While I would not have chosen TFW or the 4E changes I no longer think of it as all bad. Playing in post-Faction War Sigil was depressing (who wants to be scragged by an ex-Mercykiller and tossed in front of a dabus Guvner? The illiterate are screwed), but I think the 4E changes allow for better exploration of the consequences of TFW. I am planning a 4E Planescape game set in Sigil that uses the ‘Aftermath’ section of The Faction War as a guide to how the City of Doors is run.
Post your thoughts and any plot hooks or questions you have. Here are a few things I will be using:
- Sure, Asmodeus is a god now and pushed the Abyss to the bottom of the Elemental Chaos, but I cannot see the Demons caring. With the static battlefront removed the Blood War is pretty much over, but that does not rule out guerilla warfare. It also would not stop individuals or groups of Demons beating the hellfire out of passing Devils. I am picturing Devil and Demon gang fights in the streets of Sigil a la West Side Story.
- The Daughters of the Light are still enforcing the Lady of Pain’s ban on factions--but was that really what the Lady wanted? "No more factions, ever!" were certainly was not her (technically her dabus’) exact words; “This city tolerates your faction no longer. Abandon it or die.” was the exact phrase used. It is possible new factions are alright with the Lady, but no group or Guild with delusions of factionhood grandeur will ever know unless they can find a way to keep the Daughters off their backs.
- With the revelation that there are a finite amount of dabus to do work comes the realization that unless dabus somehow increase their numbers the Hall of Records is likely to remain sealed forever. Considering the attentiveness (some would say obsessive compulsiveness) of the Fated it is likely anything a basher needs to know about pre-Faction War Sigil can be found there. Of course, the berk would have to get through the locks and guards. Besides, it might not be there anymore; who knows what people took before the Advisory Council came to their senses?
QUESTION: With the removal of Outland from the cosmology in 4E, what happened to gate-towns like Bedlam and Curst? Are they just cast-offs from the previous edition? If they are, I guess there could be few portals that directly connect full planes to Sigil, so the gate-towns could act as demiplanar buffers.
Trying to adapt Planescape for 4E is an exercise in futility IMHO, the changes to the planes being no small reason. 4E effective destroyed the Planescape cosmology in D&D; unless you import the planar wheel wholesale, there is nothing beyond the 'astral sea', the 'elemental chaos' and the abyss listed in the 4E DMG, with the Feywild and the Shadowfel as 'echoes' of the world, which pretty much kills the setting in and of itself. Alignment, i.e. belief, forms the fundamental basis of Planescape, as manifested by the planes. The massive redaction to the planes, and suddenly massive role of 'the world' (a single Prime world) in the cosmology negates the principle rather quickly.
Alignment creates another issue. Law vs. Chaos was a large of Planescape -- as much as Good vs. Evil. Alignment was a pivotal part of the setting, and considering the oversimplified spectrum presented in 4E, there's another key piece of the puzzle gone AWOL.
There are more significant issues to porting Planescape to 4E, including the lack of factions, the simplification of magic for clerics and wizards, the changes to outsiders and planar politics, etc. Unless a great deal of work is invested into creating a vast array of options for faction characters at all 30 levels, it's not going to be feasible.
With that said, I think having some adaptation of Planescape and Spelljammer appearing in 4th Edition is inevitable. I don't know if it will be called one, the other, or something completely different, but it will come. I've heard people say that they're already core; I disagree. For now both setting have been pilfered for content that are appropriate all settings. Until we've had the supplemental books for The Planes Below, The Planes Above, and the Planes Between, no one outside of WotC can make the call on if the settings are core or not. Even then I expect we'll need books covering the new setting both for the inherited Planeswalker factions and any Spelljammer material not recreated in the four planes books.
And if you honestly think about it, in a world without the Great Wheel most of the factions probably recovered by way of Spelljamming when they were denied use of Sigil as a base of operation. So my crystal ball says that it's in the pipeline.
With that said, I think having some adaptation of Planescape and Spelljammer appearing in 4th Edition is inevitable. I don't know if it will be called one, the other, or something completely different, but it will come. I've heard people say that they're already core; I disagree. For now both setting have been pilfered for content that are appropriate all settings. Until we've had the supplemental books for The Planes Below, The Planes Above, and the Planes Between, no one outside of WotC can make the call on if the settings are core or not. Even then I expect we'll need books covering the new setting both for the inherited Planeswalker factions and any Spelljammer material not recreated in the four planes books.
Sigil will appear a the paragon tier "home base" in the DMG2. So we'll get some idea of how 4E will look in terms of Planescape.
Th--the abyss is in the elemental planes? No Outland? Y'serious, berk? Just look off the edge of th' donut, 's right down there! Soddin' Prime "cosmology" is all completely wrong, it'll drive ya barmy if ya try to navigate yer way around with that nonsense in yer skulls! Talk about Clueless...
Um... yeah. The Great Wheel isn't necessary for Planescape. Yes, it was an important part of the Planescape in 2nd and 3rd edition, but it wasn't essential. What is essential are the Factions and their belief in belief. Given the result of the Faction Wars, some naturally occurring portals that are relatively permanent and can be charted would be needed, but it doesn't have to be as simple as the Great Road was. Some Spelljammer aspects incorporated correctly might be cool too.
