Quote from: DrewD&D has more baseline coherennce, largely due to it being designed as an interlocking system from the ground up, with new feats/spells/classes building on a well defined foundation.

Exalted - in both editions - is more akin to latter day AD&D 2e. It's a revision of a system already built on three or four previous Storyteller incarnations, and as such has baseline assumptions that are at odds with the current designers intent. A good example is damage and soak, which has evolved from the simple, narrative-friendly model of Vampire 1e into Bashing/Lethal/Aggravated, further complicated by rules for Bleeding, Infection, Essence Ping, Piercing, Overwhelming, Hardness, Crippling, Stunning and Knockback effects. And that's before dozens of rule-breaking Charms are added to the mix.

I still have a lot of fondness for the game, and would love to run it again with competent players, but there's no denying the system has accreted rather than grown. The Second Edition should have been approached with the same design mentality as 3.5 - define the core assumptions of play then rewrite the system to support it.

Couldn't agree more.

Quote from: RedFoxCouldn't agree more.

I'd love to ask the current development team what they'd come up with if WW policy didn't shackle the system to the old ST mechanics. Seriously, if ever there was a game looking for a one or two-die resoloution mechanic then Exalted is it.

Thinking about it though I'd probably leave R. Borgstrom out. As much as I like her writing, I find her approach to rules-writing idiosyncratic at best.

Quote from: DrewI still have a lot of fondness for the game, and would love to run it again with competent players, but there's no denying the system has accreted rather than grown. The Second Edition should have been approached with the same design mentality as 3.5 - define the core assumptions of play then rewrite the system to support it.

Well, there's no denying you need competent players for Exalted. They really have to "get" the mechanics, otherwise the came will collapse whenever you're dealing with more than a single mortal antagonist.

The main problem is that all of these extra systems (bleeding, disease, infection...) are superfluous. Any Exalted worth his/her mettle does not need to worry about that. I sure know I never used such systems. Maybe if you play a game using heroic mortals you should use it, but mortals already leave most charms out, so that leaves more space for worrying about matters like bleeding...
Those subsystems really seem like artefacts from a horror game crammed into a game that is heroic fantasy (which is exactly what they are, in fact).

I wouldn't really say that DnD 3.5 doesn't have its quirks, however. It is literally full of weird feats and new subsystems (psionics, several new types of magic, incarnum, some feats that slow down combat immensely...)
Somehow, however, people seem to have less problems with leaving entire books out of their DnD sessions, while they feel the need to include every Exalted book ever printed into their Exalted sessions. Something which is really optional, and not compulsory. Sidereals, Lunars, Abyssals, Alchemicals and fair folk can easily be left out, or confined to antagonists. Dragon-blooded are somewhat harder to leave out, but their charms tend to be more manageable anyway. Anyhow, I tend to always say yes, but if my players wanted to play a circle consisting of a Solar, Sidereal, DB, heroic mortal and a Raksha, my answer would be a resounding NO!

Quote from: ThranduilWell, there's no denying you need competent players for Exalted. They really have to "get" the mechanics, otherwise the came will collapse whenever you're dealing with more than a single mortal antagonist.

Oh god yes, it's been my single biggest hurdle when putting together an Exalted game over the last few years.

QuoteThe main problem is that all of these extra systems (bleeding, disease, infection...) are superfluous. Any Exalted worth his/her mettle does not need to worry about that. I sure know I never used such systems. Maybe if you play a game using heroic mortals you should use it, but mortals already leave most charms out, so that leaves more space for worrying about matters like bleeding...

Granted for the subsystems you list, but stuff like Hardness, Essence Ping, Overwhelming Damage, Piercing Damage, Knockback and Stun all have an appreciable difference on how combat plays out. Many of them are remamants from Power Combat, which was itself an overly complex patch for all the fiddly bits the ST engine wasn't up to handling.

