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Kurieg posted:It was written by Phil Brucato, so amongst other things it had magikal hermaphrodites. In itself, Magical Hermaphrodite is a justifiable thing to include. The union of opposites without inconsistency into a single body is a recurring theme in Western magical traditions, and the hermaphrodite is one of the Big Ones as an emblem of the 'perfect' union between the two pillars and all they embody. Mankind occupies a special place as a microcosm of the macrocosm both within and without him/herself, the central point of both the greater and the lesser universes, the walking-talking reflection of the archetypal plan of the universe, etc, and so that fundamental division into two pillars is reflected in us, and the most obvious and seemingly irreconcilable form is into the Male and Female bodies. Obviously, that has some issues when it comes to actually applying it, but as esotericism goes its a solid principle and it's a little less sexist than it sounds (still pretty sexist, admittedly, but each human being contains within him/herself both pillars in varying degrees, so it isn't saying 'okay childrearing is an inherently female practice so put it on the left and declare it Unmanly for wizards to do' and the ultimate goal is to balance the expression of those two pillars/forces/poles within both ourselves and the universe), and the result is that the true, androgynous hermaphrodite is a powerfully charged magical image as exactly that union of the false dichotomy. The real problem with Brucato on this front isn't that he said 'yo they be magick', but that he neither explained why they are magick (which is important - divorced of that context of reconciling the irreconcilable, the hermaphrodite-icon is no more powerful than the shoe-icon) and applied that line of thinking to transfolk, and in the process unintentionally declared that all transpeople are fundamentally magical beings.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:14
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Axelgear posted:Yeah, I can't bring myself to boycott OPP; they're good people who make great products and their attempts at inclusivity are the exact opposite set of decisions to boycott. Some money given to them for the lines they license reaches Paradox, but I'd hope the majority goes to OPP. Not to mention seeing CoD flourish while he continues to slam oWoD so deep into the earth that it will become part of the core will probably really get under Swedracula's skin.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:17
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also, y'know, transfolks aren't magical hermaphrodites, and most nonbinary folks also aren't
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Feb 18, 2017 00:19
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Mors Rattus posted:also, y'know, transfolks aren't magical hermaphrodites, and most nonbinary folks also aren't but in my animes
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Feb 18, 2017 00:22
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I respect M20 for making it clear to sane people that you should be empathizing with the Technocracy in the opening fiction. It usually takes a few books in to the line before they realize which side they should be backing.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:22
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MonsieurChoc posted:Don't wanna make something out of this, but I hope that worked out/works out for you. Good luck! Alien Rope Burn posted:I don't disagree, but it strikes me as a small potatoes right now compared to hiring people who actively do direct harm.  Loomer posted:but in my animes Ningyou fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 00:32
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Mulva posted:I respect M20 for making it clear to sane people that you should be empathizing with the Technocracy in the opening fiction. It usually takes a few books in to the line before they realize which side they should be backing. It doesn't help that the Technocracy is doing more batshit insane stuff on their weekends than entire lines have done in their entire run. Extradimensional plantations staffed by lizardpeople growing astralweeds? Crazy-nuts people pushing the bounderies of reality and sanity to journey into the void in magical spaceships and sometimes coming back wrong while meeting weird 'aliens' maybe? A faceted planet on the other side of the sun run by cyborg-fetishists worshiping a sentient AI? Magical MIBs who dissolve into goo when shot? Legitimate mad scientists who would be entirely comfortable counting Doc Brown and Rick Sanchez among them? A global one-world government conspiracy? A general structure which at times can be the perfect expression of the well-oiled machine and other times be almost exactly like Paranoia!? If I want to play a fun game, I throw in with these guys.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:35
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Mors Rattus posted:also, y'know, transfolks aren't magical hermaphrodites, and most nonbinary folks also aren't Speak for yourself!
