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Last year PingosHusband, after noodling around Exalted (2nd edition) and World of Darkness rulebooks (Vampire the Masquerade 2nd edition, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Mage the Ascension, etc.), announced that he'd like to run an Exalted game set in the World of Darkness. We, his friends and loved ones, said “What, are you crazy? Have we not long joked about how unplayable and internally inconsistent the World of Darkness is; how its timeline makes no sense and its rules and worldbuilding are buried and often mutually contradictory; how foolish and suicidally incurious the various groups are regarding each other; and how so many of its many tragic angsty world-destroying problems could be solved if only each isolated group got its head out of its backside and actually talked to one of the others?” He said, “Hear me out,” and since we have long experience of his keen ability to run entertaining campaigns, we heard him out. See, PingosHusband has a knack rather like Alan Moore's ability to take unpromising old third rate comic book series and turn them into fascinating multifaceted mythic dynamos, or Neil Gaiman's ability to mine world mythology to create astounding and consistent and multilayered worlds, or James Burke or Kenneth Hite’s ability to take fascinating historical and technological developments and spin them into stories of human interconnectivity or disturbingly deep illuminati conspiracies for game use, respectively. More than once PingosHusband has taken historical oddments, played “What happens if this is taken seriously and assumed to make sense somehow?” and produced some wonderful story or game setting or world. (One of them won awards.) So apparently he did this with Exalted and World of Darkness, getting under the hood, finding the core of what worked and what didn’t, seeing what could be connected to what else and what made sense, what was clearly absurd, what needed tweaking, what could be fun, what couldn’t be possible, why things happened, and who could have done them. He looked keenly at characters, places and situations, saw potential for fun in a campaign, wrote up background, and presented us with an introductory players’ handout. I’ll get to particulars later. The simple version is that the world looks basically like the World of Darkness, except that all of a sudden a tiny number of people have Exalted with memories of the world of Exalted (“Creation”) and powers derived from it. There are five to begin with (the PCs), although more will come soon enough. I have to say, this game has so far been tremendous fun. Our group has been playing together for over thirty years and I have rarely seen all of us this excited about a game. Our teenage / adult children are also involved and we have been having vivid family conversations over meals about history, strategy, and characters. I’ve (of course) been painting up miniatures for the game. I’m having a lot of fun with these too. I’ll put links to Show Off threads when I have them up.

This is another of the PCs for an enjoyable mashup of White Wolf's World of Darkness (Vampire the Masquerade, second edition, Werewolf the APocalypse etc.) and Exalted (second edition). This one is an androgynous, or perhaps genderfluid would be a better description, Alchemical, a sort of human-cyborg prototype Exalted made by Autochthon, architect of the world. The Adamant caste are sort of the policemen-secret agent-ninjas of the Alchemicals, making sure society runs smoothly in their mechanized cities. This one is sort of lost, as the Creation of Exalted has morphed into the World of Darkness and Autochthon is nowhere to be found, although things with his name which are not him, echoes perhaps, linger. Anyhow, that's all backstory. The figure is Patrick Keith's enigmatic Numemera Jack, Reaper 62102. There is a WIP thread here.

This is a figure from the Goth set from the game "Wild in the Streets" by Slow Death Games. Thanks to FishNJeeps for directing me to them when I needed miniatures of modern people in goth-punk wear for a World of Darkness game. I painted up the figure as a vampire. It didn't originally have any facial hair; that's all painted on. There isn't a WIP thread. So as a quick note, although I have seen people able to do wonderfully subtle and menacing vampires who still look like vampires, I find that unless I paint mine in stark black and white they look like regular people.

This figure is from a set of fun modern street fighters from the game "Wild in the Streets" by Slow Death Games. (Many thanks to FishNJeeps for pointing them out to me at Adepticon.) This figure is from the "Murder Cult Girls Gang" (I had to remove a large knife from her right hand). I'm currently involved with a campaign of "Exalted" (2nd edition) set in the World of Darkness ("Vampire the Masquerade" (2nd edition), "Werewolf the Apocalypse" etc. etc.). One of the PCs is (and I'm sure this will sound like glossolalia) a member of a South Korean girl pop group who Exalted as a Sidereal of the Maiden of Serenity (Venus). She dresses fashionably, mostly in the color blue (the five Maidens have planets and colors associated with them and I swear they are totally cribbed from "Sailor Moon"). Her hair is dyed bright pink; her eyes are preternaturally blue with white pupils; and she has a "caste mark" of the sign of Venus (a.k.a. the symbol for "female") in glowing blue on her forehead (I wasn't able to paint that clearly; there's just a little interference blue under her bangs). The character has a hand-sized green spider familiar named Jadie. Since she had a slightly blobby hand (from removing an unwanted knife from the figure), I painted it up to look like a spider. There is a WIP thread here.

This is another of the PCs for the "Exalted" campaign set in White Wolf's World of Darkness which I'm currently involved in. This character was a medieval Persian vampire who reverted to human when she Exalted as a Zenith caste Solar. Among other things, she has a sword which shines with the light of the Sun. The figure is from Hasslefree, HFA004 "Kat", sculpted by Kev White. There's a WIP thread here. The lighting effect changes a lot at different angles so I included lots of pictures.

This is another PC for the campaign of "Exalted" set in White Wolf's World of Darkness that I am involved in. The character is a Scottish mage from the Sons of Ether who is essentially a therapist for would-be reformed vampires and werewolves. At the beginning of the game he Exalted as a Twilight-caste Solar. (If this means nothing to you don't worry about it.) The figure is Julie Guthrie's delightful "Benedict Baker", a highly versatile gentleman. There's a WIP thread here.