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General Exalted Thread

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So, is it just me not reading it correctly, or are the rules for Feats of Strength actually incomprehensible?

Like, what does it mean by the Storyteller setting both the Difficulty and "success requirement" for the feat, aren't those the same thing? Does it mean you need that many successes after beating the Difficulty? But why not just raise the Difficulty, then? Or use some other way to reflect that you need ever more thews to move ever bigger objects besides making a weird exception to the basic mechanics?

And when it says that one dot of Physique let's you handwave rolling for lesser feats of strength, does that mean both Standard and Challenging Difficulty lesser feats? Can my scribe character with Force 2, but who does cardio on the side, still pick up a warhorse without needing to roll?

What does it mean? Aarglblargle.
 
Chehrazad said:
I don't think those are remotely comparable. The kind of thinking that gave us EX3's godawful Craft system is in fact - exactly as you allude to - that the core system is still built for mortals (but in a way so it feels shitty), but the Craft system lets you obviate all the parts that feel bad. Essence is built around the assumption that you are an Exalt from the ground up.
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/me waggles hand

I think the that the core assertion, that a poor mechanic is excused by dint of you being intended to work around it with charms, is one that I disagree with quite firmly, and insofar as that assertion was put forward I think it's a flaw of the game - but, I reiterate, my disagreement is specific to that assertion, and not one I'd necessarily apply to the larger game. I'm open to the idea that Hardness as it stands (or as it will be, after the pending changes are made before the book is published) is a functional and valuable mechanic. Just, it's one that I would prefer be defended on the grounds that it adds value to the game in its own right, rather than on these grounds.
 
Since my previous Getimian essay went over so well, I figured I'd continue the series for the rest of the Exalts. And since Solars are the "primary" Exalted type, I thought I'd start there.


As always, I am not affiliated with Exalted in any official capacity and the words here do not reflect the writers' stance on the exalted. These are merely my own thoughts on how to create/play the Exalted.

Not as happy with this one, as Solars are not my forte.

Great Man Theory
"The history of the world is but the biography of great men." So says Thomas Carlyle, in his book On Heroes, Hero-Worshp and the Heroic in History, and while I have many problems with his theories, the fact remains that for Solars, this is true. Deliberately so, for the Solars were designed from the ground up to be the great men and women on whom the fulcrum of history turns.

This is not up for negotiation. A Solar who uses their powers cannot help but change the world. Their words are too persuasive, their skill too superlative and their powers to great too do otherwise.

Creating a Solar, then, is as easy (and as hard) as choosing a grand achievement for them to perform. End slavery. Conquer the west. Destroy the realm. Invent a flying machine. Cure the Whispers. This is your characters motivation. It is the reason they are acting upon the world, rather than being acted upon by the world.

Note: This motivation does not have to match the motivation on your character sheet. Rather, it is the story that you want to tell. A young peasant boy who takes up the sword to defend his family and is then thrust into a conflict between two great warring states is 100% applicable.

Of course, just because your Solar is great, doesn't mean they have to be good. The Solar Exaltation gives its bearer vast cosmic powers and superlative skill, but it tells them nothing about how that power should be used.

There is no charm for being a good person.

Examples: Naruto (Motivation, be Hokage), Luffy (Motivation, Be Pirate King), Leonardo Da Vinci (Motivation, be the greatest artist/inventor), King Arthuer (Motivation, Unite the Britons), etc.

Cultural Hero
In many ways, Solars can be the hardest Exalt to make, because they can be anyone. While they do have themes, their themes are deliberately designed to be as universal and applicable as possible. As long as you are heroic (in the classical sense) you can be a Solar.

So, to help ground your Solar in the world, I find it is often best to first look at where they are in the world. Solar's do not grow up in a vacuum. They are exist in a cultural context. Not just the context of "Anathema of the realm" but of that of their own culture.

So when creating a Solar, it can be helpful to look at the culture he came from, and what kind of heroes that culture would produce. What does that culture value, what systemic forces shape the lives of its people, what hardships trouble them and make them cry out for a hero. A Solar from Lookshy could be a general born and bred in the legions, or he could be a slave rising up against his oppressors. A Solar of Gem could be a mercenary and veteran of a dozen wars, or a merchant prince trying to challenge the noble house's monopolies.

