Read it all, it is good stuff, but the relevant piece for this is "In Planescape, one of the idealised things that PCs are supposed to be doing - it is suggested - is reshaping the planes through their actions [or] by acting in the name of a God (although the writers called these 'Powers') of one kind or another, they can literally physically enlarge his or her sphere of influence. And, of course, the PCs can themselves aspire to ascend to Godhood and carve out a realm of their own, individually or collectively. [...] There is an unwritten but much better version of Planescape out there in the ether, in which PCs' stats are largely to do with belief and values, and they roll against these stats in order to effect change in their surroundings."
This is a very interesting take - I agree with the critique in that the setting and a bunch of the adventures made it clear that such things should be happening - Recruiters in Well of Worlds is about exactly that. Sig
My immediate reaction to 'other stats about belief and values' is to think of Spire/Heart. There Dark Elfs start a revolution with all the different stats like wealth, blood, magic to stress to get things done. For this ether-Planescape it could be belief (strength thereof), alignment, might, whatever - a bunch of stats that would fit to different circumstances to stress/flex. Playing Spire for me it took a lot to get away from 'I hit it' to 'stress silver to just pay the guy to look the other way' but once I got into the groove it gave a much better sense of getting things done without going blades drawn all the time.
Spire had stats of -
Blood: Physical damage and exhaustion.
Mind: Mental stress, instability and insanity.
Silver: Loss of money or resources.
Shadow: Loss of secrecy, damage to cover identities, police and government attention.
Reputation: Loss of social standing in a group or community.
I like the range there, lots of different ways you can get burnt, which I would like to flip to become what are the many ways that one can mystically affect the planes. Sig, City of Blades is nominally a Blades in the Dark refit of Sigil that is kind of the right system in kind of the right setting but is not looking to achieve the effects we want - it does have the stress system but it is focused on personal prowess, kinetic action and the like - not this more cosmic, warping of realms idea.
My initial thoughts are on a model with axis of matter/mind and dominating/persuasive:
Strength of Will = push through resistance, shape the stuff of a place around you like a cloak
Arcane Cunning = twist to shape, recognise the threads of fate and pluck and tease them to your preference
Belief = resonance, pull others to your vision, be as a beacon
Dreamworking = envision the thing and convince others they perceive it too
Expanding on the attributes
Strength of Will works best when a place is abandoned and noone elses perceptions can gain-say yours. Demons like this - kill everyone and reform a place. It is your radiative certainty that things ought to be a certain way, it is what the Sign of One believes.
Arcane Cunning flexes knowledge of the intricacies of the planes to allow you to reform and reshape them, playing with the underlying laws and rules to change things to your liking. All of the factions built around 'know the lore, the rules, the maths and you can reshape the multiverse' play to this. It also works regardless of whether there are people present or not.
Belief only works where others are present; it is attractive, convincing others that your perception is right and then changing the landscape in their minds which then causes the terrain to shift to match. This is where all of the cults reside. Angels go with this.
Dreamcraft/dreamworking messes with the perceptions of others, pulling a new world over their eyes until they become sure that it was always like this and thus reality warps to match. This also uses the perception of the residents as the medium to make change.
Some additional thoughts on how it would all work
These are not stats that get depleted through damage and stress, these are all attributes for action. Maybe only an exceptional individual has any of these stats at all, maybe they only manifest after certain quests or rituals.
Maybe use of these is like attribute damage in D&D, you spend them very carefully and they take a while to come back. Big effects are very hard to achieve alone, you want to have lots of folk acting in concert, ideally. Most folk will never have a great pool of any of these and thus will effect little to no change.
Combat is not considered in this, use whatever other system you like for that. Contested deployment of these attributes - attempting to wrest a location in different ways - would be won by making the conditions favour the stat you wish to deploy - if you wish to use Dreamcraft vs an opposed Arcane Cunning - make sure there are people to be channels for your dreamcraft. The arcanist will be trying to chase them out. In cases of direct contest - Belief vs Belief - high stat wins.
Effecting change is a longer term thing, even for the forces of the Abyss to drag their gatetown into the Abyss it is a long term project; the deployment of any of these should be something like ritual magic - time, site and components should be relevant.
Gods and other powerful beings tend to have high Will, high Belief; exerting influence on terrain around them and drawing others into alignment with their vision.
I really liked the way Lorefinder could be a retro-fit onto the standard stat block and so it would be great to crunch something off the 6 stats, plus or minus something so you could switch to this system. Maybe you have a couple of stats, multiply it up by your level and that gives you a pool to attempt things. Low level, you're not going to do much but once you get to mid/high level, warping reality around you becomes a thing you can do.
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