Years back our group found Fellowship, the best PbtA game we've played before or since. We played it a bunch and had a lot of fun with how versatile of a framework it provides. We used it for Star Wars, Transformers, Exalted and heck, even Warhammer 40k. Which is why it was a surpsise for us to hear some people bounce from it because it was "just generic fantasy" and not looking past the genre box they put the game in to see what it is trying to do underneath the surface.
But since we have a good deal of experience reflavouring RPGs to suit what we need, let's talk about the issue more broadly! Let's talk about how you can look past the game's exterior and possibly have more fun tailoring the game to your needs!
When an Elf is not an Elf - Fellowship's Playbooks
The main way Fellowship seems to have lead people astray is with some of its names. The game itself brings to mind the Fellowship of the Ring book, and if you look at its Playbooks you see such fantasy staples as Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Orc, etc. You glance at the surface and think to yourself "yup, this sure is a generic fantasy game drawing from everyone's first fantasy book inspiration" and if you're not in the mood for playing fantasy you move on. But the looks can be deceiving!
So for example, let's look at the Elf Playbook. Here is most of what it can do:
The Elven Core Moves is the baseline for the Playbook - the Elf can use magic to hide, see well, sense magic and send messages. It also can move without leaving a trail. The Elven Custom Moves further enhance these abilities and also gives them an option to be a performer.
On the surface it's pretty Tolkien-esque elf stuff. Wield a bow, climb some trees, attack unseen, etc. But we need to look past what the flavour and theming of the mechanics is and look at what you can actually do with this mechanical set!
Because you see, with the same set of mechanics you are not only describing Legolas, but also Solid Snake, the Predator and the hecking Batman. Any character that focuses on stealth and ranged attacks can easily slot into this Playbook. If you need to add some other character-specific doodad like Batman's wealth or gadgets you can do so with the Half-Elf Custom.
Sure looks like an Elf, even has pointy ears!
The same treatment can be applied to all the other Playbooks. Dwarves are characters that are tough and into clearing a path forward (like, say, a footbal quarterback), Halflings are sneaky tricksters that like fighting big things (like Antman), Orcs are people that fight with whatever they can kitbash together (like a LEGO Master Builder).
Heck, grab the right expansion and Playbooks for Fellowship and you can just straight up play Star Trek with it...
But this idea of reflavouring mechanics and character concepts doesn't just apply to games like Fellowship. We've done it elsewhere too!
Mechanics vs flavour - Blackstar and cybernetics in SWN
A while back we played a game of Stars Without Number called Blackstar. Midway through the game we wanted to make an introduce new combat character. The character was going to be a cool cybered-up mercenary, but then when we looked at the cybernetic loadouts available in the game we were rather underwhelmed. They were prohibitively expensive for a starting level character and not as cost efficient as just getting regular gear to do similar combat stuff (these things got addressed a bit in Cities Without Number years later).
But we found a clever workaround. All we wanted was for the character to be tough and be able to punch things really well, and what covered all of our needs were the Foci the characters could take - Ironhide and Unarmed Combatant. Thematically those are there to represent some kind of space shaolin monks or tough aliens, but there isn't really anything stopping you from saying those represent your character's cyberware. You get the mechanics you need and keep the flavour you wanted without having to deal with the cumbersome cybernetics system or getting any kind of mechanical advantage over a regular character.
Cybernetics? Nah, just Foci!
Conclusions
While you don't want to carelessly mess with game's mechanics while trying to make it fit the story you want to play, reflavouring existing mechanics to suit your needs works quite well with many games. When you're trying to customize a game like that, don't look at its aesthetical trappings, but instead at what the game wants to be mechanically.
And as for Fellowship, from what I've been hearing its third edition is currently in the works that might address some of the leading names for the Playbooks. Currently its Elf is the Star, Halfing is the Rascal, Dwarf is the Mountain, Orc is War Torn and so on.
So fingers crossed the game gets the recognition and accolades it deserves!
In RPGs players usually narrate what their character does and the GM narrates the world, the obstacles they face and how the NPCs act. But what if some powerful characters could flip that narrative on its head?
Years back my group and I played a game of Broken Worlds called Gangs of New Gloam. The system is set in the world of Kill Six Billion Demons and the PCs get to play some really powerful and competent characters (at least by standards of trad games like D&D).
You can be this cool!
One of our players played The Hunter playbook, which made them a legendary assassin. One of their powers stuck out to me in particular:
Mantra of Ovis, the Empty One
Name a character or location. If you spend a power
die, at some point before you next rest, you can tell
the GM that you’re there, very close to that character
or location, silently observing from a hidden perch.
