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JDCorley posted:I agree there's no cosmic smackdown, sure. It sounds like the issue is that there's no punishment, not that the descending Wisdom scale doesn't show a Mage increasingly absorbed in the power/narcissism combo that is the heart of hubris. It's not that there's no punishment, it's that A) the punishment is 100% internal and psychological and B) there is no punishment for hubris. You're just punished for, like, doing bad stuff. If it would make your mom frown it's on the Wisdom scale. Like, the Wisdom scale doesn't actually care about your power or your narcissism. I guess there's the one thing introduced in Tome of Mysteries where you lose Wisdom if you make a homunculus look like you, but otherwise... Unless we're meant to understand that it isn't that killing is callous and traumatic, per se, but it's just so gosh darn arrogant Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Oct 22, 2012 |
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Oct 22, 2012 01:17
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MalcolmSheppard posted:The real problem with hubris in Mage, which Dave and I have been talking about at length recently, is that the "gods" have no moral authority in the setting, being either people who got away with hubris or amoral exemplars of Supernal symbols. Zeus isn't amoral! He's a fine, upstanding member of Astral society who supported Franco.
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Oct 22, 2012 01:17
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So I had a fairly large combat last session, and it's gotten me thinking about how to change Mage combat. I'm going to implement the Sexmurder changes (auto-successes for attacks, armour removes successes) but I had a couple of others I wanted to chew over. I liked the idea I saw earlier in the thread about making shields something that need to be recast in combat. In my case I'm thinking less a matter of how many turns they last, and rather how solid they are. Each success on the shielding roll grants you 1 attack the shield reflects, no matter how large or small. Shields pre-cast for combat gain their Arcanum rating in deflected attacks. Counterspelling a shield ablates this number of deflected attacks on a one-to-one basis. Additionally, I wanted to add some sort of mechanism for bleeding/overwhelming physical damage. I found it odd that large amounts of lethal damage or any amount of aggravated damage had no mechanism for requiring medical attention until your boxes were full. I was thinking that if you take over your Stamina in lethal or aggravated damage in a single turn, you begin to take 1 lethal per time unit (turn might be too fast, possibly minute?) until you're stabilised by some sort of first aid or a healing power. I'm unsure of the numbers there, but given that 3 damage is close to half the Health of the average person, it seems reasonable?
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Oct 22, 2012 03:07
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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Quantum Mechanic posted:I liked the idea I saw earlier in the thread about making shields something that need to be recast in combat. In my case I'm thinking less a matter of how many turns they last, and rather how solid they are. Each success on the shielding roll grants you 1 attack the shield reflects, no matter how large or small. Shields pre-cast for combat gain their Arcanum rating in deflected attacks. Counterspelling a shield ablates this number of deflected attacks on a one-to-one basis. I originally had shields work like you've posted above, but I changed it to what was posted for a couple reasons. (disclaimer: YMMV, but here's why I do what I do) [Out of Combat:] Shields cancel out one entire surprise attack, a sniper'sbullet, a werewolf's claws or fireball from a dark alley. This one free shot actually gives you a reason to spend mana that's more enticing than "lasts all day" is on it's own. this isn't ever rolled, I basically just rule it as "spend the mana, take the ride". [In Combat:] Shields are very basic, any Mage worth the title is going to have shields up at all times. And I follow the adage that "any feature or power that is required for a character to be playable/fun/successful, should be made an innate part of the character." With that in mind I changed shields to be fairly fire and forget, and much less fiddly than RAW for those times when players do need to care about their shields. I capped the potency of a shield to *Arcana Dots*, because I wanted an "airbag vs a suit of platemail" a shield (IMO) is just supposed to give you a slight edge, and give you a bit of breathing room so you can think of a ~more creative~ way out than "dude walks through hell unharmed". Dudes with huge dicepools or who roll hot can have a tendency to want to turtle up, which seems boring from a story perspective. I have successes go to duration, because I think having a defense that could fail ~at any moment~ is also much more dramatic. Basically, everyone knew that poo poo got real in Star Trek when the shields were about to fail. edit: for clarity. Error 404 fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Oct 22, 2012 |
