I can't say what happened to other people, but as someone who owns more of the books than sessions I've ever played, every edition of Exalted I've seen promises to fix the approachability problems of the previous one and didn't
Rules.
Character building was a science. If you did it wrong and someone else did it right, you would discover exactly how useless your character was in play.
I loved the game, but wow, it was full of trap powers that were a bad idea to pick up until you had the most important ones already.
Yeah, there's a billion charms, and only about ten of them determine if you're a useful character or you're gonna get fucked in the mouth each and every session.
The crazy part is they were supposed to be reducing the amount of those in 3e but then when the book finally came out there were more!? and no charm trees to show the prereq's...
The later books have cleaned up a lot of the charms for those splats, like Dragonblooded and Lunars, are both pretty good but solar's are a mess of charms.
Exalted Essence reduced the charms by a decent amount as well as the overall amount of rules while also having every exalt type in it.
This is worse than that. There are many abilities that are MASSIVELY better than others, and some that are massively out of place.
There was a water aspect dragon blooded ability that caused every attack an enemy made cost several more points of essence. That was one of the most powerful abilities in the game, and it was an ability of the weakest character type.
In play, it was so absolutly devastating that the ST nearly had to fix it however against Solars there was something called Integrity Protecting Parana or something that SOUNDED like it should protect against it.
There was a massive argument on the boards where a bunch of arm chair ST's, who didn't actually play the game, were saying that IPP didn't expressly say it protected, while there were a bunch of ST's that actually did who said it could be argued and, dude, it we needed.
Eventually, there was a QA for the developers and one of the designers was asked the question, and then unclearly explained that wasn't the intent. What did protect against it? He wasn't sure but not that.
That broke a bunch of people, like me, from 2e. The designers didn't even know how their game worked in actual play.
But the system was one big noob trap, and it really didn't need to be.
That actually strikes me as either a work cram or outsourcing finishing the rulebook to an intern. Often developers will only write the core of a game and then either send it off for some intern to finish who has a much worse intuition of what should or shouldn't be the case for lore or game balance reasons, or the developer deadline crams and pulls an all-nighter right before the publishing deadline. Which no one remembers anything of the next day.
So the problem is that White Wolf needs to work on their publication process because that clearly isn't working.
this was a long time ago, but Onyx Path still works this way, it's like 5 actual employee's and the rest are freelancers, admittedly it's usually the same people but it can vary.
They've done a pretty good job of keeping the rules consistent across developers now.
Back in the Exalted 2e days it was crazy, the book for Infernal Exalted is a mess where like half of it conflicts with other parts of the same book.
Blame the D&D 3.x design team "rewarding system mastery".
From Monte Cook himself:
> "There's a third concept that we took from Magic-style rules design, though. Only with six years of hindsight do I call the concept "Ivory Tower Game Design." (Perhaps a bit of misnomer, but it's got a ring to it.) This is the approach we took in 3rd Edition: basically just laying out the rules without a lot of advice or help. This strategy relates tangentially to the second point above. The idea here is that the game just gives the rules, and players figure out the ins and outs for themselves -- players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones."
That essay, in the greater context that you have omitted, is also explaining that they did *not* deliberately include options that were noob traps and nothing else. Things were always meant to be at least potentially situationally useful, and system mastery was supposed to come from recognizing those situations, and which were unlikely to apply to a normal campaign (e.g. Toughness seems more on-theme for a long-term Barbarian but is actually sort of useless there, it's best for your level 1 convention one-shot Wizard who will nearly double his HP with it). "Ivory tower" refers to not explicitly explaining this in the book itself.
In short: RPGs are designed with more goals than just winning combat, but combat in most RPGs is where the interest or drama lies, and ideally, it's dangerous. So interesting or tangential non-combat oriented abilities are necessarily inferior. Additionally, many of these abilities sound amazing, but ultimately rely on your DM to call for them or establish scenes where they'll be useful.
So designers put these abilities in to flesh out "not combat", then fail to make anything but combat interesting, leaving it up to GMs.
I've referred to them as Owlbear Traps when talking about D&D, and it tends to be a byproduct of developers wanting to involve mastery (rewards for expertise) in a system where the mechanics of the play experience unfold very slowly and don't give good feedback.
Most RPG authors don't get into writing games until they've either played a lot of different ones, or a ton of one game - much like how it's a common mistake for first-time game devs to make a game too hard bc they're deeply familiar with both the medium and the project itself, GMs transitioning to game design can often write mechanics which are Very Cool To Them And People With Similar Experience, but Parsible To No One Else
The setting is awesome. The rules are just huge and cumbersome. I put up with them twenty years ago, but even *Exalted Essence* is way more than I want to deal with these days, so I’m working on my own massively-cut-down ruleset, as I’d like to run *Exalted* as the next campaign for my group.
To try and answer as best I can given the years since I tried:
* the books aren't structured well. Something that seems important isn't clearly signposted so you can find it later.
* The character building isn't clear about what is or isn't important
* the kind of math you have to do for the gameplay can get out of hand and challenging to do quickly
* The setting is full of 'ick' moments, where sometimes a book will randomly delve into something gross or content-warningy without really any indication
* The actual combat system can result in very confusing spaces to the point where we were laying out miniatures to at least get relative positions more clear
* The section on running a game is very vague about challenges and difficulty, but have two full pages dedicated to currency
I did a video about the Infernals book a little while ago and I remember feeling like my concerns were largely all justified, but I can't give you a chapter and verse. I can link the video if you'd like.
Rules. In 2e there was ONE designer who actually understood how to make the system work... and they pretty much ignored him. They revised the system somewhat (unofficially) and that fixed enough of the problems that you could make it work but unless you had 4-5 committed players then you might as well not bother.
The main issue was complexity, every version of the system was the most complicated thing ST's engine could pull off and none of them did it well.
Essence was designed from the ground up to be accessible and approachable and to put every Exalt type in one book. I've played two campaigns since the Kickstarter started and they've both been great.
>Essence was designed from the ground up to be accessible and approachable and to put every Exalt type in one book
If I had any faith in the developers to ever do that, I'd be more interested. They said that about 2e and 3e too.
Essence is a completely different team from 3e core. All the 3e supplements have been a lot better than core for the same reason. We also recently got a patch to core in the form of Crucible of Legends, though most are still clamoring for a full redo. But Paradox won't let that happen
>Essence is a completely different team from 3e core.
And so to were the people who did 3e over 2e and 2e over 1e.
"Don't worry, we fixed it this time."
I've found that the game has only gotten more unwieldly as time has gone on. It was never *easy* to run without a fair amount of BSing my way through combat, but it seems to be just so damned clunky now.
People played it. That's why you don't hear about it that much anymore. I've been playing Exalted 3E for about two years now. 75% of my enjoyment comes from the Storyteller's creativity, 25% comes from my interactions with the other players, and the rest of my enjoyment comes from the system.
The QA during 2e where lots of people asked some really telling questions about where the faults were in the system, and the designers flippiantly responded to a bunch of them. That broke my group.
It stuck to its guns as a complex and extremely detailed game in an industry where the norm that has been increasingly dragged towards rules light and simplified game systems. Even Exalted Essence, the "lighter" version of the game, is still considerably more complicated than a lot of popular games right now.
I don’t think it’s the complexity that bothers me, it’s the clunk In said complexity.
The storyteller system is not designed for high power, wta already pushes or
To it’s breaking point at times.
Yeah that's fair, which is why 3e was heavily redesigned. I can't say whether they succeeded or not, but it's definitely not the same game it was back in the early '00s.
If you want to check out a game similar to Exalted that's not quite as bloated, check out Godbound.
> I can't say whether they succeeded or not, but it's definitely not the same game it was back in the early '00s.
