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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6383810" data-attributes="member: 2067">Hehehe, hilarious.I think this is a reasonable issue, but one that is something that is possible to address in design. like, your Paladin never forgot that they were a Paladin, right? Because "Paladin" defines so much about them that they use in play, from their aesthetics (the weapons and armor they use) to their class powers (which get use in every adventure!) to even their alignment or their associated NPCs and character goals. In PS, a character's belief should be that important, IMO. More so than race or class, your BELIEF should define your equipment, your powers, your associates, and your goals. THAT should be the formative seed of any character you create. Hell, when I tried my most recent PS game, I floated the idea of people picking a faction INSTEAD of a class. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Which isn't to say I took away paladins, but more that I wanted someone who wanted to play a "paladin" to first decide what belief they wanted to espouse, and then organically find their way to being whatever kind of paladin happened to shake out of that. Lay on Hands, IIRC, you could find as a member of the Athar, the Believers, the Harmonium, and the Sensates. But if you were a Mercykiller, you wouldn't find yourself with that ability. I think it's maybe worth it to point out that PC's in most PnP games have trouble joining ANY organization, especially one that isn't part of character creation. The nature of freelance murderhobos is that they don't want to be tied down to any particular group of jerks, and the nature of PS means that there is no group that is "right" because that's kind of the conflict in the setting. And the nature of most players is that Proper Nouns go poof in your memory. Faction membership needs to overcome these tendencies if it is to be something present to a high degree in any individual game. Factions are an iconic, PS-y thing, but it's not surprising to me that so many people have difficulty integrating them into the games that they personally run, because they're a bit awkward unless you make them really FORMATIVE to your character. But, IMO, if you don't, you may as well be running a plane-hopping FR adventure in certain respects. Which can be a lot of fun, but doesn't highlight what makes PS unique as much.Now on to Quickleaf![sblock]Vague, but yeah. I think to a certain degree, every fantasy setting does this (dragons are the abstract concept of greed made manifest; skeletons are the abstract concept of death made manifest, etc.), but PS is explicit and proud about this in a way that not every setting is. And it does it to more stuff. So while not definitively unique, it's a big element that's played up a bunch. As a poll option, it's a little vague. Yeah, this would be the "planewalker" part. While I think you probably COULD do a PS adventure on just one plane, part of the distinct flavor of the setting is in being in the Abyss on Monday and The Plane of Vacuum on Tuesday with a stop in Arcadia for lunch -- it's part of the Wow factor, part of the "taken to the extreme!" idea of the setting. Portals go a long way to facilitate this. I would consider Cant as part of the aesthetics, personally, but in a lot of ways I would think this is one of the MOST important bits. If you can nail this, it'll be identified as a PS adventure regardless of anything else. I think this is important for teasing out the Belief angle -- how the PC's want to answer this question should be what matters, and their answers should be part of what paths they take down the road in the adventure. It also helps keep the adventure itself thematic, so it's a nice writing tool. Less key in and of itself than what it ennables -- characters defined by their affiliation in philosophical clubs. Talking the BBEG to death is a pretty memorable PS-y experience, and helps to keep it distinct from most other settings Meh. Possible, but not unique or special. Like other planar sites, those should be important as destinations, not as filler. If I'm going to the Styx, I need to be having an adventure about memory, forgetting, and the nature of washing away sins, or some other resonant feature of the Styx itself. I'm not just getting on the Styx to get from Pandemonium to Carceri. Regardless of faction membership, significant PS NPC's should largely be "philosophers with clubs" to a certain degree, as in, they are motivated by their beliefs, and they have the power and authority to change the planes with them. It's what separates a Good PS Adventure from a Good Adventure, I think.Important only as a way of "cutting to the action," where "the action" might be occurring on multiple different planes. "The Action" shouldn't be happening without the PC's. Like a few other notes here, important only as much as it ennables getting at the important bits in the settings -- namely, Sigil is a meeting ground for extremes, and place to find a path to wherever you want to go. Useful, iconic, but it's possible to fill that void in other ways, probably. If they're planting a rose in the abyss, it should be because they believe it will DO something, something that will support their own worldviews. I think that part of the idea of a setting built on belief is that villains and heroes are not always immediately transparent or clear, or even are up to individual interpretation. Who do you BELIEVE needs to be stopped? Who would pose a risk to the way you want the world to be? Not unique to PS, but an appealing trait of it that it marinates in, a lot like "abstract made manifest."[/sblock]</blockquote>

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