azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
I've made pointlessly complex and shitty systems that worked as-intended.
General Exalted Thread
Missing the point, given your goals for that system aren't the devs's goal for theirs.
Their goal was to deliver an enjoyable combat system while eliminating the problems caused by perfect defenses and rocket tag combat.
Jon Chung
=][=
Yes, even the 1E freelancers, with a developer who wanted something pretty specific, or that developer himself (see Lunars, lol) managed to fuck up. The point is not that 1E is some sort of perfected ideal, the point is that it was the last time the line had coherent direction and that we explicitly know what the direction was and the intent behind it. This did not include "lol whatever, do whatever seems cool, internal consistency or believable humanity are completely irrelevant".
Incidentally, the triremes are a mistake caused by the map scale inflation. The Inner Sea was originally supposed to be the size of the Mediterranean, and the Blessed Isle an actual island. Triremes work OK in the Mediterranean. They do not work OK in the Pacific Ocean.
Chiaroscuro is a city of wood and canvas sitting in the wreckage of million-man capacity steel-glass arcologies. The hegemony of the Scarlet Realm is enforced by a network of sorcerous WMDs that can burn a whole world clean. The Solar Deliberative had a post-scarcity civilization which expanded its territory by tearing it from the teeth of unformed Chaos and nailing it to reality with monuments of magic science. The world itself was made by titans so vast that they needed multiple souls acting like an corporation or government to express their nature, and each of those multiple souls have souls of their own. You are playing an invincible autonomous reincarnating murder weapon made by god-slaves led by Aztec Lucifer to kill said titans soul by screaming soul, a task which you succeeded at... only for you to collectively grow so great and terrible, so insane, that you were murdered and sealed away by your inferiors just like the titans were themselves so that the world itself might survive your hubris, and it didn't stick.
Are these not enough for a lost greater age? Do you really need something like a transforming giant robot Death Star? Does that even fit in?
It's not incorrect to note that Exalted 1 pulled in people who did not like "standard White Wolf stuff". Thing is, doubling down on "standard White Wolf stuff" and losing this factor is not exactly what those people want in a new edition of Exalted.
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
We want a bureaucracy sysyem becaus we've been promised one for well over a decade now and it has not been delivered. Part of what made exalted interesting is that ot has two skills that are basically government oriented, it has vast bureaucracies mortal and celestial that are supposwdly interactable. yet after three editions, I still can't get decent rules for running a damn business.
1E was all fiat iirc, and 2E had Mandate of Heaven (which was literally unfinished on release and referenced rules that didn't exist). I'm not sure "been promised" is the right phrase, as the devs were pretty unambiguous that they didn't want a hyper-detailed bureaucracy system from the beginning.
I think what they need is, rather than a detailed subsystem, is simply a guide on how to run and arbitrate things in the existing projects system.
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Very much so. Examples like with the hazard system would be nice
The complaint "wow, these are terrible subsystems and all entirely different from one another" does not mean that you don't want subsystems. Just that you want non terrible subsystems that mesh with each other. I can't help but wonder if you've actually been reading what people are arguing about.Similarly I can't help but wonder, given how you simultaneously talk about your frustration with all the different subsystems, what precisely yet another subsystem for bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish for you. Say what you will about Projects, but you have a framework: you gamble merit dots on a task you play through, and if you succeed you eventually get your fleet built/your spy network created/your plague cured. I can't help but feel that it's preferable to Exalted's previous takes on top-down stuff, especially considering if a detailed 3E bureaucracy system ended up like 3E craft.
ES Homebrew: Three Pre-Human Races
Pre-Human Races
Once, when men were young, Creation was filled with many bountiful forms of life. The young Primordials made the world into a garden, and spawned countless races out of art, The great deva of the third circle built new forms of life in art, and at a whim they would set these fledging species against each other.
