Difference between revisions of "Thus Spake Zargrabowski/ExaltedOperationInstructions"

Revision as of 05:37, 3 July 2004

>>>I'm another one in the "great game! what do I do with it?" club. I still can't figure it out. My brain just doesn't "get" what to do with Sword and Sorcery Super Heroes.<<<

The sort of heroism people perform in epics: impossible deeds for the sake of fame, fighting gods, founding new religions and great empires, advancing their ideals and culture, and getting impossibly rich and powerful just for the sake of it

The goal of the guys who accompany Priam in the Illiad is to retrieve the most beautiful woman ever from her "captors", who just happen to be incredible heroes themselves there for reasons of their own. The goal of the Brotherhood of the Peach Orchard in Romance of the Three Kingdoms is to protect and reform the Chinese dynasty, again against the opposition of other incredible heroes, who are also individual actors. Survival type goals -- food, shelter, etc -- are pretty much gone. Exaltation happens to people willing to change the world, and makes them able to do it. How they change it, and if the results they get are what they set out to do -- is the subject of your stories. The biggest problem, in my eyes, is that people that powerful generated at the undirected whims of the players will be disparate individuals. The first session will be "okay, good to meet you, I'm off to refound the Immaculate Philosophy. Good luck on that vast army project." I strongly suggest sitting down ahead of time and either talking through the matter very closely with the players, to see what kind of characters they're playing ahead of time, or else come up with a framework on your own and pitch it to them as part of the game.

Eric's suggestion is a good one. Just make sure they understand it's to be a learning experience, because if they think they're going to get a solid workout from an adventure for 3-5 characters of 4th to 6th level, they're going to be so disappointed. Also, try to see beyond the module in the way AD&D adventures don't, because after you introduce them to the fact that the Temple of the Lizardmen is not really a problem, it's a lot easier to segue into the political aftermath of their victory over some minor menace (fame, temporal power, limited riches, etc) than to suddenly go "and now for something completely diferent: The Next Plot!"

Geoffrey C. Grabowski\\ Exalted Developer, WWGS\\ raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>In my admittedly limited experience gming Exalted, I'd say that the exalts aren't very powerful at all. They definitely aren't superheroes, at least on high end scale, and would die a messy death if they took on an army.<<<

Page 21 of the main book: "A young and inexperienced Exalted may seem like a moderately talented magician, capable of only a few practical tricks or sorceries."

It is in fact possible for a young Exalt, especially one caught in a bad situation, to die even at the hands of extras. However, one who is more experienced, well-equipped or designed to do it can kill swaths of extras. A regenerating Lunar or a Solar with stacked persistent defenses is basically invulnerable to mortals. The characters in my Lunars playtest game killed 100 of the Brides of Ahlat in like 3 turns and were not even really burning Essence. The trick is to master splitting your dice pool.

>>>I fail to see how Solars can destroy armies or rule as despots without fear.<<<

Destroying armies, see above.

For your despot: Immunity to Everything Technique and Adamant Skin Technique or some other perfect defense. So much for poison and assassination. Now I use Speed the Wheels on my secret police force and unravel your plots in mere days. I /think/ you can do it as a starting character, including Surprise Anticipation Method so they can't attack you while you sleep, but your defensive techniques might be kinda weak, since you really want Immunity to Everything, Speed the Wheels and Surprise Anticipation Method.

>>>The Achilles heel of Solars is their inability to use more than one charm, except using combos. Unfortunately, combos require much Essence, and more importantly, 1 WP. That means no more than 10 combos can ever be activated in a reasonable period of time -- regardless of how powerful you are, 10 is the absolute max.<<<

Their real Achilles heel is that their persistent defenses take 1 turn each and can't be Comboed. This makes them vulnerable to ninja attack by undetectable foes. The Willpower is easy -- just do a 2 die stunt. It's not like you can just throw it away, but I don't think it's as big a limit as you believe it to be.

>>>I can see 50 or 60 well-trained mooks taking down even the most powerful solar.<<<

If you get him or her asleep and naked, yeah. You might be able to kill her in the first turn. This is why Surprise Anticipation Method is such an important power. Otherwise, against normal guys, they're gonna use a movement effect or two, get away, activate some persistent defenses, and then come back for the kill.

>>>Superheroes can act stupid, and still be able to kick the US military's ass; Exalted acting stupid should get creamed by any decent-sized town military.<<<

You're applying what looks like a value judgement here? If you want the game to run a certain way as Storyteller, it's gonna run that way. You make all the judgement calls as god / Storyteller. If you want Solars who face tremendous problems, then they're gonna face 'em. Part of the game's tone, at least in canon, involves the Storyteller having a "just say yes" attitude. You're not there to be an obstacle to heroics, but to facilitate them.

