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Also, to go with that above post about the various splats and ecosystems, i'd argue Vampires are more like hunter-gatherer's following the herd. Y'know, pre-agricultural societies and all that. Vampires don't really usually have the sort of pull in the CofD/NWoD to get cities built. Rather, they just follow the efforts of humans that set up population centers. Heck, even some of the terminology veers into this. Pre-agricultural societies supposedly had to deal with other tribes and villages raiding them for livestock or to take their hunting grounds. It was a bigger problem than war, in fact. And one of the big things that represents currency and conflict among vampires is their herd or feeding grounds. There's some pretty big parallels there. And given how lovely life for people was back then it's probably no surprise that the lives of vampires suck a bit more because of it. Note that this is probably a good thing. Vampires that decided to advance to a post-agriculture world would probably need to mass harvest humans. Or in less dystopian futures either rely on synthetic blood or that plant in the Woundgate alternate setting that can be ground up/milked/whatever to create a blood substitute that only the undead can safely drink. Ironically, I think the only time something like that was really touched on in the NWoD/CofD was during the 1e London stories/lore. If I recall it right I think it was supposed to be a plot point that the leadership of London was mass harvesting humans to farm them to survive...Something? Possibly the Strix coming back to kill every vampire in the area they could find. So basically they accomplished advancing beyond hunter-gatherer subsistence and politicking by being greedy assholes and then promptly lost any benefit it could have achieved also by being greedy assholes. Basically the results you'd typically expect from the older and more powerful vampires in the setting. Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Feb 13, 2020 |
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Feb 13, 2020 03:13
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I mean the good news about Hunter 2e is it looks like the "mysterious places" rules in there might rip out the only useful/interesting part of Beast (Lairs) as a thing you can use for monster/scene creation anyway. Soon, Beast will be entirely consigned to the dustbin of history, in every part. I like the more Unknown Armies style they started to go with in CofD. Like... sometimes there will be an office building that eats people. Not all the time, but sometimes, when certain events happen that are probably very arcane and precise, but then they happen and they have to call in the janitors who stick around because they have to be paid very well to stay and there's no reason. Why is the Death Building the Building That Eats? Dunno! Maybe it's just a jerk. There's no 'ah, clearly, yes, this is the result of a Specter skilled in the Arts of Phantasm and Outrage.' Some places are just weird, man.
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Feb 13, 2020 03:17
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I wish there was an extraterrestrial alien splat. Just like, ancient spirit beings, gnostic wizards, dream people, then just some Greys in human suits.
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Feb 13, 2020 03:18
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Uuuuh Archonex, do you mean the ASTRAL rather than the Supernal? Because the Dark Mother stuff in Beast books takes place in the Temenos, the human astral realm, and the Anima Mundi, the world-soul astral realm. Neither are the Supernal, they're just parts of the mental plane. The Temenos is where human thoughts and concepts live, and the Anima Mundi is where the world dreams. The Supernal is far beyond both of those. e: it's relatively easy to access the Astral Realms, or at least, nothing breaks by giving non-mages some way to access it particularly. So if you really wanted to do something with Beast nonsense (don't), you could do that. Ironically, Werewolves have the most fun interaction with the anima mundi thing, because they naturally dream their way into that part of the Astral and it has no negative effect on them because they have inhuman souls. Beasts can go there, but they get their ego flensed off because humans can't naturally stay in the Anima Mundi (Mages use a shell of pure gnostic ego to resist the 'ecstatic wind' of the world-soul calling them to oneness with the cosmos). Beasts are canonically and explicitly too human to walk in the Anima Mundi safely, while Werewolves do it by accident. Beasts are monster poseurs. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Feb 13, 2020 |
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Feb 13, 2020 03:19
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Joe Slowboat posted:Uuuuh Archonex, do you mean the ASTRAL rather than the Supernal? Because the Dark Mother stuff in Beast books takes place in the Temenos, the human astral realm, and the Anima Mundi, the world-soul astral realm. Neither are the Supernal, they're just parts of the mental plane. The Temenos is where human thoughts and concepts live, and the Anima Mundi is where the world dreams. The Supernal is far beyond both of those. I don't have the book in my hands any more so I don't remember which it is precisely. Regardless, when I read it I tried to think of a way to get people into it and outside of Mages (Who can technically bullshit their way into just about any other area of reality with enough effort or incentive.) I couldn't think of many wide ranging splats that'd cover reliable access to it outside of Beasts themselves. And yeah, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the rear end in a top hat abuse elementals are monster poseurs. Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Feb 13, 2020 |
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Feb 13, 2020 03:27
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This is Beast: Turbo annihilating immersion at the speed of sexual predator.
