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Zereth posted:Didn't they rather inconsistently walk things back and there's a couple of things that only really make sense if you know what the initial reveal was like? Yes, the edits stop almost completely after the first chapter, it's justification for "teaching lessons" is almost completely forgotten, and it falls back on the excuse of "Well, if you leave their bloody mutilated corpse in a high traffic area then someone will probably learn a lesson. So you're good." It still inconsistently refers to the homecoming instead of the devouring, says that you're born instead of made, etc. The only other major later changes I know of is that the table no longer shifts uncomfortably at granny torture, the st just gets a little uneasy. The high schooler she tortures is now a frat boy (making his own actions even more inscrutable). And there's references in sleeping beauty's text to the fact that she might not actually be a hero at all, but instead she ran away from her devouring, and if the PC's finish the job she'll pop back to her body as a proper beast. Therefore removing all nuance of having sympathetic heroes.
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Feb 25, 2016 07:54
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Bedlamdan posted:I still think that, with a bit of touching up, there is definitely a market for rpgs like Beast, where the purpose of the game ends at pandering to people's belief systems and giving them an attaboy. There's a market for lots of things that are bad, Bedlamdan. It's not our duty as consumers to morally support the business plans of people who are trying to sell us stuff.
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Feb 25, 2016 07:54
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Kai Tave posted:One of the sample NPCs is (was?) the disembodied astral form of a teenage girl who hunts down and kills Beasts after one broke into her home to teach her some kind of (presumably abusive) lesson, but remember she's the bad guy here and if you don't believe that then you're literally Hitler. In the old draft, she went into her forever coma when a Beast broke into her house to rob her, because she had something he wanted, and that made it his. (That is the actual lead quote for the two-page Collector splash, even post-revision.) In the new draft, she went into her forever coma because some Beast somewhere didn't eat enough abuse, and when that happens their otherkin Beast soul goes off and gives people nightmares. The new draft is like "okay, Melanie's clearly not really the bad guy here, but that probably means that if you listened to her and got her out of coma land she'd stop being a Hero, and maybe she's actually a putative Beast and you can help her find her Beast soul!" Also one of her Willpower-refreshing Anchors is Comatose. She can refresh her Willpower if she backs down from the quest so that she can be more comatose. There's a short paragraph about her Comatose Anchor and it doesn't even try to explain how it works.
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Feb 25, 2016 07:55
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Attorney at Funk posted:There's a market for lots of things that are bad, Bedlamdan. It's not our duty as consumers to morally support the business plans of people who are trying to sell us stuff. Well, yes! This is very much a true thing. But I just think Beast is operating with a great deal more savvy than we give it credit for.
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Feb 25, 2016 07:59
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Bedlamdan posted:Well, yes! This is very much a true thing. If I thought Beast was just stupid as opposed to malevolent pandering I don't think I'd care any more about it than, like, the people who think Homestuck characters live in their head.
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Feb 25, 2016 08:02
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Attorney at Funk posted:If I thought Beast was just stupid as opposed to malevolent pandering I don't think I'd care any more about it than, like, the people who think Homestuck characters live in their head. That is fair. Unfortunately for me, I care about the people who think Homestuck characters live in their head and sometimes read about them to a degree that it leaves me less room for more important things. This may be where our biggest disconnect lies.
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Feb 25, 2016 08:08
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Attorney at Funk posted:If I thought Beast was just stupid as opposed to malevolent pandering Well hey now, let's give credit where it's due, why can't it be both?
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Feb 25, 2016 08:26
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I'm re-reading Foucault's Pendulum after hearing of Umberto Eco's death, and it's giving me so many different inspirations. I really want to play in/run a mage game full of esoteric mysteries and conspiracies, half of which are completely wrong about stuff. I want to make a Mekhet based on Casaubon, the "Sam Spade of literature".
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Feb 25, 2016 08:39
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Ironslave posted:Yeah, a workshop before I play pretend vampires with a bunch of other people on how I might possibly encounter the other players loving in public and how to deal with it in-character sounds like a great first foot forward. That'll totally sell me on playing Vampire and/or Vampire LARPs and not make me write them off as a bunch of creeps with an infantile obsession with fantasy. Okay, not only is that not really a fair reading, it also fundamentally misunderstands stuff about Nordic Larp. Noone is publicly loving at this larp, if they were you wouldn't deal with it in-charecter, and this is obviously a larp aimed at well-versed nordic larpers before going to a conferance about nordic larping, including transgressive nordic larping. If and when they make Vampire Larps for a broad audience and *those* turn out to be poo poo, then you have a point. I doubt they will, though.
