OK honest question, who hear wound't mind taking someone like me who has no real experience with third edition and ruining a one on one game? I want to able to one day run games myself, but I before I do that again I want some practical experience on the other side of the table, so I can have more grounded understanding of how the game is played. Well that, and I figure that doing it one on one is a good way of keeping my ADHD addled mind focused on the game. I hesitate to ask ether the venerable @Aleph or @EarthScorpion ask if they would be interested, but seeing as how I just did the worse thing they could is ignore me. What about you @Dif? We did spend two week going back and forth trying to lay out the ground work on how an Autochthonien Solar.Well then. It was a tumultuous time to get this going, but @Aleph pulled through to run a double-session and we were on our A game here. A lot happened, slewing through multiple different mechanical niches and tones, all in the span of a pair of game days.
Without further delay, Session 33 of Sunlit Sands!
Session 33 Log
Now, before we figured out the scheduling, we were orignially planning on doing a google docs Play By Post session because we were just that far behind- but the scheduling all cleared up at the last minute. But, the planning for that session is still relevant here.
Last Session, Inks rolled to get a lead on how to deal with Xandia and Etiyadi's conflict, the results of that roll in summary-
Etiyadi and Xandia's conflict (from Xandia's side) stems primarily from Religion, Luxuries and Punishment.
Religion - Etiyadi Fire-in-Earth is the godsdaughter of an influential and overpowered volcano god within the Coxati region. She aggressively runs out rival cults. This is likely the least likely thing to be removed, maybe modified.
Luxuries - Etiyadi is the ruler of her court and likes the perks that come with it.
Punishment - She also enjoys the power and influence granted to her by dint of being the judge and authority on all punitive actions. It's not that she likes putting people to death, but more that she likes what people do to avoid her sentencing. She does promote witchhunts though.
Now, the leverage Xandia can provide is limited, more that she doesn't want to give Etiyadi any more than she has to. One potential lever is the dam Inks noticed, which if fixed, can be used to choke a river that runs through Etiyadi's lands. This is not something Inks would want to do lightly though.
Scene #1
The session opens with Pipera, and she is one of the underlying goals of the Coxati arc- to put her on camera and to build up her character and dynamic with Inks. To more firmly establish her as the 'Pepper' to Inks's Tony.
During pre-game planning, I wanted to invoke Pipera's contacts and DB communication magic to get an update on Gem, which the log describes more in-depth. It's notable that as of this scene, Inks has been gone for a bit more than a season- that's 3 months; 28 days to a month in Creation, adding on a week or two.
Remember further that this is not the age of aircraft and easy travel- when a diplomat goes to another country, they do so on an indefinite basis and empowered as heads of state abroad. Not that Inks is acting as a head of state, but this kind of diplomatic and economic scale is normal for most of Creation.
Pipera occupies an interesting space in terms of NPCs. Part of the psychology I'm used to dealing with as ST opposite players, is that of 'covetedness', not necessarily in a negative sense, but the tendency for PCs to adopt NPCs on whims. It's the urge to pick things up the storyteller or GM drops, intentionally or not. Anyone familiar with the story of 'Noh' should understand the feeling here.
So my good-natured conflict is that the 'PC plan' approach to Pipera is to invoke all of my game and system mastery to make her fess up and/or illuminate all the mysteries. To 'solve' her, as a puzzle, or conquer her like a game objective. Or, on the other side (which Inks tends to follow), approach Pipera like a character who is entitled to her privacy same as Inks is, to actually be a person capable of establishing meaningful relationships outside of Exalted scales.
This is why I haven't leaned on Pipera a lot to figure everything out- not through lack of knowledge- I remembered 'Nanda's description of Pipera's tattoos (less so their IO history), but through more an understanding that... hell, 2e corebook covers it neatly:
Unnatural mental influence is magical mental influence. Targets recognize the supernatural force behind the character's actions. If this influence is hostile, inappropriate, or used against targets who value their liberty and independence, unnatural mental influence makes enemies.
Not that Inks has much in the way of UMI, but to the inexperienced or unwary, the luminary genius offered by an Excellency is still perfectly awesome.
But all of this leads to another piece of the puzzle that is Pipera- that she hates the dead (and wants Inks to actively campaign against them), and that she considers her own tattoos as sacred and not to be openly flaunted.
My theory is that being rooted in Immaculate culture, followers of that cult do not approve of accurate representations of the Dragons or any god- they want symbols, not portraits. So there is a non-zero chance Pipera has a religious/culturally significant tattoo. Knowning Aleph's read Otoyomogatari as much as I have, I feel this is a 'can't see an unwed woman's unbound hair' thing.
Setting that theorizing aside, I am again pleased/impressed when Aleph includes little touches about how Inks is influencing the people around her, either in opposition or emulation.
One thing I regret not doing more of myself (Aleph had enough on her plate), was embelishing the specific scene. This conversation while rich with charcter detail, was fairly 'talking heads'. I attempted to adress that with the 'walk and talk' sequence.
Here we also move on and Inks finally gives a more fleshed out account of her Exaltation and more importantly (to her), she got her tattoo. I've had Inks's family more or less fleshed out since the third major attempt at her character (this is actually the fourth time I've tried to play her), so when I joke that she's a runaway mafiya princess, I'm being 100% accurate.
On that note, it's worth noting that I made a point to write Inks as estranged from her family (and that was key on her terrestrial station sacrifice), not that her parents were dead, which is a common trend in these sorts of games. It's not to say that her family can't show up in Sunlit Sands, but in practical terms they probably won't. Further, Aleph knows that attacking distant dependants is an annoying ploy- and there are far more nearby accessible targets anyway.
I don't go into it a lot directly in text, because over-writing visual description makes the narration akward and/or sound like a bad erotica, but for contrast, Pipera basically keeps herself covered neck to toe. Inks essentially wears backless gowns with high slits up the thighs. Bare arms, bare legs, and she is not living in permissive modern earth or blase anime fashion land (even if Creation is designed to enable awesome anime fashions.)
Scene #2
I'm labeling these as scenes, mostly because we've been using softer transitions in this game versus the hard ===== bars i'm used to- this is largely a stylistic thing and likely a result of being a 1:1 game. The important thing is that were still implicitly following the definition of scene change- moving through time and space.
Moving on to Xandia's meeting, this scene went a lot quicker because it was less characterization and more procedural game resolution. I was presented with a challenge, arriving at a plot-enabling decision point. Inks was essentially a tiebreaker.
