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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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I'm confused, I thought the last vote was on how to deal with the group of Abyssals. The plan then was to try talking to all of them at once and convince them to have a private meeting among Exalts in the FCF at that point, not to have Doctor Deadhead stay in our palace while we picked them up.

I sort of assumed from the wording of the vote we were glossing over the trip back. Hence the mention of Silver in the default option.

Fair enough if we actually needed to handle that, but the plan I wrote is more suited to this meeting than that one. It didn't even make sense in a scene without multiple exalts, the whole thing with the caste mark was even based around prodding them in a way that'd get them to reflexively reveal their own as a physical manifestation of our kinship.

It even answered the question of the new vote and the follow on consequences of the venue choice. The exalts, along with Lydia and Tiffany at most. Fallen Angel pocket change stays with the wizards.

Feels like we jumped ahead and then awkwardly shuffled halfway back.
 
This is far from the first time we voted on a plan to do everything quickly and it somehow ended up in ten different updates. I understand why there is a stop here, but I think more could have been done with Molly before choosing who else to invite.
 
So:
1) Bringing too many people is problematic - it'll make the abyssals, or at least Azhi Dahaka nervous
2) At least some of the people brought in should be adults, given Doctor's biases (and we are totally making him a sonic screwdriver)
3) We need to bring as many members of various organizations as possible, in order to avoid the accusations of biases

As such

[X] Plan Allied Forces
-[X] Lydia, as your friend and one who aids the dead
-[X] Harry as someone who has mastered Essence by another path
-[X] Thomas, as Silver Phantom's brother and the White Court member
-[X] Tiffany in case you need social back-up

Of all others, only exalted knights may have social stats required. And I am very, very iffy on Tiffany. Frankly, having more than three people on our side, ourselves included, is a problem in my mind. Tiffany is only there because she has a great barganing chip in the form of flesh manipulation and is also a counter-denarian representative
 
BronzeTongue said:
I'm confused, I thought the last vote was on how to deal with the group of Abyssals. The plan then was to try talking to all of them at once and convince them to have a private meeting among Exalts in the FCF at that point, not to have Doctor Deadhead stay in our palace while we picked them up.

I sort of assumed from the wording of the vote we were glossing over the trip back. Hence the mention of Silver in the default option.

Fair enough if we actually needed to handle that, but the plan I wrote is more suited to this meeting than that one. It didn't even make sense in a scene without multiple exalts, the whole thing with the caste mark was even based around prodding them in a way that'd get them to reflexively reveal their own as a physical manifestation of our kinship.

It even answered the question of the new vote and the follow on consequences of the venue choice. The exalts, along with Lydia and Tiffany at most. Fallen Angel pocket change stays with the wizards.

Feels like we jumped ahead and then awkwardly shuffled halfway back.
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Yeah that came out a bit awkward when I tried to integrate the stunt, but I did not want to jump ahead to the meeting since who you have with you is going to have an impact on the result and when I thought about it you guys know quite a few people who could conceivably be interested and useful.
 
I think that we should have this first meeting as a more private Exalted discussion. There are things I think are appropriate to share with them that we don't want to discuss in front of others and the focused small group setting gives us some more room to maneuver socially speaking.

See my stunt with the whole caste mark reciprocity thing as an example of the sort of stagecraft we can more easily supplement our rhetoric with in this sort of setup. This isn't the only discussion we'll ever have with them or that they'll have with anyone else, it's just one where we can establish our relationships to each other more directly. A follow up meeting is fine, but I don't want a peanut gallery taking notes or cutting in on us during our first group meeting.

This first one should cover in more detail (insofar as Molly has them) what an exalt is, why they're a big deal, and how our actions saw their shards released. From there a more detailed overview of the supernatural world and the important pieces of it.

A lot of that is sensitive information, and even parties that already have it don't need more insight into how we think about things. It's also helpful on a psychological level; having an open discussion where we treat them like insiders helps draw people into a relationship. It's hard to do that with an audience.


Ivar said:
This is far from the first time we voted on a plan to do everything quickly and it somehow ended up in ten different updates. I understand why there is a stop here, but I think more could have been done with Molly before choosing who else to invite.
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I'm more annoyed about needing to litigate a point covered in the last winning plan and how the vote was presented in a way that skipped over the intermediate travel step. It asked the question "how do you address the group of Abyssals" and I wrote to that prompt. Then we used it on a single Abyssal, a Cainite, and an angry mortal. Of course it didn't work - it was set up for an entirely different group of people.

Presented as a vote on how to get Doctor and co to come home with us I'd have made a very different argument and it's possible we wouldn't be opening up this meeting in a public bar.

DragonParadox said:
Yeah that came out a bit awkward when I tried to integrate the stunt, but I did not want to jump ahead to the meeting since who you have with you is going to have an impact on the result and when I thought about it you guys know quite a few people who could conceivably be interested and useful.
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That makes sense, cause I misread the prompt or something. The vote seemed to be about how to talk to the Abyssals as a group so I wrote for that encounter. My stunt made almost no sense at all directed at the arctic group instead of the Abyssals.

Thats why it worked from talk to all the Abyssals at once default option and added a line specifying to only bring Tiffany and Lydia if they wanted to come.

I didn't realize we were supposed to direct anything at the group going back with us when they weren't mentioned in the base stuff.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
That makes sense, cause I misread the prompt or something. The vote seemed to be about how to talk to the Abyssals as a group so I wrote for that encounter. My stunt made almost no sense at all directed at the arctic group instead of the Abyssals.

