General Exalted Thread

[Shyft]

Like with most of Exalted- no one is exactly happy with it in parts or comprehensively, and almost all conflict in the fandom stems from the fact that we have opinions and differing perspectives. A lot of the early push for 3e was that it was finally going to be a new thing to refer to, to say that 'this is canon now'... and clearly did not wholly succeed. Lunars are the case in point of differing opinions: You'll find countless fans of Lunars- but I guarantee you that finding any two that agree on what Lunars are/do is difficult!

 

[ichypa]

^...... now i'm just confused.

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I've just outright stopped paying attention.

Instead I go look at the 3e map and admire how fuck massive it is. Looking upon it, after looking at the 2e map for so long, was like being able to finally inhale properly. Like for the last two editions, the setting had been wearing a corset.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

I do actually kind of like the idea of the fair folk making their own exalted to fight creation with, now I think about it though.

I'd do it as like, a bunch of mortals they stole and then attached some of their power into exalted style as kind of fake exalted who can operate better in creation though.

Like with most of Exalted- no one is exactly happy with it in parts or comprehensively, and almost all conflict in the fandom stems from the fact that we have opinions and differing perspectives. A lot of the early push for 3e was that it was finally going to be a new thing to refer to, to say that 'this is canon now'... and clearly did not wholly succeed. Lunars are the case in point of differing opinions: You'll find countless fans of Lunars- but I guarantee you that finding any two that agree on what Lunars are/do is difficult!

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I really like the idea of Lunar Dominions but I feel like they could have done with like, describing more of them and them being more actual places, rather than just "Fortress of X more powerful Lunar."

Oh well. I guess I'd better start thinking of some.

 

[Jon Chung]

I don't think the potential existence of powerful beings out in the primal chaos beyond the world doing their own strange things out there particularly affects what's happening inside of creation, anymore than the fact that China exists is going to make a story set in Medieval Europe lesser. While the Wyld is infinite, and there obviously are vastly powerful beings out there, there's no reason to suppose that many of them can match a celestial exalt or that those that can outnumber creation's champions locally.

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You don't think imposing shape on the shapeless and time on the timeless is the sort of thing that ticks off our hypothetical trillions of Solar Exalt peer-level entities? Or, put another way, China matters to you if you're playing a game in Europe if China has built a machine that blocks off the sun. This is kind of a big deal. You'd probably want to drop everything you were doing and go deal with that.

So just have some peer entities out there that don't outnumber creation, at least locally. That's not even vaguely complicated. There's plenty of options, from powerful Cataphracti to the unshaped.

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A Cataphract can be manufactured in job lots by a noble Fair Folk PC barely out of chargen. This can't be allowed to take on a Solar Exalt 1v1 as a peer opponent, yes? I'm fairly sure everyone in this thread will agree that this is ridiculous.

I don't even agree that there's nothing to do out there. There's a whole foreign civilization with its own weird magics who trade regularly with humans. If the works of the fair folk are useless to humans, that's a problem of the system. There should absolutely be reasons why even an exalted might make deals with the fair folk, as much as there is for an exalted to make deals with (or enslave) demons.

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Yes, there's a whole foreign civilization full of soul-sucking elves who want to eat your brain, where the terrain is uniformly a holodeck, which you can treat as the illusion it is with a couple basic charm purchases. The Underworld has more interesting variation, and that place is literally full of dead things that can't change. At least there you have different historical strata of dead things along a useful spectrum of retained sanity and relative humanity in locations built in monochrome from the memories of ghosts.

I mean in terms of the fact that they're both male and female. The fact you've still got elder lunars who are totally bound up about gender roles is one of the things I mean about emphasizing it more.

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Eh. I don't think Ma Ha Suchi has any issues with turning into a female-looking shoggoth wolf-goat if that is needed in order to produce better wolf-goat biological weapons.

Well, the same goes for you. If you want to use TAW, it is from what I've seen, pretty well written and well realized homebrew. If that's what you want to do, it is, after all, your game.

