At what Essence would Anathema become a serious menace to the Realm?

[Isator Levi]

That's not a story, that's the warmup scene to show how awesome your MC is before the actual story starts. Which in Exalted could definitely be a scavenger lord or something, but when it's the deliberative for the globe crushing empire then it's like, what are you even warming up for?

An episodic game that opts for the aesthetic device of starting from the centre and spiralling outwards.

Your reading of my statement as something to defeat the whole Realm at once is wrong.

Is there no story in Exalted that isn't about creatures that can backhand a mountain range off the map*?

...What?

[DrLoveMonkey]

An episodic game that opts for the aesthetic device of starting from the centre and spiralling outwards

That sounds good, but why does it have to involve the ability to walk into one of the most dangerous and heavily guarded places in the setting, deliver a devastating speech, and walk out again based on absolutely nothing but your charm power? Remember I’m not saying that the concept of going and giving an epic speech to the deliberative is bad, just that making it something that any Solar who wants to flex a bit can do without any kind of setup.

Your reading of my statement as something to defeat the whole Realm at once is wrong.

What would the effect be?

...What?

If the Realm isn’t something to take seriously, then most things in the setting aren’t either until you get to the stuff that can actually chuck mountains around.

Which is a problem for me as a ST. You want a game where mortals defeat the Yozi? Done, that’s not even hard. You want a game where Essence 10 Solars square off against a scavenger lord? Nope, can’t do it. I mean, maybe I could, but I wouldn’t. When I craft a campaign that lets a mortal circle be the lynchpin, the people who made the biggest difference, the ones who saved the world, my PCs don’t feel cheated. When I craft a campaign that lets a mortal rise up and punch them in the nose, they feel cheated and it’s not fun. Maybe once or twice, but it’d be rare.

The Exalted should be powerful, but if you start the baseline at setting-breaking, there’s not much room to go up, and going back down is really hard.

[Isator Levi]

How the fuck did my post just get wiped out as I was writing it...?

Fuck's sake, abridged version: Other possibility is game where telling off Deliberative is opener and then followed by exploring consequence of disruption. Seems fitting to premise of Solars as major upset. Suggested before, stuff like kill Mnemon in first session. Think RPGs with detailed settings are uniquely suited, since everybody already knows characters and scenario going in.

[DrLoveMonkey]

That’s a very fitting start to a story. Or a Warcraft 3 style opening with Medivh style intro where the character goes into the deliberative and proclaims of a great doom coming and then walks out. I think it’s great, but I don’t see that we gain basically anything by saying that a Solar, by their nature, can easily do that with no help to the Realm Deliberative. Maybe they find a senator that wants to help out, and they get leverage on one of the guard captains and any number of other things.

It’s like, if there’s a cult to a god that thinks the god will save them from the armies of the empire when they come, and you want to convince them they can’t. Going to the god’s sanctum, kicking their ass and dragging them out in front of the whole city to show them how very vincible they are is an AWESOME opener to a game. Nooooot so much of the god they’re worshiping is the Unconquered Sun. You don’t bust down the Jade Pleasure Dome, shitkick the king of the Incarna, and drag him to Creation in session one, no, not even as one of the mighty Solar Exalted. The UCS needs to retain some manner of respect that shows he’s a force to be reckoned with.

Now, EVENTUALLY going to the Jade Dome, shitkicking the Sun and dragging him to Creation, yes, definitely, just not that easily. Or rather, if you want it to be that easy it’s not because the books or rules imply that it is, but because your ST is running some kind of mega gonzo campaign, but at that point conversation is almost meaningless.

[DrLoveMonkey]

This is also particularly important because outside of a very small number of games Exalted is a group game, so it’s important that the group feels like they’re working as a team, and a really bad way to facilitate that is to give every character the ability to just do whatever they want and never need rely on eachother at all.

[Colin_Fredericks]

You want to rend fate then commit 30m for a week? Do you want teacup ninjas? Because that's how you get teacup ninjas.

I mean, sensibly, yes, Sidereals track you down and send the Wild Hunt after you. Rules-as-written thus far, no - there are only a handful of Lunars who have a chance of spotting it and they're all going to be cheering for you to devastate the Realm.

[DrLoveMonkey]

cheering for you to devastate the Realm.

Not necessarily. The Realm is probably just right on the cusp of a massive civil war. Ancient weapons that can only be used ONCE are about to be triggered against enemy great houses, their militaries are about to be devastated against eachother, and their satrapies drained as the forces that have pressed the Lunars back to the edge of the world for centuries are drawn away. Then you nuke Lord's Crossing. At first the Lunars go "WOOO FUCK YEAH! Do it again!" but then you can't do it again for a year. Now they all want to kill you because you've just turned this, into this.

I might not want Mnemon on the throne, or V'Neef on the throne, or whoever on the throne, but some souless demon just unleashed the greatest terror attack in the history of the Realm on my whole culture and revealed exactly how dumb it is that I considered my third cousin a bigger threat than the fangs at our gate.