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Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

MiltonSlavemasta posted:

First Pulse, Solar Hero, Infernal Monster, and Dark Messiah all count "Improvised Weapons" as acceptable form weapons for the style. First Pulse is literally Exalted Street Fighting.

Didn't Dark Messiah, in addition, grant some specific benefit from using dead bodies or coffins as weapons?

# ¿ May 31, 2013 03:30

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 23:29

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Attorney at Funk posted:

I'd max my stunt every time through excessive cruelty to my fellow players with belabored yet perfunctory narration of every single action

Oh yeah, my group had that guy.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 03:42

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Mexcillent posted:

There's lots of received crap about Lunars. I saw Winson Paine say earlier that without exaggeration the book is all rape and bestiality cover to cover when I seem to remember some not so great charms, bad character diversification advice (because of the crappiness of the charms and shapeshifting), and some ok stuff about Lunar anti-imperialism/"savagery" vs. "civilization" in Creation.

Yeah, I think this is a lot of why Lunars shone, relatively speaking, in 2E. It wasn't that the end product was great, it was that there was the largest and immediately-visible improvement.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 03:45

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Denim Avenger posted:

Solar Mate was a desperate attempt to try and fit Lunars into the setting and make it feel like they belonged there when they very obviously didn't. It says a lot that they initially considered removing Lunars all together from Third Edition.

What's funny to me is that in the one game I was in where the Solar Mate trait came up, it was used unfailingly and unerringly for the purpose of the Lunar bailing the Solar out of whatever dumb poo poo he'd gotten up to that time. That said, won't be missed.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 04:17

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PrinceRandom posted:

That is also my hope, hence my hope that they don't take the splat that has the connotation of "Savage" or "primal" and make the only representatives of that splat come from non-Western societies. They should either broaden the splats connotation or include other cultures.

Edit: I used Pocahontas because I was thinking of the Disney movie when I was thinking of the "Noble Savage" trope as something to avoid. I am sad to say that I really don't know much about her historical life at all.

I don't think any of the 'barbarian' cultures I can recall had much Native American styling, unless you want to include the Dragon Kings. The Marukani might've had some Plains influence but they also seemed like they could be 'like' Eurasian steppe nomads. Other than that, and leaving aside the "settled" places like the Haltans, there were... the icewalkers?

# ¿ May 31, 2013 07:19

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Mexcillent posted:

I often wonder how much awful stuff in Exalted comes from the fact that writers put any inane crap into the game they wanted.

This is probably true of virtually every RPG :sigh:

# ¿ May 31, 2013 07:23

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Strength of Many posted:

uh, the Linowan Nation? They're like 1:1 native americans, including all of the tree murder. Dragon Kings are almost strictly mesoamerican and ancient world in feel. Marukani are a bit more generic with touches of Steppes people iirc.

I just realized I actually never read a writeup of the Linowan, except for 'and these are the guys the Haltans have feuds with.' Sounds like I'm not missing a bunch though.

e: SEE?? I guess I just never gave a poo poo about that direction book or was poor when it came out.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 07:29

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Plague of Hats posted:

A more widespread, realistic use of the idea of "barbarian" would dilute it as an icon, making it harder to bring its subversion to the fore and harder to implement as a theme in the books without getting really repetitive.

This actually sounds a lot like ibn Khaldun's theory on the cycles of civilizations (super short summary: a society flourishes, becomes great, becomes decadent, gets knocked over by the next society, who flourish, become great...) although it would seem he, well, did in fact use the term barbarian, or at least a term translated as such.

For the curious (and I only knew this guy from a course in historiography): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

# ¿ May 31, 2013 08:31

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PrinceRandom posted:

... Is it sad that that is how I found Exalted, on TVTropes? I think reading the length of the Exalted entries qualifies as reading a post "The Firm" John Grisham novel.

