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Mile'ionaha posted:In my last game I had a "heroic" Infernal trying to figure out how to protect large swathes of Creation with poison and mutations. Lunars gently caress animals to make people/animal hybrids, and literally the only thing vaguely close to a purpose they've had for the past few centuries is messing with random groups of people without their consent to see what happens. Literally no Lunar that isn't in open conflict with the totality of Lunar society has any right to criticize that plan, which would be a fairly basic Lunar plan if it began with "I blow a fish and make fishmen babies".
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Apr 9, 2019 12:05
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Mulva posted:"I blow a fish and make fishmen babies".  "How do you DO, fellow fish"
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Apr 9, 2019 14:09
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Mulva posted:Lunars gently caress animals to make people/animal hybrids, and literally the only thing vaguely close to a purpose they've had for the past few centuries is messing with random groups of people without their consent to see what happens. In 3E Lunars consecrate trials/testing grounds which transform successful humans into beastmen. They also largely don't do the social experiments thing - they just have various internal disagreements on when and how to destroy the Realm and then Heaven.
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Apr 9, 2019 14:18
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Ferrinus posted:In 3E Lunars consecrate trials/testing grounds which transform successful humans into beastmen. They also largely don't do the social experiments thing - they just have various internal disagreements on when and how to destroy the Realm and then Heaven. Insofar as they DO conduct social experiments, they're largely an accident of the Lunar focus on prefigurative politics - when your goal is to raze the current, hideously-unjust order to its foundations and replace it with something better, there's gonna be a lot of trial-and-error as the Lunars (and everyone else, really) work things out.
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Apr 9, 2019 15:15
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Re: Martial Arts Lunars don't get the favoured/caste ability discount for buying up the skills in the first place, while it is only a discount of -1 per dot that will add up over the course of multiple martial arts, especially when added with the 2xp discount per Martial Art charm. Two martial arts bought to 5 after chargen is 8xp in favour of the Solar, which is another charm or another Martial Art to 3. For every 5 charms the Solar gets +1 from the XP saved. Supernal Martial Arts is also a thing if you want which means the Solar will hit all of the end-tree charms before a Lunar has got his boots on. Some of the Mastery effects are really super good and some are pretty close to equivalent to some of the Lunar charms but also you get them for free instead of paying XP to get them and then motes to use them. I'm not saying it's massively in their favour or anything (which is good), but I do think Solars have the edge overall.
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Apr 9, 2019 16:09
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Thesaurasaurus posted:Insofar as they DO conduct social experiments, they're largely an accident of the Lunar focus on prefigurative politics - when your goal is to raze the current, hideously-unjust order to its foundations and replace it with something better, there's gonna be a lot of trial-and-error as the Lunars (and everyone else, really) work things out.
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Apr 10, 2019 00:09
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Is there any homebrew to make Abyssals and/or Sidereals yet, because it looks like we're two years out for the later
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Apr 10, 2019 22:34
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It's not ideal but you can basically get away with Abyssals using the core Solar charms and old Abyssal charms as reference points. I really want the Sidereals book though.
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Apr 10, 2019 22:41
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i know of two Sidereal homebrews: Where Fate Has Led, with mediocre charms Down Came the Spider, which i've never used myself there's probably more, fan splats are usually hosted as Google Docs
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Apr 10, 2019 23:04
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Attorney at Funk posted:It's not ideal but you can basically get away with Abyssals using the core Solar charms and old Abyssal charms as reference points. I really want the Sidereals book though. Yeah, painting it black and one or two adapted or new charms isn't that hard; it's really the Sidreals I want/need 1994 Toyota Celica posted:i know of two Sidereal homebrews: Thank you
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Apr 11, 2019 00:21
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i did have fun the one time i played an Endings with Where Fate has Led, but that was mostly a matter of playing a Single Shining Point master with the Sidereal excellency
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Apr 11, 2019 01:52
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If Sidereals are going to get 3e's charm bloat treatment then they drat well better pay Jenna Moran handsomely to write more maiden scriptures.
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Apr 11, 2019 03:38
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Honestly I think only Solars really have charm bloat which I'll blame entirely on Morke and Holden. Nothing in the DB book or Lunars compares to the nightmare monstronsities of Solar Melee/Brawl/Craft/Lore.
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Apr 11, 2019 14:42
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:If Sidereals are going to get 3e's charm bloat treatment then they drat well better pay Jenna Moran handsomely to write more maiden scriptures. Always hire Jenna Moran.
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Apr 11, 2019 15:45
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EthanSteele posted:Always hire Jenna Moran. 
