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Nessus posted:It manages to be even less nuanced than things like superhero registration or whatever, where, yes, ignoring the parable, the surface-level actions are comprehensible if not necessarily good. The Players Guide reads like Matt was dragged away from the keyboard somewhere around the Beasts that embody the fear of BLACK PEOPLE and feed by outing closeted gays and somebody else took over to write the chapter about starting a murder cult devoted to your worship and tricking your horror into birthing terrorspawn that possess corpses and want to murder everyone you love. So yes it's swerving hard towards "Yes Beasts are Evil, here are evil things you can do as a beast player or with your beast villains."
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Mar 10, 2018 06:49
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Kurieg posted:The BPG straight up says "Couching Feeding as Lessons is a thing Beasts do to feel better about themselves." Wow. It's really like I'm making oWoD Humanity rolls to play the game.
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Mar 10, 2018 13:32
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Nessus posted:You could cast it as someone comparable to the Deathlord of the Skeletal Legion - an ancient and terrible spirit but not, like, incomprehensible or cthonic. You might rap with them about what kind of style they want and could then work there. Like if they really want fishman/ocean sub-themes, then it's the Ancient Siren, with powers over those who die of pneumonia as well as drowning. I Am Just a Box posted:Things might change up in 2e with Geist on the horizon, but at least knowing what we know of the 1e setting? Cthonians. The native beings of the Underworld, ghosts of things that never lived, the stillborn undead. Avoid making it explicit in game, but especially since older ghosts that reside in the Underworld can grow stranger and further from human, it should be easy to blur the line between human ghost and a minor cthonian god which is less alien than its brethren, familiar enough to communicate with the human living in a comprehensible manner. Its relations with younger, more human ghosts could potentially wring some mystery and tension out of the setting. Thanks for the help! I'll talk with the player about this, but now I at least have something to talk about. Cthonians seem like a really good idea, since it lets me stay close to the ghosts focus I was trying to keep for this game.
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Mar 10, 2018 15:39
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Kurieg posted:Yes Oh my loving god. I'm halfway through this and. Jesus Christ.
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Mar 10, 2018 18:20
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So, I've mentioned before that I've been drafting some High Speech glyphs for my Mage game (and for my players' general enjoyment) - I've compiled a sheet of them in black and white, though I still need to clean them up. Behold, images of the Supernal tongue! All but one of these are specifically characters, Legacies, or Prelacies/Iron Seal crowns from Awakening; the remaining one is a real-world political logo translated into High Speech.  If anyone wants to know which high speech 'syllables' each is composed from, or what they represent, please ask! Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 19:26
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Xinder posted:I'm in need of some assistance. The obvious choice is an Idigam for cthonic spirits, one of a slightly more coherent bent than most perhaps?
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Mar 10, 2018 19:31
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Cthonic is a real word that basically just means "from under the earth" or "of the underworld." Idigam, barring one of the alternative origin options from Werewolf, are the exact opposite of that.  They are however a pretty decent Cthulhu analogue.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:48
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Cthonic is a real word that basically just means "from under the earth" or "of the underworld." Idigam, barring one of the alternative origin options from Werewolf, are the exact opposite of that. I do actually think that going for Cthonians or even just ancient horrible ghosts would fit the 'Old Ones' flavor the player seems to want? Most people don't actually want aliens when they say they want the Great Old Ones, they want something huge and inhuman and gribbly but they're not picky about where the tentacles come from.
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Mar 10, 2018 19:54
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Talked to my player and we agreed on a Cthonian or a ghost so ancient as to be indistinguishable, and the distinction academic. I was also told 'If they die and end up dealing with a Bargain/Claim scenario, I'm 100% down for that.' which is good to confirm. Then I was asked a stumper: "What happens when you hit Integrity 0?" I think nothing? Pretty sure there is no consequence besides another condition? I checked my books and I can't find anything. I also doubt it'll ever come up unless one of my players start racing to the bottom, but now I'm curious as well.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:32
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Xinder posted:Then I was asked a stumper: "What happens when you hit Integrity 0?" I think nothing? Pretty sure there is no consequence besides another condition? I checked my books and I can't find anything. I also doubt it'll ever come up unless one of my players start racing to the bottom, but now I'm curious as well. Mechanically I don't believe you can reach 0 without help, it looks like you hit 1, and suffer the consequences of that, primarily penalties to further Breaking Points. So basically you're a psychologically fragile human who is driven to Conditions (potentially persistent) whenever something big happens to them. Regarding the idigam, one of the ones made by writer Chris Allen was an underworld. It's possible the underworld itself, as is, is an idigam that has managed to become what it aimed for. Considering the differences you see in the Neolithic, at least something big has happened to it.
