Ironclaw: The Will to Power

Game Master UltraFennec

An Ironclaw: Squaring the Circle game set in the environs of Triskellian, with potential to expand further. Focused on the intrigue and violence surrounding the conflicts between the rising Guilds, with a lighthearted base tone.


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Female Weasel Dilettante

All of the side-vignette things I'd like to pursue at this point are things which could theoretically happen any time over the next few days and aren't dependent on happening before the debauch.

The matter of the letter (if Natalia still has it):
Natalia, Rosza and others visiting papermakers.
Natalia possibly trying to assist with the filing and sorting of various collegiate correspondence to see if any notable donors to the College have similar handwriting?

Other matters:
Rosza wants to track down Jean-Yves at some point.
Rosza will also be idly making inquiries among Cedric's ex-employees who were so helpful when the winds changed, as well as further inquiries in the gutter about who she might speak of to acquire certain things forbidden in the city, or how to get certain things out of the city without taxes, who to talk to, etc, with an eye towards trying to get a feel for who Cedric was entangled with locally...And who else might be left in the lurch by the collapse of Cedric's business.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

None of those things should be particularly difficult. I could probably work the papermakers into the adventure at the least. Keep it relevant while advancing multiple plot points at the SAME TIME?! Mother of God.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Tl/dr Technique, 3 motes and 1 Willpower; Perfect Defense against 'Wall of Text Prana'

/Exalted injoke #2

It looks like the shopping trip is almost done, maybe just a fitting, since no one wants to go for jewelry. (;_;)
Research will go on as long as you give Natalia something to go with, and then there is that family letter she still hasn't even glanced at yet...
And then the party... oh my, the party. I'm looking forward to dragging Natalia though that. Clearly "A Night to Remember." (Hmmm, the title of the most famous book about the Titanic...)

And then on to... Springheel Jack? Jack the Ripper? Murder Most Foul? Evil Lurks in Darkness? "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids and your Phelan"?


Male Raccoon: d6 Witch Finder: d6

Murder most fowl.


Tiger Taoist, Sworddancer

Or is it "The Best Night Ever!" ?
(Hmm, the title of a season finale of the best cartoon ever, MLP:FIM)


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

I'd intended the party to be part of the same adventure as the murder, so I don't know if they really need more than one title. Maybe a combined one.

Ugh, murder most fowl...that's tempting, but...it's a pun...

That might be too obvious...but...

"Dinner and a Murder Most Fowl."


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

A small side-note to the "Weapons and Zongguo" mix.
Yes, in places like Japan, you kept your weapons at hand... except when dining with your lord, or going to a gesha house. Then you set your weapons aside to an attendant 'to be polished' or some polite excuse.
So I would expect that there are times in Zongguo where you set your weapons aside.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

And then I got hijacked by rabid monkeys.

NOW I'm getting to posts.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Celestial Rabid Monkey Methodology, 2 motes and 1 mote per additional rabid monkey

/Exalted in-joke 3


Female Weasel Dilettante

Just as an aside re: the carriage of weapons before one's ruler in China and Japan...If I remember right this varied a great deal dependent upon the era. In most times the long blade was left at the door and the short blade permitted, but there were eras when the complete daisho was appropriate, and others when no weapons were permitted...which gave rise to such entertaining accoutrements as the iron fan and similar 'non-weapons'.

One of the most famous swordsmen in Japanese history made the majority of his kills with sticks and boat-oars, if I remember right.


Female Weasel Dilettante

Also, I can't promise much will necessarily come of this, but if I could persuade folks to indulge me by doing what Delroy's player did and coming up with visual examples of costume, weapons, and even character build...


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Poking around in the Ironclaw book, I find that there is really nothing about how big a character is normally. Size is mentioned in the Gift: Giant, but for the most part the game is silent.
The only comparisons I can find is in the example characters. Treating them as normal for their type, I find the following sizes:
Bat and Rat are 8 hands height (2'8")
Squirrel and Fox are 11 hands height (3'8")
Raccoons are 13 hands height (4'4")
Weasels and Dhole are 14 hands height (4"8")
The horse is 18 hands height (6')
And the wolf is 20 hands height (6'8")

Using that as a rough guide, I find that:
Natalia at 6 hands is only 2'.
Delroy at 12 hands is 4'.
Javiera as a fox would be around 11 hands, or 3'8".
Rosza is tall, at 15 1/2 hands, or 5'2".
I would say that as a tiger, Quinn is most likely around 18 hands, or 6'.
And Ceallarch as a wold should be around 20 hands, or 6'8".

