General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Singapore
Excellent. Thank you.
I now have an idea for a fortress or something.
Second age:
"This fortress's repulsive moat, from the first age, creates a repulsive field that forces back any army. Any army is thrown back, any projectile is rejected. A mighty defense from our ancestors. With this moat, no army can amass at our front, and so this castle has never been taken."
First age:
"Best bouncy castle, ever"
Oh man, that is such an awesome image. Like you can imagine a rando ghost going about their everyday unlife in the Underworld, when suddenly a blast of sunlight erupted in the distance like a piece of the sun just fell onto the necrotic plains and everything starts evaporating under the scouring light. And then said rando ghost went blind from staring straight into a Solar's anima and the next thing he knew, his corpus starts smoking as he begins taking damage from the sunlight.
Hmm, oh yeah, does Infernal animas do damage to Underworld environments? Sunlight does it because that's what it does to Dead things, but what about Yozic essences? I can't quite recall the rules for that particular bit of interaction.
- Location
- United States
"Celestial Circle Workings: Workings of the Celestial Circle are miracles of outright supernatural power, either rewriting the laws of the natural world on a relatively large scale or instilling supernatural power into the mundane world. They can have scope sufficient to place powerful blessings or curses upon an entire village or a particular neighborhood or feature of a city, and their power is either an overt manifestation of supernatural magic, or a dramatic and drastic change to the properties of the natural world."
Seems very clearly Celestial to me. Might even be Solar depending on the size of the area effected.
I'd suggest that you don't focus on the means in which a working accomplishes something to determine what level it is. Focus on the end result. In this case, the end result is the creation of a fortress that is impossible to capture by an army... which seems Solar Ambition 1 to me.
Well, lets see the bouncy castle idea(because its kind of fun) and iterate over a number of ideas:
-Terrestrial Ambition 3:
--Render a vine tangle extremely resilient and elastic. Basically First Age Treehouse.
--Render a literal rubber and air bouncy castle as durable as stone, but no less flexible and enjoyable. Should be garishly painted. Particularly difficult to siege by traditional means, but it's just a matter of technique.
--Renders the standing water of the moat semi-fluid elastic gel, creating an advanced obstacle which must be bridged or bypassed, as it can neither be walked nor swum across
-Celestial Ambition 1:
--Reinforce every exterior surface of the edifice with repulsive wards that will reflect mundane force directed against it. Has an obvious flaw where invaders with sufficient protection/durability and a good run up could trampoline over the moat and walls into the courtyard.
-Celestial Ambition 3
--As Ambition 1, but the bouncy effect is strengthened to include even superhuman physical force and energy effects. Perhaps this bouncy castle was designed for a particularly weird Behemoth to play with.
-Solar Ambition 1
--Screw bouncy castle, you're making bouncy city! Hyper elastic walls. Strange adapted local vermin include slingshot rats and people wearing long coats and masks to shed eternally bouncing garbage
-Solar Ambition 3
--This is the Dimension of Bounce. Strange pinball like lifeforms dominate and the trees hop about. Did some raksha come up with this idea?
-Terrestrial Ambition 3:
--Render a vine tangle extremely resilient and elastic. Basically First Age Treehouse.
--Render a literal rubber and air bouncy castle as durable as stone, but no less flexible and enjoyable. Should be garishly painted. Particularly difficult to siege by traditional means, but it's just a matter of technique.
--Renders the standing water of the moat semi-fluid elastic gel, creating an advanced obstacle which must be bridged or bypassed, as it can neither be walked nor swum across
-Celestial Ambition 1:
--Reinforce every exterior surface of the edifice with repulsive wards that will reflect mundane force directed against it. Has an obvious flaw where invaders with sufficient protection/durability and a good run up could trampoline over the moat and walls into the courtyard.
-Celestial Ambition 3
--As Ambition 1, but the bouncy effect is strengthened to include even superhuman physical force and energy effects. Perhaps this bouncy castle was designed for a particularly weird Behemoth to play with.
-Solar Ambition 1
--Screw bouncy castle, you're making bouncy city! Hyper elastic walls. Strange adapted local vermin include slingshot rats and people wearing long coats and masks to shed eternally bouncing garbage
-Solar Ambition 3
--This is the Dimension of Bounce. Strange pinball like lifeforms dominate and the trees hop about. Did some raksha come up with this idea?
