Many RPGs out there as part of their worldbuilding establish in-universe rules and laws the player characters ought to obide by. But since those are separate from game and mechanical rules, their interpretation is often fuzzy. Do those laws exist as absolutes and GMs ought to be enforcing them, or are they meant to be broken and existing as something the PCs ought to fight against and win?
Since this topic seems to be cropping up in many RPGs, I figured it might be good to explore it!
Nobilis and the Windflower Law
Recently, our group has been talking about Nobilis, a game by Jenna Moran. One of the players wanted to have a Noble NPC be in love with another character, simple backstory building stuff. But then we were reminded by one particular passage in Nobilis, a law passed down from Lord Entropy, which simply states:
THE WINDFLOWER LAW: Thou shalt not love.
Which sparked a debate about whether that law is meant to be absolute, or something that adds to the drama of the game. Lord Entropy is the absolute ruler of Earth in Nobilis (and since the PCs will most likely play on Earth, they will be under his dominion), he laid down the Code Fidelitatis for Nobles to follow, so you'd think the players ought to follow them as absolute laws, right?
The brick walls are there to stop the OTHER people.
Which reading is correct, I can't say. I find Jenna's writing to be needlessly obtuse to the point I can't slog through the 300 page Nobilis, or the 400 page Glitch, or the 550 page Chuubo's, nor did I immerse myself in paratext about the game that might explain the meaning of such parts of the game.
World of Darkness, its Traditions and lawful stupid enforcement of them
An example of a similar topic that I have read and experienced much more of is the World of Darkness, and its Vampire Traditions, Mage Protocols, Werewolf Litany or whatever else might crop up in each specific gameline.
Each of those games has a set of rules that the societies the PCs are a part of follow and they keep the world in a stable state. But then when PCs come along and start going against those age old Traditions, what ought the GM do?
The nanosecond you break the Traditions the fun police get dispatched to get you
On one hand, since you have those Traditions, people put in place to enforce them and a good top-down pressure to use them to keep the newbies in-line, why wouldn't you make your supernatural society into the most authoritarian state out there where every transgression is instantly detected with the supernatural senses of Auspex (after all, why wouldn't everyone pat down your aura each time you enter Elysium?) and punished with execution.
Understandably though, this is the most boring, most player-vs-storyteller way to play the game. It's the lawful stupid of World of Darkness. Heck, Vampire the Requiem 2nd edition actually recognised it and finally added a textbox addressing it - "The Traditions are broken regularly enough that there’s a need for law, but not enough to break down vampire society or the veneer of the ordinary world that the Kindred hide behind. [...] The Traditions are deliberately designed so that vampires have motivation to break them, and so that there will be drama when they do.". Finally, a clear indicator that rules are meant to be broken!
Such direct, unambiguous communication is vital to letting the players and the GMs know how a game ought to be played so we don't end up with decades of party pooper NPCs in every campaign coming in to stop players from having fun breaking the rules.
Genre conventions and laws that improve the game
While we discussed times when in-universe laws were meant to be broken, there is also a flipside to this argument - rules that enforce genre conventions and improve the game.
An example of this would be Legen of the Five Rings' Bushido. Since that game is steeped in the samurai cinema and its romanticised view of the Japanese history, its bushido is inspired by its real-life counterpart. Since the players are expected to play honourable samurai, these rules exist to steer the players and their characters into how they are supposed to be playing.
Of course, even such genre conventions and rules can still be broken, but ought to be done with intention and good reason. After all, Forty-Seven Rōnin is a big cultural touchstone for just such a thing!
Sometimes the most honourable thing is to act dishonourably... for a time.
Similarly, you can have the drama that comes from such rules coming in conflict with one another, or the tragedy of having to uphold them in extreme situations. It would be a much different game after all if PCs decided to go and murder the emperor because they decided he's weak and they would be much better suited to rule Rokugan...
All of that is to say, sometimes in-universe rules are actually meant to be followed.
Conclusions
When you are writing an RPG book, pay close attention to what you are stating as norms of any given setting. Be explicit about the differences between the setting as it sees itself and the setting as it is in practice. Use an appropriate voice to communicate such intent and don't leave things ambiguous. Make your point clear in the same spot you state those societal norms - don't expect the players to read the entire book to see a correction elsewhere. Don't expect the readers to have any knowledge of any ofther paratext that is not explicitly called out and referenced. Your work needs to stand on its own and can't rely on any clarifications made outside of it. It is okay to be direct and blunt, it's okay to call on genre conventions, it's better to state the obvious than let something that is not obvious remain unstated.
I’ve spent the last few years 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.
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 biassed 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.
Fourthly, we hang out with the game’s GM, Brendon, and have made an Actual Play together and are working on another one. Heck, this very game was kind of inspired by our EvWoD game, Heaven for Everyone. While I aim to be impartial in my reviews, I might have an implicit bias. So take things with a grain of salt.
Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...
2) Overview and minor things
Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts is an Exalted vs World of Darkness actual play stream hosted by Brendon from @APairOfDiceLost. The game features a core cast of four PC Exalts of mixed splats, plus some cameos by a few more, being college age kids messing with the New York supernaturals.
The series takes the form of an audio-only podcast (you can find it on Podbean here, or on many other podcast hosting services), with each recording being edited down to 1 hour episode chunks.
The cast consists of casual RPG fans (so no voice actors or improv artists this time). A good chunk of the cast is new to World of Darkness and Exalted as well.
The campaign is mostly played by a core cast of mixed splat Exalts:
Cassandra Roller, aka Cas (f) - a Sidereal Chosen of Secrets curious investigator and gambler Lenard Van Zant, aka Lenny (m) - a Solar Dawn himbo southern conservative christian Oliver Jones, aka Liv (m) - a Daybreak Abyssal medical student Marcy Bartello, aka Marcy (f) - a Solar Zenith fighter
With others making an appearance on occasion:
Roswell “Nova” McArthur, aka Rose (f) - an Infernal pizzeria worker with an attitude Stargazer (m) - a Starmetal Alchemical getaway driver Roko’s Basilisk, aka Roko (m) - a Moonshadow Abyssal hacker
4) General Plot
The game starts with the characters being college students in New York, taking various classes together. Then they Exalt and start dealing with the local supernatural weirdness of the area as they try figuring out what they are. Eventually they start dealing with the World of Darkness Gehenna plot as they prepare to face off against an Antediluvian slumbering beneath the city.
5) Highlights
Introduction to Exalted and World of Darkness
To the shock of a few people that have heard of this, this game was apparently an introduction to both the World of Darkness and Exalted for a few of the players. Brendon the GM does bring a well prepared world for the new players to explore and enjoy the weirdness of the mashup. It is always enjoyable seeing people experience this strange setting for the first time.
The Wisconsin Adventure
Towards the end of the game the group decided to go to Wisconsin for various reasons, and a lot of that adventure has been a delight. By then the game has already gone from its early, down-to-earth concept of “Exalts in college” and embraced its wacky and over-the-top shenanigans.
The trip started with Lenard and Liv visiting Liv’s parents. We’ve seen a number of over the top parents already, so it was anyone’s bet what we would find in the home of an Abyssal mortuary student. And what we got were… a pair of very caring and supportive parents with quirky careers and hobbies, and a delightful Wisconsin accent to boot! Not only was the whole situation wholesome as fuck, when Liv asked for some old wax sculptures and animatronics his dad had in his storage (being a wax sculpture artist and so on) for his “project” (putting ghosts in them) and the player selected the “cowabunga” option, well, it was interesting seeing what project Liv’s dad worked on back in his day that was “The Avengers End Game” of their times…
Then the pair went on to try finding a master crafter Alchemical they heard lived around these parts that they met earlier. They were joking that he was Santa Claus and sure enough, they found him in Norway Wisconsin, complete with a giant factory full of robotic elves. They got to get some cool Artefacts for the whole team as a belated Christmass present so they can prepare for the big fight.
