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This arose from a discussion over in Actual Play about a Bumpy Exalted Game. Since I don't believe any of this has to do with John's actual problem, I'm starting a new thread.

Quote from: Blake HutchinsRon's take on Gamism taking over in Actual Play strikes me as right on the money. Based on my experience creating an Exalted character, the thinking moves quickly into tactical analysis of Charm efficacy, Essence budgets, and Backgrounds to maximize character effectiveness.

I'll admit, I agree. Exalted is heavy on the character-focus, players-get-what-they-want speech...but the text for building a character is all about tactical design of characters. It was jarring to come across when I started reading through the book and creating a character -- "You could spend your points to make a master archer to start with, but then your guy will get pounded into crap because he lacks basic defensive abilities, or stand around doing nothing because his character lacks a broad variety of useful skills." I'm not kidding, the big black box on page 101 is all about it.

So, Exalted states up-front that I can make a mythical archetype near-and-dear to my own heart, but then turns around and proclaims as loudly that, really, I shouldn't. So I definitely agree the rules are completely schizophrenic.

Now, regarding the Virtues:

Quote from: Eero TuovinenIsn't it clear that Exalted virtues are a limiting game mechanic, not constructive? Their main effects come from game efficiency (with spirit charms and saving throws) and giving stereotypical guidelines for character play. "My character is valorous so I should do this." or even "Your character is valorous, are you sure you want to do that?", and in the worst case "Throw your compassion against valor to see if you can do that."

There just isn't anything even nearly narrativistic in them, so they are quite a different animal from TROS SAs, which are customized hooks.

Alright, I think I see your point. I'm still mulling it over, but I do believe I see what you're getting at. However, isn't this pretty much the same thing Sorcerer's Humanity does? ("You were naughty. Roll a Humanity check.")

Quote from: Thor OlavsrudI think it would be very difficult for a GM to co-opt the players' decision-making process when they have these tools at their disposal. In my experience, GMs who try to do this enforce their plots by limiting player choices to the paths that they envision. But an Exalted character should be able to get around all but the heaviest-handed tactics.

Not hard at all. Witness Mike Mearls' upcoming article in Dragon Magazine about how to remove the effectiveness of powerful divination spells so that players cannot use them to "ruin" adventures, or Mike Morris' "Art of Magic" articles which began with an article on how to strip PCs of their hard-won enchantments and magic items with a type of anti-enchantment spell.

These are two recent examples, but gaming lore, "GMing advice" is rife with similar gripes by GMs and effective "solutions" to the percieved problems -- this is by no means something new, but it is making a comeback in terms of promotion.

Witness my own terrible recollections of Immortal play, where the GM at the time (and the main line developer) outright stated that it was really difficult to come up with ways to keep character magical abilities from ruining a game, so he had to nix them when someone tried to use them using the old "You dont' know why, but it doesn't work!" idea.

To say nothing of presenting new enemies and situations never even hinted at in the main rules, all to keep players from having any idea what to do until he chose to reveal clues as to what might work (and thus allowing the 'plot' to continue).

The a common gripe in adventure gaming is "the players are wrecking my adventure with their powers!" And the equally common response, the accepted wisdom, is to limit those supposedly book-legal powers and abilities.

This relegates them into non-use, returning the status quo to where it was at before the characters gained that power, ultimately resulting in players who, despite having new stuff on their character's sheets, have not really gained anything or advanced at all. They may as well be playing with the same, unchanged characters for as much good as advancement does them.

Bullshit, I say to these gamemasters and to the gaming public in general, the players are NOT wrecking YOUR adventure. It's the gamemasters not having the ability to run a game where the characters have those sorts of powers: that is, non-traditional games where players actually have the power to affect the scope, direction, and result of play, above and beyond simple succeed/fail.

I don't necessarily blame the gamemasters because this attitude of play is ingrained through tradition. But to return to Thor's point specifically, even giving the players the tools does not necessitate their ability to do anything with them -- and it does not even require heavy-handed (ie: obvious) tactics on the part of the gamemaster.

