- Pronouns
- They/Them
What is Obama? I mean, I'd be guessing a Solar?
General Exalted Thread
What is Obama? I mean, I'd be guessing a Solar?
I had a couple idea for Exalted quests. I'm unlikely to start writing them anytime soon, but I wanted to throw some ideas around and get some feedback.
The first is Project Razor empire builder quest. The main character would be a heroic mortal who's been tasked with managing the mortal side of the operations. Alchemical Exalted will be there to advise, support,build, take over temporarily, or even bugger off somewhere to do their own thing, depending on their age, personality, capabilities, and relationship with the main character. Obviously managing relations with various beings way stronger and older than themselves will be one of the main focuses for the players.
The players can choose to keep the operation as a peaceful trading outpost, start a full-fledged Locust Crusade, or anything in between. There'll be consequences, like Deathknights and Green Sun Princes gaining access to Autochtonia, throwing off the balance of power with the Realm, Lookshy, and the Lunars, and other Autocthnonian nations starting their own projects. A lot of these things should be running in the background since the main character's only a heroic mortal.
I wonder how to handle the mechanics. I was thinking something like an advisor-action system, where every Alchemical can be assigned a few actions.
or straight up CKII style system, except Alchemicals advisors can add a huge bonus to a particular action
Or a system like the Ulthuan Quest, where Alchemical advisors have a similar effect.
Regardless, I'd have to take into account the possibility that Alchemical advisors tell the PC to fuck off, and do their own thing. But disobeying the PC wouldn't always be a bad thing. The 1000 year old E5 Starmetal might disobey orders to negotiate with an Elemental Court because she realizes that they're planning to backstab everyone. On the other hand, an Excessively Righteous Blossom expy might blow up peace talks between two rival Kingdoms and start a war.
For actual combat, I could probably use a much simpler more narrative system. I could handwave a lot of it since personal combat shouldn't be the main focus.
The other idea is a Warhammer/Exalted crossover since there seems to be a very strong, unfulfilled demand for one of those.
I'd be interested in writing a few character concepts:
A Bretonnian Questing Knight who Exalts while doing something suitably heroic. I'm not sure if the Exaltation should burn out all Blessings from the Lady, or not. Basically, should it still be possible for him to become a Grail Knight? It'd be a fairly small bonus compared to a Celestial Exaltation, so it's more of a fluff/metaphysics question.
A captain or first mate of a trading ship that travels a route between Barak Varr and Lothern. The ship is then intercepted by Druchii raiders.
An engineer at the Nuln School of Gunnery exalts while doing something heroically engineer-y.
And two other ideas that maybe a bit thornier. Basically, I'd rule that Elves and Dwarfs are pretty much humans by Exalted standards (and ignore that WH humans, Elves, and Dwarfs have different souls)
One idea is a Dwarfen Apprentice of some sort, like Runesmith Apprentice or Apprentice Engineer
The other is student at the White Tower of Hoeth. Here, I wonder if the Exalt should still be able to use native Warhammer magic. It could easily lead to combinatorial hell and be way overpowered. Balance isn't necessarily the most important thing, but it should still be within reason.
Since personal character actions are the focus of this one, I don't think I can handwave mechanics as much as with the other quest idea.
The first is Project Razor empire builder quest. The main character would be a heroic mortal who's been tasked with managing the mortal side of the operations. Alchemical Exalted will be there to advise, support,build, take over temporarily, or even bugger off somewhere to do their own thing, depending on their age, personality, capabilities, and relationship with the main character. Obviously managing relations with various beings way stronger and older than themselves will be one of the main focuses for the players.
The players can choose to keep the operation as a peaceful trading outpost, start a full-fledged Locust Crusade, or anything in between. There'll be consequences, like Deathknights and Green Sun Princes gaining access to Autochtonia, throwing off the balance of power with the Realm, Lookshy, and the Lunars, and other Autocthnonian nations starting their own projects. A lot of these things should be running in the background since the main character's only a heroic mortal.
I wonder how to handle the mechanics. I was thinking something like an advisor-action system, where every Alchemical can be assigned a few actions.
or straight up CKII style system, except Alchemicals advisors can add a huge bonus to a particular action
Or a system like the Ulthuan Quest, where Alchemical advisors have a similar effect.