Geoffrey C. Grabowski\\ Exalted Developer, WWGS\\ raindog@white-wolf.com

>>>In summary, Solars are incredibly powerful individuals on the level at or above that of Hercules/Herakles, or Beowulf, that go and do big stuff and more big stuff happens as a result. So what's the POINT?<<<

You get to erect religions, wreck kingdoms and fight gods and armies?

>>>Anyone can just do stuff. WHY do they do stuff? Why WOULD they do stuff? Just because they can? They have no reason, or weak reasons to act in any capacity.<<<

Every day throughout history and up into the present, people act in the real world for the reasons the posters have described, at great risk of life and limb.

>>>Solars are post-human. They are in fact, alien. They have no connection to normal humanity, nor do they need to maintain any connection that they may have had at one point.<<<

Other than the fact that they're human beings? They are not Exalted as doctrinaire reciters of posthumanist jargon. Historically there /was/ once a time whent the Solars asked themselves what use they had for gods or men or any other impedimentia to their own self-gratification. Then everyone gacked them before they rent Creation asunder with their increasingly mostrous and detached antics and experiments, because they had become mad inhuman things beyond reason or morality.

It is entirely possible that the Solars are just the greatest scourge of an age of woe. It may be that their rebirth will herald the end of Creation in a few centuries when they grow to the maturity of their power and the Great Curse takes root. Will heroes who can raise and demolish nations be able to remember that they too are human?

Maybe that's the "point," or at least part of it?

>>>I would contend that the most beautiful woman in all of creation would be another Solar. Solars will always be the pinnacles of all things, in all ways. Thus, they have no reason to bother to acknowledge the existence of humanity.<<<

So what happens when you better-deal your mortal wife for her? What about this Celestial Beauty's other suitors?

>>>Furthermore, there is hardly anything to hold them back from simply turning normal humans into livestock, or batteries (or the equivalent), much like the AIs from The Matrix.<<<

Sure, other than morality, ethics and empathy, there's nothing stopping them. Of course, that includes the morality, ethics and empathy of everyone in the world who might choose to oppose them in these patently mad and inhuman schemes.

>>>Thus, the true heroes of the setting, in the modern sense of the word, are the Dragon Blooded and Sidereals.<<<

Well, in the modern sense of the word that "heroes" are often people who claim they will undertake necessary reforms and then stop once they gain the power to do so and just start helping themselves. But really, they're heroes. Someone has to do this, just ask them. It might look like opulence at the expense of others and a culture based around a religion of social control that worships you as a living bodhissatva, but it's really a tremendous burden.

Not that you can't paint the Dragon-Blooded as heroes for exactly the reasons you illustrate. In fact, I assumed many people would, thus publishing Dragon-Blooded first among the hardbacks. If you like it that way, then that's fine, but I don't think that there's a lot of objective evidence that clearly paints the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals as particularly good people. Remember that their murder of the Solars was when they decided to take the easy way out a problem and murder their rulers and imprison the Essences rather than actually attempting to solve the problem, and hasn't that just done great things for Creation?

>>>And it's this weird disconnect between what I feel the game presents itself as (bright and shiny heroic action), and what it really seems to be, that keeps me from actually doing something with it. I just get hung up and freeze. Yeah, I could just tell my players that I want them to play "modern" altruistic heroes, but everything seems setup to undermine that concept.<<<

The game certainly does set out to undermine the modern concept of altruistic heroism, yes. I think if you percieve it to "be" something else, you should run it as what you see it to be, not what you think the game is "trying" to be. The game was designed so as to be pretty malleable in terms of feel. You should run the stories that the setting presents that seem natural or correct to you.

Geoffrey C. Grabowski\\ Exalted Developer, WWGS\\ raindog@white-wolf.com

In terms of feel, Exalted is about people who are very mighty but not necessarily particularly wise. The actual world of the game is brutal and gritty and the Exalted are very glorious heroes who live in it. Imagine John Carter, Warlord of Mars or Red Blades of Black Cathay if the fight scenes were undertaken with the same cinematic intent as the Omaha Beach landing in Saving Private Ryan, and set in a relentlessly political and morally ambiguous world, a-la Romance of the Three Kingdoms. That's sorta where Exalted falls by default. Some people make it deliberately gritty all the way through, some people accentuate the crazy epicness, but the intent of the game is to meld them both with the goal of accentuating the pathos of the mortal condition and the glory of the heroism by providing a contrast to each.

Geoffrey C. Grabowski\\ Exalted Developer, WWGS\\ raindog@white-wolf.com

Comments

Not sure if this belongs here, but it seems to fit the above. - Epsilon