Exalted Godbound: Cobbled-Together From Stuff and the Appendix N of Exalted

The last few posts have made it clear that what I've worked on these last few weeks is a game of Godbound using the sadly-misused RPG known as Exalted. As with all White Wolf (now Onyx Path) games, it is one game where there is a very complicated love/hate relationship. I absolutely adore the basic ideas behind Exalted but always loathed the execution and it left me with the impression of a setting which poorly tapped into it's excellent core elements. A recent chance to finally read more of the older stories of the fantasy genre has only reinforced this impression. Exalted should have been Conan, Elric, Mythology and Wuxia put in a blender with a good dose of drugs for good measures. As the Yoon-Suin post pointed out, Exalted failed. But it's okay, I can salvage it and run it in a style none of it's creators ever really considered.

Games Resources

My 'sandbox tools' and resources for the Godbound Exalted game are nothing short of simply cobbling together tables from pre-existing games. A recycling of already existing resources or perhaps a re purposing.

• Flying Swordsmen: Wuxia+OSR, is it any surprise this one is on the list?
• Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names: Names, names names. Did I mention mentions are important but hard to get right in a pinch. If I recall correctly this wasn't remotely written by Gygax.
• Godbound: Obviously, since I'm using the system. Just about every table in there is of some use to me.
• GURPS China and similar books: Good historical reference. Odds are if an ancient culture existed, there is probably a GURPS book for it.
• GURPS Conan: A good reference whenever I'm in the mood to inject more Conan-like elements to Creation.
• Legends of the Wulin: This book maybe an incomprehensible mess of a storygame at times but it has a lot of good information on the Wuxia genre, one of the core inspirations for Exalted. At least when the writers remember it.
• Spears of the Dawn: Has some good references for Africa and since parts of the south of Exalted's world are based loosely off Africa, these tools will come in handy. In particular, the 'Quick Culture Generator' is perfect to quickly generate any tribal and semi-tribal society found all across Creation.
• Scarlet Heroes and Red Tide: More general purpose resources and names.
• Yoon-Suin The Purple Land: Many general purpose resources too (and inspired by the former), but the tea and opium generator as well as the details on generating local cults dedicated to specific gods are perfect material to help flesh out the flavor of Creation.

The Totally Serious Exalted Appendix N

I mean, everyone love to read a biased and possibly pretentious 'Appendix N' list, right? And it's not like Exalted doesn't already have an equivalent in each goddamn book, right? Well, truth be told I've never quite found these lists to be quite as accurate or useful not to mention many are painfully out of date due to how old First and Second editions are. This is in addition to those things listed in previous editions:

Japanese Animation (And Manga)

• Berserk: Not only is it an amazing manga on it's own, but Guts and Griffith truly show the best (and worst) of heroic mortals (and later Exalted for Griffith). One could also argue that Guts' superhuman level of skill and ferocity makes him more than a mere mortal.
• Devilman: The original manga is still good, but there's a chance you may have heard of it through it's most recent (and equally good) Netflix adaptation called Devilman Crybaby. If you plan to use rebellious Infernals in your game, then Devilman is the way to go.
• Fate/Zero: In an oddball case, this Light Novel-turned-anime prequel to the Visual Novel Fate/Stay Night turns out to be much better than what it's a prequel to. The impossibly overpowered and smug Gilgamesh is the perfect example of a First Age Solar and the charisma they'd nonetheless command even when they're assholes.
• Fist of the North Star: The granddaddy of modern Shonen, before Dragon Ball came along anyway. Kenshiro is a perfect example of a wandering Solar martial artist who wield impossibly deadly Celestial Martial Arts.
• Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Don't let the annoying newbie-infested fanbase ruin an excellent manga. Trying to describe it in any shape or form would take whole pages. Some of the crazier Stand powers are the kind of things you could base Sidereal Martial Arts off.
• Kill La Kill: It's a lot less serious than many shows on this list, but it's a Studio Trigger show, so it's obviously going to make the list based on the action alone.
• Souten Kourou: Romance of the Three Kingdoms from Cao Cao's point of view, painting him as a more sympathetic character.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: The people at Studio Gainax who made this show would later go on to work on Kill La Kill, which is a very similar show in tone and structure. Both shows are over the top, insanity-fueled, action-driven pile of glorious nonsense and insane escalation.
• The Twelve Kingdoms: I've only just started this one as of this post but I can already see a wealth of correlation with it and Exalted. It's a shame the 'sent-in-another-world-shows' have become such utter trite these days. This is one show which seem like it went under people's radar.
• The Vision of Escaflowne: Multi-demographic appeal was a thing in the '90, and this show combine elements of shoujou, shonen and mecha anime. It's a 'trapped-in-another-world' kind of story but it was made decades before the genre got annoyingly stale.
• Thunderbolt Fantasy: Technically this is puppet animation, but this high action fantasy wuxia tale by Gen Urobuchi is the kind of over the top stuff Exalted breathe. Swordsmen with superhuman skills, undead, demons and all that good stuff.
• Yona: The Girl Standing in the Blush of Dawn: A pretty good Shoujou manga partially adapted to anime. A princess' carefree life is shattered and her kingdom usurped, so she goes on a quest to assemble the Four Dragon Warriors. The setting's has a lot of elements similar to Exalted.

Live Action Television

• Ancient Aliens: Complete and utter bullocks about 'ancient alien' theories. It's on the list because there is plenty of nonsense that could be true in Exalted in some form or another.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Okay so it's not exactly good let alone serious by modern standards, but it's still thematically relevant to Exalted.
• Ice Fantasy: A rather cheesy Chinese fantasy television series but one worth the watch for (some) of the visuals.
• The Legend of Zu: I'm sure there are countless other Chinese television series which involve hilariously dated (but colorful!) CGI, that are apparently based off Wuxia novels and that last for seriously way too many episodes. I'll put the only one I started watching on the list for simplicity's sake.
• Xena: Warrior Princess: The (somewhat more famous) spin off to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Oh come on, you knew this was coming. While a kid's show, it also is very much the closest we'd ever see to an Exalted saturday morning cartoon if you think about it. Just ignore the sequel.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002): The sadly short-lived He-Man reboot manage to blend the campy, colorful scifi and fantasy blend of Eternia in a much more serious package than the original.