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so when's 4e?
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Jan 24, 2023 14:50
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Well, hmm, let's see. Eighteen months elapsed between the release of DBs and the release of Lunars. If you assume they keep that pace up, then... Exigents should have been out last April. But there was covid. So let's assume eighteen months between splats, and say Exigents comes out Q2/Q3 this year. So Sids are early 2025, then Abyssals, Infernals, Alchemicals, Liminals and Getimians, in whatever they want to do those. And maybe a Fair Folk book? Plus assorted miscellanea. Minimum, last splat is mid 2032. If you assume twenty four months between books is more reasonable, and there is a Fair Folk book, it's like, 2037? So a theoretical fourth edition hits 2040ish? ... Does this game just have too much poo poo in it? 
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Jan 24, 2023 16:24
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I was gonna say, it's been a decade and I'm still mad about that October 2013 release date and the implicit assertion that they had the bulk of the text ready to go, they just needed cash to move ahead with layout and art.
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Jan 24, 2023 17:54
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Does this game just have too much poo poo in it? For their publishing resources, yeah. Also to feasibly play, sometimes. drunkencarp posted:I was gonna say, it's been a decade and I'm still mad about that October 2013 release date and the implicit assertion that they had the bulk of the text ready to go, they just needed cash to move ahead with layout and art. I am only just getting over it 
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Jan 24, 2023 20:48
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I was going to join a game with friends and was excited, but the GM realized he couldn't envision the campaign surviving the first combat encounter, and also the prospect of actually running the thing was stressing him out. We all agreed it was super fair. I am really digging the savage worlds 50 fathoms campaign we are doing instead, but it would be cool to find a good exalted hack to play in the future. Has anybody made a good hack that lets you enjoy the setting without having to break yourself upon the rocks of the solar charm set?
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Jan 24, 2023 21:30
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Holden Shearer is actually working on an "Exalted Demake" which has much smaller mote pools and charm lists as well as simpler mechanics, based roughly off how the various exalts work in Exalted vs. World of Darkness (which is free and which you might also want to look at). There are a few weird design decisions but it looks eminently playable and much better at actually getting the idea of Exalted across than Essence is.
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Jan 24, 2023 22:05
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Ferrinus posted:Holden Shearer is actually working on an "Exalted Demake" which has much smaller mote pools and charm lists as well as simpler mechanics, based roughly off how the various exalts work in Exalted vs. World of Darkness (which is free and which you might also want to look at). There are a few weird design decisions but it looks eminently playable and much better at actually getting the idea of Exalted across than Essence is. Exalted vs. World of Darkness Lunars suck and Infernals lack all the interesting transhuman stuff, though.
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Jan 24, 2023 23:41
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The fact that Holden has somehow released two versions of Exalted and has made decent progress on a third since his termination makes the snafu with the 3e core book all the more confusing to me.
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Jan 24, 2023 23:41
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Schwarzwald posted:The fact that Holden has somehow released two versions of Exalted and has made decent progress on a third since his termination makes the snafu with the 3e core book all the more confusing to me. It's not particularly confusing when you get down to brass tacks; they were holding out for more money.
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Jan 24, 2023 23:45
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Roadie posted:Exalted vs. World of Darkness Lunars suck and Infernals lack all the interesting transhuman stuff, though. Spending just once for excellencies is nice though. Though, on the other hand, it does make getting tapped out less risky and therefore close out more weaknesses so y'know.
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Jan 25, 2023 00:02
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I've never heard of any disputes over money; what happened was that they were determined to continue working on the book until they were satisfied with it, and when Onyx Path said "no, we're tired of waiting; give us what you have and we're publishing that", they said no and were fired/quit. As for the rest, I don't think it's that odd that abandoning all the really stressful parts of being a developer, such as "having a boss" and "needing to give a drat about whether other people like his take on Lunars", has made Holden a lot more enthusiastic and productive, not to mention that the WoD system is like ten times simpler than Ex3.
