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Kaza42 posted:Ex3 uses weapon classes rather than finely-detailed differences. There's very little difference between a Medium Sword and Medium Claws. Your point about artifact weapons is correct though, but the Supernatural Merits system is meant to be used to create beastmen or other mutants more than exalts. Also, natural weapons have an advantage when it comes to combining Martial Art styles so it's a niche but valid option So you're saying that the game explicitly and intentionally has a sub-par chargen option? Some sort of trap option? Something that it requires System Mastery to avoid? Legitimately, unless something is a good option that players should want to pick and have a reason to pick, it should not be in the game. I'm curious if Mors' review bears out that it's a worthwhile mechanical choice for MA builds.
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Mar 22, 2019 17:02
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PurpleXVI posted:Man, I still think Strength and Stamina should be clapped together, Appearance should be deleted and Wits and Perception should be slapped together. Stamina's a garbage stat in almost every Storyteller system game, Strength badly needs something to make it as viable as Dexterity but at least serves a purpose. gently caress having an Appearance stat on principle. And Wits and Perception just always feel like they overlap somewhat, because they both feel like they define your situational awareness. One of them's just a bit more vague than the other. Based on everything else, I feel like it's safe to say that Holden or Mørke or both* were very up their own rear end about "fixing the unfixable" because, after all, they helped write very popular high-level mechanics for both PCs and for the Incarnae and saved the game from oblivion. Also I'm pretty sure there's an element of comfortable laziness to it. * And me to an extent, but I was the one (very lightly) pushing for, like, totally scrapping the entire Attribute/Ability system, or moving to a much more simplified mote-tracking system. quote:Are any of these natural weapons even vaguely worth it, though? It feels like none of them really represent anything better than "I pick up a sword and hit a man," except I guess you can't be disarmed, but on the other hand you can never really upgrade from "big teef" to "ORICHALCUM BIG TEEF" so at some point or another they will be outdated. Spoiler alert 1: Weapons are one of the biggest departures from previous editions, being vastly simplified. This makes upgrades outside of the "mortal/artifact" split not nearly as much of a thing. Spoiler alert 2: Weapon stats are still fucky because they are literally the exact same preliminary numbers I came up with for early testing. quote:And being Quick Draw per-ability reminds me of the original, hilariously bad combo rules for Exalted 2E. Even prior to the errata which, if I remember right, unfucked those rules considerably, most groups seemed to have their own house rules that went "these rules are poo poo and terrible and also poo poo, let us pretend they don't exist." There was a lot of dev talk about "why does this need its own rule/need to cost character creation resources, it's so boring?" that seems not to have actually borne out in the published game because ????
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Mar 22, 2019 17:04
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I’m still amazed offhand penalties survived. No one uses them. Ever.
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Mar 22, 2019 17:12
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Shocking everyone, turning the Backgrounds into Merits and throwing dogshit like Ambidexterity and Danger Sense in a pile with Owns a Manse and Has a Friend in Nexus made the whole system loving awful.* Who could have foreseen such a turn of events * Note: system may have already been awful to begin with
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Mar 22, 2019 17:12
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That Old Tree posted:* And me to an extent, but I was the one (very lightly) pushing for, like, totally scrapping the entire Attribute/Ability system, or moving to a much more simplified mote-tracking system. I really wish you had gotten that then. One thing that super disappointed me was that after all the talk of "no sacred cows" and "looking at everything from the ground up" we got the exact same 9 attribute 25 ability 1-5 system as before. The bit that pissed me off the most though was the mote pool calculations. You (not literally you, don't know what part you had in developing 3e) cannot claim that this is the best possible version of Exalted and also have mote pool calculations that happen to give you the exact same totals as an optimized 2e character.
