Custom Setting Ideas

[illenvillen23]

I have an idea for an Exalted campaign set in ancient Greece. I also need some people to critique my idea. Please let me know if anyone is interested.

 

[Persell]

Sounds good, go ahead.

 

[illenvillen23]

Changes from vanilla I have made:


Gods were changed to reflect the Greek Pantheon


-The Vanilla Underworld is now Tartarus.


-There are a few sets of gods.


-Primordeals are now represented by Titans and the Greek Primordials.


THe Promordeals


Exalted are still the chosen ones of the gods: There are thousands of Phoenix Blooded, 500 solar exalted, 1,000 Lunar exalted, thousands of sindreal exalted, and 500 abyssal exalted. Each is chosen by a specific god.


Creation is now a map of the real life Mediterranean sea area.


Wyld borders are now defined.


Dragon Blooded are now Phoenix Blooded


The elemental poles of the vanilla setting are gone.


The 11 Great Houses are gone and replaced by the 11 Great families.


The Great Cantageon now happens at the beginning of the current era.


Sidreal Exalted are now represented by the Fates.


Lunar Exalted are still around and have found a niche with a few territories.


The world's history has changed to fit with Greek mythology.


**The small gods in the vanilla setting such are River Gods, forest gods, etc. are now replaced with demi gods.


The Yozi are now the imprisonned Titans or Primordeals that reside in Tartarus, as opposed to Malfeas: these include many giantes, Hyperion, Coeus, Crius, and Iapetus, and Typhon


The vanilla underworld is now replaced by Tartarus.


The Neverborn are now the Titans or Primordeals that have been slain, including Ophion.


The Deathlords still exist but thier personalities and names are different, they are not controlled by the Neverborn but instead 13 Primordeals.


Naxos is a spiritual double of Nexus.


The 1,000 Scaled Legion has been changed to the 1,000 Feathered Legion to reflect the chagne from Dragon to Phoenix. Grouping names have also been changed. All instances of Dragon should be replaced with Phoenix.


Groupings:


1 = Solo


2-10 = Beak


11-75 = Feather(s)


76-150 = Talon


151-300 =  Wing


301-650 = Phoenix


2,501-5,000 = Legion


5,001-10,000 = Herioc Legion


Yu-shang is no longer teh name for the home of the gods.


**Sprits still exist but in differnt ways, noramlly as demi-gods or creatures from greek myths.


Alexander has replaced the scarlet empress.


The 5 Wonders of teh world are spritual successors of the elemental poles. Each also contains a powerful Manse for the coresponding element.


The Shogonate no longer existed and its replacement is an unknown ancient empire.


Artifacts now come from the Silver Age of men.


Jade has been replaced with onyx.


Malfeas is a place within tartarus


The Underworld is now the Greek underworld.


Demanses are places touched with the power of the gods. Manses are normally styled as temples to the gods.


Martial Arts are exotic to Greece having come from Peria after the Persian invasion. Names remain the same.


Exalted characters may store a single charm in a helm made from thier favored material.


Onyx:


As a banded material the dominate color decides which element it resonates with


Money is now represented with silver coins


1 talent(T) = 100 minae(M) = 10,000 drachmae(D)


1 mina(M) = 100 drachmae(D)


Resources:


x   = less than 30 Drachmea a year


*    = less than 2 Minae a year


**   = less than 40 minae a year


***  = Less than 1 talent a year


**** = 4 to 6 talents a year


*****= 12 or more talents a year


Converting Cost to Money


n/a          =  1to10 D


*             =  20D to 1M


**            =  2M to 20 M


***          =  21 to 50 M


****         =  51M to 2 T


*****        =  4T to 6 T


***** *      =  7T to 10 T


***** **     = 11T to 20 T


***** ***   = 21T to 50T


***** ****  = 51T to 100T


***** ***** =  101+ Talents


Please let me know what you guys think. If you want me to expand on anything please let me know and I'll be happy to.

 

[memesis]

Exalted characters may store a single charm in a helm made from thier favored material.

Why?  And what is meant by "store a Charm"?


