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Yeah, which happens to everyone who eats the eggs, male or female.Covermeinsunshine posted:Hehe I remember this. What makes it worse it has nothing to do with the way other enemies in that section were presented and described (not even with the sexy snakeman)
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Sep 21, 2023 21:06
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moths posted:I don't know how to feel about learning that the house was already burning when it got struck by lightning. Well. A million monkeys with typewriters can come up with Hamlet. Fifteen freelancers making $0.03 per word can come up with Beast. But in all seriousness, it's what you get when a game is made by less invested people who aren't working together and aren't thinking about what their colleagues are doing or helping one another to catch issues. I remember when Heroes started drifting from the original idea to what they ended up as, and I tried pushing back, but it wasn't worth my time. So I stopped. They were BAD at that point. But then the examples people wrote SHOULD have gotten kicked back by the developer for being super weird and gross with unexamined implications, but, frankly, Matt was pretty checked out at that point I think. I remember my notes on that project. I had like no edits whatsoever, which is the telltale sign of "the developer didn't have time to look at my draft and just kinda assumed it was good." Really, this kind of stuff DOES exist in first draft form on a lot of projects, but it pretty quickly gets hammered down, because a lot of writers simply are not thinking of the underlying social implications of their fiction. That's a common issue in a lot of demographics, and those demographics are largely the ones willing to do work for $0.03. It's a company that's become increasingly controlled by like a guy who spent countless thousands of dollars on their Kickstarters to get insider access. Privileged superfans who can afford every book are, in my experience, the absolute worst people possible to hire. Ironically, they blacklist anyone who has admitted to pirating one of their books, and those people are the absolute BEST writers in my experience.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:07
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MachineIV, thank you for your posts. Like others have said, it's been kind of a mystery trying to figure out the behind the scenes situation at OPP, despite it being obvious that there was funky stuff going on. What you posted lines up with a lot of what I've already kind of heard about McFarland not really thinking of Beast as being his while at the same time it becoming the thing he is most associated with. Your descriptions of the back and forth and the complete lack of real oversight was really informative.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:23
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Kurieg posted:Yeah, which happens to everyone who eats the eggs, male or female. smashmouths
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Sep 21, 2023 21:31
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Anonymous Zebra posted:MachineIV, thank you for your posts. Like others have said, it's been kind of a mystery trying to figure out the behind the scenes situation at OPP, despite it being obvious that there was funky stuff going on. What you posted lines up with a lot of what I've already kind of heard about McFarland not really thinking of Beast as being his while at the same time it becoming the thing he is most associated with. Your descriptions of the back and forth and the complete lack of real oversight was really informative. Of course. To be honest, it was the second most mismanaged project I ever worked for with White Wolf, CCP, or Onyx Path. And that's saying a LOT.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:33
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I'm darkly curious about the worst one; though if it's NDA or whatever I get it.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:38
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MachineIV posted:Of course. To be honest, it was the second most mismanaged project I ever worked for with White Wolf, CCP, or Onyx Path. And that's saying a LOT. It's also not a particularly unique situation for many White Wolf and adjacent projects, over the years, for all sorts of reasons.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:38
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MachineIV posted:Ironically, they blacklist anyone who has admitted to pirating one of their books, and those people are the absolute BEST writers in my experience. I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't pirate at least one game.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:48
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MachineIV posted:4) A developer on the average OPP project (more so than when it was White Wolf and developers were on salary) would give the writers outlines and deadlines. Often the outline you got for a few thousand words was just a sentence or two telling you what to touch on. That was DEFINITELY the case with Beast. When Promethean came out and felt very sloppily put-together, my running theory has always been that Matt was just pissy about the concept of editing after having to go through the whole process of rewriting Beast after everyone hated the kickstarter. After reading this post... Well, I'm still sure he was profoundly pissy, but I almost can't blame him when this is the system. Yeah, a project lead should make sure everyone is on the same page from the outset, but I have to assume he isn't being paid much better than anyone else. Passion isn't enough to make herding that many cats worth it.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:56
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joylessdivision posted:I say this with love in my heart: I don't know what you're talking about and you can't make me know. 
