notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
The begginning isn't available. This is the earliest set, with 'Further Tales' linking to the next in the set.
General Exalted Thread
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
Having to maintain the cause and effect line means you can't actually do this.
- Location
- London, England
So, as an update from the Kickstarter:
Maybe next week, then, or slightly later if something has botched. Personally, I'll be glad to finally see it arrive. The option to get an at-cost physical version is also pretty tempting, since I'm aiming to play this with my local group and most of them find PDFs all kinds of clunky.
Kickstarter update said:
Maybe next week, then, or slightly later if something has botched. Personally, I'll be glad to finally see it arrive. The option to get an at-cost physical version is also pretty tempting, since I'm aiming to play this with my local group and most of them find PDFs all kinds of clunky.
Isn't that basically Crane Style?
To clarify, since it seems to be unclear, RAG appears to be asking about time travel of the single-fixed-timeline, "if your future self comes back in time and punches you in the face, you are guaranteed to go back in time and punch your past self in the face, because it already happened; conversely, if you haven't been punched in the face by your future self, you can never go back in time and punch your past self no matter how much you want to" variety. It certainly doesn't violate "no takebacks", but I have a hard time picturing how you could actually make it work in a tabletop roleplaying game. By definition, it removes an awful lot of agency from the players.
They have music suites? That's an interesting addon. I wonder what sort of themes they'll have chosen for the Chosen.
If it is anything less than a series of super-bombastic anime-Opening inspirational pieces, then someone has led them terribly astray.
- Location
- Washington
The Exalted story a friend of mine is running decided to take an interesting turn today. Specifically, my E5 Slayer who favors Infernal Monster Style, Malfeas Charms, and Adorjan Charms got involved in another group's campaign because the remainder of my group had lost interest in Exalted, leaving my group going from three characters who...had, at best, agreed murdering each other wouldn't be profitable, to an entirely new group that was willing to accept a new member.
Now, the other group was a circle of six Solars, for a certain value of Solar. In character, the Dawn Caste was a brutal gang lord who retains all the nobility of a thug, the Zenith Caste is a holier-than-thou former Immaculate monk from House Mnemon who failed to Exalt as a Terrestrial, the Twilight Caste is a mad scientist who needs to DIE as soon as possible, the Night Caste is responsible for the death of the Dawn Caste's brother, sister, wife, and both of his children, and the Dawn Caste just found that out in this session, the Eclipse caste is a self-absorbed, spoiled daughter of a high-ranking member of the Guild who spent her formative years in high society, with all the morality and behavior that implies, and the second Dawn Caste is a Dragon Blooded spy for the Immaculate Order, which resulted in the circle's apparent fourth encounter with the Wyld Hunt this season, in-game.
Considering the arguments of the circle, my character, a Slayer with all the peaceful nature and temper control of Malfeas, was the voice of reason in that thrice-damned group! The Dawn Caste is like an akuma with Untamed Apocalypse Shintai, and the Storyteller was the only person stopping the Night Caste and the actual Dawn Caste from fighting each other...during the fight with the Wyld Hunt. Any advice on how to deal with the many and varied issues of that group in-character so my Slayer can go back to smashing things instead of being the voice of reason among SOLARS?
Now, the other group was a circle of six Solars, for a certain value of Solar. In character, the Dawn Caste was a brutal gang lord who retains all the nobility of a thug, the Zenith Caste is a holier-than-thou former Immaculate monk from House Mnemon who failed to Exalt as a Terrestrial, the Twilight Caste is a mad scientist who needs to DIE as soon as possible, the Night Caste is responsible for the death of the Dawn Caste's brother, sister, wife, and both of his children, and the Dawn Caste just found that out in this session, the Eclipse caste is a self-absorbed, spoiled daughter of a high-ranking member of the Guild who spent her formative years in high society, with all the morality and behavior that implies, and the second Dawn Caste is a Dragon Blooded spy for the Immaculate Order, which resulted in the circle's apparent fourth encounter with the Wyld Hunt this season, in-game.
Considering the arguments of the circle, my character, a Slayer with all the peaceful nature and temper control of Malfeas, was the voice of reason in that thrice-damned group! The Dawn Caste is like an akuma with Untamed Apocalypse Shintai, and the Storyteller was the only person stopping the Night Caste and the actual Dawn Caste from fighting each other...during the fight with the Wyld Hunt. Any advice on how to deal with the many and varied issues of that group in-character so my Slayer can go back to smashing things instead of being the voice of reason among SOLARS?
