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MalcolmSheppard posted:That's certainly an essay about how vampire horror shouldn't explore the discomforting intersection between sex and violence. Wait a second... MalcolmSheppard posted:In what part of anything I wrote did I express an opinion on that name other than saying it was "tricky?" In what part of anything I wrote did I say that these criticisms were invalid? I DID remember this old-argument from the old megathread, where the discussion of how dumb it is to have customer-facing promotions branded as "sexmurder" came up and you backtracked immediately at the time.
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# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 02:12 |
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 05:32 |
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Dave Brookshaw posted:It's a full-page rant about a book's internal development codename, not even anyhing that made it into print. Onyx Path publicly advertised the name "sexmurder" in customer-facing branding for a long time before print. The rant itself existed before you ever brought it to print. Until nearly the print was made, the product was to all consumers known as sexmurder. It was a wildly botched roll-out on Onyx Path's part, and the act itself has zero defenders and a whole lot of revisionist retellings to frame it as less-lovely, as quoted above. To be totally dismissive of the misstep is showing a lack of correction to the mindset of Onyx Path as producers.
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# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 19:44 |
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Nordic-style LARPS, aka jeepform, are really cool experiences that qualify as role-playing games despite never granting XP and ignoring poo poo like health levels. They're not in the same building as any Strength + Punchskill - Dodgeability game.
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# ¿ Apr 11, 2015 00:14 |
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I have become less critical of Beast's fiction and otherwise iffy presentation to this point. Part of that is that it is very easy to denigrate games with a pithy example of gameplay- Vampire: the pedophile ring game, Werewolf: the southern revanchism game, Changeling: the abuse survivor game, Promethean: the homeless autistic game. Beast being described as the teenaged otherkin outcast game is not yet a great retort to the game-as-played.
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# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 16:15 |
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Mors Rattus posted:Lair is your Supernatural Tolerance stat, yeah. (It is also a literal place; this part is pretty neat.) Isn't the point of the "I'm a horrible monster"-game to turn into a regular human being? If even for a day, getting to do just regular stuff is the thing of grand crusades for most other splats.
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# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 04:02 |
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Denim Avenger posted:See, I don't think so. Changeling are often very paranoid people, but that's because Changeling is about abuse and madness. Changeling paranoia is the result of their abuse, its the most chronic form of madness they suffer. It's very much part of the game, but its not the core of the game. Changeling is much more about what you suffered and your personal quest to try and piece it all back together as best you can. The central theme of C:tL is self-expression (in the face of trauma and recovery), and choosing who to "out" yourself to is part of that. Otherwise, the Mask as-written is near impossible to blunder through. However since Beasts can break into any "zone", that means they can pop into the Hedge- where the Mask doesn't exist, and all Changelings are in their true form.
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# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 14:23 |
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Super Fame either is on the level of "You are the President", or they'll never make that a mechanical element in a game ever.
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# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 16:18 |
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paradoxGentleman posted:This narrative doesn't always work for Changeling deals, I think. They can also give Merits such as Stunning Looks, and how you explain that with luck? The same way you explain spending experience points on a merit to get it, but sped through an instantaneous training montage. And the pledge blessing very specifically avoids allowing Giant Size to be taken by dint of blessings being capped at 3.
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# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 00:30 |
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If Raptors had a stronger element of being the sort of secret-revealing, naked-in-front-of-the-classroom, we-know-where-you-live fear, it'd be a stronger family in our post-NSA world. As now, it's the family of birds.
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# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 16:26 |
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GimpInBlack posted:Ugallu are about the fear of exposure, both in the sense you describe and in the sense of being stranded in a vast, open place with no shelter or means of survival. Knowledge, observation, and spying are often metaphorically associated with height, towers, and being "above" (hell, that's what the word "surveillance" literally means), and wide open deserts with no place to get underground or inside are natural hunting grounds for giant, winged things. The whole "winged monstrosity" theme also ties into nightmares of plummeting from a tremendous height, which absolutely is a fundamental nightmare built into the human brain. The conceptual link seems pretty clear and interesting to me. Admittedly maybe calling them "Nightmares of Exposure" would get that across better in a slugline than "Nightmares of the Skies," but there's a little more to them than "and also birds, I guess." I'd buy that there was more to the family than birds doing bird things if their special ability wasn't "leap really far vertically or horizontally, because birds". Rename them to be Nightmares of Exposure and grant them the ability to learn a secret from a target they see instead.
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# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 17:37 |
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Seemings are altered so that now your decision to leave arcadia is locked into your Wyrd profile, rather than being a moment of humanity. A seeming perk of being able to, once per story, gain a point of clarity. Meaning that Clarity is just another powerstat of fae design rather than a difficult piece of humanity countered by fae madness. lol nope sorry 2E, I'm sure y'all tried really hard.
