u/themousereturns

For people who have used this character as a more prominent NPC, how did you play the personalities and their relationship to Shemeshka? I'm giving them a more prominent role since my game is duo and my player recruited one of the personalities, Aza, to help them.

I liked the idea of the personalities being truly their own people and not sharing memories, but it seems unrealistic to me that none of them would even suspect something is up.

I had in mind that some have an inkling of what is going on, or might vaguely remember parts of being someone else as if it were a dream.

For example Aza, a Sensate who experiences other people's perspectives through stones, thinks she gets "too invested" and loses herself. Sylvester, of the Mind's Eye in my game, has an inkling he's being changed somehow by the power of belief. Josbert of the Harmonium will be mostly in denial, but has become paranoid and thinks someone is messing with him. Most haven't considered they're not the "core" or "original".

I haven't worked out where Farrow themselves would fall in their general level of awareness of all this, but they probably have the most direct dealing with Shemeshka. I am imagining some personalities will lean more towards her side or the player's as the game goes on which could be a complex thing to deal with.

I think the triggers for the personalities in Faces of Sigil are good, but some feel extremely niche, so I'll probably expand on them a bit.

I've also decided they can switch if subjected to a significant amount of psychic damage, mental distress or traps/spells that affect the mind.

The player had Aza walk into a trap that caused paralysis by overwhelming the mind with things beyond comprehension, and in the moment I decided that made her switch to Sylvester.

My player was very confused to say the least, right now he seems to think it was just an effect of the trap or "Sigil weirdness" even though I had the creator of the trap themselves emphasize that's not normal. I do want to hint more clearly about it. The player has met Aza, Sylvester and briefly met Farrow and I have pointed out they all have the same facial marking. His character is a Sensate and he seemed to like Aza most so I do feel a little bad making her go poof like that, haha.

I do still plan on having Farrow or one of the personalities closer to Shemeshka lead the player to her soon, right now they're just going down some tangentially related side plot rabbit holes in Sigil.

My player wants to find a discreet route out of a building through a series of catacombs underneath it. He's taking an overly cautious approach and his plan seems to be to find a route he can return through with more allies or resources

It's been established already these are sprawling catacombs on a very large scale that are difficult to navigate as well as ridden and undead.

However establishing a set map of the catacombs would be an insane amount of work most of which the player might not even explore, and I don't want it to be a slog of just bonking waves of zombies and skeletons.

So I was thinking of taking a modular approach. Pull a bunch of dungeon chambers from various premade sources and maybe throw in some of my own. Then roll to see what room is there when he opens a door.

Main question is how do I incorporate his main goal (finding an exit) into this approach. And should it even be possible for him to find a route he can remember and sneak back in the way he planned? This is Sigil so the catacombs may also connect to many dangerous and wild places.