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Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Nightskye posted:

Well I mean, if that's your feeling going into it, doesn't seem like there was any apology he could have made at any point that you'd accept.

Which is fine, you know, that's just how it goes sometimes. Just too bad, because I don't really think anybody here was acting in bad faith.

I don't know why people keep saying this. Of course there's an apology he could have made: "Sorry, the charms were in poor taste, we will not be printing them in the actual book."

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Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Yeah, there are apologies that could be made! Ferrinus' would be nice.

It's just, the longer he goes without doing that and the more weaseling he does, the less I trust it, especially as I talk to people who have dealt with him in person or in relation to people he works with. So yeah, the longer this takes, the less likely I am to accept any apology he makes, you are correct!

QuintessenceX
Aug 11, 2006
We are reasons so unreal

Ferrinus posted:

Uh, why. Why would it be. It'll be a bid for money either way, since his answer will determine the future popularity and status of Exalted among people who object to rape ghosts.

It's possible that other people won't come to the same conclusion as you, or think in such an objective fashion. An apology means less to some people if the apology is being done while in the middle of a huge drive for funding. If the apology is given when there's not an immediate ask involved, it might strike some as more sincere. It's not that this is wrong or right, it's just his take on it. His statement basically amounts to "If I apologize now it might not be sincere enough. I want to wait."

BryanChavez
Sep 13, 2007

Custom: Heroic
Having A Life: Fair

QuintessenceX posted:

It's possible that other people won't come to the same conclusion as you, or think in such an objective fashion. An apology means less to some people if the apology is being done while in the middle of a huge drive for funding. If the apology is given when there's not an immediate ask involved, it might strike some as more sincere. It's not that this is wrong or right, it's just his take on it. His statement basically amounts to "If I apologize now it might not be sincere enough. I want to wait."

Apologies aren't dailies. He can apologize now, and then apologize later. Nothing is stopping him from doing that. A quick apology like Ferrinus suggested, with the note, "I want to explain myself in depth later, after the kickstarter is over, to show that my contrition isn't just huge bullshit." And then he does that.

Vadoc
Dec 31, 2007

Guess who made waffles...


Apparently nobody will be happy about anything, whether done now or later. I agree it's better to maybe just do it afterwards. if he does it now then maybe gets more, but other people could feel insulted and withdraw their pledges. It's a no win scenario.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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Vadoc posted:

Apparently nobody will be happy about anything, whether done now or later. I agree it's better to maybe just do it afterwards. if he does it now then maybe gets more, but other people could feel insulted and withdraw their pledges. It's a no win scenario.

Is it really worthwhile to not apologize in order to spare the feelings of those who will be upset you didn't double down on rape ghosts?

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

QuintessenceX posted:

It's possible that other people won't come to the same conclusion as you, or think in such an objective fashion. An apology means less to some people if the apology is being done while in the middle of a huge drive for funding. If the apology is given when there's not an immediate ask involved, it might strike some as more sincere. It's not that this is wrong or right, it's just his take on it. His statement basically amounts to "If I apologize now it might not be sincere enough. I want to wait."

That's stupid, though. As BryanChavez says, apologizing doesn't cost you anything.

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Mors Rattus posted:

Is it really worthwhile to not apologize in order to spare the feelings of those who will be upset you didn't double down on rape ghosts?

Will an apology really be taken as anything other than intentional obfuscation before secretly doubling down on rape ghosts?

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Bedlamdan posted:

Will an apology really be taken as anything other than intentional obfuscation before secretly doubling down on rape ghosts?

Well, that depends. How long have I had to wait, and what else has the man apologizing said?

Seriously, dude. Context.

QuintessenceX
Aug 11, 2006
We are reasons so unreal

Ferrinus posted:

That's stupid, though. As BryanChavez says, apologizing doesn't cost you anything.

Sure, but people have their own ethics.

