Lunars were definitely not working as intended, given their somewhat terrible mechanics(that pigeonholed them into a few good builds, luckily that was fixed in second....oh wait) and the fluff writers basically revolting and not doing what he wanted. From what I've heard, unlike say the Fair Folk(in which there was a firm vision that was ignored by writers), Lunars did not have a very clear blueprint going into the writing.
General Exalted Thread
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
It's pretty hard to define a mistake in fuzzier fields like RPGs. If Fan A thinks that X is a mistake and Fan B thinks X isn't, well, much comes to subjective evaluations of RPG products. But at least the author can answer whether some phenomenon X is the system/setting/etc. working as intended or not. (E.g. Windows spying on people isn't a bug, it's a feature that the company wants and the users don't.)
One can, of course, disagree with the intent of the author, but IMHO that's not the same thing as the author committing a mistake in the execution of an intent.
- Location
- NYC
Not moreso than any other functional/artistic field, like movies, videogames, or books. There's definitely a level of subjectivity, but there are pretty reasonable objective critiques people can (and have in this thread) been making that don't rely upon the intent of the author, but rather the material being presented. In the case of 1E Lunars, for example, it doesn't matter what the author's intent was. The splat was presented in a way inconsistent with the rest of the line's material, with a number of specific elements that seemed to undercut the things that would make playing a Lunar desirable.
- Location
- The end of all things
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Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
Okay, so how are counterattacks intended to work?
Or, less snidely, the problem with this is that the authors haven't bothered to actually communicate this intent in a large number of cases.
I feel an active and visceral disgust at the thought of a bunch of my time at a gaming table being wasted on this kind of thing.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
I mean.
I was talking about stuff I made, personally, that was needlessly complex and had shitty crunch and still accomplished its goals.
You can, in fact, make an enjoyable combat system that is needlessly complex and has shitty crunch. These are not incompatible things. I find 3.5e D&D very enjoyable; it's also a needlessly complex system, and the system is honestly pretty terrible.
So, uh, yeah. Try actually replying to the point I'm making (i.e. you can make a heavily flawed system that does what you want) next time, please.
Need? No.
Want? Certainly.
There is a place for cool in a universe where the Sick Primordial roamed abroad in an environmental suit, and I submit this is one of them.
As for fitting in?Why wouldn't it?
Sun gods in real life mythology have often been associated with the most advanced military technology of the time of their origin.
Ra had his ships, Surya and Helios/Apollo both had their chariots.
Sol Invictus' supersized warstrider is only an alternate universe version of Phoebus Apollo's dread chariot on which he rode across the sky, smiting his enemies with arrows of fire.
- Location
- NOVA
I completely agree.
There's a reason why they're friends who I know play 3e, not friends that I play with currently: Incompatible play styles.
For them, the act of counting up the numbers itself is fun. They still tell stories about the 2 die roll in nWoD that got 13 successes, even though I ran that game around ten years ago.
From what I understand, the devs direct comments to/about people, who post here/who also posted on the official WW forums, have a fair bit to do with it.
But also edition wars in general get really nasty.
Now, to be fair, while I also find the act of rolling and counting the numbers up to be annoying, and generally try to see if there are alternate rules for just using averages, I'd remember something like that and be willing to talk about it for years as well.
- Location
- Ottawa
Okay, maybe not so far-fetched. I just saw an old chat log where Holden talked about using his writing to drive away fans he dislikes.
I'm glad they're having fun, but...this is just bizarre to me. I really can't understand the appeal of big numbers.
I wonder if a game which used exponents and factorials to generate farcically large success numbers would be popular with that crowd. I could write one easily enough...
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Disgea, the tRPG?
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Okay, i discovered why the PDF hasn't materialized in my e-mail yet, and hopefully it is more complicated than what i am understanding, otherwise i would be pissed off greatly(Fake Edit: i have postpoed writing this for nearly a week, so my chances of being pissed off are MUCH BIGGER):
...So! They are apparently scouring MANUALLY/INDIVIDUALLY the whole database with all the pledges, without using anything else. And they are taking more than a week to do so.
.... And me, who is rusty as fuck, could probably write something in less than three days to scour the database to find any and all the precious email addresses that need to be found manually because we cannot be competent enough to find someone capable of programming something in less than the time we are taking to check everyting manually manually manually MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*GIYGAS.EXE HAS DISSOLVED INTO INCOHERENT RAGE.*
... Hopefully the aren't being that incompetent and there is another problem, but i am starting to doubt it.
Also, some comments on recent appenings. Because i keep proastinating otherwise.
1) About the Charms interacting with the intelligence of items: has someone found and read a rogue pdf link of the Discordians? They seem to either be perfectly integrated with Pet Rock Promotion, or crumble into dust because the item is a familiar too and thus the attempts fails.
2) About Shyft senpai flipping out and going mad, and then reading the thing that he was gone insane from: it seem to have been resolved, so i wont comment this. It is not because i don't know how to comment it, because i forgot what i wanted to say. Nope sir.
