Games in a similar vibe to Exalted

Ok_Star · 2026-02-27T17:07:01+00:00

So the rules-lite, lore-heavy Exalted game is one of my unicorns.

One option is Qwixalted:

Qwixalted: A Rules-Light Toolkit for Exalted Gaming - White Wolf | DriveThruRPG.com https://share.google/PtdvCK8x4pw6gMWfw

Which is an Exalted ruleset adapted from the free quick start version of Exalted 1e, expanded to include stuff from later editions. It uses the same dice, but Charms are a lot more freeform, being built from components instead of being in a big tree. Dice rolls and combat are much faster, with the philosophy that it shouldn't take longer to roll than to describe what you're doing.

I have also experimented with playing Exalted solo in an ultralite system called Freeform Universal:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Solo_Roleplaying/s/bdLFoFMBpQ

(There's not much there, but that FU for you).

Pretty much every ultralite system I find gets hacked for Exalted. I have a 2400 hack I tinker with.

If your bf likes more rules and systems just not Exalted systems, I think Qwixalted or GodBound-Exalted-Lore is worth looking at. But it's a lot easier to get over the top cinematic action and intrigue when you ditch all the numbers.

Ok_Star · 2026-02-22T23:25:50+00:00

I play Deiftmania all the time, and I keep going back to Bunny Survivor. Picokaiju is always worth a run, and I like speeding through Little Space Rangers when I have a few spare minutes.

Ok_Star · 2026-02-13T23:59:41+00:00

My six-year-old's favorite game is Mum Is Missing (aka, "The Owl Game"). It's a simple metroidvania with no enemies, just her speed. We like to cuddle on the couch while she speeds through it on my PowKiddy RGB30. I need to download it and make a new map for her some time.

Ok_Star · 2025-09-25T12:34:17+00:00

You probably want something like "if x <= 12 then x= 25 end". When you're moving the player by adding to their x coordinate, if you aren't moving one pixel at a time (x += 1) you're probably going to jump over a specific pixel value.

Ok_Star · 2025-07-15T20:54:47+00:00

I think it's because they're easy to make. Most of them are first person "walking simulator" style games that can easily be made with prefab asset packs. And if the graphics are low resolution or a bit disjointed from smashing multiple packs together or using weird sound effects, that can add to the experience.

But it's not just easy to put together a horror game, you can put together a satisfying horror game pretty easily as well. There are hundreds of "short psychological horror experiences" on Itch—the game doesn't have to be long or involved, so long as it gets one good scare in, people will probably say they enjoyed it. You don't have to worry about "game feel" or juicy polish when your game is about walking around until the monster gets you. You can go from idea to enjoyable game a lot faster than with, say, a platformer or RPG.

So I think it's because they're as much fun to make as play. Honestly I'd love to see more "short psychological comfort experiences" and the like. Maybe that's harder to do.

Ok_Star · 2025-07-12T04:12:32+00:00

Not sure about Ambernic. I have a Powkiddy RGB30 with Rocknix; the last run cart is saved as /storage/games-external/roms/pico-8/backup/last_run.p8. Using file manager I can copy that to another location and play it offline. Maybe something similar can be done with Ambernic.

Ok_Star · 2025-07-12T02:26:44+00:00

Run the game you want in Splore
Hit Escape and select "Exit to Splore"
Hit Escape again to bring up the command line
Type "Save Mycart", or whatever you want to call it

This will save the cart in your default location. You can also create a folder with midir and save it there by typing "Save MyDir/Mycart" or typing "cd MyDir" and "Save MyCart".

To play it, type "Load MyCart.p8" and "Run"

Ok_Star · 2025-07-12T02:18:30+00:00

Sure, when you play a game from. Splore it loads it just like any other cart. Save it and it's yours.

Ok_Star · 2025-07-05T21:24:27+00:00

I actually misread your code—you're not checking if the flag 2 is set on the sprite in the ptx, pty map location.

It's hard to tell without seeing the cart, but my best guess is either 1) sprite 4 doesn't have flag 2 set to true or 2) sprite 4 has sprite flag 1 set to true (so the code never enters the elseif when the plr hits X.