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Mar 22, 2019 17:15
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megane posted:Shocking everyone, turning the Backgrounds into Merits and throwing dogshit like Ambidexterity and Danger Sense in a pile with Owns a Manse and Has a Friend in Nexus made the whole system loving awful.* Who could have foreseen such a turn of events It's really not a terrible idea to simplify and unify character creation stuff, but it absolutely is a bad idea to act like "-2 difficulty to fatigue rolls" is the same as "a staff that grows an endless amount of food" or "a stone that you can use to trap a god." Kaza42 posted:I really wish you had gotten that then. One thing that super disappointed me was that after all the talk of "no sacred cows" and "looking at everything from the ground up" we got the exact same 9 attribute 25 ability 1-5 system as before. The bit that pissed me off the most though was the mote pool calculations. You (not literally you, don't know what part you had in developing 3e) cannot claim that this is the best possible version of Exalted and also have mote pool calculations that happen to give you the exact same totals as an optimized 2e character. I think the weapon and armor stat numbers are the only things I came up with that are in the published book. (Maybe even just the weapon numbers? I'm not sure.) I had light amounts of input into a bunch of stuff, mostly because dev meetings were wide-ranging and involved a half-dozen or more people. There's ~20-30k words worth of a half-done equipment chapter that I think would've been pretty good, sitting in my Google Drive alongside the skeletons of like three bureaucracy/social management systems, a couple crafting systems, an the basics of an Evocation system based on a handful of really good ideas they didn't use because, again, ???? Like I'm not even claiming any ownership over a lot of this. After all, there's like a handful of numbers in the game that I came up with and that's it. But there were some very interesting and characterful ideas from the dev meetings that were scrapped and replaced with More Of The Same, and it's loving baffling. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 22, 2019 |
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Mar 22, 2019 17:28
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That Old Tree posted:It's really not a terrible idea to simplify and unify character creation stuff, but it absolutely is a bad idea to act like "-2 difficulty to fatigue rolls" is the same as "a staff that grows an endless amount of food" or "a stone that you can use to trap a god." Or 'control my fertility.' That's one... wow, yeah.
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Mar 22, 2019 17:46
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That Old Tree posted:It's really not a terrible idea to simplify and unify character creation stuff, but it absolutely is a bad idea to act like "-2 difficulty to fatigue rolls" is the same as "a staff that grows an endless amount of food" or "a stone that you can use to trap a god." Sure, simplifying things is fine. As is giving the player a couple of 'buckets' to keep them from making a terrible unbalanced abomination with 5s in all their stats but no skills or assets. But that doesn't work if you can spend points from the "background assets that make you a character in the world, like friends or a house or contacts" bucket to buy a dice bonus to lifting poo poo. megane fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Mar 22, 2019 |
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Mar 22, 2019 18:00
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Mors Rattus posted:I’m still amazed offhand penalties survived. No one uses them. Ever. When I was flipping through the Neotech 2 book there was a section about offhand penalties. The most hilarious part is that it suggests that the GM should allow the PC to have the same primary hand as the player. Otherwise it suggested you should roll 1d10 and if you rolled a 10 you got to be left handed. Because the book states only a tenth of all people in the world are left handed.
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Mar 22, 2019 18:41
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The only time handedness should ever matter in a game is one that's like, Riddle of Steel level fiddly business fencing, boxing or other combat stuff, and at that point it's an advantage worth paying points for because southpaws are harder to handle.
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Mar 22, 2019 18:51
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The control fertility one vaguely made sense to me as okay this might be a thing in a DB focused game where you're actually forming your own dynasty and stuff, but without that context it's...yeah. Even with that context it's not good, it just...had an argument for its existence that wasn't just creepy shitheads
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Mar 22, 2019 18:55
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Is dual-wielding pistols or swords still a fad that has to be incorporated into everything? Because at one point it was a huge fad that bled into every tabletop game. Our Shadowrun group did use off-hand penalties, and it was one of many games where Ambidexterity is a costly mechanical advantage. Whether it's actually better than carrying the biggest rifle you can handle depends on the game.
