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Apocalypse 1e update: I'm still hammering through notes and if I actually spend some time on it this weekend (instead of ignoring them like I have been) I should have the notes wrapped up and I'll be able to start getting the review put together. I don't know why I've been procrastinating on these notes, other than I hate transcribing powers because it's tedious as poo poo. I won't include descriptions of every power like I did for Mage because some of them really aren't worth mentioning aside from their name. Except Feral Lobotomy which is  and I'll include the quote from my friends response when I sent him a screenshot of that power in the review because it's way funnier than anything I would have come up with.
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Aug 5, 2022 15:14
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Don't worry about it, we'll be cool with whatever you share. Let's hate read together.
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Aug 5, 2022 15:19
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joylessdivision posted:Except Feral Lobotomy which is Something like "You're returning to monke whether you like it or not" or does the actual description get creepier?
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Aug 5, 2022 15:22
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Quackles posted:I've made this joke a bit too often lately, but— so that explains CoNTINUUM! I still don't understand the "sentient spacetime" theory.
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Aug 5, 2022 15:27
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JcDent posted:Your husband sails out, leaving with keys to the mansion. Half of the rooms are age of sail trivia about boats and stuff, half the other rooms have stuff to do with drunk sailors. Well, screw you for describing this game and then not having it already written for me to play 
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Aug 5, 2022 16:00
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Kavak posted:Something like "You're returning to monke whether you like it or not" or does the actual description get creepier? Kinda yes it's the permanent destruction of the victims intelligence, which is pretty hosed considering the roll to oppose is just Willpower. It's an obscenely OP power even for a 5 dot.
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Aug 5, 2022 16:07
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By popular demand posted:Don't worry about it, we'll be cool with whatever you share. Shockingly, I really don't have a lot to hate in Apocalypse. I have some quibbles with format like I did in Mage but my feelings and reaction to these two games has been night and day. With the caveat of "I'm pretty sure 99% of this book is offensive in some way to indigenous people or at least kinda insensitive"
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Aug 5, 2022 16:10
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joylessdivision posted:Shockingly, I really don't have a lot to hate in Apocalypse. I have some quibbles with format like I did in Mage but my feelings and reaction to these two games has been night and day. Yeah. It starts with the breed with deformities having the same name as an actual group of people in Metis and one of the Native American tribes being named a taboo word (which admittedly I doubt the writers knew, but it does lead to some interesting choices for Woof 5E).
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Aug 5, 2022 16:37
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah. It starts with the breed with deformities having the same name as an actual group of people in Metis and one of the Native American tribes being named a taboo word (which admittedly I doubt the writers knew, but it does lead to some interesting choices for Woof 5E). Yeah with Metis I can see that being a mistake of "Well we were pulling from the Greek myth use of the word" and like the other stuff that comes off a bit....tonedeaf I suppose is the best word for it is likely chalked up to "Bunch of dudes in Georgia in the early 90's who didn't know better" and while not an excuse, it's still important context for when it was written. I'll go over it more in the review but I don't get the same condescension and smug superiority feeling from the "Authorial Voice" in Werewolf as I did in Mage, and maybe that's softened my stance a little bit on some of the iffy elements of the book.
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Aug 5, 2022 16:49
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JcDent posted:Your husband sails out, leaving with keys to the mansion. Half of the rooms are age of sail trivia about boats and stuff, half the other rooms have stuff to do with drunk sailors. Blackbeard's Bride seems like it would be way more fun (and way less rapey/gross) than Bluebeard's Bride. I want to play that game.
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Aug 5, 2022 17:50
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Idunno, he looks nonplussed.
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Aug 5, 2022 17:53
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Capfalcon posted:Bluebeard's Bride is, to me, a great example of a game not actually meant to be played, but where you read it and imagine playing it. The reason I find Bride so creepy and uncomfortable is that I genuinely think "reading it and getting off on the description of all the horrible things happening to the heroine" is the intended use case. It's a collaborative abuse simulator, where the whole idea is to make the Bride experience eroticised horror and get off on the idea of making her walk into such horrific situations while defenceless. Blackbeard's Bride would be great simply for the subversive glee of her pulling out a pistol in response to such crap. Also there should be arguments with sailors who weren't taken on her husband's current cruise, arranging the money laundering and keeping the Bostonites sweet so you can fence the loot, meetings with lawyers over the wording of the letter of marque, and valuation sessions for the stuff taken in the last round of pirating.
