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JDCorley posted:
Who's going to pay for my medical bills when this 4-ton grain of salt crushes my arms and legs?
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Jun 3, 2015 22:43
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My table awards a fixed amount of XP after every session, and I could say that I like it because it keeps everyone at the same power level and makes it so that they don't have to think about doing something out of character for a material award. But that would be a lie, because, now, I really like it because it means I'll never have to look at a PC's fictional relationship with their fictional significant other and be like hm yes I approve of how this is playing out, have a reward
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Jun 3, 2015 22:53
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CommissarMega posted:Okay, this might be a dumb question but what happens when a vampire drinks the blood of another supernatural? For some reason this question's been bugging me, and I'm not sure if I'd want to purchase a rulebook to find out IIRC, Werewolf blood is like high octane fuel, the vampire would get wired and I think it's like 2.5 vitae per health level? Mage blood makes vampires trip balls and might give you hallucinations and derangements. Changeling blood tastes really good. Promethean blood tastes horrible, the vampire needs to inflict twice as much damage to get the normal amount of blood, and they're affected by Disquiet while they're doing it.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:42
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MalcolmSheppard posted:*Cultural Studies hat on* Cool. What about the parts of Beast that don't work at all?
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Jun 4, 2015 16:27
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MalcolmSheppard posted:So you're just going to ignore the fact that the thing Beast is being accused of subtextual homophobia for is a thing employed by prominent queer genre writers for a specific reason because TOO MANY WERDS. Got it. No, it's just that your word salad was a lot more sophomoric and obtuse than you might have intended. Should we break it down line-by-line to show how it's condescending and meaningless as a defense of the thing we've been talking about?
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Jun 4, 2015 16:55
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Rand Brittain posted:I don't think Malcolm is going to come out against his colleague's work as angrily as people want him to, and I don't think trying to talk him into it will be productive. I'm not trying to talk him into it. If he's under pressure to not discuss it (except positively, I guess), then he shouldn't discuss it.
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Jun 4, 2015 17:11
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It's cool that a television show about mid-2000s Baltimore's decaying social institutions has now successfully influenced a tabletop roleplaying game about undead predators drinking people's blood and feuding among themselves, a tabletop roleplaying game about half-feral pack monsters policing the spirit world, a tabletop roleplaying game about magicians exploring the hidden truth above the material world while trying to alter reality itself, a tabletop roleplaying game about magically altered humans hiding from and resisting their lurking supernatural captors, a tabletop roleplaying game about monstrous creations trying to alchemize themselves souls so that they might be fully human, a tabletop roleplaying game about rogue machines hiding from and attacking the inscrutable mechanism that birthed them, and a tabletop roleplaying game about primordial monsters balancing satiating their desires with trying not to spawn the heroes who will kill them if they indulge those desires. For all the other lines, there's Homicide: Life On the Street
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Jun 5, 2015 00:04
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Kavak posted:What about the tabletop roleplaying game about regular and not-so-regular humans trying to study and/or kill those monsters? That's Treme
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Jun 5, 2015 00:07
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What's the difference between a narcissistic poor person wanting attention and a narcissistic rich person wanting attention? Oh, right.
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Jun 5, 2015 01:38
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quote every stupid thing that makes you feel alive quote every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away Basically I have extreme reservations about Beast but i have downloaded the pdf, and I will make an honest effort to read this entire thing and approach it with an open mind. My qualifications are that I run a game of Vampire and am possessed of sound mind and body. Let's start quote:”I remember a time or two way out on the prairie ... I’d get the feelin’ somethin’ was behind me. Somethin’ waitin’ for me to become it." Well, whatever. That's a freebie. quote:You don’t suffer nightmares. Okay quote:You were normal, once. At least more than you are now. You got up and went about your daily routine like anyone else — work, school, family, friends — with the same petty complaints and ambitions as anyone else you knew, except that you never quite fit in. It always felt like you stood apart from the rest of the herd; no matter how much you tried to be good, no one could argue that you had a cruel streak that ran bone deep. Okay. A little overwrought but this is the line's corebook, so a non-self-aware declaration of power and ~badassery~ is par for the course quote:In Beast: The Primordial, you play one of the Children, a human being with the Soul of one of the great monsters of legend: dragons, gryphons, giants, kraken, and worse. All your life you’ve had the same nightmare, one of the classics so common to human nature. Hunted by a relentless predator. Dragged into the murky depths. Dropped from great heights. Held under the