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With the rich palate of Exalted's NPCs to draw upon you can ally yourself with the psychotic baby-eating murder-witch or the narcissistic goatwolf rapist. There's something for everyone, really.
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Jun 11, 2014 01:55
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Kai Tave posted:With the rich palate of Exalted's NPCs to draw upon you can ally yourself with the psychotic baby-eating murder-witch or the narcissistic goatwolf rapist. There's something for everyone, really. 
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Jun 11, 2014 01:59
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Well yeah, that's a given.
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Jun 11, 2014 02:01
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Transient People posted:The problem is that 'Enter the Exalted' is an extreme cop-out solution to 'we have no people capable of eliciting a positive change in the world, or even interested in trying'. If I want to play Nelson Mandela, Solar Edition, I shouldn't be forced to rope another player into playing Bishop Tutu, or lop off big chunks of the setting so I can make room for him and his efforts and take him as an Ally background. People like that should already be there. Some may be more successful at eliciting changes, some less, but the game is not going to suffer if you have a couple people that players will want to befriend, instead of just get politically in bed with. I'm not asking that everybody be Mother Theresa or MLK, but I do want people like them to be represented and not by the party. There's just too few players and Creation is too big to tackle all of it, or even a reasonably large chunk of it, without help. Are there really no people like that in Exalted, though? I'm a fan of Admiral Sand and that House Cynis guy who's coming to realize that he ought to fight for something more than Cynis profits. The Immaculate Paragons seemed to be pretty upright religious leaders, as well, albeit working for a false doctrine (whose falseness they may or may not be aware of). There's more than a few gods here and there who would love to try and make the world a better place - arguably the Syndics of Whitewall have decided to try and intervene directly to improve the world even though they'd break Celestial law. And of course, the sourcebooks do try to make it clear, I think, that there are good gods, good Dragon-Bloods, and good people in general all over the place even if they're not explicitly detailed - though most of the time the problems of the current existing systems has them in positions of weakness or isolation. They're just need someone to help give them a boost and put them in touch with like-minded folks. Granted, maybe the official books could stand to spend a little more ink detailing some straight-up good people, but there's still a number of them around and there's plenty of room for them to be plopped in by a ST, isn't there?
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Jun 11, 2014 02:06
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#Allunderheaven actually did a search for the purpose of that challenge. We managed to find 10, but most of them are minor characters, and several are described with one sentence. This is the list: -Princess Amayana (the Saint I asked for) -Whitewall's First Age leaders, whom the Sidereals could not turn the population of the city against. -Saibok Gauto (you may know him as 'dude who possibly suggested the Usurpation to Kejack'. I didn't ask for people whose attempts to do good turn out right, just that they be decent folk). -Sharkdad. -Swan Dragon, the amnesiac Censor who's an aimless hobo these days. -Ulito Swan, daughter of the above. -The Green Lady, the Sidereal superspy. -Red Skulking Bear. -Dozima Wokish (who did not have a motivation until the Scroll of Errata made it clear he wanted to understand the South's cultures to know how Heaven could best help them, natch). Honorable mentions to a West Censor who's basically a good dude overwhelmed by the terribleness of the world, whose name we forgot, and the Ancient of Stone Journeys. So we have Ten Good Men (and women). Now here's the kicker: How many of these are more than bit players? How many have a tangible, serious impact in the modern Creation? ...Yeah. Exactly. Kind of puts everything into perspective, doesn't it? We went through several books and this is the best list we could put together. EDIT: There we go, someone rememberes his name: The Western Censor's name is Fakharu, if you wanna look him up. Transient People fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 02:27
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Thanatosian posted:What, exactly, would this different "chosen path" have looked like? Admitting that something was up with the Exalted as a whole and risking the wrath of Solars to confront that. The 2e Sidereal book pretty much lays out the options they picked between were install the DBs over Creation and confront the Solars about the issues (Great Curse). The Sidereals looked at the Loom of Fate as best they could and saw that option A would definitely work, but Creation would be somewhat worse off for it. Option B, on the other hand, was about 50/50 between fixing things and destroying Creation. Chejop and the Bronze Faction elected to go with the plan they knew would definitely work.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:08
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Transient People posted:-Sharkdad.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:16
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Transient People posted:#Allunderheaven actually did a search for the purpose of that challenge. We managed to find 10, but most of them are minor characters, and several are described with one sentence. This is the list: I'm kinda curious - what exactly was your criteria for "good person" here? I'm not sure I would have put the Green Lady on such a list myself (disclaimer - I'm mostly used to 2E, so I dunno how 1E describes her.)
