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Mormon Star Wars posted:Okay, I haven't been following Onyx Path stuff at all since Demon. I'm having a little trouble understanding this beast stuff, is this close?: Add the fact that heroes are only coerced to do terrible things to the beast because the beast infected them with a supernatural compulsion to kill all beasts as a direct result of the beast doing something spooky, and yeah, you've got it. If you're confused, it's actually because you understand.
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Jun 3, 2015 08:08
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Kellsterik posted:It sounds like there's the potential to read the book as some kind of in-character artifact of how Beasts see the world, fundamentally not understanding why these humans keep trying to kill them for just doing their thing. And thus we come full circle back to oMage, the infinite, bloated ouroboros at the center of the RPG world.
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Jun 3, 2015 08:33
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I repeat myself: Dragon's Dogma Beast is probably the best way to piece together the basic elements of what we've been given into something that's actually radical, even if it'd step on Changeling's toes somewhat. The narrative is the villain, "good" beasts catalyze positive change and create true heroes worthy of making the world a better place, while "bad" beasts are the ones the game seems madly in love with. As for the idea of making it more like a terminal illness, I actually have my own entertained thoughts about a whole splat for that I've talked about once or twice in these threads (think Cronenberg.) Really, the most damning indictment I've seen of Beast so far is something a friend of mine said. He doesn't play World of Darkness games much, and doesn't really know a lot about them beyond vague distate for the 90s WoD he tried, and vague approval of stuff I've told him about Demon. I showed him the Beast draft, told him to focus on the overall fluff, and asked him to tell me what he thought. He said "a lot of this reads like it was written by a school shooter."
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Jun 3, 2015 20:45
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paradoxGentleman posted:Dragon's Dogma Beast being the one that sees the future and tries to help people reaching their full potential by being a monster at the right time? It's an interesting concept, but I'm not so sure about it, because I get the impression there's not much wiggle room there, and it could get repetitive fast. Nah, being the one where the villains are heroes who didn't make the cosmic cut and are shackled into serving as foil for heroes who might actually succeed.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:53
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Yeah that's what boggles me, frankly. Most everything McFarland's done so far has been pretty good, and the stuff Onyx Path has been making recently (putting aside Exalted) has been generally good quality compared to a lot of their history. Beast is kinda like someone ripping a wet fart into their tuba in the middle of the orchestra - unexpected, baffling, and makes everything around it seem just a bit worse by association. It's why I'm scratching my head so much.
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Jun 4, 2015 03:06
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NutritiousSnack posted:
All this talk and I totally forgot that in attempting to be socially considerate, they set up the accidental reading that LGBT people (and minorities, and all out-groups) are abusive sociopathic deviants that can at best sublimate their urges 
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Jun 4, 2015 08:10
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 okay, I was a little too flip about that statement last night, but at least it sparked an interesting debate. I do agree that it's a little reductive, but the abuse reading to me is the one that really sticks out as the unintended, incredibly ugly accident of design, the result of a completely inconsistent attempt to portray tones and metaphors across different chapters. Like others have said, I really don't mind if a book encourages being a monster in-game - hell, I loving love Vampire, and Demon is in many ways about a level of sociopathic detachment. The way it's presented this time, how it creeps into text that should otherwise be neutral, is just kinda gross, in a way that speaks to authorial intent rather than game design. I'd be more charitable if McFarland hadn't very regularly come out and said "no, heroes should NEVER have sympathy, they're all dumb and terrible," or Dammit Who? mentioning the guy banned for bringing up the domestic abuse metaphor, adding reinforcement to the idea that it's not MEANT to be a creepy presentation. It's a Gordian knot of interpretations, intended or otherwise.Adept Nightingale posted:I sincerely don't have an issue with World of Darkness protagonists being, well, monsters. I don't even really care about the text suggesting they're not-- I feel like that suggests a dissonance in Beasts (whether author intended or not) that I could work with to establish a mood as an st. Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, this is about where I stand. If I wanted to be flip, I'd summarize the issue by saying that Beast wants us to be very clear about how anybody who dislikes a Beast must have a tiny penis. This, basically.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:38
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Fsmhunk posted:All the talk of Beasts as a metaphor for illness makes me want to see David: The Cronenberging. You have absolutely no idea how badly I want this to be one of their future lines. There is so much potential in a full-blown body horror line.
