You arrive in pre-Faction War Sigil

>you arrive in pre-Faction War Sigil
>what faction do you join?

Factions are for sheep

I join one of the Outlands sects. Ring-Givers sound nice. I like sharing.

>faction war
Why do you have to pretend like that fanfic happened, man?

Harmonium, probably.

Bleak Cabal

The Bleak Cabal because I already feel the Grim Retreat coming on but still want to help people and find meaning and enjoyment in the things I like.

The Fated, because only the strong survive!

The dustmen.
Those bodies have to go somewhere, goyim.

Athar
>tips fedora

My character from the only planescape campaign I ever played joined the Takers, as I was on a hard Nietzsche jag at that point IRL. I'd probably still join them if I woke up in Sigil, partially because of philosophy, but mostly because I want to go to Ysgard when I die. If I'm my real-life self with the same stats, though, I might want to buff up a bit before I join the might makes right faction.

>Factions are for sheep

You realise that makes you a member of the free league, right?

>Found the Harmonium tyrant.

The one with the hottest chicks.

Can you give me a quick rundown on them?
I dont know much about Planescape, and if I only have the names and images to go off, I would probably go for Dustmen or maybe Sign of One.

Not really such a thing as a 'quick rundown', but a simple search on wikipedia would set you on the right path. The Athar believe the gods of the multiverse are not TRUE gods, merely powerful entities. The Bleak Cabal believe there is no overarching point to ANYTHING. The Godsmen believe life is a test, a chance to refine yourself into godhood. The Doomguard believe entropy is the mightiest force in the multiverse and should not be fought against. The Dustmen believe that life is not real, that they are already in an afterlife and therefore they seek 'True Life'. The Fated believe if you want something, do whatever is in your power to work towards it. The strong get what they want. The Fraternity of Order believe there are laws to all things in the multiverse, and by knowing the laws they can circumvent them. The Free League believe in freedom.. and that's it. The Harmonium believe in universal peace and harmony.. or else. The Mercykillers believe in justice (as in, the application of punishment for the commission of crimes). The Anarchists believe all factions and powers must be torn down, as they are all liars keeping you from truly understanding the multiverse. The Sign of One believe the universe is what they BELIEVE it to be. The Sensates believe in going out and experiencing everything there is to experience. The Ciphers believe in action without thought, to better attune to the will of the multiverse. The Xaositects believe that randomness and chaos are what rules everything and try to live out that belief.

And bear in mind that is the most simplistic possible explanation of each faction. The factions are one of the best things about the setting, and worth looking into if you haven't.

The Fated or the Free League sounds like the wisest option.

>a quick rundown

herewego.jpg

Literally, everyone hates the Free League, including the Lady of Pain.

That's not true though? The Harmonium does, but they're dickheads that nobody else really likes.

Why though?
Because they don't want to be shackled to anyone like a dog?

Basically. Everyone hates the Free League because they're a bunch of "muh freedom" lovers who don't have the "dedication" to align themselves with a single cause.

The Lady of Pain hates them because they lack a singular goal she can use to dangle a carrot in front of them with.

Are you really implying the Lady of Pain does shit like 'dangle goals' in front of people? She shreds people that imply that sort of thing about her, you know.

Also, the Free League is still a faction, so it's better than ACTUAL 'independants'. The Indeps work for every faction on-and-off, even the Harmonium sometimes and they DESPISE each other. Only the Harmonium view them as 'lacking dedication', the rest mostly just don't give a shit about them.

I always wandered what the difference between the Xaositects, the Free League and the Anarchists is.

Arent they basically the same shit?

The Godsmen have the truest convictions. I have seen it firsthand. Once I climb to the top of the Fourfold Furnaces and expel the hags and godlings from Gehenna, I will become a goddess the likes of which The Great Wheel has never seen before. After all, I am a demiurge!

Don't miss my next concert at Golden Volcano in The Crawling City! I've got three special surprises that sing when you cook them.

They are all slightly to severely more aligned with chaos than with law, but they are by no means even remotely similar. The Xaositects seek chaos for the sake of chaos, because in their mind order is a false belief overlain on reality in order to gibble gribble wark bark bark shoestring radish. The Anarchists have a collective goal--the tearing down of every faction and organization, because organization prevents enlightenment.

