In today's episode, I will cover ExalTwitch.
Disclaimers
There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.
First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.
Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.
Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.
Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...
Overview and minor things
ExalTwitch is an Exalted actual play hosted by @JonVerrall. The game features a set cast of three PC Exalts and can be generally divided into two phases - early episodes focusing on the Circle’s adventures in Nexus, and late episodes that explore more of the world.
The series takes the form of Twitch streams (VODs are available here), each about 3 hours in length.
The cast consists of professional actors, streamers, etc. which lends itself to some solid voice work.
Player Characters
http://www.rpgclinic.com/exaltwitch:characters
Unlike Swallows of the South, ExalTwitch features a fixed cast of characters:
Jorek - an Eclipse merchant prince and deal broker
Rey - a Dawn fighter from the pits of Nexus
Valeria - a Zenith healer and orator
They are also joined from time to time by She-Who-Knows-Ten-Thousand-Things, a Lunar scholar
General Plot
The plot of the game, as mentioned earlier, can generally be split into two parts - the earlier parts of the game that is mostly spent in the city of Nexus, and the later parts where the party starts travelling the world in their efforts to advance the metaplot.
As mentioned before, there will be some spoilers ahead for what’s going on in the game, but the main focus is on highlighting the kinds of things you can expect listening to the podcast.
The early game is focused on the protagonists going about their business in Nexus as a freshly reincarnated Solars. Rey cares for her ailing father as she fights in the fighting pits, striving to improve the fighting conditions there. Jorek strives to improve his position in the Guild to be able to leverage it to help the people of Nexus. Valeria tends to the sick and tries to win over the hearts of the masses to convince them the Solars are not Anathema. Early on the group also finds their old manse and set it up as their base of operations.
Early plots include confronting local Abyssals, Dragonblooded, Sidereals, as well as facing off against an Exigent of Discord who aims to spread the disease targeting the rich. This part of the series gets capped off with a Dragonblooded army, along with an airship, threatening the safety of the city. After that has been dealt with and Nexus suffering enough collateral damage, the game transitions into “the metaplot” phase.
During the second half of the series, probably to avoid stagnation, the party leaves Nexus intermittently to explore the wider world. They travel to the Wyld to get directions to a Yu-Shan gate, visit Chiaroscuro to rescue someone to secure the service of the aforementioned airship, they go to Yu-Shan to turn their Abyssal ally (Three Fates Shadow) back to a Solar, confront the Deathlord behind all the Abyssals they fought. After all of that, they visit Mahalanka to learn of a prophecy they are a part of that will determine the next ruler of Creation, which involves taking over the Imperial Manse. The series ends with the Solars and their allies entering the Manse and undergoing its trials.
Highlights
Early Nexus stuff
The game early on had a pretty nice focus on one place in Creation and characters having lives there. This let the players make plans for what their characters wanted to accomplish and then pursue those goals to drive the game without having to worry about the global metaplot or anything.
The game also glossed past some problematic old materials for Nexus (no Solar tombs, no all-powerful Emissary, etc.), so it was interesting to see a more down to earth place be the centre of attention for the game for awhile.
Engaging with the community
ExalTwitch, perhaps more so than other Exalted actual plays I’ve come across so far, started getting really good at engaging its community. Between fan recaps, showcasing fanart, shouting out to the game’s developers when they were in chat, letting watchers vote on the play of the game down to inviting one of their mods to play in the actual game, the show certainly was able to engage its audience and let people have fun together.
Clear mechanics explanations
ExalTwitch, possibly due to its nature of being a live stream, did not shy away from the complex Exalted mechanics, and even made sure to explain things like charms, combat mechanics, etc. as they would come up to make sure the viewers were all caught up. The series is probably the best way to see Exalted mechanics in action.
Limit meant things
Some Exalted games omit Limit, while some players try to game the Limit mechanics. This wasn’t the case in this game - the players were pretty eager to engage with the mechanics and play them out to their full extent, putting themselves and what they care about in jeopardy along the way.
