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I think the big issue you have may be that the established factions, day 1 of game, are all inherently problematic, by design. None of the five Orders are intended to be perfect good guys, they are all intended to have failures and issues. This is true of literally every faction in nWoD, incidentally. Your PCs will have to fix these groups as part of their big revolutionary changes. Because it's a game about your PCs.
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Feb 12, 2019 19:58
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The trouble is that with some of these readings, the "well-intentioned flaws" written into Mage factions come off about as sincere and informed as the ones in Stigmata. At this point I'm mostly just looking forward to Geist 2E coming out so I can have a game that's both optimistic about our chances and inherently structured around the metaphor of revolution as a mass movement from the get-go, rather than being so muddled that you can read magic as either a metaphor for participation and democratic power or as the power to unilaterally change things from the top down, and neither interpretation can definitively be called wrong. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 20:01
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Nah, that's fine by me. It's the way Wisdom plays out, in depiction, as passivity rather than caution. The Orders are problematic but have various good points that keep this from being 'both sides of the Ascension War have reasonable points' - Archmasters and related figures, where actually visible, are uniformly jerks. Only the invisible, passive ones are Wise. E: also unfortunately Tuxedo Catfish is right that some of the writing does not hit a good balance; less on macro scale and more 'nearly every NPC writeup is of someone unbearable.' And that scale issue really only kicks in at archmastery, where getting cosmic tenure lets you rewrite reality in ways that break with the Traveler scale completely. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 20:02
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Archmasters are, by their nature, Mage+, though, and Mages are already obsessive weirdos who frequently are willing to do Whatever It Takes to get what they want. It only makes sense that Archmasters are going to be a bit extra in that regard. I'm entirely okay with Archmasters being a bit more prone to being monsters than other Mages are, just because of the nature of the scenario they find themselves in. They have to be manipulative because they have so many enemies, but also because there's just too drat much to be done for one person, even an Archmaster. Their line of work makes it hard to not see people - including other Mages - as pawns because they're playing the Long Game and the reward of their victory is so immense; not just for them, but for everyone. Bodhisattvas, after all, aren't just trying to help people Awaken; they're trying to help them Ascend. Are a few broken lives that big a cost compared to liberating souls from this universe and adding more allies to fight in the Ascension War? From a removed perspective, the calculus is easy to see. I'm also really okay with an emphasis that Wisdom is a stat of caution, not passivity. Tuxedo Catfish posted:The trouble is that with some of these readings, the "well-intentioned flaws" written into Mage factions come off about as sincere and informed as the ones in Stigmata. The flaws in the factions seem pretty organic to me. Thearchs thrive off of a philosophy of self-assertion, so it makes sense they'd excuse the consequences of such. Mystagogues are technocrats to their core, and the stereotype of the sneering technocrat who disdains the lowly people who are just too stupid to understand is a stereotype for a reason. Guardians are self-flagellating and it's easy to fall in love with your own martyr complex. The Arrow is all about over-the-top honour culture. The Free Council easily believes its own hype that democracy leads to perfection, with all the anti-individualist tendencies and groupthink that can cause. I will agree that I wouldn't mind a little more optimism in Mage, but Mage definitely seems to frame magic as a form of privilege, and I'd be very wary of any game that says "Privileged elites will save us all out of the goodness of their hearts!". e: I just wanna add, I'm just sharing my perspective here, not trying to tell anyone they're wrong. Your take is your take, this is just mine.
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Feb 12, 2019 20:14
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Joe Slowboat posted:Nobody can do that, though - the capacity does not exist. Or is it ok to talk about the moral dimensions of fictional characters only when it serves your point? In Mage, dickheads with that sort of power do exist. And nah, I'm not interested in talking about moral dimensions because it leads to the kind of poo poo-throwing you just attempted to do by trying to needle me on whatever views I might have about the ANC (seriously what the gently caress dude we're discussing pretend wizards). quote:Regardless: the Exarchs have clear metaphorical and thematic content, as do the Orders, pointing towards what you describe being fundamentally a break with that metaphorical space. No revolutionary group has that capacity; any one-shot end to the Exarchs would be a clear betrayal of the line's themes. I don't think it is. We have, as I mentioned, an entire supplement about the panoply of an Exarch who died, and it's not like Mages don't have their own myths about the golden child(ren) who will save us all (see: the Guardians). And, even if it was, so what? The game you play isn't necessarily the game in the book, as people all having their own houserules shows, and ultimately these things just serve as collections of widgets to use at your table for fun. Play the Hieromagus, create a wizard city on one of the moons of Uranus, challenge some Exarchs to arm-wrestling matches. If you find the themes sad, don't use them, or--even better--deliberately subvert them by playing against expected type. I don't really subscribe to the mindset of playing a game wrong. quote:Within those themes, there is a clear tensiont between the possibility of revolutionary activity and the kind of conservatism that says trying to make big changes is inherently unwise. Your answer to this is 'big changes, metaphorized, are clearly bad.' I think we have enough media that claims this - and Mage has potential to come down on the other side of that equation, with a nuanced depiction of the 'hubris' of fighting injustice. That's not "my answer." Mage isn't real life, the game's going to go the way the game goes, and different ones will have different answers. I wouldn't want Johnny Godling making the decision to have us age backwards and now there's an eighth continent, but... Johnnny Godling could be right. That's a tension that exists. Questioning the validity of sudden revolution vs. gradual effort to reform the system is something which exists. History tends to fall along the lines of the latter, but even that then invites the questions of morality/ethics vs. pragmatism. The bit is, mages tend not to get powerful by considering that. They get powerful by deciding they know the answer and to hell with the consequences.
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Feb 12, 2019 20:19
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My point with the ANC is that Mage engages with political questions. The minute the Exarchs got written, the game was very explicitly engaged with those themes. And, yeah, the gameline could ultimately not have a consistent position on these topics, but I would personally find it a more valuable object if it did. And, y'know, I'd prefer if that consistent position aligned with my own, but if it doesn't, it doesn't! I know how Mage is going to be played at my table, but that's distinct from questions of the text itself. I really don't think I'm asking for much when I ask for models of how high Wisdom mages or post-mage entities might exist in the world as imagined by the devs active figures. That's a widget! I admit, I was frustrated by your depiction of the setting as one where it's reasonable to go 'oh no, a single wizard will totally ruin everything' because my point is that that possibility breaks with the questions in play, and makes them less incisive. It may well be canon, but canon is not a neutral entity but something created to pursue themes and writing. Having that possibility in the setting weakens what I consider the core concepts of the line, unless it's handled carefully. Fictional settings do not just stand on their own; the metaphors and structures writers introduce reflect and comment on the world - especially with the Exarchs sitting right there. You say 'well the themes of mage don't support your reading' and my point is that I think those themes are, in fact, open to criticism. 'Pretend wizards' reflect actual writing decisions, and Mage has high enough ambitions - hubris, perhaps - that I think talking about the metaphorical content of the setting is fair game. E: I will say, I don't know which supplement has the panoply of a dead Exarch? Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 20:36
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You'll never take my Marxist Silver Ladder from me. Never!
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Feb 12, 2019 20:56
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Joe Slowboat posted:My point with the ANC is that Mage engages with political questions. The minute the Exarchs got written, the game was very explicitly engaged with those themes. That's not a point. That was kinda weird and lovely. quote:And, yeah, the gameline could ultimately not have a consistent position on these topics, but I would personally find it a more valuable object if it did. And, y'know, I'd prefer if that consistent position aligned with my own, but if it doesn't, it doesn't! I know how Mage is going to be played at my table, but that's distinct from questions of the text itself. I feel the gameline is pretty consistent in terms of how it depicts individuals, but I'm with Tuxedo that a lot of its earlier books had issues with how it talked about them. Most often from their own perspective, which can make it easy to miss the point, or to have your eyes brush past the few small details meant to throw it into stark relief. I remember Guide to the Technocracy having a lot of those issues in Ascension. quote:I really don't think I'm asking for much when I ask for models of how high Wisdom mages or post-mage entities might exist in the world as imagined by the devs active figures. That's a widget! I don't think I'd want that. Wisdom's already something of a personal system so no two Wisdom 10 Mages are going to have the same worldview or way of going about things. "Are they consistent with their axioms and considered action, etc." sorta thing. And post-mage entities I feel would rob the setting of some of its ambiguity and also... sorta be a waste of wordcount. Most games aren't played on the level of rival supernal gods, and even then they sort of go beyond the point where that kind of power can be modeled. quote:admit, I was frustrated by your depiction of the setting as one where it's reasonable to go 'oh no, a single wizard will totally ruin everything' because my point is that that possibility breaks with the questions in play, and makes them less incisive. It may well be canon, but canon is not