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Personally my favorite phrase involving the word 'monsters' is "the old dies and the new struggles to be born. Now is a time of monsters."
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Mar 18, 2019 21:51
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Dave Brookshaw posted:In a CofD game? Yes. it’s sort of the point, and I look down on the games that lose sight of the fact that their protagonists are monsters. knowing how many of the designers of these monstergames are themselves literal rapists (yourself excluded), maybe we could sit down and think about how that might impact narrative design. i don't think it's the protagonists that are the monsters. Basic Chunnel posted:As opposed to those wholesome tendencies evinced in the other lines? ostensibly you can play the other games in such a way as to avoid appeasing ~the nebulous manifestation of entropy and violence~ but if my understanding is correct that's explicitly not the point here. Maybe I'm just bummed my headcanon turned out so wrong but like, I don't need a game to remind me that I have a list of people who have hosed me over.
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Mar 18, 2019 22:15
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:knowing how many of the designers of these monstergames are themselves literal rapists (yourself excluded), maybe we could sit down and think about how that might impact narrative design. i don't think it's the protagonists that are the monsters. E: and, indeed, it is kind of gross to accuse, say, Rose Bailey of it on account of writing Vampire, say, which is explicitly set up so that being a good and healthy person is extremely difficult and requires you to explicitly seek that and forgo much of your power, because the theme of Vampire is fundamentally tied to vampires being broken people. Like, it's just Matt, dude. Matt is awful. (And tangentially Morke, but he never wrote for ChronD.) Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 22:17
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There's a massive difference between having a game with unstable PCs and having a game with a hit list on the character sheet. I like the WoD games because, at their excruciatingly rare best, they model ways to overcome the antisocial handicaps plaguing their players. If I'm missing how that's incorporated into Deviant please feel free to correct me.
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Mar 18, 2019 22:30
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The Beast Players Guide straight up has a sidebar that says "Oh, wow, is human sacrifice a step too far for you? This is the line you refuse to cross? Really? You do realize that your characters are evil right? I mean if you don't want to roleplay it out then good for you. If you don't want to roleplay a bad person then you're playing the wrong loving game." And I fully believe that sidebar was written by someone who was not Matt.
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Mar 18, 2019 22:33
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Dave Brookshaw posted:I look down on the games that lose sight of the fact that their protagonists are monsters. Good to know I'm held in contempt...?
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Mar 18, 2019 23:11
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This being a megathread I know this discussion has come around again and again but it still surprises me how often people come to WoD, and CoD especially, as fundamentally not about horror
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Mar 18, 2019 23:20
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Crasical posted:Good to know I'm held in contempt...? Not people that play them. The games themselves. As a paying customer, it is your right and privilege to do whatever you like. I do, when I run things! It’s when it drifts into the writing for games that we get thematically confused lines. I get the desire for optimistic games, I really do. That’s why I’m off to write other things. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 23:20
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Dave Brookshaw posted:In a CofD game? Yes. it’s sort of the point, and I look down on the games that lose sight of the fact that their protagonists are monsters. This just put into perspective why the LA by Night G&S show doesn't do it for me despite having some talented players. It doesn't feel like they ever have to deal with having to be a vampire very much. Maybe that's an artifact of being 5E? I don't know.
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Mar 19, 2019 00:10
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Basic Chunnel posted:This being a megathread I know this discussion has come around again and again but it still surprises me how often people come to WoD, and CoD especially, as fundamentally not about horror Sometimes horror involves facing your own inner demons and realizing all of the various cruelties that you'll let yourself get away with just to stay comfortable. Sometimes it's about going on a ultimately self defeating rampage against the world itself. And sometimes it's about playing a redneck werewolf that fights against the personification of entropy with the power of a fiddle and a proper line dance.
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Mar 19, 2019 00:20
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Chronicles of Darkness has done a fantastic job of threading the needle in how it's written in a consistent thematic way while also providing a toolbox approach and freedom to run it in a variety of genres and style. I'm tentatively excited for Deviant to do the same. It's a game about revenge, so absolutely it should have a hitlist. I get the criticism, but I think there is a lot of fertile story ground to explore there in a meaningful way that will end up being cathartic. I think the biggest issue with Beast was its refusal to condemn, and even outright condoning what it was creating. I withhold my judgment until the text comes out, but the concept doesn't bother me, even living in the context we do this day. If anything, it's that context that makes the desire to engage in it all the more. A lot of the same death-urge that it's speaking to that we see paralleled in the mass killings and revenge fantasies of today is also spoke about in off-handed humor about guillotines and a sharper class politics of the time. The knife cuts both ways, and I don't think handling that matter should be condemned, and I think the game explicitly provides moral incentives to resist the path of simply indulging in fantasy, while the path to simply blow it up is "easier" but ends with utter collapse and ruin for the player... you know, like most of the genre works that it is drawn from.
