|
Kavak posted:How did McFarland write Demon again? Did he, really? I'm wondering this myself, are we sure DaveB or Rose didn't ghost write it?
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 14:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 07:41 |
|
|
Count Chocula posted:No wonder every modern adaptation tries to change or subvert it. It's also explicitly gay, it loving rules
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 17:55
|
|
|
The Sin of Onan posted:Gilgamesh is good. It is also the only legend I know of to feature a man throwing a bull's arse at a goddess. But Mesopotamian myth is weird in general (see also; the myth where Inanna is so proud of either her sheepfold or her vulva - the words are the same in Sumerian - that she decides to show it to her father, who agrees that it's the best sheepfold/vulva he's ever seen, and then throws a party for it). Much comedy ensues. I find it makes a lot more sense in the context of Inanna being weapons-grade crazy and threatening to open the gates of the Underworld to unleash a zombie apocalypse whenever she feels even the least bit slighted.  : "Hey. Uncle Dumuzid! Look at my lady parts! Aren't they the best lady parts? I bet you couldn't find a vagina as perfect as mine anywhere in creation!" : "Um, Inanna, this really isn't appropriate behav-" : *Gates of Hell begin to groan and strain under the weight of the ravening horde*: "You know what, you're right! You have the best vagina in all the cosmos! Why, *I'd* touch it, and I'm your uncle! Let's throw it a party! Please don't destroy the world"
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 18:05
|
|
|
I'm probably going to abandon my Book of Artifacts review soon (I still want to cover the magic item creation section) and I'm curious about the first edition of Cyberpunk (or Cyberpunk 2.0.1.3. as it's otherwise known). The only problem is that I can't find any copies-not even Drivethru seems to have it available.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 18:06
|
|
|
LordAbaddon posted:I'm wondering this myself, are we sure DaveB or Rose didn't ghost write it? Rose co-wrote the Demon Core book, but Matt was lead writer on most of the supplementary material and it's all very good.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 18:28
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Rose co-wrote the Demon Core book, but Matt was lead writer on most of the supplementary material and it's all very good. Thats what makes everything to do with Beast so confusing. How can the same man do both? Is this what happens when someone buys into their own hype?
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 18:30
|
|
|
LordAbaddon posted:Thats what makes everything to do with Beast so confusing. How can the same man do both? Is this what happens when someone buys into their own hype? It can happen, and sometimes a good work is a fluke (i.e: Utena is good, everything else done by Ikuhara is awful) of an otherwise mediocre or bad writer.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 18:40
|
|
|
LordAbaddon posted:Thats what makes everything to do with Beast so confusing. How can the same man do both? Is this what happens when someone buys into their own hype? Some writers just can't kill their darlings, and some writers work well off of an established state. Demon is good, it's easy to make good things when the foundation you're building on is solid. Beast needs a lot of work and Matt needs to at least accept the reality that the harsh criticism might not be unfounded. I understand that they have kickstarter obligations to fulfill but I'm not looking forward to being the one man tasked with rubbing BHM's face in mess he keeps making. It is worth noting that unlike Beast, Conquering Heroes has absolutely zero reviews on DTRPG, and the only comments on it are choice quotes from the character description of the Blind Man (Which is a thing I would thank everyone to not spoil, it needs to be experienced properly) so it seems other people are at least realizing that this isn't healthy. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jan 16, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 18:47
|
|
|
I can only assume having to follow guidelines and rules that someone else had helped set out made things work.Robindaybird posted:It can happen, and sometimes a good work is a fluke (i.e: Utena is good, everything else done by Ikuhara is awful) of an otherwise mediocre or bad writer. McFarland had done a lot of stuff before this that wasn't bad, right? I know writers often go overboard or wallow in self-indulgence when let off the handle, but the sheer plunge in quality is what's shocking people.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 18:49
|
|
|
Kavak posted:I can only assume having to follow guidelines and rules that someone else had helped set out made things work. Yea, some people really do need either editors or collaborators to reign them in - LKH's Anita Blake series went off the rails when she got successful enough to pick her own editor (who fawns over her and basically doesn't even touch the text), Kojima really does need someone to come in and trim the fat, etc, etc.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 19:06
|
|
|
Beast: Dare you enter their Magical Realm?
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 19:49
|
|
|
I have this problem where i can't just let a terrible thing be terrible, so i've been thinking about Beast for a while now. Does anyone else think the titular Beasts are kinda luddite-ish? Like moreso than any other NWoD sourcebook we've done? They're creatures that do a job that may have been necessary once but is now actively making things worse, they swear up and down that they're necessary, and their main antagonist's big plan is just to get rid of them. I dunno, I can't help but think that with a refocusing of the narrative and them being something other than "ordinary human who can scare people", it could work. I mean, it's a potentially sympathetic motivation? Or maybe it couldn't and i'm just a dumb. vcvcvc12 fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jan 16, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 20:17
|
|
|
Everyone comes up with a way to try to salvage Beast. The problem is that Beast we've got is not really worth saving.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 20:29
|
|
|
Seriously this thread is littered with reworks of Beast in a desperate attempt to make it a good game. Let it go.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 20:30
|
|
|
At this point all Beast deserves is a total rewrite from the ground up, and possibly being turned into hunter or mage antagonists.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:09
|
|
|
Double Plus Undead posted:Seriously this thread is littered with reworks of Beast in a desperate attempt to make it a good game. Let it go. Yeah ok good point. I still don't get how someone could be so incredibly tonedeaf as to make more Beast books. Did anyone actually buy into the idea that these kinds of characters could be interesting? I just went to look at what other forums said about it and apparently the answer is yes. Wow. I mean i should expect that from the internet by now but still. vcvcvc12 fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jan 16, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:11
|
|
|
vcvcvc12 posted:Yeah ok good point. I believe Beast actually sold pretty well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:16
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I believe Beast actually sold pretty well. Thats extremely disappointing for humanity
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:19
|
|
|
The Kickstarter petered out much faster than their other big ones, though. And like Kurieg said, this thing took a day to reach Bronze status on DTRPG, a unique achievement for an Onyx Path book. So it's still selling, just not at the numbers a good CoD game would.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:21
|
|
|
And I wonder how much of it is a misguided attempt for revised Changeling, Geist or other books people were more interested in (Geist had a great concept, just poor ideas on how you're actually suppose to play it) - like how Capcom tried to get people to buy unrelated games so they'd publish the ones people actually wanted. I'm someone addicted to trying to rewrite bad things and Beast is impossible without scrapping everything but the name.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:21
|
|
|
Honestly, I don't see any aspect of Beast that makes it worth a rewrite. It's almost as bad as that Gypsies sourcebook, the one not-so-horrible thing being that the powers aren't literally drawn from negative stereotypes.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:23
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:And I wonder how much of it is a misguided attempt for revised Changeling, Geist or other books people were more interested in (Geist had a great concept, just poor ideas on how you're actually suppose to play it) - like how Capcom tried to get people to buy unrelated games so they'd publish the ones people actually wanted. I'd rather have a new Street Fighter RPG.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:25
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:Honestly, I don't see any aspect of Beast that makes it worth a rewrite. It's almost as bad as that Gypsies sourcebook, the one not-so-horrible thing being that the powers aren't literally drawn from negative stereotypes. There aren't any. The idea of being a mythmaker whose job is actually really complicated, sympathetic, or weird and getting inserted into a gothic crazytown is a neat idea, but that's never actually been what Beast is. Beast has always been an irredeemable pile of poo poo about justified violence and wallowing in enjoying 'deserved' harm, which is awful.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:29
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:There aren't any. The idea of being a mythmaker whose job is actually really complicated, sympathetic, or weird and getting inserted into a gothic crazytown is a neat idea, but that's never actually been what Beast is.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:32
|
|
|
I posted it elsewhere here or in the WoD thread, but my ideal game of that type would be that you're a muse. You're a dragon or sharktopus or whatever. Everyone sees you as human. In the day you live a normal life. You watch people. You *like* people. You inspire people. Kind of a reverse of Disquiet where your presence helps a community or location via your inspiration and the stories and dreams you bring about at night. And then one day, someone sees through the disguise, panics, and now they're coming after you because they think you eat people. You have powers, you have the script, and they're playing the Hero's role, which gives your misguided attacker a bunch of power over you. Now you have a choice to make. How do you deal with this? You've got the script, like I said, and you could break the story however you wanted, but being a genre savvy rear end in a top hat monster like the Beasts makes for being a bad story and the person you're up against maybe doesn't deserve that, anyway; this is the World of Darkness and they have no idea you're not a monster. So now you have to deal with the easy temptation to rewrite the hero as a strawman and destroy them, or find some better way to a better end and a new story for both of you. Wouldn't fit in the WoD, wouldn't even be the kind of game you can run that many times, but someday I'd like to write that for somebody. Also not quite Changling since it escapes the abuse metaphor. My idea would be more of a cosmic employee than a terrified survivor. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jan 16, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:37
|
|
|
The only real springboard for a salvaged beast is also the one I've seen like fifteen times via independent sources by now, where Beasts are more like Grigori from Dragon's Dogma and exist to forge properly good and heroic people via testing them, and the win condition is when you get got by a worthy foe. Of course, you'd have to burn down so much of Beast to get to that as your base premise that you're actively hurting your pitch by associating it with Beast as it actually exists. Believe me, I tried for months to rewrite both the mechanics and the fluff to make it happen, but it honestly just doesn't deserve the legitimacy bestowed by having someone put the effort in. The kindest thing you can do to Beast is poach the few mechanical innovations it made that were either good or a novel stab at an idea, and leave the rest behind.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 21:46
|
|
|
And seems like all the good ideas are covered by Better Angels
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 22:02
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:I believe Beast actually sold pretty well. A lot of Beast's numbers came from people who had already committed to buy it off the Kickstarter and what, are you going to not redeem the thing you already paid over retail for? Most of Beast's reviews are glowing and came from *before* the book came out, meaning it was entirely kickstarter backers. Conquering Heroes is probably a better metric for what people actually think of Beast.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 22:44
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:A lot of Beast's numbers came from people who had already committed to buy it off the Kickstarter and what, are you going to not redeem the thing you already paid over retail for? Most of Beast's reviews are glowing and came from *before* the book came out, meaning it was entirely kickstarter backers. Conquering Heroes is probably a better metric for what people actually think of Beast. This is comforting and good to hear.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 23:05
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:This is comforting and good to hear. My expectations of other people took a huge hit from last year. I wouldn't hold my breath for anything.
