Quote from: Snowman0147;790252Well creativity and actually representing the setting for what it is had already suffered.

Agreed. As I've said, I'm interested in 3rd for the mechanics. Almost nothing I've heard about the setting changes sound like they're for the better.

Quote from: Nexus;790249Is it just me or does about 90 or so percent of Exalted fans and all of the staff seem to share the SJW platform? I'm curious how this is going to show up in the 3rd edition run.

Which is interesting because White Wolf has released products that should be orders of magnitude more egregious to someone actually concerned with Social Justice then say, all of FATAL, or the single Numenera monster, or the stupidest crap Desborough says.

Quote from: Snowman0147;786819It does and I am really sick of it when they do that to settings that are not shitty.  Don't care if it uses storyteller.  If the setting is not bleak you don't get to bleak up the place.

I just started running a 1st edition game, and for now since the characters are still "new" and learning what they can and cannot do, they're on the run, but it won't last long. They're already talking about plans to return and have a "chat" with a garrison of Realm soldiery and their Dragon-Blooded commander in the near future. So no, not shitty, or bleak, just a ramp-up period where the players AND characters are learning what they can and can't do. I think for a first-time group (and Exalted GM like me), it's a natural progression while we all learn the ropes. I'm sure they'll be blazing their 50-foot-tall anima and mowing down scores of soldiers before you know it.

Want to throw this out for anyone who wants to answer: since there is SO damn much background in the setting, which I love and have spent two weeks reading, I was thinking of implementing a mechanic where the players can spend one or more motes of Essence to "remember" things when the players need or want more info, rather than having them try to read up on thousands of years of history. I know the Lore skill covers that to some extent, but I was thinking more along the lines of remembering events/places/things that their prior incarnations would know. I know in the rules they mention things like Circles coming together that are formed because of relationships with prior incarnations, so that seems like something that might work.  Is there something already in the game along those lines, or do you think it'd weaken the Lore skill too much?

Quote from: Werekoala;790345Want to throw this out for anyone who wants to answer: since there is SO damn much background in the setting, which I love and have spent two weeks reading, I was thinking of implementing a mechanic where the players can spend one or more motes of Essence to "remember" things when the players need or want more info, rather than having them try to read up on thousands of years of history. I know the Lore skill covers that to some extent, but I was thinking more along the lines of remembering events/places/things that their prior incarnations would know. I know in the rules they mention things like Circles coming together that are formed because of relationships with prior incarnations, so that seems like something that might work.  Is there something already in the game along those lines, or do you think it'd weaken the Lore skill too much?

IME Exalted is best where the past is kept mysterious and mostly obfuscated. Anything before the Scarlet Empress came to power should be like Atlantis before it feel beneath the waves or the green stoned cyclopean cities of Conan's Hyboria. Focus on the present and use the past to make the stuff in the present more exciting and dramatic.

PCs in Exalted don't know all that much history unless they are specialised historians or they are experienced Celestial Exalts that have made sense of the dreams and visions they have had from their past lives. The later was represented in game with the Past Lives Merit, found on page 27 of the Player's Guide. Everything the PCs are likely to know as from character creation is set out on a single page (pg 32) of the 1e rulebook. Its even written as an "in character" history so you can simply give it as a hand out.

Quote from: Werekoala;790345I just started running a 1st edition game, and for now since the characters are still "new" and learning what they can and cannot do, they're on the run, but it won't last long. They're already talking about plans to return and have a "chat" with a garrison of Realm soldiery and their Dragon-Blooded commander in the near future. So no, not shitty, or bleak, just a ramp-up period where the players AND characters are learning what they can and can't do. I think for a first-time group (and Exalted GM like me), it's a natural progression while we all learn the ropes. I'm sure they'll be blazing their 50-foot-tall anima and mowing down scores of soldiers before you know it.

That was in general and not just for exalted.  Point I am saying is that if the setting is cherry gum drop happy you don't go out to make it bleak just because you see it uses the same system for dark depressing settings.

Edit:  Grammar mistake.

Quote from: Snowman0147;790389That was in general and just for exalted.  Point I am saying is that if the setting is cherry gum drop happy you don't go out to make it bleak just because you see it uses the same system for dark depressing settings.