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Aug 5, 2022 18:02
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Loxbourne posted:Blackbeard's Bride would be great simply for the subversive glee of her pulling out a pistol in response to such crap. Also there should be arguments with sailors who weren't taken on her husband's current cruise, arranging the money laundering and keeping the Bostonites sweet so you can fence the loot, meetings with lawyers over the wording of the letter of marque, and valuation sessions for the stuff taken in the last round of pirating. Can we make this a goon project? Please? 
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Aug 5, 2022 20:25
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joylessdivision posted:I'll go over it more in the review but I don't get the same condescension and smug superiority feeling from the "Authorial Voice" in Werewolf as I did in Mage, and maybe that's softened my stance a little bit on some of the iffy elements of the book. You're not wrong. There is a weird core of Bart Simpson giving them an 'At Least You Tried' cake that feels different from Mage.
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Aug 5, 2022 20:58
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Loxbourne posted:The reason I find Bride so creepy and uncomfortable is that I genuinely think "reading it and getting off on the description of all the horrible things happening to the heroine" is the intended use case. It's a collaborative abuse simulator, where the whole idea is to make the Bride experience eroticised horror and get off on the idea of making her walk into such horrific situations while defenceless. . Can we get a lot less of this “I don’t like this flavor of horror game therefore the author must be fetishizing it” in this thread? It makes it feel basically pointless to talk about this, or to discuss the actual flaws in the game.
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Aug 5, 2022 21:51
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Joe Slowboat posted:Can we get a lot less of this “I don’t like this flavor of horror game therefore the author must be fetishizing it” in this thread? It makes it feel basically pointless to talk about this, or to discuss the actual flaws in the game. I mean, they wrote a rape couch into their game. It's not just "horror we don't like," it's "horror that contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault and gendered violence."
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Aug 5, 2022 22:13
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Loxbourne posted:The reason I find Bride so creepy and uncomfortable is that I genuinely think "reading it and getting off on the description of all the horrible things happening to the heroine" is the intended use case. It's a collaborative abuse simulator, where the whole idea is to make the Bride experience eroticised horror and get off on the idea of making her walk into such horrific situations while defenceless. I want to play one round of Bluebeard's Bride with the "tell the town and get ignored/insulted" ending and then do a sequel where that bride ends up as Blackbeard's Bride and leads her new hubby into the town to plunder it and Bluebeard's castle, burning both to the ground at the end.
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Aug 5, 2022 22:46
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We had a discussion on the Lancer Discord about Bluebeard's Bride, and what we generally came to was that, it being Feminist Horror and meant to replicate the feeling of being trapped in a bad situation where even if you reveal your abuser, society will punish you for attempting to escape them. Where you can't win because, for the longest time, women weren't able to win in situations like this, so at most they could survive. That my viewpoint of "This is bad because it feels exploitative and all the endings feel like misery porn, why can't you just win against Bluebeard" is ultimately just looking at the problem through a very masculine lens of "Gotta triumph over the problem." I don't get it, but when a bunch of women tell me that this is how it is and the game isn't really meant to be "Fun" or have unambiguously good endings because its explicitly Feminist horror, I'm going to believe them. Because I'm a guy.
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Aug 6, 2022 03:33
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I'm definitely not going to argue with anyone who claims this isn't intended to be "fun."
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Aug 6, 2022 03:39
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Loxbourne posted:The reason I find Bride so creepy and uncomfortable is that I genuinely think "reading it and getting off on the description of all the horrible things happening to the heroine" is the intended use case. It's a collaborative abuse simulator, where the whole idea is to make the Bride experience eroticised horror and get off on the idea of making her walk into such horrific situations while defenceless. So, I've never played Bluebeard's Bride and it holds no appeal to me. However, I've been at least three different conventions where different groups, almost entirely made up of women played it, and that was overwhelmingly not the vibe it gave off or what they talked about afterwards. I've heard it talked about as a cathartic experience, as a sort of "telling scary ghost stories" activity, and as a serious examination of patriarchy and misogyny, but never anything like a "collaborative abuse simulator." Now, to my knowledge none of those used/had the Book of Rooms present, which may just be purely gross material, but what the core game produces in play seems to be attractive to people on a level that's not just weird wankery.
