Sidereal oddness

[Jakk Bey]

I was under the impression, that Essence weilders, by their use of Essence, could alter Fate--and that their interactions with Mortals could change their Fate--but not just from an overt action, such as a Solar putting the whammy on a slaver, but much more subtle ramifications.


Solar A uses Sorcery to get from Point A to Point B. Whirlwind of dust and off she goes.  She lands outside an apple orchard, where she speaks to a Mortal, who tells of the illness of her children. The Solar suggests a remedy, and how to prepare it, and details on how to prevent further attacks.  The Solar doesn't heal the child, but makes a suggestion, and the Mortal follows it.


According to those in charge of Fate, the little girl was to die, and the mother to languish for years of remorse, eventually killing herself.  All tidy and good. Another tale of caution for offering the appropriate sacrifices, which is why the girl got sick in the first place, because the local River Spirit is a bitchy little shit who just wasn't happy with the apples offered to it.


But, our Solar has changed the equation. Now, things are very untidy.  The use of Sorcery wasn't forseen. The actions of the mother weren't accounted for. The child doesn't die on cue, the bitchy River Spirit is still going to complain, and now about the interference with its worship further by a nosey Exalt.  Not just an expenditure of Essence, but the Solar impacted a Mortal in a way that the Rolls of Heaven didn't forsee--and that's a problem.  


It's not just the raw use of Essence, but the unpredictable nature of the fallout from Essence users' actions after they wind up places that they're not supposed to be--which means someone wasn't keeping track of things to either keep things clean, or someone is really using power up, and the ripples of their actions keep spreading, not just affecting their own Fate, but those they come into contact as well.

 

[Persell]

My impression was that anyone can go against their fate; Essence wielders can just do it far more effectively.

I had the opposite impression. Non-Essence users are basically playing out a pre-determined drama, and have no actual free-will.

...then I really don't want to ever play in a game you run. ::grins:: No reflection on you, but I see fate rather differently. RSB already said it, so I'm going to yoink her words.


::rummages around for quote::

Fate is just causality. It's just the rules Creation has for determining what happens next.
That's all.


There's no river. There's no force. There's just a bunch of gods saying, "If this happens, do this. If that happens, do that to keep it on course. If *that* happens, do *that* to keep it on course." And the spiders set target numbers or adjust dice pools by a little bit. Because they can.


The purpose of all this? To keep *two different things from happening next*. To make sure that you don't swing your sword at someone and both hit and not hit them. With consequences for each.


That's pretty much it. If something is fated to happen, it means that looking at how you act (generally) in your life, you're going to wind up there. Normally, if the farmer is going to move, then that's his fate. If he's not going to move, then *not* moving is his fate. If a Sidereal tries to push him into staying, and he moves anyway, that's pretty much his fate. The pattern spiders know how stubborn the farmer is. If they didn't, then when he breaks with his fate and moves, the pattern spiders won't know, and they'll keep on weaving him in the old place. Everyone will interact with him in the old village while *he* goes off somewhere else, and then fate's screwed up, because the pattern spiders aren't strong enough to *stop* him from interacting with people elsewhere.


This doesn't mean that the Sidereal predictions are always right. On the other hand, please remember that the pattern spiders being pretty good judges of character is why the world doesn't explode.


If your fate is to meet your doom in Gem, then part of what that means is that you're going to go there voluntarily. Not because you're forced to by the power of fate. But because, when the pattern spiders look at the Storyteller's notes and your known character motivation, it seems pretty likely that that's where you're going to end up. And if you don't, well, enh. "Departmental vision changes and meddling of creatures outside of fate."


Thinking of fate as something you fight is silly. You can't fight it because that doesn't make sense. You change your fate the same way you do anything else in the game---by taking action to ensure that the things you want to have happen happen, and that the things you don't want to have happen, don't.


...


In short: planning fate is not so much steering the world around like a bunch of puppets, as herding cats through an obstacle course inside a freight train with no brakes. With a supercomputer and a bunch of muppets giving you helpful advice.

From here.


Your vision of how fate works may vary, but I personally find this much more palatable than saying to the player of a heroic mortal, "Sorry, this Dragon-Blooded tyrant you're trying to take down is fated not to be taken down, and you don't wield Essence, so you can't. In fact, you're fated to walk up to him, fall down at his feet and lick his boots, so your character does that." If the character is fated to fall down and lick the DB's boots, it'll be either because he wants to, or because he is made to want to.


