How to turn DnD players into Exaltamaniacs

Krellian:

D&D is big on Archetypes. You are "The" proverbial wizard and theres not really all that much difference between you and the next one. Whereas Exalted you can make a very varied character vastly different from any other, and it has the mechanics to support it.

Opps, I forgot to address this one. First, I need to ask: Krellian, have you actually played D&D 3.0/3.5? If so, you would be aware that the dozens of races, hundreds of feats, prestige classes, alternate class features, templates, ect means no fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue, ect will *ever* look like the next one. The ability to both specialize and acquire unique abilities is inherent for all class progressions. It seems to me you are making your comments based on outdated knowledge/perception of the game.

Actually, and this may seem counter intuitive to some, exalted to me allows less munchkin twinkery than dnd3.5.  The amount of feats, prestige classes, spells, magic items, classes etc... in 3.5 is staggering, many of which are grossly overpowered (book of 9 swords, I'm looking at you).  Exalted, since there less books to pull shit from, suffers less from power inequality (unless you want to play the DB in a solar game) and balances better than 3.5. 
I really enjoy both games, but to make them enjoy exalted for the sake of its sheer exaltedyness throw in cool stuff like lost manses, lintha pirates, fights on the top of a glass tower in Chiraoscuoro, deathlord worshipping shadowlands cannibals, etc...
Unless they're all a bunch of system mechanics, then wow them with social charms and the fact that the system has rules for social combat.

Just show them Heysha Black Asp.

annatar777:

Just show them Heysha Black Asp.

mmmmmmm.

Can't go wrong with that.

I've sold D&D players on Exalted by telling them some of the stuff that I think is awesome about the game. Some comparison and contrast can help them make up their minds as to whether they think they'll have a good time.

I tend to concentrate on the points that fail to sell me on D&D, but that's a personal thing. For example, I often stress how you start out at the portion of the game wherein you can sway nations and fight armies with nothing but your closest couple friends. Another point is the freedom that an archetype system can give you over a class based system. Then I give random cool bits about the setting, especially focusing on where it is definitely not your typical post-Tolkien fantasy setting following the grove set down by decades of tropes.

I've pretty much played most of the damn games i can get my hands on that require dice *eyes Amber* and in my opinion every game is good AT DIFFERENT THINGS.
D&D 1-2nd were pretty much to me all about classic fantasy heros, 3rd *coughs* was a great idea...but wasnt balanced till 3.5.  Alright whats does 3.5 give you....options, you can be most races, most classes, and lets be fair a few things tend to happen alot. 1. The Death Machine, move to frenzied bersker and things died...sometimes your allies 2. Someone gets stuck playing the cleric, cause dammit we need a healer 3. At after 10th level, characters not twinkified, lose vs magic when it comes to combat. (These may not be problems for you but they ended up being sticking points for me with local players). 4E offers a emphasis on strategy, very attack is different and a power....and what I like to call an ounce of balance. No more is a wizard at epic levels automatically the winner, was something that really made me smile personally. The other big one is, no race penalized you for picking it *coughs* 3.5 half orcs.

