Who else here plays Exalted?

[Zweihänder]

I don't play, but I DO Storytell. I actually enjoy that more than playing.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

My longest running (and overall best) game is an Exalted game. It's currently on hiatus due to work issues.

I actually started running the game after borrowing the main book from a co-worker. I had it under an arm on an evening gathering. While I was looking at it after dinner, a player spots it. "Dude! We're playing Exalted?" He then proceeds to explain the game to the rest of the group. Large hand gestures abound. My group then asks me when we can start.

How could I refuse that?

It's a fun game, but it's always a bit unpredictable, and I'm still occasionally amazed at the things my players manage to pull off.

I think I fell in love with the game when one player's choices led to a moonlit chase scene across rooftops while throwing knives. Their failure in that battle led to the death of their mentor. Oh yeah, one player created a cloak of unnatural night to mask his movements, and the lead NPC was on fire from tapping into so much elemental power.

Croth, you willing to accept the premise that some rules support certain play expierences better than others? If you're not, than any arguements about the games one way or another are pretty pointless. And... Err... uh... I need a witty jibe here.... Ah! I'll leave you to your excersizes in self-disulsional satisfaction in your games.

To answer your last question though. The game doesn't make the exceptional commonplace. What it does is present a system of mechanics that helps support trying exceptional things. Most of the time play happens in a way that the rules support. If I'm 20% better off while doing missions for the king, I'll probably do them. Likewise, if by giving a description of my action, I gain a bonus, I'm likely to describe my actions.

The difference, though one of illustration, is between these two action declarations.
1. "I'm gonna shoot him. Three times. Holy arrows."
2. "Ok, so he came in from above, and as I'm parrying it to the side, I'm going to swing around him. I'll keep the one sword high to keep him open and slash low."

That's the same guy.

It's not that you can't describe your actions in D&D, it's just that there's no reward to. Thus, I'm the only person at the table who does so. In Exalted, everyone does, because there's a tangable reward for it.

Also, the guy who I used in my previous examples says "I might try stuff like that in D&D, but even with a sword it's not like I parry. I was hit, or I wasn't."

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

No, cool is about the people playing not about the game. It is possible though that people thing so since characters in one game can do less then characters in another game. But that would mean that cool equals powerful, and I don't buy that.

Of course it doesn't, or else SenZar would be one of the coolest games around. No, what I mean is that in Exalted, there is a tangible reward for describing your actions visually and attempting to do normally impossible things. In D&D, there isn't - what a character can and cannot do is rigidly defined, even for epic-level characters.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

One of the many things they learned was going into the Wyld is not an intelligent solution to a problem. This was during the brief stint when we had a Night caste Solar who exalted from a noble house accompanying us. The Lunar was getting more and more obvious about his tell (the first animal heart he ate was a stag, so he had antlers). In order explain this when dragonbloods started noticing was to say he had been to the Wyld. Now, in order to stand up to truth charms, we would actually have to go to the Wyld. The plan was to find a patch of Wyld, let him go in and go out, and go back to the town. Course, the Wyld isn't predictable that way. The lot of us ended up in the Wyld and the Lunar is the only one who stands immune. After fighting grass and talking to a cow, the monk ends up with a tentacle coming out of his stomach and another coming out of his back. The noble ends up with gazelle horns. Such a great plan.

Heh. One of my players is considering getting the Wyld-shaping technique. We will see if it is worth the trouble dealing with all the neighboring Fair Folk...

 

[Jdvn1]

Oh, figured I should add to what I said before.

I have played other WW games, and mostly because I haven't found any other systems that could do Werewolf quite as well (for example). Exalted is neat, but has better competition.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

It's easier to wear leather jackets and smoke in exalted???

Doing the "impossible" in a game designed for doing the "impossible" is not cool and not un cool. Its like going insane in CoC, its what the game is designed to do. Its like summoning a demon in Sorcerer, sure it is unusual and a rare ability in the real world but all the PCs can do it. Now, if the focus on the game involves normal people doing these things (like in D&D where it is hard) then you might have a point, but if the game makes the impossible like chewing gum and walking how can that be seen as exceptional?

So if you see any action movies or fantasy movies with great stunts, you don't go and say: "Whoa... that was cool!" The Star Was light saber duels leave you cold? The scene in "Return of the King" where Legolas kills the Mumakil did nothing for you?

I call those scenes "cool", and I am sticking to it. And Exalted can do such scenes much more easily than D&D, since its very mechanics encourage the players to attempt to do reckless stunts.

And D&D doesn't, since it is primarily about resource management. Instead, it encourages a different style of play that Exalted is bad at - that of the Fantasy Technothriller. In D&D, you keep careful track of your resources in whatever form you might be, and careful planning and well-trained tactics will succeed much more often than reckless stunts.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Nobilis or In Nomine. In Nomine is closer in theme, but Nobilis is a cooler system.

