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Kurieg posted:What is the "Failure State" of beast, what are you trying to prevent. Hit satiety 0 and, yeah, that's basically what happens. Hit satiety 10 and you're defenseless against heroes. There's also a few "endgames" but they're kinda shakily written in most spots.
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Jun 3, 2015 00:28
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Pope Guilty posted:So basically Beast has the same problem as Disney's Beauty and the Beast, being that Gaston has to be a complete piece of poo poo so the audience won't notice that the Beast is every bit the indefensible monster Gaston says he is? Except the Beast redeems himself but Beast doesn't seem like it is about that. You are many to embrace your monster.
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Jun 3, 2015 00:48
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As it is, from not having read the leaks it's just seeming like there's nothing interesting for Beasts to do, especially on a day-to-day group basis. Vampires: Feed, take place in overcomplicated political machinations. Werewolves: Hunt, beat spirits up, beat other things up, don't wreck the things you care about somehow. Mage: Be a wizard with inscrutable wizard projects, be Neo in the Matrix and fight Agents, do Vampire-style politics, be Indiana Jones Promethean: Pretty much the whole game is 'find ways to be human' so that's all set Changeling: Survive and avoid the Fae. Actually I'm a little shaky on this one and don't remember what changelings are supposed to do besides that. Hunter: Go hunt the things. Mummy: uhhh I never read this but from what I've read, then if you only wake up once every x years you're gonna do your damnedest to do everything you need to do in short time you've got Demon: Maintain your cover, fight the God-Machine (or otherwise find ways to interact with it), play spy games Beast: Fulfill whatever hunger you have and kill the normies? Someone fill me in on the other WoD lines too on what they "do" on a day-to-day gameable basis.
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Jun 3, 2015 00:54
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Mummy is basically 'some rear end in a top hat stole your poo poo, GET YOUR poo poo BACK and maybe rebel against your ancient rear end in a top hat necromancer masters maybe, maybe getting your poo poo back is just playing into their hands'.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:02
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If nothing else, this appears to be a useful, feel-good lesson on what OPP can get funded. Good lord.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:06
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My real confusion here is the sample characters. Like one of the example characters in the splat writeups is basically just "The human antagonist from Ghostbusters, who feeds on the frustration he causes with petty red tape and inspection fines." Only he's actually a horrible monster. Who the hell looks at Walter loving Peck and goes "That guy. He's who I want to play?"
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Jun 3, 2015 01:11
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bewilderment posted:Changeling: Survive and avoid the Fae. Actually I'm a little shaky on this one and don't remember what changelings are supposed to do besides that. Try to get your life back, or at least *A* life back, as an insane fairytale creature. You can't really run away from your Keeper, you have to run *towards* something. What did you want so badly it kept you alive through madness? quote:Beast: Fulfill whatever hunger you have and kill the normies? This and Mummy are probably the only two lines where I've gone "I don't get it". Like there's interesting work in both, some compelling plot elements here and there, but I fundamentally don't get why I'm supposed to care about their existence. It's not that I'd see myself playing all the other lines, I can just understand what is potentially compelling about them. I fundamentally don't see what is compelling about Beast. What am I supposed to be getting from their conflict, what about them in the world is it that is supposed to draw me to them?
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Jun 3, 2015 01:15
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Every time Onyx Path announces a new line, I go through this cycle where I wonder how they hell they pull the game off and make it fit into the World of Darkness. I was totally unsure about Mummy, but the Planescape: Torment vibe hooked me and I've had a blast running it for the past three years. I was slightly unsure about Demon, but the God-Machine hook was really good, and the finished game manages to keep a lot of what's cool about Demons with a spy flair. I was confused by Beast when it was announced at GenCon and now...I'm still confused by Beast. I don't know what to do in it, who this is for, or why I would want to play it. I'm confused at how it's 89% funded after six hours. I'm even confused about why the cover is purple when there's already a very purple line in the nWoD, thank you so much. Maybe that's just red tinged gunmetal gray or something, I don't know. It's an intriguing idea, but the vibe of the book is just so bizzare, and there's no compelling antagonist to go with it. There's so much crossover, but I don't even know why I would want to cross Beast over in the first place! You can't make a good crossover book without at least having a strong core game to go with it. I'm just baffled.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:40
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Hahaha I totally forgot Geist in my original post and forgot to mention it even though I wanted to. Still, even for Geist there's a hook: Solve ghost problems! Or solve problems with your ghost powers! It's not something that Sin-Eaters are *forced* into like other lines but it's what the book and all supplemental material suggests they do so at least there's a direction there. Ghostbusters with Ghostpowers.
