I said I was going to do it- so here it is! The first post of the dedicated Sunlit Sands Exalted...
Sunlit Sands - An Exalted Campaign (Discussion)
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Sunlit Sands Index and Session 1
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
I said I was going to do it- so here it is! The first post of the dedicated Sunlit Sands Exalted Discussion Thread. I'll be cribbing a fair amount from @Aleph and her management of the Kerisgame thread , and slowly porting over the various postmortems from the Exalted General Megathread.
So this first post will 'mirror' the opening post in that thread plus expand upon some general overview. I'll be editing this post bit by bit as the 'index and information' post, as well as Chapter 1 + Postmortem. I'm still in the process of figuring out how to do all the fancy formatting, so for the moment it might look a little unpolished. My plan is to update this thread with Ao3 chapters as I get them formatted, and mirror the postmortems in-thread. This intro post is likely also going to have Inks's Character sheet, XP/Planning Sheet, houserules and our Guide to Gem Document at some point.
Session 1 - Arrival in Gem (Under further proofing)
Creation-date unspecified
So this first post will 'mirror' the opening post in that thread plus expand upon some general overview. I'll be editing this post bit by bit as the 'index and information' post, as well as Chapter 1 + Postmortem. I'm still in the process of figuring out how to do all the fancy formatting, so for the moment it might look a little unpolished. My plan is to update this thread with Ao3 chapters as I get them formatted, and mirror the postmortems in-thread. This intro post is likely also going to have Inks's Character sheet, XP/Planning Sheet, houserules and our Guide to Gem Document at some point.
Session 1 - Arrival in Gem (Under further proofing)
Creation-date unspecified
[11:04] - Minor goof here. I invoked a per+aware roll, but I should have paused and cited the 'noticing details' rules on page 135pdf of 2e core. This would've given Aleph a framework to decide how difficult anything was, and explained the 'Zero Difficulty' concept as well as the idea of a rising threshold for secret information.
- (Aleph: Yup, corebook RAW is something I may need reminders on every so often.)
[11:16] - At this point I'm using Flawless Diagnosis technique in its modular interpretation, where you use it to spot-check 'is it relevant', and then use it again to properly diagnose it as a 5 minute action with no chance of misdiagnosis.*
*It automatically succeeds unless there is some critical piece of information not available at time of diagnosis.
[11:20] - This discussion about the stomach bottle bug was in part because we had talked about her having bound one off-camera before session start.
[11:24] - Here I realized I should/could have rolled Inks's valor 2, because as I planned to later, bring up that she's from Nexus. "Do you know what happens to women who wake up drugged in Nexus? Yeah, Not a pretty thought!"
- (Aleph: It may be evident that I'm a little too used to writing for an Exalt who can be reasonably sure of murdering or at least escaping anything short of a combat-focused Third Circle or Incarnae-level god.)
[11:32] - We're still trying to get a handle on our respective styles, which is why we keep forgetting to write ((done)) at the end of a post, forcing it to a hard linebreak. Related to this, I have long since practiced pre-writing stunts, while Aleph is actually likely waiting for me to write, then writing the NPCs/environment response.
- (Aleph: I am, yes.)
[11:40] - This is one of those vagaries of the IRC format, where a lot of time is actually spent Talking without Rolling. We're still getting used to how we want to pace the mechanics and rolls,and for the record, a game can actually be run without much rolling or charm use and still be fun!
- (Aleph: I'm actually kind of fine with this. I consider "soft" roleplay where things happen by conversation and RP skill to be a valuable part of a game, which can and should have considerable impact on it. I don't expect Shyft to be as good a speaker as Inks, but the direction of his stunts and how she chooses to go about convincing people of things will matter.)
[11:40] - Also of note is that neither ST or PC have made much note about languages yet, we can assume we're both talking Riverspeak, which is the 'trade language' of Creation and occupies a niche similar to that of English in my opinion. (It's not actually English)
[11:45] - This is one of those awkward moments where a roll is asked for, but you don't have enough information as a player to create a stunt. I was also called away, so I made the decision to just roll it straight. It also occured to me that previously, Aleph had houseruled I have inherent 1st and 2nd excellencies without charm purchases, so all my rolls to this point could've been upgraded for motes.
- (Aleph: This issue here is that if you call for a perception check to spot things lurking in the dark shadowy alleyway, it kind of gives away that there may be things lurking in the dark shadowy alleyway. But if you don't stunt to see them, you may be less likely /to/ see them. Which is a bit paradoxical. I don't really have a good solution.)
[11:47] - I also just remembered we're using the mote reactor hack, and I don't actually know how many motes you regen when not in combat, if any. Because I didn't wnat to interrupt Aleph (who was already quite nervous at running a session), I simply stuck to the roleplaying goal of not outing Inks as a Solar to her potential ally.
- (Aleph: For reference, it's in the motes-per-hour range, so not really applicable in short periods of time like this.)
[12:09] - This is another one of those 'unstuntable' rolls
[12:25] - Note that Maji is not a corebook familiar, we're using specific houserules to better model an Awesome Exalted familiar.
[12:29] - Maji and Suleiman are both evidence of how much pre-session planning went into this before we sat down and actually Played. The high notes of the first half of the session- the whirlwind betrothal, Suleiman's character and profession, a lot of it was already set up. Inks waking up in a wedding dress was part of five in-media res options we came up with previously.
- (Aleph: All of which were amusing, some of which we may see reused.)
[12:48] - I'm not actually sure if Aleph is using MDV rules here.
- (Aleph: I am, but had just run into the issue that despite the many things I /did/ calculate for Sulieman, like his rough family history, dicepools and important Intimacies, his MDV was somehow not one of them. However, since Inks was gorgeous and playing to two of his strong Intimacies, I decided that the combination probably dropped his MDV low enough for her to overcome it.)
[13:08] - Another point in which IRC changes the game format. We have at this point only covered approximately two scenes worth of content, and the main reason for that is we're spending a lot of time writing 'narration' ala shared writing jam. This is not bad, but it definitely slows things down. Conversations between characters tend to be very plodding affairs unless all players are fast typists.
[13:08] - One of the goals of Sunlit Sands was, at least for me, to practice different game styles, like having scenes/sessions resolved in a wider angle that focuses less on direct narration more on cause-effect discussion. Narration however is really important and fun.
[13:40] - Here I very deliberately focused on 'wide angle' narration and made a point to not have Aleph control the NPC before I got what I wanted, this was to prevent unnecessary dawdling and delays. The madam and possile courtesans remain -potential- NPCs, but not yet.
[13:57] - So this was a four hour session, and I had to stop because of an errand that had to be run before it got too late. I for the record am in the pacific timezone.
- (Aleph: And I'm GMT.)
=== Aleph's Observations: Session #1 ===
[11:00] - Tenses are a constant lowkey challenge in this game. I'm fine with having it in past tense, but I'm so used to writing in present-tense for roleplay that I slip every so often. I'll get better with time. Probably.
[11:18] - This oversharing of information is a case of misinterpretation on my part - I didn't grok that Flawless Diagnosis is modular, and it's been a while since I've read Shyft's Solar Essays. I should probably throw the text of her Charms, as well as the Essay commentary/unpacking of them, into her character sheet.
- This is actually a compound fuckup on my part. I sort of wrote myself into a corner on the question of "how did she not wake up", patched it with "drugs", patched "that's /more than a bit skeevy/" with "medicinal dose" and then ran into "but Stomach Bottle Bug" and just sort of swore and gave up.
[11:30] - Suleiman - "Husbando" - was a character we discussed ahead of time, who was integral to the starting-session prompt of "Well This Is Awkward; I Appear To Have Gone To Sleep At A Hotel And Woken Up In A Wedding Dress". My goals with Suleiman were to avoid creepy-stalker territory by making him kookily adorable, to make him useful to Inks but not so useful that she'd be boneheaded not to take him, and to set him up in a situation where he could be a recurring character but not overshadow the plot. I'm hopeful that I struck the right balance in all three.
[11:56] - "I can't marry a man I just met!" QueenElsa.jpg
[12:02] - Yeah, this was just me making his rolls and such.
[12:06] - Shyft brings up an important point here: Suleiman didn't beat her MDV, but that doesn't mean she /has/ to reject him. It merely means that he hasn't won her over and that she can hold back and make a choice entirely of her own volition.
[12:25] - Shyft had already bought Maji, so there was no need for a protracted winning-him over plotline; he basically fell in loyalty-at-first-sight. Like merchant, like tiger.
[12:36] - Actions matter; even unrolled. Few women would dare to walk into a cage with a giant godblooded tiger. Fewer still would win him over in seconds where only three people in the caravan have managed it, and all took weeks. Suleiman knows he'd get his hand bitten off if he'd tried that. ++ Reputation for Inks in his eyes - and that may have consequences if he tells the story.
