Welcome to the Multiverse! What's your take?

>>The factions would be avoided like a plague<<

I can't say that I'd avoid the factions ... they can offer a berk quite a bit in the way of training and direction and are always on the lookout for new recruits. Sure he's start out on the bottom rung, but there is room for advancement depending upon what faction you put him in ... like you say, I wouldn't introduce him to the Harmonium, but the others aren't all so bad. Being biased, if he had any tallents the Sensates would appreciate I'd introduce him to them ... if nothing else they might pay a few stingers to hear about his world and the experience which brought him to the cage.

Really, though, I'm no tout, so I'd simply figure out which faction was the best fit for him and releave myself of the responsibility; I have a show to put on, berk.

(likewise, if I ended up in Sigil, the first thing I'd do is head to the Festhall and sign myself up with the Sensates)

>>Remember, part of the reason the clueless get such a bad name is because a huge proportion of them are low-level members of NPC classes<<

I disagree - I believe the reason the Clueless get such a bad reputation is that most of them are adventurers with a middle ammount of experience and a over inflated opinion of their own knowledge. They think that because they've read a book on the planes, written by some prime philosopher/wizard, or tangled with a few summoned demonoids, they know the dark of things in the multiverse. Trick is, there's a heck of a lot more to surviving in the planes than knowing the names and the scholarly qiucknotes.

You're probably correct in that the average planar doesn't have a high number of ranks in planar lore, as his experience is all first hand - street lore - which can be far more valuable when dealing with living, breathing, creatures. (knowing the theorized origin of the Pit Fiend isn't going to be as useful as knowing that buying one a "raped virgin on brimstone" down at the Styxe Oarsman is the best way to put it in a mood not to kill you when you accidentally run your body collector's wagon into it.)

Another reason people disdain Clueless is they tend to believe the great titles they earned themselves on their own backwater little prime means pike all once they step into the wider multiverse. A body doesn't care if you're king of Yappiville once you've rattled you're bones into the Cage - here you're just one more berk who has to cut his teeth and earn his respect all over again.

Speaking of respect, adventurers who make their way to the planes tend to think very highly of themselves and as such forgot to show the proper respect to those around them ... not a wise choice on the planes, where respect is a form of currency itself ... especially since you can't ever know just who or what that person standing next to you really is.

Clueless will earn or lose respect through their actions, just like anyone else, it simply becomes more difficult for them once they identify themselves as Clueless.

And that 20th level Mage? I just saw him down the street doing lunch for a group of Tanaar'ri ... or was that being lunch for ...?

Public Sensorium. Plain and simple (if not expensive) way of experiencing planes without leaving the safety of Sigil. Plus it is great way to introduce the new clueless to Sensate faction.

True, maybe the factions are untrustworthy bunch who only care about new recruits but first hand experiences are hard to fake and will directly "tell" clueless what are planes all about. Plus it pays to have "Philosophers with Clubs" guarding your backs.

The cluelessness of prime sods is not limited to activities in Sigil according to canon. It is emphasized again and again how primes are likely to misread situations that a planar would understand perfectly well. Naturally there is a bell curve of understanding, with some exceptional primes being unusually savvy, and some planars being a bit addle coved, but in the vast majority of cases, a planar will be able to make more intelligent decisions when faced with the politics of the planes than a prime will just because they are steeped in the culture of the multiverse in a way that primes aren't, and because they are afforded special status by virtue of their origins.

To use a real world example, the liberties afforded by the British during the height of Britain's imperial power were substantial in any of their colonies, and the special knowledge they possessed made them much more adept as a people at manuevering in foreign countries than, say, the Germans at that time. Conversely, any German or Indian trying to make a living in London faced a special set of challenges that the average Londoner could easily navigate. Power and Money could both shield you from some of those problems, but that power was contingent upon its political relevance in London, something a prime would never have in sigil, and so too with the Money part of the equation (unless you happened to go through a portal with a bag of holding full of jink that was in a fungible form).

