When and why were the factions driven out of Sigil?

[Banshee16]

Yeah, one of TSR's big weaknesses was the tendency to produce a good setting with a cool hook, then completely trash that setting in modules/novels, and treat the content of those modules/novels as an established part of the universe from there on out. If they'd stuck to WotC's new model of "three books per setting and we're done," everybody would have been so much better off.

Not that I'm bitter about Dark Sun or anything...

Woah.....

I don't quite look at it the same way. Yeah, TSR did sometimes make massive changes to game worlds after the worlds were initially created. Often these changes were tied to the novels.

But let's not forget that the changes they brought to settings were often both good and bad.

Yes, Dark Sun was significantly changed during the Prism Pentad.....but the Prism Pentad also really fleshed out the setting. Without the Prism Pentad there was no Rajaat. Without Rajaat there were no Cleansing Wars. Without the Cleansing Wars, there was no explanation for what the Sorcerer-Kings actually were. Nor was there the Pristine Tower. And some of the later material was pretty cool......Daskinor and the Avangion Sorcerer-King, the Kreen Empire, Mind Lords of the Last Sea, the Jagged Cliffs region.....much of this stuff was really kind of cool...

Having the Sorcerer-Kings be by and large destroyed (most of them) sucked for those who liked the oppressive feel of the setting....but it was good for those who wanted to open the setting up to the kinds of social chaos that would result from having these powerful beings who'd ruled for thousands of years, removed from their positions of influence, leaving the lesser mortals to try and fill the void (with all the conflict that implies). Or it could be looked at as bad, if you really preferred the setting to not answer the questions of what the Sorcerer-Kings are, etc. Similarly, one of my favourite supplements from that time was the book about Ur Draxa.....which came out, and was promptly followed by a novel a few months later, wherein the city was destroyed.

There are different ways to look at it.

With Planescape, having the Factions get kicked out of Sigil sucked.....but it brought back groups like the Sons of Mercy. Unfortunately, it wrecked the Believers of the Source, who were always one of my favourite Factions. I think I was more disappointed by that module where Vecna went to Sigil than I was by the Faction War.

Change isn't always bad......I tend to like additive changes......whereas change for the sake of change I'm not a huge fan of. Like a lot of the stuff done for 4E.

I do find TSR had a much better grasp of creating interesting campaign worlds than WotC does. What new ones has WotC actually created? Ghostwalk, and Eberron. And Eberron doesn't count as much, as it was through a setting contest, wasn't it?

One setting I wish got another chance was Birthright.....I always thought it had a much grittier, more mystical feel than Forgotten Realms. It was one of the first times I saw a D&D setting where followers of two different good gods could literally have a holy war against each other.

Banshee

 

[aurance]

Hey a Primary Witchlight Marauder or two on most campaign worlds would be a cataclysm!!

I love those things man. Your PCs never even really need to see one. Just the idea of one can spur on a lot of nice, panicky adventures.

 

[Spatula]

But let's not forget that the changes they brought to settings were often both good and bad.

Yes, Dark Sun was significantly changed during the Prism Pentad.....but the Prism Pentad also really fleshed out the setting. Without the Prism Pentad there was no Rajaat. Without Rajaat there were no Cleansing Wars. Without the Cleansing Wars, there was no explanation for what the Sorcerer-Kings actually were. Nor was there the Pristine Tower.

So... where's the good in any of that? Opening up the setting to social chaos or whatnot was accomplished with Kalak's death. Off-handedly killing most of the other SKs just to prove how badass the writer's BBEG is didn't accomplish anything constructive. Ditto for removing any and all sense of mystery from the setting and replacing it with the silliness that was in the PP. Halflings... really?

 

[Nymrohd]

I am sorry but letting your settings be slaves to novels and their writers often poorly conceived Mary Sues is not creative. And the prism pentad had went overboard with it's mary sue. Back story can be added without changing the present, it is backstory after all.
And comparing sigil with factions and sigil with a few powerless groups that are all essentially controlled by the local and now uncontrolled powerbrokers? The Factions in Sigil were a huge part of the setting to summarily abolish them or move them to secondary positions.

 

[Krensky]

The Second Unhuman War was a part of Spelljammer from its inception, so it's not really a setting cataclysm like the others that Nymrohd listed.

Then the third? The events covered in the Scro module series. It's been a long time.

But none of them were world changing cataclysms. Spelljammer was just too big for that, really. Luckily the novels never were turned into modules though.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

So... where's the good in any of that? Opening up the setting to social chaos or whatnot was accomplished with Kalak's death. Off-handedly killing most of the other SKs just to prove how badass the writer's BBEG is didn't accomplish anything constructive. Ditto for removing any and all sense of mystery from the setting and replacing it with the silliness that was in the PP. Halflings... really?