Exalted- Exalted first came to me as a game that an ST mentioned we should all go play...before some crazy belief was trying to steal his girlfriend from him. So at the time all i had was reference to a game called Exalted by ye olde WW, so bought a copy sat down in my comfy chair and read the intro. Whats Exalted got that other games of its like dont, I get to be a mythic hero. I am a Beowulf, a Hercules, a Merlin...anyone who says differently is 9 times outta 10 gonna find himself with a broken jaw, mindwarped or blown to peices by a sorcerous display...because I can. I can have a character thts not gonna cry about an extra getting torn in half (unless i got a nice high compassion), I dont have to sit and take orders from some king who earned his throne cause he was born to it...I can choose what bit of  the world i want fixed....and dammit i have the tools to do it. Got a problem with the realm, want to remove slavery, want to carve out my own kingdom ala Conan....I can do it, might be a little difficult but as a starting character...I can do these things. I never ever have to say....well in 10 levels  ill get my disintergrate spell, and finally I wont feel like i have to worry about getting waxed and one shot. (Not a perfectly accurate representation, but you all know that character that feels deep seated fear for his character until he hits a level benchmark). I have as my first 1E exalted character, stolen the jewel out of a Godkings crown while talking to him, being woken up by a wyld hunt offensive, and defeated their commander without pants, Allied with the 7th legion to carve out half of the blessed Isle of our new territory, enslaved 2 nations, slept with most of the reputable women in nexus and was still drinking 3 days later (selling your daiklave can get you alot), later stealing back said daiklaive, and slaughtering his birth family for shunning his Exalted awesome (bastard cathaks), turned a military unit into chunky salsa with a single thrown dagger (cascade was so awesome in 1e). 
Thats just a smattering of that characters accomplishments, which is to say nothing of the 6 other circle (and extended circle) members. Sell exalted on YOU make the descisions, YOU decide what you want to get done, YOU dont wait around for a king, guild leader, heros guild guy to throw you a chance to do something, YOU decide that the local princess is being held against her will....and save her....cause I hold destiny in my hands....just you try and stop me.

P.S. I realize i could have probbly worded this so much better but eh...i simply bring my anime collection and snippets from Edith Hamiltons mythology and go....we can do this...whos in?   Ive yet to have 1 person out of 34 players tell me they didnt like it, I get phone calls requesting we play more, I have watched die hard fans of D&D, Shadowrun, Rifts (this one really suprised me), and other games pretend their game of choice stopped existing.

P.P.S. Yes we still play games other than exalted...and they are run by other people other than me...yay!

The way I was brought in was a brief history of primy war, first age, usurpation, super plague, and the now.  Then common class breakdowns of Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue, Diplomat (but more awesome).  From there it wasn't too much of a strech to get me to give it a go.  After all we could always go back.  I've found too that Exalted is more about the role-playing and less about the dice, but who doesn't like a good ole blood bath every now and again.

mercucio:

Krellian:

D&D is big on Archetypes. You are "The" proverbial wizard and theres not really all that much difference between you and the next one. Whereas Exalted you can make a very varied character vastly different from any other, and it has the mechanics to support it.

Opps, I forgot to address this one. First, I need to ask: Krellian, have you actually played D&D 3.0/3.5? If so, you would be aware that the dozens of races, hundreds of feats, prestige classes, alternate class features, templates, ect means no fighter, cleric, wizard, rogue, ect will *ever* look like the next one. The ability to both specialize and acquire unique abilities is inherent for all class progressions. It seems to me you are making your comments based on outdated knowledge/perception of the game.

I have to say, from first hand experience with 3 and 3.5, feats and anything else besides class* are kinda side fiddly bits at best.  They're only defining for character classes that simply suck (fighter) or classes that are deliberately non-archetypical (d20 Modern base classes).  In 4e it's even worse.  And I say worse, because if you need to proliferate so many different classes to allow different character roles, you're defeating the idea of having classes in the first place which is abstraction to make mathematical balance easier.  (or you can multiclass, which in 3.x is just an excellent way to gimp your character aside from a few combos and in 4 is a nice way to waste feats).

*Arcane spellcasters with very different spell choices are markedly different, but that's just part of D&D 1-3's massive favoring of magic-users.

Oh right, we're supposed to talk about how we were brought into Exalted.

For me, I had no clue what I was going into.  One of my friends from an online group for the first RPG I played (the d6 Star Wars system, may it RIP) mentioned that they had a game coming up about something called "dragon-bloods" and "outcastes" in this system called "Exalted".  It was kinda like the oWoD, which I'd read through, and I thought it sounded interesting...

Somehow I ended up playing an exiled Cynis scion "helping" to administer Melevhil on behalf of its king (and secretly trying to take over), and I thought she was doing pretty well with her single die-adder Thrown charm and some social stuff...

Then our Fire aspect whipped out the 50L damage combos in one battle and I was like *durrrrr*.