I may offer Shyft some help with the whole Charm Analisys, because i wanted to do one myself and i procastined when i told myself i wouldn't procastinate. I still reember how i wanted to do it, so tomorrow or the day after tomorrow i may find some time to do it.
3) About the whole case of the EX3, and the horrible/lacking/good/sufficent subsistems: i still have to finish reading them, but i can say that the Combat System and the social one seem to be at least functional and decent, barring THE MISTERY OF THE WORTH OF THE WILLPOWER!!! *cracatoom* And also its cousin: Fucking 3ED Stunts, how do they works? Of the other systems.... i need to finish reading them (Most notably, Sail hasn't been gazed upon), but they always seem to lack instructions of use/expansion.
The feat of strength table is an example of lack of expansion , not having ways of deciding which feats should be available past the published limit, nor the minimum strenght necessary to do them. An example of lack of instruction is the feat of strenght over time system, which is simply hinted to be a thing, and given an example in a few lines and then no instruction at all.
Aaaand i will end this post tomorow, because here i am falling asleep.
Goodnoght!
As soon as we get the OK from them for the Backer Charm book PDF, we'll get that out to those who backed that Reward Tier, and then I'll go through each pledge level individually and send links to the many folks who added that PDF on to their pledges. It's a multi-day process, so bear with me.
...So! They are apparently scouring MANUALLY/INDIVIDUALLY the whole database with all the pledges, without using anything else. And they are taking more than a week to do so.
.... And me, who is rusty as fuck, could probably write something in less than three days to scour the database to find any and all the precious email addresses that need to be found manually because we cannot be competent enough to find someone capable of programming something in less than the time we are taking to check everyting manually manually manually MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLY MANUALLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*GIYGAS.EXE HAS DISSOLVED INTO INCOHERENT RAGE.*
... Hopefully the aren't being that incompetent and there is another problem, but i am starting to doubt it.
Also, some comments on recent appenings. Because i keep proastinating otherwise.
1) About the Charms interacting with the intelligence of items: has someone found and read a rogue pdf link of the Discordians? They seem to either be perfectly integrated with Pet Rock Promotion, or crumble into dust because the item is a familiar too and thus the attempts fails.
2) About Shyft senpai flipping out and going mad, and then reading the thing that he was gone insane from: it seem to have been resolved, so i wont comment this. It is not because i don't know how to comment it, because i forgot what i wanted to say. Nope sir.
I may offer Shyft some help with the whole Charm Analisys, because i wanted to do one myself and i procastined when i told myself i wouldn't procastinate. I still reember how i wanted to do it, so tomorrow or the day after tomorrow i may find some time to do it.
3) About the whole case of the EX3, and the horrible/lacking/good/sufficent subsistems: i still have to finish reading them, but i can say that the Combat System and the social one seem to be at least functional and decent, barring THE MISTERY OF THE WORTH OF THE WILLPOWER!!! *cracatoom* And also its cousin: Fucking 3ED Stunts, how do they works? Of the other systems.... i need to finish reading them (Most notably, Sail hasn't been gazed upon), but they always seem to lack instructions of use/expansion.
The feat of strength table is an example of lack of expansion , not having ways of deciding which feats should be available past the published limit, nor the minimum strenght necessary to do them. An example of lack of instruction is the feat of strenght over time system, which is simply hinted to be a thing, and given an example in a few lines and then no instruction at all.
Aaaand i will end this post tomorow, because here i am falling asleep.
Goodnoght!
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Just use Strike Legion to appeal to the farcically large numbers and buckets of dice crowd.
- Location
- NOVA
If you could figure out a way to do that which obfuscated the math, they'd be thrilled.
Group one is the group where we did polar integration to figure out certain things in the middle of sessions... in Exalted.
What the actual fuck.... I really, really hope that's not what they're doing.
If nothing else, they should be able to just write an excel formula and make it go faster.
Jon Chung
=][=
A combination of him making mistakes (see the link about his desired outline for Lunars) and freelancers making mistakes (see the link about his desired outline for Fair Folk, or the published Sidereal Martial Arts). Thing is, we know these are mistakes because the dude told everyone what he was trying to accomplish, so it is easy to compare what got published with what he wanted to do and note the places where the implementation falls short, as well as places where his desired outcome didn't work to begin with (lol Lunars).
Sure, you can do that. The task has a known difficulty and timeframe: a) unify the Exalted Host, and b) work for a few centuries to do the sociological and technological infrastructure work required to have a stable high-tech civilization. You even have the same starting point: post-apocalypse(s). Both of these are entirely achievable, as long as you're able to do a) and able to maintain a) long enough to do b). Ideally, you also include something to mitigate the effects of long-term Celestial insanity, or else it's just going to explode again.
You think deliberately unclear language, as a nice example, is a good idea? This is pandering to the so-called WW core audience and alienating a good chunk of the Exalted audience for no good reason, yes?
