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General Exalted Thread

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Ruyh said:
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If you take Dreams of the First Age as canon. There was at least a manse for every single solar there + more since afterwards solars weren't happy with the free manses the deliberative gave them so they made better ones. A newly exalted Solar had the right to get one unoccupied manse in the city + another in an unoccupied state in the isle.

Obviously lots of this manses didn't survive. But my guess is that enough should have, enough for every db house and faction at the very minimum.
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To add to this some. It's not even a matter of folks not taking DotFA into account for 3e. The line itself doesn't assume it as canon, and Creation's history as we know it in 3e is not the one found in 2e's. Pretty much no 3e book assumes anything from DotFA is the case, many outright contradict it.

I say this on other places often, but each edition of Exalted is a soft reboot. 2e, despite appearances and its own claims, is not the same canon as 1e. This is a particular issue I have at times when folks treat 2e as definitive and 3e as somehow "wrong" in what it changes, as 2e did change things, just often subtly or in ways that the details changed the cotnxt of the thing talked about more as a thumbnail in 1e. This isn't to say 2e is bad. I just think it's worth noting different editions do have incompatible canons unless shown specifically otherwise. This does kind of mean for example, that a thing 1e left open that 2e answered, doesn't even mean it was in my view answered in 1e. It just was answered in 2e's take of the setting, because often that answer could change other elements in the setting that were more layed-down.
 
I think the most constructive relationship to have with canon, especially older canon is to question what you get out of adhering to it.
 
Adhering to a canon gives me a fun setting to explore and a set of parameters to be creative within and like, do stuff with different corners of it, using the canonical depiction as a springboard. It is part of how I derive enjoyment from a game like this.

Some divergence is only reasonable, and usually harmless for specific games or whatever, and it's not like I'm a complete purist myself but the 3e material is broadly well written enough that I don't really enjoy approaching it like it's a tasting menu that I'm going to take parts of and then discard the rest from. It's like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, murder canon and eat its throat or whatever, but I like canon, canon is a friend of mine, and I don't usually eat my friends' throats.

For the specific thing that sparked this discussion, a lot of prior setting material for the Blessed Isle had such a different take on the basic lay of the land that it's kind of deceptively one of the worst places to try and wedge in 2e stuff.
 
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I am usually a strong advocate of adhering to canon as closely as you can manage because that's what makes a setting function as anything more than glorified set dressing. You make a rule, you stick to it. Otherwise nothing else in your story matters.

However when it comes to TTRPGs, I'm less so. 'Canon' is already a murky prospect with TTRPGs simply because you will have a different GM for every game with their own rules, quirks, and interpretations. The events of the story need to be tailored to the specific group you're running and each edition tries something new, with the mechanics if nothing else. Yeah, there's 'canon events', but you need to be willing and able to throw them out for the sake of your group's story. Even if your game uses an established setting like Star Wars.

I still think you should have a reason to throw out whatever you're throwing out (*cough*Lilun*cough*)
 
I don't think acknowledging that each edition has an internal canon either requires or proscribes any sort of "relationship with canon," its just a thing to keep in mind when comparing different sourcebooks.
 
I usually and heavily lean into 3e for creation. But I happily pluck stuff from Scavenger Sons and other books when I want. I think the biggest thing I tend to do is juice up Lookshy to have more of their 2e toys to make them feel a lot more menacing.
 
My general view on canon is that it often also serves as a baseline for discussions and answering questions when they are brought up. Like, if we assume every single person's take is equally canon, that's probably true on the table, but less useful in discussions where we kind of want at least a baseline to build on. @Gazetteer has had I think good points on things like how Terrestrial inheritance is actually described in the 3e books versus what a lot of folks have actually internalized, and I think that having the canon to at least clarify what is the thing we're talking about is a good thing.

Folks will often ask "What is X/Y/Z" in the setting, and that does assume a canonical answer somewhere. Sometimes there isn't an answer and that's fine. But I think folks will often go "Well this other edition says that's the case" and this is where I kind of bring up the different editions as separate canons internally. The Blessed Isle is a good example, where things like the locations of islands, deserts, swamps, what house controls what city, or even the presence of fae or shadowlands differ between the Exalted: the Dragon-Blooded, Compass of Celestial Directions Vol. 1: The Blessed Isle, and The Realm.

And I admit this comes from me having been on a few other locations with folks notably hostile to 3e and it "changing the setting needlessly". This is mostly in part because while 2e does change, it also does copy-paste (some places, literally) so it for some folks is less a fork from 1e at first blush I guess. But also 2e would answer things 1e never wanted or bothered to, and folks see that similarity between them meaning its answer applies to both, and thus 3e is the one who's weird. I also think at times due to how long 3e has taken, folks assume that the 2e answer still stands until 3e contradicts it, when it turns out 3e did already contradict it.
 
Blaque said:
To add to this some. It's not even a matter of folks not taking DotFA into account for 3e. The line itself doesn't assume it as canon, and Creation's history as we know it in 3e is not the one found in 2e's. Pretty much no 3e book assumes anything from DotFA is the case, many outright contradict it.

