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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ripzerai" data-source="post: 3287311" data-attributes="member: 38324">There are a few other places like that - it's physically impossible to raise a weapon in anger in  both Valorhome (the realm of Kuan-ti in Elysium) and in Portent in Gehenna. But as they're located respectively on the lower and upper planes, they lack Sigil's status as a true neutral ground.You can fight in Sigil, and its inhabitants do fight, constantly, mugging one another in alleyways, engaging in duels, arresting criminals, and ripping each other apart in arenas to the delight of spectators. There was even a war there recently. The Lady of Pain is there, somewhere in the background, and there's an understanding that she won't permit anything to truly threaten her city, at least not for long, assuming she isn't otherwise occupied or dead or imaginary (and she is all of those things). But really, Sigil is a neutral ground because the inhabitants of the planes need one, or want one, and Sigil is as good as any, and the Lady of Pain offers a decent justification for why this should be so. She's just proactive enough to rationalize the city's impossible existence, sort of, and just mysterious enough to never spoil any juicy plotlines or the players' fun.There are no essential themes in a Planescape campaign. For some people, the core of Planescape is the philosophical war - the principles of Law and Chaos, of Good and Evil, of Balance and upheaval, of solipsism and nihilism, of substance and ephemera, of faith and doubt, of fatalism and transcendence - and the fact that the PCs engage these philosophies directly (also indirectly), swimming in them, embodying them, building houses atop them, destroying and rebuilding them. This is, I think, how David "Zeb" Cook thought of it. Armchair philosophizing as a PoMo RPG.For others, the core of Planescape is the cool, exotic, sometimes surreal and magical places you can visit, the weird and wonderful races and spells and NPCs. The scifi and high fantasy elements, more extreme and over-the-top than in a typical fantasy RPG. The factions, the Outer and Inner Planes - none of those things are fundamental. This is, I think, how Monte Cook approached it.</blockquote>

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