(Exalted 3e) The Three Banners Festival: An Exigents Jumpstart

 In a shocking turn of events, I don't have a lot to say about The Three Banners Festival: An Exigents Jumpstart (Anahita Lange, John Maytus, MJ Monleón). Though in my defense (to my shame?) this is only because the book itself is so short - 55 pages, divided into three parts. Part one was just a recap of the Exalted 3rd Edition rules, and was more selective than condensed. I relearned all about withering attacks and the social influence system, but none of the Abilities or Attributes were described and so things like "feats of strength" or "establishing a fact" are presumably left for me to reinvent on my own (and if this is your only exposure to the Exalted rules, you'll have to, because they are referenced in the PCs' charms). This took up 17 pages. Then, skipping ahead, part three was all about the preconstruct characters, which had canonical backstories, complex mechanics, and two-page character sheets, taking up 20 pages. That left part 2, the actual Jumpstart Adventure itself, with a mere 13 pages to work with. (The fact that these don't add up is down to the title page, table of contents, credits page, and two full-page chapter illustrations).

So yes, I may have spent longer breaking down the page count than I did reading the adventure, but that's not a commentary on the adventure itself. Hell, it's barely commentary at all, except perhaps to give y'all a heads-up if you were planning on buying this to run the adventure with the full rules. There's not a lot of meat on these bones, but there's some good flavor, if you were merely Exalted-curious and wanted to try it out.

The story is classic Exalted in that it is a mildly interesting plot, happening in a more-interesting-than-average setting, involving more-interesting than average characters. The set-up: a local big shot got his hands on a valuable item and needs protection while he works out what to do with it. Unfortunately, a small-time criminal syndicate gets word of this and tries to make a big score, assaulting the big-shot and framing the main characters for the theft. Working their underworld contacts, the protagonists corner the toughs, brawl it out, and in the process the valuable item is ruined. Ah well, they tried their best. The only thing to do now is have the main characters team up permanently, to solve mysteries.

But, you know, the local big shot is "a lesser but well connected god of rumors," the valuable item is the Divine Exigence, capable of turning an ordinary person into an immortal champion of the gods, the gang of toughs are the Goddesses of Pottery, Baking, and Weaving (as well as a rogue lion-dog who gave up on the whole "guardian of sacred sites" deal), and of course the main characters are a motely group of fantasy superheroes, blessed with the powers of the aurora, peasant agriculture, puppetry, and urban planning.

If you're familiar with Exalted, it all comes across as very sensible, perhaps even inevitable. Mad-lib mock epic meets the most elemental of noir plots (the storyteller advice at the start of part two even says "reading a Raymond Chandler novel in advance might be helpful"). However, I can't help wondering what it might be like for this product to be used in its intended role - as an entry point to the series for total newcomers. I'm not sure I'd be able to parse the logic of its choices. A town that's sort of (but not really) ruled by gods. . . and the gods can have different purviews and power levels, ranging from a single field to the concept of defensive warfare . . . and the gods can empower mortals to use extremely specific magical abilities . . . but doing so is risky and transactional, so the gods have their own mafia for all of this . . . and that's what you have to know before you can start playing The Three Banners Festival: An Exigents Jumpstart.

I guess it's not the biggest ask in my collection (that would probably be The Far Roofs, when I finally get around to reading it), but it is a bit of a niche. Of course, being a niche is part of what I love about Exalted, generally, so . . . at least it's a better adventure than the dream quest from Tomb of Dreams.

Ukss Contribution: Pakpao the Puppeteer. She's probably one of 3e's best signature characters (when the book isn't pretending her charmset could be used for anybody) - messed up golddigger, inadvertent(?) class warrior, hustler out for number one, master of mind control and the ruthless objectification of flesh, but also just a huge nerd for those damned puppets. She's like a hero made specifically for the Internet Age.

(Eberron 3.5) Five Nations

In the world of Eberron, the continent of Khorvaire is a place defined by the interwar tensions and cutthroat espionage and diplomacy of Europe in the 1920s and 30s, mixed with the liberalization and nation-building of the early modern era, but then aesthetically and culturally it is almost, but not quite, a completely "standard" medieval fantasy setting. Yes, there are magical items that evoke 19th century technology, but you are stepping off that train into what is, essentially, a "fairytale kingdom."

That last part was a direct quote, by the way. It's how Five Nations (Bill Slavicsek, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins) described the Kingdom of Cyre, before it was swallowed up by a magical death cloud to become the Mournland.

