Exg - Exalted General

Any news on anathema?

There's not been any word on the original Anathema in quite some time. There's a small group of people working on their own chargen maker who said in December that it'd be out by the end of 2016, but being an Exalted product it just gets delayed, doesn't it?

There was an user on here a yearish ago who had compiled the Anathema code he got off of Github. The new guys have a Bitbucket if you want to try compiling that as well. If you manage to get either running, tell us.

Exalted: Blood & Fire

Pick rules light system of your choice, use exalted setting to constrain what can be picked.

>I was wondering how to work them into a situation that would cause them to exalt.

Any major crisis that forces the PCs to confront it head on. Stuff like an Abyssal leading an army of the dead, or a risen Behemoth invading a city, or ancient First Age Machinery going haywire.

Don't bother with giving them a challenge that mortals can handle. Give them a crisis that, if they're willing to confront, Exalts them and gives them the edge they need to win.

Make it very clear to them during the session that this is "their moment" and that if their characters step up to the plate they will Exalt. Tell them "fuck caution or prudence", if they go over the top and never let their foot off the gas during this session, they will be rewarded. Be sure to give every player a moment in the spotlight, so that they can have a moment of specific grandeur, skill, courage, or moral principle in the face of this crisis to Exalt.

If they succeed on something really meaningful, Exalt them. If they come up short and get in over their heads, as long as they're still raring to fight, Exalt them and let them blast past that challenge. Even if they don't manage a big shining moment, reward them for an epiphany or a moment of courage: the overpowered bad guy demands their surrender only to get a middle finger, the demon who tried to tempt them gets shot down, they decide not to abandon the random mortal NPC who says "it's over for me, leave me behind," the ordinary mortal stands up to the asshole Dynast, and so forth.

It's a bit contrived, but I've been doing stuff like this for years and it really does work.

So I hear it isn't good for Solars to spread their skills into too many parts. Is that true? I shouldn't spend XP on all my 10 preferred/favored abilities? If so how many should I focus on?

As for NPCs, don't bother starting them out. Guesstimate their dice pools and remember that two dots in an Attribute is average, and if they're trained but not outstanding in a skill give them one or two dots in an ability. About four dice max.

If they're especially skilled, like a well trained swordsman or an experienced pickpocket, give them six dice in what their best at.

If they're especially talented, like one of the top dozen swords men in the kingdom or an elderly Sage who has read just about everything, eight dice max, and maybe six in a few other pools to represent that they're badasses.

Reserve the attribute/ability cap of 5 for each for PCs, Exalts, Spirits, and any major rival or enemy NPC meant to go toe to toe with a mortal player for a final climactic encounter (the latter should only be if the player is similarly maxed out: these NPCs should be on par, not superior).

If they're an Exalt or a Spirit don't bother with getting them huge lists of charms, just pick out a handful of signature powers in the book like a handful of Snake Style charms or something.

Hopefully this is useful. The Quick Characters section in the book can help you more. Good luck!

Solars are always stronger as specialists rather than generalists.

It's okay to have large dice pools for your caste/favored abilities, the bulk of your progression is in your Charms. Invest heavily in your Supernal and then in abilities important for your concept: a Zenith Warrior of Justice should have something like Brawl/Melee, Presence or Performance to shout down bad guys, Resistance for toughness, etc. For abilities less heavily emphasized by your concept, dip in for maybe a couple of charms at most.

Made a Storyteller Guide a while back. Its mostly done.

docs.google.com/document/d/1sG52v0QCij7-vI0Y3Mb2s2gusu8dfkzdUOLkmMshw3Q/edit

>So does anyone have advice for running an exalted campaign for me.
Reconsider.

That's seriously my advice after trying to run an Ex3 campaign for 9 months.

git gud

yes, exalted should git gud.

or was that not what you meant?

My first time DMing a game was for Exalted last year. Now I do have quite a bit of experience in playing TTRPGs and Exalted specifically, but really it wasn't overly difficult.

So yeah buddy, git gud.

What were your issues? Maybe we can help?

>been running successful and fun 2e campaigns for years even before the Ink Monkeys started making their errata

>people struggling to make ex3 work at all

Kind of glad I didn't back that.

yeah, pretty much

My issues aren't in GMing. I've been Gming for well over a decade. With this group for 5 years.

The game itself simply enforces individual action by "encouraging" specialization. That means I have to work four times as hard as I normally would to get the same amount of stuff done.

