[OSSR]Factol's Manifesto

[Ancient History]

Doom Guard
Who celebrate destruction and decay.

Someday, Yanek, None of this will be yours.

FrankT:

The Doomguard (AKA: Sinkers) are the pro-decay faction. That is totally different from the Bleakers, who are the previously discussed faction who feed the poor and stuff.

AncientH:

Just before I was a freelancer, I took a little comfort in the fact that if I really wanted to I could go around and delete everything I’d ever written on the web, and that I could die and for most people it would be just like I never had been. It was a nice thought, that I could pretty much destroy every trace of me up to that point. So, there’s a little bit of the nihilist in me.

But I wasn’t a Doomguard kinda guy. Too happy goth for me. They’re the kids setting shit on fire in Chemistry class and poking holes between the walls in the bathroom stalls and breaking stuff just for fun.

The problem is, unlike trendy postmodern “heat death of the universe” guys, the end game/apocalypse for AD&D worlds is a bit iffy, leaving out The Apocalypse Stone because seriously, that was some retarded shit right there. It’s not like the multiverse came from a Big Bang and has a finite lifespan that we know of.

FrankT:

From a religious standpoint, these guys aren't much different from Mormons or Evangelicals. They think the world is going to end, they think that's awesome, and they want to do their part to help it along. From a practical standpoint, they leave much to be desired. First of all: instead of having completely arbitrary prophesies that they think are going to bring about the end of the world that no one else believes in, these guys really don't. So while Evangelicals can get away with trying to breed a perfect red bull in order to sacrifice to remake the temple of Jerusalem so that their end-times prophesies can possibly happen, the Doomguard don't have anything like that. They just run around setting shit on fire and attacking the fire department and stuff. They are an even mix of Captain Planet villains and rampaging monsters, and I don't understand how they could possibly exist openly in any area that even pretends to have anything remotely resembling civilization or rules of any kind. I don't know what laws your country has, but I can't even conceive of it having any laws without having a law against setting fires at random while dancing in a heap of your own poop.

AncientH:

These guys remind me a bit of the Satanists from Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens, in that I imagine a lot of them grew up in it and there are little old ladies running bake sales to fund raising the Elder Gods and releasing the Tarrasque. Unfortunately, they’re written like Necromongers from the Chronicles of Riddick, determined to start some serious shit. Like Frank, I don’t see how you can put up with these guys unless they are an unstoppable bullshit army; most people just will not stand to someone trashing everything (unless they do it all sneaky-like).

I do kinda like that Bleakers and Sinkers get along though. It’s Ferris, Lesser Doomlord going around to his friend Cameron’s house and seeing he’s down in the dumps, so he passes him a beer and says “Let’s go set some shit on fire.” and Cameron sighs and goes “Okay.” It may not be healthy, but it’s a relationship dynamic I can actually see happening.

The Doomguard are split into three factions divided on whether the universe is decaying fast enough—there’s a lot of fridge logic waiting to happen here, but I think the authors aren’t quite clear on what “entropy” means from a physics or metaphysics viewpoint. At least it does set up for potential intra-factol infighting as different groups of Doomguards argue about whether or not to set something on fire, and that makes for good stories.

FrankT:

The Doom Lords are pretty cool. The run around in red and black robes wearing skull masks, murdering people right in the face for any reason or no reason at all while openly plotting to destroy the city and everyone in it.


I'm not saying that having a few villains around whose philosophy is so mind bogglingly obviously villainous that people don't feel the slightest tinge of guilt when they kill them with extreme stabination is a bad idea. Fuck, this is D&D, that's kind of the point a lot of the time. But I find it super hard to take the idea that these people are taken seriously and allowed a space in public discourse. I mean, even demons have succubi and mariliths whose shtick is that they have boobs and make compelling (if jerktastic) offers to people. What are we supposed to imagine? That people stand up in council saying “Skullface Razorcock has a point, we haven't been brutally murdering enough helpless orphans and hurling their corpses into casks of fire maggots. We should hear more of his five part plan to remedy this situation.”

Basically, the idea that the Sinkers as described could ever be anything other than a criminal cult in any society they hadn't conquered with fire and sword is too absurd to warrant coherent critique.

AncientH:

The Factol of the Doomguard is Pentar, a 20th-level human female ranger armed with, and I love this, a blade of Modron death +2 (dust blade, +4 against modrons undergoing the Great March) and an arrow of slaying (modron). That shit may not be in the Enyclopedia Magica, but I don’t care. At what point in your wizardly existence do you get an order for an arrow of slaying (modron) and not wonder where your life went horribly awry?



Unlike most of the other factols, Pentar is demonstrably insane enough that she wants to push entropy until her own faction splits into warring groups. That’s dedication for you.

FrankT:

Hey man, empowering your flunkies to be skull-emblazoned “Doom Lords” who live life like they were on a never ending GTA rampage mission sounds totally Chaotic Neutral to me. Why would you think that she should be “Evil” just because she is the leader of the “even more murders and senseless vandalism” subfaction of the “more murders and senseless vandalism” faction?

AncientH:

As it turns out, the reason that people put up with the Doomguard is because they are capitalist war lords. No, seriously, these guys are like Nick Cage’s character in Lord of War, they make all the swords and axes and arrows and shit that the other factions need to kill each other with. The Doomgaurd operate a 24-hour Armory that sells everything from half-price rusty daggers to custom magical swords and siege engines. Which means that this is basically the Crime Mall where adventurers go to shop.

Also, I swear to Ghost the Armoury is built into an evil Eiffel Tower.

FrankT:

I think it was a major mistake to have the Armory have their forges on the first floor. The first floor is open to the public and there are 23 more floors of office space. If they were going to have forges, it seems like they could have put them upstairs in the “no Homers” areas. Also, I'm not really sure why we need to have a special weapon forge when we already have an arbitrarily large foundry of the Godsmen. The whole thing seems a bit redundant.

Reading about their off-world citadels makes me super duper glad that we don't have to talk about Negative Quasi-Elemental Planes anymore. Because those were stupid.

AncientH:

The Doomguard’s open to bashers of all alignments.

Wait what, really? Do we need to go back and replay the bit from Fifth Element?


Actually, Zorg makes weapons, arms terrorists, and actively works for the destruction of Earth while claiming to be a good guy…shit, he is a Doomlord.

Clerics who do cleric-y things like creating water or healing people are not allowed in the Doomguard; White Mage is not allowed in your party.

FrankT:

Good Sinkers prefer inaction as a method of pushing their agenda – rather than tearing down a new kip, they’d merely stop others from shoring up a decrepit one.

I don't know how fucking high you have to be before you start actually spouting off that you can run around preventing people from fixing damage to their homes as your life's work and still qualify as “Good”. That is D&D alignments run completely into indefensible shit salad country.

