Gilok posted:

So I don't want to go wade through thousands of off-site forums posts. What do RPG.net and OPP forums think of Beast? Are these same issues being raised and taken seriously there, are they being raised and then smacked down by mods, or do they all love it?

Gilok posted:

So I don't want to go wade through thousands of off-site forums posts. What do RPG.net and OPP forums think of Beast? Are these same issues being raised and taken seriously there, are they being raised and then smacked down by mods, or do they all love it?

Roland Jones posted:

Ah, fair enough. Still, the rest of it stands, and what he has written on these subjects and other things I've found reading back in this thread do not inspire confidence. I was already unsold on buying Demon now that I have a little spare money before I read that.

Night10194 posted:

Also this thread is making me think that as well as Hunter, Changeling might very well be for me, too. It's basically normal people taken by hosed up horror faeries and turned into something inhuman who escape and try to stay escaped, while trying to deal with their trauma, yes?

Yawgmoth posted:

I can't speak for RPG.net but OPP posters are by and large the best examples of Beast sample characters outside of an otherkin tumblr so I can't imagine that they are concerned with anything in the book.

LatwPIAT posted:

Got a link to that?

quote:

OK, I'm not going to post in red text, because I'm very much a normal poster in this thread, but as a request - could we tone down the "OMG HEROES ARE FIREMEN WHY DO YOU HATE FIREMEN" stuff a little? Because that's really obviously not what we're going for, and frankly the question of why Heroes are called Heroes has been more than adequately answered.

(And, I note, once again Heroes smash their way in here and are all like "not all Heroes!" and "what about the Heroes?")

Dave Brookshaw posted:

The mage page states that mages sometimes listen to Beasts going on about the Dark Mother and take away the idea that Beasts are servants of the Life Exarch. An "honor" literally no other splat gets - vampires and mummies get classed as "related to the lower depths" by the Orders, werewolves and Sin-Eaters are regarded as native guides to their respective otherworlds, but Beasts are the guys who a non-zero number of mages look at and decide must represent everything wrong with the universe.

Now, if you play Beast, those mages are obviously wrong. But it's not exactly Poochie.

paradoxGentleman posted:

Bowser is too decent to be a Beast.

Obligatum VII posted:

Agreed, please don't compare Bowser to that book.

Gilok posted:

So I don't want to go wade through thousands of off-site forums posts. What do RPG.net and OPP forums think of Beast? Are these same issues being raised and taken seriously there, are they being raised and then smacked down by mods, or do they all love it?

Dave Brookshaw posted:

The mage page states that mages sometimes listen to Beasts going on about the Dark Mother and take away the idea that Beasts are servants of the Life Exarch. An "honor" literally no other splat gets - vampires and mummies get classed as "related to the lower depths" by the Orders, werewolves and Sin-Eaters are regarded as native guides to their respective otherworlds, but Beasts are the guys who a non-zero number of mages look at and decide must represent everything wrong with the universe.

Now, if you play Beast, those mages are obviously wrong. But it's not exactly Poochie.

Luminous Obscurity posted:

Honestly the crossover stuff (barring the Hunter bits) didn't bug me as much because it gives me the feeling that most Beasts are lonely. They track down other monster-y things to hang out with and right out the gate try to make a space for themselves, but slowly realize that even other monsters are more human than they are. It's an interesting idea.

Little_wh0re posted:

Bowser is a Sorcerer according to the mario 1 instruction manual

Night10194 posted:

Also this thread is making me think that as well as Hunter, Changeling might very well be for me, too. It's basically normal people taken by hosed up horror faeries and turned into something inhuman who escape and try to stay escaped, while trying to deal with their trauma, yes?

Crion posted:

Will be interesting to see if this Monday update consists of anything other than pointing at the Kickstarter that's well on its way to doubling its funding goal and saying, "Scoreboard." Obviously somebody wants this book, or thinks they do.

quote:

Promethean: These people who reject you. You need to learn to kill more of them.

quote:

They say children can see monsters. They’re wrong, at least about him. He’s only seen in his day job, as the administrator of a juvenile justice facility. His facility’s got one of the cleanest records in the state. After lights out, he stalks the corridors of the building, seeing what no one else can see, guarding against the dangers the children bring inside with them or foment when given too much time to themselves. He says he’d never hurt any of “his kids”... but cross enough lines and you’re not his kid anymore.

quote:

Like every one of his kind, he knows what it’s like to be on the outside, but he likes it there very much. He gets to watch people. Happy people. Sad people. Loving people. He sets up camp every night across the street from the only bar in town, and watches the little people go about their lives, blissfully unaware that they share their town with a monster. He’s very strict with his Hunger. He only lets it out every few years, but oh, what a glorious feast. To take one of those happy people and break their neck before they can even stop smiling, and then to feast on the flesh.

