General Exalted Thread

[drakensis]

Chatted with a friend about how DBs might work better as the opening view of the Exalted, in a hypothetical fourth edition

The corebook covers the (Terrestrial) Exalted, the Princes of the Earth, the Dragon-Blooded. The dynastic champions of an admittedly corrupt empire that was once Creation-spanning but is now the Blessed Isle plus some satrapies, surrounded by the rising tide of barbarian nations, besieged by the shape-shifting silver anathema, tormented by the golden princes of the damned, by the raksha hordes, the undead... Do you take the frontlines to fight to preserve civilization, do you hunt the evils in the shadows, do you try to purge the corruption in the ranks of your homeland's rulers?

Then expand out with Celestial Exalted. the Lunars who have their very different narrative about the kingdoms and empires they're building, the war on two fronts against the usurping dragonbloods and the hordes of the wyld. the Sidereals who are pursuing the greater good but they're so dreadfully few, and they have to balance the needs of heaven against those of creation - they see how they got here, they see the myriad paths of the future but they cannot quite ever grasp how things went so wrong

And finally, the greatest of the Exalted. The mighty chosen of the Sun, now for the most part twice-chosen: those pledged to the original and rightful rulers of Creation (overthrow the corrupt celestial bureaucracy and restore the dead or imprisoned Primordials), possibly now dealing with second thoughts and rebelling against their chains. Of course, you might be one of the few exceptions not in the hands of the Yozi or the Malfeans, the few original Solar shards running free and dealing with the memories of hundreds of past lives where you were hunted down by the Wyld Hunt. The few, the proud, the (very possibly) last hope of finding a path that doesn't leave Creation totally screwed.

 

[strange_person]

I had a similar proposal back here: General Exalted Thread but with a mortal-and-spirit focused corebook.

 

[HalfTangible]

Chatted with a friend about how DBs might work better as the opening view of the Exalted, in a hypothetical fourth edition

The corebook covers the (Terrestrial) Exalted, the Princes of the Earth, the Dragon-Blooded. The dynastic champions of an admittedly corrupt empire that was once Creation-spanning but is now the Blessed Isle plus some satrapies, surrounded by the rising tide of barbarian nations, besieged by the shape-shifting silver anathema, tormented by the golden princes of the damned, by the raksha hordes, the undead... Do you take the frontlines to fight to preserve civilization, do you hunt the evils in the shadows, do you try to purge the corruption in the ranks of your homeland's rulers?

Then expand out with Celestial Exalted. the Lunars who have their very different narrative about the kingdoms and empires they're building, the war on two fronts against the usurping dragonbloods and the hordes of the wyld. the Sidereals who are pursuing the greater good but they're so dreadfully few, and they have to balance the needs of heaven against those of creation - they see how they got here, they see the myriad paths of the future but they cannot quite ever grasp how things went so wrong

And finally, the greatest of the Exalted. The mighty chosen of the Sun, now for the most part twice-chosen: those pledged to the original and rightful rulers of Creation (overthrow the corrupt celestial bureaucracy and restore the dead or imprisoned Primordials), possibly now dealing with second thoughts and rebelling against their chains. Of course, you might be one of the few exceptions not in the hands of the Yozi or the Malfeans, the few original Solar shards running free and dealing with the memories of hundreds of past lives where you were hunted down by the Wyld Hunt. The few, the proud, the (very possibly) last hope of finding a path that doesn't leave Creation totally screwed.

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I had a similar proposal back here: General Exalted Thread but with a mortal-and-spirit focused corebook.

Click to shrink...

There's a few different reasons why the Solars go first. Some of those reasons being:

1) One of the things that sets Exalted apart is its very high power. Even Deebs, supposedly the 'weak but numerous' Exalted, have skills and abilities at chargen that characters in other games wouldn't have until late into a campaign. And Solars are the peak of that power; everywhere in the core book and even in other books you see it said that the Solars are the greatest of all the Exalted at X, Y, Z, etc. They are, ultimately, the entire concept of Exalted writ large: the world is a crapsack, but you have immense power and ability to change it, maybe for the better or maybe for the worse. Putting them forward as the setting's protagonist splat is important.

2) Solars can be homebrewed into the Abyssals and Infernals without too much difficulty until their main splatbook comes out (and those splatbooks will be better for it since the Solars can act as a first draft). You effectively start the game with 3 different Exalt types.

