Alright... So right up front, this whole session came out of the fact that we could not find a day to share an actual Live Session via IRC. So we adapted and played a 'As you can' play-by-post. This immediately and tellingly changes the pace of the game and enables a more 'longform' style of play and writing. It comes off much more as a cooperative storytelling experience versus a proper Game.
The admittedly flexible definition of Game that I tend to use/emphasise includes but is not limited to 'a set of objective or agreed upon rules/mechanics that define modes of play. Play happens within the spaces defined by those rules to generate game results.'
That's not the comprehensive definition, but the important part is that a game has play. Which is to say it has wiggle room, jiggle, slack. I might've mentioned before but 90% of all 'make work fun' initiatives fail because work by its nature cannot have flexibility or allow for 'cleverness'. You cannot jump the system to achieve a goal, and your goals not embraced by you the player.
Now, the 'play by doc' style reduces a certain degree of play in exchange for a more flexible playing space/experience- that is to say, you don't do as much mechanically, but do a lot more narratively. Like combat? I would not want to run combat in this format. Maybe 'narrative' combat like it's done in Kerisgame, but not crunchy, ten-steps combat.
Now Mass Combat i could see doing okay... but really any sort of tick-based thing would become glacially slow.
As an overall impression of the session, is that I think we... took advantage of a travel time, but also sort of missed the point. We did a lot of things during transit that extended out into a multi-week gameplay juggernaut. On paper though this same span of time could've been completely handwaved and we fastforwarded to meeting Susili Moto.
What I'm trying to say is that Aleph primarily- and then me because I didn't really want to push that hard on advancing- let this whole arc play out in day-by-day chunks. Or several scenes dedicated to a single day's worth of challenges. This is something I am often very leery of, due to bad pacing experiences in general. It's easy to fall into the trap of moment-to-moment Exalted. Especially when you have an infinite document and an arbitrary amount of time to spend embelishing the scenes.
So as a consequence of this- we had a lot of time spent on character development and backstory, of navigating around wilderness hazards and a fair amount of worldbuilding. I want to stress that this was not wasted time or busywork, but I've seen it happen or done it myself as ST where a game gets bogged down on meaningless scenes or challenges.
This is not to say that every scene must be jam packed with action or concrete advancement or Epic Loot (but those are easy things to mark as signs of progress), but part of the ST's job is to recognize when a player wants to Get Moving.
To give you an idea of what I mean, is that I was generally never given an explicit option to Move Faster. Challenges were laid out to Inks in a linear fashion. I was having fun engaging with those challenge, but at the same time I think I would've liked a bit more development or encouragement generate my own challenges. Most everything in this session was a consequence of a single decision.
Related to pacing that I brought up with Aleph later, is that the nature of the 'longform game' is that it assumes that XP is rewarded at the end in one big glut, instead of dribbled out to take advantage of Stuff happening immediately or coming up. I could've learned multiple Dots over the course of this session, and maybe more than a single Charm, for example.
Now let's talk about the actual Game!
This whole 'arc' unto itself grew out of a very simple desire. I wanted to learn Trackless Region Navigation, and I wanted to do it faster. Aleph agreed with my impression of Creation that any 'difficult experience' can count as a tutor for a Charm or trait, so after making a case for Maji being a Survival Tutor (raising Inks to Surv 4), Aleph informed me that Inks could go two routes out to Susili Moto's land. The slow, safer route along a proven road, or quite litereally into the untravailed wilds, over steep mountain peaks, deep valleys, gorges and rivers.
Remember- Inks is not a buff amazonian warrior or anything that looks visually Competent. her whole aesthetic is rooted in the idea of 'I am Helen of Troy Polymath', but most people remember Helen of Troy for her beauty, not her brains. She is a sexy nerd urging a caravan crew of some 30 people to go haring off into no man's land. I deliberately designed her to enable situations like this, because it helps upsell why Exalted are amazing.
It still took some convincing.
Prior to all this was some ends being tied up from last session, awarding Backgrounds where appropriate and teeing off the actual plot. The ambushers from last session might've been hired by Moto, or Pangasutri - or even Rankar, if he caught wind of what Inks is up to. Remember, She's not supposed to talk to him at all, but Rankar never explained why.
On a related note, Inks did in fact learn her lesson, making a point to buy a Buff Jacket before leaving Xandia's lands. I haven't given it a lot of thought or detail yet, but I'm assuming it's mundane and of the best quality availible in that region- considering Inks has Frugal Merchant and Insightful Buyer. Now mechanically Aleph doesn't like the 2e equipment bonuses, so I'm not sure how she'd want to mechanize this partiuclar jacket, but I think we both agree that higher quality goods are mechanically meaningful.
