Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I recall a line about it being well known that the empress favored "a woman's touch" but she also took many male lovers to found houses.
General Exalted Thread
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
The Realm was against gay marriage in 2e, in the sense that it assumed you would be reproducing in the 'normal' way without any magic to allow for same sex couples to have children, and you were getting married in order to have children (and as political alliances and stuff, but children is the most important bit). It was sort of equal opportunity in not giving a shit if you were personally in favor of your marriage on any level, and indeed affairs are noted to be common and even encouraged as long as you have children with the person you were told to and no one else.
This can be seen as anti-LGBT in the sense that you're *forcing* them to go against their sexual preference, but I am personally fine with that being one of the evils of the Realm, and its not like a player couldn't easily get access to a Neomah or something to have children with their arranged spouse without ever having sex with them if they wanted.
Do I have a problem with same-sex marriages being a thing in the Realm now? No, if Exalted wants to do that its fine, its not like it isn't super easy to justify with all sorts of magic in the setting even from the perspective of the Realm wanting all marriages to produce children, and if it makes the game's audience happy its probably a good idea. Exalted has always had much higher gay representation than most other RPGs I've seen.
This can be seen as anti-LGBT in the sense that you're *forcing* them to go against their sexual preference, but I am personally fine with that being one of the evils of the Realm, and its not like a player couldn't easily get access to a Neomah or something to have children with their arranged spouse without ever having sex with them if they wanted.
Do I have a problem with same-sex marriages being a thing in the Realm now? No, if Exalted wants to do that its fine, its not like it isn't super easy to justify with all sorts of magic in the setting even from the perspective of the Realm wanting all marriages to produce children, and if it makes the game's audience happy its probably a good idea. Exalted has always had much higher gay representation than most other RPGs I've seen.
Aren't the Realm against employing Demons in this manner, at least when an official Heir would be the intended result?
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
The Realm is generally officially against demons, yes.
That's why you keep quiet about it
- Pronouns
- she/her
Even that's misleading because Immaculate Monks have been there since the start.
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Realm is generally officially against demons, yes.
That's why you keep quiet about it
In fact, I'm pretty sure that What Fire Has Wrought spells out somewhere that the main objection to a gay marriage is that of children, and if you can find a way to have children regardless, complaints tend to vanish.
EDIT: Here we are!
Article: Same-sex couples face stigma over matters of reproduction, but little else. If a same-sex marriage does produce a child — whether through adopting a patrician outcaste (p. XX) or an undesirable or orphaned child of a Dynastic relative, employing a surrogate parent, or turning to sorcery — then their duty to house and Realm is fulfilled, and they become as socially acceptable as any other couple, the circumstance of their genders no more than a trifling quirk.
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I haven't encountered anything about immaculates being anti-gay, though i admittedly have not read every splatbook.
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
...No, the vow of celibacy thing.
*Edit: The misleading part of 'It's frowned upon for Dragonblooded to not reproduce and otherwise you can be as gay as you want' is not that Immaculate Monks are anti-gay, its that they're monks and thus don't reproduce.
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In regards to Shyft's post, I'm still mulling over a fully thought out response, but for now I will say that I think that, at the very least, on the issue of players feeling left out if the party isn't engaged in a scene that their character is specc'd for, more robust and well-supported rules and systems for teamwork/cooperation and such would go a long way towards addressing that problem. Even if their character isn't at the heart of the action, they can still participate.
There's also always the option of going the Ledaal Kas route and marrying your equally gay best friend of the opposite gender.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Officially, anyway.
I've read medieval literature, I know how much that actually works out in practice.
The Realm contains a list of some sorcerous societies in the Realm, and one of them is the "Cabal of Righteous Midwives", who specialise on exactly that. Their entry does mention that summoning Neomah for that is a disreputable practise, but the Midwives "consult Immaculate monks for scriptural guidance". So it is the kind of thing that's somewhat looked down upon, but there's still institutions in place for it.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Over all The Realm was pretttty great. Really loved some changes, kind of hated others. Espically where slaves have less rights now than in other editions. Prettty sure I'm remembering that wrong.
Also pardon me for deleting that post. Kind of realized some of the other players browsed here and I don't wanna blow off some spoilers by accident.
