I'm thinking about developing a situation for my Exalted group. We've had some false starts with player dropouts, and I've lost my mental momentum. I'd like to talk about how I got to this point.

More than a year back, a friend(Agito) invited me to his game group to play D&D. I had played various games from about 1980 to 1986 and stopped for lack of players. This invitation was my first opening since high school. It turned out that the group alternated between D&D and a never ending series of home made games by one of the players. The D&D game faltered after a few sessions, but the GM/game designer(Ranger One) kept doing his games every week.

I started buying game books. I ran a one shot of Adventure!. I'd heard praise of Exalted. Much of the comments refered to an anime connection, which confused me. I didn't see any when I flipped through the books. When I was able to get the core book and Lunars for 70% off, I bought them. By summer, I had most of the released books. More importantly, I felt enough confidence and inspiration to run the game.

Agito, who had invited me in the first place, had become increasingly frustrated with Ranger One's games. Once I understood the Impossible Thing and why Illusionism comes about, I had enjoyed the games. The other regular player (Jeff) was happy as long his character was effective; he was content with providing badass color. Agito's feelings were evidenced by "I can't do shit" while throwing his character sheet across the table. His reaction to getting a new powerfull item was to predict it would be damaged, destroyed, or stolen. Naturally, his belief was well founded. This situation was why I started reading Forge discussions. I didn't write about it because I was neither the unhappy player nor the GM.

Ranger One constantly tinkers with his rules. When we show up for his games, we plan for time to copy our characters over to the new character sheet. Frequently, he abandons a game completely and tries something new. All the games had the same Sim agenda with Illusionist technique. I felt that his trying different rules without varying play style was a shame. I've discussed creative agendas with him, and he has broadened how he plays a little.

Since I was the one who wanted to play Exalted, and the one who owned and read the books, I started a game as GM. I hoped that playing Exalted, with its high character effectiveness, and using what I learned from reading here would allow Agito to enjoy gaming again. I was going to emphasize player empowerment and exploration of setting over situation.

The first session was a trivial excersize in combat using the Tomb of Five Corners sample adventure. The second session was the one I tried to play in ernest. A player that had dropped out of the group before I came (Steve) returned at this time. Steve asked if he could have a god as a companion; I showed him the write-up for Lion Dogs. He read it and was enthused by the description of noble gods protecting ruins without any recognition or purpose. He led the overall mood of the game in his effort to restore the honor of the gods and the well-being of the mortals. He pulled the party together and built a following by protecting people from barbarian raiders and fair folk.

Ranger One has a strong preference for playing as GM. Running a PC pretty much bores him, but he's a good sport about it.

Agito played a Full Moon Lunar brawler. His play was very combat focused. He was the only player to make significant use of stunt descriptions and he enjoyed that element. His player initiated plot was centered on prize fighting.

At this point, everything was going good. With fall semester starting, Steve dropped out of the game because of time constraints. None of the other players are invested in his crusade. Two of them want to leave the city and move to a big forest. Okay. We move to the Linowan forests. I start bringing in elements of the confict between the Linowan people and the Haltans. We're cool.

Agito's work schedule changes and he stops coming to the games. Ranger One doesn't want to play his character anymore and starts making a new one. A player that had left before I showed up, Al, had talked to Ranger One. The description of the setting and style of Exalted interested him. Now we have Jeff, Ranger One with a new character, and Al. The situation between the Linowan and Haltan peoples didn't really stick anymore. We settle for a mostly pointless battle. Ranger One's new character dies; he doesn't mind because making a character is more fun than playing one.

I declare the outcome of the pointless battle void, and Ranger One makes a new character. His new character is a Sidereal Gold Faction meddler. Three Dragon Blooded are trying to kill the two Solars for simply being Solars; a Bronze Faction Sidereal gave them the location. We have a fight. Players are envious of the special advantages given to Dragon Blooded. Ranger One actually like his almost a pet NPC character and wants to play him again.

That was the last session. I need to get the game moving. I believe Al will enjoy the game I want to play. I'm almost tempted to make him read the book and give me something to work with. I don't really believe that is necessary or effective.

I want Ranger One to direct the other characters to achieve goals. Those goals would be ones his character wants met. The usual enemies would be the dead, demons, and fair folk. I just don't feel confident.

John

SquirrelCentral wrote:
I'm thinking about developing a situation for my Exalted group. We've had some false starts with player dropouts, and I've lost my mental momentum. I'd like to talk about how I got to this point.

Since I was the one who wanted to play Exalted, and the one who owned and read the books, I started a game as GM. I hoped that playing Exalted, with its high character effectiveness, and using what I learned from reading here would allow Agito to enjoy gaming again. I was going to emphasize player empowerment and exploration of setting over situation.

Steve asked if he could have a god as a companion; I showed him the write-up for Lion Dogs. He read it and was enthused by the description of noble gods protecting ruins without any recognition or purpose. He led the overall mood of the game in his effort to restore the honor of the gods and the well-being of the mortals. He pulled the party together and built a following by protecting people from barbarian raiders and fair folk.

Ranger One has a strong preference for playing as GM. Running a PC pretty much bores him, but he's a good sport about it.

Agito played a Full Moon Lunar brawler. His play was very combat focused. He was the only player to make significant use of stunt descriptions and he enjoyed that element. His player initiated plot was centered on prize fighting.

At this point, everything was going good. With fall semester starting, Steve dropped out of the game because of time constraints. None of the other players are invested in his crusade. Two of them want to leave the city and move to a big forest. Okay. We move to the Linowan forests. I start bringing in elements of the confict between the Linowan people and the Haltans. We're cool.

I declare the outcome of the pointless battle void, and Ranger One makes a new character. His new character is a Sidereal Gold Faction meddler. Three Dragon Blooded are trying to kill the two Solars for simply being Solars; a Bronze Faction Sidereal gave them the location. We have a fight. Players are envious of the special advantages given to Dragon Blooded. Ranger One actually like his almost a pet NPC character and wants to play him again.

That was the last session. I need to get the game moving. I believe Al will enjoy the game I want to play. I'm almost tempted to make him read the book and give me something to work with. I don't really believe that is necessary or effective.