QuoteThose subsystems really seem like artefacts from a horror game crammed into a game that is heroic fantasy (which is exactly what they are, in fact).

Indeed.

QuoteI wouldn't really say that DnD 3.5 doesn't have its quirks, however. It is literally full of weird feats and new subsystems (psionics, several new types of magic, incarnum, some feats that slow down combat immensely...)
Somehow, however, people seem to have less problems with leaving entire books out of their DnD sessions, while they feel the need to include every Exalted book ever printed into their Exalted sessions. Something which is really optional, and not compulsory. Sidereals, Lunars, Abyssals, Alchemicals and fair folk can easily be left out, or confined to antagonists. Dragon-blooded are somewhat harder to leave out, but their charms tend to be more manageable anyway. Anyhow, I tend to always say yes, but if my players wanted to play a circle consisting of a Solar, Sidereal, DB, heroic mortal and a Raksha, my answer would be a resounding NO!

3.5 is designed with modularity in mind, presenting reams of options that can be plugged in to the existing system with relative ease. Exalted on the other hand makes the various splats fairly integral to the setting, in a way that the latest PrC from 'The Manual of Umpteen Choices' doesn't.

I'd run a mixed group, but would expect 99% of the heavy lifting to be done by the players regarding system.

Quote from: DrewGranted for the subsystems you list, but stuff like Hardness, Essence Ping, Overwhelming Damage, Piercing Damage, Knockback and Stun all have an appreciable difference on how combat plays out. Many of them are remamants from Power Combat, which was itself an overly complex patch for all the fiddly bits the ST engine wasn't up to handling.

Well, the hardnessand piercing are really not that complex. Hardness is just a damage treshold, and piercing isn't that hard to take into account. Not if you use the various SR or DR in DnD, IMO.

However, systems like knockback and stun are nasty. Especially the amount of bookkeeping required to see when they happen. Add to that the fact that speed and distance are vital statistics, but almost impossible to implement without using miniatures, and they become the greatest nuisance in the system. Perhaps if I would have to designate my biggest annoyance, it would be just that: for all the bookkeeping on speed and distance, they are irrellevant in most situations. Yet the charm system keeps referencing them over and over and over...

Increasingly, I'm beginning to think that Exalted works for me just because I've thrown half of it out of the window (except when dramatically appropriate). Of course, I know next to no one who plays any system out of the box, so I hope I'm not abnormal in that.

Quote from: Drew3.5 is designed with modularity in mind, presenting reams of options that can be plugged in to the existing system with relative ease. Exalted on the other hand makes the various splats fairly integral to the setting, in a way that the latest PrC from 'The Manual of Umpteen Choices' doesn't.

Hmm, we disagree there, then.
The way I see it, e.g. Sidereals are perfectly optional. Just assume that they do their work so fate runs normally, and that they don't interfere with the characters because they have enormous amounts of red tape to deal with in heaven. They are integral to the setting, perhaps, but not in the day-to-day life of even your adventurers, just like China has a vital role to play in the world history, but not in my day to day life, except perhaps indirectly.
Abyssals can be mostly confined to the Underworld, and Lunars rarely leave the Wyld. Fae are busy in the wyld as well. And creation is so vast, and Exalted are so few, that they never have to meet without ST fiat.
It is not that different from never having Thay come up in the Forgotten Realms, or eliminating Argonessen from Eberron, or never making even a single reference to Nyarlathotep in Call of Cthulhu.

So if all of that is relegated to off-stage, what on earth do you use for antagonists?

That's the other half of the Exalted difficulty equation:  NPCs are the main antagonists, and there's A: no guidelines to NPC vs. party challenge level, and B: NPCs are fucking complex and require their own splatbooks to build.  It's not like you can use the POS ST handbook for them, as the damn thing's broken beyond all measure and doesn't even use the core's rule system.

