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Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



The point of the Realm's misandry, as I understand it, is to have a sexist society PCs can play in without it recapitulating precisely that real sexism. It's for playing out Austen, with daiklaves, and without the constant creeptastic possibilities of a player saying sexist poo poo about women then going 'but it's the setting! That's what the Realm thinks!'

Also if you want to nuke a misogynist imperial power that has it coming, Exalted has Coral (aka Age of Exploration England). They're significantly easier to crush than the Realm would be.

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That Old Tree
Jun 23, 2012

nah


Wapole Languray posted:



Statistics and Skills


This is the first quote in the book, and no I have NO idea why it’s in the chapter well they tell us what the stats do.

This is such a bad "quote" I'm angry about it. What a flaccid nothing of world/atmosphere-building.

jakodee
Mar 4, 2019

Joe Slowboat posted:

The point of the Realm's misandry, as I understand it, is to have a sexist society PCs can play in without it recapitulating precisely that real sexism. It's for playing out Austen, with daiklaves, and without the constant creeptastic possibilities of a player saying sexist poo poo about women then going 'but it's the setting! That's what the Realm thinks!'

Also if you want to nuke a misogynist imperial power that has it coming, Exalted has Coral (aka Age of Exploration England). They're significantly easier to crush than the Realm would be.

I kinda like the sexist culture of the Realm as a setting element (although you shouldn’t use it unless the other members of the group want to engage with it). By making the seething *only* about as sexist or somewhat less than modern America, it’s fairly easy to engage with. And reversing the power structure but not the justifications for that power structure avoids much of the Cis White Man smug power(less) fantasy of a society were women are warriors and men stay at home knitting.

Men being prone to anger unmoored from their community is a gender idea that exists in real life, just here it’s used to justify men being considered inferior rather than excused by their supposed inherent inferiority.

Basically the writing avoids the standard incredibly sexist drow/amazons/planet of the women scenario by having an actual matriarchal society rather than whatever men’s rights activists think “matriarchy” means.

jakodee
Mar 4, 2019

Xelkelvos posted:

Basically, if it wasn't a game made by Monte Cook, it'd be good? :thunk:

It drives me insane that I can’t tell the difference between the good parts of that book that were written by people other than Monte and the parts that may or may not have been written by Monte in a moment of divine guidance. Like I clearly know who wrote the main classes as being “lovely Fighter, Rogue who is actually just a person with actual life skills, and God Killing Ultra-Wizard”; but I don’t know who wrote the genuinely inspired parts of the setting material (not the parts that are just faerun).

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Do you actually fight big dumb bug tentacle monsters in this?

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Joe Slowboat posted:

The point of the Realm's misandry, as I understand it, is to have a sexist society PCs can play in without it recapitulating precisely that real sexism. It's for playing out Austen, with daiklaves, and without the constant creeptastic possibilities of a player saying sexist poo poo about women then going 'but it's the setting! That's what the Realm thinks!'

This was the goal, yeah.

Also more than half the writers on The Realm are women, and we had long discussions about exactly how to write bigotry into Realm society during development of the book. Admittedly I don’t recall who wrote the section on Realm sexism specifically but it came out of days and days of conversation and wasn’t a matter of lovely male writers spewing gross mansplaining nonsense.

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jun 1, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Nobody at any table is a descendant of people who suffered Dynastic oppression, or has experienced the lasting harm of the Realm's colonialism. The Realm can't dig up, or make light of, historical trauma - and where it parallels real historical traumas it's pretty clear that the Realm is the villain.

I think that's a pretty major moral difference.

E: whoops, the context got edited out. Should I just empty this one?

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
Enh.

For context, there was an additional paragraph in that post I deleted for reasons I don’t want to go into.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
But anyway, The Realm and bigotry.

There’s a problem with writing the Realm which is particularly difficult to navigate. The problem is as follows: by all rights, Dynastic culture ought to be toxic. The reason why it ought to be toxic is that it’s an oppressive elitist slaveowning oligarchy, and oppressive elitist slaveowning oligarchies must cultivate the callousness necessary to keep their oppressed classes in enough terror that those oppressed classes don’t effectively revolt, but, having sufficiently cultivated that level of callousness, such societies are unable to direct it exclusively at those they oppress.

