When and why were the factions driven out of Sigil?

[CelticMutt]

Birthright was about the only setting that didn't get cataclysmed as far as I remember. It was Eberron a decade before Eberron, at least in the sense that there was no major meta-plot advancement or timeline advancement. Except for a few adventures everything publsihed was either detailing the different regions or creatures.

Then again, I only ever read one of the novels, so it could have happened there. Though the novel I read took place during the events that fractured the empire in the first place, several centuries in teh setting's past.

I can't recall any of them (except for Dragonlance) being trashed and convoluted to the degree WotC did with 4E FR...

Which it thoroughly deserved.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Nah. Nobody cares about Spelljammer...

To be complete, they Immortal War'd Mystara and Canceled Birthright. And Lets not even get into the Great Cataclysm of Ravenloft...

That's the Grand Conjunction (although characters in-setting call it the "Great Upheaval"). It was really more of a minor annoyance than a cataclysm--the geography got reshuffled a little, one darklord (who'd never been written up or used outside of a minor role in one novel) was staked, and some of the dynamics changed. Most of the changes, IMO, were generally improvements, and even those that were questionable (such as leaving a Great Big Hole in the center of the Core) wound up being put to good use.

I think that of the metaplot changes in Ravenloft, the ones that would annoy fans most would be the Grim Harvest (sending Azalin offstage and making the land's largest city unplayable for living PCs) and the loss of Soth in Spectre of the Black Rose, the only time the novels have really had a major impact on the setting's direction. I think the latter would have been better received if Soth had actually done something in DL after they took him back, but the best laid plans of mice and men . . .

Die Vecna Die? For this Ravenloft fan, it barely even registers. A lot of fans were iffy about Vecna and Kas to begin with, and Vecna's escape doesn't really break canon--it's been a fact since the Black Box that Greater Powers can slip through the bonds of Ravenloft.

 

[Shemeska]

The Inner Planes is one book that I haven't read much of. From what I have read & used from it, I don't remember there being anything related to post-Faction War fluff.

Is there actually content in The Inner Planes that a DM would need to know is the result of the Faction War? I'm just curious what it might be.

Off the top of my head, the one big thing (possibly the only thing) there would be the fracture of the Doomguard into ideological sects, with each claiming one of the original faction's quasielemental fortresses in ash, dust, vacuum, and salt.

But the inner planes had so little interaction with Sigil on any major scale that the book stood on its own without much dealing with anything outer planes related or Sigil/faction related. Xanxost as a sometimes narrator made the book in my opinion. Great stuff.

 

[Orius]

Thanks folks!

hm, I know D&D lore isn't stationary, but...yet another time I think TSR threw the baby out with the bath water :/

I think out of setting it's part of the fallout of WotC's buyout of TSR. They may have planned to further the plot after the faction war, but then WotC decided to cancel all the settings because they were fracturing the D&D player base. So Faction War probably get written right around TSR's bankruptcy, but wasn't printed and released until 1998. I think these product lines take something like 12-18 months to finally get printed and sold. I suppose one could just ignore the Faction War and just keep playing the setting as usual (there's a lot of plotlines going anyway), or just resolve the matter, didn't the Planescape designers mention what the metaplot past this was going to be even in a brief outline?

Off the top of my head, the one big thing (possibly the only thing) there would be the fracture of the Doomguard into ideological sects, with each claiming one of the original faction's quasielemental fortresses in ash, dust, vacuum, and salt.

But the inner planes had so little interaction with Sigil on any major scale that the book stood on its own without much dealing with anything outer planes related or Sigil/faction related. Xanxost as a sometimes narrator made the book in my opinion. Great stuff.

Mmmm, mephits.

But Inner Planes isn't going to be big on faction stuff since the factions were more focused on Sigil and the Outer Planes. They saw the Inner Planes as a backwater, and the Inner Planes couldn't care less about the plitics of Sigil.

 

[aurance]

I'm of the opinion that a game like 4e would port over to it just beautifully; in some ways, I think I could run an even better 4e Planescape game than I did my 2e and 3e games.

I agree. Planescape had tons and tons of fantastic descriptions and histories, while being very mechanics-minimalist. Most of the "stat blocks" were half a line of game information. I'm actually thinking of running a 4e Planescape game.

 

[Nymrohd]

I think mechanics were actually the worst part of planescape. While many of the things it tried to create mechanically were interesting as concepts, they were simply badly implemented from the get go. The one issue I do see with 4E planescape is that 4E is very interested in balance (and I for one love that about it) and Planescape has certain aspects that would have to change to fit (the power of belief, whether used by factions or outer planar creatures).

 

[Shemeska]

I agree. Planescape had tons and tons of fantastic descriptions and histories, while being very mechanics-minimalist. Most of the "stat blocks" were half a line of game information. I'm actually thinking of running a 4e Planescape game.

If you go with a very mechanics-minimal approach, what system you use really doesn't matter much though. I've found certain elements of 4e to be pretty antithetical to a Planescape campaign, given that 4e tries to force a number of flavor assumptions into the game system itself which conflict with the flavor assumptions from 2e and 3e Planescape. To say nothing of some openly antagonistic remarks from some of the 4e team regarding the setting itself.

I could run a 4e PS game, but I don't think it's worth having to remove and sift through all the assumptions inherent in 4e that make it difficult to play something too far away from the default PoL theme.

 

[Spatula]

If you go with a very mechanics-minimal approach, what system you use really doesn't matter much though. I've found certain elements of 4e to be pretty antithetical to a Planescape campaign, given that 4e tries to force a number of flavor assumptions into the game system itself which conflict with the flavor assumptions from 2e and 3e Planescape. To say nothing of some openly antagonistic remarks from some of the 4e team regarding the setting itself.

I could run a 4e PS game, but I don't think it's worth having to remove and sift through all the assumptions inherent in 4e that make it difficult to play something too far away from the default PoL theme.

Points of Light is a style of campaign play. It has nothing to do with the rules mechanics, which are almost entirely focused on character and monster capabilities.

While the built-in setting does have some mechanical impact on monsters, it's all rather trivial in 4e. Don't like that succubi (?) are considered devils instead of demons? Simply change that, it has no real impact on the actual creature.

 

[aurance]

If you go with a very mechanics-minimal approach, what system you use really doesn't matter much though.

That's what I was implying.

I've found certain elements of 4e to be pretty antithetical to a Planescape campaign...

I haven't.

...given that 4e tries to force a number of flavor assumptions into the game system itself which conflict with the flavor assumptions from 2e and 3e Planescape. To say nothing of some openly antagonistic remarks from some of the 4e team regarding the setting itself.

Irrelevant.

I could run a 4e PS game, but I don't think it's worth having to remove and sift through all the assumptions inherent in 4e that make it difficult to play something too far away from the default PoL theme.

I've not found the flavor aspects of 4e "default" setting to affect its game mechanics.

I've been a fan of PS since its very beginning, and I've played D&D since the BECMI days, and I don't find anything about 4e that clashes mechanically with PS any more than any other iteration of D&D. Well, I suppose I can't speak to OD&D, since that was before my time.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

The fact that in 4th ed, anyone cna take the Ritual Caster feat, and thus allow planar adventures, actually improves things, IMHO

Oh and that feat does make sense to me, from quite a few novels where an investigative or military character had spell casting ability but not on the field of battle, it was too complex for them to do that, only a dedicated sorceror etc could cast magic at will, so long rituals etc were needed.