This was a really well done thing, because even though it had the conveience of 'Plot time', it flowed neatly together and Aleph focused the majority of the 'play' on making a creative decision vs time and resource management. Further, she left the descriptions of the locales and arguments open-ended enough that I was inspired.
She definitely learned her lesson from Hinna, seeing my plan as I laid it out and agreeing that it was not only viable but worth pursuing. The decision to grant a +3 stunt is important here, because every time Aleph's given me one, it's a ringing gong in my ears saying 'DO MORE OF THIS'.
Scene #3
While not a particularly hard scene change, the move to sending the message to Etiyadi was itself a new scene in my mind. Since we're using Anchors, I had to cast Infallible Messenger through Maji. Secondly, Aleph hews much more closely to the text of the spell, in that it does have a travel rate of 100 mph, not 'instantaneous'. Most games I've run or played treated it like a text messaging spell, alibet one that can record a long speech.
Unfortunately due to Xandia's request, Inks could not send a message to Gion just yet saying 'Guests must behave respectfully!'
Scene #4
While likely not far removed in location, the period describing the reply was itself a new scene- and Aleph does a good job of foreshadowing for later with Etiyadi.
Scene #5
Here we try again our improvised travel rules- Note that by RAW any sort of roll to proceed is not required or outlined, Aleph just made this up for Inksgame as a logical way to mark progress. Doing so has forced Inks to lean into Survival more than I expected, but it's an enjoyable diversion from her core competencies, and it segues nicely into how I want to invest in Maji.
Sadly, I could not game the system right yet to get a fast dot of Survival.
In either case, we took the time to make sure the two survival rolls were useful characterization, particularly of Maji. I had spent the prior evening watching tiger videos on youtube for ideas. For good or ill though, I defaulted to a more Hobbesian approach.
What followed is a wonderful comedy of errors, and is largely killed ded by rampant optimization. I'll let the logs speak for themselves...
But what ho, oh dear? Has Aleph gone round the bend? Is she? SHE IS!
Scene #6
HereWeGo.jpg, it's time for 2nd edition Exalted Combat!.
It's been about a year since I've run combat, and when I last did, it was during a 3000xp solar game. Inks is about as far from that game as can get before just not having any combat dice at all.
But, I have also played in over 10+ games over the years, and most of them did dip into combat. Plus my essays and all my ruminations on the system... but enough about me, Aleph's the star of the show here.
First thing's first- while she did not do so in-character, she took the time to describe the combat arena (the hard curve of the switchback road). There were clear boundaries- a cliff on one side, the mountain implicitly on the other. I wasn't sure how WIDE the road was, to be fair, but I imagine wide enough for one cart at least, less than two I bet.
Thinking further I imagine that depending on the angle of the road, there would've been no way to see around the bend, hence the ambush kerfluffle.
In anycase, Aleph established the locale in concrete terms that made the rest of the scene flow amazingly well. Like crystals, a seed must be set before the combat scene can grow around it.
Anyway, we start with Join Battle, and Aleph was pretty on top of things- though in the future, I suggest we adopt the approach I picked up from #suptg- putting the reaction count in our IRC channel topic- It's fairly easy to handle.
On the one hand, I could spend some time explaining how Join Battle works, but I'd rather not glut the postmortem- I'd be happy to expand upon it if someone has a specific question that the logs don't address or in too little detail.
One notable thing is that Aleph assumed Maji and Inks shared a Join Battle roll- which I personally was not expecting (and would assume they'd have separate rolls), but at the same time, I did not want to burden Aleph further, so I did not demand it and it worked out fine either way.
A key point to remember here also is that... I honestly don't know how much Aleph has run 2e style combat, and I know for a fact that she did so out of considerating for me. I feel the love, so much. But the point I'm making is that there are dozens of knobs to twist and we run through most of them, not because we're trying to be pendantic, but because we both understand that the emergent nature of combat relies on these clauses.
Even then, we forget things, slip and slide around.
Tick 0: Tricerabadger
Case in point, Mounted Combat!
Inks has 0 ride dots. Windroarer as a bonded Simhata has a Control Rating of 0, which means mechanically, Inks can ride him no handed, all ride-based actions to control him are reflexive unrolled. In practice this means that if Inks had stayed on him, she would have been able to run around on a lion horse cleaving dudes from mounted luxury.
Alas, that was not the case.
Now Aleph in my favored ruled that Windroarer granted her his DV. I appreciate that in the moment, but I'm going to have to advocate that we stick to the RAW rules again, because it throws a lot of wrenches in tracking applicability and charm supplemented actions.
Of specific note, is that I said very clearly in OOC that I was not worried. Why was I not worried? Because I knew that even though Aleph is likely not going to pull a mechanical punch with me, I was also confident and trusted in her that the tone of the game we were playing would not gut-punch Inks out of combat.
My confidence held even in the face of 6 damage levels. I shall now enumerate to you Inks's total combat suite.
Dodge DV of 3, most of that from her Permanent Essence
PDV of 6, largely due to her Style.
Soak of 1L/2B; she has no armor. I've played this entire game without it. 33 sessions.
1st/2nd Melee, Call the Blade, Summoning the Loyal Steel.
That's it. No other Melee Charms. No Resistance Charms, Dodge. Nothing. Not even an Ox Body. We're not even using the 'Extra Ox Bodies' houserule, as common as it is.
Inks's major defensive asset is her un-errata'd twilight anima, that I used to life-saving effect here.
Having reduced down to 3 HLs, Inks is now in her last -1 HL, taking -1d to all actions. On paper wound penalties subtract 1 from static/derived values, but we'll get into that later.
The more important/interesting thing is that the Tricerabadger inflicted knockback.
This is an oft underutilized mechanic, largely because most people experience it with the aggressively powerful Solar Hero suite of Heaven Thunder Hammer/Crashing Wave Through. Most KB effects though are more like this- you get flung, are rendered prone, and you have to spend extra flurried actions to get moving.
Or in this case, you get half-gored off your mount and thrown off a cliff. Good thing for Graceful Crane Stance!
Before I move on, I should point out that a lotof time spent in IRC games are these sorts of Q/A beats trying to figure out who does what. This gets faster the more you do it, so the key is getting over that initial effort hump. I've already done it, having internalized a lot of these fiddly rules.
