The Personal Artifacts of Walker in Darkness?

The players have over 250 xp now, they still aren't movers and shakers on a global level.


The game was written for heroic epics, but if you read the storyteller chapters, it does not say that the characters are the only powerful people. Far from all DB's are as powerful as the player characters, but there are many who are more powerful as well.


And you are just ridiculing yourself by using the "fetch a paper" example. You mean that you never use powerful NPC's who have their own agendas, sending PC's on missions for hidden reasons? It's in every adventure with someone "hiring" the PCs or sending them on a mission.  You know quite well that my campaign doesn't involve paper fetching, and your reasoning using that just shows that you don't want to understand a different way of looking at the game, or that you just want to argue.


And, some NPCs out there get as much XP as the player characters. If a Solar is out, doing adventures and rescuing mortals from demons and stuff, he won't get 10 exp per year. That would suggest that OBJECTIVELY, the characters are something special in the world. They aren't, they don't have destiny 5 or some explanation why they are in essence better and more important than other solars / DBs etc.


Sesus Nagezzer might not get so much xp, because he's rather passive. He isn't out adventuring. My players have gotten around 230 xp over 1 year of in-game time, but they are experiencing a whole lot of things in the game, and learning things with every session. That yields xp. Just sitting on your ass does not give much exp.


But, there are NPCs in the campaign who are getting just slightly less xp, because that's realistic. If they don't, my players will feel like the world isn't realistic, that it doesn't make sense. Why can two groups of DB's do a bunch of heroics, but one group doesn't learn anything and the other does, for their CHARACTERS point of view? The characters would start wondering "Are we something special? Why are we learning things so damn fast that takes people ten years of meditation to learn?" and it would feel stupid. The players are just playing characters, important and involved in enormous events in the world, but they are just Dragon Blooded.


It says how much xp you get when you have downtime for NPC's or just when they aren't doing anything. I'm treating all NPCs as realistic individuals existing in the same world with nearly the same rules, they can stunt etc ( if they are exalted or heroic mortals ) etc. It gives us a sense of a world that -works-


And yes, it gives us a better game from what we want out of it. Epic stories that make sense.
 
It also makes it a favorite moment of every session, when the players get written and printed letters from their contacts and allies around the realm, telling them the latest news from their parts of the world, and the latest things that happened in the realm. This way, the players can sit with maps, watching different armies move about from their reports from the legions, track just how many votes each agenda has in the deliberative, see how the political factions change in the Greater Chamber, etc etc. And they can react on things far far away that aren't part of their current mission, but that their characters are interested in, because there are powerful players out there who are making actions of their own. The empire is moving around them, and they are part of it.
 
Also, I rather use the Sesus Nagezzer written by people who know what they are talking about, aka 1st edition aspect book:


Essence 4


24 charms


36 backgrounds


Half-decent skills and stats.


That's a whole lot more realistic for how he is portrayed in the game and the things he's up to.
 
It pleases me that I've sparked such discussion over the nature of Storytelling.  I definitely have enjoyed reading both sides.


Having said that; I'm definitely with Zaramis on this one.


I like realism and even in a game of high fantasy, the characters can be central and even quite powerful but not change the entire world.


A good example from anime is Samurai Champloo.  The two main swordsmen take out just about everybody but it's always a fight and they're not ruling Japan.  They're not fighting Nobunaga or anything like that, but they're certainly quite powerful, dangerous, and deep.  They get hurt and they get hungry.  They fail and they lose their temper and they become wiser with each mistake they make.


Give me a story like that over DBZ, Hellsing, or any other sh!tty anime where the characters are always pushing planets around or destroying civilizations and have absolutely ZERO character development.  


And my "DL Lovin' Heart" is capitalized, thank you.


It's not really that I love them so much as I recognize the importance of beings more powerful than the characters.  In my games, it's frequently filled with the characters tip-toeing around greater beings, whether enemy or ally.  It might be somewhat masturbatory, but my NPCs are never collections of dots.  Ever.  (If you understand what I mean.)
 