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Mar 22, 2019 18:59
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PurpleXVI posted:Everything about Limit Breaks also seems to assume that you're using the whole intimacy mechanic to the hilt and constantly engaging with characters that use it. In the Exalted games I've played, I think that personal intimacies came up as something that gave boosts/penalties all of once. Because intimacies are largely towards people, and unless you're hanging around in very much the same place a lot, a lot of those people you have intimacies towards, at least some of which are likely non-Exalts, will stay home engaging with mortal-level challenges so they don't get eaten by a Behemoth. A travelling party just has little reason or chance to engage with that mechanic at all. Intimacies are a huge deal and should be coming up constantly. You have Ties and Principles. Ties can be to people or things, specific or general, like you can really like Brother Three Dog Night or Monks in general, or you can care about The Guild as a whole or one particular merchant prince who's dick you want to rip off. Principles are.. well, principles. Stuff like "Violence is always a last resort", "All slaves should be set free" and "I will fix what is broken" and they obviously are things your character can care about wherever they go. Intimacies are the core of the entire social influence system which doesn't work without them, its a game about big idiots caring about stuff. You're supposed to gain and lose minor intimacies very frequently, the social system is about targeting people's intimacies and using them as leverage to get people to do things. Minor intimacies can be things you care about but don't pop up very often, like a character really likes plum cakes or a particular flower which aren't huge deals but give you a bit of personality and then someone finds out you like plum cakes and delivers a whole bunch to your house to start the process of building up a positive intimacy towards them so they can get you to murder the satrap.
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Mar 22, 2019 19:03
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thatbastardken posted:hard to have a theme for your powers when you have like 600 of them Maybe one shouldn't do that, then?
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Mar 22, 2019 19:24
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Night10194 posted:God, I don't have the expansion books. I know they exist, but I don't have them. Hi, I'm one of the three people who started, and then abandoned a D:tD 40k 7thEd F&F 3 or 4 years ago. From what I remember, the expansion book added ship rules, new races (one of which is literally a Mass Effect race mixed with plants), gunman and piloting classes, and some new Exaltations I think. I basically continued off from where AccidentalHipster stopped and then stopped because of school and other things and just didn't feel like going through the rest of the book after talking about the deites in the mishmashed setting. Admittedly, having Vectron as a god in a meme RPG book was an amusing choice
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Mar 22, 2019 20:31
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I think my issue with all of it is that it hides the fact that is has no actual original ideas (literally everything is a reference or mashup, without even any interesting connective tissue), and that it doesn't even attempt to do the slightest game design work, behind 'it's a joke!'. But 'It's just a little joke' wears really thin when I'm wading through the 300th page of this stuff. I'll be able to start writing soon, I've finished my refresher readthrough, but man is this going to be an undertaking.
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Mar 22, 2019 20:41
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EthanSteele posted:Intimacies are a huge deal and should be coming up constantly. You have Ties and Principles. Ties can be to people or things, specific or general, like you can really like Brother Three Dog Night or Monks in general, or you can care about The Guild as a whole or one particular merchant prince who's dick you want to rip off. Principles are.. well, principles. Stuff like "Violence is always a last resort", "All slaves should be set free" and "I will fix what is broken" and they obviously are things your character can care about wherever they go. Intimacies are the core of the entire social influence system which doesn't work without them, its a game about big idiots caring about stuff. You're supposed to gain and lose minor intimacies very frequently, the social system is about targeting people's intimacies and using them as leverage to get people to do things. Minor intimacies can be things you care about but don't pop up very often, like a character really likes plum cakes or a particular flower which aren't huge deals but give you a bit of personality and then someone finds out you like plum cakes and delivers a whole bunch to your house to start the process of building up a positive intimacy towards them so they can get you to murder the satrap. It feels like fiddly bookkeeping for relatively small gains mechanically, with regards to intimacies. I'm just not a fan of the idea.