Bizarrely, joining the Doomguard is actually pretty frinkin sweet from a mechanical perspective. You get bonuses to attack and damage. In exchange, it takes more magical healing spells to patch you up (non-magical healing and non-spell healing is unaffected). The game totally wants you to be a Neutral Good Sinker who goes around preventing people from fixing things or eating food. For great justice.

AncientH:

There are three frat boy hazings initiation rituals to going from being a rank-and-file namer to “really” joining the Doomguard. The first is easy (break your weapon), the second is expensive (scatter 500 gp in a ghetto, bonus points if a riot breaks out), and the third is deadly (allow the razorvines to destroy a building oh but the Lady of Pain has servants that supposedly stop that shit and if you fuck with them you’re toast.), but if you pass you get a nifty sword. If you get to 5th level and break a lot of shit (as PCs are want to do), they peel off a strip of your skin and make a shiny new magic sword for you! From your skin. Dwarfs shouldn’t ask for claymores.

Bizarrely, Doomguards also develop a psychic talent that should make them the best forensic guys in the multiverse. CSI: Doomguards!

FrankT:

The whole Modron March thing they keep talking about in this chapter is actually foreshadowing for an adventure called The Great Modron March that came out two years later in 1997.

AncientH:

There is a place for these guys as NPCs—the Kurgan from Highlander was a Doomlord and Champion of Entropy; Zorg from Fifth Element was a slightly-less-insane factotum; run of the mill Doomguards are like the crazies from Mad Max that just want to blow shit up. If they published this book nowadays though, I don’t think they could quite get away with being as blatantly anti-your-shit as they are. I’d expect they’d be subtler, setting up zombie apocalypses and overthrowing governments, maybe poisoning wells and rivers and opening portals to really hostile planes. Because right now they’re heavily armed merchants that set bridges on fire on weekends.

[Blasted]

I'm thoroughly enjoying this review. Although it's slowly removing the fog of nostalgia which keeps me enjoying Planescape.

[Koumei]

So why has the Lady of Pain not punted the Doomguard so hard in the collective dick that you only find it at the end of a Spelljammer campaign? Given she only bothers killifying "disruptive" people who wreck stuff and are a general pain, and that wrecking stuff as a general pain is their entire thing.

It also sounds like there's no point giving anyone a CSI: Sigil ability, because clearly the Doomguard did it. Always.

[TarkisFlux]

So why has the Lady of Pain not punted the Doomguard so hard in the collective dick that you only find it at the end of a Spelljammer campaign? Given she only bothers killifying "disruptive" people who wreck stuff and are a general pain, and that wrecking stuff as a general pain is their entire thing.

That sort of happens in a followup adventure path, Faction War, in that she pretty much kicks everybody out and sets the stage for the 3e Sigil where no one cares about factions. If Ancient and Frank have access to it, I'd be interested in their takes on what becomes of them.

[Koumei]

That sort of happens in a followup adventure path, Faction War, in that she pretty much kicks everybody out and sets the stage for the 3e Sigil where no one cares about factionsPlanescape.

Let's be honest: every Planescape game I've ever seen or played in 3E has used the AD&D fluff, relegating the Faction War & 3E material to the appropriate receptacle (the circular filing cabinet). As unimportant as the factions are, they're the thing that actually makes it anything other than "You have a hub from which you can do all your planehopping for adventures in all the planes!"

[Whatever]

So why has the Lady of Pain not punted the Doomguard so hard in the collective dick that you only find it at the end of a Spelljammer campaign? Given she only bothers killifying "disruptive" people who wreck stuff and are a general pain, and that wrecking stuff as a general pain is their entire thing.

Because when you boil it down, the Doomguard do "adventurer stuff". If you started kicking people out of Sigil for murder, theft, or arson, Sigil would not be an adventure location anymore.

[TarkisFlux]

every Planescape game I've ever seen or played in 3E has used the AD&D fluff, relegating the Faction War & 3E material to the appropriate receptacle (the circular filing cabinet).

Lol, what 3e material? The couple of chapters of half-assed recycled fluff in Manual of the Planes? Planescape was not a supported setting in 3e, so everyone still using their 2e material for it isn't that surprising.

[Koumei]

Yeah, MotP or Planar Handbook has a small entry on it, giving it maybe as much importance as the City of Brass or something, but IIRC they make it clear that the Faction War happened and the place is stripped down.

And Whatever: that's just the thing. Apparently, "doing adventurer stuff" is a mazable offence in Sigil - you're expected to talk philosophy and stuff in Sigil, and then go elsewhere (or to the shitter places nobody cares about) to do your adventuring. But these guys are seriously doing adventurer stuff to people and property inside Sigil proper and yet still exist.

[Avoraciopoctules]

every Planescape game I've ever seen or played in 3E has used the AD&D fluff, relegating the Faction War & 3E material to the appropriate receptacle (the circular filing cabinet).

Lol, what 3e material? The couple of chapters of half-assed recycled fluff in Manual of the Planes? Planescape was not a supported setting in 3e, so everyone still using their 2e material for it isn't that surprising.

There's some fan stuff here, including at least 1 pretty decent low-level adventure.
http://www.planewalker.com/

[wotmaniac]

Lol, what 3e material?

ummm ... here?
I mean, they haven't paid the licensing fee required to be actual 2nd-party (such as with Dragonlance); however, they have gotten an official "nod", which makes it more legit than 3rd-party.

EDIT: argh -- ninja'd

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I remember getting pissed at the boxed set's description of the Sensates.

When you say that the faction is about experiencing new things, seeing new sights, and learning from both bad and good experiences, that sounds awesome. When you say that they find base hedonism to be a useless pastime and a true sensate is going out exploring the multiverse and doing things, that's awesome too.

Then the boxed set describes the Factol of the sensates as a piggish, gluttonous hedonist. Like a less charming version of Hedonismbot.

[K]

All of the factions can be basically summarized as one of the various reasons that adventurers go adventuring.

Sensates do it for the experience and cool stories. Doomguard do it because they like getting to break shit.

[Username17]

Faction war kills off 60% of the factions. There was a thing in Dragon in early 2004 that talks about post-Faction War official Sigil. Nine factions get killed off or disband voluntarily, the remaining six factions leave, and now there are three new factions that no one cares about (Mind's Eye, Sons of Mercy, Second Wave).

The DMG 2 for 4th edition has an entire chapter on Sigil, and it has this to say about factions in Sigil:

In the past, Sigil served as a headquarters for numerous factions. These philosophical fraternities helped keep Sigil vital by each running a different part of the city. In the aftermath of a terrible war between the factions, the Lady of Pain made a rare and stunning appearance before the surviving leaders. With a dabus in tow to communicate for her, the Lady proclaimed: The city tolerates your faction no longer. Abandon it or die. They complied, and Sigil no longer hosts any organized factions.

