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Strength of Many
Jan 13, 2012

The butthurt is the life... and it shall be mine.

Stephenls posted:

Well, yeah, the other side of that is, no half marks for effort. The end product actually does have to be something people like.

But the number of people who wanted Compass: Autochthonia to be an examination of dystopian oppression and the grim darkness of far future is non-trivial. They seemed pretty happy when we didn't give them that.

I think you seem confused. I'm pretty sure no one wanted either of those things.

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Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Strength of Many posted:

I think you seem confused. I'm pretty sure no one wanted either of those things.

You didn't like Compass: Autochthonia?

Kenlon
Jun 27, 2003

Digitus Impudicus

Stephenls posted:

So, if Raksi is Lunar Mengele, what does that mean?

It means that people are thinking of the mythical Mengele, not the real one. And thus, the actual historical person is irrelevant to what they're asking for.

Bigup DJ
Nov 8, 2012

Strength of Many posted:

I would, if only out of spite. Let it come crashing down around their ears. And hopefully get the line discontinued or sold to someone more competent to revitalize the IP.

There's plenty wrong with the way the developers have been handling things but this is honestly really dumb and puerile.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
The possibility of Strength of Many being the loudest, most prominent voice in this thread is pretty much why I'm here. To the extent that you're enjoying my contributions, thank him!

Attorney at Funk
Jun 3, 2008

...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.

Stephenls posted:

(And this is where the Christmas present metaphor comes from, actually -- I have repeated this so many times in dev email chains. When I was a kid my parents never got me the presents I asked for; they paid attention to what I asked for, but triangulated from there to something I wasn't expecting but which fit my interests well enough to delight me. Part of that delight came from getting something from people who knew me better than I knew myself, and part came from the surprise. As a rule, best practice is not to give people what they're asking for, but instead give them what they didn't know they always wanted.)

This is a pretty good summation of how I feel about the Exalted 3e disclosure policy. On the one hand, it's nice - aww, they want to give us something we'll like, something we didn't even know we wanted! This is a cool, self-effacing instinct and speaks to a desire to both please and surprise.

However, it's also insanely patronizing. It's not a simple rhetorical flourish that your story is set when you're a kid. That's the only time this actually works. This is not how grownups give and receive gifts, through "knowing you better than you know yourself". And you're not giving us presents, anyhow! This is something we, collectively, kicked up seven hundred thousand US fiat dollars for - a cool shiny book and to support you guys. We did this based almost entirely on the strength of pur shared dissatisfaction with the past and the inherent fanaticism of the fanbase you inherited. We don't owe you any more patience or tolerance or goodwill. It's stuffed under your figurative mattresses.

Now, none of this matters if you're certain we'll eat up whatever you give us (as some people will - lookin at you, Deathmatch) either because it's good or because we're dupes. But despite your own personal patience and good faith, I can't shake the suspicion that there's a significant amount of the latter mixed in with the former.

The Christmas Day Metaphor only makes sense as policy if your customers are children. It only makes sense as strategy if you think they're children.

Strength of Many
Jan 13, 2012

The butthurt is the life... and it shall be mine.

Bedlamdan posted:

You didn't like Compass: Autochthonia?

Not much to like. Off the top of my head, a few 'Go To Creation!' hooks ferreted in here and there and other offenders that bothered me.

Perhaps the keenest example to me was, say, the whole coming-of-age rave-orgy they detailed. Which felt so silly given the 'work until you die (for the Maker)' attitude of the world they live in. And how they all live in cramped shared housing. Like sex is suppose to be this great liberating deviant force to them when its probably something they see on a regular basis because gently caress, like there is anything else to do for recreation?? A society who's entire impetuous for procreation is to shove more good workers into the assembly line. There is absolutely nothing sacred or abhorrent about it. If anything, there should be so little mystique about it that no one should loving care.

But nah, body paint rave orgies.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Strength of Many posted:

Not much to like. Off the top of my head, a few 'Go To Creation!' hooks ferreted in here and there and other offenders that bothered me.

