Exalted Second Edition Discussion

[Valette-Serafina]

Because we didn't have one, and an argument cannot continue in the prior thread.

 

[Valette-Serafina]

As someone who has played as a Midnight, I can assure you that no, no you can't. For among other reasons then because the locations you've mentioned don't actually exist, and by the nature of the underworld pretty much can't.

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And y'know what? You had a shitty storyteller. That is very very clear.
If you're just going to look at what locations are in the book, and sigh that the world seems a little small, the problem is that Exalted's setting was not filled out completly. There is more in the setting than the books give you.

...Also, claiming that 'murderghosts and zombies' as a reason for Abyssals being good is more then reaching.

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That's not my argument. That was never my argument.

Except that, well, 'horrible shithole and playground of the deathlords/neverborn' how it was written and shown. You can make up new things as a DM or as a player, but that doesn't make those things canon, it makes those things things people made up in a desire to make the underworld less of a shithole. Because it is a shithole.

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And see above.

Canonwise, those lunar ruled palaces? Don't exist unless I missed something big. The whole of the underworld is hostile territory for the living, and nothing that lives wants to be in it long term anyway.

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Lunars can learn how to respire Essence in the underworld.
And a elder Lunar could hide a city from anyone who wanted to find it.

Sounds like a bloody brilliant adventure hook to me. Or one hell of a backstory. "Student of a Lunar, raised and educated in the underworld". Take Mentor 3-5, some backing...
Yeah, that'd be neat. If I'm ever in a game where it'd fit, I'll float that concept. And if my potential ST shoots it down with "There's no such Lunar", I'll know to walk out.

Nothing new is ever made there. Nothing new can be made there. It's population, the 'people' within it, can only degrade, not grow. It can only gain new people by the decreasement of the living world, and both the deathlords and the undead guildsmen have spent ages on things that insure it'll stay a shithole and that it is a shithole.

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Just like how Creation is locked in an unending spiral of destructive conflict, constantly loosing the knowledge of the past, and no one can fix it? Oh my, if only there were some Exalted to confront the issues that the setting faces!

Che. No, you don't get anything on a silver platter. Of course there'll be conflict if you try to build anything there.
Just like Solars who build glorious shiny kingdoms get a Wyld Hunt dropped on their heads.

Yes, because 'all your canon super magic powers are crap, and you need to rewrite your entire charm tree to get something sane out of it' is such a ringing endorsement of playing an abyssal.

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You clearly aren't looking. Abyssals have full combat suites, total mastery of necromancy, second circle sorcery, Celestial martial Arts and the option of learning Sidereal martial arts with a teacher, some of the most powerful Excellencies in the game, and an excuse to reskin almost any Solar charm. They craft just as well as Solars. They rule the dead just as well as Solars rule the living. They master knowledge, kill sickness, destroy wounds, run and jump and hide and notice just as well as Solars.

And Solars are kinda good at those things.

Because universally being able to use essence doesn't provide them with enough anti-suckyness to make them any better then mortals,

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Yeah, it really does. Like, seriously. Unless you're ruling a cityful of gods or Dragonblooded, that's about as good as it gets.

and unlike mortals you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a good army of the undead out...

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Stats are higher on average, they have Charms, they will not get sick, they will not bleed to death, they do not tire, they do not sleep...

Oh, and if you think the only use of a nation is an army, you're very wrong.

even before the whole PR disaster type repercussions start, you have to deal with necromancers mind controlling your troops (and the deathlords are the biggest necromancers around both in collected lore and available minion necromancers),

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Fixable. War Charms, Integrity Charms, Necromancy of your own, Thaumaturgy...

Of course, a mortal army would have to worry about the same thing, every time they went up against a Solar. Or about being killed by an unending tide of vermin the night before the battle.

See, it turns out that the Deathlords are kinda a problem for everybody who wants to fight them, and that everybody needs to go to special lengths to muster an Army that can oppose them. Maybe you knew that?

other exalts flocking in from miles to fight the evil horde of undead,

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Oh come on. Don't be that...
Right. Here's the thing.

