General Exalted Thread

[ichypa]

Unfortunately Irrelevant. That's history. Speaking for myself, I can't internalize that as a setting conceit. It doesn't tell me anything useful. It's interesting, and I can with effort, do something with it- but it's not the same kind of useful as 'Wyld-Hunt'.

Ideas are hard to convey in general and even more so when trying to be succinct. I'm not really worried about what 3e is or isn't doing, or plans to do. I'm speaking more about the non-solar experiences holistically.

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While probably equally unhelpful, I'd say "causing disruption" would be my two cents, in a "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" sort of way. Something I felt while reading the Lunar fluff was that the Lunars' actions to weaken the Realm was not without collateral. A group of Lunar-lead guerrillas disrupting Realm logistics can just as easily be a group of bandits responsible for stealing the food shipment that your village is going hungry without. Thus, Lunar activities can be plot hooks for PCs looking for allies to help overthrow the corrupt regime, or PCs looking for enemies to bring peace to their region.

Its not specific, which if I understand correctly is part of the problem, but its certainly something you could plop in anywhere.

 

[DayDreamer]

Sure, until you need something from that Deep Time. Tracking down some treasure, looking for a cure to a curse, trying to figure out the weakness of the big bad monster threatening your kingdom? Bam, hit up the nearest Lunar elder.

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This is a singularly bad pitch for Lunars because it undermines a ton of other plot paths. Want ancient secrets [about X]? Dig up an ancient tomb to find their records. Gods have been around, maintaining the Celestial Bureaucracy, since that time and in some cases earlier—figure out who knows what and get them to talk. Same with demons.

The only way "been around a while" is valuable is if it's unique—Exalted-tier PCs have any number of ways of getting access to the distant past.

 

[mothematics]

hey nerds i'm doing a quest go read it bleeding hearts: an exalted story - Mature

 

[Skelethin]

Setting that aside, I'd ask this: what's the setting conceit of the Lunars? What is the one thing you know, going in to any game, any splat, that Lunars are going to be doing? That you can essentially drop into any game, any format, just as easily as a Wyld Hunt?

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I want to say its fucking over the Realm/Empire, or some sort of ancient hermit that has been lost to the ages only for someone to try to find the cave he is hiding in only to discover the person he is looking for is the entire mountain he is standing on.

But the part that stands out to me the most is the aspect of the Lunars that seems to be forgotten due to all the Realm/anti-Realm politics - Lunars are Creation's first and greatest defense against the Wyld and Fair Folk/Rakasha invasions. They hold the border well enough that it took a concentrated effort strong enough to basically overrun all of creation once it broke their lines, if the Scarlet Empress hadn't activated the defense grid.

So the stranger who showed up and held the unstoppable enemy long enough for the village to be evacuated, daring messenger who brings news just before a Fair Folk raiding party would hit. They may or may not be enough to perfectly save the village, or stop the raid, but they should up enough to make sure that enough people survive what shouldn't have been survivable.

Or perhaps they are the ones you seek out when you know its going to be too much - the Realm is coming in force, the Rakasha are raiding, whoever is coming and you are turning to anyone you can think of for help. They will offer it, but on the condition that they aren't going to do everything. The village won't be saved from attack, the people will have to defend themselves. But the Lunars act as enough of a boost that something that seems like it should be impossible becomes just within reach, as long as those who are being protected reach out and take it themselves.

But woe to anyone who asks for their aid, and doesn't step up, as the Lunars can vanish even faster than they appear.

 

[Shyft]

While probably equally unhelpful, I'd say "causing disruption" would be my two cents, in a "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist" sort of way. Something I felt while reading the Lunar fluff was that the Lunars' actions to weaken the Realm was not without collateral. A group of Lunar-lead guerrillas disrupting Realm logistics can just as easily be a group of bandits responsible for stealing the food shipment that your village is going hungry without. Thus, Lunar activities can be plot hooks for PCs looking for allies to help overthrow the corrupt regime, or PCs looking for enemies to bring peace to their region.

Its not specific, which if I understand correctly is part of the problem, but its certainly something you could plop in anywhere.

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Specificity is in my opinion critical to the success of a product like Exalted. Not regimented, textbook certainty of course. Vaugeness is the enemy. I think we all can agree that the published works should inspire.

To be specific, let's examine the setting conceit of the Wyld Hunt- it is a core statement of the game, of the Experience of Playing Exalted, that the Realm and to a minor extent Lookshy, sends out teams of Dragonblooded, be they monks or not, to go hunt Anathema. This includes but is not limited to Lunars, Solars, Raksha and more. This is a thing that happens.

