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.
In today's episode, I will cover RPG Blender’s unnamed Exalted 3E campaign (one shot, plus Season 1 Episodes 1-56).
1) Disclaimers
There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.
First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.
Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.
Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.
Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...
2) Overview and minor things
This Exalted campaign is hosted by George (Twitter) and is part of the RPGBlender podcast. This game started as a one-shot session as a part of their Grab Bag Gaming “let’s try a system and see how it shakes out” type of game, but has since grown into a full-blown campaign. It's a game recorded over a voice call that’s later been cut down into 1 hour sessions and uploaded to YouTube.
The game follows a handful of mortal heroes that Exalt, explore their cool new powers and get roped into political machinations a bit beyond their grasp.
3) Player Characters
The campaign features a mostly fixed cast of player characters that go from mortal to Exalted:
Smiling Mountain, aka Mnemon Rakin (m) - a Dawn Caste giant strong punchman that believes in the rule of the strong.
Dirum Borath, aka Cathak Lau (m) - a Twilight Caste archaeologist and artifice enthusiast.
Strings Like Fingers (m) - an Eclipse Caste flamboyant crazy horse girl man that loves his amazing horse, Invincible 2.
Adramalihk, aka Cynis Niddala (m) - a Day Caste Abyssal, a down-on-his-luck dynast that wants to return his family to the glory they deserve. Has a monkey named Uba and a cult of devoted followers.
4) General Plot
So far, there are basically four stories in this campaign so far.
Firstly, there is the one-shot campaign where Mountain and Dirum as mortals go out to Darthask to investigate an Anathema sighting as a part of a Wyld Hunt.
The second story is the Daughter of Nexus module where the group tries saving a daughter of the god of Nexus from being used for nefarious purposes.
The third story is the players investigating a mysterious treasure island that has called out to them in a dream, from the Tomb of Dreams module.
The forth and ongoing story is the group’s adventures on the way back from that island where they decided to have a quick stop in the city of Nechara and got roped into a large conflict between the city and the Broken Horn Tribe hoping to conquer it.
5) Highlights
5.1) Group’s First Exalted Experience
From everything that’s been stated, this is the group’s first Exalted experience. They try the system for the first time during their one-shot, and then continue the campaign afterwards. It is interesting to watch those players get over their D&D brain and slowly embrace the higher-power game while being wide-eyed newcomers to the world.
Sure, this might not be what some Exalted fans might be looking for in their actual play, but viewed through the lens of what the group is trying to accomplish, it’s a solid exploration of the system.
5.2) Biased introduction to the world
One thing you can’t really do with players that have read a lot of Exalted is to introduce them to a world in a biased way, which the GM did pretty solidly at the start. George told them the tale of holy tyrants that oppressed the world that had to be struck down by heroes rising up, and how that brought about the freedom of the world. Except this wasn’t the story of the Primordial War, but of the Usurpation. The players, as a Wyld Hunt retinue, are primed to hate the Solars… until they become them. It is an interesting take on the dynamic of the world you don’t often get in games like this that is made possible by the players not knowing the world too much before jumping in.
5.3) Some good characters and drama
A large part of a successful Actual Play comes from the characters involved and their dynamics with one another, and RPG Blender does deliver on that a bit. You don’t have any Godwins or Mocking White Winds (characters that winge or are too paranoid), and any inter-character drama is first discussed OOG from what I’ve been told, so that’s the baseline.
Strings Like Fingers was a nice, colourful character. He had the most wuxia design of the whole group (long robes, long fingernails, a meter-long pipe, etc.) and seemed to be the character most comfortable with how the Exalted setting operates (once he gets over his D&Disms from the first episode). Him being really infatuated with his horse, Invincible 2, was also very amusing. It was unfortunate that the party would often find themselves in places where that horse couldn’t go. The party dynamic felt a bit off ever since this character left the show.
