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Mulva posted:It's all the same bullshit, why aren't we just perfect immortal beings that never suffer or experience loss? If God is all loving why would they allow suffering? The answer is the same as it's always been, because without change and challenge you would never grow or develop understanding of the world around you. "But we could do that without genetic birth defects and strokes", says the species that has shown no evidence it can do it at all. The problem of evil is someone saying they got a bum rap, and someone else saying no you didn't. It never ends. The Problem of Evil is a big thing in theology and philosophy precisely because it's kinda hard to answer. You seem to be treating it as easy despite the fact that to a lot of people the answers you're providing aren't satisfactory explanations. Baby Broomer posted:I just mostly appreciate that it doesn't simply exist as a tool to punish PC's for acting like PC's. This is actually one of the things I appreciate about Morality, because it incentivizes players to seek solutions that aren't invariably "kill everyone" (i.e. acting like a PC).
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Apr 3, 2020 23:59
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If my poorly thought out series of murders are wrong, I don't want to be right.
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Apr 4, 2020 00:12
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Lord_Hambrose posted:If my poorly thought out series of murders are wrong, I don't want to be right.  I think when it comes to large-scale things like "the game setting's assumptions about the Problem of Evil," the issue comes when these things are kind of unstated or thoughtless assumptions. This pops a lot less in, for instance, Vampire (ultimately about being a dracula dealing with the dracula life) vs. Werewolf (complex spiritual questions in either version) or Mage (entire gameplay model is about sticking your metaphorical head into the metaphorical lion's mouth, either for the sake of your ideology or just, yanno, because).
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Apr 4, 2020 00:30
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I'm not in or running a Mage game - or working in academia lol - but there's rarely a day that goes by without me thinking about the Mystery/Obsession/Arcane Experience/Wisdom/Gnosis loop and how goddamn beautiful that bit of game design is. It's so incredibly tight and any attempt to understand or engage with any point in it leads to the exact kind of stories Mage wants to tell. I feel like CtL 2E's Clarity got like... 2/3rds of the way there? I like the idea of Clarity damage a lot but, like a lot of Lost 2E's systems, I feel there might be a missing of the forest for the trees. Or, I guess to be a little clearer to be a lack of high level connection from that system to others important to the core CtL gameplay loop. Like, in practice the hedge systems DO NOT need to be more complicated but in theory if there was some concrete link between Clarity damage/Hedge travel (or spinning) / Glamour harvesting than I could see the loop working as well as Mage's. There's a ton I love about Lost and Lost 2E but I sometimes wish for feeling of the same kind of higher level vision that Mage or Demon have w/r/t their morality traits. And of course I don't want to slag either Vampire's pretty solidly constructed "you gotta eat people to do stupid vampire political bullshit, and you gotta do stupid vampire political bullshit to (easily) eat people, and engaging with either makes you more of a monster" loop just because it's well known and straightforward, it's pretty elegant too - at least until you get to stuff like oVampire's alternate morality paths.
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Apr 4, 2020 08:15
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I don't mind maltheism pr. se., and i am a well-known supporter of storming the gates of heaven and claiming the throne of God. But. My god do i hate it when nerd fantasy makes all religions or all gods evil, particularly when it doesn't fit the setting or the themes at all. I'm looking at you, EXALTED. Most fantasy religion and its gods are boring and uninteresting, and most gods, too. They seem entirely unable to approach questions of religion from the perspectives of why people are religious or why some ideas or concepts are spiritually important to people.
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Apr 4, 2020 17:25
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Exalted doesn't make all religion or all gods evil (eyes Jarish).
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Apr 4, 2020 17:38
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Rand Brittain posted:Exalted doesn't make all religion or all gods evil (eyes Jarish). It does frame the relationship between gods and people as gods "extorting" worship. Of course, not every spirit is directly cruel, but heaven is largely corrupt and selfish, the terrestrial gods are predatory ane greedy
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Apr 4, 2020 17:48
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To be fair, that’s one model for the relationship between gods and mortals; one that is sadly common in the era Exalted is set in, because that’s an era of widespread slavery, war, colonial exploitation, and so on. Gods aren’t innately evil in Exalted any more than humans are, but by that same token the gods of the Age of Sorrows are not inherently better by reason of being divine, either.
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Apr 4, 2020 18:26
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Joe Slowboat posted:To be fair, that's one model for the relationship between gods and mortals; one that is sadly common in the era Exalted is set in, because that's an era of widespread slavery, war, colonial exploitation, and so on. Is it, though, a model for the relationship between gods and mortals? Certainly in ancient myth and religion, the relationship was often transactional, and there were often spirits or gods that must be appeased or propitiated, or spirits, often demons, that are unreasonable or predatory in their demands, but i cannot think of an instance where worship itself was something extorted from people by the gods.
