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Planescape PbP

I've been following the Google+ community for Planescape. I'm nostalgic for the setting and I wanted to see if there is any interest in a Play by Post game. The only d20 system I'm familiar with is Pathfinder. Would be interested to see the game played again using 2ed rules!

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Re: Planescape PbP

I'd be interested in something like that; I've been working on some Planescape stuff for Pathfinder for some time. I don't really use Google+, though. Do you know anybody else who might be interested? Were you looking to GM, or just trying to find a group?

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Re: Planescape PbP

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone else who's interested. There seems to be a lot of activity in the Planescape community on Google +, so that might be a good place to recruit.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/114763908734601085075

My preference would be to play, but I'm open.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I might be interested. I've always wanted to do a planescape game and have never gotten the chance.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I'd still love to run or play in a Dungeon World/Dark Heart of a Dreamer game, though I'd be willing to play in a 2e game.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Besides 2ed, what systems are people comfortable with and like to Play? Dungeon World looks like an OSR clone. My experience is with HARP/ RM. I've picked up Pathfinder, Hackmaster, DCC, Savage Worlds, and BRP/ Legend, but am still trying to figure out the rules. If we can come to a consensus on a system, maybe we can get something up and running.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Appearances can be deceiving. Dungeon World is an Apocalypse World hack, which means it's closer to something like Fate or even Fiasco-- indie story games, basically-- than a retroclone. It's hacked to resemble D&D, vaguely, mostly in terms of the standard six ability scores, polyhedral damage dice, and Vancian magic. Those don't inform the system as much as one might think.

I won't only play DW, by any means, but there are things I'd like to suggest taking from it regardless of system, such as awarding XP for roleplaying (for hewing closely to your alignment, faction, whatever) and not on a per-monster basis.

I've played D&D 3e and 4e, Pathfinder, Castles & Crusades, Savage Worlds once, Fate, White Wolf/Storyteller, and various others.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Of the games you mentioned, I'm most familiar with Pathfinder. I'm actually not a big fan of Savage Worlds, and I've played a lot of Call of Cthulhu but haven't looked at any other BRP stuff. I haven't played Hackmaster or Dungeon Crawl Classics, so I'm hesitant to express an opinion there, but they don't really look like my cup of tea. On the other hand, Dungeon World looks interesting, but again I don't really know anything about it.

I wouldn't have a problem running or playing in a Second Edition game, but honestly my past attempts to revisit AD&D haven't been very successful. Once the nostalgia factor wears off, most people seem to get frustrated with the system pretty quickly, and the game sort of falls apart. That said, I'm game if you guys think 2e (or 1e, for that matter) would be fun.

Not to bring up the unwelcome specter of a nearly-dead system, but I personally don't have a problem with 4th edition, either. It benefits from being a good deal simpler than 3.5 or Pathfinder, and I like *some* of the concepts the system introduced. I don't expect that suggestion to gain much traction; I just thought I'd put it out there.

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Re: Planescape PbP

One of the guys on the Google+ group has been doing a blog about using Fate for Planescape, and it sound pretty interesting, so I'd be happy to give that a shot. Not very familiar with the system, though. Using an alternate experience or advancement system would be fine by me; a fair number of people doing Pathfinder have actually stopped using experience points altogether, and just let characters level up when it's appropriate to their game.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I don't know anything about Fate. I would do Pathfinder. It looks like there are resources on-line on converting Pathfinder to Planescape. I can see that AD&D 2ed getting boring after awhile. I'm not familiar with 4ed, but I have the books for 3.5 and would get up to speed.

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4e is... well, it's a pretty big departure from 3.5. They pretty much rebuilt the whole game from the ground up, and a *lot* of people hated it. Pathfinder probably wouldn't exist if they hadn't changed so much in 4e, or if the changes hadn't triggered such a negative reaction. I actually like both games, though, and have no problem with running Pathfinder if that appeals to people.

I really only brought it up because I'm playing in a 4e game right now for the first time in years, and I find I like a lot of things about their take on hit points. It's never been very clear what, exactly HP are supposed to represent (resistance to fatigue? meat density? some kind of plot armor?), and while 4e doesn't clarify the matter a whole lot, it generally treats them as a combination of endurance and morale.

