- Location
- Singapore
General Exalted Thread
What? Even if you haven't seen that show its a incredibly well spread trope. The Hellsing Family from Hellsing would count. Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter comes from a old, rich and powerful family.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Are you familiar with the upper class - not the American upper class, which is mostly upper middle, and i will stand by that - the historied families. Those that went to public schools, That have homes older than the USA, ect, ect. That's a prestigious family, in the context you were asking. Old money.
Okay, to address more broadly your points here, @Shyft, amusingly enough one of the major contributing factors to this design of low resolution actions in downtime and how you can substitute normal gameplay actions for them (so if you steal someone's notes in normal gameplay, you can use those stolen notes to provide an already-successful strategic action) is based on the previous remarks you made about how the "normal game" is the Avengers team-up comic.
These strategic actions, therefore, are basically the story of what happened in your own comic, with each action essentially a one-roll "scene". It's so when the downtime ends, you can say "In the last session, Ariana found that the dam at the head of the Red River was unstable. After carrying out a geomantic survey, she decided it was safe to temporarily reinforce it with Raising the Earth's Bones. Over the next season, she located and re-inscribed the ancient glyphs on the front, strengthening the dam and also restoring control over it. She can now control the sluice gates, which is an asset for their party's control of the farming lands downstream. She also helps out Swan with the translations". And that's born of:
That's why it's low-res. What matters here is "do you pass or fail at your survey" - if you fail, that section on "dynamic failure" means there's some plot complication because of that failure while if you pass, you find the problem. If it was more complicated and something you can't resolve that simply at that resolution, you shouldn't be doing it on the strategic timescale.
I'll address these points together, because they're the same fundamental point.
If you don't meet them in-game, strategic actions are the answer. When you get some downtime, you go "Okay, I want to make a deal with a storm god" or "I want a demonic pact" or "I want a demonic familiar", and discuss with your GM how many "actions" the background is worth, and assemble an action chain.
So, take the storm god. You might build up a chain of:
Same for the Ally-pact with a second or third circle. You research and build a ritual you carry out at the new moon or Calibration to beckon the image of the demon (letting Mara speak through a sacrificed deer corpse, say), and once it's there, you negotiate with the demon for the terms of the pact. It's a proactive thing for the sorcerer. Of course, if the demon in question had a cult you wiped out and the sorcerer stole their ritual book, you don't need to research or design a ritual to contact them.
It's meant to be a proactive player thing. They go "I want to contact spirits - gods, demons, elementals - and make a deal with them". The GM provides a path for them to do it, et voila, you're now an infernalist. Just look to fiction for what signing a pact with a demon might be like - also note that as per Demonic Anchors stuff, you're now an anchor for them to stay in Creation. They're your Ally so want you to thrive and not die, but they also get to do things in Creation that further their own interests (because they're an Ally, not a slave).
First Circle Demonic Familiars are even easier, as you don't need any ritual summoning if you have Dot1C. You just use that spell, don't bind them, and negotiate a pact with them where they serve you and in return they get to stay in Creation:
(You could also use Dot2C for more powerful demons, but since that actually brings them to Creation it's probably a better idea to negotiate with their image. It's an even worse idea to go to Hell and talk things out, unless you're an Infernal. @Aleph does have Asarin as a low rated Ally, though, from that agreement they worked out that Keris would use Asarin as her favoured combat 2CD when they can summon them and in return Keris wouldn't bind her.)
These strategic actions, therefore, are basically the story of what happened in your own comic, with each action essentially a one-roll "scene". It's so when the downtime ends, you can say "In the last session, Ariana found that the dam at the head of the Red River was unstable. After carrying out a geomantic survey, she decided it was safe to temporarily reinforce it with Raising the Earth's Bones. Over the next season, she located and re-inscribed the ancient glyphs on the front, strengthening the dam and also restoring control over it. She can now control the sluice gates, which is an asset for their party's control of the farming lands downstream. She also helps out Swan with the translations". And that's born of:
- Occult - Minor - Geomantic Survey
- Raising the Earth's Bones lets her reinforce it as a Trivial thing, she makes the case to the GM
- Craft - Major - Reinforcing and repairing the glyphs
- Linguistics - Minor - Helping Swan with his downtime project.
That's why it's low-res. What matters here is "do you pass or fail at your survey" - if you fail, that section on "dynamic failure" means there's some plot complication because of that failure while if you pass, you find the problem. If it was more complicated and something you can't resolve that simply at that resolution, you shouldn't be doing it on the strategic timescale.
I'll address these points together, because they're the same fundamental point.
If you don't meet them in-game, strategic actions are the answer. When you get some downtime, you go "Okay, I want to make a deal with a storm god" or "I want a demonic pact" or "I want a demonic familiar", and discuss with your GM how many "actions" the background is worth, and assemble an action chain.
So, take the storm god. You might build up a chain of:
- Lore - Major - Travel between the libraries and temples in the area, researching the myths and tales of the powerful storm gods, until you find a hopeful candicate
- Performance - Minor - Get the resources and the materials to hold a giant ceremony pleasing to the god you've chosen to approach, using the knowledge you've found.
- Performance - Trivial - Actually hold the ritual, and see if it pleases the god
- Then you zoom back down to the personal scale for the interactions with the god once they've shown up in response to your prayers if the GM wants the PC to have to negotiate it out, or you can just say that the ritual pleased the god enough and they're willing to lend you their lightning if you don't want to take time away from the main story.
Same for the Ally-pact with a second or third circle. You research and build a ritual you carry out at the new moon or Calibration to beckon the image of the demon (letting Mara speak through a sacrificed deer corpse, say), and once it's there, you negotiate with the demon for the terms of the pact. It's a proactive thing for the sorcerer. Of course, if the demon in question had a cult you wiped out and the sorcerer stole their ritual book, you don't need to research or design a ritual to contact them.
It's meant to be a proactive player thing. They go "I want to contact spirits - gods, demons, elementals - and make a deal with them". The GM provides a path for them to do it, et voila, you're now an infernalist. Just look to fiction for what signing a pact with a demon might be like - also note that as per Demonic Anchors stuff, you're now an anchor for them to stay in Creation. They're your Ally so want you to thrive and not die, but they also get to do things in Creation that further their own interests (because they're an Ally, not a slave).
First Circle Demonic Familiars are even easier, as you don't need any ritual summoning if you have Dot1C. You just use that spell, don't bind them, and negotiate a pact with them where they serve you and in return they get to stay in Creation:
- If you're a militant Dawn, they might kiss your blade or even be "knighted" by you.
- If you're a holy Zenith, you might touch them with your touch and brand them with your mark
- If you're a mathmagician Twilight, you might have them give their word in a complex binding circle
- If you're a crime lord Night, you might cut your hand and cut theirs and have them swear a blood oath
- If you're an Eclipse... you have your anima power, what more do you want?
(You could also use Dot2C for more powerful demons, but since that actually brings them to Creation it's probably a better idea to negotiate with their image. It's an even worse idea to go to Hell and talk things out, unless you're an Infernal. @Aleph does have Asarin as a low rated Ally, though, from that agreement they worked out that Keris would use Asarin as her favoured combat 2CD when they can summon them and in return Keris wouldn't bind her.)
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- Location
- Singapore
Hmm... I think I now get it.
Ok, now that I have a computer...
1. For those homebrewers of yours, what guidelines do you have for making, say, a specific city or nation?
2. What are the most expensive and hardest things to create and make in a medieval setting?
3. I have opened a thread on onyxpath forums, and I got a thread there for 'what would a people of adamant look like'. We got some talking, and then.... I got this idea. I once saw a gift for werewolf, in which the gift basically enables a werewolf to create anything, as long as he has the raw materials. For example, with sand, scrap metal, and some plastic, a wolf using this gift can create a crude computer. How would you rate this pattern for the people of adamant?
4. If you had stuff like the obliterator virus, how would you put it in-setting? A specific symbiotic demon, like a combination of Sesslejae and Peronelle?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
1: Dean Shomshak can help you out with this.
2. Impossible to say. 'Medieval' is a hopelessly vague term covering centuries of history and dozens of nations among wildly different areas of the world. Be more specific.
3: Reference Craftsman Needs No Tools, rebalance to fit.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Canals. No, seriously. Canals. They require huge amounts of manpower to make, which is hugely expensive to employ, and if you use too much labour you'll be starving the area as people are taken from agriculture. Canals are a bitch to make.
- Location
- Singapore
Ah, fine then.
Its in the time to tumult thing.
Basically, I have a nation. It's down in the dumps. Previously, it had mines of, say, rare gemstones or magical materials or metals. But as time passed, the mines dried up, and it got harder and harder to get enough to turn a profit. The nation was on a downturn, since this was pretty much their only export. The nations wealth was based on these gemstones.
Then suddenly, something changed. The nation started to export something else. I'm still not sure what to write. Maybe lacquered wooden goods. Maybe high quality lenses and glasses. Fine china. High quality steel and various alloys. Not sure. Basically, its something that a high level craftsman would create, or one that requires secret and advanced techniques.
The trick? As they were mining, they dug. And they dug too deep. And they fell, right into the mining tunnel of the Jadeborn. Not a far out one, it was a relatively safe one. so no darkbrood invasion. So they met, and miraculously, they did not fight. A good thing, too, since they started to trade. No matter what, the world above is probably a nice place. Enough to grow some food. So they got a deal hammered out. In return for food, and other stuff from the world above, the jadeborn would help craft things for the nation. Maybe even teach them to make their own things. So they were given the knowledge of, say, how to smelt and forge high quality steel and metal. Fine china. Clear glasses. The works.
Sometimes, as gifts or offerings, they give him Artifacts. I'm still not sure on how much to give him. They say that artifacts in the jadeborn society are rather common, but I'm not sure how common. 2-dot artifacts? 1s? And the king takes them, and basically puts them on display in the palace. He wasn't a rich king, so hey, trying to show off here.
So I'm not sure what to add in. Perhaps the population is groaning under the higher taxes the king has, and starvation and famine is setting in. Perhaps an uprising is in order. Maybe others, looking upon the things they are crafting, are getting greedy, and are thinking of invading to take the craftsman and blacksmiths for themselves. Or perhaps the stories of the King's stores of artifacts and wonders, and many eyes, dragonblooded or so, gaze upon the nation, wishing to take it for themselves.
That's about it.
