So, one thing I liked about Exalted was that it had rules for things that D&D doesn't support so well: training armies, propagandizing a populace, shaping worlds out of chaos, training apprentices, birthing heroic children, etc.
A lot of this stuff makes your personal saga more *involved*, and more self-contained, than RPG characters' stories have traditionally been, which leaves me wondering how it's supposed to work. The only good experience I've had playing Exalted was a game I ran for 1 player, which made many (though by no means all) of the balance glitches less problematic and allowed us to skip around as much as we pleased into the POV of underlings and so on. Admittedly, I've only played Exalted twice, and the other time failed for reasons unrelated to the game system entirely, but it still leaves me wondering. Now, we all know Exalted sucks, but I like the idea of a game with comparably over-the-top abilities, so let's look at the three models I could come up with for how group-based Exalted could function.
Model 1: The SWAT Team
You could do a site-based adventure like a traditional D&D "dungeon," or really maybe more like a Shadowrun installation. I mention Shadowrun because the Exalted are actually supposed to hyperspecialized like runners. In shadowrun, you have to have astral, matrix, and meat security. In Exalted, each ancient ruin would have to include squad-based enemies to fight (demon soldiers flooding through a portal) stuff worth stealing/spying on for your invisible scout, potential allies to mindwhammy with your social skills, demons to banish, etc.
Model 2: The Commune.
This game focuses on the Exalted's "big" abilities, but makes sure that they're all working together as part of the same project. Maybe one player shapes a kingdom out of chaos, another educates the populace, a third trains the armies, a fourth binds demons for labor and transport, etc. I foresee two problems with this model: First, it requires intense work at chargen to make sure the players have compatible visions. Second, each of those things can get so involved that a player might filibuster/grandstand his part of the storyline for an entire session.
Model 3: Playing Gods
The essential dilemma is this: "big" events tend to push players into isolated activities. If one player gets "craft artifact" one gets "train army" and one gets "turn into anything you can kill and eat", then each is now participating in activities the other player's can't do at all. And the rule for activities which one player participates in, is that they shouldn't use up much game time. Well if brainwashing kingdoms, stealing sacred heirlooms, or hunting rare monsters isn't supposed to take very long, then the only way to fill a game session is to have each of those things be just one part of an adventure.
The means the scale of the adventure has to be *huge*. If "politically manipulating your way to the throne of a kingdom" is resolved by a one-time Charisma+Socialize in the same way "hacking this maglock" is resolved by a one time Logic+Electronics, then you should *care* about each of them equally. That means appropriate adventure goals are things like conquering entire worlds, murdering elder gods, and the like. taking over a kingdom, raising an army, and sending them to their deaths against the hordes of hell should seriously be the kind of thing that happens in one to two "combat rounds." The things that worry me about this are again two:
First, designing adventures on that scale is fucking hard. The story of a guy stealing, murdering, or preaching his way to the top of a society is classic, but the story of multiple characters who do this during their lunch breaks--that's hard to write. Second, it risks making the "heroic" scale no longer cool. If players are going to interact with and casually dispose of dozens of peoples, cultures, and polities over the course of an adventure... it really robs the DM of any incentive to develop those peoples or give them coherent interrelationships. This in turn will probably make things so flat you don't particularly care about ruling anything or remaking it in your name.
The problem with "big" games
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RandomCasualty2
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The big problem I've always had is that people aren't playing the same game anymore generally at this level. There are in fact so many minigames that unless everyone in the party agrees to do one thing, it turns into 3E Shadowrun's matrix, where the diplomancer does diplomatic stuff, the warrior does the combats, the item crafter makes items... etc.
And the game tends to lose its identity.
In D&D, you're a bunch of dudes storming a dungeon. At any level. Dungeons may become planar fortresses, but you're still a group of adventurers going in and killing things.
Shadowrun is about a group raiding places.
However, once you go beyond that, you run into trouble keeping the group on track. Because the moment you have characters that just fight by proxy, like the diplomancer or the general, you pretty much lose the basic game. It's as if in Shadowrun you just hired another group of runners to take your PC's place in the adventure and just didn't show up at all.
