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Yeah, I can buy Urban Horror Batman. Batman's hosed up but he exists in the hosed-up-ness milleu of pop culture, rather than the personal kind of hosed up of actually hosed up people.
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Jun 16, 2015 16:26
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It's still creepy. But the text at least acknowledges it's creepy, and in character acknowledges it too. Before the party line was "We were born into this privilege so we're allowed to torment you and you can't get mad." which is extremely hosed up and I can't figure out how the people selling it as an escapist fantasy can't see it.
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Jun 16, 2015 16:31
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I'm totally fine with Onyx Path releasing a bad kitschy game, because I'd rather have that than something in the catalog that qualifies as bad art. Either in the execution or in the original purpose, something made Beast: The Primordial fail on a level that could not be unremarked. Refurbishing the game down a well-trodden path of being a poor a-single-entitlement-from-Changeling simulacrum at least allows it to fail acceptably. What I do hope is that people don't see this as an excuse to suddenly cry out against bad design choices by Onyx Path as if they are somehow equivalent. I wouldn't design the same games if I was paid to design them, but I don't see the purpose in being melodramatic about a writer not writing a game I would enjoy purchasing. Beast is (was) its own beast. Gerund fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 16:37
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Let's be honest now: most WoD gamelines have you play someone who is at the very least on morally shaky ground. What made Beast particularly vile, at least IMHO, was that it refused to aknowledge its protagonists' actions as evil, and in fact insisted in painting them as innocent victims, condemned simply because they follow their own natures. The fact that said actions mirror those of real life abusers certainly didn't help.
paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 17:00
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Yeah, in most cases you have protagonists that run the gamut from kinda-on-the-good-side (e.g. The Union, Obrimos and Thyrsus mages, maybe the Carthians) to the definitely-grey-area sorts (Guardians of the Veil, Changelings, Crones), but Beast's problem was that you could only play assholes, the game style only rewarded assholes, and your enemies were all strawmen- incompetently done strawmen at that.
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Jun 16, 2015 17:14
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What's morally grey for Changelings? Scarecrow Ministry, maybe, but if you roughly summed up a whole-splat view of changelings it'd probably average towards "We don't want no trouble mister".
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Jun 16, 2015 17:19
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spectralent posted:What's morally grey for Changelings? Scarecrow Ministry, maybe, but if you roughly summed up a whole-splat view of changelings it'd probably average towards "We don't want no trouble mister". Changelings (1e Changelings) are broken to the point where it is more comfortable for them, as a whole, to kill each-other than imprison each-other. A typical (seasonal) freehold is more or less laissez faire towards individual Changelings being horrible people to outsiders and even fellow freeholders, since the cycle of rulership means that everyone has a chance at being higher on the totem pole and get revenge.
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Jun 16, 2015 17:30
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paradoxGentleman posted:Let's be honest now: most WoD gamelines have you play someone who is at the very least on morally shaky ground. What made Beast particularly vile, at least IMHO, was that it refused to aknowledge its protagonists' actions as evil, and in fact insisted in painting them as innocent victims, condemned simply because they follow their own natures. The fact that said actions mirror those of real life abusers certainly didn't help. Whereas when fully divorced from the Beasts-as-any-real-Outsider-group metaphor, the whole thing's more a piss-take on lazy storytelling and a mental exercise, which a is much more palatable context for doing creepy things.
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Jun 16, 2015 18:19
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Just imagine having your health track slowly fill with unhealable lethal, eventually causing you to waste away and die, because no one thinks you're scary.
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Jun 16, 2015 18:37
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah, in most cases you have protagonists that run the gamut from kinda-on-the-good-side (e.g. The Union, Obrimos and Thyrsus mages, maybe the Carthians) to the definitely-grey-area sorts (Guardians of the Veil, Changelings, Crones), but Beast's problem was that you could only play assholes, the game style only rewarded assholes, and your enemies were all strawmen- incompetently done strawmen at that. Very maybe. As Rose Bailey once noted, there's a difference between revolutionary vampires who see humans as the proletariat, and revolutionary vampires who see humans as the means of production
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Jun 16, 2015 19:29
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Ferrinus posted:Just imagine having your health track slowly fill with unhealable lethal, eventually causing you to waste away and die, because no one thinks you're scary. "Sorry gramps, hockey mask and knife is too retro to be scary! It's all about weird animatronics and jump scares now."
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Jun 16, 2015 20:01
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Cabbit posted:"Sorry gramps, hockey mask and knife is too retro to be scary! It's all about weird animatronics and jump scares now." "People want to have sex with them." "Well. Okay. Goodbye. *disappears into the primordial mist, never to be seen again*"
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Jun 16, 2015 20:43
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LatwPIAT posted:Very maybe. As Rose Bailey once noted, there's a difference between revolutionary vampires who see humans as the proletariat, and revolutionary vampires who see humans as the means of production I always liked the idea of a freshly-embraced communist who hates the Carthians like sunshine because they're taking the politics of liberation he dedicated his life to and using them to be better at exploiting the masses.
