A Real World History of Sigil Prep

Art by David Cummings

Sigil Prep began in 2006. My recently ended D&D game had been set in modern day Miami, and I had my sights set on another blended genre. I was wandering through the DVD section of the store in which I worked when the idea struck, and when I got home, I immediately got on WotC’s message boards and started sharing some humorous write-ups of the 3rd edition character races as college stereotypes. Jocks, nerds, popular kids, cheerleaders, all that sort of thing. It got a surprising amount of traction, and I followed it up with write-ups of the classes as college majors, and within a couple of weeks, I’d put up a website, and about a month later, I started an online play-by-post game.

Conceptually, I wanted a game that allowed all of the options available in 3rd edition D&D at the time, which was a lot. And not just the classes, the races, the spells and feats and stuff. But the settings as well. Set in Sigil, the game allowed characters from throughout the D&D multiverse. Characters from Greyhawk and Eberron and the Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft all interacted and every corner of D&D could be explored.

The original Sigil Prep game ran for about six years on the now defunct gaming site, plothook.net. Several players lasted the entire run, others popped in an out over the period. And then I made the mistake of converting to 4th edition, and it killed all the momentum.

Sigil Prep lay dormant for a few years, but I revived it toward the beginning of 5th edition, and started a new play-by-post game on some forums I set up myself. Although it didn’t last nearly as long as the first iteration, it still enjoyed some success. And then I killed it again.

I made a rather iffy decision to try and make a version of Sigil Prep completely devoid of the TSR/WotC IP, all my own material that I could take in different directions, monetize if there was a market for it. But ultimately, I could never make it actually feel like Sigil Prep, and so once more, it faded away.

This new version returns to the D&D multiverse, but in a new and (hopefully) exciting way. I’ll be trying to make it as edition agnostic as possible, so it can be played in any rules set. Building once more from the ground up, with eyes on both the pat and future. Welcome, friends, to Sigil Prep! I hope you survive the experience.

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