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PurpleXVI posted:I have to admit I always had trouble with that approach, though, the idea that things only ran by the rules in the book in the region around the PC's, and everywhere else just worked on real-world logic. It seems... off. But it's a preference thing, obviously. I honestly like those attempts at making rulesets that would result in a more-or-less coherent world if they were applied across the gameworld, at all times. I genuinely think it's important, and the notion of "rules as physics" always made sense to me. By this I don't mean that you needed to design things so that someone could theoretically simulate a world in the absence of PC's, or that NPC's necessarily need to play by the same rules as PC's, but that the rules are the primary mediator in the way players interact with their characters and the setting. Consequently it's really important to make sure the mechanics line up with the world (and genre) you're describing, because differences between expectations and results take players out of the game and start prompting serious questions about the setting. So you don't actually need a system that lets you roll to see how well a random peasant does carpentry, but if you let a PC try their hand at it the rules should not set difficulties that imply all such random peasants are actually physical paragons with master-level skills. Designing a system that works similarly for both characters is one approach, but the far more important thing is that you have alignment between what you're telling players their characters (and similar characters) can do on paper and what they can actually do in game.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:17
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GURPS FANTASY II 7 – THE SOULLESS, INTRODUCTION  You ready to see what long-term immortality looks like? Too bad! ”GURPS Fantasy II: Adventures in the Mad Lands” posted:The final group of "monsters" native to the Madlands is the soulless. Unlike the others, they are a genuine race, with their own language and highly developed culture. Too highly developed, in fact. Cursed with immortality, the soulless are trapped in cultural stasis, having exhausted every means of diversion centuries ago. This has made them decadent and cruel. To the Madlanders, they're unpredictable, frighteningly powerful menaces. From their own standpoint, they're victims of a cosmic practical joke. To a Madlander, a Soulless looks kind of like a human. Their eyes are yellow and lack pupils; they have high, thin cheekbones, long, sharp noses, narrow heads, and narrow eyes; they’re usually a foot or so taller than an adult human male and maybe 20 pounds less; and their skin varies between any number of natural colors. They cannot die of old age, and so, with countless years of practice, they are so deadly in combat no Madlander can hope to outfight them and they’ve mastered magic even shamans don’t understand – however, they’ve also lost the ability to have children. They live in hidden ancient cities in the interior only accessible through seemingly-natural circles in the woods; rocks, trees, mushrooms and the like. Sound familiar?  However, unlike your standard fantasy elfs, Soulless are vicious sadists driven to a human definition of insanity by boredom. While they were once human(ish), tens of thousands of years ago they did some ill-defined thing that granted them immortality, but tens of thousands of years is a little long for a single culture to last; their culture exhausted any creativity it had roundabout at least 10,000 years ago, declined precipitously, and reached rock bottom 5,000 years ago. Soulless cannot die; though they can be killed, any time they die they reincarnate in the form of an unfortunate Madlander baby (which sharp-eyed elders usually bash to death on the rocks outside the village) and eventually gain back their memories. And since they’ve invented everything new they could think of, there is nothing more to discover or learn or live for and they are bored. The Soulless, whatever they might say, want nothing more than to die. Unfortunately, the magical pact that gave them eternal life prevents this. This leaves them a mite pissed off. With all my harping on about how Madlands can be used for campaigns with little adaptation, even Laws acknowledges that eventually players will get bored of village life and start to space out. The Soulless are his answer to that. While the Madlanders have achieved a culture that can last forever in exchange for comfort and security, the Soulless have phenomenal cosmic power and nothing to do with it. When you think the players are decelerating, start dropping hints that something’s coming (What kind of hints? I don’t know!) and let them plunge their asses into the Soulless Metal Cities. When they’ve finally emerged, their characters will have changed irrevocably and the campaign will end naturally. While I understand why something like this is included, as you’ll see, the Metal Cities are way too much for an ordinary character to survive, especially for anti-magic barbarians like the Madlanders. The Soulless are so wildly