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Wales Grey posted:The original Beast Stereotypes made it sound that Beasts liked to hang out with Changelings because they're easy to bully. Now they come across as groupies looking up to their kinship-senpais. Does that still contradict every possible game mechanic for satiety? Can they really get away with only feeding once every few years?
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Jun 22, 2015 21:53
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No solid mechanics in the new draft yet, but it might work if they jumped up to Satiety 10, since last draft that basically un-Beasted you for a good, long time.
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Jun 22, 2015 22:01
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RPZip posted:Does that still contradict every possible game mechanic for satiety? Can they really get away with only feeding once every few years? It says he only lets it feed with abandon every few years. Presumably in the interim he stays lean and hungry and only gives the Horror little meals just to stay above starvation, but every few years the hunger gets to be too much and he gorges. EDIT: Mors Rattus posted:No solid mechanics in the new draft yet, but it might work if they jumped up to Satiety 10, since last draft that basically un-Beasted you for a good, long time. Or this, yeah. I'll mention to Matt that it might be worth putting a second axis on the "Satiety loss over time" chart so a more sated Beast needs to feed less often than one who's straight-up starving.
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Jun 22, 2015 22:11
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Wales Grey posted:The original Beast Stereotypes made it sound that Beasts liked to hang out with Changelings because they're easy to bully. Now they come across as groupies looking up to their kinship-senpais. I was referring to the stereotypes in general, not the way they appear in Beast. It has by now become clear that almost everything in Beast is terrible.
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Jun 22, 2015 22:22
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Wales Grey posted:The original Beast Stereotypes made it sound that Beasts liked to hang out with Changelings because they're easy to bully. Now they come across as groupies looking up to their kinship-senpais. The only new thing in that is the very last sentence. "Woops, we forgot that this was supposed to be remotely appealing"
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Jun 22, 2015 22:26
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Hmm... This Beast doesn't seem too likable or appealing, but what if we gave it the stated motive of that heartwarming killer from Saw?
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Jun 22, 2015 22:57
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GimpInBlack posted:It says he only lets it feed with abandon every few years. Presumably in the interim he stays lean and hungry and only gives the Horror little meals just to stay above starvation, but every few years the hunger gets to be too much and he gorges. That "with abandon," of course, is an amendment to the original draft. Its addition sort of makes the example fit but points to the larger problem with the revisions thus far: they're piecemeal, and the new pieces don't mesh with the old ones. One can kind of understand this problem, given the magnitude of changes necessary to fix Beast, and the short crunch of time in which to make them; if you can save time rewriting everything you kind of have to. But it just reinforces how poor the first draft turned out, and how it simply wasn't in a suitable state to launch a Kickstarter. The only truly satisfying solution to Beast, I'm growing to feel, would be to cancel the Kickstarter and take your time rewriting the whole book so that the text coheres, because the old text still reflects that radically different direction originally taken. But that won't happen; it'd be a PR black eye and a tremendous money sink. The stereotypes indeed now overcompensate from "Beasts are so much better than you shits" to "I hope sempai notices me!" The change isn't much better. They remain superficial and lack any particular insight. The exception, of course, being demons, who have unchanged stereotypes still reflecting their arbitrary designation as hostile strangers. Beasts are still so much better than those shits. What a shame. Edit: So hey, how about that neolithic period? That looks pretty cool. I really like the idea of Pangaean beings, the material proto-spirits native to the Shadow Marches. They feel like a natural fit, they add dimensions to Father Wolf and the Hosts, and they're material that can be used to fuel weird exception case poo poo right up to the present day. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 00:42
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I was round at Chris' flat this evening (he wrote the Neolithic chapter) and commented that we seem to have gotten away with revealing that Father Wolf was not actually a Spirit. I was expecting more fan push-back on that one.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:10
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I was round at Chris' flat this evening (he wrote the Neolithic chapter) and commented that we seem to have gotten away with revealing that Father Wolf was not actually a Spirit. I was expecting more fan push-back on that one. When you're loving around in magical mystical prehistory, and with things that - if they were spirits - would be like Rank 8, simple terms like "spirit" probably stop applying so neatly. I'm intrigued as to your personal answer now, though.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:12
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I was round at Chris' flat this evening (he wrote the Neolithic chapter) and commented that we seem to have gotten away with revealing that Father Wolf was not actually a Spirit. I was expecting more fan push-back on that one. In addition to what Daeren said about Rank 8+ entities, which just generally holds true, it fits with how I had already been viewing a lot of the overdeities of the Shadow, like Rat and Father Wolf. It didn't seem like, for example, a very big spirit would split into many small material shards the way the progenitors of the Hosts did. And it's an elegant solution, because while Pangaeans are not spirits, they are described as being akin in nature, so it's not like declaring he was an alien monster from beyond the stars or something.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:22
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I Am Just a Box posted:What a shame. It was a good gameline. What a rotten way to die. Dave Brookshaw posted:I was round at Chris' flat this evening (he wrote the Neolithic chapter) and commented that we seem to have gotten away with revealing that Father Wolf was not actually a Spirit. I was expecting more fan push-back on that one. Father Wolf doesn't even exist in my version of Werewolf, so I don't really care  .
