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Stephenls posted:(Why "Blood of One Thousand Bees?") I guess because up until that point it hadn't completed its mission in life to become a terrible parody of 90's era White Wolf.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:26
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Kai Tave posted:First, I haven't brought up morality at all here, so that's all you. Second, serious question...do you really think stuff like Lillun occurs in a void? I know that Stephen and Holden had nothing to do with that, I'm not holding them accountable or responsible for that mess, but do you think that in a game where people are actually judicious about the application of "shocking" content that someone could just roll up with "hey I've got this great idea for the opening of our new sourcebook; perpetual child rape. Eh? Ehhhh?" and not get told to gently caress off and never come back instead of someone up the chain apparently thinking that was a perfect fit? Do you seriously believe that? You yourself said that this isn't even a drop in the ocean compared to Lillun, and it's not a moral imperative in and of itself, yet you're still working yourself up over it and trying to make an argument that this will naturally progress to stuff like Lillun, like some sort of sick parody of "The Ascent of Man." No, I don't think that letting something problematic simply remain problematic will result in something even worse in the future. I think there are some problems with ideas like the Broken Window Theory.  How's it any different from "but if he looks at his grandpa's porno mags, he'll turn into a sex offender!"
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Feb 4, 2014 04:32
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Is that 2e Abyssals? EDIT: I think Kai has a point, to the extent that without good oversight, writers will keep trying to top themselves, and that leads to bad places. That doesn't mean the solution is "Have good oversight, and then institute a zero tolerance policy," which is what I keep reading him as assertion. (We will actually need to demonstrate that our oversight is good, after the you know. But this comes back to "Ultimately the book will stand on its own merits.") Stephenls fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 04:34
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Stephenls posted:Is that 2e Abyssals? Wasn't John Chambers defined by his complete lack of oversight?
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Feb 4, 2014 04:36
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Bedlamdan posted:Wasn't John Chambers defined by his complete lack of oversight? He was a big fan of letting authors go where their creativity took them, yeah. (Also he was doing a lot of work on Scion at the time.) It's probably worth noting this served me really well as sub-developer on RoGDI. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 04:39
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Bedlamdan posted:Do you seriously believe that? I believe that White Wolf is full of people who think dumb, shlocky stuff is cool/mature/whatever and who egg each other on along with virtually no clear editorial oversight or anyone willing to rein it in when things veer towards Pimp: the Backhanding and authors shoving their skeezy fetishes into games under the guise of "games for mature minds." If you can come up with a better way to explain 90% of White Wolf's output I'll happily hear it. My point isn't that this sort of stuff is impossible to do well so much as White Wolf doesn't really demonstrate that they can do it well so maybe they should step back and try coming at things from a different angle instead of trying the same approach yet again only with a whole new set of justifications.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:42
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When you've got something as threatening and mysterious as a Terrible Witch Queen, people are going to invent all sorts of rumours. I remember there were rumours among the Congolese that the cans of corned beef seen in the colonisers' houses actually contained the severed hands of Congolese slaves - there's nothing unusual about rumours of cannibalism. Chances are, Raksi's clever enough to manipulate these rumours to her own ends. "Rumour has it that she eats babies, but rumours such as these are the fronts on which Raksi wages her psychological war on the locals." There's nothing wrong with mention of baby eating, but I don't think it deserves more than a line or two in her writeup, and I don't think you should straight up say "Raksi eats babies and this is a rock solid fact about her character."
