I got into exalted mostly because borgstromancy is awesome, and i was stick of constantly having to fight people over the crunch/fluff divide in D&D.
Also, I was promised the exalted was a setting where it was understood that the players are larger than life characters with superpowers and there would be none of this "muh realism" nonsense.
1. What would you say Exalted's essential features are?
2. What about Exalted would describe as most interesting and evocative?
3. What would you call Exalted's worst features?
1.
A. PCs are explicitly superpowered-demigods. High Power/High Magic/High Fantasy. Kick silly notions like physics to the curb and run on rule of cool. If it;s impossible, that just means you need to roll 5 extra successes.
B. Deliberate invocation of Ancient Myth and Legend, rather than tolkien-esque fantasy, as the inspiration, as well as deliberate use of non-western folklore and aesthetics. It may be painted over with magitech, animistic spiritualism, and Wuxia, but at heart, Exalted evokes the "Mythic Age of Heroes." The prototypes for Exalts are Achilles, Guan Yu, and Gilgamesh, rather than the 13th century french style King Arthur of Le Morte D'Arthur. Exalted is Bronze/Heroic age, not Middle Ages. And it's aesthetics draw as much on Imperial China as it does the Mediterranean.
C. Animism. I feel that people over focus on the Wuxia. The animism is really much more focal for me. 2e devoted more than a page to the mechanics of prayer, and symbolism, sympathetic associations, and spiritual hierarchies are all played pretty straight. See Borgstromancy. Exalted is a game where Tarot and the I Ching are things you can bring to the table and integrate and not feel out of place.
D. The ability to go beyond the personal scale and work on the geopolitical scale. Bureaucracy should be as if not more powerful vis-a-vis martial abilities. This was promised but not delivered on. not even in 3e, judging from the leak. Fans have adhoc'ed this pretty well, and there is a very weak system from Masters of Jade you can use.
2.
A. Cyclical history with constant repetitions of the same mistakes and disasters, for the very believable reasons of "people are people and thus have differences of priority, desire, and interpretation behind their differences of opinion" and "People tend to patch over problems rather than actually fix them at their source"
B. Borgstromancy. This is Integration of fluff and mechanics. Exalts have discrete bits of magic called charms and these are actual thing that exist in the setting. Your motes are actual measurable, science-able quanta of spiritual power. There are no "blinded, 2 rounds, and a BS explanation for the effect that sounds lame to anyone who's ever tried that in RL," or "This spell would break the economy in half and yet mysteriously no one in this setting recognizes it and only uses the spell to kill orcs." Sadly, 3e is throwing this aspect out - charms are no longer actual things that exists and are known in character.
C. A consistent theme of "Actions have consequences," usually of the "fuixing problems by creating more problems" sort. Tied to a inherent setting conceit that this is very much a greek tragedy crapsack world half empty, not because it has to be that way but because of the choices of your character and her predecessors.
3.
A. Being made by White Wolf (and their successors), and their asinine idea of "maturity."
B. Lack of Chapter Headings, Indexes, Glossaries, and other things. Also a feature of WW.
C. Certain parts of the fanbase's embracing of the "maturity" and their tendency to be arrogant pricks as a result. So much 7edgy12me.
