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Flavivirus posted:The amount of free rein you apparently have to interpret tyranny, destruction etc makes me think of something like Nobilis - you can do good things, bad things or weird things, so long as they're destructive/tyrannical/whatever things. Makes me quite a bit more interested, as it's a far cry from the 'you have an urge to do horrible things' the preview material sent out. I mentioned this to a few of the other members of the Beast team a few days ago, but now that the Families and the Hungers have been previewed I can say it more publicly: You could absolutely run the TV show Leverage as a game of Beast. You've got Nate Ford as an Anakim Nemesis, Sophie Devereaux as an Eshmaki Predator (she doesn't eat people, but she earns their trust and their love and uses that to take everything from them), Parker as an Ugallu Collector, and Elliott Spencer as a Namtaru Ravager who really doesn't like indulging his Hunger. Hardison is a little harder to pin down--maybe an Eshmaki Tyrant, since he's the ghost in your systems that casually smashes through even your most secure digital protections and shows you just how pitiful they are. Or maybe he's an Ugallu, if you want to go more in the "all your digital secrets are mine" direction. That scene at the end of every episode where they let the mark see them all together and realize just who it was that took him down so thoroughly is the whole brood getting a Satiety hit off of the Hunger for Power. So yeah. Creatures of nightmare and terror they may be, but it doesn't have to be unrelieved people-eating and traumatizing small children. This preview doesn't even include my favorite sample concept from the Hunger for Punishment. Flavivirus posted:Hopefully they similarly widen the Raptors. I think you'll be happy when the final text hits.
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Apr 20, 2015 17:45
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| # ? May 9, 2024 00:20 |
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GimpInBlack posted:This preview doesn't even include my favorite sample concept from the Hunger for Punishment. The Punisher? Heck so many costumed vigilantes work with that hunger.
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Apr 20, 2015 17:48
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We've finally found NWOD Batman. "Echidna is deaaaaaad!"
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Apr 20, 2015 18:19
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Luminous Obscurity posted:We've finally found NWOD Batman. Why do you think criminals swear up and down that he's some kind of inhuman monster instead of obviously a dude in a bat costume? It's because some of them get dragged into his Lair, and they see Bruce Wayne's Soul. 
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Apr 20, 2015 18:27
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I just don't understand why it's the enemies of these things that the book works so hard to portray as vindictive reactionary terrorists.
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Apr 20, 2015 18:30
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GimpInBlack posted:Why do you think criminals swear up and down that he's some kind of inhuman monster instead of obviously a dude in a bat costume? It's because some of them get dragged into his Lair, and they see Bruce Wayne's Soul. Does that make Joker a "Hero?"
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Apr 20, 2015 18:51
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Isn't part of being a Beast accepting that you're'a monster? You've had all these horrible nightmares, and one day you go, fine, whatever, I'll embrace my inner nightmare creature? But they're also squeamish about being an actual monster...? Finally, I embrace my dark heritage...of being a cabbie who takes rich people and puts them in poor neighborhoods but also makes sure no one dies as a result of what I do! Fear me!!
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Apr 20, 2015 18:55
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tatankatonk posted:Isn't part of being a Beast accepting that you're'a monster? You've had all these horrible nightmares, and one day you go, fine, whatever, I'll embrace my inner nightmare creature? But they're also squeamish about being an actual monster...? Finally, I embrace my dark heritage...of being a cabbie who takes rich people and puts them in poor neighborhoods but also makes sure no one dies as a result of what I do! Fear me!! But he doesn't need to kill them, it isn't part of his hunger. He doesn't need to do that psychologically or metaphysically. Accepting his own monstrousness means accepting whatever weird occult rules govern his hunger. "I am embrace this part of myself" doesn't mean necessarily going above and beyond the call of what you need to do in order to drive the point home. He gets no additional satisfaction out of watching them die, so why would he? It sounds a lot more complicated than just getting what you need from them.
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Apr 20, 2015 18:58
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Twibbit posted:Does that make Joker a "Hero?" Nah, I don't think so. He's obsessed with Batman, sure, but he doesn't want to slay the Bat, he wants to make the Bat like him. He might be another Beast, a Namtaru Ravager, maybe, one who really enjoys sating his hungers in the most harmful ways possible. If any of Batman's rogue's gallery is a "Hero," I'd say maybe it's Bane, with his whole "break the Bat" obsession. But I'm honestly not that up on Batman comics, so maybe I'm totally off base.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:00
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Ferrinus posted:I just don't understand why it's the enemies of these things that the book works so hard to portray as vindictive reactionary terrorists. The sample character we have is a cabbie who drops assholes off in the poo poo part of town and picks them up the second it stops being funny.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:21
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Wasn't that the plot of an episode of NUMB3RS? Someone was hacking people's GPS and making them drive into bad parts of town where they got murdered?
