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Ferrinus posted:I'd swear there were examples of angels who didn't realize what they were doing until they did it, like they'd start experimenting with something or decide they could do something better etc. etc. and oops! No going back now. That's just a choice made in ignorance, though. It's more sympathetic, but the conscious decision to do it on some level is what makes them demons. Some of them made decisions that seem like really minor defiances and some of them made that decision either not understanding or underestimating it, but only Exiles are truly "random chance meant they fell off the grid".
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Jun 3, 2015 18:25
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Crion posted:First, that's not really a defense. It's a bit of a problem that even the Core Book has. Beasts, as written, are basically Mages, they're suppose to go out and explore the spooky scaries of World of Darkness because that's how you can make some cool and interesting Nightmares, or as it would be in Mage, go out and explore the mysteries of the World of Darkness to get some sweet Arcane xp. There is something about Beast I like, I think there's a way to make the core idea of a being having this bloody and grim calculus of how much damage does he have to do to stop himself from going full monster. But even if the presentation wasn't so awful, I'd have no idea what to do with them, which is the single greatest sin. So much word count is wasted on these stupid ascension ideas (though I do like the, become an Astral Spirit if you gently caress up bad enough, one) and on how boring Heroes are, it's baffling to me that they couldn't find something to par down to actually talk about what Beasts do, especially in a Beast only game. It's all well and good to make the crossover splat, but to have the gall to say Beast is a complete game without any crossover is mind blowing.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:28
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Tezzor posted:It's abundantly clear from the book that the standard reason for Falling is accidental, or oblivious pushing too far. Even in cases of willful disobedience the reasoning is "I refuse to kill this baby" and not "I wish to become a Demon" Right. They don't know what they're in for and they probably came to the opportunity by sheer happenstance, even if it's always an act of will that seals the deal. It's kind of like a person doesn't really become a Mage on purpose, even though they have to, at some point, leave their mark on their Watchtower. Denim Avenger posted:It's a bit of a problem that even the Core Book has. Beasts, as written, are basically Mages, they're suppose to go out and explore the spooky scaries of World of Darkness because that's how you can make some cool and interesting Nightmares, or as it would be in Mage, go out and explore the mysteries of the World of Darkness to get some sweet Arcane xp. I can't loving get over the fact that the typical, resting activity of a Beast character is "search for plot hooks".
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Jun 3, 2015 18:29
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Gerund posted:What nWoD really needed in its second edition was an unrestricted connective ur-beast to unify the gamelines under a single umbrella, held in the hand of an obvious creator-insert faction that is in text referred to as Good and Pure and Worthy, and have it textually established that all the other gamelines are totally cool with this arrangement.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:30
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Two ideas- 1. Get away from Joseph Campbell a bit. The basic heroic cycle is about how the world is thrown into chaos, and the hero brings order back through their actions. Often, this involves killing or driving away some manifestation of the chaos- Tiamat, the Sphinx, Apep, Yamato-no-Orochi. Beasts are the consequences of these primordial actions. They are raw disorder welded into a particular form by the actions of a hero and chained in some way. They feed upon fear, respect, awe for supernatural power. Overfeeding risks them slipping their chains, and prompts the rising of a hero to put them back down. Underfeeding weakens the protective aura around their purpose for existence and puts their purpose at risk to a different kind of hero. Beasts are "crossover-friendly" because they seek companionship, being largely isolated from one another physically. They are "ancestral" because they're the primordial form of what a monster is. 2. Beasts are a metaphor for a terminal illness. Being one is a death sentence. Stages of grief. Blah blah blah anti-Promethean blah.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:35
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Denim Avenger posted:There is something about Beast I like, I think there's a way to make the core idea of a being having this bloody and grim calculus of how much damage does he have to do to stop himself from going full monster. How is that materially different than the classic vampire conundrum of "beast I am lest beast I become"? It's literally the same concept. It needs to be more than "gaslighting people versus drinking their blood" to be worth the time and effort. OTOH, many of the arguments being made to why Beasts are horrible protagonists apply equally well to vampires, yet that line runs just fine and is considered entirely playable. Once you've come to terms with the fact that you have to drink blood, and will with an almost certainty take it violently from an unwilling donor at some point in your existence, is there any other moral\acceptable choice than to meet the sun at your next opportunity. If so, then what makes beasts unacceptable but vampires kosher?
