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Jade Mage posted:I blame the thread for getting my hopes up for the Scion Hero text in the near future. I'm starting to with they never gave us any tentative dates. I feel you, I keep checking the backerkit downloads page to no avail
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 00:42 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:36 |
RedSnapper posted:player shenanigans My Werewolves just finished their first chapter. I last posted that they had used their gifts to track ownership of the weapons used in the attack on the warehouse concert by local nazis to a white nationalist gang (and further to a group of surivalists out in the swamps), talked to their contacts in the nosferatu to get information on the White Knights (and discovered that the underground transport system the nossies use are infested by CHUDs). With that info they actually put together a really solid plan to assault the half abandonded strip mall the gnag was using as a base with the help of some fear spirits they allied with. Everything went off the rails as half of them forgot the plan. They didn't cover the chicken shack and slot place that were being used as laundering and drug distribution, so one of our ithaeur's got gut shot with a shotgun while our Rahu was doing a Bane impression with the lead enforcer of the WKs. Our fresh changed ithaeur managed to talk down two teens with guns who were coming around the back alley of strip mall to flank the group, which was both wonderful and in character, and our irraka had been doing a stellar job isolating and killing the guys still inside a abandoned shoe store after having cut the power, but when things went loud outside and the fear spirits kicked into overdrive, having the goons inside all start shooting each other, she grabbed a grenade from their stash and chucked it back into the crate it came from. (Which was why I was asking about explosions last week). They started their hunt with 15 random goons and four of the gang's leadership. It ended with all the leaders dead except one, which our gutshot ithaeur would have finished, his guts literally hanging out as he repeatedly bashed the shotgunner (who had been knocked down by a spirit wolf packmate) repeatedly in the face with a rock, if our rahu hadn't pulled him away to retreat. Four nameless goons escaped, one of whom saw some weird poo poo and suffered lunacy that maaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cause a first change next full moon. They had some really amazing character interaction, both with each other and in their solo reactions. I also did my best to remind, tempt, and cajole them, but no one, not even the 6L damaged ithaeur shifted into gauru to end things quicker. We had some successful kuruth rolls, some successful and failed harmony rolls and I could not be prouder of my players. Now, during downtime, the irraka is hunting down two dirty cops affiliated with the gang, the rahu is hitting up his mentor for information on nosferatu because he doesn't trust the vampires, the cub is researching a story lead I dropped on him,. I''ve handed out bonus XP that they can only spend as a pack on pack specific things, so they now have a locus in their off grid community center and have a totem that represents the renewal of spring. I really have a great group of players.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 01:17 |
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Night Horrors: Enemy Action (the Demon: the Descent Night Horrors) is cool so far. My favorites are definitely "totally not Mags Bennett from Justified as an angel" and the exile who went so long without orders it turned a train station into a pocket dimension.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 02:07 |
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RedSnapper posted:And I'm not using this fucker in any of my games: that sounds like a personal problem
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 03:01 |
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Night Horrors: Enemy Action (the Demon: the Descent Night Horrors) is cool so far. My favorites are definitely "totally not Mags Bennett from Justified as an angel" and the exile who went so long without orders it turned a train station into a pocket dimension. That sounds amazing.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 03:28 |
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Night Horrors: Enemy Action (the Demon: the Descent Night Horrors) is cool so far. My favorites are definitely "totally not Mags Bennett from Justified as an angel" and the exile who went so long without orders it turned a train station into a pocket dimension. Wait, Enemy Action is out? Holy poo poo!