Then suddenly, something changed. The nation started to export something else. I'm still not sure what to write. Maybe lacquered wooden goods. Maybe high quality lenses and glasses. Fine china. High quality steel and various alloys. Not sure. Basically, its something that a high level craftsman would create, or one that requires secret and advanced techniques.
The trick? As they were mining, they dug. And they dug too deep. And they fell, right into the mining tunnel of the Jadeborn. Not a far out one, it was a relatively safe one. so no darkbrood invasion. So they met, and miraculously, they did not fight. A good thing, too, since they started to trade. No matter what, the world above is probably a nice place. Enough to grow some food. So they got a deal hammered out. In return for food, and other stuff from the world above, the jadeborn would help craft things for the nation. Maybe even teach them to make their own things. So they were given the knowledge of, say, how to smelt and forge high quality steel and metal. Fine china. Clear glasses. The works.
Sometimes, as gifts or offerings, they give him Artifacts. I'm still not sure on how much to give him. They say that artifacts in the jadeborn society are rather common, but I'm not sure how common. 2-dot artifacts? 1s? And the king takes them, and basically puts them on display in the palace. He wasn't a rich king, so hey, trying to show off here.
So I'm not sure what to add in. Perhaps the population is groaning under the higher taxes the king has, and starvation and famine is setting in. Perhaps an uprising is in order. Maybe others, looking upon the things they are crafting, are getting greedy, and are thinking of invading to take the craftsman and blacksmiths for themselves. Or perhaps the stories of the King's stores of artifacts and wonders, and many eyes, dragonblooded or so, gaze upon the nation, wishing to take it for themselves.
That's about it.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Alright, thanks for the unpacking @EarthScorpion
Onto a specific point- what I was trying to say about the low-resolution system, while it's a good idea, has an inherent bias away from 'on camera'. Which is fine, except most players have fun being on camera. The downside of the avengers teamup model as you present it, is that when a failure condition forces a zoom-in, it interrupts everyone else.
Like, the problem isn't your system, it's player/storyteller preference to present these huge multi-session setpieces.
I don't have a lot of time to go into it this morning, gotta leave for work, but that's a point I want to convey.
Onto a specific point- what I was trying to say about the low-resolution system, while it's a good idea, has an inherent bias away from 'on camera'. Which is fine, except most players have fun being on camera. The downside of the avengers teamup model as you present it, is that when a failure condition forces a zoom-in, it interrupts everyone else.
Like, the problem isn't your system, it's player/storyteller preference to present these huge multi-session setpieces.
I don't have a lot of time to go into it this morning, gotta leave for work, but that's a point I want to convey.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
@horngeek
to be fair, a lot of this can be solved by properly conveying player/game expectations. It's not an insurmountable problem. The issue is that most gamerunners are bad at understanding what kind of game they want to run, and what game their players want. The rules should exist to get these two goals meeting in the middle as quickly as possible. The simple question of 'what kind of game do you want to play' is very hard to answer if you don't know how to word it.
Like Mj12 has pointed out, Exalted was sold on being a king-making strategic game punctuated by kungfu battles. People need to be presented with a 'default' format of play so they can get used to the progression of a session or campaign. Most people run games heel-toe with minimal downtime because they don't know how to pace an exciting, novel-style or iliad-style epic narrative.
to be fair, a lot of this can be solved by properly conveying player/game expectations. It's not an insurmountable problem. The issue is that most gamerunners are bad at understanding what kind of game they want to run, and what game their players want. The rules should exist to get these two goals meeting in the middle as quickly as possible. The simple question of 'what kind of game do you want to play' is very hard to answer if you don't know how to word it.
Like Mj12 has pointed out, Exalted was sold on being a king-making strategic game punctuated by kungfu battles. People need to be presented with a 'default' format of play so they can get used to the progression of a session or campaign. Most people run games heel-toe with minimal downtime because they don't know how to pace an exciting, novel-style or iliad-style epic narrative.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I've been thinking about 'Paleolithic Sorcerers', the sort of beings who might rule over the most savage portions of Creation. Anchors might include the skins of mighty beasts inscribed with the symbols of gods and stone/bone/jewel piercings as Artifacts and calling upon the frenzied chants of their tribes as Cult or Backing to raise megaliths. I was wondering what kind of unique spells such a sorcerer could use.
EDIT: It occurs that it would be possible to anchor a spell through tireless, ritualised applications of precious oils by adoring acolytes, forming a multilayered geometric pattern copied from the sands of Cecelyne or derived through occult equations. And that's why when you cast Corrupted Words your magnificent beard snakes out and wriggles down the victim's throat, the malignant hairs threading themselves around the vocal chords.
I now understand why all those fictional/mythical sorcerers had incredible facial hair.
EDIT: It occurs that it would be possible to anchor a spell through tireless, ritualised applications of precious oils by adoring acolytes, forming a multilayered geometric pattern copied from the sands of Cecelyne or derived through occult equations. And that's why when you cast Corrupted Words your magnificent beard snakes out and wriggles down the victim's throat, the malignant hairs threading themselves around the vocal chords.
I now understand why all those fictional/mythical sorcerers had incredible facial hair.
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TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
hey y'know what's cool? crimson court, crimson court is cool. and i am a hack.
you know what else is cool? damnation city.
and i am still a hack
(and need to get better at this stuff so wheeee)
Sangwei Estate
It lays to the North and East, in a land where the scarlet-stained trees grow so tall that their snow-mantled boughs block out the sun. Where the rivers churn and rush through the undergrowth, sweeping away bramble and frozen bracken in their mad charge to distant lakes and the farther seas. Where the woods are so lovely, so dark, so deep and have such dear secrets to keep. A place where you can scream as loud as you like, as long as you please, and only hear the sounds of the forest answering you back as it settles and shifts. Wood creaking, branches rustling.
The Estate itself was constructed at a time when the architecture of the late Shogunate was briefly back in vogue and the buildings mimic the aesthetics of that fading age. Brutal, blocky structures, chained together in complexes that brush the canopy; unlovely piles nearly as wide as they are high with only the barest indications to more contemporary fashion. A reminder, perhaps, of why such a style enjoyed only a temporary resurgence but fitting too: this place is as much prison as it is palace. Beneath the harsh exterior lies a honeycombed hive of oppressive opulence and overbearing grandeur. A kingdom-in-exile for the mistress of the manor, the sort of punishment a peasant would gladly trade their right arm for.
Roads link it to the Shogunate-era stone arteries that lace the region and more populous portions of the prefecture may be reached with but a few days diligent travel. But visitors here are few and the estate is by and large self sufficient. Such enclaves are not unknown among the Children of the Dragon. They are a form of social surgery, cultural containment. A means by which the potentially dangerous yet presently benign may be safely excised and tossed away before they threaten the body politic. It is easy for darkness to fester in such places. Places where pleasures are plenty yet purpose is slim. Where the wealth of time exceeds the bounds of temperance and one finds it so easy to grow dull and jaded on familiar decadence.
Darkness has done more than fester here. Darkness has swallowed this place whole and vomited forth its rotting corpse. Listen. Can you hear them? That high-pitched whine, that keening needle that lances your eardrums. They ought not be here, not in this land of winter. But "ought" has only a passing relationship with "does".
A Bloodsoaked Fen
The rivers have burst their banks, carving paths through rotting parlors and once-well appointed quarters. Sagging staircases descend into waist-deep pools and expensive wall-scrolls hang heavy with mildew and rot. Entire buildings, defiant fortresses in their own right, list in the marshy ground while concrete prayer gates sag and crack. Wood is slick to the touch, warm and slippery and slimy as if decaying in your hand. Stones keep the heat or cold in excessive measure. The estate was laid out with painstaking care, core geomantic principles in mind but that network has long since come undone. Lines of Fire and Earth, Water and Wood, flicker and surge, spluttering like a drowned man gasping for air. Their crucial anchor-pavilions now form crumbling islands in flooded gardens.
The air is freezing cold and clammy. The waters are feverishly hot and wreathed in steam. The combination smothers you. Weighs you down. Your footsteps stick, sucked into lank, razor-edged river-grass and soft black mud. Your clothes stick, glued down by the perspiration that drips from every pore of your body. Your hands stick, tacky with uncertain residue, smearing red on whatever you touch. Pallid things squirm and swell in shallow, stagnant pools and one can't help but feel their skin crawl. Dry land is a cause for tearful rejoicing. This place is fever-sweat and chattering teeth. Nighttime delirium and damp sheets. And over it all a honey-sweet taste thick upon the mists.
It should be dead. Better it be dead. Yet the estate swarms with verminous life. Midges and mosquitoes the size of a woman's palm or larger dance and swirl in black curtains over the slow-moving water. The whine of their wings always at the edge of hearing. Interfering, infecting, brushing the back of the brain and slipping under the skin. Ticks hang like ripe grapes from vegetation, waiting patiently for their elder cousins to catch them and carry them on. River Dragons swim through flooded gardens and beach themselves on mud-caked paths, sometimes breaking the surface of an otherwise placid pool in huffs of pale pink mist. They too have been twisted, their bodies abhorrent fusions of insect and reptile. Powerful legs tipped with sharpened prongs. Armored scutes pockmarked with symbiotic hives.
Laden stone tables sit here and there as if waiting for the guests of a glamorous dinner party. Fetid cushions moldering on benches. The food clearly fetched from the stores of the estate yet liquifying. Ripe and decaying even as it spills over china plates and lacquered bowls. Shadowed shapes hang in the distance, whispering and murmuring in an indistinct hum. Tittering and cackling as they watch the progress of interlopers.
Everything drinks from everyone here you see, and everyone drinks from the waters.
Arterial Apiaries
The Immaculate Shrine of Whispering Melt was a modest affair: enough for a handful of nuns and a few monks but little more. Built upon a hillock overlooking the servant quarters so carefully separated from the whole, rows of neat stone boxes frosted in snow. Now the bloody mire rushes through the tenement squares, the ugly barracks now a breakwater against the tide. When the rivers rose those with the presence of mind to flee came here to higher ground. Huddled in the grey half-light they listened to the screams, the sobs. The silence. The to the scuttling, scratching, at the solid stone doors. Yet this place stands, sanctified still and home to the few remaining humans of the manor. In the basement food and supplies lay stockpiled, enough to last for months, even years if necessary, and an untainted elemental well allows the inhabitants to perform their daily ablutions. Lifted above the humid wetland gentle breezes sweep through now and then, tasting of distant places and cold, clean, snow. A slice of security, safety, in the madness.