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Sep 21, 2023 22:07
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spectralent posted:I'm darkly curious about the worst one; though if it's NDA or whatever I get it. Oh no. I don't care. It was Mortal Remains, the Hunter: The Vigil supplement and sort of "stop gap second edition." It was in development for a couple of years. My draft was the only one that I would have called serviceable at that point, but there were only one or two others completed (I initially wrote the conversion material and powers and stuff.) It was just so dead in the water and Matt McElroy just didn't have the time or attention for it. I was asked to take over the development. So I basically rebuilt it from the ground up. I'm pretty proud of what ended up of it, but I was EXTREMELY frustrated because, I don't know if you're aware, Onyx Path contracts usually pay half upon publication. So many books I wrote before my kids were born only ever paid out after they started elementary school for that reason.
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Sep 21, 2023 22:10
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MachineIV posted:Oh no. I don't care. Wow, goddamn. I was going to guess it was Mortal Remains, and I'm kind of proud I sniffed out the weirdness in that one too. I actually kinda like that book overall, even though it feels like the first half (Prometheans and changelings) was written in a completely different style than the 2nd half. Was that the case? The first two chapters went into a lot of detail about how Prometheans and changelings work with stated out NPCs (antagonists or not depending on things), and then the Sin Eater, Mummy, and Demon chapters were all very vague and mostly just new orgs with almost no stat blocks. Were they written at different times? I like the book mostly because it doesn't upset HtV itself while still allowing me to slot in the new rules I like from the God--Machine Rules update, and at least gives me ideas on how to handle Sin Eaters and Demons in that context. Ugh 2e HtV.
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Sep 21, 2023 23:13
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Wow, goddamn. I was going to guess it was Mortal Remains, and I'm kind of proud I sniffed out the weirdness in that one too. I actually kinda like that book overall, even though it feels like the first half (Prometheans and changelings) was written in a completely different style than the 2nd half. Was that the case? The first two chapters went into a lot of detail about how Prometheans and changelings work with stated out NPCs (antagonists or not depending on things), and then the Sin Eater, Mummy, and Demon chapters were all very vague and mostly just new orgs with almost no stat blocks. Were they written at different times? They were ABSOLUTELY written at different times. You're literally describing what I mentioned. I got a couple drafts, the rest had to be quickly pitch hit a couple years later by people who weren't part of the original discussions. I believe I wrote every rules bit. Possibly in a drunken fugue. I was kinda frustrated at the lack of mechanics allowed in the initial outline—I felt it was basically the perfect place to use conspiracies to mesh hunters intrinsically into those very specific ecologies, since we were really doing "Chronicles of Darkness Splats" as the targets of most of these hunters, not "Generic Hammer Horror Monsters."
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Sep 21, 2023 23:40
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Why is it that every time I read about something World of Darkness-adjacent it always devolves into some disgusting ponytail greaseball poo poo?
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Sep 21, 2023 23:45
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Lynx Winters posted:Thank you for this, I kinda figured "beast was a mess of a game from start to finish" and "Matt is a monster" were two different ideas that got mashed together. The game where Matt tells the world that he views himself as a broken monster faking being a person until he makes it... .. Is *Promethean*.
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Sep 21, 2023 23:46
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Dawgstar posted:Rose is very good at her job so I like to think it was mostly her, but we're friends now so bias. Rose, I think, invented Demon, developed most of its concepts... And then Matt actually Developed the entire thing and she barely did anything on it, because she was doing what turned into Requiem second edition at the same time.
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Sep 21, 2023 23:51
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God, Requiem 2E was so good. My group adored the campaign we ran with that game. My only gripe was that I wish there were more books printed for it.
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Sep 22, 2023 01:56
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Onyx Path changed to paying the second half of writers' payments after second drafts are in, which is a very welcome change. My very first Exalted work was on Many Faced Strangers, which isn't out yet. Since then, multiple other books I worked on have been kickstarted or otherwise published.
