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Ay FWIW i have never once accidentally written r*pe metaphors into anything, even incidentally. even after not reading a bunch of emails. Not to brag but outside these austere garden walls I am considered the Frank Zappa of not perpetuating rape culture in my elfgames. ask any of the wise old masters in the salons and cafes, they'll vouch for me. just. . . tossing that out there. if there's anyone reading whompst might know of a freelancer wrangler in need of a reliable hand. Frankly? Sex doesn't belong in tabletop games. It adds nothing that nonspecific "seduction" hasn't already brought to the table, and even then how often does the scene end up with a wretched monster using Gribbly Powers to get what they actually want, with seduction just as the pretext? What percentage of a Vampire game is obligated to be a string of nightclub encounters to make sure the character's juiced up enough to go punch Death in the face? And, just, Werewolf. Yikes. Some of those books read like propaganda for Yiffy Eco ISIS. Like, I get that drenching a LARP in sex is basically the only way to make it justifiable, but whyyyyyyy would that translate to tabletop?
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Feb 15, 2019 14:36
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That Old Tree posted:Is it at all useful or healthy to pretend it's all his fault when it wasn't? The fact that maybe a lot of the unfortunate implications were thoughtless mistakes instead of some singular villain's plan doesn't make Matt any less a rapist. But pretending otherwise probably makes it harder for those who are just misguided to improve. He's responsible enough for the overall project as its developer without trying to erase everyone else to make him solely responsible. The truth of this kind of thing can't be useless. Should be even more of a reason to get out ahead of this while it's back in everyone's collective consciousness. They should have gotten out ahead of it a lot sooner, but as has been said, there was a lot of people being protective of the project, which-- I mean, I get it. People want to defend their work. But when the work as a whole comes off the way that it does, and has That Name associated with it, just kind of spreading your hands and saying 'well that happened,' hoping to god it'll go away, just makes OPP yet another smarmy game company. If no one looks good, then own that, and strive to do better. gently caress, just saying 'that was really goddamn dumb of us and we feel the need to say stuff about it now' goes a long way towards mending that. It'd put them leagues ahead of what White Wolf's become, besides. EDIT: And White Wolf actually did the thing where they pulled their books to restructure them. Maybe that'll go downhill even further, maybe not, but the gesture wasn't a bad one to make. PHIZ KALIFA posted:And, just, Werewolf. Yikes. Some of those books read like propaganda for Yiffy Eco ISIS. Yiffy ISIS is the Spirals. The Garou are lock-step Republicans with a side of climate change acceptance. Also, yeah, I have never accidentally written a rape metaphor into my manuscripts. It's actually not that hard to do. You can stumble upon something that's problematic on more than one occasion, just not thinking 'oh that dynamic is a little skeezy if I think about it (this) way, isn't it' but that's why editors and proofreaders exist. It sounds like they just didn't want to listen to the proofreaders, which were, in this case, their Kickstarter patrons. Easier, I suppose, to just call them all ultra-reactionary pissbabies and be done with it.
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Feb 15, 2019 15:21
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Old Boot posted:Also, yeah, I have never accidentally written a rape metaphor into my manuscripts. It's actually not that hard to do. I’d think it would be somewhat difficult while writing for Vampire.
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Feb 15, 2019 15:50
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ulmont posted:I’d think it would be somewhat difficult while writing for Vampire. The key word there was 'accidental.'
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Feb 15, 2019 15:53
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If we can't critique the book in general or parts of the book in specific then what the hell do you want us to do? Because the book is bad, the book is harmful. And yes parts of it aren't that bad until you look at it in the greater context of the book at which point it's just another piece of the weird subtextual rape metaphor puzzle. Which should be Matt's fault. Also: They should not have let his wife be his sole editor.
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Feb 15, 2019 15:59
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Let's be real though, one can never apologize enough for the line that brought us fishEggman.
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Feb 15, 2019 16:03
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Old Boot posted:Let's be real though, one can never apologize enough for the line that brought us fishEggman. Ironically I know for a fact who wrote that and he has apologized (to a friend of mine) for it.
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Feb 15, 2019 16:05
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I can empathize with accidentally writing something bad, as I do that everytime I post.
