Ah, okay. I was super busy when Exigents was going on, so I backed the project but haven't taken the time to actually read the manuscript yet. >.<
General Exalted Thread
Ah, okay. I was super busy when Exigents was going on, so I backed the project but haven't taken the time to actually read the manuscript yet. >.<
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I definitely need to do more reading on the subject, but what little I know of Ainu spiritual beliefs is... not entirely antithetical to that idea?
In Ainu cosmology, our reality's natural form is a lifeless, meaningless expanse of dust. Spirits make journeys into our reality and inhabit the dust, causing it to take on new shapes and develop meanings. Collectively, these spirit-inhabited shapes are the world as we know it, with things like trees and fish and boulders. (I'm unclear on where humans fit into this schema.)
However, the spirits do not intend to reside in our realm eternally, and will eventually seek to leave. (Speculating, but this might be part of their explanation of why death, erosion, and other destructive phenomena exist - as means for the spirits to discard their physical housing and return home). Part of Ainu religious practice was trying to maintain this cycle of visitation and departure, performing rituals to "send" the spirits back home when their vessels had grown tiresome for them (which naturally involves destroying said vessel). If these rituals were not performed, they believed, then the spirits might become disinclined to keep visiting our realm, resulting in the gradual collapse of everything back into lifeless dust.
(I can't help but see an odd symmetry between the Ainu cosmology and Wajin/Japanese concepts of objects and animals becoming youkai if they last long enough; to the Ainu, that would presumably be a consequence of the spirit within the object growing frustrated and/or delirious and mutating their vessel in an attempt to escape.)
Admittedly, the Ainu spirit-concept is one where most physics and biology occur "because the spirits want it that way", by and large, but in a way where the spirits themselves aren't really interested in causing things to happen outside of the established order we're accustomed to, and are willing to let their vessels be destroyed because they were never planning to inhabit them perpetually to begin with.
As a consequence of it being a sincere effort to understand and explain RL phenomena, treating it as real could potentially lead to taking a physics textbook and appending "...because such is the will of the spirits" to every scientific law.
More importantly, though, this was all happening within a larger culture with its own specific ideas; for example, traditional Ainu art was intensely aniconic, because depicting any living thing could result in a spirit trying to inhabit said depiction and then getting upset when it found itself stuck inside a shirt or a snuffbox instead of a trout/bear/etc. They would change the specific words they used to refer to various fish and game animal species to fit the season - I remember an example where... salmon, I think, would be rechristened during their spawning season, because it's important to be extra-polite to spirits when they're preparing to leave, and their usual word for 'salmon' sounded a lot like their word for another kind of fish which they felt salmon would find unflattering to be compared to.
Ugh, this started out as me seeing a parallel, but now that I can't find my big book of Ainu history/culture/folklore/etc to refresh myself, I feel like I'm giving a subpar presentation of Japan's First Nations.
- Location
- South Carolina
In the end, I decided not to wait on a final decision on whether Golden Calibration could be sold on the Vault (DriveThru didn't feel qualified to make the decision, and finding someone at Paradox to make it had taken weeks and might wind up taking even longer).
Here is the final book, released as a free supplement under the Dark Pack rules. May it bring you joy. May you send me any comments you come up with so I can continue to make corrections and adjustments. May I spend the rest of my life working on IP I actually own.
Here is the final book, released as a free supplement under the Dark Pack rules. May it bring you joy. May you send me any comments you come up with so I can continue to make corrections and adjustments. May I spend the rest of my life working on IP I actually own.
- Location
- Ottawa
The Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick was based on Charcoal March of Spiders Style, actually, and it was always mostly hypothetical.
Obsidian Shards was far far worse. Where Cobra Style was overpushed and other Sidereal styles were broken, OSoI was just baffling. It included a scene-long perfect defense, a Charm that makes all your martial arts Charms free, a Charm that creates obedient clones of other characters that last for weeks and can use their originals' motes, a Charm that lets you act at least thirty-seven times per turn...it's so obviously insanely broken that I legitimately don't know what the author was thinking.
The most ridiculous Charm, fittingly, is the capstone. Breathing on the Black Mirror, or Win Offscreen Prana. You use it during a climactic scene, and the Storyteller offers you your choice of five different automatic victories. The one you choose, happens. It's great if you don't actually like playing the game, and would rather spend your time looking at a piece of paper that says A WINNER IS YOU.
I've always liked that aspect of the Sidereal Charmset. Particularly Medicine being all death-y.
Keywords, I think, fell victim to the same anti-2e overreaction that turned ten-step attack resolution into nobody-knows-exactly-how-many-steps attack resolution. It seemed like they were trying to hide some of the game's complexity, to avoid the immediate shock of seeing so many moving parts when you first read the book. But of course hiding complexity just increases it.
Good to see the tide turning back towards clarity.
- Location
- South Carolina
Honestly, stuff like Shaping and Holy never really went away even in the core, they just didn't have Keywords so they took ten times as many words to say and it wasn't really clear whether any specific example counted or not.
Blaque
Resident Catblob
- Location
- SLC UT
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The Ainu take sounds like a good contrast to what I mean. I admiteldy am running with a bit of how I see how WW did animism in Werewolf and the Year of the Lotus stuff, and it was transplanted into Exalted with Journey to the West Heaven mixed with a pretty cynical take on Washington DC.
I think a setting could work that runs on the Ainu-style occasionalism. But I am pretty sure that's not what I think WW was working on with the original invention of least gods or how it ended up as per Oadenol's Codex where it became al-Ghazālī by teamwork and committee. And a lot more heavy lifting I think would need to be done to get htat to be recognizably Exalted still.
