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[OOC Exalted]: Diamond in the Rough
Inglorious Coyote
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Okay, since there is an overflow of people in Rainfall's game, the prospect of another game has been raised, and I've toyed with the idea of running a game, though my experience with the setting and system are not exactly great.
So, should I decide to run a game, I'm curious what type of game would people like to play? What kind of stuff would you like to be doing?
So, should I decide to run a game, I'm curious what type of game would people like to play? What kind of stuff would you like to be doing?
Inglorious Coyote on
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I am desperately interested in playing Exalted, but due to work, my time constraints are always changing, so an IRC game is out of the question for me. but something PBP would be great. If that were an option.
And it should be Epic. And lots of Social stuff.
KrataLightblade has also raised his voice in encouragement for getting to play in an Exalted game. But I'm using his computer at the moment, so we're playing messenger girl at the moment.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
Why only PbP Thanatos. Is it that you're afraid your lack of a SOUL would show through in mIRC? Don't lie.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
which is very possible.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
That is untill Exalted. Unfortunately I don't have anybody to play with IRL so the next logical step is to look into playing it online. Playing with you guys aside, is there any really good place to go to play Exalted in general online? And another question... is Exalted any good for somebody with literally zero prior experience in PnP gaming? Damnit, I just love the absurd "over the top" level of power it seems to let you play around with.
Because you made it here?
EDIT: I'm not crazy, it got removed because it must of gotten put here by accident when this thread was made. It was pretty random too considering it was a topic about running an Exalted game and me commenting on how awesome something unrelated was.
Ooooooo-kaaaayyyy...
When this thread was made, my post about the Alchemicals was in this thread. You removed it though but that's what that the "why is my post in this thread" post was in relation to. Nothing to see here people, move along now.
I'm interested in all manner of character types, too, so I'd fit in in most Exalted games. *L*
I'll be waaaaaatching.
Yeah, as I said, I'm a total newbie to all of this and I have literally zero idea what's going on or what I'm doing (About anything!), aside from "oh my god power overwhelming this sounds so awesome".
Help I'm a lost and confused newbie. *Has literally never touched a PnP game prior to this*
EDIT: I gotta stop thinking of questions after I make a post. Anyways... how hard is it to learn Exalted's system and get into it all if you've never done D20-anything before?
Example: You're trying to hit someone with your Grand Daiklave(really really big and deadly sword)
So you add together your Dexterity+Melee, add any bonuses you have to your Accuracy and whatnot, and you roll that many dice.
Any die that rolls a 7 or higher counts as a success, and 10s count double. If the guy has a Defence of, say, 10, you need to roll 10 successes, and then you roll your damage(and add any extra successes you got from your hit roll to the damage pool)
Very simple, eh?
Then you do damage etc etc, but basically everything is calculating dice pools and rolling a shitload of D10s.
It's a lot more intuitive and simple to me than d20 is, and it's not particularly newbie-unfriendly(although the amount of choices you have is rather dizzying)
EDIT: I realize I didn't answer your first question there, PbP is 'play by post' where rather than sitting down around a table or having sessions in IRC or some other chat client, you play via forum posts.
I think Exalted is ridiculously complicated compared to D20, and waaaayyyy harder to learn. That being said, it's also fucking awesome.
All the class bonuses and levels and weirdness guh. The only part of Exalted that's complex is the hojillion charms and how they all interact with each other.
And there are tons of things which White Wolf is, shall we say, less than clear on. Not to mention that their page references generally suck when they refer you to stuff.
The books are all set up similarly enough that lack of indexes aren't a huge problem, and sure some of the page references reference pages that don't exist, but that's half the fun!
I've never played Exalted before but have read a lot about it and it looks awesome.
PbP would be best for me too.
