Exalted: the Pitch
In Exalted the players take the role of heroic figures empowered by Gods, Daemons, and Primordials. The story follows their exploits as they discover and develop their powers and the inevitable fallout of their appearance.
Characters
More than possibly any other RPG, the plot will be driven by the PCs and their personalities/motivations, as their power makes them capable of significantly shifting the order of Creation. For this reason, more thought than usual needs to go into character concept. Also a ‘build’ is nowhere near as important as the character’s personality.
You are of course welcome to ignore this advice, but the game is made to revolve around the characters personalities and goals (ie there is no starting campaign plot included in the book) and you will find yourself constantly second-chairing to those who are more involved.
There would be no restriction on what you can play; I will incorporate any concept that is presented to me. I have played in parties which included (pretty much) Goku, Iron Man, Aang, Queen Victoria, Voldemort, Matt Cauthon, Edward Elric and Buffy, and the rules/setting supported it.
This is not the time to give an experimental character a whirl, or to make a generic . This is the time to play the character you always wanted to fully realise, but which the rules never permitted.
Give no thought to what kind of exaltation you want, I will be assigning one based on your concept.
Setting
The Exalted setting is immense and varied. It is a ‘fantasy’ setting with feudal Japanese/Chinese/Roman Empire influences + Small sections of ‘Creation’ make up more territory than Earth’s entire surface. Every race, monster and civilisation you can imagine is present, so again there is no limit on concept, your exalted does not have to be a human. The tone is of an ‘epic’, but this should not be mistaken as meaning cartoonish. Exalted is grim enough to satisfy even GW loyalists like us; the Iliad/the Odyssey/the Wheel of Time/Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon/Journey to the West are by no means comedies.
Rules
General consensus is that the standard book needs lots of house ruling/loose interpretation and there are whole books full of errata. The basic mechanics are great but beyond that they get messy. I will be ignoring a lot of it. You’re welcome to look into the rules if you want, but what I run may bear little similarity to that and you may be wasting your time. I would employ a highly simplified version for beginners.
I would do a warm-up session with you where we make characters, introduce the setting and learn the basics in play.