Problems with character Cults in RPGs

In our group, we enjoy playing a good deal of demigod games with character Cults, ranging from Exalted (1, 2), through Godbound (1, 2), and to a smaller extent even Chronicles of Darkness could fall under this umbrella (in CRMB one of the PCs runs a masonic society which basically is a Cult to their supernatural self). While a demigod Cult is pretty much a staple of the genre and something that can be pretty interesting if done well, they often bring some issues whenever they appear.

Roles of cults in RPGs

As a baseline, Cults in RPGs generally come with some mechanical benefits to the player. In Exalted they give you some free Willpower, in Chronicles of Darkness they give you some free Merits, in the New Gods of Mankind they are key to getting faith to power your miracles, and in Godbound Cults give you more Dominion to change the world and come with some other benefits.

Beyond the mechanical, Cults are an expression of the demigod PC and their beliefs on how people should behave. Swallows of the South's Godwin was a musician, so his cults were his groupies. In Princes of the Universe, the Royal was all about being a merchant prince and trade, so his cult focused on heavy capitalism, paying taxes and accruing as much wealth as you could to get a high score when you die. In the same series the Majestic was a narcissistic scholar and his cult focused on people becoming educated. He was also heavily themed after mesoamerican themes of Exalted, which meant a lot of human sacrifices. But since only the best would do for him, the sacrifices had to be of the best examplars of his cult and willing because Majestic was against slavery.

Similarly, Cults are a way for the players to shape their world - to introduce a new religion into the world and possibly affect a large number of NPCs. Similarly, the Cults are often a resource the PC can tap into to engage the world more broadly - if you have a kingdom that worships you, you can rally troops from it and send that army to conquer other territories for you after all.

There are some problems that appear when you start dealing with the Cults in practice however...

Possession of NPCs

In demigod games we ran we often ran into this situation - a new mortal NPC is introduced, they join our society, and then comes the question of who will "own them" (so to say) by which Cult they will join. After that the PCs can get possessive over the NPCs that are their worshippers, and those NPCs rarely interact with PCs that are not their chosen deity.

For example, in Princes of the Universe a young girl named Conna is one of the last survivors from Wanderer's village. Early in the series the Majestic takes her under his wing to educate her properly and so on, later making her an important figure in his cult. Pretty much from that point she doesn't interact with anyone else anymore, and later Majestic basically refers to her as his adopted child. Similar patterns also appear in The Living Years where various mummified saints are raised from the dead and become worshippers of the Litch King and not interact much with other PCs, despite one of them being a devout of the faith they were the saints of, etc.

It's perhaps a bit subtle at times, since in a lot of situations you will have certain PCs and NPCs gravitate closer together and you may have NPCs that don't interact with anyone but one PC in general, but an NPC becoming someone's worshipper is certainly a strong indication to other players to not mess with them because they "belong" to that player.

On a larger scale, the same principle applies whenever the players visit a new location. Since some systems like Godbound punish you for divvying up a population between characters (Cult scale is exponential, but breakdown is linear. A Scale 1 Cult is 1000 people, a Scale 2 town is 100k people, but you can either get one Scale 2 Cult out of it, or two Scale 1 Cults, and combining two Scale 1 Cults from two places doesn't give you a Scale 2 Cult), meaning you often have to pick who owns what new town you visit or save. It starts to feel very transactional, especially when players start expecting towns to convert to their religion after saving them.

On a similar note...

Transactional worship

Growing your Cult in games like Godbound is generally a reward for completing some major quest. You liberate a town from some evil monster that has been plaguing it, and now the people give you praise. Because having a bigger Cult means you get a mechanical benefit, you sort of expect that as a reward or at least an option when you enter a new location. This makes the whole process feel a bit transactional, since even if you try being selfless you might get worshippers regardless due to them being so grateful, etc. This can feel even worse if you realise your character can be essentially uprooting an existing culture and replacing it with their own in the process.

That was an important character arc for Atrus in The Living Years - he was an outsider to the kingdom of Ancalia and the world of Arcem as a whole and he was really conscious about starting a cult of his own and imposing his ideas on the people that were foreign to him. For similar reasons in Evicting Epistle (a setting where the world was destroyed in the future so people went back to the past to conquer it anew since they didn't have anything left in their time) I couldn't justify playing a character from the future to avoid these kind of themes, and the themes of colonialism. It would be really hard to avoid a hyper-tech future demigod interacting with prehistoric proto-humans without some form of "need to uplift these 'savages'".