played up that it takes an insane amount of GM hand-holding just to get them through a session unharmed, and the separation of their two cultures is great enough that dead characters can’t easily be replaced. I can, however, see a campaign centered around a party of changelings who somehow miss the Soulless Patrol and grow up in the Madlands, only to eventually find their way to the Metal Cities and gradually regain their memories. But there’s no mechanical support for this and characters are left floundering whenever they get there. Naturally, there’s vanishingly little advice on how to GM Madlanders among the Soulless. Yay! There’s a LOT of ground to cover with the Soulless, and I neither like the way the book presents it nor think I should skip over anything. Have a hapless, meandering introduction!  A hostile nephrite trapezoidal prism. Once upon a time – and I mean a time, the Soulless can’t remember it because it was so long ago and their records are unreliable, but they think 14,500 or 22,700 years ago  - the Soulless were a group of tribes divided from ordinary humans only by a “few minor anatomical differences” (:elf:) and an unpronounceable language. They lived a hardscrabble existence in the pre-gods version of the Madlands, which was at that time dominated by “a race of malevolent jade trapezoids.” What ? This tribe, the Jyiuehyynkzd (see?) was oppressed by these “trapezoids” until one tribe’s princess, Oxlcyxowsyjys (see?) reverse-engineered their sorcerous powers and used them to trick some otherworldly being into granting them immortality; over time, they outlived, outsmarted, and annihilated the “trapezoids” and established their own civilization. At this point, Soulless history begins.
So, you may have noticed there’s a little bit of haziness in the historical record, despite it being written down and all. Why? Mmmmmagic!  I gotta be honest with you, I forgot how to write. Every last aspect of Soulless culture boils down, in some way, to magic. Their magic isn’t shamanism; in fact, they despise the gods as only Randian individualists can. Instead they use four unique schools of spellcastin’: Epic sorcery, which uses the greatest achievement of Soulless literature to turn literary analysis into a superpower; gem injection sorcery, which is, well, gem-fueled heroin magic; singing sorcery, which, guess; and sacrifice magic, which they stole from the trapezoids (seriously, what the hell?) and categorizes sacrificed Madlanders as animals  . In fact, the Soulless consider sorcery the dividing line between intelligent beings and animals. Madlanders aren’t human to them (:elf:). This is a problem because, since they make literally everything in their cities through sorcery, their history books are made the same way; and because sorcery can and does reflect the biases of the caster, history has been so distorted that they’ve lost any trace of their original culture. And, of course, since everything’s made by magic, all Soulless have lost the ability to craft anything by hand or take pride in it. The only exception is the Epic, which Soulless value too much to risk corruption. It’s telling that, as much as they want to reclaim their past glories, they still rely on their centuries of magical experience to try and reclaim it.There’s an undercurrent that runs through this chapter that never gets directly remarked on, but I think it’s wildly important. The Soulless themselves, though they believe themselves completely spent and creatively dead, are still intelligent beings with the ability to create new things. However, they are so submerged in their stagnant culture that they can’t. For instance, the Soulless, being radically individualist, regard any kind of divine being with loathing and disdain (and abject fear, though they’d never admit it). They consider any kind of divine being either an impostor or something actually below them, and they deal with the extradimensional beings they sometimes encounter as lesser creatures. The thing is, only such creatures are likely to finally kill them, but the Soulless can’t push past their cultural prejudices to consider it. Dying, or at least being changed into something new and interesting, is as easy as walking outside and thinking about Bett Agwo really hard – they’re so desperate for something new that they’re willing to do poo poo like going through drug withdrawal multiple times just for the sensation. They still can’t even consider it. I mean, apparently Soulless killed by gods come back as changelings instead of monsters, but you’d think they’d embrace divine alteration  . See? I told you they were dwarves! The Soulless actually deeply dislike the Madlands; divine contamination makes their spells go frequently awry and you can’t have that. Instead, they live in three “Metal Cities”, Kzowozymyzkz, Fyzkwyzkozpoza and Xymsdykyhjyzklz (SEE?) buried deep under the earth somewhere in the Madlands. You can only get to them through fairy-circle equivalents described above (:elf:), and once you enter you reach the Street, which, well, there’s only one Street in each city connecting roughly 5,000 inhabitants. Instead of it being, like, an actual street, the Street is