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General Exalted Thread

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grommile said:
It's an empire, not just a country that calls its king an emperor, therefore it has to overcome the scarcely rebuttable presumption that it's bad.
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This is a really simplistic and boring take and exactly what the point of reading A Memory Called Empire is about. Yeah, empires are bad, very insightful. However, that's not really the point of what Tenfold is talking about.
 
Man I'm having a big struggle with exalted right now. To put it simply, I'm very much a comic book style ST. I enable my players to do cool fun things as my primary objective. My issues is that when it comes to exalted is that I struggle with running a more 'serious' tone to campaigns. Like a real air of tension that make you sit and think. But when I'm running Pathfinder I'm able to scare the hell out of players. Make every moment felt like something was gonna pop and than violently detonate.

I ran a Essence game today and tried really hard to keep a good solid tone and holy fuck it was hard. I don't know what it is with Exalted, but its really hard for me compared to any other system I play. I did let myself have a treat when I had a god of Bats say "EYY I'M FUCKING SNORFFING HERE."

Regardless none of my ST skills transfer in anyway to online spaces and it sucks lol.
 
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Gazetteer said:
I'm sure that point made a lot of sense in your head, but I don't quite follow how that applies to the specific excerpt in any meaningful capacity.
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"This passage doesn't make me want to read the book, it just makes me want one of the characters described to be executed."
 
The scene is a shorter excerpt meant to communicate between me and Tenfold you dingus, not a scene meant to convince you empires are good. The point of the book is not that empires are bad, which is a self-evidently obvious statement, but the specific, interesting ways in which they are bad and how people relate to them. There are whole academic fields founded around studying that! The author is an academic in one of those fields. It's true that you can come to the brilliant, intellectually stimulating conclusion that empires are indeed quite bad, but it doesn't lead you to any interesting storylines or character studies.
 
grommile said:
It doesn't even feel interesting, that's the thing.
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With all due respect, but this is so dumb and weird. Tenfold tagged me, so I responded with a scene from the book we both like. You're free to conclude that you don't think that scene is interesting, that's fine you know, you don't have to like it. But you haven't read the book and are talking about how you want a character to be executed with a personal artisanal guilloutine. You're coming off like a weirdo and an internet tough guy. I am saying this, because I feel like the premises for an argument here are really bad, since you haven't even read the book you are making bizarrely wide-reaching and authoritative statements about and it's not really the topic of the thread. So this is just, kind of weird at best?
 
you know how it is, one minute you're just debating the complexities of human existence and the nuances of a massive social structure's construction and the next you've been catapulted into a portal fantasy of crushing oppression and structural violence but you can't overcome the empire made out of imaginary dragons because the other internet nerds that got thrown into the grinder with you want to debate the opponents instead of crafting guillotines and then all your friends are dead. you go through it once and you never want to do it again. it is deathly important that other people on the internet know that they're propping up the wrong blorbos at a cost in blood.
 
Person 1: "Here let me quote a thing to my friend from a book he said was good inspiration for the subject of this thread"

Person 2: "I have also read this book, and I love that character in that excerpt."

Person 1: "Haha, she's great and my wife."

Person 3: "Well, I haven't read this book, but I think your favourite character should die, and also that this out of context scene is bad."

This is not a fruitful tangent.
 
The Sidereal charmset has a number of Charms that have special benefit for being unarmored. Freedom's Cadence, Starmetal armor from the corebook, lets you pay three extra motes of attunement to have it not count as armor. Unlike Silken Armor, it doesn't count as armor full-stop, not just for Martial Arts purposes. Would you consider it okay to get those benefits with the armor?

Between Martial Arts and the charmset effects, any armor that doesn't cheat requirements has a notable opportunity cost. I wonder what a Starmetal fullplate artifact would look like.
 
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JamesShazbond said:
The Sidereal charmset has a number of Charms that have special benefit for being unarmored. Freedom's Cadence, Starmetal armor from the corebook, lets you pay three extra motes of attunement to have it not count as armor. Unlike Silken Armor, it doesn't count as armor full-stop, not just for Martial Arts purposes. Would you consider it okay to get those benefits with the armor?
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Yeah, I don't see why not.
 
Crumplepunch said:
"I think [the Scarlet Dynasty] sucks, personally."

To her credit, Logris does not falter. She does not gasp, or miss a step. She shows no outward sign of acknowledging what you said, save that her face goes immediately and perfectly blank of expression.

