Exalted!

Because it has been more than a page since I last said Burn Legend was awesome, I am legally obligated to say:

Burn Legend is awesome.

So, any news on the system of 3rd Edition? I've heard that they're not using Storyteller anymore, and I'm uncertain of how much information has been released. (Painfully slow internet makes research difficult)

That's...not entirely accurate, unless they've hugely revised their plans recently.

(Information-collecting wiki, in case you were interested.)

They're using a tweaked variant on Storyteller which supposedly works a lot better for action than the 2e system. As part of this, the average size of dice pools has been shunted downwards, to prevent that thing where the First and Forsaken Lion is throwing 30 dice at the table without spending a single mote.

Also multiattack flurries are dead, because nobody really liked sitting around waiting for twenty attacks.

Awesome, thanks Count.

Bleh...I'm trying to come up with a Lunar and my choices are a battle sorcerer or something social (since that is what the group is missing)

I have no idea how to play either of those though...

Sorcery kind of blows as a combat technique, with the notable exception of demon summoning, so I'd advise you go social.

Terrifying Argent Witches has some neat social weirdness you might want to take a look at. Beyond that, [stat] 5 Appearance 5 is strongly advised, and the Changing Moon caste with Manip 5 Appearance 5 will net you a god of deception who can trick, lie and cheat with the best of them.

Imagine a cross between Terezi Pyrope and Prince Kheldar.

Here's a little challenge.

I'm trying to convert Exalted into the Apocalypse World system and is trying to distill all the >9000 charms into only about a dozen moves that the player can make. Can anyone tell me if it is possible to distill all the charms into several moves that can represent them all mechanically?

edited 13th Nov '12 2:44:40 PM by IraTheSquire

Does Apoc World have noncombat stuff or are we just talking the combat moves?

Yes, it does. In fact, one of the hacks, Monster Hearts, has a brilliant social system and is a very social-focused game (a melodrama High School setting with vampires, werewolves and other supernaturals in it). Mechanically, everything is done the same way (only players roll dice. The GM's role is to decide what happens next as all normal successes have a consequence).

edited 13th Nov '12 3:04:12 PM by IraTheSquire

I can't really help with the social, but most attack Charms boil down to variants on "I hit him for extra damage", with the occasional "I hit him in such a way that it debilitates him like so".

Examples: Hungry Tiger Technique and Fists of Iron Technique improve damage for a single attack. Joint-Wounding Attack, Artful Maiming Onslaught, and Transcendent Hatchet of Fate inflict penalties through injuries or traumatic visions. Peony Blossom Attack hits in such a way that the extra damage is spread across multiple targets, while Iron Whirlwind Attack increases damage by hitting multiple times. Green Sun Nimbus Flare starts as a damage bonus and later inflicts penalties through radiation burns and sickness. Crashing Wave Throw penalises someone by putting them waaaaaay over there, in that handy breakable object.

Defensive Charms generally boil down to "I don't get hit" or "you do hit but it doesn't hurt me as much/at all", with a sideline in "I detect your surprise attack".

Another unexpected Shout-Out: a Klingon Bat'leth in Scroll of the Monk weapon section

Hilariously, there are no styles which use it as a form weapon.

If I had more mechanical aptitude than a spanner, I'd love to stat up a style based off Mok'bara sometime.

Well you probably can harmonize it for Silver-Voiced Nightingale Style at least, but yeah.

Singing Klingons

Hey, Klingons sing all the time. They have a huge opera tradition, remember?

Oh gods. Now I'm imagining an opera-themed martial art.

>They have a huge opera tradition, remember?

I haven't actually watched pretty much any Star Trek so I don't >.>

Not certain it's a Star Trek shout-out. I think the Spreading Water Knife is an actual, IRL weapon.

But yes, time to make a Lunar Klingon Opera Monk.

If it was a real weapon, everybody would know that bat'leth is a real weapon. As bat'leth isn't a real weapon, that knife is not either and is just a bat'leth.

>But yes, time to make a Lunar Klingon Opera Monk.

Modify the Nightingale style (or just flavour the stunts of it) or create from scratch?

edited 19th Nov '12 10:06:38 AM by Adannor

Hee. I believe the most popular Klingon opera is about their Messiah figure and his girlfriend wiping out an army and having sex between the corpses. This is obviously the best Solar/Lunar duo and the best use for In Doubt Of Legions Spirit.