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Oct 22, 2012 03:53
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I'm 100% behind Error 404's mage armor rules. The sexmurder combat rules really don't enthuse me, and I think it's a drat shame that they had a huge thread on the White Wolf forums about fine-tuning the physical disciplines but not a huge thread about fine-tuning the combat system the physical disciplines would run on. A game in which weapons and armor automatically generate or nullify successes rather than dice is one in which characters are much more heavily segregated by combat ability and in which fights can much more rapidly degenerate into situations in which one party is not only incapable of defeating another, but is actually incapable of harming another or withstanding a single one of the other's attacks. I'm really excited for God Machine/Strix Chronicles to come out because they've got a lot of cool ideas cooking (who else has seen that chart about Blood Potency 7 vampires being able to hear every heartbeat in the same building?), but I'm not looking forward having to untangle the good stuff from the combat rules. Quantum Mechanic posted:Additionally, I wanted to add some sort of mechanism for bleeding/overwhelming physical damage. I found it odd that large amounts of lethal damage or any amount of aggravated damage had no mechanism for requiring medical attention until your boxes were full. I think Health works better in the WoD when you treat it as abstracted ability-to-keep-standing. It's not totally D&D-style in that when you take wounds you are actually being physically damaged, you're not just getting tired as you dodge blows - but it's a mistake to get hung up on how many points of damage someone took at once or stuff like that. Rather, it's easier to pay attention to how much health someone has left, and how close they are to falling over. How serious a wound is depends on how much health it leaves, not how much health it takes. Consider someone with a 7-die Dex+Firearms+Gun pool shooting someone with 3 Stamina and therefore 8 health, and getting totally average "gun nibble" results: Turn 1: 5/8 health remaining Turn 2: 2/8 health remaining Turn 3: 0/8 health remaining, bleeding out That scenario makes very little sense when you assume that the 3L hit the victim is taking is somehow the same kind of wound each time, but it works a lot better in your head when you realize that, clearly, in the first turn the victim took some sort of graze or flesh wound and is still in functioning capacity, in the second turn the victim's actually been really badly shot and is taking wound penalties, and in the third turn they actually took a fatal bullet. None of those attacks actually did more than the target's Stamina in damage and so wouldn't trigger your hypothetical bleeding-out rules, but they're actually pretty drat serious because each one has made it that much easier to one-shot the victim in a single turn. In the game I'm playing now we're not even bothering to use wound penalties; damage is still a big problem because it makes you easier to finish off. You could totally, like, make people roll to resist infection or something if they're regular humans and they don't get their stab wounds looked at in the aftermath of a fight, though.
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Oct 22, 2012 05:54
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I realize people are using it as a specific piece of jargon, but I'm somewhat disappointed at all the uses of "sexmurder" and no mention of Eternal Hearts.
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Oct 22, 2012 07:03
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Error 404 posted:I originally had shields work like you've posted above, but I changed it to what was posted for a couple reasons. (disclaimer: YMMV, but here's why I do what I do) To clarify, how are you using successes to determine duration? Is it one success per round or something else?
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Oct 22, 2012 07:06
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Reene posted:To clarify, how are you using successes to determine duration? Is it one success per round or something else? Oh poo poo, I knew I was forgetting something.  Yes, successes on activation roll = how many combat rounds the shield lasts, after that you must roll it again.
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Oct 22, 2012 07:50
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Alaemon posted:I realize people are using it as a specific piece of jargon, but I'm somewhat disappointed at all the uses of "sexmurder" and no mention of Eternal Hearts. ...I'm going to have to read Eternal Hearts for the project. I guess I'll let you guys know my thoughts on it.
