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Now explain how fight mechanics don't equally destroy your ability to tell a story with action scenes. Setting aside that they're usually garbage.
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Jan 3, 2015 18:52
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I mean, they largely would if you just made one roll, looked at it, and divined immediately whether you had won the fight or not. Unfortunately, no one wants to bother giving bureaucracies the defense totals, health bars, etc. they'd need to serve as interesting game-mechanical opponents.
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Jan 3, 2015 19:01
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Ferrinus posted:I mean, they largely would if you just made one roll, looked at it, and divined immediately whether you had won the fight or not. Unfortunately, no one wants to bother giving bureaucracies the defense totals, health bars, etc. they'd need to serve as interesting game-mechanical opponents.
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Jan 3, 2015 19:02
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Ferrinus posted:I mean, they largely would if you just made one roll, looked at it, and divined immediately whether you had won the fight or not. Unfortunately, no one wants to bother giving bureaucracies the defense totals, health bars, etc. they'd need to serve as interesting game-mechanical opponents. Treating bureaucracy as an analogue for physical combat is probably misguided unless you have a really good metaphor for how navigating a bureaucracy is like combat (a gameable metaphor). Instead, you'd want a game-representation of a bureaucracy to use mechanics in a way that best represents navigating a bureaucracy while also being a fun game. Roleplaying games originate in tabletop wargames, so mechanics for how to represent combat is one of those things that are easiest to represent (if only because people steal them from D&D and things that stole from D&D). Mechanical subsystems for handling other kinds of conflict tend to be far less detailed, more abstract, and more general (hereunder everything from "roll against skill to succeed" and FATE's all-purpose resolution system), and if they have more detail, they tend to be either reskinned combat (copying what works), or amateurish (fumbling in the dark). To create a bureaucracy subsystem for Exalted 3E (or any game), the best approach would probably be to browse the tabletop market and see if there's anyone that's made a boardgame about navigating bureaucracies, and then steal everything you can and then some from that game.
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Jan 3, 2015 20:30
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Off-the-cuff commentary on some random subject taken out of context is clearly indicative of contradictory design priorities by the staff. Really guys.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:08
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LatwPIAT posted:Treating bureaucracy as an analogue for physical combat is probably misguided unless you have a really good metaphor for how navigating a bureaucracy is like combat (a gameable metaphor). Instead, you'd want a game-representation of a bureaucracy to use mechanics in a way that best represents navigating a bureaucracy while also being a fun game. Roleplaying games originate in tabletop wargames, so mechanics for how to represent combat is one of those things that are easiest to represent (if only because people steal them from D&D and things that stole from D&D). Mechanical subsystems for handling other kinds of conflict tend to be far less detailed, more abstract, and more general (hereunder everything from "roll against skill to succeed" and FATE's all-purpose resolution system), and if they have more detail, they tend to be either reskinned combat (copying what works), or amateurish (fumbling in the dark). I think it's more complicated than that. In my experience gamers want systems that are easier to navigate than your typical boardgame except where combat is concerned, and then it's allowed to be as complicated as you want. I don't understand why this is but it persists across systems. But yeah I think a combat analogue for something like bureaucracy is stupid. Preferably you'd want something light weight, thematic, and fun. You could probably simulate a bureaucratic turn by spending Influence Points to buy Favors from an Office Pool, penalized by Inefficiency and Corruption to navigate to the next Hierarchy tier but that's not actually enjoyable. I think the reality of a bureaucracy is that when you put an order out into the world (from the top) it will typically foster discontent and corruption on the way down as more and more people get their hands and motivations in on it. Navigating a bureaucracy in reverse (from the bottom) means contending with those diverse motivations on the way up. If Presence is one on one influence, and Performance is one versus a group, and Socialize is usually seen as the skill used to manipulate a whole society, what exactly does Bureaucracy do? You could use it to manipulate prices on a regional scale, but so could Socialize - just make a large group value that thing more or less. You could quickly work your way through the ranks of an organization, but that's also what Presence and Performance do. You could use it manage an organization, trying to keep motivations pure and focused on the task at hand - but that's also what Socialize does. I'm not convinced Bureaucracy needs a complex subsystem because I'm not convinced it even needs to be a skill. If you have to have it be a skill then make sure there's a system attached to it that is evocative and simple. I'd like to see a system that uses votes from other players, a handful of competing motivations within an organization you have to sway or score points with, or something similar.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:11