The way I see it, whatever plays out in the game - that is what was fated to happen. Sidereals just have a couple other ways of affecting what plays out, some of which involve asking favors from epically pissy bureaucratic underling fate-weaver spirits. Who don't like some uppity Sidereal telling them how to do their job.


Jakk Bey - the situation you're describing is more the way I would play out a being who is outside of fate, rather than a being who is subject to fate bending it. If a Solar is fated to be slain by his firstborn son, circumventing that fate shouldn't be as easy as using Fire and Stones Strike when you slice the sprog in half with your daiklave. If you do that, it'll probably be his ghost that kills you. Or that wasn't actually your firstborn because you had a bastard when you were thirteen. Or something. I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to circumvent it, but it shouldn't be that easy.

 

[Flagg]

No reflection on you, but I see fate rather differently. RSB already said it, so I'm going to yoink her words.

First off, don't rely on RSB for anything that's supposed to make logical sense, or is otherwhise outside of the realm of whimsy. At the very least, don't expect a lot of the people around here to put much stock into her writings.

Not because you're forced to by the power of fate. But because, when the pattern spiders look at the Storyteller's notes and your known character motivation, it seems pretty likely that that's where you're going to end up. And if you don't, well, enh. "Departmental vision changes and meddling of creatures outside of fate."

See? This is nonsensical babble. She's not presenting a logical argument for how Fate works in any metaphysical sense, she's just spewing "it's this way because I say so"-type garbage. Her little rant also doesn't mesh very well with what's been published in canon.

Your vision of how fate works may vary, but I personally find this much more palatable than saying to the player of a heroic mortal, "Sorry, this Dragon-Blooded tyrant you're trying to take down is fated not to be taken down, and you don't wield Essence, so you can't. In fact, you're fated to walk up to him, fall down at his feet and lick his boots, so your character does that."

I don't see a reasonable situation in which the characters would even have access to this information. It's somewhat of a non-issue anyway, since you, as the ST, have complete say over what is and is not fated to happen. Sending a group of mortals on a quest that you've decided is fated to fail is somewhat pointless. The easy solution is not to do that.


But I thought we were talking about how Fate works in Exalted, not about how a ST decides what IS fated? You kind of changed the argument midstream.


As far as I can see, everything in canon supports that, within the in-game context of Exalted, mortals are bound inexorably to their Fate. Essence usage can change their Fate, but they cannot do it themselves.


Considering that there are thousands, if not MILLIONS of Essence users stomping around creating little eddies of disruption on the Loom, I'm sure mortal Fates get changed around quite often. This is most likely why the Celestial Bureaucracy doesn't want gods interacting with mortals -- it fuckes up the Loom too much.


-S

 

[Jakk Bey]

Kurulham--If you're going to pull the "Your Son Shall Slay Thee" card, then the sprog, as you so aptly put it, had better be bringing something a bit better than just a dagger, and the plot had better be something that a simple sword stroke can take care of--because if that's how your games roll, there's some problems.


Fate is a fancy way of saying, "What the ST wants."  Plain and simple.  It's even made as a game mechanic, when a Sidereal can duck an event.  


How you play Fate is up to you, but I prefer to think of Fate is an unfolding of events that have been foretold--but Exalts, and critters Outside Fate can alter those expectations. Dragon Bloods, not that powerful, can warp Fate a little bit--they don't have access to Solar Sorcery, their Charms aren't all that powerful, and their lives are pretty dang short compared to the others.


Lunars, aren't as concerned with breaking out of their expected roles. They got their noses to the grindstone, having watched their lovers and companions get theirs snapped off.  Learned them a bit.


Sidereals get smacked around for messing with Fate--because it's their job to keep things running smoothly.  By smoothly, I mean that Heaven just wants things to be quiet so they can keep on with the GoD, and not worry too much.


Solars busting loose mess things up. They have powerful Essence, Fate shattering Charms--people who were supposed to die, and inspire a whole raft of events get screwed up because they get saved. Others, who were supposed to inspire fear and obedience get skewered, and that messes with the easy flow.  It's annoying, because the Solars are part of Fate, part of the Creation, but their duties as managerial staff give them some priveleges to make some changes.


