Have you guys ever written or seen any interesting homebrew for islands in the West? I'm gearing up to run a game there and appreciate any ideas you could throw my way.
How many docs do you have? Found out 'bout The Book of Ten Thousand Scorpions first, then the Green Cherry Demonomicron and the Pale Apple Necronomicron showed up. I saw a link to The Fourth Soul in the BoTTS after, then I saw your post on The Auspicious Geomantic Registry in the Threadmarks here, and now Plunderer Princes? Are you going to come up with some kind of Dragonblooded doc next? The beach and hot springs would make a good start.
Sometimes, I wonder why we do so love Exalted; @EarthScorpion has spent more words than War and Peace to fix it, @Shyft has turned his mind to divining the alien will of his prophet Jenna Moran, I act like a misanthropical cynic and the regular pastime of literally every edition's fanbase has been to complain about developers and new iterations of terrible rules.
Yet we still love it. We invest time, effort and dedication into it to a degree that we simply don't do many other RPGs, hell I've been holding on to a dream-version of this wreck of a game for over a decade. It's kind of amazing, I wonder why.
Underlying all this, as my understanding grew, was the idea and sudden realization of something I had longed for, enjoyed previously but never had a name to give- Mechanics as Metaphor, or more topically Borgstromancy. The idea of crunch-informing-fluff and vice-versa was a revelation to me, and in a very real sense kickstarted my ideal of game design despite being trained for it previously in college. I had to know more, had to understand. I devoured the books, evaluated the decisions. (To this day though I sadly have not read Sidereals 1e). And I in turn comprehended.
Exalted at its best was a self-teaching game, but it's best were akin to thin golden strands of hay in bales upon bales of both pedestrian straw and fetid, rotted stalks representing ill-conceived mechanics, freak-the-norms White Wolf writing, and so on. When the game was working, you were encouraged, much like Raiden was throughout MGS2, to act in a manner akin to an Exalt or Solid Snake, respectively. Like the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the 'language' of Charms and underlying mechanics informed and reinforced the themes of their attached Exalts. (This is why I am so enamored with the Metal Gear Solid series, as well as similar line-blurring endeavors).
I don't suppose you've read Jenna's other games, Nobilis and Chuubo's, among others? IMO they're even better examples of Jenna's mechanics-as-fluff, in many aspects. Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist is also one of her impenetrable, abstract wonders.
How many docs do you have? Found out 'bout The Book of Ten Thousand Scorpions first, then the Green Cherry Demonomicron and the Pale Apple Necronomicron showed up. I saw a link to The Fourth Soul in the BoTTS after, then I saw your post on The Auspicious Geomantic Registry in the Threadmarks here, and now Plunderer Princes? Are you going to come up with some kind of Dragonblooded doc next? The beach and hot springs would make a good start.
I don't suppose you've read Jenna's other games, Nobilis and Chuubo's, among others? IMO they're even better examples of Jenna's mechanics-as-fluff, in many aspects. Wisher, Theurge, Fatalist is also one of her impenetrable, abstract wonders.
Nobilis is in some ways the quintessential example of mechanics-as-fluff and fluff-as-mechanics. 2e's presentation is impenetrably obtuse yet perfectly self-consistent, and it only really makes sense the second time you read through it, but it's really rewarding.
It's a shame 3e had that terrible art fiasco that got mocked a lot, because its mechanics are probably more playable than 2e's. 3e's mortal Intentions system is perfectly coherent at expressing Jenna's view of the system: it doesn't measure success, it measures 'I try to do this'. It measures just how much one's actions are correct, efficient, and productive, how they make your life better. The world's strongest mortal swordsman can try to kill a god, and fail, but she probably fails in a way that makes her life better. By contrast, while miracles straightforwardly tell the world 'this happens', with no chance at failure unless opposed by other miracles, they don't guarantee at all that they will make things better for you, or guide you in the right direction. And finally, there's Imperial Miracles, which say that 'something is so', but it doesn't tell you how or why or who is responsible for it, and they all work on different levels but they're all very very solid, and it's a marvel to read.