I want Ranger One to direct the other characters to achieve goals. Those goals would be ones his character wants met. The usual enemies would be the dead, demons, and fair folk. I just don't feel confident.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
If you go at it from the (usually laudable) direction of lettin' the players decide, what you get is exactly what you have: a bunch of demigods doing nothing at all particularly.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
From a latter part of the post I see that you have made a point of keeping the books from the players.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
You seem to understand player empowerment as letting them follow their own ideas narrowmindedly?

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Make a player wanting to play a certain type of Exalted read the appropriate book. From the first page to the finish, no mercy. If they don't want to, give them heroic mortals to play until it happens.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
If you want player empowerment, start talking about what you really want. If your players want meaningless battles, structure the game so that it works for some stylish meaningless battles (with the characters executing a campaign against some Deathlord, for example). If, as it might be, they have the dream about immersing in the world you seem to have, how about either some heavy scene framing or more ST intervention in the plot?

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Almost tempted? Almost tempted!? <pulling his hair> Do it already, like yesterday! It's the only possibility if you want your players to view the idea of exploring the world as anything but a backdrop for killing monsters.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
I don't know if R1 is really the best choise for a leading element; from your story of his play habits it seems to me that he is much more interested in planning than in execution. You'd know best, though.

SquirrelCentral wrote:

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
You seem to understand player empowerment as letting them follow their own ideas narrowmindedly?

I can't understand why you would say that. I feel a bit defensive.

Maybe. Past history suggests that pushing books at people is hard work.

I'll convince Al to read the core book, Scavenger Sons, and 3 Circles. Happy?

The best and simplest piece of advice I can give you is to just focus the campaigns and have the players make characters suited to the campaign. Exalted has a huge widespread world which allows for almost anything but that doesn't mean that it can do it all at once.

With the group you have remaining I would strongly suggest doing smaller, tightly focused, mini-campaigns. Choose one area and one idea and build a campaign with a set beginning and ending around your area and idea. This also means limiting character types in each mini-campaign to save yourself the nightmare of having an Abyssal, a Celestial, and a Solar trying to work together. (Though once the players get used to this style of play you could try the separate but moving towards similar goals approach that was mentioned before. Mini-campaigns allow more experimentation.)

When a mini-campaign is done move to another area and another idea. This will allow your player who likes making characters to explore that aspect further and also lets them see more of the world, just in smaller bites.

This also alows you to revisit characters from previous mini-campaigns should players long to play "Yarl the mighty" (or whatever) once more.

I'd also suggest letting experience carry over from mini-campaign to mini-campaign to allow them to play more "developed" characters.

Exalted, like Glorantha (IMO), should play more like an anthology of stories rather than a novel or trilogy (or some nightmarish dodecogy).

Just my two cents.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: It is important, from my recent experience, to channel players towards an unitary game.

Otherwise they might just play their own, separate stories.

<snip>The moral of the story: there was nothing for the hang glider man to do in the adventure, as his character was building a hang glider

greyorm wrote:
Hrm, Eero, you might want to hang around the Forge a bit more before handing out advice like this. When the GM controls the players (ie: "channels" them) either overtly or covertly, a group is well on its way to a dysfunctional game (if they aren't already there).

Gods forbid the players play their character's story rather than follow the GM's plot.

<snip>The moral of the story: there was nothing for the hang glider man to do in the adventure, as his character was building a hang glider

Sounds to me like it wasn't the player who failed, but you. As the GM, it was you who failed to provide adventure to the player because he didn't do what you expected or wanted, not the player because he did not do what you expected or wanted.

The player from your example did absolutely nothing wrong, and made no mistake, by choosing to pursue his own course of action. As GM, it is your job to riff off his chosen actions and provide the character with plenty to do, interactions to have, and so forth.

However, these sorts of situations highlight why it is important that a game's boundaries be set up front by the group as a whole; if they aren't supposed to go off and do their own thing, then they need to be aware of that AND agree to it. Expectations need to be set and agreed to by the individuals of the group.

So, there's two ways to approach this: either set up those boundaries for play expectations, a valid form of Illusionism (though others here more versed in such would be better proponents of that style) so everyone does stay together (not so you can keep them together), or let go and let the players direct the action, which means no centralized plots or play goals for the evening, often little party-based focus but plenty of group (as in, the real people at the table) interest in events that do not actually affect everyone.

We played last night. The session was better than the last two. Al, the new player, is starting to grasp the mecanics. The start was good. Al was trying to lay low after the previous fight, while the Gold faction character tried to get him into action. I let things bog down late in the evening. It was mainly the time and not stepping back to reevaluate.

John

Hi John,

I've been thinking about your situation a lot since you first posted. I've been reading Exalted pretty carefully lately and have been very interested in how people have played it, and what they found to enjoy or not to enjoy.

And in some ways, I've had to think about the way this thread has developed too, specifically as a dialogue.

If I'm not mistaken, your gaming situation has some real risks built into it. Risk #1 is that you guys might not continue to play together, and Risk #2 is that you will continue to play but with relatively low levels of satisfaction in return.

The trouble is discussing that without a whole lot of emotional tension going on. The internet medium, frankly, really sucks for this purpose, and so we all have to be careful. In my view, Erling gave you some exceptionally good feedback, given what you'd posted, and I was looking forward to some good dialogue about that. Apparently what seemed to me like a very good set of advice and ideas wasn't phrased in a way that worked. (Nor did it work for Raven [greyorm], which only goes to show the limitations of the medium and how we all individually interpret what we read.)So it's not clear to me just how to post, for you.

With that in mind, I ask you to take any and all of the following as kind of a shotgun-blast of "maybes," which may or may not apply, and which may or may not be helpful. If any of it is clearly, to you, off the mark, then please don't take it as an unjust accusation, but rather as merely my own failure of perception.

Here are some of the Social Contract issues I see in your post. Emphasis: which I see, which is not the same thing as actually truly the case. I'm posing them for you to verify, correct, or identify as non-applicable.

1. Ranger One is typically "the GM" and in this case, he's not. He is also heavily committed to control-issues during play and utilizes both play-techniques and rules-adjustments as authorities in doing so. I could be very wrong about this, but all my experience points to such a person as a problematic player - power-issues and the role of central authority are very hard to give up, and being "just a player" entails giving up.