The Corpse-Choked Fountain sits in the blasted wreckage of the once-great courtyard. The gates and corridors smashed to flinders by the initial rush of water, trickling streams all that are left. What was once a place of august grandeur and quiet contemplation, the proper first impression for new arrivals, has become a frenzied hive of wet, visceral, life. The complicated pumps and aquatic systems now slowly, sluggishly drip-drip-drip concentrated, clotted, red into the structure's many basins. The fluid rich and rife with tainted power, the fountain now an improvised distillery for the infernal essence that suppurates within the estate. In that nutrient rich bath pallid white grubs grow to tremendous size, squirming fitfully and scoring the stone with scythe-like limbs. Armored things like ambulatory leeches dip their heads and drink like dogs, waiting for a more proper host. And everywhere, everywhere, the whine of mosquitoes. Monstrous things the size of birds tending to their thousand-fold young.
Hell's Hall gives lie to the notion that the only thing to haunt this place are broken beasts and squamous horrors. Look and see! The once-inhabitants of this grand court. A lady's train of suitors and servants and courtiers and callers. They followed her into disgrace. They followed her into decadence. They followed her into debauchery. They followed her into degeneracy. And now they remain, giving her their devotion with torn grey lips stained ruby red. Chitin breaking the skin and slender, inhuman limbs trailing like wires. The politics here are pointless but they have always been pointless so, day after day, the denizens here still gather and grandstand, scheme and simper, seeking to impress the handmaidens that stand in the shadows of the room and so garner their Lovely Lady's favor. Perfume chokes the still air, masking the sickly-sweet smell of rotting clothes and contaminated flesh. The opulence here is oppressive. Wealth and excess to set the eye aching. The tables are buried beneath mountains of filth and decayed food. The fresher bodies of would-be bandits and incautious ronin carelessly heaped atop the pile.
The Hemorrhagic Harem occupies three entire wings of the sprawling compound. Castles within castles. An armed camp within a desolate ruin. Here the preening male Dynasts and thinly-graced Dragonblooded dwell. Once guests of the manor, suitors seeking advantageous advancement or hedonists a season of vulgar indulgence, they have become the champions of the estate's noblewomen. Their faces broken into knife-slender snouts, mouths full of hollow, hypodermic teeth and long, questing, tongues. Their bodies grey with living armor and eyes glittering like black glass. Great, gauzy wings beat behind them in a blur. Bearing their emaciated bodies aloft. They adorn their bodies with bright cloth and heft painted lances and garishly daubed blades in skeletal, taloned hands. The atmosphere here is one of fevered dedication; a jostling for attention and affection. Their ladies cannot survive without the blood they bring them. Cannot bear their many, many children without the lovely blood. So they, their vain, vapid champions must harvest as much as they can from whoever they can. Bleed and bleed whomever they will to ensure their survival.
The Submerged Seat lays at the core of Sangwei's broken manse; a control center cum throne room. Cables and cords hanging from the walls like black vines, and the thaumaturgic arrays that enabled the workings of the estate spark and sputter with elemental energy; their throats slashed by the brutal flood. Intended as a weapons array, a hidden trump card, the Seat now sleeps. Outside the droning is endless, eternal, but here...here there is an expectant hush. A drip-drip-drip of crimson condensation disturbed only by the careful movement of robed attendants. The whole world waiting for something to shift. Something to stir. The immaculate design of plants and canals has been flooded to waist height and human-faced larva gestate in the deeper pools. She sits against the farthest wall, watching the light from the distant sun track across the pool, pouring through the broken glass dome. Her throne is of living construction and her bearing seems familiar, but look closely into the black honeycomb and you can see the rest of her. Pulsing, throbbing within the superstructure. Brilliant black and ruby red.
Government and Culture
The estate is an enclave of anarchy dressed up in saccharine obsequity. The demon-tainted murder and feed off each other at whim and effective random, dressing their brutal vulgarity in the trappings of honeyed hypocrisy and increasingly tattered scraps of civilization. Fashion has become utterly divorced from conventional aesthetic, all that matters is the gluttonous drive to consume. To display the fruits of your appetite. The grotesquely ostentatious are envied, the humble mark themselves at prey. Their Lovely Lady is the only authority they acknowledge and her word they obey; anything else must be carved out by main force.
The leader of the untainted remnants is Sister Abharta Miruna, kin to the beast that dwells in the center of the estate. She willingly followed her elder sister into exile and oversaw the erection of the Shrine. A sort of self-selected penance for failing to stand by her family in the internecine war that so ravaged their country. The Chosen of Wood saw the corruption that was overtaking her kin and attempted to mitigate it but ah, too little and too late. Her sister scorned her words and the court followed suit. Unwilling to abandon her family twiceover Abharta Miruna remains. Her patience and tenacity obscure a growing despair: her prayers have not been answered and she fears her supernatural missives have been lost or intercepted.
Abharta Decebal leads the Harem in Exile. Bastard born to Miruna of a more youthful dalliance he remains a devoted son, even as Yozic essence twists his body. He has rallied to him a small force of Dynasts and other thinblooded still able and willing to oppose the Lovely Lady and they haunt the fringes of the flooded marsh, a few "domesticated" River Dragons in tow. He longs to play the part of the hero as one might in the great tales but he is young and this is his first campaign. Inexperience haunts him, the blood-red thirst torments him, and his aunt slowly, patiently, closes the noose. In the core of his being he knows that win or lose this story can only end with him falling upon his sword. But he's determined to give the dragons a good show before he goes.
Sangwei Rodica is the right hand woman of the Lady. An irony, perhaps, considering this is her ancestral estate. But then she was never particularly forceful or powerful, a personal friend of the Lady (so hungry for approval!) she eagerly attached her fortunes to those of House Abharta when civil war wracked the countryside. And, when those fortunes fell...well. She always did play a fine host. Now she moves through the sagging halls of her family home, watching, weighing. Dangling favors over a seething pit of once-men and women and reporting her findings to her mistress. Her glistening bone-and-chitin smile conceals the dynast's slowly strengthening resentment. She desires only to be desired, it's not fair that none of this new wealth is for her. She's been listening to the blood in the rivers, it agrees with her wholly.
Abharta Tatiana is the Lovely Lady. Mistress of all she surveys and infernal matriarch to much of the inhuman brood that so infests these grounds. Once she despaired, amidst the frivolities, the endless parties, what could she ever build that would be truly hers? But her disgrace and disillusion are at an end and nothing but joy fills her heart. Her children grow so beautiful, so strong, and with them she will descend upon the world that scorned her and sweep them aside. She will grow even stronger. She will spread. And she will eat her revenge hot-blooded and screaming.
Religion
The gods of the rivers of gone, they wear the shape of great crocodilian horrors and feed mindlessly upon the unwary, rutting with the River Dragons in the muck. The gods of the forests are gone, they are have become slick, squirming things that dwell in the pulped, rotted trunks of the great trees. All praise the name of the Lovely Lady, our Regent in Red. Surely the alien beasts that rise from the deeps are her doing. Surely their affinity with this tainted land are a sign of her blessing. But this whole blighted place is in truth a temple to another.
Elloge, Elloge! The Sphere of Speech. Elloge, Elloge! How slowly she seeps, bleeding between the worlds.
You can find her herald sitting on a black stone rock at the river's side; bandages wrapped about his body, feet and tail trailing in the current. Relicta Mu, the Spring of Darkling Caledonia and Lord of Hell. He does not wish to fight. He does not even wish to be here. But she promised him payment and he agreed to the brokered terms and so he must stay. He only need unleash the floodwaters within thrice more and then he will have the complete set. The behemoth skull and fangs pledged to him in the Lovely Lady's vault. The last pieces he needs to reconstruct that ancient beast, that long-lost trace of He Who Bleeds the Unknown Word.
Economy
Once merchant trains stopped by this enclave, bringing with them rare and exotic luxuries for the disaffected dilettantes within. Once there was a steady stream of arrivals and departures, fodder for the mock-court within. Once there was rich finery and the wealth of generations. Now there are only the odd, cautious, group of looters or explorers, probing the edge of this wound in the Earth. Those within dress themselves in damp, mold-dappled rags and subsist on the lovely lovely red that wells from deep within the earth. Parasite feeding on parasite in a visceral, incestuous loop, until all possible value has been stripped.
How hungry the eyes that peer out from between the trees. How strange the half-drowned, insectile minds that dream of a world beyond, ripe for the eating. Gold and gems and precious things, ripe for the taking.
History
A story then.
The Lovely Lady, Abharta Tatiana, was a maiden much desired by her peers. But the favor of the Dragons ran through her in unequal measures and she could not fulfill that most ancient and important of Dragonblooded duties. As upheaval and foreign incursion split the nation she could not guarantee a legacy, a path forward, and her allies, those flighty, fickle, men so easily swayed by treasure and adventure abandoned her. The new masters of the land dare not slay her but, rather, she was sent into a sort of comfortable exile. An indefinite guest of her dear friend, safely removed from anything important.
Boredom and despair gave way to desperate indulgence. Indulgence became rank excess. Excess gave way to depravity. In the sanctum of the woods she created a world without consequence, a world where she could never fail. Where her will must always prevail. Was infernalism truly such a a great fall from those lowly depths? She called and the demon came, she bartered and the demon bestowed, and you can see the truth of her triumph written in a thousand bloody, beating, wings.
you know what else is cool? damnation city.
and i am still a hack
(and need to get better at this stuff so wheeee)Sangwei Estate
It lays to the North and East, in a land where the scarlet-stained trees grow so tall that their snow-mantled boughs block out the sun. Where the rivers churn and rush through the undergrowth, sweeping away bramble and frozen bracken in their mad charge to distant lakes and the farther seas. Where the woods are so lovely, so dark, so deep and have such dear secrets to keep. A place where you can scream as loud as you like, as long as you please, and only hear the sounds of the forest answering you back as it settles and shifts. Wood creaking, branches rustling.
