The Gaming Den

My understanding is that Morke is aiming at a more human scale, narratively. Way less cosmic wack-out nonsense.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Given those definitions, if I were going to bet money, my money would be on a 3e-epic-style situation, because that's what the fans seem to expect and want.

If 4E D&D fans have taught us anything, as long as you call something epic and awesome and amazing the suckers will buy it.

4E D&D had a ton of marketing and gameplay problems, but 'epic does not feel like epic' is pretty far down the list once you tease out the much more common 'wizards feel gimped compared to their 3E D&D counterpart!' complaint -- a concern that does not exist in Exalted.

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:My understanding is that Morke is aiming at a more human scale, narratively. Way less cosmic wack-out nonsense.

Sounds like nWoDxalted. Not very promising...

Black Paper Moon wrote:Exalted 3E is coming out in a couple of months. I'm looking forward to reading a tear-down and discussion of it here.

My opinion of the current team design abilities is very low (Infernals Charm section was a convoluted piece of shit, their net materials had cool flulff and mostly shitty mechanics, and their net fixes either failed to adress the problems or repalced them with worse ones), so I expect nothing worth my time from them. Unless a quick scan of a pirated corebook rekindles my interest (or, failing that, nerdrage), I'm not going to bother studying 3E deep enough to criticize it.

OgreBattle wrote:They actually give a large deal of information on Perfect Defenses

Surprisingly, they talk sense, except for the last quote.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:In Exalted for example, unless you want the game to devolve into a Deus Ex Machina powered Boss Rush there's literally nothing for a well-built Essence 6-7 Solar troupe to do that isn't a complete cakewalk.

More like Essense 3-4 Solar troupe. One of my problem with Solar games is that the setting offers very little appropriate challenge for them. By Essense 3-4 you can pretty much easily storm the Blessed Isle and overthrow the Scarlet Empire, unless actual writeups for various DBs are suddenly replaced with combat monsters, and even then they will need to zerg-rush your team in large numbers, and even then you still can win, particularly if your GM allows you to abuse social combat. But after that you have only various superbosses with arbitrarily massive stats, half of whom can pretty much destroy the world by themselves.

More interesting quotes:

This is neither an evolution of or a reaction to 2e. I went back to the first six months of 1e, decided what I would change and where I would go if I were to have rebooted the game from its earliest, strongest iteration. You could definitely think of it as "Ultimate Exalted." (John Mørke)

A: Reset button, particularly where 2e is concerned. (Holden)

This fills me with (very cautious) optimism. Early 1E books were pretty much the reason I started to care about Exalted at all.

Old lore will occasionally be referenced (when it's cool). Also occasionally contradicted or ignored (when it sucks). Generally you won't be able to win arguments over what's canon and what isn't by citing page references for a while. Most of the old lore will exist in a state of canonical indeterminacy until such time as someone finds a way to use it well. (Stephenls)

Of course, my optimism above might be premature.

Honestly, I don't believe in Exalted 3E.

And as for now I don't think that Storytelling based Exalteds would ever be better than Anima: Beyond Fantasy I'm playing now.

You know, a day ago I had insomnia and no energy to do something productive, so I've read through most of the above-linked compilation of developer comments. They are really full of marketspeak and lambasting of the previous edition (which is deserved, but total concentration of criticism on 2E and the most widely hated pieces of 1E, aka Lunars in combination with the fact that the same people were determined to defend the books they are now denigrating not so far ago, makes me suspect a coordinated PR policy, rather than a honest undestanding of what went wrong on the part of the writing team). By marketspeak I mean vague promises like making combat better or reducing splat disparity. Specific information is rare, and whenever I found bits of it, those that I found discouraging (the Attibute spread is unchanged, the size of Charm chapters remains roughly the same, at least one new Exalted type pulled out of the ass) were usually of greater inportance than those that I found encouraging (no perfects, less/no Resonance straightjacketing for Abyssals).

Fluffwise things look somewhat more promising. They seems to have grasped the fact that the Threshold, which was supposed to be the default adventuring zone, was the most boring part of the gameworld, and that the only reason for PC to remain there was uber-NPC ready to zap them the instant they walk into any of the actually cool places.

Black Paper Moon wrote:Exalted 3E is coming out in a couple of months. I'm looking forward to reading a tear-down and discussion of it here.

Good news everyone! Currently Exalted 3E is expected to come out in 2015. Mere 2 years past the deadline they promised in Kickstarter.

Longes wrote: Good news everyone! Currently Exalted 3E is expected to come out in 2015. Mere 2 years past the deadline they promised in Kickstarter.

Hmmm... didn't even notice the fact. I guess that shows how few fucks I'm giving about 3E.

FatR wrote:

Longes wrote: Good news everyone! Currently Exalted 3E is expected to come out in 2015. Mere 2 years past the deadline they promised in Kickstarter.

Hmmm... didn't even notice the fact. I guess that shows how few fucks I'm giving about 3E.