Exalted is worse than D&D, because at least D&D encourages the group to stick together.

That and natural fucking language. Not even once.

Exalted, and White Wolf games in general, have always had issues with player characters being encouraged to hyperfocus one thing to the exclusion of all others.

This really imbalances things like Combat because, unless everyone else is also well built combat character, you are trapped between balancing your encounters around the one combat guy and Everyone Else. If you don't build up to the combat guy's level, he'll run roughshod over your fights, but if you balance the fight around combat guy, you'll murder your other players. If everyone is all combat all the time? you lose out on all the other aspects of the game because no one can socialize, investigate, study, craft, sail ships, etc. worth a dick. I suppose that works if your players want a fight-after-fight dungeon crawl style adventure but that runs so hard against the premise and tone that Exalted tries to sell you.

Its a very unforgiving game and I've found that ex3 only encourages more of this.

Also its initiative system and all of the re-rolls, count X and Y results, etc etc charms very tedious to keep track of and makes fights bigger than 1v1 a headache to run.

Are there any official 2e or 2.5e rules for addiction? I can't find anything. I'm specifically looking for the effects of mundane drugs, if that helps.

>Exalted, and White Wolf games in general, have always had issues with player characters being encouraged to hyperfocus one thing to the exclusion of all others.
I'm aware. I wrote a long post on this subject on rpg.net and they kindly deleted it for speaking truth to power.

>This really imbalances things like Combat because, unless everyone else is also well built combat character, you are trapped between balancing your encounters around the one combat guy and Everyone Else.
Combat is the perpetual Achilles' heel of White Wolf games and yes, that's pretty much precisely the reason. The only time I've ever seen that averted is once in VtM I built a soak monster who could keep the wimps alive in a fight. But it took forever to get there; long campaign and he was the only original character at the end.

>I suppose that works if your players want a fight-after-fight dungeon crawl style adventure but that runs so hard against the premise and tone that Exalted tries to sell you.
Dude I tried. I really, really tried. I trapped everyone on a boat for like 8 sessions and they still found ways to work on individual goals.

I'm not criticizing you my man, I'm just harping on the system at large. I guess that's kind of pointless nowadays, we all seem to know the faults and problems with it.

For my games I made a lot of adjustments to lethality and tailored my dice pools, damage output, etc. to hit a sweet spot for my entire group. But normally they would all dip half and half into combat and non-combat, kept their DVs , soak, etc. all around each other it also helps that I gave them loads of free health levels starting off to keep them from dying after one hit

If you're mad about people doing their own stuff you should really be playing a different game.

>If you're mad about people doing their own stuff you should really be playing a different game.
And so we are.

And having a lot of fun.

Without natural language.

user, are you trying to imply there have never been people sgtruggling to make 2E work? There are people who have issues with each and every sustem you could name. There are people having fun with each and every system you could name. Neither positive nor negatitve experiences of a single group are enough to say very much about any game.

Initiative system is pretty nice, though. The bookkeeping it adds is not really noteworthy in my ecperience - and I amm talking out of actual expeirence here, though obviously anecdotes are just anecdotes.

I don't have any empirical evidence but my own personal experiences with talking to groups who've actually played ex3 (provided me logs or allowed me to sit in and watch) and my own experiences running it, have shown you struggle a lot more with ex3 than 2e, if only because there have been years to find its flaws and correct them with your choice of house rules. The current edition is a mess because...

.. it swings around too hard, its too easy to game as a player unless your ST only makes Solar opponents because the antagonist section , frankly sucks. Its 2e combat that forces you to delay for 2 rounds when you would have simply killed them in 1 round. Even with dice rollers the amount of charms that have you rerolling X results, counting how many Y results you scored on a dice roll, and in general keeping track of any and all of your charms that could be marshalled during your turn or an opponent's turn without any clear steps to combat resolution like 2e had makes it very unappetizing to, again in my personal experience, both a lot of veterans and especially new players.

If you're cool with it being a cargo cult kind of game then more power to you but this edition has definitely gotten a lot of bad press and alienated people unfamiliar with the brand, which is going to hurt its longevity immensely. Doesn't help that even now people still suggest you go play FATE or whatever instead.

Kind of sad, but I guess its to be expected.

I just run Exalted in a slightly modified D&D 4e. Its been great so far.

