=== Shyft's Observations: Session #3 ===
[11:50] I love Graceful Crane Stance. It is the entire reason Inks has Athletics 1. As long as Maji serves as a applicable platform on which to balance, Inks cannot fall over. If he were to say, invert himself, Inks would fall without a stunt or Spider Foot Style. Feather-Foot Style lets her balance on things that CAN'T support weight, while GCS lets her stand on things that can support SOME weight but not her own weight. As mentioned in my Solar Essays, GCS's platform clause also exists to ensure you can use your Dodge DV even on tightrope wires and so on.
[11:50] As far as stunts go, Sunlit Sands has meatier, more compressed stunts than I'm sure some people are used to- this is an elaborate 'Dramatic Movement Action' which is summed up as 'Inks gets from one side of the city ot another, gets past a guard and talks to a person she knows'. The important part for Aleph is that I made sure to include the people I wanted to See There, like Ahlam, and acknowledged the previously established conventions like the guard or other employees.
(Aleph: Shyft is good at remembering established details like this, which is nice - less work tracking them for me as an ST.)
[12:00] Aleph employed a fairly standard ST trick of using an NPC to get a read on a PC's intentions- specifically if Inks would bring Maji along. Remember, Maji is about 4.5 maybe 5 feet tall at the shoulder and much bigger than even a regular tiger. A significant portion of Inks's initial revenue stream just goes into FEEDING HIM. He actually ate better outside of Gem with his Survival 4 and +4d from one of his mutations. Note to self, add my Resources 3 'Gemcrafting' to my character sheet...
As to the acutal plan here, invoking Maji in this manner is mostly me wanting to get the most out of my traits which includes Backgrounds- a lot of Exalted actually suffers from too much stuff to track and not enough time to spotlight it all. That's actually why the best Artifacts are the ones that are iconic or 'Daily Use'.
So the main thing I realized after the fact was that I misunderstood the summons, and Aleph pointed it out as well- Inks was asked to meet the Despot 'at her earliest convenience- today', which I took as 'Right the Goddamned Now', but Aleph clarified as 'Any time That Day'.
This is worth mentioning, because the waiting room Inks was pushed into was one of many,or so Aleph implied, with a specific sort of role or objective in the decor and pagentry. I don't know if Aleph intended this, but one thing I took away from the whole waiting scene was ideas on How To Do It myself- Inks may infact end up mirroring the Despot's behaviors.
(This was 100% intentional. Inks saying things like "I want them a bit nervous but also greedy for what I can give them; send them to the green waiting room" and designing rooms to make passive social attacks against people who spend much time in them is very much the sort of thing that fits her character archetype.)
[12:04] Here we have one of Aleph's and I's Game Tone miscues. Our knowledge pools don't always overlap, and I am generally of a mind that 'Keep the game moving' is more important than vermilisitude- however Aleph comes from a very strong background of Do Your Goddamned Research. She obligingly reminded me that Resources 3 of Gems was not 'big stones', and we amicably agreed to retcon it in the subsequent stunts. She even found a reference page to show what she was talking about.
Now, not every game is going to have that luxury- of having anyone willing to BE that dedicated to accuracy or helping build up the detail of the world. Sometimes it's tough enough getting three or five people at the same tie together focusing on a somewhat shared goal.
(Aleph: In this case Inks is specifically a crafter who is in Gem, who works with jewels a lot and who is producing them as her main revenue stream. Since it's an area with more narrative focus, I feel the increased granularity is a bonus - more detail allows for more hooks and more things to interact with.)
[12:04] Back to Inks and Maji, I made a point of bringing up Inks's Nexan heritage and the culture she brought with her.
[12:18] In the ((OOC)) part of the conversation, I noted that these scenes could be considered Intimacy Building. Remember that most Mortals have Conviction 1-2, which means it's easy to win them over. Ahlam is probably more driven, so he'd be more difficult, and the 'Court' embodied in the Dream of Flesh shares his traits.
[12:37] Here Aleph attempted and in my opinion succeeded reasonably well at creating an Establishing Shot and Scene Change. She moved the characters through time and space with a metaphorical curtain fall and rise. Here she also poked Inks, intentionally or not, in one of her Virtues.
