General Exalted Thread

[Shyft]

I'm not sure if the principles of industrial design are applicable to game design.

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It's late, but I have to follow up on this: There really are no existing principles of Game Design- at least none that are consistently agreed upon and upheld by the industry. We've been faffing about for the past 30-50 years trying to develop some, and we really haven't.

So why Industrial design principles? Because at the end of the day, design is about making functional things. Industrial principles apply because a game text is a technical manual, not a novel. It has to explain very complicated things in straight-forward, distinct and memorable ways, then be repeatedly used as a reference-guide. It cannot afford to be an art-piece, despite many game-creators considering themselves the next Tolkien.

I tried reading Nobilis, for example. Operative word- tried.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

On the other hand of less negativity, I was actually thinking about resources systems and I think I have a reasonably setting-agnostic idea which might be worth considering in-depth. This is because it was actually intended for my fan-rewrite of Aberrant, although I realized nothing in it actually stops you from using it in Exalted, except with a few assumptions which might actually make it more useful for a game thing, such as "you can't convert liquid assets into usable ones instantly because forex is hard in Exalted (oh hey a use for Bureaucracy)."

The idea is that Resources gives you a combination of liquid assets (i.e. disposable money) and fixed assets (i.e. everything else). Your liquid assets are how much cash you have squirreled away, your fixed assets are things like your land, the mercenaries you've hired, etc. Resources would give you a number of points you can either spend or invest in items. Some would have continuing costs, others would have one-time costs-this allows "buy a sword" (a small one-time cost) and "hire mercenaries" (a large continuing cost) to work on the same scale without significant fudging-although I suspect given how res5 isn't just 5 times res1, there's going to be a basic exponent somewhere.

You could therefore balance tool access and dice bonuses from tools in a more granular fashion via using the Resources system, and the difference in fixed assets would be notable in a way. Someone with Resources 1 and their fixed assets being "a really awesome suit of plate armor and a custom-made sword" is going to notably be different from the guy whose Resources 1 fixed asset is "their high-class lifestyle" and the guy whose Res1 fixed asset is "an acre of land and a mule."

This is obviously a super-early brainstorm sketch but I'm wondering what people think of it.

 

[Shyft]

@MJ12 Commando - 2e Resources handles 'liquid assets' functionally, but not elegantly, so as a baseline...

A Res 2 sword can be worth up to Res 2 + Res 1 compared to another sword, which is what makes people more likely to buy it. I'd get rid of that as a mechanic, simplify, but it's trying to say that a given Resources X thing can have a variant price.

Anyway- So your brainstorm sketch covers one-off purchases and persistent expenses. I would suggest you include a third division for Services. Services can overlap with persistent expenses.

I did a post a while back that roughly elaborated on it, and you can adapt it as you like. The rough idea though is "a character can perform work with a value equal to their relevant trait or trait+specialty. A character is not guaranteed to be paid Resources equal to their trait."

Therefore, a Melee 5 Swordsman can in theory secure Resources 5 wage for being a swordsman... if they find someone willing to pay that much.

You can adjust this however you want, and a per+bur/ability roll can be used to judge value or modifiers like 'he's got an artifact sword' or 'he's clearly superatural'.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Anyway- So your brainstorm sketch covers one-off purchases and persistent expenses. I would suggest you include a third division for Services. Services can overlap with persistent expenses.

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I'd count services as either one-time or persistent expenses depending on what they are, with a cost to be determined by the rough difficulty of the service. So you could probably get temporary disposable income from your ability to do services in downtime.

 

[zorb42]

snip.

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Personally, I would make it s, that Resources give certain amount of Wealth points exponentially(or as math needs dictates), which are the used as basis for the economic systems. Wealth points refreshing once in a while(as system or resource fluff dictates) with everything you can buy/craft and so on having buy cost significantly higher, that the second upkeep cost(sometimes 0), with ability to semipermanently burn Wealth points to get things beyond your means. Upkeep working as the blancer and buy more as a can I afford it limiter(insert required charms) and so on.

 

[Shyft]

I'd count services as either one-time or persistent expenses depending on what they are, with a cost to be determined by the rough difficulty of the service. So you could probably get temporary disposable income from your ability to do services in downtime.

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So long as services get acknowledged properly, the system will be more robust.