And that doesn't work too well because it means that your PC is now sitting out the Shadowrun while your army or whatever does the work, because some other PC may have a character based around just being an awesome warrior and doing the run is still his schtick.
And that's the problem. The game needs to be about something. You can have a game about a group of politicians who move armies and people like chess pieces, conquer nations and so on. But in that case, everyone has to be playing the social game.
You can't try to combine the dungeon game with the large scale social/war game in a meaningful fashion.
And that's the big problem I seem to have with Exalted and similar games. You can have a game where you're playing Napoleon, or a game where you're playing Silver Surfer, but you really can't have both in the same campaign.
And the game tends to lose its identity.
In D&D, you're a bunch of dudes storming a dungeon. At any level. Dungeons may become planar fortresses, but you're still a group of adventurers going in and killing things.
Shadowrun is about a group raiding places.
However, once you go beyond that, you run into trouble keeping the group on track. Because the moment you have characters that just fight by proxy, like the diplomancer or the general, you pretty much lose the basic game. It's as if in Shadowrun you just hired another group of runners to take your PC's place in the adventure and just didn't show up at all.
And that doesn't work too well because it means that your PC is now sitting out the Shadowrun while your army or whatever does the work, because some other PC may have a character based around just being an awesome warrior and doing the run is still his schtick.
And that's the problem. The game needs to be about something. You can have a game about a group of politicians who move armies and people like chess pieces, conquer nations and so on. But in that case, everyone has to be playing the social game.
You can't try to combine the dungeon game with the large scale social/war game in a meaningful fashion.
And that's the big problem I seem to have with Exalted and similar games. You can have a game where you're playing Napoleon, or a game where you're playing Silver Surfer, but you really can't have both in the same campaign.
This is how I'm approaching it in my own RPG project:
Based off of the Tiers discussion, "hitting things with an axe" is Combat tier, and the first stages of adventuring and being a badass. Around the time you're starting to run out of ways to avoid each other's shticks, you move to Warfare (mass combat) and Dominance, and finally Transcendence.
The intent is to put enough things to do in there that the players again have enough space to maneuver with their own shticks, which are basically unconnected with killing one or two or ten guys at once. You have enough flexibility that you could spend a "free slot" or whatever to become an even greater badass in Combat, but the action is clearly on Warfare - being a Combat badass just isn't all that cracked up to be, though it'll come up once in a while anyway.
By having Warfare structured to include the Tactical, Operational and Strategic levels as well as a set of powers for Epic Heroes and War Magic (ie, the guys that don't want to bother with armies and just want to do everything themselves), you have a place for everyone to do their thing, with enough slots and abilities to fill that a party of five still couldn't cover everything you would want to do.
So, what everyone is doing is a bit on rails: at some point the scope of the game changes from tomb-raiding to empire-building precisely because you don't want to use the same timescale. However, I think you can manage to echo back to "earlier" tiers to keep things interesting, by fighting the Yama King or romancing the Mountain Duchess or whatever.
Basically, you accept that the game scale changes and get buy-in from the players. You move forward with new conflict minigames to keep things fresh, but also dredge up older minigames to remind the players "although the challenges are scaling, you're still a badass".
Finally, and most importantly, I think you have to have a background engine. You design the challenges to suit the tiers, meaning you zoom out with successively less detail: from the locality to the region to the kingdom to the empire to the gods, and because the players and system intend for you to deal with these elements at their own scales you don't have to worry quite so much about every merchant house on the planet, only the ones the characters are going to have to contend with. Ultimately I think it takes a little more planning but it's essentially the same thing that a GM will do with any grand campaign arc, just with a better set of tools to hit the high notes.
Based off of the Tiers discussion, "hitting things with an axe" is Combat tier, and the first stages of adventuring and being a badass. Around the time you're starting to run out of ways to avoid each other's shticks, you move to Warfare (mass combat) and Dominance, and finally Transcendence.
The intent is to put enough things to do in there that the players again have enough space to maneuver with their own shticks, which are basically unconnected with killing one or two or ten guys at once. You have enough flexibility that you could spend a "free slot" or whatever to become an even greater badass in Combat, but the action is clearly on Warfare - being a Combat badass just isn't all that cracked up to be, though it'll come up once in a while anyway.