I say this on other places often, but each edition of Exalted is a soft reboot. 2e, despite appearances and its own claims, is not the same canon as 1e. This is a particular issue I have at times when folks treat 2e as definitive and 3e as somehow "wrong" in what it changes, as 2e did change things, just often subtly or in ways that the details changed the cotnxt of the thing talked about more as a thumbnail in 1e. This isn't to say 2e is bad. I just think it's worth noting different editions do have incompatible canons unless shown specifically otherwise. This does kind of mean for example, that a thing 1e left open that 2e answered, doesn't even mean it was in my view answered in 1e. It just was answered in 2e's take of the setting, because often that answer could change other elements in the setting that were more layed-down.
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that all said, 2e is also generally pretty bad, with exceptions mostly from copy-pasting first edition. Exalted Second Edition has had actual scholarly papers written about how bad it is. Exalted Second Edition was occasionally unobjectionable, rarely good, often a mechanical ruin, and chock full of the creepy fetishes of whatever random writer decided to shoehorn theirs in today.

Like, 1e and 3e are far, far from perfect, but they're not Exalted Second Edition.
 
Kaiya said:
that all said, 2e is also generally pretty bad, with exceptions mostly from copy-pasting first edition. Exalted Second Edition has had actual scholarly papers written about how bad it is. Exalted Second Edition was occasionally unobjectionable, rarely good, often a mechanical ruin, and chock full of the creepy fetishes of whatever random writer decided to shoehorn theirs in today.

Like, 1e and 3e are far, far from perfect, but they're not Exalted Second Edition.
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to be fair, a lot of the problematic writing in 2e is building off a trend that started in mid to late 1e
 
Blaque said:
The Blessed Isle is a good example, where things like the locations of islands, deserts, swamps, what house controls what city, or even the presence of fae or shadowlands differ between the Exalted: the Dragon-Blooded, Compass of Celestial Directions Vol. 1: The Blessed Isle, and The Realm.
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I distinctly remember being throw for a loop for a bit when I was poking around Across the Eight Directions and Exigents, trying to figure out where the Field of Endless Raitons would be on the map, only to realize when I tried referencing older material that in previous editions, Great Forks had been on the opposite side of the Rolling River.
 
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Blaque said:
My general view on canon is that it often also serves as a baseline for discussions and answering questions when they are brought up. Like, if we assume every single person's take is equally canon, that's probably true on the table, but less useful in discussions where we kind of want at least a baseline to build on.
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Yeah, for the purpose of discussion canon is true north on the compass. It's not necessarily where you want to go but the point of reference is important.
 
HalfTangible said:
So I don't remember where this is exactly, but I *believe* it's said somewhere that compasses point towards Mt.Meru, at the center of Creation.
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Yep. It first showed-up in Savage Seas about jade needles. The only reference to them pointing to Center to my gathering skimming 2e is an artifact which has a jade needle that does that too. Across the Eight Directions explicitly says this in the appendix in the section on navigation.

"Compass points in" is to me one of those "Reboot doesn't mean always different' bits honestly. It's like how JJ Jameson in the Spider-Man movies is always played JK SImmons until further notice.
 
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I love the idea of fucky wucky compasses in creation. A special five-jade compass that points to all five poles. A log-pose esque compass that points to the nearest large gathering of earth essence, useful for locating islands in the far West. A third compass that also does something cool.
 
It's unfortunate that we had to refer back to Savage Seas to find out how a compass worked as recently as last year because that book is impressively sexist in a way that can't be 100% attributed to the subject matter being a grimdark fantasy world.
 
Kymme said:
I love the idea of fucky wucky compasses in creation. A special five-jade compass that points to all five poles. A log-pose esque compass that points to the nearest large gathering of earth essence, useful for locating islands in the far West. A third compass that also does something cool.
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A compass that points to a manse

A compass that points to an artifact folding ship whose awakening evocation is that it can't get lost

A compass that points you to an opportunity to fulfill a defining intimacy

A compass that points you to a god who will do you a favor in exchange for the compass

A compass that points you to the nearest abundant source of food and water

A compass that points towards safety

I'd say the five poles one but you already did ;)
 
A thin, starmetal knife with evocations that improve your ability to dodge by showing you the path to safety in battle or can show you the path to your foe's end to help you attack. It can also show you which way is north.
 
alexthealright said:
is the pole of air not true north?
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This is the issue with a flat world. Ignoring direction names, for someone standing on the pole of earth the pole of air would be straight "up, " if you were looking at a map. However, for someone standing on the pole of wood the pole of air would be "up" and "left." So true north could mean either "up" or the pole of air.
 
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notanautomaton said:
This is the issue with a flat world. Ignoring direction names, for someone standing on the pole of earth the pole of air would be straight "up, " if you were looking at a map. However, for someone standing on the pole of wood the pole of air would be "up" and "left." So true north could mean either "up" or the pole of air.
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Can you even stand at the non-earth poles? The Wyld's eaten into Creation, so the poles probably aren't anywhere that you'd expect a compass to function anyway. Outside of that, I'd think a compass pointing to 'true air' would be very useful, since there's only one 'correct' orientation for pretty much anywhere that isn't Ascension. With any two non-earth pole compass, you'd know exactly where you are. I think people would still refer to it as North (/East/South/West) in Creation; you just accept that the further you are from the Blessed Isle, the less your directions are at right angles to each other. Interestingly, because the sun traces a parabolic arc through the sky, the one RL use for right-angled directions, getting your windows to either face the sun or avoid it, doesn't matter. The only windows that avoid seeing the sun are oriented towards 'true air'!
 
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