Dice OOC: The Underways of Gethamane

[Lochar]

S'alright. I really should have caught that myself, but I was just doing counts of charms and points.

You also rolled enough successes early enough in your dice I literally don't think I could take away anything from your only dice roll anyways.

 

[Psychie]

I am going to have to drop many of my Awareness Charms, and I'm going to go with either Lore or Investigation. The alternative is to change my Caste to either Night or Dawn, which is not exactly what I had envisioned for my character.

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

ooooooh a Lore Supernal Twilight, that can be awesome, especially if you delve deep into the Introduce Fact charms... but an Investigation Supernal Twilight is also cool, and can be a closer fit for Awareness.

 

[Lochar]

You only have to drop your two Unsurpassed charms though?

 

[Psychie]

Just the two, but I'll want to get some of the Essence 2 Charms so I'll end up cutting out some more than that. Going with Lore. After all, she was a teacher before she Exalted.

 

[Lochar]

Ah, alright.

 

[Psychie]

Ok, I have the edit done. Sorry again. I honestly forgot.

 

[Lochar]

Well, challenging your teaching methods just became harder. LOL

 

[Psychie]

Very true!

 

[Rykon]

You'd be surprised at how badass 3E lore is. Especially the charm that lets you roll to unlock a number of evocations.

 

[Lochar]

You're talking to the original Eclipse that helped to break Lore charms in 2e.

 

[Psychie]

I'm new at Lore 3e, so it will take me a bit of time to figure out the really cool Charms to pick up and the ones that I can pass on.

 

[Rykon]

Declaring facts is really powerful, so the charms that boost lore topics and fact rolls are good, then there's the charm that lets you awaken evocations for yourself or others.

 

[Lochar]

Also, because I should probably mention it: Solar Unpausing Prana! You may post in the IC thread now.

 

[Rykon]

If it matters, Max isn't actively trying to sneak so I doubt it'd be enough effort to merit a stealth roll. Merely just avoiding drawing attention to himself with the passive boost of the belt of shadow walking assisting it as a matter of background imagery.

 

[Psychie]

First Fact of Gethamane introduced! 'The Drunkard's Walk' has a famous house brew! Who would have known about such a thing?

 

[Psychie]

That is, so long as its ok with our Illustrious Storyteller.

 

[Lochar]

That's fine. I'm on my phone so I'm going to have to hold off on a long post for a little longer.

 

[Lochar]

Alright, so this is probably more my fault in expectations than anyone elses (and the fact that we're barely a page into the game) and this is probably going to sound like a stupid rant, but Exalted. As the Storyteller, I expected and marshaled my defenses against my players immediately coming in and taking the facts as given to them, laugh at them, and prove them wrong. To stride forth, and if the earth itself doesn't tremble at your footsteps, it is only because it is bowing in adoration. Or fear.

Perhaps Snow Blossom is waiting for an appropriate time where it won't hurt her to only understand the Old Tongue, but I'm half surprised she hasn't pulled out Ancient Tongue Understanding to make light of the fact that the scripts that are carved literally everywhere, or the runes on the giant onyx door, are supposedly unreadable and in a language unknown.

Denuan had a Lore roll so high I gave a freebie to introduce a fact, pretty much any fact. This allows you to set your own plot hooks and story components. Every player emoted their dislike of the slave trade. Introducing a fact at this point is the equivalent of instead of asking the Storyteller if there's a way to end the slave trade in Gethamane, you could introduce the fact that there is a small coalition of families that want to end slavery in Gethamane, and do so by buying as many slaves as is safe and immediately adopting them into their families to make them citizens, to try to grow large enough to take seats on the Council to force a change of policy. Either the bold part by itself and I can come up with the reasoning, or the entire reasoning as well with a good enough Lore to introduce it. But that gives me the plot hook of something the entire circle might be interested in helping happen once they take care of this pesky monsters in the Underways problem.

Instead, we get beer. Which, don't get me wrong, you want the best beer, I hope someone has some damned good poison resistances because you've just made a fact that I'm going to play with and make it a major component of your next scene. However, you're still restrained by current canon, which I'm pulling from page 83/84 of the 3e book. Gethamane’s people speak little in public. They remain insular and wary of outsiders.

Duncan is more of a smash and break character with minimal stats in social activities, yet seems to be taking the lead on being the party face. (Hi Sherwood, I see you peaking through there. ) Not a problem, but Max, for all the fact that you'd think he is the same type of character, actually has a better stat pool to deal with people than Duncan does. Max did something right in the social world to build up three dots of Socialize and five dots of Performance with a specialty. Rykon, if you don't think you're up to actually being as social as your character (and yes, often it's stupid hard to do so with social or any other skills), you can still go passive and describe what you're doing, rather than actively having a conversation or similar.


Alright, stupid rant over. Assuming I still have players after reading this, I promise I'm working my way back into giving you the greater world of Exalted, that both begs for the return of their rightful rulers and fears their coming, from the Storyteller's point of view as well. I haven't done a good Exalted game in at least a couple of years so I'm decidedly out of practice in my own world building and for that I apologize.

Rising Echo
God King of Lotus​

 

[Psychie]

I guess that I'm not quite used to thinking in the epic level that Exalted can be. Also, I would have to say that I am not very familiar with the Lore Charms that I'm getting into, and learning what they are capable of is still somewhat surprising to me. I'll try to think larger in the future.

 

[Sherwood]

I was more or less waiting to see what direction your own plot lines were going to bring us before trying to substantially alter the social order of the place. I'll do my best to try and think larger, too.

 

[Lochar]

I guess that I'm not quite used to thinking in the epic level that Exalted can be. Also, I would have to say that I am not very familiar with the Lore Charms that I'm getting into, and learning what they are capable of is still somewhat surprising to me. I'll try to think larger in the future.

Honestly, it is hard to stay in the mindset that Exalted calls for. You can be better. and all that jazz. It requires a story just as grand as the players, because both feed off of each other. I provide the stage, and you all provide the actors. I will admit, the game that defined Exalted for me, with a Storyteller that eventually because a writer for Onyx Path, I was probably the worst player in my circle. But I hung in there, and attempted to kick as much ass as the rest of the players. I probably didn't always succeed, but I know there were times when I shined.

I was more or less waiting to see what direction your own plot lines were going to bring us before trying to substantially alter the social order of the place. I'll do my best to try and think larger, too.

Understandable. However, this is a text based medium which gives me, even more than you guys, a lot of leeway. If you derail my plans, thinking on my feet means I might need an hour or two to figure out what you just did. But I have that time since this isn't face to face. While no one has War, if you all decided that you were going to the Council and demanded a week to train the local guard and you would personally lead them to purge the Underways to ensure the safety of Gethamane.... Hell, I'd roll with it and throw some stats together so you could have a social fu fight with the Council and maybe have a backup plan of if the social fight was failing a monster would mount an attack on Gethamane and then you guys would have a chance to prove your credentials.

 

[Sherwood]

Just as a side note, Duncan is not a real social kind of guy, and with a Int of 1, neither is Max. A quick glance at Deunan's sheet and I can see that she is not a social build, so unless Blossom is geared to run a one-person game while the rest of us twiddle our thumbs, trying to 'remove the scourge of slavery' is not in our immediate futures.

 

[Lochar]

I'm definitely against doing a solo game for anyone's motivation, even a defining. But it's a fine downtime activity, or something you come at from another perspective (beat every slaver to death, for example). The slavery thing was made an example of because everyone reacted in a similar vein to seeing it.

 

[Lochar]

Also, I've added beer notes into lore now. Heh.