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# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 11:54 |
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Edit: ^^^ Yeah, like that seems a bit much. I don't like how the decision to have Seeming typify and define lock in character's internal struggle. It sacrifices the major benefit of C:tL to allow for the widest possible variety of characters. In 2e every Beast is a non-conformist anti-cage rebel. My own thing about Clarity is that I see the game using a more brittle, glass-like structure to make the decent into madness horrifying and have impact. Long, incremental gains to reconstruct an identity with counseling or harsh, dangerous Jupiter dreams rather than just popping your magic superpower to feel better about yourself.
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# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 14:26 |
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paradoxGentleman posted:I don't think it necessarily sacrifices variety, but you do have to consider both Seeming and Kith to reach the result that you are aiming for for your character. Want to play an ox or bull that was forced to till the Keeper's fields until he bled or worse, and escaped by taking an hidden bite out of the Hedge that surrounded the mansion every day until it was weak enough to make a run for it? Pick a Wizened, or maybe an Elemental, and give it an ox-appropriate kith. A snake that convinced with honeyed lies one of the zookepers to keep his cage open? Fairest with reptile kith. I admit that it is possible that the 6 + 1 seemings can approximate the breadth of all worthy motivations to have escaped your Durance, AND have an breaking point that matches the character idea, AND have an internal Clarity-regain superpower that matches the character. However I wouldn't bet my life on it, and it is definitely a rules addition that I would excise immediately because it also alters Clarity from a fragile object into something fluid and arbitrary and even less tied to the choices you as a player made during the game.
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# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 16:14 |
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Since 2E seems to be going for a more fluid, wishy-washy expression of their Integrity-analogs, they should make that a part of its thematic expression. For Geist 2E, their Synergy should be a degree to how visible or wisp-like they are. Being on the low end of Synergy means you're continuously ignored by society, like as mentioned as a curse in legitimate vodoun practices that Geist so painfully wants to be associated with. Getting close to unplayable makes you invisible and ghost-like, and true unplayability makes you a ghost without the ability to interact with the world. Make having extra Synergy make you the magnetic teenaged lone-wolf sex god that OPP demands that every splat become and you're golden. Gerund fucked around with this message at 11:44 on Apr 24, 2015 |
# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 11:42 |
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When you really want to have Ravnos back in Vampire, but want to avoid the problematic gypsy issues, just turn Nightmare into Chimerstry, but even thinner in explanation!
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# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 03:10 |
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bewilderment posted:Unrelated to any current thread: The third attainment of the Blank Badges. In all honesty any actual prestidigitation is better explained by stacking super-buffs to a mage to do a quick, fantastically-practiced trick with mundane skills before it gets unraveled by the onlookers, rather than trusting you can "get away with it" via a singular attainment.
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2015 16:43 |
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I will say that making the egg-headed grey aliens a canon fae-type instead of a lightly-referenced suggestion is good. But seeing each kith get only its top three "best" seemings described is showing the strain of the Kith-into-Seemings concept. Cross-Kith'd changelings were a supported option in C:tL, so I'm not seeing much extra 'freedom' here for me.
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 03:31 |
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A quick ctrl+f through the Kith Draft reveals that there are no 9-again abilities, only 8-again. they're learning
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 14:20 |
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I'd rather use Space shielding to prevent someone getting any further or closer to me, and then walk them off a cliff before dismissing the spell.
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# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 22:31 |
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It seems to me that the writers are terrified of telling players that no matter how Clever a mage is with their magic, the exarchs declare that in the Fallen World disciples of an arcana do a single bashing per potency in a single combat round with a spell.
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2015 19:00 |
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In my opinion they should have led off with Darklings: of all the options they were the least well defined as a Seeming and most defined by their specific Kiths. Even the 2e preview for Kiths distilled the options down to long fingers, goblin/Nosferatu features, and Burton-esque creepiness. The preview delivered a pathos, or at least a few of them: abandonment, betrayal of trust or faith, and obsession with the what others forget, the classic Hard Man Making Hard Choices WoD theme. Four is better than zero, at least. I'm still going to ignore and revise the rules regarding Clarity, as they aren't impressive and counter to what I see work in the games I play.
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# ¿ May 1, 2015 14:31 |
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"I'm gonna swing this sword in a method that doesn't use the combat mechanics but still disables my opponent" would get squashed at the table, so why should the spells be allowed to do the same thing?
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# ¿ May 2, 2015 17:20 |
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Attorney at Funk posted:Or at least, what does it say about the combat system if the principal reward of magic is that you don't have to use it anymore? In my take-this-as-a-non-rhetorical-question opinion, it means that the combat system is where players are expected to spend their character-definition points into to Not Die, but is a very explicitly zero-sum game of diminishing returns and is not is an enjoyable process to go through for anyone involved.