It's not that post-Faction War Planescape doesn't have material written for it, it's that no one fucking cares. The 4th edition DMG2 alone drops over twenty eight thousand words on Sigil (which is itself about a third the length of a proper full-sized Planescape campaign book like the Factol's Manifesto). And no one fucking cares. Because as stupid and terrible many of the Factions were, they were the only thing making Sigil better or different from Union or any other planar metropolis.

I can certainly understand the desire to revamp the factions heavily. They were frankly not very well designed. But replacing them with nothing was not an acceptable answer. And I have no idea why anyone thought it was going to be.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

My experience with 2E Planescape was mostly limited to sets like Planes of Chaos, so I was only vaguely aware of Sigil as a place where stuff I cared about might be happening. It's good to know that I wasn't missing much by focusing on gate-towns and the outer planes for my political stuff.

[Grek]

the third is deadly (allow the razorvines to destroy a building oh but the Lady of Pain has servants that supposedly stop that shit and if you fuck with them you’re toast.)

Does it specifically have to be a house in Sigil? Or can you take a portal to Bytopia and kick over some gnome huts?

[Koumei]

I imagine they only do that for publicly owned houses, and don't go near the slummy areas. So you have some options where you could buy a house, let everyone know it's yours, and then let it crumble apart and be overrun by the vines, or you could just go to the slums and watch it happen to any number of houses.

One of the Planar 3.X books actually had some Faction-based Prestige Classes. Two of them, to be precise (with more appearing in Dragon magazine). One of them was a Doomguard one that had the exact requirements there of smashing a weapon, ruining a house and throwing a coin into a crowd to cause a riot. They might have been part of a weird "staggered requirements" thing where you can qualify for the first 3 levels, then have to actually go qualify for the next 3 and so on.

The other one was the Sensate one, and that was amazingly fucking stupid. To get further levels with the staggered requirements, you need to do more and more multiclassing. No, no it does not progress the things you used to qualify, so don't get the idea that the class has +sneak attack, +arcane and +divine. It just has its own stuff, including the amazing "You don't lose levels when restored to life" ability.

Planescape had problems, but it deserved more respect than that. Literally not having those classes, and not giving anything in their place, would have been kinder.

[Username17]

the third is deadly (allow the razorvines to destroy a building oh but the Lady of Pain has servants that supposedly stop that shit and if you fuck with them you’re toast.)

Does it specifically have to be a house in Sigil? Or can you take a portal to Bytopia and kick over some gnome huts?

You have to prevent the Dabus from cutting back the razorvines on a building for a full day. The Dabus actually have a scheduling thing where they totally don't cut back the razorvines on every building every day, so I'm not sure if you can just map out the Dabus gardening itinerary and declare that you are going to keep the razorvines growing for a full day on a day they weren't going to be cut anyway.

But it seems like you could do a lot of things, from making the sewers back up to moving a building to another dimension to simply cutting all the razorvines yourself. Considering how much ink they spend pointing out that the unkillable godslayer NPC will fuck your shit up if you straight attack one of the Dabus, I'm fairly perplexed as to why they didn't bother dropping a couple of examples of how various people succeeded at the task.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Bleak Cabal
Who find no sense in the Universe.

[...]

In this book, the Bleakers are portrayed as much more sympathetic, doing good works and not giving an actual shit about vanity or wealth or other petty crap. Still, the damage has totally been done. As Ancient History noted earlier: whoever wrote the original faction writeups decided to dump all the liberal philosophies into Chaotic Evil dimensions. I don't know if that was a fuck you to the players, a fuck you to liberals, or a cunning ploy to try to equal out faction membership by forcing players to choose between doing good works and having “Good” written on their character sheet. But for whatever reason, if you want to be an existentialist who feeds the poor and only adventures because they think it's the right thing to do... then you get to have your chapterhouse in fucking Pandemonium, have to chill out with Giant Rape Frogs and Demons, and also have to spend a random day every three weeks cutting yourself in bed while listening to The Cure. Because the original authors had already written all that shit into the faction and fuck you. Hippie.

FrankT:

Allow me to say that it is needlessly confusing that a faction who are called the “Bleak Cabal” and “The Madmen” are different from the people who espouse Entropy and the people who espouse Chaos. The writeup here continues to be offensive. Apparently nihilists can't run things, and large groups of people who don't believe in a higher power inevitably drive each other insane. I don't even know how that's supposed to work.

The thing is that even though they keep dissing on how “crazy” and “disorganized” these people are, the Bleak Cabal are still the closest thing that comes to an actual government that the city seems to have. They provide healthcare, unemployment insurance, orphanages, and food security. They are the actual welfare state, which is why they are not allowed to be Lawful. I know that Law and Chaos mean fuckall at the best of times, but this is pretty intensely off the reservation. This needs to be said a couple of times: The Bleak Cabal run all the services that the city has and are busily constructing more and they are not allowed to be Lawful. I just don't even know what the hell the AD&D authors thought Law and Chaos were supposed to mean if nation building doesn't count as Law.

[...]

AncientH:

The big thing with the Bleak Cabal is that there is practically little to no reason for anybody to hate these guys. They’re basically a charitable organization in the middle of the multiverse’s biggest ghetto, they’re not out to take over the city or get you to worship their god above all others or anything like that—I mean, I guess the evil guys should hate them because they take in orphans and feed the homeless and care for the sick and dying, but by definition you can’t be a paladin and join the Bleak Cabal, so what the hell heroes?

Well, I think we can see why they think the universe makes no sense.

At least there are chaotic good afterlives.

[Orion]

Your "power cap" for this purpose is "leader of a bullshit NGO branch in a medium sized city". That is a very low power cap for a game that otherwise allows you to save, conquer, and destroy planets and gods.

I don't understand why you persist in arguing from tradition on this. I really don't care whether fantasy gaming or literature generally allows you to destroy planets and gods, unless I understand why they do that and what they gain by it. If you want to make a case that running the police force of a cosmopolitan city is not satisfying, make that case, don't just wave your hands about what you can do in some other game.

The whole "faction conflict" scene is supposed to be front and center for the whole Planescape deal. Fuck, more than one of these Factols are 19th level characters. And yet, nothing you can do involving these assholes can possibly amount to more than you getting control of a single city's morgue. There are epic level badasses you have to go against to wrest control of a faction, and when you actually do it all you get to do is decide whether the incinerator runs on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

I guess this is just a matter of taste. Personally, I think the problem with municipal government in real life is not that running a city isn't important and satisfying, it's that is isn't dramatic and exciting. You really can just take boring but worthwhile things people do and add some super kung fu and get gripping storytelling. If people competed for the role of neighborhood alderman by shooting fire from their mouths, I would follow campaign season.

With the amount of buildup that the Factions get in the setting, you'd think that they had anything at all to do with the endgame. But they don't.

With the endgame presented in the core rulebooks, you mean? I think it's fairly clear that Planescape is intended to present an alternative endgame, as well as the option to be a murder hobo with 5th level spells. It would be absurd to try to do the whole keep on the borderlands thing at the same time.

