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Attorney at Funk posted:This is somehow an even less accurate analogy. We're talking about comparative efficiency here, not what mechanics fall under what abilities. What Lea is describing is a world where Red gets Force of Will at nine mana, but also Magic contains a rule that says 'Mountains can tap for 3 mana to cast Red Force of Will'. Actually I was talking about how you could theoretically start with Magic and with a long enough quest for design rigor end up with poker. Have you seen the Masterpiece Starscream toy? It's amazing, but the designer is unhappy with it because the jet mode's undercarriage doesn't look like a real jet. He had to stop designing it, though, because if he'd gone further the end result would have stopped looking like Starscream. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 04:07
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Tulul posted:This is because, unbelievably, nobody you should care about wants to sit around the table roleplaying out sex with their friends. Without any sort of thematic purpose, sex in RPGs is just pathetic, and 99.9% of tables will just relegate that content into the FATAL bin. This is really the entire thing in a nutshell. Maybe back in the 90s when Rein*Hagen made Vampire there were a bunch of crazy goth sex orgies, but I have never been anywhere near a table of gamers who wanted to do more than say "ok, I go sleep with her off camera, next scene." I guess I have seen some really immature groups that would roll 2d6 for penis length or something as a joke, but nobody really ever wanted stats for loving good, even if it's a genre trope. And dear lord, that's just thinking about a table full of nerdy guys, which is about what, 75% of White Wolf's audience? If you have women playing with a bunch of guys this stuff has a lot of potential to become really, really uncomfortable and the writers should recognize that. A sidebar that says "don't be creepy" does not cut it. I don't know why the Exalted devs don't see this. Do they have games where they sit around talking each other off? Do they roll for loving frequently enough that they need charms for it? This poo poo should be handled through ordinary social charms that can be turned towards seduction and everyone seems to know it except the people making the game. I'm more and more certain that I'm just going to steal any good ideas they have and make my own system for Exalted.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:08
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NiciasTSOF posted:There's literally a devotion called Wet Dream which lets you force someone to have sexytime dreams about you. Every vampire, simply by being a vampire, can cause someone to become unbearably horny, or at least unbearably lusty to do something they wouldn't usually - this is part of predatory aura. Vinculum turns just about anybody into a sex slave. You're missing the word "can". Vinculum can turn just about anybody into a sex slave. Predatory Aura can make someone unbearably horny. The actual rules text, though, talks about temptation and disinhibition, not loving. If you don't feel like it becoming canon that your character hosed some NPC, you can still use your powers, even your suggestively-named powers. Now that I think about it, the only World of Darkness game to have powers that expressly said that the target must now attempt to seduce you or similar was Mummy: the Curse. Who wrote Mummy's powers? Why, Nephilpal did. Stephenls posted:Actually I was talking about how you could theoretically start with Magic and with a long enough quest for design rigor end up with Poker. I don't think you can successfully draw an equivalence between that hypothetical exercise and the hypothetical exercise of designing Exalted such that you don't have to give Solars separate pools of subpar XP and good XP.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:08
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NiciasTSOF posted:That said, I'm pretty sure that Exalted has gone over the line at times and that the developers are aware of the problem. Holden's talked about being incredibly proud of his work on MOEP: Alchemicals but never being comfortable showing his family the book because of the cover art. I imagine he intends to not have that issue again if he can help it. Actions speak louder than words. It got lost in the rape Charm debacle, but the first image we saw in the previews was a literal bikini witch. Holden defended it ardently, using the same bullshit justifications that everyone heard back when one of the (now ex) Exalted writers was coining the phrase. Everything that's happened since then should give you zero hope that he's learned his lesson.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:09
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Stephenls posted:Actually I was talking about how you could theoretically start with Magic and with a long enough quest for design rigor end up with poker. Oh, wow, sorry. I misread you. This is even less applicable than the position I falsely attributed to you, though.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:09
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Attorney at Funk posted:This is somehow an even less accurate analogy. We're talking about comparative efficiency here, not what mechanics fall under what abilities. What Lea is describing is a world where Red gets Force of Will at nine mana, but also Magic contains a rule that says 'Mountains can tap for 3 mana to cast Red Force of Will'. I didn't quite elaborate what I meant there. In high-power magic, there are cards you *must* take, because otherwise your strat is a no-go. Counterspells and other card nullers that debunk strategies (of all sorts - from Wrath of God to Annul) tend to be an example of that, because regardless of your TTK efficiency, there's always a chance for your opponent to draw the cards he needs to hose you. As blue has the best and sometimes the only good counterspells and nullers, a surprising proportion of dominant decks was either main or splashed blue for a long long part of the game's history (and when not that, artifact colorless because yay accessibility, or white because it busted artifacts, or...). Even if you wanted to play rush, it paid to have nullers to such a degree that you were a fool not to employ some, diluting your deck strat in the purpose of efficiency. This is much the same reason why people buy charms in bulk, even though a lot of times they DO want to have, say INT 5 instead of 4 - for its price, it's just pointless to buy yourself one more die instead of yet another charm, even if you have every charm you want at the moment, because the increase-per-XP is too marginal in spite of being more faithful to your vision of the character. The flexibility increase (or the numbers increase in some cases) is just too powerful. Does it make more sense now?
