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General Exalted Thread

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Let's also be real, it's impossible to discount the impact 3e's Quality over Quantity approach had on maintaining enthusiasm. We're what, ten years in, and we're *just* getting the campaign for the last of the five core splats. Meanwhile, by this point second exition had all the splats, several Item and Mechanics books, a concise atlas series for the numerous locales, mundane and spectacular, *and* an Alternate Setting Book. We don't even have the setting book for 3e yet! Now, most of those 2e books were dogshit, but the point remains, if you wanted Exalted content you were getting a regular stream of new Exalted content, compared to now where content is sporadic enough people unironically asking if the line is dead is a regular occurrence.
 
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What other game is occupying that role in game discussions, though? I don't think it's so much that Exalted declined as the entire market grew and the entire discourse splintered. There are just more games competing for attention and debate, and there's more design diversity to go with it. D&D is still D&D, reinforced by their prominence in streaming, everyone else is getting a smaller (relative) share of discussion.

edit: certainly by DTRPG metals and crowdfunding numbers exalted is still a wildly successful IP. they keep expanding its staff footprint.
 
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Also, everyone here is aware of this. Nothing gets a nerd community discourse going than everyone getting together a debating over ways to take the raging, stinking trashfire they all love and pretty up the cool bits to something that smells good, and in that regard hooooo 2e is some prime level garbage that just begs for ways to be improved.
 
Potato Anarchy said:
edit: certainly by DTRPG metals and crowdfunding numbers exalted is still a wildly successful IP. they keep expanding its staff footprint.
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Books like Lunars and Dragon-Blooded are "Mithral" sellers, which means 2501 - 5000 sales.

Not nothing, but I doubt that can measure up to what 2e sold. I saw random Manuals of Exalted Power in my local non-nerdy non-game-oriented bookstore, back in the day.

Obviously the game's not dying. It pays for its own production and them some. But I don't think this is the best we can hope for.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
That's definitely a big part of the inward turn. But of all the many hobbies and interests I follow, Exalted is the worst-hit by a fair margin.
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That... doesn't actually mean anything? TTRPGs are very likely the most niche and discord-focused hobby you have.

Like, my entire response to this is [citation needed]. Specifically I need citations both that this is happening and that it's somehow especially bad for Exalted, rather than just being the general decline of non-Discord discussion that happened to... really pretty much all TTRPGs that aren't named Dungeons and Dragons?

Sanctaphrax said:
Books like Lunars and Dragon-Blooded are "Mithral" sellers, which means 2501 - 5000 sales.

Not nothing, but I doubt that can measure up to what 2e sold. I saw random Manuals of Exalted Power in my local non-nerdy non-game-oriented bookstore, back in the day.

Obviously the game's not dying. It pays for its own production and them some. But I don't think this is the best we can hope for.
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You're missing the part where both raised ~$300k on Kickstarter on top of that.
 
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Not the most niche, but possibly the most discord-focused. And my other main RPG was abandoned by its publisher, so it can't really be compared.

I don't think I need to prove that it's happening, since as you just said it's happening all over the place. But proving that it's especially bad for Exalted is tricky, since I'm going by impressions and not by survey data. (Plus it's always harder to prove intensity than existence.)

Maybe it would help if I showed that it's not just my impression?

One of the biggest RPGnet Exalted threads of the last two years was asking what happened to all the Exalted discussion. Doing a quick search on some other popular games, I don't see similar concern and confusion there.

EDIT TO ACCOMMODATE EDIT: And yes, Kickstarter sales count too. But even with them, we're still in the same general range. The Lunars Kickstarter had 2379 backers; we're looking at much less than 10 000 copies either way. Do you think that Ex2 was similarly small?
 
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Potato Anarchy said:
What other game is occupying that role in game discussions, though? I don't think it's so much that Exalted declined as the entire market grew and the entire discourse splintered. There are just more games competing for attention and debate, and there's more design diversity to go with it. D&D is still D&D, reinforced by their prominence in streaming, everyone else is getting a smaller (relative) share of discussion.
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Yeah, this basically. There's a lot of new blood in the industry in recent years, stuff like Modiphus' 2d20, the KSBD author doing Lancer/Broken Worlds/ICON, Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark taking off and spawning reams of indie games using their system... I simply don't believe that Exalted is 'dying', I think it's just the TTRPG conversation has broadened, fragmented, and moved to discord, and Sanct is drawing false conclusions.
 
Again, I specifically said it's not dying.

It's just kinda slumping along.

But hey, let's say I'm wrong. Let's say there's absolutely nothing special about Exalted's situation, and it's just one of the higher-profile victims of an industry-wide turn towards fragmentation and insularity. The question I ask remains the same:

What, if anything, can we do about it?

I do think this is the best edition of Exalted. I don't think it should be the least popular, even if market forces are against it.
 
