So I'm reading the Planescape source material for the first time and... I feel like I was mislead...

>More than likely, but so what? The masculine has been used a the neutral gender pronoun for centuries.
I mean, for centuries, it was also the norm for women to not be allowed to own property independently. I'm not saying pronoun use is really all that important, but it is a bit silly to say "we've always done it this way" in the context of inclusivity.

>If the pronoun being used is capable of ruining a game system, it clearly wasn't a very good game system in the first place.

Doesn't have any impact on the system. It impacts the readability of the work. In this case, horribly so. Every time the female pronoun comes up I immediately assume the text has swapped over to a third person past tense narrative, when it hasn't.

Fuck off. Language isn't something you can change by bureaucratic fiat because of soggy knees

>I mean, for centuries, it was also the norm for women to not be allowed to own property independently. I'm not saying pronoun use is really all that important, but it is a bit silly to say "we've always done it this way" in the context of inclusivity.

Except it set a gross precedent in our language. Whenever the female pronoun comes up I immediately assume the work has shifted into a narrative, it confused the hell out of me when this happens and I have readjust my perspective. I can get use to it, but not easily.

>If they wanted to be inclusive they should have stuck to having more female, or only female point of view characters.
No dude I agree. I hate that.

>I think their community hood winked me.
If it really was "le kino" or whatever then they would try to pull that "secret club" shit. They just liked their schlock nothing wrong with that.

Spoken like someone who is completely unaware of how languages work. The standardization of English spelling is the way it is literally purely because of fiat.

Oh, it is. You just have to take an Orwellian approach and institute punishments.

To a certain point, but inclusiveness should actually try to be inclusive. It shouldn't be screwing with established mechanics. It should be involving an actual feminine touch to the work.

>horrible faux cockney accent lingo shit
thats cant, ya clueless berk

Don't you want a setting so deep it has its own slang and language?

cold-blood.obsidianportal.com/wikis/guide-to-planescape-cant

Sigil is a very strange place and rightly so has it's own slang. If you don't like it, play some other setting. The planescape setting is incredibly rich, but if you gotta remember it was first published in 1994.

>cold-blood.obsidianportal.com/wikis/guide-to-planescape-cant

But, here's the problem with that. It's used too much and there is too little of it. It makes the writing very irritating. Also, the author shouldn't be using it. Only the narrative pieces should, and then only if it calls for it.

the MO of the planescape books seems to be immersion. immersion in the setting. slog through it or give up, just don't complain to us

Funny thing is, the over used slang does the exact opposite of what it set out to achieve. It's weird to hear an authoritative, characterless narrator talking like some slurring British whore from turn of the century London.

This is the biggest problem with the 'immersion' of Planescape - all of the 'in character' text reads EXACTLY THE SAME. It doesn't matter if the narrator is an educated scholar or a well-traveled barfly - they all talk in the same arrogant, cynical, above-it-all voice. The only exception is Xanxost the slaad, and his schtick gets old fast.
That was really the problem with the setting - a whole lot of potential, but completely screwed up in execution. But it was TSR's attempt to be all 'philosophical' like all those other games in the 90s, and if you never bothered playing any of those because all you played was DnD, then I guess it might seem all special and magical, even if it had some of the worst adventures ever. That, and a ridiculously-beloved computer game, are what give it the niche.

That's my impression. I'm holding out my final judgment until I get to the planes of Law, which I expect will be the best source book, but I'm stating to suspect that the other D&D settings like Dark Sun and Dragon Lance were more popular for a reason...

Going by my logs, I have run about ~380 sessions of "Planescape" in a heavily bastardized version of the Great Wheel. (It is mangled enough to bring in World Axis elements ala 4e and 5e.)

I have modified the setting heavily, because, frankly, I hate the vast majority of it and completely agree that most of it is nonsensical dreck, particularly many of the factions and the underdeveloped planes (e.g. Bytopia).

Still, I know enough about the 2e setting from having pored over the 2e books for inspiration, and I know my way around 3.X lore like obyriths, aphanacts, and whatnot. If there is anything you would like to ask about the setting and what about it I disliked, feel free to inquire.

There are also these threads:
docs.google.com/document/d/1EC4fQ7qW0dNveXRDD2UZsB2NXbyIpEm-jCtTjwBQH3I/edit

>tried
You forgot something, HasbrotCdrone. Lorraine "Y Dad Left Me the Rights to Buck Rogers" Williams hated RPGs and those who played them. She tried everything she could to destroy True AD&D but failed. Had to sell to WotC so they could gut it. But what's dead may never die, but rises again stronger. You suck her swamp ass.

