My Exalted Problem

I've spent more time reading about Exalted on RPGnet than reading actual Exalted books. Exalted is a fairly common subject on those particular boards (there's probably an Exalted thread on the front page of the main forum right now) and despite a tendency for those discussions to go into negative territory (people started putting Exalted+ in their topics to keep out that sort thing) I find them inspiring. The problem is the inspiration I get is to rip out chunks of the system and rewrite them.

I'm not planning on running Exalted any time soon (though I would love a chance to play either edition), but there's something about Exalted's system that taunts me to try and fix it. The game is playable but it always seems like more of a chore to run than it needs to be. Most of my Exalted hacks end up as just ideas with maybe a few rough notes that I forget about or lose interest in before I get around to doing anything with them (sometimes because of some other idea).

While they don't tend to go anywhere, sorting out these hacks in my head does help keep my mind in shape, and some of the better ideas I come up with for Exalted can be translated to other projects.

My current idea is to just convert the entire thing into Mutants & Mastermind with a couple key additions to capture the feel of Exalted. It's not a a perfect solution but only requires as much work as I want to put into it since. A good number of Exalted Charms (even the more esoteric ones if your creative about it) can be built using the M&M power rules.

My most extreme idea was to simplify everything on the character sheet to the four Virtues and Essence along with the character type and subtype (for example Night Caste Solar). I have write up of this version that someone else could read and understand.