Pesala continues to be adorable and Pipera is... less than pleased. So severe.
Anyway, Xandia warns Inks, and we're off!
So, for six days, Inks beat her metaphorical head against the wilds. To the point that her convoy (all mortals, save for Ajjim, Vahti, Pesala and Pipera) started eroding their intimacies towards her. Now I don't know what these guys are statted as, but if they're template mortals, their Conviction was 1, so they went from 'Feeling something' about her to 'Feeling Nothing' and/or 'Not liking her'.
But by the time this happened, they were already six days in and going forward was the only option. I admit I felt kind of dickish right there, Inks didn't though.
This raises an interesting point that I think the game/setting doesn't talk about much is- how do supernatural characters know that they can learn a Charm? That leaning into a challenge can make or break them? I admit my favorite example in recent cinema of 'necessity is mother of Supernatural Invention' is Tai Lung's escape from Chorh-Gom Prison, but I digress.
For six days, a Magnitude 3 caravan is moving about 5 miles closer a day to Moto's lands. Usually less.
Before Inks can finally tip over and learn her Charm though, Pipera uses one of her skills to assess the weather, giving us hours of time to prepare.
Out of game, Aleph reminded me of Raising the Earth's Bones, so I aborted my previous stunt and rewrote it to invoke the spell. Doing so allowed Inks to raise a bunker in less than an hour. We might've lost a day's travel, but we were safe and far more comfortable than most travelers have it.
Of course, right then and there Inks tried to buck up spirits again.. and failed. Remember she has Performance 0, which is normally what you use on groups of individuals. If Inks had been mechanically addressing her convoy as a mass unit or Court (which is personal jargon not a system term in 2e), she could've used Presence. But arranging for that would've been difficult at best.
Situations like these are what charms like Authority-Radiating Stance and Husband Seducing Demon Dance are for, by the way. Charms that Inks does not yet have/may never get.
That aside, Pipera is starting to slip. I wonder where this is going... More seriously for the postmortem, doing things like this is very important to flesh out the world and characters, but the ST should always be mindful that a PC might not be able to or in a position to notice all of the nuance. If you're dead set on a player noticing something, have them roll for it- that helps fix it in their memory as much as anything.
The storms that follow are something of a rolling, dramatic setpiece. A backdrop that underpins the central challenge of 'Getting the caravan through the mountains. They don't necessarily demand extra rolls in and of themselves, but modify existing ones as the setpiece goes on.
I was pretty frustrated with my poor rolls the past few rounds, so I made a point of creating a new scene myself with Inks cooking for the camp, and emphasizing her skill as an artisan/cook/etc. I am aware of the irony that I am likely playing this closer to how 3e tries to make Craft.
But the important thing is that I tried to move a challenge into one of my stronger spheres, and Aleph was more than happy to allow the attempt.
Moving on- part of why this whole 'chapter' took so long was Pipera, in a good way. We both wanted to spend more time with her as a character, fleshing her out and if not advancing her relationship with Inks, creating a wider foundation to build more story on. Characters like Pipera are very important because they're persistent actors that exist to foil and flatter Inks's existence as much as be independent actors. It's exaggerated because this is a 1:1 game, but in general, NPCs serve important functions that help anchor PCs to the game and the world.
Another big thing about Pipera that will become clear through the rest of the session is that like Etiyadi and Tekutali, she's a big nose-up at the idea of of Homogeneous Objective Creation Culture. I think I've brought it up before, but short-version is that homogeneous creation is a side-effect of the ST being overburdened and/or metagaming on the part of the players, malicious or incidental.
So what Aleph's trying to do is use Pipera as a storytelling tool (not exactly a plot device) to show a small, digestible slice of a specific culture.
The nice thing about this sequence was that I as a player had the opportunity to really think about Inks's reaction, and try to develop her character more in response. This is why she resists the urge to Fix immediately.
Finally though, enough time/effort has passed that Inks has learned Trackless Region Navigation.
TRN is one of those in my opinion, underappreciated Solar Charms because Survival-based challenges tend to be thin on the ground. Most games take place in cities or settlements, and not a lot of thought is spent on travel, handwaving it and any of it's related hurdles. Not so in Sunlit Sands, where time and distance matter.
I need to underline something. Inks can lead a unit of Magnitude 3 or less (Under our HRs that something like 30 people), 10 miles per day across any terrain. Minimum. Medics to some war-torn village, commandos to a distant target, or in her case, caravans. She does this with no roll, and if it's good terrain, it's 20 miles per day instead.