thumb of something huge and powerful. Or simply the inescapable dread that comes from knowing that some nameless, shapeless thing out there in the dark was stalking you. It was nothing human beings haven’t suffered since the dawn of civilization, except that you weren’t content to remain That's cool. Gryphons are cool. quote:This is the life of the Children: Preying on humanity while living within it, walking the mortal world and the worlds beyond as they fulfill the needs of their Soul, tending their Lair as they guard their territory, moving freely between mortal society and supernatural cultures as legends in both. Humans might think they know how a monster’s story ends, but Beasts refuse to accept the role they’ve been given. They write their own stories, letting no human — or Hero — dictate how it ends. That's fair. Even nightmare spawning creatures of dark myth want to live quote:In order to understand a bit more about the characters in Beast: The Primordial, here are some common beliefs and how they align with the Begotten: The splat I have the most familiarity with is Vampires, and I don't think of them as necessarily evil, as their moral nature is decided by their own free will while have full control of their actions. The bolded portion makes sense. quote:• Beasts are immortal: False. While a Beast with a well-established Lair can live for a very long time, they eventually perish of old age, assuming no Hero or other hazard gets them first. Haha wait...what?? You're a legendary creature of primordial darkness and terror...whose soul exists in the nightmare dream realm...who will eventually just fuckin' die of old age. O-kay. quote:Regardless of the truth, all Beasts recognize her as not only the first of their kind, but also the first of all monsters. As far as the Begotten are concerned, vampires, werewolves, changelings, and other stranger things are simply younger siblings, branches of the family tree that have diverged but still share common roots. While other beings may scoff, Beasts have powers and abilities that seem to back their claim. I cannot believe that the response to this from any self-respecting splat would be anything except "gently caress off" or "I didn't vote for her" quote:What do her children do? If Beasts can be said to have something close to a single purpose, it is to feast. Linked as they are to the Primordial Dream, the place where all nightmares are spawned, Beasts remind humanity and even other supernatural creatures that everyone has something to fear. A Beast does this by feeding her Hunger, which sates the primal part of her Soul, the great monster that dwells in the nightmare realm. If she does not indulge her Hunger, the Soul begins to wreak havoc in the minds of mortals around her, starting with her closest friends and relatives and quickly attracting the attention of Heroes bent on the Beast’s destruction. Hm quote:What do her children do? If Beasts can be said to have something close to a single purpose, it is to feast. Linked as they are to the Primordial Dream, the place where all nightmares are spawned, Beasts remind humanity and even other supernatural creatures that everyone has something to fear. A Beast does this by feeding her Hunger, which sates the primal part of her Soul, the great monster that dwells in the nightmare realm. If she does not indulge her Hunger, the Soul begins to wreak havoc in the minds of mortals around her, starting with her closest friends and relatives and quickly attracting the attention of Heroes bent on the Beast’s destruction. quote:• Beasts are inherently evil: False. While Heroes like to think of the Children as absolutely evil, the truth is that a Beast is only as evil as her actions. Hmm. quote:Anyone can become a Beast. The potential to slide back into the first darkness and join the ranks of humanity’s nightmares made flesh dwells within every human heart. Still, the process of actually becoming one with the Soul and becoming a true Beast begins early, sometimes even in early childhood. Wait, you just said- quote:• Beasts aren’t human: True. Beasts are born like humans and seem human until their Homecoming, when they discover a spiritual link to nightmare monsters — their Souls. That is when they truly become Beasts, but even before that they are not really human. quote:Of course, with relief comes horror, as the Beast realizes her terrible Hunger must be fed to keep the Soul appeased. Everything a Beast has learned since she was a child tells her the monster is By...not doing evil things? quote:All Beasts have a primal drive called Hunger, which they must indulge to sate the appetite of the Soul. Hunger can be a very simple, direct thing, such as a drive to stalk and kill prey, or it can be more abstract, such as a need to punish others for their transgressions. Though the primal drives are the same, how Beasts interpret them can vary — instead of literally hunting prey to consume them, for example, a Beast might more metaphorically stalk a target and “consume” their trust. Okay, but they need to do bad things. Spreading nightmares is bad. And if you don't, even worse things happen. quote:Where monsters hunt, Heroes follow. As a Beast grows in power, she inevitably attracts hunters, who follow the nightmares she leaves in her wake like tracks left in the dust. Okay, so Beasts make Hunters as part of their mythological cycle. quote:Ultimately, Beasts recognize that the Hero cycle is as much a part of their nature as their Lair and their Soul. Humanity fears Beasts — that’s the intrinsic truth of what they are — and what humanity fears, it invariably attempts to destroy. Beasts quickly learn that they can’t become angry that people have that reaction; it’s reasonable. At the same time, though, the Children know that they have a right to exist. The world is a terrifying place, and the monsters in the dark are there for a reason. The dominant narrative may be “Hero arises, kills the monster,” but the Begotten see past that and know that it doesn’t have to be that way. Heroes, on the other hand, never question their own heroism — and that is why Beasts hate them. Wait, what? How hosed up is that? Who cares if they're self-aware? You made them!