Compare this to the statement of 'The Lunars push the borders of the Realm Back'. Yes, those things have consequences that can be used to inform a game- like your examples of terrorist/freedom fighter example, but it's not specific. I don't have a Name or Coherent Idea of this phenomenon. I don't have a sense of it being an institution or practice. Just a vague statement. I caveat this with 'we don't have enough published new material' and 'Old material was bad at this'.

If I'm playing a Joe Solar or Sam Sidereal game, I want to know the 'Wyld-Hunt Equivilent' for Lunars. That's what they should be doing, not this nebulous 'We're totally partisan iconoclasts at the gates of decadent Realm Civilization, guys!'

(They totally can be that, I just want them to be More than that.)

I want to say its fucking over the Realm/Empire, or some sort of ancient hermit that has been lost to the ages only for someone to try to find the cave he is hiding in only to discover the person he is looking for is the entire mountain he is standing on.

But the part that stands out to me the most is the aspect of the Lunars that seems to be forgotten due to all the Realm/anti-Realm politics - Lunars are Creation's first and greatest defense against the Wyld and Fair Folk/Rakasha invasions. They hold the border well enough that it took a concentrated effort strong enough to basically overrun all of creation once it broke their lines, if the Scarlet Empress hadn't activated the defense grid.

So the stranger who showed up and held the unstoppable enemy long enough for the village to be evacuated, daring messenger who brings news just before a Fair Folk raiding party would hit. They may or may not be enough to perfectly save the village, or stop the raid, but they should up enough to make sure that enough people survive what shouldn't have been survivable.

Or perhaps they are the ones you seek out when you know its going to be too much - the Realm is coming in force, the Rakasha are raiding, whoever is coming and you are turning to anyone you can think of for help. They will offer it, but on the condition that they aren't going to do everything. The village won't be saved from attack, the people will have to defend themselves. But the Lunars act as enough of a boost that something that seems like it should be impossible becomes just within reach, as long as those who are being protected reach out and take it themselves.

But woe to anyone who asks for their aid, and doesn't step up, as the Lunars can vanish even faster than they appear.

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Here's the problem with Lunars and the Wyld: Nobody gives a shit about the Wyld. Both in-setting and out. Everything dynamic and interesting and dramatic about the Wyld is quite litereally off the edge of all printed maps. Unless you go in and redo how Raksha work for the entire setting, nobody is going to care about things that happen off the edges of the world.

We should, care more than we do, but we don't. It's 'Over There', it's Not In My Back Yard.

The rest of your post I can summarize as 'Lunars are the Fable-Hero' the one who teaches lessons'. I get the appeal of that, but it's also a terrible idea for play-ability. It pigeonholes you into a thematic space that precludes things like getting stuck in and making a mess. What you outlined sounds fine for a storyteller character, but not a player.

It also hearkens back to the bad parts of the Thousand Streams River Project, of the utopian idea of a Creation that 'doesn't need the Exalted'. That was a terrible idea as presented back then, because among other things it made it so the 'splat victory condition' was to not do anything.

This is a game, and it has to be playable. Sometimes that means making concessions in context of writing or the setting to promote viable playstyles. Sometimes it means sticking hard to your narrative guns about thematic spaces and viable play.

 

[Romantic_Kaiju]

In the couple games I've been in, there are 3 Regions to Creations, outside the Blessed Isle. These are the Realm Satrapies, located near the Inner Sea (generally), the Near Threshold, and the Far Threshold.

In the Near Threshold, the Realm can operate, but has trouble, and the main defenders are Outcaste Dragon-Bloods, and the Wyld Hunt.

It is the Far Threshold, the borders of creation, where Lunars reign supreme. Many times, in these outer reaches of Creation, as well as in the Near Threshold, that Lunars preform their great acts of heroism, rooting out demon cult, purging shadowlands, slaughting raksha, and in some places, founding nations, attempting create lasting bastions for themselves.

But still, Creation is a vast world, and even with Lunars on the look out for one another, it was difficult for those who exalted in Realm Satrapies and the Near Threshold to survive.

When Someone spoke of Lunar Unity, they spoke of the Rare Lunar Elder, who seeks out those freshly exalted, too train them, to ensure they survive. But Creation is vast, and many Lunars know naught of the so-called Silver Pact, nor of the Elders who survived the First Age, who live far from the Realm.

Many times, a fresh Exalted Lunar, Spoken to by Luna, spreads their name and aspect, and is slain quickly, sometimes, one their elder finds and teaches them, others survive on their own. Many do.

And so the Lunars have survived Creation, in the years since the Contagion, and the Crusade, when the wyld roiled, great swathes of the world vanishing, never to be seen again.

But still, they have preformed great deads, Some, with grievances against, throwing them back from the Threshold, others who strike out against the Wyld, reclaiming it for creation, to those who have hunted demon cults and those who have tried to allow the greatest Lords of the Dead into creation.

