General Exalted Thread

[strange_person]

It's not, which is why mote recovery shouldn't be tied to stunting. If you tie mote recovery to stunting, this creates an incentive for the player to do "pointless" stunts, like narrating how they loot the bodies of the dead bandits they just mowed down in excruciating detail because they want to regain motes. Or narrate how relaxing it is to wander through the forest admiring the scenery and interacting with the flora because they want to regain motes. Or narrate exactly what they're doing to hunt small game, prepare it and use it to cook dinner because they want to regain motes, then narrate eating dinner because they want to regain motes. Then narrate playing their bamboo flute while enjoying the sunset because they want to regain motes. Etc, etc, you all get where this is going. All of this is a waste of time. Every half hour spent narrating things you can probably just skip right over and would happily agree to skip if you didn't need to generate motes is wasted valuable gaming time you'll never get back.

It's one of those things where it's rules-legal and the only actual thing preventing it from happening is nebulous GM fiat, the "you're obviously doing this to get motes, please don't" approach. Any case where the incentive set up by the system leads the player to try to game the system, the GM has to spend effort to shut it down and the result of the two parties' force of personality contest meaningfully affects gameplay is bad. There shouldn't be a system-driven set of conflicting desires where "I want to stunt every single pointless thing to get back motes" runs into "I don't want the player to stunt every single pointless thing, I want to get to the next interesting scene omg wtf". The incentives for the player and the GM should harmoniously align to encourage correct gameplay.

You can tell which side of this I've been on in actual play, yes? I assure you, it's as annoying as it sounds.

The entire reason the mote reactor hack mentioned above exists is to (in conjunction with the style specialty hack) recalibrate the stunting incentives, remove the perverse ones and give the player an easy framework to use when it actually matters. You get motes regardless of how you stunt, so stunt only when you the player think it adds to the scene to do it. You gain style bonuses when you stunt using one of your style specialties, so you're encouraged to stunt whenever your styles would apply, which is definitionally in cases where it's your dice roll and you care about bonuses like combat or high-stakes negotiations. There is no incentive to stunt outside of these circumstances besides "I like the sound of my own voice", which is out of scope of the ruleset to solve.

tl;dr: The stunt rules are bad. It's Exalted, what did you expect? You should probably fix this if you're going to run Exalted for some reason and your players are the slightest bit optimization savvy.




Cheese-stunt for resources whenever you can (I highly recommend Unhesitating Dedication or whatever it's called, Solar Integrity, for auto-upgrading your stunt category for purposes of resource recovery, kek), and only activate the charm (Vanishing from Mind's Eye or the Night Caste anonymity anima power is acceptable too) whenever you're "on camera". If you're not "on camera" and participating in a scene you don't need to activate it, you can just assume your character is using their normal stealth/disguise skills which do not cost resources since nothing interesting is happening to them and they are not interacting with anyone or anything meaningful. Revel in your anonymity. Ideally, pick a different identity every scene because you have no reason not to, unless doing so would lead to greater advantage. Bonus points for [BAZINGA].



This is actually hilarious and fun to play. Your GM will try to kill you IRL if you do. Don't actually do this unless it's a troll game and everyone around you is in on the joke.

Click to shrink...

Our fundamental disagreement seems to be that, once some error or potential for abuse has been observed, my impulse is to find a way to modify the relevant subsystem so it functions as originally intended, while yours is to burn it all down and salt the earth.

 

[grommile]

The problem: mote recovery through stunting, RAW, creates perverse incentives that are a barrier to fun.

Solution 1: Create a new mote recovery system that doesn't incentivize stunting every not-completely-trivial action you take.

Solution 2: Force the Storyteller to decide which stunts on not-completely-trivial actions are worthy of mote recovery.

I find Solution 1 more attractive. You do a bit of numerical tuning, once, and then you have a basically working system that is easy to understand and administer, and contains fewer perverse incentives.

 

[Jon Chung]

Our fundamental disagreement seems to be that, once some error or potential for abuse has been observed, my impulse is to find a way to modify the relevant subsystem so it functions as originally intended, while yours is to burn it all down and salt the earth.

Click to shrink...

