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The first level of Auspex, Heightened Senses, obviates the need for glasses. Of course individual vampires may have their own reasons to wear them.
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May 31, 2019 05:08
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Pope Guilty posted:The first level of Auspex, Heightened Senses, obviates the need for glasses. Of course individual vampires may have their own reasons to wear them. Auspex was low-key one of the most powerful disciplines in oWoD. By the way, reading through the nWoD I actually like a ton of what they've done but I'm not loving Beast and I wonder who it was written for.
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May 31, 2019 05:27
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Zeroisanumber posted:By the way, reading through the nWoD I actually like a ton of what they've done but I'm not loving Beast and I wonder who it was written for. We all wonder that and we all fear the answer.
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May 31, 2019 05:31
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LatwPIAT posted:We all wonder that and we all fear the answer. I'm even trying to picture how they fit in with the social ecosystem of the nWoD and I'm not getting a clear picture. Even Prometheans have a better defined role.
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May 31, 2019 05:44
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My homebrew Highlander characters that I ported to Vampire back when I was 14 make more sense.
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May 31, 2019 05:45
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That's what's so bizarre about it. Beasts seem to have no niche, role, or purpose. No themes that other games don't already address. No high concept. No pop-culture horror genre to draw on. There's just... nothing. It's perplexing that this idea ever got farther than idle musing, because there's no substance to it.
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May 31, 2019 05:52
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LatwPIAT posted:That's what's so bizarre about it. Beasts seem to have no niche, role, or purpose. No themes that other games don't already address. No high concept. No pop-culture horror genre to draw on. There's just... nothing. It's perplexing that this idea ever got farther than idle musing, because there's no substance to it. I'm not completely convinced by this. The idea of dragons - and more high fantasy creatures generally - seemed like an interesting niche. Sure, there was always going to be some overlap with other game lines (once you get past vampires, werewolves, mages, fairies, ghosts, Frankensteins, mummies, and the people that hunt them, most pop-culture horror genres are tapped), but something along the lines of OWoD Mage (i.e., these beings are being forced into roles by the fact that pop culture wants to put them in these roles, and the roles are both the source of your power and the source of your destruction) seemed interesting. ...I was envisioning something like the Indexing series by Seanan McGuire, which focuses on the "X-Files, but for fairy tales" division: quote:For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected—perhaps infected is a better word—by memetic incursion: where fairy tale narratives become reality, often with disastrous results. Sure, the themes overlap, but because these are classic stories and themes. How you get there is part of the process. ...now, I understand from this thread that Beast missed those marks so far it can't even see the target from where it hit, but c'est la vie.
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May 31, 2019 06:29
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Zeroisanumber posted:Auspex was low-key one of the most powerful disciplines in oWoD. This is an extremely polite response to reading NWoD and then coming across beast. A very disciplined response.
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May 31, 2019 07:52
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Austria felix nube posted:Can you tell us why did they make the Strix? Can you... run this by us again? I’m interested in aesthetic critiques of the physical art of these books in print, but I don’t really understanding what you found repulsive about the book?