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Smack their heads together and announce that you are the alpha and they have to fall in line. Copious amounts of mutations and Dragon based shintai may be required
Or embrace your role as the nuclear powered voice of sanity.
On a more serious note, I looked up youtube.
Here's one possibility:
Tai Chi with Wind and Fire Wheels said:
Here's another:
To my untrained eye, it looks pretty similar to what you'd get with anyone dual-wielding war fans.
Quantumboost
Now with 50% more dots in Dimensional Science
- Location
- Ensemble Space
Acquire Tragic Love Amusement and Wind-Carried Passion. Use it to make all of them fall deeply in love with each other.
(Warning: TLA+WCP rewards showing affection towards, hurting, and teaching the target of the intimacy. Side-effects may include redefinition of the notion of 'love', yandere tendencies, and accruing stakers. Using this combination on Adorjan herself is not advised.)
For me the tried-and-true practice here is to ask the players themselves what they plan to accomplish through these conflicts, and let that help inform your in-character stance on things. Because you're going into these campaign/player dynamics as a latecomer, and different groups have different thresholds of infighting they allow among PCs, sometimes going all the way up to straight-up inter-party murder with no hard feelings.
You'll need to figure out where you stand as a player amidst all this before you can stake a solid position in-character, because it could very well be that those two players of the Night and Dawn already have something in mind and may just prefer to "settle it between themselves" than have the interference of a third party stonewalling them, even if its short-sighted to the group's overall goals. Some people just like playing in extremely divisive groups, to help encourage characters personalities to bounce off eachother in ways that propel the game forwards, rather than bring it grinding to a halt.
No telling if this is that kind of group or not, but asking about it certainly couldn't hurt. There's almost no bad time to go hashing out where player goals align with character and story arc goals, especially when you want to integrate into things easier.
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
get them drunk, by the time the hangover has faded your problem will be solved, one way or another.
Not at all. Just because you can't change history doesn't mean you can't change the past.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
...That is in fact exactly what it means.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Remember the Old Geezer law: No gaming is better than bad gaming.
That in mind, bring this up with your group and discuss it like reasonable adult human beings.
Not at all. History's what we know about the past. But the thing is, you never know everything about the universe you're in, so even if you have perfect memory you can never know the entirety of the past.
Here's the important bit: If you change the past without changing history, as far as you know, nothing's changed at all. Going forward, you may discover a few surprises... but up until the point you go back, there's nothing really different. You were always living in a changed world - you just didn't know it until you went back.
Neat little bit of metaphysics, there: if it's not possible to demonstrate that something exists, it doesn't, and if it's not possible to prove that two things are different, they aren't. If you haven't actually done anything, the universe isn't going to complain.
This leads to such things as the Chrono Trigger trick: replacing someone with a perfect clone at the instant of their death, so that everyone thinks they were dead. Alternatively, convincing everyone present at their "death" to fake it instead. Mind you, this doesn't work too well with Solars because of All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, Eye of the Unconquered Sun, and similar tricks - but you can do all sorts of similar fun things, and if you just ban paradoxes it leaves your timeline (and thus your gameplay experience) squeaky clean!
Here's the important bit: If you change the past without changing history, as far as you know, nothing's changed at all. Going forward, you may discover a few surprises... but up until the point you go back, there's nothing really different. You were always living in a changed world - you just didn't know it until you went back.
Neat little bit of metaphysics, there: if it's not possible to demonstrate that something exists, it doesn't, and if it's not possible to prove that two things are different, they aren't. If you haven't actually done anything, the universe isn't going to complain.
This leads to such things as the Chrono Trigger trick: replacing someone with a perfect clone at the instant of their death, so that everyone thinks they were dead. Alternatively, convincing everyone present at their "death" to fake it instead. Mind you, this doesn't work too well with Solars because of All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, Eye of the Unconquered Sun, and similar tricks - but you can do all sorts of similar fun things, and if you just ban paradoxes it leaves your timeline (and thus your gameplay experience) squeaky clean!
dash931
Conil
Oh, so basically, changing the past without looking like you've changed the past and thus setting up a stable time loop.
I'm reasonably certain you still can't do that.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Given that the biggest argument against time travel was violation of the "no takebacks" rule, one might suggest that "allowing takebacks if you're clever about it" is perhaps not a perfect solution.