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Sep 22, 2023 02:17
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Warthur posted:Deviant actually strikes me as "Freak Legion, only actually playable". You're all hosed up because a big conspiracy used you as a guinea pig. The key is that the game is about trying to handle that rather than emptily wallowing in hosed-upness for its own sake. Kinda both really. Deviant is good for 'people hosed over by Pentex and their masters' but Beast really seems like 'so you want to play a Bane...'. KingKalamari posted:Remember a couple of pages ago where I said Beast had the same problem as a lot of WoD-inspired games where it spends all its time on high level, in-game lore and character creation, but forgets to explain how any of this stuff is supposed to work as a game you play with other people? Immortal was one of the game I was specifically thinking of when I wrote that... Nah, that was more player drift. Turns out most people who were into W:TA weren't there to angst about feeling disconnected from humanity and their inner Rage inevitably alienating them from their families (assuming they didn't kill them in a frenzy). They were there to play a dying breed doing their damndest to take the thing killing them down with them. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 02:34
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aw frig aw dang it posted:God, Requiem 2E was so good. My group adored the campaign we ran with that game. My only gripe was that I wish there were more books printed for it. Imho core was good but supplements that came out later were kind of meh (at least on the fluff writing part). On the other hand 1st ed supplement fluff was mostly still goingt o hold up and they were really good for the most part
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Sep 22, 2023 06:23
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Covermeinsunshine posted:Imho core was good but supplements that came out later were kind of meh (at least on the fluff writing part). On the other hand 1st ed supplement fluff was mostly still goingt o hold up and they were really good for the most part I’m honestly kinda sad I didn’t get to do more for Requiem. I wrote something like 60,000 words of the Requiem 2 core then I wrote the rules chapter and carthian chapter of the covenants book, and that was my last work on the line. I couldn’t confirm exactly but I think that was a pretty big time for shaking up and changing hands. When I was working on Covenants Rose told me she was thinking of stepping down. And at the point when I left, I don’t know if they had anyone that worked on the line at all beyond maybe a tiny supplement piece here or there.
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Sep 22, 2023 06:46
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Liquid Communism posted:Kinda both really. Deviant is good for 'people hosed over by Pentex and their masters' but Beast really seems like 'so you want to play a Bane...'. Werewolf does strike me as a messy concept that ended up coalescing into something very different from what was envisioned but actually also compelling in its own right. Like has been said about Shadowrun, as much of a total mess as it is, at least actually has a coherent core concept, D&D but with guns and computers treating corporate blacksites and offices as dungeons, compared to a lot of other cyberpunk games that have no idea what you're actually supposed to do in them.
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Sep 22, 2023 07:47
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If OPP is hard up for new splat ideas they should do Australians. Crossovers would be a piece of piss. No matter where or what you are, you can always run into another Aussie tourist.
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Sep 22, 2023 11:24
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My impression was it's not so much OPP has no more ideas as OPP are trying to move away from WoD because it's not property they own anymore.
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Sep 22, 2023 11:30
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spectralent posted:My impression was it's not so much OPP has no more ideas as OPP are trying to move away from WoD because it's not property they own anymore. They're making the entirely rational decision to focus on their own ips rather than the one owned by a highly mercurial and at times actively hostile third party. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 11:40
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MachineIV posted:I’m honestly kinda sad I didn’t get to do more for Requiem. I wrote something like 60,000 words of the Requiem 2 core then I wrote the rules chapter and carthian chapter of the covenants book, and that was my last work on the line. Dave Brookshaw posted:They're making the entirely rational decison to focus on their own ips rather than the one owned by a highly mercurial and at times acrively hostile third party. spectralent posted:My impression was it's not so much OPP has no more ideas as OPP are trying to move away from WoD because it's not property they own anymore.
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Sep 22, 2023 11:46
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Dave Brookshaw posted:They're making the entirely rational decison to focus on their own ips rather than the one owned by a highly mercurial and at times acrively hostile third party. Oh, yeah, I don't think they're assholes for doing it or anything - just, I think that's the issue and not that they ran out of ideas.
