|
Transient People posted:Just to correct you, Lea, I laughed at the thought that the villains aren't going to be a pressing concern simply because I disbelieve that the dev team is going to paint, say, the Deathlords as a group that isn't actively causing terrible things to happen in Creation, on a pretty wide scale that could eventually consume the whole world. I don't think the team is going to write down something like 'Evil Autochthon exists now and he's a comet headed for Creation, which has only one year to live before it's destroyed...UNLESS SOME BRAVE HEROES CAN STOP IT, I WONDER WHO'LL SAVE US NOW'. I do think they'll write something like 'Malpheas and crew are actively attempting to break out of Hell, the more active Deathlords are constantly encroaching forwards toward the Blessed Isle, and groups of Raksha are making headway towards finding the Tomb of Balor'. This is gonna happen. And the reason I dislike that something like that might happen is that it means the ST has to actively handwave away these 'crisis crossover' events if he wants to tell a story that's closer to the source materials of Exalted, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, instead of playing things out like, well, fantasy superheroes. That's all. Well, Malfeas and his crew are still actively trying to break out of hell, and it's still a doomed abstract campaign happening in the background over the course of centuries or millennia with finite but concrete collateral damage that needs dealing with now; demon material is going to spend a lot more time on second circle demons running cults and being eccentric. The Mask of Winters isn't encroaching on the Blessed Isle, but he is fermenting political unrest in the River Province, so you should maybe try to mess with that or take advantage of it at least. And raksha are, as always, a serious concern for anyone at the edge of the world, and probably a long-term bad thing for everyone else to ignore. None of us are fans of the First and Forsaken Lion's giant hateboner for the sun; FaFL is much more interesting when he's making plans to conquer more of the Underworld and got locked in his armor for not being more ambitious than that. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Dec 17, 2014 |
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 05:43 |
|
|
Stephenls posted:Well, Malfeas and his crew are still actively trying to break out of hell, and it's still a doomed abstract campaign happening in the background over the course of centuries or millennia with finite but concrete collateral damage that needs dealing with now; demon material is going to spend a lot more time on second circle demons running cults and being eccentric. The Mask of Winters isn't encroaching on the Blessed Isle, but he is fermenting political unrest in the River Province, so you should maybe try to mess with that or take advantage of it at least. And raksha are, as always, a serious concern for anyone at the edge of the world, and probably a long-term bad thing for everyone else to ignore. Right. What I mean is that fundamentally, the huge 'you gotta deal with this eventually or You Lose' threats are still there and they're still taking up space that is not going to be left open for GMs. Exalted comes with Ultimate Evils prepackaged, and you can't shove them out of the picture if your campaign goes big for whatever reason, or is in one of their contested hotzones. What Thanatosian is asking for is never going to happen because the elephant is still in the living room. To elminate the concern of 'bah, eventually we're gonna be forced to end the campaign prematurely or go shank/talk/smart the big monsters to death', the only possible solutions are to either make them nonthreats from the writing, or axe them outright and present them as potential threats instead of certain ones (for example, only in adventure paths). Exalted isn't going to do either of those things, which means any GM that wants to tell his own stories instead of the prepackaged ones is gonna have to erase chunks of continuity outright. Does this make sense to you?
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:11
|
|
|
All this talk about keeping bad mechanics for no good reason is reminding me of those people who prefer the lovely oWoD rules to the better nWoD ones. One of my friends recently told me he wanted to run nChangeling using the old rules instead because he thought they were better and I didn't really have a good comeback.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:15
|
|
|
Transient People posted:Right. What I mean is that fundamentally, the huge 'you gotta deal with this eventually or You Lose' threats are still there and they're still taking up space that is not going to be left open for GMs. Exalted comes with Ultimate Evils prepackaged, and you can't shove them out of the picture if your campaign goes big for whatever reason, or is in one of their contested hotzones. What Thanatosian is asking for is never going to happen because the elephant is still in the living room. To elminate the concern of 'bah, eventually we're gonna be forced to end the campaign prematurely or go shank/talk/smart the big monsters to death', the only possible solutions are to either make them nonthreats from the writing, or axe them outright and present them as potential threats instead of certain ones (for example, only in adventure paths). Exalted isn't going to do either of those things, which means any GM that wants to tell his own stories instead of the prepackaged ones is gonna have to erase chunks of continuity outright. Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to me that someone could feel that way, if someone had a different set of assumptions and priorities that I do, yes. We keep, always keep, coming back to priorities for our disagreements. I think people are more likely to be jazzed about using pre-packaged threats if those threats are presented with some teeth, and people are more likely to run fun games using bits they're jazzed about than bits they aren't; I've never found explicitly entirely optional material that compelling. Even Autochthonia is pretty clearly "A real place, that just might never become relevant" rather than "A place that is real or isn't, depending on your preference." So I don't agree that presenting toolbox Deathlords who explicitly don't exist unless you're running the Deathlord Adventure Path (or house-ruling antagonists from the Deathlord Adventure Path into the core setting) would make for a better or more compelling game presentation. Also, I'm pretty sure it's not safe for you to assume that Thanatosian's priorities are closer to yours than to mine, when it comes to whether he'll evalute Ex3's setting as well-executed or not. OTOH I guess it's not safe for me to assume they're close to mine than to yours, so I guess that's a wash.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:21
