[OOC Thread] [Acrotomo]

Licurgo and Cyl, if you would like to catch up with the convoy, you can do so freely with your next post. Nothing will hinder you as you run to get back with them.


That is not to say that Broken Heron as the spotlight, but I do want you guys asking each other "Hey, what the hell happened to him?!", and we can only do this if everyone is together taking accountability.
 
Thanks H@B, but due to my sloppy stunt description things didn't turn out the way I wanted, I'm extremely disappointed by myself.


I shall sleep over it and see if I can find a way to save BH's ass, otherwise... hey, shit happens.
 
Truly BH has the ridiculous luck of a True Hero.... =P


Elan would be proud. :mrgreen:
 
Xarvh, give me 2 seperate Perception+Awareness rolls. Label them as Number 1 and Number 2.


You have no dots in War, so you have no idea what an After-Action Review is.
 
Roll 1:


Broken Heron rolled the following in his 7 dice:


2, 5, 1, 10, 10, 6, 8


Using 7 as the target number, the roll resulted in 5 successes.


Roll 2:


Broken Heron rolled the following in his 7 dice:


8, 8, 6, 10, 8, 4, 7


Using 7 as the target number, the roll resulted in 6 successes.


I would like to bring to your attention that BH can move his head to look around, and indeed also his torso.


As long as he does not leave his position, he can crouch, dance, wave.
 
Time to have an interpretation discussion then and develop a house rule.


"This Charm fades instantly if the character joins battle or moves (with the Move action, the Dash action or their


narrative and dramatic equivalents.)"


The book states the above. I interpret "Narrative and Dramatic Equivalents" as "Any kind of movement at all". In other words, a Solar using Invisible Statue Spirit (keyword being Statue) must remain motionless in order to continue the charm. I feel that an indefinite, near perfect invisibility under any lighting or situation, would have to have some sort of flaw, and that flaw is the inability to move. The designers intended for it to be a trade-off for an 'Invisibility Spell'.


I open this issue up to discussion, and encourage all players not involved in the Wyld Hill scene to continue moving north while contributing to this houserule / clarification of the rules. I don't want to continue until I have a general consensus among the players.


It's a good opportunity to start talking to eachother (Nkem and Sapph already have) and to actually MEET for the first time without extreme stresses. Maybe.
 
If BH shakes his booty, it is not a Move action.


A Move action is used to change the location of the character, not taunt the enemy, gesticulate, breath, blink, scratch one's ass.


Activating a martial arts Form Charm is an action that is not a Move, Dash, Jump and yet requires movement.


These are Solar Charms and are outrageously powerful.


Please compare with Flawless Pickpocketing Technique, Sagacious Reading of Intent, Iron Skin Concentration, or any Perfect Defense... How do you feel about the ability to fuckin' PARRY an atomic bomb?


Hello!? This is Exalted, not DnD!


Solars are perfect, and have perfect charms.


ISS prevents the user from moving or attacking, and is useless to use it if the enemy can actually see you disappear.
 
Well, the Move and Dash actions do have a specific games rule meanings, which is to change the location of the character. They are also specifically combat options, so the "dramatic or narrative equivalent" could be interpreted as changing location in dramatic time. Also, Invisible Statue Spirit must allow some motion, otherwise the Charm would end with the character's next heart-beat, breath, or eye-blink. Mechanically speaking, the motion limitation is meant to leave a clear flaw in the Charm and to prevent the Solar from abusing his invisibility. Taunting one's enemy is a rather minor abuse, so the game won't break down if it's allowed. Being able to move about to improve one's ability to gather information has a slightly greater impact, but it's still fairly small if you can't move from one specific location.


