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General Exalted Thread

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Aaron Peori said:
You remove the 'master race' from the Dragonblooded and you remove, like, the majority of what makes them actually interesting.
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Erm, NO.

If I so choose, in MY game, I am perfectly within my rights to tone down, de-emphasize, or otherwise move away from the creepy-as-shit "ein volk, ein reich, ein FUHRER!" subtext that the most recent argument has indelibly welded the Terrestrial Exalted to in my mind. You want fuckface bastards who obsess over blood purity and practice enforced castration? Go play with the Lintha - they're supposed to be 100% assholes by volume.

Thing is, you can still have ugly, grimdark stories (which I assume is your goal) with Terrestrials who derive their Breeding from "heroic" acts. Since, y'know, Exalted makes a huge deal out of how that term can just as easily mean 'being an enormous penis-stain' as 'being a shiny LG paladin'.

Have the Dynasts engage in propaganda campaigns to puff up their forebears' accomplishments and denigrate those of their rivals, and rabidly oppose inauspicious pairings - after all, the knowledge that heroism = strong blood makes heritage and reputation just as important to the Princes of the Earth as their goose-stepping canon version. Parents eagerly enable all manner of demented behavior from "strong" heirs until most become half-mad narcissists, because the farther they go, the closer they get to becoming another Gilgamesh or Achilles or Jason, and so swelling their veins with the power of dragons. Meanwhile, the "weak-blooded" siblings of these favored sons are pushed into the lower ranks of the Wyld Hunt or other dangerous postings on the edges of the Realm, where they will be redeemed through either glory or death.

For Dragonblooded children dissatisfied with this system, all accomplishment is hopelessly tainted, as any effort to prove their individual worth merely plays into their clan's expectations, making them ever-more-valuable broodmares to be guarded and bartered over. Ultimately, the "heroic" model of Dragonbloods deconstructs the very idea of heroism, reducing it to just another commodity to be dickered over by Dynastic politicians and courtiers. Risk-takers and the hopelessly self-absorbed gain primacy, as their recklessness either sees them to an early grave or rewards them with practically unearned power and prestige.

See what I mean? Did you see anything about drooling, inbred freaks with six malformed testes being kept in a cage when they're not being forcibly mated by their family? Anything about racial supremacy? Like, sure there's some fucked-up Lamarckian shit going on there, but it's better than inviting direct comparisons to the German National Socialists.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
It's not like a medieval king thought he was a separate race from his peasants;
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They might well have. Maybe not in so many words, but the honour culture of the British Empire certainly did, and that didn't grow out of nothing. The vast difference in nutrition would've made it very easy to think along those lines, too.
 
Roadie said:
Sorry, I named the wrong one. I actually meant Thousand-Forge Hands - that's the one that talks about reducing time to begin the project, except that there's no listed time to begin a project in the first place.
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Hm? Thousand-Forge Hands is very straightforward - it caps the amount of time before you get to roll to finish (i.e. the crafting time) of superior projects (i.e. artifacts, mainly). See the craft section for the normal times.

It's just "you can make artifacts in weeks instead of months or years, the charm".
 
I'm mostly annoyed at the pretense that removing the "master race" bits will make remove most of what makes the Terrestrials interesting.

I can perfectly enjoy, and indeed do, a Terrestrial without any amount of inherent "master race" bits, just as well as I can enjoy the opposite.

They are after all, both Terrestrials.

And Terrestrials are Best Exalted.
 
Are directional gods widely worshipped, or is someone like Ahlat unusual for the fact that he's a directional god widely worshipped?

Have you guys made any religions in your games that weren't the Immaculate Philosophy? Particularly interested in ones which might have been widespread within an area.
 
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Roadie said:
Here's my crude attempt at rewriting the War Charms.

It's sort of half funny, half sad how much shorter this version of One With Five Forces is compared to the original.
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On a first read-through, I think it's a mistake to limit Unstoppable Solar Conqueror to only benefiting you when you have the numbers advantage (as the math given indicates). I know you have it tagged as an intentional change to closer match how it's 'usually' used in play, but I think both halves of the original effect are important.

Also, this format is pretty unambiguous, but if this is going to be a full project I'd find a way to work in the flavor texts somehow (Italicized text somewhere a-la Magic?), because it does add a lot to grokking the effect in places even if the mechanical rigor is important.
 
"Compass of Celestial Directions: the Wyld" had descriptions of a lot of places in the wyld.
What is your favorite of those?

Mine is probably the Baking Sands.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
Thing is, you can still have ugly, grimdark stories (which I assume is your goal) with Terrestrials
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I'm going to stop you right here, because I don't think anyone in the entire history of this thread, barring a couple contentious elements long since removed, have ever expressed this as their goal, or attempted to justify out why Exalted should be about those things. Trying to reframe the discussion around it as an Us-vs-Them, and pulling a Holden-esque "debating the argument you're all really making that Exalted should Suck" tirade where the side you disagree with is in-fact advocating literal Nazi-rhetoric, is disingenuous at best, flat-out baselessly insulting and shit-stirring at worst.

The point attempting to be made here, as I swear I made fairly clear in my previous post on the subject, is not Racial Purity Is Awesome, but that Exalted is built to tell tragedies. You're not intended to like the methods of Exaltation, in fact you're supposed to think of them as grossly unfair and ultimately bad things for what they say about humanity and the people who possess them. That is the point. They are metaphysical weapons built to destroy, not create role-models, and anyone attempting to become the latter using one faces an uphill battle by the nature and history of the powers they wield. Being a good person is not the optimal path to power.

You don't get to have a clean Exaltation based on high-ideals about heroism, classical or otherwise. Every Solar Exalted went reshaping the world in her own image, the plights and pleas of the proles be-damned, and were killed for acting like half-mad gods. Every Sidereal is forced to see the world in causes and effects, not individuals, so stayed their hands from stopping the blades held by their fellows. Every Terrestrial is regarded as an outsider to mortalkind by the magic in her blood, and those seen as "her people" have set themselves up as the True Kings in the wake of the Solar fall.

That contrast, between those who take their Exaltation as-given, that the Unconquered Sun really did hand down the divine authority to bend the heavens and put to death anyone who disagrees with utter impunity, that the blood of the Dragons makes you innately superior to humanity, that being an Abyssal inevitably ends with standing at the precipice of the void as the world disappears into it and throwing yourself in after, etc, and between those who Fight Against that and the world telling them what their Exaltation is for, is where you make the step from classical hero (asshole with plot-justification) and Genuine Hero.

It also creates tragedy, because Exaltations are rarely given to those who aspire towards Genuine Heroism, and the attempt sets them against everyone else who doesn't subscribe to those lofty ideals. She will constantly be compared to others of her kind, usually the worst of them, and forced to prove herself better to a world waiting for her to slip just once and show what kind of Secret Demon she always was lurking underneath.

The bloodline as a component of the Dragonblooded narrative creates alienation, either from the mortal origins of the character, or from other Dragonblooded as she refuses its twisted sense of camaraderie and towing the unsavory party-line of superiority. You don't get the same arc simply because your dad was so much cooler than everyone else's dad, even if being cooler also meant he was also the Baddest Dude.
 
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...that seems a long rant that again sorta seems to be missing what everyone else has been saying for two pages.

Well, not everyone else, but people have been making good arguments for why it's not necessary (in the way that Aaron is pushing, and I still haven't actually gotten the citation on that :p) or, as Manus objected, the only thing interesting about Terrestials.
 
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Dif said:
It also creates tragedy, because Exaltations are rarely given to those who aspire towards Genuine Heroism, and the attempt sets them against everyone else who doesn't subscribe to those lofty ideals. She will constantly be compared to others of her kind, usually the worst of them, and forced to prove herself better to a world waiting for her to slip just once and show what kind of Secret Demon she always was lurking underneath.
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Hmmm, how do you define "Genuine Heroism" in your post?
 