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# ¿ May 2, 2015 19:21 |
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Mage is vague in scope but very precise in the intended actions. Playing Mage is like having n+1 people swinging wrecking balls of exactly half a ton of mass on a wire of exactly one hundred feet in random directions.
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# ¿ May 2, 2015 20:26 |
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In V20 news, the next book Lore of the Clans was up for a "live proofing session" that is currently up on YouTube. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I like the show of transparency to the KS backers and wonder if any one else had any opinions.
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# ¿ May 11, 2015 14:47 |
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The solution that the writers of Vampire have given to the problem of players being too "party friendly" is to turn your Cam game into a Sabbat game.
Gerund fucked around with this message at 19:15 on May 14, 2015 |
# ¿ May 14, 2015 14:30 |
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It cannot be emphasized enough that vampire LARP suffers if every new character is constructed from a recently-embraced template and can never have an option against the players that "succeed" in PVP. Vampire is inherently a small part of a bigger world, and players should be given the option to come in having some influence in the goings on. If the players fear PVP in the LARP because they don't think they'll have fun with it, you need to restructure the systems of your LARP so that the players will have fun doing PVP. Plotting your setting to make players have to PVP to have fun has nothing to do with this.
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# ¿ May 15, 2015 16:32 |
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Mage 20's Traditions being exactly as diverse and exactly as inclusive as the gentrified hipster Brooklyn is exactly what I expect out of a game of playing justified solipsists.
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# ¿ May 20, 2015 15:51 |
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There is a happy medium between the C:tL 1E demisplat- ensorcelled mortals- and the Fae-Touched. Ensorcelled mortals were Fae-ghouls with even less powers, while the Fae-Touched act like mini-changelings with a hard cap on power output. It very much reads as a format filler to allow each 2E game a demisplat for players to crossover their games than something that the 1E game needed. On that note, I don't like the change to the setting that Fae-Touched represents to C:tL; making the hedge itself responsible for applying Wyrd to a mortal rather than a True Fae is a dilution of the basic horror and interconnection of the Changeling experience. Fittlewink and Rickiki suffered through a durance and escaped arcadia, while Bob just got lost in the bramble bushes off the highway for a week?
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# ¿ May 28, 2015 00:27 |
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The minute a LARP introduces a "can't trust anyone" body-snatcher plot, that game either goes to poo poo immediately or the social contract is established to never do it again. There is room for backstabby knives and betrayal, but it ends at the point when the act of knowing who you are talking to is in question.
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# ¿ May 29, 2015 04:44 |
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Mors Rattus posted:No, no, no, you were doing better! Still not great, but better! Why is this still here? Why are there still whole essays on how lovely Heroes are, how they're trolls and conspiracy theorists and crazy MRA gunmen? You're doing the lord's work, Mors. GimpInBlack posted:Beast, like 1st Edition Mage: The Awakening, is a game I think will improve tremendously with supplements. ....so why ask for money to deliver the corebook in its current state, rather than release these supplements with a barebones starter system attached?
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 22:06 |
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CommissarMega posted:Isn't this kind of like Changeling the Lost, though? You can keep your Fae side in check and remain human, or you can go full-on Wyrd 10 and turn into Cute Elf Hitler. I would say that former is the first half of Mad Max: Fury Road- where you run from the horrible abuser and compromise and suffer from the abuser's pursuit- while the latter is the second half of Mad Max: Fury Road- where you turn back and fight your way to reclaim the horrible abuser's kingdom and spot and maybe turn into a more moral version of your abuser (unless you also enact changes to the system that you might not be able to understand or control).* *sidenote: the C:tL reading of MM:FR would be a depressing and fatalistic one because C:tL is a depressing and fatalistic game, not because MM:FR is inherently either of those things as presented
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# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 16:12 |
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What nWoD really needed in its second edition was an unrestricted connective ur-beast to unify the gamelines under a single umbrella, held in the hand of an obvious creator-insert faction that is in text referred to as Good and Pure and Worthy, and have it textually established that all the other gamelines are totally cool with this arrangement.
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# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 17:36 |
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Ferrinus posted:This looks cool. I especially appreciate how the means of modifying the dicepool are strictly defined (and TN shifting is tier-based) and how there's express support for just using existing skill/attribute ratings as a trump card rather than as interchangeable dicepool generators. I want to see that firmly supported, like with Culture 3 I can just always recognize where someone is from based on their table manners or w/e. everything about that preview is basically like reading a reverse Wod 20th anniversary edition, where the game is actually pushed forward 20 years rather than looking back. I see Gumshoe and Burning Wheel as big influences and that is pretty darn cool.
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 03:18 |
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Inzombiac posted:Guys, You should create a better system to make dramatic failures happen more often than tying their rate of occurrence to the number of dice you are rolling, because your current method makes the fear of a increasing the chances of a dramatic failure completely orthogonal to the inherent appeal of more dice being equivalent to a larger success. The answer, if you're being suitably monkeycheese and are okay with the implementation being clunky, is to roll a secondary pool of d10s that isn't tied to the number of die you are rolling and have that result trigger the Dramatic Failure.