It takes very little to thwart player desires and goals, and deprotagonize them, even given the superpowers granted in Exalted. Immortal deals with gods and mythical beings of (supposedly) incredible power -- yet such game devolve in the exact same way as high-power D&D games with the same sort of "re-limit the players" advice used to respond to the same in that game.

Quote from: greyorm
Now, regarding the Virtues:

Quote from: Eero TuovinenIsn't it clear that Exalted virtues are a limiting game mechanic, not constructive? Their main effects come from game efficiency (with spirit charms and saving throws) and giving stereotypical guidelines for character play. "My character is valorous so I should do this." or even "Your character is valorous, are you sure you want to do that?", and in the worst case "Throw your compassion against valor to see if you can do that."

There just isn't anything even nearly narrativistic in them, so they are quite a different animal from TROS SAs, which are customized hooks.

Alright, I think I see your point. I'm still mulling it over, but I do believe I see what you're getting at. However, isn't this pretty much the same thing Sorcerer's Humanity does? ("You were naughty. Roll a Humanity check.")

Hmm... that's a point, let's see...
...
...
The main difference I see is that Humanity is predefined freely for the campaign, and Virtues aren't. And losing Humanity is usually a free dramatic choice, while you aren't losing anything with the Virtues. My Exalted is out right now, and I don't remember the particulars about what you are supposed to use the virtues for apart from general game efficiency and simulation. Did they encourage limiting character behavior or something like that officially? Someone with a book?

Anyway, my limited understanding of GSN doesn't allow me to tell if the above are significant differences from that viewpoint. At least the aspect of choice is important to me - rarely you see Humanity being used as a punitive or restrictive mechanic in any way, and the ideal of Sorcerer play is to make those humanity points count. You lose them when the character goes bad, but the reasons for going bad aren't punishing players or upholding simulation - unlike Exalted, where I imagine from my partial recollection this to be the case.

Pending for further details about what the book actually says about the use of virtues apart from character efficiency, I'd say that you at least can drift the game to a tad more balanced position conserning the virtues. Just use them as a Humanity mechanic, institute some horrific fates for those losing it (beefed up limit breaks?), and make them drifting scores instead of static ones (although I remember that there already is a drifting value assosiated to each virtue, because they can be used value times a session to boost rolls).

I think this analysis is overcomplicated.

Exalted tells you not to make a character that would have a fatal weakness because its designed for broadly competent protagonists, not the "glass archer" you might see in stereotypical point-buy game. The fictional characters Exalted that Exalted is a tribute to don't really suck at anything. Therefore, the player is encouraged to make a character that doesn't suck.

(This is another instance of gamist concerns working hand in hand with simulationist ones contrary to the basic premise espoused by many people on this site, but that's a discussion for another time.)

Now why doesn;t Exalted go a step forther and slap additional training wheels so that players can't help but make an optimal character? Good question. I would think that part of it is letting the rules stay loose so that variety isn't lost. For example, everybody should take Ox Body, but there are plenty of different ways to configure Ox Body. That's why slapping on a few more HLs isn't the same. Plus, we get an in-game reason for the variation.

Virtues are really designed to let the players adjust their character's arc as far as the general heroic tragedy trip the want to go on is. They also act as personality meters, but most of their use as afr as that goes is abstract (that's a form of design that counts, but that's not something I'd discuss in this thread).

I personally think Exalted's Charm set could be pared down and simplified a bit, since they boil down to a limited number of mechanics tweaks with Essence minimums. I like to throw together powers from scratch though and don't like charts. Other folks do.

Sorry, Malcom, complete disagreement from me. When you get right down to it, heroes of myth and legend are rarely, if ever, portrayed as jacks-of-all-trades, nor are anime heroes and villans.

This is not a case of Gamism working hand-in-hand with Simulationism: this is a very prominent case of G overriding S, as your statement that the antagonists in Exalted are

Quote from: eyebeams...designed for broadly competent protagonists, not the "glass archer" you might see in stereotypical point-buy game.

testifies.

