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Archonex posted:
Oh hello shadowrun. (Yes, I know shadowrun isn't SR, but they grew up on the same street in the 90s together, and share a lot of unfortunate themes, including both games trying to make sympathetic AIDS victim analogues by making them contagious flesh/blood eating monster.)
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Jul 29, 2021 08:38
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Perestroika posted:As somebody who is only superficially familiar with the setting, I wonder how it's treating the whole concept of the (second) inquisition and hunters? On the one hand I'd expect it to come down on it fairly harshly, since the setting and writers don't seem to be fans of the religious fanaticism inherent to movements. On the other hand... well, the inquisition kinda does have a point when there really are blood-drinking monsters preying on humanity, doesn't it? Politically speaking, the second inquisition are cleaning out the trash. And by the trash, I mean the worst assholes in VtM's sects that were convinced they could get away with doing anything to anyone, often due to a (as demonstrated in V5) false belief of superiority over humanity/other vampires. To give an idea of it, the Sabbat is entirely missing from V5 outside of some cameo's thus far because they "suddenly" decided to go crusading in the middle east once humanity started introducing them to the wonders of white phosphorous coated rounds and carpet bombing via drone strikes. Something that literally cleared out their strongholds to the point where their south american holdings were collectively one of the first big casualties aside from the Tremere inner council. Who went down like utter chumps to a single missile after centuries of giving the Setites a run for their money in the category of "Pompous, supervillain-esque and all around monstrous bastards that are long overdue in needing a good staking.". Unfortunately there is some dubious politics there. The Camarilla source book has what appears to be a writer of a CIA document referring to people who are LGBT as deviants on par with vampires, for instance. Which is rather chilling given how certain groups on the Hunter end in V5 prefer to deal with vampires they take prisoner. Though given who contributed to the Camarilla source book this is dubiously canon given that that book was the book that literally almost started an international incident after the then management had spent like a year and a half signaling hard to literal neo nazis and the like. Suffice to say that they peaked with that book in a pretty over the top way. Also, interestingly enough Rein-Hagen was involved in the actual controversial text too, to go off of what Holden has said (and I should note that Holden Shearer's increasingly infuriated twitter rants on how Mark Rein-Hagen was dumb as a box of rocks and refused to understand how using LGBT minorities as a punching bag in the setting is bad and would rightfully piss people off are genuinely hilarious, despite any alleged issues with Exalted 3e.) on twitter since he was fired from Exalted 3e and doesn't need to keep his mouth shut anymore. Even if those remarks aren't canon the way the SI treats vampires in other books varies according to the country and organization that finds them. For instance, in the London book it's made clear that if you aren't some mass murdering psychopath, deranged blood cultist, or mafia-esque Camarilla fanatic the UK's anti terrorist unit will actually let you live in peace so long as they can track your position to make sure you don't relapse into old habits. Other areas where groups like the Society of Leopold/Catholic Church/the actual first Inquisition remnants and less tolerant counter-terrorist forces hold dominance however will, assuming you aren't killed outright, typically put you in the vampiric version of a gas chamber set to incinerate you to ash. There's multiple implied references to a kill'em all policy on that front, with one fiction blurb of a guy that straight up agrees with the opinion that the Camarilla needed to burn yesterday since the sheriff murdered his family for shits and giggles. He gets incinerated regardless of that and has an understated gently caress you to the SI as well for killing him, demanding that they just get it over with and put him in a sun facing cell already. Typically this occurs by way of the SI securing the vampire in a prison cell facing the morning sun once it rises. Which, aside from the implied horror of the deviants thing mentioned above is probably one of the less pleasant ways for a character in the setting to go out depending on how fast the sun hits their entire body. 
Archonex fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 08:53
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Wait, is this the Swedracula/Chechen Vampire Pogrom thing?
