Why I dislike Sigil and the Lady of Pain

[d2OKC]

Probably off-topic (and I apologize if it is too far off), but this thread has been really inspirational to me. I've been kind of stumped about how (and when) to reveal certain information to my players during epic tier (which I wanted to take place in Sigil and make heavy use of some of the elemental planes), and this thread has lead me to exactly the places and "people" I needed. So, thanks, I guess?

And, some of the posters here have suggested that others may not be up-to-date on their Sigil/Planescape lore. Where is the best place to go to do so? Is there a well-made wiki? Or would someone have to go read the novels set there? It would be helpful to know where to get that knowledge. Thanks, again.

 

[Shemeska]

And, some of the posters here have suggested that others may not be up-to-date on their Sigil/Planescape lore. Where is the best place to go to do so? Is there a well-made wiki? Or would someone have to go read the novels set there? It would be helpful to know where to get that knowledge. Thanks, again.

Planewalker.com has a decent wiki, but the site had some navigation problems a little while back. Its worth a look though. A shame the 2e pdfs aren't for sale anymore, they would have been your best best.

Avoid the novels. For the love of God avoid the novels.

Play a few hours of Planescape: Torment and you'll have a good feel for the setting's atmosphere and tone.

 

[Shemeska]

The only way I can think of to make the Lady of Pain less of a pain to to keep her remote, seen in the distance or not at all. Demonstrate that interacting with her is a bad idea, and avoiding her is entirely possible.

She's more background element and plot device than NPC. Keeping her a remote, depersonalized point of mystery and setting mystique seems to work best IMO. In six years of running games in Sigil she showed up twice, and not once during those two times did she speak or have any meaningful communication with the PCs.

If you don't know what she is, don't have stats, don't even know if she's a god, or even if she's alive, you can't interact with her the same way as a mundane, prosaic NPC. This gets under some peoples' skin, but I suspect it's also a playstyle issue at work here as well.

For all we know she's trapped, and an object of pity, or a martyr for the pain of the multiverse, or a nascent godling forever unable to breach the cusp of divinity and consigned to act out her frustration only on those who mock her with worship. Or she's a living personification of Sigil. Or she's the original paragon of neutrality. Or she's a being from another multiverse. Etc Etc. It's an awesome concept.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Avoid the novels. For the love of God avoid the novels.

Are they simply run-of-the-mill-teen-D&D-fantasy bad, or bad in some other way? I ask because you don't often have negative comments about PS stuff.

 

[d2OKC]

Cool, thanks, Shemeska!

 

[Shemeska]

Are they simply run-of-the-mill-teen-D&D-fantasy bad, or bad in some other way? I ask because you don't often have negative comments about PS stuff.

They have some instances of blatantly going against some of the setting's rules in some truly wtf ways: The Lady of Pain's griffon riding shock troops. Yeah. The three book 'Blood War' trilogy should be ignored.

The other novel, Troy Denning's 'Pages of Pain' is an interesting and pretty decent read on its own, but I wouldn't present it as canonical to the setting in any way.

 

[TarionzCousin]

My problem with the lady of pain is that she's a cliched super powerful being with no explanation for why she's there or why she does what she does. It stinks of lazy writing to me. Sigil could have existed without her and it would have been better off for it.

I'm just on the opposite side. I always loved Sigil and the Lady, especially the sense of mistery about her powers and her connection to the city.

To us it was very simple: the Lady is the local goddess. Outside of the city she has no powers, while inside she's able to control almost everything, including the portals and the mazes. That's why other gods can't enter her realm and why in Harbinger House there was a plot to create a god inside Sigil.

The Lady isn't a god, she's a "tool" for DMs to use as they will. She might be the future self of a PC in one campaign, or the mother of all deities in the other. She gives the DM a way to control otherwise incompatible beings and NPCs long enough to form a campaign setting.

If I were to justify it, I would say that gods rely on belief for their power, and Sigil is sort of a hub of skepticism, so gods have a hard time deploying their power there.

Sigil is too important to too many people and factions, and so the only god that can exist there is a god of skepticism. Who is the Lady of Pain? No one knows. Fits great for me.

She's more background element and plot device than NPC. Keeping her a remote, depersonalized point of mystery and setting mystique seems to work best IMO. In six years of running games in Sigil she showed up twice, and not once during those two times did she speak or have any meaningful communication with the PCs.