You can’t tell anyone how you got there, not even
your GM - for that would be to reveal the Shadow
Arts.
It is at the same time simple, and yet very thematic and effective. Of course an assassin would easily find a way to get to their target while remaining hidden. Of course you don't need to ellaborate on how they got there since that would take away from the cool factor. But best of all, it also maintains the mystique by not even letting you explain how you got there, which was a part that really made it memorable!
In comparison, some time later I played a game of Exalted vs World of Darkness called Heaven for Everyone. It's a modern demigod game of PCs wielding ancient power and using it to wreck the old White Wolf setting. I played a Sidereal character that maxed out Stealth. Good spies in the setting would have maybe 6 dice, top level starting characters for most of the World of Darkness game would push things to 10 dice, this character had a resting stealth of 15, pushing it to 20 if needed be.
Stealth rating: Yes
During one of our missions the character needed to sneak in and out of a server room. Simple door, one person inside, but once you start describing the situation, it's hard to be a top level stealth character when an NPC only cracks open a door wide enough for them to stand in it, and then sits next to the door so you can't open it without knocking into them.
That kind of situation gave me an idea - what if at really high character competency, your script would flip and the player took control of the narration? What if you could turn Batman cool with it?
Henchmen are running, Batman appears out of nowhere and get them!
GM: You arrive at the mansion, it's guarded by a few patrols, the path brightly illuminated and everyone alert. Player: I activate my Batman powers (roll stealth test and pass vs the guards). A lightning lights up the night sky and a glimpse of a silluette is seen jumping between the trees. The light flickers for a second and a dark figure appears behind one of the guards next to a balcony door. Someone yells to check the breakers and they can't hear the creek of the door as I get into the mansion. GM: The inside corridors are patrolled by single armed guards. How do you get past them? Player: (Rolls stealth vs the guards) One of the guards feel a cool breeze passing by them as if they felt a ghost. How do they react? GM: They turn around and investigate! Player: They turn around and see an eerily empty corridor. They deviate from their path and check out one of the rooms to look for intruders. What they don't notice is a shadowy figure taking advantage of that and sneaking right past the now open corridor from a turn they didn't expect. GM: There is a single guard in the server room, looking at the monitors. Player: (Rolls stealth vs the guard) It has been a long night for Bob. His kids kept him up all day and he can barely keep his eyes open. His big coffee mug has ran dry and he'll need the kick to keep up his shift. Whether he goes to fill it himself or gets someone else to do it, he's distracted enough for his system to get compromised without him even realising it.
That kind of narration melted away the player character's physicality and let them move as a cinematic force of nature. The rolls guaranteed the outcome, and letting the player narrate beyond their immediate character it allowed to set the scene for an epic stealth. If instead you tried narrating how the character moved through the space and how those actions were performed, it would move them to the mundane and step by step nature of things. Much less worthy of Ovis, the Empty One.
Of course, this kind of approach is not for every game. It's much more geared towards high-power / high-competency games where the PCs are a cut above people they confront. The ones where you can look at a situation and comfortably say the PC can dominate it without breaking a sweat so you can just go straight for the question of "How do you want to do it?" (like a few GMs do when their players roll a critical success).
In pretty much every RPG and beyond you want to treat everyone fairly. Everyone has to follow the same rules, the same judgements should apply to all the players and their characters and the GM should be impartial under normal circumstances. But what if there was a character class where that meta assumption shouldn't apply, as a feature?
Exalted is a game about playing capital H Heroes like Gilgamesh, Hercules, Sun Wukong, etc. There are many types of Exalted out there, from the peak human Solars that can punch through mountains, through elemental scion Dragonblooded that combine Avatar elemental bending with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, down to some out there concepts like golem Alchemicals that fight for communism and keeping their mechanical world alive.
Amongst all of them, we find Sidereals, the troubleshooters of Fate. They aren't very strong, their numbers are pitiful, and they have the most thankless job in the whole world - cleaning up everyone's messes and making sure the reality doesn't break down so there can be a next day. But they have one important trick up their sleeve to level the playing field - they cheat.
Sidereals, they be like that.
When they needed to disappear from history in order to be able to manipulate the entire world in order to save it, they broke an entire constellation to erase the memory of themselves from existance. When their power set wasn't enough to defeat their enemies, they developed magic kung fu powerful enough to kick people out of reality. When they couldn't overthrow the tyrants of the world, they turned their allies against them.
