The Exalted and car talk thread

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It definitely leaves me with the feeling RPGs are not a healthy hobby. When XXXL is referred to as gamer large it's not a sign that health is ranked high on group values

I think that falls into the 'neckbeard' cliche; those sad people who latch onto rpgs as one of their escapes from the real world, which includes basic health and hygeine regimes, who are mostly known because, lacking any friends in real life, the only chance they get to play is by showing up to cons and organized store events. I don't think it really bespeaks to most people who simply play RPGs, at least from my experience.
 
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My trouble is that as a palladium fan, every time I see someone use the KS abbreviation, my mind ALWAYS thinks 'Kevin Siembieda' first and 'Kick Starter' second.
 
Yeah, I'm not saying its necessarily a scam when someone bites off more than they can chew, and I also have strongly stressed in the past that KS is an investment scheme not an ordering service, but at the same time there's a difference between being open and honest about the work taking much longer than initially expected and making excuses. And ultimately, the failure of a creator to do the proper research before engaging in a business venture isnt something that evokes any empathy on my part. There's very few health issues that actually prevent someone from doing work, and even then, its simply one delay among others and probably isnt worth mentioning if someone wants to come across as professional.
Don't get me wrong, that's a fair attitude to take, at the end of the day you've paid for a product (Regardless of how Kickstarter says it works, that's the way the majority of gaming kickstarters actually work) and you deserve to get that product. I think Kickstarter should be doing more to let new creators understand what they're getting in for and to vet that they're actually capable (If Kevin Crawford ever decides to get out of gaming, he'd make an incredible KS mentor), but until it starts cutting into their 7%, they're not going to do anything, and then they're treading a fine line against obstructing the arts / social / creative-with-potential-but-no-resources projects that they say they're around for, or becoming just another creative investment gatekeeper.

I follow a couple of kickstarter overwatch subreddits, and the tech side of kickstarter definitely seems worse than our little bit, with regular campaigns making promises that get obstructed by pesky things like the laws of physics, energy storage limitations, or just the general techbro "the world will do what we want it to" mentality. * *'s got nothing on those guys.

Still better than Monster, or Redbull :wink:
I stopped drinking that stuff after I poured it into a glass, and saw what colour it was.
 
I think that falls into the 'neckbeard' cliche; those sad people who latch onto rpgs as one of their escapes from the real world, which includes basic health and hygeine regimes, who are mostly known because, lacking any friends in real life, the only chance they get to play is by showing up to cons and organized store events. I don't think it really bespeaks to most people who simply play RPGs, at least from my experience.
So I'm not prepared to go quite that far. Overweight doesn't equal outcast. There's some studies that show you shift your weight up towards the average of your group. So if being husky is acceptable it's unfortunately easier to get to very obese. And let's face it this is the hobby you can continue with even after your back is damaged or carple tunnel sets in etc. I wish as a group we started saying your a great person and I'd like to play with you into your nineties so I'm not going to make it easy to drink 65 oz of coke tonight. There's been too many good people die too young because bad health and bad habits have been almost seen as a right of passage.

I attended both Gencon and Gencon SoCal. There's definitely a regional aspect to it. SoCal looked like the general population of socal. Mostly fit. Gencon had a wider mix but compared to what I see in Seattle obesity was much more common.
 
So I'm not prepared to go quite that far. Overweight doesn't equal outcast. There's some studies that show you shift your weight up towards the average of your group. So if being husky is acceptable it's unfortunately easier to get to very obese. And let's face it this is the hobby you can continue with even after your back is damaged or carple tunnel sets in etc. I wish as a group we started saying your a great person and I'd like to play with you into your nineties so I'm not going to make it easy to drink 65 oz of coke tonight.

Coke really is amazingly fattening. I had a friend who downed a 2 liter at every game session, and he was heavy guy. He had the same stomach problems I did. I talked him into quitting pop, simply for that reason, not even thinking about his weight. That was the only lifestyle change he made, and his weight dropped dramatically in just a few months. It was pretty eye opening.
 
Still better than Monster, or Redbull :wink:

I drink Monster. I should really stop. It started innocently enough, me flirting with a can at the convenience store one day. I couldn’t resist the temptation...
 
So I'm not prepared to go quite that far. Overweight doesn't equal outcast. There's some studies that show you shift your weight up towards the average of your group. So if being husky is acceptable it's unfortunately easier to get to very obese. And let's face it this is the hobby you can continue with even after your back is damaged or carple tunnel sets in etc. I wish as a group we started saying your a great person and I'd like to play with you into your nineties so I'm not going to make it easy to drink 65 oz of coke tonight. There's been too many good people die too young because bad health and bad habits have been almost seen as a right of passage.

