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Kavak posted:Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. I always just assumed they bought it to make some videogames. The hype for a new bloodlines game would guarantee a bunch of free press and probably good sales if it wasn't a total turd. If they keep letting some swedish idiot gently caress up their brand before it even releases a single substantial product its going to derail this pretty quickly.
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Jun 28, 2017 23:19
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We probably should have remembered that Paradox's core audience are European neckbeards, and grand strategy is a stratum of video game culture that is so niche it's almost its own thing. There was always a non-zero possibility that they'd approach WW from the perspective of European neckbeards. Swedracula is the kind of guy you'd see earnestly posting on a forum such as this one. I mean we talk abt the WoD being a global non-European brand or whatever but at this point it's clear that EuroLARP is the focus, and presumably it's a profitable one. The talk of global integration through social media or whatever is just Swedracula getting suckered by "internet of things" tech futurism. They'll either drop it or it will become moribund almost immediately after launch. At best it will all as robust, vital and long-lasting as Second Life. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 28, 2017 23:57
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Basic Chunnel posted:We probably should have remembered that Paradox's core audience are European neckbeards, and grand strategy is a stratum of video game culture that is so niche it's almost its own thing. We should also remember that Paradox Development Studio, which makes the grand strategy games, is not what owns World of Darkness; that is Paradox Interactive, which publishes (but does not develop) games of various genres, including stuff like Cities: Skylines and Magicka 2. I mean, yeah, Paradox Development Studio is Paradox Interactive's subsidiary, but they're not the same company. Swedracula is his very own brand of lovely, distinct from grand strategy shittiness.
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Jun 29, 2017 00:35
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Night10194 posted:Because Swededracula is a shithead. He's not 'sheltered'.  I was hoping to give them the benefit of the doubt before, given Hanlon's razor and all. ("Never attribute to malice...") But I'll admit I glossed over a lot of those random tables because even their existence is dumb as hell, and because we were focusing on the more obvious detail of "Triggered" as a frenzy effect, so I didn't notice that more insidious bit in the Toreador table. Nope nope nope, this isn't close to being sheltered; it's active malice and being a shithead.The one good thing to come out of this is that maybe (maybe) this fiasco blows up enough to get him off the project in favor of someone less regressive. But that's a very strong maybe in this industry.
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Jun 29, 2017 02:45
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Shalebridge Cradle posted:I always just assumed they bought it to make some videogames. The hype for a new bloodlines game would guarantee a bunch of free press and probably good sales if it wasn't a total turd. If they keep letting some swedish idiot gently caress up their brand before it even releases a single substantial product its going to derail this pretty quickly. Well, ttrpgs are small enough these days that I suspect most of the stupid won't impact the videogame brand much, sales wise. Look at GW; they've been doing stupid poo poo to their settings and pissing off their fanbase for years, and their videogames do fine. Really, more than fine; licensing has become a core part of their business now. Its annoying, but plenty of people will just hear "vampire revival" and not pay any attention to the rest. While I'm sure Paradox would prefer not to have Swedracula loving things up this badly in his little corner, I'd also suspect they don't care too much unless he manages to do something so spectacularly idiotic that non-tabletop social media starts reporting on it.
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Jun 29, 2017 03:07
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Kurieg posted:"Vampire is a dark mature game designed for dealing with dark and mature themes that are hot button issues of today. But not child rape, ew, that's gross." Y-yes? Some things are probably areas to avoid unless you have a lot of tact and skill, even in mature settings? In fact a major element of being actually mature is knowing the limits of what you can do tastefully and what's best to avoid?
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Jun 29, 2017 05:04
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sexpig by night posted:Y-yes? Some things are probably areas to avoid unless you have a lot of tact and skill, even in mature settings? In fact a major element of being actually mature is knowing the limits of what you can do tastefully and what's best to avoid? Yes. The point being that if they weren't properly equipped to address it, or willing to deal with the consequences of bringing it up, then perhaps they shouldn't have introduced a character that is a child abuser by any sense of the definition except for the one that nuWolf is using, apparently. It is something that can be done well, and addressed maturely. but "HERE'S A CHILD ABUSER! SHE ONLY FEEDS FROM CHILDREN! LOOK AT HOW EVIL SHE IS! SO EVIL THAT SHE DIES!" is something a teenager on a revenge kick comes up with.