a neutral entity but something created to pursue themes and writing. Having that possibility in the setting weakens what I consider the core concepts of the line, unless it's handled carefully. Fictional settings do not just stand on their own; the metaphors and structures writers introduce reflect and comment on the world - especially with the Exarchs sitting right there. A single wizard can ruin everything. A single mage might start the apocalypse, or a cabal of mages might shutter the Abyss. A group of them might even ascend a ladder and break all of reality, even. Aponoia means even a single Awakening can change some things. Heck, Archmages are basically all set on doing exactly this thing in order to become gods themselves. This isn't my depiction, it's right there in Imperial Mysteries and is often a subject when people play these games. Criticize all you want. I generally enjoy discussing on how well Mage does or doesn't capture its themes. I don't feel that's been the tone of this conversation, though, but maybe I've been misreading. quote:'Pretend wizards' reflect actual writing decisions, and Mage has high enough ambitions - hubris, perhaps - that I think talking about the metaphorical content of the setting is fair game. I enjoy discussing the game's metaphorical content. Heck, I run an entire Discord server dedicated to doing just that. I'm just not sure that's what's been happening, seeing as you tried to turn the conversation to my real-world views on ethics and proper governance. And the book is Reign of the Exarchs. It's pretty neat, really. It also concludes with an example of a non-Archmage Ascension at the end. Ironslave fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 12, 2019 20:57
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Wait, can you be a member of two Orders? I remember you could be part of two Covenants in Requiem, with the caveat it meant no one trusted you fully and you could never have more than 3 total dots of Status, but does that work for Mage too? It obviously doesn't work Werewolf due to the spiritual nature of Tribes.
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Feb 12, 2019 20:57
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MonsieurChoc posted:Wait, can you be a member of two Orders? I remember you could be part of two Covenants in Requiem, with the caveat it meant no one trusted you fully and you could never have more than 3 total dots of Status, but does that work for Mage too? You can earn a single dot of honorary status with other Orders. Curiously, there's nothing saying you can't use this to learn the special powers of the other orders (Lex Magica, Adamant Hand, Techne, etc.) since all those only require a single dot of status. Never seen anyone permit it, though.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:00
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Ironslave posted:You can earn a single dot of honorary status with other Orders. Curiously, there's nothing saying you can't use this to learn the special powers of the other orders (Lex Magica, Adamant Hand, Techne, etc.) since all those only require a single dot of status. Never seen anyone permit it, though. I'm asking because my post got me thinking about playing a dual-Order Silver Ladder/Free Council character. Not that I'll ever get to play the game.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:03
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'm asking because my post got me thinking about playing a dual-Order Silver Ladder/Free Council character. We've had developer commentary on how in Europe, which didn't suffer the political and social fallout of Operation: Oracle, the Silver Ladder and Free Council are working so closely in places they're on the verge of merging. So it might not be that far- fetched a concept.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:07
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Joe Slowboat posted:I will say, I don't know which supplement has the panoply of a dead Exarch? Reign of the Exarchs. And as - for the time being - Mage's dev, I will note that my chronicle did end, Invisibles-style, with an immamentized echaton. The sample Ascended archmasters are morally dubious, sure, but Aaliyah isn't. There's lots of upstanding mages. Mage is about getting what you want, and how many people you're willing to throw under the bus to do it. Sure was nice to work on Geist, though, where the revolution is possible.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:09
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My point from the start has been that Mage has a tendency to lean, thematically, towards the real-world mystic approach of 'wisdom means accepting the world as it is, because attempting to change things for the better is dangerous.' This is the logic behind the real-world critique of revolutionary or socially transformative causes as 'immanentizing the eschaton.' I'm not a fan of this tendency, given that Mage's themes are much more interesting when the difficulty of revolutionary action is balanced against the moral need to do so. I apologize for using the ANC as a rhetorical referent for a flawed but ultimately heroic organization whose cause was considered by many moderates worldwide (especially in the US) unacceptably violent and complicated, up until the point where they succeeded. I think the Diamond can reasonably be compared to such national liberation movements historically, both in terms of the cause and the flaws, and moreover, the end of Apartheid is a functional referent for the metaphorical 'end of the world' that is the point of the Ascension War. I did not intend to imply you actually have strong negative opinions about a historically successful liberation movement. Also, funny story: I do actually have a player with Status: Free Council and Status: Adamantine Arrow right now. The PC basically bounced out of the Arrow for personal problems and not feeling worthy of making the oaths, but the Arrow still wants her involvement; she's back to working with the Arrow now and is learning Adamantine Hand. My take on it is that the Order Merits like Hand or Techne are, basically, representative of the conceptual and abstract occult understanding of the Order. Aster does meaningfully unite Arrow and Council ideas in her particular approach to conflict and magic, such that I think she's ultimately going to have to choose one but could reasonably perform both styles. The local Free Council is certainly permissive of this as long as she doesn't do anything to break the Libertine principles, and the local Arrow would still like her to join them because she has promise that way. I generally depict the Orders as being obviously deeply flawed, but less at each others' throats outside of local conflicts or overarching differences of opinion. I wouldn't let a Guardians player also get Mysterium initiation, for example, unless they were deep undercover or had really weird, unique circumstances. Said weirdness did almost happen but it would not have been good for my Guardian PC if it had!
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Feb 12, 2019 21:16
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Ironslave posted:We've had developer commentary on how in Europe, which didn't suffer the political and social fallout of Operation: Oracle, the Silver Ladder and Free Council are working so closely in places they're on the verge of merging. So it might not be that far- fetched a concept. Yeah, that's an angle I like. Maybe a young idealist trying to bring back that tradition here.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:19
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'm asking because my post got me thinking about playing a dual-Order Silver Ladder/Free Council character. Yes, you can, and yes, you qualify for both the Order signiature Merits. You only get one set of rote skills, though.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:22
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Joe Slowboat posted:My point from the start has been that Mage has a tendency to lean, thematically, towards the real-world mystic approach of 'wisdom means accepting the world as it is, because attempting to change things for the better is dangerous.' This is the logic behind the real-world critique of revolutionary or socially transformative causes as 'immanentizing the eschaton.' I can see that complaint. I feel like Wisdom both benefits and suffers from something of a "know it when I see it" approach. I've never had it not work out well in-play, but discussing it outside of a game ends up messy. I think I agree with your assessment of the Diamond. End of the day there are massive issues and flaws among them, but they're at least opposed to the actual unapologetic fascists. Though their organization does possess some apologetic fascists of its own (mostly with the Ladder and Mysterium, I imagine). I apologize if I misrepresented myself; I tend to accentuate the negative about Mages because, after seven years of discussing the game, I've found that's a piece that tends to get missed when discussing them, I think due to a lot of it ending up buried in subtext and the perspectives the books often end up being written from (the Orders in question).
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Feb 12, 2019 21:30
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Dave Brookshaw posted:There's lots of upstanding mages. I'm carving these two statements into my PDF.
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Feb 12, 2019 21:34
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Yes, you can, and yes, you qualify for both the Order signiature Merits. You only get one set of rote skills, though. Thanks! Now to find someone willing to run Mage (other than me).
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Feb 12, 2019 21:54
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Regarding Reign of the Exarchs, it's important to note that Mage has changed pretty dramatically over its run. That book is a really good example of it. The way it portrays the Seers of the Throne and the Exarchs as being attached to myth, as opposed to the much more central and "no they are very real" take that the Seers of the Throne book and 2e afterward took, makes it feel very different. The idea of what an Exarch might be was still very nebulous as it was released very early in the line. And I like that. I still sometimes draw upon it for my own games. I love a lot of what the later supplements added to the Seers, but the opening fiction to Reign was very evocative to me in the strange relationship between Pentacle and Seer mages could and should be, where it is clear they are enemies, but there's a lot more communication than you might have with the more anathema take of dealing with Tremere or the like. Toolboxes are good. If I ran a Seer heavy game I would probably care a lot more about the 11 canon Exarchs and the Ministries and the Tetrarchies and etc., but most of the time I put that aside and try to figure out, what do the Exarchs mean for the characters, for my game's particular themes. I'm starting a chronicle right now that focuses on a 19th-century voyage with the players acting as spies on an East Indiaman ship that's a tool of the Seers. For me, it's a lot more useful to make the Seers a bit more monolithic rather than divided into competing ministries because they represent in this setting, with the Nameless War as a backdrop, as an insidious corrupting force that is increasingly powerful with the new world order coming into play, that has abused the Diamond's lack of action and pettiness to try and destroy them. That isn't to say there aren't competing pylons or the like. Anyway this isn't precisely to the subject at hand but Reign is good.