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Feb 13, 2020 03:31
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The Astral is pretty accessible, unlike the Supernal which even Mages can't get into (and in fact that's the whole point, Ascension is a Mage finding their way into the Supernal). There's a mortal merit for Astral travel, as well as some splat-specific powers that allow specific kinds of astral delving. And again, literally nothing breaks if you let non-Mages enter the Astral, though the tone of the game will immediately get a lot more psychedelic and weird because of the nature of the shared mindscape. Werewolves go there naturally in dreams, as noted.
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Feb 13, 2020 03:49
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Archonex posted:I don't have the book at my hands any more so I don't remember which it is precisely. Regardless, when I read it I tried to think of a way to get people into it and outside of Mages (Who can technically bullshit their way into just about any other area of reality with enough effort or incentive.) I couldn't think of many wide ranging splats that'd cover reliable access to it outside of Beasts themselves. Beasts seem like a weird merging of the selfish predation of Vampires combined with the "gently caress up the general area" wasteland thing of Prometheans but with none of either character types' sympathetic aspects. Vampires, despite being mostly human (dead human, but still) lose touch with most of the sensual aspects of being a human being. No eating. No drinking (anything but blood). No enjoyment from sex. They can't even feel the sun on their skin without it bursting into flame. And Prometheans, if anything, have it even worse. They desperately want to achieve a basic acceptance and are denied it. One thing I like to do when I play is to play my character as a "pre-supernatural" mortal for a little but before I jump right into things. I've played a Sleepwalker who gets involved with Mages. Another human who was kind of the mascot of a motley of Changelings. While I've never played it, I remember one bit from Geist 1ed which went something like "Sin-eaters often use esoteric signs and to designate times and places for meetings. Unless serious business is in the offing, even mortals who are clever enough to decipher the messages are welcome at what will likely be a party they won't soon forget." One of the things that AD&D kind of messed up was making Alignments a specific "visible" thing. Like somebody worshiping an explicitly evil god or serving the cause of evil. Because everyone is the hero of their own story. It's an extreme example, but Adolph Hitler thought of himself as a hero saving humanity (or Aryan humanity, the only "real" humanity) from the vile Jewish conspiracy. While people might have moments of doubt (or clarity) most people don't think of themselves as being evil. It sometimes pops up on the Front Page of this site, but there is an article featuring outtakes from a forum that espouses pedophilia. And the people on that forum clearly thought of themselves as an enlightened, heroic minority suffering the persecution of lesser, evil minds. Coming at last to my point, in RPG figure most people want to play "the good guys." Even in something like Vampire where one plays a being who preys on humans by assaulting them or subverting their free will to drink their blood. With Beast there's very little in the way of being able to do that. When a Beast preys, his victim doesn't feel lightheaded (from blood loss) for a few days, they're subjected to pain, torment, terror and trauma that does (or can do) lasting damage to their psyches. It's difficult to feel "heroic" doing stuff like that, even if you try to confine to "bad people."
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Feb 13, 2020 05:30
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Everyone posted:Coming at last to my point, in RPG figure most people want to play "the good guys." Even in something like Vampire where one plays a being who preys on humans by assaulting them or subverting their free will to drink their blood. And, importantly, if you do somehow manage trick yourself into thinking you're doing heroic things, it's irredeemably reprehensible. Like, the stuff a beast does is so much worse than even a very murdery vampire that anyone - a player or the character - who thinks they're doing good by being a petty, sadistic, manipulative, psychological trauma elemental is morally beyond the pale.
