|
They were also technically seduction ghosts, it’s just that ‘pay willpower or be compelled to kiss the ghost’ is not a free choice. I’m not sure how one implements creepy seduction in tabletop mechanics without crossing the line; Vampire certainly just makes a bunch of tools of coercion available and is certainly all in on the sexmurder, but doesn’t get the kind of flak the Abyssal charm preview got.
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 05:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 16:41 |
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:That... isn’t really a thing that happens? When are you ever going to have more than three or four?
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 05:40
|
|
|
Having sexual content or even sexual violence in your game, if everyone playing is on board with it and you're a writer capable of handling the material responsibly, is fine. I don't think it really belongs in a game that's, on its surface, just a generic wuxia fantasy for a relatively broad audience but on the other hand Exalted's reputation kind of precedes it at this point. Someone who equivocates about whether rape is really rape or not is absolutely not that writer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 05:43
|
|
|
Fair enough, and I certainly don’t think there should be sexual violence charms; I just think ‘spooky seducer who kisses you and sucks out your body heat’ should be an archetype Abyssals can handle and do ghostly things with. Not by any means necessarily the same charms from the preview, and yeah 100% the Hamster and his sex pest buddy shouldn’t be involved, but it would be nice to see that style of Abyssal handled more interestingly than 2e’s “titmonsters” (thanks for that word, Archonex). Exalted does present itself as being PG-13 enough to admit sex exists, at least.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 05:49
|
|
|
Yeah the short answer is: either you don't write powers that strip away free will, or you include langauge in the game that lets people know coercion is a thing and provide them with tools to mediate, both at session zero and in-play, when content has walked over a line. Like Majesty/Presence and Dominate have powers that can be used for rape. You can either acknowledge this and try to address it in both the text and content of the game, or you alter how those powers work. What you defianately don't do is get on Twitter and argue about what counts as rape.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 06:01
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:They were also technically seduction ghosts, it’s just that ‘pay willpower or be compelled to kiss the ghost’ is not a free choice. Nah man. From what I recall when you read the other charms it became apparent that they were straight up rape ghosts. The charm description of one of the previous charms really inferred that point without hitting on it outright. Heck, there was even a "succubus" style charm that let you steal essence/willpower/life that was ripped out of the pages of 2e. At the very least they're sexual assault ghosts that get really handsy with you while impersonating someone close to you. Which is itself rapey is heck. Also, it was entirely possible they could have worked that charm set in if they had kept their mouth shut about it and just kept the Lover in Darkness/whatever her name is a mystery and said "Yeah, we don't want to touch this in the 3e core book since it's a bit too heavy. Her themes are a bit too controversial to get into without a lot of disclaimers and prep work first." whenever someone brought her up. That's how they got away with putting sex charms (Which included the same abyssal succubus type charm that in 2e outright required drinking "fluids" from people during sex.) in as a joke in 2e, in fact. Instead they went full rape ghost right out the gate and alienated people by seeming juvenile and creepy. Both of which are things that are very much at odds with including adult content in a game. On the whole, most players are perfectly capable of handling adult content so long as the devs are mature about it. They weren't. Which is probably why that stuff isn't going to get added in now.  Joe Slowboat posted:Fair enough, and I certainly don’t think there should be sexual violence charms; I just think ‘spooky seducer who kisses you and sucks out your body heat’ should be an archetype Abyssals can handle and do ghostly things with. Not by any means necessarily the same charms from the preview, and yeah 100% the Hamster and his sex pest buddy shouldn’t be involved, but it would be nice to see that style of Abyssal handled more interestingly than 2e’s “titmonsters” (thanks for that word, Archonex). I definitely agree. Abyssals should be able to opt to heavily lean into that aesthetic as well. It's part of the appeal. It's just Holden and Morke reaaaallly did not approach the issue of it well at all. I mean, contrast that preview with the Daeva clan book which has several pages getting into making sure everyone is comfortable before they get down to the issue of sex in a game. One goes "Hey, here's some rape ghosts y'all!" with barely no preamble and the other goes in depth to make sure that players at the table aren't squicked out by the topic before getting into the powers and other related content. Also, now I really want to post the art and description of that titty monster charm. It's hilarious in how ridiculous it is.  It's definitely NWS though so whatever.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Dec 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 06:06
|
|
|
