Minireview: Alchemicals (Exalted)

With Alchemicals, Exalted’s 2nd edition now has a full lineup of the Exalts defined in the first edition, with the addition of the Infernals which are 2nd edition -only. I haven’t read the 1st ed Alchemicals book so I cannot compare to that, but read on its own this is a good (if somewhat obscure) addition to the game.

The so-called “Alchemical Exalts” are weird in many ways. While generally classed as “Celestial Exalts”, that’s more to do with power level than actual origin. Properly, the Alchemicals would be classed as “Primordial Exalts” due to their origin, but that general category doesn’t exist as such. They are on the low end of the “Celestial” power scale; which they have tremendous flexibility, they are far below the raw power level of Solars. A large part of the weirdness comes from their origin: they were created by Autochthon as caretakers of his realm, which in actuality is his own vast body after his retreat into Elsewhere. Creation has no idea they exist, and they have only vague legends of Creation.

Since they are artificially created beings (much more so than, say, Solars), they are unusual in many ways. Grown in vats, they immediately inherit the personality and (most) memories of their predecessor – they step into the world as full adults, lacking most of the chance and uncertainty of the Celestial Exalts. Their creation is always planned, and their capabilities are also planned and designed. Instead of Charms that directly manipulate Essence, their bodies contain extensions and artifacts which allow them to manipulate Essence. Each plug-in artifact does only one thing, so they are limited by what “hardware” they have installed – resulting in a much smaller set of “Charms” than typical Exalts. The flipside is that they can visit a friendly neighborhood vat technician and reconfigure their bodies as they wish, from a huge pool of available implants. As a result, they are very dangerous if they have time to prepare, but more limited in their ability to react to surprises.

In an interesting twist, as they grow in power (Essence-wise) they grow physically larger. At the end of this path, they actually become cities – it’s expected that all Alchemicals eventually “settle down” and provide more living space for the “Populat”… but not all want to do this. Alchemicals do not have a Great Curse (since they were not involved in the Primordial War), but they do have a stat named Clarity – the higher it is, the more “machine-like” they become. As a counterbalance, high Clarity opens up options in the Charm tree and elsewhere. Alchemicals stay at low Clarity by interacting with normal humans, a nice mechanical tweak which gives motivation for the “heroes of the people” to mingle.

As noted, Alchemicals live outside Creation (and also Fate, as a side result). Their world is a strange steampunk-ish underground realm, though it’s not strictly underground: it’s inside the body of an ancient sleeping Primordial. The whole thing is a strange mix of transhumanism, steampunk and “normal” Exalted, and the world has a lot of old Soviet Union echoes via the “planned society” and “limited resources” theme. It’s far from the dystopia that the Soviet Union generally was, though. The Alchemicals really do try to protect the people, and the rulers generally are honest. They’ve been made to be that, and have limited options to rebel even if they wanted to.

As to “what do Alchemicals do?”… well, for one their world is dying. Autochthon is sleeping, and cannot be woken due to ancient edicts. His planned society has developed flaws over the milennia, and inertia is creeping into everything. “The Void” is a major enemy, though the inhabitants of the world are unsure of what the Void actually is. It’s most often seen as the “hostile realm outside Autochthon”, though that’s not strictly true. Nevertheless, it’s a malign force which the Alchemicals can try to push back.

Also, Autochtonia (as the realm is called) contains a multitude of nations, with different views. Warfare is common, despite (or maybe because of) the dwindling resources. Alchemicals can represent “state heroes”, and act as vanguards of their nation. This ties in nicely with their role in society, since they are much more like “respected and well-known superheroes” than most Exalts in Creation.

Also, there is the whole “our world is dying” thing. One option is for a desperate (or brave) nation to break the seal that separates Authchtonia from the mythical Creation, opening up a vast new realm to strip-mine and exploit. Sure, the natives may raise a fuss, but there are lots of Alchemicals. Before the Realm and the other powers realize it, they may be facing a new enemy, one which just appears overnight “from nowhere” and has a lot of firepower.

