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Nuns with Guns posted:The Changlelings were the worst because the books admit the True Fae like the cut of Beasts' jibs and Beasts even team up with True Fae on hunts, but somehow Changleling still really want to hang out with the abuse elementals. The one that got me are werewolves, because the Beasts' Lairs (I think that's the name for their special flavor of Honeycomb Hideout) are built explicitly on the fact that they do terrible things which has echoes in the spirit world and would create the kind of terrible locations that the werewolves are then forced to deal with. And at the same time the Beasts are still their friends. "Yeah, sure, they've created such negative, haunted and hurt feelings they've made the spiritual equivalent of the Sarlacc Pit in my backyard but I just can't help like 'em, yanno." I asked Kurieg once if this read was correct and they said yes. And then I sighed.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:41
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Elephant Parade posted:I'm pretty sure most of the people here aren't rapists, actually I’m not saying anyone here is, just that at this point I probably wouldn’t bat an eye if someone told me a goon was caught jacking off while on a bus.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:41
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Kurieg posted:It's also a bizarre empowerment fantasy for people who were bullied in high school for being different because it tells them that "no, you were in fact correct and it is now your sacred duty to go out and kill jocks." Beast absolutely was the Trenchcoat Mafia RPG. There was even a fluff scenario where a highschool girl was about to massacre her percieved foes over an imagined slight, and this was presented as a good thing. Beast was also the first game to have an example of play where one player feels uncomfortable and another player loving doubles down on trying to making her (the player, not the character) feel uncomfortable. Most games are like "respect your friends and their boundaries" ...but Beast went 180 in the other direction, I wonder why.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:42
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Bedlamdan posted:I’m not saying anyone here is, just that at this point I probably wouldn’t bat an eye if someone told me a goon was caught jacking off while on a bus.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:44
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Elephant Parade posted:I was using "rapist" as a pithy shorthand for "sex criminal." I don't think most people here are sex criminals, either Well, that would require them to have sex so it does seem unlikely.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:45
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Yeah, I think Matt has that weird type of brain worm someone gets when they're nominally on the left but have done something or support something that makes one completely at odds with it, so they just go into this kind of rationalization overdrive to try and make themselves acceptable in it. Beast basically tries to posit that abuse actually makes people better, and that if you are against this, well, you're probably an internet troll who hates women (as the first draft of Heroes were coded) or a psychopath (the Heroes in the final draft). Same kind of logic that TV writer and UK Labour member Graham Lineham has in his pathetic crusade against trans people ("I am a hero for opposing the evil trans people who are all rapists and psychos, and if you oppose me, you are an internet troll who hates women"), and the same kind of desire to stop being an outcast on the left that drives it all.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:53
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moths posted:Most games are like "respect your friends and their boundaries" ...but Beast went 180 in the other direction, I wonder why. jeesus
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Feb 11, 2019 17:53
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Dawgstar posted:I asked Kurieg once if this read was correct and they said yes. And then I sighed. The book straight up says that if a Beast manages to somehow get into the Shadow they act as a locus for Fear and Suffering resonance. Mind, there are some werewolves who would view this as a positive. And one of the examples of play is "Set beast loose in the territory of a pack you don't like." Which is probably a result of the fact that Matt ultimately had final say on what went into the book. Anyone who would ask "Why the gently caress would werewolves associate with Beasts." was told "They do, it's your job to justify it." Matt would make sweeping generalizations about the other game lines then leave it up to them to prove his point. The stuff written(or overseen more directly) by Matt comes off like this  Whereas the stuff written by other people comes off more like this.  To the point that the portion of the Beast Players guide written after Matt's authorial voice has long since left the building has this side bar. 
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Feb 11, 2019 18:00
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Geez, what the gently caress is wrong with people in this industry?Kurieg posted:No, at least not intentionally. What is is intended to do is this. This is a seriously depressing answer
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Feb 11, 2019 19:24
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my first impression of Beast, before learning about how it is essentially rapist apologia was just "wow i guess you really liked that dr. horrible, seems weird to uncritically accept that he was the good guy in that scenario."