Graypairofsocks
What is Grammar?
- Location
- earth
It's worth noting that (in 2e) the Hungry ghosts (first) appeared in core, when the only playable splat was solars.
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- Location
- Spain
The First Age was an strange time.
I'm unsure, the Infernal Anima seems to have a deleterious effect on the surrounding environment in general;
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Standard anima damage, as I run it - actually slightly better than most other types of anima banner, because it's the only one that doesn't specifically fuck over the Dead. Solars and Lunars are sun- and moon-light which Creatures of Death are weak to, and the pure forms of the elements ward the Dead off, but Hellish essence "merely" has the same effects it would on mortals.
(Nobody remembers what Sidereal animas do, because... who were we talking about, again?)
(Nobody remembers what Sidereal animas do, because... who were we talking about, again?)
So, uh, what does anima damage actually do in your game?
Somehow I doubt it's the canon 2e 1d/minute, 9 ticks, or tick. That's too much of a bitch to keep track of.
- Location
- Singapore
Does anyone know how cancer would work in exalted?
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Mechanically or metaphysically? Mechanically it's a sickness effect that likely has a high difficulty to treat due to terribly invasive surgery, so 'Supernatural healing' or bust.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Actually, I'd probably tag it as a Sickness/Crippling effect.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Sounds like the Palais de Boing! from the Judge Dredd comics.
- Location
- Singapore
Are you sure?
Because there are carcinogens.
Perhaps some kind of poison effect, that causes rapid growths and tumours to form?
If the Manse in Denandsor can do what it does then why can't a different demesne or damaged manse cause cancer or produce contaminants?
- Location
- Canada
It actually ended up showing up in Kerisgame at one point, as something that you can get from Wyld contamination.
Which, yeah, a disease where your body's flesh starts mutating wildly out of control and strangling itself from the inside, caused by exposure to strange forms of energy? It already sounds like something you'd find in the Wyld without even doing anything to change it up and make it more Exalted-y.
EDIT:
It also works quite well as something Metagaoin, whether from a Demesne or some 2CD or 3CD1, since "Parts of your organs have become other, and are starting to slowly eat you from the inside out in order to add to themselves" fits very nicely into his themes of body horror, parasitism, and consumption.
EDIT2:
1(actually, maybe even a particular 1CD, like some kind of reverse sesselja, which also lets you pull the "Diseases are caused by evil invisible demons that crawl inside your body and corrupt it from the inside out" reference)
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- Location
- United States
magical radiation carcinogens are going to be rarer than the number of people that get hit with cancer, as will demonic influence and out of control wyld mutations. And each one of those can easily be 'explained' as some sort of 'divine curse'. I just assume that in creation gods and spirits are mythologically petty and cancer as a disease gets lumped in with various low key 'curses' upon people that accidentally aren't respectful enough. Treatments include prayer, fasting , seeking forgiveness and intercession from the gods, consuming various materials considered sacred by the gods and if you're willing to risk deadly surgery, having someone cut out the bits of you that are cursed.
- Location
- New York City
Are you talking about real cancer, or fake magic cancer that works faster? Because the disease rules typically represent the regular type you get in most games.
I'd also suggest looking up what people thought cancer to be back in the day. I'm sure medical historians have probably connected the dots on a few descriptions.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
So, my player (who is playing a Slayer who favors Isidoros) met the Yozi cult meant to help wrangle him. In related news, their faith has also reached record lows.
In terms of first impressions, walking up to them and dropping a set of code words on their own, having a 30 second pause in the middle of introducing yourself, and then talking aloud to the voice in your head and agreeing with it that you're not sane is probably a bad one.
He then tried to seduce their leader.
I also dropped a few rumors - some generic ones and some plot hooks - and before a few immediate plot hooks I mentioned that there's a rumor about the Hundred Kingdoms being united, and that this rumor comes up every month or two. Somehow, despite me trying to make it sounds like a generic "you're gonna hear this one a lot" rumor (it's something that typically comes from either scaremongers or people who want to unite the Kingdoms for various reasons), he caught onto the fact that I'm taking his character from an old campaign and turning him into a conquerer.