John Murururururke posted:

The Niobraran League represents a vast host of different races, cultures, and belief systems. They were not a proper League until the destruction of the Lintha Empire. Many of them were enemies. But one thing many of these disparate races had in common, was belief in the Voice of the Trench. The great trench, at the deepest part of the ocean, where the poles reach a true confluence, is believed by them to be the source of the universe, the origin of Creation. To them, the Voice of the Trench is God. His Chosen are the Spoken, which he called into existence. They too have the power of the Voice to call things into being. They can call upon the powers of the oceanic gods, for example, calling down the brimstone rain that fell upon the Burning Isles as in the beginning. They can call upon the aid of sea creatures and pelagic horrors and command them. They can call upon the powers of the tsunami, the quake, the maelstrom, and the vent. They are terrifying champions and counterparts to the Chosen of the Depths, who are quite a bit different.

Gonna play the poo poo out of a Crab Exalted

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Mors Rattus posted:

Well, that depends. How long have I had to wait, and what else has the man apologizing said?

Seriously, dude. Context.

Right. So what precise point is an apology going to serve now? It won't give you any reason to change your mind.

And, I want to add, there's really no reason to change your mind.

taichara
May 9, 2013

c:\>erase c:\reality.sys copy a:\gigacity\*.* c:

Vadoc posted:

Also responsible for "It's not meant to be fun" regarding playing ghosts. Sure, being a ghost isn't like going to Disneyland but then what was the point on writing up them up to be playable if you can't enjoy it?

And also responsible, if I recall correctly, for the notion that a "mortal" will never amount to anything and will never win and exists basically to be ground into the dust.

Which rather begs the question of just how normal people ever manage to stop being ground into the dust long enough to Exalt.

MJ12
Apr 8, 2009

Oligopsony posted:

To me, Neph's failures are a reason for skepticism more than anything else - from an outside view, I can't think of any two people more qualified to have set the system on solid foundation than he and Jenna, but they hosed it up pretty badly (albeit not in a way that was at all obvious.) The current team is by all accounts competent too; why should I expect them to do better? (Not that I'm unwilling to take a look; far from it!)

Also yes on Neph being a better frontman than John or Holden.

Neph's failures (okay social combat is kinda something else) I think stemmed from the whole 'you can spend tons of XP freely' versus 'you get stuff by-level' paradigm of Exalted and making it so social characters can get not-die charms fast so they can survive fights (Which happen fairly often because it's thematic and mechanically beneficial to draw a sword if you don't want to surrender when you get out-argued in Exalted). I've been playing an oMage game with a great GM for a ton of time and there is this incredibly absurd gap between optimized fighters (me and another character), sort of optimized fighters (a couple of others) and non-fighters (everyone else) which only 'works' as it were because all of us are rules-familiar enough and invested enough to make WoD combat go at an okay pace and not mind sitting out for a bit. It's a fuckup of good intentions, as it were.

Ex 2.5 fixes the combat system but breaks that. In a game where XP can be spent freely you're likely to either break the system, cap combat skills at a very low peak, make combat and noncombat prowess independent of each other, or accept that guys who don't invest in fighting will die horribly in a fight instead of having enough time to run the hell away really fast. I sympathize with anyone who has to wade into this morass.

So no, you shouldn't expect them to do 'better', but you should probably expect them to break it in a different, interesting, and possibly educational way. Or just go with the 2.5 thing wherein investing heavily in combat abilities is necessary for survival against high-level foes. Which is potentially broken (as said, combat in Exalted takes a while and is a major scene focus) but less unfun for fighty-types than the other forms of broken.

BryanChavez
Sep 13, 2007

Custom: Heroic
Having A Life: Fair

Bedlamdan posted:

Will an apology really be taken as anything other than intentional obfuscation before secretly doubling down on rape ghosts?

If it's an actual apology, I'm willing to actually listen. This thread sure as poo poo jumped at the chance to give Holden another chance, with just a few outliers. The people in this thread, save for maybe a handful, clearly want to really like Ex3 and the people writing it. I think if the apology is sincere and actually contrite, forgiveness would be quick to follow. At this point? Maybe it won't work, because they've already gone back and forth on the subject. But an apology absolutely could have worked, and I feel still would to a great degree.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Bedlamdan posted:

Will an apology really be taken as anything other than intentional obfuscation before secretly doubling down on rape ghosts?