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Jun 29, 2017 05:17
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Oh sorry I read that in a more sarcastic tone than you meant it seems. Like, poo poo, you can even do some creepy 'they feed on youth because they believe it keeps them young in spirit' stuff if you want to make someone who preys on kids That's common in horror like this and can tie into the whole 'vampires are alpha predators...and also tend to be loving insane with power if they can get it' thing. Just, ya know, maybe don't drop child rape unless you're able to actually handle that as more than a cheap 'THIS is how bad they are' shock.
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Jun 29, 2017 05:25
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In principle, a Ventrue neonate who found out that they could only feed on children would be a good-rear end run of personal horror. In practice, the character would either be a cartoon villain or would be presented as a Noble Pedophile a la Piers Anthony or something. What does determine a Ventrue's feeding limit anyway? I mean, like, in-universe.
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Jun 29, 2017 06:21
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Kenneth Hite is a native English speaker, though.
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Jun 29, 2017 06:49
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Nessus posted:What does determine a Ventrue's feeding limit anyway? I mean, like, in-universe. The same vaguely Biblical magic curse that determines most of the other ones, if there's anything at all to explain it. Not that there's any compelling alternatives I can recall ever being presented.
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Jun 29, 2017 07:57
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That Old Tree posted:The same vaguely Biblical magic curse that determines most of the other ones, if there's anything at all to explain it. Not that there's any compelling alternatives I can recall ever being presented.
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Jun 29, 2017 08:08
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The problem with the Vampire thing beyond the sheer bad taste factor is twofold, though the issues with it end up overlapping in execution. First, Vampire is a game about predatory people, and more significantly, it's about predatory people as seen through a cultural lens that is implicitly sexually and erotically charged due to both the broader cultural ideas about vampires and the source materials Vampire openly draws from. Because of this premise from the word go you're going to be dealing with poo poo that is not only disturbing but familiar in a way a lot of horror won't be by virtue of it inevitably brushing extremely close to traumas that a significant number of people actually have. Parallel to that is the simple fact that simply telling everyone the various ways in which a particular person is monstrous is never going to be as effective as leading up to it and then trailing off suggestively when it comes to invoking that sense of horror. Dread builds when your mind is allowed to start wondering at what is being implied by something, and the pinnacle of that experience is being able to go back and re-read what you have in front of you and realize what it's actually telling you. So your responsibility and goal when writing that material is not simply avoiding the things that resonate with trauma and horror (because that's impossible and frankly undesirable) but writing it in such a way that these predators are examined almost at arms length in a way that is eroticized but never romanticized and which leaves the worst, most explicit parts of it unsaid. This is lucky, because not only are you writing more effective horror that way, you also avoid the poo poo that has the most potential to be a tableau of real traumas which, yes, trigger survivors of that kind of abuse. What we have there instead of effective horror is a caricature of an evil monster. World of Darkness is so named because it wants to invoke fears of the things that hide in dark places; what happens when you shine a light on all your monsters? You lose anything to feel dread about. So not only is the pedophile poo poo in incredibly bad taste, it's also plain bad writing. But we'll get a lot of back-patting from people who consistently miss the point of the kind of horror *WoD has tried to be in favor of boring forced edginess.
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Jun 29, 2017 09:43
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vampire 5e
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Jun 29, 2017 10:22
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NGDBSS posted:The one good thing to come out of this is that maybe (maybe) this fiasco blows up enough to get him off the project in favor of someone less regressive. But that's a very strong maybe in this industry. Unfortunately for the industry, he'll be able to spin criticism as "look at these homophobes who don't want (players slaughtering) gays in my game!" and his critics as fuddy-duddy sticks in the mud who have no business playing a RATED M FOR MATURE grown-ups' game with real adult themes like (racist stereotypes of) immigrants. The worst shitheads go into it with their sympathy headline already in mind.