3) The corebook gets to/needs to take a bird's eye view of Creation, looking at Exalted's setting as a whole rather than focusing on a specific piece of it. The other Exalt types can't really do this (except maybe Lunars) but Solars aren't bound to any particular piece of Creation since one of their big weaknesses is that they have no infrastructure to draw on. If you make it the deebs instead you change the framing of the game to focus more on Deebs in the threshold, rather than either Creation as a whole or the Realm in particular, since the core needs to go over as much of Creation as possible. Speaking of which...

4) The splatbooks don't just detail the splats, but also the area most strongly associated with them. Charting Fate's Course spends a lot of time detailing Heaven and characters in it, for example. WFHW focuses in deep on the various Deeb societies one could make their Deebs come from. If you wanted to do that with Solars, you'd need to focus in on things like the Cult of the Illuminated, which again changes the splat's framing.

5) I've said this previously and hinted at it in 3, but the Solars require the least amount of setting knowledge in order to play properly. You don't need to know, for example, that Mnemon hates Ragara or why. You don't need to know why Sidereals can move through Yu-Shan's gates freely. You don't need to know what a Deathlord is or why the elemental-powered ninjas are hunting you. There's no political infrastructure for the Solars, nopt even the loose 'kinda-sorta' alliance that the Silver Pact gets.

6) Putting the Infernals, Abyssals, and Solars all in the same splatbook as drakensis suggests means you have one book dedicated to THREE ENTIRE SPLATS, which imo is a recipe for all three of them being bad and splitting the focus immensely. It also frames the three splats as either one team (which is not the case) or as vying with each other rather than the rest of Creation. Yeah, if you're going to combine multiple splats, it'd be those three, but keeping them as separate despite their shared history is beneficial for all three splats imo.

7) The inciting incident of the coming third age is the return of the Solar Exalted. You can debate me on this if you like, you can say it's the disappearance of the Empress, the rise of the deathlords, etc etc, but the way the game is framed, the most recent event of significance that will upset the status quo is the return of the Solars. The Realm has withdrawn its legions from the threshold (where Solars are most likely to find new powerbases) and is about to go to war with itself. The Sidereals have noticed the uptick in Solars exalting and the Bronze faction is panicking over it while the Gold seeks to capitalize.

The Solars are the apex of power in Exalted and every splat knows it. Their presence is going to affect the decisions of every single faction in the setting, and it's only going to get worse with time as the Solars grow in power and influence.

If we're going to pull the Solars out of the corebook I'd rather we just have a cheap corebook that goes over the basic game rules and give each splat its own book.

 

[strange_person]

If we're going to pull the Solars out of the corebook I'd rather we just have a cheap corebook that goes over the basic game rules and give each splat its own book.

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That's my thinking. Core rules need to provide a rigorous foundation which won't crumble when all the wacky superpowers start carving exceptions into it, frameworks for action outside of combat, all sorts of stuff. Crowding the page count and editorial bandwidth by including a full exalted charmset at the same time makes that harder.

 

[Cosar]

I think mashing multiple current splats into one release wouldn't work, at least for a game similar in basic principles to 3e. But I think the setting knowledge and political issue isn't nearly as lopsided as you suggest here. Since Solars generally do need to know all of that sort of thing, it's just that any given group of Solars doesn't really need to know the same baseline. Which can be a problem, since it means the corebooks description is often pretty perfunctory and very, very high level since it has to do everything at once. A DB centered core would be different, but it would be able to have a tighter focus which isn't always a negative as something to introduce people to a setting. Limitations can be helpful. Hell, one of the trickier parts of introducing people with Solars from my experience is that they are often so open in terms of what they can do and where they can come from that people who are truly new can somewhat bounce off things.

 

[HalfTangible]

But I think the setting knowledge and political issue isn't nearly as lopsided as you suggest here. Since Solars generally do need to know all of that sort of thing, it's just that any given group of Solars doesn't really need to know the same baseline.

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No they don't =/ Like straight up, they don't. Certainly not to the extent of the other splats. All you really need to know to make a Solar PC is that the world you live in is highly animist, you are empowered by the sun, that people believe you are a type of demon, and that you possess immense power (also you might have a moon-themed waifu with a lion's mouth).

Sure, the ST needs to know more about the setting, but a new player? What else do they really need to know that the other splats don't and to a greater extent? If you go a Deeb you suddenly need to know, at the absolute least, the details of how your own house operates and who your major enemies are. ON TOP of being in an animist world with divinely empowered god champions and the Wyld hunt etc etc

That's leaving aside the fact that the Deeb's view of how the world works and their role in it is... well... I don't want to call it a lie or outright false, but it's definitely skewed.

And like I said last time I don't think it's THE reason to go Solar (biggest reason is Supernal abilities imo) but I do think it is A reason.

