QuoteA list of powers or characteristics or in-game traits/benefits common to your faction, gained or lost as your went up and down the Belief Scale (or whatever) would be very Planescape-y, to me.

(Although a more unified mechanic would be more elegant. I have a weakness for unified mechanics over subsystems. That's just a personal preference, though.)

I also like unified mechanics better. What would you suggest in this case?

Quote from: BWA;392868Right, forgot to comment on that.

I think that approach is definitely preferable to the other one. If you act on your belief that, say, each life is a test, and every person has the potential to become a god (Godsmen), then the EFFECT that has on your character should be to make him more or less Godsmen-y, rather than better at picking pockets or fighting.

A list of powers or characteristics or in-game traits/benefits common to your faction, gained or lost as your went up and down the Belief Scale (or whatever) would be very Planescape-y, to me.

(Although a more unified mechanic would be more elegant. I have a weakness for unified mechanics over subsystems. That's just a personal preference, though.)

I think there's definitely mileage in Pendragon's Traits/Passions system. Arguably the Pendragon Traits are more about personality than belief, in some respects, but the basic idea is still transferrable.

Noisms, please elaborate.

(I cant see how Pendragon´s trait/passion system could have any use here, except maybe as substitute for alignments).

Haven't given it a great deal of thought, but each character might have a set of Trait-esque "beliefs" according to which faction they belong, which would go up and down according to how that character behaves, and which would enforce or restrict player character action in given situations, as with Pendragon.

So, just off the top of my head, a member of the Bleak Cabal's "beliefs" might be:

Pessimism / Optimism
Chaos / Order
Nihilism / Moral Objectivism

They would then have to start off with (say) 15/5 in all of those beliefs, and, just as in Pendragon, would earn "checks" to see if those beliefs go up or down over the course of play, according to how they played those beliefs. They would also have to roll against their belief scores if they ever wanted to go against the grain - so if a Bleaker was about to do something explicitly in the name of some moral rule or other, he would have to make sure he could do so by rolling against his Nihilism / Moral Objectivism score.

Does that make sense? Ideally there would be some sort of benefit attached to having especially high scores in the beliefs your faction values. So maybe if you managed to get to 16/4 in a certain belief, you would gain some mechanical benefit according to faction, which would get better as you progressed to 17/3, 18/2 etc.

Quote from: BWA;392828So here's where the reflexive disdain/suspicion of theRPGsite.com toward story/indie/etc games stops making sense, to me.

The RPGsite (and story games, for that matter, a site which I am also a member of) is made up on individuals. Some are more extremist here just like some are more extremist there. And I have frequent occasion to argue with both. :cool:

I think the biggest false dichotomy that frequently gets spouted is that story-games or indie RPGs somehow owns the concept of story. My personal perspective is that old school RPGs had story, but the story is a backdrop that creates situations for the PCs to interact with, not a structure to foist players into (as more extremist storygamers would have it). And I believe that the way PS was typically presented (and I presume played), it agrees with my perspective, not the extremist storygamer one.

Quote from: noisms;392936Haven't given it a great deal of thought, but each character might have a set of Trait-esque "beliefs" according to which faction they belong, which would go up and down according to how that character behaves, and which would enforce or restrict player character action in given situations, as with Pendragon.

So, just off the top of my head, a member of the Bleak Cabal's "beliefs" might be:

Pessimism / Optimism
Chaos / Order
Nihilism / Moral Objectivism

They would then have to start off with (say) 15/5 in all of those beliefs, and, just as in Pendragon, would earn "checks" to see if those beliefs go up or down over the course of play, according to how they played those beliefs. They would also have to roll against their belief scores if they ever wanted to go against the grain - so if a Bleaker was about to do something explicitly in the name of some moral rule or other, he would have to make sure he could do so by rolling against his Nihilism / Moral Objectivism score.

That's sort of cool. I would never want to hinge whether or not the PC takes a certain action on a dice roll... they way lies icky gaming IMO.

It would be cool if your ability to shape reality was based on such scores, however.

I would be afraid that might be too tracking heavy, like many "honor" type systems have proven to be. Systems like Bushido's and Oriental Adventure's (1e) seem cool on paper, and even in my younger days I didn't mind teatotaling the events. Nowadays, it just wouldn't fly for me.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;392938That's sort of cool. I would never want to hinge whether or not the PC takes a certain action on a dice roll... they way lies icky gaming IMO.

It would be cool if your ability to shape reality was based on such scores, however.

I would be afraid that might be too tracking heavy, like many "honor" type systems have proven to be. Systems like Bushido's and Oriental Adventure's (1e) seem cool on paper, and even in my younger days I didn't mind teatotaling the events. Nowadays, it just wouldn't fly for me.

The way its used in Pendragon, it's comparatively rare and easy to track. A bit hard to explain without going into great detail, but trust me - it's not very onerous at all. Much less onerous than even keeping track of hit points, I would say.

As for forcing player action... it only happens in the situation that somebody has 16/4 or higher in a given trait (they usually only have 1 such trait), and only in situations that are exceptional and pertain directly to it. Obviously it's not for everyone but it really works well if players are into it.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;392938The RPGsite (and story games, for that matter, a site which I am also a member of) is made up on individuals.

Absolutely! Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like an internet zealot. I was referring to some of the comments in this thread that sounded suspicious of non-combat-based mechanics. But no point in focusing on that esp since the real discussion has gotten more interesting.

I never got the chance to play Pendragon, although I sort of know about the traits.

How do they actually work in the game? Does my guy get better or worse at the stuff he wants to do depending on where I am on my trait scale?

Quote from: BWA;392954How do they actually work in the game? Does my guy get better or worse at the stuff he wants to do depending on where I am on my trait scale?

No, which is why some other system would have to be tacked on top.