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Aug 6, 2022 03:45
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LaSquida posted:So, I've never played Bluebeard's Bride and it holds no appeal to me. However, I've been at least three different conventions where different groups, almost entirely made up of women played it, and that was overwhelmingly not the vibe it gave off or what they talked about afterwards. I've heard it talked about as a cathartic experience, as a sort of "telling scary ghost stories" activity, and as a serious examination of patriarchy and misogyny, but never anything like a "collaborative abuse simulator." I'm starting to get the feeling that (demographically) we are really, really not the target audience for Bluebeard's Bride and should just leave it alone, but my cynical side wants to know who the target audience is for the Book of Rooms. The core book has three women listed on the cover as the writers, what about Book of Rooms? Kavak fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 04:19
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Kavak posted:The core book has three women listed on the cover as the writers, what about Book of Rooms? DriveThru lists four authors, two of whom were authors listed for the core, and the other two also have names that lead me to believe they’re women.
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Aug 6, 2022 04:30
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Sometimes women like gross garbage too (usually with half more self-awareness than men who partake the same things). But yeah, Bluebeard's Bride is a Feminist Horror, it's akin to Robin McKinley's Deerskin
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Aug 6, 2022 05:39
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Everyone posted:I want to play one round of Bluebeard's Bride with the "tell the town and get ignored/insulted" ending and then do a sequel where that bride ends up as Blackbeard's Bride and leads her new hubby into the town to plunder it and Bluebeard's castle, burning both to the ground at the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7awW5nrDHk
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Aug 6, 2022 10:52
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Exactly.
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Aug 6, 2022 13:28
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Kavak posted:I'm starting to get the feeling that (demographically) we are really, really not the target audience for Bluebeard's Bride and should just leave it alone, but my cynical side wants to know who the target audience is for the Book of Rooms. The core book has three women listed on the cover as the writers, what about Book of Rooms? Book of Rooms is also “we promised X supplements for Kickstarter stretch goals and this is the last one.” It’s clear that what is basically a monster manual for a deeply personal game was a bad idea, and also they were running low on actual good ideas at that point. It’s a bad supplement that makes the game worse, is my perspective, and quite possibly only exists because of KS obligations. Which is a really terrible reason for a supplement to exist when the subject matter is this intense.
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Aug 6, 2022 16:26
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I've written up and deleted a few responses to Bluebeard's Bride, because it's a real difficult thing to write about. But I think I've settled on thinking about it as basically a Lifetime Original Movie. It's a story of abuse that some people find cathartic or therapeutic but I find unpleasant and verging on voyeuristic. I think the mechanics don't do anything to actually reflect the ambiguities and uncertainties of being abused and why the decision to seek out the obvious and hopeless truth still matters, but I don't know if the game would be better if it put the player more in the shoes of an abuse victim. Do you want to feel stupid and guilty and ashamed that you made a bad decision on what's now the most obvious thing in the world? But at the end of the day, I think I'm much better off ignoring it than arguing about it. It's not Beast, and that's the key aspect for me. It's not abuse apologia, and I genuinely don't believe the creators are anything worse than misguided. I still think a line's been crossed when they're rolling out supplementals and monster manuals and tacky poo poo to make your gothic feminist abuse horror more dramatic, but this is an industry where you have to monetize everything, so... whaddya gonna do? I don't like that it's in this thread, but it's not evil, and we've actually covered evil books in the thread before.
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Aug 6, 2022 16:36
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Halloween Jack posted:I still don't understand the "sentient spacetime" theory. I’m pretty sure it’s just an excuse “stuff changes that’s interesting and that your group cares about and you don’t get paradoxes by some atoms incidentally moving.”