Uh, yes? It depends on the content of the apology. You might recall that this thread was pretty down with John, Holden, and the rest of the team after the first day of the Abyssal pdf's release, and then went sour again only after the stupid doubling-down "clarification" came out. The actual content of their statements matter.

QuintessenceX posted:

Sure, but people have their own ethics.

Yes, stupid ones.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Yeah, I was a bit bewildered by championing Neph - it wasn't that he was that good at design, but that so much of the 2e design was so bad. He was an innovative ideas guy, and I love the Infernal charm structure and concepts. But he gave us some real monstrosities like the Infernal Monster Expansions, including a charm tree where the apex charm turned you into an NPC (gee, I'm glad I invested in that poo poo!), or Inescapable Fiend, an martial art expansion tree with more charms than the martial art itself. When you're having to take upwards of 20+ charms (and over 160 xp) to get to the apex charms, something has has gone horribly, hideously wrong design-wise. We just had such horrific design disasters as Scroll of the Monk or Scroll of Heroes that it doesn't seem quite so bad by contrast.

I get the impression as to why we haven't seen a mechanics preview is that there's no "there" there - that they haven't hammered out the rules well enough for a playtest or preview. Whether or not this is more cynical or less cynical is up to you to work out, but I'm pretty confident in the assertion nothing is getting shown is because there just isn't that much to show, yet. Working out all the Exalt types in advance is an exercise in spergy madness and I wish them the best, but it's a dirty job worthy of Dirty Jobs and going to take a lot of effort and time for a modest payoff, and certainly going to take more time than the ticking time clock of a Kickstarter.

I think the system will maintain a lot of the core issues of all editions of Exalted until proven otherwise; imbalance between combat fiends and characters who invest in anything else, bloated charm trees and charm descriptions (the fact that the corebook is adverting "more charms!" makes me cringe into my socks), and utterly runaway splat expansion (I like the new types, but complexity is complexity...) Add in additional systems like merits, evocations, variable TNs, and well...

... it's still going to be a huge beast of interlocking mechanics and mechanical wanking. It's still going to be Exalted. :ssh:

Ash Rose
Sep 3, 2011

Where is Megaman?

In queer, with us!

Bedlamdan posted:

Right. So what precise point is an apology going to serve now? It won't give you any reason to change your mind.
If there was a sincere apology and a clear statement along the lines of "we won't actually publish these" I would totally re-pledge.

MJ12
Apr 8, 2009

taichara posted:

And also responsible, if I recall correctly, for the notion that a "mortal" will never amount to anything and will never win and exists basically to be ground into the dust.

Which rather begs the question of just how normal people ever manage to stop being ground into the dust long enough to Exalt.

I think Neph honestly really really wanted to write for a RPG with heavy posthuman themes like, say, a hypothetical redesign of Aberrant/Trinity or something. Anyways, 'mortals don't get to win' is a pretty interesting thematic thing because it completely turns heroic fantasy on its head. At its heart, I always thought Exalted should have been really cynical about standard heroic fantasy.

Morality isn't black and white, there is no such thing as objective good or evil, what really matters is how well you can make people accept your viewpoints on what's right, power corrupts even with the best intentions, so on and so forth. 'Virtues' are an alien inhuman view of the world forced on humans by uncaring shinma. The plucky farmboy doesn't get to win unless he wins the lottery and is fused to a divinely forged weapon designed to kill gods by a revenge-maddened cancerous forgemaster. Even then in the end, unless he understands this, he's likely to fall. Nevertheless, he's allowed to win. Has good not triumphed over evil even in reality, the birthplace of cynicism? It's just not going to be very easy.

Removing some of that might be popular with other fans, but I think it's a bit of a loss that makes Exalted closer to D&D rather than its 'own thing' as it were. Mortals not being able to win against any big players, but being brave enough to try (and occasionally being rewarded for their balls by becoming one of them) worked thematically IMO.

