Has anyone used the different affiliation rules?

[thorr-kan]

How did they work out for you?

What did you do to reconcile the differences?

ETA: I should really unpack and wait until I'm on a PC for these questions.

Affiliations and organizations are covered in the following supplements, just of a quick scan of the library:
PH2, Ch 7
DMG2, Ch 6
Cityscape, Ch 3
Complete Champion, Ch 1
Complete Adventurer, Ch 6
The Shatttered Gates of Slaughergarde, Player's Guide

[inuyasha]

What do you mean by 'affiliation rules?'

[thorr-kan]

What do you mean by 'affiliation rules?'
They're a later development, and I should unpack my thoughts when I post these questions. I've edited the original post.

[Vrock Bait]

I think they’re not too unbalanced as long as you make sure everyone has one, and make sure it’s only one.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I think they’re not too unbalanced as long as you make sure everyone has one, and make sure it’s only one.

I'd say it's fine for players to belong to multiple--the actual benefits gained are fairly minor except for the top-tier abilities, and even those aren't particularly strong unless you do something like writing a convoluted backstory to pick up all the benefits at very low levels--and in fact having players attempt to balance allegiances to multiple factions can be a great way to get them invested in things like inter-faction politicking (because they have to juggle loyalties to keep multiple benefits) or just the world in general (because they at least have to read up on and care about various factions to decide which ones to join).

[Fizban]

How did they work out for you?
Last game I was running was before I'd noticed them, but- I think they're a great worldbuilding tool, with a few rough bits that should be easy enough to smooth over. Also a fine vector for giving out little bonuses for being part of an organization, which is what makes it feel like you're actually a member, without needing to take a dedicated prestige class.

What did you do to reconcile the differences?
What, between the different types? You use the ones that you like. Complete Adventurer organizations are not Affiliations, but rather a way of determining what high level NPCs are found in a group- basically a smaller version of the city generation rules. The CA stuff could be assigned to NPCs in the town, or used as a framework for generating a reasonable but not over the top number of extra high level NPCs that are only there for the organization. PHB2 Affiliations deliberately ignore how many people are members. CA organizations have a weekly spending limit that can be abused, while affiliations have their own capital system, which can also be abused, but takes a bit more effort and at least gives you an idea of what they already have rather than just what they spend per week. And there are "organization" descriptions in many books, some with no benefits, some with a single benefit, but not fitting either CA or PHB2 systems.

Naturally, the book with the most affiliations outside of PHB2 (Complete Champion) also immediately relaxes the concept and starts giving out more significant benefits, as do most of those outside of PHB2. Much like skill tricks and free level adjustment, affiliation benefits can become yet another parallel advancement track that if one person is using, all need to be using. Ideally you would have one or two affiliations that are friendly with each other, so the PCs can all belong to and gain useful benefits from them without pasting on "oh my build wants X so I have this domain affiliation. . . "

One major problem with affiliations, is that many of their benefits are things that would have previously been part of "roleplaying benefits," or involve item pricing. That's kinda the point, that those kind of benefits are now assigned to affiliations and here's a table of how you join and rank up, but it also means that if the DM is altering the money and item systems, those will all need to be changed, and people will complain that things they could do for "free" now require investment. There is no good solution there, since even compiling a list of all these things to be assigned to affiliations would be impossible. So it's best to go the other way, make them few, and only assign significant things that you wouldn't have allowed as "backstory" (and make that clear).

[Tiktakkat]

I did!
I wrote the affiliations for the Greyhawk Ruins arc in Living Greyhawk.

Overall, it was fun delving into the system and writing them up. You can get some serious insight into developing groups for your campaign world, defining what their goals are, and what little bits can be thrown at members to make them special.

In practice though, meh.
Like most of the attempts to write up background/downtime rules in 3.5 and PFRPG, the rules are overly complicated, and generally require a commitment of resources (feats and skills) that far outweigh the benefits.

The Affiliations are not too bad compared to some of the subsystems they tried, but unless you really, determinedly, cherry pick the elements that give bonuses and the rewards, most are going to be useless to worthless for the average adventuring party. They just do not give any grand return. Maybe a bonus feat or three if you really weasel them, but even then you should only see them above 15th level, at which point they are barely noticeable as rewards.