Let the Sidereals play their games in the Yu-Shan and the Realm. Let the Dragon-Blooded call us Anathema, and their arrogance turn the world against them.

We are the Lunar Exalted, and since the Balorian Crusade, we have slain thousands of Wyld Things who have attempted a Second Crusade, Hundreds of Dead Cults, who have tried to bring forth the greatest of the dead horrors. The Realm has been thrown back through our efforts. But still, those Elders who have seen the Glorious Heights of the First Age?

Raksi. Ma-Ha-Suchi. and Mad Lilith are all that remain.

And those of the Shogunate, before the Contagion and the Cursade, many, but still few.

And even with the attempts of those who try to reunite the Lunar Exalted, it is said that some of us are still lost, in the deepest parts of the Wyld, or of the Underworld, fighting things that wish to destroy Creation anew.

 

[Phigment]

I don't know how things have changed in 3E; I've mostly dropped out after 1st and 2nd.

However, I've long tended to see the Lunars as the "I do what I want" Exalted.

That is to say, they're the Exalted who are independents.

Dragonblooded have families, who they are beholden to and draw power from. Solars have nations. Sidereals have agencies. Abyssals and Infernals have masters.

Lunars have themselves, and that's what they need. They're the ones who, by historical canon, are all over the place. You have some setting themselves up as rulers, like Leviathan and Raksi and Ma-Ha-Suchi. You have random wanderers, like Anja Silverclaws. You have people with causes, like Strength-Of-Many You have some who just said "screw it" and checked out for a while, like Lillith and Magnificent Jaguar.

And those are all acceptable options, as far as most Lunars are concerned. Lunars are the Conan-esque swords and sorcery bunch, compared to the Solars with their epic destined hero shtick or Dragonbloods with their baroque social drama.

Conan treading the jeweled thrones of the world beneath his sandals is a Lunar, picking up armies and discarding them, gaining treasure and losing it, moving back and forth between being a thief, a mercenary, a pirate, a general, or a steppe raider as the whim strikes him. Thulsa Doom conquering the world with sorcery is also a Lunar.

The Lunar endgame, in character, is to have the power and freedom to do whatever ever that particular Lunar wants. Raksi is a Lunar who has won. She's got her city of sorcery and wonder, her hordes of loyal ape-men, and the power to keep them. As far as most lunars are concerned, that's all the justification she needs, and anyone who doesn't like how she lives her life can stay well outside of her territory, because it's nobody's business but hers. Or, if you really object to her lifestyle, you can go try to take a swing at her, but don't be surprised if you lose and the other lunars shrug and say you had it coming. They don't, as a group, have a lot of unifying principles.

To a large extent, though, I treat the Silver Pact as a glorified non-agression pact. It's not an organization with ranks and goals, it's a mutual agreement by lots of powerful Lunars that they will make a reasonable effort to not kill each other. The Silver Pact means that when two Lunars butt heads in an area, instead of immediately fighting to the death, they'll make a good faith effort to parlay and offer each other the chance to retreat. And if one Pact member defeats another, they'll offer the chance at blood debts and favor trading instead of immediately turning to murder. The Silver Pact is an agreement that Creation is big enough for all of them, and they have worse enemies than each other. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't and somebody gets their heart eaten.

 

[Sucal]

Setting that aside, I'd ask this: what's the setting conceit of the Lunars? What is the one thing you know, going in to any game, any splat, that Lunars are going to be doing? That you can essentially drop into any game, any format, just as easily as a Wyld Hunt?

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Making Beastmen?

*shot*

More seriously, I think if I was making Lunars, I'd have them as Creations 'memory' in a way, preserving creations lore and secrets through an 'oral' tradition. I'd likely make it so its Lunars and Infernals most likely to have the memories of previous incarnations. While an Infernal might be more likely to remember more concrete savant style knowledge, a lunar would be more likely to remember the lands they once roamed, and the secrets they both preserved and protected.

Have them closer to 'threshold guardians in a way, acting as both a test for those that want to disturb the secrets of the past (or in the case of Raksi, steal their secrets) and a somewhat more enigmate force when dealing with other exalts. Is the Lunar following you because they recongnize you from another life? have you gotten too close to something they swore to protect (or stuff they've decided to use for themselves). Are they in the area for a completely unconnected reason, seeking to learn and remember everything they can about a local culutre before the realm comes to conquer them.... or dredge up the memores or customs of the long dead, to best manipulate them to taking up arms and fighting off the invaders.

Have them established as guardians of the past, its memories and that which is left behind. Make the conflict against the realm as much 'stop plundering my stuff' as it is 'stop trying to kill me'. Then show how people are people and how they abuse it

Dunno, rambling chain of thoughts

 

[Imrix]

Setting that aside, I'd ask this: what's the setting conceit of the Lunars? What is the one thing you know, going in to any game, any splat, that Lunars are going to be doing? That you can essentially drop into any game, any format, just as easily as a Wyld Hunt?