Incidentally, this is the second biggest concern I have about the whole affair, the first being, well, the specter of 2E Infernals and the 3E Abyssals preview. I think that the Ink Monkeys hew closer to classical fantastical stuff than I'd really like. I recall getting into a discussion about Autocthonian militaries wherein I mentioned that how dangerous the terrain was in Autocthonia plus their need to keep working as many people as possible for as long as possible would have resulted in a military which was absolutely tiny but had to be lavishly well-equipped and trained. An entire force of Delta Force meets the Spartans from 300, because nothing else would help much in tight confines where 1 guy in power armor could murder 500 conscripts because the conscripts had to come at him one at a time. We didn't really get that. IMO the current crop of writers hews closer to what is fantasy than what is logical given what we have in the setting and I think that's kind of what I like most about Exalted.

The setting feels like it evolved naturally from its assumptions, rather than having its assumptions created to support some kind of generic fantasyfest.

EDIT:

axelsoar posted:

If there was a sincere apology and a clear statement along the lines of "we won't actually publish these" I would totally re-pledge.

What about "we'll find-replace any mentions of 'rape', 'ravishing', 'lustful', or 'carnal'" into "kittens".

I would buy a book with a charm called "Kitten Shadow Resurrection" pretty much instantly. Also, soul-dead zombies which need kittens to live? Sold.

MJ12 fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jun 6, 2013

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Ferrinus posted:

Uh, yes? It depends on the content of the apology. You might recall that this thread was pretty down with John, Holden, and the rest of the team after the first day of the Abyssal pdf's release, and then went sour again only after the stupid doubling-down "clarification" came out. The actual content of their statements matter.

The "clarification" was already posted. It cannot be unposted, and by and large it's already sufficient evidence for some people that the dev team is lying and will continue to lie. Holden was banned the last time he came to listen to us and apparently try to do straight talk about the Abyssal charms, I don't think that he's going to be jumping at the chance to do so again.

axelsoar posted:

If there was a sincere apology and a clear statement along the lines of "we won't actually publish these" I would totally re-pledge.

And, I don't think we're going to get that.

AdjectiveNoun
Oct 11, 2012

Everything. Is. Fine.
I love the new art piece they just released on the kickstarter.

I'm just irrationally in love with how they've actually managed to make a Roman-Chinese architectural hybrid look plausible and /good/, even if it's just tucked away in a corner.

Lymond
May 30, 2013

Dark Lord in training
I don't want or need an apology. I found the Charms tasteless and niche, but I didn't read rape in them and wasn't offended. The only thing that's annoyed me is the vague responses and the passive-aggressive "you guys are over-reacting and make Lunar fans seem tame by comparison" tone from Holden. So long as the books themselves treat the audience with respect and they don't do any weird crap like sex-only Charms, I'll be satisfied.

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

AdjectiveNoun posted:

I love the new art piece they just released on the kickstarter.

I'm just irrationally in love with how they've actually managed to make a Roman-Chinese architectural hybrid look plausible and /good/, even if it's just tucked away in a corner.

Yeah, there's no question it's nice art.



And check out the Centurion helmet on the bottom-left corner. :3:

Mexcillent
Dec 6, 2008
Still waiting on an apology for Holden broadly painting Indians as Barbarians.

e: Niobaran league is making me want to get this anyway though.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Bedlamdan posted:

The "clarification" was already posted. It cannot be unposted, and by and large it's already sufficient evidence for some people that the dev team is lying and will continue to lie. Holden was banned the last time he came to listen to us and apparently try to do straight talk about the Abyssal charms, I don't think that he's going to be jumping at the chance to do so again.

They don't have to come back here, they can release something on the kickstarter or their own forums. This is by no means beyond their power to fix, they just don't feel like it.

Lymond posted:

I don't want or need an apology. I found the Charms tasteless and niche, but I didn't read rape in them and wasn't offended. The only thing that's annoyed me is the vague responses and the passive-aggressive "you guys are over-reacting and make Lunar fans seem tame by comparison" tone from Holden. So long as the books themselves treat the audience with respect and they don't do any weird crap like sex-only Charms, I'll be satisfied.

Your blindness shouldn't be Exalted's problem.

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Ferrinus posted:

They don't have to come back here, they can release something on the kickstarter or their own forums. This is by no means beyond their power to fix, they just don't feel like it.

