Thus Spake Zaraborgstrom/WhatRSBAimsFor

(from Rebecca's blog)

I write most games very explicitly so when people sit down, throw together the best character they can, and play kind of twinkily and tiredly, it works out with the kinds of stories I want.

That's what I aim for.

This apparently never comes across.

I should have explicitly said in the Fair Folk mechanics, "Just put together some twinks with some half-cocked fairy tale qualities in a freehold somewhere. Play shaping combat as poker, because it's really all about how far your opponents will go. Flail around playing the equivalent of a paranoid Amber Throne War. The Charm rules are supposed to turn this into a cool story cycle like the Babylonian myths, your other Exalted game, or 24, without you really trying that hard."

Nobilis is about exploring your character's philosophy and Estate and its themes, but that's not how you play it. I should have explicitly said, "The way you play it is sit down, figure out some ideas you'll have fun doing fun weird stuff with a lot, and then do a lot of fun weird stuff, and as long as you try to be cool and get the spotlight without hogging it, doing stupid player stunts, or going into an OOC extended Monty Python riff, you should wind up with all the philosophy and thematic stuff just kind of happening."

Conversely, I should have said in Forest Witches, "Look, this is either the world before Genesis or posthuman fiction; you'll need to think about what you're doing accordingly."

Instead I wind up talking about what the *games* are about, which is very different, and I should stop that.

Comments

People don't like to hear 'Make your twinkie! That's the idea!'. People seem to have a hard time looking at a game seriously like that. Many of my friends into Exalted think it's a 'bad feature' that these kinds of powers are actively encouraged.
I find that sad, kinda, though I'm not really sure why. -Xeriar

I'm more sad at her trying to appropriate our play to her conception of whatever she has written, no matter what. It looks like she works, subversively, to ensure that we play her way in any and all situations, imposing herself on our gaming spaces like some bizarre colonizer, displacing our interpretations and tastes and imposing the Borgstrom way upon all players in all games in all spaces. ~ Andrew02

This seems to be a really negative way of looking at things! It's also a really elegant way of rewarding people who want to roleplay what the setting expects them to roleplay, by building mechanical effectiveness in such a way that it generates neat stories. Like, I can imagine the situation where someone vexes away your Heart, and you are like, "I must fight my master for my free will and volition so that I may serve him better, with clearer mind and body!" Any you vex it right back. And that's so awesome. - willows

In addition to which: she's a game designer. That's what game designers do. It's certainly what I do (or try to do) when designing a game. I'm not even sure what the alternative is supposed to be. Design games with the singular goal of creating something which can be ignored as much as possible? I think we reached the pinnacle of that design goal when we invented paper. ~ VioletCrazyGirl (Also: pens. But clearly, “paper,” was that post's proper end.)

Huzzah! Bring the enlightenment of the Borgstrom way to the underpriveliged masses! The revolution is it hand! Seriously, if someone works to create a rules set and flavour text so lovingly and intricately that it can convey the atmosphere and feel of the setting regardless of how it's played, I'm extremely impressed by it; it's good game design. I play Exalted to play Exalted, not my own game, and what aid the designers can offer in helping me do that is more than welcome...DeathBySurfeit

The problem is not so much that she has an idea of how she wants her games to be played - I think everyonw who writes games has that - the problem is more that she apparantly can't get the setting and the system to reflect that in any meaningful way. The Forest Witches don't come across as the world before Genesis or posthuman fiction, whatever, precisely, she mines by that; in my mind, they come across as pretentious and poorly written. I haven't read Fair Folk myself - though I've talked to folks who have - and their conclusion is that it comes out more or less the same way. So pretentious it's almost unintelligable and poorly written. -Seraph

That's funny, because everyone I've talked to basically agrees that the Fair Folk are a kind of poorly organised triumph of great game design. As for "poorly written," I challenge you to point me at a writer whose ability to compress information into small word-counts while retaining legibility surpasses hers. The FF book has more meat in it than Lunars, Dragon-Blooded, and Abyssals combined.

