Luminous Obscurity posted:Honestly, unless one of the devs is sitting on something brilliant, I hope Beast is the last gameline for a bit. I'd like to see them just focus on fleshing out what they have for a little while. I mean, counting Beast, we'll be at ten lines plus the core. Keep in mind that originally only Vampire/Mage/Werewolf got continuing support- the other lines got a limited set of books, and it looks like 2e will feature a similar setup.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:41
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paradoxGentleman posted:It's a good sign that the writers here on SA are taking the critism so well, but I cannot help but remember that most criticism towards Heroes is mostly being shut down. That's because OOP devs are Beasts and goons are Heroes.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:43
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Effectronica posted:-Where's the personal horror? All those counters are terrible. I guess I'll give you the bug people one? I mean, I was just throwing random ideas I thought of in under 5 minutes, this wasn't a serious pitch or anything. I will still answer you, though. - How is X-Files/Mothman Prophecies not instantly horror? It was a major inspiration for the nWoD core, as well as howing up in sidebars over multiple gamelines since. Making that into a stand-alone game would be cool and easy. - Shapeshifting monsters that copy/replace people. How is that not a sure hit? As well as continuing the classic mosnter checklist of the WoD. - No. Not at all. Unless you're thinking of Ascension, in which case I clearly wasn't talking aboutt he oWoD. - Different themes and atmospheres, really different core concept. The similarities would be cosmetic at best. - That's a stupid question. The story of someone turning or being turned into something strange and horrifying is like super basic horror. - Thousand different ways, really. That's the moment I got less serious anyway, Broken Rooms already does it pretty well so there's no need for a WoD version. - That's the one I'm giving you. - Heh.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:44
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Abbott and Costello should have been a Dark Ages crossover chapter with Mummy and the core book/Mortals.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:48
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What's not to like about Genius: The Transgression? It has a shadowy organization that secretly controlled humanity's progress for centuries! And one of their factions consists of exporers/knight errant types that used to explore jungles and now explore the space/time continuum! And the Martian Empire!
paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 17:53
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MonsieurChoc posted:All those counters are terrible. I guess I'll give you the bug people one? I mean, I was just throwing random ideas I thought of in under 5 minutes, this wasn't a serious pitch or anything. I will still answer you, though. Okay, but you were talking like they would be gamelines, which in the World of Darkness we live in are about playing the monster. So with that in mind. -Okay, that's covered by corebook and Hunter stuff, all it really needs is a dedicated book or chronicle. -Where's the tension between humanity and monstrosity? It sounds like it would be all-monster all-the-time. -The basic themes of mad-scientist-as-protagonist are covered pretty much entirely by Awakening. -Not really. Werewolf has the whole "family history of being a monster" theme, while Beast looks like it will be able to cover the whole icky fish monster stuff. Unless you want a game about playing a Cthulhu cultist, which goes a ways away from the kind of Gothic horror WoD games try to invoke. -Where's the impetus for the Gothic horror where you have a tension between inhuman desires and basic humanity that exists for all the major templates and most of the minor ones? -Okay.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:57
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"Shape shifting monster that replaces people" is Demon.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:09
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Mors Rattus posted:"Shape shifting monster that replaces people" is Demon. Or, in certain cases, the True Fae.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:13
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paradoxGentleman posted:What's not to like about Genius: The Transgression? It has a shadowy organization that secretly controlled humanity's progress for centuries! And one of their factions consists of exporers/knight errants types that used to explore jungles and now explore the space/time continuum! And the Martian Empire! Well, that's the thing, really. Those things are cool... in the oWoD. They don't really fit with the tone of the nWoD. Shadowy organisation that control everything go very much against the central core of the setting. A mad scientist game more in line with the nWoD would be more about playing people like the original Frankenstein or the Invisible Man: a man who, through his madness, managed to create one or two terrible inventions and use them for their own purposes. Any kind of mad scientist conspiracies would look a lot more like The Cheiron Group or the Ordo Dracul than the Technocracy. That, to me, is the core of the nWoD: every answer only leads to more questions, no one is in charge, no matter how powerful or how much you know there will always be soemthing that will leave you completely baffled and scared, no one is safe, no one can be safe. Effectronica posted:Okay, but you were talking like they would be gamelines, which in the World of Darkness we live in are about playing the monster. So with that in mind. - Sure, I'd be down with that. But a good gameline could also be done about playing the Aliens. Considering how creative WW/OPP got with some of their source material, there's plenty of possibilities. - Why isn't it there? This wouldn't even be the first gameline where you play as something that was never human (Promethean and Demon come to mind). - Nope, not at all. Awakening doesn't touch on this even slightly. - I dunno what to tell you. There isn't really any aspect of body horror/evil in the blood/etc. in Werewolf. It's much more about the Hunt. - The only nWoD game with any gothic aspect in it is Vampire: the Requiem. And Promethean a bit too, I guess. Everything else is free to be any kind of horror it wants to be. Demon isn't gothic at all, for example. As such, this is a completely invalid argument and I can't really argue with it. I mean, it's just completely beside the subject, so I don't have a way of engaging with it.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:15
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Clearly we need a gameline for playing that one dude from the GMC, the fly-headed man who orders pizza.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:16
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Mors Rattus posted:Clearly we need a gameline for playing that one dude from the GMC, the fly-headed man who orders pizza. Baxter: The Stockmaning?