That said, one must also consider the desired tone of the game. Broken Heron has a certain amount of inherent silliness and bravado, so allowing those sort of actions are perfectly within his established character. However, the tone of the game in general is a bit darker, so there are limits to how much silliness and bravado we're free to engage in, especially when we start bending the fluff presented in the rule-book to accomplish it. The Rule of Cool cuts both ways here. Is it cooler to let the character bend the rules to taunt his opponent, or is it cooler for the game to enforce a certain gritty edge? Is it cooler to for the character to slowly turn his head to follow the commander while he talks, or is it cooler for him to be forced to rely specifically on what he can hear? I think that's going to vary from scene to scene.


Obviously, either way Broken Heron should know how his own Charm works and wouldn't do anything deliberately to violate the protection it affords him.


Perhaps a compromise? Allow it with a successful Temperance roll, so that BH moves slowly enough to avoid breaking the charm (limiting him movements to motion already allowed by the charm, such as the space his chest moves in one breath, etc), or give the enemies a chance to spot him, but make it really, really hard (like, 10 successes hard)?
 
two things, first LM has seen an avalanche before he know the destruction it can bring, his primary fear is that BH was not quick enough (even the greatest of beings cant predict mother nature)


second, I think H@B hit a couple valid points, the charm would undoubtably fail with any outright movement or action, but at the same time it must allow essential movements breathing, blinking. I also want to point out that a statue is designed to stand on a solid unmovable surface, while that may have been the intent I have to agree with Xarvh solars are intended to be perfect, as he is now on a surface that moves up, down, side to side as ones shoulder does when you walk, I would argue that the charm either grounded him to make him unmovable/unshakable or allowed him the freedom to alter his stance in a way that would prevent his location from changing thus ending the charm by default. In this situation, when the stider begins to move, either the charm would bind him in place keeping him from moving until he so chose, or would allow the slight movements needed to keep he footing thus not physically changing his possition. When it comes to any other movement I think it should fall to the storytellers discretion as to whether it breaks the spirit of the charm, an outright taunt would undoubtably clue in the other partys of your location, but I'm sure an approprate stealth/temporance roll would allow a movement such as slowly turning ones head in an attempt to follow a speaker as they move through a crowd.
 
If BH dies, is no big deal, none likes a hero that survives only because the narrator likes him.


But BH surviving my sloppiness and his bravados is not what we discuss now.


The fact that ISS allows gestures or not does not impact how gritty is the story.


Since it would not contradict the manual, the questions to consider are two:


1) Does it make life harder to the ST?


2) Does it impact negatively the kind of story we want to develop and, ultimately, our fun?


If the answer is yes to any of 1) or 2), I'm all for ISS that deactivates if you scratch you ass.


Any other point, is mental masturbation.
 
Haaaaaaaa!


That was awesome!


Let's see, terminal velocity in this game is 25 levels of piercing bashing damage. That has to eat through all of your HLs twice, so a standard heroic mortal can take 14 levels and end up with a L in their Incap box. Can you find a way to soak 10 levels of bashing damage?
 
Let's first try to see if I have enough Essence to dodge all the stuff that they are going to throw after BH.


If I actually get to a point where I have to be concerned about falling damage, I'll be really, really satisfied. =)
 
Xarvh, I won't bother asking for a roll, you'd be rolling 10 die on a dex+athletics roll anyway, so I'd feel rather silly asking for it.


I think I need to review my intended theme for the game in light of the work we have done so far. I've been working on a theme, but I'm seeing this theme as more disruptive to the players' stated intentions than anything else.


Originally, I wanted to depict the darker side of Creation. I wanted feelings of hopelessness, confusion, feelings of being hunted and discriminated. I wanted Creation to be a vile, wicked, bitter place, just like the world we live in today.


To that end, I wanted characters that had their own dark side. I sought players whose characters were… ‘not good people’ in their mortal lives. I wanted to place them in a bleak and uncaring world, present them with the darkness of Creation and its many problems, and see how they react, especially with their newfound Exalted responsibilities.


