/var/log/orava

Had another fun session of running Exalted last Sunday, I was a bit worried pregame whether I had prepped enough stuff but it turned out I needn’t have worried – as so often happens, many things took more time than anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing, and I like winging extra stuff on top of what I had planned. At the moment I’m using bits and pieces of various pregen material, and maybe half pure self-generated material. It’s slowly coming together, and the characters are getting more fleshed out and acquiring personalities. Mika’s ‘Khamyn’ makes an excellent leader and focus point for things, especially since he doesn’t hog the spotlight and everyone gets to do stuff. In the beginning (during chargen) I was a bit worried about Janne’s Dragonblood getting overshadowed by the Solars, but at least up to now if anything it’s been the other way round. The Water Aspect abilities plus Immaculate training have proven to be very helpful.

We’ll see how it goes, the party is heading up north, one sidetrack at a time. They are now the proud owners of the recently “liberated” good ship ‘Cottonmouth’, and have full intention of kicking some leech god ass next, for daring to kidnap their cultists. Don’t steal cultists, kids, the owners may come knocking.

Gamemastering Exalted is very much like herding cats. Big, glowing cats with superhuman speed, strength and ninja powers, of course. Plotting can be tricky, since the characters are able to twist even the most sturdy stretch of railroad into a prezel. Which is not a bad thing, as such, not at all.

There’s a “happened so far” available, but it’s not updated with the latest session yet.

Here’s a pic from Janne, depicting his recently-completed set of minis for the characters. From the left: Khamyn (fearless leader and god-king in training), Arashi (Lookshy ninja-sorcerer), Wanderer (ex-Immaculate Monk), White Noise (ex-Realm bureaucrat and aspiring capitalist) and Damien (the best swordsman in the world, in training).

You thought The Doors and Blondie have nothing in common? Think again and check out this mashup. Awesome!

I separated the VTES wiki into a subdomain (vtes.orava.org) and set up a new wiki there. I’m in the process of moving things over, will probably take a bit until it’s all there – I have an Exalted game to run on Sunday and need to prep for that, and various things (including a Porcupine Tree concert) eat up most of Saturday.

Anyway, registration is free for all and you’re welcome to add VTES-related content there. Spammers and vandals will be deal with appropriately.

Ok, the 2008 tournament rules for VTES just came out, and contained some (welcome) surprises. The changes contained two significant items:

• The cards Edge Explosion, Memories of Mortality and Protect Thine Own are now banned in tournament play.

• The way finals results are tallied has changed, now the top scorer of the final round (only) is the winner, all other finalists share second place. In addition, prize splitting is forbidden.

Now, this has already spawned a lot of talk both on the newsgroup and on a local mailing list. The overall reception has been very positive, with of course some dissent here and there.

So, what does this mean, and why was this done? Here are my views, in a nutshell.

First off, the banned cards.

Edge Explosion - I think the rules team correctly identified this as the problem card, causing the problems with overpowered Imbued decks. It let them largely ignore Conviction costs, and also let you largely ignore Virtues, letting you build optimal cryps mostly based on special abilities. Without this, Imbued decks will actually have to pay attention to Conviction as a resource, and also make a lot more (hard) choices in crypt construction. This is good. This would have been a hard card to errata without rewriting it completely, so I think a ban is justified.

Memories of Mortality - this has always been a stupidly powerful card, but with the Imbued it became a problem card. Total shutdown for combat decks, and near-impossible to get rid of (especially since most Imbued decks used Anthelios to cycle it back). I would have personally preferred an errata to this card, making it a lot less powerful, since this ban also hit some otherwise ok ally decks hard… but I’m ok with a ban, too. This card *is* too strong, whichever way you look at it.

Protect Thine Own - well, what can I say, except “goddamit, finally!”. This card has been a problem since forever, the effect is simply too strong, no easy way to rewrite it to reasonable levels without totally changing it. Ban is fine.

So, in effect: the Imbued get a (deserved) nerf, while still being totally playable and competitive. IMHO, of course, some people disagree on this. Also, an old problem card has finally been buried for good.

Then, for the tournament finals rules: the reason here is that lately, tournament finals have tended to be… well, not that fun. Too much careful table talk and wrangling, and weird deals made just so someone could become 3rd instead of 2nd. This change will hopefully force people to play to win in the finals, disregarding everything else. What will probably happen is lots of careful table talk and wrangling, but the moment anyone gets a VP everyone else goes all-out. We’ll see.

All in all, I’m very happy, these changes should result in better games all around. An overpowered deck type has been toned down a bit, and players in finals have been given new priorities.

My “hate list” is growing short, here, it now only contains Anthelios and Direct Intervention.

On a VTES-related note, Monger is still down, but Jussi Hattara’s excellent Secret Library provides a good replacement. I haven’t played around much with it yet, but what I’ve seen looks very cool and well-designed.

What do you do when Rick Astley just doesn’t cut it anymore?

Simple. You go hooga chakka ooga ooga….

Well, we finally got a pile of snow over here. Sure, it was mostly gone by this morning, but still… Sunday morning, I actually had some trouble driving the car down our driveway, had to take care not to get stuck. Kind of hoping the snow comes back soon, even though it’s a bit of a hassle it still changes the dreary grey into less dreary white – a big deal, as we’re right now in the worst stretch of the “it’s always dark, dammit!” Finnish winter.

Was a bit of an exercise-oriented weekend, for a change; six hours of martial arts / self-defense training on Saturday and three more on Sunday. Was a ton of fun, we explored what options a walking stick, a (big) flashlight, an axe, and a (normal trouser) belt give you. Turns out a walking stick/cane is a lot more versatile than even I would have imagined, especially if it has a hook on one end. Another surprise was the belt… it can become a surprisingly useful weapon/accessory. Best of all, neither are generally classified as weapons, and can be carried in places where a knife, for example, would get you in trouble.

The fact that an axe is a pretty good weapon came as no surprise, and neither the fact that a large flashlight doubles as a weapon without much problems. Have to watch out against blinding yourself, of course… we did some training in a darkened room, lots of fun that.

Besides that flailing around on an exercise mat, it was a nice, peaceful weekend. Cleaned up around the house, read quite a bit, watched some “tv”. I can now safely say that Pushing Daisies is very much worth watching, I found it delightful. It’s also… unconventional. It’s a romantic comedy, and it’s also a sort of an urban fairly tale (with a slightly macabre twist). The 3rd party narrator and the hyper-saturated colors add to this, it’s a totally intentional vibe. The writing is excellent and very funny, and there are just wonderfully bizarre momments (like when the passengers in a car suddenly start singing a They Might Be Giants song). It’s quirky and warm-hearted and I’m very much enjoying it.

What’s it about? Well, there’s this pie maker, who can raise the dead by touching them. Thing is, if he ever touches them again, they drop dead again. For good. If he doesn’t “kill” them again within one minute, someone or something else dies as a side-effect. Then there’s a girl named Chuck, some kooky aunts, and much surrealism.

The whole thing is just so weird and unconventional that I’ll be surprised if it stays on air for very long. On the other hand, it’s apparently gotten great ratings and has been picked up for a full season, so apparently I’m not the only one finding it charming. We’ll see.

Oh, and on a totally unrelated note: I’ve previously talked about Delta Green: Eyes Only, a Delta Green book collecting three near-impossible-to-find old chapbooks, with lots of new material thrown in. Well, it’s now shipping, and also nearly sold out; as of Sunday, there were 110 copies left out of 1000. After this limited run sells out, getting your hands on a copy might be highly non-trivial. So: if you’ve been thinking of maybe getting this, act now. Soon it will be too late. There’s a Game Geeks video review of the book available, if you want to get a quick description of what the book’s about.

Word of warning: the book is only available through Internet order, and the shipping costs to Finland are pretty high. The US$ is pretty low vs the euro at the moment, but still… this book will cost you a bit.