[Exalted] Spectating replacing interaction?

[intorporeal]

I will preface this by saying that I have only played in 3 Exalted games (all 2e), 2 by the same ST, and none lasted very long.

Exalted is a pretty awesome, and extremely elaborate and intricate game, with an astounding level of detail in the setting. So, why do I seem to never have fun when I play it?

To me, it comes down to who is on stage. In my opinion, any RPG should be about the player characters. After all, they are called "players" not "spectators." And yet, somehow, every Exalted game I play in becomes more of a theatrical display (complete with sitting quietly for an hour or more and watching as some series of events happen in front of you) than an interactive story. I think a lot of this must be caused by the people that I play with (all 3 games I have played in have had variously overlapping players and STs), but I don't believe that is the whole cause. It seems to me that there must be something in the system that not simply allows but actually encourages this style of game.

In addition, there seems to be something about the game (perhaps it's a white wolf thing in general, or perhaps it's just a "feature" of the people I play with) which encourages individualism over team-player-ism. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I like games which encourage team play.

A few quick examples:

• In our current game (we are all solars), one character is a member of the immaculate order, while another is a high-ranking member of a cult dedicated to a god of assassins. Somehow (we only discovered this recently and don't actually know how) the assassin player was living in a manse which was simultaneously a shadowlands. My character, an aspiring necromancer, was excited, but through a very quiet side scene, the player of the immaculate sent several monks to the assassin's manse and attempted to have it cleansed, leading to a major rift in the party (i.e. all of us further disliking the immaculate, who had regularly been suffering from "paladin syndrome"
• Again in our current game, we recently attempted to assert our authority over the local spirit court, situated in the nearby forest. The spirit court had an ambassador they sent into our city, which gained an audience with the king. There was a lengthy scene involving the the spirit and the court, observed in character by two players who stealthed in, and out of character by the rest of us. The scene took about half an hour, and nothing happened. The end result was that the spirits were, in fact, entirely innocuous pushovers not trying to take advantage of the situation (as we expected they would), leaving us all with no real direction after a scene in which no one was engaged but managed to influence the course of action for the entire session.
• In our most infamous example, and for the very first game I played in, the ST insisted that the game would be run "in real time," insisting that it be critical that the players get together to play regularly, otherwise the plot would simply leave them behind. He had taken a series of in game events, and mapped them onto a calendar, such that the events happened on the date that they happened, and if for whatever reason we had to reschedule the game for a different time, then we would just miss the major plot event. Oh well.

Has anyone else experienced issues with this trend of sidelining interaction in favor of spectatorism, in this game or any others? Or is it more likely an artifact of the people that I've been playing with, and not the game itself?

[masqueradeball]

I don't think the phenomena your describing Exalted play in general. I've played my fair share of the game and never experienced the problem your talking about, and by the book, your ST is doing it "wrong" in terms of not following the advice the game gives about running Exalted games. Just out of curiosity, what was your (or the other players) character's Motivations.

[intorporeal]

My character in our current game has the motivation: "Eliminate the suffering of the innocent"
My character in the "real time" game (which was my first character, and thus not very well conceived) had the motivation: "Get my House in charge of the Blessed Isle" (note: i joined mid-campaign, and was a lone dragon blood immaculate amongst solars, at the ST's suggestion. it didn't go well)

I don't necessarily think that this is a unique phenomenon to Exalted, it is simply where I have seen it the most. I've also encountered this in a Demon The Fallen game (which overlapped heavily in players with all of the Exalted games) as well as a Mage The Awakening game (which has no overlap with any of the Exalted games... besides me).

Perhaps moreso than encouraging sidelining players for NPC spectacles, it seems like the various White Wolf games encourage party division. Not necessarily party conflict, but simply splitting the party, where one or two people will go off to resolve one scene while everyone waits around, and then one or two other people will go off and resolve the next scene while everyone waits, and so on.

[oculusverit]

As someone who ran an Exalted game for two years that had people very satisfied, I don't think it's something inherent in the system. It's true that White Wolf games in general do not in and of themselves encourage team play in many of their games, however, Werewolf and Exalted have always been an exception (Werewolf with its pack mentality where everyone supports everyone else, and Exalted with its idea that you're all alone, hunted against a world that hates you so you have to band together and make a Circle).

