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It's really not tenable to gauge a game's success based on whether Those People have the right feelings about it. Roleplaying gamers aren't uniquely horrible and it's not on Vampire to morally uplift them. I thought Etherwind's "rant" was a pretty cool story about the roleplaying society he's in and an extremely subdued and reasonable reaction to the actual working title "sexmurder." Like, look at the actual portions of the essay wherein he talks about it, rather than just marking the post's length and making up for yourself what it actually says. That guy could be really goofy and tonally off, but he wasn't in that post.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:57
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Effectronica posted:Trick question, they're all Obrimoi, because Game of Thrones is bad. Oh, you're dead, buddy. You're loving dead. But in the name of which referent?
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Apr 11, 2015 01:07
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I guess if Changeling is going to be Hunter, it's only fair that Beast is going to be Changeling.
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Apr 13, 2015 02:50
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The mage looks down at his hands, puzzled and dismayed. Across the room, his smirking vampire nemesis pulls his hand out of his pocket, revealing the penknife he was holding onto the entire time.
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Apr 13, 2015 04:53
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Man, White Wolf cares about menstrual blood almost as much as........ the posters in this thread.
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Apr 13, 2015 05:14
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I like Apocalypse a lot, too - it's a cool and powerful top-level effect. Meanwhile, I have no idea why Miracle of the Dead Sun exists at all, let alone is castable at three dots. The much lower-key sun-blotting-out ritual from 1E, where you had to actually stand out in the sunlight for a turn or two and got a pall of thick clouds for your trouble, was much cooler. Also, I'm totally for Belial's Brood, or at least hypothetical parts of Belial's Brood, being a bogeyman for the Sanctum in specific as well as the kindred in general. I don't see why Apple of Eden has to provide an experience cost break. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Apr 13, 2015 |
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Apr 13, 2015 05:31
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Yeah, there's really no other logical way to do "Heroes" except as embryonic Beasts (or, for the weak/unlucky ones, Beast fodder). And they should come after you when you're sated, not when you're hungry. C'mon, people.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:36
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What's OP about Atavisms, if you don't mind going into it? My feeling's been that Vampire, Werewolf, and Demon have already muddied stuff with so many overblown, rocket tag-y mechanics that there's not really a reliable baseline to judge game balance by.
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Apr 14, 2015 03:11
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Mors Rattus posted:Easy aggravated damage in several cases, insanely good armor, a lot of costless powers that you can use any time (unless you have Satiety 10, which is insanely easy to avoid having) which get better very easily, especially at low Satiety. Many of these powers are unrolled. One of them, once taken, makes you literally impossible to lie to - any attempt to deceive you automatically fails, period, all the time, constantly. This is a minor effect attached to the rest of the power. You know, I never really noticed this while WoD 1e was still running, but that entire game line must've had really strong top-down game balance control because you almost never got superpowers that were dramatically out of line with, like, the basic numbers established by vigor/resilience/celerity right at Requiem's inception. This applies even to Mage - the problem there was your ability to stack twenty different spells and related effects, each of which actually did very faithfully adhere to the basic standards for dicepool size, combat damage, etc. established by Vampire and continued by Werewolf. I really get the feeling coming straight out of Vampire that whatever oversight existed on that level is just gone, now, so you've got a bunch of writers trying to outdo each other in terms of rhetorical "pop" if not raw damage/soak/completeness of mind control/convenience of teleportation/radius of AoE curse/etc. Also: quote:Also, seriously, please stop having Heroes use internet slang and comparing them to internet trolls. Could we get a quote or two, here, because this is simply wonderful. The extent to which Heroes are goofy standins for basically everyone right-thinking people hate is really kind of embarrassing. I was kind of taking my glasses off and blinking when I saw that someone raising concerns about Heroes over on rpg.net was immediately compared to a men's rights activist ("What about the Heroes" "#notallheroes") by people working on the line. This is the same problem that afflicts that faction of alchemists that got spoiled from Promethean 2E, if anyone remembers them - the Golden Chalice or whatever. You remember, the dudes who are so white, so rich, and so conservative that their writers kind of forgot to make them at all relevant to Prometheans in any way whatsoever?
