[Exalted] What problems do you see in the Mandate of Heaven rules?

[Indon]

So, I'm going to set out rewriting the Mandate of Heaven rules (they involve rules for running a nation in Exalted), with an eye towards making it a decent subgame in its' own right and with heavy inspiration from the Pathfinder adventure path Kingmaker.

So far, the major mechanics revamps I'm looking at is:

-Introducing 'coalitions', a means by which groups of sorcerors may compete as a group for legitimacy over a domain.
-Introducing national backgrounds such as Resources, Geomancy, and Panopoly to better describe the specific capabilities of nations in the Mandate of Heaven mechanics.
-Introducing a resource system, "Assets", which replenish a certain amount per turn, are used by actions, committed by sustained actions, and divided into standard and emergency pools (tapping the emergency pool costs Willpower or raises Limit).
-Making events random instead of chosen by a different player.
-Probably rewriting most of the actions heavily in order to incorporate the above mechanics, as well as adding new actions to deal with the national backgrounds.
-The group may segue between Mandate of Heaven and standard play seamlessly, but must spend at least 1 month of each season actively ruling (that is to say, not in standard play) in order to maintain full control of the Domain for that turn.

The thing is, these changes are without me ever having run the Mandate of Heaven rules as written - and reading them after having played Kingmaker, I have no intention of doing so - so I'm wondering if maybe I've missed some other glaring problem with the rules that someone else knows of.

So, are there any Mandate of Heaven tweaks people would be interested in seeing that I could consider folding into my revamp when I get around to doing it?

[Tengu_temp]

My biggest problem with Mandate of Heaven is that I can't get through the rules without falling asleep. From all White Wolfy incomprehensible messes that really could use cleaning up and better fluff/crunch separation, this is the White Wolfiest.

[Xefas]

No matter what revisions you make, even if you do a full rewrite, there must still be an action I can take called "Rapacious Bear Incursion". That proper noun is the best part of Mandate of Heaven, in my opinion.

[Friv]

Mandate of Heaven has three problems, not all of which are problems if you want it to be its own game:

#1) It is very complicated. All of the rules have names that are awesomely evocative, but not rules-evocative, making the rules very hard to get into.

#2) The timescale is, unsurprisingly, on a seasonal scale. As such, the ability of any powerful supernatural being to completely mess your nation up are totally unaddressed. When a Solar Exalt can rewrite your entire society's culture in a week, the fact that each turn takes a full season means that just saying "You can use this Charm in dominion-scale time" is meaningless. You can use that Charm about a hundred times in dominion-scale time. In other words, the instant the powerful magical beings that the setting is about get involved, everything goes to pieces. The system attempts to address this by brutally punishing any player who decides to take actual actions, by applying arbitrary Willpower and Essence penalties to... actions?

#3) The creation system isn't very granular, which is fine for a board game but not for a simulation. Because every nation in the world has a scale from 1 to 10 (with 1 being "crappy village", 7 being "The Realm", and 10 being "the Solar Realm"), and because bonus points are a flat line progression, you have a situation where if one of the Hundred Kingdoms goes toe-to-toe with Great Forks, they're rolling 2-3 dice against Great Forks' 3-4 dice, with equal Virtues powering them. In short, any nation has a reasonable shot at taking out a force five to ten times its size and power, and a non-zero chance of conquering an enemy a hundred times their size.

[TheCountAlucard]

#2) The timescale is, unsurprisingly, on a seasonal scale. As such, the ability of any powerful supernatural being to completely mess your nation up are totally unaddressed.It also means that if just one player wants to sit down and do some Mandate of Heaven stuff, that the other PCs all have to either forestall their own plans for about a year, or that the first PC will fall short of the rest of the group by a vast amount of XP.

[Indon]

No matter what revisions you make, even if you do a full rewrite, there must still be an action I can take called "Rapacious Bear Incursion". That proper noun is the best part of Mandate of Heaven, in my opinion.

I do intend on maintaining the Bear(Government)/Tiger(Military)/Mouse(Culture) naming schematic, as well as any other consistent metaphors I spot (like the Dragon one for the whole).


#1) It is very complicated. All of the rules have names that are awesomely evocative, but not rules-evocative, making the rules very hard to get into.
I don't understand how the rules terminology aren't rules-evocative. Magnitude, abilities, virtues, WP, limit are all Exalted concepts and function much like they do in traditional Exalted.

If you're referring to the actions, well, they are rules-evocative to a degree, though yes, some of the actions could be cleaned up.


#2) The timescale is, unsurprisingly, on a seasonal scale. As such, the ability of any powerful supernatural being to completely mess your nation up are totally unaddressed. When a Solar Exalt can rewrite your entire society's culture in a week, the fact that each turn takes a full season means that just saying "You can use this Charm in dominion-scale time" is meaningless. You can use that Charm about a hundred times in dominion-scale time. In other words, the instant the powerful magical beings that the setting is about get involved, everything goes to pieces. The system attempts to address this by brutally punishing any player who decides to take actual actions, by applying arbitrary Willpower and Essence penalties to... actions?
Ah, I forgot to note another change I'm making because I'm basically grifting it wholly from the Kingmaker rules.

-The group may segue between Mandate of Heaven and standard play seamlessly, but must spend at least 1 month of each season actively ruling (that is to say, not in standard play) in order to maintain full control of the Domain for that turn.

I have now added that rule to the first post to better reflect the changes. Thanks.