Adramalihk seems to be stealing the show though in his own way. His weasely mannerisms come off quite well, and they are well suited for a Day Caste. His player can also deliver on his complex backstory - being a member of house Cynis that is uncomfortable with what his family and he has done in the past, having to live with the indignity of being impoverished, being driven to reclaim his just deserved place in society, and being a leader of a cult-commune that has built itself around him. Every now and then you get into his emotional core and the player can deliver.
Dirum and Mountain are not bad characters, but they seem to fall under “mostly okay”. I’ll talk about them later.
5.4) Flashback combat tutorial!
Since the one-shot the group ran was the players’ first introduction to Exalted, the GM decided to teach them how the system’s combat works by the means of a flashback tutorial bout with their teacher. It was an amusing scene, being about as self-aware as a video game tutorial, but got the job done. It was a neat trick on the GM’s part.
5.5) Playing pre-written modules
While watching the earlier episodes of the campaign, some things were a bit weird. Some of the plot points were a bit weird - multiple factions wanted to use the daughter of the city god of Nexus to turn the city into a shadowland or a wyld pocket somehow. Then things clicked more when it was pointed out the group’s first adventure after the one-shot was a pre-written module - the Daughter of Nexus. The next adventure was also a module - the Tomb of Dreams.
On one hand it’s interesting to see some of Exalted’s pre-written scenarios be played, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem those scenarios were that great to begin with. It would be interesting to see if some other modules make their way into the series, it would certainly be unique among the Exalted Actual Plays I’ve seen so far.
5.6) Social combat
In Episodes 35 and 36 the group had an unusual conflict - a full blown social combat. The circle decided to appeal to the council of Nechara to get a peaceful resolution of their conflict with the Broken Horn Tribe. The GM ran it as a quasi-combat where the circle had to figure out and convince enough of the councilmembers to get the vote to go in their favour. In the second episode they were also pitted against some Dragonblooded to up the stakes.
The players said the conflict was more stressful than the actual combats they were in and it did feel a bit tense and high stakes listening to it, especially given that the circle couldn’t let their anima flare during this conversation. It was definitely a fun situation to listen to.
5.7) Abyssal Resonance
I’m always a sucker for seeing how people play into Exalted’s Limit system, and it seems we might be getting something brewing here. While between the three Solars we had about one Limit roll, our resident Abyssal Adramalihk has done quite a few transgressions against Oblivion (mostly because I’m guessing they weren’t laid out to him from the start, instead he’s learning them as the episodes go on). It will definitely be interesting to see how far that will get pushed and what will be the implications of it. Now if we could get the Solars to do a temper tantrum spiral…
5.8) Animal antics
The series’ running joke is the players realising they can make their GM do animal noises by taking an animal Familiar and having fun with it. You get your regular dose of monkey noises out of it.
5.9) Interesting enough cult
Character cults in demigod games can be a hit or miss affair. Usually the NPCs in them tend to be really flat, existing only as a hivemind that just sings their patron’s praises. While we do get that to an extent, there is a little bit of extra depth on display here.
Adramalihk is a person with a personal grudge compensating for his family’s impoverished status. His cult is his second family, one that he takes care of and nurtures, and they in turn work themselves to the bone out of devotion to him. The relationship has a little bit of give and take from both sides. It’s not much, but it feels a little bit less bad than some other cults I’ve seen.
Unfortunately, we also have a bit of moralising from Dirum about how cults are bad that takes up a good deal of screen time repeatedly. It also doesn’t seem to be going anywhere beyond people giving Adramalihk flak for taking that Merit, which is a bit unfortunate. But on the plus side, apparently the players did check in with one another before they started arguing in-character, so that’s good to know! Would be nice if the arguments actually went anywhere other than just lingering pretty much unresolved for the characters though…
5.10) Consent before arguing
Exalted and similar demigod games tend to make people argue with one another a lot about morality and other things, and those moments in an Actual Play can be uncomfortable if you think the players are actually yelling at one another. It was a big thing in Swallows of the South, Princes of the Universe, and in A Pair of Dice Lost’s Exalted campaign (the one they did a recap of).
