Thanks for the input, I'll definitely take a look at your take on it. It's cool to trade thoughts with someone else who has tried this general idea - I didn't know anyone had!
Hopefully we can end up with a bunch of great Planescape sets
I do have dual color archetypes assigned to 10 selected post-faction war factions, but haven't necessarily decided to emphasize them so much as have the intent to use them as a notable part of the flavor and backstory of a good amount of cards.
After my experience, I think if you are going the lands- and Portals-matter route, I kind of think the factions should be even further background than this. For example, what if your ten two-color pairs were tied to Outer Planes? It sounds like you are going much more "big picture" than I did so this could let you fit in more of the weird stuff from elsewhere on the wheel.
The Portal Mechanic is sort of intended to reflect the reality-shaping and specifically give a sense of "from something intangible and abstract (instant/sorcery) to something concrete and real (creature/possibly other permanents)". It has potential to reflect things from the D&D multiverse in a flavorful way. Haven't fully developed its potential yet though, and I might still tweak it.
I dig it, excited to see what you come up with.
I have a general color setup for the races, though I can see a number of them could be in two colors easily, and human could be any color. There are also a lot of possible monsters from DnD and related to certain planes that I want to experiment with, and allow more to naturally fall where they feel on the color pie.
I struggled with this, it was tough to get a good balance of showing the "core" PC races and all the weird monsters and stuff. I do think if you tie races to colors, most of them should be in at least two. For example, I think it does a disservice to Githzerai to restrict them to red... they are very big into traditions and rituals (green), community survival in the chaos of Limbo and in the face of illithid and Githyanki threats (white), and practicing the mental discipline to maintain cities in Limbo (blue). That said, it does feel sort of anti-MTG to put races in all the colors, so it might be tough to recognize it. I do think my creature types ended up a bit too soupy.
It also occurs to me that "planeswalker matters" or "loyalty counters" could be a subtheme, but I haven't explored it.
That's gotta be really tough without bumping Planeswalkers down to rare, and doing that could have some pretty feel-bad consequences for Limited. But if you're not interested in Limited, YMMV.
While I'd ideally love to represent all the factions, it seemed to me that distilling it down to 10 was the most straight forward/elegant way to go about it simply because it maps to the standard 10 2 color combos in a convenient way, while covering all the factions seems to inherently create some sort of assymetrical distribution among the colors.
In hindsight, I do think with a little pushing there could be a way. If I took my original setup and made some tweaks, I could have ended with 10 two-color pair factions and 5 single-color factions, which would be perfectly balanced on the color pie. I'm thinking Harmonium as mono-white, Godsmen as mono-blue (they are all about that self improvement, merit-based success), Doomguard as mono-black, Free League as mono-red, and... somebody as mono-green, I guess that leaves Signers? But also in hindsight, I don't think I'd have tried to cram all 15 factions into a set, but it could be done.
I'm definitely excited to see the lands you've come up with. Those will be awesome.
Funny you should ask for this. I just finished my custom Planescape set last week and ordered 210 packs for a league I'm running with it.
I'll try to find some time in the next couple of days to post it for you. Feel free to steal whatever if you like any of it.
-- UPDATE: Info about my set below --
I thought a long time about how to do a Planescape set and in the end I decided to focus on the factions, particularly their roles in Sigil. Here is a link to my Planescape: Factions set spoiler, if you want to go straight to the source:
And below I've gathered some thoughts about my work on the set, and on your ideas so far. It's a bit of a hot mess but given that I don't know if anyone will actually ever come back to this thread and read it, I didn't want to spend too much time cleaning it up :P.
If you only read one thing from this diatribe, it should be my advice that Planescape is HUGE, and you should pick something narrow and go crazy with that thing. I picked "Factions in Sigil" and even that was too broad... could have easily been two to three sets, GNR/RNA style.
My goals were to:
Explore Planescape's wonderful world of contradiction
Showcase Sigil with a peek at the greater multiverse (10%-ish cards set outside the city)
Design groups of cards which played well together for all 15 factions
Reference classic D&D spells and creatures in a reverent way
Provide an "alternate take" on if Magic had been started with Planescape in mind (you'll see some clear nods to other Magic cards)
Environment: Booster draft and constructed, with constructed being a league environment with limitations on how often players can add cards to their pool (trading allowed)
Complexity level: Slightly above Standard, around Future Sight level, well below cube
Power level: Also slightly above Standard, such that almost all cards feel "Limited playable" relative to modern Standard-legal sets
I definitely agree that DFC is great fit for Planescape, it just wasn't something I wanted to do for production reasons.
