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General Exalted Thread

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Prince of Brass said:
[1]: Elloge has that risk in general IMO, mirroring that other Oramus charmset that predated yours
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Hence why a lot of my own Elloge brainstorming had a heavy emphasis on "to be Ellogean is to be traumatized and in denial and hiding from your sins", so your attempts to try and raksha it up are tainted because whatever drove you to become this thing will inevitably squirm out from under the illusion you've tried to hide it behind.

All the groundwater in your perfect fairyland tastes faintly of the poison you fed to the old king to claim his throne. No matter how hard you try to make your tent airtight, the wind always blows through it and sounds like the pleas for mercy you've tried to convince yourself you don't care about because you're an edgy heartless merc. When someone visits your picture-perfect family estate they sometimes get short of breath and develop a rash on their neck that looks like the contusions from when your mother tried to strangle you (before you killed her in self-defense, and the "mother" you're having wonderful fluffy family time with is a corpse stuffed full of Ellogean Essence and your fond memories of what you thought she was like).

Essentially, you're pushing a narrative, but you're doing so to avoid your own guilt/trauma/other internal ugliness you don't want to acknowledge, so you have to walk a line between getting so fixated on your coping mechanism that you leave yourself vulnerable, and letting yourself get too clear-headed and having a psychotic breakdown.
 
Prince of Brass said:
Personally I prefer the 'narrative enforcing' geomancy you posted, if only because it is rather straightforward, while

seems quite frankly rather hellish to play with.
Ignoring the fact that the proposed charm sounds far too much like filthy Raksha nonsense [1], having to play with two layers of landscape/reality at once, while also factoring in stunts and charms that further alter the, or rather, one of the landscapes seems like it could potentially end a session right there, as everyone gets confused as to what is real for whom and what interacts with what.

For example: One character hides behind a pillar for cover, but that pillar is part of the 'stage'. Somebody now lights that pillar on magical fire. Does the fire exist for the guy 'backstage' who ignores the pillar, and if so, how can he affect it, if what it burns is not real?

The concept is interesting, but I see no way that it could be actually playable without marginalizing its effects to a level which would make it worthless.


Flavour wise, would it not also cause a hellish amount of fate-errors and attract Sidereal attention as causality stopps working for, like, more than half the area's population, who run on Illusion logic instad?
For that matter the posted charm also seems like it could mess fate up something fierce, by overlaying a contradictory narrative on an area, leading to a full derail of destinies, as murder plots made to fail suddenly succed, and loves meant to fail bear fruit etc..


Oh and, when you say 'permanent geomancy' - I was under the impression that as Indefinite charms they are merely maintained charms that lock out some motes, and not actually permanent effects like wyld-shaping, was I mistaken or is this just phrasing?


[1]: Elloge has that risk in general IMO, mirroring that other Oramus charmset that predated yours
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Infernals have several charms with the sorcerous keyword. This means that you do not have to commit motes to them, but they can be dispelled by countermagic. Infernal Geomancy is sorcerous, just like Metagaos's Self-Seeds, Adorjan's clones, and the Ebon Dragon's curses.
 
Dynamesmouse said:
This means that you do not have to commit motes to them, but they can be dispelled by countermagic.
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oops :oops:

Thank you for reminding me, I had remembered the Countermagic thing, but completely forgot about the 'no commitment' aspect of it, remembering it as an inherent weakness.
That is kind of embarassing, considering how much I had been rereading, and worse, writing charms in the last few days :confused:.

I might have to add a line about the Infernal being able to deactivate a charm in my homebrew, thanks for pointing out my misconception.
 
uju32 said:
Huh.
First time I've seen a Solar successfully out social'd by someone who isn't a peer. Even if they did come to mutually satisfactory(heh) terms.
DB Pepper looks to be fun, and also a bundle of Complications; someone with that many references would have options other than working for a new Anathema sorceress in Gem.

Odds are she's running from something/someone and that contract she's being so cagey about commits Inks to act in her defence. OR she's looking for something/someone that requires a sorcerer to find.

And the Despot has a covert fifth Sorceress?
And one loyal enough to be willing to remain lowkey as a surprise, which tends to go against the tendencies of most sorcerers.
Your Gem is full of surprises.

