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View Full Version : How well would Exalted handle Journey to the West?



MonkeySage
2016-08-20, 08:08 PM
I've been looking for a suitable game system to run Journey to the West on, complety with the levels of absurdity you'd expect from that epic.

Fri
2016-08-20, 11:03 PM
I haven't played exalted for a long time, but not that well I think. It's because IIRC exalted mechanic ties too much to the setting. But I might be wrong, and I might be conflating it with legend of the wulin.

Vknight
2016-08-21, 01:20 AM
I've been looking for a suitable game system to run Journey to the West on, complety with the levels of absurdity you'd expect from that epic.

Something like this I would say
Sun Wukong is a Solar with like 1000 EXP(or just an Eldar Solar)
The others are Dragon Blooded of various types
and everyone's favorite monk is a heroic mortal whose only powers besides have loyalty from the others is he can limit Sun Wukong to a 250 XP version of his character(so still better then the rest of the party but awesome), and he can only do it when absolutely needed(avoiding a tpk etc.)

So well yes Sun is far more powerful the group as a whole needs to work together and makes for a fun game

Mechalich
2016-08-21, 01:48 AM
I'm not familiar with the current (3e) iteration of Exalted, but at least prior to that the answer to 'how well will Exalted handle X?' was pretty much always, 'poorly.' It just was not a good system and a had a number of fundamental flaws. In any case, the storyteller system upon which Exalted is based is poorly suited to high-powered play for a number of reasons, but most obviously for its very high lethality. In Aberrant, Exalted, and Scion it was always possible for characters to dish out dozens of health levels worth of damage per attack to characters who had a mere 7 health levels. This makes structuring combats in an exciting way rather challenging.

Anyway, Journey to the West means accepting an inherently unbalanced party, and if you're going to do that at all I'd suggest a less-crunchy approach because it will both obscure how obviously overpowered Sun Wukong is and allow other party members to channel drama to actual effect as opposed to staring impotently at anything that could conceivably threaten Sun. There's a wuxia Fate variant called Tianxia that seems like a good fit for this in particular.

Vknight
2016-08-21, 02:09 AM
I'm not familiar with the current (3e) iteration of Exalted, but at least prior to that the answer to 'how well will Exalted handle X?' was pretty much always, 'poorly.' It just was not a good system and a had a number of fundamental flaws. In any case, the storyteller system upon which Exalted is based is poorly suited to high-powered play for a number of reasons, but most obviously for its very high lethality. In Aberrant, Exalted, and Scion it was always possible for characters to dish out dozens of health levels worth of damage per attack to characters who had a mere 7 health levels. This makes structuring combats in an exciting way rather challenging.

Anyway, Journey to the West means accepting an inherently unbalanced party, and if you're going to do that at all I'd suggest a less-crunchy approach because it will both obscure how obviously overpowered Sun Wukong is and allow other party members to channel drama to actual effect as opposed to staring impotently at anything that could conceivably threaten Sun. There's a wuxia Fate variant called Tianxia that seems like a good fit for this in particular.

This is very true Sun will unbalance the party but that can be handled with the right setup.
Really all you need in FATE is Sun to not follow the skill pyramid have a bunch of stunts that let him use his other skills for purposes they were not meant for.
Like his presence lets him transform and its high so he can use that for stealth and calculating damage.
Then make him have 1 or 0 fate points
Let the other gods have 2 to 4
Let the monk have 6 or so, after all its his plot

Sith_Happens
2016-08-21, 03:17 AM
I haven't played exalted for a long time, but not that well I think. It's because IIRC exalted mechanic ties too much to the setting. But I might be wrong, and I might be conflating it with legend of the wulin.

You're right that Exalted's rules and setting are pretty closely integrated in certain places, but its setting takes a lot of cues from Journey to the West so I wouldn't really call that a problem in this case.

SethoMarkus
2016-08-21, 10:12 AM
I second Vknight's suggestion of FATE for this. Or perhaps Mutants & Masterminds, but I haven't used that past 2nd ed so not sure how it has changed in 3rd.

Knaight
2016-08-21, 11:56 AM
You're right that Exalted's rules and setting are pretty closely integrated in certain places, but its setting takes a lot of cues from Journey to the West so I wouldn't really call that a problem in this case.

There's also a lot in Journey to the West that doesn't fit well with Exalted. For one thing Exalted went out of its way to avoid the more mythological aspects of Bhuddism, Journey to the West is literally about a Bhuddist monk seeking enlightenment by fetching some scrolls in India, accompanied by four mythological creatures (admittedly not from Bhuddism) who routinely consult with a Bodhisattva. It's a better fit than a lot of systems, but it still doesn't work too well.

TheCountAlucard
2016-08-21, 03:23 PM
3rd's a much better fit for it than 2nd was.

One thing to keep in mind with regard to the new edition is that there's a lot less standing there, swiping ineffectually at one another until a blow happens to connect (at which point that combatant pretty much immediately falls over dead). Who wins in a combat is no longer strictly the guy with the biggest mote pool and most efficient Charms and fewest holes in his "perfect suite."

It may not be a perfect fit, but it's darned better than it used to be, and probably about the best you'll do with a crunch-heavy system (as opposed to something like FATE, as mentioned above).

Fri
2016-08-21, 09:46 PM
After I think about it, Legend of the Wulin might work better than exalted EVEN if LotW's mechanic is more tied up to the setting than exalted. Because LotW's setting is basically generic Wuxia setting, and you can just rename all factions or just make powers/stances independent of factions. Compared to Exalted where the setting is very specific. Like, the Scarlet Empire? The Exalted? The Celestial Buearaucracy? They all very Exalted-specific and might not be comparable to other setting.

Lord Raziere
2016-08-22, 12:30 AM
I'd say Exalted is more for stories inspired by Journey To The West, than Journey To The West.

because while its about crazy kung-fu techniques and such, and pulp sorcery and spirits and mythical heroes and whatnot, its about the....how to say it.....archetypical, standardized versions of those things. like Solars aren't any particular mythical hero, they are a standardized rounded out kind of mythical hero that fits a certain range of power and achievement. all the crazy particular stuff of myth and legend are pretty much peeled out. like sure your Sun Wukong will be the greatest fighter ever, and he will have his golden armor and size-changing staff, but he won't have his weirder crazier abilities that have no basis in human excellence or using an item.

(in short, your Solar will be VERY SIMILAR to Sun Wukong, but he won't BE Sun Wukong)

and to really get the mythic feel, you gotta have that crazy mythical stuff that Exalted ignores for the sake of standardizing their abilities across Exalts.

There is also Godbound. that is also an option, if you don't want Fate's narrativity or to deal with.LotW's......LotW-ness.

Milo v3
2016-08-22, 12:43 AM
like sure your Sun Wukong will be the greatest fighter ever, and he will have his golden armor and size-changing staff, but he won't have his weirder crazier abilities that have no basis in human excellence or using an item.
Well those crazy things would be represented by sorcery since they are literally spells Sun Wukong knows (one of them is even in Exalted 3 already I think).