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Speaking as an abiding fan of TAW as a project? People. The one unique conceit of Lunars that I've been able to find is that, alone among the Exalted, they are the only splat who have both operated in Creation in an unbroken chain linking back to the First Age, while also having sufficient lifespans to remember that history. As the Dragonblooded have defined where we are, and the Solars have returned to blaze the trail of where we're going, Lunars provide a sense of where we came from, of continuity. There are Lunars who hail from the First Age. There are Lunars dating back to the Shogunate. There are Lunars who took their Second Breath during the founding of the Realm. This doesn't offer a single, unified hook like the the Wyld Hunt - but I find a lot of value in embracing that. The Lunars are not unified. Their value is in offering smaller, fractured hooks in the form of many, many NPC's that you can slot into your game and derive plothooks from.

I am generally skeptical of the idea that Lunars need a single Big Thing to make them work - apart from anything else, I don't actually agree that the Wyld Hunt is that much of a central hook for the Dragonblooded. In my experience the big attraction of playing Dragonbloods has been that being the Realm's development offers dynastic and court intrigue to a degree that few other nations in the setting can match, and that's less of a single discrete hook than it is a landscape, a style. For Lunars, I think it's fine to sketch a similar landscape through simple volume of NPC writeups, each sharing a rough aesthetic/thematic sense of who Lunars are, but filtering it through plentiful examples of what they as individuals are doing.

 

[Chehrazad]

I am generally skeptical of the idea that Lunars need a single Big Thing to make them work - apart from anything else, I don't actually agree that the Wyld Hunt is that much of a central hook for the Dragonblooded. In my experience the big attraction of playing Dragonbloods has been that being the Realm's development offers dynastic and court intrigue to a degree that few other nations in the setting can match, and that's less of a single discrete hook than it is a landscape, a style. For Lunars, I think it's fine to sketch a similar landscape through simple volume of NPC writeups, each sharing a rough aesthetic/thematic sense of who Lunars are, but filtering it through plentiful examples of what they as individuals are doing.

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I'm going to make note that the actual structure of the Wyld Hunt - supposedly an institution in the Realm - has never been sketched out in any book throughout all of the three editions of Exalted. I think that puts a pretty damn fucking powerful dampener on the idea that the Wyld Hunt is a hook for playing Dragon-Blooded, no one cares about the Wyld Hunt or hunting Anathema, they want to game in the Realm and do engaging politics and/or imperialist use of force. The Wyld Hunt isn't a plot hook for Dragon-Blooded, it's a vague and often arbitrary Sword of Damocles that hangs above the Solar and Lunar Exalted.

 

[Imrix]

I'm going to make note that the actual structure of the Wyld Hunt - supposedly an institution in the Realm - has never been sketched out in any book throughout all of the three editions of Exalted. I think that puts a pretty damn fucking powerful dampener on the idea that the Wyld Hunt is a hook for playing Dragon-Blooded, no one cares about the Wyld Hunt or hunting Anathema, they want to game in the Realm and do engaging politics and/or imperialist use of force. The Wyld Hunt isn't a plot hook for Dragon-Blooded, it's a vague and often arbitrary Sword of Damocles that hangs above the Solar and Lunar Exalted.

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Wellll we've had some details on it, like that there's chapter houses spread around, the difference between part-time hunters and hosted shikari, the 3e conception of it as a general crusade used as a rallying cry by DB's for all sorts of things, and so on and so forth. But for the most part, yeah, the Wyld Hunt is most often not a game you play so much as something that happens to your game.

 

[Omicron]

The Wyld Hunt, for example, is an inherent part of the game. Any game of Exalted you play is going to have to acknowledge the idea of it, even if out of game, every player knows that in practice it'll never come up. Amusingly, the Lunars ostensibly are probably the most relevant to the Wyld Hunt anyway- being the primary Anathema opposition.

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Sometimes I wonder if we play the same game

Setting that aside, I'd ask this: what's the setting conceit of the Lunars? What is the one thing you know, going in to any game, any splat, that Lunars are going to be doing? That you can essentially drop into any game, any format, just as easily as a Wyld Hunt?

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Going from Kickstarter material, the answer seems to be "the Pact and the War against the Realm."

Which is to say, Lunars are connected by networks of mentorship, tutelage, and assistance. Unlike Solar Circles, who have never made any sense but are accepted as a conceit because RPGs are played in groups, Lunar Circles are gathered through the influence of their support network and the pressure inflicted by the Realm, while also providing them with objectives. Not in a "mission control" sense - rather it is assumed that every Lunar will be hailing from a place, that place will be feeling the Realm's influence because all places in Creation do, the Lunar will want to do something about it, and the Pact will provide pointers, advice and help to direct that anger in useful way.

