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1So there have been a lot of large posts written about the various splat theory and systems of Exalted, but lacking any /useful/ kind of Storytelling Chapter to help establish a tone, jumping right into the game without any prior impressions but what the book hands you is going to end up in a vastly different place. So to that end, I'm going to ramble on here about some narrative fundamentals to consider for someone /running a game/ of Exalted, rather than simply reading the books and observing homebrew from afar.
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4Enriching Creation - Getting Started:
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6Exalted is a game with a lot of contradictory goals behind it, in order to establish a very particular kind of feel than other games of its stripe. At its core is a typical power fantasy, providing you with a 
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8paired with the indictment of that very power fantasy, through the cynicism and contempt by which it holds those possessing such capabilities. This is not a particularly *new* domain for White Wolf, having once had Abberant under its belt with an infamous "This Is Not The Superfriends" cachet, and so how *successful* it can be at executing that indictment is at times entirely up in the air. But through the kitchen-sink-sandbox nature of Creation and distance from 21st century earth and all its cultural morals and landmarks, I think there are a handful of ways which Exalted excells over its peers to take advantage of it's wider premise on its own terms without capitulating to real-world nonsense.
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10Exalts are, by default, considered to be standalone heroes in their own right. Beowulf has only its protagonist
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12but as mighty as Exalts are, they are also considered to form into groups of like-minded individuals to undertake grand feats, which can put on even more pressure to make the conflict grander to compare. And stories of this stripe rarely appear in classical myth, and those which do like Jason and the Argonauts, are rotating casts of disparate characters who meet, undertake a grand quest, then return to their own lives. This is cause for concern to many STs, who will often have a difficult time just finding more than One good excuse for these people to unite together, let alone several spaced over large spans of time.
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14in the long run you can basically do anything and learn anything, and then once you get there you have to live with it. Which also means that it needs to be possible for your characters to be heroes as well as monsters, because otherwise their self-sabotage is just meaningless misery porn. 
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16When making a group, it can be very tempting to have the first session or prologue be "the introduction" that lays out first impressions, chance meetings and establishing the foundations for future relationships. While this can work for an experienced group who have very clear ideas about the game they came to play and who-with, and essentially went and pre-scripted the entire affair, the easier method is to create a web of connections between them before the first session ever takes place. Pose leading, significant questions for each character which connect either to their background or your plans for the overall plot, such as "on your way here, one of these people saved your life, who was it and how?" or "you've heard word of a foriegn Exalt poking around, and thinking it may be a Realm spy, you decided to investigate. Who was it, and how did you find out?
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18There are four things I consider to be fair integral to the Exalted experience, and how you and your group approach these things is going to have a significant effect on how campaign plays out. Just to make my biases clear, my prefered take on Creation has none of the canon NPCs, barely any of the existant organizations or factions except where they are either archetypical or would be a huge pain to whip up a replacement for a bit role (the Great Houses, the Deathlords, the Sidereal Conventions, what have you). I tend to keep my plots and ideas more street-level, locally-focused and less emphasis placed on the JRPG crew globe-trotting Creation causing in their rustbucket airship before tearing down the latest threat to all reality. So my examples and arguments are going to be formed by that, somewhat.
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20But generally speaking, storytelling in Exalted stands on four pillars: Cynicism, Absurdity, Diversity, and Tragedy.
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23The Cynicism:
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25Generally one of the major things that Exalted attempts to impart by its wide and varied themes and character is one thing above all others: There is no such thing as a benevolent power. The very act of obtaining power through sheer luck and happenstance, wielding the necesssary ambition to gain it by force, or possessing the willingness to use it against all-comers, these things are not the province of normal, right-thinking, and moral people. Handed the keys to the wonders of the world, and it is used to fight like wild dogs, exploit others and worse, 
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27It is a world where Jenna Moran once characterized a First Age Solar game as one of Personal Horror, at finding yourself a newfound peer among the world-spanning politics of impossibly old and entrenched monsters who indulge in feats of incredible decadence and terrifying vice, and the only thing 
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29And that's the baseline, because make no mistake, Exalted is inherently a very moralistic setting, and the rampant abuse, disease, oppression and genocide it dwells on are all derived out of very real problems which cannot be easily magic'd away by a peerless swordswoman. Sometimes the problem itself may simply be too many peerless swordfighters making these kinds of decisions. Despite claims otherwise, the vaunted supernatural power of the Exalted does not render one immune or out of reach of that misery, or unable to perpetuate it, but merely in a better place to take advantage of the circumstances to exploit . 
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32he problem people hit is they look at the pre-existing NPCs as what their own characters should aspire to be, and not as a mixture of antagonists and warning signs for your own PC to avoid and confront while creating your own story.
33are the result of people like you giving in to temptation or despair, but you can and should do better.
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36You can fight the agents of death and chaos in the streets, declare yourself bound to no gods, tear down the ivory towers of the decadent and oppressive, and surround yourself with the noblest among demons if it suits your fancy. But when the battle of the righteous and villainous are two superpowered beings locked in combat to determine the fate of those below them, its not always certain these are truly the actions of a Hero and not a powerful opportunist. "My methods are harsh but fair," "it was the only way it could be done," and "everyone will thank me later" are the lies that hard men tell themselves after all, and violent thugs are more than happy to keep their hands wet with blood if it would keep that position secure. An Exalt is often a walking figure of danger by what she represents, a world too large to contain, full of mystery and terror, embodied in a living, breathing actor who casually alters the course of thousands of lives in an afternoon. That potential is terrifying.
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38The text recognizes, quite rightly, that although limitless power is amazing and intoxicating, using it to sate your every whim and spit in the face of those who defied you means nothing without the wisdom to temper it and a sense of perspective about who will be the victim of your higher goals. Even the best intentions will cause knock-on effects of pain and misery if mishandled badly enough, because you are wielding a magical hammer to open glass cases filled with innocent people as collateral damage. The streets you fight on will be populated with market-goers trying best they can to put food on the table for another day, the gods you spurned will take offense and send threats to bedevil both your allies and your progress, that ivory tower rubble might leave a power-vacuum for someone worse to take the seat, and those demons may well have bloody pasts and ulterior motives from before they ever met you. All the options that power sets before you are bad options, when you must wonder if the people truly love you, fear you, or fear your capacity to Make them love you if they do not submit. The struggle is not to Win Forever through a monumental act of victory over your foes and critics, but to carve out a comfortable place in an uncomfortable reality.
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40Example plots:
41 - A powerful and derilict manse has become a holy site around which a town has sprung, dedicated to maintaining the lush garden and associated god of foliage which clogs its essence flows. Your enemies know this too, and may already be on the way there with plans of their own. Do you reach it first and take it for yourself, and destroy a way of life?
42 - A large band of refugees cast adrift from tribal fighting in lands far away have descended on a small village, almost doubling its population. They are the "unclean" of their society, lepers, prostitutes and undesirables, looking to start a new life and having nowhere else to be. Do you try to integrate the two peoples by force for the sake of harmony, or cast the newcomers out to the road again?
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44So the tough question Creation poses is this: If the chance to Be *truly* Good was already lost before the power came to you, is it still worthwhile to Do Good, keep fighting and growing in strength to maintain what you know and love? The quest to remain an upright, kindly person while that emergent power tries to change you, or risk embracing the great madness of your kind because others have escaped without consequence while you will remain a Bad person no matter what noble deeds you accomplish. That has always been one of the vastly more compelling angles to Exalted's critique of power than simply placing increasingly burly hurdles to clear in front of superhuman magic, or assuming a defeatist attitude that for the sake of true freedom all Exalts must die and leave the mortal world to the mercy of its myriad dangers. 
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46Because despite perceptions on the ground, those consequences Are ultimately inescapable. While it doesn't get marked as a checkbox on a sheet, the growing willingness to exploit others to achieve ones goals are part of what makes Exalts so dangerous and barely more justified than the gods they would overthrow. But that can of worms is opened now and can't be closed, Exalts are drafted into a role which stopped mattering ages ago, the first blow struck in a cosmic terror campaign which started a cycle of violence they cannot hope to control and which will possibly outlive them long after Creation itself is dust. What kind of redemption can exist for the forces which allowed Death to florish and created Hell as a place to cage and shame their enemies, and what kind of responsibility should be demanded of or shouldered by those who hold the legacy of those crimes beyond imagining?
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48Game Functions like the Great Curse and the Wyld Hunt try to explain it away and mechanicize it, but there is always meant to be that inherent tension to being a walking danger to others and their livelihood, while unavoidably drawn to do great things, stopping self-interested creatures and others of your kind from wrecking havok, and investigate into important goings-on. Power encourages that self-interest, distance from mortal pains and failings blinds one to the harm which can be caused. The dicotomy is shown to the players as one of grappling with inapplicable tools, where the wiser ruler must act to lie low and minimize the risks and withdraw from exerting control. But busting out that control in sweeping gestures of magical ability in full view of the public is all the strength she holds can reasonably Do. 