In terms of first impressions, walking up to them and dropping a set of code words on their own, having a 30 second pause in the middle of introducing yourself, and then talking aloud to the voice in your head and agreeing with it that you're not sane is probably a bad one.
He then tried to seduce their leader.
I also dropped a few rumors - some generic ones and some plot hooks - and before a few immediate plot hooks I mentioned that there's a rumor about the Hundred Kingdoms being united, and that this rumor comes up every month or two. Somehow, despite me trying to make it sounds like a generic "you're gonna hear this one a lot" rumor (it's something that typically comes from either scaremongers or people who want to unite the Kingdoms for various reasons), he caught onto the fact that I'm taking his character from an old campaign and turning him into a conquerer.
Kuckiwalker Homebrew: Sondell, the Clockwork Manse
- Location
- Virginia
Sondell, the Clockwork Manse
Greater Sidereal Manse
In a great mountain range of the East, far above the forests, is a barren valley cut by the bed of a long-dead river. Astride this are the concentric walls of a fortress-complex, guarding the approach to one of the great orreries and observatories of the Sidereal Exalted. The gates to the outer three walls lay buried under inches of dust and dirt, but the inner sanctum still stands.
Once, no sound other than the roar of the falls at the valley's end would have been audible, but now, if you press your ear up against the cool steel, you may hear the tick - tick - tick of clockwork. Inside, you would find the gleaming starmetal mechanisms of one of the strangest devices in Creation, and the five score men and women who have spent the greater part of a thousand years maintaining it.
Built during the early years of the Shogunate, the manse is more than a simple stargazing aid. It houses a great assemblage of gears so complex that it might be attributed an intelligence of its own. One of its secondary functions is to forecast the motion of the stars: it is so adept at this that comparison of its predictions with reality can be used to spot subtle errors in Fate. Its primary function is to perform a calculation. What calculation few know - surely one or more of the Viziers know, but if its devout monk-technicians do, they aren't telling.
When constructed, the manse was populated by an entire community devoted to its maintenance, surrounded by a larger settlement just outside the walls. But after the Contagion and Crusade the climate shifted, the mountains received far less snow in winter, and the river dried. The settlement and neighbors blamed the manse, for it had closed its gates during the Contagion, and besieged and sacked it.
Now, the manse is crippled, its power source run dry. For the past seven centuries it has been powered by its backup - a metal sphere slowly riding a screw. While on backup most of the functions of the manse have been disabled to conserve power, but even so the sphere is nearly four-fifths of the way to the floor. The monks suspect that, should it reach the bottom, their unnaturally extended lives will end.
Years of being cloistered in the inner sanctum changed the monks in strange ways. So long as they do not venture outside they avoid the ravages of time. Deep meditation on the nature of their task has led them to develop a martial arts style for its defense should it ever be attacked again: the Certain Gears of Heaven. Probably most disturbing to any ordinary visitor, though, is the uniform emerald green of their eyes.
Greater Sidereal Manse
In a great mountain range of the East, far above the forests, is a barren valley cut by the bed of a long-dead river. Astride this are the concentric walls of a fortress-complex, guarding the approach to one of the great orreries and observatories of the Sidereal Exalted. The gates to the outer three walls lay buried under inches of dust and dirt, but the inner sanctum still stands.
Once, no sound other than the roar of the falls at the valley's end would have been audible, but now, if you press your ear up against the cool steel, you may hear the tick - tick - tick of clockwork. Inside, you would find the gleaming starmetal mechanisms of one of the strangest devices in Creation, and the five score men and women who have spent the greater part of a thousand years maintaining it.
Built during the early years of the Shogunate, the manse is more than a simple stargazing aid. It houses a great assemblage of gears so complex that it might be attributed an intelligence of its own. One of its secondary functions is to forecast the motion of the stars: it is so adept at this that comparison of its predictions with reality can be used to spot subtle errors in Fate. Its primary function is to perform a calculation. What calculation few know - surely one or more of the Viziers know, but if its devout monk-technicians do, they aren't telling.