By having Warfare structured to include the Tactical, Operational and Strategic levels as well as a set of powers for Epic Heroes and War Magic (ie, the guys that don't want to bother with armies and just want to do everything themselves), you have a place for everyone to do their thing, with enough slots and abilities to fill that a party of five still couldn't cover everything you would want to do.
So, what everyone is doing is a bit on rails: at some point the scope of the game changes from tomb-raiding to empire-building precisely because you don't want to use the same timescale. However, I think you can manage to echo back to "earlier" tiers to keep things interesting, by fighting the Yama King or romancing the Mountain Duchess or whatever.
Basically, you accept that the game scale changes and get buy-in from the players. You move forward with new conflict minigames to keep things fresh, but also dredge up older minigames to remind the players "although the challenges are scaling, you're still a badass".
Finally, and most importantly, I think you have to have a background engine. You design the challenges to suit the tiers, meaning you zoom out with successively less detail: from the locality to the region to the kingdom to the empire to the gods, and because the players and system intend for you to deal with these elements at their own scales you don't have to worry quite so much about every merchant house on the planet, only the ones the characters are going to have to contend with. Ultimately I think it takes a little more planning but it's essentially the same thing that a GM will do with any grand campaign arc, just with a better set of tools to hit the high notes.
Random is really right.
The thing about rpgs is that its already pretty hard to
1) make sure everybody has a schtick
Thats one of the things about frpgs and shadowrun that make them work. Shadowrun is "classless" but not really it has the matrix, vehicles/mahcines, fighting, syping, and magic. Those are basically the games classes. Fantasy RPGS work really well compared to a lot of other rpgs because its easy to define roles for dungeon divers.
You could have a game where people play heads of great houses in the scarlet empire, with one person being say "the officer, the theologian, the demagogue, the spymaster, and the grand vazier" but those roles are all themed to your game, and help keep that game going. Taking those characters on the adventure for the fighter, cleric, wizard, thief and bard would be suxors. The roles themselves have to fit your game, and they have to be roles that people want to play.
Nobody wants to "Wesley" in the star trek rpg thats clear, the problem is that "Chief" O'Brian is a terrible role espeically when the other roles are Commander Riker, Lt. Commander Data, Lt. Commander LaForge, and Dr. Crusher. Most RPGs have a hard enough time just weeding out f Chief O'Brian type characters without trying to provide a game that is relevant the O'Brians and the LaForge's at the same time.
2) make sure everybody is on the same page as to what is actually happening.
If you have a system where hero's can impart a portion of their mystical ability into their children and also a way where a hero can become immortal and you want a long running game you are going to end up with one immortal character and one character who is the grandson of their original character.
If you include a subsystem players are going to want to use them. IF they make the lives and stories of the various players really diverge that is actually going to SUCK.
3. Games that try and do everything often end up doing nothing
One of the major flaws of exalted is that because it has subsystems for doing so much the games core flaws show up over and over again in every subsystem, and worse where two systems are made to work in a similar fashion even if they are widely different activities, the flaws of each end up mixed into the both. Its not that this can't work, but usually it soon becomes clear that the subystems all don't accomplish anything.
Exalted sadly does all 3 of these. It is not obvious what constitues a group that has all the bases covered, and its VERY easy to have people end up building characters who trample all over each others one special thing.
It has no idea if its D&D superheros or Empire Wars or even just conan meets vampire. Its system is very broken leading to an unchallenging play experience that doesn't seem like the systems get things done.
The thing about rpgs is that its already pretty hard to
1) make sure everybody has a schtick
Thats one of the things about frpgs and shadowrun that make them work. Shadowrun is "classless" but not really it has the matrix, vehicles/mahcines, fighting, syping, and magic. Those are basically the games classes. Fantasy RPGS work really well compared to a lot of other rpgs because its easy to define roles for dungeon divers.