Tick 1: Inks, Maji, Xandia + her's Guards, Pipera
Remember what I said about trust? Trust is a treasure. Trust and confidence separates okay games from great games. In most of the games I've played/run, trust is so low, that players must fall back on the core rules and only manipulate what has a concrete, objective value. I admit I've been worried or confused sometimes by Aleph's decisions, but I've been able to trust her more often than not to be consistent.
Trust is why I felt confident enough to go for a gutsy stunt as opposed to a staid, practical one. Three paragraphs describing a single swordstroke is not worth +2 dice, let alone +3.
A good stunt, beyond invoking the environment, +2 or +3, must have stakes. It's a gambit, a desire to rise above the strictly defined. Looking cool is secondary to doing cool.
Which is why I got a +3 for using the tricerabadger as a springboard for a diving slash.
Amusingly, out of nowhere, Aleph gives me this gimmie of Grand Daiklaves being able to hit multiple targets- I sure as hell ain't gonna complain. Cleaving one raider in half and knocking a second one out of the fight in one go? Hell yeah!
Another important note here is that Aleph is happy and willing to invoke valor rolls- it's just that our raiders are some hotshot badasses.
Pipera... sadly she is not the most martial of DBs.
Now, the first concession here was the abstraction of Raiders vs Xandia's guards- on paper this should not have happened, but this was an ambitious first-combat scene by any stretch, so I understand completely that the encounter being streamlined for proper spotlight focus is important. Somedays it's funny when joe extra kills the enemy... but doing it every time is boring.
In this game, I tend to control Maji during combat, and unlike Inks, a lot of his traits are fairly static at the moment. Sadly his character sheet is very hard to read, so there was a lot of faffing about. Regardless, I make a decent showing, trying to be clever. The dice are not with Maji though.
Tick 2: Raider Sword x2, Raider Bow x2
Move actions are curious, because they are Reflxive Speed 0, and depending on your interpretation, they can be attempted Every tick, for the duration of your Action. So you have [X ticks] of Move Actions in any direction. This means Exalted combat can be pretty frentic if you keep it in your head. Most games treat movement as straight lines though.
In any case, the raiders are taking their move actions on their acting ticks, moving [Dex - mobility/wound penaties] away. Note that reflexive actions take no penalties from whole classes of sources but those two. Regardless, they're moving around. Note that Inks is dex 2, so she moves 2 yards per tick. In hindsight, I probably couldn't have jumped the badger...
This kind of thing is why 2e combat is both a joy and pain to run. 11 yards away at move speeds... Hah, wounded as she was, Inks was moving 1 yard per tick. So it would've taken her 11 total ticks to move there, or... 1+6 yrds/tick during a Dash action, which would've been another action in her Flurry... In any case it was still Possible but I did it wrong.
Now, in practical terms, movement rules being what they are, you can't by default use absurd Movement rules like Scourge dashing to evade attacks directly- an attack coming in happens As/While/Before you move unless some other rule helps out.
Anyway! The swordsmen choose to Guard, while the bowmen attack Inks, sadly Inks is squishy sorcerer, and has to tank the shots on her anima again- but this time I flare it totemic as per mote reactor rules. As of now I've spent about 25m of my 45m pool or so.
Further advise- when in doubt, stunt your anima. Stunt it hard. Stunt it like it owes you money, like you wanted revenge.
Tick 3-5: Raider Sword x2
Not stated in the actual game, but they would've acted again here if they waited the full 3 ticks.
Tick 6: Tricerabadger, Inks, Pipera, Maji
Going for the carts (unintentionally at least), the badger is threatening out Stuff. That's a quick way to get wrecked- or for Maji to be best hero.
The important thing here is that Aleph is making me make choices in combat, choosing to spend my actions on not attacking, to add texture to the scene and prevent whiteroom antics.
Maji of course succeeds.
Alongthe way, the wits+occult roll finally comes through and we realize this badger is an Elemental of sorts, bestial perhaps, but still a spirit of some power.
Now the Badger attacks properly, charging at Maji- and here again I'm going to take you to stunting school- even if I screwed up on the actual charm rules.
Remember that you can take Move actions off your acting tick, and I gambited enough that Maji could move to play this out. I fully intended to write the stunt, but Aleph offered me the chance to roll for the perk anyway and I got it.
LOOM STRIDE
Cost: 4m; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
The spirit replaces its normal Move action with a special Move action that doesn't require it to cross space. This Charm must be invoked on a tick on which the spirit acts. The spirit focuses on a point within (Essence x Conviction) yards, and its player rolls (Wits + Conviction), taking into account vision and cover-based penalties as though the spirit were making a ranged attack.
With a successful roll, the spirit instantaneously moves up to (Essence x Conviction) yards. The spirit cannot dash or reflexively move until its next action. Successes on this roll constitute successes on a roll for the spirit to reestablish surprise, which is resisted normally.
Now, I thought Loom Stride could be used as a Dodge, but I was wrong. Aleph allowed it anyway for likely this one session, but it earned me a... third +3 stunt.
Either way, the badger flies off the side of the cliff and we're reminded that Fall Damage is absolutely terrifying.
Tick 6: Inks, Maji, Pipera, Raider Sword x2
You'll note that I tried to staunch the wound here- Exalts can do that reflexively with sta+res at Diff 2. I forgot I had res 3, so I could've rolled more dice, but alas. Fortunately, bleeding rules work on Minutes, not Actions. Every [Stamina] minutes the wound was left untreated, Inks would've taken an auto lethal level.
But I want to underscore something here. Inks is a stacked hot woman wearing a sexy dress not suited for the weather and wielding a giant sword as tall as she is. In this scene she's got a bloody gash ripped in her side if not a hole- and she's shrugging it off like a champ. She is not a combat character. She doesn't look like a combat character.
That aside, we carry on- I tried something ambitious again, flicking the ruins of the trap wire as an improvised bola- I tried to be too Dawn for my own good and failed. It was still a good stunt though.
The Sword Raiders were now able to act as well- having spent their ticks guarding. I think if we had a clearer grasp of the reaction count, Aleph would've had them Coordinate on Tick 3-5, and swung five ticks later. Fortunately Inks's action lands 'before' theirs...
A coordinated attack would've really ruined Inks's day too.
As far as stunting goes, this was not as ornately ambitious, I admit, but I was still proud of it. Maji can teleport-pounce.