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Mar 19, 2019 00:32
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I feel like a mechanism that actually reduced your characters' power as they accomplished sinister goals would make for an interesting twist. You set the character's violent, unhealthy goals directly at odds with what players have been conditioned since day 1 to work towards and see what happens. Make it a game where the Monster characer wants to kill Dr Frankenstein, but his player doesn't want to permanently lose dots and abilities.
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Mar 19, 2019 00:53
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punishing players for playing the game usually doesn't end with happy players
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Mar 19, 2019 01:06
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Basic Chunnel posted:This being a megathread I know this discussion has come around again and again but it still surprises me how often people come to WoD, and CoD especially, as fundamentally not about horror The game can be about horror without the characters themselves being reprehensible. I'd argue that trying to maintain a moral core in a world that seeks to corrupt you is super dramatic AF but that would be so personally contextual that it's irrelevant, so I'll just ask you "what do you mean by horror?" moths posted:I feel like a mechanism that actually reduced your characters' power as they accomplished sinister goals would make for an interesting twist. This is something I'm working on, you start as a member of an extremist organization and attempt to work through the conspiracies and traumas that isolated you in the first place, as you escape it. This entails losing access to the bully powers being in the group gave you. The thing that makes this really difficult is "livestreaming spree killer" is now a real life archetype because I didn't finish the project before reality got as bad as the dystopia I was writing, so now I'm consumed with the moral weight of making a game where Moot and Laura Loomer are quasi-mythological figures capable of inspiring supernatural strength in their followers. Like, I release the game as it is and within is the framework for playing the "livestreaming gang of white nationalists" archetype as antagonists, I can't stop people from playing that straight. And something about that has utterly paralyzed me. eh, whatever, when deviant comes out I'm deffo going to try to make Eleven from Stranger Things. EDIT- DAVE EXCUSE ME I HAVE A QUESTION. Does the spider from Spider-Man (specifically Into the Spiderverse) count as a Deviant? Are there rules for playing changed animals or is it just humans? I hope this criticism doesn't feel personal, I'm sure I'll love parts of the game as much as I've loved parts of everything else WW/OP has put out. Especially if I can play a surly but gold-hearted spider who likes biting orphans to give them mutant powers. edit2- I'll make one last addition to the "PCs as evildoers" debacle before it goes further; I can no longer give the benefit of the doubt to nerds to use games as a fig leaf to cover their antisocial power fantasies. I don't know how else to describe it, there's just a type of gamer who plays these games because they wish they could do it in real life and none of them seem to respect boundaries. That's not a judgement on gaming as a whole, but I think we do need to be more honest with ourselves about the audience we're members of. PHIZ KALIFA fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 01:12
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I'm not Dave but I am 100% certain that Deviant is not going to treat 'gives people powers' as a sympathetic thing at all
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Mar 19, 2019 01:17
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Mors Rattus posted:I'm not Dave but I am 100% certain that Deviant is not going to treat 'gives people powers' as a sympathetic thing at all good. edit- fuckin plague of radioactive man-spiders taking over manhattan, what up.
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Mar 19, 2019 01:23
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:Like, I release the game as it is and within is the framework for playing the "livestreaming gang of white nationalists" archetype as antagonists, I can't stop people from playing that straight. And something about that has utterly paralyzed me. I've talked about this in other threads, but this is how you make good Scifi. Frame it in some functional analogue society, play with those ideas and concepts through a lens. Because that's a great theme to explore, but soul-crushing. Mors Rattus posted:punishing players for playing the game usually doesn't end with happy players The point isn't to punish players, It's a shared dilemma with the character. I like when mechanics have an emotional slant, they lead to memorable moments. Consider things where you permanently burn a fate/destiny/whatever point. It's painful as a player because we horde those things. But it'll generally accomplish something that should be tough for the character. Like, imagine tearing up a chaos orb as an RPG mechanic. moths fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 01:43
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From the typology of VtM fans in 94's WWM42... "Creepy Vampire Nut: By far the most enthusiastic vampire players, and definitely the most frightening. This is the crowd with an intense, erotic fascination with undead life. As far as they're concerned, Vampire is the ne plus ultra of games; all others fade into utter insignificance (so, for that matter, does reality.) This is the crowd that posts long, pompous, 100% in-character messages on the on-line services. Some of them think they really are vampires. Don't even let them get anywhere near a Masquerade game - they might never snap out of it." Gee, who does that remind me of?