I don't get it when people complain that RSB writes poorly; it's like they're going to Morimoto and complaining that Masaharu is a poor chef because he doesn't make Big Macs. - willows

More elaborately, I feel like a lot of people are conflating "writes stuff I like" and "is a good writer." I'm sure that RSB's writing style, as heavily mannered and dense as it is, isn't appealing to everyone. I wouldn't be surprised if it were only appealing to very few! But just because her writing can be unappealing doesn't make her a bad writer; I dont think you can say anyone is a bad writer or game designer who displays such an obviously strong sense of game design, such ability to turn beautiful phrases, and such expansive artistic vision, all of which she succeeds in transferring to paper. She's a person with clear goals that she consistently reaches with style and panache. And if you don't like that, I don't blame you, but when you're saying "she's a bad writer," I will always conclude that you are confusing your own subjective preferences with actual writing ability. - willows

She's a complex writer, which is problematic for a lot of people. She builds up an idea, and writes it down as it exists in her mind, which doesn't translate well to paper. Astrology, for example, could have been written much simpler, but then, I feel the same is true for a lot of Exalted. -Xeriar

Sidereal astrology was written by GCG not RSB. And I think it's as complex as it is because it's supposed to simulate the process that Sidereals have to go through to get their astrology implemented. - pedant Moxiane

OK, let me explain what I mean by "poorly written." For me, to be well written, a piece of prose must achieve its goals. If it doesn't achieve its goals, it fails. It's poorly written, and it needs a re-write. If it does achieve its goals - whatever those goals are - it's a success. Sometimes things acheive their goals, but you don't like them, like someone eating a big mac when they would prefer something made by Masaharu - or vice-versa. The question is, does RSB achieve her goals with her work? From all I've heard, basing my opinion on my reading of things like the Forest Witches and my friends' descriptions of Fair Folk, she doesn't. The ideas are good, but it doesn't come out playable.

To sum it up, to me, her writing ability is inconsequential. It's her ability to communicate meaningfully that matters. -Seraph

On the other hand, I know several people who have no trouble understanding her. The fact that people can understand her indicates, in my opinion, that her ability to communicate meaningfully is just fine. - David., holding back comments that he can't find a delicate way to phrase

There probably is no way to politely say "RSB does not write for the hard-of-thinking" but, you're welcome to try. ^_^ - cynically amused Moxiane

That's not really what I was looking to say. "The burden of effective communication does not rest solely on the sender of the message." might be a suffeciently polite way to say what I'm thinking. - David.

So? It's not abest from the sender either. I have this problem a lot and it's my responsibility to work it out, not the reader. Otherwise, I'm not talking to the reader, but my image of her. It's troubling, because there are a lot of different people out there, and what goes for one will drop another and break a third. Even still, I think it's possible to communicate many of Rebecca's ideas in a ... more salient fashion. -Xeriar

Did I say it was abest from the sender? No, I didn't. Now, as for it being possible to convey some of her ideas in a fashion that you'd understand more easily: Maybe it is, but I think it's equally possible that it's not. You seem to be confusing what you like and what you understand with what's well-made. - David.

Abest... I just invented a word O_o. Meant to say absent. But no - for a certain group of people, there are definitely better ways to get something across to them. One group might find Rebecca's method ideal. It seems the majority doesn't when she tries to do something new, however, and that's a shame. People think differently. Rebecca - and many of us here - do not think like most people. Making most people see from my point of view is hard, laborious work. So instead I try to speak to someone else's point of view. -Xeriar

Point the first: you could condense the systems of Fair Folk and all their intracacies into maybe three pages of summary if you wanted to. What have you gained? A mechanical grasp of the system but no appreciation for the context in which it was designed. I think summary pages would be immensely beneficial, but people would fixate on them and never reread any of the actual text, which is rife with hooks and concepts that are important for players to know when trying to play realistic characters. The text is dense, both in the 'laden with information' and 'intimidating to even think about' senses, though I think these may be one-in-the-same. If players just go through the motions dice-rolling, their characters have no understanding of the world they exist in. Annoying but true.
Rebecca's work suffers on occasion from a lack of efficient structure. Her work in Games of Divinity and Sidereals is brilliant and approachable because it fits in a very succinct, previously structured system. Forest Witches and Fair Folk go other delicious and post-modern directions, but exist as these enormous behemoths of information that don't lend themselves to quick review. I don't think it's impossible to summarize and structure them in ways that do justice to the source material, though. The answers you need to play are always either explicit or, on occasion, implied--if the implied became explicit and the explicit became... I don't know, bolded, or something, I think everyone would be a little happier. _Wohksworth thinks material should be immediately accessible but only on a second readthrough.