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Feb 15, 2019 16:24
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Warthur posted:(Pssst, Dave: people are giving you a lifeline to say that the overall problems with Beast were not the collective responsibility of all the writers on the project, but primarily the responsibility of Matt as its overseer. If you want us to believe that it's not wholly Matt's fault how Beast turned out, that's not helping OPP or its freelancers. Not even slightly.) Here's the thing. I wrote the Lair rules in Beast, cited a few pages ago as one of the few salvageable pieces (so hey, thanks for that!) but the bit about how Beasts side with the True Fae sometimes? That was also me. Because I understood Beasts to be self-deluded monsters. Then the rest of the loving book comes in painting them as good guys, and it looks really dodgy. I'm not particularly interested in making excuses for or helping OPP. They're grown men and women who make their own decisions. Yeah, Matt's role was minimal - and as Liv says, that was the problem; he should have realised how horrid the assembled product was. OPP shouldn't have made him rewrite it during the Kickstarter (I would have pulled it and brought it back later). He should have had a much clearer vision of the game before writing started. Beast is the unique chimeric horror that results from a bunch of enthusiastic newbies writing CofD like it's a LGBTQ-metaphor supers setting, pressured old timers writing awful monsters, and a Dev who didn't have it in him to blend the two or provide the leadership needed. Deviant spent years in pre-writing. I designed it down to the game mechanic dice pools before hiring anyone. Mage has a writer's bible longer than some of its published sourcebooks. That kind of obsessive prework makes me chronically late, and it's *not incentivised*. My personal view of Beast, from the inside, is that Matt phoned it in, had to react when the kickstarter went bad, and didn't understand people's problem with it when he rewrote it on the fly .. It is a clusterfuck. But use Matt's alleged crimes as a means of not copping to when I played a part it in? gently caress that. I should have tried to steer the new writers, even without the authority to do it. I should have paid more attention to the emerging tone. OPP *has* learned lessons from this. Deviant had, like, triple the gateways of approval to go through and it's not entered development yet. Nowadays, new writers *are* organised in teams under senior writers, so if, say, I was doing the core template I'd have a formal way to tell the Merits author what to do.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:09
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God I want to read that Mage writer's bible.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:12
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MonsieurChoc posted:God I want to read that Mage writer's bible. When I step down, I'm gonna see about putting it in the Storyteller's Vault, the way Rose did with hers for Requiem
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Feb 15, 2019 17:19
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Here's the thing. I wrote the Lair rules in Beast, cited a few pages ago as one of the few salvageable pieces (so hey, thanks for that!) but the bit about how Beasts side with the True Fae sometimes? That was also me. Because I understood Beasts to be self-deluded monsters. This is a really bad problem. Some people understood that Beasts were monsters and were profoundly lovely. But someone else was saying that Beasts are the best and everyone is best friends with them. So you have chapters saying that Beasts in the Shadow are walking loci of suffering and fear resonance in the same book that says that werewolves love hanging out with them. The book states that changelings love having Beasts around a few pages after it says that Beasts help the True Fae hunt down rogue Changelings. Some of the best stories in the fiction anthology (The Promethean one, the Mage one(which, thank you for writing even if you did bring back the changing breeds), and the two about the incarnation and retreat) are the ones that actually acknowledge that Beasts are self-deluded monsters. And address the real tangible psychological damage they inflict even upon their 'family'. Of course they have to share page space with the gay beast who lives in montana and teaches kids guitar and is extremely self righteous about how Beasts need to teach people (and even has a child abuse metaphor! Dealt with in the worst possible way!!) and the Beast Superfriends Band. Which is unfortunate.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:21
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who was responsible for the storytelling chapter of Mage 2E
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Feb 15, 2019 17:23
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Does Biokinesis suck, or am I just not seeing its potential?
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Feb 15, 2019 17:23
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:who was responsible for the storytelling chapter of Mage 2E Me. I was its Developer.  (I do not identify writers unless they have told me its okay, for reasons that should be really obvious) It was a victim of wordcount. We had barely any room for it, and I had a list of ten things and space for three. Every Mage book in process has more ST advixe than normal as compensation, and if the upcoming Vampire Guide to the Night does well, it might get a dedicated book. Hang on. Didn't I explain this recently? Was that here? What day is it?
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Feb 15, 2019 17:29
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The Storytelling chapter is a travesty, in that people should just be expected to instantly gnostically apprehend how to storytell Mage and all of that word count could have gone to more setting information or game mechanics.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:31
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Hang on. Didn't I explain this recently? Was that here? What day is it? Here, two weeks ago. Dave Brookshaw posted:Yeah, it's a combination of brutal wordcount constraints, the previous person specialising in ST chapters (me!) not doing it, Werewolf and Mage overly aping Vampire's style because they were outlined as megasupplements not new editions (you say a 2e should stand alone and I agree, but Mage only became a 2e in editing), and various other things.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:33
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Me. I was its Developer. It was a victim of wordcount, and you still decided to dedicate a full page to choosing mood music?
