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General Exalted Thread

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Heyo! Time for more Craft Rambling!

This is not a system, it's barely even an attempt at house rules. Think of it more like some formalized advice on how to run 'Craft' plots.

So: we accept that questing for Exotic Components is boring and clumsy. The ideas I'm going to talk about are for the people who don't have crazy magical infrastructure to make lots and lots of components for them. This is for all the 'Early to mid-game' crafters.

The idea is as follows: Don't make players spend time paying FOR an artifact. Make them spend time/effort paying BACK- usually during other plots so that they mesh together more fluidly or serve as a way to 'fill in' time between other plots.

If a player wants an Exotic Component, they must go out into the world and risk the consequences. For the sake of game pacing, you don't need to roleplay this out from scene to scene, but you must acknowledge an Action has happened. Time was spent, the character did one thing at the expense of another, etc.

From here, the player should be made aware that because they Did A Thing, they A: Got their component, and B: did something that will come up later. Think of it less like having to checkbox all these things to get your component, and more generating a list of potential complicationsin the future.

Now, this 'action' doesn't have to be stunted or rolled- but a player should be encouraged to stunt it. When the character writes a stunt describing the general direction they're going for a component, that is a signal to the storyteller "I want to engage this somehow."

The stunt can also inform the ST about how attentive the player is to detail, how cautions or incautious they're being, etc. The point is, stunts in this situation add useful detail.

So you have your player who wants this thing. You both agree that it takes Time, Effort, and invokes a character's traits like Resources, Backing, Allies, etc. It's critical part here, is that it's not happening in a vacuum. The other critical part, is that it's not taxing the rest of the game with a big obnoxious 'Help the Crafter!' sidequest.

Taking this to the next phase- your character has taken Actions and Gotten his Stuff. He can do his Craft Rolls and make his artifact. Now he has his artifact. THIS is when the Storyteller starts invoking all the things he had to do to GET his artifact- now the player has big row of Things to use his artifact on or protect it from.

I think I'm going to stop this idea here for now, but if I continue it, the next step will be throwing down some ideas for how to mechanize it and offering dot-ratings for things like favors/obligations, enemies, hazards, etc.
 
Jon Chung said:
Stop. That's crazy. Charms are mechanical widgets. They are supposed to do specific mechanical things. Porting Charms to a different system makes no sense whatsoever. Make new mechanical widgets to fit the new context.
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Eh, there is the approach where an power (Charm, Spell, Psi-Gift etc.) is supposed to game-mechanically represent what it does descriptively. But I guess you're more experienced with the system and know better about where this approach breaks down if applied to Exalted.

The Laurent said:
Scenarii.

Scenarii.

...Scenarii.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Scenarios.

Now, you're not a native-born Englishperson, you're French...

Which doesn't have Scenarii either, so that's not actually an excuse.

I don't know why, but I have a nit and I'm going to pick it.

Also, pick, like, a scenario-idea and run with it. I'm sure I'm annoying some people in the WOD thread with my continued ASOIAF/Mage stuff, but at least I'm developing one idea. Not five.
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So now you have a reason to suspect that ES is a native-born Russian Spy. (You should probably keep that information to yourself as insurance and set up a deadman's switch to reveal to the Empress/UCS/TED/etc. as appropriate.)
 
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Imrix said:
Not quite. It's important to remember that having high Clarity does not mean being emotionally dead, but rather that the character views their emotions through a lens of hyper-rational utility. So, at Clarity 8 we cannot maintain Intimacies towards broad social groups (which would cut out our our Intimacy of Loyalty to the PRT), and we cannot maintain Intimacies towards individuals or small social groups unless, and this is important, unless they provide material support to our Motivation. So, let's take some examples.
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Shifting this discussion here from the Alchemical Solutions thread.

That particular implementation of Clarity never made much sense to me.
Matropoli/Patropoli are high-Clarity Alchemicals, forming the centerpiece of their nationstate's infrastructure.
And these guys tend to be the most devoted, since a lot of Alchemicals choose to eschew that last step where they abandon what's left of their independence for the good of the Populat.