If that wasn’t enough, they also encountered a Rhinelander Hodag cryptid during their trip and decided to go all in with a whole side adventure of visiting its home and resolving a war between it and a raiding party of Sasquatches eager to kill the Hodag.
Overall, while it had some slow moments, the Wisconsin adventure had a lot of nice, memorable moments that were pretty fun as long as you don’t take things too seriously and enjoy the flow of where this game has gone to at this point.
The Elysium
During that Wisconsin adventure, the other half of the party, Cas and Marcy, paid a brief visit to the New York Elysium. That entire outing was really neat to behold.
You know how over time in RPGs, shows or the like various characters start having some long stories with one another and you can feel that there is a lot more depth to the situation than someone who just met them might realise? That’s how that visit felt - like the Exalts were stepping into a completely different story, one that has been going on for a while, and one that they won’t understand by just this brief interaction. Neither side knew what to expect from one another, everyone was tense, and in general this is what you hope a lot of vampire Elysium games would be.
The interactions themselves were fairly straightforward, Cas mostly warning the kindred about Tzimisce being about to awaken. Marcy had to avoid being turned into a refreshment after being left alone as a “ghoul” and delivering one poignant line at the Prince, who only allowed her a handful of words to speak. “Scale of Bangladesh” wiped out all the smirks off of the undead faces, since they heart rumours of what happened during The Week of Nightmares when Ravnos woke up.
I have yet to see any other EvWoD game make me wish for Exalts to try gently diving into the shark tank of vampire politics. Heaven for Everyone mostly powered through them in Los Angeles, City of the Bull God was mostly t-posing over the London vampires, asserting dominance, and the few other ongoing games I know of barely interact with them so far. I’m not sure if this feeling Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts evoked was just an illusion, or maybe a result of not sending the heavy hitters to the meeting where they would project their big dick energy and ruin the mood, but what we had here felt really interesting to me at least…
A big boss fight
With how much of heavy hitters Exalted are in the World of Darkness, you’d naturally want to end it with something cool, like a big boss fight. And this series delivered on that, if perhaps overdoing it a bit for its own good.
Since the series takes place in World of Darkness New York, those that know what’s going on in that place could guess the final boss - the antediluvian Tzimisce, one of the most dreadful things in that world.
Big boss time
The Exalts assaulted the Vampire to catch them unaware, fought through a number of their flesh monster minions, and eventually faced off against the perfected form of the creature themselves.
With a lot of legwork done ahead of time the fight was manageable (they managed to evacuate the entire area and bring a large pack of werewolves to help with damage control), but with this being Exalted vs World of Darkness, things eventually became a bit too big for the game format.
Three of the players had some form of protection against getting killed, but that meant the weakest link, Marcy, had to be rescued multiple times and burning through their resources. The battle itself took about 5 recorded hours and required two entire extra sessions to wrap. By the end of it, the crew was also running late and decided to wrap things up cinematically just to actually get to the end of it. The actual enemy stat blocks were eyeballed (since this came out before EvWoD Revised that had some guidelines for big boss fights) and rules had to be adjusted on the fly not to imbalance the whole encounter one way or the other. Some of the episodes as presented ended up being “and then they fought some more” and are kind of skippable (on my first viewing I accidentally missed one of the fight episodes and didn’t even notice).
The other Battle of New York
But in the end, it was a good way to wrap a series like this up, especially since it jumped the shark a long time ago and kept going further off the rails. For basically a first foray into a system that was a bit unbalanced at the time, it was pretty solid.
Pulling at the heartstrings
This game isn’t the first time some of those people played together, and Brendon had a good way of leveraging their shared play experience to tug on players’ heartstrings and make them feel things.
These ranged from rather innocuous things like referencing the other recorded campaigns (such as mentioning Mages making a van, or the Brightness Landing Hotel), but also their Exalted campaign we only got a retelling of. Some Artefacts the group was gifted towards the end of the game were referring to their old characters in a way that made Christina tear up a little. It was a nice touch and a good bit of extra work by the GM to really make things memorable for the players.
Therapeutic and making the world a better place
After you’re done listening to the series, there is a nice outro interview with the various players talking about the series and so on. One of those interviews is with Liv’s player, Tyler. In it, he mentions that playing that character helped him “in a way he didn't know he needed”. Moreover, playing Liv actually made him actually decide to go through with going to a nursing school.
So in the end, when all is said and done, no matter what else you have to say about the series, at least it made the world a slightly better place. It’s nice knowing that games have this kind of positive effect. Hats off to everyone involved!
6) Criticism
No show is without its flaws, and so we should turn to what the Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts has committed. Not as an attack on the show or its creators, but as a learning experience on how everyone could improve…
A casual game of Exalted vs World of Darkness
Honestly, this whole game could be summed up as “casual”, both to its merit as well as detriment. The players aren’t voice actors, there isn’t any production team behind it, the various plots are picked up a bit ad hoc, sometimes the players are strung along a bit, some rules perhaps aren’t 100% there and so on and so on.
Which is fine, but at the same time, the game could’ve been so much better with some more focus, planning and pacing.
Like the game starts with characters being students. That relates to pretty much nothing in the whole plot besides them hanging out with ghosts in a clubhouse. There is a ghost comic book making clubhouse, which doesn’t do much beyond a small role in preparing for the final fight. There is a spirit of the City of New York projecting a giant rotting apple on the Empire States Building to show the corruption of the city as some kind of spiritual problem (implying vampires are somehow making them sick) which gets foreshadowed, a little explored, but not really resolved beyond fighting the big boss fight at the end which would improve the situation. The gang find a biblical seven headed Beast from a sarcophagus that erases itself from your memory that ends up being nothing more than a pet for a few scenes. Multiple families from multiple PCs are more wacky than the next and not all of them get their payoffs after they all get introduced in the same tacked on ending to a museum visit. A doom prepper uncle drags his niece PC into an open sewer manhole as a surprise hello only to die off-screen and be reincarnated as a Demon the Fallen spirit possesses his body and just chills with the PC twice before the game ends. The crew meets a character that is implied to be Santa Clauss that hires them for a museum heist and then just makes them some cool Artefact gifts for the final showdown.
This isn’t Riverdale level of crazy, but it certainly has a lot of ideas that you could fill a few seasons of a campaign with.
A completely normal Archie show, don't worry about it...
And like I should be complaining, we did some of that in our EvWoD Heaven for Everyone game. Sometimes you think you’re setting up something nice but the idea flops and characters latch onto something new. But that’s kind of what I mean by “a casual game” - it has ambition to do a lot, does some of it, and sometimes you just have to follow along a group deciding to hunt cryptids and decide the fate of battle between Sasquatches and Rhinelander Hodags.
Lenard - a southern christian bigot…
While I have nothing against Cody the player, and overall he seems like an okay person from all the games I’ve listened to from A Pair of Dice Lost, I didn’t like his character very much.
