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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Behold, the whitest thing ever written. ...until you see the Bone Gnawers one.
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Apr 10, 2015 17:23
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Doesn't that have more to do with culturally/regionally created afterlife models though?
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Apr 10, 2015 20:41
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Antonio could only nod. And then everyone stood up and clapped. The handsome student teacher finally noticed her, and they fell in love and are still together to this day. Beast might be an interesting game for the right group, but good luck finding that group because teen revenge powertrip otherkin fantasy is goddamn catnip for wrong groups. Even if the game turns out to be the mechanically best Onyx Path offering, it seems like it's headed in the wrong direction for me - and entirely the right direction for people I never want to sit at a table with again.
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Apr 13, 2015 16:35
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Mors Rattus posted:You sure can read a lot into things from a single snippet of fiction from a sales pitch. It's more about their decision to lead with what we've seen than what they've lead with, if that makes sense.
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Apr 13, 2015 19:13
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Basically. I meant to type "revenge fantasy" and somehow lost that word.DSPaul posted:I agree. Onyx Path need to realize that we have severe mental scars from having to play RPGs with nerds. Clearly, the only responsible thing to do is revamp their entire publishing schedule in order to eliminate things that nerds might find cool. We need our fantasy games about sexy vampires and awesome magical powers to be a safe, nerd-free space; otherwise, all the cool people might start to think that we're nerds. I think you're being facetious, but substitute "maladjusted creeps who make other players uncomfortable" for "nerd" in your joke and we're essentially in agreement.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:43
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So Lairs are Freddy's boiler room?
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Apr 14, 2015 06:21
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Mors Rattus posted:But no one looked at it and went 'this is the serial killer game.' (I rather like Werewolf 2e, really.) That's because Slasher is the serial killer game.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:40
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Actually the real reason Werewolf isn't "the serial killer game" is because there was more than the killing to the setting. Whereas Beast's looking to be all about providing justification for despicable behavior. Locking teenage girls in your basement keeps internet trolls at bay. Where does the conflict come from? Why these self righteous rear end in a top hat heroes who want to do the right thing and stop you! If Eve hadn't unleashed her squid-soul sea powers, then what? Would she learn that sometimes wadded paper hits people - and they just deal with it? I'm also getting this really uncomfortable vibe that it's Aurora and Colombine shooters with kewl powers instead of AR-15s.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:23
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The Hero thing really feels like a dated jab at Everquest players. And I think Beast might work if the Beast and its host exist in an antagonistic relationship. While the host is satisfying the hunger, he has some autonomy. Maybe he only eats bad people, or steals things that won't be missed. But then if he fails to satisfy the Beast? Black out, go full NPC, and now you get to deal with whatever mess the Beast made while it was driving. The disconnect is that Beast seems like you're Dr Jekyll doing solids for his bro Mr Hyde, and that really loving misses the point.
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Apr 14, 2015 23:48
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I get what they're going for, but it comes across as a sky-type pokébeast with wind-themed moves instead of an embodiment of primal dread. Which might works better with Team Rocket as Heroes.
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Apr 15, 2015 22:41
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Guild drama is like LARP drama that you don't have to leave Fuckers were sitting on a goldmine.
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Apr 17, 2015 05:55
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MonsieurChoc posted:I remember he worked on Orpheus, one of WW's best gameline. At elast, one of the msot consistently good one. IIRC Orpheus, Promethian, and (originally) nHunter were all planned to be limited runs - a core book and then a half dozen or so expanding splats. That honestly seems like the strongest way to deliver material, since you get a much tighter focus than standard treadmill development.
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Apr 18, 2015 19:08
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ErichZahn posted:The sample character we have is a cabbie who drops assholes off in the poo poo part of town and picks them up the second it stops being funny. He's also dropping poor people in gated communities to get arrested / neighborhood watched. Even if he is waiting in the wings to scoop them to safety, the "Hero" here is going to be the guy who gets his cab licence revoked. THE BASTARD.
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Apr 20, 2015 22:41
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It's relevant to remember that nWolf's "mission" was initially more than a little confusing for oWolf players. The huge, world-wrecking antagonists were gone, and now your job is to shepherd and hall-monitor spirits. No, not banes. Just, you know, spirits.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:27
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Attorney at Funk posted:I've said before, and I still believe, that Hunter is the scariest WoD line both in terms of how bleak it is and in terms of how uncomfortable and sinister the questions it asks of its players and player-characters are. Well. It was... until Beast introduced us to jerkoff cabbie and hoodie school girl's lunch period revenge daydream.  Wrap it up, Hunters.