Having killed the swordsmen, the combat ends properly, with the archers having spent more time dashing away to disengage. I have never had NPCs run from a combat in my experience. They stay til death unless valor rolls prompted by a player action force them away.
Scene #7
We deploy Maji on a brief solo adventure to track the archers, and though he could have disobeyed orders and pursued, he is best and noble tiger prince and came back to his mistress.
It was a good introduction to the tracking/evasion rules, and I look forward to using them again.
In this same scene, we have Inks recover from combat- note that she was the one who got hit the most/hardest out of everyone. Pesala, confronted with Inks's mortality again decides to be a brave tiger-daughter heroine. It's adorable.
The major plot twist here is that these raiders are supsiciously... unadorned. Anonymous. And briefed for a specific threat. There is a non-zero chance Rankar sent them, but Inks hasn't voiced these suspicions either. I hope to ask Piercing Sun if he would recognize the gear, later on.
But we didn't lose any people, or time really. Or supplies. But the major thing is that by our mote reactor rules, flaring totemic counts as 10 hours of strenuous activity. By RAW again, Inks should've been knocked out within moments of letting her anima die down.
Fortunately neither of us were going to try and poke those rules hard just yet- but later yes. Inks treated her own wounds, and made a point to cast Water from Stone on a nearby rock for fresh supplies- mostly because I wanted to keep using Sorcery more casually.
From here we segue...
Scene #8
Here we are introduced to the first on-camera demesne of Sunlit Sands! Ahh, fond memories of Demesne weeks.
Aleph did an excellent job of establishing the overwhelming magical nature of the place- though I admittedly think it sounds much higher rating than it actually is. Like, this kind of thick, pervasive mutation and reshaping sounds more like a 3-4 dot demesne to me.
After a bit of discussion, we figure out what to do with Raising the Earth's Bones- I've been using the of the Emerald Circle spell rewrites for these, so they're not the exact same as the White/Black Treatises versions.
Having done that, Inks conks out again because strictly speaking, Sorcery requires totemic anima flaring... all the time. This might need to be adjusted?
Scene #9
Etiyadi arrives- I did not want to say this in game, because I'm a firm believer in keeping to vocabulary guidelines. Modern slang or jargon generally doesn't belong.
However, here in this postmortem, I am more than willing to call Etiyadi what she is- thirsty.
She's also kind of an entitled brat and a bit smitten. So that's cool.
I was actually pleased though with the inclusion- and the foreshadowing I mentioned earlier. The implication being that Inks left such a positive impression on Etiyadi that I'm pretty sure Inks was the major reason she even bothered to show up.
For good or ill though, Inks had to maintain a pretense of impartiality, so no fun times just yet.
Scene #10
A quick discussion with Pipera segues into a banquet fit for lords, which is appropriate, and we use that time to sound Etiyadi of 'today' out, preparing for the final scenes of the game.
These last few scenes are a bit light on post-mortem detail, because we've covered the kind of content before. I'm also getting somewhat tired, so I may have to expand this later...
Anyway, we're nearing the end of the session, Aleph and I have both put in a huge solid chunk of gaming, but we're in that critical home stretch....
Scene #11
The talks, part 1. This is sort of a culmination of the 'Methods/Approach' style gameplay that Aleph's been trying to tutorialize. Though in hindsight, I don't think we really ever settled on the Exact plan. It ended up that Inks is acting as reasonably impartial mediator, with an eye towards polishing up all of the concessions and arguments on both sides that they all get what they want.
Now, despite my epic desperate crunking, I did not win the roll... and I barely beat Etiyadi- but fortunately, I did!
Scene #12
The last roll is almost a formality, negotating the final end contract of the agreement. As Aleph points out, there are a lot of things Pipera CAN do that she hasn't done, and she's been trying to do that more, but we've agreed now to just give me a list of things to invoke if I see fit.
Regardless, two excellent rolls from Inks and Pipera seal the deal, and I have shaped the fate of nations without having to daiklave anyone or fight a big bad evil guy.
Wrapup
The last few notes of note is that Inks now will have Ally X with both Xandia and Etiyadi, and Backing 4-ish I think with the unified polity of Xandia-Etiyadi , which in turn segues neatly into the arranged for trade route that Inks wants to set up. Depending on how the rest of the Coxati arc goes, since Xandia is the more central kingdom within the greater Coxati area, it'd be great to have most goods shipped there, then east to Etiyadi where they get shipped to Gem proper.
But that hasn't been set up yet, the rest of the routes I mean.
Now, The Coxati arc has mushroomed into an expansive thing, beyond I think the scope Aleph and I originally envisoned. That's cool- we're experimenting, and this happens with IRC games a lot more than voice/table games, I feel.
But, I've more or less achieved the goal I set out for- developing new backgrounds to use as Anchors- I got 3 of them so far, two Allies and 1 Backing. There'll be some thematic restrictions, but now I feel more comfortable learning more infrastructure spells!
Now I gotta decide what Pres, Bur or Soc charm to get during this training time Aleph offered...
General Exalted Thread
OK honest question, who hear wound't mind taking someone like me who has no real experience with third edition and ruining a one on one game? I want to able to one day run games myself, but I before I do that again I want some practical experience on the other side of the table, so I can have more grounded understanding of how the game is played. Well that, and I figure that doing it one on one is a good way of keeping my ADHD addled mind focused on the game. I hesitate to ask ether the venerable @Aleph or @EarthScorpion ask if they would be interested, but seeing as how I just did the worse thing they could is ignore me. What about you @Dif? We did spend two week going back and forth trying to lay out the ground work on how an Autochthonien Solar.
Flattering as the thought is, my work schedule and several projects on my plate means I don't even get to play in a regular game myself. So I've been pouring any offhand plot/set-piece/NPC ideas I have into various writeups and research instead.
I'm sure someone in the thread can help you out, though.
I'm sure someone in the thread can help you out, though.
Dunno how much of a game you were wanting, but I've run the Ex3 jumpstart quite a few times for various friend groups of mine, and I'd be down for running one for interested members of the thread. I couldn't do a real ongoing game though, sorry.
Something with a raping difficulty maybe. Something that would last two or three mouths, ideally once a week on Sunday. My new job is going to be Wednesday thru Saturday, so my free time is going to be awkward for more traditional gaming groups. I hope a one on one set up might at least be able to give me the necessary experience for running a small game my self. That way if I can't find a group that meets on my days off I can make one!
