In today's episode, I will cover Congenials by Sponsored By Nobody.
Disclaimers
There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.
First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.
Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.
Thirdly, I’ve been a part of this podcasting group (but not this specific game) both when those episodes were being recorded and since. I intend to go into this review as objectively as I can, but you should be aware of the potential bias at play. Here is your disclaimer.
Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...
Overview and minor things
Congenials is an Exalted actual play hosted by @Tavelgorge and part of the Sponsored By Nobody podcast. It was made up of the same GM that ran Princes of the Universe Exalted game, as well as fans of that podcast as players (some of which are starting their own podcast, PodPodCastCast). It features a shifting cast of 7 Exalts, almost all of which from a different splat.
The game’s system is GM’s very own homebrew hack of Godbound - Godbound Conversion of Exalted.
The series takes the form of an audio-only podcast with 2-4 hour episodes with minor editing, recorded over the Internet. The cast consists of casual RPG fans (so no voice actors or improv artists this time).
Player Characters
The game features seven PCs that come and go:
Sola Bright Light, a Zenith Solar priestess.
Mocking White Wind, a New Moon Lunar.
Mirage of Ideal Destinations, a Sidereal Chosen of Journeys.
Magister Invil, a Getimian scholar.
Heroism Advancing Algorithm (HAAL), an Orichalcum Achemical from Classlat.
Multitudinous Mask, a Changing Moon Lunar, very spider-like.
Hunter of Shades, a Liminal.
The party’s theme for this game was twofold:
- They are monster hunters
- They are nice people (which is an important contrast to the Princes of the Universe game…)
General Plot
The game starts with the group of Exalts hunting monsters in Kingdom of Halta, the Chanta region in the North-East of Creation. The local area has been attacked by Kaiju, large augmented monsters. After slaying a few of these beasts, the group discovers the mastermind behind this - an Exigent of Kaiju that’s unleashing those monsters on the world for heroes to rise up and earn their glory fighting them. The group strikes a deal with him to use his powers to help train Solars and work with the Cult of the Illuminated.
Meanwhile, the Autochtonian nation of Classlat has completed Project Razor and established a colony in the nearby area. They are looking for resources to send back to the Land of Brass and Shadow and are establishing relationships with the Kingdom of Halta, as well as the local Fairfolk. It’s soon revealed, however, that the Fae have made deal with the Guild to enslave Classlat. To that end, the Fae have reached into the Wyld and brought Aradd the Hunter, an ancient Behemoth to get through their defences.
During the second Season the Exalts look for ways to deal with this threat, seeking help from the Jadeborn, confronting the Guild in Nexus, using the Rathess Observatory, and finally enlisting the aid of an ancient Sphinx of the South to stand a chance at defeating Aradd before he can get to Classlat.
Highlights
Variety of Exalts, no Solar problems
After listening to Swallows of the South, ExalTwitch, Demon City Slickers and even Princes of the Universe, with a total of 20 Solar PCs between them with a sporadic sprinkle of one-off non-Solar PC guests, it was a breath of fresh air to have a diverse group of PC Exalt types.
A large part of the podcast focused on the Alchemical HAAL, his culture and enclave of his people. Secondary to that were the stories of a Sidereal and a Getimian, both being rather novel and unique. Tertiary we saw a glimpse at what a Liminal might be up to, some Lunar shenanigans, and a minor Solar business.
Very notably, the game also didn’t fall into the typical trappings of a Solar-focused game - there was no Wyld Hunt, there was no Realm invading the place, there were no Sidereals out to hunt the PCs, etc.
So if you’re done watching any of the other Exalted podcasts that I listed and want a breath of fresh air to get a palette cleanser on Solar stuff, this series is a good place to go.
Autochtonia and HAAL
Since one of the player characters was an Alchemical the game had an opportunity to explore the concepts associated with them - the Autochtonian culture, the industrial aesthetics, the purveying propaganda, the concepts of 1984 mixed with communism and everything that’s usually quite alien to Exalted and Creation. Both the GM and the player portraying Heroism Advancing Algorithm nailed that portrayal, making it both the highlight of the series as well as the centre focus of much of the campaign. It is clear both of them were very familiar with the source material and had fun depicting that culture.
Morality of monsters
One fun part of RPGs is being able to explore worlds and cultures that are different and alien to our own. Congenials offered its own interesting twist when dealing with the Exigent of Kaiju.
