Ahhh, a fun question
@ManusDomine
The TL;DR answer is that I enjoy the
potential of Exalted.
But, a history lesson. We call back to the distant years 2008 and 9. I had just graduated college, hadn't yet found a job and was looking for a new hobby that costed less than Wh40k. I had been peripherally aware of Exalted for some time before that, exposed primarily through the popular demotivators of the time and the incidental mentions on 4chan's /tg thread. Yes- I was both Shyft even back then, and an Anon.
From there I encountered the sup/tg IRC channel, and gradually joined a greater community in the firm 'mid point' of 2e. This was in the leadup to Infernals, before we really knew the dread trend of Freelancers (nevermind that everyone on the line was still a Freelancer, but we didn't care to name names or keep track of who did what). My first game was called Sunshine and Decay, run by a first-time ST and full of awful people save one. The party twilight
hated the idea of Active techniques, so he focused on Medicine simply because everything was permanent/passive. We had a stoner-zenith and my pretty-zenith, and the best player of the group was the dawn with bark skin. He was the best part of the game, goddamn.
Anyway, that first game, my first character died. This was during the point at which the community was really starting to super-saturate with the idea of Paranoia Combat as the Ideal Way to Play, as opposed to 'Thought Experiment Balance-Breaker'.
The old crew back then were various 4chan anons and not-so-anons (I can't use the word 4chan used for them, as it would be a ToS). Many of them I still have at least a distant connection to, or have maintained now as my core crew of artist friends and so on.
That's the history lesson though- from that point, I really hadn't
grokked Exalted for several years, often regurgitating the latest meme or stumbling around trying to understand the game and how to be a roleplayer. To underscore this- Exalted was my first proper creative RP experience, of making a consistent character and holding to it. Of course, I had the issue of most of my characters back then being 'Stuff Shyft wants to Draw' and weren't very interesting beyond that.
Anyway, games came and went, some long runners- one of the first if not first IRC Infernals games grew out of that server, to my knowledge. It was a wild, heady time.
Underlying all this, as my understanding grew, was the idea and sudden realization of something I had longed for, enjoyed previously but never had a name to give- Mechanics as Metaphor, or more topically Borgstromancy. The
idea of crunch-informing-fluff and vice-versa was a
revelation to me, and in a very real sense kickstarted my ideal of game design despite being trained for it previously in college. I had to know more, had to understand. I devoured the books, evaluated the decisions. (To this day though I sadly have not read Sidereals 1e). And I in turn comprehended.
Exalted at its best was a self-teaching game, but it's best were akin to thin golden strands of hay in bales upon bales of both pedestrian straw and fetid, rotted stalks representing ill-conceived mechanics, freak-the-norms White Wolf writing, and so on. When the game was
working, you were encouraged, much like Raiden was throughout MGS2, to act in a manner akin to an Exalt or Solid Snake, respectively. Like the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the 'language' of Charms and underlying mechanics informed and reinforced the themes of their attached Exalts. (This is why I am so enamored with the Metal Gear Solid series, as well as similar line-blurring endeavors).
This blew my goddamned mind.
Now, I
learned all this sadly not from the books, but discussion upon discussion with like-minded souls in that first tight knit community. Sadly though, it was not to last.
Alchemicals 2e hit, and with it came the death knell call of Holden and Hatewheel. Nephiphial (Micheal Goodwin) by no means awful, helped in some places and hurt in others. The inclusive developer/moderator community built up in earnest around RPG.net and the old WW forums, and the wagons began to circle. Ink Monkeys appeared, Glories dominated, and then the DotFA and main-errata. The Dawn Solution followed, until we were introduced to 2.5 edition. And then silence, save for the at the time endless release of cut Infernals content.
The sup/tg community collapsed after it's core members and their games ended, (with memorable scenes being a Lunar eating the heart of the Ebon Dragon, and that aforementioned infernals game ending with the cast ascending to Devil Tigers).
So why do I love Exalted?
It is a setting that lets you point at something and say 'Not Sue Enough'.
It lets me draw characters that are absurd and wonderful and unapologetically sexy in the way that only a Frazetta-esque setting can allow.
It lets me be clever with mechanics and homebrew, of writing words that lead to an inescapable, amusing or potent conclusion.
Above all else, the entertaiment value, the community and friends I hope to maintain for years to come-
It makes me
think.