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Oct 22, 2012 08:06
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Ferrinus posted:Like, the Wisdom scale doesn't actually care about your power or your narcissism. I guess there's the one thing introduced in Tome of Mysteries where you lose Wisdom if you make a homunculus look like you, but otherwise... Unless we're meant to understand that it isn't that killing is callous and traumatic, per se, but it's just so gosh darn arrogant In the context of the rest of the game, though, I think it makes sense. The characters are set up to commit those crimes specifically for magic-related reasons. Wisdom isn't set up to handle your average guy that beats his wife to death with a golf trophy, it's set up to handle Mages created according to the rest of the book and living in a world that's like the one described in rest of the book. I'm trying to think of a PC-committed murder that took place in any of my prior Mage games that didn't at least have some measure of "I know what needs to be done better than everyone else; only my judgment matters here; when the President does it, it's not illegal" in it. It's not perfect but in practice it really hasn't missed the mark for me.
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Oct 22, 2012 08:44
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Ferrinus posted:That scenario makes very little sense when you assume that the 3L hit the victim is taking is somehow the same kind of wound each time, but it works a lot better in your head when you realize that, clearly, in the first turn the victim took some sort of graze or flesh wound and is still in functioning capacity, in the second turn the victim's actually been really badly shot and is taking wound penalties, and in the third turn they actually took a fatal bullet. This is actually generally how I've run it up until now - I look at health remaining, rather than the actual severity of a given attack. It just seems like the amount of damage that's required to bring someone to bleeding out is a lot less than it should be. Like in your example there, on average it's taking you 3 shots that hit to bring someone to the point of bleeding. You end up describing a lot of nicks and cuts. Maybe ultimately my soul is screaming for some sort of stamina/avoidance system. Error 404 posted:I capped the potency of a shield to *Arcana Dots* Isn't this how they normally work? Or do you mean Potency as in "difficulty to dispel"? Also I ran the idea of having them be active for a certain number of turns to my group and the response was pretty profoundly negative. I think a certain number of deflected attacks ("deflected" as in subtracted their rating, mind you, not completely absorbed) might go down better. Actually, reading over it - do you mean Mage Armour absorbs ALL damage for a number of turns equal to the successes on the roll? Quantum Mechanic fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Oct 22, 2012 |
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Oct 22, 2012 10:31
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I know some Canadians that do, but I mean, here in real Canada, as opposed to the West, it's not a thing.
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Oct 22, 2012 14:11
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JDCorley posted:I'm trying to think of a PC-committed murder that took place in any of my prior Mage games that didn't at least have some measure of "I know what needs to be done better than everyone else; only my judgment matters here; when the President does it, it's not illegal" in it. It's theoretically possible to describe every single crime one might ever commit as being rooted in pride, but not actually tenable or convincing. I mean, there are six other Vices in the corebook alone. There's nothing special about burning someone's face off that makes it a usurpation of God's perogative to mete out life and death rather than an expression of rage, or sadism, or desperation, or indoctrination, or the million other reasons you might kill someone. Which is the point I'm making here. Mage doesn't actually punish hubris, it just heavily encourages you to declare that, after the fact, anything bad anyone did was clearly, clearly hubris. It'd be like if Vampire's rules stayed exactly the same but the corebook started calling every Humanity sin an "act of lust". Hypothetically defensible, but really forced and weird. Quantum Mechanic posted:Like in your example there, on average it's taking you 3 shots that hit to bring someone to the point of bleeding. You end up describing a lot of nicks and cuts. Well, I mean... is that really a lot of nicks and cuts? The first shot, assuming it isn't incredibly lucky in the rolling, is definitely some sort of graze or flesh wound. The ones after it aren't just scrapes and bruises. Mind you, the WoD's definitely set up so that one-shot kills on player characters (and NPCs important enough to have player character like stats) are next to impossible. If you actually want people to frequently crumple after a single turn of combat you probably would be well-served implementing the sexmurder autodamage rules. The thing is, do your players really wish they were getting one-shot more often?
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Oct 22, 2012 17:37
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Ferrinus posted:The thing is, do your players really wish they were getting one-shot more often? Actually, they do. It's kind of weird.
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Oct 23, 2012 00:54
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I'm of a mind that combat in nWoD should be rare, and when it does happen, it should feel threatening, significant, and like something that should be avoided or ended as quickly as possible rather than just like another mundane random D&D-esque encounter.