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Aug 6, 2022 18:14
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Another issue is that we're conflating Rooms with Bride. Maybe the women experiencing cathartic release played it as it was on release: no specific room descriptions, GM go wild. Or maybe the Rooms are also OK and this just isn't the game for my gender - a novel feeling.
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Aug 6, 2022 18:59
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Infinity RPG: Tohaa Life Among the Fartalfar So, our Tohaa GM chapter begins with a discussion of how the Tohaa are not, in fact, a monoculture. Humans often kind of assume they are, since the Tohaa sphere is generally a uniformly fairly wealthy place full of stuff to do no matter where you go. However, in truth, there are fairly strong distinctions between different cultural groups, particularly when looking between those living in the core Runohaa system and those in the Colonial Territories. This becomes clearest when you look at how the different groups within the Trinomial are dealing with the Combined Army war. Those on Runohaa are fully aware that the Combined Army is a dangerous throat and are afraid of the danger they represent - but it's at a distance. Runohaa itself is not under any immediate threat. In the Colonial Territories, no world is safe. Every time a new system falls, the Combined Army gain new wormholes into Tohaa space. Runohaa's people often worry about how long the war can be maintained...but in the Colonial worlds, everyone is worrying that their world will fall next. The Tohaa are unified, one civilization, but the different groups within the Trinomial experience it differently, and that difference matters because the war itself is pervasive. Its influence is everywhere, causing resource shortages, filling the airwaves with propaganda, and more. On the Colonial worlds, though, it's more than that. It is an existential threat in a way that it very much is not on Runohaa. The war is omnipresent but does not affect all of life. In the Colonial Territories, pretty much all civilians take part in evacuation drills very regularly. Everyone knows how they're supposed to get off planet, and most have bugout bags packed for when the day comes. The war lives in their homes. Even so, despite decades of warfare, the Tohaa have made great efforts to maintain their pre-war culture as well. They have been Heralds for far longer than they have been at war, and pursuing the higher cause of the T'Zechi Digesters is, if anything, an even more pervasive. Every Tohaa is pushed to serve the species as a whole, in whatever way they feel best suited. For some, that means joining the Errant Fleet or the Trident to help stop the Evolved Intelligence directly. For others, it means contributing to society through labor, producing goods or serving the Tohaa interstellar economy as a merchant, teacher, scientist or whatever. The majority of Tohaa are civilians whose goal is productivity in service to the greater Trinomial, because productivity allows the empire to continue expanding and gathering knowledge. Tohaa society is built from the ground up to inculcate a deep and abiding desire to serve the greater whole, in fact. Tohaa schooling, at each stage, regardless of what kind of education, features a series of what are called "capacity tests." These tests happen in all parts of Tohaa society, and they are designed to provide a person and their triad advice on what career paths are realistic for them. They attempt to measure capacity for various jobs and predict their talents and abilities, to give them a clear idea of how they may best serve society and themselves. Individuals are not required to follow the paths set forth in their capacity tests, and many Tohaa experiment with work outside their recommended fields. However, the majority end up settling in for their advised fields, as time has repeatedly shown them to be well designed as ways to match ability and function. Many Tohaa attach a great deal of personal worth to their capacity test results, though over time, a lot of them end up on weirder career paths due to the realities of work after their first job. Nothing keeps a Tohaa from changing jobs or developing outside their field, after all. If someone needs a change, they need it, and therefore them changing is good for society, after all. The other area of big difference between Runohaa and Colonial culture is their ideological tendencies. All of them agree that exalting other species and expanding the Tohaa sphere is the vital driver of their society. However, how they approach and understand this cause (and each other) differs. Runohaans often see Colonial Tohaa as more cynical and self-interested, less driven by the actual cause of spreading enlightenment and knowledge. This isn't technically untrue, even, but that's mostly because Runohaans often only see the parts of the Exaltation process and the fruits of empire. They don't see the failures and the losses personally. The Territorials have had to live with the bad parts of the empire, not just the good. They have seen the failures. Often, those who question the ideological underpinnings of the empire often do so because of their experiences with the Exalted. Exaltation is meant to be a gift, but for a Tohaa who sees it go bad or who has witnessed it getting weird and unexpected, it's often hard to accept that that gift is fully positive. There is in fact a counter-movement that argues that the Exalted are not being well treated and that what was done