Hence why the claim arises that the game is based on heavy Gamist traditions in play. Your statement that this is really Simulationist since the protagonists and antagonists are "supposed to be that way" is hand-waving.

If the intention was that characters should be good at everything, then the rules fail to support that, since you can easily create characters which are not.

This is further highlighted by the antagonists: if I'm not mistaken, the GM creates those for his players. How difficult would it be to create antagonists which compliment the protagonists, rather than create ones which can easily screw the players by concentrating on their weaknesses?

Simply, the character's adversaries, constructed by the GM, fall prey to this same problem: they can be optimized along a particular path, leaving them weak in other areas -- but this will not happen because the pitfalls are the same as they are with characters.

A better designed system would support the desired option: antagonists would always be good at everything, and so would protagonists. There would be no getting around it as the system would naturally create such characters.

Ultimately, this is not Sim.

Finally, Exalted's Sim category in the "talky" parts is highly Exploration of Color & Setting, but the game mechanics do not support this, they enforce (through supporting and verbally encouraging) Gamist mechanical-effectiveness choices instead. (I will give that it does manage to provide support ExoColor by the use of Stunt dice.)

Quote from: eyebeamsVirtues are really designed to let the players adjust their character's arc as far as the general heroic tragedy trip the want to go on is.

Are they and do they do so? I'm not so certain.
I don't have enough experience with the actual play of the game to comment on what actually occurs with their use.

Quote from: Eero TuovinenThe main difference I see is that Humanity is predefined freely for the campaign, and Virtues aren't. And losing Humanity is usually a free dramatic choice.

The first one isn't really a big deal, the second one though...I was going to say there was a definite difference there -- you choose your reaction to a situation, your behavior, but you do that in both Humanity or Virtue: you decide how to act, and deal with the consequences of such.

Quotebut the reasons for going bad aren't punishing players or upholding simulation - unlike Exalted, where I imagine from my partial recollection this to be the case.

I can see that as a difference, and I swear there's something I'm missing in the above, too, but I can't yet put words to what it is.

QuoteDid they encourage limiting character behavior or something like that officially? Someone with a book?

I have my book. Their use is supposed to be automatic: ignoring your Virtues in the appropriate situation causes checks to be made -- if you have a high Valor and fail to leap into battle with vicious abandon, you have to make a check. If you have a high Compassion, and you fail to try and protect suffering innocents or spare the lives of your enemies, you have to make a check.

However, the character is forced to enact their Flaw for a scene when they fail a certain number of checks, which is definitely a "limit" of sorts on character behavior (unlike Humanity).

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. The Iliad and Odyssey don't have narrow specialists. Odysseus in particular is broadly comptent; he's stealthy, strong, has almost supernatural guide and formidable battle skill. Similarly, in Ninja Scroll, Jubei is also sneaky, tough (he takes a licking other characters can't) and good in a fight, all at once.

You *do* have characters who are better at one thing, but they don't really suck at anything; they aren't "glass archers." They aren't even "archers of average toughness." They're just plain tougher (or stronger) than you or I, even if it's not the important thing about the character. Odysseus isn't primarily an archer, but he still has a bow only he can string. So heroes are usually a cut above mortals in almost any challenge, regardless of their focus. Exalted encourages you to make characters like that.

Virtues generate a plot arc viw Limit Break.

Malcolm,

While I concede the point (to a degree) about mythical Greek heroes, I feel you did so by completely skipping over my statements about system design, which is by far the more important point in my argument, and hence why I will maintain my response about the S/G interaction in Exalted.

BTW, you state Virtues produce a "story arc" -- but could you define what you mean by that term in the context of gaming?

I am aware of the meaning and use for scripted television series and similar, but as RPGs are a very different beast, what does it mean here? That will be necessary before we can proceed on discussion about it, since I'm uncertain as to your meaning.

Hiya,

Just to add another sub-variable to the discussion, I think the key issue for me, anyway, is the scale difference between the perceivable distinct GNS-type goals.