You could have a game where people play heads of great houses in the scarlet empire, with one person being say "the officer, the theologian, the demagogue, the spymaster, and the grand vazier" but those roles are all themed to your game, and help keep that game going. Taking those characters on the adventure for the fighter, cleric, wizard, thief and bard would be suxors. The roles themselves have to fit your game, and they have to be roles that people want to play.
Nobody wants to "Wesley" in the star trek rpg thats clear, the problem is that "Chief" O'Brian is a terrible role espeically when the other roles are Commander Riker, Lt. Commander Data, Lt. Commander LaForge, and Dr. Crusher. Most RPGs have a hard enough time just weeding out f Chief O'Brian type characters without trying to provide a game that is relevant the O'Brians and the LaForge's at the same time.
2) make sure everybody is on the same page as to what is actually happening.
If you have a system where hero's can impart a portion of their mystical ability into their children and also a way where a hero can become immortal and you want a long running game you are going to end up with one immortal character and one character who is the grandson of their original character.
If you include a subsystem players are going to want to use them. IF they make the lives and stories of the various players really diverge that is actually going to SUCK.
3. Games that try and do everything often end up doing nothing
One of the major flaws of exalted is that because it has subsystems for doing so much the games core flaws show up over and over again in every subsystem, and worse where two systems are made to work in a similar fashion even if they are widely different activities, the flaws of each end up mixed into the both. Its not that this can't work, but usually it soon becomes clear that the subystems all don't accomplish anything.
Exalted sadly does all 3 of these. It is not obvious what constitues a group that has all the bases covered, and its VERY easy to have people end up building characters who trample all over each others one special thing.
It has no idea if its D&D superheros or Empire Wars or even just conan meets vampire. Its system is very broken leading to an unchallenging play experience that doesn't seem like the systems get things done.
There is no absolute reason that the players couldn't transition between these roles and scales. It's more a matter of maintaining mutual interest and parity than any inherent difficulty in being both a vizier and a dungeon-raiding priest.souran wrote:1) make sure everybody has a schtick
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You could have a game where people play heads of great houses in the scarlet empire, with one person being say "the officer, the theologian, the demagogue, the spymaster, and the grand vazier" but those roles are all themed to your game, and help keep that game going. Taking those characters on the adventure for the fighter, cleric, wizard, thief and bard would be suxors. The roles themselves have to fit your game, and they have to be roles that people want to play.
The problem is when A wants to dungeon-crash and B wants to raise an empire. That sort of thing needs to be worked-out on the frontend between players and GM, but it can still be worked out. At some point, there's an acceptance that you need to move on from crashing to ruling - and GMs should be making that obvious with the plot and writing to match the frontend discussion about what the game is and is not.
It's not an easy problem to address but I think a group of players with mutual expectations would fare well with it.
This is addressable by good mechanics. A shitty set of mechanics means a shitty game.3. Games that try and do everything often end up doing nothing
One of the major flaws of exalted is that because it has subsystems for doing so much the games core flaws show up over and over again in every subsystem, and worse where two systems are made to work in a similar fashion even if they are widely different activities, the flaws of each end up mixed into the both. Its not that this can't work, but usually it soon becomes clear that the subystems all don't accomplish anything.
[quote="mean_liar]
There is no absolute reason that the players couldn't transition between these roles and scales. It's more a matter of maintaining mutual interest and parity than any inherent difficulty in being both a vizier and a dungeon-raiding priest. [/quote]
The is no hard rule no. The problem is that rules for doing one really don't have anything to do with the other. Additionally, every time you add a subsystem you have to think about how it could impact the things your game already does. 2e D&D gave everybody followers for hitting 10th level. The value of those followers varried so widely from game to game and between players within a game as to render them completely meaningless. On the other hand, traditional adventurers and stories didn't make much sense using birthright characters.
The inherent difficulty in switching between the face of a dungeon diving priest and the cardinal of fantasy land is the problem that cauases players to have varying degrees of interest, and additionallly, most social structures are not designed with equals in mind so getting parity between the player who is the emperor's chief of staff and his cardinal is going to be diffiult to do.
You are right, its not impossible. The thing is you may find that many of your players may not have signed up for that and have no desire to change a game they thought was fun into one they think sounds like a combination of reading a history textbook and watching the news.
