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Lunar Charms are cool, but reading through the last backer PDF myself I wished that the Totemic keyword showed up a lot more often—as it is, it seems like it offers a lot of versatility to pack-hunting or tiny animal-spirit-shape-having Lunars, a few niche charms for people whose spirit shapes can look like other animals (so like...butterflies, and those one kinds of octopus?), and then a very light dusting of utility to everything else. Also that I wish the book just had a solid list of "these are animals that live in Creation and where."
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May 28, 2019 17:10
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Night10194 posted:Cubes are passe, it's all orbs now. At least the Star Trek RPG had the sense to make their cube a Borg Cube.
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May 28, 2019 20:24
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Wapole Languray posted:But also it emphasizes that Magical Interior Decorating is important. And it is important. Not kidding.
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May 28, 2019 21:22
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So from what I have seen, the entirety of "Invisible Sun" is kind of trying to be Cultist Simulator but without anything approaching the weirdness/neccesity of the normal.
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May 28, 2019 21:22
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Josef bugman posted:So from what I have seen, the entirety of "Invisible Sun" is kind of trying to be Cultist Simulator but without anything approaching the weirdness/neccesity of the normal. Yeah I mean they're both influenced by high Modernism, only Cultist Simulator is a fantastic constructed mythology built on that base with occultism as the glue, and Invisible Sun has no actual statement to make whatsoever. I love CultSim, and Mage: the Awakening, and all that occult wizard business, which is why Invisible Sun infuriates me. It's building CultSim or Mage Aw but with the underlying aesthetic of D&D 3.0 spell lists, the least magical magic in fiction.
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May 28, 2019 21:29
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Josef bugman posted:So from what I have seen, the entirety of "Invisible Sun" is kind of trying to be Cultist Simulator but without anything approaching the weirdness/neccesity of the normal.
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May 28, 2019 21:52
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CultSim is good, actually.
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May 28, 2019 22:11
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Joe Slowboat posted:CultSim is good, actually.
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May 28, 2019 22:25
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Nessus posted:Cultsim has the same problem Sunless Sea did where they have an excellent system for integrating story with gameplay. Then they make the gameplay six times more tedious. The writing remains great, but at a certain point I just read the wiki. The process of discovery in Cultist Simulator is half the fun; it effectively simulates a kind of research and slow discovery that has far more power than wiki-crawling the same text. I mean, that's my opinion. It's no more tedious than classic roguelikes, and the reward for going in blind and learning the game is huge.
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May 28, 2019 22:28
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 The Key: Chapter 2: Characters Oh boy oh boy. I hope you guys are ready for this, because now we’re getting into the real poo poo. So, player characters are Vislae, the fancy made up word for Wizards. It means “Children of Visla” which is the name of the Invisible Sun which… does something. It’s the source of magic I guess? Anyway, Vislae call non-vislae “Nons”. Yes, the game term for muggles/normals is “Nons”. As mentioned before, all Vislae exiled themselves to Shadow (THE REAL WORLD, OR IS IT???) to avoid the War (Secret Metaplot Bullshit) and have recently returned to their homes in Actuality (THE MAGICAL WORLD). They all have pseudo amnesia in that you only forgot the stuff that your GM should explain to you but you do remember how to do the stuff you don’t need them to tell you about. So, now I’m going to digress a bit. I’ll be doing this a few times to point out something: This game has the worst goddamn layout I’ve ever seen in an RPG book. So first, whenever in the test the world Invisible appears… it’s in a light grey. On white.  Keywords? Light lavender. Also on white.  Oh and this is where we get introduced to the first kind of sidebar in this game. Yes the first kind, there are multiple types of sidebar notation.  This first page? Page 11 alone?  Yeah. Oh we aren’t done yet! See that’s 2 kinds of sidebars. The orange boxes are like extra rules clarifications that have to be in a box for some reason. The Other Book Reference Boxes are another, but there’s also Same book references.  Oh, and let’s not forget traditional explanatory sidebars.  So yes that is 4 different kinds of notation in the sidebars, 2 of which look the same but are not. But that’s not even the worst part! No no, because this book is 2 column layout. That’s normal right, 2 columns with a sidebar, nothing weird about that you say. No no, because the thing is… these things I’ve been calling sidebars? Aren’t sidebars. They’re mid-bars.   Layout and graphic designers, please feel free to tear your eyeballs out. ANYWAY. So, back to character creation, which has issues. The main issue is that because Monte decided to split his book into non-contiguous sections which can be read in any order you get a lot, and I mean a LOT, of repetition. The same information is repeated over and over in different books because there’s no guarantee you’ll get the context before the content. So be aware I’ll be repeating a lot. Anyway, so you’re Vislae, being a wizard has no correlation with your physical appearance or build so you can be a buff wizard unlike D&D. We learn that there’s places called changeries that are like magical plastic surgery so you can have quote:heads shaped like brass cubes, skin of sparkling Your job as characters is vague and not-helpful. You are attempting to rebuild your life in Magictown that you abandoned. Invisible Sun flat out says that it will not tell you what to do, players have to come up with what this game is going to be about. This gives the illusion of freedom, but actually means that he just threw cool poo poo together without a unifying concept. We get another mention of The Labyrinth which has not been explained in this book, except it’s something that players want to do eventually. The game assumes that you live in Satyrine, which is the magical city at the nexus of the multiverse sorta. It’s called the City of Notions, which is a dumb name. It’s wannabe Sigil, like I said before. OK so besides Humans, which remember can look like non-humans thanks to magical plastic surgery, the most common denizen of Satyrine are the elderbrin. They are shapeshifters. Another are the Lacuna, who are… person shaped holes in the fabric of reality that act like living gateways to other places. There are also Thoughtforms and Shadows. Thoughtforms are semi-living beings created by magic out of thoughts and emotions to act as servants and such. They’re basically NPCs from a video game. Not actually a bad concept, I like. Shadows are people from… Shadow that interacted with a Vislae enough that they sort of got charged with magic and leveled up into being a Real Person. They are “Please see this other book for rules to play one” types so maybe when we get to the Gate! Also there’s the Dead. Who normally live in the Pale, but do live in Satyrine as well. OK so I’m switching to rambling list form for the rest of Facts About The Setting That Make Character Creation Vaguely Comprehensible.
 And welp I could have just copy-pasted that thing so gently caress me I guess. Whatever. You’ll notice that there is a lot of words and information that means basically nothing at all. Like it mentions the Magisterium but you don’t know what the hell it IS. What was the war? Who knows! What actually are wicked keys? Guess! It’s all evocative and weird and vague and nonsense completely. Finally before we get to the actual mechanics of making a character, or at least the bits of choosing things about them, we learn some more stuff that make vislae special! quote:
I really don’t have much to say, this is all just… so evocatively hollow. I mean the secret language is cool, I’m OK with that, some of the other stuff is neat. The dream thing seems like it exists just to have the GM gently caress you with dream-monsters, the whole multiple-aspects sounds like it is either pointless or a giant pain in the rear end during play, and goddamn I’m sick of reading Vislae. It’s a terrible word.  Next Time: Actual loving Character Creation, The Buttplug of Apostasy, and the Big Plastic Hand of Magic Wapole Languray fucked around with this message at 22:32 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 22:29
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Joe Slowboat posted:I mean, that's my opinion. It's no more tedious than classic roguelikes, and the reward for going in blind and learning the game is huge. My reward for going in blind to CultSim was to die of starvation over and over then give up. I loved the writing and worldbuilding, but to have it swallowed by the frantic rush to find food and money felt like a waste.
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May 28, 2019 22:49
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At least Monte Cooke finally admitted that everyone should probably be a wizard in an RPG where only wizards matter, that's sort of progress from D&D 3.X.
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May 28, 2019 22:52
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potatocubed posted:My reward for going in blind to CultSim was to die of starvation over and over then give up. If you're ever interested in trying again, go for the doctor start. You get a permanent job that never fires you and gives two money every 60 seconds when used, which is enough to pay for food and have a bit left over for emergencies. That said I agree the gameplay is rear end outside of discovering how the mechanics work, which is a problem because it runs out of new mechanics about 1/3 of the way through the game and the rest is a tedious grind until numbers big enough to win. E: Still way better than Invisible Sun, particularly lore-wise.
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May 28, 2019 23:00
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Don't worry, I'm sure one of the types of wizard will be "the kind of wizard most focused on wizard-y poo poo" and that one will be miles better than the other wizards at everything. Also that sidebar is extra hilarious because you could find-replace "wizard" for "vislae" and this is just a D&D 3E setting book, and not even a particularly inventive one. Keys rain from the sky, guys!!!! Sometimes people do ~~~m~~~a~~~g~~~i~~~c~~~!!!!!!!!!
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May 28, 2019 23:01
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Big Mad Drongo posted:That said I agree the gameplay is rear end outside of discovering how the mechanics work, which is a problem because it runs out of new mechanics about 1/3 of the way through the game and the rest is a tedious grind until numbers big enough to win. Yeah the thing is that the discovery thing is presnet, the writing is great, but it absolutely and deliberately has a bunch of grindy make-work bullshit as well. And this is absolutely deliberate, because the "make the game harder for the really good players" expansion focuses heavily on just making the grindiness even worse; one of my friends was working on a hack to make it less tedious and just gave up after seeing the changes planned for that because it was directly going 'no, we actually want the grinding.'
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May 28, 2019 23:06
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megane posted:Don't worry, I'm sure one of the types of wizard will be "the kind of wizard most focused on wizard-y poo poo" and that one will be miles better than the other wizards at everything. This is what Wizard Supremacy does to people. They become incapable of imagining actually interesting wizards. The big failure here, I think, is the fact that the metaphysical structure is detailed but pretty transparently lacks any kind of organizing ideas or principles. Stuff happens! The stuff is individually kinda cool! But you need a thematic and occult framework that makes sense of all the things like rains of keys, so that players are actually discovering parts of a whole. Otherwise it's just, as was said, 'evocatively hollow.' E: I will certainly agree CultSim is only going to appeal to people who don't mind its core loop being slow and finicky.
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May 28, 2019 23:27
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Invisible Sun: Graphic Design Is My Passionmegane posted:Don't worry, I'm sure one of the types of wizard will be "the kind of wizard most focused on wizard-y poo poo" and that one will be miles better than the other wizards at everything. I am in love with the fact that not only did Monte make a game that just makes his favorite class the default, he went out of his to point out that you shouldn't just call them wizards, guys, hey knock it off.
