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[Lioness]

This got flagged for rudeness so I'm going to nip this in the bud,
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It's what I did and the browsing experience is far more pleasurable. ...

[Lioness]

Yeah I think Thulio's supposed to be viewed as a bit of an asshole.
I remember a few years ago when I talked to John about the Getimians (specifically in the context of how they were different from fanworks such as the Nocturnals) and he made a point about how a dedicated anti-fate faction needs to be a bit unsavoury otherwise the Sidereals end up as their antagonists rather than the other way around....

[Lioness]

I think there are issues with how we were introduced to Rakan but his issues are hardly unique.

For example, it's pretty easy to frame The Mask of Winters as a ridiculous manchild when you know his backstory as Larquen Quen and I doubt any of the other Deathlords would fare much better under similar scrutiny of their motivations.

[Lioness]

If you acknowledge that the Realm is a better equipped and numerically superior enemy then surviving and establishing a power base beyond its reach becomes a valid victory condition.
If you view Dragon-Blooded as interchangeable worthless foes, either the Realm falls or you die trying and the fact it's Realm Year 768 is a pretty good clue of how that one tends to end....

[Lioness]

It's hard to just throw out information that hasn't been categorically declared obsolete when we're still this far from a complete picture....

[Lioness]

Alternatively we could not say that....

[Lioness]

Two of the PCs are Dragon-Blooded of House Sesus who were aware that a conflict with their house had been a long time coming, even if they'd previously had success in delaying this conflict.

So their grandmother makes a meeting happen in Great Forks, an outwardly understanding and eccentric Dynast who appreciates that they've done good work even if they have been running with the Anathema for years she doesn't want to fight them and would rather have all hands on deck for the inevitable civil war.

She wants something bad to happen to House Nellens and Greyfalls (which...

[Lioness]

I'm wary of the scenario, less because of the fanbase's history of treating the Dragon-Blooded as insignificant and more because it tends to help cast the Lunar Exalted as thwarted monsters....

[Lioness]

Not yet. I was waiting for What Fire Hath Wrought before doing more with the Dragon-Blooded the main thing I've done was introduce House Sesus' Masked Council in a way that ultimately lead to the Night Caste PC getting killed. Though something lighter in tone next time they tangle with Dragon-Blooded would probably be appreciated....

[Lioness]

Don't know how much of that still stands, but......

[Lioness]

Yeah, the Orche Fountain Era is more interesting than the Era of Dreams but the DotFA supplement negatively impacts it in the way I described, in that having hundreds of Dragon-Blooded at your personal command is a Solar default that didn't start to change until after the Thousand Struggles Era.


I think the problem with playing the Shards from the book now is that 3rd edition has shifted a lot of our expectations for better or worse. I'm still down for trying though....

[Lioness]

I'm imagining the Rogue Trader era model with the two handlers that are trying to aim him like a cannon.

I really want to do a conversion that's both a homage to this model and the I'M A' FIRIN' MAH LAZER!! meme.

...

[Lioness]

Most people I've seen who've been saying that were comparing it to the factions who are going to destroy the world if nobody stops them.
Such groups usually exist in fantasy and science fiction settings to offer ideological simplification so that hard men can make their hard decisions and there's clearly been points where Exalted has played that idea completely straight, which has made the stance on the Realm seem a little incoherent as a result....

[Lioness]

This may shed a little light on that.

Edit: You can't see it in the quote but they actually italicised the thing part of everything in the book... that's actually kind of amazing....

[Lioness]

I experienced as you described to varying degrees.

I originally liked the time of relative peace, the first Solar I made for a DotFA game was a Night Caste who'd been a waitress/lounge singer who'd been convinced to spy on her crimelord boss and it was kind of liberating to make a Solar who didn't have to worry so much about their combat ability because they had the Wyld Hunt on their ass or deal with Abyssals that were just too evil to negotiate with.

A consistent problem I've observed with First Age games at the Celestial level was that the notion of giving each Solar...

[Lioness]

Some bavckground for when I criticise DotFA.

I've played three fully fledged* First Age characters Autumn Shade, Radiant Mya and Iza Iyanna. Jiro Corinna was also born in the Era of Dreams and built as a First Age Dragon-Blooded. So I'm talking about four different characters, under four different storytellers and thus when I talk about the shortcomings of the suppliment it comes from a place where I've tried to interact with it as a game setting rather than just a resource book and repeatedly encountered similar problems.

I don't critique Shards of the Exalted anywhere...

[Lioness]

I know this is mostly headcanon but you mixed this part up.
The first Gens to abandon its Solar was Kirigasu refusing to serve his sucessor after the Thousand Struggles Era. Gens Iza was formed much later during the Era of Dreams....

[Lioness]

Sorry about that. I noted it during the playtest but I didn't make a big issue over it because at the time I assumed we were eventually going to get an explaination of out of combat speeds measured range bands when we got to travel sorcery like Stormwind Rider. Instead the playtest got ended early and as you saw Stormwind Rider's speed ended up being conveyed in miles per hour....

[Lioness]

It's not really headcanon, MoEP: Dragon-Blooded infers as such and it's part of what fuels plans like the one in the OP.
"Oh yeah Dragon-Blooded are like hypersexual they won't have any serious issue with being ordered to procreate with complete strangers."...

[Lioness]

I've dabbled with rules for combat enhancing drugs based upon the rules for poison, in that the immediate effect is beneficial but you still suffer initiative damage each round that becomes actual damage in initiative crash. Though because it's mechanically problematic to give more than 1 non-charm dice at a time I found the best way to implement this was in the form of an artifact that dispensed the drug via Evocations....