Quote from: Christopher Brady;963604It's popular?  I thought it was just a flash in the pan, in the long view.  And I'm being honest here.  It has none of the life expectancy of Vampire.

It's been around over a decade, and the first two editions were extremely successful with dozens of books seeing print. Third edition will likely be around for another 5+ years unless OPP does something to lose the license, and despite my issues with the third edition it's still a top seller on DTRPG. After that there's no telling what might happen. In the grand scheme of things Exalted is a much bigger hit than all but the really big names in the RPG industry.

Quote from: Nexus;963571I figured that by now everyone was tired of hearing it from me.

Never! Rolling in the hot mess that is Exalted is a tradition!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;963604It's popular?  I thought it was just a flash in the pan, in the long view.  And I'm being honest here.  It has none of the life expectancy of Vampire.

While its popularity has declined somewhat, Exalted still have an almost fanatically zealous core fandom that appears to be significant particularly in today's rpg market. 3rd has at least 5 yrs of core supplements, probably longer to release and should get to them baring something unusual happening at sales are almost guaranteed as its spawned imitators and adaptations who's players will likely pay the books for setting material even if they dislike the rules. As rpgs go its still up there and barring some major fan alienating fuck up (which is difficult to imagine what it might be) will probably stay that for awhile, my personal opinions aside.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963611Never! Rolling in the hot mess that is Exalted is a tradition!

Ha!

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;963569Exalted? Nobody? Doesn't it count?

I would have mentioned Exalted, if I was dissatisfied with it, but so far, it's delivering;).

And it was, even if briefly, in the top 10 or top 5 of most popular games. Count on Cupcake to not notice such details:D!

The one session of Exalted I played, ok the system sucked, but the setting seemed ok? What went wrong with it?

Quote from: S'mon;963669The one session of Exalted I played, ok the system sucked, but the setting seemed ok? What went wrong with it?

Nothing, it's mostly the same setting, even if the art sucks lately. The system also works, with the crafting being a notable exception.
You're witnessing Internet butthurt syndrome, that's all.

Quote from: AsenRG;963679Nothing, it's mostly the same setting, even if the art sucks lately. The system also works, with the crafting being a notable exception.
You're witnessing Internet butthurt syndrome, that's all.

Everyone has his own ideas, of course, but characterizing the refusal to invest the time needed to master 700 exception-based Charms as "internet butthurt syndrome" sounds a tad biased.

Exalted is a system which can only work for someone who has lots and lots of free time and mental space to invest in it.

Quote from: Luca;963680Everyone has his own ideas, of course, but characterizing the refusal to invest the time needed to master 700 exception-based Charms as "internet butthurt syndrome" sounds a tad biased.

Exalted is a system which can only work for someone who has lots and lots of free time and mental space to invest in it.

Yeah being put off by the ideas of slogging through 700+ (and growing) fiddly little charms (that mostly boil down to less an 1 success added) that interact in minute ways with a complicated and in places ill described system that, in my and others opinion is vague, slow and tedious to handle isn't just "Butthurt". Particularly coming from a system that was hyped as "totally new" and 'streamlined' and came years late.

 Yes, the system 'works' in the sense that it will do what it meant to do (thought some cracks are showing already) but some don't find how it accomplishes that fun, engaging or worth the effort of slogging through to understand let alone master. Some (idiots I guess, like myself) thought the promises to stream line and rebuild the system to be faster and easier to use actually, I dunno, meant something other than adding an order of ton more crunch including different forms of experience points, a Crafting mini-game and even more resource management to combat.

But it seems to 'work'. Mostly. Just I and others don't think its terribly fun or anything like what we were hoping for from the hype. I mean 1st edition 'worked' if you just didn't pull too hard at (several) loose threads so functional isn't that high a bar. People have been bailing on Exalted due to the mechanics for its entire lifespan. Less so due to its setting but there's been quite a few driven off from that too. S'mon experience of "setting is okay, system sucks" is incredibly common.

Quote from: S'mon;963669The one session of Exalted I played, ok the system sucked, but the setting seemed ok? What went wrong with it?

(IMHO)

The system is now an over-complicated train-wreck  that while more functional than earlier version  yet only technically meets that low bar which like winning the "Tallest Little Person" award. It works but its still a tedious, slow pain in the ass that feels like its fighting you every step of the way where even many of its fans most common advice for dealing with system is to ignore swaths of it.