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Jun 16, 2015 20:49
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LatwPIAT posted:Very maybe. As Rose Bailey once noted, there's a difference between revolutionary vampires who see humans as the proletariat, and revolutionary vampires who see humans as the means of production (She actually attributed the quote to Greg Stolze.)
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Jun 17, 2015 00:16
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moths posted:Is there some reason she just doesn't specialize in Molotovs? I mean "fire potion" sounds cool and all, but it sounds like you're falling into the trap of houseruling extant rules. The example I gave was one of about 20 potions she's come up with. One temporarily wipes memory if consumed, a sleeping and a choking gas, tranmogrification elixir (change someone into something of equalish mass for a scene), one that makes someone look close to death (which is Crocodile Tears in the endowment but she hasn't read that), etc. I need help coming up with reasonable xp costs and mechanics. Since they are hunters I want her to get the fangs of a Mekhet in order to make invisibility potions from then on. A top-tier healing potion would need Werewolf blood. Think of how Witcher 3 does it. Hard to make at first but replenishes automatically on rest.
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Jun 17, 2015 02:19
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Ogres 2.0 are up.
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Jun 17, 2015 02:53
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Let's be perfectly clear: I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a splat that is abusive; it's glorifying that abuse or giving it a free pass that's a problem. Vampire is a game that's also about abuse. Almost every vampire is going to physically assault other people for food. Of those the very best will seek out willing targets. Below that, people who make their victims forget or try to convince their victims that it's what they wanted all along. Then you've got vampires who terrorize people, routinely murder, or turn their victims into willing slaves who will debase themselves at their master's feet just for the honor of doing so. What makes this different is that the vampire book keeps reminding you that this isn't really a good thing to do and that for the most part it's this kind of behavior that makes you a monster. All 5 of the covenants give you justifications for why what you're doing is okay, but OOC it's pretty obvious that all of them are wrong on a fundamental ethical level. Humans don't deserve to be treated this way, vampires are a parasitic menace that can try to rise above their nature or fall down that deep dark pit like an addict. A lot of Requiem games eventually touch on the existential crisis of justifying why it's okay to continue your own existence. I don't think that's a coincidence.
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Jun 17, 2015 03:20
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Are they any widely popular house rules for nMummy? Ones that skew simpler, not more complex. I keep coming back to the game, but it is just so full of fiddly bullshit.
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Jun 17, 2015 04:04
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Plague of Hats posted:Are they any widely popular house rules for nMummy? Ones that skew simpler, not more complex. I keep coming back to the game, but it is just so full of fiddly bullshit. I will never forgive it for bringing back variable TNs. 
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Jun 17, 2015 04:22
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LatwPIAT posted:Very maybe. As Rose Bailey once noted, there's a difference between revolutionary vampires who see humans as the proletariat, and revolutionary vampires who see humans as the means of production
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Jun 17, 2015 04:26
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So I'm pretty hype for Mage the Awakening 2e coming out sometime between July and September (hopefully). I've been meaning to GM a game and that seems like the game for me. All the rules (theoretically) being in one book is a nice bonus. There's just one issue I'm fearing: How the hell am I going to explain all the rules, all the things you can do at each arcana dot, what the hell a mudra is, etc. with only one book, which I will likely have only in PDF form on my tablet? I'm really hoping there will be some kind of quick-reference sheet because otherwise the initial heap of sessions will just be "uhhh... what can I do at Life 3 again"?