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Sep 22, 2023 11:48
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I always wish that I had managed to get Scion or Trinity to the table, but for some reason I feel like that ship has sailed. Even the books from the later Kickstarters I backed are projects where I barely skimmed through updates and never do more than add the finished product to my Drivethru account. It feels like there are so many books, but every setting also feels like it needs more content other than Aeon which still feels like it is lacking something but at least has several books about stuff. The only Onyx Path thing I am actually excited about anymore is the Sidereal book getting finished, because they were always my favorite splat back in the old days. The very idea of even playing Essense edition edition with my group is laughable. At least I might be able to try out the new V5 or W5 systems for a October spooky gaming month. They both seem neat. 
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Sep 22, 2023 11:57
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I've played a bit of Scion 2e. Seemed cool. The main thing stopping me from running any of OP's games (Scion, Trinity, They Came, etc) is the fact that I am a big manbaby who needs a nice lengthy published campaign (or a shorter module anthology) to run when figuring out a new system and WW/OP have traditionally not done a lot of those.
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Sep 22, 2023 12:15
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Werewolf does strike me as a messy concept that ended up coalescing into something very different from what was envisioned but actually also compelling in its own right. I find W:TA makes much more sense if filtered through teenage fury at the world and a poo poo-ton of heavy metal. 'You know, the world's pretty hosed up. Doesn't it just make you want to go apeshit?' met with a lot of the same neoanarchist punk thought that drove Shadowrun's early editions too.
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Sep 22, 2023 12:21
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Halloween Jack posted:Get. On. My. Level. I'll call you and raise you.  FMguru posted:Only The Everlasting really matches it for dedication to the bit. gently caress, beaten.
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Sep 22, 2023 18:56
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I had planned to review the whole Everlasting series, and never got past the Unliving book because it was kind of exhausting and each book repeats a lot of stuff. One of the things I couldn't get over was how the Unliving book constantly talked about, and even had bits of fiction featuring, the Highlanders and Mummies and Demigod player character types from the other books that hadn't even come out yet. I know this is a stupid question before I ask it, but did the franchise ever get any better?
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Sep 22, 2023 19:05
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I think they made all the books they were planning, so you can see all the things now, if that counts as 'better'.
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Sep 22, 2023 19:17
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Liquid Communism posted:I find W:TA makes much more sense if filtered through teenage fury at the world and a poo poo-ton of heavy metal. 'You know, the world's pretty hosed up. Doesn't it just make you want to go apeshit?' met with a lot of the same neoanarchist punk thought that drove Shadowrun's early editions too.
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Sep 22, 2023 19:55
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Tsilkani posted:I'll call you and raise you. Fellas, fellas,  I mean it's at the leading edge of RPGs that put genitals on the cover.
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Sep 22, 2023 21:07
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Was the new werewolf any good? I feel like the new vampire got some actual good buzz for its mechanics.
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Sep 22, 2023 22:02
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spectralent posted:Was the new werewolf any good? I feel like the new vampire got some actual good buzz for its mechanics. The results are, charitably, mixed with one of the writers when it was at Hunters talking about he was overruled at his attempts to introduce more diversity and representation to the mix when the editor wanted such things as 'kill off one of the Native American woof tribes.' Just kind of a giant mess.
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Sep 22, 2023 22:06
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Oh. Well, that might be why I've heard sod all about it, then!
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Sep 22, 2023 22:21
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theironjef posted:Fellas, fellas, For all of Wraeththu's bizarreness, I don't know if it outscores The Everlasting in sheer 'this is a knockoff White Wolf game' magnitude. Of course, now I realize you haven't reviewed The Everlasting yet, and you really, really need to.
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Sep 22, 2023 22:43
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Tsilkani posted:For all of Wraeththu's bizarreness, I don't know if it outscores The Everlasting in sheer 'this is a knockoff White Wolf game' magnitude. Most Vampire Heartbreakers lean heavily into the WoD-style "everything and the kitchen sink" overtstuffed setting. You have vampires, and werewolves, and angels, and faeries, and mummies, and wizards, and ghosts, and etcetera etcetera, all bumping into each other and stepping on each others toes, and that certainly describes The Everlasting. FMguru fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Sep 22, 2023 |
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Sep 22, 2023 22:57
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