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Jul 29, 2021 09:00
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Ronwayne posted:Wait, is this the Swedracula/Chechen Vampire Pogrom thing? Yes. And then some. That was just the absolute peak of the poo poo iceberg of reprehensible and on more than one occasion downright abhorrent things that those guys got up too. It's honestly kind of astounding we still have V5 being developed given how thoroughly they poisoned the well when it came to people willing to buy the books. LA by Night by Geek and Sundry probably did a fair bit to recover the damage they did. Though that's off topic for the D&D thread I guess? Archonex fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 09:07
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True, but I suppose the politics of WW as a company itself might be topical to the thread, especially, uh, when said politics create real world political problems. There does need to be hard limits since there is...a bunch to unpack. You go too far away from Vampire and you end up with Phil "Satyros" Brucato telling you its not bestiality as long as you're both wolves. Or whatever the hell aberrant was about, despite aberrant being a great insight into a particular kind of 90s brainworms. Also, you know, Wraith: The Oblivion 
Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 09:18
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MonsieurChoc posted:I did the F&F on the Wraith Holocaust book. AMA. What's F&F? Also, so they're not all the same world? I loved the lore of wraith when I read it and I kinda like reading about a lot of the other poo poo. It's weird in the sense that D&D only seems to get in maybe the cosmological sense AtomikKrab posted:I liked reading the oWoD books, and then telling myself "I shall never play this ridiculous thing" Pretty much, except the wiki
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Jul 29, 2021 09:48
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Just to touch back on the whole Roma/Gypsy thing, the Ravnos clan (who were supposedly descended from the Roma and were the Vampire stand-ins for them) have the clan weakness of compulsory committing crimes. Normally this is theft, but much like the Ventrue have hard-coded feeding preferences each have their own preference for whatever their compelled crime is. Frankly, it's amazing that Paradox has been able to salvage the lineup. The coda of the Demon world origin story is that all the fallen angels get stuck in Hell (which is in the shadowlands--wraith territory) except Lucifer, who gets to walk the earth. Several big bad fallen get summoned by people and root into inanimate objects like trees or similar to become minor deities, since angelic powers literally rewrite the stuff of creation to do effects. But any demon who doesn't have an anchor gets sucked back to hell eventually. Due to the world ending events in the modern era, Hell's walls crack and allow lesser demons to escape, which is where the game line picks up. The metaplot was one thing they ditched when they tried to modernize the setting and rulebooks in the early 2000s (to call the mechanics of 2nd and Revised a bit janky is an understatement). This was not a popular choice, and CCP and Paradox gradually returned to the original setting and tried to smooth out the rough edges, to varying degrees of success. Romanian nazis notwithstanding.
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Jul 29, 2021 10:26
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I get the obvious ways that the 'Gypsies' book is bad - I mean the title of the book is a loving slur FFS - but I'll be honest; I kind of feel like it's less offensive than the Ravnos. The 'Gypsies' book is constantly going out of its way to point out how the 'Gypsies' aren't bad, just 'different' and who are we to judge them? Sure it's perpetuating horrible and hateful stereotypes and otherizing a real people - one who have been subjected to genocide numerous times in even the modern era - but like it's all coming from a myopic sort of 1990s ignorance and arrogance. The Ravnos always felt more hateful to me. Like the 'Gypsies' is 'just' 90s myopic ignorance, but the original incarnation of the Ravnos are basically if they had chosen to make a race of black Vampires that were stupid but brutally strong and sexually attractive or something. But maybe that's me. Honestly it's surprising they didn't make a properly Indian clan in the original lineup; it's a bit of a stretch (but so are lots of things when you try and map things from different cultures onto the same core idea) but you have the Vetala/Betala from Hindu mythology. And you can easily get some sort of interesting mileage out of the clan weakness revolving around their riddle-telling nature. Like maybe they have oracular powers like the Malkavians, but instead of being lunatics, they're just physically incapable of giving straight answers to people or something. I dunno. Just feel like the 'Gypsies' book is part and parcel of the 90s nonsense that gave us magical Native Americans and poo poo, while the Ravnos are both overtly racist even for the 90s, and also betray a lack of imagination or cleverness that is disappointing. EDIT: Like seriously, of all the criticisms one can level against the World of Darkness, generally 'unimaginative' is not one of them. The Ravnos are a disappointment from both a moral and an artistic standpoint even when examined solely through the lens of the rest of the setting. RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 10:42 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 10:33
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I get the obvious ways that the 'Gypsies' book is bad - I mean the title of the book is a loving slur FFS - but I'll be honest; I kind of feel like it's less offensive than the Ravnos. Requiem made an entire set of Indian bloodlines (Well, actually, the closest thing the setting has to an organized nation state in the modern era.) along with doing the same to the cultures of several other nations and their myths in the region actually. I don't know if the Ravnos revamp came before or after that, but if it was after then they took some heavy inspiration from Requiem and what you're saying. Beckett's Jyhad Diary literally has him going overseas at which point he encounters a society of vampires that are way different than anything the Camarilla would ever expect to encounter or deal with. Hence why they want to control or exterminate them like some sort of lovely goth imperialistic colonialists, since the Camarilla is basically what happens when a gerontocracy turns rotten due to corrupt people at the top not being filtered out due to old age. Archonex fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 10:45
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You also had the Nagaraja in VtM which despite the name seem more like - and the name of the one Nagaraja in Bloodlines would suggest a deliberate connection - Pishacha than anything related to Naga. But yeah, I admit I'm pretty familiar with the bulk of the OWoD, at least the Vampire stuff, but not too much with the newer stuff. All I know about VTR is they made Vampires much more recent and they're not only dating back to Roman times rather than a mythological dawn of Man.