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Feb 13, 2020 06:32
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I Am Just a Box posted:Has your group been getting much out of the oneiromancy/hedgespinning rules? Those, and to a much lesser extent some of the example Clarity attacks, are the only things that really felt off for me in Second Edition, with how expensive it is to buy shifts. (Well, that and the new ephemeral entities that explicitly don't have a Twilight Form despite their immateriality, and that of the Helldiver and one of the Shield Contracts, works almost exactly like having a fae "phase" of Twilight. But that's a real nitpicky nerd issue.) I Am Just a Box posted:I haven't had problems with smaller PoD hardbacks. Even the CofD 2e corebooks, while you can still tell the difference, I wouldn't really call flimsy or fragile.
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Feb 13, 2020 07:55
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Everyone posted:Beasts... are just rear end in a top hat bullies who mumble about teaching lessons while feeding on others via pain and fear. The should be the darker counterparts to changelings, instilling a healthy fear and respect for the mysteries of the universe that they aren't taken for granted
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Feb 13, 2020 17:02
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Digital Osmosis posted:And, importantly, if you do somehow manage trick yourself into thinking you're doing heroic things, it's irredeemably reprehensible. Like, the stuff a beast does is so much worse than even a very murdery vampire that anyone - a player or the character - who thinks they're doing good by being a petty, sadistic, manipulative, psychological trauma elemental is morally beyond the pale. I'm not even sure what a Beast's character arc would even look like. Froghammer fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Feb 13, 2020 |
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Feb 13, 2020 17:33
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I will say it before and say it again: Beasts are an awful concept for a splat. Some of that Dragon: the Dragoning stuff and the other toes it steps on, sure, though they may work better as distinct splats or members of existing splats. But not only does nobody sensible want Beasts, nobody asked for Beasts in the first place. If you looked at the game line pre-Beast and were asked what the thematic gaps were and where you see a potential new splat fitting, you would never propose something like Beast. If Supernal Magic wiped the concept of Beast out of our minds tomorrow, nobody would feel that something was missing.
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Feb 13, 2020 17:41
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Froghammer posted:I'm not even sure what a Beast's character arc would even look like. Dying on their way back to their home planet.
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Feb 13, 2020 17:47
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When you think about it they even fail at their billed purpose of crossover splat. They don't get on with Demons, and so fail the basic test of "can fit into a party containing any other splat" that you'd expect a functional crossover splat to meet, and Onyx Path had to do Contagion Chronicle to get some form of crossover support out there in the end.
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Feb 13, 2020 17:55
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I thought Contagion turned out to not be all that hot for crossover either? I'll be honest I only know stuff about it secondhand. Despite how much I've liked the Dark Eras, Contagion never seemed like it had anything all that interesting going for it in the KS campaign, and all the reports on the manuscript previews seemed to bear that out.
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Feb 13, 2020 18:08
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Digital Osmosis posted:Like, the stuff a beast does is so much worse than even a very murdery vampire that anyone - a player or the character - who thinks they're doing good by being a petty, sadistic, manipulative, psychological trauma elemental is morally beyond the pale. The movie Commando had more outcry over the scene where Arnold knocks out two guard dogs than any of its other violence. And I think the reason for this is that it's imitable violence. Nobody's going to shoot missiles at cars or machine guns at bad guys - but anyone can punch a dog. It resisters as more real than the other fantasy violence. Beast represents an extremely imitable evil. Nobody is going to turn into a werewolf and rage through a Walmart, or use their vampire powers to shoplift in real life. It's fantasy violence. But Beast? All of the interpersonal bullshit, exploiting and abusing others, disguising power dynamics, and victimization are real things that people face. It's gross and trivializing, and I suspect it's by design with intent to put abusers on the same cool kids tier as Wolfman or Frankenstein.
