Exalted discussion

[Kurt Christ]

I'm pretty sure that at least Epi has played it (I seem to remember you being on the WW boards). I don't have anything particularly inspiring for his post, just wondering who here has played it and what their thoughts are. A friend and I are working on a couple homebrew projects of varying scale, though I don't have very much substantial to show for them yet (a few charms into a Celestial Martial Art, a few Malfean charm concepts, and some fluff of a Primordial). Do you have any favorite houserules/fixes in your games?

[Requia ☣]

I played Exalted.  I was not impressed.

[Kurt Christ]

What were your issues with it? The system is far from perfect, but I enjoy the basis of the game. I'm considered attempting a total conversion to a generic RP system, but it would take more effort to do well than I really want to put forth, so we use houserules to patch up places where the gameplay is weak.

[Jasper]

I appreciate the appeal, but it really doesn't call to me.  I've always preferred playing characters who are just powerful enough to get into trouble, but not so powerful they can easily get out of it.

[Requia ☣]

What were your issues with it? The system is far from perfect, but I enjoy the basis of the game. I'm considered attempting a total conversion to a generic RP system, but it would take more effort to do well than I really want to put forth, so we use houserules to patch up places where the gameplay is weak.

The system struck me as being "here's a list of incredibly cool things the Exalted can do.  Oh but not you, you'll be a noob for the next ten years of playtime."

[Kurt Christ]

The system struck me as being "here's a list of incredibly cool things the Exalted can do.  Oh but not you, you'll be a noob for the next ten years of playtime."

My playgroup heavily exceeds the recommended amount of experience rewards, and either shorten or ignore training times in a lot of cases.

[Telarus]

I dig the concept and the setting (and can dig high-power play... I scratch my head at 'the Gods are addicted to dinosaur piss which is better than LSD' stuff... but hey, settings get weird), but I've gotten disillusioned by glaring flaws in (not just this one), but pretty much all of the crunch/system that comes out of WW studios. I was a Mage: the Ascension FANATIC (read, the only guy on my side of the island that 'got' the concepts and references in the game well enough to play it coherently for more than one session)......

And I was pretty familiar with the oWorld-of-Darkness games from all the various 'cores' up through the LARP variants (and this one time, I was playing a Ravnos with Chimestry ....translation, I was a 'Gypsy/Roma Vampire' with holodeck style 'illusions' peppered with Fae magic, for you non-recovering WW gamers... and I managed to hijack not only the environmental descriptions away from the story tellers, but, by the end of the night, _I_ was framing and closing scenes and the STs had forgotten about their plot).

The main disconnect in their games (and I was so hopeful about the new Mage, they fixed 85% of the crunch problems with old-Mage), is that the fiction and storytelling advice in the books all scream at you "the game is about THIS INCREDIBLY COOL HOOK", and then the rules are all "here's how to play a undead/furry/psychic/fairy/ghost/normal-guy SUPER HERO. What? What do you mean 'mechanical resolutions that aren't about punch/kick/jump/fly/zzorch! combos and moon-blessed silver blades of righteous-awesomeness"?? Isn't that what 'role-playing' is? Oh-fine.. here's a "Free Will" bar, and when it hits zero, you tear your character sheet up. Happy now?

They build these beautiful worlds, tell you again and again that "playing the game = telling epic stories like the fiction you read in the book", and then hand you a classic arcade joystick with 6 buttons and shout "GO, Go, GO!"...

It's sloppy game design.

[Requia ☣]

I disagree there, mechanics should be largely about combat, most noncombat things work better most of the time if you just look at the stat and go well, your character is/isn't good enough to pull that off (or flip for it if you're on the edge).

Or perhaps I misunderstand your point.

[Telarus]

Nah, combat has historically been it's own 'mini-game' ever since Gygax first put out the first ever D&D with the suggestion "Go buy Chainmail for the combat rules, here's a bunch of RP and adventuring/exploring rules about dungeons, oh and if you don't have Chainmail, here's some quick'n'dirty combat rules". That's actually the one area that I think WW has historically gotten mostly right.

From my experience with playing and GMing the oWorld of Darkness games (up through a playtest of Exalted a while back), it seems that the WW designers had a play-style specific to themselves that didn't get fully translated into the rules which led to a disconnect between the in-book fiction and pretty much every game I've been part of.