Indeps, on the other hand, are just what they suggest; Independant. They're people who care about personal freedom; to do what you want and to not let other people stop you. They're apolitical individualists as a 'faction'.

Can someone explain to me the difference between Xiaosects and Ciphers? They both seem to be attuned to the cadence of the planes, but Ciphers do so through instinct while I don't know how Xiaosects do so except by being "chaotic". Can someone elaborate on this?

I know nothing about Planescape. I will try the Free League. Do they espouse liberty for al, in a non-meme libertarian fashion?

The Ciphers aren't acting randomly. They still establish goals, but they are meant to clear their mind in order to allow some sort of cosmic force to act through them.
They mostly just want to be left alone to do their own thing. They also hate slavery, and will fight against it. They absolutely despise the Harmonium, and the feeling is mutual, due to the Harmonium's rigid thought-policing, mixed with ACTUAL police-state shit. The Fated are closer to meme-style Libertarianism, at least on the face of it.

Well the Free League sound like my type of guys. Would they welcome a punk wizard with a chip on his shoulder, determined to make magical knowledge free and open for all? A Linus Torvalds of magic, if you will.

The Godsmen, with something of a Free League bent. To be truly free one must first obtain absolute power.

Maybe, as it's not exactly a 'faction' there's not really any 'welcome'. You might find yourself murdered for wanting to share magical knowledge by the wizards that make their living keeping that shit secret! That, or eaten by Incantifers or Hakshear.

Doomguard, because one can never have enough weapons.

Mercykillers of course, the only proper faction for a Paladin.

They're not really.. not really paladin-like, you know? The name says it all. Mercy has no place in that faction, it's justice without mercy.

Yes, real justice. What a proper Paladin stands for. Mercy's whores always lead to more evil in the long run.

This sounds like good shit. Now to find a game.

The Society of Sensation.

It's the most likely faction to have elan in it, and becoming an Elan is top priority. Ageless explorer of the entire multiverse? Absolutely.

Elan don't exist in 2e.

Isn';t the worship of gods forbidden on Sigil?
Like I know that the Lady of Pain killed a door-god and protects the city from demons, angels, and things like that.

Lady doesn't really care as long as you're not starting some shit.

Here's how it works, rookie:
Prisoner attempts to escape, kill them.
Prisoner attempts to bribe you, kill them.
Prisoner kills another prisoner, ...
Kill them?
No, you recruit them, we need more men doing the right thing.

The worship isn't forbidden (unless you're trying to worship the Lady of Pain herself), just the gods themselves. Aoskar tried to usurp Sigil from the LoP, and got fucked UP as a result.

Sounds like a pretty good adventure hook

>Taking prisoners
What kind kind of shit system are you running?

The worship of gods isn't forbidden. What's forbidden is trying to worship the Lady, or trying to actually dethrone her. The god of portal was blasted because of that.

Also, i'm a Dustmen by hearth. Someone who worships death as being the end of existance, while being deeply scared of it.

The League only holds real sway in the Cage, berk.

>Can you give me a quick rundown on them?
>I dont know much about Planescape, and if I only have the names and images to go off, I would probably go for Dustmen or maybe Sign of One.

Here user, I'm such a generous soul that I made you a PDF with descriptions of all the factions.

Not at all, they have HUGE amounts of influence in the Outlands. Many towns that dot the infinite landscape of the Outlands are run by and for Indeps.

What... what sort of adventures do you have in Planescape?

Whoever is selling the pumpkins they need to make those nifty sigil jack o lanterns. They must be doing gang busters.

All sorts of shit. There are a bunch of modules about. One I remember is about an LG entity whose sword was stolen by devils and taken to Did, where a devil was implanted in it. When the PCs return the sword to its owner for a ceremony that will allow the Mount Celestia gate-town to become so LG it moves from the Outlands to Mt Celestia, said devil attempts to seize control of the entity wielding the sword and ruin the ceremony through murder.

There's another one where the PCs end up hunting down a lower-planar entity that's ended up with a bit of a deva's essence mingled with its own, and is becoming... something. The PCs get to choose whether or not to kill it.

Not everything is like that, though. Another module just has the PCs looking for a crashed spelljammer on the top layer of the Abyss.