- Location
- Singapore
???? autocorrupt?
Peanut-007
Hat or Hair? America decides.
- Location
- Maryland, United States of America
Kicked in some money to What Fire Has Wrought kickstarter.
Now I just have to pray this isn't a complete shitshow like 3e core's development so it won't be my grandkids who get the completed product.
Now I just have to pray this isn't a complete shitshow like 3e core's development so it won't be my grandkids who get the completed product.
That was with spell check. If you check all those words are technically spelled correctly.
But yeah that was typed on my computer which unlike my phone (which I'm on now) does not have auto correct.What did you even mean for the first thing on difficulty though?That was with spell check. If you check all those words are technically spelled correctly.
Given that the text is actually *done*, final editing aside, I figure you won't be disappointed.
My guess is 'ramping'?
- Location
- Ottawa
Sometimes I go through old forum threads, or old posts from long-running threads like this one. When I do, I often come across quotes that are, in retrospect, quite funny. Preposterously wrong predictions and the like.
I'm not sure whether it'd be appropriate to share them here. I wouldn't mind if someone dredged up my old comments but...that's just me. Maybe other people would find it mean.
What do you all think?
I'm not sure whether it'd be appropriate to share them here. I wouldn't mind if someone dredged up my old comments but...that's just me. Maybe other people would find it mean.
What do you all think?
I think you should look at the thread tags and mod banner and really consider if any good can come of this.
- Location
- Ottawa
S'what I'm doing.
Sasha
Not the Leader
- Location
- The Ever After
So my group just had the first session of the reboot of our game. I'm not the Storyteller, but I'm normally the one that keeps the logs of what happened for my fellow players. I posted a couple of the logs from our first game and they seemed to make a few people chuckle, so I figured I'd start doing that again.
Anyway, here's Solar Shenanigans 2.0: Electric Boolagoo!
Anyway, here's Solar Shenanigans 2.0: Electric Boolagoo!
- Our story begins (or rather continues) in Nexus
- Invisible Horse Princess and Fang of the Temperate Dragon are enjoying a normal day
- Nakar Edthir is off engaging in pagan rituals that involve putting eggs in places eggs do not belong
- All is well in the world…
- Except no, because fuck happiness and tranquillity, amirite?
- Princess and Fang get a psychic distress signal from Ruby (Princess' sexy silver girlfriend who is also a house) that is calling them to her/the Manse of the Resplendent Swan
- Nakar might have gotten it too, but he was probably too busy defiling newly sealed tombs and replacing the recently deceased with colorful baskets of candy
- Fang heads over to the manse on his Stormwind Rider
- Princess sees him slowly making his way to Ruby at a measly 100 mph, takes pity on him, and gives him a ride
- They get to the mountains where the manse should be, but it's vanished
- Well, gang, looks like we got a mystery on our hands!
- The distress signal splits into 5 separate signals, one for each Elemental Pole
- Even though the Eastern signal is closest, Princess and Fang decide to go to the signal in the North since it's the strongest
- Oh yeah, the Hearthstones they got from Ruby have changed
- Fang's is glowing and warm
- Princess' is dark and cold
- No thematic decisions made here, no sir
- Our heroes head back to Nexus to stock up on supplies for the trip North
- As they shop, Fang notices some bloke wearing white robes is stalking them while doing his grocery shopping (which consisted almost entirely of cabbage)
- The man shall henceforth be known as White Cabbage Douche
- Clearly the only thing to do now is throw a Bell of Shame at him
- He catches it, oblivious to the fact that he just ruined the scene with his insensitive desire not to be hit in the head with a heavy brass bell
- Seriously, what a jackass
- Fang plays a little song to inspire the proper levels of shame in White Cabbage Douche, but it doesn't seem to have much effect
- Princess heads over to give him a lecture about proper etiquette (and also find out why he's following them)
- Insults are traded, nothing of value is really learned
- But that's okay, because it was all just a ruse to buy time! (Ignore the failed dice rolls)
- Fang casts Corrupted Words, preventing White Cabbage Douche from speaking about our Circle without really bad indigestion
- As he walks away, Princess steals his groceries, successfully securing scrumptious supplies for their journey
- White Cabbage Douche figures this out after the fact and tries to confront Princess about it, but she simply stares him down while taking a big bite out of a head of cabbage, establishing her position as the Alpha
- Time for a scene change!
- We cut to a few hours later when Princess and Fang are already in the North (because lol, supernatural mount + Ride charms)
- There's a big army trying to wave them down
- Fuck it, why not?
- A big dude takes us to see the leader of the army, Evrina Calum, the Zenith that happens to be our most recent player
- She wants to hire us as mercenaries and/or trainers for her men
- Princess and Fang agree to consider it after they finish checking out the distress signal and everyone decides to meet at Whitewall in a week or so
- Continuing their journey, our heroes find the signal coming from a big-ass castle
- It's made of dark Blue Jade, the front door is a massive portcullis, and there are no other doors or windows
- Seems inviting!
- Princess feels her Hearthstone being pulled towards the portcullis, so she allows them to touch and see if it will unlock
- It does!
- The gate rises, the Blue Jade that makes up the castle brightens to it's normal shade, and Princess and Fang head inside
- The inside of the castle is nice, but Ruby doesn't seem to be here
- There are three doors on the inside
- The first leads up to the top of the tallest spire in the castle
- The second leads to more of the same floor and is covered in frost
- The third leads down into a foreboding darkness from which the occasional dripping sound echoes
- Fang: "Let's split up so we can cover more ground!"
- Princess: "Have you just never seen a movie ever?"
- Fang: "What's a movie?"
- Princess relents, reasoning that Fang's Red Jade Silken Armor makes him close enough to a Red Shirt that she'll be better off without him
- Of course Fang wusses out and takes the door that goes up, leaving Princess with the choice of one of the less welcoming doors
- She decides to go for the door that descends into darkness, because she might as well go all-in at this point
- Fang goes through his door and climbs the stairs all the way to the top of the tallest spire
- He emerges on an open-air platform and the stairs seal behind him
- Fang is all alone now
- End of Session 1
Last edited:
- Location
- my house
Always good to see more actual plays
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
So, I know this isn't the GMing advice thread, but I figured this was relevant:
In the round-robin game I'm in, I'm currently ST. One of my players, Wheels Greased Proper, has no combat ability (aside from Dodge). It fits the concept, and Wheels is a Bureaucracy Supernal with Resources 5. She's also bankrolling the party.