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Jun 3, 2015 01:45
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I think the funniest part about Beast is how easily this thread came up with like half a dozen interesting things that could be done with the concept of 'Your soul is a legendary monster trapped in epic conflicts whether you want it to be or not'. Like, that is an easy setup to do cool poo poo with! How do you gently caress that up so badly?
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Jun 3, 2015 01:47
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Just sitting here thinking for a while. Make it so that the beast soul is the bit that doesn't want *you*. You're an annoying bit of sentience that's attached to it's protrusion into our realm of reality. At some point you will die and it will take over, and you can sort of try and keep it at bay. It will slowly get more and more powerful, your goal, then, is to keep up. Because at some point you will fail. Your goal is at some point before then either figure out how to sever your connection, or turn the link back in on itself and take over the beast.. So like a backwards Promethean. It would also give the beasts some justifcation to hate and avoid hunters beyond "Those damned normies just don't understand how hard I got it." in "If that gently caress actually manages to kill me for real then everyone's hosed."
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Jun 3, 2015 01:57
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Night10194 posted:I think the funniest part about Beast is how easily this thread came up with like half a dozen interesting things that could be done with the concept of 'Your soul is a legendary monster trapped in epic conflicts whether you want it to be or not'. Like, that is an easy setup to do cool poo poo with! How do you gently caress that up so badly? Leviathan, the fan splat, treads on a few of the same notes Beast does and it plays those notes a lot better (based on the F&F at least)
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Jun 3, 2015 02:02
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Kurieg posted:Just sitting here thinking for a while. So Beast as the Beast from Vampire having fun murder partytimes with a Wraith's Shadow? I dig it.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:06
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Leviathan also doesn't have the albatross of "everything written about Heroes being in the same book" hanging around its neck. If it got a latter-day B&S-style "antagonist we're really trying hard to get excited about but we're just mashing our palms against our inert matter until we grunt out a hundo pages about it" on the wiki it would find itself probably about on par with Beast. Plus with weirder interactions with the Size rules, I'd imagine?
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Jun 3, 2015 02:09
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Kurieg posted:Just sitting here thinking for a while. Isn't that the hook to Better Angels, the Wild Talents setting? I mean, that does sound pretty cool and all, but I swear I've heard it before.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:11
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Kurieg posted:Make it so that the beast soul is the bit that doesn't want *you*. That's cool...
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Jun 3, 2015 02:11
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Well one of the problems with Beast is that it's not quite clear whether you're playing a primordial monster who's been incarnated in a human, or whether you're playing a human who's trying to keep desperate hold of a primordial monster. The text and mechanics kind of shift to whichever one is most convenient for making the Beast the good guy in a given context.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:15
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Free Cog posted:Isn't that the hook to Better Angels, the Wild Talents setting? I mean, that does sound pretty cool and all, but I swear I've heard it before. Better Angels owns bones. It's like Wraith except you're playing a deliberately incompetent Venture Brothers supervillain, and you don't want to shoot yourself/your Shadowguide at the end of a session.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:16
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I have a great idea for a game named Beast, about surviving a world that hates and fears you, but sadly an injunction from Marvel prevents me from publishing it.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:17
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Daeren posted:Better Angels owns bones. It's like Wraith except you're playing a deliberately incompetent Venture Brothers supervillain, and you don't want to shoot yourself/your Shadowguide at the end of a session. It's been on my "to-play" list for a long while. I might just go ahead and run it next semester, I've been hankering for a nice supers game and the new edition of Aberrant is so far away. Also, one more thing that I'm baffled about when it comes to Beast: where do you go with it, in terms of supplements? They don't seem to have a "half-Beast" splat from what I've seen, Heroes don't seem to be worth doing a whole book on, and crossover's pretty well covered in the core. Would there just be a citybook? Something totally different? I honestly couldn't make a guess.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:32
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I could guess at "Lair book," "wacky supernatural encounters book," or a "supernatural pathways and assorted hijinx" book.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:41
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You could probably get a book out of a relatively linear chronicle book. How was Reign of the Exarchs received for Mage? My only experience with it is DaveB's actual play report.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:59
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quote:"You can only kill someone once, but you can victimize them in other ways forever." --Matt McFarland, re: Beast quote:Heroes always have a catalyst, but that catalyst generally looks utterly wrong to the Beasts causing it. In only the rarest cases will a Beast be able to look at her own actions and believe the Hero is justified. Beast is a game about being an abuser, but unlike Vampire it takes the traditional abuser's defenses (down to "actually, YOU'RE the abusive one!") entirely at face value. It's repulsive. I hadn't gone back to the RPG.net thread since Matt called me an MRA, but later on somebody brings up that Beast reminded him of domestic violence which he had a real problem with since his mom was a victim of that. He got a one-day probation and no other response. This game genuinely makes me less comfortable playing other games released by OPP.