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Jun 29, 2017 12:24
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Kurieg posted:
Even as a Swede myself I am very wary of non-native(speaking) writers of English in games because it always feels like something has been lost in the translation. Looking at games like the first Witcher, the new Heroes of Might and Magic as examples, there are story beats that just fall flat or aren't communicated properly. But with the proper new hires a game can really turn that around (see Witcher 2-3).
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Jun 29, 2017 13:14
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Nessus posted:In principle, a Ventrue neonate who found out that they could only feed on children would be a good-rear end run of personal horror. In practice, the character would either be a cartoon villain or would be presented as a Noble Pedophile a la Piers Anthony or something. I don't think it would really though, not for the kind of horror I think Vampire does well. To me Personal Horror should be about temptation. It should be possible for a vampire to survive by eating animals and not using theiir powers on anyone. It should be a marginal existence and they'll probably be homeless and everyone will make fun of them and hate them but it should be possible. And everyone should know deep down that that is what they should be doing. If they were a good person that is what they would be doing. But feeding on people doesn't really hurt them too much, and they get a lot out of being ghouled really, it's a fair deal so it's not a big deal that I live in their apartment now and made them my personal servant. On the other hand if it's just something that God cursed you with that sucks. Like it's objectively terrible, but it's not really horror to me. There is no temptation, you were just unlucky and now you have to live with it.
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Jun 29, 2017 13:34
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neaden posted:I don't think it would really though, not for the kind of horror I think Vampire does well. To me Personal Horror should be about temptation. ... On the other hand if it's just something that God cursed you with that sucks. Like it's objectively terrible, but it's not really horror to me. There is no temptation, you were just unlucky and now you have to live with it. The temptation can come in other ways. Said unlucky Ventrue could spend a lot of money/favors to feed on Werewolf blood, for example. Or set up a robust trading network of Kindred blood - getting one-stage bonds to each of their clients. When their money runs out, what do they do? Is feeding on a sleeping child different? What about Forgetful Mind - is that still harm? What about feeding from sick children, then using their vitae to cure them in payment? Does the Ventrue Council eventually pull them in because preying on kids is one of the quicker ways to make hunters? Even if they go cold turkey - does a rash of missing children cause the Sheriff to turn up on their doorstep? If they relapse, does the Ventrue Council move them from Domain to Domain - a mirror of what the Catholic Church was doing? It can be done maturely. It wasn't done maturely.
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Jun 29, 2017 14:01
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that sure sounds like a real fun game that doesn't get weird and stupid at all
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Jun 29, 2017 14:04
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Nessus posted:What does determine a Ventrue's feeding limit anyway? I mean, like, in-universe.
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Jun 29, 2017 14:12
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Basic Chunnel posted:They'll either drop it or it will become moribund almost immediately after launch. At best it will all as robust, vital and long-lasting as Second Life. They'll start selling werewolf fursuits and it will exist unto perpetuity?
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Jun 29, 2017 14:21
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Yawgmoth posted:I don't think it's ever actually mentioned. Back in college a group of people I knew ran a vampire game where the first session was getting turned, and the ventrue's feeding was set by the first person he fed on. Which sucked, because he got arrested, frenzied, and fed on a cop. See, now that's a good feeding limit for a rich chap with a lot of power. Or if you aren't, it's a pretty drat good reason to do everything you can to get the money and power necessary to make it happen.
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Jun 29, 2017 14:37
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Nessus posted:or would be presented as a Noble Pedophile a la Piers Anthony or something. I only have a vague awareness of Piers Anthony and his writing, but wait WHAT?!?
