Blogwagon: Contrariwise’s Rule of Three
I don’t know that it got as much traction as it probably deserved, but Sam Seer asked us to talk about three games that were important to us, and I thought. Yes. Yes I think I will.
A Tale in the Desert
I am not physically capable of being reasonable about A Tale in the Desert. This is my ur-game. This is the game that I literally cannot be allowed to play, because it would consume me whole.
It would take me into its bosom and I would be unmade.
My first encounter with ATITD was through the IRC channel of another game (for another time). A friend said, “hey, this sounds like your jam.” And it was. It extremely was.
This was back during their open beta, but the way an ATITD beta worked was that they’d reset the game and make it available to play for a weekend. Dear reader, I would orient my entire life around maximizing that weekend. I would do nothing else. It was my everything.
Eventually they launched into “Tale 1.” If you didn’t read the Wikipedia link (no judgement,) it’s important to know that ATITD operated in “tales.” Each tale would begin with a fresh world, with slightly modified systems, and progress through to a complete ending, before starting anew.
Originally, these tales were designed to last a year. Most of them have ran significantly longer.
The first tale I was able to play, as a paying customer, was Tale 3. I participated in the beta for Tale 2, and I think I played in Tale 4 as well. But that was around the time I went back to college as an adult, and realized that I simply couldn’t be allowed to continue playing.
So I shut the door and have never allowed myself to turn the key. Because I know that on the other side are all the horror stories of someone who couldn’t disconnect from an MMO until there was nothing left.
That would be me, and I know it with my entire self.
Exalted (1e)
I didn’t have a lot of access to TTRPG sourcebooks as a youth. Some time in middle school I got my filthy paws on a copy of AD&D, and that lead to no end of trouble at home for bringing the “devil magic” into our home.
Fast forward a few years to high school, and I had a small amount of money burning a hole in my pocket which I had decided to spend on either Cyberpunk or Shadowrun. I can’t remember which. But I had been eyeing it at my local Borders for some time.
Except when I got there, it was gone. But what I saw in its place, which would go on to inform most of my own tastes and opinions about RPGs far in excess of anything D&D achieved, was Exalted.
The original first edition solars book. Which probably had only just come out.
It was entirely unlike anything I had encountered before. A wildly imaginative wuxia-inspired TTRPG setting with godlike powers, grand destinies, evocative mysteries, and enough ideas to fill every campaign world I would ever go on to write.
Something I didn’t know at the time but now deeply appreciate is that each of the Exalted 1e core rulebooks has an unreliable narrator. The history of the world, how they got where they are, who is to blame, is always written from the perspective of the faction whose book you are reading.
And so, over the course of roughly eight of them, it’s possible to figure out what really happened. Which set an example for world building that I aspire to live up to.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I managed to organically collect almost every book that came out for first edition. I would later have to sell them all to make ends meet, but one of the first things I did once I was financially stable was track down and complete the collection, and the entire run of Exalted 1e has place of pride on my bookshelf to this day.
Earthdawn
For everything that Exalted is, Earthdawn probably should have been. It is the first TTRPG I ever encountered in the wild. Before I found D&D, a friend let me borrow their copy of the Earthdawn core rulebook.
I think if I had found it slightly later, or in a position where I could have purchased more of its materials, it might have taken off more in my imagination. As it stands, this is the book that gave me a fascination with airships. And its particular rendition of “blood magic” (trading permanent stat debuffs for ongoing magical effects.)
Many years later I would come to find out that much as Exalted was intended to be the “backstory” for the World of Darkness, Earthdawn is meant to be the “backstory” for Shadowrun.
Exalted quickly grew into something very much its own, and in no way ties into the rest of the WoD. You can still find evidence that this was the original plan, including in the advertising copy on Amazon.com.
You’ve Heard the Rumors.
Before the Impergium before the Mythic Ages before the Sundering before there was a World of Darkness there was something else. And now it is revealed, at last. Come adventure in the Second Age of the World, the fantastic world of the Exalted.
Now Play the Game.
Though thematically related to the modern-day World of Darkness, Exalted begins a whole new line of fantasy products from White Wolf. This hardcover rulebook invites you to become one of the Exalted, an heir to an Age of Heroes. Created to be saviors and Prometheans to humanity, the first Exalted were corrupted and slain by their own brethren. But now, new Exalted are being reborn into the Second Age of the World. Can you survive in a world that needs you yet reviles you? The fate of this new world is in your hands.
Though as far as I understand, Earthdawn is still nominally the background explanation for the world that would eventually become Shadowrun. Both games are somewhat famously considered “unplayable” by modern standards. At least in their original editions. There’s a great deal of interesting concepts in them, but mechanically they didn’t work.
And, so…
One of the through lines for all three of these games is that they are the origin story for concepts that continue to repeat in every creative endeavor I’ve undertaken since. I’ve built MUDs that are basically ATITD. I’ve written campaign worlds that are basically Exalted. My friends and I dreamed through most of high school of making an MMO about airships that had Earthdawn as its beating heart.
Over time I’ve continued to refine the parts of these ideas I like the most, adapt them into something new. My campaign worlds look a lot less like Exalted with the serial numbers filed off. But if you know where to look, you can still find the marks they left on the person I would someday become.