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Jun 23, 2015 01:32
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All credit and admiration to Digitalraven, who has let me stomp all over his gameline's backstory. I know that if, say, the other Dave developed a Changeling Dark Era that casually revealed the Exarchs were True Fae I'd throw a fit. But, as you say, the revelation that there used to be creatures very much like spirits, but made of flesh, explains the weirder parts of werewolves' own origin story, implies horrible things about the Wolf-Hosts from that one book, gives the Baal-Hadad new plot hooks, gives a backstory to the weird fleshy monsters all the way back in Predators... It fits, and hopefully the finished setting will be received as well as the teaser has been.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:43
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I was round at Chris' flat this evening (he wrote the Neolithic chapter) and commented that we seem to have gotten away with revealing that Father Wolf was not actually a Spirit. I was expecting more fan push-back on that one. Father Wolf confirmed for supernal being who moved to the world from the Primal Wild, Mage confirmed for uber alles.
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Jun 23, 2015 01:55
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Dave Brookshaw posted:All credit and admiration to Digitalraven, who has let me stomp all over his gameline's backstory. I know that if, say, the other Dave developed a Changeling Dark Era that casually revealed the Exarchs were True Fae I'd throw a fit.  Yeah, it's basically a matter of respect for the original game lines (and the authors of such), to me. "Actually, you're wrong and I'm right  " is what gets the torches and pitchforks out, as evidenced by Mage Supremacy shitstorms and the reception to the first draft of Kinship in Beast. Saying that Father Wolf was from the Primal Wild is shenanigans - saying Father Wolf was kinda a spirit but was also something unknown, something weird, especially when that's got evidence from like a decade of publication, isn't.I'm one of those dirty heathens that tries to make the cosmology fit together, but over the years I've made the mages less and less right about what it actually looks like. It gives them more room to actually investigate things, and lets me ST scenes in non-Mage games where the mages all get blindsided by the PC's understanding of an outside context problem. Way back in one of the threads, I posted about a Changeling PC in one of my games making a Contract of Communion (Celestial Objects) and proceeding to thoroughly style upon a Thrice-Great mage by having a casual phone call with an incarnation of the Sun.
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Jun 23, 2015 02:28
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Father Wolf was a mascot costume and nobody knew who wore it. The inhabitants of the Shadow Realm were the Spirits of the Game. Luna was a stadium owner. The werewolves were the people who ran the stadium and kept the joy of the game alive in the hearts of the patrons but kept them from becoming so inhabited with the Spirits of the Game they would fight over it or paint their faces in team colors. But then the werewolves got rid of Father Wolf because he couldn't entertain the crowd anymore. Now the Forsaken keep the stadium running and keep the patrons safe while the Pure skim money off the stadium and cut corners at every turn.
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Jun 23, 2015 03:23
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... Wait, Urfarrah was meant to be a spirit? I always thought he was something weird else. Otherwise it makes no sense for woofwoofs to be all about balancing spirit and flesh, or being half-and-half in general. He and Luna are the two halves of a whole; doesn't make sense for them both to be spirits. (I mean, yeah, you could make them otherwise, but this way makes way more sense.) Also, from all the previews so far, Mage 2e seems to help out a lot in keeping Mages in the cosmology rather than above it. They can see the underlying cogs and wheels of reality, but the Supernal feels less like a heaven from which distant gods can monkey with us mere mortals and more akin to the mystical, religious state of mind that Mage as a whole tries to embrace.