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Jun 3, 2015 18:37
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In Vampire it's clear exactly who you're playing as and what problems you face as that thing, and the basic difficulties inherent in your condition make it so that you don't actually need anything besides normal people and other vampires to set up believable conflicts and tell engaging stories. Weird, obsessive anti-vampires who arise in response to vampire predation and obsessively hunt down vampires would markedly weaken VtR.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:40
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Also, vampires don't run Spooky Gothic Haunted Taxis. That's another important thing.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:41
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And if there are people who want to kill the vampires for being vampires, the vamps know that the reason is justified.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:43
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Yeah, Vampire is just plain less chickenshit about the harm its characters do to the populace. Vampires aren't play-acting; they really and truly do hurt people, physically, even measurably. Meanwhile, Beasts "feed" the same way that Changelings do (by eliciting an emotional response, but without actually taking anything from the person whose emotions are evoked), and Changelings are, notably, the most benign playable monster in the entire drat game.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:43
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I mentioned it earlier, but the big problem with Beast is a conflict of tones. They're predators who are treated as both innocent and unapologetic. That's really the heart of nearly all the issues here. The material tries to treat them as all three at once and it just sort of collapses on itself.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:44
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They're not, though. Beasts AREN'T predators. They're predator-cosplayers. It's all an act!
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Jun 3, 2015 18:46
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They might not always draw blood, but they're still victimizing and tormenting people.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:55
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kaynorr posted:How is that materially different than the classic vampire conundrum of "beast I am lest beast I become"? It's literally the same concept. It needs to be more than "gaslighting people versus drinking their blood" to be worth the time and effort. Probably because Vampire doesn't go out of it's way in it's out-of-character portions to try to paint anyone who might have an issue with taking blood from an unwilling victim as I mean, even putting that aside, a fedora wearing PUA doesn't exactly scream "compelling antagonist" for a Dragon.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:57
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Ferrinus posted:Yeah, Vampire is just plain less chickenshit about the harm its characters do to the populace. Vampires aren't play-acting; they really and truly do hurt people, physically, even measurably. Meanwhile, Beasts "feed" the same way that Changelings do (by eliciting an emotional response, but without actually taking anything from the person whose emotions are evoked), and Changelings are, notably, the most benign playable monster in the entire drat game. The ST advice kind of addresses this problem. quote:Give spotlight to Nightmares and Atavisms. Give longer, more elaborate descriptions than you might otherwise. Focus heavily on the direct and indirect ramifications of these monstrous features. Don’t be afraid to give a quick cutaway, just a brief description of some of the ripples happening off-camera. If a Nightmare breaks a person’s will, show them at their family dinner table that Sunday. Show the family asking him what’s wrong, and gossiping about him when he goes to the restroom. Show us his fiancé, cupping an engagement ring, and opting to second guess himself and put it away when his lover’s behavior becomes erratic and disjointed. Show us his custody hearing where his defensive attitude costs him visitation rights with his children. This should happen quickly, but clearly. Once again, though, we run into the problem of inconsistent tone. If these are the kinds of effects Beasts regularly perform, then how can Heroes be unsympathetic? Usually they result from this exact kind of thing. The PCs are being asked not to feel bad for the father in that story, but instead feel smugly justified that he's been given an encounter with the ur-fear. Not everyone gets to have a complete psychological breakdown from a Beast encounter, you know. This sort of treatment also, again, runs counter to a ton of the samples we're given. Taxi Man is pathetically harmless, and the book is filled with these lame creatures that don't actually attack anyone but just kind of act weird. A lot of theses Beasts feed on people, but don't actually antagonize anyone, which doesn't work as drama. It goes right down to the Hunger splats. These Hungers are supposed to be what motivates the Beasts into action, answering the question "What do they do?" Beast chronicles, I imagine, are supposed to be about Beasts fulfilling their Hungers and having that complicated in various ways. But so many of those Hungers are ridiculously easy to solve. In the Collector/Horde section, they're described as feeding on having what other people want, but one of the sample characters is a trucker that collects roadkill. Who the gently caress wants roadkill? How is he tapping into the great fears or desires of mankind? How is his collection going to complicate his life enough to actually create a story? The actual splat description says that they are driven to steal things, but the fluff doesn't bear this out, probably because it would make the Beasts unsympathetic. It just doesn't work. pospysyl fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 18:57
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Luminous Obscurity posted:They might not always draw blood, but they're still victimizing and tormenting people. Yes, by bullying them. Beasts don't care about material circumstances; they care about how they're perceived. They're all image, and the entire game is about PR. Who looks cool? Who looks scary? Do your enemies know you beat them? Have you created the cognitive perception of defeat in the opposing side? It's all posturing. Notice what pospysyl just posted; it's about making Beast powers look really scary and evil. But, uh... they're powers. You choose to use them. There's a difference between a Vampire having to consume human blood to activate Vigor and a vampire having to consume human blood to wake up at all.
