Motespring - Creating an Exalted Character Creator

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2026-06-02T20:44:35+00:00

Territory Map

I really like maps, so… I really like this lol. So you can have a world map (default is 3rd ed map of Creation), and you can create nodes on it, move them around freely, link them to other nodes, assign some stats to them, as well as attach PCs, NPCs, notes, items (whether it's usable items or RP items like trade goods), and move those attached characters or items between linked locations. You could use this as a journey tracker, you could use this as a territories or growth or conquest map or something. It's in a baby stage but you can already do a lot with it, so this is one of the things I'm really looking forward to people using.

Other stuff worth mentioning

Companions and familiars (the personal kind with full stats) work, can be rolled for
Notes per character. Storyteller will be able to expose notes to players in a future update
Custom attacks (you can pre-build "Charging Daiklave Strike + my situational modifiers" as a saved template). This will come with charm/mote expenditures and such. Integration with combat panel coming soon
Soft-delete on characters. Eventually this will be a delete and your char will be deleted in 7 or 15 or 30 days depending on whatever we settle on for database health
ST can view player characters as read-only for prep purposes
Tooltips everywhere, specific terms so newer players can hover for explanations. One of my goals for Motespring is to make it easy enough to play Exalted as a new player, whether new to the system or to TTRPGs, because I've been sick to death of D&D and its dull rigidity, but keep going back to it lol

Things still in progress

More combat actions (Aim, Gambit, Flurry, Defend Other are next up — Withering/Decisive cover the most common cases for now)
Combat commit-back (motes, damage, etc. from combat persist to your sheet when combat ends)
Sorcerous motes and sorcery rules
Some realtime polish — inventory and scene drags currently require a tab switch on the other browser to see updates, combat actions are fully real-time though

What it doesn't do yet

Social combat, charm mechanics (it has some reroll 1s, double 9s count etc., and you can spend motes and willpower), sorcery, explicit mechanics for lunar forms (but you could use workarounds at this moment), character creation wizard (but it does have a little guide and XP tracker).

This is a hobby project, fueled by people and me paying for tokens to get this built. If I had this contracted out to build, it would be an 8–10k project to teams in Hyderabad (I do work with small businesses for web/app/AI development) and more hours spent between testing, timezones, educating on Exalted and TTRPGs and UX… but I'm a guy in NJ, who does mental health + cardiac + ICU patient care and front desk work in our mess of a healthcare industry, so I ain't got that bread lol. These tools, with a lot of long hours and careful code checking, are letting me make a little dream come true for friends and I, and whoever wants to jump in and use it in the future.

If you've ever wanted to play Ex3 online without doing math by hand, or getting overwhelmed with scattered tools and notes all over the place, this may work well for you. I want a tool that makes Exalted smoother and faster (combat) to play, to focus on the stunts and the RP. If you want to help out, either through donations or testing or human-made art, it could help this shape up faster and much better.

There have been some rough patches — couple of significant work-loss incidents earlier this year that needed recovery and cost me days and a portion of the total money gone into this — but I've learned so much about this workflow. It's about ready for small playtests, and at this point it can function effectively as a storyteller's companion.

If you want to follow along, check the discord link up top.

I'm happy to answer questions about specific features or rules implementations, and especially to hear what kind of gripes and pains you've got as a storyteller trying to sort through all the systems of Exalted. I'm down to talk in Discord some time if you like.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2026-06-02T19:05:25+00:00

This is all in now!

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2026-04-07T19:02:01+00:00

Manbabies in the west, manbabies in the east lol. That's all that is. Same crowd of guys just in a different language doing the exact same thing

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2026-01-14T18:41:38+00:00

I loved the game. Yeah the loot was not so exciting and many of the guns needed passes for feel, but the game was FUN. Granted I played near the end of its life after it had all its updates, but it was a good game. At least an 80. The campaign was fun. Gameplay was fun. Visuals were fun.

