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[Blaque]

So this is a bit where I still don't buy into things, actually. This is mostly since I have a couple main views of things that I also tend to translate to how I view Creaiton as well.

First, that while there is a distirbution of altruistic to selfish motivations in a population, they are not something that's heritable to a level that matters. Humnas, as a species, has been "altruistic enough" to get by most of our existance. Kind of like any other organism. Us being multi-cellular organisms geenrally is pretty good altruism, until some cells go rogue and you get cancer....

[Blaque]

The example more to my mind is the sort of situation like Fredrick Douglas talked about a couple times in his autobiography. Where he often met people who did honestly think they were good people, were kind, and treated him well and he noted as such. But then he also points out, they owned people still. He wasn't a child or a worker, he was property.

I can see this with some Dynasts really. They open a school in a satrapy because well, there are so many orphans there. Not really even thinking that maybe there are a lot of orphans because a lot of parents get conscripted into the...

[Blaque]

The US treatment of the Americas in the 19th and 20th Century, as well as some of the ways that imposed land distribution was implemented to native lands, kind of push me to say...yes actually. Economic empires are often built on ecnomic exploitationa nd dependence. Cultural empire is often done with a large chunk of cultural eradication in the process, especially when done purposefully as was done by the Spanish, British, and the United States.


I mean, depends here. There's a reason cultural relativism is kind of something brought up in the first couple weeks of any ethics...

[Blaque]

Though that said, very good people can buy into pretty evil propoganda. Just read stuff on African Colonialism or Amerinidan relocaiton or the Stain and things get pretty nasty really. The US was brought-up as a non-empire but seeing its treatment of Latin America since the Monroe Doctrine and the forced relocation of native peoples, it kind of does fit the bill. It just happens to also be a colonizing one wihtin its own borders.

And a lot of it was done with an idea of bettering the lands or people. Or just the land, by getting rid of the people there already as often teh case....

[Blaque]

So randomly, it has been brought to some attention in this post that there are two incompatable systems for training animals in the Exalted 3e corebook. Which one would you say is probably the "right" one?

[Blaque]

That's just a bit of weird editting, as the exact same rules are actually repeated in the bestiary and needed not be in the Solar Charms to begin with....

[Blaque]

I actually think that Scion didn't need to be two volumes, personally. There's a lot of weirdness to its structure and such as a result of it as well I think. Exalted as a game is also kind of billed on playing well, Solars default and upfront, while Scion and trinity present the "default" games more as games in of themselvs. The split would be odd too since some things unviersal to all Exalted beyond the core (spells, Martial Arts, Evocations) would probably still need to be in the Solar book if youw ant to keep things thinned down, not really making it optional.

What Exalted...

[Blaque]

I don't get that sense myself. I mean, Ma-Ha-Suchi's entire character arc in teh book right now is "We did all this fucking work and it's still there." And the geenral ability for the Realm to basically put a boot on the neck of Lunars for nearly eight centuries is a big motivating aspect to the entire Lunar like, thing....

[Blaque]

I mean, another thing to remember is that in 3e, it's not the Martial Arts dots that give you magic. A way I think of it is that just knowing Snake Sytle doesn't give you shit besides dots in Snake Style and the ability to use cool weapons. But that you're a master of Snake Style probably opens up options storywise to other things, such as weird unique techniques (Meirts) or patronage for useful beings (as the characte rin Adversaries of the Righteous).

I think that's the big thing to me. Even if it's a setting fact, that fact is not going to be realized by the Martial Arts Ablity...

[Blaque]

QCs don't have Attributes and Abilities. Their pool caps are baed on them, but simply put, a person hast hose stats because that is what's approrpiate to the character for the role they have in a story. The Defense 7 isn't hiding some actaul stat. THey have Defense 7 because that's what the character needed to be interesting in teh role they needed.


They have it because that's what they needed for the stats. QCs aren't "Really trait X+Y" to me. They're just the traits they have. The martial artist with Defense 7 is probably among the best in the world. What that "really...

[Blaque]

Why would it be? QCs should be designed to be interesting challenges to PCs and express their role in a story well. Their stats reflect their narrative importance, not some statement of their actual relative power or traits in the world as some measure of their real traits....

[Blaque]

Generally I just think that characters have the statst hey need. If you're not wanting to give the martial artist the higher Soak, just give them a higher Dodge Deefense. Give them some special unique Merits that represent their understanding of the secrets fo the style that PCs fully unlock with Charms. Basically a way to do "mortal martial arts" often to me is just...give them Merits that do some semblance fo what the Charm probably does. Because the Charms basically are just pulling that weight and there's no need for QCs to follow the rules so strictly.

[Blaque]

I will note, though, that due to 3e's general defaulting to Quick Characters, it's not htat hard to just make the martial artist NPC good at being a badass mortal martial artist via the QC rules. I think that a bit of the view that there's something lacking in Martial Arts mechancially in 3e is built on the idea that NPCs should be using the same mechanics as PCs for character creation and equipment implementation....

[Blaque]

The Neverborn don't want anything. They're asleep and impotent at the bottom of the Underworld. There is also something in other outlets that there's no Oblivion anymore anyhow. The Neverborn are dead gods thrashing in their sleep and the Deathlords are powerful ghosts who wrestled packs from them after centuries fo work. The Neverborn wanting anything is irrelevant and the Deahtlords seem to be pretty happy ruling their domains for as long as they can. Mask of Winters just as much likes toying with mortals as he likes killing them, as an example.

Abyssals are a diverse group of...

[Blaque]

Actually, no. Fair Folk are as I gather last, not going back to the version that was in the 1e book. Remember a bit that the Fair Folk as a potentail existential threat was in part from authors going off the rails on following an outline (see here for more on that). While there might be Fair Folk who think that, the general vibe that we got in late 2e and I think we're going to see with the hannya still being a thing, we're going to get the raksha-as-refugees thing still. Some might still very want another Balorian Crusade, but they probably ultimatley don't matter in the general long term survival...

[Blaque]

As already noted by others, the creation or at least, linking to the Underworld that the death of the god's enemies caused was probably something they didn't want to add to. Killing a titan need not delete concepts to be destructive. They can just...be destructive, without having a setting suddenly be unrecognizable to humans playing the game.

There is also the couple-times-referred-to clemency pleas from Gaia, the possibility that killing the ones who were left wasn't any easier than locking up those who surrendered, some enterprising Exalt proposing enslavement of the to-be-Yozis,...

[Blaque]

Again, editions matter in this. 2e took very hard to the "Rules are physics" thing, but 1e didn't and 3e explicitly rejects this. Mostly since while "rules as physics' Is a good experiment, it's not actually (I think) a good way to make a broadly usable game setting. It becomes self-serving solipsistic writing rather htan useful for like, playing hte game.

My own view is kind of hinted at above. If you kill She Who Lives in Her Name, you don't suddenly change Hierarchy. You just canned its greatest advocate. wastevens I think had the best take on it. Hierarchy isn't...

[Blaque]

It should be noted that SHLiHN taking-out 90% of everythign in her thing was only stated in Dreams of the First Age. Depending on where you place that in canon (1e was very vague on the number, and 3e runs with a lot of stuff with the Yozis at least being based on Games of Divinity and that's it) affects a bit on this. I honestly kind of doubt it might come back as it leads to weird over-thinking onw aht was I think meant to be a bit of weird, not some definitive "The world is fucked" thing.

[Blaque]

I think the term shinma not even being capitalized originally kind of shows how drift of their perceived importance might ahve been overblown. Kind of rembmer that in the orignal Fair Folk presentation, the shinma weren't for sure even real....