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 Exalted? Exalted is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TTRPG) published by White Wolf. Well, it was. It is currently published by Onyx Path Publishing, under license from White Wolf, which is now a shell company owned by Crowd Control Productions of  fame. Except not anymore because Paradox Interactive just bought White Wolf from CCP, but enough of that. Exalted!Here’s a game where you play as a demigod in a world of impossible odds and fallen wonders. A world ruled by a ruthless empire that threatens to crush that world to dust under the weight of its cruelties and excesses, beset by gods and monsters bent on revenge and indifferent to the hapless mortals caught in the crossfire, while Heaven turns a blind eye to its supplicants and spirals ever downward into corruption and indolence. It is into this world that you, one of the Exalted, have come, granted nigh-immortality and divine power to rival even the gods, to save this world...or destroy it. A Brief History of Everything Set in the dying world of Creation, a tiny plateau of stable reality floating atop the infinite chaos of the Wyld, Exalted is a storytelling game of epic heroism. It hearkens to classical myth, Hindu and Buddhist theology, and Norse sagas, along with countless other influences from Subsaharan African folklore, to two-fisted pulp novels of the early 20th century. It is also extremely anime. The world used to work fairly well[citation needed] until the Solar god-kings, leaders of the Exalted host, went mad with power and started trying to blow up the world for laughs and were overthrown. The new order isn’t great, but it’s lovely in a different way. Now as one of the reborn godkings, you get your chance to overthrow it and shape the world anew. Gods help us all. The Roll of Exalted Heroes  By twos from L to R: Solars, Lunars, Dragon-Blooded, Sidereals, Abyssals The Solars: Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, overall the mightiest of the Exalted, granted the power to excel at human pursuits beyond all human measure. They slay armies and command nations and raise miracles from the ashes of history. Sometimes they go very, very crazy. Guess who you’re probably playing as! The Dragon-Blooded: Those assholes right above you? Yeah, you killed the poo poo out of them. You and your lineage of badass elemental supermen who are totally not Benders from Avatar, but who cares, you rule the known world! Well, your great-grandparents do. Also the world looks to be falling apart like drat. You should probably do something about that. The Lunars: You are a motherfucking werewolf. Or were-lion. Or were-squid, really Luna’s not that particular. You have the power to survive and thrive in the worst conditions imaginable, and you can turn into other things by RIPPING OUT THEIR HEARTS AND EATING THEM  . Since the overthrow of the Solars, you and yours have been hunted like dogs by the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals, but now it’s your turn to be the hunter.The Sidereal Exalted: You are a mysterious un-person wielding the power of destiny itself. You are the true masters of this world, the Illuminati, the invisible puppetmasters pulling Creation’s strings. When invisibility isn’t enough, you have ludicrous, reality-breaking kung-fu; basically you’re one of the Agents from the Matrix. Over a thousand years ago, the Sidereals made the decision to overthrow the Solars and Lunars for the good of Creation. Critical response to this has been…mixed, to put it lightly. The Abyssal Exalted: BLAH!  You are Chosen of Death itself, a hero of the Underworld and a goddamn Turbo-Dracula. You wield dark power to rival even the Solars, and your dress code is basically one giant love letter to Vampire: the Masquerade. You are new on Creation’s scene, but don’t worry, you’re sure to make a big impression. Supposedly more devoted to some kind of Knightly Code of Death than in prior editions.The Liminal Exalted: No, you’re the Death Exalted, not those LARPing poseurs. You are a patchwork creation pieced together from the bodies of the dead, given ‘life’ by the blessing of the Dark Mother and charged to hunt down much, much scarier things than yourself. You can gain power from corpses by assimilating their body parts, and you can’t be truly slain unless your brain is destroyed. The Getimian Exalted: The Linux to the Sidereals' Microsoft. Walking paradoxes and remnants of stillborn destinies, Getimians exist as a giant middle finger to the Celestial Order, housing miniature, alternative Tapestries of Fate within their beings and colonies of destiny-weaving Pattern Spiders within their spinal columns. Very little is known about them to date, but they apparently take their visual design cues from the art of Hirohiko Araki so they may turn out to be worth the pagecount for that alone. The Exigents: Not all Exalted are born of numinous, transcendental cosmic forces. Sometimes, one of the countless animistic deities that dwell in Creation or Heaven needs a champion, to represent them in the mortal sphere, do things they cannot or must not, or simply carry on their mantle - for in Exalted, even gods may die. Chosen by field spirits or war gods or gods of luck or the