Thanks for sharing.
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A lot of Exalted's... behavior is rooted in the idea that there isn't a social contract between players and storytellers- that the rules are the only medium in which to arbitrate situations. Aleph and I actually went too far the other way with the session before last, what with Maji acting on his own and up-ending the scene- we relied too heavily on straight mechanical resolution and didn't think to ask about the mutual storytelling. Now I personally as both player and ST, prefer more mechanics than OOC cooperative agreement, simply because my philosophy is this: If you aren't going to use the rules, why are you playing a game?

That being said, the degree to which that is applied varies based on the situation.

Now, ideally, Exalted as a game should be one about Opportunities. You as a player should be encouraged by the roleplaying culture and the mechanics to embrace things like social influences, be they NMI or otherwise, because of what they represent. How fun would it be to play someone with a crush? Or an apopletic enmity for a rival? Those kinds of things don't come up much as a result of the mechanics, because most of the time they're portrayed as adversarial.

I as a player and Inks as a character accepted the UMI for a few reasons- my personal one being 'I've never allowed UMI to happen before, I wonder how it actually works in play?' The other is that Inks, for all her prowess, is still only a young adult and not worldly. She is a mafiya princess from a sheltered, Nexian culture that happened to luck into a strong mentorship relationship with a powerful spirit. Is she ignorante or naive? No, but nor is she hopelessly jaded and faultlessly wise.

I personally haven't given much thought to Pipera's motivations yet, but those are definitely interesting theories. And the Despot is increasingly interesting as a character to me. Aleph's doing a good job of putting Rankar down as someone who's worth keeping in the cast of characters, instead of pitting him explicitly against the PC as a designated enemy. Can they become enemies? Totally possible. So far though they have parallel interests.
 
Shyft said:
Now, ideally, Exalted as a game should be one about Opportunities. You as a player should be encouraged by the roleplaying culture and the mechanics to embrace things like social influences, be they NMI or otherwise, because of what they represent. How fun would it be to play someone with a crush? Or an apopletic enmity for a rival? Those kinds of things don't come up much as a result of the mechanics, because most of the time they're portrayed as adversarial.
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Well that's how the mechanics portray it; there is only stick, no carrot for following through.
 
Talkkno said:
Well that's how the mechanics portray it; there is only stick, no carrot for following through.
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That's true to a point, but we are thinking beings, as players? I mean, it's the RAW/RAI debate in essence. Do you execute, like a program, or do you interpret, like a creative work? Neither is a wrong answer, but sometimes one answer works better in a given situation.

I post the Sunlit Sands logs so that people can see at least an attempt at the spirit of these mechanics and philosophies in practice, because the vast majority of us only talk about Exalted, after all.
 
Talkkno said:
Well that's how the mechanics portray it; there is only stick, no carrot for following through.
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It's a role playing game, not an RPG on your game console that was written and programmed with a hard coded story. Quote unquote "setbacks" in the form of people using social influence on your character is it's own reward.

If you want full narrative control over the story, write a book and don't play a shared storytelling game while expecting full narrative control.
 
Talkkno said:
Well that's how the mechanics portray it; there is only stick, no carrot for following through.
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Shyft said:
That's true to a point, but we are thinking beings, as players? I mean, it's the RAW/RAI debate in essence. Do you execute, like a program, or do you interpret, like a creative work? Neither is a wrong answer, but sometimes one answer works better in a given situation.

I post the Sunlit Sands logs so that people can see at least an attempt at the spirit of these mechanics and philosophies in practice, because the vast majority of us only talk about Exalted, after all.
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Presumably, if I enjoy a story, I will engage with it, regardless of whether it's rollplayed or just roleplayed. In fact, the former is counterproductive in terms of a story hook because I'd be more likely to take it as an attack and tell it to fuck off on principle, regardless of how interesting I might find the story if I let it play out.

If mechanical social interaction was, like in the real world, an opportunity to compromise and had some form of carrot to go with the stick, I'd be much less hostile to it.

Unbanshee said:
It's a role playing game, not an RPG on your game console that was written and programmed with a hard coded story. Quote unquote "setbacks" in the form of people using social influence on your character is it's own reward.

If you want full narrative control over the story, write a book and don't play a shared storytelling game while expecting full narrative control.
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I already have full control over the narrative threads I could be subjected to by social influence. If I do not want to engage, I resist with willpower and make an excuse to leave, then only engage with them through proxies until I've bought up my defenses.
 
