Book Description: Epic Fantasy Reimagined It is an Age of Sorrows in a world of glorious ruin. While mortals toil and perish, Exalted heroes stride among the bones of a vast, long-forgotten empire, waging war for the destiny of all Creation. There is might, there is beauty, there is wonder, and there is death as well. This is the world of the Exalted.
A Core Rulebook for Exalted® * Updates and simplifies the Exalted rules, without making older supplements invalid * A slick-looking book with exciting combat inspired by anime, CCG and CRPG mechanics * Appeals to both young and hip anime fans and to fans of more traditional fantasy and mythology * An excellent one-book introduction to epic fantasy roleplaying
Feel the real power Just as the Japanese meld influences from Europe, the Americas and Africa into media (and Scotch!) that is uniquely Japanese, White Wolf has crafted a uniquely American RPG with vast influences from both Asian myth and pop-culture as well as Classical European mythology. The synthesis is nothing short of an amazing collaborative work of fiction.
The Fluff, as it were, is entirely engaging and as a fantasy series, and even bereft of the RPG mechanics, all the books are pretty fine reads. In Second Edition, not only have the mechanics gelled, but the backstory has matured as well. What White Wolf has laid out in this core book is a giant buffet of Fantasy and HiFi-sciFi that Storytellers can pick and choose what type of campaign they wish to play--whether it's taking down errant gods, swords and sorcery, or post-apocalyptic survival very similar to Gamma World, or a straight, in-canon campaign of Solar Exalted against the hated Scarlet Empire. Suffice to say there is an incredible amount to explore in the backstory and swaths will probably never be touched in the published materials.
Fluff aside, the mechanics of the game as presented in the core book show a long, hard road of playtesting and years of refining game rules. Somewhere in the early 90's there was a reason that White Wolf published the Street Fighter RPG: Exalted is that reason. The combat system is simply amazing, incorporating stunting (much like the Daedelus RPG, Feng Shui) which opens combat to the highest level of narrative, as well as an incredibly deep skill and charm system. The additions of Mass and Social combat round out what is one of the best combat systems for an RPG to date. Good stunts and on the fly imaginative play will always win out over the Min/Max (which in Exalted is mostly MAX), but there is plenty of depth for the Min/Max player to excruciatingly choose the best charms for the job of giving fatal beatings, tongue lashings or driving the armies of the Jade Dogs before them.
The book itself has held up very well over the last couple years and is very solidly produced. The physical size of it is simply intimidating. The art has taken a major step up over first edition, obviously due to the inclusion of color, but also moving away from the cartoonish anime style to a more hybridization of say Frazetta and Katsuya Terada.
The writing, while a bit dry in certain areas as is typical of RPG books, is extremely clear in it's presentation of both the rules and the backstory. The index is surprisingly useful and the inclusion of sidebars where White Wolf felt certain aspects of the rules needed clarification outside the narrative are all exceedingly helpful figuring out what can, at times, be quite complicated. The Storyteller section is not only essential reading for running a game, but a solid discourse on running a high-powered, pulpy RPG.
As for things that could have been done better, there are some typos as well as some flat out confusing mistakes here and there. References to splitting dice pools, a mechanic thankfully removed from the system with second edition, appear in the back half of the book.
Also the antagonists section, while touching on what's coming up in the new books, really doesn't help the fledgling storyteller as most are either far too powerful (Octavian the Living Tower), too localized (Gri-Fel the god of the Imperial City), or too abstract (The Fair Folk) to be easily fit into a starting campaign. I would have liked to see a chapter dedicated to Dragon Blooded antagonists and a full list for a sample Wyld Hunt because that's who typically will be getting the first fatal beatings in a vanilla campaign.
The lack of a starting adventure in a book this size was also confusing. White Wolf released a free module for the game on release, but the module itself breaks the cardinal rule set forth in the Storyteller section of the book--start with a bang! With a set of mechanics and background this large, it's a bit intimidating for a new storyteller to know where to begin.
Bottom line, this is an amazing start to what I expect will be a long and healthy product line for White Wolf and an incredible world for players to explore. More importantly, Exalted is triumph in RPG system design that fits perfectly with the high powered background.
exalted 2 is good like exalted 1 you might be apprehensive about switching over from 1st edition, but if the hollidays are coming get your friends to buy you the 2nd edition core. they've cleaned up a lot of problems, both in the setting and the mechanics, granted they've added a handful of new problems, but that was to be expected.
Exalted a different type of RPG I haven't personally played too many White Wolf games but I have played 3rd Edition D&D a lot so I liked the fact in this game that I started out beefy instead of a character who could easily be killed off. I think the style is also very different from D&D in that its pulling more from Eastern style medieval period instead of the European one typical in D&D. Most impressive to me was how they did mass combat rules an item that doesn't typically occur much in other RPGs. My issues with this book is that it can be hard to find particular rules at times and some rules aren't entirely fleshed out enough that we've spent about 30 minutes debating on how a rule should work. The other issue is that this book gives you the entire background to the world which players themselves shouldn't always have because this book tries to be a combination of a GM and Players handbook. Overall, its has been a very enjoyable game to me and I would recommend any D&D player give it a chance.
A must-have if you're in an Exalted campaign, but . . . I have to say, I really don't like the way White Wolf structures their content. I would prefer to have more sidebars, tables and the like, as a lot of often-referenced rules and such are buried in the text, and the index is less than helpful. Also, the way they word a lot of the rules is somewhat imprecise, and leaves things open to interpretation. They need a good content editor and someone to make the material more accessible to first-time White Wolf gamers. All in all, it's a solid product, the illustrations are nice and the layout looks very professional. Handle with care though, the binding doesn't seem to be all that strong.
Nice Update to Exalted Better than the first edition. Great for a new Exalted player. Worth getting if you have first edition.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