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Feb 4, 2014 04:46
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Bedlamdan posted:Do you seriously believe that? You yourself said that this isn't even a drop in the ocean compared to Lillun, and it's not a moral imperative in and of itself, yet you're still working yourself up over it and trying to make an argument that this will naturally progress to stuff like Lillun, like some sort of sick parody of "The Ascent of Man." No, I don't think that letting something problematic simply remain problematic will result in something even worse in the future. I think there are some problems with ideas like the Broken Window Theory. History, I would assume. In this case it is more a case of finding him beating off to grandpa's porno mags over and over and over again, and then assuming the big stack in his room is going to go unused because he said he wouldn't. If you don't actually understand why people have misgivings with trusting Exalted not to go super creepy THIS TIME after it has pretty hardcore in two previous editions, I dunno what to tell you. So I guess people might be worried that the game that produced Blood and Salt and the all animal loving rape Lunars in first edition and the Infernals book of second edition and the Abyssal preview charms of this edition are not going to go buck wild again? What about that are you having trouble with, I guess? I get that you don't seem to mind this content or whatever, but your insistence other people not be bothered by it is weird and kind of disingenuous to me.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:49
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Kai Tave posted:I believe that White Wolf is full of people who think dumb, shlocky stuff is cool/mature/whatever and who egg each other on along with virtually no clear editorial oversight or anyone willing to rein it in when things veer towards Pimp: the Backhanding and authors shoving their skeezy fetishes into games under the guise of "games for mature minds." If you can come up with a better way to explain 90% of White Wolf's output I'll happily hear it. They've done lots of things well. They're inclusive, for one thing. I mean, Holden wrote a gigantic loving blogpost about how it's really important to be inclusive to non-heterosexual couples: http://nobilis.me/quotes:exalted-is-totally-gay. They wrote a game where brown people like me aren't shoved off to the corner of the map until they're ready to be elaborated on in SUPPLEMENT 23: JOURNEY TO THE MYSTERIOUS EAST. The cover for 1E Exalted was a black woman in dreadlocks and a sensible outfit. They've been very trans-inclusive, since 1E. Manacle and Coin was really good at exploring things like drugs and slavery without being stupid and over the top. The Realm is a powerful matriarchal nation without resorting to cheap straw-misandry. I could go on? Winson_Paine posted:History, I would assume. In this case it is more a case of finding him beating off to grandpa's porno mags over and over and over again, and then assuming the big stack in his room is going to go unused because he said he wouldn't. If you don't actually understand why people have misgivings with trusting Exalted not to go super creepy THIS TIME after it has pretty hardcore in two previous editions, I dunno what to tell you. So I guess people might be worried that the game that produced Blood and Salt and the all animal loving rape Lunars in first edition and the Infernals book of second edition and the Abyssal preview charms of this edition are not going to go buck wild again? What about that are you having trouble with, I guess? I get that you don't seem to mind this content or whatever, but your insistence other people not be bothered by it is weird and kind of disingenuous to me. Sure, but it isn't just those things? poo poo dude, I'm not insisting that people not be bothered. I know people are going to be loving bothered, and it'll take a lot to unbother them. Being bothered is a pretty big part of SA. I'm just saying that people have valid reasons to not be bothered and still not be horrible? 
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Feb 4, 2014 04:56
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Bedlamdan posted:Being bothered is a pretty big part of SA. I'm just saying that people have valid reasons to not be bothered and still not be horrible? Yeah, I get it is just the hivemind persecuting you. If that is all you have you can flounce off in a huff again.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:59
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Stallion Cabana posted:"Hey, Little Lunar." This is amazing. Honestly, "Raksi eats babies!" feels more like a rumor that her enemies or rivals started in order to discredit her, or that she started herself in order to make herself really scary sounding. Or maybe she did eat a baby once and no one will ever let her live that one down. ("You eat one baby!") I didn't even know Raksi was the Lunar who invented the tattoos until just now. Lilun is on a whole 'nother level and I think we can safely just light those chapters on fire and hopefully never go down that path again. (I am looking very sternly at Onyx Path.) Honestly at this point, trying to remove something a recurring character is very well known for might not be something the devs want to do, even if that something is kind of dumb. In my stories, I would probably not have it be a literal truth though, even if it does stick around in the new texts. Hopefully they can manage some of the squickier character without going too far. We've done a good job of not rehashing the Abyssal Charm Preview argument for the 'nth time so far, but like, I hope there are some changes to some of the old characters who crossed the line into too-drat-squicky. Like that First Age Solar guy who kept his mate mind-controlled and abused the hell out of her. I don't really want to see more of that guy. I don't think that's a character and story that should be preserved as it was. Baby-eating Raksi is quite tame compared to that.
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Feb 4, 2014 05:00
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Winson_Paine posted:Yeah, I get it is just the hivemind persecuting you. If that is all you have you can flounce off in a huff again. No, I don't want to do that.  I'm sorry if I'm coming off badly.I just think that the game has good qualities as well as bad ones, and I'm here for the good qualities.
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Feb 4, 2014 05:03
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I continue to stand by my assertion that this is a better way to go for Onyx Path (as measured by sales and critical acclaim and growth of the hobby as a whole): Write the main text of your books as PG-13 (or actually R, because I'd classify a lot of the old WW stuff people object to as NC-17 even setting aside the whole issue of Americans being cool with violence and down on sex). Then have a sidebar or two talking about ways your gaming group can take it to a more mature level if everyone in the group is really, truly* fine with that. *No, seriously, we mean it that "really, truly" means every member of the group has had a chance to object without being pressured into something that you the GM or their significant other or their ride wants them to do.
