I Am Just a Box posted:

As much as I regret having spent my money on it, I did receive my hardcopy prestige edition. It took years, which is ridiculous, but they did finally deliver it. Between that and PoD copies being on sale through Drivethru, it is probably fair to just straight out say they finished releasing Ex3.

No idea on the status of the absurd superdeluxe edition with the gold-plated cover.

Daeren posted:

Speak to enough current and former freelancers from Onyx Path and you'll get a much clearer picture of Holden and Morke as people, as well as line developers.

It should be telling, for example, that as far as I can see, nobody here (or in a few other spots I looked at) who has ever actually known or worked with them has said a word to defend their honor beyond correcting flat-out errors/lies.

quote:

Greetings and thank you for your interest in writing for future Exalted: Third Edition books. We are presently in need of writers to fill assignments for The Realm, What Fire Has Wrought, and Towers of the Mighty. We are looking for writers who can handle the pressures of research and writing under a deadline.

Writing for Exalted requires a tremendous amount of time and work. We are very demanding and we push our writers to excel in composition as well as creativity. A writer’s job requires that they do constant reading and writing to keep their skills honed. Any weakness in this regard will show in a draft like bubbles in ink.

To be frank, it takes more than just knowledge of Exalted to get a job on the line. If you are not doing your diligence as a writer, it will show up in your answers to the questions below. Conversely, the electric snap of a new idea will hit us like the breath of life itself.

We can tell a writer who reads voraciously apart from one who doesn’t by their creativity, and we can tell a writer who writes frequently apart from one who doesn’t by the skill in their composition. Which is not to say that knowledge of Exalted isn’t important; but it is far easier for a good writer to freshen up on the setting than it is for someone who knows all about Exalted to take the rust off their writing.

Before I get to the questions, I want to impart two critical pieces of advice on how to write Exalted material.

1. A writer’s job is to put conflict into the setting, never to remove it.

2. A writer must be past the point of passing judgment on individual characters. It is not useful or productive to get wrapped up in this kind of thinking, because you will end up confused when you realize that the most “evil” characters in the setting have saved the world time and time again. As a writer for Exalted it is far more useful to understand a character’s motivations than to pass judgment on their actions. It also creates a stronger, more natural, unpredictable and exciting setting, rather than the biased axe-grinding of Second Edition.

Keep those clues in mind when you answer the writing prompts at the bottom of this message.

First we have a few questions. Please answer these questions and send me the answers as soon as possible. The writing prompts have a longer due date, but we want to know more about you right away, so please do not delay in answering.

Questions (answers deliverable ASAP):

1. Have you read Night’s Master by Tanith Lee?

2. Have you read The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany?

3. Have you read any of the other books listed in the Exalted First Edition list of suggested resources? If so, which?

4. Are you more experienced with First or Second Edition? If you are only familiar with Second, you will need to familiarize yourself with First Edition. (Working from Second Edition will guarantee any draft you put forward will not get used.)

5. What is your writing experience? Optional: Can you include a writing sample?

6. What do you feel your strengths are? Where can we best use you?

7. What Exalted books / subjects are you most interested in writing? Don’t be shy in answering. We are looking for stable writers to contribute to books throughout the life of the edition.

Writing prompt (due Sunday, November 23rd, 2014 by 5:00 PM Eastern):

Select two characters from the following list and explain their motivations in under 300 words. Do not use the “Motivation” stat from Second Edition. When I talk about motivations, I am talking about the essential drive of the character. Hint: Don’t tell me what they are trying to do. Tell me what drives them to do the things they do and back it up with evidence from the books. If you aren’t sure, then impress me with your imagination by making it up. Feel free to embellish or invent details, so long as the characters are recognizable. Your choices are: The Scarlet Empress, Chejop Kejak, The Mask of Winters, and Lilith.

Next: Read the short story Big Two-Hearted River (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/hem_river.html) by Ernest Hemingway and answer the following in 350-500 words:

Compare Nick’s journey to Luke Skywalker’s visit to the Dark Side Cave in the film The Empire Strikes Back. Pay attention to word choice, mood, tone, and setting details employed by Hemingway to make your comparison. But also apply the overall theme of Big Two-Hearted River to the scene from The Empire Strikes Back. What is Hemingway getting at and how is it similar to that scene? Note: Do not introduce any facts from stories other than the two being discussed, or from prior knowledge of Hemingway, etc. Use no evidence about Big Two-Hearted River that does not come directly from the story itself.

Next: Read the following quote by Flannery O’Connor:

“I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies. This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity. The action or gesture I'm talking about would have to be on the anagogical level, that is, the level which has to do with the Divine life and our participation in it. It would be a gesture that transcended any neat allegory that might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with mystery.”

