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General Exalted Thread

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HalfTangible said:
3rd doesn't have Lilun.

Also while yes the 2e comics are cool and I like them (in the corebook at least) you could just show them the comics. There's also Tale of the Visiting Flare (I think that's what it's called) that serves as a good intro.



This is one reason why Solars are the Exalt given in the core book: you don't need to know anything about the larger world from the get-go. "Your world is animist, you have divinely-granted magical powers, you are being hunted by magical ninja monks that think you're a demon" is generally enough.
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Hard disagree on Tale of the Visiting Flare. It has Psycho Homosexual Rakan Thulio and gay love described as a twisted and empty version of love. It's bad enough that the current devs have disowned it.
 
Gazetteer said:
I recently did have to introduce multiple people to Exalted, and I just used the opening chapter to Exalted Essence, 3e material, and select excerpts from 1e*. It's worked fine so far.

Speaking from the standpoint of someone who got seriously into Exalted relatively recently by reading a bunch of 2e content then reading 3e, I am very confident when I impress upon you how extraordinarily badly a lot of 2e setting content has aged, and how much would have been bad even at the time it has published. Trying to sell someone on the setting with 2e content feels like trying to get a friend into an anime that you swear gets good, but the first few episodes are nothing but really embarrassing fanservice that has every chance of just putting them off the whole thing.

The lore and setting differences between 2e and 3e are also just significant enough that someone coming straight from one to the other can cause significant confusion. I would really recommend working with the current setting material wherever you can.

*1e has its fair share of yikes shit, but it's both less of a constant minefield than 2e and is more broadly compatible with 3e lore, so it's easier to just... Selectively grab a section that I know works and show that to someone.
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Last I checked Exalted Essence is still only officially available to Kickstarter backers though. I'm just stuck with the bloated core book. Arms of the Chosen, and PDFs of the Dragon Blooded book, and the Realm Source book.
 
Tahu1809 said:
Last I checked Exalted Essence is still only officially available to Kickstarter backers though. I'm just stuck with the bloated core book. Arms of the Chosen, and PDFs of the Dragon Blooded book, and the Realm Source book.
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Fangs at the Gate is honestly a pretty great book for additional setting material as well. As is Heirs to the Shogunate, but that one's still like... frustratingly close to being out but is not out yet.
 
Indivisible said:
Hard disagree on Tale of the Visiting Flare. It has Psycho Homosexual Rakan Thulio and gay love described as a twisted and empty version of love. It's bad enough that the current devs have disowned it.
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What, really? First I've heard of it.

I interpreted him as a yandere (sans the dere). Not empty because homo, empty because his "love" was possessive ownership more than genuine care and affection.
 
Today in Exalted, worryingly curious Velociraptors, in space. And an expedition to a Yu-shan facing 'space station' for lack a better term, for what do you call something that's magically fixed over a planet's pole, but isn't orbiting? Real curious as to how the next session is going to go.
 
No context quote from Wednesday:

"Lunars can change their height by a few inches at a time, but I don't think they would do that just to make it look like someone else was the assassin. They wouldn't be used to the height and it would throw them off in combat."
"I'm pretty sure it's canon that Lunars are perfectly comfortable in whatever form they take."
"*snrk*... I just had this mental image of a height-conscious Lunar who uses Hybrid Body to always be the tallest person in the room, so over time she goes from a complete short stack to Yao Ming..."

(And then she meets another Lunar who ALSO wants to be 'the tallest in the room' and they keep trying to one-inch each other until they're both like 20 feet tall...)
 
We've had things like that in my Lunars campaign. A quick joke moment where a Lunar was wearing three inch heels, but made herself three inches shorter because this is the right height for me.

I've talked with several other people whose Lunar characters operate a lot like that, yeah. "Wants to be the tallest in the room", etc, is pretty common.
 
My No Moon lost half a foot of height when she Exalted and does not change the height of her true form, because it's perfect like this.

HalfTangible said:
"Lunars can change their height by a few inches at a time, but I don't think they would do that just to make it look like someone else was the assassin. They wouldn't be used to the height and it would throw them off in combat."
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"You really think a Lunar would do that? Just shapeshift to frame someone else for murder?"
 
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Maybe it's just me but I like the idea that Luna sometimes holds off on a Lunar's "true" form at first just to mess with them. After all Lunars can explicitly change their form permanently.

Gazetteer said:
"You really think a Lunar would do that? Just shapeshifting to frame someone else for murder?"
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We never actually saw these people, ftr, just saw the aftermath of three of their kills. Rokuto just got a REALLY high roll on his investigation and we were able to determine the heights of both killers. One of them is a master of both Ebon Shadow and Tiger Style while the other has Mantis, Water AND Crane style. The two being the same is incredibly unlikely and there's little point in framing each other since they seem to have the same goal of destabilizing Thorns (this is before MOW)

But we got stuck on this idea and how to make it work for so long that the GM eventually just came out and said "No, you are completely certain it's two different assassins" so we'd move on. I'll be writing up this recap sooner or later.
 
HalfTangible said:
Maybe it's just me but I like the idea that Luna sometimes holds off on a Lunar's "true" form at first just to mess with them. After all Lunars can explicitly change their form permanently.

