This arose from a discussion over in Actual Play about a Bumpy Exalted Game. Since I don't believe any of this has to do with John's actual problem, I'm starting a new thread.

Blake Hutchins wrote: 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.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: 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."

There just isn't anything even nearly narrativistic in them, so they are quite a different animal from TROS SAs, which are customized hooks.

Thor Olavsrud wrote: I think it would be very difficult for a GM to co-opt the players' decision-making process when they have these tools at their disposal. In my experience, GMs who try to do this enforce their plots by limiting player choices to the paths that they envision. But an Exalted character should be able to get around all but the heaviest-handed tactics.

greyorm wrote:
Now, regarding the Virtues:

Eero Tuovinen wrote: 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."

There just isn't anything even nearly narrativistic in them, so they are quite a different animal from TROS SAs, which are customized hooks.

Alright, I think I see your point. I'm still mulling it over, but I do believe I see what you're getting at. However, isn't this pretty much the same thing Sorcerer's Humanity does? ("You were naughty. Roll a Humanity check.")

I think this analysis is overcomplicated.

Exalted tells you not to make a character that would have a fatal weakness because its designed for broadly competent protagonists, not the "glass archer" you might see in stereotypical point-buy game. The fictional characters Exalted that Exalted is a tribute to don't really suck at anything. Therefore, the player is encouraged to make a character that doesn't suck.

(This is another instance of gamist concerns working hand in hand with simulationist ones contrary to the basic premise espoused by many people on this site, but that's a discussion for another time.)

Now why doesn;t Exalted go a step forther and slap additional training wheels so that players can't help but make an optimal character? Good question. I would think that part of it is letting the rules stay loose so that variety isn't lost. For example, everybody should take Ox Body, but there are plenty of different ways to configure Ox Body. That's why slapping on a few more HLs isn't the same. Plus, we get an in-game reason for the variation.

Virtues are really designed to let the players adjust their character's arc as far as the general heroic tragedy trip the want to go on is. They also act as personality meters, but most of their use as afr as that goes is abstract (that's a form of design that counts, but that's not something I'd discuss in this thread).

I personally think Exalted's Charm set could be pared down and simplified a bit, since they boil down to a limited number of mechanics tweaks with Essence minimums. I like to throw together powers from scratch though and don't like charts. Other folks do.

Sorry, Malcom, complete disagreement from me. When you get right down to it, heroes of myth and legend are rarely, if ever, portrayed as jacks-of-all-trades, nor are anime heroes and villans.

This is not a case of Gamism working hand-in-hand with Simulationism: this is a very prominent case of G overriding S, as your statement that the antagonists in Exalted are

eyebeams wrote: ...designed for broadly competent protagonists, not the "glass archer" you might see in stereotypical point-buy game.

eyebeams wrote: Virtues are really designed to let the players adjust their character's arc as far as the general heroic tragedy trip the want to go on is.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: The main difference I see is that Humanity is predefined freely for the campaign, and Virtues aren't. And losing Humanity is usually a free dramatic choice.

but the reasons for going bad aren't punishing players or upholding simulation - unlike Exalted, where I imagine from my partial recollection this to be the case.

Did they encourage limiting character behavior or something like that officially? Someone with a book?

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. The Iliad and Odyssey don't have narrow specialists. Odysseus in particular is broadly comptent; he's stealthy, strong, has almost supernatural guide and formidable battle skill. Similarly, in Ninja Scroll, Jubei is also sneaky, tough (he takes a licking other characters can't) and good in a fight, all at once.

You *do* have characters who are better at one thing, but they don't really suck at anything; they aren't "glass archers." They aren't even "archers of average toughness." They're just plain tougher (or stronger) than you or I, even if it's not the important thing about the character. Odysseus isn't primarily an archer, but he still has a bow only he can string. So heroes are usually a cut above mortals in almost any challenge, regardless of their focus. Exalted encourages you to make characters like that.

Virtues generate a plot arc viw Limit Break.

Malcolm,

While I concede the point (to a degree) about mythical Greek heroes, I feel you did so by completely skipping over my statements about system design, which is by far the more important point in my argument, and hence why I will maintain my response about the S/G interaction in Exalted.

