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Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kurieg posted:

So for future reference and people who've been paying attention to Beast discussion. Apparently they changed some rather fundamental things about the way Heroes are created (mainly, they aren't anymore) despite the fact that the first and second chapters imply that they are. So, just ignore that whole rant I had about Heroes being tragic figures. Cause now they're something much worse, of course they won't address that until chapter 5. For reference that's page 200, right now we're on page 44.

Oh boy, I actually don't know what this is. Something to look forward to, I guess.

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Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
You can literally sell all the awful parts of your life to a Demon, which is a sort of self-improvement, though not quite the one intended here.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Daeren posted:

And/or self-admittedly abused, self-loathing, and seriously messed up people self-identifying with the beasts, which was upsetting on basically every level possible.

I remember the person you're probably thinking of in particular; if nothing else I hope someone guided them to Promethean because it hits everything they said they identified with Beast for without being completely reprehensible in the process.

Also yeah, nth-ing the repeated refrain of seeing an abuser (in this case my child molester cousin) in the Beasts and seeing myself/other victims as the people the book says deserve it when I read that terrible book. Which I actually brought up during the initial Beast criticism; I was resoundingly ignored (except by the person above, who did try to acknowledge what I said but was still too tied up in seeing themselves in Beast and whatnot), so, yeah.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Doresh posted:

Man, I just realize that if Beasts only target people who actually deserve it for realz, you could basically play a campaign of Yu-Gi-Oh! Season 0. You know, the one were Yugi is pretty much a more personal Jigsaw.

Ahahahaha, oh man, that'd be amazing. The original Yu-Gi-Oh! was great.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Silver Ladder Stereotypes posted:

Free Council: Even democracy must recognize the firsts among equals.

Free Council Stereotypes posted:

Silver Ladder: How does one exalt the equality of all, then claim to be first among equals?

I am amused that the Free Council stereotype here is almost a direct response to the Silver Ladder one. A response with a very good point, at that.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

NGDBSS posted:

It is more ambiguous than that. While "demons" are a thing in the game, they're never characters in their own right but instead exist to drive people to go against church teachings. There's a quote early on about this:

Similarly, in play Demonic Influence serves as the stakes against the players when there's nothing more concrete to present against them. The exception to this is that a sorcerer can use the stat as well, but a sorcerer is basically an agent of anti-faith and thus Demonic Influence would represent some sort of crisis of faith in that situation. And as for changes to the possessed...let's just say that people can still look "off" in the real world as a result of various mundane things.

That said, the religious doctrines are very much something I won't be an apologist for except to note that to a certain degree they're supposed to drive conflict. In what manner they should drive conflict is something you can take them to task about, but they aren't there for no reason.

Yeah, while I skimmed some parts of DitV and these memories are a year or more old, I remember it being a lot more ambiguous than it's being made out to be here, and also an explicit part of it being that you could actually go against the teachings and such, because it turns out you have ultimate religious authority and everyone else has to deal with it. It could cause more conflict later, but the struggle between the text of the faith and one's own belief that such and such isn't right or whatever was supposed to be a big part of it.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
You know, I just realized something. If non-Beasts happened to learn about the weird effect Beasts have to force you to like them, they would probably be livid. Like, I can easily imagine werewolves who are aware of that killing anyone they're interacting with who they learn is a Beast on principle, and I imagine that vampires and mages wouldn't be particularly happy about it either, among the others. Hell, it even applies to demons apparently, and they probably have the most legitimate reasons to find anything like that a major threat. Edit: Whoops, forgot the "not kin" part means that this actually doesn't apply there.

My distaste for it as a mechanic aside, Thicker Than Water is basically an in-game motivation for any non-Beast aware of it to want to have as little to do with any Beast they encounter, or possibly kill them outright. Which is presumably the opposite of what it's intended to achieve.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 06:39 on May 25, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kurieg posted:

It specifically does not apply to Demons.

Oh, right, I forgot the stuff under "kinship" and just read the "any supernatural creature" part (and remembered my possibly-mistaken-then-too reaction to it back in the KS release). Whoops. In my defense, would you be surprised if they had stuff that still affected demons like everything else despite the whole "not kin" thing? Because I wouldn't.

Ratoslov posted:

Yes, we really were stretching for reasons for any non-Beast to want to kill any Beast they meet. That was certainly something we were lacking for.