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Feb 25, 2016 09:02
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Kai Tave posted:The tl;dr of Beast is you play an abuser whose actions are vindicated by the authorial voice telling you that your abuses are good ones, also you're a stand-in for minorities? Which makes you the good guys! Except you abuse people, like poisoning Halloween candy or maybe just psychologically abusing people. Also if you think Beast is bad then you're a fedora-wearing MRA shitlord who should literally go kill yourself. One of the sample NPCs is (was?) the disembodied astral form of a teenage girl who hunts down and kills Beasts after one broke into her home to teach her some kind of (presumably abusive) lesson, but remember she's the bad guy here and if you don't believe that then you're literally Hitler. How did WoD get like this? What authors are responsible and why can't they bring back the good ones (evidently Exalted can't find their good artists with both hands but hey).
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Feb 25, 2016 11:04
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Magnusth posted:There are many different, semi-overlapping Larps Scenes in europe. That said, i've never encountered a 'no touching' rule in any of them. That said, this is on the pretty, hm 'extreme' side of nordic larping, but i don't actually think there's even the slightest thing to be worried about here, just a PR misstep. The general larping guidelines or rules or whatever likely won't be anything near this far on the 'social extremesports' sliding scale. Every mainstream non-private LARP I know about in the UK has a no-touching rule. It's usually clarified as more "consent to touch cannot be assumed so don't do it to people you don't know without asking. Be aware, don't be a creep" than a super strict "girls and boys must stay six feet apart at all times" but it's still there.
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Feb 25, 2016 13:17
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Helical Nightmares posted:How did WoD get like this? What authors are responsible and why can't they bring back the good ones (evidently Exalted can't find their good artists with both hands but hey). Oddly, the people involved in that are some of the better WoD authors in general and have done great work before.
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Feb 25, 2016 13:41
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Loomer posted:Oddly, the people involved in that are some of the better WoD authors in general and have done great work before. I feel like Beast is a product of that thing where you have an idea in your head that's cool, then you write it down, and it's not the same idea but you react badly to criticism of the idea in-text because it's an attack of the idea in-head. Like, I'm sure this isn't meant to be the game that makes clear that the gay people stand-in victimises children, but that's the product, and it's not getting changed massively because it's someone's brainchild.
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Feb 25, 2016 14:03
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spectralent posted:I feel like Beast is a product of that thing where you have an idea in your head that's cool, then you write it down, and it's not the same idea but you react badly to criticism of the idea in-text because it's an attack of the idea in-head. Like, I'm sure this isn't meant to be the game that makes clear that the gay people stand-in victimises children, but that's the product, and it's not getting changed massively because it's someone's brainchild. Pretty much. Matt McFarland, Beast's designer, has a very personal stake in a lot of it that's blinded him to the unintended implications of the text. There's also the not-so-unintended groaners like Heroes literally being described as MRAs.
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Feb 25, 2016 14:11
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Sometimes I feel like he's trying to win a bet. Or the rest of us lost one.
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Feb 25, 2016 14:22
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Magnusth posted:Okay, not only is that not really a fair reading, it also fundamentally misunderstands stuff about Nordic Larp. Noone is publicly loving at this larp, if they were you wouldn't deal with it in-charecter, and this is obviously a larp aimed at well-versed nordic larpers before going to a conferance about nordic larping, including transgressive nordic larping. If and when they make Vampire Larps for a broad audience and *those* turn out to be poo poo, then you have a point. I doubt they will, though. Look, I can't claim to be familiar with nordic LARP, living in the limp dick of the USA, but the words "I doubt any actual sex is going to happen" should probably not be encountered anywhere outside of a discussion of an upcoming porn or bondage convention, or when discussing the will-they-won't-they couple on your favorite TV show. Much less talks about meta techniques to simulate loving. Especially at what is an official event which is supposed to represent the company, its new ownership, and its IPs.