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Nah, this isn't TAW. TAW doesn't do this, it tries to do what you want and reintegrate the Lunars without doing anything about the fairies. Did you read TAW?

However, on my part, I feel like you're undermining a lot of cool parts of the setting to do it. As I said earlier, by removing the fairfolk, or enslaving then to the lunars, you make the Wyld less than it would be.

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No, you remove the Lunars and give the 300 Lunar Exaltations to the Fair Folk. This removes the old Lunars nobody likes, introduces a Celestial peer level entity to the Wyld, provides variation to various Wyld domains with some actual reality to them (enforced by the Lunars), etc, etc.

More than that though, you also remove any faction that wants to push towards a future rather than trying to recreate some utopian past (solars, infernals) or simply preserve what is (Sidereals, Dragon blooded). That to me makes the setting less than what it should be.

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Wut? The fairies are as reductionist as the Abyssals. A destroyed Creation is pushing towards a future?

 

[Shyft]

I do actually kind of like the idea of the fair folk making their own exalted to fight creation with, now I think about it though.

I'd do it as like, a bunch of mortals they stole and then attached some of their power into exalted style as kind of fake exalted who can operate better in creation though.

I really like the idea of Lunar Dominions but I feel like they could have done with like, describing more of them and them being more actual places, rather than just "Fortress of X more powerful Lunar."

Oh well. I guess I'd better start thinking of some.

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One of the keys I feel to writing for a game is to write with an eye towards what players can or will do, instead of just a static 'The way things are'. @EarthScorpion does this constantly with his projects, and he succeeds fairly often.

The world or NPCs can't be 'cooler' than the PCs, but it's a very careful alchemy, because if the NPCs and locations aren't cool enough to be interesting, then they won't come up. The other factor is writing for 'difficulty'. It's hard to write using canon Raksi, because she's awful and monstrous, and it makes it tough to engage her without being horrible or obnoxious black comedy.

 

[Chehrazad]

I don't, I'm gonna be honest here, really care about what was written in 1st edition more than 2nd edition. 2nd edition's setting notes had their problems (primarily the decision to reduce the world to a mere 4 thin source books) but the lunars in 2nd edition were so much cooler than in first edition, and I'd go as far as to say genuinely interesting in their own right. For instance, I really like TSR. They just didn't do enough with it, by which I mean they didn't actually add a bunch of territories under lunar control.

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I don't really have any horse in this race because I really, aggressively don't care, but I'll just forward you the section on Lunars from the corebook rather than their own book, which was idiotic and stupid:

Spoiler: Lunars

These are the Lunars from First Edition I fell in love with, and these are the ones that I will be eternally disappointed never got into the game.

EDIT: They're also the Lunars that me and @horngeek have discussed at length for the purposes of Dilaragame.

 

[EarthScorpion]

I don't really have any horse in this race because I really, aggressively don't care, but I'll just forward you the section on Lunars from the corebook rather than their own book, which was idiotic and stupid:

Spoiler: Lunars

These are the Lunars from First Edition I fell in love with, and these are the ones that I will be eternally disappointed never got into the game.

EDIT: They're also the Lunars that me and @horngeek have discussed at length for the purposes of Dilaragame.

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And they seem entirely supportive of @Jon Chung's stuff - as he's said, there's room for young, sane Lunars who haven't been caught up in the madness of the elders and their twisted ways.

 

[landcollector]

No, you remove the Lunars and give the 300 Lunar Exaltations to the Fair Folk.

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I don't have much of a stake in this topic myself, but why would Luna allow beings who want Creation to Go Away to get Exaltations?

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

I think we're kind of getting close to violating the rule against spaghetti here, and I'm already at like, 3 stars over my head, so I'm going to consolidate this.

You don't think imposing shape on the shapeless and time on the timeless is the sort of thing that ticks off our hypothetical trillions of Solar Exalt peer-level entities? Or, put another way, China matters to you if you're playing a game in Europe if China has built a machine that blocks off the sun. This is kind of a big deal. You'd probably want to drop everything you were doing and go deal with that.