sea or the crossroads, Exigents are raised up at great cost (or even lethal cost) to their sponsor, for as many reasons as there are gods who would Exalt champions. Links to useful sources: Charm Tree Charts, by Roadie. Very helpful, since for some unfathomable reason nothing like this is in the backer PDF Quick Calculations for dicepools and values you’ll use often, by Echo Cian Bouquet’s zoomable world map A blank character sheet for Solar PCs, also by Bouquet A different blank character sheet, by TransientPeople, in case spreadsheets aren’t your thing. Myckou's Comprehensive Character Spreadsheet, in case spreadsheets are VERY your thing and you also want up-to-date references on new splats as they're released. How We Got Into This Mess Creation is a world of myth and legend, haunted by gods and demons and the ghosts of its own bloodstained past. At the dawn of time, the titans labored to wrench a cosmos from the primordial chaos, peopled their world with mortals and spirits and fantastical, wondrous beings, then proceeded to be unbelievably lovely to them. Needless to say, the mortals and spirits weren’t all that happy with this arrangement, and the mightiest of these spirits - the Unconquered Sun, Luna, and the Five Maidens of Destiny - colluded with the titanic defectors Autochthon and Gaia to elevate the greatest of mortals to powers befitting the stations of the armies of the gods. From their efforts were born the Exalted: the Unconquered Sun’s Solars, Luna’s...Lunars, the Maidens’ Sidereals, and the Dragon-Blooded of Gaia. At the spirits’ command, these heroes cast down the mad demiurges and claimed Creation for themselves.  Air, wood, earth, fire, water elementals. Elementals are kind of the same as gods. The spirits became the Gods of Heaven, the holy city of Yu-Shan that sits above the world. The vanquished titans and their favored progeny became demonkind, forever banished to Malfeas, a terrifying hell wrought from the tortured, still-living body of their own king. Those titans who were slain by the Exalted became the Neverborn, and from their restless, eternal nightmares arose the Underworld, the realm of the dead. The Exalted themselves were given rulership of Creation, and charged to lead the world into a golden age of prosperity. This went pretty well, until the Solar god-kings, the leaders of the Exalted Host, went mad with power and started trying to blow up the world for laughs. In their prophecies, the Sidereals, peerless soothsayers and seers, foresaw the end of all things if the Solars were not stopped. Together with the Dragon-Blooded, stalwart legionnaires whose bloodlines granted them the powers of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and The Sidereals retreated to Heaven, using their esoteric magics to hide all evidence of their treachery, or even their existence. The Dragon-Blooded attempted to step up to the task of running the world in the Solars’ stead. Instead they wound up forming the Shogunate and basically having a centuries-long Warring States Period, which wasn’t great, but was still preferable to some of the Solars’ worst excesses. Then a Great Contagion arose from the Underworld and killed most of Creation, followed shortly by the denizens of the Wyld, the primeval chaos beyond the edge of the world, descending en masse in an attempt to put an end to existence as we know it. They almost succeeded, but for the actions of an unnamed Dragon-Blooded heroine who claimed a long-forgotten superweapon and laid waste to the invaders. For this act, she crowned herself the Scarlet Empress, ruler of the Realm reborn, and answered challenges to her legitimacy with the same aforementioned superweapon. Most Dragon-Blooded (and behind the scenes, most Sidereals as well) quickly accepted her rule. For a time, life was good, assuming you happened to be a Dragon-Blooded of the Scarlet Dynasty, or a free citizen of her Realm, or one of her puppet-ruler strongmen abroad. If you weren’t, things were honestly pretty poo poo! And now, the Empress has vanished, an unworthy fool sits the Throne of the Realm, its Great Houses turn upon each other, and new Solars are once again rising from the teeming masses of humanity. Enter you. Isn’t this game vaporware? No more! On October 22, 2015, PDF copies went out to Kickstarter backers! These PDFs are full of good rules (with a few clunkers for good measure), terrible indexing, and art that runs the entire spectrum from stellar…  ...to atrocious…  ...to badass…  ...to blatant, shameful plagiarism that the devs have fired the artist over and vowed to fix before it goes to print.  Is it actually good? We think so! It’s not exactly rules-light, but it’s a loving godsend after the unplayable mess that was Second Edition. Give it a try! OP is TL;DR. Where can I talk about this game with actual human beings? Try #allunderheaven on SynIRC. Now in new and exciting Discord flavor! Thesaurasaurus fucked around with this message at 18:41 on May 16, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2015 06:00
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Reserved
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Nov 4, 2015 06:00
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Can you add a picture of each type of xsalt.