ManusDomine said:
Hmmm, how do you define "Genuine Heroism" in your post?
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21st century, altruistic hard-luck attempts to make the world feel worth-living-in for people outside of a select peer-group or invested community, without enforcing your will or views upon them in the process. Exalts are generally misguided, shortsighted people driven to pursue agendas based on whatever biases and cultural traditions they grew up with, in such a way that even the well-intentioned ones create significant problems for those around them, blind to any/all consequences for their actions until the blood is actually shown on their hands.

Compassion is one of the four Virtues, but it doesn't actually enforce mature introspection that PCs can attain, even if it alone of the four comes with the price of making you the Prince with a Thousand Enemies. Or maybe especially because of that.
 
Dif said:
21st century, altruistic hard-luck attempts to make the world feel worth-living-in for people outside of a select peer-group or invested community, without enforcing your will or views upon them in the process.
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Ah, I see. In that case I mostly agree with your analysis.

Dif said:
Exalts are generally misguided, shortsighted people driven to pursue agendas based on whatever biases and cultural traditions they grew up with, in such a way that even the well-intentioned ones create significant problems for those around them, blind to any/all consequences for their actions until the blood is actually shown on their hands.
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I don't know if it's a good idea to throw all Exalts into a category of "misguided, shortsighted people driven to pursue agendas based on whatever biases and cultural traditions they grew up with, in such a way that even the well-intentioned ones create significant problems for those around them, blind to any/all consequences for their actions until the blood is actually shown on their hands", when there is an entire splat of Exalted based around being long-sighted and damning the world due to their understanding and acceptance of the consequences made as sacrifices "for a higher cause".

Unless of course, you would call all people "driven to pursue agendas based on whatever biases or cultural traditions they grew up with", in which case that's true.

Because no one is an island.

Dif said:
Compassion is one of the four Virtues, but it doesn't actually enforce mature introspection that PCs can attain, even if it alone of the four comes with the price of making you the Prince with a Thousand Enemies. Or maybe especially because of that.
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Why are you saying this @Dif? Like, I've played the game since First Edition.

I am, as a matter of fact capable of reading and understanding the game.
 
ManusDomine said:
I don't know if it's a good idea to throw all Exalts into a category of "misguided, shortsighted people driven to pursue agendas based on whatever biases and cultural traditions they grew up with, in such a way that even the well-intentioned ones create significant problems for those around them, blind to any/all consequences for their actions until the blood is actually shown on their hands", when there is an entire splat of Exalted based around being long-sighted and damning the world due to their understanding and acceptance of the consequences made as sacrifices "for a higher cause".
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Sidereals do a lot of posturing to the effect of being long-sighted, worldly-wise and knowing not just everything but also what is best for everyone, because it is Sidereals who write most of their own hype, being one of the few groups to remember they even exist anymore. But the majority of that simply comes from a place of having a good deal of the available information on the subject, and incidentally using that information to justify drawing whatever conclusions fit the plans and views they already had in mind, through the same tried-and-true combination of confirmation bias, maneuvering for status/esteem, looking for simple solutions to complex problems, and unwillingness to change tacks from what they have always done. The Usurpation alone is the textbook definition of an attempted "quick fix" to a foreseeable apocalypse.

The rest of my post was speaking more generally on the subject, not necessarily to you, because invariably the automatic reply is "but everyone already has Compassion!"
 
@Dif, my main issue here is that there has to be a difference between "classical hero" and "Nazi". I find a who-fucked-who basis for Dragonbloods to be unpleasant and kind of dumb. In its place, I'd prefer a model where we take the vaguely-Eastern "family honor/rep" thing and make it have a factual basis, pushing Dynasts to great and terrible acts in their hunger to be more than, to become stronger and stronger until they can look down on their parents and say "Who are you, who dares defy me? I AM THE DRAGON.", and have a leg to stand on by virtue of their blood's potency.