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Apr 4, 2020 19:21
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Magnusth posted:Is it, though, a model for the relationship between gods and mortals? Certainly in ancient myth and religion, the relationship was often transactional, and there were often spirits or gods that must be appeased or propitiated, or spirits, often demons, that are unreasonable or predatory in their demands, but i cannot think of an instance where worship itself was something extorted from people by the gods. It's a reasonable modern frame on the relationship between humanity and the gods in some stories; plenty of deities have received sacrifice and worship in exchange for not visiting their wrath on the people. Exalted doesn't claim to precisely recreate the world as understood by bronze age people, or the elaboration of empire involved in the setting would look very different as well. Exalted treats the economics of the bronze age as fundamentally driven by exploitation, and generalizes that to a critique of the societies it depicts (where they're bronze age as opposed to Dying Earth, Conan-esque fantasy world, etc). I mean, it's also the case that exploitation, reverence, and mutualism can all coexist. Ahlat, God of Southern War, is a great example (and one of the classic Exalted NPC gods). Ahlat is a war god, a god of cattle, and a very competent social climber. He has waxed in power over the centuries, and has hugely shaped the society of Harborhead to one that fits his ideals: Constant cattle-raiding war defines the region. However, Ahlat also wants his people to have self-determination, power, wealth, and martial glory - not just because that will expand his own influence, but because he sees them as his people. For their part, the Harborhead peoples revere Ahlat, and they genuinely want the same things he wants for them (speaking broadly; individuals will differ). Ahlat is absolutely exploitative, in that in the final calculation he has shaped an entire society to the model of his power and priorities, to the point that Harborhead's ability to throw off foreign colonization has been hampered by their dedication to internal ritual warfare and cattle raiding - but he's also their god. Compare that to Ishtar, and I wouldn't consider it unfavorable; Ahlat may be understood in an idiom of exploitation, but if Ishtar is understood to exist as a discrete entity, the dual knowledge of 'what she loves she destroys' and her power over people, with the immense festivals and adoration given to ameliorate her... that's also exploitative, in the same way that any monarch is exploitative. Exploitation doesn't mean there isn't real religious feeling, or the god doesn't represent the culture's goals and ideals, it's just not framing those in the (fictional) culture's own terms. E: Put another way - how is 'propitiation' different from 'exploitation' other than one focusing on the actions of the people, and the other on the actions of the god? Exploitation is a simple fact of historical (and present!) modes of economic and social control. That Exalted also frames gods in that light isn't maltheism, it's just extending the critique.
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Apr 4, 2020 19:45
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Magnusth posted:I don't mind maltheism pr. se., and i am a well-known supporter of storming the gates of heaven and claiming the throne of God. I would step back a little from "evil" in the context of Exalted's gods, but I do think that the fantasy idiom of the gods as entities who are in some way directly and materially benefiting from worship or religious activities tends to cast religious activities as fundamentally transactional, and also transactional in a relatively capitalist way. In turn, this translates to "evil" to us, even if a lot of historical religious activities did ultimately boil down to "we do this ritual and a positive outcome occurs, or a negative outcome is avoided." I think the mental space from which many RPG writers, and many RPGer players/runners, come from, does not have a sympathetic view of religious activities, largely due to being contemporary with the rise of public religion (in America) being fundamentalist Evangelicals etc. as well as the scandals in the Catholic church.
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Apr 4, 2020 22:44
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I think the core framework Exalted works off of is that those who have power over others have historically materially benefited from that, and gods are understood as extensions of those economic and social relationships - Zeus is kinglike, and the setting is critical of kingship. I’m not sure how one would present Bronze Age divinity fairly in a way that didn’t invite the comparison; Royalty or the local equivalent served as a core symbolic framework for understanding divinity in many if not most traditions, and similarly many considered their gods not as morally perfect principles but as individuals.. To say ‘kingship is prone to abuse of power’ isn’t to say monarchs are inherently evil as individuals but it’s certainly critical of the category. I just think that’s very different from ‘Gods are inherently evil because the category ‘god’ describes something bad’ which is the key claim of Nerd maltheism.
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Apr 5, 2020 00:08
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Joe Slowboat posted:I just think that’s very different from ‘Gods are inherently evil because the category ‘god’ describes something bad’ which is the key claim of Nerd maltheism.