Well the game (and even some of the other games' books apparently) tries to provide reasons why that wouldn't be the case, but they've really designed something that anyone knowledgeable about it should want absolutely nothing to do with just by its very nature. I mean, imagine how the other splats would take the knowledge that these things make you positively disposed towards them by default. Even the ones that aren't ridiculously paranoid and who have had extensive good interactions with a Beast would probably start wondering if all those interactions seemed good because of that power. Its very existence is anathema to the idea of them being the unifying crossover splat, the exact opposite of what it's intended to accomplish, if anyone in-character actually learns of it. It's just so bad on every level.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

I Am Just a Box posted:

There's a spoiler for the Beast writeup waiting here.

The Demon Storyteller's Guide (otherwise mostly a pretty good book) also decided to take the Disquiet in an odd direction that I probably wouldn't have gone with myself, given the nature of Disquiet: it affects their Cover identities, but not the demon itself. The demon can choose how to act as their Cover as normal, but they risk a compromise of Cover if they don't act like somebody suffering Disquiet. I'm not sure how the demon is supposed to experience this prompt of "you don't actually feel this but you spontaneously intuit that you're supposed to act like you do," similarly to how I don't understand how a demon meeting a Beast is supposed to experience spontaneously gaining blackmail leverage over them.

I think the idea is that Demons, being machines, wouldn't feel the "wrongness" of Disquiet the way flesh-and-blood things do; whereas all the other splats, supernatural-ness aside, are or were flesh-and-blood at one point, Demons were created by the God Machine and the Azoth animation or whatever causes Disquiet isn't something that resonates with them. However, at the same time they're posing as humans, who should be affected by it, so not being affected is a sign they're not human.

The issue is, as you say, how these two things interact. Though, the alternative is that the Demons can break their Cover without knowing why because they didn't know enough about the Promethean they're dealing with or whatever, which isn't fun for the players, even if it arguably makes more sense. Or they could make Demons affected by Disquiet directly, but, that's odd too. (Or just have them not be affected at all I guess; only the Prometheans and those familiar with them would be able to tell that the Demons not freaking out is wrong, so.)

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 00:19 on May 29, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Mors Rattus posted:

Werewolf senses are also vastly more potent than humans, and they get much more sensory input. Human experience is unable to comprehend it. Wolf forms grant them the power to smell prey, to hear it coming, to chase it for miles without tiring. And more than that, they notice why humans are 'prey'. Most humans are complacent, blind to threats. They think they're safe. They have no overt predators, so they live without fear of predation. While not all werewolves hunt humans, and certainly no werewolf hunts all humans, the Uratha can't help but notice prey behavior. People notice violence and shy away from it, keeping together in herds for protection. Werewolf instincts can't help but respond to it. The fact that these cues are often caused by a werewolf's presence just exacerbates the problem. And of course, the senses can't be turned off. They're always there. You can always smell the delicious meat, the sweat, the fear. You notice the nervous tics, the desire to flee. An Uratha can eventually discover just about anything their prey would want to hide, any clues to their behavior. But they can never go back to being human.

Huh, now I'm wondering how werewolves react to things like Demons, who specifically don't have all those nervous tics and such; given how honed their senses are, there's no way there werewolves wouldn't notice it.


Also, on the topic of werewolf forms, I agree that having the extra ones is probably better, even if it takes a little effort to learn the names and what they do. As was pointed out, it does match the moon phase thing rather well: Human - Big hairy human - Werewolf - Big wolf - Normal wolf. They all have uses, and also different werewolf stories and legends can support any or all of those forms, so it's not like there isn't precedent to werewolves becoming monster wolves instead of or in addition to normal ones, etc.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kavak posted:

I think the penalty to social roles was removed in 2nd Edition, though most Uratha are scary motherfuckers in their own right. Demons have total control over their cover's emotional appearance IIRC, so they would learn to fake being scared of people like that or cause suspicion. Though I imagine something would smell wrong anyway.

I actually wasn't thinking of it in the context of seeing a full on werewolf and reacting appropriately, but just a werewolf interacting with or watching a demon at all. Barring the demon manufacturing a million subtle signs, the wolf should be able to notice that there's something off about this individual. Though smell's one I wouldn't expect them to be suspicious of, unless the demon's been up to weird things (or is glitching out, but that's a different story); their Covers let them pass as human, after all, so they should smell human too. The issue is how they act, and the tiny things that humans don't even notice that a demon doesn't do unless they're consciously emulating them.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kavak posted:

The penalty was in all forms and was a holdover from Apocalypse.

