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Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

I guess this is the thread to post it, I posted it in the AW thread before this thread was a thing. I started work on a hack based on Exalted, focused specifically on the narrative of "innately flawed god-kings reborn after many centuries" as Exalted originally pitched itself, rather than all the piles of thematic and narrative sprawl that came after. I haven't worked on it for a few weeks thanks to various problems, but I figured I'd toss it up for feedback.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2015 05:38

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:31

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

I'm a little late to the "post your Exalted hack" party, but I was working on one of my own a while back and would be curious if anyone had feedback for it.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 08:32

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Nifara posted:

I think this is an interesting take on it - letting any of the playbooks play as any exalted type is a cool idea if you can get it to work. How were you thinking you would represent the impact of being different exalt types? I'm imagining Dungeon World esque backgrounds?

It's in there under Exaltation Moves, but the whole thing is admittedly pretty unorganized. It's more like Monsterhearts' Darkest Self than DW races.

Each Exalt type has its own form of the Great Curse, which the player fills in with keywords; for example, a Solar's past life had an Ambition and was brought low by a Failing. When they're acting on their destiny's terms (the Ambition in this case) they can choose to treat a miss as a 7-9 instead, but are overcome by the Great Curse until a certain condition is met (for a Solar, you succumb to your Failing until that behavior destroys something of value to your present life.)

I don't have a lot I can say about The Beast specifically, but I like the look of stress vs. harm in your game. It really sort of emphasizes that threats and intimidation are fine but actually getting stabbed is Real Bad News.

Benly fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Feb 12, 2016

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 03:37

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

I don't think of Hx as quite being understanding - rather, it's a tension or similar emotional connection between the two characters which can lead to understanding (which is when the wrap-around occurs). Once you reach that understanding, you learn something from it and that particular tension is broken. I don't think that's the "official" reading, though.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 07:40

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Covok posted:

At the risk of sounding really, really douchey -- and I apologize if I do --, I generally find it easier to get feedback when I format the document I show off. I'm not saying this to sound high and mighty or sound too good for it, I'm saying it because getting feedback can be hard. I find formatting makes it easier to attract people to the doc. Let's the eyes move more easily across the page: less of a chore. I really hope this doesn't pretentious, I'm just trying to help because someone said the same to me a long time back and it helped.

It's fine, I'm aware my formatting is poo poo. I don't really know how to use any formatting software I might have access to (I'm on a Mac, so what options are available to me are probably different from most folks) and every time I start thinking about formatting this my hindbrain goes "no, this is too unfinished, make it better". So.. laziness and depression, I guess? I don't know. If you've got any advice for how to learn how to do this poo poo I'd appreciate it.

quote:

My main worry comes down to how it resolves battles. It might be too piecemeal and lead to the same move being rolled too often. This leads to two questions: what elements of Exalted are you highlighting and how are NPCs built?

It seems like you want to heighten the cursed-insane God-king elements. Is this correct? If so, lowering the importance of battle might be better. That's the vibe I get, but I could be wrong.

I ask about NPC health because it needs to be at a level where combat doesn't go on forever, ya know? Either by narrative reinforcement that taking harm is a big deal, keeping harm low, etc. Otherwise, battles could end up sloggy. It's hard to judge without this information. Assuming characters who can take 1-6 with the higher ends being rare should avoid slogs.

Mortals have 2-3 depending on their sturdiness (a human would have 2, a dino-man would have 3) but die immediately on taking grievous harm. My thought was that 5 (the standard for PCs) is near the upper end of health for enlightened beings - a spirit-king of predatory beasts or Imperial knight might have 3-4, 5 might be a superior war-demon or the living incarnation of a holy mountain. A PC with Ox-Body Technique has 7 and is about the most unstoppable thing in Creation, a war machine built to go toe to toe with Primordials. PCs in this should be the scariest thing around.

Which leads into "what story am I trying to tell", because it is definitely the case that Exalted usually has no idea what story it's trying to tell. "Cursed god-kings" is about accurate. Basically, many years ago I bought the first edition of Exalted before any of the splatbooks had come out, and the story it was pushing was "now you have the power of a demigod who hosed up real bad, and there's no reason to think you'll do any better, and destiny wants you to do great and terrible things", and I wanted to go back to that root.

quote:

I didn't really look at the playbooks, but the idea of linking Exalted type to the Great Curse and making the playbooks universal setting archetypes is a solid way of doing things.

