Exalted and how I feel about it.

[Doomboy911]

Right so I'm in the proccess of doing a superhero campaign that is going great. The two veterans of my group have suddenly wanted to play exalted and are convincing the rest of the party that it's the way to go they were plenty cordial about it but we all know what being cordial can do (A series of Unfortunate Events: The End) Now the plot the two veterans had was about this book created by this crazy stupid battle in the future that broke time. My response they want to stop this conflict in the future fine but if a book messes with time by all means is it going to mess with space which means all other universes and all other possibilities are either working for or against. In the end as they're so busy killing each other trying to save their own day they're going to understand that this big stupid battle they're all trying to stop is being caused by them trying to stop it. The only way to win is to give up. The coup de grace they've done this time and time again each and every failure they've had led to them having to repeat their existence again the only difference being those who succeed are left out of the loop until all universals have found their own end.

When the dm wants to play superheroes don't bring any dang exalted to his table especially when he love him some quantum mechanics.

What do you all think?

[AuraTwilight]

What does any of this have to do with Exalted?

[TheCountAlucard]

I play Exalted, and I have no idea what you are getting on about. Please, please clarify.

Edit: I think it looks like the plot is about the Broken-Winged Crane, except that you added the proviso that it also warps space. Am I right?

[Doomboy911]

Well hmm I'll get into more detail and change the subject a bit. I'm not to big a fan of exalted it's a game of absolutes and allows absolutely no wiggle room. Yu-shan can't be penetrated the incarnate can't be touched. The two veterans who want me to run this exalted campaign make me feel as though I'm being controlled. I had my plots in mind concerning deathknights and the games of divinity but instead they'd rather deal with these time altering books that foretell the end of the world. Running things so it also affects space and they have to fight copies of themselves I'm doing what I'm after changing the game so I can do what I think should happen every event of exalted is predetermined. I can't say hey this primordial is going to do this thing they're all trapped and if one gets out it's time to focus on that and what these freed primordials would do is determined. There's nowhere I as the storyteller can have control. Maybe I'm exxagerating or wrong. Just a thought.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Then, err... tell them that while you wouldn't mind running Exalted if everyone agrees, you're not interested in that part of the lore, but that if they really want it you'd be happy to let one of them take a turn behind the screen?

[TheCountAlucard]

Also, the Broken-Winged Crane doesn't have any apocalyptic powers - it's just a dangerous thing, akin to the Necronomicon. That it is POSITED to have traveled back in time is a curiosity of the setting, no more, no less.

[kamikasei]

Firstly: if some of your players want to try a particular game that you don't want to run, tell them you don't want to run it. Don't say "sure, we can play that, but I'm going to alter it so it won't be fun for you". That's passive-aggressive and obnoxious. If I were one of your players, whether one of the ones pulling for Exalted or not, such behaviour on the part of my GM would make me a good deal less likely to return to that table.

Secondly: I strongly recommend you take a little more care in your writing when posting. The above is very stream-of-consciousness, verging on incoherent. If you want people to be able to understand what you're saying to them, you have a responsibility to express yourself clearly. If you don't want that... then it's more than a little rude of you to waste our time so you can vent.

[Doomboy911]

Firstly: if some of your players want to try a particular game that you don't want to run, tell them you don't want to run it. Don't say "sure, we can play that, but I'm going to alter it so it won't be fun for you". That's passive-aggressive and obnoxious. If I were one of your players, whether one of the ones pulling for Exalted or not, such behaviour on the part of my GM would make me a good deal less likely to return to that table.

Secondly: I strongly recommend you take a little more care in your writing when posting. The above is very stream-of-consciousness, verging on incoherent. If you want people to be able to understand what you're saying to them, you have a responsibility to express yourself clearly. If you don't want that... then it's more than a little rude of you to waste our time so you can vent.

Fair enough on both accounts. Exalted simply doesn't feel like much of a playable game. The main appeal seems to be that you're this all powerful being but the second you run into a threat you're informed that you are in fact not that great. I mean exalted just feels like a game filled with pun puns/

[Tavar]

Fair enough on both accounts. Exalted simply doesn't feel like much of a playable game. The main appeal seems to be that you're this all powerful being but the second you run into a threat you're informed that you are in fact not that great. I mean exalted just feels like a game filled with pun puns/

Have you read the books/looked into the abilities of the Exalted?

This is very much not the case, even with the extremely broken mechanics of 2ed.

[Doomboy911]

Well I'm currently reading it and all I've heard is that they can go months on end without eating or drinking or sleeping that they can juggle mountains if pressed.