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LatwPIAT posted:To create a bureaucracy subsystem for Exalted 3E (or any game), the best approach would probably be to browse the tabletop market and see if there's anyone that's made a boardgame about navigating bureaucracies, and then steal everything you can and then some from that game. I would be completely OK with integrating Paranoia systems when you're engaging with bureaucratic organizations.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:16
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I wouldn't exactly mind if they recreated the Great Game from Weapons of the Gods in Exalted but I can understand why they didn't.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:37
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It's basically okay if Bureaucracy is only as useful in the course of a regular scene as, like, Athletics or something. As long as they're things you can do with it that have immediate, describable effects it doesn't actually need a big subsystem behind it. It's a little unfair that it just doesn't have the same level of depth and system support as Archery or what have you, but then you could say that for at least two thirds of the listed Abilities.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:43
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I always thought Bureaucracy was a way to organize people for a non-War purpose. Want to set up a trading station, roll Bureaucracy to figure out how long it takes, or how many problems arise if you fail. I also like to use it as a haggling skill.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:22
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Mendrian posted:I think it's more complicated than that. In my experience gamers want systems that are easier to navigate than your typical boardgame except where combat is concerned, and then it's allowed to be as complicated as you want. I don't understand why this is but it persists across systems. Part of it is that that's the way things have always been; D&D had the combat complexity of a wargame, and roleplaying games ever since have to a large extent copied D&D, which often means copying the combat and its complexity. Secondly is that, well, a lot of people think it's fun. A variety of options keeps things from getting monotonous, and complexity gives a tangible feel to things being different. This helps maintain an illusion that you're actually doing more than just rolling dice and hoping that your deviation from the mean of some 200 dice rolls is slightly higher than the GM's deviation from the norm of their 200 dice rolls. It's also something of a question of focus; in a lot of games, combat is expected to be a fairly major kind of event, so devoting a lot of wordcount into making combat feel significant makes sense. Doing non-combat things, on the other hand, is often expected to not be as important - a better word might actually be "pivotal" - than combat. When you're set upon by brigands on the road, it is understood[1] that this is a significant event that risks the death of those involved. Getting Form ABDAAF5.23.4, Request for Deployment of Heavy Machine Gun Against Shoggoth approved, meanwhile, is usually not something people expect a game to be about. Therefore, having the GM dig up an extra sourcebook and make everyone roll 20 times to pass their Bureocracy checks just so you can get some minor aid in combat distracts from what people are there to do - the important things. Just as films tend not to focus on filling in forms, but devote lots of time to trying to shoot a Proton Torpedo down the Death Star's exhaust shaft, role-playing gamers expect to not spend much time justifying their expenses before a Senate subcommittee and a lot of time shooting Agent Smith. It's not just combat; games like Call of Cthulhu and the new World of Darkness emphasize investigation, and the "fun" is had through spending the majority of time doing investigating things. This usually doesn't happen through deep mechanical subsystems, but I'd argue that investigation, which is a plot-thing, would be difficult to handle mechanically anyway. A better example might be a hypothetical; if you're going to play a game about computer hackers hacking things, it might serve the game well to have a detailed mechanical subsystem for hacking computers, so that players can get a feel for the tension and risk, rather than a simple pass/fail Computer Hacking roll on every computer you come across. Defending yourself against truncheon blows when the police come knocking, meanwhile, is something that the game might not suffer from abstracting away. These are generalities, of course: some people just don't enjoy combat. Some people really like getting into the nitty-gritty parts of roleplaying and engage with bureaucratic subsystems like others engage with combat, even if they're just trying to justify writing up a chocolate bar as a PR expenditure. [1] In general terms; there's a line of thought among role-playing gamers that says that unless being set upon by those brigands is actually important, in the narrative sense, you shouldn't bog things down by dragging out a complex combat subsystem; it should be resolved by a single dice roll, same as any triviality.