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50But this is not set in stone either, because while the characters might be long-suffering classical heroes, there is still Heroism. There is a strong theme of defying fate and reason in the face of everything else, breaking the chains of What Is and striving for something new and better, even if you might fail. Its one of the few advantages placed before Players Characters, knowledge about how the game is already rigged and when its acceptable to bribe the dealer. Exalted is at it's strongest when it allows for Third Paths and trying to thread the needle on doing the most you can with what are arguably pretty Terrible Powers for executing Good Works, minimizing the damage while removing the most harmful elements you can in the process. The point has always been for clever players to break your carefully laid breadcrumb trail or Hard Moral Choice over their knee, and find some way, somehow to snatch a happy ending from between the jaws of cynicism and despair.
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53Shyft: "Players are going to think of solutions to problems you have not considered. Your job is not to tell them no. Your job is to arbitrate the results of their actions. This means that they may have to contend wtih a different form of challenge than what you originally intended, or what they originally expected.'
54"To expand on this point, Storytellers can reward their players for tehse kinds of clever behaviors with bonus dice (situational or circumstantial), new plot hooks, information, or even Backgrounds and other Traits."
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57Exalted magic, by its own nature, exists to create optimal circumstances for players to leverage. The magically-accurate attack kills effortlessly, the magically-persausive argument convinces without a second thought. Therefore it is of otmost importance for the Storyteller to place before the characters nothing but suboptimal choices. There are several ways to do this, 
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59 - Lead with Greed: Orient your presentation of information around what the characters desire most. Draw their attention towards it in the process of conveying other information, and the sheer accessability of it given their skills and Charms. Don't goad or advocate for a certain course of action, but make it plain nothing is stopping a smash-and-grab approach.
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61MORE EXAMPLES
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63The end goal is not to jerk the players around with the possibility for gains, but to follow through on them entirely to the hilt and have consequences spin out of the character's own approach to the problem, and through this force conflict between the characters and the world around them. The Storyteller is the player's lens into the world of Creation, and without outright lying or hiding information, act the part of the Imp of the Perverse perched on their shoulders driving them towards acing like the monsters they are one bad day away from being. 
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65By the same token, don't populate the world with things that involiate their xp purchases
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68Low Cynicism: Good-hearted people will recognize the goodness of others, no matter the personal migh or station.
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70Mid cynicism: Those who have power squander it, those without power are cowed by fear.
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72High Cynicism: Its a dog-eat-dog world, and everyone is looking out for themselves.
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75Keeping it Fun
76Exploring the allure and abuse of power as one of its foremost agents in the world at large can be an exhausting ordeal, especially in a world with conditions as bad as Creation. For players of especially compassionate and moral characters, it can feel helpless to not change anything meaningfully overnight, especially when those solutions only seemingly make things worse. At the more extreme ends one might characterize things as misery tourism, inauthentic plumbing around the worst depths of humanity through the lens of myth and magic, and emphasizing how these things cannot be solved by a simple fight scene transition and some spectacular light shows.
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78But the world is always subject to changes, even those outside of the players control and influence. Despite the acts of Exalts and gods, nothing is eternal. Not even misery. When these great and powerful forces of misrule stumble on their own vices and pratfall into the sea? That's really funny, and a large component of being an Exalt is living with the knowledge that for every mundane problem which cannot be solved with an application of cleverness and force, can certainly be waited out until someone screws up very badly and it all comes crashing down, if not actively assisting those fumbles when it comes to pass. Its all a very black joke sometimes, but in a game about power fantasies which also rejects the moral high ground to practice those fantasies, sometimes the best and most cathartic result you can manage is seeing the mighty and wicked get what they truly deserve.
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80the blame for any given mishandling of events most certainly will fall upon the circle. 
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83The Diversity: More than humans.
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85Creation is larger than the Exalted, and the name on the book is simply the lens by which the players get to see the world. The framework of might granted by Exaltation empowers them to grapple with the magnitude and strangeness of that world. The premise behind the Exalted is itself a paradox, how one woman can redefine the world around her through her ambitions, and yet if she holds no authority or support despite this strength, her death will cause no equally-powerful ripple of events. If she dies as a queen, she died as a queen, while dying alone in a ditch as a wandering monk holds no particular rarity either. Exalts are peer-level opponents, but so are vastly more varied and wild things which have come before and persisted into the modern day, meaning that an Exalt is neither the last word or the upper eichelons of dangers to be found. In fact Exalts should be among the minority unless acting in places like the Realm which rely exclusively on the Exalted as a way of life, because for the purposes of the stories Exalted likes to tell, an Exalted opponent is often both too predictable  to hold any surprises and too easy to understand. 