a nebulous path between all the city’s buildings determined by the walkers. If you’re psyching yourself up for a duel to the not-death, the street is a narrow pathway surrounded by spikes with impaled people on them. If you just got magilaid, the Street is broad, the gem-plated birds are singing, and everything looks as pretty as it can, because it can’t by human standards. Soulless inclinations towards the overwhelming mean their buildings (which show up whenever the walker wants them to) are offensively gaudy and feature Doctor Who interior construction; this is another way Soulless show off, as they can set their houses to pop up as people stroll around or even force their buildings onto the streets. By the way, as Soulless are basically autonomous, there are vanishingly few public buildings, only excepting public entertainment centers. Finally, a note on Soulless language. Their language is so old and overdeveloped that even prepositions can last a dozen syllables and ordinary roots last several times that, not counting the dozens of modifiers used to communicate the slightest variations in meaning. The average Soulless word has 29 syllables  ! Names are usually half-again as long ! The longest word in their lexicon is the direct translation of their name for themselves, with 8,906 syllables  ! The book straight-up tells you, when it comes to pronunciation, to just fake it; the suggested method for coming up with Soulless words is to mash the keyboard for a couple seconds and edit the result to fit the spelling scheme. Dyfzhzygrizhnygok!  Olzhdkygnogaopgynpagynropa!  Afylgnoiufbyygagnalniuzhyygdlyal!  In practical use, you shorten these to a few syllables or use a nickname instead. Next time: fashion means strapping live dogs to your ankles!
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Aug 18, 2016 23:56
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Kaza42 posted:You start a Beast game set in a small town, pitching it in such a way to play up the self-righteousness of it all, to encourage the players to really get into the horrible swing of things. Focus on the individual damage they're doing and the effect on the environment of the town. Then one session, they arrive and you hand them all Hunter character sheets and now they're playing the Union here to kick the crap out of the Beasts. No way, you set up a horrible small town (redundant, I know) full of hypocrisy and pain, and you play Beasts destroying all the small-minded residents who are destroying each other in small ways. The Hunters are the redneck antagonists. Get a real Stephen King/Shirley Jackson vibe. Maybe transplant it into a small apartment building or gated community or something. Any place where normal people inflict petty cruelty and aesthetic ugliness on each other. I just realized that Heroes are the kind of people who ruined the dentist who shot Cecil the Lion's life. That kind of self-righteousnes Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 00:43
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Legend of the Five Rings First Edition Book of the Shadowlands: Knee Deep in the Dead  This guy is probably not your friend. Now we get to dive into the bad place of Rokugan, the Shadowlands! This book ("translated" by Cris Dornaus and Rob Vaux) purports to be the collected writings of one Kuni Mokuna. Branded a heretic menace and a seeker of forbidden lore, he is ill-famed in Rokugan proper, but the Kuni family and the Crab Clan understand just how much he sacrificed to obtain vital knowledge to fight off the Shadowlands and its menaces. The preface is written by Kuni Yori, the Kuni daimyo, who defends Mokuna from the condemnation issued by those who don't have to deal with the Shadowlands everyday and also inserts commentary from time to time. The book is written mostly IC, with sidebars explaining actual game mechanics and the like. On with it!  Kuni Mokuna, the funkiest scienceman. Mokuna approached the Shadowlands with a scientific eye. He did not bother with pretty words for the horrors that lurk there - he couldn't afford to. In fact, even though children in Rokugan are taught never to say Fu Leng's name, that's exactly how he names him in his writings, which is yet another reason why shugenja are forbidden by Imperial decree from reading his journals. (Not that 'Fu Leng' is the Dark God's real name, it's just an epithet. Maybe the Twelve Black Scrolls that the Scorpions hold have the real name.) Myth pervades Rokugani conceptions of the Shadowlands, but by and large most people - peasant and samurai - don't understand what the Crab has to face. They fashion fantastic, but sedate visions of ogres and oni, while ignorant of (or actively denying) the reality. Mokuna thought that perhaps this was for the best, even if people like him had to study Fu Leng and his minions without hiding behind poetry and fantasy. So, the Shadowlands themselves! As myth has it, Fu Leng fell from the heavens and the force of his impact created a pathway to Jigoku, the Demon World. There, he became twisted, and the evil of his presence corrupted the surrounding countryside. Mokuna's research indicated that the Nezumi have similar myths and