The Villain is You, GM

Lone Wolf Fists doesn’t do something that Exalted does well: I argue, however, that Exalted (and indeed, no game) should ever do this well. 

Despite the “ten minutes to midnight” energy of the many apocalyptic metaplots, Exalted has the feeling of an established, stable setting, with a well defined status quo. Probably because of the volumes of dull, uninteresting text dedicated to writing about it

Oh how did an image of this book get here

This gives players the experience of being bulls in the China shop of the world. They’re not just breaking things, they’re breaking old, valuable things

I think it contributes to the player-versus-gm energy of the entire enterprise

If you’re the kind of person who both deigns to run Exalted AND wants to keep their setting books as reference material, you’re incentivized to sabotage the player’s attempts to change established setting

Meanwhile, in what I can only describe as anticipatory design, the powers that players get explicitly outline ways in which the GM cannot fuck with them

Players have (and motherfucker, you better believe *I have*) pointed to the rules when the GM says some version of “no” to one of their hair-brained schemes and stated “that is exactly how this rule works, fuck you”

Nice try bitch, I’m a Solar

For example, good ol’ husband-seducing demon dance

“I make a speech and get this whole village, who hate us, to march on that dragon blood blood camp”. GM either sets the difficulty, or, more reasonable, scoffs at the notion and says “you can’t do that”.

You point to the charm:

Some relevant aspects: Characters with Mental DV less than the Solar’s successes must spend two Willpower or fall instantly in love either with the Solar or something the Solar represents.

(For scale, most mental DVs are between 2-3. A Solar’s successes from a typical Performance roll number around Five)

This love is a form of commitment (see p. 201). Targets can break the commitment naturally but they must spend one Willpower in each scene where they deliberately attempt to shake it off.”

Again, to give you an idea, most mortals have around four Willpower max. And spending a Willpower to resist mental influence is described in the text as extremely unlikely and rare.

“Motherfucker, how many willpower these shit farmers got? Because they’re about to be in love with the idea”

 …

Now, obviously, I didn’t want to foster those kind of crossed-incentives. I wanted an attitude of collaboration and mutual respect between players and GM.

BUT those decisions mean that the extremely fun, punk energy that Exalted can generate is sacrificed. How can you buck an authority enforcing boring bullshit, when the authority is on your side and everything is explosively cool?

Pictured: the typical LWF GM (chad)

I feel like my path forward here is to advise GMs to make their bad guys absolute dickweeds

“I use Jagi-summoning Technique!”

We need to transfer that punk energy where it always should have been: within the framework of the game itself

“In Lone Wolf Fists, the evil NPC is your enemy

In Exalted, the evil NPC is sympathetic and secretly right, so the GM is your enemy”