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Idea: mixing Hunter and WoD: Innocents with a bunch of kids and teenagers foiling supernatural plans.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:00
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I don't like the idea of too many artificial / metaphysical blinders in CofD; that feels like the sort of thing that pulls things away from human agency, which strikes me as more of a habit of the oWoD. Of course, things like the God-Machine and the Exarchs put in more of a "cosmic war" element. And fine for folks that want to focus on that, if does make me wonder if there's a meandering away from the more local and personal stories that were the nWoD's strength. At least with the God Machine it keeps it local and personal with the idea that you can not and probably shouldn't go out and try to destroy the entire machine. It is too big, too decentralized, and is also probably keeping everything from splitting apart. It is implied in a lot of fiction and pieces that for all the evil the God Machine does it is also what keeps a lot of things ticking. What you can do is keep the God Machine out of your city and away from your family. Maybe two towns over everyone is still being used for rituals and unwittingly helping it, but at least you made sure your kids and neighbors are safe. Demon plays on this too with the idea of a personal Hell. You can't beat the God Machine but if you are lucky you can escape it.
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Jun 1, 2016 20:25
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jim truds posted:At least with the God Machine it keeps it local and personal with the idea that you can not and probably shouldn't go out and try to destroy the entire machine. It is too big, too decentralized, and is also probably keeping everything from splitting apart. It is implied in a lot of fiction and pieces that for all the evil the God Machine does it is also what keeps a lot of things ticking. What is this Machnist propaganda! The machine must be broken. Going "I am alright" is all very well when you think you can be kept safe, but what happens when you age and find the machine rumbling back to take your grandchildren away. Its messengers have not got older, but you have. Far better to try and crack it open, to pierce the lie and to force it to either change or perish through its own actions.
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Jun 1, 2016 21:00
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MonsieurChoc posted:Idea: mixing Hunter and WoD: Innocents with a bunch of kids and teenagers foiling supernatural plans. So basically scooby doo.
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Jun 1, 2016 21:46
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berenzen posted:So basically scooby doo. Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated featuring Harlan Ellison as himself, secret societies and hidden artifacts, and a literal end of the world scenario
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Jun 1, 2016 21:50
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berenzen posted:So basically scooby doo. Close enough.
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Jun 1, 2016 21:51
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jim truds posted:At least with the God Machine it keeps it local and personal with the idea that you can not and probably shouldn't go out and try to destroy the entire machine. It is too big, too decentralized, and is also probably keeping everything from splitting apart. It is implied in a lot of fiction and pieces that for all the evil the God Machine does it is also what keeps a lot of things ticking. "The God Machine is the worst form of alienating systematized exploitation, except for all the others that have been tried." -Winston Churchill
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Jun 1, 2016 21:56
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Mors Rattus posted:The other thing about the CofD world is that in many ways, the Masquerade/whatever...uh, isn't upheld. People experience weird poo poo and learn to ignore it. They pretend it doesn't happen, or they become hunters. But there's a consistent tone, at least in the mortals and hunter books, that the average person is willfully ignorant, rather than deceived or actually ignorant. It's a thing that exists, and you know it exists, but you pretend it doesn't so you can pretend that your world makes sense.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:25
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You really don't even need the CoD for this. Everyone knows someone who had something weird happen. They lived in a house they thought was haunted, they saw a UFO, Bigfoot ate their cat, whatever. Our actual world we exist in is full of weird poo poo, even if it isn't supernatural. People disappear all the time. Many people around the world actively believe in magic, witchcraft, and spirits as a regular part of their daily lives. Cults really exist, serial killers really exist. The conceit of CoD/WoD/every other occult horror story and game ever is that it's all kind of plausible. In the CoD, all of the fringe weirdo stuff that periodically sweeps the world like ufo sightings and chupacabras or whatever are probably a lot more common. Back in the 90s there were dozens of "unexplained phenomena" TV shows, not to mention stuff like X-Files. The weird was a huge and incredibly popular subject. I imagine in the CoD that level of interest is pretty much the baseline. In the WoD however, interest is a probably a lot lower since there are huge powerful global conspiracies with superpowers actively working to keep people from thinking about that stuff too hard.