She walks carefully around the edges of a puddle. You start to wonder if she actually heard you.

LOGRIS: "But you are a magistrate."

LOGRIS' FACE: ...

"Yeah, apparently so."

LOGRIS: "Could you... elaborate on your position?"

"Yeah, I think it sucks dick."

This makes her face twitch, just a little. You can't quite catch the expression.

LOGRIS: "Yes, thank you. Is there anything specific you dislike about the Dynasty?"
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Crumplepunch said:
"I am still formulating my structural critique."

LOGRIS: "For why it sucks dick."

"Yes."

LOGRIS: "Well, you must let me know as soon as you have it figured out."

"Oh, I will."

Logris sighs.
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I am not sure why this exchange suddenly feels relevant once again!
 
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I always draw from the well of Avatar (the blue space people one, not the cartoon), specifically the humans, when I want to portray Dynasts. They're brutal individuals who do not give a shit about anything but whether or not they're getting a cut of the empire's pie, and therefore, ripe targets for getting owned by people with less resources then them. They've got all the fancy artifacts (I really always make it a point that Wyld Hunts in my game are usually well-outfitted if they're not an impromptu thing) and they're certainly not easy foes, but centuries of complacency has made many of them inadequate for dealing with plucky Solar or Lunar player characters. I honestly don't know how I could really eke a sympathetic portrayal of a Dynast out of this; maybe I could feel bad for an outcaste since its either military service or centuries of monastic service (and generally these outcastes are portrayed as better generals than Dynasts), but basically everybody in, for example, House Tepet deserved what the Bull did to them.
 
SunnySprings said:
I honestly don't know how I could really eke a sympathetic portrayal of a Dynast out of this
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Yeah, I agree, that portrayal of the entirety of the Dynasty and everyone who belongs to it would be exceptionally hard to eke a sympathetic portrayal out of, or indeed, to use for anything other than "here is a very shallow villain for you, the unambiguous hero, to style on."

For that, you'd probably want to like, depict the people who make up the Dynasty as like, people. Who probably hold values and beliefs that justify their way of life, in the same way people born into unjust societies often do. This is obviously harder to write or roleplay than just flattening the characterisation until you have thousands of arrogant idiots who don't know what they're doing, but I am personally glad the written material we have does not take your approach. It is considerably easier for you to jettison nuance from a portrayal for your purposes than it would be for me to have to add it all back in for mine.
 
SunnySprings said:
I always draw from the well of Avatar (the blue space people one, not the cartoon), specifically the humans, when I want to portray Dynasts. They're brutal individuals who do not give a shit about anything but whether or not they're getting a cut of the empire's pie, and therefore, ripe targets for getting owned by people with less resources then them. They've got all the fancy artifacts (I really always make it a point that Wyld Hunts in my game are usually well-outfitted if they're not an impromptu thing) and they're certainly not easy foes, but centuries of complacency has made many of them inadequate for dealing with plucky Solar or Lunar player characters. I honestly don't know how I could really eke a sympathetic portrayal of a Dynast out of this; maybe I could feel bad for an outcaste since its either military service or centuries of monastic service (and generally these outcastes are portrayed as better generals than Dynasts), but basically everybody in, for example, House Tepet deserved what the Bull did to them.
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Hm, I dunno. I think you can make a sympathetic character out of that. Someone so tied up in the system they're born into, its expectations of success and their own blind spots that they aren't able to reach their full potential? Lots of room for character drama there.
 
SunnySprings said:
"I think it would be cool if there was something like a draco-lich in my game and I'm wondering what it could do to really drive conflicts both short-term and long-term,"
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Not certain if you actually want ideas about this in particular, or if it was just a hypothetical, but it is fun to think about anyway.

In the short term, IDK where your game is set, but most ancient armies used a volunteer militia type of system, so theoretically he could cause a famine just by making the local cities keep their armies raised, due to there being no one to bring in the harvest or plant it on time depending on the season.

That's rather mundane by exalted standards though, so maybe the local lords have conscripted the gods of the fields in the hopes of contesting this monster, or maybe the dracolich has unleashed a plague upon the field gods specifically, leading to a blight with a non obvious cause.

Maybe the dracolich got into cahoots with the god of the local aquifer, convincing it to only use it's cleansing powers in exchange for prayer. The aquifer God doesn't know that any toxins in its aquifer will eventually be taken up by the plants and animals, because it isn't their department.

