Sigil Ciy of Doors (Topology of a Torus) - MATHS

There is no hole. The 'Illumination' section even flat out says that at night you can look up and see the city on the far side.

And again, for all of Sigil's history you've been able to look up at "night" and see the lights on the other side of the city, but it's the lights on the complete other side of the city. Look up from the Hive and you'll see the lights of the Lady's Ward, look up from the Lower Ward and through the smog you'll see the Guildhall Ward, etc. You're looking at the opposite side of the city's ring/torus/whatever word you care to use, not a portion of the same section of the city like you're inside of a hollow donut.

The 4e MotP isn't as clear as it could be, but it doesn't go out of its way to alter the way that Sigil has always been described.
 

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I seriously don't understand how someone can look at this picture and see a ringworld. It's clearly a torus.
That's because we are looking at it correctly! ;)

It's a ring that is almost-but-not-quite a torus. That's the way Sigil has always been and they did not change it for 4e . . . although I would have been okay with it if they had.
 

Perhaps a picture could help?

Sigil.jpg
 

There is no hole. The 'Illumination' section even flat out says that at night you can look up and see the city on the far side.

To me, "far side" of the city is confirmation that the shape hasn't changed.

I agree that both the wording and the map are confusing. It almost seem like they decided to enclose Sigil, but kept the description ambiguous in the hope that no one would notice.
 

I found the original description of Sigil in the planescape boxed set...
If a DM’s got to describe the place with words, the closest prime-material analogy is an auto tire. Imagine a tire - no hubcap or wheel rim - lying on its side. Sigil would be built on the inside of the tire. All the streets and buildings would fill the curved interior. Meanwhile, on the outside there’s nothing, see?

One thing this means for describing the place is that, no matter where a cutter stands, if he looks up he’s going to see buildings overhead. Most of the time a basher’s looking across the center of the ring, so he’ll see a broad panorama of the city in the distance (unless, of course, it’s obscured by smoke, smog, fog, or rain). Locals get used to having the gray arc constantly hovering overhead; in fact, the open sky of a normal world sometimes unnerves them.

Another important thing to remember when describing Sigil is that the city’s curved in the opposite direction from most prime-material worlds. On those worlds, there’s a horizon because the surface has a convex curve, and a cutter can only see what lies along a straight line of sight. In Sigil, things curve up, not down. Looking down a long avenue, it’ll seem like the street’s rising in front of a body, kind of like looking up a long hill. Just to make it more confusing, Sigil curves both in front of and behind that sod on the street, so he might feel like he’s standing at the bottom of a big hollow nearly all the time.
Also...
Nobody’s ever seen the outside of Sigil because there may not even be an “outside.” The edges of the ring are all solidly lined by buildings with no windows or doors on their backs. ’Course, a cutter could get himself up on the roof to take a look. Those that’ve tried it’ll tell a body, “There’s nothing to see,” and they really do mean “nothing” - not emptiness, not a vacuum, just nothing. That matches what flyers say lies beyond the ring: nothingness.
 
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(Note that I'm not familiar with Sigil from previous products).

Okay, I think I see it now. Wow, that's actually kinda stupid. Why the hell did they make it rounded like that? Like Dire Bane said, it appears to be a ring that is almost a torus. They could have just said 'ringworld' or something and I would have gotten it.

Also, the 4e description doesn't mention edges or anything. And when it said you could see the lights of the other side, I assumed it meant the other side of the torus, which would go with the description of being able to reach the same point after traveling in a straight line.
 

I've always seen it like this:

Take the letter "U". This letter makes a ring so that above the letter U there is another letter U.

It's not like a letter O that comes back on itself (except from the outside).

Admittedly, I could be smoking something wicked.

I've attached a little diagram of two little dots who can see each other.

The open space is the "sky" of Sigil; that's where the light comes from and that's also where you just vanish if you go past (which is why you don't fly from the top to the bottom of it, either).

sigildiagram.jpg
 

So 4E Sigil is fully enclosed and there is a strong case that original Sigil might be too? Interesting but in all honesty most groups are going to play it the way they feel like, anyway, so I doubt it matters too much. Anyway I have got my answer about doughnuts from a maths site.

[edit] 2E has a hole in it.
 
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So 4E Sigil is fully enclosed and there is a strong case that original Sigil might be too? Interesting but in all honesty most groups are going to play it the way they feel like, anyway, so I doubt it matters too much. Anyway I have got my answer about doughnuts from a maths site.
Ah, no. You've got it reversed still. Sigil, 2e thru 4e, is NOT fully enclosed but is open on the inside edge. Pretty much exactly like a car tire.

Although, you're right that it really doesn't (or shouldn't) matter. But we're all geeks here and the shape of an impossible city in an imaginary game sometimes seems of utmost importance!
 


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