I know someone looking to run a game of V5. I'm not entirely clear on the embrace and bonding as it relates to Tremere and their new bane. So assume I've been around the block a while, the head of my chantry has been called by the Beckoning, all the blood bonds are shattering, and I'm looking at making a name for myself. Is there any reason I, as a Tremere, would actually sire someone rather than making ghouls? Basically I'm trying to figure out what an origin would be for a V5 fledgling Tremere because I can't understand why someone would sire them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 06:20
|
|
|
The charm sent a ghost of you to seduce someone you had seduced before. You could also use charms through the specter; one of the charms you could do that with drained their health etc if they gave you a ‘physical sign of affection’ or something like that. The upgrade charm let the ghost look like their loved ones, but was still visibly a ghost, so you could use their intimacies towards loved ones to empower the seduction roll. The problem is the power imbalance in a rolled mechanical seduction and the fact that this is skeevy villain poo poo. Are these good idea charms? Probably not. Are they ‘rape ghosts’? I think that’s a lovely way to describe them, especially since the term originally referred to something else from the same charm preview: an Appearance booster that made ‘specters appear at the windows or in the shadows, longing to ravish the Abyssal.’ It’s stupid bodice-ripper stuff, and could easily have been phrased in a way that didn’t imply intention to rape on behalf of the cosmetic ghosts, but Holden doubled down on ‘ravish’ as a totally reasonable word to use. E: also, this was a charm preview released to KS backers to explain how they imagined Abyssal charm trees working; people act like it was a published splatbook. Again, not careful or particularly excellent charms and they doubled down like idiots, because Holden and Morke seem literally incapable of introspection. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Dec 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 06:28
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:I’m not sure how one implements creepy seduction in tabletop mechanics without crossing the line; Vampire certainly just makes a bunch of tools of coercion available and is certainly all in on the sexmurder, but doesn’t get the kind of flak the Abyssal charm preview got. Vampire has a lot of tools that can be used for outright mind control which interacts with an act that the game is not shy about saying is a metaphor for sexual assault, but there's three very critical elements to this: 1) Magic doesn't exist, so the mind control powers have a healthy distance from the real world 2) You can just... not acknowledge the metaphor and play a game where blood-drinking is just blood-drinking 3) It's generally portrayed as kind of a bad thing to do (which is necessary for the metaphor to make sense in the first place) This is part of the success and versatility of Vampire, where you can play the game of bad people engaging in horrible sexmurder, but you can also just play a fun game about being dark creatures of the night being cool and drinking blood. The Abyssal charm preview lacked most of these elements, notably the metaphor level. The sex and/or sexual assault was inherent and explicit in the charms, so you had to acknowledge it - there was no way to say "yeah but that's just an optional metaphor, not actually real". Because of how it was presented, absent of the themes, mood, tone, and context of the actual game, there wasn't much reason to believe it was presented as a bad thing either - it was just presented as a bunch of cool powers you could use, that encouraged players to sexually assault NPCs with ghosts and being themselves haunted by creepy ghosts that were implied to want to molest the player characters.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 06:39
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:I know someone looking to run a game of V5. I'm not entirely clear on the embrace and bonding as it relates to Tremere and their new bane. So assume I've been around the block a while, the head of my chantry has been called by the Beckoning, all the blood bonds are shattering, and I'm looking at making a name for myself. Is there any reason I, as a Tremere, would actually sire someone rather than making ghouls? I don't know if it's active in v5 but you could always say you were a ghoul who was imbued with that ritual that auto-sires upon your physical death. I mean, that replaces the question "why was i sired" with "who put this ritual on me" and "who killed me and for what reason" but those are both fun Plot Hooks which will in no way come back to bite you in the rear end, mwa ha ha ha.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 06:47
|
|
|
I guess? I mean, again, I don't think these charms were good... but they explicitly could key off of any positive human interaction involving touch (a kiss or a hug were, I think, repeatedly used as the example in the text) and they're about magical ghosts that torment people on behalf of vampire-exalted, the Abyssals. I'll certainly agree that the charm preview was quite literally a bunch of mechanics isolated from the larger scope of the game, and there's little reason to believe Holden and Morke would have presented it in a more careful light in the actual book. Or at least, not with particular competence. But I genuinely think the 'ghosts show up to steal a kiss' charms are significantly less immediately tied to sexual assault than vampire bite, given that they could have just been framed as 'this ghost looking like someone you haven't seen in a long time appears and asks you to hold them, then when you do they steal your body heat and you die, feeding an evil vampire demigod.' I guess what I mean is, it looks to me a lot less like the charms' mechanics themselves were the problem, compared to the edgelord-adjacent presentation Morke and Holden gave just about everything.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 06:52