Perhaps the keenest example to me was, say, the whole coming-of-age rave-orgy they detailed. Which felt so silly given the 'work until you die (for the Maker)' attitude of the world they live in. And how they all live in cramped shared housing. Like sex is suppose to be this great liberating deviant force to them when its probably something they see on a regular basis because gently caress, like there is anything else to do for recreation?? A society who's entire impetuous for procreation is to shove more good workers into the assembly line. There is absolutely nothing sacred or abhorrent about it. If anything, there should be so little mystique about it that no one should loving care.

But nah, body paint rave orgies.

You're no fun.

Chaotic Neutral
Aug 29, 2011

Stephenls posted:

(Mengele didn't do all his awful crap for resarch's sake. His methodology was horrible and I distinctly remember reading that his documentation was atrocious -- the idea that "The Nazi scientists were so devoted to knowledge and so without ethics that they plumbed awful fields of study in their pursuit of power; even now the techniques we use to save people from drowning and hypothermia are reliant on Nazi research into exactly how long it takes for people to freeze and drown!" is a lie on the level of "Superior German engineering made the Nazi superweapons unstoppable; if only they'd had the resources to field enough of them, they would have conquered the world," or, for that matter, "The Nazis kept the trains running on time." No. The trains were late, the superweapons were impractical pieces of poo poo, and Mengele's research was basically worthless to everyone but him and his left hand when he went to bed at night. So, if Raksi is Lunar Mengele, what does that mean?)
As mentioned, half mythical, half simply cracked. Her 'superweapons' don't work right, her research is going down psychotic rabbit holes, her morals are nonexistent, and she's still able to make some things work and present it with a dangerously attractive air to people who don't get to see behind the veil, or to anyone who makes the mistake of approaching her directly.

If she gets anything to work right, it will be by stumbling into it or brute forcing it - or worse - but the fact that on top of her former genius she has such a wealth of time, supplies, and pawns is what makes her dangerous.

I never much liked the idea of 'she stays in the corner of the world doing her own thing' or of her being any kind of redeemable, though, so v:shobon:v

Strength of Many
Jan 13, 2012

The butthurt is the life... and it shall be mine.

Stephenls posted:

You're no fun.

Maybe if you guys had rewritten their society sufficiently enough to make that kind of thing understandable, but instead it clashes with literally everything about their mortals' daily lives.

In all honesty it felt like someone had just finished watching the second Matrix movie and decided to wedge the orgy scene into Autocthonia.

Old Kentucky Shark
May 25, 2012

If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.


Strength of Many posted:

In all honesty it felt like someone had just finished watching the second Matrix movie and decided to wedge the orgy scene into Autocthonia.

Got to admit, that was my reaction to shekeda as well. I like Compass: Autochthonia on the whole, but that part was clearly "someone thought they had a clever idea that wasn't."

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Attorney at Funk posted:

This is a pretty good summation of how I feel about the Exalted 3e disclosure policy. On the one hand, it's nice - aww, they want to give us something we'll like, something we didn't even know we wanted! This is a cool, self-effacing instinct and speaks to a desire to both please and surprise.

However, it's also insanely patronizing. It's not a simple rhetorical flourish that your story is set when you're a kid. That's the only time this actually works. This is not how grownups give and receive gifts, through "knowing you better than you know yourself". And you're not giving us presents, anyhow! This is something we, collectively, kicked up seven hundred thousand US fiat dollars for - a cool shiny book and to support you guys. We did this based almost entirely on the strength of pur shared dissatisfaction with the past and the inherent fanaticism of the fanbase you inherited. We don't owe you any more patience or tolerance or goodwill. It's stuffed under your figurative mattresses.

Now, none of this matters if you're certain we'll eat up whatever you give us (as some people will - lookin at you, Deathmatch) either because it's good or because we're dupes. But despite your own personal patience and good faith, I can't shake the suspicion that there's a significant amount of the latter mixed in with the former.

The Christmas Day Metaphor only makes sense as policy if your customers are children. It only makes sense as strategy if you think they're children.

To try to present it in a slightly less patronizing light, the same idea is expressed in different words in Robert McKee's Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting -- in a story, you need to give the audience what will satisfy them, the sequence of events that will seem inevitable in retrospect, but you never want to give them what they expect.

Who in Exalted's fanbase before the publication of Games of Divinity would have asked for a Hell like what Borgstrom gave us? Who before Exalted: The Sidereals would have asked for that Charmset?

