General Exalted Thread
One of the best examples of a Solar Crafter-esque character I've recently seen is Sol Badguy in the Guilty Gear Strive story mode (which is basically a four hour long anime rendered in the game engine).
In it, Sol utilized his weird anime sword laser gun (built prior to the story), drives around in his kick ass custom motorcycle (built prior to the story), and in the prologue we see him working a Space Shuttle (incomplete, but otherwise built in a years long downtime between scenes). The only time he uses his crafter skills as such during the story is when he explains to the President of the United States how to get more juice out of future-magic-batteries.
I found it interesting how him being a genius crafter could considerably impact the story yet the story never had him craft.
In it, Sol utilized his weird anime sword laser gun (built prior to the story), drives around in his kick ass custom motorcycle (built prior to the story), and in the prologue we see him working a Space Shuttle (incomplete, but otherwise built in a years long downtime between scenes). The only time he uses his crafter skills as such during the story is when he explains to the President of the United States how to get more juice out of future-magic-batteries.
I found it interesting how him being a genius crafter could considerably impact the story yet the story never had him craft.
Even with very specialized characters you can usually do something for, say, a combat encounter or a social one. Crafting generally isn't built with this in mind: the closest is probably 2nd editions idea that artifacts required quests to get the items, but that isn't even quite it.
It's the decker problem, and one of the best ways to avoid that issue is to not design a huge, robust system that only one person can interact with.
- Location
- The North
But Exalted loves cordoning things off into huge systems only one person can interact with! Just look at Wyld Shaping and Sorcerous workings - getting assistance from other people is good for like 1 extra roll in one of those, and completely unimportant in another. Exalted cordons off basically everything from being a collaborative effort by not having any broadly applicable teamwork rules. I'm glad that Essence seems to be changing this, however.
But seriously a paradigmatic change to systems like crafting would be pretty neat. I'd honestly much rather have like... a single conflict resolution system that's robust and easy to use, that can be used whenever the results of some conflict are gonna be dramatic. Something you can plug into when you need it and ignore when it's not necessary. Alternatively, my favorite crafting 'system' is probably the Savvyhead's 'Workspace' ability, from Apocalypse World.
Apocalypse World 2e by Vincent and Meguey Baker said:
I consider this a good crafting system because it's a communication tool. You say you want to do something, the MC tells you what they expect you'll need to be able to do it, and once you've got those things you're done. The rules exist to put you on the same page. The bullet points are modular prerequisites and can be used to generate a nigh-infinite amount of 'recepies.' This also creates an inherently collaborative experience, in that everybody can pitch in to complete a project by helping you meet one of the bullet points. I think that this could serve as an excellent template for a system in Exalted as well. It's similar to Ventures, in a way, except that Essence seems to want you to roll dice to accomplish Obstacles and avoid Complications.
I think Kingfisher's example of Sol Badguy (fucking love that name) as a Solar Crafter is pretty spot on. For him, being a genius craftsman and artificer defines his position in the fiction - it's basically an open set of permissions for him to do things like 'introduce cool shit I've built,' 'slowly work at big ongoing projects during downtime,' and 'speak authoritatively about technology.' All three of those things would be pretty good jumping off points for Craft Charms.
Eh, I'm not certain those are entirely what I'm talking about here. Because something can easily be a thing that no one else can do and yet not lead to this issue. It just has to be something that doesn't take much spotlight time during the game itself. Wyldshaping especially, at least from what I remember, isn't exactly a huge timesink in terms of activating the charm and getting the benefits. Sorcerous workings are a bit trickier, but are part of Exalted's flirtations with downtime activities, and most of the non-interactive parts don't seem like they would take up real game time. It's certainly not what I would call a robust system, but then it's not designed to be one.
Like, you could still have decker's were no one can interact with their rolls in almost any way. But if they make, say, 3 rolls over the course of their 'part' and then it's done it's not really the 'Decker problem' (well, as long as they an contribute to the other part of the game: another issue from my understanding is that often times the Deckers could basically only contribute to their specific section). It's not about individual rolls, it's about scenes.
