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Seriously I feel like I'm having some kind of brain haemmorage reading some of these posts. People aren't just trying to infer they're scouring the text into a bloody, broken mess to try and come out with how Melanie's a serial killer. Is the playtest copy of Beast some kind of necronomicon that breaks people's minds where they can only empathise with an urge to traumatise candy-stealing teenagers and young girls? It's loving insane. It's not even at the level of "Well some of the stuff implies she might've been a Mean Girl" anymore, now we're just going straight to "BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED SHE MIGHT HAVE KILLED SEVEN PROSTITUTES IN THE FAMOUS WYOMING MASSACRE OF '69? IT REMAINS CURIOUSLY UNSOLVED AND IF YOU REARRAGE HER SKILL NAMES YOU GET "MELANIE AX" WHICH IS A CLEAR REFERENCE. SERIAL KILLER! SERIAL KILLER!" I am legitimately concerned about some of these posters on an OOC level, beyond feeling that have wrong opinions about game books.
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Jun 10, 2015 10:10
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Like, the biggest gap there is this idea that there is a mass of innocent Beasts running around that don't actually harm anyone at all and she probably kills them too. But that depends on the existence of innocent Beasts and while the game obviously wants to have them ("This guy feeds by hunting, this guy feeds by collecting dirty needles" being the big two) these don't seem like real feedings when you actually read about what feedings are. If the part of collecting that feeds you is making someone feel deprived, collecting dirty needles isn't going to get you any satiety because not even junkies want dirty needles. If you gain satiety by feeding on human fear, then how does feeding by hunting an animal, which isn't a human, work? Neither of those seem like they would actually work, if they weren't actually in the book and someone put them down on the character sheet, we'd probably assume they were trying to cheese the game by choosing the easiest flaws to work around. It would be like writing "Weakness: I don't have to drink blood" on a vampire sheet. Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 10:18
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spectralent posted:Seriously I feel like I'm having some kind of brain haemmorage reading some of these posts. People aren't just trying to infer they're scouring the text into a bloody, broken mess to try and come out with how Melanie's a serial killer. Is the playtest copy of Beast some kind of necronomicon that breaks people's minds where they can only empathise with an urge to traumatise candy-stealing teenagers and young girls? It's loving insane. It's not even at the level of "Well some of the stuff implies she might've been a Mean Girl" anymore, now we're just going straight to "BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED SHE MIGHT HAVE KILLED SEVEN PROSTITUTES IN THE FAMOUS WYOMING MASSACRE OF '69? IT REMAINS CURIOUSLY UNSOLVED AND IF YOU REARRAGE HER SKILL NAMES YOU GET "MELANIE AX" WHICH IS A CLEAR REFERENCE. SERIAL KILLER! SERIAL KILLER!" Someone earlier brought up the point that this is a fairly common sort of response people take to various internet dramafests, where Person A who is a respected member of the Whatever fan community accuses Person B of being a total shitheel. Well, you might not know Person B from a hole in the ground but if Person A says they're bad then, well, they must be bad right? Cue people exhaustively combing over everything they've ever posted online, on social media, private correspondence, their SAT scores, etc. in order to find evidence that corroborates Person A's accusations and of course you wind up with people grasping at the flimsiest of straws because the alternative is that maybe Person A is wrong or a lying rear end in a top hat and that just doesn't bear consideration. That seems to be what's going on with Beast. The book doesn't show why Beasts are noble, misunderstood cool dudes that every other supernatural wants to hang out with (except I guess for Demons who are too sensible for all this bullshit) and why Heroes are actually total jerks, it just tells you that. Since the author of the work clearly must be right, then obviously any failure to perceive the work as intended no matter how bad the work is at enforcing those concepts most lie on the reader. The writing isn't bad and tonally inconsistent, you just aren't trying hard enough.
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Jun 10, 2015 10:25
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Kai Tave posted:Rose Bailey is trans herself, but I don't know how much she has to do with Beast. She wrote the Families.
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Jun 10, 2015 10:47
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spectralent posted:Seriously I feel like I'm having some kind of brain haemmorage reading some of these posts. People aren't just trying to infer they're scouring the text into a bloody, broken mess to try and come out with how Melanie's a serial killer. Is the playtest copy of Beast some kind of necronomicon that breaks people's minds where they can only empathise with an urge to traumatise candy-stealing teenagers and young girls? It's loving insane. It's not even at the level of "Well some of the stuff implies she might've been a Mean Girl" anymore, now we're just going straight to "BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED SHE MIGHT HAVE KILLED SEVEN PROSTITUTES IN THE FAMOUS WYOMING MASSACRE OF '69? IT REMAINS CURIOUSLY UNSOLVED AND IF YOU REARRAGE HER SKILL NAMES YOU GET "MELANIE AX" WHICH IS A CLEAR REFERENCE. SERIAL KILLER! SERIAL KILLER!" I love this idea. Like Beast is actually a super meta oWoD reference to Black Dog Game Factory and how their games were designed to actually break people's brains. 
