In a Nutshell:
Exalted is a new game by White Wolf that not only manages to accomplish what it sets out to do—create a fantasy setting that is genuinely novel. Exalted succeeds not just because it’s not D&D, but also because it manages to avoid the pitfalls of trying too hard not to be D&D. Exalted handles baroque elements like Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” or Peake’s “Ghormenghast;” power and majesty like Zelazny’s “Amber” or a Greek epic; sword and sorcery like Howard, Ashton Smith, or Vance; and martial arts like “Ninja Scroll” or “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” It’s all over the map, in a good way. I can’t recommend it enough.
A note about personal bias: I was admittedly skeptical when Exalted first came out. White Wolf continues to release high quality products, but after nearly a decade of playing in the World of Darkness, I’d lost interest in their lines. Exalted, I can honestly say, has brought me back in the White Wolf fold. I’ve set aside money for future releases, and as long as the quality keeps up, I’ll keep coming back. The highest compliment I can pay Exalted is this: Two members of my gaming group have managed to avoid buying a new game or sourcebook for five years. Any new games they’ve desired they managed to get for their birthdays or for the annual Christmas exchange. Last night, after getting halfway through character generation, they wrote me a check to pick them up a copy.
Breaking it Down:
Exalted is set in a distant, heroic past called the Age of Sorrows. For all this title smacks of the World of Darkness, the setting is actually far brighter and hope-filled than WW’s flagship setting. The mighty ruler of the Realm has disappeared, and the Dragon-Blooded who make up the upper-caste of the empire squabble endlessly, forsaking the pogrom they’ve waged to suppress the reappearance of the Solar Exalted. The Solar Exalted are near-demigods created by the powerful deity the Unconquered Sun. At the same time, the Unconquered Sun has realized that he was wrong in forsaking his children, and thus the Solar Exalted begin to return to the world in huge numbers. PCs take the role of these Solar Exalted, who are one part demigod and one part classical hero.
To briefly go over the appearance of the book, it's got a beautiful white cover with some striking art on it. It’s a solid hardcover, with black and white interior art. The art ranges from the truly beautiful to the mundane--a few of the pictures actually detracted from the book, in my opinion, but these are rare. The art definitely has an anime feel. The book avoids the standard White Wolf problems of strange fonts and black print on a dark background--overall, the book if very legible. The margins don't affect the amount of information in the book--I could be wrong, but this seems to be the most densely packed, rules and setting heavy, color-fiction light of their games, and it works for Exalted. With one exception, Exalted has dodged the “Curse of Page XX,” but there are a number of grammar—these errors don’t seem to be “people” mistakes, but instead the kind of editing mistakes that occur when someone re-writes a sentence in a word processor and forgets to scan the new sentence a second time to make sure the old version is completely gone.
The rules are based on the Trinity Revised Storyteller System, with some changes that, in general, improve it. I can’t praise the system enough—the problems with White Wolf’s Storyteller System as used in the World of Darkness are fixed, and this version is easier to learn and to navigate as a GM. One interesting addition to combat is Stunts, in which a good description of your action nets the players a number of bonus dice—I’ve seen this before (Ghostbusters the RPG was the first place, I think) but it still works and adds to the atmosphere of the game. A section in the rear of the book fleshes out the skill system to a fantastic extent—no longer is a skill like Sailing or Investigation a mere throwaway. The rules are extremely well worked out; the Charms are integrated with them, and White Wolf should make sure Geoff Grabowski oversees that section of all of their core rules. It shows that they really focused in on the mechanics rather than just concentrating on the setting.
Solar Exalted fall into one of five castes, and I was against this when I first read reviews—here’s more splats, I thought. But the castes are very loose, and the only thing a caste choice affects is where a few of your initial Charms go and the Experience Costs for buying new Charms, or magical ki powers. Any caste can buy any Charm, so it’s entirely possible to play a member of the Dawn caste who practices Sorcery, for instance. Exalted Charms and their anima banner (a kind of mystic field) are fuelled by Essence. A great curse placed on the Solar Exalted by dead Gods means that occasionally, a Solar Exalted’s Virtue will be affected by a “Limit Break” and he will be governed by his passions, like any classical hero—he might be forced to brood, or find himself unable to feel compassion for others, until the malaise is over. In summary, the Solar Exalted are complex beings and the rules serve to emphasize that they are the most powerful of the many flavors of Exalted, and very much like the heroes of Greek myth or Asian cinema and anime.
