/me coughs pointedly.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
Revlid
blob of bugs
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Developer statements and actual printed material make it explicit that:
a) Exalted can and do develop new Charms on the fly in response to unforeseen exigencies
b) while printed Exalted Charms present benchmarks for Solar power, an endless array of Charms exist in-potentia
c) Exalted can and should waive training times as dramatically appropriate, though this is not reliable
And I know for a fact that you've employed all three of these elements in your own stories and games.
HURRRRRR
Developer statements and actual printed material make it explicit that:
a) Exalted can and do develop new Charms on the fly in response to unforeseen exigencies
b) while printed Exalted Charms present benchmarks for Solar power, an endless array of Charms exist in-potentia
c) Exalted can and should waive training times as dramatically appropriate, though this is not reliable
And I know for a fact that you've employed all three of these elements in your own stories and games.
I don't agree with the idea that Solars would somehow steamroll the WoD, but argue against it honestly.
Don't Solars need to know a specific Integrity Charm for their Anima to count as "real" sunlight?
Lealope
Not yet invincible
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Revlid
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I mean, not to labour the point, but the reason that Solars don't have a Charm to mess around with sympathetic links is because Exalted isn't a setting where sympathetic links are at all relevant – barring, like, three shitty spells. The reason Solars don't have a Charm to stop teleportation in its tracks is because Exalted isn't a setting where teleportation, casual or otherwise, really happens – the exception being Travel Without Distance, a lone back-asswards-named spell that isn't actually even as good as most other fast-travel spells. The reason there's no Charm for obscuring or eliminating or changing people's True Names is because Exalted's not a setting where True Names are particularly relevant – barring Abyssals suffering resonance for using their slave name (check your breathing privilege).
The reason there's no detail given for what happens when a vampire bites a Solar is because Exalted isn't a setting where vampires exist. The lack of any such statement doesn't mean that when a vampire bites someone who is part sun nothing happens, it just means it wasn't relevant to write such a thing into either game.
A Mage who locks a Solar Hero practitioner in a pocket dimension because "lol no Solar Charms to deal with pocket dimensions, gg" is going to get fucked in the face with a daiklave, Jack Rakan-style. Presumably this will interrupt their glee at the way whoever set up this dumb whiteroom brawl has cheerfully handed them both the initiative and all relevant resources.
If you're crossing Exalted over with WoD – or with anything – you take their new setting into account, and translate the walking genre that is each Exalt into that setting. That's like step 1, possibly even before working out how you want the Exalts to actually arrive (is this Conan suddenly blundering into traffic, or are people just Exalting, or what?).
The reason there's no detail given for what happens when a vampire bites a Solar is because Exalted isn't a setting where vampires exist. The lack of any such statement doesn't mean that when a vampire bites someone who is part sun nothing happens, it just means it wasn't relevant to write such a thing into either game.
A Mage who locks a Solar Hero practitioner in a pocket dimension because "lol no Solar Charms to deal with pocket dimensions, gg" is going to get fucked in the face with a daiklave, Jack Rakan-style. Presumably this will interrupt their glee at the way whoever set up this dumb whiteroom brawl has cheerfully handed them both the initiative and all relevant resources.
If you're crossing Exalted over with WoD – or with anything – you take their new setting into account, and translate the walking genre that is each Exalt into that setting. That's like step 1, possibly even before working out how you want the Exalts to actually arrive (is this Conan suddenly blundering into traffic, or are people just Exalting, or what?).
But not reliably, given that the entire premise of the Wyld Hunt relies on catching Solars while they're young and don't have the powers they need. And one of the most reliable tactics against an Exalt being "catch them by surprise".
And since it's not reliable, people should stop taking it as given. Given that Solars have a long and well-established history of not developing pre-existing charmtech in life-or-death situations (vis a vis "The Wyld Hunt" and "the Usurpation").
Just gonna remind you that some of the Solars were poisoned at the Usurpation feast despite the existence of anti-poison Charmtech.
I'm sorry. I thought we were talking about canon Exalted here, not my massively houseruled and rewritten frankensetting.
Wait, this is an entirely different subject and interesting on its own.
Can we talk about this instead?
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(Maybe not) Shocking discovery. The Dresden Files earth is (partially accidentally) even worse and darker than the nWoD earth.
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Hm. I'd argue against that, for the guy on the ground. In the nWoD, it's clear that humans know their world is horribly fucked, they just mostly don't talk about it. Certain things are open secrets, certain conspiracy theories are given rather more leeway. The world as a whole is grimy and nasty and filled with fuck. The Dresden Files is more-or-less identical to our world, up until the main character kicks up a fuss and starts a vampire-wizard war. Sure, there's a big looming apocalypse that is definitely going to happen waiting in the wings (as opposed to the multiple "apocalypse maybes" of the nWoD), but regular people don't know or care about that. Even in specific, local cases, human beings have more power and significance in Dresden than in nWoD.
HURRRRRRRRRRR
and with perception filtres few thousand times stronger , than whole of WoD. This is not exactly news. It is just rather sadly comical.
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South America=Hellhole controlled by the Red Court.