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Jun 4, 2015 23:59
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:*writes a sample character that mechanically and demonstrably gets off on psychologically abusing children in her care in tyool 2015* For real though these are the good guys and you should be friends with them, everyone. Not only that, you're mechanically forced to like them if you're supernatural. Swagger Dagger posted:An official statement like "Thanks for taking us 27k over our goal with 25 days to go!"? I'm going to be really blunt and say I'm actively disappointed and kind of ashamed this is getting the kind of money it is. Either the majority of people backing it have no critical reading skills, or there are a whole lot of people who see nothing wrong with flat out lionizing abusers.
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Jun 7, 2015 02:27
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Effectronica posted:
Let's not say things we know aren't true.
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Jun 7, 2015 04:32
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Effectronica posted:Let's meet in the middle and say he wouldn't write Goth Creeper Taxicab Service. He would, however, write a Goth Creeper Taxicab Ran Me Over short story, were this 15 years ago and he was still traumatized and high as balls on painkillers 24/7.
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Jun 7, 2015 04:39
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Kurieg posted:Was that the period when he wrote the short story where a kid killed a werewolf with his silver plated wheelchair or something? I don't recall that one offhand, but most of what I remember about his writing after the car accident was Dreamcatcher, in retrospect, was very clearly written by someone on heavy-grade painkillers. Shitweasels, dude.
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Jun 7, 2015 04:49
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Beast is the kind of game where it seems like they wanted to write about scenery-chewing, mustache-twirling villains who invited their heroic nemeses into their Secret Lairs while playing their leitmotif on their standard-issue spooky organ, then someone tacked on completely mismanaged social commentary that means both parties end up staring awkwardly at each other when they realize how badly they've been written. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my end because I really love a game where I can yell WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM and flourish my comically oversized black-and-red cape.
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Jun 7, 2015 16:09
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Effectronica posted:Even then, the two parts are themselves pretty bad, unless the abusive vice principal was meant to be social commentary of some kind etc. and they fed off one another. Well yes, but if you're looking for anything actually good in Beast instead of just "this was a good idea once", you're going to end up burning down most everything that isn't the mechanics, and then taking a hammer and chisel to a good portion of those. E: Like for real, aside from the bizarrely high power level of everything, a lot of the conceits of the mechanics of things like Lairs and Kinship Nightmares and poo poo are pretty novel, and I really enjoy how they work even if I don't always like what they do.
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Jun 7, 2015 16:19
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Ferrinus posted:This was post was incredible and completely on the nose, by the by. Agreed, without the emote because I'm not being sarcastic. I didn't say this last night but you've been on loving fire with your posts about Beast, Dammit Who?.
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Jun 7, 2015 16:53
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SunAndSpring posted:An immensely pissed-off robot that just regained all its health & mana, topped off its power meter, and gained access to a wide arsenal of reality hacks and inbuilt weaponry? Someone didn't think this sentence through when they wrote it. Not to mention you just called down a hit squad of murderbots all like  
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Jun 7, 2015 17:37
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Mormon Star Wars posted:I'm still chuckling at the idea of a Beast taking the book's recommended path of trying to make hunters question themselves by turning the question of who the real monster is on them. "PERHAPS IT IS MAN THAT IS THE TRUE - wait a second is that your dick, goddamn man put that back in your pants, just because I can fly doesn't mean I'm interested"
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Jun 7, 2015 17:52
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Kavak posted:"What if you are the real mons-" "Bitch, I work for the Federal Government, we're you on a global scale!" Don't mind me, just quoting this again now that the context is EVEN BETTER for it. Boogaleeboo posted:But conversely, the VASCU is the FBI. Like ok, you'll have to deal with some crazy magic poo poo, but you'll be trying to put it into jail. You are a real agent, you have a real badge. And again, it's magic jail, but jail. And sometimes it's some crazy rear end mutant that is eating people and making clothes out of their skin and you have to put it down, but it's never really the objective. You'll do paperwork about it, and you'll have to deal with assholes at TFV taking over cases, and you are in all ways just a 'regular' agent. And a lot of the time you'll just get roped into regular everyday cases. And it's somewhat of an open secret what you do at the FBI, and wider agencies and local law enforcement know if you have an....interesting case this is who you call. In so many ways their job is really only as disturbing as people that have to deal with regular serial killers and kidnapping cases, which isn't exactly a picnic.