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Mar 19, 2019 03:03
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moths posted:The point isn't to punish players, It's a shared dilemma with the character. I like when mechanics have an emotional slant, they lead to memorable moments. Also, I want the game to be about moving beyond toxic power fantasies, and there's no ludonarrative dissonance-free way to do that unless the process of abandoning your online bully power source costs you the powers it gave you. It's only a "punishment" if the point of the game is numbers go up. Loomer posted:From the typology of VtM fans in 94's WWM42... I think it was you who posted, hundred pages back, about one of the formernew leads who ran a LARP which was deliberately designed to make people uncomfortable, and his whole schtick was to make you uncomfortable or he wasn't doing his job? That kind of poo poo. What the gently caress is up with that poo poo. Dominate in the wrong hands ruins games faster than any other player-held mechanic I've found short of the deck of many things.
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Mar 19, 2019 03:32
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One of the players in my Mage game has told me that they're absolutely going to run headlong into trying things that are normally Too Risky or occasionally Frowned Upon in their SilverLadder quest to get more people to Awaken. When I asked another player "Did your character ever hurt someone with magic in the course of their training, or do something they shouldn't have?" "No, not during training, no way." "No, I mean, like, during the period of your apprenticeship, because your vice is hot-headed, and-" "Oh yeah I absolutely once punched a guy straight through a wall because he was getting on my nerves." mmm that's good magery. Right now they're trying to run a youth shelter.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:06
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I'm mostly out of playing WoD games due to game group burnout, but I don't know. The idea of "Hero embarks on revenge fueled rampage against those who wronged him", while a known and beloved trope, has a different mouthfeel these days. What with the whole white supremacy/xenophobia/terrorism thing going around. I know it's probably not written for those people, but that's who I think of when that idea gets rolled around these days so I'm. Uncomfortable with it. End lukewarm take.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:22
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Dave Brookshaw posted:In a CofD game? Yes. it’s sort of the point, and I look down on the games that lose sight of the fact that their protagonists are monsters. Yeah, see, I really don't like this. Geist and Changeling 2E are the best the CofD has ever been, and are about empowered victims. Mage is better when it's about heroes whose tragic flaw is that they can't not stick their nose in and break things, and Promethean... well, Promethean is sort of about being monsters, but it's monsters in the sense of the abject, which I don't think is quite what you're getting at here. Demon is probably the best game about monsters and a huge part of what makes Demon so good is that being a monster is optional for them in a way that it isn't for e.g. vampires -- it's just very, very expedient. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 04:34
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I'm in the same boat, if I'm honest. As much as I enjoyed the idea of Deviant earlier, Christchurch has turned that to a kind of ambivalent unease. It might fade with a few weeks distance but it might not.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:34
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It's already been stated a number of ways, but the setting is at its best when you're punching up and making the best out of the crappy hand you've been dealt. No matter how lovely a vampire you are, there's always a worse vampire villain to fight. Werewolves have the rear end in a top hat werewolves, demons have the god machine, I don't understand Geist, and hunters have the whole lot. Even when it's a violent power fantasy, the bad guys are worse guys, and you don't need to squint hard to see that they have it coming. That's (a big part of) where Beast hosed up, and I'm not sure what steps, if any, Deviant took to do better.
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Mar 19, 2019 04:52
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PHIZ KALIFA posted:I'd argue that trying to maintain a moral core in a world that seeks to corrupt you is super dramatic AF but that would be so personally contextual that it's irrelevant, so I'll just ask you "what do you mean by horror?" Tuxedo Catfish posted:Demon is probably the best game about monsters and a huge part of what makes Demon so good is that being a monster is optional for them in a way that it isn't for e.g. vampires -- it's just very, very expedient.
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Mar 19, 2019 05:28
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Basic Chunnel posted:It isn't? Sure they don't have to eat people but even if a Demon doesn't have a hand in straight up terrorism, she's putting all the humans she surrounds herself with at unknowing risk. And not even for relationships built on honesty! Spies are bad news! A Demon deludes herself into believing she cares for humans the same way a vampire does. She isn't instigating any of that. Demonic secrecy is basically the only non-suicidal response to a globe-spanning conspiracy that eats Demons and humans alike alive. And yes, a Demon doesn't have to eat people; that's exactly the point. That's what divides "someone in a morally complex and difficult position" from "a monster." Also frankly, given the opposition, the Demon who engages in straight-up terrorism probably has a better claim to being a good person than one who doesn't.
