|
The Technocracy would like to stand for science, and people are often fooled into thinking they do, but they are ultimately an anti-science group in that they try to avoid doing actual science and try to prevent other people from doing any either.
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 15:23 |
|
|
The Technocracy loves I loving LOVE SCIENCE Facebook memes with inaccurate Einstein quotes, but isn't so keen on peer-review.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:27
|
|
|
Is there any villains other than the Technocracy and anything Changeling that annoys people as much as these groups do in oWoD?
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:28
|
|
|
Covok posted:Is there any villains other than the Technocracy and anything Changeling that annoys people as much as these groups do in oWoD? Casual racism.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:30
|
|
|
I find the Nephandi pretty annoying, because in a game about how we're tragically divided by ideology they're a bunch of card-carrying villains who are designed to be purely dedicated to the service of evil. I've come around to the view that it's irresponsible to present characters who are unworthy of empathy, but Nephandi are actually constructed so that feeling empathy for them is a dangerous trap.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:32
|
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:I find the Nephandi pretty annoying, because in a game about how we're tragically divided by ideology they're a bunch of card-carrying villains who are designed to be purely dedicated to the service of evil. I liked how revised Mage presented the Nephandi as being fractious and having been thrown into disarray by the sudden overwhelming silence and loss of power from their unspeakable masters. As for empathizing with the Nephandi, you're right about them being the sorts to use empathy to trap the unwary, but that doesn't make the likes of Widderslainte any less tragic. Or those Barabbi that felt they were trapped in the Cauls and left with no other alternative.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:38
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Casual racism. Yeah, there is quite a bit of that from what I read in W:tA 20A. Like a lot. Like positive sterotypes are racism too, guys. Rand Brittain posted:I find the Nephandi pretty annoying, because in a game about how we're tragically divided by ideology they're a bunch of card-carrying villains who are designed to be purely dedicated to the service of evil. What group are they? Sound like vampires. Seems odd for this game to have pure evil villians. Then again, the Wyrm.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:38
|
|
|
Covok posted:Yeah, there is quite a bit of that from what I read in W:tA 20A. Like a lot. Like positive sterotypes are racism too, guys. The sad thing is that W:TA has come a long way since 1st edition and the magical natives who literally did not know disease or suffering until the evil Europeans showed up. But they can't really cut the Stereotribes loose without completely redoing all of the tribes from the ground up. Not that it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it wouldn't really be W:TA at that point. quote:What group are they? Sound like vampires. Seems odd for this game to have pure evil villians. Then again, the Wyrm. They're mages working for nameless entities that wish the unmaking of reality.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:48
|
|
|
Nephandi invert their own souls to work toward Descension rather than Ascension. They think that no world is better than any kind of "better world" and so try to undo everything. In the right hands, they can be some of the scariest villains of the oWoD. In the wrong hands, they are a complete joke.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:49
|
|
|
If you're going to use Nephandi you owe it to yourself and your players to read Thomas Ligotti's work.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:52
|
|
|
Loomer posted:If you're going to use Nephandi you owe it to yourself and your players to read Thomas Ligotti's work. Rustin Cohle: Willworker.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:52
|
|
|
Pussy Cartel posted:I liked how revised Mage presented the Nephandi as being fractious and having been thrown into disarray by the sudden overwhelming silence and loss of power from their unspeakable masters. One of the signature NPCs of the setting that comes up throughout the book's fiction up until Ascension is a Barabbi Euthanathos working for the Traditions because of her sheer unwavering loyalty to her leader, Old Man Senex (major euthanathos dude who lives on Pluto's secret moon Cerberus).