But the countless songs have almost all fallen silent, even the memory of their existence erased by the choral babble of mankind. The Primordial War was a bloodbath beyond comprehension, and the Exalted were not kind in victory. Now all that can be heard are the mourning songs of the dragon-kings, the maker-chained rhymes of the mountainfolk and a faintest echo of the Lintha that were, drowned out by their own human blood.
At the dawn of the First Age, the victors put all who had remained loyal to the titans to the sword. They spared none - save those few specimens they kept as pets and trophies as their triumph. Their cities were razed and their wonders burned or stolen. Some of the elder races were taken to Malfeas by their lords - and there they discovered that the magnamity of the titans had been excised by the swords of the Exalted and that the spiteful Yozis would extract the price of every failure from their servants. Others fled into the darkness beneath the world and down in the lightless depths they degenerated, becoming monstrous mockeries of what they once were. If the Exalted Host had not turned on the People of Adamant, the devoted of Autochthon would surely have exterminated these bastardised remnants by now.
Now only a few remnants of the bounty of life before the Primordial War can be found by those who know where to look. Even during the Late First Age, the knowledge of these creatures was slipping out of the annals of history. Time births distance and the Host of those latter years felt vague shame for the extermination of the non-humans. "Perhaps," young golden princelings said, "it might have been better to take them and teach them a better way of life than service to the Yozis - for it was surely not beyond our power to redeem such creatures." But that was not done, and so much was lost.
Such are the fates of these once-proud creatures - death at the hands of men, suffering at the hands of their tormented creators or degeneration in eternal dark. Even death was not the end for them, for many exist within the memories of the murdered Neverborn and mockeries of their form wail endlessly within the nightmares of dead titans.
The Tusk-Giants
Long before the birth of the sun, it is said that the demon-boar Isidoros once thought to challenge a titan whose name is now lost to history. Long was their struggle, and though the boar was successful in his endeavour one tusk of his was broken and the splintered remnants fell to earth. Now, as occultists know the demon-boar ruptures the world around him, smashing mirrors and tearing the light of Ligier - and so his tusk plummeted through the earth and embedded deep within Creation.
From this hole crawled forth the tusk-giants, whose skin was horn and whose blood was magma. They were truly giants, for their heads rose above the clouds and even the smallest of them broke a mile in height when fully grown. Such size made them slow of thought and gait, but their strength was stupendous. They fed upon the living rock of the continent of Galgamo, which is no more, and so they cultivated mountains as men might grow crops.
The tusk-giants were too slow of thought to survive the Primordial War. Men came upon them as they slept and carved out their eyes. Blinded, the tusk-giants listened to the lying songs of the Chosen of the Moon and so they fell upon the lands of the alluan and the lintha and the rhyneomkae in a rage. The songs of the Lunars filled their ears and they could not hear the wailing of their allies and in the end Kimbery reached out and drowned Galgamo to save her beloved lintha.
In the depths of the Western Ocean, the remnants of the flooded continent of the tusk-giants lies buried in sediments. Their titanic architecture sometimes breaks the surface, and modern men think that their ruined buildings are island-chains. Three of the tusk-giants survive within Malfeas. Two of them, blinded and crippled, lie chained within the jails of one Third Circle or another. The third has given herself to the worship of Cecelyne fully and strides the desert wastes with new iridescent eyes and an endless hatred of all mankind. Her footsteps cause sandstorms and her bellows of rage trigger earthquakes - and the Endless Desert laughs when the tusk-giant is a tribulation upon those who would seek to pass across her.
The Lintha
What can be said about the lintha that has not been said before? Brother-race to men, blessed by the Demon Sea with all the gifts denied to humanity - yet fallen from their grace and doomed to a painful dying lasting millennia. Much as men, the lintha have two souls; their po, sleek and powerful; their hun strong and prideful. Their blood carries their kinship to Kimbery, but also their kinship to men. One might question which of these two ties has brought them more misery over the years.