Hmm, there's probably two major points here:
1) You appear to believe leaning on the GM to adjudicate on the fly to solve a problem created by the system is acceptable, I don't. I want the system to stop making problems for me in the first place, since the only reason I put up with it is that it ostensibly saves me effort and generates fun. Like I said above, the incentives for everyone involved should harmoniously align to encourage correct gameplay.
2) You appear to assign value to the writers' original intent, such that you'll accept extra overhead to preserve things because they showed up in the book. I only assign value to things that work. Things that don't work (create perverse incentives, cause undesirable outcomes, etc etc) have no value and should be freely discarded and replaced by something that works. If the reason that it doesn't work is a fundamental core assumption of the thing, too bad for it.

That being said, there's no reason to do more work than you have to in order to get something that works, we should spend the least possible effort to gain the most possible benefit. You can, for example, largely fix the Social Combat NMI problem by removing the ability for social combat hits to compel actions, you don't have to replace the whole thing. For something like "mote regeneration increases the more you stunt" though, the only way to get something that works is to cut the connection between mote regeneration and stunting. Luckily for us, the replacement is simple: the reactor and style concept takes up less than one page to explain and solves multiple problems simultaneously.

Now, if the problem is both fundamental and impossible to fix easily (the lethality trend that drives paranoia combat, for example), you either have to just live with the extra overhead or run something else.

 

[strange_person]

The problem: mote recovery through stunting, RAW, creates perverse incentives that are a barrier to fun.

Solution 1: Create a new mote recovery system that doesn't incentivize stunting every not-completely-trivial action you take.

Solution 2: Force the Storyteller to decide which stunts on not-completely-trivial actions are worthy of mote recovery.

I find Solution 1 more attractive. You do a bit of numerical tuning, once, and then you have a basically working system that is easy to understand and administer, and contains fewer perverse incentives.

Click to shrink...

I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy. Given that the existing system isn't working for your group, yes, the extreme options are throwing it out and inventing a new system from scratch, or handling everything as case-by-case fiat. You're neglecting the differences between "replace" and "repair," though, not to mention the value of a broader structure to guide such judgement calls when they do become necessary - and sooner or later they will, if you're doing anything interesting enough to be worth the trouble of running it in a tabletop system at all rather than computerizing everything.

i don't actually find the idea of lovingly detailed descriptions of noncombat activity inherently wasteful and repugnant. In the 2.5 rules there's a system under which you only get one stunt award per action - that is, when your DV refreshes in combat, as opposed to separate awards for every individual attack or defense. How about extending some structure like that to slower-paced activities? Then instead of leaning entirely on nebulous criteria of novelty and OOC time-wasting to curb abuse, the GM can simply say "already got your stunt award for cooking/playing the flute/whatever, and we're tracking time in hours for overland travel right now, can't have another one until midafternoon. By then your mote pool will be full anyway thanks to natural respiration and hearthstones." If bureaucratic maneuvers take place on a timescale where each tick is a day, standard stunt awards will fade to insignificance - anyone with a bed to sleep in and compatible ambient essence can count on recharging completely as often as it's likely to matter, while one willpower per week is a drop in the bucket compared to restful sleep, Motivation progress. or any non-negligible level of worship.

If someone desperate for faster recharges starts pointless fights, well, either they're up against a worthy opponent, in which case chance of losing means the problem will eventually solve itself... or you can skip right past the detailed resolution and just count it as training time toward, say, a Melee specialty in "murdering peasants." If I recall correctly. feudal Japan had enough of a problem with that sort of thing to establish a word for it.

That being said, there's no reason to do more work than you have to in order to get something that works. You can, for example, largely fix the Social Combat NMI problem by removing the ability for social combat hits to compel actions, you don't have to replace the whole thing.

Click to shrink...

I can see incomplete/imperfect functionality in a lot of systems, which I thus consider worth trying to salvage. Repair or Replace How about just removing the ability of natural mental influence to compel behavior beyond the current scene? To my understanding that's already how it's meant to work, just not explained well. Smooth enough pitch might persuade someone with weak MDVs to agree to almost anything... until they get a few moments alone to think it over, or an exciting distraction. Enforcing such commitments beyond the point where they become inconvenient would then require longer-duration UMI and/or engagement with other systems: virtue compulsion, contract law, social engineering on larger groups, etc.

