[Exalted] Spectating replacing interaction?
intorporeal:
I will preface this by saying that I have only played in 3 Exalted games (all 2e), 2 by the same ST, and none lasted very long.
Exalted is a pretty awesome, and extremely elaborate and intricate game, with an astounding level of detail in the setting. So, why do I seem to never have fun when I play it?
To me, it comes down to who is on stage. In my opinion, any RPG should be about the player characters. After all, they are called "players" not "spectators." And yet, somehow, every Exalted game I play in becomes more of a theatrical display (complete with sitting quietly for an hour or more and watching as some series of events happen in front of you) than an interactive story. I think a lot of this must be caused by the people that I play with (all 3 games I have played in have had variously overlapping players and STs), but I don't believe that is the whole cause. It seems to me that there must be something in the system that not simply allows but actually encourages this style of game.
In addition, there seems to be something about the game (perhaps it's a white wolf thing in general, or perhaps it's just a "feature" of the people I play with) which encourages individualism over team-player-ism. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I like games which encourage team play.
A few quick examples:
In our current game (we are all solars), one character is a member of the immaculate order, while another is a high-ranking member of a cult dedicated to a god of assassins. Somehow (we only discovered this recently and don't actually know how) the assassin player was living in a manse which was simultaneously a shadowlands. My character, an aspiring necromancer, was excited, but through a very quiet side scene, the player of the immaculate sent several monks to the assassin's manse and attempted to have it cleansed, leading to a major rift in the party (i.e. all of us further disliking the immaculate, who had regularly been suffering from "paladin syndrome"Again in our current game, we recently attempted to assert our authority over the local spirit court, situated in the nearby forest. The spirit court had an ambassador they sent into our city, which gained an audience with the king. There was a lengthy scene involving the the spirit and the court, observed in character by two players who stealthed in, and out of character by the rest of us. The scene took about half an hour, and nothing happened. The end result was that the spirits were, in fact, entirely innocuous pushovers not trying to take advantage of the situation (as we expected they would), leaving us all with no real direction after a scene in which no one was engaged but managed to influence the course of action for the entire session.In our most infamous example, and for the very first game I played in, the ST insisted that the game would be run "in real time," insisting that it be critical that the players get together to play regularly, otherwise the plot would simply leave them behind. He had taken a series of in game events, and mapped them onto a calendar, such that the events happened on the date that they happened, and if for whatever reason we had to reschedule the game for a different time, then we would just miss the major plot event. Oh well.
Has anyone else experienced issues with this trend of sidelining interaction in favor of spectatorism, in this game or any others? Or is it more likely an artifact of the people that I've been playing with, and not the game itself?
masqueradeball:
I don't think the phenomena your describing Exalted play in general. I've played my fair share of the game and never experienced the problem your talking about, and by the book, your ST is doing it "wrong" in terms of not following the advice the game gives about running Exalted games. Just out of curiosity, what was your (or the other players) character's Motivations.
intorporeal:
My character in our current game has the motivation: "Eliminate the suffering of the innocent"
My character in the "real time" game (which was my first character, and thus not very well conceived) had the motivation: "Get my House in charge of the Blessed Isle" (note: i joined mid-campaign, and was a lone dragon blood immaculate amongst solars, at the ST's suggestion. it didn't go well)
I don't necessarily think that this is a unique phenomenon to Exalted, it is simply where I have seen it the most. I've also encountered this in a Demon The Fallen game (which overlapped heavily in players with all of the Exalted games) as well as a Mage The Awakening game (which has no overlap with any of the Exalted games... besides me).
Perhaps moreso than encouraging sidelining players for NPC spectacles, it seems like the various White Wolf games encourage party division. Not necessarily party conflict, but simply splitting the party, where one or two people will go off to resolve one scene while everyone waits around, and then one or two other people will go off and resolve the next scene while everyone waits, and so on.
oculusverit:
As someone who ran an Exalted game for two years that had people very satisfied, I don't think it's something inherent in the system. It's true that White Wolf games in general do not in and of themselves encourage team play in many of their games, however, Werewolf and Exalted have always been an exception (Werewolf with its pack mentality where everyone supports everyone else, and Exalted with its idea that you're all alone, hunted against a world that hates you so you have to band together and make a Circle).
The Exalted game I ran had a pretty basic set up, three players and me, with a Zenith, a Twilight, and a Night caste all drawn together. I set the game in the West, so they were on board ship or on remote islands a lot of the time, and that made it very easy for them to stick together for the first few stories of the game. After that, they were so used to working together that if they did split up, they'd come right back together... I would also cut back and forth between scenes (ex: (to the Zenith:) "All right, you've managed to follow the spy back to the home of the cult, meanwhile, what are you doing back at the tavern? (to the Night caste).) They also would get together and have planning sessions before splitting up so they all had goals that served the same purpose.
So yeah, I'd blame the GM and/or other players for that attitude. I don't think it's intrinsic to Exalted.
oculusverit:
One more thing to add: the only beef I ever had about Exalted was that the combats always took me so...freakin'... long. I never did figure out a way around that, people would get drowsy as we attempted to finish either an epic battle or a minor skirmish in a tavern.
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