Quote from: Thanatos02Seriously, that banality crap was so stupid it made me dizzy.

Fortunately, all that has been rooted out of the new Changeling. Even the Dreaming seems to have been replaced with some sort of an animistic framework in the world here and now.

Quote from: GrimGentFortunately, all that has been rooted out of the new Changeling. Even the Dreaming seems to have been replaced with some sort of an animistic framework in the world here and now.

From what little I've heard about the base character story assumption, it sounds like it has more to do with stuff like the actual changeling legends, in which case the Fae actually come across as scary evil fuckers from beyond our reality.

While they have attached the usual kewl powers element that no WW game would be complete without, the base characters sound like they're still basically humans who've been victims of icky nasties.

Quote from: J ArcaneWhile they have attached the usual kewl powers element that no WW game would be complete without, the base characters sound like they're still basically humans who've been victims of icky nasties.

These folks are also changelings in the sense that they've been changed. This time they aren't fairies trapped in mortal bodies: instead, they are abducted humans who have been twisted into bizarre creatures so that they could better serve as the slaves and toys of the Others in Faerie, and who must exert themselves in order to maintain an illusion of human appearance now that they've managed to escape. Even those powers are mostly something that they've stolen from their former masters, knowledge about the contracts that the Fae have made with the spirits of the Earth.

The new Changling game looks like it'll rock. If it's as good as it looks...

Pundit, man, I admire your appearent DMing skills. Your games sound like riots. But you totally missed the boat on the point of these games. Shit, you're not the only one; there are plenty of 'swine' that did too, so it makes sense you'd conflate what their views of the games are with reality. It isn't; they're douchbags. Not all of us gamers are, though.

Shit, I read things for a living. It's pretty much my MO to figure out what the messages of shit is. I don't play Vampire because it's MO isn't a whole lotta fun for me, but that doesn't mean you're on target here.

Thanatos: So what, exactly, do you think the message of Vampire, werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Hunter, or Exalted are, if not essentially anti-humanist, anti-science, anti-christian, anti-western civilization?

I mean shit, the first non-fiction sentence in the Exalted main book is "do not believe what the scientists tell you".  I'd say the message is pretty fucking clear.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditThanatos: So what, exactly, do you think the message of Vampire, werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Hunter, or Exalted are, if not essentially anti-humanist, anti-science, anti-christian, anti-western civilization?

I mean shit, the first non-fiction sentence in the Exalted main book is "do not believe what the scientists tell you".  I'd say the message is pretty fucking clear.

RPGPundit

I think the first non-fiction sentence in Exalted is actually fiction, my man. I don't think we were supposed to take it as many make it out. That said, it's amazingly poor writing, imo.

Um, what do I think the message is? That's a good question, actually. I think the games are about themes, but I'm not sure they have a message, per say.
I think the games themes were typically not what the message of their writers were.

For example, Vampire is about how eating dudes is horrible and about living in a society involving that. At the same time, you've essentially got a punk-goth attitude from the writers. I think that's a mistake on their part, because they're adding this attitude that's totally divorced from the game. That attitude couldn't decide if it was quite anti-christian (it was anti-religion, as an organized body) and it was anti-capitalist. I think the those attitudes drifted into ill-informed racism (noble savage bullshit, and exoticising the orient).

(As a side note, that's what makes Kindred of the East so painful for me today. I'm looking at these books, and I want to like a game inside, but it's amazingly racist.)

What I am saying is the themes of, say, Vampire, wasn't anti-humanist because it's casting vampires in an ill light. Sure, they can do all this cool shit, but it's a losing proposition. The farther you move from being human, the worse off you become. Vampire wasn't anti-science, but I might argue Werewolf is.

Maybe they didn't conciously mean it to, but that's what it ended up. Like, you're supposed to be looking at it from their point of view, but somewere along the line, the developers decided to make their point of view objectively true until it ended up being about how awesome it was to shit in the woods. So, I conceed Werewolf to ya. (There are other themes, but those are absolutely there.)

Mage is pretty much 'Post-Modernism: the Gamining', though. I wouldn't say it's anti-science, but it's very anti-establishment. It's just that the establishment brought flushing toilets and air-conditioning along with (in the game world) reality-facism. Here's the caveat about Mage: none of the major organizations are right. The Traditions spent a long time keeping humanity in the dark ages and the Technocracy spends a lot of time making dudes and ladies 'conform'. The 'right' arguement is essentially a balance, in later editions. The original editions are relentlessly anti-establishment, and mostly be default, anti-western civilization. But not anti-human, either.

EDIT: My big point isn't that these games arn't without flaws or bias. I'm just contesting the the point was to lord your awesomeness over other people in anything but Vampire, and in that game, you're playing a douchbag. Oh, and Werewolf, the epic story of going without toilet paper.

