D&D as it pertains to Exalted

[Sanctaphrax]

Xefas did a bunch of disciplines for D&D based on Exalted supernatural martial arts and the Yozis, who are re-imagined as a kind of, what's the blanket term for evil outsiders.

Here's his Ligier.

He also created some things called Mythos classes, which have clear Exalted influence.

If you want to see his homebrew in general (including some EX3 stuff), look here.

[Khantalas]

The most amusing and bemusing commonality between D&D and Exalted I've seen is that both games try to do one specific thing (dungeon crawls for D&D, Creation for Exalted), people try to make them work for other things (high fantasy for D&D, real world myths for Exalted), and get upset when the adaptation isn't trivial or even feasible.

[TavelGorge]

"Graduate your game." Trade in your D&D PHB for the then-new Second Edition core book. Because, somehow, D&D is kid stuff, and Exalted is, like, the real game, man.

Yeah, it was super awkward and it nearly soured me to the whole game when I first saw it. Made worse by being launched like a week after Gary Gygax died.

Hahaha, God yes i remember that. Many people dont recall just how full of themselves whitewolf had gotten by the end of their golden age. This is like the pinnacle of how pretentious they had become.

Whitewolf, for those not in the know, made their debut in the 90's, to a market saturated by wargaming derived tabletop games (D&D/Tunnels and Trolls/Warhammer) and hard simulationist bent franchises (Steve Jackson/WestEndGames/Palladium). Their game, Vampire, was a more dramatic system. Instead of focusing on endless charts, dungeon meat grinders or weapon loadout tables: Vampire played up a gothy kinda goofy game about playing 80's vampires ala the crow, lost boys and interview with a vampire. It was a big hit, many gawky and awkward teenagers, a good portion with a gothy bent, flocked to this new game that was basically known for being “not d&d” and having just enough sex about it that made it risque. So it hit an untapped market and an entire generation of people who may never had enjoyed gaming, many of them girls, got into the coolest hobby around.

There were a bunch of years of good natured fun and ribbing and an air of not taking themselves seriously. Then sometime around the late 90s there was this weird air of superiority started to seep in. It may have been a few of the writers or it could have been a vocal minority of fans talking in like newsletters and at cons. It got to the point where Steve Jackson games was gently ribbing Vampire with its own version that was pig based in their magazine and in response some people from white wolf wrote some big response about how they were maturing the hobby and were above such childishness. This got kinda worse until you eventually have what Alucard linked: a crude and tasteless marketing ploy that alienated potential fans and galvanized many gamers who played both by telling them they were inferior by being the same gawky teenagers that were filling out Whitewolfs bottomline.

This promotion was only like 7 years ago, today the publishing powerhouse that was white wolf has...changed...hands, size, direction and thankfully its PR strategems. Wizards of the Coast also tanked its gameline by alienating its fanbase with 4th ed. Shadowrun began changing hands and alienating its fanbases. Steve Jackson Games released Munchkin and dug a deep and unmoving root into every beer and pretzel gamer gathering ever. And a galaxy of open source developers began to sweep through gaming groups.

[Khantalas]

"Tanked" is such a strong word, when in terms of name recognition, hype and commercial success, D&D is still the RPG to aspire to be (or sell). I don't even like D&D, and Pathfinder's popularity among 3rd Edition's (not D&D's in general) core demographic aside, even 4th Edition, the red-headed stepchild of WotC (and my favorite D&D game), dwarfed most games out there.

It's always been weird to me, the differences between what dedicated roleplaying gamers (which I count myself among) consider successes and what most people who play RPGs consider successes. I don't know what it would take to "tank" D&D, but even in my country, where the two most popular RPGs to play appear to be classic World of Darkness and Pathfinder, D&D is still the most popular in terms of what gets talked about and what gets sold.

((As far as I can tell, non-statistically speaking, the main reason Pathfinder is such an anomaly in terms of non-D&D games has to do with what the market was like when 3rd Edition initially came out, and the inertia the players of 3rd Edition later developed.))

[TavelGorge]

"Tanked" is such a strong word, when in terms of name recognition, hype and commercial success, D&D is still the RPG to aspire to be (or sell). I don't even like D&D, and Pathfinder's popularity among 3rd Edition's (not D&D's in general) core demographic aside, even 4th Edition, the red-headed stepchild of WotC (and my favorite D&D game), dwarfed most games out there.

It's always been weird to me, the differences between what dedicated roleplaying gamers (which I count myself among) consider successes and what most people who play RPGs consider successes. I don't know what it would take to "tank" D&D, but even in my country, where the two most popular RPGs to play appear to be classic World of Darkness and Pathfinder, D&D is still the most popular in terms of what gets talked about and what gets sold.

((As far as I can tell, non-statistically speaking, the main reason Pathfinder is such an anomaly in terms of non-D&D games has to do with what the market was like when 3rd Edition initially came out, and the inertia the players of 3rd Edition later developed.))

I think Tanked is appropriate when you consider the ripple effects 4th made. WOTC was the core D&D game shareholder, the imitators all stopped or became 3rd edition SRD supporters, essentially funneling customer base directly back into WOTC. 4th shattered the fanbase and allowed many fantasy games including pathfinder to become serious revenue competition, to the point where Pathfinder consistently outperforms D&D. WOTC makes the bulk of its income from, i think MTG, and i also think its a Hasbro subsidiary. Still, someone probably got a talking to about creating a host of legitimate competitors supported by fleeing customers.