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Mar 19, 2019 05:43
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moths posted:It's already been stated a number of ways, but the setting is at its best when you're punching up and making the best out of the crappy hand you've been dealt. We'll see when the game come sout but it seems like the idea is to fight those conspiracies that made you, which would mean punching up no?
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Mar 19, 2019 05:45
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moths posted:It's already been stated a number of ways, but the setting is at its best when you're punching up and making the best out of the crappy hand you've been dealt. And anyway quote:Even when it's a violent power fantasy, the bad guys are worse guys, and you don't need to squint hard to see that they have it coming.
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Mar 19, 2019 05:48
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:She isn't instigating any of that. Demonic secrecy is basically the only non-suicidal response to a globe-spanning conspiracy that eats Demons and humans alike alive.
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Mar 19, 2019 05:57
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What I’m hoping for with Deviant is a sort of noir game. Noir in the literary sense, not the film sense (Fiasco has that covered), the sense of “working class tragedy”. The noir protagonist happens to be bad at the things that bring him closer to wholeness and very good at the things that make things worse for him, and all threats are in one way or another existential. They’re always headed for tragedy but (as it’s got roots in southern gothic traditions), they get a moment of grace before they meet their fate. They are heroic in that they’re sad and unsung. Normal people caught in the machinations of relentless mad science makes this more like Frankenstein than Promethean, tbh Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 06:23
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Basic Chunnel posted:You can’t quite claim the high ground when you fight the revolution in civilian garb. This is a bit of a wild claim to make, given basically every successful revolution has kicked off with a widespread conspiracy. In Demon, the God-Machine is not going to be defeated by open rebellion, because it has no qualms about mass-murdering both the demon that says 'hi I'm a demon and I fight God' and also every human within earshot, and then some. Or more likely doing something weird that produces an angel whose entire life is dedicated to the same. If changing the system of the world is a good cause, and that cause cannot be advanced without secrecy, would you really claim that any Demon attempting to secretly pursue said cause is really just as bad as the God-Machine?
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Mar 19, 2019 08:29
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Joe Slowboat posted:This is a bit of a wild claim to make, given basically every successful revolution has kicked off with a widespread conspiracy. In Demon, the God-Machine is not going to be defeated by open rebellion, because it has no qualms about mass-murdering both the demon that says 'hi I'm a demon and I fight God' and also every human within earshot, and then some. Or more likely doing something weird that produces an angel whose entire life is dedicated to the same. So all those human beings are acceptable collateral for our protagonist Demon who is entirely doing this for the betterment of the world--and who, apparently, knows that their course of action is the best one--and not out of their own desire to escape and survive? The ChroD games often set up beings in unfair positions or positions of privilege, the weights placed on them as a result, and the way the human condition will often twist them to either taking horrible actions, and/or justifying the actions they assure themselves they had to take. Like what you just did, for example. A Demon is risking the lives of everyone around them, without their consent, through webs of deception, so that they can survive. And will then proceed to burn that cover and let everyone in their orbit fend for themselves once it becomes compromised. Whether they asked for that situation or don't have another option that ensures their survival, this is what they are doing and it is emphatically not a good thing. This is representational of a lot of the circumstances and pressures entities in the ChroD face. Just because they don't seem to have a more moral option (that isn't "accept your own end") doesn't act as an excuse which somehow validates the awful and questionable things they actually do.
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Mar 19, 2019 10:01
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I feel like the whole question of "are Demons moral" is skipping the whole fact that their Cover is (usually) made up of pieces of lives they cajole, lie, trick and bargain for from other people, and while not everyone goes for the full-on soul, it's still literally taking a part of it, their very identity, for their own selfish need. Angel-jacking is an exception to this, and more directly avoiding those philosophical questions, but also requires an occult matrix which is itself powered often by the suffering of human beings in the first place, it just provides a degree of separation from the act. Cover isn't just this thing that comes from nowhere, it's got a real cost.
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Mar 19, 2019 10:33
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drat, the 1700s were rough on the Traditions. The Chorus lost its influence in China, the Hermetics lost a major house to infernalism, had another house destroyed, and were thoroughly infilitrated by the ksirafai, the Ascension War turned hot with the proto-Syndicate massively expanding, the Akashics got the poo poo kicked out of them by the Wu Lung, they lost over a hundred Native American Dreamspeakers, and they only had three meaningful wins - Ivory Tower, Uludag, and the formation of House Thig and the Golden Dragon Society.