Ultimately, though, aren't these things meant to be games? And aren't games meant to be played? You can have all sorts of great themes in your games - and hell, you should, because strong themes make for better games - but if nobody gets it, if enough people don't understand your games well enough to play them, then you've got a problem. And yes, the burden of effective communcation does not rest fully on the sender, but, in my opinion, it rests mostly on the sender, because the sender is the one who has the information, and I (the reader, in this case) is the one who wants the information. I have to work to get what I want, but the sender has to work to make it accesable for me. In this, I think I agree with Xeriar. My criticism of RSB is that it doesn't feel like she's working hard enough to make her themes accesible to her audience.

Complexity I like. Give me all the complexity you can stand. I just want things like system and basic setting to make enough sense that I can play and run effectively on multiple levels.

The best way to sum it up is this: I feel that accessability is not an added bonus to an otherwise genius work. Accessability is part and parcel to the greatness of a piece of prose. Something that is otherwise genius, but totally inaccessable is, well, less genius. Flawed genius. As it is, I've never been able to get far enough into RSB's work to see the genius behind what I see as a flaw. If I ever do, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

Thank you, David, for being diplomatic. -Seraph

Seraph: Have you read any posthuman fantasy? If so, did you enjoy it? I'm not sure how you could create a ruleset for an inherently postmodern genre that was not itself postmodern. If you aren't interested in what RSB is trying to achieve, then it doesn't really matter whether she communicates it to you effectively, does it? --MF

To be fair, no, I haven't read any posthuman fantasy. Actually, for that matter, I don't even really know what posthuman fantasy is. For all I know, I might have read it and loved it without knowing. Could you name a few posthuman works, so I could figure out if I've read them, and if not, try to pick them up? I do like experiencing new genres, for all that I might sound a bit critical. The fact remains, though, that I'm going to have a hard time swallowing posthuman fantasy if a central idea is that it doesn't have to be accessible. That I may continue to percieve as poor writing.

Secondly, RSB's writing aside, is Exalted an inherently posthuman/postmodern setting? The problem I see might just be that these elements - however cool I might find them in their place - don't fit with the rest of Exalted, or at least my vision of Exalted. In my experience, things that are just fine where they belong can seem like flaws if given the wrong backdrop. - Seraph

I think you just hit the nail on the head. These elements very well may not fit with your vision of Exalted. However, your vision is not the base from which the writing staff works. They work from the head developer's vision, which evidently includes all of the elements being published. - David.

Of coure they don't work from my vision. If that ever happens, I'll be writing my own game. But, as I understand it, a lot of people collaborate in the making of a game, and not all of them are necessarily thinking the same thing as the person who came up with the game in the first place. If your argument is that RSB's work in Exalted is good and appropriate simply because it is in Exalted, then we may as well stop talking altogether and simply accept every aspect of the game as gospel. In a community dedicated to inventing, tweaking, and even fixing the game we all like, I'd be surprised if anyone wants to do that. - Seraph

I'm not taking issue with the fact that you don't like Borgstrom's work. That's fine. I am, however, taking issue with the fact that you declared something you didn't like "poorly written", when that opinion seems based only on the fact that you dislike the style. To use a hurtfully simple analogy, it's one thing for me to look at a piece of sturdy minimalist furniture and say "I don't like the look of it", and something else altogether for me to look at it and say "that's a flimsy, worthless table". My argument is that Rebecca's writing is appropriate to the game being published. It might not be appropriate to the version of the game you run, and that's perfectly alright, but I think it's unreasonable to say that, because it doesn't suit your style, it doesn't belong in the game at all. As you said, if the game worked from your vision, you'd be writing your own game. - David.

That's a very good point. I wish I could say I think you are catagorically wrong. The fact is, you might be right, and I might be overstepping the bounds of opinion. I guess my counter-argument is that I am not really talking about how appropriate Borgstrom's work is to Exalted. I am talking about my basic idea of what makes for good and bad prose - hense the "poorly written." For me, accessability is one of the many qualities of good prose, and inaccessability is always a flaw. Therefore, inaccessable work is, for me, catagorically flawed. I feel that Borgstrom's work tends to fall into this group. In all my pointing out of Borgstrom's flaws, I seem to have left out that I really do like a lot of her ideas, I just don't like how they are expressed. I don't like how they are written because, in my view, according to my definitions of good and bad prose, they aren't written well. - Seraph