Please, fill me in on everything that you liked and hated about it. I'm planning on ripping off a bunch of shit from it for some FATE core based fantasy sessions. Also, did you do anything with Spelljammer, Dragon Lance, Ravenloft, etc? If you did, fill me in on that stuff too. I'm on a second edition marathon session right now, and anything that would allow to avoid some unnecessary reading would be greatly appreciated. For example, what was the best Heaven and Hell? What were the lamest Planes? What was surprisingly the most interesting material?

>Every time the female pronoun comes up I immediately assume the text has swapped over to a third person past tense narrative, when it hasn't.
Why?

>I can get use to it, but not easily.
I don't want to turn this into an ad hominem, but that sounds like a personal problem. You're describing it like a personal problem.

You're unwilling to get used to a particular writing style, even though you have had to get used to all of your current preferred writing styles as well, at some point.

>Also, the author shouldn't be using it.
They're not math textbooks.

Linguistc descriptivists = SJWs
Linguistc prescriptivists = Real Men

Planes of Law is a below-average book.

The Mount Celestia section is passable, but it could give more material on the paths up the mountain, which are the "primary" plot hook of the plane.

The Arcadia section has very few feasible hooks to it beyond the Harmonium and Nemausus situation, which is hyperfocused on. There should have been more material on the Storm Kings, the intrigues surrounding them, and what life in Arcadia is actually like.

The Mechanus section is fair enough, but the section on the Labyrinthine Portal is frustratingly vague on how to actually implement it in an adventure. Furthermore, I hate how, like a rebellious teenager, the book highlights how beings and societies of exemplary law tend to be zany and obstructive. Why not show examples of how order is actually helpful?

The Acheron section is decent for the first layer, Avalas, and is barely tolerable for Thuldanin and Ocanthus, but the passage on Tintibulus is simply shameful. "It is a mostly empty and noisy place where wizards go to study" is creatively bankrupt.

The Baator section is about as good as the Mount Celestia section, but I find 3.5's Fiendish Codex II to be more compelling and inspirational to read.

>Why?

Because it's no longer gender neutral or uncharacterized. Hence, I assume its talking about some woman character that it is about to be introduced. You know, like 98 percent of literature from the past two hundred years?

>I don't want to turn this into an ad hominem, but that sounds like a personal problem. You're describing it like a personal problem.

It isn't. I'm simply use to normal writing formats, and the feminine is rarely (if ever) used as the default or gender neutral term from a non characterized narrator.

>You're unwilling to get used to a particular writing style, even though you have had to get used to all of your current preferred writing styles as well, at some point.

No, one is heavily biased vs the other. Like, we aren't even talking about a remotely comparable scale here.

Planescape came out 94. To be honest, a lot of the stuff that came out 94 is considered garbage today, because much more competent people have built on it. The original WoD has terrible rules that actually sabotage role playing for example, yet for its time it was ground breaking in many ways.

>I assume its talking about some woman character that it is about to be introduced
Definitely a personal problem.

Read Manual of the Planes and Dragon Magazine articles on said planes. Jeff Grubb doesn't bend over for BBC.

There is no Sigil, no Outlands. Just Plane of Concordant Opposition. Now that's some heady shit. Canon well into 2E and referenced many times up until 1994 when suddenly"inclusiveness" deemed the planes suitable for low level play. Nonsense.

>Because it's no longer gender neutral or uncharacterized.
The point is that male pronouns aren't really neutral, either. It's weird to assume they are, just because you more of them.

>the feminine is rarely (if ever) used as the default or gender neutral term from a non characterized narrator.
And we could keep doing that indefinitely. Or we could help people get used to female pronouns.

I can't say option B is objectively inferior to option A. Language develops organically, and this isn't even as drastic a change as the shit retards are trying to pull with 'literally'.

>Planes of Law is a below-average book.

Son of a bitch...

>The Mount Celestia section is passable, but it could give more material on the paths up the mountain, which are the "primary" plot hook of the plane.

Cool, that's what I'm most interested in.

>The Arcadia section has very few feasible hooks to it beyond the Harmonium and Nemausus situation, which is hyperfocused on. There should have been more material on the Storm Kings, the intrigues surrounding them, and what life in Arcadia is actually like.

Ah, that's a shame.

>The Acheron section is decent for the first layer, Avalas, and is barely tolerable for Thuldanin and Ocanthus, but the passage on Tintibulus is simply shameful. "It is a mostly empty and noisy place where wizards go to study" is creatively bankrupt.

That sucks.

>The Baator section is about as good as the Mount Celestia section, but I find 3.5's Fiendish Codex II to be more compelling and inspirational to read.

I'll look into it. I'm not going to touch third edition stuff until I read all the old school War Hammer RPG and army books, which might take a while since it's after all the second edition stuff, but I'll definitely remember it. Thanks!

Well, I'll tell you a secret. I'm not going to let this become one. Thanks for your lame attempt at derailing my thread. I won't be discussing this matter any further with you. If you feel like contributing, feel free to do so.

Are you trying to be a faggot, or is this how you normally are?

>best Hell

>I won't be discussing this matter any further with you
>with you
>specifically
>on an anonymous imageboard

>The point is that male pronouns aren't really neutral, either. It's weird to assume they are, just because you more of them.

Except, that "he" has been used as the pronoun for both sexes for centuries. Why change it, now? Also, why do it without putting a forward in the book about so the reader isn't confused?

>And we could keep doing that indefinitely. Or we could help people get used to female pronouns.

You could try, but then it's just flip sided at the point. So what? Are men suppose to flip around another couple of centuries later because it isn't being inclusive for them anymore? It's just stupid and doesn't actually tackle the issue you think it does.

>I can't say option B is objectively inferior to option A. Language develops organically, and this isn't even as drastic a change as the shit retards are trying to pull with 'literally'.

I agree wholeheartedly!

Don't ever reply to me or Lorraine Williams' son Skip ever again

>the books being in lingo somehow affects the quality of the setting

Did you not read the foreword to 2E itself that Lorraine made Zeb include regarding pronouns?

>Thinks they aren't obvious as shit when they bring the issue up again. Pretending to be someone else.

Seriously?

It does, read through my past responses to see why I think that. It's really obnoxious.

I'm not the one sucking the setting's cock.

My greatest issue with the 2e Planescape books is that the writing quality is inconsistent, even within a same books. Most likely, the writers chosen to handle different sections were of vastly different caliber.

For example, take Planes of Conflict.

I may be biased due to my weeaboo habits, but I really like the writeup for the Upper Plane of Elysium there. It is an idyllic, fairy tale wonderland, full of the most picturesque Ghibli hills and glittering waters one can lay their eyes on.

Travel in Elysium is vastly accelerated by doing good deeds along the road, and the plane is ever eager to direct travelers to opportunities to help other travelers and Elysian locals.

Its exemplar race of celestials, the guardinals, are friendly animal-people. They game Elysium's travel system by living nomadic lifestyles, effectively forcing the plane to give them more and more opportunities do good unto the plane. But why stop there? The guardinals are naturally good fighters too, and they know it. Among all celestials, the wanderlustful guardinals are the most eager to set off from their home plane and take the fight to evil elsewhere.

There are actual conflicts and plot hooks in Elysium! There is a barmy asuras guarding a major bridge, Ishtar's divine realm (the passion-driven metropolis of the City of the Star) has tensions with Isis's divine realm and is being infiltrated by fiends preying on passions, there is a mysterious divine realm nobody has been able to identify the god of, a great phoenix is soon to give birth in a way that attracts evil folk... and that is just for layer #1 out of four.

Things get really interesting once you hit layer #3, Belierin, the great swamp and the maximum-security prison of the Upper Planes. It is full of immensely powerful prisoners, like the Hydra of Legend, and these inmates have a disturbing amount of free rein with which to scheme and fight among themselves.

(Continued.)

Joke's on you, cunt, that was indeed somebody else.

There is a difference between book and setting.

>Except, that "he" has been used as the pronoun for both sexes for centuries.
None of us lives for centuries. 'Gay' just meant 'merry', right until the time it didn't anymore.

>Are men suppose to flip around another couple of centuries later because it isn't being inclusive for them anymore?
How would using both he and she exclude men?

Alternating between the two in a single book is a stage we need to pass as soon as possible, but your resistance to the use of 'her' to refer to a general group of people tells me you still feel it's inferior somehow.

I see no need to teach that mentality to following generations. It's difficult to explain in a way that makes sense without resorting to "That's just the way we do things", which is a terrible argument.

