General Exalted Discussion Thread VII: Playground Eternal Essence

[Drascin]

The only people I know who get treated as orcs to be beat up by the Exalted in the standard setting are Fair Folk, demons, and gods. The first two often deserve it in some respect, because that's the narrative role they occupy. The latter may or may not, depending on the characters involved.

Actually, I find demons are given more respect than DBs for the most part. I've actually found more people wondering if it's alright to bind demons than doubting their morality for annihilating a whole House Legion .

Still, if someone argues that DB are orcs for Solars to kill, the proper response is to not hate Solars, any more than if someone suggested that when you see a kitten, to throw it into a dog-fighting cage match the proper response would be to hate dogs. The person is wrong, but that doesn't mean that you should take the opposite side entirely.

See, here's how my process went.

First, with just the core book and a couple more books, I merely disliked Solars as something to play myself. They're the most powerful thing in the game, I dislike playing the single most powerful option in a given game (I'm a powergamer at heart - and playing Tier 1 stuff makes powergaming just too easy). It was, at first, as simple and innocuous as this. Just a bunch of dudes with superpowers, some good, some evil, but all entirely too Superman-y in powerlevel for me to play them.

But then, I started to read more, and started realizing that the game was written for Solars and that the other splats (at the time, no Alchemicals or Infernals) were more of a concession, like WotC giving you rules to play monster characters, than anything actually thought from the beginning as a player option (Lunars were particularly egregious in this. It's so obvious they never were really thought out beyond "barbarian warlords for Solars to make alliances or war with" at first). And then, whenever I said I disliked Solars and would have really enjoyed it if someone else got a bit of a chance at protagonism instead of the game's base conceit of "Solars are the ones who will make or break the world, everyone else is mostly here as cheerleaders or to sramble around trying to do stuff", I got more or less torn apart by everyone saying that if we left things to everyone else the world was inevitably dead. Solars got treated as heroes or at least the absolute and indisputable lesser evil, and a necessary improvement, and I just never could see why. Solars had already almost blown up the world once, they had to be put down for it! They were at the absolute least every bit as bad as everyone else, and I had trouble seeing how in some ways they weren't worse. And the more I read, the more I found about Solars tending towards being completely egoistic. And trying to suggest a Solar with some kind of selflessness had people pointing that that would not be a Solar, but a Lunar or something else.

So, what's a man to think, if nearly (nearly because Arkadi, Dace and Demetheus seem to be cool dudes) all the Solars you see reflected in the books are annoying, and trying to make a non-annoying one gets everyone else, including people who know more than you about the setting by a mile, saying you're doing it wrong? Well obviously I probably am doing it wrong, then!

Also, I was going to make a snarky post where I compare your argument to the common argument that Solars are all jerks, that will try to destroy the world. Honestly, I've seen just as many people hold that opinion,

Not a chance. There's actually not that many of us. The thing is, we're really a bit too loud (and sorry for that), which only gets amplified since we're really standing out from the assumption that DBs and Sidereals are evil, which is more or less what most players think. DBs as setting-appropiate orcs and Sids as teacup-death-squad bogeymen is more or less how people think - because that's what's written in the books, because the books are written for Solars. "Mere terrestrial" is a turn of phrase that crops up in the books' writing continuously - and it transmits the rather simple fact that Terrestrials are not important. They never really were. They are hobgoblins, stronger and more interesting than the Raksha kobolds but still designed to lose. And I find this annoying because I rather like Terrestrials.

As for your first complaint, they are protagonists and heroes. So are Sidereals. So are Lunars. So are Dragonblooded. They are also villians. As are Sidereals. As are Lunars. As are Dragonblooded. I'm pretty sure that the core book mentions this, that they can be shining heroes or tyrants, either being within their capabilities. Yeah, they're the most famous ones, but that's because they are both the most powerful(though, when compared to other celestial, not much with regards to direct confrontation) and because they're the ones in the core book.

As for the final point, about everyone else being helpless, that's simply not true. There are very few problems that only solars can deal with. In fact, I think the only issue that truly requires solar help is Building a first age infrastructure, as that was built off of the specific abilities Solars had access to. I would note that other groups do, indeed, have special things that only they have access.