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87The use of petty gods and animist supernatural trappings insists that, on some level, everything the characters will be interacting with is /a Person/ to some degree. Anything capable of holding a conversation and forming complex thoughts has a name, baser drives and a history behind how these things and behaviors came to be. There are no truly /unknowable/ and alien mindsets which defy human comprehension, because in many cases humanity is a weaker echo of these outlandish and passionate things. There are simply those which align to a truly foreign set of objectionable or incompatable social mores and experiences. Some of these are merely inimical to life through no prior fault save unfortunate twist of fate, and the underlying tragedy here helps soften some more typically antagonistic edges. Creation is populated with thousands of such beings, like the "vengeful" caldera spirit whose broiling home has scalded and choked to death every suitor called to please her, leaving her dejected and lonely that her desire for companionship is seen by the locals as a ritual sacrifice. 
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89At the furthest extremes the supernatural actors of Creation still broadly /act/ in ways which nonetheless appear subversive or abhorrent, fitting with Exalted's mythology-influenced background. Demons express love through causing or recieving pain, the fey live to share a certain kind of maniacal solipsism with unwilling audiences, spirits lord over mortals with a distant but iron grip, and ghosts manipulate generations of descendants and conduct passion plays to gain existential purpose and reason to feel Something anymore. But although the methods are strange or cruel, players should still clearly see the logic underlying these needs, to better understand or engage with them. Those demons nevertheless quest to love and *be* loved, however misguided, the fair folk desire self-validation and tangible connections with more authentic things or people, sick to death of indulging in grandoise illusions, spirits are literally and metaphorically fattened on ill-gotten wealth and esteem which creates a blinkered world of privilege apart from that of hardscrabble humanity, and ghosts endlessly search for scraps of life to cling too when everything else from that former identity has quite literally been ripped away or forgotten. 
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91The narrative breadth of humanity is extremely complex, so the same should be equally said of anything being which can meet humankind on comparable terms. Contrasting the mundanity of the mortal desires and experiences of the players against exaggerated actors and supernatural circumstances helps add dynamicism to character relationships and an understanding, if not a sense of empathy, towards the supposed enemy or Other. A player character by contrast often will be following a reversed path by the nature of Exaltation, someone who has undoubtedly come from humble origins into grasping for enlightenment and power. 
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93The best kind of dramatic engagement is the one which feels like the real violence and conflict could have been avoided somehow, were it not for issues of ideology and unfortunately irreconcilable differences. By simply presenting the players with a series of disposable and quickly set-aside obstacles, the story instead becomes a series of mechanical gates necessary to be answered by Charms, not choices.
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95create injustices and social Others in ways we don't necessarily see as modern people. Judging value of a person on her practice of hedge magic and manipulating the essence in the land or objects can be viewed as an outgrowth of paranoia and fear of the unknown, but rarely have those fears had a real-world analogue to compare against, so not many can claim to have had a business lience revoked and been run out of town at the rumor of badly made disease-prevention talismans infecting the very people they were purchased to protect.
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97But this added context can especially emphasize the ways we Do see injustice and magnifies it, like gods lavishing blessings upon the richest cultists because the offerings are more expensive, while a poor family might be forced to empty every coffer in an effort to insure metaphysical protections for a favored child. The presence of a supernatural layer of injustice does not preclude the existence of its more mundane forms, and the two many even enable eachother to compound the issue. 
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99A cruel landlord raising the rent to drive tenets out into the street may be doing so at the behest of a godblooded kingpin leveraging a blackmail threat, where the real plot is to twist the reputation of the neighborhood into seedy, dangerous slum so local dragon lines may be cultivated a into a manse there without much oversight from the local authorities. The kingpin gets away with this because he is an enterprising bastard of the city god, who is content to let him act out his short-sighted ambitions in gentrification at the hopes he will grow bored with this petty diversion and join his mother's court with a better appreciation for how dull day-to-day civic management truly is. But for the penniless families left shivering in the cold under awnings and in alleyways, this greater context is even more disempowering and does nothing to fill hungry bellies or help put a roof back overhead.
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101So understandably there is an ignorance barrier at work, even if the circumstances aren't quite so unclear as a goddess who promises immortality will be bestowed on those who willingly plunge into the icy waters of her home. Common folk simply cannot hope to be aware of or account for the kinds of things which matter to instinct-driven animals and mystical beings. This is the root misunderstanding which creates that lack of suitable context for diplomatic communication and causes the suspicion that drives Creation's cycles of violence. To an extent, /every monster, spirit, demon and god has a motivation/ which places it at-odds with others around it, and often not a very aspirational motivation either.
