Anatomy of Failed Design: Exalted

[Lago PARANOIA]

My favorite SMA is the one from Obsidian Shards of Creation that's basically 'you win the game exactly how you want to win it. You fucknut'. Of course, one of the charms is that you make duplicates of yourself, so what the hey?

Also gotta love one of the SMA's 'better than perfect' attack charms.

[DeadlyReed]

Nothing pisses me off about Exalted more than Geoff Grabowski's disdain of other games and how he deliberately designed Exalted as a critique of said games.

The Charms system was made to replace the Champions-like powers system of the original draft because Geoff hated that a "9d6 EB was still an EB" (except the Champions power system WORKS) and the setting and supposed power level of Exalted was seriously built to be as non-Tolkien-esque and high powered as possible (except D&D beyond its visual trappings isn't Tolkien-esque and also handles high powered play a lot better - after he retired from being the line developer, he started a game of Rules Cyclopedia D&D and practically admitted he was full of shit all of this time).

[Username17]

Geoff Grabowski got on my shitlist of White Wolf authors for Hunter and Mysterious Places (which is a fucking wikipedia cut-and-paste job).

-Username17

[Josh_Kablack]

Nothing pisses me off about Exalted more than Geoff Grabowski's disdain of other games and how he deliberately designed Exalted as a critique of said games.

Er, how's that now?

I get that Exalted fails hard at mechanics, mechanics/setting interaction, definitions of in-game morality, caste integration, balance and even capitalizing contributor's names.

But honestly, I see "I want this game to be different than games already out there" as a totally justifiable, and heck even admirable, design goal.

Exalted's failure to hit that design goal may be rage-worthy, but I don't understand why you would rage at the decision to pursue it in the first place.

after he retired from being the line developer, he started a game of Rules Cyclopedia D&D and practically admitted he was full of shit all of this time).

And during his time as line developer, he ran several games of Exalted.
And recently, he's switched to running 4e D&D.

You ever get tired of one game system and want to go play/run another?

Yeah well, so does Geoff.

And that has zero bearing on how full of shit he is.

[Koumei]

Nothing pisses me off about Exalted more than Geoff Grabowski's disdain of other games and how he deliberately designed Exalted as a critique of said games.

Emphasis mine. That doesn't say "making something new" to me, it says (in a French accent) "Bah, I hate all your shit, so I shall make mah own game and it shall be all about how shit your games are".

[Lago PARANOIA]

Geoff Grabowski got on my shitlist of White Wolf authors for Hunter and Mysterious Places (which is a fucking wikipedia cut-and-paste job).

-Username17

To someone who hasn't played any WoD, what's the dealyo with those things?

[Username17]

Geoff Grabowski got on my shitlist of White Wolf authors for Hunter and Mysterious Places (which is a fucking wikipedia cut-and-paste job).

-Username17

To someone who hasn't played any WoD, what's the dealyo with those things?

OK, Hunter is such a fucking confused mess that it seriously gets its own 1d4chan article. Also whenever it is mentioned it generates a long tirade on rpg.net.

But I'll give you the short end of it:

• The blurb on the back talks about normal people fighting vampires and werewolves and shit. So people who ordered it on Amazon and preordered it in the stores did so expecting that they were in for a brutal mortal's eye view of hardcore Abraham Whistlers fighting their way through the World of Darkness. Wrong!
• The art in the book is all about wuxia combat moves. Leaping out of explosions Die Hard-style, spinning Buffy-verse kicks, and guns that shoot swords. People who skimmed the book were coming in for Buffy: the Vampire Slayer vs. the Camarilla. Wrong!
• The game is in fact actually about people who get the bad touch from decidedly Christian angelic messengers and then they get to see world of darkness monsters for what they are - like in They Live. Then you get turned into a sorcerer for no reason and you are pitted against Vampires, Werewolves, and Mages (the last of which are essentially indistinguishable from you except as noted) where your powers are ass weak compared to theirs and you have no real way to win or get any information on what the fuck.