BTW, you state Virtues produce a "story arc" -- but could you define what you mean by that term in the context of gaming?

I am aware of the meaning and use for scripted television series and similar, but as RPGs are a very different beast, what does it mean here? That will be necessary before we can proceed on discussion about it, since I'm uncertain as to your meaning.

Hiya,

Just to add another sub-variable to the discussion, I think the key issue for me, anyway, is the scale difference between the perceivable distinct GNS-type goals.

Players / Gamism = moment by moment, combination by combination, "initiative unit" by "initiative unit."

GM / Simulatinionism = scene by scene (which includes fights as wholes), session by session, metaplot-unit by metaplot-unit.

It's partly that scale effect that keeps the goals from being integrated, as I see it. As a contrast, taking Rifts as a game design that facilitates Gamism-aided-by-a-bit-of-Sim, I see the "underpinning" showing up at multiple scales. But here, it's as if the group operates mainly under GM-guidance in Simulationist terms when thinking about session-by-session, or scene-by-scene (e.g. "whom we fight") ... and then the group has to switch to mainly player-tactics in terms of winning the fight.

Why is this kind of a problem? Because - ultimately - can the GM "open up" the Gamism fully, inside the fights? Which means fundamentally that the player-characters would then have the full capacity to lose?

Or, as I suspect, we may well be talking about good old large-scale Illusionism in Champions terms, in which the GM is in full control of whether this is a "get to know the villains by face skirmish," a "get butt kicked briefly by big bad-ass so you can hate him for later," a "clean up the mooks but find out nothing special except the clue," or a "take the bad guys down in the royal finish" fight.

In other words, the tactical choices made by the players are not even especially rewarding as such ... because the fight as whole (this "scene") is taped already.

My other, related concept is that Gamism wins - mix it with anything else, and it'll take over. The only solutions to the situation presented by Exalted are (a) faux-Gamism, as described above; (b) full-Gamism, which is to say "fuck your story, gimme the fights now," and (c) leave off the fights almost entirely, just play characters' personalities and revel in "being there."

Which are the same solutions I see cropping up in almost all the actual play accounts and instances I've witnessed of White Wolf games. The (a) seems to turn into (b) or (c) pretty quickly. And the (c) tends to be accompanied by less and less actual role-playing, and more and more of either reading the books per se, or of using the rituals of "character" as an excuse for a singles scene.

So that's my input - the scale difference between the two modes of play seems to me to set up an unstable relationship among them, and probably not sustainable over any appreciable period of time.

Best,
Ron

The Exalted text places the role of Virtues somewhere between the tactical dice pool adder and a sort of personality-based saving roll stat, something like the personality traits in Pendragon or Ars Magica. On the one hand, you can spend a Willpower point to allow your selected (and appropriate under the circumstances) Virtue add its value to your dice pools for a scene. On the other hand, there are times when you'll be asked to roll Valor to stand up to the icky slimy horror, or to roll Compassion (and fail!) before you can leave the peasant family to the mercies of the bandits. There's some personality based utility here, stuff that's potentially far more interesting than the Limit Break/Great Curse angle, in my view, but it's not center stage under the rules.

Like the Virtues in Vampire, those of Exalted could be a really cool, story-encouraging facet of the game, but in practice, I suspect most folks make tactical assessments: Am I going to have enough Valor to face the Deathknight? Am I going to have the Conviction to be the ruthless badass I want to be? I believe I read someone in the Bumpy Exalted thread (Eero?) declare that practically, players gravitate toward the "hard" Virtues rather than the "soft" ones.

Unlike the bloodsucker versions, Exalted Virtues don't fluctuate much, at least not under the rules as written. I've thought about using them in a Sorcerer sense, but I haven't thought through all the implications of such a shift.

Best,

Blake

Jumping in again as I cross-posted with Ron and wanted to comment.