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Jan 4, 2015 01:56
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Bureaucracy is obviously about manipulating rules rather than emotions or relationships. Even in a place as venal and corrupt as the Scarlet Empire, even being beloved can only do so much if the rules are against you. Organizations shouldn't have mechanically-defined stat blocks with stats like Size or Loyalty, they should have a handful of Rules that define what they can do and who they can do it to. Bureaucracy Charms let you alter, add, or subtract those rules, just like Nomic.
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Jan 4, 2015 02:48
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So, as a quick point to the people who are saying the devs outright fabricated their release date, I'm about 65% sure you're full of poo poo. There was a big OPP interview a while back where it was talked about how that initial release date was accurate - if a little optimistic - but Morke and Holden had some 'big idea' for how to rework the base engine. They explained it would result in big delays, but make a better system, and were given approval to do so. Then Morke had that stupid health scare and delayed the project even further. The interview was of the OPP guy who gave the approval for the delay. The original link was either in this thread or the World of Darkness one - I can't remebering which, and I can't be bothered to track it down while on my phone. I just felt the need to point out that I'm pretty sure that some wild misinformation is going on.
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Jan 4, 2015 16:52
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It's still pretty "great" that the Kickstarter never officially mentioned they were redoing stuff that would drag out the release date until a year after its original release estimate.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:47
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Roadie posted:It's still pretty "great" that the Kickstarter never officially mentioned they were redoing stuff that would drag out the release date until a year after its original release estimate. Yes they did, in one of the updates.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:52
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slut chan posted:Yes they did, in one of the updates.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:00
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slut chan posted:Yes they did, in one of the updates. Yes, one of the updates that was a year after the Kickstarter's original release estimate, like I said. I checked. They went from "ready to go to editing" in Aug 2013 back to "X subsystem is almost done" over and over after that until they finally said "a year ago we tossed a bunch of stuff out the window and started rewriting everything" in Aug 2014.
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Jan 4, 2015 22:16
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Yeah, whatever the case and the timeline for the announcements might've been, the fact is that the kickstarter ran on the grounds that we would have the book by oct13 and a bunch of people backed thinking that was going to be the case. Plus they've been treating us like little brats that want to get their presents before christmas, when most of us just want to at least get real previews of the game we backed, or even a beta so we can start playing something. Well, at least that was the case, I'm not even excited for Ex3 anymore (Now I just want Mage 2.0  )
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Jan 5, 2015 09:00
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Plus they've been treating us like little brats that want to get their presents before christmas, when most of us just want to at least get real previews of the game we backed, or even a beta so we can start playing something. Well, at least that was the case, I'm not even excited for Ex3 anymore (Now I just want Mage 2.0
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Jan 5, 2015 09:23
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Yeah, I'm not really +mad+ just kinda dissapointed when I look at a bunch other KS that have a close and open relationship with their audience and come off way better as a result. Fate Core is the biggest example to me because hot drat if that wasn't transparent and felt like a community effort at times with how on the ball Fred Hicks was when dealing with backers. And if any game needed some good, open and massive playtest is probably Exalted.
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Jan 5, 2015 09:31
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Yeah, I'm not really +mad+ just kinda dissapointed when I look at a bunch other KS that have a close and open relationship with their audience and come off way better as a result. Fate Core is the biggest example to me because hot drat if that wasn't transparent and felt like a community effort at times with how on the ball Fred Hicks was when dealing with backers. One argument that they've used is that they don't have the manpower to deal with the feedback from such a playtest, but, well... it really doesn't take long to deal with surface-level feedback (bad spelling, punctuation and grammar, calling something by different names in different places, calculations not adding up right). Plus, I seem to recall them selling this game as "the most playtested edition of exalted ever" at some point pre-Kickstarter, so they really should have budgeted for that sort of feedback processing when planning the project. Then again, it took them two years post-kickstarter to finish the game text, so I can only imagine how much longer they'd have dragged things out if they were thoroughly playtesting it too. It's a real shame the internal playtesting got cancelled too, because as far as I can tell the reason was either 'we don't like the feedback you're giving us' or 'someone leaked the draft, resulting in people reading it and actually feeling optimistic about this game'.