- Location
- The North
Wyld Shaping (at least in 3e) is definitely the sort of thing that eats scenes. Your Lore Supernal or whoever goes out there and everybody around the table waits like 30 minutes for everything to be adjudicated, all of the stunts to be described and the dice rolls tallied up, various calculations of square-mileage based on phase and successes, and don't forget the encounter rolls, where a Wyld shaping project could spontaneously generate several quirky miniboss squads of Raksha nobles who the GM just has to improvise in the moment, and it goes on and on. I definitely think it qualifies as an example of the decker problem, considering how much time at the table goes by where everyone else is standing by insensate while the Wyld shaper figures out how their three-pages-long Charm works.
It's pretty bad.
It's pretty bad.
- Location
- my house
Yeah, this was basically the impetus behind my essay. If building an artifact is something that happens during downtime just like spending XP, then the table can just go "Bob builds his artifact, Janice learns flutter kicks, etc. They can be more descriptive with it if they want, but it doesn't automatically bog down play.
This is actually a perfect example of how I think Craft should work. Your big projects and cool weapons are things that should be built offscreen/during downtime. Which I suppose I should explain.
One of my assumptions when DMing a game is the idea of offscreen/downtime actions. Things that the players do in between their adventures, such as buying new gear, leveling up, etc. And these things are meant to happen either very quickly i.e "You're in town, anything you want to do before heading to the next adventure" or not at the table.
So, for instance, after a big adventure where the players have just gotten a lot of XP and gold they go back to town. Before ending the session I might say "hey everyone, good job. Here's the amount of gold, xp, whatever you received. You're going to have a month of in-game time to rest before the next adventure." And then we all leave the table and each player decides what they want to do.
Using Sol Badguy as an example, this is where he would spend the XP he needs to build a sword laser gun or motorcycle. It would also be where he spends time building his rocket ship, its just that its a very high-rated artifact, and so he can't build it all in one season of downtime. (Which isn't a bad thing. It means we can set little RP moments there and use him building it to set scenes).
And he could also spend this time making things which don't directly impact his abilities (such as building a wall for the town, or digging a moat), he would just have to roll to see if he succeeeds.
Him using his craft skill to explain things to the President is also a great example of what my system is meant to emulate, because its basically just his player using his craft skills as justifications for a stunt (if he is trying to use this explanation to persuade the President of something) or as a justification for what the character (and thus player) should know. I.e. "Hey ST, Sol Badguy has 5 craft. He's going to explain whats happening to the president. What is happening."
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
An underlying problem of downtime-focused advancement, is that players are acustomed to the accelerated pace of on-stage play. If you give a PC 3 months, and then don't let them use their fancy powers due to an arbitrary timing distinction, that breaks suspension of disbelief.
However, allowing that kind of optimization makes the power curve for downtime actions explosively huge. On-stage arcs can take several sessions to resolve a handful of days, and then boop 3 months skip? That has to be squared somehow.
However, allowing that kind of optimization makes the power curve for downtime actions explosively huge. On-stage arcs can take several sessions to resolve a handful of days, and then boop 3 months skip? That has to be squared somehow.
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
...Okay so... hot take here but I don't think that artifact creation should be an off-screen thing. It trivializes artifacts, makes legendary items that will be passed down for centuries seem like stuff you pick up at the corner store.
Yes, it can take up time at the table, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
Yes, it can take up time at the table, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Sure, totally reasonable position- so now you'd want to ask "how can I make this on-stage thing go smoothly, better yet, how do I get the other PCs involved in a natural and engaging manner?"
- Location
- my house
This is true, and I suppose I am letting something of an unspoken agreement color my perceptions.
For me, downtime stuff is "this is all the stuff you're doing to prepare for the adventure. Anything important is going to bring us back into on-screen play." And that does have problems, but I have found it works well to emulate most of the stories we are trying to emulate when we play Exalted.