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Jul 29, 2021 10:53
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:You also had the Nagaraja in VtM which despite the name seem more like - and the name of the one Nagaraja in Bloodlines would suggest a deliberate connection - Pishacha than anything related to Naga. Actually, Requiem goes even further back than VtM does. At least one bloodline is heavily implied to date back to before humanity even existed as we know it. As a side note, Requiem gets a bad rap from certain folks but in retrospect it definitely was a hell of a lot more fun to play. It's less about some unstoppable metaplot that rolls inexorably forwards and more about dealing with all the night to night bullshit vampires deal with. Sadly, it's less global and more local focus along with the lack of over the top faux pas means that it's hard to apply Requiem to this thread outside of pointing out that VtM shamelessly stole a lot of great ideas from Requiem. And then had Sweddracula try to claim that Requiem sucked and it was all their idea to create systems that were...literally ripped wholesale right down to their titles straight out of Requiem. All while doing their damndest to dick over the devs that kept the WoD franchise alive through the NWoD for years on end, and arguably did a better job of it. Archonex fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 10:55
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Huh! I guess I know even less about CoD than I thought! EDIT: Which one by the by?
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Jul 29, 2021 10:57
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Huh! I guess I know even less about CoD than I thought! Oh man, i'll have to do some digging since I can't recall their names and there's no good wiki for it but there's multiple bloodlines books related to India, Thailand, and I believe also a Hinduist belief system? It's been so long that I can't remember the finer details. But a whole lot of areas of that region of the world got some neat detailing in V1 of VtR. Actually, there's some neat D&D appropriate politics stuff in it. One of the organizations straight up has a caste system where there are Kshatriya, Brahmin, etc, etc with a big focus being on the younger generations wanting to break out of the caste system and embrace the modern world while the older vampires are locked into requiring the caste system to maintain their social power that the Brahmin caste don't even deserve since it's stated that the Ventrue diablerized the real Brahmin caste and covered it up many centuries ago. The real Brahmin caste members were the aforementioned "predates humanity" eldritch type of vampire. to the point where they will hunt down those that leave the country with no intention of coming back with the intent of murdering them or something brutal like that. Complicating this is the fact that the Invictus (The closest local level but globally dispersed version of the Camarilla.) is right up there with the Lancaea et Sanctum (Basically, evil christians that believe they are superior to humanity. Imagine if the Sabbat took the whole religious aspects seriously and then had a supremacist oriented right wing evangelical view to it to boot. The former group wants to exploit the natives. The latter group wants to exterminate any religious belief system other than their own.) in wanting to continue the horrors of imperialism on the region, meaning the elders really do need the manpower that comes from the support of the younger vampires. I mentioned the gerontocracy thing before and if i've remembered the details right then it gets a different take from anything in VtM here. The whole thing comes off as a bunch of people way too fond of the perks of the status quo committing suicide by imperialism and past grudges. All because they don't want to consider that someone else in their own in-group could be right. All while themselves unwittingly being wrong about everything about their society, since their highest caste was straight up murdered by the ancestors of those imperialists a long time ago. Meaning their entire reliance on the caste system has become a tragic farce by proxy due to the mounting losses that can be attributed to a strict adherence to it. Aside from that, there's also multiple bloodlines centered around mythological beliefs that were turned to vampiric purposes along with more mundane stuff like a hosed up Nosferatu-esque nobility that travel abroad as wheeling and dealing businessmen while also acting as spies for their allies back home, etc, etc. Had to be at almost a dozen of bloodlines spread out through the books all told. They definitely did the concept of it far better justice than the OWoD did, and it's obvious that some of it heavily "inspired" the Jyhad Diary take on the Ravnos. If I get a chance i'll see if I can't look them up some more if folks are interested in that diversion. Or someone else can post about it.  Edit: As for the other possible meaning of your question: The Mekhet (A word used in VtM, no less.) are the bloodline that are confirmed as being something else that predates humanity. The clan book has one of the most entertaining characters from VtR's literature get a peek back in time. She gets tricked into using an artifact that shows the last moments of now deceased Mekhet vampires going all the way back to ancient Egypt (Where you'd think they'd originated from given the name.). She discovers however that the presumed Egyptian origin is complete bullshit when her mind is then dragged even further back in time to prehistory after the demise of the vampire in that segment. Instead, she finds herself occupying the consciousness of a many tentacled thing that waits and slithers in the dark of a cave, brandishing swords with it's tentacles as it prepares to try to fight off the entities massing outside to slay it. Which is as far back as she can go. Archonex fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 11:16
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Setites are the closest thing the setting has to a faction of moustache-twirling villains, as they have no one's best interests in mind, not even their own. Their Revised clanbook gives them a much better outlook and philosophy, but yeah, they're just evil cultists who want to corrupt people. Milo and POTUS posted:What's F&F? A megathread in traditional games that reviews rpgs and supplements.