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Jun 29, 2017 14:59
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Barbed Tongues posted:The temptation can come in other ways. Said unlucky Ventrue could spend a lot of money/favors to feed on Werewolf blood, for example. Or set up a robust trading network of Kindred blood - getting one-stage bonds to each of their clients. When their money runs out, what do they do? Is feeding on a sleeping child different? What about Forgetful Mind - is that still harm? What about feeding from sick children, then using their vitae to cure them in payment? Does the Ventrue Council eventually pull them in because preying on kids is one of the quicker ways to make hunters? Even if they go cold turkey - does a rash of missing children cause the Sheriff to turn up on their doorstep? If they relapse, does the Ventrue Council move them from Domain to Domain - a mirror of what the Catholic Church was doing?
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Jun 29, 2017 15:04
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hangedman1984 posted:I only have a vague awareness of Piers Anthony and his writing, but wait WHAT?!? Okay, so. This is a rabbit hole, and once you start, it's hard to get back out. But essentially: Piers Anthony writes a lot about sexy teens and preteens. Like, a loving lot. And the men that love them, generally older, are often his protagonists or secondary protags. And there was this one book in which there was literally a trial for a man who hosed a twelve year old and the judge was like 'oh she was into it and that makes it okay and this guy is a good guy'. This is a thing. Piers Anthony is scum, do not let your kids read his books. Get them good books instead.
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Jun 29, 2017 15:09
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Then there was his whole... ...gonna call it a correspondence and not anything else...with a young lady who was in a car accident, a nasty one, but was a fan of his books, who he inserted as a character and started being pen-pals with.
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Jun 29, 2017 15:23
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I'm not gonna bring that up here because it seemed like that was a positive for her, but the character he made based on her is certainly, uh, something.
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Jun 29, 2017 15:28
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neaden posted:I mean, you do you but that sounds awful to me. It looks like it would either fall into supernatural camp with werewolf and blood bonds or child molester: the metaphor. I would never allow the character as a ST. That's probably the better policy. It is absolutely Child Abuse the metaphor, I don't think you can get around that with that kind of a feeding requirement. I've never had a player want to portray that, nor have I ever wanted to myself. And yet there it is in 5e playtesting. But OPP shouldn't get a pass, either. One of the stock Humanity 6 sins in Req2E is 'Feeding from a Child' - so they felt it important enough to include a mechanic for. The difference is OPP lets the table decide how to handle it in a way that is good for them (and I suspect most tables take a pass entirely). nuWod infused it into the initial playtest and is dying on the "What? This is fine," hill for some reason - and it feels deliberate, like they think they need to shock poeple into remembering what the WoD is supposed to be, rather than trusting each table to craft a game that's good for them.
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Jun 29, 2017 15:28
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Barbed Tongues posted:That's probably the better policy. It is absolutely Child Abuse the metaphor, I don't think you can get around that with that kind of a feeding requirement. I've never had a player want to portray that, nor have I ever wanted to myself. And yet there it is in 5e playtesting. But OPP shouldn't get a pass, either. One of the stock Humanity 6 sins in Req2E is 'Feeding from a Child' - so they felt it important enough to include a mechanic for. The difference is OPP lets the table decide how to handle it in a way that is good for them (and I suspect most tables take a pass entirely). nuWod infused it into the initial playtest and is dying on the "What? This is fine," hill for some reason - and it feels deliberate, like they think they need to shock poeple into remembering what the WoD is supposed to be, rather than trusting each table to craft a game that's good for them. Oh drat, that's what I've been unable to put my finger on. The whole attitude reminds me so much of all the half-baked amateur game designers I've talked to (including past me) who fail to realize that games are an inherently collaborative medium. They get stuck cobbling together an unappealing, inflexible mess because they're desperately trying to prevent people from playing it "wrong". Especially because those people also are often fond of grim grit and having a random table for every occasion. Man, it really is like if all the worst habits of the Swedish RPG scene congealed into a person. Terrorforge fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 15:47
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Nessus posted:I just hope once in a while there's a Ventrue who ends up frenzying and having to be put down because their blood requirement is something impossible to get even if you're rich and powerful. It's possible to change feeding restrictions (V20 Lore of the Clans has the mechanic; it involves frenzy and a Willpower roll), but it's supposed to be difficult. Like, if you're a Ventrue who can only feed on, say, Confederate veterans, you're going to run into some serious issues by the 1920s unless you change.