The pithy, simple, and probably most correct answer is better marketing. If OPP can't/won't keep its product visible through steady, regular release, than it needs to advertise the SHIT out of what it does have. Abaddon is regularly shilling Lancer/ICON/whatever he is currently working on and encoraging others to do the same, Apocalypse and its various offshots are always pushing and advertising all its splinters, and this isn't even getting into all the various, officially santioned Actual Plays for all sorts of systems. Any RPG that's not DnD lives and dies by word of mouth, and a lot of time the best word to start with is right from the mouth of the creator themselves.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
What, if anything, can we do about it?
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I don't think there's anything to be done about it, nor should there be. As in, sure there are things that could be done to advertise Exalted within the current TTRPG scene, but reclaiming the kind of spotlight it had in the 2e days would, I think, require basically rolling the TTRPG scene back to those days. And that would suck shit. Those days were bad. Things are better now, because of all that new blood in the scene.
 
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I think the bigger difference isn't anything Exalted specific but the market place in general. In the middle oughts I could go to any book store chain and have my choice of two Worlds of Darkness, several other storyteller RPGs, three dozen 3.x indie splat books, and maybe even a GURPs or two. But the last time I was in Barnes and Noble they only had D&D 5th edition and Pathfinder books, with one or two Starfinder books.

Now depending on who you ask things have been great for (some) indie developers who primarily sell digitally, but it ain't like I can go to the Waldenbooks at my local mall and pick up the latest Mage the Awakening splat like I could back in the day.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
EDIT TO ACCOMMODATE EDIT: And yes, Kickstarter sales count too. But even with them, we're still in the same general range. The Lunars Kickstarter had 2379 backers; we're looking at much less than 10 000 copies either way. Do you think that Ex2 was similarly small?
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Given that Exalted 3rd Edition's original kickstarter, leading directly on from 2e's hype and culture and having the advantage of being both the corebook and the Solar book, only had a bit over four thousand backers? Yeah, actually.
 
Leyleyfication said:
Given that Exalted 3rd Edition's original kickstarter, leading directly on from 2e's hype and culture and having the advantage of being both the corebook and the Solar book, only had a bit over four thousand backers? Yeah, actually.
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I think people just have a very skewed idea of what Big RPG numbers look like lol

The best way to make a million dollars is to start with ten million dollars and buy a TTRPG company, etc etc
 
Leyleyfication said:
Given that Exalted 3rd Edition's original kickstarter, leading directly on from 2e's hype and culture and having the advantage of being both the corebook and the Solar book, only had a bit over four thousand backers? Yeah, actually.
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Yeah, every piece of evidence I've seen so far is that Exalted third edition is doing pretty well for itself. 4368 backers for Exalted third edition kickstarter (which as you pointed out inherited all the hype from 2e as it went along, along with a huge amount of the fanbase being able to project this being their ideal evolution from last edition without being hampered by the actual rough edges that reality always imposes), and then 4086 backers for Exalted Essence. And you know what I keep coming across? People who'd rather play third edition than Essence. The plural of anecdote isn't always data, here, but I do think it's eventually worth giving some weight.

The idea that Exalted is withering is completely unsupported, at least until some counter-evidence is submitted that's more compelling than "I feel like I'm not hearing about the game as much". The reason for the massive glut of 2e books stopping (...and the entire rest of this business model stopping, on other lines) isn't that business was booming and the audience was swelling enormously because of it.

I think Exalted is a great game and a great setting and I'd like to continue to see it grow. And so far the evidence is that it's doing well enough for itself. It's niche, yeah, and probably a little more niche than it was... but that's because the pie has grown. There's more people in TTRPGs now than there was ten, fifteen years ago. Comparable absolute numbers in a larger pool are proportionately smaller. It's hard to be really sure, but I'd actually be surprised if the current 3e audience isn't larger than 2e's.
 
For all the ostensible disagreement, everyone in this discussion is saying that

a) the game's sales are roughly stable at the moment

and

b) discussion has largely retreated to more insular spaces, particularly Discord.

We could continue to play dueling anecdotes about the relative prominence of KS in the community and how popular the game was or wasn't a decade ago, but we've probably said all that can usefully be said on that topic already.

Like, I think this bit summarizes the situation pretty well. It all comes down to the vibes we've personally experienced.

VagueZ said:
And you know what I keep coming across? People who'd rather play third edition than Essence. The plural of anecdote isn't always data, here, but I do think it's eventually worth giving some weight.

The idea that Exalted is withering is completely unsupported, at least until some counter-evidence is submitted that's more compelling than "I feel like I'm not hearing about the game as much".
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So, focusing on something a bit more productive...

The_Reptile_ said:
The pithy, simple, and probably most correct answer is better marketing. If OPP can't/won't keep its product visible through steady, regular release, than it needs to advertise the SHIT out of what it does have. Abaddon is regularly shilling Lancer/ICON/whatever he is currently working on and encoraging others to do the same, Apocalypse and its various offshots are always pushing and advertising all its splinters, and this isn't even getting into all the various, officially santioned Actual Plays for all sorts of systems. Any RPG that's not DnD lives and dies by word of mouth, and a lot of time the best word to start with is right from the mouth of the creator themselves.
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Well, we've all got mouths. And most of us can speak words, though I'm sure the fandom has a few mutes.

