The Exalted Spirit: Part Two

I feel that Part One of this blog actually did a good job of giving the basics of what I need. The only thing I don't think I have put down yet is the idea of Caste Abilities. Players choose a caste aspect in character creation, not only does it decide what caste they are a part of but it also decides what their anima looks like and gives them one or more caste abilities which are similar to stunts. Unless noted otherwise a Caste Ability adds 5 to the Anima Stress Bar no matter what its cost in FATE points. This represents that their inate caste abilities are used by truly manipulating the essence within themselves. This could possibly send the PC through all the consequences of the Anima Bar in one swoop.

The Solar Castes:

• Dawn Caste - (The Forsaken) The Dawn Caste are known as the warriors of the Solar Exalted. They are the Generals and Champions. Their Anima Banner is a golden sunburst.
• Zenith Caste - (The Blasphemous) The Zenith Caste were the Priest-Kings of the realm. They are hunters of the minions of darkness, being almost zealots in the destruction of the dark denizens of the Underworld and Malfeas. Their Anima Banner is a large bright gold filled disc.
• Twilight Caste - (The Unclean) The Twilight Caste are the scholars of the Solars. They seek to enlighten the ignorant and seek knowledge and learnign through experience and study. Their Anima Banner is a golden circle filled with gold in the top half but an empty ring in the bottom half.
• Night Caste - (The Wretched) The Night Caste were the protectors and security of the realm. They are known for the stealth, guile, skill and cunning. Their Anima Banner is an empty golden ring.
• Eclipse Caste - (The Deceivers) The Eclipse Caste are the diplomats of the Solar Exalted. They are masters at social interaction and know how to handle court play amongst any groups. Their Anima Banner is a golden disc within a golden ring.

Each class has different Caste Abilities they may use when needed.
The Caste Abilities are:

• Dawn - For 2 FPs a Dawn Caste member can  make themselves appear huge and terrifying for the remainder of a "scene". This gives them +2 in defensive rolls, often this would be Physical Conflicts, but in some instances a player and GM may find it appropriate for Social Conflict as well. Any creature immune to fear such as undead or controlled golems ignore this ability.
• Zenith - For 1 FP a Zenith can burn a corpse with but a touch, sendign the smoke to heaven and preventing the dead from being raised as a minion of evil. For 2 FPs a Zenith can surround himself in bright sunlight that lights up the area around him as if it were noon. For the remainder of the scene the Zenith is +1 in Physical Attacks and +1 Health Stress to any minnion of darkness or undead.
• Twilight - When a Twilight Caste receives Health Stress, they may spend FPs on a 1 for 1 basis to prevent health stress from the attack. A very potent ability, but can burn through FPs quickly if not careful.
• Night - Anytime a Night Caste uses an action that would cause stress to be added to the Anima Bar they can spend 1FP to prevent the stress, this ability does not add 5 to the Anima Bar. Also for 2FPs a Night Caste may spend 2 FPs to add Aspects to the environment around them that cause the area to be darker, have more shadows, cause sounds to be muffled, and to cause smells and footprints to be lighter. All of these effects are rolled into one Aspect known as "The Night Unseen".
• Eclipse - For 2 FPs an Eclipse Caste can sanctify an oath. The participants are bound to it and if they break the oath, they immediatelly gain the Aspect of "Oath Breaker's Curse". Oath Breaker's Curse can only be compelled by the GM and it should come at the worst possible moment for the one afflicted. There are special rules for Oath Breaker's Curse, when it is compelled the player receives the afflicted receives no FPs, cannot negotiate the compel, and fails the current action...terribly. Breaking an oath is a terrible thing with powerful consequences.

Well I believe this is all of my thoughts on using FATE to run Exalted. The one thing I did not work on was Sorcery. I am apt to make it a Tiered group of stunts with Celestial being a prereq to Solar and Terrestial being a prereq to Celestial. This would allow the PC to use truly remarkable rituals and powers based on their highest circle/stunt. I would probably leave it at that for now, being free-form and lots of player and GM fiat. But once Dresden Files RPG is out that may change things. I am not too worried about it as Sorcery has always been the most ignored part of Exalted for me.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or feel I left out something important.