Of the sorry state of the modern lintha, much has been written elsewhere. The tales of their former glory are folklore at best among them - and often less than that, mere braggart of pirates jealous of the fortune of others. Their tales do not recall the height of their empire, where living ships carrying their own blood dominated the West. Their culture is withered and neutered, and their arts and their music are lost - for all the modern lintha know how to do is fight and steal and sail. They make nothing that does not serve these ends and this is as the Demon Sea wills it, for she wishes them to suffer for their sins.
The suffering of the lintha of the South-West are nothing compared to those denizens of Malfeas, however. Twenty proud fleets of their race were taken to Hell when Kimbery was bound inside and once they had grand plans for venturing forth from their hellish sanctums to strike against the gloating Exalted. Then the Demon Sea grew wrathful and extracted the full measure of her vengeance against them for flesh-eating of their Creation-locked compatriots. Within her waters float iceberg palaces, where mewling pieces of living art document their betrayal of her laws. The mercy of Kimbery is cruelest of all, for when one dies she crafts a new lintha from their soul, fair and beautiful and seemly - and then starts all over again.
The Daughters of Cytherea
The children of the Mother of Creation were the elder siblings of the world, for the first of their race predated time itself. They were nebulous beings, creatures of dust and gas hundreds of yards across with a brightly burning core in place of their heart. The Daughters could arrange their dust and gas as they saw fit and - if they compacted themselves down far enough - could even assume a form that could pass as mortal creatures.
Before the Incarnate Rebellion, the Daughters of Cytherea dwelt in the skies and looked down upon the gods from on high. Prideful and arrogant, they took learning from all the lesser races and gave nothing in return. They scrawled their theorems upon the dome of the heavens and the wisest of them were even permitted entrance to Yu Shan when the divinities were not. Perhaps it is no surprise that the gods of the wind and the sky and the weather took particular joy in hunting them down when their grand betrayal came.
Still, the Daughters of Cytherea inherited their mother's fire and fought with burning celestial fury. The might of the Sun drove them from the sky, but their magics called down great firestorms upon the soldiers of the gods. They warred to the very end and did not surrender even when the Primordials laid down their arms, retreating to lightless places to continue the fight against the victorious Exalts.
In the darkness their burning souls gave light and hope to the other refugees from the victor's justice of the sun. They were queens of the deep and they burned brighter in their hubris. When the People of Adamant were chained by the Exalted too, the Daughters of Cytherea laughed and rushed through the depths in pyroclastic flows. The lessened newborn People of Jade could not withstand them.
But that last war was their undoing. The iron and heavy metals of the earth poisoned them, quenching their fury. They became dense and base and material, losing their transcendent enlightenment. Even their dust was tainted by the broken jade they had burned. They could not sustain themselves and collapsed into dense coalescences of metal and stone. Now the Daughters were chained by their own forms - and so it is said, they still dwell upon the darkbrood to this day, towering metal figures who glow a faint red through the cracks in their heat-forged shells.
It is said by some that before the end of the war, some of the Daughters turned traitor and approached Lady Jupiter offering fell secrets on the nature of their mother - and perhaps even knowledge of sorcery itself. The tales differ as to their eventual fate, though. Some say that the Maiden honoured their deal and to this day flashes of bright light can be seen on the surface of Jupiter, like lightning through thick clouds. The Daughters of Cytherea - so the tales continue - serve the Maiden of Secrets, slipping into Malfeas to shepherd the dying stars of the Malfean sky according to her dictates. Others, however, say that the Maiden reached out her hand and slew them all, for they offered her nothing that she did not already know.
Regardless, in the heavens, some of the equations of the Daughters of Cytherea can still be seen during Calibration when there are no stars to obscure the patterns of dust. A would-be savant who wishes to investigate the faint gleams in the Calibration sky must be wary, though, for many of their symbols now reveal glimpses of the hellish realm of Malfeas if gazed at too long. In Varang and many other states, there are hidden Yozi astrologer-cults instigated by too much curiosity about the sky during the five days darkness.
Once, when men were young, Creation was filled with many bountiful forms of life. The young Primordials made the world into a garden, and spawned countless races out of art, The great deva of the third circle built new forms of life in art, and at a whim they would set these fledging species against each other.