Religion defining the NPCs

A character can appear in the story and later join one of the PC Cults, or they can be introduced as someone from the Cult outright. In the second case especially (although not exclusively) the NPC's involvement in the Cult tends to define their personality. Godwin's groupies exist only as his fans with a little bit of individual mannerisms sprinkled on top. In CRMB every member of the masonic Cult tends to act in a similar, scheming way. etc.

Sure, sometimes when you create disposable NPCs, they tend to be one note, but unfortunately it seems with NPCs that are a part of a PC Cult that note tends to gravitate on what religion they subscribe to. This can make them a bit less interesting than if one would build characters first and then figure out if they'd follow any of the Cults.

In a similar vein, it is also rather easy to portray these Cults as a homogeneous group of people, rather than a collection of individuals. They tend to be characterised as a collective, display uniform traits and generally just be that one-note character from the previous paragraph smeared across a larger group.

Of course, this can come down to how much time and effort one wants to devote to fleshing out the characters. There is nothing stopping you from adding more depth and nuance to Cults and its members, but it takes that little bit extra effort over going with the flow of the least resistance and using stereotypes when describing the NPCs.

Mechanics influence characters

As discussed before, the mechanics of a game inform the playstyle of the characters, and the same can be said for Cults. I've noticed this especially with Godbound - in this system the characters can either be a demigod with a cult, or a free divinity that doesn't have worshippers to suit your playstyle. However, mechanically, having a cult more often than not is a better choice - you get more Dominion out of it, you get a neat Faction you can use to do your large-scale bidding, and generally have more stuff to interact with. Mechanically, the game is rewarding you for having a Cult, which means almost every character in the game will end up having a Cult (in our multiple campaigns using the system, totalling to about 15 characters, only one PC didn't have a cult - Adina from The Living Years, and that was only because I ended up insisting she wouldn't get one if it couldn't be a part of the religion she followed herself). This in turn changes the sort of characters you play - you won't want to play someone who is selfless and doesn't accept people worshipping them because that would put you at an advantage, so you make a character that would want the worship.

One solution - make it all cosmetic

One possible solution to a number of the listed problems would be to make the Cults a cosmetic thing to a character, rather than something that has mechanical benefits. A narcissist demigod that demands adulation can still make a Cult because that suits the character, while someone that doesn't feel the need won't feel bad for missing out on the mechanical benefits. Now because Cults stop being such a dominant thing every player has to focus on, the NPCs are under less pressure to pick a side and they can remain their own people. Being praised as "the town's hero" for saving it feels a bit less of a commitment than having the town worship you as their deity of choice.

Conclusions

Character Cults can be a really interesting part of a demigod game. They can serve as an extension or a compliment of any character, a way for them to express themselves on a large scale. However, it is very easy to fall into traps of defining NPCs by the religion they follow, and to get territorial and transactional about individual and group NPCs and which bucket they will fall into. When the system promotes having Cults, you also tend to see characters more skewed in that direction, changing what kind of PCs you see in those games.

Ideally, you would focus on making NPCs defined people first and then putting them in a Cult if they fit, and you would have a system where choosing to have or not to have a Cult would be balanced to encourage making characters that fit what the players want to play, rather than rewarding one kind of characters.

Sins of RPG Actual Plays

So you want to do a TTRPG Actual Play / Stream / Whatever? Here are some things to avoid and tips on how to make your content enjoyable for your viewers.

I'll try providing examples of various do's and don'ts if I'm able. These are meant to be for educational purpose only, and are not meant as an attack on the linked materials. It takes a lot of effort to produce high-quality content, a lot of these are amateur recordings, and everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes a good-sounding idea can turn out to be poor in execution, etc.

This advice can also be very specific to recording / streaming and might not always be applicable to normal games. So while you might learn about a thing or two that could be useful regardless, take things with a grain of salt.

As for my qualifications, I've been a part of a weekly RPG Podcast for about four years now, and I've listened through a few actual plays with a critical ear.

With all of that out of the way...

Don't name yourself after specific games

I've seen this one a few times - the group would enthusiastically name themselves based on a specific RPG system, or their first campaign and later it would be hard to rebrand once they move onto a different system or campaign.

ExalTwitch for example still doesn't seem to have a parent "brand" after that campaign ended and they switched over to Changeling: The Streaming. Both names are also very system-specific. As I understand their RPGClinic used to be a separate show by the same host, meaning that's three different "products" without an umbrella way to refer to the group.