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Feb 11, 2019 19:28
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Pacho posted:This is a seriously depressing answer If there's a post of my F&F review you should read it's probably this one. https://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/kurieg/beast-the-primordial/#18 The queen poo poo beast of New Orleans bombs a storefront to cover up her tracks and hide the fact that she's planning on dirty-bombing a concert while she kills a Hero in an bid to ascend to Godhood. The question presented to the players isn't should we stop this, it's "Do we have the right to interfere in the affairs of our betters." The best the party can hope for is convincing her not to use the poison bomb to kill hundreds of people and that killing the Hero will be enough, but even then it's a giant public murder by an overtly supernatural entity and it brings down the attention of literally everyone to New Orleans and makes the players lives a living hell as a result. If they kill her target before she does then they stop the attack but are now pariahs from beast society because they broke the geek social fallacies.
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Feb 11, 2019 20:49
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I've never even heard of beast before today but it sounds loving stupid, thanks for the wave off
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Feb 11, 2019 21:02
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I think this has put the final nail in the Beast coffin. It won’t get a 2e or another book. Sleeping Beauty finally tracked it down.
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Feb 11, 2019 21:16
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Part of me would quite like to see Hero, a game (or maybe a Hunter supplement) all about struggling to overcome Beasts and protect the community. Mostly though I think the game line should be quietly retired and maybe even withdrawn from sale.
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Feb 11, 2019 21:39
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Warthur posted:Part of me would quite like to see Hero, a game (or maybe a Hunter supplement) all about struggling to overcome Beasts and protect the community. Mostly though I think the game line should be quietly retired and maybe even withdrawn from sale. The best thing that could happen would be Beast being withdrawn from everything with an apology for allowing it to get as far as it did. They've fulfilled their kickstarter obligations at this point (I think and hope) so that would theoretically be possible. Having a "Social-Other Empowerment Fantasy" book actually be about abuse and rape is at best crass and at worst actively harmful.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:08
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Rand Brittain posted:I think this has put the final nail in the Beast coffin. It won’t get a 2e or another book. You would think the content would make you question the decision of publishing it the first time. how do you greenlight a game where the explicit message is "abusers are good actually"
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Feb 11, 2019 22:17
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Unoriginal Name posted:You would think the content would make you question the decision of publishing it the first time. It had a bizarre aura around it. Like people refused to look at that side when it came out.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:18
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Vampire was basically "the bad guys are good" and it got really big, I guess someone figured edgyness still sells.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:27
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Unoriginal Name posted:You would think the content would make you question the decision of publishing it the first time. The KS was not specific about the abusers metaphor and just seemed like it was some very weird, dark game that felt more metaphysical than it actually was. I don't know if I can read the KS and not see some of the hints now, but there was definitely not specific wording about this game being what it turned out to be. A whole bunch of people got rightfully upset at the early drafts. I don't know how much Onyx Path knew about the exact metaphors that were going to be used, but I imagine they greenlit it on the strength of Demon more than anything else.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:28
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Up until Beast came out Matt McFarland was a well regarded writer. His work previous to this, Demon, was good. Very good. So when he said that we were simply misreading Beast we believed him. It was far too easy to write off the skeevy stuff as just a auteur believing so strongly in his vision that the subtext escaped him. He said he'd dial it back in the final copy and we trusted him. He did not dial it back, but again it came off more as an inability to kill his darlings and the fact that his sole editorial oversight was his Wife. Both of which were acknowledged as problems and we were told it wasn't going to happen again. It's only with the knowledge that he is in fact a rapist that we can look back and see that the subtext was in fact the Text. The Lore Bear posted:The KS was not specific about the abusers metaphor and just seemed like it was some very weird, dark game that felt more metaphysical than it actually was. I don't know if I can read the KS and not see some of the hints now, but there was definitely not specific wording about this game being what it turned out to be. A whole bunch of people got rightfully upset at the early drafts. I was among those people. Upset is an understatement.
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Feb 11, 2019 22:35
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Biomute posted:Vampire was basically "the bad guys are good" and it got really big, I guess someone figured edgyness still sells. That's really not what Vampire is though. It was "the bad guys are tragic and cool", and sort of... mutated through play & poor writing into "and also secretly good"
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Feb 11, 2019 22:42
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It mutated in play because people often confuse 'protagonist' for 'hero'. I loved Werewolf, but I fully admit that the Garou were hosed up and in a hell of their own making.