Actually, only Natalia, Delroy, and Rosza have sizes listed, the others are guesses. How large are the other members?

(Heh, Ceallach is taller than 3 Natalia's.)
I find the height differences in the group amusing.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

I...tend to normalize the sizes to something closer to human heights when I'm creating the characters. I just find the size differences to be kinda goofy frankly, and very, very little of the art bothers with it unless emphasizing how big rhinos and such are.

You might also notice that some of these sizes are not even remotely correlated to the animals' relative real life sizes. A fox should totally be larger than a raccoon, and there's just no way a wolf is going to be taller than a horse.

I'm one of those guys that always made halflings and gnomes a foot taller in DnD and PF so I could take them seriously, lol.


Female Weasel Dilettante

I also was normalizing to humanish sizes. Rosza is not meant to be a giant.

Also by build I did not simply mean 'height', but general proportion.


Male Wolf

Ceallach is big, but obviously not quite giant given his lack of that d12 body die, and no giant gift. As far as looks...

Kinda like this


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Maybe I'm reading too much into the sample characters. Maybe their sizes are only close to what they should be, and personal differences cover up some sizes.
The example wolf is the big scary atavist. Maybe he just pushed his size to be big.
And maybe the fox character wanted to be small for her race (as I chose for Natalia).
The artwork shows some size difference in some of the animals (when they get shown in a group).

None the less, there does seem to be size differences between the various sized animals.
The small animals (mice, bats and the like) seem to group around 8 hands.
The next size grouping are medium animals, and that gives a range of 11 to 14 hands. I'd say 11 is small (although it fits squirrels, maybe its the upper end of the small animal range?), with most animals grouping around 14 hands.
The last size is the larger animals, the horses, cattle, deer, wolves, tigers and the like. I'd say 16 to 20 hands, with 18 being the common size.
And then the outsized rhino and Gift:Giant folk, who are supposed to be larger than 20 hands.
I notice that I and Delroy put our heights in hands, where Rosza put her's in feet and inches.

So UltraFennic, what are the height ranges in your game? How tall are Delroy and Natalia really, if Rosza is 5'2"?


Male Wolf

For you, UF, and anybody else that has changed their mind.

Interest check for SIFRP


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

I'd probably adjust each of those groups somewhat differently. I imagine the medium sized animals being roughly the same range of heights as humans, which means anywhere from 4 to 6.5 feet on average. The small animals would probably run from 2.75 to 5 feet on average, and the large animals I think would be minimum 5 feet, and average upper range at 7.5, maybe eight feet.

Of course there would be outliers in each of those ranges and groups, and I play PF too so y'know, short and tall races exist. Just...more condensed size ratios for sentient beings is a preference. Whatever they were before, the animal species of Ironclaw are, to me, more human than animal most of the time. Well, that and frankly none of the art really makes them look all that small IMO.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

@Favor: Well I figured as much because in the demo game (that ran for quite awhile after the streams were over) we had him kinda peering over our shoulder and saying such things.

Just, y'know, the actual text is a bit ambiguous. Happens a lot.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4
UltraFennec wrote:

I'd probably adjust each of those groups somewhat differently. I imagine the medium sized animals being roughly the same range of heights as humans, which means anywhere from 4 to 6.5 feet on average. The small animals would probably run from 2.75 to 5 feet on average, and the large animals I think would be minimum 5 feet, and average upper range at 7.5, maybe eight feet.

Of course there would be outliers in each of those ranges and groups, and I play PF too so y'know, short and tall races exist. Just...more condensed size ratios for sentient beings is a preference. Whatever they were before, the animal species of Ironclaw are, to me, more human than animal most of the time. Well, that and frankly none of the art really makes them look all that small IMO.

I just kinda realized that...given the height ranges I posited...aside from the very smalls mice and bats...that the example characters are sort of average for their species bracket...so did I change anything, or not?

LOLOLOLOLOLOL.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

So basically all you did was make Natalia taller, and left everyone else alone? She went from 2' to 2'9" with your change.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

That's why I was going "waitaminnit, I should rethink this..."

I still don't like the huge size differences between the species, but I should probably think about this a bit more before I start throwing out numbers. So uh...don't change anything IC yet.