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Apr 21, 2015 20:17
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Pope Guilty posted:There's also a part of me that suspects a lot of the younger players view all RPGs through the lens of D&D/Pathfinder and can't imagine why they would be expected to work against other members of the party (where "the party" = "the Camarilla"), but I can't exactly assign them five-page papers on how the Camarilla has a level of disregard for the welfare of its individual members that the Hierarchy of Stygia would raise an eyebrow at. I think this is a place where showing is going to be much more effective than telling. Don't be afraid to use NPCs to demonstrate what a backbiting, infighting, corrupt, and petty "organisation" the Camarilla is. Throw the PCs in the deep end of the Prince's reindeer games. Maybe he assigns them to "investigate" an innocent vampire with the aim of wrongly executing them. But the framed individual has irrefutable blackmail dirt on the Prince, showing that the Prince is worse than they are! Who do they side with?
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May 14, 2015 15:01
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Holy Christ, there's still a fax machine on the cover.
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May 20, 2015 01:44
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Swagger Dagger posted:Isn't that the same art from an older edition? It is, but the x20 stuff sort-of brings the lines into 2015. He should at least have a first gen 3D printer or a Zune by now.
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May 20, 2015 04:12
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The Grand Masquerade editions plummeted when the collector's V20 came out. It was the exact same book without the gaudy GRAND MASQUERADE yearbook cover.
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May 20, 2015 14:23
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chaos rhames posted:Get your machine guns ready, we're going to hit the blood bank. Vampire: the Masked Raid
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May 26, 2015 12:27
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Just rename the Heroes "Strawmen" and called it a day. Jesus, what crap.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:10
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This whole thing about Heroes resonates with the same vibe I get from disproportionate internet shaming. Except here, the "Hero" is representative of the punching-bag persecutor oppressor who judges and harasses the poor snowflake Beast who is only doing what's in his nature, and trying to be true to himself. So yeah, no level of retaliation is inappropriate or off-limits. Except instead of doxxing him or getting him fired from his job, you have supernatural powers with which to humiliate and kill him. It's alarmingly not self-aware.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:56
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I can't really make this idea more concrete, and maybe someone else can do a better job of it, but Beasts remind me of some of the worst Mommy-Bloggers. It's something to do with their casual disregard for every other regular person, and the grandstanding about how whatever they're doing is Right, whatever the circumstances actually are.
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Jun 3, 2015 20:43
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The Cabal/Nightbreed comparison doesn't really work because all the Midians wanted was to live peacefully. Sure, some were over-zealous in their defense of that community, but they didn't go out into the world and deliberately gently caress with regular people. I suspect that's the comparison Beast really, really wants to make but then drops the ball. It's the kind of thematic disconnect that happens when you use tropes as Lego blocks. We're supposed to see Heroes as the rear end in a top hat cops from the end of Nightbreed, but it fails because there's a strong moral case for destroying Beasts. (Whereas in NB they were essentially a stand-in for bigots or homophobes.) A more concise example is in Karloff's Frankenstein. The Monster accidentally kills a little girl, the village forms a mob to destroy him. It's a tragedy. But Beast wants us to deliberately drown the girl, and then paint the resulting mob as unjustified, pathetic assholes. It's a mess.
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Jun 4, 2015 16:50
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Thanks for elaborating on that, by the way. I guess a lot of the problem in trying to read Beast's themes is that they're inconsistent and contradictory: On one hand, Beasts are described as just doing their thing and then oh no here comes persecution. But then on the other hand, "their thing" amounts to killing, bullying, and harassing regular people. Out of the whole Beast / Hero dynamic, the only relatable people aren't even characters: they're one-dimensional victims. The abused girls chained up in the Beast's Lair, the guy just trying to get home in the wrong cab, or the popular kid about to get killed over an imagined slight. Trying to read in themes of homosexuality (or any oppressed outgroups) has to be out of generosity or optimism. This is magical child molester, school shooter, and rapist territory - and I don't think anybody expected that poo poo from OP. Beasts take what they want from innocent people to gratify themselves. They rationalize those who object as sub-human oppressors, as bad or worse than themselves. Regular people exist only to indulge their inner monster. It's all pretty hosed up. And the game backs up this worldview. I don't like it.
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Jun 4, 2015 18:00
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Daeren posted:You have absolutely no idea how badly I want this to be one of their future lines. There is so much potential in a full-blown body horror line. Freak Legion 20th Anniversary Edition had better be a thing.
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Jun 5, 2015 00:14
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A lot of Beasts inconsistencies and contradictions go away if you look at it as an intentionally misleading player book, along the lines of the Hackmaster PHB, the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, or Red level Paranoia information. The actual reality of in-game is way different than what the players think is going on. They're not primordial manifestations of dread and fear - they're pathetic, delusional weirdos and creeps. The Heroes are only "Heroes" because the "Beast" needs them to be. Because to admit a regular person's power over you acknowledges just how weak and powerless you really are. The Friendly's manager who threw you out for scaring kids? He must be a Hero of legend along the lines of Beowulf or Gilgamesh. Surely no mortal woman could pepper spray you, YOU the Primordial embodiment of fear itself, for groping her on the street. Lairs are hoarder's basements filled with useless trinkets pilfered from recycle bins. You're not Smaug, you're a guy who has convinced himself he's Smaug because the alternative is too dreadful to consider. You've found others like you, who reinforce your delusions in a toxic support group. What's missing is ST material that spells out what's really going on. It's rules from an unreliable perspective, for playing unreliable protagonists in an unreliable narrative. Consider this passage from the King in Yellow: quote:"Come, come, old fellow," he cried, "take off that brass crown ...and there's your Beast. It's a meta-game about the headgames of the most broken losers living in the World of Darkness. You're playing a character whose delusional grandeur has eclipsed their reality.