So how does it make sense that they lack the ability to maintain Intimacies towards broad social groups, like their nation state's citizenry?
The municipal maintenance department that keeps things intact? The research department with whom they research new charms?
The creche workers of one city sector?

Doesn't seem to make sense.
 
uju32 said:
Shifting this discussion here from the Alchemical Solutions thread.

That particular implementation of Clarity never made much sense to me.
Matropoli/Patropoli are high-Clarity Alchemicals, forming the centerpiece of their nationstate's infrastructure.
And these guys tend to be the most devoted, since a lot of Alchemicals choose to eschew that last step where they abandon what's left of their independence for the good of the Populat.

So how does it make sense that they lack the ability to maintain Intimacies towards broad social groups, like their nation state's citizenry?
The municipal maintenance department that keeps things intact? The research department with whom they research new charms?
The creche workers of one city sector?

Doesn't seem to make sense.
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Actually sounds like a standard downfall of a political person.
A politician who starts out with wanting to serve the good of the people.
But then accepts a devil's bargain where he sacrifices the good of a minority for the good of the majority.
Then, with the excuse of doing what needs to be done, he tells the people how they need to tolerate just a little bit more of bad stuff for the greater good.
Then he finds that he has no qualms with sacrificing the good of the people for the sake of the state . . . and that in his current vision, what a surprise, the good of the state is no longer in any way linked to the good of the people of whom the state consists.

"You ordered the execution and utilisation of 99% of the population of Freedomlandia, and turned the other 1% into mindless cyborgs!"
"Well yeah, but now that 1% of mindless cyborgs can guarantee the protection of Freedomlandia from all existential threats, domestic and foreign!"
 
vicky_molokh said:
Eh, there is the approach where an power (Charm, Spell, Psi-Gift etc.) is supposed to game-mechanically represent what it does descriptively. But I guess you're more experienced with the system and know better about where this approach breaks down if applied to Exalted.
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The capabilities granted by Charms are in-setting. The mechanical widgets themselves are not. For example, take the Solar War tree. We have the ability to manipulate morale (reinforcing our own, shattering the enemy's), the ability to control our army effectively despite communication problems and the ability to see everything on the field as if we were playing Starcraft, giving ourselves unparalleled battlefield awareness and army reaction speed.

If your system doesn't have morale, then you don't include the morale bits as-is, you fold them into the abstraction handling morale and design the tree accordingly. If your system doesn't have discrete unit control, you don't include those, you fold them into the abstraction handling unit control. The important thing is not to translate charms 1:1 in some kind of slavish imitation, it is to make charms that properly interact with and manipulate your new system such that the capability-set is present.
 
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uju32 said:
Doesn't seem to make sense.
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It has never made sense in either edition, and runs about as counter to the Alchemical thematic mandate and the status of technology and its place within Autochthonia as Gremlin Syndrome is a poor-man's Cyberpsychosis. In a wider setting where you can have your soul sorcerously plucked out of your body and placed within a dog and transformed back to a human again with no lasting ill-effects.

It is a completely artificial conflict which exists for no other reason than to be a conflict, and 2e doubling down on this by attempting to mechanicize the difference by forcing you to shed Intimacies only makes matters worse, not better.
 
vicky_molokh said:
Then he finds that he has no qualms with sacrificing the good of the people for the sake of the state . . . and that in his current vision, what a surprise, the good of the state is no longer in any way linked to the good of the people of whom the state consists.
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That's not how it works; they're perfectly capable of determining that the good of the people is what determines the good of the state, because the state is composed of its people. And they do, in fact, usually do so.

This "the good of the state is no longer linked to the good of the people" is a failing of the human mind, who can't keep all these variables in place at once, who can't evaluate a situation on a hundred different levels as once. It is not a failing of Patropoli. They aren't literal genie AIs, they're hyperintelligent people who can't maintain emotional connections to things that aren't ideologies and directives. They just work towards the well-being of the state (which includes its citizens) for ideological reasons rather than reasons of direct emotional attachment.
 
