First and foremost, the group liked the game. We didn't finish Return to the Tomb of Five Corners because a few people left, but we'll finish up the last bit next weekend.

My lack of experience with the power level caused me todoubled the number of zombies in the first fight thinking it might give everyone a chance to act, but it came nowhere close. It did explain the tick system well though, so mission accomplished.

The bandit fight was fairly easy. The arrows did very little damage and then a Death of Obsidian Butterflies wiped out all the foes that hadn't already been dropped by Naria's arrows. It also caught a few party members in its wake, giving people a chance to roll soak some damage, and Morning Breeze a chance to exercise his Oaken Body charm. Moments later they went to the Zenith tomb and Oaken Body let Morning Breeze slide in and easily claim his staff.

Next up was the Tomb of Dawn, where Kade landed a mighty blow but due to not realizing that Melee Excellency can be added to parry DV was dropped to incapacitated by the walking dead. Had he not been already injured by Rinan's spell he would have just been hurt, not taken out. A comboed Serpent-Sting Staff flurry of death and carnage finished the dead guy off, and they went back to rest for a couple of days while a meditating Kade healed up.

Next up was the forest city. They didn't explore it much, but were sufficiently creeped out by the bodies with no wounds and no skeletons. Morning Breeze consecrated the corpses they encountered, and was rewarded by hearing faint sounds of joy from the freed dead souls. They found the citadel entrance and fought the demon servitors on the rope bridge. I gave the servitors the ability to run on air so they could easily run up to the bridge and set it on fire with their feet, giving plenty of opportunity to do some fun stunting as people rush to kill the demons and get off the bridge. It was an easy fight, made hard only by the need to not plummet to the forest floor.

Overall it was a cool experience. Stunting definitely helped liven it up, as our group is usually the type that quickly devolves into "swing & miss, swing & hit, swing & miss" style of combat narrative. The lack of a battlemat was slightly problematic in the demonic servitors fight, but I think it helped pull us away from a tactical mindset and into a more cinematic one.

Overall it was a good game and I'm looking forward to playing again.

Sounds great, James!

It's good to hear that Stunting livened up play.  I've played with some folk that absolutely love it, while others continue the "swing... miss" routine.

We had one player continue the swing...miss style except when he really needed the dice. The others are too into minmaxing to let an opportunity for free dice pass them up.

The most memorable part came when the guy playing Kara (the renamed Mistress of Pacts as a mole) finally unleashed a combo with massive charm use. He was having a hard time against zombies because I didn't give the character Unfurling Iron Lotus so there will be a surprise for the party when she turns on them, so offense wasn't his strong suit. But when he finally went for blod he got 13 damage dice against a lowly 3 health level zombie. A shake and a throw later and he'd rolled 0 successes.

Wow, you Zombies aren't "extras". Extras are awesome and don't let anyone tell you any different.



Normally for extras, if you have nine damage dice, they're dead. Every three damage dice equals one health level of damage.

It speeds up combat with on non-challenging foes.

I'm also suprised the dawn caste didn't just activate his anima banner and make them all run (Shamble?) away.

Didn't realize there was a damage rule for extras. It probably isn't in the intro adventure because it adds something unneeded and means that in most fights you wouldn't even roll your damage. I'll keep it in mind for when the real campaign starts up.

Zombies are immune to the anima because they never fail Valor checks. The only fight they've been in where an enemy could be affected by it was some bandits. The guy playing the Dawn caste hadn't arrived yet so I was NPCing him and didn't want to overshine the other party members or prevent them from showing off their cool powerz by chasing the opposition away. In that respect it worked, since it let the sorcerer show how deadly flapping your arms and saying butterfly three times can be.

The next session they'll be facing about 50 enemies at once, and his banner will come in very handy. He'll be at the table too, so it'll be the player scaring off the baddies instead of the GM.

Sounds like a fine start. May it be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

As far as the combat rules go, I think you just have to get through a couple of fights before they really sink in. And after that it's smooth sailing, assuming the players take the time to learn the rules as well. My first attempt with Exalted 2e was embarrassingly clunky, but within a couple of sessions it got to be 2nd-nature. The rules are never as complex as they look on paper.

