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Octavo posted:Consensus reality on the other hand is just a conceit to help players imagine that allegedly eternal truths like capitalism might be social constructs. If you can pretend physics is up for grabs, maybe economics and social hierarchies are too. Except within the conceit of the game consensus reality is true and removing it will cause a large number of deaths as life saving measures suddenly fail or sick people find that they are actually in fact possessed by demons. Or that Cars and Planes don't work anymore. Any number of nightmare scenarios could happen because you've removed the structural framework holding reality in place. Even in the pie in the sky end game of "Let's awaken everyone" that's still going to result in a bunch of deaths as people suddenly can wish their annoying neighbor out of existence. Mage as a game has always had it's end state be an ethical calculus game of "If we improve X people's lives by Y amount by indirectly murdering Z people so long as X*Y/Z > X+Z we're still the heroes yay us."
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Jan 30, 2020 20:19
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Octavo posted:I think there’s something weirder going on with Mage that has to do with the the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, which advanced the idea that idea that technology has become alienating, but is not inherently negative. That’s Stew Weick’s major source for a lot of the ideas in Mage 1E, but was not necessarily a source for the ideas in the Brucato-developed supplements that followed. That's certainly one line of influence. I think there's an even bigger, sorta weirder one in an underlying secularist presumption of all the oWoD, but especially Mage, Werewolf, and Changeling. I say weirder because even at the time of writing it was a discredited assumption, and if you timeshift those books even a few years later in the 90s it would have seemed quaint. Secularization theories were a thing in academic social sciences, particularly through the late 60s to early 80s. As often happens, this ended up filtering down in a general sense to pop culture ideas of where society was going; Western European culture was basically the ur-example of where people thought we were headed in terms of religion, but the fundies added their own mix in the US, grabbing a distorted version to reinforce their siege mentality as the "moral majority" got rolling. Theories varied, but in various forms they posited either the displacement or wholesale decline of religion as a relevant ideology as science, technology, and the modern nation-state progressed. If that sounds like some ethnocentric bullshit once again placing Western society as the apex of "progress" and everyone else arrayed down the line...well, you aren't alone. Even for "the West", you had to come up with more and more convoluted theories about why the US was the exception while still being at the top of the heap. By the early 80s, a lot of the foundational thinkers like Peter Berger were recanting on "hard secularization", where you posit science and technology are replacing religion, recognizing that a unilinear model of how religion and science interacted didn't actually work. Secularization theories are still around, but pretty much no one relevant talks about it as a singular thing anymore; it's all about exploring how different ideologies, religion among them, interact in societies. So "classic" secularization theories were all falling out of favor by the early to mid 80s. By the time Mage and co. are rolling around, they're already using as their central premise a theory of replacement that had been discredited for a decade by that point. Go a few years after the oWoD got rolling, and pop culture has mostly caught up. Outside of the fundies again (and maybe that awkward internet atheist period in the early 2000s) no one's really imagining religion disappearing, or that you can't have some sort of spiritual practice and also accept science as valid if you want to do both. It really was this weird threading the needle timewise with the oWoD, where many of the central conceits would have seemed out of date (or just have been completely different) if they had been created even a couple years later.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:20
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If people are going to make declarations about what the Technocracy is, I really strongly recommend adopting the following practices:
With four editions spanning 25 years, a lot has been written about the Technocracy, and someone talking about the 1e core book Technocracy and someone talking about the positively-framing Guide to the Technocracy chapters (as opposed to the negatively-framing ones, that book contains multitudes!) are talking about completely different things.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:20
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moths posted:Slasher would make for a fantastic game where you remap them to overly-violent 80s action heroes. Just a party of Snake Plisskins, Johns Rambo and McClaine, and the cast of Predator taking on the World of Darkness.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:20
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Warthur posted:Hard disagree. Consensus reality isn't a figleaf over a "what if", it's a core principle of the game which enforces a swathe of its mechanics and which players are more or less directly invited to engage with and think about in terms of an actual metaphysic, rather than a justification for questioning supposed facts of life. The metaphor breaks down the more you literally accept it, yeah. My point is just that the original Stew Wieck version of the game was doing a particular thing with the metaphor and it absolutely was in opposition to fascism and other forces like western imperialism more generally. Outside of Stew Wieck, the person who had the best understanding of what all those messy mixed metaphors of Ascension were for is Malcolm Sheppard. Some of it is here: https://mobunited.livejournal.com/58878.html.