It's not necessarily a patronizing attitude. I tend to express it in terms of my personal anecdote because I prefer to express my thoughts in terms of my own experiences.

Attorney at Funk
Jun 3, 2008

...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.

Stephenls posted:

To try to present it in a slightly less patronizing light, the same idea is expressed in different words in Robert McKee's Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting -- in a story, you need to give the audience what will satisfy them, the sequence of events that will seem inevitable in retrospect, but you never want to give them what they expect.

Who in Exalted's fanbase before the publication of Games of Divinity would have asked for a Hell like what Borgstrom gave us? Who before Exalted: The Sidereals would have asked for that Charmset?

It's not necessarily a patronizing attitude. I tend to express it in terms of my personal anecdote because I prefer to express my thoughts in terms of my own experiences.

Sure, like I said, surprising people is a good and laudable goal. It's an essential one to virtually all forms of entertainment. But that speaks to the design philosophy of the line, and not to its PR agenda. Talking about surprises to explain away not telling us anything concrete about the game is patronizing. You're explicitly saying we can't be trusted.

Chaotic Neutral
Aug 29, 2011
And yet, people have still bitched about those for a decade. And that's without looking at the flip side of that coin: who would have asked for That Section of MoEP: Infernals? (Leaving aside that I don't think we want to know the answer to that question, or that in some cases we do and would like to forget.)

It's not like you've got the ability to Vulcan mind meld with your customers or something, or check out their Persona to see their true self. Sometimes what they want is in fact what they want. Sometimes what they want isn't good for anyone or anything.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.
Don't bring up freaking Dr Mengele in the thread that already has too many dumb and gross concepts floating around it like a weird crib-mobile. Use Colonel Kurtz or something, instead, which is both more accurate a comparison and less likely to have people making awful, awful posts.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

tatankatonk posted:

Don't bring up freaking Dr Mengele in the thread that already has too many dumb and gross concepts floating around it like a weird crib-mobile. Use Colonel Kurtz or something, instead, which is both more accurate a comparison and less likely to have people making awful, awful posts.

Hey, I didn't bring him up.

EDIT: Wait, did I? I could have sworn I saw him mentioned in SoM's chat transcript. If I'm wrong I want to apologize.

A_Raving_Loon
Dec 12, 2008

Subtle
Quick to Anger

Stephenls posted:

THe general, running theme here, even before you get into whether the ideas were expanded well, is that the ideas were more interesting before they were expanded. It's vastly easier to write 1k intriguing words about a topic than expand that into 10k... but at the same time, as a writer the temptation is always going to be to expand on what the audience has already said they're intrigued by, because that feels easier than coming up with something new. The urge is to give people what they're asking for.

This is the sort of thought I was hoping to hear.

It's an approach that I hope is kept is kept in mind when approaching extreme aspects of the setting. Implication is a powerful thing in writing, especially with horror. Spelling out all the atrocities which play out in the ancient Witch-Queen's dungeons, ruins the mystique. You replace the endless possibilities in the imaginations of your readers with a single image. One which can never satisfy everyone, and if you screw it up will satisfy no one. Stopping short of that leaves an open canvas for all the eXXXtreme fans who want metal covers born from a teamup of Boris Vallejo and H.R. Giger to paint that image and go to town with it. Meanwhile, folks with other tastes are just as free to fill that space subtle psychological horror or romanticized Gothic poetry or absurdist slapstick comedy as suits their needs.

When one of the main selling points of tabletop RPGs is how many ways they can be played, why wouldn't you chose that path that gives your customers more options?

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Stephenls posted:

Hey, I didn't bring him up.

EDIT: Wait, did I? I could have sworn I saw him mentioned in SoM's chat transcript. If I'm wrong I want to apologize.

No, you're right in that regard.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Hey, thanks to Stephenls's posts and those of playtesters, I actually feel a lot better about Exalted 3e as of today than I did before. That's not that I expected not to like it overall or something, but I'd pretty much resigned myself to the idea that my two pet issues (Brawl vs. Martial Arts, BP vs. XP) were locked into their dumbest possible implementations and would be stuck there in the middle of a game I'd otherwise like. To hear that they are in fact in a state of flux and/or haven't even been implemented in the playtest yet fills me with hope!