Chuubo's is what happened when Jenna took 3e's system and polished it even further, with an actually decent art team and layout, better editing, a more compelling and down-to-earth setting, and a lot of material for fans to sink their teeth into.
...This is dangerously going off-topic so I'm just going to shoehorn in Exalted by saying that if you read through her stuff you can really tell just what she was aiming for when she made Sidereal charms.
I remembered you discussing this but hadn't seen the document, thanks!
I think I'm being generous with my game's potential scope, because I've been trying to cultivate resources for both the West and the Southwest in case they decide to travel that way, too.
TAW is a thing, yes. I just didn't classify it as Earthscorpian's because it is a collaborative work, just like how I didn't mention the Keris-game stuff.
Terrifying Argent Witches was a community project (I don't know all of who was involved), which @Revlid cleaned up into a single document.
On who contributed, the introduction says:
A year or so back, a user named EarthScorpion posted a homebrew Lunar Charm on the official Exalted forums, accompanied by the suggestion that the Lunar Exalted (who were direly lacking in direction) might benefit from using less literal interpretations of the traits their Charms were tied to. He posted a few more ideas along these lines, which a number of other homebrewers started playing around with, and the whole thing gathered speed.
...
The TAW project was ambitious, new, and exciting. It was also a complete goddamn mess, with absolutely no communication on any angle. For most of its lifespan, it was quite literally a handful of unrelated writers throwing ideas at a wall to see if anything stuck - it's remarkable it remained as coherent as it did.
...
I'd like to offer thanks to everyone who supported TAW throughout those later days of second edition, with special mentions going to Aleph, who arguably started the damn thing, EarthScorpion, the primary shaper by way of having lots of really cool ideas, Imrix, a tireless advocate of the principles behind the project, Kylar, who actually put together the original TAW material into a very neat pdf, and Koshindou, who provided the art of Ma-Ha-Suchi I've appropriated for use on the title page.
Thanks also goes to the current writing team, who helped keep this game alive, and will be providing us with a much-needed third edition. Special mentions, again, go to Chai Tea, who provided vital criticism toward the end of the project's lifespan, much of which influenced the direction of this edit, and John Mørke, who has thrown his support behind player creativity and all manner of homebrew.
"I can play a mythical god-king in a setting built around realpolitik, geopolitical brinksmanship and the inevitable consequences of unwise use of overwhelming power" - sold
"...fuck none of the rules work, but I can make it work" - trapped
"...oh hey new edition maybe the rules work this time- nope" - trolled
"...new edition- holy shit the charm bloat, nope, guess not" - double trolled
And maybe why I've never gotten into Exalted, and mostly just pick stuff up and pick through it for ideas for other things, is that my first reaction to the bolded part was to do a double-take.
I mean, you will fail most mary-sue tests online just by nature of being an Exalt: reincarnation of an ancient hero, lives for centuries, heals without issue, lots of people hate you by default, etc. etc.
Context matters, at least, but it's still funny to me!
I'm going to stop you right there. If you're truly interested in finding people to play Exalted with, I suggest you find a local tabletop group of your own and try to convince them to play it with you.
Pbp just isn't the same, and trying to coordinate VoIP scheduling is a goddamn nightmare.
On the next subject, I would advise not attempting to play 2e for your first game, as it's notoriously lethal as well as...a bunch of other things. Now, as vitriolic and backbiting as this thread gets about 3e and it's devs and what could have been, it is still a fairly solid foundation for an entry-level Solar game, which is pretty much the default for players new to Exalted.
If instead what you wish is a game enabled by he long-released splatbooks and wealth of homebrew that 2e has...well, I guess you've come to the right place for GM training, because you appear to have default appointed yourself it for whatever group you end up with.
I'm just looking for a game that is looking for new players. I don't really want to try running a game again. At least not till I can couplet a full story, or something to that equivalent.
Besides like I said earlier I can't really get the support I need to get a face to face game going.