|
|
|
Transient People posted:Right. What I mean is that fundamentally, the huge 'you gotta deal with this eventually or You Lose' threats are still there and they're still taking up space that is not going to be left open for GMs. Exalted comes with Ultimate Evils prepackaged, and you can't shove them out of the picture if your campaign goes big for whatever reason, or is in one of their contested hotzones. What Thanatosian is asking for is never going to happen because the elephant is still in the living room. To elminate the concern of 'bah, eventually we're gonna be forced to end the campaign prematurely or go shank/talk/smart the big monsters to death', the only possible solutions are to either make them nonthreats from the writing, or axe them outright and present them as potential threats instead of certain ones (for example, only in adventure paths). Exalted isn't going to do either of those things, which means any GM that wants to tell his own stories instead of the prepackaged ones is gonna have to erase chunks of continuity outright. Does this make sense to you? It sounds like you just want them to take all the threats in the book, add a "could potentially" in front of anything they're going to do, and then you're all set. "The Deathlords (could potentially) take over the Blessed Isle" and so on. Maybe throw in a "want to" every once in a while as well. It's weird because you want the world to have consistency of timeline, enough so that if the book says there's an actual threat you will treat it as an actual threat, but you don't seem to be taking advantage of all the other stuff in the book. Why not just use some of the other 146 solars running around, assume some of them figured it out while your party was doing some other thing? There's also a buttload of various other Exalt types just itching to hold the big bad threat at bay or even deal with it outright. Like "Oh no the yozis will do this horrible thing in a year if we don't... wait, some Exigents and a Sidereal figured it out? Okay good then back to running this other thing."
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:22
|
|
|
theironjef posted:It sounds like you just want them to take all the threats in the book, add a "could potentially" in front of anything they're going to do, and then you're all set. "The Deathlords (could potentially) take over the Blessed Isle" and so on. Maybe throw in a "want to" every once in a while as well. Because it cheapens your adventures when there's something bigger going on. It requires a tonal shift that I am not interested in. It also leaves less room for you to put your own mark on the setting if you have to deal with so much prepackaged poo poo, too. Serious question here: Does Creation feel like a world ten times as big as Earth when poo poo is so concentrated in a couple specific regions and there's effectively enormous chunks of blank terrain with nothing but random encounters in the way like it's a jRPG instead of a tabletop game? Because it doesn't to me. Having so much prepackaged stuff forced down my throat forces me to implement retcons everywhere, which means that my fellow players are not going to be on the same page as me. stephenls posted:I think people are more likely to be jazzed about using pre-packaged threats if those threats are presented with some teeth, and people are more likely to run fun games using bits they're jazzed about than bits they aren't; I've never found explicitly entirely optional material that compelling. Even Autochthonia is pretty clearly "A real place, that just might never become relevant" rather than "A place that is real or isn't, depending on your preference." So I don't agree that presenting toolbox Deathlords who explicitly don't exist unless you're running the Deathlord Adventure Path (or house-ruling antagonists from the Deathlord Adventure Path into the core setting) would make for a better or more compelling game presentation. Having run through some pretty major adventures in various systems just recently, I can't say I agree. Optional stuff has the benefit of being allowed to be truly gamechanging. Something like becoming the last group of superpowered people in wild talents, or destroying the logistic lines of the blood war in planescape and grinding it down to a halt semi-permanently (AKA, stopping multiple infinities in a pretty surefire fashion...a task even the most advanced Exalts probably can't dream of accomplishing in spite of their higher power level) is much more impactful than anything you can do when dealing with a 'forced' setting element. As a player and a GM, what you choose has more impact than what you don't. Transient People fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Dec 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:28
|
|
|
Transient People posted:Because it cheapens your adventures when there's something bigger going on. It requires a tonal shift that I am not interested in. It also leaves less room for you to put your own mark on the setting if you have to deal with so much prepackaged poo poo, too. Serious question here: Does Creation feel like a world ten times as big as Earth when poo poo is so concentrated in a couple specific regions and there's effectively enormous chunks of blank terrain with nothing but random encounters in the way like it's a jRPG instead of a tabletop game? Because it doesn't to me. Having so much prepackaged stuff forced down my throat forces me to implement retcons everywhere, which means that my fellow players are not going to be on the same page as me. So do you want a big world where there's tons of poo poo going on everywhere, or a small one where the PCs are the only people doing anything of consequence? I'm not trying to cheapen your concerns; I recognize they come from a place of honesty. But you voice them as though they're self-evident and lend to easy fixes, and by extension we don't know what we're doing if we don't address them, when they're obviously inconsistent, because you can't have "Setting is gigantic" alongside "Nothing is happening anywhere that might be more important in an objective sense than what's happening to my PC right here and now." I mean, not without entirely removing certain elements that contribute to its broad appeal. Was there at any point a chance that we were going to remove Deathlords?