Now, granted, many of these problems were just 'inherited' from the current popular game-design trends unexamined. Let's take the Merits and Flaws system: pretty much the same as GURPS or any Advantage/Disadvantage system from that era.

You have a pool of points to spend during character creation.
You can take "Flaws" to get more points.
You can spend points on "Merits" or on the rest of your character sheet.

This leads to a "Character Creation mini-game" where players try to buy the least negative Flaws in order to have a large pool to buy the cool Merits. I have often seen 90% of the flaws taken never even enter play in a meaningful way, thus some players simply benefit from gaming the system and/or GM. It really took a game that handled Merits and Flaws very differently for me to see how the previous M&F systems actually _encourages_ 'unsportsmanlike conduct'.

In "The Shadow of Yesterday", a indie fantasy game, you have things called "Keys" on your Char Sheet. Keys are directly tied into how you earn XP (in fact, the only other way to earn XP is by explicit GM End-Of-Session Award and you get way more XP from Keys).

Keys define the character personality, shortcomings, and drive much in the ways Merits and Flaws attempted to, but with a major difference. Keys describe events that a character may experience or initiate, which they then get to proactively claim XP for (i.e. the GM doesn't 'hand out' XP, the players claim it in the scene where the action happens).

In a WW style Merit/Flaw system, if you take, say, "Addiction" or "Compulsion" (usually ranging between 1pt to 3pt flaws), then the only mechanical effect it has on game-play is usually a) 1-3 more Bonus Points to spend on Character Creation, and b) Spend a Willpower point to avoid the Compulsion/Addiction (and for addictions, if you can't get your stuff you loose 1-3 dice out of each pool, or make a will power check and if you fail that you hand control of your Character to the ST). This tell me that the writers don't want the GM to trust their players with a character who's has an addiction problem, and basically invokes the 'Golden Rule", i.e. the ST can hijack any character from any player at any time (kinda DEprotagonizing, don'tcha think?).

Contrast this to TSOY, where all goblin characters have the "Key of Glittering Gold" which reads:

Key of Glittering Gold: Your character loves wealth. Gain 1 XP every time you make a deal that favors you in wealth. Gain 2 XP every time you finish an adventure with more wealth than you started with. Gain 5 XP every time you double your wealth. Buyoff: Give away everything you own except what you can carry lightly.

So every time your Goblin manages to steal enough gold to double his wealth, the Player actually gets rewarded, directly with 5 XP. Every time (quite a bit, as TSOY and WW run on similar XP systems). The ST can't have you roll a willpower point and then hijack your character and _make_ him play "greedy" if you fail. There is no Stick (besides, "Don't do anything, you don't get XP"), there is only the Carrot. Which actually encourages the player to behave like a greedy little shit.

Let's take another example:

Phobia, Severe (3pt WW Flaw): Make a willpower roll, on a failure, you run screaming (more de-protagonism), on less than 3 successes you stand frozen (yet more de-protagonism).

Key of the Coward (TSOY): Your character avoids combat like the plague. Gain 1 XP every time your character avoids a potentially dangerous situation. Gain 3 XP every time your character stops a combat using other means besides violence. Buyoff: Leap into combat with no hesitation.

*One thing to note about the "Buyoff". If a TSOY player decided to "Buyoff" their key (by performing the listed action in-game), they get a BIG chunk of XP and can never take that Key again in the game.

With the TSOY system, the player always has a choice: a) Ignore my Fear and jump into Combat (might loose a couple XP), or b) actually ROLEPLAY a Coward and GET XP for it. This empowers the player to really play their concept to the hilt, and leaves open meaningful choice in tense situations. In TSOY the Coward can make the choice to forgo XP in order to jump into a scary situation and save his companions. In WW, it's down to a random roll (oops, so sorry, your bad-ass 300 year old vampire freezes in fear because you only got 2 successes).

My big problem, is that these types of game-design decisions (which feel overlooked) haven't even been addressed in the new WW systems. That's what disillusioned me from WW, the fact that once the RPG community realized that rules structures actually directly influence _how_ the story manifests, WW barely addressed the shortcomings of earlier games because they had sacred cows of design that they just re-used in the new games.