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May 31, 2019 07:54
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Yeah the "they suck because we really, really suck" aspect of it is cool. Isn't it not just that the moon's haunted, but that the moon may have deliberately haunted itself with them? It's layers on layers of ridiculousness.  ulmont posted:I'm not completely convinced by this. The idea of dragons - and more high fantasy creatures generally - seemed like an interesting niche. Sure, there was always going to be some overlap with other game lines (once you get past vampires, werewolves, mages, fairies, ghosts, Frankensteins, mummies, and the people that hunt them, most pop-culture horror genres are tapped), but something along the lines of OWoD Mage (i.e., these beings are being forced into roles by the fact that pop culture wants to put them in these roles, and the roles are both the source of your power and the source of your destruction) seemed interesting. I mean, you can have dragons and such pretty easily without including Beast's sicko abuse apologia take on them. Changeling had a version of them in the form of a kith, I believe. Heck, Changeling is pretty much "here's some old timey tales and fantastic things in a modern context".txt in that regard. 1e Changeling had a neat take on the True Fae and how they interacted with stories too. So they had that niche covered if someone wanted to explore it. And knowing the community i'm sure someone has not only designed a fan game for dragons but also pointed out that they'd also make for a pretty neat sort of ultra-rare shapeshifter like those pride ridden minotaurs, the Dagon/Innsmouth-esque knockoffs, or the other types of creatures similar to werewolves that don't take center stage in the books. So it's not like you couldn't house rule something if you didn't like the take presented in the games available. About the only thing you lose by throwing Beast out the window is the skeevy undertones and nasty history that come with it. Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:20 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 10:05
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Archonex posted:Isn't it not just that the moon's haunted, but that the moon may have deliberately haunted itself with them? I really like that Luna stuck a bunch of weird jerks on the moon where they wouldn't cause problems. Spirits of concepts that don't exist who are upset about spending so much time in Moon-Jail was definitely a pleasant surprise in 2nd edition
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May 31, 2019 12:35
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And then people went to the moon and hosed it all up, of course. How could anyone expect that? Why would spirits expect anyone to go to the moon? There's nothing on the moon to eat.
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May 31, 2019 13:04
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Actually, let me amend my previous post. There is one thing that I feel is without a doubt good about Beast. And it has pretty much nothing to do with Beast's themselves, save for wanting them all dead for being abusive motherfuckers. It's Yuri's Group. The idea that instead of going all Rambo on the monsters and ignoring their victims a bunch of people would sit down, analyze the situation rationally, therapeutically seek to provide support for those hurt by them, and then on top of that develop coping strategies that work for the monsters to help minimize the damage they do is pure loving genius as both a narrative and thematic thing. It even doubles as undermining the pretensions of some of the nastiest parts of Vampire's political groups/support groups. Since both they and the whole "A beast I am, lest a beast I become" thing loses a bit of it's punch if there's a bunch of doctors and patients that can sit down with you every week or so in an actually healthy support group and talk you down from doing altogether stupid or evil things. I mean, when you think about it not everyone's gonna be out for revenge or to kill all the monsters all WH40K Inquisitor style. Nor are they going to try to scientifically explain the problem and gently caress that up as groups like the Talbot Group or others do. Having one undeniably good group of people that seem to really know their stuff (to the point where they can literally help vampires to not frenzy or degenerate) and apply it reasonably without making a bunch of idiotic/mistaken assumptions was a breath of fresh air and something I didn't know would be useful for a game until I read the details behind it. Archonex fucked around with this message at 13:46 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 13:30
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Archonex posted:Actually, let me amend my previous post. It's a really weird and good niche that seems obvious in hindsight, but wouldn't immediately come up as something to use in play. It's such a stark contrast to the darkness in WoD because it's so positive.
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May 31, 2019 13:48
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Archonex posted:Actually, let me amend my previous post. The early books written in ignorance of Matt's retcons to make the Beasts perpetually good and justified are all of at least decent quality. Over half the stories in Primordial Dream are about how Beasts are monsters, and much of what they do is coping mechanisms to hide that fact from themselves. And ignoring the last chapter of Conquering Heroes. Most of the Hero characters are all about how Beasts profoundly hosed up their lives and they do that they do to help other people. And several of the Beasts are examples of what happens when you take the "We are justified in our hunger" narrative to it's logic conclusion. Of course the "suggested ways the players can interact with these people" side bars also undermine the premise.. but beggars can't be choosers.
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May 31, 2019 14:05
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I really enjoy that idea of Yuri's Group. Not only does it make sense, but it also makes the monsters that are being played just a little bit more monstrous. One of my favorite character concepts that I've ever run across (from someone who occasionally reads this thread) was an Arrow psychologist who helped mages with PTSD and other psychological ailments. So good that I used that character (as best as I can) as an NPC in my game because they asked for a priest or some other mage that would treat their psychological problem as a real thing and not just be an rear end in a top hat to them about it.