The Martial Arts thing is so easy to solve and bring completely into keeping with the devs' stated design goals, though, oh my god.

tatankatonk
Nov 4, 2011

Pitching is the art of instilling fear.

Stephenls posted:

Hey, I didn't bring him up.

EDIT: Wait, did I? I could have sworn I saw him mentioned in SoM's chat transcript. If I'm wrong I want to apologize.

No, you didn't bring him up, somebody mentioned him in that chatlog, but c'mon, random chatlog people. Have some sense.

Rulebook Heavily
Sep 18, 2010

by FactsAreUseless

Stephenls posted:

You're no fun.


Strength of Many posted:

Maybe if you guys had rewritten their society sufficiently enough to make that kind of thing understandable, but instead it clashes with literally everything about their mortals' daily lives.

In all honesty it felt like someone had just finished watching the second Matrix movie and decided to wedge the orgy scene into Autocthonia.

See this? This is the sort of poo poo I meant in my critique earlier. This exactly. This is not a personal feeling of mine, or any kind of vendetta, or anything. The tones don't work together and come off as cheap when put next to each other and it detracts from the quality of the work. That's just how this works.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
If anyone is wondering, this is the incredibly easy and simple way that you implement brawl/martial arts in Exalted 3rd edition. I am going to claim that I did not come up with this idea, but that it just crystallized spontaneously out of John and Holden's glorious vision and therefore originates with/belongs to them, not me. Also any playtesters who happen to read this and suggest it to the higher-ups definitely came up with it themselves, and so on, and so forth.

Four combat abilities:

1. Archery
2. Brawl
3. Melee
4. Thrown

They do what they say they do.

Each Martial Art is associated with one or more combat skills. For instance, Snake uses Brawl, Single Point Shining into the Void uses Melee, Wood Dragon uses Brawl and Archery. Martial Arts merits represent initiation into various styles, and let you do stuff like:

-Wield "exotic" weapons without the usual penalties, which might mean you know how to use a fighting chain, that in your hands a kama is as dangerous as an axe, etc.
-Wield either "exotic" or normal weapons with normally-inappropriate skills; for instance, training in Snake Style allows you to treat hook swords as an extension of your own body and make hook sword attacks with Brawl instead of Melee

So, whether you actually need multiple skills or just one to use a style, and whether a style requires you to keep multiple skills maxed out or just lets you dabble in one skill enough to fullfil a prereq but actually "main" another skill varies with the style. Totally up to the designer of the style, so basically any already-implemented style existing in Exalted 1e or 2e could fit into the framework.

Then Martial Arts charms are just, you know, charms that tend to use the same Abilities as the styles they come from do.

This is so easy. However, you might want to rename "Brawl" to "Unarmed", because the latter sounds less rowdy and would be more appropriate to many martial arts styles that use it.

Bigup DJ
Nov 8, 2012

Attorney at Funk posted:

Sure, like I said, surprising people is a good and laudable goal. It's an essential one to virtually all forms of entertainment. But that speaks to the design philosophy of the line, and not to its PR agenda. Talking about surprises to explain away not telling us anything concrete about the game is patronizing. You're explicitly saying we can't be trusted.

This is absolutely right - especially the bolded part. Opening the game up to feedback doesn't put you under any obligation to implement it - it's just a useful resource that you're free to take advantage of, as much or as little as you like. It's great that you want to surprise us - I want to be surprised! I just can't see how making the design process a little more open would prevent you from doing that.

A_Raving_Loon posted:

When one of the main selling points of tabletop RPGs is how many ways they can be played, why wouldn't you chose that path that gives your customers more options?

This is great too!

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Rulebook Heavily posted:

See this? This is the sort of poo poo I meant in my critique earlier. This exactly. This is not a personal feeling of mine, or any kind of vendetta, or anything. The tones don't work together and come off as cheap when put next to each other and it detracts from the quality of the work. That's just how this works.

Lots of people, including such luminaries as Melissa Uran, who enjoyed drawing the illo for the shedeka, don't see a contradiction between including that sort of content and things more serious in tone. I think the occasional levity enhances the points of darkness and vice versa. As far as I know, the plan is to continue to include both.