Fundamentally, high level characters can just have the kind of temporal power that Sigil cockteases you with.

High-level D&D character have class features that grant them power that is broader in scope and scale than you are ever likely to get in Sigil. I am extremely unconvinced that this gives power that feels more fun to exercise. I think the most important factor in feeling powerful through fiction isn't scale, it's detail. Yes, at level 9 you are entitled to demand that your MC make up several thousand crap-covered farmers and give you dominion over them. But you don't care about having dominion over Steve the crap-covered farmer because his name is fucking Steve and all his neighbors are also named Steve because your MC is not a professional novelist worldbuilding compelling people and relationships on the fly. They are all named Steve and you do not care whose cow is in the pasture.

What makes power satisfying is seeing it's impact--it's imagining how your actions effect whatever parts of the setting you already know or care about. When some farmers show up out of nowhere and you get to order them to build statues of you? Meh. When that asshole in the Housing Association wouldn't let you plant rhododendrons, so you ousted him from the board and now plant whatever you like? Now we're talking.

[ishy]

Your "power cap" for this purpose is "leader of a bullshit NGO branch in a medium sized city". That is a very low power cap for a game that otherwise allows you to save, conquer, and destroy planets and gods.

I don't understand why you persist in arguing from tradition on this. I really don't care whether fantasy gaming or literature generally allows you to destroy planets and gods, unless I understand why they do that and what they gain by it. If you want to make a case that running the police force of a cosmopolitan city is not satisfying, make that case, don't just wave your hands about what you can do in some other game.

You might want to reread what you just fucking quoted, or stop strawmanning. Frank was talking about power you wield in the same fucking game.
Hell even in the same setting, you can wield immense power outside Sigil, but if spend immense amount of time inside Sigil you can get basically none.

The whole "faction conflict" scene is supposed to be front and center for the whole Planescape deal. Fuck, more than one of these Factols are 19th level characters. And yet, nothing you can do involving these assholes can possibly amount to more than you getting control of a single city's morgue. There are epic level badasses you have to go against to wrest control of a faction, and when you actually do it all you get to do is decide whether the incinerator runs on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

I guess this is just a matter of taste. Personally, I think the problem with municipal government in real life is not that running a city isn't important and satisfying, it's that is isn't dramatic and exciting. You really can just take boring but worthwhile things people do and add some super kung fu and get gripping storytelling. If people competed for the role of neighborhood alderman by shooting fire from their mouths, I would follow campaign season.

You don't get to run the city though. You only get to run things the DM PC (who you can't even interact with) doesn't care about.
And yeah if you make up cool shit you can have fun games. Has nothing to do with Sigil though.

With the amount of buildup that the Factions get in the setting, you'd think that they had anything at all to do with the endgame. But they don't.

With the endgame presented in the core rulebooks, you mean? I think it's fairly clear that Planescape is intended to present an alternative endgame, as well as the option to be a murder hobo with 5th level spells. It would be absurd to try to do the whole keep on the borderlands thing at the same time.

I always assumed the endgame was to do anything but not Sigil, but what do you think the alternate endgame for planescape was intended to be?

Fundamentally, high level characters can just have the kind of temporal power that Sigil cockteases you with.

High-level D&D character have class features that grant them power that is broader in scope and scale than you are ever likely to get in Sigil. I am extremely unconvinced that this gives power that feels more fun to exercise. I think the most important factor in feeling powerful through fiction isn't scale, it's detail. Yes, at level 9 you are entitled to demand that your MC make up several thousand crap-covered farmers and give you dominion over them. But you don't care about having dominion over Steve the crap-covered farmer because his name is fucking Steve and all his neighbors are also named Steve because your MC is not a professional novelist worldbuilding compelling people and relationships on the fly. They are all named Steve and you do not care whose cow is in the pasture.

You must have the worst DM and players ever.
If your DM is bad at world building, you can make up characters yourself that your DM can then use.

What makes power satisfying is seeing it's impact--it's imagining how your actions effect whatever parts of the setting you already know or care about. When some farmers show up out of nowhere and you get to order them to build statues of you? Meh. When that asshole in the Housing Association wouldn't let you plant rhododendrons, so you ousted him from the board and now plant whatever you like? Now we're talking.

I hate to tell you this, but epic level adventures about planting roses in the backyard are 4e adventures.

[Orion]

You might want to reread what you just fucking quoted, or stop strawmanning. Frank was talking about power you wield in the same fucking game.

I apologize for not communicating more clearly. I understand that Frank was primarily drawing comparisons to other published D&D settings, particularly the implied setting of the PHB. Whether something is nominally part of the same product line is simply not of concern to me. Either way the argument is the same: "A has skub. B does not have skub. Therefore A is superior." It's not interesting until you explain why skub is desirable. Publication history can be a relevant part of that argument. It would be totally reasonable to look at a variety of D&D products, come to a conclusion about what the core appeal of D&D is, and critique a particular D&D book for not serving the core value of the product line. I personally do not feel that "destroying planets" is a necessary part of the D&D experience.

I always assumed the endgame was to do anything but not Sigil, but what do you think the alternate endgame for planescape was intended to be?

Let me get back to you on this one. I feel like it deserves to be its own post and not clutter this one.

I hate to tell you this, but epic level adventures about planting roses in the backyard are 4e adventures.

Not exactly. Let me draw a chart. I hope to god this works.

		High Action	Low Action
	High Stakes	Dungeons and Dragons: Name Level	C-SPAN
	Low Stakes	PLANESCAPE	4th Edition

Name-Level D&D is a 3-dimensional kung fu showdown over the fate of nations. 4th Edition is neighbors punching each other in the face over the fate of rose bushes. C-SPAN is old people arguing discursively in mumbled, repetitive technical language over the fate of nations. PLANESCAPE(tm) is neighbors having a 3-dimension kung fu showdown over the fate of rose bushes. It's clear that people are very reluctant to engage with 4E, and very willing to engage with Name-level AD&D. There are many differences between the two games, and it's not immediately obvious which ones are dispositive. But I think it's worth considering the fact that Fawlty Towers is much better television than C-Span Live. [/td][/tr][/table]

[virgil]

You don't get to run the city though. You only get to run things the DM PC (who you can't even interact with) doesn't care about.

You do get to run the city. I don't get this floccinaucinihilipilification. Municipal courts and police departments are not invalidated by the existence of the military. The Lady doesn't care about anything except keeping out the Powers, keeping people from setting the entire city on fire, and killing the garbage man (waah?).

The party couldn't stop a Power from taking over if it wanted, and even aside from them, the vast majority of campaigns would never reach the point of replacing Rowan Darkwood.

Hell, if the Dabus were never mentioned, then nobody would care about how the streets got cleaned, just like every other published campaign ever; as it stands, they're a popular background element that persistently stay in the background so they don't rub their plot-armor in your face.