Other than this, it all looks like (if you'll pardon the term) superficial changes.  If you are happy with the setting and your players are happy, then everything should work out well.  It sounds reasonable.

 

[Balota]

Martial Arts are exotic to Greece having come from Peria after the Persian invasion. Names remain the same.

Just Curious do you want to not have the martial arts from the area. A common misconception is that martial arts are exclusive to the asias. Not true at all, there are some great martial art forms from Europe and Asia Minor. But so far that is my only question.


Don't want to give an opinon on this one piece untill I know enough to give an opinon but the rest sounds great.

 

[Flagg]

Furthermore, do you mean that the Martial Arts Charms are foreign to Greece, or the mundane arts as well?


If you're using Second Edition, then there is no distinction between all forms of unarmed combat. They're all "Martial Arts".

 

[Persell]

Exalted are still the chosen ones of the gods: There are thousands of Phoenix Blooded, 500 solar exalted, 1,000 Lunar exalted, thousands of sindreal exalted, and 500 abyssal exalted. Each is chosen by a specific god.

Over all sounds good, except this part. I don't mind the threefold increase in Solars/Abyssals, and Lunars, Creation is so big that a few hundred more or the two won't make much difference. But do you really want as many Sidereals hopping about as there are Terestrials? If only about 100 has caused as much grief in the canon setting, what would thousands do?
More over, even if Sidereals are weaker than Lunars and Solars physically, if every Solar and Lunar are outnumbered 3 to 1 by a different type of Celestrial Exalt, I don't think they would have much of a chance, nor would the Sidereals have even needed the Dragonblooded/Phoenixblooded during the Usurption.


Other than that point, sounds good. Helenistic Exalt goodness....

 

[wordman]

I have an idea for an Exalted campaign set in ancient Greece.

Honestly, you might want to use Scion instead of exalted. The changes you list get you half-way there already.

 

[Persell]

I have an idea for an Exalted campaign set in ancient Greece.

Honestly, you might want to use Scion instead of exalted. The changes you list get you half-way there already.

I was thinking exactly that when I was reading the changes he made. Furthermore I think the scion rulesset will make you more than happy, the changes are slight, but they change the feel a lot away from anime towards illias.

 

[illenvillen23]

Why?  And what is meant by "store a Charm"?

Well since helms were very important in actual ancient reece I wanted something to make them important in Exalted Greece as well. I guess rules wise it would be like having extra personal Essence but only for that single charm.

Just Curious do you want to not have the martial arts from the area. A common misconception is that martial arts are exclusive to the asias. Not true at all, there are some great martial art forms from Europe and Asia Minor. But so far that is my only question.

Furthermore, do you mean that the Martial Arts Charms are foreign to Greece, or the mundane arts as well?
If you're using Second Edition, then there is no distinction between all forms of unarmed combat. They're all "Martial Arts".

The martial arts forms I am talking about are the martial arts charms described in the book. I thought the names and descriptions were very oriental sounding, which is why i have them come from Persia.


This setting is a work in progress. I am currently working on martial art charms that sound and work like the martial arts that were developed by ancient Greece like wrestling and and some others, but that is a long process.

Over all sounds good, except this part. I don't mind the threefold increase in Solars/Abyssals, and Lunars, Creation is so big that a few hundred more or the two won't make much difference. But do you really want as many Sidereals hopping about as there are Terestrials? If only about 100 has caused as much grief in the canon setting, what would thousands do?
More over, even if Sidereals are weaker than Lunars and Solars physically, if every Solar and Lunar are outnumbered 3 to 1 by a different type of Celestrial Exalt, I don't think they would have much of a chance, nor would the Sidereals have even needed the Dragonblooded/Phoenixblooded during the Usurption.

See this helps a lot and is why I wanted help. I didn't know what the numbers were in the vanilla setting and I was just making guesses based on what sounded good. The "thousands of sidereal exalted" was actually a mistake on my part I have changed tat to 150 with 3 MAIN fates and the rest being used/employed by them.


As for all the people mentioning cosmetic changes:


I didn't want to change the rule set too much because I know what a pain that can be especially with a system I'm not entirely familiar with. For these changes I just wanted to know if they would make sense in a world with Exalted people.