Mind you, it's not that they announced the release date - they announced that the book is delayed yet again, and is pushed into 2015.

I was a lot more optimistic earlier on but now have the "why did I cough up 250 again??" Buyers remorse.

1e and 2e were some of the best games I've ever run and played in... and some of the worst too. I love the setting and the narrative power the game gives. .. but the rule system just... I ended up feeling like an abused spouse who keeps on coming back for more punishment. I hoping 3e isn't a clusterfuck and may just need some minor house ruling for taste. At worst I'll just ebay my books.

Is it being done by that hack who is putting out the new Vampire line?

codeGlaze wrote:Is it being done by that hack who is putting out the new Vampire line?

I'm not following the new Vampire. I stopped after I read the menses merit (I posted about it on this forum). AFAIK, 3e is being done by Ink Monkeys - Holden and co., who are freelancers.

Longes wrote:

Black Paper Moon wrote:Exalted 3E is coming out in a couple of months. I'm looking forward to reading a tear-down and discussion of it here.

Good news everyone! Currently Exalted 3E is expected to come out in 2015. Mere 2 years past the deadline they promised in Kickstarter.

Good. The longer they delay it, the longer before a toxic blight is released upon the world.

Koumei wrote:

Longes wrote:

Black Paper Moon wrote:Exalted 3E is coming out in a couple of months. I'm looking forward to reading a tear-down and discussion of it here.

Good news everyone! Currently Exalted 3E is expected to come out in 2015. Mere 2 years past the deadline they promised in Kickstarter.

Good. The longer they delay it, the longer before a toxic blight is released upon the world.

The secret hopes of many fans is that a longer delay means they will at least be putting out a more polished product... With this amazing quality control thing called "multiple rounds of extensive play testing. "

Hey, FatR... just for old time's sake, could you make a few Essence 5-8 Solar/Sidereal Sidereal Martial Arts builds using nothing but the basic 2E Book, Scroll of the Monk, and maybe the Sidreal sourcebook? No infinite loops or essence generating engines, plz.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Hey, FatR... just for old time's sake, could you make a few Essence 5-8 Solar/Sidereal Sidereal Martial Arts builds using nothing but the basic 2E Book, Scroll of the Monk, and maybe the Sidreal sourcebook? No infinite loops or essence generating engines, plz.

Twilight Essence Reactor is no longer a thing. 2.5 hacked out that ability.

What exactly do you want from those builds? Should they be pure combat monsters? Is there an XP limit? I mean, building high essence Solars is easy (if you want SMA, they should be Eclipses for optimality) - give them ability dots as you see fitting to the concept and write down "All the charms for which he meets the prerequisites. Martial Arts: X, Y, Z complete trees"

Hrm. How about just overall versatility and efficiency? Combat effectiveness is going to be the key, of course, but sacrificing a little bit in that arena for more flavor or plot bullshit abilities is okay.

Obsidian Shards of Infinity wins everything forever. THe capstone charm is literally an I Win Ability.

...Can't you just load up Anathema and do it yourself?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Hey, FatR... just for old time's sake, could you make a few Essence 5-8 Solar/Sidereal Sidereal Martial Arts builds using nothing but the basic 2E Book, Scroll of the Monk, and maybe the Sidreal sourcebook? No infinite loops or essence generating engines, plz.

Sorry, I've forgotten most of nuts and bolts of optimizing 2E by now. In fact, I was largely giving up on the game by the time of the Scroll of the Monk already. As far as I can remember from skimming it, non-cheesed martial artists pretty much sucked.

In 1E, now, a character could do well using Water Dragon (that made you pretty hard to kill and had a Charm to bypass stacked persistent) and Violet Bier of Sorrows (scenelong dicepool boost, IIRC) styles. Air Dragon was pretty good for a burst offense, assuming you loaded yourself on returning chakrams. You actually could conceivably want to use these as a Solar.

FatR wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Hey, FatR... just for old time's sake, could you make a few Essence 5-8 Solar/Sidereal Sidereal Martial Arts builds using nothing but the basic 2E Book, Scroll of the Monk, and maybe the Sidreal sourcebook? No infinite loops or essence generating engines, plz.

Sorry, I've forgotten most of nuts and bolts of optimizing 2E by now. In fact, I was largely giving up on the game by the time of the Scroll of the Monk already. As far as I can remember from skimming it, non-cheesed martial artists pretty much sucked.

In 1E, now, a character could do well using Water Dragon (that made you pretty hard to kill and had a Charm to bypass stacked persistent) and Violet Bier of Sorrows (scenelong dicepool boost, IIRC) styles. Air Dragon was pretty good for a burst offense, assuming you loaded yourself on returning chakrams. You actually could conceivably want to use these as a Solar.

Air and Water Dragons are broken in a lot of places, which makes them very good even for a Solar. Air dragon has a scene long surprise negator. With Water dragon you can strike the ground for undodgeable AOE damage.

Water Dragon also makes you invincible for a turn, if I recall Depths of the Water Dragon correctly..