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Jan 30, 2020 20:41
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I feel like Awakening has a much, much more effective framework for actually talking about power in the world that exists - ironically for a Neoplatonist game, it's much more materialist, while Ascension is hardcore idealist; Ascension posits that what really needs to be transformed is ideology, and mass belief/consensus is the fundamental turning point of the system of power that exists. Or at the very least, everything from Ascension that I've run into does that, I don't know the gameline as well as I know Awakening (by a long shot). E: also, that post has a really strong shot of 'utopian desire is fundamentally dangerous' which is a mainstay of the classic conservative framework for justifying long-term injustice in societies. I'm not saying it's written for that purpose, but I always give a side-eye to the idea that actually, immanentizing the eschaton is a bad desire; it makes sense in the context of Ascension but that just points towards my issues with even the fully articulated Ascension model of ideology and culture metaphor. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 20:47
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joylessdivision posted:It's 2020, Why are you defending Twilight? In the WOD thread of all places? The problem isn't really defending Twilight so much as knowing what part of Twilight to criticize. Criticism of its portrayal of vampires is way overblown; they're pretty standard pop culture vampires minus the sparkly diamond skin, and who really cares about that. Vampires are a million things by now in pop culture. (If you're going to criticize the monsters anyway, why pick the vampires when the werewolf "imprinting" thing is much weirder and creepier?) The real problem in Twilight is, as hinted by Tuxedo Catfish, the way it glamorizes unhealthy relationships. Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Slasher, as a book, at least says "yeah these are only very briefly playable, and even then it's only a couple of them in a pretty narrow niche, and the tier 2 ones are pretty much unplayable start to finish. but hey! they might make some interesting NPCs, and here's how" and they're presented as an edge-case, failure-state for Hunters for the most part. Yeah, as I recall, the Slasher book is pretty good about clarifying that these rules are mostly meant for awful antagonists your player characters will ice, and the fact that you can also use the rules to play slashers is half side effect of the general Storytelling System design they're written in and half option offered to groups that are comfortable playing morally bleak content without endorsing it. And even then if you play a slasher you're still implicitly expected to be playing one of the less extreme slashers. Because like, come on, how are you going to play the Mask. The Mask is not written with player characters in mind. Warthur posted:Also he has an entire sidebar about "cartoonish evil" vs "realistic evil" and then claims he's serving up the latter despite the fact that it's a book about, you know, cosmic hellraisers out to destroy the multiverse with the help of Cthulhu. The tonal whiplash in that book is quite something, and it never really stops see-sawing back and forth. On one page you'll find a bulleted list of the signs used to spot real-life abuse, an oWoD version of the Seer of the Throne whose evil plan is to increase misery by using gentrification to reduce housing availability for the poor, and a spell effect written to fictionalize and embellish PUA tactics and create emotionally abusive dependent relationships. On another page you'll find a line about "Nephandic shock troops" (not the only occurrence of this phrase) riding steeds of interdimensional goo into battle, an Appalachian cannibal who runs a diner where she serves people meatballs, and stats for creating a seven-foot-long sword that shoots black lightning. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 21:09
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dead gay comedy forums posted:honestly that is a great observation, one of the things that really soured me on oWoD was the edgelord tryhardiness made manifest with stuff like the Baali, for example. I actually agree that there's really not a need to include grimdark bloodhorror ultraviolence or even to delve too hard into real world horror for groups that aren't ready for it, and certainly not as a PC-facing thing. For me, the prime value of Slasher, the book, is not in creating that particular Slasher (though it's possible) but in providing VASCU (who are amazing PCs for Hunter) and providing a decent nWoD 1e framework for making weirdo supernatural horror movie villains. I would say that in 2e, the need for the latter is obviated by the inclusion of Horror rules in the 2e core; that said, I understand 2e Hunter is planning to make Slashers its signature monstrosity in the same way Strix were for Vampire 2e and idigam for Werewolf 2e. We'll see how that turns out.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:09
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Joe Slowboat posted:I feel like Awakening has a much, much more effective framework for actually talking about power in the world that exists - ironically for a Neoplatonist game, it's much more materialist, while Ascension is hardcore idealist; Ascension posits that what really needs to be transformed is ideology, and mass belief/consensus is the fundamental turning point of the system of power that exists. Or at the very least, everything from Ascension that I've run into does that, I don't know the gameline as well as I know Awakening (by a long shot). Agreed about Awakening. It's clearly a game written by Ascension writers (specifically Bill Bridges and Malcolm Sheppard) determined to make a clearer game that didn't muddy its politics. Regarding immanentizing the eschaton: I really need to play an Unknown Armies with that conceit. It's really built for it, esp in 3rd edition.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:15