Ron, that analysis is right on the fucking mark. If you scan the Exalted Actual Play or GM Prep discussions over at RPG.net and the WW forums (as a starting point), you almost always see the "Champions" Illusionist methodology being employed. In the one or two cases where a GM mentions "killing a player," it appears in the context of "player pushed me to the point where I had no choice," which in turn reflects a Sim perspective. It's very clear that most of the folks weighing in over there are actively reluctant to have players die. On the other hand, there's also plenty of bragging about min-maxing Combos and lots of heated debate over the game balance of Charm X, so from the player end, I see the granular Gamist focus taking center stage.

I also agree that the disconnect you're referring to applies in other WW games - with the possible exception of Werewolf. This bugs me, because I want to pin down why it feels different. In general, my experience in all WW games is consistent with what you've said save for Werewolf. Clearly, Werewolf can be played and probably is played under the same disconnect, but there's something different there. I'm not sure I can put my finger on it, or why there appears to be such a qualitative difference. While Werewolf still labors under the same heavy metaplot, the element of embedded tragedy/we're-fighting-a-war-we're destined-to-lose seems to allow a degree of leeway in terms of reconciling the scaling differential. In my experience with this game, it seems much easier to set the dials in Werewolf to allow full-on Gamism to merge with player-driven story arcs. Maybe the heavy social setting pushes players to create characters who are heavily embedded and invested in that society, to the degree of defining relationships and conceiving of relevant accompanying goals. In that context, I'm thinking my actual play experience with Werewolf seemed heavily driving by player interests and goals, kinda like I imagine TROS SAs work. The other cool aspects of SAs aren't present, of course. In any event, the part about Werewolf that departs from other WW games may be the strength of the relationship structure as an unavoidable part of character creation.

Apologies for the ramble. I have a serious headache right now, so looking at a computer screen isn't real smart, and I'm not at my most clear-headed.

Best,

Blake

I believe a careless typo made me a touch unclear. In my mind, Virtues are a device to add an arc to character development by accumulating to the point where characters undergo Limit Break. Limit Breaks are mejor events in the game and are the flipside of having heroic characters. Eventually, the character is going to have a Limit Break that disrupts normal characterization and serves as a major touchstone for the player's look at the storyline. Limit Breaks accumulate over play, so they naturally evoke what haas come before.

This arc provides an overlay to a variety of games, from one where the story has a fairly narrow direction to one that is predicated entirely on where the characters go (their proactive actions, basically).

Greyorm, my point was really to talk about how Exalted supports these kinds of characters. Advice vis a vis choosing a Charm set is about creating broadly competent characters. If we want Odysseus, we've gotta buy Ox-Body and maybe some Athletics Charms, even if we don't think that Exalted-Odyssues has these traits as the standout schtick.

However, the system has some variety when it comes to how you get to implement that broad competence. Ox-Body alone can customize the character quite a bit, because each of them is really a different kind of toughness. Are we talking about a character who feels no pain, like the Terminator? Or are we talking about the ability to stagger through horrific wounds, like Boromir? Ox-Body can handle both, depending on how its slotted. It's just easier then, to advise people to take Ox-Body than to tack on extra health levels.

About Exalted's combat: I don't use GNS to design or run anything, so I'll mostly stick to vernacular.

First of all, Ron seems to be assuming that there are conventions of play at work that don't match up with anything that I, as a player, reader and occasional freelancer for the line, think are inevitable.

Many Exalted games are run according to player initiative, not conventional plotting. This means that characters are not guided to antagonists, but that there are antagonists in different parts of the world that they can choose or not choose to fight, ally with or ignore. THis was, from what I understand, the mode that Exalted: The Lunars was playtested in.

In these cases, it's very possible to lose. The characters can blunder into a challenge that's just too big for them (in the Lunars playtests, it was a huge army) or they can pick their fights.

However, this isn't necessarily the point of, or what's enjoyable about, all combat in Exalted. I think that Ron's overly focused on the ends of combat rather than the means, which is what Exalted really emphasized, with:

1) The modular Charm and Combo system.
2) Stunt bonuses.

The game is is to try and collaborate with the GM to have an engaging fight with a limited set of tools. The fight's result is really less interesting than this.

