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NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Night10194 posted:

Why do they need a Confederacy at all, anyway? Like, what role does 'Oh and there's a breakway slaver state to the south' really fill in the Western milieu?

Same as Nazis or the like if done well, if not done well...apolgism.

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NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

ProfessorProf posted:

Valor was literally designed from the ground up to create fight scenes that hit all those story beats.

Disclaimer: I wrote Valor, so I'm not an unbiased viewpoint here.


Covok posted:

If I can give some potentially pretenious advice, have you tried giving review copies out to potentially interested game blogs? Reviews can really help push copies. Turnout can be low on review copies, but an unbiased review can help people take the plunge.

Also, the link to the chapter preview on your dtrpg page doesn't work. Dtrpg doesn't like embedded hot links on new accounts. You might be better off giving the link openly. Had the same problem with my products.

I'm honestly extremely interested in this, but with that price tag I want to know more about the system before I drive in.

I assume it'd be great for running a One Piece or Gundam game with action actually being fun, but I have no idea how the system works.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Robindaybird posted:

I lost count how many times I rolled my eyes at the introductory stuff in Bella Maga.

Though to be fair, the murder of a young girl in such a brutal fashion sells newspapers like hot cakes, so it's gonna be reported even if it took place in Nebraska.

Missing White Girl syndrome.

unseenlibrarian posted:

Pretty sure the answer is "You're both right", which is why I suggested the game be called "TERF Wars" in the Industry thread where it first came up.

Given this is a Witch Girls spin off and turning white men into objects/animals is a thing, maybe it's "fetishist sadistic vore" stuff.

NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Feb 16, 2016

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

LatwPIAT posted:

It's so oddly dedicated to feminist activists and women persecuted for being smart or breaking sexual norms, but not victims of women-targeting racial prejudice or victims of sexism in general. You'd think that a feminist role-playing game would celebrate the victims of sexism, but nope, the only people deserving recognition are the activists, the lesbians, and the smart girls.


OK, the most hillarious part of this backstory? Caine was jealous of the women having more power than men; Caine was jealous of all the magical power the Circe gave to women but not men and rebelled, which tells us that the real issue at hand here are the thousands of years of discrimination that men faced at the hands of Circe. In fact, the last five thousand years of Patriarchy cannot be seen as traditional oppression by the powerful. Rather, Patriarchy is the lashing out of an abused and impoverished group, and the witches who worship Circe are reactionaries trying to regain their own position of superiority.


Didn't the same thing happen in Witch Girls Adventure? Like Witches where such assholes that muggle men blowing them up was in fact 100 rationale and just a means of self defense


Covok posted:

I keep hearing people mention that term, "intersectionality." What does it mean?

White women recognizing black and PoC men/women face discrimination too, often contradictory or supplementary to their own and feminist advance of equal rights. And Vice Versa. It can mean everything from realizing people of color are indeed more likely to be falsely accused of crimes against white women (because of white paternalism) to whitespaling. It can mean issues both face like unequal pay or unequal access to education. The biggest and simplest example is when a feminist writer actually said "Women face more discrimination in America then black men" because Obama started beating Hilary in the polls back in 2007 and how other feminists/civil rights leaders got pissed

NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Feb 16, 2016

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Lightning Lord posted:

I thought maybe it was a burn, like "lol Soto doesn't know what intersectionality is"

To be fair, while Soto is loving terrible there are plenty of legitimate civil right leaders and PoC feminists deeply skeptical of intersectionality and think of it as a way for white feminists to push their issues to the forefront.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:



Sorry to double post but I'm sickeningly entranced by Daria Pierre Polnareff here's giant muscle-y arm and normal arm, and her giant muscle-y leg and normal leg, on opposite sides.

i'm glad america called in the military to wipe out her brony rear end

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011
God I hate Wick, I want to do a review of City of Lies to get the taste of that out of my mouth.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Young Freud posted:

Goddamn, I never noticed that really. But yeah, it's supposed to be Fantasy Europe, but it ignores all the intercontinental trade that went on to make places like Italy the center of the universe off-and-on for more than a millennium and why Spain was so loving important.

I honestly don't care at all about this line of thought, normally. Nearly all fantasy fiction takes place in Not Europe, because Western Europe's mythology is unsurprisingly popular in the west and is ingrained in our culture to require next to no research to bullshit on the game table while African mythology isn't.

