I am extremely stuck on any ideas on how to make a long standing campaign starting in this location and keeping it in Sigil for awhile, considering:
1. The Pc's are all primes and don't know the dark on Sigil or the Planes
2. The Players are all clueless to Planescape except in vague passing.
3. I also feel the Pc's have to be familiarized with the world they are in.
Hence ideas are helpful on what kind of campaigning I could do in Sigil for at least a month real time(playing on Friday nites once a week for that long) before branching out My campaign to true plane hopping.
I decided that nobody understood them (never liked the idea that their common prime language is the same as planar common) (the fiends in To Baator and back communicated telepaticly with the characters and the nighthag used magic), so they felt really lost in that strange place. After a while the characters met Kylie from Uncaged:Faces of Sigil, whom I equipped with a magical item that made her understand and speak every language - very useful for a tout. ("Ye look like a bunch of soddin' clueless with yer bonebox wide open and that ´Peel me!´-sign on your back. Perhaps ye´re lookin´ for a tout, ain´t ye?" "What did she say?" "Don´t know what she ment, but at last somebody who´s speaks our language! Doesn´t matter that she´s got the tail of a fiend." =) ) She took them around a while, showed them the Market and Guildhall Ward, gave them a little information of Sigil and the factions and brought them to Iarmid´s The Other Place (see Uncaged), where the characters could relax from their trip to Baator.
After letting them have some minor encounters there, Kylie took the characters to Milori the linguist (see Uncaged), who learned their prime language in an hour and offered to teach them planar trade (it took two weeks until the PCs were able to speak planar trade on a basic level and in this 2 weeks Milori told them alot about the Cage). Kylie showed the PCs a kip near Milori´s shop and sent a tout from her group the next day to guide the PC through parts of Sigil (In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil offers lots of interesting places). They met A'kin, Whooly Cupgras, Tripicus (at the Civic Festhall; all from Uncaged).
Being almost out of money after some days the PCs had to move to the Lower Ward and stayed at The Ubiquitious Wayfarer where they met Morvun and Phineas (from Uncaged), who performed there during one night. The same night they where hired by a man (don´t remember his name right now) to find a barmy in the Hive, named Eliath ("Well, everybody told us that the Hive´s a bad place, so I´m really interested in seein´ if it´s really THAT bad. Why not looking for a barmy and gaining some - what´s it called - jink?" said a still clueless PC) and I started The Eternal Boundary. The PCs learned that the Hive IS a bad place to live, learned something about the Dustmen, Bleakers and Xaositects as well as about the Harmonium and Mercykillers in the course of the adventure as well as something about petitioners and the way souls go after their bodies died, they learned that it´s really hot on the Elemental Plane of Fire and they made really nice enemies: the Illuminated.
After sacking the Fortress on the Plane of Fire My PC's were drawn inot a long series of "actions" against the Illuminated in Plague-Mort... Needless to say the do-gooders drew the ire of the Arch-Lector Byrri Ymoril. Oh did my PC's have a ball looting His Steel Palace!
"There is a very, VERY good wine selection to be had in the Arch-Lectors cellars if I do say so myself. I'd have to say that the Clineli Heartwine was the best of the lot." -Ebon Ironhoof, Bariaur Giantslayer
"There is a very, VERY good wine selection to be had in the Arch-Lectors cellars if I do say so myself. I'd have to say that the Clineli Heartwine was the best of the lot." -Ebon Ironhoof, Bariaur Giantslayer
What year would that be? The Necromancer-King of the Skull Forest had a couple of bottles of rather nice '87, and I seem to remember that the Barbarian Overlord Thok-tarn had one or two cases of the '95...
It just brings a whole new flavour to dungeon crawls.
I always liked the Infinite Stairway and the possibilities it offers so Tales from the Infinite Stairway is nice for fleshing it out particularly Tale 1 Planewalkers which introuduces the PCs to the Plane Walker's Guild and limits access to the stairway to a few days a month during the full moon gating from Sigil to The Gates of The Moon.
There is the Free PDF download here at Wizards to Rescue Waukeen in "For Duty and Diety" using the Infinite Stairway.
The Market Ward is a great place to start because so much is going on at once. Here are some flavor encounters I've used in the past:
A vendor has many cages hanging about, containing strange animals that look in poor condition.
A beholder in magical stasis is being sold by a group of githyanki.
The aroma from a food stall is wonderful; an ogre argues over a portion he’s been given.
A gnomish “purveyor of magic” offers “dust of illusion” for sale. It is fake.
A Harmonium patrol captures a githzerai with a planar mancatcher.
A dwarven stonemason needs help with a block of marble.
....and so on. Somewhere in the tangle of stalls and pavilions will come an adventure hook, or someone to lead them to it. I like introductory adventures that force the characters to venture into different Wards for various reasons. Just keep laying the ambience on them and make them learn the Wards for what they are. You could start Doors to the Unknown at some point and run the 4 mini-adventures eventually, or have news of the Great Modron March beginning. The Eternal Boundary is always great for a first major adventure once they've been around a bit.