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Feb 4, 2014 05:03
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The "First Age Solar with a mind-controlled, abused spouse" is Desus who's a perfect example of what I'm talking about here. Desus started out as a sort of nudge-and-wink call out to Odysseus (get it? Desus?) who was mostly known for punching a big cyclops robot monster in the eye and blinding it, and also for being kind of an arrogant jerk who didn't really care about the consequences of his actions but had cultivated a number of Charms which basically resulted in people viewing whatever he did in a positive fashion. The idea behind Desus, as I understand it, was that he was supposed to be an example of the Solar you didn't really want to be but could wind up becoming if you weren't careful. Then in second edition Desus became a super-creepy abusive spouse who abused his Lunar mate way back in the First Age so much that it came to define her thousands of years later and DID I MENTION THAT HE LOVED TO ABUSE HIS WIFE SO MUCH YOU GUYS holy poo poo. White Wolf has absolutely no sense of when to rein stuff in or roll poo poo back, and so now Desus has been rendered so completely toxic that the Ex3 team is, last I heard, completely jettisoning him from the game or at least largely ignoring him and Lillith this time around.
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Feb 4, 2014 05:08
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This doesn't have anything to do with the current topic of discussion but I'm working on my Exalted hack and I'm trying to figure out what Night Castes are about because I'm replacing Attributes and Abilities with Caste-stats. Dawns are warmakers, Zeniths are messiahs and god-kings, Twilights are scholars and craftspeople, Eclipses are diplomats and brokers, but I'm not sure what Nights are supposed to be. Assassins? Criminals? I would have said spies but that feels like more of an Eclipse thing. I can see where Larceny and Stealth come in, but I'm less sure about Athletics and Awareness. What do those abilities have to do with the Night Caste? In regards to the hack, here's what I've got so far. It's obviously incomplete but comments are always welcome!
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Feb 4, 2014 05:15
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Kai Tave posted:White Wolf has absolutely no sense of when to rein stuff in or roll poo poo back, and so now Desus has been rendered so completely toxic that the Ex3 team is, last I heard, completely jettisoning him from the game or at least largely ignoring him and Lillith this time around. From what I heard, they just want to dial Desus back to how he was in 1E rather than delete him entirely. And even if they do delete him entirely, nothing of value is lost in removing a magical spousal abuser completely. It's certainly not them deciding that Desus must be a spousal abuser because that's his iconic trait. I think the problem with 2E Exalted was that it had bad writers, and no real oversight on part of the line developer. I don't agree with the idea that if it's White Wolf, they will gently caress it up. They've been better recently, especially where WoD is now compared to WoD in the nineties. Can't imagine that the new version of Changing Breeds will somehow turn into an even more extreme version of the previous book.
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Feb 4, 2014 05:16
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Attorney at Funk posted:I get the sense we're supposed to take Raksi's baby eating seriously, though? This is, to me, a harder sell. Well, there are a lot of unanswered questions. Are the babies locally grown or imported? What are baby recipes like? Is it true that baby flesh has a soft, fish-like consistency? If the PCs want to develop baby preparation as a specialty, what Craft skill does it fall under? Is a baby with a full head of hair too ripe? Are ape babies similar enough to human babies after preparation that only skilled baby tasters can tell the difference? What sort of liquor do you serve with babies? Is a baby more delicious if it listens to Mozart? Do you remove the eyes with a spoon or an entrenching tool? Are cloth diapers sufficient for marinating? Is it safe to eat a dead baby you find in a garbage can? I look forward to the answers in The Gustatory Tomes IV: Mahalanka.