When constructed, the manse was populated by an entire community devoted to its maintenance, surrounded by a larger settlement just outside the walls. But after the Contagion and Crusade the climate shifted, the mountains received far less snow in winter, and the river dried. The settlement and neighbors blamed the manse, for it had closed its gates during the Contagion, and besieged and sacked it.
Now, the manse is crippled, its power source run dry. For the past seven centuries it has been powered by its backup - a metal sphere slowly riding a screw. While on backup most of the functions of the manse have been disabled to conserve power, but even so the sphere is nearly four-fifths of the way to the floor. The monks suspect that, should it reach the bottom, their unnaturally extended lives will end.
Years of being cloistered in the inner sanctum changed the monks in strange ways. So long as they do not venture outside they avoid the ravages of time. Deep meditation on the nature of their task has led them to develop a martial arts style for its defense should it ever be attacked again: the Certain Gears of Heaven. Probably most disturbing to any ordinary visitor, though, is the uniform emerald green of their eyes.
- Location
- The end of all things
There's a new Exalted 3e Kickstarter Update with some major progress: the Dragon-Blooded manuscript is complete, while Arms of the Chosen is in proofs.
Finally, an excerpt on murdering Anathema from Dragon-Blooded: House Tepet—Air Stained by the Blood of Legions.
Finally, an excerpt on murdering Anathema from Dragon-Blooded: House Tepet—Air Stained by the Blood of Legions.
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- Location
- Gladstone, OR
What ho, is this? yes it is my friends(?)- a second session of Sunlit Sands, a doubles week! Due to labor cost issues in the retail sphere, I had four days off instead of a mere three! @Aleph was most gracious to offer and then run two sessions this week!
Session 19 log
Anyway, that's Sunlit Sands Session 19!
Session 19 log
So today was an interesting session, and we got a lot done, feels good!
We open and pick up where we left off last time, with Inks having confronted The Exorcist and pinned her down. We now begin the game of talking, to solve problems. Truly an under-rated art.
We also learn, with minimal teeth-pulling, that this woman calls herself 'Tatters', which is oddly appropriate, though I don't know why.
There's a fair bit of back and forth in which Inks more or less voices out loud the central argument and pin of their relationshi- what does justice look like? Tatters is firmly in the 'Might is Right' camp, whereas Inks generally takes a longer view. Vigilante justice is immediate and satisfying, but not always the best choice. So Tatters is acting very much like a player character.
Thinking about it, you wonder how this is a 'reversal' of how Aleph normally sees and plays things. Keris is her primary play experience, and she's generally almost always more maneuverable and deadlier than her opposition. So 'Tatters' being cornered the way she did is almost a metatextual nod to the looming 'gotcha' that might befall Keris at some point in her career.
I generally don't bring up Kerisgame in context of Sunlit Sands, largely because I want to let the game stand on its own merits, but acknowledging Aleph's own experience is important to in turn express how she does things. I have myself spent more time running games than playing them, so I'm more used to making up characters and improvising plots on the fly. Maintaining consistent characterization is... not a challenge, but not something I've practiced in a while.
Anyway, Tatters is apparently quite tragic and also hopelessly besotted with Inks, as we discovered last session. I chose not to overdo that simply because it'd be kinda tacky and fliration in a dark alley is not Inks's MO. Having convinced Tatters to head back to the townhouse, planning can ensue.
I cannot underestimate this. Exalted as a game is intended to let you prepare the ground much more than most of its contemporaries. You are encouraged to choose when and where to make engagements, to game the environment and any number of other factors. Sometimes you need benefit of hindsight, and sometimes you just don't get the chance to plan, but Exalted really wants you to.
Now, as far as storytelling goes, Aleph executed a fantastic little trick here with Pipera- she's trying to be coy with plot elements, notably Pipera (and later Tatters) backstory. Because of the prompted awareness roll, Aleph is attempting to convey meaningful or interesting details as to Pipera's personality and nature. She's a westerner, for one, has tattoos, which is hardly surprising, though Inks doesn't know what they mean, and she's a woman. If you don't know, a lot of the canonical cultures in the West don't like women being on ocean-going vessels. I'm drastically oversimplifying, mind.
I can't remember what color Pipera's hair is either...