to them is no gift. They are a small minority even within the Colonial Territories, but they argue that the Exalted are often treated as little better than slaves, raised and shaped to be tools of an empire that does not truly see them as people and who use them to do jobs the Tohaa themselves consider unworthy. Is this cynical? Perhaps, but to dismiss it out of hand, as many Runohaans do, is reductive at best and fails to address the actual issues that exist within the Tohaa Empire's reliance on Exaltation. We now get some campaign ideas for Tohaa-focused games. The first structure is to focus on the Tohaa as an interstellar empire, with players taking on the role of a merchant crew aboard a freight ship, likely in some debt, who are trying to keep the ship running and have been forced into some lovely jobs as a result, including shipping trips into battleground systems. This means they're likely to get caught up in weapons smuggling, rival political families and those trying to get their wealth out of danger while the Trident battles the Combined Army. Survival is going to be a major issue, especially if they get trapped on a planet newly fallen to the EI or otherwise have to work with Trigon insurgents. Alternatively, the players may themselves be part of the Trident and directly taking the fight to the Combined Army, either in open battle or spycraft. In older times, recruitment by the Trident was mostly limited to those whose capacity tests showed the right mix of physical ability and psychological profile to be good soldiers. These days, most Trident recruits are those who have felt the losses of the war firsthand in the colonies or whose sense of duty compels them to join up. The Tohaa see themselves as special, but their pride in their martial ability is secondary to that of their pride as Heralds and givers of sapience. They assume this will cover over into martial skill - and in large part, that arrogance has actually served the Trident well by making them willing to take brazen risks. Almost all Tohaa believe that, pound for pound, they are superior to their enemies, and that they will always find a way claw victory from the jaws of defeat as a result. That determination to never accept loss has resulted in surprising victories, and maintaining the pride of one's Trident unit history is a big deal within the armed forces. Therefore, a campaign could revolve around a specific Trident unit. The most widespread and largest are the 110, formally the Kamael Light Infantry, whose number represents glory through sacrifice in Neebab Numerology. They are drawn from across the empire and are the most common Tohaa soldiers on every planet and even in human space. They're also the most common destination of new recruits, who must prove themselves in the 110 before they can muster into other units...though many never end up leaving, proud of their service in the Kamael. Basic training lasts eight months, with extensive fitness and weapons drills, survival and microgravity training, and triad tactics. The 110 are the backbone of most Tohaa operations, including security and law enforcement in the Colonial Territories and Errant Fleet and joint operations with human forces. Tohaa war campaigns will end up jumping between planets more often than human ones, as the Tohaa are simultaneously fighting across multiple fronts in multiple systems. A Tohaa military campaign is going to mix search-and-destroy missions, civilian rescue and insertions to deliver key supplies. An Errant Fleet campaign can easily mix in the military, but the focus will be different. Exploration and discovery, even now, are core parts of Tohaa culture. They have to continue exploring, expanding and gathering knowledge to maintain their existence as Heralds. Errant Ships are immense, and an Errant Ship campaign is essentially being part of a giant city that is moving through space, seeking new discoveries and worlds. Scouting vessels are sent out from the Errant ships to venture into newly discovered wormholes, with the Errant Ship waiting behind. Whenever an exploration ship arrives in a new system, it takes a few different steps. It begins by surveying and mapping the system with long-range spectroscopy and chemical analysis. The ship remains hidden and radio silent through this part, with the crew analyzing data to determine if there is life in the system. If there is, the ship remains in hiding but sends out probes to determine how much life is present and how developed it is. If there are signs of technology, particularly space travel, the explorer ship will assess it and then head back to its Errant Ship. If there are no signs of development, the explorer ship will often head to close orbit around the planet or moon where life was detected and continue analysis, possibly sending out a xenobiologist party to take samples. They will continually update the Errant Ship, and either way, the main ship will soon join them to decide to either end the study or expand it. Systems determined to be rich in minerals may also get tagged for use even if they contain no life. The crews of explorer sub-ships are tight-knight and make great PCs. They can range from four or five crewmates to upwards of a few hundred, but the average exploratory ship has a crew of 20 to 60, while the Errant Ship itself has thousands. Even the biggest explorer ship does not operate solo, and is a satellite to the larger Errant Ship. Tohaa that work in the Errant Fleet tend to be more restless sorts, eager to see things they've never seen before. They're still almost always gregarious extroverts