Swallows of the South similarly leaned heavily into their campaign name, and now they are running their second game, Arms of the Tide, still without some other name to call themselves.

On the flip side you have groups like RollPlay, which has done shows like Swan Song, Far Verona, Mirrorshades, etc., each falling under one parent entity, while being its own show.

Overall sound quality

Probably the most important part of any actual play - sound quality. It's the most important thing to get right. If you don't have a clear audio, people might not have the patience to stay for anything else.

There are a few key things to look out for:

1) Eliminate background noise. Nobody wants to listen to things like loud fridges, fish tank aerators, computer fans, etc. Some of it can even be nauseating to listen to for a longer time.

For example, check out this Colonial Marines Actual Play. Skip to anywhere during the episode, listen for a few seconds, then pause and notice that humming sound just go away. That's one example of background noise you want to avoid.

Luckily, programs like Audacity let you remove some of this noise. We start all of our episode recordings with "30 seconds of silence" used for this purpose and it helps a lot.

2) Use push-to-talk, but avoid "on/off" sounds. If you're connecting for an online game, you will have to choose whether to use push-to-talk, or other microphone activation methods. Push to talk is generally the best since it's more deliberate - you know when you're on, and you know when you're off.

However, sometimes when you use push-to-talk, you might be creating a crackling sound when you start and stop your microphone. For an example, check out this episode - about 4 minutes in onward whenever Gary / Mirage talks, you hear the snap on snap off sounds, and that's really annoying. It's probably due to an analog push-to-talk, but it's something worth looking out for regardless.

3) Audio clipping. This is especially important when you're talking into some headphones - if you talk too loud, especially with some extra software audio boosts, your audio will clip and sound just awful. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see this video:

#1 - your gain is too high

4) Set your microphone up correctly. You can be talking to your microphone from the wrong side, you could have a wrong type of microphone for your needs, or you could even be recording from a wrong microphone (especially relevant to laptops with built-in microphones!). In general, watch this video:

5) Don't put your microphone on the table. Find a way to set it up somewhere where you won't be rolling or putting your things, ideally on some boom stands / arms, maybe even in a shock mount. Otherwise your audience will get the experience of putting their ears to your table and hearing every tap, slide, roll, etc. like they'd have their ear to the table itself:

42:55, putting down a cup in front of the microphone...

6) Disable notification sounds. We all have some sort of notifications that bug us every now and then - Discord, Slack, Facebook, other websites, system sounds, what have you. You don't want to have those on your recording - they are not only distracting, but can also make your audience think someone is messaging them. Disable all of those when you record.

In our Congenial S01E04 the first 20 minutes are an example of what to avoid.

This should cover the basics, now for some more advanced examples...

Audio balancing - music

If you want to add music to your game, make sure it doesn't overpower your voice audio. People are here to listen to your stories, and the music should be secondary. This can be especially problematic if the song in question doesn't have a consistent volume but swells over time. For an example of this, check out Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade: Episode 3, 10 minutes in.

Audio balancing - voice

People have different default speaking volumes - some talk quietly, while others project their voice, especially when they get excited. You should compensate for this so that more or less the sound level of everyone recorded would be on a similar level - you don't want to have one person be too loud while someone else is too quiet for comfortable listening.

This could be achieved in a few ways. First of all, if you are recording an online game, you can usually adjust individual volumes and balance things that way. If you are recording in person, you can achieve something similar if you have multiple microphones, each for a different person and balancing their levels.

However, if you want a cheap solution that we used for our one microphone setup, here it is. Use distance to the microphone as a way of adjusting volume. Put the microphone on one side of the table and sit the quiet people close to it, while the louder people should be seated further away from it. This will have a similar effect as the other options while costing you nothing.

Avoid sharp sounds

A personal pet peeve of mine. Sharp sounds pick up REALLY well on microphones, so if you're doing things like putting glass beads in a glass bowl, rolling dice on a glass table, eating food on plates with utensils or using a tambourine for a dice tray, your audience will hear that really well, to the detriment of everything else.

On a similar note, if you're using music in your games that are on the higher pitch spectrum, make sure to play those a bit more quietly and don't play it for a prolonged period of time.