Jon Chung said:
The capabilities granted by Charms are in-setting. The mechanical widgets themselves are not. For example, take the Solar War tree. We have the ability to manipulate morale (reinforcing our own, shattering the enemy's), the ability to control our army effectively despite communication problems and the ability to see everything on the field as if we were playing Starcraft, giving ourselves unparalleled battlefield awareness and army reaction speed.

If your system doesn't have morale, then you don't include the morale bits as-is, you fold them into the abstraction handling morale and design the tree accordingly. If your system doesn't have discrete unit control, you don't include those, you fold them into the abstraction handling unit control. The important thing is not to translate charms 1:1 in some kind of slavish imitation, it is to make charms that properly interact with and manipulate your new system such that the capability-set is present.
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Yes, slavish imitation is bad.
But attempts to find the closest way to represent an in-setting phenomenon with game-mechanics is not inherently bad.

Either way, the easy-vs-hard conversion is largely a matter of finding ways to represent described phenomena of old Charms in the new system, and coming up with totally new Charms that manipulate the new features of the new system. E.g. a hypothetical Sail Charm that grants your underlings the Marine special feature (making them much more useful in amphibious assaults and boarding actions) would be of the latter type, while making Heroism-Encouraging Presence grant an 'abstracted' bonus (because morale is considered to be largely part of troop quality, and deserters are considered to be part of Casualties in GMC) would be closer to the former.

In fact, coming up with new Charms that interact with bits of the system that didn't exist in Exalted Mass Combat is kinda tempting. Such as granting special features, reducing cost/time to Raise/upgrade/maintain troops, afflicting the enemy with Disloyalty, or even reducing casualties after the battle (by optimising triage and medevac). It does seem to run the risk of making the rework bigger on the inside . . .
 
vicky_molokh said:
In fact, coming up with new Charms that interact with bits of the system that didn't exist in Exalted Mass Combat is kinda tempting. Such as granting special features, reducing cost/time to Raise/upgrade/maintain troops, afflicting the enemy with Disloyalty, or even reducing casualties after the battle (by optimising triage and medevac). It does seem to run the risk of making the rework bigger on the inside . . .
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This is a superior option when you're talking about Solar charms. Remember, the design space for Solar Charms is incredibly broad, because it covers everything humans can be good at and then some. The 17 3E War Charms don't serve to proscribe what Solar War can do, they just serve as examples to push you in the right direction.
 
Name: Thousand-Faces Game
Artifact 2
Attune: None

A Thousand-Faces Game is a magical deck of square playing cards. When not in use, they appear identical and unadorned, save for a simple mark painted with powdered blue jade ink. By commiting a single mote, the user may bid the cards become any known game in all of Creation, with the cards changing size and appearance as needed. This transformation lasts for the scene.

As a side effect of this commitment, the user may reflexively change any card in the deck at any time. This grants +3 automatic successes on any Larceny-based action to cheat with cards.

The true power of this deck however, is that of a teaching aide- spending another mote after selecting a game allows the deck to play itself against the user, up to and including projecting an illusion of an opponent to practice bluffing and other social tricks. The Thousand-Faces game has Larceny 4, Socialize 4, a +3 Lore specialty in 'Games of Creation' and another +3 Larceny specialty in 'Cheating at Cards'.

Training times for the traits listed above are measured in days, instead of weeks.

These artifacts are obviously banned in all reputable casinos, and unbelievably common in illegal Dynastic gambling dens.
 
Shyft said:
. By commiting a single mote, the user may bid the cards become any known game in all of Creation, with the cards changing size and appearance as needed. This transformation lasts for the scene..
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Any known card game or typical game (mostly curious if it can become a gateway set)
 
Sucal said:
Any known card game or typical game (mostly curious if it can become a gateway set)
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What does a gateway set include anyway? I want my character to play it, but I don't have a way to describe the set or the moves in the game besides "Uh, like chess, yeah, but I, uh, put my Mortal forward to defend my, uh, Manse, against the enemy, uh, Yeddim", and that's kinda vague and un-exotic.
 
