TheKawaiiEdition

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Exalted: Kawaii Edition

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What is Exalted: Kawaii?

Exalted: Kawaii began as a gag cover done for a Photoshop thread on RPG.net. It has since been developed into a humorous variant of the standard Exalted setting with a much heavier anime slant (especially shoujo and harem shows). It should function both as something to laugh at and as a viable game setting for those of correctly twisted mentality.


The Setting

For a thousand years, Neo-Empress Scarlet stood astride the tide of history, directing Creation from the Scarlet Throne through her mastery of the Scarlet Crystal which gave her command over Area 51 (which was, amazingly enough, not actually Scarlet, but more of an off-mauve), the ancient defense system created by the now long-fallen Bishonen and their allies in the First Age, the Age of Harems, when the Bishonen constantly tried to date too many supernaturally powerful women at once. (It's no surprise, really, that the whole thing blew up on them, leading to their overthrow.)

But now, she has vanished, and Creation is falling into Chaos as its enemies rise up, and its defenders, the Magical Girls, turn on each other. It is a time that cries out for cute and cuddly heroes.


Charms

All the Exalted are elevated above the ickiness of the world on a fundamental level. Mundane problems such as infection, bleeding and disease are things they pay little heed to. But beyond that the thing which most elevates the Exalted above others is their Charms.

By channeling their Moe and declaring to the universe at large that they are simply too cute and cool to deal with a problem a problem the universe bows to their request and simply makes it go away. This process is referred to as Being Too Cute And Charming To Be Bothered, the act of convincing the universe that you are simply too special to be concerned with problems right now. Each Exalted has a different manner of going about this Charming process and some of these methods are more effective in certain situations than others. By developing a number of techniques in this regard, the Exalted can be so cute that they are unassailable and their every wish is granted.

The vast number of "Ways in Which I Am So Cute and Charming To Be Bothered" eventually got short-handed to "Charms" over the years. Mainly because nobody has to time to use the full title since their so busy developing new ones. Each sub-set of the Exalted has access to radically different Charms. The innate Moe of their nature allows them to develop only certain Charms in line with their personality and Fetishes. However their are certain rules which are universal to all of the Kawaii Exalted.


Infant Charms

These are the simplest and most straightforward of the Kawaii Charms. These Charms usually produce flashy effects that linger for no longer than an instant. The name for these Charms come from the fact that, for the time of their use, the user often appears as a smaller, child-like version of themselves.


Speech Charms

These Charms produce long term effects for the Exalt who uses them. They can be fairly powerful, but often requires the commitment of Moe to empower them. The only real limitation on these Charms is that they must be activated while the Exalted is giving a speech and posing. It is impossible to conceal this display and in fact attempting to do so negates the Moe invested. Only by declaring to the entire universe and all who are willing to see that you are, indeed, going to punish evil in the name of light, love and puffed pastries will you receive the blessing to do just that.

Thankfully you may use one speech and pose sequence to activate multiple Speech Charms. Of course, this often leads to the fact that, with elder Exalted, the pre-battle speech-making can take hours! Still there is nothing to do but bear with it. Interrupting another Exalted's speech is considered terribly impolite! Of course, there is nothing wrong with making certain your opponent can not start their speech-making. Duct tape is one of the most valuable commodities in the Scarlet Empire.


Subtle/Mental Charms

Sometimes it is best to use Charms that others aren't aware of. The category of Subtle Mental Charms was developed to fill this void. It allows a Kawaii Exalted to enforce their Moe without necessarily producing an extravagant display. Of course, these Charms are often of limited use compared to the more powerful Charms that everyone can see. Subtle/Mental Charms do produce the backbone of the Moe wielded by the Exalted, since using them is often easier then making a big fuss over everything.

Unless you want to make a big fuss. Otherwise these are no fun at all.


Re-Fun Charms

Even the most super Moe Exalted can be caught unawares and forced into a situation that is not fun at all. To prevent this, the concept of Re-Fun Charms was developed. These Charms allow the Exalt to respond to unfunny things after they have happened, spontaneously using Moe to make it fun again (and, incidentally, making them not dead in many cases). Re-Fun Charms are the primary reason why mortals can not challenge the Kawaii Exalted.


