I find myself suffering again from one of my many character flaws that’s plagued me my entire life: Indecision. I’m still thinking about the D&D campaign I’ve discussed before on this site. It was primarily brought about by my waning interest in reading and learning about the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting — the book had been sitting on my floor for a while, and every time I’ve tried to get back into it I’ve failed. This doesn’t give me much hope for the setting as a whole, as if there’s one person in a D&D group who needs to be invested heavily in liking the setting it’s the DM.
Maybe Forgotten Realms would be a bit more interesting. I’ve played it and enjoyed it in the past, and it certainly has no shortage of support. Or [Eberron], with its high-action, energetic environment and refreshing take on D&D-style fantasy. I was running these thoughts around in my brain, and I remembered a game I’d picked up a while back and had never gotten around to trying: Exalted. It’s a very epic, non-traditional fantasy game made by White Wolf, makers of the popular and gothy Vampire: the Masquerade. The concept behind it is that each of the players is one of the chosen of the mightiest of gods, the Unconquered Sun. This means that they’re significantly more powerful than the average mortal, and provides a high-scale level of conflict. In most games, characters start out having trouble defeating a small band of organized goblins; in Exalted, they start out having the ability to dominate entire regions of the world. It uses [White Wolf]‘s Storyteller System which I’ve found in the past to be easier to learn and use than the D20 System that D&D 3.5e uses. At least, I thought it was — having done some reading in the Second Edition Exalted main book, it’s far more complex than I remember it being when I played Vampire. Maybe that has something to do with the additional capabilities of characters, or maybe it’s just a more complex system for a more complex game, or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but I’m worried that it might be trickier to play.
So, this leaves me worse off than I was before. Eberron still looks intriguing, Forgotten Realms is as it always has been, Kingdoms of Kalamar is solid and boring, and now I’ve got Exalted to think about as well. Sigh. I hate being indecisive and flighty.
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