Female Weasel Dilettante

I just never pictured Natalia being less than half Rosza's height. This means she'll have to PICK THE BAT UP to HUG THE STUFFING OUT OF HER if necessary. (As nearly happened in the very first scene. XD)


Female Weasel Dilettante

Delroy, you DID see that Rosza responded to you, yes? :) Just checking since you said you were waiting on it.


Male Raccoon: d6 Witch Finder: d6

Checking for it now.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

I always pictured Rosza as being tall (somehow weasels and ermines being so long translates to being tall). And yes, Natalia is quite aware of being small enough to pick up and hugged until her stuffings squeeze out. She has had this happen time and again, and while she doesn't like it too much, she will tolerate it (or even expect it and sort of enjoy it) with people she likes.
The rest get zapped (do not pick up electric bats).
Yes, Rosza is one of the few that Natalia doesn't mind being picked up by.


Male Raccoon: d6 Witch Finder: d6

Delroy seems to be about the same size as Natalia, then?
Gwenn did pick him up. So when it happens to the bat, Delroy will know her pain.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Actually, until our Host decides what sizes we really are, Natalia at 6 hands is only half the size of the 12 hands Delroy. Delroy might even be able to pick Natalia up.

Congratulations, you found someone shorter than you. Just loom over Natalia and point that fact out, and I'm sure her already sparkling opinion of you will go up. Or just pick her up like a child!

On second thought, don't.


Male Raccoon: d6 Witch Finder: d6

Somehow I don't think Delroy will be lifting up noblewomen any time soon. It's not in his nature to squee at cuteness. Or will he be bullying anyone. He's had his fill with Cedric.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Thank you, Delroy.
It's not in Natalia's best interests to have to explain to the Church why she electocuted one of their Witch Finders either. ^_~


Male Wolf

On the bright side, you can have your very own Phelan mount.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

I respect Ceallach too much to make him a mount.

Although that does bring up a scary thought; Bat Elementalists riding Phelan Atavists into combat!


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

I looked at a yardstick, and then stacked three rulers on top of each other because it felt more right for some reason. I think about 2'5" is about where I'd pictured Natalia being in my head. Still really short, even for a bat, but not quite at the point where you'd be too small to take arrow wounds without falling off a hillock in the process.

Yes, that really is what i thought while measuring. I'm sorry. It just...happened. It's my head. It does these things.

Likewise, Delroy is kinda short for a guy. If Gwen can lift you with her Strength-iness, she's probably taller than you too, which makes things odd because...rat...raccoon...I dunno. He's only a bit shorter than Rosza in my head, but that's my head not yours.

So...counterpoints? I think being a wee bit taller isn't too terrible, keeps things more in-line in their sizes, stops my brain from constantly telling hobbit jokes to myself, and still lets Natalia ride Ceallach into combat. :D


Male Raccoon: d6 Witch Finder: d6

Old IronClaw based size on the body die + modifiers for Srength and Robustness, I used the average size for Body d6


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

I recall that too from old Ironclaw, but also remembered that it did give just as odd sizes too. A horse could be smaller than a rat in that game, and that seems just a bit odd. And didn't you change size because your body die could go up with exp?

That being said, I can see how somw races have a large range of sizes. Mice are almost always small, but rats can grow to a good size.
And I saw the lift as more of a heft up, pulling feet off the floor, type greeting as two of the same sized people might do to each other), and not a pick up that Natalia would entail (like an adult to a 5 year-old).

And since Ironclaw now doesn't explain their measurements of hands or stones (14 lbs) better, most people aren't aware of the sizes.
It would seem that most of the races are about 5', with the outliers going from 2' to 7'.


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

And Natalia overthinks things again. Silly bat.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

Yeah there's no mechanical anything about height in this Edition, it's pretty much up to the characters, entirely divorced from Body dice.

I think the reason the example characters are the heights they are is because those sheets are copy-pasted from the old books and modified to fit the new mechanical paradigm.

Your comment about the average heights seems both spot on, and also appropriate given the "just out of medieval era" feel the game has. People used to be shorter in the past too until regular balanced nutrition became a thing.

That said obviously y'all are going to do whatever y'all want, just...y'know. I'll probably never imagine you guys quite that short. *shrug* It's just...well, we know what I think about it. :\

Shutting up now.