Regardless, I'd have to take into account the possibility that Alchemical advisors tell the PC to fuck off, and do their own thing. But disobeying the PC wouldn't always be a bad thing. The 1000 year old E5 Starmetal might disobey orders to negotiate with an Elemental Court because she realizes that they're planning to backstab everyone. On the other hand, an Excessively Righteous Blossom expy might blow up peace talks between two rival Kingdoms and start a war.
For actual combat, I could probably use a much simpler more narrative system. I could handwave a lot of it since personal combat shouldn't be the main focus.
The other idea is a Warhammer/Exalted crossover since there seems to be a very strong, unfulfilled demand for one of those.
I'd be interested in writing a few character concepts:
A Bretonnian Questing Knight who Exalts while doing something suitably heroic. I'm not sure if the Exaltation should burn out all Blessings from the Lady, or not. Basically, should it still be possible for him to become a Grail Knight? It'd be a fairly small bonus compared to a Celestial Exaltation, so it's more of a fluff/metaphysics question.
A captain or first mate of a trading ship that travels a route between Barak Varr and Lothern. The ship is then intercepted by Druchii raiders.
An engineer at the Nuln School of Gunnery exalts while doing something heroically engineer-y.
And two other ideas that maybe a bit thornier. Basically, I'd rule that Elves and Dwarfs are pretty much humans by Exalted standards (and ignore that WH humans, Elves, and Dwarfs have different souls)
One idea is a Dwarfen Apprentice of some sort, like Runesmith Apprentice or Apprentice Engineer
The other is student at the White Tower of Hoeth. Here, I wonder if the Exalt should still be able to use native Warhammer magic. It could easily lead to combinatorial hell and be way overpowered. Balance isn't necessarily the most important thing, but it should still be within reason.
Since personal character actions are the focus of this one, I don't think I can handwave mechanics as much as with the other quest idea.
- Location
- Virginia
Mechanical issues aside, I think Gunstar is a perfectly good setting, although it won't work for all types of campaign. It's suited for an episodic campaign with crises-of-the-day, recurring villains, some long-running plots, and intermixed slice-of-life stories. Which... of course it is, it's Battlestar Galactica
Oh, I agree. I'm not super enthused about the direction of Gunstar's setting and how that influences plots, but I don't think it's bad. My issue with it is much more focused on, well, those mechanical issues, and for better or worse it was a second edition supplement. The fact that it really doesn't work with 2e or 2.5 well is a big knock against it, and while it might work better in 3e, that requires significantly more material to come out for 3e given how many splats are represented in it. The issue with them both falling into save the world stuff is more about how 2 out of the 3 settings they give do this. Honestly, of the two, Gunstar probably does it better, largely because it makes some amount of sense at the setting level.
- Location
- NYC
As someone who was in a Gunstar campaign, it had... issues.
The scale is simply too big. It's absurd. The Gunstar is the size of multiple planets, and you're dealing with issues that Exalted really doesn't have satisfactory ways of resolving. Like, the interesting problems in Battlestar Galactica come from logistics issues or internal conflicts, but any logistical issues can literally only be created and resolved by ST Fiat, and the internal issues quickly run into a massive elder problem because all of the important people are crazy good, and there aren't any rules for how to actually interact with larger organizations. More to the point, unless the PCs are playing a high essence game, there are always going to be substantially more powerful characters who could potentially be doing their jobs: the really important stuff would have an E5+ Exalt assigned to it. The PCs aren't playing William Adama or Laura Roslin, they're playing named fighter pilots or diplomats: significant, sure, but not the kind of person Exalted is supposed to be about.
More importantly, it doesn't really work with the themes of Exalted, the ones that make the bad mechanics acceptable to play with. When actions don't really have consequences because you'll be abandoning the planet anyway next session, there's not much of a point to it. A good Battlestar Galactica setting would need to do more than copy all of the setting beats of Battlestar: it would need to actually examine what the structural issues are and then create something that works from there.