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:38
|
|
|
Transient People posted:Because it cheapens your adventures when there's something bigger going on. It requires a tonal shift that I am not interested in. It also leaves less room for you to put your own mark on the setting if you have to deal with so much prepackaged poo poo, too. Serious question here: Does Creation feel like a world ten times as big as Earth when poo poo is so concentrated in a couple specific regions and there's effectively enormous chunks of blank terrain with nothing but random encounters in the way like it's a jRPG instead of a tabletop game? Because it doesn't to me. Having so much prepackaged stuff forced down my throat forces me to implement retcons everywhere, which means that my fellow players are not going to be on the same page as me. How does it cheapen your game if there is bigger stuff going on? Do you only play Solar campaigns because they automatically have bigger adventures than Dragonbloods? If you're only interested in putting your own mark on the setting then why are you paying enough attention to the prepackaged materials to get angry at them? Just ignore them and move along. I know you're winding up to say something about wasted book space, but it's wasted specifically on you. I personally love those sort of setting details, whether I use them or not, and find that the backstory elements of Exalted are one of the reasons to play it at all as opposed to something else. I am used to playing this with a few friends, and they will often introduce a setting like this "Here's the setting, it's a big region I made up. Here are some of the major power players in this region, and some of the people the region trades with. Here's how they sit with the Realm and here's where the Wyld encroaches on it. Here's where it is elemental pole-wise. That's just for info, this game is largely contained to this region." Since the region is big and contained, any player that starts by saying "Well great, I have this map from the official book so my first move is to walk to The Lap" is just being an rear end in a top hat anyway. It would be the same for anyone that asked "Hey, if we spend time hanging around in this area, isn't the world going to end in a month?" Nope, because that's not the story we're playing. Do you have players that do that? Like constantly just point out that stopping a local deathknight and his cult is less interesting in the face of the fact that the book mentions a way bigger cult? Those players are dicks.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:40
|
|
|
Transient People posted:Because it cheapens your adventures when there's something bigger going on. It requires a tonal shift that I am not interested in. It also leaves less room for you to put your own mark on the setting if you have to deal with so much prepackaged poo poo, too. Serious question here: Does Creation feel like a world ten times as big as Earth when poo poo is so concentrated in a couple specific regions and there's effectively enormous chunks of blank terrain with nothing but random encounters in the way like it's a jRPG instead of a tabletop game? Because it doesn't to me. Having so much prepackaged stuff forced down my throat forces me to implement retcons everywhere, which means that my fellow players are not going to be on the same page as me. And even that you probably can skip with newer players. If they seem hype to encounter an Abyssal, that can be accomodated and so forth, of course.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:45
|
|
|
Stephenls posted:So do you want a big world where there's tons of poo poo going on everywhere, or a small one where the PCs are the only people doing anything of consequence? I want a big world where there's tons of poo poo going on everywhere, but the status quo does not presume there's any universe shattering events in the wings. When those happen, the guys who are not involved are the heroes of another story, so to speak. Those events happening should be 100% contingent on the PCs becoming involved. In this case I can easily point to Planescape, for instance. In the last two adventures my group of Planescape played, we got served up the aforementioned opportunity to effectively stall out the biggest conflict in the multiverse, and afterward we went and helped a machine with infinite potential escape from a vortex not even gods could reach and each of us got a limitless reward out of it, with one of us getting the seeds to a Tree of Wisdom, another one getting control of the vortex, and the third acquiring the tools necessary to rewrite the setting conceits, should he choose to do so. These are massively impactful events, but I wouldn't want them to happen offscreen, because it means some other fucker gets the tools to reshape the world as he sees fit, for instance, or to decisively win an endless conflict for one side of monsters. My problem is that events like these happen in Exalted regardless of whether the PCs are interested in pursuing the hook. And that's a huge problem.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:47
|
|
|
The idea that there will still be big setting-threatening bads is fine, as long as the timetables are moved back. In 2e, the world was going to end in about a week if the PCs weren't everywhere at once. From what it sounds like, the Big Threats from 2e are still largely there, but are much more long-term or spread out. Yes, unopposed the Deathlords will eventually destroy Creation or Malfeas might break free or the Fair Folk could consume reality, but that's all a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand years off. In the mean time, there are the political and military machinations of the underworld, spreading secretive demon cults, nibbling raids at the borders of the Wyld and a thousand other localized issues to deal with. The world will not end if Mask of Winters is allowed to establish a spy network in the Golden Mountain Principality, but some people you care about will get hurt so you'll still try to stop him. Even among heroes, it's hard to care about Saving The World (from a doom three hundred years in the future), but it's easy to care about protecting your home from the fae, or taking revenge against the death cult that killed your husband, or keeping your favorite nephew safe.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:50
|
|
|