 

[EarthScorpion]

• We never actually see any PoV other than Keris's in Kerisgame, for obvious reasons. Believe me, Sasi's inner monologue does not resemble her external façade very much. To assume it does is to miss the basic themes of Sasi as a character.

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Indeed, one of the things Keris has brushed against the edges of is the idea that Exaltations have "types". Keris' own Night Exaltation, for example, likes parkourists, freerunners, and generally seems to have a thing for people from more humble backgrounds. Meanwhile, Keris has sometimes wondered what Sasi was like before her Exaltation - and how much she was like Salina before the trauma of "being an Anathema" forced her to redefine herself.

Sasi is not a fighter or a combatant in any way, and is frankly probably something of a coward when it comes to Exalt-level fighting.

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She is a super-massive coward at Exalt-level fighting. Her basic combat tactic if engaged by an Exalt is to run away using SWLIHN flickerporting and assume Skulking Shadow Shintai and hide in dark places until the enemy Exalt goes away.

Sasi is not a combat character, is fully aware she's not a combat character, and one of her significant worries is how on earth she's keep Aiko safe if someone makes a significant effort to hurt her - considering that her daughter is one of her major weak points.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Vicky, look. The second charm in the most well-known terrestrial martial arts style in the game (Five Dragon Force Blow in Five Dragon Style) costs two motes, doubles (strength + weapon) damage, and is compatible with grand daiklaves. A jade grand daiklave does 14L-P damage. If you have Strength 3, that's 17L-P damage. If you use that charm, you will hit for 34L-P damage before accuracy overflow successes, and your target will probably be splattered.

If you want even more gibs, have some of your goons surround and clinch before you strike. If your target happens to be clinched and have 0 DV, and you have 23 dice in your attack pool (13 base, +2 weapon, +8 DB Excellency), you will do ~45L-P after accuracy overflow successes. Have fun soaking that without a perfect soak. Remember that it costs all of 6 motes and having some goons.

Alternatively, if you aren't into martial arts, you could use Ringing Anvil Onslaught and get, once again, more gibs, as you attack ~6-7 times for 17L-P base damage vs 0 DV. This would cost you 12 motes total since you need to use your Excellency on the activation roll for optimal results. For reference, Solar Melee's Iron Whirlwind Attack attacks 8 times for 5m 1w.

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Okay, I sit informed. Somehow I remembered Terrestrial stuff being more modest than that. Maybe looked at weaker styles.

Your GM didn't use this on you. I'm pretty sure you know why, yes?

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Well duh, I said why the GM didn't use TPK material on our party, so yes indeed.

revisionist and questionably-tasteful fluff

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Do you have specific things in mind? I know they added the Caul to the world, but I have an impression that you're talking about some other revisions.

I want to build on this because I think it's relevant to how a lot of discussions here work. When people are disappointed in 3E, I think 3E fans implicitly see that as comparing 3E (which is, for all its problems, actually a playable game) to 2E and judging it as inferior (this is incredibly insulting), when for most people it's more that 3E is an improvement over 2E but nowhere near enough of an improvement to, well, adapt to a game which may well have discarded a lot of the things they liked about Exalted 2E for the devs' specific vision of the line. When you have Your Own Exalted, Someone Else's Exalted is probably not going to be as interesting to you, and that's not the fault of the devs.

2E being so bad is the core problem here-everyone still playing has, as @Jon Chung said, houseruled the fuck out of Exalted 2E, to the point where they more or less have a different game with some Exalted-y bits in it. Or they're playing without using most of the rules, at which point why do you need a new edition? If Exalted 2E had been better, ironically enough, I think 3E would have been better received, because it'd be competing with Ex2E, rather than, you know, your personal houseruled version of Exalted 2E which emphasizes the very specific things you want emphasized and deemphasizes the things you don't. I don't think it's coincidence that everyone in this thread who isn't playing 3E have basically their own specific houseruled version of the 2E system rather than using second-hand hacks.

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I'd say it doesn't even require being a 3e fan to see it that way. It's just counterintuitive to both realise and constantly remember that any '3e made it worse'-like posts are meant as comparisons between 3e and a quasi-platonic ideal that is both not the same as 2e and highly different across people's minds. The comparison is rather useless when somone says "I want to run/play Exalted without any extra fuss" and asks for a comparison.