Hope that clears a few things up. This is a heavy subject for me , so I hope I didn't come across as too snarky. I still have a fondness for a lot of the WW game-worlds, but their rules-system has let me down.

[Requia ☣]

Ah, ok.  I thought you were talking about barebones skill systems.  The flaws system from WW I also don't like, but more because flaw systems tend to encourage twinkery rather than roleplaying (just look for flaws that don't really hurt you).  The complications system from M&M is the only one I ever really liked.  The TSOY stuff... I'll have to think about that.

Hmm, I suppose the addictions from SPECIAL work well too, though that was never a primarily P&P system.

[Jasper]

The Keys idea is a good one.  It shows a much better understanding of how to incentivize gamers and make it more fun at the same time.

[Requia ☣]

The concept is sound, my big concern is that they're the kind of thing that potentially encourages players to screw each other over for XP, particularly the coward one, you can be a greedy little shit without betraying your comrades (though betraying them might net you even more), but being afraid to help them in a fight? Not so great in most games.

Which would be awesome in say, Paranoia, but not so great for a lot of other games.  But I only have two examples, and I don't know the style of play of TSOY, so it might work out in context, or those two might not be representative.

[Telarus]

The concept is sound, my big concern is that they're the kind of thing that potentially encourages players to screw each other over for XP, particularly the coward one, you can be a greedy little shit without betraying your comrades (though betraying them might net you even more), but being afraid to help them in a fight? Not so great in most games.

Which would be awesome in say, Paranoia, but not so great for a lot of other games.  But I only have two examples, and I don't know the style of play of TSOY, so it might work out in context, or those two might not be representative.

In TSOY it is explicitly setup from the beginning by the GM and Players if it a cooperative or cut-throat game (this is another key design decision, a visible "switch" if you will). In the latter, maneuvering thieves guilds and mercenary companies against another player can be valid moves, as long as all players know to expect it. But everyone up front should know if they're playing Risk or if it's against the social contract to maneuver against other players.

[Telarus]

I was also using Keys that have obvious parallels in the WW merit&flaw system.

Here's the other thing I like about Keys. They are explicit "Flags" ('Flag' is current game design jargon for something written on the character-sheet that is important to the PLAYER in terms of how the plot plays out). If you as GM have this intricate plot about the political intrigue infesting the more and more corrupt Dwarven Court (and associated Trade Houses), based around gritty film-noir snooping around and getting into more trouble than the players can handle.... well, you have to be flexible. Having a player grab Key of Unrequited Love is going to change the plot a little. Having another player take Key of of the Guardian and Name the first player's character as his Ward is going to change it more. Having a third player choose to be the "love interest's older brother" and take Key of Power is going to change it EVEN MORE (see where I'm going with this). This allows the player's background to actually be Important, to give them Narrative control (which previously was only GM territory), but to give it to them in a way moderated by the game rules (just like Combat).

Also note, most characters start with 2-3 keys in TSOY, and can have up to 5 (but that means your character has some conflicting motivations, most likely). Here's some more representative Keys:

Key of Bloodlust
Your character enjoys overpowering others in combat. Gain 1 XP every time your character defeats
someone in battle. Gain 3 XP for defeating someone equal to or more powerful than your character
(equal or higher combat skill.) Buyoff: Be defeated in battle.

Key of Conscience
Your character has a soft spot for those weaker than their opponents. Gain 1 XP every time your character
helps someone who cannot help themselves. Gain 2 XP every time your character defends someone
with might who is in danger and cannot save themselves. Gain 5 XP every time your character
takes someone in an unfortunate situation and changes their life to where they can help themselves.
Buyoff: Ignore a request for help.

Key of Faith
Your character has a strong religious belief that guides her. Gain 1 XP every time she defends her faith
to others. Gain 2 XP whenever this character converts someone to her faith. Gain 5 XP whenever this
character defends her faith even though it brings her great harm. Buyoff: Your character renounces her
beliefs.

Key of Fraternity
Your character has someone she is sworn to, a friend who is more important than anyone else. Gain 1
XP every time this character is present in a scene with your character (maximum 3 per adventure).
Gain 2 XP whenever your character has to make a decision that is influenced by them. Gain 5 XP
every time your character defends them by putting herself at risk. Buyoff: Sever the relationship with
this person.