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Jun 17, 2015 05:40
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bewilderment posted:I'm really hoping there will be some kind of quick-reference sheet because otherwise the initial heap of sessions will just be "uhhh... what can I do at Life 3 again"? The community will probably come out with one pretty quick, is the good news. There are some good ones for 1e that summarize the printed spells into convenient "this is what you can do" sentences, hopefully that will still be reasonable in 2e if there's a consistent and easily explainable logic behind Reach. The Changeling 2e posts don't make it look bad to me, but they remind me of reading the core book for the first time and feeling like my idea of what makes this game interesting is really different from that of the writers. quote:Ogres can came from a lot of backgrounds, like so many Seemings, but by and large, they share one thing. Ogres were bullied. Most often, this bullying is real, brutal, constant. Bullying that’s really better to call abuse. More rarely, but not impossibly, Ogres come from people who perceived bullying where it wasn’t really happening, and so the abuse that drove them was mostly from their own persecution complex. Mostly, though, Ogres were first people who were pushed and pushed and hurt and hurt until they had no choice but to lash out, to respond with violence or brutality, and that moment, when they snapped, they fled, flung, or were grabbed into the Hedge. The power to snap, the thing that pushed them over could come from within, but often, comes from the Keeper and his servants, to draw the Changeling in. Like for me, it's important that there isn't expected to be continuity between your mortal life and your Seeming because the identity the fae molded you into isn't who you actually are. The default assumption shouldn't be that you're basically the same person before and after your Durance. It feels too on-the-nose, like everything about the character orbits around them being an Ogre rather than that being one part of their identity that other parts might contradict. quote:Blessing: Clarity of Violence. Suffice to say, Ogres aren’t especially good at communicating with words. There are some ideas only her fists can communicate. Once per Story, if an Ogre can manage to get a message across through the use or threat of violence, she gains a point of Clarity for Free. Have they explained the changes to Clarity somewhere else? It looks like the other Seeming blessings/curses are mostly about Clarity and not dice bonuses now. I really do like that they're trying to make the Integrity-like stat more active and fluctuating in play in 2e rather than just being a bar that degrades every couple of sessions, but I'm not sure what Clarity is supposed to represent now. This might come back to my reading of Changeling being different from the writers, but I always liked to explain Clarity as "the extent to which you are aware that you are not in Arcadia". Having high Clarity means you can clearly tell the difference between the fairy and mundane worlds, because they are not the same and have different rules. Low Clarity means you're losing your sense of reality and agency, which might manifest as following a fairy tale-like narrative about who you are so you don't have to think too hard about what's happening. So with that as my reading, I don't really get this- I'm sure it makes sense in the context of the whole 2e book, but I don't see what Clarity represents now that you gain it by being a stereotypical Ogre and lose it by being reminded of your humanity. If anything you should potentially lose Clarity by falling into the role of the dumb, easily tricked brute and resorting to violence instead of words but gain it by being painfully reminded that you're a human being and not a cardboard cutout of a scary monster.
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Jun 17, 2015 07:59
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I think one of the takeaways from the earlier Seeming-chats was that the Background bits are going to be clarified a bit. I think the intention was that they act more as examples or general ideas than strict guidelines of any kind.Kellsterik posted:Have they explained the changes to Clarity somewhere else? It looks like the other Seeming blessings/curses are mostly about Clarity and not dice bonuses now. I really do like that they're trying to make the Integrity-like stat more active and fluctuating in play in 2e rather than just being a bar that degrades every couple of sessions, but I'm not sure what Clarity is supposed to represent now. This might come back to my reading of Changeling being different from the writers, but I always liked to explain Clarity as "the extent to which you are aware that you are not in Arcadia". Having high Clarity means you can clearly tell the difference between the fairy and mundane worlds, because they are not the same and have different rules. Low Clarity means you're losing your sense of reality and agency, which might manifest as following a fairy tale-like narrative about who you are so you don't have to think too hard about what's happening. Because Clarity is also about mental stability and things like trust issues, anger problems, acting out, and having an overdeveloped sense of responsibility are ways people cope with traumatic experiences. Seemings function as a couple different things now, but the Blessing/Curse mechanics are pretty clearly built around people's responses to trauma.
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Jun 17, 2015 10:46
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The focus of the game seems to have shifted from abuse to trauma, which is an interesting choice. Not everyone is satisfied with it but it's okay by me: you can still tell some very powerful stories with this new theme.
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Jun 17, 2015 11:22
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It's all looking interesting, but I might end up just converting 1e to GMC rules.
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Jun 17, 2015 14:40
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" Astromancer posted:The thing that gave Changeling it's greatest force of Horror were the Sidhe. The game showed how irresponsible dreams create horror, misery, injustice, and cruelty. Because the Sidhe were dreams of power, the power of beauty, the power of wealth, the power of social prestige, power without responsibility or compassion, they were lovely monsters. It's an interesting take, if a bit of a marxist interpretation, on one of the main conflicts of CtD. Kind of makes me hope that C20 will go balls-to-the-wall, nuts-on-the-road social commentary and become the game of the Glorious Faery-People's Revolutionary Democratic Front versus the Order of Silver Assholes.
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Jun 17, 2015 17:22
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That link you shared seems to go nowhere.
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Jun 17, 2015 17:30
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Ah, Ogres, the school shooter seeming. I really wish I had nicer things to say about Changeling 2E, but just about every decision they're making here seems to be in service of a game I just find far less interesting, in concept, than its predecessor.
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Jun 17, 2015 18:38
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You are not the first one to say that, and I'd like to hear what you are reffering to, exactly, if that is okay.