As a result, you can regain hit points fairly quickly between encounters (though there's still a limit to how much punishment you can take each day), and "healing" doesn't have to be magical. The Warlord class is basically built around giving inspiring speeches (or just barking orders) to keep the party going when the going gets tough, thus replenishing their HP.

For Planescape, I think a "hit points as morale" system like that would work better than the traditional take on them, since a lot of the Factions have ideological problems with receiving healing magic. The Athar, Doomguard, Dustmen, and possibly even the Fated become pretty unattractive choices for PCs in a system where positive energy channeled from the powers is often the only thing keeping the party alive.

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Re: Planescape PbP

The key thing about advancement in Dungeon World is that you gain XP for trying, not necessarily succeeding. It's a relatively short experience track which rewards roleplaying, so I like it. When running D&D, I tend not to track XP unless it's a pure dungeon crawl/hack-and-slash affair.

...If Fate is on the table, I'd be interested in running or playing that. Fate would actually work extremely well for Planescape, with Fate Points being more or less a belief economy, Fate being spent to control the narrative/your life. And given how you must actually reduce your permanent pool of Fate Points to gain supernatural powers and feats ("Stunts"), you can actually build quite powerful starting characters who are actually on a roughly even keel with ordinary mortals-- simply because ordinary mortals have a much greater leeway when it comes to acting against external demands and their own inner natures ("Aspects"). The whole game is basically a tug-of-war between Freedom and Power-- the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. It's built into the mechanics of the game, which is highly collaborative and improvisational.

I love Fate, and it's actually very easy to play, but i's about as far removed from RAW D&D as we're likely to get. It might take some getting used to if D&D is all you've ever played, but it's well worth it.

Even if we don't play it, I recommend reading up on Fate (http://www.faterpg.com/resources/). There are some brilliant ideas for running any RPG, particularly Aspects and City Creation.

There's not much point in running D&D 4th Edition without its well-balanced, enjoyable combat system, and I wouldn't recommend 4e combat for a forum game. It's highly visual, there's a lot of bookkeeping, and all the triggered actions just bog everything down. My favourite version of 4e by far was their version of Gamma World, which cut out a lot of the bookkeeping elements. I would have loved 4e had it stayed closer to d20 Modern and Star Wars Saga Edition, but they cut out a lot of great ideas (the condition track, talent trees, limited base classes with easy multiclassing, prestige classes, the Noble) and added some new ideas I didn't like (healing surges, daily item power uses, daily powers in general, leveled powers). 4e was just starting to hum along nicely when they canned it-- Dark Sun and Essentials were especially well done. Sigh. Ah well.

I don't think I'd care to play D&D 3e/Pathfinder again. The system is too granular and static for my liking. Too much prep-work and research, too many skills and feats to choose.

I've always liked the Vitality/Wounds dynamic of hit points. The new Star Wars RPG handles this particularly nicely, where you have Strain (physical and mental, easily recovered-- something that would give you temporary hit points in D&D would recover your Strain), Wounds (entirely physical, harder to recover), and Critical Injuries, which are suffered when you take further damage when you're already over your Wound Threshold. That means rolling on a big chart, where lower rolls might not kill you or even knock you out, and the higher rolls are likely to be gruesome. Brought to you by the makers of Dark Heresy, naturally.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I've heard that about 4ed. I also heard that they radically changed the cosmology of the game. Well, I'm all in with Pathfinder if we can find a consensus.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I get what you're saying about 4e; it would be really hard to do as a PbP, now that I think about it. They did change the cosmology, too, though mostly in terms of the overall organization of the planes; the old familiar places are still there, just sort up mixed up and jumbled together. One of the developers working on D&D Next pointed out rather cleverly that, considering the infinite scope of the planes, the default Second Edition, Third Edition, and Fourth Edition cosmologies could all be "accurate," all representing different approaches to mapping the unmappable.

I'm familiar with Fate in terms of the broad strokes, I just haven't played it before and I don't know the details of the system. I'd honestly be up for whatever; the system isn't as important to me as getting a good group together.

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I'd still be interested in 2e, just because I've never actually played it. But I don't think I'd enjoy playing Planescape with all of 3e's restrictions. And I'd still like to throw my hag in the ring to run either Fate or Dungeon World.

Edit: But I'd still *consider* Pathfinder, depending on what the game was about. What kind of stuff have you been working on for Pathfinder, CatDoom?