Limitations can be helpful.

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They can also be harmful and in this case I feel it would be. A Deeb centric core would make Exalted as a game revolve around the Realm and the Blessed Isle in particular. The Realm's a fine place to run your game (hell I'm putting a RCW game together right now) but I don't think it's the greatest thing in Creation.

 

[Cosar]

No they don't =/ Like straight up, they don't. Certainly not to the extent of the other splats. All you really need to know to make a Solar PC is that the world you live in is highly animist, you are empowered by the sun, that people believe you are a type of demon, and that you possess immense power (also you might have a moon-themed waifu with a lion's mouth).

Sure, the ST needs to know more about the setting, but a new player? What else do they really need to know that the other splats don't and to a greater extent? If you go a Deeb you suddenly need to know, at the absolute least, the details of how your own house operates and who your major enemies are. ON TOP of being in an animist world with divinely empowered god champions and the Wyld hunt etc etc

That's leaving aside the fact that the Deeb's view of how the world works and their role in it is... well... I don't want to call it a lie or outright false, but it's definitely skewed.

And like I said last time I don't think it's THE reason to go Solar (biggest reason is Supernal abilities imo) but I do think it is A reason.



They can also be harmful and in this case I feel it would be. A Deeb centric core would make Exalted as a game revolve around the Realm and the Blessed Isle in particular. The Realm's a fine place to run your game (hell I'm putting a RCW game together right now) but I don't think it's the greatest thing in Creation.
.

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Well, first off, if you're going to go over what people need to know in your opinion it's probably best to get those details right: the Realm and specifically the Immaculate faith think you are some sort of demon, which does mean you have a very powerful organization set against you. But people in general have a lot of very different opinions about Solars, especially in places currently in conflict with the Realm. Also people get tripped up by the whole 'empowered by the sun' thing a lot, since the link between a Solar's powers and many traditional 'sun empowered being' stuff is limited(not a lot of actual fire stuff, for one) and the relationship with the Sun is also different due to how exhalations work so I find I actually do need to do some significant explanations there to get people to understand things.

But, more importantly, with that you can not make a character who is in the world. Like, if I'm helping a new player who wants to start with a Night caste gang lord that tells them nothing of serious value in making that character. Same for basically any background except literal amnesiac. Now, I can tell them a bunch of stuff about Nexus or Gem or wherever the game is actually set to help, but that involves actually giving them information and details about the setting that they can play off of to form the character. It requires context. And often it means largely bespoke and custom contexts for each solar because with the core book alone there just isn't a lot of information about any one area. Which works great when you know what's going on and can also fall back on older material to at least fill in gaps, but I've had people flounder when trying to do it as an introduction (and it certainly has taken time for me to get comfortable with the setting). But I've also had success when essentially forcing a stronger context either through a much more focused campaign(as set up in a session 0) or just by using something that is inherently more focused.

And it's funny, but the major thing about the DB viewpoint that's skewed is exact same thing that you're saying that the Solars need to know in order to start out. So...I don't think it's a complicated idea to get across? You'd need to also touch on the reincarnation thing being flawed, but I haven't had trouble introducing people to the idea that an inuniverse religion is flawed in order to prop up an existing power structure. They all seem to have understood that pretty well.

As for shifting the focus, yes. This absolutely would be a shift. Though I don't know if it necessarily leads directly to a Blessed Isle game: focusing on DB power in the threshold seems reasonable enough. It would make the Realm Civil war more prominent in discussions. But I don't necessarily think that is a negative tradeoff.

Edit:
This is largely just a thought experiment: by this point Exalted is defined partially by starting with Solars, to the degree that some of the items you brought up are basically just a reaction to some of the downsides for Solar or Exalted charm design. Like not being able to get too deep into charm trees partially leading to Supernal. And it's not like that's some core, long standing part of the design either: it's new to 3e Solars. You could easily have made some sort of justification that DB's get something similar tied to aspect if it was core to an intro experience, though given the design history you would probably change it to some degree since the idea does also fit well with Solar themes so them also having it is good.

 

[drakensis]

There's a few different reasons why the Solars go first. Some of those reasons being:

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Thank you for the detailed response.

1) One of the things that sets Exalted apart is its very high power. Even Deebs, supposedly the 'weak but numerous' Exalted, have skills and abilities at chargen that characters in other games wouldn't have until late into a campaign. And Solars are the peak of that power; everywhere in the core book and even in other books you see it said that the Solars are the greatest of all the Exalted at X, Y, Z, etc. They are, ultimately, the entire concept of Exalted writ large: the world is a crapsack, but you have immense power and ability to change it, maybe for the better or maybe for the worse. Putting them forward as the setting's protagonist splat is important.