The people who'd consider FATE ab acceptable replaceent for Exalted probably aren't the target audience for any edition of Exalted, though. Not saying there's anything wrong with their taste, just that the crunch-heavy agme Exalted is, ahs always been and hopefully always will be is probably far removed form their preferences.

Wow, I think you managed to insult like everyone on Veeky Forums with one sentence.

But I like 4e, so I applaud you.

I wouldn't run Exalted in Fate anyway. I'd run it in FAE if there weren't like 100 better games and 1000 better settings out there.

>Doesn't help that even now people still suggest you go play FATE or whatever instead.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves : people have been doing that for every system you can name since the advent of FATE, too.

Natural language never really bothered me.

Then again playing 2e from the start probably taught me how charms are supposed to work so.

>I cherrypicked evidence so therefore it is valid.

You are full of shit.

I still think it's way easier than 2E combat: for one thing, I no longer have to keep track of those fucking Ticks. Initiative is a genuinely good system that other games genuinely ought to use.

>If you're cool with it being a cargo cult kind of game then more power to you but this edition has definitely gotten a lot of bad press and alienated people unfamiliar with the brand

...It's been outselling every other OPP game on DriveThru besides, maybe, Mage?

People tended to like Exalted specifically for the setting. WW is good at writing fluff but garbage at mechanics.

I believe 3e is a good game, but when paired with other games such as FC or DnD 4e which are seemingly laser focused to do what they do? 3e can't compared to those.

>have shown you struggle a lot more with ex3 than 2e, if only because there have been years to find its flaws and correct them with your choice of house rules.

But none of those House Rules did anything to unfuck the game, user. Even the Earthscorpion homebrew that people kept fellating kept holding the promise of rolling Join Battle as a threat over people's heads.

2E continues to have issues with Perfect Defense spam, paranoia combat, rocket-tag combat, a social system that basically had you spam dice until you achieve brainwashing, and so on.

Ex3 genuinely fixed all of those issues, and I'm not interested in some dude's houserules given that a lot of them are adapted to a specific group of players at a specific table.

I remember there being rules for them in the 2E Core. If not there, then I remember 1E's Manacle and Coin definitely had them.

Also for new players - and 3E certainly can attract new players, as I ahve introfuced people to Exalted with 3E - will have a hell of a lot easier time learning 3E than 2E with a bunch of house rules. Less trouble for more gain. The only thing 2E or 25 have going on for them is the abundance of material, and considering both the quality of official 2E material and the amount of fan content 3e already has, even that advantage is questionable.

I mean, these people seem to like Exalted plenty

gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2016/12/23/the-top-tabletop-games-of-2016.aspx?PostPageIndex=4

geekandsundry.com/the-best-tabletop-rpgs-we-saw-in-2016/

I've tried looking - I'll chalk it up to the book's weird layout then. In the meantime, still looking for help on it.

>I make strawmans

Ok Holden

>they like new 7th Sea
>they like NEW
>they like Exalted

Apparently you can account for taste.

>they like AW2E

Okay, maybe not.

ok

The only rules about addiction I could find are for Wyld addiction (p. 288 core book). Not a whole lot there, but you could use it to model other addictions.

Thank you! I really do appreciate the help. Have this, it's all I can give over the internet.

The only way for Limit Break to actually ever work as intended is to pretty much turn it into a reward system. Be an asshole when the situation warrants, get a tiiiiiny bonus. Just something to sweeten a situation.

Yea Wyld addiction is pretty much it

>That's seriously my advice after trying to run an Ex3 campaign for 9 months

Please elaborate on a practical example where it went wrong. Have been running one campaign for about the same time and always felt like something was off, but couldn't place it yet.

On the oher hand, of tne you cna just rely on the PCs acting like assholes when the situation warrants it, and maybe even when it doesn't, incentives or no. Limit Break hs always felt pretty unnecessary to me, all in all. Incentives for acting like the magnificent but flawed heroes Exalted are supposed be is fine, but these incentives should be subtler.

I like the nWoD system, where characters have to indulge their vices to recharge their emotional batteries/recover Willpower points.

>Please elaborate on a practical example where it went wrong.
I don't really know that we need to rehash, but sure.