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Jun 6, 2015 18:13
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The next logical step from Jo is a race-baiting reverse-racist Beast. Or why not a Beast who ruins innocent men's lives with false rape accusations? This feels like watching someone take a slow-motion poo poo in the punchbowl.
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Jun 7, 2015 07:30
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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?
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Jun 7, 2015 13:36
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Am I misremembering, or do most WoD books have a section about player boundaries? I feel like every game but Beast has explicitly said to reel it in when players are uncomfortable, but that example of Beast play affirms the real-world antisocial behavior of ignoring/relishing your real life friends' discomfort.
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Jun 8, 2015 13:22
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The tools are also present to treat Beasts to be horrific, racist stereotypes.The stingy Jew banker who delights in tormenting the working class, the "welfare queen" in her Cadillac, the sinister foreigner here to spread disease and steal jobs. They become the literal monsters imagined by racists and hate groups. And there doesn't seem to be any guidance as to who gets "punished" or what criteria is used. Stealing candy gets you poisoned and suffocated... what violence is justified against those who "assault traditional marriage" or live "alternate lifestyles." Maybe having too many tattoos or tolerating diversity offends a Beast. Who even loving knows. In any case, the game tells us the Beast is Always Right, which is a socially irresponsible message. It's Jack Bauer syndrome on a massive scale.
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Jun 8, 2015 15:01
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I noticed OPP isn't showing us the Monday meeting notes this week. Maybe that's good?
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Jun 9, 2015 02:32
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Luminous Obscurity posted:Did they say that? Because they usually drop around 10pm EST. Do they? I usually notice them in the morning, but maybe it's Tuesday mornings and I'm confused.
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Jun 9, 2015 02:53
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I'd actually put V:tR and V:tM on the same spot ranked against oWoD ranking. Which would be: Wraith / Great War / Orpheus V:tM / Dark Ages Vampire Werewolf / Dark Ages Werewolf DA Inquisitor Mage / Hunter tie DA Fae Sorcerer's Crusade / Demon the Fallen tie Freak Legion Devil's Due (DA demons) Mummy Sorcerer Mafia Kindred of the East / Dark Continent tie oChangeling ... Gypsy (This is counting it as a game if it had its own character sheet.) I feel weird placing Hunter so high, but the line communicated its weird otherworldly nature better than most. Did I get everything? I'm sure I missed somebody's favorite. E: wow dick gently caress you in your tone hole, Monday boss Notes moths fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Jun 9, 2015 |
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Jun 9, 2015 05:07
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Oops, Wild West should be on the same line as Werewolf. Was Possessed its own thing? I thought it was an exploration of spirits and a WtA splat - I didn't count Kinfolk either and maybe I should have. moths fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jun 9, 2015 |
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Jun 9, 2015 05:10
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I think I have Possessed in a box somewhere and now I really want to find it. E: and ugh, someone told me Wyld West was awful years ago and now I feel dumb for believing them.
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Jun 9, 2015 05:20
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Do they police up the comments? Because there's at least two "Gee how are people upset about this great game!" posts mixed in with "I'm glad to hear you're taking concerns seriously!" Like, if I hadn't read the PDF or this thread I'd assume it was just pearl-clutching nonsense instead of Abuser: The Pedocideing.
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Jun 9, 2015 12:43
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Wow, they're really making GBS threads up Dark Eras with Beast? Instead of literally anything the backers of that book actually wanted. E: I misread, it's going into the Dark Eras Companion instead of anything the backers wanted and voted on. moths fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Jun 9, 2015 |
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Jun 9, 2015 14:04
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Vampire also benefits from being clearly fantasy. The vampires do fantastic things that cannot be done in real life, it serves as a reminder that it's a game. People don't get attacked by vampires in real life. But compare that to the imitable violence in Beast. Beasts vandalize property to intimidate. They run over your family's dog. They threaten children. It's like someone saw a neo-Nazi spraying a swastika in a synagogue, and said yes - let's tell a story where that guy's the hero. Beast's ugliness exists in our world.
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Jun 9, 2015 16:31
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Kai Tave posted:What is Beast's elevator pitch? You are an otherkin who genuinely has the soul of a dragon. This gives you powers, which you use to terrorize and kill regular people because dragons are assholes.
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Jun 10, 2015 13:17
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