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Please give X the final death this season.
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Dec 14, 2019 20:05
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Haha! I think you will find, my friend, that it is in fact X gonna give it to you!
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Dec 14, 2019 20:10
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Also, there's some sort of ARG mixed in with a charity drive involving VTM, the games out/coming out, and LA by Night going on at the moment. It features Outstar, Eva's actress and probably that Tender ARG from what i'm seeing in chat. https://www.twitch.tv/outstar Think that's the link though I may be wrong. Apparently there's going to be some character lore dropped there too if that's your bag. Edit: Also, they're talking about doing a play through of the new VTM game. So who loving knows at the moment. Archonex fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Dec 14, 2019 |
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Dec 14, 2019 20:15
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I refuse to believe loving Penny Arcade can’t afford good hardware.
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Dec 14, 2019 20:38
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Mors Rattus posted:I refuse to believe loving Penny Arcade can’t afford good hardware. Have you listened to it? If you haven't go check out episode one and then compare it to LA by Night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2smsDmVfco It's depressing because someone in the comments says it's because they want to appear authentic and indie when loving lol it's PA. The guys that made kept making transphobic comments and jokes and doubled down on them until people started bailing on their convention (Only to keep going with their lives as if it wasn't a huge loss in profit.) are about as far from that as you can get. Edit: Oh god, I forgot how lovely the audio on the intro was. Archonex fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Dec 14, 2019 |
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Dec 14, 2019 20:51
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Archonex posted:The guys that made kept making transphobic comments and jokes and doubled down on them until people started bailing on their convention (Only to keep going with their lives as if it wasn't a huge loss in profit.) are about as far from that as you can get. And thus my interest in going to read Penny Arcade again died a miserable death, replaced by being happy I fell off of it a long time ago and never bothered to play much of the video games. Definitely gonna checkout LA By Night, but there any good purely audio ones I could put on my phone?
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Dec 14, 2019 21:35
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Archonex posted:Have you listened to it? If you haven't go check out episode one and then compare it to LA by Night. Oh, I don't doubt it's lovely. I'm saying that it's lovely because they refuse to put any cash into it, which they could easily do.
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Dec 14, 2019 21:56
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xanthan posted:And thus my interest in going to read Penny Arcade again died a miserable death, replaced by being happy I fell off of it a long time ago and never bothered to play much of the video games. Definitely gonna checkout LA By Night, but there any good purely audio ones I could put on my phone? Technically they all are okay for audio. Really, LA by Night seems like it would be the worst for a purely audio listen in that regard since it has a lot of physical acting involved at times. While it would work you'd probably miss out on a fair bit of the charm if you did only listen to the audio. I haven't seen much of it yet, but if you don't mind the usual sound quality issues outside of LA by Night and a really harsh cold open (We're talking, it starts literally in the middle of a hunt or something. You'll have no idea what's going on for most of the first episode.) i've heard that the Long Beach by Night one is pretty good. It's run by the guy that plays Victor in LA by Night, has appearances from at least one other cast member from it, (Eva) and the general cast seems far more likable than the PA guys. Just be aware that i'm really not kidding on it being a harsh cold opening. Even the comments on youtube for the first episode are riddled with "Wait, where's the previous episode?" and "Did I miss an episode?". Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Dec 14, 2019 |
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Dec 14, 2019 23:36
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Archonex posted:Just be aware that i'm really not kidding on it being a harsh cold opening. Even the comments on youtube for the first episode are riddled with "Wait, where's the previous episode?" and "Did I miss an episode?". That really does just plop you out there with nary a by your leave. I mean, it's fine, but very jarring.
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Dec 15, 2019 00:00
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Dawgstar posted:That really does just plop you out there with nary a by your leave. I mean, it's fine, but very jarring. Yeah, and from some of the comments and such it seems like they regretted that decision. So at least they're not plowing ahead with it and eventually sorted things out. Regardless, i'd recommend it over the PA one. The only thing the PA one seems to have going for it is Jason Carl in a less roleplay heavy setting. Which means he's able to let his hair down a heck of a lot more. Unfortunately that also means a lot of the charm that brought a lot of people into LA by Night is kind of not there since like someone said one part of the appeal of it was seeing how characters like Annabelle reacted to the situation they were in. Also, now that i've had some time to think about it I think there were two or three at most more games I saw on youtube and twitter over the summer. But they weren't in any way official. There were also a couple of earlier runs of games up on youtube that were largely audio only around when LaBN was in season 1-2. Pretty sure they're around still and posting but obviously they're just random enthusiasts playing the game and putting their stories online after seeing how successful LAbN was. Edit: Twitch probably has more games going than youtube has since that's where they seem to be initially streamed. So keep that in mind. Other than that, I guess either check twitter with a tag like "bynight" or "vamily" and see what pops up. Or see if someone else on here knows of any. 
Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Dec 15, 2019 |
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Dec 15, 2019 00:08
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I've been really enjoying Roll4it's Vampire game.
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Dec 15, 2019 00:29
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thark posted:I've been really enjoying Roll4it's Vampire game. Is that the one that started off as Sounds of Silence?
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Dec 15, 2019 00:37
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S1 Sounds of Silence, S2 Silence of Shadows yeah.
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Dec 15, 2019 00:40
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So happy to see LAbN coming back in January. I got a little ways into Sounds of Silence from Roll20 but LAbN really grabbed me. Also that PA video was yikes, I barely made it through the open. Like I can accept bad mics from amateur podcasts but come on god drat. Also shameless plug for my own VTM game https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-area-by-night-a-vampire-the-masquerade-podcast/id1489890591 yeah it's like 3 hours but I dressed it up with music and some sound effects. joylessdivision fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Dec 15, 2019 |
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Dec 15, 2019 15:53
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I started Long Beach by Night and while B. Dave is a great ST, I think there's another kooky Malkavian and that is an automatic letter grade reduction.
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Dec 15, 2019 15:59
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Especially in V5 where Dementation is folded into Dominate, I really don't see why Malkavian should be a primary PC clan, rather than moved off to the side like the Sabbat clans and obscure outliers. Real mental disability doesn't lend itself to being a protagonist and every good Malk I can think of is an NPC. It feels like one of those legacy things that's kept around because grogs would riot without it like [checks notes] roughly everything in D&D anymore.
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Dec 16, 2019 05:43
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The issue with Malks isn't 'characters with mental issues don't make good protagonists', it's that like almost every sanity system or conception of gamifying those mental issues the Malks were traditionally offensive and completely graceless in how they handled it or played it for comedy.
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Dec 16, 2019 05:49
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Especially in V5 where Dementation is folded into Dominate, I really don't see why Malkavian should be a primary PC clan, rather than moved off to the side like the Sabbat clans and obscure outliers. Real mental disability doesn't lend itself to being a protagonist and every good Malk I can think of is an NPC. It feels like one of those legacy things that's kept around because grogs would riot without it like [checks notes] roughly everything in D&D anymore. I like to think that my mental illnesses don't get in the way of being the protagonist of my narrative - poo poo, they actually seem to be crucial to being the kind of protagonist I am - so, uh, gently caress you guy.
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Dec 16, 2019 05:57
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Night10194 posted:The issue with Malks isn't 'characters with mental issues don't make good protagonists', it's that like almost every sanity system or conception of gamifying those mental issues the Malks were traditionally offensive and completely graceless in how they handled it or played it for comedy. I was working as if that was implied but yeah, I should have mentioned it. I'm assuming in the rare alternative where someone manages to duck all the problematic poo poo and make a character that has the ring of truth to it. In those situations it's like okay, you've got a realistic, non-offensive character. Now how have they managed their panic attacks or severe depressive disorder or whatever else to actually take part in the plot?
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Dec 16, 2019 06:01
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Night10194 posted:The issue with Malks isn't 'characters with mental issues don't make good protagonists', it's that like almost every sanity system or conception of gamifying those mental issues the Malks were traditionally offensive and completely graceless in how they handled it or played it for comedy. I think this is further reinforced by the Malkavians being presented as "the clan with mental issues." Mental issues aren't evenly distributed among the clans; rather, there's a vampire who deals with them here or there and then The Clan Who Have Mental Issues, subconsciously or often even overtly inviting exaggeration and caricature. There has also been a presentation of Malkavians as "the clan who are seers," but Requiem's Mekhet do a much better job of decoupling that from general mental issues and becoming something of their own. Generally speaking, I have never seen a Malkavian character I really liked. Jeanette Voermann was kind of okay, but DID is always a sketchy topic in pop culture. But I've seen Malkavians who try to play it completely straight, Malkavians who go whole-hog wacky, Malkavians who are mysterious seers impaired by their own visions. Almost all of them are overwhelmed by some issue that dominates their entire personality, and the few that are genuinely well rounded and credible characters don't benefit from being Malkavians rather than any other given clan. "The clan with mental issues" is a rotten foundation to build on.
