Mar 12
Graduate To Exalted…Ugh
So I am suppose to be writing my Iron Heroes session, for this weekend, and I was skimming my RSS feeds, and saw my fellow GM-Fu Master, and blogger Zach has posted an article about White Wolf’s offer to Graduate to Exalted. Graduated? I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
It’s not that I am a White Wolf hater, because I played a rather successful Vampire campaign back in the late 90’s. You know the 90’s when White Wolf was cool, new and hip. Back when Pearl Jam was considered cool (though not by me..but that is a different rant). I was never a big fan of the rules system, but the artwork and production quality of their rule books, elevated the entire industry.
Back to the word Graduated…and that taste of bile clinging to the back of my throat. Graduated means to move to the next level, and implies that movement is forward. I find it hard not to laugh about “graduating” to Exalted, a game that is based on the same rules-set that was invented back when TSR was making 2nd edition Splat Books. In the time that White Wolf invented the pool of d10’s and rating stats using little dots, Dungeons & Dragons has underwent 2.5 evolutions in rules.
Now you may or may not like d20 or Dungeons & Dragons, but at least the rules have grown over the years to reflect newer gaming designs. In addition d20 launched numerous gaming companies and inspired several adapted rule systems (Spycraft, Mutants and Masterminds, Blue Rose/True 20).
What has White Wolf done? Not much in my opinion. White Wolf’s rule system is like McDonalds. I was in Paris a few years ago, and wandered into a McDonalds. My French is poor, but it took me less than a minute to find my favorite Value Meal and order it. Why? Because there is no difference in the core of every McDonalds, from Manhattan to Paris, its the same damn restaurant.
Same is true for White Wolf. No matter what rule book you read, you know just what you are going to get. There are going to be a bunch of d10’s; there are going to be dots; there are going to be some kind of clan/set/group; and some kind of supernatural powers tied to the clan/set/group. Yawn. That was cool, when I was reading my rulebooks while watching Melrose Place.
Janet Jackson said it best, when I ask White Wolf, “what have you done for me lately?” Seriously you re-launched your entire World of Darkness setting, and kept that same rule system. Come on, go to the Forge and read some gaming theory and update that sad, old system. I am not saying make it d20, though Monte did some interesting things with it, but look at some innovative systems out there, like Burning Wheel, and expand those horizons.
But please what ever you do, don’t tell me that switching from D&D 3.5 to Exalted is Graduating. It’s more like I am being left back.
Here ends the rant.
5 Comments so far
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You say that White Wolf is still using the same system just because they are still using rolls of multiple d10s? Or that there will be a group of whatevers who have their own splat of supernatural powers? If thats your basis for what defines a system, then DnD is still using the same system it was in the ’70s as it still uses primarily a d20 roll. Oh and classes? Gosh, we’ve had classes all along too, must be the same game. Yep, same dice being used, same game, yep.
*eye roll*
Have you stopped for five, or even ten minutes and read the rules for Exalted? The second-by-second combat rules or the in depth social combat rules? I’m not saying I agree with their marketing campaign and the term “graduating” but I think you were overly harsh on WW. But you have to admit it has gotten people’s attention and as they say “Any publicity is good publicity.”
Colin thanks for the comments. I usually don’t rant, but WW is a favorite hot button of mine. In any case you do bring up some good points and I wanted to respond to some of them.
I will admit that I have only flipped through my friends copy of Exalted. But it only took me a few seconds to figure out that it was the White Wolf system. The core White Wolf system has not undergone a rules revision as far as I can remember.
What gets me about WW is that no matter the setting, no matter the time period, there are always “Clans” and “Powers” that go with the clans. Even in Hunter, where everyone is human, they went with “Clans”. And The Clans always like some clans and hate others.
I played Vampire for some time, and I the Clans worked there, but WW will jam that system into anything. Would it hurt them to break from the Clan system for one game?
To say that D&D is the same from the blue box to today is not as accurate. Are there classes? There are. Is there a d20? There is. But in the case of D&D, there have been a few major rule revisions over the years. The biggest one we have seen, so far, is from 2e to 3e. In that case, things like THACO tables were removed, Saving throws change from the old Breath Weapon, etc, to Ref/Fort/Will. Armor Classes changed, from lower is better in, 2e to higher is better in 3e.
So while a lot of D&D is the same, the core mechanics have evolved with time. 4e looks to be the next evolution of the rules, and will be a marked difference from 3e.
I don’t think you can say the same things about the White Wolf system from the first Edition of Vampire through Exalted.
Phil, here’s the trick: In WW’s games, the structure of the game is that the setting contains a significant amount of the actual material in form of factions that are in conflict with each other. Kind of like D&D’s structure is that player characters work as a unified party such that the abilities of the party members complement each other and go on quests for the good guys against the bad guys.
Both of the above can be broken and are broken. They are, nevertheless, the base assumptions the games are built around.
The stuff about armour class and rolling d20 and adding or rolling a pool of d10 or whatever are details around that structure. They are very important details, of course, but still details.
If you to say that one line of games has remained stagnant and the other changed, compare them on the same levels. The details of both lines have changed significantly, the structure remained largely the same.
Tommi…welcome back, and thanks for joining in on the discussion. To answer some of your comments…
I guess for me where I feel that WW has gone stale is that since the 90’s I really have not had to learn a different set of rules to play one of their games.
Sure the settings are different, and I agree with the type of stories that the WoD and other WW products create, the Factions are a good mechanism for built-in conflict.
What annoys me about WW is that I have not played Vampire since 1999, but I can grab any WW book and in seconds, find the factions, find the powers, etc. When they announced a new version of WoD, I was excited to see them gut the rules, and incorporate some more modern gaming mechanics and theories. But in the end the new Vamp book was more of setting reboot than a mechanical upgrade. Which is what WW wanted to do.
But to go back to my original argument, I think it is a bit arrogant of WW to insinuate that Exalted is a step up from D&D, when D&D has made serious efforts to improve its game mechanics.
I am not really a WW hater, but there is an Apple-like attitude that WW zealots have, that puts me into rant mode. That add for Exalted trigged that reflex.
The “graduation” probably was a publicity stunt. It worked.
Personally, I am no fan of WW (or of WotC, for that matter). Both create generally functional games. Both tend to improve them with new editions. New WoD is smoother than the old one. It’n not a paradigm shift as the editions of D&D have been to some amount.