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Jun 11, 2014 03:18
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Tomn posted:I'm kinda curious - what exactly was your criteria for "good person" here? I'm not sure I would have put the Green Lady on such a list myself (disclaimer - I'm mostly used to 2E, so I dunno how 1E describes her.) the majority of them came off of motivations in the case of full write-ups or how they were described in their single sentence. Someone else suggested the Green Lady, but in the end she is far from a bad person. She's a supper deep double agent attempting to keep track of three deathlords by herself. You can replace her with Flashing Peak if you want.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:25
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I really don't like Queen Amayana. Specifically I really didn't like this policy of throwing in the occasional token good First Age Solars to contrast the monsters really didn’t work, because it made them come across as complicit or shockingly ignorant. The 2e background for Luthe is really the microcosm of this phenomenon for me. It goes out of the way to convince you that Queen Amayna was pure and good who didn't deserve to die and yet the other Luthe Solars are horrible people that she apparently never clocked onto (or knew and didn't care enough to stop them). This is made doubly worse by her "I defeat my assassins and now I know all about the Usurpation" charm.
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Jun 11, 2014 04:06
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Lioness posted:I really don't like Queen Amayana. I don't like her either honestly. I never had. But she exists so it seems fair enough to put her there.
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Jun 11, 2014 04:10
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Transient People posted:#Allunderheaven actually did a search for the purpose of that challenge. We managed to find 10, but most of them are minor characters, and several are described with one sentence. This is the list: Isn't Ulito Swan basically Osama Bin Ladin, hiding out in a bunker plotting terrorist attacks against those she sees as the usurpers of her father's legacy? Even in 1E most of her emotions are centered around hate and obsession, she's running the Court of the Orderly Flame's spy ring on the Blessed Isle, plus implied to be involved in assassination, blackmail and theft. 2E just made it more explicit, I believe. Just off the top of my head you guys are missing the Three Syndics of Whitewall: Luranume, Uvanavu and Yo-Ping. They work tirelessly to use their domains of luck, prosperity and peace to better both the City of Whitewall and Creation itself. They do stuff like arrange marriages on the borders of Shadowlands to slowly push away the influence of the Underworld, arrange peace treaties between various factions to the benefit of the humans within their charge, increase literacy and education in the populace of Whitewall and so on. Plus their long-term objective is to try to convince the Sun to stop being such a terrible king, by showing him through example what the world could be like and focusing it through magic super-prayer mandalas like the ending of a goddamn Doctor Who episode. And they manage all of this in defiance of the laws of Heaven that say they should stand aside and do nothing, not even asking for prayer from their city as graft in exchange. Then there's gods like Flashing Peak and Wayang, both who have a certain nobility. Peak is hopelessly idealistic, Wayang is pragmatic and self-aware. Or the Ennead up in the Haslanti League, who have a really great symbiotic relationship with the city-states where they help out without turning the whole thing into some kind of abusive protection-racket. And that's just gods. For Exalts you have dudes like Kasif the itinerant monk, Admiral Sand (maybe), Hetman Lenurel from Castebook: Zenith, Sailor Moon from Cult of the Illuminated (Amaya, Patron Saint), and so on.