Problems? Beginning of the forcing everyone to get Christian apologetics bad touch them whether they wanted it or not like Geoff Grabowski would continue to do all through nWoD. Massive failures to meet any expectations of any of the fans. Really painful lack of a reason to give a fuck: even the ability to see the monsters for what they really are is pretty meaningless, because most of them don't go outside in public areas. Seriously, the ability to see a garou for what he really is means nothing because he lives in the wilderness and runs around as a naked dire wolf, so if you saw him at all you would know something was up whether you had powers or not. And the biggest sin of all: mechanics don't match the artwork or the flavor text. On any level.

H:tR is a train wreck. Every part of it was crap. Every segment of the fan base was offended or disappointed. The only thing good that ever came out of Hunter was an awesome video game that Geoff Grabowski never touched.

---

Now, Mysterious Places is a whole different thing. It's a waste of space and money. The nWoD has this generic sourcebook line of books in it that are so generic that they... don't actually have anything to do with the world of darkness at all. They are just 120-140 page (hardcovered) books of "source material" on "generic modern supernatural stuff." Can you wrap your mind around that shit? It's literally just a collection of rants about hauntings and campfire stories and shit, that has no relevance to anything.

The things in this line are:

• Ghost Stories. It's not even compatible with Geist: the Sineating (wish I was making that up). It's just a pile of wikipedia grabs from actual ghost stories with some padding and some art.
• Midnight Roads. It's 130 pages of clip art and "spooky" stories about axe murdering hitchhikers. Devotes more than 4 paragraphs to discussing how you could include the carcrash fetishists from the 1996 movie about sex and car crashes called Crash into a game, without actually delivering on any mechanics or meaningful tie-ins to nWoD metaplot or established locations.
• Second Sight. An entirely different book about ghosts (and also psychics and sorcerers) that is also clipped from internet discussions about various woo beliefs. Nicely manages to be completely incompatible with Geist and Mage, despite being about sorcery and ghosts. Differs from the other books in this series and kind of belongs to the "half-baked new supernatural type" along with Immortals and Skinshifters because there are about 30 pages of actual mechanics and it allows you to take most of the necromancy powers you want as flaws.
• Urban Legends. Seriously someone spent 130 pages on some cribbings from Snopes and a half-hearted introspection on perhaps trying to incorporate some of that shit into a WoD game. 20 pages are devoted to a possible adventure involving Bloody Mary. I am not kidding. They only cover 6 adventure possibilities and none of them are even completed. They liked their piece on kidney thieves so much that they expanded it into "The Harvesters" which is a full 40 page adventure. That's right, the adventures in this book are literally half finished - the "complete" ones are 40 pages and the "incomplete" ones are 20.
• Tales from the 13th Precinct. Holy shit, did they seriously release a 145 page book that is nothing but some ramblings about police procedure copied off the web followed by some police procedural vignettes, each with the "twist" that one of the characters is a supernatural with incomplete stats? Yes. Yes they did.
• Mysterious Places. It's 138 pages, there are 9 encounters in it. Each one is missing a key piece of information: why you would give a shit. Each place has a sinister secret that you have to make up yourself. And each one has a grim power that doesn't have stats. Each one is therefore the same utility in campaign design as consuming any horror fiction at all.

Blargh. I think the following quote sums up everything that is wrong with Mysterious Places:

What if the Empty
Room isn’t a trap for the players’ characters, but for something else. Some unseen, unfelt entity dwells in the room, unable to escape, but capable of luring others into its prison. Should the characters find a way to break the room’s curse, the mysterious prisoner is also freed. The characters might not find this out until it’s too late, which could lead to another story in which they search for a way to put the genie back in the bottle. Or they may receive clues about the room’s true purpose and must decide whether saving their own lives is worth releasing something dangerous into the world.

I've got a better plan: how about instead of me paying actual money for a book that exhorts me to make up sme fucking plot hooks, I just actually make up some plot hooks myself? Seriously man, what the fuck?

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

In nWoD, Hunter is much, much better, but it still suffers from the "not really ordinary mortals" bit. See, in Hunter: the Vigil, there are three levels of organization. Cells are the first tier organizations; they're average Joes who get together to fight monsters. Compacts are the second tier organizations; they're like Cells but they're larger and more organized. Examples include The Long Night, which are Christian hunters, and Ashwood Abbey, who are thrill-seekers who want to experience the supernatural. Conspiracies are the third tier; they're global organizations that grant access to special abilities.

