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Ferrinus posted:You need those 4 dice, man, every little edge counts in exalt on exalt combat. Doesn't this sprawling, wondrous ecosystem understand that? Isn't it being just a liiittle bit selfish? Well, whatever, I tried using reason, send in the erymanthoi. Pity about Steps 1 and 2 involving Solars, though.
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May 31, 2013 18:15
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A_Raving_Loon posted:How much magic land do folks like in their games? I like smaller manses in my games, particularly in the wilderness where it is plausible they have remained unclaimed. I find they provide a bit of mystery (who built this, and where are they now?) and respite, a useful tool or power for the characters, and occasionally a cool scene and a place the characters will return to as the game progresses. The smaller ones can be pretty much anything; an enchanted bridge that spans a crevice, a wayside shrine, a maze that will hide you from enemies for a night, a bell tower where you can touch the sky, a geothermal spa that will soothe your wounds, a cavern in a lost canyon containing magical crystal formations... I recall someone calculated how many manses it took to power all the magitech in Lookshy, which was a ridiculous amount as they would primarily have to be located in the area around Lookshy. It was hundreds and hundreds of manses rated 1, 2 and 3.
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May 31, 2013 18:16
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:The greatest irony here being that the Alchemical Exalted in their machine cityplanetsystem are in fact the perfect realization of community spirit and togetherness in their utter triumph over the frailties of nature. So Step 3: Profit could in theory be really great. Here's my Solar's plan to thwart the Yozis: act in such a way that when the Infernal Exalted show up, no one will actually notice.
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May 31, 2013 18:17
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Alien Rope Burn posted:That's a tough question, because 2e seems to assume Hearthstones are a regular reward for adventures. Every artifact seems to require or come with a Heartstone slot. But Hearthstones are frequently A) useless or B) game-busting. Have there been any mentions of hearthstones in E3? I know there's those secret artifact powers and I feel like that makes plenty of sense as a replacement for the really dull, mechanistic hearthstone creation process in 2e.
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May 31, 2013 18:20
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Ferrinus posted:I always figured manses to be gigantic manifestations of exalted megalomania. You stride into a huge, fantastic landscape that has over the centuries developed a unique supernatural ecology sustained by the natural essence flows of the area, put your fists on your waist, and go "Yyyyep, I'm gonna turn this entire place into +4 dice on my jumping rolls." Isn't breaking pristine wilderness over your knee for your comfort and convenience what being human is all about? It's always been odd to me that hearthstones often give such narrow benefits for the amount of work that goes into making one exist. With a lot of rocks, it felt like you could way more use out of them as a battery for some fancy old-realm gizmo.
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May 31, 2013 18:21
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Ferrinus posted:Here's my Solar's plan to thwart the Yozis: act in such a way that when the Infernal Exalted show up, no one will actually notice. This leaves out the Lunars I guess. Unless they're part of "everyone," as they should be.
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May 31, 2013 18:21
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carborexic posted:I like smaller manses in my games, particularly in the wilderness where it is plausible they have remained unclaimed. I find they provide a bit of mystery (who built this, and where are they now?) and respite, a useful tool or power for the characters, and occasionally a cool scene and a place the characters will return to as the game progresses. The smaller ones can be pretty much anything; an enchanted bridge that spans a crevice, a wayside shrine, a maze that will hide you from enemies for a night, a bell tower where you can touch the sky, a geothermal spa that will soothe your wounds, a cavern in a lost canyon containing magical crystal formations... I've found a comfortable balance in making things rated 1-3 relatively frequent stuff in circulation, with any 4s and 5s being important things that stand out. This goes for manses, artifacts, and essence ratings on NPCs. I feel free to sprinkle little mystical points of interest and shiny trinkets around that would be a Big Deal to normals, but far less so on the level Exalted games are meant to start at.