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Mors Rattus posted:I understand 2e Hunter is planning to make Slashers its signature monstrosity in the same way Strix were for Vampire 2e and idigam for Werewolf 2e. We'll see how that turns out.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:16
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:That one's weird to me, if only because Hunter seems like a line that just has "everybody else" as the signature monster at all once. Then again, at least Slashers are interesting-in-theory and (other than the Mask 1e power) are about on-combat-par with Hunters themselves, and given the success of Dead by Daylight you've got a couple dozen expy antagonists you could stat up in a pinch. "Signature monster" and "primary antagonist" aren't really the same thing in this sense. The signature monster of Werewolf is the idigam, but you're not expected to go up against idigam all the time. You hunt spirits and shartha far, far more. Vampires mostly fight other vampires and their minions. The signature monsters are show-stoppers whose existence can cast a shadow over the game a little even when they're not around. Werewolves know they live in an age when powerful spirit-monsters are beginning to awaken from slumber; vampires spread rumors about the strix and accuse each other of secretly being witch-owls. As the Second Edition cores progressed they got less consistent about this. The Huntsmen in Changeling obey this mold, but Mage's signature focus is the Fallen World Chronicle, which is just a name for all the miscellaneous mysteries mages always delve into, and Mummy namedrops the Timeless Chronicle, which isn't about any given antagonist at all, just 2e's conceit that when you wake up from death you might have moved backward on the arrow of time. I'm not sure I recall what Geist's "chronicle" premise was, but it kind of fits the pattern anyway, with lesser antagonists that are much more prevalent and some stranger, more fearful antagonists to throw a spotlight on. I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jan 30, 2020 |
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Jan 30, 2020 21:23
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Ahh, gotcha. I guess I got a little confused because the one that left a sour taste in my mouth was alchemists for Promethean, and their sections on the inter-factional politics of antagonists that boil down to "we wanna getcha." But Huntsmen have been interesting-not-going-to-say-fun in the Changeling game I'm in, and I am a sucker for idigam, so, slasher me up I guess. The Hunter 2e KS is what, next week, right?
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Jan 30, 2020 21:25
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Promethean's another weird one, because its signature focus is supposed to be Firestorms, not alchemists; alchemists are just another new type of lesser antagonist alongside Pandorans, occupying the space inhabited by clones in the First Edition Promethean core. I'm not really convinced Firestorms have been made more interesting or given more actual focus to justify the "Firestorm Chronicle," though.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:28
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I Am Just a Box posted:Promethean's another weird one, because its signature focus is supposed to be Firestorms, not alchemists; alchemists are just another new type of lesser antagonist alongside Pandorans, occupying the space inhabited by clones in the First Edition Promethean core. I'm not really convinced Firestorms have been made more interesting or given more actual focus to justify the "Firestorm Chronicle," though.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:33
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I Am Just a Box posted:The problem isn't really defending Twilight so much as knowing what part of Twilight to criticize. Criticism of its portrayal of vampires is way overblown; they're pretty standard pop culture vampires minus the sparkly diamond skin, and who really cares about that. Vampires are a million things by now in pop culture. (If you're going to criticize the monsters anyway, why pick the vampires when the werewolf "imprinting" thing is much weirder and creepier?) The real problem in Twilight is, as hinted by Tuxedo Catfish, the way it glamorizes unhealthy relationships. You're right, it's fair to argue that the semantics behind the definition of Vampire is ever evolving. I just feel YA-Book vampires are losing the monstrous aspect established in existing folk-lore/mythologies and instead just making them into superhero-like characters that occasionally need blood.
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Jan 30, 2020 21:41
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Tetrabor posted:I just feel YA-Book vampires are losing the monstrous aspect established in existing folk-lore/mythologies and instead just making them into superhero-like characters that occasionally need blood. Even if so, so what? Vampires don't exist and their honor doesn't need to be defended. Records of existing folklore and myth, and the various other depictions of monstrous vampires so derived, haven't been lost and are still around for people to read. Young adult literature isn't really known for forming people's sole holistic understanding of cultural concepts. What is lost? Let 'em have Blade the superhero and Edward Cullen. Having Edward Cullen doesn't prevent us from having Count Orlock.