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Jun 20, 2014 04:10
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Transient People posted:I didn't quite elaborate what I meant there. In high-power magic, there are cards you *must* take, because otherwise your strat is a no-go. Counterspells and other card nullers that debunk strategies (of all sorts - from Wrath of God to Annul) tend to be an example of that, because regardless of your TTK efficiency, there's always a chance for your opponent to draw the cards he needs to hose you. As blue has the best and sometimes the only good counterspells and nullers, a surprising proportion of dominant decks was either main or splashed blue for a long long part of the game's history (and when not that, artifact colorless because yay accessibility, or white because it busted artifacts, or...). Even if you wanted to play rush, it paid to have nullers to such a degree that you were a fool not to employ some, diluting your deck strat in the purpose of efficiency. This is much the same reason why people buy charms in bulk, even though a lot of times they DO want to have, say INT 5 instead of 4 - for its price, it's just pointless to buy yourself one more die instead of yet another charm, even if you have every charm you want at the moment, because the increase-per-XP is too marginal in spite of being more faithful to your vision of the character. The flexibility increase (or the numbers increase in some cases) is just too powerful. Does it make more sense now? Are you having a giggle there, mate.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:13
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Yeah, I don't think you understand Magic nearly as well as you think you do if you think the basis of blue's historic and ongoing strength as a color is based on getting access to ~Counterspell~ effects.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:20
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NiciasTSOF posted:That said, I'm pretty sure that Exalted has gone over the line at times and that the developers are aware of the problem. Holden's talked about being incredibly proud of his work on MOEP: Alchemicals but never being comfortable showing his family the book because of the cover art. I imagine he intends to not have that issue again if he can help it. Well as long as none of the cover art shows anyone holding somebody down and sticking it in he should be golden.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:30
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NiciasTSOF posted:That said, I'm pretty sure that Exalted has gone over the line at times and that the developers are aware of the problem. Holden's talked about being incredibly proud of his work on MOEP: Alchemicals but never being comfortable showing his family the book because of the cover art. I imagine he intends to not have that issue again if he can help it. All signs so far point to "NO" because just about every single reveal so far has been the exact opposite of this. They know it's been a problem before, but see guys this time will be different because I'm not going to gently caress it up like those other idiots, I'm too clever to make their mistakes and if people call me out on something I'll just claim it's a necessary part of the setting verisimilitude or some other way to say I don't give a gently caress about what people think. Haters. Now that I think about it you could just copy-paste that and say it about anything else they've been doing so far.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:35
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Ferrinus posted:You're missing the word "can". Vinculum can turn just about anybody into a sex slave. Predatory Aura can make someone unbearably horny. The actual rules text, though, talks about temptation and disinhibition, not loving. If you don't feel like it becoming canon that your character hosed some NPC, you can still use your powers, even your suggestively-named powers. Yeah, this was the point I was attempting to reach. Vampire is thematically concerned with sex, and has a bunch of mechanics and powers which are "about" sex, in the sense that they're playing with the idea of vampires as sexually dominant, dangerous creatures. Indeed, there are quite a lot of them. Dominate, Vinculum, Predatory Aura, Majesty. And it makes sense, because that's a big part of what a vampire is. It's certainly more fundamental to "vampire" than it is to "epic hero", who often has relationships and gets in trouble sexually, but also has a lot else going on. But even if you really did need a sex metaphor in your epic hero game, that's a whole different ballgame, heh, from a power that says, "If you gently caress somebody, it's really awesome for everyone concerned!" Like, I can imagine an Achilles in His Tent sort of Charm that allows you to turn someone against a friend and ally, if that friend has taken something or someone the target thinks should be theirs. And that's about sex! Achilles was in the tent because Agamemnon stole his concubine! But it can be about a lot of other things, too: a sense of entitlement, an unarticulated idea of betrayal, the question of what someone who takes pride in their work should do if no one else respects it. But Rose-Lipped Seduction Style is always going to be about sex, and it's going to be about sex in the most childish way possible.