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:I know someone looking to run a game of V5. I'm not entirely clear on the embrace and bonding as it relates to Tremere and their new bane. So assume I've been around the block a while, the head of my chantry has been called by the Beckoning, all the blood bonds are shattering, and I'm looking at making a name for myself. Is there any reason I, as a Tremere, would actually sire someone rather than making ghouls? Gotta spread the Pyramid. For the Tremere to function they need kindred, their whole organization is based on this. The fact that it’s falling apart would not stop them from trying to keep it together.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 07:21
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:I don't want to spend fifteen minutes every time I take an action to choose which of the many many charms I want to use to slightly modify my dice roll. This doesn't actually happen because (except for Crafts, where it's the whole game) any given single skill is going to have its excellency and some kind of qualitative/multiplicative booster and that's it. Sometimes there'll be some kind of situational second dice trick you can layer onto the first, but if you're a Melee fighter for example you've basically got your excellency, your reroll 1s, and a success+dice bonus that has a chance of going off only when you full-excellency. The other 30 or 40-odd charms all do more concrete stuff like adding damage or making a counterattack or making a weird, special kind of counterattack or making a bunch of extra attacks that mean your turn takes six years to resolve. Some abilities don't even have the equivalent of the reroll-1s dice trick that Melee boasts, and (again, unless you're doing Craft) you never actually get a guy who rerolls 1s and 6s and doubles 9s and adds a non-charm success for every third 10 and... This is probably by design, since dice tricks tend to be mutually synergistic and anyone who gets to layer them on top of each other gets too good at hitting defenses or winning rolloffs. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Dec 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 07:22
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Vampire has a lot of tools that can be used for outright mind control which interacts with an act that the game is not shy about saying is a metaphor for sexual assault, but there's three very critical elements to this: Okay, cool. There are powers/abilities in the Psion and Aberrant aspects of Trinity that could be used/abused for rape and other horrible poo poo. Telepathy allows for mind control. Some of the Mega-Attritube stuff for Social Attributes can let somebody with them talk almost anyone into almost anything. On a different thread I related the story of some other player in AD&D using Charm Person to get sex. So there's that. I just didn't want to have to wade through a bunch of FATALesque (this is the table for figuring out the circumference of the anus of the infant you want to gently caress) poo poo. And apparently I won't have to, which is cool.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 07:34
|
|
|
A little late to the discussion on Exalted Essence but as far as I see it it's not a revised third edition or a revised third edition corebook. What it is is an entry point into Exalted that i.e. contains rules for playing any of the ten named types in the book, has a briefer overview of Creation, and a pool of Charms that are enough to do the basic stuff. Exalted has never actually had an entry point for newcomers. The Exalted 3rd Edition core isn't a good entry point book. Even if we set aside the arguments about the number of charms and the poor quality of them, if your group decides that solars don't appeal to them after you introduce them to the game, they wanna play as these other guys who don't have a sourcebook out yet, or, if what you wanna get your group to play is Lunars but they don't know the setting or the rules so they need to have this other book full of a lot of things they aren't using to read through in addition to the Lunars stuff, which is a big ask to a group unfamiliar with the setting or systems. An entry point to the line is one of the healthiest decisions for its future that they could possibly make. It's never had one, and it's needed one very badly for a long time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 07:38
|
|
|
I think the best way to handle those kinds of ~coercion~ powers is to make it that the subjects are almost sure to "snap out of it" the minute something too boundary-crossing is about to happen. That way the story has the theme of sexual menace and nonconsent, and also the immediate consequences of that being bad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 07:47
|
|
|
I have returned from 1.2 playthoughts of the new game, Coteries of New York. Verdict: It's Not Great. The writing is fine, but English mistakes abound with comma cruelty, misspellings and missing punctuation. There's some technical stuff that's busted as well, with some first person narration being delivered by other characters as dialogue, or dialogue that should be delivered by other characters presented as narration. Sometimes when using a power the game would increase your Hunger (we're using V5 lore and mechanics, you see), and other times it wouldn't, leaving you as a player very confused at the cost of not just spamming your Disciplines. [Note: I only played the Ventrue path, so the things mentioned below may not happen exactly like I describe on other paths.] The Good: The two (of potentially four) coterie members I focused on were pretty interesting, Hope the Malk and Agathion the Tremere. If nothing else, I know enough about V5 now that I could jump into a tabletop game and be able to know what's going on both mechanically and in the setting. The Bad: Choices - there are none. Not really. Over the long tradition of False Choices in video games, you've had Persona Choices and TellTale Choices; the former giving you three options to respond that all amount to the same thing, the latter giving you a bunch of branching choices that all ends in the same place and situation anyway. CoNY does both. Many, many times you're given choices that only practically serve to give you different pieces of exposition, as barring a couple major signposted moments, you're going to go along with the plot whether you like it or not. Your Companions are a decent example; the game makes a big point that you're going to need allies, and when you complete the four-part series of missions to formally bring them into your crew...they show up once to save you in the finale, then leave and are never spoken of again. Dropped Threads - I completed two sidequests, one with a vamp getting weird about a Priest's True Faith hurting him, and a stalker Malk who wants to vampire-bang you. I completed both, and...nothing happened. Not even a nod to finishing the questline in the finale. The Ugly Bugs - So, at some point on the path, you're asked to infiltrate the Anarchs to arrange a meeting with a smaller Baron in order to take down the big one. You do a quest to gain the Anarch's loyalty and to get them to arrange the meeting, then you get grabbed by the Big Boss's goons and told to knock this whole thing off. Except...well, that whole night just...didn't happen. Skipped over it entirely. The flags got set, and when we meet the goon later we have a reaction like he beat the poo poo out of us, but that didn't at all happen on screen. Thankfully I was able to figure out what happened from context clues, but that completely ejected any building immersion the game was getting with me. But in general the game seems to have a problem with the wrong flags getting set, like in the beginning where the Sheriff says that I mouthed off to him when that literally did not happen. (I checked to see if he was just lying and played through the scene again, and sure enough if you choose to drink from the blood bag and vomit all over yourself because of the Ventrue Bane, your character is too embarrassed to mouth off to him. You could say he made up the lie anyway, but I'm skeptical) Bane, Schmane - That's another thing that might be very minor, but the game has you vomit up a few feedings before telling you that you have a type. Since this isn't the tabletop game, you don't know what your type is and have to figure it out. This is neat. However, every feeding opportunity after that, your character keeps down fine. Now, this might be because all the feedings happen to incidentally match your type (it's not hard) but it's enough of a challenge that it's a weird coincidence it never bothers you again after the opening. Rushed Ending - This might be the most route-specific complaint, but the ending was a shitshow. You're kidnapped by the Second inquisition, then broken out, then send to a place, then monologued at for a while as everyone has their motivations laid bare, then you go to another place, a fight breaks out that you can't influence at all, and that's it. You have exactly one impactful choice in that entire scene Question; in V5, does Vampire blood sustain a Ventrue even if the vamp doesn't match the bane?
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 08:02
|
|
|
I don't know about V5 in specific but vampire blood was always kosher for our Ventrue brothers before then. Potentially also those demi-ghoul revenants the Sabbat had laying around.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 08:09
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I don't know about V5 in specific but vampire blood was always kosher for our Ventrue brothers before then. Potentially also those demi-ghoul revenants the Sabbat had laying around. Oh good, no lore fouls there then. Shrecknet posted:Please let me know if its any good, im an absolute slut for princess makers like Long Live the Queen and Vlad the Impaler Sadly, there's none of that. The game mentions learning other clan disciplines through experience, but it's lying. You have no stat sheet, there is no improvement. You wouldn't even know what your powers were unless you played V5.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 08:13
|
|
|
Some ding-dong on steam was complaining about pernicious ESS JAY DUBYA presence in the visual novel and is whining about all the left-wingers around him after he picked Brujah
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 09:45
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:I only remember one Solar sex charm and it’s literally just ‘you’re super good at sex, and when you do sex, your partner or partners get extreme physical pleasure.’ I think the only mechanical element is that if you want partners to think of you as an amazing lover, you get a bonus to establishing that relationship. Something like that doesn't bother me. I could see putting something similar to that in my game as a Gift for a Talent wanting to go the James Bond route. I just don't want stuff like "World's Bestest Rapist" or "World's Awesomest Pedophile" (molest a whole kindergarten class to unlock Super Saiyfucker mode!). Nehru the Damaja posted:Some ding-dong on steam was complaining about pernicious ESS JAY DUBYA presence in the visual novel and is whining about all the left-wingers around him after he picked Brujah Tell him (figure it's almost certainly a him) that he should go Ventrue. They're a pack of entitled rear end in a top hat whose whole reason for being is exploiting their "lessers." Granted that as a newbie, he'll kind of be one of those lessers, but oh wells...