In order to establish the theme that Creation is not all about bright happy faces and success, I knew that it was not enough to talk about how crappy Creation is. I had to show the players that Creation was crappy. I had to place the Circle in difficult situations, limit their choices, and demonstrate that, no matter what choice they made, it wasn’t perfect. Did I intend to set the Circle up for failure in the first few Acts of this game? Absolutely. There’s no other way to say it. I wanted the beginning of the game to be “Oh wow, this isn’t easy, and not everything we do is perfect. We didn’t accomplish what we wanted to do.â€


This isn’t just my own interpretation. Established canon presents Creation as a massive catastrophe, with destruction, mayhem and corruption seeping in at every angle. I wanted this to hit home with the characters, and to do this, I wanted their goals and actions to end up destroyed and corrupted. This was how I planned to establish my theme of hopelessness and catastrophe.


From the beginning, I did not have the characters that I thought I would have. To be honest, I wanted corruptible humans who had power and inherent responsibility thrust upon them. To my eyes, your characters are good people. Sapphire is the goodly bandit queen, a quintessential Robin Hoodette, and she does it well. Miss Fang cares deeply about her mortal entourage, and became an Architect to preserve the deep secrets of the world for her generation, and future generations. Lost Mountain is a hunter who believes in the independence of people, on strength and self-reliance, and helping other people achieve this. Broken Heron has a clean past as well, and Nkemdilim, though constantly at odds with established leadership all over Creation, is still inherently a good person.


Understanding these characters, I still decided to continue with my plan to present my idea of Creation. I wondered if I could still have Creation be dark, even though the players were not. Could inherently good characters still be affected by the hopelessness of the world? Sure, but not in the way I had originally planned.


I have a problem with the ‘Rule of Cool’. I believe in the ‘Rule of Pain’. I think players should accomplish their goals through effort, trials and tribulation, not through ‘Cool’. But at every god damned turn I am being told that this is wrong, and counterproductive to the intent of Exalted roleplaying. Players join an Exalted game to be awesome, glowing superheroes who succeed, not people with problems who fail.


My problem is that I see Broken Heron's recent actions (catapulting himself off a monster's punch, riding an avalanche, launching a tree for 2 miles onto a hill covered in Wyld Hunt, standing invisible on a Warstrider's shoulder, shooting himself into the air with a super-size powerbow) as outrageous.


But that’s what Exalted is supposed to be, isn’t it? Outrageous and cool. It would seem that my beliefs with regards to Exalted, and this game in particular, are wholly incorrect.


Again, it seems like my work has been disruptive and stifling to the creativity of the players, and this is the last thing I want. I’d like to review the feelings you guys are having, what you want from this game, and the things that you like, because I don’t think I’m meeting those desires.


Help me fix this.
 
Honestly I kinda enjoy the tinge of reality that you have going, yes its an exalted game and we as the solars should be able to do unbelievably cool things, but the fact that to this point its not accomplished much other than keeping us from being killed adds to the flavor of the game for me. In a more perfect world the avalanche would have drowned the mortals and the tree would have shattered the warstrider, leaving us to fight the remaining two, and through sheer force of awesome we would have prevailed, why because we are cool like that. But the fact that things acted more realistically the avalanche played out the trained military side stepped the missile that they clearly saw coming, adds to the fact that we aren't all powerful, we are most assuradly of a deferent standard, but still have short comings. Once in a while a concession has to be made that we are going to do something that is inherently badass beyond all means of measure.


But of course this is just my opinion, and I'm fairly new to the system and dont have many preconcieved notions of what an exalted game should play like.
 
Well, having the conversation about expectations is a good start.


Exalted is a great system that can tell a variety of stories. Telling about how grim and gritty it can get is certainly possible within the setting. I'm certainly interested in that story, and Nkemdilim could easily fit into it. Alaura has a good start on learning it from what happened to her people. Lost Mountain has unresolved issues with Yurgen Kaneko, who is a great person to demonstrate the theme. The loss of Sapphire's man is going to be pretty devastating to her. Broken Heron certainly isn't getting out of this lightly. Which is all a way of saying that the story you're wanting to tell hasn't been ruined yet.