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Feb 13, 2020 18:11
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Soonmot posted:I know the old thread had a discussion on how hedgespinning and orienomancy were pretty hosed up RAW, but I don't remember if we came up with a fix. I LOVE CtL, and I cannot wait for my ST to rev up our game again so I can play my spider mob doctor cannibal. I just want useable and interesting Talecrafting rules! Is that too much to ask?
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Feb 13, 2020 18:37
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I just want to pop in and say that my current vamp game has gone for about 12 6 hours sessions and the body counts is virtually zero. Only one PC killed anyone and it was three vampires trying to summon a demon. Though, I did frenzy while feeding on a sheep and that went... poorly. Our ST is brand new to running games and did something I thought was clever: You know how in most neonate games you keep your head down and accomplish tasks as they come? Our first session was Elysium where the Princess (a Daeva) enchanted all of us for about 8 days. So we are all inclined to help her right away and our sires know what happened but they can't do anything about it yet. We have one day left and my sire (an Architect in OD) has already mentioned that she can't talk about a lot of things until "your mind is your own". I suspect she is going to kidnap our coterie just as the enchantment ends to make sure the Princess can't reapply it right away. I'm excited.
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Feb 13, 2020 18:38
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Oh hey, Beastchat. Wonderful, glad I missed this yesterday.moths posted:But Beast? All of the interpersonal bullshit, exploiting and abusing others, disguising power dynamics, and victimization are real things that people face. It's gross and trivializing, and I suspect it's by design with intent to put abusers on the same cool kids tier as Wolfman or Frankenstein. When the BPG came out alongside Matt's own admissions is when it turned from "I really hate Beast and I want others to know that this book is not good" to "Hunt the McFarland wherever it lives, wherever it breeds."
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Feb 13, 2020 18:47
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The real splat crossover method is to recognize that individual games have different loops and themes, and go for something like the Dark Eras sections: Fit two particular splats together where they complement each other. If your group has three or more splats, you're going to be getting less and less coherent thematic use out of splat themes anyways, so you can just have them fight whatever horror you want, etc. The niche of 'splat that makes all other splats crossover compatible' isn't just kind of weak, it's actively a bad idea. Plus, the actual splat that can cross over with any two other splats is 'competent Hunter-type mortal with Sleepwalker and some nice Merits.' Beasts bring far too much baggage, and so does the Contagion by all accounts; it's just that the Contagion baggage is much less pathological. Beasts are terrible at their 'purpose' and also terrible as a splat and atrocious as a piece of fiction. They can't even function as the Beast from Beauty and the Beast because in that context, Gaston would absolutely have been the good guy ... and Belle wouldn't have started off seeing the Beast as beastly unless he wanted her to, because they don't even have a clear physical monstrosity. Ugh, any time I start thinking about Beast it's a rabbit hole of worse and worse, dumber and dumber.
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Feb 13, 2020 18:59
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I think the real answer for crossover games is "have a basic idea for what the theme / tone / setting is going to be, pitch it to your players, have them pitch you their concepts, talk it over like adults". It's hard to sell books based on that though.
