All the Problems of Exalted in One Image

[FiveBlinkNurse]

Hi there, first post. Not sure if I committed a faux-pax.
Hope you find this humorous.
It's one of those "funny 'cause it's true" things - at least for me. Your experience may differ, in which case please feel free to tell me all about it.



What Is Exalted?
Exalted: The Not-Playing is a brand new Horror RPG unroleplaying game in which players can create and play a variety of characters.
Will you be:

• An unfortunate nerd who thought they were investing time and money into learning a complex, badly-edited system in order to receive the minimum payoff of getting to play the damn thing.
• The consumate scholar who is exactly the same character as the above, save that this one had absolutely no intention of actually playing it. They just like to know every detail about the game in order to engage in faux-philosophical discussions about it on the internet, mastering an exercise in pointless, existential time-wasting bullshit.
• That one guy who will say "this is fine".
• That one other person who will say "not true, I play it all the time. I'm a real person, you can trust me. Not a troll. Swear."
• The confused friend who was dragged into this by their terrible friend, who is terrible, and then left - abandoned - in the middle of trying to understand how to "tick".

And many more!
In Exalted, you are slowly coming to the realization that this shit will never happen and that none of this matters.

The first rule of Exalted club is that everyone just talks about Exalted... Club.
And then they kind of don't.

Want to learn more?
Download our overly simplified, has-literally-nothing-to-do-with-the-actual-game FREE starter set and be infinitely confused as you page back and forth, failing to understand that a third of the text was hastily copy-pasted from previous editions and thus contains defunct, unplayable rules that no longer make sense in this completely new edition that is also terribly edited.

For more information, go to pg. XX, flip two pages forward to find the text box in the corner (the one between the completely unrelated paragraph and the totally different Rule heading).
Jump back five pages. I meant a hundred and five. Nope, still not there.
This is just the same text again but the paragraphs are longer, needlessly repetitive. The next one is the exact same paragraph but worded differently.

Ah, there you go: a non-working rule written in a language that you're not quite sure is English.
Notice that there's five different ways to interpret the rule. Go on the internet to ask about it and discover there's a hidden sixth way.

Don't forget to bring a Thesaurus in order to understand half the text.
Turns out it did not help in understanding the game - it was just the same descriptions with no new information.

EXALTED!
Because Some People Totally Play It Regularly Somewhere...

[Dean]

Certainly I've talked about Exalted for many years and my entire play experience is probably 2 sessions.

[Blade]

I attempted an Exalted game once.

After listening to someone trying to explain the game and looking at the books, I was a bit confused by the mix of mythology and anime, it felt like it was trying to mix different stuff that had things in common but didn't go quite that well together.
Then I wondered how we could get a cohesive group with all the distinct factions there were.

And then we got into the game and there was a fight scene and there was this initiative wheel that was looking good but the system felt far too complicated for its own good. And I don't remember much more. I think the session was pretty short because we spent a lot of time on the setting and character creation.

[Shiritai]

I was in a Bureaucracy and Brigands-style campaign for a year. I think it only worked out because we were an all-Terrestrial party, and only encountered humans, other dragonblooded, spirits, demons, and a lone whatever-the-corrupted-solars-are. Not having to deal with perfect defenses or being kill-on-sight in most civilized areas helped a lot.

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

There are some few people playing the game. One guy is posting his actual play podcast.

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main ... story-told

[Zaranthan]

So what you're telling me is that Exalted is the TTRPG equivalent of EvE Online? I'm down with that. Taking a break from ratting at the moment.

[OgreBattle]

The diversity and stunting of exalted seems suited for rules lite rather than specific like a fate aspects thing

[FatR]

I've played some Exalted PBP and ran a couple of campaigns. That's why I'm still mad about it.

[Libertad]

The diversity and stunting of exalted seems suited for rules lite rather than specific like a fate aspects thing

Hello good sir. Shall I regale you on the joys of Godbound?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I have an even better one.

1) Who is the audience for this kind of socially repellent form of power fantasy?

2) More importantly, why exactly would I want to stake my livelihood and professional development appealing to the kind the people who form the answer to question 1?

[FatR]

(1) To be fair Lago, the Exalted guy featured there has always been a card-carryng villain, and therefore we're not supposed to agree with him.

Even though thanks to the way his world works he's basically 100% correct in this comic, just in a rude way.

(2) There is a massive market worth of people who would completely miss the fact that the Exalt is supposed to be a villain here, if their popular fantasy is any indicator. But to appeal to them you will need to learn Chinese.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I disagree with 2. There is a market of people who want to play muggles fighting against their superpowered oppressors. There's probably even a bigger market of people who want to play superpowered protagonists fighting against their muggle protagonists.

But I question the idea that people want to play a setting where the superpowered protagonists wave their dicks at people less powerful than them while also indulging in a fantasy savior complex against the unworthy. I mean, even in grimdark fantasy like Game of Thrones people actually got pretty upset when Daenerys actually started using her dragons to cement her right to rule.

[Chamomile]

Clearly you aren't familiar with xianxia. That was the genre FatR was referencing.

[OgreBattle]

1) Who is the audience for this kind of socially repellent form of power fantasy?

A three day's fast is what American white collar men and women chasing fad diets have done because they felt ambitious for a weekend. People have fasted longer by accident playing starcraft.

The bald guy in that exalted short fasted a very light amount of time and instead of being grateful that it only took 3 days for the master of the martial arts school to notice him, he cries and gives up. Such a character would get killed trying to master dragon blooded martial arts, his life has been saved via rejection. Maybe that guy can have a normal and peaceful life.

Looking at religion, Vedic Hindu epics have many antagonists who fasted for impossibly long periods of time to acquire power.

Exalted is often off-note though, so there is a chance that this was suppose to show what a bigot that villain exalted in that comic is and the writer just picked a puny unimpressive amount of days by accident.

Tonally... Exalted has a hollywood kinda feel to how people are assholes. That upcoming ghost of tsujima game has the same off-tone...

Mean Girls, that's it. That kind of relationship, personality, interaction, dialog, Mean Girls, for whatever reason a lot of oriental adventure fantasy for a US audience takes on that tone.

godbound

Hahah the first thought I had looking through their art is "finally a game that accurately portrays the US marines"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tnJtLBQzQ