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Jun 1, 2016 23:43
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Despite my immense irritation with OPP (I was thinking it was lessening but while looking some stuff up I discovered that Matt is still making front page posts on their site and heavily involved with (leading?) projects, which reaffirmed my decision to not support OPP in any form for the foreseeable future, possibly ever), things like the F&F on Werewolf have rekindled my interest in the WoD. (Or, I guess, the CofD now?) It's making me want to play Demon, or possibly a demon or something in a crossover game like what I described in the F&F thread. Or possibly Promethean, I've been interested in that line for a long time but no one seems to play it. Of course, the problem with that last one is that I really dislike the old nWoD rules and really don't want to play a game with them, while the new ones aren't out, though Matt's heavy influence in it means I won't be getting it anyway. Also apparently my favorite lineage (the Zeka) got cut, which is disappointing, but given the other stuff that doesn't really matter I guess. Josef bugman posted:What is this Machnist propaganda! The machine must be broken. Going "I am alright" is all very well when you think you can be kept safe, but what happens when you age and find the machine rumbling back to take your grandchildren away. Its messengers have not got older, but you have. Far better to try and crack it open, to pierce the lie and to force it to either change or perish through its own actions. The book actually outright says that, in theory, demons could defeat the God-Machine (or, well, ban it from entering Earth, among other options), it's just that the God-Machine is so huge and powerful that it's not an easy goal. Demons are ludicrously powerful themselves, so the creation of some form of Hell, be it through finding or creating another world the God-Machine can't reach or banning or even destroying the Machine isn't impossible. It's not at all easy or simple, and admittedly not particularly likely either. But, provided they don't get themselves killed and can manage to keep making new Covers, demons have all the time they need to work on it.
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Jun 2, 2016 02:35
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MonsieurChoc posted:Idea: mixing Hunter and WoD: Innocents with a bunch of kids and teenagers foiling supernatural plans. There's a pretty decent Apocalypse World hack called "Troublemakers" that can handle this out of the box.
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Jun 2, 2016 06:27
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After watching the LP of SOMA, I wonder if the God-Machine can be run as similar to the WAU in that game. The WAU (Warden Autonomous Unit) is a basic AI that isn't necessarily sapient. It's the life support and security programming for a large undersea research station. Mostly it makes sure the machinery works, and if things break down, it fixes them (with nanomachines called 'Structure Gel'). It had very few directives, basically boiling down to: 1. Keep the humans under its care alive. 2. Keep itself running. 3. Keep the station running. Then a comet crashed into Earth, meaning that the only survivors were on that undersea research station - with plenty of supplies, but, well, that has problems and people suicide or die or fight or whatever. So the WAU starts expanding to try to keep its directives going despite all the craziness. Drawing more power, spreading structure gel to new ends, etc. This might not necessarily be a bad thing except that the definition of humanity it has is not necessarily the same one that most humans have. Cyborg made with structure gel? OK, that seems fair. Someone's lost their lung functions somehow? Structure gel into them, tether them to the wall, but keep them breathing! Uhh... Had a bullet shot through their brain? Shove some gel into their head, turn them into a robo-zombie! OK, this isn't working. Trick people into mentally scanning themselves. Kill the bodies. Then upload the scans into much more durable robot bodies! The WAU's not evil or malicious, it's just trying to keep things, and people, going. It seems similar to the God-Machine that way, in how it tries to protect Earth from existential threats - it's just trying to make sure things keep on keeping on, but the definitions of 'keep things running' that whatever created it started with aren't the ones that are best for individual humans.
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Jun 2, 2016 06:30
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Ferrinus posted:"The God Machine is the worst form of alienating systematized exploitation, except for all the others that have been tried." -Winston Churchill This works on a lot of levels.
