Back when Exalted was first released, the White Wolf forums pretty much sucked, so RPGNet became the default Exalted forum. There were tons of great threads on the game.

I honestly think the release of 2e is what killed the game for many people. I was a huge fan of 1e up until the Lunars book, which was just trash. Exalted also began to get way too over-explored as time went on, which also hurt it's standing.

Quote from: Benoist;612136Not indy forgey enough, probably. 'Needs moar metagame edgy mechanics, dude.'

No, just shitty, shitty system that really isn't designed to handle that sort of scale, and piles ever-increasing complexity upon itself.

Quote from: Kiero;612525No, just shitty, shitty system that really isn't designed to handle that sort of scale, and piles ever-increasing complexity upon itself.

Mechanical, I don't think Exalted does one thing right. The combat system was clunky and slow, the crafting rules were not well thought out, the artifact system was inspiring, but not equal to in value, the magic system was not worth investing, the martial arts system was either too good or not worth investing, the social conflict system didn't have teeth and was rather boring, the emotional traits didn't really have a point and the game required buckets of dice. The game failed on every account.

Oh, let's not even bring up how long it took to make an NPC.

I ran a three-year-long Exalted campaign using the game's 1st Edition, and ended it just after 2nd Edition arrived.  It's a good thing that I did because the mechanics were already starting to strain, as was the setting premises, and that was with just one Perfect Brotherhood of Dragon-Blooded Dynasts (and a Sidereal PC who tried very, very hard to stay under cover; he provided much comic relief).  Had things gone on, as I intended, the follow-up would have broken both elements within a year.

Second Edition did little to allay my concerns, so I sat out this edition, and now I am cautious about this new Third Edition.  I really want to see folks that know statistics, probability, etc. hammering away at the forge of mechanical design while economists, geographers, geologists, religious scholars, occultists, martial artists, philosophers and so on all contribute their expertise.  (Graduate students and top-tier undergraduates are cheap and good enough in terms of expertise.)

I want a business manager planning the releases NOW.  I want that man to be able to clearly, concisely answer questions like "What is the expected buy-in?", "What is your new user acquisition strategy?" and "What is your user retention strategy?" with things like "Players spend $30 and buy one boxed set.", "A marketing campaign aimed at college-aged young adults who fit both the Classics-familiar and the Anime/Wuxia-familiar demographics, w/ a gameplay experience that replicates the key features of both sources." and "We've signed a contract with the RPGA to launch a Living Creation Campaign, where participating players will influence future product releases by their gameplay results at major conventions over the fiscal year."

In other words, I want a fucking serious business approach.  Show me.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;612530I ran a three-year-long Exalted campaign using the game's 1st Edition, and ended it just after 2nd Edition arrived.  It's a good thing that I did because the mechanics were already starting to strain, as was the setting premises, and that was with just one Perfect Brotherhood of Dragon-Blooded Dynasts (and a Sidereal PC who tried very, very hard to stay under cover; he provided much comic relief).  Had things gone on, as I intended, the follow-up would have broken both elements within a year.

Second Edition did little to allay my concerns, so I sat out this edition, and now I am cautious about this new Third Edition.  I really want to see folks that know statistics, probability, etc. hammering away at the forge of mechanical design while economists, geographers, geologists, religious scholars, occultists, martial artists, philosophers and so on all contribute their expertise.  (Graduate students and top-tier undergraduates are cheap and good enough in terms of expertise.)

I want a business manager planning the releases NOW.  I want that man to be able to clearly, concisely answer questions like "What is the expected buy-in?", "What is your new user acquisition strategy?" and "What is your user retention strategy?" with things like "Players spend $30 and buy one boxed set.", "A marketing campaign aimed at college-aged young adults who fit both the Classics-familiar and the Anime/Wuxia-familiar demographics, w/ a gameplay experience that replicates the key features of both sources." and "We've signed a contract with the RPGA to launch a Living Creation Campaign, where participating players will influence future product releases by their gameplay results at major conventions over the fiscal year."

In other words, I want a fucking serious business approach.  Show me.

Flat out: You will be disappointed and should not buy third edition.  

That is simply such an incomprehensible goal for a company the size of Onyx Path right now that you are doomed to disappointment.  I also think "(Graduate students and top-tier undergraduates are cheap and good enough in terms of expertise.)" shows a deep, abiding ignorance of the economic realities of 99% of game companies out there.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;612530I want a business manager planning the releases NOW.  I want that man to be able to clearly, concisely answer questions like "What is the expected buy-in?", "What is your new user acquisition strategy?" and "What is your user retention strategy?" with things like "Players spend $30 and buy one boxed set.", "A marketing campaign aimed at college-aged young adults who fit both the Classics-familiar and the Anime/Wuxia-familiar demographics, w/ a gameplay experience that replicates the key features of both sources." and "We've signed a contract with the RPGA to launch a Living Creation Campaign, where participating players will influence future product releases by their gameplay results at major conventions over the fiscal year."

In other words, I want a fucking serious business approach.  Show me.

Side question:
Given that, presumably, you can still run any game you want with your group and run it however y'all decide, why do you care about all this business-end and target-demographic stuff?

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;612530I want a business manager planning the releases NOW.  I want that man to be able to clearly, concisely answer questions like "What is the expected buy-in?", "What is your new user acquisition strategy?" and "What is your user retention strategy?" with things like "Players spend $30 and buy one boxed set.", "A marketing campaign aimed at college-aged young adults who fit both the Classics-familiar and the Anime/Wuxia-familiar demographics, w/ a gameplay experience that replicates the key features of both sources." and "We've signed a contract with the RPGA to launch a Living Creation Campaign, where participating players will influence future product releases by their gameplay results at major conventions over the fiscal year."

In other words, I want a fucking serious business approach.  Show me.

Do you expect this from any other publishers?

Quote from: Future Villain Band;612534Flat out: You will be disappointed and should not buy third edition.

Likely so.

QuoteThat is simply such an incomprehensible goal for a company the size of Onyx Path right now that you are doomed to disappointment.  I also think "(Graduate students and top-tier undergraduates are cheap and good enough in terms of expertise.)" shows a deep, abiding ignorance of the economic realities of 99% of game companies out there.

I'm tired of hearing this whine.  If you're good enough to figure out how to work around the collapse of traditional publishing, then you're good enough to figure out how to work around the other economic issues out there.  (If not, then get the fuck out and go back to your day job.)

You can get this work done for free.  Contact a public university.  You'll find that a lot of them now offer Independent Studies.  That's the alternative to the traditional Internship, and this is how you get that shit done.  The deal is much like an internship in that you're trading work experience that matters in return for the student's availability and expertise.  The catch is that you've got to get the school to sign off on it, and you've got to revise expectations to fit the student's schedule--it's part-time at best, only during the term (semester, etc.) and the student is not treated like an employee; he's doing consulting work, not flunky work--but as more public institutions are opening to Independent Study (especially in graduate work) this sort of thing will be more commonplace (likely in addition to an internship over the summer).

Seriously, this is not hard to do anymore.  For fuck's sake, a goodly amount of useful and relevant information can be had even cheaper and easier just by making proper fucking use of Wikipedia and hitting up the local university libraries now and again.  If you're going to do like Barker--and Exalted does, to a significant degree--then its on the designer and publisher to do that heavy lifting well before it goes to press.  I don't give a fuck that it takes time or effort; this ain't pre-transmedia time anymore- either you have a full fucking plan, and you make use of all this expertise lying about going unused, or you go fucking home.

Christ.  Only in TRPGs is anything like this looked at askance.  Cloning D&D is something doable on the cheap like that.  This?  Fuck no.  There is no longer any successful not-D&D TRPG (much less a fantasy game) that doesn't require a metric fuckload of useful research and development.  I don't give a fuck what their size is, or their finances, or whatever the bitchfest is this week: this is what is required now, so either put up or shut up- success is for closers.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;612543I'm tired of hearing this whine.  If you're good enough to figure out how to work around the collapse of traditional publishing, then you're good enough to figure out how to work around the other economic issues out there.  (If not, then get the fuck out and go back to your day job.)

You can get this work done for free.  Contact a public university.  You'll find that a lot of them now offer Independent Studies.  That's the alternative to the traditional Internship, and this is how you get that shit done.  The deal is much like an internship in that you're trading work experience that matters in return for the student's availability and expertise.  The catch is that you've got to get the school to sign off on it, and you've got to revise expectations to fit the student's schedule--it's part-time at best, only during the term (semester, etc.) and the student is not treated like an employee; he's doing consulting work, not flunky work--but as more public institutions are opening to Independent Study (especially in graduate work) this sort of thing will be more commonplace (likely in addition to an internship over the summer).

Seriously, this is not hard to do anymore.  For fuck's sake, a goodly amount of useful and relevant information can be had even cheaper and easier just by making proper fucking use of Wikipedia and hitting up the local university libraries now and again.  If you're going to do like Barker--and Exalted does, to a significant degree--then its on the designer and publisher to do that heavy lifting well before it goes to press.  I don't give a fuck that it takes time or effort; this ain't pre-transmedia time anymore- either you have a full fucking plan, and you make use of all this expertise lying about going unused, or you go fucking home.