1. Charm bloat is out of control. I never did read all of them, much less try to memorize what they do.
2. The game's specialization focus makes group efforts the rare event rather than the basis of a communal gaming activity.
3. Natural fucking language.
4. Combat has the usual WW tendency where you can't design threats that work for the entire group because someone is always a murder specialist. Let me note that this was true even after our murder specialist made a new character who was social-oriented. There's no sweet spot.
5. John and Holden are complete assholes. This makes it hard to get answers to questions about the game. Like, I don't even want to ask the questions any more.
6. It was tremendously over-hyped. We were promised the new age of tabletop gaming and got something that might have been that if it was released in 1997.
7. The community is cancerous.
8. It's designed around 8-12 hour sessions (no, I am not kidding, that's what Holden said).

Honestly I'm not sure you need more reasons than that to trashbin the game.

>8. It's designed around 8-12 hour sessions (no, I am not kidding, that's what Holden said).
And yet it works just fine with 3-4 hour sessions. Being designed for longer sessions sure doesn't show. I don't rewlly agree with any of your other points either, aside from natural language. Well, I do agree abou Holden and Morke being assholes and a big chunk of the community being cancerous, but these things aren't about the game itself and are not in any way relevant to whether the game is good or not. Especially the thing about community, which may be literally the dumbest possible reason to dislike a game.

Yes but I don't care if you agree.

>Honestly I'm not sure you need more reasons than that to trashbin the game.

The vast majority of your reasons are either piss-poor or subjective though.

Get mad about it.

Why be so defensive?

Why would I be mad that someones reasons for trash binning a game I enjoy are shit? It feels good to know your reasons aren't relevant to me at all

So? There are, presumably, people other than you and me reading this thread. It should be obvious why I'd prefer to make it clear to others that your opinions don't represent any kind of a general consensus about 3E.

you mad

I wouldn't say the reasons are shit, aside from the ones that aren't actually about the game itself at all. They are highly subjective, is all. Subjective reasons are enough to not like a game. Someone else's subjective reasons obviously aren't enough for me to not like a game, though, and I agree about the reasons listed not being relevant at all to me.

user, spend a minute considering what kind of a mindset leads people to see anyone disagreeing with them as being mad. Think hard about whether you wish to adopt such a mindset.

>1. Charm bloat is out of control. I never did read all of them, much less try to memorize what they do.

You are neither obliged nor expected to have every charm memorized, that wasn't even feasible in 2E.

>2. The game's specialization focus makes group efforts the rare event rather than the basis of a communal gaming activity.

I've read your comments up-thread, this really seems much more like a group issue than a game issue. You can get problems like this in plenty of games where combat is silo'd away from the rest of your abilities, but the thing is, it doesn't naturally lead to that issue. Ideally, everyone ought to take some combat ability.

>3. Natural fucking language.

It's impact on the game is badly, badly exaggerated.

>
4. Combat has the usual WW tendency where you can't design threats that work for the entire group because someone is always a murder specialist. Let me note that this was true even after our murder specialist made a new character who was social-oriented. There's no sweet spot.

You never thought to try giving a strong guy a couple of weaker lieutenants and a Battle Group?

>5. John and Holden are complete assholes. This makes it hard to get answers to questions about the game. Like, I don't even want to ask the questions any more.

Mhm, 'developer likability,' a vital and all-important pillar of good game design. God knows, the impact of a game really hinges on whether I'm able to emotionally identify with the person who wrote a thing.

>6. It was tremendously over-hyped. We were promised the new age of tabletop gaming and got something that might have been that if it was released in 1997.

It essentially fixed all the issues 2E had with Paranoia Combat, Perfect Defenses, etc. If they just promised me '2E but it WORKS SOMEHOW' I'd have been happy. I got more than that, enough that I can have fun with the system now, even if it's completely divorced from a setting I really enjoy.

You aren't my psychologist, kid.

At this juncture it's clear that most of you feel very strongly about the game and feel besieged by the negative opinions on it that exist out of the echo chamber.

You react viscerally when someone points out flaws, and your most recent modus operandi is labeling those flaws "subjective."

No, kid, you aren't my psychologist. But perhaps you should spend some time reflecting on your own cognitive bias.

hi Holden

nice of you to show up to defend your work

>7. The community is cancerous.

Ah, community likability, the other essential element of good game design.

>8. It's designed around 8-12 hour sessions (no, I am not kidding, that's what Holden said).

Do you even have a source, given people's tendency to write elaborate fanfiction about what the devs might or might not have said, or what they TRULY mean whenever they make a statement?

...good gracious!

