User Profile

[Blaque]

Good point, they're a crocodiliomorph (modern crocodiles and other croc-shaped relatives). Close, but not quite and all that. Still more closer to modern crocs than really anything else though.

Fun fact to me though is how crocs in general are more closely related to birds and idnos than other reptiles, including a lot of the aquatic ones back in the day....

[Blaque]

Deathrolls, at least in game media, seem to be at some point were decided as the signature move of big-ol'crocs./...

[Blaque]

It was always weird since as noted, they probably aren't based on a real megafauna originally, but in later books (Savage Seas notably) did make it so they were related to sea dragons (which were obviously mososaurs). I have kind of always chalked this up to the authors being on a good track (I like most megafauna in Creation just being "Classical person's account of exotic creature gone wild") but also not knowing their biology and not realizing there weren't really many if any inland mososaurs and something like that isn't common in rivers. This has then gotten retained in the art...

[Blaque]

Pestletails are indeed glyptodons. I think they were a backer reward choice, even.

Despite what one would think at first, angler lizards are Tanystropheus, which surprsiingly are not dinosaurs despite their looks.

[Blaque]

While there's a lot ot be improved on, I htink that it's notable a lot did change from there too on the depictions of the Incarna and Gaia from there to 3e as well. Gaia is notably just less active in general in Creation, and Autochthon toned down a shitload. I think that there's room to improve on teh Dragons ab it, but I think that htis need for them to have some say or be present much in the Dragon-Blooded stuff, when a lot of their Exaltation is so fundementally not built on the same themes fo the Celestials, seems kind of looking for problems that aren't there, or taking stuff that was expanded...

[Blaque]

The Dragon's had almost as much about them written in 1e I think as the Sun. I kind of wonder if the Incarna having gotten so much expanded on them in 2e and the Dragon's relegated to the oft ignored 3CD status of that edition is skewing some of this.

Frankly I kind of think their brief take in GoD was about what was needed. They ran the turning of the seasons, made their Chosen and established the Terrestrial Bureaceacy. Lesser elemebral beings approach them in form because they are the platonic expressions of their element.

I just don't see what elaborating in beings...

[Blaque]

The 1e take is pretty much all there was on it in 1e. It didn't become a gateway for-sure to toher worlds until Second Edition, which is only canon within itself. And whether or not what's in there is what she thinks is in there is never given a definitive answer, just what she thinks it is I think....

[Blaque]

It shoudl be noted that a lot of this is baed on prior edition lore some. In 3e, we havent' seen anything about them being addictive.

The devs have implied it is just that the Incarna have decided that they're effing retired and they can let everyone else handle things since that's what they revolted for.

In this context also, the Heavenly City was probably always corrupt, since it's a giant government thing anyhow will eventually just have corrupt people in it. And even if the Incarna were at the wheel there probably would still be corruption since they're powerful but...

[Blaque]

It is also a bit of a leap to say "tone things down" equals "remove". Even the previous devs weren't for removing artifacts with a mechanical aesthetic from the game, just taking away it being its own special category above other artifacts. And while the two warstrdiers are the only artifact N/A things we have seen detailed so far, I think it's notable that the others 1) Fit in the power level of Artifact 5 and 2) Kuvira is actually not as magitech-styled as a lot of stuff of 2e.

[Blaque]

I'll note that also only two of them are N/A. The other five are perfectlya vailable to PCs, and still are giant robot armor, so while there are N/A ones, their existance doesn't invalidate the fact that most warstriders are PC-available just fine....

[Blaque]

I kind of assumed SMA are going to be a bit like Signature Charms for DBs. Something you wont's ee in chargen, but something you can grow into after a game's been going for a bit. Them going Essence 3-5 is aboutw here I expect them since it helps fill in for MAs in general and it allows the Charms toh ave good "Breathing room" in power too.

[Blaque]

A big thing to me is there's no point of "2e setting for 3e" shard when well..the 2e setting exists. It's a waste of tiem and wordcount hwen the setting that folks seem to want for their shard already exists over three dozen books and seven years of publication. It's a waste of time, and fuel for debates over the "real way authors intended 3e to be" or the very "This option is the standard" debates this thread is born out of.



9bp unless you wanted the manse or not in 3e. Note, this entire tangent started when you said the system was dinging...

[Blaque]

As stated a few times, a Shard is really only useful in context when we have more of the setting done and settled (ie, we need to know what the setting is before we have alterante spin-offs of it). And you risk the issues of a split playerbase, either people who love magitech bitching they enver get support, or too much support givent o magitech. You are basically in effect asking for the game to purposefully introduce a version of the Fera problem that WW has had in the past. I think the decision to pick an aesthetic,s tick with that aesthetic, adn work fromt here is good. What I see is basically...

[Blaque]

I think it depends what you are counting as gonzo, which is a bit of my pushback with the OP. What he's considering gonzo looks to me to boil down to a few things, for me at least:

First, they seem to be based on whether there is any sort of "inappropriate for what I consider sword and sorcery" technology, which is less about gonzo and more about a view of genre. Which, mind is also not how the genre actual operates and I think is part of the push-back.

The second is kind of one of scale, wherein apparently if you aren't personally abile to single-handedly battle...

[Blaque]

Vanelith and Florivet are originally in Games of Divinity. And they more or less have the same plotlines: Vanelith is pretty much in forced retirement since no one uses flying machines and Florivet's ship made from his own bones is exotic as hell. I wouldn't so much call them gonzo though. Vanelith's situation indicates the general rarity fo flying machines and Florivet would be home in a Tanith Lee or Lord Dunsany story. They go for different kinds of weird than I get at times the OP is talking about....

[Blaque]

Also remember no matter how much self-worth Fire Aspects claim in being badass warriors, their original role in the First Age was that of concubines and jigalows . This, remember, is something actually said in the DB book that tries to sell you on playing DBs....

[Blaque]

So my responses, again to this:

a) and b) 2e was in itself a shift from 1e. This is not very different in edition changes between Exalted. Notably too in 2e, much of the world was still post-apocalyptic hellscape by the standards of most folks today.

c) Many of the things you have cited as left-over elements are in themselves, not new. They just were taken different ways in 2e (airships, warstriders, power armor).

d) I think you are conflating things with gonzoness that don't need to be. And there is not benefit for a gameline purposefully going to define...

[Blaque]

I mean, you can steal or find another airship somewhere. I don't see how them being rare prevents PCs from getting them. It's just that Skywolf isn't a dinky-ass transporter class of a common shitty First Age vessel.

Warstriders cost at least six Background dots in previouse ditions as well due to the hearthstones. ANd also were a pain. This isn't like, anything unique to the 3e take save the 3e take is that they're also probably singularly more significanta round and unexpected to have....

[Blaque]

Sidereals 2e did change some lore about. Namely Sidereals were more willing to murder eachother, they did a big Deus Ex Machina that might have caused the Empress, and they apparently tolds oem ghosts what happened, made them mad, and eventaully become Deathlords. Oversight was also a wholey 2e invention. I think generally there was a thing in 2e where stuff working against Solars was often depicted as 1) Incompetent 2) Shortsighted or 3) Working against their anture and being punished for it. Unless it was Lunars, who built a lot of their fluff on "You're not my dad" towards Solars....

[Blaque]

I should note that not all of these are gone, and not all of them are something that's always been in Exalted's history either.

Magitech first showed up in Aspect Book: Air, but had a very different tone there than what it became in the course of the line since through late 1e and into 2e.

Autochthonia was in in one of the very first sourceoboks for Exalted (Time of Tumult) and one of the last for 1e (Exalted: the Autocthonians). I think that if anything, it's something we'll see probably in somehwat recognizable a state, as it's very overtly magitechy/steampunky aesthetics...