TwelveEssays/PartI

Setting Characters and Player Characters

For my first installment of TwelveEssays, I think I should try and tackle the latest issue (thanks to Aspect Book Wood), the quality and purpose of characters in Exalted supplements. Although quality has always been a concern with sample Exalted NPCs, I hope to share my insights on how characters are used by Exalted writers, and why it needs to be improved.

Exalted characters come in two brands, Setting Characters, and Player Characters. Not all the characters in Exalted manage to meet the lofty goal of being a great example for the players, and I think most people will be able to find a character in the books whose value as an example suffers for focusing too much on the seting, and not enough time spent on ensuring that it is the kind of character you would like to see your player make.

I'm talking about the castebooks. Setting Characters are just fine in most of the books, but not so great in a book that focuses on the characters, because the players are going to look at those books for a hint as to what they should be playing. If you put a character that doesn't have any personality into a castebook, who isn't capable of positive action (that is, having a goal, and pursuing it), then that's a bad example to be setting for the players.

Here, if nowhere else, we should have characters that are exemplars of the Exalted. Save your scapegoat mind-eaten exalted slave for another book, like one on the fair folk where it can be a minor character instead of the focus. Exalted shouldn't focus on a gimmick or your chance to make a character with the Master Sword, but on goals and the unique plans a character has to carry out those goals.

Unfortunately, it looks like we won't be seeing castebooks for 2.0, which leads me to believe that it's possible we never saw eye-to-eye on the purpose of castebooks to begin with. We will see a Guide to the Realm instead of aspectbooks, which means that it's even more imperative that there not be many setting characters in 2.0. However, we might see another player's guide, and it's possible there might be information on choosing your goal in the corebook, instead of the example we have now which focuses mainly on the fact that there's this guy that has swords and he has a specialty in those swords.