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Jun 2, 2016 10:14
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Sometimes, the God-Machine feels like an Adam Curtis documentary given form. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3gwyHNo7MI
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Jun 2, 2016 18:27
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Roland Jones posted:Despite my immense irritation with OPP (I was thinking it was lessening but while looking some stuff up I discovered that Matt is still making front page posts on their site and heavily involved with (leading?) projects, which reaffirmed my decision to not support OPP in any form for the foreseeable future, possibly ever), things like the F&F on Werewolf have rekindled my interest in the WoD. (Or, I guess, the CofD now?) It's making me want to play Demon, or possibly a demon or something in a crossover game like what I described in the F&F thread. Or possibly Promethean, I've been interested in that line for a long time but no one seems to play it. You know Matt McFarland was heavily involved in Demon and wrote for Promethean? Like I guess the current opinion for some in this thread is that Matt's a super-abuser and awful person, which is ironic because for a long time people were ripping on Beast for being too into slagging MRA types and for generally being too concerned with being aggressively progressive, but the level of vitriol is way out of whack in comparison to Beast's actual flaws. Beast is a lovely game with a dumb premise.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:13
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fez_machine posted:You know Matt McFarland was heavily involved in Demon and wrote for Promethean? He also is on the credits (on DTRPG at least) for nMage 2nd, which contributed heavily to my decision not to buy nMage 2nd. Like, I realize that he probably wasn't the main writer, and that quote:Beast is a lovely game with a dumb premise. CaptainRat fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 22:19
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fez_machine posted:You know Matt McFarland was heavily involved in Demon and wrote for Promethean? I'd be way more okay with Matt having written a bad game if his reaction to criticis had been better. Instead he doubled down in the worst way and tried to paint all critics as terrible people. That soured me on Matt, not Beast.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:35
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fez_machine posted:You know Matt McFarland was heavily involved in Demon and wrote for Promethean? Matt wrote Heirs to Hell, which is an amazing book, he was the co-producer on Demon, which is also good. That doesn't give him a free pass to write whatever the hell he wants. And we're not saying that Matt is a super-abuser. We're saying that Beasts are, and that he identifies with them to an absolutely unhealthy degree. To the point that he has, on several occasions, compared his critics to Heroes. In the book, even, he describes the people who disagree with him on message boards as "Heroes in Training". Making your bad guys a thinly veiled pastiche of the most reviled group of people in most modern gamer circles doesn't absolve beasts of the need to objectively evaluate the meaning and implications of their actions. Beasts are describe as doing horrific things to people that can ruin their lives, but they're justified because they're the POV Characters. Heroes are described as doing the exact same things but they're the Designated Bad Guy Splat so it's wrong when they do it. Matt made it very clear that Beasts would be changed, that they would be given a reason to exist, that other splats would be given a more compelling reason to actually want to trust beasts, and that heroes would be toned down and be treated more Sympathetically. But then he doubled-down, made Beasts even more special than before, turned Heroes into a race of people that it's okay to hate, made it so Beasts still compel the other supernaturals to work with them even while they destroy their lives, and openly mocked his detractors for not agreeing with him. I don't hate him because he's a bad person. I don't think I hate him at all. But I'm very disappointed in him because I know he can do better, and I don't trust him anymore.