If you don't know what she is, don't have stats, don't even know if she's a god, or even if she's alive, you can't interact with her the same way as a mundane, prosaic NPC. This gets under some peoples' skin, but I suspect it's also a playstyle issue at work here as well.

For all we know she's trapped, and an object of pity, or a martyr for the pain of the multiverse, or a nascent godling forever unable to breach the cusp of divinity and consigned to act out her frustration only on those who mock her with worship. Or she's a living personification of Sigil. Or she's the original paragon of neutrality. Or she's a being from another multiverse. Etc Etc. It's an awesome concept.

I have colorfully highlighted sentences I particularly like. I'm just lazy like that.

I like the idea that the Lady of Pain is not just a local goddess; she is something else. The idea of Sigil as being free of the gods' influence really appeals to me. It's neutral territory. It isn't the Lady's realm, per se; it's a place where no deity has overt influence.

The Lady herself is a mystery. To me, that makes Sigil and the Planescape setting more interesting. That puts all the Powers' plans into the covert realm, behind the scenes. I like that.

Planescape isn't traditional fantasy. To me it's a weird hybrid of multiple mythologies, philosophies, and the endless multiverse. That's why I love it.

 

[DracoSuave]

(from the Planescape point of view)

To understand the Lady of Pain, you have to understand what Sigil is.

Sigil is not just 'some city full of doors' tho obviously that's part of it.

It's the physical and metaphysical centerpoint of the Outlands.

The Outlands are the plane of absolute neutraility and balance. For every good action there is an evil action. For every spot of chaos there is a spot of law.

This is not some conscious effort on the part of civic-minded neutral beancounters (tho those do exist)... it's the absolute power of the entire plan itself. It is as absolute as the Elysium's requirement that to travel you must perform acts of kindness. If you die in battle in Ysgard, you come back the next day as if it never happened. If you wish to do certain magics in Carceri, you must perform an act of treachery. If you listen to the winds of Pandemonium, you go insane.

These are not the work of gods, these are the fundamental laws of each universe.

Sigil is the absolute center of the Outlands. It is the absolute center of truest neutrality. Gods, however, have the ability to shape and change the laws around them to suit themselves. Gods can enter the outer parts of the Outlands without problems. But near the Spire, they have no reach. And on top of the spire, above it... the power of the Outlands is the strongest.

So if a God enters Sigil... then there are only two possible reactions: Either the god is denied entry, or a god must be created to oppose him.

The former is the better option.

The Lady of Pain is just one aspect of that balance. Her job is not to prevent action, but to balance actions that require her to do so.


....lastly... atheism is not a rational choice for planars. The closest you get are the Athar, who believe that the powers are just extremely powerful entities, but are not all-powerful dieties to be worshipped. This is not atheism in the classic 'those things don't exist' sense, cause they obviously do, but it's closer to gnosticism, where 'those things exist, but not as you think they are.' sense.

 

[Shemeska]

....lastly... atheism is not a rational choice for planars. The closest you get are the Athar, who believe that the powers are just extremely powerful entities, but are not all-powerful dieties to be worshipped. This is not atheism in the classic 'those things don't exist' sense, cause they obviously do, but it's closer to gnosticism, where 'those things exist, but not as you think they are.' sense.

I'm not sure where some of the Athar = Atheism and Sigil/LoP makes atheism a valid option is coming from. A large portion of the Athar faction actually believes in something which is about as close as you can get to monotheism in D&D: the so-called "Great Beyond" which is their name for a transcendant, unknowable, omnipotent being beyond the gods.

Their former factol Terrance was an adherent of that philosophy. And they got spells via worship of the concept, and it was always a big question if they were actually gaining spells from that entity, or gaining it by worship of the concept itself even if there was nothing behind it, or if it was being supplied (perhaps unknowingly) by all of the other gods out there.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In particular, I really, really dislike how the Lady of Pain devalues the gods. I'm not opposed to areas that gods can't enter (see Death's Reach), but the reason they can't enter there is far more convincing than the fiat that enables Sigil.

I personally am happy to see that the gods are not all-powerful in a cosmological mash-up. There are Forces Beyond Gods. It is infinity turned up to 11.