Ah, Zaramis of the shifting thesis is back again. You skillfully shifted from not-powerful and unimportant to powerful and important in their own story. Congratulations :P I suggest you invest some time into learning how to lead a discussion. Changing your theory all the time without first announcing "hey sorry, I was wrong." is a tad childish. I'll answer you anyway, but for the sake of the arguement, just don't do it every post now, ok?


Yes, my player character's never do the bidding of some uber-powerful NPC for some "hidden reasons". They do not get sent on missions, they have motivations.


That being said, you brought the newspaper fetching in here not me. Well perhaps I did it literally but you brought it in thematically. It is just ridiculous that a 250 xp Exalt is running around doing other people's work.


Furthermore, yes, the player characters are objectively the fastest advancing exalts in the game, and no, joe-NPC doesn't get more than 10 XP per year in canon. Why? Because they PCs are MEANT to square off against the "biggest and baddest" enemies around. They are meant to turn the tides, they are not meant to watch someone else doing so. Like I said, read some designer posts. Those are not all second edition either, which seems to be one of your favourite gripes. Which is, like we all already had, bullshit.


Oh, and the two swordsmen from Samurai Champloo are a prime example of excellent player characters. They do not have to do the bidding of some hidden overly powerful NPC. They help this girl, they could abandon her any time, and they do a few times. They always come back, because their "heart" tells them to do so. They never hear any stories of those other swordsmen ruling japan and saving the world by now and in the end they kill all those "uber-powerful" bad guys. It is a perfect example of what I am explaining.


@Gustav: I didn't write anywhere, that my NPC are just a couple of dots and I neither wrote that my PC aber uber-powerful. I suggest you acquire some reading comprehension. You, too, are mixing up powerful and important.
 
I didn't change a single thing in how I want things done in my campaign, neither did I start with personal attacks. If you want to learn how to lead a discussion, that's one of the first and most important points. Don't attack the person, attack the things he's saying.


And again, you obviously read what you want into what I type, not what I intend the message to be, like others seem to have. Exalted is not written as "the players are intended to square off against the biggest and the baddest", that's one of the many play-styles of the game.


Want me to quote the Storyteller chapter of the Dragon-Blooded book, or the Core book for you? It seems you like you need some refreshing on a game that can be played in as many ways as there are storytellers. The game itself specifies that you can even focus on a region, and if you read the 1st Edition DB book, you can even run a boarding school chronicle that never leads beyond graduating! The book specifies just how important family, face and superiors are. Dragon-Blooded PC's are defined by their surroundings, their houses, and, in the end, their superiors.


I don't find anything strange with 250 xp exalts running around doing the bidding of others, since they are still young. In my campaign, knowledge and insight as well as backgrounds and political experience is a lot more important than just xp. Just like in the real world. You can be a multi-talented supergenius in RL without being near where things are done for real. But, they are slowly getting there. They are characters in a setting, as are all the NPCs. They are important in their story, but not necessarily the most important characters in the bigger story. Just like I stated in my early posts.


My point remains, and it has not changed. They started as not-powerful and unimportant, and many of my other Exalted campaigns have characters that are unimportant and not  powerful. The PLAYERS are still important, but the characters aren't. Example: My skullstone chronicle, where my players play a group of heroic mortals ( A necrosurgeon, a priest of the Silver Prince, a captain of a ship and a diplomat ). They don't get very many xp, they don't do so fancy stuff, they are goons. Still, the players are just as important as if they had played 900 xp solars, but their characters are goons and are playing within a larger setting.
 
On another note, since my players have read the discussion here and reached the same conclusion as I have, and I'm sure everyone but Safim has understood just what I mean and quite a few people agree, I will leave the discussion here.


Safim, you, Sir, are an idiot. ( Edit: I apologize to the rest of the forums, and to Safim, for making a personal attack. It goes against my idea of forums and what they are for. I would remove it now, a minute or two after I wrote it, but I decide to let it stand to show just how stupid this discussion got in the end, when It made me write something like this. )


There, I said it. I've been struggling to keep myself from personal attacks all through out this and a dozen other threads, but I can't contain it any longer. You constantly read what you want to read into my posts instead of the intended meaning. Bad form, and that you continue to use derogatory language in attacking my position. Also bad form. The only conclusion I can draw is that when your arguments and possibly intelligence aren't quite up to the task, you pull out some stupid argument and toss at me instead, a mile off what I meant, and have me defend it in a long post. It's stupid, rude and by now, this entire discussion isn't interesting for anyone. Certainly not for the rest of the people on Patternspider, who long since understood what we both meant.