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Feb 18, 2017 00:36
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From what I understand of oWoD Mage the Ascension, whether the statement 'actually the Technocracy is right and good' is dependent on the writer, edition, book, and chapter you happen to be reading with no clear consensus. While it took a while to get there because of the poor writeup they got in Awakening core, Seers of the Throne seem like they've intentionally been written as all the bad bits of the Technocracy, and divorced from the whole science and technology angle. So they're the oppressive elite crushing humanity down, without the "oh but we really keep people safe from chaos and monsters and unpredictability which perhaps are the real villains, hmmmmmm?" But I say this with my only source of information being forum arguments and never having read an Ascension book ever.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:38
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"We're bad people who are protecting you, the helpless masses, from even worse people" is the extremely successful selling point of hateful authoritarians throughout history. It doesn't mesh well with a setting where the supposedly-villainous hateful authoritarians are actually protecting the helpless masses from otherwise unstoppable supernatural monsters.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:41
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Ironslave posted:Extradimensional plantations staffed by lizardpeople growing astralweeds? Crazy-nuts people pushing the bounderies of reality and sanity to journey into the void in magical spaceships and sometimes coming back wrong while meeting weird 'aliens' maybe? A faceted planet on the other side of the sun run by cyborg-fetishists worshiping a sentient AI? Magical MIBs who dissolve into goo when shot? Legitimate mad scientists who would be entirely comfortable counting Doc Brown and Rick Sanchez among them? A global one-world government conspiracy? A general structure which at times can be the perfect expression of the well-oiled machine and other times be almost exactly like Paranoia!? I know, right? Demon: the Descent is the best game. It's super good!
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Feb 18, 2017 00:42
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Ningyou posted:Yeah. I kind of feel like there's a proper time and place for 'hey OPP did some gross stuff too' and it's maybe not in the middle of lovely Elfgames Voldemort Rides Again. Yeah, I really really don't mean to downplay how lovely Beast: the Victim-Blaming or Mage: the Narcissism are but they at the very least have the sense to not directly attack or impersonate people I respect. (Exalted may effectively just be a dead line at this point.)
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Feb 18, 2017 00:42
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Well, I sent an email to White Wolf about their poor choices, I don't expect much to come of that but it's what I can do. I thought about making a Facebook comment but it looked like a massive hugbox where my words would not survive--I didn't see any criticism in the comments listed. I don't use or like or understand Twitter and I am satisfied with my decision to be over 70 in TYOOL 2017.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:45
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Archonex posted:I think the best part is that it's implied that this guy is really into sucking rear end.
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Feb 18, 2017 00:52
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Ironslave posted:It doesn't help that the Technocracy is doing more batshit insane stuff on their weekends than entire lines have done in their entire run. Extradimensional plantations staffed by lizardpeople growing astralweeds? Crazy-nuts people pushing the bounderies of reality and sanity to journey into the void in magical spaceships and sometimes coming back wrong while meeting weird 'aliens' maybe? A faceted planet on the other side of the sun run by cyborg-fetishists worshiping a sentient AI? Magical MIBs who dissolve into goo when shot? Legitimate mad scientists who would be entirely comfortable counting Doc Brown and Rick Sanchez among them? A global one-world government conspiracy? A general structure which at times can be the perfect expression of the well-oiled machine and other times be almost exactly like Paranoia!? "m-m-morty (hic) i really appreciate you mmmorty yuh-you're a good sleeper morty" "o-okay rick well i have to get back to--" "YOU LITTLE SON OF A BITCH ARE Y-Y-YOU AN UMBRAL SPIRIT MORTY" or something idk it's been forever since i read the technocracy books
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Feb 18, 2017 00:54
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bewilderment posted:From what I understand of oWoD Mage the Ascension, whether the statement 'actually the Technocracy is right and good' is dependent on the writer, edition, book, and chapter you happen to be reading with no clear consensus. No, that's basically correct. The old line was super-inconsistent about a lot of stuff, played fans of both against the other, and on top of it all wrote the Guide to the Technocracy as intentional satire that a lot of people failed to catch. This, on top of the fact that in the current political context people are really, really uncomfortable opposing the forces of (supposedly) Science, made the zeitgeists turn against the Traditions, who were supposedly the heroic protagonists. M20, for some insane reason, decided to make it worse by making "actually wizards do prefer candles to light bulbs" canon instead of fanon spawned by forum arguments. EDIT: Last time I mentioned that Guide to the Technocracy was satire I got accused of "reading intentions into things", so here's a link to a Mage writer saying it. Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 00:58
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Worse yet, the most important Tradition really has zero reason to oppose science itself. Somehow 'everyone should be able to choose their own magical destiny even if it's a chaotic clusterfuck of a world' vs 'WE WILL DECIDE FOR ALL' (a huge oversimplification, obviously) really did get turned into just MAGIC VS SCIENCE again for M20.