Thats why it worked from talk to all the Abyssals at once default option and added a line specifying to only bring Tiffany and Lydia if they wanted to come.

I didn't realize we were supposed to direct anything at the group going back with us when they weren't mentioned in the base stuff.
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That is partially my fault, sorry. The reason it was structured like that was that if you had chosen 'alone' you would have had the option to start with the one in whose company you were in.
 
[X] The Exalted Host(ess)
-[X] Lydia

I want to have a discussion between exalts first, to build some commonality up before we turn this into a free for all.
 
DragonParadox said:
That is partially my fault, sorry. The reason it was structured like that was that if you had chosen 'alone' you would have had the option to start with the one in whose company you were in.
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Fair, but did we at least conserve some of the resources we didn't need?

The point of that write in was to answer the question "Do you want to talk to all of the Abyssals together or just one?" With "All of them, bring Lydia and Tiffany if they want to be there but leave everyone else. Spend these resources in our opening gambit".

I wouldn't have spent multiple points of essence and willpower on convincing the guy to let us uber him around, or to wait in our hell without us for whatever reason. Cause that's suspicious and not helpful to our position.
 
DragonParadox said:
That is partially my fault, sorry. The reason it was structured like that was that if you had chosen 'alone' you would have had the option to start with the one in whose company you were in.
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Maybe then we should stop making complicated plans? This is the third time a complicated plan has disappeared into the difficulties of writing or been misinterpreted. Like what happened with the negotiations with the White Council. I understand all the difficulties of writing a quest. But what can we as players do to prevent this from happening?
 
Ivar said:
Maybe then we should stop making complicated plans? This is the third time a complicated plan has disappeared into the difficulties of writing or been misinterpreted. Like what happened with the negotiations with the White Council. I understand all the difficulties of writing a quest. But what can we as players do to prevent this from happening?
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The plan in this case will still get used. I just need to know some more stuff in the meantime.
 
I understand the benefit in keeping it to only Exalts but since Lara is probably going to but herself in somehow either during or after I feel like taking Thomas with us is a really good counter balance. He knows how his family is and the White Court for that matter.
 
BoredMan said:
I understand the benefit in keeping it to only Exalts but since Lara is probably going to but herself in somehow either during or after I feel like taking Thomas with us is a really good counter balance. He knows how his family is and the White Court for that matter.
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This isn't about cutting them out entirely, it's about getting a clean starting point for dealing with the exalts as a group. Really it's the first step to getting them to considering it as a group themselves.

Anyone we bring is going to push their agenda, which is fine. Thing is we have an agenda too and we're under no obligation to let them use us to advance their interests at our expense. We can do other meetings later.

Remember Listens to Wind's great ideas, or the Valkyrie as the dragon blood enclave? We have maybe one or two things they could do that would benefit us and they're not going to prioritize them.

This whole council of Elrond thing is two steps ahead of the curve. Doing this sort of jumping consistently fails to get good results. We need to do the groundwork first.
Yog said:
Why not the knights or the dragonblooded girl?
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They aren't celestials and their experiences are very different. My goal here is to get these people up to speed and start building bonds between the group. A certain amount of focus is helpful for that. I'd make meeting them a sort of stage two of expanding their social circle, but the goal of the meeting isn't really served by a derail into the Arthurian mythos or a dragon touched teenager who has very little in common with them.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Thing is we have an agenda too and we're under no obligation to let them use us to advance their interests at our expense. We can do other meetings later.

Remember Listens to Wind's great ideas, or the Valkyrie as the dragon blood enclave? We have maybe one or two things they could do that would benefit us and they're not going to prioritize them.
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Um, Thomas works for us though??

[X] The Exalted Host(ess)
-[X] Lydia
 
BronzeTongue said:
They aren't celestials and their experiences are very different. My goal here is to get these people up to speed and start building bonds between the group. A certain amount of focus is helpful for that. I'd make meeting them a sort of stage two of expanding their social circle, but the goal of the meeting isn't really served by a derail into the Arthurian mythos or a dragon touched teenager who has very little in common with them.
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Up to speed in regards to what? We know way too little about Exaltations to really have that as a cornerstone of the discussion. Not unless we start the talk by using one of the abyssals as a focus for "what is the history of exaltations?" kind of question.

I can see the benefir of only having supernaturally good social combatants on our side. But in this case, knights should help.

What do you plan on talking with them about that you can't talk in front of Harry or TIffany?
 
Yog said:
What do you plan on talking with them about that you can't talk in front of Harry or TIffany?
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Directly from what he said, he wants to establish a group mindset of Exalts of the new age. That sort of thing. Only Lydia on that list qualifies.. not really hard to understand there.
 
BoredMan said:
Directly from what he said, he wants to establish a group mindset of Exalts of the new age. That sort of thing. Only Lydia on that list qualifies.. not really hard to understand there.
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Huh... I thought "Deliberative 2.0: motonic boogaloo" was not a popular notion. I'm glad if that changed. I will re-express my opinion that we know too little about exaltations to really pull that off now.
 
Yog said:
Huh... I thought "Deliberative 2.0: motonic boogaloo" was not a popular notion. I'm glad if that changed. I will re-express my opinion that we know too little about exaltations to really pull that off now.
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???

Can you do me a favor and read BronzeTongue's stunt from the previous vote? That is the context.
The idea being that we get them to the point where they feel we are in the same situation and are kin in a very real way compared to the rest of the setting. Which would hopefully give us an in with them that can't be easily rebuffed by people like Lara later on.
 
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