You can’t have a society that’s kind to “its own” but terrorizes those it considers lesser. Doesn’t happen. The status-consciousness and willingness to inflict cruelty and terror necessary to keep the underclasses in line always becomes habitual enough that it gets applied between fine graduations of status within the oligarchy—abuse by parents towards children, bullying between siblings seeking to establish hierachy of parental favor, same for rulers toward subordinates and subordinates jockeying for position between each other, etc. And, as always, people will rationalize their cruelty with various bigotries. Kindness and humanity can be found in such societies as anywhere but it always exists amidst a background of normative cruelty.

Not acknowledging this feels like apologia for slaveowning oligarchy. Acknowledging it too readily risks traumatizing the reader—in the real sense, because the cruelties exercised by the society will echo real cruelties many of the readers will have really suffered.

Previous editions, especially first edition in the Aspect Books, leaned pretty heavily on the child abuse to get this across. For various reasons we didn’t want to do that again, as e.g. graphic descriptions of that one Dynast whose mom fed her favourite nannies live and screaming to sharks to toughen her up bother our readers, and also our writers, many of whom don’t like being asked to write that sort of thing.

Previous editions also tried to establish the Realm as a matriarchy and fell down pretty hard—Eric Minton did statistical analysis of named Dynastic NPCs and their status and position in society throughout first and second edition and determined that, while the text often claimed women were equal or favored for wielding power, most named powerful figures were men and an uncomfortable number of powerful women were described as having achieved their power illegitimately through e.g. sexual favors (ugh Tepet Lisara), or were portrayed as stereotypically “crazy” in ways typical of real modern stereotypes of powerful women (see: that shark thing).

We made the decision for third edition to reverse course hard on this—if the Realm is a matriarchy, most powerful figures ought to be women, and they ought to have seized or been granted their power through means the Dynasty considered normative. But there has to be a societal rationalization for why Dynastic women consider themselves more fit to rule than men and why social norms back them. Hence Dynastic sexism, among other things—House founders and some leadership being changed from men to women, an attention to ensuring most new powerful Dynasts are women, etc.

We can’t write the Dynasty as psychologically healthy and inclusive, and there’s a limit to the number of times we can invent a reason for why a specific bigotry you’d expect in a heavily nativist class-conscious society is actually absent (trans Immaculate Dragon, Precedent of Rawar). We can’t establish that they’re hosed up without having them be hosed up in ways that echo real societal hosed-up-edness, and we can’t write them as not hosed up. All we can do is try not to be chuds about it.

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Jun 1, 2019

SunAndSpring
Dec 4, 2013
Honestly think that you should’ve just considered making a group of Dragon-bloods that aren’t horrible so people not willing to be horrible imperialists can play them. So far the structure is still “terrible empire”, “less terrible mercenary group”, and “slightly less terrible empire in the southeast”.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
I can see the argument for that, but historically attempts to write The Good Guy Society rarely go well.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Stephenls posted:

I can see the argument for that, but historically attempts to write The Good Guy Society rarely go well.
At the same time there are degrees. And “everything will always be poo poo really” is a very boring and trite ethical subtext.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Well, if you want to change the world isn't that why you're playing Lunars or Solars? They exist to do that, but playing a game as Dragonbloods rather deliberately places you as part of the in group while lacking the power and perspective to change that group's ways.

SunAndSpring
Dec 4, 2013
Well, there’s just as many Dragon-blooded outside the Realm as those in it. Not all get to be a part of a vast dynasty stretching back to the First Age. A lot are just people lucky enough to get the Exaltation due to a distant ancestor having it.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Stephenls posted:

I can see the argument for that, but historically attempts to write The Good Guy Society rarely go well.

Maybe the solution is just to not write societies as either good or evil, and just as societies, with all the flaws that implies? :v: Trying to actively write a society as good or evil, rather than just as the natural outgrowth of whatever fundamental/governmental ideology they have at the time, just tends to hamfistedly show off what the authors believe in. Let the players decide what's good or evil in the setting, if you're trying to make the societies believable, rather than just the Country of Good King Manynicestuffs and the Empire of Evil Lord Badmankillsdudes. Have a decent spread of ideologies that are equally detailed and most players will find something they can sympathize with in-setting.