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May 31, 2013 18:31
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It's always disappointed me since I started playing Exalted that, when a player puts dots into Manse, 99% of the time, the focus is on the Hearthstone they can use rather than the actual magical fortress. I would like to see Hearthstones purchased separately from manses. Manse is for players who want a fortress and magical base of operations. Hearthstone is for players who want a rock that makes them regenerate motes faster, plus some minor powers. Perhaps you get a discount if you buy both together, or perhaps not, but I think "I have a magical death fortress" deserves more focus.
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May 31, 2013 18:35
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Manses are criminally underused. Demesnes are heinously underused. Does anyone know of inspirations (real-world or fictional) for either of the above? If we just had some decent examples.... There's always the Winchester Mansion, to start with.
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May 31, 2013 18:44
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I think it's good to link the two, such that your magical death fortress always counts for something even if you're adventuring half a world a way. Also, like I said, the understated nature of a hearthstone's actual benefits makes a fun point about what it means to be powerful. Is it really worth it to unilaterally restructure an entire community and to siphon away the flows of natural magic that may well have sustained that community's livelihood just to provide yourself with a minor portable convenience? The answer is yes.
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May 31, 2013 18:45
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This could be either. For manses, I generally look at awesome, ancient buildings, and wonder what magical powers they would have if translated to Exalted. Perhaps the Colossus of Rhodes was a point defense system and lighthouse in combination, and it was of Hesieh. That sort of thing. I'm not as good at demenses, but I'd consider doing the same for landscape features and deities. "Why is there a hole so deep here? Perhap this houses a group of crystal elementals who wanted to see the sky." Ferrinus posted:I think it's good to link the two, such that your magical death fortress always counts for something even if you're adventuring half a world a way. Also, like I said, the understated nature of a hearthstone's actual benefits makes a fun point about what it means to be powerful. Is it really worth it to unilaterally restructure an entire community and to siphon away the flows of natural magic that may well have sustained that community's livelihood just to provide yourself with a minor portable convenience? The answer is yes. Yeah, this makes sense. I'll rephrase to focus on my primary issue: The magical death fortress itself is rarely detailed and doesn't usually manage to count for anything besides the Hearthstone. This is a sad underutilization of it.
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May 31, 2013 18:51
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As a fun thought experiment, a prerequisite for having a Manse from the player's perspective is that for every dot of the Merit you have, you have to write a sentence describing it. So, 1 dot, 1 sentence (nice, basic, high-concept elevator pitch style manses). 2 dots, that's 2 more sentence for 3 total, and so on. So for a big 5-dot mansion, you're looking at 15 robust sentences' worth of description of your cool place you own and can totally hang out at between your rad adventures of fun. And now that you've spent all that time detailing the thing, maybe it's produced some story hooks for the ST to work with, while also making the player sufficiently invested in a thing they helped devise and execute for more than just "lets me get a bonus to jumping."
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May 31, 2013 19:36
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:It's always disappointed me since I started playing Exalted that, when a player puts dots into Manse, 99% of the time, the focus is on the Hearthstone they can use rather than the actual magical fortress. I would like to see Hearthstones purchased separately from manses. Manse is for players who want a fortress and magical base of operations. Hearthstone is for players who want a rock that makes them regenerate motes faster, plus some minor powers. Perhaps you get a discount if you buy both together, or perhaps not, but I think "I have a magical death fortress" deserves more focus. Focus on the hearthstone itself is how the Background works for Dragon-Blooded, and other types of Exalts as well, I believe. You're attuned to the place and lent the hearthstone, and there's no easy way to take it away from you other than breaking the manse through geomancy and in such rendering the hearthstone useless. You also have a say in whether or not others can attune themselves to the manse. Perhaps it would be better if the two were separate. I can see why that'd be preferable from a storytelling point of view, though, in particular when the hearthstones start piling up. In previous games I've had manses act as dojos or smithies, and in the last campaign I ran the characters found a demesne while investigating the death of a prominent dynastic sorceress (she'd felt charitable in her last moments and used the Awareness Charm from DotFA to create a level 5 demesne from her essence). They built a level five manse there with the Alternate Locations power, and set up useful spots around Creation. Other than that I've rarely seen that side of the Manse Background properly employed. Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:As a fun thought experiment, a prerequisite for having a Manse from the player's perspective is that for every dot of the Merit you have, you have to write a sentence describing it. So, 1 dot, 1 sentence (nice, basic, high-concept elevator pitch style manses). 2 dots, that's 2 more sentence for 3 total, and so on. So for a big 5-dot mansion, you're looking at 15 robust sentences' worth of description of your cool place you own and can totally hang out at between your rad adventures of fun. And now that you've spent all that time detailing the thing, maybe it's produced some story hooks for the ST to work with, while also making the player sufficiently invested in a thing they helped devise and execute for more than just "lets me get a bonus to jumping." I like this a lot.