Transient People posted:I want a big world where there's tons of poo poo going on everywhere, but the status quo does not presume there's any universe shattering events in the wings. When those happen, the guys who are not involved are the heroes of another story, so to speak. Those events happening should be 100% contingent on the PCs becoming involved. In this case I can easily point to Planescape, for instance. In the last two adventures my group of Planescape played, we got served up the aforementioned opportunity to effectively stall out the biggest conflict in the multiverse, and afterward we went and helped a machine with infinite potential escape from a vortex not even gods could reach and each of us got a limitless reward out of it, with one of us getting the seeds to a Tree of Wisdom, another one getting control of the vortex, and the third achieving acquiring the tools necessary to rewrite the setting conceits, should he choose to do so. These are massively impactful events, but I wouldn't want them to happen offscreen, because it means some other fucker gets the tools to reshape the world as he sees fit, for instance, or to decisively win an endless conflict for one side of monsters. My problem is that events like these happen in Exalted regardless of whether the PCs are interested in pursuing the hook. And that's a huge problem. How would this have not been an issue in Planescape? I actually know very little about it because it's been hyped up to the point where I prefer to remain ignorant rather than possibly look at The Greatest Thing Ever and go "meh," but wouldn't the conflict you described have still existed in the hypothetical setting, even if your group addressed something completely different? Like I guess I'm not parsing the freight here. People are not conjuring up completely invisible NPCs which are there to usurp your narrative importance, they're proposing "well, there are other Exalted running around" as a reason why problems you are not addressing aren't boiling over, if it is necessary to consider them at all.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
To be honest I don't really like "Something huge happened over there and some NPCs just as awesome as you stopped it," either. But I've never found Exalted incompatible with "Something huge may or may not be gearing up to happen over there, possibly in the process getting locked in an intractable stalemate with something else huge. Whatever, camera's pointing this way." Well, okay, not never. It started to feel incompatible sometime during 2e.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 19:59
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I guess I don't understand here, it seems like you feel that hypothetical NPC groups are addressing some of the other hooks that are presented, in so far as "this is a valid reason why the world didn't blow up from Problem X while you were focusing on Problem Y"? The difference is that Planescape isn't built from the ground up to accomodate the eventual occurrance of these earth-shattering events. There ain't a timeline that says 'five months from now, everything changes, forever'. Exalted is. Five years from now, or five hundred, the world's ending. If nobody solves the problem, it's happening as surely as an oil crisis would in the real world. This seeps into the rest of the setting, too. That's pretty much one of the building blocks of the setting - the world is lovely and it keeps getting shittier, and this will continue forever unless somebody breaks the mold and changes things (somebody can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I don't think I am). This setup, the whole 'yeah everybody is goddamn incompetent at solving the problem, they're gonna need someone new to come in and get it right' idea, it all is a giant sign that points toward inserting a PC or five into the mix. If you don't, you end up with these threats that are intended for PCs getting solved by other people. Which puts you in the uncomfortable position of either saying that there are NPCs out there with the same plot weight as the players (who should probably never meet face to face so as not to steal spotlight from the PCs, even by accident), or to say the world keeps getting worse and watch the ripple effect hit the portion of the world the player characters are invested in. And I really don't care for that. You shouldn't have to take on every huge quest out there just to stop it from loving you over personally because of how far-reaching it is. EDIT: And you wanna know why this is a huge problem? Because a single Exalted campaign can very feasibly last a millennium or five. So when you say 'sure, this is a problem but it won't be one for five hundred years', it can end up seeping into a campaign that goes for a long, grand perspective. And at that point you have to do retcons and...why was this poo poo hardcoded into the setting when it was supposed to be optional, again? Transient People fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Dec 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 20:02
|
|
|
Transient People posted:The difference is that Planescape isn't built from the ground up to accomodate the eventual occurrance of these earth-shattering events. There ain't a timeline that says 'five months from now, everything changes, forever'. Exalted is. Five years from now, or five hundred, the world's ending. If nobody solves the problem, it's happening as surely as an oil crisis would in the real world. This seeps into the rest of the setting, too. That's pretty much one of the building blocks of the setting - the world is lovely and it keeps getting shittier, and this will continue forever unless somebody breaks the mold and changes things (somebody can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I don't think I am). This setup, the whole 'yeah everybody is goddamn incompetent at solving the problem, they're gonna need someone new to come in and get it right' idea, it all is a giant sign that points toward inserting a PC or five into the mix. If you don't, you end up with these threats that are intended for PCs getting solved by other people. Which puts you in the uncomfortable position of either saying that there are NPCs out there with the same plot weight as the players (who should probably never meet face to face so as not to steal spotlight from the PCs, even by accident), or to say the world keeps getting worse and watch the ripple effect hit the portion of the world the player characters are invested in. And I really don't care for that. You shouldn't have to take on every huge quest out there just to stop it from loving you over personally because of how far-reaching it is. That's epic dying earth tragedy for you. We shut up about the evil scientists, but didn't cut back on the rest of it as much as some people might want, I guess. (For those of you who worried, yes, this is confirmation that this edition shuts up about the evil scientists.)
