D&D General How Do You Feel About Sigil?

[Malmuria]

Given how much of a 90's metaplot uber-character she is, I fully expect her to turn toward the DM and say 'No'.

I do feel that the lady of pain's mazes are underutilized as a mega-dungeon like environment (similar to the lack of definition around undersigil). I think there were a couple of adventures here and there, but the mazes are largely presented as being "game over" for your character.

As with all things sigil, probably the best version of it can be found in PS Torment

 

[Laurefindel]

Sigil is lie the Mos Eisley cantina, full of strange beings. It is also a piece of Babylon 5 and the Federation station of Deep Space 9

Slight disagreement:

Mos Eisley is like the City of Brass or Dis; a place where your PC go to to have an adventure/meet someone/acquire something. Reaching destination is often a adventure on its own. Dis and the City of Brass, like Mos Eisley, exist independently from the characters.

Sigil is like DS 9 or Babylon 5; a base of operation where the PCs reside and where adventure comes to them just as often as they use Sigil's portals to get places. In Sigil, like in B5 and DS9, the PCs are involved in the city's dynamics, intrigues, and machinations, whether they want it or not.

 

[Ancalagon]

I don't see the Lady of Pain as particularly active. The most likely way you are to meet her is to go on a dabus slaughtering spree. She extremely rarely engages with the governance of the city, and then only when it's "balance" is directly threatened.

My personal game canon for the Lady is that Sigil is a literal cage -- it's a prison that holds things that have committed crimes against existence. The Lady is the Warden. He job is to make sure Sigil stays in balance because that's the only way the prison holds. She refuses to be worshipped because that could make her a god, and that would remove her ability to be the Warden. She's a proto-god, who's entire authority and portfolio is the Cage, and isn't diluted by needing to support worshippers. She excludes other gods because they're new and don't have need to know about what's trapped in the Cage. She tolerates people living there because they're not interacting with the Prison part -- they're on the "surface" and don't engage the actual workings. The dabus are her staff and maintain the prison proper.

This puts the Lady in a place where directly opposing her is essentially siding with things that are considered to be massive threats to existence.

That's a preeeety good game canon!

 

[Ancalagon]

It never really worked for me as a setting. I dislike the Lady of Pain trope intensely.

The way I see it, if you're going to have a city that's an inter planar Casablanca all the politicking should matter. But having an all powerful overlord who makes sure the status quo is always maintained undermines this. Who cares if there's a plot by Hell to take over the city if you know it can't possibly succeed?

This one is "easy" to answer.

There MUST be a super powerful ruler in Sigil, one that cannot be displaced. Why? Because Sigil has immense strategic value AND is "neutral". Otherwise, the forces of Hell would have tried to take it, and probably the Yugoloths too.

There should be a lot of room for political intrigue between the factions...

 

[Umbran]

How do you feel about Sigil?

I find it a bit... contrived? Uninspiring? Yet one more Big City with Factions?

But then, I find frequent plane-hopping to also be contrived and uninspiring, so, there's that.

 

[Laurefindel]

as for the OP, I looooooooved Sigil. loved its characters, its dungeonpunk aesthetics, the way it diverged from AD&D's archetypes (a ranger in charge of the Great Foundry? How unorthodox!). I loved the factions and the covert war of influence under the Lady's nose. I loved how your 1st level PC might be called to deal with a Pit Fiend...

I still love it as a setting, but I'm not sure I'd be playing in it anymore. The factions had the same issue as the guilds from Ravnica; half of them are not suitable for PCs, and of the remaing half, half of them are in direct opposition with one another and keeping the party together requires a significant participation from the player's side. And like a good wine, the style i love to play has refined over the years and i'm not sure I'm into the dungeonpunk vibe, looking cool sipping a beer next to a baatezu warlord on vacation...

 

[mrpopstar]

as for the OP, I looooooooved Sigil. loved its characters, its dungeonpunk aesthetics, the way it diverged from AD&D's archetypes (a ranger in charge of the Great Foundry? How unorthodox!). I loved the factions and the covert war of influence under the Lady's nose. I loved how your 1st level PC might be called to deal with a Pit Fiend...

I still love it as a setting, but I'm not sure I'd be playing in it anymore. The factions had the same issue as the guilds from Ravnica; half of them are not suitable for PCs, and of the remaing half, half of them are in direct opposition with one another and keeping the party together requires a significant participation from the player's side. And like a good wine, the style i love to play has refined over the years and i'm not sure I'm into the dungeonpunk vibe, looking cool sipping a beer next to a baatezu warlord on vacation...

