Quote from: Simlasa;849994Neither do I... I've got a local friend who's ranted at me about the GG folks and there's just no way to talk to him about it. As soon as I brought up that neither side has the high ground he announced his shock and dismay that I was a 'Gamergater'. It's a toxic subject.

That is what the anti-gamergate side is known for.  It doesn't matter if your neutral, or hate both sides.  If your not a anti, then you might as well be a gamergater in their world view.  Did he cut you off yet?

Quote from: Simlasa;849994'Gamergater'. It's a toxic subject.

Indeed, and it's got nothing to do with this thread.

Quote from: Orphan81;849946Didn't the latest update say it's in Layout now? With that art sample and everything? I thought I read it would be ready in pdf in why...just a few short months!

It's supposedly been in lay out since February.

Quote from: Nexus;849937I am really curious what the reaction to full and final mechanics will be. There are quite a few hardcore fans that are going to accept anything and praise its genius and the rules were written to appeal to certain tastes but still I wonder how many are going to be disappointed. "I didn't read the leak" has practically become a loyalty oath and supposedly that leak wasn't "anywhere close" to the final product. So we'll see.

I'm a little surprised how truly hardcore fans their seem to be after how this has been handled but Exalted has always generated allot of passion.

It remains to be seen if the hardcore fans are enough to make a profitable game.

jg

Quote from: James Gillen;850224It remains to be seen if the hardcore fans are enough to make a profitable game.

jg

It's already profitable. We're talking about a game where the devs got suckers to pay hundreds of dollars (each) up front just to have a single Charm created for them or have their characters illustrated. Thousands of dollars went for things that would cost the developer next to nothing (or nothing at all, in the case of PDFs of old material). Unless a lot of hookers and blow were involved in the design process (which I'm not entirely ruling out), then Exalted 3e should be one of the most profitable games ever.

Quote from: Brand55;850243It's already profitable. We're talking about a game where the devs got suckers to pay hundreds of dollars (each) up front just to have a single Charm created for them or have their characters illustrated. Thousands of dollars went for things that would cost the developer next to nothing (or nothing at all, in the case of PDFs of old material). Unless a lot of hookers and blow were involved in the design process (which I'm not entirely ruling out), then Exalted 3e should be one of the most profitable games ever.

Yeah that is the biggest fuck you to the fans.  It is not even a honest sale and frankly Onyx Path should be hated for this shit.

Quote from: Brand55;850243It's already profitable. We're talking about a game where the devs got suckers to pay hundreds of dollars (each) up front just to have a single Charm created for them or have their characters illustrated. Thousands of dollars went for things that would cost the developer next to nothing (or nothing at all, in the case of PDFs of old material). Unless a lot of hookers and blow were involved in the design process (which I'm not entirely ruling out), then Exalted 3e should be one of the most profitable games ever.

Yep. Some of the contributors put in four digits. Not even to fund a 3rd edition but for extras, a fancy version. Exalted is an incredible cash cow.

Quote from: Nexus;850249Yep. Some of the contributors put in four digits. Not even to fund a 3rd edition but for extras, a fancy version. Exalted is an incredible cash cow.

I was shocked when I first looked at the numbers. Not by the total pledged, though that was surprising enough. But when I saw that the average backer level was around $150 with hundreds of people going much higher than that, I could hardly believe it.

A lot of people are upset, yes. But there are a lot of other people that will rabidly gobble up anything, good or bad, OPP puts out with "Exalted" slapped on the cover.

Exalted is awesome...

No, really, Exalted, as a concept is fucking awesome. It's why it engenders such good will.

I remember going to Ryder's Hobby Shop with a friend, and looking over some new books. We had known Exalted was coming out, but thought it was going to be lame. Exalted was fresh on the shelf, and my buddy starts reading it while I'm browsing.

10 minutes in he tells me I MUST buy this book and run it for our group tomorrow. I spent all day and night reading as much of the book as I could, and did in fact run it that next day.

My group got tons of play out of 1st edition Exalted. I made up my own nations in the Hundred Kingdoms, let one player play a secret Abyssal disguised as a Dragon Blooded, had them work for lookshy as special forces agents...Ran a session that involved a "mass wedding" in Nexus complete with parades of one PC to everyone in his employ so they would be politically protected...

All with 1e, all with fond memories...

I'll say it again...Exalted is...fucking awesome...

But for some reason...2e just couldn't capture the same magic as 1e...and it seemed to get further away setting wise from what made 1e so fucking awesome...I had high hopes for 3e...but eh...everything I've seen of it just makes me sad...

But its why people pledged so much, it's why they were willing to donate. I was broke at the time so I couldn't...But I really wanted to...one of my gaming group pledged high enough to get the cloth map...Now though, I'm glad I didn't and my buddy just wants his fucking cloth map.

What made the first edition so much better than the second edition?  I am curious about that because so many exalted players love the first edition, but hated the later editions.

Quote from: Snowman0147;850262What made the first edition so much better than the second edition?  I am curious about that because so many exalted players love the first edition, but hated the later editions.

There's many reasons, and I'll try to go over some of them briefly.

First, let's talk mechanics...

Simply put, 1e is better mechanically than 2e. 2e attempted to "Fix" the problems of 1e and in the end, just made things worse. The Ink Monkeys coming on "fixed" 2e, but in the end this still made it a horrendous mess compared to 1e.

1e was a lot like typical white wolf. Combat wise, it played like you expected Storyteller to play..It wasn't overly complicated, it didn't have as much charm bloat, and the system didn't have all the fiddly bits that 2e did.

It was still the most complex whitewolf game released at the time, but when you compare it to 2e it seems streamlined and simple. Combat was fun. When the player's guide was released and introduced the "Power Combat" rules addition, it got even better.