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Apr 5, 2020 00:42
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Nessus posted:I think that claim can be generalized outwards to some extent, replacing "god" for "superheroes," "Jedi," "wizards," and so forth. It's like a reflex contrarianism. I wonder if it's happened for The Witcher yet, or if that situates all the secondary-world magic in dirtbags like Geralt. People love to talk about "contrarianism" when what they really mean is "stop spoiling my fun by not accepting really ugly premises uncritically." Like seriously, the Jedi? They're absolutely huge, hypocritical pieces of poo poo by any fair reading of the Star Wars movies.
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Apr 5, 2020 03:18
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:People love to talk about "contrarianism" when what they really mean is "stop spoiling my fun by not accepting really ugly premises uncritically."
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Apr 5, 2020 03:50
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Nessus posted:At this point I think that's the normative reading, and the contrarian reading would be "anything that is not that." I have to agree here. I mean, I think that reading the 'Jedi' as a coherent entity across the three trilogies, which each take wildly different approaches to the Jedi order.
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Apr 5, 2020 04:03
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Nessus posted:At this point I think that's the normative reading, and the contrarian reading would be "anything that is not that." Nah. They are largely presented as protagonists and good people, so most people will read them as such because they're not going to offer it any more thought or hang around us weird nerds making lengthy arguments about the morality of dumb movies.
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Apr 5, 2020 05:18
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LatwPIAT posted:Nah. They are largely presented as protagonists and good people, so most people will read them as such because they're not going to offer it any more thought or hang around us weird nerds making lengthy arguments about the morality of dumb movies. In fairness, there's also a lot to say about how they understand themselves and how the horrific flaws in Jedi ideology fit into the narrative we're presented; it's the beginning, not the end, of an interesting conversation. The point is not dismissal but investigation, especially since the way they demonize emotion is something with a very long real-life history that Lucas's movies just kind of exaggerate and exoticize.
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Apr 5, 2020 05:26
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:In fairness, there's also a lot to say about how they understand themselves and how the horrific flaws in Jedi ideology fit into the narrative we're presented; it's the beginning, not the end, of an interesting conversation. The point is not dismissal but investigation, especially since the way they demonize emotion is something with a very long real-life history that Lucas's movies just kind of exaggerate and exoticize. Also the entire reason the Jedi order even survived through several of the near-apocalypses that happened in their established canon is that a couple of jedi masters decided to ignore the whole "Jedi shall not bone" order and had kids. All forcing jedi to not acknowledge that they have emotions accomplished was create an entire order of very powerful wizards who turn into utter psychopaths when they find something they're not equipped to deal with otherwise.
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Apr 5, 2020 06:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:It's a reasonable modern frame on the relationship between humanity and the gods in some stories; plenty of deities have received sacrifice and worship in exchange for not visiting their wrath on the people. Exalted doesn't claim to precisely recreate the world as understood by bronze age people, or the elaboration of empire involved in the setting would look very different as well. Exalted treats the economics of the bronze age as fundamentally driven by exploitation, and generalizes that to a critique of the societies it depicts (where they're bronze age as opposed to Dying Earth, Conan-esque fantasy world, etc).
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Apr 5, 2020 07:41
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I feel like you get the problem where a game focused around critique of the Jedi Order's ethical program would probably not "feel" much like a Star Wars game, and indeed might be in pretty bad taste depending on the period, because for the majority of the films, the Jedi Order are genocide victims with a few survivors who have maintained their sorcerous teachings. Fortunately, the World of Darkness would never do something like that. e: To loop back around away from religious topics and back to mage chat: It occurs to me that you could have a tradition of people who get into abyssal magic basically using the Sheev methodology: groom some dork, get him hooked in the process of trying to achieve his goal, and (potentially) laugh when he doesn't even manage to do what he set out to do! Nessus fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Apr 5, 2020 |
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Apr 5, 2020 07:54
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Nessus posted:e: To loop back around away from religious topics and back to mage chat: It occurs to me that you could have a tradition of people who get into abyssal magic basically using the Sheev methodology: groom some dork, get him hooked in the process of trying to achieve his goal, and (potentially) laugh when he doesn't even manage to do what he set out to do! I have a Legacy that runs through my games that is essentially this. It's a Prime Legacy, and the gimmick is summoning your personal "soul weapon" and fighting against the vile creatures of the world. The twist was that the Legacy really pushed into its members a sense of pride in the idea of literal self sacrifice. Palpatine was secretly the global leader of the Legacy, a Reaper growing powerful eating the souls of young Magi who threw their lives away blazing out in glory.