The problem is pirate fiction, doesn't usually take place near...ummm...Europe or Not Europe. It takes place in Africa and the Caribbean or if your going more niche covering Chinese pirates, Korea and China. I mean pirate crews and even most naval time crews had a surprising amount of diversity too, so while NotEurope nations should make up a lot of the fluff for character backgrounds, even on that count those places should be where you draw a lot of your mythology and historical goodie digging.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Young Freud posted:

poo poo, anyone who has played Civilization knows that if you can maneuver around in Triremes, there's was no reason to invest in Navigation and building Sailing Ships until later in the game or obtain the Advance through trade, theft, or invasion.

The best is when you play the real world map and go for the Leif Erickson route and get a head start on colonizing the Americas before any of the other civilizations can.


At the same time, it's ignoring that the geography plays a large part in the histories and mythologies of nations. You can't just move poo poo around and expect it to have the same effect. France and Germany are different countries largely because one got invaded by the Romans and one didn't, as well as the various interplay between France and the British Isles. The reason Italy wasn't a hell hole of squabbling ethnic groups and the Balkans were is largely because the latter was the front line between Europe and the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Spain could never exist without the Moors invading the Iberian peninsula and occupying it for 7 centuries. There's no real Spanish Inquisition if there isn't a Reconquista to cause the new owners to hunt down the old occupants and anyone who allied with them.

I get this, but the balance of laziness, a desire not to offend, and appeals to surface/hobby enthusiasm of European History and Tolkien Fantasy is to blame for a lot of pop dnd settings and it's an excuse I sympathize with and when it comes to Eberron/Ravenloft (not the Roma poo poo though) will even defend. It's indeed a problem but when it infects poo poo like L5R and 7 Seas.

There is a poo poo ton of pop history written about samurais or pirates, along with so much art/pulp entertainment available, there's no excuse entirely because it's extremely easy not to gently caress up and if your into that stuff so it should be a nostalgia trip to do basic research.

Young Freud posted:

This is kinda why I like the Shadowrun splatbook "Cyberpirates", despite it's artwork not really matching the content. The art direction predates the conception of the modern piracy being "Somali fisherman-turned-raider with an AK" so it's more "sail the seven seas with a cyberleg", otherwise it would totally be that because that's what the content is: it concentrates on the Caribbean, the Gold Coast of Africa, and Japanese-corporate-occupied Philippines islands and the desperate, desperate people involved in piracy, guerrilla warfare, and drug smuggling and why you'd get involved in that poo poo in the first place.
I really want a pirate rpg that handles stuff like this or swashbuckling adventures, and I would think it's a popular genre ripe to dig into, but man no one is even trying to tap into it.

It's kinda weird because Shadowrun is a bad system and has uneven products when covering topics like this, usually they're the first ones to pull Civil War South and WWII Japan are back, crap.

Hostile V posted:

Lt. Kenneth Spencer is a white officer of the black Buffalo Soldiers cavalry (yup, it's the 30s) and went to Mars with his men when Patton relocated them. At least he comes from a lineage of abolitionists. He's been with Patton and McArthur for the long haul: fighting in campaigns against attackers, helping stop rebellions, clandestine operations. He's a typical cowboy cavalryman with a saber, ivory-handled RAY gun pistols and a horse on Martian soil.

Lt. Spencer.

A whole lot of white officers of segregated units where involved in the civil rights movement or efforts of desegregate the army, either because serving with them and living with them changed their opinions on race relations for numerous and obvious reasons or because they specifically took the job to make a point about the absurdity of white supremacy and to prove black americans equally skilled and patriotic as white americans.

Not a big surprise they went that route

NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Apr 13, 2016

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

That Old Tree posted:

Good loving Christ. This is one of the worst stereotype lines I've seen. A lot of these immediately bring to mind the latest F Plus where they read a bunch of "and then everyone applauded me as the bully ran away" stories.

This fiction is so bad it's unbelievable. Like the anti feminist mass murderer/Beast Hunting Hero who was arrested but the women he killed were indeed mass murdering beasts. Or the MRA programmer who is supposed to the bad guy because he wears a fedora and is mad at his female coworker, but thanks to the way Beast works she is indeed responsible for his creation and why he never did get that promotion.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Does Beast even have an overarching conflict outside of being psuedo-victimized by heroes?