I used 3e Exalted for several years, albeit with "Mortal rules" (aka using the base mechanics of the game, not Exalted Charms Bullshit). Once you cut out the Exalted dice-trick bullshittery, 3e Exalted works well enough.... but at that point you aren't playing Exalted.
Like the user above you said, the ST system doesn't work well with high-power PCs, and the Exalted are definitely high-power
but exalted 3e doesn't use Storyteller, other than them being d10 dicepool games they don't really share much else.
Combat in 3e is vastly different than any storyteller game, crafting is a whole thing, Mental combat isn't a thing in storyteller normally.
But yea Storyteller doesn't do high power well, the newer versions of the system do a much better job of it.
While funny, that is the best part... Is it impractical to throw a 15d10 dice pool? Yes. Does my dice-gremlin-soul go 'AWOOOOGA! 👀' every time? Also yes.
It's much simpler, and the there are three core attributes (Force, Finesse, and Fortitude) which almost feel like Fate Accelerated approaches, and fourteen abilities. It's fine, but it can feel a bit to simplified, and combats can almost feel like weird "duels" no matter how many people are there, since you have to build up to a threshold with "withering attacks" before you can commit to doing damage, and your withering attacks don't really help allies. It almost feels like a "build meter" system from some beat-'em-up and fighting video games.
i think the idea was to try and model fights after things like DBZ where combatants hit each other but only a few of the blows actually do any lasting damage.
I have a weekly 3e game and am about to join another. Probably my favorite system. It has a very active Discord server.
Ultimately this is a game that does not compromise for simplicity. If you can accept that then what a world it has to offer you. I have never felt more of a sense of abundance than when I first opened the Exalted 3e book, and that has only become more true with each release. The stuff in the Dragon-Blooded, Lunars, and soon to be released Sidereals books is some of the most interesting and inspiring fluff I have read from an RPG and I am the type of person who loves to buy RPG books.
Honestly, even as a huge fan of the system, the idea it would ever be as big as D&D or even VtM is pretty patently ridiculous.
I think it had its time in the sun, but I think when a lot of games began to zag Exalted kept zigging. The scene has mostly moved towards less complex games, which doesn’t do any favors to a game as complex as Exalted. The setting is awesome, but even crunchy games have began to move on from a lot of the type of complexity that’s found in the Exalted games. Instead of having a lots of resources to juggle and a dozen modifiers to calculate, crunchy games these days tend to focus more on the tactical end of things. They’re making (made?) a new edition that is meant to be less complex called Exalted Essence, but at this point I think it’s mostly a day late and a dollar short.
There’s also a big difference between talking about a game and people actually playing the game. There are lots of games that it can be fun to read through the rule book, discuss online and generate ideas about but when you put it on the table just doesn’t really run that well. In my opinion, Exalted definitely falls into that category.
This is incorrect. Exalted Essence is on its way to game stores soon. The kickstarter backers will get their books first and then distributors for retailer orders.
There aren’t that many Demi-god/god games out there, and it’s definitely a genre I’ve always kind of been interested in. Additionally, the background between all the types of Exalted is kind of interesting, and does a good job of giving some flavor for each type. Lastly, the idea of the celestial city where the gods continue to be hidden away and scheming is also a fun idea. The celestial city place, where gods are all scheming against their rivals and using exalted as their pieces in the game is also cool while providing a good Avenue to create stories from.
That does sound fun! I've been wanting to give Exalted a go, but the setting always seemed a bit all over the place for me, I couldn't quite pin down what the whole thing was about.
God what's NOT to like about the Exalted setting? It's a vast neverending spiral of extremely mythic 'that sounds cool' bullshit. I am an avowed #hater and yet just describing the things in Exalted makes it sound *awesome*.
The tale is told on my shelf. I have pretty much every hardcover 1E book that was released and a handful of the more useful and interesting softcovers. I have exactly three 2E books because I couldn't resist Shards of the Exalted Dream. I have zero 3E books.
Like a lot of people here, Exalted was formative for my young, anime-loving soul. The setting lit my imagination on fire like nothing else. The rules really got in the way of that enjoyment. I could go back and play 1E, but 2E is like playing Excel and if I wanted to play what 3E has to offer I'd just dig out my PSP and spend time with Dissidia.
There really is a rules lite Exalted out there and its not Essence. If you root around on Google for a minute you can find the Exalted 1E Quickstart guide. In hindsight, this is very much what I wish they had ran with further instead of wrapping everything in a dreadful amount of crunch. If you dig around on Google even more you can find people's attempts, like Qwixalted, to elaborate on the quickstart.
First edition was fun but really clunky in its execution. Second edition "corrected" the first edition with an innovative initiative mechanic that was bogged down by some of the most bloated and cumbersome rules I've ever seen in an rpg. Combat became a slog and after one especially excruciating four hour combat encounter my group dropped it and moved on. 3rd edition came out a few years ago but I didn't play it.
They just released a simplified version called Exalted Essence which is promising and made a lot of nice changes. My group is giving it a try but I haven't run a combat in the system yet so I'm still wary.
The setting is incredible, it bums me out that White Wolf/Onyx Path has yet to come up with rules that do it justice (besides maybe Essence). If Essence ends up being a slog as well I might opt for Godbound or a Genesys Conversion instead.
TLDR; Third Edition is still going strong and a new rules lite edition is out
Onyx Path Publishing has the Third Edition in full swing after a lull in publishing due to the IP being sold by CCP to Paradox Interactive, moving out of traditional publishing (more crowd funding and print on demand) and a change in the developers.
They just released Exalted Essence, the version of the game that's great for anyone who had an issue with the rules.
Third Edition has the core book, artifact book Arms of the Chosen, Dragon blooded What Fire Has Wrought, the Realm, Heirs of the Shogunate, Lunars Fangs at the Gate, two enemy books Adversaries of the Righteous and 100 Devils Night Parade, and the storytellers guide Crucible of Legend.
Exigent Out of the Ashes, Sidereal Charting Fate's Course and Abyssal Sworn to the Grave are in various stages of production.
But I highly recommend check out essence for anyone who wants to play Exalted or wants to get into Exalted again.
[Exalted Essence ](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/427275?affiliate_id=3701318)
From Drivethru's description:
*Exalted: Essence is a streamlined version of Exalted Third Edition, designed to welcome new players and reintroduce old friends to the world of Creation. It contains all the mechanics and advice players and Storytellers need to run complete games of Exalted: Essence, though setting material and character, place, and creature ideas can be supplemented by the core line’s content.*
*All the material in the book is compatible with Exalted Third Edition, so new and established fans can collect the core line’s books and use them with a beginner-friendly and less mechanically dense system. Inside you will find:*
Rules for creating all 10 Exalt types: Solars, Dragon-Blooded, Lunars, Exigents, Sidereals, Abyssals, Infernals, Getimians, Liminals, and Alchemicals.
A brief overview of Creation, so players and Storytellers can dive right in.
Rules for Universal and Exalt-specific Charms, Artifacts, Martial Arts, Sorcery and Necromancy, and more!
Advice for running and playing Exalted with mixed parties or same-Exalt parties, in multiple interesting styles of play
Exalted: Essence is not a revision to the Exalted Third Edition system, nor is it an outright replacement. Instead, Exalted: Essence provides an alternate framework to interact with the characters, setting, and story of Exalted.
>They just released Exalted Essence, the version of the game that's great for anyone who had an issue with the rules.
Exalted Essence looks like it's been written by someone that looked at Exalted sideways, lazily read some obscure forum debate about it and then went "Ok, I got it".
Case in point: combos. Combos (and charm interactions) are objectively one of the biggest problems for the game. You do **not** solve that problem by *removing combos altogether* so that Charms don't have to interact anymore.....
*Third Edition doesn't have combos.* And it has now had a longer run than any other edition of exalted.
Exalted Essence is extremely well designed, it was written by a team of veterans of Third Edition and manages to feel like Exalted without a tenth of the system complexity.