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Re: Planescape PbP

Really I've just been tinkering with the system from the Pathfinder Faction Guide to represent the Factions (naturally), converting key NPCs (the Factols, mostly, although I'll likely never need the stats) and races (particularly the Githzerai), and I've come up with some stuff to work the new classes from Pathfinder into the setting. I'm planning on doing a Zerth archetype for the Magus class (inspired by Dakkon, of course), and probably Githzerai-friendly and Cypher-friendly monk archetypes.

A couple years back I did a conversion of "The Eternal Boundary" and put together an introductory scenario for a party of primes (partly based on some material from "Well of Worlds"). I've had a few Planescape campaign ideas buzzing around my head for a while, but truth be told I'm not terribly good at adventure design. >_>

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Re: Planescape PbP

Maybe you should run this game, then. Smiling No better practice than a little trial by fire, and you don't always have to have the whole adventure prepared straight off the bat. Even if it you didn't run the whole campaign, one-shots are actually good for PbP games.

Or you could put your knowledge to use and play a githzerai. That works too.

So all talk of systems aside, what kind of game would people be interested in running? Dark, light? Hardened planars or green primes? In Sigil or out of it? Pre-Faction War or post? These questions will eventually need to be asked. Personally, the weirder the better. Characters you can't get away with in any other D&D campaign are one of the reasons I so enjoy Planescape.

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Re: Planescape PbP

My default mode, as a GM, tends to be fairly "gray," or perhaps "semi-gritty." High weirdness/sorcery is fine, but some poor jerk still has to clean the bird droppings off of the flying crystal palaces. My approach to morality is similar; there may be angels and demons, and good and evil may be as real and as absolute as the laws of physics, but life is still *complicated,* and even beings literally made of good are forced to make hard, morally ambiguous choices on a daily basis. One of the big reasons I like Planescape is that it fits this approach quite well; a dark alley in Sigil might hide a tense negotiation between the servants of Heaven and Hell, or just a syphilitic indigent drowning his sorrows with cheap rotgut.

Speaking of which, for me, Sigil *is* Planescape. The Great Wheel cosmology, the Blood War, the Githyanki and Githzerai - all of those things (as far as I know) predate the Planescape setting, and I honestly think you could heavily alter or even do away with them and the setting would still be recognizable as long as it was centered on the City of Doors. I love the Factions (and, consequently, do *not* love Faction War), I love the flavor of the different wards and neighborhoods, I love all the quirky NPCs, and I just love the whole concept of the place. I know it's not the first interdimensional crossroads city in the history of fiction, but for my money it's a very well realized one.

About the one thing about Sigil I could do without, honestly, is the Chant. Used in moderation, it can be useful for giving certain Sigilian characters a distinctive "voice," but some of the old Planescape books used it *way* too much, and it's become one of the things about the setting that makes me roll my eyes every time.

Anyway, if I ran a game, it would almost certainly take place primarily in Sigil and, to a lesser extent, the Gate Towns, with periodic adventures in exotic locales beyond the portals for variety.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I like that approach to a game, CatDoom. My preference would be for a full-out planar campaign, instead of one where primes stumble upon the planes.

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Re: Planescape PbP

That all sounds perfect-- I'd say we're on much the same page. I wasn't particularly interested in starting the campaign on the prime anyway. I love Sigil, the factions and the gate-towns.

Planescape Torment was my first exposure to the Outer Planes, so most of its trappings resonate pretty strongly with me-- the badlands around Curst are what I think of when I think of the Outlands, and the city underneath the streets is more alive to me than the walled-off manor houses of the Lady's Ward. Planescape for me is pocket planes and the Civic Festhall, the Great Foundry, the Mortuary and the Hive, hidden places and ghosts and old memories, and the constant background rattle of the Blood War. Also modrons.

I do like the notion of Faction War, but much like Dark Sun's Prism Pentad it removes a lot of the core appeal of the setting, and the book is a little too definitive about how it all transpires for my liking. It's a great resource for an end-of-campaign blowout, but I think you do your players a disservice if you don't let them participate, fight for all they've fought for one last time, with the possibility of changing the outcome.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Good thoughts Unsung. I never got Faction War, but I may pick up a PDF copy. My preference would be to stick what's in the campaign setting and develop our own history. One of my favorite books in the Factol's Manifesto. Are we envisioning a faction-heavy game?

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Could do. Personally I'd enjoy a game where there was a fair bit of tension between the player's politics and their personal feelings. Intra-party conflict is something I like wading through.

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Since others have mentioned Fate, I wouldn't mind it either. It'd be nice to have a PS game using a game not too burdened by strict numbers.

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Oh really? Laughing out loud

Here's an older work-in-progress that set out to adapt Fate specifically to Planescape:
http://potatocubed.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/fatescape.pdf

And here's a more recent attempt, using the most recent revision of the rules.
http://fateoftheplanes.blogspot.ca/

Both have a few things I'd like to change, but Fate has the benefit of being very friendly to houserules and fairly hard to break (unless you knowingly set out to break it).

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I see. Thank you for those links.
I don't know if I'd ever get the opportunity, but I'd just discovered Fate a little while ago when attempting to start a PS game and someone recommended it (unfortunately, the other players voted on 3.5/Pathfinder and from there it turned into a rather... un-Planescape-ish munchkincluster.

But still, my dream of GMing "Unlimited Skies: A Planescape/Spelljammer Advenure" lives on in my heart, like... oh, insert whatever dead deity/archfiend you like here. Orcus? Let's go with Orcus. Like Orcus, waiting to be reinstated to his rightful place, so shall my campaign see its fruition!

I always hated playing Planescape and all its subtleties and possibilities while burdened with D&D mechanics.

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Like I said, I've got no problem with Fate, I just don't know it very well. If we're not using D&D, there's less pressure to try and assemble a group of a particular size, so we could theoretically start playing any tim. It looks like there are four of us interested here on Planewalker; would you want to try and get a couple more players, or do we want to try and start putting together characters and such?

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I say put the word out if you think there's anyone you know who'd be interested in this kind of thing, but we can get started on hashing out what we want the party to be and do at the very least, and start playing whenever we finish with that.

If we're leaning heavily toward Fate as the system, then we might start off with what the Dresden Files RPG called your High Concept and your Trouble-- who you are and what your biggest problem is in life-- and then move on to how we know each other, if we know each other. It's suggested, and it's good advice, that we create the party having decided how we know at least one other person in the group.

On top of the usual motley adventuring party, we could play rival captains of merchant spelljammers, Blood War mercenaries on furlough, sparring faction demagogues, members of a street gang or a band of Collectors, or people who just happen to frequent the same bar-- a group of exemplars on the outs with their respective species, perhaps. We could play Golden Lords, meeting up for tea, intrigue, and our weekly game of bridge, or hard-luck immortals, living in ramshackle garrets and reminiscing on days of empire and glory.

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We should be like the A-Team of the planes. Chaotic good soldiers from the upper planes falsely accused of being traitors.

The opening sequence can be them rescuing their Bleaker comrade from the Gatehouse.

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I downloaded the Fate 2.0 rules last night and they look interesting. Who is going to DM? I assume CatDoom. I will post a like to this discussion on Google+ to see if there is any interest.

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Yeah, it seesm CatDoom wanted to.
Otherwise, I would do it.

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You could always cooperate in broad strokes on a story (still keeping any big reveals to yourself) and then take turns actually GMing the game.

I am somewhat partial to the idea of the party being sponsored by one of the Golden Lords, maybe Zadara or a new creation, possibly even one of the player characters, who spurs the group to acts of apparent Good for her own mysterious ends. Thoughts?

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Sure, I can run the game, and I have no problem with brainstorming plot ideas as a group. I did have an idea for a sort of episodic, macguffin-driven story arc about tracking down volumes or sections of a rare collection of planar folktales for a wealthy scholar (probably a Guvner or a Taker). The party would be motivated by faction ties and/or the promise of a handsome reward, but would soon find out that they're not the only ones after the text, and that there might be far more at stake than a few old books...

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Heh. That's usually the kind of plotline I do.
That storyline also perfectly fits the interests of a character I have in mind.

If you're open to suggestions, I have a lot of planescape NPC ideas that could make for good major or minor characters.

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@CatDoom: I like it. Smiling

There's actually a whole section in the DFRPG devoted to building a city together (http://www.faterpg.com/dl/df/citycreation.html). It's generated by both the GM and the players, and that includes populating the campaign with NPCs.