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May 31, 2013 19:44
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Mexcillent posted:Have there been any mentions of hearthstones in E3?
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May 31, 2013 19:47
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I always felt one of the major issues with manses is that they're generally not well-defended (unless that's all you build them to do - to be defended). In theory, any time the PCs are away to play, somebody's probably going to be horning in on their territory to claim it, raid it, break it, whatever. Really part of it is just that Exalted games tend to be wandering games, and so there's often not much reason to focus on them overtly outside of a single adventure, unless it's a mobile manse, though they can be focuses for more sedentary campaigns. I have wished Hearthstones were much more focused - I'd like to see them enhance the item they're socketed into, myself, and give new powers to weapons and armor instead of just granting random superpowers.
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May 31, 2013 19:50
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I feel like tying Hearthstones to Manses is just not a great idea. I'd prefer they just be magical gems that maybe Demesne create through the accumulation of Essence over a long period of time or something.
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May 31, 2013 19:54
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Really part of it is just that Exalted games tend to be wandering games, and so there's often not much reason to focus on them overtly outside of a single adventure, unless it's a mobile manse, though they can be focuses for more sedentary campaigns. Tolkien god drat you. E: Good Demenses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hills http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_Hills Mexcillent fucked around with this message at 19:58 on May 31, 2013 |
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May 31, 2013 19:56
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
This seems like it'd be pretty easy with the new system for artifacts. "This Evocation is not usable without a hearthstone socketed" and maybe have hearthstones that add new Evocations to existing artifacts, or both.
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May 31, 2013 19:58
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carborexic posted:Focus on the hearthstone itself is how the Background works for Dragon-Blooded, and other types of Exalts as well, I believe. You're attuned to the place and lent the hearthstone, and there's no easy way to take it away from you other than breaking the manse through geomancy and in such rendering the hearthstone useless. You also have a say in whether or not others can attune themselves to the manse. Perhaps it would be better if the two were separate. Yeah, Dynast-Manse felt like something that should have been broken off into a separate merit. Points of it don't make you a landholder, just a tenant who gets to rent out the magic glow-rocks. quote:I always felt one of the major issues with manses is that they're generally not well-defended (unless that's all you build them to do - to be defended). In theory, any time the PCs are away to play, somebody's probably going to be horning in on their territory to claim it, raid it, break it, whatever. The levelling of the power curve coming in 3e may help alleviate this, such that leaving your magic house guarded by even a community of skilled mortals or a pack of animal friends or something provides a reasonable deterrent against people loving with your stuff while you're away from home.
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May 31, 2013 20:02
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I've always been confused about how prevalent manses/demenses are supposed to be. Was there ever any statement given on how common or uncommon they are? That being said, I've always just treated most castles as manses and most town centers having a few manses since they seem like natural gathering spots.