Examples of what to avoid:

• Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade: Episode 1 and the "tambourine-assisted rolls" - every time a roll is made it's painful to listen to.
• ExalTwitch Day Eight, 2:11:00 in - the GM plays a character that talks in whispers, their theme song however has a lot of very long, vibrating, high-pitched notes. Couple that with audio balancing that might be a bit off and have the character be in the scene for awhile and your listeners can get a headache (I have!)
• ExalTwitch Day Eleven, 1:06:00 in - the cast uses glass beads for essentially mana points and they keep them in glass containers. Usually everyone is very careful about moving them, but sometimes you move a larger amount and hear the glass-on-glass noise. This one is not a particularly bad example, but I couldn't find a better illustration. Imagine what a careless group might do in this setup with dropping more glass beads into glass.
• Our Amp Year One S01E05 - 21:30 in one of the players decides to microwave some food and then proceeds to eat it during the recording with utensils from a plate. The microphone picks it up quite well. The episode also features a player being sick or having allergies and just inhaling it in sharply, which is also rather audible.

Songs with lyrics

Humans are good at picking up human speech out of even loud environments. What is harder though is picking up one person talking over another. For this reason it's best to avoid playing songs with lyrics in them - you will be drowning your own self out with these. Generally save those for your intro / outro and use them very sparingly during the game.

After-effects

Sometimes you might want to spice up your recording with some after-effects. While these can be nice if pulled off well (see Swallows of the South Prelude: Episode Six, 27 minutes in for a good example), they can be a detriment if you sacrifice clarity for the effect (see Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade: Episode 4, 23 minutes in for an example of an effect that makes a character illegible). Try erring on the side of restraint unless you know what you're doing.

Anachronisms

One part of enjoying an actual play is getting immersed in the game and its world. This is especially important for heavily stylised games like Exalted, Warhammer 40k, or Legend of the Five Rings. One surefire way of breaking that immersion is introducing things that don't belong in that world, or even clash with it - anachronisms.

Swallows of the South Prelude Episode Four gives a good example of this around the 19:53 mark, where in a sword and sandal setting of Exalted characters use the threat of a bad Yelp review on one another...

Bringing up the missing PCs

It's somewhat expected that some players will miss a session every now and then or have to leave the game entirely. Sometimes you know in advance and can plan accordingly, while at other times you won't know until after the fact, that's just life.

The problem arises on how to deal with the missing characters plot-wise. You could try to explain why they're away, write them out in-universe or the like, or just ignore the issue entirely. The latter is our default go-to choice as it keeps things simple and moving and avoids one issue that tends to drag some games down - character bringing up the missing PCs.

Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade Episode 03 is the first episode after one of the characters, Kleefin, leaves the show. That marks the start of the trend of Kulak, another one of the PCs, reminiscing about his missing friend and bringing the fact that he's missing to the forefront of multiple episodes.

A similar situation happens in Swallows of the South, when after Prelude: Episode Three Rizzo gets written off. For seasons Godwin keeps bringing him up, how much he misses him and how much he doesn't like the new PCs that were introduced in comparison to his missing best friend Rizzo. This ends up alienating another of the PCs, Ariston, for no reason of their own. By the time Rizzo comes back, another one of the original characters gets written off - Ajax, which also doesn't help the situation.

In general, unless you have some some good story to tell about the absence of a character, it's best to not bring them up too much if at all. Asking "where's Poochie" is usually not an interesting question for the audience if there is no actual answer.

Name drop your characters a lot

This one is especially important when you're starting a new game, but is a good rule to follow most of the time. Name drop your characters, a lot. Use them when talking to a PC, use them when describing what your character does, etc. Eventually people will learn the names and learn to associate them with your voice, but it takes awhile, especially if someone is new to your podcast and doesn't know the entire cast yet.

The first episode of Congenials for example does a poor job of this - even though I know some of these people, it still took me an episode or two to be able to tell which character someone is playing and who is doing what.

Conclusions

There are a lot of things to get right when it comes to making actual plays. Listen to your material with a critical ear, listen to other actual plays to pick up their slip-ups.. Learn from the mistakes and aim to improve.

Swallows of the South - an Exalted Podcast Review

I’ve spent the last few months listening through a few of the Exalted RPG Podcasts / Actual Plays and I figured I’d share my thoughts on them with you. There is a good deal one can learn from them, whether you’re making your own actual plays or just gaming in general.

In today's episode, I will cover Swallows of the South.

