Miracles of the Solar Exalted (John Mørke) is a nothing of a book, just 40 pages of backer charms from the Exalted 3rd Edition kickstarter. Some are good. Some will be repeated in the Abyssals book. Some are over-designed. The usual fare. If you like Exalted, you'll like this probably.
I did have to laugh at some of the niche charms, included to round out the charm trees (or just because Mr. Mørke had a particular itch he needed to scratch). Like the Performance charm that lets an actor infer the entirety of their character's script based only on a few lines of dialogue. How many times in the developers' home games are they asking players to make a "script remembering" roll? When would this even come in handy? How is this an Essence 3 effect worth 8-10xp and 5 committed motes? Even in an unusual situation like a campaign that's a hard-core simulation set backstage at a theater troupe, well, you've just created a charm that completely bypasses the systems you presumably invented specifically for this situation. Also, your story hinges on a character getting up on stage and flawlessly performing a part for which they were unable to rehearse? By the rules of drama, that's a once-a-story event at best. Repeat the trick and suddenly it's not "Oh, wow, they're so great! They're able to fill in for the second understudy with no preparation whatsoever," but rather, "Damn that bastard! They never show up for rehearsals, I've never even seen them read a script, but somehow their lazy ass never suffers consequences. They always nail their performances, even when the rest of us are left pulling our hair out stressing about their lack of preparation." And I'm not saying that this couldn't be a compelling Solar Exalted character concept. Just that if you're making that character, it would make more sense mechanically for Divinely-Inspired Performance to be a permanent charm with no cost.
That's just a nitpick, though. If anything, the lazy actor build is inspirational in the best weird-char-op tradition. The only part of Miracles of the Solar Exalted that bothered me was the Apocryphal keyword. The short version - it has no mechanical meaning, it's only present to let us, the readers, know that a particular charm is non-canonical.
There are things in rpgs that are objectively worse, from a moral perspective, so I should definitely try to keep my annoyance in perspective, but this is just such a chickenshit move. You solicited money from these people on the premise that they would be able to leave their mark on Exalted by creating a custom charm . . . so compromise your fucking vision, okay?! I mean, the whole point of collaborative creation is that you surrender total control in exchange for the beauty (and yeah, sometimes, the cringe) of the unexpected. You invited randos from the internet with more money than sense (and/or the Exalted obsession that made this a sensible financial transaction) to become part of the process, so let them be part of the process. Because of your choice of stretch goals, Creation is now a weirder, wilder place where Solar and Lunar exalted can merge into a composite being and legendary warriors can wade shirtlessly into battle. Deal with it.
I don't know. Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of this. It just doesn't sit right with me. It's like he invented the keyword to say "I, John Mørke, am willing to perform mercenary design work to the client's specifications, but let it be known that I, John Mørke, in my role as developer, do not personally sanction these decisions." I guess I feel like maybe Exalted is a little bit more resilient than that.
Later books in the line would take to bundling these backer charms in with the campaign's stretch goals to make one larger supplement. That's probably a superior approach (and would likely have saved the core book, in particular, a whole lot of trouble, to the extent of changing the direction of 3rd edition's development as a whole). As it stands, Miracles of the Solar Exalted was just a somewhat useful, but utterly forgettable book. There's only one reason to consult it (you want more choices for your solar's charms), but that reason is hardly a compelling one (the corebook has a lot of fucking charms).
Overall, I approve, but only on the balance, and probably only because I'm a soft touch for all things Exalted.
Ukss Contribution: It wasn't an intended rules outcome, but setting is a bit thin on the ground and I'm a bit salty about the Apocryphal keyword still, so I'm going with the "impossibly lazy, but infuriatingly talented actor" that is implied to exist by a strict reading of the mechanics of Divinely-Inspired Performance. I think they'd be fun as both a quest giver and a macguffin.
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