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May 28, 2019 23:28
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 Chapter 1 - Continued The Realm didn't find it unusual for the Empress to take a year long sabbatical; sometimes she would hole up in the Imperial Manse doing who-knows-what for months at a time without informing anyone. After two years of no word or appearance from her, the Realm at large realized something was very wrong and the Council of the Empty Throne met. This group of ministers, monks, and Dynasts decided that, rather than seat someone who could exercise any kind of power, chose Tepet Fokuf to be the regent. In public, they declared the Empress to just be taking her meditation in seclusion. Privately, they decided that after seven years of this, it would be decided that she had abdicated the throne. This, of course, sets off a chain reaction. Whether she's dead, kidnapped, stuck in the Imperial Manse, or what not, she did not build the Empire to survive her absence. New magistrates cannot be appointed by anyone but her and the existing ones immediately start getting picked off by Dynasts trying to hide their own crimes. Multiple ministries cannot secure funding from their traditional source, leaving parts of the Empire deadlocked. The Great Houses begin to feud in ways that screws over the Empire more than they do themselves. The legions are divided among these Houses and most are recalled from the satrapies to the Blessed Isle, thus leaving wide openings for what appears to be an awful lot of Solar Anathema these days, as well as more mundane conquerors who wish to seize upon the wealth of their neighbors. Basically, poo poo's extremely hosed. Life on the Blessed Isle details the more day-to-day life of everyone living on this powder keg, so lots of fluff incoming and unfortunately not that many pictures. The Blessed Isle is, bar none, the most prosperous land on Creation. Even without the whole empire thing feeding tons of stolen wealth into it, it has the most fertile fields, the best infrastructure, the most people living on it, and a hell of a lot of metal and jade. But, it's ridiculously big; it's mentioned that all of its soil has been mapped by Imperial cartographers, but some of those documents have been lost over the years. Shogunate and Solar ruins alike lurk in valleys and forests, untouched by humanity since the Great Contagion, and there's an awful lot of places for bandits, runaway slaves, and the dispossessed to hide. The Realm has several distinct social classes. At the absolute bottom are the dispossessed. They have absolutely no rights whatsoever and are branded with an X upon their forehead to let everyone know this. Most scrape by a meager living by doing the worst labor possible, or flee into the wilds to live with other dispossessed. This status is usually given en masse by Imperial judges to peasants who joined revolts against the crown, people who cannot pay their taxes, and to communities who let lawlessness fester. One can have this revoked only by a magistrate providing evidence that exonerates the dispossessed, or by the Empress's decree; too bad the magistrates are dropping like flies and the Empress isn't around anymore. Children of the dispossessed are de facto peasants, but obviously are not very well off unless adopted by peasants who still have their citizenry or the Immaculate Order. As of now, the dispossessed cannot be made slaves on the grounds that it would "elevate them above their station", but the Deliberative (the Realm's senate) has entertained the option as of late, only stopped by fierce House Cynis opposition (as they don't want anyone else cutting in on the slaving business) and from traditionalists upset at the breaking with Immaculate morality. Above the dispossessed are slaves. The vast majority of slaves are foreigners, with a few being former citizens enslaved as punishment for severe crimes. The book takes great pains to clarify that the "good master" poo poo is just that: poo poo. Every slave, whether they be doing backbreaking labor in the fields or a house slave that teaches Dynast students in mathematics, is abused in some way and slavery by itself is a traumatizing thing; "A happy slave is a broken slave", as the book states. Only the Dragon-blooded can own slaves, but slaves are often lent out to mortal Dynasts and patricians. Slaves have no rights beyond what is granted to them by their master; they may own property, but bearing arms is only allowed if their master wills it. Originally, children of slaves were also slaves, but House Cynis's rise resulted in that being changed, so as to preserve their monopoly on the slave trade by cutting off any supply but their own. Nowadays, slave children are automatically uplifted to the status of peasant. Abolitionists do exist, but are generally rare, especially among the Dynasty. Abolitionism is stymied by there being an absolute limit of one slave per year that can be emancipated per owner. Dragon-blooded who despise slavery thus tend to try and smuggle slaves out, let them live as though they were free, or treat them as servants with wages and guaranteed rights. The peasants make up the majority of the populace. Most are farmers, but artisans, bankers, merchants, soldiers, and more come from their ranks; some get very wealthy as a result of their own work. Peasants are full citizens, and thus generally can't be murdered or abused on a whim by Dynasts; they get the amazing privilege of having a right to a trial before getting executed (but only if the crime is not too severe; otherwise, the Dynast can just lop their head off anyway). Rich peasants may marry up in the world, usually by finder a poorer patrician and marrying into their family by paying a substantial dowry. Patricians form the middle management of the Empire, their status stemming from their lineage, whether it be from relation to an old Shogunate gens, an Imperial official, and fallen Dynast Houses stricken from the ledgers. If a Dynast makes a decree, patricians enact it. They're the lower ministers and officers of the Empire, and thus very valuable; as such, around half of them are under the patronage of a Great House, working for them in exchange for rewards such as the right to raise troops, sponsorship of their petitions to the government, slaves loaned to their household, and even the right to marry into the House. Those who are rich enough to stand alone are often plied with gifts, negotiations, and more, but as of late, overtures