 

[Jon Chung]

I can see incomplete/imperfect functionality in a lot of systems, which I thus consider worth trying to salvage. Repair or Replace How about just removing the ability of natural mental influence to compel behavior beyond the current scene? To my understanding that's already how it's meant to work, just not explained well. Smooth enough pitch might persuade someone with weak MDVs to agree to almost anything... until they get a few moments alone to think it over, or an exciting distraction. Enforcing such commitments beyond the point where they become inconvenient would then require longer-duration UMI and/or engagement with other systems: virtue compulsion, contract law, social engineering on larger groups, etc.

Click to shrink...

No, this leaves open the possibility of exploitation still. You're taking half-measures that don't actually solve the problem, ending up with an inferior end result because you appear to have a reluctance to toss out things that aren't working. I can easily think of five things I can force someone to spend Willpower to avoid doing in one scene.

This isn't a case of Chesterton's Fence, you know? We don't have a solid track record of things working fine, so we should be reluctant to change things in fear of causing damage. Instead we have a solid track record of things not working, which should make us quite happy to rip things out and replace them with parts that don't suck.

 

[strange_person]

No, this leaves open the possibility of exploitation still. You're taking half-measures that don't actually solve the problem, ending up with an inferior end result because you appear to have a reluctance to toss out things that aren't working. I can easily think of five things I can force someone to spend Willpower to avoid doing in one scene.

This isn't a case of Chesterton's Fence, you know? We don't have a solid track record of things working fine, so we should be reluctant to change things in fear of causing damage. Instead we have a solid track record of things not working, which should make us quite happy to rip things out and replace them with parts that don't suck.

Click to shrink...

If this game is going to include a social combat system at all, it needs to be possible for someone to use that system to get results that meaningfully carry over into other fields. Psychologically undermining an enemy in order to put them at some tactical disadvantage during a subsequent assassination attempt isn't an exploit, it's core functionality - a social system for Exalted that can't even approximately model stories such as Samson and Delilah or the downfall of Cú Chulainn would be like a physical combat system that fails to include stab wounds among the possible outcomes of a knife fight.

How exactly are you defining "the problem," in this case?

 

[Jon Chung]

If this game is going to include a social combat system at all, it needs to be possible for someone to use that system to get results that meaningfully carry over into other fields. Psychologically undermining an enemy in order to put them at some tactical disadvantage during a subsequent assassination attempt isn't an exploit, it's core functionality - a social system for Exalted that can't even approximately model stories such as Samson and Delilah or the downfall of Cú Chulainn would be like a physical combat system that fails to include stab wounds among the possible outcomes of a knife fight.

How exactly are you defining "the problem," in this case?

Click to shrink...

Let's flip that around. Do you think it's good for the game that I can tell a king to strip naked, eat his own shit and strangle his wife to death in his own throne room with 1 success normal social combat hits? Because I can, by RAW, once I burn out all his WP by commanding him to rip out his own eyes and swallow them, behead his loyal councilors and spend all his money buying elephants, all of which he will, naturally, resist doing because doing so would be completely unacceptable. Should the rules allow this to happen? Does that make sense? Is this a reasonable expected outcome?

I'm going to assume that as a reasonable person, you'll say "of course not, that shouldn't be happening, the system is clearly bugged if it allows you to do that". What allows me to do this? The ability to compel actions unbound by any restrictions except I can't order a suicide or going against the person's Motivation, with no limits except I can't give the same unreasonable command more than twice in a row if the target still has WP to spend desperately blocking. Is this actually needed for anything? What bad stuff happens if I delete it? Why... nothing! Nothing breaks, because this isn't something you expect a normal conversation to be capable of in the first place. Well then, what should we do?

D E L E T E

Now I can't compel actions anymore. Okay, what's left that we can do with social combat 1 success hits after we've deleted this outrageous thing? Nudge Intimacies up or down. Find stuff out. If I want to make people do anything with this, the best I can do is to crank up an Intimacy until they get around to doing it themselves, which is more or less how normal persuasion works in real life. Looks pretty good now, right? Does Solar Bob have an overpoweringly strong incentive to behead anyone who can beat his MDV after the first Presence roll now? No. Do NPCs have an overpoweringly strong incentive to try to kill Solar Bob the moment he starts hitting them through their MDV? Nope, not anymore. Can I put Solar Bob in a losing social combat without Solar Bob calling Join Battle? Yes.