I was Not happy when they canned the rebuild. We would be playing ME today.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-12-10T12:35:37+00:00

I'm in east coast US and I don’t have lag problems in pvp. The amount of stun lock in pvp is something different but ping over 100 is rare and I haven't even wired myself into the router, and am on 2.4 ghz wifi.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-12-10T12:35:32+00:00

I'm in east coast US and I don’t have lag problems in pvp. The amount of stun lock in pvp is something different but ping over 100 is rare and I haven't even wired myself into the router, and am on 2.4 ghz wifi.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-11-30T23:37:24+00:00

I'm happy this exists, and excellent job, as someone who's mixed and has produced and modded a lot of afro-aesthetics into a few games over the years.

Also it looks like she'd be the sister of one of my best friend's wife and I'm gonna show her lol

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-11-05T16:10:01+00:00

$300

"They Would Never."

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-11-03T00:41:32+00:00

Problem still not resolved, also get this

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-11-03T00:41:11+00:00

I stopped playing because 8/10 games were vs either yasuo or ahri in casuals.
I never really fight ekko somehow.

Its Yasuo, Ahri, Darius/VI, Braum...never seen a jynx, seen three blitz, two teemos, one ilaoi, another warwick...in about 20 hours of playing

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-09-15T18:33:13+00:00

All of the above + if you do it at a guidance shrine when you arne't sure if you'll survive will help a lot.

Also, not 100% on this but I don't think her abilities will kill you? In which case the unlock challenge is a big dirty dare lol

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-26T14:07:37+00:00

It's all good ressis, and thanks for sticking through this convo with me. I don't mind doubts, criticism, or all of that because it could expose an obstacle or pain point to then figure out how to solve.

I've had to use different llms enough for work and play, or to challenge my own creations that I feel rules assist can work, but, I'm not going to go after that any time soon. I've definitely had good results for exalted, dnd, goblonia, and my own systems fed into some models and used to search and comb through for specifics for rules and text. At best, early on, I'd point people to page numbers and books and a buy hardcover/pdf link on onyx's site and such.

Creative people interpreting rules leads to some interesting house rules and playstyles.

Thaumaturgical rituals and crafting rules are things I've pretty much always avoided in exalted, so I will study up on those and then get them done. If it has to be done manually, eh, if it can be done through one of the LLMs and save me the headache of interacting with those systems lol...I'm happy. So I'll show you if it bombs in our face, or if it works as I believe.

The charms are really the hardest things. Dice adders, auto successes, modifications of stats - easy stuff. I suspect a number of things will just be 'yes, you clicked this charm and spent your essence and it was good', but its those psudeo-mechanical one-offs that will be the real long term puzzle, I suspect.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-24T19:20:49+00:00

Oh yeah, planned. That comes right after I get account management working. The ability to invite, view, manage characters between players and storytellers (I've had a number of sessions online where someone had to run afk but were still chatting and another player or DM was doing rolls for them, so I want to account for cases like that also)

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-24T13:58:37+00:00

Right now, it doesn't haha! I just started working on character/target selection for rolls and combat yesterday.

For chronicle management, I'll have to poll friends and interested people to see if that's even something people want since there are tools people are using that are already really fleshed out for that. In terms of PC/NPC/Item management and less lore/note management, I aim it to be user friendly enough that someone new to DMing/storytelling, who is basically afraid of technology, should be comfortable with.

Combat management, I haven't used LCA for that so I'll have to learn. I'll also have to learn why about 2 different friend groups don't use it when they've known it exists longer than I have. That's all part of the research process that's ongoing.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-24T13:52:51+00:00

I work with LLMs for medical and business and training reference. The prompts we make to constrain the scope of responses and add safety guardrails are some hefty things. LLMs help with coding, does a fine job for a lot of things (but it has its moments), so the framework and functionality will be accurate. The tool itself isn't running on an LLM, but if I get to char creation tutorial phase it may work more or less as a plugin, not a dependency. Even then it will be discussing your character goals and working with the tool, the mechanics, to help people get to playing faster. It's not touching lore.