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Dec 16, 2019 06:04
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I Am Just a Box posted:I think this is further reinforced by the Malkavians being presented as "the clan with mental issues." Mental issues aren't evenly distributed among the clans; rather, there's a vampire who deals with them here or there and then The Clan Who Have Mental Issues, subconsciously or often even overtly inviting exaggeration and caricature. I can kind of see the Malkavians as being an attempt to complement the Nosferatu, who were "the clan who is ugly." The problem is that the Nosferatu could go full-on horror strange with their descriptions "and dozens of tiny penises blowing around his head in an invisible wind" and then turn invisible or just create an illusion of being something completely different. Malkavians had to have a game interpretation of real-world mental illnesses and they couldn't turn it off.
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Dec 16, 2019 07:10
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Everyone posted:dozens of tiny penises blowing around his head in an invisible wind
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Dec 16, 2019 07:19
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PMush Perfect posted:"Horror"? In the head of a 15 year old trying to combine faux-literature with gross-out, sure. "Caliban" was at least more original than yet another not-Wolverine-but-totally-vampire-Wolverine Gangrel.
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Dec 16, 2019 07:27
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The joke is that I'm a slut.
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Dec 16, 2019 08:25
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I Am Just a Box posted:Generally speaking, I have never seen a Malkavian character I really liked. Jeanette Voermann was kind of okay, but DID is always a sketchy topic in pop culture. But I've seen Malkavians who try to play it completely straight, Malkavians who go whole-hog wacky, Malkavians who are mysterious seers impaired by their own visions. Almost all of them are overwhelmed by some issue that dominates their entire personality, and the few that are genuinely well rounded and credible characters don't benefit from being Malkavians rather than any other given clan. "The clan with mental issues" is a rotten foundation to build on. Grout was very well done too imo, especially the balance between "normal" paranoia and the otherworldy insight into just how dangerous Jack actually is.
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Dec 16, 2019 08:59
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PMush Perfect posted:The joke is that I'm a slut. Ah. Sorry. Sadly you'd be a disappointed slut. The, uh, members in question were really small. Remember that Pizza Hut abomination from a few years ago with the tiny hot dogs baked into the crust? That, except all over his head.
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Dec 16, 2019 10:54
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Goa Tse-tung posted:Grout was very well done too imo, especially the balance between "normal" paranoia and the otherworldy insight into just how dangerous Jack actually is. And I have to give some praise for Hope in that Coterie game just released. She's got a pretty interesting spin on things.
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Dec 16, 2019 13:45
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There are a number of problems with Malkavians as presented, including but not limited to: * Being the clan What Who is Crazy means other clans can't just be crazy without being weird about it. * The 'Madness' espoused by Malks is distinctly Victorian, meaning zero nuance. They've got a little better about this, but not much. * Both in the fiction and in play this often seems to manifest as writers and players trying to one up each other in the most new and unique deramgement they can think of which always has some obnoxious 'twist.' * Game can no longer decide if standard human anxiety or depression qualifies as a Malkavian situation. I think it's technically legal but I've never seen it. So this results in, "can I play a Malk who 'just' has intrusive, unwanted thoughts, should I, and how does one even play a character who has a mental condition that is not played up for dramatic effect?" I honestly have no idea.
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Dec 16, 2019 15:06
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nWoD had...two or so distinct takes on it, with the Malkovian bloodline of the Ventrue being prone to mental illness. That wasn't great. And then there was malkavia, a bloodborne vampiric disease of the soul. Malkavia increases blood potency and power, but causes its victims to suffer visions and hallucinatory delusions. The disease creates a sort of spiritual hivemind that those afflicted by it can tap into, gaining knowledge and inflicting their delusional visions on others. It was effectively a bloodline that could be taken by any clan, was contagious via blood sharing and was easier to catch if you already had mental issues.
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Dec 16, 2019 15:15
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Would Malkavians work better if instead of being presented as "the ones with mental illness" they were instead presented as "the ones that are perpetually high af"? Something about a vampire so drunk and high with Malkavian blood that their thoughts and persons are utterly disconnected from their own physical existence, leading to higher knowledge due to some weird vampire nonsense but also rough to control and the highs can manifest in ways not entirely dissimilar to things like depersonalization and derealization? Either that or just trying to anchor their humanity in the acceptance of the mental illness and the heightened intensity of it brought on by vampirism? I've only played Bloodlines but I kind of got the idea that Malkavians are essentially people who were already suffering from something before the embrace and that the embrace itself made everything so much worse.
