Into the Light, Part 1: Behind the Screen

 

This is a tricky start for a DM, let’s be honest, especially if it’s your first time running Sigil like it was mine. I hadn’t been up to my eyes learning all the Planescape lore, I’d probably have sexed it up a bit more, but you can’t have everything. All the same, my first way to involve the players was to help them make the adventure's NPC contact rather than do it myself. I got the players to name:

What their last mission from their contact was;
 
What unexpected thing happened on the quest;
 
What was an unusual thing you remember about the NPC? (Recommended for the DM who enjoys improvisational comedy).

That was it. But you could use race/class/a secret/what happened when you got drunk with them etc. I used a fun tavern, too, the Fat Candle in the Clerk’s Ward, not far from the players’ apartment.

If your players are a long way from the Lower Ward, get them investigating things fairly quickly with quick access to Tea Street Transit’s pony cabs, or a sedan chair.

A modern D&D player is likely to head first to one of two places: the tavern, or the church. And if the players see the map of the church area in the adventure, expect them to try and get into one of the abandoned houses next to the church. To create a meaningful choice, I made one house securely boarded up and difficult to enter unnoticed; the other one is easily entered, but contained an evil warlock and some Rutterkin demons upstairs (an adaptation of an encounter on page 15), and some wererats in the basement. Players might also be expecting to unravel the whole mystery within the seven days. I felt it important to tell them that they wouldn’t, to avert frustration.

To keep track of the NPCs of the adventure, I wrote out a spreadsheet with boxes detailing where everyone is on a given day. Way easier to track. I also decided on the fly to remove the one day head-start the adventure gives the players, so that they could watch Jason Scott’s (Malweis) charging of the church first-hand. With hindsight, this is definitely the right call to make regardless, as it accelerates the conflict between PCs and NPCs.

Speaking of hindsight, if I ran this again I would give the players 5 days instead of 7. 6 is more than enough. And give them a means to contact the NPC questgiver, like a sending stone, so they can end the quest early if they like.

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