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As a Mexican man, I've always felt that my Mesoamerican forebears have been dramatically over-represented in fantasy settings for far too long. It's frankly shameful, and I'm glad that it's finally getting called out.
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Feb 22, 2014 03:55
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Dammit Who? posted:Actually you'll find, if you read his thread, that modern fantasy gaming falls critically short of the True Representative Beauty of Merrie Englande, except for High Rock in the elder scrolls games. Don't YOU look a fool! They're still kicking out editions of Pendragon, aren't they?
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Feb 22, 2014 03:56
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I hope Creation has a single medieval European castle in it containing a king in a crown, and it's adjacent to a field farmed by one (1) serf who scrapes together enough food for both himself and the king.
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Feb 22, 2014 03:56
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BryanChavez posted:As a Mexican man, I've always felt that my Mesoamerican forebears have been dramatically over-represented in fantasy settings for far too long. It's frankly shameful, and I'm glad that it's finally getting called out. Just out of mild curiosity, and not to derail entirely, but what were your thoughts on Scion?
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Feb 22, 2014 05:28
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Ferrinus posted:I hope Creation has a single medieval European castle in it containing a king in a crown, and it's adjacent to a field farmed by one (1) serf who scrapes together enough food for both himself and the king. I don't think sucking up to the devs will get you and Vox added as characters. 
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Feb 22, 2014 06:00
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Here is Stovetop posted:Just out of mild curiosity, and not to derail entirely, but what were your thoughts on Scion? "Capricious and cruel in a way that the other pantheons are not, the Aztec Gods are bloodthirsty, aggressive, and violent." drat. Not a good start, is it? In general, I think Scion is judgmental about the Mexica pantheon in a way it fails to be with the others. In addition, it significantly fails to reflect the obsession that the Aztecs had with duality. Miclántecuhtli is treated as just a death god, despite his powerful connections to life and fertility. He's also cited as being associated with Santa Muerte, which is true, but the set of powers given are completely out-of-place for a death goddess who protects outcasts and the oppressed. Even Tlazoltéotl's powers of purification are described in ugly, negative terms, as if casting filth away were in some way lurid and disturbing. Her role in bringing communities together go unmentioned, as well as her fertility and lunar aspects. Scion is somewhat myopic about gods and their purviews in general, and it has to be to give these sort of choices to a character. Representing Zeus accurately, using all myths and all local versions of the god, would necessitate giving him 'Associated Powers: All' and 'Abilities: All'. In general, though, I think they went with the lowest common denominator for the pantheons, and it just hurt the Mexica the most because who the gently caress knows about the Mexica gods and goddesses? And us Mexicans have been bloodthirsty savages with particularly evil magic in RPGs since Shadowrun, at the very least. I'm used to it by now. BryanChavez fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 06:08
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Pretty much my thoughts on it as a non-mexican hah.
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Feb 22, 2014 21:03
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BryanChavez posted:And us Mexicans have been bloodthirsty savages with particularly evil magic in RPGs since Shadowrun, at the very least. I'm used to it by now. 100 percent agreed. I always find it funny that apparently the Aesir are cool and good unlike Mexican savages despite regular thrall sacrificing as a practice among historical vikings.
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Feb 22, 2014 21:19
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Mexcillent posted:100 percent agreed. Scion had a lot of really uncomfortable elements to its presentation. The "bloodthirsty and capricious" Mexica gods, the Hollywood style zombies all over the Loa pantheon, the creepy tendency to devote at least a paragraph to how smokin' hot virtually every goddess was (and almost invariably include some kind of highly sexualized "mortal identity" to the goddesses)... culturally sensitive it really was not.
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Feb 22, 2014 21:24
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Oh, man, I just realized. Here's where you put the medieval European aesthetic in Creation: ...the underworld! If you walk through the edge of a Shadowland after dark you find yourself in Lordran from Dark Souls.
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Feb 22, 2014 22:53
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Ferrinus posted:Oh, man, I just realized. Here's where you put the medieval European aesthetic in Creation: ...the underworld! If you walk through the edge of a Shadowland after dark you find yourself in Lordran from Dark Souls. I think you're almost right. I believe that the land of the dead is not the ideal place for the medieval European aesthetic in Exalted, but that it is the idea place for its fans and advocates.