Female Weasel Dilettante

I personally tended to visualize things in the more 'typical fantasy adventuring party range'...Short people up to just below the ribcage of the average 'medium height' person, with tall people getting up into the 8' range, but that's not based so much on the book as on the LACK of obvious height stuff in the book (I confess I didn't really look much at the sample characters, and the artwork is so inconsistent as to be better labeled incoherent).

If we want to get fussy (I don't), then that's enough to cause its own ergonomic issues. Blades must be customized for the wielder, dwellings and furnishings built with one size in mind may be distinctly uncomfortable for others (picture Natalia in a Phelan household...Having to stand on her chair to reach the table). Forget about refitting captured armor or weapons. Go too far beyond that and you nearly have to have separate societies differentiated simply in terms of what ergonomic and social facilities they can use, almost each with their own economies (it takes X more fine clay and labor to make an ornate and elegant tea set for elephants than for mice).

I don't even want to start on the rhinos and elephants, although I suppose Goodwin's writeup (I understand HE wrote those to accompany the artwork without prompting from the IC team, and they just really liked them) makes a good stab at that for the rhinos.

On further glancing about, I note that there are combat rules for size, but not for reach (unless I missed them). That way madness lies! Too much of that and one ends up with a situation where small characters can't even attack larger ones without a polearm or ranged weapon.

TL;DR - I admit I had my own viewpoint based on nothing particularly relevant but I hope this doesn't turn into something too rules-y because if a sizeable chunk of the population can stand in the palm of the hand of another sizeable chunk of the population it will create issues...

(On the other hand, if we ever have to smuggle Natalia out of the city we can just slap a kilt on Ceallach and devastatingly offend at least two people's sensibilities and propriety at once!)


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

Let it be said that Sanguine could use some more and better editing passes, but again, money. It's crazy that they were able to afford to print full-size hardcovers with glossy covers and color pages as an indie company.

@The size issue: Micro characters just aren't going to exist in our version of Calabria, so no madness there. I can't actually find the size rules for combat, which is probably indicative, again, of the editing problems. Reach rules only exist insofar as how far people can "threaten" with their weapons, which basically exists only for determining if you've flanked someone and can use Tactics dice against them. :\

Unless the size rules for combat would seriously affect the way things play out in a way that mattered, I'm going to ignore them, whatever they are. There's enough I have to track already! >:V


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

@ Rozsa: The thing about size is not that the people are out of proportion with each other, but that they are so small in comparison to what we invision.
Natalia is a rarity, small for even the small sized people. But normally, the small come up to the ribcage of 'normal' people, and the truely large a head ansd shoulders above the normal. It's just that the normal people are short to begin with (most of them not getting more than 4'8"!) I think that is what is throwing everyone off, the fact that the normal people are small to us, while only the large seem to be the right height.

Oh, and increacing your attack range of 1 pace can be found in one place, the Gift of Giant. It makes you over 20 hands tall (over 6'8"), and is the only thing that gives you +1 to your range (one additional pace range for melee). So with a close weapon you could attack foes 1 or 2 paces away, and with a close,reach weapon you could attack a foe 1, 2, or 3 paces away.

Just an add on: Rosza, you mentioned that Natalia would have to stand on a chair to reach a tall tabletop, and yet that sort of thing I always had in mind for Natalia. That is, her being very small in a world made for normal people. She always has had to deal with being short and unable to reach or see things that others can. She hasn't had to panic about losing everyone in a crowd yet, or any of the other things I have in mind.
And yet with the sizes we discussed, I see most people being the middle of the heigth pack, and most things sized for them. Currently, tall and oversized people have to shop in seperate stores for clothing (chain stores do not carry sizes outside the normal range), and I could tell you about the girls of FICE (japanese singers) that shopped in a child's clothing store because that was the size clothing they wore.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

Part of the oddity I think comes from...well, aside from the variance in heights and sizes based on animal characteristics, Rafferty and the dev gang also told me that they tried to incorporate as much stuff from actual history, from medieval to the enlightenment periods in Europe, and so the "average" height range seems to cleave closer to the real height ranges of people a few hundred years ago, which were on average shorter than contemporary heights/sizes, several inches shorter in some cases. The "average anglo-saxon man is six feet tall" thing only came about in the late 19th, early 20th century when medicine and nutrition finally came into their own.