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Jun 7, 2015 01:15
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The open mind didn't last long. This is even dumber than previously indicated.quote:Atavisms lol okay, so the Beasts get to keep their human forms AND be terrifying badasses, and also they know which splat everyone else is, because the Dark Mother is real, and every other splat's origin fluff just had rank pulled on it for some reason. quote:Inheritance The loss condition for this splat, beyond just dying, is losing access to your tvtropes phone app quote:Inspirational Material quote:Bill Willingham’s Fables comic series is fairytale oriented, but many of the concepts behind Beast are still there: magical Lairs, journeys between fantastic worlds, monsters in human forms, the mythic cycle as a very real factor in day-to-day life, and a whole lot of inverted stories going in unexpected directions. In particular, Bigby Wolf would make an excellent Beast, a great wolf that walks like a man and whose Soul is the North Wind itself, as well as a reformed “villain” who must suppress his Hunger to hunt in order to fit in with the world around him. That's cool, because I remember reading about Fables, and thinking "this is stupid" after I found out that Goldilocks was a bad caricature of leftism and feminism, and seeing a panel from it where Bigby Wolf praises the heroism of the state of Israel in standing up to its various enemies quote:When a Beast finally stops resisting the nightmare, and chooses instead to embrace it and become the monster in the dark, she realizes what she really is. That moment of Homecoming might be horrifying or revolting, but for the most part, it is a relief — the Beast finally understands. quote:Then came the day when you came face to face with the monster inside you, and suddenly it all made sense. You didn’t fit in with other people for the same reason a fox doesn’t fit in with a room full of poodles. It wasn’t cruelty in your nature: it was Hunger. Now you knew just how to feed it. Maybe it’s not pretty, sating these drives, but you don’t have a choice. It’s not your fault you’re what you are; since you can’t go back, you might as well make the best of it. Okay, so the latter was wrong, and it's explicitly your own choice? On to the Families! quote:The little people won’t hold you back anymore. They have their petty concerns: their debts, their hates, their loves. You tower above those petty concerns, a pillar of strength and unstoppable force. All your life you knew you were different—greater. You just didn’t realize how literal that was.You might say that your enemies are like toys in your hands, but that would mean you could even count anyone as an enemy. They’re not, not really. They’re mice standing up to cats. When they even bother to stand. Nothing screams sympathetic monster like embittered sociopathy!
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Jun 7, 2015 01:33
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quote:For all that they can express dominance by other means, the Anakim are creatures of force. Its use and abuse come naturally to them. Once per scene, they can break through any physical obstacle in a single turn. A physical obstacle enhanced by magic or supernatural power requires the player to expend a point of Satiety. That's an innocuous turn of phrase, until you get to the stereotype quotes. Also, let's take a second to pour some out for stereotype quotes from other corebooks . They're always obnoxiously smug and blinkered, but at least they're not as bad at these ones. Anyway! quote:Vampire: Control isn’t love. Trust me. Oh man! You know why that sounded weird? Because, it turns out, that you're a huge loving creep. Also, aren't Beasts supposed to get along with the other splats? Also, hilariously, there aren't any stereotype quotes about other Beasts. They're solely for other splats. quote:Often only a single feature of the Lurker is visible in the dream; shining eyes, an animal stench, the scratch of claws on a bare leg. The Eshmaki is a nightmare’s nightmare, a thing that avoids form except when it leaps out for the kill...which is of course when the prey wakes up. quote:• Beasts are inherently evil: False. While Heroes like to think of the Children as absolutely evil, the truth is that a Beast is only as evil as her actions. Nice. quote:Werewolf: You watch boundaries. I violate them. Let’s be friends. ?????????? quote:Mage: Met one once. His dreams smelled of old knowledge, ancient and true. So I ate him. Please stop. quote:It’s her freshman year in high school, and some of her friends feel like they’re drowning. There’s more homework, more people, more of everything that makes life hard. She only wishes she was drowning. The water’s where she feels alive. Swim team would help, maybe. But who’s got time? She can’t help lashing out from time to time, letting her real self rise to the surface. She’s afraid someone will notice, but sometimes she wants them to. Sometimes she wants people to know that she’s different and that they should be afraid. Nice. quote:When you were young, you were quiet. People said still waters ran deep. You wouldn’t know. For you, the waters have never been still, even in their darkest depths. You were always set apart. Maybe you lived near the water, maybe not. It didn’t matter. The rush of the tides was always in your veins. And now that you’ve come into your own, you’re both the force of the waves and the thing they hide, the shadow from the deep that claims wary and unwary alike. smdh. Did no one learn the lesson of Aquaman? I guess they kind of did, because they get a grappling bonus. quote:She sculpts statues of famous people. Even other Beasts think it’s an affectation, a callback to the Medusa myth so well-known and well-beloved by the Namtaru. Even so, it’s hard not to notice that the ones she keeps in her studio instead of selling them to the public are twisted in expressions of fear and agony. Truth is, she’s working up her courage with every hammer of the chisel. It’s not a collection. It’s a hit list. Here you can actually see the exact moment in the pdf where the writers were like hey so we kind of made these guys sound like insane assholes, better make some of them tolerable. But remember to keep in that they don't take anybody's poo poo!!! quote:Vampire: You take the ground, I’ll take the sky. By morning, it’s all ours. Good golly. Poor changelings.
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Jun 7, 2015 01:52
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quote:Tyrants are Beasts who crave power, feeding off the act of besting someone and proving their own superiority. They bask in the fear, respect, and trembling worship of those beneath them, whether the Beast is standing at the top of the pyramid or controlling things from the shadows while their subjects tremble at the thought of their unseen king.  quote:A Tyrant hunts in as many ways as there are people to master. A literal hunt provides the quickest route towards satisfying the Hunger for Power on short notice. Finding some drunken thug in a bar and pinning him against a brick wall in the back alley while forcing him to beg for his life is usually enough to satisfy a Tyrant’s immediate cravings, but many consider this a rather inelegant approach to feeding. quote:A Beast is always more than merely human; a Tyrant thrills in reminding those below him just how powerless tiny mortals really are against the stuff of nightmares. Should a Tyrant fail to find proper subjects during his waking hours, his Soul stalks through the dreamscape and brings them subjugation while they slumber. I feel gross. I can't believe someone took the worst and most upsetting part of the Vampire metaphor even further.