by the Houses to independent patrician families have gotten rather aggressive. Dragon-blooded children are the most treasured thing for a patrician to have; adoption of a Dragon-blood into a House gives great boons to the family that produced them, and the richest patricians can have their child fostered by a Great House, letting them remain in the family to use all their anime powers for their own economic gain and hopes for having even more Dragon-blooded descendants. Outcaste Dragon-bloods tend to marry into patrician families once they're done with their mandatory service in the legions. Un-Exalted Dynasts live incredibly pampered and decadent lives, but are regarded as disappointments in their family for not Exalting. They have the same legal privileges as their more fortunate kin and work in the same fields as upper management, military officers, and so on, but generally are not considered equals in the family's eyes. Outcaste Dragon-blooded, those born into families not of the patriciate or Dynasty, technically have the same rights as Dynast Dragon-bloods, but would have to marry in to a Great House to feel like it. They are forced to either join the legions for fifty years or join the Immaculate Order as a monk in perpetuity. Cadet House Dynasts are technically Dynasts, but since they live off the Blessed Isle, are viewed as uncivilized yokels and don't have the same connections as Dynasts. Dynast Dragon-blooded are the top of society. Only half are employed; the rest tend to gently caress around and exist off their stipend, adventuring here and there, doing war tourism, enjoying their hobbies, and generally being the richest gits to ever exist. Dynasts and patricians are fond of arranged matrilineal marriages, in which the groom gets sent off to live with his wife's household and a substantial dowry is paid to the groom's family. The poorer peasants have much more leeway and can marry for silly things like love, and the rich peasants emulate their social superiors. Patricians loathe marrying peasants, since classism is so very popular a pastime in the Realm, but will do it if the offer is too good to refuse. Promiscuity is considered uncouth, but most people just gently caress constantly anyways since this is Exalted. Only rural peasants raise their kids on their own; the rest tend to get nannies and tutors to do it for them since being a good parent in the Realm's eyes is being a cold and methodical person who shapes their kid to be just the same. Slaves and the dispossessed cannot marry officially, but some get married so as to assert their humanity in this crushing society. There's a rather big section on clothing that I'll go through quickly. Essentially, anything from China, Japan, Korea, and India is in fashion here, along with tunics, trousers, skirts, and togas. Rural peasants wear practical stuff like tunics and pants, sarongs, kimonos, and so on woven from jute, wool, cotton, and so on. Rich peasants and patricians wear togas and saris made from more expensive materials like silk and have incredibly tricked out hats. The Dynasts largely wear more expensive versions of what the peasants wear, generally made to stand out, and they satisfy themselves with headbands embroidered with poetry rather than the patrician's ludicrous hats. Art & architecture are complicated by the Immaculate Order's ban on iconography for everyone but the Dragon-blooded. Only statues of the Elemental and Immaculate Dragons are allowed, with certain dispensations for things that basically cannot get by without having iconic depictions in them, such as medical books, bestiaries, herbal guides, and so on. Thus, art for the peasant and patrician classes tends to be incredibly abstract, calligraphy being the biggest field of all. Dragon-bloods can just do whatever the gently caress they want, but generally the more pious among them stick to aniconic art. Most peasants live in simple one-room houses or in city apartments. Rich peasants and patricians live in Roman style houses built around an atrium and a small garden, and Dynasts live in walled-off complexes with many gardens, shrines, towers, pavillions, and just anything else a rich rear end in a top hat wants. Geomancy is used by the wealthiest to construct houses in a way that harmonizes with the dragon lines of the world, and by the Dynasts to construct manses, which serve as their very fancy magical manors and forts. Cuisine is about what you would expect; rural peasants eat grain constantly, whether as bread, rice, noodles, dumplings, and so on, supplementing this with other staple vegetables such as lentils and onions, occasionally get meat from farming or hunting, and eat fruits both grown and foraged. Rice wine and beer are the most common drinks for peasants. The rich can afford mutton, pork, and fowl frequently, have a greater variety in vegetables, and start to add spices to their meals such as chili paste or garum. Dynasts eat pretty much anything and everything the world has to offer; lamb, veal, venison, horse, bear, doves, tyrant lizards, hellboars, giant squids, and more get added to the table, coated in the most expensive of spices and served with the best tea, wine, and other spirits. Peasant and patrician families always dine together, while Dynasts eat alone or gather in small numbers, only gathering for holidays, entertaining guests, or special occasions such as, say, a child graduating from secondary school. Travelers eat at roadside inns, which have no menu and just serve whatever the owner wishes, although the best is reserved for richer guests, and proper teahouses and restaurants exist in the cities, along with roadside vendors. Every city has at least one temple to the Immaculate Dragons, and the biggest have many, along with shrines to bigger deities such as Gri-Fel, City Father of the Imperial City, and Flashing Peak, Goddess of the Imperial Mountain, that get more prayer days devoted to them than other gods on the Immaculate Calendar. Villages will have a shrine with a simple wooden dragon statue to pray in, although sometimes the wealthier individuals pay for more fancy lacquer and carving as a show of piety. Every Dynastic household will have one shrine, generally taking up a whole room or pagoda. Patricians will have a small shrine in their atrium. As always, people have their folklores and superstitions; even the Dragon-bloods aren't immune to it. Most of it revolves around the Immaculate Dragons; legends state that certain geographical features were