Crion posted:

Of course not-Trunchbull isn't the only example of sample characters abusing children in the book. Why would it be.

tatankatonk posted:

Oh MAN I don't know how I missed this one


or this one

quote:

Example of Character Creation

Magda is making a character for her friend Orson’s Beast game. Orson has told the other players in advance that he wants to explore the concept of family and what that means. He’s set up a chronicle based in what looks like a normal suburb, complete with white picket fences and PTA meetings. It’s a perfect hiding place for a brood of Children (the players’ characters) to set up, inciting and feeding on the mundane fears and terrors of its residents. When Orson first hears Magda’s idea, he likes it, but is a little unconvinced about how it’ll mesh with the rest of the group. Still, he allows it anyway to see what Magda does with it.
Step One: Concept and Aspirations

Magda lays out her concept: “Mrs. Winters, the whole neighborhood’s grandmother.” She watches over some of the neighborhood kids after school to help supplement her social security check, which only stretches so far every month. She’s likely been in the neighborhood the longest out of all of the Children, but came into her Homecoming late in life after her own children were grown.

quote:

Right now, Mrs. Winters looks like a sweet, benign old lady who just wants to protect her neighborhood. At this stage, Magda adds the details that make her not so benign.
Magda chooses the Eshmaki as Mrs. Winters’ Family. The more Magda thinks about the character, the more she sees Mrs. Winters claiming her Birthright when her husband died and her children left the nest. The echoing darkness of the empty house haunted her dreams, especially the impossibly quick scrabbling of claws on the hardwood floors. Finally, she listened very hard, cutting through the echoes to follow the sounds. This led to her Lair, where she realized the scrabbling sound was her own long, curled talons along the floor and claimed her Birthright as one of the Lurkers.

Magda chooses the Hunger for Punishment for Mrs. Winters, letting her seep into the dreams of those who confide in her, berating them for their failings and filling them with the terror of their secrets being discovered. While Mrs. Winters won’t outwardly judge those who confide in her, she stalks them in the Primordial Dream, never letting them rest comfortably while they try to hide their illicit affairs, abuses, and other guilty pleasures. She feasts on the rot underneath the surface of her pristine neighborhood, and her victims can’t hide from her. Ever. Orson points out that she could also use it to sate herself on the children who misbehave under her watch, if she so chooses. The rest of the players at the table shift uncomfortably in their seats, which inspires Mrs. Winters’ third Aspiration: “protect the children in the neighborhood, even from themselves.”

quote:

• Are you a social predator? Magda decides that Mrs. Winters is disinclined to hunt with other Begotten, especially since her primary target is children. She would rather not deal with the judgmental attitudes that other Beasts might bring (or, indeed, expose the neighborhood kids to a Beast with a bloodier Hunger than hers). The snickering from the other players at the hypocrisy in Mrs. Winters’ stance is reward enough for Magda to not take the point of Satiety for the third question.

quote:

Mrs. Winters, Magda’s character (detailed starting on p. XX), is running a little low — she’s only got two dots of Satiety and she’d rather not risk becoming Ravenous. She Hungers for Punishment, and her particular favorite flavor is punishing those who harm the children in her neighborhood. As it happens, Halloween was last week, and she noted a young man named Brent snatching bags of candy from some of the youngsters.

Magda decides Mrs. Winters doesn’t need to be subtle or elaborate about her punishment, not this time. She breaks into Brent’s house while he’s away and notes that he’s got a bunch of candy on his coffee table. She grabs a few soft candies and injects them with a mild poison — nothing fatal, but enough to make the bully very ill. She lurks upstairs for a while, and waits until she hears him start to retch. She then creeps up behind him with a thick plastic bag (one of the bags of candy he stole from a child) and holds it over his face until he nearly blacks out. As he lies there panting, she whispers, “Now, you behave. We see what you do on All Hallow’s Eve, and we remember.”

Just to drive the point home, she uses the You Deserve This Nightmare on Brent, and Magda is delighted to see that she’s rolled an exceptional success! That means that if the house is dark enough to match the Darkness Lair Trait of Mrs. Winters’ Lair, Magda can spend a dot of Satiety and turn this place into a new Chamber. She decides to do so; she likes the idea of having an inhabited house as a Chamber, and she doesn’t care if her Soul inflicts nightmares on Brent (and besides, the Storyteller figures Brent would make a great Hero).

tatankatonk posted:

Night10194 posted:

As someone who has heard a lot about child abuse, up to and including parents slowly poisoning their adopted children to death to 'punish' them, this legitimately makes me angry now.

quote:

Magda is making a character for her friend Orson’s Beast game.

quote:

Just to drive the point home, she uses the You Deserve This Nightmare on Brent, and Magda is delighted to see that she’s rolled an exceptional success!

quote:

Magda is delighted

Daeren posted:

No, but you see, anyone reading anything unsavory into the interpretations of the game is obviously doing it wrong, because the developers would never do something as vile as imply that the players should be enjoying inflicting realistic, lovingly detailed abuse on people who-




...no you see, because the developers would never intend to imply

NutritiousSnack posted:

I have legitimately no idea how, but this book is worse than changing breeds or that gypsy supplement.

SunAndSpring posted:

This book fails on so many loving levels that I feel legitimately concerned for the people that got it funded. Did people even read the loving PDF before they threw in money? Either answer is disappointing.

NutritiousSnack posted:

I have legitimately no idea how, but this book is worse than changing breeds or that gypsy supplement.

SunAndSpring posted:

This book fails on so many loving levels that I feel legitimately concerned for the people that got it funded. Did people even read the loving PDF before they threw in money? Either answer is disappointing.

tatankatonk posted:

Beast doesn't make me want to stop playing nWoD/OPP games. It really, really makes me wish that a bunch of other people would stop playing them, forever.

SunAndSpring posted:

This book fails on so many loving levels that I feel legitimately concerned for the people that got it funded. Did people even read the loving PDF before they threw in money? Either answer is disappointing.