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Nov 4, 2015 06:22
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They did.
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Nov 4, 2015 06:24
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chaos rhames posted:They did. Ok that is funny I can't take chain boobs serious at all I would almost expect them to add a piercing so that the chain stayed in the right spot. That is some of the dumbest looking thing I have seen. Also the green chick in the middle going for golden balls crotch.
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Nov 4, 2015 06:30
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I'm the bear on lower left. Glad we have a new thread. Fallorn posted:Ok that is funny I can't take chain boobs serious at all I would almost expect them to add a piercing so that the chain stayed in the right spot. That is some of the dumbest looking thing I have seen. Also the green chick in the middle going for golden balls crotch. Nessus fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Nov 4, 2015 |
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Nov 4, 2015 06:45
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Fallorn posted:Ok that is funny I can't take chain boobs serious at all I would almost expect them to add a piercing so that the chain stayed in the right spot. That is some of the dumbest looking thing I have seen. Also the green chick in the middle going for golden balls crotch. Yeah, the Lady of Darkness in Bloodstained Robes is kind of ridiculous. I don't know if her writeup in Scroll of Exalts was actually based on someone's ex-girlfriend, but man, it sure sounds like it was. (People can say what they like about Infernals, but Scroll of Exalts is the worst book in the line to my mind for being more or less absolutely useless.)
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Nov 4, 2015 06:47
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yeah that's second ed art. good times
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Nov 4, 2015 06:48
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Are Alchemicals going to be in this one at some point?
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Nov 4, 2015 06:53
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, the Lady of Darkness in Bloodstained Robes is kind of ridiculous. I don't know if her writeup in Scroll of Exalts was actually based on someone's ex-girlfriend, but man, it sure sounds like it was.
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Nov 4, 2015 06:57
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chaos rhames posted:Are Alchemicals going to be in this one at some point? There are three new types of Exalts they will probably cover first, and they don't even mention Alchemicals by name in the book (there's a picture of Lissome Avid Engineer). That said, probably?
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Nov 4, 2015 07:12
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I'm drat sure they will be because people love to play them some robots.
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Nov 4, 2015 07:20
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Also one of the devs is a major fan boy of Alchemicals and stated for sure we will see them.
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Nov 4, 2015 09:58
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It's a missed opportunity not to have the core game set in Autochthon, and then to not reveal Creation at all until 20 sourcebooks in. 
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Nov 4, 2015 12:48
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thatbastardken posted:yeah that's second ed art. I'd rather have it back.
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Nov 4, 2015 13:05
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I'd rather have it back. Certainly the lack of Chynna Clugston really hurts this edition. Now I want to run a game about Dragon-blooded students just loving off and having shenanigans.
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Nov 4, 2015 14:06
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probably the best game of exalted I ever played was young dragon bloods
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Nov 4, 2015 14:19
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Now I want to run a game about Dragon-blooded students just loving off and having shenanigans. Someone did it but it died before taking off.
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Nov 4, 2015 14:25
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I like Exalted, Third Edition.
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Nov 4, 2015 16:44
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Hey how does Silver Nightingale voice martial arts work? Like could I do a scathing song that insults mothers, find out my opponent has an intimacy linked to his mom and then next action attack that intimacy and convince him to stop fighting?
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Nov 4, 2015 16:58
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Did anyone ever figure out what was going on in the 2e Core comic with all the confused clones?
