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Ferrinus posted:- if you're an ancient super powerful witch-queen no one really has the power to make you stop eating babies, after all - Fun fact: if you replace the word 'babies' in this sentence with the word 'ice cream', you will have arrived at Mage: the Awakening.
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Feb 4, 2014 00:43
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Stephenls posted:Pregnant zombies that shoot zombie baby bombs is a thing from previous editions that I think is over the top, not something we're looking forward to perpetuating. The thing we're looking forward to perpetuating is the doom engine that sings death songs and is stitched together from the necromantically animated lungs of the unhallowed dead. Which is totally metal, but not really mature, except, again, in the language of parental warning stickers. See, I'm totally on board with things that are cool but not necessarily mature. It just wouldn't be the same without skullapults. We must have skullapults. They aren't mature and they aren't trying to be, they're just fun. Look at all the screwed up monsters in like, Dead Space. There should definitely be monsters that deserve Issac's mighty boot crawling around in the Underworld. And that game even does evil-acid-spitting-babies and somehow pulls it off fairly well! You just have to find the line between 'cool' and 'squicky'. I liked the writeup for Ixcoatli a lot, and hearing that it's trying to give Beastmen more of a worldspace that isn't just savage abominations is actually pretty sweet. Brings up a question I don't think I've ever asked though, can Beastmen Exalt? If they're just being treated as another brand of humans you'd think that they could. Are they seen often outside their domains? It makes me think of the Viera from Final Fantasy 12, (the bunny ladies) who mostly didn't leave their forest but there were occasional exiles and travelers who did. Would they be considered regular folks to the Dynasts, or Anathema?
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Feb 4, 2014 01:03
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mistaya posted:And that game even does evil-acid-spitting-babies and somehow pulls it off fairly well! The first one did. The second one had three different kinds of baby monster. I can only assume the third one had a shocking twist where Isaac Clarke was a baby.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:18
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mistaya posted:Brings up a question I don't think I've ever asked though, can Beastmen Exalt? If they're just being treated as another brand of humans you'd think that they could. Are they seen often outside their domains? It makes me think of the Viera from Final Fantasy 12, (the bunny ladies) who mostly didn't leave their forest but there were occasional exiles and travelers who did. Would they be considered regular folks to the Dynasts, or Anathema?
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Feb 4, 2014 01:31
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Ferrinus posted:Eating people being lazy is lame and toothless compared to eating people being a path to otherwise unavailable power. That's one half of the argument, yeah. The other is that eating people providing otherwise unavailable power is unfair to people squicked by cannibalism, and anything it gives you should be attainable by other means through sufficient effort. (Though that quickly turns into "If you're giving me an alternative way to do this for the sake of my aesthetic sensibilities, why is it an XP sink?" and if we do the logical followup to that, it becomes "Why is the evil option an option at all if nicer methods produce the same results?" 'Round and 'round we go.) And then the third prong is "Cannibalism shouldn't be a factor at all, because it squicks me the gently caress out." We can't please everyone. The safest option would be to omit the cannibalism option entirely, but removing the potentially objectionable material is always the safest option and I'm usually reluctant to take that unless it can be demonstrated that including it is actually harmful, and as someone above who I am too lazy to go and look up said, we don't live in a culture that enables cannibalism, so I personally would rather keep it in. Mostly because cannibal skin-thieves are neat. And well within the Lunar Exalted's remit. Ferrinus posted:Raksi eating, specifically, babies is really goofy. Haha, I've tricked you into thinking I'm a crazy woman who eats babies, by eating babies! Trolled! It's not that it's necessarily unrealistic or something - if you're an ancient super powerful witch-queen no one really has the power to make you stop eating babies, after all - but it's something that contributes to Raksi seeming deranged, not Raksi seeming cunning. Like Hamlet, she can be one kind of crazy pretending to be another kind of crazy. People think she's the kind of crazy that eats babies because she's that out of touch with social norms; she's actually the kind of crazy that can do something as heinous as eat babies merely as a way to give other other people the wrong impression of her mental competence. mistaya posted:See, I'm totally on board with things that are cool but not necessarily mature. It just wouldn't be the same without skullapults. We must have skullapults. They aren't mature and they aren't trying to be, they're just fun. Look at all the screwed up monsters in like, Dead Space. There should definitely be monsters that deserve Issac's mighty boot crawling around in the Underworld. And that game even does evil-acid-spitting-babies and somehow pulls it off fairly well! You just have to find the line between 'cool' and 'squicky'. It's different for everyone, though. We have to put the line where we want it. mistaya posted:I liked the writeup for Ixcoatli a lot, and hearing that it's trying to give Beastmen more of a worldspace