Quote from: Chris24601 on July 06, 2022, 10:22:19 PMYou could run a game using my system while banning all PC flight options and be assured that everything would work fine; in terms of balance its no different than a game where flight options were available but no one happened to select them.

We aren't discussing mechanics, but setting elements. If the setting is written around flight being available, then removing it conceptually is pretty dange difficult.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 06, 2022, 10:46:01 PM
Have you ever run into the experience of players objecting to stuff like this on the grounds of "if it's in the rules it should be allowable in the game"? (One of the things I was intrigued by in the design of the Eberron setting was the explicit adoption of this as a principle, where Keith Baker says in the prologue, "If it's in the books, it has a place in Eberron.")

Mostly players seem to go along with what the GM wants; how easily they go along depends on how well the GM explains their vision. One of the first actual campaign uses of my system was to continue a standard 4E campaign with all its assumptions and limits. Another was a human only/no spellcasters/limited background campaign set in the slums of a major urban area.

The first struggled a bit as players started wanting to pull in system elements that didn't quite fit 4E proper (continuing the prior campaign isn't that strong a theme), but the second was an easy sell as the theme of the PCs as a street gang protecting their turf made the limits very understandable for players.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 07, 2022, 01:52:52 AM
We aren't discussing mechanics, but setting elements. If the setting is written around flight being available, then removing it conceptually is pretty dange difficult.

Can D&D only be played in Forgotten Realms or another official TSR/WotC setting? Must Pathfinder only be used to run in Goleron? Can Mekton II only be played on the world of Argol (despite deliberately being a "build your own giant robot anime setting") because it is the only location explicitly covered? Do you always port in the metaphysics of the Apocalypse when you want werewolves in your Vampire the Masquerade game?

My setting is deliberately minimalistic in the vein of 4E's Nentir Vale; a single region just big enough for a new or uninspired GM to set a campaign in, but with most of the GM's Guide (outside of the monster section which is, admittedly 2/3 of the book by itself) devoted to helping the GM develop their own campaign; first in expectations/theme (serious to silly, heroic to horror, dark ages to science fantasy and do you want to include all the character options or limit them for thematic purpose, optional rules for zero-to-hero and random character generation, different thresholds for death/availability of resurrection), then into creating your own setting with its own history and elements (with bits of the default region covered as examples) and creating your own cast.

The expectation is that the GM will use what they want and discard the rest, because that's what I've always seen GM's do. A lot of new ones will choose to use everything in default while not touching the "create your own setting" elements at all. That default setting is a fairly well considered kitchen sink, but even it has elements banned to PCs that only found in the GM's Guide with the guidance that they can be made available to PCs if the setting they wish to run has different cosmological assumptions than the default (ex. in my default setting necromancy is actively and malevolently evil and eats the soul/free will of any who use it so it's banned from PC use. In a more D&D-like setting it's just another form of magic so the GM might choose to make it available to PCs).

In short, I'd argue that my system has very few actual assumptions related to anything (be it flight or necromancy) in the level of detail where they would be difficult to remove. Remove Aspiro Aviation, put the wyvern guard and elven archons on horseback and don't reference the ravenkin who live elsewhere in the region and say there are no unmutilated goblins left and you've knocked all the flight-related elements out of the default setting.

I think you see flight as more potent and pervasive than it actually is because you deem even the prospect of it as so unbalancingly powerful. You've yet to actually play a session of the game to find out if it actually is though. The fact that, even after experiencing flight options, my powergamer playtesters (the best kind for finding broken mechanics in my experience) have not reworked their concepts around flight speaks to flight not actually being as overwhelming an advantage as you suppose it to be.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on July 02, 2022, 07:34:41 PM
Exalted's setting, Creation, is really fucking good. Really, really good. But the system sucks ass!

So, I ask a question. What if...Exalted's setting used your favorite system? Would it be better to play? Worse? Do tell!

I'm bored at work, so here is this.

You'll have to use Traveller 5 and tech level will be around 20 (no jump drive, but NAFAL), but you get to do an epic game setting that encompasses whole galaxies. The closest thing to Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns that you can get. It is science fiction, but of such an epic scale as to be almost unimaginable.

Case in point, if a star is about to go supernova, one of the houses builds an encapsulation sphere out of abandoned ringworlds from a previous civilization. Epic enough for you?