In Dresden Files, it would be a real-world city, and they actually suggest using your real-world hometown. But the point is really that it be a city that everyone in the campaign knows well, and as CatDoom said, Planescape more or less *is* Sigil. The process is about campaign themes, which turn into aspects which are then invoked and compelled continuously through play. You also get to establish ongoing, overarching threats which face the city. One of the nice things about this sort of approach is that it leads to players being very invested in the campaign right from the start.

The interesting thing about this approach is that the themes and threats are unique to the group that's choosing them. Between two groups of players, each might sketch out the same city in an entirely different way. Even in a non-Fate game, I've had one party who looked at Sigil through the lens of mercenaries and merchants, an infinite market for their prime world's goods and services. In another game, the players see Sigil as a violent, dirty slum compared to the city on the Hinterlands where they'd taken up permanent residence.

While creating the city, each player and the GM also get to choose (or invent) one, maybe two recurring locations which are important to the characters, because those will get an aspect too. Then you have the chance to put a face to each location, theme, and threat, and that means thinking up NPCs.

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A few character ideas:

-A mild-mannered, dapperly dressed rare books dealer who happens to be a rather visible representative of a little-known race of winged, batlike, scarred planar nomads-- storytellers, musicians, puppeteers, and fortunetellers, who celebrate death and embrace pain as an essential part of a life fully experienced. A tribe of them has recently moved into Sigil. Naturally they fit in rather well with the Sensates, although their ecstatic dances frequently draw blood, which has led to more than one 'misunderstanding' with the Harmonium. Their beliefs about death are also almost completely opposite to the Dustmen, and their presence in the Hive has led to a certain friction.

-A veteran planewalker, a man without a shadow who has lived an unnaturally long time, and who up until recently was the captain of a merchant spelljammer. He was unceremoniously stripped of his commission after his ship was boarded by a githyanki raiding party; he repelled the pirates but scuttled the ship, and saved much of the crew at the expense of the ship's cargo. Some would call him a hero, but they don't know all the sordid details of his long, eventful life.

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I was just watching the movie "The Ninth Gate" last night, so this perfect. I pulled out my old crate of Planescape books from the attic last night, so I'm up and running. I'm going through the Planewalker Handbook for character ideas. Since we're adopting this game to a new rule system, what restrictions are there for races/ characters (e.g., no Rogue Modrons)?

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-A jaded Psychomachia agent who's a twelve-foot-tall fallen archon. A neurotic beholder dockworker who, appearances aside, is just an ordinary Indep and tries to keep his head down (but of course, he's all head). A completely insufferable lantern archon with special dispensation to serve in the Harmonium (Measure Two). A shapechanging silver dragon beggar who lives in the sewers with his hoard of wooden nickels, clipped coppers, and old newspapers.

-A snakeblooded, passionately ideological but naive young journalist with aspirations of being a great poet, from a prime-world city ruled by intellectual trolls and yuan-ti purebloods, the only survivors of a plague which the yuan-ti might have actually engineered. A city of intense economic and spiritual corruption, made wealthy its anything-goes flesh-and-organ markets, and by sheltering extraplanar fugitives with the wealth to build their mansions and fortresses in the city. The world's only semblance of a conscience comes in the form of a newspaper with Anarchist ties, whose enemies tend to suffer grotesque accidents, and who are the sole employer of the aforementioned young journalist.

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Hey everybody! Busy day today, but I love the ideas you've been throwing out. I'd be happy to see some of Githyankee's as well; if you like, you can email me at [REDACTED] with stuff that might be too long to post here on the forums.

I still need to take the time to really read over the Fate 2.0 rules, but since it seems to be a pretty generic system, I'm not going to set any hard restrictions on races or whatnot at this point. A Rogue Modron should work fine, as might some other kinds of "fallen" exemplars. Exemplars who are still on "active duty" might be trickier, since they're likely to have some pretty strong ties outside of the factions and other power-brokers of Sigil, but any interesting character concept could probably work.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Here's a couple of my Planescape NPCs

Here's some of my Planescape characters:

Count Cauchemar: A Rakshasa of Wealth and Taste. He has a monumental fortune, but he's less interested these days in gains, putting only as much effort into his investments as is required to maintain his income. He's gone philosophical lately, and is more interested in obtaining Things Of Interest (book, artifacts, and so forth). He really doesn't like other lower planar creatures because he thinks they are "boring", and although he is still evil and still has plans for world domination, he's pretty laid-back and eccentric. Philosophically has most in line with the Guvners, though not quite as stodgy as the stereotype, mostly as a matter of having a scientific mindset. He isn't just a collector, though, but also a creator. He's a talented artist and inventor and his magical abilities lean towards crafting magical items.

The two PC ideas I'm debating right now are
1) An Opposer who rips off the Transcendent Order. Where they are "action without thought" he is "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".
2) A Sensate (though a bit eclectic) who is basically a bard, but uses all five senses to inspire people instead of just music.

Rubrik and Codec: Modrocops. Rubrik is a hardass Mercykiller, though he is affiliated with the faction in name only due to his refusal to follow orders (he sees everyone else's action as not be up to code and that only he understands proper procedure, hence his inability to take orders from anyone). Would probably wear a trenchcoat and have permanent stubble if he was a human. Codec has an official designation of belonging to the Fraternity of Order, although he recognizes Rubrik as his sole superior. He has been shrunk down to miniature size and has functional wings. He serves as an encyclopedia and translator for Rubrik and his the only being he will take advice from.

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Re: Planescape PbP

You know, you could could very well play Count Cauchemar in Fate, actually, depending on our starting power level. When you say monumental, are we talking about Golden Lords amounts of money? One of Fate's more interesting innovations, I think, is treating Resources as a skill, something you roll rather than keeping track of. Because it's not how much you have, it's what you do with it, after all.

How's your Sensate use all of the five senses? That could be very interesting, depending on the scale of some of their installation pieces. And an Opposer who deliberately sets out to counter the Transcendent Order sounds like someone who could enter into supervillain territory. Not that I'm saying having a supervillain in the party would be a bad thing. You don't have to spin it that way, but just the sheer scale of such an enterprise is something I find interesting-- that, and making enemies of the Transcendent Order, who in my mind are possibly the most neutral and inoffensive of all the factions. Dangerous when riled, though.

I like the Modocops, I must admit. Are they a PC idea as well, or NPCs?

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Re: Planescape PbP

Yeah, he's Golden Lord levels. He was created largely as a patron type NPC. I imagine that he actually derives most of his resources through scheming on the Prime Material plane, though, so he doesn't actually interact that much on the business side of things on the planes.

I imagine his "base" in Sigil is actually just a random doorway without an attached building, that's a portal to his villa on a Prime world somewhere (or perhaps a demiplane).

Though, it might be interesting to play him without his wealth as a factor. If he's based from the Prime and has come to the planes to go on "safari" and hence is disconnected from his wealth for the duration of the adventure. Gosh, now I have an image of a rakshasa dressed like a stereotypical British adventurer, pith helmet and everything.

Modrocops were also NPC ideas. They would tend to be played either as comical but competent antagonists or perhaps as guest allies on a quest, depending on where PCs are along the law/chaos axis.

Note that he doesn't specifically set out to counter the Ciphers. He just uses their methods to facilitate Opposition philosophy. So he doesn't seek them out to fight, it's just that he happens to be the perfect counter to one since as soon as they are attacking, he's already blocking. He was originally invented as a nemesis for a Cipher character I was writing a fic about.
His real goal is actually world peace, because he decided he will fight against conflict itself, hence his focus on defense and reacting to and subsequently neutralizing threats, rather than actively picking fights.

The Sensate runs off the same schtick as bardic music. So, it's the same sort of effects, with some thematical variance. But for instance, she could create perfumes that have the same effect as, say, inspire courage, or cook a meal that tastes so great it gives the effects of Heroes Feast. Using dance movements to hypnotize someone.
So basically, the same way bards use music to channel effects, she would use color, scent, and so on to do similar feats.
She might not be *quite* so versatile in this game, but that's the gist.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I've been reading up on the Fate 2.0 rules. General question for the group- how many Aspects/ Phases are we thinking about? Also, how are we going to handle magic?

As far as a character, my thought was to run a tiefling orphan who believes he was the calling to become a proxy of an Upper Plane power. Another character concept would be a Prime Human paladin who was trapped in the lower planes while on a crusade against Devils, who escapes to Sigil.

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Re: Planescape PbP

@Githyankee- I honestly think that playing Count Cauchemar with Resources as an apex Skill would be fascinating. Your two other ideas both seem like projects he might actually be working on, or people he's been acting as a patron for.