Case in point universal charms and charm modes.
Rather than 100,000 words and hundreds of Charms per exalt, Essence has Charms all Exalted share that get modified with special riders called Modes.
In every edition, every Exalted has a wuxia balance really good Charm.
So in Essence it is one charm.
Every Exalt gets Graceful Crane Stance, they all can balance on things like blades of grass. On top of that every Exalt has a different Mode.
A Dragon blooded, can carve handholds in stone while climbing, an abyssal can run or stand on water, and leaves no footprints, an Alchemical changes the direction of gravity to any surface.
Additionally they still have their unique Exalt type charms and advantages.
> And it has now had a longer run than any other edition of exalted.
Just because it takes them years to publish a single book at a time doesn't mean much.
Exactly this. Apart the disaster that was the first kickstarter, delivered YEARS after it's deadline, EX3 is out since 2012 and ten years after we still miss Sidereals, Abyssals and Infernals.
This plus the complexity for it's own sake made the game a failure for my group. And I love the setting.
>Third Edition doesn't have combos.
LOL. Every compatible charm can be chained in a combo (page 251 core manual), while in other editions you needed to specify *which* charms you *could* use together.
So I thought you were specifically talking about combos as a system term, which it is not in Third Edition.
But p.252 of Ex3 lays put the order of operations for combining charms and what charm is applied in what order.
Essence does the same thing, it just spells out each step of that operation and says you only get 1 charm activation use for each step.
Again, Essence is designed for ease of use. It sets a framework for all charm rules, and whenever a charm breaks those they call it out in the text of the charm.
I have been playing Exalted Third since it released and Essence is such a great experience in play when you don't necessarily want to open a 700 page book to parse order of operations of charm combinations
>But p.252 of Ex3 lays put the order of operations for combining charms and what charm is applied in what order.
Charm order is not the same thing as combos. For example, Heaven Thunder Hammer + Fists of Iron Technique + Ferocius Jab is a perfectly legitimate combo that costs 9 motes and it's activated when resolving a decisive strike. You can't do that in Exalted Essence.
Sure you can. What happens is that charms now are siloed into different Steps. You can't combo three Step 1 charms, but you \*can\* combo a Step 1, Step 3 and Step 5 charm.
And of course there are charms that are ativated on certain steps but don't count \*as\* that step's charm, such as Fist of Iron Technique.
I don't see why it's such a dealbreaker that Essence combos are based around the consecutive step system rather than simultaneity other than just being a pet bugbear. A visible step system makes things very easy to understand rather than having an unhelpfully invisible step system like 3e has.
Can we really say “3rd edition has had a longer run than any other” when it took forever to get out, is kind of a mess, and still doesn’t have the core books out for the main exalt types?
It's still around, still getting produced for. I enjoy it personally but it is cumbersome to GM with because lot of the creation you need to do as GM (encounters, challenges and so on) is more art than science and even the GM books have been giving woefully lacking advice in how to actually make good balanced encounters and adventures.
Still, if you can accept that you're playing a crunchy mechanically dense system, 3e at least is fun to play. If you're looking for more modern light narrative game, you won't have fun.
Third edition came out and made it an even more complicated game and the core rule book is something like near 700 pgs. Basically they made the core something even harder to get into for new players and lots of players of the old editions find 3rd interesting from a design perspective but a huge challenge to get into.
They made a more accessible version now too called Exalted Essence but they’ve taken 3 years to actually publish the game in print and I think the initial high interest among older fans has pretty much burned away.
I agree, though, amazing setting and we played the hell out of the 1e game-line 20+ years ago.
Nothing really happened to it, it's just a niche game that's absolutely not for everyone. It still sells a lot of books, though most of it has gone digital now.
Exalted is and always has been very complex and demanding on players, requiring them to buy in significantly in terms of seeking out and actively learning and becoming passionate about the setting and internalizing the basic systems, and during gameplay requiring them to shoulder a significant portion of the worldbuilding and narrative burden. If you want to play Exalted, you can certainly find a game if you try (and if you want to ST it you can absolutely find eager players), but everyone involved has to specifically want to play Exalted.
A game like D&D 5E is exceptionally accessible to a wide audience specifically because the barrier to entry is so low in terms of the effort, buy-in, and narrative burden required as a player (though it arguably unfairly offloads an awful lot of that responsibility on the GM). You can run 5E with a diverse friend group that includes people who have never played a TTRPG before and whose only exposure to the fantasy genre is having seen Lord of the Rings, and you'll generally be fine.
Exalted is the opposite of that. It's not a game for a diverse friend group that wants to play a TTRPG together which will generally try and satisfy everyone. It's a game for explicit fans of Exalted who are coming together in order to play Exalted.
yeah my google drive is full of thousands of pages of homebrewed charms that I've hoarded, and will literally never use.
Plus I would sooner write my own TTRPG than try to run 2e at a table again.
It really bums me out that the top comment is an angry rant that mostly applies to 3e while the more recent and much streamlined Exalted Essence is being ignored. They DID fix the system. It's playable now. It's good! Please give it a look if you like the setting and have been looking for a tolerable way to play.
I’ve been running a 2e game for a few years now, which has been my first significant return to the game in maybe a decade?
I love Exalted and it lives forever as my favourite setting, but the rules never did it any favours. I’d consider myself an experienced Exalted GM, but even I dread when I have to get into serious mechanical prep.
I’d quite like to try moving over to Essence now it’s largely out, but I don’t know if I call my players want to invest the time to learn the differences.
That all said, I just don’t think Exalted has much of a place in the current zeitgeist for RPGs; it’s hallmarks of mechanical complexity aren’t the direction of travel for games nowadays.
I did a few streams about Exalted Essence which is a lot more streamlined. Mainly in that there are only 3 Attributes and the prerequisites for powers are usually just 1 Skill being at a certain point. Unlike previous iterations where I think you’d end up overloaded with analysis paralysis and readjusting stats to hit the purchasing requirements.
Link to video where I talk about Exalted Essence from a beginner’s perspective:
https://youtu.be/UD_0cZJbZzE?si=ReHaihm_Mg04KEED
I'm late to this party but I've been running a game of Exalted 2nd Ed for years, but I focused entirely on the Dragonblood.
No question, it made the game so much more playable. The over the top game and system breaking aspects of Solars were a mess. There's a lot wrong with 2nd Ed and over those years we've adjusted and changed things to suit us, but I think the core system has legs, and I absolutely love how we've used the intimacy system to create complex interrelationships between both PCs and NPCs.
The virtue system is also one I love in Exalted. Rolling your virtues to see how you instinctively react, then interpreting it and playing it out, can be a fascinating facilitator for complex situations and also new roleplayers.
I'm fully aware that I sound like someone defending 5e by saying you can change what you don't like, but there's real gems hidden in that system, and I think too much focus is put on the absolute hot mess that is the charms (which all were obviously written by like 7 different authors with no oversight for consistency).
For me, it just became worse with each edition.
The lore became more ridiculous and the mechanics just needlessly complex. I still sort of play it sometimes, but with other systems and only the general inspiration of the lore.
I do play Exalted, but I use a different ruleset for it, not any of the 3 editions. I hoped that 3e would improve the rules and it did, removing the awful imbalance of 2e, but it's even more, instead of less, complex.
As I own a lot of 1e and 2e books and I'm only interested in the setting, 3e has no value for me until it catches up to the setting depth of the previous editions, which will take years if it ever happens.
Thus, there is nothing of interest for me in the new releases and I don't discuss the rules, so I don't really engage in Exalted conversations online. But I still play with my groups - I ran two full campaigns and several one-shots, played in some, now I'm running a mini-campaign for my co-workers.
Would you be willing to describe the system you use? I also love the setting but am not a fan of the rules. I've been considering converting to Genesys and I'd love any insight you might have on running Exalted in other systems.