- Location
- Washington
Thanks for the advice. Got in contact with those of the players I could, and found out their current plans. The circle is going in a few separate directions for the moment, the Dawn Caste to raise his Essence, the Night Caste to 'free' the Dawn of the 'chains' of his remaining family, gang, etc. So essentially, the plan is build the feud to truly incredible heights in order to inspire the other characters to get along just in order to get between them.
The Zenith Caste is currently infiltrating the Wyld Hunt, with the Eclipse for backup, in order to manipulate politics and remove a pair of NPC Abyssals that the circle ran into. The Twilight is traveling on her own business, intending to look into necromancy, while my Slayer is traveling with the Dragon Blood to rip apart a few annoying raksha.
Plans for the next session involve the behavior of the Zenith and Eclipse getting worse, the feud between Dawn and Night escalating in an attempt to force the circle together in character, the Twilight coming back with artifacts made from soulsteel that were forged by harvesting several villages, and myself and the Dragon Blood returning after destroying a freehold and significant fighting in a shadowland, so far.
It's enough to make me miss my old circle. I worked with a Fiend and a Defiler, and we built our characters to work together fairly well. The Fiend was a social monster, capable of manipulating cities and cults quickly and easily, giving us a support base and soldiers. The Defiler was a decent sorcerer, better with Craft (Vitriol) and Craft (Genesis) though, and kept us supplied with summoned First Circles, a low-grade behemoth or two, the rare elemental, artifacts, and monsters. Finally, I was the coven's fighter, with an unholy amount of soak, hardness, and ability to dish out damage. Essentially, we specialized in our Caste's roles, with the other two having cursory combat and defense Charms, enough to let them survive until my Slayer got into position to deal out several worlds of hurt. It worked well, letting us take out a Wyld Hunt consisting of about two thousand soldiers and six circles of Immaculate monks given a little forewarning, with the majority of the Exalt vs. Exalt combat falling to my Slayer...I burned motes like water that fight.
The Zenith Caste is currently infiltrating the Wyld Hunt, with the Eclipse for backup, in order to manipulate politics and remove a pair of NPC Abyssals that the circle ran into. The Twilight is traveling on her own business, intending to look into necromancy, while my Slayer is traveling with the Dragon Blood to rip apart a few annoying raksha.
Plans for the next session involve the behavior of the Zenith and Eclipse getting worse, the feud between Dawn and Night escalating in an attempt to force the circle together in character, the Twilight coming back with artifacts made from soulsteel that were forged by harvesting several villages, and myself and the Dragon Blood returning after destroying a freehold and significant fighting in a shadowland, so far.
It's enough to make me miss my old circle. I worked with a Fiend and a Defiler, and we built our characters to work together fairly well. The Fiend was a social monster, capable of manipulating cities and cults quickly and easily, giving us a support base and soldiers. The Defiler was a decent sorcerer, better with Craft (Vitriol) and Craft (Genesis) though, and kept us supplied with summoned First Circles, a low-grade behemoth or two, the rare elemental, artifacts, and monsters. Finally, I was the coven's fighter, with an unholy amount of soak, hardness, and ability to dish out damage. Essentially, we specialized in our Caste's roles, with the other two having cursory combat and defense Charms, enough to let them survive until my Slayer got into position to deal out several worlds of hurt. It worked well, letting us take out a Wyld Hunt consisting of about two thousand soldiers and six circles of Immaculate monks given a little forewarning, with the majority of the Exalt vs. Exalt combat falling to my Slayer...I burned motes like water that fight.
Not at all. The relevant question is "how much do you have to fake in order to take something back?"
Exalted has enough perfect-perception Charms and whatnot that it's not too hard to lock down most things the players do as unchangeable. Then this becomes entirely a plot device - you can bring back some ancient Solar that the players had nothing to do with killing because he randomly got himself ganked by Raksha or something, but of course that brings problems back with him.
Anyway, I'm not really arguing all that hard for time travel in Exalted - mostly, it's just that it's not at all true that single timeline time travel defeats the purpose of having time travel in the first place.
Okay, who let the Adjorian splintered gale get a exaltation?