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Jun 3, 2015 04:25
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Dammit Who? posted:Beast is a game about being an abuser, but unlike Vampire it takes the traditional abuser's defenses (down to "actually, YOU'RE the abusive one!") entirely at face value. It's repulsive. I hadn't gone back to the RPG.net thread since Matt called me an MRA, but later on somebody brings up that Beast reminded him of domestic violence which he had a real problem with since his mom was a victim of that. He got a one-day probation and no other response. I don't know why McFarland has chosen this as his hill to die on, but he's defending Beasts and villanizing heroes way too much. Like the part about how Heroes are all explicitly bad people because if they get too moral they stop hearing the call of the hunt. Why? Because heroes are bad people.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:23
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The book never admits that, most of the time, the Hero and the Beast are doing the same exact thing. Here's part of the entry on the Collector Hero, a Hero created by a Beast who hungers for Horde.quote:The Hero’s fixation for material objects increases. Even if he was previously a generous sort with little concern for worldly goods, suddenly he cares a great deal more about his possessions and the possessions of others. His home becomes a cluttered mess, piled high with trophies, trinkets, and baubles, some of which he may have simply taken because he wanted them. The concept of personal property is not lost on him; he simply stops recognizing other people’s right to have personal property. The words “you can’t have that” simply do not compute; if he wants something, he’ll get it by whatever means necessary, even putting himself or others at great risk in the process. Such a Hero often comes up with elaborate rationalizations for this behavior — he might feel that if he can take something, it should belong to him, by rights. After all, he wanted it more. For comparison, the Horde Hunger signature quote is, "I wanted it more than he did. That makes it mine." The Collectors explicitly get off on having things that other people want. Buying or trading for things can't satisfy them. Most Collectors are supposed to be thieves. The only difference between the Beast and his Hero counterpart is that the Beast does it for the art. When the Beast steals something, it's "a reflection of the greed of mankind," but when the Hero steals and hordes something it's because he's a meaniepants doodoo head. The Beast can steal from the Hero as much as he likes and the book won't judge, but if the Hero dares steal something back from the Beast's lair, then we're told that's completely unjustifiable, and don't you dare make the Hero's actions sympathetic in any way or we'll take your book and give you Hunter: the Vigil instead. It's the same thing with all the other pairs. Violent Beasts produce violent Heroes, Beasts that bully others get bullied back, and so on. The Beasts do terrible things because it evokes the most primal emotions of the collective unconscious. They're sensitive artists, you see. It's literally just that Heroes do it for the wrong reasons and that they don't demonstrate enough humility or sensitivity, which is insane. Part of the problem is that this book is so obviously written by different authors with different ideas, in obvious ways. As mentioned, the Heroes section talks about their willpower and experience mechanics, which doesn't make any sense. The Storytelling advice section then gives instruction on how to portray Heroes and gives the Integrity advice again, stating that they didn't do it before because, as NPCs, it doesn't actually matter. The overall aims of each section also don't match up. The Heroes section begins with a rundown of mythical heroes and focuses on the horror of having your psyche bound into these archetypes. It does not work at all with the ST advice to portray them as fedora wearing MRAs. edit: Dammit Who? posted:Beast is a game about being an abuser, but unlike Vampire it takes the traditional abuser's defenses (down to "actually, YOU'RE the abusive one!") entirely at face value. It's repulsive. I hadn't gone back to the RPG.net thread since Matt called me an MRA, but later on somebody brings up that Beast reminded him of domestic violence which he had a real problem with since his mom was a victim of that. He got a one-day probation and no other response. I found out what you're talking about. It starts with this great post. The basic reply to him was either "don't talk about serious subjects please" or what I said above, that Heroes don't have the necessary capacity for self-reflection or humility to be considered worthy of compassion in the same way that Beasts are. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 05:32