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Apr 5, 2020 14:59
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Pope Guilty posted:This is much less similar to the big NWOD crossover setting the MES ran a few years back than the original description put me in mind of. The MES ruined that one all on its own, with a large number of players gamifying the whole thing to the point that people were actively being scolded for not min-maxing (like most other VLARP inter/national org games tbh)
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Apr 5, 2020 21:20
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do NOT jack off posted:The MES ruined that one all on its own, with a large number of players gamifying the whole thing to the point that people were actively being scolded for not min-maxing (like most other VLARP inter/national org games tbh) Back when I ST'd I had to take three different people aside to gently say "don't tell people how to optimize their sheets unless they ask you to".
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Apr 5, 2020 21:34
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Ran my first real session of Promethean yesterday Loved it! I still find WOD in general to be excessively clunky, but PTC does a lot of work to push players in interesting directions in a way that I never felt with any of Vampire or Mage. Promethean is really aggressive about demanding players engage with the question of "what are you trying to do" and "why would you want to be a human," which is great and for a bunch of sadbrains is a radically tougher question than like, metaphysics. I probably pressed a few buttons a little faster than necessary with say Disquiet, but that was mostly to make sure that the players and I got a handle on the fact that these systems do in fact exist. It's already getting some great places. I set it in a near future midwest dustbowl because because being trapped in a single apartment sucks and makes you crave some open sky.
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Apr 5, 2020 23:41
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/\/\/\/\That is so awesome, we had a pbp that lasted a couple weeks here a few years back I got to play in that was really fun. I've just gotten around to listening to The Black Tapes podcasts and drat am I gonna rip off so much poo poo from this for one of my games.
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Apr 6, 2020 04:11
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Hot drat the folios gave the tremere some much needed rituals
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Apr 6, 2020 18:03
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I'm running V5 for my players and I have some problems. 1. I don't know how to really include the personal horror aspect of the game. I think I'm doing well when it comes to politics/social intrigue etc but I simply don't have a single clue on how to make my game even remotly creepy. 2. How do I encourage my players to take part in kindred politics? Only 2 out 5 are somehow engage in politics and talk to other kindred on elysiums and other social occasions about stuff that doesn't concern the main plot. 3. How to deal with a fishmalk? I made a mistake of believing my player that he's going to roleplay a serious malkavian. Now I have to deal with a dude who's -supposedly a serial killer never killed anyone in game -Refuses to enter cars Not because he doesn't like cars/is scared of them etc. It's because the player thinks it's funny if he's character jogs everywhere. -Most of the time speaks in third person then randomly switches to speaking like a normal person for no reason -Makes anime references in character. I tried talking to him about it and it resulted in him basically not saying anything next session and a week after that he went back to his normal shenanigans.
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Apr 6, 2020 18:31
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The easiest way to get vampire PCs into politics is to bring politics to them- figure out what they want and can't otherwise get, or figure out what they have and how their refusal to get involved in the local vampire politics threatens it. Are they Camarilla neonates? There's probably older vampires who want something from them, whether it's a particularly desirable bit of Influence or even just support for a political move. (And tell the fishmalk player that he's having his fun at the expense of everybody else and to knock it off or he's not welcome.)
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Apr 6, 2020 18:43
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Pope Guilty posted:The easiest way to get vampire PCs into politics is to bring politics to them- figure out what they want and can't otherwise get, or figure out what they have and how their refusal to get involved in the local vampire politics threatens it. Are they Camarilla neonates? There's probably older vampires who want something from them, whether it's a particularly desirable bit of Influence or even just support for a political move. Exactly. Not playing the game means you don't have anybody backing you up and no connections when somebody wants to mess with you. Maybe the Sheriff is a prick (likely) and a gaggle of Licks with nobody to turn to is a fine target to get his intimidation rocks off. Or maybe one of the PCs' havens is in line to be bought up by a Ventrue for some sort of real estate scheme. Also seconded on the fishmalk.
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Apr 6, 2020 18:53
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Also you mentioned that only a couple of players want to talk about things that aren't in the main plot, so hell, find ways that politics fucks with the plot or the players' ability to pursue the plot. Got a MacGuffin? Better make sure you're not going into somebody's domain to get it. Do the PCs have adequate access to Herd and feeding grounds and the freedom to hunt to keep from going hungry while using all those shiny Disciplines? Better find a way to get permission to hunt elsewhere to supplement before you overfeed your turf or get caught poaching. Got an antagonist who has police protection like Sollozzo from The Godfather? Better get with the Ventrue Primogen before you make a move or the concessions he's going to have to give the police chief, with whom he has a longstanding and productive understanding, to keep things copacetic are coming straight out of your coterie's hide, plus interest for loving with somebody bigger than they are. People in the real world get involved in politics because it directly impacts our lives, making them easier or harder, better or worse, and vampires in a not-real-but-close-enough-to-pretend world are no different. Just gotta find the points of friction that need smoothing, or vice versa.