The problem with the Realm, as I read it, is that it doesn't really have... any reforming force that springs to mind. Like, it's in their religious tenets that "you are born to rule, but you are also supposed to not be a dickhead to the people below you, because you're ruling for their sake." It's obviously not codified enough to prevent most powerful Dragonblooded dynasties taking advantage of it, but just... some internal form for reform, for equal treatment, for abolition of slavery, equal rights, etc. would give players something Realm-related to play without feeling greasy. Because with all the details given to the Realm, obviously it's intended that PC's should be from there, some of the time. But it doesn't feel like there's any PC role in the Realm that isn't "perpetuating the current level of poo poo" unless the players want to start that movement from whole cloth with no backers. And likewise it kind of feels like the status quo is... weirdly tolerated, like, if you have a centuries-long oppressive situation, at some points you're going to get rebellions that break things and scare the ruling class. But the losers from this setup just seem to meekly put up with it, from most of the writing.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

SunAndSpring posted:

Well, there’s just as many Dragon-blooded outside the Realm as those in it. Not all get to be a part of a vast dynasty stretching back to the First Age. A lot are just people lucky enough to get the Exaltation due to a distant ancestor having it.

Play venues, then.

A play venue is an area of the setting designed to be played in; it can be geographical or conceptual or both. The term is broad and they can be nested in each other; more on that in a bit.

The most obvious instance of play venues in the way the setting is designed is how the Directions naturally divide the setting up into areas that suggest play genre and make it obvious to new groups that Exalted is meant to support a wide variety of different fantasy games. The West supports swashbuckling piracy adventures, the South supports something like the Arabian Nights or maybe “swords and sandals” pulp fantasy, the East supports something close to generic D&D wandering heroes fantasy, and the North is Vikings (which is to say pop perception of Vikings, which is very little actual Vikings and a lot of Skyrim). These are not perfectly accurate once you get into the details (The North is more than Skyrim, the East is more than D&D) but they’re accurate in broad strokes, and this is super useful for getting new players invested in the setting in the same way that Vampire having clans, with each clan representing a different genre of vampire stories, is useful in getting people invested in that game. “No matter what type of [fantasy story / vampire] you like, [Exalted / Vampire: The (Masquerade/Requiem)] is the game for you.”

Within Directions, individual city-states or geographical areas are also play venues. The Hundred Kingdoms is the ideal play venue for nation-building and also for a game modeled after a show like Xena or Lodoss where the protagonists are traveling around on foot and every episode they’re in a different nation... or wold be, if it had ever been developed. Nexus tries really hard to be Lankhmar and falls flat because Chiaroscuro is a more interesting version of Pulp Adventure City.

“Solars” are a play venue. You put Solars together with a Direction and you get a more focused play venue.

“Dragon-Blooded” are a broad play venue, and so’s “The Dynasty.”

To the extent that setting elements and playable splats go over well with the fandom, I have argued for years that the degree to which they offer a clear play venue, novel within the context of the larger Exalted oeuvre, is super-important. The reason why everybody loves the Dreaming Sea is that it’s a truly novel play venue that fits well within the genre conceits of the setting but offers aesthetics and political specifics not found elsewhere—the same was true of An-Teng when it was introduced in 1e, and the same was true of a lot of the individual settings introduced in Scavenger Sons. I’d argue that things like 2nd Edition’s Compass: Blessed Isle and indeed 2nd Edition’s treatment of the setting in general fall flat because they were not written with “How will this be a functional play venue?” in mind. Compass: Autochthonia was written and developed with “must be a distinct genre-venue” in mind and it really shows and it really worked. Wu-Juan is clearly a novel play venue; everyone loves Wu-Juan, because Kowloon Walled City is a great place for a pulp fantasy game and a meaningfully different Pulp Fantasy Adventure City than Chiaroscuro. The Underworld is potentially a very strong play venue; I’ve always wanted to see it developed in the direction of a pulp fantasy setting in the vein of Creation but with Gothic and Romantic stylings to contrast Creation’s anime/wuxia aesthetics.

(I have seen it argued that that would be bad because it doesn’t really make sense for an anime/wuxia setting to have a gothic afterlife, to which I reply doesn’t matter, the play venue needs to be differentiated in order to appeal, and gothic romance is something Exalted has room for but Creation doesn’t deliver well, so that’s the niche the Underworld play venue ought to be written to serve. Underworld gets gothic knights and gloomy castles because that’s where they fit.)