Still somewhat upset about the campaign, because it looked extremely promising. Then it ended up being monster of the week with a system that's shit as monster of the week, where the GM was stuck wondering how the hell he was supposed to make the Magnus a million times smarter than everyone else when one of our characters was "smart dude, srs bsns."
Edit: Like, if I were making the Gunstar module, I would have it take place immediately after the Gunstar's flight, with the main leadership dead and without many (or any) elders: the expectation would be that the PCs take control. Then, I would have some rules for how the Gunstar works: it's divided into different sections each of which gives the ship the capability to do a lot of very convenient things, many of which require repairs to gain access to. The repairs, in turn, require exotic components, the aid of some discontent people on the ship, or such. Tie everything into that and bam, it's about choices and sacrifices and morality in the face of the apocalypse, and it's also reasonable for the GM to run.
Last edited:
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Also extremely slow for space.
I'm not sure I get that sentiment. Why does Exalted have to be always be about world changing important figures. Why can't it be about important cogs in big machines or medium sized fish in huge ponds. I mean, that's certainly what Alchemical and Dragon-blooded games are.
Some of this runs into the mechanical issues brought up: remove the elder issue, limit essence to 5, and things become significantly easier. Also, remove Mangus/rework him. He could work well as a Solar who ended up linking his mind to one of the Primordials or something. He's a danger because of, well, being linked to a Primordial, but at the same time he's a goddamn goldmine of intelligence. That makes the whole keeping him locked up and restrained make sense, because they can't trust him, but also have him be a resource that players can't tap. The only way to get on "his level" would be to link yourself with another primordial...in which case you're either locked up or killed because holy crap they can't trust you now. Rather than him being a super special authors pet.
Also, I'd just demolish the scale: have something like a tenth or less of the celestial exalted, have the human population in the tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe low millions max. Change Autochonia into being a small fleet, with ships being either an Alchemical or multiple Alchemicals+Autochthon's subsouls, depending on the size of the ship(the main warship being Autchthon's feitch obviously). If there are only about 60 Celestial Exalted, having yourself being even on of those is a huge deal. It also would make it easier to deal with other organizations: rather than having to make up a full world's worth that are all tightly interconnected, you're dealing with a small government's worth. Subdividing the ships also makes it easier, as you have more of a natural divide between internal organizations(the ones on your ships) and external ones (the ones that exist across the fleet). Suddenly a ships suffering engine failure(or sabotage) is both critical and not existential as it would be with everything relying on the Gunstar.
In any case, yeah, the big issue is the mechanics. If you have good mechanics then a lot of the issues would recede a bit, and you could do some interesting things.
Yeah. That runs into the problem that the scales are so different. Granted, the simple way is for there to be an FTL like hyperspace, which gives a huge multiplier to speeds, but is basically restricted to long distance travel. Not the most interesting solution, but it's not the main point of either the main setting or the shard, so it's fine to have it solved in a more cursory manner.
The rest is just an issue with Artifact/vessel speeds. The stats in the book are based off Wonders of the Lost Age stats, and those are, well, bad. Like many of the mechanical issues with shards, one of the biggest reasons for problems is the rules that already exist and writing in relation to those.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ottawa
- Location
- NYC
Sure: for most games (as in, game systems), that's the expectation. In D&D around mid level, characters are generally important cogs in big machines or medium sized fish in huge ponds. In a lot of higher powered FATE games (like Dresden), that's true as well.
Exalted is interesting because it didn't do that. Players weren't moderately important characters: they were extremely important. They got to change the world, have actual impact, do things that mattered right from the get go. Starting characters got to conquer kingdoms and rule them, not have to wait until level fifteen.
If you want to play a game about that, there are way better systems than Exalted. Gunstar was like a more restrictive version of normal Alch playstyles, because instead of acting largely autonomously in the face of some pretty vague and abstracted threats, you're needing to directly address whatever the threat of the day is, in a system where addressing the threat of the day often isn't that mechanically compelling, in a setting where the ST basically needs to come up with all of the actually interesting bits you'd run into and make them somehow relevant.
The thing is, if you're changing all of that, basically all you're left with is "hey, Battlestar Galactica in Exalted would be cool." I agree with that, which is why I was excited about playing in that campaign.
