Exalted is a Fantasy Roleplaying game originally created by White Wolf Publishing, made famous for their World of Darkness game lines (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Mage the Awakening, etc.).
It's a Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TTRPG) where players take the role of one of the Titulatar, Exalted, powerful Demigods of World-shaping skill and Awesome might.
Many of the ways Exalted Third Edition likes to emphasize the power of the Exalted and their Charms (individual power expressions packaged with flavorful names and descriptions) are with mechanics often called “Dice Tricks”.
Dice Tricks are powers that have some ability to alter the potential results of the Dice before they're ever rolled to make it more likely the Exalt will succeed at tasks within their purview.
A common dice trick Non-Exalted players are likely familiar with is Advantage in Dungeons and Dragons, a mechanic where the player leverages their luck, talent, or skill in an area to take two shots at rolling the dice and choosing the most beneficial result.
Advantage and other dice tricks like it are how many TTRPGs add complexity to their mechanics as well as how they give players an added level of control over the outcomes of any actions they take.
Simply knowing that you have two attempts to succeed at a task instills you with a bit of confidence, and perhaps even courage, going into a challenge.
But how does that relate to choosing a Virtual Tabletop?
Simple. The more complex the mechanics, especially the dice tricks, involved in a given TTRPG system, the more powerful of a VTT engine is required to allow players the full experience of playing the game. Even more so if you intend to use the VTT as a method to cut down on some of the need to personally calculate the result of rolls and actions taken in-game, leaving such chores to the gentle attentions of the computer while you and your friends enjoy the story being told.
Where does that actually leave us though?
Knowing that you’ll likely want a more powerful Virtual Tabletop is all well and good, but just saying that doesn’t actually narrow down the options for the everyman (or woman) just trying to enjoy a cool game where you can play as a shapeshifting cowboy crow-man using a six-shooter that spits fireballs to fight a T-Rex.
Which is… fair enough.
There are a few options available to you for playing Exalted 3rd Edition online.
The first is ‘ol reliable. Roll20. Roll20 is perhaps the most well known VTT on the market, dating back to simpler days of the world wide web, having been originally launched some thirteen years ago in 2012. It now boasts more than eight million registered users, supports nearly twenty languages, and through a mix of official and unofficial programming efforts has become the host of hundreds, if not thousands, of tabletop RPGs. It’s fair to say that Roll20 is likely the first name on the lips of nearly anyone who has played a TTRPG online in the last decade, and for good reason. Even better, Roll20 does host a functioning Exalted 3e character sheet which is the most important step to determining if a VTT will be usable for any system.
Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends. While it is possible to run a campaign of Exalted 3e exclusively on Roll20, doing so is something of a slow, clunky mess. Roll20 was simply never made to accommodate systems with as much depth as Exalted and as such, there is next to no automation available for the more complex powers available to a character in Exalted, even if only restricted to ones available at Character Creation. The community has put in a goodly amount of work to make macros and hacks to bridge the gap, but even so it may yet be a doomed endeavor as ever new types of Exalted are written and released officially who will on their own require even more powerful automation to smoothen out their magics.
Ok then. If Roll20, the Grandfather of Virtual Tabletops, is out of the running, what about Fantasy Grounds? It’s leagues more powerful, having been built with Unity, and has enough tech wizardry behind it to rival any demigod’s sinister sorceries.
An excellent suggestion! While Roll20 occupies the lofty title of “Grandfather of Virtual Tabletops”, a title that I absolutely didn’t just make up, Fantasy Grounds has actually been around for nearly a decade longer, having been initially released in 2004. Even then, it’s somewhat rare to find others who actually know about it. Likely, that’s due to the fact that to use the software the Gamemaster first needs to buy a license, which then allows you to create a limited number of games to run for however many distinct groups you might want to play with as compared to the free solution of Roll20. The additional Ultimate License, has since been folded into the core software license as of February of 2025.
Ah, but to bring us back on topic, is hosting an Exalted Third Edition campaign on Fantasy Grounds better than doing so with Roll20?
In all likelihood, it would be… if there were any support to be had for the system on Fantasy Grounds in the first place. Sad to say, there’s been little more than silence on that front since the end of the game’s Kickstarter where excited fans discussed different options for online play between themselves.
If Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are both off the table, where does that leave us? Tableplop? Owlbear Rodeo? Alchemy?
While all of the above, save perhaps Tableplop, would be possible to at least recreate the character sheets necessary to at least attempt to play Exalted, none of them are the best solution.
Instead, the best Virtual Tabletop option for playing Exalted Third Edition is, without a doubt, FoundryVTT.
Like Roll20, FoundryVTT actually does host a fan-made character sheet for Exalted, passing the first hurdle with ease. Beyond that though, the “system” module for Exalted on Foundry was made not only to store the character’s attributes and powers, but also to be able to properly emulate as many of the game’s dice tricks as can be automated.
With only that level of innovation, the Foundry sheet would be a clear winner. However, it not only can handle many of the game’s most rigorous uses of dice magic, it also comes complete with a character creation tool, one of the best to be found for the game online at all.
From a player perspective, the Foundry sheet covers practically everything you could ask for, but what about from the Gamemaster’s (or Storyteller’s, to use the system’s preferred parlance) perspective? A side of the feature we’ve yet to discuss so far?
Well, the Foundry system has got you covered there as well.
While at this time Onyx Path Publishing have yet to officially license Exalted content to any Virtual Tabletop, meaning that hopeful Storytellers will need to manually enter each individual armor, charm, merit, npc, and weapon into their preferred program. The Foundry system has you covered as well, boasting an importer that works with all of the official content released for the game and even for third-party and homemade content written using the correct formatting, something that none of the other VTT options researched have for this system. Meaning that instead of spending potentially dozens of hours personally adding each relevant item into the system, the Storyteller need only spend a fraction of that time on mindless busywork and can instead focus on the things that matter, like telling a phenomenal story of divinely potent demigods entering a baking competition together to obtain the mystical mcguffin needed to raise the secret city of atlantis from the bottom of the ocean.
With Foundry on your side, the only things you’ll need to get into Exalted are the rules and the will to have a good time!
Tsire Divyn is a Black TTRPG Professional with a soft-spot for crunchy games.