Examples: Drawing on real world history for this, since it helps to ground the discussion in cultures. A Solar in the Age of Exploration might be a cunning pirate captain, a sadistic imperial general or persuasive abolitionist, but they are unlikely to be a chivalrous knight. Looking at distances of space instead of time (and limiting ourselves to the 10th​ century), a Solar from Scandinavia might be a daring Viking, while one from Constantinople could be a disciplined general, while one from Venice might be a merchant prince. You don't have to play a hero stereotypical to your culture (you could be Scandinavian inventor rather than a Viking, or a Venetian soldier instead of merchant), but your character is going to be defined by your culture, and it makes as good a starting point as any other.

The Return of the King
The Solars are not just new heroes. But old ones as well. Heirs to a legacy of rulership and righteousness 1000 years old. If you want to play an ancient king returning in the world's hour of need to set things right, well then Solars are the right splat for you.

And honestly, their isn't much more to say here, save that Exalted has never believed in objective good or evil, and so the amount you play into the inherent righteousness of this cause is up to you.

Examples: Sailor Moon. King Arthur. Aragon.

Archetypes
Solars are deliberately flavor agnostic. While they do have themes, they are also designed in such a way that you can ignore those themes. A Solar could be a holy paladin here to restore the rightful nature of the world.

But they could also not be that. They could, in fact, be nearly anything else. So if you're having trouble coming up with a character concept, you can just choose a heroic (or villainous) archetype you like and play that instead. Do you want to he a wandering samurai, or millionaire tech genius, or gumshoe detective? Literally any of these can be a solar. So if you're having trouble, just pick an archetype that sounds fun and go with that. You can always add complexity later.
 
KymmeSeventh said:
It's becoming increasingly apparent to me that Exalted is a game where the characters are supposed to succeed at everything. The drama, the game posits, ought to come from the consequences of success and the ways that your legendary deeds shape the world, rather than the struggle to perform those deeds or the tension of not knowing if you will succeed or fail. That's a perfectly fine idea for a game. What gets me, though, and what I think has led to a lot of tension whenever I sit down to play or run Exalted, is that all of the actual game, its mechanics, doesn't seem to support that. Actions, be they attacks or treating diseases or climbing mountains, have Difficulties that you roll dice to overcome. All of the tension present in that dice roll, in the random chance, the probability curve, is about whether or not you do the thing. The mechanics of the game don't really care about, or help to shape, what happens next.

I think what you're pointing out is indicative of that. The game is doing everything it can to stack the deck in favor the PCs, so that when they utilize this tactical skirmishing combat system there is a feeling of dramatic tension but no real possibility of failure. It's a ton of effort put in to something that, for me, seems... kind of tangential to the actual point of the game. If player characters are going to win their fights, and the aftermath and consequences of victory are the real important part, then this combat system is a two hour formality. Why bother?
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This is a very interesting point, because in essence, what you're saying is that Exalted is both the same thing as and the polar opposite of D&D 4E in a way?

Consider: in Exalted, the game - and the fan community culture/discourse - tells you that characters are supposed to succeed at everything, and the interesting part is the consequences of success. The system does nothing to facilitate what the game claims to be "about".

In D&D 4E, the game is telling you that you're heroes who fight their way through challenging encounters, but the encounters the game terms "challenging" are overwhelmingly weighted to favor the PCs. It's actually really hard to create a situation where the PCs are facing a meaningful challenge, if you're following the advice the game is giving you. The system does the thing it claims to be about (tactical combat), but it does not, by default, provide an experience that can be described as "challenging" in the traditionally understood sense of "characters face a meaningful risk of failure".

At the same time, nobody would describe D&D 4E's combat system as "a two hour formality". Winning can feel meaningful and earned even if the odds were severely stacked in your favor to begin with. The story of how you triumph can be interesting and worth telling even if the fact that you will triumph in the end was never really in question - and I feel that there's a sizeable portion of players who are interested in exactly that, rather than a serious observation of the consequences of their victory (otherwise, they'd be playing that one PbtA game where every conflict is resolved by one roll, the result of which doesn't influence whether you succeed but how badly you fuck everything else up in the process).
 
KymmeSeventh said:
If player characters are going to win their fights, and the aftermath and consequences of victory are the real important part, then this combat system is a two hour formality. Why bother?
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Why watch a superhero movie when you know the heroes are going to win (Infinity War doesn't count)?

There's a lot of drama to be had in failure, yes. But there's also fun to be had in a good fight scene.

Last session, I botched twice and got ambushed by a Greenmaw. It was never going to beat me, but during those first few turns of combat, I was alone and getting savaged by a plant monster the size of a bear. If Raptor were mortal, he'd have died, no question. And we knew that.
 
