WW Exalted + Token

[Andrew Martin]

I've been running a WW Exalted game for our group for the last couple of Sundays. I've noticed some problems with our last few sessions and made a point over discussing this with the players at the start of the session. These problems were: one player wanting to abandon his character and generate another; another player being unhappy that his character was combat ineffective; another player wanting/needing to do three month turns, as his character was running two towns at once; and another player wanting to move his character's "dots" around. I was also unhappy with the in-game forces pulling players and their characters in radical directions.

So we agreed to all generate new characters and we decided that the PCs were going to be wandering do-good heroes, ridding the land of evil such as the Abyssal Exalted (evil undead, the direct opposite of the heroes who are Solar Exalted), and are pursued by the Dragon-blooded (the stick!). After some time (WW Storyteller character generation is exhausting!), we had characters written up. One player had to leave as his lack of sleep the previous night was catching up with him. We assumed that PCs from other players formed a group just a bit behind from the main PCs (to allow other players to come in). We ended up with a Dawn caste swordsmaster and armourer with lots of armour and a big weapon, a Night caste assassin laden with magical items, and a Eclipse caste with power bow and other stuff. Note that WW Exalted permits this degree of enhancement right from the start; we're not playing D&D! :)

It was getting late in the afternoon, so I set up that the heroes/PCs were riding along, when they came across a small band of undead about to assault some peasants. The group swiftly defeated them with sling and arrow fire before the swordsmaster could reach them on foot (horses weren't combat trained), and the player was a little miffed at this. So he introduced my Token system (which I had forgotten about at the time), and suggested that the group proceeds a bit farther and finds a dark tower and more undead swarming out to meet the heroes. This gave each player several tokens each and a swarm of undead to defeat as well as a dark tower to investigate. The bow and sling wielders kept their distance on horseback, while the swordsmaster sprinted forward and engaged the remainder in melee. As they were unintelligent undead, the swordsmaster was able to slay two per turn, while the other PCs kept his back clear and picked off the others. Play proceeded much faster once we worked out averages for damage done, instead of having to roll between 10 - 20 dice per weapon hit.

The swordsmaster player then found that the above wasn't much of a challenge for his character, so he proposed that a undead warstrider (think of a fantasy version of a Battle Mech) piloted by an Abyssal Exalted had arrived from the nearby dark tower. Again, every player got a token as the warstrider made every PC's life more complicated. Very quickly we found that PC missile and melee weapons made very little difference on a warstrider no matter how good the tactics or how cinematic their moves were (WW Exalted has a rule that cinematic moves are rewarded by 1 - 3 dice extra). One player had to spend a token to avoid the first blow by the warstrider as his PC's skills were nowhere near high enough to avoid it, even with perfect dice results. Then the swordsmaster spent his tokens to leap up, and cut through the back of the war strider's knee with one blow of his weapon, forcing the warstrider to hop around and no longer melee. The assassin send out his mechanical, magical flying snake to crawl into the pilot's cockpit and assault the pilot, while the Eclipse cast fired arrows through a ventilation grill into the pilot, spending a token to get the arrow through.

The assassin then worked on tie-ing a rope to the warstrider while the pilot was distracted by the flying snake and so managed to trip it up. Then a player suggested that the warstrider fall on top of the assassin! The assassin's player accepted the suggestion and got a token, then spent a second token to just be pinned for a while, not squashed. The mechanical snake was still in the warstrider's pilot's armour busy biting the pilot under his armour, when a player suggested that the snake (and it's controlling character, the assassin) sees that pilot looks like a fellow PC and so might not be the Abyssal any more. Again the player accepted and claimed a token reward.

The Eclipse caste then managed to tear off the cockpit and a player suggested, you see it's your twin brother; you can't just kill him right now! Some great roleplaying ensued, "My brother's an Abyssal?!", the crippled Abyssal melee-ed with his brother (the Eclipse) doing some damage (I suggested this as GM and handed the player a token), and eventually the Eclipse beheaded his brother. Players then suggested various things and the Eclipse ended up being cursed (with flatulence!) by his twin and filled with sadness/grief of having to kill his twin.

The session ended with the PCs looking to clean out the Abyssal tower before them and liberating the manses (magical nodes or wells of essence/magic) within.

Once my Token system came into play, and players understood Token's mechanics (the player gains a token when their character's life becomes more complicated (even if that complication was proposed by another player or themselves or affects multiple characters), and the player spends a token to erase a complication from their character's life by taking appropriate character action), the game came to life, causing players to laugh, have lots of fun and be happy. Compared to the lifeless and boring play in the earlier part, playing standard WW Exalted mechanics, my Token system made a world of difference.

As a GM my workload was relaxed as I just had to explain the Token system rules to players, and help adjudicating it's use. I had to work out on the spot what success meant in the WW rules, allowing that a token spent allowed one to ignore the target's armour (the arrow slipped through an opening or flap), and so on. My Token system allowed players to connect more to the setting allowing them to create and invoke things, people and places that mattered to their characters and what the players directly wanted, rather than those things I thought they could handle.

[greyorm]

Sounds as though it was a great deal of fun, Andrew, thanks for letting us in on it!  However, you didn't provide a link to your Token system for those of us who don't know what you're referring to {fret!}

Would you do us the honor?

[Andrew Martin]

Sounds as though it was a great deal of fun, Andrew, thanks for letting us in on it!  However, you didn't provide a link to your Token system for those of us who don't know what you're referring to {fret!}

Would you do us the honor?

Here's the best version I've got at the moment: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3976 Be sure to take out the Shadow part and substitute the game system of your choice.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andrew,

That was an exceptionally cogent illustration of the power of the metagame ... I especially appreciate the way you could describe in-game events and real-people decision events in tandem.

Best,
Ron