they claim to be natives to the lands now corrupted by the Taint, and even Shadowlands creatures he interrogated maintain that once the land was green and fertile, before falling to corruption. The Shadowlands are a place of unease, where fires burn a sickly green but no wood or fuel actually catches fire. The forests are dead and desiccated; swamps are fetid, noxious and treacherous; deserts are dry and infested by foul flying creatures and monsters lurking underground; the coast is rugged and blackened, the waves bring nothing but sooth, and giant things lurk underwater. As for Fu Leng's lair itself, no one can tell. Only some intrepid Nezumi have made it close enough, and they are not telling about what they have seen. The Kuni Wastes were once the homelands of the Kuni family, until two hundred years ago the forces of darkness invaded, conquered and Tainted the land. The Kuni refused to yield, however, and with the Crab's help they took back their homelands and enacted a grand ritual that wiped out the Taint from their home - as well as all other life. Now the Wastes are barren and desolate, and perhaps nothing else will ever grow back there. The Kuni are lucky; the Hiruma, that still can't take back their family castle and lands without huge armies of monsters coming down to dislodge them without fail, less so. The Shadowlands aren't a nice place is what I'm saying.  BWAAAK Magic is very necessary when facing the dangers of the Shadowlands, and any adventuring group should keep at least one shugenja with them. However, they are not immune to the Shadowlands' corrupting influence. In game terms, any spell cast in the Shadowlands has its TN raised in 10 (except for maho), a shugenja gains one Shadowlands point per 5 points of failure, and they must make a Willpower roll with a TN of 5 x Shadowlands Taint. If this roll succeeds, the spell goes off. If it fails by more than 10, the spell fails (but it still counts as cast for resting purposes) If it fails by less than 10, instead of summoning a kami the shugenja summons a kansen, a foul corrupted spirit that will do its best to make the shugenja's life misery: giving bad advice, mistargeting spells, using goblin flesh on healing spells, etc. The Kuni maintain a special force of witch hunters, the tsukai-sagasu, who seek and destroy maho-tsukai and other corrupted people. Speaking of the Taint! It's awful. Mokuna believed that the Taint blocked the natural flow of elements in the body, replacing it with Fu Leng's corruption. Physically it is more notorious, as the Tainted person becomes sickly, suffering cankers and blisters, and then progressing to horrible body mutations. Mentally, the subject becomes more easily irritable and prone to violence, moving on to violent bloodshed, eating of filth and other mental maladies in the latter stages. The Crab have learned to recognize the early signs of the Taint, and instantly remove anyone presenting it from the Shadowlands in order to stop the Taint's progress. Any human that dies in the Shadowlands becomes a zombie or skeleton, and because only decapitation disposes of them permanently Crab have as a custom the beheading of their own comrades when they die in Fu Leng's realm. Infection is also a great danger, as open wounds quickly become infested by the ambient Taint. Mokuna and other Kuni shugenja have developed jade salve to cleanse wounds and bandages, as well as a Blessing of Cleansing spell that sanitizes wounds and keeps food and water from spoiling in the Shadowlands. (Blessing of Cleansing requires a Honor roll on the target's part, and most Crab are low-Honor types  ) Jade is essential, as it naturally repels the Taint. Carrying finger-sized pieces of the stuff allows people to survive without suffering the ambient Taint of the land, and its touch is extremely painful to oni and other unnatural creatures (though goblins and ogres aren't particularly affected by it, however - Mokuna speculated this is due to their soulless nature) Only natural jade will do: artificial jade like what the Agasha can do with their Transform spells is of no use. Healing the Taint is very hard: aside from the Purification ritual the Kuni developed along with the Phoenix, there is a recipe called Tea of Jade Petals that Mokuna developed from the leaves of rare jade lotus grown with blessed water and infused with fine jade powder: a dose negates the tea's potency of Shadowlands points for 8 hours, at which point they return unless more tea is drunk. The tea also allows natural wounds recovery in the Shadowlands, since by default humans do not naturally regenerate wounds there.These are all the wards and precautions against the Shadowlands Taint that exist.  Swell dude, eh? geddit Next: gobbos! Traveller fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 00:53
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And yet the beasts who rapes unwilling men, sets people on fire for not tipping, dropping people off in dangerous neighborhoods in hopes they'll get robbed/raped/murdered and suffocating a kid over candy, is more heroic than the 'rednecks' that wanna stop them. In what universe are those reactions even remotely justifiable?