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May 31, 2019 14:24
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Zeroisanumber posted:Auspex was low-key one of the most powerful disciplines in oWoD. The one thing that kinda makes sense to me is that, every Subtle Arcana had an associated splat that was partially human. Werewolves are humans with a bit of Spirit, changelings are humans with some Fate added, the Bound are people with Death elementals inside. Even Prometheans are inanimate matter stuffed with Prime to look like humans. In that context, things that are horrific nightmares from Astral trapped in human body fit. Even their tendency to abuse ostensibly to teach lessons is not weird in this context: that's what Pandemonium does to the mages that visit it. It seems obvious that's what Mind half-elementals would also try to do.
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May 31, 2019 14:28
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In theory, such a mage could go into a patient's mind and destroy PTSD's goetic form. I'm sure this would have no consequences and is perfectly healthy.
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May 31, 2019 14:28
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Xelkelvos posted:It's a really weird and good niche that seems obvious in hindsight, but wouldn't immediately come up as something to use in play. It's such a stark contrast to the darkness in WoD because it's so positive. Yeah. Working in the concept of "doctors that will do their damnedest to help you but will straight up butcher you if you're a legit monster that gets off on hurting people" is kinda hard given their main specialties. But on the other hand, just having it in the lore pretty much changes up the tone of a bunch of the monster lines. It really makes the willing monsters seem that much more monstrous when there's a group of people with verifiable results out there that not only help their victim's put their lives back together but can teach the antagonists ways to suppress their worst impulses. If you were running a social chronicle I could see it working though. Or I could see it being a chronicle where they bring in security to fend off _____ rear end in a top hat/threat to protect their patients on both sides of the line. Just to go with Vampire again, I could also see an organization like the Lancaea et Sanctum doing their damndest to wipe them out so they can keep their stranglehold on the populace. The Lancaea et Sanctum looks a hell of a lot less justified when the things that make vampires monsters can be treatable on one level of another. And the Invictus would probably freak the gently caress out the moment they realized groups like that exist. I'm imagining them realizing that there is a treatment group full of former ghouls/blood dolls/whatever and just going scorched earth to wipe it out. Especially if it contained escapees/their own victims. You'd probably have to wait until your group was familiar with the setting to introduce them though. A big part of the narrative impact of Yuri's Group comes from the fact that they're remarkably sane about the whole "Well, monsters exist!" thing compared to a lot of the other groups in the setting. Take the Abbey, for example. Archonex fucked around with this message at 15:06 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 14:50
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Mors Rattus posted:In theory, such a mage could go into a patient's mind and destroy PTSD's goetic form. They could indeed do that. No issues could ever arise from rummaging around in someone else’s mind. Nope, not at all.