Also pardon me for deleting that post. Kind of realized some of the other players browsed here and I don't wanna blow off some spoilers by accident.
- Location
- Ottawa
Now I'm curious. Can you link us?
And I wouldn't blame 2e for that, 3e is totally capable of attracting its own problem people.
I mean in this case it's literally people fixating on a change that 3E made compared to 2E, so it's not exactly a major deduction.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
It's the usual crowd on 4chan and other places that have fucking meltdowns over lgbt stuff. Feels funny to live rent free in their heads like that.
But It be best to just uhh, not really dive into the giant pile of shit to see what it smells like.
- Location
- United States
Remember how A Certain Kind of exalted fan would latch onto DBs as 'the breeder exalts' and endlessly bring up how to optimize breeding camps and strategies and manses so that they could create an army of perfectly loyal brainwashed super soldiers that followed their idealized PC with no regard to the actual Setting because they think that the setting encourages that with how the realm is set up? I expect that any setting bits that de-emphasize that part of realm culture would set them off.
- Pronouns
- she/her
It's more that monkhood provides a Dragon-Blooded with an escape from those pressures. They don't even have to take it, just looking towards that door is going to give them bargaining power.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
That's also my understanding - if you want to be gay, that's fine, as long as you still fulfill your marital duties and provide your House with newborn Dynasts to continue the family into the next generation.
Of course, if you're not a Dynast, then you can potentially finagle your way out of that by ensuring that an heir is procured from some other source, but where the Dragon's Blood is concerned... well, there's a reason why I get uncomfortable about the 'genetic superiority' element of the Terrestrial Exalt.
Still, the idea of them being more LGBT+ friendly is actually the more interesting possibility, since then the insistence on Terrestrial Exalts fulfilling their genetic duty becomes either an infamous bit of Dynastic dirty laundry that nobody involved is comfortable with, or there's something interesting going on with the specifics of their LGBT+ acceptance that makes insisting on Dragonblooded reproduction despite issues of orientation somehow gel with the rest of their ideology.
The main issue is that I remember Earthscorpion once ran the numbers, and using neomah is a pretty bad decision once you get to an institutional scale of operation. Quoting from memory here, but I think it was something like a one-in-five to one-in-four chance that any given child produced with a neomah's help develops significant issues - which can range from sprouting red hair all over the body to legs never developing bones and thus becoming useless tubes of meat to epilepsy to schizophrenia to psychopathy.
That's a hell of a gamble.
I'd assume that the Realm's methods are fairly diverse, with neomah as the high-risk, high-reward option. No impact on their Breeding, chances to Exalt, or any other possible issues... unless the dice come up snake eyes.
Meanwhile, the methods that are safer tend to have some sort of guaranteed downside - children that don't Exalt are sickly, the chance of them Exalting drops slightly, the ritual's maker angered a Celestial god and they hold a grudge against anyone created using it, that sort of thing - or require going to greater expense than just having someone beckon a neomah from Malfeas.
I'm actually a little disappointed that the Realm is cool with gay marriage.
Like, in real life I'm all for it, but it always bugs me when a fantasy universe has values that match a little too close to real life, gimme some socially backwards norms that my character can fight against, dangit!
Like, in real life I'm all for it, but it always bugs me when a fantasy universe has values that match a little too close to real life, gimme some socially backwards norms that my character can fight against, dangit!
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Mnemon and Ragara were both sorcerously conceived, establishing the "Precedent of Rawar" (after the Empress's transgender consort-husband) that enables dynasts to use Neomah in this fashion. The Iconic Water Aspect in this edition is a former monk who had a son with her wife by using a Neomah that her Hearth-mate summoned.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Well they got slavery around. So you can feel reaaaaalll good about burning Cynis to the ground.
Eeehhhh... I feel like slavery has been played out, like to the point that its almost genetic.
Give me oppression of minorities and women, discrimination of people based on their orientation or gender identity, or something. Especially in a game like Exalted where "societal reformation" is totally a thing you can expect your character to be capable of.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Honestly I've dealt with that in so many fucking games already. I just enjoy playing a game where I just don't have to deal with that shit.
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ledaal and Sesus too! Classicist pricks! /only partially sarcastic
Thats fair. In other games I kinda ignore it in other games because its apart of the background setting and not something you're expected to be able to have an impact on.