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Apr 20, 2015 20:24
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Mendrian posted:But he doesn't need to kill them, it isn't part of his hunger. He doesn't need to do that psychologically or metaphysically. Accepting his own monstrousness means accepting whatever weird occult rules govern his hunger. "I am embrace this part of myself" doesn't mean necessarily going above and beyond the call of what you need to do in order to drive the point home. He gets no additional satisfaction out of watching them die, so why would he? It sounds a lot more complicated than just getting what you need from them. That would be sort of like a vampire overfeeding on an human until they die: you get a big power up, but it's not really worth all the trouble you have to go through as a consequence of your actions.
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Apr 20, 2015 21:06
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GimpInBlack posted:Nah, I don't think so. He's obsessed with Batman, sure, but he doesn't want to slay the Bat, he wants to make the Bat like him. He might be another Beast, a Namtaru Ravager, maybe, one who really enjoys sating his hungers in the most harmful ways possible. That hasn't been a thing since Knightfall because he was a character designed specifically to be evil Batman and after that story ended there was nothing left for him to do
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Apr 20, 2015 21:14
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GimpInBlack posted:Nah, I don't think so. He's obsessed with Batman, sure, but he doesn't want to slay the Bat, he wants to make the Bat like him. He might be another Beast, a Namtaru Ravager, maybe, one who really enjoys sating his hungers in the most harmful ways possible. Arguably, Batman and all of his rogues are Beasts. The closest he has to Heroes are Hush (who has a personal vendetta against Bruce Wayne) and Bane (who's been rewritten to have a greater hatred our Batman, but can still operate outside of any context involving Batman). Bane is more likely a Hunter of sorts
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Apr 20, 2015 21:27
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ErichZahn posted:The sample character we have is a cabbie who drops assholes off in the poo poo part of town and picks them up the second it stops being funny. He's also dropping poor people in gated communities to get arrested / neighborhood watched. Even if he is waiting in the wings to scoop them to safety, the "Hero" here is going to be the guy who gets his cab licence revoked. THE BASTARD.
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Apr 20, 2015 22:41
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I have yet to read a pitch for one of these supposed moral Beasts characters that I could credibly believe a real human being would play for more than thirty minutes. If we're at the point where we're supposed to be treating Ari the Passive-Aggressive Uber Vigilante as a serious character concept that shows how Beasts can function in the mortal world without doing undue harm to humans, just give me some fish monster who kills college students out at the lake every other weekend. At least the guy playing the fish monster is being honest about what game he's playing.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:00
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Behold the creature of unimaginable nightmare, sprung from the formless fear of ancient man, a being of pure and temporary inconvenience
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Apr 21, 2015 00:01
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tatankatonk posted:Behold the creature of unimaginable nightmare, sprung from the formless fear of ancient man, a being of pure and temporary inconvenience So, First World Problems.com incarnate?
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Apr 21, 2015 00:04
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What makes the Batman comparison really apt is that moment in The Dark Knight when Batman's holding a mobster by the throat and doing the growly voice and everything and the mobster's just rolling his eyes, because come on, man. We've all caught on that you're full of poo poo by now.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:06
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Twibbit posted:Does that make Joker a "Hero?" No, he's a Beast too.  (not pictured: the kid is from a rich family and sent a series of EXTREMELY mean tweets to Anita Sarkeesian) Seriously though, the Ravager concept is a guy who drives around hucking bricks through windows, like the dirtbag kid from high school. If we're comparing to TV shows, Beast honestly reminds me more of Seinfeld or It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia than Leverage. A collection of unpleasant jerks with weirdly specific get-Satiated-quick schemes. Tremble, puny humans! A monster from the darkest recesses of nightmare has added two more stop signs to this intersection! Now there's four stop signs, and no cars can go!
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Apr 21, 2015 00:12
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Well that's the real hard thing about these games and why I hope Beast gets an ST guide - what exactly are you supposed to play with these guys? What's supposed to happen with them? I don't doubt there's some cool stuff you can do out of the core (I haven't read the leak) but they're kind of disjointed, it sounds like. It's the same problem Promethean initially had. There's no clear direction for the story arc to go other than "ST's Call". I still say out of the core, only Mage and Vampire had a clear direction in 1e, and only then because other Mages and Vampires were such compelling antagonists. Vampires are all dicks, done, you just wrote an entire chronicle. Mages are chronic fuckups, done, now clean up their mess.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:25
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Mendrian posted:Well that's the real hard thing about these games and why I hope Beast gets an ST guide - what exactly are you supposed to play with these guys? What's supposed to happen with them? I don't doubt there's some cool stuff you can do out of the core (I haven't read the leak) but they're kind of disjointed, it sounds like. It's the same problem Promethean initially had. There's no clear direction for the story arc to go other than "ST's Call". Promethean has the most robustly designed and straightforward out of the box PC story arc of any game line White Wolf ever made.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:28
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Wait, Promethean, the game with the most baked-in mechanically-supported plot progression of any WoD game and one of the few RPGs you can actually win? Were you thinking of something else? e: Not that I disagree with you about Beast, that's just a weird comparison to make. also, e:f;b
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Apr 21, 2015 00:29
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Promethean is a game you can win, yes, but (IMHO) it had poorly implemented group mechanics out of the box and was best played as some kind of solo adventure game. Also it told you roughly what a milestone was but not fantastic advice on how to achieve them (as a player) or how to conceive them (as an ST). I dunno guys, your mileage may vary and all that, but there certainly wasn't a rousing cry of support for Promethean when it came out. It had some great ideas that was dragged down in places.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:31
