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LGD posted:Yes. I know. That just has to be weighed against the initial difficulty and approachability of chargen. Or not if you go with non-scaling costs, which is better. But if you do I think that there is a reasonable case to be made for not doing XP-gen character creation. That's all I'm saying*. 'Easy chargen' and 'no resource sinks' aren't mutually exclusive goals. You shouldn't have to weigh them against each other. If you do, you're working with a bad system. I can't help you if you want to work with a bad system. God willing you and Ferrinus will stop with this dumb line-by-line argument you've got going here because line-by-line arguments are just the most tedious thing.
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Nov 8, 2013 05:49
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Ferrinus posted:As far as I can tell, too many people criticized BP/XP in harsh and intemperate tones. Well, I mean, I don't hate The BP/XP Divide as a person. I think I could go have a beer with him. He's just stuck in the nineties, you can't deal with him when it's about anything current.
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Nov 8, 2013 05:51
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He keeps getting my good buddy White Wolf games into trouble!
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Nov 8, 2013 05:59
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On the subject of holdovers from previous editions, have we heard anything about the Virtues for Exalted 3? Temperance has always seemed like a poor choice. It doesn't create interesting roleplaying opportunities: a character with high Temperance rejects choices that go against his principles and might cause him trouble. You face a moral quandary and you exert self-control: no drunken brawls or unwise affairs to mess up your life. This is reflected in the Temperance Limit Breaks, which are either boring and uninteresting (disappear from play for a week) or make you act like a man with no self-control—you know, the opposite of what the Great Curse is supposed to do. The way to make Temperance interesting is to reduce your score in it.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:11
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Lymond posted:On the subject of holdovers from previous editions, have we heard anything about the Virtues for Exalted 3? Temperance has always seemed like a poor choice. It doesn't create interesting roleplaying opportunities: a character with high Temperance rejects choices that go against his principles and might cause him trouble. You face a moral quandary and you exert self-control: no drunken brawls or unwise affairs to mess up your life. Or redefine its scope to include more interesting forms of patience, such as ambushes, Machiavellian schemes, and other things that amount to not jumping the gun. Move the 'principles' part over to Conviction, which really needs to be more than just how much of an rear end in a top hat you can be when you don't get your way, and let Temperance be about self-control instead of a monolithic compulsion to always be boring.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:24
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The thing with virtues is that if you have Valor 5, the exciting thing to do is to try to ignore insults. If you have Temperance 5, the exciting thing to do is to constantly put yourself around temptation. With Conviction 5, you want your goals and how far you'll go for them challenged at every turn. And with Compassion 5, you want to be given the absolute worst person in Creation, and have to deal with having their life in your hand. Or poo poo like that. But they're also there because if you have Valor 5, you never want to run away from a fight, and if you have Conviction 5, you never want to be diverted from your path, no matter what. On the one hand, you have Virtues As Stories You Want To See (the courageous hero runs away, the bodhisattva is tempted by drugs and orgies, etc.), and on the other hand, you have Virtues As Stories You Don't Want To See. Did you take Valor 5 because you want to see your character run away, or because you want them to never run away? I'm not sure this is a problem or not. But it's certainly an observation.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:30
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As someone who stupidly bought 2 dots in nearly every skill at chargen for an actual long-campaign character, I would love to see an end to BP/XP.Lymond posted:On the subject of holdovers from previous editions, have we heard anything about the Virtues for Exalted 3? Temperance has always seemed like a poor choice. It doesn't create interesting roleplaying opportunities: a character with high Temperance rejects choices that go against his principles and might cause him trouble. You face a moral quandary and you exert self-control: no drunken brawls or unwise affairs to mess up your life. I thought Virtues were out in 3e.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:31
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Virtues are subsumed into Intimacies, yeah.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:35
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I'm good with that. I wouldn't mind a preview on Intimacies, now that they actually sound like they might be an interesting mechanic and not something that I constantly forget are even a thing.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:37
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BryanChavez posted:I'm good with that. I wouldn't mind a preview on Intimacies, now that they actually sound like they might be an interesting mechanic and not something that I constantly forget are even a thing. This stuff has all been teased already so: Intimacies come in three strengths, which I think are called Minor, Major, and Defining, and two varieties, called IIRC Principles and Bonds. Principles are statements of behavior or whatever, while Bonds are tied to specific things. "I honor my family" would be a principle, while "I want the best for my daughter" would be a bond. (Though you could probably make I Honor My Family a bond, too; there's always grey areas in this sort of thing, isn't there?) They tie into the social conflict system -- without an intimacy to key off, about the best you can hope to persuade someone to do is spot you bus fare. Virtues and Motivation are both gone, because Intimacies make them irrelevant. There's more to it than that but it ties into a bunch of other systems we haven't talked about yet. The days of min-maxing your virtues to get a decent mote pool or starting Willpower are gone, though.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:49