So to sum up: An "open" style of play where there's real freedom of movement has what you might call more "Gamist" combats, since the players choose (intentionally or unwittingly) the opposition. In a narrower style, combat may have contrived results, but that's ultimately unimportant, because creatively using systems and narration is the point of satisfaction. This is why fans talk about both Charms and story goals. Certainly, play morphing into something less satisfying in the way Ron mentions has been, in my experience, the result of much more prosaic things, like scheduling a game.

To put it simply, Exalted is a game that can be played in a gamist, narrativist, and simulationist mode.

It hits these goals about tap-dead center, if you ask me, not really having one element overpowering any other.

Truthfully, I think that the rules as written (In that big box) are designed for gamers who are playing in a slightly gamist game. Make a character that's cool, but be sure to be aware that your goal of telling a good story might not be the same goal as your GM or your other players have.

If the GM and the players are all narativists and on the same wavelength, though, it's okay to build a character with a weak defense because the campaign won't require the character to have a better defense; part of the reason I think Exalted is so popular is that it gives gamist elements a simulationist feel and narrative purpose, or conversely, adds gamist elements to a primarily narrative game.

-- Funksaw

Hey, Funksaw, Narrativism isn't about "Telling a Good Story." And characters with a weak defense have nothing to do with Narrativism.

As well, any game can be played in any fashion by the participants: what's important and what is being discussed here is what the rules themselvs emphasize by play. You may wish to bone up on the GNS essay and past discussions here before delving any deeper into Style waters.

greyorm wrote: ´
I have my book. Their use is supposed to be automatic: ignoring your Virtues in the appropriate situation causes checks to be made -- if you have a high Valor and fail to leap into battle with vicious abandon, you have to make a check. If you have a high Compassion, and you fail to try and protect suffering innocents or spare the lives of your enemies, you have to make a check.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: There you go. The Virtues are quite clearly a stick. If you are one of those "herding wild dogs" gamemasters you can use them for punishment

"That's not courageous, roll your Valor!"...In that case limit break is a clear punishment for unrealistic, uncharacteristic play. Just follow the stricture and you never get limit break.

greyorm wrote: Hey, Funksaw, Narrativism isn't about "Telling a Good Story." And characters with a weak defense have nothing to do with Narrativism.

Just a quick responce here.

Not hard at all. Witness Mike Mearls' upcoming article in Dragon Magazine about how to remove the effectiveness of powerful divination spells so that players cannot use them to "ruin" adventures, or Mike Morris' "Art of Magic" articles which began with an article on how to strip PCs of their hard-won enchantments and magic items with a type of anti-enchantment spell.

These are two recent examples, but gaming lore, "GMing advice" is rife with similar gripes by GMs and effective "solutions" to the percieved problems -- this is by no means something new, but it is making a comeback in terms of promotion.

Witness my own terrible recollections of Immortal play, where the GM at the time (and the main line developer) outright stated that it was really difficult to come up with ways to keep character magical abilities from ruining a game, so he had to nix them when someone tried to use them using the old "You dont' know why, but it doesn't work!" idea.

To say nothing of presenting new enemies and situations never even hinted at in the main rules, all to keep players from having any idea what to do until he chose to reveal clues as to what might work (and thus allowing the 'plot' to continue).

The a common gripe in adventure gaming is "the players are wrecking my adventure with their powers!" And the equally common response, the accepted wisdom, is to limit those supposedly book-legal powers and abilities.

Funksaw wrote:

greyorm wrote: Hey, Funksaw, Narrativism isn't about "Telling a Good Story." And characters with a weak defense have nothing to do with Narrativism.

You misunderstand me.

If Narrativism isn't about telling/creating a narrative, then wouldn't it be a bit of a misnomer? And you're right, charcters with a weak defense in design have nothing to do with narrativism in design. In execution however, a narrative GM would be more likely to forgive or work around a character's weak defense for the purpose of a story. A gamist GM would not be likely to be forgiving at all, especially since there's that big box in the text.

Funksaw, Callan, this is a heads-up that I'm starting a seperate thread for the Narrativism tangent that has arisen. I will be posting my reply there. Everyone else, back to topic or to the new thread with commentary on the tangent. Thanks!