Lenard is a bit of a stereotypical southern US christian boy, which unfortunately came with its baggage of being a bigot. Straight up in the first episode during Introduction to Religion class he started with the spiel of “worshipping false idols”, and by episode 3 hearing that some NPC girl was German and speaking with a German accent he instantly called her a nazi. When he Exalted he believed himself to be an angel of god and so on and so on.
In general, I really hate these kinds of characters, the bible thumping holier-than-thou smug jingoist assholes, but sometimes they can serve an interesting part in a story. Like Kristen Applebees from Dimension 20’s Fantasy High had an equivalent similar background (although I don’t think she ever dropped any racism). Over the course of the story, however, it turned out that her family was actually a part of an extremist religious fundamentalist group, and she had to figure out her own path to be a better person than that. We never get anything like that with Lenard.
There isn’t even much pushback to what he’s spouting. The only one I’ve noticed was the german girl he insulted complaining to her friend, another PC, that she was called a nazi.
Take all that stuff away from that character though, and you still have a lot to work with. He is, as I think his player put it, a walking Lynyrd Skynyrd joke (due to his player noticing the name Van Zant in the EvWoD book and wanting to go with it), complete with a dog named Simple Man Freebird and last name Van Zant. He comes from a Dragonblooded family from Australia, has a bunch of sisters that enjoy fighting and loses the ability to read when he cusses, so to compensate he has eidetic memory. He has a giant spirit dog the size of Clifford The Big Red Dog that can talk and always has his back. You don’t need all that problematic stuff…
So many siloed sessions
The pacing of some episodes has been a little bit weird. A number of them would feature characters being siloed into their own scenes and adventures separate from the group. Every now and then that’s good, but sometimes it felt like a bit of a lost opportunity or something that sounded better on paper.
In Episode 18 the group got separated into different spirit rooms while going up the Empire State Building. Then the next episode and a half was them having their own scenes doing kind of random things from Cas having a job review with the Maidens of Fate to Liv operating on his old, dying self. And after spending like two-ish hours setting this up and going through this, those scenes didn’t really matter much and were just some random test by the spirit of the city to determine their worth? It kind of felt inconsequential for the time investment and not to mention like 12 separate cuts between the four vignettes.
Then by episode 24 the group decided to split up to do some prep. Liv and Lenard went to Wisconsin to find a master crafter to forge them some weapons and stop by Liv’s parents, while Cas and Marcy were having meetings with various supernaturals of the region to get them on their side for the upcoming big boss fight. They don’t meet back by mid-episode 29. So that’s 5 hours of content bouncing back and forth between two plots, about 26ish cuts (and mind you, each transition comes with a few second jingle, good for denoting context changes, a bit less so when you hear it 9 times in an hour ;) ). Don’t get me wrong, those episodes have some of the best scenes in the series (Liv’s parents and the Elysium), but one plot has minimal stakes (“travel to Norway, Wisconsin, ask for a favour”) while the other crams dealing with three big power brokers of the World of Darkness (Werewolves, Camarilla, and the Technocracy).
On one hand, I get doing that since basically only one character in the group was good at doing power brokerage (Cas), and bringing in Lenard to Elysium would’ve probably been a liability. On the other hand, things like this probably could’ve been paced as one off diversions during a session in between some group activities.
The siloing wasn’t so bad in the early episodes while we were establishing the various characters and their routines, or giving Marcy a bit of backstory before she joined the gang after Exalting (having individual scenes throughout episodes 4, 5 and 6 from a separately recorded session).
Probably in the end, things come down to pacing. Again, this is a casual game, so it is to be expected.
Marcy was just… there
Sometimes in a group ensemble you will have characters that don’t stand out, and unfortunately this time it was Marcy.
She was a Solar Zenith, although I had to do a double take on that since throughout most of the series she mostly acted as the second Dawn. She was introduced fighting a ghost, in the big split adventure part of the season she mostly played a plus one and bodyguard to a very motivated Cas, and besides that she was friends with Francesca, Cas’ rival.
She was a bit of a tracker, she had a cool uncle, drops one awesome line during the Elysium visit, and ends up being interested in cryptids. On the flip side she turned into a large liability during the final fight when everyone had to save her from being killed burning their “get out of jail free cards”, although at that point things didn’t matter all that much.
It is possible that if the character was a different splat or caste things would’ve worked out differently. An Eclipse would’ve complimented the group quite well and kept a lot of doors open (although Cas seems to have been doing most of the diplomacy, so it might be stepping on her toes), an Infernal or a Lunar would at least make the fights more distinct, etc.
But things like this happen, and I’m sure the group had plenty of fun with Marcy’s player being a part of the group and filling in for someone else that left really early.
Jumping the shark and going off the rails
The series was off to a bit of a slow start with the first ten episodes. The group had some run-ins with the local supernaturals, beat up some vampiric mafia, established a comic book making club with some ghost students and so on. Then things started getting turned up to 11 fairly fast.
The next Arc, Exalted’s Eleven, introduced a strange museum exhibit, featuring ancient plagues, a Daiklave hilt, some Alchemical soul gems and even a mysterious sarcophagus with something ancient inside of it (something about this does sound familiar…). Then the gang was hired to rob the museum along with some guest star Exalts and things continued to amp up. Lenard’s Australian Dragonblooded sisters appeared on the scene, a biblical seven headed serpent got freed, everyone had a trippy vision quest going up the Empire State Building, cryptids appeared, someone’s family member got turned into a Demon the Fallen character, and so on and so on.
Brendon the GM did later say that he went a bit overboard, one-upping himself over and over with each story in the system, and to an extent I have to agree. When you get ancient artefacts from a robot santa living in Norway, Wisconsin to save the Rhinelander Hodag from their mortal enemies, the Sasquatches, you probably start questioning how did you end up here.
It wasn’t an unpleasant journey all things considered, just not something you’d expect starting with the premise of “college age kids Exalting and being Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts”.
Railroading
While a lot of the game was off the rails with how bonkers it got, at the same time it did feature a bit of railroading. It wasn’t the bad kind of railroading where the players have no say in anything, but the kind where players often found themselves with a new situation out of their control and had to get through it.
The Empire State Building vignettes for example, were pretty much “you get dropped into this random scenario, how do you solve it” which didn’t have that much player input. Liv got to operate on his mortal self, with one decision - save them or kill them. Cas had an interview with the Maidens of Destiny that mostly amounted to just chatting, a little bewildered. Lenard got to save his buddy from being killed in some building. Nothing too engaging.
A less egregious situation happened in the Van Zant Manour, where the group got to lay low for a while after their heist. They mostly bounced off Lenard’s sisters a bit, and then got to talk with two more NPCs, pumping one of them for some exposition. This wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t two and a half episodes of this.
What followed for one group was similarly a bit on the rails. Lenard and Liv got to go visit Jotun to get some Artefact presents for everyone… For 4ish episodes. The only thing of note that happened was them running into the Hodag, which led to the Sasquatch fight later.
While this kind of play is fine for some groups and the players still had a good amount of input on what they wanted to pursue, it could’ve been a bit better. Then again, player-driven storytelling does require a good deal of inputs from the players and motivated characters, and since this was an introduction to World of Darkness for some people, it may not have worked out as well as you’d hope.
What is a “turn”?
Making mistakes while playing games is kind of expected. Everyone at the table has to juggle a lot of things on top of trying to remember the rules, so something is bound to crop up. However, this game seems to have embraced one crazy reading of the rules that made every late game encounter rather bonkers.
