- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Right, but those are all subservient to the Exalted, yeah? They're just supposed to do their jobs and sit down, shut the fuck up and listen when the Exalted Host comes a'rolling.
General Exalted Thread
Having not read much of the 2e Sol stuff that's at issue here, I'll take a different tack: I think it's important to point out how the Sun's 'righteousness' is not something portrayed as universally positive in Ex3. Specifically, in the Luna excerpt you gave, it's explicitly a thing that people need a reprieve from. It's overwhelming.
Also, one thing that did explicitly happen is that Heaven slammed the doors for years and the terrestrial gods took over. Creation's weather patterns are being run by the Terrestrial courts, as enforced by the Immaculate Faith. I don't even know if the Bureau of Seasons does anything anymore. I'm pretty sure it's head is trying to become a war god or some shit?
Chinese theology - Wikipedia
You will notice that the Jade Emperor took over as ruler of Heaven from one of the Three Pure Ones, Yuanshi Tianzun.
While you will not find the Three Pure Ones or the Celestial Bureaucracy in the Daodejing the broader tradition did include them. Much like how saints aren't in the Bible.
What about the Bureau of destiny? It's explotiy that the gods remain in charge at the end of the day and sidereals are more like special agents.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm not really sure I understand this? Can you clarify your question?
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
As per 2e (because 3e hasn't really gone into detail yet), Heaven is intimately involved in the maintenance of Creation, but not it's *governance*, outside of corruption or agendas. So the Bureau of Seasons does influence the weather- that's it's job. But the BoS is also one of the exceptions of Not being corrupt (for the most part), so it is more interested in Doing It's Job than ladder-climbing and following the rest of the 'Heavenly Bureaucracy'.
Like- if you actually look at the Celestail Bureaucracy from chinese mythology, it's a very simple conceit and indictment of mortal goverments of the era: The world doesn't make sense, full of things doing busywork beyond the insight of the peasant masses- just like the high-minded scholarly and official castes in those periods. To explain how the world worked in apparently arbitrary manners, the original Celestial Bureaucracy is full of corrupt, inept or otherwise disinterested beings who are not doing things the way a human can understand them.
Just like how mortal goverments do things their constituents can't understand, or think aren't productive.
In practice, Heaven has exactly as much involvement as a given game/story dictates- that's the point. It's meant to exist on a sliding scale of 'can fuck with your PCs' and 'will not fuck with your PCs'.
This is also fundamentally why over-characterizing the incarnae is a narrative mistake, because it makes the game and stories less about the Exalted (and less about the PCs) and more about this somewhat static, almost formal 'program' of a setting.
To build on what Chung was saying earlier- you don't want any 'Higher being' to be the goal of a story to 'fix the world'. I mean yes it can be done for Your Game, more power to you, but the actual base setting needs to be written with an eye towards enabling and empowering the players over the actors in the setting. This is as much a question of internal consistency and suspsension of disbelief as good game-writing.
Like, across my time playing Exalted, I have had to consistently teach players that invoking the Unconquered Sun is not meant to be a thing that is done- that his input is fallible and/or biased. That while he has vast powers, and can do things- the things he chooses to do are not comprehensive. It's the difference between 'The Sun blesses the creation of this empire' and 'The Sun marches out of Heaven at the head of his war host to conquer the Realm at your request'.
Players of Exalted... there's a conveyance problem, of really getting deep into the kind of game Chambers and Grabowksi were trying to make way back in 1e. Not to say they're absolute authorities on how to play the game either. These distant, aloof, uncaring or outright manipulative gods are either allies of conveience, or are actively trying to get theirs as much as you are trying to get yours. Not to say they're jerks- that's a problem that 2e actually went out of its' way to write a sidebar for in RoGD1- the point is that Creation as per 1e and 2e was written with a cynical eye, but not a cynical obligation.