So for example, Luigi is a fox, a slim and lithe jumper/scrapper type species already, and he's a mounted knight by training, but he's probably barely hitting 5'9" at absolute tallest. Probably more like 5'6" or 5'7" at best. It's just kinda what happens with the skewed sort of nutritional intake that happens in these societies, and that's where he'd be under the "standard" sizes.

Now of course people tend to envision characters in modern terms because that's what they relate to. Which is fine and really what I was thinking of honestly because that's what I typically do. But in this case, I'd probably just adjust the smallest guys up a little bit to fit the setting I envisioned and otherwise leave things alone.

/rambling.


Female Weasel Dilettante

@Natalia, I think part of it is that I never quite grasped that Natalia was not merely a small and dainty individual...But a small and dainty individual for her race of small and dainty individuals.

When I picked out a height of 5'2 for Rosza, I meant for her to be a little bit above middling female height...If 'average' for the medium races is in the neighborhood of 4'8, she's taller than I meant her to be...

RJ is meant to be clever, quick, and twisty as a bramblepatch, not tall and mighty (recent acquisition of a d8 body notwithstanding).


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

With a d8 Body you're smack dab in the middle of available die sizes for Traits, which is "above average" since every Minor character has d6s everywhere unless I specifically want to give them less or more for a specific reason. So you've got a little muscle to go with those weasel attributes. Probably from wearing proper armor in layers. What weasel does that? ;D

The height thing will always be a bit wonky I think, even if I hand out a "word of God" and adjust numbers upward, and I'm not comfortable doing that outside of really necessary things because I'm a player too, not some overlord. I just happen to do a lot more work than the rest of you. ;P

So I guess it's a suggestion, rather than a mandate, that I visualized everything with something approaching normalized human heights in mind, keeping aware of what was normal in the Renaissance era but allowing for variation. While I'd like it if we could all frame ourselves the same way, I've got enough to do as it is without being heartbroken about character heights.

I reserve the right to make merciless jokes about it through in-character rivals and detractors however. GM privilege. XD


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

So, speaking of what sizes we are, can we put it in another form?
Obviously, there are some races that are small, just as there are some races that are tall. But most of the races fall into the middle range of height, which we can call the popluation at large.
Natalia is small even to her small race.
Rosza is of normal size, to the population at large.
Is Delroy also small to the population at large?
Is Javiera normal sized to the population at large?
Is Quinn tall (as I see tigers as being)?
Is Ceallach tall (something about being a Phelan Atavist makes it seem that he is)?


Male Raccoon: d6 Witch Finder: d6

Delroy is small according to other raccoons, but not much. Maybe three inches shorter than average, and skinny too (He'll be bulking up, Witch Finders are fighters after all.) But for now, Skinny boy.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

I think raccoons are in the "medium" category as it were, they're not terribly small nor terribly large.

Check it: I made use of the interest check I did and set a gameplay thread in its unused tabs, so now we have a board for continuing Interludes outside of the main game time!

Sideboard! A pun!

Now to be clear I'll prioritize main stuff first, always, so these side bits may not run at optimal capacity. In fact I'd say it's likely honestly, but if it's on point it should keep people from feeling like they have nothing to do at the least.

As always, anything that you don't want to share with the group, anything that could stretch or break the public board rules, and anything you want to vent about should be sent to me in PM.

Similarly if you want to play out a solo Interlude in secret for whatever reason (mine is because surprises are fun), we can do that via PM.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

Sideboard is linked in the Campaign Info tab. I'll be turning the Discussion tab on that board into our campaign log whenever I'm not busy thinking up new plot twists to sic on you people.

If you've got anything you want to cover in full RP fashion that we haven't gotten to yet, tell me and I'll set things up over there. I think I'm ready to move on whenever your current scenes are done with.

And hopefully I won't freak out or burn out from tracking so many scenes at once. So please don't swamp me with scenes, because some things really are peripheral and can be played out with a dice roll or two. :)


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Come on! I don't want to have Natalia panic prematurely.
Some panic attacks are worth waiting for.


Male Hooman Utter Fool/4

Er...what? Context...would help me. Please?


Female Bat : Star Elementalist

Sorry. You just asked Natalia where she would be the next evening. I assumed it would be at the party.
And since I want to keep all the nasty surprise from Natalia until it is too late (say going into the dinner itself), my answer was convoluted. Should you press, Natalia has no reason to be evasive, and she'll learn about what sort of party it might be.
Which spoils my fun a bit. Nothing like a massive shock to the character for fun.

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