Meldu, the Enforcer of Thought
Demon of the Second Circle
Warden Soul of the Arbitrator of Doctrine
In the city of demons there are those who have thoughts that do not fit in with Iasestus' vision of the world. Should they step upon the marble floors of the Arbitrator's domain he will notice them, and then he will send his warden soul to pluck such incorrect thoughts from their minds. Should other thoughts be taken away with them, then that is a righteous punishment for such impudence.
Meldu cuts a dashing figure, at least in his own opinion. His skin is an erratic pattern of hypnotic black and white swirls that leave him hard to see when he dances. He is stick thin, and his arms are nearly as long as his legs with three elbows in each limb. With this he can cling to walls or ceilings like a spider, or scuttle on with exceptional speed. He customarily cloaks himself in garments that means who see him remember him as a bland figure of authority.
More peculiar, though, is the way that he can reach into the skulls of lesser beings and pluck out undesired thoughts as little wriggling fragments of silver. This damages his victims, and they are left slow of thought and lacking creativity. Iasestus loves this trait of his warden soul, for those lessened in this way may be filled up with his vision and preach his works. Meldu laughs to see his greater self pour molten silver into the hollow minds of wrongdooers, becoming his akuma-slaves forever.
Despite that, the Enforcer of Thought has little interest in Iasestus' grand vision. He lives to serve and to censor, and cares little who gives him his orders. He prefers the company of his collection of cats. He is a great fancier of felines and speaks their tongue fluently. Some, he has empowered with his nature and in his clifftop manse within Malfeas he converses with them at length, discussing strange philosophies and the nature of dreams. Those who find themselves on his wrong side find that he is willing to ignore offences if offered a particularly finely bred cat, especially if it is pure white or pure black.
Summoners put Meldu to work doing much the same thing he does for his master. The Enforcer of Thought can quieten a rebellious village or pacify a troublemaker without bloodshed, and therefore is sometimes called by those who would rather keep their hands clean. Those he withdraws too many thoughts from are left in a state similar to the dream-eaten, but with the right surgical modifications they can be quite useful proxies or assets for a certain kind of sorcerer. More academic demonologists may wish to call upon him for his academic knowledge, or just to recover some lost thought he has taken. The latter risks drawing the ire of Iasestus should he find out, though, and the rage of a demon prince is often long-burning.
Demon of the Second Circle
Warden Soul of the Arbitrator of Doctrine
In the city of demons there are those who have thoughts that do not fit in with Iasestus' vision of the world. Should they step upon the marble floors of the Arbitrator's domain he will notice them, and then he will send his warden soul to pluck such incorrect thoughts from their minds. Should other thoughts be taken away with them, then that is a righteous punishment for such impudence.
Meldu cuts a dashing figure, at least in his own opinion. His skin is an erratic pattern of hypnotic black and white swirls that leave him hard to see when he dances. He is stick thin, and his arms are nearly as long as his legs with three elbows in each limb. With this he can cling to walls or ceilings like a spider, or scuttle on with exceptional speed. He customarily cloaks himself in garments that means who see him remember him as a bland figure of authority.
More peculiar, though, is the way that he can reach into the skulls of lesser beings and pluck out undesired thoughts as little wriggling fragments of silver. This damages his victims, and they are left slow of thought and lacking creativity. Iasestus loves this trait of his warden soul, for those lessened in this way may be filled up with his vision and preach his works. Meldu laughs to see his greater self pour molten silver into the hollow minds of wrongdooers, becoming his akuma-slaves forever.
Despite that, the Enforcer of Thought has little interest in Iasestus' grand vision. He lives to serve and to censor, and cares little who gives him his orders. He prefers the company of his collection of cats. He is a great fancier of felines and speaks their tongue fluently. Some, he has empowered with his nature and in his clifftop manse within Malfeas he converses with them at length, discussing strange philosophies and the nature of dreams. Those who find themselves on his wrong side find that he is willing to ignore offences if offered a particularly finely bred cat, especially if it is pure white or pure black.
Summoners put Meldu to work doing much the same thing he does for his master. The Enforcer of Thought can quieten a rebellious village or pacify a troublemaker without bloodshed, and therefore is sometimes called by those who would rather keep their hands clean. Those he withdraws too many thoughts from are left in a state similar to the dream-eaten, but with the right surgical modifications they can be quite useful proxies or assets for a certain kind of sorcerer. More academic demonologists may wish to call upon him for his academic knowledge, or just to recover some lost thought he has taken. The latter risks drawing the ire of Iasestus should he find out, though, and the rage of a demon prince is often long-burning.