[12:43] - /Actions matter; even unrolled/. This is the sort of claim that would get a /lot/ of attention, a fair bit of it unfriendly - as Suleiman mentions later. His doing so is essentially an explicit ST warning: "Be Aware that stating your ambitions so bluntly will cause Complications and Consequences".
[12:49] - Much like Inks not being convinced earlier; this is him beating her roll but choosing to help her anyway. Though you'll notice he tried to talk her into choosing a more cautious approach.
[13:31] - Our first look at Gem and some of the landmarks around it, which I'm quite proud of. I've developed the region a fair bit, and added some points of interest and Things To Interact With outside of the city itself. Some of them are made so that Inks has pretty obvious ways to exploit them, but most are set up to support and compliment the city - making use of them will be an exercise in inventiveness.
- (Aleph: Yup, corebook RAW is something I may need reminders on every so often.)
[11:16] - At this point I'm using Flawless Diagnosis technique in its modular interpretation, where you use it to spot-check 'is it relevant', and then use it again to properly diagnose it as a 5 minute action with no chance of misdiagnosis.*
*It automatically succeeds unless there is some critical piece of information not available at time of diagnosis.
[11:20] - This discussion about the stomach bottle bug was in part because we had talked about her having bound one off-camera before session start.
[11:24] - Here I realized I should/could have rolled Inks's valor 2, because as I planned to later, bring up that she's from Nexus. "Do you know what happens to women who wake up drugged in Nexus? Yeah, Not a pretty thought!"
- (Aleph: It may be evident that I'm a little too used to writing for an Exalt who can be reasonably sure of murdering or at least escaping anything short of a combat-focused Third Circle or Incarnae-level god.)
[11:32] - We're still trying to get a handle on our respective styles, which is why we keep forgetting to write ((done)) at the end of a post, forcing it to a hard linebreak. Related to this, I have long since practiced pre-writing stunts, while Aleph is actually likely waiting for me to write, then writing the NPCs/environment response.
- (Aleph: I am, yes.)
[11:40] - This is one of those vagaries of the IRC format, where a lot of time is actually spent Talking without Rolling. We're still getting used to how we want to pace the mechanics and rolls,and for the record, a game can actually be run without much rolling or charm use and still be fun!
- (Aleph: I'm actually kind of fine with this. I consider "soft" roleplay where things happen by conversation and RP skill to be a valuable part of a game, which can and should have considerable impact on it. I don't expect Shyft to be as good a speaker as Inks, but the direction of his stunts and how she chooses to go about convincing people of things will matter.)
[11:40] - Also of note is that neither ST or PC have made much note about languages yet, we can assume we're both talking Riverspeak, which is the 'trade language' of Creation and occupies a niche similar to that of English in my opinion. (It's not actually English)
[11:45] - This is one of those awkward moments where a roll is asked for, but you don't have enough information as a player to create a stunt. I was also called away, so I made the decision to just roll it straight. It also occured to me that previously, Aleph had houseruled I have inherent 1st and 2nd excellencies without charm purchases, so all my rolls to this point could've been upgraded for motes.
- (Aleph: This issue here is that if you call for a perception check to spot things lurking in the dark shadowy alleyway, it kind of gives away that there may be things lurking in the dark shadowy alleyway. But if you don't stunt to see them, you may be less likely /to/ see them. Which is a bit paradoxical. I don't really have a good solution.)
[11:47] - I also just remembered we're using the mote reactor hack, and I don't actually know how many motes you regen when not in combat, if any. Because I didn't wnat to interrupt Aleph (who was already quite nervous at running a session), I simply stuck to the roleplaying goal of not outing Inks as a Solar to her potential ally.
- (Aleph: For reference, it's in the motes-per-hour range, so not really applicable in short periods of time like this.)
[12:09] - This is another one of those 'unstuntable' rolls
[12:25] - Note that Maji is not a corebook familiar, we're using specific houserules to better model an Awesome Exalted familiar.
[12:29] - Maji and Suleiman are both evidence of how much pre-session planning went into this before we sat down and actually Played. The high notes of the first half of the session- the whirlwind betrothal, Suleiman's character and profession, a lot of it was already set up. Inks waking up in a wedding dress was part of five in-media res options we came up with previously.
- (Aleph: All of which were amusing, some of which we may see reused.)
[12:48] - I'm not actually sure if Aleph is using MDV rules here.
- (Aleph: I am, but had just run into the issue that despite the many things I /did/ calculate for Sulieman, like his rough family history, dicepools and important Intimacies, his MDV was somehow not one of them. However, since Inks was gorgeous and playing to two of his strong Intimacies, I decided that the combination probably dropped his MDV low enough for her to overcome it.)
[13:08] - Another point in which IRC changes the game format. We have at this point only covered approximately two scenes worth of content, and the main reason for that is we're spending a lot of time writing 'narration' ala shared writing jam. This is not bad, but it definitely slows things down. Conversations between characters tend to be very plodding affairs unless all players are fast typists.
[13:08] - One of the goals of Sunlit Sands was, at least for me, to practice different game styles, like having scenes/sessions resolved in a wider angle that focuses less on direct narration more on cause-effect discussion. Narration however is really important and fun.
[13:40] - Here I very deliberately focused on 'wide angle' narration and made a point to not have Aleph control the NPC before I got what I wanted, this was to prevent unnecessary dawdling and delays. The madam and possile courtesans remain -potential- NPCs, but not yet.
[13:57] - So this was a four hour session, and I had to stop because of an errand that had to be run before it got too late. I for the record am in the pacific timezone.
- (Aleph: And I'm GMT.)
=== Aleph's Observations: Session #1 ===
[11:00] - Tenses are a constant lowkey challenge in this game. I'm fine with having it in past tense, but I'm so used to writing in present-tense for roleplay that I slip every so often. I'll get better with time. Probably.
[11:18] - This oversharing of information is a case of misinterpretation on my part - I didn't grok that Flawless Diagnosis is modular, and it's been a while since I've read Shyft's Solar Essays. I should probably throw the text of her Charms, as well as the Essay commentary/unpacking of them, into her character sheet.
- This is actually a compound fuckup on my part. I sort of wrote myself into a corner on the question of "how did she not wake up", patched it with "drugs", patched "that's /more than a bit skeevy/" with "medicinal dose" and then ran into "but Stomach Bottle Bug" and just sort of swore and gave up.
[11:30] - Suleiman - "Husbando" - was a character we discussed ahead of time, who was integral to the starting-session prompt of "Well This Is Awkward; I Appear To Have Gone To Sleep At A Hotel And Woken Up In A Wedding Dress". My goals with Suleiman were to avoid creepy-stalker territory by making him kookily adorable, to make him useful to Inks but not so useful that she'd be boneheaded not to take him, and to set him up in a situation where he could be a recurring character but not overshadow the plot. I'm hopeful that I struck the right balance in all three.
[11:56] - "I can't marry a man I just met!" QueenElsa.jpg
[12:02] - Yeah, this was just me making his rolls and such.
[12:06] - Shyft brings up an important point here: Suleiman didn't beat her MDV, but that doesn't mean she /has/ to reject him. It merely means that he hasn't won her over and that she can hold back and make a choice entirely of her own volition.
[12:25] - Shyft had already bought Maji, so there was no need for a protracted winning-him over plotline; he basically fell in loyalty-at-first-sight. Like merchant, like tiger.
[12:36] - Actions matter; even unrolled. Few women would dare to walk into a cage with a giant godblooded tiger. Fewer still would win him over in seconds where only three people in the caravan have managed it, and all took weeks. Suleiman knows he'd get his hand bitten off if he'd tried that. ++ Reputation for Inks in his eyes - and that may have consequences if he tells the story.
[12:43] - /Actions matter; even unrolled/. This is the sort of claim that would get a /lot/ of attention, a fair bit of it unfriendly - as Suleiman mentions later. His doing so is essentially an explicit ST warning: "Be Aware that stating your ambitions so bluntly will cause Complications and Consequences".
[12:49] - Much like Inks not being convinced earlier; this is him beating her roll but choosing to help her anyway. Though you'll notice he tried to talk her into choosing a more cautious approach.
[13:31] - Our first look at Gem and some of the landmarks around it, which I'm quite proud of. I've developed the region a fair bit, and added some points of interest and Things To Interact With outside of the city itself. Some of them are made so that Inks has pretty obvious ways to exploit them, but most are set up to support and compliment the city - making use of them will be an exercise in inventiveness.
So, I don't get to play Exalted that much. I ran several games for several years, but not much in the way of playing. @Aleph was kind enough to find time in her schedule to serve as my ST for a 1-on-1 game similar to that of Kerisgame.... Except really not.