I also think Lands matter is a great idea, and if my set weren't specifically focused on the Factions & Sigil, I would have gone this route.
Regarding your Legends subtheme: "Uncaged - Faces of Sigil" is my favorite roleplaying supplement _of all time_. The characters in it are so fascinating that I have even adopted and used them on the fly as Shadowrun characters when my players took a turn I didn't expect. They loved Kesto Brighteyes as a deep-net conspiracy theorist and Adamok Ebon as a rival Shadowrunner. As such I pulled heavily from this supplement when designing my Legends.
I think my biggest miss was that I don't have something to capture imagination and reality-shaping. For a while I had a mechanic called "Sculpt" which was just a shortcut for the Mercadian Masques Spellshaper mechanic. It felt pretty good and definitely made it feel like characters were shifting reality using spells, but I had too many ideas in the set and ended up cutting it. As I decided to focus on the factions, this was the biggest loss. I couldn't make it feel a substantial enough part of the set and have mechanics for all 15 factions.
I like your Portal mechanic, but I am not sure I like it for portals. I think with the right name you could make it a more general mechanic that could be the keystone mechanic for imagination and reality-shaping (that my set was lacking).
Worldliness: Since the planes are about a huge variety of different philosophies and environments, I wanted a payoff for "experiencing" as many of them as possible. This is a new ability word that counts the number of colors in your graveyard, and uses it either as an X or as a threshold to turn on an additional benefit. Obviously it's a great fit for the Sensates.
Madness: There are so many things in the 'verse that can drive a body insane. It goes great with Bleakers, Xaositects, Slaad, and sometimes Dustmen and Doomguard.
Portals and Portalkeys: Portals are enchantments which are sacrificed for an effect (flavored as pulling something through the portal). Portalkeys are artifacts which can be sacrified to reuse a Portal.
Treasure: I flavored this a number of different ways in tokens, but this was what I used as a multicolor-enabler in Limited.
Mummify: This is just embalm without the white color; it's obviously for the Dustmen and undead creatures.
Discard as a cost: Flavored primarily as spellcasting, I used this in all colors. Mechanically it pairs well with Madness and Worldliness.
Self-mill: Flavored as entropy, this goes great with the themes of insanity and death. Mechanically it pairs well with Mummify and Worldliness.
Flashback: Mechanically it pairs well with Self-mill, and it is just a fun mechanic.
Cycling: Mechanically it pairs well with Worldliness, and it is a great way to improve situational cards, particularly for Limited.
Obviously that's a lot, but I was targeting a set somewhere in the area of Future Sight complexity and Modern Masters power level (I think I came in under MM power level, but that's okay).
I decided a few things early on:
I did not want my creature types to be compatible with MTG's history -- I wanted them to feel like D&D.
I did not want to really tie creature types to particular colors and abilities, and so when I did, I made sure to also break the pattern somewhere else. One of my favorite things about Planescape is how it distorts expectations, so I wanted to make sure I didn't make any creature types too predictable. As such most D&D player-character race options run across the whole color wheel. I feel pretty confident this was a good decision, though I do think it means missing out on some potential tribal mechanics which players tend to like.
I wanted to use the CLASS/RACE D&D paradigm and so I would reference D&D character classes.
Some decisions as a result of these:
The one race I felt most embodied "sameness" across their species was Modrons, so they were the only one I made have consistent designs and a mechanic. I gave Modrons a "promotion mechanic" where when a Modron dies, a Modron of lower rank is promoted, in keeping with the fluff.
To handle Planetouched and Genasi, I decided Planetouched would be Celestial/Fiend + Base Race, and Genasi would be Elemental + Base Race, which would in theory give room for cards to effect Planetouched and Fullblooded races without needing to say "Target fiend or genasi"
I split evil creatures into Demon, Fiend, and Devil, for Tanar'ri, Yugoloth/neutral-evil, and Baatezu respectively, because the Blood Wars is such an important part of the setting
I did not split good creatures into Archon/Celestial/Eladrin/Guardinal, though I debated it. In the end I just went with Celestial because I couldn't really come up with cards where I would care about the discrepancy, whereas with fiends there definitely could be
I debated a long time of trying to use Lawful, Chaotic, Neutral, Good, Evil as either Creature Types or card Supertypes, but in the end I didn't like any of the ideas that came from this angle
I combined the various MTG undead creature types into the "Undead" creature type, both for use with the Mummify mechanic and for various D&D spells which affect all Undead creatures
With regard to Class Types, I went... close to second-edition D&D, though not exact.