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Feb 4, 2014 05:18
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I'm not super clear on what this image depicts, but I know that it belongs here:
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Feb 4, 2014 05:50
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But Raksi's diet is up there with Chapters 1&2 of Infernals.  Tulul posted:And as mentioned upthread, it makes it completely impossible to take Raksi seriously, because she's now the girl that eats babies, just like Ma-Ha Suchi is the dude that rapes everyone. Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 06:58
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So, now, continuing with the calm and reasonable discussion we were having a bit ago....Old Kentucky Shark posted:Lunars look like crappy shapeshifters because they have generally been crappy shapeshifters for most pragmatic values of shapeshifting. I think 2e Lunars with the mix-and-match knack that lets you sprout mutations for their point cost in motes was pretty neat? And the Changing Moon anima is handy. But yeah, overall the mechanical implementation of shapeshifting in general has been pretty bad up to this point; we have a multi-pronged approach to fixing that, and the prong I'm actively aware of is statting up animals so it's worthwhile to take their forms. That'll go in the core. The implementation of the rest of the Lunar fix'll have to wait for the Lunar hardcover. Old Kentucky Shark posted:Okay, I guess. I can't really speak to that. If we talk about the solution we're pursuing at the moment, and then later it turns out that solution doesn't work or we don't like the way it interacts with something else we're doing, when the final work hits, we'll have to defend what's published against everyone's personal idealized version of the initial solution. It's a pain for us and everyone else who wanted to see our implementation of the initially-presented solution is disappointed because they didn't get what they imagined they'd get. Nobody wins. What I'm trying for here is just to demonstrate that we see the problems and are taking them into account. For those of you who don't think we're capable of coming up with good solutions even if we correctly identify the problems, then only the book will suffice, and you'll have to wait. For those of you worried that we're going to come up with bad solutions because we don't know what the problems are, I'm here to be reassuring. ... Hmm. Back to the more recent commentary. I think something that keeps tripping me up with the way SA analyzes things -- and this is something other communities don't seem to do -- is the way you take the one thing out of a book or game that works the least out of context, and then present it out of context as exemplifying that book or game. So I'll make some statements that should clarify where I'm coming from. I think the Undead Menses merit works in the context of Gangrel: Savage & Macabre. That book is all about vampire as beast, with the sweat and hide and stink of large predators who run on instinct and who want to gently caress and kill and who are aluring for the reason raw biology is alluring, and who are dangerous for the reasons raw biology is dangerous. It works for the same reason that the bit at the beginning of Blood & Smoke that says vampire is a game about sex and murder works in the context of the beginning of Blood & Smoke. Just because it's hilarious when you take it out of context and put it on grogs.txt or Malcolm's user title doesn't mean it actually serves as a needs-no-elaboration criticism of Vampire: The Requiem or White Wolf's writing habits. BvD works in the context of Damnation City. More importantly it works in the context of Greg Stolze's Chicago Vampire fiction up to that point -- A Hunger Like Fire, The Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness, and the fiction running through Damnation City. I don't think it's necessary for the work to function, but removing it would weaken the artistry on display. I am prepared to call venal neonates and ancillae pumping their fists and yelling "B versus D!" while they watch ghouled dogs and vampire babies kill kill each other artistry. It does not work out of context. It sounds laughably terrible. In context, it works great. The Mother of Suffering sort of works in the context of the necrotech chapter of Manual of Exalted Power: Abyssals. I don't think that chapter works as a whole. I don't like it. It's largely a rewrite of a much more compact, sucinct, and effective chapter in Exalted 1e's The Book of Bone and Ebony (which notably doesn't include the Mother of Suffering, though it does include the Weapon of Mephitic Destruction, that killing zombie lung organ I keep going on about), but if you take the necrotech chapter on its own terms, the Mother of Suffering is just one artifact among many. It's only when you take it out and portray it as "Look how gruesome and ridiculous Abyssals are" that it falls flat. Context doesn't justify everything. No amount of context is going to justify Nazi rape machines or Lilun. We've pretty much drawn the line at "Sexual exploitation for the purpose of jokes or titilation." But the SA critic community seems to have drawn the line much closer to "Context justifies nothing" than I agree with. That's the argument used by the CAP Alert guy. I also think just because an idea within a work doesn't work, it doesn't necessarily serve as an example of the work's failure, or the failure of the methodology that produced it. All creative endeavors are comprised of numerous experiments. Not every thesis tested will hold up, there is never time for perfect polish, and a methodology used to create something great (f'rex, Exalted's racial and sexual inclusivity and its laudible treatment of drugs and slavery in Manacle & Coin) will sometimes create something terrible. All that said, here's Raksi: Raksi exists as part of a pantheon of Lunar elders who are supposed to