Basically, what I'm saying is that despite all the robots and newspapers and antiquity-stealing universities, Eberron is the rpg equivalent of this:

And look, Neuschwanstein Castle is iconic, even if it took me three guesses to successfully google the name. So if it feels like I'm dragging on Eberron right now, well that's pretty perceptive of you. I did not mean this comparison entirely as a compliment. But also, like Neuschwanstein Castle, Eberron is, for all of its faults, pretty damned iconic. 

Also like Neuschwanstein Castle (I'm going to keep name-checking the castle until I can spell it from memory), Eberron would be significantly better if the creators read more 19th century newspapers and less medieval fantasy. 

Five Nations is a book that practically embodies this contradiction. In many ways, it's one of the best setting books I've ever read. Four of the five titular nations get a "style" section that discusses their art, architecture, cuisine, and fashion. All of the NPCs have associated agendas and challenges. The locations suggest potential adventures. It's very well made. But it's a well-made medieval fantasy setting.

Let's look at some hard figures here - Breland is a kingdom with a land area of 1.8 million square miles. And a population of 3.7 million. For reference, that's more than half the continental United States (Alaska really skews the figure, so I left it out) and approximately the same number of people counted by the 1790 US census (3.9 million). Or to put it another way, as of the Day of Mourning the five nations of Galifar had a combined land area 20% greater than Europe and a population (approximately 12 million) that is lower than Europe's has ever been. . . at least in the past two thousand years.

The low populations might be explained by the century-long war they just got done fighting, but the war itself is pretty inexplicable, given the distances involved. Logistics are probably much better than they were IRL, thanks to magic, but since the primary driver of the war seems to have been the egos of those involved in the beginning (who started fighting because they could not abide Galifar's absolutely ludicrous succession laws), it doesn't actually make much sense that their descendants would carry on for decades after their deaths.*

*Except, of course, for King Kais III of Karrnath, who was the cover identity of Kais I who became a vampire and then stole the identity of his great-grandson, and thus one of the bastards who started the war in the first place.

I mean, obviously, people do foolish and immoral things for thinner motives than "nuh-uh, it was my great-grandma who should have been queen," but, like, queen of what? Breland has half the population density of the Australian outback. These "nations" are not even exerting political control over their own territories, definitely not to the extent of a modern state, and probably not even to the extent of a classical empire. Banditry and rebellious local aristocrats should be endemic. Like, I kind of thought that King Oraev's plan to carve off a piece of Breland to turn the refugee land grant of New Cyre into the independent kingdom of New Cyre was ungrateful and treacherous, but honestly, would Breland even miss it? 

You could argue that the sparse population, lower than even real medieval times, is actually an adaptation for D&D's particular style of fantasy. Not enough people for the land, sure, but if you add up the people and creatures, maybe it makes a bit more sense. Those Karrnath Bulettes, which can pop up through the floorboards to spread endemic illnesses they originally contracted through eating undead. . . they probably discourage a more uniform pattern of settlement. It might be wise to look at the book's description of the nation as occupying 1.3 million square miles and mentally discount that by 70-80%, to account for fantasy shenanigans.

It's just, if that was the intended interpretation of the material, they could simply have said as much. There's a world where the five nations are scattered Points of Light, strung together with a magical railroad and united by a shared cultural heritage of Not Being Eaten By Monsters, but that world is not Eberron. Eberron is a world that talks about the five nations as if they were modern states who are barely held back from repeating a generationally-traumatic war by a tenuous and unenforceable treaty. Breland has an "industrial heart of the nation," for crying out loud. How are they getting there? "Oh, Ma, Pa, I know the bank is threatening to foreclose on the dirt farm, but I saw in the chronicle that the factories down by the Dagger River are hiring. I'll cross the 500 miles of manticore-infested wasteland and send back money every week."

The better solution would be to assume that their figures are off by approximately an order of magnitude. A Khorvaire with a population of 120 million makes more sense even in a medieval setting, and could actually support the conflicts and themes the text keeps teasing. That's a level of population where you start needing railroads and factories, and which might even result in battles as wide-ranging and destructive as to deserve the sobriquet of "The Last War."

Anyway, as much as I want to like Five Nations for being the exact style of rpg setting book I prefer, I can't entirely get over the disconnect between my expectations and what the game delivers. Personally, I want a fantasy rpg that takes place in a magitech 19th century Europe. I am on board with that premise. Give me conflicts rooted in modern nationalism and Enlightenment political ideology, in the form of espionage, mercenary work, or scientific archaeology. Hell, give me a D&D detective story. You wanna be pulp? Then be pulp. But this thing where you also want to be able to plausibly deliver (at least on a surface level) "traditional medieval fantasy?" Honestly, it's making you worse at medieval fantasy too.