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I'm really excited for Intimacies. We've got things called "Intimacies" in the WoD game I play now, but they're basically Willpower batteries and social interaction is still pretty handwavey. I'm really curious as to how much bite a Presence roll or whatever can have in Exalted, and as to what Intimacies do besides enhance social interaction.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:54
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I had fun with a high-Temperance Twilight in 2e because it let me surgically implant my own artifacts. Now there was a doctor who knew her craft. Other than that, though, it never did come up.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:55
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Ferrinus posted:I'm really excited for Intimacies. We've got things called "Intimacies" in the WoD game I play now, but they're basically Willpower batteries and social interaction is still pretty handwavey. I'm really curious as to how much bite a Presence roll or whatever can have in Exalted, and as to what Intimacies do besides enhance social interaction. I recall Holden saying something like "You have to use intimacies to get people to do things by rolling social skills" which sounds pretty cool and opens up the possibility of more involved multi-stage social boss battles, where you have to figure out what everyone involved wants then make an offer, potentially followed by counter-offers. Deeper research or interaction can uncover motives closer to a person's heart than their obvious interests, et cetera. Definitely beats throwing out social attacks until they enter the fetal position or attempt to kill you.
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Nov 8, 2013 06:58
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Lymond posted:On the subject of holdovers from previous editions, have we heard anything about the Virtues for Exalted 3? Temperance has always seemed like a poor choice. It doesn't create interesting roleplaying opportunities: a character with high Temperance rejects choices that go against his principles and might cause him trouble. You face a moral quandary and you exert self-control: no drunken brawls or unwise affairs to mess up your life. Although I'm not defending the implementation of Temperance I believe the original goal was to make your life interesting by forcing you to not take the easy way out of things. It's not supposed to be about drunken brawls or unwise affairs, it's supposed to be about honoring the law when the law is clearly awful, upholding an oath that is inconvenient, or telling the Empress that she is, in fact, not wearing any clothes. In my opinion the problem here is that in general players would pre-emptively avoid getting into any of those situations.
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Nov 8, 2013 07:09
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Ithle01 posted:Although I'm not defending the implementation of Temperance I believe the original goal was to make your life interesting by forcing you to not take the easy way out of things. It's not supposed to be about drunken brawls or unwise affairs, it's supposed to be about honoring the law when the law is clearly awful, upholding an oath that is inconvenient, or telling the Empress that she is, in fact, not wearing any clothes. In my opinion the problem here is that in general players would pre-emptively avoid getting into any of those situations. The way Geoff described it, it was supposed to be a bit like Pendragon, with the ST calling for Virtue rolls constantly and the players constantly reacting to their characters refusing to take optimal courses of action because their own hangups keep getting in the way. Nobody liked this except Eric Brennan, though.
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Nov 8, 2013 07:11
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Stephenls posted:The way Geoff described it, it was supposed to be a bit like Pendragon, with the ST calling for Virtue rolls constantly and the players constantly reacting to their characters refusing to take optimal courses of action because their own hangups keep getting in the way. Eric Brennan and me apparently. While I was typing that I was going to use Thomas More as an example, but then I couldn't decide if he was more Conviction or Temperance although I'm fairly certain he's more Temperance. edit: misspelled the name. Moore is a completely different guy.
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Nov 8, 2013 07:14
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While I actually like the idea, it isn't very useful to me, since my group prefers to play colossal gently caress-ups as a general rule, and we scoff at the concept of an optimal course of action. Not in a comedy way (though it does tend to work out that way, too), we just like playing deeply flawed people who are doomed by the fact that they're all sorts of hosed up, obsessive, and heedless of consequences. The 3e Intimacies, as they've been described, will be much more suited for us.
BryanChavez fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 07:19
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Stephenls posted:The way Geoff described it, it was supposed to be a bit like Pendragon, with the ST calling for Virtue rolls constantly and the players constantly reacting to their characters refusing to take optimal courses of action because their own hangups keep getting in the way. In general I think game systems are better at getting players to dive into "suboptimal" courses of action when they reward them to do so rather than "you wanted to do X but you failed your roll so now you do Y instead."