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:53
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:In the right hands, They are people who are tortured into making a mistake that damns their soul to eternal recurrence and torment in service to destroying all of reality, often driven by the original thought made in the absolute depth of despair and having their soul tortured that universal nonexistence is preferable to any existence that could ever allow things like them. MonsieurChoc posted:In the wrong hands, They made up approximately half of the Third Reich, and a significant chunk of nephandi are super-Nazis from the Hollow Earth bent on
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:56
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Rustin Cohle: Willworker. Rustin Cohle is clearly a lone-operative Imbued with no connections or awareness of the greater Hunter world, duh. (I am so thankful for True Detective it's not even funny. Hearing they dropped the occultism and southern gothic elements for season two hurt me in a way a tv show should not be able to do.) Loomer fucked around with this message at 04:59 on May 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 04:56
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:Rustin Cohle: Willworker. Since I just looked up Thomas Ligotti, turns out True Detective sights Ligotti as an influence so the connection is real.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 05:01
|
|
|
Laird Barron's work is a bigger influence but a less acknowledged one. Some of Ligotti's stuff is almost verbatim for Cohle's best lines - there was a kerfuffle over that at the time - but the overall theme is closer to the pulpier but no less weird/unnerving stuff that Barron does. He's a one-eyed Alaskan man, Iditarod racer and former bering sea fisherman. His stuff is absolutely brilliant in a way Ligotti's isn't - it's visceral, pulpy in the best way, and connected while Ligotti's fiction is a lot more detached and disconnected. The two together are a winning combination. I actually would wholeheartedly recommend them both as generally good reading for running a WoD game of either version. Barron actually had a line in one of his works that I really like for VtM's constant refrain of Gehenna. Just grabbed my copy and here it is, with added Goya:  He roused from a joyous dream of feasting, of drinking blood and sucking warm marrow from the bone. His sons and daughters swarmed like ants upon the surface of the Earth, ripe in their terror, delectable in their anguish. He swept them into his mouth and their insides ran in black streams between his lips and matted his beard. This sweet dream rapidly slipped away as he stretched and assessed his surroundings. He shambled forth from the great cavern in the mountain that had been his home for so long. Moonlight illuminated the ruined plaza of the city on the mountainside. He did not recognize the configuration of the stars and this frightened and exhilarated him. During his eons’ sleep, trees had burst through cracks in paving stones. He squatted to sniff the leaves, to tear them with his old man’s snaggle teeth, and relish the taste of bitter sap. His lover approached, as naked and ancient as himself, and laid her hand upon his shoulder. They embraced in silent communion as the sun ate through the moon and bathed the city in its hideous blood-red glare. The couple’s shadows stretched long and dark over the all tiny houses and all the tiny works of men. That's from The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, one of his short story collections.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 05:09
|
|
|
Loomer posted:Rustin Cohle is clearly a lone-operative Imbued with no connections or awareness of the greater Hunter world, duh. My favorite thing about True Detective is that the series creator seems convinced that the occult elements were merely set dressing and that expecting them to pay off in any way was silly and unreasonable because obviously it was just a regular cop show using occult trappings for atmosphere. 
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 05:17
|
|
|
Pope Guilty posted:My favorite thing about True Detective is that the series creator seems convinced that the occult elements were merely set dressing and that expecting them to pay off in any way was silly and unreasonable because obviously it was just a regular cop show using occult trappings for atmosphere. See I don't object to that approach to things. I found it actually paid off in its own right, because the reality is that occultism is almost never a clear matter unless you dedicate a lot of time to unraveling the twisted thought processes involved, coming from someone who does a lot of study in that field. Cohle and Hart simply didn't have the eyes to see or the ears to hear anything more than the immediate surface, and the idea of being an ordinary (or, in Cohle's case, a close-to-ordinary) man thrust into the middle of something that could be mere madness or be something much worse is its own special breed of horror. It's being a blind man stumbling through a dark room filled with strange sounds and scents that you can't quite figure out. I would have loved to have seen that with the initial pitch for season 2, where it was going to look at the secret occult history and patterns of the US transit system. There's a loving ton you could do there with that theme while still being, largely, a regular (if exceptionally well written) cop show. Season 2 now is looking like it'll be a good watch as a cop show but a disappointment as a follow-up to Cohle and Marty, and as a regular cop show it has to compete with The Bridge et al.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 05:24