I have no interest in the kind of simplistic, moralizing narrative you have apparently decided I want to put forward. To be quite honest, I find it concerning that you apparently can't see a mid-point between "Care Bears" and "Hatred". Worse, you seem to think that having Dragonbloods' history be built on bloodsoaked conquerors and deranged hedonists is somehow - I don't know, not capable of supporting tragedies about a Terrestrial who secretly despises his family's lineage of blood and glutted excess, or Dynasts who didn't Exalt throwing their lives away in the vain hope that they can awaken the Dragon's blood through heroic deeds.

Dif said:
The bloodline as a component of the Dragonblooded narrative creates alienation, either from the mortal origins of the character, or from other Dragonblooded as she refuses its twisted sense of camaraderie and towing the unsavory party-line of superiority.
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Again, having the average peasant cringe and cower before the Princes of the Earth because it is a historical fact that many of them indulge in larger-than-life acts of violence or hedonism or other stability-disrupting actions seems to interact just fine with the idea that they cower because the Dragonbloods have superpowers. Likewise, you can totally have Dragonbloods who argue that only violent heroism, or diplomatic heroism, or Grizzly Man heroism is the only kind that really counts, creating a toxic system that Dynasts must choose to either tolerate or suffer the cost of refuting it.
 
As far as I can tell, both takes on Dragonblooded breeding are equally tragic and equally unfair. So that line of criticism doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me.

Imrix said:
They might well have. Maybe not in so many words, but the honour culture of the British Empire certainly did, and that didn't grow out of nothing. The vast difference in nutrition would've made it very easy to think along those lines, too.
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Huh, really?

The stuff I've read about pre-capitalist aristocracy doesn't really fit that mould, but it's possible I just missed the texts that did. My interest in history is strictly amateur, after all.

I'd actually be interested in reading some stuff about the pseudo-racial pretensions of British imperials. Got any links/recs?
 
Sanctaphrax said:
The stuff I've read about pre-capitalist aristocracy doesn't really fit that mould, but it's possible I just missed the texts that did. My interest in history is strictly amateur, after all.

I'd actually be interested in reading some stuff about the pseudo-racial pretensions of British imperials. Got any links/recs?
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I'm primarily going off Dr. Stephen Banks, a specialist on British honour culture and author of A Polite Exchange of Bullets: The Duel and the English Gentleman, 1750-1850. I was introduced to him through this article, the relevant excerpt is quoted below;
We also have to leave behind our modern understanding that what separated the British upper classes from "commoners" was their wealth, social power, and political clout. Gentlemen - as the ruling class called themselves - believed that they were different from the working class not because they had these advantages, but because they had a store of internal honor that most of humanity lacked, which made them unwilling to be subjugated. "When a gentleman viewed a whipped slave," says Dr. Banks, "he didn't view a man who had been a victim of power relations and social structure, he saw a man who had allowed himself to be whipped. Better to rebel, to deny he has a master and to be killed than be so subjugated . This is what a gentleman (in theory) would do."
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Essentially, although they didn't use the language of race, a British Gentleman viewed his social class as a race unto itself.

Heck, if you want to go back further, for most of British history our kings were of separate descent than the people; first the Saxons, then the Normans. Our monarchs have been Scandinavian, German or French, and British only by immigration.
 
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Idle thoughts - what if the terrestrial exaltation was something that could be literally handed down, like land[1]​, or magical materials[2]​, or titles[3]​? Assuming the inheritance could be lost due to a lack of an heir and could be weakened by dividing it too much to inflate numbers, with a very slow rate of generation (if at all), one could have the general decline-due-to-foibles-of-man while removing the blood purity thing people are concerned about.

Also the most vicious will disputes ever.

[1] Terrestrial exalts. :V
[2] Like Valyrian steel - you can reforge it, but making more is a different beast.
[3] Princes of the Earth, natch.
 
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