Key of the Guardian
Your character has a ward, someone who depends on her for security and protection. Gain 1 XP every
time this character is present in a scene with your character. Gain 2 XP whenever your character has
to make a decision that is influenced by them. Gain 5 XP every time your character rescues them from
harm. Buyoff: Sever the relationship with this person.

Key of the Impostor
Sometimes your entire life is a lie. You gain 1 XP whenever you pass yourself off as someone/
something you're not. You gain 2 XP whenever you convince others in spite of serious skepticism. You
gain 5 XP whenever your story survives a deliberate, focused, "Hey everybody, look!" attempt to reveal
your identity. Buyoff: Confess your imposture to those duped.

Key of the Masochist
Your character thrives on personal pain and suffering. Gain 1 XP every time she is bloodied and 3 XP
every time she is broken. Buyoff: Flee a source of physical or psychic damage.

Key of the Mission
Your character has a personal mission that she must complete. Gain 1 XP every time she takes action
to complete this mission (2 XP if this action is successful.) Gain 5 XP every time she takes action that
completes a major part of this mission. Buyoff: Abandon this mission.

Key of the Outcast
Your character has lost fellowship or membership in an organization - which could just be a culture, or
a specific cross-cultural group. This separation defines your character as much as membership in the
organization defines its members. Gain 1 XP every time her status with this organization comes up.
Gain 2 XP every time her disassociation brings her harm. Gain 5 XP every time the separation brings
your character great pain and suffering. Buyoff: Regain membership in the organization.

Key of Renown
"You must be the worst assassin I've ever heard of." "But you have heard of me." You gain 1 XP whenever
you see to it that your name and deeds are known, by bragging about them or making sure there
are witnesses. You gain 2 XP whenever you put yourself at risk to do something unnecessary or foolish
that will add to your reputation. You gain 5 XP whenever you risk your life to take credit for your actions
(bragging that you were the one who killed the Duke's son, for example.). Buyoff: Give someone
else credit for an action that would increase your renown.

Key of Power
You don't even care what you do with it, you just want it. You gain 1 XP whenever you earn a boon
from someone important, earn a slight gain in prestige, or make a rival look bad. You gain 3 XP whenever
you ruin, kill, or otherwise eliminate a rival, and improve your own position because of it. Buyoff:
Relinquish your power and position.

Key of Vengeance
Your character has a hatred for a particular organization, person, or even species or culture. Gain 1 XP
every time your character hurts a member of that group or a lackey of that person. Gain 2 XP every
time your character strikes a minor blow at that group or person (killing a member of the organization
or one of the person's lackeys, disrupting their life, destroying their property). Gain 5 XP every time
your character strikes a major blow at that group or person. Buyoff: Let your enemy go.

Key of the Vow
Your character has a vow of personal behavior that she has sworn not to break. This could be a dietary
restriction, a requirement to pray at sunbreak every morning, or something else like that. Gain 1 XP
for every adventure in which your character does not break this vow. Gain 2 XP every time your character
does not break this vow even though it causes her minor harm or inconvenience. Gain 5 XP
every time your character does not break this vow even though it causes her great harm. Buyoff: Break
this vow.

Key of Love
Your character has a deep love, whether friendly, erotic, or familial, for someone else. Gain 1 XP every
time this character is present in a scene with your character. Gain 2 XP whenever your character has
to make a decision that is influenced by them. Gain 5 XP every time your character puts herself in
harm's way or makes a sacrifice for them. Buyoff: Sever the relationship with this person.

Key of Unrequited Love
Your character has a love for someone who does not return this love. Gain 1 XP whenever your character
has to make a decision that is influenced by them. Gain 2 XP every time your character attempts
to win their affection. Gain 5 XP every time your character puts herself in harm's way or makes a sacrifice
for them. Buyoff: Abandon your pursuit of this person or win their love.

[Telarus]

I just read an epically long thread on RPG.net about "Social conflict mechanics". It mentioned Exalted 2's Social system quite a bit, so I'm going to have to correct the above to applying to Exalted 1, and go and read Exalted 2 before forming an opinion about those mechanics.

Apologies if I stepped on the conversation. Vartox, do you run the 2nd ed system? If so what are your opinions on the Social mechanics?