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Feb 22, 2014 23:01
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Because I had heard that Wonders of the Lost Age was one of the style of books the new edition was trying to stay away from, I decided to give it a read. It's not great, the best of the chapters is easily the created life chapter, and everything else is super RIFTSy. A tonne of tech-wank without much of an indication of why you'd ever use, or include, it in a campaign. Worse is that it paints a picture of the first age as super terrific, where everything was basically perfect until those dammed sidereals and dragonblooded ruined everything. The only taste of the decadence that propelled the other exalted to make their decision is in the created life chapter, where some of the things created are shown to be kind of lovely or created for lovely reasons (although I wish they'd had another go to twist other than "after millennia, all these [whatevers] are INSANE") For me, the narrative tension of Usurpation is between the fact that it was justifiable and the fact that it probably could have been achieved in a much better way than just massacring the Solars. When you paint everything as better in the first age, you lose that tension, making the sidereals in to complete villains. Which is why I'm super behind the re-imagining of the Infernals as the most decadent first age solars, returning to reclaim their former kingdoms.
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Feb 23, 2014 01:21
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Did you gloss over all the sorts of super-suits and robots that were used to enforce brutal police states? The widely produced magic gear usable by mortals for entirely reasonable cost of making them drop dead of old age at 30? The routine practice of powering things by having divinities sentanced to an eternity of slave labour for the crime of inflicting mild inconvenience upon an exalt? 2e does spend way too much time sucking off the old realm and its fancy gizmos, but it does a fair deal to paint its rulers as insane.
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Feb 23, 2014 01:41
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that is one thing that I hope is fixed in 3E that you pointed out but it's not the First Age or anything. It's the Motivations for things that aren't Humans. When I try to run my game, my biggest problem ends up being that from point to point, unless I am using Exalts, almost every bad guy or bad thing just wants to eat Humans. It frustrated me because I didn't want to just use a bunch of Exalted or Human antagonists and I wanted them to have different motivations and the like, but 90% of what I found/got was 'They want to eat Humans', because apparently Humans are the McNuggets of Exalted. It ends up feeling incredibly boring and cookie-cutter. "Why is this thing attacking us? Oh wait it wants to eat us like every other thing in existence." To clairify I have no problem with say Great Terrors and Tyrant Lizards both loving tasty humans. They're super predators, those things can have 'tasty tasty humans' as a driving force. Stuff liked Hushed Ones or Azekachi or even Demons or Fae all going 'tasty tasty humans' and the like is the annoying stuff. It, like a friend said, mocks the Eclipse power because 'woo, I have diplomatic immunity, I'm just going to chill here while you chow down on the village' is probably not what's going to happen. Stallion Cabana fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 04:01
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Did you gloss over all the sorts of super-suits and robots that were used to enforce brutal police states? The widely produced magic gear usable by mortals for entirely reasonable cost of making them drop dead of old age at 30? The routine practice of powering things by having divinities sentanced to an eternity of slave labour for the crime of inflicting mild inconvenience upon an exalt? Most of that stuff seems to be fan extrapolation, none of the super suits are ever talked about as enforcing brutal police states, they're all just RIFTS tech-wank. Robots, specifically brass legionaries are talked about as maintaining brutal police states, but that's in the creating life chapter, also known as the only good one. The Aegis-Inset is described as "Rarely used by the Exalted and far more commonly implanted in elite mortal warriors". So it's far more common than rare, what ever that means, but only used by the warrior elite, not exactly 'widely produced'. The use of spirits in the first age is described as an "agreements between the spirit courts and the Solar Exalted", where as in the Shogunate spirits work "through intimidation tactics" in the introduction. There is the Brass Leviathan which is as you've described it, but again guess which chapter that comes from? I'm guessing this is just another example of cohesion in tone not being enforced in the 2nd edition.
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Feb 23, 2014 05:09
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There are different points in the first age as well. Presumably some of it was kind of nice before the god kings went insane.
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Feb 23, 2014 06:53
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fez_machine posted:Worse is that it paints a picture of the first age as super terrific, where everything was basically perfect until those dammed sidereals and dragonblooded ruined everything. The only taste of the decadence that propelled the other exalted to make their decision is in the created life chapter, where some of the things created are shown to be kind of lovely or created for lovely reasons (although I wish they'd had another go to twist other than "after millennia, all these [whatevers] are INSANE") For what it's worth, I've never gotten an "everything was peachy and the Sidereals and Dragon-Blooded were just bastards" vibe from Exalted. Few enough of the First Age Solars that have been written about were decent human beings, the Great Prophecy has always been a big red bolded statement that "poo poo was bad and going to get worse", and the books that deal with the First Age made efforts to paint the Solars as unstable and prone to do really stupid things on a large scale. I'm not sure that a book that discusses the neat toys that have been lost since the Solars vanished needs to keep pounding that nail on the head, either. Whatever else the Solars' rule may have done, it did make a lot of cool gadgets. Cool gadgets might not be the best focus for an Exalted supplement, but it'd feel weird if every other artifact included notes on how their construction process was unnecessarily cruel, especially if your players expect to recapture some of that lost artifice during the game.