 

[Jon Chung]

Okay, I sit informed. Somehow I remembered Terrestrial stuff being more modest than that. Maybe looked at weaker styles.

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Did you think everyone was kidding about lethality, or something?

Well duh, I said why the GM didn't use TPK material on our party, so yes indeed.

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Therefore: your GM is deliberately playing softball by leaving the killer strategies off the table or you got lucky because he didn't naively pick said strong options when designing antagonists out of ignorance.

 

[vicky_molokh]

Did you think everyone was kidding about lethality, or something?

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Not kidding, but juding by some comments (e.g COSAR's), we have a different idea of when lethality becomes extreme/overkill/etc.
The other thing is that I carelessly jumped to judging the lethality of Charms based on their Terrestrial/Celestial/Solar tier, which, turns out, isn't as clear-cut. Looking at the actual numbers does make it much clearer, though.

Therefore: your GM is deliberately playing softball by leaving the killer strategies off the table or you got lucky because he didn't naively pick said strong options when designing antagonists out of ignorance.

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Why is not trying to TPK a party called playing softball? They're called killer strategies for a reason. Because they kill. If the GM wants to kill the PCs, s/he'll use killer strategies; if not, then won't.

 

[Jon Chung]

Not kidding, but juding by some comments (e.g COSAR's), we have a different idea of when lethality becomes extreme/overkill/etc.
The other thing is that I carelessly jumped to judging the lethality of Charms based on their Terrestrial/Celestial/Solar tier, which, turns out, isn't as clear-cut. Looking at the actual numbers does make it much clearer, though.

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There isn't that much difference in 2E between Terrestrial and Solar level in terms of causing damage. The difference is in defensive efficiency, scenelong buff quality and anti-keyword protection.

Why is not trying to TPK a party called playing softball? They're called killer strategies for a reason. Because they kill. If the GM wants to kill the PCs, s/he'll use killer strategies; if not, then won't.

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First: unless your GM knows the system well enough to tell what is or is not a killer strategy, picking based on theme or aesthetics like "Hey, I'll make my DB NPC have a great big sword and practice the standard-issue DB martial arts style..." could very well kill you with a 45LP one-shot. Second: unless your GM knows the system well enough to tell how deadly is too deadly, they could very well pick based on "Oh, I want this dragon-blooded and his posse of mortal immaculate monks to be nasty but not like, a full Wyld Hunt..." and end up killing you with surround > clinch.

Etc, etc. Lethality is everywhere.

 

[Dif]

Do you have specific things in mind? I know they added the Caul to the world, but I have an impression that you're talking about some other revisions.

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Old-elementals gone, old-thaum gone, Dragon Kings thematically displaced by a generic city of beastmen, the Abyssal Sexmurder tree, Volivat, the list goes on...

 

[EarthScorpion]

Why is not trying to TPK a party called playing softball? They're called killer strategies for a reason. Because they kill. If the GM wants to kill the PCs, s/he'll use killer strategies; if not, then won't.

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Because using the second Charm in the most common TMA in the setting is not some kind of horrific "optimise your character to kill the PCs" thing. When it comes down to it, a lot of Dragonblooded and even more of the Realm's enlightened martial artists will know Five Dragon Style. You're not building your characters to kill the PCs if you have Realm characters using Five Dragon Style - you're conforming to the fluff that tells you that Five Dragon Style is what the Immaculates teach people who can't learn the CMA Elemental Dragon Styles.

Avoiding use of Five Dragon Style to avoid killing the PCs is a) softballing them, and b) something that only happens if you know the system well enough to ignore the fluff that tells you that a random Realm bureaucrat who knows some Martial Arts for self defence probably knows some Five Dragon Style.

 

[Crumplepunch]

"Practitioners of Five-Dragon Style consider the straight sword and the spear, and their artifact equivalents (the daiklave and the dire lance), to be form weapons for their style." Pretty clear RAI this doesn't include grand daiklaves, unless you are using Masters Hand Envisioned Anew at E5.

 

[Jon Chung]

"Practitioners of Five-Dragon Style consider the straight sword and the spear, and their artifact equivalents (the daiklave and the dire lance), to be form weapons for their style." Pretty clear RAI this doesn't include grand daiklaves, unless you are using Masters Hand Envisioned Anew at E5.

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Where did you get that? That writeup is missing two out of four of the form weapons. IIRC, the original 1E Five-Dragon Style writeup had the Four Major Weapons (one/two handed cleaving sword, one handed thrusting sword, spear, quarterstaff) of traditional Chinese kung fu as form weapons as a wuxia reference/callback.

 

[Crumplepunch]

Where did you get that? That writeup is missing two out of four of the form weapons. The original Five-Dragon Style writeup had the Four Major Weapons (one/two handed cleaving sword, one handed thrusting sword, spear, quarterstaff) of traditional Chinese kung fu as form weapons as a wuxia reference/callback.

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From MoEP Dragon-Blooded, the 2e writeup. As far as I recall the 1e one doesn't specify form weapons at all.

 

[Walker of the Yellow Path]

Where did you get that? That writeup is missing two out of four of the form weapons. The original Five-Dragon Style writeup had the Four Major Weapons (one/two handed cleaving sword, one handed thrusting sword, spear, quarterstaff) of traditional Chinese kung fu as form weapons as a wuxia reference/callback.

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That's the form weapons given in MoEP: The Dragon-Blooded. Pg 189

 

[Jon Chung]

From MoEP Dragon-Blooded, the 2e writeup.

As far as I recall the 1e one doesn't specify form weapons at all.

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That's the form weapons given in MoEP: The Dragon-Blooded. Pg 189

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It had form weapons, at least I distinctly remember that being the case. Might have been in Power Combat? Not sure. If so, the 2E version is missing half of them. In any case, this doesn't particularly change the numbers: use a dire lance. The charging statline for the dire lance is 12L, which matches the grand daiklave.

 

[Leetsepeak]

Old-elementals gone, old-thaum gone, Dragon Kings thematically displaced by a generic city of beastmen, the Abyssal Sexmurder tree, Volivat, the list goes on...

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Old Elementals?

Were the Dragon Kings replaced? I thought Rathess was full of degenerate lizard people already?

What's up with Volivat?

 

[vicky_molokh]

Because using the second Charm in the most common TMA in the setting is not some kind of horrific "optimise your character to kill the PCs" thing. When it comes down to it, a lot of Dragonblooded and even more of the Realm's enlightened martial artists will know Five Dragon Style. You're not building your characters to kill the PCs if you have Realm characters using Five Dragon Style - you're conforming to the fluff that tells you that Five Dragon Style is what the Immaculates teach people who can't learn the CMA Elemental Dragon Styles.

Avoiding use of Five Dragon Style to avoid killing the PCs is a) softballing them, and b) something that only happens if you know the system well enough to ignore the fluff that tells you that a random Realm bureaucrat who knows some Martial Arts for self defence probably knows some Five Dragon Style.

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It being common in the world does not necessarily indicate that they'll be there to killstomp the PCs in a heroic fantasy campaign. E.g. in LotR, the world, particularly the time and area surrounding the War, contains lots and lots of common threats that can killstomp the hobbits. But throughout the six books (or more like about 5/6 due to the adventure taking about 80% of the whole text), they only encounter those threats that they had a chance of surviving and/or overcoming given the circumstances. Because if they encountered something they couldn't, they'd be dead and we wouldn't get a full adventure. In a similar vein, just because something exists in the setting does not mean that it needs to be thrown at the PCs when they lack sufficient ability to survive it. In a book, one can retcon stuff; in an RPG, retcons are typically unavailable, so the GM needs to be more careful than a writer of non-interactive fiction. Moran seems to have pretty much pointed it out.

Also, I wouldn't say that looking at the dicepool and realising that it's big requires much in the way of system mastery. Just think what will happen if the character successfully hits the squishier member of the Circle, and plan accordingly. We're not talking Obsidian Shards of Insanity here, just a slightly quirky damage-adder.

Old-elementals gone, old-thaum gone, Dragon Kings thematically displaced by a generic city of beastmen, the Abyssal Sexmurder tree, Volivat, the list goes on...

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Hmm.
Elementals: weren't they considered boring and thus unneeded?
Thaumatology: understood.
Dragon Kings: understood based on your post.
Abyssals: they have full Charmtrees in the core already? ó_O
Volivat: based on the few paragraphs describing the place in 3e, sounds like typical First Age macroengineering to me: appropriately ambitious and conceptually nice.

 

[Jon Chung]

It being common in the world does not necessarily indicate that they'll be there to killstomp the PCs in a heroic fantasy campaign. E.g. in LotR, the world, particularly the time and area surrounding the War, contains lots and lots of common threats that can killstomp the hobbits. But throughout the six books (or more like about 5/6 due to the adventure taking about 80% of the whole text), they only encounter those threats that they had a chance of surviving and/or overcoming given the circumstances. Because if they encountered something they couldn't, they'd be dead and we wouldn't get a full adventure. In a similar vein, just because something exists in the setting does not mean that it needs to be thrown at the PCs when they lack sufficient ability to survive it. In a book, one can retcon stuff; in an RPG, retcons are typically unavailable, so the GM needs to be more careful than a writer of non-interactive fiction. Moran seems to have pretty much pointed it out.

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Narratively, an Exalt is not a hobbit. An Exalt is Aragorn, or Glorfindel, or someone along those lines. The GM goes "Okay Aragorn, you get attacked by ten goblins led by an orc champion!", because he reasonably expects Aragorn to be able to handle this. Aragorn gets clinched by a goblin, has his DVs set to zero and is promptly beaten to death by the orc's war hammer. Whoops.

Do you expect the GM to, at that point, go "Okay, that's not supposed to happen, uh, let's just handwave past that and assume you didn't just die an ignominous death..."? If so, is that not houseruling/fudging?

Also, I wouldn't say that looking at the dicepool and realising that it's big requires much in the way of system mastery. Just think what will happen if the character successfully hits the squishier member of the Circle, and plan accordingly. We're not talking Obsidian Shards of Insanity here, just a slightly quirky damage-adder.

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And you don't see this as houseruling/fudging?

 

[Aleph]

It being common in the world does not necessarily indicate that they'll be there to killstomp the PCs in a heroic fantasy campaign. E.g. in LotR, the world, particularly the time and area surrounding the War, contains lots and lots of common threats that can killstomp the hobbits. But throughout the six books (or more like about 5/6 due to the adventure taking about 80% of the whole text), they only encounter those threats that they had a chance of surviving and/or overcoming given the circumstances. Because if they encountered something they couldn't, they'd be dead and we wouldn't get a full adventure. In a similar vein, just because something exists in the setting does not mean that it needs to be thrown at the PCs when they lack sufficient ability to survive it. In a book, one can retcon stuff; in an RPG, retcons are typically unavailable, so the GM needs to be more careful than a writer of non-interactive fiction. Moran seems to have pretty much pointed it out.

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Dude, you're not listening.

The problem here is that an ST can throw half a dozen orcs at Aragorn - who LotR and the fluff shows us mowing down scores of mook goblins in every fight - and accidentally kill him when they all charge at him and whoops Onslaught penalties > clinch > accidentally did way too much damage > him ded.

I doubt you're saying that an ST should never throw half a dozen orc mooks and an Uruk-Hai commander at fucking Aragorn unless they're seriously trying to kill him. Aragorn should be able to beat half a dozen orc mooks and one Uruk Hai with relative ease.

The fact remains that if they all charge at him screaming slurs in the Black Tongue and waving their crude weapons as he takes a fighting stance and draws the Blade That Was Reforged, there is a pretty high chance that an inexperienced ST will go "okay, this one tries to tackle you to the floor", Aragorn fails his Dodge roll, finds himself inactive and then the ST is left in unenviable position of choosing between one of two options:

1. Going "so one of them tries to stab you... oh, you can't defend and, uh, he kills you in one shot. I guess Gimli is the new leader of the party, then?"
2. Realising "uh, I don't want to kill you" and improvising with "so... the orc holding you down is very gracious and allows you to get to your feet and dust yourself off before continuing the fight. Also they're going to politely attack you one-on-one from now on instead of bum-rushing you and trying to hold you down for stabbing, because of sportsmanship."

A game in which the ST has to choose between these options for a fight between an epic hero of myth and half a dozen mooks armed with the weapons and tactics the fluff describes them having is a badly designed game.

 

[vicky_molokh]

And you don't see this as houseruling/fudging?

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As I said in one of the posts above, I don't consider campaign design ("putting level 20 mobs into a level 20 dungeon") to be a case of houseruling nor fudging, though I already found out that Shyft does. And apparently you too.