Sidereals have a Charm called Perfection of the Visionary Warrior. It’s a level 5 Battles Charm that is fairly simple, it merely says “Reflexively spend 1 Essence. At the end of every turn for the rest of the scene, the Sidereal may make an extra attack at her full dice pool.”. The key word there being “turn”. What is a turn in Old World of Darkness 20th anniversary editions? Good question, but one that you’ll be hard pressed to get a clear answer on in the various books. V20 doesn’t list it in its glossary. Some of the Storyteller systems use the term to refer to an action of an individual character, while others refer to one turn passing when everyone takes their action.
This game decided to take the first interpretation, meaning that you had the group’s Sidereal, Cas, doing an attack like 10 times a round. Every time anyone attacked, she would attack too, whether they were friend or foe. And all that for 1 Essence, which is barely anything in the system. The fights got a bit ridiculous with that, plus probably took a bit longer since Cas wasn’t the heaviest hitter in the group…
Lenard had a similar Charm, the Peony Blossom Technique, but that only gave him 5 extra attacks at the end of the turn for the cost of 3 Essence each time. Very strong, especially for a Dawn, but burning through your mote pool way way quicker.
Ultimately, would using the Charm as the developer intended change anything? I don’t really think so, the group had a lot of heavy hitters as it was so everyone they faced off against turned to red mist anyway. Was it a cool and over the top use of the Charm? Heck yes. However, the novelty of it didn’t really last too too long, eventually the fights mostly turned to same-y noise of stomping on the group’s enemies no matter who was in the lead, so whether it was Cas 5 times as often as anyone else it didn’t matter too much for the enjoyment of the game…
Imitation and flattery
If you’re like me and are keeping up with the various Exalted vs World of Darkness podcasts (there might be a dozen of us! A dozen!) when listening to this show you could notice some similarities to a certain other EvWoD production. Kids in school exalting together, a himbo of a Dawn, meddling with the local vampires, going on a museum tour only to later rob it, finding an ancient biblical serpent in a sarcophagus, doing callbacks to an older Exalted game, etc. happening twice in two EvWoD games would be a really strange coincidence. Then again, the group was heavily inspired by Princes of the Universe while playing their old Kings of Creation game as recapped under Let the Good Dice Roll.
But yes, as someone who played in Heaven for Everyone it was amusing to hear Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts have similar ideas. And you know what they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ;).
This is of course not to say that the show is entirely derivative, it puts its own spin on a lot of those ideas and the similarities are mainly what you notice in hindsight.
7) Conclusions
Overall, Friendly Neighbourhood Exalts is an okay series, but not my first pick for Exalted vs World of Darkness or Exalted in general. As mentioned before, it’s a fairly casual game, which comes with some issues you’d expect from that - plot points that go nowhere, others that overstay their welcome, a shift in focus midway through, etc. But that’s kind of expected from a casual podcast. All the players seem to have enjoyed the series, and it actually helped Tyler settle on a life direction, which is honestly more than you could’ve ever asked of a game like this.
If you’re looking for a stronger Exalted vs World of Darkness game, you’d probably want to check out City of the Bull God by the same GM (and I’m not only saying this because I got to play in that AP!). It features a cast that are Exalted and World of Darkness veterans, and has a somewhat more cohesive plot, even if it does take a detour to Hollow Earth to fight some nazis with cyber dinosaurs ;).
Sometimes RPG groups have a problem with getting the right kind of characters together for an adventure. Whether it's people wanting to play lone wolves that are too cool to care, someone making a chaotic neutral character that will just go goblin mode, or just a PC that doesn't know how to tie their backstory to what's going on, it can be a challenge for the group and the GM to tie everyone together to just go and do what they planned for the adventure to be. But, there is a neat solution to that - starting backstory bonuses!
Recently, our GM started a new EvWoD game with us - To Build a Fyre (which will probably air sometime in 2024, here is the rough game pitch). It was a modern game set in a dome city deep in the antarctic ocean. The game had a lot of moving parts, key NPCs and big mysteries to investigate. But in order to ensure that the PCs were actually invested in the premise and were proactive about looking into those mysteries, everyone had to have hooks and leads to follow out of their own volition. They needed reasons to go on a multi-year contract to the Antarctic, to interact with various NPCs, to care about what's going on. The game didn't have space for lone wolves, wallflowers or some really out there concepts like a benevolent cult leader demon that is building a figurative Noah's Arc to let their followers Heaven's Gate into a peaceful afterlife.
So our GM came up with a clever solution to it - starting backstory bonuses. Basically, the game came with 11 different hooks and plots to choose from that would define some part of the character's backstory, give them a lead to follow, as well as give them a bonus to their starting character based on that backstory. You could for example been invited to Atlantis Zero by the Conspiracy of the Lotus, a shadowy organisation that is trying to exert more control over the city. Your starting bonus would be a minor magical artefact they gifted you, and your first order of business would be to reach out to them and get initiated into the society proper to learn what schemes they expect you to help them with. Or you could have been a part of a PMC group sent by a billionnaire to extract his son from the Atlantis Zero prison, but you got attacked on the ice shelf and are the only survivor of your squad - you have a good deal of military gear, but now you have to figure out how to get that kid out by yourself. Or maybe you were helping a three letter organisation and their alien friend find their missing counterpart that has crash landed in the area. Now you have an alien to help you infiltrate the facility, but you also need to take care of them.
Since everyone needs to take one of those backstories, you will know everyone will have some kind of hook to the place right at the start and by having those backstories inform the characters being made you know you will at least have some kind of PC that fits the setting. Plus, players always like getting a little bit extra, so they will be glad to take the bonuses that come with these!
If you run the same adventure / module / etc. for multiple groups, you can also plan your stories knowing where the players will be coming in from. You might not have every backstory represented, but if every one of them leads into your story proper or to the other stories, you will be able to pick up and play that adventure more easily without having to figure out yet another reason to tie your new PCs into the story.
My group and I have played a lot of various Storyteller systems - Vampire the Masquerade, Vampire the Requiem 1st, 2nd and MET editions, Mage the Awakening, Werewolf the Forsaken, Exalted, Exalted vs World of Darkness, etc. One thing that I always enjoyed about the systems were how they handled and codified the weird character quirks and the externals of what a character is - the Merits, Flaws, Backgrounds, etc. It felt really unique back in the day being able to start a game as a character that is filthy rich, influential, or perhaps hunted down like a dog.
However, when the systems moved away from "GM may I get another dot" into letting players buy certain things with XP (as discussed last time), one big question arose - should the players pay for the various Merits they acquired during play (wealth, allies, artefacts, etc.)?
(if you're familiar with how these systems work, feel free to skip the next three sections)
oWoD - GM may I get a dot?
Let's start with how things started. In the Old World of Darkness game like like Vampire the Masquerade players could pick Backgrounds, Merits and Flaws at character creation. Backgrounds were things that didn't fit into Skills, Attributes and supernatural powers of a character. Often they would be things external to the physical person, like their wealth, allies, political influence, fame, etc. They could also be character traits that were hard to express otherwise, like a measure of Vampire's blood potency, Mage's memories from past lives, etc. To confuse things further, Merits were kind of also that, but as an optional rule and usually at a fixed price rather than 5 dot scale. These would cover being able to keep track of exact time, having an eidetic memory, having someone owe you a favour, being a really big person, etc. Flaws on the other hand were negative things that would hamper the character and gave you more freebie points, like being blind, hunted by someone, having an enemy, being averse to violence and so on. People often would min-max taking a maximum amount of Flaws to build their perfect character.
