Quote from: James Gillen;814676The Hunt should be an actual threat to PCs.  But again, it's an issue of a Storyteller (based) game promising players all sorts of supernatural power and delivering not much.

jg

I think the Hunt should be a threat to PCs. But not so much because of lots of mortals but its Terrestrial Exalts (who work well in numbers) backed by some mortals, but the Exalts do the heavy lifting. And I don't think it should be a thread that the PCs don't ever out grow or move beyond. The idea was to catch Solars young and off balance which was easier when they'd pop up every few decades one at a time. And even then you hit them with overwhelming just to be sure.

I want other play options besides sucking up to one of the major factions for protection, playing Master of Magic with PnP rules so you can have your own army or running from the Wyld Hunt for the length of the game.

Quote from: James Gillen;814676The Hunt should be an actual threat to PCs.  But again, it's an issue of a Storyteller (based) game promising players all sorts of supernatural power and delivering not much.

jg

Even high essence Solars and Lunars will have problems with a group of Dragon Bloods. They can defend each other and keep the Solar on the edge of zero init. They would have to focus on countering Solar charm init refresh and counter attacks. Even if the Solar had charms or Anima to pop up from a init crash the next round that round if the DBs delayed their attack...the Solars defence would tank. And then the DBs could bleed him/her of essesne.

Nexus: Something like that. Sorry.

Quote from: Mostlyjoe;814714Nexus: Something like that. Sorry.

No problem. I was curious f you were working from a more complete version of the rules than I am familiar with.

Really Solar Counter attacks are what you need to be careful of. It makes going 'all in' (not the official term) very, very risky. Unless you have some form of reactive defenses (like excellencies) then trying to down the Solar will cost you. Mortals may land a blow, maybe near incapacitating, but the odds of them staggering away with a mortal wound is very high.

Quote from: Orphan81;814339I think Exigents are a cool idea, don't get me wrong, but Liminals is clearly someone throwing their love of Promethean the Created into the ring.

Oh FFS...

I always thought that the silliest and most utterly irrelevant and needless aspect of the Exalted setting was the whole "is it the backstory of the World of Darkness?" deal. Who gives a frig if it is? Nobody goes to Exalted to scratch their goth vampire itch, nobody goes to the World of Darkness to scratch their Solar superhero itch, they're different games and literally no good purpose is served by cooking up new Exalts to fit every type of new WoD monster they come up with. (Look out for them announcing still further Exalts to match the Beasts from the upcoming game of that name, or the biomechanoid Demons from Demon: the Descent, if they haven't already...)

Quote from: Warthur;814864Oh FFS...

I always thought that the silliest and most utterly irrelevant and needless aspect of the Exalted setting was the whole "is it the backstory of the World of Darkness?" deal. Who gives a frig if it is? Nobody goes to Exalted to scratch their goth vampire itch, nobody goes to the World of Darkness to scratch their Solar superhero itch, they're different games and literally no good purpose is served by cooking up new Exalts to fit every type of new WoD monster they come up with. (Look out for them announcing still further Exalts to match the Beasts from the upcoming game of that name, or the biomechanoid Demons from Demon: the Descent, if they haven't already...)

That can be a problem with the "Rule of Cool" (as much as I love it) without a firm hand on wheel, it can lead to setting bloat. I think that's part of where the other editions of Exalted went wrong.

So spirits will be playable now. That should be interesting.

Quote from: Kiero;814489There's no "could" about it. They made the wrong design choice right at the start, by failing to bin the shitty Storyteller system, which doesn't scale up at all, and starting from scratch. Not "rebuilding from the ground up" (of which there's little evidence so far they've really done anything of the sort), but flushing the crap away and starting all over again with something actually purpose-built for the task. Doesn't matter how much glitter and polish you put on a turd, it's still a turd.

After following Exalted for years (what's its been over a decade at this point?) I'm honestly starting to wonder if the game is workable without a major retooling and re-imaging. Not just mechanics wise but concept wise. It began with a somewhat vague concept that's gone all over the map, attempting to follow the "Rule of Cool" but with little oversight.

Now the fanbase is huge but they're fans of different aspects of the collage of tastes and assumptions and inspirations. Look at Exalted discussions, you get the impression most of the posters are talking about different games all together. Everyone wants something different that fits whatever platonic ideal of Exalted they have in their heads. And the only thing they agree on is that people that don't agree with them are heretics out to destroy the game with their flawed taste.