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Feb 25, 2016 15:23
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Kurieg posted:Even if they handle this with the utmost care and consideration this seems like a strangely desperate gambit. This is their first official larp to "set the tone", and they don't want people who have experience with Vampire, they want people who are comfortable with having sex and doing drugs and all sorts of other debauchery in public. Apparently because they want media attention and photos. I'm following this LARP's development right now and I haven't read anything about Rules for loving. Talking to organizer Juhanna Patterson there's a lot of chat about College of Wizardry, the mood of the LARP, etc. Honestly, I think this is totally necessary. MET is a machine that grinds out results for the large org-play groups it was designed for, and experimenting with alternatives is something you'll need to get interest from people outside of that culture.
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Feb 25, 2016 15:58
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I've never been to a LARP but I imagine about 30% of the point of doing a Vampire setting like this is so nerds can hook up with eachother and I don't really see the problem there but then all my flatmates in Uni were divided between the Drama and Musical Theatre societies and would have parties round our house that were like the last days of Rome.
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Feb 25, 2016 16:01
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I understand that it's mostly pagentry and presentation now, but that's because I have had a bunch of people explain to me about what Nordic Larp is. The problem is that I needed that explained to me and this is going out to a lot of people in the English speaking world now. Most of whom are going "What the gently caress?" In character or not, the fact that the two rules are "Do what you want, and no holding back" combined with the emphasis on rules for sex and drugs(Even if they're simulated) is(and should) set off alarm bells. Particularly if they're trying to export this style of larp elsewhere in the world. Which also kind of begs the question why isn't nuWolf tapping OPP for some of their experience with the global White Wolf community, and especially their ability to email every white wolf Kickstarter backer. Or hiring a PR guy who can tell them "Guys what you're saying has connotations." Kavak posted:Pretty much. Matt McFarland, Beast's designer, has a very personal stake in a lot of it that's blinded him to the unintended implications of the text. There's also the not-so-unintended groaners like Heroes literally being described as MRAs. I think Matt really wanted to give marginalized groups a game that they can point at and go "This is for me." and allows them to attack their assumed oppressors, and integrate themselves with other societies. The unfortunate connotations are secondary to that. The problem for everyone else is that the unfortunate connotations are blindingly obvious and very unfortunate. If a hero tags you then to get rid of it you're probably going to have to kill someone in a feed, meaning the heroes are right about beasts and thanks to the "othered vs MRA's" theme the MRAs are right about margianlized groups? Yes you can integrate yourself with the werewolves and the vampires and the changelings, but they don't have a choice in the matter. The rules force them to like you no matter how much of a scumbag you are or how much murdering you do. And the hungers beasts have are all about either murder or theft(Both of items and of power), meaning that most of your lessons take the form of "Billy did something bad, then billy was tortured and almost murdered, maybe you shouldn't do bad things."
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Feb 25, 2016 16:34
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Helical Nightmares posted:How did WoD get like this? What authors are responsible and why can't they bring back the good ones (evidently Exalted can't find their good artists with both hands but hey). I checked the White Wolf Wikia, and it turns out that while most nWoD 1e core books have a credited Concept & Design team (sometimes three!) and a long list of writers, late-period 1e and 2e titles don't have anyone credited for Concept & Design, and the pool of writers is smaller, if there aren't fewer writers working on a project overall. In addition to a lot of writers no longer doing work for White Wolf/OPP. For example, compare Changeling: the Lost to Mummy: the Cursed: Changeling Concept & Design: Kelley Barnes-Herman, Bill Bridges, Will Hindmarsh, Conrad Hubbard, Aileen E. Miles, Ethan Skemp, Richard Thomas, Mike Todd, Aaron Voss, Zack Walters, Fred Yelk and Jennifer Young Writers: Justin Achilli, Joseph Carriker, Jess Hartley, Wood Ingham, Matthew McFarland, Peter Schaefer, John Snead, Travis Stout, Chuck Wendig, Peter Woodworth Developer: Ethan Skemp Mummy Concept & Design: C.A. Suleiman Writers: David Brookshaw, Michael Goodwin, George Holochwost, Khaldoun Khelil, Ari Marmell, Malcolm Sheppard, Greg Stolze, C.A. Suleiman Developer: C.A. Suleiman New Demon has been generally well received: Demon