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Jun 29, 2017 15:55
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the thing that really galls me even as someone with about as much attachment to VTM and the oWoD at large as I have to a spider that might be crawling around in my bathtub at five in the morning is the insane insistence on bringing up VTM's legacy like it's a justification for everything they're doing and a reassurance that they're totally right all the time y'all you didn't build that legacy you bought it in the IP equivalent of a garage sale buying captain america's shield from a trainyard hobo does not make you captain america
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Jun 29, 2017 16:01
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Mors Rattus posted:Okay, so. This is a rabbit hole, and once you start, it's hard to get back out. Well damnit, I read one of his Xanth books when I was a kid. I remember liking it then and had been thinking about getting into the series now. Seriously rethinking that now.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:03
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hangedman1984 posted:Well damnit, I read one of his Xanth books when I was a kid. I remember liking it then and had been thinking about getting into the series now. Seriously rethinking that now. Trust me, don't read his books.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:05
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This whole 5e issue reminds me of Cthulhutech in a lot of ways: - Creepy and rapey in a way that the creators refuse to acknowledge as a problem - Really bad mechanics that don't/won't work in actual play - Having a Vision for how the game Should Be Played, and opposing anyone varying from that - Insisting the game is a Mature Game for Matures Only, despite being "edgy teenager" at best
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Jun 29, 2017 16:19
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Blockhouse posted:the thing that really galls me even as someone with about as much attachment to VTM and the oWoD at large as I have to a spider that might be crawling around in my bathtub at five in the morning is the insane insistence on bringing up VTM's legacy like it's a justification for everything they're doing and a reassurance that they're totally right all the time They've also seemed to downplay the contributions OPP made towards masquerade, as if the game just mysteriously stopped existing in 2003 before they found it and "saved" it.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:20
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Kurieg posted:They've also seemed to downplay the contributions OPP made towards masquerade, as if the game just mysteriously stopped existing in 2003 before they found it and "saved" it. That's not 'seemed'. They are pretty openly not fans of anything but oWoD.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:25
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Mors Rattus posted:That's not 'seemed'. They are pretty openly not fans of anything but oWoD. Which really was the first sign of where things were headed.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:33
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The thing that twigs me out is that Vampire is already a game that plays with the themes of horror around being a child abuser, even if your Ventrue had a feeding restriction of rotund middle-aged men with fully bald pates. As a vampire, you will 99% of the time be targeting someone younger, less aware, and less powerful than yourself to feed a constant atavist need that you hide from civilized people. The problem I have is that we are again having a designer throw their hat into trying to revive the horror of the Most Handwaved Game Mechanic in Roleplaying that the player-base has been completely fine with and pushed towards for going on two decades. Swedracula turning the subtext into text is the sort of thing that we (rightfully) find distasteful in Beast by OPP. The entire White Wolf IP for both game lines is being managed by people that want the consumers to purchase products that glorify and celebrate the act of child abuse.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:36
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hangedman1984 posted:Well damnit, I read one of his Xanth books when I was a kid. I remember liking it then and had been thinking about getting into the series now. Seriously rethinking that now.
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Jun 29, 2017 18:07
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Yawgmoth posted:I recently read A Spell For Chameleon and it was definitely poo poo. Some of it was like "okay it was the 70s, I kinda have to forgive that" but the vast majority was just super skeevy bullshit. The bit that stuck with me hardest was the repeated "she wouldn't give up her home, life, family, friends, and very way of existence to join me in hideous exile, so clearly she didn't really love me!" Good god man, if that's your requirement for "true love" then it's no wonder people think you're trash. What, not the literal menstruation metaphor in the form of a character that is either beautiful but stupid or intelligent but ugly?
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Jun 29, 2017 18:10
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