made by them and miracles are attributed to their intercession (which the Immaculates frown upon since that leads to heresy). The blessings of monks are considered supernatural in power, and of course, people tend to make relics out of little bits of holy sites. Five is a very lucky number (since it represents every element!) as well as ten (the Elemental and Immaculate Dragons added up) and seven (the number of Celestial Incarnae). Four is considered unlucky (you're missing an element!) and represents death, incompleteness, or a lack of piety, and six is considered to represent excess and wealth (whether this is auspicious or inauspicious depends on circumstances). Ghosts aren't very common on the Blessed Isle, partially due to the fact that the Immaculate Faith does everything it can to make sure you reincarnate, partially because shadowlands are rare on the Isle due to the efforts of the Immaculate faith, and partially because Immaculate monks will suplex ghosts with their mighty elemental magics if they try to interact with anyone. This leaves plenty of room for stories about romance or vengeance from beyond the grave. People blame their various maladies and misfortunes on supernatural beings (well, supernatural beings that aren't the Dragon-blooded, who are lovely and perfect in every way, citizen); people on the Jadeborn's tribute route believe troubled children are changelings made by the Mountain Folk, and rural people in the western part of the Isle (where the raksha managed to make landfall) believe familiars of faerie creatures steal their blood and leave sickness in its place. Folk magic is in an odd spot. Learning anything that's generally actually useful, such as thaumaturgy or sorcery, outside of the Heptagram or Immaculate Order will get you forced into becoming a monk on pain of punishment very quickly if you're found out. Reading tarot cards, making protective talismans, and other small magics? Perfectly fine, even the Dynasts partake of it, although you're watched to make sure all you do is on the level; hexing and cursing people is a high crime under the Imperial law. There are, of course, tons of fakers who pretend to have power all over the place, which is also illegal as all hell. Law and order generally starts with the Black-Helms. Officially, they're the Guardians of the Realm, who operate under the Honorable and Humble Caretakers of the Common Folk's ministrations, but since they wear fancy black conical helmets and are huge dicks generally, they're dubbed the Black-Helms. Their actual symbol of office is a red belt with a brass buckle adorned with a pentagram (the star pentagram, mind you; they're not metal enough to have the upside down one). In more well off districts, they are provided with uniforms and weaponry, and also receive training, but in the rural parts of the Realm, the only criteria for being a Black-Helm is being buff and willing to follow orders. Two is the minimum effective size; one can detain people while the other delivers a message. Once drafted, it's mandatory, but you do get paid a decent amount for service, and if you're rural, you can probably do other stuff on the side. Officers are exclusively patricians (and occasionally an un-Exalted Dynast), are only found in the cities, and have a fancy silver pentagram instead of a bronze one.  "Heard you were shouting Avengers: Endgame spoilers in the square." Now, unfortunately for the Guardians, while they may have vast (some might say, too much) authority over peasants and the officers authority over any mortal citizen of the Realm, they have absolutely no say in matters of the Dragon-blooded. They're only permitted to arrest one if they're doing something beyond the pale like going on a murder spree or a destructive rampage, and they can only hold them for three days tops. However, there's another type of cop that can arrest Dragon-bloods, the Imperial Force, who are nicknamed "Dragon-Handlers." They have silver buckles with a red jade pentagram, are usually very highly qualified (some are even Dragon-blooded, since it's rather difficult to arrest someone who can shoot fireballs out of their eyes when you're only human), and are chosen by and answer only to the Deliberative's Greater Chamber. Crime tends to be local; most crime syndicates are small and operate in one town or city at the most. Petty theft gets more common in times of economic hardship (such as the current Realm Year), but is generally limited outside of gang activity. Smuggling is pretty common, especially since House Peleps's Earth Fleet (that which patrols the Isle itself) is easily bribed due to the blow losing the Merchant Fleet dealt to their coffers. Scavenging First Age relics is legal for Dynasts, but requires a license for a patrician to practice; of course, those who skip the bureaucracy can get rich very fast, or face severe punishment (fines and jailing for patricians, execution for peasants). Crime syndicates of note are the Jade Hand, who are Scarlet Prefecture's most infamous group of thieves. They prey on the wealthy for the most part, and are given tips by the Great Houses as they are seen as a useful tool for the Great Houses to humble their rivals or social inferiors. The Shansin Six are opium smugglers operating in the southern parts of the Isle and the Southern Threshold, although they're not averse to doing side business such as smuggling people to and fro. They undercut House Cynis's monoply on the drug trade, which is why House Sesus helps them out with evading the law. The Gallows Dogs are professional hitmen-for-hire; none know who their superior is, and they can only be contacted by dead drop. Contract pricing varies according to social status, and thus killing a Dynast is so expensive that generally only a Dynast can afford it, with the rate for killing a Dragon-blood ten times that. Those who do kill Dragon-bloods are often Exalted themselves: Gnarled Oak, an Immaculate monk; Three Dagger Prince, an outcaste that is actually an Iselsi scion and agent; Akaya Moda, Exigent of a hot spring god, and so on. Everyone loves to be entertained, and is there a lot of entertainment on the Blessed Isle. Anything that's in the Olympics is popular with patricians and Dynasts. Ball games such as harpastum and cuju are more niche, falling in out of favor as the years go on. Dice games are well loved by peasants and sailors, while the legions prefer cards (which, of course, are aniconic for anyone that's not a Dynast). The aristocracy loves board games, including