Today I'm going to be posting the logs of the first session, along with our notes and timestamps.
Before I begin, I'll lay out some of the basics.
Session 1 Game Log.
There is a non-zero chance I may reformat it for Google Docs, but for now Pastebin works. Do not read the observations unless you want spoilers for the session.
Today I'm going to be posting the logs of the first session, along with our notes and timestamps.
Before I begin, I'll lay out some of the basics.
- We've been planning this since sometime in november
- I very much wanted to play a Mostly 2nd Edition game of Exalted, which includes but is not limited to
- Minimal 'hacks' or system variants that are at the forefront of Kerisgame and similar. This was a deliberate request on my part, because I am in a position to more quickly bring Aleph up to speed on 2e-isms than she is to explain various kerisgame hacks.
- Minimal setting changes from 2e standard, as I personally as a player do not care overmuch about how 'clever' or 'plausible' having four Scarlet Empresses is versus the classic, canonical One.
- This is not to say we didn't change anything, and what follows is not a comprehensive list.
- Altered Chargen/experience costs - since this is a solo game, I may have to diversify more than most games, meaning I am actualy covering 2-3 party roles at once in addition to my core concept. Some of this I offload on Demons and Maji, but you'll get to that in a second.
- Styles, at Aleph's request. I agreed to try them as another means of stress testing them. I'll say this now that as of 2 sessions, I have 3 Styles on my character, and I have used none of them.
- Mote Reactor - Still getting used to this one
- Demon Summoning Adjustments. Specifically, Aleph is testing out the idea that you do ot have carte blanche access to All Demons Ever, and must learn new species as Procedures. I argued that if you have access to proper documentation, you can summon demons you do not know procedures for. We're likely costing Procedures as 1xp each. I argued for my idea because I like the thought of my character having books upon books of demon lore in a vast library.
- Aleph wanted to run a game that was heavier on wide angle content versus Combat. I personally do not have the same dire aversion to 2e combat as she does, but I think part of that is due to me having spent a lot more time playing it than she has.
Session 1 Game Log.
There is a non-zero chance I may reformat it for Google Docs, but for now Pastebin works. Do not read the observations unless you want spoilers for the session.
Last edited:
Sunlit Sands - Sesssion 2
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
And here we go with Session 2, formatted for archival!
If it's not clear yet, we have a total of 50 sessions so far, so thread is primarily focused on discussion of both the formatted chapters, and 'current events' happening presently.
Weeks in the making, the logs and analysis of Sunlit Sands, Session #2!
The Acutal Session #2 Logs
If it's not clear yet, we have a total of 50 sessions so far, so thread is primarily focused on discussion of both the formatted chapters, and 'current events' happening presently.
Weeks in the making, the logs and analysis of Sunlit Sands, Session #2!
The Acutal Session #2 Logs
=== Shyft's Observations Session #2 ===
CNNT rewrite:
Craft as if Crude Tools, upgrades held tools by one level. Crude > Basic > Master > Flawless > Ideal. Can be used to craft magical (Master+) tools. Reduces construction interval by one step. Season to Month, Month to Week, Week to Day, Day to 5 Hours, etc.
Unlike last session, this one we both managed to agree would be longer, and not have as many interruptions. As I told Aleph before the session started, my current challenge was figuring out what to do that did not need additional Charms.
As far as capabilities go, Inks is able to out-design/craft almost any mortal and a fair share of specialst Dragonblooded who happen to live in Gem. She also has access to demon labor in the form of anhules (demon spiders), trident weavers (one of Aleph's custom demons), Herenhals, and Okidaci. Edit: We agreed that in order to safely employ Herenhals, I needed a Neomah to keep them calm. This however had the hurdle of the Neomah constantly making unbound Herenhals every week, so for the foreseeable future, Inks will Banish them.
[10:37] - So from session start to now, we're mostly in a 'dialogue' scene where Ahlam is offering exposition as Inks prompts it. The challenge Aleph and I have here is that we're trying to get a whole lot of information across to each other as fast as possible in an entertaining manner.
My actual goals for this session were to learn about the monopolies of Gem, get started on finding my own property to start running a business, and doing some design rolls for new sandships to give to Sulieman.
[11:03] - Here I'm trying to expedite things- and get a lead on utilizing that Sorcerous XP mechanic Aleph and I agreed on earlier; where using Sorcery to solve problems earns me more XP to spend on sorcery.
[General] - Unlike first session, where i had a lot more line-by line analysis, mostly what I want to say here is that Aleph did a good job of remembering 'Inks' as a character and her various traits, like her TIGER, her beauty and so on. I made a point to be very Bold and Brassy about how I acted in-game, doing Big Things even under compressed timescales thanks to CNNT.
Generally, a player will feel the most rewarded and validated when the ST remembers their character.
The actual plan for today was Exposition about Gem/Monopolies. I learned that it takes 30 talents of silver (at least) to start one up, to say nothing of taxes/donatives and bribes after the fact.
Right now I set to solving my financial problems with Demons, creating a very simple demon industry out of task-bound herenhals ,okidaci and neomah. The okidaci have hot bodies that can render various substances into gemstones via oxidation, which the Herenhals handle both the application and harvesting. The Neomah keep the Herenhals happy.
I also wanted to design sandships for Sulieman, but we didn't get to do that today. I'm fine waiting, when I can afford to learn a 'Design Faster' Charm or two under Lore at some point.
Designs in Sunlit Sands are persistent pieces of information that confer bonuses or applicaiblity to certain actions like building things. The Air Conditioning I built into Inks's first workshop is a Design, which I can propagate to other buildings later on.
Part of why I did this, is that I did not want to actually 'mine' gemstones, and we established that the Despot's monopoly is on the buying/selling of stones, not the acquisition.
I initially conisdered setting up an arms/armory, but i realized that adding high quality weapons to a place that isn't loyal to me is.. suspect judgement.
=== Aleph's Observations: Session #2 ===
[10:13] Inks maybe underestimates a little how intimidating the GIANT TIGER is to mortals. This may bite someone in the rear later on.
[10:28] I was surprised at how quickly Ahlam developed a solid personality, and I'm kind of glad that Shyft intends to keep him as a point of contact. It seemed more like I was discovering him than inventing, and exploring him some more appeals to the author in me.
[11:39] So here I start introducing complications. Inks wants heranhals to smash up the stone skins of the okidaci - but they need to sate their lusts. She summons a neomah to take care of that, but neomah need a tower to fleshcraft. She builds a facade to hide the tower, but that means she's getting unbound demons made, and also attracts attention because it is not normal to build a several-storey tower in under a week. Knock-on effects like this are much more interesting for players when they're the result of character action, and also let STs be a lot more smug about "you brought this on yourselves :3".
[12:37] I am really not used to characters as blatant, bold and brassy (or should that be bronzey?) as Inks. Shyft threw me several times over the course of this session with her sheer audacity and lack of fucks given. However, again in the theme of "consequences from player action", I took the opportunity to have many of the rumours and theories she's been drawing be /negative/, since she's not doing much PR and is more than a bit scary.
[12:58] Fun fact, I had a counter of + factors and - factors to a temporary "Rumours" stat, and was intending to track this until it hit 10, at which point the Despot would summon Inks to an audience. /She hit that level inside of a single session/. This woman, I swear. ¬_¬
[General] So Inks has made a good start, and I'm pleased with how she generates her own plot hooks. I'm doing a bit less behind-the-scenes work than I expected, mostly because I need the flexibility for when she does something off-the-wall crazy (I have ceased assuming that any action whatsoever is "too blatant" for Inks to at least seriously consider, up to and including "flash the Wyld Hunt"). I have a few plot hooks waiting in the wings, but I think they can mostly wait until after the first arc of "establish Inks in the city" is nicely played out.
CNNT rewrite:
Craft as if Crude Tools, upgrades held tools by one level. Crude > Basic > Master > Flawless > Ideal. Can be used to craft magical (Master+) tools. Reduces construction interval by one step. Season to Month, Month to Week, Week to Day, Day to 5 Hours, etc.
Unlike last session, this one we both managed to agree would be longer, and not have as many interruptions. As I told Aleph before the session started, my current challenge was figuring out what to do that did not need additional Charms.
As far as capabilities go, Inks is able to out-design/craft almost any mortal and a fair share of specialst Dragonblooded who happen to live in Gem. She also has access to demon labor in the form of anhules (demon spiders), trident weavers (one of Aleph's custom demons), Herenhals, and Okidaci. Edit: We agreed that in order to safely employ Herenhals, I needed a Neomah to keep them calm. This however had the hurdle of the Neomah constantly making unbound Herenhals every week, so for the foreseeable future, Inks will Banish them.