Dude, you're not listening.

The problem here is that a GM can throw half a dozen orcs at Aragorn - who LotR and the fluff shows us mowing down scores of mook goblins in every fight - and accidentally kill him when they all charge at him and whoops Onslaught penalties > clinch > accidentally did way too much damage > him ded.

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I would expect a GM running an unfamiliar system to start out with one orc, then maybe three, and then a half-dozen, after seeing that it's OK and that there are no scarily cumulative effects (with Coordinated Attacks, there are). The only 'landminey' thing in there would be the Clinch and the Fifth Orc rule, but both of those are things that a GM either doesn't know about, and thus presumably either doesn't even try to use (e.g. one would read about Clinches if one planned an encounter with grappling orcs; the 'no DV' is a glaring thing that isn't easy to miss when you plan your tactics around it) or doesn't know to apply at all (e.g. not making the attack Unexpected even with five orcs, because of not knowing that the Fifth Orc gets to ignore DV; again, if the GM knows that the rule exists, s/he is likely to immediately realize that 'no DV' is a scary thing for anyone without Resistance and a sufficient stash of motes).

Both the GM and the players don't know the system at all, then it makes sense to start out with a low-stakes low-threat encounter and build up from there, whether with a duo of hobbits or with sixpack of Aragorn-clones.

 

[Dif]

Old Elementals?

Were the Dragon Kings replaced? I thought Rathess was full of degenerate lizard people already?

What's up with Volivat?

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The previous take on elementals were created from the original Five Great Elementals which were smashed apart during the Primordial War and thus all the wide and varied forms of them were essentially naturally-occurring spirits which sprang to life in concentrations of especially potent essence. Meaning they were fairly common creatures to stumble upon in the deep wilderness, usually as underlings or minions of various terrestrial gods without forcing the ST into the "harmless dumb animal or boss-monster" choice when figuring out local supernatural creatures of note. Many of them, like Flame Ducks and Need Fires, even had interesting hooks to bring them into player loyalties without summoning.

DKs are up in the air in terms of Currently Exiting Anymore, but remain thematically replaced as the primary lizardy-feathery Mesoamerican types in the East, despite being a vastly more interesting setting feature than "we decided beastmen can have cities too." When this conflict was brought up the very first time those beastmen were mentioned, SLS the then-editor said "Whoops! I guess we'll fix that in post when we get around to it!" which never happened like most of Ex3's other editing misfires.

And Volivat is just a gross place which doesn't sound fun or engaging at all, to make a character from or to visit. Its presented vague enough it can be read as either promoting some kind of icky test-tube eugenics project, or a society built entirely around making superhumans from ritual gangbangs. Even then either way, it spends an uncomfortable amount of time centering a culture adamantly-focused on birth and transfer of inherited power around the father, and leaving the mother, if any at all, entirely unmentioned even as a footnote. Which is like, weird on several levels and has a bunch of unpleasant implications I don't want to end up discussing with any typical Exalted group.

Not to mention the only conflict hook given is plumbing the depths of the sewers for deformed and monstrous C.H.U.Ds to exterminate because they were Born Wrong and Bad, who are actually just malformed babies who were tossed out for not being optimal test results. Its just just a bad scene all around, and seems almost created explicitly as some kind of "freak the norms/Whizzard's Magical Realm" White Wolf nonsense in a way that would make me side-eye any ST looking to include it as part of Demigod High Adventures.

 

[Aleph]

I would expect a GM running an unfamiliar system to start out with one orc, then maybe three, and then a half-dozen, after seeing that it's OK and that there are no scarily cumulative effects (with Coordinated Attacks, there are).

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... okay, whatever, I seriously doubt most newbie STs will be that careful, but you are still blatantly refusing to address the fact that half a dozen orc mooks can kill Aragorn, and that it in fact takes concerted effort to stop them doing so. And requires them to explicitly use dumb tactics like lining up and taking turns fighting him and avoiding anything like clinches or attacking him all at once, which they do because... why? Sportsmanship? Honour among orcs? This is a fucking stupid state of affairs when you're meant to be playing a demigod, and highly likely to make the players feel disappointed and cheated of awesome because they're apparently being given cardboard cutouts to fight that just stand there and fall over when prodded.