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Luminous Obscurity posted:In its defense, it's given me some cool ideas for what a cooler version of Beast would be. Someone earlier said that Beasts actually work really well as unassuming antagonists that work their way into your inner circle and use you as a safe way to feed and protect themselves but when the chips are down they're really torturing mass murderers who can break into your house while you're away with no warning and do whatever the gently caress they want because of some nebulous connection to the ur-beast.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:22
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Also, why would any beast in their right mind actually indulge their passions rather than just finding a friendly vampire to pal around with. There's no threat of overfeeding and you can game the system to only get as many dots as you need. I mean sure if you're hovering around 1-3 hunger then an exceptional success will just bounce you up to 9. But if you're anywhere above 5 then feeding the normal way is loving dangerous.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:44
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kaynorr posted:OK, all of that makes sense. So if what you really want to write, then, is Persecuted: The Othering, you have to find a core game activity which can be portrayed as harm- or victim-less, yet provokes self-righteous asshats to come hunt you down. In other words, what's the World of Darkness fantasy metaphor for sex and fetish work? I like to think I'm at least as creative as the average bear, but I'm having a hard time coming up with something. That would be actually good. Instead what we get are people losing custody of their kids because a beast looked at them funny.
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Jun 3, 2015 19:39
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JDCorley posted:Sure, but in Vampire the fiction showed the vampires feeding on jerkoffs and mistreating assholes too, and a bunch of the factions are absolutely about justifying their awful behavior. Like I say, it seems like a presentation problem, not necessarily a conceptual one. The difference is this. In vampire, they are presented as monsters in the text, and it's the characters who are trying to justify their behavior. in Beast, the text is adamant that beasts are innocent of all wrongdoing and that heroes are the real assholes. Beasts aren't compelled to be more moral creatures, and they completely lack a morality stat. There is no difference between a mass murdering psychopath and someone who tortures but doesn't kill. Heroes, on the other hand, are by definition terrible people, because if they were better people then they wouldn't be heroes.
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Jun 4, 2015 00:38
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People have pointed this out to Matt multiple times. Not only has it not been removed from the text, or changed, they were told it was intentional. The only thing that changed with regards to either beasts or heroes is that now there's that rule that Heroes need to be integrity 4 or lower to exist. Probably because he got tired of the "What happens if the 'someone heroic' the beast attracts is a cop or somebody's dad or something" argument.
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Jun 4, 2015 00:55
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JDCorley posted:You'd think there would be more robust mob rules if that were the goal. Or maybe I'm literalizing the wrong thing. It's baffling. You don't engage trolls in mass combat, they feed off of each other and can rationalize away all your arguments because everyone they know is agreeing with them. You take them out one by one because if you can corner a troll in a lie you can destroy them. Which is basically how Heroes work.
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Jun 4, 2015 04:09
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I did some more readings into the mechanics. What I'm seeing is that the reason why beasts feed is because being at low satiety for too long means that your soul is going to go out and gently caress with people. But that's not really "a monster I am lest a monster I become" that's "I better gently caress with people on my own or else my soul is gonna be a dick." You aren't fulfilling some supernatural imperative by making people feel fear. There isn't some greater doom you're preventing by ensuring that mortals poo poo themselves in terror or are forced to fill out convoluted tax forms. You are a nexus of sheer assholery and that will happen with or without your conscious involvement. I have no idea how any beast can see themselves as the put upon party. That said, I think beast does look like an interesting game if you read it as unrepentant, inhuman monsters on a quest to achieve Apex and Myth. Since that gives you a goal to strive for, and should really be more up front in the text and not hidden in the storyteller chapter. As an Aside. Family dinner basically oblivates any beast of needing to use the feeding mechanics, it almost seems too powerful. If you go out clubbing with one of your vampire friends that you have a kinship with. You get 3 satiety, and you don't need to take all of it if you don't want to, meaning there's no risk of going up to 10. And the reading of it also seems to bypass the Ravenous condition.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:18
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Luminous Obscurity posted:A while back Rose actually put up an apology on behalf of WW/OP for how poorly researched (and racist) Scion 1E was, so there is hope Do you have a link to this? Luminous Obscurity posted:Regardless, I think its interesting that the only line that Beasts expressly dislike is the one where you play faceless revolutionaries fighting the ultimate authority, who Beasts view as newcomers who have no place in their world. I really don't get why Demons get excluded from a mechanics standpoint other than them wanting to make sure people play Demon as it's own game for a few years, and beasts are meant to revitalize the other gamelines with crossover potential.