2. Most of your prep for the game consists of buying and reading the books. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily ... but, as Erling suggested, it can create a very big difference between the nature of your enthusiasm for the game and the enthusiasm of the other people. I suggest that your emphasis of Setting over Situation might be a bit troublesome, although I realize that what you're saying is to avoid programming scenes, especially in terms of outcomes. But I'm saying that Situation is key - especially if your main goal is empowering the players through character effectiveness. The players have to care about the conflict at hand, in order to enjoy being effective in it.

3. Agito is very often "de-protagonized" during play, which is a fancy way of saying that he's not satisfied with playing, specifically in terms of character actions and even identity. This is a serious issue - a very common reaction, unfortunately, is for the person to expect and even to contribute to their own victimization, by "turtling," which forces the very power struggle they dislike to appear constantly.

4. The group is fairly unstable in terms of who does and does not play. Players who apparently are "in" disappear; players who apparently weren't show up. My question about this is: what play-circumstances have actually been recognizable as unilaterally fun for everyone in the group, throughout an entire session? Any at all?

So taking all four of those at once, I guess see very little of the shared commitment to the game, socially and creatively, that I've come to expect as a basic prerequisite of having a good time. So perhaps what I need to know most is, what's the good side of role-playing with this particular group of people, in this particular way?

I have tons and tons of questions about playing Exalted specifically that I'd like to go into. But the above Social Contract points are so important, and so overriding (the "biggest box" in my model), that I can't even begin with them until I have a better understanding at this level. Can you tell me the total number of players? The age range? Gender distribution? Any relatives among them? Romantic interactions? How often do you meet to play, and does anyone in the group do social stuff with anyone else in the group? Or anything else you can tell me at all?

Just a couple of other minor questions ...

I agree with Erling that providing key readings from the books would be a very good idea, or even just turning over the books and letting the players point out stuff that they like the most. I'm really not seeing why that doesn't seem like a good idea to you - can you explain that?

When you write, "I want Ranger One to direct the other characters to achieve goals. Those goals would be ones his character wants met," that makes me nervous to read. For one thing, it seems apparent to me that Ranger One has no interest in "character goals" at all. This is the guy who likes constructing characters rather than playing them, as you wrote. Can you really rely on him to take any sort of fellow player-grabbing role regarding character actions and decisions? Can you rely on Agito to trust him? - as they seem to have a history of not interacting especially well.

I'm glad to hear that your more recent session went well. Can you elaborate on that? What actual scenes and player-character actions really paid off? And how did they pay off, specifically? How could you tell when other people at the table were more engaged with what was going on?

Best,
Ron

By the way, it's Eero, not Erling. I wouldn't mind, but we have an Erling (Rognli) on the other forum already. I'm not quite sure if the names are of the same root, but Eero and Eric most definitely are (from norse Eirik), so you can call me that if the long vocal throws you ;)

Ron Edwards wrote:
I've been thinking about your situation a lot since you first posted. I've been reading Exalted pretty carefully lately and have been very interested in how people have played it, and what they found to enjoy or not to enjoy.

The trouble is discussing that without a whole lot of emotional tension going on. The internet medium, frankly, really sucks for this purpose, and so we all have to be careful.

2. Most of your prep for the game consists of buying and reading the books. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily ... but, as Erling suggested, it can create a very big difference between the nature of your enthusiasm for the game and the enthusiasm of the other people. I suggest that your emphasis of Setting over Situation might be a bit troublesome, although I realize that what you're saying is to avoid programming scenes, especially in terms of outcomes. But I'm saying that Situation is key - especially if your main goal is empowering the players through character effectiveness. The players have to care about the conflict at hand, in order to enjoy being effective in it.

So taking all four of those at once, I guess see very little of the shared commitment to the game, socially and creatively, that I've come to expect as a basic prerequisite of having a good time. So perhaps what I need to know most is, what's the good side of role-playing with this particular group of people, in this particular way?

I have tons and tons of questions about playing Exalted specifically that I'd like to go into.

Ron Edwards wrote:
1. Ranger One is typically "the GM" and in this case, he's not. He is also heavily committed to control-issues during play and utilizes both play-techniques and rules-adjustments as authorities in doing so. I could be very wrong about this, but all my experience points to such a person as a problematic player - power-issues and the role of central authority are very hard to give up, and being "just a player" entails giving up.

Ron Edwards wrote:
I suggest that your emphasis of Setting over Situation might be a bit troublesome, although I realize that what you're saying is to avoid programming scenes, especially in terms of outcomes. But I'm saying that Situation is key - especially if your main goal is empowering the players through character effectiveness. The players have to care about the conflict at hand, in order to enjoy being effective in it.

Ron Edwards wrote:
But the above Social Contract points are so important, and so overriding (the "biggest box" in my model), that I can't even begin with them until I have a better understanding at this level.

Ron Edwards wrote:
I agree with Erling that providing key readings from the books would be a very good idea, or even just turning over the books and letting the players point out stuff that they like the most. I'm really not seeing why that doesn't seem like a good idea to you - can you explain that?

Ron Edwards wrote:
When you write, "I want Ranger One to direct the other characters to achieve goals. Those goals would be ones his character wants met," that makes me nervous to read. For one thing, it seems apparent to me that Ranger One has no interest in "character goals" at all. This is the guy who likes constructing characters rather than playing them, as you wrote.

Ron Edwards wrote:
Can you rely on Agito to trust him? - as they seem to have a history of not interacting especially well.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
This I'm not so sure of. You essentially say that player empowerment (letting them in in the decision process) cannot be linked to world exploration? I admit that I haven't heard about it, but to get Exalted to work optimally I imagine that it's participationism or this. The world is, at least for me, the only reason to stand the dysfunctional rules and certain teleological assumptions there. If I'm not riffing primarily from it, I much rather play HQ.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Hmm, I got lost for a bit there. I meant to write about combining setting focus and player empowerment, I distinctly remember. Well, the thing to remember is that if I have a problem with solving this conundrum in it's general form (how to focus setting at all entertainingly?), it's no wonder if it's hard with player initiative to boot. Port to HQ, I say.