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Apr 6, 2020 19:36
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I wouldn't have the Cam Politics Serpent Nest start off biting the PCs on the face (at first). If the goal is to get them entangled with the political scene and to have them start making deals, having their assets threatened by politics risks pushing things the other direction. Maybe have an ancilla or someone else with a little influence (but not tons) do them a favor to get them invested in the Cam's favor economy, and have someone else in a similar situation ask them for something. Start to make the Cam's favor-based-currency tangible and useful to them, but also emphasize how it's community glue - a vampire's debts and debtors make up their social circle, and are the closest thing to "friends" most Kindred get. (I've seen someone propose that a good Prince or Harpy might regularly request or offer small favors to all sorts of no-name neonates and new arrivals because it's the vampire equivalent of establishing their bank account and giving them a credit history.)
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Apr 6, 2020 19:37
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what type of creepy do you want op? there are levels of creepy
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Apr 6, 2020 19:39
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Fly away, troll.
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Apr 7, 2020 04:59
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I'm an expert at creating atmosphere please ask give more details so we can make your game the proper levels of creepy
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Apr 7, 2020 17:02
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Five Eyes posted:Maybe have an ancilla or someone else with a little influence (but not tons) do them a favor to get them invested in the Cam's favor economy, and have someone else in a similar situation ask them for something. Start to make the Cam's favor-based-currency tangible and useful to them, but also emphasize how it's community glue - a vampire's debts and debtors make up their social circle, and are the closest thing to "friends" most Kindred get. (I've seen someone propose that a good Prince or Harpy might regularly request or offer small favors to all sorts of no-name neonates and new arrivals because it's the vampire equivalent of establishing their bank account and giving them a credit history.) I can understand if the players don't think that the favor system works in Vampire until they try it out themselves. They could be wary of the other Kindred just saying 'lol nah' but if that happens then that Kindred's own credibility goes out the entire window.
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Apr 7, 2020 17:08
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It's going to be hard to incorporate horror at all if there's somebody who fishmalks. A major difficulty with getting 'politics' into an RPG is that the players can see how good they are at things - they can calculate their odds of success at surviving a given attack or picking a lock or driving a car real fast. The ability of NPCs to accomplish things - and their willingness to actually follow through on helping the PCs - is basically an unknown unknown. RPGs in general, WOD is not an exception, tend toward making individualist supermen, partially because players are generally playing a single character, but also because of specific elements of their rules - even a couple of vampires have a massive toolkit that can solve an incredible number of problems without outside assistance. Getting your gaming group on board with "one of the main tools in your kit is convincing NPCs to play nice with you" requires cultivating that social sensibility over time and with the players. It involves a lot more carrot than stick - you need NPCs that can do things for the PCs and that follow through pretty consistently. If NPCs regularly backstab the players, the players going to learn "either we do this our way, or we don't do it at all." You'll also need to keep friendly NPCs around, WOD PCs have plenty of options for "coerce/manipulate this person into doing us a favor, then dispose of them." This isn't a very satisfying way to play politics, since it basically just kind of becomes "mash dice at the problem."
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Apr 7, 2020 17:30
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You can still do horror with comic characters - one of the most memorable moments in a Demon game I ran was when a vampire decided to try and intimidate the party and gain some leverage by Dominating the party’s goofball combat monster, who was based in no small part on Steven Heck from Alpha Protocol and who did goofy poo poo all the time. The vampire was unable to use Dominate for anything especially potent in theory...so he just asked the guy to tell him who he cared about most, as a show of social power and a chance to find someone to threaten. Which led to a the character having a near breakdown internally because his answer was ‘no one, not even me’ and he’d never been forced to confront that before. The trick is the player has to be on board. (E: the vampire, meanwhile, just got frustrated and demanded the guy’s wallet because he had to do SOMETHING to show he was no pushover.)
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Apr 7, 2020 18:40
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That's as good an example of Torment if I've ever heard one.
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Apr 8, 2020 00:07
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You know, normally X on LA by Night grates on me, but in the most recent epilogue X uses memory projection to communicate with Jasper and it was really clever and well done. I like this so much better than "dress pants  "
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Apr 8, 2020 02:54
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