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Jun 5, 2015 19:00
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SunAndSpring posted:I'm still confused by how the author of Beast expect me to hate the Heroes. The way I'm interpreting it, Heroes were just normal people who had a repressed dark side to them, and then after being tormented by the Beast, something snaps inside them and they become obsessive lunatics. That's not exactly grounds for me to unconditionally froth at the mouth and boo whenever I see a Hero. They're just poor saps who got their minds broken by a horrible nightmare monster and now the only thing they can do is try and retaliate against the Beasts. I pity them more than I do the Beasts, who seem to really enjoy what they've become. Because the were at integrity 4 before their unfortunate encounter with the beast. That means that they were already horribly deranged and probably murderers. So you know, they're bad, hate them. Ignore the fact that this rule was introduced after the earlier rules leak, because people were sympathizing with the heroes.
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Jun 5, 2015 22:34
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spectralent posted:I more meant isn't it entirely possible to hit Integrity 4 from exposure to beasts anyway, given their whole traumatising people with sheer monstrousness thing? Yeah, but the book also said that that sort of person is more likely to turn into a Hunter than a Hero, because he actually has a sympathetic reason for being who he is. quote:As noted in Chapter Four, it’s possible to lose Integrity from exposure to the supernatural, but The point isn't that you could create a sympathetic hero. The point is that storytellers are specifically instructed not to. Only create monstrous Heroes that your players can hate. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 22:59
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spectralent posted:Oh, yeah, I get the book says not to, I was just questioning whether there was a logical reason other than "the book says". Because the book is full of informed attributes that run counter to what you'd think would happen. After the homecoming the soul and the beast are one, it's desires are their desires. Not once in the book is there evidence of a beast railing against their soul. The three endgames of Beast are "merge with your soul in the physical world", "Say gently caress the physical world and ride your soul like Falcor off into the collective Unconscious", and "Become a fear god" nowhere in there is "Sever your connection to your soul and become human again". And there's no real reason for a beast to want to, not feeding just means you get hungry and your soul goes out to gently caress with people on your behalf. loving with people consciously still causes spiritual damage to them. Actually managing to sever your connection to your soul (which is hard, but possible, though it means you're dead) just means it finds a new meat puppet to use and carry out it's desires. So why does the book keep saying that Beasts are the good guys? Beasts should be unrepentant, inhuman monsters. They are the villain of the story, they are also the player characters. Make the Heroes be actually heroic, have them made of sterner stuff, have them rise up to fight against the tyrants that predate upon the modern nights. And then have the beasts kill them. You are spreading fear, You are sowing terror, you are doing this because it feels good. Your end goal isn't to make the world a better place, it's to achieve spiritual apotheosis and become more than the sum of your parts. To tell Campbell to take the Heroes Journey and shove it up his rear end. This isn't a tale with a happy ending. You aren't some monster to be slain. You are a Myth. And this is your story. Unfortunately that's not what the book wants.
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Jun 6, 2015 01:16
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CommissarMega posted:Point taken; I'm just going by the basis of the general sentiment that Beasts are monsters, yet supposed to be the good guys- if that's the case, we'd need worse guys. The rules for hero creation are in the book, it is however adamant that you should never ever play a hero. And you don't need "Worse guys", you either need to make your "Good guys" actually contribute to the world something that makes them worth keeping around, despite their terrible nature, or you need "Better Guys" so that your evil PCs have someone to properly thwart. The game touches on the first point, implying that keeping humans in touch with the primordial dream is important, but never explains why, or why they have to do it through inflicting fear and terror. The answer is because doing otherwise would step on changeling toes, but that's not the point of this discussion Kurieg fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Jun 6, 2015 |
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Jun 6, 2015 14:42
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Frankly I don't see why an Uratha pack would ally itself with a Beast. The game says that beasts are literally fountains of fear, terror, and suffering resonance. That isn't going to lead to a very healthy spiritual landscape by ANY definition.
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Jun 6, 2015 17:23
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Mr.Morgenstern posted:Wait, so you can satiate your hunger by being as petty as possible? Is it possible to satiate yourself by not tipping your waiter? Is that what we have going on here? If you're at low satiety (but not 0) you can feed by being an impulsive petty rear end in a top hat. At high hunger you basically need to enact the plot from Saw, unfortunately doing that will also probably kick you up to 10 which is stupid and dumb for it's own reasons.
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Jun 7, 2015 02:51
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Honestly, yeah, the pure would group up with the Beasts. What better way to weaken a rival pack of Uratha than to have a beast go and dump nightmares on all their friends and family and leave the local spirits a nice big fear-meal.