Players / Gamism = moment by moment, combination by combination, "initiative unit" by "initiative unit."

GM / Simulatinionism = scene by scene (which includes fights as wholes), session by session, metaplot-unit by metaplot-unit.

It's partly that scale effect that keeps the goals from being integrated, as I see it. As a contrast, taking Rifts as a game design that facilitates Gamism-aided-by-a-bit-of-Sim, I see the "underpinning" showing up at multiple scales. But here, it's as if the group operates mainly under GM-guidance in Simulationist terms when thinking about session-by-session, or scene-by-scene (e.g. "whom we fight") ... and then the group has to switch to mainly player-tactics in terms of winning the fight.

Why is this kind of a problem? Because - ultimately - can the GM "open up" the Gamism fully, inside the fights? Which means fundamentally that the player-characters would then have the full capacity to lose?

Or, as I suspect, we may well be talking about good old large-scale Illusionism in Champions terms, in which the GM is in full control of whether this is a "get to know the villains by face skirmish," a "get butt kicked briefly by big bad-ass so you can hate him for later," a "clean up the mooks but find out nothing special except the clue," or a "take the bad guys down in the royal finish" fight.

In other words, the tactical choices made by the players are not even especially rewarding as such ... because the fight as whole (this "scene") is taped already.

My other, related concept is that Gamism wins - mix it with anything else, and it'll take over. The only solutions to the situation presented by Exalted are (a) faux-Gamism, as described above; (b) full-Gamism, which is to say "fuck your story, gimme the fights now," and (c) leave off the fights almost entirely, just play characters' personalities and revel in "being there."

Which are the same solutions I see cropping up in almost all the actual play accounts and instances I've witnessed of White Wolf games. The (a) seems to turn into (b) or (c) pretty quickly. And the (c) tends to be accompanied by less and less actual role-playing, and more and more of either reading the books per se, or of using the rituals of "character" as an excuse for a singles scene.

So that's my input - the scale difference between the two modes of play seems to me to set up an unstable relationship among them, and probably not sustainable over any appreciable period of time.

Best,
Ron

The Exalted text places the role of Virtues somewhere between the tactical dice pool adder and a sort of personality-based saving roll stat, something like the personality traits in Pendragon or Ars Magica.  On the one hand, you can spend a Willpower point to allow your selected (and appropriate under the circumstances) Virtue add its value to your dice pools for a scene.  On the other hand, there are times when you'll be asked to roll Valor to stand up to the icky slimy horror, or to roll Compassion (and fail!) before you can leave the peasant family to the mercies of the bandits.  There's some personality based utility here, stuff that's potentially far more interesting than the Limit Break/Great Curse angle, in my view, but it's not center stage under the rules.

Like the Virtues in Vampire, those of Exalted could be a really cool, story-encouraging facet of the game, but in practice, I suspect most folks make tactical assessments:  Am I going to have enough Valor to face the Deathknight?  Am I going to have the Conviction to be the ruthless badass I want to be?  I believe I read someone in the Bumpy Exalted thread (Eero?) declare that practically, players gravitate toward the "hard" Virtues rather than the "soft" ones.

Unlike the bloodsucker versions, Exalted Virtues don't fluctuate much, at least not under the rules as written.  I've thought about using them in a Sorcerer sense, but I haven't thought through all the implications of such a shift.

Best,

Blake

Jumping in again as I cross-posted with Ron and wanted to comment.

Ron, that analysis is right on the fucking mark.  If you scan the Exalted Actual Play or GM Prep discussions over at RPG.net and the WW forums (as a starting point), you almost always see the "Champions" Illusionist methodology being employed.  In the one or two cases where a GM mentions "killing a player," it appears in the context of "player pushed me to the point where I had no choice," which in turn reflects a Sim perspective.  It's very clear that most of the folks weighing in over there are actively reluctant to have players die.  On the other hand, there's also plenty of bragging about min-maxing Combos and lots of heated debate over the game balance of Charm X, so from the player end, I see the granular Gamist focus taking center stage.