@Modric- I like the tiefling idea. What power does he want to serve, and what makes him so sure that it's his calling? Maybe he carries a drop of celestial blood as well as fiendish? He must be meeting some resistance from some of the god's other followers. How does the power in question feel about the idea?

Well, first we have to decide whether or not we want to use spell memorization in the game, because it's one of those things that doesn't translate into Fate very well. There's a few options for how to do it, but unless someone wants to play a spellcaster, then we might just want to leave the question open for now.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Worth keeping around as a reference:
http://phreeow.net/images/Fate%20Basics.pdf

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Re: Planescape PbP

So this is built on some Fate 3.0+ assumptions, which I can change if we do end up using Fate 2.0, but here's the gist of the character I think I want to play.

Pross iya Thathen
Pross is an immaculately dressed, graceful man with fine manners and a gentle way about him. He’s also Achenari, a band of flying, winged, bat-like humanoids. He dresses in specially tailored Sigilian finery, and prefers dark vests and billowing sleeves held to his membranous wings by iron torcs around his upper arms and loops of thread around his fingers. Pross’s skin is bluish-black, covered in a tracery of white scars, thin and thick. His eyes are large and entirely black. His brown fur is kempt and well-coifed.

The Achenari have wandered gypsy-like across the planes for centuries, ever since they abandoned their world in the aftermath of one of the Blood War’s extended eruptions on the Prime. They have recently taken refuge in Sigil, where their reputation as dancers, storytellers, and troublemakers precedes them. The Achenari celebrate death and pain as experiences to be transcended rather than feared. Such things are not to be forced on anyone, but they are meant to be sought out, as evidenced by each Achenar’s collection of scars. Achenar blood dances, a combination of friendly brawl and ceremonial bloodletting, are often so frenetic that outsiders often assume the participants are out to murder each other.

Aspects
Dealer in Rare Books and Planar Histories
Achenar Gypsy (he’s not ashamed of his heritage, but Clueless are frightened by his appearance and planars often look down on him because of his race)
Far Traveller (his work has taken him all across the planes)
Pain Doesn’t Hurt (like most Achenar, Pross is inured to pain)
Nimble Flyer (because those wings aren’t just for show)

Skills
Great +4: Notice
Good +3: Investigation, Lore
Fair +2: Athletics, Brawling, Contacts, Rapport, Resources
Average +1: Burglary, Crafts, Empathy, Physique, Stealth, Will

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Re: Planescape PbP

This is a character I created using the Fatescape house rules.

Thane (Prime- Human)

Level 3 (3 Aspects, 18 Skill Pts, 3 Fate Points, 3 Stunts)

Concept- “Refugee From Darkness”

Aspects
1. Clueless Knight- Thane was trained as a knight on a distant Prime World. He traveled on a Crusade with his liege lord to the Nine Hells to vanquish evil, but his party was defeated and captured by the Baatezu.

2. Blood Warrior- Thane survived by fighting for the Baatezu in the Blood War as a slave-warrior. His time with the Baatezu hardened Thane, making him suspicious and untrusting. He also learned the Baatezu’s technique of how to “motivate” people.

3. Escape to Sigil- During a campaign in the Grey Waste, Thane escaped through a portal to Sigil. Since then, he joined the Harmonium faction.

Skills
Weapon (blades)- 3 (Good)
Might- 2 (Fair)
Endurance- 3 (Good)
Survival (lower planes)- 2 (Fair)
Intimidation 2 (Fair)
Healing- 2 (Fair)
Alertness- 2( Fair)
Investigation- 1 (Average)
Leadership- 1 (Average)

Stunts
Vigilance (Alertness)
Menace (Intimidation)
Parry (Weapon)

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Re: Planescape PbP

Hope this didn't suddenly lose interest.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Not to step on toes, but we could still start up the game. Fate shouldn't suffer too badly for having only two players and one GM, assuming you're still up for it, Githyankee. Assuming we're just talking about a first adventure to introduce the PCs to each other, that sort of thing.

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Re: Planescape PbP

I'm still interested.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Okay. Well. I'll get back tomorrow and post some stuff.

I'm guessing CatDoom is just busy.

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Re: Planescape PbP

Absolutely, and I wouldn't want to exclude him. But there's things we could be doing in Sigil before the campaign proper even starts. I don't actually know what those things are, but I'm eager to find out.

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