I think it would be good to establish how dark do you want this to be. I mean, you could have killed off all of Alaura's people when the Deathlord escaped. And killing off Broken Heron would have been...troublesome, to say the least. Killing a main character early in the story can be quite effective, but can also destroy the...actually, I don't know the word, but it can be difficult to pull off well, and that goes doubly when it's a player character since that player is heavily invested in the character.


Another good question to ask at this point is how dark each of us is willing to experience. I don't think character death is acceptable to any of us, at least not so early..although if you'd floated the idea to me at the beginning, I'd have been willing to go along with it--I'd have made a character to twist his teammates guts when he died. :-D. I'm willing to let Nkemdilim be manipulated and abused, even by the object of his faith. I'm willing to have Nkemdilim commit horrible acts for the "greater good". I'm willing that what Nkemdilim considers to be the greater good to not be. Hmm...I'm willing for his dependents to be killed while he's helpless to stop it...I'm willing to have them killed when he tries his best to stop it and still fails. I'd prefer you to avoid rape, and torture bothers me too (which is a bit odd...perhaps it's because when someone dies, their suffering is over...not sure I can deal with another character's pain like that, too stressful and hits a bit too close to home). So, I guess any trauma up to assault, illness, or kidnapping, or anything else which would hurt a person for a time but which they could be expected to recover from, and if you want to hurt a dependent more than that please skip right to killing them. I'm okay with Nkemdilim being tortured, but not raped. Let's see...did I miss anything?


In the end, though, nobody wants to experience suffering, even in a role-playing game. They tend to fight against it with everything they've got. And when they're Exalted, that's an awful lot they can bring to the fight. So, we'll play your game...just don't expect us to go down easy. **sly grin**
 
Okay so... your problem here is that you didn't talk to us about the "crappy" side of the game and how non heroic you wanted our characters to be.


We were told we would be playing exalts, we built people built for greatness and awesomeness, not mortals recently given super powers...


I think that's the first mistake. We knew we were going to go for young exalts, but still... exalts.


While I do agree with you that Creation is barely holding it together, and the people should rather be depressed except for a happy few... that's the theme of the game, drama is everywhere, heroes are needed, the night is darker just before the dawn... and you're playing in this moment being the incarnated first rays of light piercing through the darkness bringing back hope to people...


But you can also play it "rough" and get rid of the vanilla aspect of things, and do mortals with a knack for survival, self preservation and selfishness... but it's harder to run a game this way because... basically nothing will hold the circle together... the members going their separate ways have better chances to survive than if they move as a pack... live happy live hidden... unless they're chasing something not heroic, like fortune, fame, vendetta or power, in which case, they may choose to associate because they'll get to their objectives quicker together than alone.


What you've done with this first chapter pushes us to be even more heroic and selfless than you wanted us to be... I mean we've just accidentally freed a damn deathlord... with our personalities there's no way we're going to say "oh well, that went bad, now, shall we try to ruin the Guild and bathe ourselves in jade ?!"...


Now there are plenty of ways to change this. First being... talking to us about it... that you did.


I can only speak for myself so I shall. Alaura is typically the worst character you could have had in this kind of game, someone caring about others and going after the greater good. She'd be a mortal, she'd be no problem... now she has powers and can summon help... she has the power to make a better world, and she will never give up, even if people die around her.


While I like her very much the way she is, if she doesn't fit your game, I can go for a reroll in which case I happen to have a really nice concept based on the last Prince of Persia (I just finished yesterday)... also Tomb Raider, smooth talker, but definitely not taking any responsability beyond what's necessary for him to be happy and live on...