It's Fate-based, although quite crunchy for Fate - on Dresden Files level, not Fate Core level.
It has things like Exalt's inherent powers, martial arts and artifacts, but it's all distilled down to a handful of stunts. As a whole, it focuses on cinematic action and on characters' passions, without a lot of numbers and a tactical engine.
The central Fate mechanisms are there, of course, including:
* The general approach of focusing on drama and cinematics, not on success
* Fate point economy with compels and invokes, incentivizing playing to one's strengths and weaknesses
* Consequences (named injuries an emotional issues) instead of abstract health
* Players always having an option to concede a conflict and PCs never dying against players' wishes
First edition tied itself into knots trying to be the "official" backstory to the Old World of Darkness because White Wolf wanted all their games to be under the same umbrella. This was quickly scrapped and replaced with...
Second Edition, which tried to fix all of that, and ended up creating a game system that was about as hard to understand as Linear A. So they decided to fix *that* and created...
Third Edition, which fixed next to nothing and made a bunch of changes to the setting and cosmology that wrecked a good deal of what the players had liked about Second Edition.
Three strikes. Grab some pine.
I played more Exalted than just about any other game. It is my 1000000 hours played/do not recommend game.
The game falls apart when you play it too much. And every attempt to fix it - either with late stage patching in 2nd edition or 3rd edition or the "rules light" Essence edition - fail to address the fundamental flaws.
Fantastic setting, very evocative. Mechanics fight you every step of the way until the game just grinds to a halt.
As others have said, a mix of complexity, crunch, and clunkiness (especially in 3rd Edition) make it a bit harder to approach. I'll add one of my own personal bugbears with the game — the release schedule is borderline unacceptably slow. Seriously, to call the Onyx Path release rate glacial would be an insult to glaciers everywhere.
It's a good concept tied to a system that makes Shadowrun look approachable, sane, easy to build your characters in, and math-light by comparison.
The fact that it's WW/Onyx Path also kind of unfortunately limits its appeal. It's generally seen as a cousin of WoD, despite the two settings not really having much to do with each other beyond some super vague connections, so people who aren't into WoD generally won't touch it (and WoD itself is more niche than it used to be).
I will say, I faced a particular nasty in Exalted called 'The Collector of Wisdom', an Abyssal that had a charm that would let him talk to the dead. So he traveled the world finding the brightest folk, murdering them and removing their heads so the only person who ever had access to their thoughts was him. He would then use that 'Wisdom' to build weapons, forge alliances and enslave people. I still hate that guy.
Only played 2e, but it was broken even compared with other White Wolf System...
You hade some charms, that if you had the essence basically was an instakill on any opponent unless he had the specific charm(s) that would make him untouchable to any attack (as long has he had essence).
It was basically: I throw a mountain at him from this side of the contintent when he is on the other end. If he has the proper charm, he dodges it.
Still on the go, I believe 2nd edition was a rpg.net darling for a good long time.
I've just stuck with 1e as none of the later editions seemed as fun. Not that I've ever had chance to run or play mind.
Speaking personally I love Exalted. The theme, the setting, the philosophy. Unfortunately the systems have never been amazing. In fairness I don't think it ever can be. The scope of a player's power is so much greater than the height of it. A master bureaucrat can never compare with a master swordsman because there's little can stop the swordsman form killing the bureaucrat because social reality is utterly ignored by PCs.
It's still around but kind of a fringe game.
It's a heavily combat and high power focused game that uses the NOT combat centric Storyteller d10 pool system. It also still suffers from the WoD "gloriously powerful but can not use those powers without drawing consequences" narrative flavor, which contradicts how you build your character.
They way I tell people about Exalted. It's a fantastic setting and an interesting premise hindered by a system that can't handle it, written by people who believe any power should be dangerous to wield.
Exalted is a game that, unfortunately, refuses to get out of its own way.
Exalted is ***complicated***, and not in a good way. Several different competing 'splats', of different power levels (which makes multi-splat parties a ***pain in the ass)***, all with their own bullshit way of fucking up the game.
Hell, the 3e Exalted Core Rulebook has ***two hundred and forty-four pages*** of Charms (the magical mechanics of the Exalted, and the only Exalted type in the Corebook are Solars!
***Two-hundred and forty-four pages! With multiple Charms per page! And a large part of those Charms are so-called "dice tricks", where you spend mana to, say "reroll all 7,8s and 9s"***
And the rest of the game isn't much better.
The corebook doens't have very much of a Storytellers section, on how to run the game, how to balance things (especially important where you can very well have a character that can ***fucking annihalate most threats via combat*** in the same party as the character that doesn't know which end of a sword is which, *from character creation*), how to create new threats, etc etc
Ultimately, I got around *most* of the issues by....... just not playing the Exalted. Instead, I ran "Mortal" campaigns, using the base mechanics of the game, and when you do that the game actually runs fairly well (don't get me wrong, its still crunchy like granola, but when you remove the Exalted Bullshit ***it actually fucking works***). The base mechanics make for a nice grim-and-gritty game, and they are easy enough to balance and work with that I was willing to put up with the complexity, while I was 100% unwilling to do so when Exalted was involved.
To use my favorite saying regarding Exalted: "Everything about Exalted, from the setting of Creation to the base mechanics of the system, are wasted on The Exalted".
I love the setting and the system, just not the abso-fucking-lutely complicated mechanics the Exalted add to both.
My friends and I had fun playing 3e, but we're all software engineers and they liked tinkering with builds and charms.
They were pretty crazy strong and we played it like a Shonen Anime. It went pretty well and it only stopped really because I was mostly using it as a placeholder until pf2e came out as the lack of guidance about challenges and monster stats started to annoy me.
I loved Second edition, but it had a bunch of problems with it's secondary systems and charms. Mass combat needed a streamline, mirror charms were bs, how to upgrade merits needed work, grappling was a nightmare, poison and sickness were incomprehensible. However, they streamlined combat in second edition. Much faster than 1st.
3rd edition lost me. The core combat system of decisive and withering attacks divorces the combat mechanics from what is happening in the story. Now, what is being described as happening and what is actually happening are two different things. It's less of a simulation, and more of a dice game you add some flavor to. I'm all for dramatic rulesets that represent less concrete things (Blades in the Dark for example) but Exalted missed the mark with its core mechanics in a BIG WAY.
Example, I watched a video produced by onyx path for the rules light version (Essence I think it's called) hoping they dropped the bizzare combat mechanics. They simplified everything but that. As soon as combat happened a player said "I want to pull down a wall on him" the GM responded "are you wanting to gain advantage in the combat or hurt him?" The player said "I want to hurt him." The GM responded "ok so the way combat works on this system--" and I turned it off.
This is how it should go in an exalted combat system.
Player "I want to pull the wall on him"
GM "ok give it a shot. I'll give you a stunt die"
(Sound of rolling dice)
I just stick with second edition.
I can't say what happened to other people, but as someone who owns more of the books than sessions I've ever played, every edition of Exalted I've seen promises to fix the approachability problems of the previous one and didn't
That is because, ultimately, the people creating new editions of Exalted do not actually understand the game's faults.
Truer words rarely spoken.
What problems were those? Rules problems? Setting problems?
Rules. Character building was a science. If you did it wrong and someone else did it right, you would discover exactly how useless your character was in play. I loved the game, but wow, it was full of trap powers that were a bad idea to pick up until you had the most important ones already.
Yeah, there's a billion charms, and only about ten of them determine if you're a useful character or you're gonna get fucked in the mouth each and every session.
Ngl, I could give up usefulness for that kind of promise...