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 20:05
|
|
|
Transient People posted:The difference is that Planescape isn't built from the ground up to accomodate the eventual occurrance of these earth-shattering events. There are other relevant differences. Planescape isn't built around the tonal assumption of a dying world, like Exalted is. edit: Aw, beaten.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 20:11
|
|
|
Stephenls posted:That's epic dying earth tragedy for you. We shut up about the evil scientists, but didn't cut back on the rest of it as much as some people might want, I guess. As a digression from this point, there's something else I want to ask about. Why has no truly independent territory ever been explored in such a massive world? What I mean is, a place so far away from the Realm that it's never had any influence there, somewhere none of the named Deathlords have annexed, somewhere the Raksha may or may not be interested in. Creation's such a huge place and yet what the books offer feels so provincial. If it was truly so big and yet so sparsely populated (relatively speaking), these places should exist and face their own crises, but I don't think they've ever gotten any screentime. EDIT: And on that note, I thought the whole 'dying world, eventually becomes lesser, nothing you can do bro sorry' thing was a 1e conceit, that hadn't carried over going forward?
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 20:12
|
|
|
Unfortunately I've now left for my day job, and since the Internet filters at work classify SomethingAwful as pornographic content, I'll only be making glib remarks suitable for delivery via phone keyboard for the rest of the day.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 20:20
|
|
|
Stephenls posted:The book's out of editing. Holden's currently going through the Charm chapter approving my edits, making sure I didn't accidentally turn a "they" into a "he" when I meant to turn it into a "she." (Pretty sure he won't find any errors, there.) We are far, far past the point where we could overhaul chargen, so "Agree with Ferrinus and implement his suggested changes" has been off the table for at least two months. This is false. The book obviously isn't out of editing because Holden still has the power to edit it, and literally all you'd have to do is change some numbers on the XP table to fix this entirely. quote:Beyond that, everything we've said elsewhere about our priorities has been honest. GURPS-esque "Giant pool of points, everything is costed exponentially, go wild" chargen would be awful; This is how chargen actually works for anybody who isn't A) playing the game for the first time ever B) starting the game from 0XP and C) totally incurious about advancement mechanics. You are dealing with a giant pool of exponentially-costed points the entire time - the game just endeavors to trick you about this until you've already dug yourself into a hole. Straight up giving Exalted pure, total XP-based chargen would not actually be more onerous than the system that already exists, but it would at least be more honest. quote:and we like exponential XP to make it easier to dabble in a few dots of new skills during play. It doesn't, really. What makes it possible to dabble in skills is the fact that buying one dot costs less than buying two dots. If every Ability dot just cost 6xp instead of 3/4/6/8/10 (note that this is my preferred solution) then it would, indeed, be easy to dabble in a skill without mastering that skill because dabbling in a skill costs 6xp while mastering it costs 30. A system in which everything has flat XP costs, rather than everything but Attributes and Abilities has flat XP costs, would be strictly superior to the current system, do everything you claim the current system does, and solve with one stroke all the enormous problems with chargen. This, by the way, is the point at which writers clutch at their pearls and pretend to be offended, so you'd better do so here when you realize you haven't got a retort. quote:The nWoD costs everything linearly but then uses Beats to give everyone uneven XP advancement, which presumably is supposed to be counteracted by the ST paying attention and giving extra Beats to anyone who seems to be falling behind (and if that's the case, why use Beats instead of giving everyone a fixed XP income per session?), and that's apparently fine given how many people here have cited Beats as superior to what's on offer for Ex3, but Exalted expecting the ST to pay attention to players unhappy about being behind and toss some extra XP their way to make up for it is... not fine? What? It's the same thing. Make up your minds. Is mathematical parity in XP design important or isn't it? Everyone's already told you that there's an explicit option to pool beats. What everyone hasn't told you is that different characters being differently powerful isn't the problem. I don't actually care about that. You can't actually balance a sprawling point-buy game like Exalted and many people frankly don't want to - there's nothing wrong with playing a Solar game in which one person is a Dragon-Blood or whatever purely for the sake of the power disparity. I personally don't like uneven XP rewards, but "different players get different amounts of XP even if the ST is trying to keep everyone's XP even" is not the ultimate problem with oWoD-style chargen. The problem is disparity between different versions of the character I am making, not disparity between my character and my friend's. The problem