But the countless songs have almost all fallen silent, even the memory of their existence erased by the choral babble of mankind. The Primordial War was a bloodbath beyond comprehension, and the Exalted were not kind in victory. Now all that can be heard are the mourning songs of the dragon-kings, the maker-chained rhymes of the mountainfolk and a faintest echo of the Lintha that were, drowned out by their own human blood.
At the dawn of the First Age, the victors put all who had remained loyal to the titans to the sword. They spared none - save those few specimens they kept as pets and trophies as their triumph. Their cities were razed and their wonders burned or stolen. Some of the elder races were taken to Malfeas by their lords - and there they discovered that the magnamity of the titans had been excised by the swords of the Exalted and that the spiteful Yozis would extract the price of every failure from their servants. Others fled into the darkness beneath the world and down in the lightless depths they degenerated, becoming monstrous mockeries of what they once were. If the Exalted Host had not turned on the People of Adamant, the devoted of Autochthon would surely have exterminated these bastardised remnants by now.
Now only a few remnants of the bounty of life before the Primordial War can be found by those who know where to look. Even during the Late First Age, the knowledge of these creatures was slipping out of the annals of history. Time births distance and the Host of those latter years felt vague shame for the extermination of the non-humans. "Perhaps," young golden princelings said, "it might have been better to take them and teach them a better way of life than service to the Yozis - for it was surely not beyond our power to redeem such creatures." But that was not done, and so much was lost.
Such are the fates of these once-proud creatures - death at the hands of men, suffering at the hands of their tormented creators or degeneration in eternal dark. Even death was not the end for them, for many exist within the memories of the murdered Neverborn and mockeries of their form wail endlessly within the nightmares of dead titans.
The Tusk-Giants
Long before the birth of the sun, it is said that the demon-boar Isidoros once thought to challenge a titan whose name is now lost to history. Long was their struggle, and though the boar was successful in his endeavour one tusk of his was broken and the splintered remnants fell to earth. Now, as occultists know the demon-boar ruptures the world around him, smashing mirrors and tearing the light of Ligier - and so his tusk plummeted through the earth and embedded deep within Creation.
From this hole crawled forth the tusk-giants, whose skin was horn and whose blood was magma. They were truly giants, for their heads rose above the clouds and even the smallest of them broke a mile in height when fully grown. Such size made them slow of thought and gait, but their strength was stupendous. They fed upon the living rock of the continent of Galgamo, which is no more, and so they cultivated mountains as men might grow crops.
The tusk-giants were too slow of thought to survive the Primordial War. Men came upon them as they slept and carved out their eyes. Blinded, the tusk-giants listened to the lying songs of the Chosen of the Moon and so they fell upon the lands of the alluan and the lintha and the rhyneomkae in a rage. The songs of the Lunars filled their ears and they could not hear the wailing of their allies and in the end Kimbery reached out and drowned Galgamo to save her beloved lintha.
In the depths of the Western Ocean, the remnants of the flooded continent of the tusk-giants lies buried in sediments. Their titanic architecture sometimes breaks the surface, and modern men think that their ruined buildings are island-chains. Three of the tusk-giants survive within Malfeas. Two of them, blinded and crippled, lie chained within the jails of one Third Circle or another. The third has given herself to the worship of Cecelyne fully and strides the desert wastes with new iridescent eyes and an endless hatred of all mankind. Her footsteps cause sandstorms and her bellows of rage trigger earthquakes - and the Endless Desert laughs when the tusk-giant is a tribulation upon those who would seek to pass across her.
The Lintha
What can be said about the lintha that has not been said before? Brother-race to men, blessed by the Demon Sea with all the gifts denied to humanity - yet fallen from their grace and doomed to a painful dying lasting millennia. Much as men, the lintha have two souls; their po, sleek and powerful; their hun strong and prideful. Their blood carries their kinship to Kimbery, but also their kinship to men. One might question which of these two ties has brought them more misery over the years.
