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Ferrinus posted: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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Jun 23, 2015 15:11
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...but it helps!!
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Jun 23, 2015 15:27
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Ferrinus posted: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. If I want to play the game, players have to be engaged with the revolutionaries' personal brands, and they were already in large part turning against them before M20 decided to give the Traditions a huge blackwashing.
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Jun 23, 2015 15:38
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Rand Brittain posted:If I want to play the game, players have to be engaged with the revolutionaries' personal brands, and they were already in large part turning against them before M20 decided to give the Traditions a huge blackwashing. lol Phil Brucato has always hated the Traditions. They're the mean unsmiling Indians who don't let hippies commodify their sweat lodges and etc.
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Jun 23, 2015 17:22
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Mexcillent posted:lol Phil Brucato has always hated the Traditions. They're the mean unsmiling Indians who don't let hippies commodify their sweat lodges and etc. Well, more mean Indians that don't take kindly to Brucato's particular brand of leftist liberalism. The Traditions advocate a more permissive liberalism, where they can uphold their religious or cultural practices in peace and perpetuity, while Brucato wants full Marxist communism for everyone, whether they like it or not. Even if they reject this kind of revolution, they still need it. They're just held back by false consciousness. Holding on to individual cultural practices as valuable is, to Brucato, misguided at best, actively supporting capitalist hegemony at worst. I do agree, though, that his use of cultural aesthetics for this kind of satire is very ironic and uncomfortable. He enjoys them as aesthetics, but not as fully fledged ways of life, which is troubling.
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Jun 23, 2015 17:57
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pospysyl posted:Well, more mean Indians that don't take kindly to Brucato's particular brand of leftist liberalism. The Traditions advocate a more permissive liberalism, where they can uphold their religious or cultural practices in peace and perpetuity, while Brucato wants full Marxist communism for everyone, whether they like it or not. Even if they reject this kind of revolution, they still need it. They're just held back by false consciousness. Holding on to individual cultural practices as valuable is, to Brucato, misguided at best, actively supporting capitalist hegemony at worst. I do agree, though, that his use of cultural aesthetics for this kind of satire is very ironic and uncomfortable. He enjoys them as aesthetics, but not as fully fledged ways of life, which is troubling. Its ironic to complain that neoliberal globalist capitalism is Bad, and then tell other people that agree on this that they need to allow for a globalist, non-ideological, commodity-market dependant worldview* to define their lives. *aka Neoliberalism
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Jun 23, 2015 19:06
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pospysyl posted:Well, more mean Indians that don't take kindly to Brucato's particular brand of leftist liberalism. The Traditions advocate a more permissive liberalism, where they can uphold their religious or cultural practices in peace and perpetuity, while Brucato wants full Marxist communism for everyone, whether they like it or not. Even if they reject this kind of revolution, they still need it. They're just held back by false consciousness. Holding on to individual cultural practices as valuable is, to Brucato, misguided at best, actively supporting capitalist hegemony at worst. I do agree, though, that his use of cultural aesthetics for this kind of satire is very ironic and uncomfortable. He enjoys them as aesthetics, but not as fully fledged ways of life, which is troubling. I did not like the way he appropriated trans identities as something "magickal" in M20. Or the fact that, for all he talks about queer, non-binary, and trans identities, he still writes, black on off-white, "male, female, or transgender".
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Jun 23, 2015 19:23
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Was he like this during his 90's era tenure on the Mage line? My only real experience with him were his brief forays into Werewolf and (shudder) changing breeds, where you can tell he's really getting off about talking about how great these animal people are and how wonderful it must be to be in tune with nature, when he's not just obliquely talking about sexy rabbit people and rules that force you to poo poo on someone's carpet for smoking. Or railing against the patriarchy for forcing nudity taboos onto our wonderful pagan goddess worshipping culture. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 20:56
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Kurieg posted:Was he like this during his 90's era tenure on the Mage line? My only real experience with him were his brief forays into Werewolf and (shudder) changing breeds, where you can tell he's really getting off about talking about how great these animal people are and how wonderful it must be to be in tune with nature, when he's not just obliquely talking about sexy rabbit people and rules that force you to poo poo on someone's carpet for smoking. There was that time he wrote the Abrahamic god as "the Patriarch", an evil woman-hater created by the Weaver. I believe he also, at one point, cut a spell from being described in an oMage supplement because he was afraid that someone might do actual, real-world magick with it.
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Jun 23, 2015 21:01
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LatwPIAT posted:There was that time he wrote the Abrahamic god as "the Patriarch", an evil woman-hater created by the Weaver. I believe he also, at one point, cut a spell from being described in an oMage supplement because he was afraid that someone might do actual, real-world magick with it. tl,dr: Brucato and Jack Chick agree about D&D, they just think they're on different sides.
