Quote from: Azraele;952099I keep coming back to things like that; things that betray this game as a game made by fans of pirates characters (from movies and books). Fans of commerce-themed anime (Spice and Wolf gets brought up a lot). Fans of fighting and kung-fu cartoons. But nothing has a root in actual reality; everything is designed to emulate some fiction or another, so that what you have isn't a game about something, but rather about stories which were about something.

This is pretty much my main gripe about not just Exalted by the entire output of WhiteWolf and its successors. They always seem to assume that there's this thing called noir and this thing called mythology and this thing called wuxia and this thing called crime fiction, and that not only can the customers be assumed to be deeply familiar with them but it will be easy, for people familiar with a certain genre, to emulate that genre in play. The only thing stopping them from doing so, the unspoken assumption in everything from Vampire: the Masquerade to Trinity seems to go, is that roleplayers are a bunch of immature munchkins who need to be patiently lectured on the need to not be immature munchkins so that they might finally start to roleplay properly.

The problem is that while you don't need much real-world knowledge to enjoy a story of a given genre, you do need a certain understanding of the factors at work - or at least a simplified, fictionalised version of those factors - to create such a story. To create a pirate scenario, you need to know what sort of thing might happen to a pirate ship in the Spanish Main, or at least an internally consistent fictional version of the Spanish Main. To create a police procedural, you need to know something about what sort of procedures the police could conceivably use - not necessarily the ones the real police use, but the ones they might be imagined to use in a make-believe setting where forensic evidence is 100% reliable and a DNA test can be whipped up in five minutes. And to have a fantasy game that deal heavily with logistics and infrastructure, you need to not just have a note that says "insert logistics and infrastructure," but to provide an actual working model for how things like trade and bureaucracy and politics actually function.

It doesn't have to be in the form of rules and dice and modifiers - in fact, it might even be better if it isn't. But there needs to be some kind of easy-to-follow guidelines that states that usually X is the case but sometimes Y happens, and then Z often but not always results. That explains that the reason why no one has done obvious improvement A is that so far no one has managed to overcome obstacle B, but if someone could manage A it would be really good because then we might start working on C. You know? Enough information for the GM to form some sort of simple working model of how the world is ticking along and how the players might affect and be affected by it.

But no, no, no... "Just roleplay it!" they say, as if internally coherent setting detail was the sort of thing you could just pull out of your ass. And then they are surprised and disappointed when people stick to the parts of the game that are actually outlined.

How ill was John Morke? The last reports I saw directly indicating he had a growth that was being tested. Then things fell silent for awhile aside from rumors from he was at Death's Door to he had an advanced goiter.

Latest update: Holden and John are gone as developers. That isn't surprising at this stage TBH. And they are replacing them with Eric Minton and Robert Vance , two people who seem to have no development experience or less RPG writing experience than the two outgoers. According to the update: "Eric and Robert have been all over EX3 in various capacities since writing began, and their involvement and love of Exalted goes further back than that."

Quote from: Skywalker;953926Latest update: Holden and John are gone as developers. That isn't surprising at this stage TBH. And they are replacing them with Eric Minton and Robert Vance , two people who seem to have no development experience or less RPG writing experience than the two outgoers. According to the update: "Eric and Robert have been all over EX3 in various capacities since writing began, and their involvement and love of Exalted goes further back than that."

We've seen this before with Exalted, and it never ends well when multiple developers play around with different books during an edition's run. These guys may know their stuff, but I'd be shocked if there were no more changes to the team throughout the rest of EX3's lifespan (assuming it gets the decade or so it'll need to see all the important splat books released).

This is why I prefer games that are pretty much entirely the work of a single individual, like Kevin Crawford's stuff or Wiggy's Hellfrost. It's so nice to get a single, coherent view of a game/setting.

Quote from: Azraele;952099Magnificent Rant

Welcome to the wonderful world of Roleplaying (aka actually Roleplaying as a character in a setting, not Storytelling).  Isn't playing without all the narrative horseshit refreshing?

Quote from: Skywalker;953926Latest update: Holden and John are gone as developers.

Well, I'm surprised about John, Holden had become a PR liability.

Quote from: Brand55;953930We've seen this before with Exalted, and it never ends well when multiple developers play around with different books during an edition's run. These guys may know their stuff, but I'd be shocked if there were no more changes to the team throughout the rest of EX3's lifespan (assuming it gets the decade or so it'll need to see all the important splat books released).

This is why I prefer games that are pretty much entirely the work of a single individual, like Kevin Crawford's stuff or Wiggy's Hellfrost. It's so nice to get a single, coherent view of a game/setting.

Wonder if and when they'll get thrown under the bus.

Just curious since I haven't been following Exalted for a while, but what happened to Holden and John?

Quote from: Azraele;952099The creator(s) of ACKS (A particular shout out to Alexander Macris and his tireless effort to improve on perfection) were also fans of something; dungeons and dragons. But ACKS isn't just a warmed-over set of abstractions and excuses for the "core experience" of DnD: it's based on thought, and research, and the real actual world and its physical laws.

Hahaha, your post is brilliant. Ironically, I'd gotten about halfway through when I was thinking, you know, ACKS does "modelling the world through it's economy well", and that's where you arrived at.

You've encapsulated the difference between someone who designs something in an appropriate way, based on having an approach that's logical and internally consistent. Contrasting to a collective of people who frankly haven't got a fucking clue about anything besides their own prejudices and the "Rule of Cool". Which if you have no grounding, nothing is cool.

The Ex3 team made very clear they weren't serious about designing a good game when they didn't burn the Storyteller System and write something totally new, from scratch. So all we have is a warmed up turd rolled in glitter.

Quote from: Starglyte;954021Just curious since I haven't been following Exalted for a while, but what happened to Holden and John?

The same thing that happened to Zinoviev and Tukhachevsky.

jg

Quote from: Kiero;954033So all we have is a warmed up turd rolled in glitter.

The imagery is beautiful.

Quote from: James Gillen;954045The same thing that happened to Zinoviev and Tukhachevsky.

jg

It looked like there was talk of some behind the scenes stuff going on that was pretty quickly hushed up, on TBP at least.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;954060The imagery is beautiful.

Its certainly vivid and, IMO, accurate.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;954060The imagery is beautiful.

It's less beautiful when you realize it's a turd the size of a minivan. Have you seen the size comparison of the 2nd and 3rd gen books?

Quote from: AsenRG;953939Well, I'm surprised about John, Holden had become a PR liability.

To be honest, both are. And throw Rich on top of that as well.

But i think you are right. It probably was time to let them go because of accumulated...bs... . I mean seriously, have you read how they (Holden in particular) have communicated to fans and customers. Wow...just wow.

As for the new situation...not sure what to think. Minton has some good AP stuff for Exalted (i guess that was why he made the team in the first place) but other than that, no clue who those people are. Considering that no one of the whole Ex3e team has a fucking clue about mechanics and logical/technical writing, my expectations aren't high (ok, after the first leak, they never were again anyway...so that's not saying much).

I am also not sure if this is not the official beginning of the end after all...sure Rich tries to sound like "hey, now it's going somewhere again..." but i am not convinced.
Considering that they will probably want to charge the fans for all those snippets they promised instead of making them a "sorry for the shit so far, guys" i think it could very well be the last nail in the coffin.

I guess we will see.

I have no idea who either of these guys are. But I'd never heard of John Morke before and Holden was just some slightly obnoxious fan on the White Wolf message with a Hamtaro avatar.