the ever-popular Gateway, and now even the peasantry are picking up the trend, playing go, pachisi, and Hunt-the-Anathema. Students of the military House of Bells academy play ~*war games*~ with miniatures and dice, making them the gooniest of all. Cockfighting gets the peasants going, while insect battling is truly a cross-class touchstone. Dueling between humans is generally restricted to the patricians and Dynasts and is never to the death. Gladiatoral combat is subject to ministerial oversight, and are found in the Cathak stronghold of Myion, Cynis's Pangu, and the Imperial City itself. Gambling is acceptable if done within one's means for entertainment, but high-stakes gambling is seen as a wrong-headed desire to live outside one's station. Woodblock printing is common enough (and as the book later tells us, so is literacy thanks to the efforts of the Immaculate Order) that books (such as travelogues, novels, and religious texts) are about the same price as a nice dinner rather than an extravagance, although the wealthy prefer hand-drawn works done with the finest calligraphy. Acting is common enough, traveling actors performing morality plays and comedies at inns, while the more professional sorts perform at urban theaters and the parties of the aristocracy. Music is mostly done with real-life Chinese instruments; sanxians, erhus, guzhengs, and more are the most common. The three most popular genres to date are Elegant River (slow and soothing), Jade Cockerel (known for its high-pitched vocals), and the improvisational Eight-Winds style. Dynasts and patricians generally display their art collections in galleries, or store them in museums.The Immaculates follow suit, displaying their relics and religious art to the public. Most are by invitation only, or are otherwise open to those who can pay substantial fees. Dynastic salons especially love to display their war loot and the severed heads of animals they hunted for sport in a centerpiece. Travel is pretty tricky in such a large country. Poor travelers tend to travel in group caravans, while the wealthy hire their own guards. Roads to critical areas such as the larger cities are laid with stone blocks and see patrol from militias and legion forces, but of course most are just dirt and are left to the locals to patrol. The Great Coast Road stretches along the entire coastline of the Isle, a priceless and irreplaceable First Age miracle. It is black and featureless, and is notable for two things: it repairs itself (although records show its rate of regeneration has slowed down over the centuries), and enchantments laid on it shave off one fifth the time it would usually take to travel from Point A to Point B. Towns and cities have sprouted around this road, as well as forts and watchtowers (usually owned by legion forces, but occasionally taken over by bandits). More and more waystations are being taken over by highwaymen, however, and there's an odd trend of there being raids conducted by bandits that are strangely well-conducted as if they were legion forces themselves. The Road is most likely to be bitterly fought over by the Houses if civil war is to break out since it's rather useful to march troops down a magic road that makes them quicker, no?  Gonna take my horse to the Great Coast Road I'm gonna ride till I can't no more Of course, the Blessed Isle also has plenty of canals and waterways to travel down. Plenty of rowboats, dhows, junks, triremes, and galleys in the Realm's harbors. Travel between prefectures is restricted for peasants, requiring travel papers provided by the Fastidious Keepers of the Imperial Peace. One requires the ability to pay a steep fee and a good reason to be traveling abroad, usually provided by a letter of endorsement from a patrician, Dynast, or Immaculate authority. Documents indicate whether the trip is one-way or two-way, how long the papers are valid, and so on. Stamps are rotated out so as to avoid counterfieting, since there is a bustling industry in making them for peasants wanting to save a little bit of hard-earned money. Caravan guards and traveling laborers are paid for by their patron and receive frequent traveler discounts. Black-Helms, archons, and magisrates' servants receive long-term papers covering the entirety of the Isle, couriers for the Imperial Post likewise receive the same, and legion officers carry papers for their troops. Soldiers pay no fee so long as they have a letter of endorsement to go on leave. Speaking of couriers, the Realm boasts the largest and most effective communication system in the world. Everything from personal letters to peasants and coded Dynast missives is delivered via horse relay system, courtesy of the Imperial Post. Priority is given to the messages of Dynasts, patricians, and wealthy peasants and foreigners, although couriers are fine with accepting rural peasant missives for a few coins if their load is light and the destination is on their route. Couriers for the Imperial Post are expected to never tamper with or intercept messages for fear of severe punishment, but some do it anyways and the most clever among them make quite a living off the grift and bribery it entails. Great Houses use their own couriers when secrecy is utterly necessary. Couriers are expected to be able to defend themselves, generally using stealth and disguise to evade banditry but if it comes to it, sometimes motherfuckers have got to die so Grandma Rock Sparrow gets her grandson's heartfelt letter congratulating her on her 65th birthday. Message runners are employed for the cities, and the Post even extends into the satrapies across the Inner Sea. The Imperial Post also boasts a heliograph system, a network of towers that broadcast messages with great mirrors that reflect the sun's light. The purposes of law enforcement or troop organization take precedent, with concerns of the Deliberative, the Great Houses, and the ministries following afterwards, and personal messages from one Dynast to another dead last. Since these are easily intercepted, they're not used for private matters, usually. Finally, one can pay sorcerers to use Infallible Messenger to send any communications; the spell is generally unable to be intercepted, and as such, sorcerers charge quite a bit for the service. The Imperial Post has a few Heptagram graduates of their own on staff for emergency communications. The quality of life and health in the Realm is quite good. The cities have sewage systems and apartment buildings have lavatories rather