If that's the case than anybody trained to watch people should be able to pick out a demon. Someone more familiar with that game needs to decide that, though.

I'm not talking about penalties. I don't even know what you're talking about at all. I mean, from context I'm guessing there was some social penalty werewolves used to have, but I am not talking about that. I just mean, in terms of interacting with or just watching a demon, a werewolf may be able to pick up on the subtle things that anyone else should miss. Assuming, of course, the demon wasn't aware of and actively emulating all those things; there's a bunch of subtle signs that a human wouldn't notice, but a highly-sensitive hunting machine like a werewolf could.

I Am Just a Box posted:

It's not a thing Demon stresses. There are no rolls made to avoid being an unblinking, perfectly steady creepo who people can tell is in some way weird, and the fluff generally seems to assume that, while demons don't have to perform any natural human tics, most don't find it a great effort to keep up enough from day to day. Some demons do seem to come across as plastic and unsettling, while others are such good liars that their body language can present "unconscious" tics entirely counter to how they're really feeling, but the game doesn't treat it as a risk factor or a big influence.

I figure your average demon probably reproduces enough little human tics that a werewolf couldn't sniff them out as something wrong or more/less than human, but that they would read to the wolf's senses as weirdos, either a little awkward and stiff or a little overconfident and unusually collected. Strange, but within the range of normal human strangeness. Some demons, depending on what they're trying to do and how much they care in general about fitting in, would be outliers, either dangerous chameleons or unsettling pod people.

Oh, yeah, I wasn't thinking of rolls (though I could see a Storyteller calling for them based on the situation), but, given how much it's emphasized that werewolves have those extremely, well, sensitive senses, I figure that they'd probably pick up on someone being odd just for their lack of reaction to some things. It would, of course, depend on the demon (some you don't need to be a wolf to tell they're not normal, as you say), but it seems, based on what Mors has written at least, if anyone could identify a demon without weird special poo poo or something, a werewolf could. Not that they'd know what was up with the demon, mind. In a passing encounter it'd be an oddity, while in a more direct interaction it might be a sign to the wolf there's more up with this person than meets the eye (or at least that they're very strange), but barring knowledge the werewolf probably won't have it likely wouldn't be more than that. Which, in the latter situation, might mean the wolf wouldn't think much of escalating things, which could get... "Interesting".

Edit: Actually rereading the rules, that might just fall under spoofing, actually. I don't know; I'm tired and haven't read this book in a long time.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 09:08 on May 29, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
The Werewolf updates here, combined with my memories of Demon and such, have had me imagining a cross-splat game where all the PCs have a shared goal of trying to clean up (or take over) a city in some manner, for whatever reason. Like, obviously the werewolf PC(s) would want to deal with all the spiritual landscape stuff described here, a demon might want to purge the city of God-Machine influence and make it their own Hell, a vampire could be trying to navigate if not outright end the bullshit vampire politics in the area, and so on. They all have similar goals (that don't quite line up all of the time, which could lead to interesting conflict), get embroiled in each other's politics and messes, and so on. It seems like it could be a fun game (though sadly one that would make it hard for a Promethean PC to be a part of it, though they could make an appearance as NPCs and present an interesting dilemma).

Beasts, given that everything they do would be anathema to nearly everyone's goals, would likely not be welcome and might wind up being B-plot antagonists or something. I dunno.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Kavak posted:

This is due to bad playtesting, IIRC. The developers only had like one group of playetesters and didn't find the problem of how hard it is for two werewolves in Gauru form to kill each other without somebody else to tip the scales.

Also, werewolves are basically impossible to kill reliably without silver. Which is good- you're not supposed to be killing each other and naturally the only thing that can reliably do it is taboo, but then they had the Blood Talons be based around hunting werewolves. How are they supposed to kill their prey without playing dirty as hell or using silver?

Harry the prey, separate it, and bring it down with numbers? Hunting is a pack activity, after all.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Nessus posted:

Not every fictional work needs to relentlesly recreate and reassert Whig Progress.

The Garou are amply presented as dicks; you can root for them because they're fighting the corruption of the modern world and trying to save the Earth, even if their methods are weird and hosed up by the standard of a staid Midwesterner. Many of them are weird and hosed up, but you can comprehend why (for instance) Red Talons, who are born as wolves but raised to human intelligence by becoming werewolves, typically come to blame humans for the cause of all this bullshit. A Red Talon is an alien.