And if you say, 'But South America is a hellhole in real life' I'm going to start laughing or crying. Or both.
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- He/Him
I always figured that this statement was an IC exaggeration and that the Red Court were basically running cartels controling some isolated villages away from the authorities and large population centers.
There is secret to that. Jim Butcher is not very good world builder to begin with and it tends to show. and I shall now need flameshileds.
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...that could work, actually. Though said exaggeration is brought up several times. But if that is so, it'd fit at least a little, though it wouldn't fit with how potent the Red Court was seen, and how the fall of the Red Court supposedly led to *several* revolutions and Red backed governments collapsing.
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Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
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Yes, that horrible hell hole South America, where the Red Court basically lives like Confederate plantation owners surrounded by their venom addicted blood slaves...
Pay no attention to the White Court living like Confederate plantation owners surrounded by their pleasure addicted sex slaves all over North America.
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Being fair, it's at least implied that White Court is sorta in Dresden's list. It's just, like Marcone, he views them as a lesser evil (for whatever reasons, debatable though they are) and thus something to be dealt with later.
Except later hasn't happened yet, really.
I think Marcone's never going to die.
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blob of bugs
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The Red Court are just drug cartels.
They're scary monsters who form big groups in South America, are basically more powerful than the government there thanks to bribes and threats, and are constantly trying to get a foothold in "civilized" countries. They're the suppliers of a dangerous, addictive narcotic, and forcibly turn their addicted victims into peddlers of the same poison. The "real" authorities aren't willing to take them on in force because they'd cause even more collateral damage in their death throes. They're a (very, very American) metaphor for drug cartels.
With that in mind, I'd assumed that South America was just... South America, but with drug cartels all replaced by the Red Court, or their catspaws. That seemed to be what Butcher was going for, at least in Dresden's mind.
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Hmm, I suppose it's the 'very, very American' part that throws people like me off. That and assuming that all of the governments are weaker than the cartels IRL. Though that'd go under some sort of 'current affairs+History discussion' or something.
Also the complexity of the replacement thing versus the add-on thing.
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They also have an initiation process in which you need to kill someone to be truly part of the group.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Lets dispel with the myth that Holden doesn't know what he's doing, he knows exactly what he's doing. He's trying to make Exalted more like D&D!
This stuff was from like, a whole day ago, but considering the majority of the discussion was a big inconclusive VS...
As for the dragon thing in his arm...might not be mutually exclusive, since whenever it's shown up so far it kicks the offender's face in, grumbles about preferring to be left alone, and then puts Touma's arm back and ducks back into his arm. Maybe the uberspirit just wants to retire for a bit without actually dying.
Most of the vampire control over society is tied to various proxyies and representatives anyway. Too much work to actually administrate compared to having addicted/dominated mortal patsies do the work.
On Touma's misfortune...it pretty much never actually applies in combat, and all it does is really throw him at interesting events, in fact, in combat, he has something rather similar to combat hyperstat. He absolutely has a focus for a Prime + Entropy thing of "I've fought every kind of magic in the world before and can instinctively counter any magical opponent with street fighting techniques".
As for the dragon thing in his arm...might not be mutually exclusive, since whenever it's shown up so far it kicks the offender's face in, grumbles about preferring to be left alone, and then puts Touma's arm back and ducks back into his arm. Maybe the uberspirit just wants to retire for a bit without actually dying.
Well...Touma DOES have this memory gap you could conveniently stuff all sorts of things into....
Lesser evil mostly because the Whites benefit quite a lot from human civilization and are thus never really going to cross the line on more than a personal level.
Most of the vampire control over society is tied to various proxyies and representatives anyway. Too much work to actually administrate compared to having addicted/dominated mortal patsies do the work.
The idea that Touma used to run in a magical deathsquad before getting MiB retired after the program got revealed is far more interesting than anything that actually occurred...
I don't think that Mages are Broken Sidereals. Because breaking an Exaltation is defined as impossible. I think that Mages are Raksha. I think that everyone in oWoD are Raksha. I think that the Loom was burned, the Elemental Poles weer shattered, and Creation mostly dissolved into the Wyld. But many of Shaped Raksha were too enamored with Creation, so they took the tiny fragment that remained and expanded upon it by making up stories. They told these stories so often and with such passion and conviction that they forgot that the stories were just stories and began to see them as objective truth. They forgot that what they were and became part of the play. They pretended to be human so completely and convincingly that they forgot that they weren't. They stopped being players and became the play. But they're still Raksha and they're still constantly Shaping the Wyld around them with the little stories they tell themselves in their heads. Thus, Consensus Reality. All the supernaturals and mythological beings are just stories that are told often enough to become real.
ooooooooooooorrr maybe they can be two different worlds where we don't have to reconcile how they all compare.
That's no fun.
Because Vampires et all are part of the Consensus. Vampires don't suffer paradox because most people, in their heart of hearts, believe that vampires exist. Same thing with werewolves, demons, changelings, witches, and all the others. Sphere Magic is specifically outside the Consensus. But everything else has enough traction in the cultural zeitgeist to be believable.