Pretty sad, yeah

false edit: Though I hear some people use TV tropes to look for 'something like this thing I just saw/read/watched/consumed and liked' which would seem to be a benign use of all this sperg-labor.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 08:32

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PrinceRandom posted:

Is it even sadder that I know of this theory, (and of Ibn Khaldun) because of GURPS Infinite Worlds?

I'm not entirely sure on that front; GURPS books not rooted in random future crap or designing extremely detailed dune buggies seem to have better scholarship than most popular texts.

e: Do they present Spengler as some kind of Truth or as a model that can be used to do thumbnail sketches of alternate history stuff for gaming purposes? I remember getting annoyed at the three or four incidents of Austrian economics being 'new and exciting' in IW2, although IW1's love of Howard Scott in Gernsback made up for it.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 08:36

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The Gate posted:

Fair enough, I read very few of the 2ed books, and kind of assumed the Hunt was still 3-6 DB's with a platoon or two of heavy infantry. Doubling the amount of each would certainly explain that fluff.

I think you're kind of both right, since the books have noted that the Wyld Hunt has been running on fumes and Peleps Deled's hatred of everything that isn't Peleps Deled due to all the Great Houses pulling their surplus heavily-armed maniacs back home, in anticipation of civil war. I believe the books are supposed to be describing both pre-Empress-vanishment and post-vanishment eras too.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 13:41

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

If it was oaks and maples, it would've been just like that Rush song, man. :stare:

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I'm presuming 3e will have some means of creating chickenfolk that doesn't boil down to "loving a chicken".

My table's pet recipe was leading ten men and ten ducks into the deep Wyld, adding the secret sauce, and then returning with twenty (angry, angry) duckmen.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 13:48

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Heart Attacks posted:

Yeah it's weird. Some of the books talk about how the civil war that seems to be on the Realm's doorstep is leading to cuts in the Wyld Hunt forces (which normally only feature like 3-5 dragon-blooded), but then it also talks about how they're doubling down since the Solars have started to return in greater numbers.

Pick your choice of 'editorial incompetence' and 'fewer patrols in greater force' I guess.

# ¿ May 31, 2013 14:25

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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

I think it's completely fair and reasonable to say that unless you are specifically using the power of your new Manse to benefit its surroundings (in addition to other effects or not) then it just makes things shittier for the local peasants. Since when does snapping up resources to fight grand wars ever benefit the people living on top of those resources? If you want to be a just ruler you have to do things differently from the realm and the shogunate and the deliberative.

Well this makes it so doing a cool thing is negative, unless you take pains to do otherwise. I think it is OK to have a setting where doing a thing is, in and of itself, neutral rather than negative, if only for the sake of variety.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 02:40

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Excelsiortothemax posted:

Some hope?

John Morke: Re: Laughing Wounds Style: I plan not to do it, ever.

Maybe he just got all the non-consensual BDSM in on other charms though.

Reading through that it sounded like the "pick your own martial art style to include" was a lot more like "guess what MA style Oberst Morke wishes to include in Ex3E"

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 03:28

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Mexcillent posted:

It's a very Anglocentric idea of wilderness/ecosystems that informs this imo. "Even in my fantasy world, I assume that everyone loves private property and forcing land to suit their whims. Even my imagination is American."

I believe the history of large-scale public works projects is significantly deeper than your summary indicates.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 04:13

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Mexcillent posted:

Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) weren't that, though. Unless they caused climate change or Athabaskan migration.

My point is that not all changes to an environment are catastrophic.

Oh fair enough, I misread you a bit then

I suppose we're agreeing in slightly different directions then.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 04:31

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I will never kung fu for another, nor ask another to kung fu for me.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 04:53

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Attorney at Funk posted:

There was no Usurpation - the Solars just all went Galt.

I unironically assumed the Invisible Fortress was, at least in part, a sick riff on Galt's gulch.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 05:00

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Oligopsony posted:

Notable Gulches of Creation: Malfeas, Autochthonia, the Jade Prison, the Invisible Fortress, the Labyrinth, whatever Lunars have been doing...