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Mar 10, 2018 21:36
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Kurieg posted:But.. I... you... I just hit the part about trans people and lol I'm pretty sure this was written by TERFs. gently caress 'em.
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Mar 10, 2018 22:16
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I don’t even post here but gently caress that game
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Mar 10, 2018 22:18
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Xinder posted:I just hit the part about trans people and lol I'm pretty sure this was written by TERFs. gently caress 'em. Also: I live in Omaha where those gosh darn rednecks burn a witch alive and the picture for it is smack downtown by the newspaper printing facility. Because if you're going to burn someone alive, you may as well do it next to the loving paper I work at. https://goo.gl/images/Cg2cAH crime fighting hog fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 22:28
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nofather posted:Mechanically I don't believe you can reach 0 without help, it looks like you hit 1, and suffer the consequences of that, primarily penalties to further Breaking Points. So basically you're a psychologically fragile human who is driven to Conditions (potentially persistent) whenever something big happens to them. It's this. I'm not sure whether the normal minimum is 0 or 1, but either way, you don't hit a point where your character becomes unplayable or suffers soul loss or something just by experiencing breaking points. You do start to risk dramatic failures on breaking points, which can hit you with nasty stuff like Broken, so it's still not a good place to be.
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Mar 10, 2018 22:59
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I Am Just a Box posted:It's this. I'm not sure whether the normal minimum is 0 or 1, but either way, you don't hit a point where your character becomes unplayable or suffers soul loss or something just by experiencing breaking points. You do start to risk dramatic failures on breaking points, which can hit you with nasty stuff like Broken, so it's still not a good place to be. Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought. It makes the "race to 0 humanity" playstyle less appealing.
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Mar 10, 2018 23:07
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Joe Slowboat posted:So, I've mentioned before that I've been drafting some High Speech glyphs for my Mage game (and for my players' general enjoyment) - I've compiled a sheet of them in black and white, though I still need to clean them up. Gonna go with the usual recommendation of 
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Mar 10, 2018 23:11
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For reference the top left glyph that Joe posted is the coolest. It's definitely one of the least ornate, but it's the strongest and best and represents the coolest thing. Just one girl's opinion...
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Mar 10, 2018 23:13
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Emy posted:Gonna go with the usual recommendation of Same. Let's hear it.
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Mar 10, 2018 23:21
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Emy posted:Gonna go with the usual recommendation of I'm definitely interested in which one is the logo (is it the lower left?) and what the original logo looked like.
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Mar 10, 2018 23:36
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crime fighting hog posted:Also: I live in Omaha where those gosh darn rednecks burn a witch alive and the picture for it is smack downtown by the newspaper printing facility. Gosh, why didn't you stop those rednecks from burning girls alive right next to your place of employment? Clearly, you are the problem here.
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Mar 10, 2018 23:42
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I Am Just a Box posted:I'm definitely interested in which one is the logo (is it the lower left?) and what the original logo looked like. It is the lower left (also my phone now capitalizes Lower, due to explaining Lower Depths at some point). It's the DSA logo, specifically this one:  The leaves are the basic glyphs for Matter and Time, and the rose is a modified Free Council glyph (historical materialism, get it). The hands I decomposed into a less representative design inspired by the veve of Ogoun. Unfortunately I have no skill at vector art or I'd try to make a clean, geometrical version.
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Mar 11, 2018 01:08
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crime fighting hog posted:Also: I live in Omaha where those gosh darn rednecks burn a witch alive and the picture for it is smack downtown by the newspaper printing facility. If you keep going there's a shot of the author turning two supreme court justices into women, then pregnant women, in front of a hobby lobby.
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Mar 11, 2018 01:39
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Kurieg posted:If you keep going there's a shot of the author turning two supreme court justices into women, then pregnant women, in front of a hobby lobby. I really """"love"""" how much literally all Bellum Maga art began life, and ended it, as pretty specific bad fetish art.
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Mar 11, 2018 01:58
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So, what is the Goonsensus on the newly released Beast Players Guide? Is it good, or bad?
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Mar 11, 2018 06:05
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Take a guess
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Mar 11, 2018 06:19
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I never know what I should think unless it's spelled out for me.
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Mar 11, 2018 06:25
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Concept: a Malkavian who believes the Antedeluvians were actually aliens and vampires are a bio-weapon they unleashed (or an alien virus or something like that). Did I just come up with this concept or this I steal it from someone in this thread? I've got a terrible memory for things like that.
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Mar 11, 2018 06:28
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Bedlamdan posted:I never know what I should think unless it's spelled out for me. Bad.