[ArcturusV]

Reminds me a bit in the DM advice written in the Dragonball Z RPG book.

"Can your players fly? Well put something underground. Can they punch through a mountain? Can they, or will they, punch through their sister? Can they shrug off a sword blow? What about electrical shock?"

[Lord Raziere]

Reminds me a bit in the DM advice written in the Dragonball Z RPG book.

"Can your players fly? Well put something underground. Can they punch through a mountain? Can they, or will they, punch through their sister? Can they shrug off a sword blow? What about electrical shock?"

Exalted: *punches through the ground until they get the thing like no problem, super-persuades their sister to step aside, and shrugs off the electrical shock just like they shrugged off the sword blow*

all of this? normal days work for the average Solar.

[Doomboy911]

Or as I told my friends they could juggle a mountain than eat the mountain and than eat tacos than juggle them without any internal issues.

[Tavar]

Well I'm currently reading it and all I've heard is that they can go months on end without eating or drinking or sleeping that they can juggle mountains if pressed.

A 2500 ring can essentially do the eating and sleeping part for end characters, so that's a bar low enough a roomba could get over it. As for the mountain thing, not really. Some very specialiazed builds could maybe do it, but Exalted generally do not have that amount of raw strength.

[ArcturusV]

The particulars might not apply. But the spirit of it does. When you have a character that effectively can do whatever the hell they want... say like DC's Superman (Especially back in the day when he'd get new superpowers just for the hell of it), you just get creative with the antagonists. You play up their morality, or backstory elements as weaknesses. You challenge them to an encounter where their Go To powers don't really apply, if they are someone who has Immunity: Everything I Could Think of When I Wrote this Down, you hit them with something they didn't think of, even if it sounds weird like a weapon made of cheese, or something like a gamma ray burst from a star.

Though I do share the pain that it can be frustrating to constantly have to deal with campaigns based off those, and DM things in such a way that players will rightly feel they are being "punished" for their RPing and backstory because you use everything they put out there against them.

[Doomboy911]

Yeah to challenge these guys is a massive pain since I don't know anything about the setting they suggested I use the villains the game has in place (they really don't seem that interesting.) while I wanted to have a deathknight thing acting as a slumlord using demense and manse to her advantage she'd be doing the right thing while being manipulated by others who simply want what's best for them. They don;t want that they want something more epic. I thought about perhaps dealing with the games of divinity also existing on creation and them being sought after to control the incarnate by threatening to destroy the game. But no apparently the games of divinity are just a narrative device to say why the incarnate don't just click their heels and make the world better. (Honestly how stupid is that the unconquered sun can't step away from the board for ten seconds to fix the universe.)

[Rhynn]

if they are someone who has Immunity: Everything I Could Think of When I Wrote this Down, you hit them with something they didn't think of, even if it sounds weird like a weapon made of cheese, or something like a gamma ray burst from a star.

That one's even older than literature.

Bring my mistletoe darts!

[Grod_The_Giant]

Sure, Exalts can do ridiculously powerful things. They're fantasy super-heroes. But it's worth remembering... so can their opponents. Mortals aren't meant to be opponents, they're meant to be scenery. Exalts fight gods and other Exalts. They don't quest to save a village from bandits or overthrow an evil king, they quest to save Creation from being unmade or to overthrow the gods.

tl;dr: It's a question of scale. If you're having trouble challenging Exalts, you need bigger threats.

EDIT: Your touchstones are Hercules and Thor, not Conan and Gandalf.

(Also, as Tavar said, the power isn't that silly. The weirdest thing I saw when I played was a preponderance of "perfect attack!" "perfect dodge!")

[Hiro Protagonest]

This seems to be less a matter of having problems with Exalted, and more about being rushed into running a game you know very little about with complex mechanics and a massive setting, while the players who wanted to play this game in the first place are telling you to run this game about a very weird artifact that they apparently misread the cryptic page they're given on it, because it doesn't actually time-travel and doesn't actually cause the apocalypse.

[jindra34]

This seems to be less a matter of having problems with Exalted, and more about being rushed into running a game you know very little about with complex mechanics and a massive setting, while the players who wanted to play this game in the first place are telling you to run this game about a very weird artifact that they apparently misread the cryptic page they're given on it, because it doesn't actually time-travel and doesn't actually cause the apocalypse.