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Jun 7, 2015 03:11
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Daeren posted: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. Was that the period when he wrote the short story where a kid killed a werewolf with his silver plated wheelchair or something?
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Jun 7, 2015 04:45
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Dammit Who? posted:Jo is a straight up antifeminist trope, the trapdoor spider who goads men so that she can unjustifiably destroy them. Beasts are feminists and gay people written from the perspective of their enemies, as tinpot dictators in tiny fiefdoms who exult in crushing the helpless and adopting a mien of aggrieved innocence when challenged. The worst part of this is that their detractors are played straight and legitimized by the text. That guy on tumblr who talks about how people are out to get him. He's right, and he has super powers. And he was injured by the monsters not because of any particular failing of his, but merely by his proximity.
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Jun 7, 2015 05:12
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Loomer posted:I am legitimately stunned every time I go to the official oWoD forums. Some of the opinions are just loving bizarre and can't be supported by any reading of the source texts, the subtext, or the genre. That's without getting into specific concerns (one I see constantly is this idea that the Setites, Assamites and Baali are all completely interchangeable and redundant), the constant substitution of people's fanon in discussions about 'canon' stuff (e.g., discussion of the role of justicars in the Camarilla as an example. Someone will come in and say that in his game, Justicars are actually the servants of the Inconnu, the Camarilla doesn't exist, etc, and not see it as a derail) and the enormous amount of love for 1E and 2E. That's a common problem with the White Wolf Forums, people absolutely insist that their headcanon is correct, and normally get offended when you point out they're wrong. There was this one guy I remember who had this ridiculously complex setup where there was no magic, mages didn't exist, and everything that vampires and werewolves could do could otherwise be explained "Scientifically". (he also thought that the Baali were the best thing since sliced bread since it let him freak out rape and abuse survivors, funny that) Loomer posted:Yeah, M20 was a pretty solid execution of the change, I have to admit. I disagree with some of the choices made but having the options as the devs see them was interesting. My concern is that they won't take the best from M20 for C20, and it's mostly to do with the nature of that particular game and with Blackhat's recent work on Beast. That and I love the idea of CtD and have always been wretchedly disappointed in the execution. Yeah, Changeling strikes me as one of those games that sounds like it should be about one thing, but every single play experience I've heard has been about something COMPLETELY different, usually something grognardy/terrible.
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Jun 7, 2015 05:37
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Of the top of my head (since those threads are lost to the mists of time) Werewolves and Vampires were "mutants', which he used to explain away all of their physical abilities, including werewolves being able to breed with wolves. Werewolves gained mass by sucking in carbon dioxide from their environment and solidifying it. Werewolf magic abilities were actually them exuding halucinogenic pheromones to make people *think* they did things leading to his hilarious defense of "WEREWOLVES DO NOT FART THE UMBRA! IT'S HALUCINOGENS!" Also probably the best thing ever was his explanation for Dominate. Vampires firing neurons out of specialized neuron-guns in their forehead, that went into peoples brains and took them over from the inside. We spent about 2 months trying to explain to him all the various ways in which that wouldn't work before he got banned for suggesting that we were all "pussies" for not wanting to roleplay out raping small children for shits and giggles in his Baali game.
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Jun 7, 2015 05:56
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moths posted:So what happens if CPP doesn't want to be attached to a game focused on being a hateful douchebag? Do all the nWoD serial numbers get filed off and it still goes out the door as a stand-alone? OPP? I don't think they can, the problem with beasts is that they're heavily entwined with every world of darkness gameline. They'd need to jettison everything except the mechanics (which are good) and start from scratch. CCP? I doubt they even know what the hell is going on with the World of Darkness license these days.
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Jun 7, 2015 14:40
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I love the game for having a power that lets you vomit fire every day for no cost, and for having an ability called "BEHOLD MY TRUE FORM" that requires you to make eye contact with your enemy and rant at them to deal purely psychological damage. But then everything else about the game happens. Pope Guilty posted:I'm surprised it's not already in FATAL and Friends tbh, especially after those excerpts upthread. I'm waiting until the finalized version of the book comes out. At the very least.
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Jun 7, 2015 16:30
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Mormon Star Wars posted:"But what if killing me makes you the real monster?" "I am a plumber and you are a giant squid that tricks people into swimming in a lake so you can 'punish' them by either drowning them or snubbing them on instagram." Now I'm envisioning Bowser as a beast, with Mario as his Hero. Does Beast have go-kart rules?