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Jun 11, 2014 04:30
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Calde posted:Isn't Ulito Swan basically Osama Bin Ladin, hiding out in a bunker plotting terrorist attacks against those she sees as the usurpers of her father's legacy? Even in 1E most of her emotions are centered around hate and obsession, she's running the Court of the Orderly Flame's spy ring on the Blessed Isle, plus implied to be involved in assassination, blackmail and theft. 2E just made it more explicit, I believe. Her motivation is 'Eliminate all Corruption' as per 2E, her write up specifics that she avoids murder outside of extreme cases, but will do what is necessary to stop the Realm and the Celestial Bureaucracy or other that she thinks are corrupt or evil. I think she's fairly good considering this involves The Realm, The Celestial Bureaucracy, and The Guild. The list isn't conclusive or anything, and on the IRC I never implied that it was. I simply found 10 characters. Stallion Cabana fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 04:32
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Stallion Cabana posted:Her motivation is 'Eliminate all Corruption' as per 2E, her write up specifics that she avoids murder outside of extreme cases, but will do what is necessary to stop the Realm and the Celestial Bureaucracy or other that she thinks are corrupt or evil. Yeah, her write-up specifies that she had to be ordered by her two fellow triumvirs to eschew murder and terrorist techniques (except in extreme cases). Which kind of implies she would implement them more often if she could. Perhaps that's uncharitable, but the Court of the Orderly Flame does embrace outright assassination to achieve its ends and she certainly appears to be the one behind that. She's a really interesting character, and I could totally see an interpretation for using her as a Nelson Mandela analog on re-reading it.
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Jun 11, 2014 04:49
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Nessus posted:SHARKDAD INSPIRES ALL OF US This sharkdad dude gets mentioned like twice per page and I have no idea what the gently caress. Google did not help. Can someone please sing to me the tale of sharkdad?
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Jun 11, 2014 11:31
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BAWRLIN posted:This sharkdad dude gets mentioned like twice per page and I have no idea what the gently caress. Google did not help. Can someone please sing to me the tale of sharkdad? 
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Jun 11, 2014 11:37
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 sharkdad indeed.
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Jun 11, 2014 14:46
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I guess I see the complaint of "there aren't any super-influential, hyper-good people" largely as asking "where's Elminster?" If Elminster were around, your characters wouldn't be needed. The preservation of Creation is probably going to involve elevating someone who isn't influential. And, much as in real life, most people with influence have gotten their hands dirty in some way or another. Ayesha Ura (head of the Gold Faction) and Verumipra (Yu-Shan's emissary to Malfeas) both come to mind as fundamentally good people, though both have probably gotten their hands dirty in some way or another. And if "I didn't ask for people whose attempts to do good turn out right, just that they be decent folk" is our criteria... I think there's an argument to be made for Chejop Kejak. And possibly Mnemon. Ham Equity fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 16:49
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Here's the thing, if most of the NPCs in Exalted are basically some combination of stupid and assholes then the whole "let's kill all the Dragonbloods" thing that Stephen keeps bringing up becomes less and less of a horrifying failure to recognize the monstrosity of one's own actions and more "gently caress it, who cares, everyone in this game sucks anyway." Like, I'd bet money this is in part why the Yozis got such an upswell in fan support once Infernals came out because "gently caress this mess, let's just kick it all down and start over!" doesn't sound so horrible when the game has been doing its level best to convince you that Creation is a shithole. "Oh but you could fix it maybe!" So what? Why should anyone care? It reminds me of Eberron and the Church of the Silver Flame which was supposed to be a largely good (if aloof) organization with a bit of darkness lurking within it. Instead, every writer who ever wrote anything about the Silver Flame had the same idea, "I know, I'll have this NPC working for the Silver Flame secretly turn out to be evil and/or corrupt!" And so after a while the overwhelming impression one might take away from the Silver Flame was that it was a thoroughly corrupt and evil organization putting on a shallow veneer of goodness to fool the rubes, despite the fact that that's literally the exact opposite of what it's actually supposed to be.
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Jun 11, 2014 17:37
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Kai Tave posted:Here's the thing, if most of the NPCs in Exalted are basically some combination of stupid and assholes then the whole "let's kill all the Dragonbloods" thing that Stephen keeps bringing up Me?
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Jun 11, 2014 17:59
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Kai Tave, like, I want to kill everyone in the world already I need no excuse like NPCs being lovely to do that on imaginationland, brotha! Bringing chaos and doom and death and all that shtuff is the true reward of exaltation 
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Jun 11, 2014 18:02
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Fair enough, I thought I remembered you being the one who brought up that the fandom had leaned strongly towards "the solution to Creation's ills is the right kind of genocide" and this was something that the Ex3 writers wanted to steer away from. TheLovablePlutonis posted:Kai Tave, like, I want to kill everyone in the world already I need no excuse like NPCs being lovely to do that on imaginationland, brotha! Bringing chaos and doom and death and all that shtuff is the true reward of exaltation Yeah but that's just projected self-loathing, nothing even Exalted writers can do about that one.