Well the Broken-Winged Crane Books did kinda go backwards in time (the original complete book was published after the Solars were released in the Second Age but the book (in incomplete form) started showing up during well before the Solars were originally overthrown). And while it does lead toward BAD THINGS HAPPENING, the only stated effects of it (from one of the Infernal Books IIRC) is that it makes it very easy for Yozi to tempt people with power and thereby gain puppets in Creation.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Well the Broken-Winged Crane Books did kinda go backwards in time (the original complete book was published after the Solars were released in the Second Age but the book (in incomplete form) started showing up during well before the Solars were originally overthrown). And while it does lead toward BAD THINGS HAPPENING, the only stated effects of it (from one of the Infernal Books IIRC) is that it makes it very easy for Yozi to tempt people with power and thereby gain puppets in Creation.

I thought the impossibility of time travel was one of the fundamental rules of Exalted?

[jindra34]

I thought the impossibility of time travel was one of the fundamental rules of Exalted?

The book isn't exactly time-traveling though, its creation caused a near-infinite number of imperfect and conflicting copies to be created in the past. Goofiness indeed. And also no time traveling is closer to a rule of Creation than of the Exalted world as a whole (given that the Wild doesn't even have a fixed rate of flow of time).

[Tavar]

No time travel is more a subsection of a general rule of no takebacks. Your actions have consequences, so if you kill someone they're dead. If you make an action, you can't go back and fix it.

[HerrTenko]

I'll have to agree with Jade Dragon here. Maybe put a stop to the thing, talk with your players, and tell them you need more time to prepare the campaign.

Also, it seems like they are imposing their own headcanon on you which, combined with your lack of time to read up on the setting, might have given you some weird ideas. That is entirely understandable, and the best way to fix this is to tell them to hold it, research Exalted's lore a bit by yourself, make your own assumptions and basically ignore their headcanon where it doesn't suit you. Craft your own stories, and keep in mind while doing it that your players are expected to jump in and change the course of history, because that is what Exalts do.

The feeling that everything is locked in place in Exalted is actually an illusion. Most books are filled to the brim with small details, plot hooks and subtle (or less subtle hints), but when it comes to the table it all depends on what you as an ST and your players want. Ignore canon all you want as long as it stays coherent with your own game. Or throw coherence out the window if you want! I mean the Wyld certainly allows you to pull a few doozies.

Basically, Exalted is a game about normal-yet-somewhat-heroic mortals given Phenomenal Cosmic Power and free license to do as they damn please with them. The concept of "Heroic" being more akin to the old greek concept of someone accomplishing great deeds, not necessarily the nice guy that saves the day. Every bit of canon metaplot the book gives must be considered as a tower of glass that your players are expected to crash in some way, because they have the drive and the power to do so.

Which brings me to my last advice : while I like the premise of your plot, I find the way to resolve this crisis to be somewhat iffy. The main reason being that having a single possible way to solve a problem is kind of contrary to the spirit of Exalted as I understand it. The second being that it entails giving up which is really the only option an Exalted character probably won't ever consider.
Lunars will temporarily retreat, lick their wounds, adapt to the challenge and get back to business. Sidereals will use the full extent of their bureaucratic advantages over fate, or maybe punch the insurmountable problem into an advantage. Solars will look at the insurmountable problem, smirk, and punch it in the face so hard it shatters because they're just that good. Here's what I'm getting at : you should really start preparing for the moment your Solar players understand the situation fully, realise they're supposed to give up, and then proceed to promptly refuse and resolve the situation somehow anyway.

[Mewtarthio]

Yeah to challenge these guys is a massive pain since I don't know anything about the setting they suggested I use the villains the game has in place (they really don't seem that interesting.) while I wanted to have a deathknight thing acting as a slumlord using demense and manse to her advantage she'd be doing the right thing while being manipulated by others who simply want what's best for them. They don;t want that they want something more epic. I thought about perhaps dealing with the games of divinity also existing on creation and them being sought after to control the incarnate by threatening to destroy the game. But no apparently the games of divinity are just a narrative device to say why the incarnate don't just click their heels and make the world better. (Honestly how stupid is that the unconquered sun can't step away from the board for ten seconds to fix the universe.)

Wait, so you're saying that you, the GM, introduced an element into your setting, and the players told you that it didn't belong in there?

Why aren't they running this game themselves?

[Closet_Skeleton]

Why aren't they running this game themselves?

Yup.

If you want a campaign done in a certain way, GM it yourself. If you want to be a player sit down and shut up.

[NichG]

Running anything where you're unwilling to change the setting or where your players know more about the setting than you do (in an absolute, 'run it this way or else' sense) is extremely crippling to the DM. You lose the ability to surprise your players, and you have to deal with players backseat-DMing.