The Dynasty is a play venue. It has its own genre and its own conflicts internal and external. Lookshy is its own play venue, likewise with its own conflicts. The Forest Witches are their own play venue; as are Houses Burano, Ophris, and Akatha (the clan invisible!) in the Empire of Prasad. Wandering outcastes are their own play venue. All five of these play venues are potentially very strong and very well-differentiated and memorable, which is why they got the prestige spreads in What Fire Has Wrought whereas the Grass Spiders didn’t.

One thing that marks Dragon-Blooded play venues is they’re the social politics niche. To overly simplify things (to the same degree that it’s oversimplifying to say the North is Skyrim, which is a lot): You play Solars for traditional heroics and you play Dragon-Blooded for backstabbing at salons. All of the really strong Dragon-Blooded play venues support a degree of salon backstabbing play, with the exception of outcastes who exist to be the none-of-the-above option.

In order to be worth doing, a hypothetical setting-venue-play-option for Dragon-Blooded games that serves the role of “Like the Dynasty, but not hosed up” would have to be developed into its own full play venue. It would need to be as strongly differentiated from the Realm, Lookshy, the Forest Witches, and Prasad as they are from each other, and as strongly differentiated from all the Solar, Lunar, and as-yet-hypothetical-in-3e Abyssal, Sidereal, Infernal, Alchemical et al play venues that serve similar roles. It would need its own fully developed conflicts both internal and external, and its own conceptual hook as intriguing and compelling as those of the Dynasty, Lookshy, the Forest Witches, Prasad, and outcastes.

“The Dynasty, but with their defining internal conflict removed” is a really bad place to start development of a new Dragon-Blooded play venue, and for evidence of this I will point at Lunars 2e. I’m not saying what you’re suggesting is impossible, but this is legitimately not a trivial design problem.

EDIT: You have gotten me thinking, though. I love identifying and helping develop the sort of new play venues that, once you see them, feel like they’ve been a natural part of the game all along, and this doesn’t feel like one yet but it does feel like a space where one ought to exist.

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Jun 1, 2019

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!


Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights, part 8- "The individual(s) stolen away may be earmarked for slave labor, torture, food (as in, to be killed and eaten), rape, sale into slavery, human sacrifice, and so on."

Situations Critical
By Bill Coffin


Time to back up the truck and dump out some adventure hooks until you're just, like, sick of them. Well, I am already, but hopefully ya'll enjoy the blood I'm squeezing from this stone!

Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights posted:

What follows here are brief overviews of some of these "sitcrit" scenarios, a slang term used by Coalition and Tolkeen intelligence officers alike to describe the various "situations critical" involving Cyber-Knights in and around Tolkeen.

Like, only involving Cyber-Knights? Or just that these are sitcrits that happen to involve Cyber-Knights? Granted, knowing military personnel, it'd probably take all of twenty seconds for this term to evolve into "shitcrits". I'm pretty sure a lot of these are written by Siembieda after a certain point, it eventually shifts into what's unmistakably his meandering writing style.


"En garde!"

Conspicuous Gallantry: A lot of Cyber-Knights like to fight baddies and are proud of their skills, but with the Coalition on the run, there's only so many opportunities for bravery around. What's a Cyber-Knight to do?

Why, be a jerk about it, of course!
  • Glory Hounds: Some retreating Coalition forces have hunkered down in the abandoned town of Lonely Bones, as Tolkeen forces and Cyber-Knights rush to be the ones who defeat them for the credit. There's a lot of :words: as to different situations depending if the PCs arrive early (greater risks, greater fame) or late (less risk, but possibly involving friendly fire or competition). Maybe some rival bad guys show up and fight the PCs! This is... incredibly vague, but is supposed to give an indication of how crazy and nutty the Tolkeen forces have gotten. Maybe they aren't the good guys have we drilled that in enough yet?!
  • An Army of One: So, a Cyber-Knight managed to annihilate and defeat an Coalition Brigade through trickery and luck, and so a lot of Cyber-Knights are looking to equal or top his victory. We're given a laundry list of targets for ambitious PCs to go after, from a down Death's Head Transport that might be carrying a nuke to an experimental artillery rail cannon. Doing so will get Tolkeen allocades and Coalition demerits, of course.
  • Decapitation: I have a feeling this was originally named "The Suleyman Gambit", because the first words of the entry are just that by themselves. Essentially, there's a Coalition brigade on the retreat that, if not defeated, will remain around for the Coalition to make a new spearhead into Tolkeen's territory. Tolkeen has resolved to do a "Suleyman Charge" named after after the Siege of Szigetvár and Zrinski's famous charge, and have their forces do a suicide charge to kill the general in charge. I guess the PCs are lucky and just got nominated for this, or something? Also the general has already prepared for this which, uh, the only reason the "Suleyman Charge" ever "worked" is that it was a wholly unexpected desperation gambit by a losing force. So, uh, good luck getting past thousands of troops, heavy armor, and traps set up just to stop this!

Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights posted:

And even if the assassination succeeds, will it really stop the Coalition Army? No.
WELL GOOD WE WOULDN'T WANT A SUICIDE CHARGE BY OUR HEROES TO MATTER OR ANYTHING :argh:


"Am I going to stab her in the back? What am I doing in this art again?"

A House Divided: So, a distant worry is that the division within the Cyber-Knights will eventually lead to a full-on conflict between the two factions. It seems unlikely, but enough are concerned that some are working full-time to try and find ways to heal the rift between them. In any case, these are hooks regarding whether or not Cyber-Knight will be super best friends again.
  • Treachery Revealed: So some eeevil Fallen Knights are out to kill Lord Coake for his cowardice and divisiveness while he's visiting refugee encampments near Tolkeen. And unless PCs stop them, they'll find the perfect ambush point to murder him! Stop them, PCs! Oh, but if you screw up, you're bad and should feel super-bad.

Rifts Coalition Wars 4: Cyber-Knights posted:

G.M. Note: However the battle turns out, the G.M. should consider carefully what kind of impact it will have on his campaign and the world if Lord Coake is killed (and he shouldn't be). Lord Coake is an important NPC tying into multiple Rifts story lines, so eliminating him from play may complicate other adventures down the road. Of course, including an NPC such as Lord Coake and then saying he can not be killed defeats the purpose of this adventure and the freedom of role-playing. Why bother assassinating him, or even protecting him, if he is an untouchable fixture? As a catalyst for an epic adventure, why else? For the risk of Lord Coake dying during this critical period has dramatic repercussions for the Fellowship and North America. On the other hand, the individual G.M. may elect to have Lord Coake killed or fall off the side of the mountain and vanish (to make a dramatic reappearance later?) and simply modify events that happen in the official Rifts world in future sourcebooks.
  • Shadow of Doom: So, a band of eeevil Cyber-Knights are going around murdering Cyber-Knights who serve as prominent leaders or examples. They want to keep the two factions of Cyber-Knights divided because, uh, it's Sunday and they're bored and have "Diabolic" under their Alignment? I have no idea. We get a long list of possible targets and it's up to the PCs to detective out their next target, and thankfully they sent a bunch of obtuse clues to Sir Coake and Sir Rigeld, Riddler-style. Why would they announce this? Seriously, I don't understand. Why would they do that?

Got a few more adventure hooks, and we'll have this wrapped up here.

Next: Epaulets.

Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Jun 1, 2019

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's kind of amazing how often RPG writers in general don't ask themselves 'what does my villain want, why do they think they'll get it, and why are they doing this' beyond 'their character sheet says Diabolic/Evil/Chaos/whatever'.

ZeroCount
Aug 12, 2013


As interesting as the Realm discussion is, it's also in response to TheNamedSaviour, who probably isn't going to comprehend it. Last time I saw them they were shouting at RPG writers for the sin of having posted in /tg/ years ago.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Stephenls posted:

Play venues, then.

I think the words you're looking for are "campaign" or "campaign type", unless you're bugged by the old-school militaristic overtones of such.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

SunAndSpring posted:

Well, there’s just as many Dragon-blooded outside the Realm as those in it. Not all get to be a part of a vast dynasty stretching back to the First Age. A lot are just people lucky enough to get the Exaltation due to a distant ancestor having it.

Can always be the Dragon-blooded Yellow Turbans or Mountain Bandits instead of trying to be Liu Bei.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



To be fair to all the exalted devs, Ex3 needed to be more or less the same world as the previous games or else they might as well be starting a new game line with shared concepts, and that's probably a way less reliable Kickstarter venture. "More or less the same world" has a lot of wiggle room but there were underlying assumptions, such as "there is a singular central hegemonic state with these qualities."