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Nov 8, 2013 07:24
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One of the things I don't like about the new WoD rules is the preponderance of bonus XP you get for slipping on banana peels or failing to resist supernatural powers or whatever. I think the willingness to get your character into trouble comes from an investment in the story and a basic trust in your GM and the other players, not metagame rewards, so put me down for hoping that Intimacies don't have "Hurt yourself or your interests while ____" reward structures.
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Nov 8, 2013 07:29
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Ferrinus posted:One of the things I don't like about the new WoD rules is the preponderance of bonus XP you get for slipping on banana peels or failing to resist supernatural powers or whatever. I think the willingness to get your character into trouble comes from an investment in the story and a basic trust in your GM and the other players, not metagame rewards, so put me down for hoping that Intimacies don't have "Hurt yourself or your interests while ____" reward structures. It kinda works for the WOD because WOD is a horror game, and the game is deliberately creating incentives for people to make Dumbass Horror Movie Decisions.
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Nov 8, 2013 08:38
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Stephenls posted:This stuff has all been teased already so: Intimacies come in three strengths, which I think are called Minor, Major, and Defining, and two varieties, called IIRC Principles and Bonds. Principles are statements of behavior or whatever, while Bonds are tied to specific things. "I honor my family" would be a principle, while "I want the best for my daughter" would be a bond. (Though you could probably make I Honor My Family a bond, too; there's always grey areas in this sort of thing, isn't there?) They tie into the social conflict system -- without an intimacy to key off, about the best you can hope to persuade someone to do is spot you bus fare. I'm happy to read this. It sounds like a system that encourages fun social interaction, and it's the kind of gameplay-first, gently caress-the-sacred-cows (but the Fae and Creation and the Great Curse and Willpower and whatever are all tied to the Virtues!) change that I'd like to see more of in Exalted 3.
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Nov 8, 2013 08:40
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I think I remember hearing that Limit Break is still in there somewhere, so I'm interested in how that works out. Just off the top of my head, it's possible that it's a result of one of your intimacies (a Defining one, maybe) getting hit hard during a social conflict. Or possibly, it could be invoked as an alternative reaction to someone breaking one of your intimacies. "Oh, you want me to stop being so devoted to killing orphans, huh? Well how about I burn your entire city down instead."
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Nov 8, 2013 08:49
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Stephenls posted:Virtues and Motivation are both gone, because Intimacies make them irrelevant. I just flip flopped from uninterested to excited about ex3.
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Nov 8, 2013 10:07
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Nishkriya has been updated to also scrape the new Onyx Path Forums. Alright, if you don't know what Nishkriya is, it is a developer tracker for Exalted developer/freelancers. Named for Nishkriya the Shinma of conflict who is imperturbably at peace. So you can read what they have to say on the forums without having to keep a close eye on them, which should keep your blood pressure down. Right now we don't have all the account details set up for all of them yet but as we seem them register or post we'll include the missing ones. With a much more sensible bit of forum software come some nice side benefits. You won't see anymore virtually duplicate posts because a post was edited, it'll just update the existing post. All posts now feature links to exactly that post in a thread. Quotes now also feature links to the original post on the forums. More enhancements may come in the future, depends on our drive and how much effort they would be to execute. If you have problems, see bugs or have suggestions please feel free to let me know. Tzarnal fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 20:52
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Tzarnal posted:Nishkriya has been updated to also scrape the new Onyx Path Forums. You're the best. Also I'm glad to see people pitched in to help with Hatewheel's medical bills. Nobody deserves to suffer through the American healthcare system unaided.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:08
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Thanqol posted:It kinda works for the WOD because WOD is a horror game, and the game is deliberately creating incentives for people to make Dumbass Horror Movie Decisions. Kiiiinda, but in general the World of Darkness is interesting enough, and its monsters smart/humanlike enough, that it doesn't actually rely on people deciding to split up while being hunted by the serial killer or whatever to work. You end up with a mirror of 90s-style "spend an experience point right now for a temporary bonus" rules, where you have to choose between your character's current success or future development. The fact that there's a cap on how much XP you can harvest from getting owned per scene means this is mostly manageable, but it's still a conspicuously empty check box in your quest log that blinks alarmingly at you if the scene's drawing to a close without it having been filled. I want Ex3's Virtue style mechanics to reward your character for doing things that your character naturally wants or values, like furthering their ideals of protecting their loved ones.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:10
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Ferrinus posted:Kiiiinda, but in general the World of Darkness is interesting enough, and its monsters smart/humanlike enough, that it doesn't actually rely on people deciding to split up while being hunted by the serial killer or whatever to work. You end up with a mirror of 90s-style "spend an experience point right now for a temporary bonus" rules, where you have to choose between your character's current success or future development. The fact that there's a cap on how much XP you can harvest from getting owned per scene means this is mostly manageable, but it's still a conspicuously empty check box in your quest log that blinks alarmingly at you if the scene's drawing to a close without it having been filled. I am firmly of the opinion that if you can't make a plot work unless one or more PCs suddenly lose about fifty points of IQ, it is a bad plot. I said this before on the WW forums, but if you, as a GM, really must game out a tragedy, uncertainty and tough choices are far better instigators than random acts of self-destruction.