vicky_molokh said:
What does a gateway set include anyway? I want my character to play it, but I don't have a way to describe the set or the moves in the game besides "Uh, like chess, yeah, but I, uh, put my Mortal forward to defend my, uh, Manse, against the enemy, uh, Yeddim", and that's kinda vague and un-exotic.
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It's literally and exactly what you just described- almost like Calvinball; the important part is that Gateway is under Lore or War as far as 'Actions' go, usually.
 
vicky_molokh said:
What does a gateway set include anyway? I want my character to play it, but I don't have a way to describe the set or the moves in the game besides "Uh, like chess, yeah, but I, uh, put my Mortal forward to defend my, uh, Manse, against the enemy, uh, Yeddim", and that's kinda vague and un-exotic.
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As far as I know, Gateway's gameplay or contents have never been explained, or even sketched out in any useful detail.
 
I've always thought of Gateway as being similar to Go, not chess - the Realm is, after all, "Chinese empire" coded. I picture a Gateway board as having several boards - one major and several minor around it - possibly representing the Blessed Isle and various Threshold satrapies. The rules are a little more complex than Go's, but still essentially boil down to territory control - in a sense, it's a metaphor for warring Houses within the Realm who have satrapies on the minor boards (where their power is strong) and holdings on the Blessed Isle (where they're one among many), and who are trying to gain dominance from within the overall empire.
 
Hello, just registered here and I have a question about Lunars; I've heard that Grabowski's original concept about them were about being the Princes of the Wyld returning to overtake Creation (Explaining why they have so little importance in it's history); Is there more information about said vision, and if so, where?
 
Aleph said:
I've always thought of Gateway as being similar to Go, not chess - the Realm is, after all, "Chinese empire" coded. I picture a Gateway board as having several boards - one major and several minor around it - possibly representing the Blessed Isle and various Threshold satrapies. The rules are a little more complex than Go's, but still essentially boil down to territory control - in a sense, it's a metaphor for warring Houses within the Realm who have satrapies on the minor boards (where their power is strong) and holdings on the Blessed Isle (where they're one among many), and who are trying to gain dominance from within the overall empire.
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Plausible.

Given the name it might even be a thought exercise in gaining control of the Imperial Manse, which would be the titular 'gateway' to Creation wide power.
 
BrainInAJar said:
Hello, just registered here and I have a question about Lunars; I've heard that Grabowski's original concept about them were about being the Princes of the Wyld returning to overtake Creation (Explaining why they have so little importance in it's history); Is there more information about said vision, and if so, where?
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That initial vision basically only exists in rumour, but you might check Chancel Aleph for a few Exalted quotes about the subject. I think Holden's is probably the closest to what you're looking for, ah, Where It All Went Wrong.
 
Aleph said:
I've always thought of Gateway as being similar to Go, not chess - the Realm is, after all, "Chinese empire" coded. I picture a Gateway board as having several boards - one major and several minor around it - possibly representing the Blessed Isle and various Threshold satrapies. The rules are a little more complex than Go's, but still essentially boil down to territory control - in a sense, it's a metaphor for warring Houses within the Realm who have satrapies on the minor boards (where their power is strong) and holdings on the Blessed Isle (where they're one among many), and who are trying to gain dominance from within the overall empire.
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Except where it's Greco-Roman Empire coded . . .

But I do kinda like the idea of it being go-like (at least that sounds more fun than chess to me), and would like to find some sort of ground for this hypothesis (as opposed to it being, say, like Shogi to some extent).

Also, if it's about trying to seize the Blessed Isle, then it needs to prevent the creation of two eyes on the Blessed Isle . . . or to lack the two-eye principle entirely. That . . . would sound like not like Go at all, to me.
 
Honestly, what major elements* of the Realm are rooted in the Roman Empire?

* No, the offhand note that their navy uses mostly triremes is not a major element.
 
Honestly, what major elements* of the Realm are rooted in the Roman Empire?
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Deliberative which is Senate by other name and nothing like it was ever present in China's history. Legions, which are bit generic in "yeah, kinda like almost all descriptions of Roman military in fiction, ever" way.
 
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