Gaming Geeks Unite! DriveThru RPG Pakistan Flood Relief

It's the talk of the Interwebs - DriveThru RPG is offering a bundle of PDF products, the sale of which will go to support Doctors Without Borders and the victims of the recent massive Pakistan flood.

Just glancing down the list of products makes it clear that this is an unbelievable amount of gaming goodness for the listed price of $25.  Even if it wasn't philanthropy, it would be a hell of a deal.

This isn't just a load of inexpensive peripherals - there are plenty of full games like Contenders, Don't Rest Your Head, Dragon Warriors, Exalted Second Edition, Fear Itself, Hot War, Icons, Spycraft 2.0, Starblazer Adventures, Time and Temp, Wild Talents 2nd Edition...

A total value of $730 altogether.  For $25!

Exalted 2nd Ed Review

I just finished a short-run game run by my friend using the Exalted system, Second Edition, by White Wolf Games. This review will be pretty brief because there isn't that much I feel like I need to say.

It does what it does pretty well - that is, allowing you to roll huge dice-pools and do amazing things, primarily in combat. I mean, if you want to level a phalanx of hobgoblins, put an arrow through someone's eye every time you bend your bow, or take a flying leap off of a giant's back and jam a fiery naginata into Dread Cthulhu (hey, I had to get His attention), this is your game.

It is unlike the other White Wolf games, in general, in that the focus seems to be on action. I'm sure you could run an intrigue game, but I imagine there's only so deep things will go when you have all of these abilities devoted to obliterating your foes. Gone, also, is the usual kind of internal moral or spiritual conflict that marks many of White Wolf's games. This game is all about external conflict.

I personally don't like the change that White Wolf has made in general (in Requiem, Awakening, Forsaken, Exalted, etc.) to a d10 system where the difficulty is always the same. Frankly, that takes away a dimension of the game that I liked a great deal - that successes always mean the same thing, and your capacity (dice-pool) is always placed against the difficulty (target number) of a task. In the new systems, the target number never changes. This just lessens the versatility of the dice mechanic for no good reason whatsoever (IMO).

Overall, I give Exalted 2nd Edition 3.5 out of 5 stars. It does what it does well, but is also limited, and the only meaningful conflicts you're likely to have are external. It's definitely fun, and a great way to blow off steam, and to use amounts of d10's that won't even fit in two cupped hands, but I'm not sure I'd be interested in a long-term Exalted game.