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MalcolmSheppard posted:If only there was some kind of signal about that context provided by it being a book for Vampire: The Requiem, a game about vampires struggling to maintain a semblance of humanity, that identifies itself firmly within the tradition of gothic horror and described its essentials in an entire other edition, for which these statements assumed familiarity, since the name was assigned to what was originally a supplement for that game. If only. Then there would be more than zero context for anyone who is not a cleverly disguised chatbot or largely interested in performing outrage for an audience so as to signal that they are in fact totally cool dudes. "Performing outrage" is basically the worst way to dismiss concerns anyway, and certainly isn't going to win anyone new over to your way of thinking, so maybe moving on is best, yes.
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Apr 10, 2015 02:10
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Kurieg posted: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. This is pretty much why I'm backing. The fluff with them is exactly as weird and off-putting as everyone is saying, and I can't imagine running a game for Beast PCs, but I actually really like the (correct, if unintentional) reading of them as being basically irredeemable monsters. I think they'll make fun antagonists.
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Jun 3, 2015 17:38
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Kavak posted:I just noticed something interesting on the rewards list on the Kickstarter page, sorry if someone mentioned this: I think they just know that a Geist 2E is going to fall beyond the publication date for Beast, I'm pretty sure it's got to be in planning.
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Jun 3, 2015 21:06
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I sincerely don't have an issue with World of Darkness protagonists being, well, monsters. I don't even really care about the text suggesting they're not-- I feel like that suggests a dissonance in Beasts (whether author intended or not) that I could work with to establish a mood as an st. The hero stuff is sincerely pretty weak, though-- I expect more nuanced and interesting villains from WoD, and I think just using straight up hunters would have made more sense. Would also have turned the question of right to exist back onto the Beasts themselves-- they do awful things to get by, but would they be willing to die to make it stop?
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Jun 4, 2015 19:44
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I hope to have a piece up about this by the 12th on my site talking with Matt directly about the game and some of these concerns directly, and I'm hoping for some good answers there, but my basic feeling here is that this book was reaching really hard to evoke themes like that in Nightbreed (and other Clive Barker works, but Nightbreed's probably the most relevant/most often cited take on horror working through queer themes), but ultimately failed to earn the audience's sympathy. Beasts do bad things and lash out at the world around them, and feel like others just don't understaaaaand them. This is, in itself, not inherently terrible. The issue is, to my mind, that the lashing out ultimately isn't earned. Beasts aren't actually part of some marginalized group, striking back at a world that hates them unreasonably. If anything, they're inherently privileged: blessed with remarkable power with very little drawback save "if you don't use it to hurt people enough, it will use itself to hurt people." This inverts the entire message. I don't at all think this is what McFarland or the other writers set out to do, and that's where the static's coming in. It's easier to assume people just aren't getting what they're going for, especially when the subject material feels this personal (Heroes, in particular, feel like they were written as a form of catharsis for the creators). This doesn't excuse any of the concerns-- I just think the sin here's in mistranslation, not evil intent.
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Jun 9, 2015 08:53
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Yeah, that's what I mean when I say it isn't earned. Beasts primarily look to prey on literal innocent bystanders, which makes the entire queer reading fall apart immediately. They should have played up the Hero-Beast relationship a lot more (and made the Hero the instigator in the relationship), in my opinion.
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Jun 9, 2015 09:05
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Tezzor posted:http://nwod.org/wiki/index.php/Provoke_Wrath I hate to break it to you, but you're just not going to win an argument with Ferrinus. You can rest assured he can deconstruct any argument you may care to make. I guess you could say you're working with a Discipline related to internet argument, and he's working with an Arcana.
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Jun 9, 2015 21:54
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I'm a couple of days late with this (the revision set things back a bit, I think), but I finally got to sit down for a conversation about Beast with Matthew McFarland and got a more comprehensive sense for what his vision is for the game now: here.
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Jun 14, 2015 21:43
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Zak's number one concern is whether people are willing to say nice things about him. Trans people who come to his defense are not only Great People with Good Opinions, they offer him a person to tokenize as "evidence" that he's a good guy - and boy oh boy is Zak obsessed with fallacious proofs for his arguments. I likewise don't think that he's really primarily motivated in attacking people by minority status; it's just that marginalized people on the whole make way easier targets - fewer support structures in place - than straight white dudes, so... In any case, the only way anything's going to get done on this is if the pressure keeps up in a visible way on Paradox for weeks and months to come. I encourage everyone to keep writing people over there and making noise about this.
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Feb 21, 2017 01:36
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Given that they've since employed Zak Smith, I really don't blame him for burning the bridge.
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Jun 19, 2017 11:51
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ZearothK posted:PDS hosed up by not making a Vampire Dark Ages game based on the systems they've developed for Crusader Kings. Really just underlines how much the WW acquisition was some individual executive's pet project, rather than something the company had any sort of vision for.
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Jan 13, 2018 03:06
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Mors Rattus posted:I will note one of the parts of the Pentex book that made me go 'uh, really, you really want to go here?' was the bit where they talk about Pentex-run abortion clinics that use the aborted fetuses, kept alive by dark magic, as incubators for banes, and then laugh at werewolves who kill the bane-babies. BvD: The Next Generation.
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Jan 25, 2018 18:33
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