Did you know that you just agreed with me and supported my point? - David. bows out before the discussion becomes any more circular

A lot of Exalted can be given a posthuman slant... It certainly doesn't have to be inaccessible. Now that I think about it, most of my arguments against Nephilpal have been because I am very much a fan of the idea of humans 'outgrowing ourselves' - to the point of, mentally, not being human anymore. Twisted and mind-openning, sure, but the idea shouldn't be beyond people. -Xeriar

If that's what posthuman fantasy is about, I can see themes of it in Exalted. I can also see how I could come to appreciate the genre a lot. However strange and mind-opening a genre has to be, I don't believe it has to be inacessible. I still believe that inacessability is a flaw. Multi-layer acessability, with multiple levels, all of them accessible to different people, that makes for greatness, but inacessability is a flaw, in my opinion, and intentional inacessability is pretension. - Seraph

I happen to be in an interesting place. Ask most of the people around me how I feel about Sids and they'll usually laugh. Ask me and I usually can't resist at least a few expletives. And yet, I like the Sids as a setting piece and even as characters. They are just so strange. I imagine it will be similar when I read the Fair Folk book. I liked the Forest Witches, as they don't seem to fit. They are strange, and they are somewhat unknowable. It's hard to fit your brain around. Which makes them seem alien and strange. From all I have seen of the Raksha, they are the same. They are so hard to understand that it makes them seem far more strange and different. I would rather not just have had a different flavor of Exalted. I think Sidereals are that in between place. If you learn to think in their way, things start to make sense. But it does take a lot of work. Namely Blaque explaining alot to me. However, engaging in new thought patterns can help you to roleplay alien beings and those who think in the abstract.

Essentially what I sum it up as, is that different thought patterns will always be hard to understand. I think she writes mostly by suggestion and by making you think in new ways. Which, if you go along with it, does end up changing the way you think. I think that is a good thing. Jaelra

There's other things I want to say, but I know even though I found this place less than three months ago it wouldn't be worth it. So I'm just going to ask one question: is it me, or does something written by Borgstrom stand out as something written by her? Does her style so definitively mark something she is produced that it is immediately recognizable what she has written? - Andrew02

Yes and no. Sometimes, it's really clearly her style, other times it's well-hidden. I've found that I can usually identify the change between other things and hers, but it's not always a jarring, instant, apparent shift. Also, please sign your remarks. - David.

Perhaps a way of describing RSB's work would be to say that it's like she's an installation artist who creates a work of art that you can't quite follow without interacting with it. The installation needs to be climbed inside of for the "viewer" to understand more fully. Other RPGs are like movies or statues or automobiles. RSB makes a mixed construction that feels unfamiliar because it's not /just/ a movie or automobile or statue. It's a maubostavieary, and not everyone's going to like that. Moreover, not everyone is going to even understand what the point is. -Kintara

Um, can we go back to the people who said that Exalted is about "posthuman fantasy"? Seraph very nicely asked for a definition of, and examples of, the genre, and was not answered. And I certainly don't know what it is, despite some serious fantasy reading of the course of my life including, um, an entire senior thesis written on fantasy. And, hey, I asked Wikipedia too, and it couldn't even find "posthuman fantasy", though "posthuman" is apparently: (1) a concept in human evolution, or (2) an electronica name, or (3) a vanity label of Marilyn Manson's. So ... not to be, you know, a bitch or anything, but if you're going to act patronizing about how the rest of us don't get a genre concept, it would be nice if you could back it up with an explanation of that concept when it's requested.

For me, the issues with RSB's work have nothing to do with her writing or her aesthetics. Both are excellent -- though they do have the lamentable drawback of not being everyone's bag by a long shot, and in particular definitely not a lot of Exalted players' bags, and in particular not matching up with a lot of her fellow Exalted writers' bags ... which is all kind of a problem. But hey, who cares about such pesky matters? If her writing were backed up by balanced mechanics, that would be fantastic, but it's absolutely not. Ideally, someone like RSB should -- in my opinion, and when working on a system like this, which is more solidly mechanical and less free-form than her ideal (as, I'm assuming, is demonstrated by such work as "Nobilis") -- write her wonderful flavour and then have someone else do the mechanics. Who has, say, maybe actually played a lot of Exalted (as she once admitted she hadn't done much of, during one of the many Blade of the Battle Maiden arguments).
~ Shataina