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Jun 23, 2015 21:03
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LatwPIAT posted:There was that time he wrote the Abrahamic god as "the Patriarch", an evil woman-hater created by the Weaver. That's what I was referencing, and it was a Wyrm spirit formed out of all the rage that men felt at women being superior to them and better at everything in every way. Also he was way harder on the Islamic branch of the abrahamic faiths than he was on the Judeochristian branches. Because of the whole 'covering the female body' thing.
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Jun 23, 2015 21:07
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LatwPIAT posted:There was that time he wrote the Abrahamic god as "the Patriarch", an evil woman-hater created by the Weaver. I believe he also, at one point, cut a spell from being described in an oMage supplement because he was afraid that someone might do actual, real-world magick with it. If I recall correctly, it wasn't a particular spell so much as the broad trappings and practices of all the various Traditions in 2E. Some writer, I guess Brucato, was worried that too-accurate descriptions of magical rituals and paraphernalia might lead to unintentional spellcasting at the game table, and that's why the Traditions were extremely light on real-world historical detail and tended to come off as kind of generic, mythologized versions of themselves. It was Revised that started working to tie the Traditions more closely to actual historical traditions.
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Jun 23, 2015 21:18
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I believe it was specifically the paradigms he left out, that is to say, any explanation of how the magic of a given group is supposed to work. (Note: in Ascension this information is kind of crucial)
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Jun 23, 2015 22:24
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Ferrinus posted:If I recall correctly, it wasn't a particular spell so much as the broad trappings and practices of all the various Traditions in 2E. Some writer, I guess Brucato, was worried that too-accurate descriptions of magical rituals and paraphernalia might lead to unintentional spellcasting at the game table, and that's why the Traditions were extremely light on real-world historical detail and tended to come off as kind of generic, mythologized versions of themselves. It was Revised that started working to tie the Traditions more closely to actual historical traditions. This shows up in the sidebar about Nephandi in M20 that more or less says that while Nephandi can technically be played or made somewhat sympathetic, the principles of real world magick mean that you'll become a horrible monster yourself IRL if you do so, and that's exactly what they want. Brucato sometimes reminds me of Grant Morrison without any of the deranged charisma.
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Jun 23, 2015 22:46
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Daeren posted:This shows up in the sidebar about Nephandi in M20 that more or less says that while Nephandi can technically be played or made somewhat sympathetic, the principles of real world magick mean that you'll become a horrible monster yourself IRL if you do so, and that's exactly what they want. Okay, I want a quote or screenshot of this.
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Jun 23, 2015 22:59
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What does that say about Satyros Brucato that the Satyrs in changing breeds are all satanic hermaprhodite sex god(desses)?
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Jun 23, 2015 23:03
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Mors Rattus posted:Okay, I want a quote or screenshot of this.  Kurieg posted:What does that say about Satyros Brucato that the Satyrs in changing breeds are all satanic hermaprhodite sex god(desses)? Well, he's been a contributing author to no less than three books about love, sex, and paganism/magick, so.
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Jun 23, 2015 23:18
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That's loving amazing. Also, I wonder why Phil isn't worried about the mind and soul of the ST.
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Jun 23, 2015 23:23
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Mors Rattus posted:That's loving amazing. He'd probably say that the ST advice section is actually a magickal spell to protect Storytellers from having to adopt so many potentially dangerous roles, if I had to guess. You think I'm being flippant? quote:Writings, Inscriptions, and Runes: Writing is a magickal act. Long before literacy became a common trait, the man or woman who could read and write understood the secret lore of texts and scriptures. Even now, the act of physically writing something down (or carving or engraving it into a surface) gives that magick a sense of permanence. It was for this art that Odin hanged himself on the World Tree, that Chinese calligraphers spent their days in meditative bliss, that monks and friars, scribes and nuns devoted themselves to copying holy words in sacred texts. And even now, a smart blog post or text message can change somebody’s world. True, there’s a huge difference between cutting bloody runes in your flesh, scribing an illuminated scripture, and texting a Twitter observation. Any and all of these methods, though, can focus magickal intentions. Hell, even writing a roleplaying book could be considered an act of Will… This is why I said he sometimes reminds me of Grant Morrison. Go look up Ultra Comics #1 by Grant Morrison, or interviews about The Invisibles. Dude literally believes his comics are chaos magic in motion, and the results are as brain-fuckingly hilarious/weird as that sounds. I take it back, somewhat. There's an earnest sort of charm in this sort of thing, so long as you don't think too much about how deep it is in the crazy-weeds.
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Jun 23, 2015 23:40
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Mors Rattus posted:That's loving amazing. Anyone with the wit and will to run Mage is clearly empowered by an Avatar IRL.