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pospysyl posted:Part of the problem is that this book is so obviously written by different authors with different ideas, in obvious ways. As mentioned, the Heroes section talks about their willpower and experience mechanics, which doesn't make any sense. The Storytelling advice section then gives instruction on how to portray Heroes and gives the Integrity advice again, stating that they didn't do it before because, as NPCs, it doesn't actually matter. The overall aims of each section also don't match up. The Heroes section begins with a rundown of mythical heroes and focuses on the horror of having your psyche bound into these archetypes. It does not work at all with the ST advice to portray them as fedora wearing MRAs. That's what digs into me. After reading his posts on the matter, McFarland freely admits he has a biased reading/intent for the line and the conflict, but the book itself doesn't knuckle down and commit to that bias. Turning it purely into a bizarre quasi-fascist abuse apologist tract is deeply unpleasant, but at least it would be consistently unpleasant, serving some arguable purpose to set a tone and the mindset of some really loving terrible people. It magnifies how ugly some of the writing gets when it's sandwiched between chapters that completely contradict it.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:42
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Yea there's parts of the book that appear to be really interesting concepts around how monsters and heroes are two sides of the same coin and that the whole reason they fight so brutally is they see everything about themselves they hate in the other...but then most of it is just really poorly written 'hrm yes but mayhaps the beast doesn't even know what he's doing and the hero is the badguy here hm?' The problem is that second part is so incredibly creepy and wrongheaded, and they're defending it SO hard that I just can't see my group enjoying the brief bits of the first part that's in there.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:42
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pospysyl posted:Part of the problem is that this book is so obviously written by different authors with different ideas, in obvious ways. As mentioned, the Heroes section talks about their willpower and experience mechanics, which doesn't make any sense. The Storytelling advice section then gives instruction on how to portray Heroes and gives the Integrity advice again, stating that they didn't do it before because, as NPCs, it doesn't actually matter. The overall aims of each section also don't match up. The Heroes section begins with a rundown of mythical heroes and focuses on the horror of having your psyche bound into these archetypes. It does not work at all with the ST advice to portray them as fedora wearing MRAs. But don't you remember the story of Persecutus who slew the evil M'dusa for being a stone cold bitch and not putting out after he complemented her nice statue collection? I mean she was really ugly and should have been grateful that someone like him was even paying attention to her, even if it was with a mirror. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 05:48
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This whole thing about Heroes resonates with the same vibe I get from disproportionate internet shaming. Except here, the "Hero" is representative of the punching-bag persecutor oppressor who judges and harasses the poor snowflake Beast who is only doing what's in his nature, and trying to be true to himself. So yeah, no level of retaliation is inappropriate or off-limits. Except instead of doxxing him or getting him fired from his job, you have supernatural powers with which to humiliate and kill him. It's alarmingly not self-aware.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:56
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The book is so relentlessly self-righteous it becomes tedious. Like vampires loving eat people, and they have an entire faction that tells them that God Almighty wants them to eat people [Hell, arguably two or more factions with that message], but somehow it manages not to come off as self-righteous as Beast. Mage, the one where you are so special and unique you managed to awaken to the greater truths of the universe and are now set apart from the common rabble, Mage not as self-righteous as Beast. Infernal, where you can play actual forces of sin demons, not as self-righteous as Beast. Nothing else they've ever done is so relentlessly up it's own rear end about how special they are as Beast. When you actively take the time to say "It's actually impossible to be a good person and a Hero, because if you were a good person you'd stop being a Hero" and you still fail to make me care about how terrible they are, you might have to dial down how poo poo your protagonists are, or accept that maybe your antagonists have some moments that deserve empathy. e: I mean God drat I don't care how many times you reference subverting accepted norms with the role of monsters in stories, they are still assholes. Mulva fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 06:00
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moths posted:It's alarmingly not self-aware. Is that what's happening here? Did McFarland only receive feedback on this a few months ago and is being incredibly stubborn and willfully dense about the implications of his game, or is this some kind of bizarre Gamergate cipher? Basically, why are they writing Heroes like this?