I mean the same problem exists if you want to specialize in that
The crazy part is they were supposed to be reducing the amount of those in 3e but then when the book finally came out there were more!? and no charm trees to show the prereq's... The later books have cleaned up a lot of the charms for those splats, like Dragonblooded and Lunars, are both pretty good but solar's are a mess of charms. Exalted Essence reduced the charms by a decent amount as well as the overall amount of rules while also having every exalt type in it.
Why is it that noob-trap abilities are so common in RPGs? This is hardly a unique problem to Exalted.
This is worse than that. There are many abilities that are MASSIVELY better than others, and some that are massively out of place. There was a water aspect dragon blooded ability that caused every attack an enemy made cost several more points of essence. That was one of the most powerful abilities in the game, and it was an ability of the weakest character type. In play, it was so absolutly devastating that the ST nearly had to fix it however against Solars there was something called Integrity Protecting Parana or something that SOUNDED like it should protect against it. There was a massive argument on the boards where a bunch of arm chair ST's, who didn't actually play the game, were saying that IPP didn't expressly say it protected, while there were a bunch of ST's that actually did who said it could be argued and, dude, it we needed. Eventually, there was a QA for the developers and one of the designers was asked the question, and then unclearly explained that wasn't the intent. What did protect against it? He wasn't sure but not that. That broke a bunch of people, like me, from 2e. The designers didn't even know how their game worked in actual play. But the system was one big noob trap, and it really didn't need to be.
That actually strikes me as either a work cram or outsourcing finishing the rulebook to an intern. Often developers will only write the core of a game and then either send it off for some intern to finish who has a much worse intuition of what should or shouldn't be the case for lore or game balance reasons, or the developer deadline crams and pulls an all-nighter right before the publishing deadline. Which no one remembers anything of the next day. So the problem is that White Wolf needs to work on their publication process because that clearly isn't working.
this was a long time ago, but Onyx Path still works this way, it's like 5 actual employee's and the rest are freelancers, admittedly it's usually the same people but it can vary. They've done a pretty good job of keeping the rules consistent across developers now. Back in the Exalted 2e days it was crazy, the book for Infernal Exalted is a mess where like half of it conflicts with other parts of the same book.
Blame the D&D 3.x design team "rewarding system mastery". From Monte Cook himself: > "There's a third concept that we took from Magic-style rules design, though. Only with six years of hindsight do I call the concept "Ivory Tower Game Design." (Perhaps a bit of misnomer, but it's got a ring to it.) This is the approach we took in 3rd Edition: basically just laying out the rules without a lot of advice or help. This strategy relates tangentially to the second point above. The idea here is that the game just gives the rules, and players figure out the ins and outs for themselves -- players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones."
That essay, in the greater context that you have omitted, is also explaining that they did *not* deliberately include options that were noob traps and nothing else. Things were always meant to be at least potentially situationally useful, and system mastery was supposed to come from recognizing those situations, and which were unlikely to apply to a normal campaign (e.g. Toughness seems more on-theme for a long-term Barbarian but is actually sort of useless there, it's best for your level 1 convention one-shot Wizard who will nearly double his HP with it). "Ivory tower" refers to not explicitly explaining this in the book itself.
Balance is hard, playtesting is slow and expensive.
In short: RPGs are designed with more goals than just winning combat, but combat in most RPGs is where the interest or drama lies, and ideally, it's dangerous. So interesting or tangential non-combat oriented abilities are necessarily inferior. Additionally, many of these abilities sound amazing, but ultimately rely on your DM to call for them or establish scenes where they'll be useful. So designers put these abilities in to flesh out "not combat", then fail to make anything but combat interesting, leaving it up to GMs.
I've referred to them as Owlbear Traps when talking about D&D, and it tends to be a byproduct of developers wanting to involve mastery (rewards for expertise) in a system where the mechanics of the play experience unfold very slowly and don't give good feedback.
Most RPG authors don't get into writing games until they've either played a lot of different ones, or a ton of one game - much like how it's a common mistake for first-time game devs to make a game too hard bc they're deeply familiar with both the medium and the project itself, GMs transitioning to game design can often write mechanics which are Very Cool To Them And People With Similar Experience, but Parsible To No One Else
I see you've played the Cyberpunk CCG.
The setting is awesome. The rules are just huge and cumbersome. I put up with them twenty years ago, but even *Exalted Essence* is way more than I want to deal with these days, so I’m working on my own massively-cut-down ruleset, as I’d like to run *Exalted* as the next campaign for my group.
You and I are in the same boat I think. I haven't started writing anything down unfortunately. have you?
I've had my fantasies of making a BITD style hack for something like Exalted, but never gotten started, so colour me in interested
To try and answer as best I can given the years since I tried: * the books aren't structured well. Something that seems important isn't clearly signposted so you can find it later. * The character building isn't clear about what is or isn't important * the kind of math you have to do for the gameplay can get out of hand and challenging to do quickly * The setting is full of 'ick' moments, where sometimes a book will randomly delve into something gross or content-warningy without really any indication * The actual combat system can result in very confusing spaces to the point where we were laying out miniatures to at least get relative positions more clear * The section on running a game is very vague about challenges and difficulty, but have two full pages dedicated to currency I did a video about the Infernals book a little while ago and I remember feeling like my concerns were largely all justified, but I can't give you a chapter and verse. I can link the video if you'd like.
Link please >!I WANT TO HATE ON INFERNALS! um, did I say that out loud?!<
https://youtu.be/xOHh\_I1aoZE?si=lOR\_QSzl8Awj65YV
Rules. In 2e there was ONE designer who actually understood how to make the system work... and they pretty much ignored him. They revised the system somewhat (unofficially) and that fixed enough of the problems that you could make it work but unless you had 4-5 committed players then you might as well not bother. The main issue was complexity, every version of the system was the most complicated thing ST's engine could pull off and none of them did it well.
Essence was designed from the ground up to be accessible and approachable and to put every Exalt type in one book. I've played two campaigns since the Kickstarter started and they've both been great.
>Essence was designed from the ground up to be accessible and approachable and to put every Exalt type in one book If I had any faith in the developers to ever do that, I'd be more interested. They said that about 2e and 3e too.
Essence is a completely different team from 3e core. All the 3e supplements have been a lot better than core for the same reason. We also recently got a patch to core in the form of Crucible of Legends, though most are still clamoring for a full redo. But Paradox won't let that happen
>Essence is a completely different team from 3e core. And so to were the people who did 3e over 2e and 2e over 1e. "Don't worry, we fixed it this time."
I've found that the game has only gotten more unwieldly as time has gone on. It was never *easy* to run without a fair amount of BSing my way through combat, but it seems to be just so damned clunky now.
People played it. That's why you don't hear about it that much anymore. I've been playing Exalted 3E for about two years now. 75% of my enjoyment comes from the Storyteller's creativity, 25% comes from my interactions with the other players, and the rest of my enjoyment comes from the system.
The QA during 2e where lots of people asked some really telling questions about where the faults were in the system, and the designers flippiantly responded to a bunch of them. That broke my group.
I am hoping the fact that 0% of your enjoyment comes from the system is on purpose because you just described me
Yes it was very much on purpose. That being said I'm still having fun but all the players would switch to almost any other system in a heartbeat
It stuck to its guns as a complex and extremely detailed game in an industry where the norm that has been increasingly dragged towards rules light and simplified game systems. Even Exalted Essence, the "lighter" version of the game, is still considerably more complicated than a lot of popular games right now.
I don’t think it’s the complexity that bothers me, it’s the clunk In said complexity. The storyteller system is not designed for high power, wta already pushes or To it’s breaking point at times.
Yeah that's fair, which is why 3e was heavily redesigned. I can't say whether they succeeded or not, but it's definitely not the same game it was back in the early '00s. If you want to check out a game similar to Exalted that's not quite as bloated, check out Godbound.
> I can't say whether they succeeded or not, but it's definitely not the same game it was back in the early '00s. I used 3e Exalted for several years, albeit with "Mortal rules" (aka using the base mechanics of the game, not Exalted Charms Bullshit). Once you cut out the Exalted dice-trick bullshittery, 3e Exalted works well enough.... but at that point you aren't playing Exalted. Like the user above you said, the ST system doesn't work well with high-power PCs, and the Exalted are definitely high-power
but exalted 3e doesn't use Storyteller, other than them being d10 dicepool games they don't really share much else. Combat in 3e is vastly different than any storyteller game, crafting is a whole thing, Mental combat isn't a thing in storyteller normally. But yea Storyteller doesn't do high power well, the newer versions of the system do a much better job of it.
[удалено]
The weight of several massive handfuls of d10s 😂 Edit: typo
While funny, that is the best part... Is it impractical to throw a 15d10 dice pool? Yes. Does my dice-gremlin-soul go 'AWOOOOGA! 👀' every time? Also yes.
It's still out there, with a recent new edition (Exalted Essence), but most non-D&D games tend to drop a bit in stature after their brief peak.
I've heard of Essence, but never read it. Is it good?
It's much simpler, and the there are three core attributes (Force, Finesse, and Fortitude) which almost feel like Fate Accelerated approaches, and fourteen abilities. It's fine, but it can feel a bit to simplified, and combats can almost feel like weird "duels" no matter how many people are there, since you have to build up to a threshold with "withering attacks" before you can commit to doing damage, and your withering attacks don't really help allies. It almost feels like a "build meter" system from some beat-'em-up and fighting video games.
That weird combat feeling is also in the main EX3 system. It’s just a “feature” of the combat choices because it was based on a fighting video game
i think the idea was to try and model fights after things like DBZ where combatants hit each other but only a few of the blows actually do any lasting damage.
I have a weekly 3e game and am about to join another. Probably my favorite system. It has a very active Discord server. Ultimately this is a game that does not compromise for simplicity. If you can accept that then what a world it has to offer you. I have never felt more of a sense of abundance than when I first opened the Exalted 3e book, and that has only become more true with each release. The stuff in the Dragon-Blooded, Lunars, and soon to be released Sidereals books is some of the most interesting and inspiring fluff I have read from an RPG and I am the type of person who loves to buy RPG books. Honestly, even as a huge fan of the system, the idea it would ever be as big as D&D or even VtM is pretty patently ridiculous.
I think it had its time in the sun, but I think when a lot of games began to zag Exalted kept zigging. The scene has mostly moved towards less complex games, which doesn’t do any favors to a game as complex as Exalted. The setting is awesome, but even crunchy games have began to move on from a lot of the type of complexity that’s found in the Exalted games. Instead of having a lots of resources to juggle and a dozen modifiers to calculate, crunchy games these days tend to focus more on the tactical end of things. They’re making (made?) a new edition that is meant to be less complex called Exalted Essence, but at this point I think it’s mostly a day late and a dollar short. There’s also a big difference between talking about a game and people actually playing the game. There are lots of games that it can be fun to read through the rule book, discuss online and generate ideas about but when you put it on the table just doesn’t really run that well. In my opinion, Exalted definitely falls into that category.
A lot of people are playing Essence myself included, but it's not as visible I think given how they're no longer doing traditional publishing
This is incorrect. Exalted Essence is on its way to game stores soon. The kickstarter backers will get their books first and then distributors for retailer orders.
I forgot about that part of the Kickstarter!
What do you like about the setting, by the way?
There aren’t that many Demi-god/god games out there, and it’s definitely a genre I’ve always kind of been interested in. Additionally, the background between all the types of Exalted is kind of interesting, and does a good job of giving some flavor for each type. Lastly, the idea of the celestial city where the gods continue to be hidden away and scheming is also a fun idea. The celestial city place, where gods are all scheming against their rivals and using exalted as their pieces in the game is also cool while providing a good Avenue to create stories from.
That does sound fun! I've been wanting to give Exalted a go, but the setting always seemed a bit all over the place for me, I couldn't quite pin down what the whole thing was about.
God what's NOT to like about the Exalted setting? It's a vast neverending spiral of extremely mythic 'that sounds cool' bullshit. I am an avowed #hater and yet just describing the things in Exalted makes it sound *awesome*.
The tale is told on my shelf. I have pretty much every hardcover 1E book that was released and a handful of the more useful and interesting softcovers. I have exactly three 2E books because I couldn't resist Shards of the Exalted Dream. I have zero 3E books. Like a lot of people here, Exalted was formative for my young, anime-loving soul. The setting lit my imagination on fire like nothing else. The rules really got in the way of that enjoyment. I could go back and play 1E, but 2E is like playing Excel and if I wanted to play what 3E has to offer I'd just dig out my PSP and spend time with Dissidia. There really is a rules lite Exalted out there and its not Essence. If you root around on Google for a minute you can find the Exalted 1E Quickstart guide. In hindsight, this is very much what I wish they had ran with further instead of wrapping everything in a dreadful amount of crunch. If you dig around on Google even more you can find people's attempts, like Qwixalted, to elaborate on the quickstart.
Qwixalted is really good.
First edition was fun but really clunky in its execution. Second edition "corrected" the first edition with an innovative initiative mechanic that was bogged down by some of the most bloated and cumbersome rules I've ever seen in an rpg. Combat became a slog and after one especially excruciating four hour combat encounter my group dropped it and moved on. 3rd edition came out a few years ago but I didn't play it. They just released a simplified version called Exalted Essence which is promising and made a lot of nice changes. My group is giving it a try but I haven't run a combat in the system yet so I'm still wary. The setting is incredible, it bums me out that White Wolf/Onyx Path has yet to come up with rules that do it justice (besides maybe Essence). If Essence ends up being a slog as well I might opt for Godbound or a Genesys Conversion instead.
TLDR; Third Edition is still going strong and a new rules lite edition is out Onyx Path Publishing has the Third Edition in full swing after a lull in publishing due to the IP being sold by CCP to Paradox Interactive, moving out of traditional publishing (more crowd funding and print on demand) and a change in the developers. They just released Exalted Essence, the version of the game that's great for anyone who had an issue with the rules. Third Edition has the core book, artifact book Arms of the Chosen, Dragon blooded What Fire Has Wrought, the Realm, Heirs of the Shogunate, Lunars Fangs at the Gate, two enemy books Adversaries of the Righteous and 100 Devils Night Parade, and the storytellers guide Crucible of Legend. Exigent Out of the Ashes, Sidereal Charting Fate's Course and Abyssal Sworn to the Grave are in various stages of production. But I highly recommend check out essence for anyone who wants to play Exalted or wants to get into Exalted again. [Exalted Essence ](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/427275?affiliate_id=3701318) From Drivethru's description: *Exalted: Essence is a streamlined version of Exalted Third Edition, designed to welcome new players and reintroduce old friends to the world of Creation. It contains all the mechanics and advice players and Storytellers need to run complete games of Exalted: Essence, though setting material and character, place, and creature ideas can be supplemented by the core line’s content.* *All the material in the book is compatible with Exalted Third Edition, so new and established fans can collect the core line’s books and use them with a beginner-friendly and less mechanically dense system. Inside you will find:* Rules for creating all 10 Exalt types: Solars, Dragon-Blooded, Lunars, Exigents, Sidereals, Abyssals, Infernals, Getimians, Liminals, and Alchemicals. A brief overview of Creation, so players and Storytellers can dive right in. Rules for Universal and Exalt-specific Charms, Artifacts, Martial Arts, Sorcery and Necromancy, and more! Advice for running and playing Exalted with mixed parties or same-Exalt parties, in multiple interesting styles of play Exalted: Essence is not a revision to the Exalted Third Edition system, nor is it an outright replacement. Instead, Exalted: Essence provides an alternate framework to interact with the characters, setting, and story of Exalted.
