Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
where did MJ say this?
General Exalted Thread
Here:
In a context where I said "the game does not model the Usurpation". The only way to interpret that is that the draw was modeling the Usurpation.
So why am I using Exalted's mechanics instead of Feng Shui or Burning Wheel or FATE (all of which do either wuxia or pulp quite well)? And I wouldn't say "this thing that was critical for the entire game line to happen" has no bearing on the actual game I play. For example, in D&D, I can gain enough levels and stab gods to death. This exists because the setting says that gods were occasionally defeated by heroes, but you could just as equally argue that it doesn't need to exist because it has 'no bearing on the actual game I play'.
Which is wrong. The Usurpation has plenty of bearing on the game I play, because it is the very thematic core of Exalted. Lessers getting together and overthrowing their greaters by force. I should be able to overthrow a rival Solar who had a decade to set up his own empire and get Essence 5 by force, instead of "oh, it was another fucking Doombot." Because that being a Charm is a statement that it's something any Solar Exalt could theoretically get.
The question had an easy answer in 1E and 2E: "Because FATE or Feng Shui or Burning Wheel might be better engines at being pulp or wuxia, but they're not better at being Exalted." By blatantly ignoring whether this makes sense within the setting, Ex3E's engine may have issues succeeding at that.
Except they don't. The rules make the setting impossible. I get on D&D's case on wizard supremacy because the rules people use for wizards make the setting described impossible. I don't see why I shouldn't get on Exalted's case because the rules people use for Exalts make the setting described impossible. And as for 'fun experience for the world as-is', why, specifically, does this make the world more fun? There's the whole "invincible Elders" criticism here.
And Exalted wasn't simulationist? Despite the fact that motes were a thing that actually existed, that Health Levels actually represented your health, etc etc? Exalted, and the Storyteller system are fundamentally simulationist, instead of fundamentally narrativist systems like FATE, where instead of health and willpower you have 'consequences' which are arbitrarily defined.
Just because you don't understand what I'm getting at doesn't make it a meltdown. What I'm getting at is that if you're going to start justifying things that ignore the setting out of 'it makes for a fun game', it opens you up to a lot more questions, because every one of these things you add in makes it increasingly hard to defend your artistic vision. A game isn't just a setting, or a series of mechanics.
No, it's just what the implications of "who cares if this Charm that any Solar, even a very young one, could theoretically get, breaks the most important part of the setting which illustrates the thematics of the setting best?" is the conclusion "we don't care if the setting is reflected in the mechanics at all".
Again, the point being made was that one of the criticisms leveled there was that it wasn't Usurpation-OK and it also sucked. In fact, I would daresay that Exalted 2E's problem was more one of failing to think about how to best simulate the setting it was supposed to simulate, rather than being too close to the setting.
So what was so different about the First Age, in terms of metaphysics, that modeling the current age doesn't model the First Age? The Primordial War is a maybe thing (of course, if you model a Primordial as a campaign module, instead of a character... suddenly things start working a lot better), but the First Age was supposed to have Solars and Lunars and Sidereals with much the same powers as existed today, just with more wacky magical artifacts and whatnot.
That will be for you to decide when the game releases and you dig into the system. If you don't like it, I imagine you won't use it. It's very good for doing Exalted stuff in Exalted's world.
There's really nothing I can say here other than you're playing it wrong. The Usurpation is an event that happened, and it was important, but it's over and done with. It's not something the game is concerning itself with. It's ancient history. The game is focused on the now. And again, any criticism you have of illegally leaked material should bear in mind that material is actively being tested and undergoing revisions.
Not trying to model the First Age is not the same as not modeling the time the game actually takes place in.
The invincible elders don't exist. There are no ancient Super Saiyan Goku Solars in the world. As for the rules, they're never going to cover the First Age or times before that, man. If that's a dealbreaker for you, them's the beats, but how it is.
Your traits represented these things; they were not actually these things. People in Creation don't have health levels. They have organs, and nerves, and blood vessels, and muscle and bone and sinew and their bodies respond to shock and trauma in various ways etc etc. The map is not the territory. They are more simulationist than some other systems, but they ultimately remain abstractions.
Ask whatever questions you want. The answer is "it's arbitrary fiat; that's how game creation works. The creators decide on things they believe fit or are good or fun and include them and excise that which they do not". There's no universal law or principle guiding design.
No one at all has said anything remotely like that. It's really hard to not call you drama queens names when you start getting so melodramatically indignant and lie through your teeth.
Usurpation-OK is not a metric the developers or playtesters have any concerns over. If it is important to you, your values diverge from the official Exalted vision and there are strong odds you won't be happy.
Nothing was different metaphysically. It was just much higher power. That upper limit of power can't coexist with the power the game is intended to focus on.
