Uncaged: Faces of Sigil

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Planescape RPG

by Ray Vallese

Everyone slides through Sigil sooner or later. But plenty of cutters call the Cage home, and it's their shops, trades, and peels that keep the jink flowing–and the bone-boxes flapping. A body's got to know who sells bogus goods, and who'll scrag him (or worse) just for the fun of it. 'Course, the trick is telling friend from foe. In Sigil, a fiery fiend ain't always a serpent, and a shining celestial ain't always a lamb.

This 128-page book provides Dungeon Masters with details on over 40 intriguing characters and groups found in Sigil, ready for immediate use in any Planescape campaign. Each entry features history, motivation, and secrets, along with complete game statistics and brand-new, full-color art. What's more, the stories are woven together throughout, creating a rich tapestry of relationships that brings Sigil alive.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

Reviews

[Ty Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome collection of personalities from across Sigil to incorporate into a campaign, and most of them are very much focused away from combat adversaries. These entertaining characters all keep up the oddity of Planescape really well, from a racist/xenophobic angel that wants to rid her city of primes to what is essentially a depressive black metal brother duo and everything you could imagine inbetween. Sentient razorvine, a githzerai rat catcher who works for cranium rats, a messenger who can't leave his ultra loud armor without going insane, and more are all found here. Rather than just straightforward descriptions, the format changes frequently as well, from interviews to wanted posters. Even if you don't intend to play a campaign in Sigil, this is still a really interesting read just to learn about the characters living there.

[Nick Klagge · Rating 4 out of 5]

OK, I think this is the last in my Planescape reading binge (for a while?), but it was another good one! The book has a very unusual format for an RPG setting book. Simply put, it's an alphabetical listing of a few dozen NPCs, each of which has one to three pages written about them. The styles of the writeups are extremely diverse, ranging from interviews to "Wanted" posters to mini-short-stories, while a consistent set of game-relevant information is provided in a stat block for each. The balance of RP-relevant to combat-relevant information reflects what I strive for in games I DM.

The NPCs range from 0-level commoners to extremely powerful extraplanar bosses. The overall effect of the book is to give a strong feeling of a lived-in world. The NPCs often have connections with one another, which the book calls out in the individual sections as well as in some relationship maps at the end. But even for those who don't have any clear connection, it feels like it would be easy to postulate scenarios where they would cross paths, and think through how they might respond to one another.

The book also has excellent Tony DiTerlizzi art. I wish there were more RPG setting books in this mold!

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful collection of interrelated NPCs for Planescape. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...