Vampires are not portrayed as cosmically justified, either, to my memory. It's just that the game line, you know, is about vampires doing vampire poo poo, often while hanging out with other vampires. I think Masquerade had numerous books about hosed up weirdo spinoff cultures that followed in the wake of Kindred.

Beasts seem to get written as cosmically justified.

There isn't any "seems to" about it; in the original draft they were explicitly declared to be in the right to inflict horror and misery on both Heroes (who, back then, were created by Beasts and thus entirely the victim) and innocent, mundane bystanders. While it got toned down in some places in the rewrite, it's still largely present and noticeable.

But yes, every other line makes no excuses for the monstrosity of its protagonists. Even Promethean is honest about the damage the Created do to their surroundings by their existence and doesn't make up excuses for why a Promethean would actually be totally justified in creating a Wasteland in the middle of a populated city or how people who are taken over by Disquiet are the real monsters and deserve to die.

Also the other lines didn't have the creator comparing their detractors to hate groups when they were being written. If, say, someone had expressed concerns about the whole "crypto-facist eco-terrorist" thing going on in Werewolf, and in response one of the writers compared the critics to the KKK for being racist against werewolves, then I imagine people would have less goodwill towards that line too.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
Yeah, setting aside my issues with the game's creator and OPP's handling of that mess, as a game Beast is just... Lacking. People were talking about Geist lacking any real goals for your characters in the WoD thread, but Beast has that problem too. There's no arc to Beast-hood, there's just feeding in whatever simple or complex and disturbing manner you desire, and occasionally the GM will throw Heroes at you. If you clown on one hard enough, you become an Incarnate or something. And that's it. They're unlikable and uninteresting, their villains are pathetic and nonthreatening unless you let them be threatening by staying at a Satiety level where their nasty powers actually work on you, and there's no grand goal or theme or anything to the game as a whole, no defining struggle like every other line has. They're supposedly "crossover-friendly" but they don't really provide any reason for a crossover beyond Poochie-powers making everyone like them and thus presumably creating a "the friends of my friend are my friends too" situation; a crossover game would need a reason for everyone to be grouping together and doing stuff, as well as things for them to be doing, and unless you're doing a "Beast and friends pal around and torment people" game, Beasts don't provide that. If you're not, then the Beasts are superfluous and the game doesn't add anything except letting people be Beasts, meanwhile.

Scrub the game of all the things that invoke abusive imagery, get rid of the forced and ill-conceived "oppressed people vs Gamergate/the WBC/etc." overtones, and pretend it wasn't made by a guy who thought it was a good idea to compare abuse victims to MRAs, and you're left with a game with questionable mechanics and no reason to play it. The plot of Beast is that you're a monster tormenting a neighborhood (or other locale) until people come to stop you, and then you kill them for trying to stop you, before going back to tormenting the normal people. Unless your group wants to be monsters that don't look like monsters and who get off on making people suffer, Beast isn't a game that offers you anything. They could have been a B-tier or C-tier antagonist for another line (people have pointed out the many similarities between them and other Werewolf antagonists, for example, and how Beast feeding would gently caress up the spiritual landscape in a way the wolves would not appreciate), but even removed of all the awful baggage Beasts just can't support a game on their own, and nothing they bring to the table makes them a particularly interesting choice for a crossover game either. Unless you're the kind of rear end in a top hat who needs everyone else to fawn over your character but can't actually write someone compelling enough to elicit that reaction genuinely, I suppose. Then the Kinship stuff is fantastic for you.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Jun 6, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Count Chocula posted:

I think 'the literal patriarchy is the villiain against feminist witches' is a kickass premise for a game that resonates with both ancient mythological Archtypes and modern Tumblr culture. If done WELL (not Bellum Magica) and with good art (from Tumblr/zine culture, like the MegaHex/Meg and Mog stuff) it could capture a market as well as Vampire did in the 90s.

It's certainly a premise with as much or more basis in mythology, fantasy literature (Angela Carter) and theory than 'musclemen and artillery wizards go into dark holes to beat up orcs'.

Hell I know a bunch of artists, and if I thought I could do it in a non tone-deaf way I would.

Yeah, I think you could do a game about that well. Bellum Maga did not, and neither did Beast; Beast got so caught up in being a revenge fantasy it unintentionally invoked some horrible things in its first draft, and even after the rewrite the abusive overtones are still there. Arguably worse even, since now they Beasts are doing it for the victims' own good in theory.

People (or, well, I, at least) don't dislike Beast for being a revenge fantasy. They dislike it for being a terrible revenge fantasy, that is full of abusive imagery that is at times uncomfortably close to things I and people I know endured in real life, and because the creator is a loving rear end in a top hat. And for just not being a good game.

I think a good first step to making a good revenge fantasy game would be to look at it without the revenge fantasy part and see if the protagonists and antagonists are likable and reprehensible, respectively, without any knowledge of what they're supposed to represent. Beast and Bellum Maga, for example, fail utterly at this, because their protagonists are abhorrent and making them analogs to real life groups doesn't make them better, it just makes things even more uncomfortable and feels outright insulting on some levels, speaking as a person who Beasts are supposedly representing.

Edit: Wait, is Bellum Maga another game where the witches torture and transform and basically murder people for shits and giggles? I might be mixing it up with the other awful witch game being reviewed here and having them blend together in my mind. Though I think that at least two of the awful witch games here were written by the same person, I'm not sure, so...

Edit again: Looking it up, yeah, at least one Witch Girl Adventures person was involved with Bellum Maga. Also Bellum Maga had that awful trans trait in it so that's another mark against it; if you're trying to represent people make sure you actually know anything about who you're representing and don't write horrible offensive poo poo about them instead.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Jun 6, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
Fury Road also treated its female characters with respect; while we saw things like the chastity belts and knew that at least most of them were raped given their pregnancy combined with their hate for Joe, it didn't have gratuitous rape scenes or people demeaning them for being women or with sexist language or anything like that. It turns out, shockingly, if you want to empower people you don't need to treat them like garbage first.

Edit: This is more a commentary on how media normally treats this sort of thing, rather than in comparison to games here specifically, admittedly. It is something that Fury Road does well though, and probably something to keep in mind when going for that sort of thing, regardless of medium.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Jun 6, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Nancy_Noxious posted:

That one is easy. The Technocracy are STEMlords, so it's not like they're evil queer monsters or anything, so STEMlord nerds dig them. Take for instance that really unfair Mage20 review that was going on, it was a celebration of sciency nerd types. Fashionable tattooed characters were despicable, fugly characters wearing Darwin t-shirts and sweatpants were awesome!

Viking honor is conventionally masculine, so most straight nerds dig it. Queer Beasts? Burn them!

This is really disingenuous, and also rather despicable; co-opting progressive language to insinuate that people who don't like a game with serious issues of abusive imagery and overtones (speaking as a queer person who's also been subject to various forms of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse through my lifetime, reading the original Beast draft made me feel sick, and I did not see myself in the Beasts at all but rather their victims, who in the old book were treated as having no right to object to their treatment and frequently deserving of their abuse, while the new one, in addition to mostly keeping that tone, also says it's for their own good now) are actually regressive GG-esque nerds is pretty disgusting. Though that you'd do that shows why you'd like Beast, given that its creator did the same thing when people pointed out that the game's protagonists were utterly reprehensible and the only reason to dislike the antagonists was that the book said to and all but explicitly said "These are stand-ins for MRAs and other bigots" without ever actually characterizing them as such, beyond including the one stereotypical Internet nerd in a trilby.

Is your username's similarity to "Mandy Morbid" a coincidence, out of curiosity?

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jun 7, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
Beast does not punch up, though. The Beasts are at the top; the examples even include some corporate jackass who is climbing as high as he can. The Beasts are automatically liked by everyone (who matters; at some points mundane people are almost explicitly just prey for the much-more-important Beasts), they have no stigma or grand force fighting them or keeping them down, and the book itself tries to present their every action, no matter how heinous, as justified. Hell, the way Beasts act reflects that of the privileged more than the not; when they fight Heroes they're described as doing things such as leveraging their connections and assets against them, turning the masses against them and ostracizing them and trying to make them look bad regardless of the facts of the matter, and basically reveling in their ability to ruin their lives in every imaginable way. The things they are described as doing (that aren't just real life abusive situations; I seriously don't think some people get how uncomfortably, disturbingly close what some Beast actions in the book are to real life abuser tactics and actions, or how the book's narrative mirrors the justifications of actual abusers almost perfectly even after they tried to scrub that out of it) are what the people the Heroes supposedly represent actually do in real life.