All of those things you could buy / pick at character creation and only change later through roleplay. You couldn't spend XP to learn more languages or to increase your wealth in V20 (some other systems handled languages differently, but that's a different story) - those could only be awarded by the GM as a result of the narrative.
In practice, people would rarely go back to those and update them. "We found a new guardian angel? Cool! I wasn't told to put them as a Mentor so I won't! Even if I did it wouldn't change anything, I can just call them, right?". If someone did want to update some Background, they would have to do the "GM may I?" thing and arbitrarily get a "yay" or "nay". You pretty much never got new Merits, and you'd usually shed Flaws connected to having an enemy after killing them, etc.
Because things were so wishy-washy, you didn't have people specialise in these things since you couldn't rely on the GM approving your point increases, so you mostly stuck to what you had at character generation. Things changed, however, with the next iteration of the system.
nWoD - everything is a Merit you can buy! (some limitations apply)
In the New World of Darkness (aka 1st edition of Chronicles of Darkness) the system got way more streamlined. You didn't have Flaws, you only had Merits that also covered Backgrounds. So you could be wealthy, influential, know telepathy, kung-fu, etc. all under the system of a Merit. Best of all, you could buy a lot of them with XP after character creation! The ones you couldn't buy were tied to rather innate things about the character - you couldn't grow an extra half a meter to take the Giant Merit, nor suddenly develop Eidetic Memory (unless you were a cool Vampire, then you had a separate Merit in Covenant Book Ordo Dracul "Mind of Devouring Worm" that was basically Eidetic Memory, but that's another story).
Now people could want to spend their XP on Merits since they often offered some interesting mechanical benefits - Fighting Styles augmented how you would engage in combat, Striking Looks helped you with social stuff, etc.
Things worked similarly in Exalted 3rd Edition, with an added exception of "Story Merits" - Merits that you couldn't purchase with XP after character generation. They could instead be awarded or advanced by the GM though roleplay and social influence. Those were things like Allies, Contacts, Mentor, Artifact, etc. Otherwise, you could still buy some Merits, like faster reflexes, languages, etc.
There was only one caveat to the base system in nWoD - if you spend XP on something and you lost it, that XP would be gone too. That was addressed in the final iteration of the system.
CofD - Sanctity of Merits and more mechanics!
In the 2nd edition of the system, all the game lines introduced the Sanctity of Merits rule, which refunded you XP you'd spend purchasing any Merit you lost. So if you buy a loyal retainer Alfred and he gets killed, you would get all that precious XP back and be able to spend it on something else.
I think by now also all Merits had some mechanical benefit to them. Status used to be a nebulous pull in an organisation, and now it turned into a bonus to social and an ability to block other Merits. Mentors had specific areas of expertise they could help with. The list goes on.
So finally you could have a character that specialises in Merits be not only very effective in a game, but also rest assured they wouldn't be downgraded to useless just because someone blew up the tower housing their home, people, place of business, etc.
So now we come to the crux of our problem.
The problem - narrative Merits
So the problem arises when you introduce Merits that can be earned via a narrative. Things like Resources, Mentor, Allies, Contacts, Status, Artefact, etc. How do you handle them?
When a character wins a hundred million dollars in a lottery because they cheated with their future-sight, does that justify them catapulting from Resources 0 to Resources 5 (granting them like, 10 sessions worth of XP)? If someone robs them afterwards and they go back to Resources 0, does that give them those XP points back even though they didn't earn them? Or probably the most important variant - if you kill someone with a cool artefact weapon and take it as your own, does that suddenly drain XP from you to make you purchase it, or do you get it for free? Is it magically protected from being stolen back if you purchased it at character generation in comparison to getting it later?
It is a tough question. Let's examine things one by one with some examples.
More money more problems - Resources
Your character hit it big. They won a lottery, robbed a bank or what have you. Now they want to convert that into more permanent, long-term wealth for their character.
Turn those rags into riches!
In stories usually that's the character's end goal and you don't linger on what happens next. If real life is anything to go by, chance are a sudden influx of money will revert itself back to zero sooner than later. That makes sense - it takes a bit more than just raw cash to produce more cash in the future. Heck, even some countries have problems with this:
Nauru, wealth based on guano quickly ran out
Even if you don't have to deal with people trying to rob you or con you, it can still be an issue. Doubly so when you're dealing with illegal funds you get from robbing a bank. Turning that into clean money and then into a legitimate income is an adventure in itself.
Money laundering, it can get complicated
Resources are also often tied with one's standard of living and include a nice place to live, a good bank, credit score, knowing how much money you can toss around without going broke.
So that's why I don't think getting an influx of cash should instantly translate to getting wealth / Resources on a character sheet. It takes effort and attention to grow those. Chronicles of Darkness did have a useful alternative for that influx of money though - Cash as a gear you can use!
Cash - for when you get that influx of money
Also, if you could turn money into Resources without spending XP, someone with Resources 5 could easily fund a few characters with Resources 2-3 without noticing a significant drop in their reserves. Why wouldn't every group do it in Session 1?
Not everyone gets to be the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy,
not without a heavy investment of XP!
Mentors - it's a fine day for learning
Mentors are people that have interest in character's long-term growth and success. Some characters start their story with one, like Zuko and Iroh, others earn the privilege of learning from them during the series, like Goku and Roshi, Kami, Kai, Whis, etc. (man that monkey had a lot of teachers!).
So when you find a suitable Mentor that should be that, onto the character sheet they go, right? Well, it depends on what the role of the person is in the story.
On one hand you have rather transitory characters that exist to teach the character a lesson, some secret technique, etc. Aang had a good number of them. He chilled with most of them for an episode or two and moved on. Those kind of characters wouldn't necessitate being put on the character sheet - they are a means to spending XP on something else - a martial arts form or the like. You have a small adventure with them, this lets you spend your XP and usually you're done until you want to learn something else.
On the other hand, you have Mentors that stick around and offer support to the character over a longer period of time, not only showing them the ropes of how to do something, but also being invested in their success and maybe long-term education. Sometimes they guide the character's morality and stick their neck out to save them.
Old man Bruce from Batman Beyond,
teaches, judges and provides the cool gadgets
(to live through his pupil)
Those kind of characters usually take a bit more to be convinced to train someone and sometimes even when they want to teach the character it's not that easy. Take Shifu from Kung Fu Panda for example. Initially he resents teaching Po, eventually does so anyway but fails miserably, and only after discovering how to teach his pupil does he manage to get through to him, with dumplings:
A teacher learns how to teach their student
There is also the trope with Mentors about learning "the secret technique". Usually only the worthy characters that have proven themselves are trusted enough to learn their master's final lessons. You have that with Shifu, Oogway and Tai Lung, where the student is denied the Dragon Scroll for not being worthy of it. Or heck, even in Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion Getafix withholds the final ingredient to make the magic potion from his student because he didn't respect the ways of the druids (and also was manipulated by the bad guy):
Missing the secret ingredient!
So spending XP on a Mentor would mean more than "this person will train you" - it means you did the legwork and have proven yourself to someone enough that they get invested in you and your success (and they learned how to teach you and get to you properly). Like sure, a lot of that might be better expressed through some kind of Social Links but in lieu of that, you have a commitment of XP.
This is further exacerbated if there are mechanics involved to having a Mentor. In Chronicles of Darkness a Mentor can do some amazing rolls for you and even be your sugar daddy. Suddenly being able to throw five private jets at the party because they got to know the recluse billionaire might be a bit much (they are probably antisocial and wouldn't want to hang out with a whole party of adventurers in the same room ;) ).