SquirrelCentral wrote:

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Port to HQ, I say.

I don't see how this is different than saying "Port to <neatgame>". I own Sorcerer, maybe I should use that? (Rhetorical question intended to demonstrate that I don't understand.)

Heya Eero,

Yep, sounds like I misinterpreted your points. Thanks for clearing them up. Returning to "lurk & think" mode.

Hi SquirrelCentral,

I've been having my own troubles with Exalted, so I can relate. But from what you describe, it seems to me that most of your difficulties are really outside the framework of the game itself, and have more to do with differences in what the players want out of the game, levels of commitment, etc.

Probably your best bet is to have a sit down with those players who are committed -- outside the context of the game -- and really talk about what you all want out of it. Make sure you're all on the same page and that your play goals are compatible. Otherwise you're just going to end up with a lot of frustration and dissatisfaction. This could be the hardest step, but it might also be illuminating.

After that, I suggest another hard step. Scrap everything that has come before. Then sit down with a blank slate and discuss which conflicts in the setting really interest you. There are tons -- War between the tree kingdoms (Haltan v. Linowan), barbarians v. civilization, the disappearance of the Empress and the impending civil war in the Empire as the dynastic houses vie for the throne, the rising of the Deathlords and their attempts to end Creation, the reemergence of the Solars and the way they overthrow the social order by their sheer existence, etc.

Then collectively choose a spot on the map where that conflict comes into focus. Make sure the situation there is tense -- about to explode into conflict. Make sure your players have a say in how the conflicts expresses itself in the setting, different factions, etc. Obviously later on you can add secrets and rivalries that your characters can stumble into in play, but for now focus on the big picture and put it all on the table.

Once you have that, you can all talk about the characters you want to play and how they fit into this picture. The important thing is to make sure that each character has a stake in how the conflict turns out. Exalted characters must be absolutely driven. They have the power to completely remake the world in their image, they must have a good idea of what that image is. Even if it is possible for Exalts not to have this sort of drive, the PCs will BECAUSE they're PCs. Riddle of Steel's Spiritual Attributes and Sorcerer's Kickers are excellent tools for this sort of thing, and might help you along.

I should emphasize that in the step above, the players (including the GM) should create the characters as a group. Discuss your ideas. Make suggestions. Allow the players to riff on each other's ideas.

If you do all this, you will almost certainly come up with an explosive setting, and players who are really dedicated to their PCs and each other's.

I think I should have asked how long the players intended to participate. If I had considered that it had to end before fall classes start, I could've done much better. Playing my game for 7 consecutive weeks instead of every other week would have allowed a complete game before the end of summer.

No matter how well involved the players are in the situation, the game will flop if they don't show up.

I compounded that by trying to patch the game and carry on. The two least engaged players were the only ones I had left after two rounds of patching. The only reason I didn't drop the game completely was Al actively wanting to play. Since he didn't participate in either of the two previous versions, he didn't provide any continuity of interest.

I'm not sure a complete new start is enough, given the players I have. Maybe I should set aside the whole idea until I have more than one enthusiastic player and then create a situation that can be played out within the time available. (Jeff likes his character, but doesn't play in a manner I'm satisfied with.)

Here's a question: I allowed the players to create characters that supported their usual habits of play in terms of abilities. Was that a mistake?

John

Hello,

SQ, I'm not ignoring your questions, but I think I'm going to address them from a completely different angle. Thor, if you would, I'd appreciate your input about this angle too.

My reading of Exalted yields this preliminary response from me:

Extremely dedicated Illusionist play with maximal GM-Force exerted over protagonist decisions and actions, in terms of "the story." The GM gets "the story" directly from the features of Setting, whether metaplot or not. The GM also dictates (explicitly!) how the characters were enlisted in their Situation, as well as how the characters feel about it, which is to say, 100% motivated to swing into action in a particular fashion.

Player effort and authority is concentrated on immediate tactical advantage during confrontations, including remarkable opportunities for "stacking" in the sense of D&D3E Feats and most CCG design.

It seems to me as if the players are expected to be delighted with their character's effectiveness in the immediate context of a fight, and for that delight to contribute to the Black Curtain concealing the GM's absolute authority over why their characters are fighting, whom they are fighting, and for what. The scale of players' authority and input is handled at the "seconds" level; the scale of the GM's (in tandem with the publishers' stuff) is handled at the "scenes and sessions" level.

I think a comparison with Feng Shui is useful: Feng Shui is above-board about all aspects of the game being an excuse for a series of genre(s)-celebratory fight scenes. In Exalted, those aspects are dressed up in New Age "meaning" to the extent of proclaiming"important stuff."

It also strikes me that, unlike Feng Shui (which includes many effective non-Gamist-rewarding features), playing Exalted runs the serious risk of the Gamist rewards and features for the players completely overriding whatever story-stuff the GM is trying to impose or use as context. In other words, I think the Simulationist features of Exalted are misplaced as the "main" features, and will be enjoyed almost exclusively by reading the books - whereas actual play will see the usual Gamist takeover, or perhaps a lot of power-struggles over whether characters are really going to do whatever it is they're supposed to do.

Now, I could be very wrong about all of this. I'm finding Exalted to be a slow read because every detail I find seems consistent with this view, cementing the chances for dysfunctional play more and more with each one. But as I say, I could be wrong.

SQ, this quote seems consistent with my perceptions as well:

The two least engaged players were the only ones I had left after two rounds of patching. The only reason I didn't drop the game completely was Al actively wanting to play. Since he didn't participate in either of the two previous versions, he didn't provide any continuity of interest.

Could you clarify, Ron, how is it Illusionist if the control is so explicitly laid out? Your description sounds more participationist. What form does the "black curtain" take in this case?

Also, might not this be "trailblazing"? That is, the GM leading the players from one Gamist arena to the next to link the story together (how come that reminds me of the Pokemon TV show)?

I'm intensely interested because of the importance of Exalted, and my near complete lack of exposure. I completly understand that you'll want to wait for Squirrel's response before answering, but I'm hoping that my requested clarifications may help him too.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Might be Participationism, might be trailblazing ... whatever. I don't mean to sound flip, but the distinction among these things never seems as important to me as it seems to for others. What matters to me is the presence or absence of the GM-Force. (Review: "Force" = GM control over what player-characters decide to do, what they do, and how it turns out.)

You're probably right, though. Pending confirmation of my perceptions, I'd enjoy playing Exalted more if we just left the Black Curtain off. And so far, I suppose I can't think of any terribly explicit "Black Ops" Techniques sections in the book; it just hands all the control of the game-events (besides spending points on combinations and making tactical decisions during combat) to the GM and that's that.

My query in the post above should probably be clarified, then. I perceive that the players' satisfaction is apparently derived from Gamist play on the small scale plus "reception"-based enjoyment of the GM's presentation of the context for the fights. I perceive that the GM's satisfaction is apparently derived from providing that context in the most absorbing manner possible.

Therefore I ask, are these goals (hybrid Simulationist + Gamist with the latter in a subordinate role) consistently possible? Or instead, as I see it, highly likely to serve a double audience of primarily Simulationist readers and primarily Gamist players, with a lot of GM/player disconnects arising in instances of actual play?

I guess my current view of your situation, SC, is that you picked up what looked like a great instrument for some well-understood goals on your part, and it turned out to emit horrific discordant squeals instead. I very much appreciate your post about the people involved, and I now have a much better idea of what might be happening ... unfortunately, I also now think that the game you're holding is fighting you.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Eero, sorry about the name; you and Erling started posting at the same time and I was merely confused. Your thoughts on all the above GNS stuff and Exalted would also be appreciated.

Ron Edwards wrote:
I guess my current view of your situation, SC, is that you picked up what looked like a great instrument for some well-understood goals on your part, and it turned out to emit horrific discordant squeals instead. I very much appreciate your post about the people involved, and I now have a much better idea of what might be happening ... unfortunately, I also now think that the game you're holding is fighting you.

Ron Edwards wrote:
It also strikes me that, unlike Feng Shui (which includes many effective non-Gamist-rewarding features), playing Exalted runs the serious risk of the Gamist rewards and features for the players completely overriding whatever story-stuff the GM is trying to impose or use as context. In other words, I think the Simulationist features of Exalted are misplaced as the "main" features, and will be enjoyed almost exclusively by reading the books - whereas actual play will see the usual Gamist takeover, or perhaps a lot of power-struggles over whether characters are really going to do whatever it is they're supposed to do.

The person who wants to play most is the person who isn't playing, but rather (I presume) reading, and the ones who continue to play are "least engaged" ...

Ron,

I get what you're saying about gamism being the overriding aspect of play -- at least, in regards to what the player controls -- but it left me wondering about Virtues (and, to an extent, Flaws)?

Seems to me Virtues serve the same sort of function in Exalted that SA's do in Riddle of Steel -- in that they guide action. Admitedly, they are limited tactically in the number of uses that can be gained from them, and that's a point against them.

However, it would seem the smart GM would make adventures centered around the Virtues -- how does a hero behave when his values prove burdensome? Virtues seem tailor made to support of this avenue of play, giving the players some (significant) say in what happens in the game at the table.

Thoughts?

Now that we have some more detail, I'd more or less agree about the problem being more on the social side of things. I'm not regrettably any good with specific advice on that. Anything I say is probably horribly inappropriate and in the end amounts to "if you don't like 'em, play with someone else".

Let's see... John? We have a good enough picture about the play and particulars of Agito and R1. I don't however see much about Jeff. Are you familiar enough with his play to give us some context?

Anyway, Agito seems a kind of familiar kind of player, I have had similar ones. Frustation with set-backs, strive for conflict efficiency? In fact, my brother is one, and just yesterday my D&D had some major trouble with the feature. I'll assume quite much here, and might give entirely inappropriate advice. This isn't a particularly uncommon player type, here's some of my insight on the matter:

This kind of player actually and truthfully hates conflict while needing it. His play style doesn't confess easily to the existence of the more sublime narrative elements (remorse and regret for failure, non-dramatic conflict situations, as examples), so he has to look for the culturally stereotypical ones, like fights and adventure. The problem is, while he decidedly longs for the danger, he has trouble with dealing with it. For this kind of player games like D&D and Exalted are clearly and without doubt a kind of wish fulfillment - they want to feel feelings of competence, and thus they are driven towards conflicts their particular art education recognizes as meaningful (usually violent ones). The problem comes up when this is dealt with as Gamism. This kind of player isn't a gamist. He uses play as a kind of therapy (I won't try to explain what for), and all failure - an inevitable part of a gamist conflict - is poison for his game. He frustates easily, and especially easy it is when the conflict isn't archetypal. Your words about Agito fearing for his magic items in games is telling to me: he is again and again confronted with challenges that are too much for him, against which he cannot cope. Actual gamist would conseivably rise for the challenge instead of sulking, but that's exactly what this kind of player does. The challenge, instead of bolstering his self-picture, has eroded it.

The trick with this kind of a player (assuming Agito is one; if I'm off-base, ignore me) is to provide challenges he understands and ensure that he will win them. Even when he doesn't, it's easier if the challenge is one he understands. Easy, the real problem comes from the other players: it's a rare ST who is content with running wish-fulfillment. Time and again I've however proved to myself that it's a failure proposition to engage this player with insurmountable odds or a seemingly impossible challenge: those will just depress him. I've got the best and most satisfying (for us other players) results by making the challenge a non-issue while keeping the facade of action adventure: by playing a game with strong player initiative where it's explicitly stated that players cannot lose (a suitable system and a superhero setting, for example; I use my own system, and just now noticed that I cannot name a public one), this kind of player can slowly get rid of his nervousness. If the game allows for almost unlimited player power the player will at first go to ridiculous lengths to protect his character from failure, but in the long run it will penetrate: the GM won't allow him to lose, so why bother? It's much more fun to enjoy the thrills and the feeling of competence.