[Ancient History]

Dustmen
Who believe we're already dead.

FrankT:

The Dustmen are another essentially godless religious organization, which brings the total so far to three. They do not support suicide per se, but they preach that death is basically a good deal and things only go up from there – especially if you give a portion of your wealth to the Dustmen and read their book and make yourself right with their priests. And that if you wait long enough, the Dustmen are all going to be brought back to unlife as a big zombie army, which is going to be awesome. So basically they are pretty much exactly the same as mainstream Christians. But the twist here is that they are flat affect and run around in sack cloth. So more like mainstream Christians from the 1600s.

The whole paradox of wanting to die in order to ascend to a higher state of being and be rewarded with true life is supposed to be a shocker, but considering that that is explicitly the tenets of the Earth's two most powerful religions, it's something that I got over long before I ever picked up a PLANESCAPE™ book. To be honest, I'm not sure the authors actually ever figured out the Christianity tie-in, most of their writeup looks like they are trying to make fun of Hari Krishnas. Man, these guys must have had one shitty time in the 60s and 70s.

AncientH:

The Dustmen are thinly-veiled take on Buddhism, or certain Gnostic sects, which preach the elimination of desire. Or, if you prefer, it’s a quasi-variation of the Cappadocians from Vampire: the Masquerade. It’s very weird in PLANESCAPE because you’re already knocking about in what most Prime Material Plane terms is the afterlife—it’s weird to think that you can go to Arcadia and see great-grandma or descend into the Nine Hells and run across the little half-orc that used to pull your hair in grade school.

Bizarre observation time: as we go along, everyone likes to present their faction as older than the others, but by my reckoning most of these things are far younger even than real-world religions. When you can have an elf celebrating millennial, your 900-year-old faction just is not impressive from a purely historical viewpoint.

FrankT:

The Jedi-like “purge your emotions” deal is a reasonable enough thing for an apocalyptic religion to teach, but it sure is fucking hard on actually playing the game. A good member of The Dead is supposed to divest themselves of give-a-shit to the point that they don't have motivation to, for example, go on adventures. Makes it hard to do a cooperative storytelling game about going on fucking adventures.

AncientH:

The nice thing about the Dead is that they get along well with everybody except the Sensates. The bad thing is, well, they get along with almost everybody. There’s no tension or conflict with the Dead (which, admittedly, is 95% of the point), so there’s not a whole lot that you can do with them because they don’t do much of anything. They’re nice neighbors to have, but from the standpoint of Mister Cavern trying to use them as a jumping-off point for adventures, there isn’t a great deal to work with.

FrankT:

Factol Skall may be unimaginatively named, but he's also supposed to be an unbeatable DM Penis Extension:

No player character or party should attempt combat with Skall; those who do should not win.

He's a 19th level Lich with a Type III Demon as a familiar and arbitrarily good item and spell selection. That being said, I don't see how that's as impressive as the Athar and their not-god-tree of Reverse Psychology being able to cast unlimited numbers of Priest Spells of any level. Skall is certainly a boss for a near-epic confrontation, but getting all pissy that the players might be able to win at some point is just authorial insecurity. if you stat it, they will kill it, just get over it.

AncientH:

Skall is one of their weird DM-NPCs that has developed a number of unusual abilities, the kind of permanent abilities that players would like for their characters, but existed before there were prestige classes as such. Ed Greenwood used a lot of them. They’re the kind of thing I like to point at when I talk about how in AD&D there was a tremendous range of power even within a given level.

The impressive thing about the Dustmen is that their HQ is on the Negative Material Plane. In D&D terms, that is perhaps the least hospitable environment for anything not already undead, and there’s no indication given that the Dustmen have an unusual number of undead, so choosing to have the HQ on the plane of “fuck you living” is both thematically appropriate but a poor zoning choice.

FrankT:

The Mortuary is pretty neat. It's a big temple of death that pays people small amounts of money to deliver corpses to them and charges people small amounts of money to perform various burial services. It has ancient libraries and record halls, and various undead creatures put to various tasks. It's pretty much everything you'd ever want out of a temple of death short of having a sacrificial altar to murder captured princesses on. That being said, I don't understand how it is supposed to have a monopoly on funerary services. As described in the Athar chapter, a majority of people in Sigil have a religion, but only a minority of people in Sigil have “Duster” as their religion. So a majority of people should want some priest of Lathander or something to do some mumbo jumbo over their corpse. There ought to be some reason why the various religions – most of whom have a fairly negative opinion of the Undead – seem totally cool with having last rites of their flock handled by death cult led by a Lich King, but I'm just not seeing it.

AncientH:

The Mortuary is basically where you go to dispose of the bodies of your enemies. You specify that you’d like them cremated and the ashes spread in the Quasielemental Plane of Vacuum or whatever, and then go on your merry way murderhoboing because no one will ever find the body. Also, I like to think that the Dustmen don’t ask many questions about this sort of thing. If you’re a midwife, you probably can get a group discount on disposing of abortions before the paladins find out.

FrankT:

Actually being one of the Dusties comes with a pretty huge perk: you get command undead at level 4 of any class. Players of 3rd edition and later may not understand what a big deal that was, but it was a very big deal. First of all, “turn resistance” hadn't been invented yet, so command undead could actually start affecting Nightwalkers at level 9. Secondly, I'm not calling it “rebuke undead”, because in 2nd edition you got the “command” result right away with no bullshit about rebuking. You could at least potentially get an army of 12 wights at level 1 with this shiznit.

To pay for that, you lose absolutely nothing. For now. If at some point in the future you ever die, you have a 50% chance of resurrection failure. This is emblematic of the kind of “awesome power now, pay for this shit later” thing that AD&D designers thought was a totally great idea. Also note that “paying for it” means that at infrequent intervals you will be asked to flip a coin and on tails the entire game is over forever and fuck you.

AncientH:

The Dead don’t have a lot of plans these days. Never did. A body can bet they’ll continue their Mortuary duties and work to reach True Death. And they will exist. Their only real concern surrounds a brand-new Dead chant.

This is the problem with the Dustmen in a nutshell: they don’t fucking do anything! For all that they go on about the philosophies of being Dead and seeking True Death, there’s no real mythology there for them to hang their hats on. At least the Cappadocians can go seek out the mysteries of necromancy or something, but the Dustmen…don’t.

Now, if you were to take these guys from a Buddhist or Gnostic perspective, they could still be fairly passive while still being playable or usable, because those groups have their attendant mythologies. You could go to them for respite or insight, they can be mystics or just preach that everybody else is wrong (a bit like the Athar) and you shouldn’t fight death but welcome it. They could be great supporting characters for a multi-faction party involving a couple Bleakers and a Doomguard, maybe.

