The Trouble With Union

[F5]

I've only used Union once, in a one-off epic game I ran (the only time I've used the epic book, actually...). The only way I was able to make it work for me was to play up the boring aspects of it. It's MEANT to be boring, because the epic folks of the multiverse are tired of having exciting, world-shattering things happen to them ALL THE TIME. After making a heroic one-man stand against an entire Orcish horde for the THIRD time, the epic fighter wants to go somewhere where his actions have meaning; he longs for the simple life and minimal responsibility of a City Guardsman. That's why they founded Union in the first place.

Basically, the PCs show up and are trying to track down a cross-planar smuggler, and essentially the entire population of Union is trying to get rid of them, because they're causing a fuss...

It was a very tongue-in-cheek take on Epic play, and it only went over kinda' well. But I just couldn't justify Union in my head any other way.

(in hindsight, after reading some of the posts on this thread, lowering the levels of most of the NPCs in Union does make it work, too. I was stuck on trying to conceptualize a place filled with Epic commoners...)

 

[Mouseferatu]

F5...

So basically, it's Florida for retired epic heroes?

You know, I think I can actually get behind that. It would still require some redesign, and it certainly wouldn't work in even a moderately serious game, but I like it.

 

[F5]

So basically, it's Florida for retired epic heroes?

You know, I think I can actually get behind that. It would still require some redesign, and it certainly wouldn't work in even a moderately serious game, but I like it.

The MAcguffin they were after was called the Mouth of the Rat, or, translated into the native language, the Boca Raton...

 

[Mouseferatu]

The MAcguffin they were after was called the Mouth of the Rat, or, translated into the native language, the Boca Raton...

Nice.

I've done that, on very rare occasions. Not that specific pun, but a "comic relief" game in which everything was like that. (I did it twice in an otherwise serious Planescape campaign many years ago.) I still recall a game in which the heroes:

A) Had to find the cure to revive a dying elven noble by the name of Credence Clearwater. (If you don't get this joke, you're too young. )

B) Had to negotiate with the Abbot of the Castellan Abbey--aka the Abbot of Costello.

C) Wound up battling a violent, twitching, foul-mouthed demon that dwelt in a crevice--aka a crack fiend.

I'm sure there were others, but those are the three that spring to mind.

 

[Shemeska]

Union suffers terribly because it tried to be Sigil, without Sigil's quirks, complexities, and depth. That comparison along destroys the place, but even if without the comparison to the City of Doors, it comes off as boring and contrived. The entire city as described apparently exists in a vacuum, because none of the major planar power groups or factions are mentioned, even when their presence would be relevant, yet a number of EPIC organizations with levels out the wazoo spring up out of nowhere, some of them with far too many parallels to some of those planar factions, etc. Suplindh comes off as a parody of A'kin, and all said and done, the 15th level fishmonger in Union turns any attempts at respect into something rather different.

The city is worth salvaging however, but it needs to be overhauled in a major way, and it needs to have the rest of the multiverse incorporated into it when appropriate in terms of religious groups, factions, sects, people like the Planar Trade Consortium, etc. Union needs a reason to exist, and a reason why it hasn't been oblitered by a god or overrun by an army of fiends. Suggest perhaps that the Mercanes who nominaly run the city might have actually found it there already, and perhaps Union is indeed much older than the mercane's would have anyone believe. If so, who made it, and more importantly, why might it have been abandoned for the mercanes to find (or was it ever abandoned in the first place?). Perhaps a group of great wyrms are the true powers in the city, or the city might be a pacified version of Neth or Nimicri controlled by the mercane by whatever means, etc.

But as presented, Union had none of that, it just had ludicrous levels and a feeling like it was a setting turned up to 11. Without the development that it never received, I've only used it once in my planar campaigns, and only then as a running joke (a Union Sentinel who bore a disturbing resemblance to Hulk Hogan was, briefly, involved in a gladiatorial match in Sigil, before the Mercykillers' great wyrm rust dragon Choirosis ate him).

And at times, I've been mean.

Some time later I arrived at Chindra’s Palace of Delights in the Perfumed Quarter for a nice pleasant chat with Oslan Turvae, a good friend of mine. The palace is really a cheap knockoff of the Fortune’s Wheel, just on a lower budget and without the same quality of clientele. Of course, I also had to deal with the insufferable buffoons who serve as Union’s unwitting jink spigot.

Just a sample of the fumbling questions I had to endure over the course of a half hour from those idiots: “So what sort of devil are you?” “Just what kingdom are you the King of?” “I know a cleric in the Temple Quarter who can cure your lycanthropy.” “I’m the richest person in Union! Jeremo the Natterer? No I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of him. Why?” “Have you met Suplindh? Are you related to him? Do you know his father?” “The Gray Waste? Never heard of it, is that part of Hell? Or is it near the Happy Hunting Grounds?” “What’s that vine stuff on your head? Are you a druid? Why are you uncoiling a stand of it like… ack!”