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Jan 30, 2020 22:21
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Yeah, the issue with twilight wasn't that vampires and werewolves did not cleave tight enough to their mythological roots. It was the profoundly hosed up power dynamics in the relationships portrayed.
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Jan 30, 2020 22:34
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Yeah, more popular media should do different things with traditional monsters. They should just do it, y'know, well. And not root them in un-examined hosed up relationship dynamics. (Obviously intentionally hosed up dynamics are cool and good to write about as long as you don't idealise them)
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Jan 30, 2020 22:40
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Ahh, gotcha. I guess I got a little confused because the one that left a sour taste in my mouth was alchemists for Promethean, and their sections on the inter-factional politics of antagonists that boil down to "we wanna getcha." But Huntsmen have been interesting-not-going-to-say-fun in the Changeling game I'm in, and I am a sucker for idigam, so, slasher me up I guess. It's the next KS so...I think so? I actually came away from my read of the Promethean Night Horrors book liking alchemists. Their chapter was largely well-written and provided usable characters, which is more than I can say for the Qashmal or Pyros Devil chapters.
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Jan 30, 2020 23:20
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There was a KS update from…I don't remember which project, but it said Hunter 2e KS is coming up Feb 6. So look forward to that!
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Jan 30, 2020 23:24
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That Old Tree posted:There was a KS update from…I don't remember which project, but it said Hunter 2e KS is coming up Feb 6. So look forward to that!
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Jan 30, 2020 23:50
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Mors Rattus posted:I actually came away from my read of the Promethean Night Horrors book liking alchemists. Their chapter was largely well-written and provided usable characters, which is more than I can say for the Qashmal or Pyros Devil chapters. In fairness, as a concept, qashmallim are very cool and interesting. The writer who did their chapter just really fumbled the ball. I like alchemists a lot better than I liked 1e clones, but I like 2e clones better than I like alchemists. The Night Horrors writer on clones knocked it out of the park.
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Jan 31, 2020 00:17
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Is HRG the book they explore Slashers in?
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Jan 31, 2020 00:32
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Is HRG the book they explore Slashers in?
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Jan 31, 2020 00:39
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:HRG has a Slasher in one of the strongest of its stories, but WoD: Slasher is what you want. Read the HRG for an extremely grounded, horrifyingly down-to-earth take on slashers who could exist in our world. A good, powerful horror story, but not something you'd typically want to sit with your friends and game through. Read World of Darkness: Slasher for the genre characters shaded by horror films, who are less emotionally powerful but much friendlier to showing up at the average actual game table. Read the HRG anyway though, that book is great all around. (Slashers are first introduced in summary in the Hunter First Edition corebook, and the character who appears in the HRG first appears in that writeup. In a similar way to the later Slasher book, though, the Hunter core is focused on playability over emotional impact, so its version of that character is pulpier and less raw and grisly.) I Am Just a Box fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Jan 31, 2020 |
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Jan 31, 2020 00:43
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Slashers also introduces the best Hunter group, VASCU.
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Jan 31, 2020 02:09
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I came across something on Twitter about I think, a "Corpse Monger" who was basically a horror movie slasher operating on the idea that everyone they killed would end up serving them in hell, and if I remember right wasn't that something the Zodiac Killer included in their letters? I was wondering if this is where that was from. Thanks for the link!
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Jan 31, 2020 04:02
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If anyone gets to write the definitive Technocracy it is I, the man who statisticized the world of darkness
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Jan 31, 2020 04:03
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Loomer posted:If anyone gets to write the definitive Technocracy it is I, the man who statisticized the world of darkness ...this is in fact the correct take, that does show command of the cumulative forces of rationalization in the WoD.
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Jan 31, 2020 04:18
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Soonmot posted:Slashers also introduces the best Hunter group, VASCU. IMHO, Hunter for Chronicles is sooooo much better than oWoD that I put it in an entire superior league altogether. I haven't read anything about VASCU other than the people who like HtV saying "they are loving awesome" with almost universal acclaim  (Paradox could make a sick faux-xcom style game too so perhaps one day)
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Jan 31, 2020 06:13
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dead gay comedy forums posted:IMHO, Hunter for Chronicles is sooooo much better than oWoD that I put it in an entire superior league altogether. I haven't read anything about VASCU other than the people who like HtV saying "they are loving awesome" with almost universal acclaim Basically, they're government agents who arrest supernatural critters who break the law. And they have low key psychic powers.
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Jan 31, 2020 06:33
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Yeash, Loomer's the one true Antipope of the oWoD.
