|
Stephenls posted:Hats, I'm really flattered that you're not sharing any of the terrible things I said during those Skype meetings. At the same time I feel kind of left out. Also you're making it really difficult for me to continue imagining my perfect ideal future where everyone makes up and you and Neall are back on the writing team. You're too late. We've stolen Neall for the nWoD, Scion and Trinity. He's currently on the Scion/Trinity core system team and writing the Orders for Fallen World Chronicle, among other increasingly high-profile jobs.
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 09:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 00:16 |
|
|
I'm running a game centered around the Realm civil war that's poised to erupt with the empress missing, what books should I be picking up to know more about Realm culture and who's who and what's what. I have the Dragonblooded book already, and have Compass: Blessed Isle and 1000 Correct Actions on order. Is there anything else that details things about Dragonblooded or the Realm? Or even better, how it's all scheduled to fall apart? I have ideas in mind for what could happen, but if something goes through all the major factors for me then that'd be really useful.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 09:49
|
|
|
Interestingly, getting put on Nixon's enemies list also made you vulnerable to Charms with the Holy keyword.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 10:59
|
|
|
Captain Hats posted:I'm running a game centered around the Realm civil war that's poised to erupt with the empress missing, what books should I be picking up to know more about Realm culture and who's who and what's what. I have the Dragonblooded book already, and have Compass: Blessed Isle and 1000 Correct Actions on order. Is there anything else that details things about Dragonblooded or the Realm? Or even better, how it's all scheduled to fall apart? I have ideas in mind for what could happen, but if something goes through all the major factors for me then that'd be really useful. That's about it I think, unless maybe you look through the 1e books on DB's for bits that didn't get brought over, and the Aspect books. One more for 2e is Scroll of Kings if you go to The Failing Center section.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 11:22
|
|
|
The Unconquered Sun is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a divine monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake both your hand and stab you in the back twice at the same time. He lied to his worshipers and betrayed the trust of his department. Not even Kejop Chejak, the unhappy Sidereal who sidelined the Unconquered and kept him addicted to the Games, was immune to the evil fallout. Chejak, who believes strongly in the cycle of reincarnation, has told more than one of his celebrity kung fu partners that "I know I will be reborn mortal, because I didn't kill the Unconquered Sun."
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 12:45
|
|
|
thatbastardken posted:The Unconquered Sun is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a divine monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake both your hand and stab you in the back twice at the same time. He lied to his worshipers and betrayed the trust of his department. Not even Kejop Chejak, the unhappy Sidereal who sidelined the Unconquered and kept him addicted to the Games, was immune to the evil fallout. Chejak, who believes strongly in the cycle of reincarnation, has told more than one of his celebrity kung fu partners that "I know I will be reborn mortal, because I didn't kill the Unconquered Sun." Chejop Kejak is more Kissinger than Kissinger.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 13:13
|
|
|
Vadoc posted:One more for 2e is Scroll of Kings if you go to The Failing Center section. I'll second the recommendation for the Scroll of Kings if you're planning to do the Realm Civil War - it goes into some detail about how exactly the Imperial Legions wage war and what their overall strategies and organization are. Can't think of much else that's relevant in 2E, though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 13:51
|
|
|
Captain Hats posted:I'm running a game centered around the Realm civil war that's poised to erupt with the empress missing, what books should I be picking up to know more about Realm culture and who's who and what's what. I have the Dragonblooded book already, and have Compass: Blessed Isle and 1000 Correct Actions on order. Is there anything else that details things about Dragonblooded or the Realm? Or even better, how it's all scheduled to fall apart? I have ideas in mind for what could happen, but if something goes through all the major factors for me then that'd be really useful. You want the 1e Dragon-Blooded book and the Aspect Books, maybe Houses of the Bullgod to get a feel for how a major Threshold state relates to the war if a session's focus wanders from the Isle. As far as how it's all going to fall apart, the key thing to understand is the unstable tripod at the center of Dynastic politics. First, read the Great House stuff starting on page 84 of Exalted: The Dragon-Blooded. The Houses of Mnemon, Sesus and Cynis all have long-standing alliances but their interests do not coincide; how and why they shatter is probably going to decide what your civil war looks like. The center of it all is how Princess Mmenmon wants the Throne above all others and will not brook any compromise that does not see her Empress. There is no circumstance where she relents and allows a Cynis or