that isn't just savage abominations is actually pretty sweet. I really hope we can pull it off. mistaya posted:Brings up a question I don't think I've ever asked though, can Beastmen Exalt? If they're just being treated as another brand of humans you'd think that they could. Are they seen often outside their domains? It makes me think of the Viera from Final Fantasy 12, (the bunny ladies) who mostly didn't leave their forest but there were occasional exiles and travelers who did. Would they be considered regular folks to the Dynasts, or Anathema? Any given sort of beastman is just a human ethnic group. They can Exalt. Ophilis Ses is a Night Caste snakeman in Castebook: Night (and then an Infernal pretending to be a Night Caste snakeman in Return of the Scarlet Empress, sigh). They seem a bit less likely to Exalt, though, and also most people in Creation are moderately-to-severely racist against weird-looking foreigners and quite frightened of anything that looks like it comes from the Wyld, so they face the sort of bigotry all weird-looking foreigners who might be mistaken for monsters out of the WYld might face. Dammit Who? posted:The first one did. The second one had three different kinds of baby monster. I can only assume the third one had a shocking twist where Isaac Clarke was a baby. The third one had mutant dogs, because the third one was Dead Space Does John Carpenter's The Thing.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:31
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Yeah, they can exalt. There's a Snake-man Night Caste named Ophilis Ses in Castebook: Night. He's a Fiend now in 2E.
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Feb 4, 2014 01:46
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Stephenls posted:Mostly because cannibal skin-thieves are neat. And well within the Lunar Exalted's remit. "Cannibalistic skin changer" as the default magical disguise option is a neat thematic touchstone for certain types of fantasy games, or even one of the good seasons of Supernatural, but it's functionally a major impediment when applied to what should be one of the lunar's most basic tricks. It has the weird and unwanted side effect of pigeon-holing lunar social characters into becoming serial killers for no particularly good reason. Mirror Flag doesn't have to face a moral dilemma or dismember a corpse every time she wants to play Sophie from leverage, but every Lunars does. "You have to kill and eat people every time you want to perform what most people would consider a basic aspect of your splat" is the kind of thing that made people complain about Abyssals in 2e; it's not a good thing to build into the heart of a splat in a new edition. It is a neat schtick -- I actually really like it, purely as a theory -- but at the table in practice I've found that it's also dumb as a bag of hammers and one of those things that makes people not want to play Lunars. Like many of the knacks, it takes building a shapechanging character, something that should be exciting, like picking out new toys in a toy story, and turns it into picking carefully through a minefield of poo poo that players just don't want to deal with. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 02:09
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Yes, but the lunar's remit has never been in a good place in general. There are some problems with the way Lunar shapeshifting is traditionally handled, yeah. The Tell, the cannibalism limits, those are all the sorts of things that are interesting to go into if you want to play a game about shapeshifters -- what are the limits of shapeshifting, how does it work, etc. Interesting constraints can make for interesting play. You'd gloss over it if shapeshifting is just a side dish, but if it's the main course you want to go into it. The problem is there are a lot of entities within Creation for whome shapeshifting is a side dish, so they get some version of shapeshifting with all that stuff glossed over. And this makes Lunars look like crappy shapeshifters, because they get the high resolution "Let's examine constraints" version of shapeshifting while everyone else gets "Enh, it just works, moving on." I do not know what the solution will be. But we're working on the problem.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:16
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Aha! You've suspected I'm crazy enough to eat babies, but in fact, I've only been crazy enough to eat babies to make you think that I really liked eating babies, which, to be fair, I do
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Feb 4, 2014 02:27
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What is the hang up over eating babies? She is a 1000 year old crazy demi-god that is corrupt to the core and she eats babies. To me that just shows how far she will go to maintain terror in the eyes of the Eastern peoples so they don't band together to take down her kingdom. In Canada here we had a mentally disturbed lady give birth to two dumpster babies recently. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Just crazy. Raksi is a terror of the south and is mentally unbalanced. She thinks these are things to so because she is nuts. She is a child eating super powered murderer that will enter your house without a sound, kill your family, rape you and then eat the progeny if you dare stand up against her. I don't know about you but if I had that threat against me when all I had to defend myself was a pointy stick or crappy metal sword you better believe I'd fall in line. Ancient mythology is full of this stuff; the Minotaur eating the flesh of virgin sacrifices, Lot let his daughters get raped and then they raped him right back, the island of Japan literally being made out of the semen of the creator god. Exalted is supposed to invoke the ancient text of those times and for you to be a hero and rise against it. We are just supposed to ignore the material it is based off of?