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Feb 11, 2019 23:31
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Nuns with Guns posted:Oh boy, now the RPGnet admins that came here last time to say the Matt they know would never do this and he's changed can come back to explain this, too. (Please don't) That's...not what happened. That's a real misrepresentation of what happened. Edit even with your selective quoting that's still trying to build a strawman. Mcfarland is a piece of poo poo, Zak is a piece of poo poo, Pundit as well, and Desborough and Webb and Mentzer and who knows how many others. EDIT: Ohh and Paizo for their child abuse demon and trying to cover it up, then lying about removing it and their lovely treatment of Price and others. But that doesn't mean you should be lying about what did and didn't happen x time ago when it came out about McFarland. PST fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Feb 11, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 23:39
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Liquid Communism posted:It mutated in play because people often confuse 'protagonist' for 'hero'. I loved Werewolf, but I fully admit that the Garou were hosed up and in a hell of their own making. Most Garou and Fera at least were pretty well meaning as a whole while Vampires and other WoD playable characters are mostly selfish assholes.
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Feb 11, 2019 23:43
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open_sketchbook posted:That's really not what Vampire is though. It was "the bad guys are tragic and cool", and sort of... mutated through play & poor writing into "and also secretly good" Also something to keep in mind is that Requiem, by and large, took greater pains to emphasize the monstrous and kind of hosed up nature of being a vampire rather than going "you're a rapacious predator that has to hurt people to survive, you're so good and cool." This is also the same new World of Darkness which gave us games like Promethian and Changeling: the Lost, handling themes of abuse and what it means to be human in intelligent and mature ways. Then along comes Beast not as some relic of the bad old WoD: Gypsies days but a post nWoD era game, released to an audience with nWoD expectations, which turns out to be a paean to that most noble and selfless creature, the serial abuser.
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Feb 11, 2019 23:47
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The Lore Bear posted:The KS was not specific about the abusers metaphor and just seemed like it was some very weird, dark game that felt more metaphysical than it actually was. I don't know if I can read the KS and not see some of the hints now, but there was definitely not specific wording about this game being what it turned out to be. A whole bunch of people got rightfully upset at the early drafts. Yeah, certainly when I glanced at the KS, my takeaway was that it was going to be something not unlike changeling: the dreaming, albeit darker and more focused on general myth than faeries specifically. That you were some sort of mythical creature partially trapped in human form, trying to navigate the balance between the two worlds, yadda yadda. Admittedly, I didn't really spend much time on it and didn't back it, so maybe it was clearer if you read more of the KS material. My reason for not backing at the time though was more "I don't see how this niche isn't already filled" rather than "this is creepy rape justification".
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Feb 11, 2019 23:48
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Matt said multiple times that there were bad Beasts but that Beasts as a whole were good and served a necessary purpose in the world by teaching people "Lessons". But there is absolutely nothing mechanical in the game that forces you to teach "Lessons", the only thing the game has is that theoretically other Beasts will think you're Gauche for not doing so. It wasn't until the later books written by people who's names don't end in McFarland that they finally stated that the "Lessons" thing is just a fig leaf that most Beasts need to have because without it they're forced to confront the reality that they are monsters. There's no random chance, they were not forced to be this way. They chose it willingly and on the other side of the looking glass is nothing but a yawning endless hunger that will never be sated. Once you've engaged with one of Beast's inheritances you've left the Fig leaf behind and have set your sights on exactly what kind of monster you want to be. If Beast had actually engaged with that at the start, done away with the queer coding and focused entirely on a loose collection of people trying to forge their souls into dragons for some unknown purpose it might have been good. But instead Matt just kept insisting on it until he finally gave up the ghost with the explicit text of "Maybe rapists are a good thing to have around?"