Similar reasoning might be applied to Allies and Retainers - an Ally might work with the group because they trust one person that actually put in the leg work, but not the whole group. A Retainer works for one person and isn't everyone's gofer.
Woof of Wall Street - your Ally might stick a neck out for you and smuggle money,
doing the same for a coworker is another matter entirely...
So okay, where does that leave us? I think we're mostly down to magic swords!
Characters and their signature items - artefacts!
A number of characters in popular media come with some signature gear. Sometimes things are rather mundane, like Indiana Jones' whip and fedora, and sometimes they are much more intricate and unique, like Sword of Light:
A fighter with their signature weapon!
Lesser gear comes and goes and there isn't much need to spend XP on them. But let's look at some more important magical items.
One category is items used for pretty straightforward powering up. They don't serve an important narrative in themselves, and eventually you even forget they are there. Demon's Blood Talismans for example weren't part of Lina's original kit, but after acquiring them to be able to cast some more powerful magic they mostly just became a background item.
For the character, crafting the sword was a culmination of a bout of training with a swordmaster. In game terms you could express this as spending some XP on skills, fighting technique, etc. and adding a signature weapon to the character that would be either a good piece of gear or some minor artefact.
Sometimes characters pick up a magic item and wield it pretty easily pretty fast (like Thor and Stormbreaker in Endgame, probably since that movie was so long already...), but sometimes it is a process. In Book of Boba Fett we see Din struggle mastering the Darksaber:
Heavy is the edgelordiest blade...
Which might be a good basis for a mastery of an artefact being tied to spending time and XP on it.
Even if you get artefacts for free in Exalted, that's just the start of your journey. Many of them come with so called Evocations - special powers you gradually unlock by investing XP into them that someone wielding it for the first time wouldn't have access to.
Of course, things get a bit more complicated when you have a system for making artefacts also built into the system that is separate from the regular XP system, which is again the case with Exalted. The crafter spending their resources making some cool blade for the fighter would justify not spending XP on it, but if you want to treat it the same as someone who did buy a similar artefact at character creation and if they both end up getting destroyed and Sanctity of Merits kicks in, who gets how much XP? This can get a bit more complicated if you had to pay XP regardless and a crafter just facilitates you getting the kind of artefact you want?
Conclusions
In at least some instances it makes sense for characters having to "pay" for the windfall they receive as a part of a narrative. It keeps things consistent when it comes to Sanctity of Merits, and it keeps the numbers fair between the players (loss aversion and being jealous someone got something for free that you paid for can be an ugly thing). Things get a bit more complicated when dealing with artefacts and characters that can make them on the regular.
Recently our group had a discussion about the progression of earning new dots in Backgrounds in an Old World of Darkness campaign we've been playing. He's been trying to beef up security in his Dragon Nest (magical lair from EvWoD), bolster his Resources by robbing some ATMs and strengthen the bonds with his demonic advisor. But because all of these interactions have been rather subtle, neither the GM nor other players noticed this until it was brought up recently that these things haven't budged on his character sheet. Unlike everything else that can be bought with XP, this one part of the character sheet falls under "just roleplay it out and GM should award you some points", which falls under the unguided realm of "mother may I" which doesn't ever seem to be a good part of an RPG. Let's go over the problem in more detail.
Hey GM, is this enough for Resources 2?
What are Backgrounds?
Backgrounds, also sometimes called Merits, are parts of the character in the Storytelling System that are mostly extrinsic to the character. They are things like income, fame, people that work for you, how influential you are in the region, how powerful of a mentor is guiding you, etc. Unlike D&D, in the Storytelling System your character can start being a rich, influential political figure if you spend your points right, which can be pretty fun.
The problem is that in some of the Storytelling Systems, like Vampire the Masquerade after character creation raising existing or getting new Backgrounds cannot be done with XP, unlike everything else. Instead, they are raised as a consequence of the narrative and roleplaying.
While this isn't universal (Chronicles of Darkness let you buy any Merit with XP and Exalted lets you buy some Merits with XP), it can certainly be annoying.
Just roleplay it out!
I personally dislike any system that tells the players or the GM to just roleplay any broad part of the game out without any guidelines or rules. They always leave things wishy-washy and even if the GM wants to be conductive to the players advancing their things, it often feels arbitrary. How do you gaige of a player has sufficiently roleplayed becoming a millionaire to raise their income? How do you balance one player nagging the GM consistently to get those Backgrounds they want vs a player that is less forward about what they want? Should a player that can make money out of thin air just be given the money Background another player invested a good part of their starting character points into? If a player wants to roleplay getting some powerful artefact as a Background, should they just be allowed to? How do you roleplay learning Mandarin for five years if the in-game sessions happen day-to-day?
This is kind of like when character's social influence is left entirely to roleplay - the option is never as useful as the concrete option of violence. If you have the XP to up your proficiency in a skill like Melee, you as the player are in control of the character getting more competent and that has a tangible application on the session - your numbers go up, you are numerically better. You can't rely on having that same agency if your GM doesn't facilitate you getting the Backgrounds you want (even leaving aside some more hostile GMs that don't want you to get them, even well meaning GMs may forget to set the scene you need or you may fumble meeting a potential Mentor / Contact / Ally, etc.).
Just spend the XP!
Seeing how the New World of Darkness solved this issue in 2004, I'm surprised this approach hasn't been backported to the 20th anniversary edition in 2011. Just letting the players spend XP to buy points in Backgrounds would address this issue and give players the agency to push for their character improving things external to themselves. As always, you'd want to also tie the system into Sanctity of Merits (a system from Chronicles of Darkness where if you lose something you spent XP on, you get refunded that XP) not to make players lose their investments and feel bad about it.
Of course, one can argue whether or not some particular Backgrounds (such as Mentor, money, artefacts, etc.) should cost XP if sometimes players can happen upon them, but that's a bigger topic for another day...
Recently I watched some Legend of Vox Machina and one of the big plots of the series was focused on a cleric losing her connection to her deity. With the show being rather trope-y, it went the usual route of the deity saying what amounted to "I haven't forsaken you, you have forsaken me" and so on. It felt like such a worn out story beat. Then I started going over the various relationships between religion, spirituality, gods, their chosen and their faithful I've seen in RPGs and the list started getting so long I figured I'd best start writing things down. So if you want an inspiration for a character, setting detail or the like, hope you enjoy!
Morally absolutist religions and lawful stupid
First category of religious interpretations that inform the characters would fall under "moral absolutism". They rely on religious commandments being applied as per letter of the law without question. This seems to be Gygax's interpretation of what "Lawful Good" means:
With the religious commandments being absolute and unwavering, the role of a cleric or a paladin is to execute them on the behalf of their deity without question. Essentially, they become an extension of their god of choice.
In terms of playing a character like that it tends to veer towards the Lawful Stupid category. The player is discouraged from making their own decision, instead applying the religious law like a blunt instrument. Worse yet is when the GM punishes a player for not playing their paladin according to their interpretation of the religion and takes away their powers for being "bad".
From a narrative perspective, characters like these are rather limiting in a game. If they always act in a certain way with no nuance, the GM basically knows what they will do in any situation they are put and you are not really playing a character as following a script.