Of the sorry state of the modern lintha, much has been written elsewhere. The tales of their former glory are folklore at best among them - and often less than that, mere braggart of pirates jealous of the fortune of others. Their tales do not recall the height of their empire, where living ships carrying their own blood dominated the West. Their culture is withered and neutered, and their arts and their music are lost - for all the modern lintha know how to do is fight and steal and sail. They make nothing that does not serve these ends and this is as the Demon Sea wills it, for she wishes them to suffer for their sins.
The suffering of the lintha of the South-West are nothing compared to those denizens of Malfeas, however. Twenty proud fleets of their race were taken to Hell when Kimbery was bound inside and once they had grand plans for venturing forth from their hellish sanctums to strike against the gloating Exalted. Then the Demon Sea grew wrathful and extracted the full measure of her vengeance against them for flesh-eating of their Creation-locked compatriots. Within her waters float iceberg palaces, where mewling pieces of living art document their betrayal of her laws. The mercy of Kimbery is cruelest of all, for when one dies she crafts a new lintha from their soul, fair and beautiful and seemly - and then starts all over again.
The Daughters of Cytherea
The children of the Mother of Creation were the elder siblings of the world, for the first of their race predated time itself. They were nebulous beings, creatures of dust and gas hundreds of yards across with a brightly burning core in place of their heart. The Daughters could arrange their dust and gas as they saw fit and - if they compacted themselves down far enough - could even assume a form that could pass as mortal creatures.
Before the Incarnate Rebellion, the Daughters of Cytherea dwelt in the skies and looked down upon the gods from on high. Prideful and arrogant, they took learning from all the lesser races and gave nothing in return. They scrawled their theorems upon the dome of the heavens and the wisest of them were even permitted entrance to Yu Shan when the divinities were not. Perhaps it is no surprise that the gods of the wind and the sky and the weather took particular joy in hunting them down when their grand betrayal came.
Still, the Daughters of Cytherea inherited their mother's fire and fought with burning celestial fury. The might of the Sun drove them from the sky, but their magics called down great firestorms upon the soldiers of the gods. They warred to the very end and did not surrender even when the Primordials laid down their arms, retreating to lightless places to continue the fight against the victorious Exalts.
In the darkness their burning souls gave light and hope to the other refugees from the victor's justice of the sun. They were queens of the deep and they burned brighter in their hubris. When the People of Adamant were chained by the Exalted too, the Daughters of Cytherea laughed and rushed through the depths in pyroclastic flows. The lessened newborn People of Jade could not withstand them.
But that last war was their undoing. The iron and heavy metals of the earth poisoned them, quenching their fury. They became dense and base and material, losing their transcendent enlightenment. Even their dust was tainted by the broken jade they had burned. They could not sustain themselves and collapsed into dense coalescences of metal and stone. Now the Daughters were chained by their own forms - and so it is said, they still dwell upon the darkbrood to this day, towering metal figures who glow a faint red through the cracks in their heat-forged shells.
It is said by some that before the end of the war, some of the Daughters turned traitor and approached Lady Jupiter offering fell secrets on the nature of their mother - and perhaps even knowledge of sorcery itself. The tales differ as to their eventual fate, though. Some say that the Maiden honoured their deal and to this day flashes of bright light can be seen on the surface of Jupiter, like lightning through thick clouds. The Daughters of Cytherea - so the tales continue - serve the Maiden of Secrets, slipping into Malfeas to shepherd the dying stars of the Malfean sky according to her dictates. Others, however, say that the Maiden reached out her hand and slew them all, for they offered her nothing that she did not already know.
Regardless, in the heavens, some of the equations of the Daughters of Cytherea can still be seen during Calibration when there are no stars to obscure the patterns of dust. A would-be savant who wishes to investigate the faint gleams in the Calibration sky must be wary, though, for many of their symbols now reveal glimpses of the hellish realm of Malfeas if gazed at too long. In Varang and many other states, there are hidden Yozi astrologer-cults instigated by too much curiosity about the sky during the five days darkness.