It’s quite an interesting book. The Alchemicals themselves are a fun semi-cybernetic twist on the “Exalt” theme, and Autochtonia has lots of story possibilities. Of course, the complete separation of Autochthonia from Creations means the GM cannot just add this material to a normal Exalted game. There are basically two options: one is to run a game completely withing Autochtonia, and the other is to run an “Autochthonia Invades Creation” scenario. Both can work, but unfortunately only skimpy internal detail on Autochthonia is provided, the bulk of the book goes towards providing mechanics for the Alchemical Exalts… so a GM wishing to run an Autochthonia-based game needs to do quite a bit of extra work in populating the world. I get the feeling that the “Invasion of the Cyber-Exalted!” scenario is the most common use here. And why not, it provides a new enemy (or potential ally). Not that Creation was exatly lacking in forces trying to destroy it… but hey, the more the merrier.

In sum, a fairly interesting book which is also quite a ways removed from “stock Exalted”. Can be useful, but isn’t required reading in any way. […]

Minireview: Scroll of Exalts (Exalted)

Scroll of Exalts has a very cool cover picture, a tribute to the old 1st edition AD&D Player’s Handbook. Nitpickers will note that all those Exalted signature characters being gathered into one place would be highly unlikely, and their gathering without bloody mayhem ensuing is even more unlikely (apparently someone’s offed whatshername, the lizard lady Lunar, perhaps as a prelude). Nitpickers will also be totally ignored – it’s a brilliant cover.

Fortunately, the cover isn’t the only good thing here. This book is quite straightforward: it’s a collection of Exalts of different types and power levels. Some are “signature characters” we’ve seen before (without full stats, though), some are new to this book. Each is given a full page spread, with a picture, some back story, and full game stats. Included are (among others) the new Infernals, and even the new Alchemicals get a section even though that sourcebook is a later release.

Oh, and we finally get full stats for Chejop Kejak (affectionately also known as “Ketchup Carjack”). Yes, he’s scary. No big surprise.

Since statting up Exalted NPCs has always been a major chore (and one of the problems with the system, imho), I really like this book. It gives you a bunch of ready-made NPCs to play with, and it also illustrates designer intent in what various sorts of characters might be capable of. Oh, and the character writeups are also very cool, some old fairly “meh” characters have been given a new makeover, generally making them rock. Meticulous Owl, for instance, is very interesting now.

Good book. I wish more NPC writeups like this were available, it would lighten up some parts of Exalted GMing considerably. […]

Gaming weekend

Busy weekend.

On Saturday I ran a release tournament for the new Heirs to the Blood set. Went well; we had 19 players and these release tournament things are always fun. I had personally avoided reading spoilers much at all so for me the cards were largely new surprises, but even for people who had bought some the previous week (when it went on sale) it was probably the first chance to actually play with them.

The win went to Tuomas Vuokko, playing with Salubri Antitribu. Tuomas has been in torpor for almost a year now due to suffering a bunch of pretty horrific real-life events… but he decided to join this at the last minute and proceeded to win the whole thing. As an amusing side, all the players with game wins were playing Kiasyd/Lasombra, Tuomas was the only one able to get a game win with something else. Impressive.

Sunday I ran another segment of my ongoing Exalted game. I had done quite a bit of prep, due to having no real certainty of how the players would react to the things I threw at them… so even though I suspected they’d go for Plan A, I also had to have Plans B,C and D available in some form. Mostly things went as I had suspected (though there were a few surprises). The gang is now in the Northern Wyld Borderlands, planning an assault on a massive Pale Hunter fortification, all because a young Lunar managed to land on their lap.

I was pretty happy with the thing, especially since a major part of it had been written from scratch. […]

Avatar and other stuff

We stayed cooped up inside for most of the New Year extended weekend; we originally intended to “do some stuff”, but the extra-chilly weather and general laziness put a stop to that. It was nice to just cozy up inside for days, don’t get me wrong. Anyway, yesterday we felt like doing something, so we decided to go see Avatar since a) it’s by Cameron who is generally awesome and b) it had been getting generally positive though slightly mixed reviews.