The “magical powers” of the game are split into Charms and Sorcery. Charms are techniques that the Exalted can learn and which allow them to perform superhuman acts. Each skill in the game usually has a half dozen Charms associated with it, from the obvious skills like Melee to the disconcerting ones, like Bureaucracy—and don’t laugh at the Bureaucracy Charms. If used properly, they’re some of the most powerful in the game. Charms are great, and my players were agape at the high-powered ones, giving the PCs a reason to keep playing and earning XP. Charms can be linked into “combos,” which simulate Exalted learning secret martial art maneuvers and trademark moves. Sorcery is a different animal entirely, split into three Circles, each aspected so that a certain kind of Exalted can use them. A Solar Exalted can use any of the three Circles, while a Terrestrial can only access the first. The sorcery of Exalted is of the ritual sort, and at least a few turns to perform, except for a few notable exceptions, such as a curse that would make a Prince of Amber proud. In an earlier review, I defended the high-powered magic of the Forgotten Realms as “Aberrant for Fantasy RPGs.” I was wrong: Exalted is Aberrant for fantasy RPGs, with none of the flaws that eventually led me to stop playing Aberrant.
As to the setting, it revolves around the Realm, or the Elemental Pole of Earth, which lies at the center of the map, so to speak. At each of the cardinal points of the map lie the other four poles, those of wood, fire, water and air. As one travels farther in those directions, they slowly slip out of the “real world” and into the elemental plane. This is a novel concept, to say the least, and colors a lot of the game world. Other hazards include the wild Fey waiting at the edges of creation, the Deathlords and their dead cities where mortal and ghost toil together, and the Threshold, where the political power of the Realm doesn’t always hold sway. All in all, the game’s setting runs the gamut from baroque to savage, with complex manners and lengthy titles holding sway in the Realm while the city of Nexus strives to make Mos Eisely look cozy. The setting doesn’t force the PCs into being hunted by the Dragon Blooded—there’s plenty of room to avoid the Wyld Hunt entirely, and areas and opportunities exist for the Solar Exalted to shine like they should. There is a slight metaplot element involving the struggle for the Empress’ Throne, but it’s easily avoided by not setting your game on the Blessed Isle. With the characters’ power level being what it is relative to other powers in the setting, I find it hard to believe a metaplot is going to drive the PCs, and not vice versa.
As a final note about the setting, it doesn’t actually seem to be the past of the World of Darkness. For those of you who want to avoid that baggage, the book nearly explicitly states that the World of Darkness is a future that the Exalted have “dodged.” There are some very tenuous ties between he various types of Exalted and the supernaturals of the WoD, but unless you really want to force them to fit, it’s a non-issue. I get the feeling that the game began as a possible past of the WoD, but in development that idea was discarded and only mildly heeded.
The rear of the book includes rules for weaponry, armor, opponents, and artifacts. The system for Manses, Demesnes, and Hearthstones seems overly jargon-filled at first, but is easily learned. Throughout the section on artifacts interesting setting touches abound, such as the use of the five materials sacred to the Exalted. As to whether or not rules exist to run the other breeds of Exalted (Lunar, Sidereal, Abyssal, and Terrestrial) the answer is yes, such rules exist for running other Exalted as NPCs, with tips on how to fudge the existing Solar Charms to work for them, as well as how to capture some of the flavor of their powers. In addition, there’s plenty of info on running the Fey, as well as info on the Spirit Courts and natural wildlife. Exalted is a fairly all-in-one game—I started a campaign last night, with just the rulebook.
My only complaint with the book, other than the numerous sentence errors, is that the Charms could’ve used some kind of summary page. There are a lot of them, and the “flavorful” names and lack of a universal resolution system make it hard to remember off the top of your head what they do. This is minor complaint, however—the lack of such a guide is hardly a showstopper.
In summary, White Wolf’s Exalted is a major step forward in their game design, and the attention paid to the mechanics and playtesting shows. Exalted is a truly different setting, operating on different principles and a different power level than anything I’ve seen. My players, who are all also in my D&D game, would’ve turned their noses up at anything remotely D&D like—we’re already playing that, after all. They embraced Exalted wholeheartedly. They stated that Exalted worked on a level D&D couldn’t touch, and it’s true—my original plan was to buy Exalted and to convert it to d20 for use in my D&D campaign, but there’s just no way to do Exalted justice. In a summer seemingly deluged with fantasy settings, it would be a shame to miss Exalted.
The Scoring:
Style: Exalted is a beautiful book, and despite the fact that I didn’t care for some of the art in places, it deserves a 5.
Substance: I paid the thirty bucks and I immediately started playing it, putting my plans for other games on hold. What more do I need to say that I haven’t said? It gets a solid, emphatic 5.
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