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Jun 7, 2015 02:00
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quote:Not all of those who hunger for Power are so straightforward. If a Tyrant considers himself above such brutish displays, he’ll find other sources for what he needs. A corporate Tyrant might feed by orchestrating his own promotion over that of a hated colleague, delighting as he forces his former equal to polish the nameplate on the door of the Beast’s new corner office. A Tyrant lawyer could find herself working in criminal law, feeding from those moments where the opposing attorney realizes he’s lost the case against her superior skill, regardless of whether the accused is guilty or innocent. If his talents don’t lend themselves towards climbing the ladder of power within an institution, a Tyrant will seek out opponents to best through competition. Competitive sports work nearly as well as physical violence, as long as the opponent is invested enough in the outcome to feel the sting and shame of defeat. A more cunning Tyrant may propose matching wits with his victims through puzzles or games of skill instead, engineering situations where he can prove his superior intelligence. Haha, gently caress off. You can't write the Tyrant introduction and then try and pull the Adamantine Arrow Lawyer out of your rear end. quote:Jo doesn’t tower over her prey — she’s short, but she’s all muscle. She enjoys letting other people challenge her, especially men. The challenge isn’t always or even usually physical. Sometimes they try to test her knowledge on topics they think she shouldn’t understand, or try to explain things to her that it’s obvious she knows. She destroys them; she knows what they know and she pokes holes in their beliefs and their facts, showing them sides of the topic they never considered. Secretly, though, she relishes the rare times when a man gets so mad he tries to touch her, because then she can beat him in a way that leaves no room for argument. This is like a mean parody of feminist power fantasies. Who made this, my god quote:Reynold is a health inspector for the city. When his Soul hungers, he dons rubber gloves and tests everything. He quizzes employees, he looks for the slightest bit of mold or dirt, and he happily provides miles of appeals forms to the owner. He refuses bribes and dutifully reports any attempt. He isn’t after money, after all. He’s after the frustration and defeat in their eyes. No comment. No comment. No comment. No comment. No commWHO WOULD WANT TO PLAY AS THIS SAMPLE CHARACTER quote:Makara Tyrants enforce their rule with the very Lairs in which they dwell: as masters of the depths, they have an entire sea of nightmares at their back when they hunt. The victim of such a Tyrant may not even recognize an intelligent force behind his misery when the world starts to work against him, only to find out at the last minute that a keen and malevolent mind has plotted to take him out of his element and into hers. The Makara Tyrant’s Soul rules her nightmarish oceans with the same subtle menace, forcefully reminding her victims of how powerless they are in the Beast’s waters. Stop quote:Ari drives a cab. He goes to the parts of the city that the other cabbies won’t. He knows every bit of the city — the poor neighborhoods where everyone looks out for each other and the rich neighborhoods where everyone’s a stranger. When he feels his Hunger, he picks someone up and drops them in a place they’ve never seen before, a place where just walking down the street will get them arrested or jumped. He never lets anyone die, though. He just wants each little fish to know how far from its home pond it has strayed.  quote:No one wants to get sent to the principal’s office, but especially not with Ms. Blaise there. Ms. Blaise is the assistant principal, but the real principal is just as scared of her as the kids. She has a pet scorpion in a tank on her desk. She always feeds it when she’s talking to a kid in trouble. Sometimes kids cry, sometimes they mumble apologies, but no one gets sent to Ms. Blaise twice. That’s actually a problem for Ms. Blaise — she needs kids to misbehave. She’s hungry, and so is her scorpion. *screams*
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Jun 7, 2015 02:08
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quote:Hunger for the Hoard The Collectors quote:• Beasts are inherently evil: False. While Heroes like to think of the Children as absolutely evil, the truth is that a Beast is only as evil as her actions. ♫ So, extremely ♫ quote:Zmei is a burglar...of a sort. He doesn’t creep in quietly or slip through windows. He walks in, takes what he wants (he’s partial to silver), and leaves. If the homeowner wants to try and stop them, they’re free to do so. If they can stop him, Zmei feels, they deserve to keep their belongings. ♫This has ♫ ♫ no coherent sense of tone or self-awareness ♫ ♫ my god it's dumb ♫ ♫ remember that the beasts are the ones you'll be playing ♫ quote:Yin found a little hollow just off the coast. She swims out there once a day with a plastic bag. She always has something heavy in the bag, and she always comes back to the beach without it. Once, someone from her neighborhood decided to grab the bag and peek in, but no one’s sure what happened after that because a storm blew up out of nowhere. Next time anyone saw Yin, she was walking into the water with two bags. This isn't the worst sample character. But holy poo poo it's the most pointless quote:Anya owns an apple orchard. Each tree has a ribbon tied around the top. Some of them are red, some are yellow, some are green, and most people who visit the orchard and buy her apples assume the ribbons correspond to the specific type of apple the tree bears. But that isn’t it. Anya goes out into the orchard at night and checks the ribbons, reminiscing about the day each tree was planted. The ribbons don’t match the apples. They remind Anya what she buried when she planted the tree. Red for something stained with blood, yellow for something stolen, green for something never touched or tasted. Anya only buries things that will nourish her trees, though. You know what? This one is cool. quote:Humans think that they’re on top of the food chain, preying on animals that are bigger and stronger than they are. But some part of them remembers a time before they were the ultimate hunters, and knows more fearsome creatures see them nothing more than the next meal. Predators remind the world’s self-declared alpha predators that when you catch one of them alone at night, they’re nothing more than helpless, hairless monkeys. So, you might have picked up a certain..enthusiasm for something, in this game. I will let you draw your own conclusions. quote:Darius took his name and his hunting style from a werewolf he met once. He chases down his prey and breaks a bone — arm, leg, neck, doesn’t matter, as long as he can hear the crack. He inflicts pain and fear in his prey and leaves behind a crippled, terrified person...or sometimes just a corpse, depending on how loudly his Soul howls. There was this weird part in the Werewolf 2E book where it talked about a bunch of Hunters in Darkness going to the Rockies every so often, picking a country road, and just straight up slaughtering anyone they found. Weird! i thought, but I get it, because they're protagonists, and not necessarily heroes. They made this entire book out of that one section, and then gave them an antagonist you're forbidden to sympathize with.
