Planescape parties and factions

[Clueless]

Sorry to say that some of the stuff at Planewalker striked me as SO essentialy unbalanced, that it disencouraged me from relying too much on the other stuff that perhaps didn't seem unbalanced at first. Same thing happens with lots of third party stuff, however...

There are also some writeups on the factions themselves that will probably be most useful to you for the fluff. The articles towards the end of this for example:
http://www.planewalker.com/products/released.php

But if you're talking about the feats that were released - keep in mind the PDFs that come out are considered generally in 1st draft form. We *want* feedback. And nothing so vague as 'it's unbalanced' (Since that's not exact enough to get things balanced again usually.) If you've got some specific bits that you'd do differently then certainly drop us a line and let us know - without the feedback we're flying blind. And with a mechanics revision mid-write up (thank you 3.5...) we're even more in the course of revisions.

 

[LiKral]

I've run one Planescape game, and played in another, and in neither of them did most of the players really understand the nature of the factions. I think the factions are a little too different from the way that our culture looks at things for most people to be able to easily identify with them.
In my experience, people always join the Sensates and the Free League because they are easy to understand and seem reasonably sane. They never join the Mercykillers or the Bleak Cabal (for instance) because they are hard to identify with.
I'd advise giving out some kind of "cheat sheet" that describes all the factions in 2 sentences or less, if you want your players to make interesting choices.

 

[wocky]

I re-checked planewalker the other day and found that the "unbalanced" feats I found probably were some I found outside of the PDFs (around the site). A quick browse through the faction feats in the PDF didn't strike me as particularly unbalanced. I'll check them more throughly and give some feedback.

 

[wocky]

I'd advise giving out some kind of "cheat sheet" that describes all the factions in 2 sentences or less, if you want your players to make interesting choices.

Yes... I planned going this way. It's tough being a player when you haven't read about the setting and want to play along with it.

 

[Clueless]

I re-checked planewalker the other day and found that the "unbalanced" feats I found probably were some I found outside of the PDFs (around the site). A quick browse through the faction feats in the PDF didn't strike me as particularly unbalanced. I'll check them more throughly and give some feedback.

*nod* cool... there's a fairly large difference between the releases and the site material. (As in two different project teams and writing groups... ) Site material comes in directly from the fans and isn't held to quite the same level of sticklerness - or we might not have *any* submissions. If it sounds neat or useful or at least worthy of consideration.. up it goes to be commented on by the readers.

It's the PDF releases that get a real hairy eyeball from a number of folks before they go live. And after they go live too.