Planewalker dot com is recreating the Great Wheel for their 4th edition adaptation. I don't agree with that approach, but if you do then go check out their forums. Personally, I think all we need to recreate the from the Great Wheel is Mechanus, just because an entire plane of churning cogs might not be typical fantasy, but it is certainly Planescape/Spelljammer.
The DM has pretty much the final say in what the cosmology looks like.
Also, the Manual of the Planes details how the Great Wheel is in accordance with the 4th edition cosmology.
Th--the abyss is in the elemental planes? No Outland? Y'serious, berk? Just look off the edge of th' donut, 's right down there! Soddin' Prime "cosmology" is all completely wrong, it'll drive ya barmy if ya try to navigate yer way around with that nonsense in yer skulls! Talk about Clueless...
Exactly.
They can even look like a giant gaping open space with no borders between the Abyss and the Elemental Plane of Fire, if you want. No problem.
Or, they can look like a giant gaping open space with no borders between the Abyss and Outland/Gehenna/Pandemonium.
There's no reason the Abyss can't be 'adjacent' to all these things, and none. It's infinite in 3 dimensions--at least--and it's in the 4th, 5th, 6th or more that we are trying to judge its placement.
The way I see it is, there are different competing mortal theories as to how the planes are 'organized.' Mimir.net has a few different cosmologies from back in the day (although all of them had the great ring, still.) Who's to say who's right? We are trying to interpret a multidimensional multiverse using a 3-d model which is then drawn on a 2-d map. The amount of information lost doing this is astounding.
Imagine a tire's shadow with light from the side--it's a ring. Imagine it with light from straight-above, it's... kind of a rounded-rectangle? Completely distorts the three-dimensionality of the tire. As such our distillation of the grand cosmology of the multiverse severely distorts the way it actually* looks.
*Er, in-game.
So, what planes are connected to what is entirely up to the DM to decide.
Now, a caveat to that. I like the 2e cosmology, myself, but it presents a problem with 4e mechanics. I'd say most prominently is the Feywild. I can't deny access to the Feywild anywhere without severely nerfing Eladrin, Feylocks... I'm not sure how to handle that. In 4e the Feywild is an echo of "The World." In 2e cosmology, what makes the most sense is to say that it's part of the Ethereal plane, however, that presents a problem for the Outer--unless I just arbitrarily decide that the Outer Planes are bordered by the Ethereal, and I'm not sure if I like that solution.
What I'm inclined to say is that there are certain techniques that take one a bit out of phase with whatever environment one is in, and that Eladrin and other fey creatures used these techniques on the Prime, frequently and for long durations, and in so doing, created the Feywild. (Well, ancient creatures did, anyway.) These techniques can be used elsewhere too, and they create pocket-portals from whatever plane you are in. However, most planes don't have reflection-planes like the Feywild does.
Arborea probably has a straight-up hugeass portal right into the Feywild, itself.
The great wheel, the world tree, the astral sea, ALL of them can work with plancescape, really all of them can exist at the same time and be true. It would actually add something interesting to the setting*. Greater than just petty politics there can by down right holy wars between factions who are fighting over which one's view of the afterlife is most correct.
* (This is my personal opinion, I don't really like PS, it's just a city setting with "quirky" races. Anything else it does is normal "planar"-level adventures in a cosmology I have never really liked.)
What is the essence of Planescape? What made it interesting and worth playing?
I must agree it was not the Great Wheel. It may have been some of the interesting planes, Bytopia, Mount Celestia, Limbo, etc, but it wasn't the wheel itself, which was just a mechanical construct around the great ideas and things these planes symbolized?
Was it the factions? Yes to a degree. The factions were the manifestations of the power of belief, and ultimately, that was what was interesting, people who believed in things so fully so as to dedicate their being to it. This has always been what made playing a paladin in normal D&D so grokkable and fulfilling, the ability to so wholly immerse yourself in the surity of your beliefs. Planescape gave us the ability to have the certitude and belief on par with a paladin, but about many, many other things and across different shades of the alignment spectrum.
Was it the City of Sigil? Yes, again, because it was the manifestation of all of these wondrous things. It was to D&D what Paris of the late 18th or early 19th century was to the world. An extremely cosmopolitain place full of different people's and beliefs all doing their own thing. It was this place full of angels, demons, humans, talking boxes and everything in bewtween. It appealed to those who loved discovery, intrigue and battle as it facilitated all 3 very easily.
I believe we will see some of this, especially the third point brought to the fore in the DMG2, but they are not going to undo or ignore the Faction War (as again, most followers want), but that is the attitude I am taking in my game. I simply advanced the timeline and had the Lady allow the factions back into the city with some harsh preexisting conditions (all communicated through the Dabus of course). This lets me draw on all the old info of the 2ed books while also telling my new stories, changing things were I need to.
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Pretty much this.
I think the factions are missing badly. This is no more Planescape without factions. They were the very essence of the setting, of the look and feel of this city. Ideas, thoughts, belives, all these stuff which could change exsitence itself found its representation in the different factions. Without them, Sigil is ripped of its most individual character and becomes a normal city as so many other around the planes.
But a remarkable city where a philosophy of a being determines its fate is it no more. 
Planescape is all about belief, and regardless of what many people try to say it's core is set in the City of Sigil. The great wheel, the world tree, the astral sea, ALL of them can work with plancescape, really all of them can exist at the same time and be true. It would actually add something interesting to the setting*.
Ancient thread, but I just read this and - yes.
Amazing.