(Aleph: Intentional again. Slavery is a big thing in Gem, and Inks is now settled enough for me to start confronting her with it.)
[12:37] And here Inks rolls Compassion- because she can make a logical leap from 'arranged marriages' to 'slavery', and it may not be a wholly rational belief, but it's Her belief. Inks is Intelligence 5, not Rationalist Posthuman Singularity 5.
[12:40] Now, I succeeded on the Compassion roll, and as per the rules, I am compelled to act unless I spend a WP. I however am fully in control of HOW I act- so instead of making an immediate scene, Inks bides her time...
[12:40] I also very specifically picked Slavery as part of Inks's characterization for both Exalted Bucket List reasons, and simplicty for Aleph's sake. Slavery exists in Creation for players to take a stand against it or use it to achieve their own goals. I have never encountered a Free the Slaves player other than Aleph, and even then Keris is well, an Infernal- her approach to problems is not 'Classic Solar'. Most of the time in my experience, the slave most players want to save are demons. Which is fine, but wow are there a lot of Demon/Yozi apologists out there.
(Aleph: I have not encountered this, and it honestly bewilders me. I mean, Keris is an Infernal, and even she's pretty much given up on "justice for Hell". It's just too /big/.)
[12:48] Maji is partially a compromise for the solo play experience- I can offload a small slice of competence on him so Inks can focus her experience expenditures on more improtant things like Bureaucracy, Sorcery and Craft. On paper I would love for Inks to have more XP for... everything, and even now she actually doesn't quite feel 'Set' as a character. Exalted character generation feels best when a character comes out the gate as 'Done, but with room to grow'. Inks, having multi-specced into almost four different specialties, suffers from the 2e twilight problem of 'Does Everything Smart'.
Now, ths is actually important to me because I wanted her conceptually to be a polymath and to explore that, instead of taking it as an entitled 'I'm a Twilight and I should do it all'. Not every Twilight has to be like this, but with Inks, I wanted to make a very clear statement of 'This woman with the neck to ankles tattoo is a master surgeon, architect, savant and sorcerer'.
Hopefully in the future, the idea is that Inks is so valuable for her mind and other skills that people call upon her like they did the great thinkers of antiquity. A lot of Exalted games fall victim to the idea of nothing 'touches' the PCs unless it attacks them. In Inks's case, she fights the 'Island' problem and exists to be recognized and invited to solve other people's problems. She's the architect who designs the new castle, or the metallurgist who revolutionizes steel production. When you want to fund a trade mission to distant lands, you ask her to loan you money like the rich gentry of the previous eras did.
[13:16] Enter The Despot, Rankar the Seventh. This is the first time I've ever played a game even Remotely near Gem, and thus the first time I've seen the guy on-camera. I deliberately have been avoiding reading any of the southern setting books just to make sure Aleph can A- surprise me and B, I don't metagame her. I know a FEW things by osmosis, but none of which are particularly relevant to Sunlit Sands.
Now, as previously emphasized by Aleph, Maji is a GIANT TIGER and no matter how docile he seems at Inks's side, he is a GIANT TIGER and people will act accordingly. I also am gleefully playing to the hilt the fact that this curvacous woman has a GIANT TIGER generally following her commands by gesture and expression.
[13:18] The first great confrontation between these two minds! I'm not playing it too cagey, as Inks is only Socialize 1 (and I want to raise that really soon...), but she is a proud sorcerer and at least has some reasonable amount of business sense. Rankar is probably more skilled and experienced than Inks at this stage- more Ability and Style/Specialty dots. Also Rankar has AIDES- who grant teamwork bonuses, along with Books and Tools and Blessings to further improve his capabilities. A lot of people point out hte hypothetical maximum pool for mortals is 5+5+3? That's false. The Ideal Cases pool is Attribute 5, Ability 5, Specialty +3, Limited Teamwork +5d, Tool Bonus +3, howevermany dice a blessing can get you, and then your stunt. Now-
This is ideal case,and only someone LIKE Rankar can achieve it wiht any degree of regularity... unless you're an Exalt.
[13:25] From here Rankar is both showing some of his own cards, like the undisguised attraction to Inks (which is a perfectly reasonable consideration). I personally was acting (faking) as if Inks had more power at hand than Rankar did, but in reality he still is in much more control than Inks is.