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May 31, 2013 20:34
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Manses are big deals. They always mean that someone took a demesne - a landscape naturally suffused with excess essence of some aspect, such that it's extra-magical in a way that's probably totally unique - and performed a huge landscaping/architecture project to channel all that essence into a single building which, itself, channels all that essence into a single hearthstone. I know later supplements added lots of rules for extra side things that you could use a manse's power to do, like magical traps or whatever, but the primary goal of a manse is to take the magical power of an entire region and congeal it into a token that you, an exalt, can exploit. That's not the sort of thing you find in every town square - an exalt is lucky to have a manse, unless they're a working Sidereal or otherwise bolstered by an extensive and influential support structure. In channeling all of a demesne's energies into a manse, you're channeling those energies away from whatever they were already doing, so the natural wonders and mutated creatures (which may, in fact, be human beings) developed as a result of the demesne's unique conditions will probably wither away and die. They weren't very important, though.
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May 31, 2013 20:45
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 I'm not sure how to feel about this.
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May 31, 2013 20:52
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carborexic posted:
Well, if they can fit 9 (potentially 11) MA Styles in the Corebook, then it would make sense that they can fit more in the other splat books. So Abyssals will probably give us Hungry Ghost and Laughing Wound with Dark Messiah simply being Brawl charms.
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May 31, 2013 20:58
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carborexic posted:
Hopefully, it means that John Morke is planning to quarantine all the terrible ideas in the new edition into one, easily-avoided book. 
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May 31, 2013 21:01
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Ferrinus posted:Manses are big deals. They always mean that someone took a demesne - a landscape naturally suffused with excess essence of some aspect, such that it's extra-magical in a way that's probably totally unique - and performed a huge landscaping/architecture project to channel all that essence into a single building which, itself, channels all that essence into a single hearthstone. I know later supplements added lots of rules for extra side things that you could use a manse's power to do, like magical traps or whatever, but the primary goal of a manse is to take the magical power of an entire region and congeal it into a token that you, an exalt, can exploit. That's not the sort of thing you find in every town square - an exalt is lucky to have a manse, unless they're a working Sidereal or otherwise bolstered by an extensive and influential support structure. The true villains of creation - Aqueducts.
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May 31, 2013 21:07
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Emerald Rogue posted:Hopefully, it means that John Morke is planning to quarantine all the terrible ideas in the new edition into one, easily-avoided book.  Do not make that book their Promethean wasteland.
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May 31, 2013 21:07
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:But is it going to be the same book with the Liminals in it? By the sound of it, the new exalts who don't get hardbacks will get softbacks, so Liminals shouldn't be shoe-horned into the Abyssal book.
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May 31, 2013 21:11
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carborexic posted:
Uggh. But the most annoying thing, as many other much smarter people before me have pointed out, is that this toxic material could be very useful and interesting concepts if they just worked a little harder on the background and fluff, and toned down the "sexy" pandering. It seems like they are really limiting themselves to this concept that "Mature Content = loving and Fetishes"; They could be doing so many cooler things if this wasn't their obsession. PrinceRandom fucked around with this message at 21:23 on May 31, 2013 |
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May 31, 2013 21:18
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PrinceRandom posted:Uggh. But the most annoying thing, as many other much smarter people before me have pointed out, is that this toxic material could be very useful and interesting concepts if they just worked a little harder on the background and fluff, and toned down the "sexy" pandering. Too bad they have to write them that way or the character and the martial art won't be accurately presented.
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May 31, 2013 21:23
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Ego Trip posted:Too bad they have to write them that way or the character and the martial art won't be accurately presented. This is one thing I just can't wrap my head around. Do they not understand that they are in control of the setting now? Maybe this is the problem with the ascended fanboys controlling the writing is that they aren't comprehending that they can change entire characters or concepts to whatever they want them to be.
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May 31, 2013 21:27
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PrinceRandom posted:This is one thing I just can't wrap my head around. Do they not understand that they are in control of the setting now? Maybe this is the problem with the ascended fanboys controlling the writing is that they aren't comprehending that they can change entire characters or concepts to whatever they want them to be. It's what happens when the fans become the ones writing the setting. They became fans for a reason, and they won't change that reason.
