The bit of Kult's cosmology I really enjoy - apart from the overarching "humans are at the centre of everything - but 'human' is a way broader category than you think it is, and not in a good way" deal which underpins everything - is the delicious cosmological implication that God and the Devil are two sides of the same person - a human being like any other who, at the crunch point when their higher and lower selves confront each other, botched it horribly, causing God to vanish and the Devil to be left with the job of trying to keep things together.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;877870As for "The Last Temptation of Christ", you're talking about one of most controversial movies ever, banned in several countries. Around here it was also banned, available only via DVDs and when it was finally screened, it was done sporadically, sans any advertising, hush-hushed. You can find blog entries dating last year where the movie is still considered something blasphemous.

Greatest stunt casting EVER.

jg

Quote from: Simlasa;877894I'm not saying the IDEA was mainstream but the movie was... well known director and actors, played at our local shopping mall. There was a small, sad group of protestors outside the screening I went to... we chatted for a moment afterward and they were pretty friendly (I was still a Christian back then).

That's well and good, thumbs up for living in tolerant parts of the world, but this doesn't change the way things were back then. I hope I made it clear that The Last Temptation wasn't "mainstream" back then in context of the world. That's what it's about - the state of the world back then. Not some specific city, not a state, not States'. World.

Sure, you may be a guy who's watching Srpski Film (or whatever passes as "shocker" nowadays) with his friends without feeling any strong emotions, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not "mainstream", even if people know it exists and you can watch it via Netflix. Similarly, back then (this is crucial) neither "The Temptation" nor such ideas could've been considered mainstream, even if they were nothing new according to some specific cases/places.

Help me out here, Pippi, English is neither my first language nor one I use very well, so if you're planning to rely on Mhurrican stubbornness and judge the past by your own personal, subjective experience, we're not gonna find a common language. ;]

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Quote from: Catelf;877920I personally find the idea of the "Qlippoth" annoying, they are a mix of entities and ideas, that solely has been put together because someone thought an "anti-adam" or anti-creation put together of things they had described as demonic back then was a good idea.
It would not surprise me if "Gamaliel" actually originated as a character assassination of the revered one with that name.
...Sorry, it is a kind of pet peeve.

Just to make things clear: we're talking about setting or "real life" here?

Quote from: Catelf;877920How is it possible to hide in "The Lie" if it is all illusions, that Nepharites and similar should be able to see through anyway?
The only solution is that "The Lie" isn't a lie, it isn't mere illusions, it has to be either a different plane of existence, or even a downright separate world.

Yes... and no. ;]

Different versions of KULT treat the Illusion in different fashion. Sometimes it's really different plane of existence, a kingdom-prison erected on Malkut's skin, sort of "a cancer" with our whole universe hidden withing, and then it's matching your assumption. Then again, in other occurrences it's more like an augmented reality, superimposed on streets of Metropolis itself.

BTW, this reminds me about Interzone from Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" and the second part of "The Futurological Congress" by St. Lem, which is probably one of best explanation of how the Illusion might work.

Anyway, in the latter approach, there's no "beyond", only different perceptions. Different beings are adjusted to perceive different ranges of reality only, so when hunters "see through the Lie", it means that they see things as they really are - celebrities with clown masks covering their faces, people whose "smartphones" are some sort of parasites, piercing their skulls with small tentacles and sucking dry their souls, monsters roaming slums, pretending to be "merely" violent gang members and so on and so forth. It's possible to hide before such beings from beyond, because to them we're all alike: just filthy, blind and drugged entities focused on totally irrelevant matters, worshiping pieces of trash.

...but they might miss a lot of other details. They don't see what is written on our t-shirts, they don't perceive pictures transmitted via tv, and once you cover yourself with rags, cease to act "differently", you're just another piece of the Illusion. They could've been standing next to their prey unable to recognize it as long as it behaves properly.

What brings us to "power usage". It could've been merely a momentary blip on their scanner, and that'd allow the GM to change it into "catch a mouse", with hunters coming closer the moment that magician decides to evoke some power, but losing track the moment he stops and moves on. Kind of, you know "triangulation", or Matrix effect.