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Unbanshee said:
The carrot is that it is a twist in the story!
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If I was sure I'd like it, I'd go along with it no matter what the mechanics said. If I was sure I'd hate it, I'd be able to reject it pretty easily. If I'm unsure and you want me to take this new opportunity, why would you threaten to hit me with the stick if I didn't take it? Does that seem like it would be conducive to me liking it?

opportunity

uk /ˌɒp.əˈtʃuː.nə.ti/ us /ˌɑː.pɚˈtuː.nə.t̬i/

B1 [ C or U ] an occasion or situation that makes it possible to do something that you want to do or have to do, or the possibility of doing something:

That's not an opportunity because you've given me no reason to believe it will make it possible to do something I want to do. If it I already had a reason, then I wouldn't need the mechanics in the first place to change my mind for me. (and before anyone says anything, the latter definition is useless in this case.)
 
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That adversarial mindset, and the persistence of it in the community is exactly what I was bringing up. I made a choice to not act on that mindset, out of a desire to see what else could happen.

Like... a lot of players i have met in my experience, have a trajectory or plan they want to execute with their characters. A goal if not a plot arc in mind, to say nothing of whatever a storyteller has planned. Exalted is often run in an adversarial manner, in that whatever the ST is doing likely interferes with whatever the player wants to do. Done well this is engaging, done poorly and it feels like the PC has no agency.

Sunlit Sands has had a period of this with the murder plot- I've done almost nothing except work on that and squeeze in some tangential scenes. That's not a bad thing, having the flexibility to do that is great.

Taken too far the other way though, where everything the ST does somehow dovetails into the PC's plots feels contrived. It's equally railroading, just in the player's favor and without satisfactory challenge.
 
rogthnor said:
I've actually been thinking about something along those lines as how to handle Elder Infernal's. I really like the idea of changing the game by completely changing what they are. So for instance maybe they become giant towers who can only interact with the world through their minions.
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Be very careful about this. Elder anything is extremely touchy stuff because the vast majority of elder power users are NPCs that are hostile to your player characters (yes, specifically).

You want the risk-reward calculation for "does it make sense for me to catch an agata-ride over there and kill them all" to come out "fuck no, I might die", and this is very difficult to accomplish because most of the time when people write elder powers, they're writing from the perspective of how cool it would be if my PC could do X, rather than what happens when hostile NPCs use X on my players.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Oh hai, I had this sitting in my workingspace document half done that I just found when I went to go write another Charm.

Have one of my two possibilities for an Elloge geomancy charm, the one where you declare "IN THIS AREA, WE'RE WORKING IN THIS GENRE BITCHES".


Pathetic Fallacious Stage
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And now, for my next Ellogean trick, I will sneak into a House Cynis party and change the genre into "hardcore porno."

We'll see how long it takes the Sidereals to notice.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
And now, for my next Ellogean trick, I will sneak into a House Cynis party and change the genre into "hardcore porno."

We'll see how long it takes the Sidereals to notice.
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Really? Not "low budget porno"?

Sidereal: "... okay, there is something going on here. That's the fourth person I've met who didn't have money to pay for the noodles I'm selling. And what's that 'bow-chicka-wow-wow' noise that keeps on playing?"
 
Shyft said:
That adversarial mindset, and the persistence of it in the community is exactly what I was bringing up. I made a choice to not act on that mindset, out of a desire to see what else could happen.

Like... a lot of players i have met in my experience, have a trajectory or plan they want to execute with their characters. A goal if not a plot arc in mind, to say nothing of whatever a storyteller has planned. Exalted is often run in an adversarial manner, in that whatever the ST is doing likely interferes with whatever the player wants to do. Done well this is engaging, done poorly and it feels like the PC has no agency.

Sunlit Sands has had a period of this with the murder plot- I've done almost nothing except work on that and squeeze in some tangential scenes. That's not a bad thing, having the flexibility to do that is great.

Taken too far the other way though, where everything the ST does somehow dovetails into the PC's plots feels contrived. It's equally railroading, just in the player's favor and without satisfactory challenge.
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I don't mind serious obstacles. The actual problem is that I'm treating the opportunity as an obstacle because I've been given no reason to go along with it. If you give me a reason, I will change my plans to accommodate for this new opportunity.

Sure, my character absolutely has a goal in mind. I will work towards that goal with the simulated determination of a mythological hero because that is what my character wants. That doesn't mean that I'm particularly attached to that goal (if I was, I'd tell the GM) and would gladly adjust my plans based on new opportunities. Indeed, I might be willing to change my motivation outright or at least gain secondary goals if I've enjoyed it enough.