Concept & Design: none listed Writers: Dave Brookshaw, N. Conte, Susann Hessen, David A Hill Jr, Alec Humphrey, Danielle Lauzon, Michelle Lyons-McFarland, Matthew McFarland, Mark Stone, Travis Stout, Stew Wilson, Eric Zawadzki Developers: Rose Bailey and Matthew McFarland We can also compare VTR 1e to 2e: Vampire 1e Concept & Design: Justin Achilli, Philippe Boulle, Bill Bridges, Dean Burnham, Ken Cliffe, Conrad Hubbard, Mike Lee, Chris McDonough, Ethan Skemp, Richard Thomas, Mike Tinney, Stephan Wieck, Stewart Wieck, Frederick Yelk Concept & Design, stage 2: Justin Achilli, Bill Bridges, Ken Cliffe, Chris McDonough, Mike Tinney, Aaron Voss, Frederick Yelk Concept & Design, stage 3: Justin Achilli, Bill Bridges, Ken Cliffe, Conrad Hubbard, Chris McDonough, Mike Tinney, Aaron Voss, Frederick Yelk Concept & Design, additional: Carl Bowen, John Chambers, Matthew McFarland Writers: Ari Marmell, Dean Shomshak, C. A. Suleiman Developer: Justin Achilli Vampire 2e Concept & Design: none listed Writers: Rose Bailey, David Brookshaw, N. Conte, Joshua Alan Doetsch, Elizabeth Greenberg, Susann Hessen, David A Hill Jr, Alec Humphrey, Wood Ingham, Audrey Whitman, Stew Wilson, Filamena Young Developer: Rose Bailey In short, it seems like a dedicated "concept & design"-process has been entirely dropped from the making of nWoD titles, and there's been a reduction in the number of available writers such that the same names appear a lot. Some people also don't do work for WW/OPP anymore: Bill Bridges, Conrad Hubbard, Justin Achilli, Mike Todd, Will Hindmarsh... Of course, Alan Alexander is also on the list of people who don't write core books for OPP anymore, so not working for OPP is not a sign of quality, but I found it telling that the obvious differences between the nWoD books I like, and the nWoD books I think are badly written poo poo, is the absence of Concept & Design credits, a reduction in team sizes, and the absence of several prolific writers/designers.
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Feb 25, 2016 16:40
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While I wouldn't say the 2E nWoD is "complete poo poo", they are a lot more uneven than their 1E counterpart so far. While there have been a few rules change I really like, there's also been a lot that I really don't like, and the power creep/unbalacing of a lot of powers ticks me off. Back in 2004, the lower power level of the nWoD was a selling point! I also feel that the "fluff" writing has become more uneven. BvD and Shapechangers aside, 1E usually managed a pretty good level of quality and tone in the fluff, and some of the sections in Blood and Smoke really felt out of place and cringey.
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Feb 25, 2016 17:04
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Kurieg posted:I think Matt really wanted to give marginalized groups a game that they can point at and go "This is for me." and allows them to attack their assumed oppressors, and integrate themselves with other societies. The unfortunate connotations are secondary to that. The problem for everyone else is that the unfortunate connotations are blindingly obvious and very unfortunate. If a hero tags you then to get rid of it you're probably going to have to kill someone in a feed, meaning the heroes are right about beasts and thanks to the "othered vs MRA's" theme the MRAs are right about margianlized groups? Yes you can integrate yourself with the werewolves and the vampires and the changelings, but they don't have a choice in the matter. The rules force them to like you no matter how much of a scumbag you are or how much murdering you do. And the hungers beasts have are all about either murder or theft(Both of items and of power), meaning that most of your lessons take the form of "Billy did something bad, then billy was tortured and almost murdered, maybe you shouldn't do bad things." Beast remains the most fascinating mess to pick at because groups like MRAs so frequently adopt the language of marginalized groups, which the book replicates flawlessly on behalf of the Beasts. The book is constantly railing on about oppressed Beasts who suffer no oppression at all. They're supposedly the ostracized group yet others are compelled to welcome them and befriend them wherever they go. They're the victims of those meanie Heroes, when in truth Beasts are habitual abusers who relish causing pain. It's amazing the whole thing came together like it did by accident.
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Feb 25, 2016 17:13
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LatwPIAT posted:
Yeah I mean I haven't been following this for too long but the 2e Vampire book is pretty good its just not particularly coherent. The rules are tight once you can peice them together but it feels a little like they went "oh its a sandbox, you know, whatever!" for most of the setting which I'm cool with but its not handled as well as, say, Dark Sun or something (don't know much about DS either but the setting grabs me by the balls). I'm still excited to play it but its not like the previous edition of call of cthulhu where I read the rulebook front to back in one sitting like "holy poo poo yes" and understood the rules immediately.
