I'll be honest: When I first read Shards of the Exalted Dream, I wasn't excited about Burn Legend. I thought it was shallow, since it didn't have any social or academic elements, instead focusing solely on combat. About a year ago, I watched the entire series of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I knew it would be awesome to combine it with Exalted. I tried my own homebrew creation, but it seemed clunky, and I wanted to create something simple, as we had a very inexperienced gamer in the group. I asked the wonderful people on the Internet for help, and someone suggested I use Burn Legend as a basis, since the Ryuujin styles closely resembled bending from Avatar. That was when I gave Burn Legend a serious look and found that I really liked it! The rock-paper-scissors aspect really intrigued me, since it would add depth and tension to any fight. I played around with the idea for a while and found myself increasingly wanting to play it or run it, and so I got my chance!
Before I really get into this, I'll be discussing both the mechanical and narrative aspects of this series. What works well? What do we end up changing to improve the system for us and the kind of game we want? How was the story furthered? What did the players and their characters enjoy? What do we want to try next?
We actually started last week. One of the players had a work meeting and was running our other game, which uses the FATE system. I felt kind of bad for seizing the opportunity and offering to run Burn Legend, but he seemed to have a good time when he was playing! (Sidenote: We all agreed that we would alternate between the two, since we both enjoy running our respective games) There are three PCs:
Papana of the Mugen, is played by Blake. Blake said he was going to try his best to avoid making a Goku rip-off. Papana is an easy-going, almost hippy character, whose best attack is Heavenly Storm, a Technique where the practitioner fires a beam of energy from his hands. Oops!
Shiver, the Untamed, of the Okami, is played by Wade. Early on, Blake and Wade agreed that Papana and Shiver would have a close relationship. Shiver ended up being a wolf-totem Okami, so they agreed Shiver would masquerade as Papana's canine companion.
Eric, of the Air Ryuujin, is played by Jaime. He is a billionaire playboy who is very publicly Ryuujin and specializes in the lightning Techniques of the advanced Air style. When I heard his character concept, I pointed out that he was kung-fu Tony Stark. He seemed okay with that.
We agreed that this would be a very modern setting, abandoning Creation for Earth and playing in 2014. The mystical martial arts have been hidden until very recently. revealed only because the forces of Hell have become brazen and martial arts masters realize they need greater numbers to combat the growing hordes. The media has sensationalized the emergence of these so-called Exalted martial artists, turning many of them famous, like Papana (who was one of the first, but was almost forgotten due to a combination of more famous people "coming out" as Exalted and accusations of lying), and, to a much larger extent, Eric. Religious organizations across the world have spoken out against the Exalted, claiming their powers to be sinful, demonic, unnatural, and blasphemous. Through the establishment of this setting, it was also decided upon that Presidents Obama and Putin are also Exalted, but have yet to reveal such. Finally, the Ryuujin pass their enlightenment through blood, and in an effort to restore the vivacity of their bloodlines, have congregated into several Great Houses. In an effort to establish solidarity, a new religious city-state named the Scarlet Dynasty forged an alliance with China and is currently occupying its northwestern corner.
The game began with the three heroes bound and gagged. They found themselves in an abandoned warehouse, which obviously had not been used in a long time, complete with visible collections of dust and many cobwebs. Papana, who had been sleeping, was woken by a slap in the face. A tall man with spiked red hair accused him of trying to steal a Radiant Scroll of Solar Excellence, which he held under Papana's nose. Shiver was bound and locked in a cage, while Eric was also tied up. The man, named Tepet Ymol, ordered his goons to kill Papana and Shiver, while he had another escort Eric away, fully intending to hold him hostage for ransom. The heroes freed themselves, scaring off Ymol and his relative, Tepet Fione. This was essentially a tutorial fight: the three heroes versus seven extras. Papana did fairly well, even managing to use his Overdrive Technique, Heaven Thunder Hammer. He and a goon punched each other's fists, resulting in the goon having his entire arm blown away. Shiver did well, notably being shot at a lot and never being hit. Eric stole the show here, displaying his powerful lightning Techniques. At one point, he placed his hand against a breaker box and redirected the flow of electricity to barbecue a goon. Shiver was pleased. They managed to defeat six of the seven goons before the last one gave up. Papana offered to spare his life if the goon agreed to get Chinese take-out for them. The goon agreed.