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Feb 13, 2020 19:42
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Froghammer posted:Vampires at least have no bones about who and what they are, and the slow descent from trying to hang onto your humanity as it slips through your fingers to deciding that it's no longer worth it is, like, the whole point of the game. It getting harder and harder to ethically obtain the things you need to survive (blood, money, a place to sleep, influence over other vampires) while getting easier and easier to just start taking them as Blood Potency rises and cool vampire powers get unlocked defines that game's narrative. It's also hypothetically feasible that a vampire can be a decent person that doesn't actively gently caress up the lives of people around them. A lot of what makes vampires in the WoD such toxic assholes is A: They have no loving clue how to handle their instincts and new needs when they're new and B: The process of doing that will almost certainly get them sucked into the shittiness that is whatever power structures are present unless they live out in the boonies or something. It's not likely, but if they're separated from the FYGM (give me yours too) culture of vampire society and all the petty evil bullshit the older ones do it's possible they could turn out alright. The problem is that that wouldn't make for a good story or game. So you'd never really see it happen outside of fiction blurbs. Hilariously, despite the OWoD being a hell of a lot more punishing in terms of enjoying things (Pretty sure 2e NWoD vampires can taste food and have sex among other things from what I recall.) that humans do Annabelle in the LA by Night series is probably a good example of a decent vampire. She feeds by consent (Something other vampires think is weird. To give an idea of how hosed their "upbringing" was.) and generally is depicted as a decent person sucked into a lovely situation despite everyone else around her actively alternating between trying to corrupt her or being in awe of her basic capacity for empathy and logic. With Beast being good is literally anathema to your nature. Like someone else said, the only way I could see it working is if you were doing a nicer take on the Scarecrow Ministry and focus on terrorizing people away from dangerous areas or people. Heck, even the Scarecrow Ministry comes out ahead of Beast's in their default format. Since the Scarecrow Ministry is implied to commonly try to scare the poo poo out of people specifically because they don't want them to get dragged off to a magical nightmare world to be violated and tortured into becoming like them. Edit: Back when the early drafts had excerpts posted on here a Beast's end game was literally "You get consumed by your beast." or "Congrats! You're an awful monster! But you feel good about it now because you're stronger than everyone else you're likely to meet." or just "Hey, you're dead/cut free of your Beast while your Beast is loose to gently caress over everyone else. Congrats!". I remember ranting about how loving stupid it was since it was the logic that lead to the Wicked Dead book in VtR having an excerpt on why some of the alternate types of vampires in that book shouldn't be considered for a long or serious game. Namely because in case of things like the horrifying parasite that infests people you're playing what are explicitly doomed characters with no happy ending. The happy ending is that you loving die before it takes you over and infests or hurts everyone around you. And that typically isn't fun for your average person that isn't a massive sadist. Pretty sure better endings to a Beast's arc were introduced later on. But the fact that those were the logical end games back then really says where the game was going. Archonex fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Feb 13, 2020 |
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Feb 13, 2020 19:57
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Joe Slowboat posted:The real splat crossover method is to recognize that individual games have different loops and themes, and go for something like the Dark Eras sections: Fit two particular splats together where they complement each other. If your group has three or more splats, you're going to be getting less and less coherent thematic use out of splat themes anyways, so you can just have them fight whatever horror you want, etc. See I could imagine something like a Kinfolk Sleepwalker Hunter finding herself in some situation working with a Vampire, Werewolf and a Mage in some weird situation involving Belial's Brood, the Pure and the Seers or whatever. Then though that experience she realizes that not all the "monsters" are evil and need to be destroyed. Then she finds signs of a Beast and shares it with her new "friends" and perhaps asks about the best way to make peaceful contact with it And their take is "Oh, no, those things are nasty without exception and we need to destroy that fucker toot sweet." I'm not sure what I expected from Beast. I think I wanted something that would continue the themes of the God Machine from Demon. Maybe some spin on Lovecraft. Like, "you are descendant of the blood of Hastur/Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth/etc. You have Manifested to find that not only are the stars Wrong, they've been twisted out of rightness by some unfathomably powerful Thing that has usurped the rightful place of your ancient progenitors. Now you must battle this God Machine and its "Angelic" minions to put the Stars right again. And as you struggle you realize that the "infestation" of humanity has plenty of good points and that perhaps once the Stars are Right, there's no need for them to be enslaved and devoured because hamburgers and the internet are pretty cool things." Instead I got something like Rapist: The Punishing. "You are a Rapist. You rape people (especially women and children) to "teach them lessons" and have to fight off the unenlightened who think that raping people is somehow bad." Everyone fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Feb 13, 2020 |
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Feb 13, 2020 20:37
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Rapist: The Punishing sounds like the Black Dog take on parodying it. So it's pretty much perfect.