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Jun 20, 2014 04:50
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It's amazing how virtually every time the subject of sex charms in Exalted have come up from the fuckghost debacle on to right this second the exact same argument is raised every time...is it vitally important that these charms, which have effects that in a much more broadly applicable sense could be much more useful, evocative, and even thematically resonant, have to be specifically about loving? And without fail the answer from the Ex3 side of things is inevitably "yes they do, because"
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Jun 20, 2014 05:00
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Stephenls posted:Have you seen the Masterpiece Starscream toy? It's amazing, but the designer is unhappy with it because the jet mode's undercarriage doesn't look like a real jet. He had to stop designing it, though, because if he'd gone further the end result would have stopped looking like Starscream. I didn't see this when I first responded to your post, sorry. Let me ask you this: did the designer, after doing this, design a little breastplate to clip onto Starscream's undercarriage to make it look a little bit more jetlike? Cause, like, that's the practice you're bringing up this analogies to justify. You're saying 'we can't put a fairer pricing on the powers, because we lose what Exalted is, but we can drat sure kludge some apology mechanics on top of what Exalted is'. I mean, you can see why this is unconvincing, right?
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Jun 20, 2014 05:09
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And sex is totally interchangeable with other things because...reasons? Giving someone an amazing pizza just isn't as intimate as sleeping with them.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:12
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NiciasTSOF posted:And sex is totally interchangeable with other things because...reasons? Giving someone an amazing pizza just isn't as intimate as sleeping with them. But giving a really good speech can make them orgasm anyway!
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Jun 20, 2014 05:13
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Stephenls posted:Have you seen the Masterpiece Starscream toy? It's amazing, but the designer is unhappy with it because the jet mode's undercarriage doesn't look like a real jet. He had to stop designing it, though, because if he'd gone further the end result would have stopped looking like Starscream. The problem with your analogy is that you're assuming that Solars finding it less worthwhile to learn martial arts than to learn brawling is an integral part of Exalted, such that it would be diluting Exalted in order to make a Solar practitioner of Snake Style get just as much value for his training investment as a Solar practitioner of just punching people. But, that's not convincing at all. The whole point of the Solar Exalted is that they take whatever they do and bring it to superheroic levels. Most people with swords just... fight with swords, but Solars use swords with impossible, supernal skill. And yet, while most people who practice snake style just... practice snake style, a Solar who practices snake style only does so marginally better, such that a Lunar or Alchemical or something could match them? That already doesn't look like Exalted. By defending it you are holding back Exalted, keeping Exalted diluted and untrue to its own nature! Martial Arts charms in a Solar's hands should either be supremely deadly (just as Melee charms are), or Solars should be able to learn Martial Arts charms more cheaply than normal. Either way, the value-for-XP is built right into the game instead of being enforced by a top-down kludge.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:21
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NiciasTSOF posted:And sex is totally interchangeable with other things because...reasons? Giving someone an amazing pizza just isn't as intimate as sleeping with them. The point isn't that you should wordswap the sex Charms, it's that you should make Charms that can key off other things besides sex, because they're not about the actual act of sex. The example of Husband-Seducing Demon Dance came up earlier. It's obviously linked to sex, but you can use it in other ways, and it makes a statement about seduction and how the Solar Exalted use it. It does not state a variation on "you sex real good". The point is that you shouldn't have sex Charms in the first place.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:23
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Ferrinus posted:So, here's the biggest philosophical problem with E3 as it stands right now, made most clear by a sidebar attached to a Charm that lets you trade 10 Initiative for 1 Willpower:  Okay I see why they didn't want to release any real mechanics previews now, the mechanics are terrible.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:25
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Tulul posted:The point is that you shouldn't have sex Charms in the first place. It's possible to disagree with this statement without being some kind of negging MRA.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:25