serve as the awful legendary boogeymen of Threshold society. As Geoff said, and as I quoted earlier, they are terrible shapeshifting monsters from the depths of oh-my-god. Raksi is She-who-must-be-obeyed and she is The Rakshasa. I like to think she has more depth than that, that there's something in her that can serve as an NPC that you can talk to and maybe bargain with or apptentice at the feet of, but she's a 1,200 year old monster-god from the depths of a dead age of the world. Any form you see her in is the form of someone she has devoured. When she calls a meeting of the Silver Pact you attend, because she is Raksi, and she is old and wise and cunning and the last thing you want is her enmity. And if she serves human baby at her repast, is she trying to make a point that all your morals and restraints are foolish self-deception in the face of the truth her continuing survival embodies? If you refuse, will she be amused or wroth? Take your gamble. If you reject this, and possess the might to stand against her and to reject what she says about the world, you are free to kick her rear end from Sperimin's ruins to the Coral Archipelago and back. That's kind of what she's for. But she needs that awful, unbridled venality that goes so far it becomes majesty, in order to occupy the narrative position she does. The execution fell flat because nobody likes Lunars 1e. It's the same book that gave us the chapter 2 rape sidebar. 2e Lunars failed even worse because it made her tawdry and petty and small, it took this god-monster survivor of a fallen age and revealed her to be a 14 year old traumatized child. 2e did this with so much of the setting; it was all about pulling the curtains back and revealing all awesome things to be undeserving of awe. I get where the writers were going because I was rooting for that approach myself, but in retrospect I wonder what the hell I was thinking. If you don't dig on the idea of an Exalted that has things like Raksi, I don't know what to say.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:02
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But all of this comes to nothing because Raksi serving you a dead baby is, in the context of the culture that you're introducing this concept to, the equivalent of saying, "And then Raksi, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, throws the sheet off of the grand main course you're about to eat, revealing a quadruple amputee in a pool by the name of Bob." And now your huge epic monstrous ancient shapeshifter who rules over an empire of ape-men and forces the characters to make terrible choices about whether to allow her monstrosity to continue or not, weighing their own chances of survival against putting an end to her hideous reign, has become a joke. A dead baby joke.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:11
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It does require a degree of willing buy-in. Probably not as much as Undead Menses.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:14
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What people object to in Exalted is the extremity of its transgressions. Raksi doesn't need to eat babies. She could just eat grown adults. She could serve adults at her banquet, but that just wasn't enough, so she serves babies. Exploding corpses are plenty terrible, but that wasn't enough, it needs to be an obese undead woman who shoots exploding babies. I can dig on those things to a certain extent, and I would never argue that someone just shouldn't create those things because I do respect the artistic process. I don't blame anybody for Raksi because that's stupid, what was created is what was created and we all clearly enjoyed the setting enough to post on the internet and that's cool. What I distinctly want to avoid is enshrining that stuff. Raksi is all of those things you mentioned without the baby eating part. I think the reason that people rip on specific parts of Exalted with laser-focus that ignores the wider context is because they are developing a narrative with the bits they laser off. That narrative, obviously, is about transgression. It's about finding the line, and then stepping over it, and then drawing another line and stepping over that one too, because one line is just too pedestrian. The challenge for Exalted writers - one that I don't envy - is that the whole setting is like that. And people love that technique for stuff that isn't sex or violence. Gods don't just exist, they get drunk and party with mortals and have day jobs? Hell yeah, sign me up for that. My character isn't just awesome, he's a reincarnated god-king who can potentially defeat the titans who made the world? Holy poo poo! The villains of the setting aren't just evil, they [TRANSGRESSION]? Ew. So that's hard. Maybe impossible. If I can't have Exlated without that stuff, than bring on the baby buffet, but I'd prefer to do without.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:17
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I think, "At her grotesque banquets, Raksi has served delicacies that the rest of the world has never seen - and for good reason." followed by a list of examples, which includes innocent people, and might indicate very young examples of those people, would be reasonable. That Raksi is a horrific example of the decadence of an ancient monster who answers to no one and mocks you for pretending you have qualms about her actions is great. That you then thrust out one specific and (frankly) laughable example just hurts that image of her, in the long run. It makes her smaller.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:22
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Transgression is a big part of Exalted, yeah -- a lot of the setting is the way it is because gently caress you, that's why. (Uh. The general you.) Like, Geoff's come right out and said its genesis is him going "Modern fantasy is awful and Dungeons & Dragons is stupid and I can do better."