OY, GUVVENOR! LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE MAGICAL REALMS OF FARAWAY LAND. Where the cutters, see, and the gits. Storm the old lordies heavenly lord house, for revenge! Also, let me fill you in on the mazen truths of the multiverse, guvenor!

You're being facetious about this and you know it.

A proper naughty geezer is going to pen you in the dead book right fast if you keep running your bonebox like that, you berk.

Thanks, that's some good stuff. It makes my skimming feel much more justified.

LOL, whatever fag.

>Alternating between the two in a single book is a stage we need to pass as soon as possible, but your resistance to the use of 'her' to refer to a general group of people tells me you still feel it's inferior somehow.

>I see no need to teach that mentality to following generations. It's difficult to explain in a way that makes sense without resorting to "That's just the way we do things", which is a terrible argument.

That doesn't really matter. When the generation goes out and reads material, with nearly all of it using the masculine as the plurality of the two genders, they're going to keep doing it out of force of habit. Which, is perfectly fine because it's become a foundation. The only reason to change is unnecessary political moaning. Which, centuries of habit will crush every time. It's the same reason we don't randomly change the meanings of words like "the" and "or" because of some perceived fault with the usage. We change them through sheer language drift.

It's just like Baldur's Gate and the Time of Troubles novels. I grew up playing the BG series, and I adore it beyond words. And it all centers around the dead God of Murder, Bhaal, who was slain during the ominous Time of Troubles, when the gods walked the world and wreaked terrible havoc in their battles against each other.

Then I read the ToT novels, the only direct source of info on that period, and fuck. The characters range between awful and absurd (Cyric is perfectly pleasant before going maximum info, I am 90% the writer hadn't been informed he was supposed to be a villain till book 2) Kelemvor isn't awful except his tragic flaw is that if he does anything for any reason but personal profit he turns into a were-leopard and murders everyone, which is so absurd it's funny, Adon's entire motivation is he's angry he got his pretty face cut, literally, and Midnight is retarded. "Cyric must be a good guy he'd never betray us even though he's ambushed us with an army of Zhent soldiers under his command a third time this book."

The gods are worse. They quiver and piss themselves like children in the intro, Tyr gets blinded for no reason, Ao is less a terrifying overdeity and more a cranky, arbitrary old asshole, and Bane and Mystra... ho fuck.

Bane's Skeletor. He's incompetent, easily frightened, and has the planning ability of a five year old.

I cant stop imagining this pic while reading OPs whiny posts

>Then I read the ToT novels, the only direct source of info on that period, and fuck. The characters range between awful and absurd (Cyric is perfectly pleasant before going maximum info, I am 90% the writer hadn't been informed he was supposed to be a villain till book 2) Kelemvor isn't awful except his tragic flaw is that if he does anything for any reason but personal profit he turns into a were-leopard and murders everyone, which is so absurd it's funny, Adon's entire motivation is he's angry he got his pretty face cut, literally, and Midnight is retarded. "Cyric must be a good guy he'd never betray us even though he's ambushed us with an army of Zhent soldiers under his command a third time this book."
>The gods are worse. They quiver and piss themselves like children in the intro, Tyr gets blinded for no reason, Ao is less a terrifying overdeity and more a cranky, arbitrary old asshole, and Bane and Mystra... ho fuck.
>Bane's Skeletor. He's incompetent, easily frightened, and has the planning ability of a five year old.

This sounds like a major issue of the era. Where they would just punt their intellectual properties to whatever freelancer drifted through the door and hope for the best.

Belierin (again, the third layer of Elysium) is also the birthplace of the quesar, solar-powered celestial constructs forged from sacred mud at the hands of foreign angels. They sought independence from their creators, played out a standard-fare sci-fi robot story, and waged rebellious war. Elysium's gods eventually intervened, ousted the foreign angels, and granted the quesar independence, although the constructs still struggle to find a place for themselves.

Then there is Thalasia, the fourth layer of Elysium, which happens to be the headwaters of the River Oceanus. There are titanically powerful, quasi-divine beasts slumbering beneath the calm waves. Except... the waves are not so calm, because Thalasia is currently being invaded by a legion of evil aquatic monsters who stage hit-and-run raids from a living maelstrom of a mobile fortress.

In the same book, we have one of Elysium's adjacent planes, Bytopia. It has a very intriguing aesthetic, quite possibly one of my favorite planar layouts in all of the Great Wheel. Alas, as written, Bytopia's hook is a dull: it is a place of pastoral yet industrial bliss where everyone lives out regular lives harvesting and manufacturing.