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Feb 15, 2019 17:41
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Can someone sum up easily what Martin Swedracula did w/r/t Vampire 5th gen that sucked (no pun intended)? My girlfriend has known him for 20 years it turns out, and while she thinks he's a lovely and possibly rapey LARPer, she hasn't heard in her RPG circle what's so bad about V5. I haven't read it, so thought I'd turn to the trusty memory of goons.txt
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Feb 15, 2019 17:42
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Tias posted:Can someone sum up easily what Martin Swedracula did w/r/t Vampire 5th gen that sucked (no pun intended)? My girlfriend has known him for 20 years it turns out, and while she thinks he's a lovely and possibly rapey LARPer, she hasn't heard in her RPG circle what's so bad about V5. Well.. I mean, V5 isn't mechanically bad. It's more things that Swedracula has said around it. He wants it to be edgy and controversial and doesn't see anything wrong with causing harm to people in the process. Prior to V5 coming out they released a mobile game that was written by Zak. When people pointed out that was perhaps a bad idea they released a press release to the effect of "We've looked into it and everyone who's accused Zak of something is lying. And we value his contributions more than his controversy." (They quietly deleted those blog posts on tuesday without comment or apology) Then last year in the Camarilla book the had a profoundly ill advised section on Chechnya that put people's lives in danger. And ended up getting WW rolled back into paradox proper.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:49
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Kurieg posted:Well.. I mean, V5 isn't mechanically bad. It's more things that Swedracula has said around it. He wants it to be edgy and controversial and doesn't see anything wrong with causing harm to people in the process. Prior to V5 coming out they released a mobile game that was written by Zak. When people pointed out that was perhaps a bad idea they released a press release to the effect of "We've looked into it and everyone who's accused Zak of something is lying. And we value his contributions more than his controversy." (They quietly deleted those blog posts on tuesday without comment or apology)
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Feb 15, 2019 17:56
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Tias posted:Can someone sum up easily what Martin Swedracula did w/r/t Vampire 5th gen that sucked (no pun intended)? My girlfriend has known him for 20 years it turns out, and while she thinks he's a lovely and possibly rapey LARPer, she hasn't heard in her RPG circle what's so bad about V5. He’s listed as “Lead Storyteller” for the current iteration of White Wolf. I don’t think anyone has a 100% idea of who is responsible for what, but during his tenure as Lead Storyteller a number of troubling things have happened including; hiring Zak to write their Choose Your Own Adventure mobile game, a pedophile sample character in playtest documents, White Wolf dictating edits to a OPP written Werewolf sourcebook to includ transphobic poo poo, careless Nazi dogwhitles in the V5 text, a really gross take on the persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya, and other things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten. Free Gratis fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 18:01
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Warthur posted:Game mechanically I see a lot of people griping about the hunger system - specifically, the way it seems to obligate you to spend a substantial amount of game time on diversions paying attention to feeding and hunger management. The general feeling seems to be that in past editions the amount of attention you paid to the actual vampire-ing bit of being a vampire was a dial you could adjust depending on how much grotty street-level feeding action you wanted vs. how much high-stakes vampire politics with the feeding mostly offscreen you wanted, and people who take that approach to Vampire seem to think that the new system takes away their capacity to adjust that dial. Not sure how true that is, but that's the complaint I've seen. Part of that is that they're (in the fiction) dialing back a lot of the high-stakes vampire politics. But yes, if your dice decide to gently caress you over you're spending a lot of time feeding or you're comfortable getting a lot of messy crits.
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Feb 15, 2019 18:02
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Kurieg posted:Part of that is that they're (in the fiction) dialing back a lot of the high-stakes vampire politics.
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Feb 15, 2019 18:08
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Warthur posted:Which if anything is actually not great for the LARP scene. High-stakes politics is much easier to stage in a LARP context than hunting - hunting requires people to hunt, places to hunt them etc., politics just requires that you stick the PCs in a room and have them talk at each other and then take downtime actions. It'd have been interesting to see how By Night Studios handled that when they did the LARP version of V5 (I'm assuming, possibly jumping the gun a little, that a lot of the plans for where they're taking the fiction are going to be rolled back or retconned, since the fiction was supposed to be setting up an ambitious centrally-directed metaplot which they now don't have the personnel to actually do). Hilariously though the focus on feeding did give us the gay spartan legionaire cosplay troupe. (In the same book that it had the abused teenage isis bomber, sadly).