Find this gesture in Big Two-Hearted River and explain in less than 500 words why it is a transcendental moment. Pay attention to word choice, tone, emotional cues, et al to make your argument. Why is the moment a gesture that makes contact with mystery and how is it “in character and beyond character” and suggestive of “the world and eternity”?

Note: Before I can read any writing submissions, you must fill out the Onyx Path disclosure form at https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B57iDF62OjtPV3dDT0VRN3gxMkU/edit - print, sign and send a scan or phone picture in with your submission. Without the form, I can’t read your writing.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Just as a reminder:


Maybe Mørke was mistreated, but he doesn't sound like the simplest soul to work around.

Stallion Cabana posted:

Holden and Hatewheel claiming, totally unironically, that '1E Exalted had the greatest series of TRPG books written over three years ever, better then anything else' and acting like it wasn't just them having severe nostalgia was pretty great.

Stallion Cabana posted:

I'm going to post the same response to this that I posted in the Exalted thread;

This really onesided account misses out on all the stuff Holden and Hatewheel have bragged about before and is pretty not chill.

For instance, Holden and Hatewheel liked to bitch that Rich Thomas personally hated them, but at the same time they would both brag repeatedly that they had told Rich Thomas to gently caress off directly to his face multiple times and refused to do what he said. Then they blamed it taking forever for their books to get art and layout on Rich trying to sabotage them, but having nothing to do with them repeatedly giving Rich Thomas poo poo. In fact, ever since they left they've turned an IRC that is theoretically about Exalted into the place for them to complain about how mistreated Exalted has been, how it's breaking away from their vision, and how horribly they were treated.

Which is kind of interesting when you consider how Rich Thomas has had a problem with Exalted Fans before. It seems so strange, doesn't it? that someone would have problems with the Exalted Community when they don't ever interact with them, and consider them as being perpetually unpleasant. Of course it turns out if the line developers who everyone loves are prickly, better then thou assholes who are constantly insulting you, that'd probably be a reason to feel like the actual players aren't that different, since they're supporting the developers.

Then there's the whole question that Holden and Hatewheel did this explicitly, giving this guy information knowing he was going to do this. Which really just makes me wonder if they're trying to burn down Exalted permanently know that they don't get to be the developers anymore.

I used to think really negatively of Rich Thomas but honestly as time has gone on I've gotten really loving sympathetic to him; Holden and Hatewheel were always assholes at best, but it's starting to seem like they were being incredibly difficult to work with and then using Rich Thomas as an excuse when things weren't going how they wanted.

Also from what I know all the pay stuff is highly exaggerated at best. Holden and Hatewheel were paid for the core. They weren't paid for the mostly done Arms and DBs that they completely rescinded and refused to allow to publish.

SunAndSpring posted:

I think I like 1e more than 2e because the 1e stuff had less edgy poo poo, didn't have wanky magitech that was readily available, and had better writing than 2e in general. But wew lad, that loving post. Glad Holden and Morke are gone.

SunandSpring posted:

Magitech stuff

ZeroCount posted:

The fair folk books were pretty cool I guess.

Desiden posted:

The thing about the bolded bit was they were still loving around and scrapping major parts of unpublished books (Arms) weeks ahead of when they were supposed to be out in pdf form (and those release dates themselves way past original estimates).

Strangely enough, "you need to pay us for this stuff we wrote but haven't used yet, or else we won't finish these other books we keep not finishing anyway" did not seem to be a convincing argument.

Meanwhile, the two new devs have released some cheap antagonist stuff and look to be on track to pump out some new full books within promised deadlines.

ZeroCount posted:

The fair folk books were pretty cool I guess.

Joe Slowboat posted:

I really liked the dial-back to Essence 1-5 for Ex3, and I really liked the refocusing of the story and mechanics.

Archonex posted:

Mors Rattus posted:

While I believe they are building on ruined foundations, Robert Vance and Eric Minton are both decent folks and I wish them the best.

Ferrinus posted:

Abyssals being melodramatic goths is good; Abyssals being school shooters is bad.

Night10194 posted:

I thought the entire point of Exalted was that there was no magic evil driving them to do any of what they do and it was simply the result of having poo poo like 'I am so persuasive that no-one can disagree with me' that made them all go crazy, because who wouldn't?

Archonex posted:

Nah. There's a few things that work against Exalted on the personal level and make them somewhat byronic heroes if you're playing in the time period and setting most of the books focus on.

The big thing is the Great Curse. Which is basically the dead primordials constantly doing the magical equivalent of "gently caress you Exalted!" for killing them from beyond the grave. It basically causes them to freak out and go to batshit insane extremes to fulfill or act against their primary virtue.