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Jun 11, 2014 18:05
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Kai Tave posted:Fair enough, I thought I remembered you being the one who brought up that the fandom had leaned strongly towards "the solution to Creation's ills is the right kind of genocide" and this was something that the Ex3 writers wanted to steer away from. That was me. I brought it up to make pretty much that point exactly.
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Jun 11, 2014 18:07
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Yeah, I've never mentioned that. What I tend to see is "No, if you make the Realm bad, how will I feel good about playing a Dynast?"
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Jun 11, 2014 18:08
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Stephenls posted:Yeah, I've never mentioned that. To which 2E's answer seemed to be "Make everyone else except the Solars even worse" such that it was a choice between the grinding, impersonal, imperialist evil of the Realm, the Lunars' Khmer Rouge, all the factions that were even more up-front about wanting to skullfuck Creation to death, and the Sidereals who, like the IRL CIA, didn't really set an agenda of their own so much as engage in ill-conceived meddling with the other groups to magnify the impact of the other guys' fuckups tenfold. I'm really hoping that 3E tacks more towards letting you play good people within a bad system, with the potential of reforming said bad system being an actual campaign possibility rather than a self-deluding pipe dream. Like I said earlier with respect to the Lunar Elders, it doesn't have to be baby-eating monsters to literal saints, just not a total fuckfest where killing everyone out of hand actually comes across as the most reasonable option.
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Jun 11, 2014 18:25
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Incidentally, and I think I've mentioned this before, we're well aware of the problem with what Holden calls shitdark Creation -- the way, when you make everything relentlessly grim, the audience disengages. Compass: Autochthonia is illustrative, here -- it would have been very easy to write a grim world of machines and darkness where human life is ground to nothing in service to an uncaring and distant soul-eating Primordial. Instead, the team behind Compass: Autochthonia went out of its way to show a setting worth fighting for, with Gulak's multiculturalism, Jarish's devoted faith, Kamak's multifaceted culture of initial caution and welcoming warmth once you enter their homes, the tragedy of Nurad's lost glories and the threat they face from the encroaching Blight, and Sova's absolutely unique culture among the Octet. I guess I don't have much interesting to say about Estasia, Yugash, or Claslat, but five out of eight home runs isn't bad, and the remaning three aren't terrible. (And then there's Xexas and Loran, which are just neat, but then of course I'd say that because I was the one to tell Holden "There should be a spire-city clinging to the roof of the Pole of Smoke and a bubble-city in the Pole of Oil." I've always been more about spectacle than depth, alas.) Neall has moved on to other projects (unfortunate, as Sova was his), but Robert Vance and Eric Minton were responsible for most of the best setting material in Autochthonia and they're handling most of the setting duties for 3e. So. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 18:39
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Stephenls posted:Yeah, I've never mentioned that. I think most people were interested in playing 'good' dynasts because the dragon-blooded book was written largely from that frame of reference, and being a dynast gets you a lot of benefits compared to being from the threshold. It is basically the castless lunar problem but not quite as bad. Ash Rose fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 17:30
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axelsoar posted:I think most people were interested in playing 'good' dynasts because the dragon-blooded book was written largely from that frame of reference, and being a dynast gets you a lot of benefits compared to being from the threshold. Well, a lot of benefits meaning 'literally everything is better'. You have more charms, more skill dots, awesome backgrounds, easier Breeding, the fiat ability to call in aid.... outcastes get... what? Less everything for no benefit. You can literally play a dynast who never goes onto the Blessed Isle too... so why not do so? So everyone wanted to be a Dynast.
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Jun 12, 2014 17:41
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Thanatosian posted:I think there's an argument to be made for Chejop Kejak. And possibly Mnemon. Mnemon stopped the practice of killing un-Exalted children at 20. Not the Scarlet Empress, Mnemon.