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Feb 4, 2014 07:23
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BryanChavez posted:I think, "At her grotesque banquets, Raksi has served delicacies that the rest of the world has never seen - and for good reason." followed by a list of examples, which includes innocent people, and might indicate very young examples of those people, would be reasonable. That Raksi is a horrific example of the decadence of an ancient monster who answers to no one and mocks you for pretending you have qualms about her actions is great. That you then thrust out one specific and (frankly) laughable example just hurts that image of her, in the long run. It makes her smaller. It happened to be the example on display in the one piece of fiction in Lunars 1e that featured Raksi. Baby-eating wasn't mentioned anywhere else in that book -- her NPC writeup at the end of chapter 2 mentions the great hunger in her loins and belly for beautiful youths, but nothing specifically about babies. But because it was the most memorable example on display it's the thing that got the most play later. EDIT: Aaaaaand... huh. That's the sound of me changing my mind about Raksi eating babies. Like, I still think it's appropriate, but only as one example among the many things she does, and probably not one worthy of more than a mention where it's already been mentioned. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 07:29
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See, yeah, I think I've found your problem here. Just in general. Maybe you guys should implement a rule that after a thing is said, other writers don't get to say the same thing with ten times as many words in following books. I know that Raksi eats babies. Okay. Done. What else can you tell me about Raks- no, you've already told me she eats babies, stop it. Say something once, and dear god don't let anyone say it again. Unless it's like, legit core thesis poo poo, like, "Monarchies blow chunks." This seems to be the source of basically every single one of Exalted's problems. gently caress, we probably wouldn't even have Lillun if somebody just stopped telling us about what happened to the Empress.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:35
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BryanChavez posted:See, yeah, I think I've found your problem here. Just in general. Maybe you guys should implement a rule that after a thing is said, other writers don't get to say the same thing with ten times as many words in following books. I know that Raksi eats babies. Okay. Done. What else can you tell me about Raks- no, you've already told me she eats babies, stop it. We've actually already implemented this for 3e in a number of ways. We're pretty sure the Scavenger Sons format (EDIT: Well, maybe a bit bigger. Time of Tumult's description of the Lap, maybe) is the ideal size for setting presentation, and we've started packaging locations with constellations of thumbnail locations surrounding them only mentioned there, so we don't get any of this bullshit where Gethamane has entries for its relationship with Lookshy and Wavecrest. It hadn't occured to me we should do that with Raksi and baby-eating, though. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 07:36
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False alarm, Raksi cooks the babies before feeding them to people! 
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Feb 4, 2014 07:51
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Stephenls posted:It happened to be the example on display in the one piece of fiction in Lunars 1e that featured Raksi. Baby-eating wasn't mentioned anywhere else in that book -- her NPC writeup at the end of chapter 2 mentions the great hunger in her loins and belly for beautiful youths, but nothing specifically about babies. But because it was the most memorable example on display it's the thing that got the most play later. I'm glad to learn that eating babies, specifically, as a core character trait has turned out to be another "let's place laserlike focus on this random detail to the point that it swallows up everything nuanced and interesting" 2e-ism.
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Feb 4, 2014 07:53
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Ferrinus posted:I'm glad to learn that eating babies, specifically, as a core character trait has turned out to be another "let's place laserlike focus on this random detail to the point that it swallows up everything nuanced and interesting" 2e-ism. IT KEEPS HAPPENING
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Feb 4, 2014 07:55
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Stephenls posted:IT KEEPS HAPPENING This may be because you, collectively, keep doing it. There's nothing wrong with changing things based on feedback, and watching devs pick the bizarrest hills to die on is disheartening. You don't have to have "And then Raksi ate the babies!" to have her be creepy - implying it would work even better for that!
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Feb 4, 2014 08:40
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Stephenls posted:EDIT: Aaaaaand... huh. That's the sound of me changing my mind about Raksi eating babies. Like, I still think it's appropriate, but only as one example among the many things she does, and probably not one worthy of more than a mention where it's already been mentioned. Honestly... if you just wrote in that there are rumours about Raksi filleting and cooking people and then serving them at dinner to watch her guests squirm, it'd be a lot more effective than the "Raksi eats babies" soundbite. It's a lot easier to get audience buy-in for something like that. It might even, possibly, not overshadow the rest of her portrayal as an ancient monster god. Stephenls posted:I have seen this sort of pushback on literally every single R-rated element in the game at one point or another. Everything is someone's One Thing That's Over The Line. We can listen to all of it, some of it, or none of it, and if we listen to some of it, someone is going to be the person who doesn't get listened to, and that person is always going to think that if we just listened to everyone else we're listening to plus them, the game would be improved. But if we listen to everyone the game goes PG-13. I think rape ghosts and Lilun in particular, and to a lesser degree casual bestiality, cannibalism et al, piss over the R-rated line and go well into NC-17 territory. The gulf between PG-13 and what Exalted 2E is is large enough to contain an ocean. I'd also argue that most of the NC-17 material in Exalted feels either squicky, gross or stupid. This is the line that gave us the Scroll of Swallowed Darkness, among other gems. Like, if you actually aimed at making Exalted R-rated I don't think we'd lose a whole lot of value.