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Jul 29, 2021 15:37
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Hey shrecknet, if you're cool with it we can open this up to talking about politics in tabletop stuff in general. A recent Atlantic article talked about the pro-colonialist subtext in quite a few board games, for instance.
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Jul 29, 2021 15:51
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I'm amenable to it but there's probably a ton of overlap with the TG industry thread in terms of "oh no! The creator of this thing I like is a horrible person!"
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Jul 29, 2021 16:03
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Yeah I'd prefer we keep the conversation focused on the media itself, rather than the creators.
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Jul 29, 2021 16:06
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MonsieurChoc posted:I did the F&F on the Wraith Holocaust book. AMA. Can’t say that without linking it.
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Jul 29, 2021 16:09
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Ronwayne posted:You go too far away from Vampire and you end up with Phil "Satyros" Brucato telling you its not bestiality as long as you're both wolves. Yeah, Mage: the Ascension is a particularly weird thing combining the worst parts of "magick" and "what a lot of people think post-modernism is" In the world of Mage, relativism is real. Like, seriously. Reality is constructed via consensus, so the only reason science works, for example, is because enough people were convinced that water boils at 100 degrees or whatever and that two plus two is four, rather than five. There are no absolute truths and no concrete rules about things. This manifests itself in strange ways throughout the game line, and the people writing it (as usual) don't seem to understand the implications that they've put into the setting. So, the in game reason for the world being the way it is is that a group of mages called The Technocracy decided to "save" the world by removing all magic from it, and replace that magic with Science. Instead of the world being defined by a person imposing their will upon reality and changing it to how they want it to be, instead, there would be Science, which was "objective" and which everyone could do regardless of magical talent. Rather than killing two rabbits and smearing blood all over yourself, you could simply go to an ob-gyn and have a wand and gel put on your stomach to see if your baby is healthy during pregnancy. Rather than hoping that the food was edible because you prayed enough, you'd put it over the fire for a little while to remove the infection. Rather than hoping that the medicine man decides the tribe is worth enough for him to purify the stream so that the village doesn't die from waste contamination, we have sewage systems to separate drinking water from waste water. The Technocracy are the bad guys of the setting. Because they "fooled" the world into thinking Science was real, now the world is mundane and sad and lacks imagination. Things are predictable and dull and safe and gently caress you Dad you can't just tell me to do math homework I need to DREAM! Mages are reality's losers. They are people with competing worldviews that lost, and/or didn't work out. The nine core Traditions, as they're called, are The Akashic Brotherhood -- kung fu monks who are a mélange of Buddhism and Taoism The Celestial Chorus -- Christians The Cult of Ecstasy -- Potheads The Dream Speakers -- Native Americans The Euthanatos -- an apocalyptic cult of Indian assassins who think that killing bad people is necessary to "turn the wheel" and start the next age of Man The Order of Hermes -- Magicians ported over from Ars Magica The Sons of Ether -- Steampunk anti-vax moms The Verbena -- Witches The Virtual Adepts -- Hackers (Some were renamed in the 20th anniversary edition, but frankly, I don't care) Now, an interesting game theoretically exists exploring the implications of the Overton Window and how historical evidence shapes our view of the past and how different people looking at the same pattern will find different things in it, but, uh, this game isn't it, and why is not particularly complicated. In addition to being a sober and deep examination of the world's construction ala Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum or Baudilino, the game also wants to be the Burger King Kids Club vs the Men in Black. Like most White Wolf supernaturals, the combat capacities of every mage at through the roof, but, additionally, their reality warping capacities are through the roof. By 3 dots in whatever, you can control minds, blow up buildings, warp space around yourself, and basically play Doctor Manhattan. But, uh, people are dumb, and if you do this in front of them, they can just say "I don't believe in fairies" and if no one claps their hands to bring you back to life, you're boned. They won't believe their evidence of their own eyes, because science tells them that magic isn't real and people are sheep and won't make up to the truth and so on and so on. So you end up with this convoluted system of rationalization, where "Oh no, I didn't throw a fireball to fry that guy, a gas pipe just coincidentally exploded underneath him (and *shh* I secretly made that happen with magic)" which, well, which is it? Did you really hadouken the fireball, or did you use fire magic to detonate the gas pipe? This is fine when it's all just fiction to describe why the fighter takes 2d6 damage and is moved back two squares, and it doesn't matter whether it's a fireball explosion or a Jedi force push or the thief doing complex acrobatics with a lot of daggers. But when that ambiguity is supposed to be a core theme of the game? That's not so bad in and of itself, because the stakes are, frankly, action movie. When I was young, I liked the idea of folks who "really knew what the world was like" fighting against The Man. But as I age, and I think more, other examples pop into my head which aren't so great. The Sons of Ether, for example, are practitioners of alternative science, and are your goggle and raygun types. In reality, these people do exist, just as much witches and magicians and traditional religious folks. They're the ones who got my uncle to kill himself via homeopathy and colloidal silver. And this has some uncomfortable implications: if the game logic is "real" then am I responsible for killing my uncle because I didn't believe in homeopathy enough? is it society's fault for not believing in the efficacy of homeopathy? or is it the practitioner's fault for not admitting that they lost the "Reality War", and clinging to outdated beliefs? And all of this could be handwaved as "dumb game stuff, don't think about it too hard", except that Satyros Brucato was genuinely worried about people casting spells accidentally while playing the game. Going off his blog and my interactions with him, Brucato is a nice tolerant and liberal guy who is terminally 90s in his outlook. The idea that, for example, the "Q Shaman" is doing his own version of magickal consensus reality in which Trump is the rightful victor of the election and therefore god emperor, is intolerable to Brucato, even though, by his own system there is no way to determine what is real except via king mob.   A Verbena and a Dreamspeaker, from the 20th anniversary edition of Mage  [url posted:https://satyrosphilbrucato.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/time-to-leave-the-funhouse-part-ii-the-end-of-the-apprentice/[/url]] tldr: Mage is a game where Meme Magic is real, even realer than it is in reality, and the people trying to keep the wheels on the bus and preventing us from going back to philosopher kings are the bad guys. Very thorough write up here about everything wrong with Mage, of which I've barely scratched the surface: https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/latwpiat/mage-the-ascension-20th-anniversary-edition/ Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 16:34
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Technocracy are the bad guys not because they believe in Science, but because they're Western Imperialism and Capitalism.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:05
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Yeah, Mage: the Ascension is a particularly weird thing combining the worst parts of "magick" and "what a lot of people think post-modernism is" I feel Mage could be improved a bit by like just making it a thing that the Technocracy is running the laws around EARTH but the rest of the universe has its own Consensus, and as scientists study more of the galaxy and wider universe it is coming up against the outside Consensus (and Aliens coming by using their own magic the gently caress with people or maybe free their minds or some stuff.)
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Jul 29, 2021 17:11
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AtomikKrab posted:I feel Mage could be improved a bit by like just making it a thing that the Technocracy is running the laws around EARTH but the rest of the universe has its own Consensus, and as scientists study more of the galaxy and wider universe it is coming up against the outside Consensus (and Aliens coming by using their own magic the gently caress with people or maybe free their minds or some stuff.) The rest of the galaxy is Lovecraftian-style Old Ones who are very interested in eating Earth and all the nice tasty meat popsicles on it. We know this because there’s a group of the Technocracy (the Void Engineers) dedicated to protecting humanity from them!
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Jul 29, 2021 17:16
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Milo and POTUS posted:What's F&F?
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Jul 29, 2021 17:18
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That's why Mage: The Awakening is better. In awakening, the bad guys are the old wizards of yore, who seized ultimate magical power only to pull up the ladder behind them and break the world.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:23
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Arivia posted:The rest of the galaxy is Lovecraftian-style Old Ones who are very interested in eating Earth and all the nice tasty meat popsicles on it. We know this because there’s a group of the Technocracy (the Void Engineers) dedicated to protecting humanity from them! Solution is simple, just get everyone to agree we are made out of wood instead of meat.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:24
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fool of sound posted:Hey shrecknet, if you're cool with it we can open this up to talking about politics in tabletop stuff in general. A recent Atlantic article talked about the pro-colonialist subtext in quite a few board games, for instance. That article is a great primer, as is this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQuFSxs9VXA History and the colonial period has been a long-standing genre in designer board games, but as the Atlantic article briefly brought up that community is beginning to bring in new perspectives and respect its role as something people learn from either intentionally or inadvertently. A great example of how perspectives can change just from one edition to another is Pax Pamir, which is sets you as a player in Afghan politics in the time that Britain and Russia fought each other’s interests there. Dan Thurot is better able to write on the differences in editions than I can, but there are designers that are out there trying to still explore that space in worthy ways. Triskelli fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 17:26
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MonsieurChoc posted:Technocracy are the bad guys not because they believe in Science, but because they're Western Imperialism and Capitalism. Sure, I can agree with that. But Mage needs to provide an alternative that isn't anarcho-primitivism until the rule of Randian superpeople who create reality according their whims, or anti-scientific libertarian utopianism in which each person is the ruler of their own dream reality pocket, in order to make them not look so appealing. From LatwPIAT's F&F write up: quote:I think Brian Campbell [in the 20th anniversary edition] does a very good job of explaining why a lot of readers ultimately feel the Technocracy is a better option than the Traditions: edit: For a more concrete example, Mage cannot explain to me why life under John of God would be much better than life as it currently is, if you aren't John of God. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 17:34
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Toph Bei Fong posted:Sure, I can agree with that. To say that Mage is ideologically confused is putting it mildly, never mind how the factions ideas and goals will change from author to author. But ultimately the goal of the Traditions is to create a world were people of varied creeds and culture can live, while the Technocracy wants to kill them all. It's a survival war for the Traditions. If you ask me the faction with the best outlook was probably the Craftmasons, but they got owned by their own creation.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:54
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Archonex posted:I mean, if you want to go into a really deep lore dive then you could argue that it is in fact Caine in a darkly hilarious "This man is terrifyingly powerful yet also an utter gently caress up at everything he tries to do." sort of way. Since I think it's Demon that suggests that Caine's gently caress ups go far outside the realm of VtM itself, one of the bigger examples being introducing the concept of murder to reality by offing his brother Abel. That lead to like maybe a little over half of Lucifer's allies going AWOL (Some of them were genuinely heroic. Others...not so much.) during the whole war in heaven thing that was meant to uplift humanity and (allegedly) keep the loyalists from screwing with them. This is a magnificent post that should be hung in the Library of Congress. Thank you.
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Jul 29, 2021 18:20
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Jaxyon posted:I believe that canonically when a vampire bites you, you orgasm. This. Vampires can easily make someone busy huge ropers in their trousers just by biting them.
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Jul 29, 2021 19:15
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^^^^ yeah and it's a good test of what kind of players/ST you have by how much they're into describing that aspect It's worth noting that like in any other game involving people, it vastly depends on who you're playing with. I've sat a table of something like CAH(of which there are millions of ripoffs, and they ripped of Apples to Apples), and had everyone try and make card jokes that were positive and affirming. I've been lucky enough that every Storyteller I've played with has been super great about saying that some of the source material for Vampire is super problematic and don't bother getting to much into it. It's a setting and system for them to do the roleplay they've homebrewed or adapted. But I can very much see how there's some serious problems in the source and how that might mean my experience is not the rule. I can see Vampire games and other WoD stuff getting very icky and enabling some really lovely people.
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Jul 29, 2021 20:06
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Archonex posted:
If it's not outside the scope of the thread, could i ask for some details on the bolded part? I know that the beta? document had some 1488 numbers crop up (I'm assuming that's what you mean by the signaling to neo nazis), but... what's this about causing international incidents?