Not saying that it's how things are - it's merely an attempt to find an explanation to self-contradictory setting. ;]

Quote from: Catelf;877920Essentially, the Great Horrors do not trigger awakenings, because even if they are madness-inducing(or are they even that?), they are still a part of the LIE.

It's possible. Then again: it is suggested across books and editions, that witnessing something outside of your typical paradigm (extreme fear, awful carnage, things that simply "can't" exist, being tortured) - no matter what is the source - might crack the Illusion, allow the witness to see the true reality and bring him closer to the Awakening.

Now, even if we agree that Lovecraftian monsters don't make cracks in the Illusion, they are almost certainly guaranteed to bring havoc and destruction, to the lives of people, and that's pretty much the same.

Effectively, when you deploy something more powerful than a Nightgaunt, you're risking spontaneous Awakenings and this is like an avalanche of problems.

Quote from: Catelf;877920Making up explanations in the heat of battle is easy, it is all a lie, it is part of the prison. "So why did that particular unspeakable trigger an awakening?" "Because Malkuth or any of the other anti-prison sephira had created or tampered with it."

Also, if you are preparing a game where answers are supposed to be given, then prepare answers.
Even if the answer is "You are not ready for that answer yet".

Short version: it's impossible to prepare all answers in advance, and if you're planning to pull "it's just a lie", or "can't answer that right now" move quite often, you're risking setting's consistency, stripping it of any forms of certainty, which results in players approaching a brand new game (as in "world") each time they are starting a session. This isn't good. To play any game, players - at least those I had pleasure to play with - require some safety, predictability, some healthy dosage of "meta" knowledge to feel at home and play for extended amounts of time.

Because in the end, KULT is just a game. One, that's resembling our reality, but just a game.

I require an excessive amount of alcohol and time to require my point of view in a broader sense. I'm, unfortunately, in the process of my liver's regeneration what rules out any forms of alcoholic beverage and working with online translators for longer periods of time is pain in the ass. ;]

Quote from: JesterRaiin;878080I hope I made it clear that The Last Temptation wasn't "mainstream" back then in context of the world.

Oh, now it has to have been mainstream for the whole planet? Does ANYTHING qualify for that except maybe Star Wars and Disney?
I wasn't flying all over the world to check... but around here, if it plays in the local shopping mall THAT means it's mainstream.
Not the ideas, the MOVIE.
What else played at the shopping mall theater? Hellraiser, a popular movie that Kult pulled a good bit of inspiration from.

QuoteSure, you may be a guy who's watching Srpski Film (or whatever passes as "shocker" nowadays) with his friends without feeling any strong emotions, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not "mainstream"

Never claimed it was. A Serbian Film would NOT have played at our local shopping mall (it's got subtitles, folks around here HATE subtitles!).

My ONLY argument with you is your story of "POOF, the internet came along and suddenly we were presented with all this trangressive stuff that NOBODY had seen or heard of before... we were mere babes in the woods up to that point... EXCEPT for KULT! Because Kult was just sooooooo shocking and unlike anything anyone had ever seen before!!!! (high pitched scream goes here)" which is total bullshit except maybe for whatever Candyland corner of reality you grew up in.

It's true that my grandma might not have seen gay men swap semen-laden kisses up until she accidentally clicked on some Badwrongfun link... but really, PLENTY of youths were into dark music, dark movies (Faces of Death) and reading up on crazy sex/death/occult subjects if for no other reason than to scare their parents.

Quote from: Warthur;877922The bit of Kult's cosmology I really enjoy - apart from the overarching "humans are at the centre of everything - but 'human' is a way broader category than you think it is, and not in a good way" deal which underpins everything

Well, it's not that KULT pushed humans that hard to the front. Take Tiferet and her agenda. It is said that she forms alliances in places so distant, that the Illusion is unknown there, what implies that the true reality is more enormous than we think. Or that curious case of an angel who abducts some people, dumps them on some distant planet and reigns over them with an iron hand, punishing severely for every transgression of "God's" law.

We - the Mankind - are sleeping gods, vessels carrying the potential to mutate into probably most powerful beings ever, but there was little to no chance to ever achieve that, effectively resulting with a gamebreaker.

It was, more a possible plot hook, a part of lore, rather than something truly attainable, as opposite to, let's say oWoD's Golconda.