[10:37] - So from session start to now, we're mostly in a 'dialogue' scene where Ahlam is offering exposition as Inks prompts it. The challenge Aleph and I have here is that we're trying to get a whole lot of information across to each other as fast as possible in an entertaining manner.
My actual goals for this session were to learn about the monopolies of Gem, get started on finding my own property to start running a business, and doing some design rolls for new sandships to give to Sulieman.
[11:03] - Here I'm trying to expedite things- and get a lead on utilizing that Sorcerous XP mechanic Aleph and I agreed on earlier; where using Sorcery to solve problems earns me more XP to spend on sorcery.
[General] - Unlike first session, where i had a lot more line-by line analysis, mostly what I want to say here is that Aleph did a good job of remembering 'Inks' as a character and her various traits, like her TIGER, her beauty and so on. I made a point to be very Bold and Brassy about how I acted in-game, doing Big Things even under compressed timescales thanks to CNNT.
Generally, a player will feel the most rewarded and validated when the ST remembers their character.
The actual plan for today was Exposition about Gem/Monopolies. I learned that it takes 30 talents of silver (at least) to start one up, to say nothing of taxes/donatives and bribes after the fact.
Right now I set to solving my financial problems with Demons, creating a very simple demon industry out of task-bound herenhals ,okidaci and neomah. The okidaci have hot bodies that can render various substances into gemstones via oxidation, which the Herenhals handle both the application and harvesting. The Neomah keep the Herenhals happy.
I also wanted to design sandships for Sulieman, but we didn't get to do that today. I'm fine waiting, when I can afford to learn a 'Design Faster' Charm or two under Lore at some point.
Designs in Sunlit Sands are persistent pieces of information that confer bonuses or applicaiblity to certain actions like building things. The Air Conditioning I built into Inks's first workshop is a Design, which I can propagate to other buildings later on.
Part of why I did this, is that I did not want to actually 'mine' gemstones, and we established that the Despot's monopoly is on the buying/selling of stones, not the acquisition.
I initially conisdered setting up an arms/armory, but i realized that adding high quality weapons to a place that isn't loyal to me is.. suspect judgement.
=== Aleph's Observations: Session #2 ===
[10:13] Inks maybe underestimates a little how intimidating the GIANT TIGER is to mortals. This may bite someone in the rear later on.
[10:28] I was surprised at how quickly Ahlam developed a solid personality, and I'm kind of glad that Shyft intends to keep him as a point of contact. It seemed more like I was discovering him than inventing, and exploring him some more appeals to the author in me.
[11:39] So here I start introducing complications. Inks wants heranhals to smash up the stone skins of the okidaci - but they need to sate their lusts. She summons a neomah to take care of that, but neomah need a tower to fleshcraft. She builds a facade to hide the tower, but that means she's getting unbound demons made, and also attracts attention because it is not normal to build a several-storey tower in under a week. Knock-on effects like this are much more interesting for players when they're the result of character action, and also let STs be a lot more smug about "you brought this on yourselves :3".
[12:37] I am really not used to characters as blatant, bold and brassy (or should that be bronzey?) as Inks. Shyft threw me several times over the course of this session with her sheer audacity and lack of fucks given. However, again in the theme of "consequences from player action", I took the opportunity to have many of the rumours and theories she's been drawing be /negative/, since she's not doing much PR and is more than a bit scary.
[12:58] Fun fact, I had a counter of + factors and - factors to a temporary "Rumours" stat, and was intending to track this until it hit 10, at which point the Despot would summon Inks to an audience. /She hit that level inside of a single session/. This woman, I swear. ¬_¬
[General] So Inks has made a good start, and I'm pleased with how she generates her own plot hooks. I'm doing a bit less behind-the-scenes work than I expected, mostly because I need the flexibility for when she does something off-the-wall crazy (I have ceased assuming that any action whatsoever is "too blatant" for Inks to at least seriously consider, up to and including "flash the Wyld Hunt"). I have a few plot hooks waiting in the wings, but I think they can mostly wait until after the first arc of "establish Inks in the city" is nicely played out.
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Sunlit Sands - Sesssion 3
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
And here we go posting Session #3! Comments welcome! I will of course update all these posts with the individual postmortems as time and energy permits. Right now I'm focusing on just getting them formatted for Ao3.
=== Shyft's Observations: Session #3 ===
[11:50] I love Graceful Crane Stance. It is the entire reason Inks has Athletics 1. As long as Maji serves as a applicable platform on which to balance, Inks cannot fall over. If he were to say, invert himself, Inks would fall without a stunt or Spider Foot Style. Feather-Foot Style lets her balance on things that CAN'T support weight, while GCS lets her stand on things that can support SOME weight but not her own weight. As mentioned in my Solar Essays, GCS's platform clause also exists to ensure you can use your Dodge DV even on tightrope wires and so on.
[11:50] As far as stunts go, Sunlit Sands has meatier, more compressed stunts than I'm sure some people are used to- this is an elaborate 'Dramatic Movement Action' which is summed up as 'Inks gets from one side of the city ot another, gets past a guard and talks to a person she knows'. The important part for Aleph is that I made sure to include the people I wanted to See There, like Ahlam, and acknowledged the previously established conventions like the guard or other employees.
(Aleph: Shyft is good at remembering established details like this, which is nice - less work tracking them for me as an ST.)
[12:00] Aleph employed a fairly standard ST trick of using an NPC to get a read on a PC's intentions- specifically if Inks would bring Maji along. Remember, Maji is about 4.5 maybe 5 feet tall at the shoulder and much bigger than even a regular tiger. A significant portion of Inks's initial revenue stream just goes into FEEDING HIM. He actually ate better outside of Gem with his Survival 4 and +4d from one of his mutations. Note to self, add my Resources 3 'Gemcrafting' to my character sheet...
As to the acutal plan here, invoking Maji in this manner is mostly me wanting to get the most out of my traits which includes Backgrounds- a lot of Exalted actually suffers from too much stuff to track and not enough time to spotlight it all. That's actually why the best Artifacts are the ones that are iconic or 'Daily Use'.
So the main thing I realized after the fact was that I misunderstood the summons, and Aleph pointed it out as well- Inks was asked to meet the Despot 'at her earliest convenience- today', which I took as 'Right the Goddamned Now', but Aleph clarified as 'Any time That Day'.
This is worth mentioning, because the waiting room Inks was pushed into was one of many,or so Aleph implied, with a specific sort of role or objective in the decor and pagentry. I don't know if Aleph intended this, but one thing I took away from the whole waiting scene was ideas on How To Do It myself- Inks may infact end up mirroring the Despot's behaviors.
(This was 100% intentional. Inks saying things like "I want them a bit nervous but also greedy for what I can give them; send them to the green waiting room" and designing rooms to make passive social attacks against people who spend much time in them is very much the sort of thing that fits her character archetype.)
[12:04] Here we have one of Aleph's and I's Game Tone miscues. Our knowledge pools don't always overlap, and I am generally of a mind that 'Keep the game moving' is more important than vermilisitude- however Aleph comes from a very strong background of Do Your Goddamned Research. She obligingly reminded me that Resources 3 of Gems was not 'big stones', and we amicably agreed to retcon it in the subsequent stunts. She even found a reference page to show what she was talking about.
Now, not every game is going to have that luxury- of having anyone willing to BE that dedicated to accuracy or helping build up the detail of the world. Sometimes it's tough enough getting three or five people at the same tie together focusing on a somewhat shared goal.
(Aleph: In this case Inks is specifically a crafter who is in Gem, who works with jewels a lot and who is producing them as her main revenue stream. Since it's an area with more narrative focus, I feel the increased granularity is a bonus - more detail allows for more hooks and more things to interact with.)
[12:04] Back to Inks and Maji, I made a point of bringing up Inks's Nexan heritage and the culture she brought with her.
[12:18] In the ((OOC)) part of the conversation, I noted that these scenes could be considered Intimacy Building. Remember that most Mortals have Conviction 1-2, which means it's easy to win them over. Ahlam is probably more driven, so he'd be more difficult, and the 'Court' embodied in the Dream of Flesh shares his traits.
[12:37] Here Aleph attempted and in my opinion succeeded reasonably well at creating an Establishing Shot and Scene Change. She moved the characters through time and space with a metaphorical curtain fall and rise. Here she also poked Inks, intentionally or not, in one of her Virtues.
(Aleph: Intentional again. Slavery is a big thing in Gem, and Inks is now settled enough for me to start confronting her with it.)
[12:37] And here Inks rolls Compassion- because she can make a logical leap from 'arranged marriages' to 'slavery', and it may not be a wholly rational belief, but it's Her belief. Inks is Intelligence 5, not Rationalist Posthuman Singularity 5.