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103All living things (and frequently the non-living things) want to,
104 - succeed at a skill she is good at (or choses believe she is, and reacts badly when proven wrong),
105 - gain what she needs to survive in comfort (which includes ingratiating herself with people capable of supplying that comfort),
106 - be loved by those she respects and cares for (or have the option to gain this trust from strangers),
107 - feel at home and safe where she lives (or explore the option to safely create such a home for herself), 
108 - and lastly, become acknowledged as though she belongs and has agency or control over her own life and destiny. 
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110All the characters which players will be interacting with, from the most common bandit on the roadside to the Neverborn churning in their collective graves, are driven by these needs. Perhaps not all at once, and perhaps not in ways which align to methods the players may sympathize with, but it will exist.
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112So it falls to the Storyteller to make it clear that everything happening is in pursuit of having one or more these needs met by /someone/, for some reason. Most of these things will have easy excuses, be it ideology or convienient alibi to justify it all as something greater than base motivators, but it still comes from a place of Need. So long as that Need exists, so will the desire to pursue it. And that inherent selfishness will bring conflict to the players.
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114Every living thing pictures itself as the protagonist of its own story, if not the justified hero. The Farmer who wakes in the middle of the night from the sound of fighting in the fields only to witness a 11-foot turtle woman trading blows with a hungry ghost still considers himself the lead of his life's story, only now it has become a Horror story.
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116But this isn't the same thing as saying all Wants are equal in nuance, because Creation has no shortage of people and creatures who promote and thrive on truly despicable things. Moral ambiguity inherent to the setting is not moral relativism, and so while a Southern warlord might stand in her command tent and wonder if the growing pool of blood at her feet is a worthy price to achieve her ambitions, this is not fundamentally the same as the offended god who revokes her harvest blessing at an accidental snub and plunges a small nation into famine, even if both campaigns result in the same amount of dead. 
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118It is both the pettiness and the scope of the circumstances which cast the god as the greater monster, and being able to clearly assign this blame as an abuse of power fueled by a wounded ego detracts nothing from a story containing it. The Storyteller is not required to include some implausibly more sympathetic interpretation of the god's character, 
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120The purpose of the exercise isn't to excuse or justify the occurance of bad events and actors at work in the world, but give players and the characters an insight into How and Why this has happened, that there are reasons things have turned out the way they are. Even if those reasons are illogical or nonsensical.
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122Low Diversity:
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124Mid Diversity:
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126High Diversity:
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129Expanding on that somewhat, Creation is a setting intended to feel /lived-in/ by people. History stretches impossibly vast and large beyond and behind the knowledge of anyone bar celestial figures in charge of meticulously tracking its changes. There are no places untouched by man or god, there was /something/ notable which happened anywhere you can go, and quite explicitly the further you walk from human civilization the greater your chances of stumbling across societies organized among spirits and the noteworthy things they have accomplished in mankind's absence. Everywhere is a home to Someone or Something, meaning even the demon bound to guard an ancient tomb is going to have found some way to add little homey-touches to the surroundings to alleviate its boredom of the intervening time.
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131Nowhere is truly a Dungeon, but Creation is a dangerous place despite that. Setpieces are amazing when they are the punctuation to a great sequence. When all you have to offer are setpieces, they suck.
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134people are more complex than their culture says, 
135a faction of people who hate ghosts in a culture which practices ancestor cults is unnecessarily contrary, but a woman who chafes against tradition because she feels slighted by her parents and has to continue this relationship through worship has interiority and reasons behind her disgust with the status quo.
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138traits common to a region or people are not a personality, but a context. A single person may not express or support the things common to her culture, but she will be shaped by them, have stances, opinions and orient her experiences around them.
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140sympathy for slaves gives a bias against those would would make themselves masters.
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142set problems five minutes before they begin, absent a trigger which may not exist.
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144sympathetic does not mean Correct. There are universal cultural wrongs, but they will be split up across class or power groups, where violence is looked down upon, but ultimately more acceptable or dismissable when posed against "fair targets."
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147People will believe most things you tell them and most lies go unnoticed because ordinary social situations don't call for skepticism. Most people don't want to know the real story, have their own problems to be dealt with, and so are willing rubes when inquiry seems like asking for more trouble than necessary. Good lies lean on things that aren't easily falsified and no one is all that much invested in resolving. Sometimes a mystery is left well alone.