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Feb 18, 2017 01:04
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Loomer posted:Worse yet, the most important Tradition really has zero reason to oppose science itself. Somehow 'everyone should be able to choose their own magical destiny even if it's a chaotic clusterfuck of a world' vs 'WE WILL DECIDE FOR ALL' (a huge oversimplification, obviously) really did get turned into just MAGIC VS SCIENCE again for M20. Although my real beef is that M20 bangs the "all paradigms are the same; you're all just fooling yourselves and it means nothing" drum really hard, after Revised did so much work to make paradigms cool.
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Feb 18, 2017 01:07
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bewilderment posted:From what I understand of oWoD Mage the Ascension, whether the statement 'actually the Technocracy is right and good' is dependent on the writer, edition, book, and chapter you happen to be reading with no clear consensus. Gonna be long to get into this so apologies for the  if you're not interested in a lore dump. But i'd argue that the Seers keep the technological and progressive bent and are inarguably worse for an entirely different set of reasons than most people commonly think. From what I remember of the old OWoD books the Technocracy actually ended up being partially sympathetic once it became apparent that they're dicking around in a setting that is fundamentally hostile to humanity. Granted, it's been over a decade from when I read my last Ascension book but there's basically two takes on the OWoD setting that get into how it works on a fundamental level: If you go with the "OWoD is seperate from Exalted" take then the world is besieged on all sides by inhuman godlike monsters like the Antediluvian's that want to burn the setting down and piss on the ashes. And never mind all the lesser stuff like the fact that reality is so frayed and damaged that something as simple as dropping a magical nuke basically triggered the start of the end times. Their scientific focus also is implied in a few books to actually be really good for humanity in the long run, since it's improving their quality of life over the old "supernaturals dominate everything/mysticism owns you" angle while slowly giving humanity at large an edge to fight back and capitalize on down the line. If you go with the "the OWoD is a bad "what if" future for Exalted" (like one of the limited edition books even outright said in it's intro blurb) then they're literally living in the post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post apocalyptic remnants of an age that heralded the height of mankind and existence itself. Behind the Technocracy lies a paradisaical age where men walked like gods. Before them lies an unspeakable doom or an eternity of suffering and horror at the hands of monstrous and nigh omnipotent beings that care not a wit for their creations. And in the now they have a world riven by supernatural strife and possibly controlled by the worst of the fallen Primordials (Ever wonder why it was originally called the World of Darkness? In early iterations of the OWoD one of the Yozi representing treachery, evil, suffering, and self defeat is implied to have won over the Unconquered Sun if you connect some of the older lore together.) to ever exist. Either way, they don't get to play nice in a grim dark world like that. Not if they want to win. Hell, their political position about regulating magic and the supernatural races out there is arguably right given that one of the major themes of pre-revival OWoD was that everything supernatural was rushing towards a final terminal point that would see the end of the world occur. Being the magical police for a half century to a century before the internal politics of the Technocracy shift again is better than it being eaten by a bunch of soul devouring eldritch abominations. Or being mutated and turned into part of an Antediluvian's personal hellscape like was the case for a certain Antediluvian from a certain nightmarish Gehenna scenario. By contrast the Seers of the Throne have no existential threat to reality to justify their actions. Reality is only in danger of breaking and falling apart if mages keep acting irresponsibly; as OWoD's mages did in one of their potential end game scenarios. But even then, the consequences for the NWoD mages if they abuse their powers are both far less severe (Most likely it'd just mean no more magic --- Humanity just progresses using tech while other supernatural species do their thing and eventually forget that mages ever existed.) along with the difficulty to break reality to that degree being much higher. Furthermore, there's no potentially world ending threat outside of the poo poo NWoD mages have already introduced! Barring the True Fae and a few other threats pretty much every predatory or omnicidal threat to existence is either content to chill out in it's own hell dimension or only come calling when some mage wants to poke things that are best left alone. Hell, the worst of them literally leash themselves into their respective prisons half the time through their own awful nature. And all that is setting aside the fact that the Seers are depicted in the books as actively having let those threats in. Usually because they want to make use of them for some monstrous agenda. One of the outsider entities in one of the books is literally a soul devouring monster that sucks the soul out of a human and leaves them a mindless and easy to control thrall that can be used for menial grunt work. They have no use for this atrocity. They just use it because it's easier and more efficient than wiping someone's mind clean. What's more, it's a 1e entity of the Lower Depths, so it's liable to just chill out and do nothing but sleep so long as some mage doesn't antagonize it or --- y'know --- start feeding it a feast of souls. Hell, the Exarch's are implied not to even be human any more, acting more as oppressive and negative human aspirations made manifest. Which makes the Seers basically just the equivalent of magical nerds that saw Warhammer 40K's hopeless and dystopian themes and said "Yeah, this is how I want reality to work one day." in the hopes that they'd be on the top of the lovely pile. Furthermore, they're traitors that willingly and knowingly worship a group of wannabe demiurges. Which even in Gnostic terms is a pretty godawful concept. To do this they stay modern. They're progressive. They're enlightened by our standards. They are loving loaded insofar as cash goes. Hell, it's part of why they have Luxuries as a merit. It's Resources on crack! They are just utterly opposed to the idea of the world being a better place. This is even touched on in Secrets of the Covenants. It's heavily implied during an exercise by the Invictus to find out if elitism is really going the way of the dodo that one lobbying group they discovered is run by the Seers. Some of the "leaked" documents literally show them scheming and helping a scummy senator to depress wages while giving advice to help keep poor people at each other's throats and cover the guy's tracks. All so that they can build that promised dystopia a little faster. Or to put it in a TL;DR way: They're both technology focused and future oriented organizations with an understanding of how the world works. And they've both had a hand in shaping it. The catch is that the Technocracy is kind of justified in their authoritarian views on the world due to the apocalyptic situation they're stuck in. The Seers are just selfish and greedy assholes and are at least partially a commentary on the public perceptions of the elite in the year we live in. Edit: Jesus, that was way longer than intended. Archonex fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 01:16
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Ningyou posted:suddenly all i can think of is....
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Feb 18, 2017 01:35
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"Schools for id- *hic* idiots, Morty. Did they teach you about Atlantis there, Morty *buuuurp* did they? *bruuup* Oh, Atlantis was great. Just everyone doing w- w- whatever they wanted, w- with whoever they wanted, wherever they wanted." "I dunno, Rick, that sounds like some new-age-y hippie bull-" "You shut the gently caress up, Morty! At- Atlantis was important! Atlantis was cool, Morty!"
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Feb 18, 2017 01:42
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Mage needs its own thread, criminy pete. It's a monster that swallows all other discussions.
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Feb 18, 2017 01:48
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RandallODim posted:"Schools for id- *hic* idiots, Morty. Did they teach you about Atlantis there, Morty *buuuurp* did they? *bruuup* Oh, Atlantis was great. Just everyone doing w- w- whatever they wanted, w- with whoever they wanted, wherever they wanted." "I dunno, Rick, that sounds like some new-age-y hippie bull-" "You shut the gently caress up, Morty! At- Atlantis was important! Atlantis was cool, Morty!" t-t-they had fuckin *hic* DRAGONS morty, like with flames and murder and stuff
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Feb 18, 2017 01:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Mage needs its own thread, criminy pete. It's a monster that swallows all other discussions. That sounds like Banisher talk to me. Are you a Banisher, pal?  To be fair, I kind of agree. I'm way more into VTR than Mage. It's just that no one wants to chat about it.
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Feb 18, 2017 01:51
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Archonex posted:To be fair, I kind of agree. I'm way more into VTR than Mage. It's just that no one wants to chat about it.
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Feb 18, 2017 02:05
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Kvetching about Mage chat needs its own thread, in the gas chamber.
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Feb 18, 2017 02:07
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Yawgmoth posted:Try talking about it and see what happens Hey, if I gotta be the one to start it, then let me ask: Do we know anything about when Half-Damned is coming out? Outside of Secrets of the Covenants it's probably my only must buy in the line. It's also been in development hell for who knows how long.
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Feb 18, 2017 02:22
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Random Vampirechat musings on the off chance anybody "bites" (sorry): 1) I wonder to what extent you can see the Covenants and vampire backstabby politics in general as attempts to remain engaged in human-like concerns (religious, political, social) as distinct from skin-in-the-game fights over survival and food supply? (And that a lot of dangerous stuff starts happening when vampires who are genuinely playing to win start interacting with those who tacitly are playacting.) 2) Speaking of Covenants and meaning and so on: I can really genuinely see the appeal of the L+S. I imagine most vampires, especially those who aren't rapidly spiraling down in Humanity, have to have a big sense of self-loathing, and contact with the supernatural has to raise the probability that no, really, God exists and Hell is real, &c. I'm not sure to what extent the other Covenants (other than maybe the Ordo?) can really offer a worldview that speaks to those concerns. 3) Hypothetically, how would you go about making a Requiem phonegame? (I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult to implement in Inform or something!)