Exactly!!
Big tip for all DM's and WOTC here: MYSTERY IS BLOODY IMPORTANT!! YOU DO NOT NEED TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING!!
in fact, it's much better when you don't.
If everything is known = no mystery, no mystery = no fear.
Fear is vital for a campaign, to keep it edgy and concerned.

Like yes, the Witchlight Marauders, lol, my player's response to them was unprintable and involved running away! lol.

So folk now know Sorceror-Kings are trying to become dragons and there are rules for it and avagnions....wonderful, thank you, NOT!!!
The Sorceror Kings should be bloody enigmatic, absolute terrors for the PCs. The SKs have been around for centuries, or millenia, or millions of years, who the hell knows? Only the SKs and they ain't telling!

I worked out my own backstory to Dark Sun, the mind flayers tried ot put out the SUn, and screwed up. They introduced psionics to Humans, and siphoned some of it off, for power, over an aeon where war and conflict grew, where psionics and magic gave birth to defiling...

• Sun went nova due to the illithids screwing up, gods tried ot stop it, some got vaped and sealed the Astral Plane but managed to stabilize the Sun, hence it's current form.
• Living weapons were created in the enormous defiler wars, scorched earth wepaons to destory everything useful for non-arcane/psions, like the so-uts and rust monsters. hence, little metal.
• And Athas is Athas, it doesn't have ot have ANY critter the DM doesn't want. Mine sure as heck has kobolds and other critters, but usually very different from orginals, mutated by vast times and magic.
• The Sorceror Kings are the malignant uber powerful defilers who survived the catacylsms, who can squash any non lvl 30 PC like a bug.
• Lingering foul magics of the war, the eerie radiation of the Dark Sun, brutal Darwinism and who knows what, gives rise ot many weird mutaitons and new beasts.

There simple, doesn't need messy books, cleansing wars etc, works for me as a backstory as a DM to fold the game around.
And it all could be completely wrong, because the history of Athas is lost in the very distant past...

Ever read the Clark Ashton Smith books? lost Sarcosa etc, that's what you want for Athas: barbaric, strange, brutal, horrible and a scary mystery.

having most of the Sorceror Kings wiped out, a backstory slammed into the setting which was...iffy, and the city of Tyr becoming a blasted DEMOCRACY ?! ruined the setting, ugh.
Such things must only be done by the PCs, that's their job, that's why their players play D&D to do great heroics, not have it done for them!! yeech.

*huge lover of Dark Sun, jus tnot what was done to the setting*
DARK SUN

 

[CelticMutt]

Frankly, I love the backstory the novels created for the Sorcerer Kings, and I really hope all of that's kept for Dark Sun 4e when (not if) it gets made. With allowances made for things like the gnomes being wiped out getting reversed though (probably).

And Dragon, Avangion, and Elemental are almost certainly going to be EDs.

 

[Shemeska]

I am sorry but letting your settings be slaves to novels and their writers often poorly conceived Mary Sues is not creative. And the prism pentad had went overboard with it's mary sue. Back story can be added without changing the present, it is backstory after all.
And comparing sigil with factions and sigil with a few powerless groups that are all essentially controlled by the local and now uncontrolled powerbrokers? The Factions in Sigil were a huge part of the setting to summarily abolish them or move them to secondary positions.

Who says that they became secondary? They didn't stop believing what they did except perhaps for the two Factions that merged, or the one that split apart back into the two sects that formed it in the first place. The Factions still exist, either formally and in exile, or unofficially and now taking control through puppet guilds or different avenues of political power without breaking the letter of the Lady's edict.

At least in my opinion of post FW Sigil (and yes there's a different tone to games pre and post FW) things are much more dynamic, there's a much larger chance for PCs to be directly involved in the power dynamic in Sigil, and the changes to the Factions actually serves to draw other players from the multiverse at large into Sigil-based plots because now the Factions are being forced to expand out onto the planes themselves more than they ever were.

Unlike a situation like perhaps 4e FR, the 2e settings were still recognizable as the same settings and didn't retcon or invalidate huge amounts of history after whatever changes happened to them during 2e (via novels like Dark Sun, or module metaplot for Planescape, etc).

 

[Banshee16]

So... where's the good in any of that? Opening up the setting to social chaos or whatnot was accomplished with Kalak's death. Off-handedly killing most of the other SKs just to prove how badass the writer's BBEG is didn't accomplish anything constructive. Ditto for removing any and all sense of mystery from the setting and replacing it with the silliness that was in the PP. Halflings... really?