Yeah, it kind of seemed like the only way to allow more than one Exaltation type without a hojillion playbooks, and only a few splats really broke from the usual structure anyway. (And those splats were ones that couldn't really fit into the story I wanted to tell as PCs anyway.)

Edit: I've edited the document's section on Harm with examples of what sort of creatures can withstand different amounts of Harm.

Benly fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Feb 12, 2016

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 08:42

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Okay, I tried out markdown. Here's a formatted version of Exalted World; the formatting is simple but should make it less wall-of-text-y. The rules are still pretty disorganized, but at least I bolded the key term of each rules paragraph so you can see what the hell it's about.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 10:25

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Welp, I've had insomnia and I've been chewing over Exalted World and I'm kind of coming to think that Dragonblooded, much as I love them, might not fit as player characters. The essential problem I'm having is that the other splats I'm using have an inherent tension that entwines their power and their curse. Solars' greatness magnifies their failings, Lunars have superhuman totem powers coming with subhuman bestial instincts, Abyssals are raised to greatness by the same thing that shackles them into servitude.

I can't think of something like that for DBs. The Great Curse I have for them now is basically just an elemental version of the Lunar curse, which feels kind of weaksauce. I don't mind changing canon around some to find the narrative beats I want, I'm just having trouble thinking of how to do it.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2016 14:34

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Nifara posted:

I'm going to read through the FEV document tomorrow when my brain isn't so melted from doing playbook layout - but I'll definitely read and feedback.

My brain is melted because of all this stuff!

Crazy. I need to write up the MC sheet, but otherwise it's playable and hopefully good. I'll be playtesting when I get a chance. I'll update the document with the MC sheet when it's written.

So I guess I'm not 100% clear on how Excellencies work. I'm reading it as "when you do your caste's core move in specific ways, add the relevant charms you know to the list of options for that basic move", plus "when you get 12+ you go hog wild and pick all the options you want"? Where does rolling +virtue enter into this? Do you roll the +virtue instead of the +caste if you want access to the excellency's benefits? Sorry if I'm being thick.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 07:54

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Covok posted:

I've just finished the latest draft for Friendship, Effort, Victory.

The big things on this change are:

I removed all the "mark training" only moves

I made all the above moves always true to the archetype: all archetypes mark training when they do an action from a list of three. This is in addition to getting one on a 6-

I added in a string mechanic I called "ties."

I replaced all the "mark training" only moves with ones related to ties.

I'm feeling pretty good with the new draft. To reiterate: this is a hack to specifically play titles like Dragonball, Naruto, and Bleach. Shonen battle comics, not just anime. I'm going for a particular story that isn't directly tied to a setting. That said, I put in many mechanics (many of which are GM facing) to reinforce the elements of the genre.

I realize it can kind of a big read, but any feedback is appreciated.

I'm not sure about Temper's name, since it seems more about aggressive idealism to me. On the other hand, a friend of mine thought the name was pretty appropriate and made a decent case for it.

I like the way Battle A Mob is implemented.

I assume it's because Ties are a new mechanic, but I feel like there should be a playbook that uses them more heavily, to indicate the kind of character who maybe doesn't bring much to a fight but brings everyone together around them. (This is the female lead depressingly often, but not always!)

Have you seen Luckyman? Because it's really hard for me to read this without thinking about it in terms of that series. (The lead characters are Luckyman, Friendlyman, Effortman, and Victoryman - it's a very self-aware shounen battle manga parody.)

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 09:21

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Covok posted:

I have never heard of luckyman. Is being compared to it a good thing?

Luckyman is frigging excellent but also has no readily available English translation, I got to see it through circumstances that are unfortunately not really replicable. It was very popular and surprisingly influential in Japan, and is a visibly massive influence on Onepunch Man in particular recently. The creator is generally believed to be the pseudonymous writer of the team that created Death Note and Bakuman, and the uncle in Bakuman who had one comedy-superhero hit and worked himself to death seems extremely closely modeled on his Luckyman work.

:goonsay:

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 09:39

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Nifara posted:

The great tension in the Dragon Blooded, as far as I see them, is service vs ambition.

It took me a while to respond to this because I was chewing it over. I don't think you're wrong about this being a major tension in the Dragon-Blooded, but it's fundamentally different from the other tensions I mentioned. In this case, it's two distinct drives pulling them in separate directions, while the others are all two faces of the same thing. A Solar the glory of her First Age self is by necessity embracing its failings. Likewise for a Lunar's totem and its base instincts or an Abyssal's granted power and binding chains.

