I think the "outlander" is like the "person from a foreign culture in the pseudo-medieval melieu." So it might cover folks like stereotypical nordic-barbarian-culture folks, people like pseudo-Arabic nomads from the desert, or even possibly "Merchant from Kara-Tur."
If WotC had really gone that route, it would be the dumbest.background.ever. I mean seriously,
one background to cover "all foreigners" is not just dumb, it's bordering the racist. How the hell can I think everyone outside our kingdom/continent has the same skills proficiencies?
I'm with [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] and [MENTION=61026]tuxgeo[/MENTION], and seriously hope WotC has followed the same idea. "Outlander" as simply someone living in the wilderness makes a lot more sense: all other backgrounds describe also how you make (or used to make) your living, and an outlander is someone who doesn't need to be a more specific member of society because she finds her food and makes her shelter in the wild.
Survival and
Nature are the most obvious skill proficiencies for such character.
Then, if you want, you can also use such background to represent an entire barbarian clan in your own setting. In fact, the background is probably going to have a short table of sub-concepts, including the old Guide for example, and maybe Forester, Lumberjack, Nomad or Hunter-gatherer.
I liked the Factions as BGs, BUT are they REALLy backgrounds? I mean, can't people still have normal BGs AND be a member of an organisation?
I personally don't think factions should be backgrounds either. Someone should be a Hiver (urchin or criminal), or from the Lady's Ward (noble) and faction should be something else.
You are both right. Belonging to an organization in most settings doesn't remove your society role. And not only you are a Sage or Soldier by day and a Zhentarim or Harper at night, but you are typically a Sage or Soldier
within and
for the Zhentarim or the Harpers.
However,
in some settings, backgrounds can be effectively used to represent factions
instead of society roles. And that's the case when a setting is actually built around factions, and the majority of characters are supposed to belong to one. Planescape is an example, and Rokugan is another.
In thoses cases, you can use backgrounds as normal in 5e, and handle factions narratively or add your own extra system for them. Or alternatively, you can use backgrounds for factions, and handle society roles narrative or add a system for them. You can even use backgrounds for both, in which case you can let each player choose either a faction or a "job", OR EVEN allow PCs to have 2 backgrounds, one of each type!
In Rokugan for example, the PCs are all nobles, they don't have a profession or any other society role. But if you give all of them then Noble background, then you kinda lose the purpose of the backgrounds system which is that of providing character diversity. Instead, since all PCs belong to a
clan (or otherwise Ronin), you can use backgrounds to represent different clans (in my 5e conversion of Rokugan, I choose to represent different
families, because IMO that's even better).