But you first need to give my character an actual reason to treat it as a genuine opportunity and not an obstacle. Show me, and by extension my character, that it's worth it, whether that be through my motivation, my intimacies, my virtue. I don't care if it's a physical reward or just mental satisfaction, just make it something my character would actually care about.

To take the example we're actually talking about, if my character was established as a lustful person, it wouldn't matter if Janissa rolled a botch for seduction (unless the ST made the result truly horrifying), I'd still probably go with it because that's something I actually care about, no mental influence necessary.

If, on the other hand, I'm an amoral schemer who sees sex as a tool, I'm probably not going to engage with it if all you've got is a stick. You need to actually give my character a reason to want this, and not just because the dice said so.

EDIT: To get to my point, I'd want to change the social system such that it encourages compromise. That's more or less it.
 
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Shyft said:
That adversarial mindset, and the persistence of it in the community is exactly what I was bringing up. I made a choice to not act on that mindset, out of a desire to see what else could happen.

Like... a lot of players i have met in my experience, have a trajectory or plan they want to execute with their characters. A goal if not a plot arc in mind, to say nothing of whatever a storyteller has planned. Exalted is often run in an adversarial manner, in that whatever the ST is doing likely interferes with whatever the player wants to do. Done well this is engaging, done poorly and it feels like the PC has no agency.

Sunlit Sands has had a period of this with the murder plot- I've done almost nothing except work on that and squeeze in some tangential scenes. That's not a bad thing, having the flexibility to do that is great.

Taken too far the other way though, where everything the ST does somehow dovetails into the PC's plots feels contrived. It's equally railroading, just in the player's favor and without satisfactory challenge.
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The thing is though; it seems like your blaming the player, rather then the game system?
 
Titanic Progeny Paradise
Cost: -; Mins: Essence 4; Type: Permanent
Keywords: Heretical
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: Titanic Heart Overweening, one Yozi Shintai Charm

Letting her flesh blossom with the promise of the primordials, the Infernal grows metaphysically so that she might house the multitudes within her mind.

This Charm creates a Sanctum within Elsewhere for each of the Infernal's souls created by Titanic Heart Overweening, where they dwell when not externalised. These begin with a rating of one, and can be upgraded normally by the souls. The soul is permanently materialised within the sanctum and has full access to its own Charms and Essence while in it. The Sanctum is themed appropriately for the soul in question.

Unlike normal sanctums, there are no external entrance, though they are permitted to interconnect (permitting the souls to interact). The Infernal controls passage exclusively. No entity or object may exit or enter it, save by methods described in this or later expansion Charms; this is resolved as if it was a defence again any effect which would contest this.

The soul may leave the Sanctum via the method described in Titanic Heart Overweening. They gain an appropriate escape clause which they may use to slip out, which the player and the ST should balance appropriately. With the permission of the Infernal and the soul in question, sorcerers may use the appropriate summoning spell to summon them from their Sanctum. Likewise, the Art of Demon Summoning may beckon them with an appropriate ritual. The soul may always refuse to be summoned by anyone apart from the Infernal, and no one apart from the Infernal may bind them. First circle demons resident within the sanctum may be summoned should the Infernal or the soul give their permission, and may also be bound with permission.

Upon learning this Charm, the Infernal and her souls gain the capacity to design and build demon-bound manses upon Yozi-aspected demesnes for Yozis with themes compatible with the soul in question. These manses will favour appropriate manse powers for the themes of the soul.

::SIDEBAR: Welcome to the Tiger Empire, Revisited::

Titanic Progeny Paradise may take the place of Fourth Soul Devil Domain as a prerequisite for Blossoms of the Tiger Empire. The radius of the Tiger Empire is instead (Number of souls made by Titanic Heart Overweening) km, rather than (Coadjutor rating) km, with the Sanctums of the souls located as physical places within this space. Should the Infernal know both charms, this radius stacks - becoming (Coadjutor rating + Number of Titanic Heart Overweening souls) kilometres.

::END SIDEBAR::
 
Hmm...how does this play with Sasi having a rather cramped Tiger Empire because she doesn't get along with her Coadjutor? Or does she just know the other charm?
 