 

[MiracleGrow]

This whole conversation basically boils down to. 'For games to work the ST needs to know when to say 'No'. And how much this 'no' is dropped depends on the group'.

Like purely following mechanics in table top rolling games always leads to pain. That's just the nature of tabletop roleplaying games. That's why you like, don't purely follow mechanics.

 

[Jon Chung]

This whole conversation basically boils down to. 'For games to work the ST needs to know when to say 'No'. And how much this 'no' is dropped depends on the group'.

Like purely following mechanics in table top rolling games always leads to pain. That's just the nature of tabletop roleplaying games. That's why you like, don't purely follow mechanics.

Click to shrink...

............................................________........................
....................................,.-'"...................``~.,..................
.............................,.-"..................................."-.,............
.........................,/...............................................":,........
.....................,?......................................................\,.....
.................../...........................................................,}....
................./......................................................,:`^`..}....
.............../...................................................,:"........./.....
..............?.....__.........................................:`.........../.....
............./__.(....."~-,_..............................,:`........../........
.........../(_...."~,_........"~,_....................,:`........_/...........
..........{.._$;_......"=,_......."-,_.......,.-~-,},.~";/....}...........
...........((.....*~_......."=-._......";,,./`..../"............../............
...,,,___.\`~,......"~.,....................`.....}............../.............
............(....`=-,,.......`........................(......;_,,-"...............
............/.`~,......`-...............................\....../\...................
.............\`~.*-,.....................................|,./.....\,__...........
,,_..........}.>-._\...................................|..............`=~-,....
.....`=~-,_\_......`\,.................................\........................
...................`=~-,,.\,...............................\.......................
................................`:,,...........................`\..............__..
.....................................`=-,...................,%`>--==``.......
........................................_\..........._,-%.......`\...............
...................................,<`.._|_,-&``................`\..............

 

[MiracleGrow]

............................................________........................
....................................,.-'"...................``~.,..................
.............................,.-"..................................."-.,............
.........................,/...............................................":,........
.....................,?......................................................\,.....
.................../...........................................................,}....
................./......................................................,:`^`..}....
.............../...................................................,:"........./.....
..............?.....__.........................................:`.........../.....
............./__.(....."~-,_..............................,:`........../........
.........../(_...."~,_........"~,_....................,:`........_/...........
..........{.._$;_......"=,_......."-,_.......,.-~-,},.~";/....}...........
...........((.....*~_......."=-._......";,,./`..../"............../............
...,,,___.\`~,......"~.,....................`.....}............../.............
............(....`=-,,.......`........................(......;_,,-"...............
............/.`~,......`-...............................\....../\...................
.............\`~.*-,.....................................|,./.....\,__...........
,,_..........}.>-._\...................................|..............`=~-,....
.....`=~-,_\_......`\,.................................\........................
...................`=~-,,.\,...............................\.......................
................................`:,,...........................`\..............__..
.....................................`=-,...................,%`>--==``.......
........................................_\..........._,-%.......`\...............
...................................,<`.._|_,-&``................`\..............

Click to shrink...

Hey if I'm completely misunderstanding the current flow of the conversation ya can just tell me.

Edit: Ah double read your posts and now I'm getting it. Thanks for your thoughtful reply :>

 

[UrsaTempest]

This whole conversation basically boils down to. 'For games to work the ST needs to know when to say 'No'. And how much this 'no' is dropped depends on the group'.

Like purely following mechanics in table top rolling games always leads to pain. That's just the nature of tabletop roleplaying games. That's why you like, don't purely follow mechanics.

Click to shrink...

Normally I'll agree with you, but...

A couple years ago, my IRL friends expressed interest of playing DnD 5e. Being the only one that has any TRPG experience (even if it's different system), I got the dubious honor of being the DM.

So I got the DM book, the player book, and start quizzing the community what kind of trap I should be aware, what's with my experience with Exalted and WoD. And you know what?

They just shrugged, and told me it's playable out of box. No real need for homebrew.

I was amazed.

 

[MiracleGrow]

Normally I'll agree with you, but...

A couple years ago, my IRL friends expressed interest of playing DnD 5e. Being the only one that has any TRPG experience (even if it's different system), I got the dubious honor of being the DM.