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Feb 23, 2014 18:49
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Lymond posted:Cool gadgets might not be the best focus for an Exalted supplement, but it'd feel weird if every other artifact included notes on how their construction process was unnecessarily cruel, especially if your players expect to recapture some of that lost artifice during the game. I guess my problems can be divided up into two parts: 1. The gadgets aren't even all that cool, like way too many pages (greater than 1) are spent on varying styles of troop transport. Who cares? 2. It's not that I'm asking for every other artefact to have some hosed up implication or cruelty associated with them, but certainly only one of the chapters even mentions the abuse of power. The first chapter is probably the worst offender in that it hypes up the First Age so much without talking about the flaws, while making GBS threads on the Shogunate that reading it I found myself thinking "Why were the solars overthrown anyway?". It wouldn't have hurt to have had a some example Late Age Solar harnessing their perfect geomatic designs and architecture for a really misguided and foolhardy purpose. Instead we just get "HA!, the dragon-blooded can't do anything right, can they?". Why should we care about the Shogunate? This is a genuine question. I've never seen how it could be used in an actual campaign, it barely has any resonance except with Dragon Blooded characters and even then they're likely to be more interested in complete independence and self rule or the take over of the Realm. It's just this interregnum period that that gets the setting from the first age to the second age because something had to exist for it to be invaded and threatened by the Wyld and the Great Contagion.
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Feb 23, 2014 20:34
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fez_machine posted:Why should we care about the Shogunate? This is a genuine question. I've never seen how it could be used in an actual campaign, it barely has any resonance except with Dragon Blooded characters and even then they're likely to be more interested in complete independence and self rule or the take over of the Realm. It's just this interregnum period that that gets the setting from the first age to the second age because something had to exist for it to be invaded and threatened by the Wyld and the Great Contagion.
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Feb 23, 2014 22:35
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Yeah, I prefer magitech as a complicated, expensive, and breakdown-prone half-measure that people resorted to once fiat relics like teleportation archways or whatever became impossible to produce.
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Feb 23, 2014 22:41
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fez_machine posted:I guess my problems can be divided up into two parts: fez_machine posted:Why should we care about the Shogunate? This is a genuine question. I've never seen how it could be used in an actual campaign, it barely has any resonance except with Dragon Blooded characters and even then they're likely to be more interested in complete independence and self rule or the take over of the Realm. It's just this interregnum period that that gets the setting from the first age to the second age because something had to exist for it to be invaded and threatened by the Wyld and the Great Contagion. Lymond fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Feb 24, 2014 |
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Feb 24, 2014 02:39
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The Shogunate had mass literacy*, sanitation, and other accomplishments without being ruled by power-mad god-kings. Sure they had atrocities but they were lesser, and therefore greater, than the First Age. That's it. The Shogunate is there to explain that Moral Decline isn't a thing and that waiting for Jesus is a sucker's game.
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Feb 24, 2014 08:22
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I had a thought about exalted recently I want to run by some people to see if I have a point or if I'm just crazy, here goes: Limit would be better if people were aware of it. See, limit potentially serves some neat purpose in these games: giving our larger than life heroes some larger than life flaws. The problem comes when the books tell us that nobody knows about it so we can't do a lot with it in story. It also raises a lot of questions as to how nobody has noticed it, since it is by no means subtle. There can be some real drama when your character realizes that with every new bit of power they acquire they lose a bit of sanity. It would also have the unintended consequence of making the whole thousand stream river thing that the lunars doing make a whole lot more sense.
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Feb 24, 2014 08:43
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I never saw it as something nobody ever noticed, really. I'm sure "Great power leads to great excess." is a maxim in Creation. It seems to be true of gods, Exalts, and even mortal rulers. The more powerful you are, the more you'll be prone to dangerous extremes of virtue, the more likely you'll embrace decadent hedonism, etc. It's simply assumed to be true, and in general, the mighty tend to live up to those expectations. It's just that nobody knows that for the Exalted, it's exacerbated by the spiteful curse of the Neverborn.