is that I might want to make a guy with Strength 3 and Dexterity 3, frown for a moment, and turn him into a guy with Strength 2 and Dexterity 4 instead. The problem is that dots you have now are worth more than dots you have later... but the rules as written allow you to have just as many dots now in one configuration as another, but then additionally guarantee one of those configurations more dots later than the other. This is why the current implementation of story merits is also stupid. One dot's as good as another, right? So why would I take one that won't cost XP later compared to one that will? Why the hell does the game expect me to permanently weaken my character in order for my character to start the game with friends or housing rather than just give me a free pool of points to buy that stuff with? The oWoD system is restrictive and annoying - it saps your freedom and options. quote:Ferrinus, I wouldn't mind your position so much if you weren't so quick to go to "They know I'm right, they're just lying about it!" That's for kooks and you should know it. The lie is these little self-pitying asides like "they're just demanding I concede", and it's always told at the place in an argument in place of an answer or justification. People in favor of the BP/XP split can never actually answer criticisms past a certain point, so they work themselves up into a fury about the fact that they're being questioned at all. EDIT: To jump into another discussion: Transient People posted:Because it cheapens your adventures when there's something bigger going on. No it doesn't. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Dec 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:09
|
|
|
The BP/XP split encourages mentally challenged characters at chargen. Full stop. It encourages every character to not be balanced at all when just starting. It encourages you to make that 3 strength four dexterity guy into two strength five dexterity, because its cheaper to buy the third dot of strength than it is to buy a fifth dot of dexterity with xp. It encourages you to maximize as many skills as you can at chargen, and not give yourself those two dots of lore, or dot of linguistics, or anything else that most characters should have. Because its cheaper to just buy those in play rather than buying the fifth dot in dodge in play. Characters with 5 melee/dodge/resistance/survival were dumb, and common because of the split. If it takes me 10 xp to get one to 5 from 4, why would I sacrifice one dot to put it into something that let's my character read or write or whatever? I can spend 3 xp to learn those skills later if I really want to make my character capable of it!
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:11
|
|
|
Stephenls posted:To be honest I don't really like "Something huge happened over there and some NPCs just as awesome as you stopped it," either. But I've never found Exalted incompatible with "Something huge may or may not be gearing up to happen over there, possibly in the process getting locked in an intractable stalemate with something else huge. Whatever, camera's pointing this way." Yeah, this would be my problem. Though, I'm working with third-hand, partial knowledge, here, so maybe you've managed to fix it. I'll reserve judgment until I've actually read it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:18
|
|
|
Transient People posted:As a digression from this point, there's something else I want to ask about. Why has no truly independent territory ever been explored in such a massive world? What I mean is, a place so far away from the Realm that it's never had any influence there, somewhere none of the named Deathlords have annexed, somewhere the Raksha may or may not be interested in. Creation's such a huge place and yet what the books offer feels so provincial. If it was truly so big and yet so sparsely populated (relatively speaking), these places should exist and face their own crises, but I don't think they've ever gotten any screentime. That place does exist, though. It's called Whateverthefuckyouwant Pass and is located near the elemental pole of Imagination. If you want a game that takes place someplace outside of the relatively few areas that they have dedicated book space to, then you just go ahead and point wildly at the map and say "Kingdom X exists here. Nobody gives a poo poo about it in the grand scheme of things but LITTLE DO THEY KNOW that a world shattering event is about to occur!" The argument that the other threats might "eventually" win is entirely up to the person running it. The yozi's are eventually going to break out of their prison in the same way that a toddler punching a brick wall will eventually break through it. Before that happens, you have the pressing concerns of cults killing people or the Wyld Hunt chasing you. In the same way I have to assume your party in Planescape didn't end the Blood War at level 1, a group of fresh faced Exalts aren't going to just jump right into the game by punching a Deathlord in his ghost dick. Background threats are there as setting ideas. If Faerun says that such and such a place has an evil necromancer king and I don't set my game there that doesn't mean that the necromancer king auto wins or has to be stopped by some other adventurers with bigger muscles and whiter smiles. It means he either a) was biding his time and was about to go into action until the PCs got around to stopping him or b) you ignore that poo poo because it doesn't matter to your game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:25