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Jun 3, 2016 22:58
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Kurieg posted:Matt wrote Heirs to Hell, which is an amazing book, he was the co-producer on Demon, which is also good. That doesn't give him a free pass to write whatever the hell he wants. To clarify the poster I was quoting expressed a disgust about Matt McFarland to the extent that they wouldn't even want to read a blog post by him and then promptly stated that they wanted to play two games made in part by him. Beast as a gameline should not exist.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:08
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fez_machine posted:To clarify the poster I was quoting expressed a disgust about Matt McFarland to the extent that they wouldn't even want to read a blog post by him and then promptly stated that they wanted to play two games made in part by him. That he wrote some decent books in the past is a fact, but I don't think that I would begrudge these people for not wanting to deal with Matt going forward. Since it's obvious that he's not contrite for what he's done at all. And I'm definitely going to be giving any book that he's credited on a more critical eye for his presence.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:19
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I plan on buying the books I like and probably not buy the books I don't like. I hope everyone is cool with that.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:36
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jim truds posted:I plan on buying the books I like and probably not buy the books I don't like. I hope everyone is cool with that. NO! just kidding, buy the books you want to buy. I wanna get pretty much all the books I can get, though probably not Beast. I've been reading and listening to a lot of stuff about Beast and it's like, it could work if: 1.) The Beasts could actually not be fukkin' assholes 2.) Rationalization for the Beasts' actions were left up to the players, but the writing acknowledged that "hey you're playing bad dudes" 3.) The writing acknowledged and accepted that Beasts' actions are awful and heinous and welp in this game you just play villains Like, Gaston as an example for a hero. Great! Except the Beast in Beauty and the Beast wasn't a loving horrible monster who delights in the suffering of others, and if he was, there wouldn't be a narrator butting in screaming "NO THE BEAST IS ACTUALLY GOOD, HE'S NOT EVIL HE'S GOOD" I also would've avoided the whole "MRA Hero, Social Justice Beast" thing completely. Just, nope, not touched it at all. And I would've also not even included that bit about all the other supernaturals automagically liking Beasts, and once again, left that poo poo up to players. From what I've gleaned most other supernaturals would probably not like beasts. Best-case scenario: a Centimani Promethean who likes being a dick might like Beasts, and I could see a Mummy working with a Beast to retrieve a relic from a Hero, but I think the Mummy would also, at best, dislike the Beast. Ultimately Beast is bad an Onyx Path should feel bad. Isn't there a term for when the author asserts that something is good when it's objectively and obviously bad, but no, it's good because I'm the author and I say it's good? FrostyPox fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 3, 2016 23:49
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FrostyPox posted:Isn't there a term for when the author asserts that something is good when it's objectively and obviously bad, but no, it's good because I'm the author and I say it's good? "Show, don't tell?" Or rather its failed opposite, tell, don't show.
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Jun 3, 2016 23:55
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Depends on whether the work appears conscious of its context. If it does, it's contrarianism, acknowledging established trends and bucking them. If it doesn't, it's just being didactic.
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Jun 4, 2016 00:24
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fez_machine posted:You know Matt McFarland was heavily involved in Demon and wrote for Promethean? I am aware, yes. It's what Matt himself said and did during the creation of Beast, and OPP standing behind him while he did it, that really has me upset with them. When people were criticizing his game, many of them were doing so because the horrible abusive protagonists were uncomfortably close to real-life abusers that they knew and situations they experienced. My own complaints, for example, included that as the book was written Beasts were like the real life physical, emotional, and sexual abusers I knew, which made the book's constant justification of their abuse and going on about how their victims (both the normal people and the Heroes, which is what I and other people I know would be in this situation) deserved it rather uncomfortable, to say the least. A lot of people had genuine criticisms of the game for things like this and wanted to tell Matt what his book was coming off as so that it could be less... Utterly abhorrent. Matt heard all these people, and in response, compared them to Gamergaters and MRAs, among other groups. Upon having a lot of abuse victims and other people criticize his project, he decided the appropriate reaction was to compare them to hate groups and abusers themselves, because he needed to defend his ego and his stupid game. And Onyx Path looked at this and did absolutely nothing. The "rewrite" of Beast made the abusive overtones of the game even worse and fixed next to none of the problems with it (it actually removed one of the few compelling aspects of it even, but that's tangential), with Matt doubling down on a lot of the things that were supposed to be changed, and their weasel-worded statement on everything completely neglected to acknowledge what a