So yeah, that's a tension that's there, but it's not quite what I need. A central conceit for Exalted World is that, for the Exalted, to be great is to be flawed by the very nature of their power. The Great Curse isn't an external problem, it's inherent to the way the kinds of Exalted work.

(The Sidereal tension, for this purpose, is that to stand above fate is to stand outside of it - inherently, the more they become able to see and manipulate the strands of history, the less they ultimately matter because they're not part of the story they're reading and telling. This happens to not be well-suited to PC use, unfortunately.)

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 14:33

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Flavivirus posted:

Maybe you could play with the idea that Dragon-Blooded generally (with the exception of the Empress maybe) only can achieve great things by working as part of a group - so, like, they can get lots of strength in unity but to do that have to give up their own goals and individuality? Really that's a rephrasing of the service/ambition dichotomy, but it might be easier to work with that way? Maybe give the Dragon-Blooded playbooks opportunities to do the same big things other playbooks can, but have it at the cost of taking on obligations or having the greater organisation take some control of the outcome.

So, "Dragon-Blooded playbooks" aren't exactly a thing in my hack. I have five playbooks, and exaltation type is more analogous to MH Darkest Self - it's one move that you can invoke to automatically 7-9 when you embrace your particular destiny, at the cost of embracing your Great Curse along with it.

(The hack in question, which I haven't been reposting since I don't want to feel like I'm aggressively flogging it. On the other hand at this point the conversation is probably getting confusing without a link.)

So for this purpose it would be something like "You are born to greatness and made to serve, one of a thousand scales that make the great dragon. Your Purpose is (blank) and your Obligation is (blank). Exercise Excellency when you draw on society or the elements around you to pursue your Purpose, but you are bound by Obligation until you sacrifice something you desire to it."

Which frames the DB as struggling to achieve the kind of destiny that the other Exalts are trying to avoid being torn apart by, which in turn is a potentially interesting direction to go in.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 22:57

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

DemonMage posted:

Or you could even move up to 2014 or so and just make a Discord channel =-p

What are the actual benefits to using Discord other than "it's new"? I already have an IRC client for other poo poo and I'm not sure how fancy something like this really needs to be.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2016 07:42

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Frgrbrgr posted:

OK, Succubus version 2, borrowed some stuff from the Vampire this time - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PH_LlKZI3UvcWapWimVjwWm3GXo9kK20tftG8FIF_IE/edit

Feedback welcome. Balance needed.

Does Quite Convincing let you just keep pestering someone for strings (spend 1, gain 2) until they give in and join your covenant?

Does the Turn On from Second Thoughts get the advantage of Want Another Go?

It seems to me like the sex move should trigger when covenant members partake of your That One Thing. It feels weird to be able to have a money-succubus who still preys through sex. Maybe move the current sex move to an effect of That One Thing and then the sex move is that sex with you counts as partaking of your That One Thing?

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 02:52

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Frgrbrgr posted:

C - It's something I debated, but I like it as a sex move because it taps directly into Succubus lore - feeding on sex. It's also something core to the game, more than just the covenant or skin, there's a reason there's no Drug Move or whatever. Still, will think on it.

I get that, but your Succubus explicitly doesn't have to be about sex, in the same way the Ghoul doesn't have to be about flesh. It doesn't make much sense to me to say "the Succubus is about sustaining yourself by preying on others' hungers and that can be a hunger for anything, but the actual feeding is still specific to sex".

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 05:30

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:31

Benly: Aug 2, 2011; 20% of the time, it works every time.

Doc Aquatic posted:

The 'String on yourself' thing also comes up when you have a Neighbor who shouts their own name during sex, so I like that it's just a thing that only comes up in the dumbest of edge cases.

Edit: My assumptions in these cases is that Unashamed and That Good do work to shunt off a string onto whoever you're posing as, but that you're probably risking people not believing your disguise unless you're posing as someone who would actually act like that. (I *think* the string would still go onto the person you're dressed as, even if doing that breaks the disguise, which is a little weird, but I don't think you can interrupt one move to resolve another).

In cases of having a string on yourself, I assume you'd just spend it as if it were on another PC, in which case you could just use it to give yourself XP or maybe put a condition on yourself for some reason.

Spending a string on yourself to give yourself a condition is what happens when you remember something dumb you did a while back and feel bad about it all over again. So it seems like a reasonable consequence of shouting your own name during sex.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2016 16:17

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