So I got the DM book, the player book, and start quizzing the community what kind of trap I should be aware, what's with my experience with Exalted and WoD. And you know what?

They just shrugged, and told me it's playable out of box. No real need for homebrew.

I was amazed.

Click to shrink...

I think this depends on the group/players in question. Like my group when we played DnD 5e introduced a ton of new stuff and changed things here and there.

Even then stuff tends to come up out of nowhere and it's usually me going 'eh why not' or 'no'. Then maybe sitdown later and figure out a way to make an actual mechanic for it.

 

[UrsaTempest]

I think this depends on the group/players in question. Like my group when we played DnD 5e introduced a ton of new stuff and changed things here and there.

Even then stuff tends to come up out of nowhere and it's usually me going 'eh why not' or 'no'. Then maybe sitdown later and figure out a way to make an actual mechanic for it.

Click to shrink...

I mean specifically 'trap', like how in 2E you gotta be aware of paranoia combat and avoiding social by switching to combat and so on.

 

[MiracleGrow]

I mean specifically 'trap', like how in 2E you gotta be aware of paranoia combat and avoiding social by switching to combat and so on.

Click to shrink...

Ah, I can usually trust my group to not do shit like that. But I fully understand how it can be an issue for others.

 

[notanautomaton]

Ah, I can usually trust my group to not do shit like that. But I fully understand how it can be an issue for others.

Click to shrink...

Its not really something that can be fixed with trust. Paranoia Combat comes from the fact that five day laborers with sledgehammers, or an assassin with a poison knife, can easily kill a combat focused Solar, entirely by accident on the GM's part. And the stop social with combat arises from the fact that engaging in the social system massively weakens your ability to engage in the combat system. This means that if your courtly intrigue scene is interupted by a military coup, suddenly your players are way weaker than they should be.

 

[MiracleGrow]

Its not really something that can be fixed with trust. Paranoia Combat comes from the fact that five day laborers with sledgehammers, or an assassin with a poison knife, can easily kill a combat focused Solar, entirely by accident on the GM's part. And the stop social with combat arises from the fact that engaging in the social system massively weakens your ability to engage in the combat system. This means that if your courtly intrigue scene is interupted by a military coup, suddenly your players are way weaker than they should be.

Click to shrink...

Ah, last time something like this came up in my dragonblood game. I let them keep doing social attacks in combat. As talking someone down in combat is some classic stuff. But well, my group plays 3E, not 2e. Cause playing 2e is like grinding sandpaper on my face.

Might have missed the little fact that people are talking about 2e. Woops

 

[Imrix]

This whole conversation basically boils down to. 'For games to work the ST needs to know when to say 'No'. And how much this 'no' is dropped depends on the group'.

Like purely following mechanics in table top rolling games always leads to pain. That's just the nature of tabletop roleplaying games. That's why you like, don't purely follow mechanics.

Click to shrink...

No, it doesn't. You're falling into a tired old chestnut (hence Chung's reaction; dude's been going 'round this block for like... What is it @Jon Chung, literally a decade at this point?) called the Rule Zero fallacy; the idea that because the table can change the rules, bad mechanics aren't a problem. But they are, because they still require the judgement to recognise the problem before it causes disaster, and then expend effort fixing the problem. The game shouldn't make you do this. The game should actively and helpfully enable the mode of play that it wants to be.

 

[MiracleGrow]

No, it doesn't. You're falling into a tired old chestnut (hence Chung's reaction; dude's been going 'round this block for like... What is it @Jon Chung, literally a decade at this point?) called the Rule Zero fallacy; the idea that because the table can change the rules, bad mechanics aren't a problem. But they are, because they still require the judgement to recognize the problem before it causes disaster, and then expend effort fixing the problem. The game shouldn't make you do this. The game should actively and helpfully enable the mode of play that it wants to be.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for explaining the issue instead of high effort facepalm picard.

I genuinely get what your saying here. And I understand the mistake I'm making here.

Spoiler: stupid question

But I'm curious about something. What tabletop games do you think are able to fit this perfect little area? That aren't super basic ones like fate, etc. What games are you able to sit down with and feel like you have zero issues with mechanics that let you enable play you want? I imagine this can be a frustrating/stupid question and you don't need to answer me. I fully admit that I sometimes have issues understanding things text wise so bare with me a bit please.