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Mar 11, 2018 06:37
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I'm reading about Beast: The Primordial and jesus loving christ. This is like....All those episodes of Batman Beyond or Static Shock where a bullied nerd gets powers and tries to kill all jocks, except they're being painted as correct and right in this course of action. It's like, FATAL if FATAL thought it was woke.
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Mar 11, 2018 06:46
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MonsieurChoc posted:Concept: a Malkavian who believes the Antedeluvians were actually aliens and vampires are a bio-weapon they unleashed (or an alien virus or something like that). I could actually see something like this working although I would have it either be some kind of reflexive alienation (and possibly bad for their long-term Humanity or Path situation) or a weird twist on Sanguinary Animism.
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Mar 11, 2018 06:48
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Emy posted:Gonna go with the usual recommendation of First, here's cleaner versions of the runes: Skipping the DSA rune, since I already explained it above: The top left rune is the personal glyph of one of the mage PCs in my Awakening campaign, named Kyra. She's a Silver Ladder Mastigos who's primarily invested in Mind and Time, so the rune itself, so the rune is composed of the Mind rune conjoined to the tail of the Time rune, and both arranged into more of a y or harp shape, to fit the Silver Ladder rune's broad outline. It's also intentionally understated and streamlined, at the request of Jenny Angel, Kyra's player. It's also being used as part of the logo of the anime forum/mystery cult she's founded as a way to search for Awakenings in progress after an eventful convention run by a Libertine (magical girl praxis). The rune second from top left is another personal glyph, in this case for the other Mastigos - Aster, a Libertine adept of Space with some sidelines in Death and Prime, whose tiny apartment was recently warped into a space the size of a large house for a shared Sanctum. It's also not connected to any location in the usual way; there's a doorway in an unrelated alley that leads there. This glyph is the key and crucial rune of the spells that hold the Sanctum together; the player requested that it denote trust, safety, Space, and knives. As such, it's a Space rune curled around a shielding rune, both pinned together by a rune that looks like a sword or knife. Also due to Paradox twisting the key condition to open the Sanctum's door from 'have been knighted in a ceremony by Aster' to 'be cut by Aster in the knighting ceremony, and you can only enter the Sanctum if you're bleeding less than you did in the ceremony' everyone now has a pretty sizable scar in the shape of this rune on their backs. So it has a lot of weight for the cabal and is central in their Sanctum imagery. The next row of small glyphs, starting with the one that looks like a tuning fork on the middle left, are ones I made for non-game reasons. The first is my own personal glyph; it's a modified Obrimos glyph (since that Path speaks to me much more than the others, especially in the Second Edition rendition) with Silver Ladder, well, ladder iconography in the center (once again because the Silver Ladder's gnostic revolutionary creed is pretty appealing to me, even if the Free Council is overall closer to my heart. And the Ladder worked better for making this look like something Liz Sherman from Hellboy used to kill a god-monster). It's also vaguely shaped like my initials, though that more or less fell by the wayside as it developed. The rune second from left, second from top is a rune for a Legacy I swear I'll write up someday, which is a Spirit/Time Legacy inspired by Johnny Clegg's King of Time (and also his wider musical career). Titled The Opening Moment, it's a Free Council legacy that focuses on Spirit and Time, and specialize in spirits of events and moments, which normally are born powerful and die quickly. With Attainments focused on both maintaining and commanding such spirits, the Time component primarily is used to summon historical revolution-spirits from the past and stabilize them, using Time to keep them alive and Spirit to let them influence the present. The Legacy's ideological focus is on the idea of 'revolutionary time' - see the Walter Benjamin quote about "a concept of the present as that of the here-and-now, in which splinters of messianic time are shot through." The Opening Moment believe that revolution on Earth will speed revolution in the Supernal, and moreover that there is a particular moment in Earthly revolutions that allow access to the Supernal; they were a Nameless legacy with a less defined ethos in the late 1800s, whose members were inspired by the Young Hegelians and the revolutionary philosophy of the era. During the Great Refusal, the Legacy split - most joined the Free Council, but those who did not yet survive as Seers of the Throne, worshiping the Prophet. These follow the stifling ideas of Hegel's End of History and his belief in Heroes, and seek to maintain Time and Spirit in stasis, drawing on the slower but more powerful spirits of convention and tradition to stamp out spirits of revolution. The rune is composed of Spirit, Time, and the Free Council, as well as the Unveiling Practice. It's one of my favorite designs here. I'm going to break the post here because it's getting stupidly long and I want to go grab a beer before continuing. Next up, design process on the Exarchic Seals, an Ascended mage's glyph, and some scelesti stuff I made for a friend.