In our world a person making giant monsters and unleashing them onto the world would be really bad. However, Creation is a different place. It’s a land of capital H Heroes. Those heroes don’t rise up without a challenge, and they need to forge their legend, so what better way than engineering opportunities for that to happen?
Enter the Exigent of Kaiju, an Exalt who took on the task of creating monsters so that heroes might rise up to defeat them. The PCs were just such heroes, rising up to protect Halta from kaijus disrupting trade, killing people, etc. When they finally tracked down where those monsters are coming from and why they were made it became an interesting engagement for the players and the characters - they had to make a judgement whether this is something they want to allow to continue and if so - how to make the best use of it.
Garfield Minus Garfield
Season 1 Episode 6 is a very unique episode. Since this game was recorded online, by accident this episode did not record audio from the players, which resulted in almost an hour and a half of just the GM describing things, reacting to players, etc. It could’ve been a disaster to redo or a lost episode instead turned out to be an okay listen in the spirit of Garfield Minus Garfield. The GM is expressive enough that you can infer most of the context and still enjoy the show. Congenials Minus Congenials!
Everyone is Magister
Born out of the joke that Magister the Getimian is full of spiders constantly chattering inside of him and telling him to do awful things, the Congenials decided to run a more joke episode of Everyone is John. Suddenly, the character of Magister was controlled by The Ebon Dragon, The Perfect Magister, Grand Defensive Buttress Engineer, Edumaster, Old Cat Lady Magister and The Perfect of Paragon.
That episode went off the rails pretty quick as I’d guess any Everyone is John did, but even more so because the characters are living demigods. So you have cities being conquered, major NPCs being killed like chums, multiple second circle demons being summoned and bound in service of an Old Cat Lady, etc.
The episode was a fun if silly romp!
Opulence of Yu-Shan
Yu-Shan, the city of the gods, could be portrayed in a few ways in Exalted. The GM had some fun playing up its opulence as the golden metropolis when it came to describing how life has been treating Mirage the Sidereal. It’s a fun contrast hearing about how he’s moving up in the world into a giant palatial estate with a host of servants and hand-bedazzled butterflies, meanwhile in Creation people are struggling to get by. It was similarly a bit of a fun scene when the other PCs went to Yu-Shan by themselves and visited Mirage’s estate. There was much judgement and condescension, but in a fun way.
Criticism
No show is without its flaws, and so we should turn to what Congenials has committed. Not as an attack on the show or its creators, but as a learning experience on how everyone could improve...
Some character duds
As with all RPGs, some character concepts or portrayals work better on paper than in practice. Congenials was unfortunately no exception.
I would like to once again remind that a critique of characters and their actions should not reflect on the players portraying those characters. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes we try playing a character one way that comes off different from what we had in mind, etc. With that out of the way…
I personally wasn’t fond of the character of Mocking White Wind, the Lunar, for a few reasons. First of all, I think the player operated on a lower Level of Trust than the rest of the party and the GM. In the very first episode the group transported a stash of magical materials they acquired into Chanta. They rented a secure storage room and deposited their precious bits. Unsatisfied with that however, Mocking spent the next half an hour or more working his way through a Lunar spy network to work out a deal for a more secure holding spot in exchange for clearing a manse out. It played out overly paranoid and felt like a waste of time in the grand scheme of things because the GM wasn’t going to have anyone try to steal their stuff - he never does that. The character had a similar level of distrust permeate the rest of the series, setting up extra fortified ways of capturing people, etc.
Secondly, the character came off as rather condescending and moralising, judging people and telling them what not to do and what’s good and bad. Sure, that’s what Exalts do, but it can be stressful to even listen to. He wanted to completely shut down the concept of the Exigent of Kaiju and all of his work, and tried to lecture a Guild Acquirer about how she could be starting a war by trying to enslave people in the Classlat Enclave. It all rang a bit hollow and a bit annoying to listen to. Understandably, that sort of thing could be a tough balancing act to pull off between having a strong moral code and being a moralising prick. Unfortunately, this one didn’t stick the landing.
