White Wolf Publishing

Page 163, Sidereals, under the Charm Efficient Secretary Technique: "The pattern spider cannot retrieve information that is actively hidden or innately esoteric..."

Would you agree that a Lunar concealing their presence is actively hidden?

Time for a short burst of exposition.

In 1E, Efficient Secretary Technique had a clause that specifically forbade it from retrieving any information that was "actively hidden." This nuance was insufficiently emphasized in the transition to Second Edition, along with most of the elegance, grace, sense, working mechanics and useability of the Sidereal Charmset. Many players, including most on this forum (and myself) prefer to keep to the somewhat stricter 1E definition.

This is one example why it's futile to discuss Sidereal perception vs. Lunar stealth/disguise using the mechanics as they currently stand. Fortunately, in a matter of days, we will have errata to make Sidereals functional, even if it doesn't bring them to their maximum potential. Have patience, delicious friend. All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Doesn't work. The Lunar is actively hiding his presence, which removes him from being found by the Charm.

Charms do exactly what they say, no more, no less.

Without much knowledge of that specific Celestial, rather poor odds that a Sidereal with Backing 4+ was able to have them marked as a person of interest on the Loom for easier tracking.



I think you have an interpretation of Efficient Secretary Technique that is broader than mine. I see that it says the Charm cannot find information related to a topic that is being actively hidden. So therefore, if a Lunar is actively trying not to be found, then any information relevant to that Lunar's location will be unobtainable through a simple Charm that costs 2 motes and no effort on the Sidereal but asking a question anywhere in the world.

I don't think this is what Efficient Secretary Technique is meant to do.

Might I bring forward for your consideration pre-Usurpation Fate markings on Lunar Elders? As for fresh incarnations, EST investigation is a viable option when the Lunar is too surprised by suddenly Exalting to conceal anything.

Well, I think the examples provided of questions that would be answered ought to be questions the Charm could answer. Hopefully 2.5 will clear this up, hint hint.

So, if someone murdered Sesus Lahor by stabbing him, and tried to cover up this fact, are you saying the Charm would still get results from "Who stabbed Sesus Lahor?" because the method wasn't concealed, only the perpetrator, or are you dismissing the implication that the two questions are connected to the same event?

Basically, the charm is chicanary-no. You don't get to loophole-abuse it into being the Answer To Everything. It cannot provide you with information that's being concealed, period, no matter how many weasel-words you try.

Alternately, you could just use Yellow Path to go to the murderer's house, or "wherever the murderer will be at at noon today. I've got an appointment for a duel to the death with him, after all."

Trying to run away or hide from Sidereals is likely to wind up looking something like this.

"Hey, buddy! I've got magic that can find the dude who killed your dad, if you agree to let me officiate the duel to the death between the two of you." *pause* "Cool beans. Noon today good for you? Excellent. Follow me, then."

Also, "I've got to get to the bomb in the next five minutes or Gem will be destroyed!"

In any case, though, even without the appointment-"teleportation", it's still an amazingly powerful investigative tool.

Should work. It'd also allow you to track down Sidereal akuma relatively easily, too.

Man I really hope ETP really, really tighten things up so ridiculous interpretations like some of these become nearly impossible.

Maddy and paradim gave examples of using things sideways. You're using examples of waving a magic wand to instantly cut directly to the problem.

Remember this post?

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I agree on the whole but sometimes it's just plain unclear what's reasonable and isn't. In this specific case it really is clear to anyone with a shred of common sense.

But sometimes clarification is good too, 'specially when introducing new or unusual charm technology.

That's "The Purloined Letter". "The Scarlet Letter" is a different thing entirely, a mark of shame.

I disagree. I think there needs to be an implicit assumption that Sidereal charms are, to modify the forum meme slightly, chicanery-maybe. That meaning, while egregiously abusive interpretations should be stomped on, you should allow..."creative" interpretations that don't totally violate the letter and/or spirit of the Charm...

The other alternatives I see are we really do need to write up 24 additional SMAs revolving around punching paperwork to get it approved faster, punching people to get them to like you (go go unfortunate implications, also insert-Desus-joke-here), punching a sword to craft it faster, punching evidence to learn more about it, etc.

Or just open the damn Charmset.



Well, it is the Internet.

I don't need them to open the Charmset for me. This is pretty much the one house rule that even the most strict interpretation games I play will cave too.

I don't really get the logic behind not opening it considering it means Sidereals don't get new charms in books though. Because that sucks.

To be fair, there IS good reason why nick's ideas are fairly obviously doing something beyond the pale, here: this Charm lets you specify a place you need to be by a time, or an appointment you must keep. "I must get to Atlantis before McKay activates the time sifter and undoes [all the events of SG:A]!" can work because you know where, roughly, you are going and what, roughly, you're timing is. You know he's going to do this and you know where he is going to do it.