Well, it was very much worth seeing. It’s not a perfect movie; the plot is more than a tad predicable and follows the classic “boy meets girl and becomes hero” pattern a bit too much by-the-numbers. Maybe the most fitting thing to say about the plot is that it was serviceable; while it could have been (a lot) more original, it didn’t get in the way. But the visuals. Damn, they were jaw-dropping, especially when seen on the large screen with 3d. This is the best visualization of a science fiction world and native culture that I recall even seeing. Even though I knew that most of what I was seeing was computer-generated, my eyes were telling me the stuff was real. During the whole 3-hour span, there was only one short clip where the CGI was obviously CGI in a way that jarred me. That’s damn well done.

So. The complaints about the plot do have merit. But it’s not that bad, and this is one movie that is worth seeing for the visuals alone. They are just that good. The star of this movie is the planet Pandora.

(Added later: here is a hilarious plot summary. Spoiler alert, you might want to skip until you’ve seen the movie!)

Apart from that, I actually spent a large part of the mini-vacation coding and watching “TV” – coding in one window with a video player running in another. I’m working a hobby-project Exalted character generator web thingy. I’m not sure when if ever it will be ready, let alone ready for general use, but it’s one of those things – a way to learn lots of new tech while building something useful. I’m using a lot of bleeding-edge stuff, and Ruby on Rails of course. Among the toys are: authlogic, declarative_authorization, formtastic, css_dryer, jQuery & jQuery-UI, AJAX (with dynamic jQuery/Javascript generation via Rails views), and rspec test cases for all models and controllers. Fun stuff, and complicated enough to keep it interesting.

On the TV side, I managed to watch:

• True Blood season two. Good stuff, and very interesting “bad guy”. Still among the best of the current crop of series. Not for the prudish, though.

• Californication season two. Very good and very funny. Also not for the prudish, and I mean it: this show is mostly about sex. And about how people deal with it. I really like this show, because the characters are excellent and it somehow manages to be lewd & irreverent and warm & understanding at the same time. The characters screw up (and just screw) all the time, but you can’t help understanding and liking them at the same time.

• The Doctor Who “specials” Waters of Mars and End of Time (parts 1 & 2). Watchable but nothing all that special. Will be interesting to see how the new Doctor works out, since these were the final ones with the (great!) David Tennant.

• Some other bits and pieces… some Heroes (meh, but at least getting a bit better), Sanctuary (meh), etc. Nothing much worth commenting on. […]

Minireview: Compass of Terrestrial Directions vol. V - The North (Exalted)

The North rounds up the “Terrestrial Directions” books for Exalted, being (amazingly enough) a description of the North. Some of this material first appeared in the 1st edition Bastions of the North book, some is brand new… and even the old stuff has been revised quite a bit.

After the disappointing Scroll of Heroes, this is a welcome touch of quality. In fact, I’d perhaps rate this as the best of the “terrestrial direction” books; not that the others have been bad in any way, but the writing and ideas here are especially good. In addition, my own game happens to be situated in the North currently so there is a lot here I can use directly, lending to the interest factor (for me, at least).

Like in the 1st edition book, we get descriptions of the Haslanti League, Whitewall, and Gethamane, with 2nd edition stats this time round. No major changes have been made to any of them, though of course the slant of the 2nd edition Lunars book means that some things in Haslanti history have a different emphasis now. Gethamane is as cool and creepy as ever, and Whitewall contains some new detail about daily life etc. Very nice.

The new stuff includes detail on the Bull of the North and his dominions (finally!), along with some discussion on how to use the Bull in games, since he represents a quite unique facet in the game metaplot – an NPC party styled after a PC party, with potential for both alliances and hostilities. Some new regional power blocks are given here, some of them quite interesting. There’s a coastal Realm satrapy running on heavy and total use of slave labor, a small region known for a specialist hospital, a large Northern area aligned with the Lover… lots of cool new stuff. There’s also the normal listing of unique Northern NPCs and creatures, and some general discussion on Northern lifestyles. Like all the books, this one also contains mass combat stats and Mandate of Heaven stats for the various regional powers.