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Feb 12, 2019 22:35
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Kurieg posted:More relevantly to this thread. It also recently came out that Matt McFarland is not only a rapist, he was also still raping women while writing Beast. Well there's some minor justification for the sheer, visceral, Brobdingnagian knee-jerk hatred I have for that game. Christ.
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Feb 12, 2019 23:49
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citybeatnik posted:Well there's some minor justification for the sheer, visceral, Brobdingnagian knee-jerk hatred I have for that game. The only good ideas I've found in that dumpster fire are the sleeping beauty hero and the take away that a Beast is actually a good antagonist for every other game because they gently caress up the local supernatural ecosystem.
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Feb 12, 2019 23:52
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With regards to multiple Orders, it's totally possible that in an area where the Free Council dominates or has particular influence, Consilium structure is totally assembled in favour of Assemblies. It's totally possible for members of other orders to be give Assembly voting rights even where they're more marginal. For my own Melbourne setting I've actually gone the opposite way, though. Melbourne in particular is a progressive city and the Free Council has a strong amount of influence. On the other hand, Australia has had voting since it officially became a nation and mandatory voting is a thing. And finally, a lot of traditions and order structures got inherited UK-style with shakeups only coming recently. Combined this means that the local caucuses are more democratic than they would be elsewhere in the world and members get a significant amount of say, even though the Consilium itself still follows the Hierarch model. This robs the local Assembly of a bit of its overall shared revolutionary impetus - so while as a whole it's influential, it's very factionalised between those who are cool with the Hierarch model and being close to the Silver Ladder, and those who want Revolution Now.
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Feb 13, 2019 00:33
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citybeatnik posted:Well there's some minor justification for the sheer, visceral, Brobdingnagian knee-jerk hatred I have for that game. Turns out all that weird subtext about being a rapist was just the actual text.
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Feb 13, 2019 00:36
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joylessdivision posted:The only good ideas I've found in that dumpster fire are the sleeping beauty hero and the take away that a Beast is actually a good antagonist for every other game because they gently caress up the local supernatural ecosystem. I mean, the Hunter Compact that's basically the Nightmare on Elm Street where the kids decided to punch Freddy in the nuts is also nice? Still can't figure out what it is about the game that infuriates me. Vampire has all sorts of problematic stuff re abuse. Werewolf as well. Even Mage as others have talked about earlier. But I can compartmentalize those. But Beast just makes me want to start throwing punches.
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Feb 13, 2019 05:16
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citybeatnik posted:I mean, the Hunter Compact that's basically the Nightmare on Elm Street where the kids decided to punch Freddy in the nuts is also nice? The Dream Warriors deserve better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noLPhZvcBpw
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Feb 13, 2019 05:19
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My version of Melanie (Sleeping Beauty) was in the Astral because a Tremere botched ripping out her soul due to untapped Astral Adept capabilities. The players went to some lengths to help her wake up, restore her atrophied muscles (with Life to speed up healing, and the spell involved lowering her into a garter snake pit for a place yantra). After that they eventually got involved in her Awakening and an Epuiad Seer camping out in her soul. She's an obrimos now and sort of apprenticed to one of the PCs (though since both are teenagers it's less of a standard teacher/student relationship and more of a friendship/potential romance).
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Feb 13, 2019 05:34
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citybeatnik posted:I mean, the Hunter Compact that's basically the Nightmare on Elm Street where the kids decided to punch Freddy in the nuts is also nice? Vampire doesn't spend all its time telling you the Vampires are great for doing it. That's the difference. Vampire is really aware that what you're doing is problematic. No bullshit about you 'teaching lessons'. No 'abusers are so misunderstood and heroic'.
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Feb 13, 2019 05:34
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Beast strips away any allegory and then glamorizes abuse and vilifies those who seek to stop it.
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Feb 13, 2019 05:43
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Night10194 posted:Vampire doesn't spend all its time telling you the Vampires are great for doing it. That's the difference. Also, and this is very important, you can not engage with it. "Superheroes with fangs" is maligned and ridiculed, but if you want to play Vampire without really caring about blooding-drinking, ghouling, and Dominate being elaborate sexual assault metaphors you can just not engage with those parts. You can play the game without engaging with the subtext. In Beast, the abuse is text.