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Mar 11, 2018 06:50
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Mendrian posted:Bad. I see...  All right then. Who here is responsible for this? 
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Mar 11, 2018 06:53
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Show yourselves and be given a quick death
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Mar 11, 2018 06:54
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Nessus posted:There's the proto-Alex Jones in the revised Malk clanbook. Paranoia would be the mechanical Derangement for the concept, I thought.
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Mar 11, 2018 07:24
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Bedlamdan posted:Show yourselves and be given a quick death I mean are you surprised that it's a 'bestseller'?
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Mar 11, 2018 08:31
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Mendrian posted:I mean are you surprised that it's a 'bestseller'? More than a little! SA hates it, /tg/ hates it, rpg.net at a minimum dislike it, and aside from this or that blog, I don’t know anyone online who is positive about Beast. I’m mildly relieved they at least didn’t put Matt McFarland as an author.
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Mar 11, 2018 08:50
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Bedlamdan posted:More than a little! SA hates it, /tg/ hates it, rpg.net at a minimum dislike it, and aside from this or that blog, I don’t know anyone online who is positive about Beast.
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Mar 11, 2018 08:57
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Nessus posted:I don't think it takes a huge number of sales in absolute terms to put something at the top of the best-seller list. Most likely not, but there are plenty of better games that don’t even reach that point. 
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Mar 11, 2018 09:06
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Ok, more runes and a longer delay than I intended: The large upright one in the center is representative of an Ascended mage who intervened to found a Proximus Dynasty, to which one of the player characters (Corrine al-Zahra) belongs. Az-Zahra, the Ascended mage in question, was an Obrimos who ascended around 1000 BCE in the middle east. She was a contemporary of Ibn al-Haytham, also known as Alhazen in Europe, and her magical studies primarily focused on light, the spectrum, and optics. Forces, in other words, which is the central symbolic element of her glyph. The al-Zahra dynasty of proximi was founded by her granting a lineage custody of her tools, which she intended to be used in ways yet unknown to the Dynasty; nonetheless, they continue to study the Mysteries she left behind in the form of artifacts and instructions. They are at odds with the Seers of the Throne, especially the Exarch known as the Father, due to the dynasty also being a weird offshoot of gnostic Christianity closely tied to the philosophy of Suhrawardī, Illuminationism. Their ideas consider the Supernal as light emanating from beyond the world and setting it in form, and designing them with the player in question has been a huge amount of fun, as they draw from a number of medieval and Islamic Golden Age philosophical sources. The Ascended az-Zahra appeared to the dynasty and blessed them around 1200 or so, when the early members were judged by her to fit her designs. The rune itself was a bit of a challenge - it's meant to incorporate sources other than 'Atlantean' glyphs, since it's an Ascended symbol, something that incorporates elements from the phenomenal world into the Supernal. Thus, a number of flourishes (the floating section on the upper left of the rune, and the entire lower half curlicue) are taken directly from Arabic calligraphy, in particular a calligraphic rendering of the name 'Zahra' that I found conducive to design. The upper section is the Obrimos rune decomposed to emphasize Forces more than Prime, with Matter and Prime set as a secondary layer in small glyphs on either side of the center. The whole of the thing is meant to resemble but not reiterate Arabic calligraphy, though I'm also considering trying to draw a version of it that more directly mimics the form. In the lower right is the first rune I drew after my own glyph; the Crown of Alienation, a component of the Iron Seal of the Nemesis, Exarch of Spirit. Due to the description of the Iron Seals as perverting High Speech grammar and syllabary, I wasn't entirely sure how to approach these vile sigils, but I knew I wanted this because the Nemesis had left the seal in a form of fire in a chamber in the roots of Yggdrasil, the Emanation Realm of Sacrifice, which my fourth player character, a Guardian Thyrsus (Primarily Life focused) named Akashiwo visited in his investigations. Since this was the site of the usurpation of the throne of an Old God, and an important moment in the game, I wanted to give it a bit more punch (and later Kyra got herself marked with Alienation as well by attempting to peer into the Time Before through an artifact Akashiwo took from the site). As such, I wanted to make the Crown of the Nemesis. The rune itself is not overly complicated; it's primarily the Seers of the Throne rune (of course) combined with the Spirit rune, and the Veiling rune in the wide sweep at the center. The rest are two general structures, one in organic shapes for the shadow, the other in hard edges for the world of flesh; the Seers rune has a descending stem that divides the two against each other. The Seers rune actually gave me the underlying structural element that the two Iron Seal components I've made so far share: The throne shape