CROSS-OVER POTENTIAL

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Ratoslov posted:

I would put the smug part first. There's plenty of monsters, but pretty much the defining Beast stchick is that they're the smug ones. They're smugger than vampires, fer crissake.

Deva's ditch them an hour in when diving into "authentic" urban hotspots already infested hipster bullshit.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Echo Cian posted:

The Heroes are right.

In a game where the protagonists where supposed to be feminist/activist minorities and the "heroes" were supposed to be MRA 4chan gamergator redditor KKK trolls, at the end of the book you get 100% behind the guys ranting about how Israel deserves to wiped off the map.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Bedlamdan posted:

Yeah, it really ruins the metaphor when Beasts get a say and Heroes don't, and using mentally damaged people as stand ins for whatever cyber-troll is insulting for everyone. It fails to maintain the idea that Beasts are correct and Heroes are bad.

The problem is even on a conceptional level, the design decisions don't work. You can make a good game beatin' on weak strawman of whatever political stripe but a horror game? Horror rely on tension, and while your actions/mistakes creating an antagonist for you is interesting and good in creating tension, it's important in how your actions get there. So either you make your a real monster (what happened here) or you need another antagonist group pushing your character into extreme actions. Especially one where an organization of "heroes" or powerful nonreactionary and "radical"/ones who set the agenda or drive the plot forward in a setting don't exist. You run into the Geist problem of "what is the point"?

And then there's the problem where unambiguous evil doesn't make sense in the setting. Even Slahsers illicit sympathy and nearly all the game lines get you behind the "bad guys" eyes to humanize them.

NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Apr 26, 2016

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Bedlamdan posted:

Yeah. And I mean, you totally can have something that only provides evil and suffering in WoD, True Fae have basically no redeeming characteristics in nChangeling. But Changelings aren't an unambiguous good: they all have the potential to turn into True Fae themselves, there are Changelings who sell out other Changelings, and they can and maybe even do gently caress up other people's lives in an effort to not go back to Arcadia. Because Fae are monsters and Changelings are people for better or worse.

Neither Beasts nor Heroes get written like they're people in this book. They're both extended metaphors for something else.

Speaking of which is the part where Beasts are buddy-buddy with the Fae intact? :stare:

The thing is though, in this description, Fae are forces of nature or trauma personified. Not "people" that had childhood or are supposed to have jobs that last from "9 to 5 but the drat boss keeps them until 7 with no overtime pay". They exist to create scenarios that cause Changeling's to make their own messes and deal with the consequences of. "Heroes" are human beings, with accidentally completely justifiable motives "reacting" to the needles cruelty the player characters do, and don't pose much of a threat.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kurieg posted:

If only because the last story re-introduces Changing Breeds to the Chronicles of Darkness.

This proves my theory that every thing bad can be connected to Changing Breeds one way or another.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kurieg posted:

Spoilers for a future chapter of Beast even though that's dumb as hell
Heroes are born "just like Beasts"(and yes I will have words about that), High integrity heroes realize their place in the world and that Beasts are serving a noble purpose.'.

The problem with this is, no they don't and low integrity heroes hate of beasts is completely justified

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Simian_Prime posted:

Just found out that the CoD Dark Eras setting for Beast will be based around the Reconstruction.

I'm predicting a *glorious* train wreck...

The most heroic depiction of the KKK since Birth of a Nation

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011
"Stares wistfully at copy of WoD Gypises and WoD Dark Ages: Reconstruction*

"Chewie...we're home"

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kellsterik posted:

Heroic with a capital H, imo. It seems pretty obvious that the hook they're hanging this on is the Klan as lionized folk Heroes who are actually evil.

The problem is, and this is important, Beasts are by nature murderous assholes and are going to be loving former slaves. Heroes are by their nature, and through the actions of Beasts, attracted and given enticement to hurt them/innately know what evil fucks they are. Put two and two together, and no matter what veneer or window dressing or lovely justifications you put in front of it, they accidentally created a heroic Klan.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Covok posted:

As bad as Beast is, I feel like they must be aware enough to know to portray slavery and racism as the evils they are. Or, at least, I hope they are aware enough to see that. They have to be, right?