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Apr 14, 2015 03:28
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Mors Rattus posted:E: a handful of samplings - you can take a power that will constantly, always give you +Lair to social rolls (to say nothing of its boosted stuff). One that lets you constantly, always, costlessly shoot fire that has (Lair)L weapon modifier, can autofire at low Satiety and deals Durability-ignoring aggravated damage for a scene for 1 Satiety. A power that makes you always, constantly, at all times, become impossible to notice if you stand still or are in a crowd. A power that constantly makes your unarmed attacks deal (Lair)L, which can be made into agg damage for a scene for one Satiety. A power that constantly multiplies your Speed by (Lair+2), on top of constantly boosting you in chases, giving you Defense against Firearms, boosting Initiative and, for one Satiety, let you ignore multiple attacker penalties and add Lair to your Defense before doubling for Dodge. (That's not all - that's just some of what it does.) A power that lets you constantly fire off wind blasts, be immune to all weather (including magical lightning bolts), and, for 1 Satiety, summon up a storm that will devastate anyone and everything caught in it for several miles across. (Extreme Environment level 5, which IIRC deals agg damage.) There's several methods of making your fists ignore Durability completely; the Atavism one also lets you punch cars to stop them dead without reducing momentum for the passengers inside. (Or trains, for that matter, if you picked up the trick that increases your effective Size.) And of course the one that gives constant 3/2 armor plus immunity to bone breakage and the Wrack tilts. This upgrades to 4/3 at low Satiety, can utterly cancel out lethal damage that would normally downgrade to bashing, and for 1 Satiety renders you immune to attacks that would normally deal bashing damage and downgrades all normally lethal damage to bashing. On top of the armor. And Lair is your Blood Potency analogue, right? It sounds like Beasts don't actually an equivalent of Essence/Vitae/Mana, but instead just spend Satiety willy nilly? A lot of that stuff sounds on par for the new normal, frankly. Like, a firebolt that deals +Lair damage is probably worse than a pistol that deals +3 damage or whatever. Although I should register here how glad I am that Protean claws got machined down to dealing a piddly amount of lethal damage all the while everything else in the game got cranked up to 11. Dammit Who? posted:What in the ding dong heck is going on here I feel like there's some kind of really fascinating synthesis possible here but damned if I know what it is as of yet.
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Apr 14, 2015 03:58
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Mors Rattus posted:Satiety is closer to being Vitae than it is to an Integrity-analogue. You don't sin against it or have breaking points, you just spend and gain it. At low Satiety, however, it's much easier to gain Satiety - your needs get increasingly specific as you get closer to 10. (If you hit 10, you lose access to all of your Powers for a while. Never hit 10.) To what extent is it even possible to hit 10 by accident? I don't think I "get" why having too much Satiety is supposed to be a bad thing. Does your astral form just pass out groaning on the astral couch in an astral food coma, or something?
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Apr 14, 2015 04:02
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If you think about it, Beast is kind of like a malefic curse cast at all World of Darkness players in general, because now whenever anyone tries to run a non-Demon game at least one person is going to be like "hey can I play a Beast instead? And hang out with the PCs? They're crossover friendlyyyyy~" Question, how do Beasts generally interact? Do they prey on each other or compete for food? Do they have any natural predators or enemies besides Heroes (and their non-Hero victims)?
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Apr 14, 2015 04:12
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Well... what's the actual, given reason for Beast/Demon antagonism? Can you quote it? It doesn't seem like it's totally backwards or stupid - the God Machine's pretty far, conceptually, from humanity's ancient fears of monsters. Then again, I don't see why there'd be antagonism rather than confusion... and even though the modern capitalist hegemony is a monster we've made for ourselves, it's certainly still capable of causing large-scale ruin, dominating people brutally, etc. It seems like even if Demons are totally alien to Beasts they'd still be potentially useful.
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Apr 14, 2015 04:19
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Beasts and Demons not getting along works well thematically, I think. Of course, it would intrigue me more if I liked Beast more to start. I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't allowed to discuss the Beast leak over there same as you can't discuss the Exalted leak.
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Apr 14, 2015 04:37
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Man of Steel was about a platoon of Adamantine Arrows invading a Supernal Realm that had already been claimed by a freshly-minted Exarch. Think about it.
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Apr 14, 2015 04:40
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Kurieg posted:I'm not sure why Demons are getting singled out here, and the "BECAUSE WE SAID SO!" reasons are just perplexing. Demons were never human, and they're manufactured by an impersonal system of control. If we're to allow at all that the various monsters of the World of Darkness are connected on a metaphysical, and not just metaphorical, level, then it makes sense that Demons are the odd never-even-were-men out.