Noah Caldwell-Gervais' video essay on the game as a whole
This interpretation of religion might be a bit hard to pull off in a casual pen and paper RPG campaign. You would probably have to have characters that in some way are forced to obey a given religion, but at the same time struggle against it for what they believe to be the morally correct outcome. Similarly, the deity sending down the decrees would have to be powerful enough to force the players to act on their behalf, while also accepting players interpretations of its decrees as valid (which could be due to not caring, or being a rules lawyer, or maybe following some alien logic of "I commanded it, it happened, therefore the way it happened must've been the way I commanded it" (sounds like something Malfeas would do honestly) or something).
I think the closest thing to this I've seen in an RPG would be Sidereals from Exalted. They are the troubleshooters of Fate. They go in when something that shouldn't have happened happened and their job is to set history right. However, while Fate might chafe against it, they can exert their will as to some things. Maybe they don't want to kill a child that should've died in a flood and instead decide to Lone Wolf and Cub it.
High autonomy and task delegation - The Immaculate Order
If you want to avoid the pitfalls of Lawful Stupid, you could have a religion that gives its priests a high degree of autonomy while delegating tasks to them. In this scenario a deity or even a religious order could send a cleric or a paladin on a quest or to a specific location and trust they will take care of any problem they will encounter. The PC then is responsible for acting on the behalf of their religion to the best of their ability while still having the autonomy to make their own decisions and interpret the rules and orders as needed.
A good example of this would be Exalted's Immaculate Order, a state religion that focuses on being the intermediary between the myriad gods of the setting and the people, as well as hunting ancient monsters that stalk the land. The Immaculate Monks are send on their missions and expected to get things done, but there isn't much beyond a mortal oversight on them. Their power is their own and nothing will curse them for letting something slide or getting corrupt since first of all, religion in Exalted doesn't work that way, and second of all, the Immaculate Order is a manufactured religion that is used to keep the world behaving in a certain way according to some people in power.
Exalted and "no backsies" on power
Since I already touched on it, might as well expand it here. In the world of Exalted by default you play a demigod hero that is empowered by the gods or the elements. You could be the priest of the god that gave you power, or just someone that was awesome enough to impress them, but at the end of the day, you are marked by their power. You're not a paladin or a cleric per-se, mainly by the dint of this being an eastern fantasy.
At the same time, just because a god gave you some of their power doesn't mean they hold any sway over you. An exaltation is a one and done type of deal, the god can't take away your power or stop you from getting more powerful after they have given you the spark (without killing you of course, but considering you were designed to be a titan-killer, few are stupid enough to try).
This essentially means that a god choosing you as their champion puts a lot of faith in you to be a good long-term investment, and similar to the previous section, you are afforded a lot of autonomy in representing them.
Taboos and caveats of power
Adjacent to the default Exalted's "no backsies" on power are divine or supernatural powers that come with some taboos and caveats. You are still not beholden to a deity to use your divine magic, but you have something else that is limiting you and your behaviour.
This covers your 5e D&D paladins that have to upkeep their Oaths or risk becoming Oathbreakers. They could, say, be questing for glory and have to perform great deeds and avoid cowardice. These pain the character in broad enough strokes that you don't fall into the "lawful stupid" category of the older edition paladins while still directing the character to working in a certain way.
In Fading Suns you have religious priests of The Universal Church of the Celestial Sun that wield power in the setting, both literal and figurative. They tend to the peasant folk to keep them on the right path, they act as advisers and confessors to the nobility, and if needed be, they take flamethrowers to burn the heretics...
A good heretic is a burnt heretic, thanks Avesti
They can also manifest Theurgy, a magic that comes with a small caveat - Hubris. If you do bad things, like murder, steal, or get excommunicated that Hubris will grow until your character becomes a sinful plague on the land.
Some type of Exalts in Exalted have similar taboos. For example, the Abyssals are champions of the dead and are forbidden from taking on a name, acknowledging who they were in the past life, or even creating or saving lives. It doesn't mean they are physically incapable of doing those things, but usually there is a high price to pay associated with those transgressions.
These kind of mechanics work well for when you want to give player characters power they can use for good or ill, while at the same time putting some thematic or gameplay restrictions on what to use them for. As long as they are not too restrictive, they will keep the players in check without ruining the fun. While this limits some murderhobo behaviour in some bad gamers, for a high-level play this could also limit some stories you could tell, ones of unchecked power corrupting people and so on (hello again Exalted).
Religion of shared interests - Sathraism, SWN's Psychics
A different way of expressing religion is through how the practitioners share common interests unique to that religion. An example of this are the members of a minor heretical sect from Fading Suns called the Sathraists.
Fading Suns is a scifi fantasy game where people travel between worlds through stargates floating in space. There is one quirk to that - when you jump, for a moment you become one with the universe in an addictive flash of nirvana. This is what caused psychic powers to get introduced to the human race. However, since people started getting addicted to those jumps, soon Sathra Dampers were developed that shielded the people in the ship from the psychodelic effects and made space travel more mundane.
This didn't stop people chasing the high though and figuring out how to get their next fix by meddling with the ship engines. Eventually, you had a minor religious heretical cult develop around this phenomena of people that help protect one another, help score their next hit and look out for anyone new that might have experienced the phenomenon themselves. The religion comes from the shared experience, needs and interests to support its practitioners.
Stargate, but more extra
A similar phenomena can also be seen in Stars Without Number. It too is a scifi fantasy game that has psychics. One quirk about them though - a new psychic will most likely burn themselves out pretty quickly and become everyone's problem if they don't have a mentor to teach them how to use their powers. They need someone with a specific psionic power to help them get over their initial hump before they learn how to control their powers and so on.
While the setting is a mostly blank and open ended sandbox, you could infer someone would start a psychic order religion that seeks out new psychics and trains them in how to properly use their power as well as teaching them a religion based on those powers. Again, a religion based on shared experience, needs and interests of the practitioners.
Power through conviction - oWoD's True Faith
White Wolf offered us another take on religion with Old World of Darkness' True Faith merit. It was a bit of a weird power that had different interpretations throughout the various game lines and editions. It mostly boiled down to this - if you believed in religion strong enough, you could perform some miracles or generally use it to smite creatures of darkness.
In one of the scenarios of the Gehenna book however, we can infer that True Faith is not tied to doing religiously good deeds or even the approval of Yahweh (oWoD had a very judeo-christian focused backstory, down to Vampires descending from Caine).
In the Wormwood scenario, a group of Vampires hide in a church and await god's judgement after he destroys all of the world's vampires in 40 days and 40 nights. One of those vampires in question is Ferox, a Gargoyle bruiser with True Faith 9 (out of possible 10). He's mostly there to keep peace and is not above hurting or killing people to do his job. He's a zealot through and through.
Too cool for school Ferox
At the end of the scenario, all of the characters are judged by Yahweh directly and can either be purged of their Mark of Cain and become people, or get smitten into dust. Ferox falls into that second camp, probably to the surprise of similar murderhobos that might've been playing oWoD in the 2000s with a similar build and attitude.
It is certainly an interesting take on religions in RPGs, although it might come off as flat in execution. You can't really judge if a player character has enough conviction to continue using their powers, and possibly confronting their conviction in their righteousness with actual religious morality or the will of a deity would have to be a big event that amounts to "you're playing your character wrong, stupid". So there probably is a reason why this kind of powers didn't make the transition to Chronicles of Darkness.