disgusting person their lead writer was being to their fans and customers. Apparently, comparing abuse victims to the kind of people who abuse them is completely OK with them, because they never said or did anything about this, and he's still writing for them and representing them on their website. Hell, judging from his Promethean posts where he mentions things like "my writers", it sounds like he's leading that project. Multiple people have tried telling me that OPP is upset with Matt, but looking at what they're actually doing I sure as hell don't see it. So, gently caress Onyx Path. If Matt is the kind of person they want representing them and they don't care that he spews that kind of bullshit because he couldn't handle people telling him his game was bad, then I'm not giving them a penny. While firing Matt, releasing a public statement showing they knew what was wrong with Beast and they were actually sorry for all the bullshit it and Matt had caused, and making a rework of it that actually addressed any of the issues the game had would have been ideal, at least they could have done something saying hey, maybe comparing your customers to loving hate groups isn't appropriate and our project lead who is representing us shouldn't do that poo poo. Instead, they decided he should keep representing them and be heavily involved with (possibly outright in charge of) their future projects. So, while I'm not trashing their things I already have, I feel pretty justified in saying I'm never going to buy anything from them again. If that's the kind of company they want to be, then fine. I'm going to have nothing to do with them, and I'm going to tell any friends who are into RPGs to avoid them as well, and tell them exactly why OPP does not deserve their money. It probably won't amount to much, but at this point I consider any lost sale OPP suffers to be a good thing, because they had every chance to do things differently and instead did this. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jun 4, 2016 |
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Jun 4, 2016 01:13
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Huh, I actually wasn't aware of any of this. I thought that "OPP was mad at him" meant back-benching him, not putting him up front on another major project. I've seen other developers straight-up fired for treating fans like that, so yeah I'm definitely puzzled by this. (Do the fans love him enough/not care enough to let this slide? Are goons the outlier here?) I guess I'm going to be thinking very, very hard before I buy any supplements for Mage 2e.
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Jun 4, 2016 02:09
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Honestly, Beast is not a good book but to me it reads like someone's power fantasy. I don't know Matt or anything about his personal life outside of what is shared on Twitter and with Onyx Path. But the first draft read like the power fantasy of someone getting back at their abusers. So I can see why he took all of the criticism very poorly. It doesn't excuse it or make it a good book but it feels more like a book by a damaged person and if you look at the people who are fans of it there are people looking for that power fantasy. Yay cycle of abuse?
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Jun 4, 2016 02:16
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Dave Brookshaw's the developer/lead writer of Mage 2e, if y'all are thinking otherwise. McFarland is, however, lead of Promethean 2e, and that's been the case since before Beast ever went public.
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Jun 4, 2016 02:40
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jim truds posted:I plan on buying the books I like and probably not buy the books I don't like. I hope everyone is cool with that. You monster.
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Jun 4, 2016 02:59
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jim truds posted:Honestly, Beast is not a good book but to me it reads like someone's power fantasy. I don't know Matt or anything about his personal life outside of what is shared on Twitter and with Onyx Path. But the first draft read like the power fantasy of someone getting back at their abusers. So I can see why he took all of the criticism very poorly. It doesn't excuse it or make it a good book but it feels more like a book by a damaged person and if you look at the people who are fans of it there are people looking for that power fantasy. Yay cycle of abuse? That is why I'm not so mad about Beast itself, or at least wasn't initially. It was clear that there was a lot of projection in it, and there was the "Beasts as LGBT and other oppressed groups stand-ins" thing that was incredibly obvious. It was all very understandable, really; it was a personal project that didn't really think about some things and wound up going somewhere unintended and awful. What got to me was, again, how he acted after that, and how OPP, as far as I can tell from the outside, let it all slide. Beast's first draft was unfortunate but understandable, and forgivable. Matt's words and actions after its debut and the finalized version of Beast post-feedback were abhorrent and make me not want to support anything he does. OPP letting it all happen and not doing anything about it or giving any public sign that it gives a drat makes me not want to support anything the company does, regardless of the team involved. Daeren posted:Dave Brookshaw's the developer/lead writer of Mage 2e, if y'all are thinking otherwise. McFarland is, however, lead of Promethean 2e, and that's been the case since before Beast ever went public. Ah. I knew the former, but not the latter, though it does make sense in retrospect. It doesn't make most of what I said any better, but it does explain the apparent discrepancy between "OPP is supposedly upset with Matt" and "Matt is the head of one of their current projects".