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Mar 19, 2019 12:39
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Also frankly, given the opposition, the Demon who engages in straight-up terrorism probably has a better claim to being a good person than one who doesn't. remind me again why this applies to Demons but not to Deviants, whose entire backstory is 'an evil conspiracy tortured and broke you and destroyed your life and made you what you now are'
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Mar 19, 2019 12:59
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Tricky Dick Nixon posted:I feel like the whole question of "are Demons moral" is skipping the whole fact that their Cover is (usually) made up of pieces of lives they cajole, lie, trick and bargain for from other people, and while not everyone goes for the full-on soul, it's still literally taking a part of it, their very identity, for their own selfish need. Yeah, it's my understanding that if you want a Cover with a family and you aren't using the one the GM (heh, I get it) gave you originally you've got to take that part of somebody that does have a family.
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Mar 19, 2019 13:13
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Yeah, see, I really don't like this. Geist and Changeling 2E are the best the CofD has ever been, and are about empowered victims. Mage is better when it's about heroes whose tragic flaw is that they can't not stick their nose in and break things, and Promethean... well, Promethean is sort of about being monsters, but it's monsters in the sense of the abject, which I don't think is quite what you're getting at here. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Changeling 2e. Changeling 1e was one of my favourite games to never play, because it got so much right, but it just had an absolutely awful texture, on top of all the incentive structure problems that were in 1e (seriously, punishing players for doing interesting things is bad). (Edit: To clarify my meaning on the texture thing: Changeling 1e had this problem where everything was out to get you and suffering was everywhere forever. It made everything painful and sad, and every trip into the Hedge an exercise in anxiety. Such was my experience, anyway.) Changeling 2e is a vast improvement, because it tends to reward player agency and its mechanics are much more geared to creating drama. I don't think it's "finished", though. I think its incentive structure is really incomplete. CofD's mortal rules very much feel - to me - like they're designed on the assumption of one-shots or otherwise very short games; the incentives are largely there to reward getting the absolute piss beaten out of you, mentally or physically, along with a small degree of rewards for telling the ST what you actually want to do instead of leaving it to them to guess. But Changeling doesn't really expand on that, and I think that's a weakness of the line compared to, say, Mage, which has the tightest gameplay loop this side of D&D: Chase mysteries to get more power that you use to chase bigger mysteries. Along the way, drama happens. Changeling also sort of muddies its own themes by trying to make faerie magic two things at once. In 1e, it was thematically very clear: Faerie magic was something that got beaten into you: You became this thing because your Keeper made you that way but, somehow, you just can't help but coming back to it. The Darkling thief finds too much joy in stealing; the Fairest doesn't feel alive unless they're on center stage. In 2e, though, sometimes that is the case and fae magic is a way to lure you away from your mortal life, back into dreamland and away from the hard work of just being a human being, and sometimes it's a manifestation of agency that is about liberating you from abuse and returning you to humanity. These things are thematically at complete loggerheads. Personally, none of this changes that I love 2e as a massive mechanical upgrade over its predecessor. My preferred take is to use Arcadia itself as a combined metaphor for power and power fantasy, with escapist thought tainting both. Changelings are the victims of abusers who didn't see them as people; lost in their own solipsistic waking dream. Faerie magic offers the promise of doing - and being - the same; granting you agency and freeing you from mortal pains. It just also encourages you to use that faerie magic in a way that is thoroughly self-interested. My first houserule to change that was to put Seemings back where they were in 1e - inflicted on you, rather than chosen - and make it so that dreams and emotions echo through the Hedge to Arcadia (which I think is already hinted at). It makes it so that powerful wishes from the people they loved or the places they felt strongly about are what call the Changeling back; a reminder that, in the midst of their strange fantasy world, there are things that mattered to them, outside themselves. Returning from Arcadia is still self-assertion, but it's fundamentally human in every sense. And that's before we talk gameplay loops. Axelgear fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Mar 19, 2019 |
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Mar 19, 2019 13:31
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Up past 4000 footnoted events in the timeline now.
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Mar 19, 2019 13:56
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah, it's my understanding that if you want a Cover with a family and you aren't using the one the GM (heh, I get it) gave you originally you've got to take that part of somebody that does have a family. Or you get a basic cover together and then build a family the slow way. Nothing stops a demon from reinforcing a cover without artificially stitching the new bits on.
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Mar 19, 2019 14:11
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So can forming a new cover involve something like someone selling you their family life? Does everyone forget that person had a family but "remembers" your cover did? Because just having a group of mortals immune to that memory tampering could work for a short story.
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Mar 19, 2019 15:00
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