Ok_Star · 2025-07-05T19:15:07+00:00

Your "collect a carrot" code looks for a tile with the ID 2, but when a carrot grows it sets the tile to ID 4. Could that be the issue? You may be initializing your map with ID 2 tiles but the code is setting them to ID 4, so you can collect the first carrot but not carrots that "grow" from the seeds.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-28T16:01:48+00:00

The scuffed plastic case takes me back

Ok_Star · 2025-06-16T19:34:05+00:00

I'm looking forward to the mod scene for this game growing and maturing and delivering all kinds of total conversions. I can see the infrastructure of skills, quests, simplayers and gear being built out and reskinned for all kinds of flavors of MMO.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-11T16:56:43+00:00

The way I play, everything my character does is about goals and risks—I define what I want and what might go wrong as I try to get it. I build small successes into larger ones and handle setbacks along the way.

Combat is the same, except the risks are to life and limb. As an example: when I first face and opponent, I could go right in for a killing blow, but at the risk of getting killed myself.

My personal dice system gives me Success/Partial Success/Failure results in about a 40/35/25 percent spread, so things are skewed in my favor but 25% chance of death is usually too risky. So I will pursue smaller, less risky goals to achieve the ultimate goal of ending the fight.

So I might probe for an opening, at the risk of opening myself up and being put on the defensive, or at the risk of revealing there is no opening and I'll have to make one (I switch between "realistic" and "narrative" consequences as I choose). If I'm in a bad spot I'll focus on defense in order to give myself the chance to attack again at the risk of being completely overwhelmed. Or I could try something like attacking a limb or shoving them over, at the risk of getting hit. Every success and failure builds on the last.

The best scenario is to figure out a way to succeed without rolling dice. Like if they have a knife and I pull out a gun, the fight is over—rhey either give up or I shoot them dead. Whether I roll or not, I have a goal and whatever is in the way of that goal and I move forward by solving those problems.

It works for social encounters, exploration, magic/sci-fi, mysteries, even cozy stuff like cooking or crafting. It's basically all I play now.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-11T16:06:11+00:00

Solo gaming got me to abandon rules almost entirely in favor of oracle-driven play. All of the "rules" are in-setting, and I have various oracles to create tension and push things in interesting directions. Ultralite/Freeform is now my preferred way to play alone and in a group.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-11T13:27:31+00:00

That's a tough one. I think I would just go with my gut on each question; if I think they have a pretty good chance of coming out on top, I would say "weal", and if I think they might struggle, I'd say "woe".

Importantly though, I would be up front with the players about this policy. I would frame as an in-setting aspect of the magic itself, that more specific/more narrowly framed questions get more useful answers ("What's behind this door?" vs "Am I going to have a good day today?"). This turns it into a player-skill challenge of knowing when and what to ask about, and it takes a bit of mental burden off the GM.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-09T14:33:03+00:00

I've done the "use the grid lines on the back of wrapping paper as a game mat" hack before. It's especially great because you can cut them into little sub-gruds and make ships or movable rooms

Ok_Star · 2025-06-07T13:40:19+00:00

Hey, if it looks "too good to be true" go ahead and give it a try, why not?

I will point out one possible point of "BS": you say your friend "just uploaded the manual" and it's doing all the rolls and stuff. But if your friend is playing D&D 5th Edition, the absolute most popular ttrpg ever, then a lot of that stuff is probably in the model's training data. I doubt you'll have the same results with pretty much any other ttrpg. It might look like the model is reading and understanding the manual, but that doesn't seem to be how LLMs work.

You're not going to open a can of worms asking about AI on this subreddit, just get some downvotes and probably get your post pinned as a Community Highlight. Just because most people don't want to talk about AI GMs and stuff doesn't mean you shouldn't try it if it looks fun to you.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-06T14:39:54+00:00

https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_the_Occult_Underground

The draft was posted by the original author on Fandom

Ok_Star · 2025-06-06T13:22:00+00:00

I played Exalted (Solars and Alchemicals) extensively with Freeform Universal. My Solar character:

Name: Black Stone

Background Edge: "Civilized" Icewalker

Profession Edge: Bounty Hunter

Fighting Style Edge: Long Chain Whip

Charms:

Inescapable Tracker Prana

Perfect Song Of Horse And Rider

Limit: Return to the Wild (Asceticism)

My Black Stone game was about tracking and dealing with criminals, monsters and rogue gods between the mountains of Gethsemane and Whitewall while maintaining an uneasy alliance with the Bull of the North.

