I got a call about two weeks ago that my good friend was going to be running a couple of Exalted campaigns, one Solar before summer, and one Autochtonian after summer started. I'd been in the mood for gaming for some time, but time crunches and transportation issues had pretty much prevented the group from getting together at anything approaching a regular basis.

Now, I'd played Exalted before, and as interesting as parts of the game were, I'd had trouble. It was really very mechanically demanding, and I had never taken the time to really master the rules to any kind of capacity. But, I'd had time to look them over a bit, and after reading some tutorials on rpg.net, I figured I'd be in better shape to give it a go this time. We ended up getting four people to sign on in total. I took the game on, in particular, with an eye on observing how the game mechanics actually shook out in actual play, and if they were really as difficult as RPG.net made them seem to be. Here's the play roster:

Me (Killroy, Prodigal Essence Scholer. Twilight): Killroy grew up disenfranchised before being taken in by a local guru, martial artist, and sage. He's a scholer, a martial artist, and a would-be thaumaturge, but he Exalted. The concept is a person who is interested in mastering himself through mastering one's Essence. I wanted to see how well Exalted dealt with what is essentially a multi-class character. Can I be a kung-fu taoist wizard? We'll find out!

The Viski (Marianna, Eclipse) In contrast to me, she's never played Exalted before, and is dubious of all the crunch. However, she's played D&D and D20 Modern, and as a player, doesn't seem to have any trouble. She's got a good eye for practical issues, but not great with 'optimal' builds. Marianna comes from one of the ruling houses of merchant nobles, and is our groups willfull social-monkey.  She rides a horse, and is a crack shot with a bow, because she loves to go hunting. Social-fu seems less intensive then sorcery, but I'll be interested to see how the game really handles these two spectrums.

Brantai (Eight Line Poem, Zenith) Brantai's played several WoD games in the past, so is pretty familiar with the Storyteller system at its core. He's not sure how well that knowledge is going to transition into Exalted, but seems to be doing really well. For a Zenith, he sure is shiv-oriented, going with some really good Melee parries and attack charms, and I assume some social and Endurance ones.

Mikey (Beylar, Night) Mikey is playing our ninja. While he really wasn't planning on going steriotypic here, in his own words, "After seeing a lot of those charms, it was hard to avoid it." Unlike the rest of us, who tended to split our concepts, Beylar is pretty much just a ninja. He throws things, and it's cool. Mikey, despite his steriotypical problem-character-looking character, doesn't have a habit of being a prick at the table, and has played before. In these terms, he's more or less acting as a Control player in my mental experiment, then.

I'm pretty excited about this, because it's a good group, and we always have a great time. It's even better for these purposes, because we're starting at super-beginning character creation but are gaining about x1.5 normal exp. off generous initial bumps, so there's a good chance we'll hit higher levels fairly quickly and I'll be able to see at least mid-power before the game ends.

More to come, as I jot down the game session and how the mechanics played out. Stay tuned for the whole thing (or just skip to the bottom) for the game's outtakes and novelty charm names.

Eight Line Poem - a peasant farmer with a split between sword-y and leader-y charms, the Throwback flaw and the Past Lives merit - is basically Rand al'Thor with more David Bowie references and less Douchebaggery.  I figured we needed someone good at swording, and I've been looking to play a "hero's journey" sort of character without several of the assumptions 1st-level D&D brings to the table.
I steadfastly maintain that "Eight Line Poem" is no more ridiculous a name than "Harmonious Jade."



My initial impressions of the system
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I forgot to mention that we're using Exalted 1st ed.
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I came in letting everyone know that I'd played something like three variants of the Storyteller system at various times, and so might have trouble keeping rules straight.  As luck would have it, the only thing I kept messing up was trying to spend willpower on damage, which I don't think you have ever been able to do in any White Wolf game, anyway.
I was pleasantly surprised by the "halfway in-between Storyteller and Storytelling" feel of the system, because it has a reputation for requiring buckets of dice.  Not that there weren't buckets of dice being thrown around, but the little things done to streamline combat (like soak subtracting from the damage pool instead of being rolled, and the simplified method of taking multiple actions) helped keep the complexity of the combats lower than I was expecting.
After laboring through the charms at character creation, I had kind of expected those to be a sticking point during actual play.  They sort-of were, but mostly because I didn't have a great handle on the nuances of the system.  As a starting character I have something like 11 charms, and only about half for combat, so they were somewhat easier to keep track of.  I do wonder if this will become a problem once everyone gets a lot more charms, but like I stated in another thread I expect it to be comparable with playing a wizard in D&D.
I had a blast at the first session, and I'm quite looking forward to our next game.