The Estate itself was constructed at a time when the architecture of the late Shogunate was briefly back in vogue and the buildings mimic the aesthetics of that fading age. Brutal, blocky structures, chained together in complexes that brush the canopy; unlovely piles nearly as wide as they are high with only the barest indications to more contemporary fashion. A reminder, perhaps, of why such a style enjoyed only a temporary resurgence but fitting too: this place is as much prison as it is palace. Beneath the harsh exterior lies a honeycombed hive of oppressive opulence and overbearing grandeur. A kingdom-in-exile for the mistress of the manor, the sort of punishment a peasant would gladly trade their right arm for.
Roads link it to the Shogunate-era stone arteries that lace the region and more populous portions of the prefecture may be reached with but a few days diligent travel. But visitors here are few and the estate is by and large self sufficient. Such enclaves are not unknown among the Children of the Dragon. They are a form of social surgery, cultural containment. A means by which the potentially dangerous yet presently benign may be safely excised and tossed away before they threaten the body politic. It is easy for darkness to fester in such places. Places where pleasures are plenty yet purpose is slim. Where the wealth of time exceeds the bounds of temperance and one finds it so easy to grow dull and jaded on familiar decadence.
Darkness has done more than fester here. Darkness has swallowed this place whole and vomited forth its rotting corpse. Listen. Can you hear them? That high-pitched whine, that keening needle that lances your eardrums. They ought not be here, not in this land of winter. But "ought" has only a passing relationship with "does".
A Bloodsoaked Fen
The rivers have burst their banks, carving paths through rotting parlors and once-well appointed quarters. Sagging staircases descend into waist-deep pools and expensive wall-scrolls hang heavy with mildew and rot. Entire buildings, defiant fortresses in their own right, list in the marshy ground while concrete prayer gates sag and crack. Wood is slick to the touch, warm and slippery and slimy as if decaying in your hand. Stones keep the heat or cold in excessive measure. The estate was laid out with painstaking care, core geomantic principles in mind but that network has long since come undone. Lines of Fire and Earth, Water and Wood, flicker and surge, spluttering like a drowned man gasping for air. Their crucial anchor-pavilions now form crumbling islands in flooded gardens.
The air is freezing cold and clammy. The waters are feverishly hot and wreathed in steam. The combination smothers you. Weighs you down. Your footsteps stick, sucked into lank, razor-edged river-grass and soft black mud. Your clothes stick, glued down by the perspiration that drips from every pore of your body. Your hands stick, tacky with uncertain residue, smearing red on whatever you touch. Pallid things squirm and swell in shallow, stagnant pools and one can't help but feel their skin crawl. Dry land is a cause for tearful rejoicing. This place is fever-sweat and chattering teeth. Nighttime delirium and damp sheets. And over it all a honey-sweet taste thick upon the mists.
It should be dead. Better it be dead. Yet the estate swarms with verminous life. Midges and mosquitoes the size of a woman's palm or larger dance and swirl in black curtains over the slow-moving water. The whine of their wings always at the edge of hearing. Interfering, infecting, brushing the back of the brain and slipping under the skin. Ticks hang like ripe grapes from vegetation, waiting patiently for their elder cousins to catch them and carry them on. River Dragons swim through flooded gardens and beach themselves on mud-caked paths, sometimes breaking the surface of an otherwise placid pool in huffs of pale pink mist. They too have been twisted, their bodies abhorrent fusions of insect and reptile. Powerful legs tipped with sharpened prongs. Armored scutes pockmarked with symbiotic hives.
Laden stone tables sit here and there as if waiting for the guests of a glamorous dinner party. Fetid cushions moldering on benches. The food clearly fetched from the stores of the estate yet liquifying. Ripe and decaying even as it spills over china plates and lacquered bowls. Shadowed shapes hang in the distance, whispering and murmuring in an indistinct hum. Tittering and cackling as they watch the progress of interlopers.
Everything drinks from everyone here you see, and everyone drinks from the waters.
Arterial Apiaries
The Immaculate Shrine of Whispering Melt was a modest affair: enough for a handful of nuns and a few monks but little more. Built upon a hillock overlooking the servant quarters so carefully separated from the whole, rows of neat stone boxes frosted in snow. Now the bloody mire rushes through the tenement squares, the ugly barracks now a breakwater against the tide. When the rivers rose those with the presence of mind to flee came here to higher ground. Huddled in the grey half-light they listened to the screams, the sobs. The silence. The to the scuttling, scratching, at the solid stone doors. Yet this place stands, sanctified still and home to the few remaining humans of the manor. In the basement food and supplies lay stockpiled, enough to last for months, even years if necessary, and an untainted elemental well allows the inhabitants to perform their daily ablutions. Lifted above the humid wetland gentle breezes sweep through now and then, tasting of distant places and cold, clean, snow. A slice of security, safety, in the madness.
The Corpse-Choked Fountain sits in the blasted wreckage of the once-great courtyard. The gates and corridors smashed to flinders by the initial rush of water, trickling streams all that are left. What was once a place of august grandeur and quiet contemplation, the proper first impression for new arrivals, has become a frenzied hive of wet, visceral, life. The complicated pumps and aquatic systems now slowly, sluggishly drip-drip-drip concentrated, clotted, red into the structure's many basins. The fluid rich and rife with tainted power, the fountain now an improvised distillery for the infernal essence that suppurates within the estate. In that nutrient rich bath pallid white grubs grow to tremendous size, squirming fitfully and scoring the stone with scythe-like limbs. Armored things like ambulatory leeches dip their heads and drink like dogs, waiting for a more proper host. And everywhere, everywhere, the whine of mosquitoes. Monstrous things the size of birds tending to their thousand-fold young.
Hell's Hall gives lie to the notion that the only thing to haunt this place are broken beasts and squamous horrors. Look and see! The once-inhabitants of this grand court. A lady's train of suitors and servants and courtiers and callers. They followed her into disgrace. They followed her into decadence. They followed her into debauchery. They followed her into degeneracy. And now they remain, giving her their devotion with torn grey lips stained ruby red. Chitin breaking the skin and slender, inhuman limbs trailing like wires. The politics here are pointless but they have always been pointless so, day after day, the denizens here still gather and grandstand, scheme and simper, seeking to impress the handmaidens that stand in the shadows of the room and so garner their Lovely Lady's favor. Perfume chokes the still air, masking the sickly-sweet smell of rotting clothes and contaminated flesh. The opulence here is oppressive. Wealth and excess to set the eye aching. The tables are buried beneath mountains of filth and decayed food. The fresher bodies of would-be bandits and incautious ronin carelessly heaped atop the pile.
The Hemorrhagic Harem occupies three entire wings of the sprawling compound. Castles within castles. An armed camp within a desolate ruin. Here the preening male Dynasts and thinly-graced Dragonblooded dwell. Once guests of the manor, suitors seeking advantageous advancement or hedonists a season of vulgar indulgence, they have become the champions of the estate's noblewomen. Their faces broken into knife-slender snouts, mouths full of hollow, hypodermic teeth and long, questing, tongues. Their bodies grey with living armor and eyes glittering like black glass. Great, gauzy wings beat behind them in a blur. Bearing their emaciated bodies aloft. They adorn their bodies with bright cloth and heft painted lances and garishly daubed blades in skeletal, taloned hands. The atmosphere here is one of fevered dedication; a jostling for attention and affection. Their ladies cannot survive without the blood they bring them. Cannot bear their many, many children without the lovely blood. So they, their vain, vapid champions must harvest as much as they can from whoever they can. Bleed and bleed whomever they will to ensure their survival.
The Submerged Seat lays at the core of Sangwei's broken manse; a control center cum throne room. Cables and cords hanging from the walls like black vines, and the thaumaturgic arrays that enabled the workings of the estate spark and sputter with elemental energy; their throats slashed by the brutal flood. Intended as a weapons array, a hidden trump card, the Seat now sleeps. Outside the droning is endless, eternal, but here...here there is an expectant hush. A drip-drip-drip of crimson condensation disturbed only by the careful movement of robed attendants. The whole world waiting for something to shift. Something to stir. The immaculate design of plants and canals has been flooded to waist height and human-faced larva gestate in the deeper pools. She sits against the farthest wall, watching the light from the distant sun track across the pool, pouring through the broken glass dome. Her throne is of living construction and her bearing seems familiar, but look closely into the black honeycomb and you can see the rest of her. Pulsing, throbbing within the superstructure. Brilliant black and ruby red.
Government and Culture
The estate is an enclave of anarchy dressed up in saccharine obsequity. The demon-tainted murder and feed off each other at whim and effective random, dressing their brutal vulgarity in the trappings of honeyed hypocrisy and increasingly tattered scraps of civilization. Fashion has become utterly divorced from conventional aesthetic, all that matters is the gluttonous drive to consume. To display the fruits of your appetite. The grotesquely ostentatious are envied, the humble mark themselves at prey. Their Lovely Lady is the only authority they acknowledge and her word they obey; anything else must be carved out by main force.
The leader of the untainted remnants is Sister Abharta Miruna, kin to the beast that dwells in the center of the estate. She willingly followed her elder sister into exile and oversaw the erection of the Shrine. A sort of self-selected penance for failing to stand by her family in the internecine war that so ravaged their country. The Chosen of Wood saw the corruption that was overtaking her kin and attempted to mitigate it but ah, too little and too late. Her sister scorned her words and the court followed suit. Unwilling to abandon her family twiceover Abharta Miruna remains. Her patience and tenacity obscure a growing despair: her prayers have not been answered and she fears her supernatural missives have been lost or intercepted.
Abharta Decebal leads the Harem in Exile. Bastard born to Miruna of a more youthful dalliance he remains a devoted son, even as Yozic essence twists his body. He has rallied to him a small force of Dynasts and other thinblooded still able and willing to oppose the Lovely Lady and they haunt the fringes of the flooded marsh, a few "domesticated" River Dragons in tow. He longs to play the part of the hero as one might in the great tales but he is young and this is his first campaign. Inexperience haunts him, the blood-red thirst torments him, and his aunt slowly, patiently, closes the noose. In the core of his being he knows that win or lose this story can only end with him falling upon his sword. But he's determined to give the dragons a good show before he goes.
Sangwei Rodica is the right hand woman of the Lady. An irony, perhaps, considering this is her ancestral estate. But then she was never particularly forceful or powerful, a personal friend of the Lady (so hungry for approval!) she eagerly attached her fortunes to those of House Abharta when civil war wracked the countryside. And, when those fortunes fell...well. She always did play a fine host. Now she moves through the sagging halls of her family home, watching, weighing. Dangling favors over a seething pit of once-men and women and reporting her findings to her mistress. Her glistening bone-and-chitin smile conceals the dynast's slowly strengthening resentment. She desires only to be desired, it's not fair that none of this new wealth is for her. She's been listening to the blood in the rivers, it agrees with her wholly.