Lifting it lets an Exalt act as they're supposed to act, long term. And it's pretty heavily implied that barring some cases where some bad dudes were Exalted (More on that in a sec.) that the Exalted really were all they were cracked up to be at first. It's just that after 5000 or more years of getting constant limit breaks and having their minds worn away most of them started to go a bit bonkers. The ones that didn't either realized that things were utterly hosed up and were either killed trying to fix it, during the Usurpation, or in the case of the really smart ones like Righteous Devil just sealed themselves away from Creation to avoid the literally apocalyptic clusterfuck that was coming.

The second big this is that the virtues aren't really virtuous as we know them. They're more heroic virtues par the myths of ancient heroes. And if you've read the original myths you should know that they can do some really dickish things despite what good they did. What's more, not having an even spread of them can lead to the Exalt actively doing some tremendously dickish or unwise things. Case in point, an Exalt defined by the virtue of conviction is basically capable of going through a lot of horrible crap and still want to get the job done and save the day. But too much conviction and not enough compassion means that they could consider it perfectly appropriate to butcher a hell of of a lot of people to do that. Hell, conviction even has "butcher an entire nation of people" at either 4 or five conviction as an example.

The other is that some Exalt's are just seriously not good people. Lytek, the god in charge of handling and handing out Exaltation's is kind of a tool when it comes to doing his job competently. The end result being that some decidedly unsavory or insane people occasionally get access to nigh omnipotent power. This leads to certain Solar's thinking that the Unconquered Sun (Who is basically possessed of perfect virtue.) would totally be down with human sacrifice and mass slaughter of the dragon-blooded. Or they just mind rape everyone in sight to get whatever they want without giving a drat about anyone like that one Exalt did to Lilith in the first age.

Stallion Cabana posted:

This isn't super accurate. And especially not in 3E.

3E has kept the Great Curse, but removed Virtues; Exalted do eventually Limit Break due to stress, and heroes have a lot of Stress, but they are also just normal people given absurd power. The idea of a decent into terribleness and hedonism is stronger for the great curse but the great curse isn't the only part.

Lytek also doesn't hand out Exaltations, and never has. His job is removing old memories from Exaltations and their maintenance. The Exaltations are possessed of their own power to find suitable people and Exalt them. There's a reason that, specifically, Lytek NOR the Sun can hand out the Actual Exaltations, but it comes from a very deep lore thing that doesn't really matter so much as to correct you on that point; Lytek isn't a tool and he's not the one that picks who Exalts, he's entirely the maintenance man who cleans them up and stores them while they aren't in use.

The Exaltations pick Heroes, people standing up against impossible odds. And sometimes those people are assholes. It's unfortunate but not actually that common; it's far more likely that the person will be a decent person who snaps under the weight of being a hero and the realization that they have godly powers; something akin to Mark Waid's Irredeemable then 'The Exaltation chose a murder'.

In Example; the Exaltation may exalt a simple, nice village farmer who only wants to protect his village. But as he becomes aware of the power he possesses and that few can stop him, he begins demanding more and more, taking things he's wanted but couldn't have and the like; he isn't a bad person, he just wasn't ready for the kind of power he got and it corrupted him.

The Sun himself is also a complicated case. If you mean his 2E form, then you're actually still not exactly right. He IS a god of War, and one of the acceptable forms of worship to him was Aztec Heart Sacrifices. There is in fact an entire martial art made by his Favored Race, the Dragon Kings, that capstones with you ripping your enemies heart out and raising it into the air as a prayer to the Sun. His response is to give you willpower and a health level back.

If this is still the case in 3E is difficult to say, because the Sun hasn't been detailed yet.

Archonex posted:

Yeah, in 3e it's different. But since we only have the 3e corebook to work with I figured i'd give an explanation from 2e since it's more fleshed out.

You're right about the Lytek thing. It's been a loooong time since I read anything to do with that part of the setting, so I got mixed up. The Unconquered Sun himself is definitely not pro heart removal when it comes to innocent people though. It's kind of a plot point in the character that features said sacrifices. From what I recall he also doesn't have the ability to stop people from using certain traits of his. Like anything to do with sorcery that works through him.

neaden posted:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3749911

So Mage chat. The core says you can't lie in High Speech but never really goes into the implications of that. Is the assumption that Mages profess innocence or make non-magically binding promises in High Speech to show they are being honest? Or is that beyond what most people allow High Speech to do?

Mors Rattus posted:

High Speech is not a functional language the way even First Tongue is. You can't lie in it, but it's entire vocabulary is essentially 'the words required to describe and cast spells'. It'd be like trying to hold a conversation using C++ snippets.

Also the can't lie thing might be the other way around - you can't lie because speaking your will is part of casting a spell to make it true.