I also agree that the disconnect you're referring to applies in other WW games - with the possible exception of Werewolf.  This bugs me, because I want to pin down why it feels different.  In general, my experience in all WW games is consistent with what you've said save for Werewolf.  Clearly, Werewolf can be played and probably is played under the same disconnect, but there's something different there.  I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, or why there appears to be such a qualitative difference.  While Werewolf still labors under the same heavy metaplot, the element of embedded tragedy/we're-fighting-a-war-we're destined-to-lose seems to allow a degree of leeway in terms of reconciling the scaling differential.  In my experience with this game, it seems much easier to set the dials in Werewolf to allow full-on Gamism to merge with player-driven story arcs.  Maybe the heavy social setting pushes players to create characters who are heavily embedded and invested in that society, to the degree of defining relationships and conceiving of relevant accompanying goals.  In that context, I'm thinking my actual play experience with Werewolf seemed heavily driving by player interests and goals, kinda like I imagine TROS SAs work.  The other cool aspects of SAs aren't present, of course.  In any event, the part about Werewolf that departs from other WW games may be the strength of the relationship structure as an unavoidable part of character creation.

Apologies for the ramble.  I have a serious headache right now, so looking at a computer screen isn't real smart, and I'm not at my most clear-headed.

Best,

Blake

I believe a careless typo made me a touch unclear. In my mind, Virtues are a device to add an arc to character development by accumulating to the point where characters undergo Limit Break. Limit Breaks are mejor events in the game and are the flipside of having heroic characters. Eventually, the character is going to have a Limit Break that disrupts normal characterization and serves as a major touchstone for the player's look at the storyline. Limit Breaks accumulate over play, so they naturally evoke what haas come before.

This arc provides an overlay to a variety of games, from one where the story has a fairly narrow direction to one that is predicated entirely on where the characters go (their proactive actions, basically).

Greyorm, my point was really to talk about how Exalted supports these kinds of characters. Advice vis a vis choosing a Charm set is about creating broadly competent characters. If we want Odysseus, we've gotta buy Ox-Body and maybe some Athletics Charms, even if we don't think that Exalted-Odyssues has these traits as the standout schtick.

However, the system has some variety when it comes to how you get to implement that broad competence. Ox-Body alone can customize the character quite a bit, because each of them is really a different kind of toughness. Are we talking about a character who feels no pain, like the Terminator? Or are we talking about the ability to stagger through horrific wounds, like Boromir? Ox-Body can handle both, depending on how its slotted. It's just easier then, to advise people to take Ox-Body than to tack on extra health levels.

About Exalted's combat: I don't use GNS to design or run anything, so I'll mostly stick to vernacular.

First of all, Ron seems to be assuming that there are conventions of play at work that don't match up with anything that I, as a player, reader and occasional freelancer for the line, think are inevitable.

Many Exalted games are run according to player initiative, not conventional plotting. This means that characters are not guided to antagonists, but that there are antagonists in different parts of the world that they can choose or not choose to fight, ally with or ignore. THis was, from what I understand, the mode that Exalted: The Lunars was playtested in.

In these cases, it's very possible to lose. The characters can blunder into a challenge that's just too big for them (in the Lunars playtests, it was a huge army) or they can pick their fights.

However, this isn't necessarily the point of, or what's enjoyable about, all combat in Exalted. I think that Ron's overly focused on the ends of combat rather than the means, which is what Exalted really emphasized, with:

1) The modular Charm and Combo system.
2) Stunt bonuses.

The game is is to try and collaborate with the GM to have an engaging fight with a limited set of tools. The fight's result is really less interesting than this.

So to sum up: An "open" style of play where there's real freedom of movement has what you might call more "Gamist" combats, since the players choose (intentionally or unwittingly) the opposition. In a narrower style, combat may have contrived results, but that's ultimately unimportant, because creatively using systems and narration  is the point of satisfaction. This is why fans talk about both Charms and story goals. Certainly, play morphing into something less satisfying in the way Ron mentions has been, in my experience, the result of much more prosaic things, like scheduling a game.