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Jul 29, 2021 20:44
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Randalor posted:If it's not outside the scope of the thread, could i ask for some details on the bolded part? I know that the beta? document had some 1488 numbers crop up (I'm assuming that's what you mean by the signaling to neo nazis), but... what's this about causing international incidents? So, first this happened: https://rainbo.co.uk/article/169 quote:White Wolf Uses Violence In Chechnya as an Islamic Vampire Sub-Plot Which is pretty hosed up and bad. Then this happened: https://archive.is/Zyyws quote:Chechen authorities demand satisfaction because of game about vampires in Chechnya The people making this complaint are well-armed reactionaries that are very bad people More info here: https://sputniknews.com/world/201811171069893129-chechnya-anti-gay-vampires/
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Jul 29, 2021 21:30
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 WHAT THE EVERLOVING gently caress?
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Jul 29, 2021 21:49
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Toph Bei Fong posted:So, first this happened: Well that's genuinely horrifying.
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Jul 29, 2021 21:55
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One of the things I thought was interesting about how Mage was developing over the course of its second edition was that its overall metaplot was moving in a direction that made the Technocracy much less cartoon-villain. In the original edition, it was very much magic antiheroes vs. The Man, with the Technocracy as basically every information-suppressing villain from '90s pop culture rolled into one. The introduction even has a newbie mage show up with a katana hidden under his trenchcoat. They knew what they were about. The second edition filed some of the rough edges off of that, however, up to the point where they released a book about how to run an all-Technocracy game. They were increasingly depicted as a powerful but flawed faction, much like the mystic Traditions, where their philosophy had some obvious weaknesses but they did have a series of increasingly valid points. The 2nd edition Technocracy might be the closest thing in the old World of Darkness to a faction that is unequivocally on the side of basic humanity. Then third edition came along and threw most of that in the gutter. It was a pretty sharp change in creative direction; now the Technocracy had just outright won, partially due to a phenomena that blocked off the spirit world from Earth, and anyone who wasn't a Technocrat was just playing out the string. I don't disagree with comments about the general philosophical flaws of Mage--I'm trying to be objective about it, since I really like the game and have a lot of good memories attached to it--but one of the biggest problems is that philosophical incoherence was slowly being addressed in 2nd, and then 3rd blew it up in favor of doing Orwellian Cyber-Wizards. AtomikKrab posted:I feel Mage could be improved a bit by like just making it a thing that the Technocracy is running the laws around EARTH but the rest of the universe has its own Consensus, and as scientists study more of the galaxy and wider universe it is coming up against the outside Consensus (and Aliens coming by using their own magic the gently caress with people or maybe free their minds or some stuff.) They kinda did that. There's a second-edition supplement called the Book of Worlds that talks about how things work in space. Basically, once you get outside of lunar orbit or so in oWoD cosmology, there is no Consensus and you can go hog wild. Paradox doesn't exist. There just aren't enough people out there to have a common idea of what reality is, so you get steampunk space-zeppelins flying alongside starships. Out there, the Ascension War is basically the Traditions and Technocracy occasionally exchanging fire, but generally happy to team up against worse things when they show up. There was a plot thread really late in third edition that went further into it, where the Void Engineers (space techno-wizards) had begun outright cooperating with other supernatural forces, because deep space is a Lovecraftian nightmare and you're better off with a vampire at your back, who at least was human at one point, than whatever the hell that thing is.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:01
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Randalor posted:
So unless it becomes an even bigger thing in the thread I won't go into it more than what i'm about to post as it's more to do with the creators rather than the setting itself. But to elaborate just a bit further so people who aren't as familiar with V5 know what went down and it doesn't have to get a retread over and over: When we say that V5 had a lovely start under Sweddrac, we aren't kidding. From the moment Paradox picked it up to the moment Paradox cleaned out the management it was filled with PR blunder after escalating PR blunder. With the blunders looking a lot less like blunders and more like "these people are abhorrent assholes" as time went on and they just did not stop with the awful behavior and in fact kept escalating as Paradox turned a blind eye to it. Which makes it all the funnier and more ironic that they ultimately got fired for pissing off an even nastier and eviller group of bigots and supremacists. Likewise, when we say that V5 management got up to some skeezy poo poo, we really aren't kidding. The whole "let's accidentally almost make a bunch of violent genocidal bigots go to the international stage with their issues against us!" thing was just the amusingly over the top ending to a whole series of bad incidents. There were articles floating around for awhile that looked more like dissertation papers in terms of length due to all the bad poo poo they got up too. To give an example of a single other incident amongst the multitudes (Which started out with