The Exalted Spirit: Part One

Well I guess i should start by saying this Exalted conversion to Spirit of the Century is being done with a copy of Spirit of the Century and the 2nd Edition of the Exalted core as the main basis for the whole thing. I will include a few things from the Starblazer Adventures core also. The reason I am going with the 2nd edition core is for some reason second edition really sets up the mood of the setting for me. 1st edition did to some extent, but 2nd really hammers it home for me. That being said, I am currently going on the idea that the PCs will be Solar Exalts, later as I feel like it, or decide the time is right I might give the other Exalts a try, but for now Solar is it. A lot of my ideas here are modifications or direct rip-offs from the Poster Gregor on RPGnet.

My first thought is to use the d6-d6 mechanic of SA, instead of the normal 4dF(Fudge Dice) of SotC. There is a very good chance that when I run this it will be online and d6-d6 is much easier to accomplish online. Another thought is this makes the range -5 to +5, which sounds better to me it allows the range to go higher into more legendary abilities and colossal failures, which sounds like Exalted to me.

I don't like the idea of changing much of the rules from SotC from what they are, so most of my ideas add to them more than directly change them. So first in a nutshell some of my ideas/thoughts/likes in summary.

• Aspects - I keep the 10 Aspects per character, that should not change. However each character also recieves a Caste Aspect, a Virtue Flaw Aspect, and 4 Charm Aspects.
• Skills - There is not much about skills I feel needs changing. Drive becomes Ride, Pilot becomes Sailing, Guns becomes Ranged and Weapons becomes Melee. The "trappings" of the skills(and stunts) simply need to be changed for the setting. The pyramid is unchanged and everyone gets 15.
• Stunts - As stated in skills, I feel it doesn't need changed much except instances of setting trappings. Incidently skills and stunts are the two areas I could see me changing more as playtesting happens, but for now I feel I should err on the side of caution instead of changing to much from the get-go. Everyone gets 5 stunts.
• Stress - Health and Composure work as in SotC, however I like the idea of having an Anima and Limit track.

The Character creation phases would look something like this:

1. Age of Sorrows - This is the time before a PC's exaltation, their mortal life growing up. Choose two Aspects.
2. Exaltation - This is when the PC has just exalted. Pick two aspects, your caste aspect, your virtue flaw aspect and a charm aspect. Aspects linked to past lives work best here.
3. Force of the Unconquered Sun - This a character's main "novel". Choose two aspects and a charm aspect that are related to an adventure you have had.
4. Forging the Circle - Work yourself into another player's Force of the Unconquered Sun story then choose two apects and a charm aspect from it.
5. Forging the Circle - Repeat phase 4 with a different player.

A character's refresh rate is still equal to his normal aspects number.

Charm Aspects are apsects that cover a general style, formation or group of abilities that make the character near god-like. Some examples would be Iron Whirlwind Attack, Will Bolstering Method, Flawlessly Inpenetrable Disguise, and Venemous Whispers Technique. These are all from the Exalted book and the names leave no guess as to their abilities. What makes Charm Aspects special is they can be "stacked" with any other normal aspect, skill and/or stunt. Using a Charm Aspect makes the action fueled with Essence and adds to the Anima stress bar. The Charm adds an additional +2. This means coupled with another apsect it could be +4 or a reroll+2. With stunts it could take a bit more on the GMs part, but assume it adds +2 ranks or an equivalent.

Anima Stress Bar - Anytime a Charm is used whether by itself or in conjunction with other abilities, it puts a point of stress on the Anima bar. The Anima Stress Bar starts at 5 and is increased with Mysteries using the same table as health and composure. Once the bar is filled anything causing the Anima bar more stress causes a consequence. With Anima the PC can take four consequences any stress beyond the fourth just maintains the consequences at the fourth. The four consequences are:

• Caste mark appears.
• Caste mark lights up.
• Anima flares up.
• Anima becomes iconic.