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KymmeSeventh said:
If player characters are going to win their fights, and the aftermath and consequences of victory are the real important part, then this combat system is a two hour formality. Why bother?
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Real hard to care about the aftermath and the consequences of a thing that was just breezed past or given no narrative/mechanical weight. Exalted is a game about consequences, yeah, but it's also obviously a game about cool fights and like, intrigues and shit. They're also a pretty big element of chaos, in that like... Even if you are going to win a fight in the end, there's a pretty wide array of interesting outcomes other than outright failure once you start rolling dice.
 
elfgames said:
This is a very interesting point, because in essence, what you're saying is that Exalted is both the same thing as and the polar opposite of D&D 4E in a way?

Consider: in Exalted, the game - and the fan community culture/discourse - tells you that characters are supposed to succeed at everything, and the interesting part is the consequences of success. The system does nothing to facilitate what the game claims to be "about".
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I definitely agree with this. It feels like I'm being misled sometimes. There is a promise in the setting of Exalted that its mechanical systems don't keep.

elfgames said:
In D&D 4E, the game is telling you that you're heroes who fight their way through challenging encounters, but the encounters the game terms "challenging" are overwhelmingly weighted to favor the PCs. It's actually really hard to create a situation where the PCs are facing a meaningful challenge, if you're following the advice the game is giving you. The system does the thing it claims to be about (tactical combat), but it does not, by default, provide an experience that can be described as "challenging" in the traditionally understood sense of "characters face a meaningful risk of failure".
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See I'm probably just bad at 4e because my experience has been that most encounters are pretty hair-raising encounters where specific positioning and the proper timing of your encounter/daily powers is mandatory for victory, and if you play your cards wrong the first boss is likely to kill you. It's true that the game stacks things in favor of the players - I think that's a necessity in systems that expect you to go through gauntlets of battles rather than just one battle/day or what-have-you.

elfgames said:
At the same time, nobody would describe D&D 4E's combat system as "a two hour formality". Winning can feel meaningful and earned even if the odds were severely stacked in your favor to begin with. The story of how you triumph can be interesting and worth telling even if the fact that you will triumph in the end was never really in question - and I feel that there's a sizeable portion of players who are interested in exactly that, rather than a serious observation of the consequences of their victory (otherwise, they'd be playing that one PbtA game where every conflict is resolved by one roll, the result of which doesn't influence whether you succeed but how badly you fuck everything else up in the process).
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I also wouldn't describe combat in 4e as a two hour formality, but that's because its tactical skirmishing wargame is the whole appeal for me. That's what 4e and games like it (Lancer comes to mind) exist for. I don't think Exalted needs a tactical skirmishing wargame element to deliver awesome fight scenes and exciting, earned victories. Like, goodness, Jenna Moran wrote a whole little subsystem for her game Chuubos that does just that and it's like, 500 words, tops. I'm not in favor of the Legacy: Godsend approach (which is the game I think you're referencing :p) but I find myself here, reading Essence, reflecting on the five years I've spent playing and running 3e, and I see Power and Anima and Gambits and Rally actions that are distinct from teamwork actions and I see accuracy bonuses and Overwhelming and eight-step-attack-resolution and Parry and Evasion and Soak and Hardness and no doubt tons of Charms that give you extra dice or let you reroll-1s or give you exploding-10s or double-9s and make your attacks Unblockable or let you make better Aim actions and I think to myself:

Isn't this too much? Do we need these things to tell the stories of the Exalted? Of epic heroes and high drama? Are all of these moving parts serving a purpose here?
 
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ichypa said:
So, is it just me not reading it correctly, or are the rules for Feats of Strength actually incomprehensible?

Like, what does it mean by the Storyteller setting both the Difficulty and "success requirement" for the feat, aren't those the same thing? Does it mean you need that many successes after beating the Difficulty? But why not just raise the Difficulty, then? Or use some other way to reflect that you need ever more thews to move ever bigger objects besides making a weird exception to the basic mechanics?

And when it says that one dot of Physique let's you handwave rolling for lesser feats of strength, does that mean both Standard and Challenging Difficulty lesser feats? Can my scribe character with Force 2, but who does cardio on the side, still pick up a warhorse without needing to roll?

What does it mean? Aarglblargle.
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Probably versioning errors imo.
 
KymmeSeventh said:
Isn't this too much? Do we need these things to tell the stories of the Exalted? Of epic heroes and high drama? Are all of these moving parts serving a purpose here?
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This is one of those problems that have been following Exalted if not ttrpgs in general for over a decade. I've wandered on either side of the discussion myself over the years. There are advantages to a streamlined system with minimal knobs and levers, just as there advantages to a strongly delineated, granular system. Both lend themselves well to varying types of play.