Repository of Secrets
During the game the GM wanted to let the players interact with some old or distant NPCs. I think the first time the opportunity was hinted at but not picked up by the players when they went into the Wyld, but later it was used in full force when they were introduced to the Repository of Secrets in Yu-Shan. It was a simple concept really - something akin to a holodeck that allowed you to interact with any non-god that ever lived at any point in their lives. While it could’ve been really easy to game, the players didn’t go for the powergaming option, instead opting to have some intimate conversations with various people they’ve met in their lives. It was a really great concept and an opportunity for some good character moments before the game started heading for its endgame.
Intimate relations and sex positivity
Sex is of course a frequent occurance in many Exalted games, so too did ExalTwitch feature a number of intimate relations. They were done pretty tastefully, and the Red Rule was explained on a few occasions, so everything was good. Not much to add there.
The game is also very sex positive with a good number of sexual encounters that were handled tastefully.
Good NPCs
The series featured a good roster of NPCs, both allies, friends and enemies. Pretty much everyone had a clear motivation and a good way to get them to ally with the players’ cause. A lot of them also came with their own themes, which is a bonus.
Some of my personal favourites were Klem the resentful river goddess, Eyes Alight the Sidereal with a crush and Heffump the Dome guardian, a big lovable giant of an elephant.
Also, a special shout out to the GM for imbuing one of the artefacts, Jorek’s Heart’s String bow with enough personality that Jorek started basically falling in love with her. It really takes something to make an artefact that’s got this much personality! Ship that JoHeart! ;)
“They tell you”
One problem with introducing Sidereals in Exalted is that they can have some insight into the game that you don’t, either as a player or as a GM. This perhaps was doubly so a problem when building a large part of the game around a prophecy that’s apparently very important. ExalTwitch handled that in a pretty neat way.
Whenever the players would ask Sidereals about the future, or the Sidereals would otherwise talk about things that weren’t certain, the GM answered with “They tell you”. This simple answer didn’t dismiss the question or come up with some lame excuse as to why they can’t tell the PCs something, while also giving the GM and the players freedom to play the game out nondeterministically.
The same answer was also given when one would ask a Sidereal a name they’d forget soon afterwards, etc.
Good use of music
Throughout the series the use of music was pretty much on-point. Every important NPC had their own theme that would noticeably trigger when they’d enter the scene and so on. Also, their intro music of “Worlds Collide” was really fitting for the game and got me pumped for every episode. Pretty good all around!
Final visit home before the end
Before the last part of the game, the characters had one last chance to visit Nexus and enjoy it, seeing all the changes they’ve made to it. It was part victory lap, part nostalgia and part a way of saying goodbye to the series as a whole. It was a really nice episode to have before the game ended. I would recommend everyone to steal this idea for their games! ;)
Criticism
ExalTwitch was not a game without its flaws, or at least things that I didn’t enjoy while watching the show. Some of them will be down to personal preference, understandably.
Familiarity with Exalted
The first notable problem that stood out was that the players were not too familiar with Exalted. The GM is a veteran of the game, I think one player was a bit familiar with the previous edition of the game, but that didn’t stop a few niggles from cropping up. You notice this especially when it comes to talking about Yu-Shan as “heaven” and the gods. The players, especially early on had a big reverence when they heard of these concepts, treating them akin to their judeo-christian equivalents or at least the greek Olympians, while in the setting they are much less impressive and more human-like.
Similarly, there were some offhand remarks about the history of the world that perhaps painted a simpler picture of the events. “Look how big Creation was before the Solars destroyed it”, “Scarlett Empress killed the Solars”, “Deathlords were never human”, that re-Exaltations and reincarnations are basically the same thing, someone is born destined to be a Solar, etc. Perhaps they were hard to catch in the moment, but it felt that explaining a few of these things to the players would’ve been more useful to get the bigger picture and maybe see things from another side.
Abyssals
The game also didn’t have the best portrayal of some of the non-Solar splats.The Abyssals, since they are death-aspected, are throughout the whole game treated as “broken”, evil and in need of fixing because the first Abyssal circle they ran into were their enemies. It would seem that the characters didn’t notice the hypocrisy of wanting the Solars not to be considered “Anathema” and yet failing to understand the heroes of the underworld. That or maybe it was simpler for the game, I’m not sure.