[12:40] Now, I succeeded on the Compassion roll, and as per the rules, I am compelled to act unless I spend a WP. I however am fully in control of HOW I act- so instead of making an immediate scene, Inks bides her time...
[12:40] I also very specifically picked Slavery as part of Inks's characterization for both Exalted Bucket List reasons, and simplicty for Aleph's sake. Slavery exists in Creation for players to take a stand against it or use it to achieve their own goals. I have never encountered a Free the Slaves player other than Aleph, and even then Keris is well, an Infernal- her approach to problems is not 'Classic Solar'. Most of the time in my experience, the slave most players want to save are demons. Which is fine, but wow are there a lot of Demon/Yozi apologists out there.
(Aleph: I have not encountered this, and it honestly bewilders me. I mean, Keris is an Infernal, and even she's pretty much given up on "justice for Hell". It's just too /big/.)
[12:48] Maji is partially a compromise for the solo play experience- I can offload a small slice of competence on him so Inks can focus her experience expenditures on more improtant things like Bureaucracy, Sorcery and Craft. On paper I would love for Inks to have more XP for... everything, and even now she actually doesn't quite feel 'Set' as a character. Exalted character generation feels best when a character comes out the gate as 'Done, but with room to grow'. Inks, having multi-specced into almost four different specialties, suffers from the 2e twilight problem of 'Does Everything Smart'.
Now, ths is actually important to me because I wanted her conceptually to be a polymath and to explore that, instead of taking it as an entitled 'I'm a Twilight and I should do it all'. Not every Twilight has to be like this, but with Inks, I wanted to make a very clear statement of 'This woman with the neck to ankles tattoo is a master surgeon, architect, savant and sorcerer'.
Hopefully in the future, the idea is that Inks is so valuable for her mind and other skills that people call upon her like they did the great thinkers of antiquity. A lot of Exalted games fall victim to the idea of nothing 'touches' the PCs unless it attacks them. In Inks's case, she fights the 'Island' problem and exists to be recognized and invited to solve other people's problems. She's the architect who designs the new castle, or the metallurgist who revolutionizes steel production. When you want to fund a trade mission to distant lands, you ask her to loan you money like the rich gentry of the previous eras did.
[13:16] Enter The Despot, Rankar the Seventh. This is the first time I've ever played a game even Remotely near Gem, and thus the first time I've seen the guy on-camera. I deliberately have been avoiding reading any of the southern setting books just to make sure Aleph can A- surprise me and B, I don't metagame her. I know a FEW things by osmosis, but none of which are particularly relevant to Sunlit Sands.
Now, as previously emphasized by Aleph, Maji is a GIANT TIGER and no matter how docile he seems at Inks's side, he is a GIANT TIGER and people will act accordingly. I also am gleefully playing to the hilt the fact that this curvacous woman has a GIANT TIGER generally following her commands by gesture and expression.
[13:18] The first great confrontation between these two minds! I'm not playing it too cagey, as Inks is only Socialize 1 (and I want to raise that really soon...), but she is a proud sorcerer and at least has some reasonable amount of business sense. Rankar is probably more skilled and experienced than Inks at this stage- more Ability and Style/Specialty dots. Also Rankar has AIDES- who grant teamwork bonuses, along with Books and Tools and Blessings to further improve his capabilities. A lot of people point out hte hypothetical maximum pool for mortals is 5+5+3? That's false. The Ideal Cases pool is Attribute 5, Ability 5, Specialty +3, Limited Teamwork +5d, Tool Bonus +3, howevermany dice a blessing can get you, and then your stunt. Now-
This is ideal case,and only someone LIKE Rankar can achieve it wiht any degree of regularity... unless you're an Exalt.
[13:25] From here Rankar is both showing some of his own cards, like the undisguised attraction to Inks (which is a perfectly reasonable consideration). I personally was acting (faking) as if Inks had more power at hand than Rankar did, but in reality he still is in much more control than Inks is.
[13:44] By this point, Rankar has deduced that Inks is a Sorcerer, and while I'm actually not going to be too shy aobut Demons, I don't want to make a bad impression this early either. Regardless, Rankar and by extension Aleph really impressed me with this summation of Inks's actions thus far, because I almost never see that level of attention paid to a player character- I try to when I run games, but most of my recent experiences have been four-five player romps with predominantly new players.
So with regard to the summation itself, Rankar points out that Inks is actually acting in a very strange manner- she goes to Gem and decides "I'm going to make more Gems.", she hides half the time and then shows off in blatant sorcerous glory the other half. This is all oddly fitting considering she's a Twilight, and only the Eclipse is more split between 'stages' of day or night.
[14:00] having reviewed the summation and spent a few rolls assessing his character, Inks offered her reply- "I want to start a business and I wanted to live somewhere warm." I haven't posted the prelude where she exalted, but basically she almost died of frostbite and it's left Inks less than interested in the idea of Cold Weather.
Inks's vision is grand, but a lot of her reasoning is very straight-forward and human. She wants to be rich, comfortable, powerful... and in a lot of ways, nothing like the family she left behind.
[14:15] I fully went into this meeting knowing Rankar would demand something like this- and to be fair I actually agree that flooding the market with gems hurts everyone, which is why Inks has an immediate counter-offer of turning excess gems to industrial uses and keeping them out of the 'fine jewlery' trade that he is more intimately familiar with.
[14:25] And if you recall that compassion roll, here Inks is cashing it in- she successfully convices the Despot to give up a slave- and he actually throws in two more as a casual display of generosity. Rankar doesn't know it, but he just gave Inks her first three employees.
(Aleph: I actually did this with the full expectation of her balking at the idea of being casually /given/ two people like /things/, to try and rub her nose in the slavery culture a little more. I realised immediately after doing so, of course, that Inks would just take that as an opportunity to rescue two more people from being slaves. She doesn't stand on principle like that.)
The next 'Session', let's call it 3.5, is actually going to be somewhat Play By Post/Google Doc, which sets up for the next Live Session whenever it happens.
=== Aleph's Observations: Session #3 ===
[12:56] Something Shyft missed at the time here - which he mentioned above - was that Rankar didn't give an exact time for Inks to meet him. As a result, since he couldn't afford to keep his whole day free, he was actually in a meeting when she arrived, hence the wait in the meeting room. I don't feel this miscommunication compromises Inks' character, since she's shown a trend of being rather impatient and forward, so this comment still basically fits. Nonetheless, it might have been better to quietly mention it as soon as I noticed the misunderstanding.
More generally, I'm giving Inks' style of aggressive negotiation some leeway by having Rankar be a cautious man who's assuming that Inks is holding /something/ back and treating her as though she might be either a valuable asset or a viable threat. I've been eagerly waiting for the chance to show off how much attention people have been paying her - I'm somewhat surprised that Shyft's experience of this is rare, because to me this is a /perfect/ way to generate plot that I've been planning ever since she started acting to draw attention. If you do things loudly and obviously, people are going to Watch You - and then they're going to start guessing at what you want, what you're doing and how they can turn it to their advantage. And Inks has been very, very obvious, so a lot of big players in Gem have been getting reports on her comings and goings.
I feel that's something that isn't included nearly enough in any form of fiction - people not only /guessing/ at things based on the information they have, but also crucially guessing /wrong/ sometimes. Or even a lot! Someone coming to a hilariously wrong but totally understandable and logical conclusion is generally only used for humour, when it's actually really good for drama and plot as well. And there are plenty of ways for characters to be wrong! Being intentionally misled or not knowing all the facts and extrapolating are only two! People can assume that everyone acts a certain way or holds a certain belief. They can put too much trust in something or someone, or assume it will always be the same. They can ignore facts so they don't have to change their opinions - without even realising they're doing it! - or they can acknowledge them but just naively think something won't be all that bad. Characters being wrong is /really good stuff/ for writing, and in a game like Inksgame where the focus is on politics and intelligence and business and ultimately /people/ - how they act, what they want, both in groups and individually - characters being wrong is an invaluable and essential element.
[11:50] I love Graceful Crane Stance. It is the entire reason Inks has Athletics 1. As long as Maji serves as a applicable platform on which to balance, Inks cannot fall over. If he were to say, invert himself, Inks would fall without a stunt or Spider Foot Style. Feather-Foot Style lets her balance on things that CAN'T support weight, while GCS lets her stand on things that can support SOME weight but not her own weight. As mentioned in my Solar Essays, GCS's platform clause also exists to ensure you can use your Dodge DV even on tightrope wires and so on.
[11:50] As far as stunts go, Sunlit Sands has meatier, more compressed stunts than I'm sure some people are used to- this is an elaborate 'Dramatic Movement Action' which is summed up as 'Inks gets from one side of the city ot another, gets past a guard and talks to a person she knows'. The important part for Aleph is that I made sure to include the people I wanted to See There, like Ahlam, and acknowledged the previously established conventions like the guard or other employees.