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Feb 4, 2014 09:42
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Nonviolent imitation is expensive, temporary, and subtly incomplete. Eating someone to steal their skin is cheap, permanent, and perfect. Or maybe a charm/knack that allows for non-violent shapeshifting as long as you hold a positive intimacy to the person your shifting into? So you can still get someone's form without eating them, but you have to genuinely love them and lose the form if you ever stop loving them. Ties a bit into "Lunars caring passionately for causes/people" schtick, means that the "good" choice has its vulnerabilities/sacrifices without being cripplingly sub-optimal.
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Feb 4, 2014 13:20
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Lymond posted:I think rape ghosts and Lilun in particular, and to a lesser degree casual bestiality, cannibalism et al, piss over the R-rated line and go well into NC-17 territory. I'd also argue a lot of the NC-17 stuff (and SoSD, joke or not) fed into a creepy fanbase that's been toxic - at least, when I ran into it in online RP, it certainly put me off the game for awhile. When I worry about playing Exalted with Exalted fans, there's a problem.
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Feb 4, 2014 14:12
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Stephenls posted:It happened to be the example on display in the one piece of fiction in Lunars 1e that featured Raksi. Baby-eating wasn't mentioned anywhere else in that book -- her NPC writeup at the end of chapter 2 mentions the great hunger in her loins and belly for beautiful youths, but nothing specifically about babies. But because it was the most memorable example on display it's the thing that got the most play later. You (you specifically, Stephen Lea Sheppard) can understand, now, why people might have developed a tendency to myopically focus on the most outlandish thing you (you generally, being made to stand less-than-fairly for Exalted's entire history) say and keep running it into the ground wildly out of proportion to its significance? We learned it watching you, dad! We learned it watching you.
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Feb 4, 2014 15:26
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tatankatonk posted:Aha! You've suspected I'm crazy enough to eat babies, but in fact, I've only been crazy enough to eat babies to make you think that I really liked eating babies, which, to be fair, I do ... I read this in Mojo Jojo's voice. This doesn't really help making Raksi mature. Anyway, the one thing I dislike about Lunars and and their cannibalism thing in general, is that... sometimes I just want to play a character that can easily make themselves pass as other people, and NOT having to slaughter and eat said other people to achieve their goal. WELP I GUESS I BETTER GO PLAY A SOLAR. I do also get a bit annoyed at them being unable to get into different animal shapes other than their totem when their anima is showing. What IS the point of that limitation anyway?
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Feb 4, 2014 16:08
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Stephenls posted:Transgression is a big part of Exalted, yeah -- a lot of the setting is the way it is because gently caress you, that's why. (Uh. The general you.) Like, Geoff's come right out and said its genesis is him going "Modern fantasy is awful and Dungeons & Dragons is stupid and I can do better." You need to start doing this to Exalted's legacy, FYI.
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Feb 4, 2014 17:18
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Rulebook Heavily posted:You need to start doing this to Exalted's legacy, FYI. New Exalt types, new map, new core cultures and settings, complete overhaul of sorcery including throwing out necromancy as a separate thing (as per current draft), Lunars razed to the foundations and rebuilt (note: we kept what we see as the foundations), focus entirely removed from magitech, high-essence game re-conceptualized from first principles, Evocations.... Those are just the things I can talk about. You know how secretive we are. (Also not mentioning some things that go without saying because they're standard for the game industry, like a complete rebuild of the core mechanics and the necessary complete rebuild of the low-essence game to go with it.) Stephenls fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 17:30
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The Lunar tell & cannibalism restrictions are analogous to, & work about as well as, all Solars being uniquely vulnerable to magic, powerless in red light, and poisoned by radiation from First Age materials.
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Feb 4, 2014 17:35
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