To put it simply, Exalted is a game that can be played in a gamist, narrativist, and simulationist mode.  

It hits these goals about tap-dead center, if you ask me, not really having one element overpowering any other.

Truthfully, I think that the rules as written (In that big box) are designed for gamers who are playing in a slightly gamist game.  Make a character that's cool, but be sure to be aware that your goal of telling a good story might not be the same goal as your GM or your other players have.

If the GM and the players are all narativists and on the same wavelength, though, it's okay to build a character with a weak defense because the campaign won't require the character to have a better defense; part of the reason I think Exalted is so popular is that it gives gamist elements a simulationist feel and narrative purpose, or conversely, adds gamist elements to a primarily narrative game.  

-- Funksaw

Hey, Funksaw, Narrativism isn't about "Telling a Good Story." And characters with a weak defense have nothing to do with Narrativism.

As well, any game can be played in any fashion by the participants: what's important and what is being discussed here is what the rules themselvs emphasize by play. You may wish to bone up on the GNS essay and past discussions here before delving any deeper into Style waters.

Quote from: greyorm´
I have my book. Their use is supposed to be automatic: ignoring your Virtues in the appropriate situation causes checks to be made -- if you have a high Valor and fail to leap into battle with vicious abandon, you have to make a check. If you have a high Compassion, and you fail to try and protect suffering innocents or spare the lives of your enemies, you have to make a check.

There you go. The Virtues are quite clearly a stick. If you are one of those "herding wild dogs" gamemasters you can use them for punishment: "That's not courageous, roll your Valor!" Not unlike D&D alignment in it's various forms. If you do a grand simulation they encourage following the appropriate virtue. Compare to Humanity, which does neither: I haven't heard about Sorcerer play where the GM punishes play he doesn't like by humanity loss (quite selfdefeating, that), or about play where the first thing GM says is "Hey, guys, just remember the humanity definition and never play against it or I punish you for unrealistic play."

The Virtues come into play when a character acts against them. The key to understanding this is knowing what the virtues are supposed to be. Are they a psychological model? In that case limit break is a clear punishment for unrealistic, uncharacteristic play. Just follow the stricture and you never get limit break. Are they a narrativistic tool underlining the great passions that move the chosen of the gods? Why then a player has to consistently act against his character in high-drama situations to get them? "I'll just give my character a high Valor although I plan to play him as a pacifist monk. That way we get some passion play between his instincts and his upraising." That's conseivable, but why then such a non-intuitive system, which implicates that virtues are what your character is like, not what he strives to avoid?

As I said, I see multiple possible ways to use the virtues in quite differing ways. To get to the bottom of what they are meant to be one needs to deep-read the book (which I still don't have here). The bottom line however is that in typical play the stick approach seems to be a prevalent one. I at least have to consiciously avoid that interpretation to get to something else.

By the way, there's a strong indication that Virtues are meant to be primarily a game efficiency stat: they can be developed by spending XP, so one would assume that it's better for the character to have all his virtues be high rather than low.

I'd be interested to know how usual it is for the limit break to stay as a dead letter in actual play. That's how it worked when we played, I remembered it some couple of weeks after the mini-campaign ended, and I was the ST!


For the record, I still agree with Ron's broad outline. Nothing new to add about that, though. I understood the point of the scale difference in the last thread and agree that it is the distinguishing point compared to many other designs.

eyebeams: What do you think about the above supposition that in actual play the Great Curse is actually marginalized or forgotten altogether in a tacit agreement? That's what to me seems to be likely, and that's how it went in my game. And if this is true, doesn't it rather implicate that the whole limit break angle to virtues is somehow a little supplementary to the whole thing?