The three then followed after Ymol and Fione, chasing them up a flight of stairs. Eric took them one flight at a time; Papana ended up having to carry Shiver because the wolf didn't like stairs (and refused to transform into his spirit or human forms). Eric posted a video of it to YouTube. It should have at least 10,000 hits before the end of the night. They then burst out of the top of the stairwell to find Ymol, Fione, and a pilot shouting at each other while a helicopter prepared for take off. Papana melted the rear rotor with a blast of sun-ki, while Eric fried the engine and console. Stranded, the pilot removed himself and pointed a gun at the three of them. Eric and Fione had been making googly eyes at each downstairs, so he managed to convince her to abandon them and they found a spot for, ahem, aggressive negotiations. Papana paired up with Ymol, while Shiver paired with the pilot, named Jet. Papana and Ymol were fairly evenly matched; even so, Ymol did hardly any damage to Papana. Papana landed a few good hits toward the end and his Overdrive finished Ymol off hard. Shiver was unable to be touched by bullets it seemed, as Jet managed to hit only once or twice. Still, Shiver didn't deal much damage. Papana's final blow sent Ymol crashing into the helicopter, twisting the metal around him, then crashing off the side of the building--smashing the goon who was returning with take-out and interrupting Eric and Fione's negotiations. Jet surrendered and inquired about repaying a life-debt. Papana pointed out that his life-debt belonged to Shiver, who wanted a nice steak.
The night ended with Papana, Shiver, Eric, and Fione sitting in the backalley, eating Chinese take-out by the light of the fiery helicopter. Fione explained that now that they had killed Ymol, it was very likely others members of House Tepet would want blood vengeance, and Jet would want to restore his lost honor.
I think it was a great first session! We got a lot of kinks smoothed out and definitely felt the charm of the setting. I was a little disappointed that no one screamed out the names of their techniques, especially their Overdrives, though.
What we liked
- There is always a chance for failure. Your Techniques could be curbstomped multiple times in a row, putting you in a world of hurt. This adds a good amount of tension to combat.
- The setting. Oh god, the setting. It's modern kung-fu. We're just dying to add pop culture references to our narrative.
- The Technique system. We took the time to cut out copies of each Technique printed in the Shards book. We then put unused Magic cards into card sleeves, then put the Technique cards into those sleeves. It adds weight and substance to the Techniques, which is a little thing, but it's more satisfying than putting down a dinky piece of paper.
What we didn't like
- Combat was pretty slow. Each individual round was fast, but it takes a looong time to take someone down in this system. With 5 Health Stocks and 7 Health Points per stock, your opponents could have potentially 35 health levels. When you're only rolling maybe 3 dice of damage, this could take a really long time. Even after we learned that damaging Techniques automatically deal one point of damage, this is still a problem. Using Overdrive will be necessary to do any significant damage to an opponent. Halfway through the second fight, I'll admit I was starting to lose steam, but it could also be because of:
- The "white room." This was intentional, but still boring. For the first night, I wanted things to be really simple. I intentionally kept the environments simple and nondescript. I wanted us to focus on the main combat mechanics, intending to add dynamic and hazardous environments later.
- The movement and range rules. Since this isn't D&D, it's really difficult to keep track of who is where in relation to everyone else. As such, we decided to simply ignore it, and it didn't seemed to have to much impact on our fights.
What we learned
- Damaging Techniques always deal one point of damage automatically, plus any from the Damage roll
- Overdrive accumulates whenever the target is damaged. I had originally said that Overdrive still increases even if the attack deals no damage (before realizing that all damaging Techniques automatically deal one point of damage), but this ended up being a moot point.
- Overdrive is retained as long as your adrenaline levels are maintained (houserule).
- Ki runs out fast, especially if you're using flashy lightning-based Techniques.
- Never try to shoot a wolf. It doesn't work.
- Have more than 3 Techniques available for your antagonists to use. Players learn quickly.
What we're going to try next time
- Using Backgrounds. Since this week was all about learning the combat mechanics, we haven't had a chance to experiment with Backgrounds. We won't have to worry about creating characters or cutting up cards, so we should have a full session!
- Modular environments. Now that we're comfortable with the combat system (and kicking ass with it), we feel we're ready to add a little variety to the locations we're fighting in. I'll be spending this week creating different locations and areas within them. What I'd like to have happen is if a character moves into a different area (willingly or not), they will flip over a card from a deck designed for that location and "attach" it to the area they're leaving, thereby allowing others to enter this new area. There are additional mechanics involved, such as reintroducing the movement and range traits and sending someone into another area unwillingly. I'll discuss those in the next post.
Closing Thoughts
This is a very fun system to play! Character creation took very little time. Combat is tight and tense, but can get drawn out. But it is that tension that everyone agreed on was the best part of combat and was superior to Exalted 2e's own combat mechanics. They agreed that it was more exciting (and, thus, fun) to have that chance for failure, rather than pump your attack so full of Essence that you simply cannot fail. I love the characters my players have created, and I can only hope I create equally cool antagonists!
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