Castlefield: Sovereign Nation in the Hundred Kingdoms

If anything then creation needs more kingdoms in dormant volcanoes.


@cyl: I think you might be alone with having missed me  :wink:


but thank you kindly.
 
Arthur said:
Poor Safim. He needs a Free Hug too.
We all missed you.
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Hehe, thanks.


Astonishingly I rarely get into fights outside of the internet while still behaving the same. Usually people like my direct approach to things and to be honest, I am too lazy to change myself for the internet.
 
I'm afraid continuing to off topic might not be well regarded, but anyway: I get in fights much, much more often while offline, and I don't take anything I read in forums very seriously, which helps me not to get mad (with the noteworthy exception from this blog. The comment signed "A." from the post Bring Back Bush is mine). I like straightforwardness (is that a word?), and I believe that's essential to have discussions that actually lead to some conclusion. I just usually try to be gentle.
 
cyl said:
What's the point ? if living in the caldera of an extinct volcano is your coolest idea for a background...
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What do you do when your smart-ass player decides that the way he's going to bring down the city of Gem, which he has decided is too despotic to be permitted to continue to exist, is going to be to start pirating the food shipments?


You look at him blankly.


He says, "Look, they live in a burnt-out cinder of a volcano surrounded by uninhabitable wasteland.  They have to be importing food.  I'm going to take this sandship we stole last game session, mount some weapons on it, and start hunting the food convoys."


If you've never thought about the issue, then you are going to be baffled.  


If your players would never, ever imagine applying economic pressure in this manner, I pity you for having unimaginative players.  But then again, I live to give the folks who run games for me screaming fits by derailing the plot train with a new and interesting approach to solving problems.  I once put a GM in the fetal position for two hours (by blowing up the entire army of Bad Guys he had chasing the party I joined--NEVER give me a literal truckload of explosives as a PC), but he's a FISTer and thus mentally unstable to begin with.
 
cyl said:
Exalted is mainly about adventure and fun, not politics and economics (you could do both in a game and make it very deep and complex and interesting).


I mean you could try to understand the complex dynamics in Creation and make some connections with our good old planet... but hey, we don't have spirits, gods, exalts, or sorcery...
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Playing Exalted with Celestial Exalts, your player have the raw power to change the complex dynamics in their portion of Creation.  


Full Stop.


If you have not even begun to think about understanding them, how do you explain them to your players when they start monkeying with them?  How do you understand what sort of second and third order effects your players set in motion when they decide to start doing something Epic (say, start liberating all the slaves in the area, or turning the local king's bone marrow into magma, or doing urban renewal with a warstrider)?  An Exalted game that was run in the hack-and-slash manner of a D&D game is, to me, a waste of the amazing potential in the game system and setting.  And an Exalt that wants to do nothing more complex than set himself at the top of the local food chain is a waste of an Exaltation.
 
Well there are uses for causality, but not all of them are good.


A solar is doomed to make various ennemies as Creation is not only mortal politics but spiritual politics too, and they are very very different... but do you really want to keep track of every offensed mortal/exalt/god/spirit/other and plan the various effects of his revenge or focus on the main plots ?


I mean you have to do it sometimes, it can even become a main plot (for me : the offensed Walker in the Darkness converted two solars of the group into deathknights in the long run).


What good is burying your exalts under the consequences of diplomatic incidents they created unvoluntarily ? That will only make them fear consequences of taking action, leading them to plan more, and act less.


Unless they are the main topics of the game, politics and economics block the epic.


Just like survival and logistics.


I can't but agree with you, Exalted should not be limited to the H&S style, but at one point, realism will always defeat interest, and in Exalted it must not... according to me :)
 
Safim said:
As if you need to know how much food Gem imports to let a player pirate it.
That is just not true.
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You need to have an idea of the scale of things.  Is one or two sandships going to make a difference?  Are there huge convoys moving through the desert on a regular basis?  How long before it starts to matter to the rulers of the city?  How long before it starts to impact the lower class citizens?  


You're going to have to come up answers to these questions, why not make them answers that make sense?
 
cyl said:
What good is burying your exalts under the consequences of diplomatic incidents they created unvoluntarily ? That will only make them fear consequences of taking action, leading them to plan more, and act less.


Unless they are the main topics of the game, politics and economics block the epic.


Just like survival and logistics.


I can't but agree with you, Exalted should not be limited to the H&S style, but at one point, realism will always defeat interest, and in Exalted it must not... according to me :)
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If that were all I meant, you might be right.  


Read a little more history, and a little less manga.


I find this sort of thing fascinating, and it adds to the game.  If you and your PCs find it detracts from the game, then you can run games where they fight the deathknight, loot the corpse, and drink at the inn.  Whatever floats your boat.