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NiciasTSOF posted:It's possible to disagree with this statement without being some kind of negging MRA. A) I never stated or even implied a personal insult there; B) Why do you disagree with it? What is the purpose of having explicit sex/seduction and mechanics for it in the game? Why is it good for the game? Give me reasons.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:29
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Zereth posted:Okay I see why they didn't want to release any real mechanics previews now, the mechanics are terrible. Still totally want to play it though (probably because I'm an idiot, as my KS balance would reiterate).
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Jun 20, 2014 05:31
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Zereth posted:Okay I see why they didn't want to release any real mechanics previews now, the mechanics are terrible. I don't think that's fair. I generally make a lot more posts about things that annoy me than things that impress me, but there's a lot to like even in the playtest. The problem is all the cruft stuck onto it. Before the playtest leaked, I was really impatient for Exalted to come out just because, like... I wanted to see what it would be like. Now I have seen, and I'm perfectly okay with them taking longer to refine and prune this stuff down. The stuff that's true to the game's core vision is great; the stuff that diverges from or dilutes it is annoying. For instance, that Unstoppable Magnus Approach charm, if you think about it, is kind of a betrayal of what's heretofore been onf of Exalted's principles. Exalted's mechanics have always been really, like, real - even if Charms don't exist as distinct objects the Chosen talk to each other about, it's literally true that one Twilight is literally energized by the act of figuring things out, or that a Dawn's archery hits harder when it's empowered by that Dawn's passions, or whatever. So, if there's a Charm that refreshes and invigorates you for drawing out a fight... well, gently caress, it should actually do that. It shouldn't have a "Storytellers, wag your fingers VERY fiercely!" note attached. NiciasTSOF posted:It's possible to disagree with this without being some kind of negging MRA. Exalted should have sexy charms, not sex charms. Celestial Bliss Trick would be more interesting if you could choose to do it (as in, overwhelm people with the intensity of an intimate, personal performance such that they become incredibly susceptible to persuasion on the spot and become obsessed with an encore for some time after) with a soliloquy from outside someone's window, not less.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:32
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Solars finding martial arts less valuable to learn than other Solar Charms is an emergent property of a couple of other design decisions we do like. We do not like the emergent property, but we like the thing going into it. To whit: 1) Exalted is a game with multiple character types, each with a self-contained supernatural power set. 2) Martial arts is power set shared between multiple character types. 3) Different character types are not balanced against each other power-wise. 1 + 2 + 3 = Martial arts are an unfavorable power choice for Solars. There are many different ways to mitigate this problem, that we could use. For example, we could abandon 1, and make all the different character types run on the same power set. Obviously that's not on the table for us but, hey, people run Exalted using Fate or Quixalted or D&D or whatever, it works for some people. It just doesn't work for our purposes. We could abandon 2, either by removing martial arts as a shared power set or by having it function differently for everyone. But we like martial arts as a shared power set! It's fun to have a side pool of powers you can dip into that let you have e.g. a Solar and a Sidereal who have things in common because they both know Snake Style, and it's nice to be able to add additional mechanical content in supplements that's applicable to everyone. If we had Unlimited Words we could just straight-up write a version of Snake Style for Solars, and one for Lunars, and one for Sidereals, et cetera, and say "There is only one Snake Style in-universe but if you learn it as a Solar you get these Charms and if you learn it as a Lunar you get these other ones." (We could make it the same set of Charms for each one, but have Solar Snake Form be different from Lunar Snake Form in effect.) ...but we're not doing that; we don't have Unlimited Words. So. We could abandon 3! We could have each Exalt type be mechanically distinct, but be of equal power. This would seem to necessitate a big change to the fiction, but wait, we could just say that in the fiction they're of different power levels but during play we only support playing them during the period of time when they're at parity, like, you play a Solar and I play a Dragon-Blooded but because we're both young Exalts, we haven't diverged in power enough for the difference to be visible, and we can have our characters maybe angst a bit about how some day you'll inevitably surpass me but then be happy that it's not today, and for however long we keep the campaign going, that's how long that day is put off for. But that's a dodge, like solving the problem of how to make a craft system engaging by writing a hunting-down-monster-parts system instead. We're not doing that. So. Not changing 1. Not changing 2. Not changing 3. Solution? Introduce an additional variable that compensates. There are a bunch of these we could do! Right now, what we are doing is XP siloing.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:37