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Mendrian posted:Promethean is a game you can win, yes, but (IMHO) it had poorly implemented group mechanics out of the box and was best played as some kind of solo adventure game. Also it told you roughly what a milestone was but not fantastic advice on how to achieve them (as a player) or how to conceive them (as an ST). Man, there's a substantial segment of people that think Geist is the best nWoD game and that like nWoD fangames. Support doesn't mean much.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:36
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Mendrian posted:Promethean is a game you can win, yes, but (IMHO) it had poorly implemented group mechanics out of the box and was best played as some kind of solo adventure game. Also it told you roughly what a milestone was but not fantastic advice on how to achieve them (as a player) or how to conceive them (as an ST). Promethean's commercial viability is extremely suspect but it's still a good, well-designed game that's distinct thematically and mechanically from the other lines. If you're looking for the real aimless game comparison, there's always Geist.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:42
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Mendrian posted:Promethean is a game you can win, yes, but (IMHO) it had poorly implemented group mechanics out of the box and was best played as some kind of solo adventure game. Also it told you roughly what a milestone was but not fantastic advice on how to achieve them (as a player) or how to conceive them (as an ST). The mechanics weren't super-great, I agree, but there was still an incredibly clear arc (the Pilgrimage) to hook your game onto. And it had the best excuse for five Draculas hanging out ever, because you would stick with pretty much anyone if they weren't compelled to hate you by the universe itself like pretty much everyone else. tatankatonk posted:Promethean's commercial viability is extremely suspect but it's still a good, well-designed game that's distinct thematically and mechanically from the other lines. If you're looking for the real aimless game comparison, there's always Geist. I really hope Geist gets an honest-to-God second edition. Some really good ideas, good visual design, and a neat power scheme, it's just a mess in execution.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:48
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1E werewolf as printed read to me as "Everyone wants to kill you because you were born. This is all your fault. If you fail in your duty other people will show up and kill you. Good luck" which didn't exactly leave me wanting to explore the nuances of where to go from there.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:53
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I'm going to take the bold stand and say: this game is stupid and is another Geist.
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Apr 21, 2015 01:06
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Mexcillent posted:I'm going to take the bold stand and say: this game is stupid and is another Geist.  No way.But in all seriousness, I'll wait till they post the Kickstarter version till I start casting stones, but I didn't like what I saw.
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Apr 21, 2015 01:34
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An opinion so edgy it gets 8-again.
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Apr 21, 2015 01:37
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Promethean wasn't perfect, but I would say its primary flaw was not 'trouble with group play.' Its primary flaw was 'only tells the one story'. It was really good at that, though.
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Apr 21, 2015 02:09
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Kurieg posted:1E werewolf as printed read to me as "Everyone wants to kill you because you were born. This is all your fault. If you fail in your duty other people will show up and kill you. Good luck" which didn't exactly leave me wanting to explore the nuances of where to go from there. I dunno man, this sounds pretty great for a tense game of creepy stuff. I played in only one Frosaken game (sadly), it was basically run that way, and it was loving amazing.
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Apr 21, 2015 05:12
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As a werewolf though, you usually weren't supposed to be the one being creeped out. I understand that it got much better with supplementary material, but our group never really got that far, the only non-core book I've got for it is Blood of the Wolf, and that was because someone suggested it to me (it is a good book, but it's fairly setting agnostic for anything with werewolves)
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Apr 21, 2015 05:37
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Kurieg posted:As a werewolf though, you usually weren't supposed to be the one being creeped out. Why not?
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Apr 21, 2015 05:40
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Because you're the spiritual police pressed into service under threat of your own life? You normally don't have time to be creeped out when the poo poo you're dealing with is trying to kill you. I guess the Hosts are super creepy but that only really works once. I guess what I'm saying is "Oh god look at all this creepy poo poo the spirit world throws at you" can work for a shorter duration game, but once you've become inured to it both in and out of character then what's left?
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Apr 21, 2015 05:51
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You're a Spirit Cop yea but even the most spiritual werewolf is very much only scratching the surface of the spirit world around you. The whole point is you, as a Forsaken, are cast out and are using your situation to serve as a bridge between worlds.
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Apr 21, 2015 05:54
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Then it becomes The Wire with spirits. Still awesome.
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Apr 21, 2015 05:54
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MonsieurChoc posted:Then it becomes The Wire with spirits. Yea you're not Spirit CSI, you're Spirit The Wire. You understand, in broad strokes, what's going on but this is very much not 'your world' and you are super not welcome in it no matter how many books you've read on it. And instead of crack it's spirit insanity monsters.
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Apr 21, 2015 05:56
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Yes, and the 2nd edition book does a better job of getting that across, and is generally better in a lot of ways. I was talking about the 1st edition book and my experiences playing it, which weren't that good, and in one case involved the entire group being eaten by a car spirit.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:06
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