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[Saur Ops Specialist]

I think that you're going to be in trouble with the clunky mechanics of first edition, particularly with Werewolf and Mage, the former of which had grossly inflated Renown totals, the latter being a game of magick that didn't have functional magick rules until the Player's Guide was released. Also, as a reminder, Dodge added to soak instead of negating attack successes, and there were variable soak difficulties by weapon (Impact).

But hey, at least no Thrall of the Wyrm, I guess. Mage and Werewolf still can't coexist in the setting with both being true, though, so that's going to...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

NB: The developers have said that comparisons to Daesh are off-base. Let the meme die....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Also, it really wasn't Raksi's thing in the first place. 1e established her preferences for human bedmates/imminent victims of cannibalism....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Getimians were made, metatextually speaking, for the express purpose of serving as Sidereal foils. They're going to be cutting at Sidereal stuff sideways. Lunars were not made to do this, but to express their own raw, visceral themes, which don't really intersect with those of the Sidereals.



"Outside Fate" used to be a crippling blow to some of their cool Charms. Even without that detail cropping up, it removes the capability of the Sidereals to peer into where a Lunar will likely be, which lowers the tension too far for a spy game angle.

...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

See, when you say "co-opt", it doesn't usually mean to convince people to abandon something and then destroy it, but rather to take it over and continue operations for yourself on a strategic time table. Lunars typically have to do the former because they don't have the numbers to do the latter; the advantage to camping and stand-up fights really belongs to the Exalted with the greatest numbers, and the Dragon-Blooded really can't be bested in that arena....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I'm sort of chuckling that a Fire-Aspected unarmed combatant has a flow chart. Of course, much like Limit, it's not the same kind of thing as in the video game....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Aren't the two Craft Charms in Arms of the Chosen errata for the two respective Charms from the core, since, in the core, they ended up printed with older Evocation mechanics in mind?...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

And the author knew this, intending for Air-Body Style to be unusable to most Second Age Lunars....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Pure Breed no longer relies on human ethnic extraction in W20, and only affects the likeness of your forms outside of Homid.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

There are no dire wolves there. Dire wolves were a sister species of coyote that died out 12 kya, lived only in the Americas, and were only about the size of a moderately large dog, with shorter limbs and stronger, hyena-like jaws. Hispo is a giant wolf the size of a horse, that resembles a nightmare wolf the size of a horse and not a simple canid trying hard to be a hyaenid.



Hopefully it wouldn't be nearly so generic. Also, if we're talking Imbued, that would necessitate the "normal person thrown into the deep end" plot....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Social combat got left behind in second edition. Third edition has a system for influence, which could simply be done via surreal and/or nightmarish dreamscapes without changing many of the mechanics involved. Anyone really wanting to get under the skin of their opponent had best be good with Socialize, to avoid giving anything away and to make sure that their target gives everything away, and possibly also Investigation for profiling. An outcome of defeat in this dreamscape can be modeled as a Psyche effect....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

There weren't any dots to connect in the first place; any picture that you end up with is going to require a lot of your own work to draw, with no particular framework or help given on what the end product is supposed to look like. You don't get much from playing the "you can't comprehend the true shape" card and then trying to explain said true shape.



W:tA doesn't offer nearly so many words to qualify as "hyper-explaining"; the hierarchy of spirits is extremely loose, the concept of "this is the soul of the world" is not exactly complicated,...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Well, take a vampire that can't retract their fangs and add on some bushy whiskers, and you're already a good portion of the way there, so I'm not seeing how it's going to be the disaster you're imagining. Especially since the tusks are likely to end up in people and helping to loose their blood supply for that hypothetical lick....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

It might shake out a bit more easily to have powers reminiscent of raksha, on account of how raksha power schemes have changed or might change (the prior developers were kicking around simplified power clusters like WoD powers that aren't Gifts, but that, too, is up in the air) and will probably not be sufficiently detailed to show strong themes for a long time....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

This reminds me of failed attempts to sell people on the Wyld as an interesting place in Exalted. Is it a seething, infinite space of limitless chaos that can allow for anything? Well, yes, but it also often gets presented without structure, making all the hype so much hot air. It ultimately means nothing and has no draw of note compared to the rich tapestry of drama and weirdness that you get inside Creation. So, too, does the "layers of reality" explanation fail to produce any form of significant heat; it's a meaningless buzzword that amounts to the same mutual incompatibility...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Edition. Previous edition. 1e made you buy it if you were casteless, and you didn't start out with it in a narrative sense - you had to hunt, kill, and eat somewhere in the character history in 1e if you had Finding the Spirit's Shape. The text mentioned this as "gaining the shape fairly"....

[Saur Ops Specialist]

For one thing, Sidereals acting as faculty in the Heptagram wouldn't be nearly so sure that they could keep their students from spilling the beans. Given that the same problems would arise from teaching them a certain Sidereal style, I'm not sure why at least some Sidereals weren't decrying what Anys Syn was trying to do in training Myrrun.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

For Eclipses who learn the Charm, does it make them look like a neomah, or does the character look like themself regardless of shapechanging?

Unrelated Dragon-Blooded question - among the various prominent Dragon-Blooded communities outside the Realm (Lookshy, Prasad, and the Forest Witches), who's expected to change names during marriage, and if a change is customary, to which family's name?...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Or the TU is desperately overreaching in an attempt to get an advantage. Which could result in a bunch of colony ships having an accident when they get to the asteroid belt......

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Fishmalks were something different. Vampions were one thing, but the Fishmalk was just there to do random comedy gags and not much else, which makes it difficult to get along with any game that's grounded on even slightly more serious assumptions....