Now, give me a moment to savor my own audacity in roasting Neuschwanstein (got it in four!)

Ukss Contribution: Okay, this is a silly one. The king of Breland has a companion animal called a "magebred tiger." It's almost exactly like a tiger, but it's smarter, easier to train, and with higher physical attributes across the board ("hey, what if we increased this apex predator's land speed by 25% and its stealth rating by 33%") and it was given to the king as a gift from the dragonmarked house that specializes in creating abominations of nature.

But that's not what I'm adding to Ukss. What I'm adding to Ukss is the king's . . . strange reaction to receiving such a gift. "Boranel instantly fell in love with the animals and spent several years populating his rainforests with them. Boranel has decreed that killing magebred ghost tigers in the King's Forest is a crime punishable by incarceration or death."

Now, I'm sure someone will tell me if it's just me who thinks this - but that's a recipe for an out-of-control invasive species, right? They took a creature that was already a top-tier predator of humans, then genetically modified it to be even more deadly than that, and then they set it loose in a protected habitat where it would be safe from its only conceivable predator. . . 

I don't know, maybe the King's Forest is full of manticores or something, and so nature will find a balance, but I kind of find that sort of ecological short-sightedness to be absolutely hilarious. Hey, Boranel - at any point of this plan, did you find even one other person who thought it was a good idea? It's actually fascinating. There's no level of analysis or way of breaking this down that makes it even accidentally persuasive. What was the end goal here? Getting mauled to death in your own forest?

Anyway, some monarch or other on Ukss will have a similarly reckless relationship with an artificial animal, but when I depict it, I'm not going to be at all subtle about how bad that's going to backfire.

(Exalted 3e) Abyssals: Sworn to the Grave

When you read any Exalted 3rd Edition fatsplat you have to accept a certain implicit risk - that you will blow through the interesting lore stuff in a single day and then spend the next two weeks trying to muster the enthusiasm to read the subsequent 230 pages of charms. Can you believe I actually forgot my own opinions on the new lore? I had to look at my notes to remind me.

Abyssals: Sworn to the Grave is an interesting book because it is (for obvious reasons) the most . . . skilled 3e book yet, the one that is best at embodying all the unique virtues of 3rd edition as a game. But its subject matter - the dark Exalted who swore an oath to eternally-dying primordial gods to destroy all life in exchange for a delay in their fated hour - is the one that benefits least from 3rd edition's approach. I know this is going to be a controversial opinion in the fandom, but they didn't need to be softened, or rounded out, or made more human. The tits-out goth chick with the wild eyes that screamed "I'm horny for BLOOD" was peak and yeah, she was conceived in misogyny and when I get around to reading Scroll of Exalts I'm going to have some harsh words about that, but this book was definitely missing an essential level of camp. I mean, really, this is the Abyssals book. If you're not going to take this opportunity to celebrate women's wrongs, when are you ever going to do it?

Okay, less flippantly. . . there's always been this constituency in the fandom that objected to Abyssals being presented as a "villain" splat. You know, death is a part of life, so maybe it doesn't need to be viewed solely as an evil. And if death is sometimes not an evil, then death's exalted shouldn't have to always be evil. Maybe you could have an Abyssal who was a psychopomp or a counselor or just a hero for the ghost kingdoms.

I mean, I get it. Sometimes you just want to put on the leather pants and the eyeliner and be a little spooky in a way that is exactly as safe as the shiny golden hero, because why should the psychopaths get to hog the dark aesthetic? And to be fair, the villainous Abyssals haven't always been the fun kind of villain-core. Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, they were just these scatological bullies who were like "I'm going to STOMP on the KITTEN and then make a HAT from its GUTS."

But I can't help feeling the "Abyssals should be shepherds of the dead" perspective is one that . . . unduly privileges respectability. Truth of the matter is, no matter what our various religions tell us to the contrary, death sucks. Even if you stipulate the maximum cause for optimism ("they're up there right now, hanging with history's coolest celebrities, knocking back some cold ones and saving you a place at the table") it's still an involuntary separation in which one of the parties has no way of knowing for certain that it's temporary. No matter what you believe happens to your loved ones after they die, you still grieve for them. And the inevitability and heaviness of that grief, it sucks. 