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Feb 4, 2014 02:27
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Nah, Raksi'd never go house to house. She demands tribute be brought to her, lest she sic her terrible ape-children upon those who deny her divinity and sovereignty.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:31
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Aha, yes, what is the 'hang-up' about something that if you actually saw it happen in person would be the worst thing that you've ever seen and would scar you horribly forever.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:31
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tatankatonk posted:Aha, yes, what is the 'hang-up' about something that if you actually saw it happen in person would be the worst thing that you've ever seen and would scar you horribly forever. You saw a baby get eaten? 
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Feb 4, 2014 02:37
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Excelsiortothemax posted:What is the hang up over eating babies? quote:Exalted is supposed to invoke the ancient text of those times and for you to be a hero and rise against it. We are just supposed to ignore the material it is based off of? Rakshi does the thing in the source material, sans the reason why the people in the source material do the thing in the source material. So it comes off as dumb and crazy.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:38
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Stephenls posted:
quote:I do not know what the solution will be. But we're working on the problem. But from the outside perspective, you guys seem to do a lot more of defending the problems than explaining how you are actually going to fix the problems. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 02:40
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tatankatonk posted:Aha, yes, what is the 'hang-up' about something that if you actually saw it happen in person would be the worst thing that you've ever seen and would scar you horribly forever. My point was she IS a horrible monster that does things like flambé a child because the villagers didn't give her enough tribute this season. She is a horrendous evil taint on the world that will do things that a normal person wouldn't to fulfill her goals because she thinks that is the best way to get it done. That's the "What's the hang up". You are supposed to look at that and go "Wow, she sure is evil and crazy. Maybe I don't want to mess with her". I realize that as adults we all want to know why, but can't the answer be because? In your story that features Raksi, why not use those elements. Make it so that each child sacrifice brings her closer to achieving her Solar sorcery mastery. Or she has a pack with a 2nd circle demon that artificially extends her life at the cost of her humanity. Or in my case, she is just a crazy monster that my players are so terrified to fight that they will avoid her territory at all costs.
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Feb 4, 2014 02:48
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Dead baby jokes aren't bad because infanticide is an unconscionable crime. Dead baby jokes are bad because they're puerile, goofy trash that trades on the fact that infanticide is an unconscionable crime (rather than on being funny or clever or interesting or any of the things you'd want an actual joke to be). I'll admit that I haven't ready any of the source material, but you guys are super duper making Raksi sound like an extended dead baby joke. So let me ask - what else is there to Raksi? What traits does she possess, or what circumstances surround her, such that someone who stopped thinking South Park was brilliant when they were 14 might be interested in reading about her or using her as a character?