[13:44] By this point, Rankar has deduced that Inks is a Sorcerer, and while I'm actually not going to be too shy aobut Demons, I don't want to make a bad impression this early either. Regardless, Rankar and by extension Aleph really impressed me with this summation of Inks's actions thus far, because I almost never see that level of attention paid to a player character- I try to when I run games, but most of my recent experiences have been four-five player romps with predominantly new players.
So with regard to the summation itself, Rankar points out that Inks is actually acting in a very strange manner- she goes to Gem and decides "I'm going to make more Gems.", she hides half the time and then shows off in blatant sorcerous glory the other half. This is all oddly fitting considering she's a Twilight, and only the Eclipse is more split between 'stages' of day or night.
[14:00] having reviewed the summation and spent a few rolls assessing his character, Inks offered her reply- "I want to start a business and I wanted to live somewhere warm." I haven't posted the prelude where she exalted, but basically she almost died of frostbite and it's left Inks less than interested in the idea of Cold Weather.
Inks's vision is grand, but a lot of her reasoning is very straight-forward and human. She wants to be rich, comfortable, powerful... and in a lot of ways, nothing like the family she left behind.
[14:15] I fully went into this meeting knowing Rankar would demand something like this- and to be fair I actually agree that flooding the market with gems hurts everyone, which is why Inks has an immediate counter-offer of turning excess gems to industrial uses and keeping them out of the 'fine jewlery' trade that he is more intimately familiar with.
[14:25] And if you recall that compassion roll, here Inks is cashing it in- she successfully convices the Despot to give up a slave- and he actually throws in two more as a casual display of generosity. Rankar doesn't know it, but he just gave Inks her first three employees.
(Aleph: I actually did this with the full expectation of her balking at the idea of being casually /given/ two people like /things/, to try and rub her nose in the slavery culture a little more. I realised immediately after doing so, of course, that Inks would just take that as an opportunity to rescue two more people from being slaves. She doesn't stand on principle like that.)
The next 'Session', let's call it 3.5, is actually going to be somewhat Play By Post/Google Doc, which sets up for the next Live Session whenever it happens.
=== Aleph's Observations: Session #3 ===
[12:56] Something Shyft missed at the time here - which he mentioned above - was that Rankar didn't give an exact time for Inks to meet him. As a result, since he couldn't afford to keep his whole day free, he was actually in a meeting when she arrived, hence the wait in the meeting room. I don't feel this miscommunication compromises Inks' character, since she's shown a trend of being rather impatient and forward, so this comment still basically fits. Nonetheless, it might have been better to quietly mention it as soon as I noticed the misunderstanding.
More generally, I'm giving Inks' style of aggressive negotiation some leeway by having Rankar be a cautious man who's assuming that Inks is holding /something/ back and treating her as though she might be either a valuable asset or a viable threat. I've been eagerly waiting for the chance to show off how much attention people have been paying her - I'm somewhat surprised that Shyft's experience of this is rare, because to me this is a /perfect/ way to generate plot that I've been planning ever since she started acting to draw attention. If you do things loudly and obviously, people are going to Watch You - and then they're going to start guessing at what you want, what you're doing and how they can turn it to their advantage. And Inks has been very, very obvious, so a lot of big players in Gem have been getting reports on her comings and goings.
I feel that's something that isn't included nearly enough in any form of fiction - people not only /guessing/ at things based on the information they have, but also crucially guessing /wrong/ sometimes. Or even a lot! Someone coming to a hilariously wrong but totally understandable and logical conclusion is generally only used for humour, when it's actually really good for drama and plot as well. And there are plenty of ways for characters to be wrong! Being intentionally misled or not knowing all the facts and extrapolating are only two! People can assume that everyone acts a certain way or holds a certain belief. They can put too much trust in something or someone, or assume it will always be the same. They can ignore facts so they don't have to change their opinions - without even realising they're doing it! - or they can acknowledge them but just naively think something won't be all that bad. Characters being wrong is /really good stuff/ for writing, and in a game like Inksgame where the focus is on politics and intelligence and business and ultimately /people/ - how they act, what they want, both in groups and individually - characters being wrong is an invaluable and essential element.
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