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Jun 3, 2015 06:02
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moths posted:This whole thing about Heroes resonates with the same vibe I get from disproportionate internet shaming. Except here, the "Hero" is representative of the punching-bag persecutor oppressor who judges and harasses the poor snowflake Beast who is only doing what's in his nature, and trying to be true to himself. So yeah, no level of retaliation is inappropriate or off-limits. Except instead of doxxing him or getting him fired from his job, you have supernatural powers with which to humiliate and kill him. I'm guessing the whole thing is meant as an allegory for out-groups, but the thing is, when you set up your metaphor for out-groups as a bunch of people with lethal superpowers who eat people, you suddenly make it look totally reasonable to want to fight them and stop them doing 'what's natural' to them. It's a hilariously mixed up and wrong-headed metaphor.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:03
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It's also kind of like where True Blood tried to make anti-vampire sentiment an analogue for homophobia and then made vampires vicious, bloodsucking killers with a secret agenda to enslave humanity. If you're going to go with an allegory, you can't just charge off in some other direction for the fun of it.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:10
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Night10194 posted:I'm guessing the whole thing is meant as an allegory for out-groups, but the thing is, when you set up your metaphor for out-groups as a bunch of people with lethal superpowers who eat people, you suddenly make it look totally reasonable to want to fight them and stop them doing 'what's natural' to them. It's a hilariously mixed up and wrong-headed metaphor. Like I said, they aimed for a metaphor about family dynamics and out-groups and misfits creating their own working families, and hosed it up so badly they more or less wrote fascist propaganda that can actually operate on two readings at once. Either it's a game about playing the unfettered exploitative supermen dealing with the Enemy who are incompetent, stupid, easily tricked, and yet a pervasive and immanent threat to all good folk, or it's a game about playing the diabolical manipulative Other who eat babies and seed nightmares, evading legitimate attempts to punish them, and painting the people trying to enact some form of justice against them as horrible monsters persecuting down-on-their-luck misbegotten schlubs to anyone who is foolish enough to listen. And just writing that made me feel a little dirty. I really want to believe that they had some sort of good idea, but their attempts to handle ideological metaphor just completely and utterly backfired in the worst possible way, because otherwise, someone (or more than one someone) on the writing team is more than a little bit  , whether they realize it or not.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:14
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Boogaleeboo posted:The book is so relentlessly self-righteous it becomes tedious. Like vampires loving eat people, and they have an entire faction that tells them that God Almighty wants them to eat people [Hell, arguably two or more factions with that message], but somehow it manages not to come off as self-righteous as Beast. Mage, the one where you are so special and unique you managed to awaken to the greater truths of the universe and are now set apart from the common rabble, Mage not as self-righteous as Beast. Infernal, where you can play actual forces of sin demons, not as self-righteous as Beast. Nothing else they've ever done is so relentlessly up it's own rear end about how special they are as Beast. Vampire doesn't suck because even though they believe they have God literally telling them 'eat people it's super cool' the point is they're loving dumb and probably wrong to think that, they're a bunch of sad corpses who are clinging to memories of human ritual and justifications. Beast has zero amounts of that tone. It's almost all 'yes maybe they're just misunderstood as they abuse and torture people' with no sense of the writer kinda winking at you and going 'nah gently caress these guys though'.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:17
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I think some of Matt's personal hangups from being involved in the fetish scene might be coming through. I don't normally leap to ascribe that sort of thing but what I'm reading so far is really quite strongly suggesting it to me.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:18
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Requiem is basically Vampire: the Wire. It's all about a self-perpetuating system that keeps turning people into blood-drinking monsters, even if they don't want to. Beast doesn't seem to be anything, really.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:20
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Night10194 posted:I'm guessing the whole thing is meant as an allegory for out-groups, but the thing is, when you set up your metaphor for out-groups as a bunch of people with lethal superpowers who eat people, you suddenly make it look totally reasonable to want to fight them and stop them doing 'what's natural' to them. It's a hilariously mixed up and wrong-headed metaphor. That's the thing, though. Per Kinship, everyone who matters actually loves Beasts or at least is well-disposed toward them. Heroes are all weird outcasts explicitly compared to people who argue about console sales numbers on the internet or, well, tabletop roleplaying gamers. You're the cool normie kid insanely brutally murdering the stupid fuckin' nerds. It's not like WoD can't have bullies, or even sympathetic bullies, but bullies who are objectively in the right is fuckin' unpleasant.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:23
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Loomer posted:I think some of Matt's personal hangups from being involved in the fetish scene might be coming through. I don't normally leap to ascribe that sort of thing but what I'm reading so far is really quite strongly suggesting it to me. It reminds me of when I first encountered White Wolf books and constantly thought "wow, I really don't have the same interests as the people who write this stuff"
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Jun 3, 2015 06:25
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The other thing that makes the whole 'Heroes are stupid idiots who are wrong about everything and also weak and dumb' bit so bad is that a protagonist is judged partly by their antagonist. When your splat needs its antagonists to be easily foiled, helpless, and objectively wrong, you make your protagonist look pretty loving pathetic for picking on these poor bastards. What threat do they actually pose? How do you write a story around them if they're objectively wrong and again, *easily beaten*?
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Jun 3, 2015 06:30
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