We never actually saw these people, ftr, just saw the aftermath of three of their kills. Rokuto just got a REALLY high roll on his investigation and we were able to determine the heights of both killers. One of them is a master of both Ebon Shadow and Tiger Style while the other has Mantis, Water AND Crane style. The two being the same is incredibly unlikely and there's little point in framing each other since they seem to have the same goal of destabilizing Thorns (this is before MOW)

But we got stuck on this idea and how to make it work for so long that the GM eventually just came out and said "No, you are completely certain it's two different assassins" so we'd move on. I'll be writing up this recap sooner or later.
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I'd say probably just you, yeah.

Like... Luna Chooses you, and then you Exalt. At that point, it's your power, and Luna cannot just like... "hold off" on any part of it at that point. Your true human form does not even necessarily change from what you looked like pre-Exaltation if it's already one you're comfortable with, and the one circumstance we have where it's called out as consistently occurring is that a Lunar who experiences gender dysphoria gets a shape that they feel comfortable in. Which was the case with my Lunar. So like... no, not a real amusing idea for me, generally.

The joke was that doing things like that is literally one of the things Lunars are best known for, so "a Lunar probably wouldn't change their height to assassinate someone" is pretty funny, more so than I was confused about what is happening in the scene you're describing.

Legionman said:
"No, of course not.

They just need to use Creating-the-Wolf Attitude, and they can do it in their true form"
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God I love Lunar social charms.

 
Gazetteer said:
Your true human form does not even necessarily change from what you looked like pre-Exaltation if it's already one you're comfortable with, and the one circumstance we have where it's called out as consistently occurring is that a Lunar who experiences gender dysphoria gets a shape that they feel comfortable in. Which was the case with my Lunar. So like... no, not a real amusing idea for me, generally.
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*shrug* You can still transform at will, so she's not really stopping you or "holding off" your Exaltation. Moreover, I wasn't thinking "gender dysphoria", I was thinking "you want to be the tallest person in the room but you only grow an inch". Or you want black hair, so it becomes a different shade of brown. Tiny irrelevant things that you can just fix yourself.

I think of Luna as the most irreverent prankster chaos gremlin in Exalted. Not without intelligence, layers or complexity (she is THE FRIGGEN MOON after all) but someone who is very much a trickster. Like a good mother she wants you to live a happy life, but she also wants to mess with you in the way your best friend or a sibling might.
 
Right, but, like, you can maybe see how, when "your true form changes automatically upon Exalting" is a thing most explicitly talked about in a sidebar about gender dysphoria, this thing about "what if Luna somehow withheld that as a joke" feels kind of tone deaf. Like, the only one who actually talked about a true shape changing during Exaltation before you saying that was me, and I was in fact talking about a trans character.
 
Gazetteer said:
Right, but, like, you can maybe see how, when "your true form changes automatically upon Exalting" is a thing most explicitly talked about in a sidebar about gender dysphoria, this thing about "what if Luna somehow withheld that as a joke" feels kind of tone deaf. Like, the only one who actually talked about a true shape changing during Exaltation before you saying that was me, and I was in fact talking about a trans character.
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Frankly? No. I was talking about a Lunar who wanted to be the tallest in the room starting out as a short stack. And I thought Luna would find it amusing to leave the Lunar in question short as a joke (partly because I remembered the true form thing and asked the question 'why wouldn't she be tall already'). You assumed that I was talking about gender dysphoria.

Tale of the Visiting Flare was one thing but this is a leap at best.
 
HalfTangible said:
You assumed that I was talking about gender dysphoria.
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If I thought you actually meant "haha wouldn't it be funny if Luna stopped a trans Lunar's true form from changing on purpose", I promise you I would have just reported you. Rather than like... spending three posts now trying to very gently nudge you to be more mindful. I assumed this was just you being insensitive about a subject you have not thought a lot about rather than malice.
 
Why are there always pointless arguments in Exalted Forums? There was a misunderstanding can't we leave it at that?
 
I don't think that "that joke you made gets uncomfortably close to transphobic subtext" being responded to with "I wasn't being transphobic, you assumed I was being transphobic!" counts as a misunderstanding.
 
elfgames said:
My preferred solution to that problem is weaving all necessary setting conceits into the character creation minigame. Basically, I re-write the 20 questions thingy from L5R, and funnel players towards finishing character creation with a solid idea of not just the central issues of the campaign, but also where their characters stand on them.

This, of course, means both that players have a limited input re:what should be the premise of the campaign and that I have to put in a fair amount of extra work at the start, but no method is perfect (and I'd take these downsides over deep lore-induced brainspiders any day).
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Do you have that list? Because it sounds like a very useful resource
 
Gazetteer said:
I don't think that "that joke you made gets uncomfortably close to transphobic subtext" being responded to with "I wasn't being transphobic, you assumed I was being transphobic!" counts as a misunderstanding.
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That literally sounds like a misunderstanding. Extending it into a feud is narcissistic.
 
Reading the Essence pdf some more.

Love the Getimians. Summoned from Time is such a friggen cool charm.

Kinda disappointed you can make it permanent, but w/e, it's still cool =3
 
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