Exalted Commentary

So returning from the the Lars/Brent ball game where they did much better then I expected (especially since when I arrived they were losing by several runs) and half-doing the giant stack of dishes (blah!) I'm going to tackle random Exalted news.

Now granted there hasn't been much news. There is a lot of talk about Bastions of the North, according to the White Wolf LJ it is going off to editing but we have no real idea what it's about (aside from the North), how long it is, etc. I will say that I doubt it's a hardcover mainly because hardcovers come out late in the year usually between late October and very early December. To be going to editing now would place this probably late August (after Aspect Book: Wood) to somewhere in September. It's likely the holdover book. Right now we've had 4 softcovers (ABs: Fire & Water, Bone & Ebony, Cult of the Illuminated) and 1 hardcover (Autocthonians). That means we should have 4 more softcovers (one of which is AB: Wood). Reportedly the Scarlet Manual of Proper Bearing is slated for this year (formerly last year) and I'd guess around Christmas barring that it got struck from the rosters. So 2 softcovers. So Bastions should most likely be a softcover leading up to the last hardcover of the year.

Guesses on the hardcover at the moment are: Exalted Revised or Storyteller's Handbook. Personally I am against E:Revised primarily because WW said last that this wasn't going to come out til 2006 at the earliest. Also I think a lot of fans would be unhappy because it might indicate that WW was going to go and re-do (even tho they said they wouldn't) all the core hardcovers again. This is the nasty 3.0->3.5 WotC D&D syndrome also a problem in the old WoD (and incidentally in the upgrade to nWoD as well). People generally don't like that kind of change. So really I think this is pushed more by whiny fans who think "so and so is broken" and whine about it incessantly. You can be assured if they revise Solars ever Lunar fan will expect they revise Lunars and scream murder if they don't. Heck the Lunar fans screamed murder when Cult of the Illuminated came out (a book on a Sidereal run cult worshipping/supporting Solars) and it focused on (surprise!) Sidereals and Solars. Right so my bet is on Storyteller's Handbook/Guide because as far as I know WW usually does on of these for each series and the Storyteller's Companion could use a meatier, thicker, newer replacement.

Now: WW has two secret projects going on for Exalted apparently. I don't believe the comic is one because we've seen stuff on it already on the White Wolf homepage and forums plus Zub has been talking about it a lot. See his LJ for a series of articles on the development of the Exalted comic in fact. I'm not even slightly interested in that. However, Zub works for UDON who happens to do a fair amount of the Exalted art, including the much delayed Exalted: CCG. Zub mentions this obliquely as of late so I think this is one of the secrets. Now that almost all of the nWoD core books are out (Mage comes out in August I think) I suspect they may actually go ahead and release this or re-announce it or something. So that's secret one. That leaves us with a fairly big secret too. What it is I am unsure. Hopefully pretty big. GCG has gotten a partner developer (John Chambers) so the workload may have increased although this might be related to the adding of a CCG and a comic. Anyhow figure all secrets will be out by the end of Con season, probably major announcements will be at either Origins or GenCon so just have to wait til then.

Ok, that was really long but I rather enjoyed typing it. If you want less geeky entries do read below this :D