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Oct 23, 2012 01:13
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Combat is thus far my least favorite part of playing Mage. Like, by a lot.
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Oct 23, 2012 01:28
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There's also that, yes. Despite being occasionally necessary, combat loving sucks to run as well as play in. I've had three combat encounters so far in a game that is up to 30 sessions and even that feels like too many.
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Oct 23, 2012 01:30
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You know, association-wise, I think I draw the line at participating in a group where the term "sexmurder" gets thrown around casually. To have it used as a verb is definitely over it (so very classy when it happens on the White Wolf forums). It'd be one thing if it was being referenced to mock it, but sentences like "you probably would be well-served implementing the sexmurder autodamage rules" make me wince. And no, that's not a jab at Ferrinus. Trying to bring people into gaming and expand the hobby as something worthwhile to people other than misogynists and crusty introverts is hard enough without having to listen to people nearby talking enthusiastically about the new sexmurder revisions. It's one thing to go "Yeah, World of Darkness is full of interesting material, with the occasional part that's stupid and inappropriate in the juvenile look-at-how-edgy-this-is way" and so convince people to overlook stupid poo poo like Undead Menses being a Merit, or whatever. It's another to have to warn new players that the bullshit isn't confined to the margins, evidence by how its made its way into the working title of rules for a major game line revision. I can sort-of understand this poo poo being used internally by a small group of writers bouncing ideas around while trying to get a title, but putting it out there for public consumption... it's like, can you imagine if 13th Age's open development had come out under a similar name? "Murdertreasure" or "Dungeonsnuff" or whatever. To try and justify it with the literary pretentions of "Well, clearly you're uncomfortable with the core theme of vampires, given their popular fiction origin as transgressions of the taboo on female sexuality brought about through a rape metaphor," is some pretty crass bullshit. I really hope this goes away after Strix Chronicles actually gets published. Edit: thanks, Dave. Etherwind fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 01:39
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Etherwind: In all seriousness, I hear ya, and I will pass that along.
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Oct 23, 2012 02:48
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As someone who hasn't really been following WoD for a little bit... What is this 'sexmurder' phrase exactly? Also, I'm considering running a low level Hunter game set in a small town. My current gaming group has utterly imploded but I still have all these notes and story ideas I would like to use. Thing is, I've never really run a PbP before... It seems rather daunting. Any advice?
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Oct 23, 2012 03:05
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I think it's a project name for the big revision / overhaul to the VtR and core WoD systems? I've honestly been kind of tuning it out, which is weird because it's otherwise something I'd be excited about.
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Oct 23, 2012 03:13
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moths posted:I think it's a project name for the big revision / overhaul to the VtR and core WoD systems? I've honestly been kind of tuning it out, which is weird because it's otherwise something I'd be excited about. It's a name for the Strix Chronicles, the vampire Chronicle Book, which includes a big rules overhaul. It's some way off, still. Far sooner is God-Machine, the nWoD corebook Chronicle Book, which is where most of the rules being discussed actually are - the new combat system, for example, is in God-Machine, not Strix.
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Oct 23, 2012 03:22
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On the subject of tuned out revisions, did anyone know that they released a Geist 1.1 pdf awhile ago? Supposedly it fixes some of the weird mechanical fiddly bits and omissions (for example, elemental rages doing Nothing beyond the standard boring scaling), but I haven't heard if it's fixed the fundamental "what are your characters supposed to do / is there a singular overarching theme fit for designing play" problem yet. And god the lack of a 5x5 just bugs me. So so so much.
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Oct 23, 2012 03:25
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Reene posted:I love using the MUSH server for reasons like this, it's a great medium to play nWoD games through. This is a bit off-topic, so feel free to just PM me if you don't want to bring it up here, but do you have any resources on modification for MUSH servers? I'm only familiar with the basic things like digging and describing rooms, but I wouldn't mind loving around with it for something like my Exalted game when I try to resurrect it or a few other game ideas I have.
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Oct 23, 2012 03:44
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Quantum Mechanic posted:Actually, they do. It's kind of weird. Give enemies higher attack dicepools and, most importantly, have them focus fire rather than splitting off to fight PCs mano a mano. I think it's very much worth preserving a system in which two characters fighting one-on-one engage in back-and-forth struggle rather than an iajitsu duel. Fundamentally, it's more interesting to see what your foe does in response to your attack than it is to deny your foe the ability to act entirely, even though the latter is more ruthlessly optimal.
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Oct 23, 2012 04:35
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Darksaber posted:This is a bit off-topic, so feel free to just PM me if you don't want to bring it up here, but do you have any resources on modification for MUSH servers? I'm only familiar with the basic things like digging and describing rooms, but I wouldn't mind loving around with it for something like my Exalted game when I try to resurrect it or a few other game ideas I have. I don't, really. Our games don't involve room building or anything like that, it's just a convenient way for everyone to meet up. There are commands for rolling dice, posing, chatting OOC, and... that's about it. I didn't make the server either unfortunately. It's pennmush though if that helps. ETA: I can post a snippet of a session to give you an idea of what it looks like, if that helps. Reene fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 04:48
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There's a part of me that almost kind of likes the word "Sexmurder" because it's a perfectly honest and anti-romantic description of vampires, and anti-romanticism really appeals to me, but then the rest of me hates me intensely for harboring that part of me.
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Oct 23, 2012 04:59
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Etherwind: In all seriousness, I hear ya, and I will pass that along. Please come back with a response cause I can't help but think that the writers will just smirk and say "Etherwind is a prude." 
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Oct 23, 2012 05:19
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Volume posted:Please come back with a response cause I can't help but think that the writers will just smirk and say "Etherwind is a prude."
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Oct 23, 2012 05:21
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:"It's a fair point, rapistjunkies is a much more specific and evocative phrase for the Vampire set." The World of Darkness Megathread pt.V: Rapistjunkies Anonymous- post the sexmurderiest stuff you got.
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Oct 23, 2012 06:59
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Volume posted:Please come back with a response cause I can't help but think that the writers will just smirk and say "Etherwind is a prude." If that was the reaction (I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume not), they'd be missing the point entirely. Slight derail ahead, but this is relevant to the tone of the World of Darkness books, so I figure it's worth going into. I've mentioned before on here that I'm part of a gaming society in the UK. Without going into a long explanation of what this means, we're a primarily student/post-graduate club focused on gaming, and we're affiliated to a certain University via our Student Union. The Student Union maintains its own building on campus - complete with bars and cafeteria and pool tables - and so we have access to its facilities for the purposes of booking space. Twice weekly we take up the largest space to meet and play games of various sorts (whether RPGS, board games or card games). The membership of this society has grown over the time I've been a member, from thirty or so when I first joined to an average attendance somewhere around 120 or so gamers on a good night. We have a much larger attendance each week than the LAN and Console Gaming society has once per month, though attendance fluctuates throughout the year and can go as low as fifty or so during the summer when the University is in recess. I'm proud to say that I've played a somewhat significant part in expanding the society, and as hard as some people might find it to believe, one of the major ways I've managed it over the past few years is by pushing against the unspoken but prevalent bullshit that festers in a lot of established gaming groups. Primarily, I'm talking about misogynistic attitudes and assumptions that make traditional, male-dominated gaming venues hostile to women. It's not just about poo poo like outright sexual harassment (which happens way more frequently than people realise: for an extreme example, there have been multiple allegations of rape brought to the society's committee this year... more on this later). It's also sexual attitudes, and the way gaming is approached. Sexual politics matter in gaming as it is a social activity, and if that sounds ridiculous, let me run through an example of why. (Needless to say, what follows is just my experience, so regard me as just another rear end in a top hat with an opinion.) When a guy hears the phrase "sexmurder", he usually has a very different implicit reaction to it than a woman. Forget about all the secondary processing that happens when you think about it for a moment and then contextualise the meaning: the actual term has an immediate emotional impact based on the connotations of those words in context. For men, it's generally either neutral or (without putting value judgements on the person) positive, since sex and murder can be construed as high-testosterone, action-movie-esque subjects in our culture. Even together they aren't inherently alarming to men. Without wishing to overly generalise, I'd suggest that most women will have a different reaction to those words in concert, one of initial alarm or even, possibly, fear. The reason for this is that we can say, just by looking at crime reports, when men are involved in scenarios comprising both sex and murder, they are usually the aggressors: women are usually the victims. To draw on an old adage, the most a [straight] man has to fear