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Jun 7, 2015 18:35
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LatwPIAT posted:Alice: "Well, strictly speaking, rights are deontological, and the reason I'm killing you is to reduce your capacity for harm, which is more of a utilitarian argument. I guess you could say that my right to kill you comes from the premise that actions that increase the amount of goodness in the world are inherently moral, and therefore allowable and 'right' in a society." Now I really, really want to see academic philosophers in Null Mysteriis having a slapfight over this sort of thing like that webcomic about existentialist philosophers debating over mundane poo poo like Candyland.
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Jun 7, 2015 21:15
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:And of those, notably the Hunters in Darkness and Scarecrow Ministry are ostensibly actually scaring people away from far worse poo poo than "guy cosplaying as hook hand killer," like the actual straight up True Fae. One of my favorite PCs I've ever played was a Scarecrow Minister, who set himself up as a local Bigfoot style mythical Lobsterman on an island in the city bay (it's Maine, weird poo poo happens in Maine.) This attracted bigfoot hunter type people for a little while until they realized that everybody who went near the island came back in a boat full of gouge marks raving about shapes in the water. Anyone stupid/persistent enough to set foot on the island itself were lucky if they got to leave without serious mental trauma and a permanent fear of crustaceans. The island eventually got a reputation as haunted/cursed/full of the spookies, and sailors just avoided the entire thing, taking the long way if they had to. This was because the island itself was a Trod crawling with ways to accidentally fall into the Hedge, and a semi-regular history of True Fae coming along to trawl for people who got caught in the Hedge-sea. Lobsterman was a victim of his island once, and had to abandon a dozen or more people just like him to a dinner pot to escape. He stayed on the island for decades to make sure nobody else would ever have to suffer like that again, even if he had to make them suffer another way to do so. He waged a one-changeling terror war that ended up making the Trod wither to manageable levels due to neglect. He exploited people's worst fears, he destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of property in boats and equipment, he ruined livelihoods if he had to, and he even killed a few people who wouldn't get the loving hint when it was spelled out to them in plain English. His greatest weapon was fear, even as his greatest, constant fear was that he'd make a single mistake and let someone get Taken. He was a self-loathing alcoholic wreck for most of the game, until the other PCs coaxed him into letting him forgive himself. If he'd ever met a beast, his likely response would be to vent his considerable amounts of pent up anger and frustration at his Keeper at the conveniently familiar target, before throwing the mangled body to the scavengers on the seabed. And yet, RAW he'd be best buddies with a beast unless the beast actively started to dick with him, because they've got Poochie powers.
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Jun 7, 2015 22:20
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Roland Jones posted:
I think that was a jokepost about what he'll probably say.
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Jun 7, 2015 22:45
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Roland Jones posted:Ah, fair enough. Still, the rest of it stands, and what he has written on these subjects and other things I've found reading back in this thread do not inspire confidence. I was already unsold on buying Demon now that I have a little spare money before I read that. This is the vilest crime Beast has committed so far. Go get Demon if you can afford it, it owns so much and McFarland's work on it was pretty good (at least, I think, since I don't remember anything too terrible about it and the segments don't exactly come with labels.)
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Jun 7, 2015 22:48
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Night10194 posted:Also this thread is making me think that as well as Hunter, Changeling might very well be for me, too. It's basically normal people taken by hosed up horror faeries and turned into something inhuman who escape and try to stay escaped, while trying to deal with their trauma, yes? Nailed it in one. There's some window dressing but that's the central conflict.
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Jun 7, 2015 22:55
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Speaking purely for myself, but when writing Beast I followed the opinion that Beasts are full of poo poo, and basically have the same appropriating behavior toward other beings that fans (and the weaker freelancers) accuse mages of. But also that it didn't matter. You are a good person and a good writer and I'm sad that either wasn't the directorial leaning, or the writing didn't follow through on that. WHEN'S
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Jun 7, 2015 23:01
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I mean, here's an example that's not about crossover with my gameline. So I wrote the Promethean page, which a lot of people hate because it establishes Beasts as being immune to Disquiet. That makes a truckload more sense when you put it that way.