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Jun 4, 2016 08:10
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Matt is probably the most senior freelancer - he was Developer for Dark Ages: Vampire back before the CCP buyout. At the moment he's Developer for Wod Changeling (as in, Dreaming 20th Anniversary), Beast, Promethean, and (jointly with Rose Bailey) Demon, but he's got writing credits pretty much everywhere. He also Developed God-Machine Chronicle, so he's responsible for most of the second-ed ruleset (which Stew Wilson, David Hill, and I then wrote). In Mage 2e, he wrote Mage Sight, Summoning, and the Arcanum Attainments. A comparable amount of words with, say, me writing Lairs for Beast or Qashmallim and Firestorms for Promethean. Writers work to their Dev's specifications. That's how rpg writing works. In the 2e Chronicles of Darkness, the Developers are: Vampire The Requiem: Rose Bailey Werewolf The Forsaken: Stew Wilson Mage The Awakening: Me Promethean The Created: Matt Changeling The Lost: David Hill Hunter The Vigil: Monica Valentinelli Demon The Descent: Rose and Matt Beast The Primordial: Matt Deviant The ???: Me
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Jun 4, 2016 08:59
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Roland Jones posted:So, gently caress Onyx Path. If Matt is the kind of person they want representing them and they don't care that he spews that kind of bullshit because he couldn't handle people telling him his game was bad, then I'm not giving them a penny. While firing Matt, releasing a public statement showing they knew what was wrong with Beast and they were actually sorry for all the bullshit it and Matt had caused, and making a rework of it that actually addressed any of the issues the game had would have been ideal, at least they could have done something saying hey, maybe comparing your customers to loving hate groups isn't appropriate and our project lead who is representing us shouldn't do that poo poo. I think firing McFarland over Beast would be pretty harsh, it would be nice with something like a public statement recognizing that the game handled the topic of abuse poorly and in a hurtful manner and that OPP does in fact not silently back comparing all detractors to real-life hate groups. A public apology for the same might also work!
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Jun 4, 2016 11:32
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The problem is that Beast, as people pointed out early, actually brought them money. There is an audience for this kind of thing, which might not take kindly to hearing the thing they liked so much being called a lovely abuse metaphor. In what light does that cast them? Can you as a company afford to do that to your source of revenue? Would the people that aren't going to buy from OPP anymore because of Beast, that would appreciate such a statement enough to become clients, regroup the losses caused by the client base they already have reached? The prudent move from a purely economic standpoint is to keep things the way they are.
paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Jun 4, 2016 |
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Jun 4, 2016 12:45
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The worst part of Beast is how it ignores the foundations of the setting it's building. Like the most interesting part of what it brings to the table is the idea of the Primordial Dream, and the way it interacts with humanity. I'm perfectly fine, in theory, with Beasts as horrific abusers that self-aggrandize the poo poo out of themselves and constantly downplay their flaws and culpability in their actions. They appear to be quite literally the most horrific fears and traumas of humanity given form. Of course they'll be terrible. Of course they look down on Heroes. Those appear to be the things that are designed to kill them. Of course they ignore the fact that the same force that gives them power gives Heroes power. It's all well and good to say that monsters die in stories because people write the stories, it's another to admit that the primal force that empowers you ultimately wants you to be murdered in the end. What the hell can you do with that knowledge but either proceed down the road to your inevitable death or try and buck the narrative? "By the way, you aren't human. You aren't even a monster really. You are a stupid morality play that exists to teach people a lesson and then you are over.". Fundamentally the same would be true of Heroes. They aren't really people, they are just archetypes that fill a role and then move on, possibly to empower another Hero and die. Really you don't want to be any part of a morality play, you want to be in the audience listening. Nothing good happens in them. You could say that Beasts trying to teach lessons is a lesser attempt to short circuit the process behind their creation. If they teach the lesson themselves, they don't have to die to make the point in the end. It'd certainly explain why they took it up as their role even though they have no innate drive to do it. They aren't meant to teach. They are meant to feed their hunger, and be destroyed. Their destruction is the lesson. And all of that is basically in the book, and that'd be fine as is.....if they focused more on it and what