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Feb 4, 2014 02:53
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Excelsiortothemax posted:Exalted is supposed to invoke the ancient text of those times and for you to be a hero and rise against it. We are just supposed to ignore the material it is based off of? Oh hey, the "well myth is full of horrible poo poo, so RPGs should be too" argument. It's like having the White Wolf forum delivered right to our doorstep. The business with Raksi is exactly what I was talking about earlier re: "mature" content and Exalted (and White Wolf in general). Someone sat down and said "how to we emphasize that this ancient, powerful, and dangerous demigod is removed from petty mortal concerns and something alien and fearsome" and somebody else went "SHE EATS BABIES!" Except guess what, when you decide to run with an idea like that it turns out that's going to be what everybody focuses on instead of literally anything else. So in your attempt to be "mature" or "heavy metal" or whatever you're calling it you completely drown out everything else, like cooking a steak to perfection and then pouring an entire bottle of ketchup all over it. And then what happens, because nobody at White Wolf is ever willing to step back and go "no actually this was dumb, maybe we should try this again without the baby parfaits and see if we can't find another way to emphasize this ancient demigod's fearsome power and alien nature" instead what you get is "ten reasons why it's actually really meaningful that Raksi eats babies, no really." The real issue isn't "Raksi eats babies," it's like, okay, whatever. There's a baby eating monster demigod, fine. The issue is that this stuff has steadily and increasingly crept into Exalted over time and so you wind up with not just "oh yeah Raksi eats babies and it's totally important to her character" but the same thing with a bunch of other stuff (Desus, Lunars and cannibalism/bestiality/rape, amputee sex monks, baby grenades)...and that's how you wind up with someone previewing things like "charms to ravish people and make them your eternally horny ghost slaves" and not only not realizing how dumb it is but defending it as a matter of artistic integrity, because White Wolf writers get way too fixated on stuff like this to the point where they lose sight of the forest amidst all those totally heavy metal trees. e; and also what OldKentuckyShark says, Raksi eats babies for no real reason than "because she can" which is now being handwaved into "she does it because MIND GAMES, WOO." It's dumb because it's just there, no real good reason, just "Boy that Raksi sure is evil and decadent, she even EATS BABIES (gasp)." Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 02:55
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Dropping the dead babies bit is easy. Raksi is an ancient Lunar Usurpation survivor. She was recently Exalted when the Dragon bloods and Sidreals attacked and was largely left to her own devices. She had no real mentor but was a burgeoning sorceress. Her dream was to unlock Solar level sorcery for herself. This later became and obsession and led to her Wyld tainted madness. Her only redeeming quality was that in her desperation to survive, she helped invent the Silver Tattoos that the Lunars use today. She is an evil magic queen that sits upon a throne built upon skulls and surrounds herself with mindless minions that will do her every bidding. She is the wicked witch of the East. You can use her as a antagonist for your party or even as a mysterious sponsor. She might be crazy but she is still vastly intelligent and will work against her own wishes if it means destabilizing the realm or making her more powerful than other Lunars. Her goal is always more mystical might and she would burn her entire empire to ashes if it mean that she could access the hidden circle of magic. You could also use her as an enemy of my enemy, attempting to use diplomacy to have her nation clash with that of another super power, like the Mask of Winters. It would be incredibly difficult and not likely to happen, but you are Heroes in charge if your own fate! You can do the impossible!
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Feb 4, 2014 03:04
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I have seen this sort of pushback on literally every single R-rated element in the game at one point or another. Everything is someone's One Thing That's Over The Line. We can listen to all of it, some of it, or none of it, and if we listen to some of it, someone is going to be the person who doesn't get listened to, and that person is always going to think that if we just listened to everyone else we're listening to plus them, the game would be improved. But if we listen to everyone the game goes PG-13.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:07
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Excelsiortothemax posted:Dropping the dead babies bit is easy. Of course it is, which is why it's so dumb that it (and things like it) is the bit that people (notably writers for Exalted) endlessly cling to and argue the importance of. Either A). they can't come up with a way to hit the themes they want without "eats babies" or B). they think "eats babies" is just too cool to do away with. e; Stephenls posted:But if we listen to everyone the game goes PG-13. Maybe the problem here isn't R rated gaming, maybe the problem is that White Wolf kind of sucks at it.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:11
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Excelsiortothemax posted:Dropping the dead babies bit is easy. See, this sounds like a cool character.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:12
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Oh don't get me wrong, if they were to drop it is no sweat off of my back. I'll agree that I wish it was a footnote in peoples mind rather than one if the central aspects to her character. I just think that it should still be in, just played down. How do you play down something so heinous when you only have two pages to do it?