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The Dragonblooded in groups, have great power to affect the setting, which works for a starting party (as opposed to a starting player). Also, as rules tend to get better leading to some degree of power creep, having more potent Exalted later would retain this.

2) Solars can be homebrewed into the Abyssals and Infernals without too much difficulty until their main splatbook comes out (and those splatbooks will be better for it since the Solars can act as a first draft). You effectively start the game with 3 different Exalt types.

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This is true (at least in 1e and 2e), but Abyssals and Infernals need a considerable amount of setting specific material which generally isn't in the corebooks anyway.

3) The corebook gets to/needs to take a bird's eye view of Creation, looking at Exalted's setting as a whole rather than focusing on a specific piece of it. The other Exalt types can't really do this (except maybe Lunars) but Solars aren't bound to any particular piece of Creation since one of their big weaknesses is that they have no infrastructure to draw on. If you make it the deebs instead you change the framing of the game to focus more on Deebs in the threshold, rather than either Creation as a whole or the Realm in particular, since the core needs to go over as much of Creation as possible. Speaking of which...

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Correct - I'd have the setting part cover the blessed isle and then on a roughly equal part the regions of the threshold where DB are most likely to be found - the coasts of the North and South, the Scavenger Lands, maybe one notable western realm.

4) The splatbooks don't just detail the splats, but also the area most strongly associated with them. Charting Fate's Course spends a lot of time detailing Heaven and characters in it, for example. WFHW focuses in deep on the various Deeb societies one could make their Deebs come from. If you wanted to do that with Solars, you'd need to focus in on things like the Cult of the Illuminated, which again changes the splat's framing.

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The solaroid book would cover setting specific material for the death knights and green sun princes, with Solars fitting into regions outlined in the previous books that need little expansion - the cult of illuminated perhaps, but Solars would be significantly outnumbered by Abyssals and Infernals in this conception - Solars and rogue Infernal/Abyssals being about equal in number.

5) I've said this previously and hinted at it in 3, but the Solars require the least amount of setting knowledge in order to play properly. You don't need to know, for example, that Mnemon hates Ragara or why. You don't need to know why Sidereals can move through Yu-Shan's gates freely. You don't need to know what a Deathlord is or why the elemental-powered ninjas are hunting you. There's no political infrastructure for the Solars, nopt even the loose 'kinda-sorta' alliance that the Silver Pact gets.

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I believe @Cosar has made an excellent arguement for why this isn't necessarily a flaw in having DBs go first.

6) Putting the Infernals, Abyssals, and Solars all in the same splatbook as drakensis suggests means you have one book dedicated to THREE ENTIRE SPLATS, which imo is a recipe for all three of them being bad and splitting the focus immensely. It also frames the three splats as either one team (which is not the case) or as vying with each other rather than the rest of Creation. Yeah, if you're going to combine multiple splats, it'd be those three, but keeping them as separate despite their shared history is beneficial for all three splats imo.

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That's a valid point but there is also a lot of overlap.

7) The inciting incident of the coming third age is the return of the Solar Exalted. You can debate me on this if you like, you can say it's the disappearance of the Empress, the rise of the deathlords, etc etc, but the way the game is framed, the most recent event of significance that will upset the status quo is the return of the Solars. The Realm has withdrawn its legions from the threshold (where Solars are most likely to find new powerbases) and is about to go to war with itself. The Sidereals have noticed the uptick in Solars exalting and the Bronze faction is panicking over it while the Gold seeks to capitalize.

The Solars are the apex of power in Exalted and every splat knows it. Their presence is going to affect the decisions of every single faction in the setting, and it's only going to get worse with time as the Solars grow in power and influence.

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As the current editions have gone, yes. However, I'd look at this as a build up in the way Scion does.

The DB book can outline the status quo - Scarlet Empress on the throne, a corrupt but basically functional Realm that is the single greatest power in Creation. Then the Celestials book(s) move things forward with the Scarlet Empress missing: a great opportunity for the Lunars (mostly) and a great crisis for the Sidereals (mostly). Finally, the Solaroids book brings in early actions of the Infernals and Abyssals as they appear in Creation, overstretching the Wyld Hunt and giving the Solars their chance to survive long enough to get powerful for the first time in centuries.

If we're going to pull the Solars out of the corebook I'd rather we just have a cheap corebook that goes over the basic game rules and give each splat its own book.

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That is certainly another way of doing it, although I doubt any book would be cheap given the way Exalted rules are going.