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Feb 13, 2020 20:39
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Everyone posted:I'm not sure what I expected from Beast. I think I wanted something that would continue the themes of the God Machine from Demon. Maybe some spin on Lovecraft. Like, "you are descendant of the blood of Hastur/Cthulhu/Yog-Sothoth/etc. You have Manifested to find that not only are the stars Wrong, they've been twisted out of rightness by some unfathomably powerful Thing that has usurped the rightful place of your ancient progenitors. Now you must battle this God Machine and its "Angelic" minions to put the Stars right again. And as you struggle you realize that the "infestation" of humanity has plenty of good points and that perhaps once the Stars are Right, there's no need for them to be enslaved and devoured because hamburgers and the internet are pretty cool things." I mean, this is basically the werewolf/vampire/demon origin for Monte Cook's World of Darkness. They got sent in by the THINGS WHAT LIVE OUTSIDE to finish the dirty work of dragging reality back into the chaotic formless mass from which it sprung but decided that they like being alive again/having sentience/EXISTING too much to bother.
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Feb 13, 2020 20:54
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My current vamp is a Nos (Lygos) sitting at 8 Humanity. It's kinda crazy how good natured our coterie is. Our Daeva is obviously the face of the group but has really firm principles about how he feeds and how he uses Majesty (and now Dominate). We had a session recently where his love interest was attacked by some unknown monster and they had a long discussion about the merits of erasing that from her mind. It was very strange but touching. My Nos is guided by his desire to help out his dad who was mangled in an industrial accident but wants to do so without supernatural methods. He's at a crossroads because now he's in OD and has met a vampiric surgeon or sorts. It would be so easy... The Gangrel of the group (who has also never played before) is a hilarious anime girl who is both extroverted but terrified of actual intimacy. We have to start each night by sneaking her into her apartment and then she walks out the front door because we know she's being observed by the police.
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Feb 13, 2020 21:03
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Archonex posted:Rapist: The Punishing sounds like the Black Dog take on parodying it. So it's pretty much perfect. The closest thing I can see to a "good guy" Beast is something I vaguely remember reading. "XXX is a janitor at a local school. He protects his home, including the teachers and students from those who would do them harm. The good people will feel uncomfortable, but protected. The bad ones will suffer a sojourn in Hell." The coolest "Beast" story I've read had nothing to do with the setting as written and was actually a Jonathan Maberry story set in Pine Deep called "Mr. Pockets." In the story there's a old homeless person who wears clothing with a bunch of pockets. He's odd but comes off as harmless. One day a kid gives Mr. Pockets his last candy bar. Later as the kid is making deliveries as part of his after school job, the woman he's delivering to turns out to be a vampire who is going to eat him. And Mr. Pockets shows up, stating that the boy is "his" and essentially under his protection. He eventually reveals himself to be an avatar/incarnation/something of some unfathomably ancient and powerful monster. Mr. Pockets then eats the vampire lady (opening a gigantic toothed maw and swallowing her whole). The boy is let frightened but otherwise unharmed, though he does one of the "pocket patting" mannerisms that Mr. Pockets did earlier in the story, perhaps indicating some continuing connection between himself and Mr. Pockets. Though even if you have that take, Beasts come off more as nastier versions of Werewolves in terms of "defending their territory" without the latter's greater responsibilities in terms of the spirit world. So it still comes back to, "these things are creepy and gross (and not in any kind of good/cool way), why the gently caress do we need them again?" Plus, I'm kicking myself for wasting $65.00 on something that I can maybe use to mine for occasional antagonists that I can use for games I'm no longer running, because I sure as poo poo wouldn't want to play one of these beings.
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Feb 13, 2020 21:08
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GimpInBlack posted:Dying on their way back to their home planet. You know a gameline has failed when even one of its corebook writers is dunking on it. For what it's worth, the Nightmares were an interesting idea and their use of flavor text as short subjective snippets instead of objective descriptions was very effective. I guess that's part of why people keep returning to the topic of Beast and wracking their brains trying to rehabilitate something from it, because there were a few good writers writing some stuff that is a good idea in isolation, see also I think it was Dave Brookshaw who wrote the Lair rules? But it's Hunger that's the core of the poison that kills Beast, and Hunger is at the heart of Beast as a game.