I think it's kind of essential for a cosmological mash-up to have gods that are not all-powerful, especially if Philosophy is one of the defining pillars of the setting, since you want people to be able to doubt and question them, rebel against them, pronounce them dead, compare and contrast them, ignore and defy them, or believe in them for reasons beyond "He is big and shoots lightning and can kill things and lives in a paradise far away."

That's my take, anyway.

Then too, Planescape is part of the extreme fragmentation of D&D, so I've always been opposed to it on that principle. (I also am not fond of DiTerlizzi's artwork, and I despise the cant).

Eh...tastes vary. I don't know what you mean by "extreme fragmentation of D&D" though?

One of the best times I had recently was the PCs meeting the Raven Queen, and them being speechless as a result. This was a god - their god - and she held the power of life and death over them. That's what I want from the gods: these are the creators of humanity and demihumanity, and they should be loved and occasionally feared.

That's great for a setting where most of the adventures take place in the Mortal World, but Planescape rejects that idea. Immortals are fairly common beings, everyone has their own view, and the gods, while very powerful, are ultimately nothing special. Part of that bag is the use of philosophies as a core element -- you want to include characters who are inspired by fantastical takes on ideas of right and wrong and life and death beyond the simple animal awe. You want to have characters who can spout Buddhism and Nietzsche, and that requires a different take on the nature of the gods. In PS, the awe is not that there are powerful entities, but rather that there are things beyond the most powerful entities.

This is not to say that the gods are omnipotent and invulnerable - by no means - but can you really imagine the Zeus of Greek mythology or the Odin of Norse mythology being unable to affect the Lady of Pain? The influence of Greek and Norse mythology is extremely visible on the 4E mythology, and it'd be nice to see the gods in a similar position of power.

Why do gods have to be that powerful? Why is it a prerequisite for your fantasy funtimes? Why can't the gods -- in certain settings -- be petty, vulnerable, and small-minded? Why can't clerics believe in their deity not because he's the biggest, strongest thing around, but because he represents something the cleric feels is sacred on a level that suffuses the entire multiverse, rather than just the little island where that god is worshiped?

Returning to Sigil, one effect of the Lady of Pain's existence is that suddenly atheism - in an otherwise theistic cosmos - becomes an option. And, thus, you get the factions. Completely irrelevant outside of Sigil, because the morality and ethics promulgated by the gods actually apply elsewhere. It sort of works in the confused state of mythological affairs that was 2E, where there seems to be 1001 gods or more, but with the tighter set of mythology in 4E, even if the gods don't work as tightly together as a pantheon as the rest of mythology implies they should, the factions stick out like a sore thumb. Thankfully they're mostly not there in 4E.

I get that if you don't like weak gods, that not liking atheistic or agnostic factions would follow, but I don't get why you can't have weak gods? Maybe it's just a "personal taste" thing.

The idea of meeting places - civilisation - in the Astral Sea is an interesting one. Personally, I'm very fond of the City of Brass (dating back to the cover of the old Dungeon Masters Guide), but with Sigil, I really need something more than "it exists because of the Lady of Pain". Who uses it? Why do they use it? What is the civilisation of the outer planar creatures that requires such a meeting place to exist?

Trade and travel hub of the multiverse, a "safe haven" for all walks of life that links to every other reality that could ever be, as easy as walking through a door.

"An angel and a devil sit down at a bar" sounds like a good start to a story, but why would that meeting ever take place? Is it a forced contrivance to tell a story, or does it make sense within the mythology you have? In 4E, it looks forced to me.

Philosophies is the reason. The angel and the devil have more in common in PS than they might in other settings, since they might, for instance, both believe that power should be dictated through an authority. They sit down at a bar to discuss why they each love their leader so much, and find their ideas matching up snugly, much to their disturbance.

The civilisation of the Efreet gives rise to the City of Brass, and the trade opportunities there for high-level characters, and thus I can justify it. I don't have such a justification for the City of Doors.

City of Brass isn't connected to Everywhere, it's just big on the elemental scene.

----

I'm not exactly trying to convince you to like it. Y'know, like what you like, I don't care. But maybe we can drill down to a fundamental place. You don't seem to like it mostly because you don't like trivializing the Gods. What's wrong with trivializing the Gods, for you?