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

Swallows of the South is an Exalted podcast hosted by @MonkipiQuinn. The game features a shifting cast of Exalts and could generally be divided into two phases - early seasons with Godwin, Ajax and Ariston having adventures in the town of Djao Wei, and late seasons where Golden Might of the Dawn, Ashen Mask and Rizzo travel the world looking to acquire artefacts to stop Ray of Morning Sunlight from enacting his sorcerous workings.

The series takes the form of an audio-only podcast that has been truncated to 30-60 minute episodes devoid of much out of character talk, counting dice, etc. While early episodes do suffer a bit from lower audio quality, most of the series is not only a treat to listen to, but also an actual play that respects your time.

From what I understand the cast consists of professional improv / voice actors, which enhances the experience. The players also voice some minor NPCs throughout the series, which adds to the charm even further.

Player Characters

https://swallowsofthesouth.com/about-the-characters/

The game had a shifting cast of players and characters. Here are the most important ones for reference:

Godwin Corelli II - a Zenith performer and a musician, son of Lucinda Corelli, the titular Swallow of the South.
Ajax Ford - a Twilight investigator, living in the shadow of his parents, heroes of the city of Djao Wei
Ariston - a Twilight occultist and healer, an exiled nobleman of the mer-people
Rizzo - a Zenith sorceress, often seen with her wolf, Qui Gon Gin ‘N Juice
Golden Might of the Dawn (or just Goldie) - a Dawn fighter, a very bubbly and upbeat character, travelling with her familiars - Believing (a mouse), Loving (a bear) and Mercy (a lion)
Ashen Mask - a Night smooth talking thief and scoundrel

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 Djao Wei, and the later parts where the party starts travelling the world in search for powerful artefacts to stop Ray of Morning Sunlight from enacting his sorcerous workings. Of course, things tend to weave in and out a bit with the group leaving and coming back to Djao Weir multiple times and the idols appearing throughout the story.

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.

Highlights

High production value

Swallows, perhaps out of all the Exalted podcasts I listen to, has the highest production value. The podcast features good quality audio, the voice talent for a lot of characters, PC and NPC alike, is very good, etc. However most importantly perhaps, the episodes are edited down to 30-60 minutes to respect your time, cut out table talk, dice rolling, counting, etc. Kudos to the team for going the extra mile for everyone’s enjoyment!

Good content disclaimers

The podcast creator is very diligent about giving content disclaimers for more traumatic topics that appear in the show, which is a nice touch for those that need it.

Good NPCs

This podcast features a very colourful cast of named NPCs, and a swath of unnamed mooks that still bring fun when they’re around. It’s fun to hear the players lend their voices to some throwaway characters for the fun of it of course, but some of the normal NPCs just steal the show.

Let’s start with the secondary roles. I really liked Ru of the Resplendent Lacquered Wood, the god of the Smiling Eyes District, all meek and frazzled, Shermie the immortal sorcerous frog the PCs loved to abuse, Believing the familiar mouse, who started off as a brave scrappy character and over time picked up bad attitude from other NPCs and started embarrassing everyone with his foul language, and finally Yorglip the “hot goss guy”. The last one was introduced as a throwaway NPC in the north that trades the PCs some gossip, but he was played with such intensity and commitment to the role that it became one of the crew’s favourite recurring NPCs.

For the bigger NPCs that I enjoyed, I would have to name Forlorn Aria and Seven Symphonious Cords.

Aria was introduced as the queen of the river pirates which Godwin managed to hit off with, romance (despite her having a partner already), and convince to join the PC’s side. She and Godwin then became the Lovers of Djao Wei (rulers and liaisons to gods), which came at a price of a curse. When Godwin turned out to not be too interested in politics, she had to take the burden on by herself. Later when Godwin tried patching things up after a longer hiatus, she just gave him a deserved cold shoulder and explained why she wasn’t interested in him anymore. That and a few other things where she was sticking up for the interests of her people in contrast to what the PCs were focusing on really made her come across like a fleshed out character that lived her life independent of the PCs and their plots.

Seven Symphonious Cords was introduced as a local crime lord - running a gambling parlour, dealing in looted idols, etc. The PCs didn’t trust him one bit even before he turned out to be an Abyssal, but they had to rely on his help to fight off the Realm’s army. He wanted to create a permanent shadowland in the city so that the ghosts could easily interact with the living and offer them the knowledge and culture that would otherwise be lost to the ages. The PCs didn’t like the sound of that, they didn’t want to disrupt the local culture and didn’t like the idea of ghosts. This default negative attitude towards the Abyssals seems to be the norm for a lot of Solars in games (as we’ll see more of that when I take an in-depth look at ExalTwitch…). However, kudos to the game master for actually putting more depth to the character, despite the PCs’ hostile attitudes. Later on in the game the characters learn of his strong positive intimacies towards the city (which were actually hinted at seasons earlier but nobody picked up on them due to their animosity towards him...) and that he wants what is best for it. Because of that, despite their old prejudices against him, the PCs put him forward to be the successor in ruling the city, making Aria step down from her position.

Those two character arks really stood out to me, despite being so low-key in the grand scheme of things.

Calling out a bad influence

Throughout the series the character of Godwin was a bit of a shitty person (more on that later). He was also a musical prodigy with a famous musician for a mother, so he was the only character with a fan cult.

This isn’t unusual in Exalted games and is even a default for Godbound (a system that’s basically Exalted with serial numbers filed off we used for many of our games). Between the various games I’ve played and listened to I’ve come across some 20+ different cults like that, while Swallows was probably the only game to call a PC out for possibly being a bad influence on their people, which was refreshing!

The game didn’t dwell on it and Godwin being a bad influence on the cult was explicitly called out only long after the character retired from the game, but it was still a neat titbit to give the GM props for.

Lunch at Madam Fey’s

Halfway through the first (proper) season of Swallows we were introduced to a fun segment called “Lunch at Madam Fey’s”. It was a more free-form recording where the PCs got to hang out with an NPC in a tea house and goof off. Those interactions were non-canon, but still fun to listen to, also serving as a warm-up for the crew before the recording proper.

Unfortunately, a good number of them, especially early on, devolved into Godwin getting drunk and arguing about putting the alcohol on Ariston’s tab, which often overshadowed whatever interesting guest they might be having that day. This happened on more than one occasion, to the point it was getting tiring...

Standing up to OPP

During the run of the game some shady things from OPP came to light, and to Quinn’s credit he didn’t stay quiet about them, instead addressing them clearly during an intro to two of his episodes. Being open about such things and standing up for the developers is both commendable and rare, especially since it could threaten the future of the series. I respect that a lot.

Wrapping up the game rather than dropping it

From what I understand, towards the end of the game the main players that have been around for the whole game had to drop out in rapid succession, which threatened the future of the series. Luckily for us, the podcast managed to find some replacement talent that turned out to be really good. It’s really good to see a creator deciding to create a satisfying ending to the game, rather than letting it fizzle out and stop midway through a story.

Criticism

Swallows of the South 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.

Godwin

Swallows of the South is not without its faults though. A good deal of them unfortunately seem to revolve around the character of Godwin. I would like to once again remind you that my critique of characters and their actions should not reflect on the players portraying those characters. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes we try playing a character one way that comes off different from what we had in mind, etc. With that out of the way…

The game started with a prelude where we met with Godwin, Ajax and Rizzo. Unfortunately, Rizzo’s player had to leave the show for a long time, so some other characters had to be brought in - Flowing Delta, a Dawn mercenary, which eventually got replaced by Ariston for a longer period of time.

This lead to a problem. Godwin seemed to be buddies with and trust Ajax and Rizzo, and the other characters that were brought in were treated by him as “outsiders” - people that weren’t originally part of the group. Flowing Delta helped them do a run for a split of profits, and Godwin repeatedly was trying to change the payout split. Finally, when Ariston joined the group, Godwin wouldn’t trust them for a long time and repeatedly insult him due to being “a fish person”, repeatedly getting drunk on his tab at “the tea house part of the episode” (to the point it became the main focus of multiple tea house sessions, detracting from anything else that was going on), etc. Heck, in the second episode of Ragaras and River Pirates when the Realm soldiers evict Godwin’s entire neighbourhood Ariston takes not only Godwin in, but also Godwin’s neighbour and crush Lucy, along with her entire family into his house and Godwin still has the audacity to complain about the house not being to his liking. In general, the character came off as a bully, which isn’t fun to listen to for seasons at a time…

Beyond that, some of Godwin’s character beats feel like they are from someone newer to roleplaying. First one comes during the Ragaras and River Pirates season he fights a Ragara Vijay, a Dragonblooded that came to essentially take the town over, called Godwin an anathema and set fire to the city. After the fight, he just sulks and mopes dramatically over it, how now he’s a killer and nothing is the same, and he keeps bringing it up for seasons on end.

The second questionable thing comes when Godwin decides to become the ruler of the city. In the story that involved the two current Lovers of the city to step down, for Godwin and his partner, Forlorn Aria (a former pirate queen that was the town’s enemy and then rescuer) to take on a few years of a curse for the Lovers breaking their curse, and then taking on the duties as the Lovers. However, as it turned out, Godwin wasn’t a very politically minded person, so that plot didn’t amount to much and Aria had to take over governing the city herself...

Some small payoff did come from all of that during Homecoming season when people became fed up with Godwin’s whinging. His former partner gave him the cold shoulder for making her break up with her old partner and getting roped into being the Lover and having to take on all the responsibilities herself, Tougi the Lovers’ advisor tears him down for the failed political stuff, and he finally gets punched by Ariston for calling him a fish person one too many times. Kudos for that at least, even if it took a few seasons to get there.

Not engaging other peoples’ philosophies

Exalted is a game that in theory can lend itself to debating about different world views and philosophies. Swallows did present a few of these problems to the players - the Realm wanted to force the city of Djao Wei to open its trade routes, Seven Symphoneous Cords wanted to integrate ghosts into the city, Ragara Samir and his people helped to rebuild the city and build schools, Bull of the North was locked in an ancient war, and Ray of Morning Sunlight had some qualms about Sol Invictus and his responsibilities to Creation. All of these could be an interesting excuse to engage with the different worldviews and re-examine one’s own assumptions, but most of them boiled down to the players declaring one side as being in the wrong and not engaging in their way of thinking.

This is perhaps the way with a lot of Exalted games, but at the same time it’s very reductive. Heck, as mentioned before, this way of thinking made the PCs not realise Seven Symphoneous Cords had the city’s best intentions in mind until the last season of the game because “he’s an Abyssal and a crime lord and ghosts will ruin Djao Wei’s culture”.

Large fetch quest

The core narrative of the game was ultimately a large fetch quest to find twelve magical idols. Personally I’m not a fan of such rigidly defined goals for Exalted games, but it’s an understandable way to keep the players moving in a cohesive direction if they can’t direct the story themselves. Especially seeing how Godwin handled the plotline of becoming a Lover and not having a follow-through, this might’ve been the best approach. This structure was also helpful with the changing cast of characters. Obtaining individual idols was also often an interesting set piece to a season.

But with all that being said, the very large number of idols (twelve) meant the crew wouldn’t interact with all of them before the game had to end. A few of them have been a bit rushed along to arrive, and about half were in possession of Ray at the end of the game. Moreover, it turned out that it didn’t matter whether the party had just one of them or half, the final ritual started as soon as they brought the idols close to the final showdown (which I understand was more interesting than it not going through, but still!).

So overall this plotline lead to some interesting moments, even if the overarching goal was a rather boring concept.

Spanky

Sometimes shows put out a more goofy episode out and that’s fine. Swallows did release a Halloween special during their run of the series which was played using the Dread system, while still being canonical to the main game. The episode was focused on a group of characters being stalked by one of the main antagonists of the series, Meijin “the spider lady” (guessing a Getimian Exalted). One of the characters there was Spanky the Butcher, portrayed by a guest to the show. Since the episode was a bit more light-hearted and even goofy, the character wasn’t too jarring there. However, that wasn’t all we saw of Spanky.

See, Spanky managed to survive the scenario and secure one of the idols the main group was questing for, so it was bound to either get picked up by the PCs, or by Ray. The former was picked, so it was time for Spanky to make a guest appearance during one of the normal episodes.

What followed was about half an episode of the regular group interacting with someone that came off like a mix between Borat and Edgar the Bug, one or two intelligent doors and a joke “riddle” thing that was just nonsensical throughout. That whole sequence was rather bizarre and rather tonally out of place for anything save for say, a Fae trying to pretend being a butcher and failing at it (Spanky was in fact a human and a Sidereal).

Golden Might of the Dawn

Another character I had problems liking for awhile was Goldie. She is a bubbly, cheerful and talkative person, but often her presence can be smothering, and the pure goodie-two-shoes demeanour is similarly a bit much at times. Adding to that the fact that her player is a lot better versed in Exalted than the rest of the players (GM excluded), her presence is overwhelming at first. I personally came around to her after her trials in the Temple of Mars during the Bellow of the Bull season, but she wasn’t without fault after that.