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Apr 14, 2015 18:19
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BzwxJ-M_M0
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Apr 14, 2015 18:21
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MonsieurChoc posted:- The only nWoD game with any gothic aspect in it is Vampire: the Requiem. And Promethean a bit too, I guess. Everything else is free to be any kind of horror it wants to be. Demon isn't gothic at all, for example. As such, this is a completely invalid argument and I can't really argue with it. I mean, it's just completely beside the subject, so I don't have a way of engaging with it. I would go a step farther and say that horror isn't even the top billing of nWoD any more, it's mystery. Horror is just too hard to do well, too contingent upon circumstances at an individual table. Look at the early reactions to Beast, which has the horror as front-and-center as anything since Vampire. Playing an outright antihero is hard, most people don't want to, many of those that do are uncomfortably bad at it. I think it was a smart move to refocus the nWoD in that way, but it really makes Beast the odd man out.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:22
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I think part of that is packaging. I mean, Werewolf these days is about playing a gang of serial killers. You hunt and stalk and ritually murder things - spirits, humans, stuff in between. But no one looked at it and went 'this is the serial killer game.' (I rather like Werewolf 2e, really.)
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Apr 14, 2015 18:24
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paradoxGentleman posted:I dunno, I think the Genius fangame was pretty good at delivering a sense of powerlessness and horror, while at the same time creating an interesting setting for the whole thing to take place in. I know I am absolutely in love with the Foundations a Genius can belong to. I'm not a fan of the setting of Genius for the reasons mentioned, but it's not actually the biggest thorn in Genius's paw to me. The thorn is the writing style, and there's a YMMV element here, because I never got a sense of powerlessness or horror from the Genius book. In fact, I get a distinct sense from the tone that Genius actively wants to dissuade me from feeling creeping horror or existential despair, because whenever ideas that point in this direction crop up, Genius stops to deflate the tension with a joke about Gilligan's Island, or performs a goofy schtick about increasingly silly units of measure. I'm absolutely no enemy of comic elements in the World of Darkness or in its writing, but in Genius they're relentless and they feel like they enjoy primacy. Rather than an occasional line of black humor to underscore the horror or add a layer of irony to it, the jokes read more like they are the point of Genius as a book, and the ability to interpret and run it as a serious meditation on people who possess great power, but paradoxically strip themselves of control over their lives every time they try to exert that power over it, came across as more of an afterthought or a happy accident at best. Beast's writing about Heroes could learn a lesson from this example. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 18:27
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Mors Rattus posted:But no one looked at it and went 'this is the serial killer game.' (I rather like Werewolf 2e, really.) That's because Slasher is the serial killer game.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:40
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I'm not sure how productive the distinction is, because you can play a serial killer easily and completely in-theme in every game except arguably Mage.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:43
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Crion posted:I'm not sure how productive the distinction is, because you can play a serial killer easily and completely in-theme in every game except arguably Mage. Killing people refills your mana bar.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:45
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MonsieurChoc posted:Well, that's the thing, really. Those things are cool... in the oWoD. They don't really fit with the tone of the nWoD. Shadowy organisation that control everything go very much against the central core of the setting. A mad scientist game more in line with the nWoD would be more about playing people like the original Frankenstein or the Invisible Man: a man who, through his madness, managed to create one or two terrible inventions and use them for their own purposes. Any kind of mad scientist conspiracies would look a lot more like The Cheiron Group or the Ordo Dracul than the Technocracy. I should probably add that, according to the game's lore, Lemuria has been defeated. The community of free Geniuses defeated them at some point that I cannot recall, ending their tyranny... only to find out that there is no infrastructure, no organization and that what liytle funds were left are in the hands of the Lemurian survivors. I need to give it another read sometime, to remind myself of why didn't they set up these things themselves.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:47
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MonsieurChoc posted:Well, that's the thing, really. Those things are cool... in the oWoD. They don't really fit with the tone of the nWoD. Shadowy organisation that control everything go very much against the central core of the setting. A mad scientist game more in line with the nWoD would be more about playing people like the original Frankenstein or the Invisible Man: a man who, through his madness, managed to create one or two terrible inventions and use them for their own purposes. Any kind of mad scientist conspiracies would look a lot more like The Cheiron Group or the Ordo Dracul than the Technocracy. Promethean and Demon are almost entirely about the tension between human and monster, because the goal of the Pilgrimage and the day-to-day survival of the Demon depend on being convincingly human. I see mad-scientist-as-protagonist as being about the horrors done out of arrogance and cold distance from the rest of humanity, which is pretty much in line with what Awakening is about. What do you see it as? The Shadow over Innsmouth is only barely body horror. It really consists of genealogical horror once we get past the suspense scenes. Werewolf, meanwhile, is about waking up to discover that you're actually a monster, descended from a monster that disguised itself as human, and now you're part of monster society. The fact that it's kicking rad spirit-hunting rather than kicking rad undersea adventures is just a gloss for these purposes. Pretty much all of the gamelines are supposed to derive horror from the actions of the characters- vampires feeding, woofs hunting, mages granting consciousness to their oven just because they don't wanna bother with the timer, changelings being twisted remnants of a person, hunters being violent psychopaths, prometheans lashing out after the thirtieth mob with pitchforks and torches, geists having no reason to exist, mummies destroying memory and twisting people's lives in service to undying masters, demons killing people to strengthen their disguise... Sure, there's horror from other sources, but the corebook is the only one where there aren't explicit reasons why your character would do horrifying things.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:00
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Effectronica posted:Promethean and Demon are almost entirely about the tension between human and monster, because the goal of the Pilgrimage and the day-to-day survival of the Demon depend on being convincingly human. So how is it different? How is one version ok and not another? Effectronica posted:I see mad-scientist-as-protagonist as being about the horrors done out of arrogance and cold distance from the rest of humanity, which is pretty much in line with what Awakening is about. What do you see it as? That's a really really reductionist of both what Awakening is about and what the horror interpretaion of Mad Scientists is. I'm gonna stop here, because it's getting really weird how you want random two word pitches to fit to this convuled and reductionist view of the WoD you have. We've also veered way off the original point I was mking, which is that there'S plenty of more interesting material OPP could have done isntead of the weird mishmash of CHangeling and Slasher that seems to be Beast.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:09
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MonsieurChoc posted:So how is it different? How is one version ok and not another? ????? What are you talking about? I said that the proposal wouldn't have that tension. quote:That's a really really reductionist of both what Awakening is about and what the horror interpretaion of Mad Scientists is. If you don't want to present your interpretation, that's okay.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:15
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Actually the real reason Werewolf isn't "the serial killer game" is because there was more than the killing to the setting. Whereas Beast's looking to be all about providing justification for despicable behavior. Locking teenage girls in your basement keeps internet trolls at bay. Where does the conflict come from? Why these self righteous rear end in a top hat heroes who want to do the right thing and stop you! If Eve hadn't unleashed her squid-soul sea powers, then what? Would she learn that sometimes wadded paper hits people - and they just deal with it? I'm also getting this really uncomfortable vibe that it's Aurora and Colombine shooters with kewl powers instead of AR-15s.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:23
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I actually really like Genius. It had me hooked from its opening fiction, which, for me, served as a great thesis statement that the game's horror is the horror of ego and inspiration, and the collateral damage and isolation that follows in its wake. The Lemuria angle was barely tangential to that - the theme of a very personal horror created in your own arrogance, contrasting with the wonder of creation and the urge to see more. Which absolutely had some overlap with Mage. What ended up making me like it, and see it worth keeping around despite the overlap was one part the Bardos - fictional never-weres that only reinforced that theme of isolation from the real world - and the aggressive diversity of aesthetic and reinforcement that nobody has any real theories of how/why geniuses and their Inspiration works, conspired to the seemingly-monolithic consensus on Atlantis, the Exarchs, Oracles, high speech, the Abyss, supernal realms, and even concepts as specific as goetic demons always turned me off of Awakening. Supposedly there's a lot less of that in future books, but that trans-cultural agreement of terms, extremely specific concepts, and prehistory really killed a lot of my enthusiasm for what could have been a much more flexible splat. Genius filled those missing themes and motifs for me. Its writing was way too silly at times, and its rules weren't the best-balanced, but I'm fine with a game I like needing some polish as long as its high concept, themes, and motifs really click for me.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:23
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GimpInBlack posted:You're welcome. Realtalk there better be a Geist Nightmare called There Is A Skeleton Inside Of You. Or You Are Already Dead.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:31
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Effectronica posted:????? Well, that's the thing, isn't it? There isn't an interpretation or anything else yet. What I did was post half a dozen random ideas I thoguht could be more interesting than beast. They cannot, by their very natur,e stand up to scrutiny: there is nothing there yet. Any question you ask of me can be answered the same way: "If I was actually doing it, I'd address that". Furthermore, it seems to me as if most of your questions turn around a somewhat reductionist view of the nWoD where everything must fit within the narrow framework established by Vampire: the Requiem, which I disagree with. I don't see Demon as being about the tension between Man and Monster at all. Neither is Hunter, for that matter.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:32