|
|
|
Loomer posted:See I don't object to that approach to things. I found it actually paid off in its own right, because the reality is that occultism is almost never a clear matter unless you dedicate a lot of time to unraveling the twisted thought processes involved, coming from someone who does a lot of study in that field. Cohle and Hart simply didn't have the eyes to see or the ears to hear anything more than the immediate surface, and the idea of being an ordinary (or, in Cohle's case, a close-to-ordinary) man thrust into the middle of something that could be mere madness or be something much worse is its own special breed of horror. It's being a blind man stumbling through a dark room filled with strange sounds and scents that you can't quite figure out. I was unhappy with the solution being what it was (dumb pervert inbred hillbillies, how original), but given how present the occult elements were in so many characters' narratives- how many people seemed to have had an experience they could only describe using the occult signifiers- it was silly to have Rust and Marty plunged straight into the center of it and come up with... that. The setting and crimes were a good use of the King In Yellow, but I felt like they kind of whiffed the ending, and Pizzolato's comments about the use of occultism and the pullback from those events in season 2 strengthens, I think, the idea that he doesn't really understand what he's doing in that regard. quote:I would have loved to have seen that with the initial pitch for season 2, where it was going to look at the secret occult history and patterns of the US transit system. There's a loving ton you could do there with that theme while still being, largely, a regular (if exceptionally well written) cop show. Season 2 now is looking like it'll be a good watch as a cop show but a disappointment as a follow-up to Cohle and Marty, and as a regular cop show it has to compete with The Bridge et al. The initial rumours about it being based on The Crying of Lot 49 were so tempting.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 05:36
|
|
|
I agree on the Pizzolato front. Have you read his book, Galveston? It wasn't particularly good, I thought. I think it's very odd actually that he's backing away as fast as he can from the stand-out character's basic elements. Cohle wasn't an instant hit because he was a great cop, charismatic, etcetera. He was a great hit because an outright anti-natalist alcoholic detective is (while an old idea at this point) something fairly unique on TV, and he was played perfectly. But then I remember that Pizzolato 'stole' (I think it was more case of inadvertant lifting, myself) a lot of what made Cohle Cohle directly from Ligotti, nearly word for word, and it becomes less surprising. It's not going to be good for his career if he can't actually produce an experience as unique and acclaimed as True Detective's first season again - this early in his career, if he becomes known as a once-off without his own ability to make outstanding television, he's completely hosed. So I think his retreat might really be an attempt to play to his own perceived strengths of writing crime shows and stories since Cohle and the occult element maybe weren't actually him.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 05:44
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:The conflict is between Western, and especially American, hegemony, as represented by the Technocratic Order, and all the alternatives to it, represented by the Traditions. The exalted subjects of hegemony, unable to comprehend it clearly, concluded that it was about everything that happened in the last five hundred years being defended by the noble forces of domination and control. The Traditions don't fare much better in that regard, considering that the individual Traditions themselves were explicitly created to insulate "legitimate" pre-existing European magickal traditions like the Order of Hermes by sidelining everyone else. Mages who didn't fit into the European ways - the supposedly primitive spiritualists and inscrutable orientals - got lumped together into massively simplistic artificial Traditions, purely on the basis of their European counterparts' myopia. The modern-day Traditions have made concerted efforts at including non-Western ideologies (magical and otherwise) into their various factions, especially from MtAs Revised onwards, but the fundamental structure of the Nine Traditions is still deeply rooted in Western exceptionalism and cultural imperialism.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 07:24
|
|
|
The Traditions aren't perfect, but they're not the Progenitors. Excuse me while I look up the debunked race sciences they kept evangelizing. Then we can talk about the babies their real life counterparts infected with syphilis in order to create a docile slave race. After that, we can talk about how, after the medical community dropped the ball on HIV, they totally fixed everything and made sure to never let it happen again! 