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Jun 23, 2015 03:34
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pkfan2004 posted:Father Wolf was a mascot costume and nobody knew who wore it. And the name of those games? The Games of Divinity, of course. I figured ol Father Wolf was a little more hardcore than the Jade Pleasure Dome crowd but it just goes to show, I guess.
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Jun 23, 2015 03:51
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So I haven't been here in a while but caught wind that there was some controversy over Beast: The Primordial game. What was up with that?
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Jun 23, 2015 06:16
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Bellicose Buddha posted:So I haven't been here in a while but caught wind that there was some controversy over Beast: The Primordial game. What was up with that? The game had you playing a monstrous monster with supreme self-righteousness and no self-awareness. The villains of the splat were more sympathetic than the protagonists. The writing and sample characters made it even worse.
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Jun 23, 2015 06:31
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Bellicose Buddha posted:So I haven't been here in a while but caught wind that there was some controversy over Beast: The Primordial game. What was up with that? Like 3/4ths of this thread is about it if you click most of our post histories. Long, nasty story short, huge swathes of the first draft on Kickstarter could easily be read to be about any number of nasty things (domestic abuse apologism chief among them), a lot of people went through the roof over it and laid blame on the developer/authors for endorsing said gross things, people cherry-picked the text to argue their side because it contradicted itself so often, the developer avoided the shitstorm for a while before agreeing that work needs to be done if so many people are identifying readings/allegories he didn't intend to be there, and now there's a rewrite of the draft in progress to make the game more palatable. How well it's working is still a matter of debate across forums (people splitting into camps over first draft vs redraft's ~vision~, how well the redraft actually integrates changes/excises the gross poo poo, etc), but I think it's going in the right direction. At this point I'd gladly take a decently inspiring, mediocre-at-worst product to one that's actively crowing about incredibly gross poo poo. Daeren fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 06:32
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Bellicose Buddha posted:So I haven't been here in a while but caught wind that there was some controversy over Beast: The Primordial game. What was up with that? Basically the writing for the game and some of the mechanics consistently made Beast characters, the ones you're supposed to be playing as, sound really unsympathetic. In particular one of the core ideas is that your Beast character, who has the soul of a primal monster like a dragon or roc or whatever, subconsciously drives some regular people into becoming supernaturally powerful "Heroes" in order to slay you. The writing really goes out of its way to emphasize how awful and stupid and cruel these Heroes are for wanting to kill Beasts, the idea being that it's trying to subvert the whole dragon-slaying hero's journey narrative, but it comes across as really weird because not only are Heroes literally created by Beasts and wouldn't have become driven to kill on their own, the example Beast characters are consistently depicted as doing really uncomfortable and unsettling stuff (as opposed to the sort of broad-strokes romantic horror of most Vampire characters for example) like poisoning children or killing innocent people for laughs that would seem to completely justify Heroes wanting to kill them. On top of all that, these major antagonist Heroes are specifically compared to the culture of internet trolls, Gamergate, twitter harassment, etc in a way that comes across as saying more about the developers than these fictional characters they created. The developer poured fuel on that fire by dismissing questions and criticisms with stuff like "wow, sounds like we've got a Hero wannabe over here #NotAllHeroes  ".But that negative reaction became so widespread in the online discussion about the game that it appeared to be having a noticeable effect on the Kickstarter for Beast, like backers were vocally withdrawing pledges and progress slowed to a crawl compared to other campaigns they've done, which has provoked the developer to reconsider and begin revising parts of the text of the game to try to address some of these issues.
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Jun 23, 2015 06:41
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Kellsterik posted:Basically the writing for the game and some of the mechanics consistently made Beast characters, the ones you're supposed to be playing as, sound really unsympathetic. Yeesh. They seem to have cut that back a lot. I read a recent preview and didn't get any of that from it. Seriously, that stuff sounds like things straight out of Old White Wolf, especially parts of Old Mage. Like how they tried to make the Technocracy the bad guys, when really they had a point, that reality warping holier-than-thou mofos and other supernatural beings are basically cancers on human civilization.