by human standards, but many prefer to avoid larger crowds. They're more likely to be less specialized in their skillsets and more likely to be competent at many different tasks, as they often have to be able to perform multiple jobs aboard ship in emergencies. Those that work on exploratory vessels are probably going to have at least some scientific training, or if not that, a drive to learn and explore. Many also feel strongly about the importance of the Herald cause. Most will have trained at the Colonial Exploration Academy, though there's also soldiers, guards, engineers and pilots, who likely have very different career paths. No matter what, the work is going to be varied and you never know what you'll run into next. You can also get a ton of stuff out of the poo poo that can happen to exploratory ships - crash landing and getting marooned is a very real risk, for example, as is violent encounter with a potential Exaltation candidate. And, of course, there's also political Tohaa games. For Tohaa, politics is weird, because speech and Corahtaa work differently in coveying information. Other species rarely understand how much Tohaa can communicate with each other silently and with gesture and chemical farts, which can be further layered by metaphor and reference to make the meanings even harder to pick up on. Politicians and diplomats among the Tohaa absolutely excel at layering meanings in Corahtaa and using this especially against other species. Tohaa internal politics is complex as hell to begin with, operating a web of bureaucracies and tribunals that all ultimately report back to government bodies on Runohaa, and bureaucrats and politicians are respected and seen as essential to successful day to day existence. Typically, the Trinomial is seen as a living being in its own right, with the bureaucrats and the structures they exist in seen as its nervous system. The most active and diverse diplomacy, however, is definitely the ones assigned to the Errant Ships. Diplomatic Delegates in the Errant Fleet have great authority and serve as the face of the Trinomial to new species. They do a lot of the negotiations with humanity, and their work is seen as no less technical than any other trade, with schooling typically done via apprenticeship-slash-internship to a mentor before moving to higher education. The hardest positions to get are those on Runohaa itself, which are really cushy and usually end up being effectively bought and sold by the wealthy. Colonial diplomatic posts are much easier to get, and there's often several vacant ones on any given colony world. Errant Ship posts are for the ambitious and adventurous, as they often make great stepping stones to upper ranks and also mean dealing with a lot of aliens. A game focusing on the Tohaa diplomatic corps is probably gonna end up being about Errant Ship diplomats, and that's going to mean wielding a lot of power but also having a lot of responsibilities. A Tohaa diplomat on an Errant ship is going to be working closely with the Errant Ship captain and take direction from Runohaa about how they should manage alien relations. This can often be frustrating for the PCs, as they may not agree with what Runohaa wants - especially because they're the ones that have operating knowledge on the ground. There is, fortunately, quite a bit of leeway when you're on the front lines, and sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness for permission...but not always, and sometimes it's better to work within your directives than push back. Judging when to do which is a major part of such a campaign, as is dealing with the annoying chaos of the much less organized and unified world of humanity. The Triumvirate, if brought in as an element, is going to make everything even more complicated. They are the darkest and most dangerous part of the Tohaa, after all. They have been at the forefront of pushing the Trinomial into more black ops and spycraft - an easy sell in the war against the Combined Army. They have also been using it to gain more solid control over the Tohaa populace. In the name of safety and security, they have been increasing the powers of both the intelligence services and law enforcement, reducing freedom and privacy. This isn't just about draconian control, mind - the Triumvirate genuinely believe this is necessary to protect their species from the Combined Army. They see disunity and sedition as an existential threat, and that taking control of the intelligence service and eliminating it is vital to survival. Many have tried to prove they exist and eliminate them, but so far, all investigation has been quashed and most investigators have ended up dead, usually at the hands of criminals, or just not found anything. Every so often, someone actually manages to get some traction on their investigation, however - and when that happens, things get hot quickly, as the Triumvirate goes into overdrive to try to shut it down. PCs could be on either side of that. From here, we get statblocks for a bunch of Tohaa soldiers of all types, generic Chaksa and Tohaa stats, and that's Tohaa done! The End! What next? PanOceania (plus Helots) Mercenaries Yu Jing (plus Japanese separatists) Combined Army TAGs (giant robots and power armor and the people who pilot them) O-12 Megacorps Technology of the Human Sphere (new gear and toys and an in depth dive on neomaterials)
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Aug 6, 2022 21:24
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Yu Jing. Discussing “All the Asian cultures join up” is exactly what this thread is for.