Are there any forums, besides this one, still arguing over rapeghosts? I realize there might be, but I don't know if anyone gave a particularly vocal drat about the "clarification" except the people on SA, going solely by the other rpg forums I lurk on. And while I agree that, yeah, the charms are bad and I'd like them to discuss it, it'd seem pretty silly to make a kickstarter update just to satisfy the handful of people on SA who even give a poo poo about the game after 2E.

Adept Nightingale
Feb 7, 2005


The only "apology" I'm likely to find acceptable at this point is the Abyssals book not shipping with crap like what was previewed, but I'm going to have a long wait for that.

In the meantime I'm gonna go with not assuming the worst of the developers, as I feel like they have definitely heard this at this point. I completely understand anyone wanting to go at it from the other side, definitely, but I mean, they can post anything they want, it's all wind. What matters is what they send to press. Speculating on how insincere an apology is likely to be is as much prognostication as anything.

Edit: And unfortunately, yeah. This isn't "hurting the brand" for them-- if anything, pledges must have SPED UP afterwards to keep the average rate going with all the pulled pledges in the last week or so. I'm just hopeful that they're going to come down on my side of this, I have no real illusions that the Exalted playerbase at large is anything but kind of gross.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Bedlamdan posted:

Are there any forums, besides this one, still arguing over rapeghosts? I realize there might be, but I don't know if anyone gave a particularly vocal drat about the "clarification" except the people on SA, going solely by the other rpg forums I lurk on. And while I agree that, yeah, the charms are bad and I'd like them to discuss it, it'd seem pretty silly to make a kickstarter update just to satisfy the handful of people on SA who even give a poo poo about the game after 2E.

Actually, until yesterday there was an active thread in the White Wolf Forums over it. And I'm pretty sure there's more than just people on SA who are upset, what with the G+ activity I've seen with Onyx Path folks.

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Mors Rattus posted:

Actually, until yesterday there was an active thread in the White Wolf Forums over it. And I'm pretty sure there's more than just people on SA who are upset, what with the G+ activity I've seen with Onyx Path folks.

Are you talking about the thread on the WTF D&D article on Exalted? Because that seemed less about "yeah rape ghosts are a bad idea" and more "how dare they not consider rape-ghosts to be brilliant!" I really don't know what to say to that beyond gently caress the White Wolf forums.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
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Bedlamdan posted:

Are you talking about the thread on the WTF D&D article on Exalted? Because that seemed less about "yeah rape ghosts are a bad idea" and more "how dare they not consider rape-ghosts to be brilliant!" I really don't know what to say to that beyond gently caress the White Wolf forums.

Oh, there was plenty of that, but when their thread got locked yesterday there were a good number of folks on the other side, too. Basically: mostly terrible people but a vocal minority of non-terrible people. The G+ stuff is more heartening and less rage-inducing.

Adept Nightingale
Feb 7, 2005


Ferrinus posted:

I don't know why people keep saying this. Of course there's an apology he could have made: "Sorry, the charms were in poor taste, we will not be printing them in the actual book."

I was responding to a specific post in which the guy said:

quote:

Now, whatever apology he makes probably will feel disingenuous to me, I admit. Largely because I don't trust him and don't like him. I've talked to too many people who've met the guy at cons or dealt with him in discussions to believe that he is legitimately going to understand or apologize for any of this.

If one's position is "I'm not going to accept an apology no matter what because I don't trust that guy," then no, I'm really not sure what purpose an apology will serve them. I wasn't talking about you.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
I get the impression Mr. Morke is just keeping his mouth shut and trying to avoid stoking the controversy anymore, regardless of how he actually plans to act on it. He's flubbed at the plate twice and the chances of him striking out entirely seems far from impossible. It's the smart PR move not to feed that fire. It's not like the kickstarter exactly took it in the teeth over it, so why bother? Apologizing could alienate a certain other pack of assholes, and it sucks, but assholes still make $125 pledges.