As Aleph and I discuss in the docusession itself, going the slower way ended up being faster.
Now, I will state outright that other forms of travel are better, like Sorcery or magical transports like airships and such. And there is a time/place for those things. I made the point of dipping into Survival because I had never really been able to play the survival game live on camera. I liked what it says about Inks that she's willing to stretch out of her 'stereotype' and cherrypick Charms.
Considering Windroarer, I'm honestly looking forward to picking up some Ride Dots and maybe a charm or two.
I did not dive headlong into sorcerous transport primarily to take it easy on Aleph and not deform the game around Inks being able to casually whip around huge swaths of Creation. I'm looking forward to developing that capability, but I don't consider TRN to be wasted experience- and I hope to be able to continually get use out of it throughout the the game.
Whew, gonna pause here for a sec. Take five everyone.
Okay? You good? Got something to drink? Excellent.
It's time ladies and gentlemen, for the Calibration Show!
I have not actually played through Calibration since my very first game of Exalted that I ran, in which I misread 'fate errors' to mean 'Yeddim drop from the sky'. The last time I ran a game with it, it was largely mentioned in passing as 'Summon Ligier', which took up the majority of the important wordcount.
So Aleph and I were both given the unique opportunity to drill into both the general idea of Calibration and how it specifically affects Inks, Gem and other regions. Now Aleph has gone on to say (and for good reason) that it is a years-end, hallow's-eve style period. The borders of Creation are thinner to all things, many 'year and a day' wards end, most of which are mortal magic and simple blessings. It's a time where you do your best to stay safe, ask the gods for a safe time, etc.
Importantly, and I think lots of people are guilty of this- how many people remember that most PCs have lived through 15+ Calibrations that they remember? For the life of me I forgot, until now. Speaking for myself, I prefer to think of Calibration as more like Dwali + Golden Week, not to deny the 'thinning barriers' mechanics though. My point is that presentation matters, and making it something to be Feared prejudices players towards it.
So this sequence was a good give/take period between Aleph and I where we tried to flesh out the period for each other as much as the game.
What follows is our Big Dramatic Pipera scene, which I think strikes a nice balance of mechanics and challenge vs plot advancement. This is one of those careful lines the ST has to tread, because on the one hand, the ST should want to advance the plot, but 'something for nothing' tends to leave players feeling dismayed or disappointed. Or unloading it all at once to a captive audience is railroading.
To touch back on the 'culture' thing- the important element here is that while there might be an underlying common ground, something objective and quantifiable like the specific traditions and language the Kusaboin use, the depth of that... research is such that for most games and setting material, it's largely irrelevant. Like, yes Inks could research those tattoos and discover that entire clades of gods have similar private codes and languages they dole out or keep secret and so on.
I think I could flesh this point out more, but I'm not sure how... anyway!
Another important point is that Aleph is trying to root the Kusaboin in reasonable/rational terms. There are causes or root foundations for Pipera's behavior, instead of thoughtless, arbitrary content that moves the plot along. She doesn't have a tragic history because that's an inexpensive form of drama- she's experienced a tragedy that has led her here, to Inks.
With these reveals, we move on to the Calibration Challenge!
A big part of this challenge was figuring out and undersatnding the houseruled exhaustion system, because of how mote reactor works. Short-version is that level 2 Anima means a scene counts as 5 hours of strenous activity, and Inks is Sta+Res 5, so she has 'One scene' before she starts feeling fatigue penalties. At sta-res 10, she could go two consecutive scenes at level 1, or 1 full scene at totemic.
Part of that was due to how in 2e core, WP and Virtues can be used to waive fatigue penalties, but since mote reactor also lets you regain WP with trivial ease, so that had to be addressed too. I admit I wasn't happy with the mechanics, but hashing it out midsession would've hurt us both.
One of Aleph's pet elements is Omen Weather, that is to say, invoking it or mechanizing it, so the inclusion here was expected but also well-implemented. It's a good, harmless thing that helps upsell the magical nature of Creation. And the way she used Pipera to punctuate the setpiece's description was effective.
Now Aleph broke up the subsequent challenge into paired beats, a 'Diagnose/Address' pair, essentially. One roll to see what's going on, with specific terms and modifiers, and then a second roll to actually address the challenge. Good success on the former makes the latter easier or provides more options.
Note however that Aleph learned several lessons from previous sessions, and did not commit to any set solution in her head, leaving me the opportunity to surprise her- which I did, repeatedly.
Invoking Holy Goldsmith Style for essentially the second time ever, Inks improvised warding talismans. Players tend to forget that even though Iron is one of the Wyld's banes, the Sun is the actual proper 'Meant to fight the Wyld' element of Creation.