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Feb 25, 2016 17:20
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LatwPIAT posted:In short, it seems like a dedicated "concept & design"-process has been entirely dropped from the making of nWoD titles, and there's been a reduction in the number of available writers such that the same names appear a lot. Some people also don't do work for WW/OPP anymore: Bill Bridges, Conrad Hubbard, Justin Achilli, Mike Todd, Will Hindmarsh... Of course, Alan Alexander is also on the list of people who don't write core books for OPP anymore, so not working for OPP is not a sign of quality, but I found it telling that the obvious differences between the nWoD books I like, and the nWoD books I think are badly written poo poo, is the absence of Concept & Design credits, a reduction in team sizes, and the absence of several prolific writers/designers. All of the 2e games have had what I would call a Concept and Design phase - Requiem, Forsaken, and Awakening especially. What's changed is that it's the same people as the writers, so there's no need to credit them separately. For example, on Awakening 2e I had a large pool of writers who went through every concept in the gameline, discussing ideas and designing mechanics, before I then wrote the setting bible and work actually writing the book began. It took about a year, and only two writers had to be added to that group to form the final writing team. I am currently kicking concept and design work for Deviant around, before having hired any writers. On mummy I was one of those late hires, after the game had been designed but before it had been written. So.. No, I'm afraid it's just a change between how White Wolf laid out their credits pages and how Onyx Path do.
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Feb 25, 2016 17:32
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I don't want to sound too negative when comparing the first and second editions of the nWoD, especially since I'm very much not objective on this subject. The time period 2003-2004 is when I started really getting into gaming, and I've been following the nWoD since it's start. I'm really emotionally invested in it.
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Feb 25, 2016 18:33
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Ironslave posted:Look, I can't claim to be familiar with nordic LARP, living in the limp dick of the USA, but the words "I doubt any actual sex is going to happen" should probably not be encountered anywhere outside of a discussion of an upcoming porn or bondage convention, or when discussing the will-they-won't-they couple on your favorite TV show. Much less talks about meta techniques to simulate loving. Especially at what is an official event which is supposed to represent the company, its new ownership, and its IPs. Okay, after reading through the full documentation, i'm pretty loving certain that no sex is going t happen. That said, i don't get your hangup regarding the very idea of simulating sex at a larp. If you're at a larp where sexuality is in some way a theme - which is true of basicly any vampire larp - and your audience is old enough to explore that in very much playing your game For The Art, - or hell, even if the game just incidentially happens to be artsy or encurage play around that area - then having some way to play with or around sex probably a good thing, no? quote:I'm following this LARP's development right now and I haven't read anything about Rules for loving. Talking to organizer Juhanna Patterson there's a lot of chat about College of Wizardry, the mood of the LARP, etc. Honestly, I think this is totally necessary. MET is a machine that grinds out results for the large org-play groups it was designed for, and experimenting with alternatives is something you'll need to get interest from people outside of that culture. Well, from the blurb earlier: "Together, we will try out new mechanics and methods to simulate classic vampire things blood drinking, sex and supernatural abilities." So yeah, why wouldn't there be? quote:I've never been to a LARP but I imagine about 30% of the point of doing a Vampire setting like this is so nerds can hook up with eachother and I don't really see the problem there but then all my flatmates in Uni were divided between the Drama and Musical Theatre societies and would have parties round our house that were like the last days of Rome. While Nordic Larp is closely related to theatre and drama, this isn't what *this* larp is for. After all, the participants are going to be spending the next week in finland and the following on a boat. quote:I understand that it's mostly pagentry and presentation now, but that's because I have had a bunch of people explain to me about what Nordic Larp is. How was it explained to you? i tend to find that it's very hard to explain nordic larp. Also, this was probably never meant for public consumption.