 

[Sapphite]

That's my thinking. Core rules need to provide a rigorous foundation which won't crumble when all the wacky superpowers start carving exceptions into it, frameworks for action outside of combat, all sorts of stuff. Crowding the page count and editorial bandwidth by including a full exalted charmset at the same time makes that harder.

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The Game is called Exalted, and at its most fundamental level is meant to have you play as one of the Exalted. If the core rule set doesn't give you the ability to do that then it's failed at that fundamental level.

 

[Kaiya]

The Game is called Exalted, and at its most fundamental level is meant to have you play as one of the Exalted. If the core rule set doesn't give you the ability to do that then it's failed at that fundamental level.

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this, yeah. Dropping the Exalted from the corebook would be a pretty ridiculous self-own for anyone involved with such a project to make. The pitch is the Exalted, not the edgespace of mortal play. If you sell me Vampire: Requiem and it's just the World of Darkness corebook, I'm gonna be pissed lol.

 

[HalfTangible]

The Game is called Exalted, and at its most fundamental level is meant to have you play as one of the Exalted. If the core rule set doesn't give you the ability to do that then it's failed at that fundamental level.

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this, yeah. Dropping the Exalted from the corebook would be a pretty ridiculous self-own for anyone involved with such a project to make. The pitch is the Exalted, not the edgespace of mortal play. If you sell me Vampire: Requiem and it's just the World of Darkness corebook, I'm gonna be pissed lol.

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This is the problem with separating out the splats from the corebook, yeah, and it's why I didn't agree with making it about mortals and spirits.

I think separating out the splats can still work. Maybe. D&D does something similar with the PHB and DMG; one book is player focused, the other GM focused. Do something similar with the Solar and Core books.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

Also, historically, Solars have been both by far the most popular splat and unambiguously the center of the game's story.

Not sure to what extent that's still true, but previous editions were absolutely correct to lead with them.

With the game now heavily focused on digital distribution, it might be realistic to give each major splat its own "corebook". There'd be a few chapters of basic rules, and you could get each splat with or without those chapters. The setting chapters for each splat would then be intended to introduce Creation from the (biased) perspective of the splat, rather than to introduce the splat to players already familiar with the setting. Which could be interesting, or just dumb; I'd have to see it to know. I'm not sure whether the bestiary in each "corebook" would want to be the same, or different.

Would still be hard on the layout and index folks, but it's no longer the complete nonstarter that it was when paper was king.

 

[Blaque]

D&D gets away with forcing you to buy multiple books mostly because it's D&D. The logistics involved with two books is not quite double, but it still is a hellscape. Especially for ag ame that you can't play the thing on the tin out of the gate.

OPP did this so far with Trinity Continuum and Scion 2e as well. And I think they showcase the issue really with Exalted putt to that structure. Trinity Continuum Core works because on its own, the core rulebook is a game in itself. Talents get full write-ups, are used in any Era, and even if you use nothing else, you can play game out the gate. Scion: Origin, on the other hand, I feel actively made the line with bad organization kind of worse, has a lot of cruft to prepare things, and ther's not much a game there. It's prelude. And I am on record about saying that I think Exalted has over the time put too much emphasis on what ultimately is two or three sessions for most groups and should be non-diagetic NPC stuff for the rest.

I think Exalted has for years suffered from an idea that at a point, mortals didn't matter save fodder. I think Essence and how it treats exceptional individuals as things that can participate in Exalted games wiht Exalts, while having NPCs who also can be a threat to Exalts, while fluffwise they're notable to do so, is good. I don't think the line needs much time spent on what amounts to purposefully underpowered fake PC rules that mostly serve to justify Exalt numbers being kind of unwieldy, and create perceptions of irrelevancy for them.

So yeah, Exalted with Exalted in its corebook...isn't a game. And I don't think that's really a good recipe for a line. And I do think Solar Exalted are honestly the best to put in the corebook to this day. Their themes easily translate with a multitude of pop culture and mythological characters. They have an aesthetic that doens't override that either. They as a wildcard splat with few overarching institutions let a book talk about the world in broad strokes. Their wide access to martial arts and sorcery (as well as Evocations in 3e) means that the corebook splat can use most of the things that the line will have, which means that future books play into the splat the corebook is supporting. While it takes tweaks, Solars can use every artifact, martial art, or spell save the Void Circle ones published. This means sourceooks feed into Solar stuff too.

This being said, I think two things probably need to be done. First, the Solar Charmset would need to just be written in a more lean sense. I do like Exalted's maximalist approach, but as et that looked more like Lunars or Sidereals would have done wonders. And just letting more be in a Companion.