Power through self-improvement - Monks, Elemental Dragons
To contrast with gaining power through religiously-motivated self-conviction, there is a similar concept of gaining power through self-improvement - spiritual purity and all that. D&D's Monks are an example of that - they are a class focused on mastering oneself and using spiritual energy that is divorced from a specific deity. Of course you have spiritual teachings and similar training how to achieve said mastery, so it would tie to a religion or several. Most importantly though, Monks as written can't lose the power they gain, and they are not beholden to some cosmic force, which sets them apart from a number of similar entities like say, the Jedi Order (that on paper at least follow "the will of the Force" and can turn to the dark side).
We see a similar concept to that in Exalted, not only in the form of various heroic mortals with their martial training, or Sorcerers that can achieve great feats without being Exalts, but also in the way how Elementals work. They start off as rather mindless manifestations of the elemental forces that eventually can develop sentience and personhood. Then through spiritual enlightenment they can reach further levels of essence refinement, turning into Lesser Elemental Dragons. If they continue, they can even turn to something comparable to the most powerful beings in the setting - Greater Elemental Dragons that stretch for hundreds of miles and can devastate continents. This happened at least once, and now that Elemental is buried beneath a mountain range, while others are discouraged from becoming that enlightened...
Sometimes you can have religion and spirituality without the need to worship a specific deity, all the while earning some cool powers.
Appeasing your powerdaddy and quid pro quo powers - Warlocks
A different take on the power balance between a deity and their practitioner could come from the relationship a D&D Warlock has with their patron. A common interpretation of this class is that the patron can't take away the power they granted the Warlock, but at the same time if the Warlock wants more power they need to earn them by appeasing their patron. This does give them a good amount of leeway for some back and forth as needed, while still preserving an interesting power dynamic.
I'm not telling you to do something, but... - EvWoD Infernals
This one is a little bit particular. In Exalted vs World of Darkness you have Infernal characters. They wield the power of hells themselves. Their power sets revolve around destruction and bringing about the end of the world so they could rule the reforged world. That being said, unlike their original counterparts from Exalted, there is nothing controlling them. Once they get their power, it is theirs to keep, use and abuse.
What keeps this category different from "no backsies" however, is that the powers themselves shape how the characters act. But when you have the power to turn water into acid, irradiate the landscape, create zombies and graft hellish implants onto people while turning them into fomori, it kind of informs which direction the character will fall towards.
These kind of powers use the carrot rather than the stick approach to moulding the chosen of a given deity: "You don't have to be a cruel tyrant, but if you want to it is so easy". It can only be achieved by very deliberate game design, focusing not only what the powers can do, but what intentionally they cannot do and what kind of character is painted by this positive and negative space.
Deities as avatars of cultures - Godbound's Made Gods
A completely different approach to religion is presented in Godbound in the form of Made Gods. As the lore goes, humanity achieved post-scarcity utopia, solved all science and all that stuff. The last thing they needed to iron out was philosophy and figuring out who was right. Because they couldn't agree on an answer, they turned to the only person that could settle their dispute - the abrahamic god figure of their world, the Creator. They stormed the gates of heaven, broke into its throne room only to find its throne empty. So they thought to themselves - if the Creator is not here to settle their dispute, they will have to wage a final war to prove who is right. So they stripped heaven and reality itself for parts to build great artefacts of power and Made Gods - avatars of their philosophy and civilisations, the most powerful engines of war imagined.
The role of those deities in Godbound is to represent their cultures and wage war on anyone who did not conform to their rigid beliefs. They did require an army of priests and theotechnicians to upkeep, but they did offer their believers a tangible afterlife in a heaven made by that Made God. It was a much better alternative to the hell where everyone else would go to that was hijached by angels out of spite for humanity breaking reality and shattering the world.
Making your own gods - Kuo-toa and YES!
On a similar note but perhaps a smaller scale, sometimes you can create your own gods on a much more personal level.
One example of that from D&D comes in the form of Kuo-toa, an amphibian race that can invent their own deities for protection. While those wouldn't be nearly as powerful as more established Forgotten Realms pantheons, it's certainly interesting.
Something similar also happened during Dimension 20's Fantasy High series. During the game, Kristen Applebees, a cleric, started having doubts about her faith when she realised she was brought up in an extremist cult, and after meeting her deity face to face realised he was basically a frat boy douche. Eventually, she started a new religion, complete with a new god of YES!. A nice capstone to her arc.
Create your god, kind of like this...
Serve the people, embody the ideals - Alchemicals
Going back to Exalted, we have yet another different expression of religion and its relationship to people in the form of Alchemicals and Autochthonians in general. In the setting you have a titan named Autochthon, basically Hephaestus mixed with Primus. One day he decided to peace out, turn his body inside out and create a world out of it called Autochthonia. He raptured a bunch of people to populate this world before disappearing from the main part of the setting.
You are being raptured, stop resisting!
One things settled he gave the people a new religion to follow so they would maintain his body while he slumbered. At the same time, he taught the people how to turn the most devout and accomplished among them into heroes called Alchemicals (basically a cross between a human, golem, transformer and RoboCop, but at the same time a communist hero of the people). They needed those heroes to take care of them and so they would grow over time to become new cities (think Metroplex). It makes a bit more sense in context...
Some Alchemicals are bigger than others...
So here you have a religion with a lot of back and forth. Autochthon needs people to maintain his body and provide him prayers to sustain him. People need Autochthon to provide them with raw resources to sustain themselves and Alchemicals to protect them from the raw elements and other big nasties that lurk in the robotic world. Alchemicals need the people to help maintain themselves (especially when they grow to city size and become immobile). All of this is wrapped in a religion that promotes the good of the community, selflessness, hard work, communism, and duty to Autochthon.
It's a rather rare take on religion, where your god needs you to survive, and you also are expected to serve your community above yourself, being an actual hero of the people.
Polytheistic priests
A large view of clerics, paladins and people of faith in general in RPGs come from a western perspective. You pray to and have relationship with one god, you follow one faith that has a strict set of tenants and so on. But that doesn't need to be the case. Your game could have a pantheon of deities (like Humblewood), or go all out and give everything a god to manage it (like Exalted). So what then are the roles of people of faith?
While you could have some clerics dedicated to worshipping one deity in particular (like Brides of Ahlat in Exalted), you'd more likely have the priests be focused on serving multiple deities. Whether that's through worship, guiding people ("if you have troubles with your fields, this is how you pray to Henwin"), as well as being the intermediaries between the people and the gods.
That last one especially is the focus of the aforementioned Immaculate Order. That set of beliefs postulates that the gods should not interfere with mortals and the Immaculate Monks are the ones that resolve disputes between gods and people. So if a river god cries too much and floods a town, you know who to ask for help.
Now if the setting has gods that form a somewhat cohesive pantheon or can generally co-exist (like Humblewood when you look at it - the deities there form a somewhat cohesive whole and even Kren, the evil fox deity is not a completely evil being) you can have priests representing a lot of gods without an issue. The problem arises when they start becoming incompatible with one another.
In Exalted for example, you have gods and Exalts that are worshipped by mortals on regular basis. The same world also houses Yozis, ancient mad titans that spite the world for being defeated eons ago, and the Neverborn, fossilised dead titans that wish for the whole world to end. Each of those have their own kind of devotees (mortals, demons, nihilistic ghosts) that mostly don't see eye to eye.
So while you could still have priests that represent and handle multiple deities, chances are they wouldn't represent everyone.
Conclusion
While there are probably many more different relationships between religion, spirituality, gods, their chosen and their faithful, I think this should be a good enough start for players or game designers to get some inspiration for their next creations.