Christ.  Only in TRPGs is anything like this looked at askance.  Cloning D&D is something doable on the cheap like that.  This?  Fuck no.  There is no longer any successful not-D&D TRPG (much less a fantasy game) that doesn't require a metric fuckload of useful research and development.  I don't give a fuck what their size is, or their finances, or whatever the bitchfest is this week: this is what is required now, so either put up or shut up- success is for closers.

Dude, if it's this simple, then you do it.  The reason why you won't, and can't, is because it's not this simple.  Expertise is not free, and if it is free, it's because the people involved absolutely love the subject-matter and are doing it as a hobby, which comes with its own pitfalls, such as people taking their own sweet-ass time doing things.

I mean, you go off like this and sound very authoritative, but people with real expertise charge for that expertise.  All that undergraduate and post-graduate manpower just laying around wants to be paid, and if they can't be paid, they're busy working at Starbucks and are too tired to work their ass off for you for free.

I mean, seriously, that's ludicrous.  What the hell is the RPG field going to offer, internships?  Hey, you too can make less than you'd make schlepping tables at Applebees.  Let me just push past the throng waiting outside my door to start the interviews.  Independent study?  For one guy who claims he's a game designer but works out of his kitchen when he's not doing his dayjob?

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;612543Likely so.

I'm tired of hearing this whine.  If you're good enough to figure out how to work around the collapse of traditional publishing, then you're good enough to figure out how to work around the other economic issues out there.  (If not, then get the fuck out and go back to your day job.)

You can get this work done for free.  Contact a public university.  You'll find that a lot of them now offer Independent Studies.  That's the alternative to the traditional Internship, and this is how you get that shit done.  The deal is much like an internship in that you're trading work experience that matters in return for the student's availability and expertise.  The catch is that you've got to get the school to sign off on it, and you've got to revise expectations to fit the student's schedule--it's part-time at best, only during the term (semester, etc.) and the student is not treated like an employee; he's doing consulting work, not flunky work--but as more public institutions are opening to Independent Study (especially in graduate work) this sort of thing will be more commonplace (likely in addition to an internship over the summer).

Seriously, this is not hard to do anymore.  For fuck's sake, a goodly amount of useful and relevant information can be had even cheaper and easier just by making proper fucking use of Wikipedia and hitting up the local university libraries now and again.  If you're going to do like Barker--and Exalted does, to a significant degree--then its on the designer and publisher to do that heavy lifting well before it goes to press.  I don't give a fuck that it takes time or effort; this ain't pre-transmedia time anymore- either you have a full fucking plan, and you make use of all this expertise lying about going unused, or you go fucking home.

Christ.  Only in TRPGs is anything like this looked at askance.  Cloning D&D is something doable on the cheap like that.  This?  Fuck no.  There is no longer any successful not-D&D TRPG (much less a fantasy game) that doesn't require a metric fuckload of useful research and development.  I don't give a fuck what their size is, or their finances, or whatever the bitchfest is this week: this is what is required now, so either put up or shut up- success is for closers.

Are you in some business related manner, a confidant of either staff with CCP/White or with Onyx Path? Do you have any sort of regular contact with the writers and developers involved with 3e and can share non NDA material not yet disclosed about the development of Exalted 3rd edition?

Quote from: One Horse Town;612416It's what i like to call 'smoke & mirrors' writing. Labyrinthine, arcane, gibberish, but with just enough knowing pretension to it to make some stupid people think it's meaningful.

For awhile (maybe its still in use) there was a term "Borgstromancy" for those with the "gift" to decipher her writing...

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;612454That's the GNS to a "T". "Smoke & Mirrors" pisses me off whenever I read it. I'm even more pissed off when people insist that obscurity = wisdom or insight. Here's the rule:

Just because it's hard to understand, doesn't mean it's insightful.

Applies to movies, music, and all other forms of communication. "Smoke & Mirrors" can be found everywhere.

This is what I try to tell people about Immanuel Kant.

JG

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;612543I don't give a fuck what their size is, or their finances, or whatever the bitchfest is this week: this is what is required now, so either put up or shut up- success is for closers.

To the best of my knowledge, there's only one person on DrivethruRPG who has their name on more platinum-selling titles than I do. I think that makes me a rather odd person to quote Glengarry Glen Ross to.

Quote from: Holden;612779To the best of my knowledge, there's only one person on DrivethruRPG who has their name on more platinum-selling titles than I do. I think that makes me a rather odd person to quote Glengarry Glen Ross to.

Just curious, who's number one?

Not commenting on the feasibility of cheaply affordable quality research, just want to point out that what Bradford is talking about isn't research for free, it's research for credits.  I've never known a grad student who wasn't trying finagle the last few credits needed from somewhere.