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151Exalted and the Absurd
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153Creation covers a staggering amount of written and potential material, encompassing every genre from slasher tales, barefisted fighting tournaments, millenia-spanning romances, fraught political dramas, daring heists and unlikely combinations of the same. The Exalted are superpowered heroes always pushing the edge of what is possible, if only in the sheer consistancy of operating as a peak-human unhindered for hours at a time. Therefore it is far too easy to take this towards its furthest extremes and assume this thematic chaos is all playing out concurrently, in most cases conflictingly, and annihilating any sense of reality or disbelief as one wanders between scenes like cliched movie sets.
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155Sincerity is the biggest tool in the arsenal of a Storyteller presented with such disparate parts, and for the absurdity to have meaning, there must be a baseline to follow from. In most cases, the Storyteller will be playing the role of the 'straight man' to counter and contain the actions of the players, but if you opt for a more outlandish tone, the key is to establish your tone quickly and boistrously, preferrably long before the players have made their characters. Of the two methods, playing Creation straight is the easier of the two, allowing the outlandish nature of the world and the characters attempts to grapple with it on its own terms becomes a kind of absurdity itelf. 
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157Circumstances like this could be as simply has forcing the players to negotiate a peace treaty between a land settlement and the guardian spirit of a local pride of lions, notable members of whom she demands be part of the audience to the agreement with all the amendies as any human diplomat. The trappings are more unusual, but the stakes are fundamentally the same.
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159but absurdity is a spice, as well. It should always come as a welcome surprise, rather than met with a long-suffering sigh. Even as a chance to break free from the well-worn understandings of the setting, that somber voice which carries across the lakeside should be expected to be some kind of spirit, simply for that one time out of a hundred when it is the damaged Animating Intelligence of a forgotten manse or warstrider endlessly repeating its final mayday message.
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161bad comedy can damage players investment in places, people, and things, because now the Punchline is all that remains. A quirk, a gag or an accidental flub in the execution of a character can be personality-defining, but also irritating when used for every appearance. 
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163But playing into the Absurd is not the same thing as doing something as Comedic, and Comedy is not the same thing as Parody or Irreverence. It is easy to take the exaggerations already placed upon Exalted and turn it on its ear for a quick gag, but most of the setting is grounded quite deliberately to give its excesses more effect. So while these things might seem ridiculous, there is some internal consistancy to be upheld. 
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165In the right hands and the right players, the use of straight-faced absurdity encourages moral complexity and can descalate scenes which risk going too far. When the Dawn caste trounces the bandit den of boar-beastmen, blasting her way onto the muddy roads outside before holding the leader up to stare into his beady pig eyes. Hand poised to deliver the killing blow, there is an equal possibility she may simply drop him to the ground with a raucous laugh upon realizing all this time she had been rolling in the muck with men who were not just metaphorical, but literal swine. 
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167focus on the absurdity of circumstances 
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170The best use of comedy is not to draw attention to these excesses, but to embrace that and dwell instead on the results with a sincere enthusiasm to watch it take its course. The fugitive Dawn caste who foolishly attempts to mask her castemark with an increasingly large and flamboyant change of hats as she ducks from barroom to fruit market to in an attempt to deter her pursuers, that is a story to be told on its own without any context for the humor taking place. It is necessary to read the room in these circumstances, and know when the point to reel things back has started, and when the player would prefer to wrap up her little misadventure in town than make a Dexterity test to avoid stumbling and rip her pants to flee the scene around her ankles.
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173Low Absurdity:
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175Mid Absurdity:
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177High Absurdity:
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181Telling Stories about Failure
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183Much like classical myth, Creation trends towards illustrative tragedies. Benevolent powers are overthrown as cautionary tales for new rulers. Years-spanning trusts are betrayed for shortsighted aims. Good people die unmourned. The world changes, and without intervention it is assumed these changes will be for the worse.
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185that things will go wrong but clever thinking will always help you through the other end, no matter how incredibly stupid your plan was.
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187given the lack of a perfect solution, most players would prefer to choose how they have lost. create a kingdom which rules for 1000 years without their involvement, or enact great changes personally and risk everything falling apart without them.
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189players rarely realize how terrifying they appear to be. Most grown adults have seen a brawl at the local inn or public square, some may have even watched a duel or execution, but none of what most characters can do will seem natural or reasonable. When a man gets bisected cleanly from crown to crotch by a foot wide golden razor, or flames and char erupt out from the hole made with a single punch through a man's ribcage, people will notice, remember, and steer clear in the future.
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191remember that life persists even during dark times, and touch on these small moments of levity. Old friends will congregate to gossip around the local communal oven or washing, children will run and play mindless games in the street even if the mother warily wrangles them back indoors at the characters passing, , 
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193It can be a challenge to balance between characters who wish to live large, be grandoise and indulge in the wealth and power of Exalted station, and those who are simply humble folk who askew the spotlight. While the standard advice of aligning players expectations for the game and the characters also applies here, there is another option, to coordinate the two seemingly-opposed camps together. The side who desires parades and worship serve as a public, garish face for the group as a whole, this distraction allowing the more humble members to slip in unnoticed by comparison. 