Okay, what we're dealing with is that the Forest Witches from the Outcastes book have a thing, the Sea of whatever it is, which basically incorporates some ideas from Transhumanist/Posthuman Science Fiction into a fantasy setting. That's the source of your difficulties, I think. The existence of superior forms of humanity (the Exalted) gives Exalted a certain amount of Transhumanist/Posthuman flavor as well. --JohnBiles

Sea of Mind, I think. And thanks, but the question wasn't for examples from within the game of why it's part of this genre. The question was about what said genre is, and outside examples of it were requested (e.g. actual books by today's fantasy authors that would be representative of this genre). Would you say, for example, that any of the major literary influences listed in the Exalted core (Tales from the Flat Earth, Hawkmoon, Pegana) were "transhumanist/posthumanist" fiction? And is it a subgenre of science fiction or fantasy? -- commenters seem unclear.

Even if you can define the genre for those of us ignorant confused people, and give examples, that whole contestation -- "you don't get it because it's posthuman fiction, and you must not like posthuman fiction" -- strikes me as problematic when I've never heard or read Exalted defined by that term by its developers or other authors. Most people call it a "kung fu" or "anime" or "fantasy" game. You'll note, for example, that the intro the developer wrote for 2nd Ed doesn't have the word "posthuman" in it anywhere, although it does have "pre-Tolkien" and "20th-century fantasy", "pulp fiction", "manga / anime / video games / wuxia", "ancient epics of the West and the East", etc. It's great if the game has "some" posthuman flavour, but it could have "some" of a lot of flavour. Defining the whole game by the standards of a genre that is neither an immediately accessible one to those reading the wiki, nor appears to even be an "official" influence on the game, is a particularly tricky and pretentious shuffling of terms that I for one don't appreciate.

I mean, seriously. I can see people telling me I "don't get" the aesthetics of Exalted if I don't, say, appreciate the aesthetics of anime (untrue, incidentally, but an example for argument's sake), because the whole game comes right out and tells you that's what it's about. But citing an obscure genre, heretofore unmentioned, without even giving a definition, in order to back up your particular views of how Exalted should be written is just ... bad argument, to say the least!
~ Shataina hmm, sorry for the rant there

Biting my face off for trying to answer your question when I wasn't one of the people talking earlier is rather bad form, yes. It's important not to confuse people who come in late to an argument with those you were originally arguing with. Transhumanism/Posthumanism is a philosophical movement incorporated into some science fiction; it's not normally incorporated into fantasy, though it is possible to do so, given that magic could serve the same role as technology does in Transhumanism. It envisions the use of technology to super-augment human capacities. It is in many ways, a flip-side to Cyberpunk, in that it envisions a better world through much of the same technology that is seen as dehumanizing people in Cyberpunk stories. Imagine if your mind was linked into the Internet directly and you could search for anything you want to know with but a thought. Virtual Reality, the genetic reconfiguration of the human race, cyber-senses, etc, etc. The Sea of Mind is essentially a way to transcend death by being mentally uploaded into a virtual reality on your death, done using fantasy metaphors. Check out http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism , and http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq/ . Exalted was not, I think, deliberately intended to be a Transhumanist fantasy. (As you noted, such influences are not listed in the sources in the core). However, it has elements that can be taken that way (the problem of how Exalted relate to mortals as they grow far above them in power and capacity is one of the central problems for Transhumanist thought in a fantasy context--how would posthumans relate to those not similarly augmented? I'm afraid I can't give you good examples from novels, though, as I've been too busy the last few years with my Ph.D to read much in the way of fiction. But I hope this helps, or at least that you don't bite my face off again. --JohnBiles

Put more briefly, "Shat, Google exists for a reason, and this is it." - willows

What a shame your name doesn't lend itself to similarly, irritatingly rude shortenings, W, so I can't grade-schoolishly snap back at you.  :laugh: But believe it or not, I did try Google, and didn't come up with any meaningful -- or rather, usefully informative (enough) -- results, so I thought I'd ask the resident experts.

And sorry, JohnBiles, I honestly didn't mean for that to be aimed at you -- admittedly I failed at aiming it properly (and shouldn't have been aiming it in the first place). I appreciate the attempt at explanation, I was just damn irritated by (and overexposed to) the ... aesthetic ... behind the concept's original mention.
~ Shataina

The word you're looking for is 'willy', I think...DeathBySurfeit