Pyramid Review
Exalted Storyteller's Companion (for Exalted)
Published by White Wolf Game Studio
Written by Heather Grove, Dean Shomshak, and Adam Timworth
Art by Guy Davis, Michael Gaydos, Vince Locke, and Ron Spencer
80 page book + 4-panel screen; $15.95
White Wolf doesn't sell game screens. They put together packages which comprise "companion" sets for Storytellers. These packages strive to provide more bang for the buck, including a book of extras to justify the sometimes considerable expense of the package. For the most part, the Exalted Storyteller's Companion succeeds.
The Storyteller screen itself is serviceable but not exceptional. The artwork on the outside is decent color manga, though the perspective is either skewed or deliberately exaggerated. The interior has some basic charts and the order of combat. There are some nice touches -- including the basic data for extras -- but there are some glaring omissions. Most notably, initiative (which would have taken up all of one line) is inexplicably absent.
The accompanying book, on the other hand, is excellent. Unlike most White Wolf books, there is very little in-character fiction. What the book does have is a series of chapters on the various enemies a Solar circle can expect to fight, a brief introduction and FAQ, and a few new toys to play with.
The empire of the Dragon-Blooded, or Terrestrial Exalted, is covered in-depth in the first chapter. This section goes into detail regarding the elemental powers and Byzantine lives of . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 14, 2002
Copyright © 2002 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.