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 11:46
|
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:Discarding Exalted's traditional crunchy approach in favor of a totally different game would result in an angry schism comparable to Mage Revised or V5. Doing both is a sensible way to do it, so long as they don't completely drop the ball on the design of Essence. Shadowrun Anarchy was a good idea in principle for very similar reasons, but was horrible in execution.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 12:14
|
|
|
Everyone posted:Tell him (figure it's almost certainly a him) that he should go Ventrue. They're a pack of entitled rear end in a top hat whose whole reason for being is exploiting their "lessers." Granted that as a newbie, he'll kind of be one of those lessers, but oh wells... every vampire is just a temporarily embarassed elder god
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 12:15
|
|
|
I would be very interested in a more streamline. Having played since 1st edition, I really like a lot about the setting and the wild over the top heroic stuff the game is designed for. While I usually don't mind a crunchy game, one flip through of the corebook just killed my Exalted groups interest to get back into it. It sucks being post college where everyone has jobs and relationships to deal with sometimes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 12:28
|
|
|
Spector29 posted:I have returned from 1.2 playthoughts of the new game, Coteries of New York. Verdict: It's Not Great. Yeah, it's worth a playthrough (or watch one) to see some of the characters but you can't really... do much. I remember doing my absolute best to remain polite and cordial to the Sheriff the first time out and even then I still got 'they are a problem' which was irritating. It also felt weird to win over a Gangrel with, mostly, the Power of Friendship.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 13:46
|
|
|
Warthur posted:On the other hand, I feel like sticking to the current level of crunch is a highway to extinction for the game. I know literally nobody who's particularly into Ex3 who wasn't previously into Ex1 or Ex2, and a game which doesn't recruit new fans to replace anyone who's dropped out is a game which is doomed to increasing irrelevance. (Particularly since I know plenty of people who've walked away from Exalted; it feels like a fanbase which has suffered severe attrition and is now down to a tight core of committed fans, who aren't necessarily enough to keep the lights on.)
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 13:53
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Yeah, it's worth a playthrough (or watch one) to see some of the characters but you can't really... do much. I remember doing my absolute best to remain polite and cordial to the Sheriff the first time out and even then I still got 'they are a problem' which was irritating. It also felt weird to win over a Gangrel with, mostly, the Power of Friendship. Gangrel BFF sounds hilarious and awesome. Nehru the Damaja posted:I know someone looking to run a game of V5. I'm not entirely clear on the embrace and bonding as it relates to Tremere and their new bane. So assume I've been around the block a while, the head of my chantry has been called by the Beckoning, all the blood bonds are shattering, and I'm looking at making a name for myself. Is there any reason I, as a Tremere, would actually sire someone rather than making ghouls? Why does any Kindred sire anyone? I'm not being facetious, it's a question to think about when making a character. Why was this rando (that I assume you're playing) chosen to be a Tremere? They were probably on the radar for some reason or their sire has some excuse. And remember whatever the sire says is the reason could be 100% bullshit. Maybe they turned you because you're part of a family line that they've been holding a grudge against for centuries because Kindred are dickheads. Also with the head of the chantry loving off due to the Beckoning and blood bonds breaking, that leaves open a power vacuum, and a clever Kindred would be working to make sure whoever fills that power vacuum is on their side or at least making plans to turn it to their advantage and wouldn't you know it, toss it neonate at the problem and it solves itself!