Like, a 50 page setting book shouldn't need massive houserules that actively change it (rather than adding to it) to be playable as its core conceit.
Like my last post, basically. The Magnus is a big one, as is the masquerade in Modern: stuff that a single game where the PCs actually interacted with it would reveal that it doesn't really make sense and GMs wouldn't really know what to do with it. Stuff where the book focuses a lot on stuff that a GM would likely be able to fudge it on their own, but not on the actual nuts and bolts of what they'd need to run a session.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I was fortunate to have a direct line to Robert Vance back then, who authored the rules.
- Location
- Virginia
Honestly the speed isn't the problem so much as the fact that the vehicle combat rules are pretty bad.
(But then so are the regular combat rules. And the social rules. And...)
Actually: has anyone run into a pen-and-paper system that has done vehicle combat well? Ex3's Sail combat is an interesting entry, although it has a lot of issues being pulled out of its specific setting.
(But then so are the regular combat rules. And the social rules. And...)
Actually: has anyone run into a pen-and-paper system that has done vehicle combat well? Ex3's Sail combat is an interesting entry, although it has a lot of issues being pulled out of its specific setting.
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
So something mentioned in this thread has been bugging me for the past couple of days, and I got an idea, but I'm not sure what stories one could tell rather than having it be just an odd set-piece.
So we have a city of hummingbird beastmen, or a city-state that follows the teachings of a hummingbird god or whatever. But the point is that everybody is expected to wear tight-fitting, brightly colored clothing and look their best while at the same time everybody is expected to be armed and somewhat agressive, and downright hyper-aggressive in defending their food.
So what sort of story would use this place as something important?
But those are all games about big spaceships shooting at each other. Car Wars, maybe?
So we have a city of hummingbird beastmen, or a city-state that follows the teachings of a hummingbird god or whatever. But the point is that everybody is expected to wear tight-fitting, brightly colored clothing and look their best while at the same time everybody is expected to be armed and somewhat agressive, and downright hyper-aggressive in defending their food.
So what sort of story would use this place as something important?
Battlefleet Gothic, Attack Vector: Tactical (and really anything by Ad Astra Games), Dropfleet Commander...
But those are all games about big spaceships shooting at each other. Car Wars, maybe?
- Location
- Spain
This would be really cool. Then again, i really like alchies.
Meh. This is only my opinion, but i really prefer pure Exalted over crossovers. I always found Creation much, much more interesting that the Exalted themselves. Crossovers take away the best part, the setting itself.
--------
I have been thinking in a Lost Egg quest. Exalting relatively late (15-17?), starting without any kind of formal combat training and nearly-average dicepools. With the starting part of the quest dealing with finding a teacher, training to be a proper prince of the Earth, with different factions trying to win the new Exalt to their side, etc.
Then again i would need to make the rules almost from scratch, and that fills me with dread.
Last edited:
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've been thinking about starting a vanilla Exalted Quest for a while now but there are too many possibilities and I can't settle on any one premise.
So, basically, people who act like 1600s university students?
This sounds like an interesting story. I was thinking more like gang colors the city. Maybe having a large ritualized component, with lot's of almost dance fighting, an emphasis on showing up people non-lethally.
Or basically West Side Story: The City.
And you call yourself an Exalted fan.
Seriously though, a lot of that is more me changing it to cater more towards my tastes and abilities as opposed to something necessary. Well, except the whole poor mechancis thing, but that's more a result of 2ed having reasonably bad mechanics across the board: you're expected to already have a host of houserules and implementations, at which point the setting might not be as bad out of the box. Still, there's a reason I said the setting was weak based on the mechanics from the start.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I assume you know what West Side Story was an adaptation of?
- Location
- NYC
There are a bunch of ways you could play it. The most obvious one is that something has gone wrong: the god's been replaced by someone who is basically demanding that they change their entire culture, or a diplomat is trying to bridge the cultural divide but really can't and needs the party to help, or there's a famine and everybody is refusing to share because hummingbirds.
Or these guys are in the midst of doing something: they're planning a massive invasion on a kingdom that the PCs are partial to, which means that either the PCs will need to figure out how to defeat their military or stop the invasion in the first place, both of which will require sneaking in and figuring out what these guys are about.