My God, it's gulches all the way down!

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 05:08

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I thought manses were basically as durable as small mountains (which is to say, hardly invincible to everything but not prone to casual destruction) unless you took 'fragility' to get more points for magic jacuzzis.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2013 08:37

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Thesaurasaurus posted:

Mantis Style. Disarm, cripple, then hammer the crap out of them every time they try to feebly poke at you.

What's not to like?

Edit: Okay, if the revised DPC lets you literally be Lisa Lisa then I can live with that instead.

Please: Lisa Lisa would combine DPC with what are apparently now Solar Brawl Charms. That's the one thing I regret about losing Solar Hero: I just described it as the ripple

# ¿ Jun 2, 2013 03:39

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MiltonSlavemasta posted:

Losing Solar Hero? It's not being lost, it's just becoming "The Solar Brawl Tree."

Well yeah; but that means I can't teach it to random strangers so easy!

# ¿ Jun 2, 2013 03:46

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Plague of Hats posted:

Stretch goal +$200 over previous: Buy White Wolf a two-year account at DreamHost or something drat.

Why in God's name would you want to save that horrible pit of despair and horror?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2013 04:43

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theironjef posted:

That's some Mary Sue fanwank, right? It's not just me thinking that guy was hired to slightly rebrand his extremely specific porn for every 2nd edition book? I wonder if the original version of that character has a name and lives in his head.

Yeah he drew small black women with shaved heads a lot. I think he got praised actually for drawing a lot of visibly africanish people. Perhaps he has a model, like how I think Dan Smith had that same cute-but-jowly woman who kept recurring in his art?

As for the chapter fiction I didn't dig it much but it didn't seem revolting. Janest remains best fiction of this KS

# ¿ Jun 5, 2013 18:11

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Attorney at Funk posted:

Yeah it was just kind of a goofy line. If we're gonna throw down over every goofy line in White Wolf chapter fiction, we're gonna be here a while.

Sharkdad's revenge: the return of goofy-rear end White Wolf chapter fiction.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2013 18:32

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Ferrinus posted:

I am pretty excited at the idea of bloodline-specific charms and powers. It's a great way to get across the idea that dragon-blooded bloodlines are changing and diverging from the original template without, like, fingering miscegenation as the downfall of a once-mighty empire. Maybe the ancient dragon-blooded had a bunch of weird, primal elemental powers, but modern-day interbred-with-unExalted dragon-blooded have their own crazy stuff.

I recall there were things like the Ghost-blooded-ish DBs in the past; I remember in fact thinking that Liminals would basically be those guys, more divergent and more fleshed out.

I can think of ways to make the DBs still have the 'declining if not irreversible failure of the people' with less 'sex camps for Cathak Cutie' too: make most 'ancestry' things social merits or basically 'You have access to the V'Neef charm tree, isn't that wonderful?'. While I suppose having some kind of 'your parents had unusually well-cultivated Essence, and as such you have a slightly larger Essence pool or whatever' merit WOULD instantly become mandatory for all competitive DB builds and lead to the downfall of Western civilization, it's certainly less offensive to say 'you stem the decline by cultivating virtuous behavior and wisdom' than 'by nailing your aunt.'

# ¿ Jun 5, 2013 23:40

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QuintessenceX posted:

Wait, they're just copying peoples house rules as core mechanics? How do you know this given that they haven't even really said anything about the core mechanics

Having an extremely common house rule become "official" seems like good attention to the public rather than theft, IMO. I know GURPS had a few, even if they were in some cases 'as an alternative to this, try having ST represent HP through ability to carry axe wounds in your meatbulk, and HT representing Fatigue through your superior cardio!' That said, it's also a major rules shift, so who knows

# ¿ Jun 6, 2013 04:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Perhaps it'll just be D20 rules with a note of 'oh just do it in Fate or *World anyway we give up'.