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Apr 11, 2019 18:43
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Robert Vance and Jenna are friendly enough that I couldn't imagine they wouldnt at least have her consult. IIRC he worked on Chuubo with her, and she was in his chat 3e game before he had to drop it because he had to focus on writing Exalted.
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Apr 11, 2019 23:50
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It's been discussed and I strongly doubt Jenna will be writing the 3e Sidereal Charms unless people clamor hard enough to make Onyx Path proffer some unheard-of sum for her services. (Also, Vance loves Sidereals and wants to write their Charms themself.) Jenna getting hired to write some of the fiction or something, on the other hand, or Hidden Horse Style appearing in the book, is another matter.
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Apr 12, 2019 00:32
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This is probably opening a hugeass can of worms but: Given humans experience emotions and understand languages and have thoughts and opinions and whatnot; and are thus considered 'persons'. Given animals like, say, dogs experience emotions, and understand languages (enough to respond to commands, and many are certainly well versed enough in human body language) and certainly have opinions and likes and dislikes; but are not (to most people both IRL and in Creation) considered 'persons'... It seems entirely reasonable for an Exalt who measurably (by game mechanics) experiences stronger emotions, and understands languages and expression more deeply, and has immense complex thoughts and emotions, to believe that as a dog is not a person to a human, so a human is not a person to an Exalt. People upthread seem to be saying this is "wrong and rude" somehow instead of being logically true in the setting. This doesn't make the setting 'unpleasant' or 'icky' in any way it's just a feature of the setting that such things can be true and you can have characters who wrestle with that fact.
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Apr 12, 2019 02:21
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Exalts don’t experience life more vividly in that sense, except in the context of, like, “I have developed extra keen hearing.” They don’t get access to Intimacies at a step greater than Defining, for instance. You’re arguing reification of game mechanics in support of a rhetorical agenda that’s uncomfortably close to that of real-life genociders. It’s rude for reasons similar to arguing that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the swastika as a pure symbol would be rude. Like... we’re all just basically shootin’ the poo poo for fun on this here discussion forum, just playing with ideas to pass the time, but some ideas are not safe to play with because they’re so strongly associated with real life mass murder. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Apr 12, 2019 02:36
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Stephenls posted:Exalts don’t experience life more vividly in that sense, except in the context of, like, “I have developed extra keen hearing.” They don’t get access to Intimacies at a step greater than Defining, for instance. You’re arguing reification of game mechanics in support of a rhetorical agenda that’s uncomfortably close to that of real-life genociders. It’s rude for reasons similar to arguing that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the swastika as a pure symbol would be rude. It's a real peril of just presenting the Dynastic/Immaculate perspective with anything approaching a neutral tone.
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Apr 12, 2019 03:00
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bewilderment posted:It seems entirely reasonable for an Exalt who measurably (by game mechanics) experiences stronger emotions, and understands languages and expression more deeply, and has immense complex thoughts and emotions, to believe that as a dog is not a person to a human, so a human is not a person to an Exalt. Stephenis nailed it how the initial statement isn't true, but beyond that we already established that in setting characters can believe that. They are still wrong and awful.
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Apr 12, 2019 03:22
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The ideas are bad because they're false, though. And from the point of view of a hardcore vegan we are genociding thinking beings under that rhetoric. I don't see "this idea, which is abhorrent to us because it is demonstrably false, is true in this setting" as inherently 'dangerous to play in' as long as the distinction is made clear. Plenty of games (tabletop and video) hold morality as an objective meter, and you can offset a mass-murder if you re-home sufficient puppies. This idea is awful to many people IRL but it being true in the game doesn't make it dangerous.
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Apr 12, 2019 03:47
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bewilderment posted:The ideas are bad because they're false, though. And from the point of view of a hardcore vegan we are genociding thinking beings under that rhetoric. It’s inherently dangerous in the sense that playing with it blithely, as one might play with any random idea, will actually hurt real people who are directly or familially traumatized by real genocide. That is to say, if you personally have suffered violence by or lost loved ones to those who justify it on the grounds that you’re subhuman because you don’t experience as rich a life as “real people” do, then coming on to a forum and seeing people talk about “Hey wouldn’t it be interesting if in Exalted, people who experience life less richly really are less human?” is not a fun thing to encounter. Please put the idea down. There are other ideas to play with.
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Apr 12, 2019 03:56
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bewilderment posted:The ideas are bad because they're false, though. There are people who experience emotion more strongly than others, and people who have better understanding of languages than others, and expression more deeply, and you could potentially design some bogus system of measurement that rate some people as having more complex thoughts and emotions than others. So in the particular sense that a person can be more talented than another, or better trained, or have more opportunities for growth, and all of this in a measurable fashion, the idea is not false. What is false is that this would somehow be justification to rate someone as being more of a person than another.