We were important, but for the 99% of time - just a pawns that, similarly to Call of Cthulhu, end dead or insane. Yummy. ;]

Quote from: Warthur;877922is the delicious cosmological implication that God and the Devil are two sides of the same person - a human being like any other who, at the crunch point when their higher and lower selves confront each other, botched it horribly, causing God to vanish and the Devil to be left with the job of trying to keep things together.

Ha! I recall long nights spent on discussing that implication. Was Astaroth to replace the Demiurge, what if he WAS the Demiurge all along, only forgot about that, what if this is the very same being that on occasions switches the persona, etc, etc.

Good times.

Quote from: James Gillen;878074Greatest stunt casting EVER.

Are we talking about certain Pilate? ;]

BTW, I think I recall Defoe claiming that he still didn't believe, didn't find no faith afterwards & such. It was very refreshing to see an actor approaching his role in professional manner, rather than making a drama about it.

Quote from: Simlasa;878086Oh, now it has to have been mainstream for the whole planet?

No, silly. It was discussed in the context of the world since the beginning. There's no sudden change of narration.

Quote from: Simlasa;878086Does ANYTHING qualify for that except maybe Star Wars and Disney?

Sure.

Quote from: Simlasa;878086I wasn't flying all over the world to check... but around here, if it plays in the local shopping mall THAT means it's mainstream.
Not the ideas, the MOVIE.

What you do in your spare time, and what happens in your neighborhood is irrelevant to this discussion. Sorry.

Quote from: Simlasa;878086What else played at the shopping mall theater? Hellraiser, a popular movie that Kult pulled a good bit of inspiration from.

Yes, and?

You seem to - correct me if I'm wrong - insist on assumption that just because something was available, it became instantly "mainstream", as in "widely known, recognized and acceptable", and this is false assumption.

On top of that, I'm not sure why you're putting any emphasis on "Hellraiser", and use it as argument, when I'm pointing out that ideas presented by KULT challenged Christian ideas, and that wasn't very popular thing to do "back then" (once again: back then).

Quote from: Simlasa;878086Never claimed it was. A Serbian Film would NOT have played at our local shopping mall (it's got subtitles, folks around here HATE subtitles!).

...and once again, what happens now in your neighborhood and what happened back then...

Quote from: Simlasa;878086My ONLY argument with you is your story of "POOF, the internet came along and suddenly we were presented with all this trangressive stuff that NOBODY had seen or heard of before... we were mere babes in the woods up to that point... EXCEPT for KULT! Because Kult was just sooooooo shocking and unlike anything anyone had ever seen before!!!! (high pitched scream goes here)" which is total bullshit except maybe for whatever Candyland corner of reality you grew up in.

Your only argument is B&W oversimplification of my story, then. And unless you're willing to put your stubbornness aside and actually try and read what I'm writing, there's absolutely no way we're gonna form some agreement. Your choice, Pippi. ;]

Quote from: Simlasa;878086It's true that my grandma might not have seen gay men swap semen-laden kisses up until she accidentally clicked on some Badwrongfun link... but really, PLENTY of youths were into dark music, dark movies (Faces of Death) and reading up on crazy sex/death/occult subjects if for no other reason than to scare their parents.

Sweetie, you're still unwilling to accept the world outside of your neighborhood. As such, you're not discussing the same topic that I am, or more precisely, you're trying to rewrite the past. I can assure you of one thing: you can't count on me agreeing that KULT at the moment of its release was just a mundane game that bring nothing new (also disturbing and blasphemous) to the table. I'm not sure whether it's what you're trying to achieve, but if this is the case, then at least one of us is wasting his time here. :nono:

Quote from: JesterRaiin;878080Just to make things clear: we're talking about setting or "real life" here?