I had a conversation with @Aleph, fascinating as that infernal, most dreadful creature is that lurks the edges of my Discord conversations, and although we did not talk of this specifically, she did help me come to a conclusion of why I love Exalted, despite the game I play being an arguably different game than what is in the actual books. Exalted is built on the things that I love, it has a foundation - and I'm talking mostly about the themes in early 1e here - in this idea of a slow decay, that all the supermen are here and Creation is breaking under the strain, that this is a twilight age, still a world of wonder and mystery, before the oceans were bent and the souls of men became withered, stunted things. And most of all, that it is standing on the precipe; your actions can doom or bless Creation, as it is turning and turning in the widening gyre and the heroes of old return, dead lawgivers of the grave rise as a testament to the sins committed by the heroes of yesteryear. Creation is thus, ultimately a place that is dying, falling apart to me.
But that is not all, it is also a world of heroism, where heroes can challenge the Hydra of Lerna, wrestle with the Nemean Lion, battle the Bull of Heaven, hunt Humbaba the Terrible under the canopies of the Cedar Forest, duel their nemesis of ages past and set their might against empires. Exalted never judges you, it will describe to you, mercilessly and in excruciating detail how slave trade is conducted, how they are kept, the values you can buy or sell them for, how they are captured and how many a slaver is likely to sell in their life, and it does judge you implicitly. It shows you an awful world, full of death and murder, bloodshed and slavery, oppression and disease, and it gives you the power of gods of Antiquity and says, "What are you going to do about it, punk?"
But I can do that with many other games, what makes Exalted special? Creation is a quite uncommon fantasy world, because it's ultimately built on a synthesis of the divine and the magical, the mysterious and otherworldly, with the material and physical, trader's coin and conqueror's sword. Economics and trade matter more than your ability to throw fireballs, but your ability to throw fireballs could matter a whole lot to traders. Dragon-Blooded use their mastery of the waves and supernatural understanding of the flow of coin to drive a merciless, expansionist economic policy and keep lesser markets captive to their whims, Lunars wage terrorism from a thousand shapes and ten-thousand eyes, wearing faces stolen from the very men they rebel against, Sidereals drive the turnings of heaven to shape the future of empires and dance the dance of nations. It all matters on a larger scale, everything is interconnected, and it feels like a world that could happen, it has verisimilitude.
But of course, this is all the foundation, this is, as @Shyft says, the potential of Exalted, what I see in it that it could be. It's not what Exalted has turned out to be over the years, but it's what I strive for it to be when I talk about it and when I play the game, and it's what feels right to me. A game of epic heroism, but being a hero is not always easy, and not necessary the right thing to do. It's a game where states play intrigue with each other beyond the usual pseudo-1400s-ish magical Europe that gets regurgitated and repeated time and time again. It's a setting where the magical is not mundane, but where the mundane is magical. It's Seeing Like a State, What is History?, Debt: The First 5000 Years and 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Colombus, but it's also Mahabharata, Ramayana, the Illiad, the Oddysey, Ogier the Dane, The Compleat Traveller in Black and so on.
"I can play a mythical god-king in a setting built around realpolitik, geopolitical brinksmanship and the inevitable consequences of unwise use of overwhelming power" - sold
"...fuck none of the rules work, but I can make it work" - trapped
"...oh hey new edition maybe the rules work this time- nope" - trolled
"...new edition- holy shit the charm bloat, nope, guess not" - double trolled
I used to think this way; but I'm no longer convinced of Exalted's verisimilitude because it really fails IMO to actually integrate the Exalted into the setting that actually makes sense; because its great that it dwells on these details but then it fails to convince me that why the mortal polities even should exist and people don't really matter outside being ammo for slinging at the other side's ivory tower. Its just all a sandcastle that should logically be knocked down whatever supernatural that's in the neighborhood.
Yes, I've heard that before and I remain unconvinced by it in it's entirety, for several reasons. Primarily, my critique of that argument is that:
It assumes every Exalt will automatically want to attain authority and power, this is based on both signature characters and personal experience with players, just not true.
It assumes that there are enough Exalted to take command of everything, which is also not true, given the limited numbers of Exalted and Castes as distributed.
It assumes that there is a population of Exalted distributed across the entire setting in just the right way to take command of every mortal polity, which is also likely not true, both given the limited numbers of Exalted and factors 1 and 4.
It assumes that every Exalt has the tools to be an effective, charismatic and powerful ruler which is also, as anyone with any experience with other human beings can tell, likely not true either.