No matter what you do, people will oppose it. Some of them will be Exalted, and if you don't even try to get some of those Exalts on your side, they will break your things.
On the other hand, if you do try, they might be on your side. This is not D&D. Even Solars can ally with the undead, and every single Exalt is an individual.

the need to use giant piles of murder to make shadowlands if you want them out of the underworld...

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Making a few assumptions here.

First, why leave? Ruling a nation in the underworld does not require an invasion of Creation.
Second, Why not try and make a better way? That's a classic Exalted goal. It could even be a motivation.

Well, 'being on par with mortals but happening to be far more annoying to use 99% of the time' is not a ringing endorsement either.

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Either you deliberately misread that, or my communication needs work.

Let me be 100% clear. Mortals < Ghosts. Ghosts can use Essence, Mortals cannot.
Essence that can be used for such things as efficient Thaumaturgy, Artifact attunement, and even bloody Necromancy. Ghosts can reach Essence scores above 3. Ghosts can even gain Abilities and Attributes above 5.

As for ease of use, you seem to think they'd be in Creation. That's ridiculous.

Not so. Terrestrials are better then solars at actually working together, given sworn brotherhoods.

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And yet they achieve less when they do so.

Pit a group of high essence Terrestrials against the same number of Solars, and the Solars will probably win.
Same goes for Lunars. And Sidereals, and Infernals, and Alchemicals who've got their charms on.

And yes, Same for Abyssals.

And unlike the Abyssal they don't have limit breaks of 'everyone around me randomly dies/is underworlded/slapped by the neverborn', can actually build things without murdering people/using murdertech, can actually use methods of motivation that isn't 'horror and terror', aren't stuck in the shithole of the underworld, have a lot of allies, have all the resources of ruling the world behind them...

I'd much prefer to be a Terrestrial then a Abyssal.

Because Abyssals are, well, abyssal at everything that actually matters besides 'horrible murder, often of people who don't deserve it'.

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Well. I'll be sure to remember not to play in a game you're in.

 

[Least Devotee]

A quick question for anyone who might know.

Does anyone know how where you could download a copy of the installer for Anathema for 2/2.5e? Unfortunately the links on their site don't work anymore and my own got deleted on accident a while back.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Drak4806]

A quick question for anyone who might know.

Does anyone know how where you could download a copy of the installer for Anathema for 2/2.5e? Unfortunately the links on their site don't work anymore and my own got deleted on accident a while back.

Thank you in advance.

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I thought they had it on github, did they not actually have the files there?

Anyway you could ask the thread on /tg/ if they have any backup links or see if someone can share their copy.

 

[Lichanon]

A quick question for anyone who might know.

Does anyone know how where you could download a copy of the installer for Anathema for 2/2.5e? Unfortunately the links on their site don't work anymore and my own got deleted on accident a while back.

Thank you in advance.

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Here's one I found a while back that should still work.

 

[Kelenas]

If you're just going to look at what locations are in the book, and sigh that the world seems a little small, the problem is that Exalted's setting was not filled out completly. There is more in the setting than the books give you.

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You're not wrong, but the problem is that the books do a pretty poor job of reminding and/or addressing this, to be honest. It's admittedly been a number of years since I truly read any of the books, but from what I recall the existence of kingdoms/cultures/tribes/etc outside of those extensively covered by said book is barely touched upon, and only in the vaguest terms. As in, there's the occasional sentence mentioning that they exist, but little more. That makes it pretty easy to forget that places outside of Nexus, Gem, Whitewall, etc, are a thing.

In my opinion, Exalted's "fill the map yourself" approach really would have benefited a *LOT* from a sizable segment in the Corebook dedicated to providing the GM/Storyteller with assistance in creating new polities to fill the map with. Some combination of questions to consider and/or tables to roll on (or choose from) in order to create a framework that could then be fleshed out further. With similar segments in the various Compass books to expand on this.

EDIT: Aaaand I noticed just now that your post is almost ten years old. Really sorry about that.