I was a bit anxious when I heard Dirum’s player start raising his voice while arguing with Adramalihk about his cult, but as mentioned above - from what I heard the players did check in with one another before that argument happened, so good on them! It would be nice for that to be a part of the recorded episode, but it’s at least good to know it’s not an afterthought for the crew.
6) Criticism
No show is without its flaws, and so we should turn to what RPG Blender has committed. Not as an attack on the show or its creators, but as a learning experience on how everyone could improve...
6.1) Straddling the line between D&D and Exalted
One downside of the group being new to Exalted but not new to RPGs is that they do bring some baggage, assumptions and incorrect style of play into the game. The series teeters on the edge between being Exalted and “D&D but in a different system”. Sometimes you are dealing with demons being trapped in a dream and used as a safe to store ancient artefacts, while other times you are watching a rogue sneak into a building and look for loot to steal.
The worst example of this is understandably pretty early, in Season 1 Episode 1 where characters get a rescue quest to go into a sewer, haggle for an advancement, fret about buying the correct supplies and so on. This being the first episode this is understandable, although this kind of “adventurer” attitude appears every now and then. A large chunk of S1E26 is spent fretting about having to change clothes to remain incognito, snubbing some proposed clothes since they were woven by a cult, exploring a clothes store in bumpkinville and so on.
If you expect epic heroic fantasy all the time, you will be disappointed.
6.2) Only the GM reads the lore
While it’s all well and good for the players to go into a system blind, that novelty can only last so long. Eventually, it gets a little grating that the players don’t seem to know some basic stuff about the world, especially when they are supposed to be educated dynasts from the Realm. Meanwhile you have someone 50 sessions in talking about “The Empire” (The Realm), “The Holy Order” (The Immaculate Order), “the Ascended” (The Exalted) and “Elementalists” (The Dragonblooded) and it’s getting a bit old.
Similarly, one of the players decided a running gag with them is that they can guess peoples’ names on a random chance. But rather than using some list of eastern-inspired names, or getting poetic with wuxia names, the player tends to guess some modern western names more often than not which doesn’t add to the immersive feeling of the game. A Stephanie and a Samantha don’t belong in Exalted…
The GM seems to be well enough read in the setting, so that stops it from being a complete write-off. But if you want to compensate for your players not reading the book, you really need someone steeped in the setting. Swallows of the South had a similar issue to an extent, but Quinn painted such a vivid world you got nicely immersed in it, and the players did pick up what he was putting down.
A big appeal of Exalted is its world and lore. It’s the reason why you make characters tied to The Realm and its Great Houses, why you go to Nexus and deal with the Emissary to avoid a Wyld Hunt. All of those things have a narrative meaning behind them you can draw on, rather than making up your own empire, city, people, etc. in the vast swathes of uncharted Creation.
6.3) The world is empty
In comparison to a few other Exalted Actual Plays, the world presented by RPG Blender feels rather empty. It is a bit telling when some of the most developed NPCs of the game are a pet monkey and a horse.
The series didn’t introduce too many deep NPCs, and a few that were introduced are mostly tied to their respective areas. Of ones that appeared in more than one episode, you had Useless Sparrow and Pluton of the Endless Stream in the one-show, two guild hierarchs, the Emissary and Avia in Nexus, three spirits during their dream adventure, and in Nechara you had Captain Njalan, Lore Of Autumn, Cynis Lanawle, Nanik, a bartender, and an angry undead. On top of that you have about two or three recurring members of Adramalihk’s cult, Uba the monkey and Invincible 2 and that’s about every NPC that’s worth remarking about that has appeared in the series. This isn’t much, especially given how some of those NPCs are “silo’d” in their part of the world and understandably you can’t interact with them if you are elsewhere. So having like half a dozen NPCs for a whole city where you spend 20+ hours is a bit sparse…
Funny enough though, the one-shot episodes were filled with a neat cast of colourful characters, but they mostly appeared in flashbacks to set things up for the players.