The basic Lunar conceit is "You have Exalted in a place subject to Realm oppression. A shady, loose network of old and powerful people who want the Realm undermined but might not care about your people in particular are offering you assistance with strings attached, and pointing you to useful ways in which you might begin fighting for your place. How will you act?"

It's basically the premise of the An-Teng game in which I play Nightshade. Every player is, for one reason or another, connected to An-Teng and interested in freeing it from the Realm's influence. This creates an immediate source of plots, objectives and problems.

 

[DayDreamer]

My solution to the Lunar problem would be to lean into the flaws of their previous depictions: the Lunars are the Exalts of dreams and stifled ambition. They're Exalts who have spent literally centuries working up these grand plans about how they would reshape Creation but haven't been able to in the face of continuous Realm/Sidereal interference.

Lunars, as much as Solars, represent the big movers and shakers as the setting starts, but coming from a radically different direction. A Solar shows up in a city, sees the sin and iniquity, and decides to make a stand, fighting all comers. Lunars have known about what's wrong with the city for generations, and have spent that time building, making armies of beastmen in the deeps and seeding cults to Luna amongst the city guards. Three times her plans were nearly discovered, and three times she was forced to cut ties and rebuild almost from scratch. Now, as the Solars return and as chaos sweeps the Realm and Heaven alike, Lunars at last see opportunity to make their dreams a reality.

The key here is to tie into legacy and the fact that there are a bunch of old Lunar elders around, but focus on all the stuff that they want to do but haven't been able to. The main Lunar stuff would be these transparently over-ambitious projects that have just enough resources behind them that they might just work, if the PCs are able to pull some serious moves off. Write up, say, seven big projects led by an interesting Elder (one for each Direction, one for the Realm, and two misc. ones) and establish that those are the "canonical" expected playstyle of each direction.

 

[Drascin]

It also hearkens back to the bad parts of the Thousand Streams River Project, of the utopian idea of a Creation that 'doesn't need the Exalted'. That was a terrible idea as presented back then, because among other things it made it so the 'splat victory condition' was to not do anything.

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People keep saying this like it's some obvious self-evident truth, and I still don't see it. Plenty of campaigns in a lot of games are such that if the heroes achieve total victory in their objectives, this will mean the heroes become unnecessary and the campaign will end. If Kamen Rider manages to take down all the evil organizations threatening the world, he will have to hang his belt. This does not mean Kamen Rider is unplayable as a character type.

But really, in the end, I guess I largely evaluate hooks by how much I see players go "huh, that sounds interesting, I can make a character that works with that". And I have met plenty of people who were in for the TSR, definitely more than I met that were in for the whole loyalist Abyssal or Infernal hooks (or Abyssals at all, really. I think Secret did more for Abyssals than the entire actual written gameline did, in terms of getting the players in my circle to remember Abyssals were a thing).

As for me, I guess I largely played Lunars because I felt they were a little more down to earth. Where Solars were all about EPIC MOTIVATIONS and conquering the world and becoming king of the pirates, Lunars seemed a bit more focused on the here and now, and on people.

 

[Shyft]

Speaking as an abiding fan of TAW as a project? People.

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Continuity of memory is an interesting- and you raise a good point about people not playing the Wyld Hunt- but it's always present. You can almost always think of how the Hunt fits into a game because it's a persistent element. For Dynasts, it's something to do, or something to turn your nose at and mock for not being the domain of decadent nobles.

Now, if you're going to argue 'small, fractured conceits', which is fine organizationally, then we need to see them. Not your job to write them, obviously, but that's the litmus test I'm putting down here. A player has to be able to go 'What are the Lunars doing in my game, even if they never come up? What's the most relevant Lunar Activity that I could be acknowledging."

I'm going to make note that the actual structure of the Wyld Hunt - supposedly an institution in the Realm - has never been sketched out in any book throughout all of the three editions of Exalted.

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Actually as I recall, 1e Cult of the Illuminated went into a lot of detail on the actual Wyld Hunt's structure. Even so I agree with your point that the Hunt is not as playable for Dragonblooded- though you could argue it'd be an almost... boss rush kind of game? Or harrowing investigation/chase plot.

My point is though, that in general- there are enough setting conceits of the Realm that you can know what they're doing in any given game at any given time. They're doing decadent noble things on the Isle, or more provincially in the threshold. They're politicking and militarizing. They're preparing for the Realm Civil War. They're Wyld-Hunting, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if we play the same game

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The truth is, we really don't, and few people everdo play the 'same' game of Exalted.