Sesus to be seated on the Dragon Throne, so all their investments in Mnemon marriages are not helping them much in the current political climate. There are a ton of minor factors, ranging from "weather control defunding, salt rate fluctuations and the coming peasant revolts" to "idiots hoping for civil war so they can seize the Bent Creek jade mines in Harborhead". The Aspect Books are filled with cool story hooks about the decay of the Empire. Some of them you can build up into potential interpretations of House objectives. For example, House Ledaal has taken over the Thousand Scales ministries that maintain the roads on the southern Blessed Isle, killed all the 'jade sniffers' who hunt for secret artifact caches so they can be taxed, and assassinated the majority of the Imperial magistrates within Arjuf Dominion; they are becoming more independent of the Empire with each passing year. If you have PMs I could send you some stuff from our own long-running Dynastic intrigue game that's had the Civil War looming in the distance forever.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 18:01
|
|
|
Calde posted:You want the 1e Dragon-Blooded book and the Aspect Books, maybe Houses of the Bullgod to get a feel for how a major Threshold state relates to the war if a session's focus wanders from the Isle. I should have PMs, yes. Any stuff you could send would be greatly appreciated, though I'm not going to have the civil war loom forever. Maybe loom for a few arcs then break once the PCs are in juuuust enough of a position to actually be a player in it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 29, 2014 20:57
|
|
|
I don't understand how anyone could possibly take Michael Goodwin seriously. I know it's petty, but that's the most shocking thing to me that's been said in the past 10 or so pages of this thread.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 14:17
|
|
|
Dave Brookshaw posted:You're too late. We've stolen Neall for the nWoD, Scion and Trinity. He's currently on the Scion/Trinity core system team and writing the Orders for Fallen World Chronicle, among other increasingly high-profile jobs. Good, I hope he fixes Scion. I hope someone fixes Scion. Are you part of fixing Scion? It needs very badly to be fixed. First, the auto-success pile on was silly. That game is playable for like 10 xp. Second, the Pantheon powers were hilariously out of balance and the Norse one was antithetical to Norse beliefs. Third, I'd say that the book doesn't need to suggest prostitute as a common career for every single female god. I think there's like one that doesn't. Same with the Japanese pantheon, where more than half of them work in anime, which is downright silly. Hey Neall, you can fix this. KittyEmpress posted:My group always just used a semi-unified (Craft) ability. You bought a specialty die in whatever specific Craft you wanted to be able to use (So Craft, with a specialty in (Fire)) and bam, you can use craft fire with your full Craft rating. We did this by saying each dot in the basic Craft ability was a type, so a 5 Craft was all the elements, or three of them plus Necrotech and Genesis, and so on. Specialties drove home if your character was specialized, so my Twilight had Craft 5 (Water 2, Genesis 1), and that worked okay. theironjef fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jul 1, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 16:15
|
|
|
Quote is not edit.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 16:20
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Quote is not edit. This error backwards leads to some fun mistakes when you're a beginning mod over on RPGnet.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 18:00
|
|
|
So seriously, skill nomenclature and charm bloat nonwithstanding, the single biggest problem with the leaked playtest is the repeated instances of "eh, we can't be assed to make the combat rules consistent with the noncombat rules so we'll just add sidebars encouraging clashes of wills between the ST and players". They need to get their poo poo together abou this and pronto. The big strength of White Wolf systems in general is that the rules encourage genre-appropriate behavior; that's why you get MP in Vampire by biting people. E3 needs either to embrace and encourage all the goody implications of Exalts easily refilling their mana bars by picking random fights, or it needs to overhaul mote regain/charm costs/initiative spenders to head the issue off completely.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 19:29
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Good, I hope he fixes Scion. I hope someone fixes Scion. Are you part of fixing Scion? It needs very badly to be fixed. First, the auto-success pile on was silly. That game is playable for like 10 xp. Second, the Pantheon powers were hilariously out of balance and the Norse one was antithetical to Norse beliefs. Third, I'd say that the book doesn't need to suggest prostitute as a common career for every single female god. I think there's like one that doesn't. Same with the Japanese pantheon, where more than half of them work in anime, which is downright silly. [libel]If I know Neall, and I do, you can expect every deity, regardless of gender or rank, to commonly be a prostitute. That's just how Neall do.[/libel]
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 19:29
|
|
|
Fine, whatever. If we could just de-racist the Japanese section by 30% that'd be nice. It's like the writers were thinking "Japanese gods, eh? Let's see, what are Japanese people into... anime and suicide. All set, next!"
