- Location
- New York City
I think, for what it's worth, there's an interest in allowing the table to have a greater hand in what constitutes the setting rather than an interest in destroying the ability to understand it.
General Exalted Thread
I think, for what it's worth, there's an interest in allowing the table to have a greater hand in what constitutes the setting rather than an interest in destroying the ability to understand it.
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Focusing on customizing the game to fit the group, as opposed to working a lot on a singular setting.
I can see that, sure.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
i swear i remember a quote about the discoverers of transmutation being worried about being derided as new age alchemists, but i can't seem to find it.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Key sentence here. Because we're not writing stories. We're playing games and games have rules.
No, I'm defining magic as "a thing we are making up so we can have fun". Relation to real world or not is a secondary concern. If having magic be literal quantum mechanics would be fun, let's throw in quantum mechanics.
Let's look at two of my favorite examples; Yozi and Shinma.
When you look at shinma it becomes absolutely clear that they are all math jokes. One of them is clearly set theory, for example. The others are also either mathematical or logical principles (ie, the Law of Non Contradiction, the Law of the Excluded Middle etc). What Moran did when she wrote them is flavor those mathematical concepts with a flavor of Hindu and Middle Eastern mysticism that created an interesting setting concept.
The same thing was done with the Primordials. They are (mostly) reference to cosmological or science fiction phenomena. Malfeas is a sun and a dyson sphere, the Ebon Dragon was entropy, She Who Lives In Her Name was a galaxy, Cecelyne was infinity, Adorjan was the vacuum of space (in Adorjan, no one can hear you scream), Cytherea was the big bang, Isidoris is a black hole and so on and so forth. They all take phenomena we not only haven't disproved, but are in fact a major part of our understanding of current cosmology, and reskin them to be transcendant god-monsters that are really quite awesome.
By shutting down the idea that 'science' and 'understanding' could contribute to Exalted as a setting we would be forced to remove two of the most unique and compelling things about the setting.
Last edited:
- Location
- New York City
I can see how some people think of it as a win/win too, because those who really loved how it used to work can use the existing material, while newcomers or those who are less interested in some of the previous assumptions can adapt to taste.
I can see why that'd be a lot less appealing to those fond of the old way too.
How so? Seriously, what exactly are you refering to here, and how is this being implemented? Because I don't see that or how you're getting that at all.
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ahhhhh. Okay. I was thinking 'How does this work in-universe', whereas you you were talking how to build the universe. That... makes a bit more sense, actually.
That makes it even more important. If you don't have magic explained enough to have rules then it is just GM fiat that makes it work any given way. If you want to create a plot related to a magic issue that isn't related to sorcery or exalted you are fresh out of luck for having any background that isn't homebrew. You are the protagonist in a game. What is more fun figuring out a clever solution using your knowledge of the setting and implementing it or simply rolling occult to do something magicy.
That would make sense if they simply stayed quiet on most of the topics but instead they changed the mechanics to block that avenue. Occult is no longer knowledge and skill dealing with supernatural stuff but rather instinctive inborn ability to do so. It is now a superpower not a skill that can be learned.
Thaumaturgy went from being being rituals that use the magical nature of the setting to accomplish tasks that allows for all kinds of ways for day to day life to be influenced by magic in little ways that can make the setting feel more magical to a superpower some people have for reasons.
To me it seems like a pretty clear effort to close off anything in that direction.
If that was it I would probably approve as I really loved the deliberate mysteries placed in the settings with sidebars providing various options.
In my view the best rules for magic in an rpg setting are specific enough that players can problem solve with them so you can give them puzzles related to it but general enough you can justify basically anything you want to happen.
- Location
- New York City
Who are the Enemies of the Gods? How do you become a Sorcerer? What are Elementals?
Those are three things off the top of my head, but there's a lot they got deliberately more vague on. Perhaps the most obvious evidence in explicit support of the idea is the Lore system with the ability to Introduce Facts.
I got that most definitely from Introducing Facts as a system, but a bunch of questions asked about setting elements with regards to 3rd edition reminded me a lot more of the way Rose Bailey talks about Vampire, for instance. That is, that there is definitely a strong sense of setting there, but the details of things are there for you to parse from the page or leave behind as you will.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ottawa
Did you miss the part where I said that, as far as I can tell, magic and science only became separate after the Enlightenment?
Did you miss the part where I used Infallible Messenger, a 100% repeatable and understandable phenomenon with rigorous rules, as an example of what makes magic magical?
Before I get into things, I would like to thank whoever threadmarked my Alchemical stuff. Thank you! I put a lot of work into these, so that's really flattering!