(Aleph: Shyft is good at remembering established details like this, which is nice - less work tracking them for me as an ST.)
[12:00] Aleph employed a fairly standard ST trick of using an NPC to get a read on a PC's intentions- specifically if Inks would bring Maji along. Remember, Maji is about 4.5 maybe 5 feet tall at the shoulder and much bigger than even a regular tiger. A significant portion of Inks's initial revenue stream just goes into FEEDING HIM. He actually ate better outside of Gem with his Survival 4 and +4d from one of his mutations. Note to self, add my Resources 3 'Gemcrafting' to my character sheet...
As to the acutal plan here, invoking Maji in this manner is mostly me wanting to get the most out of my traits which includes Backgrounds- a lot of Exalted actually suffers from too much stuff to track and not enough time to spotlight it all. That's actually why the best Artifacts are the ones that are iconic or 'Daily Use'.
So the main thing I realized after the fact was that I misunderstood the summons, and Aleph pointed it out as well- Inks was asked to meet the Despot 'at her earliest convenience- today', which I took as 'Right the Goddamned Now', but Aleph clarified as 'Any time That Day'.
This is worth mentioning, because the waiting room Inks was pushed into was one of many,or so Aleph implied, with a specific sort of role or objective in the decor and pagentry. I don't know if Aleph intended this, but one thing I took away from the whole waiting scene was ideas on How To Do It myself- Inks may infact end up mirroring the Despot's behaviors.
(This was 100% intentional. Inks saying things like "I want them a bit nervous but also greedy for what I can give them; send them to the green waiting room" and designing rooms to make passive social attacks against people who spend much time in them is very much the sort of thing that fits her character archetype.)
[12:04] Here we have one of Aleph's and I's Game Tone miscues. Our knowledge pools don't always overlap, and I am generally of a mind that 'Keep the game moving' is more important than vermilisitude- however Aleph comes from a very strong background of Do Your Goddamned Research. She obligingly reminded me that Resources 3 of Gems was not 'big stones', and we amicably agreed to retcon it in the subsequent stunts. She even found a reference page to show what she was talking about.
Now, not every game is going to have that luxury- of having anyone willing to BE that dedicated to accuracy or helping build up the detail of the world. Sometimes it's tough enough getting three or five people at the same tie together focusing on a somewhat shared goal.
(Aleph: In this case Inks is specifically a crafter who is in Gem, who works with jewels a lot and who is producing them as her main revenue stream. Since it's an area with more narrative focus, I feel the increased granularity is a bonus - more detail allows for more hooks and more things to interact with.)
[12:04] Back to Inks and Maji, I made a point of bringing up Inks's Nexan heritage and the culture she brought with her.
[12:18] In the ((OOC)) part of the conversation, I noted that these scenes could be considered Intimacy Building. Remember that most Mortals have Conviction 1-2, which means it's easy to win them over. Ahlam is probably more driven, so he'd be more difficult, and the 'Court' embodied in the Dream of Flesh shares his traits.
[12:37] Here Aleph attempted and in my opinion succeeded reasonably well at creating an Establishing Shot and Scene Change. She moved the characters through time and space with a metaphorical curtain fall and rise. Here she also poked Inks, intentionally or not, in one of her Virtues.
(Aleph: Intentional again. Slavery is a big thing in Gem, and Inks is now settled enough for me to start confronting her with it.)
[12:37] And here Inks rolls Compassion- because she can make a logical leap from 'arranged marriages' to 'slavery', and it may not be a wholly rational belief, but it's Her belief. Inks is Intelligence 5, not Rationalist Posthuman Singularity 5.
[12:40] Now, I succeeded on the Compassion roll, and as per the rules, I am compelled to act unless I spend a WP. I however am fully in control of HOW I act- so instead of making an immediate scene, Inks bides her time...
[12:40] I also very specifically picked Slavery as part of Inks's characterization for both Exalted Bucket List reasons, and simplicty for Aleph's sake. Slavery exists in Creation for players to take a stand against it or use it to achieve their own goals. I have never encountered a Free the Slaves player other than Aleph, and even then Keris is well, an Infernal- her approach to problems is not 'Classic Solar'. Most of the time in my experience, the slave most players want to save are demons. Which is fine, but wow are there a lot of Demon/Yozi apologists out there.
(Aleph: I have not encountered this, and it honestly bewilders me. I mean, Keris is an Infernal, and even she's pretty much given up on "justice for Hell". It's just too /big/.)
[12:48] Maji is partially a compromise for the solo play experience- I can offload a small slice of competence on him so Inks can focus her experience expenditures on more improtant things like Bureaucracy, Sorcery and Craft. On paper I would love for Inks to have more XP for... everything, and even now she actually doesn't quite feel 'Set' as a character. Exalted character generation feels best when a character comes out the gate as 'Done, but with room to grow'. Inks, having multi-specced into almost four different specialties, suffers from the 2e twilight problem of 'Does Everything Smart'.
Now, ths is actually important to me because I wanted her conceptually to be a polymath and to explore that, instead of taking it as an entitled 'I'm a Twilight and I should do it all'. Not every Twilight has to be like this, but with Inks, I wanted to make a very clear statement of 'This woman with the neck to ankles tattoo is a master surgeon, architect, savant and sorcerer'.
Hopefully in the future, the idea is that Inks is so valuable for her mind and other skills that people call upon her like they did the great thinkers of antiquity. A lot of Exalted games fall victim to the idea of nothing 'touches' the PCs unless it attacks them. In Inks's case, she fights the 'Island' problem and exists to be recognized and invited to solve other people's problems. She's the architect who designs the new castle, or the metallurgist who revolutionizes steel production. When you want to fund a trade mission to distant lands, you ask her to loan you money like the rich gentry of the previous eras did.
[13:16] Enter The Despot, Rankar the Seventh. This is the first time I've ever played a game even Remotely near Gem, and thus the first time I've seen the guy on-camera. I deliberately have been avoiding reading any of the southern setting books just to make sure Aleph can A- surprise me and B, I don't metagame her. I know a FEW things by osmosis, but none of which are particularly relevant to Sunlit Sands.
Now, as previously emphasized by Aleph, Maji is a GIANT TIGER and no matter how docile he seems at Inks's side, he is a GIANT TIGER and people will act accordingly. I also am gleefully playing to the hilt the fact that this curvacous woman has a GIANT TIGER generally following her commands by gesture and expression.
[13:18] The first great confrontation between these two minds! I'm not playing it too cagey, as Inks is only Socialize 1 (and I want to raise that really soon...), but she is a proud sorcerer and at least has some reasonable amount of business sense. Rankar is probably more skilled and experienced than Inks at this stage- more Ability and Style/Specialty dots. Also Rankar has AIDES- who grant teamwork bonuses, along with Books and Tools and Blessings to further improve his capabilities. A lot of people point out hte hypothetical maximum pool for mortals is 5+5+3? That's false. The Ideal Cases pool is Attribute 5, Ability 5, Specialty +3, Limited Teamwork +5d, Tool Bonus +3, howevermany dice a blessing can get you, and then your stunt. Now-
This is ideal case,and only someone LIKE Rankar can achieve it wiht any degree of regularity... unless you're an Exalt.
[13:25] From here Rankar is both showing some of his own cards, like the undisguised attraction to Inks (which is a perfectly reasonable consideration). I personally was acting (faking) as if Inks had more power at hand than Rankar did, but in reality he still is in much more control than Inks is.
[13:44] By this point, Rankar has deduced that Inks is a Sorcerer, and while I'm actually not going to be too shy aobut Demons, I don't want to make a bad impression this early either. Regardless, Rankar and by extension Aleph really impressed me with this summation of Inks's actions thus far, because I almost never see that level of attention paid to a player character- I try to when I run games, but most of my recent experiences have been four-five player romps with predominantly new players.
So with regard to the summation itself, Rankar points out that Inks is actually acting in a very strange manner- she goes to Gem and decides "I'm going to make more Gems.", she hides half the time and then shows off in blatant sorcerous glory the other half. This is all oddly fitting considering she's a Twilight, and only the Eclipse is more split between 'stages' of day or night.
[14:00] having reviewed the summation and spent a few rolls assessing his character, Inks offered her reply- "I want to start a business and I wanted to live somewhere warm." I haven't posted the prelude where she exalted, but basically she almost died of frostbite and it's left Inks less than interested in the idea of Cold Weather.
Inks's vision is grand, but a lot of her reasoning is very straight-forward and human. She wants to be rich, comfortable, powerful... and in a lot of ways, nothing like the family she left behind.
[14:15] I fully went into this meeting knowing Rankar would demand something like this- and to be fair I actually agree that flooding the market with gems hurts everyone, which is why Inks has an immediate counter-offer of turning excess gems to industrial uses and keeping them out of the 'fine jewlery' trade that he is more intimately familiar with.
[14:25] And if you recall that compassion roll, here Inks is cashing it in- she successfully convices the Despot to give up a slave- and he actually throws in two more as a casual display of generosity. Rankar doesn't know it, but he just gave Inks her first three employees.
(Aleph: I actually did this with the full expectation of her balking at the idea of being casually /given/ two people like /things/, to try and rub her nose in the slavery culture a little more. I realised immediately after doing so, of course, that Inks would just take that as an opportunity to rescue two more people from being slaves. She doesn't stand on principle like that.)
The next 'Session', let's call it 3.5, is actually going to be somewhat Play By Post/Google Doc, which sets up for the next Live Session whenever it happens.
=== Aleph's Observations: Session #3 ===
[12:56] Something Shyft missed at the time here - which he mentioned above - was that Rankar didn't give an exact time for Inks to meet him. As a result, since he couldn't afford to keep his whole day free, he was actually in a meeting when she arrived, hence the wait in the meeting room. I don't feel this miscommunication compromises Inks' character, since she's shown a trend of being rather impatient and forward, so this comment still basically fits. Nonetheless, it might have been better to quietly mention it as soon as I noticed the misunderstanding.
More generally, I'm giving Inks' style of aggressive negotiation some leeway by having Rankar be a cautious man who's assuming that Inks is holding /something/ back and treating her as though she might be either a valuable asset or a viable threat. I've been eagerly waiting for the chance to show off how much attention people have been paying her - I'm somewhat surprised that Shyft's experience of this is rare, because to me this is a /perfect/ way to generate plot that I've been planning ever since she started acting to draw attention. If you do things loudly and obviously, people are going to Watch You - and then they're going to start guessing at what you want, what you're doing and how they can turn it to their advantage. And Inks has been very, very obvious, so a lot of big players in Gem have been getting reports on her comings and goings.
I feel that's something that isn't included nearly enough in any form of fiction - people not only /guessing/ at things based on the information they have, but also crucially guessing /wrong/ sometimes. Or even a lot! Someone coming to a hilariously wrong but totally understandable and logical conclusion is generally only used for humour, when it's actually really good for drama and plot as well. And there are plenty of ways for characters to be wrong! Being intentionally misled or not knowing all the facts and extrapolating are only two! People can assume that everyone acts a certain way or holds a certain belief. They can put too much trust in something or someone, or assume it will always be the same. They can ignore facts so they don't have to change their opinions - without even realising they're doing it! - or they can acknowledge them but just naively think something won't be all that bad. Characters being wrong is /really good stuff/ for writing, and in a game like Inksgame where the focus is on politics and intelligence and business and ultimately /people/ - how they act, what they want, both in groups and individually - characters being wrong is an invaluable and essential element.
While most of the session was 'Talking', @Aleph and I had a lot of fun. Session 3.5 is actually proceeding by shared document/play by post. The reason for which is while a lot of the things Inks is doing is 'interesting' in the sense of has consequences and needs resolution, it also doesn't need Live On Camera Actors portraying. It is a Montage (Gonna need a montage!) and as such, we trade off the advantages and perks of live camera improv for a much more mutual, co-written effort.
Part of why I'm calling it session 3.5, is that even though I'm not going to be playing 'live at table', I'll still be earning experience for my actions. Also depending on how I stunt things, 3.5 will actually likely cover several months of in-game time instead of a few days.
Part of why I'm calling it session 3.5, is that even though I'm not going to be playing 'live at table', I'll still be earning experience for my actions. Also depending on how I stunt things, 3.5 will actually likely cover several months of in-game time instead of a few days.
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Sunlit Sands - Session 4
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
And here we are with Session 4 and some notes regarding the 'off camera' Session 3.5
So after a long snarl of scheduling issues as well as getting a new laptop, I am back to logging Sunlit Sands! Today I'm posting on Session #4, and we just finished session #7 today.
So after a long snarl of scheduling issues as well as getting a new laptop, I am back to logging Sunlit Sands! Today I'm posting on Session #4, and we just finished session #7 today.
Here we go with yet another live session!
This was a much more intimate session,focused on a handful of characters and not as many city-shaking events as previous. Mostly because it only covers roughly three days.
[09:58] On the 'first day', Inks is tired. Sooo tired, and Maji is suitable Rajah-esque for convenient inclusion. It hasn't come up much, but Maji actually has the Metal Body mutation, which partially justifies his use as spell anchor for Skin of Bronze.
[10:05] Through here, I invoke the 'remembering details' rules such as they are- not that I really need them, Sulieman is easy to remember, but habits are hard to break. (And a botch would've been hilarious if kinda sad).
[10:08] Since Sulieman won't arrive for another day and a half, I figure it'd be a good idea to get moving on things. StW is terrifying. Entire schedules and timetables shuffle at the Solar's whim!
[10:14] For all my desires to play a brassy, loud Solar, I am actually surprisingly mechanically conservative. Some of this is due to my past experience with STs who don't 'reason things out' the way Aleph does here. I'm used to having to break things down for people who have a different level of system mastery.
Here, Aleph made it clear that Inks is in a position of strength and gave a comprehensible, actionable reason why- she litereally did something, designed something that requires her skills and input. This is much more useful to me as a player than 'You win because you're Exalted/Solar' etc.
So having understood that, it was almost a formality to arrange for fair stakes on all sides. Inks isn't out to gouge people and as she said in-character, if someone isn't on her level, she's going to uplift them until they are.
[10:49] I was considering sending Maji to bring Sulieman back to the townhouse, buuut I decided against it.
[11:06] Aleph is very good at identifying when someone is digging their own hole. Probably from experience playing Keris.
[11:41] And here's the payoff- yes Inks, you are unfortunately now even more Waifu in the eyes of dear Husbando.
More seriously, there's all kinds of possible relationships and I'm not so squeamish a roleplayer as to not see how one goes. Right now though, Inks's pride would not let her settle down as anything less than an equal partner- and Sulieman's interest in her is primarily visual/attraction; they've barely known each other two days at this point, and Elsa's still right here.
By the same token, Inks is a Solar and what most people would consider 'crippling expenses', she considers 'Fair' and offers to repair the ships good as new. Because she can. (And it means she has more time to build up a proper amount of money to pay Sulieman back with, with interest.)
And then about thirty minutes later, the session concluded. While it was short, we got a fair amount moving and opportunities are presenting themselves. Three Jewels Bank and House Bhalasus are going to be great ways of getting into bigger business- and I forgot to mention that the equitable arrangement achieved earlier was a Resources 3 salary as top consultant, and Backing 3 in [Something]. Aleph didn't exactly explain what just yet. (Backing is a hard background to arbitrate without discussion).
So now Inks has TWO Resources 3 streams. It's also worth noting that we're prototyping a 10-dot Resources system, as Aleph says "Inks needs an economic system as granular as standard combat." Now, I personally dislike 10-dot background systems, but mostly for aesthetic reasons; I much prefer stuff like Resources to Salary or whatnot, but I am aware that model doesn't work Here.
Armed with two sets of Resources 3, Inks can start really scaling up!
This was a much more intimate session,focused on a handful of characters and not as many city-shaking events as previous. Mostly because it only covers roughly three days.
[09:58] On the 'first day', Inks is tired. Sooo tired, and Maji is suitable Rajah-esque for convenient inclusion. It hasn't come up much, but Maji actually has the Metal Body mutation, which partially justifies his use as spell anchor for Skin of Bronze.
[10:05] Through here, I invoke the 'remembering details' rules such as they are- not that I really need them, Sulieman is easy to remember, but habits are hard to break. (And a botch would've been hilarious if kinda sad).
[10:08] Since Sulieman won't arrive for another day and a half, I figure it'd be a good idea to get moving on things. StW is terrifying. Entire schedules and timetables shuffle at the Solar's whim!
[10:14] For all my desires to play a brassy, loud Solar, I am actually surprisingly mechanically conservative. Some of this is due to my past experience with STs who don't 'reason things out' the way Aleph does here. I'm used to having to break things down for people who have a different level of system mastery.
Here, Aleph made it clear that Inks is in a position of strength and gave a comprehensible, actionable reason why- she litereally did something, designed something that requires her skills and input. This is much more useful to me as a player than 'You win because you're Exalted/Solar' etc.
So having understood that, it was almost a formality to arrange for fair stakes on all sides. Inks isn't out to gouge people and as she said in-character, if someone isn't on her level, she's going to uplift them until they are.
[10:49] I was considering sending Maji to bring Sulieman back to the townhouse, buuut I decided against it.