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Oooh, living stars. Those are always cool to run across. (Poor Fred.)
Mm. For some reason "Galgamo" sounds very familiar, though, and I can't quite place why...
Mm. For some reason "Galgamo" sounds very familiar, though, and I can't quite place why...
From Onyx Path:
- Ex 3 core book – From RichT: Prepping the actual deluxe traditionally printed files, waiting for OK from printer about their specs for this size book. Printer is looking into materials that they thought were good for the cover, but the company that provides them sort of went out of business since we ran the Kickstarter.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
I think I remember these – weren't they like golem hermit crabs who built their bodies around themselves out of dirt, then stone, then precious metals, then magical materials, becoming more powerful and sophisticated with each stage? Except the final stages required a level of pre-existing artisanal development that simply didn't exist any more, not to mention the materials were vanishingly rare?
Or something like that.
It would help if I knew which subsystems were terrible vs nonterrible here, as opinions vary and the only thing universally disliked is Craft. Sorcery, social, mass combat, and so on seem to be just fine at least from my perspective. How are these things terrible systems that do not mesh with each other?
I've certainly been reading what people have been arguing about (though going through the entire thread isn't feasible), but I'm not sure what to take from what I've read beyond "I dislike all the subsystems." So again, not sure what another subsystem written by the same people is meant to do for you if you feel that way?
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- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Welp, I'm depressed and melancholic after reading these. Suppose that's a sign of success when you're writing about wonderful things the Usurpers shat on.
And given that you're attributing thoughts to others, perhaps it would be a good idea to ask them about what their perspective is rather than substituting your own or an made up one. Just a thought.
Now you're correct that people probably wouldn't be happy with a system written by the current crop of writers (especially if it's similar to craft). But many of the complaints have the implied complaint that they don't want the current crop of writers to do it. Because, and I realize this might be a hard leap of logic to follow, but they don't like the current crop of writers or their work. That's why they're complaining in the first place.
Plus, with a possible bueracracy subsystem, you also get a confusing mess of people talking about it. Because some people want a subsystem and like 3ed(or are not totally against it), and others want a system to actually have mechanics for all the abilities and are talking more generally, not about the current implementation of the rest of 3ed. Not to mention people bitter about being promised one for a long time(even if we ignore most of the previous editions, one of the things promised early on for 3ed was that we would have a system).
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
This has no relation to how pointlessly complex or shitty its crunch is.
I like Initiative; the basic combat system is fine (though range bands are dumb to use when zones exist), it's the nine hundred fucking charms that are shit.
You mean it's not a system that's half poorly thought-out crunch, half blatant steals from prior editions without evaluating their balance, and half high explosive that has to be defused by carefully managed gentlemen's agreements and system mastery enough to see the tripwires ahead of time? Be still my heart I'll just play 3E forev- or I could actually have some fucking standards and not praise 3E on the grounds that it passed the amazingly low fucking bar of "less awful than Exalted 2E."It's not a difficult to balance clusterfuck: 2E was because it required you to rewrite the whole thing from the ground up to get your over the top Kung-fu fights, whereas in 3E you can have people duke it out RAW and not have a clusterfuck. Part of which is thanks to initiative and part of which is due to changes in charm design.
...
I can't help but feel that it's preferable to Exalted's previous takes on top-down stuff, especially considering if a detailed 3E bureaucracy system ended up like 3E craft.
Projects are not a system. There is no system there, just a standard GM section-style "how do I run games dealing with events beyond the personal scale" guide presented as if it is a system.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Forgive me, I'm asking this as I haven't grokked range bands, but isn't one of the points of range bands that they're logarithmic while zones would be linear?
Maybe I'm misreading things, but often I get the impression that the attitude manages to shift from 'better than 2e is a low standard' to 'and this means that 1e/2e/2½e should be played more/disliked less than 3e'. (And I don't think being too old is an argument in 1e/2e/2½e's favour in this specific context.)