Quote from: Chris24601 on July 07, 2022, 09:42:09 AMCan D&D only be played in Forgotten Realms or another official TSR/WotC setting?

I mean CONCEPTUALLY, ignoring PC involvement. I am not talking about build choices. A setting where flight was common would have completly different wars and power higharchies. Im not discussing the mechanical elements you added (such as not allowing for bombardment), that exist purely mechanically to not make flight overpowered.

Its like if a setting said that everybody has miniature mass producable nuke launchers. My point is about it conceptually, not that mechanically in game it does 1d6 damage and radiation sickness is only a -2 debuff for 1 minute.

Quote from: jeff37923 on July 07, 2022, 11:33:35 AM

Quote from: MeganovaStella on July 02, 2022, 07:34:41 PM
Exalted's setting, Creation, is really fucking good. Really, really good. But the system sucks ass!

So, I ask a question. What if...Exalted's setting used your favorite system? Would it be better to play? Worse? Do tell!

I'm bored at work, so here is this.

You'll have to use Traveller 5 and tech level will be around 20 (no jump drive, but NAFAL), but you get to do an epic game setting that encompasses whole galaxies. The closest thing to Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns that you can get. It is science fiction, but of such an epic scale as to be almost unimaginable.

Case in point, if a star is about to go supernova, one of the houses builds an encapsulation sphere out of abandoned ringworlds from a previous civilization. Epic enough for you?

yes

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 07, 2022, 12:36:18 PM
Im not discussing the mechanical elements you added (such as not allowing for bombardment), that exist purely mechanically to not make flight overpowered.

And I'm saying once you have dragons as monsters your setting already has all the presence of and need to defend against flight capable opponents required to fundamentally alter the setting whether PCs also have flight or not.

Any setting with known to exist dragons (or manticores or wyverns or any other flying monster that preys on humans or their livestock) has either already made all the necessary changes to the setting needed to counterbalance flight, is utterly stupid for not making those changes or is subject to the rule of their dragon overlord because such changes were impossible to make.

Denying flight options to PCs doesn't change that. If you want a society unaffected by flight then any serious talk of a giant flying firebreathing lizard living in the mountains needs to be regarded by everyone as the talk of a crazy person akin to how the townsfolk of Passamoquotty treated Lampie in Pete's Dragon (open derision, accusations of drunken hallucinations and physical abuse as they kick him out of the tavern)... not putting out a notice for adventurers needed.

Also, not sure what you mean about "no bombardment" since I know any airship of sufficient size could carry siege engines and the Archons in the monster section specifically carry flachettes for dropping on ground forces.

Maybe you mean the rule element that low-level PCs need to devote their full attention to flying when they're doing so (it becomes more natural as you go up in level)?

If so, yes, enabling the basic flight one would expect if you're allowing a PC birdman or dragon while making it difficult to use as much beyond enhanced jumping in a combat situation (until they have more experience under their belts) is indeed a balancing element to allow flight to be available to starting creatures who sensibly should have flight without overshadowing other players (because "you can't make the character concept you want until everyone is higher level and the campaign half over" is lame).

QuoteIts like if a setting said that everybody has miniature mass producable nuke launchers. My point is about it conceptually, not that mechanically in game it does 1d6 damage and radiation sickness is only a -2 debuff for 1 minute.

Except NOT everyone has flight. Flight requires either a non-human species (both canonical beastmen with flight are small creatures; 20-40 lb.), magic or a very fragile lift envelope (and probably some magic on top of that). Flying mounts are very expensive to feed; four times more to feed in a day than a commoner can expect to earn in a day. An airship could burn through day's or even week's wages of a commoner for every hour it's steam engine is in use.

Of the default region's population of 127,000 people... fewer than 100 have access to flight; almost are are elite military forces of a few dozen per realm. The regular armed forces of each realm are easily ten to twenty times that size and there are at least as many combat spellcasters equal to the number of flyers in a realm's armies; each capable of lobbing fire or lightning or force missiles at airborne targets at-will.

That's just not going to sufficiently change heirarchies or the way wars are fought any further than the presence of combat magic in general would. The rulers are still the ones with the best toys and in a world of magic that means magic toys. But there aren't enough magic toys to go around so the bulk of military forces are the same old infantry, cavalry and archers you'd expect, though with spellcasters generally replacing both artillery and supplying anti-air capability to the force.