There are a handful of decent hooks for Bytopia, like an extremist sect of paladins and other knightly sorts from Mount Celestia coming in and trying to claim parts of Bytopia for their own, the baku have a new Holy One who needs guarding, minions of Set and rust dragons are creeping into Bytopia's second layer, and there is an eccentric titan roving around. However, none of these hooks are quite as high-concept as those of Elysium, and they do not make up for the fact that the plane's gimmick simply is not that compelling to start with.

Certainly, one could spice up Bytopia by playing up its capitalistic and corporate aspects, and by bringing in less savory sects like the Merkhants. That is not the plane as it is currently written, however.

I can fucking relate to that otter right now.

Mystra's worse. She's convinced she's big news and has an obsession with how nice her divine house is- so she grabs the first chunk of power she can find and charges Helm without a plan, at all. This would actually be a nice show of arrogance, if her nature as a "wise and benevolent" goddess didn't keep getting pointed out. I have no idea why people are mad at Helm in setting for killing this bitch- he warned her, twice. She's known him for centuries, and as soon as he told her she couldn't go back to her divine apartment she flipped her shit and charged him with all the desperation of a crack addict denied her fix. And worst of all, she's not gone after she dies- shards of her power left with others become THE Deus Ex Machina of choice for the rest of the first book at least.

Helm was fine, though he killed Mystra with his gauntlets instead of his sword, for some reason. Otherwise, B+, would worship as the only god that didn't literally wail and beg for mercy the second Old Man Ao started shouting. I mean, I expect that shit from a spineless scrub like Malar, but Bane, Tyr, what the fuck guys. Helm's the only god in this book that's decent at what he does.

Bhaal was kinda cool. He murders a lot of people without being seen, which is assassiny, and when he does attack he does so full on terminator style, shrugging off every injury thrown at him. Downside, he's got all the personality of a terminator as well, as basically serves as Myrkul's minion.

tldr all the characters are awful, the book sucks, the author Scott Ciencin is an utter hack outwritten by most fanfiction authors, and I am still mad about it.

...

Still not as much of a travesty as the Baldur's Gate novelizations though. Those weren't just bad, they were sinful.

I'm liking what I'm hearing. I might just skip to the heaven parts of the books and dump the inner plane book, which is pretty much just, "LOL, if you go there you fucking die faggot!"

If you can't tell, I'm more interested in the paradise part of Planescpe more than anything else. Because I'd dying to know why the entire multiverse doesn't just move there en mass and enjoy... Fucking paradise!

Because fuck off we're full, that's why.

Alright so here is a perfect example of the shit tier writing I'm talking about, due to the overuse of the in universe slang.

It's got it all. Over use of slang, which sounds retarded. The use of the feminine for a generic reference to a person that sounds especially awkward (who fucking talks like that!?). And this is just one paragraph, the entire fucking book reads like this shit.

Except that the SJWs would love to prescriptively tell us that we're wrong for not completely changing how pronouns work etc. Also, the SJW "descriptivists" are just really describing themselves and pretending everyone else doesn't exist and never has existed.

The real proper way is a kind of a weird hybrid of prescriptivism and descriptivism that's hard to describe.

Infinite plane of unlimited space is "full." Somebody is bullshiting me here...

The fuck is he trying to express here

>The only reason to change is unnecessary political moaning.
Whether or not it's necessary is subjective.

And force of habit is overrated. Again, 'gay' used to mean 'merry'. Force of habit has been powerless to keep that from changing. Force of habit doesn't keep people from using 'literally' to refer to literally the opposite of 'literally'.

'He' and 'she' have connotations that words like 'the' and 'or' don't. They refer to specific genders.

I'm convinced the language you speak shapes your frame of reference. If you're raised speaking a language that, as a matter of fact, only accepts 'he' as the correct pronoun for a general people, I think that sends an undesirable message about the status of men as the baseline, 'real' humans.

Teaching people to either use 'they' or to just not be bothered about either 'he', 'she' or 'they' as a general pronoun for people offers them a less biased world view. That's a win in my book.

I am mostly concerned with the inconsistent writing, which does not just apply to the planes. It applies to the factions as well.