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Jun 23, 2015 23:40
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Attorney at Funk posted:Anyone with the wit and will to run Mage is clearly empowered by an Avatar IRL. I take that as a challenge
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Jun 24, 2015 00:44
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I think I've pinned why Heroes don't read right as hate groups. In the whole Beast slightly-obtuse-metaphor melange, Heroes are meant to represent fringe-y hate group members -- they're supposed to be GamerGate or TERFs or MRAs, etc. They're a manifestation of a larger cultural bias (the whole Monomyth bit -- "the camera owes allegiance to his shallow perspective" et al. -- is being written as equivalent to existing oppressive cultural norms, a narrative that occasionally spits out people who think you deserve to die because you frighten them). Ultimately, they're (supposedly) less a threat because of the power they wield in and of themselves, and more because culture is overly permissive of them (i.e. gives them mythic superpowers) and hard on their victims (gives them mythic weaknesses). The thing is that Heroes don't actually get the support of their culture, tacit or otherwise. Beastliness is totally invisible, and Beasts have the advantages of fear control plus the advantages of always-on gently caress-off armor, agg fire, murder claws and always being on familiar turf. They feed off a public that has no idea that they exist, one that can be dominated into service without too many problems (if you don't want to spend Satiety, just call in your favor from the entrenched conspiracy of vampire power brokers to which you have inherent connections); also, Beasts don't have Integrity or human-like ethics and thus don't have a problem with murder except on philosophical grounds, and even then seem to tolerate murder or psychological assault if it Teaches Values or is used against the Right People. Basically, a Beast has no inherent obstacles to obtaining massive leverage except how he plays his cards. A Hero isn't a symptom of cultural prejudice -- he's a lone crank with a gun. As a coalition, the KKK can be a legitimate threat because they play off existing racism, and the people who conduct Twitter harassment campaigns against women on the internet for having opinions can do so because they play off existing sexism. There's no such thing as Anti-Beast prejudice except among Heroes, who can barely cooperate (or fight in hunting parties -- the book is really inconsistent on this point) It seems likely that being a Hero would increase your chances of getting murdered (see Hashtag #HorrorGate in the first version -- do you expect that guy to survive more than one encounter with a Beast?) and that Beasts, with their access to social resources, would not be the ones on the business end of a campaign of death threats. Hell, look at the basic concept of doxxing -- "I want you to be afraid that someone will come and hurt you or the things you care about." Sounds like the M.O. of a sample character -- Eshmaki Nemesis or Predator, maybe -- and that's on the mild end of the spectrum. Heroes are the fringe groups that everyone laughs at, the neo-monarchists and cultists who get called "fanatics" and "lunatics" on WoD Grimdark Fox News, the loners with no institutional power beyond a few magics, pitted against Amoral Monster Gods and their families of other Amoral Monster Gods. So, basically, Heroes have weak supernatural powers and an ironclad belief in their own righteousness. Beasts have strong supernatural powers, connections to every major supernatural force in the World of Darkness, the power to feed on human fear, vastly superior social resources and very few scruples. If Heroes had some kind of inherent Disquiet-targeting effect -- the power to make accusations against a Beast that people automatically believe, marshaling the angry mob a la Gaston against the Beast's Beast -- that might make some sense. Likewise if Beasts had to be the Other before they became Beasts, for something other than being connected to the Primordial Dream (Hero creates the Beast by deciding that they need someone to hit and subconsciously choosing someone who's already been called abnormal or inhuman to sprout horns). As is, the metaphor only works if you ignore a lot of setting.
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Jun 24, 2015 01:22
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LatwPIAT posted:I did not like the way he appropriated trans identities as something "magickal" in M20. In fairness to Phil, there actually is a very long history of identifying gender transgressive identities and archetypes as possessing some kind of magical nature. Identifying that with the bulk of transgendered people is very weird and very off base, but I don't think it's malicious or even conscious on Brucato's part. He's too busy thinking of two-spirit shamans, the union or inversion of dualistic opposites in their male-female incarnations in the form of mythologically archetypal hermaphroditism, and the evil-eye banishing anasyromenos. We have to remember that Phil is a very specific kind of batshit, which is the IRL dead-serious chaos magician kind. The chaos magic traditions were largely intended as jokes by their authors, tongue-in-cheek playfulness to poke fun at the more 'serious' occultists out there, so it takes a special kind of lunatic to go 'yes, this seems like a legitimate, non-joke thing to devote my life to' above and beyond the kind of lunatic (like myself!) who do that with gnostic and hermetic schools.