The main problem with this setup is that characters are going to want to play in Conspiracies because of the cool abilities. For the most part, Cells and Compacts are ordinary mortals (with a few slight benefits, as "hunter" is a template or something)--which means that you could just run a game with the nWoD core book and not drop $30 on Hunter. The problem with Conspiracies is that they force you to play in a certain style that is, to me, completely against what I envision Hunter to be.

The original premise of H:tR is acceptable to me. Ignoring the angels and metaplot, a small group humans with powers is what I'd like to see in my Hunter game. (The problem with H:tR and H:tV is how those powers function, which I'll talk about in a second.) With Conspiracies, though, you're forced into a huge network of hunters that feels almost like a government agency. Oh, and you should probably forget about hunters from differing Conspiracies working together--that's just ridiculous, given that each Conspiracy is working for their own ends.

Thus, the main problem with H:tV is that you end up forced into the role of Sidney Bristow if you want powers. And powers are what you paid $30 for, right?

Well, nuts to you if you want mortals with minor powers. The Lucifuge are the spawn of Satan who have infernal powers. Ignoring the bad fluff--there are always 666 Lucifuge at any time, no more and no less--they can shoot fire and summon demons. The Cheiron Group takes supernatural body parts and implants them into humans, allowing them to do such things as regenerate wounds and call forth an insect swarm from under their skin. The Malleus Maleficarum Conspiracy is a group of Catholics that can heal wounds and raise the dead.

So, yeah, you're not really "mortals with powers" once you start working in a Conspiracy. Oh, and remember when I mentioned that it's pretty ridiculous to allow hunters from different Conspiracies to collaborate? Well, enjoy those powers that you paid $30--one set of the powers per campaign, that is. I have a feeling that the Malleus Maleficarum wouldn't take too kindly to any Lucifuge. Task Force: VALKYRIE is a government organization tasked with ensuring that people don't find out about supernatural activity, while the Cheiron Group hunts supernaturals to experiment on them. Good luck making that work.

Basically, in H:tV, you pay $30 for a book that can only be used by rewriting the fluff or signing on to play a campaign in which every player is part of the same giant organization.

It's unfortunate because the Slashers book is really, really good.

[Maxus]

Oh, wow, I played the H:tR game on the Gamecube. It was allright, so I was sort of hoping the tabletop game would hold up, too.

It's a shame. I'd be down with playing a game in which Luminaries get some hardware and begin shooting their way out of a zombie apocalypse.

[FatR]

My favorite SMA is the one from Obsidian Shards of Creation that's basically 'you win the game exactly how you want to win it. You fucknut'. Of course, one of the charms is that you make duplicates of yourself, so what the hey?

Also gotta love one of the SMA's 'better than perfect' attack charms.

Those are 2E SMA. They are completely broken. Almost challenge Pun-Pun, except in this case the brokennes was mostly intentional. 1E styles were relatively (emphasis on "relatively" - powercreep still was obvious) tame.

[FatR]

Nothing pisses me off about Exalted more than Geoff Grabowski's disdain of other games and how he deliberately designed Exalted as a critique of said games.

Bah, pretentious, ego-stroking wankery is something that I've learned to expect from WW staff and ignore.

[FatR]

The big problem with playing "normal people who fight vampires and shit" in either iteration of WoD is that normal people fucking die when they try to do so. This is more promininent in oWoD of course. In fact, I have never, ever, ever, ever seen any book or actual game about "normal people fighting supernaturals" in oWoD. Unless you count psychics and ghouls (see: Hunters Hunted) or people with intelligent swords that give them ability to parry fucking bullets and/or Punisher-level combat stats (an example from an ongoing game around here) as "normal". In nWoD supernaturals kill your ass in physical combat much less harder, admittedly, but SoL powers still are very likely to instantly own normals.