I think that the best-written faction with the most gripping hook is, by far, the Society of Sensation. The Sensates' philosophy is simple: experience all there is to experience, every sight, sound, smell, taste, texture, thought, book, lesson, emotion, joy, pain. That is how one will truly learn and understand the multiverse. It is a widely-applicable message that appeals to many, from prim archons in lofty Mount Celestia to wild and savage tanar'ri in the Abyss, from mercurial yet liberty-loving djinn to cruel and slave-taking efreet.

While some Sensates are the stereotypical hedonists and pleasure-seekers, most proper Sensates are proper scholars and educators. After experiencing or witnessing something new, they head to the Civic Festhall in Sigil or the Gilded Hall in Arborea, copy and upload the memory of that experience to a recorder/sensory stone, and let the public and other Sensates relive that memory as a fully-immersive VR experience. The Sensates supplement these with lessons in classrooms.

You read that right: the Sensates are the stewards of uploading memories and letting people experience them in VR sensoriums, like in sci-fi. The Society is happy to educate the public this way, and they even accept non-members coming in to upload their own memories, for a "bounty" of sorts. However, some recorder/sensory stones are filed in "for members only" sections.

With such powerful media technology, one would think that the Society of Sensation dominates Sigil's media and entertainment. One would be right: they are canonically the single wealthiest faction in the Cage (PC Sensates even receive a wealth bonus), and they are one of the two most politically powerful factions, the other being the Takers.

Most of the other factions, alas, are awfully-written stinkers. (Continued.)

We get it. You can't handle flavour text.

A good freelancer doesn't fall from the heavens, and you got to turn out books for revenue.

The real beauty of Planescape is less in the execution, but in the idea to turn the whole D&D setting into a metaverse, and make everything in it explicitly playable and cross-overable. The execution is not bad and in parts even good, but the underlieing concept, to make everything from your setting to the Domain of your God to the place where your magic comes from, explicitly playable, is pure genius and has simply kicked worldbuilding and the degree to which the metaphysics and cosmology of D&D get detailled into a whole new age. In this respect, Planescape is nothing less than historic.

They're comparing themselves to another narrator coming up later in the book about the plane of fire, in comparison to "their" description of the plane of air. However, you wouldn't know that without reading once or twice, now imagine that shit, except it's the entire fucking books. Paragraph after repetitious paragraph of indecipherable nonsense. It wouldn't matter if this book was conveying the most awesome theories ever conceived of by mankind. With a narrative like this, the information is nearly ruined.

Granted, that's awesome, but did it have to be served on silver platter of cockney laden shit?

Keeping in mind that Planescape is the context, I had no trouble parsing that sentence at the first reading.

I don't think this problem is anywhere near as objective as you're making it out to be.

It looks like you're just very rigid in the writing styles you'll accept. Don't project that onto all readers everywhere.

No, I can't handle shit. I'm actually enjoying the content. I'm paradoxically getting fucked with by this book.

They got an efreeti to describe the Plane of Fire. Somebody who knows what's up will make sure to read between the lines.

And the books probably weren't written with shitty, backwards readers in mind.

Stop pretending you're the final arbiter of all that is good.

I would say that two-thirds of the fifteen factions are terrible, but here are the worst of them in my eyes.

The Harmonium had a chance to be a good faction. An army of law and order, from the virtuous archons of Mount Celestia to the disciplined legions of the Nine Hells of Baator. They establish peace and order wherever they go, and they even serve as Sigil's police. They have a musical theme too (Harmonium, headquarters called Melodia, a leader with a title of "romposer," lower ranks called "measures" and "notaries" like musical measures and musical notes, and so on).

That is not what they were actually portrayed as. As written, the Harmonium bashers are authoritarian not-Nazis directly compared to genocide-happy Athasian sorcerer-kings. Time and again, the Hardheads were used as stand-ins for "the man," who arbitrarily brutalize people (e.g. the Free League) for failing to abide by a gruesomely strawmanned notion of "the law."

The Harmonium was even responsible for sending Nemausus down into Mechanus, because they savagely brainwashed and tortured chaotic people in concentration camps to try to turn them lawful.

What should have been a morally balanced faction of law, leaning slightly towards good, was instead turned into monstrous authoritarians to be an easy target for 90s anti-establishment sentiments.

(Continued.)

>I am mostly concerned with the inconsistent writing, which does not just apply to the planes. It applies to the factions as well.

Yeah, this is an entire package of mixed bag.