Demons, the Restless Dead, and Fae, aren't a part of the Creation, and their actions REALLY screw with how the Pattern Spiders weave things in the Web of Fate, because they don't even recognize the critters as supposed to be exisiting.  


Fate is how things are supposed to unfold--that doesn't mean that folks can't make choices that differ from the outcome that was woven into the plan--it just means that something happened, somewhere, that wasn't accounted for.  Maybe a farmer spoke to a Solar, just in passing, because that Solar diverted his course after dealing with a Fae Prince or a Demon, or just because of whimsey, and gets it into his head to do something different. The sun is shining, the nice man with the splendid smile stirred his heart, and for ONCE he's NOT going to the well to draw water, he's going to smoke his damn pipe and enjoy the sunrise.


Of course, if he's normally rolling down to the well, bright and early, and a bough breaks off, and would have killed him if he was there, he has had his Fate broken.  In part by the action of th Neverborn, or the Solar for blowing his wad on a Whirlwind ride to get the dust off, or just because the old man is inspired by simple words from a stranger who has stirred within him a desire to change his habits, maybe yearn for more.


You could ascribe his NOT being killed as the effect of something else affecting him, or just his own brush with greatness--he has broken from the usual, and thus, snaps the threads that would have bound him to be by the well when the bough broke.  PC affecs NPC, and ST must now deal with the idea that the peasant may NOT be killed, and be found convienently by the PC's later on--instead, it makes more dramatic sense to let the old man live, and find a new plot device.


Fate is a mechanic to pull out when you want to invoke ST privilege, or for PC's to claim privilege over-ruling the normal run of events, like Duck Fate.  Or invoking that Pefect Defense.  Or the player making an impassioned speech that melts the heart of his murderous progeny who blames the Solar for the death of his mother, and the poisoned words that the Dragon Bloods have whispered in his ears melt away with the love of a father.  Fate is a convient way of saying, "This is the way that I envisioned this happening" as an ST, and using it as a plot hook to further a tale.

 

[Persell]

Wow. ::sighs:: All right, I guess we just have very different concepts of what this whole fate thing actually is. Perhaps I see something in the passage I quoted that you don't, or perhaps I'm completely deluded, but it makes perfect sense to me. ::shrugs::


I'm going to bow out of this one as I seem to be having great difficulty making myself clear. Sorry for muddling things!

 

[Jakk Bey]

I can see the point you're attempting to make, I just don't agree with it--in part because you're quoting R.B., and while I don't share the distaste that some of our other members have for some of her work, she is sometimes a bit taken with purple prose--and coming from me that's saying something.


In game, Fate is just a mechanic.  It does come down to the player's decisions--that's what RPG's are all about, in the end: decisions. Good. Bad. Indifferent. Fate is whatever the ST makes of it--because we are playing a game.  Getting metaphysical about a game mechanic is kind of goofy, but in gameplay, Fate is way of telling folks that their decisions have some importance, especially in some events that the ST would like to highlight.


The thing of it is, Fate is highlighted as a mechanic in Exalted, thus it has some importance to characters. Not the players--who are in full possession of their faculties, and rely on random number generators for the completion of tasks.  When you invoke the capital 'F' of Fate, you're telling the players something about their characters--or characters that they are close to.  


The ST can use Fate as a device to further a story--to tell players that something big or important is going to occur.  Much like you use the idea of paradox in a time travel game.  It's a device that the ST has in their pocket, and WW just gave the ST AND the players access to it--which is darned nice of them, if you ask me. Trying to downplay the device robs it of significance, especially in regards to the characters.  Not the players, the characters.

 

[wordman]

My impression was that anyone can go against their fate; Essence wielders can just do it far more effectively.

I had the opposite impression. Non-Essence users are basically playing out a pre-determined drama, and have no actual free-will.

...then I really don't want to ever play in a game you run. ::grins::

I think Stillborn is correct on this one. Well, almost. Mortals are slaves to fate by design, but they do have one out: convince Essence users to act for them. In other words: prayer.


Most mortals are constantly making offerings to gods. Why? Because in the metaphysics of exalted, this is their only recourse to changing their fate.

 

[Persell]

Most mortals are constantly making offerings to gods. Why? Because in the metaphysics of exalted, this is their only recourse to changing their fate.

Oooh, interesting...