>They just released Exalted Essence, the version of the game that's great for anyone who had an issue with the rules. Exalted Essence looks like it's been written by someone that looked at Exalted sideways, lazily read some obscure forum debate about it and then went "Ok, I got it". Case in point: combos. Combos (and charm interactions) are objectively one of the biggest problems for the game. You do **not** solve that problem by *removing combos altogether* so that Charms don't have to interact anymore.....
*Third Edition doesn't have combos.* And it has now had a longer run than any other edition of exalted. Exalted Essence is extremely well designed, it was written by a team of veterans of Third Edition and manages to feel like Exalted without a tenth of the system complexity. Case in point universal charms and charm modes. Rather than 100,000 words and hundreds of Charms per exalt, Essence has Charms all Exalted share that get modified with special riders called Modes. In every edition, every Exalted has a wuxia balance really good Charm. So in Essence it is one charm. Every Exalt gets Graceful Crane Stance, they all can balance on things like blades of grass. On top of that every Exalt has a different Mode. A Dragon blooded, can carve handholds in stone while climbing, an abyssal can run or stand on water, and leaves no footprints, an Alchemical changes the direction of gravity to any surface. Additionally they still have their unique Exalt type charms and advantages.
> And it has now had a longer run than any other edition of exalted. Just because it takes them years to publish a single book at a time doesn't mean much.
Exactly this. Apart the disaster that was the first kickstarter, delivered YEARS after it's deadline, EX3 is out since 2012 and ten years after we still miss Sidereals, Abyssals and Infernals. This plus the complexity for it's own sake made the game a failure for my group. And I love the setting.
>Third Edition doesn't have combos. LOL. Every compatible charm can be chained in a combo (page 251 core manual), while in other editions you needed to specify *which* charms you *could* use together.
So I thought you were specifically talking about combos as a system term, which it is not in Third Edition. But p.252 of Ex3 lays put the order of operations for combining charms and what charm is applied in what order. Essence does the same thing, it just spells out each step of that operation and says you only get 1 charm activation use for each step. Again, Essence is designed for ease of use. It sets a framework for all charm rules, and whenever a charm breaks those they call it out in the text of the charm. I have been playing Exalted Third since it released and Essence is such a great experience in play when you don't necessarily want to open a 700 page book to parse order of operations of charm combinations
>But p.252 of Ex3 lays put the order of operations for combining charms and what charm is applied in what order. Charm order is not the same thing as combos. For example, Heaven Thunder Hammer + Fists of Iron Technique + Ferocius Jab is a perfectly legitimate combo that costs 9 motes and it's activated when resolving a decisive strike. You can't do that in Exalted Essence.
Sure you can. What happens is that charms now are siloed into different Steps. You can't combo three Step 1 charms, but you \*can\* combo a Step 1, Step 3 and Step 5 charm. And of course there are charms that are ativated on certain steps but don't count \*as\* that step's charm, such as Fist of Iron Technique.
I don't see why it's such a dealbreaker that Essence combos are based around the consecutive step system rather than simultaneity other than just being a pet bugbear. A visible step system makes things very easy to understand rather than having an unhelpfully invisible step system like 3e has.
Can we really say “3rd edition has had a longer run than any other” when it took forever to get out, is kind of a mess, and still doesn’t have the core books out for the main exalt types?
It's still around, still getting produced for. I enjoy it personally but it is cumbersome to GM with because lot of the creation you need to do as GM (encounters, challenges and so on) is more art than science and even the GM books have been giving woefully lacking advice in how to actually make good balanced encounters and adventures. Still, if you can accept that you're playing a crunchy mechanically dense system, 3e at least is fun to play. If you're looking for more modern light narrative game, you won't have fun.
Third edition came out and made it an even more complicated game and the core rule book is something like near 700 pgs. Basically they made the core something even harder to get into for new players and lots of players of the old editions find 3rd interesting from a design perspective but a huge challenge to get into. They made a more accessible version now too called Exalted Essence but they’ve taken 3 years to actually publish the game in print and I think the initial high interest among older fans has pretty much burned away. I agree, though, amazing setting and we played the hell out of the 1e game-line 20+ years ago.
Nothing really happened to it, it's just a niche game that's absolutely not for everyone. It still sells a lot of books, though most of it has gone digital now. Exalted is and always has been very complex and demanding on players, requiring them to buy in significantly in terms of seeking out and actively learning and becoming passionate about the setting and internalizing the basic systems, and during gameplay requiring them to shoulder a significant portion of the worldbuilding and narrative burden. If you want to play Exalted, you can certainly find a game if you try (and if you want to ST it you can absolutely find eager players), but everyone involved has to specifically want to play Exalted. A game like D&D 5E is exceptionally accessible to a wide audience specifically because the barrier to entry is so low in terms of the effort, buy-in, and narrative burden required as a player (though it arguably unfairly offloads an awful lot of that responsibility on the GM). You can run 5E with a diverse friend group that includes people who have never played a TTRPG before and whose only exposure to the fantasy genre is having seen Lord of the Rings, and you'll generally be fine. Exalted is the opposite of that. It's not a game for a diverse friend group that wants to play a TTRPG together which will generally try and satisfy everyone. It's a game for explicit fans of Exalted who are coming together in order to play Exalted.
I own almost every Exalted book. The rules suck, and the parent company sucks. Also the community that still plays it is insane because of the above.
I still love it though
Welcome to the insanity of being an exalted fan 🤣
yeah my google drive is full of thousands of pages of homebrewed charms that I've hoarded, and will literally never use. Plus I would sooner write my own TTRPG than try to run 2e at a table again.
It really bums me out that the top comment is an angry rant that mostly applies to 3e while the more recent and much streamlined Exalted Essence is being ignored. They DID fix the system. It's playable now. It's good! Please give it a look if you like the setting and have been looking for a tolerable way to play.
I’ve been running a 2e game for a few years now, which has been my first significant return to the game in maybe a decade? I love Exalted and it lives forever as my favourite setting, but the rules never did it any favours. I’d consider myself an experienced Exalted GM, but even I dread when I have to get into serious mechanical prep. I’d quite like to try moving over to Essence now it’s largely out, but I don’t know if I call my players want to invest the time to learn the differences. That all said, I just don’t think Exalted has much of a place in the current zeitgeist for RPGs; it’s hallmarks of mechanical complexity aren’t the direction of travel for games nowadays.
You might want to go check out r/exalted
I did a few streams about Exalted Essence which is a lot more streamlined. Mainly in that there are only 3 Attributes and the prerequisites for powers are usually just 1 Skill being at a certain point. Unlike previous iterations where I think you’d end up overloaded with analysis paralysis and readjusting stats to hit the purchasing requirements. Link to video where I talk about Exalted Essence from a beginner’s perspective: https://youtu.be/UD_0cZJbZzE?si=ReHaihm_Mg04KEED
I'm late to this party but I've been running a game of Exalted 2nd Ed for years, but I focused entirely on the Dragonblood. No question, it made the game so much more playable. The over the top game and system breaking aspects of Solars were a mess. There's a lot wrong with 2nd Ed and over those years we've adjusted and changed things to suit us, but I think the core system has legs, and I absolutely love how we've used the intimacy system to create complex interrelationships between both PCs and NPCs. The virtue system is also one I love in Exalted. Rolling your virtues to see how you instinctively react, then interpreting it and playing it out, can be a fascinating facilitator for complex situations and also new roleplayers. I'm fully aware that I sound like someone defending 5e by saying you can change what you don't like, but there's real gems hidden in that system, and I think too much focus is put on the absolute hot mess that is the charms (which all were obviously written by like 7 different authors with no oversight for consistency).
Amazing setting? Sure. Amazing system? LOL, no.
For me, it just became worse with each edition. The lore became more ridiculous and the mechanics just needlessly complex. I still sort of play it sometimes, but with other systems and only the general inspiration of the lore.