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
theironjef posted:Fine, whatever. If we could just de-racist the Japanese section by 30% that'd be nice. It's like the writers were thinking "Japanese gods, eh? Let's see, what are Japanese people into... anime and suicide. All set, next!" Hey, let's be fair. Tsukiyomi almost redeems that section by himself with the idea that he bums around posing as a master chef to prove to the other gods that you can make good food without reverse vomiting it onto plates.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 20:15
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:So seriously, skill nomenclature and charm bloat nonwithstanding, the single biggest problem with the leaked playtest is the repeated instances of "eh, we can't be assed to make the combat rules consistent with the noncombat rules so we'll just add sidebars encouraging clashes of wills between the ST and players". As for the issue you raise, here's an easy solution: Long-duration Charms require a commitment of (peripheral-only?) Essence, which means when a fight starts someone who is running four different "I invoke the blessings of postindustrial Western democracy on this squalid hamlet" Charms will have less room to maneuver. The costs would vary; some kind of Detective Vision might only be two or three (a cost but probably not a large one) while Complex Calculations of Transautistic Cultural Optimization might be like "twelve." I recall Exalted had some relatively practical time blocking (round, scene, session, story arc, etc.) so you could say the commitments have different time values; Detective Vision is only a scene-length (so if you find the bandits and run to catch them, Man of Bats will be down a few motes) while CCoTCO might be much longer (and since it's obviously an Alchemical Charm, possibly permanent until removed!!)
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 21:11
|
|
|
Nessus posted:What do you mean by clashes of wills here? Like, you seem to have said this a lot in different forms (social minigame with the GM, etc.) Do you feel like, that GMs should not be able to go "no" at some point, is the clash of wills originating from "Sometimes a thing is OK, and sometimes it isn't, it is ultimately up to the ST?" Does this actually occur much or is it a point of philosophical rigor? I mean things like Unstoppable Magnus Method or the basic fact that if you need essence fast your best bet is to get into an easy but not too easy fight. There are a bunch of mechanics in place that clearly incentivize "farming" initiative or combat rounds or whatever which are then paired with sidebars instructing Storytellers to get their index fingers ready for a stern and thorough shaking. quote:As for the issue you raise, here's an easy solution: Long-duration Charms require a commitment of (peripheral-only?) Essence, which means when a fight starts someone who is running four different "I invoke the blessings of postindustrial Western democracy on this squalid hamlet" Charms will have less room to maneuver. The costs would vary; some kind of Detective Vision might only be two or three (a cost but probably not a large one) while Complex Calculations of Transautistic Cultural Optimization might be like "twelve." I recall Exalted had some relatively practical time blocking (round, scene, session, story arc, etc.) so you could say the commitments have different time values; Detective Vision is only a scene-length (so if you find the bandits and run to catch them, Man of Bats will be down a few motes) while CCoTCO might be much longer (and since it's obviously an Alchemical Charm, possibly permanent until removed!!) That's what I thought, but there are a lot of instant-duration charms with non-negligible effects on resource pools or NPC actions or whatever. It's not completely trivial to just normalize mote regain and use the charm list as written, at least not if you don't want to dramatically change the utility of things like that one mage sight charm or the Integrity trick that lets you pay motes instead of willpower to resist influence and similar.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2014 21:31
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:So seriously, skill nomenclature and charm bloat nonwithstanding, the single biggest problem with the leaked playtest is the repeated instances of "eh, we can't be assed to make the combat rules consistent with the noncombat rules so we'll just add sidebars encouraging clashes of wills between the ST and players". Or don't have out of combat and in combat stuff use the same resource. Bam, fixed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 01:50
|
|
|
It'd be cool if motes always regenerated at the "slow" rate, but way more combat charms either cost initiative or required that you had a certain amount of initiative before you threw them or similar. You could also bring back the "overdrive" pool - combat mote regen is all overdrive motes, which only power combat charms and fade if they go unused for like a minute.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 02:08
|
|
|