A Cataphract can be manufactured in job lots by a noble Fair Folk PC barely out of chargen. This can't be allowed to take on a Solar Exalt 1v1 as a peer opponent, yes? I'm fairly sure everyone in this thread will agree that this is ridiculous.

Yes, there's a whole foreign civilization full of soul-sucking elves who want to eat your brain, where the terrain is uniformly a holodeck. The Underworld has more interesting variation, and that place is literally full of dead things that can't change. At least there you have different historical strata of dead things along a useful spectrum of retained sanity and relative humanity in locations built in monochrome from the memories of ghosts.

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Most of the truly powerful shapeless probably cannot even comprehend movement, so the Primodials imposition of dimensionality basically makes creation safe from them on its own, as they cannot comprehend how to get there. So you're only dealing with ones that randomly stumble up, or figure out how to move, which shapes them more and reduces their power.

Even then, they have weaknesses that mean they're not going to be able to just attack creation on mass. It's the same reason why the exalted won the war against the primordials. The unshaped (who are kind of proto-Primes in how they're set up) are not used to being able to die. Them being around is no worse than second or third circle demons being around.

As for Cataphracts, I think I'm just using the term imprecisely. What I meant was "PC grade fair folk noble who is specialized in fighting creation born."

Fairfolk, shaped or unshaped, just shouldn't be able to create stuff that can take on an exalted easily. That doesn't mean they can't create that stuff that can take on an exalt though, just you need to make their powers work in such a way that it doesn't let them beat creation.

As for the wyld itself, you can easily detail it more interestingly than it has been previously detailed.

Wut? The fairies are as reductionist as the Abyssals. A destroyed Creation is pushing towards a future?

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No. I mean the lunars, as written, are trying to create the future. That's their job in the setting. To create change and newness.

 

[grommile]

Our patriarchy, the one that exists in our world. There's no more subversive idea to the norms of gender power than the idea that gender itself may not exist in the way we suppose it too. Even in creation, where there are more equal societies, and ones dominated by women, the idea of twin faced beings who are male and female as they wish is going to be pretty subversive whether you're a coralite who believes men should rule, or a realm dynast who thinks that it's women's job.

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To my mind, the fact that a numerically limited supernatural outsider elite has the luxury of being able to ignore gender norms by virtue of being supernaturally powerful shapeshifters doesn't seem to be particularly subversive to the gender norms of people who are not part of that supernatural outsider elite and have no realistic prospect of ever so being.

If anything, it seems like it would reinforce those norms, by saying that only super special people get to ignore gender norms.

 

[The Laurent]

To my mind, the fact that a numerically limited supernatural outsider elite has the luxury of being able to ignore gender norms by virtue of being supernaturally powerful shapeshifters doesn't seem to be particularly subversive to the gender norms of people who are not part of that supernatural outsider elite and have no realistic prospect of ever so being.

If anything, it seems like it would reinforce those norms, by saying that only super special people get to ignore gender norms.

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Though it seems a very Exalted thing to, with drawbacks and limitations, and themed to whatever type of Exalted you are (Solars getting straight-up training, Infernals do that 'radiation cancer' thing in one tree, a 'becoming your children' thing in another, etc, etc, based on the Yozi), to be able to transmit some of what you can do to your followers.

Some sort of lesser shapeshifting charm or something? Not sure. *shrugs*.

 

[ichypa]

I do actually kind of like the idea of the fair folk making their own exalted to fight creation with, now I think about it though.

I'd do it as like, a bunch of mortals they stole and then attached some of their power into exalted style as kind of fake exalted who can operate better in creation though.

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I don't know about them being "fake exalted," but I've always felt that if the fair folk were going to be Irish, it was a shame that there weren't any characters referencing the Tuatha De Danan; god-like being who were foreign to their land, but were mighty and wise and heroes in their own right.