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Feb 15, 2019 18:11
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Does it shine through with Demon and Promethean? I mean Demon is about avoiding detection by the authorities and Promethean is desperately wishing you were human while being toxic as gently caress so...I mean...
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Feb 15, 2019 18:30
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Bosushi! posted:He’s listed as “Lead Storyteller” for the current iteration of White Wolf. I don’t think anyone has a 100% idea of who is responsible for what, but during his tenure as Lead Storyteller a number of troubling things have happened including; hiring Zak to write their Choose Your Own Adventure mobile game, a pedophile sample character in playtest documents, White Wolf dictating edits to a OPP written Werewolf sourcebook to includ transphobic poo poo, careless Nazi dogwhitles in the V5 text, a really gross take on the persecution of LGBT people in Chechnya, and other things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten. Iirc on the details of the Chechnya thing, the passage was pretty much the standard oWoD "This splat is totally involved or capitalizing on this real world thing" and the big issue wasn't that it was gross, but that it was claiming it happened to begin with and which the country it happened in (Russia) vehemently denies and threatened legal action over it
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Feb 15, 2019 18:36
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Dave Brookshaw posted:When I step down, I'm gonna see about putting it in the Storyteller's Vault, the way Rose did with hers for Requiem Oh poo poo, I need to get that too.
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Feb 15, 2019 18:37
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Xelkelvos posted:Iirc on the details of the Chechnya thing, the passage was pretty much the standard oWoD "This splat is totally involved or capitalizing on this real world thing" and the big issue wasn't that it was gross, but that it was claiming it happened to begin with and which the country it happened in (Russia) vehemently denies and threatened legal action over it It wasn't "This real world thing has vampires involved' it was "the vampires are doing this absolutely terrible thing and also the leader is a vampire" and there was nary a sidebar or notation that "Oh by the way this terrible thing is actually happening" It was presented as this bizarre hyperbolic thing that a fictional bad guy was doing.
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Feb 15, 2019 18:42
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Unoriginal Name posted:I mean Demon is about avoiding detection by the authorities and Promethean is desperately wishing you were human while being toxic as gently caress so...I mean... That's a really lovely reading of Promethean if that's your take. joylessdivision fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 18:42
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Kurieg posted:It wasn't "This real world thing has vampires involved' it was "the vampires are doing this absolutely terrible thing and also the leader is a vampire" and there was nary a sidebar or notation that "Oh by the way this terrible thing is actually happening" And also a healthy dose of "this horrible, real-world atrocity is actually just a smokescreen to draw attention so people don't realize the country is run by vampires."
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Feb 15, 2019 18:47
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Kurieg posted:It wasn't "This real world thing has vampires involved' it was "the vampires are doing this absolutely terrible thing and also the leader is a vampire" and there was nary a sidebar or notation that "Oh by the way this terrible thing is actually happening" Ah, right. I wasn't sure if it extended that far in being that dumb or not and I forgot the side bar portion which is probably the bit that made it go from just gross to international incident.
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Feb 15, 2019 18:47
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I just started reading the V5 books and a few likes and dislikes. I like the whole deal of trying to take the elder vampires less out of the game and leaving a power vacuum to an extent. Especially the little tidbit about finding lost hordes in estates left behind by those same elders. I find the entire fate of the Tremere chantry in Austria to be dumb as poo poo. Drone strikes and special forces hit squads. The Tremere as I think about them would have taken some bad losses but for sure not been so thoroughly owned. On the other hand I don't dislike the changes to how the clan operates or their clan flaw. I'm also into the Sabbat being more in the shadows instead of it's own very clear regional power.
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Feb 15, 2019 18:54
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MonsieurChoc posted:God I want to read that Mage writer's bible. Dave Brookshaw posted:When I step down, I'm gonna see about putting it in the Storyteller's Vault, the way Rose did with hers for Requiem I have a feeling I'd get angry reading it, but that doesn't mean I don't want to. 