The other Lunar of the group, Mask, was also a bit of a problem. His introduction was basically V for Vendetta speech, which got promptly interrupted and diffused by another character noticing his name being a part of Mask’s long name, which made that already failing bit flop. After that he played a bit of a self-absorbed loner, but one that wanted to have a say on everything, which seems to fall under one of those RPG tropes of a dark brooding character with an edgy backstory. In general, I didn’t enjoy this character either.
And finally, we have two characters that make you want to say “and they were there too”, those being Sola Bright Light and Hunter of Shades. Both of those characters were introduced and contributed to some fights and solving some problems, but you would often forget they were there. Sola had one bit with her cult that was interesting (we’ll get to that soon), and Hunter had his character introduction which gave him a goal to achieve (kill the Perfect of Paragon), but other than those I couldn’t tell you much more about what they did. Part of it could be because of how often they appeared in the story (4 episodes for Sola, only in Season 1, and 8 for Hunter, only in Season 2), part of it could be because not everyone likes to take centre stage, so it’s understandable if some characters don’t leave a mark.
Dragon King plot elephants
Dragon Kings in the Exalted world can be a bit of a plot elephant - drawing a lot of attention to themselves when introduced and possibly being a fountain of exposition when introduced - something you can’t ignore and have to address. Mai, an ancient spirit of a Dragon King was such an elephant - quickly acting as a sycophant to Sola, talking about the First Age, the Usurpation, undermining Autochtonian teaching by telling what Autochton was really like, etc. It’s hard to argue with such Dragon Kings, especially as played by this GM, as they present everything they talk about as facts and first hands accounts very convincingly.
What’s worse is that Mai’s plotline just gets dropped soon after they’re introduced because Sola’s player stopped appearing in the show.
Mediocre audio quality
Since the game was run online and featured eight different people each on their own computer, the audio quality varied a lot from person to person. Unfortunately, the final product had an overall mediocre audio quality - you could hear a number of notification pings being recorded, people talked over one another a bit (at one point the GM muted himself in the game but not on the recording and proceeded to talk with someone about the game while two PCs were talking at the same time), etc. As much as I enjoyed the character of HAAL, the enjoyment was always dampened by a poor audio quality unfortunately.
Out of all Exalted podcasts I’ve covered so far, this one had the poorest audio quality.
Journey quick travel
The old problem of Exalted being a gigantic world while at the same time having many means of quick travelling and skipping through it also made its way to Congenials. It was further compounded by having a Sidereal Chosen of Journeys as one of the main PCs, meaning most of the travel by the group could be done at a rapid pace while avoiding all the problems in between. So while something like ExalTwitch condensed a journey of 4000 miles into a scene swipe, Congenials were doing something similar but also their characters didn’t experience much of the downtime.
Ignoring cult problems
This one has been a personal gripe of mine for a while now. In games like Exalted or Godbound where the PCs have their own cults, they often end up being neglected by their patrons or becoming caricatures of how people behave, rather than being an important part of that character.
Sola was a high priestess in her village before she Exalted. After killing the village’s former god, the villagers decided to worship her instead and followed her from the West into the deep North-East that is Halta. They were quite a lot out of their comfort zone almost living in a squaller, but their main problem was a lack of direction. When presented with this problem characters like HAAL started helping the village out and offering them some guidance but Sola didn’t engage with them or express what she wants out of them at all. It was a bit disappointing, and at least the PCs called her out on it a bit.
The problem probably comes from a few things.
Firstly, the Godbound system that this homebrew was based on really rewarded characters for having a cult. You not only gained more Dominion (power to change the world), but you could also turn it into an army or a big power in the world. Opting not to have a cult was a bad choice in almost all situations.
Secondly, it can also be a problem to play a character with a cult. Some players might like the idea on paper, but when push comes to shove it could be something the player might not be comfortable or enjoy dealing with.
Unfortunately, Sola did not appear in the game after the episode when she interacted with her cult, so that thread was dropped without a conclusion.
Conclusions
Congenials was an interesting Exalted podcast that unfortunately is dragged down by its audio quality. It’s pretty much the only Exalted Actual Play that focused predominantly on non-Solar characters and breaking away from Solar-related tropes. With cherry picking the right players from the ones that played the game, you could have a pretty good set of characters for an interesting continuation of the story. It’s unfortunate that probably won’t happen, but some of the players from the Congenials cast have started their own PodPodCastCast.
Now, onto listening to the other Sponsored By Nobody Exalted podcasts...
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