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Jun 10, 2015 10:48
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The thing I like the most about that picture is the Thai cuisine book. Seriously though, it's almost heartbreaking to see all these fans trying to fill in the holes that OPP left in this product. It really shows that this was a game line with potential that was shamefully squandered.
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Jun 10, 2015 10:55
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paradoxGentleman posted:The thing I like the most about that picture is the Thai cuisine book. At the risk of repeating myself too much, what potential? I am legitimately confused as hell as to what Beast is supposed to be about, what gap in the nWoD it's meant to fill in, the themes it's aiming for, etc. I have no interest in playing like 2/3rds of the nWoD gamelines but at least if you asked me what they were about I could tell you, even if I miss some of the nuance along the way. Changeling? Dealing with and overcoming the traumas of being an abuse survivor. Promethean? Questing to become human in a world that hates and rejects you. Hunter? You hunt monsters, get an axe. What is Beast's elevator pitch? What is the capsule summary that makes it somehow a distinct and interestingly new addition to the World of Darkness? Help me out here somebody, this isn't rhetorical, I would like to know.
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Jun 10, 2015 11:04
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"I want to be a dragon or a giant death squid" and also "I want to be Walter Peck from Ghostbusters" at the same time.
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Jun 10, 2015 11:10
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Black Hat Matt post: Oh, good! This is basically what I was hoping for.
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Jun 10, 2015 11:14
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unseenlibrarian posted:"I want to be a dragon or a giant death squid" and also "I want to be Walter Peck from Ghostbusters" at the same time. I mean if it doesn't go any deeper than "I want to be a monster but, like, a dragon or Cthulu" then hey, that's cool, dragons are cool. They don't all have to be Changeling: the Lost. But if that really is as far as it goes, that the origins of Beast were basically "hey we should make a new World of Darkness line, it should be about monsters but not like vampires and stuff, I mean legendary stuff, and the antagonists will be called Heroes, it'll be a clever inversion," then I have to admit that doesn't seem like a lot to hang a game on.
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Jun 10, 2015 11:18
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unseenlibrarian posted:"I want to be a dragon or a giant death squid" and also "I want to be Walter Peck from Ghostbusters" at the same time. I was pretty interested in that first part... I don't really get the second. None of the other WoD lines have the titular monsters actually turn out to be basically human jerks. Earthorn fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 11:23
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unseenlibrarian posted:"I want to be a dragon or a giant death squid" I know it sounds silly and maybe even juvenile, but that's it. That is what I wanted from this game. I would have expected OPP to manage to deliver that and also add a thoughtful theme to it, but they didn't, and it sucks. gently caress it, I am renaming the Vestiges from Leviathan and pretending that's Beast. It's also a great excuse to come up with over the top names for magical monster powers. You can also sort of fit the themes of that gameline (because unlike the Primordial Leviathan has themes) if you play it up as "Beasts used to rule the world in fear but now they are a shadow of their former selves". Don't know if I can justify Beasts mating with humans like the Progenitors did, but maybe I can take the "Beasts live in the dream world and start inhabing the souls of humans they like" angle and work from there. paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 11:25
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paradoxGentleman posted:I know it sounds silly and maybe even juvenile, but that's it. That is what I wanted from this game. I would have expected OPP to manage to deliver that and also add a thoughtful theme to it, but they didn't, and it sucks. Take some of the family themes. Beasts want to continue existing to try and thrive again and lord over humanity with their awesome might. But alas, the world has changed and humanity has gotten better at putting down creatures like them. Before, a Beast might have had to worry about a single Hero going mano-a mano with them. Then they got smart, coming in twos or threes then by the dozens and then by the hundreds if they felt threatened enough. There might've been still a single Hero leading the charge or commanding the field, but enough fights like those and the age of the Beast was no more. Now, if a Beast were to appear in all of its majesty and glory, entire states and nations might come upon them out of a pure primal terror. Thus, Beasts have to be subtle about their existence as they try and continue their family lines in the hope that there might be enough of them in quantity or quality to bring about a new golden age for them. Heroes could have a parallel family theme where they also have to bear the weight of their legacy except where Beasts know their legacy based on their own innate abilities, all Heroes have to go are stories about their great^n grandparent who slew a monster the size of a skyscraper and blah blah blah or so the story goes and the Hero should live up to their ancestor's name or they're not fit to bear the name. So even if a Hero and a Beast meet face to face, both of them might just walk out together giving the middle finger to their respective families to be the creature or person they want to be.