Creation was not always going to be as ridiculously huge as it ended up being. The "map expansion" thing happened because they wrote the core and most or all of Scavenger Sons, before Geoff decided that instead of roughly Mediterranean in scale it would be roughly actual Earth in scale. It was "utterly butchered" almost from the start. This problem was never really fixed for two whole editions, though it's one of the things EX3 is almost certainly going to knock out of the park (thanks in large part to Eric Minton and Robert Vance).
All the "game as physics engine" stuff was never actually built into the game from the start. It was post-hoc, both editions, mostly by freelancers going their own way. It's good to have a game that does its best to represent the fiction it's meant to help create, but it's a fool's errand to try to produce some kind of box that spits out the fiction like it's a math problem. Related: The core system, which even heavily modified in EX3 is still there, cannot adequately support the central, intended gameplay experience and "Usurpation-OK" at the same time to the degree many people seem to expect or desire. EX2 is about the best of all these things that you're going to get, and it's a steaming pile, so if you really want that game you're probably going to have to make it yourself.
You guys should probably go ahead and just ban Theion as soon as possible. This is just what he does.
Violation of Com.Com III (7)
Why do you even post on Exalted threads anymore, Plague? Surely you get the rape ghost cooties. shoo. Or put your money where your mouth is, nut up, and argue against what I'm saying, instead of whining like you're so accustomed to.
Don't be a bitch, bitch.
Don't be a bitch, bitch.
I think that's a bit of a tragedy honestly. I think the time where mechanics stop being 'adequate' and start being 'excellent' is when the mechanics stop being a neutral framework that lets you adjudicate exactly what happens in the story that could be literally anything else, and start being an active way of telling the story. GURPS when running gritty military commando fiction. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020's combat systems for Cyberpunk gaming. The very best moments of oWoD gaming experiences (as contrasted to the times where you work against the dice). Nobilis.
I don't think they need to be a physics engine, but that's only because the term 'physics engine' implies a lot of fiddliness that honestly isn't necessary for simulationism. I just think that mechanics do make explicit statements about What The Setting Is, and when you have mechanics that can't support the setting (like the whole "you can't actually stab high-essence Solars to death" when being able to stab anyone to death is kind of important to the setting) that's generally a bad sign.
(Also, oh hey @Plague of Hats. Last time I saw you was on SA!)
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This [mechanics as flavor] is in no way incompatible with mechanics being gamist. As an example, the whole momentum thing that we've been hinted at (not mentioning anything specific here) clearly generals a flavor and tone that are specifically chosen to be a bit cinematic despite, in-character, it being a very serious and lethal fight.
I believe the idea is that you don't /have/ any of those Elders anymore, and thus there's no need to model them if modeling them detracts from the system as a whole.
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Yeah I think that the whole problem here is that Solars need to be BEATABLE in some way. Dragonblooded Wyld Hunts need to be a threat rather than something Doctor Doomlight just laughs off because he has a combination of Charms and assets that make him unkillable no matter what
It isn't, but Exalted is still primarily simulationist. You have specific Charms, which are a real thing in the game world, which run on motes, which are also a real thing in the gameworld, and simply because they've changed the combat system to simulate the environment better by removing the binary distinction between 'hitting' and 'missing' doesn't change that it's not simulationist. In fact, I'd argue that it's more simulationist. Even when martial artists have their blows blocked or deflected or miss, they are working towards a goal.
Except there are 150 Solars, and any one of them could become one of those Elders, which leads to the exact same problem. First guy to get to this point gets a massive advantage and should be able to lord it over everyone, until other people get to this point and it sort of kind of becomes a game of MAD, because Creation is big and you can't stop Solar Doombots from wrecking your nations. If you wanted to make a commentary on how mutually assured destruction guarantees peace, that's one thing, but I don't think they've thought it out that far.
And 100 Abyssals and 50 Infernals, and both of those could theoretically have similar death-cheating charms. In fact, Abyssals, being so closely associated with death, probably are just as good at doing it as Solars.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The problem with talking people down about having meltdowns is that when you have one yourself you end up looking like a dork.
Posts where the only content is insults directed at a user aren't kosher. It's a waste of our bandwidth and a violation of the standards to which you have agreed to by posting here.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Oh, huh. I did not know that, thanks for explaining!
Ex2 was simulationist.
Ex2 sucked. A number of people actively did their best to avoid combat because it was honestly painful.
Notably, the specific Charms are also a post-hoc thing, and it again shows.
To a certain extent, one could call that simulationist, but it specifically aims for a cinematic game backing a gritty world. A bit like HP in D&D. The intent is clearly that the combat is, relatively speaking, relaxed in the OOC, rather than as intensive and on-the-edge-of-lethality as it is IC.