Personally, having "grown up" on 2nd edition D&D, then afterward moving to the Storyteller system White Wolf uses, as well as having some experience with the L5R rules and GURPS and Shadowrun, I have to say of all of them, I prefer the Storyteller and its variants greatly. I find that it's more intuitive for me personally, that skills are not "level" based, but rather, based on what you've trained in, and I personally think "classes" are something that we should've thrown out before D&D was ever thought up.
That said, some people find the system confusing. A lot of the time, this is because they're approaching it the wrong way... they're looking at it like a class and level system and it's not and never will be. Sure, in Exalted you've got Essence, and in Scion you've got Legend, but those are much looser than the D&D system is. Same with Generation, Rank, Arete, Balance, and any other of the random words White Wolf picks out of a dictionary to describe the "core" power scale that game.
The fact that you've never played a d20 game will actually help you when you try to learn Exalted. d20 games come with a particular mindset that's hard to overcome successfully.
Rainfall pretty much encapsulated the Exalted system perfectly. You roll a number of dice determined by your basic Attributes (everyone has nine of them automatically, you assign "dots" to them and that helps determine your basic uhh... attributes... such as whether you're really strong or hideously ugly), plus Abilities (Melee, for example, for swording at people, Presence for making an impression, Performance for singing, Lore to decipher First Age tech, that sort of thing), and any applicable bonuses (Say, that sword is much lighter and easier to swing than the huge ass scythe that guy over there's carrying, so you get an Accuracy bonus, and he doesn't).
The rules get more complicated when it comes to magic, naturally. It always does. But essentially, every magical power in the game is called a "Charm", pretty much (there are a few exceptions, but let's not get overcomplicated). Each Charm allows you to do something specific that gives you a major edge over mortals. Some Charms, called Excellencies, are basic "dice adders", "success ensurers", or "rerolls". Pay this much Essence (the stuff you power your magic with is called Essence), you get this many dice, or you get to add this many automatic successes to your roll, or pay another cost instead and reroll if you don't like what you got the first time.
Other Charms get more complicated, but essentially, every Charm is based on something your character can do that makes you better at it. Solar, Abyssal, Sidereal, and Dragon-Blooded Charms are based on Abilities, so you might have Melee Charms or Sail Charms. Lunar Charms are based on Attributes, so they get Strength or Intelligence charms, that sort of thing. This makes Lunars more flexible, but their charms also tend to be less specific, so someone with Melee charms gets more out of his combat charms when he's swording at someone than a Lunar would get, but the guy with all the Melee charms gets nothing for his bow, while the Lunar keeps his bonuses from his basic Dexterity charms.
One thing that's rarely mentioned, but that every Exalted player loves, is Stunts. Stunts allow you to do epic, off-the-wall things that you'd never be able to pull off "by the book". For example, by the book's rules, you can't block a sword with your bare hand. If you whip out a Stunt, you can. And it's pretty easy to Stunt, too, since all it requires is a cool description of your action. If you throw out a "I spin in a circle and slap the flat of the blade out of the way, ducking under it and readying for an attack", you get to parry that sword that you couldn't before. And you even get a dice bonus, because Stunts are measured in either 1-die, 2-dice, or 3-dice levels. One die is a simple description, like I just did there. Two dice is more elaborate, and generally has to use the environment around you in some way. Three dice stunts are described as "There's no hard rule... it just makes everyone at the table go 'wow'". Essentially, if you stun your fellow players with your purified awesome, you'll get a three-die stunt if your ST was impressed enough.
Mind you, the addition of one or two dice to your rolls will rarely make or break you, but it's a reward that you don't have to pay anything for, and it encourages you to get more into the game and make it cooler for everyone. It also, if you succeed on your action, allows you to recover small amounts of Essence, or if you pull off a three-die stunt, you can, if your ST allows, actually choose to gain an extra experience point at the end of the session for being really awesome.
I've drifted from the point a bit.
Point is, once you get the hang of one Storyteller game, you've got the hang of almost all of them. IT's just a matter of getting the specifics down after that. And Exalted is, in my personal experience, absolutely not the hardest game to learn on the market. In my experience, it was pretty damned easy, actually.