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Jun 10, 2015 11:56
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unseenlibrarian posted:"I want to be a dragon or a giant death squid" If only someone had made a game where you can be a squid, but also a kid...
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Jun 10, 2015 11:56
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Kai Tave posted:At the risk of repeating myself too much, what potential? I am legitimately confused as hell as to what Beast is supposed to be about, what gap in the nWoD it's meant to fill in, the themes it's aiming for, etc. I have no interest in playing like 2/3rds of the nWoD gamelines but at least if you asked me what they were about I could tell you, even if I miss some of the nuance along the way. Changeling? Dealing with and overcoming the traumas of being an abuse survivor. Promethean? Questing to become human in a world that hates and rejects you. Hunter? You hunt monsters, get an axe. Apparently some people have latched onto it as a presentation of minorities, apparently in the belief it is literally true that minorities hurt other people by existing, which is depressing and confusing even before we get to the issue that upsetting a christian fundie by being gay is something of an order of magnitude difference between sadistically choking someone to death on their own vomit. unseenlibrarian posted:"I want to be a dragon or a giant death squid" and also "I want to be Walter Peck from Ghostbusters" at the same time. A game about godzilla would've been fun, but basically we just needed a professional edit of Leviathan for that.
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Jun 10, 2015 11:59
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Dammit Who? posted:If only someone had made a game where you can be a squid, but also a kid... Inkling: the Splattening kickstarter coming this fall.
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Jun 10, 2015 12:26
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The selling point for me was "I want to be the Creature From The Black Lagoon". Think about it, it maps really well to the Universal Monsters diagram of nWoD splat origins, and its ultimately the story of a persecuted primordial monster, hunted down and killed by not entirely sympathetic heroes. But it also does a tonne of morally objectionable things like kidnap a lady and kill a bunch of people. That would have been my game, non-urban outsiders actively hunted down, as they try to approach a society that they cannot fit into because of their basic natures. Promethean are urban wanderers seeking humanity. Beasts are non-urban without the pretence or the goal of humanity, outsiders confronting and inter-mixing with humanity. Heroes want to stop them because they represent a contaminating and disstabilising influence. But that's also a bunch of noble savage exotica so I guess they didn't want to go that way (plus its covered by Were Wolf). fez_machine fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 12:31
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To distract a little from Beast, at the end of my last Demon session one of the ring got dumped into the Underworld while under the effects of Going Native (i.e. human for all intents and purposes). They'll probably start this session spat out of the underworld in a parking garage basement or whatever, but does anyone have ideas for cool consequences to have slapped on them? I'm thinking making them some kind of super-fetter could be fun but I'm not sure it'd make a lot of sense.
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Jun 10, 2015 13:02
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Drank from one of the weird underworld rivers and has some sort of condition related to that, like their tears are frozen or cause memory loss.
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Jun 10, 2015 13:09
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Kai Tave posted:What is Beast's elevator pitch? You are an otherkin who genuinely has the soul of a dragon. This gives you powers, which you use to terrorize and kill regular people because dragons are assholes.
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Jun 10, 2015 13:17
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So David Hill made a post about pitch season and gave an example of a pitch that didn't get accepted, Fury: The Scourge. I kind of like Furies ya'll.  VVV Agreed. VVV Luminous Obscurity fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 13:21
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Luminous Obscurity posted:So David Hill made a post about pitch season and gave an example of a pitch that didn't get accepted, Fury: The Scourge. I do too, but I can sort of see why it would get rejected: the focus is narrow, there are only so many variations of the basic idea behind these characters that can be put in practice before it starts to feel samey and it's not based on a very popular monster. But it's still a nice idea.
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Jun 10, 2015 13:40
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I feel like there's enough there to make a fantastic Hunter or GMC splat, if not its own line.