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 03:35 |
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Tollymain posted:that sounds like a personal problem It very much is. I never liked Power Rangers.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 05:15 |
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Night Horrors: Enemy Action (the Demon: the Descent Night Horrors) is cool so far. My favorites are definitely "totally not Mags Bennett from Justified as an angel" and the exile who went so long without orders it turned a train station into a pocket dimension. I misread this and thought he turned into a train station.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 05:21 |
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Kurieg posted:I misread this and thought he turned into a train station.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 05:50 |
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Okay fess up, who at OPP keeps sneaking evil squirrels into the Night Horrors books? e: I guess technically Intruders isn't a Night Horrors book but it's basically the same format Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Mar 8, 2018 |
# ? Mar 8, 2018 09:27 |
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My personal favorites are Mr. Void, Cheonsa, Ms. Morgue, Ophelia Adder, Carta and Alban. I should also, I suppose, note that this was not the only nWoD release yesterday.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 12:30 |
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Mors Rattus posted:My personal favorites are Mr. Void, Cheonsa, Ms. Morgue, Ophelia Adder, Carta and Alban. You're a monster, by the by.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 13:58 |
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Kurieg posted:You're a monster, by the by. The best kind, though.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 14:03 |
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Soonmot posted:They had some really amazing character interaction, both with each other and in their solo reactions. I also did my best to remind, tempt, and cajole them, but no one, not even the 6L damaged ithaeur shifted into gauru to end things quicker. We had some successful kuruth rolls, some successful and failed harmony rolls and I could not be prouder of my players. Huh. I've been playing werewolf for the last few months, and that's generally been everyone's first solution to any remotely challenging fight. Seriously, like 80% of a fresh werewolf's raw power is locked up in Gauru. I guess they must be playing roles or something? Weird. On the topic of rolls, one amusing thing about Harmony is that you're often hoping to fail. When our group was playing demons it was always a case of "oh geeeeez I guess I might have to roll Compromise for that, huh? can I get a pass? no? oh boy", but when we've been playing werewolf it's been "hey, hey, hey, does that count as a breaking point? i think it should count as a breaking point". Also on the topic of rolls, are you aware that it takes an exceptional success to get out of Kuruth? You only mention "successful" rolls, and it certainly took me a while to see how drat hard it is to get out of the Death Rage once it's in motion.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 14:39 |
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Harmony is great because you're trying to play a balancing act and, yes, sometimes actively seeking out breaking points to make your life easier. It helps that when you get too spirit-heavy, one of the best solutions is 'i lock myself in a room full of slim jims and go hog wild.'
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 14:41 |
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Just throwing in that I love Aspirations. My favorite mechanical addition in 2e.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 14:59 |
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So the Beast Players Guide came out yesterday. Remember that initial bit of intro fiction that Matt released, with the Makara girl who threatened to drown a boy in the cafeteria? Matt finished writing it. Really putting their best foot forward here. This is literally the first three paragraphs of text in the book.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 15:11 |
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wait does matt still work for opp?
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 15:21 |
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Xinder posted:wait does matt still work for opp? No, it's just that this is stuff that was paid for/promised via the kickstarter and Matt was working on when everything came out.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 15:28 |
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Yeah I imagine this was the last book he was working on for OPP when he got shitcanned. Thankfully a kid beast punches the pedophile's quadriceps off. Unthankfully there's a pedophile and kid beasts. PLURAL
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 15:30 |
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I really don’t understand why they feel the need to try to rehabilitate Beast instead of mothball it. Even if it somehow totally escaped all the lovely subtext (or text), it still doesn’t inherently present a distinct game from Vampire or Changeling.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:12 |
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I think it's literally a contractual obligation.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:16 |
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i hope there's an endpoint to that contract so they can just stop devoting any time or resources to it at some point.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:29 |
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Xinder posted:i hope there's an endpoint to that contract so they can just stop devoting any time or resources to it at some point. I'm pretty sure there is. This book was mandated by the Kickstarter, right?
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:31 |
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Mister Olympus posted:I really don’t understand why they feel the need to try to rehabilitate Beast instead of mothball it. Even if it somehow totally escaped all the lovely subtext (or text), it still doesn’t inherently present a distinct game from Vampire or Changeling. unseenlibrarian posted:No, it's just that this is stuff that was paid for/promised via the kickstarter and Matt was working on when everything came out. Also some folks like it I guess? A quick glance at the OPP forums suggests it's at least more popular than, say, Demon.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:33 |
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We've also got some pagecount in the upcoming Dark Eras 2 devoted to Beast. With luck, that's the last we'll see of it. e: Terrorforge posted:Also some folks like it I guess? A quick glance at the OPP forums suggests it's at least more popular than, say, Demon. this makes me sad
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:33 |
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My dream, my hope beyond hope, which I know will literally never happen, is that they finish all the stuff they are contractually obligated to do, and then say "Right we're done with this forever, we're pulling it from stores and just never touching this utter blight upon our reputation ever ever ever again."