Not really. If I had a cookie for every time I heard someone say "well, good luck doing that without Solars" for something (be it retake Thorns as a Sid/DB composite group, stop the Bull's rampage, stop a second Balorian Crusade, whatever)... well, I'd probably have died from indigestion already and couldn't be talking to you here . Fact is, Solars are the ones who are expected to change things, and the ones the other splats turn around (a thousand straight years and a couple apocalypses of stuff happening without Solars, and most of the political life of Sidereals and Lunars is still mostly about "Solars yay" and "Solars nay"? Seriously? A thousand years are a lot of years to get over things!) and challenges are written for.

Oh, wow. That's wrong on many levels. Solars don't think that they're more important than the world(or, not sane ones). They think that they're important people within the world, yes, but if an Exalt doesn't think of himself like that he is lying to himself very, very hard. A solar thinks that

As for the ambition thing, what exactly is wrong with ambition? This though process showed up in the Lytek thread on the Exalted forums, and I just don't get it. Do you really never want to feel pride or satisfaction in what you do? Do you never want to change a bad situation into one that's better? To have an impact? And, even if you do, how in the world does wanting to do so make you a bad person?

There's a difference between "I take pride in what I contribute" and "must change everything in my image", and Solars seem to tend more towards the second than the first. Ambition for self-improvement is good - hell, it's necessary to be a good person. But when your ambition is so all-encompassing as the Solars' is nearly required to be, there's way more chances for it to be bad than good.

Also, I'm interested that you find Solars who go out and do stuff so distasteful. Why? Should Sidereals just sit back and not do anything?

Well, if you were to look at most books that's already what they do when they're not sending deathsquads to kill those poor Solars . But nah, you msunderstand. It's not that they go out and do stuff. It's that apparently Solars are expected to do stuff big and huge and without nuance. A proper Solar can't just want to help improve a country's standing - he has to take over the country because he knows he can rule it better. He must have a ridiculously epic in scope motivation right from Exaltation day one - the kind of guy who performs great acts of heroism simply to protect his friends and that which he loves doesn't Exalt as a Solar. You need to want to go out and turn everything inside out to get that golden shine.

A Sidereal is equally expected to do small changes as big ones. To care for the little things, which matter, as much as the big ones. In fact, "change a lot of small things to change the big ones" is more or less standard Sidereal MO, because for the most part they don't have the power to wave their hand and make things so, so they have to work from down up. But, more importantly, in a way, Alchemicals and Sidereals are, in the end, servants to a cause they believe higher than themselves. You sit down and think and know that, for all your power, some things are way bigger than you, and the welfare of your world and your people is one of those things. But the Solar story is, in the end, about how you are bigger than the world. How in the end the world is whatever you want it to be. It's your playground, and the people in it your playthings, and the other Solars are the other kids in the sandbox. You can fool yourself into thinking otherwise, but that is no less lying to yourself than your mention before that an Exalt who doesn't think he's important at all is, and the books do not hide that they expect you to outgrow such silly things really quickly. Mostly, Solars come off as reminding of Cuzco, "it's all about me!".

Simply put, I find the idea of someone who, after getting power, the first idea that pops into his head is "Oh, man, with this power I could totally take over the world!" (insert M.Bison quote here) - or hell, someone who already wanted power so he could take over - to be someone more likely to be unsuited to having that power than not. And that's the kind of person that I have been given to understand, repeteadly, makes for the best Solar. The mindset most likely to attract a Solar Exaltation. This makes it rather hard for me to believe that most Solars aren't going to be people to rather watch out for. I still honestly think there are going to be good Solars. But due to the selection process, I can't help but feel most are going to be egotistical jerks.

Not commenting on the Solar smith because I have no idea who he is, or what's his story.

It's apparently more or less what I said. There never was much on him, from what I was told. Just a dude mentioned in Castebook:Twilight, apparently, as someone the players might find useful as a friendly crafter and stuff. But I liked it. I liked the idea that you could have Solars that didn't instantly drop everything and go out to change the world!(tm). Just, "I got some powers now, I should use them to help".

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Oh my god the class is nearly over I've rambled how much? I really gotta go, I hope this made any kind of sense.

Anyway, sorry for all this stuff. We kind of totally derailed the thread just now. I'll shut up. Basically, it comes to, when I think a maybe-Solar I like, I think Ferb Fletcher. Ridiculously competent, yes, but not overbearing, or conquering, or world-shaking. But the whole focus the line has had with regards to Solars (inevitable conquerors and general egotistic "my way or the highway" people) makes me uncomfortable and uninterested in equal parts. That's basically what it boils down to, in the end.