That said I'd say gently caress it and that there ought to have been a couple more significantly-sized Dragon-blooded-dominated cultural groups :v: However such theorycrafting would probably be better suited for the Exalted thread.

SunAndSpring
Dec 4, 2013
oh well at least people are talking about my F&F

1994 Toyota Celica
Sep 11, 2008

by Nyc_Tattoo

SunAndSpring posted:

Honestly think that you should’ve just considered making a group of Dragon-bloods that aren’t horrible so people not willing to be horrible imperialists can play them. So far the structure is still “terrible empire”, “less terrible mercenary group”, and “slightly less terrible empire in the southeast”.

the degree to with the Prasadi are 'slightly less terrible' is highly debatable

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

The Siege on Tolkeen really does hammer home how bizarrely unending the CS' resources seem to be. Lose a thousand troops to bizarre means? Eh. Whole battalions gone? Pah. A decapitation strike on high command? Fie, says they.

DalaranJ
Apr 15, 2008

Yosuke will now die for you.

If you spend more then one bene is that, *coughs*

Is that, molto bene?

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I think the words you're looking for are "campaign" or "campaign type", unless you're bugged by the old-school militaristic overtones of such.

Yes and no. To be worth a drat a play venue needs to be able to support a wide variety of campaigns. For example you can have Dynastic campaigns that range from secondary school dramedy hiijinx to Game of Thrones generational cuththroat politics to The Office to the equivalent of a White House drama to spy games ranging in tone from James Bond to John le Carré to Get Smart, "Wandering (very rich) 'Heroes' of the Threshold" to actual war campaigns about life in the Legions, etc. I'm pretty happy with the way the signature hearth fiction in What Fire Has Wrought turned out; it showcases how looking at the same characters at different points in their lives produce stories of different genres. All these games occupy the general venue of "Dynastic Dragon-Blooded game" and all share recognizable traits, but the variety ensures there's room for the game you want to play within that venue if you like the venue itself.

When designing a play venue, if you output something that can only accommodate one campaign, it's probably not going to be a big hit with the audience.

(EDIT: It occurs to me that the play venue approach to setting and game design is basically the result of looking at The Forge's ideas on coherency and going "Wait. All the most popular, best-selling games are the ones you're labeling as incoherent. What do those so-called incoherent games give people that makes them so popular; why do people loving love incoherent games and get so enthusiastic about them? And how can I write and develop game/setting to ensure that my output has the sort of incoherency people go crazy for?")

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jun 1, 2019

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

Yeah the Realm is terrible but it's not actually much worse than its historical inspirations, the writing just doesn't elide those details as with D&D-style generic medieval fantasy. Its portrayal isn't static, either - the book goes into detail on how there have been real progressive/reformist movements, which if they aren't crushed are usually co-opted by the Empress and directed against her enemies, but even so hobbled the Realm is probably better for their presence. Of course, now the Empress has vanished and all bets are off - if your DB PC wants to make a real difference, now's the time.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Thesaurasaurus posted:

Yeah the Realm is terrible but it's not actually much worse than its historical inspirations, the writing just doesn't elide those details as with D&D-style generic medieval fantasy. Its portrayal isn't static, either - the book goes into detail on how there have been real progressive/reformist movements, which if they aren't crushed are usually co-opted by the Empress and directed against her enemies, but even so hobbled the Realm is probably better for their presence. Of course, now the Empress has vanished and all bets are off - if your DB PC wants to make a real difference, now's the time.

"Oppressive Gods used to rule over all of everything, then vanished for reasons unknown and left their servants unable to keep a lid on things anymore" works great in Myriad Song, after all.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 4, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Dawgstar posted:

The Siege on Tolkeen really does hammer home how bizarrely unending the CS' resources seem to be. Lose a thousand troops to bizarre means? Eh. Whole battalions gone? Pah. A decapitation strike on high command? Fie, says they.

The Coalition's ability to raise a futuristic military, far more mechanized than our own, in a post-apocalypse world off of a slice of land that's at best like a sixth or eighth of the US, despite the fact they have to contend with monsters and numerous enemies...

... is definitely a thing.