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:34 |
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Terrorforge posted:Also some folks like it I guess? A quick glance at the OPP forums suggests it's at least more popular than, say, Demon. If that is true that Beast is more popular that Demon then that is a crime against god and man alike.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:36 |
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Be the change you want to see in the world. Enemy Action also has an extremely sad exile that got busted up in a fight and doesn't know why it's broken and why it can't hear the God-Machine anymore. Also it eats brains (not euphemism, literally scoops out and eats parts of brains, along with mechanical conditions related to this in a sidebar).
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:43 |
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Xinder posted:this makes me sad AnEdgelord posted:If that is true that Beast is more popular that Demon then that is a crime against god and man alike. I mean it's a highly inexact way to very roughly estimate attitudes, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me. The vast majority of people who engage with any sort of medium are pretty oblivious to stuff like quality of writing and awkward mechanics, let alone gross implications and objectionable themes. The vehement objections to Beast are largely being thrown around the scene's ivory towers (and also this SomethingAwful thread) and likely doesn't have much effect either way on Joe Edgelord's desire to play a badass vigilante tentacle monster.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:46 |
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Be the change you want to see in the world. Enemy Action also has an extremely sad exile that got busted up in a fight and doesn't know why it's broken and why it can't hear the God-Machine anymore. It is one of the more boring things, too. (I generally dislike random serial killer monsters, they’re too easy to make on my own.)
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 16:56 |
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Mors Rattus posted:It is one of the more boring things, too. (I generally dislike random serial killer monsters, they’re too easy to make on my own.)
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 17:02 |
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So, Trip report on the BPG. It introduces two new Families and two new Hungers
They feed by making moral people fall... and.. just.. quote:The Lessons There are, as mentioned, some new Atavisms, Nightmares, Kinship Nightmares. There's also new merits, some Kinship merits, and Lair Merits that you can apply to your brood. There's a lair merit that lets your Lair be connected to the internet/cell phones/broadcast airwaves with one of the stated things it allows is for you to run a spooky pirate radio station. And I have to appreciate that as a concept. There are rules for Beasts making cults around themselves (and how when the cults fail they almost always turn their former cultists into Heroes. Yeah that's a thing again Beasts Make Heroes). Rules for Beast Rituals which bring them into deeper communion with the Dark Mother. Some sample Beast "Lodges" (focusing around the dark mother or Incarnate beasts). Rules for leaving the primordial dream into the Bright Dream or the things that are even darker beyond. There's also 3 new Incarnations. One forcibly severs the Beast and his Horror, giving his Horror a physical form but freeing the Beast from his hunger. One has a beast stick a stolen soul to their own so that when their Horror dies they don't die with it. Another has the Beast figure out that "Not only am I a monster, so are all the rest of these fuckers.", research an anathema of their own, beat down their horror and literally pin it to the floor of their lair, and turn into some kind of unholy hybrid between a Hero and a Beast that's immune to lair traits but can create anathema. Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Yeah, the picture just makes me so sad. It's like a wobbly version of Mr. Burns in the X-Files episode of the Simpsons. Lil guy just wants to hear sky dad again "I bring you love!" "IT'S BRINGING US LOVE! KILL IT!"
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 17:31 |
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Terrorforge posted:Also some folks like it I guess? A quick glance at the OPP forums suggests it's at least more popular than, say, Demon. I can easily imagine most of the posts that bring it above Demon are things like "why I don't like Beast." The Demon forum, at least, has more topics. Still, Demon had its haters too. While now you can't get past a conversation mentioning Beast without someone mentioning that they don't like it, before that you couldn't talk about Demon without people complaining about metaplot or the 'technognostic' angle as a theme and wanting more romanticized versions of angels/demons and actual bearded god. I think there's a lot of faith in Matt McFarland, considering he was developer of the two newest lines and Promethean. Of course it could just be a small pool to pull from.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 17:52 |