I'm not asking for 'what game has no issues whatsoever', but more what games you think that despite issues enables the mode of play it wants to be?

 

[strange_person]

Let's flip that around. Do you think it's good for the game that I can tell a king to strip naked, eat his own shit and strangle his wife to death in his own throne room with 1 success normal social combat hits? Because I can, by RAW, once I burn out all his WP by commanding him to rip out his own eyes and swallow them, behead his loyal councilors and spend all his money buying elephants, all of which he will, naturally, resist doing because doing so would be completely unacceptable. Should the rules allow this to happen? Does that make sense? Is this a reasonable expected outcome?

I'm going to assume that as a reasonable person, you'll say "of course not, that shouldn't be happening, the system is clearly bugged if it allows you to do that". What allows me to do this? The ability to compel actions unbound by any restrictions except I can't order a suicide or going against the person's Motivation, with no limits except I can't give the same unreasonable command more than twice in a row if the target still has WP to spend desperately blocking. Is this actually needed for anything? What bad stuff happens if I delete it? Why... nothing! Nothing breaks, because this isn't something you expect a normal conversation to be capable of in the first place. Well then, what should we do?

D E L E T E

Okay, what's left that we can do with social combat 1 success hits after we've deleted this outrageous thing? Nudge Intimacies up or down. Find stuff out. If I want to make people do anything with this, the best I can do is to crank up an Intimacy until they get around to doing it themselves, which is more or less how normal persuasion works in real life. Looks pretty good now, right? Does Solar Bob have an overpoweringly strong incentive to behead anyone who can beat his MDV after the first Presence roll now? Do NPCs have an overpoweringly strong incentive to try to kill Solar Bob the moment he starts hitting them through their MDV? Nope, not anymore.

Click to shrink...

Telling the king to rip out his own eyes falls under the general "self-destruction is an unacceptable order" rule - as it happens, errata on the effects of Abyssal iconic animas actually mentioned eye-ripping specifically.

Beheading loyal counselors might normally involve more than one successful social attack. Usual logic would start by eroding the relationship, then persuading the king that having them killed is necessary, and then probably bypassing whatever judicial checks and balances would normally be involved is a whole separate issue. But... no, that's not strictly necessary.

Iago rolls enough successes on "strangle your wife" while she's right there in arm's reach? Othello's got a short list of bad options: spend WP to resist, or commence strangling. If Desdemona wins Join Battle and jumps out a window, though, the subsequent chase is a new scene - meaning opportunity to reconsider without even needing to spend any WP. Most likely outcome at that point is Iago, at minimum, losing 'trusted lieutenant' status.

Incidentally, virtue compulsion has a hidden advantage here: when someone's completely out of willpower, they cannot act against any virtue rated 3+ unless it was already suppressed... so social attacks opposing such virtues become impossible orders, resisted automatically at no cost. Murdering a faithful ally in cold blood clearly goes against Compassion AND Conviction, plus Temperance if doing so would violate an oath (e.g. marriage vows), so that's not a line anyone with a heroic virtue spread needs to worry about being shoved across just because they're having a bad day. Unless they took max Valor and nothing else, of course, but there's not so much room to complain if they clearly signed up to be violently unstable right from the start.

If you can overcome the king's MDVs, complete with relative-magnitude bonuses from the court full of witnesses, Defend Other from those loyal counselors, and various intimacies or virtues which would oppose such a senseless action? In-character, you've somehow built a very solid case [REPOST] Epistemic Learned Helplessness for why he should publicly humiliate himself, an argument that it'd cost him something (willpower or loyalty) to arbitrarily reject. He might decide not to pay, or not have it to spare, and just go along with the bad idea. If so, congratulations, you've egregiously embarrassed someone powerful enough to deploy armies or assassins over a personal grudge, and thus given them more than merely personal reasons to do so. Now what? Giant In the Playground Games

The point of a longer con, from an optimization perspective, is to avoid committing to anything so overtly hostile: once someone notices your arguments leading them in obviously bad directions, they'll stop giving you the chance to talk at all. Challenges of getting your (figurative) foot in the door is where the longer-timescale Bureaucracy Atomic Robo - v12ch4 - page 15 and Socialize Atomic Robo - v3ch4 Page 1 system would come in, if it were in functional condition - and no, it isn't anywhere near ready yet. Second edition, start to finish, was essentially an incomplete draft, still waiting on several rounds of expansion and revision by editors and playtesters. There's no stratum of mature chicken you can reveal by carving away 'nonfunctional' pieces of an unhatched egg. I'm not saying it's unbreakable, or that the immediate problems you point out aren't real, I'm only claiming there's unfulfilled potential to be built on.