But others disagree, so I digress.
I have run several games. If I ran it, it'd be heavily pbp, with a little IRC to deal with anything faster than social combat.
Planeswalker
Will of the Council - Starting with you, each player votes for death goblin.
In D&D, you may have a strength of 18, and you don't really need to know anything more than that, especially since, in the end, D&D is a tactical fantasy combat simulation.
In Storyteller, you may have a strength of 5 dots, but you also need to know what having such a high strength score means for the character, because it is a narrative game. The fun is in the story.
Essentially, in the case of Exalted, you can't just be the "Sword Guy". Your character is on a whole other power scale than most other RPG's, and such epic characters really need to have epic descriptions, or at least a solid foundation on which to build an epic story. If all you do is kill mortals automatically on every attack, then yeah, your character is a certified bad ass, an unstoppable juggernaut of destructive fury, but he is also boring as hell to play.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Dids on a character spot though
How many more people do I have to offer the sweet, sweet candy that is someone else's soul to?
Run-ons!
That said, the setting is currently up in the air, but I do know it will be in a large city with something approaching a royal court, and I'd be reserving just one slot for an RL friend.
So that said, if that's the plan, the roster looks like this:
Inglorious Coyote (dunno)
Reynolds (if he could because I love Reynolds)
lonelyahava (asked)
KrataLightblade (got booted from Rainfall's game)
Thanatos (you know the real one not that Moe Fwacky feller)
Digito
Rhaka
Lyrical (RL friend).
no more.
Here we have the same problem that Rainfall had with too many players. However, my RL group typically has 6-7 players and they are all 100xp Exalts of different varieties. So, one could say that this is my thing. That said, you're not my RL group of friends so I may not be able to cope with how you play as much and it'd take some adjustment. In short, if any of you feel like dropping, that'd be fine.
I do intend to do things like regular combat in IRC, simply because it's faster.
Planeswalker
Will of the Council - Starting with you, each player votes for death goblin.
Admittedly I'm kinda nervous being as I've never done anything like this before, but... what's the worst that could happen? One tiny question, is there any kind of free resource online along the lines of the D20 SRD for understanding the mechanics and getting a feel for just what kind of power I'd be playing around with and such?
Unfortunately, not really, no. However, if you can get ahold of the core Exalted book, that's all you "need".
Every other book is nothing but more background information and more lists of powers. *L* Mind you, both of those things are really good to have, but they're not necessities at all. If you like, I, and many others, would be more than happy to assist you in making characters.
And a social heavy game sounds different, hum... buuut I gotta start somewhere, and I'd really rather start with PA'ers.
Because what good is army that can't fight the guys you're fighting?
Because then you come back and they're like 'oh hey here's three Manses we captured while you were out. Thanks for those War charms that buffed us to be almost as good as Dragonblooded!'
There's also the fact to be considered that sure, you can pound an army, buyt if you don't bring one of your own, the Exalts leading the other army are gonna pound YOU while you're busy taking care of their minions.
You're mistaking 'over the top' for 'stupid', I think.
Yes. Because many solar charms include "unnatural mental compulsion". And I doubt anyone anywhere would find "build a massive chocolate bar" to be directly counter to their life's purpose, which is really the only defense against mental compulsion.
Here's the problem, though. The only massive empire of the game world has an army of Exalts who would stand in the way of your path to confectionary dominance.
Also, "giant kit-kat bar" would not be an appropriate weapon. All the bad-ass weapons are artifacts from a lost age. Though you are bad-ass enough that you could kill one person with it, similar to how Riddick killed that one dude with a teacup. Only when you do it, the stars are in alignment and you literally glow with cosmic power, and afterwards your target would most likely explode into a fine red mist.
Think over-the-top wuxia film as opposed to Terry Gilliam cartoon.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23