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 09:25
|
|
|
I thought for the longest time the ending was just the unreliable narration (which was kinda a thing up to that point, remember the shoot out) taken to its final consequence: they found something, but said (to us this time) it was hillbillies. Then they dropped the occult theme and I was sad, because now that makes no sense.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 09:26
|
|
|
ErichZahn posted:The Traditions aren't perfect, but they're not the Progenitors. I recall the revised Progenitor book released a year(?) or so ago doing a lot to turn that convention into something, y'know, playable.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 09:48
|
|
|
Cabbit posted:I recall the revised Progenitor book released a year(?) or so ago doing a lot to turn that convention into something, y'know, playable. The revised convention books do a lot to make the Technocratic conventions playable, but they assume that the metaplot was kept and that the Dimension Storm cut the Technocracy off from Control. The Progenitors come out a lot more progressive than they used to be, but they also end up being the ones most strongly in favour of purging all other mages and reinstituting the Pogrom, as opposed to the Void Engineers who, as usual, are pretty live and let live.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 13:58
|
|
|
Well, it's more that the new Void Engineers are very 'holy gently caress we have much bigger problems right now' in the new book. Their hard edges are going to eventually turn on everyone else once Threat Null is dealt with - they're still very much committed to the Technocratic paradigms, and they are probably now the single most militarized faction within the Union. Sons of Ether and the Euthanatoi get a pass because they have a common enemy and they can't ask the Union for help, but eventually that won't be the case. It's one of the big tragedies of their Revised book - the original VEs who were the most open, pragmatic and approachable convention, the most willing to work with others, are pretty much gone now. There are glimpses left, but they're in danger of being lost forever.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 14:04
|
|
|
Mexcillent posted:lol I can't believe that while complaining about the slights against the foucaldian panopticon you guys have overlooked the incredibly boneheaded mechanics of Mage20, namely that 1s eat successes holy poo poo I believe the single most White Wolf-y thing in Mage 20 is the fact that: a) there are rules for dying if you fill up your Health Track with Aggravated damage b) the ST is explicitly told to not actually kill off player characters if they fill their Health Track with Aggravated damage; it should only happen in special situations. Notably, this is not presented as an optional thing. As an ST, you're simply not supposed to kill of player characters. And it's so... that's not what mechanics are for! You're adding all these adjustable dials and making explicit how the magic system is supposed to work and saying that examples from previous books were badly written... but exchanging the "Dead" Health Level for "NPCs: Dead, PCs: Incapacitated" is apparently too much? Instead an entirely different part of the book says you shouldn't use the rules? (But then, the ST advice is full of hillarious gems with Brucato-or-whoever telling you, authoritatively, how to ST Mage 20. You're not supposed to eat during the game, for example.) LatwPIAT fucked around with this message at 15:02 on May 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 14:51
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:(But then, the ST advice is full of hillarious gems with Brucato-or-whoever telling you, authoritatively, how to ST Mage 20. You're not supposed to eat during the game, for example.) Don't forget the part where Brucato talks about how players shouldn't play Nephandi because the spiritual implications for them would end up leading them down a dark, left-hand path in real life.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 15:35
|
|
|
Pussy Cartel posted:Don't forget the part where Brucato talks about how players shouldn't play Nephandi because the spiritual implications for them would end up leading them down a dark, left-hand path in real life. I wonder if he and Steve Brown are buddies.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 15:42
|
|
|
I still can't believe that after literally 25 years of me telling people "ha ha, no, there's no such thing as a double botch, let me explain to you why the concept is completely mathematically unsound", they went and put the very worst and most common informal house rule into their official system. Maybe mathematics really is Banality u guise
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 15:48
|
|
|
Speaking of fun Brucato: "The so-called Holy Land burns with insane zeal – and with three religions literally hell-bent on bringing about their Apocalypse, we might still see the visions of that demented scripture played out on the global stage. " "The Middle East, for example, continues to be a flashpoint for humanity because large numbers of people from three different religions believe their God gave it to them… and they’re willing to end life on Earth to prove that point." Here's one of my favourites; "And between the old associations of mystic power and the new freedom to transcend gender roles without getting burnt at the stake for it, the idea of gender identity is more fluid – and more magickal – than ever before. Especially in queer, polyamorous, transhumanist, neotribal, and psychedelic cultures, it’s often more unusual to be conventionally “straight” than it is to hold, embrace, and enjoy the hell out of an identity outside the traditional polarities."