One way or the other, simplifying an entire splat to just being “the bad ones” made the game feel a bit reductive, rather than allowing for the exploration of different points of view and what have you.
Lunars
Lunars fared a bit better, but they could still rub some people the wrong way. The first Lunar introduced was Speaks-Of-Silence. She had an affinity for a fox shape, and when she transformed back into human form, she tended to be a naked redhead with hots for some of the PCs. It didn’t help that she was a Lunar Mate of someone in the circle, but for a long while it was a question of “who would get her” essentially… Now this could be a set up for something straight out of /r/RPGHorrorStories, but luckily it didn’t go there.
For a moment there was hope yet. When the players stopped by a Lunar moot and was told Speaks-Of-Silence was busy in a meeting, Jorek said something along the lines of “that’s okay, she will see us. She is my Lunar Mate you know, that should mean something!” to which the NPC Lunar essentially replied “you know, some of us would consider the whole ‘Lunar Mate’ thing a slur, you shouldn’t be throwing that around so casually”. But that was the last time that potentially problematic notion would be mentioned. Next Lunar that became an important part of the party, She-Who-Knows-Ten-Thousand-Things, was also a Lunar Mate of the Circle, this time of the Abyssal they wanted to fix, Three Fates Shadow. She was from the First Age, and basically ended up snuggling Three Fates into a Resonance coma… So yeah, not exactly the most novel representation of Lunars…
Moderate railroading
A bigger problem with the game in my eyes would be its moderate railroading. Early parts of the game seemed more player-driven, where they would pursue their goals in Nexus. This might’ve made things a bit stale after 20+ sessions understandably, but some things still felt a bit forced.
A good part of the game from when the party needs to leave Nexus followed a plan dropped by one of the NPCs - the player characters ought to go to Yu-Shan to confront the Bronze Faction Sidereals to stop them. To do this they had to go to the south edge of the map, encounter a Lunar moot consisting of about 10% of all Lunars in Creation, go into the Wyld, confront a Fae queen so they would give them a map to where they can find a gate to Yu-Shan, which was floating above the Blessed Isle. By the time they get there through some sidequest, their original goal has shifted to “we have to go to Yu-Shan, so that we can take our Abyssal friend, Three Fates Shadow, to the Unconquered Sun, so that he can fix her and re-exalt her as a Solar”. That whole plotline took about 20 episodes (one third of ExalTwitch runtime) from when the Circle leaves Nexus to when they get their ally “fixed”.
The first part feels especially contrived. I won’t fault the GM for essentially removing other Yu-Shan gates from other places the players have visited (Nexus, Chiaroscuro) since sure, getting to heaven can be an interesting journey. However, the party not getting that information from say, their Sidereal ally, two gods they have a good connection with, their old Lunar mate, 30 other Lunars they run into, from their Abyssal ally that has some memories from the first age, etc.
The railroading was doubled-down when it was time to start wrapping the game up. Instead of the players deciding their characters will just go to the Blessed Isle and take over the Imperial Manse to turn the tide in their favour, they had to resort to a First Age prophecy by the Entropy and Weaver gods, which pieces were meticulously gathered back together over thousands of years to amount to “the NPC you have with you is important, after he makes a speech on the Blessed Isle, you’ll get into the Imperial Manse, and whoever turns it off decides the next person to rule Creation”. It felt rather contrived, especially when in the execution it meant that turning off the Imperial Manse meant the Fae would enter Creation, everywhere, at the same time, instantly apparently.
She-Who-Knows-Ten-Thousand-Things
On a somewhat related note, another thing that bothered me was the character of She-Who-Knows-Ten-Thousand-Things. I understand that putting one of your biggest fans and hardest working mods into the game was a cool thing to do, and I get that the character is a reference to Wan Shi Tong from Avatar, but the character rubbed me the wrong way for a few reasons.