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Feb 13, 2020 23:14
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Archonex posted:It's not likely, but if they're separated from the FYGM (give me yours too) culture of vampire society and all the petty evil bullshit the older ones do it's possible they could turn out alright. The problem is that that wouldn't make for a good story or game. So you'd never really see it happen outside of fiction blurbs. I wonder how a NWoD Neonate would get along with Changelings. Feels like there'd be some common ground there in terms of the nature of their transformations, and their reluctance to be the monsters that their masters made them into. "Oh, you had your mind and body hosed up without your consent by supernatural predators? So did we! Welcome to the club!"
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Feb 13, 2020 23:18
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To be fair (Which is entirely more than it deserves) Beast theoretically has a character arc. The problem is that the game's "Win" States are supremely personal and at cross-purposes with a co-op game. And some of the "Win" States are rather decidedly failure states. But by it's very definition only one player can be the Apex. One of the major issues with it's described gameplay is that there are basically two kinds of feeding. The first is the punchy vampire style feeding, a quick scene that's over and done with and gives you some of your resource back. The other is a long involved plot spanning months of you systematically building up to the climax. One is also much more suited to a co-op game than the other. The game wants you to do the Former more than the latter but doesn't actually provide much support for doing anything other than the Latter. Other than casting shade on people who don't properly write out their murder revenge fanfiction in sufficient detail that they get 3 extra dice to roll for feeding potency while simultaneously saying "Yeah no just like scare the poo poo out of someone for 3 satiety who cares."
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Feb 13, 2020 23:26
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Boron_the_Moron posted:I wonder how a NWoD Neonate would get along with Changelings. Feels like there'd be some common ground there in terms of the nature of their transformations, and their reluctance to be the monsters that their masters made them into. My current game is this! Though the Changeling stuff is getting dripped in very slowly. Right now we miiiiiight have disrupted the plans of a True Fae but don't know it yet.
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Feb 13, 2020 23:44
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JohnnyCanuck posted:I just want useable and interesting Talecrafting rules! Is that too much to ask? Since the game I shall be starting soon will be either Lost or Awakening, I've been tinkering with just that! I've only been at it for a few days, it's not totally finished, and it's completely untested, but lemme know what you think.
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Feb 13, 2020 23:50
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Archonex posted:Hilariously, despite the OWoD being a hell of a lot more punishing in terms of enjoying things (Pretty sure 2e NWoD vampires can taste food and have sex among other things from what I recall.) that humans do Annabelle in the LA by Night series is probably a good example of a decent vampire. She feeds by consent (Something other vampires think is weird. To give an idea of how hosed their "upbringing" was.) and generally is depicted as a decent person sucked into a lovely situation despite everyone else around her actively alternating between trying to corrupt her or being in awe of her basic capacity for empathy and logic. Feeding by consent is pretty stupid when your entire society is based around hiding your existence from humanity (for extremely good reasons).