from a sexual encounter is rejection and derision, while the most a [straight] women has to fear is rape and violence. It's much easier to be cavalier about sexual violence when you're male, as you're coming at it from the perspective that is implied to have most of the power in that type of scenario. Now, no, I'm not suggesting that women in general are going to hear that sort of language and run for the hills. The reactions from most I've seen exposed to it in person have been a pause, followed by either incredulous laughter or a subdued shake of the head. What becomes a problem is when lots of these incidents build up, especially if it's exasperated by other people going "Oh, it's not a big deal: what's the problem? Can't you deal with it?" The sort of atmosphere fostered by those sorts of sentiment can and does put them off. It's wearying. It's bullshit they have to filter out when they're just wanting to play a game. This is the low-level, pernicious poo poo that you have to watch for. For the record, I've not always been aware about it or taken it seriously, especially when I was new to the society. This stuff is problematic because, when it goes uncontested, it allows more serious poo poo to be disregarded. To give an example, in previous years we had a female member who was harassed by a male member every time they met, harassed in that he'd be extremely friendly to her and expect a hug, and if he didn't receive a positive response he'd publicly guilt-trip her and make things socially awkward, to the point that she usually just complied to avoid a fuss. This stopped when another female member complained and pointed out what was actually happening: she gave him a public dressing down, called him out for being a creep. If she hadn't both a) wanted to stay and participate in the society and b) been unwilling to permit that kind of poo poo, it would likely have gone unnoticed, since nobody paid particular attention to the relationship between said creepy dude and the long-suffering woman. Why didn't the harassed woman say anything? Because she felt that she'd be seen as a bitch, stuck-up, or a prude for complaining. The rhetoric circulating in the society had normalised that sort of imposition. And yeah, the relatively trivial poo poo like sexualised violence had contributed to that normalisation. (A few of you might be thinking "Well, she should have spoken up, it's her own fault." Others might think "Hey, I know women who are cool with all that banter, therefore it's fine." The key to both lies in selection bias: the only women who're going to hang around are the women who're either willing to put up with it or who have no problem with it... for whatever reasons.) These sort of low-level problems do not happen as much today (I cannot say for sure that they've stopped entirely). Our membership has increased dramatically, and become a much better community to game in, after a push back against the sort of atmosphere I've outlined above. We've more than quadrupled our active membership, and key to this has been the fact that an increasing percentage of our members have been women, who increasingly feel like the society is a comfortable place to be. This year, our new membership sign-ups were dominated by women for the first time. Before signing on existing members, our intake took 60 women to 50 men. While maybe only twenty or so of those total new sign-ups have started attending regularly, about a third of those have been women. To make the difference clear, we started with around thirty members, of which maybe three were women; active membership is now roughly a quarter to a third female, out of 120 or so, depending on time of year. So, coming toward the end of this ramble: I mentioned earlier that multiple accusations of rape have been brought to the society this year, and you're probably wondering how what I've said can possibly square with that. To clarify, the accusations have been that certain male members of the society have, outside the society, sexually assaulted some of the female members. The female members have brought the matter to the attention of the society's committee because they feel the society is not a safe space while the alleged rapists remain (this has been matched by them taking the matter to the police). They've petitioned the society to remove the members in question, and so the accused have been suspended pending the outcome of criminal proceedings. Here's the really eye-opening part. It turns out that the reason they brought this to the committee is that they felt comfortable knowing that their allegations would be treated seriously. This is a direct product of both the increase in female membership and also the change it atmosphere regarding how gender politics are regarded. This led to other female members, who have been part of the society for longer, privately confiding that they've known similar incidents happening in the past and not being reported or dealt with, precisely because of anticipation of a hostile reception. This leaves me in the (admittedly subjective) position of seeing a chain between creepy/misogynistic content in game materials > normalisation of those attitudes in player discourse > normalisation of the underlying attitudes in player culture > marginalisation of female membership > low-level harassment going unreported > sex crimes going unreported. No, I'm not laying this all at the feet of poo poo like "sexmurder"... but in aggregate, it's an issue. Given that it really doesn't take much effort to cut that creepy poo poo out, I find it really hard to take that in stride, especially since every terrible thing I have to explain or rationalise away is another opportunity for a good, nice, friendly person to go "This poo poo is terrible, I'm out." So yeah, it's not about my personal sensibilities. I personally don't find the term bothersome, and the reason I dislike it is because I've seen the wider implications, one terrible "joke" at a time. Etherwind fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 07:03
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That's a really good post, and you're right. I read "sexmurder" as a totally unremarkable if vaguely edgy attempt to describe fictional vampires without at all considering its wider implications, and I thought I was at least decent at paying attention to this stuff nowadays. I'm with you: I hope they stop using it.