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May 31, 2019 15:06
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Jhet posted:They could indeed do that. No issues could ever arise from rummaging around in someone else’s mind. Nope, not at all. And never mind what you'd find in there. At least in 1e it was entirely possible for other game lines to straight up visit the mind of other beings through their dreams. For instance, changeling's had at least one or two kith's that let you do that. I think there were even mechanics for some sort of dream riding thing too. Imagine some mage going into someone's head and not realizing that no, the "goetic demon" is in fact a part-human entity that absolutely does not play by your rules and wants to know why you're mucking about with a free willed person's mind. Nor does it want to have a debate about the nature of reality or whatever the gently caress the PC's want to do. Also, since one of the kith's that lets you easily gently caress around with dreams happens to be succubi they probably look at least a little like actual no poo poo demons just to gently caress with your own perceptions of reality and what's true. Which probably is not going to lead to good things happening for the general sanity of the mage. Or aid in any future assumptions that the mage is liable to make going forwards for that matter. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:44 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 15:15
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Thinking about the secret courts that VASCU had for monsters, just as they'd have investigators and experts on the supernatural to determine what monster did what and get the evidence to prove it, I imagine there's also specialized defense experts and attorneys doing the same thing. Imagine trying to prove that a witness saw a Beast kith rather than a werewolf or a Demon undermining their own defense as it would blow their cover
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May 31, 2019 17:26
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Their 'secret court' is more just the head of VASCU convincing the FBI and Supreme Court that so-and-so must be locked up in their special prison, with a small rider to the Patriot Act offering the ability to avoid normal trials. Apparently back when they were just involved with 'normal' serial killer trials, at least one suspected murderer burst into flames upon being touched by sunlight. 'Though the Unit incarcerated a small number of slashers throughout the late 1990s, a rider on the 2001 USA-PATRIOT act allows for the unconditional and unlimited imprisonment of serial killers who present a clear and present danger to human life and who are not able to stand trial for whatever reason.' As fun as it would be, it's less Night Court and more black helicopters taking unknown individuals with bags over their heads to a secret location where they will never be seen or heard from again. 'Many' VASCU agents don't like being part of this process. nofather fucked around with this message at 19:49 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 19:44
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I mean, the two can coexist, depending on how your table defines the ability to stand trial and how much Night Court you want. And how much leeway you think the Supreme Court is gonna give.
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May 31, 2019 19:53
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My partner's VASCU pitch was "Jason Voorhees is in custody but it's become apparent that the murder you thought he could be solidly convicted of was actually one of the ones committed by his mother, and your deputy director has lit a fire under your rear end to firm up the evidence for some of the other charges before the whole case collapses."
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May 31, 2019 19:56
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Zeroisanumber posted:I'm even trying to picture how they fit in with the social ecosystem of the nWoD and I'm not getting a clear picture. Even Prometheans have a better defined role. Beasts are antisocial shitbags who make everyone's life miserable, and they're supposed to be manifestations of fairy tale monsters or something, even though Changeling exists and The Scarecrow Ministry and even the Gentry are a thing. Beast should've just been an antagonist splatbook for Changeling called Ogre: The Shrekoning, because Beasts make more sense as loose cannon asswipes or fae too hosed up from their durance that they were never able to reintegrate into human society in any fashion, so they basically become the faerie version of Slashers.
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May 31, 2019 20:26
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Someone ages ago pointed out that being a Beast feels like it's the failure state for another splat. I mean, look at Beast's pitch: an ancient, primal, horrible monster thing has eaten your soul and now you have to go out and commit atrocities or it'll do it on its own and maybe be worse. That doesn't feel too far from some of the worst case abyssal legacies in Mage. Hell, it's pretty drat similar to Vampire, and that was a game where the baseline drama is "You've become a monster that must feed on humans, now what?" Also I remember yet another person describing Beast's mechanics less as "you have a dragon for a soul" and more like you're stuck having to take care of an rear end in a top hat cat that eats torture.
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May 31, 2019 21:49
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Xelkelvos posted:It's a really weird and good niche that seems obvious in hindsight, but wouldn't immediately come up as something to use in play. It's such a stark contrast to the darkness in WoD because it's so positive. I think a part of why it's so weird is that monsters in CofD tend to think their poo poo doesn't stink, so to speak. Vampires, for all their talk of tear-stained immortality, see themselves far more often than not as solitary alpha predators, preying on the herd of common humanity. Werewolves kill as a matter of course, and are immersed in a culture where following one's nature without moral implications is not only normal but accepted. Mages outright have cults dedicated to how awesome being an obsessive weirdo is.
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May 31, 2019 21:58
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Omnicrom posted:
That's basically Geist, at least v1.