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Jun 7, 2015 18:15
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Matt's at Origins, too. He posted something earlier today saying he'd talk more with people about this when he gets back. quote:It seems some of you have gotten confused, and are operating under the assumption that Beasts aren't the good guys of their game. So let me clear up some points of contention.
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Jun 7, 2015 22:41
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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. Yeah that was a joke post... not sure if your confusion is a good or bad thing. paradoxGentleman posted:Well guess what, if an exceedingly high number of people are having trouble seeing your characters as the good guys, maybe they are not as good as you think they are- At one point in the RPG.net thread I think he called everyone who didn't like beasts "heroes in training". I would not be surprised if he's banking on people internalizing the narrative. "Hey, mages like beasts, werewolves like beasts, they're cool people. You want to be a cool person too, right? Well then sounds like you better like beasts."
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Jun 7, 2015 22:53
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I do like the implication that Beasts are the collective unconscious of humanity crying out for a savior, and Heroes are the collective consciousness of humanity going "Okay apparently we need to be slightly more specific."
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Jun 7, 2015 23:30
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LatwPIAT posted:Got a link to that? This is the thread quote:OK, I'm not going to post in red text, because I'm very much a normal poster in this thread, but as a request - could we tone down the "OMG HEROES ARE FIREMEN WHY DO YOU HATE FIREMEN" stuff a little? Because that's really obviously not what we're going for, and frankly the question of why Heroes are called Heroes has been more than adequately answered.
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Jun 7, 2015 23:54
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tatankatonk posted:Oh MAN I don't know how I missed this one "I only need to feed every few years, gently caress what the rules say." that or he sits at Satiety zero for a LONG time. Nightmares for EVERYBODY.
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Jun 8, 2015 01:21
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Daeren posted: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- Of course not, they're long past Implying. NutritiousSnack posted:I have legitimately no idea how, but this book is worse than changing breeds or that gypsy supplement. Let's not go saying things we'll regret.
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Jun 8, 2015 01:39
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MonsieurChoc posted:Let's not says things we're going to regret, here. Gypsy was a giant ball of racism that still sort of fit the tone of white wolf at the time. Changing Breeds was a bizarre game of playing super sexy animal people who had lots of sex whenever they weren't being compelled to poo poo on people's lawns while maintaining eye contact because someone smoked a cigarette in front of you. Beast is a game with decent mechanics that's currently being brought down by it's fiction. They're all terrible, but for different reasons, arguing about which is "Worse" is missing the point (and it's also sort of an opinion) I think the reason why beast "feels' like it's worse is that it's not out yet, people have been telling BHM about these problems for 3 months now, and his constant response has been "Nope you're wrong."
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Jun 8, 2015 02:10
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tatankatonk posted:
Oh look something happened while I was trying to properly word that last post. loving hell Matt. Night10194 posted:My father is a doctor. He does medical witnessing for child abuse trials as one of his specialties. So all my life, I have heard about the absolutely awful things some broken and damaged people do to helpless children. A game about glorifying it, or 'Hey, now we can twist the kid she poisoned and possibly killed into something she'll feel downright great about murdering after she tortures him more by making his house unsafe and horrible for him' makes me so angry. So goddamn angry. If he doesn't post an article tomorrow about how they're going to rework most of the book then someone at OPP needs to take him to task about this crap. It glorifies abusers and most of their interactions with other splats is "Hey you guys should be more like me because I'm loving awesome." I mean poo poo, that line from earlier about telling promethians they should murder more people goes against most of the entire point of Promethian. But he's a Beast, so he's right. See? the book says right here.
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Jun 8, 2015 02:21
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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." Also your characters hate beasts. I mean, that would happen anyway, but still.
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Jun 8, 2015 03:03
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Rand Brittain posted:When you get right down to it, Beasts' carefully-constructed compatibility with every splat does pretty much make them better matches for the evil versions of those splats than the good ones, doesn't it? The only tribe among the forsaken who would even give the Beasts the time of day are the Hunters in Darkness, because Beasts basically stole Black Wolf's schtick down to the letter. How the pure would react depends on the specific beast they're interacting with. Ivory Claws would be fine as long as they keep away from their bloodlines. Predator Kings would probably get along fine with the more violent and direct beasts. The Fire-Touched would probably try and control the Beasts somehow. Or get mad at them for loving up the spirit world.
