Today (Tonight, I guess) I'm going to talk about the core conflict resolution I've developed, as well as justify a few decisions and talk a little bit about the parts that make up a character in our new system.
First I'm going to talk a lot about my biggest and probably most controversial decision. Exalted has always been a game about powerful characters. A starting Solar Exalt could expect to walk into a village and take over it by the end of the day. Where in some RPGs a starting character might be afraid to wander out into the wilderness for fear an average wolf would just kill them, in Exalted a beginning character was very capable of taking over an entire city, solo. Given this level of power, Exalted is very much a game about what characters choose to do rather than whether or not they can do it. Even with the intense complexity of the original system, success was almost always a foregone conclusion unless the task was absurdly difficult or you were being opposed by an Exalted.
The cleverer among you will see where I'm going with this and will likely feel like they're about to hit a brick wall and try to bail out of the ride, but I'm seeing this through. Exalted is not a game about luck, it's a game about choices, about will and virtue. In short, it's a game that doesn't need dice.
That's a big decision with a lot of baggage, most notably that the game will need other mechanics to provide a sense of suspense and risk, but dice rolls almost universally allow random failure, and that especially feels awkward in Exalted, so ultimately I find dice as a mechanic ineffective for generating risk and suspense in a game like Exalted.
So what is our core mechanic? How do we make conflicts meaningful and suspenseful? Well, I could talk a lot about how I came up with it, but let's start by outlining it. It's a four step system.
Step 1: Define the Conflict. Who are the participants? Maybe a Solar facing off with her Lunar Mate, or two Deathknights dueling for the favor of their master or a Dragon-Blooded monk engaged in mortal combat with an Anathema. For now let's assume that conflicts occur between two individuals. What are their Goals, that is, what do they get if they win? And finally, how and where will the conflict be expressed? Perhaps the Lunar and Solar are engaged in a fierce debate in their manse, the Deathknights are fighting using their supernatural martial arts in a ring of bones beneath the grey sky of the Underworld, and the Dragon-Blood and the Anathema are battling to the death atop a shattered glass tower above Chiaroscuro.
Step 2: Compare relevant Skills: We'll get into Skills later, but basically they represent Dice Pools from the original game. Whoever has the higher is winning, but it's important that both sides know what number the other is dealing with for the third step.
Step 3: Charms and Complications: Starting with whoever's losing, characters trade off activating Charms or accepting Complications. Charms and Complications provide bonuses to a character's skill. Without getting into the numbers too much, if you're willing to accept setbacks, make sacrifices and penalize yourself, you do better than someone who isn't willing to. Since you don't know what your opponent is willing to sacrifice to achieve their Goal (but you do know their goal and their base skill), there is a human unpredictability to the conflict system from this element. When both sides are no longer willing to accept greater complications, whoever has the higher total wins the conflict and will achieve their goal, the other character will not. If there is a tie, neither character will achieve their goal, the conflict will be a standstill, though other characters may intervene. I haven't worked out that system yet.
Step 4: Tell the Story: We now know who wins and who loses, and what complications there are for both sides on the way. Now for the fun part: telling the whole story, as a group. This is Exalted, this is really the fun part. Take as little or as long as you like, but this is the part where you get to do all your stunts and have all your fun.
It's a fairly basic system, but as I develop greater detail for what Charms and Complications add to Step 3, I think it has the potential to be a decent narrative game system.
Now, briefly, let's talk about the bits of the character sheet that we're keeping from the original version.
Name/Title: Every Exalt deserves a badass title.
Concept: Being able to sum yourself up in a few words is very handy.
Motivation: I actually really like Motivation as a defining, semi-mechanical principle, especially in games that are so much about why someone does something, like Exalted.
Type/Caste: Since we're keeping the canon Exalted, it's gotta be there
Anima Banner: It's one of the most recognizable elements of the original game. I'll be messing with it a little bit, but we'll talk about that when we get to Essence and Charms.
Permanent Essence: Essence 'rating' is good. Essence pools were annoying.
Intimacies ?: Still undecided on if to thoroughly borrow the mechanic. Definitely has some narrative value but might be too complex and list-y. May just replace with 'things the character cares about'.
Skills: Notably for our purposes, Skills represent dice pools used for things, and are character named to give both player and GM a greater sense of why the character has the skill and what they use it for. A Dawn Caste might have "Iaido Badassery" as their combat skill, where a Night Caste might call theirs "Hail of Knives". Their effects are basically the same, but each conveys something about the character and how they use their skill. Skills will go from 0-3 for Heroic Mortals and God-Bloods, to 4 for Terrestrial Exalted and to 5 for Celestial Exalted, while otherwise being limited by Essence.
Assets: These are the meat of the new system, including what were once Backgrounds, Advantages, Charms and Sorcery. Many other, more general mechanics are treated like Assets, such as Anima powers and (in a uniquely negative way) Limit Breaks.
Resonant Virtue: "Primary" virtue doesn't sound as good, so I used "Resonant." The Four Virtues are actually very core to Exalted's setting (especially the Fair Folk, but several other elements as well) so I would feel odd removing them entirely. However, they are being intentionally redesigned as primarily a method for encouraging heroic behavior and (in the case of Resonant Virtue) punishing one flavor of negative behavior. May decide to allow characters to have multiple resonant virtues, for double the benefit and double the penalty, in which case you will have a Primary virtue that defines Limit Breaks but is also Resonant.
Next time I'll try to talk about Assets as a new mechanic, as well as Charms and Essence expenditure.
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