Because we already have Special People Magics, in the form of Sorcery, Godblooded gifts and spirit-blessings, Celestial and higher martial arts styles, legendary and unique artifacts, and finally the Exalted themselves. By decreeing that any/all forms of magic are so far outside the mortal frame of reference it is not even Possible to perform anything other than baseless superstition and ritual as total frauds, even if unaware of their fraudulent abilities, without some form of Golden Ticket to plot-relevance means that the setting is less magical and becomes seen as less magical.
By promoting the view that "ignorance is the norm, true magic is rare and mysterious" players left to such a setting will not go looking for mundane people to provide their solutions, or embrace the exotic elements of the everyday world outside of the clearly denoted "these things are Always genuine fucking magic." Because the odds of that search leading to another snake oil salesman or astrologer pulling blind horoscopes based on context cues of your dress and demeanor are suddenly much higher when any logical course of action says "lets go find the nearest Exalt or god, they're the only people who really matter here."
I like to go on about Autochthonia primarily because it is an entire setting built upon the premise that mortals no longer have to compete with an abundance of Special People constantly overthrowing whatever safe status quo they can maintain, and as a result they have managed to successfully build entire institutions atop the systematic rules created by the natural magic of how the Great Maker operates. Consistant, repeatable magic able to be applied by even the lowliest menial lever-puller is how their society has managed to persist in one of the most harsh and inhospitable environments imaginable for almost 5000 years. That understanding is how they have built their technology, their culture, their laws and religion.
Stability and practical knowledge are why Thaumatugic Arts in Autochthonia are deliberately called the Sciences.
This is a big chunk of it, to me anyway, because for the longest time Thaumaturgy has been "everyman magic," to the point that in 1e it was called Mortal Sorcery instead (terminology confusion be-damned). The highest feats were undoubtedly the domains of savant-scholars and the highly educated elites with decades of experience and resources to draw from, but it was a given that any given footslogging soldier conducting the correct practices to Mars for safety and power in battle, or that threshold nomads appealing to the spirit of a given animal for a plentiful hunting season, actually understood what they were doing and not making meaningless and hollow gestures out of ignorance.
Because we already have Special People Magics, in the form of Sorcery, Godblooded gifts and spirit-blessings, Celestial and higher martial arts styles, legendary and unique artifacts, and finally the Exalted themselves. By decreeing that any/all forms of magic are so far outside the mortal frame of reference it is not even Possible to perform anything other than baseless superstition and ritual as total frauds, even if unaware of their fraudulent abilities, without some form of Golden Ticket to plot-relevance means that the setting is less magical and becomes seen as less magical.
By promoting the view that "ignorance is the norm, true magic is rare and mysterious" players left to such a setting will not go looking for mundane people to provide their solutions, or embrace the exotic elements of the everyday world outside of the clearly denoted "these things are Always genuine fucking magic." Because the odds of that search leading to another snake oil salesman or astrologer pulling blind horoscopes based on context cues of your dress and demeanor are suddenly much higher when any logical course of action says "lets go find the nearest Exalt or god, they're the only people who really matter here."
I like to go on about Autochthonia primarily because it is an entire setting built upon the premise that mortals no longer have to compete with an abundance of Special People constantly overthrowing whatever safe status quo they can maintain, and as a result they have managed to successfully build entire institutions atop the systematic rules created by the natural magic of how the Great Maker operates. Consistant, repeatable magic able to be applied by even the lowliest menial lever-puller is how their society has managed to persist in one of the most harsh and inhospitable environments imaginable for almost 5000 years. That understanding is how they have built their technology, their culture, their laws and religion.
Stability and practical knowledge are why Thaumatugic Arts in Autochthonia are deliberately called the Sciences.
Last edited:
- Location
- New York City
Beyond any already extant instance of bad design, is there anything preventing the 2e Thaumaturgy from just being ported forward?
Did anyone revamp Thaumaturgy in any way to make it better in the previous editions? By better I mean smoothing out potential mechanical issues.
EDIT: I was reading a thread about Sorcery and I found this. Y'know sometimes you read something and it just makes you feel sad? This made me feel sad.
Paths of Brigid - Onyx Path Forums
Did anyone revamp Thaumaturgy in any way to make it better in the previous editions? By better I mean smoothing out potential mechanical issues.
EDIT: I was reading a thread about Sorcery and I found this. Y'know sometimes you read something and it just makes you feel sad? This made me feel sad.
Paths of Brigid - Onyx Path Forums
Last edited:
In order? Irrelevant(but also pretty firm given Infernals and Abyssals still will be there), exposure to weird shit, and pretty well defined in the core book (and with a pretty similar explanation from the last edition). Of the three, only the sorcerer ones fits, and even that is arguable. I find that how it works is in some ways more nailed down now, largely due to being attached to (significant) mechanics. Before it was a personal journey of some sort, but not really well described (or well explained). There's still some mystery, but the explanation is more clear. The facts system is a good example, but it's also not really something that changes things: it introduces things, which is useful, but you can't contradicts established facts with it from my understanding.