Abharta Tatiana is the Lovely Lady. Mistress of all she surveys and infernal matriarch to much of the inhuman brood that so infests these grounds. Once she despaired, amidst the frivolities, the endless parties, what could she ever build that would be truly hers? But her disgrace and disillusion are at an end and nothing but joy fills her heart. Her children grow so beautiful, so strong, and with them she will descend upon the world that scorned her and sweep them aside. She will grow even stronger. She will spread. And she will eat her revenge hot-blooded and screaming.
Religion
The gods of the rivers of gone, they wear the shape of great crocodilian horrors and feed mindlessly upon the unwary, rutting with the River Dragons in the muck. The gods of the forests are gone, they are have become slick, squirming things that dwell in the pulped, rotted trunks of the great trees. All praise the name of the Lovely Lady, our Regent in Red. Surely the alien beasts that rise from the deeps are her doing. Surely their affinity with this tainted land are a sign of her blessing. But this whole blighted place is in truth a temple to another.
Elloge, Elloge! The Sphere of Speech. Elloge, Elloge! How slowly she seeps, bleeding between the worlds.
You can find her herald sitting on a black stone rock at the river's side; bandages wrapped about his body, feet and tail trailing in the current. Relicta Mu, the Spring of Darkling Caledonia and Lord of Hell. He does not wish to fight. He does not even wish to be here. But she promised him payment and he agreed to the brokered terms and so he must stay. He only need unleash the floodwaters within thrice more and then he will have the complete set. The behemoth skull and fangs pledged to him in the Lovely Lady's vault. The last pieces he needs to reconstruct that ancient beast, that long-lost trace of He Who Bleeds the Unknown Word.
Economy
Once merchant trains stopped by this enclave, bringing with them rare and exotic luxuries for the disaffected dilettantes within. Once there was a steady stream of arrivals and departures, fodder for the mock-court within. Once there was rich finery and the wealth of generations. Now there are only the odd, cautious, group of looters or explorers, probing the edge of this wound in the Earth. Those within dress themselves in damp, mold-dappled rags and subsist on the lovely lovely red that wells from deep within the earth. Parasite feeding on parasite in a visceral, incestuous loop, until all possible value has been stripped.
How hungry the eyes that peer out from between the trees. How strange the half-drowned, insectile minds that dream of a world beyond, ripe for the eating. Gold and gems and precious things, ripe for the taking.
History
A story then.
The Lovely Lady, Abharta Tatiana, was a maiden much desired by her peers. But the favor of the Dragons ran through her in unequal measures and she could not fulfill that most ancient and important of Dragonblooded duties. As upheaval and foreign incursion split the nation she could not guarantee a legacy, a path forward, and her allies, those flighty, fickle, men so easily swayed by treasure and adventure abandoned her. The new masters of the land dare not slay her but, rather, she was sent into a sort of comfortable exile. An indefinite guest of her dear friend, safely removed from anything important.
Boredom and despair gave way to desperate indulgence. Indulgence became rank excess. Excess gave way to depravity. In the sanctum of the woods she created a world without consequence, a world where she could never fail. Where her will must always prevail. Was infernalism truly such a a great fall from those lowly depths? She called and the demon came, she bartered and the demon bestowed, and you can see the truth of her triumph written in a thousand bloody, beating, wings.
- Location
- NOVA
So, on the topics of giving backgrounds more to do, I finally finished the first draft of the narrative twists system I was working on.
Narrative Twists and Backgrounds:
It's always better to have people backing you up, no matter what you're doing, and within Creation there exist a large number of individuals and organizations that a character could call on for aid. These individual and groups are represented by the Backgrounds on a character sheet. They're time honored allies that can be called on time and time again, because the character is someone who they trust and are willing to help when the chips are down.
This system is designed to increase the direct mechanical usefulness of the many different social backgrounds. The main point of comparison is the Artifact, an item that will always be around and likely will be used to great effect every story, if not every chapter. It's also meant to be used alongside the regular rules for backgrounds whenever possible because many of them still have important, passive uses. Though, some have been combined or changed to avoid redundancy.
The main component of the narrative to be used is the twist. It's the unexpected swerve in the plot, resolving some problems and creating new ones, and will be in the hands of the players themselves.
Twists:
Twists can be sorted into five different types: Mortal, Enlightened, Terrestrial, Celestial, and Adamant.
They're named for the primary character scales because with each step the scale of the twist increases and allows the player calling for it a more decisive change. A twist should allow a player to defeat or bypass a threat of its own scale.
For instance, calling on the Mortal Twist of your army would allow a character to defeat another army of mortals, but against a demonic horde they would only be able to delay them. An Enlightened Twist would be required to fight back the forces of Malfeas.
An enlightened mortal retainer cannot directly help his mistress in a fight with a fellow Lunar, but he could be called to arrive with a vehicle that helps her flee.
Domains:
There is no such thing as a general purpose twist. Each background can only provide twists for certain domains of effect. You wouldn't call upon a band of diplomats to build an airship.
These domains are combinations of the different Abilities into task based groupings.
Spending Twists:
Twists can be spent at anytime that it would be narratively appropriate in order to change what's currently happening on scene and either assist with complications or make up for other mistakes.
They can also be used between scenes or during down time to resolve conflicts that the player doesn't wish to play out on screen. It may be very important that someone makes sure that safe passage for the newly founded kingdom's trading ships is negotiated, but they just finished a long debate and don't feel up to another one right now.
In general, proactively using a twist to change how a scene plays out should be more potent than reactively fixing a mistake/problem.
If the players know that the Wyld Hunt has a powerful airship that will be involved in the next fight, calling upon a Lunar ally with a Celestial Warfare twist to disable it before the battle begins should result in not only it not showing up, but also an additional boon such as the ground forces also being smaller because they had to leave some men behind to guard the fallen ship.
The Lunar could still disable it in the middle of a fight when the Storyteller rolled very well on its cannon damage and the Dawn rolled poorly on his rout check, but he wouldn't be able to disable it and make it destroy the Wyld Hunt's own men(effectively the same result as the proactive one) without spending two twists on the action(one to accomplish the objective of disabling it and one to get rid of some of their enemies).
Twists can also be combined for greater effect.
The Circle of Glass and Steel is on an infrastructure building spree after an invasion from a nearby Shadowland robbed them of three manses and most of their roads.
Their Twilight is too tied up with their capital to help the outlying cities. That's where their twists come in.
Seven Chains, the Night caste vagabond, has an old Dragonblooded friend from his days in the Threshold who has a Terrestrial Artifice twist. However, manse and road building also need the Strategic tag due to the scale involved.
Sesas Moya, their very conflicted Dawn, has an army of Tiger-Warrior Followers with Enlightened Strategic twists and no pressing need to spend their twists on anything else.
By combining their Ally and Follower twists, the circle is able to re-build one of their manses and also their roads by the time their Twilight finishes with the capital.
Backgrounds:
Most of the backgrounds below are rated on a 1-7 scale. This isn't because characters are expected to buy more dots than normal. Instead, it represents how a given background can be more effective for different types of characters.
A young Dragonblooded would be an incredibly potent Ally for a mortal sage, but wouldn't be nearly as important to an official of Yu-Shan.
Meanwhile, the returning Solars have no infrastructure or society backing them up, unlike the Dragonblooded. So Dynastic characters can buy large scale command more easily.
The backgrounds are ordered based on what they scale with:
Personal Potency:
A Terrestrial Exalt, or similarly powerful spirit, would buy the following backgrounds at +1. So a rank 2 Ally would only cost them 1 dot.
A Celestial/Adamant Exalt would buy them at +2.
Ally
Mentor
Familiar
Societal Potency:
Some backgrounds become more powerful because of the strength of the character's society or culture.
Lunars(Wyld/Creation), non-Dynast Terrestrials(Creation), and ronin Sidereals(Creation) have +1.
Dynastic Terrestrials(Creation), heavenly Sidereals(Yu-Shan/Creation), along with loyal Alchemicals(Autocthonia), Abyssals(Underworld), and Infernals(Malfeas) have +2.
The background must be a part of the character's native culture to receive this bonus and the Foreign domain is very important as a result.
A Dynast commands no greater backing with the forces of the Underworld than a newly Exalted Solar would.
Followers/Command/Backing
The following backgrounds do not have a normal scaling factor, if they have one at all.
Cult
The Dawn Caste Solar that calls himself Shadow Breaker is working towards the destruction of the SIlver Prince. He is helped along in this task by a Abyssal known as the Gatherer of Broken Souls. The Gatherer is employed by a rival Death Lord as a spymaster, who mentors Shadow Breaker in Necromancy as part of her efforts to recruit him as an asset. An established Abyssal is a class 6 mentor, so Shadow Breaker would need to have Mentor 4 to get access to the Gatherer of Broken Souls (his personal power grants him +2). He marks that Gather has
Sorrowful Scarab has far too many projects to work on at once, much like every other Chosen of Serenity. Thankfully, his divine friends are more than willing to assist him with some of them.
Hejon Apio, Scarab's steadfast officemate, helps the young Sidereal move through the complex web of bureaucracy that is Yu-Shan. As a Celestial God, he's a rank 5 Ally, who cost Scarab 4 dots, and has
In order to help in such lands, Scarab also has a powerful Retainer named Granite Fang. She's an earth elemental tiger who grew tired of the endless debates of her native court and began following the Sidereal around in hopes of finding a better future. As a rank 6 Retainer, she also cost Scarab 4 points, and has
Narrative Twists and Backgrounds:
It's always better to have people backing you up, no matter what you're doing, and within Creation there exist a large number of individuals and organizations that a character could call on for aid. These individual and groups are represented by the Backgrounds on a character sheet. They're time honored allies that can be called on time and time again, because the character is someone who they trust and are willing to help when the chips are down.
This system is designed to increase the direct mechanical usefulness of the many different social backgrounds. The main point of comparison is the Artifact, an item that will always be around and likely will be used to great effect every story, if not every chapter. It's also meant to be used alongside the regular rules for backgrounds whenever possible because many of them still have important, passive uses. Though, some have been combined or changed to avoid redundancy.