The Qlippoth of Kult is based on the "real" one, and that original is a total mess(it was the one I was referring to), it seems to me that it is clearly a work of fiction to begin with, as if one had created a Pantheon made up by Norse Loki, Zeus, Ilian from Mutant Chronicles, Cthulhu, Tiamat, Finder from Forgotten Realms, and Nergal.
I may be exaggerating a bit, but not very much.
It isn't merely a messy bunch to begin with, but the mix itself is so ragged that it could not really work, and would have an internal strife worse than the regular greek pantheon.
...And that kind of bunch is allegedly ordered into a body-like structure similar to the one of the Sephira?
Just no.
Nowadays, that also further distracts me from accepting that part of the setting in Kult.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;878080Not saying that it's how things are - it's merely an attempt to find an explanation to self-contradictory setting. ;]

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It's possible. Then again: it is suggested across books and editions, that witnessing something outside of your typical paradigm (extreme fear, awful carnage, things that simply "can't" exist, being tortured) - no matter what is the source - might crack the Illusion, allow the witness to see the true reality and bring him closer to the Awakening.

Now, even if we agree that Lovecraftian monsters don't make cracks in the Illusion, they are almost certainly guaranteed to bring havoc and destruction, to the lives of people, and that's pretty much the same.

Effectively, when you deploy something more powerful than a Nightgaunt, you're risking spontaneous Awakenings and this is like an avalanche of problems.

--------------------------------------

Short version: it's impossible to prepare all answers in advance, and if you're planning to pull "it's just a lie", or "can't answer that right now" move quite often, you're risking setting's consistency, stripping it of any forms of certainty, which results in players approaching a brand new game (as in "world") each time they are starting a session. This isn't good. To play any game, players - at least those I had pleasure to play with - require some safety, predictability, some healthy dosage of "meta" knowledge to feel at home and play for extended amounts of time.

Because in the end, KULT is just a game. One, that's resembling our reality, but just a game.

I require an excessive amount of alcohol and time to require my point of view in a broader sense. I'm, unfortunately, in the process of my liver's regeneration what rules out any forms of alcoholic beverage and working with online translators for longer periods of time is pain in the ass. ;]

Well, it is an explanation that works, as I see it.
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But then, how often are things more powerful than Nightgaunts actually deployed?
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Essentially, in order to be able to make it work as a game, you must break parts of it anyway.
So choose a way in which it works, and stick to it.
Of course, that do not mean that the Player Characters always must get correct info, as the NPCs, even the wise ones, not always knows the truth.
Even in our actual reality, there are different ways to see and interpret the truth.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;878095No, silly. It was discussed in the context of the world since the beginning. There's no sudden change of narration.

Not seeing any mention of 'The Entire World' elsewhere on this thread... I think YOU are presuming that what might have been true in your neck of the woods was true all over...

QuoteWhat you do in your spare time, and what happens in your neighborhood is irrelevant to this discussion.

Why? I live in Las Vegas... the dirty grimy soul of the U.S.. Companies use us as test-beds for products because we're so fucking average. Last I heard we had a higher percentage of Mormons than Salt Lake City... but there was still plenty of horror and porn at the video stores.

QuoteYou seem to - correct me if I'm wrong - insist on assumption that just because something was available, it became instantly "mainstream", as in "widely known, recognized and acceptable", and this is false assumption.

No assumption, I'm saying Hellraiser and The Last Temptation of Christ were 'widely known, recognized and acceptable' among a significant portion of my countrymen. Movies about men fucking livestock... not so much.

QuoteOn top of that, I'm not sure why you're putting any emphasis on "Hellraiser", and use it as argument, when I'm pointing out that ideas presented by KULT challenged Christian ideas, and that wasn't very popular thing to do "back then" (once again: back then).

Because Hellraiser predated KULT and influenced it... but it was a widely seen movie that was pretty popular. It did challenge Christian notions to some extent AND challenging Christian notions was a VERY POPULAR passtime for a significant portion of youth culture 'back then' and earlier.
Here in the U.S. there was a TV mini-series in the 70s 'The Word', based on an Irving Wallace book that directly challenged a whole lot of Christian notions. Sure, some folks made noise about it... but it was on fucking prime time national television. Nothing gets on mainstream TV here that isn't a pretty safe bet that viewers will NOT turn the channel.
Dan Brown's book was nothing new and neither was Kult EXCEPT that it put those ideas into an RPG.
Really, I think you're the one with blinkers on about what was going on in the world 'back then'.

QuoteYour only argument is B&W oversimplification of my story

Nope, I reread it. I've got it right, I just disagree.

QuoteSweetie, you're still unwilling to accept the world outside of your neighborhood.