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Jun 7, 2015 02:20
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You know what? All of these Hungers so far are pretty lovely and hurtful. But there's hope on the horizon. quote:
Cool. Finally. Retributive justice is ultimately harmful and less useful than restorative justice, but go ahead and beat up some rear end in a top hat murderers or rapists or whatever. Okay? Fine. quote:Patrick and Ahmed are a Makara Collector and a Makara Nemesis, respectively, who fell in love. Patrick placed his treasures at the bottom of Ahmed’s lake, and Ahmed resolved to punish all those who would dare to steal his lover’s hoard. People come to the lake to almost every week, looking to dive down and take the “abandoned treasure.” Of course, Patrick makes sure to spread the rumors about the treasure. That way people come looking, and his lover gets to punish them. FFFFUCK OFFF
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Jun 7, 2015 02:26
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quote:Hunger for Ruin Just shovel more garbage into my brain quote:A Ravager must destroy to feed, and he must destroy something that others value. It’s not exactly the act of violence that he feeds from, it’s the change it causes in the humans who notice. When someone witnesses the destruction caused by a Ravager, or its results, they are suddenly aware of how fragile they are and start to wonder just exactly what will be destroyed next. That state of uncertainty and fear is what satiates a Ravager, leaving those in the wake of his rampage wondering what could have caused so much damage and when it might be back. I love Heroes. I unironically will hoot and holler for any story of Heroes destroying Broods of Beasts. How could you imagine it any other way? How could you not see this? I am baffled. quote:Ravagers can unleash their fury in any number of directions. Most Souls who Hunger for Ruin aren’t particularly picky about their meals. A Ravager might burn down a state-of-the-art nightclub one day and take a sledgehammer to the priceless antiques at an auction house the next without his Soul becoming upset by the disruption. Many actually prefer the chaos caused by such wildly varied hunts, planning their meals such that no one will ever know where they’ll strike next. The easiest way for a Ravager to ensure his desired reaction is to target some symbol of security. Destroying a home almost invariably leave its inhabitants shaken and lost, but leaving gashes in the brick walls outside of a police station might have the same effect over a whole community of people. The Ravager needn’t target a structure, either. Smashing a woman’s laptop might leave her feeling just as exposed as destroying her house, while setting fires in public areas quickly creates the necessary state of panic and confusion. Do you understand what makes Vampires interesting? That it's the tension between the urge of hurting people that they can't control, in the form of needing to drink blood, and the urge to retain their own humanity? That the workarounds and justifications and excuses and striving towards fixing yourself make drama and pathos? Beast does not understand this. This is a broken, petty, parody of nWoD. quote:Namtaru Ravagers do not so much destroy as pollute. Their Souls are pestilent monsters that poison the air and cover everything they pass in vile sludge, or swarms of insects and other vermin. Their human selves create the same sort of ruin, infecting the world around them and feeding as people discover that something once clean and safe has become dangerous to even approach. Their ruin is insidious, because it can resurface long after people think they’ve repaired what was lost. Namtaru Ravagers don’t merely destroy whole forests or fields, they turn them to salt that poisons the earth for decades to come. LITERALLY A CAPTAIN PLANET VILLAIN THIS IS BEYOND UNDERSTANDING, BEYOND MORALITY, BEYOND SANITY
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Jun 7, 2015 02:34
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Onwards!quote:“The gently caress are you looking at, dipshit?” Kyle snarled, standing up and walking up with his hands out in a macho pose he’d probably seen in a dozen tough guy movies. 