For myself I admit happily I am supporting (if with... reservations, amply discussed in the past thread) 'Exalted: the setting and property' rather than 'ExaltedEngine: the last word in elfgaming" and I expect something better than 2E for a system. I don't expect it'll be super drastically different but I'm OK with that; my main hope is for it to be somewhat simpler, but not 'so simple you can write your character sheet in your hand' simple.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Jun 6, 2013

# ¿ Jun 6, 2013 06:13

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Lymond posted:

He's also mentioned on plenty of occasions that he's been gagged with NDAs, and he and the team were jumping up and down in impatience to tell people about what they were doing. Assigning a motive like this one is uncharitable and not reasonable.

Hm. While I imagine there have been ample bonehead maneuvers, that is a point: is it possible that we aren't getting mechanics "because forums are mean" so much as "NDAs from Iceland, or perhaps the dark will of Richard Thomas"?

# ¿ Jun 7, 2013 19:13

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MiltonSlavemasta posted:

If anyone buys the Chargen Example tier and names their character Exorcist of The Creeping Phantom or Chaste Exemplar of Discarding Lust, I will de-creepify and fully write up any three things in all of Exalted Canon

What tier is that? I'm pretty committed to forcing wiwaxiids into Creation at this point though

# ¿ Jun 7, 2013 19:17

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mistaya posted:

Ever read a Little House book? Women wore skirts, still busted rear end on the farm.

Indeed. If I recall the fiction, didn't she also put on the fancy shrine maiden outfit, which seems like a good candidate for lacelike fringes and a long skirt? She's one frilly hat away from being a Touhou :getin:

# ¿ Jun 8, 2013 18:02

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Dammit Who? posted:

The White Wolf forums have decided again that Asskicker Dorothy is terrible, and have also concluded that she loses all her powers if she ever leaves that field. I dunno if you guys have noticed this, but those are some stupid motherfuckers.

It's like they get compensated on how wrong they are. Has Janest been compared to Homestuck in terms of epicosity yet?

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 06:02

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Kai Tave posted:

Oh good, so it's not just me. Like, Volfer or whatever his name is, his design isn't so bad, but that sword is like someone played God of War and went "man, the Blades of Chaos are awesome...but what if I made them even awesomer?," and then managed to do the exact opposite of that.

That wavecleaver daiklaive is pretty sweet, I'd forgotten about that. And, like, what was her name, the Abyssal pinup girl iconic character, her sword wasn't that bad either. There was a picture of the Roseblack leading a beach landing where she had a daiklave that wasn't bad either. Beyond that I'm not really recalling very many good examples.

I like that Volfer's sword is so stupid you could put eyes on it and it'd be its own character, but I'm also biased and have reliably bad taste.

The wavecleaver daiklaves I liked. I remember discovering a key truth while trying to describe an iaijutsu stunt in a DB game with the... I forget the name, the 'skinny, less damage, more accuracy' daiklave, because it had a hook on its end. The session briefly derailed as we attempted to figure out how the gently caress you make a sheath for something four feet long with a U bend at the top.

I also liked Fallen Tears Poet's bigass hammer, mostly because the concept was clear and any implausibility in things like haft diameter were like 'OK, well, it's made from the soul of a forsaken child.'

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 18:16

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I'd think the balancing would be that (generally speaking) kungfu will lead to less raw damage but more tricks and schemes than swordaxe. Surely, the infrastructure needed to create giant oiled pillars to climb with your developing ripple magics is broadly comparable to the infrastructure needed to make a magic sword!