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 15:30
|
|
|
joylessdivision posted:Gangrel BFF sounds hilarious and awesome. In theory, but not really in practice. Hope the Malkavian's cooler. You get to mod her cam show.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 16:11
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:In theory, but not really in practice. Further proving that Malks are cool and good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 16:22
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Yeah, it's worth a playthrough (or watch one) to see some of the characters but you can't really... do much. I remember doing my absolute best to remain polite and cordial to the Sheriff the first time out and even then I still got 'they are a problem' I think the story flags have gotta be messed up on that. I had the same issue and while there could've been some intriguing "the sheriff is lying for reasons you don't yet understand" thing going on, they don't seem to pay that off.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 16:43
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:Yeah, it's worth a playthrough (or watch one) to see some of the characters but you can't really... do much. I remember doing my absolute best to remain polite and cordial to the Sheriff the first time out and even then I still got 'they are a problem' which was irritating. It also felt weird to win over a Gangrel with, mostly, the Power of Friendship. I mean, this is common for vampires in the OWOD. Look at any politician who listens intently to someone talking and then spouts out some pre-rehearsed outrage or concern that's separate from the behavior of the person they're talking too and you've got an idea of how the more manipulative and dickish vampires operate. The older ones cover it up with the whole "How dare you talk to me that way Also, the game may have a bug with the ending? That seems to be confusing people and making them think it's shorter than it is. People are saying the game stops at night 17 and doesn't continue due to an issue that appears to be a bug with the menu's disappearing. Meanwhile other people are insisting there's more. Though maybe they're trolling. Also, the devs are promising more stories after release. So maybe they're going to continue the story? Nessus posted:Yeah I literally can't stand the idea of trying to play 3E because I know for a drat fact that I would spend more time creating the character sheet than playing the game, given the attrition rate of online campaigns. It doesn't help that if you have Shards a lot of 2e's notable issues are perfectly fixable/fixed as of the last ever 2e release and errata release. Abyssals in particular end up not being awful to play due to resonance getting a much needed overhaul that makes it more about being a badass death and undeath aspected Exalted murder deity given human form and not at all about "Crawling in my skin!" game play crippling suffering on the part of the Abyssal Exalt. Ditto for if you know when to ignore Holden and Morke's "fixes" to the original content via errata. They did as much damage as they did fix things. Which is ironic, since it was how they got people so hyped for a 3e edition. Archonex fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Dec 12, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 17:13
|
|
|
Archonex posted:It doesn't help that if you have Shards a lot of 2e's notable issues are perfectly fixable/fixed as of the last ever 2e release and errata release. Abyssals in particular end up not being awful to play due to resonance getting a much needed overhaul that makes it more about being a badass death and undeath aspected Exalted murder deity given human form and not at all about "Crawling in my skin!" game play crippling suffering on the part of the Abyssal Exalt. Honestly, speaking as somebody who played a lot of Exalted 2e late in its lifetime and had fun, errata'd-and-expanded 2e is not any better than 3e in terms of stalling at the table and taking forever just to be able to pick out a character sheet. Cherry-picking out good errata from bad errata makes that worse and not better, since it's not something you just passively "know" to do, you actually have to eyeball everything and decide whether it fits, including whether changing it messes up prerequisite trees or something.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 18:56
|
|
|
Exalted unambiguously needed a new improved edition, 3rd edition wasn’t it my name is in the book and Exalted is my favorite RPG setting of all time I would not even *consider* trying to get the people I game with these days to try playing Ex 3 (and they’re pretty willing to try new systems and can deal with reasonably high levels of crunch)
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 22:11
|
|
|
I honestly don’t get that. Charm bloat is a thing, but 2e was way, way worse because at least the proportion of must-have or total dud charms has gone down (and Dragon-Blooded & Lunars have much more reasonable charm sets). There’s a number of subsystems but they’re as optional as their worse counterparts in 2e, and the goddamn errata made playing 2e a nightmare. It’s not by any means a perfect system and there’s some hugely unnecessary parts (see again, the worst charm bloat offenders are super-specific charm trees that barely any character concepts would want one of let alone a whole tree). But compared to 2e, where the system collapsed immediately under its own weight? Just the social influence mechanics and intimacies compared to 2e are an immense improvement, same with not having weapon stats like the 2e heavy artifacts. What is it that Ex3 does worse than 2e? What does it completely fail to improve (at least a little)? Craft seems like the only place one could argue it’s a side grade, and even then that’s mostly because of a boring Solar Craft charmset and the very dumb names for Crafting Points.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 22:29
|
|
|