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195Where the supernatural gets involved with mundane lives, people will be hurt and some may die by indirect or direct action of these forces. In many ways, this is a natural disaster which is personalized to the spirit as a means to identify rather than focus unproductive blame, much the same reason meteorologoists assign names to hurricanes. Most normal people lack the ability to directly contest spirit request or incursion, which is why most rely on simple wards and talismans, but if misplaced or evaded there is no chance for escape. If a spirit causes a famine, the sick and the eldest will be the first to subcumb unless they have a strong social position. This is something players will have to come to grips with very quickly, and so be emphasized to create urgency and show the forces of injustice to be fought rather than to punish players for inaction or to make causes seem hopeless. 
196
197If a player wishes to be a defender, she will have to act proactively, because reactionary stances will have a casualty cost. Most of these proactive plans will be shortsighted, poorly-executed, slapdash affairs which might end up doing more harm than good. And that's alright, the Exalted are powerful, not omniscient, and players quickly learn to temper their expectations for leaping several miles at a lark with the fact that this impressive skill often will not be enough. As the Storyteller, it is not the point of these scenes to dwell on these failings, or to bang the drum of pathos on behalf the the character, you have the opportunity to build them back up when they have fallen.
198
199Because it is something worth remembering that, despite how the many, many conflicts of Creation inspire thoughts of foreboding dangers and life-threatening risks, that bad things are extremely simple to conjure. It is the Storyteller's whim, after all, to place opposition in front of the characters, to allow victory to evade their grasp. But the much harder thing is creating instances of happiness, tranquility, or even joy. It is these moments which make the fraught tragedy of Creation bearable, its lows more worth enduring in persuit of the highs. If resolution without catharsis for a grim and dour plot arc is the only satisfaction your players receive, each obstacle which places it beyond them makes the slog seem harder, the walk more uphill to reach it. If the research for a cure to an ongoing plague leaves them with simply a growing bodycount, they will mark their efforts wasted and become demoralized by the cost. The test of the Storyteller is then to give them spots of hope and peace to punctuate these setbacks, not as something to later be dashed, but as an effort to make them view the journey as one worth undertaking. In light of a great failure, they will have these small successes to fall back against as proof of their worth, rather than one enormous example of their incompetence.
200
201
202reveal an unwanted truth about the characters or their situation
203
204present an golden opportunity with a cost
205
206failure doesn't mean that you accomplish nothing, it's that you don't accomplish the exact thing you intended. A miss can absolutely result in succeeding at the thing you set out to attempt, but succeeding in such a way that now you have a new (and often bigger) problem
207
208 Draw maps, leave blanks. Know how things would progress if the PCs weren't there
209
210Crucially, you shouldn't necessarily plan for your antagonists to succeed. That doesn't mean they shouldn't try, but give the PCs a victory if they earn it.
211
212Low Tragedy:
213
214Mid Tragedy:
215
216High Tragedy:
217
218
219Lifted from Planarch Codex, relevant to Exalted plots ------------------------
220The agendas described in Dungeon World are all applicable to the Planarch Codex. In addition, the GM has a new agenda, shared with the players:
221Reflect the variety of real life: The countless planes of existence are filled with an infinite catalog of people, places, and things, as well as experiences, sensations, emotions, happenings, controversies, vistas, and rituals. When GMing or playing this game, or preparing to do so, try to be a student of the world in all its diversity and details, giving yourself a deeper well to draw from—not just in the “OMG that’s weird!” sense, but recognizing that the range of human experiences is broad and heterogeneous.
222The inhabitants and features of the planet earth are inexhaustible and amazing teachers. Read about, explore, and reflect on the beauty and horror of the natural world, human societies both historical and modern, distant lands and their inhabitants, and the issues facing your own community. Also, attempt to listen to and learn from people of different backgrounds, remaining humble about your own knowledge and grateful for the chance to learn more. Then, try to channel what you’ve learned at the table.
223
224Give everyone personhood: Rat folk, giant spiders, demons, etc. are all just people trying to get their needs and desires met, like everyone else. Nobody is a faceless monster that can be murdered without consequence. This does not mean that everyone is friendly; life is hard and those who are desperate or malicious may stab you as soon as look at you, but they have their reasons—noble, ignoble, or both.