Exalted's got this weird myopia when it comes to its game design.  Its setting is given razor-sharp focus, and the Charm system is the gleeful love-child of feats and collectible card games.  But there's these gaping wide swaths of game-pertinent design issues that go untouched upon.

Quote from: RedFoxExalted's got this weird myopia when it comes to its game design.  Its setting is given razor-sharp focus, and the Charm system is the gleeful love-child of feats and collectible card games.  But there's these gaping wide swaths of game-pertinent design issues that go untouched upon.

Preach it.

Quote from: hgjsI thought he was referring to "a guideline for challenging the PCs."

Yeah, I was. And they did. If you look at the three PDF adventures they released, have guidelines about how many XP a character should have and rate the adventure of scales like combat, social, problem solving.

Seanchai

Do the pdfs give a usable system for GMs to generate their own challenges, or is it more like (A)D&D's label of "This Adventure suitable for 4-6 characters of levels 5-7": a guideline for the adventure, but not as useful for homebrew material.

Drew and RedFox have both actually touched on the biggest problem I have with Exalted. Of course, just like their game design is a throwback to the old WoD game lines, so too is their editing procedure. There's little more maddening on a Storyteller-level then having bought the core book and finding there's only, like, 2 poorly-done NPC Dragonblooded to fight, and 1 Sidereal. Sure, you don't have to fight any of these dudes, but if you never buy another book, you're pretty much fighting some mortals and if your Celestial and Terrestrial Exalts come off like watered-down Solars with nothing unique or interesting to bring to the table, then that's fine, because that's exactly what they are.

At least D&D is up front. "You need these three books." It says. "You can run a game from 1-20 with these books and never need a new one." If you buy three books in Exalted, depending on what you got, you can fight Solars, Sidereals, and Dragonblooded. 3 types. You skipped on the Abyssal book because you figured you could just make a Solar in black armor and end all of the charms with the words "Death", "Pain", or "Tears". There's a good amount of varience in those books, to be fair, but sooner or later the PCs are going to want to shiv a Fey, or something, and you've got no idea how that goes.

Not to mention there's no real decent standard Beastery of Creation. But Exalted isn't the only line with this problem. Mage, Hunter, Vampire, and pretty much every other line under the sun from WW has had this problem at some point. Mostly you just made shit up, but it shows.

As someone who's had a couple of the Exalted 1st fatsplats and is just about to get into Exalted 2nd (I'm awaiting the delivery as we speak), I have a question:

It seems there's two levels of Exalted powers -- the codified toys of Charms and what I call the real gamebreaking shit (I'm really talking about Solar Sorcery and Sidereal Astrology) that's ideally suited to a more freeform game.  A possible third may be all this magitech stuff that I have no exposure to outside of netspace.  How easy is it to say: "not in my game!"  I look at that gamebreaking shit and it really looks like some watered down variation of their Mage lines, and I enjoyed Mage in the day but I really don't want that stuff in my game today.

D&D for all its codification does have its own versions of freeform gamebreaking shit -- wishes, miracles and One Ring styled artifacts in particular -- but those elements are pretty miniscule so that they don't affect the Core Story.  I look at Exalted and I'm digging what it has to say, but then I get these tacked on freeform elements and I blanch and the incoherence of it all (in the dictionary sense, not the Forge sense).

Quote from: ThranduilWell, the hardnessand piercing are really not that complex. Hardness is just a damage treshold, and piercing isn't that hard to take into account. Not if you use the various SR or DR in DnD, IMO.

True, but looking at any of the subsystems in isolation makes them seem simple enough. It's the endless layering of them that really bothers me, especially from a GM's pov.  

QuoteHowever, systems like knockback and stun are nasty. Especially the amount of bookkeeping required to see when they happen. Add to that the fact that speed and distance are vital statistics, but almost impossible to implement without using miniatures, and they become the greatest nuisance in the system. Perhaps if I would have to designate my biggest annoyance, it would be just that: for all the bookkeeping on speed and distance, they are irrellevant in most situations. Yet the charm system keeps referencing them over and over and over...