FrankT:

The big “rumor” is that Skall has an army of undead in his citadel in the negative energy plane. As we know from Dominions, this army costs no upkeep and doesn't need to eat, so he's just growing it. And maybe someday he'll throw down and give someone a taste of zombie apocalypse to the face. This seems like a kind of important point, but even though it's written right next to the DM section, they don't bother confirming or denying it. The actual “big reveal” is that the Dustmen ranks include undead creatures with class levels. This might seem like an extremely stupid big reveal, and it is.

Basically, in 2nd edition monsters were arbitrary. Like 4th edition monsters. They didn't have stats or levels or even bonuses – they just had arbitrary target numbers to roll to do things and piles of hit points. So while mummy wizards and wraith thieves has been a thing that is supposed to happen since the beginning, actually figuring out how to do that in the rules is completely non-trivial. So when this book tells you that some of the characters in the faction are secretly free willed undead who continue to go around having class levels and shit, I have no idea how to do that in the rules. This makes the “big reveal” even more underwhelming than it seems at first.

AncientH:

The big “secret” of the Dustmen is that a) they suffer from a STD-like condition called Apathy (can you feel the teenage goth crowd attuning itself there?) and b) sometimes Skall takes a liking to a Dustmen and turns them into an undetectable undead version of themselves. This would be interesting if you could play an undead PC in AD&D, but of course you really can’t (unless your Mister Cavern is very generous). I actually like the idea that the Dustmen “promote” people in the organization by turning them into free-willed undead, I think there’s potential in that. By the Nine Hells, there are adventurers that would work really hard for that kind of benefit and “retirement plan.”

[Ancient History]

Fated
Who take All they can, and more.

AncientH:

The voice of this section is a reject from Greyhawk who likes to claim he’s actually from the Forgotten Realms (because that’s a much classier setting), and that makes him a mighty big asshole indeed. These guys are, well, they’re extreme capitalists. They think that they get what they want because they deserve to have it, and they’ll do every sneaky trick in the book to get an advantage, even if it makes all of them raging banker assholes. Naturally, they’re in charge of collecting taxes.


“Take what you can/Give nothing back.”

FrankT:

When it comes down to it, “Fate” is a really weird thing to try to base a faction's philosophy around. In our world, the “Fate vs. Free Will” discussion is the classic trivial discussion: it literally does not matter who is right and who is wrong because nothing changes either way. We only remember one past, and when we move far enough into the future that the present and the near future themselves become the past, then there will only be one of them too. And since we can't go back and do it again differently or see the future in any meaningful sense, that's the end of it. Fate and Free Will both describe a world that looks exactly the same as what we see with our eyes, and because we can't change the arrow of Time it is of absolutely no conceivable consequence which is “right”. This is a non-trivial portion of why the Matrix 2 was so unbelievably terrible. The entire philosophical discussion at hand was utterly meaningless.

But in D&D specifically you actually can go back in time. You actually can see the future. There are true prophecies. And thus it is possible to determine whether the future is rigidly determined or not. It fucking isn't. Fate is a testable theory in D&D land and it's testably false. There are multiple authors and random number generators creating the flow of events and prophecies can just fucking fail.

So it might not surprise you in the slightest that the presentation of the Heartless philosophy has pretty much zero anythings to do with “Fate”. Their use of the word “Fate” in their name is just there to confuse you. Actually, these guys are just insufferable assholes who are proponents of The Secret. They believe they are entitled to things because they want those things. Also, they are assholes.

AncientH:

In addition to being asshole self-entitled merchant-princes of the multiverse, the Fated also control the Hall of Records. This is a bit like putting the foxes in charge of the door of the chicken coop, or your average cell phone plan. It’s not a question of whether they’re fucking you, but how. Now, how these guys enforce taxes is a bit of a question, especially when you may be trying to collect from a slaad that’s as likely to size up whether or not your eye-hole is a good place to stick its eggs than pay you a copper (assuming it knows what coinage is), but I presume that’s where adventurers come in. “The Maralith on Eye-of-Anubis Street owes 600 gold pieces or the equivalent in soul-larvae because of the new tax on arms. You get ten percent if you can collect. Only accept coin or a certified draught from a known goldsmith.”

FrankT:

For reasons I don't understand, these guys are in charge of tax collection and record keeping for the civil government despite the fact that they explicitly don't believe in the efficacy of civil government or fairness under the law. It's like giving the ministry of finance to the “Embezzlement Party”. Nothing whatever in their actions or philosophies makes them in any way qualified to do the things that they are expected to do within society.



After we get a story about what a monstrous cock Duke Darkwood is and how he cheats and lies and changes contracts after they have been signed in order to steal shit from innocent people, we are told that he is Chaotic Good. I can only assume at this point that this book is a propaganda piece whose true purpose is to make the D&D alignment system so blatantly offensive and stupid looking that it drums up support for eliminating it in the next edition. Too bad that didn't happen.

AncientH:

Duke Darkwood is a 19th-level ranger (do we have enough of those yet?) and a 20th-level priest of Heimdall (the fuck?), and somehow is Chaotic Good (the fuckity fuck?). How any of that squares with being head tax-taker in a pandimensional city and a habitual liar I have no fucking clue. Seriously, none of those things go together.

FrankT:

You could tell the book's editors had a head scratcher of a case wringing something plausible sounding out of this manuscript, because it veers wildly from talking about Forgotten Realms and talking about Greyhawk. The editor comes up with a story that this dude is from Oerth but says he's from Toril. Because having an editor's insertion claiming that the character being quoted is a pathological liar was evidently easier than just picking a story and using the power of editing to make the facts fit from page to page.

AncientH:

About 10% of the Fated are employed in the Hall of Records, which is like the Central Bureaucracy from Futurama if it was run by Mitt Romney. My favorite part of the Hall is that one of the librarians is a female frost giant named Brigitte Gunnarsmoon, and that is awesome. I bet she’s the one to go to when you need to get a book from the top shelf, and carries a set of iron keys each of which is bigger than a Halfling is tall.

FrankT:

The Hall of Records story is about how the Takers got their home base and much of their equipment by cheating people in the legal system. I don't understand how this is supposed to work. They don't respect the rule of law and cheat all the time, why the fucking hell does anyone else respect the rule of law when dealing with them? Seriously, when the Takers reveal their big “I totally cheated you by rewriting the contract” gambit, I don't understand why anyone would accept that rather than just saying “That's OK, I'm not going to honor the contract either then, go fuck yourself.” Seriously, I'm not even aware of a theory of justice that holds that anyone is bound by agreements they didn't actually make. And even the most simplistic of game theory holds that there's basically no advantage to be had in upholding your end of the bargain with someone who explicitly has no intention of upholding theirs.

As is often the case with RPG materials, the time frames involved are not nearly large enough. The new factol has “gradually” changed the tax code and increased the size of his army and extended communication to Ysgard and stuff. But he has only been factol for a year, so I don't see how this could possibly have boiled frogged anyone.