The Exalted game I ran had a pretty basic set up, three players and me, with a Zenith, a Twilight, and a Night caste all drawn together. I set the game in the West, so they were on board ship or on remote islands a lot of the time, and that made it very easy for them to stick together for the first few stories of the game. After that, they were so used to working together that if they did split up, they'd come right back together... I would also cut back and forth between scenes (ex: (to the Zenith:) "All right, you've managed to follow the spy back to the home of the cult, meanwhile, what are you doing back at the tavern? (to the Night caste).) They also would get together and have planning sessions before splitting up so they all had goals that served the same purpose.

So yeah, I'd blame the GM and/or other players for that attitude. I don't think it's intrinsic to Exalted.

[oculusverit]

One more thing to add: the only beef I ever had about Exalted was that the combats always took me so...freakin'... long. I never did figure out a way around that, people would get drowsy as we attempted to finish either an epic battle or a minor skirmish in a tavern.

[intorporeal]

Kinch,

when you ran your game in the West, did all the characters begin the game knowing each other, and having a reason to be together? Or did they start out separate and came together for the first time in the game?

In my experience, games which begin with the players separate and joins them in the intro session are more likely to have party tension (not necessarily a bad thing) and party splitting (in my experience, usually a bad thing). The players have more freedom to create their characters when they aren't forced to begin the game as a preformed cohesive group (or, at least, they appear to have more freedom), but it seems like that freedom is often the cause of party conflict.

[masqueradeball]

The idea that White Wolf games have a lot of party disunity is strange. I would say RAW there's a heavy expectation that players will ignore that there's a possibility of not working together and that every single game has a in-fiction "pack" that the player characters are suppose to belong to. From Coteries in Vampire to Troupes in Changeling. If there's anything in Exalted that lends itself to the type of dysfunctional play Intorporeal is describing, I would say it's what might be called textual weight. There's a chapter on storytelling in nearly every book and each one of them offers advice and techniques to specifically not do what your ST is doing, but, if I'm seeing it right, there's a shit ton more text about the fictional setting and its inhabitants than there is STing advice. Why would this have the effect that it had in your game (if it really is the culprit)? Because the ST has invested a lot of real world time into learning about the setting and wants to do something with that knowledge, so he does so with these elaborate preplanned scenes and significant focus on non-player character action. The same holds true if the town and the spirits were original creations. The ST spent a lot of time creating them and really wants to use them and probably doesn't know how to do so in a way that doesn't force the players to take the back seat.
Suggestions for dealing with it: Call the ST out and hold him accountable for letting you play, be more proactive as a player and less careful with what you think the ST wants/would expect you to do, try highlighting the rules for Virtues and Limit Breaks as well as Stunts and other things that focus on character specific rewards. The Exalted text makes a big deal about protagonism, and if your playing Exalted, I would guess thats something you value in a game, so tell the ST so and help him find techniques to deal with it while at the time attempting to frame your characters actions and decisions to support group cohesion and to highlight the players... even when you might not otherwise make those decisions.

[oculusverit]

Brad,

Actually the characters met in game in the first session, I set up a situation that involved all of them in different ways from different paths and had them meet mid-situation with all of them pursuing a common goal (they were on a ship for different reasons, two of them had a reason to hate the captain and one of them was neutral) and then I had the ship come under attack and start sinking. Nothing like survival instincts and the fact that the neutral person wanted to save the slaves that were on the ship per their Motivation to get people working together. After that, the whole working together thing became a habit, I guess. There were still party tensions, but they were resolved through RP on all occasions. Maybe I was just blessed with good players.

Nolan,

I think you're right on about Exalted when it comes to setting vs. storytelling text, but I have to say that games like Vampire or Mage don't really have impetus to work together so clearly defined... I ran a Vampire game for two years, too, with the same players, and in that storyline they spent the entire time betraying each other and working against each other for the most part.

[masqueradeball]

Sorry if this is belaboring the point, and countless LARPs have shown me how much Vampire can be a game of Backstaber: The Jerkening, but one of the things your suppose to figure out before you play is why the Coterie is working together. For neonate Vampires the assumption is because they are the only neonates in the city and that the various "ages" (neonate, ancillae, elder) naturally group together to protect themselves against the other groups. This takes a lot of framing and cooperation from the ST in particular and the group as a whole, because the factionalism in each of the games is such a heavily emphasised setting element, though I would say competition, in general, is less of an issue in Mage than an Vampire, because unless your running a very strange Mage game, all the PCs should be on the same side in an on going war (if were talking 1st or 2nd ed. Ascension).