Hopefully he is listening and taking this stuff into consideration but the smart move, frankly, is probably just to shut up and put his nose to the grind. They'll do what they think is right creatively and right for the game, and hopefully they'll be right or maybe in ten years we'll be cursing their names for drowning our baby. (Something to look forward to, devs.)

At a certain point you have to let the book speak for itself for better or worse.

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Mors Rattus posted:

Oh, there was plenty of that, but when their thread got locked yesterday there were a good number of folks on the other side, too. Basically: mostly terrible people but a vocal minority of non-terrible people. The G+ stuff is more heartening and less rage-inducing.

The problem is the vocal minority of non-terrible people only caused a blip in the game's funding :(. I mean, I was still glad that Holden was going to make an attempt to talk about the charms with us without people needing to hold the Kickstarter for ransom, but given Holden's stumbling attempts, the banning, and the thread's response I think the odds of them even so much as addressing those charms any further have sort of been torpedoed. We probably won't hear anything definitive one way or another until the Abyssals book is actually in some goon's hands. Apparently Morke says he's going to address these issues after the Kickstarter, but we've been reading something sinister into that as well. I make no claims as to whether this suspicion is founded or unfounded, I am fairly certain I am not fit to judge that.

Ash Rose
Sep 3, 2011

Where is Megaman?

In queer, with us!

MJ12 posted:

What about "we'll find-replace any mentions of 'rape', 'ravishing', 'lustful', or 'carnal'" into "kittens".

I would buy a book with a charm called "Kitten Shadow Resurrection" pretty much instantly. Also, soul-dead zombies which need kittens to live? Sold.

Exigent of the god of kittens, make it happen guys.

Ithle01
May 28, 2013

Plague of Hats posted:

Stuff about Neph

As much as I like some of Neph's work I'm glad someone finally said this. The 2nd ed. Abyssal charm set was bad all over and I really like Abyssals so I have some problems with him. Aside from the Only Murder theme knee-capping their charm set there was no effective surprise negator, no effective flurry breaker, and no step 7 perfect. This wouldn't be particularly damning if it weren't for the fact that he helped design the system and didn't realize that this made Abyssals terrible at combat, which was apparently the only thing they were allowed to do thanks to Only Murder.

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Ithle01 posted:

As much as I like some of Neph's work I'm glad someone finally said this. The 2nd ed. Abyssal charm set was bad all over and I really like Abyssals so I have some problems with him. Aside from the Only Murder theme knee-capping their charm set there was no effective surprise negator, no effective flurry breaker, and no step 7 perfect. This wouldn't be particularly damning if it weren't for the fact that he helped design the system and didn't realize that this made Abyssals terrible at combat, which was apparently the only thing they were allowed to do thanks to Only Murder.

It didn't help that, when he wrote Abyssals, he deliberately went off his anti-depressants. :cry:

It showed, too, in terms of fluff 2E Abyssals were deeply nihilistic and pretty uncomfortable to boot.

MiltonSlavemasta
Feb 12, 2009

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

Ithle01 posted:

As much as I like some of Neph's work I'm glad someone finally said this. The 2nd ed. Abyssal charm set was bad all over and I really like Abyssals so I have some problems with him. Aside from the Only Murder theme knee-capping their charm set there was no effective surprise negator, no effective flurry breaker, and no step 7 perfect. This wouldn't be particularly damning if it weren't for the fact that he helped design the system and didn't realize that this made Abyssals terrible at combat, which was apparently the only thing they were allowed to do thanks to Only Murder.

They actually get a perfect surprise negator in Ominous Portent Method, depending on interpretation and if they're willing to have the Neverborn in their heads all the time, and they do get Wounds Mean Nothing for a step 7 perfect if they're willing to dig deep down into the Resistance tree, but the general thrust of your criticism is definitely valid.

The number one thing that really made them comparatively poo poo at combat was the Spectral keyword, which was fortunately deleted entirely.

MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jun 6, 2013

Ithle01
May 28, 2013

Bedlamdan posted:

It didn't help that, when he wrote Abyssals, he deliberately went off his anti-depressants. :cry:

It showed, too, in terms of fluff 2E Abyssals were deeply nihilistic and pretty uncomfortable to boot.