Excelsiortothemax fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 03:14
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Attorney at Funk posted:See, this sounds like a cool character. I feel it conspicuously lacks baby-eating though. Best to leave it in.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:18
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Excelsiortothemax posted:Oh don't get me wrong, if they were to drop it is no sweat off of my back. I'll agree that I wish it was a footnote in peoples mind rather than one if the central aspects to her character. I just think that it should still be in, just played down. How do you play down something so heinous when you only face two pages to do it? To some extent it's just the kind of thing that White Wolf games have historically trained us to interpret ungenerously. Like Kai says, there's been a lot of times reading WW material that I've thought those writers shouldn't be allowed near light sockets or open flames, much less near something you'd slap a parental advisory sticker on. And I fuckin' love White Wolf games.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:21
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Just looking at this last page makes it pretty loving blatant that when you make Raksi eat babies, all that anyone gives a poo poo about is that Raksi is eating babies. Apart from any arguments from it being childish, or dumb, or offensive, it ruins any possibility of giving us an interesting character, because no matter where you talk about Raksi, it's not Raksi the Sorceress, it's not Raksi the Ape Queen, it's Raksi the One Who Eats Babies. And that might be her double-clever super-sneaky gambit to make people underestimate her or whatever, but that doesn't work if she tricks the player base too.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:22
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Stephenls posted:I have seen this sort of pushback on literally every single R-rated element in the game at one point or another. Everything is someone's One Thing That's Over The Line. We can listen to all of it, some of it, or none of it, and if we listen to some of it, someone is going to be the person who doesn't get listened to, and that person is always going to think that if we just listened to everyone else we're listening to plus them, the game would be improved. But if we listen to everyone the game goes PG-13. Yeah, I'm going to be honest; I've seen this defense come out before from you and Holden and it's always a bullshit argument. Yes, this is the internet, and yes, that means that for any conceivable outcome someone is going to bitch about it, but that shouldn't ever serve as an excuse. The existence of problematic elements is why we have things like critical analysis and discernment and taste; you know, the things that make us actually mature. Those are the things we use to figure out that Lilun was a terrible, terrible idea, but that the latter half of BoEP infernals might not be, even though there are people out there that defend the former and hate the latter. If you can't reasonably use those social tools to figure out where the line is for your audience*, then maybe you should keep things PG-13, to be perfectly honest. Because otherwise you guys are going to keep blundering into the minefield of sex zombies and exploding undead fetus cannons** and you won't understand why everyone is angry, again. * Or, frankly, given the absolute shitshow that Exalted's audience can sometimes be, I should say your intended audience **I guess? Is that a real thing? I don't think I even own that book. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 03:24
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BryanChavez posted:Just looking at this last page makes it pretty loving blatant that when you make Raksi eat babies, all that anyone gives a poo poo about is that Raksi is eating babies. Apart from any arguments from it being childish, or dumb, or offensive, it ruins any possibility of giving us an interesting character, because no matter where you talk about Raksi, it's not Raksi the Sorceress, it's not Raksi the Ape Queen, it's Raksi the One Who Eats Babies. And that might be her double-clever super-sneaky gambit to make people underestimate her or whatever, but that doesn't work if she tricks the player base too. And again, it's not even like I think "eats babies" is in the same ballpark as poo poo like Lillun, it's not, in and of itself, some massive dealbreaker so much as the fact that it's emblematic of White Wolf's approach to sexing up their games with "shocking" content for whatever reason and then finding themselves either unable to roll it back to focus on the actual important bits or steadily ramping up the shock over time.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:34
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Between rape ghosts, baby-eating, BvD, Lilun, Undead Menses, Changing Breeds, and  , I'm not sure a PG-13 White Wolf game would be so terrible.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:39
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Kai Tave posted:And again, it's not even like I think "eats babies" is in the same ballpark as poo poo like Lillun, it's not, in and of itself, some massive dealbreaker so much as the fact that it's emblematic of White Wolf's approach to sexing up their games with "shocking" content for whatever reason and then finding themselves either unable to roll it back to focus on the actual important bits or steadily ramping up the shock over time. Yeah, like, Damnation City is a really good book. It's still got BvD in it.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:41
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Damnation City would be in no way improved by the removal of BvD. More later, when I'm not suddenly inundiated with other things to do.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:44
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I don't actually mind BvD either. Like Attorney at Funk says, though, telling a dead baby joke doesn't make you wickedly irreverent, it makes you look like you're trying too hard. BvD shows us how crass and juvenile vampires can be, not how terrifyingly evil vampires can be. Raksi eating babies isn't offensive and I don't think there's any kind of moral necessity to remove it, but it's really silly, and if you're going to keep it you've got your work cut out for you convincing the reader that baby-eating is a way in which Raksi is trying way too hard to shock her contemporaries rather than a way in which you, the writer, are trying way too hard to shock me, the reader.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:51
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Kai Tave posted:And again, it's not even like I think "eats babies" is in the same ballpark as poo poo like Lillun, it's not, in and of itself, some massive dealbreaker so much as the fact that it's emblematic of White Wolf's approach to sexing up their games with "shocking" content for whatever reason and then finding themselves either unable to roll it back to focus on the actual important bits or steadily ramping up the shock over time. I never really considered the moral status of fictional infants, to be perfectly honest, and I'm not really sure I buy the slippery slope argument.