it means. Instead they just assume all the poo poo Beasts talk is true, and jump ahead to everyone in the setting loving them because reasons. And even if you are basically a person with a few supernatural tricks you are going to find yourself neutral to them, because they have magic monster date rape powers. No cost, it's just a part of what they are. And then they defang the Heroes mechanically as well as narratively, which is just stupid game design. So your innate antagonist splat would need to luckily kill like a half dozen Beasts to even challenge a single starting Beast [Let alone a group], and he's probably insane and unable of working with anything more complicated than a mob of pitchfork wielding assholes, and all organized supernatural groups are going to be predisposed to like you, and your feeding habits could be so esoteric nobody even knows you are there? What the gently caress is your innate conflict even about at this point? How awesome you can be before you become human Godzilla? Which in and of itself makes you so far beyond a Hero as to be insanely laughable? Like there are real, serious challenges to being a member of every other supernatural community in the W....CoD except Beasts. Hell, they even find it easier to be part of the wider supernatural community. The only thing that would challenge a Beast is being so stupid that some other supernatural group overcomes innate trust of Beasts to go after them. How is that even a game, rather than fan fiction with occasional dice rolls?
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Jun 4, 2016 13:23
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Roland Jones posted:Demons are ludicrously powerful themselves, so the creation of some form of Hell, The correct term is behavioral quarantine zones. Boogaleeboo posted:What the gently caress is your innate conflict even about at this point? How awesome you can be before you become human Godzilla? Which in and of itself makes you so far beyond a Hero as to be insanely laughable? Like there are real, serious challenges to being a member of every other supernatural community in the W....CoD except Beasts. Hell, they even find it easier to be part of the wider supernatural community. The only thing that would challenge a Beast is being so stupid that some other supernatural group overcomes innate trust of Beasts to go after them. Please please, be reasonable. Most fan fiction has conflicts.
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Jun 4, 2016 14:25
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This may be controversial, but I at least respect and admire Beast for its ability to make others unhappy.
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Jun 4, 2016 17:10
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Boogaleeboo posted:The worst part of Beast is how it ignores the foundations of the setting it's building. Like the most interesting part of what it brings to the table is the idea of the Primordial Dream, and the way it interacts with humanity. I'm perfectly fine, in theory, with Beasts as horrific abusers that self-aggrandize the poo poo out of themselves and constantly downplay their flaws and culpability in their actions. They appear to be quite literally the most horrific fears and traumas of humanity given form. Of course they'll be terrible. Of course they look down on Heroes. Those appear to be the things that are designed to kill them. Of course they ignore the fact that the same force that gives them power gives Heroes power. It's all well and good to say that monsters die in stories because people write the stories, it's another to admit that the primal force that empowers you ultimately wants you to be murdered in the end. Man, that would be a really cool game. The collective unconsciousness of humanity has cast you in the role of a monster in a story, the plot of which is well-worn; you're going to do terrible things and be killed by a Hero. You didn't ask for it and you can't get out of it. So what do you do with it? I would play the hell out of that game.
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Jun 4, 2016 17:26
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Gilok posted:Man, that would be a really cool game. The collective unconsciousness of humanity has cast you in the role of a monster in a story, the plot of which is well-worn; you're going to do terrible things and be killed by a Hero. You didn't ask for it and you can't get out of it. So what do you do with it? The set up is a bit like Geist except far more horrifying in its own way. Especially if situations are supposed to occur that, even if they come about in a contrived fashion, push you (and the hero) to play the parts the universe is trying to force you to play.
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Jun 4, 2016 19:38
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See, yes, that would make Beast pretty cool and pretty good. Certainly better than the edgelord bullcrap it actually is.
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Jun 4, 2016 20:03
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I think Beast wins the award for "most squandered potential" in any WoD game.
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Jun 4, 2016 20:27
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