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Feb 18, 2017 02:32
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Well, I sent my letter of protest off to White Wolf, outlining why I'm boycotting and the amount I spend on their lines a year. Doubt it'll make a difference, but gently caress it, better than just complaining in here, right?
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Feb 18, 2017 02:35
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In the interest of vampire chat I have a question that I've never really thought about before. How are the covenants so ubiquitous? Like I get how Mage orders and Werewolf tribes are global (Space Magic and The Firstborn), but how is it that the Vampire covenants manage to maintain organizational infrastructure to the point where it can cross continents given the isolated nature of vampire enclaves?
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Feb 18, 2017 02:37
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Oligopsony posted:Random Vampirechat musings on the off chance anybody "bites" (sorry): tbh I could see a lot of ways to do this - there's nothing wrong with the concept He Who Shouldn't Be Named used, to start off with (he's just a terrible writer) a hidden object game with you being a crime scene investigator following vampire slayings could work, but would be pretty cliche, you could also reverse it - you're cleaning up after yourself or another vampire who lost it and the more details you get the better your outcome. Basically anything I can think up is tied to writing quality though.
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Feb 18, 2017 02:41
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Oligopsony posted:Random Vampirechat musings on the off chance anybody "bites" (sorry): quote:2) Speaking of Covenants and meaning and so on: I can really genuinely see the appeal of the L+S. I imagine most vampires, especially those who aren't rapidly spiraling down in Humanity, have to have a big sense of self-loathing, and contact with the supernatural has to raise the probability that no, really, God exists and Hell is real, &c. I'm not sure to what extent the other Covenants (other than maybe the Ordo?) can really offer a worldview that speaks to those concerns.
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Feb 18, 2017 02:43
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I'm going to be running a vamp game on Facebook for some friends where we try out one of the things I've been curious about: How far will basic vampire inherent powers get you? There's going to be no other vampires at the start of the game outside the pcs, just mortals and maybe a few rogue ghouls. So using those enhanced senses, lashing out and physical potency along with a single dot in their clans physical discipline. I've also stolen arcane beats from mage to make blood beats. Potency can only be increased with blood xp, disciplines can be a combo of regular and blood. Edit: I also started then off with more attribute and skill dots to help smooth over the loss of two disciplines. Soonmot fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 02:44
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Loomer posted:Well, I sent my letter of protest off to White Wolf, outlining why I'm boycotting and the amount I spend on their lines a year. Doubt it'll make a difference, but gently caress it, better than just complaining in here, right?
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Feb 18, 2017 02:47
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LordAbaddon posted:In the interest of vampire chat I have a question that I've never really thought about before. How are the covenants so ubiquitous? I think of them (and am not sure how textually supported this is) more like ideologies than organizations: like think of how most open parliamentary systems are likely to have some kind of socialist or social democratic party, a nationalist party, a liberal party, and maybe a few other variants.
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Feb 18, 2017 02:48
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Oligopsony posted:I think of them (and am not sure how textually supported this is) more like ideologies than organizations: like think of how most open parliamentary systems are likely to have some kind of socialist or social democratic party, a nationalist party, a liberal party, and maybe a few other variants. I get that for the Carthians and Invictus, but for the Ordo Dracul it seems particularly strange since they very clearly are an organization rather than a loose political affiliation.
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Feb 18, 2017 02:54
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LordAbaddon posted:I get that for the Carthians and Invictus, but for the Ordo Dracul it seems particularly strange since they very clearly are an organization rather than a loose political affiliation. The Ordo Dracul are actually a Free Mason conspiracy to take over the vampire world like they have taken over the mundane world. 
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Feb 18, 2017 03:18
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O:.D:. a secret Masonic plot? Uh... No comment. we've been compromised burn everything
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Feb 18, 2017 03:30
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What would mark them out as masonic, exactly? I dunno masons.
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Feb 18, 2017 03:33
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What the gently caress? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODsNaP12U9Q&t=1084s This character types all of that while in the middle of actually doing it? Just... no?
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Feb 18, 2017 03:35
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