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Feb 13, 2019 05:44
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Joe Slowboat posted:I think the Diamond can reasonably be compared to such national liberation movements historically, both in terms of the cause and the flaws, and moreover, the end of Apartheid is a functional referent for the metaphorical 'end of the world' that is the point of the Ascension War. Of course, because you are human and you have no real stakes in it. You can absolutely think that way. Now imagine that the stakes weren't metaphorical, and weren't even the world. They were reality, period. And the price of your failure could be retroactive. You could not just fail to liberate humanity, you could make it so that nobody has ever been liberated in all of human history. Or you could make it so there's not human history at all, that we just never happened. That's what happens when you start swimming in the big kids end of the pool. "I just want to keep things light and have fun with my magic bomb throwing anarchists" is cool, and you can totally do that. You'll just have to ignore some bits, which aren't too hard to ignore really. If you don't ignore them, you have to ask: What sort of person could put those issues aside and still fight? And history is filled with heroes, the nicest and sweetest people you would ever meet.....until it comes time to defend their beliefs, and then they are lions. Their flaws, such as they are, are the normal and perfectly acceptable flaws any of us would have [And sometimes not even those, history is filled with characters that would make the self-insert obsessed fan fiction writer stop and go "Really, jeeze, laying it on thick there aren't you?"]. There are exemplars, we aren't a completely flawed creation....which I feel to need to stress before the downer next part. People that seek power are generally pretty terrible, and not everyone marginalized by society is marginalized for unjust reasons. So all revolutions attract a fairly horrific sort of person, and that person is more inclined towards control than the more idealistic sort. The success of most revolutions can be measured in their ability to organize and their capacity to keep that element marginalized. Now take that reality, and to it add this: That person could unmake you. The ultimate act of depersonalization, you don't even have the right to have existed. Forget whatever you are fighting against, how much do you trust the people around you with that sort of power? You fight against the slave-masters, but what if you could wiggle your hands and slavery never was? I mean that's pure upside, right? Well a lot of developing cultures had a basis of raiding, and keeping captives for labor and procreation. Go back tens of thousands of years and stop that practice, do we even exist today? We very well may, but that's the sort of question you have to ask yourself when playing God. And you have to do it for everything, and all the consequences. If you don't, you shouldn't have that power in the first place. That's Wisdom, to some extent. And you know what, the answer may be "It's worth it". That doesn't mean you don't ask the question in the first place, because nothing good comes from people that assume their divinity is innate and assured. Especially if they may be right.
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Feb 13, 2019 06:34
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Dave Brookshaw posted:The sample Ascended archmasters are morally dubious, sure, but Aaliyah isn't. There's lots of upstanding mages. Aaliyah is said to sometimes introduce new Seers Archmasters to the Pax Arcana if their ministry somehow misses the memo, therefore her actions increase the number of Seer Archmasters (since some number of the new Archmasters, without knowing about the Pax Arcana, would have tried something big on their own and gotten immediately killed.) So Aaliyah prevents Seer Archmasters from dying, and therefore isn't morally dubious only insofar as she's straight up evil  [/utilitarianism]Has anyone here actually played an Archmaster game? I love Imperial Mysteries to death, and consider it a completly worthwhile supplement even just to give STs an idea of how to deal with Archmaster NPCs, but am seriously curious about what a game full of Archmaster PCs would actually look like.
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Feb 13, 2019 06:55
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Digital Osmosis posted:Aaliyah is said to sometimes introduce new Seers Archmasters to the Pax Arcana if their ministry somehow misses the memo, therefore her actions increase the number of Seer Archmasters (since some number of the new Archmasters, without knowing about the Pax Arcana, would have tried something big on their own and gotten immediately killed.) So Aaliyah prevents Seer Archmasters from dying, and therefore isn't morally dubious only insofar as she's straight up evil Imagine making attack rolls with 25 dice, rote, and 8-again. That's what I remember most about the archmasters game I played in.