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Jan 25, 2023 00:07
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Roadie posted:Exalted vs. World of Darkness Lunars suck and Infernals lack all the interesting transhuman stuff, though. Well, I don't actually have much interest in playing Ex v. WoD so I can't attest to this either way (although I have friends who've really liked the one campaign of it they did) but I basically assume Lunars will suck in any version of Exalted anyone ever writes and don't care about Infernal transhumanism at all, so neither of these would be dealbreakers for me. From what I've read of Demake, it looks like Holden took a bunch of stuff that would've been cool on Lunars and stapled it instead onto "Heart-Eaters" and "Nightmares" and "Infernals" and similar but that's just par for the course. Cost of doing business. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jan 25, 2023 |
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Jan 25, 2023 00:35
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Rand Brittain posted:I've never heard of any disputes over money; what happened was that they were determined to continue working on the book until they were satisfied with it, and when Onyx Path said "no, we're tired of waiting; give us what you have and we're publishing that", they said no and were fired/quit. Is there a short synopsis of the Ex3 timeline to date in terms of development/developers and what went down? I've been following this since the kickstarter and still get poo poo mixed up in my brain about how we got to where we were just because its been such a long road and there was so much drama at various stages of things. To my understanding it goes something like this: Kickstarter happened and was successful, but took for loving ever and the product we got out of it was an inspired and sometimes even great mess. However, between a lot of justified backlash at how long it took and what a mess it was, and then some sexpest/creeper poo poo? happened and OP + the original Ex3 devs washed their hands of each other. Since then, Ex3 development was taken over and has run at a much more brisk pace (still slow, but seems to be moving along at a more even pace) with more consistent editing and development. I've backed everything and have mostly enjoyed the stuff coming out of it, even if I mostly just use it as inspiration at this point, but realized on reading the last page of back and forth that How We Got Here is actually super murky to me and you seem to actually know more or less while also being able to describe the situations in a fairly neutral way.
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Jan 25, 2023 02:05
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TaintedBalance posted:Is there a short synopsis of the Ex3 timeline to date in terms of development/developers and what went down? I've been following this since the kickstarter and still get poo poo mixed up in my brain about how we got to where we were just because its been such a long road and there was so much drama at various stages of things. It will likely remain murky; many of the people involved have positions on what constitutes professionalism that disallow airing what they would constitute as dirty laundry in public.
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Jan 25, 2023 06:52
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Has anyone used the Exalted 3E module for the Foundry VTT and have anything useful to say about it? I'm strongly leaning towards running an Ex3 chronicle in the near future, partially based on the fact that I've heard generally good things about the Foundry module - but wanted to see if anyone had anything firsthand to share. I know the setup side of it is for professional computer touchers, but I am one so that doesn't seem like a particularly large hurdle. It can't be worse than Fantasy Grounds Classic.
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Jan 25, 2023 18:41
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It's what's made me consider running it as well; I've only got non-play testing data but it seems incredibly functional. The only thing it's really missing is pre-coded charms but that probably breaks some rules.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:09
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kaynorr posted:Has anyone used the Exalted 3E module for the Foundry VTT and have anything useful to say about it? I'm strongly leaning towards running an Ex3 chronicle in the near future, partially based on the fact that I've heard generally good things about the Foundry module - but wanted to see if anyone had anything firsthand to share. I haven't used that particular module, but I run PF2 in Foundry and a well set up module can do minor miracles.
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Jan 26, 2023 06:39
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Stephenls posted:It will likely remain murky; many of the people involved have positions on what constitutes professionalism that disallow airing what they would constitute as dirty laundry in public. Ya, I guess that's fair. I was hoping there was a "clean" version of the story, but considering everything involved, there really isn't a way to do that without leaving giant holes in the story or waking lying dogs. Back to looking forward.
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Jan 26, 2023 08:02
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I'm not a mechanics guy and was just going through Exalted's books, mostly 2E, for the setting. Opened up 3E and the removal/radical change of mortal thaumaturgy sucks.
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Jan 27, 2023 03:36
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Old Doggy Bastard posted:I'm not a mechanics guy and was just going through Exalted's books, mostly 2E, for the setting. Opened up 3E and the removal/radical change of mortal thaumaturgy sucks. 