Were it not for the Beasts and Heroes being labeled as if they were characters in a political cartoon, there would be nothing signifying that they're at all decent, just the book telling you "these are the good guys, that's why they're allowed to murder people and torture them and drive them to mental breakdowns". The supposed narrative doesn't match what it actually presents at all. Making the murderous assholes queer doesn't suddenly make the game progressive. If anything, it makes it more uncomfortable when the book alternates between detailing how two Beasts are gay lovers and how they ruthlessly exploit people for the express purpose of murdering them; the emphasis on those aspects while describing the characters committing abuse and atrocity is... Well, like I said. Uncomfortable, to put it mildly.

Edit: Very late but whatever.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Jun 7, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
You know, on something of a tangent, I actually think one of the biggest disservices Beast does against its protagonists (I mean, besides... Everything) is that it tries to paint them as good and right. No other game line does that; Changelings still have the terrible things they can do presented as terrible things, while Prometheans don't have the damage their very existence can cause wiped away, and those are probably the two most sympathetic splats by default, with the former being thinly-veiled abuse victims trying to escape and rebuild their lives, while the latter are just cursed for existing at all. Hell, Demons are caught up in a war against the all-powerful embodiment of oppression and the status quo, and yet their book still doesn't pretend them doing things like tricking mortals out of their souls is at all justified, even when it's done for the cause of opposing the God-Machine, rather than just because you need a new Cover (or because you're an rear end in a top hat). Meanwhile the other lines, well, they vary, with the extreme to an almost hilarious degree of harshness being Vampire, and how it makes no pretensions towards its protagonists being anything but parasitic monsters whose best method of making the world a better place would probably be going outside and watching the sun rise.

The World of Darkness is a terrible place where you're probably playing either a broken person or a monster who may well be harmful by their very nature, and where fighting against that and being a good person is a struggle, and one that, with the semi-exception of Promethean, you probably won't be rewarded for. Which, really, is one of the reasons trying for that anyway is such an attractive option in it; people love that sort of stuff. (Edit: Promethean is a semi-exception because, while your final chances at becoming Human are based on Humanity, you can advance on your Pilgrimage just fine by being a monster, so long as you're learning what it means to be human in the process. Meanwhile, trying to be nice and not hurt people can easily bite you in the rear end and make things harder in a situation where getting to the end point already isn't a given. Still, it probably rewards decency the most, at least as far as I'm aware, compared to the other lines.)

Beast, though, deviates from this in a way that really isn't for the better. Every other game line is some form of, "you're a monster; how do you deal with your existence?" (Well, I hear Geist is pretty upbeat apparently; I don't know much about that one.) Beast, meanwhile, is, "you're a monster and that's loving awesome; go torture the people you don't like." It just doesn't fit at all, and that hurts it a lot. The authorial voice being blatantly biased in the favor of the Beasts, where every other line is straightforward and honest about the monstrosity of its characters and the occasional good they can do and how they can fight their natures and whatnot, doesn't help either. It practically revels in their terribleness. If Beast were written more like any other line, it'd... Still have the issues with things like direction and the mechanics being busted in some areas and whatnot, but it'd be better, at least. Even setting aside the abuse apologia, the book is just too positive about its monstrous protagonists.

If nothing else, a game about how kickass it is to be a monster who isn't beholden to anyone and can gently caress up people's lives on a whim isn't one that belongs in the CofD, because, dark as it is, that kind of poo poo generally doesn't fly in any of the games that aren't Beast and causes you Problems, rather than being expected and rewarded. Whether as a revenge fantasy game or just for the sake of being awful, that belongs in a different setting. (Edit: Wait there are rules for Slashers, I forgot about those. But those are at least honest about what the characters are still.)

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Jun 7, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
Oh, I wasn't ragging on Geist, since I don't know much about it and a somewhat optimistic game in the CofD isn't bad in theory. It's just that, from what I hear, the protagonists don't have their lives be awful by default as a result of being monsters, though I don't know the specifics, so it didn't quite fit into my point of most of the CofD stuff being about coping with being a monster or handling it in your own way, rather than reveling in it and being above reproach the way Beasts are presented.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
Geist does sound like it could be neat. Though, weren't pilgrim marks already a Promethean thing? Though I guess crossover between those two could work; one finding the other's marks could lead to some plot or other.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Jun 8, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

the zeky are by far the best prometheans. thematically prometheans are similar to the way most people think about nuclear waste anyways: something extremely dangerous and unnatural that we made tinkering around with something we didn't fully understand. they warp the landscape and scare people and their life goal is to safely defuse themselves.