Exalted has a world that technically works for these players: the characters are head-and-shoulders above the normal, and thus they should feed the self-image quite well. Most of WW game content is pointed towards enabling players to build these real bad-ass characters. The problem comes from even WW being geared towards the players with a less fragile self-esteem: Exalted assumes that the characters will confront challenges that are similarly bad-ass. This can be counteracted by heavily down-playing challenge: make other Exalted suitably rare and disorganized (easy to do and stay canonical, even) and put the PCs up against mortal challenges. Those they can defeat handily, but don't let it stop the celebrations: from the mortal viewpoint the characters are bad-ass whether they are that on the exalt-god axle of things. If putting in those gods and exalts, let them be heads of mortal organizations and always singly: a group of exalts should have no trouble with that, while still allowing them even greater heights of bad-assness.

Anyway, it seems Agito has been content enough with your game to date, I just wanted to offer the observation in the case you run aground this problem: the kind of player I talk about will play eminently well and sensibly, as long as he succeeds. After failure he will shatter like glass if the challenge doesn't conform to something he can digest. If I interpreted this correctly you should consider removing the failure element alltogether.

Then on to R1: I'd still stand with the idea that encaging him depends on giving him a deeper access to the world than mere player status gives. It seems from his former play behavior that he, too, is immersed in a particular dream of roleplaying: like we all, he gets into rpgs because of a vision of play he searches for. In his case the vision seems to escape so dramatically that he has to start again and again, trying to correct things by fiddling with the rules with an insufficient toolbox for the job. What is it he has searched as GM, and why he doesn't seem to find it? Or is the process itself calling to him? Be that as it may, assuming he is more comfortable with GM status, that's what he might need as a player too. The roles can be blurred: how about encaging him to a story of utter manipulation? Give his character the means and the motivation to run these illusionist games in the game world. This even has source support in the game, with all those immortal gods and exalts directing the course of the world behind the scenes. Another possibility is giving him elements of the setting to play with: let him stat NPCs and drive the plot. The correct path depends on which part of GMing he is drawn to: the power, the process of play or the strong direction he can give to the story. In the first case there's not much to be done, apart from playing something that's far enough from a traditional rpg that he cannot map it to his usual picture of GM-player relationship.

Assuming the above and remembering your goal of player empowerment it still seems to me that you have to go deeper than vanilla Exalted allows to give your players what they want while getting it yourself. Exalted strongly encourages character/setting demarcation where the character is sole territory of the player, while setting is the domain of the ST. The players I describe above won't be happy with this: the first one will indeed want to control his character, but in such a way that it is primary compared to the setting. The second is not satisfied with only his character, but wants to have some more.

So in one way or another, you'll have to give the players more responsibility for what you are doing at the gaming night. This needn't be through changes in the rules, although that is possible too. I won't expound more on the implications, as I feel that this advice has to be inaccurate, based as it is on so scant data on the actual players.

Forgetting the above analysis, let's focus on the concrete problem, without trying to second-guess the players: as others have said, most of the actual trouble has been a part of group incoherence: your players change all the time. Conseivably this can be engineered for (as I've done with my D&D), but that'd mean throwing most of the higher-order goals here. It's easier to deal with it in some type of play contract before looking for any other problems.

That was easy. As I said, I'm not too good at this actual people thing, at least when it involves guessing about them over the 'net.

Now, on to the theory: I agree in all particulars with Ron about the GNS status of Exalted. Especially the idea that the setting is actually a red herring and play will be gamist illusionism is to my mind proved clearly by all efforts to play the game I've heard of. The only exception are hard-core immersionists (of which we have an ample supply in Finland), who are quite content to play the illusion, and therefore try to avoid the gamist content; by doing otherwise they'd doom their characters to a messy death in the hands of the system. If the ST and the players are on the same bandwidth on this, you get the most interesting analysis of Exalted to date, one we saw on the finnish usenet a while back: the problem of Exalted is that there isn't nearly enough world information on the everyday life in the Creation. How are you supposed to play this game when you don't even know how that-and-that culture prepares it's food?

And the difference between illusionism and participationism is indeed inconsequential here. It's a trivial thing to break the illusion whether you mean to or not. The key is that Exalted doesn't recognize it's leaning here, and indeed doesn't see anything strange in it. Therefore the game never explicitly states anything about the matter. It's assumed to be illusionist because it pays lip service to player protagonism, while encouraging "good storytelling".

As to if this is possible at all to play, we have those larpers and other "real roleplayers" in abundance here who would see no trouble at all, as I intimated earlier. They'd do a tiniest bit of drift by removing the combat focus, after which the game would do quite splendidly for them, with the ST running a world simulation and the players doing nothing at all (not kidding here, been to these games).

Putting finnish freaks aside, looking at published adventures should be an edifying experience: how does Ron's analysis stand against them? The one that springs to mind from the Time of Tumult features PCs travelling to the far north in search of fabled artifacts and finding there an old manse guarded by a treacherous spirit and sieged by some thousands of demons. The adventure can be analysed in three parts: the characters' travel to the north, them finding out about the manse and travelling there, and them exploring the manse and defeating it's guardian.

The point: the above adventure is essentially D&D. Actually, newer D&D products have quite the same elements, even providing those WW style psych profiles on the NPCs. This is sensible, as what Ron pictured for us is the exact same playing style some people endorse nowadays for D&D: away with the dungeon hack, welcome grand adventure! That grand adventure then means a convoluted dungeon hack embedded in a story. The key to such a design is that the gamist element has to be directed towards the story: give the gamist reward from following the illusion. And so does that adventure from ToT whose name I forget: characters have to get to the north to get the artifacts, the characters have to find the manse to get the artifacts, the characters have to defeat the guardian to get the manse, not die gruesomely and get the artifacts. The gamism drives towards the plot, with no incoherence at all.

So I'd say this is both possible and somewhat usual nowadays. As long as you limit yourself to stories with ulterior motives coinciding with the gamist rewards there's not too many problems. The game style you get is stilted, though: a significant percentage of GMs will expect the players to play fullsomely along with the narration while waiting for the next gamist decision. They of course won't, as the players interested in the gamist content rarely can or will switch gears to provide interesting dialogue or other color for the game. From here we go on to the pawning usual in WW games: the ST represses his desire for good roleplaying, forgetting his vision of enthusiastic players. Instead he'll use NPCs talking to one another and ruthlessly directs PCs to the next scene in his grand storyline. The players on the other hand have a chance to grow bored when the ST forgets to pay lip service to the illusion himself: remember, they are along because their gamist motivation happens to coincide with that clever adventure in ToT. Luckily our culture has taught the ST to build stories through violence, and WW has taught him to resolve violence through the gamist system. Thus the game will blod along with the ST dreaming about grand stories in an exciting and deep world and the players dreaming about that last dot of Martial Arts.