Very good book. Well-written and interesting 2nd edition writeup of a very interesting region in the the Exalted game world. If you’re running a game set in the North, you want this book. No question. […]

Minireview: Scroll of Heroes (Exalted)

Generally, I’ve been liking the 2nd edition of Exalted a lot. Sure, the rules are a bit weird in places (I’d love a more functional social combat mechanic in the core, for instance), and the “crunch” of the game has more than a few errors and imbalances here and there. Still, we’ve lately gotten quite a bit of good errata on various Exalted stuff from White Wolf, and there are optional mechanics available to patch up (perceived) weaknesses in the core rules. Most importantly, the books for 2nd edition have been reasonably well-written and have contained tons of great game plot ideas etc. Some shoddy proofreading, the bane of White Wolf in general, has unfortunately always been a problem… but I’ve learned to live with that.

Well, every game line needs its clunker. To date, the low points have been Scroll of the Monk (with its ridiculously imbalanced “martial arts” paths) and the Dragon-Blooded book (with lots of charms that were obviously just cut+pasted from 1st ed and not given a proper think-through). And now there is this book, which unfortunately contains much more bad than good.

Scroll of Heroes is (in parts) a 2nd edition version of the 1st edition somewhat misleadingly named Player Guide. It contains rules for playing and running both “heroic mortals” and the offshoots of liaisons between men and gods, fae, demons and ghosts (the God-Blooded, Fae-Blooded, Demon-Blooded and Ghost-Blooded). It also contains Merits and Flaws, which can be used by any Exalted character. Sounds good, as such. But…

Well, let’s start of with the good. The beginning of the book (the “fluff part”) is pretty good. It talks about the game aspects of using mortals instead of Exalts, and how campaigns should differ. There is also some background given about the game world with respect to the various types of “mortals”. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the book is crap. The Merits and Flaws are stupidly imbalanced; they are either totally useless (making you pay for abilities you had anyway) or are totally overpowered. Using these as-is in a game will seriously break things. And then we get to the rules for the various X-Blooded. Oh boy. Again, the “fluff” there is decent (mostly), but the “crunch” (i.e the actual rules) is horrible. The Charms again range from totally useless to totally overpowered (for a mortal character), and some of the mechanics given don’t even exist in this edition. It’s obviously a bad cut+paste job from 1st edition, by someone who either doesn’t fully understand the rules & setting, or who is under an overly tight deadline.

To add insult to injury, even some of the setting detail is.. off. Demon-Blooded are written to prefer “places of sin”, and to get mechanical benefits from that. Say what? Exalted demons do not work that way! In fact, Exalted demons are very, very different from “demons” in most other fantasy games, which is (imho) a bit plus. Sure, some specific demons might well revel in pain and suffering… but that’s far from being any sort of general trait. Here, the author clearly does not understand the assumptions of the setting. Places of sin, my ass.

Honestly, it might just be less work to write up your own rules for the X-Blooded than to use the mishmash given here. If you do decide to go with this, give the charm set a good read-through and be prepared to do some heavy editing… and really think twice before using the Merits and Flaws listed here.

I don’t say this about very many Exalted books, but: don’t waste your money on this. […]

Minireview: Compass of Celestial Directions vol. V - Malfeas (Exalted)

As a companion book of sorts to the recent Infernals book, Malfeas details the “hell” of Exalted’s game world. It’s pretty cool. Some is updated versions of bits and pieces from 1st edition, while the majority of the book is new stuff. Like Exalted’s “heaven”, its “hell” is also very… nonstandard. While in many games hell and heaven are extremely abstract concepts, and if detailed at all are mostly populated by stereotypical and (honestly) quite boring inhabitants, Exalted is a game where the PCs can (and sometimes will) go to either and kick some ass – or at least get a chance to state their case and be heard by important entities.