Oh yes, it's very helpful to have a party of characters who are all members of the same faction.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I played in a short campaign there. The DM was super into it and knew it by heart from way back. I got pretty into it and did a fair amount of research outside of game as my character was supposed to be a local. The other two players... seemed pretty lost a fair amount of the time. They seemed to have a good time, but the setting seemed more a barrier to entry and a source of engagement. Admittedly, given that I just used "seemed" three times in two sentences, I don't really know that that was the case with them, but it is my impression of how they interacted with the setting.

Its a detailed and original setting, which is great for people who are fascinated by settings and their dynamics, but if you've got players who don't want to have to learn and remember a lot of weird setting trivia its going to be hard for them to know what they can do in this "you can do anything" game. Even if they are super into it, unless you are amazing at summarizing it they are basically going to have to read up in their own time to not be confused endlessly. That works for some people, it doesn't work for others.

As a DM I personally like a baseline of fairly tropey, bog-standard fantasy medievalness in my settings precisely because everyone has seen it before so when I do an imperfect job of describing it people can still imagine what its supposed to look like and what they can do in it. I'm a firm believer that in ttrpgs cliché can be your friend, as it gives people touchstones in a game where a game master has to impart all sensory information to the players. Sigil hates cliché, and wants to be as original as possible with everything, and more power to it for that. But it also makes it as setting that works best when players want to sink their teeth into it, keep notes, and read up about it and generally think about it outside of the sessions, which just doesn't fit everyone's life or level of interest.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I played in a short campaign there. The DM was super into it and knew it by heart from way back. I got pretty into it and did a fair amount of research outside of game as my character was supposed to be a local. The other two players... seemed pretty lost a fair amount of the time. They seemed to have a good time, but the setting seemed more a barrier to entry and a source of engagement. Admittedly, given that I just used "seemed" three times in two sentences, I don't really know that that was the case with them, but it is my impression of how they interacted with the setting.

Its a detailed and original setting, which is great for people who are fascinated by settings and their dynamics, but if you've got players who don't want to have to learn and remember a lot of weird setting trivia its going to be hard for them to know what they can do in this "you can do anything" game. Even if they are super into it, unless you are amazing at summarizing it they are basically going to have to read up in their own time to not be confused endlessly. That works for some people, it doesn't work for others.

As a DM I personally like a baseline of fairly tropey, bog-standard fantasy medievalness in my settings precisely because everyone has seen it before so when I do an imperfect job of describing it people can still imagine what its supposed to look like and what they can do in it. I'm a firm believer that in ttrpgs cliché can be your friend, as it gives people touchstones in a game where a game master has to impart all sensory information to the players. Sigil hates cliché, and wants to be as original as possible with everything, and more power to it for that. But it also makes it as setting that works best when players want to sink their teeth into it, keep notes, and read up about it and generally think about it outside of the sessions, which just doesn't fit everyone's life or level of interest.

That's definitely a way to approach it. On the other hand, my recent Sigil game occurred AFTER I made my more to not wanting to bother with that stuff at all. I boiled the setting down to a few very easy to grab handles -- the weirdness of the city architecture, the diversity of the inhabitants and visitors, that you can get anything you want in Sigil if you can pay for it (and gold is not the only currency), gates require keys and keys are owned by people that like control, and a quick, high level blurb for each faction and some traits to remind me how to drive home their philosophy. Other than that? Make it up as you go. The setting police will not come to your door. I tied strings, as even dealing with friends usually meant trading favors for access. I made access to markets dependent on who you knew, so even if you had a million gp, you couldn't buy more than the normal stuff unless you knew someone to vouch for you to merchant or you dealt with the criminal sort (as far as "criminal" goes in Sigil). This way the players told me what was important to them, and that's we we worked out.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

This one is "easy" to answer.

There MUST be a super powerful ruler in Sigil, one that cannot be displaced. Why? Because Sigil has immense strategic value AND is "neutral". Otherwise, the forces of Hell would have tried to take it, and probably the Yugoloths too.

There should be a lot of room for political intrigue between the factions...

I have to disagree with you here. If Sigil is to be a place where dramatic political conflict can occur there absolutely has to NOT be an omnipotent ruler. Powerful? Sure. But not the unbeatable thing that the Lady of Pain is described as. There has to be a real chance that Hell or Asgard can take over the place; otherwise no drama. (Yes, one can have other dramas within a large, inter-planar city. Ones with different or smaller stakes. But I'm talking about the big political picture that is the setting's backdrop and major framing device.)

Okay, yes, above it was pointed out to me that, canonically, Vecna was able to enter Sigil and shennaniganize. So I guess that, canonically, means the Lady of Pain is not omnipotent within Sigil. It goes against the setting's original framing device. I consider that a good thing.

I think Vaalingrade has described the Lady of Pain (above) just right - she's a metaplot stick to keep players in line.