1994 Toyota Celica
Sep 11, 2008

by Nyc_Tattoo
I really enjoyed playing a 'liberation theologist' Immaculate Monk a few months ago. Born of slaves, deep pull and rapport with the Realm's poor and downtrodden. As the campaign proceeded he grew more and more openly disgusted with the Great Houses, actively trying to instill virtuous intimacies in the other player character Dragon-blooded. When Storyteller duty switched to me his character retirement angle was to set up his own new monastery and religious commune at a manse the players seized from House Manosque remnants, with the strong implication that he and his monk friends were building a 'Hussite' radical enclave to protect the local population from all comers in the Realm civil war.

there's plenty of room to play non-terrible Realm Dragon-blooded, especially with the setting conceit that the Empress's old order is breaking down in real time.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Alien Rope Burn posted:

The Coalition's ability to raise a futuristic military, far more mechanized than our own, in a post-apocalypse world off of a slice of land that's at best like a sixth or eighth of the US, despite the fact they have to contend with monsters and numerous enemies...

... is definitely a thing.
In my view the most logical explanation consistent with the Palladium Mega-Verse is that Megaroad One, carrying Zentraedi factory and cloning equipment, came back for repairs and was hijacked by Papa Prosek, who was a hard man and made the hard decision to murder a bunch of fellow humans to take their poo poo for his own ambition. The coalition armed forces are seeded with micronized Zentraedi - he can't clone an entire army because he has to grow giants, then shrink them, because science and technology are for nerds and queers and non-Aryans, so he can't adjust the settings. What he can do is grow strong guys who he can condition to be bullies and able to beat up most of the Micronian conscripts if they prove insufficiently hard and willing to make the hard decision to just, like, do war crimes for no loving reason.

The Coalition States thus have a critical vulnerability: Their ranks are in large part extremely vulnerable to the power of pop idol music.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The Coalition's ability to raise a futuristic military, far more mechanized than our own, in a post-apocalypse world off of a slice of land that's at best like a sixth or eighth of the US, despite the fact they have to contend with monsters and numerous enemies...

... is definitely a thing.

Where do they get the metal even? Chi-Town's main industry seem to be... being Chi-Town, Missouri's for farming, Lone Star is Tampering in God's Domain, Iron Heart is... uh... maybe it's Iron Heart? I dunno. I'd like at least the random nod to infrastructure.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Dawgstar posted:

Where do they get the metal even? Chi-Town's main industry seem to be... being Chi-Town, Missouri's for farming, Lone Star is Tampering in God's Domain, Iron Heart is... uh... maybe it's Iron Heart? I dunno. I'd like at least the random nod to infrastructure.

Fascists in fiction always have infinite resources and soldiers. The villain almost never has to worry about logistics, despite logistics being someplace that rag-tag rebels could easily strike at them.

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Night10194 posted:

Fascists in fiction always have infinite resources and soldiers. The villain almost never has to worry about logistics, despite logistics being someplace that rag-tag rebels could easily strike at them.

I think that's mostly because blowing up bauxite mines and ambushing flour trucks isn't very glamourous at all.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Ratoslov posted:

I think that's mostly because blowing up bauxite mines and ambushing flour trucks isn't very glamourous at all.

Blowing up huge tankers full of fuel and ammunition, though?

Terrible Opinions
Oct 17, 2013



Isn't that more or less precisely what you're doing in DOOM 2016, but against a capitalist regime instead of a fascist one though? Like the demons are a constant that cannot be stopped but it's perfectly obtainable to destroy the infrastructure needed by Robo Steve Jobs and Cyber mega church lady.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Terrible Opinions posted:

Isn't that more or less precisely what you're doing in DOOM 2016, but against a capitalist regime instead of a fascist one though? Like the demons are a constant that cannot be stopped but it's perfectly obtainable to destroy the infrastructure needed by Robo Steve Jobs and Cyber mega church lady.

Man, I might vote for an evil corporate overlord if he was voiced by Darin de Paul. Just sayin.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The Coalition's ability to raise a futuristic military, far more mechanized than our own, in a post-apocalypse world off of a slice of land that's at best like a sixth or eighth of the US, despite the fact they have to contend with monsters and numerous enemies...

... is definitely a thing.

And to keep everything about it hidden for what, twenty years?

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Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

I do suddenly realize that it's funny the game came out way before 3D Printing, or else maybe Kev would use that to explain how we got thousands of SAMAS.

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