|
|
|
Grnegsnspm posted:That place does exist, though. It's called Whateverthefuckyouwant Pass and is located near the elemental pole of Imagination. If you want a game that takes place someplace outside of the relatively few areas that they have dedicated book space to, then you just go ahead and point wildly at the map and say "Kingdom X exists here. Nobody gives a poo poo about it in the grand scheme of things but LITTLE DO THEY KNOW that a world shattering event is about to occur!" You picked a pretty poor example because Faerun has to deal with poo poo getting hosed up by outside events on a regular basis (as in, once per edition change and sometimes more). And it's exactly the kind of poo poo I don't care for.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:34
|
|
|
I'm not understanding your worry at all Transient. My group has always been "We are doing x, does anyone want to see certain things? Yes? No? Ok. Let's rock!" Or "This is what we are doing, nothing else matters. Other NPCS heroes will take care of that. " It's that simple.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:34
|
|
|
The argument that there's no reason to care about anything except for the ultimate final world-destroying megathreat is the argument that there's no point in playing as anything but the most powerful possible Solar. And, hell, I agree.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
Excelsiortothemax posted:I'm not understanding your worry at all Transient. My group has always been "We are doing x, does anyone want to see certain things? Yes? No? Ok. Let's rock!" Or "This is what we are doing, nothing else matters. Other NPCS heroes will take care of that. " Out of curiosity, have you ever played a long game? By this I don't mean a campaign that lasted a while, I mean your group created a story that stretched out several centuries for example.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:36
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:This is how chargen actually works for anybody who isn't A) playing the game for the first time ever B) starting the game from 0XP and C) totally incurious about advancement mechanics. You are dealing with a giant pool of exponentially-costed points the entire time - the game just endeavors to trick you about this until you've already dug yourself into a hole. Straight up giving Exalted pure, total XP-based chargen would not actually be more onerous than the system that already exists, but it would at least be more honest. Actually, it's partly a pool of exponentially-costed points (everything with dots), and partly a pool of linearly costed points (Charms). The ability to put 10 into Willpower, 5s into the Abilities you want to use (plus Martial Arts and Sorcery because, hey, Charm discounts!), and then forget about exponential dot costs (except Essence) forever while buying Charms that have no Ability prereqs is part of why GSPs were so popular. And GURPS is actually a pretty accurate comparison once you zoom out, despite the attempt to claim a difference from it, given its exponential costs for skills and linear costs for Advantages. Roadie fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Dec 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:40
|
|
|
Nope, never done that. We played in the style of serial adventures with Cliffhangers if we couldn't finish the episode that session. I imagine if I ever felt bothered to I would either change what I needed or keep things the same. It's my story that I'm telling. I control the narrative, I don't need a book, chart or bulletin points telling me how to have fun or what happened.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:41
|
|
|
Transient People posted:You picked a pretty poor example because Faerun has to deal with poo poo getting hosed up by outside events on a regular basis (as in, once per edition change and sometimes more). And it's exactly the kind of poo poo I don't care for. Except option B still exists even in that. Ignore the poo poo you don't like. If you have a long running Faerun game and the writers say "That continent is now a smoldering pile of ash" and you don't want that to be the case then it isn't. Ta-da! The rest of my post still stands. If you want something in your game, then put it in. If you don't want something in your game, don't put it in. gently caress THE POLICE!
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:41
|
|
|
Grnegsnspm posted:Except option B still exists even in that. Ignore the poo poo you don't like. If you have a long running Faerun game and the writers say "That continent is now a smoldering pile of ash" and you don't want that to be the case then it isn't. Ta-da! The rest of my post still stands. If you want something in your game, then put it in. If you don't want something in your game, don't put it in. gently caress THE POLICE! Why would I bother trying to bend something that doesn't fit into shape when I could just spend that time making my own, more fitting thing, though?
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:52
|
|
|
I can't imagine how anyone managed to ever successfully run Exalted without routinely ignoring large chunks of the world-destroying threats for their particular game. Is this just a thing that happens when you have a whole group of people who have all internalised the whole setting and array of presented threats at the table, and start worrying about the Yozis before the GM's ever mentioned anything threatening about them in play?