So I would posit the same ought to apply to how a GM would handle them in a game. This isn't to say they should have a carte blanche permission to fudge their dice or cheat at the actual game, but that the way you interpret the rules for them should be more leniant towards being bent in their direction.
This kind of approach is especially important when you take an important part of Sidereals' design into consideration - their power set is fixed and intentionally broken. The peak human Solar might have a Charm that lets them convince a crowd that they are speaking the truth and everyone will believe them through the sheer power of their charisma. Sidereals, since they broke one of the constellations that housed some of their power, don't have a Charm like that. Instead, they can only convince people that the truth they are saying is a lie. You never get a straightforward solution to a problem out of them.
Similarly, because their Charm set is fixed, they can't invent new powers. A Solar could decide that they want to be the best wingsuit glider out there and they can make new Charms around wingsuit gliders to help them assault some air temple, a Sidereal must rely only on the printed Charms in the book. So they would have to make do with being able to turn a mortal into a dragon and using them as a mount to try sneaking into an air temple.
Their sacred task of resolving troubles of destiny also encourages them to cheat their way through their jobs. Maybe a king of some land should've died but due to the snag in the Loom of Fate they survived a battle and now the Sidereal needs to ensure the king dies. But when they get to the place and realize the king is a little boy they might feel guilty about drowning them in a pond. So instead they can get them to abdicate their throne to their evil uncle who promptly gets an arrow to the head just after their coronation and everything is back as it should be.
So by the dint of the game encouraging the Sidereal characters to cheat, it wouldn't be an invalid approach for the GM to allow the characters to cheat within the system as well. A Solar having a Charm that lets them move instantly to anywhere they see could be stopped by the GM when they try to squeeze in through a crack in a mountain cave since they can't fit, while a Sidereal with the same Charm would be allowed to do it since obviously they could cloak themselves from reality for a split second and be at the destination they can see since that is the text of the Charm.
And it's not like other Exalted types don't have some game-breaking powers of their own. In an even fight a Solar will beat a Sidereal nine times out of ten since they get to throw raw numbers at anything they do. This isn't Munchkin where the players must pull a fast one over one another, it's more like Dune or Cosmic Encounter board games where everyone has some kind of powers that makes everyone go "Wait, you can do WHAT?". It would be an interesting and under-explored design space though to have character powers that come from being handled differently at the adjudication part of the game.
Conclusions
Exalted's Sidereals are a splat built around inherent limitations in their power sets and being encouraged to break the rules in order to succeed. As such, an interesting approach to handling them at the table might be to have the GM handle them differently from other PCs, letting them break some meta conventions of the game.
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.
Recently I ran a political intrigue / investigation adventure called The Storms of Yizhao for a few groups. It has a few neat approaches to doing a political intrigue game that you might want to borrow for your campaign. So let's go over them!
(If you want to run the adventure yourself, I strongly recommend using The Yang Version of the module since it addresses a few problems the original adventure had. We've also done a conversion for Fellowship and Exalted Demake if you prefer those systems)
The adventure sees the demigod PCs investigate the titular storms of Yizhao - a supernatural curse that is ravaging the city. They are tasked to solve the problem by the local governor that will give them a sizeable reward for stopping the storms. The players quickly learn the storms are caused by an Altar of Heaven, an ancient artefact created by a diety that imposes its morality onto the people and punishes them for its transgressions. So that means someone in the city is doing something really bad to upset the local customs, and getting to the bottom of who caused it is the PCs' ultimate goal.
During their investigations the players will interact with a couple of big name NPCs, from the governor, through a philosopher sage, down to a merchant matriarch. And here the crux of the mystery and political intrigue comes in.
Each of the big NPCs the players meet will gladly tell the PCs what they want out of them and what their take on the situation is. The merchant matriarch wants the governor deposed, dead, or both. The local royal caretaker of the Altar wants to just blow it up and go be a movie star. The philosopher sage wants to brainwash the entire town into being perfectly loyal citizens. Many of the motives are extreme and in a normal game might be a reason to send some constables after the NPCs to get them arested, but this isn't a normal situation. The NPCs aren't hiding their motives because each one of them lacks something that they need the PCs to do for them to complete their plan. A censor needs some documents stolen. The philosopher sage needs the PCs to tresspass by the Altar where they are not allowed to go. The merchant matriarch needs the PCs to steal a shipment of taxes.
