Quote from: Doc Sammy;948613Let me just say this....

Fuck Beast: The Primordial.

And while we're on that, Fuck Demon: The Descent and the entirety of Onyx Path's contributions for New World of Darkness.

nWoD 1e was cool, but this 2e Chronicles bullshit is just awful.

The God-Machine idea from the WoD book was awesome, the God-Machine Chronicles was pretty good.  Demon: The Descent isn't a very good expression of that idea I didn't think.

Quote from: san dee jota;948615I keep seeing people saying this, or variations on it ("they went all SJW and hate free speech!") from multiple people.  Could someone elaborate (I ask from a place of ignorance, not debate)?

The last couple of hate mobs flowing through the rpg sewer that is the internet have had OP freelancers which also happen to be Purple mods leading the charge.

Quote from: CRKrueger;948636The God-Machine idea from the WoD book was awesome, the God-Machine Chronicles was pretty good.  Demon: The Descent isn't a very good expression of that idea I didn't think.

It seems to me like somewhere along the line DtD lost track of the God-Machine as being this really weird, seemingly disjointed and mismatched collection of... stuff, and instead it's just The Matrix.  I mean, I don't hate it, but it feels like a case where a narrowing of focus made the game worse (Beast meanwhile -needed- it focus narrowed in).

Quote from: Warboss Squee;948641The last couple of hate mobs flowing through the rpg sewer that is the internet have had OP freelancers which also happen to be Purple mods leading the charge.

So it's not so much the games, as "these guys wrote these games over here, and they mod over there, so the games are reflections of their modding"?

No, its more than that. Its stuff like their portrayals of Heroes in Beast as the worst sorts of sociopathic narcissists... and also every person that they've ever hated in real life, up to an including gamergaters.

Or, as I mentioned before, the example use of the Pun Power in Demon, where some random schmuck approaches a couple of women to ask them out and dies because.... asking pretty women out is evil?  I mean, I guess that's what internet feminists say, so I guess he deserves to die for being a misogynist?

Or the vast overemphasis on virtue signalling (often badly handled) through the overuse of various queer archetypes... as mentioned in the Beast Review about the gay Beast duo who pair up their feeding techniques to be even bigger murder assholes than most Beasts, or how something like 80% of the Aberrants (ok, only 80% of the COOL abberrants) were part of the special Queer Superhuman Alliance.


Most folks don't play RPGs to dish out pop culture politics, but White Wolf games and writers seem to specialize in ham-handedly hammering home just how enlightened they are, and you should too... and all to often (Beast really, REALLY seems to be the prime example here) their 'enlightened' is really just the worst sort of 'we are so very precious, and everyone we've ever hated deserved to die in horrible, horrible ways... because we're good and they're bad!'... without actually managing to justify the rage except, again, through ham handed writing.

The very first example that struck me in that massive Review was the Leviathan Beast (whatever their called in game) getting jostled in the cafeteria by some random Jock and how eager he was to fight her.

I've been a teenage boy, and unless things have drastically changed in the last twenty odd years, no teenage boy wants to get into a fight with a girl for any reason. Not even if she's not popular or sexy or whatever.  I doubt any of them could articulate why, but I seriously doubt I can find a teenage boy today who wants to FIGHT a teenage girl.

But "Antonio" has to deserve getting attacked by the Beast and whatever torments they want to give him, so he acts like a bigger asshole in real life than any real life asshole would.


Now some of that is their enlightened virtue signalling: Some dude (named Matt, I'm guessing) tried to write a girl character to prove how even and balanced his murder-torture-monster game is, and wrote her like a social outcast teenage boy.  Matt is also signalling that Girls and Boys aren't just equal, they are identical, so its socialization and misogyny that keeps the Antionios of the world from wanting to FIGHT girls. (I sorta doubt it, but its possible).  Of course real girls (or murder monsters) should fight boys, because, you know, only the Patriarchy keeps girls from winning fights alla time against football players in highschool, or something.

I'm mostly betting on the first one, with flavors of the rest seeping in and convincing them it is good, enlightened game fiction instead of reading as 'what the fuck reality is this murder-monster game set in?', or as we in the writing biz (I wish...) say: One too many macguffins, bub.

Am I the only one who thinks is vaguely racist that they made the villain of that piece an 'Antonio' instead of, I dunno, a Jake or something?  I mean: I don't actually care, I just thought it was curious, given how very enlightened they clearly want to be.

