The Gaming Den

Basic concept of the campaign I'm running right now is that an Ur Priest found a way to divert the gods' worship to himself. The gods have lost their godliness, but are still around--for now--but they want the players to do the legwork of fixing it, because I need some way for the players to be involved. (and I didn't think about letting the players play depowered gods until just now. Damnit. Maybe if there's a party wipe.)

At some point (maybe after another adventure or two) I want to send my players to a planar metropolis searching for the Ur Priest. I know I don't want to use Sigil as written. I'm considering Finality, but dealing purely in souls for currency won't sit well with the party paladin so even I use Finality in name/location/etc, I'll have to change some stuff. Also sticking a party consisting of two newbies and a paladin in "Roll every day to see if you break a law" town is... probably not the best idea.

So, given that Sigil as written is shit, and Finality is not optimal for my needs, any advice on putting together a planar metropolis? Party will probably be level seven, maybe higher, by the time they get there.

I would say pick any goddam plane in the game that you like the concept of the most, then design a metrolpolis based on that.

So like you could have a Metropolis in Archon where a bunch of giant cables leash together a huge number of varying sized cubes, and the city randomly bounces around the world, and bounces around itself, and the only currency is "IT IS TIME TO D-D-D-DUEL!" and there is just a pecking order where you can boss around anyone lower than you, and as newcomers to the city, people give you orders, and you either follow them, or beat the shit out of them and insert yourself into the hierarchy above them.

And just do that for whatever plane you actually want the metropolis to exist on.

Water plane, entire huge structure floats in the water somehow, and the interior is partially filled with water and partially with air, to accommodate non water people, and it is like Zelda Water temple, with the water level constantly being moved up and down to allow travel and shit.

The thing to remember is that something as grand as a planar metropolis is someone's idea of utopia. Sigil is an atheist's paradise, Finality is a devil's paradise, Union is a high-level player's paradise, Greyhawk and Waterdeep are technically planar metropoli and are adventurer paradises (Waterdeep is literally on top of a giant 2-level dungeon of a style that you'd design when you were twelve with checkerboard traps and basically random design), the City of Brass is an ifrit paradise, etc, etc.

So basically just figure out someone's idea of the perfect city, and then design fantastic shit based on that.

K wrote:Sigil is an atheist's paradise,

Correction: Sigil is a maltheist's paradise.

Once you figure out whose utopian vision the planar metropolis was created for, you need to start extrapolating who else goes there and why - and how they muck up the utopian vision with their foreign ideas and ways. That's pretty important, because otherwise you end up with Ilkkool Rrem, the Ilithid planar gateway, slave market, and war garrison. I mean, I understand the utopian vision of "reuniting the Ilithid Empire" deal that was going on there, but there is literally zero reason for anyone to go there other than to raid its treasures and sack its temples.

A planar metropolis' utopian vision should be one where people who aren't part of the plan (such as adventurers) can go there and interact with shit. So extremely xenophobic or militaristic utopian visions, while sometimes realistic, are pretty boring to talk about.

-Username17

Infinity

City built on a surface of Mobius strip (with the strip details visible in the sky).

The Mark: Somewhere along the strip there is a structure called the Mark - anyone travelling along the strip shall approach the Mark. Since the sides of the Mark are of different, they are known as Northside and Southside, and so travel directions usually include phrases like "travel northwards" and "travel southwards".
Also, when facing "northwards", the right edge is called "eastside", and the left edge, "westside".

Infinity City is divided into several quarters, with the biggest one located along eastside almost throughout the strip, and devoted to a series greenhouses/parks owned by hostile xenophobic (put several other unkind adjectives) version of nature cult. The cult thrives on trading agriculture products, cares for the only body of water and maintains aqueducts.
The guys are bound by a series of pacts with all lords of various quarters - the lords ensure that unwarranted visits to the green quarter are punished by death.
In return, all quarter lords provide tools, refuse, corpses, you name it.

Actually, there are aqueducts that transport water toward other quarters, and sewers that return underground to the green side.

Most materials are mined/refashioned/recycled from city structures.

Leaving the city:
- jump of the edge
- enter the mark
- enter an official quarter portal
- all other portals are considered rogue and are forcibly closed due to various threats of infection, invasion, infestation or a threat to economic balance (official portals are taxed)

The city was built by a divine collective somewhere in the far future (think superadvanced architecture), then abandoned (probably due to the end of the universe, death of gods), then rewound to distant past, and slowly reinhabited by refugees from different worlds.
This means that there are artifacts of past and future mixed, most of them inoperational but still cared for, and that there are zones in Stalker style with unexplainable phenomena. Some zones slowly travel forcing people to relocate to avoid problems.
The zones also rebuild (to a degree) infrastructure/superstructure (often changing it), however the process is so slow, that most people fail to notice it.