I would probably use something like the following:

Members of each faction get a small benefit from joining that faction. For instance, Bleakers get a bonus to saving throws of some kind, if I remember correctly - sorry if that's wrong, been ages since I played, but it'll serve as an example.

Let's imagine they get +1 for their saving throw vs. magic as a low level faction member. Now, if one of their beliefs goes from 15/5 to 16/4, this bonus would go to +2. If another belief goes to 17/3, the bonus would go to +3. And so on, reflecting that, as Bleaker comes to believe in his faction's tenets more closely, actual tangible benefits begin to accrue.

Admittedly this is a bit boring and unwieldy, but it's just an example for how it might work in practice. Ideally each faction would have, say, 3 "core" beliefs that its members had to subscribe to (see previous post), and each belief would be linked to a mechanical bonus of some kind. Thus, as each member's beliefs fluctuated over time, so would their various bonuses.

Re: OP 2/10

Honestly, I dont think Pendragon´s personality Trais mechanics have a place in Planescape.

You see, in Pendragon this kind of "behaviour mapping" mechanic works well because it fits the theme of the game - the characters internal struggle for upholding knightly virtues, and the ressonance it has on the setting, etc. like we see in arthurian fiction.

While Planescape´s main themes - at least my interpretation of these, based on my reading of the Core setting and the various some supplements and sources -  are dual: 1) The power of belief, and 2) the meaning of the multiverse (the exploration of realities and ideas, so much geographically as metaphorically).

That said, I think Pendragon´s Traits would fit this themes better if used as a measurement of one´s attunements to the planes. So, for eg, the Bleaker from Noisms example could gain advantages and habilities when travelling on planes related to his traits.

IMHO, YMMV, and all that.

Quote from: silva;392959Honestly, I dont think Pendragon´s personality Trais mechanics have a place in Planescape.

You see, in Pendragon this kind of "behaviour mapping" mechanic works well because it fits the theme of the game - the characters internal struggle for upholding knightly virtues, and the ressonance it has on the setting, etc. like we see in arthurian fiction.

While Planescape´s main themes - at least my interpretation of these, based on my reading of the Core setting and the various some supplements and sources -  are dual: 1) The power of belief, and 2) the meaning of the multiverse (the exploration of realities and ideas, so much geographically as metaphorically).

That said, I think Pendragon´s Traits would fit this themes better if used as a measurement of one´s attunements to the planes. So, for eg, the Bleaker from Noisms example could gain advantages and habilities when travelling on planes related to his traits.

IMHO, YMMV, and all that.

It's already part of the core setting that members of factions get actual benefits from being in that faction and believing its tenets, though. This just gives that a better and more subtle expression in the mechanics.

If you´d really want to get to the "aboutness" of Planescape, you´d want to to it the "PTA"-way...

You play nearly middle aged  third and fourth gen gamewriters in a failing company, run by someone inept but forceful. You feel you are hip, (but really aren´t) and think you need to do something to let the gamerworld know you are hip and deep. The GM is called "DoTorlizzi" and the GM ,revolutionarily different from other RPGs, only has authoring rights for that single NPC, called "the artist".

You must collaborativley push the envelope re: hipness in Fantasy gaming, avoiding the (neo-old-school) table of Mummu-clad-ladypain-doom, that sets budgets and makes firings with full contingency.

You can win solo wins and a collaborative win. Solo wins are as diverse as "write the penultimate module, a module so beloved by the die hard fans, your name becomes a fantasy gaming staple", "get hired by White Wolf" or the lowest solo win: "survive buyout". The collaborative win is the hardest, and you need to be brought to tears by your fellow gamers, each one of you. Only then, when you have injected the deep and thoughtful hipness into your fellow designers AND the market, survived the buyout, you´ll get the big achievement: "Planescape third edition Campaign Setting Sourcebook."

Or if we were feeling particularly innovative we'd play a variant in which we all take on the personas of insipid internet nerds who sit on the sidelines slinging metaphorical fistfuls of mud at people who are having discussions about Planescape which are at least interesting to the participants, in threads on internet bulletin boards which nobody is being forced to read.

In this game, you can't win anything either solo or collaboratively, or indeed  contribute anything meaningful to anybody in the world, ever. But you do get to feel slightly better about your own weird outsider existence for a fleeting moment or two.

Sorry but, not being a native english speaker, I couldnt comprehend the last 2 messages.

Noisms, what do you think would be a nice set of traits for implementing your idea? What about making somthing related to the outer planes´ abstract concepts?

This image and this thread give some ideas in this direction. Eg:

Abyss: Fear? Horror?
Acheron: Warfare?
Arboria: Ecstasy? Exhilariation?
Arcadia: Harmony?  
Baator: Anger? Tyranny?
Beastlands: Instinct? Passion?
Bytopia: Cooperation? Simplicity?
Carceri: Betrayal? Falseness?
Elysium: Self-Knowledge?
Gehenna: Exploitation?
Gray Wastes: Despair? Apaty?
Limbo: Change ?
Mechanus: Stasis ? Logic?
Mount Celestia: Virtue? Self-improvement?
Outlands: Balance?
Pandaemonium: Madness
Ysgard: Heroism ?

Quote from: silva;393031Sorry but, not being a native english speaker, I couldnt comprehend the last 2 messages.

Well, I gather Settembrini is basically suggesting that Planescape is an attempt by a dying gaming company to tap into the fashionable "Storytelling game vibe" of the time (a la White Wolf's stuff) - an attempt to be cool more than anything else.  

Following this view, turning it into a game actually about philosophical meaning and belief is spending more thought on it than the actual designers did...they just wanted to make some noises about this and get on with making compelling stories about killing things and taking their stuff.
(Which I don't mind, personally).