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Oct 23, 2012 07:18
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I didn't really articulate it well at the time, Ferrinus, but you remember ages ago when I said I was really bothered by the sexual content in that Mage supplement about the Abyssal gently caress-temple? It's because of these sorts of reasons. It's a lot harder to break down and explain my objections to that material compared to this issue. The reason is that it's much easier for a guy to comprehend and explain how sexual violence is threatening than it is to explain how poo poo like sexual objectification, subversion of personal agency in a sexual context and gender perceptions as they relate to sexual transgression can be threatening and off-putting to women moreso than men. It's way harder to break down, but my instinct is the same.
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Oct 23, 2012 07:37
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Yeah, very eloquently put. As a sidenote, other than a few short-lived pbp games, I haven't really "played" WoD - or any other role-playing games. Things like the bloody menses can be interesting to me because I read the books as fictional world-building - not always with an eye to playing a game in that world. But apart from the same perverseness that makes me enjoy a Cronenberg movie, I realize that's stuff I wouldn't feel comfortable delving into with a group of people as part of a social game. Is it the fact that bloody menses has an actual rule associated with it that makes it bad, or just that it is even mentioned at all considering it's a detail no group of well-adjusted gamers is going to want to explore anyway - rule or not?
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Oct 23, 2012 07:38
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Wizchine posted:Yeah, very eloquently put. 1. Associating an actual rule with it implies that it's theoretically common/intrinsic enough to the setting or the context in which it's presented that it can be assumed that it's something that characters or campaigns within that setting or context might reasonably be expected to know about or encounter...and how/why do you introduce that into a campaign, if people are almost certainly going to prefer that you hadn't, ever? Does adding it to the design/fluff space suddenly segment out a chunk of the game that you just...can't use now, because it had to be presented, the way it is, as the thing it is? 2. It's BvD-style, "sure it makes sense from a particular mindset that if you look at the Vampire setting enough, something like this probably DOES exist," but that doesn't mean it needs to be put down there. It's the kind of poo poo that in oWoD gives you Freak Legion's Savage Genitalia, the entire Clanbook: Tzimisce (and Baali, to a significant extent), and Ghouls: Fatal Addiction. It doesn't add anything revolutionary or brand-new to the setting, it just restates something that groups that would be so inclined could probably extrapolate from existing material. But publishing it gives it this patina of legitimacy that says that to an extent, this is what the setting is like. And that is (in these cases): creepy and unnecessary. Which, taken as a whole, makes it hard for it to NOT contribute to a general setting-climate of quietly misogynistic (or just hyper-masculine-nerd-creepy, as though that's really a distinction that needs to be made), and adds...nothing, really? Like you don't have a full Promethean splat book about Galateid abductees or Sublimatus Centimani eating babies to figure out what a human is like on the inside. But Vampire just draws that poo poo like moths to a flame. Blame a sexmurder-naming mentality, in concept if not in actual expression.