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Jun 23, 2015 06:55
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Someone compared 1st draft Beast to Internet Argument: The Spiltism basically, and it really feels that way. Add on how special and cool Beasts were made to be "Every supernatural likes you and knows you're better than them", and it hilarious.
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Jun 23, 2015 07:31
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Bellicose Buddha posted:So I haven't been here in a while but caught wind that there was some controversy over Beast: The Primordial game. What was up with that? Bellicose Buddha posted:Like how they tried to make the Technocracy the bad guys, when really they had a point
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Jun 23, 2015 07:53
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Wales Grey posted:The Technocracy were villains because they embodied all the excesses and abuses of neoliberal imperialism combined with a monolithic bureaucracy that has absolutely no idea what it's doing. The Technocracy are great, so long as you don't mind the death squads, the "disappearances", the "don't ask questions", and the regular brainwashing of its members to ensure loyalty. They're basically a product line away from being Friend Computer. Right, and Heroes are villains because they embody all the excesses and abuses of Twitter death threats and ethics in games journalism, because that is what they were written as. The original developers of Mage wrote a setting where the Technocracy were the villains because they personally really loving hated people and systems like that and wanted stand-ins for them to be the bad guys, which later writers reacted to by saying "this fictional group is potentially more nuanced and complex than the real world Bad Thing they were originally written to represent". This is what's happening when people online (or even Beast writers) try to find reasons why the sleeping beauty coma girl Hero character is actually an evil bully, because it has already been decided that Heroes are stand-ins for a real world Bad Thing rather than a purely fictional group. Kellsterik fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 08:07
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Bellicose Buddha posted:Yeesh. They seem to have cut that back a lot. I read a recent preview and didn't get any of that from it. Seriously, that stuff sounds like things straight out of Old White Wolf, especially parts of Old Mage. Like how they tried to make the Technocracy the bad guys, when really they had a point, that reality warping holier-than-thou mofos and other supernatural beings are basically cancers on human civilization. The Technocracy are reality-warping holier-than-thou mofos and a cancer on human civilization to a greater extent than anyone in the oWoD other than the Nephandi. Actually they're much worse than the Nephandi when it comes to how holier-than-thou they are and how much they warp reality in practice if not intent.
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Jun 23, 2015 08:17
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Kellsterik posted:Right, and Heroes are villains because they embody all the excesses and abuses of Twitter death threats and ethics in games journalism, because that is what they were written as. The original developers of Mage wrote a setting where the Technocracy were the villains because they personally really loving hated people and systems like that and wanted stand-ins for them to be the bad guys, which later writers reacted to by saying "this fictional group is potentially more nuanced and complex than the real world Bad Thing they were originally written to represent". This is what's happening when people online (or even Beast writers) try to find reasons why the sleeping beauty coma girl Hero character is actually an evil bully, because it has already been decided that Heroes are stand-ins for a real world Bad Thing rather than a purely fictional group. There's a world of difference between "people who are supernaturally compelled by monsters to hunt down those selfsame monsters (whom inflict and feed on human suffering), and are the villain only because of author fiat" and "is part of a global conspiracy that literally brainwashes its agents and disappears anyone it deems inconvenient". Heroes are villains only because the book says they are, and sort of shuffles awkwardly when you point out that Hunters (the best splat) are basically Heroes but without the whole "literally directly made and empowered by monsters" bit. The Technocracy aren't villains because "oh the book says they're villains", they're villains because they have the absolute best intentions but somewhere along the line decided that they should best achieve those intentions via mandated and enforced conformity. And if you don't like it, well, they have a hit squad just itching to light you up.
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Jun 23, 2015 09:32
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Wales Grey posted:The Technocracy were villains because they embodied all the excesses and abuses of neoliberal imperialism combined with a monolithic bureaucracy that has absolutely no idea what it's doing. The Technocracy are great, so long as you don't mind the death squads, the "disappearances", the "don't ask questions", and the regular brainwashing of its members to ensure loyalty. They're basically a product line away from being Friend Computer. The Technocracy accidentally embodied real world neo liberal imperialism beyond the strawman they created, while the people opposing them and nominal heroes were either just as bad than or worse, wanting to just wanting to create a system with themselves on top and even less benefit to the Sleeper plebs. Which underlies the problem in doing game development in such a simplistic manner is stupid and why the later writers changed their tune when writing their guide.