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Jan 5, 2015 10:26
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Flavivirus posted:One argument that they've used is that they don't have the manpower to deal with the feedback from such a playtest, but, well... Yeah that's pretty much bullshit, since simply monitoring the community is enough to develop a "triage" of issues. If a thread named "Math error infinite combo" has 500 replies then it might be worth checking out, for instance. And with a game that's so heavy on mechanics and has historically been pretty bad at it, you'd think that they would be willing to take the extra effort and use thousands of playtesters. Obviously you can't listen to each individual complain, but, for instance, a bunch of people would've pointed out that maybe rape ghosts are not ok and the developers could've gotten a chance to rethink that over. It's (kind of) understandable that you as a person might have different sensibilities than others, and that's why feedback is important when you're dealing with touchy subjects.
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Jan 5, 2015 11:48
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Apropos of nothing, there's an indigenous comic book on kickstarter that includes art that immediately made me think "That's what the artifact wings art should look like. Or possibly winged power armor." ((Kickstarter is here, if you were curious. No, I am not affiliated with this kickstarter in any way, I just thought this art was cool.))
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Jan 5, 2015 14:46
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That's fantastic, especially compared to:
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Jan 5, 2015 17:16
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Calde posted:That's fantastic, especially compared to: It's weird how even though comic books literally used to be etched into giant stone walls, they still cost like thirty times as much today. I'll just wait for the trade.
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Jan 5, 2015 17:19
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Etched? I'm pretty sure they did that with First Age extra-permanent marker.
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Jan 5, 2015 17:32
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Flavivirus posted:Plus, I seem to recall them selling this game as "the most playtested edition of exalted ever" at some point pre-Kickstarter, so they really should have budgeted for that sort of feedback processing when planning the project.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:25
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Zereth posted:I feel like calling it the "most playtested edition" is damning it with faint praise, really. I did find out that there are some interesting things in 1E that basically only came out of the original game playtests a couple of days ago.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:19
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Stallion Cabana posted:I did find out that there are some interesting things in 1E that basically only came out of the original game playtests a couple of days ago.
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Jan 5, 2015 21:34
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Nessus posted:Like what? Other than, of course, the blinding radiance of nostalgia. Apparently the stuff about Sidereals nuking cities with Catana of Empty Voices was in the original playtest, which seemed to have something to do with the Sidereals who killed a city for siding with the Bull, as far as I understand. I know the part about them nuking cities with it was in the original playtest, at least. Basically everything I get is secondhand.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:08
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Stallion Cabana posted:Apparently the stuff about Sidereals nuking cities with Catana of Empty Voices was in the original playtest, which seemed to have something to do with the Sidereals who killed a city for siding with the Bull, as far as I understand. I know the part about them nuking cities with it was in the original playtest, at least. Basically everything I get is secondhand.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:10
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Nessus posted:Isn't that the necromancy widget where you sew a bunch of kids together and they break the flow of prayer to Heaven? It's a sorcery spell where you summon a bunch of creepy hooded singers and they sing a song that makes everyone who hears it explode. It's a city-killer mildly infamous for being nerfed in 2e to a city-block-killer, and now, I am told, restored to full WMD status in 3e.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:27
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Monday Meeting Notes posted:Exalted 3rd Edition core book- From Holden: “Final file (ch9: panoply) to come in later today. Meanwhile, many Bothans died to bring you these crunch chapters..” (Exalted 3rd Edition)
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Jan 5, 2015 23:37
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NIV3K posted:I guess this means it's all done being written and off to layout now. I'm curious how long that will take. Don't worry, in Jan 2016 they'll let us know they decided to rewrite all of it.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:43
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Obviously you can't listen to each individual complain, but, for instance, a bunch of people would've pointed out that maybe rape ghosts are not ok and the developers could've gotten a chance to rethink that over. It's (kind of) understandable that you as a person might have different sensibilities than others, and that's why feedback is important when you're dealing with touchy subjects. They... they did rethink it. Where are you getting the impression they looked at the outrage and went "too bad, lol"
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Jan 6, 2015 00:44
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kongurous posted:They... they did rethink it. Where are you getting the impression they looked at the outrage and went "too bad, lol" When they issued the "we're sorry if you were offended" un-apology, doubled down on the "these ghosts are for seduction" and "it's not rape if you don't hold them down and stick it in" statements, and then doubled down again later by calling fans psychopaths when they pointed out questionable stuff in the leaked playtest material.