Now that said I can see how this could go a bit far in the other direction, and make it so that 'having a cool sword' is actually a disadvantage compared to 'having a cool secret style,' when ideally they will be equivalent if equivalent points/mojos are invested in them.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 23:06

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kthegreat posted:

Are people just ignoring the fact that Smash Fists are a thing? That counts as a tool and can be used with brawling. Not to mention that the statement of armed > unarmed is not taking charms into account. I expect that with there being a large number of MA styles that each style will be able to deal well with a given situation (this could be reflected by tags or simply by the effects granted). Maybe there is a style that allows a person to deal with ranged attacks really well by emphasizing the fluidity of motion or something. The point is that straight up damage dealing capability being less than that of a melee person does not mean that the Unarmed character can't be far more versatile and able to handle any given situation with enough investment. And again, Smash Fists are one of those tools that make you stronger than an unequipped unarmed character.

Stylistically speaking, I should be able to learn how to kick rear end with my bare hands in a manner which is competitive with swording, axeing, arrowing, and batcatting. Smash fists are cool but kind of make it so you are not using your bare hands/feet/forehead.

This isn't to say you shouldn't have to make some kind of investment comparable to 'the cost of a daiklave' in order to have combat outputs comparable to 'a guy with a daiklave' of course, but punchfists lock you into the punchfist style. What if I'm a judo-style master, or a Lisa Lisa-style scarf-and-magic user, or, God save us, a grappler??

e: To vaguely repeat myself I think it's OK if kung fu tends to be less damageload, more tricks - or perhaps to use the new lingo, it's easier to build momentum with karate, at the cost of (say) if the other guy with the giant axe does get the drop on you, you may have a harder time parrying the blow than you would with a sword.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 23:17

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cenotaph posted:

Basically it's kind of silly to call the philosophy of tools being better than no tools bad design when it's just design for effect. You don't like the effect, and it's been that way for a decade. Exalted is never going to be that game. Even the gods have to build tools in Exalted, it's huge recurring theme.

Well yeah, but it's also had supernatural kung fu movie inspiration since forever. You could argue that formal martial arts training is itself a technology! :v:

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 23:20

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Lymond posted:

You can do unarmed with your drat forehead if you want to. Don't pretend that Exalted doesn't have tools for people who like the barehanded / unarmored aesthetic, because it does.

It does, although I would be kind of dubious about labelling punchfists/tiger claws/katar/etc. as filling that niche.

Like, to put it in different terms, 'a 2-dot set of smashfists is equivalent to a 2-dot daiklave' is well and good but not equal to 'a 2-dot thinger makes your kungfu comparable in power and scope to a guy with a 2-dot daiklave.' The nature of that two-dot thinger can be quite different, of course.

It's also sort of lame if martial arts has to basically lead in every style tree with 'this Charm lets you fight like you have a weapon with your bare hands!' because that's kind of a waste of a Charm. If it's that universal make some kind of 'Gravity Training' merit which (say) at a 2 dot level gives you the ability to punch for lethal damage or what have you (I obviously am using the potentially obsolete 2E concepts). If you're practicing subtle assassin arts you don't necesarily need it; if you're practicing Bear Wrestling Style, maybe you do.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jun 9, 2013

# ¿ Jun 9, 2013 23:30

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Contrabassoon posted:

My vision of the ideal fight with a really good Solar level archer would play out something like the sniper duel with The End (assuming you didn't cheat)--but The End worked because it was a one-off deal. If every encounter in MGS3 had been The End then it would've been ridiculous. It's a tough row to hoe.

My impression of Solar archery is 'the guy with a bullshit combo and a 5 dot artifact bow who can essentially kill an arbitrary number of attacking soldiers; this is considered to be acceptable because the character can only do it three times before running out of Essence, and therefore, the fourth wave,'

But then, my Exalted gaming has a heavy dose of That Guy in it.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2013 21:37

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 23:29

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Hey, kickstarter update, clearly they read the thread. :v:

While it does not address The Controversy:

* No new info, but Richard "Richard Thomas" Thomas expects updates every couple of weeks as things progress
* Official KS Survey will be held off to avoid the hundreds of shipping address changes that will inevitably occur if they did it now for a winter release
* Please go to this W20 Changing Breeds KS
* Update on that map of Creation

So, I guess they didn't get eaten by a tyrant lizard.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2013 21:08

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