Rulebook Heavily
Sep 18, 2010

by FactsAreUseless

Stephenls posted:

Lots of people, including such luminaries as Melissa Uran, who enjoyed drawing the illo for the shedeka, don't see a contradiction between including that sort of content and things more serious in tone. I think the occasional levity enhances the points of darkness and vice versa. As far as I know, the plan is to continue to include both.

It's not a matter of occasional levity. Joking is fine. It's when two portions of a text simply do not mesh. When a society like Autochtonia is presented, with everyone living in close quarters and personal space being incredibly rare (a thing even elaborated upon in the text), hsving a bodypaint orgy rave party be some kind of great revelatory thing doesn't work. The two ideas aren't in harmony. Because they're not in harmony, and are so dissonant, the big party scene loses the impact it was apparently intended to have and comes across at best as some kind of weird juvenile sex fantasy, while the mature bit from earlier is now called into question or feels like a sham.

Take also Raksi, our perennial bone. Raksi has two sides like this, but she tries to embody both: the villainous sorceress who stops at nothing to achieve her goal of mastery and who will freely indulge in monstrosity if it pleases her, and someone who eats babies. You couldn't read this sentence without noticing the jarring tonal shift, even if they're supposedly two ways to say something similar. "She eats babies" is not a bit of levity, or a joke, unless your sense of humour is permanently stuck at "I am fourteen and I just discovered George Carlin". They are two dissonant tones, notes that don't play well together. They both cheapen each other when they're placed side by side. Individually, in different contexts like serious RP sessions or a bit of forum posting? Perfectly fine. But they do not fit next to each other.

I could probably reference Sol Stein or Stephen King (curse them for both writing a book with the same title) but who gives a crap? Maintaining a consistent tone is a pretty basic thing that's easy to look up, certainly something writers I workshop with will freely mock me for not doing. Information can be conveyed in many ways, but don't try to do it every way at once.

Stallion Cabana
Feb 14, 2012
1; Get into Grad School

2; Become better at playing Tabletop, both as a player and as a GM/ST/W/E

3; Get rid of this goddamn avatar.

Ferrinus posted:


-Wield "exotic" weapons without the usual penalties, which might mean you know how to use a fighting chain, that in your hands a kama is as dangerous as an axe, etc.


I don't mean to just cut out your entire post and focus on this, but as a stand alone thing it worries me.

Are you suggesting there should be some sort of 'You must have this MA to use this Weapon' thing? That doesn't really sound too much like Exalted, where you could use weapons as Form Weapons, certainly, but the requirement was the skill. As far as I know in 2E there was nothing stopping you from using any Martial Arts Weapon with Melee (or an appropriate other skill) so long as you had the Martial Arts skill.

Which might be what you are suggesting? But the idea of 'paying for a merit to use a unique weapon' sounds a lot like 'Exotic Weapon Proficiency (X)' which probably isn't the best idea for Exalted.

I'm pretty sure how weapons work in 3E has already been mentioned, as well? It's a Weapon + Tag system, it doesn't have fifty thousand statlines for a billion weapons.

Stallion Cabana fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Feb 6, 2014

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Strength of Many posted:

Not much to like. Off the top of my head, a few 'Go To Creation!' hooks ferreted in here and there and other offenders that bothered me.

Perhaps the keenest example to me was, say, the whole coming-of-age rave-orgy they detailed. Which felt so silly given the 'work until you die (for the Maker)' attitude of the world they live in. And how they all live in cramped shared housing. Like sex is suppose to be this great liberating deviant force to them when its probably something they see on a regular basis because gently caress, like there is anything else to do for recreation?? A society who's entire impetuous for procreation is to shove more good workers into the assembly line. There is absolutely nothing sacred or abhorrent about it. If anything, there should be so little mystique about it that no one should loving care.

But nah, body paint rave orgies.

It's not a rave orgy, if you're talking about what I think you're talking about. Specifically it's a temple priest or priestess who has sex with someone as a coming of age ritual. Which really isn't all that unprecedented, historically.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Stephenls posted:

Who in Exalted's fanbase before the publication of Games of Divinity would have asked for a Hell like what Borgstrom gave us? Who before Exalted: The Sidereals would have asked for that Charmset?