The setting has gone from interestingly gonzo high octane fantasy to overwrought, overly crowded stage for the writer's to posture on and trying to cram everything they think is "cool" in until its bursting at the seams, contradictory in area and with items that don't bear anything more than the most superficial examination. oWOD with a glitzy paint job and marginally bigger special effects budget.

But the social rules are nice.

Also, IMO, most of the art is fine (aside from the piece or two mucked up by hasty censorship for showing too much female skin or the audience they've chosen to pander too).

Dark Sun: It sounds interesting and looks potentially interesting on paper. But once you start looking at the setting and the situation it starts to feel a little, or a-lot off? It didnt seem to live up to its own hype and the setting felt kinda... bland? And then 2nd ed tossed some of the premise and added in an invasion and whatever and it actually felt more bland somehow.

Planescape is the other that evokes this feeling. Even moreso for me. Really should have been its own dimension or something rather than trying to glue it onto the outer planes.

Quote from: Omega;963692Dark Sun: It sounds interesting and looks potentially interesting on paper. But once you start looking at the setting and the situation it starts to feel a little, or a-lot off? It didnt seem to live up to its own hype and the setting felt kinda... bland? And then 2nd ed tossed some of the premise and added in an invasion and whatever and it actually felt more bland somehow.

Planescape is the other that evokes this feeling. Even moreso for me. Really should have been its own dimension or something rather than trying to glue it onto the outer planes.

I feel that way about most of the 2e AD&D settings for some reason. They never feel quite right. Contributed a lot to me dropping D&D and (pretty much) RPGs for much of the 1990s, coming back with the 3e D&D release in 2000.
I liked the late-Classic D&D Mystara stuff though. One of the last campaigns I ran BiTD was Dawn of the Emperors 1000-1045 AC using the Mystara box set.

Quote from: Omega;963692Planescape is the other that evokes this feeling. Even moreso for me. Really should have been its own dimension or something rather than trying to glue it onto the outer planes.

While a lot of the focus retrospectively gets put on Sigil, the majority of materials in the Planescape line dealt with the planes (inner and outer alike) more generally, either providing more detail than had been attempted before or providing monsters and adventure ideas that made planar adventuring more accessible across the full range of levels.  To a significant degree, the setting isn't something that's grafted onto the planes;  it is the planes.

Even to the extent that Sigil was sort of glued on, making it its own dimension wouldn't have made sense, since a big part of the appeal is that it contains portals to pretty much everywhere.  While it would be possible to run whole campaigns in Sigil (just like any other big fantasy city), it was intended as a home base for extraplanar campaigns.

Quote from: The Scythian;963539Is it, though?  That's one approach you can take in a space-oriented science-fiction game.  However, most of the Traveller campaigns I've run have been for parties of merchants, troubleshooters, or some combination of the two, with sessions structured more or less like heist movies with planning and execution phases.  (A tone and feel a lot like Firefly, except years before it ever existed.)

I have always liked the Third Imperium. This was like the sophisticated center of known space with all of the available tech and enhancements, and everyhting available for sale that you could possibly want, but that came with a repressive and overly bureaucratic highly centralized but slowly to respond government. The problem with the response, they often use a hammer where a suggestive whisper, or perhaps a touch of diplomacy,  would be just as effective.

That said, I always set my new Traveller campaigns on the fringes of the imperium, or some considerable distance into frontier space, where whoever is the strongest, is the law. There is room for both, the unrestrained freedom of the frontier, where anything goes, but where it can be prohibitively expensive to purchase a new jump drive, or the latest beam lasers and missile systems for example, to the sophisticated and decadent empire, where everything is available, but almost no one is truly free. On the frontier spontaneously rocking and rolling with all guns blazing is a fine way to resolve things, in the core of the empire, to achieve your goal, you are going to have to put together a three part symphony, complete with an interlude, an intermission, and at least two cliffhangers to achieve the same result, ohhhh but the payoff, might just make a trip like this into the imperium a completely worthwhile endeavor.

Quote from: Brand55;963610It's been around over a decade, and the first two editions were extremely successful with dozens of books seeing print. Third edition will likely be around for another 5+ years unless OPP does something to lose the license, and despite my issues with the third edition it's still a top seller on DTRPG. After that there's no telling what might happen. In the grand scheme of things Exalted is a much bigger hit than all but the really big names in the RPG industry.

Well, if that's the case, and is considered a 'popular' game system, I will change my answer to Exalted, but I still say D&D is second place.

I think that D&D, as the seminal RPG, was basically an accident.  

Imagine that the first ever RPG was something like Fate instead! Ooooh! :eek: