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Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



We do know that it (apparently) wants the status quo to continue existing. Possibly this is simply practical; the GM functions as well as it does because the status quo allows it to remain invisible and influential. Possibly that status quo is, itself, what the God-Machine has always intended. Maybe there's some future goal that status quo is meant to prepare for, or maybe not.

And maybe the GM finished its original 'program' long ago and is just running over, forever.

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Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Josef bugman posted:

Wednesday seems really nice, I like the fact that there are some honest to goodness "I'm doing my best Dammit" Demons about.

Wednesday ought to talk to the Free Council, they'd get along like a Bastille on fire.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Yes and no?

The God-Machine is more material than the Exarchs so you can much more specifically say 'ok time to blow up Carlsbad Caverns' - you can find and detonate Infrastructure. You may not know what it's doing or why but you can always know there's a physical system to disrupt.

But, on the other hand, the Exarchs in Mage are off in the Supernal underpinnings of reality, but their agendas are extremely knowable. They intend to maintain the status quo through their various symbolic natures, which are well enough known that you can pretty well understand what they want in the broad strokes. There may be twists or revelations, but they are directed and comprehensible tyrants. The GM is not. What exactly the Infrastructure is intended to accomplish, ornwhether there's even any intent, or how to safely disarm it... these are extremely obscure and unclear. The motivations and methodology are physical, but they're also inscrutable.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Yeah, the Exarch-free world is kind of difficult to plan for, because it's a world where the Gods of Oppression are no longer on top. To what degree that looks like the end of Promethea or a magical space-Atlantis Communist utopia is going to vary wildly by table.

That being said, Wednesday would absolutely get along with the Silver Ladder.

"I want to make Humanity into the Gods of this world, because the human spirit is the highest good."
"...yes, were you at the meeting?"

I mean he's basically trying to build his own psychic Star Ladder with God-Machine infrastructure. (Which, given the implication in some Mage books that the God-Machine might have started as the star ladder or an equivalent device, well... that's fun.)

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



PurpleXVI posted:

See part of the problem I have with this approach to Modern Occult stuff is that it requires rewriting human nature. Because by this reading, a lot of what we consider to be ills that are simply the consequence of normal human behavior and idiocy, are suddenly the works of an extra-human conspiracy or force. This means that, in theory, WoD humanity is considerably nicer and more sensible than real world humanity, because the world would be less lovely if they were just left to do things on their own, apparently. Giving the responsibility for real-world ills to supernaturals or their conspiracies just... doesn't work.

In the case of the GM and the Exarchs, it's more that they reinforce human failings. They're the social and economic systems that reinforce our bad behavior, metaphorized into literal engines and esoteric gods. Why is it so hard to change things for the better? Well, partly people, and partly the secret gods. This is also necessary as a counterbalance to the magic powers the players have, because otherwise you'd be secretly saying something really grim that 'our world but some people have magic powers' leads to 'exactly the same as our world, people would never try to improve things.'

It's just how allegory works, and it works well for telling a story about using monster powers or magic to punch the system. It's cathartic.

e: Josef bugman's not wrong

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Oct 2, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Exarchs going down means the things they represent still exist, the game's just not rigged in their favor. It's much more 'fixing what historical contingency broke' than 'changing the basic nature of humanity.'

Plus the most commonly attested origin of the Exarchs is 'some human mages broke into Heaven and redecorated the place in iron chains' - so all the tendencies they represent, all the forms of rule, humans probably invented first. Then certain humans took over the world and made those things the most potent organizing structures for human civilization.

So, y'know. Patriarchy, capitalism, the divine right of kings, surveillance states, etc etc... basically how they arose in human history, but with a magical gloss.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



PurpleXVI posted:

If patriarchal traditions are caused by evil magic, then I, as a person, do not need to engage in any personal growth or change to counter them.

It's that 'Patriarchy,' the cultural force, grabbed hold of one of the cosmic positions from which tyranny can rain down, because humans went 'let's use this on other people!' It is precisely that humanity as a whole needs to recognize that even without humans choosing to serve patriarchy, it continues to exist in the absence of that intention (not to mention there IS that intention from plenty of people, which are represented in the magical arena by the Seers).

The Father, Exarch of Patriarchical Religion, is just the platonic symbol of what's going on on Earth. You could play the game as if the solution to that is to run up and cast Power Word: Liberation on him until he goes down, but that's not what the game expects you to do. It just says that there's a mystical representation of the power of Patriarchy, which itself seeks to reinforce its own position, which is fundamentally identical to the cultural and historical influence of patriarchy except that we've written in 'also there's wizards involved, and magic is the process of power, because this is a game about wizards.'

And if you want to fight patriarchy by running around using magic to oppose it, the Exarchs are going to send goons after you. Which makes for a better game than 'and then we used magic to fix things, the end.'

e: Also part of the point is, Patriarchy is bigger than you. You can hang out on your own being non-patriarchal, helping your community, being a decent person. And that's like chipping at the toenail of a giant. Change that doesn't shake the throne isn't going to cut it, and the Exarchs embody the cultural/historical system of power (metaphorically) that reinforces oppression. Mage is about playing someone with the analytical framework (wizard eyes) to see the systems of power that underly society, and how those systems are arranged around certain bad things, and then choose to either serve the powers that be or fight them. Or, and this is a major option in Mage, just focus on your own personal growth and development to become a better wizard, wiser and kinder to those around you... which will do nothing to change the world unless you also go out and get organized.

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Oct 2, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Flail Snail posted:

Like how one fell because he had an intrusive thought about going outside, meanwhile this one cleaner lady is actively coming closer and closer to sabotaging the GM because she desires increased challenge?

I think this is intentional - the God-Machine is, when you peel back even a little bit, a huge jury-rigged mess. Angels are janky, they regularly break away and become fully autonomous entities that represent the most direct possible threat to the Machine. The Machine doesn't even have a good sense of when an angel is going to fall, and it builds them. It's a computer-monster running on the weird occult holes in a badly designed reality, and the tools at its disposal are weird, occult, and inconsistent.

And yet it runs the world. Somebody should do something about that.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Mage and Demon are both the Matrix, but in vastly different ways, which is fun.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Young Freud posted:

Mage is very proto-The Matrix, that I still wonder if Virtual Adepts were something the Wachowskis used as inspiration.

NMage is more the Platonist influences in the Matrix, while Demon is more the techgnosticism of it.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Dawgstar posted:

I wonder how well The Invisibles holds up under that lens today.

Isn't the latter half of the Invisibles a chaos spell cast by Grant Morrison to get laid?

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I suspect it was also that Lunars was being painted in basically 'this saves the gameline go back it' colors. Plus the whole basically-finished text was being reviewed.

That's not to criticize, I just think there's some tonal/contextual differences.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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I think the use of 'cryptid' was primarily because of the God-Machine's role in the second edition overall as the unifying force behind random low-level weirdness, the vast conspiracy engine that is made up of all the weird little things you can't explain.

So, using cryptid to refer to creatures mutated by the Machine's radiation makes a lot of sense in that context - it's the thing that causes all those weird undiscovered or bizarre creatures, because it's the Generic Urban Legend fountainhead.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



So, I wouldn't say the God-Machine is the default origin of cryptids, precisely. Just that, in games where the God-Machine exists, it's the reason you get cryptids. The God-Machine thrives on being both material and omnipresent, a sort of universal material conspiracy to oppress and exploit the world (it's capitalism, get it). So, if the Machine exists, that's what causes cryptids and here are some rules for that interpretation.

Whereas if I just want common or garden bigfeet, that's an ape with a glandular problem and is easy enough to stat up. Or it's a human precursor from the Time Before and Mages are super interested in it. Or it's a kind of spirit that Werewolves have to hunt. Or whatever.

But if there's a Machine, cryptids being a waste product makes sense. (Just like, if the Supernal exists in your game of Chronicles, then a lot of things in human history are intertwined with the rise and descent of symbols in the platonic overworld, and you can assume that all the goings-on of other supernatural lines must in the end have some Supernal resonance, because the Supernal is literally the base code for everything that's not Abyss).

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I feel like the fact that he's Lord Entropy, God of Evil, and the guy who outlawed love... why do you need to spell out 'hey you might want to overthrow this bastard'?

That just seems incredibly redundant with literally everything about him that you've described. And 'our faction is really lovely but also there's an existential threat' is a pretty standard 90s kind of plot, where you have to balance overthrowing Evil McAwful with not letting the world end.

E: I should note, I have not read much Nobilis at all, but I do enjoy Chuubo's which is a sort of sequel game. In that, the Excrucians basically won and now there's a number of mythical locations floating in unreality and you're starring ina Studio Ghibli movie set there. Lord Entropy quit (and autodismembered?) and left a teenage sequel to run the local high school and as far as I can tell we're all glad he's gone.

So I'm sort of working from the assumption that either getting rid of Lord Entropy is not going to change the outcome of the war with beautiful nullity, or if it does, it might help you actually win to convince everyone that the world deserves to exist (once it's no longer ruled by Lord Entropy).

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Oct 8, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



That's because 2e was originally a campaign about the God-Machine bundled with a bunch of rule updates.

It evolved into a second edition, but the initial piece was "The God-Machine Chronicles" - a standalone expansion with new rules ideas and this fancy new horror monster based on a fan favorite concept from earlier books. It was almost 'The Mothman Chronicles' which is wild to think about.

Really in practice the Machine is only overbearing in the core GM Chronicles/2e book, and also Demon. Since the other 2e books contain their own statement of the core rules (except Demon and... maybe Vampire 2? iDK) the blue book content isn't vital.

It's a weird, historically contingent set of decisions but I don't think the Machine is quite as overbearing in practice as it would appear from 'the core features it heavily.'

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Drakli posted:

Honestly, I think the writers keep the God Machine's reasons for doing specific plans unexplained, both to maintain its mystique and to allow individual storytellers to come up with motivations suited to their table. That said, I can think of at least a couple reasons why could use human watchers (like Brandon) without memories.

A lot of the God Machine's occult matrices involve having a X number of people at a certain place at a specified time for a ritual that releases Y amount of spiritual energy. Memory-less sleepers can fulfill that function without retaining any info. Alternatively, they could serve as wireless security cameras, witnessing Supernatural eventa and uploading them to the God Cloud without retaining any knowledge themselves or breaking Cover etc.

You can also get weirder with it - the 'status quo' is almost a metaphysical entity in the Chronicles, in a number of the lines. The God-Machine might need some event to be witnessed and not register as weird or bizarre, despite being extremely those things. A mystical event, a giant biomechanical angel, some kind of bizarre Infrastructure or Matrix needs to play out in public, with witnesses, who don't treat it as anything out of the ordinary.

In that context, Brandon is kind of a semi-successful experiment. When the thing happens, he'll run and hide, which is maybe not normal enough, but afterwards it won't have any lasting impact on him or change how he understands the world.

Alternatively, he's precisely correct: The Machine needs people to react like the thing is horrifying and unusual the way baseline humans would, but then just go about their lives. Possibly you could tie this to a thematic or political point about culture and memory, but that might get very dark very quickly.

I prefer the first interpretation because it means you can have Demons stumble upon the matrix in operation: Some kind of immense Machine horror happening in public while all the oddly expressionless human witnesses go about their day-to-day lives. Maybe they'll even remember the incident on cue, but only then, and it won't influence them in any way. "Hey, remember when an immense technohorror emerged from the lake and devoured Mr. Jones from down the street?" "No... oh, yes, that was a few weeks ago, wasn't it? I remember because I was on my way to Starbucks but they were out of my favorite flavors."

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Drakli posted:

Sort of an experiment in normalizing Techno-Gnostic Monstrosity in a localized area? I imagine the God Machine could get Its work done much more efficiently without needing all this Concealment Infrastructure just to keep the herd in line.

Yes, or at least, that's what this particular occult matrix needs: You can only summon that particular horror, or put to sleep that particular Thing, if you have a bunch of mortal witnesses, and in this case it's easier to have dummies with sleeper programming than go through the whole rigamarole of maintaining a cult (especially if there's a Thing that might be able to put a cult to its own use).

I don't think the Machine is likely to try ruling openly anytime soon, or rather late, since I think the Demon ST Guide had a setting concept for 'the God Machine goes back to the Bronze Age Levant to establish an openly Machine-ruled city-state in the hopes of ruling the future more directly, like a reverse Aku from Samurai Jack, but this ultimately exploded.' The Machine is powerful but it's pretty drat vulnerable to people who know about it, because the machinery it operates on is the Infrastructure. It's not quite the Exarchs, though it's more immediately present in people's lives and is more independent of the symbolic state of humanity.

E: Basically if humanity at large knew about and rejected the Machine, the only probable response it could muster would be 'reload timeline from save state' with a big occult matrix. Which makes 'the plot of Terminator but with Demons' extremely viable, since humanity at open war with angels and a giant Matrix intended to send hunter angels back in time to prevent the revelation is just extremely God-Machine.

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Oct 10, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Robindaybird posted:

Vampire's weaknesses in both the oWoD and nWoD/CD is definitely down to being the first in the line, and not wanting to really expanding the scope of the Vampire world for one reason or another.

I’d argue that’s a strength in Requiem - you can pick it up with no general knowledge and immediately you have enough context for Vampire to be robust. There are basic rules for ghosts and things in the blue book, if you want to expand on that, but Vampire is built to play well at a local level with local concerns about surviving and building power night by night. Vampires being generally uninterested in any cosmic conflicts is a feature, not a bug, because the antagonist in Requiem is ‘other vampires, your immediate surroundings, and yourself, not in that order.’

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Eh, that the Abyss is the set of all possible things not included in the Supernal is the Scelestus Archmaster party line. It’s deceptive. The Abyss is fundamentally antinomian; opposed to all laws and order, but also to ‘chaos’ as generative force. It’s not pre-ordered existence but that which cannot fit into any order; Intruders are basically holes in the world as much as they are alien invaders.

It’s true that you can acquire ‘anything that doesn’t exist’ in the Abyss but it’s also the case that Summoners states you will never, ever get a fair deal when you invoke the Abyss - the cost is never actually fair for what you get, because the Abyss is opposed to any rule like equivalent exchange or mutual benefit, in which summoning practices usually base themselves.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I think that going by a number of things like the Summoners example, the Abyss isn’t actually just ‘too big to find what you want’ but actively malevolent towards existence as such, because it’s in direct opposition to ‘things having any kind of order’ which it will always seem to degrade. There’s an Aswadim who wants to replace the Spirit World with a less predatory one and he found what he wanted but it’s still degrading reality in various ways despite being what he was looking for.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



wdarkk posted:

The Abyss is an rear end in a top hat DM, but for all reality.

The Exarchs are rear end in a top hat rules designers, the God-Machine is the rear end in a top hat GM, and the Abyss is an rear end in a top hat player who intentionally screws with the rules to make everyone at the table unhappy because they want the game to die but won’t be honest about it.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Put another way, Mage is an idealist game (in a literal sense given the Neoplatonism) and the Abyss represents a nihilistic subversion or abandonment of the already damaged symbolic order reality runs on and which is currently ruled by tyrants who benefit from it being broken.

One could further map political idealism onto the Diamond and ‘realism’ as the betrayal of that higher order onto the Seers, but that’s stretching to the breaking point.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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There’s an example Abyssal spirit-thing in Intruders, it’s an intruder pretending to be a spirit that started a religion for spirits that lets them disconnect from flesh entirely, it’s a fun tempter villain for spirit ecosystems.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Gantolandon posted:

While the Fallen World is the glitchy, but functional code that composes our reality and the Supernal World is the operating system that lets it run, the Abyss is pure random, unaddressed data that produces weird and nonsensical results when ran as a code. Theoretically a functional alternate reality can be found there – just as random characters can sometimes produce working code – but the chance is incredibly small.

There is another world completely inimical to life: the Lower Depths. It's not anti-reality like the Abyss, it's just a bunch of worlds that lack a crucial quality that we take for granted (i. e. space). What's worse, its denizens tend to consume that particular quality when they encounter it, which makes them as dangerous as denizens of the Abyss.

It should be noted that 'The Lower Depths' is extremely a catch-all term Mages use for 'places that are further from Supernal Truth than our own phenomenological reality.' Vice demons come from a Lower Depth, so do Strix, and I'm sure that a decent number of God-Machine projects access one of the Depths. Any place that's like our own but fundamentally lacking in some quality, any alternate reality horrorverse, are categorized under the Lower Depths in Awakened cosmology. So saying a thing is from 'the Lower Depths' is mostly a way of saying 'this is bad and bad things are going to happen' rather than an immediately useful piece of information.

One nice thing is that Abyssal entities and things from the Lower Depths absolutely don't get along as a rule, because Abyss things are the antithesis of reality while Lower Depths things generally want MORE reality.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



wdarkk posted:

Has anyone run an adventure where a Mage gets high on his own farts and tries to make Changeling Arcadia and Mage Arcadia become the same thing?

I believe there was either a dev joke or an actual statement that Archmasters arguing over whether the two Arcadias were the same thing, and doing the magic to make their version true, was a thing. But I might be misremembering.

In first edition only, mind.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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Night10194 posted:

Yeah, but it's not intended to be a cohesive single setting, so maybe the Abyss is sapient and hates you in other lines if it would fit them better. I'm saying that element of the setting's writing means it's hard to say something is definitively how something works across all lines and works, even when intentionally writing crossover stuff.

True, but good crossover material is either aware it’s modifying the themes and style of one game, and explains how, or doesn’t do that. The toolbox approach doesn’t mean ignoring that the individual lines have specific investments; if anything it means those investments are even more important because each line has to justify its own setting thematically.

The Abyss has the qualities or antiqualities it has because they serve the larger Mage story; if it can serve a different purpose in another book that’s cool but needs to be done consciously and ideally with signposts for the reader that it’s not the same in that case.

E: an unpublished example of this is that one of the devs posted a cool Werewolf monster that’s a weird eye infestation and a giant eye on the other side of a portal, and suggested that in a Woof game, maybe that’s what the Seers worship as The Eye, while making it clear that this is not how most mage material assumes Exarchs work and would not be compatible. That’s a good approach if you want to mess around with established ideas radically.

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Oct 16, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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The one time I played Monsterhearts it was pretty fun despite, in retrospect, it being absolutely skeezy that an alumnus in his 30s was running it for a bunch of undergraduate club members, and pushing to make things more PG-13 (not, thankfully, R).

I would only ever play it with my close good friends, but since that's basically who I play everything with, I could imagine having a fun time that way.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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Just as having numbers and systems in combat or intrigue are ways to interconnect and bind together combat and intrigue into the mechanical processes of a game, sex and relationship mechanics make it a more central part of the game. It would absolutely require careful, conscientious play, but like... ‘I hop in the back room with a tavern maid and we fade to black’ is a worse way of handling it IMO for actually making it real and matter

It’s not for every table but it’s real weird how that specific mechanical structure is such a sticking point. Like, especially when the ‘sex move’ is so totally distinct from anything like describing sex and is very easy to change or make less definitely sex. The game doesn’t suggest you narrate a sex scene any more than it suggests you get anatomical about the gore involved in combat, as far as I can tell.

E: part of this is that I have had way more unpleasant experiences with splatter and gore in tabletop than sex, even in high school where one or two players wanted to roll charisma to seduce every attractive elf. The intense gore that was revealed in there was much worse than the mildly risqué content.

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Oct 30, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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I'm not sure that's entirely correct? The playbook seems to be about someone who passes between two social spheres and who's invested in the distinction between them. The Cerberus is someone who thinks they don't belong on the Good side of the divide, but can protect it from the Bad side; they're very concerned with people 'escaped from hell' who might ruin the good side. This might make for someone being a general social gatekeeper in pursuit of broad labels, but they could also be a gang member who tries to keep gang activity out of the 'normal' high school life they are alienated from?

But I haven't seen Riverdale.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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My point was mostly that there need to be two distinct communities that everyone your age can be divided into - which doesn’t quite work for ‘girls’ and ‘nerds.’ There are plenty of awful divisions that could be, I don’t mean to defend it on that line, I just think that the ‘damned’ and ‘blessed’ model is important. They think one group is Good and one group is Bad, and that could be ‘protecting the high school from gangs’ which is apparently CW Jughead according to Alder, or it could be ‘protecting the popular people from the hoi polloi’ or something much crueler and more toxic.

E: like you can’t really be generally defensive of all labels, you choose one gate to keep, and it needs to be one that divides everything justly or unjustly. I don’t mean to say it can’t be immensely lovely just that it’s not enforcing all social roles, it’s enforcing a specific sense of self-hatred that Cerberus has in this context involving a binary worldview.

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Nov 1, 2019

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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EthanSteele posted:

I mean. Nerds do think Gamers are Good and Girls are Bad.

But can you discretely divide the entirety of high school social life into Girls and Gamers and don’t answer that because I’m pretty sure some nerds would with like an argument about jocks not counting idk

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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Leraika posted:

It's an interesting coincidence that each post you've made from the expanded list has one skin I'm super into and cool with and another I'm pretty ??? about.

Thank you for continuing to post these, btw.

I'm genuinely uncertain whether I'm enthused or concerned about both the Cuckoo and the Unicorn - which was super appealing, and which was ??? ? If you don't mind elaborating.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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Conan has really direct, often blatant themes, though? Howard has a lot to say, sometimes artlessly, about civilization and ‘barbarism.’ And that arrived in D&D in a worse way than it appeared in Conan.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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I can’t speak to Lieber but I think you’re selling Howard short; if anything, he was more immediately willing to express themes with modern correlates than Tolkien, who insisted that his works be read non-metaphorically. His deep hostility to allegory resulted in a lot of racial tropes that he didn’t appear to intend being not just near the surface but on it, and D&D picked up on what Tolkien’s orcs clearly represented (the threatening racial Other) even while he insisted that there was no such connection to be made.

Howard just said the racism he meant.

Anyways you can say you think Tolkien developed his themes better than Howard, but Howard has a specific thematic concern and set of concerns in his Conan stories, just as Moorcock would after both of them. Various Conan stories worked out these themes to various lengths and in various combinations, and I think saying ‘well that was just who Howard was’ is not more applicable to him than to Tolkien, even if Tolkien was an academic setting out to write a new Beowulf and Howard was a pulp author setting out to write a new swashbuckling story.

E: put another way, Howard’s themes and intent are no less clear and direct than his contemporary author HP Lovecraft, whose themes were often grotesque but were very clearly carried out in his best stories with clear intent and construction.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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Not to mention that his particular model of ‘barbarism’ is a complicated historical fiction no less elaborately worked out than Tolkien’s image of Middle Earth’s dynamics.

Also lol I just remembered that Tolkien was totally cool with allegory when it came to dwarves being Jewish (from a fairly sympathetic but very gentile perspective) he just got cold feet when people compared the War of the Ring to WWII or suggested orcs might correspond to real people.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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golden bubble posted:

Orcs also rubbed up hard against Tolkien's Catholic beliefs. I think he had some really ugly and messy worldbuilding to bridge the gap between the always-evil orc depictions and his need to make sure that every individual could potentially embrace God.

The story I'd heard is that he had a bunch of notebooks explaining how Mordor's economy and government functioned to produce the orcs we see on the page, who are effectively always evil. The one thing I remember clearly is that Mount Doom produces volcanic ash that creates a very fertile region where the orcs produce all their food, which is how he explained the giant armies of orcs that keep showing up with no apparent larger orc society producing them.

But yeah, he had a weird combination of racism (at the very least, reproducing xenophobia if not modern racism from Old English sources he used as inspiration) and Catholic universalism going into orcs, which was more than a little messy.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

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Ronwayne posted:

Aren't humans in Spire the tinker gnome/tech bro equivalents who have a great sales pitch and end up causing incredible catastrophe?

They're the Indiana Joneses - the gun was based on digging up ancient (probably Dwarven?) technology and messing around with it. A lot of humans live in arcologies they moved into because the former inhabitants all vanished mysteriously long ago (there's strong Morrowind Dwarves energy in it).

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



It sounds like the Shadow Agent drew pretty heavily on something like Demon: The Descent, but it's not a system Spire has the infrastructure in place for (as opposed to Demon where every PC is doing the Cover dance).

It also sounds like if they'd kept it a little simpler, Cover could have been a really cool addition. So I'm split.

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Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I love it when settings construct elaborate reasons by which it’s actually Good to commit megadeath, especially Mormon sci-fi/fantasy novels.

(I don’t love it)

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