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Feb 11, 2019 23:59
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Liquid Communism posted:It mutated in play because people often confuse 'protagonist' for 'hero'. I loved Werewolf, but I fully admit that the Garou were hosed up and in a hell of their own making. Which is also Beast's problem. I mean, heck, even the Player's Guide to the Sabbat took great pains at length to make that distinction. You can tell stories about playing monsters and be fine with it, but McFarland insisted on that coat of paint.
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Feb 12, 2019 00:09
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PST posted:But that doesn't mean you should be lying about what did and didn't happen x time ago when it came out about McFarland.
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Feb 12, 2019 00:22
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The only lessons Beasts teach is that Beasts should be killed and the value of keeping tarps and quicklime in your car.
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Feb 12, 2019 00:26
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Plutonis posted:Most Garou and Fera at least were pretty well meaning as a whole while Vampires and other WoD playable characters are mostly selfish assholes. Nah, the Garou are hosed up genocidal racists on a ton of levels. They slaughtered uncountable humans to keep technology at bay, to such an extent that the human subconscious is terrified of them on principal, and drove other fera to extinction in the War of Rage because they thought they could do their jobs better. The apocalypse is very much their own fault, even if individuals living in it can be tragic heroes. I mean, have you read the short stories that set the tone for Apocalypse? One of them involves a Jewish Kinfolk who is the result of a Nazi Get of Fenris making time with his concentration camp bound mother, and in his old age continuing to try and get revenge on the still Neo Nazi Get. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 00:34
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Terrible Opinions posted:Pretending that rpgnet doesn't have a huge problem with refusing to ban abusive shitheads isn't a good look. They have problems with being indecisive enough when it comes to some very obvious problem people and way too decisive with lesser issues, but if you're around and being an abusive shithead, you're gonna get banned from RPGnet, even if it took too much time to get there. Was there a specific incident you're talking about?
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Feb 12, 2019 00:46
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E: double post
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Feb 12, 2019 00:57
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Liquid Communism posted:Nah, the Garou are hosed up genocidal racists on a ton of levels. They slaughtered uncountable humans to keep technology at bay, to such an extent that the human subconscious is terrified of them on principal, and drove other fera to extinction in the War of Rage because they thought they could do their jobs better. The apocalypse is very much their own fault, even if individuals living in it can be tragic heroes. I can't say about the stuff on the novels but I feel the gist with the Garou is that they have a noble end (preserving wildlife and nature) with means that go from the kinda ok to loving horrifying while Vampires, Changelings and Mages usually have their own self preservation as #1 priority.
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Feb 12, 2019 00:57
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The only reason Garou don't have self preservation as their primary feature is because they are enormously hard to kill and have hosed up so badly their rate of producing more cubs has been below sustainable since the industrial revolution. They are hosed, and have culturally accepted that they are as a species at best going down swinging.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:07
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moths posted:Beast absolutely was the Trenchcoat Mafia RPG. There was even a fluff scenario where a highschool girl was about to massacre her percieved foes over an imagined slight, and this was presented as a good thing. drat good reference to columbine while also perpetuating the myth that it was about bullying
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Feb 12, 2019 01:18
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The Lore Bear posted:They have problems with being indecisive enough when it comes to some very obvious problem people and way too decisive with lesser issues, but if you're around and being an abusive shithead, you're gonna get banned from RPGnet, even if it took too much time to get there. The place has the exact sort of lovely ultra specific rules that cultivate the worst sort of pass aggressive rules lawyer rear end in a top hat.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:43
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The most succinct summation of Beast can be found in its example of play where it presents a player making everyone else at the table uncomfortable as a neat thing during a period where many RPGs were finally starting to discuss pushing boundaries and what to do if people at the table aren't comfortable with stuff in a mature and open fashion.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:47
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Terrible Opinions posted:Like this very thread had a big to do about rpgnet refusing to ban Zak when it was "just" known that he was an abusive shitheel intent on harassing people, for a good long time because he was a developer. Zak was banned Jan. 11, 2014. We certainly didn't "refuse" to ban him. I can't deny that we may have taken too long to ban people, but we're trying to do better in that regard.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:58
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Hence saying "for a good long time" rather than just leaving it at the refuse. 2014 was long after it was known that Zak was a serial harasser.
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Feb 12, 2019 02:08
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