Ok, I'll throw my opinion in since I disagree with a lot of what is being said here about the game. I do think that Exalted basically achieves the goals that it seems to be set out for, at least the goals I saw when reading it (colored by my preconceptions of course).

Ron, you said that, in observation, play usually drifts to (a) faux-Gamism where the competition isn't really competition, (b) full-Gamism with mostly figthing and little story, or (c) a few fights with a lot of other exploriation of character and color.

First, is this an accurate assessment of what you think?

I think that option (c) is really what the game is built to support, and it is what I got from the book the first time reading it. If the players create combat heavy characters, then you end up doing more combat than if they create diplomats or craftsmen, but that's still part of (c) in that it's exploration of the character. To me, Exalted seems to be about "hey, my character can do really cool over the top things -- now lets go do some of those things." It's exploration of character and color at its core -- at least, that what I see.

Now, if there is something Exalted is doing that's is in conflict with this agenda, I would really like to have it pointed out to me.

Keep in mind that the "gamism" elements in Exalted are also a bit of a nod to "simulating" chop-socky.

"You may have beaten me last time, Lo Phan, but now I know the secret of flying monkey drunken kung-fu, which can beat your Screaming Chi Style!"

"Yes, little Pho Li, but what you do not know is that my Eagle's Nest style beats Flying monkey Drunken Kung Fu!"

Personally, the "combat stunts" mechanic - which is a subjective measure of effectiveness - would actually make me think that Exalted in a purely gamist style was not intended by the developers. The gamist combat game, of course, is Chess - and since when have you heard: "The pawn, expecting the Knight's advance, deftly moves to the side, taking out a rook with his mighty blade as he does so." -- and I'll bet you hear: "Cool move! Take another one as a bonus!" even less.

Gamism, I think, relies on rigid (and complex) rules which allows one to apply strategy/tactics based on the idea that the rules do not change from one turn to the next.

-- Funksaw

Hello,

Dave, that's a pretty good summary of what I think, except for the point I'm making about your option (c). I'm suggesting that Exalted, as a text, is setting up a desired play-situation (c) which is very, very likely to turn into (a) or (b), again quite likely to the disappointment of anyone who'd prefer (a) and gets (b), or vice versa. I agree with you that the text promotes (c), verbally, but I think that various features - most especially the scale difference that I mentioned above - will make (c) hard to realize.

Funksaw, that's a remarkably limited interpretation of Gamism. It's a good example of synecdoche - you're taking "role-playing" and reserving it for non-Gamist role--playing alone. Exalted in a "purely Gamist style" would not resemble chess.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ron,

I'd like to hear more about this conflict in scale that you see -- particularly because I'm not seeing it in Exalted. Maybe it has something to do with the way I GM, which when I think about seems perhaps likely. I've GM'd quite a few WoD games over the years and had to deal with the incoherencies in those texts -- ones that I thought they had finally done away with in Exalted.

And frankly, if people are playing the game in mode (a) or mode (b), then I don't think that they're playing the game as it's written. Of course, this is a problematic statement because Exalted is a poorly written game when it comes to understanding the rules. There are parts of the rules that I've had to go over again and again to make sense of. Maybe the game has a tendency to drift because of this, but I don't think that's a design issue.

Hi Dave,

Did you see my post on page 1 of this thread? I lay out the scale-issue as well as I can (just reviewed it, pretty sure I can't say it any better).

If so, and if it's still not clear, let's take it to private messages for a bit.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,

Funksaw, that's a remarkably limited interpretation of Gamism. It's a good example of synecdoche - you're taking "role-playing" and reserving it for non-Gamist role--playing alone. Exalted in a "purely Gamist style" would not resemble chess.

Best,
Ron

Hi Funksaw,

Gamist roleplaying is still roleplaying and needs to be considered in that light. Just because you're calling a roleplaying activity "gamist" doesn't make it the equivalent of a board or card game. Similarly, just because you might choose to identify with your King's Knight and invest it with an imagined personality during a game of chess doesn't make Chess equivalent to DnD.

Best,

Blake