|
|
#
?
Jan 16, 2017 23:30
|
|
|
Daeren posted:The only real springboard for a salvaged beast is also the one I've seen like fifteen times via independent sources by now, where Beasts are more like Grigori from Dragon's Dogma and exist to forge properly good and heroic people via testing them, and the win condition is when you get got by a worthy foe. Dragon's Dogma in the dragon's role as a P&P game is still a really rad concept that I hope someone does eventually. Though I think it would ultimately be best off in some other system than WoD, and not just to avoid association with Beast.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 00:30
|
|
|
The main problem with trying to "fix" Beast is that once you scrape away the offensive crap, you just don't have that compelling a game; just another boring nWoD/CofD/OP* rehash of Campbell monomyth, horror movie cliches, and a narrative that talks a big game about playing a-monster-but-not-really. It's for the same reason FATAL is unfixable; once you get past the juvenile stuff, it's just another boring fantasy heartbreaker with archaic rules. At this point it's only fun for gawking at, and even that's starting to wear thin. "Oh look, on page XX the author compares CPS workers to the alt-right." *yawn* *there must be some law where the number of acronyms a game line goes by is inversely proportionate to the quality of its product
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 00:36
|
|
|
I'm gonna go to bat for Conquering Heroes - it's terrible in new and fascinating ways! Just trust me on this.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 00:37
|
|
|
Simian_Prime posted:At this point it's only fun for gawking at, and even that's starting to wear thin. "Oh look, on page XX the author compares CPS workers to the alt-right." *yawn* "starting to"
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 00:50
|
|
|
LordAbaddon posted:At this point all Beast deserves is a total rewrite from the ground up, and possibly being turned into hunter or mage antagonists. They're 'beasts of nightmare' with abuser overtones that warp the psychic landscape with the primordial dream, and create their own metaphysical boss lairs that need to be entered and the monster slain. I feel like they're FANTASTIC Changeling antagonists.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 01:23
|
|
|
Crasical posted:
"Tastiest topping for dogshit sundaes!"
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 01:32
|
|
|
Crasical posted:They're 'beasts of nightmare' with abuser overtones that warp the psychic landscape with the primordial dream, and create their own metaphysical boss lairs that need to be entered and the monster slain. Given they sympathize and agree with the True Fae to the point of handing Changelings over to them - they're already Changeling antagonists.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 01:40
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:It can happen, and sometimes a good work is a fluke (i.e: Utena is good, everything else done by Ikuhara is awful) of an otherwise mediocre or bad writer. Sometimes great writers can create massive piles of poo poo not be aware of it, especially if the work in question reveals a character flaw. In Matt's case it's that he responds poorly to trolling, political arguments, and humanizing political opponents. Night10194 posted:I believe Beast actually sold pretty well. It's the worst selling NWoD 2.0 game. But yeah the White Wolf people are zombies NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 01:46
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:Given they sympathize and agree with the True Fae to the point of handing Changelings over to them - they're already Changeling antagonists. Whoah wait a minute, I knew that Beasts sympathized with the True Fae to an unhealthy degree but they actually capture and hand over Changelings to them? Why does Macfarland have the audacity to pretend that Beast's are in anyway redeemable when they apparently hand over the rape victim stand-ins to their rapists so they can go BACK into their sex dungeon. Thats hosed up on enough levels that I can barely fathom.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 01:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 07:41 |
|
|
LordAbaddon posted:Whoah wait a minute, I knew that Beasts sympathized with the True Fae to an unhealthy degree but they actually capture and hand over Changelings to them? I can't remember if that was actually in text, or a conclusion I came to after reading it and seeing the anthology where a Beast tried to force a Humanized Promthean into becoming a Promthean again - but it's not too far fetched to believe they will hand Changelings over to True Fae base on things as written.
|
|
#
?
Jan 17, 2017 01:55
|
|