>Bleak Cabal
>d20 at session start, on nat 20 sit this one out
talk about critical success

>/b/ is xaosfags
Off fuck! Are factionless they berks prime and know you it

Whatever you want, man. The Planes are infinite, all kinds of shit you can do there, not to mention Sigil itself. One day you can go Spelljamming through Realmspace looking for a legendary planet of gold, the next you can be bopping around Dis trying to find a pit fiend's estranged tiefling great-great-great-great grandson. Certainly a lot more room for wild shit like that than normal Prime settings!

Whichever faction wants the Dustmen dead the most.

So... the Dustmen, then.

fug

You can have all sorts of adventurers. I'm running a PS campaign at the moment, and the players are currently infiltrating a yugoloth estate as servants, so that they can steal a component from a yugoloth superweapon before it gets sold off for use in the Blood War. They've looted things from warring castles in Acheron, negotiated a settlement between somebody creating a new breed of Quesars in Belierin and the Guardinals, gone through a megadungeon on the Prime and explored a distorted copy of a Prime Material city on Limbo, among other adventures.

My most well-received adventure involved a rash of serial burnings in Sigil. Specifically, canines and canine-like creatures (e.g. mortal dogfolk, werewolves, hound archons, lupinals) were being magically scorched all over the Lady's Ward by an elusive assailant.

The PCs conducted a long investigation involving various quirky NPCs, including a perverted half-lich angel of the Sensates with one skeletal arm, and a mousy hound archon mansion guard who nervously clutched a Doomguard sword of salt. They eventually pinpointed and cornered a baatezu from the Nine Hells.

But the baatezu had no malice in mind. She was the Baatorian equivalent of a rich yet uneducated country girl. She was a hell hound breeder from the fiery layer of Phlegethos, and this was her first time outside of Phlegethos. The devil had no idea that non-fiery-dogs existed! She thought that all of the canine creatures in Sigil were hell hounds who had lost their flames, and tried to "save" them by scorching them.

Upon learning of her mistake (with the help of a holographic picture book from the PCs, entitled "Canines of the Multiverse") and how flagrantly she had broken Sigil's local laws, the baatezu allowed the PCs to turn her in. Baatezu are evil, but to be so ignorant as to blithely break laws is something that prompts punishment.

But there was a loose end. The baatezu explained that a friendly hellcat had urged her to burn the dogs, and had claimed such to be legal. The PCs tracked down this hellcat, and instead found a feline guardinal, a celestial! Said guardinal had an enmity towards both canine creatures (after having been bullied by wayward moon dogs in Elysium) and baatezu, and thought to humiliate both of them by tricking an ignorant baatezu new to Sigil. The catgirl was in denial over how much harm she had caused, but the PCs made her realize the error of her ways and her potential fall from grace. The guardinal went along with the PCs to be turned in as well.

It was fun.

I always liked the concept of Sensates, but most of my experience of Planescape comes from Torment which seems kinda biased towards them.
Still, they seem fine. Mostly apolitical, and they provide harmless educational services to the public.

I am a fan of the Society of Sensation as well, but primarily for their recorder/sensory stones, which are arguably among the top three most advanced pieces of "technology" available in the setting. Such devices are usually the province of futuristic or sci-fi settings, and yet here they are in an allegedly "medieval" (as "Sigil and Beyond" claims) fantasy setting.

Recorder/sensory stones have such titanic ramifications on society, and it is a disappointment how such consequences are downplayed in the setting books. With a little work, these tools could single-handedly push the Great Wheel into the information age, if not beyond that; the stones are in many ways more advanced than any video-recording technology in our world, as they capture all sensory and emotional information and can dredge up anything a person has experienced.

It is easy to see why "the Sensates are by far the richest faction in the Cage" (as per page 140 of the "Factol's Manifesto") and their factol is one of the two most politically powerful persons in Sigil (according to pages 70-71 of "Sigil and Beyond"): the recorder/sensory stones make them the foremost custodians of entertainment, education, and data alike.

Sensates are cool. I liked their prestige class, expecting you not to minmax but to become the ultimate jack of all trades, expecting even more requirements as you level up.

However I'd be more along the Bleakers or the Fated, for some reason.