Yep, there's a huge number of details to track when following the rules a written. Most of them really don't add any extra excitement or enjoyment to play, unless one enjoys crunch for its own sake.

QuoteIncreasingly, I'm beginning to think that Exalted works for me just because I've thrown half of it out of the window (except when dramatically appropriate). Of course, I know next to no one who plays any system out of the box, so I hope I'm not abnormal in that.

I think this is the default playstyle for many Exalted GM's. If I send a bunch of experienced Immaculates against a Solar Circle there's no way I'm going to track all their charm interactions, mote pools, and static value fluctuations. I like well defined antagonists who present a tactical challenge, but the system would have me running five 150xp npc's in exactly the same way as player characters! Fuck that.

QuoteHmm, we disagree there, then.
The way I see it, e.g. Sidereals are perfectly optional. Just assume that they do their work so fate runs normally, and that they don't interfere with the characters because they have enormous amounts of red tape to deal with in heaven. They are integral to the setting, perhaps, but not in the day-to-day life of even your adventurers, just like China has a vital role to play in the world history, but not in my day to day life, except perhaps indirectly.
Abyssals can be mostly confined to the Underworld, and Lunars rarely leave the Wyld. Fae are busy in the wyld as well. And creation is so vast, and Exalted are so few, that they never have to meet without ST fiat.
It is not that different from never having Thay come up in the Forgotten Realms, or eliminating Argonessen from Eberron, or never making even a single reference to Nyarlathotep in Call of Cthulhu.

Like RedFox said, when you require detailed antagonists then the books become increasingly necessary. Most of the threats listed in the core are either far too weak to pose a challenge or powerful enough to wipe a newly Exalted circle out. Little or no support is given to running the other various splats outside of a couple of examples.

Of course their details can be handwaved away, and that's largely what I do to avoid the Immaculate problem above, but my point is that the sytem as written doesn't have the kind of coherence and presentation that facilitates swift, easily resolved play. I can simplify any game I own, but it's a rare one that requires me to excise so much, and not because I want to, but because I really can't see a way of running the thing without continually interrupting play for system consultation and cross-referencing.

Quote from: MoriartyAs someone who's had a couple of the Exalted 1st fatsplats and is just about to get into Exalted 2nd (I'm awaiting the delivery as we speak), I have a question:

It seems there's two levels of Exalted powers -- the codified toys of Charms and what I call the real gamebreaking shit (I'm really talking about Solar Sorcery and Sidereal Astrology) that's ideally suited to a more freeform game.  A possible third may be all this magitech stuff that I have no exposure to outside of netspace.  How easy is it to say: "not in my game!"  I look at that gamebreaking shit and it really looks like some watered down variation of their Mage lines, and I enjoyed Mage in the day but I really don't want that stuff in my game today.

D&D for all its codification does have its own versions of freeform gamebreaking shit -- wishes, miracles and One Ring styled artifacts in particular -- but those elements are pretty miniscule so that they don't affect the Core Story.  I look at Exalted and I'm digging what it has to say, but then I get these tacked on freeform elements and I blanch and the incoherence of it all (in the dictionary sense, not the Forge sense).

Exactly. Many of the subsytems are mini-games unto themselves, which make for great reading, but are a complete pain to slip seamlessly into a fast paced game of epic action.

D&D knows what it is. The writers have a clear idea of the systems strengths and play to them. Exalted on the other hand seems to take the in-charcter mentality of "if it feels good, do it" and apply it as a design ethos, which leads to all kinds of isolated and wonky little subsystems emerging to further complicate play.

But... But...

There's gonna be a swimsuit calendar!

Quote from: fonkaygarryBut... But...

There's gonna be a swimsuit calendar!

I'd rather see a WFRP one, with camp followers displaying their buboes for all to see and the Lichemaster striking a provocative pose as Miss Sigmarzeit.