They are but that's the problem. Their not blind to social ills just to how metaphors and implications work. Plenty of films/books/ect come off as insanely sexist/racist/whatever despite not intending to because of that too, and they don't start from the same bad place as Beast does.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Libertad! posted:

Aren't you and he moderators at RPGnet? Doesn't that ever make things awkward for the two of you?

I mod a semi popular reddit and used to janitor work on 4chan. I barely know the other people, I suppose it's the same for him

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

WhitemageofDOOM posted:

....The gently caress, gently caress beast.
Also did he compare homosexuality to potentially transferable and deadly diseases? I mean sure leprosy was a broad category back in the day but...people didn't know if yours would kill or was contagious.


Also That letter is actually a loving treasure.

He also claimed hating the poor, transgendered, homosexuals, and racial minorities was new. And that the diseased aren't still discriminated against.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Simian_Prime posted:

He works better as one of the Strix from Requiem.

Beyond all the creepy stuff, for me Beast's big sin is it's misleading premise. The pitch leads you into thinking that you're playing some kind of mythic monster in the modern day, like a hydra or minotaur.

But instead you're playing a cultist who sacrificed his soul to an evil goddess, for powers fueled by abuse. It'd be like a Call of Cthulhu game where you played the insane servants of the Old Ones, and the Investigators were cast as bigots trying to oppress your religious freedom.

Beast literally is the dude shouting at Hitler while he goes "wow, I just want to murder all the Jews. Looks like you got to learn buddy"

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I think Beast is a more important review than people give it credit for. It's probably getting more attention than it deserves overall (in this and other threads), of course. I'd rather see bad RPGs like it just die a quiet death, but with it hanging onto the top RPG sales charts right now, raising awareness is pretty important. And there's going to be the eternal train of people asking "so what's so bad about Beast?" in the World of Darkness thread and elsewhere, and having something to just point people to instead of having to explain it endlessly should help out future generations.

What ratings is it getting on DriveThruRPG

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

Pathfinder is a game. Beast is a crime scene in training.

Beast is white supremacy wrapped up in Social Justice friendly language.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Maxwell Lord posted:

I think he had the idea of the bad guys being like MRAs and the like, but MRAs are guys who are dicks about women wanting equal rights and Heroes are overzealous in their pursuit of dream monsters who kill people. It was a bad fit and he couldn't make it work.

We have an ongoing review of a game having the literal patriarchy be the villain against feminist witches. It's a bad premise, with only the occasional writer doing a decent job of it. Handing political strawman to beat up on sucks the writers ability to write well rounded characters, create tension, or even "tough characters". As much as I dislike Miller or Ennis, the former and current can right compelling villains of opposing ideology. From limp wristed liberal psychologist right about the heroes relationship with his villains to Lesser Evil and Competent Dick Cheny.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Terrible Opinions posted:

Revenge fantasy against the patriarchy could be loving amazing, and done in a huge number of ways.

I've never seen it done tastefully, and I'm a huge exploitation film fan. You can get things like Django Unchained or Pam Grier movies, but even those films have unintentional undertones that are going to make people uncomfortable at parts (which is fine, but what these games have done). Even things like Ex Machina, which are about the self destructive nature of the patriarchy, are overtly not revenge films (the robot exploits women and others just as much as her male creator).

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Young Freud posted:

It might be interesting to set it in the 70s, 25 years after Superior has taken over, and have it fit with the political conspiracy and science fiction dystopia of the time. That the world is on the precipice of either a great change or the apocalypse.

90's were a time of cynicism and conspiracy theories too. It's that thirty years of JFK is kinda lame.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Robindaybird posted:

Not to mention, what did the guy plan to do with all the kids?

Break their legs and dump them in the river to teach them to be more lovable so that next time their parents will pay attention to them

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011
The gender politics of Dune is every more complicated then you get into when it comes to discussions why they want a male savior and not a female one.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

That Old Tree posted:

Don't forget also that part of the Golden Path is to make women the militaristic, "dominant" gender for 3,000 years, to "balance out" humanity and make us True Gender Neutral. The following books then descend into outright sex magic that is female-only until, once again, a male counterpart arrives to save us all.
It's more complicated than that.

