What were the Faction Wars?

Well yes and no there certainly is a lot of material from Planescape that is centered around Sigil and the factions. The big reason for this of course is that Sigil is a very convienent location to base planar adventures from giving you a big city (access to items, information, jobs etc.) that has access to everyone the DM could possibly want to send the adventures.

That being said the majority of the information from the Planescape line is outside of Sigil (though Sigil is by far the most detailed single location). The basic boxed set did contain a lot of information on Sigil and of that maybe half was on the factions or faction related.

So I guess to quit rambling I have read in a few places that Monte Cook and the Planescape team never intended the factions to be shut out of Sigil forever and many DM's prefer to play pre faction war Planescape because they enjoy the factions so much.

Not really sure that is the exact answer you were looking for but I hope it helps.

P.S. Also its not like most of the factions went away they have simply fanned out onto the planes and still have low end agents and such in the city. So you can still use the factions in your campaign if using the complete Planewalker material they just don't dominate Sigil like they used to. so if you played it that way barring the few faction splits that happened really the only place faction war changed massisivly was Sigil and a few other strongholds of the factions.

A lot of people simply ignore Faction War because it does disrupt the premise of the setting and alters Sigil quite a lot. Planewalker decided to go with the time after Faction War so that they weren't just rehashing old stuff. Faction War opens up more opportunities for people who may have grown tired of the traditional arrangement. However, almost all published PS material supports the original setting, not FW. I run my game pre-Faction War, as do many other people on these boards. YMMV.

Minor Note: questions like these should go into the RPG Discussion section.

Planewalker is specifically for the updating of Planescape to the current edition of D&D. The official rules and setting are made with post-faction war in mind because it was the last modual published for planescape.

I like the way they have done it. While yes it would seem that this change destroys one of the biggest most intrical parts of the setting, it does not. The factions no longer rule Sigil but they are not out on the wider planes more than ever and new factions are now rearing their heads. The lady's edict plays up another aspect of the game that is important to the setting as well.

Also while the factions themselves are booted out from having their head quarters and power heads in Sigil, factioneers still abound.

Things are different.

But Paka to answer your followup question I think you can certainly use most of the stuff posted on Planewalker in a 3rd edition game that is being played pre faction war. Much of the material put up deals with races, magic and other aspects of the planes that aren't really directly affected by the factions. But "storyline" things would often not be useful like Shemeka's sigil chapter which details post faction war sigil. But I for one am considering work on the innerplanes and ir/when I do that it would certainly be useable in a pre or post faction war setting.

I think he was talking about them not going back like when they totally reorganized the supernatural world after it largly got destroyed in a line of supplements.

I can say this for certain (being I have not played or know much about these settings other than Ravenloft) but I assume settings like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Birthright haven't really changed in such dramatic fashions. When they add supplements they add more material to the existing world rather than shaking the setting up in a big way like White Wolf and the Planescape team has done.

If I am wrong about those other settings being more "static" someone please correct me because as I said I don't know much of anything about them. Even Ravenloft I just own a bunch of 2nd edition supplements mainly 2 different core settings (Realm of Terror box Set and Domains of Dread setting) and the Van Ritchen guides.

I don't know if you deliberately left Dragonlance out of your list of main D&D settings, but I know that Dragonlance has had some fairly big shake ups in it's plotline.

I don't mean to sound rude here but what you're saying seems to be not quite connected. Well lemme explain. You say that you are not keen on the idea of the setting moving on because you like the setting to be poised on the brink of great upheaval.

However just because the setting has moved on doesn't mean it is not still poised on any brinks for more upheaval or even that the greatest amount of change and shaking has been had from the plot in Faction War.

I agree that a good setting for adventuring will have a sort of tension built in but that tension need not be overwhelming or even apperently close to breaking. While the current PW Sigil is in a state of calm after the faction wars, with the dust having finally settled things still have not been resolved. The Lady's Edict after FW was merely a stop to the direct conflict in the city itself, not the planes beyond. Also there are many more mysteries left unsolved and plots left unfinished.

In the end, Sigil was probably only the first battle ground of the Factions. The wars of Belief could very well out do those of the Blood.

I use a homebrew system based on Talislanta and bits of d20. Ironically, Talislanta is now being published in d20.

I've run across people using Storyteller and GURPS for Planescape, but generally people seem to be sticking to D&D 2E and 3E.

As for metaplot, some people love it, some people hate it. It works great in some settings (like Shadowrun), but not-so-well in others (Forgotten Realms). I don't see any evidence of continuous metaplot in the published PS books, so I assume the authors meant Faction War to be a temporary disruption.

This may be tick off some people, but luckily you don't really need Planewalker to have a great Planescape campaign. As long as you can track down the published books on Ebay or get an electronic copy, you've got all you need to have a great time. Planewalker and PSCS is just icing on the cake.