3e's initial answer is, yes, the Pact War. I'm not sure if that's a good idea or well executed, but let's examine this:

Like Imrix said, the Lunars have continuity and a more intact communication network, meaning they can organize, even if they are not organized like the Realm or Sidereals. Remember, my original post was noting how due to splat sanctity , a given splat implicitly cannot fill the other splat's roll. No Lunar Empires, because the Realm got there 'first'.

It seems the thrust of your perspective and interpretation (entirely valid), is that the 'Lunar Conceit' is NIMBY- to invert the problem that 'Guardians of the Borders' had as a concept (nobody cares about what's beyond Creation), by saying that Lunars come from places of Oppression, and the most widespread oppressors in Creation are the Realm. Ergo, there's a logical and consistent thread that ties all lunars together: Fuck the Realm.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but it's at least an idea.

My solution to the Lunar problem would be to lean into the flaws of their previous depictions: the Lunars are the Exalts of dreams and stifled ambition.

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That sounds totally fine for a story, but I'd have a hard time playing in a splat who's characterized primarily by chronic inability to Do anything. On the one hand it plays into the fantasy that PCs are Special and they Get Shit Done, but a lot of Lunar's legacy issues come down to the fact that they haven't been able to do anything that anyone can appreciably care about. We all approve of them being the guardians of Creation, insofar as 'we like Creation and playing there, Thanks Lunars!', but in and of itself that's such a distant element that it never comes up. That's why I don't treat it like a conceit at the same level of the Wyld Hunt.

People keep saying this like it's some obvious self-evident truth, and I still don't see it. Plenty of campaigns in a lot of games are such that if the heroes achieve total victory in their objectives, this will mean the heroes become unnecessary and the campaign will end. If Kamen Rider manages to take down all the evil organizations threatening the world, he will have to hang his belt. This does not mean Kamen Rider is unplayable as a character type.

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This is more a discussion of my opinion of the TSR narrative and thematically, so more power to anyone who enjoys it. How to explain...

I've said it before that Exalted is at it's best when it's a Political Game, of the science of politics and application of power. In that regard, creating a 'sustainable' empire that can endure Exalted absence is a laudable goal. It's also a frustratingly self-defeating one in context of a game. It tells the player that the best thing you can do is not be there. I don't want that as the central thesis of Lunars or even Exalted in general.

But, at your table, go however you want.

 

[ichypa]

To add my two cents, I would say that my take on the Wyld Hunt is that it is almost exactly as important and evocative as generalized Lunar guerilla warfare. The only real difference in my view is that "the Dragon-Blooded send out people to kill Anethema" and "the Lunars fight to bring down the Realm" is that the former process has an official name, while the latter does not.

I am generally skeptical of the idea that Lunars need a single Big Thing to make them work - apart from anything else, I don't actually agree that the Wyld Hunt is that much of a central hook for the Dragonblooded. In my experience the big attraction of playing Dragonbloods has been that being the Realm's development offers dynastic and court intrigue to a degree that few other nations in the setting can match, and that's less of a single discrete hook than it is a landscape, a style. For Lunars, I think it's fine to sketch a similar landscape through simple volume of NPC writeups, each sharing a rough aesthetic/thematic sense of who Lunars are, but filtering it through plentiful examples of what they as individuals are doing.

Click to shrink...

While I'm neutral on Big Things, something I do think the Lunars could use is a Big Event, something of their own to shake them up and redefine their relationship/place in Creation. For Solars, you have the Bull of the North getting his conquest on and smashing the Tepet Legions, as even if you're a Solar down in the South that will affect you due to being the first big impression of the return of the Solars in Creation. The Dragon-Blooded have the disappearance of the Empress, of which everything else happening in the Realm is just a consequence of. The Abyssals have the Mask of Winters conquering Thorns, the Sidereals have the impending death of Cheop Kejak. The Lunars, to my knowledge and memory, never really had anything like that. I guess previously they sorta had the death of Ingosh Silverclaws, but I don't recall how distant that was from current events.

Other that maybe that, though, it mostly seemed like the Lunars were just reacting to the Big Events of other groups. Basically, it feels like the Lunars don't have their own, for a lack of a better word, problems, they're just reacting to other people's problems. As a result, they kinda feel perpetually like a supporting cast to the heroes of a different story to me, and never the main characters of their own.

 

[The_Reptile_]

I feel like in 3e that Big Event is the looming, almost inevitable victory of Sha'a Oka in the Caul as every detail I've seen makes it pretty clear unless something major happens, he's going to be the first instance of the Silver Pact engaging in outright open warfare over a major Realm holding and come out completely victorious and they can't do anything to stop him.

 

[Exthalion]

I suppose Lunars could theoretically be the "must be this epic to play" bar for individuals and factions. If you do something other people probably wont like in a big enough way you will probably attract the attention of at least one Lunar.

