![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My personal life is going pretty well, but it doesn't make for an interesting read. I went to a party last night and didn't get hammered, so that's good. We left at about midnight-ish, probably getting out just a little before whatever was going to turn pear-shaped did so. There's a party tonight. There's a get together tomorrow to see if I want to join a role-playing group nearby, followed by a party. I'm probably going to duck out of that one. It's in St Louis, where I just was. Literally in the exact same spot, with the exact same people. Parties aren't even my thing, really. I'm over-saturated. Just, like, give me a breather. It sounds rad, I wish I had the energy and gas money, but at this point, I'm out. I've got family stuff all that upcoming week, and that shit just kills me. Family shit, man. Damn.
So, I'm obviously at home. I'm rehashing my stupid homebrew Exalted notes, you know? I've got some ideas for Fair Folk, Dragon Kings, Abyssals... stuff. I've got Lunars, Terrestrials, Solars, and Sidereals. At some point, I know that I've got to working on some very concrete rules shit, or it's all just note taking.
If you're interested in the design direction I'm taking for this fan project, it's under the cut.
I'm drawing heavily from the newer WoD core. I remember that when Exalted was first released, it was released pretty close to the end of Classic WoD, before nWoD came on the scene. As such, it carried a huge amount of the cWoD legacy rules. Where the Exalted rule sets simplify multiple attacks, though, nWoD removed them from the basic rules. Exalted carried over the Backgrounds, Merits & Flaws; nWoD turned them all into Merits. It provided a more cohesive Attribute set where Exalted was forced to kludge a mental defense characteristic into the Abilities, and maintained the setting caveat split of Lore and Occult (which was retained in both nWoD and Classic.) Seeing all this, and having admired the design on nWoD so much, I figured I'd try to bring Exalted's alternate third edition in line with the nWoD rules structure.
Which means changing the Attributes (which causes some issues with prospective Infernal, Alchemical, and Lunar Charm sets), modifying the skill lists to be Exalted setting specific (which I've discussed a little already, but which causes issues with Sidereal constellations and forces me to answer questions about where social and mental defense Charms are located and how easy they are to access), forces me to re-jigger DV calculations (probably to be more in line with the setup presented in nWoD, but the math needs to work out so as not to cause any run-away mechanics), and determine how to structure Merits and what, if anything, to do with Flaws.
I haven't written up the full document for this yet, which is dull reading anyhow, but here are the basics.
No multiple action rolls. Multiple Actions cause a lot of problems. Anything using what is, thematically, enhanced speed or multiple actions are going to be handled pretty similarly to things like how Celerity is handled in Requiem and how bursts are handled in WoD. These will have an effect on accuracy, damage, and DV's.
8-and-up's are successes. Fate gets to mess with this. You'll see similar precedents in things like making 8's and 9's roll-again's and jiggering the difficulty rating from stuff like Changeling's mechanics.
Attention's been paid to calculating running speeds, armor, DV, and other fairly static, derived values.
I'd like to retain tics as the initiative/combat system. I like them quite a lot.
Weapons and artifacts are going to function largely as tools, providing a modification to the dice roll like WoD weapons do.
I mean, I know a lot of people don't care for it, but the framework is mostly just going to be a small modification of the basic nWoD rule set. The changes that get made are going to effect the Exalts in fairly obvious ways, but I'm hoping this allows for fixes of long running problems in the rule-set. What I do think, though, is that this will be the single largest divergence between my home-brew hobby version and what the real design team is doing today. I get the impression they're doing a huge overhaul on the system in order to create a design space that Exalted can stretch its legs in and be itself rather then a re-skin of the aging Classic WoD model. I am specifically making a version of Exalted that utilizes the WoD framework. Exalted was a game that was unabashedly using the Classic system, re-skinned. The problems that it has are largely similar to the problems that WoD had, writ large, with the control issues one tends to have with an expansive, exception-based power set. Our design directions are very likely fundamentally different.
I will occasionally ask myself if there's a point to what I'm doing. But that's actually it, right there. If I thought I was trying to make the same game as the design team, I'd just let them do it. But our results are going to look totally different. I blatantly crib their notes, when they're released, for ideas. Some times they write something that's in line with my processes, but often there's not much there for me. I'm sick with a very specific kind of nerdiness, folks.
One thing I was wondering was if there was any point in sharing what I'm doing with the larger RPG.net or White Wolf community, but I'm not sure that there is. Or if there is, I don't really need the expectations of the gaming community focused on what I'm writing yet. I don't know how to articulate it easily and pretty much everyone over there is either waiting for 3E or has been doing their own thing for quite some time. I've peeked on White Wolf's forums from time to time and have seen some really excellent fan-based stuff, too. This is a pet project. Personally, I think that Brent's NExalted is more original and generally worthwhile then what I'm up to here, but my mechanics work might be useful for his overall project. So, maybe I'm helping to clear a design space for his (more interesting) ideas. Still, it's my journal, so you're probably going to see more of this in the future.