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Apr 14, 2015 04:45
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My friend points out that the most insidious thing about the way Beasts vs. Heroes is currently portrayed isn't just that, as Daeren says, it implies that the victims of reactionary hatred kinda sort of brought it on themselves. It also propagates the idea that it's the conservative reactionaries who are the tough guys and heroes, who are proactive, who really take things into their own hands and exact two-fisted justice. You know, it's not pretty, and it ain't nice, and hell it might be down and out 100% evil and totally unjustifiable, but that makes it no less glamorous!tatankatonk posted:Who wins in a legal battle between the Beast lawyer and the Adamantine Arrow lawyer who fights his war in the courtroom? All I can tell you is that I and every single other poster are going to pretend to be willing to actually devote time and effort to finding out in the course of gameplay!!!
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Apr 14, 2015 05:02
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Demons don't start to melt if people figure out what they are (or, more specifically, if they tell people what they are or if people start to investigate what they are). They start to lose their Cover. And, of course, having weak or nonexistent Cover is only a problem because your vastly powerful and seemingly-omnipresent foe will have a much easier time tracking you down in order to recapture or destroy you, which is totally different from what Changelings have to deal with,
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Apr 14, 2015 05:10
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Lair sounds great, and the kind of environment/keyword matching game it encourages you to play would probably be really fun.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:24
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jagadaishio posted:At least, that's my problem with it. I can't see any reason to play it over the exact same character concept but in Changeling, save for being really interested in the raw power that Atavisms provide. I can't wrap my head around what niche they're trying to fill. Even worse, once Changeling 2E comes out and equips characters of every kith with +10L 8-again thistleblasts or whatever, Beast won't even have that!
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Apr 14, 2015 15:11
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The WoD is definitely about the tension between man and monster and Genius: the Transgression is definitely a lovely, watered-down Awakening.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:36
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I bet that's also a lovely, watered-down Awakening, except at the same time it's a lovely, distilled Dreaming.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:38
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MonsieurChoc posted:Well, ok, let's talk about Mad Science. These things aren't distinct or exclusive at all and every last thing you mention as a "mad scientist" hallmark is part and parcel of Mage.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:48
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But, uh, mages can easily be revenge-driven loners.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:02
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That's not really true. Mage is far more different from Vampire than Mad Scientist would be from Mage. There's pretty much nothing you've listed as a hallmark of mad scientists that the mage framework doesn't allow for an indeed encourage, while the only way you can play Mage and be e.g. a loathsome cannibal parasite desperate to hide their nature from their peers is to be the kind of mage that's explicitly, within the setting itself, derived from contact with vampires! And even then your predations have a mystical, portentous bent that raw, carnal vampire feeding doesn't really touch on.
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Apr 14, 2015 20:15
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Sorry, Mors, I don't buy it. It's a good attempt, but if you look at it you'll notice that, oops, it makes Beast about Heroes and what dicks they are again! Do you horrifically torture people? Or do you, by abstaining from torturing people, somehow give others cause/an irresistible compulsion to horrifically torture people? And it's got all the problems we've already identified - a Beast's appetites look lamer if it turns out it's at least in part sating them just to stop something even worse happening, a weird equivalence is drawn between the forces of progress and the forces of reaction such that both are assumed to want to tyrannize the populace and it's just a matter of choosing which one's aesthetic appeals to the reader more, the basic fact of Beasts getting attacked when they're not doing anything makes them out to be piteous innocent victims rather than primal monsters, etc. etc. The more I think about it, the more tying Heroes to satiety - either end of the scale - makes no sense. Heroes should arise in response to your actions, not in response to your mana bar. There's a weird thing going on with Beast's description/mechanics where the game can't seem to decide if you're playing a Beast or if you're playing a human being who is desperately trying to be the ward/guardian of a Beast. The Satiety mechanics seem to imply the latter, but the powers and flavor text lean towards the former, and things seem to slide from one to the other depending on whether it's most immediately convenient to paint a Beast PC as a supervillain badass or as a tragic victim of circumstance. Also, regading that instant action, permanent soul loss power Mors and Gimp were discussing a few pages back, I don't think it's justifiable as it stands. It doesn't really pass the "would I feel like an arbitrary dick if I gave this to the bad guy" test. Like, you're up against a Beast, and the Beast, with a single curt gesture, makes your soul fall off forever. No, it's fine, you can just go on an extended quest to get it back! So you do, and you come after that Beast for round two, 'cause it's payback time...! Oops, there goes your soul again. See you in a year and a day, or something. And that's if you assume that the power strictly causes fake, psychosomatic soul loss. A mage who genuinely loses their soul - something which, previously, only happened if that mage was totally incapacitated and at the mercy of a Death master or powerful spirit or whatever for a few hours - has bigger problems than all their WP leaking out.