A Realm invasion that doesn't take into account shapeshifting murder gods will find its supply lines eaten and its army stricken with disease. A Solar who wants to upset the local spiritual hierarchy will find they have an advocate. Sidereals constantly worry about "death by Lunar" when they leave their bolt hole.

 

[Imrix]

Now, if you're going to argue 'small, fractured conceits', which is fine organizationally, then we need to see them. Not your job to write them, obviously, but that's the litmus test I'm putting down here. A player has to be able to go 'What are the Lunars doing in my game, even if they never come up? What's the most relevant Lunar Activity that I could be acknowledging."

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Well, I came in waving the TAW flag for good reason here; it's easy to show this kind of thing, you just publish a shit-ton of Lunar NPC's. Like, if the format of 2e's Manual of Exalted Power's was introduction > special setting thing > chargen > traits > charms > special mechanical thing > storytelling, then for Lunars you just write an entire chapter of brief NPC writeups. What's the average page count across the splatbook Chapter 2's? Dragonblooded got 32, Sidereals got 44, Lunars got 36, Alchemicals got 32, Abyssals got 35... Cool, give Lunars 30-40 pages of NPC writeups, there's your demonstration of Lunar Activity. Literally just one or two paragraphs of framing to establish how Lunars aren't a united bloc but there sure are a lot of heroes and heroic bands across Creation, then writeup after writeup after writeup. Leave the mechanics out to keep them short and sweet, just pack the book full of stories of Lunars doing things, and thereby exhaustively model What Lunars Do.

While I'm neutral on Big Things, something I do think the Lunars could use is a Big Event, something of their own to shake them up and redefine their relationship/place in Creation. For Solars, you have the Bull of the North getting his conquest on and smashing the Tepet Legions, as even if you're a Solar down in the South that will affect you due to being the first big impression of the return of the Solars in Creation. The Dragon-Blooded have the disappearance of the Empress, of which everything else happening in the Realm is just a consequence of. The Abyssals have the Mask of Winters conquering Thorns, the Sidereals have the impending death of Cheop Kejak. The Lunars, to my knowledge and memory, never really had anything like that. I guess previously they sorta had the death of Ingosh Silverclaws, but I don't recall how distant that was from current events.

Other that maybe that, though, it mostly seemed like the Lunars were just reacting to the Big Events of other groups. Basically, it feels like the Lunars don't have their own, for a lack of a better word, problems, they're just reacting to other people's problems. As a result, they kinda feel perpetually like a supporting cast to the heroes of a different story to me, and never the main characters of their own.

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Not to toot the TAW horn again, but it also covered that base with the Moonkillers - that is, an internal split of Lunar politics where the Silver Pact broke in the face of younger, disenfranchised Lunars who didn't want to be conscripts for an ancient war at the expense of their present-day passions and causes.

 

[Shyft]

So the Lunar discussion is cool so far, but I think we're talking past each other.

The central point I'm trying to get at is What the Lunars do, with 'how' being a secondary concern. We know the 'What' of everybody else, but not the Lunars. This is an important distinction, because if we get hung up on the hows and the structure (which are important, no lie), we lose out on trying to pin down proper theming and wider over-arching elements.

Again, this comes back to my central point of 'What is the Lunar Setting Conceit'. What is Something they Do that can happen in Any Game, that is Assumed as a Default Element of Creation. Solars have to acknowledge the Wyld Hunt, the Realm has to acknowledge the Civil War/Empress Disappearing. The Sidereals have to acknowledge the Returning Solars, etc. Obviously conceits can be shared among splats, Lunars and Sids both should care about Returning Solars, after all.

'Memory' or 'Legacy' or 'Splinter-Ideolgy' are all better articulated as charm trees or narrow institutions and practices, not cohesive theming and writing towards a coherent splat identity. It's not that they're bad ideas, it's that I don't think they're ground enough for Lunar Setting Conceits.

Like, let's harken back to Alchemicals for a second, and where 2e fucked it up horribly.

It is a setting conceit, that Solars can Cure the Uncurable. That's a given- there is nothing in the game they cannot cure, as an axiomatic statement of intent. Oh sure, a given problem might involve a quest to cure it, even Flawless Diagnosis says such, but once a Solar knows what it is, they can fix it.

Logically, this means Solars can cure Gremlin Syndrome. And I should stress this- they have specific magic that can do so. On the face of it, I have no issue with this as a setting conceit. The problem was in execution, in that the presentation of the problem in the alchemicals book made it implicit and near explicit that the only solution was to beg a solar-tier Exalt for help. This is bad.

A potential solution btw, is not to give Alchemicals a Charm that can cure the uncurable- that misses the point- but instead to recontextualize Gremlin Syndrome and similar maladies so that Alchemcial players can tackle it in interesting and fun ways.