Marital Arts

Developed by the Helping Goddesses over the millennia, these Charms are universal among the Exalted. All Exalted may learn the Marital Arts, provided they can find a willing teacher (considering the training involved, this is often easier then it sounds, especially if you have a high Appearance score). Marital Arts are powerful Charms that allow a Kawaii Exalted to transcend their limitations. There most common limitation is that they can not be used with armor (or much in the way of clothing at all, really) and that they don't interact with most weapons well (except a few, such as the whip, the chain, the riding crop and so on).


Sorcery

In the beginning the Kawaii Exalted triumphed over the dark forces of Not Fun, looking them away in a universe of boring, uncute ickiness and phallic tentacles. In return for not killing them, the Exalted extorted certain demands from the Not Fun At All things, primary among them was the ability to call upon their powers in time of need. This process called "Summoning the Sore Losers To Me" was eventually short-handed to Sorcery.

All Exalts can learn Sorcery to one degree or another. But the deals struck with the Not Fun At All Things only allows certain Exalts access to certain groups of Not Fun At All Things, social group based on how popular and powerful the Not Fun is, known as Cliques. The Magical Girls, as the least of the Kawaii Exalted only had access to the relatively broad and encompassing (and thus weak) First Clique. The Catgirls and Helping Goddesses could call upon the more exclusive and awesome Second Clique and only the fabulous Bishonens could catch the attention of the super-exclusive and really awesomely powerful Third Clique.


The Splats

Bishonens

Solar Equivalents

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Bishonen


Catgirls

Lunar Equivalents

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Catgirls


Helping God(desse)s

Sidereal Equivalents

Helping Goddesses


Magical Girls

Dragon-Blooded Equivalents

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Magical Girls


Gothic Lolitas

Abyssal Equivalents

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Gothic Lolitas


Robot Girls

Alchemical Equivalents

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Robot Girls


Alien Prince(sse)s

Fair Folk Equivalents

Alien Princesses


Other Supplements

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EKE: Creatures of the Wyld


Game Fiction

Exalted Kawaii Fiction


Game Concept Conversion

Dream Combat

Wings system for Dream Combat can be found here.


Essence

Essence is called Moe.

Permanent Moe Side-effects:

  • 1: None, you are a mortal or animal.
  • 2: All Moe 2 beings belong to some sort of Splat, which serves as their first fetish.
  • 3: Every time you gain a point of Permanent Moe above 2, you gain an additional fetish.

Fetishes are, in this context, some sort of role or behavior which adds to your cuteness. You may start saying saying your name at the end of every sentence you speak, you may begin wearing some cutesy costume all the time, you may take on roles like 'nurse', 'witch', 'teacher', etc.

For example, Magical Nurse Witch Kana-chan is a Magical Girl with the roles of 'nurse' and 'witch', who always addresses everyone as (name)-chan, as if they were all small kids. She also wears an odd outfit which blends witch and nurse clothing. She has Moe 6. (four fetishes + her Magical Girl status)


Limit Breaks and the Great Curse

Hmm, trying to think of how all this should work. It definitely should involve Limit Breaking people turning Super-Deformed, I know that much, but I haven't figured out how it SHOULD work. (Though Bishonens definitely become more Angsty as their Limit builds...)


Going Superdeformed

Sometimes, the Exalted: Kawaii universe goes into pure comedy mode. Everyone shrinks and becomes a chibi-version of themselves. The Storyteller may declare a scene to be done in 'superdeformed' mode at the start, or any time something really funny happens.

During a Super-deformed scene, all damage done to non-Extras counts only as Bashing damage and will never kill anyone, just knock them out. Stunt bonuses are doubled so long as the stunt is funny. Storytellers are encouraged to allow extremely wild stunts like grabbing someone's words as they come out of their mouth and hitting them with them.

Once a scene goes super-deformed, it stays that way until either something really serious happens or enough people get tired of full-blown whacky mode.

Players may turn super-deformed even in a serious scene for a single turn by spending 1 mote. This is often used to whack someone upside the head with one's giant daiklaive for saying something stupid, in order to avoid killing them. NPCs may do this as well.


Mass Combat Rules

Mass combat rules have their own page.