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Jun 23, 2015 09:32
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NutritiousSnack posted:The Technocracy accidentally embodied real world neo liberal imperialism beyond the strawman they created, while the people opposing them and nominal heroes were either just as bad than or worse, wanting to just wanting to create a system with themselves on top and even less benefit to the Sleeper plebs. Which underlies the problem in doing game development in such a simplistic manner is stupid and why the later writers changed their tune when writing their guide. There was no "accidentally" in the Technocracy being written as neoliberal strawmen. The Guide to the Technocracy is very much written in-character from the perspective of the group, and added (much-needed) depth by updating the Technocracy from "Hans: the Genocidal Nazi" to "Hans: a brave soldier fighting to protect the Fatherland from inferior Slavic invaders and spread the superior Bavarian way of life!", metaphorically speaking. Trying to draw a comparison between Heroes and the Technocracy, specifically in people going out of their way to invent atextual justifications as to why all Heroes including Melanie are evilbadmen and the literal actions of the Technocracy as described by multiple sourcebooks, is farcical at best and contemptibly disingenuous at worst.
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Jun 23, 2015 09:56
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Technocracy apologism in 2015. This, I claim, is ideology.
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Jun 23, 2015 12:57
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Attorney at Funk posted:Technocracy apologism in 2015. This, I claim, is ideology. I abandoned this battle in despair after M20 announced that you know what, maybe the Traditions do hate light bulbs after all.
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Jun 23, 2015 12:59
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Rand Brittain posted:I abandoned this battle in despair after M20 announced that you know what, maybe the Traditions do hate light bulbs after all. I would too if the bulbs I had to deal with were this dim.
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Jun 23, 2015 13:01
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Rand Brittain posted:I abandoned this battle in despair after M20 announced that you know what, maybe the Traditions do hate light bulbs after all. I haven't read it, yet, but now I can't wait.
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Jun 23, 2015 13:07
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Attorney at Funk posted:Technocracy apologism in 2015. This, I claim, is ideology. Hey OP can you get Zizek to write C20's opening fiction? TIA
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Jun 23, 2015 13:11
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 I remember my first Technocracy derail- I started it! After 20 pages of grog fight, I decided old Mage should remain back in the 1990's where it belongs.So, how about the Monday round-up and its stuff about Beast? EDIT: Luminous Obscurity posted:Hey OP can you get Zizek to write C20's opening fiction? TIA “In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which poo poo disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that poo poo is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. poo poo is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the poo poo floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. [...] It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement. Hegel was among the first to see in the geographical triad of Germany, France and England an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness (German), revolutionary hastiness (French), utilitarian pragmatism (English). In political terms, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English liberalism. [...] The point about toilets is that they enable us not only to discern this triad in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying mechanism in the three different attitudes towards excremental excess: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology.” Kavak fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 13:13
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Kavak posted:“In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which poo poo disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that poo poo is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness” As a Spaniard living in Germany, I can say this is true and also gross.
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Jun 23, 2015 13:48
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Attorney at Funk posted:I would too if the bulbs I had to deal with were this dim.  In other news, one of my friends is half-planning (half because he'd need to find time for it) a magical girl werewolf game. I can't decide if this is ridiculously amazing or amazingly ridiculous or both.
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Jun 23, 2015 14:25
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Yawgmoth posted:
So he'd have werewolves punish people in the name of the moon?
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Jun 23, 2015 14:32
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MonsieurChoc posted:So he'd have werewolves punish people in the name of the moon?
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Jun 23, 2015 15:02
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Rand Brittain posted:I abandoned this battle in despair after M20 announced that you know what, maybe the Traditions do hate light bulbs after all. Hell, let them do so. Let them be their own worst stereotypes without exception. Their struggle is still a just one. You don't support the revolution because of how engaged you are with the revolutionaries' personal brands.
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