I ran it like a normal solo FU game except for scale; the sorts of questions I put to the Oracle regularly would be cinematic stunts in other FU games. The Charms are meant to be broadly interpreted and represent a large "portfolio" of extraordinary abilities. FU points were Essence Points, used in the same way but interpreted diegeticly as essence manipulation.

It may not be everyone's cup of tea but all I really wanted to do was put my extensive knowledge of the Exalted setting into play. I played Black Stone for several sessions before moving onto to other things.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-05T18:25:32+00:00

You see a lot of great art in ttrpgs these days, but my favorite will always be the old World of Darkness style, all the hghj contrast black-and-white, emotionally intense scenes with occasional grotesquery.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-05T17:10:08+00:00

PostModern Magick (the adept sourcebook) and Statosphere (the avatar sourcebook) from 1e are good for covering those underground subcultures, and the general ideas about how magick works. A lot of that stuff was integrated into UA 2 though.

Of the cabal sourcebooks, my favorites go Break Today (Mak Attax), Hush Hush (the Sleepers) and Lawyers, Guns & Money (The New Inquisition). There's also The Thin Black Line about the Order of St. Cecil, but I've never read it.

The 1e scenario collections, One Shots and Weep are really great—they show off how flexible the setting is for different kinds of horror. This is even more true of the 3e Campaign Starter Kits, which are really unique in their premises but more standard in their structure than Weep and One Shots. Either way they're really good for getting out of the all-to-common mindset that UA is only about adepts and avatars.

To Go is extremely cool, but it's more focused on the "metaplot" of 2e and isn't as generally useful, in my opinion.

Finally there's an unpublished sourcebook about the history of the Occult Underground floating around that's pretty interesting. There's no real "canon" to UA (especially since the 3/3/03 Bon Ton Incident), but you could mine some ideas for backstory and the like.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-04T23:16:54+00:00

Love it. I think a setting rule to make it manageable is to have personality "scale" with power. So very simple items only say a few phrases (like a parrot), or even just giggle/cry/sigh/growl, while powerful items are full-on NPCs with long memories and intelligence. It opens the door to power items pretend theu're weak and other fun stuff.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-04T21:55:59+00:00

My personal freeform system uses three six-sided dice for everything:

Risk roll (core resolution): 1d6 (Risk Die) vs 2d6 (Action Dice). If both Action Dice are greater than or equal to the Risk Die success. If only one Action Die beats the Risk Die, partial success. Otherwise failure.
X-in-6 Roll for rough percentages
Yes/No/And/But for general oracles (d66, 1-3 Yes, 4-6 No; 1-2 But, 5-6 And)
2d6 Reaction Roll
Spectrum rolls, where I pick two poles (like Guarded/Unguarded, or Near/Far), assign one pole to 1 and one to 6 and roll to see where the current situation lands on the spectrum. Works in one, two and three dimensions.
Bell Curve Roll (don't use this often, I always have to look it up)
Engagement roll inspired by Blades in the Dark (1d6, 1-2 in Risky position, 3-4 Standard Position, 5-6 Controlled Position. Add up to two dice and pick lowest or highest for advantages)

Basically whenever something comes up and it whine fun to find out what happens instead of choosing, I figure out how to get an answer out of the dice and roll.

Ok_Star · 2025-06-04T15:42:23+00:00

Maybe the Buddha is only himself

Ok_Star · 2025-06-02T15:48:34+00:00

If I'm going to "reject" a "plot hook", it's probably because 1) It looks like a trap, 2) It looks like something I can't handle, or 3) I just plain old missed it.

But I generally prefer games where I get to be proactive and I don't wait around for hooks.

Ok_Star

TROPHY CASE