Also I have detailed documents of the setting that span several pages each but I didn't want to post them because well...they're several pages. I could post them as a zip file if anyone was interested. To get an idea of how long the documents are the longsest is teh history and uses up 14 pages in MS word the total number of pages they use is 29 in MS word. There is also a map I made if anyone would like to view it you can visit: http://www.geocities.com/illen_villen007/Ancient_Greece.png


I don't have the scion books to be honest and I don't really know how that system works. What are some of the reasons you guys are suggesting I use that instead of Exalted?


Thanks to everyone who has been commenting I really appreciate it.

 

[Persell]

what I said earlier

See this helps a lot and is why I wanted help. I didn't know what the numbers were in the vanilla setting and I was just making guesses based on what sounded good. The "thousands of sidereal exalted" was actually a mistake on my part I have changed tat to 150 with 3 MAIN fates and the rest being used/employed by them.

As far as I know in the canon setting there are 300 Lunars, 150 Solars, 100 Abyssals, 50 Solar shards sacrificed to the Yozi, 100-150 Sidereals, and shit-tons of Terrestrials. I could be wrong about these numbers though.


I personal feel the number of Exalts is a touch low for the sheer size of Creation. I adjusted it to be roughly the same as yours. 500 Lunars, 250 Solars,  200 Abyssals, still 50 shards to the Yozi, about 250 Sidereals, and double shit-tons of Terrestrial Exalts. Seems to make more sense for just how big Creation is. It really makes no difference as you will never encounter all of a particular Exalt type, more of a asthetic difference.

Also I have detailed documents of the setting that span several pages each but I didn't want to post them because well...they're several pages.it.

I would actually like to read that. I might be in the minority, but I always enjoy reading alternate settings. PM me the zip file.

 

[Ker'ion]

I use higher numbers, but the Sidereals are the five-score fellowship, so I leave them at 100.


300 Solars, 250 Abyssals, 50 Akuma, 600 Lunars, 100 Sidereals, 2400 Alchemicals (800 are cities), and 125,000 Dragon-Blooded (I think there should be a larger number of Exalts in Creation, as 150 Solars trying to save the world just seems a little too far fetched, but that's just me)

 

[Gtroc]

on the subject o fmartial arts, there is a theory out there that Greece is the birth place of martial arts. Pankration was in vented around 600 BC and is one of the oldest martial arts on the planet. there is a theory that when alexander the great conquered persia that the greeks brought there unique style of fott and fist fighting with them.  or it could have been brought east even earlier during the invasions oof the persions into greece. or it could be an example of paralell development.

 

[Flagg]

The first person who hit another person "invented" martial arts. I'm sure that happened waaaaaay before the Greeks.

 

[memesis]

The first person who hit another person "invented" martial arts. I'm sure that happened waaaaaay before the Greeks.

The first person who hit another person, then taught a third guy how he did it, invented the martial arts.  "Fighting" has been around for longer.

 

[Sherwood]

As far as numbers of the DB's go, I saw in one of the 2ed books (I think it was the Lunars book, but I'm not sure) that durring the First Age, there was well over a million of the little buggers durring the Primordal War.  Many were lost, but it makes no sense to me that after all this time there will be only a hundred thousand or so.

 

[Vanman]

The Great Contagion did a lot to whittle the numbers down. Even Exalts were affected by the Great Contagion and this would account for the drop in DBs.

 

[wordman]

I don't have the scion books to be honest and I don't really know how that system works. What are some of the reasons you guys are suggesting I use that instead of Exalted?

The main reason is that Scion is already about playing heroes of Greek (and other) gods. Another is that the vast majority of the mechanics are either identical or very close to Exalted's. Also, many of the changes you suggest are part of the Scion rules already.


For a more complete rundown of the differences, see my long-ass post in this thread.

 

[illenvillen23]

I don't have the scion books to be honest and I don't really know how that system works. What are some of the reasons you guys are suggesting I use that instead of Exalted?

The main reason is that Scion is already about playing heroes of Greek (and other) gods. Another is that the vast majority of the mechanics are either identical or very close to Exalted's. Also, many of the changes you suggest are part of the Scion rules already.