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Right, except, you're not even actually doing that. You're doing "Charms vs Not-Charms" siloing, which is both vastly less successful at fixing the martial arts problem and more nakedly an apology for your otherwise inevitably-bad rules. It's the worst possible outcome both as an actual solution and as a trick! For instance, it is not an inevitable byproduct of some otherwise-sound design decision that charm costs are flat while attribute and ability costs scale dot by dot. That's a design decision all on its own, and it's not a good one.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:42
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Tulul posted:A) I never stated or even implied a personal insult there; B) Why do you disagree with it? What is the purpose of having explicit sex/seduction and mechanics for it in the game? Why is it good for the game? Give me reasons. Is there any reason in particular you couldn't come up with appropriate, thematic charms related to sex? Something based on Aphrodite's run throughout the streets of a city, for instance, or a true love's kiss, or whatever else? I mean, everything related to sex can make for some fun charms (this entire discussion got me thinking about a charm that does a super marriage vow and it's a real fuckin' neat idea). There's no intrinsic reason sex itself can't make for fun charms too. It's just a matter of it being done well, as with anything else.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:43
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(I should note at this point that even I have completely stopped suggesting things to Holden and John, because every time I think I have a good solution to some design problem they're working through, their response is like "Yes, that's a good idea, we had it six weeks ago and tried to make it work about eleven different ways, and in the end we had to abandon it because of the other factors X, Y, Z, and Q that you're not aware of or are not considering." And I go "Oh. Right, I'll shut up.")
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Jun 20, 2014 05:44
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Stephenls posted:(I should note at this point that even I have completely stopped suggesting things to Holden and John, because every time I think I have a good solution to some design problem they're working through, their response is like "Yes, that's a good idea, we had it six weeks ago and tried to make it work about eleven different ways, and in the end we had to abandon it because of X, Y, Z, and Q that you're not aware of.") Look, I'm sorry, but this is complete bullshit. Holden Shearer and John Morke are not IRL Solar Exalted. Their genius is not beyond mortal apprehension. Every time they say something that makes it sound like they think it is, they are lying.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:47
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Ferrinus posted:I don't think that's fair. I generally make a lot more posts about things that annoy me than things that impress me, but there's a lot to like even in the playtest. The problem is all the cruft stuck onto it. Yeah. It's like 4th edition D&D in a lot of ways - sure, it'd be nice to have a highly tactical fantasy wargame that didn't have dumbfuck decisions like math fix feats or developers working to make wizards the boss characters from the start or combat slowdown at high levels, but at least the math *does* get fixed somewhere, the wizards aren't so boss that you could or should make a party entirely out of them, and so on. These are all things you couldn't say before! There's a bunch of annoying stuff here, but it's *at worst* annoying. Exalted 3e is, at long last, a system that you might conceivably choose to use on its own merits rather than because it was the only thing around that happened to do what it does.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:50
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Stephenls posted:Solars finding martial arts less valuable to learn than other Solar Charms is an emergent property of a couple of other design decisions we do like. We do not like the emergent property, but we like the thing going into it. To whit: But this is true for sorcery and evocations as well, and yet you've solved that problem without XP siloing as far as I can tell. The progression from emerald to sapphire to adamant evocations hinted at in the Volcano Cutter tree makes it obvious what "Solars are the masters of evocations" means and clearly explicates how it is that a Solar and DB could use the same sword and produce the same effects with it and yet leave the Solar at an obvious advantage. If you wanted to solve the problem in a satisfying but effort-intensive way, you'd tier martial arts Charms the same way, such that everyone can access Snake Style's techniques, every Exalt can access Snake Style's early charms, every celestial