Perhaps they could gain power and/or stability from phenomenally powerful adjurations of some kind? Things like how the Nuada had to step down from his throne after he lost his hand, because the laws of the Tuatha said they could not have a king who was not perfect. And I've always thought that a Fae-Blooded with a couple purchases of God-Body would be perfect way to emulate Cu Chulainn and his warp spasms.

I don't really have any horse in this race because I really, aggressively don't care, but I'll just forward you the section on Lunars from the corebook rather than their own book, which was idiotic and stupid:

Spoiler: Lunars

These are the Lunars from First Edition I fell in love with, and these are the ones that I will be eternally disappointed never got into the game.

EDIT: They're also the Lunars that me and @horngeek have discussed at length for the purposes of Dilaragame.

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Its perhaps telling that the two examples of Lunars given in the Core book are a shiny, shiny new Lunar who goes off to do her own thing as soon as possible, and a guy who would logically have avoided the madness of most Lunar elders because he literally slept through the Shogunate and the Crusade.

 

[Jon Chung]

I think we're kind of getting close to violating the rule against spaghetti here, and I'm already at like, 3 stars over my head, so I'm going to consolidate this.

Most of the truly powerful shapeless probably cannot even comprehend movement, so the Primodials imposition of dimensionality basically makes creation safe from them on its own, as they cannot comprehend how to get there. So you're only dealing with ones that randomly stumble up, or figure out how to move, which shapes them more and reduces their power.

Even then, they have weaknesses that mean they're not going to be able to just attack creation on mass. It's the same reason why the exalted won the war against the primordials. The unshaped (who are kind of proto-Primes in how they're set up) are not used to being able to die. Them being around is no worse than second or third circle demons being around.

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There is an absolute fixed number of second and third circle demons and none of them can leave Hell without being summoned. This is not the same thing as an infinite chaos spawning things of equal potency, I'm sure you'd agree?

As for Cataphracts, I think I'm just using the term imprecisely. What I meant was "PC grade fair folk noble who is specialized in fighting creation born."

Fairfolk, shaped or unshaped, just shouldn't be able to create stuff that can take on an exalted easily. That doesn't mean they can't create that stuff that can take on an exalt though, just you need to make their powers work in such a way that it doesn't let them beat creation.

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As of the last Fair Folk mechanics in 2E, a PC grade fair folk noble can spawn another PC grade fair folk noble in one year. Both of them can spawn another PC grade fair folk noble in one year each, at which point you have four, and... you're very quickly going to hit the point of "practically infinite fairies" after that.

The only way this works is by making the potentially limitless numbers not limitless in some fashion, such as, say, using those 300 Lunar Exaltations, which come with Celestial power and a Celestial population cap to match.

As for the wyld itself, you can easily detail it more interestingly than it has been previously detailed.

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Sure. This includes giving it interesting people to interact with, ideally people who aren't uniformly soul-sucking elves. Maybe one of those 300 kings of Chaos might make things more interesting than soul-sucking elves.

No. I mean the lunars, as written, are trying to create the future. That's their job in the setting. To create change and newness.

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That's not their job, where did you get that?

 

[The Laurent]

There is an absolute fixed number of second and third circle demons and none of them can leave Hell without being summoned. This is not the same thing as an infinite chaos spawning things of equal potency, I'm sure you'd agree?



As of the last Fair Folk mechanics in 2E, a PC grade fair folk noble can spawn another PC grade fair folk noble in one year. Both of them can spawn another PC grade fair folk noble in one year each, at which point you have four, and... you're very quickly going to hit the point of "practically infinite fairies" after that.

The only way this works is by making the potentially limitless numbers not limitless in some fashion, such as, say, using those 300 Lunar Exaltations, which come with Celestial power and a Celestial population cap to match.



Sure. This includes giving it interesting people to interact with, ideally people who aren't uniformly soul-sucking elves.



That's not their job, where did you get that?

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Um? Or by writing them with mechanics that aren't shit?

 

[Jon Chung]

Um? Or by writing them with mechanics that aren't shit?