Exalted’s “heaven”, Yu-Shan, is a magnificient bureaucracy gone mad, “led” by gods totally addicted to their Games of Divinity… in other words, actually run by and mostly for a vast army of celestial “civil servants”. Meanwhile, “hell” is actually the body of one of the defeated Primordials (now Yozi), Malfeas. Banished from Creation and forced to become part of the prison for himself and others, his rage is vast and endless, and sometimes he grinds parts of himself together in frustration – killing scores of inhabitants in the process. One of his souls, Ligier, lights everything with a harsh green glow. Another Yozi, Cecelyne (the Endless Desert) surrounds the Demon City of Malfeas in all directions (and dimensions). There is no way out, even for Cecelyne herself… unless someone or something summons from Creation, in which case the summoned entity must walk across the vastness of Cecelyne for 5 days, arriving just in time for the summoning. Time is not quite linear in this realm, and causality laughs at you.

The Ebon Dragon plots the doom of Creation while making plans for his upcoming wedding, while Adorjan, the Silent Wind, whispers across the city bringing silence and killing everything in her path. Hence, there is noise and music everywhere, in an effort to keep her out. Sometimes it even works. Kimbery, the Sea that Marched Against the Flame, laps her acidic waves against Malfeas and whispers to her demonblooded children in Creation, while She Who Lives In Her Name dreams of finally bringing order everywhere. Order of the static and final kind.

It’s not an evil realm as such (just like Yu-Shan is not exactly “good”). What it is is very, very alien. Sure, most of the Yozis would love nothing more than to escape their prison and to bring unending death and destruction to Creation… but they have been imprisoned for millenia. Cabin fever can be a bitch, especially for alien gods.

It’s a good book. It provides fun detail on lots of things, from the Yozi to their lesser souls and servants, to general life in the demon realm. It continues the line of keeping Exalted’s demons more alien than plain “evil”, which I personally like a lot. “Evil” is boring. “Alien” has a lot more story potential. […]

Minireview: Infernals (Exalted)

This is an interesting book. So far, most of 2nd edition Exalted has concerned itself with providing 2nd edition updates of stuff that existed in 1st edition. Sure, there has been a lot of (good) extra material thrown in and lots of nice improvements, but still…

Infernals is the first major addition to the line that has no counterpart in 1st edition (other than by brief mention and hints). As can be guessed, the book describes the “Infernal Exalted”, the Exalt shards given to the Yozis in exchange for some… favors back in the world history (I’m trying to avoid too many spoilers here). There aren’t very many of them, but they are potent and quite delicious opponent material. As with all the Exalted major hardcovers, this book makes the Infernals playable as PCs. However, it’s likely that the major use for this book will be as an antagonist NPC creation toolkit.

Contrasting this book with Abyssals is a fun exercise. While at first glance the Infernals and the Abyssals may seem similiar, they are actually worlds apart in style and motivation. Abyssals serve their masters in trying to destroy the world, to push it over the brink into Oblivion. The Infernals, on the other hand, do not want to destroy the world. They want to ruin it, to make it as much like Hell (Malfeas) as they can. Why? That would be a spoiler. Where Abyssals may relish in pain and torture “just because” and because it reminds them of the comforts of the grave, the Infernals use atrocities as a deliberate tool. Oh, and because they find it “fun”, in many cases – most Infernals aren’t exactly 100% sane, and most are just plain evil at this point. The Infernals go through a nasty process in order to be “born”, and one that is designed to strip away any vestiges of morality they might have had.. The Yozis give “their” Infernals much more leeway than the typical Deathlord gives his/her Deathknights… but the leash does exist, and getting a tug on it is not pleasant.

On the power scale, the Infernals seem more or less on the same level as Solars. In other words, damn strong. They are also not as crippled in Creation as Abyssals are, not to mention the Fair Folk. This makes them extremely dangerous. However, the fact that they typically want to operate “under the radar” (because of Heavenly retribution, among other factors) and the fact that they are simply very few in number make them quite balanced. At least in theory.

