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I'm in a pretty good mood despite being at work tonight in part, I think, because it's actually quiet here for once instead of having lightning and thunder knocking out every house in several counties. One of the things I'm pumped about in regards to leaving this job besides, well, most everything, is the fact that I love rainstorms, but have come to loath them as apart of this job. There's nothing like having your workload increased exponentially by something you used to enjoy! But actually, I'm totally not here to bitch about work.
I'm here to talk about Exalted.
I'm here to talk about Exalted.
I know not everyone really knows anything about Exalted, and it kind of surprised me that people who had been roleplaying a long time hadn't. It was well produced, and every major splat for it recieved color-coded, hardback treatment, most books selling in major bookstores nationwide. (As opposed to more obscure games like Nobilis, Unknown Armies, and whatnot.) Anyhow, my local friends had been playing it for years at this point, and I occasionally still labor to explain it when I'm asked. I mean, it's an epic fantasy game inspired by asian and greek myth, anime, and superhero comics. It explicitly doesn't take inspiration from Lord of the Rings. And you basically play a reincarnated fantasy superhero powered by a nuclear battery in your soul. Exalted has it all. When you ask some people, it has too much.
Canonically speaking, it had heroin-urinating dinosaurs. The worlds champion dieties are a little tied up playing the celestial version of Super Smash Bros. or some shit. The world is a crumbling, ruined remain of what it was, debauced elemental supermen who've created a world-spanning Empire are the weakest of the character types, and the world's secret masters live in Heaven and have a secret flaw being that they consistantly make bad decisions.
I'm not sure if that's a merit or a flaw of the setting. I think it's pretty interesting though. I am gonna about my plans for the game, in a rough sense, but they mostly consist of starting the game with a group of Solar Exalts* as they're chosen, let them interact with the empire that's hunting them down, and have them enmeshed in a problem they won't want to ignore. By big plan would be to start with that and, like seperate chapters in a book, have them make characters of different champion, gradually painting a larger picture of the world. How well that goes really depends on how much time I have to run, though, which is a function of how long I'm away. I could have all the time I need, or I might only run the one game, so I'd want to make it self-contained for a while.
What I like about Exalted is that it isn't the only game to field larger then life characters in a fantasy setting, but it does feel like a totally new game. It pulls from radically different mythologies and modern popculture, you start of as an important player either by virtue of the setting or by your raw power. The character powers are highly specific and combat plays, well, sorta similar to a CCG where you've got a list of Charms (like Feats) that you buy like WoD spells, with experience, and you attack, dodge, and use Charms to modify your actions (or to serve as your actions, which are modified by your abilities). I suppose the biggest flaw is that the system is almost straight old World of Darkness with a couple of heroic differentials (1's don't remove successes, 10's always re-roll, specialties add straight dice), some of which we see getting ported into the newer WoD ruleset. It's a solid system, but it only supports a certain level of granularity. I never saw an issue with it, but Exalted really does have you rolling a huge number of dice at points.
For some people, the setting and the system just don't match. They love the premise, the characters, the whole setting maybe, but the Charm system and the loads of dice have them pulling their hair out. Honestly, I love both, but if I had to say something that did occasionally get on my nerves, it'd be that Creation is really, really big. There's a lot of stuff in it. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of it all. It works to your advantage sometimes. It's so monsterously huge that it's not hard to drop a landmass the size of Texas inbetween to cities and have it hit nothing marked on the map. There's a lot of space to play and never hit anything canon at all.
* Canonically, the fewest in number, but also the most individually potent exalt in creation, these are the champions of the sun god, Sol Invictus. They have a character type for each phase of the sun, Dawn, Zenith, Twilight, Night, and Eclipse, and their general schtick is excellence. Plus, they're sun-flavored.
Canonically speaking, it had heroin-urinating dinosaurs. The worlds champion dieties are a little tied up playing the celestial version of Super Smash Bros. or some shit. The world is a crumbling, ruined remain of what it was, debauced elemental supermen who've created a world-spanning Empire are the weakest of the character types, and the world's secret masters live in Heaven and have a secret flaw being that they consistantly make bad decisions.
I'm not sure if that's a merit or a flaw of the setting. I think it's pretty interesting though. I am gonna about my plans for the game, in a rough sense, but they mostly consist of starting the game with a group of Solar Exalts* as they're chosen, let them interact with the empire that's hunting them down, and have them enmeshed in a problem they won't want to ignore. By big plan would be to start with that and, like seperate chapters in a book, have them make characters of different champion, gradually painting a larger picture of the world. How well that goes really depends on how much time I have to run, though, which is a function of how long I'm away. I could have all the time I need, or I might only run the one game, so I'd want to make it self-contained for a while.
What I like about Exalted is that it isn't the only game to field larger then life characters in a fantasy setting, but it does feel like a totally new game. It pulls from radically different mythologies and modern popculture, you start of as an important player either by virtue of the setting or by your raw power. The character powers are highly specific and combat plays, well, sorta similar to a CCG where you've got a list of Charms (like Feats) that you buy like WoD spells, with experience, and you attack, dodge, and use Charms to modify your actions (or to serve as your actions, which are modified by your abilities). I suppose the biggest flaw is that the system is almost straight old World of Darkness with a couple of heroic differentials (1's don't remove successes, 10's always re-roll, specialties add straight dice), some of which we see getting ported into the newer WoD ruleset. It's a solid system, but it only supports a certain level of granularity. I never saw an issue with it, but Exalted really does have you rolling a huge number of dice at points.
For some people, the setting and the system just don't match. They love the premise, the characters, the whole setting maybe, but the Charm system and the loads of dice have them pulling their hair out. Honestly, I love both, but if I had to say something that did occasionally get on my nerves, it'd be that Creation is really, really big. There's a lot of stuff in it. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of it all. It works to your advantage sometimes. It's so monsterously huge that it's not hard to drop a landmass the size of Texas inbetween to cities and have it hit nothing marked on the map. There's a lot of space to play and never hit anything canon at all.
* Canonically, the fewest in number, but also the most individually potent exalt in creation, these are the champions of the sun god, Sol Invictus. They have a character type for each phase of the sun, Dawn, Zenith, Twilight, Night, and Eclipse, and their general schtick is excellence. Plus, they're sun-flavored.
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I've been talking a lot lately about using a similar rules set someone on RPG.net came up with (Exalted Lite) - my only problem with the system is that it's a build your own charm sort of thing. I just want to play the damn game, but I think it'd be over my head if I tried to run it.
More coherent thoughts when I wake up further :)