Flyers used for scouting? Yes. As a Rapid Reaction Force against minor incursions? Sure. As Special Forces? Definitely. As the backbone of a realm's army? Ridiculous given the cost to purchase and maintain. When even the smallest non-combat airship costs more than a commoner will earn in their entire adult life then air travel is not something anyone but the elite of the elite will be partaking in.

I mean, sure, if you wanted to as GM you COULD give everyone magic flight and and argue that this completely changes how the setting would have to function plausibly; but that isn't the actual setting presented where flight is a "point one percenter" luxury, not something everyone has access to.

I leave it to the readers to decide whether my interpretation of the effects of flight and its effects on the setting relative to its rarity are sensible, but I needed to respond because I feel you gravely misrepresented the prevalence of flight in the setting and how its presence affects the setting.

* * * *

As relates to the topic at hand, you'd need to decide what counts as what in converting the different types of Exalted, but celstial creatures, fallen and otherwise, are available as PCs in my setting out of the box and it wouldn't take much mook scaling to go from the default "big damned heroes" rules to "demigods among mortals" as the level for starting PCs and go up from there. The rules cover wide varieties of natural and supernatural terrain to reflect any realms you'd find in Exalted and opponent design tools included in the GM's Guide would make it easy to convert critters from Exalted into my system if there was no obvious analogue.

Quote from: Chris24601 on July 07, 2022, 11:34:12 PMAnd I'm saying once you have dragons as monsters your setting already has all the presence of and need to defend against flight capable opponents required to fundamentally alter the setting whether PCs also have flight or not.

"If you have a 1-5 demons in your setting SOMEWHERE, then the need to defend against demons all the time everywhere is about the same"

Anyway I think this all feeds into a greater point that more consistency or such is good for a world, but it can never be purely 100% consistent as reality as thats reality and imagination isn't as deep as it.
Some people want to use Portable holes to generate infinite energy. To them the presence of physics breaking things at all bends credility beyond belief.
While execution is important, I still think this supports my point that unless your the setting steps on a specific button that some person is really bothered by, in general it won't really matter. For you , ignoring the difference between a caravel and a ship of the line is just inexcusable. For others the presence of 'Leather Armor' is just ludicrist.

The only way to avoid all of that is magicless 1600's england and mud farmers only, lest your play disrupt historical events and drift into implausibility.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 08, 2022, 10:52:26 AMI think this all feeds into a greater point that more consistency or such is good for a world, but it can never be purely 100% consistent as reality as thats reality and imagination isn't as deep as it.  ...(U)nless your setting steps on a specific button that some person is really bothered by, in general it won't really matter.

I think you're right about that as a general thing. Certainly calling Exalted a "kitchen sink" as far as being consistent with its real-world inspirations is to miss the point.  And the general threshold, or specific immersion-breaker, on which a "kitchen sink" setting starts to feel like a kitchen sink is going to vary between people.

To use TVTropes terminology, Exalted can be looked at as a case study in the conflict between the Rules of Cool and Awesome (in which character, plot and setting elements are thrown in solely for audience enjoyment individually) and the Rule of Drama (in which to preserve verisimilitude and emotional engagement, elements have to be selected for their cumulative interactive effect together). The fact that game settings aren't books and have to leave room for different types of narratives alters these dynamics somewhat.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 04, 2022, 09:07:53 PM
Why the hate for Kitchen sinks? Both literal and figurative.

The literal sink is a figurative symbol of oppress... eh, don't really hate kitchen sinks. They're fine for certain modes of play.

Though to be more nuanced, published kitchen sinks are often a problem. Because they tend to be morbidly overweight with setting material, which makes it hard to run a game unless 1) you memorize all that shit and are willing to weave all your own stuff into the few gaps in that complex mass, or 2) you're willing to throw out or at least ignore a lot of the material, in which case the surfeit of setting material becomes superfluous.

Exalted is a kitchen sink, but it's not a Western kitchen sink. For my style of play, I think a broad outline and a bunch of tools/setting elements that can be dropped in as desired (or not) would be a good start. Fewer splatbooks and metaplot, more exploring Creation.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 08, 2022, 11:03:12 AM
The fact that game settings aren't books and have to leave room for different types of narratives alters these dynamics somewhat.