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Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
The never-finished Immortals Handbook for D&D 3.5 was set up like that. It's OGL, so you could legally use it as raw material.
They are definitely that incompetent. They did all the layout and indexing manually and there's leftover Charms that shouldn't be there (see: Design Beyond Limit referring to "Emerald, Sapphire, and Adamant Evocation").
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
links/sources pls?The never-finished Immortals Handbook for D&D 3.5 was set up like that. It's OGL, so you could legally use it as raw material.
Was that the one that had an entry for no-kidding time lords (of gallifrey)?
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
The guy's DriveThruRPG page is here, but keep in mind that some of this stuff has been left unfinished for over a decade.
As one of the people who tossed money at the Immortals Handbook books early on (for, admittedly, purely the lols value of the silly mechanics), I'm still salty about this.
They're comic book-style cosmic entities, not Gallifreyans.
Or, rather, they're meant to be cosmic, but the author never came up with all that much for them that wasn't "bigger numbers" and "more metamagic".
- Location
- Ottawa
Basic resolution mechanic uses Attribute, Ability, and Divine Rank. Your dice have a number of sides equal to your Attribute. You roll a number of them equal to your Ability. You do this a number of times equal to your Divine Rank, then you multiply all the results together.
Should?
Remember, this is all being done by whoever they have on hand. Shoestring budgets, after all. You can't take any particular skill for granted.
Onyx Path apparently doesn't have anyone who's good with computers and datasets. So this kind of thing will always take a while.
I have that book actually. Quite like it. But I don't think it's much use here, because the author just used preposterous amounts of addition and multiplication. And frankly, the mechanical side of the book is kinda trash.
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
Ah yes, the game that makes certain dice rollers flail about helplessly. Fortuantely, Rolz can handle at least 2000 D10s in one go, because if you've even moderately optimized your character, you will spend all night and the next morning resolving a single attack roll if you use physical dice.
You're telling me a game with shitty crunch can result in good mechanics.
That's just too zen for me, man.
(I think the thing here is that I am saying 'combat is good/enjoyable' and you are focusing on the 'combat is enjoyable' part and that's probably where the disconnect is, as enjoyable =/= good for some people. But I genuinely believe, purely from a design standpoint, that 3E's combat system is one of the better ones out there).
If the crunch serves a purpose rather than being there for its own sake, it is not bad crunch. I'll admit that 3E isn't getting rid of as much cruft from 1E/2E as many would like, the new mechanics due contribute to the game's overall theme rather than detract from them.
There are a lot of charms, yes. But they do make a meaningful contribution to the overall game. Excellent Strike, for example, is a charm that lets you add an automatic success and reroll 1's. In a void, it is an incredibly boring effect.
However, charms like Bulwark stance can retroactively penalize your rolls based on the amount of 1's you rolled. So Excellent Strike is basically a solar style middle finger other people's defenses, outright negating penalties and even turning them into bonuses. And I'd be very surprised if a DB got a similar charm.
There are a great deal of charms, yeah, but for the most part they contribute something meaningful.
(and when they don't you get phantom-conjuring performance, which mercifully isn't a prereq for anything more useful)
Well, I'd like to take the bold stance that Exalted 3E is not just better than 2E, which was like pretty obvious as soon as they said they were gonna ditch ticks for turns like other sensible games, and say that it's pretty good in and of itself.
Yes. But it does establish a basic framework that anyone can work with: you invest assets, run a few scenes related to it, and either get your intended result or deal with the fallout.
It's why I mentioned preferring a guide on running projects in and of itself, so a GM who is at a total loss can at least have a better idea on what is involved in raising a fortress or starting a spy network.
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- Location
- NYC
Here's the thing: what is the game's overall theme? Generally, I've heard it articulated as some variant of "a power fantasy in which actions actually have consequences." That's why 3E opens with both the quote from the Night's Master and Lincoln, because it's about what people do with unbelievable power.
So, while a lot of the specific charm interactions you're talking about are absolutely meaningful in a mechanical sense and add value there, they seem to do basically nothing from the level of the themes Exalted is trying to work with–or at the very least, any interaction there has been obfuscated behind a pretty significant amount of systems mastery. I think 3E could be a great system, but for a low to medium powered fantasy action/adventure game with a moderate narrative bent, because those are the things the system generally focuses on. It doesn't have a lot of the systems needed to really be effective at enabling the big questions it suggests (this is why some people are annoyed at the total lack of a larger projects/organizations system, or really any feedback on how to GM such things), while focusing very heavily on very specific, detailed combat interactions that doesn't really evoke the image of an unbroken demigod shaping their will into reality.
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notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
This is absurd; by this metric Cthulhutech has good crunch.
I know what they're doing, this does not make what they're doing worthwhile.
Maybe you would, but you chose to defend 3E by saying 2E was worse, which is not exactly high praise.
They're worthless except as basic ST advice, which is as it turns out not actually what I want from my RPGs mechanically!