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Nov 8, 2013 21:40
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Thesaurasaurus posted:I am firmly of the opinion that if you can't make a plot work unless one or more PCs suddenly lose about fifty points of IQ, it is a bad plot. I said this before on the WW forums, but if you, as a GM, really must game out a tragedy, uncertainty and tough choices are far better instigators than random acts of self-destruction. I agree; you'll get a lot more mileage out of uncomfortable decisions and harsh consequences to produce the tragedy-feeling than trying to coerce people into obvious self-destructive behavior. Of course, I'm blessed in that the people I run for actually are idiots, so I have an embarrassment of riches on this score.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:25
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I played in a game with mostly flat XP costs and XP instead of BP. It's so much better. The only issue is how you handle Essence, which is a problem, because banking most of your character's power level on something you can buy with XP has always been a lovely problem with most of White Wolf's output. Personally, I'd suggest making it like Power Level from Mutants & Masterminds, where Essence is something you increase at a set time for the whole group either based on when it would be thematically or logically appropriate, instead of making people invest XP in order to overcome requirements to be allowed to invest more XP.
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Nov 8, 2013 22:28
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Hmm. Just as a though for automatic Essence scaling math . . . How about you get an essence rating boost based on your total essence minimums in charms. Base it on the old XP scale. 0 -> +8 -> +16 -> +24 -> +32 -> +40 So, you start as essence 1, and once you have eight minimum E1 charms, you are now essence 2. To hit essence 3, you need 16 more minimum essence 'points;' so either 16 more E1 charms, or 8 E2 charms, or some combination of the two. If you powergamed it, then you'd get a permanent essence boost by getting 8 charms of the highest essence rating available to you each cycle. Otherwise you could spread out and be a lot more versatile. These numbers can be tweaked easily, like instead of [8x current rating], it could be [4x current rating +4] or [8x next rating] or something. Just an idle idea.
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Nov 8, 2013 23:30
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I played in a game with mostly flat XP costs and XP instead of BP. It's so much better. The only issue is how you handle Essence, which is a problem, because banking most of your character's power level on something you can buy with XP has always been a lovely problem with most of White Wolf's output. Personally, I'd suggest making it like Power Level from Mutants & Masterminds, where Essence is something you increase at a set time for the whole group either based on when it would be thematically or logically appropriate, instead of making people invest XP in order to overcome requirements to be allowed to invest more XP. Evader posted:Hmm. I just make all Essence boosts above 3 plot-based awards instead of an XP-investment. Really, considering how drastically things change up at that level, it's easier on the ST if they have some clue about what powers PCs will have for encounter scaling, and easier on the other players since Essence is such a huge deal and not having to plan all your buys around when you'll go 3->4 or 4->5 is a big load off your mind.