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May 31, 2019 22:55
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Omnicrom posted:Someone ages ago pointed out that being a Beast feels like it's the failure state for another splat. I mean, look at Beast's pitch: an ancient, primal, horrible monster thing has eaten your soul and now you have to go out and commit atrocities or it'll do it on its own and maybe be worse. That doesn't feel too far from some of the worst case abyssal legacies in Mage. There's a game called Better Angels that plays around with this idea in that you're inhabited by a demon that gives you super powers. It works in that context because it presumes the demons are kind of dumb and hyperfocused on the trappings of evil, so if you put on a good show of villainy that leaves convenient supervillain tropes lying around for the heroes to exploit, it won't realize you're taking a dive and letting the good guys win. Not so much in Beast, though I could potentially see a route to a more serious version of Better Angels that might fit the mood of the nWoD.
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Jun 1, 2019 02:12
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Beast was made to pander to: 1. rapists. 2. Otherkin.
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Jun 1, 2019 02:21
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Silhouette posted:Beasts are antisocial shitbags who make everyone's life miserable, and they're supposed to be manifestations of fairy tale monsters or something, even though Changeling exists and The Scarecrow Ministry and even the Gentry are a thing. I had thought about saying something along the lines of 'given how much Beast stole from Changeling, they might as well have just made them a lovely sub-sect of the Lost', but didn't quite feel I had a cohesive enough statement in mind and stayed silent. Basically, your post said more or less what I'd been thinking. 
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Jun 1, 2019 02:56
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-01/renovator-finds-grave-markers-in-her-bathroom/11169064 Call the geists.
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Jun 1, 2019 05:11
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Jhet posted:They could indeed do that. No issues could ever arise from rummaging around in someone else’s mind. Nope, not at all.
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Jun 1, 2019 05:31
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Nessus posted:There are several video games of reasonable popularity where the premise could be summarized as "you go whup up on someone's inner darkness and at least weaken it enough for recovery to become possible." ~Dominatrix Bananahead~
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Jun 1, 2019 05:41
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Omnicrom posted:Someone ages ago pointed out that being a Beast feels like it's the failure state for another splat. I mean, look at Beast's pitch: an ancient, primal, horrible monster thing has eaten your soul and now you have to go out and commit atrocities or it'll do it on its own and maybe be worse. That doesn't feel too far from some of the worst case abyssal legacies in Mage. Pretty sure that was me. Part of it was what you said. The other half was that unlike other splats the early drafts people on here were posting about appeared to have literally no ending state that didn't basically boil down to increasingly horrifying ways of saying "You're hosed forever chum!" in one nightmarish way or another. Whoever handled the later books apparently fixed this later on given what a poster said a few months back. So that at least is something if it's true. Just to vaguely recap what I recall of that conversation: My point was that as they were originally designed it seemed almost like Beast was a shittier Vampire in which you play as a bunch of wholly unsympathetic assholes that cribbed themes and ideas from the other splats. Not that vampires in the setting are exactly paragons of virtue, but at least it hammered home the point that a lot of the stuff they do had no real good justification beyond their hosed up impulses and a fundamentally corrupt society. Beast...Didn't really seem to do that back then --- See all the posters pissed at the implicit abuse apologia way back when for what I mean. Furthermore, the guys and gals that wrote for Vampire seemed to understand that while horror and a dismal ending are endemic to many characters in the splat it was also important to at least dangle a thin hope that things are gonna get better. Otherwise, why even bother playing it (more on that later)? See, the 1e nods to VTM's Golconda, parts of the Carthians, literally any part of the Ordo Dracul that doesn't buy into the whole "We must become even worse monsters to escape vampirism!" thing, etc, etc. Beast didn't really seem to do that in some of the earlier drafts. Which brings me right back to VtR. In 1e Vampire got two books going under the title of Night Horrors. One introduced infamous characters in the setting. The other introduced vampires that didn't or couldn't hang out in or with the "Kindred" classification/politics. Turns out the setting is loaded with different types of undead/undead causing monstrosities! At least one even got rolled into 2e as a minor clan in a pre-written city. But what's