Anyway, Aleph expediently and without dialogue or blunt exposition fed me interesting details I can follow up on later. I have to emphasis this- dialgoue in a text format like IRC is glacial. Talking scenes take forever, and we're too much into writing witty dialogue to abstract it into pure mechanics just yet. Bear that in mind as you plan your own games.
Continuing on, we have to take a moment to reward Maji for being polite and handsome tiger-friend.
Taking a few moments to get a read on Tatters, we quickly determine that she's an overwrought, extremely touchy soul. And kinda Dead. Spooky.
Here we spend a bit hashing out some plans in character. I think Aleph was preparing for me to just interrogate her with sheer force of charisma, and practice using Judge's Ear, that I just purchased. I definitely still want to do that, but I was more concerned about getting the sword of damocles that is the Despot out from above her head. The man wanted to torture whoever was doing the killing; he has a vengeful, sadistic streak that Inks wil have to be careful managing in the future.
I take a moment also to determine the exact nature of the crimes, and again, Gem does not have an organized central justice or police force. It's not the same as Nexus's... I can't think of the word now, libertarian paradise? The point is, Gem is an ad-hoc, emergent polity and culture based around the Despot... being a despot. This isn't Whitewall with it's standing civil defense garrison or the Realm with actual law enforcement, even if that enforcement is acting with the Dynast's interests in mind.
So, having done all that, it's pretty clear that Inks can't just tell the Despot that the people Tatters killed were worse than she was.
I'm going to split up the analysis here, because there's two points that I want to more or less go through all-together instead of mixed in.
The first is that generally speaking, in Creation, the value of a mortal life is in continuity and what it Can do or Is Doing. Being alive is not valuable, being a knowledgable individual is valuable. Now I'm pretty sure that most people don't have an organized world view or religion reflecting this, they're nominally aware of Reincarnation, especially since it figures into the immaculate dogma, but creation inhabitants are as far as I can tell, fairly pragmatic about death and dying. You die, that's it. Respect the corpse or deal with a hungry ghost.
value of a person rooted in 'compassion' or the idea that life is sacred, inherently or externally, is an imposition upon the world. The idea of 'inherent right to live' is something that Exalted as a game very clearly wants players to pick up as a cause to champion. That's a cause Inks does not champion- she's not that bleeding heart compassionate (Rated 3).
Instead, Inks believes that murder has a cost- that the life taken will no longer increase in value or enrich the lives of those around it. Now not all lives are going to be value-increasing, as murderers and warlords can demonstrate, but Inks's approach to Tatters here, her immediate, reflexive willingness to protect her, is contingent on the following- I didn't express this in game either, so Aleph is going to read it for the first time here.
Inks believes Tatters should face justice for her actions, but she also believes that putting her to harm or death is a pointless waste. Tatter's utility, her ability to do and be and grow is fundamentally more valuable to Inks. Instead, Inks's approach to justice is Corrective. "Here's what you did wrong, and why it didn't work the way you wanted to. Try this instead."
So that's all in-character rationale and judgement. Out of character, Tatters is ostensibly Inks's mysterious 3 dot ally, though Aleph hasn't confirmed that explictly either. I as a player have an inherent bias and investment in protecting my character sheet, possibly even when I don't need to.
Further on the out of character, I have a moment of player cold-feed. Aleph prompts numerous solutions, and as I express in the log, I realize I don't feel confident that I can achieve a grand sweeping coup or victory. I think having considered it, I'm used to dealing with 'Despot' like challenges as having MDVs of 10+ before modifiers, which mechanically, is perfectly attainable for heroic mortals. WP 10 gives them 5 MDV right off the bat, but I don't know how much WP Rankar has.
My point is, unknowingly or not, I felt 'afraid', and likely irrationally so. I haven't mentioned it here, but the first character I ever played died, due in part to how the storyteller decided that my willingness to try an audacious plan deserved a brutal beating and no way out. I died because my recently-ST-changed perfect defense made me valor-flaw into a DB's anima flux.
That's left a mark on me as a player, dumb as it sounds.
So I'm often cagey, wary. I don't feel confident that I can make a big move. I should be, because Aleph tends to make certain claseses of challenges Less Demanding- crafting is so far the most difficult thing at Difficulty 5-6+ for the thaumaturgical materials.