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The two example Geist Nightmares are You Can't Take It With You and Death Is A Prison.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:33
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MonsieurChoc posted:Well, that's the thing, isn't it? There isn't an interpretation or anything else yet. What I did was post half a dozen random ideas I thoguht could be more interesting than beast. They cannot, by their very natur,e stand up to scrutiny: there is nothing there yet. Any question you ask of me can be answered the same way: "If I was actually doing it, I'd address that". Furthermore, it seems to me as if most of your questions turn around a somewhat reductionist view of the nWoD where everything must fit within the narrow framework established by Vampire: the Requiem, which I disagree with. I don't see Demon as being about the tension between Man and Monster at all. Neither is Hunter, for that matter. What about your interpretation of mad-scientist-as-protagonist, which you said is much less restrictive than the one I propose. Demon is absolutely about the tension between man and monster, it does it in a more interesting way where being more human requires you to do inhumane things to people, but being morally righteous puts you in constant risk of death. Hunter is, going by the rules and examples in the fiction, about the long slow slide from being an ordinary human being to being a serial killer, which you can theoretically arrest, but which is only really escaped through death or abandoning the Vigil.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:35
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The WoD is definitely about the tension between man and monster and Genius: the Transgression is definitely a lovely, watered-down Awakening.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:36
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Let me tell you about my favorite fan-game, Princess: The Hopeful.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:38
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I bet that's also a lovely, watered-down Awakening, except at the same time it's a lovely, distilled Dreaming.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:38
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Ferrinus posted:I bet that's also a lovely, watered-down Awakening, except at the same time it's a lovely, distilled Dreaming. It's a rip-off of an anime, so you're almost right.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:39
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Wait, that would mean that distilled Dreaming is equivalent to watered down Awakening. That makes Dreaming way, way more potent than Awakening, right?
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Apr 14, 2015 19:41
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Ferrinus posted:I bet that's also a lovely, watered-down Awakening, except at the same time it's a lovely, distilled Dreaming. i have never made it more than a few pages in, but it looks like it's almost all the latter
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Apr 14, 2015 19:41
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Effectronica posted:What about your interpretation of mad-scientist-as-protagonist, which you said is much less restrictive than the one I propose. Well, ok, let's talk about Mad Science. Hubris is only one of the many themes explored in fiction with the Mad Scientists. It's certainly one of the big ones. Science "going too far" and creating an out of control mosnter or plague or something like that. This doesn't really intersect with Mage though: Mage hubris is about finding out ancient secrets that should have remained buried, abusing your inherent powers, thinking yourself a god, etc. It's a very magical thing. It's very mystical, religious, spiritual. Mad Science is instead political, sociological. Mad Scientist Game should be about bitterness. Betrayal. Mad Scientists are motivated by revenge, are disillusioned with the world that rejected them, wanted to change the world but were betrayed by their ideals, etc. Negative emotions dominate, and Mas Scientists are especially bad at handling them. It's hard to put into words. Mage hubris is wanting to reign in heaven. Mad Science hubris is thinking if you ran the world using your supercomputer then there would be no more poverty.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:46
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Enough! Just rename Beast to Hatred: The Genocide Crusading.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:46
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MonsieurChoc posted:Well, ok, let's talk about Mad Science. These things aren't distinct or exclusive at all and every last thing you mention as a "mad scientist" hallmark is part and parcel of Mage.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:48
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MonsieurChoc posted:Well, ok, let's talk about Mad Science. Do you know what the meaning of the word "hubris" is?
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Apr 14, 2015 19:48
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MonsieurChoc posted:It's hard to put into words. Mage hubris is wanting to reign in heaven. Mad Science hubris is thinking if you ran the world using your supercomputer then there would be no more poverty. I guess this is an accurate description of Mage if you ignore like 75% of it
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Apr 14, 2015 19:50
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You do realize you'll never, ever see an nWoD game that isn't mystical and occult, right? Even science and technology are vehicles for mysticism in the nWoD. See also: the God Machine, Demon.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:51
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