My advice would be to make every opponent who doesn't have an individual name/backstory an extra. No need to fully stat-up "Bandit #1" or "Hungry Ghost #42." The auto-damage rule cuts one roll out of the sequence, speeding things up even more and freeing up more time for the players to bask in their own awesomeness. You can worry about that when you're writing up your own baddies, of course.

Keep it up, and have fun.

It's definitely shaping up to be a continual game for us. I just found out that two of the players bought rulebooks this week. for the record, that means we now have more core books for exalted than any other game except Shadowrun. D&D kinda gets cheated in that comparison though, since there's an SRD. If there wasn't an SRD we'd probably have close to one PHB per player (5+1GM) for it.

We finished up the introductory adventure last night. Had a good time. the final chicka would have wasted one of the characters but he got some good rolls with the charm that lets him ignore an attack if he rolls his opponent's essence with Stamina + Resistance. Her Essence was 4, so he was burning willpower like crazy to do it. Unfurling Iron Lotus + First Melee Excellency + Reaper Daiklave + Flickering Wisp Technique is nasty.

Everyone decided to keep the same general characters, only tweaking them a little instead of rebuilding from scratch, so next week we'll start the campaign proper.

Quote from: James McMurrayIt's definitely shaping up to be a continual game for us. I just found out that two of the players bought rulebooks this week. for the record, that means we now have more core books for exalted than any other game except Shadowrun. D&D kinda gets cheated in that comparison though, since there's an SRD. If there wasn't an SRD we'd probably have close to one PHB per player (5+1GM) for it.

A very good sign. Exalted is one of those games that really rewards players who learn the rules and use them in their favor. Like d20, it's intentionally designed that way. The player enthusiasm (and rulebook ownage) can only be a good thing. Glad to see the game seems to be a hit w/your group. I know it's one of my favorites, which is to say that the 2 games I've run have been epic fun for all involved.

Another player bought the Dragon-Blooded book and will be buying a core book some time next week. So we've now got 4 core rulebooks, Lunars, and Dragon-Blooded.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of preconstructed adevntures available. 2e only has the introductory one. 1e has a bunch but I can't find any conversion guidelines anywhere. that means I'll be pretty busy trying to make stuff up, which is fine, I'm just a little leery of my ability to generate good challenges for a game with no CR system and my low grasp of the rules.

It's true about the lack of published adventures, but I'm sure you'll do fine. You don't need to worry so much about matching opponent power levels to players like you would in most d20 games. Throw a bunch of extras at the PCs now and then (more to let them show off and develop new tricks than to really put them in danger) and save the deep thought for the main antagonists, the fights with whom should be things to remember.

I wonder if the absence of more published scenarios is simply because they're not profitable or perhaps also because Exalted is the sort of game in which you can't count on the players to follow a set path of any kind? 'Cause that latter part is true to a large extent--at least, railroading of any kind is kinda pointless when starting characters are capable of taking over small countries. The Compass of Terrestrial/Celestial Directions books seem to have lots of hooks to get you going, though. There are a lot of aspects of the setting that are just begging to be explored, and a circle of solars should be up for just about anything, sooner or later.

1e seems to have had several adventures. I found an online adventure that looked promising as well. I'll have to figure out how to convert 1e to 2e if I use them, but the only big problem I see is the difference in combat with weapon speeds and rates. I'll probably just give things what looks good and go from there.

But for now I'm going to be running made up stuff anyway. The players want to track down the demon they set free during White Wolf's introductory adventure, so that will keep me occupied. Unfortunately, it means less time to play Super Metroid on the Super NES emulator with my son.

I started up a campaign newsletter for my group. You can check it out here.

Part 2 is here.

I wasn't going to post the next update, but then I saw there were 13 replies and 300 views, so I figured folks must be looking at it.

Here ya go.

Anyone reading them, please feel free to comment. This is my first time running Exalted, though I've run high and epic level D&D in the past. I'm interested in any and all comments.