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Jun 10, 2015 13:53
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The people obsessed with demonizing a literal comatose teenager really gross me out a lot. It's really, really victim-blamey and it's not even in the text. I mean, they're taking Hero-demonizing further than Beast does. That takes effort. I can see how Melanie's war on the giant monsters of Eternal Nightmare Hell could be tragic. It is tragic - she has no way to know she's helping to kill people, after all, or that some of them might not be terrible. That's a tragedy. Their deaths could be regrettable. Some of them probably are. But calling her a serial killer is just...no, what? What is wrong with you? Seriously, the gently caress is wrong with you? This is a tragedy, because there's nothing that can really be done. This is a scared, lost teenager who is trapped in a world of burning houses, poisonous swamps and literal dragons, and when she runs into most of them, they don't talk first, because they're the Soul. And the Soul really is a monster, it's the part of the Beast that will kidnap innocents and eat them if it gets too hungry, the part that is all Hunger. How can you look at this and go 'hm, yes, Melanie is the clear villain here.'
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Jun 10, 2015 14:35
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unseenlibrarian posted:Drank from one of the weird underworld rivers and has some sort of condition related to that, like their tears are frozen or cause memory loss. That's a cool idea - I can treat it as some kind of permanent glitch.
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Jun 10, 2015 14:47
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moths posted:I feel like there's enough there to make a fantastic Hunter or GMC splat, if not its own line. If anything, it could work as a one-shot book. Like Immortals or Second Sight. Speaking of Blue Books, I'm surprised to realize we haven't got one on journalists and news organizations yet. The journalist is one of the staple player character archetype in horror games/movies/stories, and there's a poo poo-ton of potential for the nWoD in there.
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Jun 10, 2015 15:02
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unseenlibrarian posted:"I want to be a dragon or a giant death squid" and also "I want to be Walter Peck from Ghostbusters" at the same time. Peck was legit a good guy trying to do his job, though.
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Jun 10, 2015 15:08
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Kai Tave posted:Someone earlier brought up the point that this is a fairly common sort of response people take to various internet dramafests, where Person A who is a respected member of the Whatever fan community accuses Person B of being a total shitheel. Well, you might not know Person B from a hole in the ground but if Person A says they're bad then, well, they must be bad right? Cue people exhaustively combing over everything they've ever posted online, on social media, private correspondence, their SAT scores, etc. in order to find evidence that corroborates Person A's accusations and of course you wind up with people grasping at the flimsiest of straws because the alternative is that maybe Person A is wrong or a lying rear end in a top hat and that just doesn't bear consideration. You know the worst thing about the Demon-Beast relations, actually? Beasts, when they actually learn what Demons are, hate them because they're different, and not somehow related to them like all the other supernaturals. The supposed stand-ins for the marginalized have an immediate reaction of loathing to those who are different from them. That is not a good theme for this. Edit: That sort of thing does make more sense in the context of the World of Darkness in general, but given the intended themes it still comes off as not-great. Tangent now, someone in one of the RPG.net threads made a comparison that made me laugh. quote:In general, I like Beast. I do think that the language used to describe the relationship between Beasts and HEroes could do with some twsting, and I would (were I writing this) perhaps put an emphasis on how isolating being a Hero must be. The old cliche of 'nobody can understand my struggle' actually works in this case. It's the classic Holmes vs. Moriarty, with the former not being able to fully impress upon the rest of the world the scale of the latter's crimes. That really is it right there. Beasts are loving Moriarty, and we're supposed to think they're the good guys here. Jeez. Kai Tave's one post on this game was absolutely right. The subtext and text of this game are decoupled to the point of being nearly opposites. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 15:50
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I'm not being paid to "fix" Beast: the Primordial, nor am I emotionally invested in its success. However if I was guilted / required to run a one-shot game of it at a convention, my first action would be to make child abuse untenable. Be it by creating a Beast society that discourages such a thing, or making the abuse of children not provide much (if any) benefit to the players, or making the decision to abuse children have direct consequences in the creation of Heroes, child abuse will not be celebrated and justified at my table. Because at no point do I ever want to be in a game where the degrees of shrewdness of a Beast child abuser decides the plot, and I am sickened that a professional company is asking people to pay money for such a thing. The sad joke about this is that- as is typical with Beast- there already is a game in the WoD where the abuse of a younger, less aware, and less powerful cohort is central to the game- however at least Vampire has the class and tact to hide this subtext behind the beastial devouring of blood. Gerund fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 16:23
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Roland Jones posted:Jeez. Kai Tave's one post on this game was absolutely right. The subtext and text of this game are decoupled to the point of being nearly opposites. It's purestrain White Wolf to try writing a game as a metaphor for persecuted outsider groups, only for the game to end up where you play as the 1%.