I don't really know why non-combat charms cost motes in a game where you can just regain essence arbitarily fast by stunting. There are a lot of charms where the cost of using it is free most of the time because you literally just stunt the action 'i activate Charm X' and get those motes back. (ps, getting essence from stunting sucks)
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 04:02
|
|
|
You can't get essence back by stunting in 3rd edition. You can get willpower back from 2nd and 3rd rank stunts, but those are supposed to be rare - unlike in prior edition, the "is paying attention + breathing" stunt is the first one, not the second.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 05:41
|
|
|
I'm still pretty unsure about the whole 2-different-regen-rates thing. I get why it happened. Essence is trying to serve two different purposes here. On the one hand, it's meant to represent a round-by-round renewable resource, like some kind of CCG-based resource/bet game, not to mention it mimics the round-by-round mote regeneration that always happened but was never designed for in 2e. On the other hand, it's meant to be long-term resource management, the sort of thing that will bite you in the rear end if you spend all of your motes on reforging a society or whatever when the knives come out. Oh and probably something something anima banner. I don't know how you reconcile those two things. The Overdrive suggestion is good, but it's a straight-up bandaid, another mote pool on top of Personal and Peripheral that will only serve to add more needless complexity to an already complex game. I think there's really no way that a single resource can be used to represent both short and long term resource management without some sort of massive kludge to keep the whole thing operating, and the 2-different-regen-rate solution is what we have at this point in development. I dunno, what if you can't end a fight with more Essence than you started with?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 08:37
|
|
|
The last couple pages of this thread puts this week's blog into an interesting context.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 08:45
|
|
|
Yue posted:The last couple pages of this thread puts this week's blog into an interesting context. You mean insofar as people are discussing an incomplete game?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 08:55
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:You mean insofar as people are discussing an incomplete game? Yes. That part.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 08:56
|
|
|
Yue posted:Yes. That part. It's an interesting context to be sure, but I'm not sure it's as negative as you're implying. If the developers are worried about people starting an echo chamber of, "hah, check out how stupid Exalted is", well I mean, that's already happened. That happened months ago. That would have happened without any input from them, unless the game was phenomenal and their PR pitch-perfect, and it isn't. If they're worried people are going to criticize their incomplete mechanics - well, I mean, there's literally nothing to be afraid of, because they aren't done. Which leaves the obvious problem of people making up their minds based on the aforementioned echo chamber or upon mechanics that will ultimately change. I'm not really convinced that anybody who was making a decision to buy or not based solely on the quality of the mechanics would not wait for the final product to make up their mind. Everybody else made up their mind a long time ago. What I'm saying is, sticks and stones.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 09:01
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:It's an interesting context to be sure, but I'm not sure it's as negative as you're implying. That, uh. I was being sarcastic. I doubt it's the case, but if you look at what Plagueofhats was saying about Holden and John's Skype conversations, THAT provides some interesting context. They're hiring old writers for 20th anniversary stuff and so on, right? Maybe someone isn't so excited to come back to see themselves reviled by not just fans, but the current developers?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 09:03
|
|
|
Yue posted:The last couple pages of this thread puts this week's blog into an interesting context. Exalted has a blog? As for the "In and Out of combat motes" thing I'm just going to go on stubbornly insisting motes as a concept are stupid and we wouldn't have lost anything if they'd just gone away. Let people use their powers whenever they like, the fiction and books never really seem to buy into the idea that running out of motes is an actual thing. It just doesn't feel right.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 11:47
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:I dunno, what if you can't end a fight with more Essence than you started with? That's one of my ideas, though you might want to declare that "noncombat" charms drop your starting as well as your current total. You could also, like, make it so that every Charm from non-Dawn abilities (with exceptions) pseudo-commits the motes used, and you only recover 5 pseudo-committed motes per hour (ten when resting). I dunno.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 15:41