Frankly, that sounds like most Exalted sessions my Infernal Group does.

Yeah, Infernals are awesome like that.

Can't wait to see what they look like in 3e.

I get the feeling people aren't appreciating my genius.

Star Kings Cont...

Terrestrial

Spread across the Cosmos are the 10,000 Clans. Although sharing many common ancestors, each clan names one of the original 10,000 Dragons as their Prime Ancestor, Prime Patriarch or Matriarch, their Primarch. In this Age of Sorrows, many of the original Clans have fallen, new ones rose with some newly revered Prime Ancestor. Each bears that Primarch's philosophy and many remain to pure in that one's Element while others were taught by this Prime to revere all of the elements.

The various Clans have dozens of different allegiances they may swear themselves to. There is the ones sworn to the Realm, the ones that are a part of Scavenger Space, those ones who lost themselves, their identities to the Lonely Star, their souls to the Yozi, their sanity to the Aliens, and those many independent bodies, some of a single clan and some of a hundred. The number of ten thousand often remains the same though.

Lunar

Luna first did not throw her lot in with the rest of the Incarnae. The Sun came to speak to her, to convince her to join them, but then the speaking turned to insults. He called into question her loyalty to her intimacies, especially her love of Gaia who would throw in her lot with the Incarnae and he called her a pale reflection of himself. He had as well the help of his Chosen to goad her into reaction. She did calm down eventually but Sol Invictus still walks with a limp.

To match his Chosen she created her own, not pale silver reflections of the Solar but ones taken out deep in herself, made from terror and madness. Still enraged with the Sun, she brushed off any ideas of making them companions of the Sun Chosen but set them up as rivals, Witch-King to compete with the God-Kings.

Sidereal

Among them still exist the Jade and Iron Faction. For the Jade Faction, there are those cowed and fearful of the combined might of the Ten Thousand Dragons and then there are those who honestly believe the Cosmos are better for being ruled by the Terrestrials. For the Iron Faction, there are those who simply chafe as Celestial Exalts to be placed under the thumb of their lessers and there are those who believe Creation was ultimately better with the full Celestial Host in charge, back to ways things were before. These difference in opinion split the Fractured Fellowship even further.

Before the Terrestrial, the Sidereal put on a united front of loyalty to the Realm, save those who have become Ronin. Few Terrestrials set foot upon the extra-dimensional planet of Yu-Shan though and save to give reason for them to lay siege to the city of the gods the Sidereal freely argue and plot against each other. They do not shout their allegiances to the streets but the Sidereal each knows where the other's stand, for the most part.

Chejop Kejak plays his silent game. He is the apparent leader of the Jade Faction and the secret leader of the Iron Faction. He believes in the superiority of the Sidereals' power and position, that they should be the ones in charge of Creation with the Terrestrials as their puppets, not they as the Terrestrials' tools. This is limited to just the Sidereals though and Chejop does not broke the interference of any other Celestial's. He uses his connections through the Jade Faction to help maneuver the Realm against emergent Solars or incurring Lunars. All the while he turns their heads from the going ons of the Iron Faction.

Neverborn & Yozi

The Void Realm, the Underworld, the Terminus Memory, all of these are names given to the place Soledades lies. It connect tangentially to the Cosmos and like the Yozi may still rise up into it. What comes is not Soledades herself, but her memories which may still carry the will of those remembered. These Memorial Bodies are called the the bodies of the Neverborn. Shades, less then even the ghostly Yozi, occasionally show up in Creation, plodding along unthinking routes. Even more rare, one of the Yozi, who's greater Passion allows them passage in the Cosmos this moment, will swim along with them, lost in their own memories for a time. Sometimes they are followed by Abyssal seeking to learn of the vast memories their power emulates, or even other curious sages, sometimes they are raided by Exalted Burglars seeking some treasure of the past. These Primordial Museums guard themselves and would-be thieves face the Shades of once-devas. Even those that succeed eventually find their ill-gotten goods forgotten and inevitably returned to their hallowed halls

When the surviving Primordial were absorbed into their solipsistic queen's identity singularity, they were so thoroughly dissolved that their names were forgotten. They were so great though, what they once were always remembered, although perhaps warped by a mad queen. The Neverborn as the shades and perhaps the remnants of the surviving Primordials is well-known and their manifestations well documented:

• Unseeing Eye Frozen Awake, a frosty memorial pulled through space by moon-sized white ram, that feels so cold one would want to fall asleep but is never allowed, find their eyes and their minds frozen open, driven mad by visions brought by sleep deprivation.
• The Thousand Streams Screaming, who carries the screaming memories of his victims and his devas upon open ships carried on countless slipstreams that manifest randomly along the rim of the Cosmos, scarring the Alien Fae that remember him all too well.
• Ordered Without Name, a vast archive and library, a wealth of information stored in a most ordered fashion, references easily found as helpful lesser Shades lead students along. The challenge is to ignore the temptation to keep looking and learning as Shades point out new links, new things to look at, until the student is lost forever and eventually becomes a Shade themselves.
• The Beast Lost Within Itself, manifesting as a space craft so vast it boggles the mind, so vast it exists within its own dimension, so vast that it draws you in and loses you inside, until you become a hopeless wanderer who forgets who they are and asks the walls forever. The only escape is to find the Beast and ask for a name. It will give you its own, somehow unique among the Neverborn to remember themselves. Like all their names though, it is forgotten but since the wandered can forget no more they must remember everything else.
• Emerald Nova, the occasional emission from the Underworld is a brief but deadly to those caught in it explosion. The remembered death cry of Soledades's other fetich, a painful memory Soledades does not want and so she discards violently into the Cosmos.

The hellish ghosts of the Yozi were incapable of forgetting, only hating. Their hatred was blind though, twisted by endless Passions and arguing Circles of Ghosts. They made the realm of Malfeas around their hatred, to play out their Passions in it and still they would break open Hellmouths to rampaging across the Cosmos. These were always unfocused, pointless, just living out lives long past before they turned back into Malfeas again. So pointless was this and so vast were the Cosmos it all barely made a dent until all of them at once rampaged together. The Black Nadir Concordant bound them into a Pact upon their essential nature, forcing it so none of them could come forth together and forcing from them the secret magic of Necromancy that could bind their Ghosts into servitude. The Yozi could not be barred completely from Creation, the very essential nature used as its basis would not allow it, but they were severely restricted.

The Yozi were twisted by their death, holding unto as much as their identities as they could but undeniably changed:

• The Dragon That Was was wanted to be as much as a virtueless but in his last moments he saw the light, literally mind you. That light was the raging unleashed Sun, as some believe his heart, finally turned against him. Now he is a roiling mass of barely there-ness, invisible except by those who know what to seek, made of hypocrisy and remorse, attempts at redemption constantly spoiled by cackling sin.
• The Obelisk of Lies was obviously Qaf, he was pillar that reached up forever, piercing the lies of reality, enlightening those who who dared climb him, or his height was diminished to an illusion, just like his enlightenment, trapping his climbers in false dreams.
• The Twisted Boar That Blackens The Sky: Once unstoppable, now he was immovable. He asserts himself like an avalanche and then stays there until his Passion asserts him elsewhere. It can be in the middle of nowhere, ignored, or in the middle of some important cosmic function, jamming it hard with the totality of his self.
• The Perfected Principle of Consumption, once The Maw That Devours Worlds. In life, she was closely associated with Lethe, living souls she devoured and then shat out were as cleansed as if they had been reincarnated. Her appetite was ravenous but she gave it all back, purified from when it entered maw. Now as the World Swallower, she eliminates nothing, hoarding all that she eats in her stomach, neither does she digest, preserving everything in deathly stasis. She only absorbs, deeper and deeper into herself until it becomes lost forever.

edited 19th Nov '12 10:27:54 PM by God_of_Awesome

I have noticed that there is a large amount of the gods and elementals part of the charters page that is blank. Other than the Incarna , only the entries for Lytec, the Kukla , and Han-Tha. I don't have enough confidence in my abilities as a Troper to try and fill them in.

EDIT: sorry to change the subject .

edited 19th Nov '12 10:26:18 PM by grandphoenix

You better be sorry. MY GENIUS WILL NOT BE IGNORED

-Ignores his genius-

So anyway, remember that time I am porting Exalted to Apocalypse World system? Still working on it.

edited 20th Nov '12 8:49:19 PM by IraTheSquire

DB