We seem to be slowly getting more interesting characters in the latter part of the series when the group is not going back and forth between their boat, the forest, investigating some empty buildings or talking with a literal masked and undistinguishable council of seven people. Captain Njalan is growing a personality, we have an interesting villain show up, Lore of Autumn is not a one note antagonist Lunar, etc. Cynis Lanawle especially had an interesting potential - she is a member of a Sworn Brotherhood that’s bringing a Wyld Hunt into Nechara to investigate some Anathema sightings and so on. Her first interaction with the Circle was through a heated debate in front of the ruling council, which was an interesting conflict that let the players learn a good deal about her. So things are looking up, but might be a while before we get Swallow’s Aria or Seven Symphonious Cords.
6.4) Time passing day by day
This campaign makes keeping track of time an important part of the game (for training times as well as with some ticking clocks), but also likes to drag some of that time day-by-day, character-by-character. This was especially painful in S01E13 where you spent an hour on something that could’ve been montaged to 10-15 minutes - one character was doing research, one was helping them with said research, another character was tailing an NPC for no payoff, and the last person was stealing some supplies. But since one of them was involved in a difficult Extended Roll he could only do once a day, we got to hear a week’s worth of what everyone was up to, two time slots a day. Makes me wish for Fellowship’s A Little Downtime…
6.5) Playing overcautiously and the Solar problem
While cautiously might be the way a lot of people play RPGs, it can get a little old in an Actual Play. Part of it is a setting problem, part of it is a player problem.
As with most Exalted Solar Actual Plays, our protagonists go out of their way to keep their powers on the down low in the fear of party popper Wyld Hunt showing up on your doorstep. We’ve seen it in ExalTwitch and in Swallows of the South, and it’s a bit same-y by now. But can’t blame RPG Blender for playing the game the way it kind of wants you to play it, even if we’ve seen it before elsewhere. However, this isn’t the only way the game is overly cautious.
The group came to Nechara in Episode 22. They wanted to have “a quick beach episode” here. But players being players messed with some things and ended up getting roped in as the local Anathema specialists and diplomats trying to solve an old feud between the city and a local tribe that has been trying to raid it for some information. Rather than picking a side they have been very cautious in committing to anything, instead going back and forth between the two sides and negotiating a peaceful solution. This isn’t helped by the fact that a Wyld Hunt has showed up in the city AND the fact that the tribe is being helped by a few Lunars working for a Lunar kingdom of Mahalanka that wants to conquer the city, forcefully relocate the inhabitants and use it as a staging ground for fighting against the Realm. But you know, let’s try appeasing both sides here and see how that works out! ;)
The whole peaceful resolution option seems to be only pushed by the players really wanting to avoid bloodshed while not having much in the ways of negotiating skills or goodwill from the Lunars to avoid the war. It’s mostly wishful thinking bordering on delusion to make it work, and it’s a bit frustrating to watch the players just keep chugging along in that direction rather than resolve the issue faster or more directly by playing it too safe.
6.6) Wobbly character dynamics
A big appeal in a lot of Actual Plays are the characters and how they interact with one another. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel the group dynamics are entirely there in this adventure, at least not since Strings left.
Mountain and Dirum form your foundation. They are war buddies that will be together through thick and thin. Sometimes that dynamic does feel like it’s veering towards Godwin and Ajax territory (characters that were introduced first are buddy buddy with one another and when a new character joins they are “the outsider” and not treated) with Mountain having Dirum’s back on more than one occasion, but it’s not egregious.
Mountain is a character that believes the strong should rule, and that tends to come up every now and then when he flexes on other characters in situations you sometimes don’t expect, like when he withheld possibly dangerous artefacts from the group by putting it under something only he could lift to assert his strength-based dominance.
Dirum fills the leader role in the group, at least as far as directing Mountain and trying to negotiate with various NPC parties. Unfortunately, sometimes he has problems being the party’s face, which was more comfortably filled by Strings when he was still there. His base character concept (an Indiana Jones style character that’s really into Artefacts) also doesn’t come up very often since the player doesn’t seem to pursue many of his goals actively all that much (sure, he does a lot of leg work with book research to advance the plot twice, but that feels more reactionary).