225
226Reveal greater diversity: First, whenever it’s time to say something about the setting, don’t always say the first thing that pops into your head; try to say something slightly stranger instead, ideally something that invokes the diversity of the planes. Your political contact isn’t just a royal emissary, but a member of an asexual third gender entrusted with diplomatic duties because they can’t be carnally seduced and compromised by their kingdom’s enemies.
227
228Additionally, whenever the players ask about or examine something in a more than cursory way, show that it was more complicated than it seemed. People (along with artifacts, ruins, locations, situations, etc.) don’t simply reflect cultural norms and stereotypes, but embody and defy them in complex ways. If you’re stuck, pick one or more of these options:
229• it upholds a cultural principle, at great cost
230• it twists a principle in a new direction
231• it breaks, defies, or rebels against a principle
232• it is deeply affected or marked by a principle
233This allows you to dig deeper and complicate ideas you might have just thrown out there, and encourages everyone to cooperate in breaking down stereotypes and making relatively straightforward concepts more complex over time. All you have to do is look more closely at things and they become more interesting.
234Perhaps the asexual diplomat is pregnant.
235While doing this, avoid tokenism and “all but one” stuff, where all members of a group share the same traits, except for one or more special individuals. No one is unique in defying or embodying cultural norms. People do that all the time, in both big and small ways. That’s part of how culture works.
236
237Juxtapose the incompatible: Combine elements that seem divergent; the world is far more strange and contradictory than we expect it to be.
238
239Cultivate anthropologies: Assemble the social and cultural knowledge generated by play into a larger, constantly changing picture of life; ensure that these behaviors and ideas are backed by institutions of power and the possibility of violence.
240
241This follows from revealing greater diversity. You will begin with just a few sketchy ideas about what a group, place, treasure, or dungeon is like, but over time, by adhering to the principle of diversity, you will gradually assemble a continually expanding body of knowledge about a more complex and varied world. You shouldn’t attempt to track and reincorporate everything, just the ideas that stand out, but these details will give teeth to your anthropologies.
242What are the consequences of things being the way they are? What forces are behind these traditions or deviations? How will they react? Ask yourself these questions and show the answers to the players, giving them opportunities to become involved. Above all, don’t be afraid to change the status quo, even in the case of culture norms. But established interests will react to change, and they have significant power.
243
244Soft power gets hard: Sometimes seemingly flexible guidelines are backed by the threat or reality of violence. Then they become non-negotiable and edge cases get suppressed, ostracized, or eliminated. When you make this move, a line has been crossed and someone attempts to put things back in order or redraw the line to exclude or contain the problem.
245Overturn the status quo: Societies are flexible and so are their arrangement of interests and authority; however, sometimes that breaks down, on a small or large scale, and everyone scrambles to determine or respond to the new status quo. Make them squirm.
246Reach into the madness beyond: While everyone has personhood, there are some unknowable horrors and things beyond mortal understanding—at least until someone uncovers their true nature. Invoke the bizarre, but support players in coming to know it.
247
2482. Sketch out at least three encounters beforehand which thematically and mechanically build towards the climactic encounter.
2493. Each encounter should have:
2503a. The opportunity to use skills beforehand to gain a superior starting condition, or mitigate a really terrible starting condition.
2513b. Terrain features
2523c. A varied mix of opposition, some of whom will reappear in the climactic encounter (or least abilities are repeated if not actual foe types)
2533d. A starting action advantage towards the opposition, exact ratio varies by party optimization / tier
2543e. The opportunity to use skills during to mitigate traps/terrain features/gain an advantage
2553f. An alternate (or optional additional) victory condition beyond clearing the field of opposition
2564. After the encounter, there should be a choice to make after that has consequences for later encounters
257
258
259
260
261According to the traditional view of Thrall and Hibbard (first published in 1936), seven qualities distinguish the picaresque novel or narrative form, all or some of which an author may employ for effect:[2]
262
263    A picaresque narrative is usually written in first person as an autobiographical account.
264    The main character is often of low character or social class. He or she gets by with wits and rarely deigns to hold a job.
265    There is no plot. The story is told in a series of loosely connected adventures or episodes.
266    There is little if any character development in the main character. Once a pícaro, always a pícaro. Their circumstances may change but they rarely result in a change of heart.
267    The pícaro's story is told with a plainness of language or realism.
268    Satire is sometimes a prominent element.
269    The behavior of a picaresque hero or heroine stops just short of criminality. Carefree or immoral rascality positions the picaresque hero as a sympathetic outsider, untouched by the false rules of society.
270
271In the English-speaking world, the term "picaresque" is often used loosely to refer to novels that contain some elements of this genre; e.g. an episodic recounting of adventures on the road.[citation needed]