Understood, and agreed. From my reading of the rules and setting of 1st edition, at least, it's clear that BEFORE the Exalted (players) returned, it was pretty bleak and dark (actually, stagnant, so maybe gray?), but now that they're baaaaaack - things will change. That's how I'm running it, and how the players are playing it.

Well, mostly - the one guy in the group who is taking the lead tends to enjoy power-hungry (if not -mad) characters, so it might end up kinda bleak before it's over, but for now, it's all good.

Quote from: Nexus;786648I haven't liked the direction Exalted has been going in since early 2ed. Its been becoming some kind of soapbox for the writers to lecture on the evils of whatever their particular socio economic or political hobgoblins are.

...Exalted has never not been this.

You only have to get a sense of Grabowski's political leanings and educational background to get a sense of why the game clearly wants you to despise the Guild despite it being one of the world's only mortal achievements.

Quote from: Lioness;790490...Exalted has never not been this.

You only have to get a sense of Grabowski's political leanings and educational background to get a sense of why the game clearly wants you to despise the Guild despite it being one of the world's only mortal achievements.

You can always tell something of a writer's biases when you read their work. Its practically unavoidable. But Exalted didn't beat you over the head with its politics/social justice in earlier incarnations.

Quote from: Lioness;790490You only have to get a sense of Grabowski's political leanings and educational background to get a sense of why the game clearly wants you to despise the Guild despite it being one of the world's only mortal achievements.

You don't need to read some one's political leanings to know that the guild is evil.  They sell slaves to strange soul sucking beings.  The fact they work in the slave market is evil enough, but to sell them to beings that can suck out your soul makes it even more evil.  That is clear as fucking day with all of its cloudless blue sky.

Quote from: Snowman0147;790507You don't need to read some one's political leanings to know that the guild is evil.

Not what I'm saying.
His political leanings are a major factor in why the Guild is presented as an evil mega corporation.

So the fact they do slavery at all isn't a indication that they are evil?

I think common sense had defeated you lioness.

No, no, no, you're still not getting it.

You're thinking of the Guild as a single organisation. The technology of the Age of Sorrows simply wouldn't allow one organisation to communicate or enforce its policy globally.

There's a reason its initial presentation allows you to overlook that and that's because the Guild is a representation of the capitalist system that doesn't make distinctions between the guy running a sweatshop that makes t-shirts in Bangladesh and the person who sells them in the high street like they're equally culpable for the human suffering. It's all the Guild and the Guild is bad.

Trying to treat them like one of the major game antagonists felt particularly heavy-handed, because they're up there with omnicidal maniacs and creatures that want to collapse the whole world back into chaos without their own exalts to stand against you.

I tried the whole fight the Guild thing once, it was most unsatisfying dealing with enemies against whom your attack roll was mostly a formality to see how unrecognisable the corpse would be, but I digress!

Essentially Nexus and myself are people who presumably hold different values and have thus felt that different writers were being rather sanctimonious at different times.

Quote from: Lioness;790525Not what I'm saying.
His political leanings are a major factor in why the Guild is presented as an evil mega corporation.

Quote from: Snowman0147;790527So the fact they do slavery at all isn't a indication that they are evil?

I think common sense had defeated you lioness.

More like, the fact that the Guild are a commercial entity is WHY they're evil slavers.

I don't know if Grabowski is the guy who came up with that Page 10 blurb in 1st Edition saying "Do not believe what the scientists tell you" but I sure wouldn't be surprised.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;790268"Social Justice Warrior."  Or what Pundit accurately calls "psuedo-Activists" in the sense that they're agitated over social issues that don't actually matter.

jg

Actually, that's a bit backwards.  The issues are real, what's "pseudo" is their interest/dedication in those issues, rather than just waving those issues as a banner to pursue some agenda of personal interest, fashionability, or to get to wield those issues as a bludgeon against anyone they dislike.

Quote from: RPGPundit;790805Actually, that's a bit backwards.  The issues are real, what's "pseudo" is their interest/dedication in those issues, rather than just waving those issues as a banner to pursue some agenda of personal interest, fashionability, or to get to wield those issues as a bludgeon against anyone they dislike.

Well, stuff like "insensitive" gender language as opposed to legal persecutions of trans people, for instance.

JG