Actually, I think I'm the only one that likes your name besides you. >.> Personally, I'm tired of the generic babble names of most of the characters, and Mikey fucking came up with his name right at the table. Honestly, I want to change my Killroy's name to Prodigal Essence Scholer straight-up, and use Killroy for the Alchemicals game. I'll probably post the actual play of the game later today, because I'm spending my time now putting together a presentation for school and writing a paper due later this afternoon.

If anyone's been interested in how the game actually went on, I'm sorry it took so long for me to put up. School is, well, still in session and I hadn't got any decent sleep, so the task of posting an actual play without any decent notes seemed monumental. Suffice to say, next time we play, I'll take some better notes. I'm doing most of this off the top of my head.

Our characters were pretty much done before we met, and the only thing to do was look them over and move a few dots around. My first thought was that I had way too many Background points. You get 7 to begin with, and if your character starts off either poor or unconnected to a greater social structure, then you'll end up with more then you know what to do with. As an example, there are Resources, Allies, Contacts, Influence, Artifacts, Mentor, Manse, et al. If you're a wanderer, Manse doesn't make much sense, and it's pretty campaign specific. Allies, Contacts, Influence, and Mentor are all vaguely similar and require a certain amount of social connection. I think, after streching, I managed to put one dot in most things, and 2 in Artifact, explaining it away as a graduation present. Considering I'm a martial artist with no weapons, the damage and armor bumps are pretty welcome to me anyhow. If you've got too many points, there's no way to re-channel them into freebie points to build your character. Technically, I'm still not using all my points, but there's nothing else for me to spend them on, so it disappears. (Kind of lame.)

Because our characters are well thought out, our Storyteller (Frank) gives us all 6 extra exp, which we allocate and I use to buy another charm. There's another thing - we all ran out of available charm slots with more we wanted to buy. As a duel-concept character, I found myself spreading my charms thin, buying just the first one or two of several trees. I still found some exp to buy Ox-Body's health levels, though.

The game starts off in the Savanger Lands, in a small city on the verge of a festival. Everyone crawls out of the woodwork to participate, including haveing all residents contribute a bit. The Viski has Marianna bring a bunch of excellent but discounted chocolate, cutting deals so even the poor get their fill. Killroy brings hand-written scrolls of poetry, parables, and fiction, and hands them out to anyone who wants them. In a small bit of cheapness, he occasionally tries to pay for more expensive liquors or foodstuffs with them, which is more of a joke then anything. Eight Line Poem and Beylar roll on in from the provinces and Nexus, alternatively, and Beylar gets harrassed for being an outsider, and a dude.

Killroy and Marianna succeed in diff. 1 perception checks to notice the blacksmith is selling anathema-themed charms and headbands (get your own caste mark!). Both buy some, Marianna wearing hers as a choker, and Killroy putting (a duplicate of his!) on as a headband and playing "Thump the Anathema" with some local children. Killroy wins. ^_^;

Nothing much happens, mechanically, and the festival progresses until the martial arts competitions start. Eight Line Poem is an accomplished swordsman, and Killroy enters for fun (the village knows he's one of the two students of a MA master), and they're put on the same team. I specifically don't flaunt my artifact bracers for this one, figuring these guys are just mooks, and punching normally will suffice. ELP gets a wooden replica of his sword. I figure here's where we get to see how combat works for us.

Before I get into this, I'll explain how I set myself up for this so you know what's going on. First, this is all 1st Edition Exalted stuff, because we don't have cash to shell out for new books, and this edition hasn't done us wrong yet. Plus, we have all the books. Splitting actions looks like it's been simplified, with a simple cumulative penalty (-2, -3, -4 dice, ect) being imposed for each action.

Killroy has a specialization in Martial Arts (MA) called Defensive. I don't know if this is bending the rules, but the idea is, whenever I'm taking as many or more defensive actions as I'm taking offensive, I get 2 bonus dice to roll. I hoped to offset the fact that I'll be constantly planning on taking at least one defensive action every round, and only one attack, because I can't stand up to getting pummeled very well. I only have one MA charm, and it just adds to init, while I have the first Dodge charm, which gives me bonus dice. Essentially, I can stand in front of mooks and not get hit all day, but I'm not useful for hitting much...

We two take on three mooks, and I win init by a good margin. I plan to split my pool between offense and defense, and use a reflexive charm (super quick charm I can use at any time) to boost my Dodging dice. The mook closes in to attack range, and because I go first, I choose to attack. I have 3 Dex. and 3 MA, +2 for my specialty. That's 8. I'm taking two actions, and I take -2 for the 1st, so I roll 6 dice to hit. (My specialty balances out with being defensive like I hoped! Yay!) I roll at or above 7 on three of those, so 3 successes.