So with regard to Lunars, their splat presentation needs to come across as 'What do Lunars DO', both in rough and fine grain senses. HOW can happen later.

 

[Imrix]

'Memory' or 'Legacy' or 'Splinter-Ideolgy' are all better articulated as charm trees or narrow institutions and practices, not cohesive theming and writing towards a coherent splat identity. It's not that they're bad ideas, it's that I don't think they're ground enough for Lunar Setting Conceits.

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Okay. I flatly disagree. You're crawling down the rabbit hole of Lunars needing a Big Unique Thing and I just... I don't care about that. I'm perfectly happy for What Lunars Do to have a fairly generic answer like "have adventures", so long as the answer is informed by the aesthetics of Lunar magic.

"What do Lunars do? Iunno, they go out and have the sort of adventures most PC's will have. Here's 30-40 pages of NPC's having adventures involving Lunar magic" is perfectly sufficient to me, and frankly I find it kind of irritating that you're trying to corral the discussion like this. You're not in charge here, Shyft, you don't get to drag people back on topic when you decide we've drifted off your tracks.

 

[ichypa]

...So I was with you, @Shyft , up until you got to the Alchemicals, and then you sort of lost me in regards to what any of that has to do with Lunars.

Are you trying to say that Cure Gremlin Syndrome is an example of What Alchemicals DO, or at least should have been?

 

[Shyft]

...So I was with you, @Shyft , up until you got to the Alchemicals, and then you sort of lost me in regards to what any of that has to do with Lunars.

Are you trying to say that Cure Gremlin Syndrome is an example of What Alchemicals DO, or at least should have been?

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No, I'm trying to use it as an example of a setting conceit (Solars can cure anything) being used poorly in context of another splat. Like, we don't deny that Solars are supposed to be able to do that, but it's frustrating to play an Alchemical with that specter looming over them saying 'we must acknowledge this'. That's Bad. So whatever conceit Lunars do end up with, should try to avoid that.

Okay. I flatly disagree. You're crawling down the rabbit hole of Lunars needing a Big Unique Thing and I just... I don't care about that. I'm perfectly happy for What Lunars Do to have a fairly generic answer like "have adventures", so long as the answer is informed by the aesthetics of Lunar magic.

"What do Lunars do? Iunno, they go out and have the sort of adventures most PC's will have. Here's 30-40 pages of NPC's having adventures involving Lunar magic" is perfectly sufficient to me, and frankly I find it kind of irritating that you're trying to corral the discussion like this. You're not in charge here, Shyft, you don't get to drag people back on topic when you decide we've drifted off your tracks.

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Okay, fair point- I don't think lunar need a big singular thing either, but I stand by my point that they need a what, that everybody can grab and go 'This is what Lunars Are Doing/Have Been Doing' that isn't vague. And the options presented so far make me think I've failed to convey my premise.

 

[Flare]

Are you trying to say that Cure Gremlin Syndrome is an example of What Alchemicals DO, or at least should have been?

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For what I remember the Alchemical's "Thing" was to mantain Autochtonia functioning, so in this context they should be able to at least treat the Gremlin Syndrome, if not end it entirely.

Though I don't get why it's a problem that Lunars can individually decide what to do in Creation, since they don't have a power structure like Alchemicals or Sidereals to give them backing and obligations.

 

[Imrix]

Okay, fair point- I don't think lunar need a big singular thing either, but I stand by my point that they need a what, that everybody can grab and go 'This is what Lunars Are Doing/Have Been Doing' that isn't vague. And the options presented so far make me think I've failed to convey my premise.

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Whereas I think you've conveyed your premise quite satisfactorily - I simply think your premise is flawed. You're assuming that Lunars need a clear, unified sense of What Do, and I'm saying no, they don't. It's fine for Lunars to be vague about What Do, that "what do Lunars, uniquely, do?" is maybe not even necessarily a useful question to ask if we can throw out bunches of examples of what these Lunars have been doing and those Lunars have been doing and that Lunar over there has been up to.

Ultimately, asking "what do Lunars do?" is a means, not an end. The ends are, "inspire players to make [Splat] characters" and "give ST's a sense of how to use [Splat] in their game." The Wyld Hunt and dynastic politics do this by giving players setting elements to riff off of, "oh, I'll make a courtier jockeying for position, or maybe a Wyld Hunter crusading out to fight Anathema," and by giving ST's a sense that DB's are caught up in their halls of power, but still rove out into the Threshold to hunt Anathema. That's why those are useful setting elements. You can achieve the same effect for Lunars with a bunch of NPC's, because that provides players with a shedload of examples to inspire their own characters - hey, @TenfoldShields, how hard would you model a Lunar character in Koworai Suhal, if given the chance? - and it gives ST's a toolbox brimming with NPC's to bring into their game.