Hunter (WoD)

[Spriggan]

woh Jeffe WW says in the Stroy Tellers companion that it is.  Of course they day, oh well it may not turn out that way depending on how you play.  And that those who don't want to use Exalted as a prehisotry of the WoD can ignore Exalted.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

The idea was to take what they did best and combine them into an Anime influenced mythological RPG that took elements from their successful games and created a new and seperate idea from it. Remember there is no equivelent of the Solar Exalted or the Dragon blooderd at all in the WOD.
Its as real to the WOD as Gilgamesh, Odyssey, Troy and the Illiad are to us ie. not very.
Abyssals for instance arn't vampires or wraiths, they are corrupted Solar Exalted who are in service to the Deathlords.  

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I remember it saying that it was one possibility where the weaver went crazy but I also remember it say that it was not specifically the WOD. The theme in Exalted is one of hope, not one of bleak darkness. WW execs have been quoted on a few sites as saying that the Exalted world will not end up as the WOD.

[Spriggan]

Just because there's no equilivant to all the Exalted in WoD dosn't mean anything Jeffe.  For all we know they all get killed off by something else, or loose their powers a the change to a new age of man.  Also I remeber reading in one of their other books about Exalted being the prehisotry of WoD, if I find it I'll post that book too.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Ok, and I'll find the quotes from the guys at the company where they say it isnt the prehistory and then we'll be at an impass again.

[Spriggan]

I just take WW's squimining at the topic a way to try and not make the WoD fans mad, supposedly a lot of people were mad a WW with Exalted hinting at (in the first book) that it was the WoD's prehistory.  They shouldn't have printed missleading things if they didn't want people to think that, nor should they have used WoD mythos in Exalted.

So basicly this leaves us at two places:
1) Exalted is the prehistory of WoD, and WW is trying to calm upset fanboys.

2) They didn't think Exalted would sell, so they added info to make it linked to WoD in some way so fans of WoD would buy it.

I don't buy the whole "Exalted could or couldn't be the world that lead up to WoD.  It's your choice."  Exalted is too well of a designed setting to not have WW decide one way or the other at the time of it's design.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I don't know why you can't buy it, in fact I think its pretty shrewd.
Either way it doesn't matter much, does it. If it is the WOD prequal what does it matter, there are no exalted anymore, things happened so long ago that you miught get a raised eyebrow from a diehard fan but thats it, the rules between the two set of games are different enough to make it pretty difficult or at least painstaking for the storyteller to change things around.
If its not the prehistory then again no one really cares, it doesn't affect what you plan to do in the story.
Again the prehistory is as relevent to the WOD as Gilgamesh is to us.

[Spriggan]

Oh and about Scavenger Sons, I would go about talking how great that book is.  It's very disapointing on every subject.  When you make a book about a certain reagion don't go about trying to cover every other place in the world before you get to that region.  The povided information is so lacking in deatails that it's practicaly impossible to use the book for anything but a brief desciption on Nexus.  Check that, make it a VERY brief description of Nexus.  When someone buys a region info book you want details on that region, not a half page summery on each of the areas.  You want maps (don't give descriptions of areas not on any map out for the game), poltics, economy, stats (don't talk about all the monsters in an area then not give stats for them).

Scavenger Sons is a clear example of WW trying to push out second rate material quiclky to make a quick buck.

I don't care wich way it was intended to be (I don't care for WoD games, infact I'm proud that I don't play them or own any of the books), but I do think WW is being cynical not shrude.  Can't have it both ways.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I personally think you just want to hate ww stuff, and just love palladium stuff. Thats ok by the way. I hate palladium stuff and like WW stuff for pretty much the same reasons. Is storyteller for everyone, no, of course it isn't. You'd have to threaten me at gunpoint to play any Palladium game again (even robotech). The truth is White Wolf has almost never done what you want in any of their worldbooks. Never done a map of New York, or San Franciso, or the Warrens under the Space Needle. Its never been their style to ruin a game by making it that concrete and I woudn't expect them to start changing that formula now. Knowing how they work, I was very happy with the product.  I didn't want any of the standard maps and monster writeups to be baggage for my exalted game. Maybe I just got tired of players sneaking a peak at the product and knowing that Hari's swordmart is next to the inn they need to break into to steal the precious emerald of Sera. When I do a game I want to do all of the mapping (if im doing it at all) and plot work on my of. I just wanted to know why,... say Gem was different from Nexus what the feel of the place is.  I wanted a world summery with a few paragraphs about one place so I can do more with it.  The book was designed to do just that, and did it very well describing it in a storyteller kind of way and not a hard stat kind of way. Playing a game of Exalted isn't like playing D&D where every passage is mapped out and every trap is set down on paper. A trip in a maze is handled with roleplaying and built into the plot so its not a random execise in hitpoint re-allocation. Its about the story that you make not a set of rules more like a play or a movie than an exercise in dice rolling. Thats where storyteller gets fun, and I've found where its more social than other games. Its why fudging roles works and why the golden rule of Storyteller is change it if you don't like it.
Its why I still own Vampire, and Wraith and Changling, Exalted, Trinity and Mage, long after I have stopped playing them, and why tomorrow I could over to Game Parlor, put up a card and have 20-50 players call me to game. Its a good game, and thousands of people wouldn't play it if they didn't think it was good.

[Mr_Pleasington]

No need to get angry, Jeffe, Sprig is making some valid points.

I own quite a bit of Exalted material and the designers have stated for the record that it can or can't be the pre-WOD.  They put more emphasis on the negative there.  However, I still have books that have the teasers in them that read "Before the World of Darkness..." and such.  Before the game was released it was pimped out as the pre-WOD.  So you're both right.

I like Scavenger Sons.  It's the equivalent of a D&D gazeteer...lots of broad info on different areas so the GM can get a feel for things.  I'm kind of glad its not more detailed as it leaves more room for GMs to put in their own stuff.  

So far, all the hardbacks and the majority of softbacks are good.  That statement excludes the splatbooks though which are, and always will be, crap.

I just wish it had a better system...

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Im not angry. Just trying to explain my position. Did I sound angry?

[Eagle Prince]

I wonder if anyone else finds it hypocritically ironic that they're denying it when there are more similarities than in the movie they're trying to win the lawsuit against.

*innocent look*

lol

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I just want to point out that any game that gives me maps and stats is going to be easier for me to integrate, and I'm not going to feel pined to it. A lot of people feel pinned by games that do this, but frankly, that's hardly a problem with the system: it's their own perceptions. If I have maps I have more to choose to use or ignore, and a launching point for alterations: all of which mean more options and less time I have to use to prepare.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

The system isn't designed around maps though, a lot of games you play like D20 are effectively miniature games with skills, Storyteller isn't like that, all their main books prime their players and GM to play a different way than traditional RPG's. Locations in storyteller are set pieces, and not concrete, so instead of giving you a map of club such and such they tell you about people there, the mysterious back room and let you go from there. They also teach you how to describe it so mapping isn't important. Monsters and opponents in WOD and other WW games are so easy to make that you just do it. Not that the games are designed to be battles against monsters. Social interaction and the story is more important. Its a different style of game.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

People are still gonna ask where things are. It's nice to know that. Yes, it's one thing to make it all up on the fly, it's another to not have to because a lot of it is planned. If you have those plans, you can still ignore them, but you have the OPTION of using them. More options = better.