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Dec 16, 2019 15:31
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The mental illness the Malkavians suffer from is a direct curse from God in oWoD so it should probably be something a little more. One problem is there need to be more vampires from other clans that struggle with mental illness, or you need to embrace the idea that this particular illness is something that was done to you rather than your natural state of being. I hate Malkavians that are just wacky cartoon characters, but mental illness is something very serious that a lot of my friends struggle with so we always just tend to have them rarely show up in our campaigns. Having a sprinkling of tasteful Malkavians is usually plenty.
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Dec 16, 2019 15:45
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That's basically the issue though. Malkavians can't both be "vampires with real world mental illnesses" and "vampires cursed by God with madness." The two ideas are fundamentally incompatible. Vampires cursed with anxiety feels low rent and if you try to go well, it's super anxiety it feels insulting. If its supposed to be a curse, have it be a very specific thing with prescribed effects. It's fine if other vampires percieve this to be "madness" but express it in a specific way. The Network was an attempt to do this but it also existed alongside mealy mouthed "well some Malkavians just wash their hands a lot" stuff. ...or have some stuff about how to handle mental illness seriously and how that might manifest at the table. After all most people who struggle with mental illness actually expend a lot of effort trying to appear perfectly fine and most of that struggle is internal, not visible, stuff. You could do that too. But not both.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:51
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Especially in V5 where Dementation is folded into Dominate, I really don't see why Malkavian should be a primary PC clan, rather than moved off to the side like the Sabbat clans and obscure outliers. Real mental disability doesn't lend itself to being a protagonist and every good Malk I can think of is an NPC. It feels like one of those legacy things that's kept around because grogs would riot without it like [checks notes] roughly everything in D&D anymore. The game mechanic "derangement" doesn't exactly equal disability, nor does the Malkavian flavor dictate that they be debilitating, nor is roleplaying a debilitating disability necessarily game destroying. I figured the inspiration for them was characters like Renfield, whose derangement absolutely contributed to the narrative, though he also wasn't player-controlled obviously. As mentioned above, the major issue is graceless portrayal, with my personal immediate example of the "lol kooky monkey cheese" Malkavian being Dev/Null in Redemption, who mostly just rambles 30 seconds of cute goofy nonsense for every lucid instruction, though like the Bloodlines Malk player he does give away some later plot points when he responds to the introduction of Pink by saying "at's a mite stupid name" Also it'd be really weird if a Camarilla clan was unplayable. Dross fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 20:56
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FirstAidKite posted:Would Malkavians work better if instead of being presented as "the ones with mental illness" they were instead presented as "the ones that are perpetually high af"? No. In order to work, they would have to be something that does not wholly overshadow who they are as an individual person. The problem with The Clan That Has Mental Illness isn't that they're characters with mental illness, it's that it implicitly positions them as both The Only Ones with Mental Illness and The Ones Who Are All About Their Mental Illness. Whether then played for comedy or tragedy, the result is a cartoon. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 22:12
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Switching to Mekhet clarifies their intended niche somewhat, in that Malks are supposed to be about perception and understanding. Because they are, you know, vampires that comes with severe downsides. Namely, the fracturing of their minds. The issue is they spend a lot more time playing up their downsides rather than their focus as mentalists and seers. It's just tacked on as "They may be mad, but in their madness lies truth." or some bullshit. You need to build a stronger foundation of them as investigators and advisors, mystics and mindtakers before you jump to "....oh and by the way they are all completely bent.".
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Dec 16, 2019 22:22
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My personal peeve with Malkavians is the ones whose curse is basically "they are stuck with some delusion which they will never, ever abandon, even when it's obviously counterfactual." My favorite Malkavian is the one in Beckett who believes he is a character in a TV show, and is renowned for being extremely level-headed because when things go badly for him he just blames the writers.
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Dec 16, 2019 22:41
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Rand Brittain posted:My personal peeve with Malkavians is the ones whose curse is basically "they are stuck with some delusion which they will never, ever abandon, even when it's obviously counterfactual." A belief which is irrationally resistant to contrary fact is the definition of a delusion. Food for thought: what is the difference between a deranged Malkavian and a deranged Brujah?
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Dec 16, 2019 23:07
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Dross posted:A belief which is irrationally resistant to contrary fact is the definition of a delusion. The quantity of viscera left on the floor?
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Dec 16, 2019 23:21
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You can theoretically reason with the Brujah or even get them psychiatric treatment, but the Malkavian tends to have their delusions as an a priori fact.
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Dec 16, 2019 23:26
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I acknowledge all the problems with the Malkavians. But I still want to play a Vampire version of Disco Elysium Cop. I am the problem.
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Dec 16, 2019 23:37
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