I'm not opposed to this option. and it is something I considered, I just couldn't get it to work. I do also think that trivializing artifacts isn't a bad thing? Like, its one of those things that further separates Exalts from the rest of creation that your heroic mortal might have to go on a quest to prove himself worthy so he may pull the sword from the stone (which, tbf, you can do in my model as well. You just have to spend XP at the end of this quest if you want to actually use this sword) meanwhile an exalt just... makes one. She's one of the God-Queens of creation and she outfits herself in a panopoly befitting of her stature. And it's not an easy task. It could take months or even years of crafting and a sacrifice of her own innate puissance (XP). But she can make one. And then another. And another. Because to her, that mortal hero is trivial.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
This, yeah. 3e's social influence system allows a socialite to contribute to a fight in a limited fashion, and it's plausible to justify ways a warrior can contribute to a social scene as a warrior; at the very least, an impressive bodyguard looming behind you is good for a circumstance bonus, and if you incorporate the whole thing about how in ancient societies a skilled champion was akin to having a comparatively skilled lawyer on retainer, then it's something you can factor into the scene. Ideally I'd like non-socialites to have more support for contributing to social scenes, but it does exist, at least.
By contrast, the ability of a non-crafter to contribute to a crafting project is more limited, and importantly, those limits are somewhat more restrictive, because things like fetching and carrying tools or other menial teamwork that you can justify for an unskilled helper aren't the sort of thing that incorporates someone else's character. If you're playing a social scene and all the warrior can do is loom behind your shoulder, then that might only be a teamwork bonus just the same as that warrior playing gopher boy in a crafting scene, but the former at least still leverages their nature as a warrior.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
This is very relevant to the ongoing discussion of 'craft in play', and I think a lot of people are enamored with the idea of the 'striking hammer' part of crafting being the big on-camera moment. Which is fine for personal scale crafting, but that then leads to the question- should there be mass-scale crafting? Do artifacts fall into personal scale, mass scale, do they slide between the two extremes?
In my various attempts, the big thing I wanted to underline was that the craft systems were more downtime systems, and that each player just by showing up to participate could contribute- but then as a second mechanical layer, being able to apply their build to a project improves their results or ability. The warrior in this example spends a season not pushing papers, but finding rare reagents by dueling fae princes of chaos. They still commit the same mechanical time, but ostenisbly get to do something they're good at even if the resolution is highly abstracted.
Of course then one has to ask/determine- does the warrior's player find this satisfactory? Do they enjoy being this cog in the machine, or would they rather spend their limited mechanical-downtime doing something else?
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
It's also pretty easy to make sure that every character has at least some competence in both fighting and talking. So that even if they aren't the star of a scene that's outside of their wheelhouse, they can still meaningfully contribute. The socialite can punch some extras or apply a multi-attacker penalty in a fight scene, or the fighter can talk to some less important characters in a talking scene.
But Craft isn't really something that you can ensure that everyone can meaningfully contribute to, not unless you design your craft system to work that way from the ground up.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
In all honesty, yeah, this is part of why more and more I'm coming around to @EarthScorpion's perspective that the whole idea of Craft having a dedicated system is a design cul-de-sac where the only good way out is to turn around, go somewhere else, and not do that. Make a generic downtime system that treats the warlord training an army, the socialite suborning an organisation, and the smith forging a wondersword, as fundamentally the same kind of action, and have done with it.
Like, @Red Orion was talking about playing Iron Man earlier, and I'm... somewhat more ambivalent about the validity of playing Iron Man in Exalted, I guess? As a Solar, at least, the Alchemical aesthetic is understandably more welcoming to him. Like, Tony Stark is excellent Exalted material - the playboy war profiteer who runs headfirst into the weakness we wish all rich bastards encountered more often, The Consequences Of Their Own Actions, has a change of heart and dedicates his talents to trying to do good, eternally hounded by his legacy of hubris. Fantasy AU Tony Stark makes for a fantastic Exalt - but Iron Man specifically is just too rooted in the tech aesthetic and the infrastructure base of the modern world to be such an easy fit. I've talked about this before, we know what Tony Stark makes if you drop him on a tropical island deprived of tools and materials, and it isn't coconut shell bazookas.