>I think that the best-written faction with the most gripping hook is, by far, the Society of Sensation. The Sensates' philosophy is simple: experience all there is to experience, every sight, sound, smell, taste, texture, thought, book, lesson, emotion, joy, pain. That is how one will truly learn and understand the multiverse. It is a widely-applicable message that appeals to many, from prim archons in lofty Mount Celestia to wild and savage tanar'ri in the Abyss, from mercurial yet liberty-loving djinn to cruel and slave-taking efreet.

Agreed.

>While some Sensates are the stereotypical hedonists and pleasure-seekers, most proper Sensates are proper scholars and educators. After experiencing or witnessing something new, they head to the Civic Festhall in Sigil or the Gilded Hall in Arborea, copy and upload the memory of that experience to a recorder/sensory stone, and let the public and other Sensates relive that memory as a fully-immersive VR experience. The Sensates supplement these with lessons in classrooms.

Which, is a cool idea.

>You read that right: the Sensates are the stewards of uploading memories and letting people experience them in VR sensoriums, like in sci-fi. The Society is happy to educate the public this way, and they even accept non-members coming in to upload their own memories, for a "bounty" of sorts. However, some recorder/sensory stones are filed in "for members only" sections.

Now, compare that to the Doom Guard, "We think all of reality should break down... But now too fast!" Like, you would have to be a teenage Goth to find half of the factions even remotely worth joining, or the Free Guild. Why would anybody even need to "Join" this? Half of this shit reads like it was written by an intelligent, masterful writer. The other half, not much.

>What should have been a morally balanced faction of law
I don't think that was ever what they were intended to be. The factions don't primarily represent a D&D alignments, they represent philosophical outlooks.

The Harmonium isn't lawful neutral, leaning good in the form of a faction. It's authoritarian fundamentalism in the form of a faction.

It's pretty clear what the writer expected to do by this, to try and hand people who play actual planeswalkers a kind of vocabulary without writing down too many pages of nerdy fantasy-words (and thus get people at the table to throw around even more of them), and to make clear that the people who do this are smarmy Constantine-types rather than all superpowered mega-academics who talk about everything in faux-Latin (desu do you really perfer Astra Militarum etc.?).

All valid points. It could probably have been done better, I personally don't care much about the not-Cockney but then English isn't my first language.

No, that's why you should actually take the time to interview the person and not hire some bum you found at the local buss stop

How do you determine if someone's a decent writer through a spoken interview?

Yeah, they failed, hard. I couldn't stand fake cockney accents for more than a few sessions before going crazy. Also, the stupid faux Latin from Games Workshop is just history repeating itself. Neither of those things are good. The book should be written in plane English. So somebody buying the book understands what the fuck is being said and can quickly relocate the subject matter when necessary.

Yeah okay let's stop that venue of discussion though because it's getting awfully Captain Hindsight with a side order of It'd Never Happen If I Ran A Business With Several Hundred Employees.

Well, you ask to take a look at some of their work for starters...

>"We think all of reality should break down... But now too fast!"
They think it WILL break down. The breakdown is inevitable and sacred to them. At the same time, they're flawed mortals and all but the most devout probably don't look forward to being broken down themselves.

>Why would anybody even need to "Join" this?
Religious conviction is weird.

We're talking about one of only a few dozen books they were putting out... a YEAR. Something your ass would be thoroughly involved with, we aren't talking about a security guard or janitor here. This isn't something a temp agency can handle for you and you can expect good results.

At least even the ridiculously strawmanned Harmonium has a clear-cut mission: spread peace, law, and order throughout the multiverse, with an armed fist.

The Bleak Cabal, the Sign of One, the Transcendent Order, and the Xaositects, on the other hand, have no clear-cut mission at all.

The Bleak Cabal believes that life has no meaning. "Cabalists believe in nothing, save whatever twisted meaning they can wring out of themselves. They look sadly on those who have a belief in something external," says the Factol's Manifesto. Perhaps that is a valid stance, but it does not make for a good organization. The Bleakers run charities, run mental asylums, and act as a support group for each other, because mentally ill people tend to flock to the Bleak Cabal for some reason... but what do they actually *do*? Where is the adventure or conflict potential beyond a flimsy "Well, life has no reason, so I guess I will do X today"?