remains in some form, and the small disconnected T-shape within it is replaced by a modified version of the Arcanum symbol that the Exarch in question rules. In this case, a very classic rendition of Spirit, but the tail of the rune becomes the sweeping Veiling element. Due to the nature of the Nemesis as an alienating power, the rune is composed of sweeping, disconnected parts; there is no link within the rune between spirit and flesh. The effect of the seal itself, where imbued with sorcerous power, is to create a specific spiritual defect: Strengthening the gauntlet, except it allows all miserable and toxic resonances to flow freely, creating a spirit world at once distant and vicious. Currently, Akashiwo's lab has the seal burned into the floor, which is not good for anyone but is the least problematic part of that space right now. In the upper right is the counterpart Crown of Reflex for the Raptor, Exarch of Life. Obviously it's formed to look like a claw, and the throne section (in the upper right of the glyph) has been arranged with the Life rune section to look like the Eye of Horus. I figured a somewhat more direct depiction was acceptable given that it's purely representing living forms, and the Iron Seals have enough quasi-representation to allow mages who don't understand them to give them names. The throne section has a descending Ruling Practice curl off of it, and in general the hooked sections are modeled after that, Weaving Practices, and a need to created the main bulk of the rune: a circle of hooks around a glyph formed to look a bit like an embryo and patterned off of the Death rune. It's meant to stand for the human soul, and the hooks around it form a Skinner Box/hooked womb; the symbolism of the Raptor is blind obedience to instinct and reflex, the control imparted by biological drives.  are the Lie, and the Raptor is the King of them. This was a request by Akashiwo's player, and a lot of fun to design. It has a more organic and convoluted design than the Nemesis, which I thought was fitting, and the only disconnected parts are the crown section itself and the isolated humanity symbol.Finally, in the bottom middle, is a rune for a friend of mine who is not playing in a Mage game, but enjoys the concepts involved in the game and also when I quizzed him on what kind of mage he'd like to play we basically ended up with 'Metal Gear villain, plus antinomian magic.' So here we have an Obrimos Scelestus rune with symbolism of the General. Like a much less organizationally-minded Emperor Palpatine. (He would also potentially play a Free Council Obrimoi technomancer who is not evil, but this was the rune he wanted). If I get around to making a complete Crown of Fury glyph, it will be composed around an X-shaped outline; in this rune, the crossing lines that have displaced the dot from the center of forces represent the authority of violence and the Warring Diad, while the tendril-ness and weird eye section are taken from the canonical Scelestus rune. Then of course the large circle is Forces, and the Prime element was displaced onto the leftmost bit. In general the antinomian elements were expressed in the freer distortion of form involved, and I think it turned out well. And those are all the glyphs I have right now! I also have plans to create another glyph by a friend's request, more Iron Seal components (Crown of Scarcity for the Chancellor is especially tempting, but the Crown of Doctrine for the Father is likely more plot-relevant for my game), and I want to take a crack at a glyph to represent the Claw of the Conciliator from the book of the New Sun, since the Conciliator is a Time archmaster in a number of ways. I've also used photoshop to pretty a few of these runes up for backgrounds, avatars, etc; when I decide which version of my rune I like the most, I may make it my avatar here on this dying comedy website. EDIT: If anyone wants a rune, throw the concept at me and I'll see if it tickles my fancy, but since I'm doing these for free in my spare time I reserve the right to be a flake about it. Also, thanks for reading this far into my long magechat rambling. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Mar 11, 2018 |
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Mar 11, 2018 09:25
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Bedlamdan posted:I see... As the Resident Something Awful Beast Guy™ allow me to provide a more nuanced answer. This is easily the best Beast book they have published. This does not mean it is necessarily good, or that the line has somehow been redeemed by it's publishing. It still spends 2 chapters with BHM Waxing nostalgic about diddling kids and trying to show how woke he is. But then the book starts sacrificing Matt's sacred cows. It acknowledges that Beasts aren't the good guys. That the Lessons are 100% a lie the beasts tell themselves to feel better about what they are and what they do to people. And that there are large swaths of Beast society devoted to becoming better monsters in service of the Dark Mother. By the same token there are also now 3 new Inheritances for Beasts who realize that they're monsters and want to buck the system, either by cutting themselves off from their horror (And letting their horror roam free without their control, whoops) Killing their horror and giving themselves a replacement soul (Though they have to get a soul somehow, whoops) Or by permanently crippling their Horror and turning into a pseudo Hero who hunts other beasts. So yes, this is a good book if you want to make Beasts antagonists in another chronicle, unfortunately you need to have bought the other book to actually create them. So probably don't bother.
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Mar 11, 2018 16:04
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