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Aug 19, 2016 00:53
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The big problem with Beast is that there's no metaphor happening. Yes, there are iffy things about Vampire and Werewolf, but because its allegorical there's some space to take a step back from it. And because they're identifiable myths with well established places in fiction, there's already a lot of discussion around them to tap into, to come to grips with the problematic elements and get something meaningful out of them. Beast doesn't have that. Beasts don't look like an allegory for anything, they look like a (slightly) exaggerated version of people who are in the news every day, with a thin veneer of supernatural slathered over it. And because they lack a cohesive mythos to tap into, there's no structure to explore the issues they bring up. Yes, they're supposed to represent an archetype in fiction of the boogeyman, but the way their written just isn't weird enough to support that. They're trying to encompass far too many different concepts that are too disparate, and in some cases ones that aren't really supernatural. Hannibal and Jigsaw shouldn't be PCs. They're fundamentally different from the other monsters in WoD, because each of them is essentially cursed to do something awful to survive and the game is on some level about the struggle between that and whatever humanity they have left. By including movie serial killers in its inspirations, Beast undercuts all of the justifications that make the other games work. And of course the one allegorical aspect, the Beast's opponents, backfires because the Beasts are written so they lack that fundamental conflict between survival and conscience, so at best you have a situation where both sides deserve it. Beast could have worked if it had stuck with a narrower core idea, if it had really been about boogeymen, like Stephen King's IT or the babadook or similar characters, and built up a structure around that like the other WoD games do with their subjects. But it failed to do that. In a way, Beast is the archetypal bad Fatal and Friends game. Like CthuluTech or even Witch Girl Adventures, there's something at the heart of those games that's compelling, a version of them that would make an amazing game. But the version we actually have use that idea to support awful, indefensible content instead. These games aren't just lovely. If they were just lovely we'd ignore them. Instead, these games are like someone gave you a slice of delicious looking chocolate cake - and when you take a bite, that's when you realize it's not chocolate.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:46
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I don't support the rape, but now that the idea of it being a game about 'solipsistic rage' has been introduced I feel like I almost need to defend it since it's such a good idea. There are tons of RPGs that allow PCs to do unsavory things. The most popular game in the genre is about being murderhobos. What's wrong with a bit of Dexter, a bit of Rahl Dahl's The Witches, a bit of dark satire? And tons of people want to play Hannibal or Jigsaw or Dexter. WoD trades in letting people play horrific figures. It just makes sense. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 02:02
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Count Chocula posted:No way, you set up a horrible small town (redundant, I know) full of hypocrisy and pain, and you play Beasts destroying all the small-minded residents who are destroying each other in small ways. The Hunters are the redneck antagonists. Get a real Stephen King/Shirley Jackson vibe. Maybe transplant it into a small apartment building or gated community or something. Any place where normal people inflict petty cruelty and aesthetic ugliness on each other. And when Beasts inflict their petty cruelties and uglinesses on them it's justified because? Again why is this an aspirational game? Why would someone want to play this?