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Jan 6, 2015 04:00
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Roadie posted:When they issued the "we're sorry if you were offended" un-apology, doubled down on the "these ghosts are for seduction" and "it's not rape if you don't hold them down and stick it in" statements, and then doubled down again later by calling fans psychopaths when they pointed out questionable stuff in the leaked playtest material. Not to mention the more comprehensive and sincere apology they promised (due to claims that any apology made while asking for money would be insincere) for the rapeghosts mess after the Kickstarter was over. We're still waiting.... Also, with Holden having posted all those fun and creepy bits that got him banned over here, one of my few problems with going on RPG.net is that he's a mod there and even a mod on the forum all the Exalted threads get made on usually. It actually makes me kind of uncomfortable posting about it over there...
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Jan 6, 2015 08:21
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gourdcaptain posted:Also, with Holden having posted all those fun and creepy bits that got him banned over here, one of my few problems with going on RPG.net is that he's a mod there and even a mod on the forum all the Exalted threads get made on usually. It actually makes me kind of uncomfortable posting about it over there... Right now we're on a site that had a convicted child rapist as a mod for a few years. After that, it's all down hill.
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Jan 6, 2015 09:15
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Bedlamdan posted:Right now we're on a site that had a convicted child rapist as a mod for a few years. After that, it's all down hill. That is simultaneously somewhat depressing but less surprising when you hear it about the site where GBS is a board than it is to have Holden on a site with the general mood that RPG.net currently has. Mind, I'm pretty much a lurker online by habit - I don't tend to post much anywhere (my SA account was originally registered so I could keep reading a half-dozen threads during the paywall periods), all my discussion of this stuff goes on with a small circle of friends on chat programs or in person. Unfortunately, my friends on the subject of Exalted have pretty much sharply been divided into Exalted fans (who think my claim after playing Ex2e that the system is pretty much unplayable is ridiculous and there's nothing wrong with Exalted) and the bunch that hate Exalted and don't give a crap about the details. I only originally backed the kickstarter because I figured being the canary for my gaming groups to see if it was any good was better than the guy who was otherwise going to do it being the one with the least disposable income and is struggling to pay for his various expenses. Said guy I recently mostly lost as a friend due to an argument spawned in part over Exalted so my bitterness towards the game has kind of peaked. And Something Awful is the one forum where I see people having usually intelligent discussion of the problems of Exalted without either stressing too much over the tone of the argument being positive, being unquestioningly positive, or being negative but in rather ridiculous ways.
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Jan 6, 2015 10:33
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gourdcaptain posted:And Something Awful is the one forum where I see people having usually intelligent discussion of the problems of Exalted without either stressing too much over the tone of the argument being positive, being unquestioningly positive, or being negative but in rather ridiculous ways. Normally I'd agree but this place is frequently hostile about the people on the writing team and tries to bust their asses on some things maybe they don't really need to be busted on, and a refusal to acknowledge that is pretty blind. e: also it's not like holden got to be a mod on RPG.net by sucking dick. The discussions there aren't dominated by people fawning over how awesome he is, either. kongurous fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Jan 6, 2015 |
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Jan 6, 2015 10:45
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