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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Badwe" data-source="post: 5555137" data-attributes="member: 61762">Hey Everyone,I dunno if there's still interest but I thought I would share my experiences running a full fledged Sigil based session.  I think most impressive was that, with the prep I had done, we played a 5 hour 4th edition game with no combat, and nobody seemed to mind (ok, maybe the PC with a soul-eating artifact sword was a LITTLE bummed, but he took it in stride).  I know people have complained, and i have sometimes felt this way myself, that 4e is a little too combat centric, but when working with a pre-established and deep setting like planescape, and really just sigil, it gelled perfectly well.  The players pretty competently decided when they needed to bribe, when to intimidate, and were starting to scheme and plot all on their own after learning about just a few interactions between the major players in sigil.First, a little background.  I'm attaching the handout I gave to my players to try and give them context for how to go about doing an urban adventure, and then the printouts i used for myself.  One is a series of cards with grouped pieces of the sigil slang, and another is rumors about nearly every sigil NPC i felt comfortable allowing to be encountered. I printed all these out, cut them up, and put them in a grab bag that I pulled from to give to the players to represent them uncovering clues about sigil.  The randomness and large amount of NPC information helped me get over one of my main issues as a DM: I hate railroading PCs, and I feel like whenever there aren't a plethora of choices it becomes very clear A) what is going to happen next and B) that I prefer one path over another or know that one is more difficult.So, besides all that I found the TSR CD that was supposed to be like a mimir.  Naturally I gave the PCs a chance to buy it and then periodically played sound clips from it.  Much to my delight, they figured out a use for it almost immediately.Storywise: they had managed to get to an Inn at the end of the day, knowing only that they needed to get back to the natural world.  I threw them for a loop by treating their OOC banter about killing everyone in sight as in character, which resulted in them getting a calling card from a member of the Dustmen.  They thought this was hilarious and decided they would definitely take that opportunity up.Cut to today's session: almost immediately they dig up a rumor about tarholdt.  In the original 2e books he's just a wandering a merchant, and I mostly just used him as an NPC name for one of the "ways out" i had imagined: taking a portal out to the astral sea to ride a cargo ship from one port in the astral sea to another port that happens to have a portal to the prime material plane.  They decide to look for him and, knowing that even in Sigil dwarves frequent bars, they start asking about local bars.  They're in the market ward and start drifting towards the Lady's Ward to try and find the Golden Baurier.  Instead they discover the singing fountain and see people standing around waiting for Black Marian to sing, but see she's in a heated argument with Autochon the Bellringer.They start polling the people around to learn more about him and find out who his boss is (at least according to my mashup of 4e/2e): Shemeshka the marauder.  They start stirring up chant about him to try and get everyone saying his name, playing off the fact he seemed to be trying to keep a low profile.  Meanwhile, one of them stealths up near the front of the crowd and record his argument with the Mimir they bought.  They conclude that they will use this as a pretense to get into the HQ of the planar trade consortium (for you 2e folks: the 4e books declare that Estavan convinced his former rivals Shemeshka and Zadara to ally with him).  They assume that at least one of them will know how to get back to the prime material plane.  They bend the ear of two guards standing watch at the front, who agree to take them in to speak to a proxy of Shemeshka (who is out).I have to jet, but if there's interest I'll continue the description of what parts of Sigil I used.</blockquote>

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