So the NPCs will gladly let the PCs know exactly what they want to accomplish and what needs to be done to fulfil their goals. This lets the players know exactly what is going on, who hates who, and what their chemes are so they can make a somewhat informed decisions on what to do without having to do a roundabout song and dance to figure the basics out. It gets them right in the action and making decisions within minutes of meeting a new NPC.
Of course, there are layers to the situation. Every NPC has a goal and a plan, but sometimes their motives are hidden. Each of the NPCs also has a lead on what is really going on in Yizhao that is at the root of the problem that they will disclose if the PCs complete their quest or find some other way of leveraging them. They also each have a bias to what truth they see.
The merchant matriarch hates the governor because of his high taxes. She wants the PCs to steal the tax shipment so she can return it to the people. This is a lie. She wants to pass the shipment onto the censor to frame the governor of trying to steal his own silver to get him executed. She will tell any kind of sob story to the PCs to get them to get the governor deposed, she will lie that he's embezzling the taxes, spending it on his vices and latch onto anything the PCs bring to her to pin it on the governor. The truth she knows though is that there are people going missing from all walks of life in the city, which is really strange...
The philosopher sage believes the lax morals of the common people are the reasons the Altar of Heaven is punishing everyone. She is biased and wrong in that regard, but she doesn't know it. She wants it to be true, so she believes in it wholeheartedly. She is convinced that by empowering it to turn all the commoners of Yizhao into brainwashed Upright citizens the truth will be inevitably unveiled because it cannot take root in such a moral society that will be created. In that regard she is right, at least if you lean into "ends justify the means" kind of thinking...
Of course, some NPCs are simpler and some are more complex. The royal caretaker will let the players know he wants to just be a movie star straight away and what he needs from them to help himself escape. He is also quite eager to talk about what he thinks about the Altar and what insight he has. There is no second layer to him. Meanwhile the merchant matriarch will gladly lie about everything just to get what she wants. She will gladly ommit that she's extorting the people for money, that she's in cahoots with the censor, that she will use the stolen taxes as means for getting the governor executed, that she doesn't know if the governor is doing anything unsavory and what have you. Some variety like that means players don't expect everyone to have exactly one fake mask on they need to get through.
The garnish to the adventure are the various lesser NPCs and situations the PCs can interact with. People that have small immediate problems that show the players what the more ordinary life is like in the adventure. You have some young man that is being publicly humiliated for disobeying his mother, a merchant that can't pay the new taxes and will be fined for complaining about it too loudly, some courtesan that tries to hex the demigod PCs to give her a singing voice, etc. I tend to pace the adventure so that inbetween meeting any big name NPCs the players run into one minor situation to have something simple to solve in five to ten minutes.
Having a good number of such encounters also lets you tailor them to what the players are thinking. If they think the governor is up to no good and you want to double up on that, show them how people are treated by the government. If you want to expose the merchant matriarch for being corrupt, give them some merchant that can't afford guild dues. If they have done most of the adventure but can't connect the dots, give them an encounter that steers them in the right direction.
Finally, this adventure has multiple off-ramps for the players to end it how they see fit. They don't need to solve the mystery to solve the problem of the storms. Based on character skills, they can destroy the Altar, modify it, empower it, get to the bottom of the problem and punish those responsible, or even just leave because this place is just misery. All of those are valid end points for the adventure, some can be achieved within an hour or two of playing it.
Conclusions
The Storms of Yizhao showcases a few interesting tricks to running a compelling political introgue game.
First of all, all the NPCs share exactly what they want out of the PCs and why they want it quickly and readily. They will gladly share what they think of other NPCs. This lets the PCs understand the political landscape of the adventure fairly quickly without having to pry information out of the NPCs.
Secondly, some NPCs operate on multiple layers of truth. What they tell the PCs might be a lie, it might be a biased view of things, or it might actually be true. The PCs have the means to figure out what is really going on with some effort, but no NPC holds the whole picture.
Thirdly, minor NPCs and encounters help flesh out the world and can shape how the players view the situation. There are more such encounters than the party will encounter in an adventure, and which one gets presented depends on what the GM needs at the time.
Finally, there are multiple off-ramps for the players to complete the adventure before seeing the entire picture that feel like a satisfying end. Those ends are always triggered by the players consciously going for them rather than something the NPCs do in the background.
While it might not be the only way to run political intrigue games, I do think the scenario is an interesting case study. The recordings of multiple groups going through it should eventually be uploaded to this playlist in case you want to see how it plays out in practice.