Quote from: David RI'm not saying that most games don't pay attention to the human condition but rather the whole "let's blow shit up and have kewl adventures" sometimes creates a situation were humanity is nothing more than collateral waiting to be damaged....I call it the desensitization of the human condition in rpgs.

I have found this to be true.

Quote from: David RI think this is a discussion for another thread. But your point about genre conventions specifically the action genre is what I was trying to get at. Most times in rpgs it's all about action and not really about the human condition, hence characters and the setting sometimes overlook human beings in favour of characters having thrilling adventures, it's not really a hatred or self hatred of being human as mentioned by J, but rather one of the conventions of the genre.

I think you should start that other thread. I think it would be much more interesting than an analysis of postmodernism and Objectivism in Mage.

Sometime I think people just need to lighten up.

Relax - playing a cool ass brooding predator vampire is really fun.

And its aspirational - self confidence and self belief are crucial in life, and having the middle classes practice it in their suburban homes is good practice.

And being a goth is apparently a very health coping mechanism for the trauma of life - there was an artical in the guardian about how ex-goths experience substantialy better life outcomes than the average.

Some of you guys are letting your sense of aesthetics get in the way of a really fun gaming experience.

Quote from: JimBobOzI think you should start that other thread. I think it would be much more interesting than an analysis of postmodernism and Objectivism in Mage.

Unless you like that kind of thing.

Quote from: WerekoalaIts the Lovecraftian ideal that our minds cannont accept that we're alone and meaninginless in an uncaring universe. Without some belief that all this MEANS something, we go a bit (or more) insane. Tht's why Religion has been so successful for so long - it gives people a framework of reference to build their ego around.

I agree that people are designed to be religious but is hatred of humanity the only alternative? No. That kind of pathos has a very specific origin: a superiority complex that collides with historical reality. In the case of Lovecraft, Anne Rice and WW the problem is the idealized superiority of occult Caucasian males v.s. their real life contributions to history. The solution takes the form of an alt-history that explains why occult Caucasian males are superior but not successful. It's a persecution complex that is exactly as overblown as the Aryan's claim to greatness. (If that exact balance is off it's rebalanced with more rationalization which tends to move the mythos even farther from reality.)

QuoteBelieve me, I've had more than my share of "ewww" moments trying to imagine what dying would be like, when there's no "other side" to look back from for reference. Not even being capable of realising you're dead is a sickening prospect to me for some reason, as is missing out on everything else that'll happen after I'm gone. I need to know what's happening!!!

I agree with you here. It's a fallacy to believe that pain and pleasure are the only goods and that by extension that oblivion is not so bad. The ability to choose one thing and prevent another is good. Thus, in as much as death is absolute powerlessness, it is also absolutely bad.

Quote from: RPGPunditThanatos: So what, exactly, do you think the message of Vampire, werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Hunter, or Exalted are, if not essentially anti-humanist, anti-science, anti-christian, anti-western civilization?

I mean shit, the first non-fiction sentence in the Exalted main book is "do not believe what the scientists tell you".  I'd say the message is pretty fucking clear.

RPGPundit

I'd say it was just that: fiction. It's hardly Creationism: the game.

do you not think that you are reading a liiiiiiitle bit too much into those games?

Quote from: Erik BoielleSometime I think people just need to lighten up.

Relax - playing a cool ass brooding predator vampire is really fun.

And its aspirational - self confidence and self belief are crucial in life, and having the middle classes practice it in their suburban homes is good practice.

And being a goth is apparently a very health coping mechanism for the trauma of life - there was an artical in the guardian about how ex-goths experience substantialy better life outcomes than the average.

Some of you guys are letting your sense of aesthetics get in the way of a really fun gaming experience.

not round here it isn't, unless you want a gang of chavs to kick your head in!

But the study doesn't say Goths benefit, it says that EX-goths benefit. So we (the world at large) will breed the goths and ship them to you so that you can ex-goth them... for the betterment of mankind of course.

Quote from: signoftheserpentI'd say it was just that: fiction. It's hardly Creationism: the game.

do you not think that you are reading a liiiiiiitle bit too much into those games?

Let's put it this way: in big letters on the back of the 2nd Edition of Exalted there's a massive "Science is Wroooooong!" statement. (I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't quote the precise wording, but it's pretty damn unambiguous.) Exalted is the only fantasy RPG I have encountered which does this; no other fantasy RPG I have had any experience with has felt a need to say "Step away from 21st century science, because this is a world of fantasy and magic" in quite such an in-your-face way, because it's one of those things which really doesn't need to be said.

Why does Exalted feel the need to make this bold statement on the back cover in the first place? Yes, granted, it is fiction, but it is fiction with an avowed hostility towards science. Fantasy authors and game designers who don't have a big problem with rationalism and empiricism and whatnot don't feel a need to distance themselves from those concepts.

Not to mention that it's far from the first occurence of that attitude in WW games.  In fact, some variant of "all science and learning is badwrong" is one of the staples of intro sections to White Wolf games going clear back to Vampire.