An interesting facet of the whole thing is that each “splat” of Infernals serves a specific different Yozi. This gives them a concrete reason for being very different and for having extremely varied operational modes, and it also opens up an avenue for expanding the lineup if the GM wants to. Very nice. Kudos must also be given to the mechanical side of things… since the Infernals are meant to act in typically “villanous” ways, they have been given various mechanical bonuses to encourage such. For example, an Infernal may get a bonus if he/she actually acts like a typical James Bond villian (prepares elaborate deathtraps, gives long speeches describing her Ultimate Evil Masterplan, etc). To be sure, this is not the first time Exalted does this; the idea that game mechanics should try to encourage a certain “style” is an old one and has existed from the get go in the game line (“stunts”, “limit”, etc). Still, I found the mechanics here to be especially fun and suitable for creating a certain type of Evil Bastard for your PCs to face.

I’d say this is a very good addition to the Exalted lineup, and having yet another canonical group of bad guys to throw at your players is never a bad thing. Especially since this group is wonderfully colorful and bizarrely motivated.

And then there is that certain upcoming wedding, which has everyone just shivering with anticip..p…pation… […]

Minireview: Graceful Wicked Masques - The Fair Folk (Exalted)

Fun to read Exalted material that I wasn’t too familiar with before. Sure, 1st edition had the Fair Folk, but that’s one of the (few) 1st ed books I haven’t read – so while I cannot compare this new incarnation with the previous one, it was an interesting read with lots of new info (for me, that is).

So, Graceful Wicked Masques updates the “Fair Folk” (or Raksha, at they call themselves) to Exalted 2nd edition. First off, I love that they used the “Graceful Wicked Masques” title; as far as I understand, it was the working title for the 1st ed book but they decided to scrap it for the more mundane “Fair Folk” at some point. Fans objected, and now it’s the main title of the new book. This is a hardbound “exalt” book in the fashion of the previous books, so while the major use for this book will no doubt be in fleshing out NPCs, creating Fair Folk PCs is quite possible… if not exactly easy, due to the alien nature of the Fair Folk. The implications of this are discussed in the book.

To people coming from other games: the “fair folk” of Exalted are far from “elves”/”fae” in most other games. These are alien creatures who don’t really strictly exist as such; in “pure” form they are just matrices of Essence (energy) with one of more “feeding maws”… which can eat things like memories, feelings, and your will to live. In order to come over to Creation they need to create a physical “shell” for themselves, but that (often beautiful) apparition has nothing much to do with the real creature. Or it does, since most Raksha create shells which embody concepts which they are associated with – and concepts & drama is what the Raksha live on. In a way, they are imaginary, brain-sucking LARPers from hell. They wear their virtues as physical objects, and are absolute lords over their domain in the Wyld. In Creation… they are still dangerous, but more limited. As alien as they are to humanity, they are also alien to their original kin, the “unshaped” Raksha dwelling in the chaos of the Deep Wyld. The Unshaped, now, are again something different and bizarre. More intelligent “locations” (to use the word losely) than single creatures, with shattered multiple souls, they bear some similarity to the Yozis… without the malignant history found there.

Exalted “cosmology” is both surprisingly internally consistent (for a high fantasy game) and complicated. The Fair Folk form part of the more complicated section, simply due to what they are. In case your brain doesn’t start to overload from trying to understand the “base” Fair Folk and how they operate, we also have the Shinma. What they are… is anyone’s guess. Some of them form critical junction points “between” the Wyld and Creation, but other than that… hard to say. One Shinma is a gate through which a Raksha can recreate itself in a form suitable for Creation… but it’s not quite that simple. And it’s not a “gate” in a physical sense.

So, like I said, complicated. I’m not complaining, since the convoluted nature of Exalted metaphysics is one of many the reasons I like the game. I’m given to understand that this 2nd edition is easier to understand than the 1st edition, which is famous for RSB’s typical style of graceful but convoluted descriptive text. My brain is still complaining from trying to understand the Forest Witches from the 1st edition description…

This was an interesting book to read, and gave me lots of ideas on how to (better) use the Fair Folk in Exalted. I’ll have to re-read portions if I ever do anything more complicated with them, though, understanding things like Shaping Combat isn’t totally trivial. Or, to be more exact: I get the idea (I think), but would need serious think time to figure out how to run it in a game.

The reaction to this book has been pretty positive among people who have read the 1st edition version, so apparently this is another successful update book. […]