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Jan 29, 2023 10:46
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Creation really should be a very magical place; if Occult is supposed to represent minor magical knowledge, there should be a table of thaumaturgy-like things that you can accomplish with Occult and their difficulties. Inherited peasant magic is very in theme and it should be all over the place.
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Jan 29, 2023 17:12
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wiegieman posted:Creation really should be a very magical place; if Occult is supposed to represent minor magical knowledge, there should be a table of thaumaturgy-like things that you can accomplish with Occult and their difficulties. Inherited peasant magic is very in theme and it should be all over the place. I feel part of this comes from Occult still being an Ability in the first place and not broken into something more like Lore (Occult) and an Occult merit that forms the backbone of the casting and Ritual Shaping systems. I still find Occult as an Ability to be very unsatisfying from how they try to justify it as its own thing although I get its really all just window dressing to answer "what Ability do you roll when casting?" and them not liking that being Lore for Reasons? I guess maybe fear of overloading the Lore Charm tree? I don't really have a great answer here, but I know I dislike it.
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Jan 29, 2023 22:23
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A Creation with Forgotten-Realms-level penetration of minor magic items and a Creation which readily evokes Bronze Age fantasy are not wholly incompatible but I can see where they looked at mortal thaumaturgy and said it needed to go into the same bin as the elaborate safeguards against sorcerers using Summon Elemental to unleash the Kukla.
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Jan 29, 2023 23:27
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wiegieman posted:Creation really should be a very magical place; if Occult is supposed to represent minor magical knowledge, there should be a table of thaumaturgy-like things that you can accomplish with Occult and their difficulties. Inherited peasant magic is very in theme and it should be all over the place. Yeah, I agree. I think the problem with 2E-style thaumaturgy isn't that there was a lot of functional folk magic but that functional folk magic was a major XP sink that you could use to buy an increasing array of minor superpowers. In fact, if it's possible to whistle up a ghost by spilling blood on its grave at just the right time, then, well, that's just possible, and anyone should be able to do it if they pass a difficulty 3 Occult check or whatever. Two provisos here are that A) variations in regional geomancy or whatever mean that any particular trick isn't necessarily useful everywhere, such that it still falls to the ST to allow an attempt rather than the player to assert their right to do so (but with precisely the same kind of push and pull as you'd get with, like, "can I use Socialize to trawl the local village for rumors about the bandits?" -> "sure thing/no because the villagers are all dead, remember?") and B) given that Creation is a magical place, there's probably a fair amount of folk magic involved in the practical use of non-Occult abilities (which is to say that the fact of there being magic rituals to predict the weather doesn't mean you can use Occult to predict the weather now, but rather means that if you roll Survival to predict the weather you might be doing it by hanging up a little talisman or something).
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Jan 30, 2023 00:18
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Talking skills for braining, I'm a big fan of what Pathfinder 2e did, which is totally eliminate the difference between "practical" and "knowledge" skills (even the Arcana and Occult skills have baseline practical uses for deciphering magic writing, identifying spells being cast, etc) and then add a line of freeform "Lore" skills (Gaming Lore, Farming Lore, Theater Lore, etc), of which you get one free from your character's background. Many skill checks then end up as "either use the most appropriate skill, or use a relevant Lore skill at a slightly lower difficulty". With Exalted, I think the analogue would be to dump Lore entirely, have any big brain rolls be based on the most relevant Ability (e.g. remembering stuff about battles falls to War), and make it easy to have minor thematic floating specialties that apply to any Ability, like "+1 to checks about farming". Roadie fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jan 30, 2023 |
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Jan 30, 2023 00:28
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drunkencarp posted:A Creation with Forgotten-Realms-level penetration of minor magic items and a Creation which readily evokes Bronze Age fantasy are not wholly incompatible but I can see where they looked at mortal thaumaturgy and said it needed to go into the same bin as the elaborate safeguards against sorcerers using Summon Elemental to unleash the Kukla. Wander Creation looking for new minor spells like Exalted Frieren
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Jan 30, 2023 00:36
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TaintedBalance posted:I feel part of this comes from Occult still being an Ability in the first place and not broken into something more like Lore (Occult) and an Occult merit that forms the backbone of the casting and Ritual Shaping systems. I still find Occult as an Ability to be very unsatisfying from how they try to justify it as its own thing although I get its really all just window dressing to answer "what Ability do you roll when casting?" and them not liking that being Lore for Reasons? I guess maybe fear of overloading the Lore Charm tree? It gets even weirder when it clicks that occult doesn't strictly do anything. You need dots in it to do sorcery and to get occult charms but if you asked me "What does Occult make happen", I wouldn't actually be able to answer from the 3e core. It feels like it should maybe be Lore For Magic Stuff, but, that's Lore, Lore just does that.
