Ands whats up the faction war stuff i keep seeing referenced? Is that from a novel or something? I was pretty familiar with the 2nd ed dstuff, or so I thought. I have a goodly amount of the matterial from the three box sets
Planes of Law,chaos, and the bloodwar. But I don't remember anything about it.
Thanks.
Kwint
1) What about the adventures from Hellbound? Did those tie into the new stuff? Because we played through it, and when we finished it, it changed everything about the planes. Fiends couldn't teleport without fail ( excpt the yugoloths), it sent ripples across the planes that efeected alot of stuff.
2) What is the power structure of the new sigil like? Who rules what? I loved how the setting (pre-faction-war) had it all worked out for who controled what, and where and all that. I have now read enought that this question is no longer needed. I now know the power structure...and its well done too.
3) What happened to the Yugoloths???!!!! I don't understand how they could just write them out of the game. In every PS game we pl;ayed, the Yugoloths were an important aspect of the background. They were the puppet masters behind it all.
Ok, so i read about the faction war and all that, but still have some questions:
2) What is the power structure of the new sigil like? Who rules what? I loved how the setting (pre-faction-war) had it all worked out for who controled what, and where and all that. I have now read enought that this question is no longer needed. I now know the power structure...and its well done too.
Check out the Sigil Chapter from Planewalker's PSCS page...
Other chapters may answer your questions concerning the 'loths...
Kwint
Ok, so i read about the faction war and all that, but still have some questions:
1) What about the adventures from Hellbound? Did those tie into the new stuff? Because we played through it, and when we finished it, it changed everything about the planes. Fiends couldn't teleport without fail ( excpt the yugoloths), it sent ripples across the planes that efeected alot of stuff.
WotC has sidestepped the issue and not addressed it. I'm tempted to suggest it's because of some designers simply not being aware of the material from Hellbound, but I can't say for certain.
Planewalker's take on the events of Hellbound versus 3.x fiends still having teleport powers is that the 'loths, having reclaimed the Maeldur et Kavurik, acted to limit the exposure of their hand in it all, and restore the teleportation abilities of the other fiends as quickly as possible. Quite literally they didn't feel that the time was right to use their control of the Maeldur as leverage against the other fiends. They've quietly buried the issue as best they can, claiming that they don't know what caused the disruption to the powers of the fiends, themselves included. If anything, they've played it off as a fluke occurrance of the planes, but mostly they've remained silent and clueless to all outside observers, not letting on that they know what happened.
3) What happened to the Yugoloths???!!!! I don't understand how they could just write them out of the game. In every PS game we pl;ayed, the Yugoloths were an important aspect of the background. They were the puppet masters behind it all.
The 'loths haven't gone anywhere.
They're still around, they just weren't included in the first Monster Manual. Well, they were going to be included initially (along with Modrons), but according to Monte Cook they were removed due to issues of page space and not wanting to have to only do some of them, or do them without the proper detail. So they weren't in the MM and were to have included in subsequent books, such as the Manual of the Planes, in all their varied forms.
Well, the 'loths did show up in subsequent books, but they've been scattered across the MotP, the MM2, and the Fiend Folio, and have been rather bereft of that proper level of detail that the original design team had wanted. The subsequent designers haven't lived up to their ideals, and in one case haven't seemed to be even aware of those original intentions regarding some of the monsters left out of the MM.
However this has hamstrung the 'loths in that since they weren't in the first MM, they weren't considered 'core', and some of the early design for 3 and 3.5 largely dissuaded the use of monsters outside of the core book that would require referencing and thus making players have to use books beyond the core. Thus the 'loths were excluded from many places where they would have fit better than perhaps a Tanar'ri or Baatezu.
Color me not amused in such cases.
As for the update to PS via Planewalkers, is there a place where the whole Factions War, and Tempest of Doors, is laid out? Is it somewhere on the Planewalkers site?
Thanks for the detailed answer. I'm currently going the through the Planewalker site rightnow.....i'm reading about Shameska the Marauder.....do you have...some...thing.....in connection......? Or, is it an emmulation thing? Which is cool. I'm just wondering.
I wrote the Shemeska the Marauder pdf on Planewalker (and the Planewalker sigil chapter) but no, I don't have any connection otherwise. I just snagged the name as a board handle here and elsewhere, and I've tended to post in character on a semi-regular basis. ;)
As for the update to PS via Planewalkers, is there a place where the whole Factions War, and Tempest of Doors, is laid out? Is it somewhere on the Planewalkers site?
Hmm... I don't believe so actually. However the pdf for Faction War is only like $5 online at the legit retailers of the prior edition pdfs.
As you've expressed curiosity, it's true. I basically run the City of Doors. *Runs from the room just moments before a bladed shadow passes through*
As for the update to PS via Planewalkers, is there a place where the whole Factions War, and Tempest of Doors, is laid out? Is it somewhere on the Planewalkers site?
Here's one, though it's not exactly canonical.
I've been plodding through the whole thing and man....nice! How official is the Planewalkers PSCS? Is it the response to Wizards not making an updated version for the setting so some hardcores had at her( figuratively speaking) and wrote that whole thing on their on? Because if so....my hat of nerdom goes off to all those who took part. Well friggen done!
About on the same page as say Athas.org and the other 'official' community fansites for each of the 'defunct' 2e campaign settings. However since PS is still technically being worked on in 3e, just not a campaign setting unto itself, the waters are relatively murky here. Technically WotC can ignore us and write over the PW stuff at whimsy, but I doubt that they'll give enough specific attention to the material in future books to make it an issue.
When I was writing the Sigil chapter for Planewalker I did go out of my way a bit to confer on some specific parts with Gwen Kestrel w/ WotC to make sure that anything that WotC was doing on Sigil in the Planar Handbook wasn't going to be clashing with the PW material. In the end it wasn't, the PW material was set about 5 years post Faction War, same as the stuff in the Planar Handbook, and everything else wasn't a big deal since we tended to go into much greater detail (the lack of page space limits is a godsend) while they were a bit more general and limited in scope. They're compatable in virtually every way, though some NPCs may be given slightly different class levels, etc, but that's bound to happen.
Use whichever you like.
A few more questions. The faction war timeline i read, stated that after its all said and done the faction re-establish themselves back in Sigil, but from the reading I've done on PW site, it looks like they are still band from officially setting up shop in Sigil. Do I have that right? The factions still exesit accross the Planes ( of course) but have no officail business in Sigil? It looks like the guilds have taken over all of the official Sigilian duties and the factions are left to philisophical debates and what-not.
A few more questions. The faction war timeline i read, stated that after its all said and done the faction re-establish themselves back in Sigil, but from the reading I've done on PW site, it looks like they are still band from officially setting up shop in Sigil. Do I have that right? The factions still exesit accross the Planes ( of course) but have no officail business in Sigil? It looks like the guilds have taken over all of the official Sigilian duties and the factions are left to philisophical debates and what-not.
They don't have any 'official' power in Sigil, but many of them (that are still extant) still exist within Sigil as factions, they just don't have the stranglehold on political power in Sigil anymore.
The ban -seems- to have only meant that the factions needed to either abandon their beliefs or abandon their activities in Sigil's political realm. This may also have only applied to the factions at that time, since the Ring Givers, Sons of Mercy, Sodkillers, and Minds Eye didn't technically exist at that time. Any new factions might be able to use their influence in politics, but it's a big question and none of them is going to particularly push their luck.
Also, is there any map of Sigil Post faction war? I got the old one, and was wondering if there is an updated version? In the Sigil chapter from the PW site list many street names and what not as if they had a map to look at while they wrote it. Or i should say when you wrote it Shameska.