The issue is that now the only system everybody is able to interact with is the social system, which still leads to a decker problem. That, however, is not my major concern. The circle is currently in Rathess, which means that opportunities to use the social system are very few.
In the round-robin game I'm in, I'm currently ST. One of my players, Wheels Greased Proper, has no combat ability (aside from Dodge). It fits the concept, and Wheels is a Bureaucracy Supernal with Resources 5. She's also bankrolling the party.
The issue is that now the only system everybody is able to interact with is the social system, which still leads to a decker problem. That, however, is not my major concern. The circle is currently in Rathess, which means that opportunities to use the social system are very few.
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Sounds like a good chance for character development. Knock into Wheel's head that hey, maybe they should learn to throw a punch.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
So split the party. Have your social character get kidnapped or captured or isolated with no way of solving their current predicament but using the social system, then send the rest of the party on a rescue mission.
- Location
- Ottawa
She has Dodge; she can participate in fights without dying. She can interact with the combat system.
Why not just have fights happen?
Why not just have fights happen?
Jon Chung
=][=
Easy to solve this one. Give everyone the necessary competencies. If you have a problem of player inability to participate meaningfully in some system which comes up reasonably often, determine what the basic competency package is and give it away. You either have to mandate a certain amount of resources be spent on necessary competencies or give out resources for the explicit purpose of acquiring those competencies, and giving them away generates less annoyance from the players' POV.
eg: Exalted 2 requires the P-combo to not die instantly in combat, therefore, give everyone the components. This saves you work since you don't have to contort yourself in knots trying to justify why the massively dangerous anathema demagogue hasn't been shot in the head yet, and it allows that character's player to do something during combat scenes.
It's a poor solution to the decker problem specifically because decking is such a narrow thing, but for stuff that is reasonable to anticipate that the entire party must be forced to participate on a regular basis, just give away the minimum.
Note that this is one of the faults of point-buy systems like Exalted as opposed to class-level ones, as it's easier to bake minimum competency levels (kek) into less granular packages. Note also that this will not work if the player insists that their complete uselessness in a common activity is an inherent part of their precious character concept, you need to solve that one OOC.
Last edited:
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So then. My thoughts.
Back in Gem
Holdings decay if you're not there to do upkeep, because Backgrounds like Backing and Ally do, by the rules, require you to take actions to maintain them - they're symbiotic relationships that demand things of the player as much as they provide. Since my intention isn't to punish Inks for going off and doing cool plot stuff, it's a slow decay - but it is nonetheless decaying. There may or may not be a plot afoot to attack Inks economically - if so, that's going to create Plot when she gets back, mwaa haa - and we see that one of the downsides of exclusively using demon labour in your factories is that they're terrifying black-boxes to the locals which, and this is important, the cityfolk don't feel they have any personal stake or investment in.
One of the things that Solar Training Charms like Tiger Warrior Training can do is boost people up to the level of a 1CD in a limited area - if you like; Enlightened mortals are the "intended" Solar mook, while Infernals have demons, Abyssals have ghosts, etc. This isn't ironclad - as Inks shows, a Solar can be a demonologist and an Abyssal can teach people so they have a creepy cult of death-worshipping goths with high pools and spirit charms or whatever - but these are the kinds that their Native Charmset supports. And that means that Inks can, with a bit more investment, staff her orichalcum facilities or whatnot with Essence 1-3 Enlightened mortals who have Solar-flavoured essence and a couple of Spirit Charms tied to what they've been taught to do, and this will make the people of Gem feel like her facilities are theirs, not something foreign and scary and unknown and potentially malevolent. She can still use demons as well, of course - but one of the things that's notable at the moment is that her holdings are split into businesses she owns but which operate pretty much as they always have, and the one or two places she's made which are entirely staffed by her bound demons and which don't really need Gem at all to function.
People are scared of things they have no say or stake in, especially when those things are connected to Hell. This'll be probably coming up more as the novelty of what Inks is producing wears off and as she moves further into the economic game.
Pipera, Culture Clash and DB Charms
Ah, this reveal. I've had this in mind since Pipera's conception, and I've been subtly foreshadowing it for ages. So yeah. Pipera is from a nomadic Western culture and an odd variant of the Immaculate Faith that split off during the Shogunate and has diverged notably since then. And in her culture - either as a direct principle of her religion or a peripheral element that came in from the secular side - tattoos and body art are seen as being important, meaningful, sacred and secret. Every new piece of ink means something and is earned somehow, and you don't show them to people - they're private things that mark you in the eyes of the spirits; not meant for display to other mortals.
And then we have Inks' view. Who got her giant full-body tattoo on... well, not quite a whim, but certainly her main reasons were because she wanted it, because she thought it looked beautiful and to rebel against her parents. And who flaunts it everywhere with very skimpy clothing that shows it off to everyone who cares to look.
Now, I tried to be careful and show that this wasn't just a deliberate set-up to punish Inks for her character concept. It actually wasn't - I found similar attitudes while I was researching stuff for Pipera's origin culture when I first came up with her as being basically Daja-Moana, and was like "welp, this'll be fun". I won't deny that it's a great facet of the Pepper/Tony relationship that @Shyft asked for, though, because one of the notable bits of that dynamic is that for something on the order of 10+ years; Pepper was continually infuriated by his drinking, his womanising and his partying. Giving Pipera something to be continually lowkey annoyed at Inks for was a nice feather in getting the right attitude.
But as Inks noticed in the session - in the same paragraph as she twigged to what was going on - this has been there in the background the entire time they have known each other, and Pipera has kind of warmed up to her anyway. She hasn't stopped thinking of body art that way, and if you read back carefully you can see that she got all snippish about Etiyadi's weavers (who have full tattoo sleeves that they bare to the world) and doesn't like Etiyadi much (what with all the body-paint decoration she wears) and so on - but she's almost shifted by degrees into tolerating Inks for hers. Though she does still get a bit colder and more curt when Inks shows it off to especially blatant levels.