But one of Exalted's main conveyance problems is figuring out how to make its systems communicate its intended themes. On top of that, it's always struggled with competing desires/objectives regarding what it/the writers think the players want vs what the players say they want vs what the players actually want.

Drama, as your posts describe, basically comes from one quality- Uncertainty. The more uncertain something is, the more dramatic. But what kind of uncertainty? Is it the tactical uncertainty of landing a blow, or the sociological uncertainty of meeting a new culture for the first time. Of starting a new business, of building a great wonder, and so on.

Some players want uncertainty at the procedural level, with specific rolls and lots of chances for if not failure, dynamic outcomes. Balance checks, hazards, constant threats and challenges from multiple angles and so on. Other players want to grapple with the dramatic qualities of social and cultural challenges.

One of Exalted's big challenges, is that it fails to give players and STs useful examples of non-combat challenges, and as media consumers, we're oversaturated with combat and feats of physical agency, and given very few interesting and engaging examples of social or mental challenges and drama.

Look at almost any social system attached to an 'action' game like Exalted- where the encounter is framed in adversarial terms. This isn't inherently wrong, especially as a genre convention, but it deserves being recognized. Is the game trying to model something, or is it trying to facilitate something. Those are often separate things with overlap.

There's a lot more this could build into, but I'll have to gather thoughts.
 
...the earlier RichT conversation got me thinking. I miss the days of the Ex3 Kickstarter.

There was so much excitement in the air, then!

We* had such faith in Onyx Path, in Ex3, and in the future of the game. The playtest reports were all rapturously happy and the Kickstarter itself struck a wonderful balance between big promises and plausible goals. The developers sounded like they were doing everything right, when you looked through the weird-but-cool online archive fans made to record everything they posted. We* really thought things were going to be great.

And all that was lost. Squandered, really. The fandom returned to the acrimonious state I remembered from the latter days of 2e, but now with fewer people and less enthusiasm. Less creative anger, more tired bitterness.

I don't really know what my point is here. Just bellyaching, I guess.

*Myself and the hypothetical average fan. I know some folks here expected the worst from day one. But I wasn't always the cynic that I am.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
*Myself and the hypothetical average fan. I know some folks here expected the worst from day one. But I wasn't always the cynic that I am.
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To be honest, most of the fans I talk with are pretty enthusiastic for Essence and the game in general. Out of the spaces where I interact with them, it's literally just this thread where every ten pages someone feels the need to re-explain about That Time a Kickstarter was Bad Eight Years Ago. It's a pretty disparate fandom and attitude varies wildly by community.
 
Gazetteer said:
To be honest, most of the fans I talk with are pretty enthusiastic for Essence and the game in general. Out of the spaces where I interact with them, it's literally just this thread where every ten pages someone feels the need to re-explain about That Time a Kickstarter was Bad Eight Years Ago. It's a pretty disparate fandom and attitude varies wildly by community.
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It's been awkward for me coming back after however many years. The mainstays of my rotating group were pretty soured after Holden specifically told us we were Playing the Game Wrong. Most of the more casual folks don't want to have to relearn the setting after all the changes, and I'm having to repackage and sell individual changes to the two still interested. Trying to bring new folks in has been hard because the indie RPG scene is so strong now that I really have to make a spectacular sell each time.

My players who are sticking on will be playing Essence with me, but until they've gotten their hands on it, that's more a matter of trust in my ability to pull rabbits out of hats.
 
Also, from what the Essence crew is saying, now that Essence is in its finishing touches, they're going to be pivoting over to the main line, which should help sort out that colossal Development bottleneck they've been dealing with the past two years.

And by all indications, the Essence Gang has some really good ideas behind them--as I said, the Storytelling Chapter is probably the best I've ever seen from the Line.
 
Alectai said:
Also, from what the Essence crew is saying, now that Essence is in its finishing touches, they're going to be pivoting over to the main line, which should help sort out that colossal Development bottleneck they've been dealing with the past two years.
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There are like, four books that are all at least past post-approval development (which is, they sent a manuscript to Paradox and Paradox said "okay" hours or weeks later) already. The final Heirs to the Shogunate backer PDF also just went out, so that should be officially released pretty soon. A lot of shit seems like it's just kind of been steadily chugging along at a more or less constant rate.
 
Alectai said:
And by all indications, the Essence Gang has some really good ideas behind them--as I said, the Storytelling Chapter is probably the best I've ever seen from the Line.
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The suggestion that if you as an ST find yourself with a group of desperate players and no ideas, you should just fuckin' make them do to idea-based heavy lifting, is a particular gem that stands out to me.