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Feb 25, 2016 18:49
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Dave Brookshaw posted:All of the 2e games have had what I would call a Concept and Design phase - Requiem, Forsaken, and Awakening especially. What's changed is that it's the same people as the writers, so there's no need to credit them separately. Well there you are, then. You have, for starters, got half as many people. Also, since the writers and designers are the same people, it'd be a lot easier for the guy who came up with a pet idea to just write the pet idea without the process forcing on the team a serious period of scrutiny and revision because different people with different levels of understanding or enthusiasm are responsible for getting it down on paper in a legible form. I was active on the White Wolf forums for the early/middle parts of Requiem 2E's development, and it seemed like every (or at least more than half) rules preview shown to us ended up changing at least slightly (but sometimes dramatically) based on response/pressure from the fanbase. I don't think that's because the ideas people or the writing people were bad at their jobs on their own, but it spoke to a less intense or consistent crucible of internal judgment and review than there was in the past. Like, the idea of an intermediate state between fighting in the Gauru form and full-on kill-your-pack kuruth sounds fine to me, but it's amazing to me that at no point someone on the Forsaken team wrote a post like Kibner's, showed it to someone with some kind of separate executive authority, and received a response along the lines of "okay, no, wait."
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Feb 25, 2016 18:54
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MonsieurChoc posted:I don't want to sound too negative when comparing the first and second editions of the nWoD, especially since I'm very much not objective on this subject. The time period 2003-2004 is when I started really getting into gaming, and I've been following the nWoD since it's start. I'm really emotionally invested in it. This is also me when it comes to new World of Darkness. Overall, I'm a big fan of 2E. I really love all the new flavor for Forsaken especially, and Demon is one of my favorite games. A lot of the shift in flavor and presentation for Requiem though, which I felt started in Danse Macabre, turned me off. I got over it, putting it aside as me being a grognard. but I still prefer overall the more muted presentation I remember from the original Requiem corebook, and the larger focus on a Gothic horror theme, which is what made Requiem my favorite game period in the first place. Not that I can't basically play the same game, in fact some things in 2E make it better, and some aspects feel like they have a more solid identity, but it also feels slightly more uneven in the end.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:04
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Kurieg posted:I understand that it's mostly pagentry and presentation now, but that's because I have had a bunch of people explain to me about what Nordic Larp is. The problem is that I needed that explained to me and this is going out to a lot of people in the English speaking world now. Most of whom are going "What the gently caress?" In character or not, the fact that the two rules are "Do what you want, and no holding back" combined with the emphasis on rules for sex and drugs(Even if they're simulated) is(and should) set off alarm bells. Particularly if they're trying to export this style of larp elsewhere in the world. 1) I think some of the biggest American Nordic evangelists tend to go on about how EXTREME it is, and also about how Very Grown Up it is, while you find a variety of opinions that are somewhat more relaxed otherwise. Honestly, I get the feeling that folks falling all over themselves about Bleed is considered So Over or whatever. 2) The LARPs Ericsson talks about the most in relation to WW are College of Wizardry and Celestra, which are notable because of the production values and immersion, not because of any banging. Reducing everything to what is happening in the art-forward/fringe end is like saying watch out, all movies might be Salò. Christ's sakes. The most extreme thing described in the Vampire LARP so far is a note not to wear your really nice clothes because they might get dirty and scuffed. There's also a vague intimation that things might look all Blade movie club scene because hey, it was nicked from WW in the first place. (Seriously, they hired Bradstreet for Blade 2.) 3) The same folks doing art LARP also do highly mainstream LARP for promotional purposes, as education, for all kinds of reasons. I'm pretty sure they can do both loving and Non-loving LARPs geared for the intended audience. Once thing this crew seems to be quite good at is setting expectations, which is a step up from some of the MET things I've done where you get told you'll be involved in vampire intrigue but you'll actually be frozen out of plots and/or beaten up by folks with more powerful characters (and who get powerful characters again, if killed) over and over again. Sex is a part of the modern vampire myth, but that doesn't need to manifest as some sort of dry humping. The whole point is probably to find something that is neither humping nor having a stonefaced roshambo party, MET style. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Feb 25, 2016 |
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Feb 25, 2016 19:13
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Calde posted:Beast remains the most fascinating mess to pick at because groups like MRAs so frequently adopt the language of marginalized groups, which the book replicates flawlessly on behalf of the Beasts. The book is constantly railing on about oppressed Beasts who suffer no oppression at all. They're supposedly the ostracized group yet others are compelled to welcome them and befriend them wherever they go. They're the victims of those meanie Heroes, when in truth Beasts are habitual abusers who relish causing pain. I'm reminded of Darryl Ayo's comment about how the X-Men are not really a good for metaphor for black people or homosexuals; they're a great metaphor for gun control. Which, needless to say, angered a lot of people who are very invested in the X-Men as the most progressive comic ever, and clearly no other reading of the characters is possible, not even by someone who they are supposed to represent.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:14