Even the current developers seems to be out of touch with each other and not that certain about their own ideas and goals. I see why they didn't answer many questions now.

Quote from: Nexus;814887That can be a problem with the "Rule of Cool" (as much as I love it) without a firm hand on wheel, it can lead to setting bloat. I think that's part of where the other editions of Exalted went wrong.

The system comes with bloat built in. We don't really need more.

Quote from: Nexus;815229After following Exalted for years (what's its been over a decade at this point?) I'm honestly starting to wonder if the game is workable without a major retooling and re-imaging. Not just mechanics wise but concept wise. It began with a somewhat vague concept that's gone all over the map, attempting to follow the "Rule of Cool" but with little oversight.

Now the fanbase is huge but they're fans of different aspects of the collage of tastes and assumptions and inspirations. Look at Exalted discussions, you get the impression most of the posters are talking about different games all together. Everyone wants something different that fits whatever platonic ideal of Exalted they have in their heads. And the only thing they agree on is that people that don't agree with them are heretics out to destroy the game with their flawed taste.

Even the current developers seems to be out of touch with each other and not that certain about their own ideas and goals. I see why they didn't answer many questions now.

I think a big part of the problem is that Exalted is a mishmash of tropes and whatever the devs thought was cool haphazardly thrown together without the slightest bit of understanding of what makes those tropes effective.  It's like they look at something they like and think, "Hey, x happens in y, so if we throw in x in our game, it'll be just like y!" I'm almost tempted to call it cargo cult writing.

Quote from: Marvelous_Metal_Man;815323I think a big part of the problem is that Exalted is a mishmash of tropes and whatever the devs thought was cool haphazardly thrown together without the slightest bit of understanding of what makes those tropes effective.  It's like they look at something they like and think, "Hey, x happens in y, so if we throw in x in our game, it'll be just like y!" I'm almost tempted to call it cargo cult writing.

Yep, that's a big part of it.

Quote from: Marvelous_Metal_Man;815323I think a big part of the problem is that Exalted is a mishmash of tropes and whatever the devs thought was cool haphazardly thrown together without the slightest bit of understanding of what makes those tropes effective.  It's like they look at something they like and think, "Hey, x happens in y, so if we throw in x in our game, it'll be just like y!" I'm almost tempted to call it cargo cult writing.

I disagree. Not only is the mishmash of tropes one of its big appeals, but I think the original vision for the RPG as held by Grabowski showed a good understanding of those tropes. This was all central to the RPG's success.

Despite Grabowski holding his ship together longer than most would, the nature of the RPG industry in the 00s meant that the original vision was eventually lost and has been carried forward by people who don't understand them. This turned Exalted into what it is today.

I don't have any confidence that the Ex3 developers have shown any better understanding of those tropes. All I see is an intense focus on trying to fix the mechanics, which IMO is not the foundation on which Exalted is built.

Recent comments that they are reducing the font size to try and fit the originally estimated 400 to 500 pages or so has done nothing to alleviate my concern.

Quote from: Skywalker;815328Recent comments that they are reducing the font size to try and fit the originally estimated 400 to 500 pages or so has done nothing to alleviate my concern.

Holy shit, how big did it come out to be?

Quote from: Nexus;815329Holy shit, how big did it come out to be?

Who knows? But its another symptom of the greater issue. Honestly, go back and look at the white space in 1e's rulebook as compared to 2e's rulebook.

It was originally slated as a 400+ page rulebook. In the last update:

QuoteThe edited text for EX3 is now completely in layout. Art Director Maria Cabardo did her "bulk layout" phase, "dropping in the edited text into a very simple layout format in order to see if the fonts and the font sizes that she wants to use work for the text, and very importantly, just how many pages this tome actually is", and she and I fiddled with the font size a bit and made another proof.

That reduced the page count dramatically, but not enough to get the book to the size it can be printed and shipped within the range of pricing we planned for. And beyond this Kickstarter, we also have to look at all the folks who just couldn't be backers for one reason or another and who will pick up the book as a PoD physical book from DTRPG. We need that version to have reasonable costs as well.

That second bulk layout proof is currently in the hands of the Devs who are looking at alterations to the text to further reduce the page count. Once they pare it down, Maria and I will do another layout pass and move ahead towards our first real layout proof. That'll be where art will be positioned and sidebars made, and should be very close to what the actual book will look like. It's the most labor-intensive of the proofing stages for the layout designer.