Edit: Especially since about a month and 20 pages or so ago, people in this thread were describing the great lengths they were willing to go in order to play lol.
 
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Gazetteer said:
To be honest, most of the fans I talk with are pretty enthusiastic for Essence and the game in general. Out of the spaces where I interact with them, it's literally just this thread where every ten pages someone feels the need to re-explain about That Time a Kickstarter was Bad Eight Years Ago. It's a pretty disparate fandom and attitude varies wildly by community.
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Where do you see healthy enthusiasm?

RPGnet Exalted seems dead, the official forum feels like it's desperately trying to pretend it's not dead, the Discord is a Discord, and when I encounter Exalted fans elsewhere they generally seem cynical at best.

It doesn't help that the people I know in person don't care for this game...
 
Sanctaphrax said:
the Discord is a Discord
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I'm not sure what you mean by that, specifically! But like... I do spend a lot of time on several Discords that are for Exalted or which have it as a significant sub-topic, as well as others where there are just a number of Exalted fans who talk about it sometimes. Lots of people with a general level of excitement for the direction the gameline is headed, and lots of people who were not even around during the 3e kickstarter, and got into the game through this edition, including me. Hell, I've talked to more than one person who is into Exalted now who was in fucking middle school when that all happened. I'm certainly aware that that's not a universal attitude, it's just like... people who are constantly really cynical about a thing I am pretty hyped for are not really a demographic I actively seek out for discussions, or one that I've found it particularly hard to avoid for the most part.
 
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Gazetteer said:
To be honest, most of the fans I talk with are pretty enthusiastic for Essence and the game in general. Out of the spaces where I interact with them, it's literally just this thread where every ten pages someone feels the need to re-explain about That Time a Kickstarter was Bad Eight Years Ago. It's a pretty disparate fandom and attitude varies wildly by community.
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Sanctaphrax said:
Where do you see healthy enthusiasm?

RPGnet Exalted seems dead, the official forum feels like it's desperately trying to pretend it's not dead, the Discord is a Discord, and when I encounter Exalted fans elsewhere they generally seem cynical at best.

It doesn't help that the people I know in person don't care for this game...
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I mean, you dismiss 'the discord is a discord' when it has probably at least a hundred relatively active members and far more 'passing through'. What we really have is probably just more filter bubbling of the various spaces closing off from each other. The internet's a bigger place now than it was four years ago. Like, I'm a very enthusiastic Ex3 supporter, and I'm not even sure I have an RPGnet account. Someone on the Discord actually is trying to get an 'unofficial official' forum called Sword of Creation to catch on since the Onyx Path technological aptitude is what it is.


Gazetteer said:
There are like, four books that are all at least past post-approval development (which is, they sent a manuscript to Paradox and Paradox said "okay" hours or weeks later) already. The final Heirs to the Shogunate backer PDF also just went out, so that should be officially released pretty soon. A lot of shit seems like it's just kind of been steadily chugging along at a more or less constant rate.
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And yet, this is the big sticking point of the line for me. For all that I love Ex3, and the Heirs backer prieview did just come out, this is just over three years later. It's fucking ridiculous. I'm convinced that part of the reason day one of the Essence kickstarter was so enormous is that Exalted fans haven't had any other damn thing to pay for.
 
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I don't think I've ever seen a Discord that struck me as a healthy or positive environment. And I've seen a fair bit of the Exalted Discord. Guess I'm glad to hear that there's some genuine enthusiasm there under it all, though.

SoC looks a bit doomed but I'll probably make an account anyway. I mean, I want the place to succeed.
 
In regards to the lack of enthusiasm, I think its worth pointing out that a lot of the posters here haven't exactly lost interest, they just moved to the Ascension and Transgressions discord. I know I at least tend to post my shorter thoughts there and only post my longer form essays to here.

It probably didn't help that SV moved this thread either. I know I didn't post here for like, a year because I didn't realize it was moved. When I stopped seeing it on the General Gaming forum I just assumed nobody was posting.


As to my feelings on Ess in general. Honestly, I'm really excited for it. I have been really impressed with everything revealed so far, barring a few small changes. If I had one systemic issue with the edition is that they didn't bite the bullet and just make it a new edition. The weakest parts of the system definitely feel like the parts where they are forced to stay in lockstep with 3e.

But even with that, I am very excited for the Ess.
 
Yeah, I'm probably going to put the thread up recruiting for my game tuesday sometime, I just need to figure out where I want to run it at.
 
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