Adramalihk feels like the odd character out in the group, which is a shame. He’s a Day Caste, so you expect some degree of sneaking out on his own and doing things independently, and he does shine there. The problem is that he’s kind of in a similar space as Dirum otherwise - he kind of plays a face but without a strong preference for it, and he could be a leader if Mountain and Dirum would follow, but those two prefer their own dynamics.
So overall, it feels the group is lacking some key dynamics you’d want in a group. You want someone that at least knows a bit about the setting to quickly pick up what the GM is putting down and maybe push the plot forward with some decisive actions. Give this group a Killer Queen or a Royal and they could sing.
6.7) Is this an ambush? Fishing for dice
Exalted is a Storyteller system, so it comes with the usual mechanics you’d expect from the system, including skill specialties. While most of them are okay enough, one of the players picked a specialty that for me has become a bit grating over time - an Awareness specialty of "Ambushes".
So whenever something unexpected happens and the players are told to roll for Awareness, the inevitable question comes up - “is this an ambush?”. This gets especially repetitive since Awareness is also used for Join Battle roll, meaning every combat also opens up with this question.
This wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the fact that that player likes to haggle with the GM for dice. Sure, it’s done in a playful way, but it gets old sooner than later.
You similarly get more and more haggling for stunts, assists, using one roll instead of another and so on as the players learn the system. Part of it is understandably due to how the Exalted system works - you describe your action for a Stunt, GM judges how many dice you get for that, and then you roll all of those dice. So it’s primed for players to fish for those bonus dice. But it gets a bit old when a player jokes that a small description should be some really big dice bonus, especially if they are not doing it for themselves but for someone else.
I get that the player just wants to be funny, but the system is a bit slow as is and haggling for dice on top of stunts on top of rolling 10+ dice and picking which charms to use starts to add to the tedium rather than excitement.
6.8) Audio quality
While most of the time the audio quality from the group is pretty good, things do dip down every now and then. A player or two have the tendency to go loud and over-saturate the recording, sometimes a lower quality headset microphone is used, etc. The show also seems to be using an automated piece of software to cut out all the dead air in recordings, but at times it gets a bit too eager and starts clipping into the start of sentences which also makes it a little bit less comfortable to listen to. But generally, it’s pretty serviceable.
7) Conclusions
Overall, RPG Blender’s Exalted campaign is fine enough. I wish I could praise it more, but there isn’t that much I could say about it even after watching through it twice. It’s not the most captivating game, but it’s got competent production value. The characters have some potential, but too often they are spinning their wheels. It’s fine enough as a first foray into Exalted, but after 50 episodes I would expect a little bit more to come out of it.
The game is teetering between being an Exalted-level heroic fantasy, and dipping down to the characters being D&D-level adventurers. It isn’t a good place for it to sit though, since people that come in expecting an Exalted game would be put off. It does take a bit of a perspective shift to get into the correct head space for the players though, so it can be challenging.
The show would probably benefit from having a fourth member to improve the group dynamics. Ideally we’d have Strings back, but understandably that might not be possible. Beyond that, we need the world to be a bit more fleshed out - have a few more strong, well-defined NPCs for players to interact with. Finally, we need the players to start taking some more decisive actions. Commit to one side of the conflict and go with it rather than trying to appease everyone.
With all that being said, I think the show is starting to improve in the more recent episode. After a while the group has met a number of important NPCs in Nechara, they have had their run-in with a colourful Wyld Hunt gang and we might be heading towards some climax of the current conflict. It seems the crew also had a talk about embracing the more heroic nature of Exalted and jumping into action more readily, as apparent by Episode 56. So I’m cautiously hopeful that the show will get better sooner than later.
I plan on revisiting this review once the campaign is officially over, which might not be for a while it seems - the GM has hinted on a possibly lengthy meta-plot the characters might be facing.
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