really important to Beast is a sidebar for a parasite that basically turns the human host into an empty husk over time. It explicitly lays out the fact that from the very moment this character was infected he is a dead man walking. He's still breathing. He's walking around under his own will. And he's still a human, albeit one with increasingly horrifying things happening to him that he or she can't stop. But in the end? There's no happy ending. The sidebar in question in this section points out that while it can be entertaining to play the tale of a doomed character ultimately they are in fact going to die horribly and that you shouldn't invest too much time or (from a player perspective) care into it. Basically, you were better served to actually play one of the other characters and leave the creepy fish-tongue parasites as disturbing monster antagonists. Looking at Beast, and the original end states that were posted they all seemed to take a broken and messed up character and inflicted on them a state of being that was even worse. Sometimes to the point of being just as bad as the fish parasite in Night Horrors. So, really, even setting aside all the horrible poo poo to do with Beast why the gently caress would you even want to play a Beast, given that? They're basically an antagonist oriented splat with Golconda-esque states that at the time appeared to be more suited for NPC antagonists. Now, granted I think someone said that it was Conquering Heroes that fixed that? But I never picked that up. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Jun 1, 2019 |
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Jun 1, 2019 06:10
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The timeline as I understand it is that Conquering Heroes was being written concurrently with the Beast core book, so it's using the old framework of "Beasts create Heroes. Heroes are fundamentally broken people and have been made that way by Beasts. Beasts are born the way they are and are marginally more sympathetic as a result." The Beast Players Guide is the book that straight up says "Beasts are lying to themselves, and they are not aspirational figures." and has a lot of new neat mechanical stuff as well as new endgames like "Functionally kill your beast and turn yourself into a quasi-hero to try and make the world a slightly better place before you explode." BUT it's also the book with the fluff chapters that completely dispense with pretext and turn into rape apologia.
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Jun 1, 2019 06:19
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Kurieg posted:The timeline as I understand it is that Conquering Heroes was being written concurrently with the Beast core book, so it's using the old framework of "Beasts create Heroes. Heroes are fundamentally broken people and have been made that way by Beasts. Beasts are born the way they are and are marginally more sympathetic as a result." Neither book was written concurrently. Conquering Heroes was written a good year after Beast at least. (Can’t be sure of when. Didn’t work on it.) The book we went straight from Beast’s core onto was the fiction anthology. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Jun 1, 2019 |
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Jun 1, 2019 06:27
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Question for more seasoned WoD players: Playing through a V20 Vampire the Masquerade game as a Gangrel and I got into a pinch where I needed blood pretty quickly or I was going into torpor. My vamp was running through some alleyways and docks and came across a stray dog. My Gangrel didn't have super high humanity (~5) so I figured whatever, it's just a fictional dog right? Nope. My DM got super quiet and RP'd through the scene anyways (we play over skype so I can't see the other guys faces) but you could definitely tell that what I did upset him. My vampire immediately lost a humanity. I kind of laughed it off and tried to lighten the mood with a joke about how next time I could eat rats or even more dogs as my vampire wouldn't even think twice in character but that didn't seem to help. The session ended early and one of the other guys messaged me and said basically "hey don't worry about it he lives on a farm with pigs and poo poo so he's just a little weird about animals". I feel a bit better after that, but should I reach out and smooth things over? Or just let it go? Thanks
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Jun 1, 2019 06:30
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Blitz7x posted:Question for more seasoned WoD players: You should absolutely gently reach out and talk about it, and talk about what kind of boundaries you guys would like in your game. It may seem odd to care all that much about such actions in a game like Vampire of all things, but "well he likes animals" isn't a great reason to brush off making him uncomfortable, even if it was an accident. It can be easy to accidentally ruin someone's fun time, but it's often surprisingly easy to talk through this kind of stuff and make them feel better and avoid such things in the future. And it's also possible that it really isn't a big deal, in which case all you did was try to be kind when you thought you might've hurt someone.
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Jun 1, 2019 06:39
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