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Apr 12, 2019 04:08
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I take your point. But I do think, as mentioned upthread, that that particular statement is still conflating personhood with human-hood. e: this was originally responding to Stephenls. Schwarzwald posted:What is false is that this would somehow be justification to rate someone as being more of a person than another. How do you justify/rate as a person, be it in Creation or on Earth, though?
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Apr 12, 2019 04:10
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bewilderment posted:How do you justify/rate as a person, be it in Creation or on Earth, though? You don't.
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Apr 12, 2019 04:14
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Rand Brittain posted:You don't. Me personally, or my ratings? My point is that even in real life, 'personhood' is partially cultural. You could define it as either a binary (you're a person or you aren't), or a spectrum (you're a person, but not as much of a person as that person over there). Elephants pass a lot of cognition tests, communicate with each other in social structures and visibly care for each other in family units. We don't generally consider elephants people, though, because they can't meaningfully participate in our society, despite them having many attributes we would consider person-like. I'm struggling to see the difference, then, between a human being saying "an elephant has some of these qualities, but by dint of its species and its inability to participate in society, is not a person"; and a god in Creation saying "a human has some of my qualities, but by dint of its nature and its ability to participate in heavenly society, is not a person". What makes the human right, but the god wrong? e: that's not a rhetorical question at the end I genuinely want to know (at least from the perspective of within Creation) bewilderment fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Apr 12, 2019 04:21
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bewilderment posted:Me personally, or my ratings? Bro, just asking questions about what makes someone sub-human isn't the Socratic method, its off putting, disgusting and vile. Stop being Sophomoric.
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Apr 12, 2019 04:31
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TaintedBalance posted:Bro, just asking questions about what makes someone sub-human isn't the Socratic method, its off putting, disgusting and vile. Stop being Sophomoric. It's not a socratic question, I genuinely don't know. I acknowledge all homo sapiens as having personhood. Exalted is a game where there are things that are persons but are not homo sapiens (I suppose humans within Creation technically aren't homo sapiens either).
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Apr 12, 2019 04:43
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bewilderment posted:e: that's not a rhetorical question at the end I genuinely want to know (at least from the perspective of within Creation) The issue is that if you are even entertaining the possibility that the god in question is right, you are likely following the same train of logic as actual IRL fascists and in today's environment it is nowhere near safe to presume that this thought experiment is going to stay a thought experiment. Like you can definitely argue that maybe we should be nicer to certain species depending on how they score on cognition tests, but the real peril lies in othering human beings, explicitly or implicitly. Even if you're playing a game about exploring all the ways human beings can be lovely to one another, there is no way to raise the questions that you have without inviting the specter of actual IRL fascism and this is just not the time nor the place. Not while there are actual loving concentration camps on US soil.
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Apr 12, 2019 04:59
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Why acknowledge anyone, anywhere, with any combination of properties or behaviors, as a person? Well, because they can make you, either individually or as a group, or because you need them to treat you as a person, often so that you can band together and force some third party to treat the both of you as people.
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Apr 12, 2019 05:02
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bewilderment posted:It's not a socratic question, I genuinely don't know. I acknowledge all homo sapiens as having personhood. Exalted is a game where there are things that are persons but are not homo sapiens (I suppose humans within Creation technically aren't homo sapiens either). In a world like Exalted where non-human sapient beings exist, any definition of "person" is going to be either broad enough to include all sapients or restrictive enough that it excludes some humans.
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Apr 12, 2019 05:07
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Thesaurasaurus posted:but the real peril lies in othering human beings, explicitly or implicitly. At no point am I suggesting that any category of human being (whether in Creation or on Earth) is not a person. The point is that there are entities in Creation that are or are not persons and who can use the same justification humans have over animals to say that they are similarly so far above humans. This isn't some hidden discussion. Questions about personhood are foundational to basically any sci-fi that examines AI, for example. "God works in mysterious ways that humans cannot understand" is a common religious platitude, and this is a thread about a game/setting where gods really do exist and so that statement can have actual meaning. Sometimes the distinction is made, 'sentient but not sapient'. For anyone that makes that distinction, with 'sapient' as the supposed highest position, then in a fantasy setting where beings more capable than humans exist, there can certainly be a third tier to the sentient->sapient-> hierarchy.