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Aug 19, 2016 02:04
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Kurieg posted:And when Beasts inflict their petty cruelties and uglinesses on them it's justified because? Again why is this an aspirational game? Why would someone want to play this? Because they're the PCs? Because they're heirs to primordial power? Because presumably they have some cool MO or twisted moral code? Why should PCs play Samurai or Knights oppressing peasants and holding up a cruel feudal system? Why should they play literal vampires or dystopian corporate enforcers or tomb robbers who slaughter hundreds of monsters or Immortan Joe or Bronze Age shamans? They all do horrible things, and would be monsters in real life. Beast just brings the monstrosity down on everyday annoyance and petty assholes. When the rear end in a top hat is introduced in Act 1 of a slasher movie, you know he's going to die by Act 3 and you hope the death is bloody and cool. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 02:15
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Again, when playing a Slasher has more mechanical verisimilitude to its core idea than a Beast does, when Slasher exists to be The Evil Campaign Option and is actively more understandable than Beast is, when a Slasher doesn't lie to itself about what it is or what it does even when it's a self-righteous prick (as opposed to Beast which is lies and lies on top of hollow boasts and grandstanding), you have a gigantic problem with your line. Why would you bother being Hannibal or Dexter as a Beast when those options already exist as actually mostly humans? Speaking of, I got the Beast anthology book today. It was pretty good.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:18
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Count Chocula posted:I don't support the rape, but now that the idea of it being a game about 'solipsistic rage' has been introduced I feel like I almost need to defend it since it's such a good idea. There are tons of RPGs that allow PCs to do unsavory things. The most popular game in the genre is about being murderhobos. What's wrong with a bit of Dexter, a bit of Rahl Dahl's The Witches, a bit of dark satire? a dark irony indeed
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Aug 19, 2016 02:19
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I just want you guys to know that Count Chocula has the second most posts in this thread after Mors, and he has never posted a review of anything.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:23
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Count Chocula posted:I don't support the rape, but now that the idea of it being a game about 'solipsistic rage' has been introduced I feel like I almost need to defend it since it's such a good idea. There are tons of RPGs that allow PCs to do unsavory things. The most popular game in the genre is about being murderhobos. What's wrong with a bit of Dexter, a bit of Rahl Dahl's The Witches, a bit of dark satire? You also run into the issue of 'why do the serial killer team cooperate'? Which Beast does, uh, poorly.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:23
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Count Chocula posted:Because they're the PCs? "Because it exists" Is only a good justification for climbing mountains. I could play one of Fields' works but I don't want to play a guy with armor made out of poo poo, semen, and menstrual blood. Count Chocula posted:When the rear end in a top hat is introduced in Act 1 of a slasher movie, you know he's going to die by Act 3 and you hope the death is bloody and cool. You don't get it. You're playing the rear end in a top hat introduced in act 1. You aren't playing the Slasher. There's a game for that. IT'S CALLED SLASHER. Hostile V posted:Speaking of, I got the Beast anthology book today. It was pretty good. It does a good job of portraying Beasts as profoundly horrible people who deserve only the release of death with only a few outliers that are.. honestly very out of place. I have no idea what's going on with the woman who turns into a metal angel and that whole story doesn't parse as a really "Beasty" thing.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:27
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God Machine? Ohhhhhh are Beast Lairs like anti-Infrastructure?
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Aug 19, 2016 02:32
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Yeah that's the story of how a Sin Eater and a Beast explode an Avernian gate that was corrupted into being part of a dead Beast's lair and I honestly expected it to be the living Beast's fault (ghosts fearing and avoiding her and such). The first story and the Promethean story were the best.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:33
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Count Chocula posted:Ohhhhhh are Beast Lairs like anti-Infrastructure? No they're not, they don't interact or influence reality. They're just allegorical paths that your horror can sort of use.
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Aug 19, 2016 02:35
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Am I crazy or did we have this exact conversation like 100 pages ago with Count Chocula being like 'actually there's a cool game you could make from this' and everyone else was like 'nope'?
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Aug 19, 2016 02:44
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BinaryDoubts posted:Am I crazy or did we have this exact conversation like 100 pages ago with Count Chocula being like 'actually there's a cool game you could make from this' and everyone else was like 'nope'? Welcome back my friends / to the show that never ends We're so glad you could attend / come inside, come inside!
