Product Review

Page Count: 350 - Hardback

“Before the Great Flood… Before the Mythic Ages… Before the Impergium… Before the Sundering… Before the Shattering… Even before your mother-in-law was born… Before there was a World of Darkness… There was something Else…”

This created a constant ticking in my head. What would the next White Wolf game be like? Well, knowing their penchant for taking up trends that are already there and turning them into sourcebooks and RPGs, this one would be surprisingly easy. Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior princess meet 1001 fantasy animé series/ ovas/ movies. European fantasy, classic myth and animé. A bizarre mix indeed. And yet, a profitable one, and more importantly for us, an interesting one.

Over the last few years, White Wolf’s World of Darkness has secretly delivered a message through its books. In the World of Darkness, time is cyclic. Exalted is set in another Era of the world, called Age of Sorrows, which may be before out time… or after it! And all that cosmology in Mage is also true in Exalted. The world wasn’t (or won’t be) round in that Age. And what sorts of characters will they players give life to? The original idea was to have all the Exalted in the core-book, but that was too extensive, so for now they have focused on the Solars.

So what are Exalted? They are beings set apart from their normal brethren. Beings of immense power, touched by the gods to set the wrongs to right. There are many kinds of Exalted. First are the Solars, the most powerful ones, those touched by the Unconquered Sun, these are the ones that are dealt with in the core-book. These are the ones we’ll play… for now. Then, there are the Lunar Exalted. These are beings akin to the shapechangers of the World of Darkness, and they reign supreme in the wilderness, as barbarians. Then you have the Sidereal Exalted, those that can divine the starts and make or unmake fates, akin, maybe, to the Mages we are familiar with.

Then, are the Terrestrial Exalted, or Dragon-Blooded, who betrayed the Solars and rule the world while hunting down the last ones of the true Chosen. The Dragon-Blooded have created a powerful empire called simply The Realm (they are next in line for Player Characters, as their book will be released soon). Finally, we have the Abyssal Exalted, beings of darkness that are best not be spoken of. So, for now, I’ll focus on the Solars.

Solar Exalted, as you will expect from any White Wolf game, are subdivided into factions. There are five castes, which the Solars can belong to. Each of them corresponds to a time of the day and to one character class. The Dawn Solar Exalted are the generals, the best among warriors, the mightiest champions. The Zenith are the warrior-priests, sort of like the clerics of other systems. The Twilight are scholars and crafts-persons. The Night are thieves and assassins, and finally the Eclipse are diplomats and travellers.

Until very recently, whenever one of them was discovered they were slain to prevent them from growing to powerful. Now, as the Empress of the Realm has disappeared, the Empire is close to a civil war, and can’t afford to hunt down every last one of the evil Solars. That’s right I said evil, The Realm’s religion teaches that Solars are infernal beings and refers to them as Anathema.

The Solars slowly gather power once again, but they have many foes. With immense powers, much like an Aberrant in the game with the same name, they fight a war to end the Sorrows of the Age.

The Setting is very exciting, second only, perhaps, to AEG’s 7th Sea. As the world is ruled by bizarre geographic principles, almost any environment is available in this world, as are there other dimensions, like the Shadowlands or Wyld places, where the laws of reality bend.

As for the system, the game uses the Revised Storyteller System (the one used in the Æon Continuum games) but it’s even more simplified. In Exalted, thanks to the system and some nice low-level powers, it is possible to toss handfuls of dice for an attack, and translate all those successes into damage dice, very bloody combat, and as such, very funny. This means that of all the games White Wolf makes, this has one of the most lethal combat systems, of course it’s pretty un-lethal compared to other games, like Cyberpunk or L5R.

On the other hand (to last one hit longer) you can buy health levels at character creation through a power called Ox-Body Technique so you can tip it back towards the near-immortality you get with most White Wolf games if you like.

I think this will be a hit for White Wolf, since it has everything that a game needs to be great. It’s also possibly the best game White wolf have made to date, because it’s sort of like all of the previous games they’ve made rolled into one. The system is the most simple of all, the setting encompasses everything. In short it’s a great game.

My only regret lies with the artwork, it’s pathetic. It hurts even more when you look at the “Making of Exalted” book and see the pictures that were rejected in favour of these lousy animé-style drawings. As Denis Leary would put it: “Sad, sad, sad.” Everything else though, is spectacular.

Before all of the other White Wolf games, proudly stands… Exalted.

Reviewed by Matías Timm