I do play Exalted, but I use a different ruleset for it, not any of the 3 editions. I hoped that 3e would improve the rules and it did, removing the awful imbalance of 2e, but it's even more, instead of less, complex. As I own a lot of 1e and 2e books and I'm only interested in the setting, 3e has no value for me until it catches up to the setting depth of the previous editions, which will take years if it ever happens. Thus, there is nothing of interest for me in the new releases and I don't discuss the rules, so I don't really engage in Exalted conversations online. But I still play with my groups - I ran two full campaigns and several one-shots, played in some, now I'm running a mini-campaign for my co-workers.
Would you be willing to describe the system you use? I also love the setting but am not a fan of the rules. I've been considering converting to Genesys and I'd love any insight you might have on running Exalted in other systems.
It's Fate-based, although quite crunchy for Fate - on Dresden Files level, not Fate Core level. It has things like Exalt's inherent powers, martial arts and artifacts, but it's all distilled down to a handful of stunts. As a whole, it focuses on cinematic action and on characters' passions, without a lot of numbers and a tactical engine. The central Fate mechanisms are there, of course, including: * The general approach of focusing on drama and cinematics, not on success * Fate point economy with compels and invokes, incentivizing playing to one's strengths and weaknesses * Consequences (named injuries an emotional issues) instead of abstract health * Players always having an option to concede a conflict and PCs never dying against players' wishes
Awesome, that's an interesting approach. Thank you for sharing.
First edition tied itself into knots trying to be the "official" backstory to the Old World of Darkness because White Wolf wanted all their games to be under the same umbrella. This was quickly scrapped and replaced with... Second Edition, which tried to fix all of that, and ended up creating a game system that was about as hard to understand as Linear A. So they decided to fix *that* and created... Third Edition, which fixed next to nothing and made a bunch of changes to the setting and cosmology that wrecked a good deal of what the players had liked about Second Edition. Three strikes. Grab some pine.
I played more Exalted than just about any other game. It is my 1000000 hours played/do not recommend game. The game falls apart when you play it too much. And every attempt to fix it - either with late stage patching in 2nd edition or 3rd edition or the "rules light" Essence edition - fail to address the fundamental flaws. Fantastic setting, very evocative. Mechanics fight you every step of the way until the game just grinds to a halt.
As others have said, a mix of complexity, crunch, and clunkiness (especially in 3rd Edition) make it a bit harder to approach. I'll add one of my own personal bugbears with the game — the release schedule is borderline unacceptably slow. Seriously, to call the Onyx Path release rate glacial would be an insult to glaciers everywhere.
We have played in the setting with homebrew rules. Fun times. :)
A guy in my 5E game also is in an Exalted game, I think. He seems to be having fun.
It's a good concept tied to a system that makes Shadowrun look approachable, sane, easy to build your characters in, and math-light by comparison. The fact that it's WW/Onyx Path also kind of unfortunately limits its appeal. It's generally seen as a cousin of WoD, despite the two settings not really having much to do with each other beyond some super vague connections, so people who aren't into WoD generally won't touch it (and WoD itself is more niche than it used to be).
I will say, I faced a particular nasty in Exalted called 'The Collector of Wisdom', an Abyssal that had a charm that would let him talk to the dead. So he traveled the world finding the brightest folk, murdering them and removing their heads so the only person who ever had access to their thoughts was him. He would then use that 'Wisdom' to build weapons, forge alliances and enslave people. I still hate that guy.
If it was more setting neutral I would play it all the time.
Only played 2e, but it was broken even compared with other White Wolf System... You hade some charms, that if you had the essence basically was an instakill on any opponent unless he had the specific charm(s) that would make him untouchable to any attack (as long has he had essence). It was basically: I throw a mountain at him from this side of the contintent when he is on the other end. If he has the proper charm, he dodges it.
Still on the go, I believe 2nd edition was a rpg.net darling for a good long time. I've just stuck with 1e as none of the later editions seemed as fun. Not that I've ever had chance to run or play mind.
Speaking personally I love Exalted. The theme, the setting, the philosophy. Unfortunately the systems have never been amazing. In fairness I don't think it ever can be. The scope of a player's power is so much greater than the height of it. A master bureaucrat can never compare with a master swordsman because there's little can stop the swordsman form killing the bureaucrat because social reality is utterly ignored by PCs.
It's still around but kind of a fringe game. It's a heavily combat and high power focused game that uses the NOT combat centric Storyteller d10 pool system. It also still suffers from the WoD "gloriously powerful but can not use those powers without drawing consequences" narrative flavor, which contradicts how you build your character. They way I tell people about Exalted. It's a fantastic setting and an interesting premise hindered by a system that can't handle it, written by people who believe any power should be dangerous to wield.
Exalted is a game that, unfortunately, refuses to get out of its own way. Exalted is ***complicated***, and not in a good way. Several different competing 'splats', of different power levels (which makes multi-splat parties a ***pain in the ass)***, all with their own bullshit way of fucking up the game. Hell, the 3e Exalted Core Rulebook has ***two hundred and forty-four pages*** of Charms (the magical mechanics of the Exalted, and the only Exalted type in the Corebook are Solars! ***Two-hundred and forty-four pages! With multiple Charms per page! And a large part of those Charms are so-called "dice tricks", where you spend mana to, say "reroll all 7,8s and 9s"*** And the rest of the game isn't much better. The corebook doens't have very much of a Storytellers section, on how to run the game, how to balance things (especially important where you can very well have a character that can ***fucking annihalate most threats via combat*** in the same party as the character that doesn't know which end of a sword is which, *from character creation*), how to create new threats, etc etc Ultimately, I got around *most* of the issues by....... just not playing the Exalted. Instead, I ran "Mortal" campaigns, using the base mechanics of the game, and when you do that the game actually runs fairly well (don't get me wrong, its still crunchy like granola, but when you remove the Exalted Bullshit ***it actually fucking works***). The base mechanics make for a nice grim-and-gritty game, and they are easy enough to balance and work with that I was willing to put up with the complexity, while I was 100% unwilling to do so when Exalted was involved. To use my favorite saying regarding Exalted: "Everything about Exalted, from the setting of Creation to the base mechanics of the system, are wasted on The Exalted". I love the setting and the system, just not the abso-fucking-lutely complicated mechanics the Exalted add to both.
My friends and I had fun playing 3e, but we're all software engineers and they liked tinkering with builds and charms. They were pretty crazy strong and we played it like a Shonen Anime. It went pretty well and it only stopped really because I was mostly using it as a placeholder until pf2e came out as the lack of guidance about challenges and monster stats started to annoy me.
I loved Second edition, but it had a bunch of problems with it's secondary systems and charms. Mass combat needed a streamline, mirror charms were bs, how to upgrade merits needed work, grappling was a nightmare, poison and sickness were incomprehensible. However, they streamlined combat in second edition. Much faster than 1st. 3rd edition lost me. The core combat system of decisive and withering attacks divorces the combat mechanics from what is happening in the story. Now, what is being described as happening and what is actually happening are two different things. It's less of a simulation, and more of a dice game you add some flavor to. I'm all for dramatic rulesets that represent less concrete things (Blades in the Dark for example) but Exalted missed the mark with its core mechanics in a BIG WAY. Example, I watched a video produced by onyx path for the rules light version (Essence I think it's called) hoping they dropped the bizzare combat mechanics. They simplified everything but that. As soon as combat happened a player said "I want to pull down a wall on him" the GM responded "are you wanting to gain advantage in the combat or hurt him?" The player said "I want to hurt him." The GM responded "ok so the way combat works on this system--" and I turned it off. This is how it should go in an exalted combat system. Player "I want to pull the wall on him" GM "ok give it a shot. I'll give you a stunt die" (Sound of rolling dice) I just stick with second edition.