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Jun 10, 2015 16:37
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Roland Jones posted:The subtext and text of this game are decoupled to the point of being nearly opposites. It's the classic argument of show vs tell. It informs us that beasts are the good guys and heroes are the bad guys without actually providing any evidence as to why that would be. It informs us that all the monsters of the world of darkness love beasts even though the vast majority of them have no reason to associate with them or several reasons to kill them. It informs us that demons and beasts are at odds for reasons. I think the game would be greatly improved by some internecine conflict, the beasts that get by with less violent feeding methods trying to destroy the ones that do. But again, the problem is that, per the text, after the homecoming Beasts universally love what they are. Their motivations are now their souls motivations, it's just a matter of mitigating their rapacious hunger rather than railing against it.
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Jun 10, 2015 16:48
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Black Hat Matt posted:
quote:I think the game would be greatly improved by some internecine conflict, the beasts that get by with less violent feeding methods trying to destroy the ones that do. But again, the problem is that, per the text, after the homecoming Beasts universally love what they are. Their motivations are now their souls motivations, it's just a matter of mitigating their rapacious hunger rather than railing against it. Yeah, as it is the book kind of lacks a "moral compass" compared to all the other lines that sets some boundaries, and this is a direct result of Beasts not having a society with a lot of different groups who have different ideas of right or wrong. I think that might have gotten across in the discussion since "beast society" is one of the three things listed that is going to see fixes.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:02
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paradoxGentleman posted:The thing I like the most about that picture is the Thai cuisine book. But enough about Exalted bwahahahhaha!
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Jun 10, 2015 17:08
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Hopefully if McFarland takes that criticism to heart what we get is something that actually embodies the values the poster in question highlighted, instead of some messed up way of hitting Heroes with Stockholm Syndrome. But the big problem here is that I'm not convinced the game is equipped, at its most basic level, to portray healthy relationships -- and no amount of "reframing" is going to change that.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:09
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Playing a good guy beast should mean being Godzilla to another beast's MUTO.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:09
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I don't have access to the backer draft here - is there anything stopping Beasts from feeding on Supernaturals (and I don't mean through Family Dinner)? Hunting down Vampires or tearing down God-Machine conspiracies is a lot more palatable, and it'd be a good source of tension between the Beasts that hunt down and feed off monsters and those that take the easy route and feed from mortals (or leech off other supernaturals feeding off mortals).
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Jun 10, 2015 17:14
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Flavivirus posted:I don't have access to the backer draft here - is there anything stopping Beasts from feeding on Supernaturals (and I don't mean through Family Dinner)? Hunting down Vampires or tearing down God-Machine conspiracies is a lot more palatable, and it'd be a good source of tension between the Beasts that hunt down and feed off monsters and those that take the easy route and feed from mortals (or leech off other supernaturals feeding off mortals). The fact that actually terrifying a supernatural with your powers is more difficult than jobbing a mortal, and you take penalties for feeding off of families you have kinship with. other than that you're mostly okay.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:20
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I think there could theoretically be a splat in which the character is required to induce fear in order to survive/thrive. (Autumn Court toys with this actually, but there's other ways for them to thrive/survive so it's not as on point.) There are plenty of actual vampire novels where fear is what they consume, not blood. But I would turn to Requiem for some ideas on presentation and concepts: it's something that's done to characters; they can rationalize it as not their fault, or something they have to do. You put in something like Touchstones or Atrocities to mechanically emphasize the sickness of having to do this. Obviously the player characters have to come to terms with it in some way; put some factions in the game that come with justifications for terrorizing people ("we only do it to bad people!" "we do it in horror movies and creepy haunted houses so people are into being scared!" and so on) but always have at the back of each faction something that shows it's hosed up because of the compulsion. And in this game if I'm the stalker, my enemy should be exposure. That's right, Network Zero should be the antagonist splat. There, that's a million dollar idea. Print that out and take it to the bank and put it in the bank. You're a millionaire. No big deal.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:20
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One thing I'm kind of surprised they didn't go with is to give the beast soul, since it's kind of a distinct figure, its own set of aspirations. Fulfill those, and get satiety instead of beats. Like "Steal -that- thing for my hoard" or "I'm a Roc. Defeat an elephant, because gently caress elephants, man."
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Jun 10, 2015 17:32
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I briefly thought borrowing Wraith's shadow guide mechanic might help save Beast. Treating the Soul as a separate entity would go a long way towards giving you relatable PCs, and even remove the need for fiat-bad Heroes. (Villainous heroes could still exist, like Thunderbolt Ross or Gaston, but ALSO good heroes who couldn't differentiate between you and your Soul.) Instead of a game about lovely people fighting each other, it becomes a game about how good people fight or deal with something monstrous. The PC tries to manage his condition, but the Antagonists doesn't trust her to. It's basically the Dr Banner story.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:52
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