(If asked what system to try out for over-the-top divine fantasy, I'd be willing to try Godbound, but I'm not optimistic as far as my personal tastes go, since I'm not much of a D&D/D20 fan.)
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Range bands don't exactly have defined size, so I'm not sure how you can determine that, really. More importantly, range bands easily create geometrically impossible situations unless you're using de facto zones anyway, and they make AoEs really dumb by forcing them to default to concentric rings.
I haven't seen anyone advocate actually using a prior edition. I've indicated in the past that I would be more willing to run a 2.5 game than a 3E game since I've already acquired the relevant system mastery, but that's not exactly praise when I'd run almost literally any other game before doing so.
- Location
- NYC
There are some things range bands are better at, especially if changing environments aren't expected to be particularly mechanically important (outside of stunting), but where you want some more meaty tactical positing rules. They're much easier to write effects with, since zones can run into issues of sizing–one zone might be a single room, while another might be an entire field. They also make things like "I hit him really hard so he goes flying back" a much simpler effect, since it just pushes them back a range band.
Personally I prefer zones for a number of reasons–not the least of which is because range bands can quickly get confusing with three or more fighters–but there are valid reasons to think that range bands are a better solution to a pretty complicated issue.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
They aren't exactly defined, but the differences between the vague definitions on page 197 seems to say it:
Close is in your face, while Short is within the range of a quick sprint (the quickest officially-recognized sprinting distance I can recall is 30m, or slightly over 30 yards).
Conversely, Long range is essentially longbow archery range, but Extreme range is the range at which characters are seen as specks.
It seems to me that the difference between Long and Extreme is deliberately made greater than the difference between Close and Short.
Hypothetical question: let's say that today a person comes to this thread, under a strong impression from playing the Sakuya tutorial of Exalted. The person is intrigued by the setting and the themes, but isn't attached to a system. Which system would you recommend, assuming the person isn't into personally writing everything from scratch nor into spending hours upon hours on personally writing a conversion? (IIRC the last time something like this happened, it was when 3e wasn't quite out, or at least not for long.)
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Zones are almost always defined as "small enough for everyone within them to plausibly engage in melee in the course of a turn;" if your zones vary beyond that I think the issue is that you're using them in an unintended way, not that it's bad. Zones make hitting people back just as easy ("move to an adjacent zone") and more interesting (you get to choose where you send them! maybe making tactical coolness happen with relative positioning!).
Range bands do have some value if you want them to be of varying size, but IMO that just makes things like "trying to visualize the battlefield" more confusing.
The Sakuya tutorial is by its nature a strong tutorial on 2E mechanics; if someone liked it, they're probably going to like 2E, and be very confused when 3E's combat flows entirely differently.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Are you sure it was a case of Grabowski making a mistake (as an editor and/or as a writer and/or as a developer), and not a case of him thinking that the material was fitting / good enough for the goals he had at the moment? (Note: extra explanation in a post below.)
Most of the great feats you mention date back to the First Age, but the pitch was that even the 'current' (Second) aga of Exalted was an era greater than the 'modern' one (WoD). This is also why I so much like pointing at the option of restoring the Solar Deliberative in the corebook: because it's one of the feats that looks sufficiently epic, and shows how even the fallen age can have unbelievable wonders.
Oh, but doubling on the standard WW stuff and moving away from other stuff does not automagically mean that the chosen direction and the authors of it are lacking in intelligence, for example.
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- Location
- NYC
How is him "thinking that the material was fitting / good enough for the goals he had at the moment" not a mistake, when the result of the vision is bad?
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
It depends on whether in retrospect he looks at his work and says "Oww, I regret doing it that way" or says "Yep, that's working as intended". (I'm find it plausible that Lunars weren't working as intended, but am not so sure about, say, crossbows, which seems like something that is impossible to do accidentally.)
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Someone does not need to think it was a mistake for it to be a mistake, though. You keep giving this bafflingly privileged stance to authorial intent and it doesn't make any sense at all.