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Kurieg posted:So, Trip report on the BPG. So I take it that picture up above is of a black guy who is also harboring the soul of a depraved cannibal/ogre or something? That looks an awful lot like a femur. Either way, that's so fuckin' classy. I'm trying to picture an Enabler type Beast getting caught mid-corpse-devouring and going all "You say that I am a monster? But I secretly fed you this same meal at last Saturday's BBQ cook out! Perhaps it is you who transgressed, and you who are the monster!" while presumably making spooky ghost noises to accentuate his point, before ultimately getting domed with a 9mm round from an increasingly exasperated hunter. Because how the gently caress could you rationalize that sort of scene to a normal person in any sort of serious way? Also, holy loving poo poo. Beast's that operate off the concept of fear of the Other. NOTHING can go wrong with that concept given how Beast has gone in the past. No sirree. poo poo, you had might as well just signal that Beast is for people that think that the people oppressing minorities are the true victims of society. It's absolutely something a nerdy channer on /pol/ would write up on a lark, for certain. That being said I do like the idea of a Beast that just woke up one day and said "Holy poo poo. I am a monster that preys on the weak. Nothing I say or do to justify it changes that." before taking a good, long, hard look outside the front window of his house-turned-lair and seeing his fellow Beasts act like similar self-justifying loving monsters as they get about their day. At which point he communes with his inner wrestler to pin down another Beast and become some sort of hosed up pseudo-hero. No clue if that's actually how it worked, but if so, grats to the writer on coming up with the only way any sane being would consider it being remotely acceptable to allow a Beast to continue to exist upon encountering one and figuring what it is they do. Edit: Oh hey, I also just noticed the part where they re-added heroes being created by Beast's. Which turns the entire concept of Beast post "fix" back on it's head and ensures that Beasts will always be loving monsters that need to burn for the good of the world. The writers really couldn't resist trying to sneak that little feature back in, could they? Who wrote this thing anyways? Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Mar 8, 2018 |
# ? Mar 8, 2018 18:57 |
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Archonex posted:Edit: Oh hey, I also just noticed the part where they re-added heroes being created by Beast's. Which turns the entire concept of Beast post supposed fix back on it's head and ensures that Beasts will always be loving monsters that need to burn for the good of the world. The writers really couldn't resist trying to sneak that little feature back in, could they? I think this little bit is probably an issue with concurrent development. As at least part of this book was written at the same time as the Beast Core book. That said, Heroes being created by Beasts was actually very narratively interesting. The issue is when Heroes are created by Beasts and still treated as "Always the bad guy forever, like the loving worst." Which this book does not do. Oh, oh. There's one thing I forgot to mention that the book adds. Beasts can birth "horrorspawn" from little bits of their Horror that are basically pure unrestrained Id, but are a good way for a physically weaker Beast to get a protector. The means of their creation and manifestation in the physical world are undeniably horrific and monstrous. There is very little in this book that presents Beasts as "The Good Guys", the opening fiction is basically a nascent hero blundering into a situation where an older Beast tries to prey on two children-beasts, not because they're monsters to be slain, but because he's genuinely a good person and sees a kid in a bad situation.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 19:15 |
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Kurieg posted:I think this little bit is probably an issue with concurrent development. As at least part of this book was written at the same time as the Beast Core book. So, wait. They're actually not trying to cover for the line? That's...Interesting. Heroes actually being decent people trying to do the right thing and being portrayed as such takes a whole load off the line, at the very least. Are they still compelled to murder Beasts? Because the implications there were all kinds of hosed up. Especially with Beast's making them in the first place.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 19:17 |
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Archonex posted:So, wait. They're actually not trying to cover for the line? That's...Interesting. The book doesn't spend much time on Heroes, other than the fact that it introduces two mechanical ways that 100% for real make a Hero. it does have a few fiction pieces that show a Hero getting one over on the Beast because Beasts are Dumb.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 19:22 |
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I'll be honest, I actually really think the Divergence is a good thing, too. Divergence is basically when a Beast takes their Horror and tears it off their soul. The Horror can now manifest physically and will go out and try to feed itself, either as a giant monster or as the Beast's evil doppelganger with monster eyes. The Beast can then actually physically restrain the Horror from doing so, and is not required to do a drat thing for it. The Beast retains Nightmare access but loses all Atavisms, which go to the Horror, and if either dies, so does the other. It's less extreme than the Beasts that hunt other Beasts but the idea of having to play shepherd and ride herd on this horrible creature and being able to do so, that's a better thing than Beast Vanilla. I mean, it suffers from being attached to Beast Vanilla, but.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 19:55 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 03:36 |
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Kurieg posted:So the Beast Players Guide came out yesterday. Somehow I didn't see 'Beast Players Guide', I don't know what a Makara is and I don't know who Matt is. So I completely misread those paragraphs and thought they were pretty good. Reread that and tell me it doesn't make total sense as coming from an immortal perpetual outsider demon or whatever that reincarnates and is becoming determined to do some systemic good this go round. Realising it's just Beast but oh good, more kids, is just grimy.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 20:26 |