The game has just started so I have no problem in changing things to get along better with the master plan... however, I don't think your approach (starting in an isolated location, with no one and no drama around but just us, creating accidentally a cosmic mess), was pertinent considering the themes you wanted to focus on.


Now on the other hand, you have many many huge qualities as a storyteller, and I think we all got pretty hooked up on your way of telling the story... which means you're not doing it totally wrong :mrgreen:


My rule as a player is: the ST calls the shots and the player decides if he's stays or not.


The ST wants to change directions ?! either I stay because I like where he wants to go, either I drop out because I'm not interested.


This is mainly because I don't believe beating something out of someone will result in this someone's excellency.


Wether we continue on this heroic feel we have going on, or we move to a darker place, I'm with you either way because you obviously know how to make the setting coherent, realistic / believable, deep and adult, as well as interesting.
 
I must respectfully disagree about the rays of light. You can tell very dark stories about heroes, even heroes who genuinely desire to do good. Look at Watchmen (ooh, if we're doing Watchmen, I call dibs on Rorschach!). Sure, we're going to struggle to make the world right again, but that's no guarantee we succeed. You can do some very interesting stories in that vein. I think Alaura is a great character for this, because this is going to be a huge test for her. Does her light burn brightly, or does it get snuffed out by the darkness? That is a very interesting story, and I'd like to see it told. And yeah, you're probably confident that Alaura will stand the test. But then, so did Peter...


I just wanted to add, I trust you Aurethius. I think you've got a great story going here, and even if you rough my character up I trust you to tell a great tale doing it. Whichever way you go, I'm sticking with it.
 
Uh, I didn't say that we were necessarily the rays of lights, but it's one of the possible focus of the game.


Plus Rorschach's no hero, he's just a fricking sociopath who, depressed by human monstruosity, decided to restore balance in his world and be the vengeful arm of his concept of Justice... that dude is very honorable, has great virtues and morals, and sticks to them... but he's also very very deranged and absolutely not heroic. He's not doing good deeds because he thinks good will come out of it, he's just being a monster killing monsters, because that's the only way he can take living in this world which to me explains his last decision in the book or the movie (not spoiling anything ! 8) )


Alaura's been built to spread good and better the world. That's the point of this character. She knows she won't probably fix anything on her own, she knows she will fail many times, until she's powerful enough to stop bad things from happening to good people, and she's walking this path conscious of the harsh realities.


If bad things happen on the way, that's just life, people die every day, and you can't do much for a child who's starving to death if he's miles away from you... but her motivation is to reach sufficient power and influence so that one day, she won't have to worry about anyone being hungry anymore.


In that, she's not really fit for a darker game, because she will stop at nothing to help others, and can summon help to do so if she can't do much on her own.


The dark side of things will not affect her... because she will inevitably bring hope and care... unless obviously close friends start dying, in which case, she will be very sad and depressed that she failed to protect them, learn her lesson, and keep a court of 10+ summoned elementals at all times around her and the ones she loves, realizing she can't never protect them on her own.
 
To be clear: this is how I play someone with both high compassioin and conviction... yeah sure, shit happens and you can't fix everything every time, doesn't mean you have to stop trying to save the world, even if you fail many times, as long as you breathe, you'll keep trying, because you believe it's the right thing to do.
 
So, Alaura is Ozymandius, then? ;-) Or perhaps a more fitting comparison, given the court of summoned elementals, would be Superman in Red Son? Protective instincts do have their own dark side...


I'm just saying, a character like you described does not have to be the death of a dark game. How such a character responds to the darkness around her is just as interesting as how a flawed character responds to that same darkness. So, you know, you don't have to throw out the character immediately. It could work out for the betterment of the game.
 
I don't want to make any abrupt reversals, and I don't want any characters to change. I want to second-guess myself openly and ensure that I'm making the slight shifts that I need to make. Thank you H@B, Cyl and Licurgo for your thoughts on this. I'll keep on doing what I'm doing, just remember to be open with me on your feelings.
 
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