[masqueradeball]

Sorry if that was too tangential to the main point. I will refrain from talking about games other than Exalted from now on, unless I'm making a basic point on spectator v/active player discussion.

[greyorm]

Has anyone else experienced issues with this trend of sidelining interaction in favor of spectatorism, in this game or any others? Or is it more likely an artifact of the people that I've been playing with, and not the game itself?

I can't speak to Exalted specifically, having never played it, but this is a fairly common issue in the way many games are played, and a common complaint of many old hands here at the Forge. There has been much discussion of the source of this problem and possible solutions to it that could be found with a search through the Archives. You might start by looking up the terms "railroading" and "illusionism" in the glossary here, and see if that leads you anywhere useful.

Historically, this sort of play was part-and-parcel of the gamer culture that arose in the 90's centered around White Wolf and their reliance on metaplot -- even if the rules themselves did nothing to encourage or discourage such. I've read in a number of places that this was also a major issue in the adventure modules released for 7th Sea, where PCs became glorified couriers (little more than witnesses to the narrative), and the real action and story was centered around NPCs. I've also experienced it myself in a slightly different form in 2nd Edition AD&D, and I derisively called it "soap opera role-playing": it was play where the plot pushed the characters here and there without any control by us, punctuated by moments of role-playing that consisted entirely of intra-party drama, disputes, and bickering.

The part about players not working together and at cross-purposes is an entirely separate issue, and the case of that issue I would mention that many groups find this sort of play highly enjoyable (like myself). You don't, however. So the question is are you sure you're playing with a group that matches your personal style well? If you aren't, you have two choices: live with it and enjoy it, or don't play with that group. The worst thing you can do is demand everyone else conform to your expectations of what fun should be and/or them they're playing "wrong".

Try discussing the situation with the whole group (players and GM) and point out that you're not enjoying yourself because you prefer a more team-oriented style of play and see if they're interested in going that route (they may be or they may not, but keep in mind that even if they're up for it, it may not work out). Bring up how it isn't enjoyable to sit and listen to monologues, that you would rather be actively playing the game, involved in action, and doing things. See if you and the GM can come together on this and work it out so the focus is on the characters.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I think Raven's absolutely right to separate the issues of (i) whether the characters are defined and acting as a team or shared-interest group of some kind, and (ii) whether conflicts or even major attention are focused against one another or against external threats or targets. All four possible combinations can lead to viable play.

- defined and acting as a team, but mostly concerned with internal disputes and crisis (e.g. the X-Men as written by Chris Claremont)
- defined and acting as a team, and mostly concerned with external threats or targets, such that personality differences among the team are mainly colorful, without crisis (e.g. the A-Team)
- not a team or well-acknowledged group, and mostly concerned with conflicts among themselves (at its most extreme, "blood opera" as we at the Forge liked to call it when developing this approach through several games a few years ago, or "face stabby" as some like to call it now)
- not a team or well-acknowledged group, but still mostly concerned with external threats or targets (e.g. as observed in Werewolf, in proposing highly individualized characters, but also a far-off, very scary enemy they must try to defeat; also strongly visible in Nobilis)

I went into this in detail because it's too easy to claim, as you're kind of doing, that one or more of these are "no good" by definition. They're all good. They all work. The better questions concern why in your experience they haven't.

It could be that the entire group simply never got its shit together about which one of these was under way. That's a game-killer right there.

Or it could be that they did, but you personally simply didn't want to do it, which is also understandable; I don't think much of the idea that a person who isn't enjoying the basic idea of a given game/group should suck it up and not have fun so that everyone else can.

What do you think?

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Shoot, my post got away from me, mentally, and I totally forgot to bring it around to the point of the thread.

Given your answers or thoughts on what I posted, that will really help to clarify why spectating was so prevalent in your game, and why it wasn't fun. Because again, there are in fact games and groups in which spectating does happen and it's fun, so the questions here are why it happened in your games and why it wasn't fun. Not that it's automatically no good.

Best, Ron