The main component of the narrative to be used is the twist. It's the unexpected swerve in the plot, resolving some problems and creating new ones, and will be in the hands of the players themselves.
Twists:
Twists can be sorted into five different types: Mortal, Enlightened, Terrestrial, Celestial, and Adamant.
They're named for the primary character scales because with each step the scale of the twist increases and allows the player calling for it a more decisive change. A twist should allow a player to defeat or bypass a threat of its own scale.
For instance, calling on the Mortal Twist of your army would allow a character to defeat another army of mortals, but against a demonic horde they would only be able to delay them. An Enlightened Twist would be required to fight back the forces of Malfeas.
- Mortal - find out where the last merchant caravan to pass through is headed, delay an army from the underworld, contact the local smugglers, carry the circle to an enemy island through calm seas
- Enlightened - prepare a sleeping draught that can knock out a minor god, negotiate a favorable ransom of captives from a minor Fae noble, find the identity of a specific Second Circle demon
- Terrestrial - repair a damaged city walls within a week's time, oust a local god from their spirit court, put down a rampaging elemental, lend a minor Artifact, impress Dynastic guests with a feast
- Celestial - sabotage the Wyld Hunt's airship, insert a kill team into a Great House, cure a magical plague
- Adamant - discover the location of a peach of immortality in Creation, cleanse a shadowland, cause a rival kingdom to fall into anarchy in a week's time, force a confrontation with the elder Sidereal spying on the circle
An enlightened mortal retainer cannot directly help his mistress in a fight with a fellow Lunar, but he could be called to arrive with a vehicle that helps her flee.
Domains:
There is no such thing as a general purpose twist. Each background can only provide twists for certain domains of effect. You wouldn't call upon a band of diplomats to build an airship.
These domains are combinations of the different Abilities into task based groupings.
- Combat: personal combat; associated with Archery, Melee, Martial Arts, and Thrown.
- Warfare: accomplishing military objectives; associated with War, Survival, and Bureaucracy.
- Travel: moving people or items safely; associated with Survival, Ride, and Sail.
- Artistry: creating great works of art, speechwriting, or propaganda; associated with Performance, Craft, and Linguistics.
- Artifice: the design and construction of wonders(both Artifact and not); associated with Craft and Occult.
- Philosophy: academic study and knowledge, along with medical care; associated with Lore, Medicine, and Occult.
- Sorcery: casting sorcery or thaumaturgy based on the rank of the twist; associated with Occult
- Infiltration: entering restricted areas and bringing in/retrieving objects or people without being noticed; Athletics, Stealth, and Larceny.
- Espionage: discretely gathering information about the actions/motives of others; Investigation, Awareness, Socialize.
- Ceremony: interaction with spirit courts/the divine; Performance, Occult, Bureaucracy.
- Wayfaring: tracking, investigating, or surviving in remote areas; Survival, Resistance, Awareness.
- Intrigue: changing the mind/beliefs of another; Investigation, Integrity, Socialize.
- Diplomacy: formal negotiations or introductions; Bureaucracy, Socialize, Linguistics.
- Strategic: this tag allows operations on a large, city/societal, scale.
- Foreign(specialization): this tag allows operation in other realms than the background's native one(Creation, Yu-Shan, Malfeas, the Wyld, the Underworld, Autocthonia) at its level or the other backgrounds, whichever is lower
- Artifice+Strategic could be a manse building company or a Alchemical craftsman that can build a district in a day.
- Combat+Warfare+Sorcery would be a combat-sorcerer who could turn the tide of a battle by themselves.
- Combat+Warfare+Strategic would be a warlord whose army can not only turn the tide of battle, but also hold territory that's too large for an individual to control.
- Espionage+Intrigue+Diplomacy could describe a spy or courtier.
- Infiltration+Espionage+Combat could describe an assassin.
- Travel+Wayfaring could be the captain of a ship.
- Travel+Wayfaring+Strategic would be a fleet of ships.
- Diplomacy+Ceremony+Foreign(Underworld) could be the head of a powerful ancestor cult who has connections within the Underworld itself, as well as Creation
Spending Twists:
Twists can be spent at anytime that it would be narratively appropriate in order to change what's currently happening on scene and either assist with complications or make up for other mistakes.
They can also be used between scenes or during down time to resolve conflicts that the player doesn't wish to play out on screen. It may be very important that someone makes sure that safe passage for the newly founded kingdom's trading ships is negotiated, but they just finished a long debate and don't feel up to another one right now.
In general, proactively using a twist to change how a scene plays out should be more potent than reactively fixing a mistake/problem.
If the players know that the Wyld Hunt has a powerful airship that will be involved in the next fight, calling upon a Lunar ally with a Celestial Warfare twist to disable it before the battle begins should result in not only it not showing up, but also an additional boon such as the ground forces also being smaller because they had to leave some men behind to guard the fallen ship.
The Lunar could still disable it in the middle of a fight when the Storyteller rolled very well on its cannon damage and the Dawn rolled poorly on his rout check, but he wouldn't be able to disable it and make it destroy the Wyld Hunt's own men(effectively the same result as the proactive one) without spending two twists on the action(one to accomplish the objective of disabling it and one to get rid of some of their enemies).
Twists can also be combined for greater effect.
The Circle of Glass and Steel is on an infrastructure building spree after an invasion from a nearby Shadowland robbed them of three manses and most of their roads.
Their Twilight is too tied up with their capital to help the outlying cities. That's where their twists come in.
Seven Chains, the Night caste vagabond, has an old Dragonblooded friend from his days in the Threshold who has a Terrestrial Artifice twist. However, manse and road building also need the Strategic tag due to the scale involved.
Sesas Moya, their very conflicted Dawn, has an army of Tiger-Warrior Followers with Enlightened Strategic twists and no pressing need to spend their twists on anything else.
By combining their Ally and Follower twists, the circle is able to re-build one of their manses and also their roads by the time their Twilight finishes with the capital.
Backgrounds:
Most of the backgrounds below are rated on a 1-7 scale. This isn't because characters are expected to buy more dots than normal. Instead, it represents how a given background can be more effective for different types of characters.
A young Dragonblooded would be an incredibly potent Ally for a mortal sage, but wouldn't be nearly as important to an official of Yu-Shan.
Meanwhile, the returning Solars have no infrastructure or society backing them up, unlike the Dragonblooded. So Dynastic characters can buy large scale command more easily.
The backgrounds are ordered based on what they scale with:
Personal Potency:
A Terrestrial Exalt, or similarly powerful spirit, would buy the following backgrounds at +1. So a rank 2 Ally would only cost them 1 dot.
A Celestial/Adamant Exalt would buy them at +2.
Ally
An ally represents an individually potent person, often a peer to the character. Many find themselves seeking allies who would complement them in their areas of weakness, others choose to be around people with similar strengths to build an overwhelming force. The twists provided do not necessarily describe the overall potency of the individual, but rather, the amount of effort they're willing to put towards goals that aren't their own.
The examples next to the rank indicate the type of being who would be able to provide this assistance at a minimum. A character could have a more powerful ally, such as Ligier who would be rating 7 normally, rated at 4, but the reduced twists mean that he's much less willing to directly aid the character.
An ally provides three twists per story. A character can refresh one by performing a substantial favor for the ally.
When a Solar calls upon a Lunar warlord to lay siege to a rival's city while they assault her palace directly, it costs a twist. When he gift's the Ally the fallen commander's Grimcleaver, he's more than happy to assist them again, regaining the spent twist.
The examples next to the rank indicate the type of being who would be able to provide this assistance at a minimum. A character could have a more powerful ally, such as Ligier who would be rating 7 normally, rated at 4, but the reduced twists mean that he's much less willing to directly aid the character.
An ally provides three twists per story. A character can refresh one by performing a substantial favor for the ally.
When a Solar calls upon a Lunar warlord to lay siege to a rival's city while they assault her palace directly, it costs a twist. When he gift's the Ally the fallen commander's Grimcleaver, he's more than happy to assist them again, regaining the spent twist.
- a highly skilled mortal: three Mortal domains
- an enlightened mortal: one Enlightened domain and two Mortal domains
- an experienced mortal Sorcerer, newly Exalted Dragonblooded, or minor spirit: three Enlightened Domains and one Mortal domain
- an established Terrestrial or newly Exalted Celestial: two Terrestrial domains and two Enlightened domains
- the head of a dynastic house, established Celestial, newly Exalted Solar, or second Circle Demon: one Celestial domain and three Terrestrial domains
- an elder Celestial, established Solar, or third Circle Demon: one Adamant domain, two Celestial domains, and one Terrestrial domain
- the fetich soul of a Yozi, a Deathlord, or the head of a heavenly division: three Adamant domains and two Celestial domains
Mentor
A mentor is a more skilled person who instructs and looks out for the character. This background provides the same domains as Ally, but only provides two twists per story.
A character can refresh one of these by proving to the mentor that they've taken their lessons to heart and developed further within the mentor's domains.
A character can refresh one of these by proving to the mentor that they've taken their lessons to heart and developed further within the mentor's domains.
Familiar
A familiar is a uniquely potent creature that draws part of its power from the character.
It's always with them and provides one twist per chapter.
Familiars may only take the following domains: Combat, Infiltration, Travel, Espionage, Warfare, Philosophy, Wayfaring, and Foreign.
It's always with them and provides one twist per chapter.
Familiars may only take the following domains: Combat, Infiltration, Travel, Espionage, Warfare, Philosophy, Wayfaring, and Foreign.
- one Mortal domain
- two Mortal domains
- one Enlightened domain and one Mortal domain
- two Enlightened domains
- three Enlightened domains
- one Terrestrial domain and two Enlightened domains
- three Terrestrial domains
Societal Potency:
Some backgrounds become more powerful because of the strength of the character's society or culture.
Lunars(Wyld/Creation), non-Dynast Terrestrials(Creation), and ronin Sidereals(Creation) have +1.
Dynastic Terrestrials(Creation), heavenly Sidereals(Yu-Shan/Creation), along with loyal Alchemicals(Autocthonia), Abyssals(Underworld), and Infernals(Malfeas) have +2.
The background must be a part of the character's native culture to receive this bonus and the Foreign domain is very important as a result.
A Dynast commands no greater backing with the forces of the Underworld than a newly Exalted Solar would.
Followers/Command/Backing
The character has a large number of loyal servants. They may serve the character for personal reasons or have been assigned to them by a superior.