AncientH:

The major problem with playing with the Fated is that backstabbing isn’t just chronic, it’s institutional and encouraged. Anybody that wants your shit and can get it is entitled to it. It’s not a question about if they’ll sell you out, but when. If any PCs joined this group they’d have to do prison rules, finding the weakest namer and beating them to death just so everybody else doesn’t think they’re fresh fish.

Lawful good aren’t allowed in—presumably they make you pee in a cup so they can test for that, and they’ll probably charge you for the cup and tell you it’s customary to tip as well—which is unfortunate, because you’d think paladins would be some of the most dedicated tax-collectors in the ‘verse.

Joining the faction involves sitting university exams (weeds out most fighters), a physical exam (weeds out most wizards), and then a bullshit moral test where you’re supposed to work really hard to get something you could just steal (weeds out thieves). Based solely on that, I think the entire faction must be taken up by frat boy bards, monks, rangers, clerics, and assassins, because they’re either smart enough and strong enough to squeak by or clever enough to cheat like a motherfucker.

FrankT:

I'll say right away that the entrance hazings for the Fated do not make any sense. There's this zen shit where a prospective entrant is given an opportunity to make off with some free wealth, and if they take it they are denied entrance. Because apparently you're only supposed to take what you're entitled to, and something something. This is I think supposed to make them sound like they have a deep philosophy, but it actually just makes them sound even more assholish than they already did. Since they supposedly believe they are entitled to anything they want really hard, I don't see how any “no effort” wealth acquisition could possibly count against that. I mean, just the fact that you wanted the thing is entitlement enough, right? And fuck, they actually regularly cheat, which stretches the meaning of entitlement to the breaking point. I just plumb don't understand what they were trying to get at here.

From a mechanical standpoint, being a member of the Heartless is all bonuses up front and all penalties later on. So there is absolutely no reason to stay in the Takers. Being a member at character generation gives you extra starting skills, and unless you're a Rogue that's the end of it. Thereafter you are not allowed to accept Charity of any kind (with the example being accepting a healing potion from a comrade in arms, which isn't actually charity at all because it's the other person using their healing items to heal the wounds of their own comrades to the betterment of the combat readiness of their own unit, but whatever). And this is probably why the beginning of the book jumps up and down about how you aren't allowed to change factions. But of course, all the previous faction writeups talked extensively about how they recruit from the ranks of other factions, so that's rather a hard sell.

AncientH:

Unlike the Dustmen, the Fated do actually have some internal power struggles—they are all massive self-entitled assholes, so this is no surprise—so there are actual adventures that you could run from this faction. That being said, everyone of these guys is a Mr. Johnson that’s likely to try and screw you out of payment, and they categorically refuse to pay in advance. My advice for any campaign with the Takers is to play them like the Parker novels—get them in some nefarious underhanded scheme, then rip them off. What are they going to do, go tell the boss that they were trying to steal taxes but the guys they hired double-crossed them?

FrankT:

At the end of each of these is a section called “The Chant” and a section called “DM Darks”. These are rumors and the big behind the scenes reveal to the DM respectively. Putting them on the same page is kind of weak sauce, because it means that even if you were really trying to segregate what the players knew and what the DM knew, you'd have already failed at that task by putting them on the same page. But in any case, the rumors here fail basic chronological tests. The faction is currently doing emergency temporary shoring up of their temporary record vault that they opened more than a fucking century ago while they've been gradually accumulating scandal dirt on people who newly came into town a year ago and thus obviously do not have any scandals hidden away in those hundred year old records.

AncientH:

The weird thing about the Fated is that you know someone else wrote this section because it’s pseudo-competent. The Takers have an actual philosophy (greedy assholes), a position in the city (tax collectors/record keepers), goals (MOAR!), internal disputes and external interactions with the other factions. Granted, their philosophy has nothing to do with Sigil being a pandimensional city at the heart of the multiverse and would work just as well in, say, any fucking AD&D city you could name.

Basically, they're Ferengi. Honestly, you could drop Quark as an NPC into any PLANESCAPE campaign as a representative of the Fated and no one would blink. So there’s a lot of minable material for these guys beyond the book.

[Ancient History]

Fraternity of Order
Who discover Laws to get at the Truth.

FrankT:

Couched as it is in what passes for 1990s humor about bureaucracy, the basic Fraternity of Order philosophical point is shockingly coherent and plausible. They believe that knowledge of the laws that govern things gives power over those things, so they want to learn, understand, and write all the laws of all the things. They are therefore equal parts legalists and scientists.

Their framework is actually pretty reasonable for a group that demonstrably lives in a multiverse with different physics in different places. They divide things up into Rules (laws made by people that can be changed by people), Laws (laws intrinsic to your plane of existence that can be be changed by gods or powerful magic), and Axioms (laws that you can't change). This is actually totally reasonable and is the first piece of philosophy in this book that makes sense as a thing for highly intelligent and wise characters in D&D land to say.

That being said, the writeup still can't resist the cheap shot of clipping the text and noting that it is clipping it in the name of brevity. Get it? He's long winded because he's a science nerd, so they had to cut him off! Of course, all of the factol quotes in this book are supposedly segments of longer speeches or texts, so all of them are cropped. But this one actually says it's cropped because Lawful people are funny. Because they are long winded. Humor in the 1990s was not terribly advanced. Fortunately, we're past all that now.

AncientH:

The chaotic greedy are in charge of Sigil’s purse strings and memory; the Guvnors are the judicial branch, writing the laws, telling others what the laws are, and then judging people when they break said laws. Courts in Sigil are thus weird, Kafka-esque little hellholes. It’s a bizarre system of government and there’s no reason for any of the other Factions in Sigil to put up with their shit. Don’t get me wrong, in any environment like Sigil you’re going to have some sort of oligarchy where the Powers-What-Is decide it is much more profitable to agree to an armistice and squash all the little Powers-That-Would-Be rather than risk everything they’ve got in a knock-out, drag-out fight. The thing with Sigil is that the distribution of responsibilities is bizarre, nonsensical, and idiosyncratic.

FrankT:

The point about the Guvners keeping records that are exhaustive enough that it's actually hard to find important data is kind of interesting and vaguely believable. A thing that just sort of leaps out at you is that it is just sort of assumed that the multiverse runs on British common law. You see this in other books in the series where judges wear powdered wigs and stuff. But it all runs on precedents and rules built on other rules. This is very weird to me, as it implies that none of the authors had any experience or knowledge of legal systems like Napoleonic law or Sharia law, let alone minor legal theories like various tribal laws or Norse law. The British-centrism in the concept of what “Law” is comes off as extremely myopic for what is ostensibly supposed to be a creolized society drawn from a multitude of alien worlds.