Yes, I've heard that before and I remain unconvinced by it in it's entirety, for several reasons. Primarily, my critique of that argument is that:
It assumes every Exalt will automatically want to attain authority and power, this is based on both signature characters and personal experience with players, just not true.
It assumes that there are enough Exalted to take command of everything, which is also not true, given the limited numbers of Exalted and Castes as distributed.
It assumes that there is a population of Exalted distributed across the entire setting in just the right way to take command of every mortal polity, which is also likely not true, both given the limited numbers of Exalted and factors 1 and 4.
It assumes that every Exalt has the tools to be an effective, charismatic and powerful ruler which is also, as anyone with any experience with other human beings can tell, likely not true either.
Then how the heck is the Guild allegedy a major player that can fight and stalemate trade wars agaisnt an entire house of dragon blooded despite being mostly mortals?
Yes, I've heard that before and I remain unconvinced by it in it's entirety, for several reasons. Primarily, my critique of that argument is that:
It assumes every Exalt will automatically want to attain authority and power, this is based on both signature characters and personal experience with players, just not true.
It assumes that there are enough Exalted to take command of everything, which is also not true, given the limited numbers of Exalted and Castes as distributed.
It assumes that there is a population of Exalted distributed across the entire setting in just the right way to take command of every mortal polity, which is also likely not true, both given the limited numbers of Exalted and factors 1 and 4.
It assumes that every Exalt has the tools to be an effective, charismatic and powerful ruler which is also, as anyone with any experience with other human beings can tell, likely not true either.
I mean, having read the Lunar Homebrew (out of curiosity, it was interesting), my takeaway was how thoroughly an Exalted with even one or two charms in any area seems to just completely lap any mortal period. It honestly seems like #1 is a better argument than #4, because the way the Charms added up (and the sheer depth of power involved) makes it seem much more of a choice not to kick over the helpless sandcastles that can do nothing to have any agency if you decide they shouldn't than anything else. And the Homebrew compulsion (more Infernal Charmsets, more powers in general) seems mostly to just add more ways for Exalted to override other characters and etc, etc?
It's cool, yes, and the list of powers was very thematic and interesting. But while I'll defer to your experience playing games, I do think Talkkno had at least some point here. (I mean, besides verisimilitude being a matter of opinion, and one where, "Hey, I didn't quite buy it" can't really be answered with, "No, you're wrong, you DID buy it.")
Also a lot of the most argumentative people with locally unpopular opinions stopped posting. Also certain arguments were banned outright because of the vicious flame wars they started.
(I dare you to try to defend two of my favorite Charms, Dual Magnus Prana and God King's Shrike)
It's cool, yes, and the list of powers was very thematic and interesting. But while I'll defer to your experience playing games, I do think Talkkno had at least some point here. (I mean, besides verisimilitude being a matter of opinion, and one where, "Hey, I didn't quite buy it" can't really be answered with, "No, you're wrong, you DID buy it.")
I do think Talkkno has a point, but I don't think Exalted loses verisimilitude - do pay attention to the fact that I explicitly stated I was arguing from early 1e - just because it has a few pieces of really stupid canon, like the Guild which is a holdover from the day when Creation was supposed to be the size of the Mediterranean or the Earthsea (just like the Bull of the North helping the Haltans or Paragon's trade routes with Whitewall).
Also a lot of the most argumentative people with locally unpopular opinions stopped posting. Also certain arguments were banned outright because of the vicious flame wars they started.
(I dare you to try to defend two of my favorite Charms, Dual Magnus Prana and God King's Shrike)
Celestial Bliss Trick arguments were banned because they got really creepy and also very intense, not only because of the flame wars but because of the frequency and the argument that it caused rape to be mechanically optimal which is well...
Other people can argue against the Guild as written but the deeper question is more 'Why aren't supernaturals always on top?'
Generally speaking, the main reason for that is time and effort. Magic as Exalted presents it to players, exists to compress timescales down into playable times. The conceit of perfect and keyword defenses is to compress 'Fight the Titans' into human-comprehensible endeavors.