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Apr 12, 2019 05:19
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Like if you want to dig into this without sounding weirdly like you're Just Asking Questions and are fixing to bust out a bell chart about Djala scores on the standardized Realm magistrate exam, a better way to put it might be: Given that many of the traits of "persons" in real life apply to way more, and way more divergent beings in Exalted's setting, how would this be sorted ICly? And how could it be sorted in a way which is, broadly speaking, ethical? It is certainly reasonable that a dickhead Exalt would think that by being an Exalt he is a superior order of being on a moral basis (rather than a power basis) and start talking about "the human cattle" or "the sheeple," but this is a pretty strong indicator that you're a bad guy. If you have lost even imperfect compassion for sentient beings who can actually talk to you you're the rear end in a top hat. I don't know if it's wrongbadfun from the Devil's second edition but I liked that "Creature of Darkness" was essentially a shitlist and while most of the occupants of that shitlist were there righteously, some entities (like that dude who's like the Calibration sub-sun) are just there because of bullshit.
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Apr 12, 2019 05:31
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bewilderment posted:At no point am I suggesting that any category of human being (whether in Creation or on Earth) is not a person. The point is that there are entities in Creation that are or are not persons and who can use the same justification humans have over animals to say that they are similarly so far above humans. If you allow for the possibility that a being that exists at a higher level of consciousness has more personhood than one that exists at a lower one, you've already ceded the argument that some humans have less personhood than others. At best, a non-eugenic argument following that line of thinking would be that the beings that exist at that higher level of consciousness are such alien intelligences that our concept of personhood isn't compatible with how their minds operate - but then you'd be taking the opposite argument, that the alien intelligences are the ones who aren't really people. But as far as Exalted goes, there's no textual support for the notion that any of the gods or other supra-intelligent beings have any more or less personhood than humans. (The Fair Folk are certainly different in their ways of thinking, but different in a way that's overtly alien, not superior.)
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Apr 12, 2019 05:43
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Nessus posted:Given that many of the traits of "persons" in real life apply to way more, and way more divergent beings in Exalted's setting, how would this be sorted ICly? And how could it be sorted in a way which is, broadly speaking, ethical? This is what I'm getting at but it still gets into the detail of what it means to have compassion for "something that can actually talk to you". Pigs can pretty clearly communicate that they're in pain and don't want to be slaughtered, but people still eat pork. The farmer is a bad guy from the perspective of the pigs he raises; to the other humans, he's good ol' hog-farmer Bob. And in Creation I'm pretty sure you can work out some ways to talk to animals. At some point an Exalt is likely to have to deal with that issue in some way and either classify sentient beings into tiers, or else go Jainist and declare that no living being should be harmed if you can avoid it. gtrmp posted:If you allow for the possibility that a being that exists at a higher level of consciousness has more personhood than one that exists at a lower one bewilderment fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Apr 12, 2019 |
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Apr 12, 2019 05:57
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bewilderment posted:This is what I'm getting at but it still gets into the detail of what it means to have compassion for "something that can actually talk to you". Pigs can pretty clearly communicate that they're in pain and don't want to be slaughtered, but people still eat pork. The farmer is a bad guy from the perspective of the pigs he raises; to the other humans, he's good ol' hog-farmer Bob. And in Creation I'm pretty sure you can work out some ways to talk to animals. Like where is this going other than I guess forum theorycrafting the Great Chain of Being, but for the Exalted 3E Setting, which Explicitly Isn't Even Trying To Give You An Exhaustive List Of The Entities Present In Creation, So Much As A Representative Sample and Some Fan Favorites. Hell, given the nature of the setting there could even be entire intelligent species created by ancient Solars or Yozis in order to go "ha HA, SWLIHN, you see that I have created the Goon, which meets every one of your universalized theories of intelligence yet does not have three of your six key distinguishing features!" Five thousand years later, your circle encounters the Goons.
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Apr 12, 2019 06:11
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I think in the end my point is that just as IRL many people who we would call 'good' believe that deities hold responsibilities of stewardship over 'lesser' beings; then it is not a creepy proto-fascist idea to believe that in the setting of Creation, various gods and exalts might also hold this belief and also not be proto-fascists.
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Apr 12, 2019 06:41
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bewilderment posted:I think in the end my point is that just as IRL many people who we would call 'good' believe that deities hold responsibilities of stewardship over 'lesser' beings; then it is not a creepy proto-fascist idea to believe that in the setting of Creation, various gods and exalts might also hold this belief and also not be proto-fascists. To quote one of the heroes of literature, "With great power, there must also come... Great responsibility."
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Apr 12, 2019 06:48
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Has anybody articulated the arguments against the, um, fascist position here? I don't agree with it (the fascist position) but I think it's pretty lovely of a bunch of posters to basically just say "it's fascist, therefore bad" without bothering to take any time to say why, especially when the alt right loves calling out fallacies as a way to discount the lived experiences of marginalized people and communities.
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Apr 12, 2019 07:54
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