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Jan 31, 2020 06:34
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dead gay comedy forums posted:IMHO, Hunter for Chronicles is sooooo much better than oWoD that I put it in an entire superior league altogether. I haven't read anything about VASCU other than the people who like HtV saying "they are loving awesome" with almost universal acclaim  Hunter: the Vigil XCOM cover-shooter turn-based strategy game was, in fact, my first thought on the subject of "things Paradox could do with the Darkness properties that would be cool." I do not have a shred of hope it will ever happen, but it's nice to dream.VASCU is the Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit, an arm of the FBI that secretly employs an experimental process to activate latent psychics and uses them as psychometric field agents to investigate and apprehend high priority serial murder cases. This spans the entire gamut from a "mundane" spree killing or serial killer case that the Bureau is antsy to wipe off the board, to any case of murder involving more than two victims that suggests superhuman capabilities, from an invulnerable Jason Voorhees with a machete to a vampire who's too messy with his feeding. The trick that hamstrings VASCU is they're federal agents first and hunters second. The FBI expects them to haul suspects in with evidence for prosecution. If it's an extranormal entity then it's probably some kind of expedited or secret trial going to a special high security prison, but even so, you need your casework straight, because what VASCU is doing is already fishy and the Bureau doesn't need you making them do more cover-up work than they already are. ACAB, but VASCU cops are that special fictional cop who really cares about rights and civil procedures. They're an office of Dale Coopers and Francis York Morgans. (It's those psychos in Task Force VALKYRIE who turn their body cameras off, railgun Frankenstein to nothing, and then pull out a Ziploc Glock to plant on him.)
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Jan 31, 2020 06:56
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I Am Just a Box posted:
and the two agencies HATE each other, so it's fun when they both descend onto the same event.
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Jan 31, 2020 08:00
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I Am Just a Box posted:. I'm not sure I recall what Geist's "chronicle" premise was, but it kind of fits the pattern anyway, with lesser antagonists that are much more prevalent and some stranger, more fearful antagonists to throw a spotlight on. Gimpinblack should correct me if I misremember, but ISTR it was “The Dead”. Deviant is “The Web of Pain” Mage was the last one that we started working on thinking it was going to be a supplement, that the core rules were then added to converting it into a corebook as a third draft. Much as vampire was published for a year as “Blood & Smoke, the Strix Chronicle”, Mage was “Mystery Play, the Fallen World Chronicle” right up until the last minute.
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Jan 31, 2020 08:08
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Gimpinblack should correct me if I misremember, but ISTR it was “The Dead”. Deviant is “The Web of Pain” You're right, I just checked, it's the Chronicle of the Dead. Kind of more in the Fallen World Chronicle mold of "catch copy for running games around the game's default focus." The Web of Pain Chronicle is similar but can straddle the line, as while "deal with conspiracy problems" is the thing deviants do the way "deal with ghost problems" is the thing Sin-Eaters do, the Web of Pain expanding to reveal undiscovered connections and deeper conspiracies can still kind of cast a shadow. The whole signature chronicle conceit is, of course, kind of vestigial since it's no longer the necessary means of sneaking second editions under the old licensor's radar.
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Jan 31, 2020 08:26
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I Am Just a Box posted:Read the HRG anyway though, that book is great all around. I'm not familiar with this acronym, which book is this?
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Jan 31, 2020 08:57
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VASCU I think most people can get behind as heroes because even taking ACAB into account, the social function of "investigate murder and stop people who get off on murdering from murdering" is probably the least contentious function of the police, which is probably why so much police procedural fiction focuses on it. Even the most radical restructuring of society which largely or entirely eliminates the need for conventional police will likely need murder detectives.
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Jan 31, 2020 09:04
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VASCU is great, though it probably shouldn't be a Tier 3 group - it seems like it only is because it "has" to be to provide a supernatural gimmick. Did the plan for Vigil 2e shake up the set of groups which they were going to include in the core? I know there was some discussion of nixing the Abbey (or declaring it a slasher org) and I think VASCU (and the Barrett Commission?) had some supporters.
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Jan 31, 2020 09:06
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Warthur posted:VASCU I think most people can get behind as heroes because even taking ACAB into account, the social function of "investigate murder and stop people who get off on murdering from murdering" is probably the least contentious function of the police, which is probably why so much police procedural fiction focuses on it. Even the most radical restructuring of society which largely or entirely eliminates the need for conventional police will likely need murder detectives.
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Jan 31, 2020 09:41
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