Like, if you tell me that I have to play the Exaltation as this hunter-killer seeker system designed to uplift a patsy race into credible weapon platforms to fight god-forging titans, I'm going to dislike the imposition. I enjoy and agree with that interpretation of Exaltation itself, and I like being able to take advantage of it. Like... as a storyteller, I like the option of being able to take a player who views Exaltation as this Glorious Chosen of the Gods Divine Right of I am Awesome, and then explain to them in-setting that no, you're not special beyond qualifying- you're lucky, and then what matters is all on you. The followup though, more importantly, is then putting the agency back in the player's hands saying 'You now have all this power, and YOU have to be the moral authority. You can't offload it now onto this distant god who is only nominally affiliated with your powers."
Fundamentally, the goal is to provide a bigger toolbox- I dislike 3e's approach to an 'unwritten' toolbox, where things are vague or indistinct for the sake of open-endedness. I however see that as blank canvas syndrome and a drought of precedent to build off of- sure, 2e had too much boilerplate attached to explaining Everything, but those explanations helped me run better games.
So casting the Sun as this 'endgame' solution to Creation's problems is in a way just as bad as the Reclaimation plot, Abyssal reincarnation and Devil Tigers- they're paths but are in fact the only path that matters. The Sun cannot be the solution to all the setting's problems. I however am firmly of the mind that the Sun should be something a storyteller is equipped to use to enrich their games. This applies to everything- if the detail isn't included with the intention of improving a player/storyteller experience, it needs to be evaluated very careful as to why it's being written about.
A good example of this done badly is the Daystar itself- the actual flying airship. I know 3e is walking back on it, but that's not the point- the point is that it's an example of how Not to do it: The Daystar's problem is that it is all tell- there is no organic way for a player to encounter it unless the storyteller tells them, or the player is allowed to, out of character, recognize it's existence. Oh there are ways to justify it- past lives, visions from gods, any number of ways to convey the information-
but the Daystar itself and it's associated 'plot hooks' are all contingent on the notion that you will somehow come to know of the Daystar itself. A much better 'similar' thing was done wtih the Five Metal Shrike, in which there were enough hooks seeded in the setting itself that you could investigate it and in turn determine how to take it over for yourself. The Daystar, by contrast, was only something that NPCs or 'made up' hooks could engage with. Granted the FMS was one of those 'Solar Only' plothooks, but I'll be perfectly blunt- the game was largely in part about the Solars returning as primary actors. That's reasonable- I agree that other splats did not get the love they deserved though.
Like- if you actually look at the Celestail Bureaucracy from chinese mythology, it's a very simple conceit and indictment of mortal goverments of the era: The world doesn't make sense, full of things doing busywork beyond the insight of the peasant masses- just like the high-minded scholarly and official castes in those periods. To explain how the world worked in apparently arbitrary manners, the original Celestial Bureaucracy is full of corrupt, inept or otherwise disinterested beings who are not doing things the way a human can understand them.
Just like how mortal goverments do things their constituents can't understand, or think aren't productive.
In practice, Heaven has exactly as much involvement as a given game/story dictates- that's the point. It's meant to exist on a sliding scale of 'can fuck with your PCs' and 'will not fuck with your PCs'.
This is also fundamentally why over-characterizing the incarnae is a narrative mistake, because it makes the game and stories less about the Exalted (and less about the PCs) and more about this somewhat static, almost formal 'program' of a setting.
To build on what Chung was saying earlier- you don't want any 'Higher being' to be the goal of a story to 'fix the world'. I mean yes it can be done for Your Game, more power to you, but the actual base setting needs to be written with an eye towards enabling and empowering the players over the actors in the setting. This is as much a question of internal consistency and suspsension of disbelief as good game-writing.
Like, across my time playing Exalted, I have had to consistently teach players that invoking the Unconquered Sun is not meant to be a thing that is done- that his input is fallible and/or biased. That while he has vast powers, and can do things- the things he chooses to do are not comprehensive. It's the difference between 'The Sun blesses the creation of this empire' and 'The Sun marches out of Heaven at the head of his war host to conquer the Realm at your request'.