First of all, the way the character was often portrayed, being bubbly, very talkative character that tends to prattle on about random things, made them a bit overwhelming in the game. It was a similar problem Goldie from Swallows of the South brought with her. That didn’t help when she almost instantly went for her old mate - the normally very quiet and low-energy Three Fates Shadow. I’m not sure if this was a bleed of the player’s fascination with the Abyssal character (aka “fangirling”), or was this something extrinsic to that, but it was a bit jarring. A bigger problem with the character was some of the exposition given, namely - dropping that the Great Curse was an actual, factual thing that afflicts Solars. First time it was missed by the players, but after it was dropped for the second time it was used as an excuse for character actions - “it’s okay you murdered a relative of mine in blind rage, turns out they were someone pretending to be them all along and you weren’t yourself, there there, everything is alright”. Having that certainty that there is something wrong with the characters and yet not even considering that they might want to fix that as well felt a bit like missing the point of the Curse.
Empty space
This one is a problem that plagues many Exalted games - the vastness of Creation and moving between landmarks. As mentioned before, the group had to trek from Nexus down South to get information from a Fae. It is rather unclear how far they had to travel, so let’s assume they took a straight line to the border of the map:
Nexus sitting at V-10, Gem at L-18
This would mean they had to travel about 4000 miles to get to where they needed to go, and that was on foot without much extra help. That’s like walking across Canada and then some. Understandably, it was more of a quick travel, skipping pretty much anything in between save for a Lunar moot by the Wyld. Afterwards, they pretty much walked straight back to Nexus.
Adding to the absurdity was an encounter they had with a small army… from Gem. Those guys were trekking to this spot so they could recruit the Lunars. They have been marching for over half a year across the desert South. Granted, they were guided on this journey by a Sidereal, but it’s still a weird thing to encounter.
Of course, this is generally what happens in a lot of Exalted games - sometimes you want to go to a given landmark to do a certain plot, and the sheer land mass between two points on the map gets glossed over, or you want to name drop some place of note without realising it’s so far away it would be irrelevant… #JustExaltedThings
Fae and the empty Wyld
Speaking of the journey South, let’s talk about the Fae and the Wyld. Leaving Creation, even with a Fae guide and a Lunar by your side could’ve been a good opportunity to flex the weirdness muscles and highlight how alien the place could be. What we got instead was a brief description of a weird landscape, and then the party had an audience with the Fae queen. During that excursion, the party had met a total of two Fae - their guide and the queen. That’s it. No court of weird creatures, no weird games, no nothing. It was honestly pretty disappointing, especially that it was supposed to be a high point of a 3-4 episode questline.
Some of the things the queen fae said was also weird. She apparently enjoyed conflict, so Valeria offered to spar with one of their NPCs for her, to which she replied “you are already scheduled to fight with him in Nexus. I can watch that fight from here, so you’re offering me nothing”. Interesting to know Fae have such good scrying powers to be able to see things from 4000 miles away.
Moving on. The next Fae the group encounters is keeping an airship aloft, and Jorek spends some time feeding her emotions and learning some powers from her like the Eclipse he is. This would be fairly unremarkable, if the next time they meet Fae (for those counting - after meeting a total of 3 named NPC Fae and seeing some hobgoblins milling about) the Eclipse wouldn’t be facing them off when they invade Creation after the Imperial Manse got turned off. At that point the Eclipse decided that “you know, Fae are people too, and they deserve to live in Creation like we do, I would like to make truce with them” which was a really weird thing to be focusing on at the end of the series. But oh well, Eclipses be Eclipses and players be players…
Fast Travel through Yu-Shan
Speaking of under-utilising a location, let’s briefly touch on Yu-Shan. It’s the home of the Celestial Bureaucracy and the golden slums. An island in its own pocket dimension the side of the Blessed Isle. Normally you could get lost in the place for days on end just taking it in, but instead we once again got some fast travelling to do. Here is what happens between players entering Yu-Shan and getting an audience with the Unconquered sun: They meet a god trying to extort money from them, then a lemonade stand god, then a god that is their ride. They spend a literal in-game minute travelling at break-neck speed and they visit a Sidereal and her Repository of Secrets. Then they take the same ride and arrive at the Jade Pleasure Dome another literal minute later. They meet one god that gambled his money on the Games, one guardian god of the Dome, then they meet with a god helping them cleanse and they meet their golden daddy. So that’s six gods and one Sidereal between entering heaven and getting what they came here for.