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Jun 7, 2015 07:42
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quote:In the light of reason, humans think they killed the monsters. The real ones, that is. The wolf needs their help just to survive. The only lions and tigers are in zoos. Dinosaur bones are strung up like trophies in natural history museums. Monsters are back, baby, and they're here to quote:A Beast is an atavistic throwback, a human being with the soul of a mythic monster, itself a manifestation of a fundamental fear: of the unclean and unknown, of the predator lurking in the shadows, and of forces beyond human reckoning. quote:In order to understand a bit more about the characters in Beast: The Primordial, here are some common beliefs and how they align with the Begotten: Hm. quote:Beasts are born, not made, and reared in a world that instinctively fears them. It does not matter if she is rich or poor, hideous or lovely, gay or straight or somewhere in between. People look askance at what they know is not human even though, objectively speaking, they have no reason to fear. Not at first. I guess that the gleeful, willing malice of the Beasts is what makes them so unpalatable. It's sad that their souls are, from birth, trying to drag them back into being monsters. It's intolerable that they be allowed to exist once that happens, though. There's nobody except the book who can make Beasts sound like things that need to live for the world to be a good place. quote:The Beast and her Soul are one, two aspects of the same being, but their existence is fraught with tension. If her conscious self is the Ego, then her Soul is undoubtedly the Id. Its urges are blunt and instinctual: Hunt. Kill. Feed. Survive. Like the Id, the Soul cannot be reasoned or bargained with, only sated, and she must do so if she hopes to keep peace between them. Unfortunately, what the Soul demands may be abhorrent. Morality is irrelevant to its single-minded pursuit of its defining Hunger. The Predator must hunt. The Collector must take. The Tyrant must rule. These are not cravings; they are categorical imperatives. A vampire who doesn't feed will not wake up. They hurt people because they need blood to live, and if they can somehow find a way to get blood without assaulting someone, then they don't have to hurt people. A beast who does not scare people will end up hurting people anyway. They hurt people because their soul demands it, but it actually doesn't matter anyway because either they go nuts and cause too much fear, or they don't cause enough and their soul overrides their protests and does it regardless. Holy poo poo, did Beast just deprotagonize not only Heroes, but itself?
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Jun 7, 2015 08:04
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quote:Centuries, if not millennia, have passed, but Kinship cannot be denied. Beasts have many ways to aid their cousins and bring them back into the fold: helping feed their Hungers, alien though they may be, augmenting their supernatural abilities, and even teaching them how to walk the Primordial Pathways again. If their bond is strong enough, Beasts can even bring them into their Lairs. Can you even imagine how stupid a supernatural creature would have to be for it to somehow be a pawn of half of the sample characters listed Who the hell is going to caddy for these idiots, and why would they unless it's just straight cash quote:The wolf must hunt. Bound by this law, Uratha embody the Hunger for the Prey; they are blood brothers to Beasts with similar appetites, right down to competition over who is the better predator. Their pack loyalty more than makes up for any conflict, though, if they can be won as friends. Moreover, Uratha have a natural affinity for the Primordial Pathways, which are not too different from navigating the Shadow. The wolf must hunt. Unfortunately for Beasts looking for stuff in common, the wolf is probably not inclined to hook up its prey's extremities to a car battery for kicks or whatever the gently caress quote:The Unchained are extraordinarily secretive and seem to hold the Children in contempt. Same quote:Encounters frequently terminate in violence and vicious rivalry, particularly if the Beast sees through the demon’s human façade. The stories of the God-Machine that Beasts have pieced Good. Demons are cool, and shouldn't have to put up with this. quote:Beasts band together for the same reasons humans do: camaraderie, convenience, and mutual protection. They lack the world-spanning secret societies of mages and vampires, but the bonds they share are far more intimate. Indeed, the brood is Beast society as far as its members are concerned. Each is a surrogate family with its own territory defined by their collective influence on the Primordial Dream and how many people they affect. A brood can host any combination, not just Family members. Even other creatures, such as vampires and werewolves, are welcome to join. Do you know why mages and vampires have world-spanning secret societies? Because it gives their lines weight and stakes. If Vampire didn't have the covenants bouncing off each other, or Mage didn't have the Exarchs and Seers, the games would be narratively inert except for the campaigns that run at the smallest possible scope. Beasts hunt! And...explore...? And...uh... tatankatonk fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jun 7, 2015 |
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Jun 7, 2015 08:15
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I FOUND IT I FOUND THE BEAST WHO FEEDS ON PEOPLE NOT TIPPING quote:A trucker lumbers out of his booth and settles up. Sin-you knows what comes next. He smelled it in the man’s dime-store deodorant, and he sees it in the exact change he counts out over the cash WITNESS ME
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Jun 7, 2015 08:20
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Sorry, I left out the second half of that story because I was so excited.quote:Miles away, the trucker’s mind is wandering up the interstate. The waitress he pinched. The waiter he called a human being. The call girl with the bloody lip. They’re crawling over the walls of his cabin, tearing out soft pieces of his body and screaming obscenities he can’t hear but understands in the pit of his belly. He pulls his rig onto a side road before it slams into a concrete barrier. You know what's bad? Homophobia, misogyny, and physically assaulting people. You know what none of those things warrants, except if you're Judge Dredd? Summary execution. quote:When a Beast is nearly full to bursting, her Nightmares flow. As the Soul grows content and slothful, the Beast wrests away a scrap of its strength. With that borrowed power, she commands fear with the precision of a general. I have not read the Heroes section yet. I cannot fathom what arguments are used to position them as bad people when this is what they're fighting. quote:But as the Soul gluts on the Beast’s victims, its appetites grow more exacting. It won’t take just any gold or murder; it takes Fort Knox bullion and ritualized serial killing. The Soul has no use for temperance when gluttony is a virtue. quote:Starvation is fire. Skin blisters as the Beast forges weapons from her own body, with the hammer of the Soul’s mania shaping her designs. In exchange for pain, the unsated Beast gains focus and guile, and as her Hunger pangs grow, so do her Atavisms. Her irises warp into daggers and venom drips from her claws. She can smell threats that others can’t and sees the labels of friend or foe in every stranger. She becomes the pinnacle of survival, at least until the next meal. So at one extreme you have just being a huge feral monster. At the other extreme, you have ritualized serial killing. In the middle, you have making people beg you for life, or terrorizing them through emotional abuse, or ruining people's cherished items and sense of safety, or just straight up tricking people and then murdering them in the name of justice. What a cool game.