Basically, the limiting factor is that to achieve any lasting Change in Creation, one must invest time, and supernatural beings generally don't have time. What I mean by this, is that like the proud nail that stands tall, their time and attention is in demand by dozens of interests, their own and others. They are the best in the area, so their talents are in demand. Not using them means the power that people invest them wanes, overusing them or using them unjustly unbalanced the equation until bloody revolt becomes a reasonable response.
Now yes, a handful of written Charms (especially early on) fail a 'Setting-OK' litmus test, by and large because Exalted is a big game full of big ideas and wasn't fully worked out.
Creation, as a setting, is deliberately engineered to always be tumultuous, stability is something you secure with active effort. A passive, self-policing anything is going to fall short of active guidance and investment. Attempting to do mechanically is athematic and deserves corebook-to-the-head.
Like, setting aside an 'Exalt', let's just say joe godblooded for example. He has a charm or two (this is rare in and of itself) based on his lineage, maybe an Excellency with a limited dice cap. Assuming he's a player character he trains and raises his traits slowly; NPCs don't really change their traits unless the story says they do, after all. That's weeks and months of raising his traits, time he cannot afford with his day job.
What of his ambitions? Let's say he's a soldier, and his powers make him a good soldier. Is he a good commander, represented by War and an appropriate Specialty? Is he a good champion, due to being sturdier than a normal Mortal? Most godblooded are Heroic, so he's self-motivated and likely wants something. Most people have fairly urbane motivations like 'write a novel' or 'marry a nice girl'; he probably has something like 'Live gloriously, reach a respectable rank'.
Does he want to be a king, a bureaucrat, a merchant, or novelist? No. Can he? Sure, eventually maybe never but it's possible.
Creation is a setting where it's perfectly reasonable for a supernatural being, from god to exalt and all over to naturally gravitate towards a position of power and authority- but it's equally likely that an Exalt won't care to because they're a person, not a self-guiding optimization engine. People optimize, but they optimize the best they can based what they know and how they think.
A related notion to this overarching thing, is bluntly this- Setting elements in Exalted are deliberately portrayed as being either sup-optimal or offensive entirely to get players to poke at them. The Guild presented as a mortal-run world-spanning organization is meant to inspire players to engage with it, to disrupt or take it over. That people have analyzed its portrayal and found the writing suspect is separate from it's intention.
Then how the heck is the Guild allegedy a major player that can fight and stalemate trade wars agaisnt an entire house of dragon blooded despite being mostly mortals?
Because the Guild isn't a person, it's an organization. A decentralized organization, at that, so it's not like you can take down the 'leader' and it'll just go away. It's a bunch of trades and coalitions and opportunists, dabblers and people who are so deep in it that their hearts are shriveled and blackened things. They are the accumulation of mortal greed and lust for power. I'm sure there's also plenty of communities of tradesmen and laborers and merchants who find comfort in the consistency of the Guild, as opposed to their governments or rulers. If the Guild were 'destroyed', the drug, slave, and mercenary trade would just go on, in different hands. Someone else would seek power and try to claim supremacy over its splinters. You'd need to outright change the way the system works.
The Dynast houses could probably destroy it, if they were united enough for it, but the whole point of the houses is that they're falling apart due to in-fighting. Hell, I'm sure plenty of people in the Realm find the Guild's existence acceptable either because they benefit from it (engaging in trade or information) or because the cost to destroying them would be too high.
I'll agree the Guild's overall importance and ways of dealing with Exalts is a bit exaggerated. Working at several levels of distance only works to some extent.
Because the Guild isn't a person, it's an organization. A decentralized organization, at that, so it's not like you can take down the 'leader' and it'll just go away. It's a bunch of trades and coalitions and opportunists, dabblers and people who are so deep in it that their hearts are shriveled and blackened things. They are the accumulation of mortal greed and lust for power. I'm sure there's also plenty of communities of tradesmen and laborers and merchants who find comfort in the consistency of the Guild, as opposed to their governments or rulers. If the Guild were 'destroyed', the drug, slave, and mercenary trade would just go on, in different hands. Someone else would seek power and try to claim supremacy over its splinters. You'd need to outright change the way the system works.
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