I understand this was a culmination of a 20 session mission with 10 sessions left to go, but the way the location was presented was a bit underwhelming all things considered.
Redemption of Three Fates Shadow
Another part of the story that felt a bit off was the Abyssal redemption storyline. I get it, it was an important quest for one of the players, the NPC had a long history with the characters, and with Exalted when a character wants something bad enough they should be able to achieve it. Let me break how the plot went down though.
First, Three Fates Shadow was a part of an Abyssal Circle that were the big baddies of the first half of the series. The only reason she was allowed to live was that she never attacked the PCs, and in the end she decided to abandon a mission from her Deathlord and hang out with the players. That was still in the first half of the game. After that, the party essentially discovered she was a former member of their Circle, have met up with her Lunar Mate, and around that time the characters became dead set on “fixing her”. I think the first attempt was telegraphed by the GM when they were still in Chiaroscuro - “she became an Abyssal when she was in a very vulnerable and her soul was the most malleable in time of great weakness, dot dot dot”. I’m not sure if the players just didn’t give the GM the satisfactory answer there, but she just ended up going into a coma, being half-alive, kept alive by Valeria’s ongoing commitment of Essence. Then she had to be dragged to Yu-Shan (despite warnings that it was taboo), undergo a cleansing ritual with the rest of the circle before being allowed to see the Unconquered Sun. Part of the cleansing involved the PCs declaring what would they sacrifice in order to earn the audience with their god, and a die roll to determine who would have to make the sacrifice. Turns out, nobody had to make an actual sacrifice (the Abyssal was chosen, but since she couldn’t speak, she didn’t offer anything), and after the characters insisted that all they wanted was to “redeem” Three Fates Shadow, the Unconquered Sun re-Exalted her.
This rubbed me the wrong way because things didn’t feel earned. Sure, you had a strong start with the NPC being well fleshed out, wanting to go the distance to get fixed, etc., but then the culmination of that was very transactional. “Hey Sol, we were stopping by Yu-Shan and we had a problem you need to fix. We were willing to pay for this, but turns out we were lucky and the bill was zero”. Perhaps it was easy for the characters to state what they would’ve sacrificed (and the GM did state if the characters didn’t offer enough she wouldn’t be redeemed), but a more interesting question would be “what have you done / sacrificed so far?”. This would reframe the problem from being more christian-style “god forgave my sins so everything is alright” to more of a greek-style “I have undertaken these twelve tasks to earn forgiveness”.
I get it that the series was wrapping up by this point, so plots needed to get wrapped up. Perhaps telegraphing earlier on that the players should do something for the character to be redeemed by actions (their own, or the PCs’), not third party services. Alternatively, Sol could’ve forgiven her for “turning away from him”, but she would still need to undergo a quest to redeem herself.
Perhaps the most dramatic options that would probably be mood killers due to how long it took characters to get to Yu-Shan would be for the Unconquered Sun to state it’s beyond his power to alter the Exaltation, especially one within a person. Alternatively, Three Fates Shadow could’ve offered her life so that her Exaltation would be purified, showing that it’s not a step to be undertaken lightly. A thematic cop-out would be to state that the characters have everything they need to fix the Exaltation themselves, but if that was telegraphed very early, it might’ve worked the best. “The Unconquered Sun is not here to fix all of your problems, there is a reason why you were chosen - you have the power to fix everything yourself, you don’t need him”.