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Jun 24, 2015 04:02
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Attorney at Funk posted:Anyone with the wit and will to run Mage is clearly empowered by an Avatar IRL. It's really not that hard. The main things are: 1) Collaborate with the players to do cool things with their Spheres, paradigm and foci. The game has traditionally treated these things as strictures instead of opportunities. While you should apply reasonable limits the main thing you do is help them when they have a half-formed idea. 2) Remind them what Spheres can do. Related to #1, but more general. You remind them they live in a world where people have these capabilities. They can scry on people--but people can scry on them! 3) Counter Spheres with Spheres. The amount of information gathering and general problems solving people can do is prodigious, but the opposition has access to the same abilities, as well as the power to suppress information and throw obstacles of their own in the way. 4) Make the narrative follow the system for Effects. This sidesteps all of the weird physics/silver vs. werewolves/etc. tricks. You want to turn a werewolf into silver? Sure That happens to require Life, Matter, Spirit and enough successes to kill them. You're better off burning them. It's simpler. There are a bunch of other little things, but these are the main ones.
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Jun 24, 2015 04:29
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Yeah, you missed the joke.
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Jun 24, 2015 04:50
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So this is what a Botch looks like on a social roll.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:00
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MalcolmSheppard posted:It's really not that hard. The main things are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-GaXa8tSBE I normally appreciate your posts, but uh. Whoosh.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:05
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I'm loving dying.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:28
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Daeren posted:
So exactly like Grant Morrison then.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:33
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Loomer posted:The chaos magic traditions were largely intended as jokes by their authors, tongue-in-cheek playfulness to poke fun at the more 'serious' occultists out there, so it takes a special kind of lunatic to go 'yes, this seems like a legitimate, non-joke thing to devote my life to' above and beyond the kind of lunatic (like myself!) who do that with gnostic and hermetic schools. Is that what we're calling The Project now?
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Jun 24, 2015 05:38
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Androc posted:Is that what we're calling The Project now? No, that still goes by the project moniker of MKWASTINGMYLIFE.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:41
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Kavak posted:I'm loving dying. This paints Changing Breeds in a new, even more disturbing light.
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Jun 24, 2015 05:47
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, you missed the joke. Oh poo poo, I totally did. In my defence, I am asked how to run Ascension over and over and over and over and over and over again, so I kind of have this response canned.
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Jun 24, 2015 06:02
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Kai Tave posted:This paints Changing Breeds in a new, even more disturbing light. quote:He might meditate in the dark, take up dance or athletics, join an occult fellowship or seek out others of his kind. He could adopt an animal companion, draw or paint self portraits of his animal self, make clothes or costumes that match his Nahual or even join a group of "otherkin" - people who believe (sometimes correctly) that they're not entirely human. quote:Who better to chose as a feral tribe than people who already believe they're animals at heart? Whether they take the idea seriously or regard it as a playful kink, furries and various therians(People who feel like animals at heart) envision themselves as non-human souls trapped in human form. They share a feral's deep affinity for certain beasts and animal behavior. True, the furries and therians' idea of "animal" is often idealized, but such folks make excellent friends for people with truly wild hearts... so long as they don't wind up with real hearts bleeding on their living room floors *Yeah that's a thing
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Jun 24, 2015 06:32
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Oh poo poo, I totally did. In my defence, I am asked how to run Ascension over and over and over and over and over and over again, so I kind of have this response canned. Yeah, entering a fugue state and rattling out a hollow litany of how to make Ascension function when provided with even remotely appropriate stimuli is pretty understandable.
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Jun 24, 2015 06:37
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Daeren posted:Yeah, entering a fugue state and rattling out a hollow litany of how to make Ascension function when provided with even remotely appropriate stimuli is pretty understandable. I don't think it's hollow. People seriously think that you can't run mystery-focused games, for instance, because they never think that maybe the other side might magick up something to lead them astray. Plus I've been in games with grating "Justify that according to your paradigm" inquisitions that halt play, instead of STs who want to help make cool things happen. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Jun 24, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 06:42
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Sorry to break away from the meta-chat, but I wanted to run some Quintessences by you to see if they were feasible. Death: Soul of a vampire. (Im thinking Golconda vampire here) Life: Remade man, reborn. (Promethium who has become a real person again) Mind: Literally a third eye.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:05
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DJ Dizzy posted:Sorry to break away from the meta-chat, but I wanted to run some Quintessences by you to see if they were feasible. Certainly all cool things. What spells are they for (or are they threshold quintessences)?
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Jun 24, 2015 14:18
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DJ Dizzy posted:Sorry to break away from the meta-chat, but I wanted to run some Quintessences by you to see if they were feasible.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:23
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I have no idea. Maybe just to achieve archmastery in the first place. And the Mind one, I do mean an actual Third Eye, as in the mystical Third Eye, so life wouldn't be able to whip one up.
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Jun 24, 2015 14:27
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