- Artistocrat (Needed for non-adventuring, "high-class" characters)
- Artisan (Non-adventuring, "middle-class" characters; for "low-class" I generally went with Rogue)
- Soldier (Same as MTG Soldiers, and used for NPC-style Warriors who are part of an organized force)
I used the pre-Faction War guilds, and I broke down them down a little differently. I'll give my explanations here, not because I think your interpretation is wrong in any way, but just as food for thought and the explanation behind some of my designs.
I mostly stuck to the listed colors except for one-off cards where it made sense (e.g. a blue Harmonium tap-down card, The Great Green Wurm as the Mercykillers' monster).
My ten almost-color-pairs were the following, along with summaries of some my notes from early in the design process. I've also included the mechanics that ended up appearing on the cards (most of these came much later in development).
Fraternity of Order - WU - Blue motivations, white methods. The Guvners have a very blue goal of obtaining all knowledge and understanding all things, but they also view everything through a structured lens (white). As part of the judicial system they also maintain peace through order (white).
Mechanics: Counterspells, O-Ring, Card Draw
The Fated - UB - Black motivations, blue and black methods. The Takers believe that if you can't hold onto something, you don't deserve to have it, and everybody has to look out for themselves (black). Obtaining what you want is often accomplished through understanding and exploiting knowledge and loopholes of complex systems such as the tax code (blue), and other times through more nefarious techniques (black).
Mechanics: Discard, Stealing, Sacrifice, Treasure
The Revolutionary League - RB - Red motivations, black and red methods. The Anarchists believe in the abolishment of all systems so that individuals can be truly free (red) and they'll do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal, no matter how underhanded (black).
Mechanics: Deathtouch, Destruction, Self-sacrifice
The Xaositects - RG - Green motivations, red ideology. Ultimately the Chaosmen are about acknowledging and accepting (green) that chaos is at the core of everything (red).
Mechanics: Madness, Coin-flipping
The Bleakers - WG - Green motivations, white themes. Like the Xaositects, their motivation is to acknowledge and accept (green) that there is no purpose to life or the multiverse (colorless?). However, in doing so, they turn to healing the sick and helping the downtrodden (white).
Mechanics: Madness, Lifegain/Damage prevention, Flicker (to represent the Grim Retreat), Tapping (flavored as depression or nonsense)
Mercykillers - WB - White motivations, black methods. The Mercykillers want people to be safe (white) by striking criminals from society - or existence. However, many of them will do absolutely whatever it takes to reach this goal - interrogation, torture, murder without trial, etc. (black)
Mechanics: Kill spells, Rewards for killing
Transcendant Order - URG - Blue motivations, red themes. The Transcendants are all about perfecting themselves, mentally and physically (blue). What they believe as perfection is acting without thought (red) by being in-tune with the cadence of the multiverse (green).
Mechanics: Proaction (Precombat main phase), Prowess
Doomguard - BG - Green motivations, black methods. The Doomguard believe that everyone should accept and acknowledge that entropy is the correct/inevitable state of the multiverse (green). However, as entropy is intrinsically about destruction, many of their methods involve killing and destabilizing (black).
Mechanics: Wither, Caring about things dying and being exiled, Exiling cards from graveyards, Self-mill
Athar - RW - Red and white motivations, red methods. The Athar want everyone to think for themselves (red), and to free everyone from lies about the powers (white). The way they accomplish this tends to be through arguments, passionate speeches, and active protest (red).
Mechanics: Artifact/enchantment hate (flavored as anti-religious relics), Land hate (flavored as anti-religion)
Sensates - UGR - Blue motivations, green and red methods. The Sensates want to reach enlightenment (blue) through experiencing everything the multiverse has to offer, which includes the natural state of all things (green) and the full range of art and emotion (red). Inversely, the Sensates are about experiencing everything, without any morality or ethics attached (all colors, minus white and black).
Mechanics: Worldliness (bonuses if you have X colors in your graveyard)
Outside the color pairs / in addition to:
Harmonium - W - White motivations, white methods. The Harmonium's end goal is peace through order. They achieve it through war when necessary, but the reason they go to war is because they view that group as an obstacle to peace.