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Feb 14, 2020 00:25
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I Am Just a Box posted:You know a gameline has failed when even one of its corebook writers is dunking on it. One thing is that I can almost see a an interesting take on Beast but it seems like it'd take too much re-writing to make it functional. I live in the Bible Belt of the American South. One of the things we have around Halloween is "Judgement Houses." Basically, local churches get in on Halloween by presenting the horrors of Hell that sinners will suffer if they don't become good Christians. It's silly and more than a little manipulative, but the core idea of trying to literally "scare the Hell" out of people is the seed of this. Basically, Beasts would feed by seeking out those struggling with (or simply indulging) the Vices of the Seven Deadly Sins and draw them into a Nightmare to get them to confront and overcome their inner darkness. Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" could be read as a Beast "helping" Ebeneezer Scrooge break free from his Greed. Quick feedings could be "warnings" to "sinners" while the involved ones could result in actually causes someone to genuinely turn their lives around. Basically Beasts would function as "deprogrammers" helping to free people from the "cult" of their Vices. You could do stuff like have someone who recently lost Integrity/Humanity/Wisdom/Morality can go through one of these to get a second shot (with bonus dice) at reclaiming/repairing that breaking point. Beasts could function as dark "therapists" helping others become better people/monsters. So Beasts really would be doing this for people's own good (though figure that that would also be plenty of bad-guy Beasts who use their powers to get quick "fixes" and otherwise act like, well, the current options for PC Beasts). Obviously this process is far from pleasant for those experiencing it (Scrooge wasn't exactly having fun during A Christmas Carol) and there's plenty of stuff that can go wrong, potentially making people worse or inflicting trauma. Also figures that "Heroes" come about when the process goes really, really wrong and creates people who feed on Beasts for power/self-gratification. And that take would give plenty of room for crossovers (who doesn't need some therapy in a setting as hosed up as the WoD) and also plenty of room for misunderstandings "Yes, I'm the Boogeyman hiding in little Timmie's closest and giving him nightmares. Because right now Timmy has almost no sense of empathy or compassion so if I don't get him to develop some he'll turn out to be a serial killer, or even worse, a corporate CEO."
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Feb 14, 2020 00:32
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I Am Just a Box posted:I guess that's part of why people keep returning to the topic of Beast and wracking their brains trying to rehabilitate something from it That wasn't supposed to be an invitation. We've all had our turn playing Sisyphus. Just let the rock fall. It's fine. We lose nothing leaving Beast behind.
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Feb 14, 2020 01:07
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CottonWolf posted:Feeding by consent is pretty stupid when your entire society is based around hiding your existence from humanity (for extremely good reasons). Which makes it hilarious that it works. Literally the first person that gets revealed as her feeding from is like "Yeah okay if it'll help.". Turns out that most people aren't sociopathic dickheads! This character is then killed to protect the masquerade, to Annabelle's horror. Boron_the_Moron posted:I wonder how a NWoD Neonate would get along with Changelings. Feels like there'd be some common ground there in terms of the nature of their transformations, and their reluctance to be the monsters that their masters made them into. There's a few times where this is brought up in the 1e books. Turns out that so long as the vampires don't try to sell out the Changelings or get addicted to their blood they get along pretty well. Hell, one of the generic takes on the Vampire splat literally is just "Oh, they have to drink blood and have a whole bunch of weird biological traits? And i'm supposed to be scared of them?" by a leechfinger. There's also one misunderstanding I recall reading where some people look at blood drinking and vampiric changelings and assume that vampires are just Changelings in denial or something. Basically taking two similarities and assuming that a similarity equals the same thing so who gives a gently caress. Then again there's just as many Changelings that look at the ones that enslave people with their blood and think it's time to bust out the contracts that control fire. So it's doubtful something like a vampire in the Lancaea, Invictus, and maybe the nastier religions in the Circle of the Crone would get along with them. None of them are big on freedom or letting someone with literally magic blood get away. Though they'd cloak in their own faction based bullshit. Archonex fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Feb 14, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 01:11
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I Am Just a Box posted:You know a gameline has failed when even one of its corebook writers is dunking on it. Thanks. And yeah, Dave did the Lair stuff, which is great and deserves to find a better home.
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Feb 14, 2020 09:02
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The Legend of Saw Jones would be a baller recurring antagonist for a Werewolf the Wyld West chronicle.
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Feb 14, 2020 10:59
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| # ? May 29, 2024 09:22 |
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Reading the M20 Book of the Fallen is sure a trip when you have just been reminded of Beast's existence. Phil being all "Goddamnit, only a really terrible rear end in a top hat would publish a game about being a full-on abuser and proud of it!" takes on a new angle then.
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Feb 14, 2020 12:41
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