And how the limit breaks are really going to affect play? As they read I see two possibilities: either the break just adds color ("OK, I'll just terrorize peasants until it goes away.") or it sends the game careening out of anybody's control (assuming it's used as written), and out of the story. Like, the characters are in a perfectly interesting story, one gets a limit break and there we go, running to catch him before he gets to the Skull Archipelago. There might be a story there, but I see this as a dangerous feature that doesn't in any way ensure that the break in the story results in a more interesting one.

The color implementation is the better one to my mind, by the way. With a tacit agreement that the break won't really disrupt the story it can be dealt with and in the ST's simulationist wonderland it might even help characterisation.

About the player initiative as regards plotting: I don't remember seeing any explicit advice in the books for a ST willing to throw his story. What I remember is advice about how to construct a story, quite the opposite to the former. No doubt the game can be played in a story-free form (and that is in retrospect the only way I'd want to), but what matter that if the game doesn't instruct for that?

Eyebeam: you say that the point of the game is to have interesting combats, either embedded in a storyline or negotiated with the ST. OK, I can live with that, and I see how that's what the game's players seem to like. It just isn't anything I would be interested in. Actually, I see that as a failure of the game. It talks about grand adventure and meaningful stories set on a rich backdrop. I'd rather take that, if it were possible. I just am not interested enough in the tactical considerations to actually spend the whole evening throwing dice.

Belay that. Actually, I could see how that could be interesting, but it'd have to be over-the-table, with a clear and defined gamist agenda instead of the confused mess we actually seem to have with the WW games. Again, this is a style of play I could see, but it still isnt' anything the books would support. Ron's analysis is closest to what is actually said in the books, I'd say.

Quote from: Eero TuovinenThere you go. The Virtues are quite clearly a stick. If you are one of those "herding wild dogs" gamemasters you can use them for punishment

Ooops, something I left out of my explanation of the mechanics: you only have to roll against the Virtue if you have a 3 or higher in that Virtue. And you choose which Virtue(s) you take at those high levels (you have to choose one).

Quote"That's not courageous, roll your Valor!"...In that case limit break is a clear punishment for unrealistic, uncharacteristic play. Just follow the stricture and you never get limit break.

Let us say we define Humanity as valor, bravery, and courage in a game of Sorcerer. Characters who act in a cowardly, frightened, terrified fashion will have to make a Humanity check -- "That's not courageous, roll your Humanity!" I'm not sure why you consider this to be a stick in Exalted but not in Sorcerer?

As well, Limit Break is not a total punishment: when your Limit Breaks, you get more (temporary) Willpower. That's a good thing, a desirable thing from a tactical standpoint, and thus not a punishment -- so you WANT your limit to break occasionally because it helps your effectiveness in the long run.

Yes, you lose control of your character for a Scene, but that's because you (the player) conciously decide to act against your chosen Virtue, your chosen concept -- your character's Premise.

It's the same thing in Sorcerer, though the effects are more permanent in that game -- fail to behave in accordance with Humanity (as defined) and you lose control of your character, but, again, that's by your choice. And there's no upside there, tactically, either.

I could see Virtues being used as a stick, but perhaps not as effectively or blatantly as you describe, especially given the player choice involved in picking a Virtue(s): you get to say what your character is about and how he behaves...and isn't this the same thing as defining Humanity in Sorcerer?

As to the rest of your post, I see what you're saying and I see where you're coming from. I'm half-convinced your analysis is spot on, but something still bugs me: something in my above questions and comparisons with Sorcerer that leave me wondering how different it is, as a mechanic, from Humanity?

Obviously, the two games are worlds apart in style -- but in this case, they seem much closer than their respective systems otherwise are.

Quote from: greyormHey, Funksaw, Narrativism isn't about "Telling a Good Story." And characters with a weak defense have nothing to do with Narrativism.

You misunderstand me.

If Narrativism isn't about telling/creating a narrative, then wouldn't it be a bit of a misnomer?  And you're right, charcters with a weak defense in design have nothing to do with narrativism in design. In execution however, a narrative GM would be more likely to forgive or work around a character's weak defense for the purpose of a story.  A gamist GM would not be likely to be forgiving at all, especially since there's that big box in the text.