It makes sense to me, then, that death's exalted are, themselves, guys who kinda suck. As much as I might empathize with the desire to orient oneself differently towards death, to embrace the optimism that comes with the continuance of the soul, I feel like, literarily, it loses the plot. A "morally neutral" Abyssal exaltation says nothing instead of something about the nature of death.

This might seem like a confusing take to some of you who've read my previous posts ragging on D&D's alignment system, so let me clarify - I don't mean by this that Abyssals should be an "always Evil" splat. Rather, I mean that the Abyssal exaltation should be something conceived and deployed in malice, representing the odious, unjust, and unclean nature of death . . . and that's going to prove a real challenge for Abyssal Exalted who want to do good.

I am perfectly aware that I'm taking a hardline, unpopular position in an ancient flame war that had, hitherto, been safely dead and buried (ha! necromancy humor!), but I bring it up now because this tension in the design of the Abyssal Exalted is critical to understanding 3rd edition's presentation of the splat.

On the most abstract, conceptual level, I think they nailed it. I think the combination of "to survive the Abyssal Exaltation you must swear an oath to kill all life (yes, 'even the birds'), the lack of mechanisms for anyone with any agency as a character to directly enforce this oath, and the twisted and loophole- ridden logic of "the chivalry of death" manages to thread the needle perfectly. Yeah, you can be a benevolent shepherd of the dead, and with the proper sort of trickster attitude, you can even toe the line of death's chivalry in a way that will leave your conscience largely intact, but for all of your immortal existence you will be burdened with the knowledge that in extremis you did the most unforgivable thing anyone could imagine. Very cool. Just the right amount of angst.

So by and large I'm content with the direction that 3rd edition takes Abyssals. The main issue I have with this book is that, having negotiated this compromise among the fandom, it then proceeds to present the Abyssals and the Deathlords in a way that feels . . . well, maybe not safe and respectable, exactly, but safer and more respectable than they've been in the past. There's no one at all in this book that I'd believe would stomp on a kitten and make a hat out of its guts.

The case study here would have to be The Eye and Seven Despairs. Like I'm sitting here contemplating past books, racking up the mental abacus, and I think on sheer points count, they are the most improved character in the entire book. The Princess Magnificent is a strong runner-up, having gone from "the spare Deathlord who had her agency subordinated to the First and Forsaken Lion" to "Cool Assassin Socialite" (who would maybe stomp on a kitten, if it were a particularly heroic kitten), but in previous editions, the Eye's presentation was actively transphobic.

So it's good that those elements of the character were allowed to pass gently into the fog of memory. The new Eye is probably the most fun out of all the Deathlords now - they're an amoral mad-scientist who sells discount WMDs because they're curious about what will happen when they're set off. Another great example of an immaculate balance between "this person kind of sucks" and "this person is someone we're going to want to hang out with week after week."

However . . . sigh . . . I'm going to make myself vulnerable here and admit that I'm a little nostalgic for certain elements of the transphobic presentation of the character. I gotta tread carefully, because I recognize that I'm a hair's width away from saying "the transphobia brought something to the table," but I also gotta speak my truth. The old version of the The Eye and Seven Despairs was just a little bit #goals.

In the context of being a comic-book villain, and with allowances made for comic-book-style plots that would absolutely not be okay in real life.

The short version is that the Eye was a Deathlord who just sort of slouched into the gig, and when it came time to create his own Exalted, they didn't respect him at all. So he did what anyone would do - he swapped bodies with the beautiful courtesan they were all obsessed with and sexually manipulated them into betraying "him," secure in the knowledge that the being they all thought was the Eye and Seven Despairs was actually the courtesan in disguise and that they would really be destroying the very woman they all imagined themselves to be in love with. Then, having faked his own death, he would continue having sex with all three men while stoking their paranoia and their greed in hopes of getting them to betray each other. And you kind of get the feeling that he's willing to stretch this last phase of the plan out for as long as it takes.

The second edition version elaborated his backstory in a way that seriously weakened his character (he was tormented by certain Solars in the First Age and specifically sought out their reincarnations to make Abyssals in order to get revenge) and was probably more overtly transphobic as a result (because the Eye taking female forms is called out as a pattern and described in pretty uncharitable terms). 

And to be absolutely clear - this plot was weird and uncomfortable and good god, how was it ever intended to be used as part of a roleplaying game. The new canon is 100% better in terms of "stuff I'd be willing to say at a gaming table." But if we're talking about what's appealing about the fantasy of being a villain. . . say what you will about the original recipe Eye, but he was locking down the D with elaborate psychosexual mind games and I love that for him. 