Not that his has stopped companies from releasing their idiosyncratic restrictive personal fiction settings under the guise of being a functional ttrpg setting (when it's not) and conned loads of groups into worshiping the canon like an actual religion and attacking people for not playing according to script.

Quote from: Pat on July 08, 2022, 12:52:51 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 04, 2022, 09:07:53 PM
Why the hate for Kitchen sinks? Both literal and figurative.

The literal sink is a figurative symbol of oppress... eh, don't really hate kitchen sinks. They're fine for certain modes of play.

Though to be more nuanced, published kitchen sinks are often a problem. Because they tend to be morbidly overweight with setting material, which makes it hard to run a game unless 1) you memorize all that shit and are willing to weave all your own stuff into the few gaps in that complex mass, or 2) you're willing to throw out or at least ignore a lot of the material, in which case the surfeit of setting material becomes superfluous.

Exalted is a kitchen sink, but it's not a Western kitchen sink. For my style of play, I think a broad outline and a bunch of tools/setting elements that can be dropped in as desired (or not) would be a good start. Fewer splatbooks and metaplot, more exploring Creation.

I think kitchen sinks are useful insofar as they save you time on making your own stuff. Where they can become problems is in situations where you're forced to keep track of them all at once because the metaplot supplement treadmill is your god now, or in situations where all of these elements exist in isolation and no attempt is made at providing concrete adventures where they crossover because god forbid the group need to buy more than one or two books.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 08, 2022, 10:52:26 AM
"If you have a 1-5 demons in your setting SOMEWHERE, then the need to defend against demons all the time everywhere is about the same"

I'm mainly disappointed that you were misrepresenting my setting by claiming that flight was everywhere and broke the setting by my refusal to account for the way it being everywhere would warp the setting when all the canonical material I've given you actually places flight as something on the extremely rare side well beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest individuals and rather rare mythical creatures (including that even starting PC's are called out as being 1-in-10,000 exceptions to the norm).

QuoteFor you, ignoring the difference between a caravel and a ship of the line is just inexcusable.

I defy anyone to tell me that this...


...should be considered the same thing with the same stats in anything with human-scale granularity.

Once seen these sort of issues cannot be unseen.

QuoteFor others the presence of 'Leather Armor' is just ludicrist.

And rightly so , for less money a layered cloth gambeson provides far superior protection and just about every instance of "Studded Leather" is now known to have been brigandine. Leather Armor clearly belongs entirely in the fantasy section along side such mythical beasts as the griffin.

If you want sexy leather outfits, that's fine, but don't pretend its cheap and affordable or superior to a gambeson (the level D&D places gambeson is entirely criminal) such that your peasant conscripts will be decked out in it. Maybe note that leather "armor" is specifically a wealthy fashion statement more than it is a practical form of protection (ex. in my setting "hydra leather" magically treated so as to repair itself is one of the fluff-text alternatives to linen and wool for higher quality clothing).

Or maybe there is something to the nature of hide that was once part of a sentient creature that makes it better at holding magical energy and because of this magical leather armor is common because it is far easier to enchant than linen or metal.

Just give me something beyond "the limits of my research were reading the D&D Player's Handbook and taking it as Gospel."

QuoteThe only way to avoid all of that is magicless 1600's england and mud farmers only, lest your play disrupt historical events and drift into implausibility.

And even then they'd get it wrong (including the false assumption of "the dung ages") because to actually get it right they'd have to give half-a-fuck and research the topic they're writing about (and no, other rpg books doesn't count as research... see leather armor above).

I can understand why gross inaccuracies would be a thing in the pre-internet days when your ability to research a topic was limited to what your local library had on hand or could order... but in the present day just typing in "types of sailing ship" into a Google (or Brave in my case) search returns this as its first result; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_ship filled with a wealth of information and additional links you could use to actually try and get something closer to accurate... and that's not even counting other entries further down the search list.

Sometimes reaching back to old badly researched material can be quaint or charming if you're trying to maintain a setting that has been in continuous existence since those times (or do a homage to one)... playing 1e AD&D with the assumptions right out of 1977 for example. But if you're going to have such a break from better researched material I'd prefer the reason be deliberate rather than "didn't care enough to look."

Going all the way back to the OP, I think I might be willing to use the system from Soulbound (C7's Age of Sigmar RPG) for Exalted. It has a great core system about mythical heroes that join into Bindings (which are a lot like Circles/Sworn Brotherhoods of Exalts), and most of it's issues come from a few poorly balanced abilities and some inconsistencies that are drawn from the AoS setting.