Similarly, most D&D prime worlds are fashioned around feudal medieval societies, whereas Sigil is distinctly metropolitan, with Baroque trappings. Paris in Medieval France is not the same as Baroque era London. The rest of the multiverse similarly has little in common with navigating the prime material. In essence, once you are dropped in Sigil (or really anywhere in the multiverse) from a prime, almost everything you know about politics and geography is rendered moot. You start from scratch. Perhaps the odd wizard might have some Prime material insights into the metaphysics of the Planes, but even that knowledge is Prime-centric and largely misinformed, as is mentioned again and again in the canon material. Is some of this bias? Sure. But it's fair to say that any prime dropped on the planes is at a distinct disadvantage, and sheer muscle can only do so much to get you through dangerous situations in the plane. ALmost always the opposition is capable of bringing more force to bear, so winning is usually as much about cunning and knowledge as it is raw power.

>>The demographic reality of D&D indicates otherwise. Most 'Clueless,' especially in Sigil, will have walked through a portal by accident because it happened to open in some doorway on some random location on their prime world. Given that adventurers are perhaps 0.1% of the population, most of the clueless are not going to be adventurers.<<

I guess it depends where one imagines those portals to be opening ... if you figure they're opening in the middle of corn fields and hog slops then it is feasible that you'll end up with quite a few hicks wandering into the city of doors - should, however, you imagine them more likely to open near ancient ruins, buried temples, or places of power - the very type of place adventurers are likely to frequent - then it seems your statistics would be skewed. And, while it may be true that one tenth of a percent of all people are adventurers, you seem to be overlooking the fact that there are - theoretically - an infinite number of prime worlds out there, and as such no lack of adventuring population to plague the streets of Sigil and every other major planar metropolis.

>>While the setting tries to make out that street lore on the planes is 'oh so different' from street lore on the prime, if you actually did into the supplements that really doesn't hold a whole lot of weight.<<

But it is 'oh so different', because while Joe Bob adventurer might know how to stare down the local riff raff he won't likely know how to talk down a Yugoloth, or sweet talk an Illithid. Sigil is a microcosm for the rest of the multiverse and a cutter is likely to find himself running into every sort of blood and addle cove on those streets given time. Will a Cager be at home in the City of Brass? Perhaps not, but demons to donuts he's likely to have a foot up on anyone stepping off the prime material boat, as it were.

>>anyone worth anything is going to be deferential as all get out, but it really isn't going to make a difference. At any significant difference in level the Pit Fiend's response is going to be exactly what it wants to do, prime or planar isn't going to make a difference.<<

That may not be the way to deal with a Pit Fiend and the mislead berk who started pandering to the dicer might find themselves in the dead book for the mistake. And how is the Fiend to know if their is a significant difference in level between himself and the character? Remember, in the planes nothing is what it seems and no lanned cutter is going to believe he can just toss his weight around without concern ... a wise berk will play it clever and use that to talk his way out of a situation without tipping his hand. A Cager in the know - who sees devils on the street every day of the week and so isn't about to be awestruck - is far more likely to play that encounter off so as to walk away than a primer who - like you suggest - only knows one response to seeing a Pit Fiend.

>And a 20th level mage would do something so stupid why? <<

Note to self: Jokes are lost on some people.

>>there's really two kinds of planescape. <<

Any good logician, hell any poor logician, will tell you statements like that are fallacies.

That said, you're wrong. I "have talked to many planer fans blah blah blah" and they agree that the proper presentation of the planes is a fine combination between the two. When you're campaign is based in and around Sigil, then the city is very much the thing - but there is much more going on in the planes and many more places were entire campaigns can unwravel.

>>a single city whose purpose is really mostly a mechanics gimmick<<

Really? And considering it never made remotely the use of the 2E mechanics, that say Ptolus does for 3x, where do you get that assertion? I would say it is a city with a good deal of flavor, designed as a place for players to call home and base of operations while exploring the planes, whereas they never had one before it was developed; making the planes as a place of adventure for lower level characters nonexistent.