There's a certain paradox to queer representation. As it gets more respectful and more nuanced and more common, it also loses that ineffable transgressive thrill that makes you feel vicariously awesome for daring to be queer. I know that the moral guardians think my bisexual proclivities mean I've got a one-way ticket to hell. So just give me my plastic horns and pitchfork already, so I can leer at oiled-up hunks on my way down.

No, no, that was a joke. Don't cancel me. It's just, I recently saw Aladdin for the first time since hitting puberty and maybe it's because I'm now middle-aged and a bit scrungly myself, but Jafar was . . . hot? Totally an offensive stereotype. The queer-coding was not subtle. But that eyeliner? That sneer? That annunciation? He can mince right across the screen and straight into my bedroom. . . and yes, I know that makes me even more hell-bound than the crack about the oiled-up hunks.

And I can't help relating that experience back to my experience with Abyssals: Sworn to the Grave. The new Eye and Seven Despairs is your schlubby NB frenemy who you always invite to the book club because their opinions are guaranteed to be both fascinating and infuriating, but the old Eye and Seven Despairs was a toxic goth mommy who'd get you so twisted up inside you'd find yourself committing treason for sport. Force me to choose, and obviously you go with the new version. Easy fucking choice for any context except "spicy fanfic." But there's part of me that wonders why we couldn't have both - irresponsible WMD-crafting mad scientist with a conspicuous habit of including "transform into a hot chick and seduce this man" as a vital step in all of their supervillain schemes.

I promise, this digression was not purely to make incredibly horny engagement bait, it's also part of a broader point about the book. Which is that its more subdued, cautious, and humanist tone is not entirely to its benefit. The over-the-top, borderline-offensive grotesquerie of the previous editions served a purpose. Specifically, they took the subject matter out of the realm of the "realistically grim" and into a sort of purely make-believe dark humor. The rib-cage corsets and six-foot meat cleavers, dripping with blood, they were actually load-bearing camp. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say that the 3e version isn't camp enough, I would say that it's right at the edge, where losing even some of the camp it does have would run the risk of making it entirely too self-serious.

Although, the new approach does have some advantages. There's less I feel compelled to try and explain away. The old style, with its "goth level cranked up to absurdity" was maybe more fun across the board, but its recklessness and its lingering gen-x insensitivity meant it was loaded with little landmines of unfun that would take a deft hand to disarm. Take a moment to contemplate how much respect you lost for me when I admitted to enjoying certain problematic aspects of the old presentation of the Eye and Seven Despairs. Now, imagine that disappointment happening in real time during a game session, as I try and turn his skeevy, gender-transformation-as-fetish sexcapades into an rpg plot. Third edition, blessedly, spares us that possibility, and it was a worthwhile trade-off to lose the Eye's baroque, Bugs Bunny-style nonsense as part of the bargain.

That said, I cannot entirely forgive 3rd edition for introducing a new signature character called "the Gallows Bride" and then making her look like this:

Her name evokes two of the most powerful elements of goth cosplay, yet her design incorporates elements of neither one. That's borderline malpractice on the part of the art design. At least put her in a novelty bola tie or something.

She's dressed like she's just at the ren faire to drop off her art major girlfriend. Not a single piece of that outfit looks like it was bought at Hot Topic. If you show up to a funeral dressed like that, it's probably because your parents wanted you to look nice when they lowered you into the ground. Clothes like that are perfect for a sensible, yet fashionable night on the town with friends.

(It's essential to my understanding of what makes Abyssals enjoyable that my fashion-based roast reads like an anti-roast).

Overall, though, I'd say that Abyssals: Sworn to the Grave is easily the best version of the Abyssals fatsplat, and is arguably the best book in 3e so far. There's a lot I didn't cover about the new paradigm for underworld locations, with its cultural and manner-of-death-based afterlives. Or about necromancy's new versatility. Or about the strange deathlord-inspired charms (that were, unfortunately, not directly labelled, making them not stand out as much as they should have). All-in-all, it's a welcome continuation of 3e's tradition of competence and creativity at the expense of audacity (even if I love audacity to an unseemly degree).

Ukss Contribution: The spell "Seat of Deadly Splendor" summons a throne made from a massive skeletal fist. Both in-character and out-of-character it makes you look like a total badass. The Ukss version will be a permanent installation rather than a spell effect, but it'll still make you so intimidating your enemies will fall to their knees before you.