Basically, the issue to me is not that the 3e book is Solars and al ot of stuff. It's that Solars and that other stuff is too much stuff for one book in the voluem given. A setting chapter with like, half the locations and more abbreviated stuff on the Realm, for example, and less Solar Charms in the core, and that being in the Coampnion, I think woudl hae worked better. Basically the format that OPP seems to be using nowadays of more concise coreobok and the Companion to fill that in as a PG right after instead of an extra book five years later, would have been better.

And if we have enough room, I think the splat to add next to Solars mostly would be Exigents. It lets there be a good basis of "how to build Charms" in the core book, and also honestly has something flexible that can be applied to other games and shares teh Solar element of broad access to things in other books to work with.

 

[Lioness]

The big question for me is what are 4th edition Solars going to look like? I think there's major differences between their portrayals across the three editions thus far and the advantage of taking them out of the corebook means you'll be able to flavour them deliberately rather than them being shaped by the implications of later books.

 

[strange_person]

The Game is called Exalted,

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Most D&D players aren't playing as a dragon or a dungeon at any given time. it's named after the biggest problems you're expected to be facing.

I think Exalted has for years suffered from an idea that at a point, mortals didn't matter save fodder.

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I think the way to address that is with a corebook focused on mortals and mortal-accessible challenges - including, to be clear, a few terrestrial martial arts styles, and baseline mechanics for the sorts of supernatural benefits which are common to most exalts and spirits, that heroic types have various ways to pick up piecemeal.
Lay the groundwork for an animistic fantasy world where the political context is more nuanced than "orcs over there, go stab 'em" and the economics aren't trivially revealed as farce, but don't get too caught up in specific continental empires and deep history just yet. Towns, villages, food, spirits, violence, diplomacy - these are present in every era, in practically every place worth telling stories about. Grander ambitions take them as building blocks. If critical pieces are missing from the fundamental structure of how players interact with those, piling more superpowers on top won't cure the resulting rot. Game Structures – Part 9: Archaic Game Structures

 

[Gazetteer]

Most D&D players aren't playing as a dragon or a dungeon at any given time. it's named after the biggest problems you're expected to be facing.

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I think they'd find it a bit strange if the core rules were exclusively concerned with playing a pre-level 1 NPC backstory character, and then all the core classes and how to make a character have one were explained in a subsequent book, however. Like, I'm not sure they'd love that.

 

[Kadmus]

The core conceit of Exalted is that you play as one of the Exalted; mortals have always been a weird little add-on at best. If you revamped the line to be mortals-first you'd, uh, probably lose almost all your players, and you'd also probably have to revamp all the themes of the gameline, too.

It's like suggesting that D&D's next edition only have various classes of clothmakers in the core book and no combat rules.

 

[Lioness]

I'm also not sure about a mortals corebook but the appendix section of Across the Eight Directions is something that's been missing from the corebook in literally every edition. Ex3 comes the closest with the "Through Mortal Eyes" sidebar on page 62 but there's often a disconnect between player characters and normal people that's a feature for Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals but potentially distracting for other Exalt types.

 

[Imrix]

3) The corebook gets to/needs to take a bird's eye view of Creation, looking at Exalted's setting as a whole rather than focusing on a specific piece of it. The other Exalt types can't really do this (except maybe Lunars) but Solars aren't bound to any particular piece of Creation since one of their big weaknesses is that they have no infrastructure to draw on. If you make it the deebs instead you change the framing of the game to focus more on Deebs in the threshold, rather than either Creation as a whole or the Realm in particular, since the core needs to go over as much of Creation as possible. Speaking of which...

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They can also be harmful and in this case I feel it would be. A Deeb centric core would make Exalted as a game revolve around the Realm and the Blessed Isle in particular.

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I think kind of a knock-on consequence of this is also that like...

The corebook covers the (Terrestrial) Exalted, the Princes of the Earth, the Dragon-Blooded. The dynastic champions of an admittedly corrupt empire that was once Creation-spanning but is now the Blessed Isle plus some satrapies, surrounded by the rising tide of barbarian nations, besieged by the shape-shifting silver anathema, tormented by the golden princes of the damned, by the raksha hordes, the undead... Do you take the frontlines to fight to preserve civilization, do you hunt the evils in the shadows, do you try to purge the corruption in the ranks of your homeland's rulers?

Then expand out with Celestial Exalted. the Lunars who have their very different narrative about the kingdoms and empires they're building, the war on two fronts against the usurping dragonbloods and the hordes of the wyld.