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Aug 19, 2016 02:56
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This is the guy who wouldn't eat at McDonalds because Unknown Armies convinced him magic was real and it was just ~too real man~.
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Aug 19, 2016 03:02
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Mr. Maltose posted:This is the guy who wouldn't eat at McDonalds because Unknown Armies convinced him magic was real and it was just ~too real man~. what
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Aug 19, 2016 03:14
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Nah it was more 'it made the idea of eating at Maccas seem kinda cool instead of a necessity since it was the only place near the game room'. Still not dumb enough to literally believe in magick. It's just that if I did believe in it, it would resemble Unknown Armies and filter the real world through a mystic lens. Like Augnented Reality. The Soulless are awesomely Moorcock - Melnibonians x Dancers at the End of Time. Love how the inconsistent times just illustrates how meaningless the idea is. Do they get further books and adventures? Can you play as them? Dancers at the End of Time does fun stuff with how fad and fashion rule bored immortals.
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Aug 19, 2016 03:17
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The Soulless remind me of the Eternals from Zardoz. That's pretty cool.
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Aug 19, 2016 03:26
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Traveller posted:I just want you guys to know that Count Chocula has the second most posts in this thread after Mors, and he has never posted a review of anything. please don't reply to white wolf stymie
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Aug 19, 2016 03:56
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Count Chocula posted:I don't support the rape, but now that the idea of it being a game about 'solipsistic rage' has been introduced I feel like I almost need to defend it since it's such a good idea. No it's not, it's a loving dumb idea. We have another word for solipsistic rage, you've probably heard it before, it's called a tantrum. Children do it. Most people stop as they get older. Count Chocula posted:Beast just brings the monstrosity down on everyday annoyance and petty assholes. Yes, you are being absolutely inhumane to random people for doing something you don't like but isn't breaking a law which is STAGGERINGLY psychopathic. You don't stop for an instance to consider their life, or what they're going through or anything even in the same time zone as sympathy or empathy. You mentally torture someone who didn't tip well but don't consider that he straight up doesn't have the money at the moment. The guy who cut you off might be not paying attention to the road because his wife is having a baby and he doesn't want to miss it at any cost. It's like you're playing postal without the veneer or argument of humor. Beasts have zero redeeming qualities whereas even vampires will do good, even if its just because of their own self interest. Unlike all the other splats where the power carries a burden beast just says "Might Makes Right LOL" and if anyone tries to stop you from being a monster they're in the wrong for no reason that's ever really explained. This thread has covered rpgs where stars collapse on themselves and yet you're still the densest thing in this thread.
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Aug 19, 2016 04:07
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Count Chocula posted:No way, you set up a horrible small town (redundant, I know) full of hypocrisy and pain, and you play Beasts destroying all the small-minded residents who are destroying each other in small ways. The Hunters are the redneck antagonists. Get a real Stephen King/Shirley Jackson vibe. Maybe transplant it into a small apartment building or gated community or something. Any place where normal people inflict petty cruelty and aesthetic ugliness on each other.
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Aug 19, 2016 04:48
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Count Chocula posted:It'd probably sell more copies with that title. But my views about nature are...unorthodox. just needed to bring this back up as it relates to choc's avatar - he lamented that Australian law prevented him buying mace to take to the beach to protect him from sharks and also from people with muscles. his hatred and fear of the outside world is worth remarking on even for goons.
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Aug 19, 2016 04:49
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luv u choc but you are a loving weirdo.
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Aug 19, 2016 04:49
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BinaryDoubts posted:Am I crazy or did we have this exact conversation like 100 pages ago with Count Chocula being like 'actually there's a cool game you could make from this' and everyone else was like 'nope'? Oooh, it's Beast time again! Okay, here we go. Guys, I am in the highest percentile of finding Beast morally reprehensible and backwards. That said, I think it would work if you recontextualized it to be about the Hukbalahap Guerillas/East African sorcery/the medieval British Star Court. There we go. Bases covered. Now stand aside while I come up with a new type of -mancer based on Pokemons.