If anyone -else- have some interesting input on the discussion, feel free to comment. Other than that, I wish there was an ignore function on these forums.. *goes to look for one*
 
Safim said:
Oh, and the two swordsmen from Samurai Champloo are a prime example of excellent player characters. They do not have to do the bidding of some hidden overly powerful NPC. They help this girl, they could abandon her any time, and they do a few times. They always come back, because their "heart" tells them to do so. They never hear any stories of those other swordsmen ruling japan and saving the world by now and in the end they kill all those "uber-powerful" bad guys. It is a perfect example of what I am explaining.
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Ah, the old "you're taking crazy pills" approach where you mirror someone's discussion and point out that their point is actually your point, even when all reason fly in the face of that claim.


The example I drew was realism and scaling down of power and importance simultaneously.  The Samurai Champloo are examples of success against enemies with lots of work, not breezing past them.  Your argument is that they win simply because the writer chose for the characters to be presented with situations where they always were triumphant.  The example falls apart at this point since we are not intimately familiar with the author's views on the subject, therefore it's moot.

Safim said:
It is just ridiculous that a 250 xp Exalt is running around doing other people's work.
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Ad hominem attack on him for disagreeing with you.  Nice.  It's okay to accidentally rub off beings more powerful than you, but structuring a plot in a way where the characters aren't the major players of the world is "ridiculous."  

Safim said:
@Gustav: I didn't write anywhere, that my NPC are just a couple of dots and I neither wrote that my PC aber uber-powerful. I suggest you acquire some reading comprehension. You, too, are mixing up powerful and important.
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Safim, my comment wasn't specifically directed at you, which is surprising  since the entire world revolves around you and your opinions.  I was just pointing out that it's valid criticism to say that having really powerful NPCs around the characters can lead to Storyteller masturbation; I take steps to avoid that.  I have no worries at all about your characters being too powerful if you consider 250 xp to be "world changing."


Zaramis, don't feel bad for making personal attacks.  This paragraph-fearing, diction-lacking, self-inflated air-bag is happy to step up and show us his red, rosy baboon behind for daring to disagree with his intellectual largess.
 
Can I please have wordman back? His insults have style at least.


@Zaramis:


Yes, you shifted your point constantly. You started with my players do some unimportant and irrelevant work for other much more important characters. And you stated that they enjoy it that way. Then you were pointed out that this seems rather boring and all of a sudden your characters have their own agendas full of... stuff. That is a shift of your point. First your characters were some other guy's goons, then they were all of a sudden all important. Go back, read vanman's post if you did not like my reaction to your first post. If you wanted to say from the beginning on, that your characters are very important and "movers and shakers", then you missed the part where you should have said "right, I worded that poorly, of course my characters are not some other guy's lackeys, instead they do these and these "cool" things". Yet, I can't find that. You still insist that your player characters run around doing "largely unimportant" things. I still can't imagine that largely unimportant things are exciting. Oh and what you seem to constantly ignore is, that I wrote that you of course can play any way you want. I never said you have to play that way, I just pointed out that the system was written with a different playstyle in mind and I even asked you how you changed your NPC to match that.


Ah, speaking of NPC, please stop claiming that you know some freelancer who writes for whitewolf and constantly try to bring him into the discussion with the "oh so grand aspect books" nobody cares who you know and surely some freelancer does not want you loudmouthing with his name. Lets not end this again in some pathetic apologies from your side over PNs, ok? The last ones made me feel bad enough.


Speaking of desginers. I know you despise the second edition staff, that is fine you are entitled to that, but they are the guys who write the second edition, their systems set the mood. If you play differently, fine, we covered that already, but don't go all whiney when other people do not do the same.


About those "personal attacks". Not every time someone says you are incapable of doing something is a personal attack. Sometimes, like mine, it is just stating a fact. There are many other examples. Like for example you claiming that I can't argue. You run out of points, so you make some false claims. But I think you knew that already. Apart from that, I might be grumpy, but I do realize when I am wrong and I don't childishly disagree with the same people again and again just so because I disagreed with them before.


