So, who's up for an Exalted total conversion?

[Ariphaos]

As some people are aware, I did some fan mapping for Exalted for a few years. Then second edition came out and my interest pretty much ground down to zero.

With third edition out, and Paradox now owning the Exalted IP, I have been toying on and off with the idea of doing this, primarily with the intent of convincing Paradox that there is a market for an Exalted grand strategy game.

The map in general is far too sparse to be usable as-is, but I think a combination of procedural generation and taking elements from real Earth history could be interesting (melt provinces, komatite rivers, lignous fields, continent-sized ice shelves...) to flesh things out.

Any interest?

 

[Jorlem]

As some people are aware, I did some fan mapping for Exalted for a few years. Then second edition came out and my interest pretty much ground down to zero.

With third edition out, and Paradox now owning the Exalted IP, I have been toying on and off with the idea of doing this, primarily with the intent of convincing Paradox that there is a market for an Exalted grand strategy game.

The map in general is far too sparse to be usable as-is, but I think a combination of procedural generation and taking elements from real Earth history could be interesting (melt provinces, komatite rivers, lignous fields, continent-sized ice shelves...) to flesh things out.

Any interest?

I'd think that something more CK2-esque would fit Exalted more, as Exalts are all exceptional people, and CK2 is the only game that has individual characters. Also, the Shogunate and the Age of Sorrows time periods would fit a CK2 style game almost perfectly. (The Realm is a superblob. )

 

[Ariphaos]

HOI4 has officers, the ability to model skyships, some sense of logistics, and most importantly, a time resolution that is not completely insane.

Hopefully I would be able to model Exalts as officers, but we may see.

 

[Jorlem]

HOI4 has officers, the ability to model skyships, some sense of logistics, and most importantly, a time resolution that is not completely insane.

Hopefully I would be able to model Exalts as officers, but we may see.

Depends what Age you are trying to model, I think. For the First Age, then yeah, HOI4 could work, especially as parts of time period could be considered roughly analogous to the modern day (If you accept the 2E book detailing that, which really sucked a lot of the wonder out of the setting). But for post-Usurpation, the Realm is entirely controlled by the competing Dragonblooded dynasties through the Shogunate, and then united under the Scarlet Empress, and the tech level is constantly decaying toward Iron Age. Aside from that one culture in the far North, airships are rare enough to be all but unheard of, barring the rare sorcerer who can summon a cloud to ride on.

But, as I said, it really depends on what you want to model. HOI4 could work great for more limited timeframes/events, like the Balorean Crusade, but if you want to have a game focusing on the long sweep of passing ages, then a more CK2-esque model would fit better in my opinion.

 

[Ariphaos]

Skyships. Lookshy has six, the Realm supposedly has one. And what is it all for, if you can't play a Solar bent on restoring the glories of an age you can scarcely remember?

Also, naval combat.

 

[Praetori]

With third edition out, and Paradox now owning the Exalted IP, I have been toying on and off with the idea of doing this, primarily with the intent of convincing Paradox that there is a market for an Exalted grand strategy game.

Generally the Clausewitz engine would work well for Exalted but I'm not convinced that HOI4 mod would be ideal.

What's more interesting is what happened to the proprietary development-work already performed by CCP on WW IPs.

 

[Ariphaos]

Of course it's not ideal.

I just do not feel CK2 is either. CK2 is painful enough.

As for the IP, my assumption is that almost all of the actual work was done on the WoD side of things. The best solution for Exalted would be to either have a Magicka-style control scheme for a duel game (chaining charm combos together and triggering them) and/or a grand strategy like this. Neither of which CCP was entirely on top of.

 

[Surimi]

While an exalted grand strategy game would work better than an exalted cRPG, I too am unconvinced HOI4 would be the best approach.

The biggest issue with any exalted game is always going to be the exalted themselves, because while the weeny little player character solar exalted may be pretty managable, how do you handle elder sidereals who can destroy armies by punching reality into a massive storm of razor blades, or the unkillable uber-ghosts who can summon zombie godzilla to crush cities. Granted, those things are extremely rare in the standard third age setting, but the "hero units" in exalted can easily be just as, if not more important than the armies of regular troops. Furthermore, while exalted warfare borrows a lot of elements from modern warfare because of all the magitech floating around, wars generally seem to function more along medieval lines with big armies marching around looking for opposing big armies to fight than the big, coordinated fronts of WW2 style warfare.

One thing which could work, perhaps, is a first age setting (perhaps an alternate Exalted history where the solar deliberative has splintered into warring factions). While the first age setting has a lot more very powerful creatures in it, they're common enough as to be fairly ubiquitous and thus handleable through general mechanics, while powerful magitech can slightly even the odds between mortals and exalts. Since the first age is basically the modern age where everything is powered by magic instead of electricity or resources, HOI's system could work quite well.

Definately count me in as "up for" an Exalted conversion anyway. It would be very interesting to see how it would work, even if I'm not convinced everything would work perfectly.

 

[Jorlem]

perhaps an alternate Exalted history where the solar deliberative has splintered into warring factions

Going by some of the stuff in DotFA, that actually happened for a time, following when the Exalted learned they could die of old age. So, no need for an AU.

That said, any Exalted game would likely be based on Third Edition, not Second, to avoid confusion. So, no mass produced artifacts or magitech, all the stuff previously described as such still exists, but is far more mythical and less technological. There's also a large, ongoing back and forth conflict between the Dragonbloods and Lunars over the continent-island of the Caul. Given the shifting nature of that conflict, I could see HOI's occupation system work fairly well, with a few CK2/EU4 style sieges for the heavily fortified holy cities. (The cities are part of an ancient Dragonblooded pilgrimage route, which was closed by the Lunar occupation of many of the cities.)