So it's possible, but usually not very rewarding, at least compared to a truly coherent game. It should be noted that this has been quite clear to, I suspect, those of us hoping to use the game for something. It will need to be drifted, and aggressively, to get it somewhere useful. Preferably something that preserves the setting. A friend of mine has planned a game of Exalted for next january: first he fiddled some with the setting and then ported the whole thing to Riddle of Steel. Maybe a tad too much drifting, what's left of the original game when you do that?

Anyway, I'd continue about the possibilities of getting the game to work, but time presses. Some other time, maybe?

Eero, very good comments. (Oh, I changed my log in name to avoid further awkwardness.)

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Let's see... John? We have a good enough picture about the play and particulars of Agito and R1. I don't however see much about Jeff. Are you familiar enough with his play to give us some context?

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
For this kind of player games like D&D and Exalted are clearly and without doubt a kind of wish fulfillment - they want to feel feelings of competence, and thus they are driven towards conflicts their particular art education recognizes as meaningful (usually violent ones). The problem comes up when this is dealt with as Gamism. This kind of player isn't a gamist. He uses play as a kind of therapy (I won't try to explain what for), and all failure - an inevitable part of a gamist conflict - is poison for his game. He frustates easily, and especially easy it is when the conflict isn't archetypal. Your words about Agito fearing for his magic items in games is telling to me: he is again and again confronted with challenges that are too much for him, against which he cannot cope.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
If the game allows for almost unlimited player power the player will at first go to ridiculous lengths to protect his character from failure, but in the long run it will penetrate: the GM won't allow him to lose, so why bother? It's much more fun to enjoy the thrills and the feeling of competence.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
This can be counteracted by heavily down-playing challenge: make other Exalted suitably rare and disorganized (easy to do and stay canonical, even) and put the PCs up against mortal challenges. Those they can defeat handily, but don't let it stop the celebrations: from the mortal viewpoint the characters are bad-ass whether they are that on the exalt-god axle of things. If putting in those gods and exalts, let them be heads of mortal organizations and always singly: a group of exalts should have no trouble with that, while still allowing them even greater heights of bad-assness.

The roles can be blurred: how about encaging him to a story of utter manipulation? Give his character the means and the motivation to run these illusionist games in the game world. This even has source support in the game, with all those immortal gods and exalts directing the course of the world behind the scenes.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
So in one way or another, you'll have to give the players more responsibility for what you are doing at the gaming night. This needn't be through changes in the rules, although that is possible too. I won't expound more on the implications, as I feel that this advice has to be inaccurate, based as it is on so scant data on the actual players.

Hi Ron,

I don't know how helpful this is going to be for John, so maybe we should split it into a new thread? Anyway, here goes.

I'm not sure that you're on the right track, but I admit that it's been a fair while since I've looked at the books, and I never really tried to see it in that context. What I can say, is that the authors of the game clearly devoted a lot of focus on the idea of protagonizing players, as embodied in the "Say Yes" philosophy. Whether the system fights their intentions in this regard is another matter.

At its core, the game philosophy seems to be that if the players attempt to have their characters do something, AND IT IS COOL, the GM should not only run with it, but play it up.

This certainly has tactical elements. For instance, the text goes into explicit detail about using Stunts as insurance, i.e., if a player has his character perform a stunt that would realistically result in death if the stunt fails, the GM should not kill the character for failing.

In my experience, stunts are vastly better incorporated in Exalted than they are in Feng Shui. For instance, in Feng Shui, characters tend to do stunts when fighting mooks, rather than when fighting named enemies, because stunts would often degrade your effectiveness to the point where it became impossible to affect those named enemies. In Exalted, that's not the case. Players tend to pull out their best stunts at the most dramatic moments in order to maximize effectiveness AND the drama/coolness of the scene.

One interesting angle to explore, and I'm sure groups are all over the map when it comes to this, is how much directorial power the players take when using stunts. Some, I'm sure, will only come up with stunts based on the objects the GM describes in the environment. Others will take it upon themselves to define the scene through their stunts. I do not recall seeing any explicit discussion of this in the text, but it has been a while.

Also, stunts have greater scope in Exalted. They are not just for action scenes. everything from a tea ceremony to a political speech can benefit from stunts if the player is sufficiently creative. In my experience, it is often these sort of stunts that cause players to dip into directorial power, as they take charge of the environment to come up with their descriptions.

But the authors also assume the players will have a great deal of power to make more fundamental changes. For instance, Geoff Grabowski (the Exalted Developer) has gone on record numerous times that Exalted will have no more than a token metaplot because the Exalted characters are so powerful that they ARE the metaplot. It is assumed that the characters will enact large-scale changes on the world and essentially rewrite the setting in short order. It reminds me of HeroQuest in this regard.

On the other hand, there isn't a lot of explicit discussion about social contract and power issues between players and GM (other than a little bit of stuff about GMs upholding the coolness of the PCs).

The Virtues, I think, were a somewhat rudimentary attempt to do what Riddle of Steel's SAs accomplish. I'm not convinced they work that well. I've seen some GMs really make them central to games, while others tend to ignore them. For the most part, I ignore them. Many players, I think, will tend to go for the Valor and Conviction virtues, as they don't see them as traits their characters will come into conflict with anyway. Not many players, who make gamist decisions at least part of the time, will run away or back down when they think they are right anyway. Fewer are willing to take the Compassion or Temperance virtues.

While I ignore them, I have seen players justify "my guy" play based on the virtues on their sheets.

Hopefully virtues will be revisited in the player's guide that is scheduled for publication this year.

Personally my own frustrations with the system have to do with scaling. It is very difficult to come up with NPC stats on the fly in the system if the NPCs are at all important. When prepping for a game, I tend to focus on NPC goals and personality more than stats. But that doesn't work too well in Exalted. NPCs that the PCs have come into conflict with have either been no challenge at all, or exceptionally deadly. While I'm not a stickler for game balance, it's really anti-climactic when a bad guy has been built up for several sessions, and the players have really come to loathe him, and then he is taken down with one stroke when they finally confront him.