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Nov 4, 2015 17:03
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, the Lady of Darkness in Bloodstained Robes is kind of ridiculous. I don't know if her writeup in Scroll of Exalts was actually based on someone's ex-girlfriend, but man, it sure sounds like it was. It was based on an ex-girlfriend, yeah. Orabilis posted:Did anyone ever figure out what was going on in the 2e Core comic with all the confused clones? Not even the author of that comic knows, truefax.
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Nov 4, 2015 17:26
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Scroll of Exalts is singularly useless, I have no idea what they were thinking with it. Granted, the Scroll series is generally awful; Fallen Races is the closest thing it has to a high point.
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Nov 4, 2015 17:39
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I think the OP forgot Exigents.
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Nov 4, 2015 17:41
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Covok posted:I think the OP forgot Exigents. I'll address that, and also work on putting up new art for individual Exalt types so we can be rid of chaintits.
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Nov 4, 2015 17:46
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Covok posted:I think the OP forgot Exigents. Also Getimians.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:00
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Scroll of Exalts is singularly useless, I have no idea what they were thinking with it. Granted, the Scroll series is generally awful; Fallen Races is the closest thing it has to a high point. Because the standard character sheet is so loving useless, and because every splat has important information scattered in loving weird places sandwiched between purple prose, I actually find SoE occasionally handy just to have an example of a fully formed (if terrible) character for each splat, just so I can remind myself of little things like what Dragonblooded anima banners look like. Also, yeah, that's a great cover.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:01
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chaos rhames posted:Are Alchemicals going to be in this one at some point? Yeah there's a pic of the Alchemical Sig with a big "COMING SOON" along with a bunch of other splat types we know nothing about.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:04
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Bedlamdan posted:"COMING SOON" "COMING SOON" in 2036, if the trend holds.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:05
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Scroll of Exalts is singularly useless, I have no idea what they were thinking with it. Granted, the Scroll series is generally awful; Fallen Races is the closest thing it has to a high point. The Direction Scrolls were usually good, full of plot hooks and cool settings and hilarious comics (like Sharkdad).
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Nov 4, 2015 18:05
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team overhead smash posted:Also Getimians. To be fair regarding those, so did we all.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:07
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Bedlamdan posted:Yeah there's a pic of the Alchemical Sig with a big "COMING SOON" along with a bunch of other splat types we know nothing about. One of them is Manosque Cyan, who was the signature Fiend for Infernals.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:08
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North was reasonably good; for the rest, you'd generally be better off today reading the 1e books that the 2e directional books are Cliff's Notes versions of.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:08
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team overhead smash posted:Also Getimians. What is Getimians? Also, Alchemicals are also missing.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:09
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Alien Rope Burn posted:One of them is Manosque Cyan, who was the signature Fiend for Infernals. Apparently, she isn't Cyan, according to the Devs. Rand Brittain posted:North was reasonably good; for the rest, you'd generally be better off today reading the 1e books that the 2e directional books are Cliff's Notes versions of. The South book was the best of the four, imho.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:11
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Covok posted:What is Getimians? If Exigents are mini-Solars, and Liminals are mini-Abyssals, then Getimans are mini-Sidereals.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:12
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Exmond posted:Hey how does Silver Nightingale voice martial arts work? Like could I do a scathing song that insults mothers, find out my opponent has an intimacy linked to his mom and then next action attack that intimacy and convince him to stop fighting? Thread moves fast. I don't really get how social attacks work in actual combat. Any ideas?
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Nov 4, 2015 18:13
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LatwPIAT posted:If Exigents are mini-Solars, and Liminals are mini-Abyssals, then Getimans are mini-Sidereals. More like, they're going to be the Abyssals to Sidereals' Solars, as a dedicated antagonist splat.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:14
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Covok posted:What is Getimians? Imagine if the Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts were also kung-fu Taoists fighting a shadow war against Heaven for control of destiny itself, with Sidereal Xehanort training them in martial arts.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:16
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 11:41 |
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Rand Brittain posted:Imagine if the Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts were also kung-fu Taoists fighting a shadow war against Heaven for control of destiny itself, with Sidereal Xehanort training them in martial arts. That's like the nerdiest thing I've ever read. Bless you.
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Nov 4, 2015 18:41
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