Exalt can access Snake Style's later charms, and only Solars (and Abyssals and Infernals) can produce earth-shaking pinnacle effects that all heretofore existing practitioners of Snake Style never thought were even possible. This would be much more reflective of the setting than the rules we had in 1e and 2e. Of course, it would require writing a lot of charms, and I know how much the Exalted 3rd edition team hates writing Charms and strives to keep Charm trees short. You could do a slightly less ambitious version of what I just described - Snake and Tiger already have the "Celestial" keyword on a couple of their later Charms. So, you could just add the "Celestial" keyword to most or all of the Charms, and even sprinkle the "Solar" keyword around the mid to high tier ones. That'd also be more reflective of truths of the setting than the rules we've got now, although it would take a little writing and, of course, the 3rd edition team is clearly extremely averse to giving Charms fiddly keywords, modifiers, submodules, etc, considering how rarely those appear in the leak. You can, most simply, charge Celestials less XP for martial arts charms, and charge Solars less XP still. One Snake charm isn't as good as one Solar charm? How about two Snake charms? Seems like a pretty good deal to me! And also in keeping with the general idea that, for a given amount of training and effort, a Solar is going to get better return than a non-Solar. It's far more reflective of that truth than Solars finding themselves stuck with pools of Crappy XP that they can only spend on stuff that sucks. Let me back up a bit, though. Point 3 - "Different character types are not balanced against each other power-wise" is, even if you don't do any of the things I just said, still entirely in keeping with a model in which most Charms are equally powerful. Even if the baseline Solar Charm is as strong as the baseline Snake charm is as strong as the baseline Terrestrial Charm, you could do any combination of these things: -Solars have better Excellencies than Terrestrials -Solars have more Essence than Terrestrials -Solars buy Charms more cheaply than Terrestrials -Solars have more Charms available than Terrestrials, or more Charms that stack and synergize than Terrestrials* -Solar Charm Trees contain single outlier Charms that are greater in scope or power than the baseline And you'd get a game in which different character types were not balanced against each other power-wise, and yet Solars could buy the same martial arts charms as Terrestrials could without writhing in the throes of efficiency guilt. It's just not true that Exalted's unique essence requires that Exalted contain bad or hacky game mechanics. The latter actually detract from the former, they aren't an unavoidable price attached to it. * For example, imagine if the DB "you get more Crafting successes" cascade was identical to the Solar Crafts tree... except it stopped halfway through. Even though each individual Charm was an equally good investment for either character, there'd be a ceiling of craftpower a DB could never break that a Solar could.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:55
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Attorney at Funk posted:Look, I'm sorry, but this is complete bullshit. Holden Shearer and John Morke are not IRL Solar Exalted. Their genius is not beyond mortal apprehension. Every time they say something that makes it sound like they think it is, they are lying. Actually there is sidebar in the leaked playtest explaining a design decision that is formatted as though it were a Developer 5, Essence 3 Charm.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:56
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Transient People posted:Is there any reason in particular you couldn't come up with appropriate, thematic charms related to sex? Something based on Aphrodite's run throughout the streets of a city, for instance, or a true love's kiss, or whatever else? I mean, everything related to sex can make for some fun charms (this entire discussion got me thinking about a charm that does a super marriage vow and it's a real fuckin' neat idea). There's no intrinsic reason sex itself can't make for fun charms too. It's just a matter of it being done well, as with anything else. No, there's no reason you couldn't theoretically make charms that were specifically about sex and loving and also make them not kind of juvenile and lame and redolent of missed opportunities (see Ferrinus' elaboration on Celestial Bliss Trick). In theory is not the same as in practice though, and what's been shown from the playtest leak is nothing that particularly screams "oh man this is some revolutionary sex magic right here." I mean, the funniest/saddest part of all this is that more often than not peoples' honest critiques boil down to "this charm's effect is neat...why does it have to be about sex specifically?" followed by illustrating how not specifying that all you can do with it is give someone supernatural orgasms opens the charm and its inherent possibilities up. It's not even as though you couldn't still have the charms work with sex and sexytimes (see: Husband-Seducing Demon Dance), but straight-up making a charm that is only good for making you Sex Batman is as weirdly specific and, I would argue, counterproductive as chains of Vampire powers that are centered specifically around literal sex and rape as opposed to approaching the matter suggestively. It's not that you can't make charms that are useful in the context of sex, it's why make charms that are only useful in the context of sex, that's the stumbling block. Old Kentucky Shark made the argument that Thousandfold Courtesan Calculations is a thematically appropriate charm to put in a book about spergy robot champions of a weird machine-god and while I still think TCC is kind of silly and dumb I can at least see the validity of that argument. TCC says something about how Autochthon views mortals and human interaction. What does Celestial Bliss Trick say about Solars or the Unconquered Sun? If it's just "Solars are the best, even at loving" then that's not exactly something that really needed elaboration is it? "Solars are the best" is painted all over the game even when the system doesn't always cooperate in that regard, do you really need to devote wordcount to making sure people understand that "the best at everything" also includes sex? Just in case they forget or it was unclear or something? Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 05:59
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Ferrinus posted:Actually there is sidebar in the leaked playtest explaining a design decision that is formatted as though it were a Developer 5, Essence 3 Charm.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:59
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Yeah but if any of them could actually use that charm, the Craft section would be a third as long as it is, if that. Holy poo poo
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Jun 20, 2014 06:01
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Tulul posted:A) I never stated or even implied a personal insult there; B) Why do you disagree with it? What is the purpose of having explicit sex/seduction and mechanics for it in the game? Why is it good for the game? Give me reasons. You absolutely didn't! I was throwing it there more to make a stab at warding off that line of objection to some small degree, and I probably shouldn't have posted it in a way that suggested it was an objection to you, specifically. The idea that the current social mechanics are a direct and purposeful endorsement of negging your way into someone's pants is like less than two pages back. So, on to specific reasons. In games I've played in, the idea of characters using or seeking seduction and sex comes up a lot. Sometimes it's because they want someone as a lover, sometimes it's because they want to use it to get their way with something else. The same tropes come up frequently in inspirational source material. People want to be Captain Kirk, Mata Hari, and - well, the list goes on. Most of the time it's not really just lovebombing random tavern wenches, and I actually tend to see it more from female players (no matter the gender of their character). It's a shtick. People like it. That's worth catering to just like fans of giant swords and airships and all the rest. Besides sexual empowerment being an appealing fantasy to be able to play our with our pretendyfuntime alter egos, though, why specific and explicit mechanics? You can address it with general social mechanics, yeah. I think that it's evocative and interesting to have specific tricks, though. Partly that's just an Exalted thing imo: you get lots of specific tricks. Doing one sort of thing instead of another means tradeoffs. Thrown and Archery don't work the same, and subtrees inside Archery don't work the same. You're never gonna lock someone down as effectively with a thrown build as you can with a grappling build. As long as there's a minimum of trap options, that's interesting. That adds for me. It's also why I don't click with FATE like some people do. So for me? The idea that you can fast-track your connection to someone by seducing them makes for a good distinguishing capability like that. Seduction tricks come at the price of dealing with the sexual mores of the societies and individuals you're dealing with, and don't work the same as building up a more dispersed network of influence with oratory and education. It's a way to give some real punch to a specific kind of social nuke character I've seen a lot of people have fun playing. Footnote: a lot of the sexualized charms cited upthread actually have pretty broad application - other than Monk-Seducing Demon Dance and Celestial Bliss Trick, they're all just charisma boosters that happen to mention they make your character sexy. Monk-Seducing Demon Dance is a way of drawing desired social aggro. Celestial Bliss Trick is a way of quickly gaining the trust (or at least close attention) of someone by going through the bedroom. They're together a pretty small subset of the Performance trees. EDIT: re: Ferrinus and others: Yeah, I mean, this a matter of personal taste, I don't think a Cyrano de Bergerac should get the exact same set of social tricks as a Mata Hari. There's plenty of cool ways to have strong social impact with other techniques in other charms and you can build more charms with similar but not identical tricks if they're not sufficient. NiciasTSOF fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 06:02
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Leaked playtest Craft is first draft with no playtesting.
