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[Blaque]

I kinda fell into my own philosophy of biology jargon there. Neo-Lamarckism is this idea of environment affecting the parent in ways which affect their offspring. This is stuf flike how if your grandmother lived in a fammine or something, this actually might affect your mother's development and in turn you. It's kind fo weird, but it's an idea that the machinery of evolution is at tiems affected by lifestyle of parents in ways that actually do get passed on to offspring. It has a lot to do more with things like epigenetics and developmental biology than Darwinian evolution. Not quite the Lamarck...

[Blaque]

I'd say yes since natural selection is an emergent process based on there being components of inheritable traits, population variation, and selective pressure. I can't see it not happening in the Darwinian sense at least.

Issues for Earth comparisons are more that there's apparently a bit of neo-Lemarkian inheritence and I don't think Mendelian genetics necessarily works in Creation like they do here on Earth. So while Darwin is probably right in Creation,t he other stuff involving biological evolution as understood by someone on Earth is probably pretty distinct....

[Blaque]

The whole "T. rex was a carrion eater" thing is not really as accepted. Even the main proponent of it, Jack Horner, last I checked wasn't so big on it. The general paradigm is that T. rex was an opportunistic carnivore. Kinda like how on Earth there's no real "pure predator" or "pure scavenger" save some pretty extreme things like cheetahs or vultures.

It's also worth remember that T. rex might have hunted in family groups, so the youngins might have helped Mom and stuff like that.

And on top of that, Exalted itself is a pretty cineamtic...

[Blaque]

So over the time waiting for 3e to come out, there was some discussion I remember seeing with Holden and SLS especially on some books that are good non-ficiton resources for Exalted 3e. So far I've read Debt: the First 5,000 Years, but am currently branching out on other ones about.

Curious if these are things you cosnider good readings for Exalted 3e:
1491
The Art of Not Being Governed
Seeing Like a State

And also I guess if any additional non-ficiton you think would be good reads for getting some feel of the Exalted setting.

[Blaque]

I personally like the Craft system and have madea a few characters who while not "crafters" had a bit on the side a goal to do things that did crafting. It's soemthing I personally quite enjoy the idea of.

My own personal view so far ahs been kind of these points though in palces I personally think it could have been better implemented:

First, I think that there hsould be ways to get craft points probably out of Craft itself. I look at Linguistics, Performance and Survival here and wonder if things that are used to create works of art or utility in thsoe...

[Blaque]

I forgot if it was covered or not, I think it was, but are the sohei going to be talked about in context of Lookshy, or will they have to wait for another day? I know the Academy of Sorcery was mentioend as getting an initiation, but forget if sohei, even if not getting that,a re going to be there. If only because sorcerer-exorcists seem cool to me for all the onmyouji stuff.

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What was the final decision with Dragon-Blooded and Jade? Resonant/neutral?

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That's somewhat the idea. A bit of an issue is just versioning. I have something that consolidates all the Charms for my games in a Word documenta bout, but something I would be sharing woudl have to obviously be done differently. Right now it's even just partially getting things in order and then I think I'll probably post it on something like Google Docs. or as a publically available Word document.

[Blaque]

As a bit on this, just an example based on the original backer preview. While there are Adorjan Charms, there might also be Stealth Charms inspired by the Ebon Dragon or Metagaos or something like that, yes? Or broader afield, Charms that just kind of by their own reflect general Infernal or Yozi concepts like Infernal Monster Style did for MAs in 2e or I would assume say, dancing is just a thing Yozis in general do?...

[Blaque]

Update. I have now I think gotten something in with all Charms that I want changed. Deleted Charms have even been replaced with new-Charms-with-same-name for at least completeness' sake. In case anyone wants to know, it was Tireless Workhorse Method (mostly for bookkeeping purposes), Efficient Craftsman Technique (new effect), and Clay and Breath Practice (new effect). I think these put in I can work on some broader Craft changes that I wanna maybe do, as well as start tossing in new charms. Stay tuned.

New Charms for those interested:
Tireless Workhorse Method
This...

[Blaque]

So some overhauls to things, changes are in the first post. Some general continued goals:

- Reward players for actually using Craft. A lot of effects that just whip-up craft xp out of nowhere have some thingst hat kind of encourage you to you know, roll Craft. I also reworked the craft xp-generating engien some in places like Supreme Perfection of Craft, where it kind of blew the rest of things out of the water.

- PCs have plenty of slots using Solar Charms just with Tireless Workhorse Method. So isntead of giving you even more major slots, I thought it was better...

[Blaque]

As already noted, don't build NPCs with xp. Build them with the traits that matter to what you think their role should be in a game and what's approrpaite.

Giving them cheaper Charms is also again, kind of needless. They are already older and assumed to have more Charms. They don't need "win more" beenies for being old and high Essence when high Essence already has its own benefits....

[Blaque]

That's a bit of what I'm thinking and trying to do. For now I'm mostly tossing out things wiht an idea that I like the base system. I just think that the way the Solar Craft tree is you kind of are in a way forced to avoid it by going into the point-generating Charms to get to other effects. I think there is more just a structural issue to things than anything in Solar Craft, plus a need for some new charms that I tink can be added to things without too much effort....

[Blaque]

So, like everyone and their mother I am doing my own revision of the Craft Charms, but with my own kind of caveats and design philosophy to things. The main thing is that like many projects where nearly everyone has their own say on what something should be, seeing the ways others do it sometimes motivates to make me want to do things my own way. Hence this.

Going into things, I had some design goals in mind, that I think are worth noting before getting into the weeds:

First, I think the base Craft system is actually fine. I like the idea of crafting points, slots, and...

[Blaque]

I more or less feel that 3e kind of handles things actually a bit better than people realize. By the core rules, you can usually substitute appropriate Crafts for ones you have for at most +1 difficulty ot the roll. So while making a ship isn't the same as carpentry, Craft (Carpentry) is generally good enough to do Craft (Shipwright) with an idea to me that you might have +1 difficulty since you have to figure out the other stuff. I had a character like this in a game who had Craft (Military Engineering) who mostly used it to do some other things with a notable difficulty. I could see similar...

[Blaque]

Exigents seem to be the best palce to put "legacy heroes" like Doomfist or the Green Lantern, ya....

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I highly discourage letting traits go above 6 besides Essence itself. Only becaue I don't see much value on basically giving elders dice pools tha due to the game's math, normal PCs start not even being able to actaully interact with them meaningfully. Think of it like this. For every dot about 5 a character has, they in effect havea permanent dice-adder over PCs and then some due to the higher Excellency caps. This is already in a wordlw here many Charms are notably stronger due to the higher Essence itself and the more motes to throw those around.

I think the additional motes,...

[Blaque]

For every Sarcosuchus imperator there's something out htere like....well, that....

[Blaque]

The kind of characters who are Essence 6+ are going to be the sorts who kind of decide they have interest in personal refinement over managing temporal power and all that. Ergo, they decided they needed soemthing they could only get sitting under those Bodhi trees to get some personal refinement when they probably spent a good amount of time building a powerbase and already being capable of doing quite a bit of what htey needed to do in that.

So given my own duthers I'd actually say Chejob was not 6+, or that if he was, not very much. Because depsite the meme of him personally coming...

[Blaque]

Sand ships I think are first mentioned in Scavenger Sons, and then talked about a bit more in Castebook: Eclipse since one of the characters, Admiral Sand, has a fleet of them. In 2e they are talked about more in Scroll of Kings along with other vehicles. And I think 3e just kind of uses normal boat mechanics but you know, sand dunes, to do most of what you'd need with them.