[Exalted: Dawn of Sorrows] Changing The World Without Attack Rolls

I’m glad to report that the Exalted campaign that I’ve picked up again seems to be going pretty well.  The players are happy, the plot is chugging along, and the Quixalted hack that Jarvis put together has made it easy for me to not think of GMing Exalted in terms of mechanics, but story.

I won’t have time to write up a full accounting of the things that happened in-game, since a lot of last weekend’s session were actually quite involved.  But the highlights of the game included:

• The arrival of Rvelasco‘s character V’Neef Astarte, the 7th child of V’Neef (and technically grandson of the Scarlet Empress) who, due to his mortal status was sent to Chiaroscuro to negotiate a marriage between the House V’Neef and the Tri-Khan’s niece.
• Cyrille Morning Star (Played by Silver Countess) furthers her plans, and is given the honor of becoming the Tri-Khan’s firstborn son’s tutor.  Also her brilliant move of sponsoring Hikkikomori’s character, Liu Bu, has started a trend among the wealthy and influential nobles to begin their own sponsorships and patronage of the arts.
• Liu Bu‘s brilliant Four Act Play, which extolled the virtues of man’s struggle against the impossible has been lauded as a brilliant work of art, vaulting Chiaroscuro’s art scene forward by several decades.  The resulting pride in the populace manifested as a +1 bonus to Valor related rolls of any troops native to Chiaroscuro.

Sure there were Stunts and Charms and flaring Anima Banners too, but I was surprised at how well the game went without a single attack roll.  I think if anything this particular session verified a quiet truth that I’ve been thinking about all this time:  Exalted’s setting is rich enough to sustain games that don’t involve high flying kung-fu.

This didn’t mean that everything was low-key.  In fact, this session pretty much puts Chiaroscuro into focus from all sorts of VIPs.  And the feats executed by the characters are starting to become the kind of stories that eventually pass into legend.  You don’t need to drop-kick a god to earn your stripes.  Creation is a setting that is hungry for heroes, and sooner or later, the setting will start changing to what the characters have been doing.

I’m very happy with how the game went, and I’m definitely looking forward to starting off with the various  consequences that will start rolling now that the players are now front and center.

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