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Oct 23, 2012 08:08
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Wizchine posted:But apart from the same perverseness that makes me enjoy a Cronenberg movie, I realize that's stuff I wouldn't feel comfortable delving into with a group of people as part of a social game. Is it the fact that bloody menses has an actual rule associated with it that makes it bad, or just that it is even mentioned at all considering it's a detail no group of well-adjusted gamers is going to want to explore anyway - rule or not? Well, look, if you consider the idea of menstruation as it relates to fertility cults, and then how vampire mockeries of fertility cults would subvert it, there's nothing inherently wrong with approaching that subject in a mature and carefully considered way. It'd be easy to gently caress up, but yeah, if it was handled with due sensitivity and very good writing, it could totally work. It's not in the book. I'll break down the reasons why later. As for whether it could have a place in a game, again, the general idea - ignore the specific implementation - could conceivably work for certain styles of story with certain styles of gaming group. It's certainly very loving niche, and the odds of it being mishandled make you think "Why on earth would you loving bother?" For example, if you were going for a game where you were explicitly playing up the mythological angle, and the horror of vampirism subverting all that is natural and wholesome, it could fit the tone. If you had a group that was mostly female players it would be more likely to work, as they're more likely to have an implicit understanding of what's an appropriate and tasteful way to approach the issue than a guy. If it was a private game, away from public venue, and very much a game about issues and semi-philosophical exploration of particular subject material, it might have a place as long as it never became a common, minor detail. So it could work, but the odds of making it work are really low, and it has real niche appeal. The current Undead Menses Merit is loving reprehensible because:
Maturity is not "I can handle contemplating this stuff because I am mature!" but "I am developed and empathetic enough to consider the wider impact of this stuff beyond my personal, limited perspective on the world, and can refer to it in a way that takes these other perspectives into consideration to avoid offence." Maturity isn't "Look at this creepy poo poo! Isn't it edgy? Are you offended, prude?" but "Hey, look at this stuff you've taken for granted, and your assumptions about it. Let me challenge your position and your assumptions in a way that puts you on edge and makes you uncomfortable, without being disrespectful to you." For example, the creepiest poo poo in Vampire isn't "Look at this monster!" but "Look at this man. Can't you understand him? Don't you emphasise with his perspective, just a tiny little? You know he is a monster; does that mean you're a monster?" Etherwind fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 08:08
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Dammit, Etherwind, you need to just up and write a book on gaming psychology, I would give you all my money.
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Oct 23, 2012 08:15
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I am not a trained Psychologist. Sometimes I wish I'd gone down that path, sure, but don't mistake my relatively ill-informed opinions on gamer psychology for something in any way definitive or worthy of study. Besides, what I'm really talking about is, at its heart, empathy and a developed theory of mind. The rest of this poo poo I spew is just comprised of my experiences running games and interacting with people, for better or worse. If I did write a book on this, I swear to god it'd be one long clusterfuck of "What the hell, Etherwind, why did you do/say that, are you a completely inept idiot, how oblivious are you," followed by a slow, dawning awareness on my part that might just be mistaking for wisdom the dazed, concussed afterglow of banging my head against my own stupidity one too many times.
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Oct 23, 2012 08:22
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Fair enough. I'd still probably read it.
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Oct 23, 2012 08:25
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 07:58 |
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Thanks for the in-depth replies. Looking at the nWoD as delineating a fictional world, I always thought the "rule" that all vampires were static and dead inside and could only experience human emotions as some sort of hollow echo was incredibly limiting - that writing any sort of vampire "character" in a novel, say, was nearly impossible because there was no real growth or emotional arc that let the reader empathize with the character. From what I've gathered reading this and the previous thread, that was a deliberate design to prevent people from behaving a certain way in games - or at least LARPs (vampire romances, I guess) - much like I've heard that werewolves don't procreate with each other (to prevent yiffy gameplay). Anyway, if that was the case it's sort of doubly odd to me that designers placed these huge, central constraints on the way players are supposed to interact, yet they introduce all these creepy things in the margins afterwards that are 10 times worse. So vampires loving each other? No. Vampires having bloody, cannibal sex while drinking menses? Sure...
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Oct 23, 2012 08:45
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