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:54
|
|
|
Transient People posted:Why would I bother trying to bend something that doesn't fit into shape when I could just spend that time making my own, more fitting thing, though? I'll use my imagination like this, sure, but like that?? No sir I cannot even consider what you ask of me
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 21:55
|
|
|
xiw posted:Is this just a thing that happens when you have a whole group of people who have all internalised the whole setting and array of presented threats at the table, and start worrying about the Yozis before the GM's ever mentioned anything threatening about them in play? Yes. I've had multiple online games both run by me and run by other people devolve into someone in the group (normally more than one) deciding that our current stuff is pointless and the world is going to end and this campaign is lovely and we're doing stupid things instead of dealing with the important stuff. Heavens forbid if you make up your own antagonists either. I still prefer people who get too invested in the plot of the game to people who get mad over poo poo that is supported by the game. The last game I tried to join I eventually quit because two of the other players were firmly in the 'solars should always be heroic and good and the best and any themes otherwise are dumb and wrong and abyssals and infernals should always be bad and any themes or plots otherwise are dumb and wrong' territory. Which I see a lot. I like abyssals a little more than when I first joined and started chatting in this thread, they're still one of my least favorites, but man, I hate Solars so much more nowadays, somehow.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 22:01
|
|
|
Look all I want is for a game that properly reflects what I want, which is an Exalted Disneyland where even if you play it for hundreds of years all the setting is just Animatronic Deathlords chasing the Scarlet Empress around a barrel forever.Transient People posted:Why would I bother trying to bend something that doesn't fit into shape when I could just spend that time making my own, more fitting thing, though? This is what everyone is suggesting you do.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 22:01
|
|
|
xiw posted:I can't imagine how anyone managed to ever successfully run Exalted without routinely ignoring large chunks of the world-destroying threats for their particular game. Is this just a thing that happens when you have a whole group of people who have all internalised the whole setting and array of presented threats at the table, and start worrying about the Yozis before the GM's ever mentioned anything threatening about them in play? Yeah this definitely happens. I've been guilty of it myself. The thing is that without any real oversight - and Solars, by default, are globe hopping heroes - the players tend to expand until they can't any more. Dealing with mundane threats is relatively trivial for players who are familiar with the system, so at some point they get it in their head they need to go deal with the Mask of Winters or the Yozis or Raksi or whatever. There's always some local bone to pick (even when 'local' means, in matter of fact, like a thousand miles away) and the chronicle gallops off in that direction. One thing 2e ingrained in me, probably wrongly, is that the best people to play Exalted with are people who have never played Exalted before.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 22:22
|
|
|
Mendrian posted:Yeah this definitely happens. I've been guilty of it myself. The thing is that without any real oversight - and Solars, by default, are globe hopping heroes - the players tend to expand until they can't any more. Dealing with mundane threats is relatively trivial for players who are familiar with the system, so at some point they get it in their head they need to go deal with the Mask of Winters or the Yozis or Raksi or whatever. There's always some local bone to pick (even when 'local' means, in matter of fact, like a thousand miles away) and the chronicle gallops off in that direction. One thing 2e ingrained in me, probably wrongly, is that the best people to play Exalted with are people who have never played Exalted before.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 22:24
|
|
|
KittyEmpress posted:Yes. I've had multiple online games both run by me and run by other people devolve into someone in the group (normally more than one) deciding that our current stuff is pointless and the world is going to end and this campaign is lovely and we're doing stupid things instead of dealing with the important stuff.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 22:24
|
|
|
Nessus posted:These people are bad and they should feel bad. Fair enough if they're like "I just read Splatbook, can we do something with that? It seems awesome." But "saving this kingdom is pointless because what about this poo poo three thousand miles away from us I just read about? They could be here in LITERALLY THREE MONTHS! Six if they have to stop for gas." It's even better because almost every player who has acted like that has, in my experience, been playing either a self insert or a non-character. If I run a game where I say that we'll be localized around X place, they're the weird foreigner who showed up last year and has no friends or family or ties there, and doesn't care about it in the least. If I run a game where a shared mentor character dies part way, they're the ones who never actually cared about their mentor and don't want to go find revenge for them. These are the people whose only intimacies are to their sword and to their armor (and maybe to themselves!) Everyone else cares that Lookshy is about to be invaded by the Realm, while a ton of its equipment is undergoing catastrophic failures, because all four of them are FROM LOOKSHY and care about their hometown. No they don't care about some place called Thorns that a Deathlord took over, and don't want to abandon their home town to go beat up a Deathlord just because it's a 'bigger threat and caring about lookshy is dumb'
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 22:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 28, 2024 05:43 |
|
|
illrepute posted:I think my favorite part of yesterday was discovering just how little y'all can take the attitude you dish out when it's turned back at you. This. If you're wondering why goons might not take the Exalted team at face value, just look back at posts like this. If you want to be taken seriously, don't say poo poo like this. It's embarrassing to watch. I know professionalism is in short supply in the gaming industry, but don't throw out backhanded insults to your fans. It doesn't matter if they were jerks first. You need to be better than that if you want to be taken seriously. A lot of the Exalted team was born out of the message board culture, but at some time you need to realize you're not just a pack of posters anymore. You're trying to sell a game line, not pick nerd slapfights. And yeah, I'm not practicing what I preach. I don't have anything riding on the line. You do, and that's the goodwill of your fans. Please start at least pretending like it matters to you.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2014 23:06
|
|
