Exalted Essence: in what sense compatible?

[SabreCat]

I recently picked up the BackerKit manuscript for Exalted Essence, curious if it'll play better than 2e (my players at the time bounced off Social Combat) or 3e (where I found the flowchart of combat miserable to slog through turn after turn). I'm liking what I see, so far! Fewer Charms to juggle, simplified initiative, single-tier Stunts, all feel like a breath of fresh air.

One big-picture thing I'm confused about, though: the intro claims that "This book is compatible with Exalted Third Edition and all of its subsidiary books." How...so? Stat blocks look to be dramatically different, designed to interface with mechanics that have the same inspiration or spirit but little of the same letter of the rules.

Say I want to drop a Bride of Ahlat into my Exalted Essence game. I copy-paste the antagonist block from page 498 of the Ex3 corebook. Then what? Easy enough to ignore things like "Appearance" that have no Essence analogue, but do I really keep the same dice pools? Hardness 0? Damage 13??

At this point I feel like I have a good product to play a game with, but that I've been misled on the compatibility claim. If it's nothing more than taking place in the same setting, or that I can kinda eyeball stats and Charms from the other books to come up with ideas for Essence content, that makes about as much sense as saying it's compatible with 1e Exalted or GURPS for that matter.

[Heavy Arms]

The compatibility is more in the setting than the specific mechanics.

Basically, the state of Creation as described in Exalted 3e and it's supplements is the state of Creation in Essence. Anything main Exalted 3e says a character can do, Essence characters can do (even if they don't have a specific widget for it in print in Essence). Specific mechanically implementations will require adaptation to the system changes Essence uses.

[SabreCat]

All right, that's what I was afraid of, and aligns with the impression I've gotten so far.

No splitting hairs, I feel lied to. That's not a very common (to the point of, like, does anyone outside of OPP ever mean it this way) understanding of "compatible" in the TTRPG world. If I pick up a book that's compatible with D&D 5e, I expect to see stat blocks and rules concepts such that I could use that material in a D&D 5e game. So when I read that from Exalted Essence, I thought I could buy additional 3e sourcebooks and be able to use them as more than setting gazetteers.

I still like Essence, and it's a bold choice to make a spin-off game that departs in striking ways from the current edition! But I'm disappointed that the authors felt the need to mislead people about it, presumably in an attempt not to cannibalize sales from the main line. I very nearly fell for it! I'd loaded up my DTRPG cart, but I think I'm gonna clear it out. I might as well just use my old 1e material!

[Heavy Arms]

While I understand your frustration, I do think you're not giving the writers enough charity. That sentence doesn't exist in a vacuum, the paragraph before it, and the paragraph it's in, make if clear that the compatibility is one way; that Essence material is able to be "built up" to the more complex main-line rules.

If you don't want to look past it, you're not going to. But I really would say skipping out on everything the book does, including lot of stuff you're not going to find in 1e, over who to interpret one sentence is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

[SabreCat]

Oh, I'm not skipping anything. (Besides further 3e books, I suppose.) I'm still planning to run a game with it!

[Aliasi]

Also, Essence is still using the same dice system as Ex3. Quick Characters and Essence antagonist blocks are not actually very different, with the main difference being Ex3 QCs specify the dice for specific actions, and Essence boils it down to a Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary pool much like Storypath. QCs don't use more than a couple of charms, typically, and the only difference is Essence charms are already boiled down enough to be similar to the QC versions.

In general, dot ranges are going to be the same in either game. The person with Lore 5 in Ex3 is going to have Sagacity 5 in Essence. You start with seven health levels in either game. Essence includes a conversion guide. There's a few details but I don't think they're lying when they say 'compatible'; the differences here are like retrofitting stuff from AD&D into old Red Box D&D back in the day or MERP to Rolemaster, not translating between entirely different game systems.

[satoshi]

Honestly converting Characters from 3e to Essence is probably easier than 2e to 3e.

[SabreCat]

Also, Essence is still using the same dice system as Ex3. Quick Characters and Essence antagonist blocks are not actually very different, with the main difference being Ex3 QCs specify the dice for specific actions, and Essence boils it down to a Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary pool much like Storypath. QCs don't use more than a couple of charms, typically, and the only difference is Essence charms are already boiled down enough to be similar to the QC versions.

That's good to know re the dice pools! In the Bride of Ahlat example, what would you do with the other values? I looked through the conversion guide, but it's very brief and focuses on player characters--it isn't clear to me how it'd be useful for converting antagonists, which are the main thing I as ST would find helpful from getting further books.

[Aliasi]

That's good to know re the dice pools! In the Bride of Ahlat example, what would you do with the other values? I looked through the conversion guide, but it's very brief and focuses on player characters--it isn't clear to me how it'd be useful for converting antagonists, which are the main thing I as ST would find helpful from getting further books.

Despite sharing a name, Hardness in Ex3 isn't Hardness in Essence, so I'd be wary of stuff like that (and yes, I do wish they'd chosen different names for things that work differently). The 'QC rolls this many dice for this skill' thing seem easy enough to estimate a Primary/Secondary/Tertiary rating. In many cases I imagine looking at the supplied Essence templates for something close should help as well. For example, a Bride of Ahlat you could probably convert well enough by using the Champion antagonist block with the Blessing of Ahlat being something you can basically just straight use as-is, save the Willpower cost is probably just a once-a-day limit in Essence terms.