Until the highest ranks, these servants are elite mortals at best. Only then will enough potent ghosts, first Circle Demons, or spirit blooded join in for the group to surpass mortal limits.
They provide five twists per story.
A character can refresh Followers by recruiting additional people. Backing and Command can be refreshed by successfully convincing the character's superiors to give them more resources. At the end of the story, these additional advantages drift away unless the player increases the background's rank with xp.
Influence Until the highest ranks, these servants are elite mortals at best. Only then will enough potent ghosts, first Circle Demons, or spirit blooded join in for the group to surpass mortal limits.
They provide five twists per story.
A character can refresh Followers by recruiting additional people. Backing and Command can be refreshed by successfully convincing the character's superiors to give them more resources. At the end of the story, these additional advantages drift away unless the player increases the background's rank with xp.
- a scale of mortals: three Mortal domains
- a talon of mortals: five Mortal domains
- a wing of mortals with heroic leaders: one Enlightened domain and five Mortal domains
- a dragon of mortals with heroic leaders: two Enlightened domains and five Mortal domains
- a legion of mortals lead by powerful enlightened mortals: four Enlightened domains, and four Mortal domains
- a legion of elites lead by spirit blooded or sorcerers: one Terrestrial domain, five Enlightened domains, and two Mortal domains
- a legion of enlightened mortals lead by the greatest among them: two Terrestrial domains and seven Enlightened domains
Influence represents the minor favors that a well known and thought of person can call upon at a moment's notice due to their fame. At times, these favors will be performed even without the character's knowledge.
It provides three twists per story and these can be refreshed by publicly performing a great act that resonates with the nature of their legend.
Influence can only provide twists for the following domains: Travel, Artistry, Philosophy, Infiltration, Espionage, Ceremony, Wayfaring, Intrigue, Diplomacy, and Foreign.
Retainer/HenchmenIt provides three twists per story and these can be refreshed by publicly performing a great act that resonates with the nature of their legend.
Influence can only provide twists for the following domains: Travel, Artistry, Philosophy, Infiltration, Espionage, Ceremony, Wayfaring, Intrigue, Diplomacy, and Foreign.
- local fame within a small city: two Mortal domains
- well known by a city-state: three Mortal domains
- any neighboring state has heard of her: one Enlightened domain and two Mortal domains
- regions leagues away have heard of her: one Enlightened domain and four Mortal domains
- heard of throughout the majority of a direction: two Enlightened domains, and four Mortal domains
- rulers across the world are familiar with her exploits: one Terrestrial domain, three Enlightened domains, and three Mortal domains
- all of her home region knows her name: two Terrestrial domains and five Enlightened domains
A retainer is a highly skilled follower who travels with the character and is ready for orders at any time. They also function as the character's chief of staff, who manages a small group that makes sure the trivialities of life are taken care of.
Henchmen are a small group of very loyal individuals, who would be lead by someone of the same tier as a retainer.
They provide one twist per chapter and cannot take the Strategic domain.
Non-Scaling:Henchmen are a small group of very loyal individuals, who would be lead by someone of the same tier as a retainer.
They provide one twist per chapter and cannot take the Strategic domain.
- a mortal specialist with unskilled staff: one Mortal domain
- a small number of skilled mortals: two Mortal domains
- an Enlightened mortal with assistants: one Enlightened domain and one Mortal domain
- a group of Enlightened mortals: two Enlightened domains
- a potent spirit-blooded leading enlightened mortals: three Enlightened domains
- a minor spirit: one Terrestrial domain and two Enlightened domains
- a newly Exalted Terrestrial or potent spirit: three Terrestrial domains
The following backgrounds do not have a normal scaling factor, if they have one at all.
Cult
The primary benefit of a character's cult remains the worship(motes and willpower_ that they provide. However, such devout followers can also be called on to perform tasks for their patron.
A cult provides one twist per story. This twist can be recharged by the character performing a miraculous action for their cult.
Play Examples:A cult provides one twist per story. This twist can be recharged by the character performing a miraculous action for their cult.
- one Mortal domain
- two Mortal domains
- one Enlightened and one mortal domain
- two Enlightened domains
- one Terrestrial and one Enlightened domain
The Dawn Caste Solar that calls himself Shadow Breaker is working towards the destruction of the SIlver Prince. He is helped along in this task by a Abyssal known as the Gatherer of Broken Souls. The Gatherer is employed by a rival Death Lord as a spymaster, who mentors Shadow Breaker in Necromancy as part of her efforts to recruit him as an asset. An established Abyssal is a class 6 mentor, so Shadow Breaker would need to have Mentor 4 to get access to the Gatherer of Broken Souls (his personal power grants him +2). He marks that Gather has
- Adamant Espionage
- Celestial Foreign(Creation)
- Celestial Sorcery
- Terrestrial Intrigue
- Find out which of the Skullstone Archipelago Black Ships' captains could be bribed into smuggling him into the Archipelago's lands. Celestial-level intelligence gathering outside the Gatherer's native Underworld. This is allowed because she has the Foreign (Creation) domain to allow part of the Adamant Espionage domain to work in Creation.
- Use necromancy to open a portal to the underworld to help bypass terrestrial security measures on city (Celestial Sorcery, i.e. 2nd Circle Necromancy)
- Build a reputation for trustworthiness and integrity among the ghosts in the West (Terrestrial Intrigue)
Sorrowful Scarab has far too many projects to work on at once, much like every other Chosen of Serenity. Thankfully, his divine friends are more than willing to assist him with some of them.
Hejon Apio, Scarab's steadfast officemate, helps the young Sidereal move through the complex web of bureaucracy that is Yu-Shan. As a Celestial God, he's a rank 5 Ally, who cost Scarab 4 dots, and has
- Celestial Diplomacy
- Terrestrial Espionage
- Terrestrial Artistry
- Terrestrial Ceremony
- Acquire more funding from the division head for their personal airship project which will definitely not be used to bypass their long commute(Celestial Diplomacy)
- Uncover the Terrestrial God slandering Scarab for the astrological working he performed last year that cut off said god's flow of easy prayer(Terrestrial Espionage)
- Distract a war goddess with a delectable spread so Scarab can steal away and break into her office to "admire the decorations." (Terrestrial Artistry)
In order to help in such lands, Scarab also has a powerful Retainer named Granite Fang. She's an earth elemental tiger who grew tired of the endless debates of her native court and began following the Sidereal around in hopes of finding a better future. As a rank 6 Retainer, she also cost Scarab 4 points, and has
- Terrestrial Combat
- Enlightened Infiltration
- Enlightened Wayfaring
- Protect him from the vengeful DragonBlooded who wanted the glitch-in-Fate spawned duplicate of her wife to remain alive along with the original(Terrestrial Combat)
- Collect a Dailkaive which has been cursed to slay an important mortal king from his own vaults(Enlightened Infiltration)
- Follow an oblivious Dawn Caste through the tunnels underneath a volcano to his home base and next chapter, lead a Wyld Hunt kill team to his front door(Enlightened Wayfaring and Infiltration)
Ehhh.
I don't think the Crimson Court should be anything apart from Underworld-linked, personally. The constant "Bloodlight", the decay and rot and degradation, the twisting of the human form to feeding on blood (spiritual impurity in lots of world regions), and so on - it's death, not the Yozis.
Hell, the entire setting of Darkest Dungeon is basically a shadowland.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...Trrruuuueeee yeah and it'd make the parasite motif work better honestly. They're all stealing scraps of life from each other in an effort to keep their heads above the metaphorical/literal waters. Everything takes but nothing makes. Plus there's the constant suggestion of the entire complex sinking down while the blood wells up. And the general sense of filth and decay. Malfeas isn't exactly clean but-
Oh wait no yeah that shits super clean probably there's Stomach Bottle Bugs every fucking where. But it's more Sauron-Esque smoke and ash than sloppy grudge gunk anyway-
-but yeah that mixed in with "bad news you can't have kids but the good news is you can have fucked up plasmic-ghost babies and that's arguably better!" Alongside decking yourself out tastelessly and trashily in the acoutraments of the once-living. Right right that's actually really helpful thank you. >>
(And I can still keep sickboy mosquito vampire dragonblooded which is arguably the most important thing
)
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Yeah, I mean, they're twisted vampires. How can they really be anything but undead?...Trrruuuueeee yeah and it'd make the parasite motif work better honestly. They're all stealing scraps of life from each other in an effort to keep their heads above the metaphorical/literal waters. Everything takes but nothing makes. Plus there's the constant suggestion of the entire complex sinking down while the blood wells up. And the general sense of filth and decay. Malfeas isn't exactly clean but-
Oh wait no yeah that shits super clean probably there's Stomach Bottle Bugs every fucking where. But it's more Sauron-Esque smoke and ash than sloppy grudge gunk anyway-
-but yeah that mixed in with "bad news you can't have kids but the good news is you can have fucked up plasmic-ghost babies and that's arguably better!" Alongside decking yourself out tastelessly and trashily in the acoutraments of the once-living. Right right that's actually really helpful thank you. >>
(And I can still keep sickboy mosquito vampire dragonblooded which is arguably the most important thing
As it stands I think you should just go through the whole thing, find any reference to demons or Malfeas and simply hot-swap them with their Underworld equivalents. Third Circles with Hekatonkheires, Yozic Essence with necrotic, etc. Maybe amend the initial description a little to give it an air less of 'teeming with unsightly life' and more 'frantic last gasps of a dying landscape'.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Alright, so since ES mentioned it, I should probably elaborate on the idea of 'avengers teamup' in context of Exalted campaign running:
Circa 2008, when I was first really introduced to Exalted as a game, the community I ran with helped me understand the format and pacing of the game by using comic productions and crossover events as the metaphor for the kind of scope a campaign was supposed to cover.
You had your heroes with their solo title books, (Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, etc), and then you had the big annual teamup events. Note that this has the implicit assumption of direct continuity instead of reboots or 'anyverse' style writing where it's more about the archetypal versions of the characters instead of a specific setting's.
In context of Exalted, I was told to look at it like this- you were supposed to spend a significant chunk of the year during downtime things, justified by your in-game assets like your armies or sorcery or artifice, and as you 'did' those things, you advanced your own personal backstory. You made pacts with gods and demons, crafted great works of artifice, defeated armies, romanced beautiful princes, and so on. It ties directly into the pagentry concept that ES likes to promote with his hook-for-fluff based approach to mechanization.