As for buying too many elephants... man, if you think it shouldn't even be categorically possible to directly bamboozle people into making suboptimal financial decisions, what the hell are social stats supposed to be good for? The main way a king avoids spending everything at once is by not carrying around the entire treasury in cash. Here, Slately asks for too much money: Book 2 - Text Updates 042 and after some back-and-forth within that single scene, Don King agrees, but lacks the ability to immediately comply - setting aside irrelevant details of the magic system, he effectively needs to spend another scene (lower half of the very next page) talking to somebody else, with the original petitioner out of earshot, in order to unlock the vault and release the funds. That kind of psychological benefit from procedural delay is exactly why stable institutions have checks and balances, and gun laws have waiting periods: to limit the damage possible due to a single-scene lapse in judgement.

Inherent perils of absolute power wielded with imperfect judgement is a core theme, and being able to talk someone into making incredibly awful short-term decisions (with a lucky roll, when they're already having a bad day and thus don't have the willpower to spare) reinforces that theme.

 

[Jon Chung]

Inherent perils of absolute power wielded with imperfect judgement is a core theme, and being able to talk someone into making incredibly awful short-term decisions (with a lucky roll, when they're already having a bad day and thus don't have the willpower to spare) reinforces that theme.

Click to shrink...

You're seriously going to defend the ability for 1 success normal social combat hits to compel the target to do anything I want (with a couple exceptions) by claiming "working as intended"? Anything I want, as many demands as I want, after I exhaust the guy's maximum of five immunity topics. You actually claim that this is good, and you actually believe that nitpicking my off the cuff examples is a good argument, when anybody can come up with dozens more ways to humiliate the guy and take all his wealth without much trouble, for trivial to zero cost in resources, or turn that around and use it on your PC. You really think the behaviour this incentivizes (kill or flee anyone who can beat your MDV before you run out of willpower) is what the game should encourage.

Are you doing that because you really think it's a good thing for the game to allow people to do that, or because of your apparent irrational resistance to accepting that sometimes, rules written down in rulebooks are bad? Why are you taking on this burden of defending the obviously ridiculous?

Am I being trolled here, guys?

You do realize that the course of playtesting rounds and mechanical modifications that a hypothetical competent Exalted 2 development team would do is pretty much exactly what I'm describing here with sample alterations, right? Check what the players do, watch them exploit the system, note where incentives are aligned or misaligned with the desired outcome, cut or add incentives as needed, release for playtest again, observe player behaviour, repeat, etc, etc. If such a development team got irrationally attached to any particular mechanic they're using that isn't producing the desired outcome, they wouldn't be a competent development team if they didn't replace it with something that did. You're not, like, permanently cursed with a rule or mechanic once you start this process with it in your build, you know? You are allowed to delete things that don't work during this process. You are in fact encouraged to delete things that don't work.

 

[Jon Chung]

No, it doesn't. You're falling into a tired old chestnut (hence Chung's reaction; dude's been going 'round this block for like... What is it @Jon Chung, literally a decade at this point?) called the Rule Zero fallacy; the idea that because the table can change the rules, bad mechanics aren't a problem. But they are, because they still require the judgement to recognise the problem before it causes disaster, and then expend effort fixing the problem. The game shouldn't make you do this. The game should actively and helpfully enable the mode of play that it wants to be.

Click to shrink...

Yeah about a decade. FML.

But I'm curious about something. What tabletop games do you think are able to fit this perfect little area? That aren't super basic ones like fate, etc. What games are you able to sit down with and feel like you have zero issues with mechanics that let you enable play you want? I imagine this can be a frustrating/stupid question and you don't need to answer me. I fully admit that I sometimes have issues understanding things text wise so bare with me a bit please.

Click to shrink...