@Gustav:


No, your point was "the characters are the central protagonists of the stories, besides they are not the most important persons in the world" and I said, yes that is my point. Because it is my point. I never said characters are the most important persons in the world, powerwise, how could they anyway? They are the most important persons storywise. Mugen and Jin are more important to samurai champloo than the emperor. Despite the obvious difference in importance for the rest of japan is the emperor relatively unimportant to the story of samurai champloo. When you go back over my posts, you will see that, I am sure of that.


About the personal attacks. Expect to be ridiculed when you say ridiculous things. Anyone who lets 250xp Exalts run around and do something as zaramis put it that nicely "largely unimportant and irrelevant" is doing something ridiculous.


And for the record, I still haven't called anyone an idiot only called out obvious lack of some abilities. There doesn't even come any kind of judgement with that.
 
Block of text crits Zaramis for a gazillion. Zaramis dies.


Sorry, you just proved it far better than I could. Not that you will understand it better this time, but here it is, again, in a shorter and more easily comprehended form:


When Vanman commented, I had been talking about Exalted in general. Read the posts again. Reading comprehension is not your strongest side, I understand that, and you prove ( again ) that you read what you want, not what I actually type. My point still stands - it's fun to play as goons, and I think more people should play as goons. I still think that, if anyone else had their conceptions a little mixed up. The characters in my campaign are still doing largely unimportant things, such as protecting a satrapy from raiders or doing their house's bidding. Not fetching papers, but still, small things on the global scope of things.


( A hint for the future: If it's in the storyteller chapter, then obviously the game was intended to be played that way. Read SECOND EDITION Dragon Blooded book, page 218 to the end of the same chapter. Hmm, gee, it seems that the wrong way of playing the game is the same as the right way of playing the game. But then, you fail at reading plain text, so I didn't expect you to understand that either. )
 
Fun stuff: There's even a part of the 2nd Ed DB Storytelling chapter that discusses being a nobody in the greater scheme of things, the "Come Here, My Son" idea on page 227.


It's almost exactly the method I used for my campaign long before 2nd ed. appeared, and it's been one working well.
 
Internet forums, gotta love them. Too many insults have been thrown or alluded to that this would lead anywhere. I know what a moron you are, you know what a moron I am with so wildly different ideas of how to have a civil conversation or run a game of Exalted.


And I'm also pretty sure that if we had actually been talking to each other and not interpreting posts after the mood we're in or after what we most like to see and reply to, this would have been fairly undramatic and settled with a "I suppose we think different then," and that would have been it.


But then, not having the last word is unacceptable for both of us, it seems. :D
 
Neither Zaramis nor I have claimed that the characters aren't the most important part of the story, just that they're not only not the most bad-ass and toughest mugs out there but that they aren't the only people in the world who have anything interesting happening to them.  


You were and still are unable to address any of my concerns addressed at the OP.  I don't disagree with your comments, per se, I just think you're picking a fight with two people who have a different take on the same game that is no more or less correct than your take.  And I have to call you out on that and make fun of you for it.

Anyone who lets 250xp Exalts run around and do something as zaramis put it that nicely "largely unimportant and irrelevant" is doing something ridiculous.
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250xp is nothin'.  And if those people are changing the world...  well, D&D called and said its level 7 characters are taking over.  And the version of the Bull of the North in 1st ed Dawn has conquered the North...  while personally killing the Lover and the Bishop.


You pointing out "incapability" and calling someone's story "ridiculous" goes hand in hand with your personal judgment, which I, and anyone else here with any ST experience, would be well served to question.  Besides, are you in his game?  Why do you care if his characters enjoy it, which they apparently do?  You're passing judgment again.  And again.
 