For a more complete rundown of the differences, see my long-ass post in this thread.

Thanks for the feedback but my players don't want to buy new books so we're going to stick with exalted for the time being.


If anyone is interested in the full documents you can download them from this site:


http://www.geocities.com/illen_villen00 ... Greece.zip

 

[Zaramis]

Concerning the amounts of DB's, that someone mentioned:  The books say that there are 10.000 DB's aligned to the Realm. If you look at the different books detailing outer regions, they have quite few Outcastes. A few here, a few there. If there had been 125.000 outcastes, you would have a higher concentration of outcastes in -every- treshold place than you'd have in the realm. Those numbers are just wacko, especially since the DB's in the treshold ( with a few rare examples ) haven't been breeding for stronger DB blood, but just coexisted and mingled with mortals.


10.000 in the realm, 5.000 outside it would be more theoretically sane numbers, going up to 15.000 outside the realm if you want to really stretch it.

 

[Ledaal Kajiri]

The problem with your 15,000 overall in Creation is stated DB exaltation rates. Lookshy has a 1/100 rate, the Realm has a stated 1/1000 rate, and the rest of Creation varies between 1 in 5,000-10,000. With the populations stated for many nations this is going to push you very far over that. Places with high population concentration have been stated as generally tending towards the 5,000 while places more thinly populated tend towards the 10,000. There are some exceptions, like the northern Cadet Houses, and so forth that locally will scew such numbers.  Still, the Realm for examples has been stated as having a population in the 10s of millions, and also stated as having an exaltation rate of 1/1000, yet simultaneously having only about 10,000 Dragonblooded. If that population were only 10,000,000 this would work...however see my post here for comments on the math for the Realm and Lookshy.


Look at the final post


Now, using population numbers and exaltation rates you are likely going to result in around 15,000, but the rest of Creation is going to add up a good bit too. Lookshy alone will supply 1,100 to 2,000, depending on whether you count the old comment about keeping the military population of Lookshy off the officially available rolls. The Cadet Houses will likely add a few hundred scattered through the northern satrapsies. Nexus will likely result in another 200 by itself. 15,000 for the rest of Creation isn't really going to be stretching it, but more likely rather low. The exact number will be hard to ever know, as many areas of Creation have undetailed population counts, including some of the cities that are given a rather thorough overview (Great Forks, for example, we know the it military has roughly 2,000 troops, but not the population as a whole). If the numbers end up anything like 1E, then the population count will push Creation to nearly the billion mark...though this is in part from random insanities like Halta having a population of around or higher than the Blessed Isle. Still, eveb without such, Creation is a large place, and 15,000 Dragonblooded outside the Realm would not only be reasonable, but likely low. How low will be hard to say without both the rest of the Terrestrial direction books, and population counts contained within them.

 

[Zaramis]

I don't really respect the official numbers very much, when they aren't following them themselves in their books. I've read very very few accounts of multiple dragon bloods running around in for example, Harborhead. Where are all the outcastes?


There ought to be tons of them, gathering and forming powerful coalitions, becoming the heads of state or at least within the courts. In Harborhead, there was one DB in the higher echelons of society, and he was assassinated by the realm because they didn't want a heretical DB there. The Harborhead army and it's officers don't mention a single outcaste DB within them, in any leadership position, nor in it's ruling court.


To me, the Blessed Isle is special for a reason. The DB's there have been trying to breed for more DB's for hundreds of years, it's patrician families have strong dragon blood. If it's only 5 times better than a randomly populated world-zone, then something is considerably wacko with their rates.

 

[Vanman]

I agree with Zaramis here. The Exaltation rate in the Realm and even Lookshy is such because of the breeding there. Take away the proclivity of DBs and the Exaltation rate starts to drop. Sure, there might be some Exaltations, but they won't be like they are in the Realm or in Lookshy. And even if you do get an Outcaste somewhere, how strong is their blood, so that their DB seed, so to speak, is passed on? Not very, I'd say.


But, as always, if it helps your story, increase the numbers. No biggie......