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Jun 3, 2015 18:59
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Beast: the game of strengthening your personal brand such that your detractors are trivially blacklisted and anyone sufficiently engaged becomes an advocate.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:07
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Beast: the game of strengthening your personal brand such that your detractors are trivially blacklisted and anyone sufficiently engaged becomes an advocate. Oh, god. Oh, god, it all finally makes sense.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:13
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Ferrinus posted:Oh, god. Oh, god, it all finally makes sense.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:15
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I don't get it. 
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Jun 3, 2015 19:18
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Probably because Vampire doesn't go out of it's way in it's out-of-character portions to try to paint anyone who might have an issue with taking blood from an unwilling victim as Yeah well, at least the Vampires are self aware unlike the those loving nerd rear end unironic Heroes. Seriously self awareness is the reason Beasts hate Heroes apparently.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:18
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So on a non-Beast note, they did the core mechanic reveal for the system that's the basis for the new Scion and Trinity games. http://theonyxpath.com/codename-sardonyx-teaser-the-first/ Spoilers: Looks pretty much like a Storyteller/ing variant but with a fail forward thing built into the rules from ground zero. unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 19:19
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You are a dragon. Your actions affect the world. Look at what thou hast wrought, leviathan: You Made A Person Second Guess Whether They Want To Get Engaged. 41 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a troll post or tie down its tongue with a sick burn? 2 Can you put a cord through its bondage pants or pierce its septum with a a ring with a spooky skull on it? 3 Will it keep begging you for mercy? Will it speak to you with gentle words? 4 Will it make an agreement with you for you to take it to the Dead Can Dance show? 5 Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house? 9 Any hope of subduing it is false; the mere sight of it is overpowering. 10 It will make it difficult to tell if you want to get married, It will throw your game off during your custody hearing.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:20
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Onyx Path posted:Many games using those systems do cinematic action (Exalted, for example), and do it very well, wait, hold on
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Jun 3, 2015 19:20
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OK, all of that makes sense. So if what you really want to write, then, is Persecuted: The Othering, you have to find a core game activity which can be portrayed as harm- or victim-less, yet provokes self-righteous asshats to come hunt you down. In other words, what's the World of Darkness fantasy metaphor for sex and fetish work? I like to think I'm at least as creative as the average bear, but I'm having a hard time coming up with something. The shortest possible path between the two points would make it so somehow the beasts' victims are better off for being, well, the victims. I don't see that working. Not unless you slam down hard on the mythic story aspect and reposition beasts as having the ability to, in essence, see a person's fate and destiny and knowing how they have to be hosed with to get what they want most. The tragedy comes from knowing that in order for Alice to end up marrying her true love, she has to go through a harrowing experience of being nearly mugged and hunted for sport in an underpass so she can join the support group and one day meet Bob. They are editors of the Cosmic Story, but can only be editors by being dicks. kaynorr fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 19:23