At this point, when we try to play Exalted again, I'm very much considering using HQ as the ruleset.

I have some more thoughts on this, but this post is already getting pretty long. I'll be happy to go into more detail if any of this interests you.

Having long been fascinated with the setting, and on a meta-level, the appeal of Exalted, I'd like to add a few observations.

Ron's take on Gamism taking over in Actual Play strikes me as right on the money. Based on my experience creating an Exalted character, the thinking moves quickly into tactical analysis of Charm efficacy, Essence budgets, and Backgrounds to maximize character effectiveness. A second - and I think secondary - priority is welding the character into the setting, but that's a subject the thread on spiffy, baroque backgrounds addresses.

Here and at RPG.net, I see a number of threads asking for feedback on how to port Exalted to a different system. So far, discussion has pointed to Feng Shui, Wushu, HeroQuest, Tri-Stat, TROS, and d20 as alternatives. I don't know of any other game out there that spurs such excitement about setting and color together with dissatisfaction about the rules. It looks to me as though many folks quickly realize a disconnect exists, so they go looking for something else on which to hang the setting.

The books contain some decent discussion on ideas for different kinds of stories, portrayal of color, and thematic direction for the various species of Exalted. However, there's very little guidance and nothing fresh about group dynamics and social contract. Instead, you get the default assumptions about party formation, riffs on Golden Rules, and advice to GMs on how to push the characters through the story. To me, it's a clear example of Illusionist text. Player empowerment via stunts and color descriptions remains at a tactical level and is fairly marginal, though I think the formalization of the stunt bonus rules is a departure from the usual WW system.

In Actual Play, I found the system surprisingly disempowering, inasmuch as you can build up obscene die pools and still trip over the whiff factor on a regular basis (try rolling 36 dice and netting fewer than five successes). Discussion at RPG.net about Actual Play indicates that Exalted combat in particular moves at a cumbersome pace (high handling time is the culprit).

Much of the discussion on WW's Exalted forums focuses on dissecting the intricacies of Charm operation and complaining about game balance with this or that Charm or Spell. This in addition to the usual speculation about metaplot, which is still present in Exalted, even if at a significantly lower level than in the other WW lines. The few threads asking for help on how to run a story drive at "kewl stuff" and "is this strong enough opposition" rather than how to engage characters.

The comments about using Virtues to encourage player-owned story goals are interesting, but while I love the idea of Virtues, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they ultimately shoehorn the characters just as much as the other WW parameters. TROS Spiritual Attributes are a lot better fit because they're open-ended and player-customized. Just because you're Valorous in Exalted, it doesn't connect to goals and thereby to Bangs. The Virtues are ultimately static elements in contributing to player-driven story, as contrasted with the TROS SAs. Interestingly, Shreyas Samprat offered a variant on the Wushu port of Exalted rules (see this thread for details) that used the Virtues as Primary Attributes in place of a Physical/Mental/Social split, and in that light, the Virtues almost work.

Alright, I don't have much advice to offer beyond what's already been said. I'll just reiterate that with such a huge setting, establishment of initial situation, character interrelationships, and player goals needs laser-like focus and should be a central point of discussion within the group before character creation.

Best,

Blake

Hohum, forgot to write about the virtues. Isn't it clear that Exalted virtues are a limiting game mechanic, not constructive? Their main effects come from game efficiency (with spirit charms and saving throws) and giving stereotypical guidelines for character play. "My character is valorous so I should do this." or even "Your character is valorous, are you sure you want to do that?", and in the worst case "Throw your compassion against valor to see if you can do that."

This is logical from a character simulation point-of-view, and that is what the virtues are meant to be. They posit that these four (why the idiots didn't opt for a five-part system here is beyond me) virtues are central psychological elements for the Creation and therefore give quite powerful behind-the-scenes thematic direction and ideas. There just isn't anything even nearly narrativistic in them, so they are quite a different animal from TROS SAs, which are customized hooks. The same goes for the Great Curse, which just simulates a certain kind of psychological structure, that in optimal situation realizes related themes in the story.

Thor wrote:
At its core, the game philosophy seems to be that if the players attempt to have their characters do something, AND IT IS COOL, the GM should not only run with it, but play it up.

Wow.

Eero, you're saying all sorts of things I often write but then delete, figuring they're too harsh.

Which I suppose is a semi-cowardly way of saying, I agree with you profoundly.

Let's get this thread oriented just a little more back toward John's game. I know I was the one who brought in the system issues, and I do think those are important to keep in mind, but it's time to bring it back 'round.

John, the most relevant bit (I think) is what Eero said at the end of his post:

the ST takes care of all the mechanics, taking even the character sheets away. As I understand this has two motivations, one public, one hidden; the public one is that it helps the players to immerse in character when they don't have to worry about mechanics. The private one, I imagine, follows from the above: by taking the character sheet away you efficiently cripple the gamist aspect of the game and force players to pure character simulationism.

Ron Edwards wrote:
One thing I've often observed are groups in which the players and GMs achieve this same state through an unstated, willful "I don't get it" statement on the players' parts, which the GM encourages. If the players abnegate their participation in System, the game essentially becomes all the GM's. And by "pure Simulationism" I'll go even farther and say "Color only," which is to say ... well, the players kind of go on nipple-sucking mode. And the GM often finds, unless he or she is an astounding control freak, that play becomes exhausting.

Eero Tuovinen wrote:
Thor: your argument drives for Ron's statement, not against. You say that the players have and should have great leeway with stunts and "cool ideas". That is so in the books. However, this doesn't translate to player initiative, but only to player control of color. Stunts are not clearly meant for affecting meaningful decisions, only for micro-level description. You cannot kill the bad guy with a stunt, or do anything else important. You can decide that there is a chandelier conveniently for you to grab and swing on, but this is power most games give you anyway. Only the most anally simulationist designs like D&D and WW's Storyteller think there should be a previously defined chandelier there.

Point is, Exalted makes a big deal out of giving in to players in the color department and calling that player initiative and character protagonisation. That flies only with gamers who have never sampled play where the very plot is in your grasp as the player and you decide the theme.