What a may-may!

You have to realize, it's not just one person arguing with you here, right?

>You react viscerally when someone points out flaws, and your most recent modus operandi is labeling those flaws "subjective."

...but you're reacting very viscerally when people oppose your argument?

Again, user, people disagreed with you. There is nothing "visceral" about that. Your opinions are called subjective because that's what they are. I also pointed out here that subjective reasons matter, and obviously my reasons for liking the game are also subjective. As for your talk about echo chamber, what are you smoking? I don't think you'll find anyine here who likes everything about the game. These threads are hardly lacking in criticism about 3E. The closest thing to inability to handle different opinions we've had in this thread is a certain somebody whose response to people disagreeing with him was basically "lol u mad".

...Do you have more of this? This is awesome.

I'll exchange sexual favors and my everlasting gratitude for a solo game of 3e or 2e. I'll hear out any specific scenario or style of game you've wanted to run but never been able to run for a group.

Let's talk about something different:
How do I make the Guild an interesting force of plot in my game.
One of my players took Contacts (Guild) for 5 points and being relatively new to the setting I'm a bit unsure of what that should entail exactly.

From what I've been told the Guild is a bit like a cyberpunk megacorp but that statement and the half page of info that's in the 3e core rulebook doesn't help me as much as I'd hoped.

DId I read that right: You want to play in a solo game but the GM can dictate the terms of what the game's all about?

Why are you whoring yourself out like that user?

The Guild isn't really unified or centralized enough to be like megacorp. It is an allaince or network of merchants and craftsmen more than anything else. One thing 5 points of Contacts (the Guild) should entail is having connections pretty much everywhere, because, well, the Guild is almost everywhere.

Hear out doesn't necessarily mean agree to and then play. It's easier to sell something non-traditional to one person than a group, like certain splats or setting shards or something.

well, worst case scenario, it's an ERPG set in Yu-Shan with user playing a mortal.

Would still count as a win.

reread the Contacts merit again pls. He probably wants Backing instead.

Read Masters of Jade to get what the Guild is. It's powerful as fuck, not because it is *like* a cyberpunk megacorp, but because it is the only one. The Guild as a entity is probably as powerful as any of the Incarnae.

I think this might be a case of highly infectious social syphilis or other similar sickness. Take care not to get your fill.

Oh, my, what a coincidence, it happens that I specialize in running solo games in exchange for sexual favors and lots of gratitude. How can I contact you?

>well, worst case scenario, it's an ERPG set in Yu-Shan with user playing a mortal.
Exalted: The Harem Comedy?

Tzer#1352 on Discord.

[email protected] for Skype.

It's more common then you think

UCS-senpai best girl.
EVER.
Why do I feel so dirty...

>Exalted thread
>Using an Anima artwork
>Exalted threads are almost constantly up
>Anima threads are lucky if they last a few hours and only happen every few weeks.
It ain't fair.

You know, my group's made a lot of jokes about Exalted shards of Creation and the idea of there being an alternate universe for anything in Exalted. One of the ones we jokes about (I can't remember if it was in the actual book or just us joking though) was an AU where Exalted takes place in a high school. Was fun to make jokes about for a while, but now that I think about it, I'd probably play the shit out of that.

Am I the only one? What would you play if you were in a game like that?

I'm gonna run that for

While I have never personally thought about it, this guy (strangercreations.wordpress.com/) had one setting like that. This one (strangercreations.wordpress.com/category/project-x/), specifically.

Why does Giant cost me 4 points when it's not even that good? It doesn't even give you an extra Wound Threshold, does it? Just moves your -1 threshold up.

Plus it doesn't even make you that huge, although that's a significantly lesser complaint compared to the mechanical one.

The dice-adder merits (of which Giant is essentially one) are overcosted by and large because they stack with everything, such as Charms and "being a really strong creature natively."

4 merit points probaby isn't worth an extra 2.5 init to kill you, but when that 2.5 init is stacking with the extra 7.5 from Ox-Body...

It gives you an extra -0 health level and also this

So it's overcharged to make it harder to be a min/maxing faggot? I suppose I can deal with that, although only having 10 Merit means I can't easily have a giant mage monk out of the box.

I mean, you can be huge, it's not like you HAVE to buy Huge to be a big guy, anymore than you have to take Unusual Hide to have green skin, so long as it's not of mechanical benefit.

literally suggested in the 2e corebook