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The process for 2e did have differences compared to 1e because, well, 1e involved doing a shitload of work 2e didn't have to. For example, the first versions of 1e involved radical differences from both CWoD and what was eventually released. We went through three different iterations of the dice pool system. Physical appearance was the subject of an intense discussion. There used to be a rule that let anybody take a second action if they suffered 1B damage. The setting for the games were redeveloped multiple times. As I mentioned before, I think we did a total of three mostly-complete versions of Mage. Even brand new games benefit from the enormous amount of basic work that was done from 2002/2003 to the original then NWoD core release. This is similar to the Storypath games, which are essentially ground up redesigns with a new system. You'll see a lot of hands on the tiller for those. But if they too move to an iterative next edition in the 2020s, that probably won't be as labour intensive.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:29
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MalcolmSheppard posted:There used to be a rule that let anybody take a second action if they suffered 1B damage. That's badass.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:41
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MalcolmSheppard posted:The process for 2e did have differences compared to 1e because, well, 1e involved doing a shitload of work 2e didn't have to. For example, the first versions of 1e involved radical differences from both CWoD and what was eventually released. We went through three different iterations of the dice pool system. Physical appearance was the subject of an intense discussion. There used to be a rule that let anybody take a second action if they suffered 1B damage. The setting for the games were redeveloped multiple times. As I mentioned before, I think we did a total of three mostly-complete versions of Mage. Even brand new games benefit from the enormous amount of basic work that was done from 2002/2003 to the original then NWoD core release. Man, I would love to read an in-depth exploration of all that behind-the-scenes stuff.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:49
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I very, very vaguely remember very vague intimations MalcolmSheppard made years ago as to an older version of VtR Celerity that had to be divided up between attack and defense by the turn and nearly caused playtesters to come to blows when used, or something.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:52
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Yeah. When I took over as Awakening line Developer, Rose sent me as many files as she'd recovered from CCP, including some of the early iterations of Mage. I think it's reasonably common knowledge that the Atlantis backstory was added reasonably late on, which is why it has a disproportionate prominence in the final book's writing. Imagine a game with no Atlantis, that superficially resembled Ascension but where Ascension is fuzzy about what happens when mages shed their paradigms, this has the Orders and Seers of the Throne as the secret inner circles of the Trads and Technocracy, with membership made up of those who've made the realization. That was one of the prototype Awakenings. (I think it would have been horrendously over-complicated myself.) They experimented with having seven Arcana, nine Arcana (keeping Fate and Death but ditching Prime), all kinds of things.
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Feb 25, 2016 19:58
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Imagine a game with no Atlantis, that superficially resembled Ascension but where Ascension is fuzzy about what happens when mages shed their paradigms, this has the Orders and Seers of the Throne as the secret inner circles of the Trads and Technocracy, with membership made up of those who've made the realization. That was one of the prototype Awakenings. (I think it would have been horrendously over-complicated myself.) hosed up that this is identical to the Awakening we actually have.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:00
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And Malcolm's not wrong about Storypath. It's been chugging along for about as long as Awakening 2 has - three years, give or take. The system was finally delivered to Scion and Trinity last month, but it had several iterations. I was a designer for part of it, one of a triumvirate of Developers for one phase, and a beta-reader for the end run. I expect you'll see it credited separately in Trinity and Scion's corebooks as "Storypath System by..." or somesuch.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:01
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Yeah. When I took over as Awakening line Developer, Rose sent me as many files as she'd recovered from CCP, including some of the early iterations of Mage. I think it's reasonably common knowledge that the Atlantis backstory was added reasonably late on, which is why it has a disproportionate prominence in the final book's writing. Well, I like the Awakening we have, but when I run Ascension 20th I know what I'm doing with it now.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:01
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Attorney at Funk posted:Well, I like the Awakening we have, but when I run Ascension 20th I know what I'm doing with it now. Yeah. Also the Oracles and Exarchs exist, but paradigm-bound mages don't know about them. It would make an awesome Translation Guide game.
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Feb 25, 2016 20:05
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I'm telling you people, that's just true in Awakening as-is, except the traditionalists and technocrats are actual irl literal traditionalists and technocrats. Also, AaF told me when I showed that to him that that was his actual idea for running Mage20 ahead of seeing these posts, don't let him fool you..!
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Feb 25, 2016 20:07
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