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May 31, 2013 21:50
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Yeah, it was brought up in one of the earlier threads but they really have next to no incentive to change setting concepts until after the Kickstarter; there's nothing really there for the prospective backer (one who doesn't have access to backer updates yet, specifically) to attach to beyond the name and some extremely vague explanations of what's to be changed (THE WORLD IS BIGGER, some platitudes about new system changes and Exalts with zero hard mechanics to give you an idea of what you're getting into), so unless there's some MASSIVE, massive backlash for something they've written, which we saw with the Infernal preview (it's really funny in a sad, awful way that THAT wasn't a problem to change, but Abyssals were), there really won't be much new stuff. It's actually my theory that they're waiting until the kickstarter is over to release the quickstarts to Backers, which is maybe a bit cynical, but whatever, after the last week or so I think I've got a right to it.
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May 31, 2013 22:19
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I don't think the infernal backlash was bigger, it was just more in line with their original thoughts. The real question raised by the Abyssal backlash- to the degree it wasn't just Holden saying some offensive things in defense of the charms- is the role sex itself will play in the game.
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Jun 1, 2013 00:36
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Strength of Many posted:They chop down trees their chief god hates, they're buddy-buddy with the Realm, the entire Tepet Legion Massacre had its catalyst in the Linowans begging them to put down the Bull before he tries to invade them. Mexcillent posted:Linowans own. The Linowan got short-thrift in First Edition. Their write-up in Second almost makes it worst. Their territory is laid out so that their capital, Rubylak, can be the backdrop of an end-boss battle fought by Haltan/Bull sympathetic PCs after they've conquered their way through the rest of the Nation. Their patron god, Jorst the Golden-Eyed, is a friendly party god who loves drugs yet Haltan territory gets all the exotic intoxicants. Linowan boat clans get the aggressive stereotype of "burning down innocent Haltan forests" despite fire being a far better tactic to use in spreading their enemies' redwood tree groves; this makes them look stupid. They lose most of the canon battles, yet the Fields of Woe shadowland created by the last large scale war between the two tree-loving nations is hundreds of miles from their shared border; this is never presented as the Linowans pushing the tree-line back for near 500 years. Oh, and since they get the lovely boon of being a stand-in for Native American peoples, the writers saw fit to give them the wonderful benefit of special magical diseases that only ever infect Linowans. Stay classy, Exalted. Giving the Linowan a fantastic reboot is the sort of thing I was excited for when 3rd edition was announced. Making "awesome war over trees egged on by aggressive forest gods" as great as it sounded back in the 1st ed core would be cooler than most of the other stuff they've leaked.
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Jun 1, 2013 00:46
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Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the Reclamation thing was a bigger outcry in the post, it was just...I don't know, honestly. Easier to handle? Like, who is going to argue that continued focus on the Yozis in the Reclamation is a good direction for it. That's basically all they've had to ever deal with when they talk to the fanbase, goofy little stuff with easy answers. And by all rights this should have been exactly as easy to deal with! Like, every edition of Exalted has had sidebars like "this is some stuff you need to clear with your group before you deal with it, for everyone's comfort, so don't be an idiot please", often in multiple books, they could have just done that as their answer and be done with it. Hell, they've literally got someone who wrote for Exalted 2e prior to the Ink Monkeys still on staff, did he not remember that they've historically erred on the side of caution with this poo poo? e: I mean, poo poo, Strength of Many has posted basically every sidebar from 1e and one or two from 2e I think, the freaking 1e Abyssals book had a sidebar about finding out if they're down with killing hundreds of innocent people, and they never had a loving charm that says "You kill up to 100*(Essence) civilians in an area (Essence)*5 yards around you" Saman fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jun 1, 2013 |
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Jun 1, 2013 00:55
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Yeah, the focus on the Yozi and stuff really came at a time when I stopped buying Exalted books. Maybe I'm not the target market but I pretty much just found out about Infernals and Hell being places to play when the Infernals book came out. I kind of think that Hell and Heaven are pretty awful, just because they distract from Creation. I like the Underworld. I don't know. Random thoughts on reclamation or whatever.
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Jun 1, 2013 01:26
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Ferrinus posted:Manses are big deals. They always mean that someone took a demesne - a landscape naturally suffused with excess essence of some aspect, such that it's extra-magical in a way that's probably totally unique - and performed a huge landscaping/architecture project to channel all that essence into a single building which, itself, channels all that essence into a single hearthstone. I know later supplements added lots of rules for extra side things that you could use a manse's power to do, like magical traps or whatever, but the primary goal of a manse is to take the magical power of an entire region and congeal it into a token that you, an exalt, can exploit. That's not the sort of thing you find in every town square - an exalt is lucky to have a manse, unless they're a working Sidereal or otherwise bolstered by an extensive and influential support structure. Not necessarily. Manses aren't just siphons that take all the power in the area and concentrate it into a single spot, any more than a wind farm means there's no more wind anywhere else in the region. It's wholly possible to build a manse that exists in harmony with the demesne - seeding a mandala of lilies in an enchanted pond, whose central bloom opens to reveal the hearthstone; hanging wind chimes in a valley of echoes, whose notes play the stone into existence; cordoning off a dark forest full of terrible beasts, turning it into a game preserve where one who would attune to the manse must hunt one of the monsters within, and the hearthstone-bearer him/herself must slay the most vicious creature there and pull the gem from its bleeding heart. To the extent that a manse DOES make its demesne less magical, remember that mortals (NOT Exalts) originally raised manses not because they wanted hearthstones (most early manses didn't even generate them), but to stem the tide of unnatural horrors and mystical catastrophes that periodically spilled forth. Uncapped demesnes are pretty much radioactive.
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Jun 1, 2013 01:29
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It's not that manses make demesnes less magical, it's that they irrevocably alter the powerful essence flows that influence that demesne. For instance, when building a water manse, you're going to have to alter the flow of that magical river, or maybe even dam it up. The people downriver who age much slower thanks to their magical drinking water are slowly going to die because you wanted a hearthstone. Your disruption of earth essence might trigger earthquakes somewhere else. The manse and hearthstone section of Oadenol's Codex was great in this regard, exposing the sheer scale of what geomancy actually is.
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Jun 1, 2013 01:46
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pospysyl posted:It's not that manses make demesnes less magical, it's that they irrevocably alter the powerful essence flows that influence that demesne. For instance, when building a water manse, you're going to have to alter the flow of that magical river, or maybe even dam it up. The people downriver who age much slower thanks to their magical drinking water are slowly going to die because you wanted a hearthstone. Your disruption of earth essence might trigger earthquakes somewhere else. The manse and hearthstone section of Oadenol's Codex was great in this regard, exposing the sheer scale of what geomancy actually is. It is, however, possible to engineer a manse such that it does not irrevocably gently caress up the ecosystem it was sustaining or whatnot because human artifice is not invariably malign because this is not Captain Planet.
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Jun 1, 2013 01:51
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pospysyl posted:It's not that manses make demesnes less magical, it's that they irrevocably alter the powerful essence flows that influence that demesne. For instance, when building a water manse, you're going to have to alter the flow of that magical river, or maybe even dam it up. The people downriver who age much slower thanks to their magical drinking water are slowly going to die because you wanted a hearthstone. Your disruption of earth essence might trigger earthquakes somewhere else. The manse and hearthstone section of Oadenol's Codex was great in this regard, exposing the sheer scale of what geomancy actually is. And the resulting manse is capable of providing wonders just as great as the land which formed it, if not greater ones. If those wonders are used for the benefit or detriment of the surrounding lands and their people is left in the hands of its master. (Or whoever beats them up to steal their house)
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Jun 1, 2013 01:52
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