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Mar 22, 2019 20:43
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If your Limit Trigger doesn't involve becoming a Super Exalt and doing a stunt move while your celestial harpist accompaniment shifts to ahistorical buttrock, what are you even doing
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Mar 22, 2019 20:49
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Nessus posted:If your Limit Trigger doesn't involve becoming a Super Exalt and doing a stunt move while your celestial harpist accompaniment shifts to ahistorical buttrock, what are you even doing What's the merit for having a well-equipped musical section follow you around? Allies?
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Mar 22, 2019 20:51
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wiegieman posted:What's the merit for having a well-equipped musical section follow you around? Allies? Followers, most likely. Retainer arguably
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Mar 22, 2019 20:52
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wiegieman posted:What's the merit for having a well-equipped musical section follow you around? Allies? On the other hand, if your anime buttrock isn't giving your team buffs, what the gently caress are you doing?
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Mar 22, 2019 20:54
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PurpleXVI posted:It feels like fiddly bookkeeping for relatively small gains mechanically, with regards to intimacies. I'm just not a fan of the idea. I respect you saying that, but you saying previously when you played they only came up once gives me the impression that you haven't seen them in action properly and how they interact with the social system (they are the entire social system). A lot of people that hate the game like the way the social system works and intimacies are the core of it and what takes it out of "I roll my persuade and convince the man" territory into an actual system that lets you do the Three Kingdom's court politics nonsense. Writing and erasing minor intimacies over and over would be fiddly bookkeeping, but that's not how it works in practice in actual play.
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Mar 22, 2019 21:03
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PurpleXVI posted:So you're saying that the game explicitly and intentionally has a sub-par chargen option? Some sort of trap option? Something that it requires System Mastery to avoid? I’m not sure it’s four dots good, but if the GM rules that your claws count as form weapons for all unarmed MA styles they actually are quite good.
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Mar 22, 2019 21:27
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Night10194 posted:I think my issue with all of it is that it hides the fact that is has no actual original ideas (literally everything is a reference or mashup, without even any interesting connective tissue), and that it doesn't even attempt to do the slightest game design work, behind 'it's a joke!'. But 'It's just a little joke' wears really thin when I'm wading through the 300th page of this stuff. Take a look at the other F&Fs because some of that work may have been done for you. It REALLY lacks a lot of polish and linkage between all of the subsystems, but it does appeal to a certain sort of novelty in just thrown all sorts of stuff into a pot and mixing it together. It doesn't hide where it takes all of its stuff insofar as it doesn't literally slap a sticker on every reference, but it's fairly obvious by anyone who's even vaguely aware of what it's referencing. There is a semblance of sincere effort in its construction, IMO. It's not great, but it seems sincere.
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Mar 22, 2019 21:35
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Night10194 posted:I think my issue with all of it is that it hides the fact that is has no actual original ideas (literally everything is a reference or mashup, without even any interesting connective tissue), and that it doesn't even attempt to do the slightest game design work, behind 'it's a joke!'. But 'It's just a little joke' wears really thin when I'm wading through the 300th page of this stuff. The biggest joke is making a super mash-up RPG and not including RIFTS 
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Mar 22, 2019 21:39
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SirPhoebos posted:The biggest joke is making a super mash-up RPG and not including RIFTS That just loving hit me, too. There's no RIFTs and no Torg in here. Where is my goddamn orichalcum glitterboy people?
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Mar 22, 2019 21:51
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I can forgive not having Torg because it feels like an extreme outlier for the people who made it. But no RIFTS though? That's unforgivable.