A problem with pagentry, and Exalted's strongly consequence-driven nature (I don't mean simulationist), is that if your pagentry declares you gain an asset that has a meaningful effect, the ST is implicitly obligated or encouraged to attach an appropriate cost to it. I think a way to summarize ES's approach, having reviewed his post on second age tools, is that 'Logic is power'. If the asset has a logical, thematic throughput, it can have a mechanical weight, usually qualitative if not quantitative.
One of the problems with that model is that it invites a certain amount of freewheeling, no-rules style roleplay, the indulgent kind. Like, only the social contract of gaming made it so you couldnt' say 'Oh I conquered the Realm during the last six months'. I think we all agree that's not meant to be possible.
TL;DR - you can't just SAY you got something, the fact that we're playing a game demands you must play to get something. Being handed something is unsatisfactory to a player, but sometimes for the sake of pacing, you must be handed something or have the play resolved in an abstract, low-resolution format.
Like... it's boring to talk yourself up in a game. You feel like a shitheel for overdoing it and it often bores your other players who aren't as invested in your character as you are. Self-indulgent pagentry is all well and good, but people like earning their sobriquets and contracts and sweet gear. I could write pages about how Inks polishes orichalcum-flecked sapphires to the rythym of old-realm sutras to the sun... but after a certain point it just stops being entertaining to everyone else.
Hmm, my point meandered a lot. Sorry.
Anyway, let's say instead of a 1:1 game, Aleph was running a 1:3 game with her as ST and two players in addition to myself, Alice and Bob playing Dawn and Zenith. Under the 'avengers' teamup model, Aleph is the one who (implicitly) governs downtime and is the one who decides (knowingly or otherwise) when pacing goes high res to low res. This is a product of the fact that Exalted 2e and even 3e does not have a dramatic turns mechanic to clearly arbitrate when strategic scale actions end/are resolved.
So she gives us 6 months downtime. Assuming we're using a fully realized strategic system, we have X actions each, and each of those actions has a point of failure. If none of the PCs fail their strategic actions, the turn ends and we 'pick back up' after a timeskip and either start a new strategic turn or zoom in for an on-camera roleplaying scene for whatever reason.
If one of us fails an action- and this is my direct callout to @EarthScorpion here - does the 'timing' of the failed action impact the other actions yet to be resolved? Like if Inks fails a strategic action in Month 1 of 6, does that break the downtime block, denying the other players five months worth of strategic actions?
If two or more players fail a strategic action at the same time, how is that resolved?
If two or more players fail a strategic action at different times during the downtime turn, how is that resolved?
If any dramatic failures happen, does the sudden zoom-in focus and obligatory screentime tax detract from ongoing campaign plots or player plots? This is actually one of the most important issues to address, I feel.
If the whole group is invested in defeating a deathlord, but one of their side projects forces a tangent that takes sessions to resolve, there is a medium to high chance someone is going to be upset. If player A's project is disrupted by player B's failure, player A is going to be upset. (See 2e Crafting).
I can't propose too many solutions to this, because I haven't found any yet in about three years trying, but I'll lay out some parameters I want to look for.
Circa 2008, when I was first really introduced to Exalted as a game, the community I ran with helped me understand the format and pacing of the game by using comic productions and crossover events as the metaphor for the kind of scope a campaign was supposed to cover.
You had your heroes with their solo title books, (Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, etc), and then you had the big annual teamup events. Note that this has the implicit assumption of direct continuity instead of reboots or 'anyverse' style writing where it's more about the archetypal versions of the characters instead of a specific setting's.
In context of Exalted, I was told to look at it like this- you were supposed to spend a significant chunk of the year during downtime things, justified by your in-game assets like your armies or sorcery or artifice, and as you 'did' those things, you advanced your own personal backstory. You made pacts with gods and demons, crafted great works of artifice, defeated armies, romanced beautiful princes, and so on. It ties directly into the pagentry concept that ES likes to promote with his hook-for-fluff based approach to mechanization.
A problem with pagentry, and Exalted's strongly consequence-driven nature (I don't mean simulationist), is that if your pagentry declares you gain an asset that has a meaningful effect, the ST is implicitly obligated or encouraged to attach an appropriate cost to it. I think a way to summarize ES's approach, having reviewed his post on second age tools, is that 'Logic is power'. If the asset has a logical, thematic throughput, it can have a mechanical weight, usually qualitative if not quantitative.
One of the problems with that model is that it invites a certain amount of freewheeling, no-rules style roleplay, the indulgent kind. Like, only the social contract of gaming made it so you couldnt' say 'Oh I conquered the Realm during the last six months'. I think we all agree that's not meant to be possible.
TL;DR - you can't just SAY you got something, the fact that we're playing a game demands you must play to get something. Being handed something is unsatisfactory to a player, but sometimes for the sake of pacing, you must be handed something or have the play resolved in an abstract, low-resolution format.
Like... it's boring to talk yourself up in a game. You feel like a shitheel for overdoing it and it often bores your other players who aren't as invested in your character as you are. Self-indulgent pagentry is all well and good, but people like earning their sobriquets and contracts and sweet gear. I could write pages about how Inks polishes orichalcum-flecked sapphires to the rythym of old-realm sutras to the sun... but after a certain point it just stops being entertaining to everyone else.
Hmm, my point meandered a lot. Sorry.
Anyway, let's say instead of a 1:1 game, Aleph was running a 1:3 game with her as ST and two players in addition to myself, Alice and Bob playing Dawn and Zenith. Under the 'avengers' teamup model, Aleph is the one who (implicitly) governs downtime and is the one who decides (knowingly or otherwise) when pacing goes high res to low res. This is a product of the fact that Exalted 2e and even 3e does not have a dramatic turns mechanic to clearly arbitrate when strategic scale actions end/are resolved.
So she gives us 6 months downtime. Assuming we're using a fully realized strategic system, we have X actions each, and each of those actions has a point of failure. If none of the PCs fail their strategic actions, the turn ends and we 'pick back up' after a timeskip and either start a new strategic turn or zoom in for an on-camera roleplaying scene for whatever reason.
If one of us fails an action- and this is my direct callout to @EarthScorpion here - does the 'timing' of the failed action impact the other actions yet to be resolved? Like if Inks fails a strategic action in Month 1 of 6, does that break the downtime block, denying the other players five months worth of strategic actions?
If two or more players fail a strategic action at the same time, how is that resolved?
If two or more players fail a strategic action at different times during the downtime turn, how is that resolved?
If any dramatic failures happen, does the sudden zoom-in focus and obligatory screentime tax detract from ongoing campaign plots or player plots? This is actually one of the most important issues to address, I feel.
If the whole group is invested in defeating a deathlord, but one of their side projects forces a tangent that takes sessions to resolve, there is a medium to high chance someone is going to be upset. If player A's project is disrupted by player B's failure, player A is going to be upset. (See 2e Crafting).
I can't propose too many solutions to this, because I haven't found any yet in about three years trying, but I'll lay out some parameters I want to look for.
- Downtime should be easy to manage
- Downtime should not interrupt the flow of gameplay
- Downtime should be reasonably gamable, but not so much as to distract from primary on-camera gameplay.
- You want players to be able to feel clever, or to use their resources to their advantage. The major/minor/trivial action split is a reasonable approach in this vein.
- mechanics that rely on downtime should have reasonable alternatives to suit different play styles.
- Not every game is going to run on 'strategic' play, hollywood action movie pacing is fine as a game style, just so long as it's not the only style the entire game supports.
- Location
- Ottawa
3e-style initiations are a great start. Workings help too. Include some spells with weird specific requirements and, as far as I'm concerned, sorcerers are plenty sorcerous.
If you don't like that, you could make each spell dependent on some specific external source. Sources could have a great deal of mechanical weight or hardly any. Since sorcerous motes come from the environment in 3e, that's a natural place to attach some source mechanics.
You could also let sorcerers strengthen themselves through taboos and rituals, so that the best spellcasters are the ones who've accepted onerous limitations on their freedom or onerous costs for their magic.
Thing is, that post doesn't actually give a reason for the sorcery-as-privilege approach. It basically just asserts it.
(The bit about how sorcerers should be rare is as far as I can tell unrelated to the privilege paradigm.)
Other posts I've found are similar. But from the conversation here I get the impression that ES must've written some kind of "why this" post at some point.
The rarity is related to the privilege. Because being a sorcerer requires you to gain backgrounds like backing, ally, artifact, etc. Thus, you have to have power to become a sorcerer, and even more importantly using sorcery is essentially manifesting your privilege in a tangible way.
As for why, ES's argument generally seems to be that it means that you sorcerers have to engage with the world, plus it means that Elder's have convenient weaknesses that circles can exploit, as infrastructure can be picked off or co-opted, while still giving a way for Elders to be more powerful in a straight conflict.
- Location
- Ottawa
That doesn't work. There are too many mortals with lots of background dots for that to be the limiting factor on sorcerous numbers.
Especially since one of the major concerns in the post in question is keeping sorcery out of the hands of (too many) mortal rulers, who generally have more Backgrounds than they have anything else.
Not every elder is or should be a sorcerer. Making the anti-elder experience sorcery-centric is certainly a mistake.
I do like encouragement to engage with the setting, but I don't really see much to recommend this method of giving it.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
It kind of does, in a vaguely-pointing way, with this section:
However, the more useful posts are, I think, this, this and this. Taken together, the essence of it is that the Anchor system began as a way to both force and incentivise Sorcerers to act like Sorcerers, doing pulp fantasy Sorcerer Things, like becoming mad wizard-kings (so you can leverage your kingdom to power spells) or making pacts with demons (so you can fuel spells with their power) or claiming territory of ritualistic significance (so you can use them to cast spells) and so on. Calling it 'the power of privilege' is mostly just a form of shorthand.
As an approach, it's essentially just taking the second of the two methods you mentioned, that of forcing Sorcery to rely on external sources, but standardising it rather than making it an exceptional quality of certain spells, and elegantly tying it into the rest of the system.
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Elder's who aren't focused on sorcery already have that sort of thing (at least in the style of game that ES is talking about). This is adding the ability to interact with them, as opposed to in canon where those aren't as common, and when they do show up are on a very individual basis.
- Location
- Ottawa
I guess that makes sense. Can't say I love it, but I see what he's going for now.
Thanks.