Art Credits

Original Exalted Chibi Art by Melissa Uran.

Concept of Exalted Kawaii Edition and EKE and EKE: Catgirls art by Thomas T @ RPG.net

EKE: Robot Girls and EKE: Magical Girls art and EKE: Bishonens by JohnBiles.

EKE: Gothic Lolitas art by Greymane.

EKE: Creatures of the Wyld art by Leperunclean @ RPG.net.

I (John Biles) created my covers with the use of Generic Exalted Covers created by Melissa Uran. I have some of them stashed at http:/ if anyone wants to use them, since I've been told the links at her site don't work...

EKE World Map based on blank map from StephanLS@RPG.net's Exalted map site.


Downloads

Veav was kind enough to create a PDF of the rules (last updated early August 2006): Download Page.


Playtesting

Playtesting Page.


Comments

Jump to the Old Age Home For Exalted: Kawaii Comments

Hey, I have an Idea for the Limit Break ... Same as normal Exalted. When you act against your main Virtue, your limit break goes up. Also all Bishonens have times when they fail to be awesome that makes it go up. Kensai go up when they fail to seem brave and cool in combat. Stalwarts go up every time someone recks a great speech or something. So on and so forth. When the Limit hits 10, they drop to 0, and enter "Baka Break!!" They then smash people up based on Caste... Kensai would be all... "Gotta prove I am bad ass!" Stalwarts would be "Must show how uber sexy I am!" and again so forth... What do people think? -- Xaoc

Moved more comments to the Archival page. 5/28/06 -- JohnBiles


Gothic Lolita Charms are finished! At long last! Sorry for the wait, I hope it was worth it! Please look forward to......whatever I do next! --Wings

We could use a master list of the Lords of Cute Angst, and a thing on the Underworld. --JohnBiles
Sure, leave the Underworld to me. Or at the very least the Lords of Cute Angst, I'm already working on them. Just to confirm, we have five Lords so far, right? Mask of Vintners, the Dowager of Absurdist Literature for Children, Walker, Undead Ranger and my two originals, right? Anyway, I've finished my EKE "vacation", so I guess it's back to work now! --Wings
Also, the Bishop on the Landing, who I hadn't done a writeup of yet, but who is on the list of people/places by region up top on this page. And the Skeletal Lord, who rules the Skullstone Archipelago, who does have a brief writeup that I did today or maybe yesterday. --JohnBiles

Map of Exalted: Kawaii added. 5/31/06 -- JohnBiles


Well, there's definitely enough stuff for playtesting; I can't figure out where to link this in the main body of this page, so here's a link to the Playtesting Page.-- JohnBiles

Hooray, I did something! Download Page.-- Veav

Added some notes on Culture and Society and Anachronism --JohnBiles

So I was looking though the Wyld book recently and I was reminded about how the Pearl Court is ruled by a judge. Given the recent series of Lawyer centric Nintendo games, I suggest that the Kawaii version of this be the Court of the Ever Correct Phoenix, where vast legal battles between those who fight for truth and justice and those who will use any trick, any lie to win occur on an hourly basis. I haven't played the games, so I dunno how it should go, but I thought someone might find the idea useful --BrilliantRain

So, I'm in a newly formed gaming group that decided, among other games, to run a game of Kawaii Edition. I love this, it reads like an adorably cute and evil parody of the Exalted setting. Anyway, the GM wanted to use Craft Categories similar to the Second Edition ones, but the elemental categories weren't Kawaii enough. So between the two of us and a third person, we came up with the following categories. Thoughts on them? --KajaRainbow

  • Shiny - anything that gleams. Gems, metals, jewelry, glass, etc.
  • Soft - soft stuff. Leather, paper, hairdressing, flower arranging, clothes, etc.
  • Crunchy - harder, less shiny stuff. Stone, wood, pottery, bones, seashells, etc..
  • Juicy - liquid or edible stuff. Cooking, potions, poisons, etc.
  • Sketchy - work that's mostly design/visual. Drawing, painting, calligraphy, tattooes, manga (one of our Gothic Lolita PCs does manga though in a warped way).
   That's a really good set of ideas!  -- JohnBiles
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