I attended both Gencon and Gencon SoCal. There's definitely a regional aspect to it. SoCal looked like the general population of socal. Mostly fit. Gencon had a wider mix but compared to what I see in Seattle obesity was much more common.


Sorry I didnt intend for it to be a general statement about gamers or even overweight people. I think I spoke too generally in my response. My experience is that the gamers I've played with (which has been a very diverse population over three countries and close to 30 years) tend towards the average weight for the area and the type of people they are. I guess my intention was to say that I don't think there's any specific connection between being a gamer and being unhealthy, rather I think thats connected to the stereotyped outsider image of gamers.
 
Coke really is amazingly fattening. I had a friend who downed a 2 liter at every game session, and he was heavy guy. He had the same stomach problems I did. I talked him into quitting pop, simply for that reason, not even thinking about his weight. That was the only lifestyle change he made, and his weight dropped dramatically in just a few months. It was pretty eye opening.

It’s funny you said “pop”. In Indiana, that’s what everyone calls it. When I moved out here I said pop a few times before my wife said “it’s ‘soda’”. I don’t think I called it pop anymore.
 
Coke really is amazingly fattening. I had a friend who downed a 2 liter at every game session, and he was heavy guy. He had the same stomach problems I did. I talked him into quitting pop, simply for that reason, not even thinking about his weight. That was the only lifestyle change he made, and his weight dropped dramatically in just a few months. It was pretty eye opening.

In grade school I recall doing an experiement where we dropped an iron nail into a glass of coke. It took about 5 days for the nail to completely dissolve. And the teacher was like :'now imagine putting that stuff in your stomach on a daily basis'. That lesson stook with me. To this day I avoid soda.

I drink Monster. I should really stop. It started innocently enough, me flirting with a can at the convenience store one day. I couldn’t resist the temptation...

Ouch that stuff scares me. Taurine is a major constituent of bile, and most energy drinks produce it from modified bull hormones (hence the name). I don't think we've even started to see the long-term effects of that stuff yet.
 
It’s funny you said “pop”. In Indiana, that’s what everyone calls it. When I moved out here I said pop a few times before my wife said “it’s ‘soda’”. I don’t think I called it pop anymore.

Growing up we called it pop, then moving to the states everyone called it soda, except in Oregon, where they called it pop, and then back here on the East coast of Canada they call it soda.
 
Sorry I didnt intend for it to be a general statement about gamers or even overweight people. I think I spoke too generally in my response. My experience is that the gamers I've played with (which has been a very diverse population over three countries and close to 30 years) tend towards the average weight for the area and the type of people they are. I guess my intention was to say that I don't think there's any specific connection between being a gamer and being unhealthy, rather I think thats connected to the stereotyped outsider image of gamers.
Yeah and I didn't mean to imply you thought heavy equal bad. I've recently seen how easy it is to go from healthy to obese and it's just brutal. One injury away. That and the deaths of Gygax and Arneson too young. It would be nice to see an empathic shift to say let's find XXXL less funny without saying you're a horrible person for being large.
 
Growing up we called it pop, then moving to the states everyone called it soda, except in Oregon, where they called it pop, and then back here on the East coast of Canada they call it soda.
Or the deep South where randomly they sometimes call all some or pop Coke. Yeah I'd like a Pepsi coke please.
 
I
Coke really is amazingly fattening. I had a friend who downed a 2 liter at every game session, and he was heavy guy. He had the same stomach problems I did. I talked him into quitting pop, simply for that reason, not even thinking about his weight. That was the only lifestyle change he made, and his weight dropped dramatically in just a few months. It was pretty eye opening.
I used to drink 3L a day. One kidney stone later and I shifted away from that. Fortunately I was young and with a fast metabolism so I didn't get fat but if that was still my having by my thirties and forties I'd be pretty large by now.
 
Yeah, I'm not saying its necessarily a scam when someone bites off more than they can chew, and I also have strongly stressed in the past that KS is an investment scheme not an ordering service, but at the same time there's a difference between being open and honest about the work taking much longer than initially expected and making excuses. And ultimately, the failure of a creator to do the proper research before engaging in a business venture isnt something that evokes any empathy on my part. There's very few health issues that actually prevent someone from doing work, and even then, its simply one delay among others and probably isnt worth mentioning if someone wants to come across as professional.
I disagree KS is an investment. I view KS as something operating between an investment and a prepurchase. If it is an investment it should issue debt or shares in the company. If it's a prepurchase then it just needs to deliver the goods and no problem. But it tries to do a little of both. Investments in speculative companies are usually limited to friends, family and qualified investors. That helps deal with the disappointment issue when some fail. Failure to friends and family kills your chance at future funding. Failure to a qualified investor is failure to someone who knew the risks and can afford to lose the money or at least is reasonably expected to have access to professional advice.
I expect long term a maximum investment size of $50 or so. It's enough to get something done but not so much all these unqualified investors will lose their shirt. KS is truly weird.
 
Sure, its not technically an investment in the same terms as buying stocks or bonds. Rather, I'm using that loosely insofar as the idea ''I have faith in this product and/or creator and want to contribute to see it realized." My biggest issue is not people who pledge seeing it as a store (other than those who get really irate in the comments section when things are merely a week or two later than expected), rather those companies who set up a kickstarter campaign, fulfill their rewards to their backs...and thats it. The product never goes into stores nor is continually produced. That is "boutique pre-orders", not kickstarting a company. I dont want to "invest" in that.
 
On the original topic, I can only say that I quite like Exalted, though I've also felt thoroughly sick of it at times. It's just that every time I open one of the books again, I'm overcome all over again by just how frickin' shiny it all is. There's just so much stuff there, and it makes for a wonderfully full setting. How I think about it is, Exalted is interesting top to bottom. The humblest scavenger in Chiaroscuro has a story. So does the greatest of gods in Yu-Shan. And you can build a campaign for dealing with either one, or anything in between, depending on the character types you choose.

That said, the rules are a pain. I really have no idea what possessed White Wolf to think that they had the capacity to create a rule system that was at once grittily realistic, high-powered and allowed for interesting tactical play. Either one of those three is a challenge, let alone combining them, and no one ever accused White Wolf of being good at crafting rules - all their games before Exalted ran on the semi-explicit assumption that you were just going to Rule Zero your way through them.

I keep hearing that their heirs have managed good rules for Ex3, but nothing concrete that I hear about them makes me want to pick the new books up. I still run some irregular Exalted games, but I do that using a frankensteinian abomination of a system that I've cobbled together from Storyteller, True20 and Godbound.

But on the question of, "well, why don't you play such-and-such high-powered game instead?", my answer is, "because such-and-such high-powered game doesn't have as much soul as Exalted!" :tongue: Other games have better rules, but you just can't beat this one for ambience or immersion.
 
... and no one ever accused White Wolf of being good at crafting rules - all their games before Exalted ran on the semi-explicit assumption that you were just going to Rule Zero your way through them.

You know, I hear this a lot. Nevertheless, I realize if you asked me to list the top 5 things people hate about oWoD rules I couldn't do it. People rarely get very specific about what was wrong with the system, and when I look at the 20th anniversary games I only see patches and adjustments, not major overhauls.

I'm not saying the games are fine, I believe the dissatisfaction and I can list my own pet peeves of the systems, but I find it funny that I can't recall any clear consensus on what was wrong.
 
You know, I hear this a lot. Nevertheless, I realize if you asked me to list the top 5 things people hate about oWoD rules I couldn't do it. People rarely get very specific about what was wrong with the system, and when I look at the 20th anniversary games I only see patches and adjustments, not major overhauls.

I'm not saying the games are fine, I believe the dissatisfaction and I can list my own pet peeves of the systems, but I find it funny that I can't recall any clear consensus on what was wrong.

My feelings as well. System’s never been WW’s strong suite. But it’s hardly as bad as it’s often made out to be. It does a fine job of what it sets out to do.
 
You know, I hear this a lot. Nevertheless, I realize if you asked me to list the top 5 things people hate about oWoD rules I couldn't do it. People rarely get very specific about what was wrong with the system, and when I look at the 20th anniversary games I only see patches and adjustments, not major overhauls.

I'm not saying the games are fine, I believe the dissatisfaction and I can list my own pet peeves of the systems, but I find it funny that I can't recall any clear consensus on what was wrong.

Well, that's just it, innit? There's nothing all that wrong with it. There's just nothing right with it, either. It works. Kind of. If you don't lean too heavily on it. If you do something, you can roll something to find out if you succeeded at it. Exactly what to roll? Meh, the ST will make something up. How often will you succeed? Oh, sometimes you will and sometimes you won't.

Which was fine for the oWoD games, which were explicitly about story first and scowled menacingly at you if you showed any signs of thinking too hard about the mechanics. They didn't need good rules, they needed rules that were easy to push aside. And they had them. And all was well.

But then came Exalted, that forced us to actually immerse ourselves in the system and try to make sense of it. And then came a thousand headaches and many, many flame wars.
 
It’s funny you said “pop”. In Indiana, that’s what everyone calls it. When I moved out here I said pop a few times before my wife said “it’s ‘soda’”. I don’t think I called it pop anymore.

I moved a lot as a kid, so I used to be pretty sensitive the way basic terminology in one place could get you mocked elsewhere.

I picked up the term "pop" living in Ohio and Indiana during my teens and early 20s. As an Australian, my original term is soft drink, but I have stuck with pop, even living in New Jersey where nobody uses it. I'm entertained by the reaction it gets here.

This conversation reminds me of the time I shut down a pop vs.soda argument that two friends were having. This was in Chicago, where the cosmopolitan nature of the place invites a wide vocabulary. They'd been going back and forth for about a minute about which terms was correct.

I said, "In Australia, we call them soft drinks, because they are for children."

That was the end of the argument.

Or the deep South where randomly they sometimes call all some or pop Coke. Yeah I'd like a Pepsi coke please.

If find it hard to believe any Southerner would order a Pepsi Coke. A Dr. Pepper Coke would be believable, but not a Pepsi Coke. I've seen Southerners walk out of restaurants because they had Pepsi brand fountain drinks.

I disagree KS is an investment. I view KS as something operating between an investment and a prepurchase. If it is an investment it should issue debt or shares in the company. If it's a prepurchase then it just needs to deliver the goods and no problem. But it tries to do a little of both. Investments in speculative companies are usually limited to friends, family and qualified investors. That helps deal with the disappointment issue when some fail. Failure to friends and family kills your chance at future funding. Failure to a qualified investor is failure to someone who knew the risks and can afford to lose the money or at least is reasonably expected to have access to professional advice.
I expect long term a maximum investment size of $50 or so. It's enough to get something done but not so much all these unqualified investors will lose their shirt. KS is truly weird.

I just view it as a gamble. I'm picky about actual gambling, and I am picky about Kickstarters. So far I haven't lost.

My biggest issue is not people who pledge seeing it as a store (other than those who get really irate in the comments section when things are merely a week or two later than expected), rather those companies who set up a kickstarter campaign, fulfill their rewards to their backs...and thats it. The product never goes into stores nor is continually produced. That is "boutique pre-orders", not kickstarting a company. I dont want to "invest" in that.

I hate any Kickstarter that is offering substantive products that will not be made available afterwards. Trinkets are okay. If your Kickstarter includes branded tokens or dice that are neat but really aren't needed, that is fine. A fancy, exclusive cover is fine. A T-shirt is fine. However, if you are including an adventure or supplemental material that is exclusive, I won't back your Kickstarter.

I put money in the recent Stars Without Number Kickstarter. Then Crawford made a pitch about how if you didn't back the Kickstarter, you would never have another chance to get the GM screen that came with it. I pulled my money out.

Partly, it feels like I am being manipulated into backing it. If I don't go in on that Kickstarter, I will never own the full game. It's also a case feeling it is simply a bad business decision. Board game companies do this a lot, and I have a number of friends who want certain games, but they can't bring themselves to buy games where they missed out on the Kickstarter exclusive components. I feel like these companies are hurting the future potential of their games for a one-time payday, so why so I want to get in on the ground floor.

You know, I hear this a lot. Nevertheless, I realize if you asked me to list the top 5 things people hate about oWoD rules I couldn't do it. People rarely get very specific about what was wrong with the system, and when I look at the 20th anniversary games I only see patches and adjustments, not major overhauls.

I'm not saying the games are fine, I believe the dissatisfaction and I can list my own pet peeves of the systems, but I find it funny that I can't recall any clear consensus on what was wrong.

The biggest problem I remember with WoD was that stats were too powerful. If you had a five in a stat, you could just take a one in any related skill and you were instantly awesome. It's partly why Celerity was so broken. Having an awesome Agility made you instantly good at a huge number of skills.

It was an annoyance that followed me into other games. When I ran Savage Worlds, I remember playing with people that cut their teeth on WoD, and they complained that simply having a 5 Agility didn't innately make them awesome ninja-sniper-safe cracker-pole dancer-swordsmen. The system unfairly expected them to actually put real points into skills to be good at them.
 
One of those will definitely make you reexamine your dietary habits in a hurry.
I got lucky and despite being a good sized one it came out pointy end first vs jagged back end first. It looked like a broken off tip on a number two pencil. Felt like a stone going through a garden hose. The painful part was going from kidney to bladder. Essentially it blocked all liquid from going until it was forced through. Which is made worse by your body's reaction of massively increasing your thirst. And an intense need to pee but nothing comes out.
 
Oh, I'm very familiar with the experience. It happened to me 2 years ago.

The pain is definitely all in the stone's journey from kidney to bladder - through the ureter. Once it reaches the bladder it's no big deal - a lot more room to work with - but getting there can be a few days of abdominal pain. (A female doctor told me that it was akin to women's childbirthing pains. No fun.)

I never experienced increased thirst, or pee problems, but I'd get painful muscle cramping where it felt like my innards were vibrating. Pissed off ureter. Pain meds helped, but it was a case of one pill being not enough to dull the pain, and 2 pills being hazy in wonderland.
 
So that the non-Americans here can understand the culture war that surrounds fizzy drinks here, I am sharing this map.
pop_soda_coke.png
 
Exalted

Rather than make another coherent argument explaining why most of the dislike of Exalted is unwarnted, it's much more awesome than you want to admit, and STFU...I shall state my case with dank memes.

Dank. Memes.

ExaltedMagicMissile.jpg


zelda_exalted_by_golentan-d4n1v53.jpg


1215367a151412084bbbadac357ef9df.jpg


exalted_o_948022.jpg
 
Regarding soda, pop, and Coke.

Living in the West Coast, all soft drinks are "sodas" or referred to by brand.

As a former Southerner, I can attest that all soft drinks have traditionally been referred to as "Coke". And yes, there was (and still is to some extent) a fanatical devotion to Coke and equal disdain for Pepsi. The reason for this is Coke's headquarters and primary operations were based in Atlanta, one of the first major corporations to make the South its home, and it was a point of pride for many Georgians and others from surrounding states.

That's changing, now. New businesses moving into the South. Young people growing up while the old fogies are dying off. Tastes and trends change. Last time I looked, it wasn't so much Coke, but energy drinks, that were the mainstay of the South. That was several years ago.

The actual traditional drink of choice for the South is sweet tea. Which is iced tea with so much sugar it might as well be lemonade or Coke.
 
Up here everything is "juice", which I found bloody confusing.

But we're also one of the odd countries with our own coke-outselling national soft drink, Irn Bru, which tastes of girders and orange (The colour). It's really good for hangovers.
 
Its Pop and only pop. Take my word for it. The state I live is shaped like a mitten, so I must know what I'm talking about. Beside if you're not from here you have no idea of the awesomeness of Vernors. What does this have to do with anything? Nothing! That's the way we like it!:tongue:
 
Exalted

Rather than make another coherent argument explaining why most of the dislike of Exalted is unwarnted, it's much more awesome than you want to admit, and STFU...I shall state my case with dank memes.

Dank. Memes.

ExaltedMagicMissile.jpg


zelda_exalted_by_golentan-d4n1v53.jpg


1215367a151412084bbbadac357ef9df.jpg


exalted_o_948022.jpg
These memes actually make me want to try a game of exalted.
 
Lessee... My preferences are the idea of Godbound (I like SWN, so I approve sight unseen of Crawford's stuff), mass transit pass, and call it soda or soft drink.

And carbonated beverages are the nectar of the gods -- and probably manufactured by the devil himself. :devil: ... bless you, devil! :thumbsup::heart:
 
I think what finally stopped me worrying about the nail dissolving in coke was an npr piece... It made a comparison with stomach acid where clearly stomach acid is far more acidic than the coke... Nail dissolving way faster in the stomach acid and all that. The layman poses the question to the scientist 'but how does your stomach resist that level of acidity from you and not the acidity of the soda... It seems like your own acids would be burning a hole in you way faster than the soda would..." and the answer from the scientist is 'Yep. Your stomach lining is in a constant battle with the acid inside it. Sometimes the acid wins and we call them ulcers... Are your stomach walls immune to your own acid but vulnerable to the soda? No way.'

I'm also particularly enamored with the fact that the brand on the can in the picture above is Tab. When choosing sides in the cola war, hell doesnt choose coke or pepsi. its Tab and RC for these boys.
 
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