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Jun 20, 2014 06:03
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Stephenls posted:Leaked playtest Craft is first draft with no playtesting. "The developers are too smart and busy to explain any of their visibly stupid decisions" pablum has been you guys' PR policy for over a year now. You've playtested it quite a lot.
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Jun 20, 2014 06:08
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I think he means that the Craft hasn't had any playtesting, which I'm pretty sure squares because I feel like "Craft is written up" was one of the most recent KS updates. I think it's totally fair to give the team slack for the look of the Crafts tree in specific, and it definitely explains the "let's see how many different bonuses I can possibly come up with" feel of a lot of the Crafting Power charms in particular.
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Jun 20, 2014 06:10
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Ferrinus posted:I think he means that the Craft hasn't had any playtesting, which I'm pretty sure squares because I feel like "Craft is written up" was one of the most recent KS updates. I think it's totally fair to give the team slack for the look of the Crafts tree in specific, and it definitely explains the "let's see how many different bonuses I can possibly come up with" feel of a lot of the Crafting Power charms in particular.
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Jun 20, 2014 06:13
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Attorney at Funk posted:Look, I'm sorry, but this is complete bullshit. Holden Shearer and John Morke are not IRL Solar Exalted. Their genius is not beyond mortal apprehension. Every time they say something that makes it sound like they think it is, they are lying. Certainly John and Holden don't think that, and neither does Lea. But they are still the ones managing and putting together the whole thing, while I think Lea is avoiding reading drafts that aren't ready for final editing. Having gotten hold of and gone through a lot of the leak, I think I can confidently say that the problem here is mostly that they're looking for a lot of stuff in the system that many people thought they wouldn't be when they said "we're going to simplify and streamline." Like with the BP/XP thing. What most people think on the subject doesn't even begin to come from the same place as Holden's thoughts on it.
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Jun 20, 2014 06:13
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NiciasTSOF posted:EDIT: re: Ferrinus and others: Yeah, I mean, this a matter of personal taste, I don't think a Cyrano de Bergerac should get the exact same set of social tricks as a Mata Hari. There's plenty of cool ways to have strong social impact with other techniques in other charms and you can build more charms with similar but not identical tricks if they're not sufficient. When Morke sold me on his vision of Martial Arts in the Exalted setting on the WW forums a while ago, he went on a bit about the difference between martial arts and "native" charm cascades, and specifically between something like Snake Style with hookswords and Solar Melee. Martial arts were specific, proscribed, and means-based; Solar melee was broad, improvisational, and effects-based. It's why Melee charms don't care if you're using a dagger or a goremaul. It's about being amazing, not about being amazing at going through a specific set of motions. I actually like Rose-Lipped Seduction Style for that reason, because it's a charm that uses the Solar's Presence to produce lust and attraction. Well, I mean, I think there's something questionable in the game portraying seduction as a matter of rolling high enough to overcome someone's resistance to start with, but that aside a Presence charm whose effect is that you're simply ravishing and irresistible is just as legit as one whose effect is that you're terrifying or what have you. Celestial Bliss Trick, and I would claim the design of the Performance tree in general, fails by these lights.
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Jun 20, 2014 06:19
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