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Apr 14, 2015 23:31
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Oh, yeah, like, I couldn't have done any better. It's just, there's an annoying tendency in the White Wolf fanbase in general to, as soon as something falls under criticism, take a deep breath, type the BBcode to begin italics, and then start writing some prose about how meaningful and moving it is that a vampire hunter's stake has splintered against a Gangrel's impregnable turtle shell or whatever. That doesn't actually help!!
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Apr 14, 2015 23:40
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Rand Brittain posted:Basically, the Unchained don't want your soul; they just need to pop it out and toss it away so they can claim everything else. I always thought it fit, since Changelings don't exactly warp reality in the course of establishing contracts, do they? They just alter fate such that whatever you bargained for tumbles into your lap. Meanwhile, demons effectively shift the whole world into a parallel timeline in which you, rather than your no-good brother, inherited grandpa's fortune.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:07
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paradoxGentleman posted:This narrative doesn't always work for Changeling deals, I think. They can also give Merits such as Stunning Looks, and how you explain that with luck? Part of it's just your acne clearing up and you always having good hair days and catching the light in just the right way, etc, and I think part of it's good old-fashioned faerie magic that glamours you so you're beautiful.
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Apr 15, 2015 00:17
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Emy posted:The fact that it's you posting about Demon: the Fallen reminded me that I had some information on a spreadsheet. Good ole Demon. I believe that the reason this happened was that, among other things, Stamina + Survival was the general "how much raw elemental power can you channel" dicepool, so it was what you rolled to summon fire or water or wind or-
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Apr 15, 2015 12:42
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Can we not cheapen soul loss by allowing it to be inflicted as an uncontested instant action, though.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:04
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The prior edition of Beast (Changeling: the Dreaming) was certainly worse. EDIT: In reality, though, I'd call most of the 1E->2E transitions lateral moves. They're about half and half on fixing or at least tamping down things that were actual problems, and they introduce some cool material, but they also make a few things worse or dumber and discard a fundamental balance and consistency that kept the 1E games grounded, easy to homebrew for, and safe to intermix. Thus far, it does not look worth it to full-on convert to any of the new editions rather than to simply mine them for ideas, but I'm holding out hope for Mage. Actually, my main fear there is that Mage 2E is going to have an incredible foundation but then a ton of goofy overblown crap that only exists to keep pace with Gauru regeneration and Going Loud and whatever else. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 01:22
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Yes, but Beasts are fundamentally part of the World of Darkness, and
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Apr 16, 2015 06:53
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Luminous Obscurity posted:On another note, Matt McFarland brought up the leak in the RPGnet thread, for those curious. Well, I don't really like how the game is shaping up, but I can't fault Matt's response to the leak. Good on him for not going all-in on the kind of "listen, it's JUST the beta, it's not AT ALL INDICATIVE of ANYTHING that-" stance that people often use to defend bad previews/demos/leaks/pre-expansion releases/whatever. Here's what I want to know: what's the full story on the mysterious leaker trying to get a freelancer fired? Were they just trying to pass blame for the leak onto said freelancer, or did they think some specific portion of the freelancer's work was bad and that the leak would bring it to light, or what?
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Apr 17, 2015 00:32
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Bizarre. Either way, kudos again to the WoD folks for handling it well. I gripe a lot about the actual revealed content, but I always appreciate the opportunity to gripe afforded to me by the team's overall transparency.
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Apr 17, 2015 01:15
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Suddenly all Beast playtests are cancelled and the release is indefinitely postponed.
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Apr 17, 2015 01:22
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The City Gangrel spread is really just 'gently caress, we're worse than Brujah.'
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Apr 17, 2015 07:56
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The problem with Bloodlines is that they represent a strict upgrade over a base clan, especially if they're one of the ones that just give you a fourth normal Discipline. Yeah, they give you flaws, but so did Dark Secret and No Phone.
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Apr 19, 2015 02:34
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I completely agree there. My character was in a bloodline in a big Vampire game I played years back, and the way my character, their sire, and their sire's sire dealt with the bloodline curse (you'd uncontrollably transform into a big blind monster in anger frenzy and have a hard time turning back; if you were the oldest member of the bloodline in the local area, you'd be stuck that way indefinitely) was a huge part of the game. I only had the loosest idea of what my bloodline would be going in and my ST really knocked it out of the park (and let me roll up my sleeves and actually develop the mechanics for it as its narrative elements were revealed).
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Apr 19, 2015 08:45
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:54 |
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I just don't understand why it's the enemies of these things that the book works so hard to portray as vindictive reactionary terrorists.
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Apr 20, 2015 18:30
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