than having everyone fling their poo poo and piss into the roads. Public baths are common (in rural places, baths are drawn from well water or cisterns), and fields such as midwifing, herbalism, and dentistry are lucrative careers for the peasantry. Some peasants even become trained physicians, serving the patricians and Dynasts alike. Opthamology, dietitians, acupuncturists, chiropractors, dream interpreters, bone setters, and more are studied in the Realm. For the Dynasty, Exalted physicians are preferred over all others since, hey, they can magic your wounds and diseases away. Dragon-bloods rarely make it to old age (usually they either bite it fighting in the legions, get killed by rogue spirits while on Immaculate duty, or assassinated), but when they do, they get the same problems any other old mortal would get. Finally, there is a big subtitle detailing Discrimination in the Realm. The Realm is extremely disdainful of foreign cultures and beastmen, sexist, and as shown, they really loving love slavery. The sexism against men in the Realm is basically just the same sexism that the real world tends to direct at its women; in the Realm, men are considered to be hot-headed and too impulsive to trust with higher ranked jobs. Women tend to ignore men at conversations at best or interrupt them at worst, and men are expected to be sexually available. Of course, this cuts both ways; women are expected to be cool-headed and wise, which sets unrealistic expectations for many women. Women are punished more severely for fighting and no matter what the cause for the fight was, and getting mad in public for a women is considered to be embarrassing, while a man getting angry is considered par for the course. These exist to give players injustices to fight against, but the sidebar points out that a lot of this can cut close to home, so if a player isn't willing to deal with it, the GM shouldn't use those setting elements. If someone wants to fight against those injustices, however (such as a Dragon-blooded player character who is an abolitionist, or a Solar revolutionary), it is advised that also be allowed and a cool story be made of it. Pretty good all around, although I do roll my eyes a bit at the sexism bit since it seems fairly dull to just turn the tables and apply the same sexist tropes to men. Up next: Chapter 1's finale. Dominions, prefectures, and Great Houses, oh my! SunAndSpring fucked around with this message at 23:53 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 23:36
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah the thing is that the discovery thing is presnet, the writing is great, but it absolutely and deliberately has a bunch of grindy make-work bullshit as well. And this is absolutely deliberate, because the "make the game harder for the really good players" expansion focuses heavily on just making the grindiness even worse; one of my friends was working on a hack to make it less tedious and just gave up after seeing the changes planned for that because it was directly going 'no, we actually want the grinding.'
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May 28, 2019 23:37
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So in short, you are Total Recall Wizards. There was a big stupid war and you were either a deserter or a draft dodger or someone broken by the war. So after a certain point, you just went to the nearest neutral developing nation (the Grey) and just went AWOL until something lured you back or you found your way back. The war is over, the city you once knew is in turmoil, the wizard war economy is headed for a downturn due to post-war rebuilding and relief, and you're trying to figure out where you belong and what exactly you left behind because you have no memories. As a pitch? Pretty solid idea for a game. Allows for magical mystery and intrigue and name-making adventure. As presented? Hard to comprehend without hard reading and the players aren't meant to know they're playing a game that can be summed up as Total Recall but with wizards.
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May 28, 2019 23:38
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I do not know why people hate elevator pitches so. If someone pitched 'total recall but wizards' I would be mildly intrigued, because it would tell me immediately what was happening. But then a lot of the made up fantasy verbiage in this hobby exists to try to pretend simpler ideas are much more complex ones, both because Monte Cooke the Auteur is either a thing or a marketing gimmick and because the hobby can be pretty insecure about 'I just want to play total recall but wizards'.
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May 28, 2019 23:41
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Thinking you're too good to sum up your idea in a sentence is a poison many designers drink. Does it make your idea, your baby, your precious gluten-free vegan free-range child sound stupid? Kinda, but it's a hook, you draw them in and then wow them. Your idea is never too good to turned into "like x but y" to get the basic ideas across, because god knows how many bloated and swollen corpses are in this hobby with the core DNA of "it's like D&D but" and "it's like LOTR but" that suffocated or died of heart attacks on their own justifying heartbreaker bulk.
Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 23:55 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 23:50
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Also causes the similar problem where a lot of games have that 'so who are the PCs and what do they do' problem.
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May 28, 2019 23:53
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Night10194 posted:Also causes the similar problem where a lot of games have that 'so who are the PCs and what do they do' problem. Something which I was practically screaming about repeatedly when it came to Neotech and had to practically squint to find anything of value.
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May 29, 2019 00:05
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Wew, glad to be done with that part. Lots of the fluffiest fluff. Some of it is fairly intriguing, such as there being ghosts and faeries on the Blessed Isle when in 2e, there were absolutely none whatsoever, and I really like the travel section, but a lot of it is "peasants eat dull food and have dull clothes and patricians and dynasts have the good clothes and food."