Maybe the Dracolich would rather not be at the top of everyone's minds, so it unleashed a hearteater to distract silver pact and sidereal troubleshooters who might otherwise take offense to it.

Does the dracolich know any martial arts? If it knows black claw style then it could try to make an immaculate heresy casting itself as a sixth Immaculate Dragon, with black claw posing as Death Dragon Style or whatever.

Do you want your dracolich to have influence in the underworld? Maybe it's assembling some ghosts that way, and the nearest deathlords march on their rival and only show up after the circle has killed it?

Going back to that immaculate heresy idea, the dracolich could probably pass off being possessed by a ghost for granting ira blessing like the immaculate dragons do to dragon blooded.
 
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Gazetteer said:
Yeah, I agree, that portrayal of the entirety of the Dynasty and everyone who belongs to it would be exceptionally hard to eke a sympathetic portrayal out of, or indeed, to use for anything other than "here is a very shallow villain for you, the unambiguous hero, to style on."

For that, you'd probably want to like, depict the people who make up the Dynasty as like, people. Who probably hold values and beliefs that justify their way of life, in the same way people born into unjust societies often do. This is obviously harder to write or roleplay than just flattening the characterisation until you have thousands of arrogant idiots who don't know what they're doing, but I am personally glad the written material we have does not take your approach. It is considerably easier for you to jettison nuance from a portrayal for your purposes than it would be for me to have to add it all back in for mine.
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Eh, you do you, but I find it much more joyous to see my players blast a Dynastic warstrider pilot with powerbow arrows the size of harpoons than wondering, "Damn, what if the dude from the slave-taking empire of eugenics-obsessed weirdos who passively collects Resources 3 from the collective immiseration of millions liked dogs or had kids." Same reason why I wouldn't be kind to any Confederates in a game set around the US Civil War; any justifications they may have are feeble in the face of the eminent cruelty and cowardice of what they are doing, any heroic person would've defected to the Union, so who cares if you shoot a cannon at their officer and put the fear of God into his army?
 
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SunnySprings said:
Eh, you do you, but I find it much more joyous to see my players blast a Dynastic warstrider pilot with powerbow arrows the size of harpoons than wondering, "Damn, what if the dude from the slave-taking empire of eugenics-obsessed weirdos who passively collects Resources 3 from the collective immiseration of millions liked dogs or had kids." Same reason why I wouldn't be kind to any Confederates in a game set around the US Civil War; any justifications they may have are feeble in the face of the eminent cruelty and cowardice of what they are doing, any heroic person would've defected to the Union, so who cares if you shoot a cannon at their officer and put the fear of God into his army?
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And that is, I am sure, entirely fine a stance to take for STing at your table, and from the sound of things your players seem to be having fun.

Nevertheless, as should be clear from the numerous references to A Memory Called Empire both on this page and the page before it, more nuanced depictions of empire, and sympathetic portrayals of the individuals whom uphold and perpetuate empire, are possible. And, you know, Dynasts are to a greater or lesser extent the 'default' background for Dragon-blooded PCs, whether they are on the Blessed Isle or touring the Threshold, and so it's probably for the best that the setting is able to accommodate such a vision, and that compelling and sympathetic Dynastic PCs are possible without immediately disavowing their home and everything in it.
 
SunnySprings said:
Same reason why I wouldn't be kind to any Confederates in a game set around the US Civil War; any justifications they may have are feeble in the face of the eminent cruelty and cowardice of what they are doing, any heroic person would've defected to the Union, so who cares if you shoot a cannon at their officer and put the fear of God into his army?
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So you're saying that the pathetic rebel army deserves to be crushed beneath your morally superior boot like the evil miserable insects they are, and anyone with any sense of what was right would have defected to the Scarle- *ahem* I mean *Union* forces lead by the most righteous ruler who has ever walked the earth, so any cruelty or atrocity you inflict upon them is completely justified (barring some truly inhumane exceptions naturally because you're not a monster)?

Perspective is a funny thing, innit?
 
The immortal science of Marxism teaches us that human beings are embedded social animals that do not make history as they please. The dynast is no more easily free to act in a particular way than the insurgent opposing them, and while the cause of one is undoubtedly more righteous in our eyes, that should not prevent us from portraying their characters as living beings.
 
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