Bitching, and a question

[The Name Without Meaning]

Okay, I know some people have just stopped buying exalted books, so you've dealt with this already. But I'm really, really sick, of White Wolf's method of organizing information. It was fun when I was just playing, but I ran Vampire for a year and Exalted for another year after that, and it's just nuts. Nuggets of information are scatterd throughout the books, the indices are next to useless. All of this was cool when I was digging through new and old books for ideas for my character - it's like research-lite, and the payoffs were "the Black Hand is really what?! That fucking rocks!" or shit like that. It would be cool if I lived in a White Wolf game world - "Wow, what a diverse view point these books afford me." But when I know  I read about a sidereal and want to use her, she's not in the siddie book, not in Cult of the illuminated, not even the DB book, no, she's hiding on one of the last pages of an aspect book. Damnit! You find out more about the air-borne defenses of the Realm in Outcaste than anywhere else - you get the point.


Has anyone seen or made a useful index of characters, charms, hearthsones, or similiar? I found a good one of artifacts, on the wiki, I think, but these others would rock. Haku? You are wise and helpfull... anyone...


I stopped playing D&D not so long ago, but I really miss books about one or two things - At this point, I wouldn't mind a big book of charms n artifacts, another that's all NPC's... 'course I see that D&D has region books of it's own now, so maybe the scatter shot approach is the way of the future. sigh

 

[Persell]

Not sure about Exalted, but I heard that WW hired outside specialists to help with the indexing for WoD 2.0. Perhaps Exalted 2nd Ed. will get similar treatment.

 

[Andrew02]

It's pretty fucking sad they need outside help to get something like a fucking index down.


Anyhow, the wiki has some stuff like what you've asked for. Not just the artifacts, but hearthstones and characters. It's kind of fucked up, though.


http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?HearthStones


That's got the Hearthstones, but they're organized by type, then level, on separate pages.


http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?Abyssals


Abyssal by Deathlord.


http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?Solars


Click on the Caste links and you get listings of canonical Solars, though they've only got Dawn and Eclipse going.


Basically, look around Wiki Contents in Exalt Specific Information.

 

[Relic]

It's pretty fucking sad they need outside help to get something like a fucking index down.

Perhaps it's cheaper to hire freelance indexers than to have permanent employees on the task. Indexing is far from easy, and I doubt having the authors themselves do it is a good idea.

 

[StarHawk]

I know the wiki also has an index of all the little character one finds in all the little books. It only has a name and what book you can find them in, but it's kinda nifty none the less. I have no clue what it's called, I came across it once on accident. I think it's http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?Characters/ExaltedCensus .

 

[psychoph]

It might not help for research necesarily but Ed's Exalted Toolkit has a serach function for artifacts that includes hearthstones.  You can list them all by name I think is how it goes.  The way I did it for DB npc creation I looked it up using the tool then found the page number there for the book and read the description.  


Might be something to add to the Lore 5 stuff, searchable by different types of things.  I could definitely see the npc section having some of the canon npcs there.


IMO a database of info is going to be far superior to an index any day mainly cause you can have multiple indexs and ways to search for the information.

 

[psychoph]

Oh yeah also from my experience this is a common problem through out most of the games I have played, 7th Sea, L5R, WoD 1st Ed.


From a design perspective I am not sure you can really fix it other than through some database of informaiton or indexing of information.


In order to do like a d20 style of book release they woudl have had to redesing Exalted I think to release all the different types of creatures in the main book, which probably would have pushed out the content a long time.  


BTw if I understood the new comic correctly it is going to boggle your st research even more a they were supposed ot be releasing new charms and articats and stuff in each of the comics.

 

[memesis]

Might be something to add to the Lore 5 stuff, searchable by different types of things.  I could definitely see the npc section having some of the canon npcs there.

The submissions are already searchable on the backend, but there's no front-end interface to it (because I have been ass-busy at work).  We can throw together a 'canon index' or something with little effort.

 

[psychoph]

Would be useful, but only if there are page numbers to look up the informaiton unless the canon info is entered into the Lore 5 system.


Although now that i think about it that migh tnot be the point of the post.  The point might be that the nuggest of info, the cool things are hidden in place that are hard to get to without fully readig every book.  Definitely woudl help with all the tangile ideas like artifacts, hearthstones, npcs, charms, and such.  not going to help with useful lore informaiton that will still be scattered everywhere, which an index would benefit greatly or a word or concept assiciation in a database with the page numbers and books, which woudl be a whole seperate project than what lore 5 is all about.  Essentially a searchable index.


What i have found monumentally useful is the pdf files of the books in ocr format.  Given Acrobat's search function I can find a lot of informaiton with one or two words and just quickly look through what is there.  I am not sure of the legality of it, but I figure I purchased the book once in my mind it is ok to have an electronic copy as well.  White Wolf might not see it that way, but I don't see it as any different than me buying the electronic copy and printing it out on my home computer then binding it with tape.

 

[Andrew02]

It's pretty fucking sad they need outside help to get something like a fucking index down.

Perhaps it's cheaper to hire freelance indexers than to have permanent employees on the task. Indexing is far from easy, and I doubt having the authors themselves do it is a good idea.

I am under the impression there are other people involved in the final preparation of the books to get them to print format. This impression could be very false given the degrees of quality in published White Wolf material. The authors, I believe, could not index because they would not be responsible for the final format of the book. Something on page 5 of the author's submitted work might be something different in the final format. The 'page XX' errors were the result of the author's inability to predict the final format of the book and oversight to ensure all of the 'xx's were replaced with correct numbers.


But White Wolf is publishing books. They should have a permanent staff member or two who do indexing. They have a lot of books coming out, so it's not like they'd be paying someone to do nothing by having a dedicated Exalted indexer or whatever.