Note, this isn't to say minor things can't have gods. I think actually the idea of Japanese kami and youkai don't hurt. I just expect htat like, isntead of every sandle getting something, you end up with more things like gods of notable trees, sacred stones, or shikigami-looking. Things that seem to have like, enough of an importance to point-out get them, is how I Think on it.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I see it more as 'there's a bundle of undifferentiated spiritstuff there but it's not yet actually a god god'. Like the difference between a non-sapient Wyld puppet and an actual Raksha.
- Pronouns
- she/her
I treat least gods as an unproven theory on the inner workings of Creation that's informed some spiritual practices as well as explanations for other phenomena that can't be perceived with the human eye.
Thus far, I've found the only people who lose out from this approach are the people who want to influence and interrogate inanimate objects.
Thus far, I've found the only people who lose out from this approach are the people who want to influence and interrogate inanimate objects.
Google drive broke the link from the post on Onyx Path forums to the Infernals Homebrew Charm Compilation with their access keys update earlier this year. Do you happen to have a copy of the compilation you could throw up on Google Drive with a functional link?
Also, apparently you can't post in the Exalted section of OPF anymore.
sysid_ACE
Of Many
- Location
- Somewhere, UK
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is how I've always seen it too! A "tiniest god" not really being possible to precisely interact with, but still there, dutifully doing its work, as much as it can be said to be working or acting dutifully.
- Location
- Ottawa
I didn't save anything; actually, I don't even remember making that post.
But I followed the forum link, and most of the links there still work for me. So I rehosted the compilation PDF on dropbox.
1310 pages of homebrew Infernal content. Enjoy!
homebrew_yozi_charms_2e_compilation.pdf
sysid_ACE
Of Many
- Location
- Somewhere, UK
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We just finished our (bad) 7000-odd word port of playable Raksha to Exalted Essence. I might post it on here once at least one friend has looked at it, killed any egregious errors in their cribs.
It's quite badly structured though, it currently starts with the paragraph:
I might leave it in that state though. It adds some character. Some.
It's quite badly structured though, it currently starts with the paragraph:
I might leave it in that state though. It adds some character. Some.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Uni is over for the year so I have literally nothing to do, so if you want someone to provide structural editing suggestions I'm free.
The Exalted section on OPP forums has been broken for a while. Somebody mentioned (Maybe on the discord) that it might be a problem with the super long 'Ask the Dev's questions and that not even the mods can go in and delete the threads to get the forum working again, but how likely its the fault of those long 1000 page threads I don't know.
- Location
- South Carolina
Bizarrely, it seems like the forums themselves work fine; it's only the list of threads that won't update. I tried and failed four times to make a thread for Golden Calibration the first time I published it and then was surprised when it showed up on Google. All four threads are right there on the forum and you can see them without a problem if you ask it for only threads from the last 30 days of activity.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Yeah, posts and threads still going through it's just that the page doesn't update.
This used to last a few days at a time while I closed down or moved the larger threads but it eventually became beyond my ability as a moderator to repair. The only thing I didn't try was deletion because that "solution" defeats the point of content being on an internet forum.
Article: At $200,000 in Funding - Sidereals Supplemental Content: Battle Arts of the Back Alleys - A selection of martial arts favored by criminals and disreputable grandmasters: Seven Drunken Gods, Devil Pipe, Roaring Iron, and Prince-Eating Mendicant styles.
Well those sound promising.
I think I've seen Vance talk about Devil Pipe before, and two of the others I think I've at least seen the name, but is Roaring Iron new?
Also, they are slowly adding more premium reward tiers:
Article: Now that we've funded a bunch of supplemental content (which will likely be released in a Companion book or two), surely there's room to add some more premium reward tiers?
Yes, we'll add more premium reward tiers. Note that these will still be limited in quantity and pretty pricey. But if you want to go big on rewards, here's what will be added:
Nov 30 at 6 AM EST, Recruiter of Prodigal Stars ($450) will offer a Quick Character Write-up for a living Sidereal of your choice
Nov 30 at 6 PM EST, Sorcerer of the Celestial Design ($450) will offer a Custom Spell based on your suggestions.
Dec 7 at 6 AM EST, Legend of Secret Arts ($650) will offer a Quick Character write-up of a Sidereal of your choice, along with a secret technique they possess for one of their Martial Arts styles.
Dec 7 at 6 PM EST, Legend of Sorcerous Wisdom ($650) will offer a Quick Character write-up of a Sidereal of your choice, along with a Custom Spell based on your suggestions.
Dec 14 at 6 AM EST, Master of Twofold Enlightenment ($650) will offer a Custom Spell and a Sidereal Martial Arts Charm based on your suggestions.
Dec 14 at 6 PM EST, Heritor of the Sorcerer's Mantle ($850) will offer both a Custom artifact and a Custom Spell based on your suggestions.
Prince-Eating Mendicant sounds awesome. I wonder if it's related to Laughing Monster?
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
eat the rich style
Ah, so we have:
- Seven Drunken Gods (Drunken Fist)
- Devil Pipe (Cocaine Wizard)
- Roaring Iron (???)
- Prince-Eating Mendicant (Eat the Rich)
sysid_ACE
Of Many
- Location
- Somewhere, UK
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Common metaphors for guns include...
Maybe Roaring Iron will have flame pieces as a form weapon?
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Roaring Iron style was mentioned in the exact same bit of The Realm that Prince-Eating Mendicant is from.