Is there a supercomputer somewhere that does overall maintenance?
Unlikely, more it's like there are certain core items that have built-in memory and slowly influence surroundings to remade themselves. Since the core items are movable, the remaking is slow, and overall configuration changes.

What about power and external feeds of critical resources?
They exist, they are just beneath the ground.

What about overpopulation and monsters?
Random portals often send in monsters.
The population is reduced by famine and plagues - remember that most of the agriculture products are traded for with the green cult. So unless you have your own green house, or spells to replace one, you need to trade for life or starve.
This means that large areas of the city are still empty. And that 90 of 100 natives need to deal with food shortage, and that theft, especially food theft is punishable by death. That's why carrion eaters, dung recyclers and outsiders that can feed on magic thrive.

Hmm. That's all.

Regards,
Ruemere

Ok, so given the history of my setting (gods were highly interventionist for ten thousand years and it's been only a year since they lost their power) I think I'm probably best served by the basic concept of Sigil, the idea of a planar metropolis created to get away from the gods. That's going to give the planar metropolis the longest deity-independent history in world. I suppose I could also go with something like a city that was the home of a god of commerce, which allows for some interesting things like a banking system that had been backed by the god now in chaos, and a bunch of shit the god had set up or was controlling that now people know fuck all about.

Given that they're supposed to be going after the Ur Priest, said antagonist would be more likely to hide out in a "No Gods Allowed" place than the city of a god.

I'm tempted to use Xaxox, the lost fortress in the Far Realms, and just turn it into a planar metropolis, but that's only because of the NPC who lives there, and I can fucking put him anywhere. So no reason to invoke that shitplane.

The other couple ideas I've got right now are promoting Balefire to a planar metropolis because "the city of lanterns in the plane of Shadow" sounds really fucking awesome. Bonus points for not inherently dicking the Paladin over; a Fae Market, because, well, faerie market; and bringing in something like Ravnica as it's own demiplane. I'm not too sure about the Ravnica idea since in its source material it's just a plane that is a big city, not really a planar metropolis with the wish economy and such. But, if nothing else, it gives me some inspiration even if I don't name check it.

So Sigil has the Maltheist Utopia thing. It was created as a haven from the gods. Off the top of my head, I guess either someone who actively disliked the gods taking care of everything went off and founded it, or someone who was an enemy of the gods did so. Actually, no, fuck that. Sigil was created by the Vashar, because the Vashar are conceptually awesome (to me). Then I can pull a bunch of stuff from Hyzmarca's rewrite of them. That gives the Ur Priest antagonist a strong tie to the place. I like that.

I'm tossing the idea of the Town of the God of Commerce, because I'm not sure where to go with that.

I'm going to briefly entertain the idea of Xaxox because it's a place created by mistake. The manual of the planes says that it is a "relic from the Material Plane" and that it's just a big fortress lashed to a giant desiccated tree. Basically a bunch of wizard found the Far Realms and said "LETS GO POKE IT WITH A STICK!" and promptly got lost there and went insane. The leader of the expedition was an elven wizard named Daruth Winterwood whose "brain is full of spiders. Literally." Which is just such a great character idea I think. It gives me the idea that his brain was actually replaced by a colony of spiders, with different memories held by different spiders, and sometimes they wander off. It makes me think of a Neil Gaiman thing, The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, so he'll be talking and then he'll just forget a word, because the spider that holds that thought wandered off for a bit. "Oh! The soul market! Yes, it's just down the- down... down the... river. Path? Vein? Wide thing... long.... cobbled... we're standing on it...." "Street?" "Street! Yes! Sorry, that spider wandered off. It's just down the... thing, hang a left after the third... campfire. Brazier. light.... fuck. Pole with a candle. Go for a kiloliter. Shit. Kilo... distance. And it'll be the place with a bunch of, er, shiny... stones." "Gems." "YES! Those. There you go!" So, Xaxox wasn't a planned city by a long shot. The expedition got lost, and they're trying to get the fortress back, but they totally figured out how to open portals, so people have come in, and it's become a known outpost in the Far Realms where things are sort of stable, and maybe the wizards even eventually thought to set up a protection against the Maddening nature of the plane, they were too far gone, but it's damned hard to conduct commerce with someone when they randomly start vividly hallucinating body horror. It's a total mage utopia, and has the highest level casters in the setting thanks to it's flowing time trait where no time passes on the Material no matter how much time you spend there (I'm purposefully not thinking about how you... handle the FR side progression of time...). People have caught on, to some extent about this, so people will go to study books, rest up, and all that, but it's mostly planar creatures, since mortals don't get much higher than 8th level on the Material. Add to that the fact that Far Realms entities will occasionally go Godzilla on the place and the wizards have been severely hampered in Project: Get Back to the Material. And then of course, the creatures who know about the FR's timeless nature don't want to lose the place they go to get a full rest up inbetween combat rounds, so there are tons of people sabotaging the efforts of the mad wizards who want to get back to the Material.