Mechanics: Care about other Harmonium/white soldiers
Dustmen - BG - Green motivations, black themes. The Dustmen are all about embracing the natural state of life and death (green). They do so in macabre ways often associated with the undead (black).
Mechanics: Mummify (a reflavored Embalm)
Godsmen - WU - Blue motivations, white themes. The Godsmen believe in perfecting yourself (blue) so that you can step up the rungs of existence. They tend to be a supportive, though harsh, community (white).
Mechanics: Cares about Equipment and Auras (flavored as the works of The Great Foundry)
Signers - WUBRG - The signers accept just about anyone and any belief system, so long as you think you're the center of the multiverse. The reasoning of why you believe that, or what you intend to do with that power, can be just about anything (to bring peace, to obtain all knowledge, to dominate, to experience, etc).
Mechanics: Cares about having Signers
Free League - WUBRG, skewing R- Basically, anybody can be a member, but this tends to include those who have anti-authoritarian viewpoints.
Mechanics: None
Anyway, I could keep going but I think I'll stop. Have fun with your set! Planescape is awesome and I'm excited to see what you come up with.
Hopefully we can end up with a bunch of great Planescape sets
After my experience, I think if you are going the lands- and Portals-matter route, I kind of think the factions should be even further background than this. For example, what if your ten two-color pairs were tied to Outer Planes? It sounds like you are going much more "big picture" than I did so this could let you fit in more of the weird stuff from elsewhere on the wheel.
I dig it, excited to see what you come up with.
I struggled with this, it was tough to get a good balance of showing the "core" PC races and all the weird monsters and stuff. I do think if you tie races to colors, most of them should be in at least two. For example, I think it does a disservice to Githzerai to restrict them to red... they are very big into traditions and rituals (green), community survival in the chaos of Limbo and in the face of illithid and Githyanki threats (white), and practicing the mental discipline to maintain cities in Limbo (blue). That said, it does feel sort of anti-MTG to put races in all the colors, so it might be tough to recognize it. I do think my creature types ended up a bit too soupy.
That's gotta be really tough without bumping Planeswalkers down to rare, and doing that could have some pretty feel-bad consequences for Limited. But if you're not interested in Limited, YMMV.
In hindsight, I do think with a little pushing there could be a way. If I took my original setup and made some tweaks, I could have ended with 10 two-color pair factions and 5 single-color factions, which would be perfectly balanced on the color pie. I'm thinking Harmonium as mono-white, Godsmen as mono-blue (they are all about that self improvement, merit-based success), Doomguard as mono-black, Free League as mono-red, and... somebody as mono-green, I guess that leaves Signers? But also in hindsight, I don't think I'd have tried to cram all 15 factions into a set, but it could be done.
I'm definitely excited to see the lands you've come up with. Those will be awesome.
I'll try to find some time in the next couple of days to post it for you. Feel free to steal whatever if you like any of it.
-- UPDATE: Info about my set below --
I thought a long time about how to do a Planescape set and in the end I decided to focus on the factions, particularly their roles in Sigil. Here is a link to my Planescape: Factions set spoiler, if you want to go straight to the source:
http://www.planesculptors.net/set/planescape-factions/version-3#cards
And below I've gathered some thoughts about my work on the set, and on your ideas so far. It's a bit of a hot mess but given that I don't know if anyone will actually ever come back to this thread and read it, I didn't want to spend too much time cleaning it up :P.
If you only read one thing from this diatribe, it should be my advice that Planescape is HUGE, and you should pick something narrow and go crazy with that thing. I picked "Factions in Sigil" and even that was too broad... could have easily been two to three sets, GNR/RNA style.
Obviously that's a lot, but I was targeting a set somewhere in the area of Future Sight complexity and Modern Masters power level (I think I came in under MM power level, but that's okay).
Some decisions as a result of these:
With regard to Class Types, I went... close to second-edition D&D, though not exact.
Non-D&D class types:
I mostly stuck to the listed colors except for one-off cards where it made sense (e.g. a blue Harmonium tap-down card, The Great Green Wurm as the Mercykillers' monster).
My ten almost-color-pairs were the following, along with summaries of some my notes from early in the design process. I've also included the mechanics that ended up appearing on the cards (most of these came much later in development).