 

[Flagg]

The 'page XX' errors were the result of the author's inability to predict the final format of the book and oversight to ensure all of the 'xx's were replaced with correct numbers.

Which is really sad, since all that's necessary is to search the document for all instances of "XX".


-S

 

[The Name Without Meaning]

Thanks Andrew, Starhawk, everyone.


The point of the post was, yes, that during a game, if I want to find something, I have to skim entire books, not just one book or one chapter.

 

[psychoph]

Oh you want somethign during a game.  I missed that completely.

 

[Master of Malfeasance]

You guys are hilarious!  It might be because it's 2:51 here, and I've been awake for an indecent amount of hours (it should be criminal for a company commander to keep his troops for 17 hours on a friday night)


Anyway, I agree with you about the index things.  Tables of contents are equally useless.  Though you could task your players with finding page numbers and books for all of their retarded requests (man, I need to find some fresh talent) which any self-respecting ST should do, sometimes, you need info for yourself.


You could pull your hair out trying to find the sub-paragraph where you read that Chejop Kejak likes sex with amputees (no... really! Would I like to you about something like that?) or where you found the Regent's stats because you just KNOW he would present the perfect challenge to your characters who believe that all table top games are really video games in disguise, or you could take a deep breath, utter a few "woo sahs" under your breath and accept that your books were written by people who, though saints they should be, are the PINNACLE of geekdom.  This means their relative talents probably lie in a very narrowly defined area, and it probably isn't organization.  If you think of almost any given non-incorporated gamestore you've been in, now imagine that person having a nearly unlimited budget and actually being ENCOURAGED to think and dream and create.


These people don't want to do indexes, these people probably don't even sleep.


The solution-  Make Shit Up (MSU).  You did it all through high-school, if you joined the military, you've probably done it there, too, usually when you have to appear contrite and angry that someone under you made a minor mistake that someone over you blew way out of proportion.  I guess that's why they make the big bucks.


Hit them with both barrels.  If one of your players catches you Woo-sahing and asks what you're doing, make sure you mumble a lot and gradually increase your volume.  If you switch between Milton from Office Space and Boomhauer from King Of The Hill, you'll get the right effect.  Now describe a vision to one of your players.


No one caught you woo-sahing, everyone knows that STs have unlimited patience and unshakeable wills.


If one of your players should come out of hiding and make some pretense of pointing out that you were wrong, it is perfectly permissible to beat him to death with the book.  This not only relieves stress, (can you tell I'm hating my players right now?) but serves as an example to the rest that you will brook NO arguments.  STs never make mistakes, after all.


Then, you can give your player the secret satisfaction of RetCon-ing his retarded comment into your game later under (more on RetCon in another post).  The reasons for this discrepancy can be sources of their own stories later.


The following example was based on my own laziness about a picture I couldn't remember, but could just as easily have applied to tiny snippets of text that players have WAAAAAAAAY more time to hunt down than you probably do.


Example:


Your players go to Lookshy.  It is late at night in real life and you are becoming fatigued.  You know that reaching across the table to pick up Outcaste will probably mean your doom as your head hits the gloriously hard, supportive, and inviting surface of the table and oblivion (lowercase) consumes you and your players are free to pilfer your books and minis (okay, my players aren't THAT bad, but still).  You describe the towers, the first age architecture, and the airships patrolling the outer walls.  Then it happens...


(insert insipid lisp) player:  Rhett?  Rhett?  Rhett?  Rhett?  Rhett?


me: (talking to another player right at that moment)  WHAT!?  (insert god-like rumble--the same voice I use for those of lower rank who have offended me)


Player:  What do the airships look like?


Me:  Airships?  You want to know what airships look like (reaching for machete under table)


Player:  (drools--okay, that could have been me) yeah.


Me: (relaxing hold on machete and taking measured breaths) I guess that's a valid question.  Hmm.. they look like techno-organic galleons.  They have sails on both the top and bottom, jutting from the sides, and appear to have many different architectural styles (important statement for later).  They look wind powered, and are moving about, but you feel no wind.


Player:  Hey, wait, that sounds like a Final Fantasy airship!


Me:  (grabs machete again... of course, now that I think about it, he's right.  I actually just shamelessly plagiarized that idea from Talislanta, another table-top RPG that was written before the guy who wrote Final Fantasy had jacked off the morning he wrote it)  Funny, asshole, it looks like one, too.  I'm trying to keep things in perspective for you, there are quite a few different types, but sails that jut at angles seem like the only real unifying theme.  They appear to be docking at a dizzyingly large tower with piers sticking out from the sides.


Player:  (ADD visibly kicking in... all I had to do was stall him.. bow before my awesomeness!) Oooooh! (definitely drools this time)


Other player:  (flips through Outcaste) Hey, that's not what these airships look like, these airships look like fish!


Me:  Your girlfriend looks like a fish (have to put him off balance while I think about this).  You see a few of those, too, mostly on the outskirts.  You're not really sure what this signifies, but it might be interesting to find out.


Players:  (stare at me blankly)


Player:  You mean like, investigate?


Me:  (knuckles turning white on machete.... I've read this tragedy before, and I know what's coming)  Yes, something like that.


Other player:  Okay... here goes!  I talk to the guard at the gate.


Me:  (sighing in defeat) what do you say to him?


Other player:  Say?  What am I supposed to say to him?


Me:  (Commits seppuku with rusty machete)


End


Players aside, you have now made your own shit up, hopefully appeased your players, AND you've created another story thread... experimental airships... the first attempts at building first age-type airships since that halcyon era.


Once again, you I employed my "Infallible Story Creation Prana" charm with the best success I could hope for.