Maybe it would behoove us all to fly the flag a bit more publicly. I'll put my money where my mouth is and do some crossposting. Bring some Exalted stuff from here or from Discord to RPGnet or Tumblr or Reddit or wherever.

Anyone have something they'd like to see discussed elsewhere?
 
I always hesitate recommending Exalted to people because it will always come with an asterisk. A fucking HUGE asterisk with an essay's worth of lines that boils down to "avoid like half of what this game has actually published because this game gets weird and creepy in places, not always in the fun way".

Imagine: you are an unstoppable champion of the sun, on the run from sentai dragon monks with magic martial arts that think you're a demon, able to not only shrug off ballista shots but cut through entire regiments of enemies in a single blow. It's awesome to beat down the door of the dark lord, cut through his undead legions alongside your werewolf soulmate who can turn into a T-Rex, the noble eldest son of an ancient line of heroes who have sworn a blood oath against this demonic foe, and a little girl annointed by the stars themselves to push back the darkness... And then the big bad turns out to have 7 diseased wangs because nobody's ever made a priest joke before haha laugh with me I'M PROTESTANT

Yes I realize that the team has changed, the Abyssals book is coming out, you can change stuff about the game if you need to, and that specific example is not a thing anymore(probably) but Exalted's lore as written has a lot of moments like that, where you're reading about something that SOUNDS really awesome and then suddenly you run headfirst into the kind of faux maturity that high schoolers think is deep.

"Then just don't talk about that stuff!"

If I don't bring that up, then they're eventually going to find it and freak out. Understandably for some of this shit.

I'm hoping that at some point I can narrow down what's in that asterisk to "just don't read anything before 3e, trust me". Which at minimum is going to require the Infernals and Abyssals books to come out.
 
I remember a common crack about WoD in both a disparaging and affectionate tones is that it was always a very terminally 90s setting. Well, I would then go on to say that Exalted until 3rd Edition was always a very terminally Early 2000's one.
 
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All this stuff about how well Exalted 3e sold and the number of backers proves that Exalted has a stable fanbase (and that is an achievement), but I can't ever see it growing like it did from 1e to 2e, which is what generally drives active discussion; new fans with new takes on things make things more interesting and bring in new ideas more than the same 20 or so people going on about stuff they've already discussed in like 2013. As for why it can't grow, I can guess at some things:
-Newcomers have a choice between two rulesets: the most mechanically crunchy thing possible with a terrifying 600 pages of rules to go through (and of those rules, a good chunk of them suck and need more pages of rules or homebrew to amend), or Exalted Essence, which is somewhat less complicated but does not convey the setting in an interesting way at all IMO. Its not the 2000s anymore, people are not gonna put up with jank when they can go with a plethora of other rule sets that run so much more smoothly.
-In an age where anime/manga are more popular with everyone than they've ever been, it was a strange choice to stop using an anime aesthetic and just go with an art style more common in third party D&D books. You show anyone some of the new art (the first thing anyone is gonna see of any rule set) and they're going to shrug and go, "What's so special about this?"
-Speaking of D&D, that thing has devoured the RPG market to the point where no one wants to play anything else and other RPG franchises have to make D&D ports of their games to stay in business.
 
In general, all the old White Wolf lines have been declining; not just Exalted, but Vampire et al too. It might just be that that particular breed of setting/mechanic mix is less popular nowadays. Relative to size of market, of course; I'm sure there are more absolute number of players.
 
I mean Vampire is probably shrinking because 1. They keep switching goddamn developers and 2. The writers can't help themselves from showing their ass at being a bunch of chuds.
 
There are, what, three different current Vampire lines? oWoD 5th, CoD 2e, 20th?

Though Exalted kinda has that, even if it's more with fan works than actual.
 
So for Abyssals, there are three extant Underworld-y that I remember:

Laughing Wounds, which I believe was about getting stronger as you get hurt. Very BDSM themed. I think it used whips and razor harnesses?

Hungry Ghost, which I think was about being spooky? I think it used tiger claws?

Ivory Pestle, which was about resonating with the earth in your bones and beating up ghosts. I think it used batons and staffs and was basically escrima.


Does anyone remember any other deathly martial arts that they're hoping for?
 
HalfTangible said:
"Then just don't talk about that stuff!"

If I don't bring that up, then they're eventually going to find it and freak out. Understandably for some of this shit.

I'm hoping that at some point I can narrow down what's in that asterisk to "just don't read anything before 3e, trust me". Which at minimum is going to require the Infernals and Abyssals books to come out.
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again, tho, not very unique. this is true of many different games published in bulk before 2011!
 
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