Plus, as @Omicron pointed out on discord, if you boil it down to the fundamentals Iron Man is a flying brick with energy attacks and a capacity to generate/resolve plothooks, all via the purview of superscience technobabble. In practice this is functionally identical to Thor, just swap out the superscience technobabble with nordic mythology; the aesthetic is different, the power set and dramatic shape of things is remarkably similar. The distinction between them which Red Orion drew in the treatise that started this discussion does not seem altogether valid to me.
It's notable to me that historically Exalted as a system has been somewhat hostile to the idea of an artisan who grows their personal power by making wonders; attunement costs and, for more 'advanced' artifacts, the necessity of Hearthstones to power them kind of act to put a functional upper bound on how much you can derive your power from bling rather than your character. Which is kind of another aspect of why I'm coming by degrees around to the idea of just axing Craft as a dedicated system; sure, you can make powerful items, but on the mechanical level I think that should be handled in a like manner to, well, I said it back at the start of this post.
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This is why I like Essence's Venture system, where Research, Training an Army, Making a Magic Sword, and Running a Country all use them same system.
- Location
- Ottawa
Here.
The short version:
Craft is one ability, with fields of expertise represented by specialties.
No points or anything like that; Craft works like any other ability.
Artifacts are heavily de-emphasized. This is bolded because it's extremely important. Most problems "with Craft" are actually problems with Artifact crafting, and are not solvable as long as Craft remains Artifact-centric.
Charms are written to be useful on the normal adventuring timescale. Many of them support specific crafts rather than Craft as a whole; a Solar chef might cook food so delicious that people who eat it are incapacitated with bliss, while a Solar sculptor might make an army of living statues.
You floated that as one of the ways Charms supporting Craft as an aesthetic might work. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea (I've worked with it a bit myself) but it's dangerous stuff and I wouldn't want to put much weight on it.
Pretty much, yeah. The effects of actions, and the responses of other characters to them, are generally way more interesting than the actions themselves. "I roll the dice to do the thing" usually wants to be made simple and quick.
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hmmm.... weirdly I think the manga Toriko is a good example of what Exalted level crafting should look like, a bit one with a focus on food. A lot of the time obtaining the ingredients have a bigger focus than the actual cooking.
- Location
- The North
This is sage advice. When in doubt, go abstract. I think that a crafter spending [Downtime Action] to build themselves a new magical suit of armor is basically identical to a warrior spending [Downtime Action] to learn a new fighting technique, or a socialite spending [Downtime Action] to organize a spy network. They're all fundamentally exchanging whatever form of downtime stuff you have, be it some currency or just the GM's go-ahead to broaden your skills and gain something new that you can do. Similarly, a crafter building an aqueduct to supply a city-state with water, a warrior killing a giant monster that plagues their land, and a socialite making sure all the right people get installed to positions of power are also all fundamentally the same sort of action - in this case they're making quality of life improvements to a locale.
- Location
- my house
Maybe I just worded myself poorly then, because the distinction I was trying to draw was that there wasn't one. One uses innate powers and the other uses artifacts, but at the end of the day those artifacts are core parts of Iron Man's powers. He can fly and shoot lasers, he just uses tech as the paradigm for it.
Which is why he should still have to pay XP for it. If you say that artifacts don't have to cost XP, then you have to say the same thing for Thor. If Iron Man can spend a day building his suit of armor, then Thor has to be able to do the same by lifting weights
- Location
- my house
Again, I'm wondering if my essay was like, really bad, because that was (intended to be) exactly my solution and I'm wondering where the disconnect is?