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# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 23:19 |
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Ferrinus posted:The ones who make big spectacles of wanting publc approval certainly want public approval, yes. No doubt plenty more simply live quietly while property holdings and corporate machinery generate more and more wealth. The extent to which they are sympathetic characters is not the important thing about the upper echelons of our society. Beasts do definitely have power baked-in, and while they are very concerned with their optics they are not required to become as famous as someone that is considered public-image obsessed- such as celebrities. The 1% reading only requires you to believe that the 1% are like Beasts and care deeply about their image to the people that they interact with, which I don't have trouble believing as the luxury item market shows that ostentatious displays of wealth are a constant across all aristocracies. LatwPIAT posted:What are you trying to say here? The chance of rolling a majority 1's on a roll with no other successes decreases, I believe, as the number of dice goes up. It's not an orthogonal property. Allow me to expand: the chances of rolling more 1s than the success that actually matter increase as the total number of die in the pool increases. For a major portion of a nWoD game*, the difference between getting 1-4 or more than 5 successes is not as important to the outcome of a scene than the difference between the increased chances of getting more 1s than successes. In the nWoD a dramatic failure is (typically) written in the rules as a major event that creates major complications, and this also inspires the STs that read those rules to also treat non-explicitly written dramatic failure consequences the same way. You would have to meter the impact of successes, dicepool, and dramatic failures in a very shrewd manner, which belies the "simplicity" of just implementing the mechanic as stated to make Dramatic Failures happen more often. However, thankfully no one is advocating having 1s also reduce the number of successes! That is the same problem but just removing the word Dramatic from Dramatic Failure. *basically all of the rolls aside from the success threshold mechanics e.g. number of successes to cast a spell, number of successes to craft an item, number of successes to injure someone
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# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 00:44 |
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Ferrinus posted:Every supernatural PC, certainly in 2nd edition, has loads and loads of power baked in. I'm sure a 2E werewolf or demon or promethean or changeling or whatever could take a beast, or rather I'm sure that whatever rocket-taggy clusterfuck ensued would come down to who chose fewer newbie traps or was lucky with their power wording. Yet I see a difference between the 1% I read as a comparison to Beast and the 1% you read as a comparison to Invictus/Seers/Promethean-antagonist-Alchemists. My own reading is not that the 1% desire power in a material sense (as in the number in their bank account going up) but by increasing the impact that their money and status gives them on the outside world: their Protagonism if we're gonna get capital-letters up in this. A Koch brother or T. Boone Pickens is not a great example of this (they're too publicly known), but their lesser-known analogs such as the shadow economy of College football boosters, the league of professional prestigious non-profit board members, political action committee commanders and the bottle service economy are good readings of Beasts as image-conscious without demanding the entirety of the culture's attention. Their self-worth is not defined by their own self, but by what greater mythic image they work in service to.
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# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 01:36 |
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My own personal reading (and its not very classically 1%) would be that the hyper-douches of the Pony Excess 30 for 30 doc are great Beasts. They, too, are after the reflected glow of positive opinion because they want SMU to succeed at a football game that they have never and will never play in themselves and never get true credit for. They are willing to do Bad things that involve the ineffable "suffering" of others to make this happen by paying players in secret. In this case, the Heroes are the NCAA investigators that gave SMU the 'death penalty' after a series of harassing and pathetic sanctions. The NCAA make great Heroes in this reading because they are pathetic dickless wonders who only hate SMU because they are noticeably successful without being acceptably old. However I admit that I don't like the Twitter comparison largely because I don't believe that anyone with any real power is in control of their twitter account, its easily-fireable interns all the way down! But I concede that the 1% reading did try to flog that tired touchstone The Wire and as such should be avoided for the near future. Gerund fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jun 5, 2015 |
# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 01:47 |
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DJ Dizzy posted:As a mind/matter mage in a group of 3 vampires, how do I avoid blowing past the others in everything, yet while still remaining a unique asset to the team? Alternatively how do I gently caress with them the most? Ward, and its follows-you-as-you-move cousin Repel, using your Matter 3 to block all* physical matter. Do Scrying as well as you can. You're a human being that can walk in the sun and isn't afraid of a lit match. Alter physical matter from a safe distance. *depending on your Matter arcana level Night10194 posted:This is the absolute most oWoD game since the oWoD. As someone else said, Beast is the worst nWoD book they have released since Changing Breeds back in 2007.
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2015 16:34 |
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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 05:32 |
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If we’re talking about “game balance” in a game wholly in control by the game designer, then why, as a game purchaser, should I be taking a designer who calls it a myth seriously?
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2015 17:15 |