#3) The creation system isn't very granular, which is fine for a board game but not for a simulation. Because every nation in the world has a scale from 1 to 10 (with 1 being "crappy village", 7 being "The Realm", and 10 being "the Solar Realm"), and because bonus points are a flat line progression, you have a situation where if one of the Hundred Kingdoms goes toe-to-toe with Great Forks, they're rolling 2-3 dice against Great Forks' 3-4 dice, with equal Virtues powering them. In short, any nation has a reasonable shot at taking out a force five to ten times its size and power, and a non-zero chance of conquering an enemy a hundred times their size.
I feel this is appropriate to the Exalted setting. Not just that, but major conflicts will have major characters on both sides replacing their nations' die pools, which further crazifies this factor and introduces a heavy element of the "Your character is wearing a nation" mechanic that you get in mass combat - which I also like and thus plan to keep.


It also means that if just one player wants to sit down and do some Mandate of Heaven stuff, that the other PCs all have to either forestall their own plans for about a year, or that the first PC will fall short of the rest of the group by a vast amount of XP.

This problem also exists in the Kingmaker ruleset, and I haven't seen anything come of it. I suspect the Kingmaker-borrowed time limitation rule should fix any practical problems.

I'm also seriously considering abolishing non-Season based play and standardizing everything towards just seasons, tweaking the rules as appropriate. Thoughts?

[potatocubed]

-The group may segue between Mandate of Heaven and standard play seamlessly, but must spend at least 1 month of each season actively ruling (that is to say, not in standard play) in order to maintain full control of the Domain for that turn.

I don't think this addresses the fundamental problem, which I see as this:

It takes a season for a nation to do anything.

vs.

It takes five days of casual conversation for a Solar to redefine the fundamental values of your civilisation. (I can't remember which charm that is, but it's in there somewhere - a player in my last game had it.)

When a gang of Solars can flex their charms and, in a week or two, turn a podunk village in the middle of nowhere into an economic powerhouse populated entirely by enlightened warrior-philosophers, spending an entire season on something seems kind of pointless.

[SurlySeraph]

I do intend on maintaining the Bear(Government)/Tiger(Military)/Mouse(Culture) naming schematic, as well as any other consistent metaphors I spot (like the Dragon one for the whole).

I don't understand how the rules terminology aren't rules-evocative. Magnitude, abilities, virtues, WP, limit are all Exalted concepts and function much like they do in traditional Exalted.

If you're referring to the actions, well, they are rules-evocative to a degree, though yes, some of the actions could be cleaned up.

Here's the thing. "Bear Startles Mouse Appropriation" sounds cool. "Bear Startles Mouse Appropriation" does not sound like "Thing that makes your military more powerful." The same applies for most of the names for actions; you can't tell what they do from the name, and memorizing or referencing a long list of similar-sounding terms is annoying.
The attributes, abilities, and virtues are fine (though I have no idea why it has you use Stealth instead of Larceny for national-level sneakiness), but the names of the actions are a pain to remember. Something more like categories than a list of actions would be better - such as having Reduce Attribute and Increase Attribute as actions, with different dice pools for affecting different attributes.

Adding some kind of Reflexive actions, to deal with the "Suddenly, Essence users breaking everything!" problem, is a good idea. Say, reflexive Military + Investigation to find the guy and Military + War for your army to fight the army he raised from your population.

Or just snap back into normal play from Mandate of Heaven when stuff like that happens, because a couple reflexive rolls and "OK, the Solar is gone" is nowhere near as much fun as playing that out.

[Indon]

I don't think this addresses the fundamental problem, which I see as this:

It takes a season for a nation to do anything.

vs.

It takes five days of casual conversation for a Solar to redefine the fundamental values of your civilisation. (I can't remember which charm that is, but it's in there somewhere - a player in my last game had it.)

When a gang of Solars can flex their charms and, in a week or two, turn a podunk village in the middle of nowhere into an economic powerhouse populated entirely by enlightened warrior-philosophers, spending an entire season on something seems kind of pointless.

That's the difference between acting as heroes doing your own thing and acting as rulers within the scope of dealing with national problems. When you're ruling a nation, you're asking mortals to do things. You could give those mortals legendary guidance, but they're still mortals.


Here's the thing. "Bear Startles Mouse Appropriation" sounds cool. "Bear Startles Mouse Appropriation" does not sound like "Thing that makes your military more powerful."

It sounds like "Roll your government (bear) vs. your culture (mouse)." You roll against your own stats to raise them, so it raises Government.

Bear Startles Mouse Appropriation is in fact one of the good examples of how the naming schema can be both awesome and helpful (I didn't remember what the ability did, I reverse-engineered it from the name), though it could certainly be improved, perhaps with some standardization. Adding "Development" to the "raise your stats" actions would be a good example.


Adding some kind of Reflexive actions, to deal with the "Suddenly, Essence users breaking everything!" problem, is a good idea. Say, reflexive Military + Investigation to find the guy and Military + War for your army to fight the army he raised from your population.

Or just snap back into normal play from Mandate of Heaven when stuff like that happens, because a couple reflexive rolls and "OK, the Solar is gone" is nowhere near as much fun as playing that out.

Yeah, currently the only reflexive action I have is "Get out and deal with it," and I'm contemplating keeping it that way. I want to use the Mandate of Heaven for stuff like developing national geomantic infrastructure (Will be a background), not for killing Exalts.

Edit: Now, what I'm trying to do with the backgrounds is to introduce a greater correlation between Mandate of Heaven play and normal play. For instance, a nation with the Panopoly background is going to grant that nation's rulers access to the Panopoly background.