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Feb 15, 2019 20:11
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Deviant spent years in pre-writing. I designed it down to the game mechanic dice pools before hiring anyone. Mage has a writer's bible longer than some of its published sourcebooks. That kind of obsessive prework makes me chronically late, and it's *not incentivised*. 1) Deviant honestly sounds really exciting and I can't wait to see what it's like 2) It sounds a little like you're beating yourself up over the crimes that others committed, but it also sounds like you did everything you thought reasonable to address the problems you saw when you became aware of them? Don't feel too bad about being hoodwinked by an abuser, they've got way more experience manipulating others than most normal people have resisting manipulation. 3) Is the "Blind" flaw renamed "Blinded (by Science)" in Deviant? Is it too late to make a change if that's not the case. Old Boot posted:Yiffy ISIS is the Spirals. The Garou are lock-step Republicans with a side of climate change acceptance. Wouldn't that make them basically the opposite of lock-step Republicans, then? I could see an argument for capital-C Conservative Conservationists, especially with the FAMILY HERITAGE WARCRAFT OORAH machismo backdrop. ulmont posted:I’d think it would be somewhat difficult while writing for Vampire. Skip the part about the kiss inducing Gigagasms and putting a gauze filter on the other abuse-y mechanics (like, Conditioning could be less invasive) would be a good first start. Co-dependence instead of coercion, it's still problematic but it's less specifically capital-R problematic. Feeding doesn't have to be inherently sexual, it could represent the depression and ennui inflicted by unhealthy relationships. That's not strictly better, but it gets at the same themes without overselling the shock value of ~ravishment~. It's also a lot less sexually appealing, which I think this fandom needs. I think rewriting the parts of the game which dramatize "seduction" and flipping the script so that vampires are conniving leeches instead of suave and debonair will probably drive a lot of the worst parts of the fandom off, too. This wouldn't even require too much of a mechanical re-write, just change how it's presented. You're not wrong that it's coded into the game in a big way, though. This crowd needs a cold shower.
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Feb 15, 2019 21:27
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Just got a used copy of Reign of the Exarchs. Any tips on how to run it? Can I use it with the Chicago book?
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Feb 15, 2019 22:28
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MonsieurChoc posted:Just got a used copy of Reign of the Exarchs. Any tips on how to run it? Can I use it with the Chicago book? DaveB, current Mage lead, literally ran it as part of his Broken Diamond chronicle over a decade ago, complete with notes on how well he thought any particular bit worked. If you want a big chunk on tips on it, it's a heck of a source!
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Feb 15, 2019 22:58
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Warthur posted:Game mechanically I see a lot of people griping about the hunger system - specifically, the way it seems to obligate you to spend a substantial amount of game time on diversions paying attention to feeding and hunger management. The general feeling seems to be that in past editions the amount of attention you paid to the actual vampire-ing bit of being a vampire was a dial you could adjust depending on how much grotty street-level feeding action you wanted vs. how much high-stakes vampire politics with the feeding mostly offscreen you wanted, and people who take that approach to Vampire seem to think that the new system takes away their capacity to adjust that dial. Not sure how true that is, but that's the complaint I've seen. Eh. Feeding is as intrusive or not as you want it. The feeding section in the book starts out with 'if you need it to be quick, roll these most common combos of stuff, slake hunger based on the chart based on how long you spend doing so, and go on'. I've been running V5 since September, and we have feeding every other session just about, and we do it as more of the 'PCs getting prepped for the evening,' and it doesn't take any extra time (and adds to the players' narrative, because they have aspects of their characters tied to herds or the way they feed). A lot of the people who bitch about it seem to be bitching about the concept of 'my hunger can effect my actions' because of Hunger dice and not realizing they have options to mitigate that, like the autosuccess/take half rule or willpower to reroll dice. TheKingslayer posted:I just started reading the V5 books and a few likes and dislikes. There are implications in BJD and some text in the V5 core that it was an inside job, partially by Karl Schreckt, to take out the Worm!SauloTremere thing.
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Feb 16, 2019 02:59
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I don't know what it is exactly, but right now, GeekandSundry is doing a Vampire RP thing on their Twitch channel. https://www.twitch.tv/geekandsundry It took me a minute to realize that two of the actors are supposed to be Nines Rodriguez and Therese Voerrman from the Bloodlines game.
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Feb 16, 2019 05:35
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Max Wilco posted:I don't know what it is exactly, but right now, GeekandSundry is doing a Vampire RP thing on their Twitch channel. Jason Carl has been running a V5 game, LA by Night for... a while now, I think since last October? Four Anarchs in LA. WIth a bunch of different guest 'players/actors' for different parts, like a Werewolf at one point. Different Bloodlines characters have shown up and such, since he considers Bloodlines heavily canon. The first season is up on youtube. First episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFyQtOghqwA&t=5s MoonKnight fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Feb 16, 2019 |
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Feb 16, 2019 06:25
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