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Feb 4, 2014 03:52
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Yeah, don't get me wrong, I don't think BvD is offensive or even, like, out-of-genre. "This is how bored vampires get. This is what immortal, evil monsters for whom all life's pleasures lack color and vitality do for kicks." I get the sense we're supposed to take Raksi's baby eating seriously, though? This is, to me, a harder sell.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:04
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BryanChavez posted:Just looking at this last page makes it pretty loving blatant that when you make Raksi eat babies, all that anyone gives a poo poo about is that Raksi is eating babies. Apart from any arguments from it being childish, or dumb, or offensive, it ruins any possibility of giving us an interesting character, because no matter where you talk about Raksi, it's not Raksi the Sorceress, it's not Raksi the Ape Queen, it's Raksi the One Who Eats Babies. And that might be her double-clever super-sneaky gambit to make people underestimate her or whatever, but that doesn't work if she tricks the player base too. I'm sorry but now I can only remember that old joke. "Hey, Little Lunar." "Yes mam." "They Call me Raksi. I made those tattoos you have." "Do they call you Raksi the Tattoo-maker?" "No. I also made that book of sorcery you are reading. They Don't call me Raksi the Sorceress either. I laid the ground work for our communication, but they don't call me Raksi the Groundlayer. BUT YOU EAT ONE BABY!"
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Feb 4, 2014 04:05
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Attorney at Funk posted:Yeah, don't get me wrong, I don't think BvD is offensive or even, like, out-of-genre. "This is how bored vampires get. This is what immortal, evil monsters for whom all life's pleasures lack color and vitality do for kicks." No it's pretty much because she's a bored, decadent sorcerer-queen. I mean, I like to think she has a second motive there behind that one, but that's one of 'em. What Raksi thinks when she eats a baby is "I want to do this" and "I can get away with this." (I think my favorite thing about BvD is that Kindred society reacts to it on entirely pragmatic grounds, except for the Lancea et Sanctum who are all "What? That's making and destroying vampires! Blasphemy!") EDIT: Seriously more commentary on this coming later. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Feb 4, 2014 |
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Feb 4, 2014 04:06
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Stephenls posted:That's one half of the argument, yeah. The other is that eating people providing otherwise unavailable power is unfair to people squicked by cannibalism, and anything it gives you should be attainable by other means through sufficient effort. (Though that quickly turns into "If you're giving me an alternative way to do this for the sake of my aesthetic sensibilities, why is it an XP sink?" and if we do the logical followup to that, it becomes "Why is the evil option an option at all if nicer methods produce the same results?" 'Round and 'round we go.) Nonviolent imitation is expensive, temporary, and subtly incomplete. Eating someone to steal their skin is cheap, permanent, and perfect. Give players easy access to both, give each their pros and cons, and build options to refine and enhance the one they chose to favour.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:14
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:**I guess? Is that a real thing? I don't think I even own that book. This loving Book posted:This design appears as a morbidly obese dead woman,  Stephenls posted:No it's pretty much because she's a bored, decadent sorcerer-queen. I mean, I like to think she has a second motive there behind that one, but that's one of 'em. What Raksi thinks when she eats a baby is "I want to do this" and "I can get away with this." The problem is that it makes you, the writer, look like a complete hack. It's cheap and lazy and exploitative. It's the exact same level of effort in establishing a villain's evil-ness as I see in something like the Book of Vile Darkness for D&D, which is not a comparison I want to make. And as mentioned upthread, it makes it completely impossible to take Raksi seriously, because she's now the girl that eats babies, just like Ma-Ha Suchi is the dude that rapes everyone.
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Feb 4, 2014 04:18
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Bedlamdan posted:I never really considered the moral status of fictional infants, to be perfectly honest, and I'm not really sure I buy the slippery slope argument. First, I haven't brought up morality at all here, so that's all you. Second, serious question...do you really think stuff like Lillun occurs in a void? I know that Stephen and Holden had nothing to do with that, I'm not holding them accountable or responsible for that mess, but do you think that in a game where people are actually judicious about the application of "shocking" content that someone could just roll up with "hey I've got this great idea for the opening of our new sourcebook; perpetual child rape. Eh? Ehhhh?" and not get told to gently caress off and never come back instead of someone up the chain apparently thinking that was a perfect fit?
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Feb 4, 2014 04:19
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| # ? May 31, 2024 04:09 |
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(Why "Blood of One Thousand Bees?")
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Feb 4, 2014 04:23
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