A PC can use a Caste Aspect ability for 5 Anima stress, depending on what charms they have used this could jump them from no consequences to all 4.

Virtue Flaw Aspect - This aspect covers a moral that comes from the very core of the PC's soul. It covers an aspect of the character that they are so passionate about that at most times it cannot be denied. A good example of this could range from "Heart of Tears" where the PC cannot stand to watch suffering to "Hits the Bottle" where the PC is a drunk.

Limit Stress Bar - The Limit Stress Bar starts at 5 boxes and is modified by Empathy using the same chart as Health and Composure. Using the examples before a "Heart of Tears" PC would exchange places with a tortured hostage or the "Hits the Bottle" one might be completely unconcious.

to be continued.....

The Spirit of Creation? or maybe The Exalted Spirit?

Oh Exalted, how could such a wonderful and delicious setting be attached to a system that I hate so much? I read the fluff and am amazed at the beauty of the setting. It truly is one of the greatest settings I have ever had the pleasure of reading in an Rpg. I even ran a couple of games of 1st edition. And we enjoyed it, but it was unanimous amongst the players and I that the fun was in spite of the system. And when I bought the 2nd edition core, the system immediately screamed "Don't even try!" before I was even a quarter into it. I am sure there are lots of gamers out there that play it and love it, hell I wouldn't even mind trying to play in a game of 2nd edition with some folks who are intimately familiar with it. But for me and my kind, its a horrid atrocity that will never work for us, even houseruled and stripped down, its just a no go.

Enter FATE 3E. Spirit of the Century is one of those games that opened my eyes to different ways a pen and paper Rpg could be played. Sure there have been tons of games that try to make role-playing more narrative or more based on group storytelling than the game side of things, but I usually ended up disliking such systems(or lack there of if you get my meaning). I don't know exactly why I dislike these games, but its usually that it lacks being a game to me. A prime example is Wushu. Wushu to me is more like a "Hey let's sit down and tell a story" type system, and it just seems way to lite for me. If I wanted to simply sit around with people and tell a story, I don't need a "rulebook" for it. Now don't get me wrong, I can see how lots of people would have loads and buckets of fun with Wushu, but I just can't get into it. Same goes for Risus and even PDQ, they just seem to lack "something" to me and I run back to my more traditional games.

Spirit of the Century somehow found the line for me. It truly tries to be one of those "let's tell a story" type games, and succeeds big time, but it also has just the right amount of rules with decisions to make me feel like I am playing a game. Aspects, stunts, manuevers, tagging and compelling all add a lot of fun to the game. Now I know I am being slightly hypocritical here and realize even some of the games I mentioned before have much lighter equivalents or could have with a snap of the finger in their rules. But its not the basis like FATE, so they lost out for me.

Anyways to get to my point. FATE/Spirit of the Century is perfect for Exalted, and doing a little research across the world wide intrawebbies I see I am by no means in a small group who thinks this. The Aspects based storytelling rules system is such a nice fit that its amazing Exalted didn't use it to begin with. Exalted is based on over the top Asian style action and court play with just a pinch of Western thinking to taste. A player being able to say "I fire an arrow at the advancing hoards, fueling my Rain of Terror style with the exalted essence of my spirit to rain hundreds of arrows from my one into their ranks..." is a perfect example of aspect use if I ever heard it. And excites me with the possibilities that could come from this combination of setting and system.

So I plan my next post or two to be my rules for running Exalted using FATE/SotC and maybe take a few things from Starblazer Adventures as well. I have read a lot of peoples' ideas on how to do this online some of it influenced my ideas completely. Check RPGnet for the many threads on this very topic for some of my influences.

.....maybe Spirit of the Exalted?....hmmm.....Spirit of the Exalted Fate?