Anyway, Having talked out my feelings, I decided to try a gutsy, bold move- convince Rankar that the 'ghost' was dead-er and that there would be no mor murders. It maintained Tatter's single connection to Inks, and in turn Inks can act as a moral and ethical leash on Tatters.
Aleph in turn was very good about making the acutal engagement with the Despot dynamic and interesting, in that she made a swerve to the venue itself, showing more of Gem off- note to Aleph: do stuff like this more- as well as revisiting older NPCs like Telalsi, and recent introductions like Janissa. Note to Shyft: Do something nice for Janissa. Note to Shyft: Take over The Heavenly Gates.
Now, Pipera gets to show more of her stuff- I know enough about Dragonblooded charms to have recognized a few standounds, like Sweeten the Tap Method; such a fun charm.
Anyway, the last few scenes were a touch rushed because I had to leave for errands, but overall a lot happened and we completed a story arc!
Now, I haven't taken the time to really dig into Tatter's backstory or Pipera's, I don't want to push or rush it. Trends being what they are, Inks may roll stupidly well and get 3-4 'beats' worth of content in a single go.
Aleph's goal for them both is to make sure that trying to get them to open up is a challenge, to manage their idiosyncracies without disrupting the flow of play. It's a constant challenge, that digressions and improvizations can enrich a play experience, but also risk stalling the action.
A good example is often any child character- Pelasa is being handled brilliantly, but the risk is always there that the child will monopolise player and NPC attention by dint of 'a child's antics are an easy lever to get something happening on screen'.
The challenge and risk of a character in any situation, is balancing 'antics' versus 'meaningful advancement'. Take a first-age ma-ha-suchi archetype, the debonair seductor. That's a fine character point, but if numerous scenes are interrupted by the horndog behavior, a worn out joke at that point, it stops being fun.
Now I'm saying all this as general advice or observations for everyone else to enjoy. Aleph hasn't done it yet. I doubt she will. I've had it happen to me or even by my hand when I ran games, to my regret.
Concluding this post mortem, I think we're realy hitting a narrative stride. Inks is starting to develop the tools she needs to dig hard into El-Galabi and by extension, resolve that hanging plot thread. I have a Dragonblooded who dislikes the malevolent dead, an exorcist who is... an exorcist, and a twilight with global economic domination in her eyes.
I'm also getting a real Charlie's Angels vibe from this whole situation now. But my question is, is Inks 'Charlie' and will she have three gorgeous agents hanging on her every word, or is she one of the Angels?
this unapologetically is one of Inks's visual/character cues.
We open and pick up where we left off last time, with Inks having confronted The Exorcist and pinned her down. We now begin the game of talking, to solve problems. Truly an under-rated art.
We also learn, with minimal teeth-pulling, that this woman calls herself 'Tatters', which is oddly appropriate, though I don't know why.
There's a fair bit of back and forth in which Inks more or less voices out loud the central argument and pin of their relationshi- what does justice look like? Tatters is firmly in the 'Might is Right' camp, whereas Inks generally takes a longer view. Vigilante justice is immediate and satisfying, but not always the best choice. So Tatters is acting very much like a player character.
Thinking about it, you wonder how this is a 'reversal' of how Aleph normally sees and plays things. Keris is her primary play experience, and she's generally almost always more maneuverable and deadlier than her opposition. So 'Tatters' being cornered the way she did is almost a metatextual nod to the looming 'gotcha' that might befall Keris at some point in her career.
I generally don't bring up Kerisgame in context of Sunlit Sands, largely because I want to let the game stand on its own merits, but acknowledging Aleph's own experience is important to in turn express how she does things. I have myself spent more time running games than playing them, so I'm more used to making up characters and improvising plots on the fly. Maintaining consistent characterization is... not a challenge, but not something I've practiced in a while.
Anyway, Tatters is apparently quite tragic and also hopelessly besotted with Inks, as we discovered last session. I chose not to overdo that simply because it'd be kinda tacky and fliration in a dark alley is not Inks's MO. Having convinced Tatters to head back to the townhouse, planning can ensue.