treating Onyx Path lovely and running LARP's with rapey rules.) they hired on a transphobic individual who had a history of doxxing people who would go on to (amongst other things) put the name of a transwoman he had harassed in the game as a transwoman who liked to catfish men as a hooker, give them a blowjob and then reveal she was trans. If they acted disgusted she ate them alive. If they were fine with it she let them go. TL;DR: The point was that the writer was using a reference to a transwoman to suggest that transpeople were sexual predators. And he appeared to have used one of his past victims to do it. Also, his lovely minions and parachute accounts (Which if I recall correctly probably existed on here and definitely on rpg.net before they got caught. He was a bit of a joke when he got found out.) harassed an Onyx Path writer out of his job. His explanation on the forums just came out and said that the aforementioned transphobe (Who was a whole lot of phobic things, really.) in question was straight up having people chase him around in his personal life harassing him. Paradox did not care until the "Oh poo poo, the literal real world genocidal monsters are screaming for our blood because of what a bunch of edgy neo-nazi nerds we thought were competent did." thing happened. At which point they canned the folks responsible for V5 and assigned people who would focus on redeeming it's image in the eyes of the public. All of this is at least tangentially relevant though, as it colors the material in certain books released during a brief period of time. Which makes it of dubious reliability in discussing the wider setting that's been established for awhile now. Also, as a side note this makes me think that there's a bit of a neat discussion of the meta narrative of the live game/broadcasted show LA by Night. Since a big discrepancy of the show is the more idealistic character (Annabelle) wanting to make a home for the Anarchs and talking up some progressive points while the greater community literally does evil poo poo like slaughtering a nightclub filled with people early on. Kind of has some commentary on VtM's general view and outlook of idealism and privilege, I think. golden bubble posted:That's why Mage: The Awakening is better. In awakening, the bad guys are the old wizards of yore, who seized ultimate magical power only to pull up the ladder behind them and break the world. Awakening though is commonly used on these forums as a weird masturbatory screed of how _____ poster would (ironically, much like the mentioned rear end in a top hat old wizards) use magic to forcibly insert their own political beliefs as the dominant motif of reality. To hear people talk of it on here it's less of a game and more of a really tiresome and kind of nightmarishly hypocritical politicized thought experiment that certain folk just can't seem to pull free off, hence the joke of magechat being a big part of the game and being utterly inescapable. There's some neat meta narrative stuff there with regards to politics and how privilege could gently caress up a legitimately decent view and turn it rotten. But some of the stated aspirations of major Awakening posters is so deep into being part of remarkably niche themed games that it would never even show up for most people that post on here. Also, getting into the parts that certain posters don't agree with/don't make mages smell like roses narratively speaking is playing with fire. As past experiences have taught me the hard way that some posters will gleefully poo poo up a thread with contrarian magechat nonsense filled with jargon that no one aside from a devout contrarian or someone who takes their ideas very personally could ever be bothered to memorize if it disagrees with their weirdly niche interpretation of the setting. So it's...kind of a minefield to discuss. Archonex fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 22:38
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"Huh, isn't White Wolf that Neo-Nazi outfit?" Why yes, yes they are that Neo-Nazi outfit. This doesn't really change much for me, but its nice to know which assholes to avoid at all costs.
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Jul 29, 2021 22:47
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Klaus88 posted:"Huh, isn't White Wolf that Neo-Nazi outfit?" To be fair, the newer management is not like that. To keep this on track, I mentioned it in my last post but I'd recommend the canon LA by Night series on Youtube as something people interested in this thread might enjoy watching. It is actually relevant to the thread, as it gives a decent street level (and very Requiemish at times) look at the political going on's of a bunch of younger vampires in the setting when it veers into that direction of play. Just be aware that it takes awhile to aim in that direction. And that the latest season is on the WoD official channel instead of the Geek and Sundry channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFyQtOghqwA Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 22:52
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Wanderer posted:One of the things I thought was interesting about how Mage was developing over the course of its second edition was that its overall metaplot was moving in a direction that made the Technocracy much less cartoon-villain. This is a very fair assessment and summary. I want to still like Mage. I own most of the books, I spent a ton of high school memorizing the lore, and I have fond memories of playing the games my friends and I made out of it and other White Wolf stuff. But when I look back on it, and what happened with it, and all the parts of it that I ignored or couldn't afford to buy or that just went beyond me, it's just not the game that existed in my head 20 years ago. And that's okay. I've made peace with it. In the meantime, I can play Esoterrorists to scratch that itch
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Jul 29, 2021 23:10
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