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Jun 12, 2014 22:03
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I think it's also worth nothing that Dynasts are referenced constantly in the setting, they are practically the setting's protagonists after the Solars. Even for players with no real familiarity with the system it's gonna be hard to convince them not to play the most important characters available. Also I think most players want to be good characters, so they want to be good Dynasts. That's not really a mystery or a problem is it?
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Jun 12, 2014 22:12
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Also being the one good dude inside a big corrupt machine, fighting to flip the system and do The Right Thing is a major archetypical plot. Doing that as a half-dragon superman in China/Rome is fun.
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Jun 12, 2014 22:29
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A_Raving_Loon posted:Also being the one good dude inside a big corrupt machine, fighting to flip the system and do The Right Thing is a major archetypical plot. Yes. I love doing games where the PCs actually work for a living. It makes it easier to get away from the pure Murderhobo aspect that I can do perfectly well in games with working combat systems, and it gives the game more focus. Oftentimes it is a breath of fresh air after you have done a ton of games that were basically "Okay, you are really powerful, do whatever the gently caress you want." It makes it easier to give the PCs robust communities and serious responsibilities. This is why I am very much pumped for games where the players are all/primarily Loyalist Abyssals, Sidereals, or Dynasts. Mendrian posted:I think it's also worth nothing that Dynasts are referenced constantly in the setting, they are practically the setting's protagonists after the Solars. Even for players with no real familiarity with the system it's gonna be hard to convince them not to play the most important characters available. When I read the 2e Corebook, my impression was that the two most essential Exalt types to the game were the Solars and the Terrestrials, and the latter was almost purely focused on Dynasts. Most of the known world is under the political, religious, and economic imperial control of Elemental Superbeings, but this control is the most precarious it has been in dozens of centuries. For me, this is still the basic Exalted scenario, set in a world full of interesting spirits both essential to its function and threatening to its structure. MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 22:41
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Thinking about it, KittyEmpress, Chosen of Secrets is probably the best mechanical move for you, assuming you want to go up to Prismatic Arrangement of Creation form. Sidereals have one of the best anti-surprise charms in the game, a dodge charm that lets them leave combat, put up scene duration charms, then come back, Terminal Sanction (Bureaucracy tree, fantastic for dealing with gods and elementals), and you can easily justify picking up the first two charms of Violet Bier of Sorrows (doubling your Join Battle pool permanently, and giving you an amazing scene-duration dice-adder). Alternatively, the Abyssal path lets you pick up Writhing Blood Chain Technique, which (while not technically an extra-action charm) is a really good extra-action charm. Especially with Soul-Fire Shaper form, and doubly-especially with Soul-Fire Shaper and Perfected Kata Bracers (20 Accuracy, Damage, and Defense).
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Jun 13, 2014 09:55
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All this dynast talk makes me want to run a prep game with DBs using something like Fate, terrestials have always been my favorite exalted. The Blessed island and empire are changing a bunch in 3ed right? I don't want to introduce my (imaginary) players to stuff that they'll have to forget about later on.
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Jun 13, 2014 10:21
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It was tried and failed.
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Jun 13, 2014 14:57
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:It was tried and failed. And a few players interested in giving it another shot.
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Jun 13, 2014 15:06
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Anyone hear of the playest doc leak that Moerke sent a note about out on Facebook? I'm not interested in any docs, just news of the leak and how it may affect development. groovetastic fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Jun 13, 2014 |
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Jun 13, 2014 20:59
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It's costing at least one afternoon of "How are we going to deal with this?" on Holden and John's part that would otherwise have gone toward development of MA and Evocations, but we hope the disruption is minimal.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:10
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Exalted's development is actually a subtle primer on the wickedness of empire. Morke and the developers represent the Center, giving nothing, taking all (ie, Kickstarter). Their works are shrouded in secrecy, which we are assured is foundational to its security and integrity. In the meantime, they avoid and ignore the cries of the people, their torches raised against the BP/XP split and their pitchforks aimed at Martial Arts vs Brawl. Stephenls represents the "good imperial," exploring the periphery and talking with the locals about their woes, but unable to change (or unwilling to indict) the system.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:20
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I bet whoever stole the playtest documents is gonna feel real stupid when they open up the combat rules and learn that every single game term actually is the word "redacted", bolded and in brackets.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:32
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