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kaynorr posted:OK, all of that makes sense. So if what you really want to write, then, is Persecuted: The Othering, you have to find a core game activity which can be portrayed as harm- or victim-less, yet provokes self-righteous asshats to come hunt you down. In other words, what's the World of Darkness fantasy metaphor for sex and fetish work? I like to think I'm at least as creative as the average bear, but I'm having a hard time coming up with something. That would be actually good. Instead what we get are people losing custody of their kids because a beast looked at them funny.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:39
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unseenlibrarian posted:So on a non-Beast note, they did the core mechanic reveal for the system that's the basis for the new Scion and Trinity games. This looks cool. I especially appreciate how the means of modifying the dicepool are strictly defined (and TN shifting is tier-based) and how there's express support for just using existing skill/attribute ratings as a trump card rather than as interchangeable dicepool generators. I want to see that firmly supported, like with Culture 3 I can just always recognize where someone is from based on their table manners or w/e. One weakness of the existing White Wolf systems this seems to keep is that there's no real difference between Attribute and Skill; I'd love it if your Skill was your dicepool but your Attribute was your enhancement, or vice versa, or something. Still, it looks promising.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:50
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Effectronica posted:Two ideas- #2 is pretty close to my idea on how to make Beast not lovely: a player isn't a Beast, but one day a Beast appears in the character's subconscious like a spiritual cancer. The game would then be an allegory about being in a cancer support group, self-loathing at perceived physical and mental weakness, and the hope of someday being in remission. The Beast keeps giving a character strange destructive urges and commands that are unsettlingly suitable for the person, and gives them mental and astral powers to use for those purposes (the X splat). If you resist the urges and commands it gives you, then the effects of the Beast starts to spread to their surroundings or loved ones, and eventually the PC dies from their soul being consumed– call this failure state "Metastasis." If you accept the urges too readily, then you become a Monstrosity, where there's no distinction between the PC's mind and that of the Beast, and you become an amoral force that has a normal day job but subtly or blatantly ruins people's lives at the drop of a hat. But– and this is a but– eventually, the Beast's presence leaves a Monstrosity, and they revert to normal with just a few vestigial powers, called Afterthoughts. You may be a barely functional human being, you may be #1 on the list for Slasher material, you may have done terrible things you never want to even remember, but the Beast is gone. Giving into the Beast may make you into more of a monster than you already are, but it's the quickest and most assured way to make the voices in your head stop hungering. Eventually. The alternative is to fight the Good Fight, a Hail Mary method spread by word-of-mouth between groups of the afflicted. Feed the Beast inside, but only enough to keep you between Metastasis and Monstrosity. Let it consume enough of its desires to form an astral hellscape of a Lair. Let it define itself enough so that it forms weaknesses, strengths. And then you and your closest friends will go into the Lair and slay the matured monster. It's not easy, and it may just send the Beast into remission, but you can finally be free of its influence (save the Afterthoughts). It's extremely rare to succeed, but everyone suffering knows a guy who knows a guy who knows someone who has Slain their Beast. And if you fail? Well, your group is there to protect others from you as much as they protected you from the World of Darkness. You all know the risks and know that some day you'd have to take down one of the few people who understood the monster living inside you. The protagonists are the victims of the Beast presence in their psyche. The antagonists are the Beast presence, Hunters, and victims that act like the actual Beast: the Primordial splat (Monstrosities).