Players of Exalted... there's a conveyance problem, of really getting deep into the kind of game Chambers and Grabowksi were trying to make way back in 1e. Not to say they're absolute authorities on how to play the game either. These distant, aloof, uncaring or outright manipulative gods are either allies of conveience, or are actively trying to get theirs as much as you are trying to get yours. Not to say they're jerks- that's a problem that 2e actually went out of its' way to write a sidebar for in RoGD1- the point is that Creation as per 1e and 2e was written with a cynical eye, but not a cynical obligation.
Like, if you tell me that I have to play the Exaltation as this hunter-killer seeker system designed to uplift a patsy race into credible weapon platforms to fight god-forging titans, I'm going to dislike the imposition. I enjoy and agree with that interpretation of Exaltation itself, and I like being able to take advantage of it. Like... as a storyteller, I like the option of being able to take a player who views Exaltation as this Glorious Chosen of the Gods Divine Right of I am Awesome, and then explain to them in-setting that no, you're not special beyond qualifying- you're lucky, and then what matters is all on you. The followup though, more importantly, is then putting the agency back in the player's hands saying 'You now have all this power, and YOU have to be the moral authority. You can't offload it now onto this distant god who is only nominally affiliated with your powers."
Fundamentally, the goal is to provide a bigger toolbox- I dislike 3e's approach to an 'unwritten' toolbox, where things are vague or indistinct for the sake of open-endedness. I however see that as blank canvas syndrome and a drought of precedent to build off of- sure, 2e had too much boilerplate attached to explaining Everything, but those explanations helped me run better games.
So casting the Sun as this 'endgame' solution to Creation's problems is in a way just as bad as the Reclaimation plot, Abyssal reincarnation and Devil Tigers- they're paths but are in fact the only path that matters. The Sun cannot be the solution to all the setting's problems. I however am firmly of the mind that the Sun should be something a storyteller is equipped to use to enrich their games. This applies to everything- if the detail isn't included with the intention of improving a player/storyteller experience, it needs to be evaluated very careful as to why it's being written about.
A good example of this done badly is the Daystar itself- the actual flying airship. I know 3e is walking back on it, but that's not the point- the point is that it's an example of how Not to do it: The Daystar's problem is that it is all tell- there is no organic way for a player to encounter it unless the storyteller tells them, or the player is allowed to, out of character, recognize it's existence. Oh there are ways to justify it- past lives, visions from gods, any number of ways to convey the information-
but the Daystar itself and it's associated 'plot hooks' are all contingent on the notion that you will somehow come to know of the Daystar itself. A much better 'similar' thing was done wtih the Five Metal Shrike, in which there were enough hooks seeded in the setting itself that you could investigate it and in turn determine how to take it over for yourself. The Daystar, by contrast, was only something that NPCs or 'made up' hooks could engage with. Granted the FMS was one of those 'Solar Only' plothooks, but I'll be perfectly blunt- the game was largely in part about the Solars returning as primary actors. That's reasonable- I agree that other splats did not get the love they deserved though.
You're giving way, way too much control to the gods of Heaven. They're not hands-on. They don't directly move the flow of the world. Ideally, the gods of Heaven step in when Creation fails to regulate itself. The Bureau of Destiny doesn't personally control every mortal destiny. They and the Sidereals step in to right what once went wrong, not control the world from Heaven. If Yu-Shan ceased to exist, Creation wouldn't instantly follow. It might, down the line, because the Sidereals and such aren't there stopping really horrible things from happening.
But Yu-Shan is distant, corrupt, and lazy. It's not holding the world together. It's absence is a huge part of why things are the way they are.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Well, "Describe it in two words, then translate into Hungarian and drop the diacriticals." seems somewhat popular round these parts
- Location
- my house
Siakagudji, the Pleasant Faced Crows
Demons of the 1st Circle
There are a thousand men, fighting a thousand battles, in a thousand wars. Sometimes this drives men mad, they fall in love with act of butchering their brothers flesh, and dance to the sounds of slaughter. When one of these men falls on the battlefield, one of the Woman Faced Birds may visit them, offering them a second life and a paradise of endless battle.