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Jun 17, 2015 19:00
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paradoxGentleman posted:You are not the first one to say that, and I'd like to hear what you are reffering to, exactly, if that is okay. quote:Ogres can came from a lot of backgrounds, like so many Seemings, but by and large, they share one thing. Ogres were bullied. Most often, this bullying is real, brutal, constant. Bullying that’s really better to call abuse. More rarely, but not impossibly, Ogres come from people who perceived bullying where it wasn’t really happening, and so the abuse that drove them was mostly from their own persecution complex. Mostly, though, Ogres were first people who were pushed and pushed and hurt and hurt until they had no choice but to lash out, to respond with violence or brutality, and that moment, when they snapped, they fled, flung, or were grabbed into the Hedge. The power to snap, the thing that pushed them over could come from within, but often, comes from the Keeper and his servants, to draw the Changeling in. edit: and if you're the sort that believes that most school shooters aren't actually bullied but are just nutjobs with issues who use perceived social rejection or conflict as a fixation or crutch, the sentence previous to the one in bold covers that angle, too. Crion fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 19:04
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Noted school shooter Ralphie from A Christmas Story.
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Jun 17, 2015 19:10
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Maybe that is a lacking on my part but when I read that "school shooter" isn't the first thing that comes to mind.
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Jun 17, 2015 19:13
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This might or might not be an age thing depending on how old you are; literally the first thing that came to mind when I read that paragraph was "Columbine." The second thing was Linkin Park's "One Step Closer."
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Jun 17, 2015 19:15
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Crion posted:This might or might not be an age thing depending on how old you are; literally the first thing that came to mind when I read that paragraph was "Columbine."
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Jun 17, 2015 19:17
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Well if that helps, I am 22 and the first thing that came to my mind is, well, bullying in general and how it can cause people to snap, which I guess your interpretation of school shootings is a more extreme version of, followed by Carrie by Stephen King. (I think that issue goes a bit deeper than that but that is nit the right place for that discussion)
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Jun 17, 2015 19:29
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Maybe it is just the nature of the previews to emphasize Seemings as a be-all-end-all form of your character, but I preferred my the nWoD Changeling game where your choice of Seeming was not a defining feature of your character and how you interacted with the world on a morality-score level. That the Seemings that have been presented have fallen on the puerile teenage power-fantasy of Romance Novel Sexwolf / Brooding Antihero / Blessed Leader Chosen One / School Shooter is just a consequence of bad writing.
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Jun 17, 2015 19:34
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Did all the other Seemings tie themselves to the way you were captured in the first place the way Ogre seems to?
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Jun 17, 2015 19:37
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paradoxGentleman posted:Well if that helps, I am 22 and the first thing that came to my mind is, well, bullying in general and how it can cause people to snap, which I guess your interpretation of school shootings is a more extreme version of, followed by Carrie by Stephen King. I think it has more to do with the fact that for people roughly 28-32 or so (and older, perhaps), their first encounter with the idea of kids grabbing automatic weapons and killing their fellow students came from Columbine -- and the media's multi-year reaction to Columbine was that there were two core problems: Bullying, and Violent Computer Games. The latter of those two reactions more or less got ignored by most people, but the former focus led to in-school anti-bullying classes/speeches, PSA campaigns, lots and lots and lots of newspaper feature writing, etc. We've "grown" as a society to the point where a lot of school shooters are now said to have "Mental Illness," which is almost always vague, ill-defined, and incredibly insulting to both the psychiatric community and people who suffer from actual disorders in their life and deal with them without shooting up schools, etc. Honestly, I think the "bullying" angle probably has more validity, when one considers it in the context of privilege, but you're right that it's a discussion for a different thread. Either way I view that Ogre write-up as simultaneously reductive and overbroad (as well as describing a character concept I find kind of juvenile) which was my same problem with the Beast and Darkling writeups. Ferrinus posted:Did all the other Seemings tie themselves to the way you were captured in the first place the way Ogre seems to? I am somewhat amused/annoyed at the idea that True Fae are sitting around waiting for you to beat up a bully in order to kidnap you right in front of him. Seems like overreaching on the whole 'narrative obsession' conceit, as well as like, coming really close to saying 'everyone is born with a secret Seeming, and your Durance just activates your superpowers instead of changing who you fundamentally are' Crion fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 19:38
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Ferrinus posted:Did all the other Seemings tie themselves to the way you were captured in the first place the way Ogre seems to? Gerund posted:Maybe it is just the nature of the previews to emphasize Seemings as a be-all-end-all form of your character, but I preferred my the nWoD Changeling game where your choice of Seeming was not a defining feature of your character and how you interacted with the world on a morality-score level. That the Seemings that have been presented have fallen on the puerile teenage power-fantasy of Romance Novel Sexwolf / Brooding Antihero / Blessed Leader Chosen One / School Shooter is just a consequence of bad writing. See I think the Clarity mechanics are probably the best thing about these changes. Everything else I'm kind of neutral on, but I feel like the idea of tying Seemings to coping mechanisms (beyond the textbook Stages of Grief thing) is an effective one.
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Jun 17, 2015 19:45
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What's up with stuffed-in-lockers nerds being the WoD darlings this month?
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