The thing is that "better than 2e" is a very, very low bar.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 22:41
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:The thing is that "better than 2e" is a very, very low bar. Ok sure but like... I like 3e combat and social influence? And I haven’t actually gotten a sense for what’s so bad about them, other than Solar Charms being all the things they are. I’d be much more interested in a new Solar Charm collection for ease of use, like a Solars splatbook, than a newer edition.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 22:58
|
|
|
I don't really disagree with you on that - it's Solar stuff I hate more than anything else. That said there are some distinct and glaring flaws in Sail's single-player setup (and total and complete inability to handle artifact vehicles well) and the complete lack of rules for bureaucracy projects.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 23:02
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:I honestly don’t get that. I don't know what part of that post struck you as a full-throated defense of 2E? . but sure: the uniformity of charms (and what they do) is actually a part of the problem - in 2E the relative power of charms was wildly uneven, but many were obvious THIS IS A BIG DEAL things in smaller (graphically presented) charm trees and (the boring if highly effective/necessary) dice/success/reroll adding/similar effects were typically handled via a small number of excellencies that functioned in a uniform manner in third edition a very large part of the page count is devoted to an incredibly bloated (non-graphically presented) list of charms that are seemingly largely aimed at letting you do fiddly and situational dice tricks/add or negate small penalties/etc. (that build on one another and are frequently difficult to evaluate in terms of effectiveness, etc.) now, the dice trick charms are a lot more balanced, and do lead to more tactically interesting combat than you generally got in 2E if everyone is highly invested in it, but here is the thing: unless they have a pre-existing interest (say because they played Ex 1 or 2) people are generally not invested in it at all because you've taken a game that is ostensibly about playing badass demigods and made their kewl powaz a largely impenetrable mush of minor interventions in rules subsystems e: Joe Slowboat posted:Ok sure but like... I like 3e combat and social influence? And I haven’t actually gotten a sense for what’s so bad about them, other than Solar Charms being all the things they are. I’d be much more interested in a new Solar Charm collection for ease of use, like a Solars splatbook, than a newer edition. there's nothing inherently wrong with a lot of those subsystems, but they're not the game - the way players express their characters and interact with those subsystems is via a series of fiddly exception-based alterations provided by charms those charms take up a full 35% of a nearly 700 page core rulebook (inc MA/Sorcery but excluding artifact evocations) if you just ignore charms entirely then there's very little wrong with 2E's rules either! LGD fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Dec 13, 2019 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 23:15
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:I don't really disagree with you on that - it's Solar stuff I hate more than anything else. That said there are some distinct and glaring flaws in Sail's single-player setup (and total and complete inability to handle artifact vehicles well) and the complete lack of rules for bureaucracy projects. Fair enough (especially Sail, which was such a bitter disappointment to me that until now I’d successfully forgotten about the weird Rock Paper Scissors game). Bureaucracy seems like something fixable in a splatbook, but that is a genuine weakness. I’m not convinced that having a bunch of small charms that make you distinctly better at things and also big shiny charms is actually a bad set-up; the implementation is just bloated. I like that in theory a Solar could have few overt fantastical powers and still be fully Solar-ish via small and subtle charms (in-character) that makes them mythical capable. Dragon-Blooded charms remain just generally super fun with much less bloat.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2019 23:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 16:41 |
|
|
Are there any major new (as in, not a re-release, not part of a series) well made high-crunch TTRPGs even being produced these days? All the major flagship standbys are coming up on almost 10 revisions apeice, and all I'm reading is that there's no clear idea as to how to shepherd the game into the kind of experience people want? I guess I just don't see a demand for more high crunch games? Especially ones where you have to stack multiple, nuanced powers? WoD/ChronD went from having nine attributes to three. The 20th rereleases just bundled up the best stuff and tried to make it less stupidly complex. D&D went from 3.5 to "Dungeoncrawl: The Boardgame" to whatever 5 is, I haven't followed it much. Warhammer is getting its lunch ate by the Actually Good Tabletop Minis games, which I understand tend to be less granular and crunchy. Pathfinder. I'm not seeing the wide public adoration of crunchy games, honestly. Maybe this is just because it's been my experience that the only purpose crunch serves is to allow pedants to argue for longer as to why they actually won, despite what the dice and GM says. If there's crunch which isn't designed to slow down the game, I haven't experienced it. Curious for other takes on this. My handful of Exalted games resulted in me making a lunar poison octopus-shifter who had enough attacks that I just, ended combat? I don't think I even had any attack-specific charms. I didn't have time to read the book to figure out where sick synergies are. I don't think most gamers do, anymore?
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2019 00:13
|
|