In their natural guise, Siakagudji look like immense crows with black iron wings, and the heads of woman from the north with razor sharp teeth. Their feathers and talons are razor sharp, and they have strength enough to lift man and horse in heavy mail while in flight. Master fighters all, they revel in combat often forming raiding groups or selling their services as mercenaries.
When a fighter mad with bloodlust lies dying on the battlefield, a Siakagudji Crow may escape from hell and make of him their offer. Should the fighter accept, the Siakagudji eats his heart, and stores it within a special chamber within its stomach. At the end of a year and a day, a child is born of this union, and disgorged from the Siakagudji's mouth. This child is always female and its face bears a marked resemblance to both its parents. The new Siakagudji carries all the memories of its former self, but feels no emotional attachments to its former life.
Siakagudji are fiercely loyal to their family and clan and deeply love violence. Each scene they spend fighting a member of their clan causes them to gain one limit, as does each day without violence.
Sorcerer's summon Siakagudji as soldiers, raider, messengers and transport. Their size and endurance means they are ideal for communications or travel but the sorcerer must be sure to indulge them with combat lest they become harder to control. These same abilities however make them superb raiders or soldiers and they can easily break even the most battle hardened formations.
Demons of the 1st Circle
There are a thousand men, fighting a thousand battles, in a thousand wars. Sometimes this drives men mad, they fall in love with act of butchering their brothers flesh, and dance to the sounds of slaughter. When one of these men falls on the battlefield, one of the Woman Faced Birds may visit them, offering them a second life and a paradise of endless battle.
In their natural guise, Siakagudji look like immense crows with black iron wings, and the heads of woman from the north with razor sharp teeth. Their feathers and talons are razor sharp, and they have strength enough to lift man and horse in heavy mail while in flight. Master fighters all, they revel in combat often forming raiding groups or selling their services as mercenaries.
When a fighter mad with bloodlust lies dying on the battlefield, a Siakagudji Crow may escape from hell and make of him their offer. Should the fighter accept, the Siakagudji eats his heart, and stores it within a special chamber within its stomach. At the end of a year and a day, a child is born of this union, and disgorged from the Siakagudji's mouth. This child is always female and its face bears a marked resemblance to both its parents. The new Siakagudji carries all the memories of its former self, but feels no emotional attachments to its former life.
Siakagudji are fiercely loyal to their family and clan and deeply love violence. Each scene they spend fighting a member of their clan causes them to gain one limit, as does each day without violence.
Sorcerer's summon Siakagudji as soldiers, raider, messengers and transport. Their size and endurance means they are ideal for communications or travel but the sorcerer must be sure to indulge them with combat lest they become harder to control. These same abilities however make them superb raiders or soldiers and they can easily break even the most battle hardened formations.
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I know I'm a little late for this but...
It's been five years since that Kickstarter post was written, it's been two years since Holden has been involved with Exalted, it's been four books and nothing like that was written since, and it's been one corebook since the idea behind the Kickstarter was scrapped and stuff like the Red Rule was put in place to prevent it.
Yet you're still bringing it up as an argument, even if it has fuck all to do with Kaiya's post, or any of her arguments. And you demand she defends it, for some fucking reason.
Fuck man, I don't shit on the Infernal fanbois on this site just because the first two chapters of Infernals were concentrated dogshit, but that's what you're doing. You're conflating criticism of Ex3 with criticism of Holden, and bringing up material that was never even put to print to do so.
You're kind of an asshole.
Wat.
Okay, well, Yurgen Kaneko doesn't count for Reasons, the 1E caste and aspect books and the 2E Scroll of Exalts still has plenty of other examples? There is already a canon exalt who was chosen before he was a pre-teen in the First Age book, the 1E Zenith book has a canon example of a Solar who was suffering from mutation and Wyld induced mental illness who nevertheless felt compelled to safeguard travelers in spite of being nonverbal, Mirror Flag 100% has issues with dissociative identity, Sesus Nagezzar is overweight, crippled, and would make for an excellent Emperor, and so on and so on etc.
