Exalted Adopts Stances (sort of)

[Jonathan Walton]

Okay, so there was all this buzz about Exalted: The Fair Folk and how Rebecca Sean Borgstrom was going to further her diabolical plans of infecting Exalted, a fairly traditional mainstream game, with evil progressive roleplaying techniques.  Well, it's out and the rumors are true.

The Fair Folk in Exalted are beings magically empowered with Author and even, occasionally, Director Stance.  They use their shaping powers to narrate events occuring, even to the point of narrating other characters deaths.  These are ultimately illusions (at least most of the time), but they still "happen" in the SIS.  Additionally, they can use special powers for seemingly metagame effects like choosing the purpose of a series of scenes.  They do this through the idea that Fair Folk are, in effect, characters in their own stories and so view the world in a very meta-game way.

I was a little disappointed that there don't appear to be guidelines for letting players frame scenes in a Universalis or Polaris style, or even request scenes as in My Life With Master, since that's a logical extension of that kind of mechanic, but I guess this is a start in that direction.

The Storytelling chapter even acknowledges this break from traditional player roles in Exalted (and other mainstream games), but tries to sell it in terms of an elaboration of the existing Stunt system, which gives players bonus dice for detailed, cool descriptions:

The biggest challenge for Storytellers when running
a quest set in the Deep Wyld or a shaping duel within the
bounds of a court is the fact that the rules give an unusual
amount of power to the players. As the players attempt to
rip power from the heart of one of the unshaped or to battle
one of their own kind, the rules elevate them to a nearly
equal level with the Storyteller, which may be a strange
sensation for you if you are not prepared for it or are
initially unwilling to share the descriptive power. The
simplest advice is, embrace it — view it as an opportunity
for you to do a little less work.

The fact is that, if you are an experienced Exalted
Storyteller, the game has already prepared you for players
gaining control of the story, in a large part through the
stunt system. The players take control of the description
and add to the environment when they have their characters
perform stunts, and questing and shaping are just
stunts writ large and expanded.

In any case, I find it exciting that progressive ideas are sneaking their way into more traditional mainstream games, through the real test will be if the existing Exalted community is able to take this stuff and run with it, or if there will be endless confusing and bickering over how to implement it.

[Valamir]

What I find amusing is that in 10 years we'll be dealing with folks talking about how Exalted invented this sort of play...

[TonyLB]

Hey, if this sort of creative input gets smacked into the mainstream then I frankly don't care who gets the credit for it.

[Ben Lehman]

What I find amusing is that in 10 years we'll be dealing with folks talking about how Exalted invented this sort of play...

Ms. Borgstrom is always pretty good about acknowledging her sources.  I wouldn't be surprised to see her gently correcting people to Universalis, or whereever she first encountered the concept.

yrs--
--Ben

[Jonathan Walton]

Rebecca got introduced to the Forge, and the wacko progressive techniques we've developed here, through Vincent's Roleplaying, Hardcore stuff.  And at one point said she was going to try to figure out "what the hell we were all going on about" (she said it a little more eloquently than that) before starting work on her next big design project.  Who knows if this was that project or not, but I'd keep an eye on her future work.