Cannibal halflings

I'm not saying that all the changes were perfect....just that it's easy to complain about some of the changes, and then forget that they were tied to other good changes.

To say nothing of the fact that which changes were good, and which were bad differed from one person to another.

What I disliked in the novels was how easily some of the sorcerer kings were destroyed. I didn't mind them dying...it's just the novels kind of "cheap shotted" the whole concept. A battle that results in the death of an immortal lvl 20 defiler/lvl 20 psionicist/lvl 1 dragon should be epic. That was never really conveyed. So no, I didn't like that part.

But the whole idea of the Cleansing Wars, and the Champions of Rajaat.....that was very cool, IMO.

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

Exactly!!
Big tip for all DM's and WOTC here: MYSTERY IS BLOODY IMPORTANT!! YOU DO NOT NEED TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING!!
in fact, it's much better when you don't.
If everything is known = no mystery, no mystery = no fear.
Fear is vital for a campaign, to keep it edgy and concerned.

Like yes, the Witchlight Marauders, lol, my player's response to them was unprintable and involved running away! lol.

So folk now know Sorceror-Kings are trying to become dragons and there are rules for it and avagnions....wonderful, thank you, NOT!!!
The Sorceror Kings should be bloody enigmatic, absolute terrors for the PCs. The SKs have been around for centuries, or millenia, or millions of years, who the hell knows? Only the SKs and they ain't telling!

I worked out my own backstory to Dark Sun, the mind flayers tried ot put out the SUn, and screwed up. They introduced psionics to Humans, and siphoned some of it off, for power, over an aeon where war and conflict grew, where psionics and magic gave birth to defiling...

• Sun went nova due to the illithids screwing up, gods tried ot stop it, some got vaped and sealed the Astral Plane but managed to stabilize the Sun, hence it's current form.
• Living weapons were created in the enormous defiler wars, scorched earth wepaons to destory everything useful for non-arcane/psions, like the so-uts and rust monsters. hence, little metal.
• And Athas is Athas, it doesn't have ot have ANY critter the DM doesn't want. Mine sure as heck has kobolds and other critters, but usually very different from orginals, mutated by vast times and magic.
• The Sorceror Kings are the malignant uber powerful defilers who survived the catacylsms, who can squash any non lvl 30 PC like a bug.
• Lingering foul magics of the war, the eerie radiation of the Dark Sun, brutal Darwinism and who knows what, gives rise ot many weird mutaitons and new beasts.

There simple, doesn't need messy books, cleansing wars etc, works for me as a backstory as a DM to fold the game around.
And it all could be completely wrong, because the history of Athas is lost in the very distant past...

Ever read the Clark Ashton Smith books? lost Sarcosa etc, that's what you want for Athas: barbaric, strange, brutal, horrible and a scary mystery.

having most of the Sorceror Kings wiped out, a backstory slammed into the setting which was...iffy, and the city of Tyr becoming a blasted DEMOCRACY ?! ruined the setting, ugh.
Such things must only be done by the PCs, that's their job, that's why their players play D&D to do great heroics, not have it done for them!! yeech.

*huge lover of Dark Sun, jus tnot what was done to the setting*
DARK SUN

With all due respect, those setting ideas are as Mary Sue as the characters in the Prism Pentad....to some people. Everyone thinks they have the best idea EVAR for how a campaign world should be set up/explained. Doesn't mean all people will agree on the feeling.

I don't think the player knowing that the Sorcerer Kings were former Champions of Rajaat necessarily means that the character will. I mean, unless your characters are hanging with Sadira and Rikus, how would they ever know? It's not exactly common knowledge. To 99.9999999999% of the population of Athas, the Sorcerer-Kings are brutal, enigmatic, vile, and mega powerful beings who can crush most others like bugs. Knowing that they're the former captains of a megalomaniacal fantasy contemporary of Hitler, and the world is in its current state due to a massive holocaust against a whole bunch of the nonhuman races doesn't diminish the setting any more. I think it makes it even *more* tragic. Athas has been horribly scarred by the process of genocide. All that potential, all those people wiped out. Now, the survivors, millenia later, eke out what living they can in the broken, burned, and depleted remnants of their planet, and they're *still* fighting each other. To me, it was always a very bleak setting...especially once they described *why* it was the way it was.

In any case, my whole point was that the materials, including novels, which come after initial setting launch do have purpose, and in many cases make very valuable contributions to campaign settings.......so I just feel that it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say that all products after the initial campaign setting launches only ever detracted from those settings.

Banshee