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 16:03
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Speaking of fun Brucato: It's goofy, gonzo poo poo and I love it. Pure 2nd ed Mage, unsurprisingly.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 16:21
|
|
|
LatwPIAT posted:Speaking of fun Brucato: So Brucato's still beating that old drum? quote:From the Middle East came the Patriarch, the most insidious plot of the Wyrm, under many names in many forms. The bloody-minded Patriarch ripped the souls and battered the bodies of Woman in the name of his male gods. The Patriarch, the Incarna of jealous man and servant of Abhorra, the urge wyrm of hatred, promised man limitless power. For the sake of that power Man gladly bent everyone around him to the yoke of the Patriarch. Though the Patriarch's prophets spoke of kindness and good intentions, they crushed Woman beneath laws of ownership and myths of sin.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 16:38
|
|
|
The last few pages of Technocracy talk perfectly illustrate why I always loved the Conventions. A massive global conspiracy that's got so convoluted that no-one knows who's really running the show, filled with a competing mix of humanist idealists, power-hungry opressors and literal mad scientists? There's a lot of scope for all sorts of things in that concept, and it all depends on what facets you want to highlight at any given time.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 16:50
|
|
|
The Dark Era, To the Strongest, just got an update about it's 10k word expansion. Includes otherworlds and Egyptian cults. 
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 20:54
|
|
|
Loomer posted:It's one of the big tragedies of their Revised book - the original VEs who were the most open, pragmatic and approachable convention, the most willing to work with others, are pretty much gone now. It's the natural consequence of the total irrelevancy of the Technocracy/Tradition conflict. Neither side truly matters [They've never been more than a reed in the water, slightly changing the flow of history. Humanity itself rejected magic all on it's own], and there are forces outside the human paradigm that would absolutely unmake everything if given a chance....and all the bullshit infighting among humanity gives them that chance. It makes perfect sense that the group that was the least attached to dogmatic conflict in the Technocracy and was out on the fringes of reality fighting horrors would ultimately decide to stop playing around. The Void Engineers were the most idealistic of the conventions, and that makes them profoundly dangerous. They are now the closest to a purely military tradition that has ever existed, and they could absolutely decimate everyone if they just let loose. So now you have a group that believes in the fundamental ideals of the Technocracy, but not the machinery that's grown up around it, and that doesn't hate or even pity the Traditions, but absolutely believes they are the past. And they've completely rededicated their efforts to the fighting of magical threats. Someone in the Technocracy or the Traditions is going to accidentally push them too far at the wrong time, and it's going to be hilarious.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 22:01
|
|
|
Does noted historical documentary "The Burning Times" get a namedrop in M20?
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 22:12
|
|
|
Boogaleeboo posted:It's the natural consequence of the total irrelevancy of the Technocracy/Tradition conflict. Neither side truly matters [They've never been more than a reed in the water, slightly changing the flow of history. Humanity itself rejected magic all on it's own], and there are forces outside the human paradigm that would absolutely unmake everything if given a chance....and all the bullshit infighting among humanity gives them that chance. This is basically why at the end of the day I really can't take most of oMage too seriously. As presented, it's a giant, world-shaking, cosmological conflict over what pattern the wallpaper should have while the entire house is on fire and falling off a cliff, and the writers themselves rarely seem to understand that. The implications of Consensus are loving horrifying and that doesn't get nearly enough attention (unless that changed in M20, or I've forgotten stuff in the years since I've read most of it). Like, one of the old punchlines I remember about oWoD is that Consensus, if you bend it a bit, is an unwitting in-universe explanation for all the ridiculous racist stereotypes - enough people were racist enough to make Consensus enforce race sciences and stereotyping. Truly, it is the Darkest of Worlds
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 23:02
|
|
|
I'm glad that we discovered that talking about oWoD mage is the actually annoying kernel of truth in the "why is everyone talking about Mage for twenty pages" whining.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 23:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 15:23 |
|
|
The best use of consensus reality in a game is The Esoterrorists, wherein magic isn't real because humanity doesn't believe in it. The titular Esoterrorists are a cabal of evil pieces of poo poo who want to be the Seers of the Throne, so they carry out what are basically terrorist attacks on consensus reality- staged occult killings, faked evidence of the existence of monsters, hoaxes that make it look like magic is real- in order to break down humanity's belief that the world is fundamentally orderly and safe from magical dangers. The PCs are basically trying to a) wreck their poo poo and keep magic fake and b) make sure nobody ever knows about it.
|
|
#
?
May 21, 2015 23:22
|
|