Balefire is described in Dragon magazine as being founded by refugees from a war-destroyed Underdark city. A gnome wizard owned a building there and started selling lanterns, which became popular and eventually so numerous they awakened a nightcrawler which came and fucked the city up. A powerful mage fought it off and declared themselves the new ruler. They have a signature mount called beacon moths, and with the lanterns I have this image of an asian aesthetic Bas-Lag in perpetual night that is really cool. Basically, it's another accidental city, but instead of Wizard Town it's Night Town, and so a bunch of underdark creatures live here. However, given the inherent low level of characters in the setting, I think I want it to have been founded by a fugitive godling of night or something. It's the Night-dweller's utopia, so there's probably a lot of orcs and kobolds and vampires and stuff that live here, but also svirfneblin and probably anthropomorphic bats and stuff. Actually, here we go. The hobgoblin deity of night and shadow, Ninshigami, was injured in a fight with another god, and his followers picked him up and carried him off to the plane of shadow to recover. Ninshigami decided that the hobgoblin pantheon could go fuck itself and created the town of Balefire in the plane of shadow. It grew as more night-creatures flocked to it as a haven of nocturnal activity that didn't require dealing with mind flayers and aboleths and shit. So it started as "Hobgoblin Tokyo in Perpetual Night," but a bunch of other cultures have gone in and now it's looking more and more like some cyberpunk version of Tokyo with haphazard buildings that clash with the background and were built by and for races that have different needs and values from hobgoblins.

The Fae Market is the "Alien Utopia" where Unseelie can bring their gutted and skinned halfling and dwarf quarry to market and sell hound archon pelts, and the Seelie can do their mortal-diddling without pesky iron-wielding dads getting in their business, and trap mortals by giving them food and shit. It's the place where even the "good" guys are probably dick-bags. But they've been at it so long that there's actually starting to be a mortal immigration problem. I could see the Fae having a "Stay out of our business and we'll stay out of yours" deal with the gods, probably with their own near-god rulers. The other problem for the Fae Market is that iron fucks them up. They probably attempt to confiscate all iron from visitors, and having iron inside the market is a definite status symbol, but Summon Weapon isn't a high level spell, so it can be difficult to protect against. And with the aforementioned mortal immigration problem, this is getting to be an even bigger problem as mortals are expendable, and few if any fae complain when one is killed, but there's no institutionalized gatekeeping preventing them from gaining instruction as bards in the Market.

Prak wrote: "Oh! The soul market! Yes, it's just down the- down... down the... river. Path? Vein? Wide thing... long.... cobbled... we're standing on it...." "Street?" "Street! Yes! Sorry, that spider wandered off. It's just down the... thing, hang a left after the third... campfire. Brazier. light.... fuck. Pole with a candle. Go for a kiloliter. Shit. Kilo... distance. And it'll be the place with a bunch of, er, shiny... stones." "Gems." "YES! Those. There you go!"

Oooh... that's a risky thing to attempt. It is a tautologically true fact that deliberately annoying characters are still actually annoying, and the fact that annoying the audience on purpose is still annoying the audience. Characters who are irritating for comedic effect are quite difficult to write, and when they fail to supply humor they still almost invariably succeed in supplying irritation.



-Username17

On the other hand, players tend to experience catharsis by being able to deal with such characters.

ruemere wrote: This means that there are artifacts of past and future mixed, most of them inoperational but still cared for, and that there are zones in Stalker style with unexplainable phenomena. Some zones slowly travel forcing people to relocate to avoid problems.

Glad to see someone has an eye for the classics.


Anyone here read Niven's Ringworld?

A city built in the corpse of a dead god is an oldie but goodie. Or, even better - in the body of a dying god. Like a torso full of bees.

Watch some documentaries about India, look up their holidays on wikipedia, then rename stuff and fill the cities with inhuman beings and there's your planar metropoli setting.

sigma999 wrote:

ruemere wrote: This means that there are artifacts of past and future mixed, most of them inoperational but still cared for, and that there are zones in Stalker style with unexplainable phenomena. Some zones slowly travel forcing people to relocate to avoid problems.

Glad to see someone has an eye for the classics.


Anyone here read Niven's Ringworld?

Yep. Though not the whole series.