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Feb 24, 2014 08:53
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BryanChavez posted:I never saw it as something nobody ever noticed, really. I'm sure "Great power leads to great excess." is a maxim in Creation. It seems to be true of gods, Exalts, and even mortal rulers. The more powerful you are, the more you'll be prone to dangerous extremes of virtue, the more likely you'll embrace decadent hedonism, etc. It's simply assumed to be true, and in general, the mighty tend to live up to those expectations. It's just that nobody knows that for the Exalted, it's exacerbated by the spiteful curse of the Neverborn. I think it is fairly common knowledge in creation that people in power tend to be assholes, but I'm not sure it is every really brought up anywhere that people realize that gaining power literally drives exalts mad as a matter of course. It's the kind of thing I wish would be bought up more, much like the existential crisis of being 2 people at once, that is to say, the person you were before you exalted as well as the legacy of this exaltation and the hazy memories that come with it. edit: In general, I wish exalted spent more wordcount on giving players more neat dramatic hooks with which to make characters interesting. Ash Rose fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Feb 24, 2014 |
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Feb 24, 2014 09:06
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I'm not sure what you mean by 'gaining power literally drives Exalts mad as a matter of course'. Which mechanics reflect this? I'm looking at the book right now, and I'm not seeing anywhere that makes you accrue Limit faster if you have higher Essence or more Charms, or something like that.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:13
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BryanChavez posted:I'm not sure what you mean by 'gaining power literally drives Exalts mad as a matter of course'. Which mechanics reflect this? I'm looking at the book right now, and I'm not seeing anywhere that makes you accrue Limit faster if you have higher Essence or more Charms, or something like that. Every point of essence past 5 gives you 1 permanent limit point.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:14
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I think maybe the foundational problem with Limit is that, even back in 1E, they tried tying it to some concrete in-universe thing rather than simply making it a natural consequence of giving well-meaning (or even not-so-well-meaning) but still flawed and fallible humans phenomenal power and telling them "your birthright it to rule, have at it." Like, I'm sort of neutral on the whole "last spiteful death-curse of the slain Primordials" thing, I'm not in love with it but I don't hate it and I think there's some interesting potential there, but I've never really felt that Limit needed to be a thing that was the result of some great curse as opposed to simple human nature. Also I think it makes attempts to drag Creation back out of its inexorable decline and restore it to the glories of the First Age more meaningful if the key to doing so isn't "find a way to patch the curse that got slapped on everyone that makes them all act like colossal dipshits" but instead "hey, we need to learn how to be better people than our predecessors and not make the same dumb mistakes they did."
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Feb 24, 2014 09:17
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Kai Tave posted:I think maybe the foundational problem with Limit is that, even back in 1E, they tried tying it to some concrete in-universe thing rather than simply making it a natural consequence of giving well-meaning (or even not-so-well-meaning) but still flawed and fallible humans phenomenal power and telling them "your birthright it to rule, have at it." Personally, I would like it be left as an open ended question as to what causes limit, be it a curse, a natural part of exaltation, or what this much power does to a person.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:19
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I like Limit as a natural consequence of exaltation (or even supernatural power in general)(or even power in general). I could even see a situation where a Limit track is just something everyone has that's relevant to mental or social challenges, a stat measuring mental and emotional endurance so that you have a psychic health track for obstacles/enemies to attack that's distinct from your willpower points.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:23
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axelsoar posted:Every point of essence past 5 gives you 1 permanent limit point. Huh. Couldn't find that rule in my quick skim of the book, but I can vaguely remember seeing something like it, yeah. Well, the best option there is just to not make Essence 6 the default for elder Exalts, like they're doing in Third. If someone has the insane dedication to push through that barrier, then they're probably crazy enough that the Breaks aren't going to look that out of the ordinary anyway. "You mean Bao-Wei the Butcher, the insane swordmaster who wants nothing more than to fully encompass the sublime art of swordsmanship in all its forms, just hacked through an entire army in a blind, savage rage? Well that all adds up, actually, yeah." Kai Tave posted:I think maybe the foundational problem with Limit is that, even back in 1E, they tried tying it to some concrete in-universe thing rather than simply making it a natural consequence of giving well-meaning (or even not-so-well-meaning) but still flawed and fallible humans phenomenal power and telling them "your birthright it to rule, have at it." Yeah, it's never sat well with me that the Great Curse is just the best possible excuse for why a bunch of incredibly powerful demigods grew decadent and cruel over centuries of unchallenged rule. It's not necessary. I like the idea of the Neverborn's death-curse, I just don't like it in that form. Not that I have an alternative off the top of my head, save to ignore it.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:24