The writeup for the Guvners goes on and on about how they don't legislate for the whole city, because Sigil has a multiple branch government with a multifaction council that passes laws, a judiciary that interprets laws with the assistance of adversarial legal council, and specific civic tasks being given over to the dispensation of groups via charters. Also, supreme executive, religious, and head of state powers are in the hands of a Queen. Because Sigil is 19th century London. Rule Britania.

AncientH:

Law enforcement is not normally a part of the AD&D game that players or Mister Cavern like to deal with. The City Guard are mooks, and if the current Overlord happens to have a black goatee than suddenly murdering them in the street becomes a good and justifiable act. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a PC consent to being arrested peacefully—they’d rather fight to their last hit point than come along to answer a few questions, much less pay a fine, have their day in court, or peacebond their flaming vorpal katana. So even getting the player characters into the Guvnors’ setting is going to take a bit of work.

Actually going through a courtroom scene in a roleplaying game generally sucks, because if the PCs are there they are the defendant, which means their lawyer will tell them to shut the fuck up and look innocent while Mister Cavern breaks out the hand-puppets and tries to play out a trial scene like in the movies. There are only three outcomes: free (usually with a catch), sentenced to death (probably with a rescue and/or catch), or prison. All three options pretty much suck.

FrankT:

One of the ideas that floats around Planescape is that law enforcement requires brutality. It's not just this book, it's the whole setting. Even the DMG2 material for 4th edition goes on a rant about how the Sons of Mercy aren't brutal enough and crime waves happened as a direct result. And it's right here too in the history of the Fraternity of Order, where apparently they used to be in charge of law enforcement in addition to running the judiciary, but they weren't violent enough and had to turn enforcement over to the Harmonium. It's like if you write for Planescape in any decade you are required to get all your information about how law enforcement works from circa 1970s cop movies. I don't know where that comes from. With all the obvious British influence on the setting, you'd think someone somewhere would have noticed that London Bobbies don't carry guns and that actually works just fine. In fact, the actual British police force would be a way better model for facilitating D&D adventures than all this fapping to head-kicking police states. The basic beat cops are not heavily armed, and if there is ever a serious armed threat they call in a strike team. That's perfect for the D&D model, because it would mean that the player characters could be the SWAT equivalents called in to deal with serious threats while all the shoplifting and bullshit got dealt with by the beat patrols.

AncientH:

In a setting where the default for Factols is being a 19th-level ranger, the Factol for the Guvnors is a 0-level dwarf sage.


“Finally.”

The only reason this guy is alive is because it is highly illegal to kill him, and the only reason it is illegal to kill him is because he probably wrote that specific law down somewhere.

FrankT:

Hashkar is very strangely designed. He's a 0th level character with 6 hit points, but he is so covered with special powers that he might as well be a high level Wizard. Indeed, they get lazy and just say he has two more powers that he will use to troll the players if they ever attempt to fight him. I have no idea why they didn't just make him a high enough level Wizard to justify him being actually hard to kill. If you skip ahead to Faction War, he eventually does get killed by the expedient of a Xaositect walking over and stabbing him. Because his plot immunity only extends to thwarting player characters doing anything about him.

AncientH:

All Guvnors are lawful (no surprise), but there is no mention of any of them being paladins, which I think is unfortunate. I would absolutely love a Dwarf Paladin judge who used a warhammer instead of a gavel, and delivered Dwarf Fortress-style Hammerdwarf beatings to people that broke the law. That would be hilarious. Sadly, the Guvnors don’t get to be hilarious.

In keeping with the theme of “we don’t get out much Friday nights,” the Guvnors have no appreciably interesting history, internal disputes, or things to do adventuring-wise. There is a group of math-nerds in the Guvnors called (creatively) “The Mathematicians” who have a hard-on for Mechanus. You’d think they would be gear-heads or something, but no, math-nerds.

FrankT:

'Course, factioneers can't always go haring off on adventures.

This is the biggest failure of the authors right there. They are writing a book for a cooperative storytelling game about haring off on adventures. The idea that you should write in player options that specifically preclude doing that is the worst game design mistake you could possibly make. It's worse than having infinite power loops. It fails at question #0: “Can we tell a story with this”.

In order to fit with their representation of Order as “unnecessarily complicated”, the Fraternity of Order has seventeen ranks that have letter/number codes (letters later in the alphabet outrank earlier letters, while lower numbers outrank higher numbers). You're supposed to spend a long time working your way through the ranks, and the lower ranks specifically interfere with your ability to go on adventures. I don't know what the authors were thinking.

AncientH:

In one of the PLANESCAPE Monstrous Compendiums, there is a reference to a much better faction that did the “knowledge == power” thing better than the Guvnors; they were called the Incantifiers and basically collected arcane magic. I can get behind that idea. The Guvnors, on the other hand, are officious little rules lawyers that are collecting legal power in a setting where people can toadify you, or wrap your entrails around their god-tree and get a shiny magic apple for their trouble.

Hilariously, some of the guys that benefit best from being Guvnors are Wild Mages, because they love anything that gives them any shred of help in navigating the Wild Surge tables. However, the real high point for any PC is the ability to research a “loophole” ability—a self-determined, personal power pretty much equivalent to a spell-like ability, that is discovered by the PC (of any class) by studying the laws of the multiverse and learning how to exploit them. This is actually rather a cool concept, which is unfortunate because it’s wasted on a bunch of glossators and jurists. Also, the way it is written sucks because each time they use the ability there is a 10% cumulative chance the universe will notice and tell them to go fuck themselves, no matter how much time and money they’ve spent researching it. Which means that a studious (and wealthy) Guvnor might pick up several little surprise tricks, and then blow them all in an afternoon and have to start back over from scratch. Oh, except that they can only gain like one loophole per five levels.

See, I like the idea of a fighter figuring out how to get his sword to turn into elemental flame for a bit or a thief to teleport between shadows. I like that these are individual abilities that can be learned without changing their class, and are infinitely customizable to the character. But then you say “yeah, but you can only maybe use them 10 times and then I may never let you get another one.” And that sucks.

FrankT:

The actual mechanics for being a Guvner are incomprehensible. First of all, you get to comprehend languages. That's nice enough in most campaign worlds, and nicer in Planescape where you meet a lot of forehead aliens. At 5th level you get to start messing with die rolls. You get to give yourself a tiny bonus and/or an opponent a tiny penalty once a day. It really isn't clear where the tiny buff and the tiny curse count against the same usage limit or not. The big deal is the “Loophole”. As an administrator you get a reality hack all your own and you get to make up a unique ability that your character gets outside the normal class structure. You get to argue with the MC about what you should be able to do, the actual guidelines are more than vague.

AncientH:

The DEEP SECRET of this faction is that maybe the Factol is a petitioner (i.e. a soul that died and went to the outer plane its alignment/deity-of-choice said it should, to be re-embodied) for Sigil/The Lady of Pain. This makes no sense because the Lady is explicitly not a deity, and even if it were true there aren’t many adventure hooks you can hang off it because who the fuck cares?