Bel said:
Hmm...how does this play with Sasi having a rather cramped Tiger Empire because she doesn't get along with her Coadjutor? Or does she just know the other charm?
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She doesn't have a Tiger Empire. She just has 4SDD, which means that her souls are all crammed into a tiny sanctum (because she doesn't respect her coadjutor who's a bad match for her). It's basically the size of a small house, and each of them has a room. Which makes it an emotional hothouse and they mostly hate each other. This is either not helping her mental stability, or it's a consequence of the fact that she's a hot mess who hides it behind a facade of being calm and collected and perfect. The causality of Infernal soul interactions with their own mentality is somewhat fuzzy.
 
EarthScorpion said:
She doesn't have a Tiger Empire. She just has 4SDD, which means that her souls are all crammed into a tiny sanctum (because she doesn't respect her coadjutor who's a bad match for her). It's basically the size of a small house, and each of them has a room. Which makes it an emotional hothouse and they mostly hate each other. This is either not helping her mental stability, or it's a consequence of the fact that she's a hot mess who hides it behind a facade of being calm and collected and perfect. The causality of Infernal soul interactions with their own mentality is somewhat fuzzy.
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Do you run with the "Yozis are an emergent phenomenon based on the interactions of 3CDs" or more top down approach? Might help answer that question.
 
Talkkno said:
Do you run with the "Yozis are an emergent phenomenon based on the interactions of 3CDs" or more top down approach?
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Yes.

I know, a mathematician's answer, but that's also fuzzy. Keris has Mentor (Adorjan) 1 so Adorjan periodically shows up in person or in her dreams and serves as a tutor for Adorjan Charms, but when she interacts with the Unquestionable Keris certainly has more of an impression that the Third Circles are beings in their own right and the Yozi is sort of a smeared out average of them.

@Aleph can probably expand more on how she feels I'm running them.
 
I can definitely say that Keris thinks of the Yozis as almost certainly an emergent phenomenon from their Third Circles, simply because she knows (at some subconscious level shown by Eko's awareness and her conscious self's ignorance) that she herself is a foetal Primordial who's already got seven demonic souls beyond her hun and po. And she doesn't feel like a Primordial herself, so she's subconsciously tagged her hun and po as something akin to fetich-souls.

Were she actually able to think about this stuff consciously - that is to say, if the lingering aftereffects of that Torment at Calibration didn't make her flinch away from considering herself a similar type of being to even the Unquestionable before she so much as finishes forming the thought, let alone the Yozis - Keris would have a certain amount of difficulty conceptualising what she thinks she is. She'd probably end up deciding that there's a "Greater Keris" formed from the sum of her own decisions and all her interactions with and influences from her various souls. And then she'd get weirded out and more than a little uncomfortable at the thought of that Greater Keris potentially manifesting in and of itself, in some form.

As a player, I guess I more see ES as running a combination of the two, as he's said. For the most part the Yozis can be approximated as emergent averaged phenomena of their Third Circles interacting and intermeshing, but when Adorjan shows up in person she definitely comes off as a singular being with her own awareness, consciousness and (utterly terrifying) presence.

(And Lilunu is certainly her own being, should Keris come across that heretical chain of logic and reasoning... : 3)

-----​

With (rather delayed) reference to @Shyft and Inksgame; I was actually a little disappointed in how the last session of Sunlit Sands played out. I feel like I dropped the ball a bit with Janissa, though it seems from Shyft's comments about "seek tutelage" that she at least left a decent impression of "social powerhouse". I will say as a tantalising hint that she had at least four goals in visiting the manor, of which the booty call was only one - and she walked away having achieved at least three of them.

Pipera is great fun, and I'm super disappointed that I didn't get to dig into her motivations for wanting to work for Inks, because they are great (IMnsHO). I had decided about her using Thoughtful Gift Technique before coming to the manor, and even (hee hee) guessed correctly what Inks would want. Notable also might be the fact that per my Guide To Gem doc; Ramabar Minah is several weeks travel north up the Firepeak Pave - yet Pipera has communicated with a vendor there and already has the tome on the way. Worth thinking about how.

And then yes, Hinna. Again, I'm kind of annoyed I didn't get to do much more than the sorceress reveal with her, especially since she's an opportunity for Inks to do a lot more self-directed "Do" rather than "be Done To" play, and I didn't even get Ajjim and Pesala back onscreen at all. Nothing that can be done about it, alas - technology will sometimes fail on us.

I'm super-glad that @Shyft is enjoying my portrayal of Rankar, though. Hee hee hee. We'll see where that goes.
 
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