EDIT:
So, don't have time to read this atm (about to head to bed), but I have to admit that I am initially against this idea. Fundamentally, while I agree that craft needs to have a use during an adventure (and I think there should be many charms which do just that) I do think that it needs a niche for the downtime scale. Ideally, all the abilities should have uses in both the downtime and adventuring scale, with different abilities having different focuses. Combat, for instance, would be a "adventure heavy" skill, while crat would generally lean towards downtime actions.
Of course, these would be tendencies, not absolutes. A crafter could use his knowledge of the sciences to impress a shipright, or convince a despot to ally with him in return for repairing his dam and a warrior could spend his downtime winning prize money in fights or consent to act as a noble's champion, in return for his backing.
And of course, charms would let you give an adventuring skill more downtime options, or a downtime skill more adventuring options.
Which brings us to your point about letting craft substitute for other skills. Which I agree, is dangerous. Generally my (hypothtetical) idea would be letting an ability supplement other actions in narrow fields, rather than "You can use craft in place of X rolls".
A few sample charms of what I mean:
A charm which lets you hide a social attack (rolled at the time of the crafting, can be done by someone other than you if you work together so that another member of the circle can contribute) into an object you are creating. Anyone who spends a scene interacting with this is hit by the social attack, which is considered unexpected.
A charm which llet yous gift an object to someone. For the rest of the scene, you count the resource rating of the gift as bonus die (these count as die added by a charm) when making social attacks against that person.
A charm which lets you embed a social attack in any structure you build that is larger than an elephant. Anyone who spends a scene within sight of the structure is hit by the social attack. It is not unexpected.
A charm which lactivates when you disarm someone, lettign you destroy non-artifacts and de-attune artifacts.
A charm which lets you heat the metal of your foes weapon and armor. Dealing damage as an enviromental hazard if they do not drop/strip it.
A charm which llet yous gift an object to someone. For the rest of the scene, you count the resource rating of the gift as bonus die (these count as die added by a charm) when making social attacks against that person.
A charm which lets you embed a social attack in any structure you build that is larger than an elephant. Anyone who spends a scene within sight of the structure is hit by the social attack. It is not unexpected.
A charm which lactivates when you disarm someone, lettign you destroy non-artifacts and de-attune artifacts.
A charm which lets you heat the metal of your foes weapon and armor. Dealing damage as an enviromental hazard if they do not drop/strip it.
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asdx
Superior Sword Fairy
- Location
- Texas.
In today's session, Velociraptor's keep staring at me. One of them does a dance back at our Emperyral traitor PC. We begin an expedition to a tower that's bigger on the inside, contains a probably magic tree, and has illusionary doors that aren't actually doors. And fight against you leaving. Next session, figuring out how to deal with that so the mortals can properly investigate inside.
- Location
- Ottawa
Craft is in absolutely no danger of being useless in downtime. If you wrote zero downtime-relevant Craft Charms, designed the entire system to prevent Craft from being used in downtime, and dedicated an entire page of the Storytelling chapter to the words
IF YOU USE CRAFT DURING DOWNTIME, I WILL DRIVE TO YOUR HOUSE AND KILL YOU WITH A KNIFE
the ability would still be downtime-heavy.
Anyway, give it a read. It's really not that long; frankly, if you have time to read anything I write in this thread, that time would be better spent reading it.
- Location
- my house
Woke up, read this.
It's good, and I can see that we actually have a lot of the same ideas. Unfortunately, I can't really say more since I don't play 3e and don't really know what a project is.
- Pronouns
- They/them
My problem with this - based on personal experience - is that you always run the risk of spending like a month writing and refining your cool, abstract downtime system, and you keep adding and refining and cranking up the abstraction level so it can handle anything your players could possibly come up with, and then at the end you realize that you just spent a month re-inventing Fate (but this time it uses d10s and the abilities on the Exalted character sheet).