Fundamentally, this is a narrative of culture clash. Insofar as it's tutorialising anything, it's that one of the big draws of Creation is that it's a big place, and that you cannot expect people to all have the same views and outlooks as you do. Inks has a tendency - a very in-character one that's probably the result of her high Conviction, but one that I'd probably peg as her "fatal flaw" - of assuming that people will think in the same ways as her and use the same language and value system. She'll talk to people about investment opportunities and business plans and doesn't always (or even often) consider that they might hold "honour" or "revenge" or "moral purity" above things like "financial gain", "economic improvement" and "better quality-of-life", even in win-win deals that benefit them massively to her eyes. Honestly, I'd personally put an extreme version of this as her personal Conviction-associated Limit Break - because much like Keris and fear, it's something woven into her normal behaviour and @Shyft's fundamental playstyle in how he acts through her.
In terms of Charms... yeah, I've been really falling down in invoking and using Pipera's Charms, even offscreen or in the background. I have no excuse there - she has quite a few applicable ones that could have been useful here and there, which I just never remembered to use. I'll get @Shyft that IC list of what she can do.
The Meeting Place
Choice time, yay! So this was basically a quest-style vote, between a Xandian town, a ruined border-fort and of course the uninhabited demesne. I will admit, here - I totally forgot that Inks could just make buildings, and thereby get around the downside of the demesne by whipping up some accommodation. It was a great solution to the problem, though! Kudos to him for thinking of it. Had he chosen the fort, I would probably either have had some sort of attack occur, or forced some emergency Craft rolls on him to shore up bits of the fort as all the activity destabilised parts of the crumbling structure (Raising the Earth's Bones may or may not have helped with this). Had it been the town, Etiyadi would have been considerably more defensive, would have brought along a huge entourage, and Inks and Pipera would have been making mass social rolls to stop riots and fights breaking out (as well as figuring out how to feed everyone).
The challenges of the demesne were going to be roughing it and Etiyadi being all put out and pouty and grumpy about having to camp out on the cold hard ground with only her ultra-lavish tent and handmaidens to help her struggle through. But then Inks got them all shelter (though I should really have thought of the fact that RtEB gives only the stone skeleton of the building; not stuff like "plumbing", "shutters for the windows", "furnishings", "wooden floors" etc). Still, with luxury camping equipment even a fairly bare-bones structure can be made more comfortable than outside on the ground, so I guess it's not too much of a biggie.
Combat, Urgh
why did i decide to do this
why
why
Okay, a lot of bitching ahead, so strap yourselves in.
So I know going into this fight that running it in a white room would make me want to kill myself, @Shyft, every character in the scene or some combination of the above. Hence, I blinged it up with what @EarthScorpion and @Shyft would both probably refer to as a setpiece - the image of this fairly narrow switchback road with a steep slope on one side and a sheer drop on the other, just round from a hairpin turn that gave no visibility, halfway down the trail so that there were multiple switchbacks above and below. Difficult to retreat, limited space, massive falling damage hazard on one side and an environmental feature (the hairpin) blocking off most of the convoy from helping, because god knows running this with all of Xandia's guards would have been nothing short of hell.
Things immediately start going wrong, before the fight even starts, when both ambushers and ambushees conclusively fail to notice one another's presence. It is the subtlest ambush in history. Nobody notices it's happening, on either side.
I was in fucking hysterics, I swear to god.
It is perhaps apparent that while I had a plan for what would happen if Team Inks succeeded in their roll, and what would happen if Team Inks failed their roll, and what would happen if Team Inks succeeded their roll but got fewer successes on it than Team Ambush got on theirs; I did not have a plan for what would happen if both teams failed their rolls, and the action was summarily put on hold for a few minutes while I worked out what to do. Let this be a lesson, STs! Always assume the possibility of hilarious, pathetic failure. Always. Skilful players will sometimes even manage to drag it out of nigh-mechanically-impossible depths, as Kerisgame has demonstrated on several occasions.
So, I eventually decided to resolve this dilemma by just having a complete clusterfuck happen and have both parties surprise the other one simultaneously, in the rare and famous double-ambush phenomenon - not often found in the wild, but fabulous (and short-lived) to behold. This decision probably saved Inks' life, because those men were elite archers with a powerful earth elemental that was Maji's physical match, and if they'd managed to get the drop on the party I might have actually TPK'd them. I nearly did TPK them anyway, entirely by accident - if that cart had gone over the cliff, Xandia would have had to roll not to go with it, and that would just leave Maji and Pipera against a big tough elemental and six archers who could now get some distance and start pelting them from range.
To break down our bad guys; I intentionally tried to undermatch them - half a dozen mortals and one elemental, which was mostly just big and strong and not very smart. Since this was fairly obviously an assassination mission, the men were archers kitted out with arrows specifically intended to take down Inks (lightly dressed target with no protection whatsoever) and Maji (big tough armoured target). For those interested; the brave and noble Sir Tricerabadger was envisioned as an earth elemental that pushes up rock and stone and earth from underground where protrusion is happening, hence why it is a burrower whose horns push things away from it very hard indeed. I whacked triceratops horns on it, decided I didn't want it to be a big cat (because Maji) or a dog (because too obvious parallel to Maji), considered burrowing animals for a moment and then went "screw it, badger will do".
Obviously this means it's probably native to areas where protrusion from underground happens; eg mountains and volcanic regions. Hint hint.
So, Sir Tricerabadger wins the Join Battle roll, makes a simple charge flurry at its two main targets, hits Inks full in the stomach despite her being mounted on a magical combat-trained lion-horse and deals 6lhl which send her flying backwards off the edge of the cliff trailing blood and organs.
"Shit," thinks Aleph. "I just killed the PC in the first action."
A small angel and demon appear on my shoulders, both wearing the face of @Jon Chung. "See, this is why lethality is an issue," says the demon. "You get minefields for newbie STs where they go 'I'll have my non-fighty Eclipse player fight a normal mortal bear; that'll be a cool fight on his level', and then it rips his face off in one shot. Kek."
"Also, why are you using the Twilight anima shield?" says the angel, as @Shyft narrowly averts his character's instant demise and just barely passes a reflexive roll I made up on the spot to stop her from going over a fifty-yard drop and getting hit with an instantly fatal amount of Bashing damage. "You know that's unbalanced, we've been over this."
"Aren't you two meant to be opposed concepts of good and evil?" I say, panicked, forgetting the fact that Inks shouldn't actually be allowed to leap over the earth elemental and cut a man in half with enough force to send the guy next to him flying over the cliff in turn because her movement rate is closer to that of an elderly three-legged affenpinscher right now. "You're both just saying exactly the same sort of thing that normal Jon does!"