Right back at ya! Popular culture in my country was chock full of stuff you seem to be claiming was much less influential and accepted than it was. 'Mainstream' involves more than just your grandma and some down-home Baptists. Maybe the swedes got all torqued about it but here it was no big shakes, really.

I should probably be clear though, I really LIKE Kult. I'm just questioning any claims to how transgressive it was compared to anything except maybe other elf-games of the day... and even then... we already had Vampire.

Quote from: Simlasa;878086My ONLY argument with you is your story of "POOF, the internet came along and suddenly we were presented with all this trangressive stuff that NOBODY had seen or heard of before... we were mere babes in the woods up to that point... EXCEPT for KULT! Because Kult was just sooooooo shocking and unlike anything anyone had ever seen before!!!! (high pitched scream goes here)" which is total bullshit except maybe for whatever Candyland corner of reality you grew up in.

It's true that my grandma might not have seen gay men swap semen-laden kisses up until she accidentally clicked on some Badwrongfun link... but really, PLENTY of youths were into dark music, dark movies (Faces of Death) and reading up on crazy sex/death/occult subjects if for no other reason than to scare their parents.

Why not simply accept that you two obviously grew up in clearly different environments?

Quote from: Catelf;878100Why not simply accept that you two obviously grew up in clearly different environments?

I wouldn't even be arguing with him if he'd started out with "Well, where I'm from..." rather than some sweeping statement about the revelations of the internet and Dan Brown.

But you're right.
It's particularly silly since we obviously both like the game.

I think the problem here is Simlasa and Jesterrain are operating on two somewhat different definitions are "mainstream".

As I recall, Last Temptation of Christ was a (highly) controversial movie in the US but was a "mainstream" release in the sense it was released through regular channels and in most venues with no special restrictions and widely shown. It wasn't something like Faces of Death or Kids at Play" that you had to hunt up in backrooms, weird arthouse cinemas and get from a "friend of a friend".

Quote from: Simlasa;878099Not seeing any mention of 'The Entire World' elsewhere on this thread... I think YOU are presuming that what might have been true in your neck of the woods was true all over...

No one is more blind than the one who doesn't want to see. CTRL+F:

as in, "world", because I can't comment how things were locally

...or better not. There's absolutely no point in discussing anything with a Mhurrican, once he enters full patriotism "USA > World" mode, so let's just stop here, shall we?

до свидания

Quote from: Catelf;878098The Qlippoth of Kult is based on the "real" one, and that original is a total mess(it was the one I was referring to), it seems to me that it is clearly a work of fiction to begin with, as if one had created a Pantheon made up by Norse Loki, Zeus, Ilian from Mutant Chronicles, Cthulhu, Tiamat, Finder from Forgotten Realms, and Nergal.
I may be exaggerating a bit, but not very much.
It isn't merely a messy bunch to begin with, but the mix itself is so ragged that it could not really work, and would have an internal strife worse than the regular greek pantheon.
...And that kind of bunch is allegedly ordered into a body-like structure similar to the one of the Sephira?
Just no.
Nowadays, that also further distracts me from accepting that part of the setting in Kult.

To be fair, as I understand it the setting of Kult is explicitly dysfunctional; the Qlippoth are plotting against each other, the Sephiroth are too, and when it kicks off everything is going to come crashing down horribly because the thing which imposed order and co-operation on entities which would much rather just fight is gone. So you could almost see that as a feature, not a bug.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;878104No one is more blind than the one who doesn't want to see. CTRL+F:

as in, "world", because I can't comment how things were locally

...or better not. There's absolutely no point in discussing anything with a Mhurrican, once he enters full patriotism "USA > World" mode, so let's just stop here, shall we?

до свидания

And there's little point in discussing things with an Otherplacian once that switched to "Lets talk down to the poor stupid totally unworldly USian" mode.

(But its totally a fact the US is the Only Place in the World where people aren't constantly aware of, accepting and considering the viewpoint of every one every where else so any comment they make on conditions anywhere is objectively true. Its a fact!)

Quote from: Nexus;878107And there's little point in discussing things with an Otherplacian once that switched to "Lets talk down to the poor stupid totally unworldly USian" mode.

Guilty as charged. ;]