These guys are 1 diff. to hit. That means I only need one success, and the other two are extra. When I roll for dmg., then, I get to roll 2 extra. These guys have a non-leathal soak (armor) of 2. Soak removes dice for dmg, down to a minimum of one. So, here's how it goes: I roll Str. (3) + extra dice (2) - Soak (2) to get a total of 3 dice to roll. Kind of complicated. I roll and get a 10, and 2 non-hits. 10's equal 2 successes, so I only subtract 2 health levels from this mook.

Wait a second... I was told that even a beginning Exalt is mowing over mooks every roll, and that I'd be leveling blocks and shit. I barely bruised this sucker, despite rolling a handful of dice. >.> Maybe I'm doing something wrong...

Well, the mook trys to hit me, and like a sucker, he totally can't. I roll Dex. (3) + Dodge (3) + dice from my charm - I spent 3 motes (3) - 3 dice, because this is my second action this turn = 6. A bunch of successes, and this guy whiffs. They attack Eight Line, over there next to me, and Brent opts to use a reflexive parry charm from the melee tree. He succeeds so hard, he destroys some dude's sword. Then he gets to go, I see him roll a bunch of dice, and he beats the shit out of some suckers.

I realized at this point that even though we're providing pretty decent descriptions, it's like pulling teeth to convince Frank to give us any bonus die. It's pretty frustrating, but I let it go.

Combat continues for a little longer, and it goes a lot like that. Eight Line kicks ass with a sword, and punching people is not great dmg.

Story continues...

This is the end of the first session.

I have to retcon the story a bit to fill in a small, but needed detail. After the tournament, which Eight Line Poem and Killroy win easily, they're approached by an important delgate from Grand Forks with a job offer. This gent is half water-spirit, which comes up later, and Eight Line and Killroy defer an answer till the next day.

After the tourny, the day is starting to wind down, with the merchants and entertainment packing up to get ready for the next early morning. Eight Line is a farmer from the boondocks, while Killroy isn't keen on walking a mile and a half back to his small shrine-hovel back in the woods, so both take up the free lodging offered by the tavern for our victory. Marianne goes back to her mansion and Beylar the Shadowy Ninja Guy sleeps in a gutter, or something.

While we're all sleeping of the day's activities, a terrible scream echos through the city. While I'm dubious as to how that'd work, it's clear this is the real adventure hook, so I let it slide. ^_^ Everyone's curious to see what's going on, so ELP muscles into his breastplate while I use some personal essence to use the first Athletic charm, Graceful Crane Stance and vault out the window, trotting across clotheslines and fencetops in the dark. (Because I can, and just for fun.) Both Beylar and Marianna go too, on foot and via horseback, with Marianna easily beating us all there.

We make it undetected, while Marianna makes a scene by pushing her way through the crowd. The screamer, she's been told, is a cousin and friend of hers, so Viski makes this priority one. She easily gets in, but I can't. This is, of course, because she has a reason and authority to be here and despite me offering to use my diagnosis skills, I certainly don't. Inside, there are signs of a terrible struggle, but Marianna's friend lies mutiliated and dead.  Her anger causes her to fall into her Throwback flaw (failing a Will save), and she storms out, looking for the culperate, while the local blacksmith pulls Eight Line and Killroy aside.  Meanwhile, the xenophobic city gaurd are pulling out the Three Forks envoy and any other outsider they can find, and hauling them all off to prison.  They look for Beylar too, but he's a right rogue, and can't be so easily found (skulking off to a quiet part of the city until things die down).

It turns out the blacksmith is an expert and canny craftsman who's friends with the (only serious) local thaumaturge and sage, who're both in league with the only influential male statesman. He passes us off to the statesman who now has our full attention as he mentions that the Three Forks envoy couldn't have killed the merchant princess, and he needs our abilities at arms and otherwise to ferret out the real villain, and we're happy to agree. Beylar 'just happens' to be around, and overhear the conversation, and said statemen says something like:
"And now we've found our third investigator. I hope I can trust you all to use the full authority invested by myself to hunt down the rogues who did this. Naturally, you're all exempt from charges." (cough, Beylar) That kind of pardon can't be bought quickly enough, so he naturally signs onto the plan. The statesman introduces us to the thaumaturge who, in her enlightened wisdom, finally lets us into the crime seen.

Meanwhile, Marianna rampages through town on her horse for a while, looking for criminals, but fails to find either them or Beylar (whom she suspects). When we get to the scene of the crime, Marianna see us with Beylar and rides up to arrest him. Pulling a bow on the surprised Nexian, she proclaims that he's under arrest.
"Come with me, outsider! I've finally tracked you down, and you're under arrest!"
"No, he's really not." says Killroy, smugly. "We need Beylar to finish observing the crime scene."
"I've already seen the scene of the crime! The water puddles firmly implicate the water-spirit, and we have no way of knowing that this man wasn't involved."