So, actually, H:tR-style powerup is the only way to put more-or-less normal characters against Camarilla and whatever without them being squashed. H:tR works the best for "holy shit, we're living in horror movie"-style games. Unfortunately, this limits the long-term viability of H:tR campaigns and characters. Once you've managed to survive long enough to connect with other hunters and take up the hunt as a full-time job, it is no longer different than WtA or MtA, except without cool stuff and with annoyingly restrictive power progression. The presentation still was horrible and misleading, though.

[Username17]

While I agree that some sort of powers needed to be handed out, what was required was ancient techniques of ki focusing that let you get a round or two in against enemies with Dominate or Presence. As is, the vamps get to Save or Lose you before you even get a chance to act. And the hunters don't save.

Pissant magic lightning is both unthematic and completely unhelpful. You could already get an incapacitating weapon by just, you know, having a weapon. None of the inner fire crap hits as hard as a damn hand grenade, so what's the fucking point?

The managed to make them not thematically different from mages while at the same time not giving them the kinds of abilities that would allow them to actually win a fight.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Nothing pisses me off about Exalted more than Geoff Grabowski's disdain of other games and how he deliberately designed Exalted as a critique of said games.

There's nothing wrong with designing a game for a specific niche, assuming it's done well. Exalted had an interesting concept, and it's a shame that it wasn't pulled off well.

Though really, most high powered games have that tendency to fall apart. It's easy to make an LotR clone work, but doing a game about mythic beings fighting is really difficult.

[FatR]

Oh, and I have a general outline of a rant about why Cold War fantasy-style (which is not unique to Exalted, but is prominent there) sucks. Unfortunately, I got addicted to two computer games at once, so I don't know, when I'll be able to finish it. I hope for the next week.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, one of the things that really grinds my gears about 4th Edition and supports the notion that it's a WoW clone is that they took great pains to derail the monsters so that unaligned (neutral in earlier editions) monsters became evil and good monsters became evil.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It might be only my speculations and misperceptions, but, it seems, the turn back from grey-vs-grey setting in 1E began with the Lunar splatbook, or, maybe, with the backlash it caused. Fans, of course, had a good reason for backlash - this book sucked on all fronts****. Besides crap mechanics and lack of good plot hooks/adventuring ideas (unless one uses the Lunar society from this book as antagonists - they make good antagonists, but this means that large parts of the books are automatically useless for the player), it tried to push forward the "noble savage" archetype, but lost the "noble" part somewhere in the process, making the supposed protagonists too grimdark and, consequently, unsympathetic. Maybe it failed to repeat the success of the Dragon-Blooded happened because it is much harder to find anything positive about Genghis Khan, than about Julius Caesar. Or, maybe, authors just had too little sense of when to stop - seriously, when your faction tolerates things like making human babies a main course of your feast for honored guests (no, I'm not exaggerating even a little bit) from people at the top, any pretense of moral ambiguity goes right out of the fucking window. And attempts to present this faction as heroes begin to look like a mockery. People were not amused by that and the resulting shitstorm raged for years after the publication.

FatR, can you go into much detail as you can about everything in this paragraph?

Daddy Lago needs his hate medicine.

[souran]

You know, one of the things that really grinds my gears about 4th Edition and supports the notion that it's a WoW clone is that they took great pains to derail the monsters so that unaligned (neutral in earlier editions) monsters became evil and good monsters became evil.

Justifcation for how this makes it a wow clone please?

I am not arguing that 4e does this but how does this have anything to do with WOW? Especially considering that wow basically did the exact opposite and took great pains to make things that are totally irredemable in first presentation (the undead scourge and the later blood elves) into heros. Just curious.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That, souran, went into the very wrong thread.

This really isn't the right place to discuss this, but the basic idea is that by changing the mindset of the monsters so that all they have in mind is murder and evil it becomes easier for PCs to gank them on sight without feeling bad. And since in an MMORPG most interactions with monsters outside of town involve killing them to die there you go.

[Lago PARANOIA]

OK, Hunter is such a fucking confused mess that it seriously gets its own 1d4chan article. Also whenever it is mentioned it generates a long tirade on rpg.net.

Frank, that rpg.net article you linked has more than half of the people in the thread loving Hunter. What gives?

[Username17]

OK, Hunter is such a fucking confused mess that it seriously gets its own 1d4chan article. Also whenever it is mentioned it generates a long tirade on rpg.net.

Frank, that rpg.net article you linked has more than half of the people in the thread loving Hunter. What gives?

rpg.net is haunted by actual White Wolf Freelancers and fanbois who pop in to claim that anything that White Wolf makes is made out of delicious cherry frosting.

If the hate for a White Wolf Product hits ~40% on an rpg.net thread, that amounts to what is essentially universal disdain when you factor out the shill factor. Consider how many threads FatR linked to that had people chiming in about how everything was fine. It's like that all the time. It's about as bad for that as criticizing WotC products on EnWorld.

-Username17

[TavishArtair]

Think of it like a skill challenge thread. People are so irrational they will defend it even when they probably aren't actually using it or even assessing it. Heck, even bash threads here often have fans turning out in great numbers to defend whatever is being bashed. The only difference is that here we generally shout them down.

[Silent Wayfarer]

FatR, can you go into much detail as you can about everything in this paragraph?

Daddy Lago needs his hate medicine.

Basically, 1e Lunars had UTTER SHIT RULES like Charms that were WORSE than not using a Charm. This was because of Deadly Beastman Transformation, which was a "vertical" statbuff that was so powerful that the idiots in WW nerfed all the other Lunar Charm powers to compensate. This forced everyone who wanted to make a decent Lunar combatant to take Deadly Beastman Transformation.

Note that this "decent" combatant did not have the gold standard of combat survivability (the double-stacked persistent defences which Solars had little trouble getting) and their much-vaunted schtick of being able to tank / regenerate all damage failed because a grand total of two Charms in the Solar corebook (Armor Piercing Fang Strike - ignores armor - and Essence Venom Strike - ignores natural soak and adds quite a bit of damage) could essentially one-shot a Lunar in a single blow. The standard counter to kill-combos like this (the perfect defence) was horribly nerfed for Lunars. Not only was it much harder to get, it was a Simple Charm, which meant that you could only use it once per round. Ever. Unless you used an Extra Action Charm which actually gave you actions instead of attacks (don't think the Lunar book had one of those, by the way) you could block maybe one attack of doom per round. Then the other guy does it again and you DIE.

So basically, Lunars were shitty in terms of mechanical execution. Fluffwise, they were just as bad, if not worse. The inspiration for Lunars seems to have been the Conan-like noble savage who stalks boldly through the wild leading his tribe through trials and tribulations to defy the corrupt Empire that shackles men in the chains of civilization.

Only thing is, the WW fuckfaces writing that shit apparently thought freedom from social bindings meant that you should pick up the alias of Killfuck Soulshitter, because they take the example of Raksi, an insane elder Lunar loli, and her habits of serving BABIES to her guests, and saying that, "even though she is obviously batshit insane, she is one of the most revered people in Lunar society". Then there's a section about barbarians and rape, where the writers basically fumble and mutter for a bit before saying, "it's only for a mature table".

Yeah, fuck you too.

By far the most galling example of shit writing in this book is the way they tell you to differentiate your Dexterity 5 Lunar from other Dexterity 5 Lunars by... your choice of clothing. Or equipment.

I didn't read the Lunars book that closely, but that seems to be the bulk of the complaints about 1E Lunars.

[FatR]

FatR, can you go into much detail as you can about everything in this paragraph?

Daddy Lago needs his hate medicine.

Okay, that's one is easy. I'm not guaranteeing very many details, because my memory is thankfully foggy (and I'm still busy), but let's try.

1E Lunars book is considered a shit standard of sucking even by Exalted fans. I, personally, think that 2E Lunars book rivals it in badness, at least where fluff is concerned (while 1E fluff is more offensive, 2E is literally pointless - seriously, why the fuck you're supposed to bother about intricacies of social engineering on centuries-long timescale, when the world is likely to end within a couple decades at most), but I'm in obvious minority.