I can't speak towards Dynast DB games, but here is the thing about Alchemicals: They are still world-changing, important figures in Autochthonia, because the power-scale is universally lower across the board and the threats much more numerous without ready hands to solve them. There's only mortals, automata and spirits otherwise, seeing as Alchemicals resolve the Elder Problem by forcing any Alchemical with high essence to become sessile fortifications who have redirected all their knowledge and magical prowess towards enacting public-works and civilization-supporting infrastructure. That means the vast majority of sweeping setting problems fall on the shoulders of Ess3-4 Exalts and their supporting cast, with the heavyweight Colossi restricted to open-spaces and leading cadres of mortal heroes geared up to punch above their weight-class.
If anything, Alchemicals are more important to Autochthonia than Exalts are to Creation, because they are vastly more rare (~1000ish in total, spanning a Terrestrial to Celestial power-threshold, including the Metropoli), and are obligated to mobilize as Sidereals do to put out fires across an entire world, not exclusively pursue their own interests. They might be one element of a greater whole working to keep their world alive and habitable, but they remain the Only element which can effectively interact with the supernatural creatures and apparatuses of the Great Maker in ways which aren't reverent awe or suicidal experimentation.
The lack of several dozen other competing supernatural-types trying to fix everything their own way, each with their own superpowerful leader-figures, is arguably what makes Autochthonia a superior setting to me. Because it doesn't make the Problems to solve any smaller to match its protagonists, but reduces the range of meaningful actors down into the gameable PC scales without feeling impossible to overcome (except when the authors get dumb and say it is).
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I liked shards. Huge problems, yes, but duuude, Sidereal Firearms.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
from tonight's logs
Laughter: Anyway, can you please tell me that my plan passes basic sanity check?
Omicron: It's something that Laughter could come up with given the information she has.
Omicron: I'm not telling you if it's a good or bad idea but it's only insane as Laughter is.
Omicron: ("Hold my beer while I let that stegosaurus trample me" is not how most plans would go.)
Laughter: Anyway, can you please tell me that my plan passes basic sanity check?
Omicron: It's something that Laughter could come up with given the information she has.
Omicron: I'm not telling you if it's a good or bad idea but it's only insane as Laughter is.
Omicron: ("Hold my beer while I let that stegosaurus trample me" is not how most plans would go.)
One thing I feel needs to be pointed out. Exalted markets itself as all this, but it does lack the necessary structure to support this mode of gameplay baked into the rules in my opinion. It is just something, that should be remembered.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Well, this sounds workable, at least; I could see someone doing a vaguely 40k-ish spin on it, with individual worlds or systems becoming home to strange, unique cultures or manifestations of Essence or Wyld energy, while the forgotten children of countless long-dead gods and monsters roam the stars - warring, building, transforming, and allying each in accordance with their own natures. The vaunted galactic empire grown wild and untamed without its Solar overseers, and the Lunars struggling to keep a handful of central systems the way they were.
I'm sort of surprising myself here, but... the Imperial engineer idea kind of calls to me. I think I could really get into a story about an up-and-coming gunsmith getting the wrong kind of attention, finding himself challenged to do something basically impossible (like 'why don't you redesign this failed multishot pistol design into something workable by the end of the week, if you're such a genius') by someone he can't afford to say no to (politically, economically, career-wise, doesn't matter), flies into a frenzy of desperate prototyping and testing...
And then he finds himself waking up to find a perfect, unparalleled, impossible gun on his workbench, a fading golden glow, and swirling in his head are these ideas - terrible, beautiful ideas of armor that can give a man the strength of an ogre, of vessels to carry a man into the skies, of weapons that can shatter a mountain and leave gods writhing in agony. When he goes to present the impossible prototype, he feels a strange, phantom pang of condescending dismissal at the other students' awe - like watching savages celebrate over the idea of a sharpened stick.
Cue a fairly tense story of the main character desperately struggling to explore what the hell just happened, figure out just what he can do, not go insane, and keep all of it secret from those around him so that he doesn't end up lashed to a stake as a Daemonhost.