Finally Done Exalted 1st edition, first impression.

Yeah...its something like that  

People have been telling me to play Exalted for about a year now. Now about two months ago I got a copy of the 1st edition Exalted book and as I’m going to get the second edition main book soon, I figured I should familiarize myself with the basics of the game first.

Now I have a bit of a beef with White Wolf, and Exalted in particular, through it isn’t entirely their fault, and like most of my problems, I can tract it back to one particular source. Order of the Stick Fans will not be surprised to learn that that source is none other than Rutee, who I must say spoiled Exalted for me before even playing it. For those of you who don’t know, Rutee was a person on the old forum with whom I would always disagree. on EVERYTHING. Literally, every single thing we would fight about, I felt like this was a cliché movie, except without the sexual tension.. One of the many things we came to blows over was play style, and she held up Exalted as an example of an ideal system, which in turn made me grow to resent Exalted. I know this isn’t really the game’s fault, but I figured if even half of Rutee’s claims were right, I just wouldn’t like it very much. Remarkably , however I actually committed myself to learning how to play the game simply because I wanted to get the references in the webcomic, KeyChain of Creation, which is quite good. So credit to them for making this article happen.

So here are my impressions that I had before going in.

1) It is made by White wolf, and you already know my views on them.

2) It claims to be avoiding the typical Lord of the Rings based fantasy style, and instead tries to draw inspiration from eastern and older legends. Now this is BS, Exalted draws plenty of inspiration from LoTR, just another generation of inspiration down the line but we’ll ignore that

3) The game’s story telling style focuses more upon drama and narrative rather than rules. My understanding of this system is simply that the game encourages people’s success and powers based more upon the drama of the situation rather than a set of world abiding rules that dominates the whole game. In more detail, the basis of the game is about telling a good story and adding to drama, as well as generally feeling cool. The main characters are designed to be super mega badass demi gods, and can pull off superhuman feats, mostly because they are the main characters. People’s existence/importance is measured by weather or not they have a name more than anything else. A lot of mega logic goes into the actual mechanics of the system.

4) According to the fans at least (and we aren’t suppose to trust them anyways) Exalted is more “mature” than D&D games, i.e. they address issues of sex, violence and drugs in game. Now in reality that just means they talk about it with less subtly than D&D, but what the hell let’s go with it.

5) And the thing that I’ve heard the most about Exalted is that the players are super powered, and it runs a bit like an epic game. Now people have claimed that they are saying epic in the Hercules/Beowulf sense of the word, but the general impression I’ve gotten is that it is more like playing characters from House of Flying Daggers, Dynasty Warriors, or God of War. So when I first started reading this book, I got about as far as the inspiration section, and when I read that one of their prime inspirations was Final Fantasy VII, I shut the book and went off to do something better, because a game based after a mediocrity like that is as absurd as a absurd as an economic policy based upon Atlas Shrugged…….wait. Now I don’t like uber-powered games very much, because it feels much like self gratification, and it isn’t really that challenging

Right, lets move onto the actual review. Now that doesn’t mean the system is wrong, it just means that such a style doesn’t agree with me, while high power games can be handled maturely and can be a lot of fun, more often than not they move into the realm of absurd. Call me odd in this day in age, but I’m really not that much impressed by films like Kill Bill, (and for that matter, Final Fantasy cut scenes, which are essentially the same thing) or games like God of War/Dynasty warriors. As my Three Musketeer review indicates, I much prefer when the world functions under a more realistic basis, and the heroes are actually challenged. Anime or movies with over sized swords and heroes blocking bullets with their swords bored me. Also, despite their claims of basing their game upon the Greek heroes, I don’t actually recall them being that godly. Ignoring Heracles, Achilles or other children of gods, most of them are just powerful in the typical sense . They were absurd, but more in a D&D/can keep fighting for hours straight sort of way. While Odysseus was certainly intelligent, and a skilled fighter, he never at an point does anything truly absurd, like slaughter half a million men in an afternoon (well, there was that bit where he offed around a hundred suitors in his dinner hall in a couple minutes…), his slaughter of unarmed drunk naked people aside. or block arrows with his sword, or break the walls of Troy with the sheer power of his mind. From what I recall from the Aeneaid two of the major characters are shot down by normal arrows. Beowulf may have been hardcore, I mean ripping a monsters arm off and swimming for days straight are pretty cool, but its not Final Fantasy in terms of absurdity (and it is hinted he is a damn liar when it comes to the swimming). I realize that Exalted is a game focused primarily on exactly that style of play, i.e. people who could watch the final main group fight in Kill Bill part one and didn’t die of laughter at its stupidity, so my complaints are a little redundant, but even so I had a lot of trouble getting into that sort of gaming mindset. Finally, I settled on a happy medium, I decided that instead of imagining my game as remake of a an action movie, bad anime, Final Fantasy or anything equally stupid, I imagined it like I was in a Wuxia film, with the power range going from Curse of the Golden Flower to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and no farther.

I would love to go into a tangent explaining why I personally think that action movies that are generally immature, and almost always inferior to more realistic movies (and games for that matter) but I realize that that is exactly the kind of attitude that Exalted is built to avoid so just for this article I’ll put aside my normal standards and judge Exalted as it is. It’s a niche game, a game tailored to suit one particular audience. D&D is, or at least tries (until 4th edition obviously) to be the polar opposite of that, a game aimed for a more general audience, so when judging Exalted I need to remove my own personal taste, or at least limit it because the game is aimed for people with different standards, and calling something bad simply because it isn’t made my tastes bad is just absurdly petty and rude That aside, this won’t prevent me from being critical, nor applying my general standards to the game, I just will try to restrain myself from attacking the game based upon my pet peeves.

. I’m dividing this into parts, for the sake of length, so for this part I’ll just overview it, and go into details in part two. Right, first off the premise and back story. We start out with the entire world being nothing but raw Chaos, called the Wyld, which is made up of pure “essence,” material that powers the world. Then these powerful super gods known as the “Primordials” took the raw chaos of the world and shaped it into a solid form, thus bringing about “creation”. It is noteworthy that the world is flat, and has five elemental poles, which are the Chinese elements (Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, and Wind). Each has a certain “pole” or center of power across the world, Fire is to the south (deserts), Wind to the north (tundra) water to the west (you figure it out) and Forest to the east (massive forests), with a giant mountain containing the pole of earth right n the center. Past the edges of the world is the Wyld, which is total chaos and is creation without order, inhabited in Fae, also know as Raksha, who are these chaotic and insane beings who view morals almost as toys to be constantly taken advantage of. In the world there are many spirits, and the greater of these are known as gods, who channel essence (the life blood of creation) for power, and gain essence through worship. They granted certain mortals, known as Exalted ,with the blessing of essence, , who are essentially demigods.

. Even the Exalted weakest are essentially gods among men, and the most powerful are full blown demigods, with powers such as harnessing their own energy to produce magical weapons and effects, using their essence to pull of superhuman martial arts style tricks or other types of superhuman feats of strength. There are five types of Exalted, with each type having five subtypes, and if this system seems a bit familiar to you, then you have most likely played White Wolf’s “World of Darkness” which uses the exact same formula. Unlike World of Darkness, the five different categories of creations, or in this case exalted, can coexist in the same world, and in theory you can have a party with all five, or at least the four most powerful types. The Five types of Exalted are the Solar, who are the ruling caste/most powerful species of Exalted, and are the only ones explained in detail in the core rule book, i.e. the default Exalted. There are the Lunar exalted, who are animal spirits meant to be the second in command/nature folk to he Solar, and are detailed in a separate book. There are the Sidreal (don’t ask me why they are called that) who are the fortune teller/martial arts specialists, and the Dragon-Blooded, who are the most basic Exalted and act as “foot solders” to an extent. When Exalted die, their essence goes to another body, who is basically them reincarnated, the only exception being the Dragon-Blooded who die normally. People “exalt” or discover their heritage/powers around puberty.