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Jun 7, 2015 08:33
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quote:Luka’s a Predator, the kind who uses every part, from skin to sinew. Zie thinks other carnivores are the best prey, and being hunted in return gives hir a special sort of thrill. Normally zie’d describe hirself as a conservationist, but sometimes the bleeding hearts go too far. The new laws mean a lot more rangers snooping around the woods looking for poachers. If they catch hir with a bloody bowie knife and a bear carcass, zie’ll have to answer uncomfortable questions. Luka’s Soul is hunting on its own now, and it’s acquiring brand new tastes. Ugly ones. This should be said really often: you are not doing LGBTQ people, or feminists, or whoever is standing in opposition to internet trolls/homophobes/MRAs or whatever, a favor by associating them with this. quote:They say that internal affairs is for slimeballs, and that describes Hollis well. He’s always had a strong sense of right and wrong, as well as an unerring eye for to exploit that quality for his own edification. Woe to the cop who comes across his desk, because whether or not she’s right, she’ll always be wrong. Playing that game can be delicate, though, and now he’s faltered. He’s been suspended for all kinds of violations (if only they knew), and the review board’s going to throw the book at him. Starving outside his red tape empire, it’s time for Hollis to make good on his rolodex of spite. Time to show these cops what justice really is. good gravy quote:The Beast who walks the middle path walks a tightrope. Middle Satiety gives her a clear head, neither softened by the sloth of fullness, nor gripped by the anxiety of starvation. But that’s the opportunity the Hero’s waiting for. Half-full Beasts are out of communion with their Souls. The primordial self doesn’t care what side the Beast chooses, but it can’t abide the middle. It wants rage or contentment. It wants anything but boredom. I'm not going to lie: if I didn't know anything about Heroes, I would be insanely confused at this point in the pdf. I would think: So they're the good guys, right? Because they want to stop these monsters, who have to kill, or kill but in really specific ways, or just kill, torture, and terrorize sometimes but not enough to drift to the extremes? Right? quote:Pompeii, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima. These are the Ravager’s fantasy getaways: anywhere the restless dead are anchored by disaster. The Ravager’s not interested in helping them, though. He wants to revel in mass destruction, to make his Lair an instrument of entropy. No better way to learn of death than from those who can’t escape it. Talk about insulting the dead. quote:Fellow Beasts aren’t the only resources the Begotten have, though. Other monsters are the foundations of the World of Darkness, and their secrets are terrifyingly potent. Vampires have spent millennia building a society predicated on one big secret, while mages are addicted to solving mysteries in a reality they think to be a lie. It’s only natural that Beasts would want in on Malkavia plays a big part in my game. It's sad to see it reduced to this  Oh poo poo it's Hero time
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Jun 7, 2015 08:44
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quote:Take a high school bully, mate him with a rabid dog, and a Hero is born. The saying goes that fanatics redouble their efforts when they lose sight of their aims; if so, Heroes are an exceptional breed of fanatic. Their efforts leave no room to be redoubled, and their aims are barely coherent to begin with. I'm honestly at a loss at how to process this kind of cognitive dissonance. This is so unintentionally meta that it hurts to think about. I mean, to normal people, you've just described Beasts. Murderous psychopaths with extremely thin justifications for the terror and pain they inflict. quote:The man at the butcher shop remembers when his neighborhood was safe to walk at night. It’s the coddled kids, he mutters. Whelps raised up without the belt, like the punk who comes in and mouths off about the quality of his cuts. She’s the problem. All the little shits like her. He sees that clearly in his nightmares, in the eyes of the spider wrapping its webs over town. He’ll spread his own webs soon, made from cotton twine and clear, sterile plastic. So, we're supposed to read this and be like man these guys are lunatics! What a bunch of violent nutjobs. Except, they're right, and they're more right than any Hunter ever could be because Beasts supernaturally compel them to focus their anger on the correct target. Like, this is crazy. Those dudes ARE making people feel unsafe, they ARE making weird front organizations, that guy IS loving with people's promotions because it makes him happy and sated. And the Heroes have the problem of not caring about collateral damage, but that's still a way better starting point if you want to fight monsters than your average Hunter cell, who might not even be 100% sure that the person they're targeting is a wizard or a vampire, and not just a guy who never leaves his house. quote:To a degree, the Begotten understand the Heroic drive. Whether it’s for piles of gold or slaughtered prey, Beasts are equally slaves to instinct. The difference between a Beast’s lust and a Hero’s obsession is self-awareness. A Beast knows she’s crazy. She learns to live with it or she suffers. Justifications miss the point of having a Hunger in the first place. A Hero, on the other hand, will twist his brain to rationalize his hatred. It’s the same defense abusers cling to: blame the victim. Understanding that pathology makes the difference between a Beast with a Legend and a Beast with an encyclopedia entry. This is insane. This is abusers blaming the victim and then saying that the victim deserved it because they're not genre-savvy. tatankatonk fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Jun 7, 2015 |
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Jun 7, 2015 08:57
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quote:Incarnate Beast Golconda is uploading your consciousness to tv tropes dot org quote:The Hero of the story is an earthly paragon. He’s the light that holds the dark at bay. He takes up the call to adventure, he learns wisdom and sacrifice, he dies and resurrects. He’s Dionysus, Jesus, and Rama. The psycho loner that you made, remember. When you terrorized people to feed yourself. quote:The Hero has expectations. Forget his delusions and his ego, and even forget the monster that made him a zealot in the first place. It’s not the Beast who taught him how the tale is told. He goes to the movies; he reads books; he plays video games. His culture’s rammed the plot into him since he could understand words. The story belongs to him. I don't even know what to say anymore. The Heroes were doomed by the Beast, obviously. They're responsible, but the text itself denies that they are. The Beast is the actor, but only when they're excused of all moral responsibility to the situation that they create. I don't really want to succumb to easy hyperbole, but this is probably the most frustrating and depressing White Wolf/OPP product i've ever read. Changing Breeds was goofy and stupid and broken, but it didn't invent abusers out of nothing, and then play along in blaming the victims of those abusers.