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Jan 30, 2023 20:07
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Part of this is that Exalted's setting... how should I put this? Before 3e drove a hard wedge in between them, Creation didn't really have a divide between regular knowledge and magical knowledge. It's just facts that you can know; outside of sorcerous inititation, nobody needs to come at magic with a particular mindset or anything like that. At the high end, magic was just science: "motonic physics." Spirits, aside from being immortal and having weird powers, are venal in the same ways that mortals are venal. Exorcists and "the person who deals with spirits" are a concept in the setting, but most important spirits aren't written as being the kind of person you need a mystic to deal with; you want to send the same person you'd send to negotiate with a mortal power bloc. This is kind of a hard problem to solve because "you can enter into business negotiations with the gods" is something Exalted wants to preserve about itself.
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Jan 30, 2023 20:32
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To elaborate a little, I would say 2E made two mistakes in this regard: 1. It had high end magic become science, when instead high end science should become magic (and/or the two should end up as some third, weirder thing) 2. It let you spend XP to replace normal game skills with special occult science actions that had special game effects which, by sheet dint of costing XP to buy, couldn't justifiably be replicated otherwise 3E thaumaturgy like "second bread" or whatever is a perfectly good game system for weird one-off powers that simply can't be taught (and I can see how these are a direct reaction to 2E but they're also a cool setting element and probably existed alongside even 2E-style thaumaturgy all along) but should be paired with general discussion NOT of special things you need Occult to do but with a few actions anyone can do with Occult AND of the role folk magic plays even in totally normal uses of Craft, Survival, Bureaucracy, Medicine, etc. A lot of stuff could appear spirit-side rather than player-side. Like, imagine if every ghost and demon, along with having special conditions for their use of Measure the Wind, had special conditions under which they could Hurry Home and special conditions under which their Possession charm automatically ended. Now being a summoner and exorcist is a matter of knowing that a ghost can appear in circumstance X and can't tolerate occupying a body in condition Y, rather than having exclusive powers to summon and exorcise directly. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jan 30, 2023 |
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Jan 30, 2023 21:07
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On the one hand I agree, but, also that's unclear why that wouldn't be Lore - like, there's no categorical difference between knowing stuff about malfeas and knowing things about Wu-jian, if you live in Halta or something. In many ways, malfeas is nearer! As described, I'd probably ask for a Lore roll to declare things about how a given spirit works - but, then why do we have occult (again)?
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Jan 30, 2023 21:33
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I'd actually characterize Lore as the odd man out there, since as Roadie points out there's a lot of skills which in principle could be rolled to know stuff in various fields but that Lore rudely shoves aside. If I wanted to keep 25 distinct skills I'd probably reframe Lore as more specifically akin to Academics from WoD games where it's like knowledge of liberal arts, mathematics, library science, and education but not history, geography, or (super)natural science.
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Jan 30, 2023 21:42
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Ferrinus posted:If I wanted to keep 25 distinct skills Now here's something ExEss did that I liked.
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Jan 30, 2023 22:02
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Schwarzwald posted:Now here's something ExEss did that I liked. Definitely, although the treatment of attributes was completely baffling. Mental/Physical/Social was right there!
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Jan 30, 2023 22:11
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Schwarzwald posted:Now here's something ExEss did that I liked. I didn't like all of it, but I do like Sagacity.
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Jan 30, 2023 23:04
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I think I'd like ExEss a lot more if: 1. The developers didn't actively, aggressively, and explicitly dislike the idea of Liminals and half-rear end them because they didn't want to work on them 2. They had just copied Storypath skills/attributes over as cleanly as they could---the system's right there, it's fine, it's good! You don't have to make yet another system just to feel like you did more work! You've already got charms to consolidate and convert (and the knack/purview/boon framework from Scion if you reeeeeally want...)