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I don't think the game would benefit from framing the Realm like this? The Realm is not an 'admittedly corrupt empire... surrounded by the rising tide of barbarian nations', the game is, to its credit, far more interested in the Realm as simply an empire, the evils inherent to the project of Empire and the allures that encourage people, inside and out, to buy into it nevertheless. If you publish DB's first in this proposed model, you kind of frame the Realm as a hero - flawed, sure, but nevertheless fighting to 'preserve civilisation', when the line has taken some pains to stress the political weight of words like 'barbarian' and 'civilised' in a way that tells audiences a lot of good things not just about in-universe perspectives, but also the perspectives of the authors.

Giving the Lunar perspective later would inevitably come across as either pulling the rug out from under the 'heroes' or creating sympathy for the 'villains', and I think the game benefits a lot from avoiding that by publishing the Realm and the Dragonblooded later, when we've already had a more impartial, birds'-eye view of the setting from which to understand the position of rapacious dominance the Realm occupies, after which we can explore their perspective on why they deserve it.

 

[mothematics]

The big question for me is what are 4th edition Solars going to look like? I think there's major differences between their portrayals across the three editions thus far and the advantage of taking them out of the corebook means you'll be able to flavour them deliberately rather than them being shaped by the implications of later books.

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This is assuming a 4e is ever going to happen. I wouldn't take that as a given.

 

[The_Reptile_]

So the thing about Solars being by far the most popular splat is it kinda feels like a chicken or the egg scenario: Are solars in the corebook because they're the coolest, most popular character type, or are they the most popular character type because they're in the corebook. Ultimately for me it doesn't matter cause I think Solars should be the corebook splat regardless, but falling back on their widespread popularity as justification feels a bit circuitous to me.

 

[HalfTangible]

Most D&D players aren't playing as a dragon or a dungeon at any given time. it's named after the biggest problems you're expected to be facing.

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No one was arguing that the title of a game must describe what you are going to be playing, they're saying that this is what Exalted's title is doing. And it is pretty clear-cut that that's what it's doing.

D&D's title is a promise of adventure and fantasy. It points to what you'll be doing: delving dungeons and (eventually) fighting dragons for their treasure.

Exalted's title is more directly descriptive, kind of like the WoD gamelines (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse, etc). This is a game about the Exalted. Its core conceit is that you play the Exalted. The game is not built on the assumption that Session 0 or session 1 is going to be about your time as a mortal; it's generally assumed you've been Exalted for some time (I believe it's less than a year for standard chargen other than deebs?)

Now, one COULD make a game based in Creation about playing mortals, maybe take inspiration from the Hunter gamelines. (it's a common house rule as I recall that mortal martial artists have 10m personal so they can use MA charms) But that's not what the game is actually about.

I think they'd find it a bit strange if the core rules were exclusively concerned with playing a pre-level 1 NPC backstory character, and then all the core classes and how to make a character have one were explained in a subsequent book, however. Like, I'm not sure they'd love that.

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The core conceit of Exalted is that you play as one of the Exalted; mortals have always been a weird little add-on at best. If you revamped the line to be mortals-first you'd, uh, probably lose almost all your players, and you'd also probably have to revamp all the themes of the gameline, too.

It's like suggesting that D&D's next edition only have various classes of clothmakers in the core book and no combat rules.

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I'm also not sure about a mortals corebook but the appendix section of Across the Eight Directions is something that's been missing from the corebook in literally every edition. Ex3 comes the closest with the "Through Mortal Eyes" sidebar on page 62 but there's often a disconnect between player characters and normal people that's a feature for Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals but potentially distracting for other Exalt types.

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Agreed, agreed, and... I actually have not read that appendix.

Exalted's core conceit, one of the big things that sets it apart from D&D and other games like it (regardless of your chosen splat), is that you start the game as ridiculously powerful. Even the weakest Exalts can tango with the gods themselves in their fields of expertise. The game's themes and overall structure is all about how you use the power you've been given. Each splatbook is its own flavor of heroic archetype. You are there to have the power and decide what you'll do with it. Mortals get neither, in part because if they *do*, they'll either Exalt themselves or be convinced by an Exalt to join up with them.

I argued for a split, rather than a change in focus, because the corebook and the Solar Exalted charmset both suffer by being put together in the same book. Also I hold out hope for a 3.5 corebook and/or a Solar rewrite compatible with the other splatbooks rather than a full on 4th edition because uh... wow the Solar charmset is a mess and the more I dig into it the worse it gets.