It's not necessarily a patronizing attitude. I tend to express it in terms of my personal anecdote because I prefer to express my thoughts in terms of my own experiences.

Okay, but you aren't Jenna Moran either.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Rulebook Heavily posted:

Raksi has two sides like this, but she tries to embody both: the villainous sorceress who stops at nothing to achieve her goal of mastery and who will freely indulge in monstrosity if it pleases her, and someone who eats babies.

That's a weird place to put your division. She's a villain who stops at nothing, and she freely indulges in monstrosity. That's the two elements of Raksi. What's cheapened her in the eyes of the community was an obsession with the funniest-sounding possible extrapolation of the latter, but she wasn't originally presented with special focus there.

Rulebook Heavily
Sep 18, 2010

by FactsAreUseless

Ferrinus posted:

Uh, you placed the division incorrectly there. She's a villain who stops at nothing, and she freely indulges in monstrosity. That's the two elements of Raksi. What's cheapened her in the eyes of the community was an obsession with the funniest-sounding possible extrapolation of the latter, but she wasn't originally presented with special focus there.

Well, second edition.

But I think my point gets across anyway. These tonal shifts in Exalted are very often jarring and crude like that. If it's actually intentional, it just makes it more of a fundamental problem for the writers to deal with than if it's something the writers haven't been made aware of.

e: Actually, the writers have even recognized a couple, like Magitech and how it shifted the tone of the setting. Now understand that this problem runs deeper, and you're off!

Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Feb 6, 2014

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Stallion Cabana posted:

I don't mean to just cut out your entire post and focus on this, but as a stand alone thing it worries me.

Are you suggesting there should be some sort of 'You must have this MA to use this Weapon' thing? That doesn't really sound too much like Exalted, where you could use weapons as Form Weapons, certainly, but the requirement was the skill. As far as I know in 2E there was nothing stopping you from using any Martial Arts Weapon with Melee (or an appropriate other skill) so long as you had the Martial Arts skill.

Which might be what you are suggesting? But the idea of 'paying for a merit to use a unique weapon' sounds a lot like 'Exotic Weapon Proficiency (X)' which probably isn't the best idea for Exalted.

I am, yes. Personally I could take that or leave it, but I think it's the case that 3E Martial Arts are supposed to (sometimes - some of them just friggin' use swords or something, of course) deal in goofy or esoteric weapons that most people don't know how to use properly. Some people, devs included, want to see a game where you need to be a trained martial artist not to bonk yourself over the head with a seven section staff or some nunchuks. I don't think there's any harm in allowing that to be the case, although you might want "style-neutral" merits for people who really like hook swords but really don't like snakes. There'd probably be some in-between stuff, too, where like anyone can use a kama but in the hands of a specialist it can count as a medium weapon rather than a light one or whatever.

If I was particularly uninterested in "martial arts" getting distinct mechanics I'd just be like, yeah, all that stuff's just Melee, if you have Melee you can use it fine, shut up about your katas. But, at this point I'm actually a fan of John/Holden's vision of martial arts and am totally game with Exalted arbitrary containing "regular" weapons and "martial arts" weapons, even though it's a bit silly when you think about it and saying longswords are easy to use but hookswords are exotic kung fu weapons cleaves a little closer to Dungeons and Dragons than Exalted usually does.

Similarly, If I was designing the system from the ground up I'd probably be inclined to be a lot more draconian and be like, "Oh, you're a Snake stylist who wants to be good at kicking and swinging hook swords? Well that sounds like you've got a high score in both Brawl and Melee, friend." Ultimately, though, "You can use Skill X in place of Skill Y in circumstance Z" is just one game mechanic of many and I don't think it's uniquely threatening to Exalted's game balance.

Old Kentucky Shark
May 25, 2012

If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.


Kai Tave posted:

Okay, but you aren't Jenna Moran either.

Also, people here aren't expressing dissatisfaction because you aren't giving them what they want, they're expressing dissatisfaction because you either A) aren't giving them anything or B) are giving them things they explicitly do not want.