"I must get to the location where the next Solar to Exalt is going to be exactly three seconds before he Exalts!" is a violation because you don't have any clue where that is, nor what the event of his Exaltation will be, nor even why he's going to Exalt. You don't even know who.

Effectively, Yellow Path doesn't create information for you. You have to actually have enough information that you could plot a course and go if you only had time enough. It won't help you find your keys if you don't know where you left them. It will help you get to the appointment without your car for which you need said keys on time.

I would. Would you agree that the fact that a mortal saw a Lunar, even unknowingly, is not?[/quote]

If the Lunar didn't reveal their identity and was travelling incognito, sure I'd consider it hidden.

If I may, allow me to expand on this.

There have been, as far as I know, three assertions of why a closed charmset for Sidereals is a good idea.

1: It encourages Sidereals to use their charms in new and inventive ways
2: It forces Sidereals to come at their problems sideways.
3: If the charmset were open, many user-made charms would crop up of lower quality than the existing ones.*

I object to each of these assertions, especially the third. But we'll get to that one in a minute.

In the first instance, Sidereals can be encouraged to find new and inventive ways for their charms without closing the charmset. In fact, they don't actually need to be encouraged to do this, because players will do this on their own. They already do this on their own with the other Exalted, and share stories of how they did it, and congratulate each other on doing so. They do this in every RPG I have ever encountered. A closed charmset is completely unnecessary to achieve this.

In the second instance, Sidereals are already forced to come at their problems sideways, simply because of how their Charms work. Sidereal charms are weird, in fairly specific, interesting ways. They don't need a closed charmset to make them come at their problems sideways, in the same way that Infernals don't need a closed charmset to make them grow beyond their humanity, and Abyssals don't need a closed charmset to encourage them to solve their problems with murder.

The third instance is both nonsense and actively insulting. It's nonsense because you could say exactly the same thing of any other charmset in the game. It's insulting because an official stamp of approval in no way guarantees that a charm will be of good quality. Acting like official charm-writers are somehow intrinsically better than unofficial ones is insulting to the many skilled homebrewers on this and other forums, and laughable when you consider that some of the worst Charms in the history of this game were written and published through official channels. Some of them are still around- or did Octupus and Spider Barrage get errata when I wasn't looking? How about everything in Scroll of the Monk?

For that matter, how about most of the Sidereal charmset?! I think the hombrewers on this forum would have to work pretty dang hard to make something worse than that in its current form.

If you're so worried about people ruining the feel of the Sidereal charmset with low-quality Charms, include a sidebar talking about what Sidereal charms should be like.

In sum, I assert that there is no valid reason for the Sidereal charmset to remain closed. It is a needlessy restrictive and inefficient method to achieve the atmosphere desired.

* I can't immediately recall who said this, but I know it was one of the developers or freelancers. Could somebody find it for me? I know it was on this forum, and fairly recently.

The third reason is, I agree, nonsense. If that was the reasoning behind it SMA would not exist.

I do think the other reasons are valid though. In particular, a closed charmset with ways to cheat that fact establishes that Sidereals are Exalts who work under restrictions, who are encouraged to adhere to the letter but not the spirit of the law and generally supposed to act like the bureaucrats of the fabric of reality that they are. It's a wonderful bit of mechanics built to support a particular playstyle (or it is when it's pulled off properly at any rate).

By this logic, your PC should be the one who plotted the Usurpation. Your PC should be the one who took control of the Realm Defense Grid and drove back the Balorian Crusade. Your PC should have been the one who took control of Paragon.

This isn't a very good logic to use to design the setting, because it results in a setting where nothing happens. I reiterate from my point earlier in this thread: NPC's do not need to suck for you to be awesome.

Big Events, Big Ongoing Events, have happened before your character shows up. Otherwise, the setting is boring. Requiring the Lunars to have thrown in the towel in order for your PC to be the one who didn't, breaks Suspension of Disbelief, if we are to believe that the Lunars are heroes who do something.

Notice that in this scenario, The Lunars war against The Realm hasn't been successful, final, or crushing. This is because that is the job of your PC, should you wish.

Your character does Big Things by virtue of being an exalt. You cannot display this to players if you show an entire Splat not doing this.

Uh, yes, it is arbitrary. I want to run that story. I think that story is better and more interesting than "I helped Ma-Ha-Suchi burn down the Realm." That's all I've been saying.

How this has anything to do with "special snowflakes" is just, boggling. Do you, or do you not, want to be [PC name], Exile-Ender? If you don't, as in, actively do not want to play that story, fine.

It sounds like an interesting story to do (once). But I can play that story already by playing a Lunar who Exalts out in the Wyld as a Raksha slave, or whatever, and without it arbitrarily forcing a bunch of Celestial Exalted to act like a pack of irrelevent and pathetic fools. So, what incentive do I have to go with your vision other than "tell a story I already can, but bigger"?