Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
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So, curious, how bad would it be to run Exalted with timetravel allowed?
General Exalted Thread
Humanity never existed, the Incarna are locked-program spirit processes which maintain the cosmic functions of Creation without pause or error, and there's never been a Primordial of Industry.
That's the short-list.
Foyada
Chara Apologist
Afaict, there are two main problems that need to be solved before you can allow time travel, one ingame, one metagame.
1. Ingame, Can the usurpation happen when first age solars have acausal information networks?
2. Metagame, Do actions really have meaning if all their consequences can be unmade by more time travel?
1. Ingame, Can the usurpation happen when first age solars have acausal information networks?
2. Metagame, Do actions really have meaning if all their consequences can be unmade by more time travel?
Ignoring the setting implications:
Not worse than any other rpg? By which I mean it all depends on how you handle it, but I've heard that it's quite easy to screw up or get screwed over by timetravel when used through the freeform medium of rpgs.
Didn't timetravel exist during the Primordial War?
I believe that the only canonical information is that weapons that involved time were used, though rarely due to the danger involved.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
Who knows. She Who Lives in Her Name threw a bitch fit when she surrendered and found out that Creation held no place for her. She is the Principle of Hierarchy, and threw 3 of her 10,000 spheres at Creation, wiping out who knows how much land and who knows what concepts.
Plus, I always saw the Primordials getting fed up with the Wyld always undoing their shit, coming back to life when they're killed and whatnot, so the Primordials made a proto-causality to prevent all such shenanigans. A timeline will not let itself loop so easily.
I would hope not, because the only way it could have would involve top-to-bottom rewriting of all Creation, across billions of independent essence-wielding actors, because what we know of How Time Works requires going forever-forwards. So any attempt to "travel to the past" would be more akin to a cosmic-level Shaping reset switch a la Groundhog Day than "altering timelines."
Jon Chung
=][=
Pretty bad, since half the point of the game is to give players monstrous amounts of power and laugh when they use it without thinking and fuck everything up. If they can reload their savegames to have never fucked up, this is lost.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
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Er, not resets, I mean actual physical time travel while having to maintain the cause-and-effect line.
- Location
- Ottawa
Before the Three Spheres Cataclysm, time travel was possible. But it was preposterously difficult, and the effort required was proportional to the strength of the traveler's Essence; even the full might of a Primordial couldn't send anything with Charms more than a minute or so into the past.
Sometimes mortal messengers come from the future, but even with elaborate supernaturally-reinforced password schemes they could be infiltrators from the other side. Reading their minds won't do much good, since both Exalts and Primordials can easily make a mortal into an unwitting agent. So the primary effect is to make the PCs even more paranoid and their schemes even more complicated.
Also, everyone is very scared of creating a grandfather paradox. If you send someone back and their actions make it impossible for you to do exactly that at some point in the future, everybody loses. Except maybe the Raksha, who dislike this linear time thing entirely.
Maybe that's what the Three Spheres Cataclysm was...
(In case it's not obvious, I made all that up. Think it's probably game-able, though.)
On an unrelated note, Godbound funded and I got the latest beta document. Remember how I said it wasn't very Exalted?
The themed Godbound changed that. They're not even Exalted with the serial numbers filed off, they're Exalted with masking tape covering half the serial numbers.
Sometimes mortal messengers come from the future, but even with elaborate supernaturally-reinforced password schemes they could be infiltrators from the other side. Reading their minds won't do much good, since both Exalts and Primordials can easily make a mortal into an unwitting agent. So the primary effect is to make the PCs even more paranoid and their schemes even more complicated.
Also, everyone is very scared of creating a grandfather paradox. If you send someone back and their actions make it impossible for you to do exactly that at some point in the future, everybody loses. Except maybe the Raksha, who dislike this linear time thing entirely.
Maybe that's what the Three Spheres Cataclysm was...
(In case it's not obvious, I made all that up. Think it's probably game-able, though.)
On an unrelated note, Godbound funded and I got the latest beta document. Remember how I said it wasn't very Exalted?
The themed Godbound changed that. They're not even Exalted with the serial numbers filed off, they're Exalted with masking tape covering half the serial numbers.
Jon Chung
=][=
No practical difference: if you can undo actions already taken, through whatever method, you lose the "hahaha look what you just did, gotta live with it, O God-King of Holy Nuclear Fusion" factor. Whether you do this by reloading your savegame or physically going back in time to tell your past self to knock it off is unimportant.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I won't lie, I think "rewind the last three seconds" effects like Sands of Time are cool enough I'd have little compunction putting them in Exalted.
Jon Chung
=][=
"Hmm, is that dude actually a disguised Infernal?"
"No idea, man."
"I'll chop his head off, if he dies he's not one."
> SLICE
"Uh, whoops, he's not. I'll just undo the last thing I did, no harm no foul~"
I don't want to see this, it doesn't work with the aforementioned "live with what you've done" thing Exalted has going.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Heh, sure, why not.
In Mage Acanthus cannot easily do this because people can spot them having done it with Time Sight, so I would probably include a clause to such powers that would make them inconvenient - but not impossible - to use in such a fashion.
Jon Chung
=][=
Not worth the absolute headache it would take to prevent problems. Just state "you cannot undo what you have done by any means" and be done with it, there are other cool things that exist which are usable without being fundamentally incompatible with the game.
Can't the Yozi's do that now, in Malfeas, with a five day limit?
On a somewhat related note:
I think the last time I read an Exalted book was the backer release of Ex3. I need to get back into it.
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Jon Chung
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Thank 2E's lack of editorial control for that.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Still angry about the Lilunu Incident I see.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
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- She/Her
No, he's just terrible at punning.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
That's fair.
I'm of two minds on the topic. On one hand, the Yozis built time in the first place so if anyone was capable of mucking with time, it'd be them. The warning against asking them to do it, "the past 5 days of your life are at the mercy of a mad titan," might not be enough to dissuade a desperate enough (or foolish enough) person to take the chance. And then there's the issues that were already brought up.
And if they could time-travel, why didn't they do it when the Exalted first started the war? Were the costs insane? Was The Lidless Eye that Sees the only one capable of it? I think it makes the setting more coherent to say that as long as time exists, you can't go backwards.
Of course, a sufficiently motivated Exalted could probably break Time by chokeslamming it, but then the game is already entirely different.
I can accept the idea that a single Primordial might be able to rearrange their internal Mythos in such a way that something 'didn't happen' in the same way Raksha can Shape away things like 'just totally got stabbed by a thousand arrows to the face.' Affecting any being who has a will not bound to the Primordial's own though... That's impossible.
But not because it's time travel.
It's impossible because you are trying to reshape reality and if there's anything out of order the attempt falls apart like a house of cards.
But not because it's time travel.
It's impossible because you are trying to reshape reality and if there's anything out of order the attempt falls apart like a house of cards.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Open question to the thread:
What do you think a dual-wielding wind-and-fire-wheel Martial Art would look like?
What do you think a dual-wielding wind-and-fire-wheel Martial Art would look like?
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
Hey, does anyone have a link to the Kerisgame beginning? I read the most recent arc, but then ran out.