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Jun 3, 2015 20:09
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I could honestly respect Beast if it just owned up to the fact that Beasts are just awful. If it was "I'm a monster who makes everyone's lives worse, and everyone wants me dead because of that, but I won't die just to please everybody else. Come at me, bro," I think you could make that work.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:15
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Rand Brittain posted:I could honestly respect Beast if it just owned up to the fact that Beasts are just awful. If it was "I'm a monster who makes everyone's lives worse, and everyone wants me dead because of that, but I won't die just to please everybody else. Come at me, bro," I think you could make that work. I mean, it works for the Slashers.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:18
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I am not sure what is so compelling about Beast in the first place that makes fixing it a worthwhile or even desirable endeavor, is the thing.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:22
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unseenlibrarian posted:So on a non-Beast note, they did the core mechanic reveal for the system that's the basis for the new Scion and Trinity games. quote:System Goals: Rand Brittain posted:I could honestly respect Beast if it just owned up to the fact that Beasts are just awful. If it was "I'm a monster who makes everyone's lives worse, and everyone wants me dead because of that, but I won't die just to please everybody else. Come at me, bro," I think you could make that work. This, exactly. If Beast went the Vampire route and just admitted that its protagonists are terrible people I would be okay with it. But instead it feels the need to insist on how they are so misunderstood just because they feel the need to take other people's stuff or to make them poo poo their pants in terror.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:25
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Nothing says "Your character matters to the world. He makes a difference. He is a dragon." like knowing that he has caused completely mundane, everyday difficulties for unremarkable people.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:26
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Spiderfist Island posted:#2 is pretty close to my idea on how to make Beast not lovely: a player isn't a Beast, but one day a Beast appears in the character's subconscious like a spiritual cancer. The game would then be an allegory about being in a cancer support group, self-loathing at perceived physical and mental weakness, and the hope of someday being in remission. Rich Thomas: hire this man.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:26
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Night10194 posted:I mean, it works for the Slashers. Not really, in the sense that no one considers Slashers to be a viable PC type. If you do, then you are WAY out on the edge of gaming convention. You do you, but I don't expect that kind of playstyle to have even remotely broad appeal. At least, done in a way that isn't kind of repugnant. Spiderfist Island posted:#2 is pretty close to my idea on how to make Beast not lovely: a player isn't a Beast, but one day a Beast appears in the character's subconscious like a spiritual cancer. The game would then be an allegory about being in a cancer support group, self-loathing at perceived physical and mental weakness, and the hope of someday being in remission. This is a very interesting concept, particularly in the sense that it goes counter to a lot of conventional rules about your how to deal with your inner demons. Here I'm thinking not so much of cancer but things like substance abuse or mental illness. You DON'T fight your personal beast with nothing but stoicism, abstinence, and sheer will. The straight and narrow will kill you because everyone short of a literal saint can't handle the withdrawal process. You have to give your beast room to run, but keep it on a leash so you can learn about it and fight smart. It's close to the conceptual space of Changeling because it's also about trauma and a support system, but diverges in the sense of there is no meaningful external actor to blame. No one did this to you - there are only varying levels of You Did It To Yourself or It Just Happened. Bad things happen to good people, and good people do bad things and yet are still good. That seems like a worthwhile concept to explore in the metaphor of the World of Darkness, and uses metaphor to talk about the ridiculous, unreasonable standards that fanatics on all sides hold themselves and the world to. kaynorr fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 20:33
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Rand Brittain posted:I could honestly respect Beast if it just owned up to the fact that Beasts are just awful. If it was "I'm a monster who makes everyone's lives worse, and everyone wants me dead because of that, but I won't die just to please everybody else. Come at me, bro," I think you could make that work. But that's not what we got. Rip
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Jun 3, 2015 20:35
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kaynorr posted:Not really, in the sense that no one considers Slashers to be a viable PC type. If you do, then you are WAY out on the edge of gaming convention. You do you, but I don't expect that kind of playstyle to have even remotely broad appeal. At least, done in a way that isn't kind of repugnant. Oh, I meant it works for making them compelling enemies. Of course I didn't mean them as PCs. I mean admitting Beasts are horrible fuckers would at least make them more interesting to fight against.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:35
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paradoxGentleman posted:What exactly are they refering to, here? What attractive features were in Scion apart from "you get to be a demigod and kill monsters"? Pretty sure that means "you're still rolling a number of d10s determined by how many dots you have in traits, then counting how many dice come up > X."
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Jun 3, 2015 20:40
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Night10194 posted:I mean admitting Beasts are horrible fuckers would at least make them more interesting to fight against. See, I think if the narrative would just admit that Beasts are horrible, they could actually make decent characters; of course that would mean a complete tone shift, because the book is very much interested in demonstrating that Beasts are in fact scaly, fire-belching saints. It would sort of occupy the same niche of Vampire if it was just about controlling your horrible desires, but I'll take a redundant game over a tone deaf one any day of the week.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:40
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I can't really make this idea more concrete, and maybe someone else can do a better job of it, but Beasts remind me of some of the worst Mommy-Bloggers. It's something to do with their casual disregard for every other regular person, and the grandstanding about how whatever they're doing is Right, whatever the circumstances actually are.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:43
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