Editing Exalted101:Storytelling advice (section)

==Decide on your setting and themes==

Creation is vast - virtually any theme and any type of exotic locale can be found within its bounds. For your first game, you'll probably want to be fairly specific about both things - this will help you focus, and will help your players, since they know what sort of game they're likely to experience, and only have to learn part of Creation instead of all of it.

While your choice of theme is somewhat dictated by your choice of PC type or vice versa (Solars make for incredibly broad games, but they wouldn't do, say, a gritty game of urban crime where you struggle to survive by stealing enough to eat. Conversely, a story dealing with the effort to conquer the world and the consequences of your actions in doing so is going to be a tough ask for mortals), you should still have a fairly broad palette. The Storyteller's chapter in the core rulebook offers advice on choosing theme (**does it? It's been a while...**), but you should probably make sure that your players are OK with the theme - they may want to explore different things in game, or be adverse to a particular theme. Exalted isn't about disenfranchising players or characters, so it's best to make sure everyone is heading in the right direction. On the other hand, Exalted isn't about running games you don't want to run, so it's fine for you as an ST to set bounds for the sorts of themes to be explored in the game.

Choosing a beginning setting can seem overwhelming at first - the world is so big, and there are so many books detailing it! If there are any locations that leap out at you (or your players) from the setting chapter of the corebook, go for it - don't worry what may or may not be detailed about that location in later books, just run with what makes you think it's cool, and fudge any details. If you later invest in the appropriate books, you can have fun figuring out how and why things changed from canon to your version (blaming the Sidereals is always a popular choice!). Alternately, if nothing leaps out at you, create your own kingdom with whatever themes or imagery you like and put it whereever you want on the map (the Scavenger Lands are always a great choice, but literally anywhere will do) - Creation is so vast that there would be hundreds, if not thousands of significant kingdoms never mentioned in the books or appearing on the maps. With the exception of a few particularly advanced nations (like the Realm and Lookshy), the borders of any given nation aren't likely to be terribly definite, so feel free to literally put a kingdom wherever you like. It doesn't need to be spectacularly detailed - after all, who needs to know every branch of the local government if the Eclipse can make them dance to her tune with Bureacracy charms anyway - so don't feel intimidated out of it, grab your favourite themes and imagery, give it a few names, and go for it.

For a first game, it is easiest to choose a single location/kingdom to begin with and expand out as the characters grow in power and influence - that way nobody has to learn the ins and outs of the huge setting at the very beginning, only a localised version. Set loose boundaries on where characters can have originally come from - if their home nations or cities are reasonably close to your starting point, then they make natural story-fodder as the characters return and their histories rear up as plot hooks.