(As a side note I would love such a game personally, however numerous attempts over almost 2 decades gaming has caused me to think that the people who want to do that are few and far between.)
The thing is , there is no acceptance that you need to move from crashing to ruling. As long as the crashing gets more tougher and the stakes get higher most people are willing to be "adventurer's" for their entire playing career. At level 1 they same hommlet from the pilliaging orcs and at level 20 they save the prime material plan from orcus - and that arc of play is fine.
The same sort of thing happens when you try and upscale rpgs into wargames. Plenty of people who are willing to play rpgs have no desire to play wargames. They do not want to command armies and units. To them the battle is the background and they want to control all the goings on about as much as they want to watch the guy lay the floor in the evil wizards castle.
The way a game begins is always going to be one of the points of reference for a game. A game that abruptly shifts focus and changes the major mechanisms of play midway through the game is going to cause problems for those who were happy with what was happening before.
There is no absolute reason that the players couldn't transition between these roles and scales. It's more a matter of maintaining mutual interest and parity than any inherent difficulty in being both a vizier and a dungeon-raiding priest. [/quote]
The is no hard rule no. The problem is that rules for doing one really don't have anything to do with the other. Additionally, every time you add a subsystem you have to think about how it could impact the things your game already does. 2e D&D gave everybody followers for hitting 10th level. The value of those followers varried so widely from game to game and between players within a game as to render them completely meaningless. On the other hand, traditional adventurers and stories didn't make much sense using birthright characters.
The inherent difficulty in switching between the face of a dungeon diving priest and the cardinal of fantasy land is the problem that cauases players to have varying degrees of interest, and additionallly, most social structures are not designed with equals in mind so getting parity between the player who is the emperor's chief of staff and his cardinal is going to be diffiult to do.
You are right, its not impossible. The thing is you may find that many of your players may not have signed up for that and have no desire to change a game they thought was fun into one they think sounds like a combination of reading a history textbook and watching the news.
(As a side note I would love such a game personally, however numerous attempts over almost 2 decades gaming has caused me to think that the people who want to do that are few and far between.)
I agree that the first sentence is the problem entirely. When the players desires diverge is when the problem starts.The problem is when A wants to dungeon-crash and B wants to raise an empire. That sort of thing needs to be worked-out on the frontend between players and GM, but it can still be worked out. At some point, there's an acceptance that you need to move on from crashing to ruling - and GMs should be making that obvious with the plot and writing to match the frontend discussion about what the game is and is not.
The thing is , there is no acceptance that you need to move from crashing to ruling. As long as the crashing gets more tougher and the stakes get higher most people are willing to be "adventurer's" for their entire playing career. At level 1 they same hommlet from the pilliaging orcs and at level 20 they save the prime material plan from orcus - and that arc of play is fine.
The same sort of thing happens when you try and upscale rpgs into wargames. Plenty of people who are willing to play rpgs have no desire to play wargames. They do not want to command armies and units. To them the battle is the background and they want to control all the goings on about as much as they want to watch the guy lay the floor in the evil wizards castle.
The way a game begins is always going to be one of the points of reference for a game. A game that abruptly shifts focus and changes the major mechanisms of play midway through the game is going to cause problems for those who were happy with what was happening before.
Games without clear focus are usually games with shitty mechanics. A game that can't decide if its an rpg or a wargame or a board game is giong to play crappy.This is addressable by good mechanics. A shitty set of mechanics means a shitty game.
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RandomCasualty2
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The problem is that rulership as an army commander isn't really "epic."
Napoleon and Caesar were army commanders and they were regular dudes. And the fact that you have armies matter at all in the affairs of high level people pretty much means that your high level characters have to be regular dudes too.
If you're playing with high level mages who shape reality at their whim, then commanding an army doesn't even matter, because anyone at their tier of power can just wipe the floor with their thousands of mooks, and they end up just littering the battlefield.