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Jan 30, 2023 23:09
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As much as the devs were down on Liminals, I thought they came across pretty well mechanically?
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Jan 30, 2023 23:24
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Schwarzwald posted:As much as the devs were down on Liminals, I thought they came across pretty well mechanically? For reference on the latter: the signature exigent had 5. Which reads like it was harder to come up with ways to tie an entire type of Exalt into the basic systems, than it was to find tricks for a specific single character. Probably because they tried, with the latter.
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Jan 30, 2023 23:52
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Rand Brittain posted:Part of this is that Exalted's setting... how should I put this? Before 3e drove a hard wedge in between them, Creation didn't really have a divide between regular knowledge and magical knowledge. It's just facts that you can know; outside of sorcerous inititation, nobody needs to come at magic with a particular mindset or anything like that. At the high end, magic was just science: "motonic physics." There is one possible way to handle this: Occult isn't "knowledge of sorcerous workings" as much as it is "divine etiquette and legal knowledge." This interpretation is based on loosely remembered memories of Brett Devereaux's Practical Polytheism collection, but one of the things he particularly wanted to note was that for ancients, the relationship between humans and gods wasn't one of faith, but rather something of a business transaction - humans provide worship and sacrifices, gods provide benefits. Importantly, however, the gods were seen as powerful but capricious, and what that meant was that it was VERY IMPORTANT to get the ritual to propitiate the gods exactly right - otherwise the gods get offended and ignore the prayer or even punish the supplicant, even if there was a rich sacrifice involved, thus the importance of priests who knew and could perform the correct arcane rituals to contact the gods and beseech their aid without offending them. In the context of Exalted where the gods are both real and run everything, one could see that being even more important. The gods might require specific rituals to get their attention because, after all, they are gods and demand respect, even from the Exalted. There might be social rules regarding what can and can't ask from gods, and the specific manner in which things should be asked for, or even who you can ask things (lest you offend other gods). This could particularly apply if you're trying to create major sorcerous effects - since you're effectively impinging upon the domains of multiple gods, both major and minor, trying to create a world-shaping ritual would in effect be like trying to negotiate, get approval for, and sign all the contracts needed to begin a major construction project, both in the private and public sector. There might be general guidelines that could apply when dealing with gods of a particular bureau or direction or location, but what any specific god wants could end up being unique to the god itself - and with how many gods there are in Creation, a well-trained mortal priest might be able to learn the workings to appease a few gods important to their role, but may not necessarily have time to learn the workings of ALL gods, or even many of them. Occult, then, might represent not just knowledge, but an ability to sense the Essence of spirits and get an intuitive feel for the "shape" of their Essence, which in turn allows someone with such senses as well as book learning about spirits and their rituals to be able to work out from first principles how best to approach any given spirit even without having painstakingly learned and memorized the specific rituals they require first. In a sense, it'd be a little like someone being a horse whisperer - it'd be POSSIBLE to write down how they can tell what a horse is thinking, and for someone else to read that knowledge and gain the ability to read the same tells, but it'll always be slower than their own intuitive sense of what the horse is thinking and they can't react as well to unusual horses or situations. You might have someone else actually drive the negotiations, but you'll still need an occult master to act as a master of protocol and translator in order to arrange the terms being negotiated in a way acceptable to the spirits, as well as translating their own desires to the Exalt's mortal companions. The ability to sense Essence flows could also account for like half the charms in the Occult list as well. (Mind you, I say all this as someone who's never dealt much with sorcery in Exalted so I have no idea how that interpretation would really work out in practice - this is purely in response to the points brought up in this thread)
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Jan 31, 2023 01:06
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I decided that Foundry was worth taking a flyer on, so if you're looking for a big multiyear chronicle with either Solars, Lunars, or Siderials, I've got you covered.
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Feb 6, 2023 17:56
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Does anybody know if I put in a pre-order for the Sidereals book now, will I get an early-access copy of the PDF immediately?
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