Both of them shrug, and then vanish with a puff of smoke and a sound like zergling laughter. Sometimes my friends are very unhelpful.
Anyway, things sloooooooowly resolved themselves. Very slowly. "Two hours for three groups to take their first combat action" slowly. If Maji hadn't run Sir Tricerabadger off a cliff on the thing's next action tick, I would have resorted to having Vahti swoop down and go "YARRR I AM AN OLDER AND SMARTER ELEMENTAL THAN YOU, I DO YOU A FRIGHTEN!" or something to scare it off, because I was looking at the thing's health levels and soaks and saw the endless expanse of dozens of turns of 2e combat stretching infinitely away into my future. Such horror cannot be countenanced in words.
Less melodramatically; I personally found the actual process of combat pretty boring, tbh - I obviously don't enjoy the emergent combat nearly as much as @Shyft does or in anything like the same way. It's just too slow-paced, and I don't think even practice will speed it up enough to offset that. Also I just don't particularly like how it's so granular and step by step - that whole multi-hour combat took about 15 seconds or so in-game - while we resolve week-long travel periods in one or two rolls.
Since I like the people side of play, I did try to make that a strong factor by throwing Valor rolls in there whenever the combat significantly up-gunned; first when Inks literally cut a dude in half in one swing and then when she and Pipera went anima-flare. Pipera did not inspire any Valor rolls of her own because Pipera is kind of shit at combat, which is why after epic-failing to do any appreciable damage whatsoever twice in a row she hung her head sadly and hung back to act as an elemental wall of murder between them and the rest of the convoy.
Also of note; the grand daiklave area-attack thing isn't so much a gimme as a deliberate choice - if grand daiklaves can do that, then it significantly impacts how they are used and makes them a tactical choice; they're foe-clearers whose insane damage is less to whale on one dude and more because you're cutting through two or three health tracks stacked end-to-end. This makes combat run a little differently if you have that type of weapon and provides some direly needed variety to fite-murder. And @Shyft may not have known this beforehand, but Chronicle actually does native Knockback by canon, albeit slightly less potent Knockback than Heaven Thunder Hammer or Tricerabadger Smash. When it sent that badly wounded second guy tumbling over the cliff to his horrible death; that was an expression of the RAW Knockback mechanics on pg 153 of canon - with giant weapons like grand daiklaves and goremauls; you're knocked back 1 yard for every 3 dice of raw pre-soak damage. I quite like this rule, especially since it paradoxically makes goremauls slightly less lethal because they act as their own flurrybreaker and force the wielder to chase their target down again for more pounding.
Once Tricerabadger went down (and down, and down, and thud) and two of the archers had been wounded, it was a pretty simple decision for the four left to make a tactical disengagement - the injured pair staying to slow Inks down and try one more attempt at killing her; the uninjured pair legging it to either try again later or report back to whoever sent them. Inks sent Maji after them, and I figure @Shyft probably regretted that throwaway "back by sundown" line he threw into the stunt when I went "lol" and brought it up just as Maji was about to win the tracking roll.
Happily, that saved me an interrogation scene that would have eaten up negotiating time, so all's well that whatever.
Overall, I'd like to be able to say that @Shyft has won my cautious optimism that 2e combat will in time become bearable-to-enjoyable, but I would be lying if I did. My main response once it was finished was "oh god that was horrible why did I script it" and when @EarthScorpion laughed at me and was like "now you realise why I transitioned to quest-like narrative combat" the only argument I raised was "wtf do you mean 'now I realise'; I knew this was going to suck from the start."
(He changed it to 'now you understand at a visceral level', which I honestly couldn't deny.)
(My friends are still very unhelpful sometimes.)
A Blue Stone Haven
Demesne time, whee! I was super-excited to get to this, because I really liked the concept I came up for it. This is probably why @Shyft thinks I undersold the rating - I was really pleased with the "blue-agate geode" theme I'd come up with to blend Earth and Serenity and thus dropped it everywhere - bones, adorable armadillos that could definitely be turned into Bound Servant Force if Inks built a manse here, pebbles, plant life and of course the Egg itself (which I still think is the coolest thing ever). In my defence, this place hasn't seen much use in decades, so all the stuff that's here has been here for years and had ample time to be mutated by the demesne's energies - it may only change things very slowly, but a very slow rate of change can still build up over time. All in all, I'm very happy with how it came out and I'm looking forward to including more magical places in Sunlit Sands in future.
Do give me your thoughts on the Broken Egg, all and sundry, because I was rather proud of it and I wanna hear what other people's opinions were. I might do a write-up if I can be bothered.
Negotiations and Novel Mechanics
Once we got to the politics, I wanted to play with some more interesting mechanics than just the usual smacking against MDVs or [side1] vs [side2] contests for accumulated successes. Hence we have a couple of different mechanical environments here; first with Xandia and Etiyadi facing off while Inks rolls not in opposition either of them, but rather to successfully keep them at the table and ensure they don't storm off. And then we have an odd case of a cooperative roll, with all of the parties coming together to pool their combined successes towards a common goal. I'm not sure how @Shyft felt about this, but I rather liked it - especially due to the implications of how long it must take mortals to sort out large polities, when they have 40-50+ successes to accumulate and can't use super-speedy transcribing and Exalted genius to make the roll with hours-long intervals but instead have to make them at a pace of days or weeks.
Yeah. Ideally each session would focus on one or two game mechanics building the complexity as we go. Start off with some problem solving with skill checks, and stunting. Add in some basic combat and you have most of the first session. The week after that start throwing charms into the mix. Maybe a little mass combat. After that start working with the social combat system. In all of this I would Chronicle the game hear, and invite people to pick apart how the game went, with the goal of point out the things I was doing right and wrong, and highlighting areas we (Me and my hypothetical GM) could focus on next.
I think an ideal run time for the story would be around three or four mouths. After that? I don't know. Start a new game with more people? Maybe try ruining a game myself again? One of the things I knew I did wrong in second edition was trying to play with NO past experiences in how the game was played. It lead to a lot of needless frustration on my part. I want to correct that.
Edit: and Aleph epic recap is likely going to over shadow this. Story of my life.
Last edited:
...The biggest thing about this is the idea that there are no charms in the first session. That's either a terrible idea because why would you ignore the biggest part of the character's capabilities, or you're thinking of playing out the actual exaltation itself, in which case I think getting it done in one week is optimistic.