Raising the Earth's Bones created another bunker, and we hunkered in for the first wave...
So this 'preparation' roll (the 1st of 7 or so major rolls) bought down the potential External Penalties Inks would've had to deal with. Remember that Inks doesn't have 10s in everything, so some of these pools are dealing with Difficulty 4-5 on 7d before stunts, which means +3 autosux at best. Creating such a comprehensive bunker in such a short time made the subsequent challenge far easier than any ordinary mortal party. And I should point out that a properly equipped mortal caravan could have survived as well or even better than Inks- she had to do all this improvised, a properly provisioned caravan would have had this kind of stuff packed away anyway.
The first challenge was the speaking winds, which Inks comprehended quickly and cleanly. After consulting my spells, I asked if Private Plaza of Downcast Eyes would help, and the version we're using allowed the caster to block senses/actions from both directions, so Inks chose 'sound'. It was a tradeoff I was willing to make, in that any hazard Inks had to Hear was now at penalty, but it was better than being lulled into madness that Inks could not cure.
Now one hiccup is that Aleph demanded 6 control rolls for the sorcery action, forgetting that by default, casting is not 'per (long) tick' but 'Per Action'. So on paper it would've only been two rolls, Shaping + Casting. It worked out well enough, and added to the tension of the scene, but it definitely took a notable chunk of time to resolve.
Off camera Aleph was dang near pounding her desk (or so I imagine) when I asked if Private Plaza would work. Note that this casting essentially rendered the 'incoming hazard' inapplicable, meaning nobody had to roll nor did Inks have to make any 'ST generated' roll to prevent people from listening to the sounds.
The second diagnoistic roll was a close one- succeed by zero, that revealed chaos-lightning. Note that Inks does not have a Shaping Defense. Mostly due to Inks not going or living anywhere where such a thing would occur to her as being necessary. It sure feels necessary now though!
But since Inks lacked a proper defense, she did not want to go outside, trusting the bunker to protect them. Being inside though, Inks could use Charms to keep it stable. I admit I wish I had Object-Strenghtening Touch or Durability-Enhancing Technique, but Crack-Mending worked out well.
The last challenge was the bloody carrion rain. I reasoend it out in-character why Inks did not go out into the muck. If she had a 'regular' cleansing collar, it would've given her +3d against the hazards, but she doesn't so I didn't.
This is when the exhaustion rules kicked in and Inks could not actually stay awake. I like that these rules came up, but I felt somewhat frustrated by my lack of understanding on how they worked before this challenge came up.
The consequences of this sequence will come up later, but to underline. No casualties, no lasting damage, against a Wyldstorm. One that crossed 300+ miles before hitting us.
Of course, it's not like the storm did nothing. I did not have the power to banish it outright or anything, so yes, it has left a Mark on Creation. Albiet one that Creation tends to manage well enough on its own. I do think that the fandom over-estimates how fragile Creation is (see thinking any Essence screws up the Loom).
The other important point is that instead of trying to make up a fancy exotic disease, Aleph opts for a basic but in-setting supernatural disease: Cholera. This is not a fun thing to have. Not a fun thing to die from and people in Creation die from it, a lot.
A bit of post-storm investigation gives me enough information and cause to message both Etiyadi and Xandia about the storm, which swept through the bordering territories of both their nations. For context, this storm likely came up from the Ashen Wastes, through Pansugatri's land, across Xandia/Etiyadi, and into this little chunk right before reaching Moto's region.
I pointedly did not message Rankar, thinking (without checking) that he would likely consider any message of 'Wyldstorm through Coxati' as rendering Inks tainted goods, litereally and figuratively.
The following sequences were roughed out over the following days, unlike some of the larger sections that were done in one sitting. This meant some of the pacing was disjointed. I did enjoy meeting the Shriekers face to face, and, out of game
Aleph:
you are confusing the poor boy enormously : P
he was expecting to have to beg for their lives and plead with her not to interrupt the ritual
and she's just like
"cool, looks like you're busy. sorry for interrupting."
He is "?????"ing behind his mask.
We're introduced to yet another biome- and I am pleased and impressed that there are still snowy peaks this far South. Again Aleph leaning against the idea of rough/broad strokes. Detail matters.
Now the funny part is that this whole sequence was played out about 90 minutes before I left for work, so at the very end I was hanging on by a thread before having to run out to catch a bus. I might've played better with more time, but I wasn't unhappy either.
Either way, we're introduced to Moto's capital, our first proper manse, and the man himself!
I may have to do a post-postmortem as well, but that's the actual end of the session!