Quote from: san dee jota;948644So it's not so much the games, as "these guys wrote these games over here, and they mod over there, so the games are reflections of their modding"?

Kinda? More a general interest in pandering that led to this point.

It would be cool if the FASERIP game (Humanish) was more of a toolkit. Is love to import all of the best ideas from CoD into it.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;948654It would be cool if the FASERIP game (Humanish) was more of a toolkit. Is love to import all of the best ideas from CoD into it.

Let me introduce you to a little friend of mine. It's called Icons. It's basically a simplified FASERIP combined with FATE.

You very well could do with it what you suggest above.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;948657Let me introduce you to a little friend of mine. It's called Icons. It's basically a simplified FASERIP combined with FATE.

You very well could do with it what you suggest above.

ICONS is to FASERIP as Pong is to PC Gaming.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I suspect that people who enjoy the depth and granularity of FASERIP will balk at the simplicity ICONS.

Out of curiosity, if they're really that SJW-y these days, what's the second edition of Promethean like?

I mean, I've only read the first edition, but there the protagonists were a bunch of socially maladjusted science geeks who got blamed for everything that went wrong because they were so inherently Creepy. That seems to be at odds with the SJW mission statement of purging all forms of non-approved deviance. Is the second edition full of snotty rants about how the Prometheans could totally complete the Pilgrimage in two seconds flat if they weren't clinging so hard to their sense of white male entitlement, or something?

That I can't tell you. I realized with my purchase of Demon:The Descent that I was throwing my money away buying any more WW products.  The sheer... badness... of the game made that an easier realization than it might have otherwise been had, say, its quality been on par with the first edition Prometheans... a game I bought but will never play and one that really should have convinced me it was time to move on...

Shipyard my issue with the mechanics of CoD is they took a nearly perfect streamlined system (nWoD) and made it more unreasonably complex.

For instance two xp systems called xp and beats.  Beats are 1/5th of a xp.  To get beats you need to complete goals (something that makes sense), or suffer conditions to get those beats (hey it is FATE dick sucking time again).  So not only are you keeping track of two xps, but constantly losing immersion because these meta points favor the player over the pc.

Secondly they added more useless bulk into the game with conditions, tilts, and even more merit bulk.  Once you start doing crossover you will have too many rules to remember and that is not okay.

Then there are the weird rules that make no sense.  Changeling for example.  Servants of the true fae aka hunters (not Hunter: the Vigil which that will make some confusion) need points to get a pc changling.  Why?  Is this the game designer efforts to prevent the ST from making a horror game?  I can understand the court protections as it forces hunters to hunt in a certain way, but a point system.  Come on.

Quote from: Spike;948648Of course real girls (or murder monsters) should fight boys, because, you know, only the Patriarchy keeps girls from winning fights alla time against football players in highschool, or something.

Lol - I actually saw someone on a different RPG site (not RPG.net actually) claim that the only reason that males were generally physically stronger was because of social engineering led boys being more physically active etc.  They claimed that estrogen was somehow better for muscle stamina than testosterone and a couple other crazy-town theories.

It was both frustrating and funny.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;948666Lol - I actually saw someone on a different RPG site (not RPG.net actually) claim that the only reason that males were generally physically stronger was because of social engineering led boys being more physically active etc.  They claimed that estrogen was somehow better for muscle stamina than testosterone and a couple other crazy-town theories.

It was both frustrating and funny.

I find those stories increasingly horrifying, actually. There are too many instances of young women picking fights with men because they've been told all their lives that they should win and then getting mauled or even killed when the men finally, and often incredibly reluctantly, fight back.  I find that sort of myth spreading to be actual misogyny, rather than the presumptive misogyny that causes so many virtue signallers to chimp out.

Quote from: Spike;948670I find those stories increasingly horrifying, actually. There are too many instances of young women picking fights with men because they've been told all their lives that they should win and then getting mauled or even killed when the men finally, and often incredibly reluctantly, fight back.

Even if they somehow think that women are somehow naturally of equal strength - would that really make them think that they personally are magically stronger?  *shakes head in bewilderment*

The person in question in this case seemed to have other issues.  And I will say - on that site (Order of the Stick's I believe) I wasn't the only one telling them that they were being foolish just because they could mention a couple of power-lifter females who were stronger than most men.  (and were likely on roids)