Lioness
Feb 6, 2014

Ferrinus posted:

Hey, thanks to Stephenls's posts and those of playtesters, I actually feel a lot better about Exalted 3e as of today than I did before.
Every time I see a response like this I'm reminded why I still bother associating with the Exalted community. Thank you.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Bedlamdan posted:

It's not a rave orgy, if you're talking about what I think you're talking about. Specifically it's a temple priest or priestess who has sex with someone as a coming of age ritual. Which really isn't all that unprecedented, historically.

It's both. It's ritual sex in a sacred context as a coming-of-age rite, which I think is fine for the tone of the society in question (they are religious as hell), and it's presented in the context of a rave because we established glow-in-the-dark body paint as one of the ritual components. Given the importance of artificial light in Autochthonian society, that doesn't seem inappropriate for the tone of the society in question either. Not to me, anyway.

That said? It's cheeky. It is cheeky as gently caress. We are totally standing behind it going "Ahahah sacred raves!" We're going to keep being cheeky, now and then. But it's not nearly as cheeky as the Beasts of Resplendent Liquid, which I think we're also keeping although they're unlikely to ever receive the same kind of focus again as they did in Manacle & Coin.

Ferrinus posted:

That's a weird place to put your division. She's a villain who stops at nothing, and she freely indulges in monstrosity. That's the two elements of Raksi. What's cheapened her in the eyes of the community was an obsession with the funniest-sounding possible extrapolation of the latter, but she wasn't originally presented with special focus there.

Yeah, this. And I'm pretty much on the side of "Enough with the baby-eating" at this point -- not that I don't think she still does it, but it distorts her image to put any more focus on it than it already has. We need to diverisfy the examples used to demonstrate what kind of person Raksi is in future.

Rulebook Heavily
Sep 18, 2010

by FactsAreUseless
Oh yeah, another big "tone" example I can use and I know Stephen will sympathize with in particular: Firedust. Firedust was originally presented as a natural product of Creation, just one of the many things in Creation that were strange and not what we're used to. But much later, firedust became solidified Essence that drifted from the Wyld, and now the entire tone of Firedust is different and not what it was supposed to be. Salt from the very first book and its relationship with Ghosts suffered a similar weird shift in between books.

These examples are matters of a game developing over time with multiple authors, so they are understandable. But they are "lesser" examples of the same tonal confusion.

Strength of Many
Jan 13, 2012

The butthurt is the life... and it shall be mine.

Bedlamdan posted:

It's not a rave orgy, if you're talking about what I think you're talking about. Specifically it's a temple priest or priestess who has sex with someone as a coming of age ritual. Which really isn't all that unprecedented, historically.

In societies that support that kind of function, sure. Autocthonia? Not so much.

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Strength of Many posted:

In societies that support that kind of function, sure. Autocthonia? Not so much.

Not really. Autochthonia is not homogenous. Like, in Claslat you don't have a standard family unit and everyone is raised in these communal creches, Yugash uses the standard family units thing because they think that it'll make their workers more efficient, while Gulak (where the that ritual takes place) is known for it's weird religious traditions because they kept those from Creation-side.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Bedlamdan posted:

Not really. Autochthonia is not homogenous. Like, in Claslat you don't have a standard family unit and everyone is raised in these communal creches, Yugash uses the standard family units thing because they think that it'll make their workers more efficient, while Gulak (where the that ritual takes place) is known for it's weird religious traditions because they kept those from Creation-side.

And establishing that cultural variance was the point of Compass: Autochthonia. (Well, one of them.) So I don't know why you'd object to the idea. A culturally homogenous Autochthonia is a less fun setting.

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO
May 8, 2006
I'm telling you Martial Arts, in Holden Shearers own vision as angels revealed to me, a noncombat ability just like real life, reflecting how precise your tai chi is. Maybe take a four dot Background to use it to replace Brawl or Melee in conjunction with a specific style.

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Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:

I'm telling you Martial Arts, in Holden Shearers own vision as angels revealed to me, a noncombat ability just like real life, reflecting how precise your tai chi is. Maybe take a four dot Background to use it to replace Brawl or Melee in conjunction with a specific style.

Maybe we can preview that after the in-depth (so much depth you guys) preview of Bureaucracy I promised ages ago.

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