Or they don't, or they do and the campaign ends at the point that they pick up a bunch of Elder Charms, the way other games end at Epic.
I don't much like the doombots, but I don't think the doom-bots are intended to necessarily stick. I think they're taking a few shots of shit at the wall not to see if it sticks, but what sort of pattern it makes. Which is something that they nominally had the luxury of doing, since it was nominally not intended for public consumption.
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Look, this simulationist shit is silly and just distracting people from the important things.
Can we just drop it? Nobody gives a shit about it, not really. Its just a mechanism to ignore peoples arguments.
Can we just drop it? Nobody gives a shit about it, not really. Its just a mechanism to ignore peoples arguments.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
i think the main problem with the size isn't the size itself, but rather the density, things seem spread out a bit too much, worst case was the west, an entire direction without much in it.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Yeah, this. The map is populated like a continent, rather than an entire world.
As far as I remember, the reason they expanded a map that staff working on it had already previously called too large was to have enough room to add a hell of a lot of new cool stuff.
That's an element of it, I think maybe even mentioned in some of Geoff's commentary somewhere. It just ended up being horribly botched because the same couple dozen places got talked about constantly and some writers acted like cities thousands of miles apart were adjacent. Also the increasingly easy-seeming access to futurist-levels of fast travel and cargo hauling.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
....
I am very glad that I went for a walk to cool down, because replying to this bit of genius debating on your part might gotten me banned. Have fun with your arguments and thank you for making my point for me.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
You may be missing the point where MJ12 is not even trying to defend 2e's system. What I believe MJ12 is asking for is a) the mechanics reflect the types of stories exalted is inclined to tell and b) the powers actually be things that are reflected in the setting. So for example, Sorcery's instant communication over range, or Wyld Shaping Techniques power to make new land, actually be things that are reflected on the setting.
So while perfect Upsuration-Ok is likely a pipe dream (we're talking an event with a minimum of hundreds of elders in play, crazy artifacts and plenty of unique powers, its really easy to justify a lot) asking the team to avoid things like DotFA charms or Infernal Akuma that would utterly warp the setting into unrecognizable forms is probably not to much to ask. Or, to mention something more recent, Exalted Modern's 'conspiracy' that requires you completely ignore the realities of Infernals to make work.
That said, I think everyone can agree to a system that his less tiny pieces everywhere then 2e had. That, IMHO, was a major part of Exalted 2e's system problems: it was way to fucking complicated (that, and sections of the book seem to have been written without looking at the other sections of the book). There are so many points where they could have trimmed things back a little, and it would have made things less painful. It wasn't really helped when certain books got more interested in hammering home thematic points and play style then having fun (ABYSSALS).
TL;DR: The capabilities of the Exalted should influence the setting. Part of the point is to give you crazy things you can do in the setting (by example sometimes, see the Bull of the North) and then let you do them.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
He may or may not have been correct, but you acting like a total shitheel hurt your arguments more than helped it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that most of your decently argued points were rendered worthless when you lashed out at Plague like that.
You fucking moron.
Ex2 sucked not because it was simulationist, but because it failed to simulate the universe in a playable manner. It's the difference between say, Star Trek: Starfleet Command and Battlecruiser 3000 AD. Post-hoc abilities are an entirely valid design space, but being able to declare that I was always telepresencing a HITMark in a Technocracy game and being able to declare "SURPRISE! That was a Doombot that happened to have Solar charms!" in a Exalted game are entirely different, because, well, in one game it's expected that you can pull off crazy bullshit like that and in the other game killing people is supposed to be the easiest way to solve problems.
If this charm is basically 'end the game, you win', why have it?
More importantly because this has a huge permanent cost, I think it's actually a Bad Charm all-around. It's largely only useful for NPCs with arbitrary amounts of XP, and it's not very Solar-thematic. Like, Solar "Ha Ha I Didn't Die" Charms I'd accept would be things like Resistance Charms which you activate in response to a killing blow which immediately take you out of battle, but shockingly enough oh look, they can't find the body and oh look you're still alive. Obviously, if they do find the body then you're shit out of luck. Things like "I get right back up because I am just that righteous and noble". Not "I have a robot body double." No, that smacks to me of, I dunno, Alchemicals, or maybe some weird Cecelyne sand-double charm, and in both cases I'd trade a high non-renewable resource cost (XP) for having significant in-game drawbacks which don't permanently reduce your permanent ability to run around and Do Things.
Or maybe Crafting XP or whatever is only relevant if you're a crafter? Who knows. That'd seem to be kind of overcomplicating things, though, if you have fifty different flavors of XP, one for each type of long-term dramatic action.