There is one very simple analogy :

You just tell them that they can go on heroics without having to grind to lvl 80, that there won't be a next patch that will nerf them, and that you won't fight between each other for purple loot (you will be able to craft them soon enough).
Also flying mounts cost a lot, but less than what you had to buy to chinese farmers...

I could go on, but hell....

impossibilite scenaristique:

You just tell them that they can go on heroics without having to grind to lvl 80 [snip] and that you won't fight between each other for purple loot

I imagine that D&D players would appreciate it if you didn't lie to them to convince them to play Exalted. D&D characters are perfectly capable of heroics, and the D&D group that fights over loot will be the Exalted group that fights over loot.

I'm really not certain where from comes this apparent need to make shit up to make D&D sound worse in order to make Exalted sound better. It's more than a little immature.

I dunno ive had alot less "awesome lewt" arguements in Exalted but that might involve not being showered in toys or the favorite...how are we gonna split our gold (the latter tends to irritate me greatly). But really each have their own upsides and downsides...everyones biased to their game of choice, I know i am when it comes down to it, but doesnt mean i dont give other games their proper due.

I've recently sold someone else on the game. 

I explained to him this:

D&D- At character creation, you make a fighter.  He's basically just learned how to use his weapons and he's willing to use them.  When you walk into a bar, there are 50 people there.  Anywhere between 40 and 45 of them are more badass than you are and can kick your ass.

Exalted- At character creation, you make a guy who also happens to have his focus on combat, and you can be an expert swordsman from the start. You walk into an average bar, and no one in there can kick your ass.  You can kill between 40 and 45 of them in a single fight. 

This was one of my favorite things about Exalted.  I didn't have to depend on dice rolls to determine what my character could do, and I was in complete control of his abilities. 

He also liked the idea of not having a 'class' that dominates your character.  There's no reason you can't be a master martial artist and an archer.  I told him to take the things from the character classes he liked and rattle them off, and he smiled when I told him that he could do all of that, albeit within certain limits of spreading out your points- you may be awesome in combat, but you might end up retarded and fugly.

Another selling point for me, that he admired as well-

I can go and pick up a D&D book and see some of the monsters and adversaries I may encounter, and in the end my curiosity has ruined me- I have to pretend I don't know how to kill something when I really do, and I know what the DM has in store for me.

I can do this with Exalted- and when I see that a LOT is left up to the Storyteller, I say to myself, "Shit."  Then I spend a lot of time telling my Storyteller how awesome he is and I buy him beer and make sure I bring an extra plate of home-cooked food to him whenever I visit. 

Exalted gave me a reason to be afraid of the "Game Master" again.  The guys down at WW made sure he had all the power in his hands.

I liked the artifact gear, and the ability to posess this from the very start.  I never liked going through D&D and going through swords like I go through toothbrushes.  Exalted puts a weapon in your hands and says "This is the one.  This is your Excalibur.  Your Hrunting.  Let the peons buy the flea-market trinkets.  Take this and slay all who stand against you.  Now, when you want to play with the really cool stuff, you better start learning some Craft and Lore so that you can make one of these that turns into other weapons, or you can build armor that lets you crush armies under your feet  Your call, bitch."

Mouse:

impossibilite scenaristique:

You just tell them that they can go on heroics without having to grind to lvl 80 [snip] and that you won't fight between each other for purple loot

I imagine that D&D players would appreciate it if you didn't lie to them to convince them to play Exalted. D&D characters are perfectly capable of heroics, and the D&D group that fights over loot will be the Exalted group that fights over loot.

I'm really not certain where from comes this apparent need to make shit up to make D&D sound worse in order to make Exalted sound better. It's more than a little immature.

I got the impression he was talking specifically about WoW, not D&D.  And, as a player of EVE Online, I wholly support any such smacktalk.
I suppose my D&D4 hater cred is going to be ruined by not making a joke about how easy it apparently was to confuse the two, but I'm not going to.

Mouse:

I'm really not certain where from comes this apparent need to make shit up to make D&D sound worse in order to make Exalted sound better. It's more than a little immature.

You're taking this a bit too seriously, dude.  And it's pretty much a slam on MMORPG's, or at least D&D's 4e attempt to be one.