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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 4796386" data-attributes="member: 54846">My experience with this is the opposite. I played in an Exalted game for two years; Exalted is a lot like D&D, in that you advance in power, naturally. There's no personal responsibility built into the game. The one real big difference in terms of tone, however, is a sense of entitlement - the game basically tells the PCs, "By Godly decree, you should be ruling the world. But you're not; you're a scapegoat. Have fun." But at the beginning of the game, the GM told the group, "I expect you all to have goals for your character, and the game will be you working to succeed at your goals. I don't care what the goal is - my job is to challenge you as you try to achieve it, and have the world respond appropriately." He was very player empowering. One of our PCs' goals was to be the greates general who ever lived, so she needed an army, obviously.So we built a nation. We didn't topple one tyrant and settle down - we toppled a dozen despots, and had their nations swear allegiance to us. We negotiated with neighboring states, made deals, etc, and built a big fat bloc. We worked to acquire magical power, a good standard of living, and amassing more political power. We created a safe haven for others like us (who, in the setting, were hunted like dogs by an empire), and made a lot of good happen. I left the campaign after a point, and hear that the PCs went after the big bads of the setting in one big giant battle royale. The whole game was built on making a Change in the setting, based on what we wanted.I'd say we spent 3/4ths of the campaign as rulers. And to be honest, that was the most enjoyable period of the game, for me. I had a great time with the micromanagement of "How can we improve these people's lives? How about a Pony Express? What ways can we shore up our diplomatic front?" There was some delegation, but that delegation was, "I dispatch a spy to go there" "I tell a sorcerer to research this"; time consuming, slow moving stuff.It also made sense for us to "adventure" ourselves: in Exalted, the PCs are Solars, which literally are demi-gods. There just was no one else who could tackle the threats we faced, because mortals are weak little things. Not to mention that the adventuring itself is personal - sending someone else to travel to the underworld to find the soul of the one guy who mastered the Epic Badassery Kung-Fu doesn't work, because you want to learn the Epic Badassery Kung-Fu, so it should be you who goes down there for the tutelage. There's a reason people periodically post on these boards asking for mass combat rules: they want to run armies. So, you can't take your army to the dungeon, but you can take your army and shoot it at enemy armies.As to the "It doesn't make sense to go adventuring when you're the ruler", well, two things to that, actually. One: Your kings and generals of old usually went into battle with their armies. Granted, they sat in the back for the most part, but the precedence is there. You can also have issues of duels, honor, etc. Secondly, take Star Trek; here you have the captain and his first officer doing all the adventuring, as opposed to specialized members of the crew. That's right, the guy IN CHARGE is doing the recon and investigating. So, at least there's precedence there, too, if you're willing to allow some belief suspension. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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