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Yes. Not shitty mechanics like a population cap on Celestial Exalt level entities.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

To my mind, the fact that a numerically limited supernatural outsider elite has the luxury of being able to ignore gender norms by virtue of being supernaturally powerful shapeshifters doesn't seem to be particularly subversive to the gender norms of people who are not part of that supernatural outsider elite and have no realistic prospect of ever so being.

If anything, it seems like it would reinforce those norms, by saying that only super special people get to ignore gender norms.

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Depends who's perspective you're writing from

One of the keys I feel to writing for a game is to write with an eye towards what players can or will do, instead of just a static 'The way things are'. @EarthScorpion does this constantly with his projects, and he succeeds fairly often.

The world or NPCs can't be 'cooler' than the PCs, but it's a very careful alchemy, because if the NPCs and locations aren't cool enough to be interesting, then they won't come up. The other factor is writing for 'difficulty'. It's hard to write using canon Raksi, because she's awful and monstrous, and it makes it tough to engage her without being horrible or obnoxious black comedy.

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I'm not 100% on how that relates to what I said, but I don't know if I'd be too worried about NPCs being "cooler" in the context of a game, because the protagonist or PC is automatically cool.

The main thing is to make sure that there's no groups who have the same agenda as the PCs but more power and no additional restrictions. More power and more restrictions can give quests. Different agenda and more power can serve as antagonists, foils and allies that you persuade. Less power and same agenda can be side kicks.

So really, the issue isn't locations, it's other PC parties.

 

[Lioness]

For instance, I really like TSR. They just didn't do enough with it, by which I mean they didn't actually add a bunch of territories under lunar control.

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My big problem with the TSR was that it didn't explore the morality of what the Lunars were doing.
It has an almost Sidereal dimension of 'what are you willing to do to create an ideal society?' with the caveat that if you micromanage you end up with something that could very well fall to pieces without you. Throw in some mentors who think little of individual human lives and you have... something. Maybe not the best fit for Lunar Exalted, but something.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

My big problem with the TSR was that it didn't explore the morality of what the Lunars were doing.
It has an almost Sidereal dimension of 'what are you willing to do to create an ideal society?' with the caveat that if you micromanage you end up with something that could very well fall to pieces without you. Throw in some mentors who think little of individual human lives and you have... something. Maybe not the best fit for Lunar Exalted, but something.

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I get what you're saying.

I also got a bit annoyed that, and this is honestly similar with lunar dominions, that exalted's creative teams seem quite reluctant to just go out and add a bunch of new Lunar ruled states to the edges of creation. Creation right now is very empty, so I don't quite get why there seems to be this attachment to either stuff that was in first edition or like, individual lunar's fortress/island/whatever.

 

[grommile]

Depends who's perspective you're writing from

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I'm writing from the perspective of a 40-year-old white Anglophone bisexual cissexual man who knows that quite a few mythological figures from historical patriarchal societies could choose the presentational sex of their adopted physical forms, and that there's an awful lot of profoundly un-subversive transformation fetish erotica out there

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

I'm writing from the perspective of a 40-year-old white Anglophone bisexual cissexual man who knows that quite a few mythological figures from historical patriarchal societies could choose the presentational sex of their adopted physical forms, and that there's an awful lot of profoundly un-subversive transformation fetish erotica out there

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What I mean is is that whether it's subversive to local gender norms depends on whether you're writing from a broadly supportive perspective to the society or to the lunar.

I think you do raise a good point of how possible it even is to explore ideals of justice in a setting as unequal as exalted, but within the framework of exalted being superhumans, and especially as breaking your gender norms is often considered weakness, I think there's a fair amount of scope for stories about lunars exposing the artificiality of bad societies.

 

[Chehrazad]

No. I mean the lunars, as written, are trying to create the future. That's their job in the setting. To create change and newness.