There were still "Land Mines" in the system, Charms that could break the game in certain combinations, but ST's and Players could avoid those when they learned about them.

2e just made things way more complicated, it just added so many extra options that were unnecessary. You didn't need 3 different versions of "Excellency" for each charm...1 version worked perfectly, 3 versions just made more complicated ways to spend motes.

Then you get into the whole problem of DV... Defense Value in 2e was so easy to break, and so easy to reach the point where there literally was no point in trying to attack certain characters, because you would never get the successes needed to hit their DV.

1e still had rolled defenses. Even if you had a shit ton of dice, you could still roll poorly, and the attacker could roll well, there wasn't a futility to combat, or the need of a GM to either nerf the shit out of an enemy or overload them with so much accuracy they always had a chance of hitting the PC with the highest DV....which meant they would just obliterate a PC with a lower DV..

1e certainly has warts, but looking back now, I can honestly say 1e was overall a much more mechanically sound system, that was easier to run and easier for PC's to get into.

2e introduced things like "Join Battle" rolls, Battle Wheels, a glut of charms in the corebook, DV and Mental DV, and later on a scroll of errata that basically just rewrote the game from scratch...

Now lets get to style of 1e vs 2e...

Stylistically 1e was the perfect blend of Sword and Sorcery combined with Anime. One flavor did not over power the other. The art alone featured both beautiful Anime pieces as well as more traditional and greco-roman looking pieces..

The world itself had much more of a "Weird" 1930's fantasy vibe to go with the Anime as well. Conan fit right in with Cloud depending on where you were in the world. Old Ruins of a bygone age that were ripe for exploration, a desert capital city where trade was all that mattered....combined with Anime style Pirate Shenanigans in the far west, and an evil Empire that combined Final Fantasy style steam punk with Greco-Roman military discipline.

Furthermore, the world was far less "Crapsack" than 2e. Yes it was still an age of Sorrows, yes it was full of scum and villainy and darkness... but the Solar Exalted were a sign of HOPE.

The Unconquered Sun was shown as an entity that was GOOD. The Solars, while some of them were capable of evil (And even given examples were they were crazy, looking at you Lyta and your Giant Sun Laser sacrifices!) most Solars were unquestionably good, and dedicated to making the world a better place. You had to be exceptional, a Hero to become a Solar, and the Sun often talked to those he Exalted, telling them to go forth and make the world righteous in their sight.

The Solars were not "Lawgivers" they were Heroes, whether greco-roman or modern in their inclinations.

Magitech was also rare, to the point where the Escaflowne Mecha were completely optional. There were no "Cathedral Factories" and the like.

Exalted 1e also had a far more "Mythical" aspect to it. The Sun was not a Giant Warmachine that could fire lasers...It was the sun..

Exalted 1e had more mystery more places for the GM to make up their own stuff and play against type to keep their PC's surprised..

By contrast, 2e seemed to jetison the greco-roman and sword and sorcery elements to completely embrace Anime above all else. Solars were downplayed as being Heroic and made far more ambiguous, Creation got bigger and emptier..You had Magitech all over the damn place..the Sun was a fucking flying machine that shot heat lasers, and everything was over explained with no mystery and no room for a GM to put in their own creations. Everything was overly explained, the crapsack was cranked up, and it eventually become a bloated mess with stupid added Lore elements that seemed to take away rather than add.

Quote from: Brand55;850255I was shocked when I first looked at the numbers. Not by the total pledged, though that was surprising enough. But when I saw that the average backer level was around $150 with hundreds of people going much higher than that, I could hardly believe it.

A lot of people are upset, yes. But there are a lot of other people that will rabidly gobble up anything, good or bad, OPP puts out with "Exalted" slapped on the cover.

I think a lot of that good will is gone. The developers took a valuable and rare commodity (good will) and systematically fucked it away. I don't think you will see anything like the first kickstarter when time comes for the second and later ones.

But I maybe wrong.

Quote from: Snowman0147;850262What made the first edition so much better than the second edition?  I am curious about that because so many exalted players love the first edition, but hated the later editions.

My personal opinion:

Exalted 1e core book was awesome (the setting; the rules have never worked, although 2nd edition managed in the no small task of being even worse than the first. I wonder at how someone can really dig the concept of "an RPG in which every combat plays like a full blown CCG game"). It had this "ancient classical hero" vibe but with modern sensibilities baked in.
You could play demigods on a holy mission. Yeah, you could go nuts and slaughter half a city in a fit of rage but on the whole, the idea was you got the superpowers because God saw something good in you and used you as a means to change the world for the better. Basically, you played Superman but a bit less annoyingly perfect.

Then this tone was ruined almost immediately after that first book. Just having the Unconquered Sun being a crack addict already does untold damage to the initial idea, never mind the rest of the crap they kept coming out with after that. Although, some of the 1e stuff was still decent enough; but it became really obvious, really early, how a lot of those books were unnecessary at best and just a money-making scheme. I mean you have what... 8 different types of possible supernatural PCs? Solars, Lunars, Sidereals, Dragon-blooded, Abyssals, Alchemicals and Fair Folk... then they added Infernals in 2e.

2e was just all of the crap dialed up to eleven. It had to make everything even more ambiguous, the gonzo factor was increased... and honestly unlike 1e which had its moments, almost every single one of those books was just "let's milk our fans" material.

I haven't been that impressed by the 3rd edition setting material in spite of claims that its intended to return to 1e's style. Any thoughts on that?

What is the relationship between the people and companies of Onyx Path and the Exalted team?

Because, I loved the Trinity games, and I imagine their team will have a kickstarter of some sort. So far, I don't pledge for unstarted projects, but the Trinity setting is one that I would be tempted to do so.