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Mar 22, 2019 22:01
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Exalted 3rd Edition: In Which Mors Gets Very Angry At The Word Derangements Flaws are what we might generously call a misguided idea. They cost nothing, you can take them if you want to or you can not. Whenever a Flaw comes up in play and either harms or significantly inconveniences the character that has it, they have a chance to gain Solar XP, which will be explained ten pages from now. If it's just mildly annoying or if you can easily compensate for it and aren't really inconvenienced, no benefit. Sure, fine. But what are the example Flaws? Are they just fluff descriptions and you trust your GM to work with you to make them come up? Why, no! They all also have mechanical components. Addiction: You are addicted to a thing, such as a drug or the Wyld. While in withdrawal, you get -1 to all actions until you get your fix. Amputee: You are missing a limb. If an arm, you get -3 to any action that needs two hands to do right. If missing a leg, all terrain is difficult terrain for you. Blind: You can't see. You get -3 to all actions primarily dependent on sight. Deaf You can't hear. You get -3 to all Awareness checks at least partially dependent on hearing, and will have trouble communicating when you don't have time to read lips, like in combat. Derangements: oh wait what is this here list time for me to break out of it and start hollering Derangement is the term Exalted is using for "some malady of the mind." Any mental illness or issue. And it's an inherited term, dating back to the early days of White Wolf. And it is an evil term. It treats mental illness as a failing, usually a moral one, and a "flaw" that can be fixed. As a person on the Autism spectrum, I find this extremely offensive. And, indeed, so should everyone. It is an outdated, actively harmful treatment of mental illness made much worse by the mechanics of it. What is that mechanic? Well, your Derangement is either Minor, Major or Defining. Anyone can use it for social influence as though it were one of your Intimacies. You must spend 1 Willpower per session or day, whichever is longer, to resist a Minor Derangement, whichever is shorter for a Major, or per scene for Defining. And then we get the examples. Hysteria: Hysteria is a historical diagnosis used to belittle and medicalize women not doing what men wanted. But in Exalted, it's having emotions that "swing out of control" when you botch a roll or suffer extreme stress or anxity, causing you to lash out at others or try to flee into isolation if you fail a Willpower roll, harder the more intense your...  Derangement is.Madness: You have withdrawn from reality, hallucinating and suffering violent mood swings whenever you botch a roll, experience intense anxiety or run out of temporary Willpower, unless you make a Willpower like with Hysteria. Megrims: This is depression. Whenever you botch a roll or hit 0 temporary Willpower, you must make the Willpower roll as above. If you fail, you can't spend Willpower for "the next several days" except to temporarily suppress this. Obsession: You are fixated on a thing, idea, person or action. Whenever you encounter the focus of your obsession, you will focus on it to the exclusion of all else. When you run out of Willpower, you must make a Willpower roll as above or else you will drop everything to go find or indulge in your obsession. Have you noticed that all of these are pretty terribly implemented yet? Paranoia: You have delusions of persecution and mistrust everyone. Whenever you suffer intense stress, you distrust all strangers and lose the benefits of all positive Ties unless you succeed on the Willpower roll as above. I hate derangements. So much. anyway, back to the list. Mute: You can't talk. Sterile: You can't have kids. Whether you can gently caress is up to you. Why is this a Flaw on the same level as the others? gently caress you, that's why. Wyld Mutant: You are clearly inhuman or mutated. You get -3 to all social interactions with strangers or outsiders not used to Wyld mutants. Anyway. Willpower. You have a rating of Willpower between 1 and 10. Well, between 5 and 10, because you start at 5 as an Exalt. That is your permanent rating. You also have a pool of Willpower points. (NPCs usually have ratings of 2-3, with 1 and 4-6 beinguncommong, 7-8 being rare and 9-10 being less than 1%.) You start play with points equal to your rating, but you can have more or less than that, as Willpower points gained in some ways can cause your pool to go over your rating, to a max of 10. When you make Willpower rolls, unless otherwise specified, you're rolling your rating, not your pool of points. You can spend Willpower to: 1. Get an automatic success on a single roll. You can only spend 1 Willpower per roll this way and must do so before rolling. 2. Increase a static value such as Defense or Resolve by 1 for a single roll. You can only spend 1 Willpower per roll this way andm ust do so before the opponent rolls. 3. Spend to reject certain social influence. 4. Fuel charms that cost Willpower. You gain Willpower by: 1. Having a full night's rest. However, the Willpower gained this way cannot bring your pool over your permanent rating. If you don't have to sleep, you can still regain Willpower by spending 6-8 hours resting or meditating whil awake, but can still only get this bonus once a day. 2. When you under go significant hardship or sacrifice in support of a Major or Defining Intimacy. You can only gain 1 Willpower per scene this way, but it can go over your permanent rating. 3. When you achieve a major character or story goal, the ST may award you 1-3 Willpower, depending on the scale and significance of the achievement, and it can bring you over your permanent rating. 4. When you perform a two-point stunt, you gain 1 Willpower, but it can't go over your permanent rating. When you perform a three-point stunt, you regain 2 Willpower and it can go over your permanent rating. 5. At the start of each story, your Willpower resets to its permanent rating if it was lower. 6. At the end of Limit Break, your Willpower resets to its permanent rating, regardless of what your pool was at before that. Intimacies are the core of the social influence system, as they help determine what social influence will or won't work on you. We've talked about Ties and Principles already. Again, they can be Minor, Majopr or Defining. Minor intimacies are notable but only really matter when their subject is directly relevant to what's going on. Major Intimacies are more important, and can come into play even when only indirectly or tangentially related to what's going on. Defining Intimacies have sway over every aspect of your life and worldview, and generally speaking you'd die to protect or uphold them. We aren't going to explain social influence for another 45 pages, though. Charms can occasionally be empowered by Intimacies. When these are in play, Minors are worth 2, Majors 3, and Defining 4 - so if a Charm adds dice based on Intimacy ratings, those are the numbers they use. A character starts with whatever Intimacies are appropriate to them, but must have at least 4 Intimacies. Of those, one must be Defining, one must be Major, one must represent something the character opposes or dislikes, and one must represent something the character supports or likes. Intimacies can be gained in play in several ways, and can be overruled by the ST in any case. They must always make sense in terms of the events of the story, so you can't just gain them because it's mechanically beneficial to do so - you have to actually play out caring about this thing in the way you want. Social influence can create Minor Intimacies or strengthen Intimacies up by one level. Whenever the player feels it appropriate and the ST agrees, a character can gain a new Minor Intimacy or intensify an existing one by one step. In extremely rare cirucmstances, an Intimacy might be able to be gained at a higher level - such as if an Abyssal murders your sibling and you want to skip straight to Major or Defining Tie for hating that Abyssal. Intimacies can be reduced similarly - they can be degraded one level by social influence, or even removed if Minor. When a player feels it appropriate and the ST agrees, you can just remove a Minor Intimacy or downgrade a Major or Defining one at the end of a scene. Whenever the ST judges you haven't played in a way that reflects the Intimacy, they may just declare it has been downgraded or even just vanished, largely to keep PCs from gaining a tton of Defining Intimacies, which the book says should come up in play at least once per story. I think the intent is the ST shouldn't prune out Major or Minor Intimacies much, just downgrade Defining ones that don't come up much. The game also notes that extremely broad Intimacies ('I bow to no one'), while potentially legitimate, are also extremely powerful - they represent greater ability to resist a lot of influence, and if worded in away that breaks the system, they should be disallowed, such as overly generic or vague ones such as 'Some people just rub me the wrong way' or things that are specifically trying to be worded to game the system. Next time: Health, healing and Essence. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Mar 23, 2019 |
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Mar 22, 2019 23:49
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Derangements are absolute garbage and I hate them. One of the only worse times for it was Eclipse Phase's General Anxiety Disorder where it says you're a barely functioning wreck of a human being that needs their hands held at all times. Exalted Derangements are trying to pull double duty of representing stuff like depression and other mental illnesses (poorly) and at the same time Folk Tale Mythological Fiction "madness" which ends in a really insulting place. At least you don't have to take one to earn maximum Solar XP I guess!
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Mar 23, 2019 00:09
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EthanSteele posted:Derangements are absolute garbage and I hate them. One of the only worse times for it was Eclipse Phase's General Anxiety Disorder where it says you're a barely functioning wreck of a human being that needs their hands held at all times. Exalted Derangements are trying to pull double duty of representing stuff like depression and other mental illnesses (poorly) and at the same time Folk Tale Mythological Fiction "madness" which ends in a really insulting place. I feel like these systems would work much better if they framed it as "Here is the PRACTICAL OUTCOME of your character's issues. The CAUSES of those issues are SFX on mitigation efforts."
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Mar 23, 2019 00:15
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Mors Rattus posted:Intimacies are the core of the social influence system, as they help determine what social influence will or won't work on you Help me out with the phrasing here, Mors, am I reading this right as in the intent of the game is that someone can roll social skills against a PC to determine what they do? Because I sure love needing ironclad stat defenses in order to be allowed to play my character.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:24
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EthanSteele posted:Derangements are absolute garbage and I hate them. One of the only worse times for it was Eclipse Phase's General Anxiety Disorder where it says you're a barely functioning wreck of a human being that needs their hands held at all times. Exalted Derangements are trying to pull double duty of representing stuff like depression and other mental illnesses (poorly) and at the same time Folk Tale Mythological Fiction "madness" which ends in a really insulting place. Nnnnnnneat. This reminds me of GURPS 3E's Manic Depressive and Tourette's Syndrome.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:35
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PurpleXVI posted:Help me out with the phrasing here, Mors, am I reading this right as in the intent of the game is that someone can roll social skills against a PC to determine what they do? Exalted is certainly not the best system here but this attitude about social systems is kind of interesting to me, not least because I get regularly frustrated in these systems because I want to play someone who has positive social impacts, and this is rarely touched on, much less covered; meanwhile if I wanted to furiously murder people in a range of ways I am spoiled for choice.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:39
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PurpleXVI posted:Help me out with the phrasing here, Mors, am I reading this right as in the intent of the game is that someone can roll social skills against a PC to determine what they do? Yes and no. There are a lot of layers of defense for PCs, and generally speaking the only poo poo that will end up actually happening to a PC is stuff they should really already be inclined to do because PCs will almost certainly be able to find ways around any influence not being supported by a Defining Intimacy. It is significantly easier to use on NPCs. E: And, again, those are also defenses, easily able to be used to shutdown even magical assaults on your will. If you have Defining Tie (I love my wife) then it is monumentally difficult to make you do anything that’d make her unhappy, even magically, but not too hard to get you to do stuff to please her. Which, like, is stuff you are probably already wanting to do, since you put that on your character sheet. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Mar 23, 2019 |
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Mar 23, 2019 00:40
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Nessus posted:Exalted is certainly not the best system here but this attitude about social systems is kind of interesting to me, not least because I get regularly frustrated in these systems because I want to play someone who has positive social impacts, and this is rarely touched on, much less covered; meanwhile if I wanted to furiously murder people in a range of ways I am spoiled for choice. Well, to me, personally, the point of a game, whether I'm GM'ing or playing, is player agency. That players should be as much in control as possible, understand the levers they have available to pull, and what the consequences of pulling them are. Some jackass walking up and busting out a Dominate or Charm Person or a social roll, then suddenly dictating their actions for them is the direct antithesis of player agency. I hate the very idea of it. Now, yes, Exalted gives you ways to resist that influence. Willpower, just hauling off and punching the guy, intimacies, etc. but it still opens up the possiblity that maybe your guy returns from a tough battle that ate up all his Willpower and some jackass sidles up and mind controls him into hating ferrets or declaring that he's now a loyal follower of Gorf, God of Puddings, or whatever. Like... if I have inviolable defenses against my guy being mind controlled, don't even leave the possibility there, just have it as a rule that PC's are not hit with mind control, whether magical or otherwise. They are always perfectly in control, because otherwise what is the loving point of having players. If I wanted to jerk myself off for four hours and dictate everything that happened, I'd write erotic fanfiction, not GM a game. Social systems aimed at NPC's is fine, because sometimes the GM genuinely doesn't know how an NPC might react to a player's argument, and needs a neutral arbitrator(the system) or sometimes you just need/want a way to quantify exactly how excellent a diplomat, manipulator or leader a PC is. Or some minor encounter, like haggling over the price of a mug or whatever, doesn't merit a whole roleplaying bit and you can just roll it off to see if it's a success or not.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:52
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Straight up domination powers barely exist, and those that do are actually the easiest thing for Exalts to resist. Your worry is the guy who learns that you love your wife more than life itself and decides to bank on using that to manipulate you rather than the guy who straight up mind controls people, because mind control doesn’t work on PCs, basically. E: plus, like, nothing can save you from a shitbird GM.