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Jun 8, 2015 04:00
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Pope Guilty posted:that fuckin' bitch trying to get back what was stolen from her and trying to get home to her body! she deserves to be in a neverending nightmare of a coma dream! If she'd just let herself be victimized none of this would've happened! Even the guy who brings that up renegs on it later in the argument once he realizes that there's literally nothing else for her to do. The beasts have put her in hell and there's nothing else she can do but fight against it. Hell, she's also an example of Heroes being altruistic. Other heroes let her steal their kills. Killing beasts is how Heroes get their powers, and they're letting this poor little ghost girl kill their monsters because that's the only way she can go on existing.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:15
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So, towards the end of that rpg.net thread, things get.... worse.quote:
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quote:Preying on the fear caused by that honesty is monstrous. quote:I would argue that it's no more monstrous than the way humans treat the animals we eat, though. Cue an entire page of poo poo I'm not going to requote. quote:So humans are worse than animals, because we're better than animals, so when we aren't better than animals that makes us terrible, while animals get a pass for being terrible because they're animals.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:39
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Kellsterik posted:How would I build Shrek and his nemesis, Lord Farquad, in Beast: the Primordial? Farquad is the beast, I don't know what kind, some kind of reverse-collector? Shrek is the hero trying to bring him down. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jun 8, 2015 |
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Jun 8, 2015 05:48
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Thinking about it, the other thing that separates Beasts from Vampires is that you can take blood from someone without killing them, but all of a Beast's methods for feeding seem like the kind of thing that could give you PTSD and gently caress you up for life. Xelkelvos posted:So I take it literally autistic (or close to it) people are the ones missing the entire problem with Beast then? Or at least taking part in the Beast defense force? I highly doubt they're actually autistic, mostly because they self identified and used it as a defense of their actions. Cause how dare you argue with a poor autistic person, they know not what they do... Oh no, I'm the hero now. Cabbit posted:This book is probably going to be the litmus test for recruiting new players for years to come. If someone asks to play a beast in a crossover game just kick them right the gently caress out of the group.
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Jun 8, 2015 05:58
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Calde posted:Does a beast feeding take away a point of Integrity for sure? If there's a rule for that I'd like to see it, I thought it just provoked a roll on the Breaking Someone's Psyche table. I can't believe I had to type that but here we are. You're right, the game treats it as an almost certainty though. Probably because the person is going to be getting several rolls over the course of the night as the beast enacts their elaborate ritual.
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Jun 8, 2015 06:59
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Luminous Obscurity posted:I didn't know SMG tradgamed. For all the good points he has, I still don't think "well at least I don't kill people intentionally" is an excuse. (And entrenching your monsters within the mechanics and structures of society that allow the strong to oppress the weak is already a thing vampire does.) Beasts need a reason to exist given in the text, a justification for the crimes they commit. If all their murdering, torturing, and owning people on the basketball court with the power of existential dread is simply for their own self perpetuation then they don't have a leg to stand on in the "mean hero won't just lay there and take it" argument.
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Jun 8, 2015 14:12
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CommissarMega posted:Honestly, I for one would like Beasts more if they were unrepentantly dickish. Maybe you want to be Snidely Whiplash, maybe you want to be O'Brien from 1984. Whatever, you're a bad guy, the worst of the worst, go forth and do your thing. Slashers are playable, after all. That would work too. but as long as they're hell bent on justifying the Beast's actions then they need to actually justify them. Saying they're justified while a beast murders people for wandering near his lake because they might be there to get his girlfriend's treasure is just idiotic. MonsieurChoc posted:After thinking about it while trying to sleep yesterday, I think I get what they were going for. Now, apparently Beasts are meant to be a stand-in for marginalized group, with Heroes being a stand-in for the bigots who hate them for no adequate reason. So why then have the Beasts do terrible acts, justifying the Heroes? Well, look at Republicans and Fox News. They loathe homosexuals and think that what they do is unnatural and horrifying. The terrible acts of the Beasts are not meant to be a metaphor for what marginalized actually do, but rather for how the bigots SEE those acts.
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Jun 8, 2015 14:42
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spectralent posted:I've seen it argued that not all Beasts necessarily go around tormenting and murdering people and some of them pick retributive targets. Given the ratios, though, I'm not sure how good an argument it is. One of the beast hungers is literally the hunger for Punishment. It's unfortunately one of the more vaguely defined hungers and it bleeds over into the Tyrant and Predator hungers a lot. It also doesn't help that one of the sample characters has an elaborate setup manufactured to create 'lawbreakers' who he can punish. quote:Patrick and Ahmed are a Makara Collector and a Makara Nemesis, respectively, who fell in love.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:10
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