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Aug 19, 2016 04:58
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Summoners already exist.
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Aug 19, 2016 05:04
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No man, this one is based on Pokemon Go, not just pokemons. You see it's a cultural zeitgeist thing. He gets a minor charge if his team captures a pokestop! He gets a major charge if he dresses up a dog as a Pikachu and then runs it over with a car. It gets pretty real.
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Aug 19, 2016 05:06
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Can you reuse the costume because that's a p. easy major if so.
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Aug 19, 2016 05:13
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Mr. Maltose posted:Can you reuse the costume because that's a p. easy major if so. No each one has to be a bespoke costume and it also can't be a mimikyu
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Aug 19, 2016 05:19
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Kurieg posted:No each one has to be a bespoke costume and it also can't be a mimikyu What's wrong with Mimikyu?! You got a problem?! 
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Aug 19, 2016 05:21
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Davin Valkri posted:What's wrong with Mimikyu?! You got a problem?! It's just that the universe loves Mimikyu too much to reward people for hurting them.
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Aug 19, 2016 05:22
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Yeah Mimikyu's fine, but the ritual was created back in 2000 and doesn't account for Mimikyus, using one makes you lose all your charges.
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Aug 19, 2016 05:26
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I haven't been following Beast drama at all, but I thought the elevator pitch was that the Beasts were a metaphor for misunderstood kids and the Heroes were red pillers and dude bros? Is this not true, has this ever been true?
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Aug 19, 2016 05:27
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Lightning Lord posted:I haven't been following Beast drama at all, but I thought the elevator pitch was that the Beasts were a metaphor for misunderstood kids and the Heroes were red pillers and dude bros? Is this not true, has this ever been true? You're thinking of Monsters and Other Childish Things, a Good game. Beast is a confused mishmash of nonsense with no underlying thematic structure whatsoever. Or if it has one, it's disgusting.
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Aug 19, 2016 05:29
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Lightning Lord posted:I haven't been following Beast drama at all, but I thought the elevator pitch was that the Beasts were a metaphor for misunderstood kids and the Heroes were red pillers and dude bros? Is this not true, has this ever been true? That was the intention, but the execution went horribly askew because the book presented Beasts as pretty much all being unrepentant serial abusers/murderers, and Heroes as really wanting to kill them, but still expecting you to like Beasts and hate Heroes. The revisions attempted to change this but not nearly enough.
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Aug 19, 2016 05:31
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 12:34 |
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Lightning Lord posted:I haven't been following Beast drama at all, but I thought the elevator pitch was that the Beasts were a metaphor for misunderstood kids and the Heroes were red pillers and dude bros? Is this not true, has this ever been true? The issue with Beasts is that when they were first presented they were born to their power and had certain analogues to groups that were marginalized due to their race, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, etc. The first bit of fiction released for the game is a beast almost murdering someone because someone accidentally spilled their lunch in the cafeteria. Then information came out about their antagonists and yes they were stand ins for Red Pillers and Dudebro fratjocks, but Heroes were only created when a Beast did something terrible to a person. So it quickly became "Gay people and feminists vs the Gamer Gaters who are actually right". They went through some major revisions after the Kickstarter but the message became so muddled and confused that what little themes there are that still remain are completely undermined by the games mechanics. And the few representations of LGBT+ individuals in the book are all irredeemable monsters that you're none the less expected to sympathize and identify with because of their marginalized nature. e: Rather than create the Beasts as sympathetic characters, they attribute traits that we would identify with. In the hopes that the geek social fallacies will let us ignore the fact that they're literally murdering people to feed the mind dragon they chose to take on. They do the same thing with Heroes, they aren't created as three dimensional characters, they're things that we as gamers are supposed to hate. The only Heros that are in any way relatable or have a point literally cannot be heroes according to the rules of the game. Leaving us with the Gamergate MRA incel and the overly conservative mother who killed her son because he liked the rap music and the hooty mac. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Aug 19, 2016 |
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Aug 19, 2016 05:40
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