Eight Line Poem and Beylar both back up slowly. I'm personally worried we're going to see inter-group combat based off something we know for a fact, out of game, none of us were involved in. Luckily, this isn't what happens, because the thamaturge's word carries a lot of weight in this town, and the statesman is behind her.  So, when she walks up and frostily declairs that Beylar wasn't there, and that he's working for the councilman, Marianna quickly lowers the bow and offers to sign onto the investigation. We're to afraid of being pincushoned to say no.

What follows is a brief look around. Beylar, besides being expertly able to shiv a dude (or lady, in the interest of equality), is well practiced in looking over a crime scene. My Medicine diagnosis indicates she was roughed up by more then one person, while his Awareness or Larceny, or something, shows us that someone came in through the pipes and bent them all out of shape. While water-dude drips all the time, he's not capable of getting in this way and unlocking the door from the inside, so he's freed under observation.  While Beylar's observation is crucial, Marianna notices that her friend's pendant, which she wore all the time, had gone missing.  So, there's a clue.  She storms off (again. she's pretty stormy) to the inn that caters to the really expensive crowd to see if anyone tried to fence an amulet.

Marianna's got a charm that pretty much makes mortals spit out whatever they know when she wants to know it, so she goes ahead and abuses it heartily here.  Feeling fairly useless, Beylar, Killroy, and Eight Line sit down and order an expensive breakfast on the statesman's tab (since we've been awake since real early, it's breakfast time, and none of us had eaten yet). She finds out that a shady looking guy with black sunglasses tried to fence a cheap-looking, dull-gold talisman so she sets out for the edge of town where hobos and crap camp to look for him. Everyone follows behind her.

The very beginning of the Performance or Presence charmset pretty much functions like a decent roll in D&D's Gather Information, except GI seems more abstracted. Exalted's charm pretty much squeezes the information out forcefully, but either way, we got what we wanted real quick. Marianna, unlike the rest of us though, has been burning through a bunch of her personal "I'm not an essence torch" Essence, so if she keeps it up, she'll run out.

We get out to their camp pretty fast, finding them sitting around a campfire and waiting for night so they can get out of here. They're wrapped up like goth mummies, one with smoked goggles and another with a black mask. Marianna demands the talisman from them, and they waffle like they don't have it. Beylar seems to know better, though, and uses his beginning Larceny charm to instantly pick the pocket of the guy that has it. It instantly works, so it pretty much makes 'Pick Pocket' obsolete. Take that, low-classa CN rogues! Beylar tells Marianna to drop the subject with these mooks, 'cause we have what we want, but Marianna wants justice.

"Well, why not just shoot these sons of dogs?" Killroy whispers to her.
"Because they'll fight back. These guy look like serious criminals, and I don't like the odds."
"I think we can win a fight against these curs..." He replies, but she waffles, and we lose the advantage of surprise and pretty much just wander off, our prize in tow.

I'm pretty sure the realize we bilked them later, though, because we take the day easy and when everyone considers heading back to their homes, we get collectively ambushed. It turns out these are fey-blooded tricksters and killers, and they resent the implication that we can swipe their goods. Plus, they think they can wack us. Combat ensues, and that's going to be the last of the posts. (For now.)

Double Post.

Some minor things that Thanatos02 didn't mention:

The stolen necklace was actually a hearthstone amulet, and after we'd recovered it no one but Viski could recall ever having seen the victim wear it.  It was hinted pretty strongly that this was caused by something the half-fey did, and that killing them might end the spell, but I don't have any solid info on whether that was confirmed.

The water-y guy who offered Kilroy and Eight Line jobs, while not guilty of this particular crime, is by no means an angel.  Grand Forks is renowned for its drug trade, and this guy is definitely involved.

The murder was actually an accident.  The fey-blooded gang had intended to kidnap the victim in some sort of "The Hills Have Eeyes"-esque breeding scheme, but she fought back and they panicked.

Eight Line Poem now has a pair of sunglasses, although he has not taken to wearing them.

Frank mentioned to us that we'd see a lot of synchronicity during that beginning of the campaign, and that our characters would be aware of how odd it is that they keep ending up pursuing the same goals together.  He said this would actually be a plot thread as the campaign developed.

That's all I can think of at the moment, and I'm looking forward to the next adventure.

Ok, we finally managed to have a new session now that school is over. The Viski
s character ended up getting ret-conned out of existance because her schedule made it too difficult to show up regularly, and I think our DM was feeling particularly vengeful about it. This last adventure was particularly long, so it might take me a while to write it up.