Of course their signature pandoran is Pyramid Head.

I love the Zeky, and I was very disappointed that they weren't making it into the 2e corebook. Matt McFarland heading that project means I'm not buying it anyway, mind, but still, it's strange they wanted the Unfleshed and Extempore in the main book but cut the Zeky until an expansion if at all.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Doresh posted:

Samus: The Araning, a grim science-fiction roleplaying game about owning a strange piece of Precursor power armor that can gobble up power-ups from all kinds of sources, but conveniently forgets them after each adventure.

Like a reverse Mummy, losing everything at the start of each story only to build it all back up and then some.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jun 12, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
The Machine is not only inscrutable and dangerous to humanity even as it preserves it from threats that would ruin its plans, it is also may well be broken; sometimes it does things like create angels with no missions at all, leaving them stranded until they either Fall (unless that's impossible; I've seen contradictory stuff on whether exiles can Fall or not) or die, or assign one angel to protect a target and then have another angel assigned to destroy it, which generally will result in the death and/or Fall of one or both angels during or after their clash. Hell, the existence of demons at all is a strong strike against its sanity; angels are part of the Machine, like its own semi-autonomous limbs. If demons aren't actually part of its plan, the fact that its limbs can rebel against it is a strong sign that something is wrong with the Machine.

Not only is the God-Machine a cruel, uncaring force that keeps the world in a terrible state and seems to have no goals beyond its own existence, it is quite possibly broken, sick, or insane. Which is one of several reasons my favorite agenda is Inquisitor-Saboteur; take the parts of the Machine that work (such as the ones that keep the world turning), destroy those that don't, and eventually either hijack it or destroy it and keep things together in a new way. One that doesn't massacre towns because of reasons it doesn't particularly care to tell anyone.

Kavak posted:

No, he's just an irredeemable devil's advocate.

In that case he should be firmly on the side of the demons.

Count Chocula posted:

I've just never NOT considered siding with the immortal AI. Fallout New Vegas, Deus Ex: HR.... If I hadn't wised up I'd be one of those Singularity Institue idiots. I got mad at the ending of Wall-E since they gave up their life of posthuman comfort.

There's a Phil Sandifer essay about the original concept of the Cybermen being beings who attained qlippothic enlightenment. That might play well with a Mage/GM crossover.

You could have Demons who Fell just because they're pathological egotists.

Demons are also immortal AI though. At least, immortal so long as they don't let their only Cover die of old age; if they keep a good supply of those going they are theoretically immortal. Or they could just hang out in demon form actually, since that doesn't age, except doing that will result in the God-Machine detecting them and sending angels to destroy them and bring them back in to be reprocessed.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jun 15, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Count Chocula posted:

I actually believe all things, just at different times and depending on my mood. But at the heart of it I don't like the rules of the real world - the God Machine follows them but it also breaks them. And two of the things I explicitly oppose are 'logic' and 'consistency'. The God Machine works using mortal instruments but it also works using occult matrices. It's embedded in the world - forced to abide by most of its rules - but it's not of it. It's endgame is unknowable, just like the old Mage endgame of Ascension. The Technocracy's endgame seems to be 'keep our world the way it is and shut down the weird bits', and people here also like VASCU and Hunter and other warriors of the status quo. They work by committees, not occult matrices.

I just want something to change the nature of the universe, whether it's machine or Mage.

Demons are actually far better agents of change than the Machine is; the Machine's only apparent discernible goal is its survival via maintaining the status quo. Hacking the Machine, destroying it outright, or even "redeeming" it as some Integrators believe is possible, has a better chance of changing things than letting the Machine keep operating unopposed does. And demons actually can do those things, in theory; they're really ludicrously powerful, and their Embeds operate according to the God-Machine's rules, after all. They're just stuck fighting/hiding from something far more powerful than they are, namely the God-Machine itself; it casts a long shadow over them and makes things like unifying against it difficult at best. Its very existence is an impediment to large-scale change of any sort, really, outside of some hypothetical agenda of its own.