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Jun 7, 2015 23:27
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Gilok posted:So I don't want to go wade through thousands of off-site forums posts. What do RPG.net and OPP forums think of Beast? Are these same issues being raised and taken seriously there, are they being raised and then smacked down by mods, or do they all love it? 4chan despises it, RPG.net is having about the same debate if much more carefully with far more people defending its honor, and last I looked at OPP they were about the same as RPG.net, with more confusion than frustration.
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Jun 7, 2015 23:44
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Crion posted:Of course not-Trunchbull isn't the only example of sample characters abusing children in the book. Why would it be. Reminder that the flagship character in chargen gets like two paragraphs of an example of play where she nearly murders a child for taking other kids' Halloween candy.
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Jun 8, 2015 01:19
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Jun 8, 2015 01:24
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Night10194 posted:As someone who has heard a lot about child abuse, up to and including parents slowly poisoning their adopted children to death to 'punish' them, this legitimately makes me angry now. No, but you see, anyone reading anything unsavory into the interpretations of the game is obviously doing it wrong, because the developers would never do something as vile as imply that the players should be enjoying inflicting realistic, lovingly detailed abuse on people who- quote:Magda is making a character for her friend Orson’s Beast game. quote:Just to drive the point home, she uses the You Deserve This Nightmare on Brent, and Magda is delighted to see that she’s rolled an exceptional success! quote:Magda is delighted ...no you see, because the developers would never intend to imply
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Jun 8, 2015 01:37
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edit: eh, replace this post with "burn it down" and its the same thing, I'm actually running out of ways I can be angry without feeling exhausted
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Jun 8, 2015 01:54
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Night10194 posted:How the gently caress do you write 'These guys like to join the walking abuse metaphor on its fun sunday excursions to ruin souls and defile lives' and still think you're writing the good guys!? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD1hncFgg8w
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Jun 8, 2015 02:09
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For real. I don't usually like to presume based on the fact that we have OPP authors that read this, but, guys, you're clearly reading, you've been posting. I realize that some of you wrote on Beast and that there's probably a lot of poo poo we don't know about and will likely never know about. I don't want to pillory people who didn't have a direct hand in perpetuating the worst of this poo poo, or who realized what was going on. Please, for the love of God, ask Matt to at least say something about the abuse. I don't even care at this point if it's just "this game's dark and edgy, if you can't handle it, cya shitlords" because that's at least a response rather than silence, or casual dismissal like through all of development. If this is really the hosed up catastrophic Biblical proportions accident that his statements/history indicate, it's the least he can do to own up to it to the people he's made angry and disgusted for extremely good reasons. Christ. I haven't gotten actually, for-real angry at something in nerd games for a very long time, and I've tried as I get older and more aware of the hobby to be less ad hominem about poo poo like this, but the longer I think about this the more my blood boils. This isn't something you just miss in an editing pass.
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Jun 8, 2015 02:33
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tatankatonk posted:I spend money on Onyx Path products and nWoD is the game i'd recommend if someone new to the hobby asked me what I thought they would have the most fun playing. This is probably the first time I've felt this way, but I really would like a statement from someone from the company saying this offensive material is a mistake, or a one-off that won't get any further support, or something. I just don't think we'll get it, or at least we won't get it from McFarland, who is the public face of this project. Yeah. Yeah, this is exactly where I'm at.
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Jun 8, 2015 02:44
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Swagger Dagger posted:Is Batman a Hero? He's every splat at once, like Rasputin.
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Jun 8, 2015 03:39
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Calde posted:If Exalted is anything to go by they will promise an apology but only after the Kickstarter is done, with the reasoning being that to apologize during the Kickstarter would be an obvious pandering for cash. Then they will offer a trite "sorry you were offended" and pretend nothing happened at all. The Exalted devs seem to be in their own little hosed up universe seperate from the WOD devs most of the time, and Rose Bailey previously gave a legitimate apology for Scion 1e so I'm holding out hope in spite of things.