So the thing about Solars being by far the most popular splat is it kinda feels like a chicken or the egg scenario: Are solars in the corebook because they're the coolest, most popular character type, or are they the most popular character type because they're in the corebook. Ultimately for me it doesn't matter cause I think Solars should be the corebook splat regardless, but falling back on their widespread popularity as justification feels a bit circuitous to me.

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3E's corebook is bad.

If Solars are popular in 3e it's certainly not because their charms and corebook are well-written.

This is assuming a 4e is ever going to happen. I wouldn't take that as a given.

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Even if it were, it would not come out for at least a decade.

Like, we still have Getimians, Liminals, Alchemicals and Infernals to get through (probably another Exalt type or two I'm forgetting RN) and each of those books is going to take a year or two each, minimum. Even if you work on two at a time that's 2-4 years, ABSOLUTE minimum, ignoring companion books and backer bonuses.

A revamped Solar charmset and corebook aren't likely either but I find it more plausible on a short timescale than a 4th edition.

 

[Lioness]

This is assuming a 4e is ever going to happen. I wouldn't take that as a given.

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Well yeah, but that's kind of a conversation stopper. The last page or so of discussion has been about who should get the corebook in a hypothetical 4th edition.

 

[Blaque]

My view is that a corebook more like how Essence treats mortals is probably going to be healthier for a few reasons, some which 3e was working towards even that didn't quite come up much. For example, a lot of stuff in Exalted historically kind of assumes mortals run on the same as Exalts, but Exalts get Charms on top of that. 1e and 2e even had bleeding and infection rules that were promptly something Exalts could ignore. That wastes time and space when you stat a game to splat mortals trivially and to ignore said rules with the core splat.

This was a bit early on with 3e with the old devs. Morke asked on RPG.net something along the lines of whether if a mortal had a Merit to make them able to stand-up to PCs, should PCs get that Merit too? This, to me, isn't the right question. NPCs don't need to use PC rules. You don't need to stat mortals as "Like PCs but nerfed in every possible place". And some things should be there for me, the ST, to be able to present challenges to PCs.

You also had this with the abandoned Techniques system for Martial Arts by the way. My understanding is that it was meant to give mortals oomph, but Exalts could buy them anyhow, so it kind of meant you had this suite of Essence 1 powers that you had to be careful on stacking and which dind't actually give mortals an edge anyhow. Fast forward to Adversaries of the Righteous and it apparently is just like...fine to just give a lady snake kung fu powers. No one is owed to have those powers on their Solar Charmset. And the game isn't built assuming mortlas need to have the robust Merit, Ability dots, or Charms to make a mortal a martial artist. Just give them what they need and crib from there.

The solution isn't to make mortals more robust, but in my view to make the Exalted experience the core idea, and mortal participation in that a showcase of exceptional mortality. Again, Essence does this well with how NPC blocks can Just Be a Guy with Qualities that make them still significant opposition for Exalted characters. Mortals are generally going to be the supporting cast, sure, but I think the game by having mortals be again, nerfed PCs, is why they end up as fodder. They literally are using the same rules, but don't have access to what makes the game like, the game. And just tossing out a need represent that disparity in PC mechanics helps in that. Again, I think how Essence seems to be handling it in the Companion with Dragon Kings, god-bloods, and other exceptional individuals is what Exalted should go for. This allows for presenting a base system with a bit more constrained math (again, a strength I feel with Essence is lower equipment bonuses and starting character pools), and having significant mortal NPCs be so without worrying about "Well how does that work as a PC?" which I think has been a big albatross on Exalted for years.

 

[Blaque]

...
Like, we still have Getimians, Liminals, Alchemicals and Infernals to get through (probably another Exalt type or two I'm forgetting RN) and each of those books is going to take a year or two each, minimum. Even if you work on two at a time that's 2-4 years, ABSOLUTE minimum, ignoring companion books and backer bonuses. ...

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That's it actually. We're now at 6/10 canonical 3e splats written-up. Alchemicals is either last of this year or first of next year's crowdfunding campaigns for OPP, Infernals is next, and we still haven't heard the final plans for Getimians and Liminals. We'll be getting more specific Exigents in the already-slated Miracles of the Divine Flame and Champions of the Divine Flame. And the Essence Player's Guide focuses on those ten as well, with its Exigent options going to be "group" Exigents (March Lords, God-Admirals, Sovereigns, Architects).

But as you note, in all of this, we wouldn't see even a hinting of a Solar book until four or five years, and OPP wants to try to get non-splat stuff in there if they can eventually and if Paradox lets them. As much as I would like Solars, I'd personally also not mind a book on the Wyld, religions, or geomancy.