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Nov 8, 2013 23:42
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Attorney at Funk posted:You're the best. For everyone who hasn't seen what this guy is talking about : http://www.gofundme.com/55z5l8 It got funded even faster and harder than the Kickstarter, so don't feel any super big obligation to go put your dollars in, but I figured I'd provide the link in case any goons are currently looking for someplace to put money, or just want to see some details on the Hatewheel-itis situation.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:14
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Attorney at Funk posted:I agree; you'll get a lot more mileage out of uncomfortable decisions and harsh consequences to produce the tragedy-feeling than trying to coerce people into obvious self-destructive behavior. On the other hand, I don't really like playing with PCs who are run as if they're pawns on a chess board; like, real people do do really stupid stuff. Even really smart people do incredibly stupid things in the heat of the moment. I like characters who make those terrible decisions, too, because they don't actually have the benefit of a bird's eye view and time to consider the consequences when they've got only a split second to make a choice, and I think one of the biggest mistakes that roleplayers make when they're trying to run a character is forgetting that the character is a person and not just an Event Response Unit in a board game. If players had to make calls in the amount of time that their characters had to make those same calls, you'd see a lot more huge mistakes on the part of PCs. This isn't about 'losing IQ points' so much as it is "real people gently caress up all the time, and they don't have to be dumb to do it." Heart Attacks fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 01:29
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Heart Attacks posted:On the other hand, I don't really like playing with PCs who are run as if they're pawns on a chess board; like, real people do do really stupid stuff. Even really smart people do incredibly stupid things in the heat of the moment. Oh, sure. I don't really want to stand over everyone's shoulder as they're making those decisions and judge them harshly for making them at too much or too little of a metagame remove, though. "You really should-" is a pain in the rear end whether you're demanding ruthless optimization or ruthless psychological verismilitude. When I'm running a game all I can do to combat it is try to present situations that don't have obvious, optimal solutions, play everything completely straight, and let them find their own way to hell.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:39
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Attorney at Funk posted:Oh, sure. I don't really want to stand over everyone's shoulder as they're making those decisions and judge them harshly for making them at too much or too little of a metagame remove, though. "You really should-" is a pain in the rear end whether you're demanding ruthless optimization or ruthless psychological verismilitude. I don't want to stand there and be like, "This is what you should do," either. What I feel totally fine doing is being like, "Here's a benny if your character does something stupid that makes sense in context," because for the most part I'd rather my players try to make the story interesting rather than try to Win the Haunted House or whatever. Because really, if you're after verisimilitude, a bunch of normal people getting caught up in a world of poo poo aren't going to necessarily be faced with tons of situations where there isn't a Smart Move at all, but they'll be faced with a lot of situations where they don't know what the smart choice is, or they'll do something that they think is smart based on bad information (information that the players have that their characters don't, for example, like "haha, vampires can't turn invisible so we're dealing with something else!" or whatever.)
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Nov 9, 2013 01:43
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Oh, okay. I don't like handing out benefits for Roleplaying because it feels like bad faith game mastery. Like I think they're there for some other reason, and need to dangle a carrot in front of them to make them do the right thing.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:48
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Attorney at Funk posted:I agree; you'll get a lot more mileage out of uncomfortable decisions and harsh consequences to produce the tragedy-feeling than trying to coerce people into obvious self-destructive behavior. This sounds to me like story time. Riches like these are meant to be shared.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:52
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I think "here's a benny if you do something stupid" rules imply a default mode of play in which your PC is like a chess piece or RTS unit that you're controlling from an isometric perspective and in which there's some implicit objective goal that every player wants to achieve but that detracts from rather than supports the narrative if it's achieved. I.e., you absolutely definitely don't want to take any hit point damage so you have to be goaded into going somewhere dangerous, because for some reason you the player have set maximizing your current hitpoint total as an OOC metagoal. Also, some characters are genuinely paranoid or detail-oriented or whatever - where's their reward? I'm actually a big believer in rules which incentivize dramatically-appropriate behavior, but I want those rules to model the world of the game rather than to influence the priorities of the players of the game. For instance, to bring up Vampire for the ten thousandth time, the fact that you lose a blood point per day just by being a live is fantastic. Some sort of experience point bonus or narrative editing token in exchange for having your vampire wolf down blood rather than shrug impassively at a proffered throat wouldn't have the same impact.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:57
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Lymond posted:This sounds to me like story time. Riches like these are meant to be shared. Unfortunately, I don't have any stories that would be appropriate for an Exalted thread. I didn't even know Exalted was a thing until my gaming group started eating up 3e news.
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Nov 9, 2013 02:00
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Ferrinus posted:I think "here's a benny if you do something stupid" rules imply a default mode of play in which your PC is like a chess piece or RTS unit that you're controlling from an isometric perspective and in which there's some implicit objective goal that every player wants to achieve but that detracts from rather than supports the narrative if it's achieved. I.e., you absolutely definitely don't want to take any hit point damage so you have to be goaded into going somewhere dangerous, because for some reason you the player have set maximizing your current hitpoint total as an OOC metagoal. Also, some characters are genuinely paranoid or detail-oriented or whatever - where's their reward? Genuinely paranoid people tend to do stupid things stemming from their paranoia, I think. So their reward is, like, tripping over their own paranoia. It's awesome if you have a group who don't treat the game like a game to win, but where I'm from like 90% of people have their roots in D&D and they will play any game like it's a board game unless you give them a compelling reason not to.
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Nov 9, 2013 02:05
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