[11:06] Aleph is very good at identifying when someone is digging their own hole. Probably from experience playing Keris.
[11:41] And here's the payoff- yes Inks, you are unfortunately now even more Waifu in the eyes of dear Husbando.
More seriously, there's all kinds of possible relationships and I'm not so squeamish a roleplayer as to not see how one goes. Right now though, Inks's pride would not let her settle down as anything less than an equal partner- and Sulieman's interest in her is primarily visual/attraction; they've barely known each other two days at this point, and Elsa's still right here.
By the same token, Inks is a Solar and what most people would consider 'crippling expenses', she considers 'Fair' and offers to repair the ships good as new. Because she can. (And it means she has more time to build up a proper amount of money to pay Sulieman back with, with interest.)
And then about thirty minutes later, the session concluded. While it was short, we got a fair amount moving and opportunities are presenting themselves. Three Jewels Bank and House Bhalasus are going to be great ways of getting into bigger business- and I forgot to mention that the equitable arrangement achieved earlier was a Resources 3 salary as top consultant, and Backing 3 in [Something]. Aleph didn't exactly explain what just yet. (Backing is a hard background to arbitrate without discussion).
So now Inks has TWO Resources 3 streams. It's also worth noting that we're prototyping a 10-dot Resources system, as Aleph says "Inks needs an economic system as granular as standard combat." Now, I personally dislike 10-dot background systems, but mostly for aesthetic reasons; I much prefer stuff like Resources to Salary or whatnot, but I am aware that model doesn't work Here.
Armed with two sets of Resources 3, Inks can start really scaling up!
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Sunlit Sands - Session 5
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
And now Session 5 - with some preliminary notes for the game timeline:
So the first scene opens on the task of fixing Sulieman's ships. Inks had just purchased Crack-Mending Technique, which we've agreed 'stacks' with our revised CNNT. Inksgame's approach to CNNT is that it is a time-booster, and it either renders her bare hands 'rudimentary' tools, and upgrades held tools to the next level of sophistication, along a rough progression of Second Age to Shogunate to 'First Age'. Note that Aleph has a very firm opinion of what is attainable by PCs and the like. The 'idea' of a Single Solar attaining anything like the unified First Age is tacitly Off The Table.
Now, part of Inks's central narrative is artifice, so we're going to see artifacts eventually, but right now I'm focusing on merchant-queen and sorcery gameplay.
So, Aleph starts us with some scene-setting, and we've been discussing/working on maps of Gem for use in tracking where things are located. Cities are not... aesthetic, or planned. Not always. for that reason, industries tend to stay in industrial areas and so on. Stinky stuff stays with stinky.
The introduction to Sulieman's fleet is useful, because it helps communicate what kind of man he is- not a stay-at-home financial backer, but actual On-The-Dunes Sandsailer and merchant-lord. Manacle and Coin has a great discussion of the Guild Caravan, which I would not put out of place- on a smaller scale and without the 'Guild baggage'. In any case, it describes the Culture of the caravan people and how it moves goods across Creation.
[11:10] Here Aleph is starting to get into the habit of having people react to Inks's overal appearance and preferred behavior. She's always vamping a little.
[11:18] And here we start to see that Inks's reputation as a Sorcerer preceeds her.
[11:25] and [11:28] covers a nice feature of Exalted called Assistant Bonuses, which are separate from Oadenol's Aide Mechanics. Basically if you have skilled help, you get +1-5 dice on the action, or in rare cases, have everyone throw their pool into a single objective. We've been using this rule to calibrate difficulties and dice pools as well.
[11:29] Aleph is not used to dice pools of 20 and +5 autosux.
[11:41] This bit here threw me when i first saw it, because Aleph actually described More than what I actually did, and I'm used to the players being the one who does most of that work. Part of that was for a long time I was forever ST, so I HAD to be economical.
The point is though, is that Aleph described all of this, not in an attempt to show me up, but as a means to teach me what she considered acceptable description/stunt fodder.
[11:47] Here we abstract the rest of the repair project into downtime. From here we discuss some particulars about demon summoning and potential products of same. Later on Aleph retcons this for balance reasons, but the goals are still on the table.
[12:04] This is one of the subplots I was looking forward to starting, the investigation and development of 'personal' gods for things a charcter owns. Aleph admits readily that she doesn't know what a house god would do, but agrees it's a viable Creation Thing.
here we also discuss the 'houserule' of Enlightened Essence Wielders being able to see spirits. As I point out here, allowing that means the ST has to populate the world with spirits in addition to mortals. Locking spirit-sight behind a Charm or even an Action means the ST doesn't need to borrow trouble.
[12:37] Here we see Suleiman's reaction to the repaired fleet. I think Aleph might be able to give a better idea of how long it would've taken to repair the ships without magic. And how much it cost. Suffice to say Inks is even more waifu.
More seriously, Sulieman's reaction changed my plan for the session- i originally was aiming to make up a hot-accountant character to see what Aleph's response was, but once Sulieman' tripped over to 'almost worshipful', Inks as a character was not comfortable. So she moved to correct the misconception
This lead to the reveal scene of ANATHEMA- and then Sulieman earned huge points in her eyes by reasoning out that she has nothing to do with his emotional reactions.
And that concludes Session #5!
Now, part of Inks's central narrative is artifice, so we're going to see artifacts eventually, but right now I'm focusing on merchant-queen and sorcery gameplay.
So, Aleph starts us with some scene-setting, and we've been discussing/working on maps of Gem for use in tracking where things are located. Cities are not... aesthetic, or planned. Not always. for that reason, industries tend to stay in industrial areas and so on. Stinky stuff stays with stinky.
The introduction to Sulieman's fleet is useful, because it helps communicate what kind of man he is- not a stay-at-home financial backer, but actual On-The-Dunes Sandsailer and merchant-lord. Manacle and Coin has a great discussion of the Guild Caravan, which I would not put out of place- on a smaller scale and without the 'Guild baggage'. In any case, it describes the Culture of the caravan people and how it moves goods across Creation.
[11:10] Here Aleph is starting to get into the habit of having people react to Inks's overal appearance and preferred behavior. She's always vamping a little.
[11:18] And here we start to see that Inks's reputation as a Sorcerer preceeds her.
[11:25] and [11:28] covers a nice feature of Exalted called Assistant Bonuses, which are separate from Oadenol's Aide Mechanics. Basically if you have skilled help, you get +1-5 dice on the action, or in rare cases, have everyone throw their pool into a single objective. We've been using this rule to calibrate difficulties and dice pools as well.
[11:29] Aleph is not used to dice pools of 20 and +5 autosux.
[11:41] This bit here threw me when i first saw it, because Aleph actually described More than what I actually did, and I'm used to the players being the one who does most of that work. Part of that was for a long time I was forever ST, so I HAD to be economical.
The point is though, is that Aleph described all of this, not in an attempt to show me up, but as a means to teach me what she considered acceptable description/stunt fodder.
[11:47] Here we abstract the rest of the repair project into downtime. From here we discuss some particulars about demon summoning and potential products of same. Later on Aleph retcons this for balance reasons, but the goals are still on the table.
[12:04] This is one of the subplots I was looking forward to starting, the investigation and development of 'personal' gods for things a charcter owns. Aleph admits readily that she doesn't know what a house god would do, but agrees it's a viable Creation Thing.
here we also discuss the 'houserule' of Enlightened Essence Wielders being able to see spirits. As I point out here, allowing that means the ST has to populate the world with spirits in addition to mortals. Locking spirit-sight behind a Charm or even an Action means the ST doesn't need to borrow trouble.
[12:37] Here we see Suleiman's reaction to the repaired fleet. I think Aleph might be able to give a better idea of how long it would've taken to repair the ships without magic. And how much it cost. Suffice to say Inks is even more waifu.
More seriously, Sulieman's reaction changed my plan for the session- i originally was aiming to make up a hot-accountant character to see what Aleph's response was, but once Sulieman' tripped over to 'almost worshipful', Inks as a character was not comfortable. So she moved to correct the misconception
This lead to the reveal scene of ANATHEMA- and then Sulieman earned huge points in her eyes by reasoning out that she has nothing to do with his emotional reactions.
And that concludes Session #5!
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Sunlit Sands - Sesssion 6-8
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Sunlit Sands Sesssion 9-11
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Sunlit Sands: Session 12-14
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Hahah! Thanks. Suleiman's an interesting character, and I'm definitely looking forward to how his character develops- note that next up is Session 51, so unless you read ahead in the pastebin logs, you won't know how things progress...
Having said that, Chapters 12, 13 and 14 are now live on Ao3!
Sunlit Sands: Session 15-17
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Sunlit Sands: Session 18-20
- Location
- Gladstone, OR