I don't necessarily think you are wrong--it's just not a game I'd want to play.


I'm amused by the number of folks who think there's something "wrong" with people whose play styles differ.
 
Decurion said:
cyl said:
What good is burying your exalts under the consequences of diplomatic incidents they created unvoluntarily ? That will only make them fear consequences of taking action, leading them to plan more, and act less.


Unless they are the main topics of the game, politics and economics block the epic.


Just like survival and logistics.


I can't but agree with you, Exalted should not be limited to the H&S style, but at one point, realism will always defeat interest, and in Exalted it must not... according to me :)
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If that were all I meant, you might be right.  


Read a little more history, and a little less manga.


I find this sort of thing fascinating, and it adds to the game.  If you and your PCs find it detracts from the game, then you can run games where they fight the deathknight, loot the corpse, and drink at the inn.  Whatever floats your boat.


I don't necessarily think you are wrong--it's just not a game I'd want to play.


I'm amused by the number of folks who think there's something "wrong" with people whose play styles differ.
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I think your "one true wayism" detracts from the conversation.


Edit: Oh and I can answer that stupid question perfectly fine. There is a big shipment coming through, tomorrow evening, heavily guarded, but the captain is the father of the girl you rescued last week, she mentioned he is acting strangely.


There are so many ways to play this, not only yours and the wrong way and suggesting anyone not reading up on historical food requirements for volcano cities just wants to kill things and loot people is stupid.
 
I find it somewhat amusing that all of this attention to plausibility,  logistics, and food supply hinges on sandships.
 
Flagg said:
I find it somewhat amusing that all of this attention to plausibility,  logistics, and food supply hinges on sandships.
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Actually it is sandships on a flat world surrounded by chaos and ruled by gods in a heavenly city ^^
 
Safim said:
Flagg said:
I find it somewhat amusing that all of this attention to plausibility,  logistics, and food supply hinges on sandships.
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Actually it is sandships on a flat world surrounded by chaos and ruled by crack addicted gods in a heavenly city ^^
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Among many other things. Bold is my addition.
 
Safim said:
Flagg said:
I find it somewhat amusing that all of this attention to plausibility' date='  logistics, and food supply hinges on [i']sandships[/i].
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Actually it is sandships on a flat world surrounded by chaos and ruled by crack addicted gods in a heavenly city ^^
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Among many other things. Bold is my addition.
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But how does the grain come into the volcano?!


Super history professor team must investigate!


Well either that or we just make cool shit up.
 
Heh...it would be fun to actually play in a group, doing an IC archaeological dig and scavenger lord game, while trying to figure out First Age ruins...whether in the Scavenger Lands or not. Though...some things might be a little easier in Creation...when you can talk to the local gods to get the truth of whether the toilet is a special religious edifice, or simply a place to piss. I know many an archaeologist would love to have access to things like Incantation of Effective Restoration or The Eye and Mouth...or even better Shadows of the Ancient Past...though few sorcerers can reach the Shogunate period with that spell.
 
One of the main NPCs I'm adding here is an Animated Intelligence called E.M.R.I.S (Enhanced Matrix Recursive Information System).  The interactive avatar appears as a middle-aged man with grey hair and blue robes.  Those of you up on your Arthurian myths should get the reference. :)


The White Lady of Golden Lake should also be a no-brainer, as well as the mysterious disappearing island in the center of it.
 
Very nice and yes, I do get the references with Emris and the island.  8)
 
Decurion said:
Stuff about a busted suspension of disbelief re: Gem.
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I'll admit that I haven't read the setting materials about Gem and I'm too lazy to go scan through my books, but my reaction to your comment is simply: This is Exalted.  We're talking about the game where there are dinosaurs that piss narcotics.  Unless the materials specifically state otherwise, I would assume that they grow enough of their own food to take a little pressure off of trade in/on/around the volcano using plants that are adapted for the environment.


I will agree that the basic needs of an area's inhabitants are the first thing you need to figure out in creating a realistic location.  It's just that in my mind, the setting of Exalted defies realism so blatantly and often that I don't even question it anymore.


Then again, a possible food shortage is just another example of how Creation has it out for that city. (Oh my Unconquered Sun, you killed Gem!  You bastard!)
 
I just caught wind of this thread and I think there have been alot of good ideas thrown your way. I had one question- are any of your setting's nobility Dragonblooded? There are alot of lost egg families out there, and its perfectly plausible that these minor dragonblooded families would want nothing to do with the realm or even lookshy.


Just something to chew on.


And your map was fine. White Wolf has artists that have had years and years of training, sometimes even cartographers doing their work.
 
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