Keiya posted:

That just means the God-Machine is an octopus.

... actually, 'octopus-built god AI' sounds awesome.

Heh. I suppose that works.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
First Tongue is natively spoken by a few populations, so yeah, they know it. High Speech meanwhile is the secret mage club language so they have to learn it like everyone else. They can also theoretically lose languages they don't "really" know; apparently when the last native speaker of Aka-Bo died in 2010, all demons everywhere forgot how to speak it too.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jun 24, 2016

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
Yeah, a demon can avoid giving any signs they're not telling the truth, but that doesn't mean that everyone believes everything they say. Just that nothing can determine that they're lying by looking at the demon personally.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
That kind of sounds like what Little Fears was originally planned to be (a game about children fighting werewolves and stuff), before the guy making it started researching things like real child abuse cases and things went off the rails.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Adnachiel posted:

With a teacher sponsor that probably has no business being involved in it, even, being half-djinn.

Seriously, Adani being the head of that club seems like a complete afterthought. (Moreso than most things in the setting.) "Oh poo poo, I need a teacher to be the leader of this club that hates anyone who isn't a full-blood witch. Okay, who's a Sorceress..."

Okay, so, is "High Binders" the Neo-Nazi club? When you first posted about them I couldn't find them on the list, but with you mentioning Adani being the sponsor I went back to look at it and that's the only non-class thing she seems to lead. Or am I just missing something obvious?

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Adnachiel posted:

No, you got it. The Highbinders' whole schtick, like I've said in other posts, is that they're the setting's Death Eaters: They see anyone who isn't a witch (other magical beings included) as inferior and want to get rid of the masquerade and rule the world.

She also sponsors the Chess Club, but the book doesn't go into the school clubs, so it's also mostly an afterthought.

Ah, alright. I haven't followed along actively so I missed that bit.

Yeah, wow, that's ridiculous. This game is fractally bad; the closer you look the more you find wrong with it, in increasingly terrible ways.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

Count Chocula posted:

Huh, the Smuggler is a full Cronenberg.

Young Freud posted:

And yeah, I thought the same thing. I'm pretty sure Forbeck thought it was like some sort of Wiley Coyote hole, but I too immediately went to Videodrome.

These posts got me curious and I was disappointed when I found out what was actually being discussed.

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Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo

unzealous posted:

Alright, so I'm trying to wrap my mind around beast so correct me if I'm wrong. When someone becomes a beast their soul is eaten, or they're born that way, and for the sake of keeping things simple they have a dragon beast. So this thing is in the place of their soul, but isn't under their direct control. And it wanders around at night when they sleep. It can't really manifest in the physical world. It's kind of like if you gave a cat terrible terrible powers. They get a lair, but they can't really just pop in and chill, the dragon just kind of stays there when it's not tormenting random people. Heroes can go there physically, but most people end up going there in a dream. It's only in the lair that the dragon is really dragony and where it does most of the pointless torturing. I don't know, beast just seems kind of all over the place.

Yeah, when I get past the layer of revulsion and try to look at the mechanics and how it would play, Beast seems... Really messy. There's a lot of things that are sometimes connected and sometimes not and don't always work together or have the same themes or feels. Combined with the utter lack of goals beyond feeding that the game presents for you, the whole thing just sort of exists without any real indicator or feel for what you're supposed to actually do, beyond the mandatory torment and torture of the inferior.

Kai Tave posted:

It's hard to call any one thing Beast does badly its biggest sin since there's so much competition, but certainly one of them is that even if you ignore all the poo poo that's been hashed out across this thread and the WoD thread re: abuse, mangled minority metaphors, and so forth, once you lay the core concept of the game bare it's completely loving dull. None of this stuff about the collective unconscious, teaching lessons, or your ambulatory soul is in any way interesting or engaging, not even in a power fantasy sense because everything's all symbolic and metaphorical instead of literally getting to be a cool mythological monster like almost every other World of Darkness game.

Personally I'd put the abuse stuff as the biggest, but, yeah. Beasts are just so uninteresting at the core of things. They're just people, who have "special souls". It's a boring version of Sin-Eaters, or that one Werewolf enemy thing that every wolf should probably assume Beasts are once they learn more about them. It's kind of odd really, how despite how much the book wants you to love the Beasts and think they're cool and all, it doesn't so much to actually make them cool or let them do cool things.

Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jul 20, 2016

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