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As the Dragon-Blooded guy, I'm just going to barge in and point out that there are more Outcastes in all of Creation than there are in the Realm and Lookshy combined. You aren't going to find that most Dragon-Blooded are oppressive defenders of the status quo, most are going to be wandering heroes who do what they find that the society or community they grew up in demands of them, like crowning themselves kings and queens or fighting horrid beasts that they encounter - generally I don't think that the vast amount of Exalts will have motivations that look like each other at all. Admiral Sand wants to create the greatest fucking economy you've ever fucking seen and he's not going to let the Guild stand in his way, meanwhile Dace wants to unify the Scavenger Lands' armies under his own command and Demetheus just wants to beat some bad motherfuckers up.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

As the Dragon-Blooded guy, I'm just going to barge in and point out that there are more Outcastes in all of Creation than there are in the Realm and Lookshy combined. You aren't going to find that most Dragon-Blooded are oppressive defenders of the status quo, most are going to be wandering heroes who do what they find that the society or community they grew up in demands of them, like crowning themselves kings and queens or fighting horrid beasts that they encounter - generally I don't think that the vast amount of Exalts will have motivations that look like each other at all. Admiral Sand wants to create the greatest fucking economy you've ever fucking seen and he's not going to let the Guild stand in his way, meanwhile Dace wants to unify the Scavenger Lands' armies under his own command and Demetheus just wants to beat some bad motherfuckers up.

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I don't mean this as deterministicly as it perhaps comes across.

Obviously, there's going to be a lot of differences of opinion within factions. They'll be Solars who want to create a better future diffrent from the deliberative of old, they'll be dragon blooded outcasts or even in the realm who want to create their own newness.

Hell, my take on Mnenon is that she's a reformer who wants to build a better realm, who's personal power is such that she's able to have a grand vision of the future and more perfect government, rather than going with her mother's constant quest for basically just more life forever.

However, the lunars, who've never before ruled creation seem like the most natural group, on a factional level, to represent pushing forward, change and newness. Especially given that they're also shape shifters.

 

[ichypa]

As the Dragon-Blooded guy, I'm just going to barge in and point out that there are more Outcastes in all of Creation than there are in the Realm and Lookshy combined. You aren't going to find that most Dragon-Blooded are oppressive defenders of the status quo, most are going to be wandering heroes who do what they find that the society or community they grew up in demands of them, like crowning themselves kings and queens or fighting horrid beasts that they encounter - generally I don't think that the vast amount of Exalts will have motivations that look like each other at all. Admiral Sand wants to create the greatest fucking economy you've ever fucking seen and he's not going to let the Guild stand in his way, meanwhile Dace wants to unify the Scavenger Lands' armies under his own command and Demetheus just wants to beat some bad motherfuckers up.

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That Admiral Sand isn't more prominent is a fucking tragedy. He is the real model of all an Eclipse Caste can and should be, and an example of all the things they could accomplish if they put their minds to it; distinctly unlike Swan, the actual signature Eclipse whose greatest accomplishment of narrative relevance is to be part of a love triangle, or Mirror Flag, who is a shining example of the ways that the Bronze Faction and Immaculate Order are right.

 

[Sucal]

I don't have much of a stake in this topic myself, but why would Luna allow beings who want Creation to Go Away to get Exaltations?

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What gives Luna any say in it?

She'd need to get out of the pleasure dome 'properly' to go have a chat with the Elders, its not something that could be left to a fragment. Maybe she'll do it one of these centuries. maybe, Venus just created a new position involving 9 people.

 

[changeling]

I've just outright stopped paying attention.

Instead I go look at the 3e map and admire how fuck massive it is. Looking upon it, after looking at the 2e map for so long, was like being able to finally inhale properly. Like for the last two editions, the setting had been wearing a corset.

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The more I think of it, the more I think that gorgious map was one of the best changes in Exalted 3ed.

I know it's damning with faint praise, but after my last campaign sputtered over homebrew in evocations and charm combinations, I am now thinking it's just more tiring to run 3ed.. except vanilla, low-level combat. That's fun. And craft. I like it.


(or maybe I am just getting old, and staying to 3 a.m. to prepare for sessions was not for me anymore).