The gods felt like they hadn’t quite ripped off Greek Mythology quite enough (but then again, who has?) and work with the Exalted to overthrow the tyrannical Titans, I mean the Primordials…..yeah. Anyways, White Wolf surprises us all by being totally original, thinking completely outside the box and totally breaking away from the boundaries of typical fantasy…..banish the great evil people to the underworld where they now activlly plot to destroy the world using evil demonic styled monsters. Ok

Anyways, so the Exalted win, then the gods go off to basically get high and party (I’m not actually kidding that much), and the Exalted are left to run the world. However before being defeated the Primordials put a curse upon the Exalted, which makes them unable to control there emotions, and thus they tend to be really overly emotional…..all the time. At first I just thought that was kinda cool, but my friend say it acts as an excuse for the game to rationalize the massive amount of overly emotional people often find in anime. I don’t know if this theory is at all valid, but it’s amusing enough that we are going to go with it. Anyways, the Exalted empire is grand and all, but has the problem of being run by a bunch of overly emotional nut jobs, who eventually begin to ruin it. So the Sidereal conspire with the Dragon Born to over throw the other Exalted, and remake the empire. Then the Fey attack, but are driven off when some random chick finds the gears that run the world and ascends to some near omipowerful being known as the “Scarlet Empress” who brings stability to the world, by driving back the Fey and rules it with an Iron fist for 800 years. In that time, the Solar Exalted are hunted down by the Dragonblood when they first form and as of such can’t make a proper come back. The Empress holds the nation firmly in her control, with the blessed Island ruling the rest of creation Roman/British style, and deliberately weakens each aspect of the government by pitting them against each other so she may not be threatened. This was all fine and good until five years ago, when the Empress suddenly just vanished and now nobody knows what to do. Because she has so effectively crippled her own nation, they have no idea how to actually run anything. The legions essentially become private armies for the noble houses and return to the blessed Island, leaving the territories free to rebel and try to get independence, and on top of all that the Solar Exalted have returned en mass and are causing trouble tying to regain their old status, the monsters beyond creation are stirring, and a massive undead army lead by the “abyssal” Exalted, who serve these demi ods called the death lords, the “Yozi” who are massive Demon lords who are the spiritual reincarnation of the primordials, and rebel forces. The world is in chaos, and only some super muscle bound heroes with crazy hair and overly revealing clothing can save the day.

Now at this point I was pretty pumped, because in case you haven’t noticed, that’s pretty awesome. A falling empire desperately clinging onto its power, I thought it would be cool to be out there trying to protect the nation….then I realized you play as the Solar. Alright, misunderstanding, still a cool idea. What I like about White Wolf is they actually make an interesting setting, a complex but still understandable back story, and makes it feel really cool to get started.

Since I’m going into the mechanics and the books itself in part too, lets just finish with the Premise. Basically the Solar Exalted are really powerful beings, blessed by the gods with essential demi god status. Now I don’t like high powered, but I we have to do high powered, Exalted seems to be doing it the right way, making it clear that the Exalted aren’t human beings, so you it feels less like a wish fulfillment power gaming fiasco, and more like a legitimately cool and interesting style of playing. Basically the Exalted all have within them this “Essence” which I is the life blood of the universe, or in conventional terms, “Awesome reduced to an energy form” that they can use to as fuel to power their defying of the laws of physics. Which is I think is a pretty good system actually, makes the world seem a bit more logical and seems to be a good way to run a high powered game. For those who are use to D&D’s system of races and classes, Exalted is like all White Wolf games, so the system is based upon the idea of you gaining experience then trading it in to gain powers and experience. The game still uses the dramatic system of World of Darkness, so that it suffers from that, but other than that the system seems sound, if radically different. In part two I’ll cover the details, but the background and general conclusion.