It seems like you're not quite responding to what cyberswordsman was getting at, either. Thaumaturgy wasn't really a bit limit on how you could introduce something: sure, it had limits on how powerful it could be in most cases, but those limits could be broken with enough restrictions, plus there were a bunch of things that were powerful but weren't thaumaturgy; sorcery was explicitly more powerful, for example, or exalted charms. The change in the thaumaturgy rules didn't open up new stories, or give more control to individual tables. Quite the opposite, so it's rather confusing that you'd apparently use it as an example of more control being given.
- Location
- New York City
You can't contradict another fact established with the system. The baseline is the facts that you and the GM introduce to the setting, with the GM having ultimate veto power. That does seem to pretty significantly change the baseline assumption, but your point is well taken.
The interest in allowing flexibility is there, I feel, between systems like Lore and the Orichalcum Rule, and the decision to lessen the focus on the details of the world's backstory with hard answers to what things were like speak to an idea which is less specific and more versatile. I think getting rid of thaumaturgy-as-science is both something which could be considered a strike against customization and a strike for it, in the sense that they give you the guideline that it is not common, then suggest that its products and individual variants are common for their kind. I think, insofar as one can customize a specific setting, controlling access to magic is a way of facilitating ST control, in the sense that there's a lot less of a mental adjustment where you have to realize the dirty peasants can do magic, and how that might actually effect their communities.
But yeah, that seems like a stretch. Being more familiar to me (in the sense that access to magical-science stuff isn't assumed) in that way did make it easier as a newcomer because coming in I feel like I would've had to radically alter my expectations for the setting if I had to account for 2e's thaumaturgy.
Last edited:
I'm not so sure they're really holding back; they still give about as much information as was given in the 2ed corebook, just with some proper nouns changed or slightly obscured. It's small compared to all of 2nd edition, but there's only one book out, and a lot of the stuff we know regarding second edition comes from later books. For example, the Yozi and Neverborn were expanded greatly in later books, especially the books that dealt with their respective factions, which are still in 3ed.
And having things not be radically different doesn't really touch on customization at all, so I have no idea what you're going for with most of your post.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That would be me. I think your Alchemical stuff is one of the best things that's come out of this thread, on the level of what @EarthScorpion and @Aleph make, as well as @Shyft's essays.
I especially loved the one on facelessness and the symbolism of faces.
My hope is that you'll eventually do one on the Autochthonian justice system.
yassssss
ur muchos appreciated
thnx alif
snek-soul is best soul
hiss
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Hahah! Thank you! Not to poke unkindly, but I have a lot of homebrew sprinkled around as well.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
So does that mean she'll be getting decent ranks in both ID and Coadjutor ?
Two different worlds within her soul, soon about to go to war!
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I am aware. Your homebrew is pretty cool too.
I like your Nodes system for example.
hiss
angery snek no go to war
angery snek devour enemies
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
heh, thanks. Hmm. I should really get on compiling all those demenses I did, for one.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Please do.
Homebrew for the homebrew god @Shyft.
EDIT: Oh right, whenever @Aaron Peori does homebrew I tend to like it. His Anima-as-health hack for example, is pretty cool.
- Location
- New York City
I was enjoying that one too, and would love to see this. Demesnes and Manses are two things I find really interesting, but I'm totally starved for examples or a sense of how rare/common they should be.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
As of 2nd edition, nearly every settlement in Creation is within walking distance of some 'place of power'. By walking distance they mean a day's walk. Aside from rare exceptions at the prerogative of your storyteller naturally occurring demesne are commonly Terrestrial, and only 1-2 dot.
4-5 dot demesnes are the product of ancient engineering practices or exceptional feats in the recent past. Savant and Sorcerer for example had a fairly direct view of 'if a bunch of Exalted fought here, a demesne will likely form years later.' I think it said 'spent 500+ motes at once'.
Manses are rarer still, and they take years to build. Most 4-5 dot demesnes are already capped simply because they're that valuable.
A note that in Savant and Sorcerer, a lot of alternatives existed for powering artifacts that weren't just Manses, but those got depreciated in favor of Hearthstones in 2e.
- Location
- New York City
Speaking of, Hearthstones, powering artifacts? I hadn't heard that before, the only sense I'd gotten was one artifact mentioned that could use a hearthstone in lieu of attunement in 3e. Was that a big thing in 2e and 1e? Were a lot of artifacts used that way in lieu of attunement?
How do you see demesnes that aren't the base for a manse as a storytelling tool? They strike me as a great little way to have Striking Supernatural Locations, but I am very curious about how they're intended to be used in a game.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A lot of stuff like powered armor and magitech required Hearthstones usually.
Kerisgame is big on it.