I cannot underestimate this. Exalted as a game is intended to let you prepare the ground much more than most of its contemporaries. You are encouraged to choose when and where to make engagements, to game the environment and any number of other factors. Sometimes you need benefit of hindsight, and sometimes you just don't get the chance to plan, but Exalted really wants you to.
Now, as far as storytelling goes, Aleph executed a fantastic little trick here with Pipera- she's trying to be coy with plot elements, notably Pipera (and later Tatters) backstory. Because of the prompted awareness roll, Aleph is attempting to convey meaningful or interesting details as to Pipera's personality and nature. She's a westerner, for one, has tattoos, which is hardly surprising, though Inks doesn't know what they mean, and she's a woman. If you don't know, a lot of the canonical cultures in the West don't like women being on ocean-going vessels. I'm drastically oversimplifying, mind.
I can't remember what color Pipera's hair is either...
Anyway, Aleph expediently and without dialogue or blunt exposition fed me interesting details I can follow up on later. I have to emphasis this- dialgoue in a text format like IRC is glacial. Talking scenes take forever, and we're too much into writing witty dialogue to abstract it into pure mechanics just yet. Bear that in mind as you plan your own games.
Continuing on, we have to take a moment to reward Maji for being polite and handsome tiger-friend.
Taking a few moments to get a read on Tatters, we quickly determine that she's an overwrought, extremely touchy soul. And kinda Dead. Spooky.
Here we spend a bit hashing out some plans in character. I think Aleph was preparing for me to just interrogate her with sheer force of charisma, and practice using Judge's Ear, that I just purchased. I definitely still want to do that, but I was more concerned about getting the sword of damocles that is the Despot out from above her head. The man wanted to torture whoever was doing the killing; he has a vengeful, sadistic streak that Inks wil have to be careful managing in the future.
I take a moment also to determine the exact nature of the crimes, and again, Gem does not have an organized central justice or police force. It's not the same as Nexus's... I can't think of the word now, libertarian paradise? The point is, Gem is an ad-hoc, emergent polity and culture based around the Despot... being a despot. This isn't Whitewall with it's standing civil defense garrison or the Realm with actual law enforcement, even if that enforcement is acting with the Dynast's interests in mind.
So, having done all that, it's pretty clear that Inks can't just tell the Despot that the people Tatters killed were worse than she was.
I'm going to split up the analysis here, because there's two points that I want to more or less go through all-together instead of mixed in.
The first is that generally speaking, in Creation, the value of a mortal life is in continuity and what it Can do or Is Doing. Being alive is not valuable, being a knowledgable individual is valuable. Now I'm pretty sure that most people don't have an organized world view or religion reflecting this, they're nominally aware of Reincarnation, especially since it figures into the immaculate dogma, but creation inhabitants are as far as I can tell, fairly pragmatic about death and dying. You die, that's it. Respect the corpse or deal with a hungry ghost.
value of a person rooted in 'compassion' or the idea that life is sacred, inherently or externally, is an imposition upon the world. The idea of 'inherent right to live' is something that Exalted as a game very clearly wants players to pick up as a cause to champion. That's a cause Inks does not champion- she's not that bleeding heart compassionate (Rated 3).
Instead, Inks believes that murder has a cost- that the life taken will no longer increase in value or enrich the lives of those around it. Now not all lives are going to be value-increasing, as murderers and warlords can demonstrate, but Inks's approach to Tatters here, her immediate, reflexive willingness to protect her, is contingent on the following- I didn't express this in game either, so Aleph is going to read it for the first time here.
Inks believes Tatters should face justice for her actions, but she also believes that putting her to harm or death is a pointless waste. Tatter's utility, her ability to do and be and grow is fundamentally more valuable to Inks. Instead, Inks's approach to justice is Corrective. "Here's what you did wrong, and why it didn't work the way you wanted to. Try this instead."
So that's all in-character rationale and judgement. Out of character, Tatters is ostensibly Inks's mysterious 3 dot ally, though Aleph hasn't confirmed that explictly either. I as a player have an inherent bias and investment in protecting my character sheet, possibly even when I don't need to.