You don't like the absolutes of Exalted? Run a game where the PCs break them by accident and everyone wants to find out how. You can't get into Yu-shan, but one of the PCs finds himself there after getting punched through one too many walls. How is he there? Is it because he's just that awesome, or because the Sidereals are up to something, or is Yu-shan's protection crumbling and because of bureaucracy no one has gotten around to telling the Unconquered about it?

Don't like the game making everyone turn into omnipotent wastes of space because they're too busy playing a hand of cosmic poker? Make the game actually be the manipulation of fate and mortal activities. Each playing piece is a tribe, a city, and organization, etc, and if Sol Invictus steps away from the board that means he's letting things go to crap, rather than the reverse.

The best way to do this, given that your players are expecting something else, is to turn their expectation into a strength. If the players say 'you can't do that, its not how Exalted works!' say 'you're right, and your characters realize that and should be freaking out about now'. Be flexible, break expectations and then explain them, and listen for things your players suggest and secretly integrate the things that you can use while discarding the things that are going to lessen the game.

[Hiro Protagonest]

You don't like the absolutes of Exalted? Run a game where the PCs break them by accident and everyone wants to find out how. You can't get into Yu-shan, but one of the PCs finds himself there after getting punched through one too many walls. How is he there? Is it because he's just that awesome, or because the Sidereals are up to something, or is Yu-shan's protection crumbling and because of bureaucracy no one has gotten around to telling the Unconquered about it?

It's called Calibration. Or maybe a Solar Circle teleport spell.

Don't like the game making everyone turn into omnipotent wastes of space because they're too busy playing a hand of cosmic poker? Make the game actually be the manipulation of fate and mortal activities. Each playing piece is a tribe, a city, and organization, etc, and if Sol Invictus steps away from the board that means he's letting things go to crap, rather than the reverse.

This doesn't make any sense. The slave trade is massive, the fair folk run wild, and Creation is currently the battlegrounds for a power struggle between every superpower in the world besides the Incarnae and the Jadeborn. Unless Luna's trolling everyone, this doesn't make sense.

[HerrTenko]

Since we're talking about justifying the Games of Divinity's hold on the Incarnae, I for one like the idea that the Games are such a beautiful, awesome and terrific thing playing them balances all of the horror in Creation. They cannot stop playing the Games because not playing them would be the worst thing the world could ever know.

I like this idea because it is not entirely rationnal, and more than a little strange.

[Jerthanis]

Or as I told my friends they could juggle a mountain than eat the mountain and than eat tacos than juggle them without any internal issues.

Only if they devoted months to researching the way to use their magic to cast the "Eat a mountain" spell, then the "Have no indigestion" spell, then used both magic spells to eat a mountain and have no indigestion. Exalts are perfectly human (with a few minor benefits like faster natural healing and fast clotting blood and so on) until they use magic to become superhuman.

Personally, one of my biggest problems with Exalted is that it's so Fantasy Kitchen Sink that it struggles with a unified vision if you incorporate too many elements of the setting at once or put too much spacial area in danger.

But then it gives you so much power that the stakes beg to be put at the level where these incompatible elements are forced to merge.

But really, the personal power you're granted isn't that much more than you'd have in a mid to high level D&D game. Roughly speaking you start somewhere between level 9 and 11 in D&D terms and progress to somewhere between level 13 and 15 by the end of a normal length game. (Normal in this case defined in this case as 10-15 sessions, technically you can play for years and get to essentially a D&D level 30+ level, but you progress linearly, so it'll be QUITE some time before you're there.)

Wait, so you're saying that you, the GM, introduced an element into your setting, and the players told you that it didn't belong in there?

Why aren't they running this game themselves?

Well... in defense of players vetoing an element introduced into a setting... I once played in a brief Exalted game that was going to be about trying to kill all the gods in order to free humanity from their rule and allow humanity free will.

That... isn't how gods work in Exalted. Gods control things, yes, and in a sense they do rule the world, but at its core this idea of a plot represents a misunderstanding of the animism that grounds the metaphysics of Exalted. As players, to hear that the game we're about to play is an Exalted game where the task is to kill all the gods is like saying you're going to be in a game about a realistic space exploration game in which you will be required to take the Swim skill because you need to swim from planet to planet. It's just not how that type of game works on a fundamental level.

In THIS case, the violation isn't so bad... the ability to destroy the games as a means of coercing power over the Incarnae seems like an interesting plot actually. I'm not even really clear over what their objection to it IS.

But I will defend the conceptual right of players to veto a GM in an established setting if the violation is egregious enough.