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Sigil for 4th Edition! It's been said about ten thousand times, I'm sure, but a few things have more recently occurred to me that I figure are worth sharing.

After having actually read Worlds and Monsters, my prior ill-feelings towards planar campaigns and specifically, using the city of Sigil in the context of the 4e cosmology have utterly evaporated. If anything, the way the planes have been restructured make it a perfect locale to be set among the extraplanar dominions outlined in this reimagining of D&D's planar lexicon, and none of it's culture or general uniqueness needs to be lost.

What my thinking comes from is that, to maintain it's mystique and it's particular atmosphere, a place like Sigil doesn't need to rely on being contextualized within any planar structure. An example I need to use is the PC game Planescape: Torment. Most would agree it captured the surreal and darkly whimsical locale of Sigil very well, but throughout that game it never made many references to it's position at the "center" of the multiverse, and it didn't even overly rely on contextualizing itself in the D&D cosmology.

All that matters is that it is a place existing outside of any world, yet in between all of them and none of them at once, and how, as such, it's a cultural melting pot, a dumping ground for the refuse of countless worlds, a crossroads for itinerant adventurers, a place where beliefs and ideas could mingle and form new things entirely (like the Factions of old), and all of these things at once, altogether something fantastically unique, bringing back what grabbed us all in the days of 2e. It need not be of any size nor shape, only that it remain the City of Doors we know, complete with it's portals to everywhere, all under the watch of the ever-unknowable Lady of Pain--never one to be forgotten!

I hope the developers can, in the tradition of respect to D&D's old elements while looking for ways to improve it, take this into account. Any way you slice it, Sigil and Planescape still have numerous fans and players who'd certainly love to see official support it. While it's by no means necessary for those of us with the time and desire to include it in our games, if they were to mix it into the new cosmology, it'd be great. It could be a unique Astral Dominion, it could be one island amidst the Elemental Chaos, or more appropriately of all, it could have ties to all these things and and more and exist as a singular entity in itself. You could potentially make an entire campaign setting based entirely in it, even.

I'm looking forward to seeing ways Sigil can be made into a place for 4th Edition adventures, and even ways to complement ones based in a more traditional setting, a gateway to infinite planes as always.

What do you guys think?

What? You don't want to see it reappear in all it's glory? Or do you think it just isn't Sigil if it ain't on top of a big Spire in the middle of the Outlands?

'cause all that really was back in the day was putting it in a location people had already known from the 1e Manual of the Planes. It didn't affect the nature of the city one bit.

i have an idea. how about having the 'city of doors' being just that - a place that is entirely defined by portals - no place is actually 'in' the city - rooms, streets etc are places in an existing plane that are linked by a series of portals. so a resident of the 'city' may be living in some of the rooms of a boarded up house somewhere in greyhawk, but their kitchen may be tucked away in the realms...

You dont even need them to be sychronous in time, so a 'home' in the city may have rooms from different periods in a particular planes history. Residents know better than to 'go outside' and thus disrupt causality.

This allows the city to exist without altering the cosmology of 4e at all.

NB. this idea isn't mine. it was nicked off another system.

The nature, the idea of Sigil don't need a Wheel, really.... It could exist in a divergent cosmology - like PoL's.