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May 29, 2019 00:10
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I'm sorry to say but you are reading in more conflict and interesting stuff than the game has. Trust me, it is nowhere near as interesting as Total Recall with Wizards because that whole rebuilding your life has less to do with conspiracy and wonder and more to do with interior wizard decorating and engaging in magical capitalism for stupid magic item materials. Also yes, this game does in fact have totally unbalanced splats, to a hilarious degree. It'll be a bit before we get to them but it's incredible how loving terrible and broken and just nonsense the magic systems in this game are.
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May 29, 2019 00:11
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Wapole Languray posted:
Monte, you literally misgendered Vislae in the same list of things where you told us not to misgender them. E: I rushed back to the thread as soon as I saw the new title, because I knew "There has to be an Invisible Sun."
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May 29, 2019 00:47
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"Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us" - Sir Thomas Browne This is the quotation from a great occult philosophy author that shows up in both Cultist Simulator and Monte Cook's Invisible Sun (or maybe he really did just think of the Police?). I was very moved by this passage in Browne's Hydrotaphia when I read it, and I consider it a deeply powerful sentiment, and I just keep finding new ways Monte Cook's IS annoys me.
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May 29, 2019 01:06
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I have to wonder if the very meaning of "Invisible Sun" as per Browne / Sting is reflected in the game at any point or if it just sounds vaguely mystical and there you go.
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May 29, 2019 01:18
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That Invisible Sun layout is atrocious, and reading the background information on it makes my head hurt. (Plus, I want to keep calling it Invisible Suns.) I think I'll just stick with Numenera (and yes, I know that has its problems, but I still like it.) and D&D 5e. Loxbourne posted:At least the Star Trek RPG had the sense to make their cube a Borg Cube. Yeah, but Star Trek Adventures was an actually-good game.
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May 29, 2019 01:32
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I have to wonder if the very meaning of "Invisible Sun" as per Browne / Sting is reflected in the game at any point or if it just sounds vaguely mystical and there you go. I think the idea that all magic comes from an invisible sun would work pretty well, if magic had something thematically to bring i together and make it seem important and vital? Mage the Awakening does a good job of that. Also I do like that song a lot, I'm pretty sure Sting was aware of the Browne text. But I'm not sure how to make magic in Monte Cook's style seem that vital or fundamental, as opposed to a bunch of disconnected D&D spells.
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May 29, 2019 01:32
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Joe Slowboat posted:I think the idea that all magic comes from an invisible sun would work pretty well, if magic had something thematically to bring i together and make it seem important and vital? Mage the Awakening does a good job of that. Let’s not let Monte Cook’s magical land drive us to nostalgia for our previous mess.
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May 29, 2019 01:41
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Joe Slowboat posted:But I'm not sure how to make magic in Monte Cook's style seem that vital or fundamental, as opposed to a bunch of disconnected D&D spells. Uhh, did you not read the bit where the spells are named Sound of Hoofbeats Scatters the Flock??
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May 29, 2019 01:41
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jakodee posted:Let’s not let Monte Cook’s magical land drive us to nostalgia for our previous mess. Are you perhaps thinking of Ascension...?
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May 29, 2019 02:49
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megane posted:Uhh, did you not read the bit where the spells are named Sound of Hoofbeats Scatters the Flock?? I'm reminded of an old interview with one of the Kindred of the East authors where they commented that naming powers like "Jade Servant of the August Personage" or "Semblance of the Scarlet Queen" sounded cool until they realized those were power names they'd have to write over and over.
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May 29, 2019 02:59
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megane posted:Uhh, did you not read the bit where the spells are named Sound of Hoofbeats Scatters the Flock?? I know the reality is that Monte Cook is actually aware of other games (he at least read enough oWoD to... somehow make it even more mechanically incoherent) and all these hollow purple prose "big ideas" are probably just a cynical hustle to cash in on suckers who don't know any better because they never left the D&D ghetto. But I like to imagine that if you showed him something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine he would have a heartbreaking moment of enlightenment just before his head exploded.
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May 29, 2019 03:08
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:
Uh, bad news, there's a system that is very clearly the result of Monte reading Chuubo's and not understanding what made it work.
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May 29, 2019 03:45
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Joe Slowboat posted:Are you perhaps thinking of Ascension...? Yeah. A lovable mess, but maybe not a great example of the poignancy of magic in tabletop rpgs.
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May 29, 2019 03:53
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jakodee posted:Yeah. A lovable mess, but maybe not a great example of the poignancy of magic in tabletop rpgs. Awakening is the successor game to Ascension, a much tighter work that has a very coherent metaphysics of magic and is themed around magic is an object of obsession, delving into mysteries, and the secret workings of the world being just out of reach. It does a very good job of making magic feel like an underlying structure in reality which is hidden away (it's a Neoplatonic and Gnostic setting) which endows the world with wonder and terror when it can be seen and understood. It's currently waiting for its first supplement in second edition.
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May 29, 2019 04:07
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Joe Slowboat posted:Awakening is the successor game to Ascension, a much tighter work that has a very coherent metaphysics of magic and is themed around magic is an object of obsession, delving into mysteries, and the secret workings of the world being just out of reach. Yeah it’s definitely one of the few good examples of gnostic-wizard-games from the gigantic pile of them that exist.
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May 29, 2019 04:12
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