>>It's like Waterdeep in the Realms, it doesn't control everything else.<<

And like Waterdeep, it is the city the biggest movers and shakers around come to do business - the difference is the size of the neighborhood in question ... the biggest movers and shakers in Sigil's vicinity tend to have more on their minds than the fate of one little prime material world. No, it doesn't control everything, but deals are made there that shape the very nature of the planes and tilt the balance of ideas themselves - there is a reason why Factols keep kip in the City of Doors.

Nah, it's more like I'm stretching the word and using it in a somewhat archaic fashion, that's all, as in 'amusingly absurd.' Oh, and some apologies for hijacking your thread, but I think everyone has offered an answer in one of their posts.

Because a Pit Fiend is a very intelligent, highly reasoned monster with a great deal of knowledge that can surely be expected to roughly assess the capabilities of anyone its comes across (and in fact has to expertly assess the abilities of everyone it comes across every day of its existence in the Nine Hells or lose its immortal life). It can also do things like measure the strength of auras, or simply toss a fireball at their faces to 'guess' their potency.

Really? The evidence indicates that the writers of the Planescape setting had a very distinctive pro-Sigil bias when they wrote the 2e supplements just by the amount of words devoted to Sigil and Sigil-related topics. The also had a pro-fiend bias (one that carried over to 3e) that is equally easy to discern. There are other lesser, but also obvious biases in how the setting was structured (The Ciphers are cooler than everyone else is one those).

Planescape was written to appeal to a certain demographic for marketing concerns: the aging devoted gamers of the shrinking TSR market base in the later years of 2e. It's message was 'buy planescape, play planars, be superior to all those dimwits playing lesser, prime settings.' It worked, people bought into it wholesale (it helped that the writing for planescape was flat out better than for many other settings).

That initial author bias is reflected in what the fans later found interesting and produce on their own, that's why planewalker has so many articles about Baator, the Abyss, and the Outlands compared to everywhere else. It's why Wizards can never keep the 'we have decided that all forms of devils are known' promise whenever they make a new monster book.

Effort generates interest. I know, because I've done it on a limited scale. I wrote 20,000 words on the Ethergaunts, posted it on the Rattler, and scared much of the online planescape fanbase witless (and probably made it so no one in their right mind would ever use such broken monsters again).

In order to run an inner planes centric campaign, I had to generate my own home base, and so 30,000 words created Slaan and I've been able to operate several planescape campaigns completely without Sigil.

Sigil has hundreds of thousands of canon words to make it real, that's probably more than most of the rest of the multiverse (minus the Ethereal, Astral, Baator, Abyss, and Outlands) put together. That's going to make it appear more important/valuable than it is.

You made my point for me: Not a game mechanic, a setting mechanic, ie. a plot device. Sigil was designed for the explicit purpose of allowing low-level characters to 1. get to the planes and 2. not immediately die when they get there. It was then subsequently developed in a certain way, and the planescape setting was fashion around how it had been developed. Imagine how differently we might imagine Planescape if it had been based around the Infinite Staircase, which is far less hostile and more forgiving than Sigil while accomplishing almost the same function.

Sigil is run by the utterly enigmatic and astonishingly heartless Lady of Pain (and don't we love her for it!), The Infinite Staircase is run by what is practically a Victorian explorer's club. Extrapolate Sigil unto the entire multiverse, as is inadvertently done, and you get a multiverse of astonishing brutality, in good and evil, extrapolate the Infinite Staircase, and you'd get a Boy's Own Paper kind of multiverse.

Yet the reality of Planescape is that both, and many others, exist within the multiverse, so projecting one theme onto everything (particularly Sigil's, which often resembles we're-all-fighting-to-promote-our-own-brand-of-crazy) produces a less diverse and less interesting multiverse.