The biggest changes this would have on Exalted is that there would be no tracking of the Essence gas tank. Most Charms would be taken from Soulbound's Talents with some added cosmetic effects for anima. Other changes could be represented by the Fyreslayer runes (although the Exalts wouldn't have the trappings of the runes, they would have the effects of them as part of their Exalted powers).

Soulbound already contains mythic monsters, some of which can be upfraded to "godbeasts" for epic challenges. It also has magical steampunk tech that can be adapted into the magitech of Creation with a little effort.

Will it be a perfect fit? Of course not, but it could work and create a muh more playable game for gamers that don't want the headaches of the Exalted system.

Quote from: Chris24601 on July 08, 2022, 01:12:17 PMI'm mainly disappointed that you were misrepresenting my setting by claiming that flight was everywhere and broke the setting by my refusal to account for the way it being everywhere would warp the setting when all the canonical material I've given you actually places flight as something on the extremely rare side well beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest individuals and rather rare mythical creatures (including that even starting PC's are called out as being 1-in-10,000 exceptions to the norm).

That was never my intent and I apologize for coming off that way on a public forum. As to everything else, I think the conversation is going in cycles.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 08, 2022, 01:02:55 PM

Quote from: Pat on July 08, 2022, 12:52:51 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 04, 2022, 09:07:53 PM
Why the hate for Kitchen sinks? Both literal and figurative.

The literal sink is a figurative symbol of oppress... eh, don't really hate kitchen sinks. They're fine for certain modes of play.

Though to be more nuanced, published kitchen sinks are often a problem. Because they tend to be morbidly overweight with setting material, which makes it hard to run a game unless 1) you memorize all that shit and are willing to weave all your own stuff into the few gaps in that complex mass, or 2) you're willing to throw out or at least ignore a lot of the material, in which case the surfeit of setting material becomes superfluous.

Exalted is a kitchen sink, but it's not a Western kitchen sink. For my style of play, I think a broad outline and a bunch of tools/setting elements that can be dropped in as desired (or not) would be a good start. Fewer splatbooks and metaplot, more exploring Creation.

I think kitchen sinks are useful insofar as they save you time on making your own stuff. Where they can become problems is in situations where you're forced to keep track of them all at once because the metaplot supplement treadmill is your god now, or in situations where all of these elements exist in isolation and no attempt is made at providing concrete adventures where they crossover because god forbid the group need to buy more than one or two books.

I think kitchen sink settings are less useful than a sketchy outline of a setting + a lot of GM tools. I prefer that just provides a high level overview of what is known.

Then provide tools. A starting location, a bunch of one-off adventures, list of names, NPC stat blocks, organization and conspiracy generators, and so on. All of these tools are expressedly optional, and are designed to be placed where the GM needs them to be placed, and to be used how the GM needs them to be used, rather than being explicitly set in a particular corner of the setting, and worked into the metaplot. To retrain GMs to think that way, it might help to make many of them explicitly contradict each other, and to leave explicit gaps (like names or locations) that need to be filled in.

The idea is to keep the core as simple as possible, and then let the GM define the details in play, and only those details that are needed. The reason is because it's really hard to remember all the ins and outs of someone else's highly detailed Creation, but it's easy (and organic) to remember only the details that came up in play, and which you yourself had a hand in creating; and it gives maximum flexibility in taking the campaign wherever you want to take it.

A lot of it's presentation -- when it's all presented as established lore, it's harder for a lot of GMs and a lot of players to go against the canon. But if it's deconstructed into pieces, it can work as a toolbox without creating a tapestry that's hard to mess with.

Of course, the reason why there's a cornucopia of elaborate interlocking settings and a dearth of toolboxes is because splatbooks are a lot easier to monetize, plus writing a coherent setting appeals to all the wannabe fantasy authors in the RPG field -- they want to write their setting, instead of helping you create your own.

From what I know about Exalted's power-level it sounds like something I'd do with MSH.

But it might lose some of the "tic-tac" combat resolution that's supposed to be inherent to the Martial arts vibe of it? In that case I'd just convert it to Savage Worlds Rifts. I'm pretty confident it could be modeled there pretty easily.

Just my two coppers.

DC Heroes might work well too.