One thing that was a bit annoying later on was the phrase “I’m everyone’s type” when Goldie was referring to her superhuman appearance. She used that phrase against a PC saying she’s not his type, and later on it was again used when she learned that Tauia the Sidereal she had a crush on had romantic feelings for another Sidereal instead of her. That phrase and way of thinking just rubbed me the wrong way, being a very mechanical-focused way of viewing the world and all that.

Another of Goldie’s shortcomings, being a bigger topic, perhaps deserves its own section...

Directionless resentment of Sol

From what I’ve heard, a lot of Exalted games have a complicated relation with the character of Sol Invictus, being the big and important sky daddy everyone wants to come down and fix everything.

The central conflict of Swallows is built around Sol’s bastard son Ray resenting his father for abandoning him and his mother and generally turning his back on Creation. Goldie similarly despises him for similar reasons and for exalting her into an army-slayer.

At the end of the game the party had a chance to discuss all of this with Sol, but it ended up being more of a directionless resentment of him rather than much else. Goldie wanted Sol to fix Creation and right all the wrongs, but that would infringe on the free will of the people. She wanted him to stop crime, but Ashen Mask the party’s Night Caste and lovable scoundrel wasn’t too keen on that. Goldie wanted Sol to deal with the Realm, but that would once again impose on the free will of the people, plus the whole situation is very messy to begin with. She wasn’t happy that she got Exalted, but at the same time she used her power to save more people than she killed. This went on for a good chunk of the episode until things pretty much settled on Sol focusing a bit more to weed out corruption in the Celestial Bureaucracy and being more responsible about the bastards he leaves in Creation.

Despite having a good deal of issues with the Sun, the group also wasn’t interested in replacing him themselves. That would at least be an interesting twist, but the idea didn’t get too much discussion. It was quickly decided that Ray shouldn’t replace Sol, and that nobody else should replace Sol because no one person should hold that much power.

We generally discussed the topic of Sol Invictus in our Offtopic, and in general our opinion was that a lot of players want him to care and “come fix Creation”, but in reality that would be a boring story and a game-ender (with the entire setting being “fixed” there is no need for heroes anymore, now is there?). It’s much more interesting to engage with the approach that Sol is fixing Creation by sending his Solar Exalted. After all, the Celestial Exalted own Creation.

But yeah, all in all, the discussion with Sol was a bit underwhelming, which was a pity...

Anachronisms

Another thing that might put people off this series would be the anachronisms. During the early parts of the game, the game had a more carefree attitude (heck, that’s why the game is a sex pun…), which resulted in the players making a few random quips and running gags that don’t really fit into the framework of Exalted. The biggest of these was a repeated and big threat the players would use on their enemies of “I will give you a 1 star review on Yelp!”. This would come up again and again for a long time. Some other ones include talking about Earl Grey Tea, M&Ms, Skittles, etc.. Luckily these became less prevalent during the later seasons, but we were stuck with Qui Gon Gin ‘N Juice until the very end…

Adherence to Exalted

While the GM appears well versed in Exalted, the same can’t be said for a lot of the cast from what I gathered. Only when Golden Might of the Dawn joins the party over half way through the series do we see a player with actual Exalted experience and it does show at times.

One thing I noticed missing from the game mechanics-wise was the Limit system. I think it was mentioned a total of two times in the whole campaign, and I'm not sure if any character suffered a limit break (Ariston lashing out against Godwin would be the strongest candidate, but it wasn’t ever stated explicitly). It’s an interesting part of the game that can lead to neat story twists when used correctly, so it’s a pity we didn’t see it much in the show.

Other than that, the rest of the game was pretty faithful to Exalted.

Conclusions

Swallows of the South is a pretty good Exalted actual play, provided you can excuse the rocky start. It is very pleasant to listen to due to the extra effort the crew took to edit the episodes down. It is often light-hearted and even comedic, but at times can veer back into more serious territory.

The game’s strong suit are the range of NPCs that inhabit the world. You have a number of one-off gag characters you’ll remember (like the fish food store lady, or Chickadee the quail egg selling ghost), some well defined support NPCs (Ru of the Resplendent Lacquered Wood, Yorglip), and a number of important NPC movers and shakers with well-defined personality, aspirations and goals (Aria, Cords, a lot of the Dragonblooded enemies, etc.).

If you want to see if the podcast is for you, try having a listen to the “Ashen Mask and the Dream-Eaters of the Hidden City”, or the “Bellow of the Bull” seasons to get a taste of what the late-game quality is like before you go back to the beginning.

Related links

• Swallows of the South podcast
• Swallows of the South episode synopsis