I don't mind the nihilism, in fact that's actually one of the things I really like about Abyssals. Hell, I actually ran an Oblivion loyalist Abyssals game as one of my most successful games. Ironically, the players ended up doing more to help Creation than any other game they've played in.

Edit: I forgot about Wounds Mean Nothing, I forgot that it's Iron Skin Concentration that they don't have access to, not Adamant Skin Technique. Still a problem though. And Ominous Portent Method giving you resonance in a fight can be.... problematic let's say. Seriously, it's basically GM fiat once you hit resonance 10 and the ST has to decide whether or not the resonance eruption is of the kind that will get you killed or do absolutely nothing.

Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jun 6, 2013

MiltonSlavemasta
Feb 12, 2009

And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
"When you coming home, dad?"
"I don't know when
We'll get together then son you know we'll have a good time then."

Ithle01 posted:

I don't mind the nihilism, in fact that's actually one of the things I really like about Abyssals. Hell, I actually ran an Oblivion loyalist Abyssals game as one of my most successful games. Ironically, the players ended up doing more to help Creation than any other game they've played in.

Edit: I forgot about Wounds Mean Nothing, I forgot that it's Iron Skin Concentration that they don't have access to, not Adamant Skin Technique. Still a problem though. And Ominous Portent Method giving you resonance in a fight can be.... problematic let's say. Seriously, it's basically GM fiat once you hit resonance 10 and the ST has to decide whether or not the resonance eruption is of the kind that will get you killed or do absolutely nothing.

I don't mind nihilism, as I can totally dig using Abyssals, or really any splat, to explore nihilistic themes. I just thought 2e Abyssals were too nihilistic for my tastes, and often nihilistic in an uninteresting way. That said, I can easily do things of that sort differently at home, but the "IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE UNDERWORLD THERE IS ONLY MURDER" charmset was a huge problem I couldn't fix on my own. The spectral keyword and other BS put in there because "No one can step on the Solars' toes!" was icing on the cake and brought it to the point where, while I might have story reasons for wanting to be an Abyssal, I never had mechanical reasons for wanting to play an Abyssal over another splat; The mirror keyword was also, I found, an issue here, but the mirror keyword not being as cool as it sounded has been echoed by the 3e designers many times at this point.

Surprisingly Bitter
Oct 10, 2008

Stephenls posted:

This edition's focus is less on metaphysical fiddly bits and more on e.g. what House Mnemon is up to in the Amirate of Jiara, why the League of Rivers' internal tensions make uniting against external threats difficult, and how the West is in the unfortunate position of being an ideal fallback position for Houses who want to gather their strength for a renewed push on the Blessed Isle. Neph is good at metaphysics, but too much focus on metaphysics tends to result in mortal and DB-level politics being presented as basically irrelevant in the face of the might of the returning Solars.

It's difficult as hell to make people excited about that sort of thing in previews, though.

So does this mean that the shadow game is going to get less diverse? I sorta liked the Isle as being where you go to run a political campaign, and not a military one.

When I read somewhere that there was an ocean added in the east to offer "more coastal adventures" I was concerned. I don't want all of creation to be the same, I want each corner piece to be unique. For coastal campaigns there is already the whole threshold, and the innumerable Western islands. If I want mountains, the north and north-east exist.

Basically, what is really going to make each of the directions, and the Isle, unique?

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Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

Surprisingly Bitter posted:

So does this mean that the shadow game is going to get less diverse? I sorta liked the Isle as being where you go to run a political campaign, and not a military one.

When I read somewhere that there was an ocean added in the east to offer "more coastal adventures" I was concerned. I don't want all of creation to be the same, I want each corner piece to be unique. For coastal campaigns there is already the whole threshold, and the innumerable Western islands. If I want mountains, the north and north-east exist.

Basically, what is really going to make each of the directions, and the Isle, unique?

I'm sure a Direction can be distinctive without containing only a single biome; if anything, that just makes it monotonous. Given their emphasis this edition on how absolutely loving huge Creation is and how much that means in terms of travel, it nicely solves the problem of "How do I change the scenery a bit without having the group uproot itself and head to the other side of the world?"

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