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Jun 7, 2015 09:10
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Who would want to play this game after reading this pdf?
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Jun 7, 2015 09:11
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illrepute posted:I'm just wondering, is there a contingency plan for justifying the Beast's behavior if they open the door and instead of a bunch of MRA-caricature heroes, there's instead a full division of TF:V guys with tanks? quote:
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Jun 7, 2015 09:21
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I don't know how I missed this onequote:
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Jun 8, 2015 01:09
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Oh MAN I don't know how I missed this onequote:They say children can see monsters. They’re wrong, at least about him. He’s only seen in his day job, as the administrator of a juvenile justice facility. His facility’s got one of the cleanest records in the state. After lights out, he stalks the corridors of the building, seeing what no one else can see, guarding against the dangers the children bring inside with them or foment when given too much time to themselves. He says he’d never hurt any of “his kids”... but cross enough lines and you’re not his kid anymore. or this one quote:Like every one of his kind, he knows what it’s like to be on the outside, but he likes it there very much. He gets to watch people. Happy people. Sad people. Loving people. He sets up camp every night across the street from the only bar in town, and watches the little people go about their lives, blissfully unaware that they share their town with a monster. He’s very strict with his Hunger. He only lets it out every few years, but oh, what a glorious feast. To take one of those happy people and break their neck before they can even stop smiling, and then to feast on the flesh.
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Jun 8, 2015 01:12
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quote:Example of Character Creation quote:Right now, Mrs. Winters looks like a sweet, benign old lady who just wants to protect her neighborhood. At this stage, Magda adds the details that make her not so benign. quote:• Are you a social predator? Magda decides that Mrs. Winters is disinclined to hunt with other Begotten, especially since her primary target is children. She would rather not deal with the judgmental attitudes that other Beasts might bring (or, indeed, expose the neighborhood kids to a Beast with a bloodier Hunger than hers). The snickering from the other players at the hypocrisy in Mrs. Winters’ stance is reward enough for Magda to not take the point of Satiety for the third question. quote:
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Jun 8, 2015 01:23
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Beast doesn't make me want to stop playing nWoD/OPP games. It really, really makes me wish that a bunch of other people would stop playing them, forever.
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Jun 8, 2015 01:43
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV1fUwKMdAI quote:From the Beasts’ perspective, changelings are snatches of the oldest stories, sometimes rearranged or in a different key, but essentially unchanging. In every Ogre is the theme of the Anakim, in every Darkling a refrain of the Eshmaki. Many Beasts feel a closer Kinship with the Gentry than their partially-human servants: vast beings of infinite potential hemmed in by the roles they are forced to play, limited in their expression within the bounds of the world and only free to express their full nature within their own realm. nuke this splat from orbit
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Jun 8, 2015 02:04
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tatankatonk posted:Beast doesn't make me want to stop playing nWoD/OPP games. It really, really makes me wish that a bunch of other people would stop playing them, forever. Actually it kind of does make me want to stop playing nwod game for a while. It just gets worse the more you think about it
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Jun 8, 2015 02:37
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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.
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Jun 8, 2015 02:41
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jim truds posted:Or you could just say "I know beast is terrible but let's play Demon instead. You are both Neo and James Bond. It is fun and had nothing to do with abusing kids." Wanting a very small amount of accountability or concern from the company I support with my money and words is not a bad thing. I would like to see my concerns addressed, because this game makes me feel gross and also makes me want to do other things with my free time. It's pretty reasonable for an adult to want that.
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Jun 8, 2015 03:05
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Melanie is a badass.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:18
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Jonas Albrecht posted:For real? I am having a hard time believing this. Description: Thaddeus is a tall, skinny man in his mid-30s, clean-shaven with pale skin and neatly cut hair. During office hours, Thaddeus wears business casual polo shirts and slacks, and is completely unremarkable. While out hunting monsters, he wears a poorly fitted trenchcoat and a black trilby hat. Thaddeus considers himself a modern gentleman and speaks with an unnecessarily verbose vocabulary, dotted with “chivalric” language he’s mostly picked up from fantasy movies and novels.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:18
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to be fair to beast, it has both a caricature of an MRA goonlord and and an incredibly stupid caricature of what an MRA might imagine a feminist is
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Jun 8, 2015 05:28
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quote:
Somebody hired this person to make a game?
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Jun 8, 2015 17:50
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paradoxGentleman posted:I think I just witnessed something incredibly sad. I hope this person finds the help they need, and a better game than Beast.
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Jun 8, 2015 20:18
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