The members of the Sign of One believe that the multiverse is nothing but the imagined dream of "the One." Who is the One? The Signers cannot agree. Some say it is a single person, some say it is a group of people, and many (because the Signers tend to pull in the egotistical) claim the One to be themselves. This could be a valid stance, but it is not something to make a faction out of! How are they ever supposed to agree with one another, and what do they actually do together? The answer is "Try to turn prophecies into reality through imagination, and be the caretakers of Sigil's parliament house." Granted, those could offer some decent plot hooks, but they are wholly separate from the underlying philosophy, which is fine on its own but *not* faction material. This would not even pass for a high school club.

(Continued.)

If they have published work, you don't need an interview to look into it. You might even argue that looking into their previous work is necessary preparation for the actual interview.

But let's say you like their previous work and the interview gives you the impression that they'd be a reliable freelancer. So you give them the job.

Unfortunately, the work they produce isn't what you'd expected. It's not grammatically wrong or anything, the style is just a bit off.

That's not something a job interview would have fixed.

Extensive guidance and feedback, maybe. But that's a lot more work than a single interview.

I disagree. Giving people a vocabulary to speak in-character is generally a good thing. If you Captain can yell: "WHAT DO THE AUGERS READ?" it does more for me than if we just go: "Can we see them?" - even if Augers is a terrible word. It gets me closer to the action and thus I like it. And that's what a specific lingo does, and is supposed to do.

It's essentially just like going "Hallow" instead of "Magic Power Source" in Mage, and so on. And I generally consider it a good idea to give your in-game lingo a "colour" that is dependent on cultural matters as much as the need for a distinct word, because that's how humans work. Like we use OP and user, faggot, meme, the works.

And the specific instance here is a matter of pure taste. If you don't like it - you don't like it. But the general concept is sound.

True, but we aren't talking about a minor stylistic deviation. We are talking about an entire tier of quality here. You would spot the lack of cohesive writing talent, instantly.

>But the general concept is sound.

Except that it's one of the most heavily criticized things in all of fantasy literature. In fact, several prominent fantasy writers, like Stephen King, highly discourage it.

The factions suck. I'm not even wasting my time reading any more than I already have.

The factions are communities of adherents to a particular philosophy, banding together in a metaphysical world where belief shapes reality.

Expecting them to run as realistic, practical organisations is missing the point entirely.

You're looking for a game about politics and business, not philosophy.

The Transcendent Order is probably the single weakest faction in the setting. They espouse wu wei, essentially: "Do not try to consciously think, and instead act on instinct as the multiverse's natural harmony would have you." That is nice, but a whole faction cannot possibly be grounded in that. Taoism in the real world had many more facets to it than just that. What is someone actually supposed to *do* with that belief? Mediate arguments between other factions, apparently; that is interesting enough, but it once again has nothing to do with the core philosophy.

The Xaositects are "randumb" in faction form. They are random and unpredictable for its own sake. The closest they have for a goal is "spread chaos," and even that is not especially accurate, as the Barkers want to be random and unpredictable about it. This is hardly a faction; it is random people doing silly things. The Xaositects could have been a fairer take on what it means to actually embrace chaos and try to make the most of the wildness of the Wheel, perhaps taking advantage of Limbo's properties of spontaneous invention and inspiration to be mad-scientist-like, but that was not to be.

The Harmonium is supposed to be authoritarian fundamentalism, yes, but it is *also* supposed to lean towards LG/LN. Page 96 of the Factol's Manifesto says:

>Alignment. True belief in the Harmonium way implies a lawful-alignment, but evil members find themselves as welcome as good ones. The understanding of law and order is more important than consideration of good and evil. Fact is, few in the Harmonium seem actually evil; many are good, and lots fall somewhere in the middle of the good-evil spectrum. See, evil doesn't prove truly conducive to harmony and peace. But even a baatezu understands order and the advantages of stability.

This does not line up with the rest of how the faction is portrayed, however. The previous chapter opens up with pointless police brutality from the Harmonium!

I do not recognize Stephen King as an authority. Can you offer someone else whom I might respect to the point of valuing his opinion above my own?

I'm already quoting from memory here, but I remember Jim Butcher saying something similar in an interview. George R. R. Martin, Frank Herbert, and a few others I can't recall right now.

That descriptive, not normative. You're not 'supposed to be' LG/LN. You're supposed to be a devout follower of the Harmonium's philosophy.

All I'm really gleaning from that paragraph is that only chaotic individuals are fundamentally incompatible with the philosophy of the Harmonium. The latter part of it is just paraphrasing the whole 'everyone prefers good neighbours to evil ones' bit.

George 'take the black' Martin has a problem with any and all use of jargon in fantasy?