Further on the out of character, I have a moment of player cold-feed. Aleph prompts numerous solutions, and as I express in the log, I realize I don't feel confident that I can achieve a grand sweeping coup or victory. I think having considered it, I'm used to dealing with 'Despot' like challenges as having MDVs of 10+ before modifiers, which mechanically, is perfectly attainable for heroic mortals. WP 10 gives them 5 MDV right off the bat, but I don't know how much WP Rankar has.
My point is, unknowingly or not, I felt 'afraid', and likely irrationally so. I haven't mentioned it here, but the first character I ever played died, due in part to how the storyteller decided that my willingness to try an audacious plan deserved a brutal beating and no way out. I died because my recently-ST-changed perfect defense made me valor-flaw into a DB's anima flux.
That's left a mark on me as a player, dumb as it sounds.
So I'm often cagey, wary. I don't feel confident that I can make a big move. I should be, because Aleph tends to make certain claseses of challenges Less Demanding- crafting is so far the most difficult thing at Difficulty 5-6+ for the thaumaturgical materials.
Anyway, Having talked out my feelings, I decided to try a gutsy, bold move- convince Rankar that the 'ghost' was dead-er and that there would be no mor murders. It maintained Tatter's single connection to Inks, and in turn Inks can act as a moral and ethical leash on Tatters.
Aleph in turn was very good about making the acutal engagement with the Despot dynamic and interesting, in that she made a swerve to the venue itself, showing more of Gem off- note to Aleph: do stuff like this more- as well as revisiting older NPCs like Telalsi, and recent introductions like Janissa. Note to Shyft: Do something nice for Janissa. Note to Shyft: Take over The Heavenly Gates.
Now, Pipera gets to show more of her stuff- I know enough about Dragonblooded charms to have recognized a few standounds, like Sweeten the Tap Method; such a fun charm.
Anyway, the last few scenes were a touch rushed because I had to leave for errands, but overall a lot happened and we completed a story arc!
Now, I haven't taken the time to really dig into Tatter's backstory or Pipera's, I don't want to push or rush it. Trends being what they are, Inks may roll stupidly well and get 3-4 'beats' worth of content in a single go.
Aleph's goal for them both is to make sure that trying to get them to open up is a challenge, to manage their idiosyncracies without disrupting the flow of play. It's a constant challenge, that digressions and improvizations can enrich a play experience, but also risk stalling the action.
A good example is often any child character- Pelasa is being handled brilliantly, but the risk is always there that the child will monopolise player and NPC attention by dint of 'a child's antics are an easy lever to get something happening on screen'.
The challenge and risk of a character in any situation, is balancing 'antics' versus 'meaningful advancement'. Take a first-age ma-ha-suchi archetype, the debonair seductor. That's a fine character point, but if numerous scenes are interrupted by the horndog behavior, a worn out joke at that point, it stops being fun.
Now I'm saying all this as general advice or observations for everyone else to enjoy. Aleph hasn't done it yet. I doubt she will. I've had it happen to me or even by my hand when I ran games, to my regret.
Concluding this post mortem, I think we're realy hitting a narrative stride. Inks is starting to develop the tools she needs to dig hard into El-Galabi and by extension, resolve that hanging plot thread. I have a Dragonblooded who dislikes the malevolent dead, an exorcist who is... an exorcist, and a twilight with global economic domination in her eyes.
I'm also getting a real Charlie's Angels vibe from this whole situation now. But my question is, is Inks 'Charlie' and will she have three gorgeous agents hanging on her every word, or is she one of the Angels?
this unapologetically is one of Inks's visual/character cues.
Anyway, that's Sunlit Sands Session 19!
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
This is, in part, because of how several games, including 2E, handled failure.
In 2E RAW, the line between "Cakewalk" and "TPK" was pretty thin. When the system isn't fail-forward, and the consequences for failure start at harsh and move up to rolling a new character, any sane player would absolutely try to mitigate risks. Taking away things players spent XP on almost always results in unhappy players, and will usually only convince them that they need to be even more paranoid.
Players need to feel that they can fail without it leading to terrible outcomes.
Edit; Remember paranoia combat? Where if you didn't have ways to counter or mitigate certain things, you died no save gg no re? That's the sort of mentality some players operate under.
A Tyrant Lizard Ski Jump was considered fairly tame, yes.
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