[God_of_Awesome]

Honestly, comparing the two isn't exactly easy, since the two games feel different enough that it's like comparing apples and oranges.

New topic: Orange, the anti-apple?

D&D vs Exalted? I remember this.

Graduate Your Game.

Haha, oh wo-

Made worse by being launched like a week after Gary Gygax died.

HAHA, OH WOW

[Jürgen Hubert]

Perhaps it is useful to compare and contrast archetypal plots of the game.

In D&D, the player characters are frequently out to thwart some Big Evil. This involves a series of sub-quests figuring out what the villain is planning and how to stop him - including assorted allies giving useful hints to that purpose - and culminating with a big, cinematic fight against said villain. Afterwards, the world is restored to the status quo and the curtain falls.

At its heart, this also works as an overarching plot for Exalted. However, most of the "allies" will slant their "advice" to suit their own agenda and be mutually antagonistic, and there are no clear hints whether a political, military, or infiltration approach would work best. Furthermore, once the villain is defeated, the world won't return to the "status quo" - there will be an enormous power vacuum which the PCs are likely to fill, since they will likely have gathered large numbers of followers during the campaign. And this, in turn, will attract the attention of even bigger nations, for good or ill...

[Khantalas]

Watermelon is the anti-apple. Well, anti-red apple, specifically. Anti-green apple would probably be pumpkins.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Perhaps it is useful to compare and contrast archetypal plots of the game.

In D&D, the player characters are frequently out to thwart some Big Evil. This involves a series of sub-quests figuring out what the villain is planning and how to stop him - including assorted allies giving useful hints to that purpose - and culminating with a big, cinematic fight against said villain. Afterwards, the world is restored to the status quo and the curtain falls.

At its heart, this also works as an overarching plot for Exalted. However, most of the "allies" will slant their "advice" to suit their own agenda and be mutually antagonistic, and there are no clear hints whether a political, military, or infiltration approach would work best. Furthermore, once the villain is defeated, the world won't return to the "status quo" - there will be an enormous power vacuum which the PCs are likely to fill, since they will likely have gathered large numbers of followers during the campaign. And this, in turn, will attract the attention of even bigger nations, for good or ill...

When I think D&D, I tend to think of "start and level 1 and inexorably climb upward to omnipotence", usually with some kind of attendant bildungsroman story. Exalted tends to skip the bildungsroman, and also does away with omnipotence, especially in EX3 where its equivalent to HP is a transient value fought over with way more tension.

[Khantalas]

Hey, some of my best Exalted PCs have been bildungsroman characters!

((I've had only about a dozen Exalted PCs in my games over the years, and I cannot really claim statistical vigor.))

[God_of_Awesome]

Bildungsroman?

[Khantalas]

"In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman (German pronunciation:[ˈbɪldʊŋs.ʁoˌmaːn]; German: "novel of formation / education / culture"),^[a]novel of formation, novel of education,^[2] or coming of age story (though it may also be known as a subset of the coming-of-age story) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age),^[3] in which character change is extremely important.<sup>[4][5]"

TO WIKIPEDIA!</sup>

[TavelGorge]

Bildungsroman?

Bildungsroman is a special kind of novel that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of its main character from his or her youth to adulthood.

[Amakawa Yuuto]

- Any crossover material? How well does that work out?

D&D 4 had "Epic Destinies" as end-game for characters, as way to "retire" them - usually, they'd get some kind of quasi-immortality and then would get taken out of the game.
Some people portet them over to D&D3.5 - or maybe there even were a few published for 3.5? - as epic level feats.
I was positively surprised and amused when, in the Giant in the Playground forums... well, see for yourself, and look who's posted them.

Bildungsroman is a special kind of novel that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of its main character from his or her youth to adulthood.

... *blinks*... *blinks again*.
And here I thought they were just supposed to be books that taught you something. But that makes sense.


Anyway, another thing - sometimes, simply knowing another RPG ruleset makes you more... sensitive to certain things. Like, in Coiks read-through, when Coik asked "What's the point for seeing in no-visibility conditions like total darkness if you can just light up your anima?". D&D, with all its "Darkness", "Obscuring Mist", "Solid Fog" and similar spells - and with some, but not all characters able to see through such conditions - teaches you the advantage of being able to see when others can't. And how "More light" doesn't help you in dense fog or other "can't see"-effects that aren't based on the absence of light. And how important it is for a sneak to not carry light. I mean, a Solar probably can sneak around while carrying an open torch, but it's easier if you don't need light to see.
Similar for the Exaled 2ed Solar flight charm - I've seen people ask what the point of the stupid pose was. Well, sure, on one hand, it's a goofy superman pose. On the other - it locks one of your arms away. You have to keep one of your arms in a specific position, making it unusable for other stuff. That is, again, something D&D spends a lot of focus on - how many hands do you have, and what do you get to do with them, something Exalted usually just handwaves.

I think it's interesting how simple familiarity with a different system can shape your perspective on this system...

[Khantalas]

You should always read more RPGs, even if you don't play them, to get more mileage out of the ones you do play. I have dozens of RPG books, cheaply or freely acquired (an overwhelming majority in electronic format), that I haven't played, but mined for ideas and system analysis aids to help the ones I do play.

I also wrote three games of my own by cannibalizing several such unplayed games. It's funny how much free time you can find in grad school.