Hmm, my go-to mainstream example would be D&D4 - it's completely and utterly not shy about being a miniatures and maps based dungeon crawler, it's design is set up purely to enable you to run a miniatures and maps based dungeon crawler, it doesn't particularly care about anything other than dungeon crawling and if you use it to run a dungeon crawling game you will probably not run into any deep existential systemic problems. Some powers and classes might be a touch too powerful or less powerful than they should be, but it more or less works out of the box without a fuss as long as you don't try to use it for anything other than dungeon crawling. It genuinely helps you run that dungeon crawling game by providing useful frameworks to ensure that doing so is reasonably painless and fun. It doesn't do anything else, but you obviously don't pull this out if you don't want to crawl some dungeons.

Get book about dungeon crawling game, read book about dungeon crawling game, implement book about dungeon crawling game, more or less get decent dungeon crawling game experience out of the box, no fuss, no landmines, no missing bits absolutely necessary for dungeon crawling, not much in terms of trap choices, near-inability to make yourself completely useless, etc etc. The argument I'm having right now pretty much should never happen in play when running it.

 

[notanautomaton]

Hmm, my go-to mainstream example would be D&D4 - it's completely and utterly not shy about being a miniatures and maps based dungeon crawler, it's design is set up purely to enable you to run a miniatures and maps based dungeon crawler, it doesn't particularly care about anything other than dungeon crawling and if you use it to run a dungeon crawling game you will probably not run into any deep existential systemic problems. Some powers and classes might be a touch too powerful or less powerful than they should be, but it more or less works out of the box without a fuss as long as you don't try to use it for anything other than dungeon crawling. It genuinely helps you run that dungeon crawling game by providing useful frameworks to ensure that doing so is reasonably painless and fun. It doesn't do anything else, but you obviously don't pull this out if you don't want to crawl some dungeons.

Get book about dungeon crawling game, read book about dungeon crawling game, implement book about dungeon crawling game, more or less get decent dungeon crawling game experience out of the box, no fuss, no landmines, no missing bits absolutely necessary for dungeon crawling, not much in terms of trap choices, near-inability to make yourself completely useless, etc etc. The argument I'm having right now pretty much should never happen in play when running it.

Click to shrink...

To a lesser extent, DnD 5e allows also allows you to run it out of the box without any major hidden traps.

Scion 2e works as intended from what I've heard, though all my games have died before they got far ;-;. I've heard that the devs have discovered one utterly broken build that's still in the game, but I don't think anyone else has found it; at the least, I haven't seen anyone share it.

 

[Imrix]

Somebody like Prokopetz could probably provide a raft of examples, too. I don't actually play all that many systems, but from what I hear, Blades in the Dark is probably a pretty safe bet; it's a game of roguery and heists, and while I'm not familiar with it myself the secondhand accounts I get from people who are deep into game design themselves (the author of Kill Six Billion Demons, primarily) paint a pretty solid picture.

(I also wouldn't actually call Fate 'super basic'. Some of its lighter versions are pretty rules-light, but I think people's conception of 'normal' rules complexity actually gets distorted by how D&D is usually the introduction point to the hobby, and it's actually pretty crunch-heavy considering the scale goes all the way down to games whose rules would comfortably fit on a single sheet of paper!)

 

[Manic Dogma]

To a lesser extent, DnD 5e allows also allows you to run it out of the box without any major hidden traps.

Click to shrink...

Well, there's still the pretty major trap of using it to run anything but dungeon crawling in a anything but a very specific sort of slow, plodding fantasy.

Swear to fuck, if I meet one more person trying to wrangle something quick and feisty like Bloodborne into D&D homebrew claiming it'll work fine and not feel stiff, slow and wrong at all I swear, I will fucking explode.

 

[notanautomaton]

Well, there's still the pretty major trap of using it to run anything but dungeon crawling in a anything but a very specific sort of slow, plodding fantasy.

Swear to fuck, if I meet one more person trying to wrangle something quick and feisty like Bloodborne into D&D homebrew claiming it'll work fine and not feel stiff, slow and wrong at all I swear, I will fucking explode.

Click to shrink...

Well yes, but every game runs into issues when you try to hammer it into doing something its not meant to. DnDs issue is mostly that its fans like to think it's a generic universal fantasy system, when it very much is not.