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Jun 8, 2015 06:06
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Were this any other day, I'd be yelling at you idiots to stop having the same argument for the millionth time, but at this point I'd take oWoD canon waifu discussions over Beast rumination, so let me throw my hat in the ring by saying that it always amuses me that Paradox is such a nonissue that it never ever comes up in these wankfests.
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Jun 9, 2015 01:12
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spectralent posted:So true. Changeling is rad (did I mention changeling?) because it's got so many different things weaving together; mage is great because it's got just that one spark of curiosity that means you've got a billion activities to do with it. Really, I tried to make an orderly list, but I realized that a ton of it boils down for me to how good the line is being run and represented by the ST and the players. If you want to get a back-of-the-book statement from me about each line: Vampire: It's easy to think it's boring or middle of the road because it's where a lot of WoD thinking starts, conceptually. Then you remember all the weird poo poo in the wings, and how straight up political machinations are both not the only option and can still be really fun. Werewolf: My former complaint was that everything about the line owned except the protagonists and their mechanics having the impact of wet cardboard and being constantly overshadowed by how incredible the antagonist lineup is. In 2e, the antagonist lineup still owns, the fluff is better, and the mechanics are certainly more impactful, if decidedly more uneven. Mage: Its ability to instantly spark passionate debate about drat near anything in it is a sign that it has its fingers on the pulse of what it wants to do, even if a lot of its mechanical design is getting pretty old in hindsight and it absolutely requires its supplements. Capable of being one of the best games you'll ever play, or one of the worst, depending on the group. Changeling: If you demanded me to pick a single favorite RPG at gunpoint it'd likely be Changeling: the Lost. Its intended experience is loving perfectly realized in so many ways. There's speedbumps, hiccups, and questionable choices, but Changeling is like lightning in a bottle. Promethean: The Best Game You Will Never Play. Please don't gently caress up 2e. Hunter: At once one of the most solid lines tonally, and most schizophrenic. The power/scope/playability/interest is all over the loving place by design, but when it's running on all cylinders, it's an experience no other line can give you. Some of the absolute best ideas in the World of Darkness are in here, as well as a lot of the most mediocre and a few of the dumbest. Geist: There is such a good game in there, buried under all the aimless fluff and under-baked mechanics. If you love it, you probably love it it in spite of what it is right now. Mummy: Like Geist, I like what I do of Mummy in spite of itself. The Nameless One going on pulp adventures and beating the poo poo out of Conan villains in a quest of self-discovery is certainly something a lot of other games can't do. The later splatbooks helped carve its niche out for me - it's not a perfect game, but it's an interesting one. Demon: If I didn't pick Changeling as my favorite RPG ever made, Demon would be next, with a few other non-OPP products in the running. It slam dunks its intended experience about as well as Changeling, but it has more mechanical gripes to it when you really start to look at it closely. That's more or less looking the gift horse in the mouth, though. Beast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSNeL0QYfqo. The only nice things I can say at this point are that its mechanics are novel and worth at least a look-over, its absolute core conceits could have been turned into a very interesting game, and I will be impressed, grateful, and be willing to give it a clean shot if they actually incorporate the criticism it's received in a notable manner.
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Jun 9, 2015 02:23
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Mendrian posted:This, to say nothing of the fact that Forces and Matter are disproportionately good compared to Spirit or Fate, since the latter don't exist and can't be Googled IRL. Yeah, assuming you're not abusing the everlasting gently caress of the free ticket Fate gives you to derail plots and dictate your success. I'd say that you're also forgetting about Paradox, but well, Paradox is nothing but an elaborate system negated by the ability to take it as a magic nosebleed, soooo....
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Jun 9, 2015 02:35
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Mendrian posted:Man I didn't think people would have such a visceral reaction to those meeting notes. "I'm sorry that our lack of clarity made some of you upset, as that was never our intention." That's it. That one sentence. It's the difference between "we didn't mean it, but obviously we hosed up somehow, so we're sorry," and "sorry you got mad but it wasn't our fault."
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Jun 9, 2015 05:36
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Kavak posted:I'm trying to force my way though disappointment into a detached interest/dread of what horrible thing will be released next, any tips? Dehumanize yourself and face to bloodshed
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Jun 9, 2015 05:58
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