I was always argueing with the default exalted setting in mind. It is written the way I said, of course, a lot of storytellers' ideas might be different, those might even be represented in various storyteller chapters in the fatsplats. Yet, you can't just come here, say "hey I run this variation of the game, your idea does not work in this variation and therefore it is dumb" which basically, you did, zaramis. You called his idea dumb. He was just running the default setting, where it is entirely possible, that the secret weakness of a deathlord is a first age artifact his soul is tied to, because it represents his greatest struggle in the servise of the sun. Calling it dumb, because you play variant c from page 2xx of the dragon blooded book is like saying, "driving 200 km/h is dumb, because I prefer Offroaders and driving through muddy terrain with them". It makes no sense.


You nicely avoided the point with your "connections", too. Perhaps I missed your elaborate answer though, I have problems understanding plain text.


@Gustav:


Funny, you were the furst to call judgement based on what did you say "aesthetics". You are not even in his game, why do you care? His players seem to enjoy it, otherwise they would hardly play with him. There was no need to attack the OP, he used the game as written, with a little optional thing of deathlord weaknesses you do not like. So, what?


Oh, and one more thing to add to samurai champloo. Jin beats the best swordsman of the time in the last episode and mugen beats a chinese/japanese martial arts master. They are the toughest mofos in the anime and probably on the whole world, that they have to eat from time to time, does not change that. If you wanted to support zaramis point, you should really have chosen another anime.


Oh, and for the record, you might call it shitty, I like hellsing, it has a superb soundtrack and alucard is just gross, in a fun way.


Both of you seem to be passive/aggressive whenever someone proves you wrong and both of you take it personal when their opinion gets questioned and proven wrong.
 
I still think the idea is dumb, because it isn't epic enough for me to do the DL's justice. That's a pretty simple reason.


And at least I have some distance to my internet arguing ;)
 
Then why the two page discussion on how a ST should focus his game? Neither of you are going to compromise or agree with the other, so both of you should just drop it and let Heaven's Thunder Hammer get an answer to his question.
 
I certainly didn't attack the OP.  He submitted his ideas to a public forum for questions and I asked him about some apparent plot holes.  I'd still love to hear his response.  Your response was basically "Shut up, Gustav.  He can tell a story however he wants."  Which, to a point, is true, but that doesn't mean a few questions won't make his story stronger.  If I had a good outlet for critique of my ideas, I'd use it.


Hellsing had great fight scenes and music but absolutely zero character development.  I've heard the manga is much better and that the subsequent plotlines improve a lot, but it's kind of a moot point.  


And maybe I could have picked another anime, but I'm not a weaboo and my Japanimation knowledge is limited to the more popular and "classic" ones that my friends have encouraged me to watch.


And I'm not Zaramis.  I agree with a lot of what he said, but he defended himself adequately.  He doesn't need my help.   :)


You personally insulted me; there's not really much that you've proven wrong that I've said.  You keep saying that you're "right" and we're "wrong," but I really don't think you were paying attention to anything either Z or I have said.  Or you took it out of context, which is originally what happened when I said my NPCs weren't there just so I could say I had a high Essence character and you for some vague reason took my comment as directed at you.  I have absolutely no reference for the validity of that statement, so I wouldn't make it.
 
Captain - check my last posts again ;) I stopped arguing and looked at it with humor instead. But it does look pretty funny in the end, when trying got pointless :)
 
You just tried to be funny when you stopped having points, you kinda failed at both ^^ I still fully expect your exalted writer of doom to come into this thread to rescue you.   :P


@Gustav:


I apology for taking that one point being directed at me. The rest still stands, I surely didn't tell you to shut up, I told you why this is possible in the game, the way vanilla exalted happens to be written. You just don't want to see where you are wrong and claim that I was the one who started namecalling, when it was Zaramis, but hey, whatever floats your boat really, I just won#t repeat my points all the time.


Your limited anime knowledge is surely not going to hinder from picking you some other fitting example usually, doesn't it? So, you liked Samurai champloo despite jin and mugen being so disgustingly powerful? Didn't they uncover by accident that the gaijin are still in the country? there was something with a dutchman... Ah well anyway. So, you just shifted your point by the way, first hellsing was a shitty anime now it all of a sudden has good fight scenes and music. My definition of shitty might be different but it usually has nothing to do with good fight scenes. Yes, the character development is a tad on the meager side, but when you want character development you are watching some blacklagoon or cowboy bebop anyway.
 
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