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Feb 13, 2019 07:52
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ZiegeDame posted:Imagine making attack rolls with 25 dice, rote, and 8-again. That's what I remember most about the archmasters game I played in. Also I agree that all of this makes me want Geist more and Mage less
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Feb 13, 2019 08:17
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citybeatnik posted:I mean, the Hunter Compact that's basically the Nightmare on Elm Street where the kids decided to punch Freddy in the nuts is also nice? I actually took the basic concept of the sleeping beauty hero and turned her into a NPC for my werewolf game. She has no powers except for an immunity to mind altering affects, like Dominate or Lunacy. She operates as a sort of news broker for the supernatural community, disguising her reports as conspiracy nut bullshit about greys and reptillians and knights templar. I love my players so much, Gladys was created on the fly in our first session where the pack was attending an underground punk show, I asked one of my players if the bartender had one eye or two, they picked one so I settled on this woman rocking a 50's style waitress uniform, with an eye patch and green hair. The players fell in love, one literally. Now she's a pack member!
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Feb 13, 2019 09:21
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citybeatnik posted:Still can't figure out what it is about the game that infuriates me. Vampire has all sorts of problematic stuff re abuse. Werewolf as well. Even Mage as others have talked about earlier. But I can compartmentalize those. But Beast just makes me want to start throwing punches. I really do think it's because Beast is the only line that goes "Yes, BE THE GRIBBLE. Mortal morality is for chumps!" All the others portray 'I REJECT MY HUMANITY JOJO' as a bad thing. Other people in the thread have summarized it more concisely but while other splats do terrible things, Beasts are uniquely told they are right and correct for doing terrible things. Very reductively: Beast bothers you because it is bad, while Vampire/Wolf are good.
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Feb 13, 2019 17:25
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Crasical posted:I really do think it's because Beast is the only line that goes "Yes, BE THE GRIBBLE. Mortal morality is for chumps!" The problem isn't that the game has a focus of "YES BE THE MONSTER MORALITY IS FOR CHUMPS!" it's that it follows that up with the middle school debate club reasoning of "Actually evil things are good and heroes are bad." and expects you to be blown away. Because the writer is a rapist who's trying to normalize rape. A game where you do evil things and the antagonists are actual heroic people trying to stop you, and the game acknowledges that they are correct in doing so, could be a good game. But it needs to be written by a decent human being who isn't going to turn it into an abuse paean.
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Feb 13, 2019 17:44
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Kurieg posted:A game where you do evil things and the antagonists are actual heroic people trying to stop you, and the game acknowledges that they are correct in doing so, could be a good game. But it needs to be written by a decent human being who isn't going to turn it into an abuse paean. I feel like the Player's Guide to the Sabbat got it right in that regard.
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Feb 13, 2019 17:51
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Kurieg posted:A game where you do evil things and the antagonists are actual heroic people trying to stop you, and the game acknowledges that they are correct in doing so, could be a good game. But it needs to be written by a decent human being who isn't going to turn it into an abuse paean. I'm not going to put forth the theory that you can't write a good game about being villain protagonists, and there's actually probably a good argument to be made that base-state, a lot of the splats are exactly that. I am going to say that give the concept of 'Be the monster you were always meant to be' jives against a certain constant that a lot of other splats have upheld, IE that entirely rejecting your humanity is a bad idea. Every splat can be a villain, but none of them really glorify the villainy the way Beast does. That's part of what triggers the  values dissonance that is so bizarre when Beasts were supposed to be crossover-heavy and interacting with the other splats so much: a Vampire who embraces the Beast worldview is probably going to turn into a Draugr in short order. Beasts are abuse-heavy nightmare elementals, something that should strike a nerve for a LOT of changelings. A werewolf who abandons humanity and trends towards The Wolf/The Spirit too hard is going to throw their Harmony out of whack and suffer the consequences.
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Feb 13, 2019 18:03
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Just looking at Vampire: all of the really, explicitly bad bloodlines and sects (meaning the intrinsically evil ones) are always displayed as worse, not better, than standard Vampire fare. The assumption for a Vampire game is starting at a more or less human baseline and struggling to remain human (or not) in the face of your new monstrosity, and it's meant to be melodramatic as gently caress about it. The idea, 'eh, gently caress it, you're a monster' is sort of like... the antithesis of most WW/OP games. Those organizations are usually at least as antagonistic as the, 'hunters hunted' organization most groups have (literal vampire hunters, or the Pure, or Banishers, etc).
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Feb 13, 2019 18:12
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