Sola
The next part of the story that felt a bit cheap was Sola. She was a young girl in care of an NPC in Chiaroscuro, the party’s Twilight circlemate - Quiet Word. After some interactions with the new NPCs, an Abyssal shows up and starts causing trouble. During the ensuing fight a Deathlord appears in a cloud and blows up Sola’s tower with a lightning bolt, killing her in the process. It’s a bit of a tragic death, but they learn that apparently “she was fated to death at birth”, and only through the Twilight’s effort she was able to live this long. The Zenith commits her body and learns that she knew the Twilight wasn’t her biological father. The players don’t date break the news, so that’s good on them I guess.
After the battle with the Abyssals, the players learn of a golden box in possession of the Twilight that he wasn’t able to open, but with their powers combined, they got inside. Inside there is a letter from the girl’s mother, explaining that Jorek, the PC Eclipse is the girl’s father, which sends the Twilight into rage. Luckily he gets subdued and later in the session was killed by a Sidereal, so there is no need for the two fathers to reconcile their issues. It felt a little cheap, but it was still okay.
Next we see Sola is in the Repository of Secrets where Jorek spends some time having an emotional moment with her simulacrum. It’s a touching and emotional moment (especially since the Eclipse is really concerned about his legacy and sees her as a legacy he won’t have), and if her story ended there that would be a good high note to end it on. But things kept going.
Fast forward when the Circle is fighting the Deathlord, the Gentle Father, who is obsessed with the notion of family. He wanted his Abyssals to kill an important person from each of the PCs, and so far he only got Sola killed. Then when the fighting starts, he pulls the ghost of Sola to fight Jorek, with the explanation that “Zenith committing a body only stops them from raising as a hungry ghost”, as per the letter of what’s written in the power. This felt quite cheap. The Deathlord eventually gets killed (although since nobody had Sorcery and no Ghost Eating Technique available, rules had to be bent a bit, but whatever, it worked).
Now if that wasn’t enough, a similar thing was pulled once again. When the PCs are in the Imperial Manse, a mysterious Abyssal named Requiem also joins in. Soon enough she fails her trials and Jorek decides to abandon his attempt in order to save her. It’s a bit of a contrived final appearance for her. That is until a bonus episode of ExalTwitch that was recorded the following year, where she is back and alive at Jorek’s side, implied to having been “redeemed” like Three Fates Shadow, essentially breaking one of Exalted’s core rules of “death is permanent, you can’t bring people back to life”…
Quality of life issues
While the show kept a pretty good production value, there were some things that were a bit bothersome.
First was handling high-pitched sounds. The crew used glass beads to track their motes of Essence, which while being a nice concept were really jarring to hear at times. You’d often have a good deal of glass beads being moved back and forth and the glass-on-glass sounds and other related noises picked up REALLY well on the microphones, which at times could get headache inducing. The dice suffered from a similar problem (due to how much you roll in Exalted), although thankfully the sound they made was a bit less grating.
Secondly, some of the show used high-pitched music. This once again picks up really well on the microphones. This wouldn’t be as big of an issue if it wasn’t for one thing - Three Fates Shadow had a high-pitched theme. Because she spoke very softly, whispering her lines, and became a mainstay NPC, this created two problems. First, especially during her early appearances, she would get drowned out by her music. Secondly, if she was the focus of a scene for say, half an hour, you would get headaches from her theme due to how grating high-pitched music can get after a while.
Lastly, the cast would often start their stream while eating, which can be a bit off putting for some viewers. Luckily the food was usually some cleaner food you could eat without creating much of a mess, so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.
Conclusions
In general, ExalTwitch is a pretty good Exalted podcast. It doesn’t wow you with funny voices, but the whole cast is consistently decent to listen to. The show is perhaps the best way to experience Exalted rules being played by the book without rolls or other things being edited out.
The show could’ve perhaps been improved by better communication between the GM and the players as to the larger-scale expectations, goals and telegraphing things earlier, like a more heroic way for Three Fates Shadow to get “redeemed”, bigger emphasis on players’ agency in the process, etc. I know it could be a bit of breaking the kayfabe to have a bigger, meta-discussion while streaming, but maybe it would improve things.
One way or the other, it’s still a good actual play to recommend that stays pretty good from start to finish.
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