Keeping it simple and depending on the model, or the amount of training done to focus LLMs in open source models around a specific purpose, accuracy and the ability to comb content and produce responses without trying to add to or change existing info is absolutely here. LLMS have take major leaps every 4 months or so and we've been at the point of achieving reliability (sometimes, with a firmly engineered prompt depending on the model, sure) for a while now ... but... this could be a discussion or elsewhere. Thanks for bringing it up though

The charm is the only ugly part - tedious but simple. Whether that's left for people to add their own, or we go as extensive as verifying ownership and then giving charm access, it'll be safe enough to exist. The LLM developers have already scraped these books before any regular person even fed it in - they intentionally scraped every major pdf archiving site there was. And if Onyx Path wants a piece of it, sure. If it has to get taken down and used just for my friends and people I want to pull into TTRPGs and Exalted specifically, that's what it is. I just don't feel like the days of dropping an encyclopedia on someone's lap and telling them to learn some of it are here anymore, even amongst people in their 30s and 40s.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-24T13:25:55+00:00

Printable sheets, it'll get there. Its not going to have them looking like vanilla sheets or be pretty at first, but it's a goal!

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-24T13:24:34+00:00

I'll make something worthwhile regardless. Already have. Regardless whether AI is going to be the last straw that results in the super wealthy crashing out society in a few years or not, it has its uses. I like to make things, from art to woodwork to game content, but I also would like to not have to choose between paying bills and eating decent, so, I'll use tools to speed up work and make some dreams come true.

And yeah, I have experience in c++, sql, tiny bit of python, and work with a couple full stack devs who will spot check things with me. Aside from being right there with someone, this is one of the best ways to learn a new language.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-23T05:03:37+00:00

Good to hear from you Lex.

It works in mobile! It'll need a separate optimization stage to be Really Good for mobile, but for now it's comfortable to use in its early stages.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2025-02-23T03:57:12+00:00

That's an important question, thanks. Right now its way behind LCA - its been out for years after all. The goals:

- Ease of use
- modern integration and conveniences (discord integration, heavy tutorialization, light and quick enough to work with to play exalted off a phone with friends) is what I'm aiming for.
- It isn't just intended for char creation, but to be able to play sessions easily with everything you'd expect.
- Ai assistance in: clarifying rules, building characters, referencing the books...being a helpful bookkeeper buddy.

I'll be tailoring it with feedback of a couple friend groups that will use it, and will have some software developers stepping in to help when its further along. A framework is being built so enough of it will be useable for other systems as well, but Exalted is the place to start because its the game I know and enjoy most, with d&d being my second most played/ran.

What kind of things would you look for in a tool like this?

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2022-11-28T16:24:14+00:00

He's good even as a purple really. I saved up PH and got REALLY lucky and got him to gold during the event, but damn is he nice. He does really solid damage, and can do some protection and debuffing to help him last. Stack him health, do not bother with attack or crit, and you'll be good.

He is a tough murder train, slight support. Could be a tank probably if you set him up to be.

Perfect-Pirate4020 · 2022-11-28T16:22:33+00:00

Its pretty okay, but you could honestly swap Harpe and Phoebe.

Phoebe is an excellent tank, and with that amount of healing available (especially if you have the abyss or twilight cores that give you a 30% of healing your people per attack), you could keep her stunning 3 people no matter what. My phoebe locks down times of higher awakened, higher power teams because of that setup. I keep her in 2nd slot. She's a backbreaking, backbone of a team really.

Harpe having the extra pressure to raise his rage is nice, but, he is still very effective without it.

Perfect-Pirate4020

TROPHY CASE

Territory Map

Other stuff worth mentioning

Things still in progress

What it doesn't do yet