Fraternity of Order - WU - Blue motivations, white methods. The Guvners have a very blue goal of obtaining all knowledge and understanding all things, but they also view everything through a structured lens (white). As part of the judicial system they also maintain peace through order (white).
Mechanics: Counterspells, O-Ring, Card Draw
The Fated - UB - Black motivations, blue and black methods. The Takers believe that if you can't hold onto something, you don't deserve to have it, and everybody has to look out for themselves (black). Obtaining what you want is often accomplished through understanding and exploiting knowledge and loopholes of complex systems such as the tax code (blue), and other times through more nefarious techniques (black).
Mechanics: Discard, Stealing, Sacrifice, Treasure
The Revolutionary League - RB - Red motivations, black and red methods. The Anarchists believe in the abolishment of all systems so that individuals can be truly free (red) and they'll do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal, no matter how underhanded (black).
Mechanics: Deathtouch, Destruction, Self-sacrifice
The Xaositects - RG - Green motivations, red ideology. Ultimately the Chaosmen are about acknowledging and accepting (green) that chaos is at the core of everything (red).
Mechanics: Madness, Coin-flipping
The Bleakers - WG - Green motivations, white themes. Like the Xaositects, their motivation is to acknowledge and accept (green) that there is no purpose to life or the multiverse (colorless?). However, in doing so, they turn to healing the sick and helping the downtrodden (white).
Mechanics: Madness, Lifegain/Damage prevention, Flicker (to represent the Grim Retreat), Tapping (flavored as depression or nonsense)
Mercykillers - WB - White motivations, black methods. The Mercykillers want people to be safe (white) by striking criminals from society - or existence. However, many of them will do absolutely whatever it takes to reach this goal - interrogation, torture, murder without trial, etc. (black)
Mechanics: Kill spells, Rewards for killing
Transcendant Order - URG - Blue motivations, red themes. The Transcendants are all about perfecting themselves, mentally and physically (blue). What they believe as perfection is acting without thought (red) by being in-tune with the cadence of the multiverse (green).
Mechanics: Proaction (Precombat main phase), Prowess
Doomguard - BG - Green motivations, black methods. The Doomguard believe that everyone should accept and acknowledge that entropy is the correct/inevitable state of the multiverse (green). However, as entropy is intrinsically about destruction, many of their methods involve killing and destabilizing (black).
Mechanics: Wither, Caring about things dying and being exiled, Exiling cards from graveyards, Self-mill
Athar - RW - Red and white motivations, red methods. The Athar want everyone to think for themselves (red), and to free everyone from lies about the powers (white). The way they accomplish this tends to be through arguments, passionate speeches, and active protest (red).
Mechanics: Artifact/enchantment hate (flavored as anti-religious relics), Land hate (flavored as anti-religion)
Sensates - UGR - Blue motivations, green and red methods. The Sensates want to reach enlightenment (blue) through experiencing everything the multiverse has to offer, which includes the natural state of all things (green) and the full range of art and emotion (red). Inversely, the Sensates are about experiencing everything, without any morality or ethics attached (all colors, minus white and black).
Mechanics: Worldliness (bonuses if you have X colors in your graveyard)
Outside the color pairs / in addition to:
Harmonium - W - White motivations, white methods. The Harmonium's end goal is peace through order. They achieve it through war when necessary, but the reason they go to war is because they view that group as an obstacle to peace.
Mechanics: Care about other Harmonium/white soldiers
Dustmen - BG - Green motivations, black themes. The Dustmen are all about embracing the natural state of life and death (green). They do so in macabre ways often associated with the undead (black).
Mechanics: Mummify (a reflavored Embalm)
Godsmen - WU - Blue motivations, white themes. The Godsmen believe in perfecting yourself (blue) so that you can step up the rungs of existence. They tend to be a supportive, though harsh, community (white).
Mechanics: Cares about Equipment and Auras (flavored as the works of The Great Foundry)
Signers - WUBRG - The signers accept just about anyone and any belief system, so long as you think you're the center of the multiverse. The reasoning of why you believe that, or what you intend to do with that power, can be just about anything (to bring peace, to obtain all knowledge, to dominate, to experience, etc).
Mechanics: Cares about having Signers
Free League - WUBRG, skewing R- Basically, anybody can be a member, but this tends to include those who have anti-authoritarian viewpoints.
Mechanics: None
Anyway, I could keep going but I think I'll stop. Have fun with your set! Planescape is awesome and I'm excited to see what you come up with.