|
|
|
Going to craft myself all kinds of automotans, give them murder protocols, and then release them in my lab for my circle to help me fight whenever I need notes.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 16:54
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:I dunno, what if you can't end a fight with more Essence than you started with? This seems eminently sensible. Fluff it as the stress of combat letting your Exaltation go into overdrive and suddenly start making GBS threads out Essence every second to make sure you don't die. At combat's end, your Exaltation quiets down and the extra motes just dissapate off, leaving you at whatever you were before. Your pattern isn't meant to hold extra motes, it's a safety measure, blah blah, whatever, everyone knows it's for game balance.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 16:57
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:That's one of my ideas, though you might want to declare that "noncombat" charms drop your starting as well as your current total. Are any of those solutions really preferable in complexity to adding more mote pools?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 18:11
|
|
|
Stephenls posted:Are any of those solutions really preferable in complexity to adding more mote pools? I can't really say. The more I think anout it the more I suspect that it's best to just throw developer intent to the wind and say yes, you actually CAN just use All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight at-will and yes you DO functionally have limitless willpower w/r/t decision points if you have that one integrity charm. Well, no, I mean, it's ACTUALLY best for the writers to do some thinking rather than some busywork on the issue.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 18:18
|
|
|
Stephenls posted:Are any of those solutions really preferable in complexity to adding more mote pools? Saying "At the end of combat, mote pools are set to no higher than they were at the start of combat" is much simpler than having even more accounting for motes. Or, hell, if you want to make engaging in a life-or-death struggle invigorating for Exalts rather than draining, you could go with this: "At the end of a scene where combat has occured, mote pools are set to no higher than they were when combat was initiated." Would allow for some very genre appropriate scenes - a drained Solar on his last legs is attacked by a team of Dragon-Bloods, the threat drawing forth his power, ending with him rallying all the onlookers to his cause at the end of the battle using the strength he drew from the fight. . .
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 18:31
|
|
|
Kenlon posted:Saying "At the end of combat, mote pools are set to no higher than they were at the start of combat" is much simpler than having even more accounting for motes.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 18:37
|
|
|
Stephenls posted:Are any of those solutions really preferable in complexity to adding more mote pools? I also like the 'you can't leave combat with more motes than you entered it' idea.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 21:07
|
|
|
One of my favorite part of the leaked playtest is that you calculate your essence pool like, uh, what was it... Persona: Essence x 3 + 10 Peripheral: Essence x 7 + 10 + 16 (or something similar) Why ten? Why sixteen? Well, that should be obvious: in past editions you'd get 10 motes to each pool from your 10 dots of Willpower (you... did raise your Willpower to the maximum, didn't you?) and then some lump some more to your peripheral pool from your strategically-maxed Virtues (you... did do whatever the obvious thing with Virtues was that I don't quite remember at the moment, didn't you?).
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 21:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 00:16 |
|
|
It was based off the two highest Virtues for most Exalt types IIRC, so you generally took Conviction to 5 (because it was The Best for a variety of reasons) and then assigned the other based on what you thought would help/not-inconvenience your character the most. Despite combat being mote attrition battles, generally the 1-3 motes weren't all that important, and given the cost of purchasing Virtues you could just kind of do whatever so long as you ended with WP 10 and Conviction 5.. edit: No wait I think that was Dragonblooded. It was generally sum of all Virtues or your highest Virtue multiplied by something. It didn't really change anything very much though- just maximize Conviction and kind of do whatever with the rest of your virtues based on what you did/didn't feel like rolling against. If you really needed to make up the mote difference you could just pick up a skin mount hearthstone amulet- it'd be cheaper in terms of chargen resources for the same effect and you wouldn't need to roll against virtues as often in play. LGD fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Jul 2, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2014 22:03
|
|