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BryanChavez posted:Well, the best option there is just to not make Essence 6 the default for elder Exalts, like they're doing in Third. But it isn't problematic that people go crazy as their essence increase, it is actually a really neat avenue for story-telling. Some people want to play the guy who wakes up in haze with blood on their hands wondering to whom it belongs. Yet I get the appeal of Kai Tave's idea for limit too, I bet there is some way to have our cake and eat it too here. I can't think of it for the life of me right now though, it's 3 in the morning here.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:34
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axelsoar posted:But it isn't problematic that people go crazy as their essence increase, it is actually a really neat avenue for story-telling. Some people want to play the guy who wakes up in haze with blood on their hands wondering to whom it belongs. ... but not everyone does, so don't make achieving those levels of power expected for every character of a specific age, or connect going crazy to that specific thing? If you want to play that sort of character, it's also sort of lovely to force you to wait until you hit 100+ years of Exalted-hood in order to start going crazier, right? You want to play that character now, of someone about to go over the edge and slowly losing a battle with themselves. Most campaigns of Exalted don't hit Essence 6 anyway. I mean, if I want to play Raiden from MGS/MGR, I should be able to play Raiden right out the gates, not have to wait until my Raiden is elderly before he's on the weak precipice of sanity and madness.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:40
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BryanChavez posted:I mean, if I want to play Raiden from MGS/MGR, I should be able to play Raiden right out the gates, not have to wait until my Raiden is elderly before he's on the weak precipice of sanity and madness.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:43
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I've never been super-fond of Limit. It seems to exist as a result of the confluence of two factors: 1) the writers wanted a mechanic to insure that your character occasionally flips out and does something dumb 2) the writers thought that people would flip out if they were forced to use personality mechanics without some kind of "evil mojo made me do it" excuse I would as soon be rid of the lampshade and have rules that include occasionally doing stupid things.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:45
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axelsoar posted:But it isn't problematic that people go crazy as their essence increase, it is actually a really neat avenue for story-telling. Some people want to play the guy who wakes up in haze with blood on their hands wondering to whom it belongs. Yet I get the appeal of Kai Tave's idea for limit too, I bet there is some way to have our cake and eat it too here. I can't think of it for the life of me right now though, it's 3 in the morning here. Well, again, I think that "cultivating phenomenal levels of Essence" doesn't need a direct causal link via supernatural whatever for people to still probably figure that there's going to be something of an overlap between "people who, gifted with the power of the gods, decide that no, they need even more power than that" and "people who probably have some issues." And the thing is that I'm not even against games that prod player-characters into stupid, short-sighted, or destructive behaviors. I know that some people really don't care for that sort of thing but I'm okay with it. I just think that the great curse, both in a fictional sense and a mechanical implementation sense, is kind of ehhh. Like you said earlier, if it were up to me I'd leave it open-ended...maybe some ancient treatises make mention of a "great curse" that the chosen of heaven have to bear but nobody knows if that's literal or metaphorical, it absolutely isn't some bullshit thing meant to protect you from "soul burn" what even the gently caress. Meanwhile, I also agree with Ferrinus that turning the Limit track into a sort of "social/mental damage track" that everyone, Exalt or no, has sounds like a decent approach. Everyone can be pushed to their limits, it's just that when a normal mortal hits their breaking point they don't have incredible godlike powers on hand.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:50
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I've always thought it would have been vastly better to make a mechanic that rewards the occasional do-something-dumb rather than punish you for getting into situations that align with your virtues by forcing you to do something dumb. Although then you'd need a reason to only do something dumb every once in a while, rather than constantly, because I certainly know that a reward for being a jerk all the time would get out of hand real quick.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:56
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I've always seen the simplest alternate idea of Limit is as a big red "No." button. If you're in social combat, or social influence in the new system, and you're being pushed towards something, and you're low on Willpower, and you just absolutely do not want to gain a particular intimacy or be pushed towards a specific goal, you just press the button, you recover all of your Willpower, maybe gain some other bonuses for just completely unleashing yourself, and you go shithouse crazy for awhile. And you just completely ignore what that person was trying to make you do. The Usurpation was predicated on the Sidereal's terror of a hundred and fifty or so Solars all pressing that button at the same time if the Gold Faction's "turn our chairs backwards, sit down, and talk it out" plan was implemented.
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Feb 24, 2014 09:57
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Yeah, one of the foundational problems with Limit as it's implemented is that it's a thing you want to strive to avoid rather than a thing that makes you go "hmmmm, maybe I should press the jolly, candy-like button."
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Feb 24, 2014 10:06
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Yeah, it'd be nice to have a reason to occasionally tack "IF I HAVE TO KILL EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN IT TO DO SO" to "I am going to rebuild the lost wonders of past Ages all across Creation!"
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Feb 24, 2014 10:43
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