The Tleilaxu programmed that feature for him to assassinate/self terminate after meeting Sheena, the female Leto who could control Sandworms. It was a defect and act of treachery, and not an ability.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Dune, at least the early books, are pretty much a deconstruction of sci-fi tropes, but also of modern-day politics and religion. The worst thing to happen to the Empire s that it gets the Messiah it had been wishing for.

This outright said in text in God Emperor. Leto II created the Golden Path so that Super Beings abilities no longer matter or function in the universe or evolve to be more egalitarian and no longer threaten mankind or it's individuality. It failing because it was a plan made by a super being is sort of the joke. Hell even in Dune Messiah, Paul outright says he's worse than Hitler but is forcing himself to continue because thanks to super prescience feels his inaction would make him complacent and is depressed, self loathing wreck that uses the death of wife, his children having the same ability as him, and his blindness as an excuse to wander off and die in desert.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011
Please tell me that game is good, because I really, really want it to be.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Robindaybird posted:

Basically the idea was small dicks were actually better, it shows one is a man of reason and higher intellect, anyone with a massive dong was thought to be like a beast, ruled by desire and lust.

Secondly, big dicks are considered hilarious, they can't take a giant dong seriously.

It also had to do with an obsession with symmetry and balance...also it was outright assumed the statues where growers not showers. The penises weren't perpetually that small, which would have been associated other character flaws, like passivity and a lethargic nature (as a recent NPR report said, flaccid penises in statues aren't that much smaller than flaccid penises in real life).

The idea was that a Rational Platonic Ideal of a Man, wouldn't be ruled by their lust as said before, but control it not deny it. Often chaste anti Heroes would reach just as tragic (and "deserved") fates like the men whose lusts lead them to personal downfalls. It's just that myth reflected real life and more of the "lust isn't always good' is a more interesting and common conflict.

NutritiousSnack fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jul 29, 2016

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Davin Valkri posted:

Things like this are why I loved Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Its entire overarching theme was that, for all the supernatural power and age of those who play the game of vampires, at the end of the night they are all pretty much as stupid, petty, divided and delusional as the humans they claim superiority over. The sarcophagus isn't the herald to some big tide of bloodshed, it's an explosive macguffin that only has value because stupidly old people thought it was powerful and couldn't imagine that they were wrong.
I thought all of that was a well planned feint by Caine and Jack? Like they discovered this could have world ending repercussions, stopped it, and rigged it with a bomb to gently caress with LaCroix for pulling all the evil, backstabbing, poltik, and Tradition breaking nonsense he was up to. Send a message to other rear end hats like him not to pull this poo poo.

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kavak posted:

The novelization also ends with Amuro being killed by a random Zaku with a bazooka. No glorious sacrifice, no dying speech, his luck just runs out and he's gone.

Not really. At his funeral, he talks to his Saya with his Newtype powers and says he'll be around for her and his child anytime they need him. Getting to live on as a force ghost seems pretty loving lucky

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Asimo posted:

That's another big gimmick thing yeah. Not sure how prominent it is these days, but during the early 00's anime DVD boom this reason is why a lot of crappy C-tier things nobody would ever buy or watch got released. I forget the exact title, but I know for a fact there was at least one retail release acquired through a deal like this that sold double digit copies. :ssh:

That's how Evangelion got shipped over. Couple of other big American favorites were bargin bin discounts (though only a few got popular like Evangelion did later on)

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Halloween Jack posted:

I'm not sure that I see the point of Middenarde when WFRP2e already exists. There's even a retroclone if you don't like the setting. I mean there is probably room for other grim, picaresque low fantasy games, but probably not ones that blather on about how lovely the PCs' lives are supposed to be.

There is a WFRP retroclone?

NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kavak posted:

I thought EVA got huge in Japan pretty quick? Or did they assume Americans wouldn't be into it and sold it for cheap?

Evangelion failed big time during it's first run. It's when it was put on late night cable reruns for adults it took off and became a cultural phenomenon. The producers actually wanted it to fail too, as they were embezzling money from Ganix

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NutritiousSnack
Jul 12, 2011

Kavak posted:

That must've been in 1996 then because it was a phenomenon by '97.

Yeah, maybe I'm giving too much credit to the validity of the ADV commentaries. They lie like poo poo on them but according to them they were angling for another release and Ganix asked them if they wanted Evangelion with it too while they were at it with ADV mostly uninterested but picking it up as a bonus.

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