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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5601792" data-attributes="member: 42582">I just XPed you recently for the capsule reviews, so can't XP for this. But I mostly agree. I very much dislike Planescape (I have a few Planescape modules, and as written they all strike me as railroady to the extreme). The Lady of Pain does nothing for me, although I could perhaps tolerate her as a Bombadil-like character confined to her own little demiplane. The factions also do nothing for me (and as a professional philosopher, I find the characterisation of them as "philosophers with clubs" failry bizarre - they don't seem to be doing what I recognise as philosophy).I have toyed with using Sigil in my campaign (given that quite a bit of 4e lore presupposes it) but in the following way: by setting up a contrast between, on the one hand, the self-conception of the Sigil-ites (as the centre of the multiverse, ultra-sophisticates who look down their noses at "primers", etc) and on the other hand, the obvious squallor and degradation that is Sigil (their torus stinks and is grimy, they have no artistic, social or political culture of any value, and they even tolerate demons in their bars!). The idea would be to give the players either (i) a contrast with which to reaffirm their PCs' moral integration into the real (mortal) world, or (ii) an option for a PC who want to embrace nihilism completely.(This presentation of Sigil is sort-of based on taking every criticism levelled at Bohemians by conservatives, and actually making it true of Sigil - dada-ising the dada-ists, if you like.)I wouldn't say I despise it, but I find it inane. (In the same way that I find Jar Jar Binks creole inane, or would find it inane to describe a campaign setting where all the inhabitants sound like Peter Sellers' imitation of an Indian accent in The Party.)To me, it simply reinforces a prior sense that American English is much more removed from British English than is Australian English. (At least some elements of cant are part of the English that I grew up speaking as a child, like "berk" as a derisive term for a person.)My brother, who is married to an American, told me once about his attempt to explain to her the rhyming slang used in the TV series Minder. They call a 10-pound note a "monkey", he explained, because "monkey" is short for "monkey wrench", which denotes a form of spanner, and "spanner" rhymes with "tenner". To which she responded, "Why would you call a 10-pound note a tenner?"I feel that if you know the answer to that question, then cant will not excite you so much, because it's already implicit in your everyday speech!</blockquote>

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