So, as I said, with 1E Lunars they tried to milk "noble savage" archetype.* Which they basically envisioned as a mix of Conan (and other Robert Howard savage heroes) with werewolves from W:tA. And just a tiny bit of RL touches thrown to the mix, so that they could wank about how realistic and superior to average fantasy their game is. So, Lunars were supposed to be hardcore, free-spirited barbarian badasses that despise soft, civilized men. And also shapeshift, and hulk out and kill whole armies. Except, they forgot to include part that made either of their components even remotely sympathetic. And dragged over elements of WtA which did not belong. And made 1E Lunars very similar to each other, because, well, they are generally templated on the same narrow group of characters (and there was only one way to make somewhat viable characters - abusing your Deadly Beastman Transformation). Note, that for no discernible reason Lunars had less diversity to begin with, with only three castes instead of five. But their 1E book really hammered it home.

What do I mean by forgetting parts that made Lunar sources of inspiration sympathetic? Things like giving them Conan's smug and I'm-superior-badass attitude, but not his notable adaptability, intelligence or vestiges of honor. 1E Lunars don't adapt to life among "civilized" people
and go on adventures in their lands, they want to fucking smash them, because their way of life is obviously inferior and makes them pussy losers, so it's okay to do whatever you and your barbarian followers want with them. And while this outlook is somewhat realistic for people from primitive societies, it is not good for a game - too repulsive for many groups and actively limiting your adventuring opportunities. So, not only were Lunars pigeonholed mechanically, their possible plots were pigeonholed too. And amusingly, to a niche that has little to do with their prototypes (seriously, Conan spends his entire damn life far away from Cimmeria, probably because Cimmeria is a boring shithole, but you, as Lunar, is supposed to spend all of your life in places like this, and even the probable perspective of uniting their inhabitants into a world-conquering horde is a weak consolation).


In addition, 1E book made Lunars look like the biggest hypocrites in the setting, and trust me, in Exalted that's quite a feat. You see, the book blabbers a lot, how their way is superior, because not only Lunars, but their barbarians as well, have more freedom, and self-sufficiency, and shit than people under the Realm and its client civilizations. The problem is, then we get to the description of Lunar elders, and holy fuck, these guys are basically god-kings who hold absolute power over tribes they control. And sometimes demand to be worshipped as literal gods, too. Also, practically all Lunars are in truth united by the society, that plays by the rules of these elders, and imposes their values on everyone. So, good luck trying to just ignore the mindset above.

Also, these were random squicky parts. Like the above-mentioned feast of human babies. Speaking about hypocrisy, the Lunar responsible, Raksi, behaves in general like a stereotypical degenerate whore-sorceress, turned to eleven, but somehow remains a pillar of Lunar virtue, judging by values of their society, maybe because she's old enough to have a hand in codifying these values, maybe because she's old enough to scare everyone shitless, except for a few similarly evil elders. And then there was Lunar method for creating their beastmen flunkies (tribes of which most of the elders have) - fucking animals in human form or humans in animal form. And then there was a special sidebar about rape and why you, Lunar hero, probably can seduce any woman anyway, without such crude approaches. While I do not personally find these and similar bits offensively revolting (baby feast now seems mildly amusing in its cheap attempt at "darkness and edgyness"), lots of people did, and I have no problems imagining why.

As about the mechanics, it seems, that Silent Wayfarer already outlined the main problems.

* As an aside, at that moment WW still pretended that Exalted is supposed to be bronze age and shit, so being a leader of barbarian horde was, theoretically, a playable archetype. By now, you officially need magitech bling (magitech... did I mention, that I hate how they ripped this term from FF?) to be cool, and magitech is pretty much normal high-tech, except with more ornamental details and accessible only to the elite, so this archetype is not valid anymore.

[souran]

Once again exalted is laid low by the very things that should make it cool.

If you just took the way lunars were presented in the main rulebook and added the mechanics you would have a socially viable set of heros with crappy mechanics. That coudl be dismissed as typical WW SNAFU.

However, in order to get to a page count of however many bullshit pages they need for their hard back crap books they deicded they needed to embelish the view these barbarian peoples they already had.

Appearntly, after a while they stumbled on Games Workshop CHAOS barbarians and thought, fuck it these guys are barbarians too forgetting that they represent the armies of absolute evil.

So yeah, the lunars were not to bad until they decided that they should all run around shouting "blood for the blood god, skulls for the ..wait what setting am I again?"