So, I'm obviously at home. I'm rehashing my stupid homebrew Exalted notes, you know? I've got some ideas for Fair Folk, Dragon Kings, Abyssals... stuff. I've got Lunars, Terrestrials, Solars, and Sidereals. At some point, I know that I've got to working on some very concrete rules shit, or it's all just note taking.
If you're interested in the design direction I'm taking for this fan project, it's under the cut.
I'm drawing heavily from the newer WoD core. I remember that when Exalted was first released, it was released pretty close to the end of Classic WoD, before nWoD came on the scene. As such, it carried a huge amount of the cWoD legacy rules. Where the Exalted rule sets simplify multiple attacks, though, nWoD removed them from the basic rules. Exalted carried over the Backgrounds, Merits & Flaws; nWoD turned them all into Merits. It provided a more cohesive Attribute set where Exalted was forced to kludge a mental defense characteristic into the Abilities, and maintained the setting caveat split of Lore and Occult (which was retained in both nWoD and Classic.) Seeing all this, and having admired the design on nWoD so much, I figured I'd try to bring Exalted's alternate third edition in line with the nWoD rules structure.
Which means changing the Attributes (which causes some issues with prospective Infernal, Alchemical, and Lunar Charm sets), modifying the skill lists to be Exalted setting specific (which I've discussed a little already, but which causes issues with Sidereal constellations and forces me to answer questions about where social and mental defense Charms are located and how easy they are to access), forces me to re-jigger DV calculations (probably to be more in line with the setup presented in nWoD, but the math needs to work out so as not to cause any run-away mechanics), and determine how to structure Merits and what, if anything, to do with Flaws.
I haven't written up the full document for this yet, which is dull reading anyhow, but here are the basics.
No multiple action rolls. Multiple Actions cause a lot of problems. Anything using what is, thematically, enhanced speed or multiple actions are going to be handled pretty similarly to things like how Celerity is handled in Requiem and how bursts are handled in WoD. These will have an effect on accuracy, damage, and DV's.
8-and-up's are successes. Fate gets to mess with this. You'll see similar precedents in things like making 8's and 9's roll-again's and jiggering the difficulty rating from stuff like Changeling's mechanics.
Attention's been paid to calculating running speeds, armor, DV, and other fairly static, derived values.
I'd like to retain tics as the initiative/combat system. I like them quite a lot.
Weapons and artifacts are going to function largely as tools, providing a modification to the dice roll like WoD weapons do.
I mean, I know a lot of people don't care for it, but the framework is mostly just going to be a small modification of the basic nWoD rule set. The changes that get made are going to effect the Exalts in fairly obvious ways, but I'm hoping this allows for fixes of long running problems in the rule-set. What I do think, though, is that this will be the single largest divergence between my home-brew hobby version and what the real design team is doing today. I get the impression they're doing a huge overhaul on the system in order to create a design space that Exalted can stretch its legs in and be itself rather then a re-skin of the aging Classic WoD model. I am specifically making a version of Exalted that utilizes the WoD framework. Exalted was a game that was unabashedly using the Classic system, re-skinned. The problems that it has are largely similar to the problems that WoD had, writ large, with the control issues one tends to have with an expansive, exception-based power set. Our design directions are very likely fundamentally different.
I will occasionally ask myself if there's a point to what I'm doing. But that's actually it, right there. If I thought I was trying to make the same game as the design team, I'd just let them do it. But our results are going to look totally different. I blatantly crib their notes, when they're released, for ideas. Some times they write something that's in line with my processes, but often there's not much there for me. I'm sick with a very specific kind of nerdiness, folks.
One thing I was wondering was if there was any point in sharing what I'm doing with the larger RPG.net or White Wolf community, but I'm not sure that there is. Or if there is, I don't really need the expectations of the gaming community focused on what I'm writing yet. I don't know how to articulate it easily and pretty much everyone over there is either waiting for 3E or has been doing their own thing for quite some time. I've peeked on White Wolf's forums from time to time and have seen some really excellent fan-based stuff, too. This is a pet project. Personally, I think that Brent's NExalted is more original and generally worthwhile then what I'm up to here, but my mechanics work might be useful for his overall project. So, maybe I'm helping to clear a design space for his (more interesting) ideas. Still, it's my journal, so you're probably going to see more of this in the future.
Tags: