapid - he's great at setting up a conflict, but terrible at coming up with ideologies - they tend to be simplistic as hell even compared to Planescape's Factions (which aren't exactly super-complex). You can see this in Ptolus, Numenera, Diamond Throne.

I like his work but he was absolutely the wrong person to mess with the Factions. It's like having U2 do a follow-up album for Rage Against The Machine or something. It's not like either band dislikes the other (directly the contrary, even, they're buds and have toured together), but U2 could not do RatM's style (not even Sunday Bloody Sunday comes close).

If he'd had his druthers, I daresay we'd have just had a bunch of super-bland Factions dumbed down just like the Mind's Eye and Sons of Mercy. And he'd have been very satisfied with it - it'd probably have had more obvious conflicts, too - but it would have been about 5% as interesting and daring, and instead been very trope-y and obvious.

Perhaps the upcoming 5e Planescape release will repair the damage from the Faction War in a similarly satisfying way.

Or perhaps they'll just retcon it. Impossible to say, at present.

The reason I'm advocating for a retcon is that I do not believe WotC currently employs anyone who has the interest in philosophy and thought to do anything good with the Factions in a post-Faction War scenario. Nor the love for Planescape/Sigil. But I am confident they could simply reboot what already existed without a problem.

Even authors I like have screwed this up - 4E's DMG 2 version of Sigil being a prime example. We have no idea (AFAIK) who actually wrote that, but James Wyatt, who I normally respect, signed off on it. And it's basically a straight-up hate crime against Sigil. And we know there are people out there who realllllllly hate Sigil/Planescape/the Factions.

Also totally irrelevant but Sigil is incredibly funny as a name if you use the American pronunciation (which I doubt Zeb Cook intended), because it rhymes with "wiggle", whereas in British English it's "Si-Jil" which sounds much more uh, serious. I had to check after Crawford pronounced it that way lol (interestingly the American D&D players I know IRL who I've discussed Planescape with all pronounced it the British way, when I think about it - I'd have been lying on the floor laughing otherwise).

TLDR: Don't smash something someone else made unless you know how to put it back together.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

The faction war could continue in the Gatetowns. There is a great potential here.

Interesting PC species. Not only the glitchlings, but also the bariaur or the paragenasies. I miss the mechanatrixes from Fiend Folio, those planetouched from Mechanus.

* Summonable monsters, paraelementals and quasielementals: ice, magma, smoke, clay...

* A new plane style Feywild or Shadowfell. There is a potential in the mirror plane.

* Planar dragons, and planar dragonborns. The infernal dragons are perfect for Ravenloft.

* A second layer within Sigil, like a second toroid, but larger, with the size of a region, not only a megacity.

If they do I'd go with Dream/Nightmare Planes

 

[I'm A Banana]

A Faction no longer referring to itself as a Faction while otherwise largely continuing on as it had been previously seems like a minor issue to get hung up on.

One thing that I do sort of miss that FW changed was that the factions controlled elements of civic society. The change to "guilds" maintains some of this, but the idea that Planescape was a world in which the courts were the courts because there was an organization philosophically devoted to perfect Law was neat. Same with there being organized corpse-collectors who devoted themselves to true death or tax officials specifically and explicitly devoted to the idea of taking as much as they could from others.

The aftermath of FW basically says "Nobody pays their taxes, and it's fine. The faction stop running things, and no one cares." which, speaking as an American in 2023, is...optimistic...

I do think a retcon would be better, the more I think about it. Just a sort of "This is the baseline. Faction War is one direction you could go in, one possible future for your campaign, if you want it." And then we can mostly ignore it unless someone really loves Arwyll Swan's Son or something.

 

[BB Shockwave]

Maybe someone already posted this, sorry don't have the time to go through this many pages... but anyway... there are some recognizable faces in the poster DiTerlizzi posted.

The Lady of Pain in the middle, of course needs no introduction. She sure trimmed down her collar of blades to just a half-circle though.
Behind her are two Dabus, the enigmatic caretakers of Sigil and the extension of her will, who speak by hovering symbols. Also, a Mercane (Arcane), the plane-hopping giant blue merchants whom 5E already re-introduced in Spelljammer, and some Monodrones.

The cat eared/tailed lady on the left corner peering behind a doorway is the Cat Lord, the anthropomorphic representation of all felines in the multiverse, from the Beastlands. While almost god-like in nature they are not real deities nor ask for worship, so I guess technically they could get into Sigil.

The Githyanki knight next to her is bazed on Kharzed, who appears in the Monstrous Manual Planescape Appendix I.

To the right of him is a Green Slaad, in a mix of DiTerlizzi and 5E style, though notably having the ruby gem in its forehead that can be used to summon them. Maybe this could be Xanxost, the famous fiend-expert?

The Human girl next to the Slaad is based on the art for a generic Outsider, aka people who just arrived to Sigil and are clueless about the multiverse, and she looks just as hopelessly lost as she did in 2E.

On the far right in the doorway, looking smug and recognizable for all the ioun stones around him is Xaositect lawyer Sly Nye, a Tiefling. He seems to have grown a nose in all this time.

The Mephit in the foreground on the right could just be a regular Dust Mephit, but could also be Seamusxanthuszenus, the proprietor of Parts and Pieces, a shop selling planar animal parts as ingredients for spells and other purposes, no questions asked.

On the right in front of Sly is defintely a Rogue Quadrone, it could be a new character of course, or maybe it is Ylem who tries to introduce a little chaos into law and create a sentient form of Spellhaunts.

The Dwarf-like guy in the spiky helmet seems to be based on the Bedlam guards, which is a Gate-Town to Pandemonium, no idea what would they be doing in Sigil.

The blue-skinned Tiefling lady next to the Quadrone seems to be based on this drawing, and based on her tattoo, she is a Doomguard.
You can also see the Sensate logo on a flag, and on the left, the sign of The Friendly Fiend shop, Akin the Arcanaloth's store.
And the floating skull (in a hat) could be a Mimir (like Morte), but the gems for eyes kinda make me think it is a Demilich.

That is potentially problematic though. I didn't touch Planescape in part because of Tony's art.

But, umm, why? His art is what made Planescape iconic. It has given it its unique style.
Don't tell me DiTerlizzi too has been cancelled because someone dug up something he said 20 years ago. Can we just give this nonsense a rest, before everyone in existence is banned? Don't tell me you never said or wrote anything online you regretted in a moment of anger or confusion.

I also want to see the Guardinals, Celestial Eladrin (Arvandorei? Sidhe? Azatas? whatever they're calling them now) and Rilmani back in 5e.

5E has brought back pretty much all the classic Demons, Devils and Yugoloths by now (except the Piscoloth for some reason) but it remains ridiculously light on the Celestial side. We have 1 type of Deva only, the Solar and Planetar and that's that.
I wish we got the (2-3E) Archons back, Guardinals, and yes, maybe rename the old 2-3E Eladrin something else, but bring them back.
I'd love to see Formians too, and yes, Rilmani. Plus, they should finally give us stats and artwork for the Hierarch Modrons... so we can have minis of them. As a side note, I am really hoping Wizkids makes a Modron Warband mini set for those of us who wanna recreate the Great Modron March.

Oh, and make the setting an actual setting, not a pathetic grab bag of rules designed to run one specific and inadequate adventure. And bump the damn page count up a LOT from Spelljammer, for pete's sake. Dump the GM screen to do it, if its not already too late.

Spelljammer suffered from how it had to spend about 2/3 of the lore book on introducing Wildspace and speljamming, and then tons of pages on the various ship descriptions and stats alone. Planescape has no unique mechanics outside of the gates, so I am hoping that instead they can spend this space on the various planes plus Sigil itself.

Alignment- Planescape uses alignment, 5E does not...... It would seem like they would 5E wash the planes into "sort of good" and "sort of evil" places? And that would not really fit with the setting. I would like to see the old 2E alignments, but doubt they will even consider that.

Where did you get that from? 5E still has alignment for specific characters, and all extraplanar creatures tied to planes like Slaadi or Modrons are "always XY alignment". Only regular humanoids are described as "any alignment". Even Dragons have "usually XY alignment" in Fizban's.
The alignment system still exists, they just made it more free for various races to be any alignment in games.

As well, some cool NPCs like Shemeshka the Marauder, the Us, and Alluvius Ruskin would be awesome to see, hopefully with stat blocks to accompany them!

I expect Shemeshka will show up, probably as a narrator. She appeared in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes where it was supposedly she who influenced Bigby to share his friends' writings with the world.

I would really love if they give useful directions for those that want to play before the Faction Wars. Full rules for all the 15 Sigyl ruling factions before the war.

I know many people like the Faction Wars and it is all ok. But lots of us (including myself) consider it what broke the setting.

Couldn't they just undo the whole thing? As far as I know, 3E/4E never referenced Planescape in any large detail other than a few Dragon magazine entries. The last adventure that really mattered at the end of 2E was Die Vecna Die, and the factions still existed back then. We could make that the end of 2E and just erase the stupid Faction War from canon. They certainly have erased things from settings already in 5E before.

 

[the Jester]

Lore and flavor. Not the "a few bits and pieces of exotica mixed in with generic D&D" approach that they used for Spelljammer (of all the settings to not lean into the flavor!).