Not even counting all the Exalted that have a missing eye, arm, leg, or so on but keep on trucking anyways because those are just gimmes.
Frankly the most damning thing against your argument is that the books from 1E to 3E says you can totally be someone who is blind, deaf, infirm right out of the box, with the only caveat being a word of advice not to pile them onto yourself like crazy!
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- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Nagezzar did that to himself well after he Exalted, because he's suffered a 'career ending injury' in the eyes of the Dragonblooded culture. If you don't know, The Slug has to eat almost every waking moment to get that fat- and it doesn't actually reduce his capabilities as an Exalt.
The underlying point if the original Exaltation classifications is that it is trying to say 'you must already be This Potentially Heroic'. If your character has lost an eye or arm, and still qualifies, then clearly you are badass- that's the point. The classifications exist not to preclude concepts like the pre-teen Solar or Wizened Lunar, but to give a demographic picture of the kinds of people that were meant to be chosen in the first place- young, healthy and wilful people who would fight the primordial war.
That Exaltation has Criteria was a meaningful setting statement, and the reduction or pullback from those kinds of statements weakens the overall themeing even as it opens up new character concepts at a player level. Unfortunately, most players are shit at writing characters, I sure as hell am not great at it! But I can see right now that allowing for min-maxing flaws or just taking them for 'character reasons' like a missing eye or peg leg is a minefield of Bad Characterization potential.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Man, he already apologized for it, there's no reason to dig it in, dude.
Did he apologize? I missed that.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, he did.
That's fair. We all make mistakes some times, I kind of hate being the tone police like this, but I have increasingly come to believe that it is my lot in life - especially because this debate about the role of the Sun is actually one that I really enjoy - and I would really rather not someone flies off their handles and the entire thread descends into a quagmire resembling a trench on the Eastern Front more than a forum of peers.Yeah, he did, I missed it
Sidereals aren't in charge of the bueueus, Gods are is my point.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Right, sure, but the Sidereals are a specific exception case working under the authority of the Five Maidens of Heaven who are, oh look, Incarnae. The Sidereals possess the legal power to do nearly anything if it is justifiably within the remit of the Bureau of Destiny, it's just that Sidereals live within a cutthroat bureaucratic environment where various departments have been gathering increasingly more power to themselves for literal centuries.
- Location
- Ottawa
So, in which book(s) did he do that?
The stats were in Glories, obviously, but I don't remember that book portraying the Sun like that. And as I recall, he was quite beat-able by the book as long as his Temperance was down. Which it always was.
Nah, his Temperance only goes down for a scene at a time. Each choice, he loses his shield briefly, but it comes back. Glories: Sol I believe has a segment on how he allowed himself to be tortured for five days and nights by the Primordials for a single mortal (despite being perfectly invulnerable) before the Solars kicked down Heaven's doors and arrested him. Glories: Sol also just had a lot on how swell a guy he was, then Morke had other essays and ect in Ink Monkeys I think?
Last I heard, that was the Ex3 plan going forward.
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Hi guys! So, I was reading the Kerisgame hacks and I like the mechanical changes a lot, and the setting stuff has a lot of interesting plot hooks. I had a question though, for Aleph, EarthScorpion, or anyone else who knows the system: what happens to Essence 6+ stuff? Does it just not exist? What do the various exalts do when they've gotten to their maximum enlightenment? Do they just... Stop growing?
Another thing, how are mote pools calculated? With Virtues replaced by Principles and Enlightenment having much bigger numbers then Essence I'm not sure how the math is supposed to work.
I'm not sure if these have been answered before, this thread has a lot of pages and I don't want to go searching for it.
Another thing, how are mote pools calculated? With Virtues replaced by Principles and Enlightenment having much bigger numbers then Essence I'm not sure how the math is supposed to work.
I'm not sure if these have been answered before, this thread has a lot of pages and I don't want to go searching for it.