The world where army commanders matter and the world of army destroying gods are just not compatible at all. If the army destroying god exists, then the army commander cannot compete with him. The single character is just way more mobile and powerful, while the army commander is bogged down moving troops and shit, the single man just teleport strikes people and rapes them. Superman basically acts on a daily scale, doing tons of shit almost instantly. The army guy is taking weeks and months to plan complex sieges and military campaigns.
Your high level games can be either about an age of kings, or a clash of superheroes, but they can't be both. The two are pretty much mutually exclusive.
It's generally easier to go with the Superhero model simply because the game is already suited around a small team of warriors doing stuff. The age of kings game requires pretty much a completely separate mechanic, because you're no longer worried about resolving personal actions, but rather quickly resolving actions that you tell your underlings to do without having to roll out each and every underling. Doing that requires a lot of extra rules.
Napoleon and Caesar were army commanders and they were regular dudes. And the fact that you have armies matter at all in the affairs of high level people pretty much means that your high level characters have to be regular dudes too.
If you're playing with high level mages who shape reality at their whim, then commanding an army doesn't even matter, because anyone at their tier of power can just wipe the floor with their thousands of mooks, and they end up just littering the battlefield.
The world where army commanders matter and the world of army destroying gods are just not compatible at all. If the army destroying god exists, then the army commander cannot compete with him. The single character is just way more mobile and powerful, while the army commander is bogged down moving troops and shit, the single man just teleport strikes people and rapes them. Superman basically acts on a daily scale, doing tons of shit almost instantly. The army guy is taking weeks and months to plan complex sieges and military campaigns.
Your high level games can be either about an age of kings, or a clash of superheroes, but they can't be both. The two are pretty much mutually exclusive.
It's generally easier to go with the Superhero model simply because the game is already suited around a small team of warriors doing stuff. The age of kings game requires pretty much a completely separate mechanic, because you're no longer worried about resolving personal actions, but rather quickly resolving actions that you tell your underlings to do without having to roll out each and every underling. Doing that requires a lot of extra rules.
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Tue Feb 02, 2010 7:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Addressing that really has to do more with what the upper ranges of personal power look like, rather than anything impossible to solve.
My fixes are:
1. Traveling quickly requires a level of investment that isn't just DnD's, "hit 9th level and get Teleport in addition to everything else". You can move quickly, scaling with level, but doing so is a choice of power and not just a side-benefit.
2. Army destroying gods can exist, but only relative to lower levels. In a system where level differences are intrinsic in all calculations you're looking at increasing the benefit on the lower side without anything on the higher side, treating a 2-level difference in your favor as a 4-level difference. You can chew through units but you're just one Unit on your own, and you have to do all that killing. A skilled Operational or Strategic commander would be a force multiplier that could bring a war to a halt through more subtle means than simply mowing through everything.
There's an upper limit where being a superhero does obviate armies, but that's not the Warfare level of play - that's Transcendence, where you're raising mountains or a God-King or something else that obviates most of the lower levels of play as much as Warfare obviates most interpersonal use of Combat.
My fixes are:
1. Traveling quickly requires a level of investment that isn't just DnD's, "hit 9th level and get Teleport in addition to everything else". You can move quickly, scaling with level, but doing so is a choice of power and not just a side-benefit.
2. Army destroying gods can exist, but only relative to lower levels. In a system where level differences are intrinsic in all calculations you're looking at increasing the benefit on the lower side without anything on the higher side, treating a 2-level difference in your favor as a 4-level difference. You can chew through units but you're just one Unit on your own, and you have to do all that killing. A skilled Operational or Strategic commander would be a force multiplier that could bring a war to a halt through more subtle means than simply mowing through everything.
There's an upper limit where being a superhero does obviate armies, but that's not the Warfare level of play - that's Transcendence, where you're raising mountains or a God-King or something else that obviates most of the lower levels of play as much as Warfare obviates most interpersonal use of Combat.
Bear in mind that Exalted explicitly lets you turn your entire populace into super-soldiers, personally protect them by deflecting entire volleys of arrows, and turn your lieutenant-commanders into mini-Solars.
Armies can be relevant in a game about gods, if the gods are able to infuse their armies with their divinity.
Armies can be relevant in a game about gods, if the gods are able to infuse their armies with their divinity.