I stand in awe before Nobilis, but I am not sure if I can wrap my head around the system enough to actually run it. In this, it is much like Exalted: The Fair Folk which was not coincidentally written by the same author ("I attack my foe with Social Problems?!?").

 

[beepeearr]

See, I would find those same actions much cooler in D&D because of how difficult they are to pull off, as opposed to the relative simplicity of the action. I don't want to be rewarded for saying I am going to do something, I want to be rewarded for actually accomplishing the action. That being said I don't exactly run standard D&D games either, I award my players for good roleplay and have various houserules which change how we play, for instance lots of actions say, draw an attack of opportunity, if damage is done you automatically fail. Instead I allow a concentration check to fight thru the pain, and made concentration a class skill for the fighter. Also I award Karma in my games, similiar to action points or the like. Instead of XP rewards I give out Karma which can be used in lots of different ways, the one that sees the most use though is spending a karma to re-roll, or spending 2 to make some one else re-roll.

But mechanics have never stopped me from trying the next to impossible in a normal game before, remember a nat 20 is always a success . The last game I played, our party was hired to vandalize an estates grain supplies. During the climatic scene I Jumped from silo roof to silo roof lighting the oil I had already doused them with With a torch I was carrying, while being shot at by 20 guards with crossbows. Each silo was ten feet wide and 20 feet apart, and I ended with a jump over the estates wall from the top of a fifty foot silo. I had to make more jump checks and balance checks than I can remeber, and only made it out of the compound with three hit points left. Was it easy, no. Did I almost die, yeah. Would a single failed roll have meant disaster, yeah, but thats what made it cool. Sure I could hve taken the easy way out, and did something safer, carrying the torch made me an easy target afterall. I could have waited a few rounds and activated a few powers first, but more time would have benefitted my enemies as well.

My point is nothing worth doing ever comes easy. It's the added risk of failure that makes dangerous actions so cool. Ask yourself was Legolas's actions cool because of what he did or because what would have happened if he had failed his balance or climb checks.

 

[Jdvn1]

I stand in awe before Nobilis, but I am not sure if I can wrap my head around the system enough to actually run it. In this, it is much like Exalted: The Fair Folk which was not coincidentally written by the same author ("I attack my foe with Social Problems?!?").

It's tough at first--it certainly takes some getting used to. One of my PbP games is a Noblis game (my first every Nobilis game! ) and I think is a good example of the game (if you care to look at David Artel in my sig).

We're also can take in another character now, I think.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

See, I would find those same actions much cooler in D&D because of how difficult they are to pull off, as opposed to the relative simplicity of the action. I don't want to be rewarded for saying I am going to do something, I want to be rewarded for actually accomplishing the action. That being said I don't exactly run standard D&D games either, I award my players for good roleplay and have various houserules which change how we play, for instance lots of actions say, draw an attack of opportunity, if damage is done you automatically fail. Instead I allow a concentration check to fight thru the pain, and made concentration a class skill for the fighter. Also I award Karma in my games, similiar to action points or the like. Instead of XP rewards I give out Karma which can be used in lots of different ways, the one that sees the most use though is spending a karma to re-roll, or spending 2 to make some one else re-roll.

But mechanics have never stopped me from trying the next to impossible in a normal game before, remember a nat 20 is always a success . The last game I played, our party was hired to vandalize an estates grain supplies. During the climatic scene I Jumped from silo roof to silo roof lighting the oil I had already doused them with With a torch I was carrying, while being shot at by 20 guards with crossbows. Each silo was ten feet wide and 20 feet apart, and I ended with a jump over the estates wall from the top of a fifty foot silo. I had to make more jump checks and balance checks than I can remeber, and only made it out of the compound with three hit points left. Was it easy, no. Did I almost die, yeah. Would a single failed roll have meant disaster, yeah, but thats what made it cool. Sure I could hve taken the easy way out, and did something safer, carrying the torch made me an easy target afterall. I could have waited a few rounds and activated a few powers first, but more time would have benefitted my enemies as well.

My point is nothing worth doing ever comes easy. It's the added risk of failure that makes dangerous actions so cool. Ask yourself was Legolas's actions cool because of what he did or because what would have happened if he had failed his balance or climb checks.

Well, Legolas's actions were cool because of what he did. I never once thought that he might fail. It never crossed my mind. The only scene that really got me on the level of uncertianty was Sam vs. the giant spider.

First question: "Is it less cool for a rogue to sneak past a series of guards because he has a higher chance of success than the fighter?"

Second, have you ever said "You know, that sucked. Roll again."?

Third, does it ever reach the point where your chances of success are slim enough that trying becomes dumb instead of fun?

Fourth, does having rules for cargo trade help a pirate game?