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Mar 23, 2019 00:59
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Mors Rattus posted:Your worry is the guy who learns that you love your wife more than life itself and decides to bank on using that to manipulate you rather than the guy who straight up mind controls people, because mind control doesn’t work on PCs, basically. Yeah, but in the hands of a decent player and GM, that doesn't feel like something that needs a system. If the player wants to cooperate with this hook, it'll flow all the more naturally without needing any dice or rules. And if the player isn't on board with it, forcing it with dice and rules will just produce sullen compliance rather than enthusiastic cooperation. Mors Rattus posted:E: plus, like, nothing can save you from a shitbird GM. Oh, absolutely. I'm just saying why those things are a dealbreaker that is part of my definition of "shitbird GM." and why I do not touch them myself as a GM.
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Mar 23, 2019 01:02
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PurpleXVI posted:Well, to me, personally, the point of a game, whether I'm GM'ing or playing, is player agency. That players should be as much in control as possible, understand the levers they have available to pull, and what the consequences of pulling them are. Some jackass walking up and busting out a Dominate or Charm Person or a social roll, then suddenly dictating their actions for them is the direct antithesis of player agency. I hate the very idea of it. Almost all RPGs have combat systems. In, I would say, the great majority of these cases, these systems can kill the players' characters (although this is probably not easy to do casually). Leaving aside the exciting possibilities of necromancy and busting out the Wraith rules, killing my character also removes my agency, and even in a fair or to-my-advantage fight, I could get dice-hosed. Rarely do people object to these sorts of things. But they often take "mental/social influence systems, capable in principle of impacting player characters as well" as "disgusting pervert mind control fan fiction content."
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Mar 23, 2019 01:03
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I think the social influence system is basically fine. I am not gonna waste my time trying to convince you of something you’ve already decided you hate.
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Mar 23, 2019 01:05
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Nessus posted:While I understand what you're saying, and would also not say that Exalted in any version has ever been a great version of this: Usually death in combat is the result of a series of decisions made in which I have full agency(unless the GM just has someone show up with a nuke and vaporize the entire party on round one, that is also bad GM'ing), at the end I may hit the loss condition of my character no longer being in play. But at no point is the character not mine to play, control and decide what he does. At no point does the GM lean over and go: "Okay, you now have to play out this exact combat strategy. Read from this script I just printed out." And the only thing that happens which isn't under my control is that eventually I die. Though ultimately, to some extent, that character death is also the result of the actions I consciously chose to take, knowing their likely outcomes(even if the likely outcomes were not the eventual outcomes). Getting hit with a mind control mallet, whether rhetoric followed by a social attack roll, or magic/psionic/nanites mind control, feels distinctly different. Because someone's literally reaching in and rewriting my character, something that I have no counter for or way to undo once it's happened. This is now no longer my character, more or less, it's someone else's character that I'm forced to keep playing(unless I decide it's bullshit and get up and leave the table). My decisions and participation for this character have actively ceased to matter and are just a formality for the remainder of the effect(or game, if it's permanent).
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Mar 23, 2019 01:19
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