 

[Shadeydm]

The less it has in common with Sigil the better.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I feel the opposite way. Rather than try to rewrite the city to make it into Tanelorn, I'd rather just lower everybody's level to match the way the city actually feels, the way it would logically be. It can still have a few very high-level characters (all the named ones, in fact), and the interesting epic organizations. Some of the private islands might be extremely exotic.

I think Union is great as a planar trade city, more powerful than many but not as powerful as some. Its portals are simply not as useful as Sigil's, and therefore it's going to attract fewer high-level characters and fewer merchants, but it's still an important part of planar trade routes. I don't see it as a magnet for retired heroes, though. It's a Disneyland created by the mercanes - a decent place to vacation, but not an shining, hidden city of the Balance, promising long-withheld solace for eternal champions wearied from a thousand psychic wars.

If you want Tanelorn, create Tanelorn. Start from scratch.

The thing is, there is something appealing about a city comprised of so many epic level characters. That's the trope that everything should be based around. Removing that basic assumption pretty much kills any chance of making Union different or unique. It just becomes another fantasy RPG city. That's boring. I already have plenty of those, many of them really interesting. Anyone retooling Union should take advantage of its one distinguishing feature. What would a city made up almost entirely of epic level characters be like? Why are all those characters there in the first place? The answers to just those two questions alone should yield a plethora of cool ideas and concepts.

 

[Rystil Arden]

The thing is, there is something appealing about a city comprised of so many epic level characters. That's the trope that everything should be based around. Removing that basic assumption pretty much kills any chance of making Union different or unique. It just becomes another fantasy RPG city. That's boring. I already have plenty of those, many of them really interesting. Anyone retooling Union should take advantage of its one distinguishing feature. What would a city made up almost entirely of epic level characters be like? Why are all those characters there in the first place? The answers to just those two questions alone should yield a plethora of cool ideas and concepts.

I might make the city on the edge of a powerful nexus that is purported to lead to the path to ascension. Great heroes from across the multiverse flock here for the chance to become hero-demigods in their own right. There they can meet elbow to elbow with the other heroes and create communities of like-minded individuals who each seek a different path to transcendence. Achilles might arm-wrestle Conan in a tavern--and Siegfried's called the winner!--while Merlin and Mordenkainen display their erudition and magical prowess. Legends claim that those who complete their path can perform a series of trials and enter the nexus itself. No one is really sure why and how this is decided, though there are many contradictory legends, including those of 'Keepers' who make the decisions. One thing is certain, this is the path to ascension and not the place for those who are already gods to destroy their competitors. Deific powers cannot approach too close to the Nexus, though no one knows exactly why, but it apparently isn't safe for them. Legends speak of an arrogant young godling who disappeared from the universe forever, not even a corpse on the Astral Plane was left.

Naturally, the Godsmen faction, among others would be interested in a place like this!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Each power jump in D&D (low- to mid-level, mid- to high-level, high- to epic-level) should include both more and different. That is, some challenges are similar to what you already know, but more powerful, while other challenges are of a sort totally unlike anything you could handle before. Too much of the ELH focuses on more, with very little focused on different.

You're right. D&D has always changed the way you play every approximately 5 levels as PC's get access to high-powered blasting magic, divination, teleportation, scrying, creating food and water, resurrection, wishes, etc., etc. An ELH should have taken this, and given the "final" chance that the campaign can go through, should have dealt with the problems and burdens of power, should have introduced things like reputation, running kingdoms, attaining divinity, and even then still having to fight bad guys and save the world every once in a while. But the kind of badguys like the monster section of the ELH provides (which is one very cool section of the ELH -- the godspawn alone are kind of amazing monsters).

The mechanics of the ELH are solid enough, and there's a few good ideas, but too often it refuses to accept that the game *should* be different at level 25 than it is at level 15. It's understandable why, but it works against the entire flow of the D&D game to get there.

With Union, specifically, it's got some nice ideas, but the entire thing is violated by level 50 dirt farmers. "We have all these great powers and we're just TIRED of using them" doesn't fly for me.

 

[rounser]

It sounds something like the Immortals boxed set for OD&D:

"Yeah, you were a paragon and 36th level and did these impossible quests and stuff, but now you're immortal you're just a teeny weeny little nothing in a biiiig pond again."

If folks wanted that, they could just retire their PCs and start at first level again.

With Union, specifically, it's got some nice ideas, but the entire thing is violated by level 50 dirt farmers. "We have all these great powers and we're just TIRED of using them" doesn't fly for me.

Maybe they should have called the city Seachange. Or maybe, Downshift.