 

[Valette-Serafina]

You're not wrong, but the problem is that the books do a pretty poor job of reminding and/or addressing this, to be honest. It's admittedly been a number of years since I truly read any of the books, but from what I recall the existence of kingdoms/cultures/tribes/etc outside of those extensively covered by said book is barely touched upon, and only in the vaguest terms. As in, there's the occasional sentence mentioning that they exist, but little more. That makes it pretty easy to forget that places outside of Nexus, Gem, Whitewall, etc, are a thing.

In my opinion, Exalted's "fill the map yourself" approach really would have benefited a *LOT* from a sizable segment in the Corebook dedicated to providing the GM/Storyteller with assistance in creating new polities to fill the map with. Some combination of questions to consider and/or tables to roll on (or choose from) in order to create a framework that could then be fleshed out further. With similar segments in the various Compass books to expand on this.

EDIT: Aaaand I noticed just now that your post is almost ten years old. Really sorry about that.

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You're not wrong. More than just a segment in the corebook, Ex2 could have used an entire book with advice for Storytellers and Players alike about filling in the setting.

 

[Belenus]

That's what the Storytellers Companion was intended to be and what it failed at horribly. That's the book the OG Mandate of Heaven system comes from, which is clearly designed for NPCs to run their NPC cities, but players were so enamored of it that they cobbled together a (mostly) working version and put it in Masters of Jade.

 

[Kelenas]

You're not wrong. More than just a segment in the corebook, Ex2 could have used an entire book with advice for Storytellers and Players alike about filling in the setting.

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Either its own dedicated book (maybe as a final "Compass" book), or spread out throughout the various Compass- and splat-books with direction- or splat-focused advice/assistance. The Lunar book for example, probably would've benefited a lot, given the focus on society-building with thousand-stream river experiment.

As its own dedicated book, it probably shouldn't just include advice, though, but also some mechanical assistance for creating polities, settlements, etc. Ie, a bunch of charts and tables the ST (or Player) can roll on if they just need something quick-and-dirty for the settlement the player characters found themselves in unexpectedly, so the GM doesn't have to go for Generic Village #378.

Same with NPCs or factions as well, really; some advice for Storytellers or Players for when they create NPCs or groups of some sort, along with tables to roll on for when the ST just needs something to inject a little bit more life into what is otherwise just another random background character. There's the list of questions for character-creation in the various splats that might be able to provide some sort of starting points, but fleshing out NPCs is a bit different compared to fleshing out PCs, depending on the NPC's narrative importance.

That's what the Storytellers Companion was intended to be and what it failed at horribly. That's the book the OG Mandate of Heaven system comes from, which is clearly designed for NPCs to run their NPC cities, but players were so enamored of it that they cobbled together a (mostly) working version and put it in Masters of Jade.

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From what I recall of the Mandate system, it could work to flesh out ongoing events in a region, but I don't think it'd be particularly useful for creating the region in the first place.

Well, maybe stat-wise, but stats are arguably the easiest part once you have an at least rough concept in mind. The difficult part - at least for me - when creating characters, locales, and the like is more with the various aspects that aren't necessarily covered by mechanics. Things like culture, personality, etc.

But yeah; some sort of Storyteller's/Worldbuilder's Companion would have been ideal.

Something along the lines of this:
One segment for creating new polities, from small villages, tribal clans, city districts, etc, all the way to kingdoms, city-states, tribal hordes, etc that they might be part of.
One segment for creating people, both as individuals, and perhaps as groups with somewhat similar sub-identities. For example, creating a single tavern keeper vs creating a group of woodcutters, or a shopkeeper and his family.
One segment for creating organizations such as gangs, guilds, political factions, and so on.
And finally, one segment for creating adventures/storylines/challenges.

The last is something I'd consider particularly useful; I've thought about running games for RPGs - including Exalted - in the past, but one thing that's always stopped me was/is the sheer cliff face of "Where the heck do I even *start* designing something like an adventure or campaign?".
Arguably, this is something pretty much all RPG systems/settings could benefit, but Exalted arguably in particular, given its blank-map approach.

Don't suppose you or anyone else knows of something like this?