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Aug 6, 2022 21:44
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JcDent posted:Another issue is that we're conflating Rooms with Bride. Maybe the women experiencing cathartic release played it as it was on release: no specific room descriptions, GM go wild. Rooms has a
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Aug 6, 2022 23:26
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One criticism of Bluebeard I've heard among women, for whatever it's worth, is "I get enough denial of my agency and eroticization of my suffering in real life, thanks, I want to play a game."
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Aug 6, 2022 23:40
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Well Mors can rejoice, Cubicle 7 announced the Champions of Chaos book for Soulbound today at Gencon.
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Aug 7, 2022 00:16
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Cythereal posted:One criticism of Bluebeard I've heard among women, for whatever it's worth, is "I get enough denial of my agency and eroticization of my suffering in real life, thanks, I want to play a game." I feel like that’s a perfectly valid reason to not play a game, but not really anyone saying “this shouldn’t exist”?
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Aug 7, 2022 00:20
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Cooked Auto posted:Well Mors can rejoice, Cubicle 7 announced the Champions of Chaos book for Soulbound today at Gencon. I’m very excited, yes. Gonna play a Tzaangor!
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Aug 7, 2022 00:36
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Joe Slowboat posted:I feel like that’s a perfectly valid reason to not play a game, but not really anyone saying “this shouldn’t exist”? I won't say Bluebeard shouldn't exist so much as "it needs to exist in a different form" Like an interactive novel or a Twine game or something. I'm sure it's happened, but it's really difficult for me to imagine five people coming together to run and play this as a role-playing game with rules and dice.
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Aug 7, 2022 00:39
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Everyone posted:I won't say Bluebeard shouldn't exist so much as "it needs to exist in a different form" Like an interactive novel or a Twine game or something. I'm sure it's happened, but it's really difficult for me to imagine five people coming together to run and play this as a role-playing game with rules and dice. And yet apparently it has a reasonably strong convention presence for an indie game, which tells me people do in fact play it, regardless of how hard it is for you to believe it. We’ve had people in this thread mention seeing it played in the wild at cons, which speaks to it having found an audience.
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Aug 7, 2022 00:46
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Joe Slowboat posted:And yet apparently it has a reasonably strong convention presence for an indie game, which tells me people do in fact play it, regardless of how hard it is for you to believe it. We’ve had people in this thread mention seeing it played in the wild at cons, which speaks to it having found an audience. Well, presumably Degenesis, Cthulhutentaclerapetech and that Beneath thing where the PCs had to masturbate/gently caress to open doors found audiences as well.
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Aug 7, 2022 02:39
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I think this gets at another of the reasons that Rooms is just a fundamentally kind of set up to fail--one of the really cool things about RPGs is that they're just toolkits a group uses to play out a story; ultimately it's the group that's coming up with the content of the game, and in a game with a lot of themes that different players will have different comfort levels with, the GM can to a large extent adjust things to taste. Some groups might want things more veiled and implied, others might distract from the real-world parallels of the abuse with over the top grindhouse imagery, and others might just be comfortable with taking it all head on. Also, importantly, the group can build a history of trust with the GM that they aren't just Piss Wizarding them. A book full of boxtexty descriptions of rooms can't really do any of that. It just seems like a recipe for making the game veer off into unwanted places unexpectedly.
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Aug 7, 2022 04:47
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