No, don’t worry, we aren’t changing Beast: the Primordial into a game of Noir detectives. Like I talked about last week, there are revisions being done, but only to better present Black Hat Matt’s vision for the game.
But there is actually a connection between Beast and Films Noir.
First, a digression.
One of the issues with being self-employed is that if you love what you do, like I do, it is all too easy to obsess over your job. Just one more email. Just another graphic designed or file proofed. Many times during our Monday Lunch Meetings, Fast Eddy Webb and I compare notes on this very question: how do you keep the balance between life and job when there’s no office to drive home from? And not just balance, but how do you maintain the ability to be creative when you are doing a creative job 24/7? Certainly, that burnout was something White Wolf employees struggled with back in the day.
One method, that Eddy and I each hit on without telling the other, is to continue learning. Keep giving your brain input, and make it outside the info you absorb continually while doing the job. It turns out that there is an online class in Film Noir in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies, which is just perfect for me (and also for Eddy apparently). Old movies to watch, reconnecting with my film theory days, and just a little bit of added structure so that playtime isn’t just veg-out time. A film-clip a day, a quiz a week, full films on TCM, and podcasts and recorded lectures make for a varied and interesting break from regular life and work.
So, to return to the connection between Beast and Films Noir, we had a podcast lecture from that course that talked about the conundrum faced by the old Hollywood movie studios where they had to please one segment of their audience who wanted to see an expected story and set of themes play out, and another segment who got tired of the same old things. Plus they had very creative teams that wanted to stretch what they did and experiment creatively.
Wow, I said to Fast Eddy.
That’s us!
Because Onyx Path was lucky enough to start with the license to revitalize WW‘s game lines, we also have more than 25 years of expectations. People have been playing a certain way, and to totally change that with a new version of their game would be doing them a disservice. But to just ape the old WW settings and particularly the rules, which age way faster than the setting, leaves us no room to grow as creative folks. And in a business sense, no company survives without innovation. So, like the Hollywood studios in the 1940’s, we have to find a way to do both.
We try and produce a semi-steady stream of projects, but we don’t allow that to become a production treadmill producing substandard books. We have some projects like the 20th Anniversary books that try and compile all those great moments from earlier editions, but which still leave room for their supplements to expand the setting and rules in new ways. I’m being general here because even one example that details our stategery will fill up this blog.
Beast is one of the ones that we pushed a little harder with. The themes go a bit beyond a lot of what we’ve done with nWoD before, with the Hero/Beast dichotomy and no social splats as some examples. And as folks reacted we could see that maybe the presentation got a little lost while trying to tackle this challenge. We were ambiguous where a bit more clarity was needed, and in other places we drew too hard a line where we intended the situation to be more fluid. Hence the revisions that are right now being done.
It’s a balancing act and sometimes you teeter a bit too much one way or the other. We don’t exactly look graceful as we start and stop and stagger and stutter up there on the wire.
But if that’s what it takes to try and climb to another height – it’s worth it.
YMMV.
And Now For Something Completely Different: a couple of things about Gen Con that we talked about today.
First, the Events folks at Gen Con tell us they have moved the room for the SEM1572637 Dive into Pugmire & Cavaliers of Mars on August 1. It has moved from the Crowne Plaza to the Embassy Suites, Ambassador 1 room. This sometimes happens and it’s a drag, but if any more of these changes occur, I’ll let you know here, and/or on social media, and we’ll also have a notice at the Onyx Path booth at the con.
And speaking of the booth, Impish Ian Watson, our T-shirt maven, loves both our new shirts and classic White Wolf shirts so much that he wants you to know that anybody buying books at our booth during Gen con who is wearing any of our shirts, old or new, will get an additional discount on their purchase. Of course, he might make you pose for a pic, if you’re willing, not unlike these:
Nuff said!
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And now, the BLURBS!
Fear the dark places: the Beast: the Primordial Kickstarter has passed a whole passel of Stretch Goals like a silk ribbon in the book, a t-shirt, a historical Beast chapter in the nWoD Dark Eras Companion, Beast Ready Made Characters, and a Beast Fiction Anthology. And we just achieved a Beast supplement for Mortal Remains PDF. Many of these SG rewards were suggested by our backers, too. The original complete text is up there on the KS site, and we just added links to revisions for the Intro, and Chapters 1 & 2. We’ll be adding more revision links as we head into the last week of this Kickstarter!
All omens and portents point to the Demon Translation Guide Advance PDF being ready to appear in a cloud of brimstone and ozone on Wednesday. We take fiendish delight in presenting this devilish guide to transferring your Demon: the Fallen and Demon: the Descent characters from one setting to the other.
Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition KS backers: M20 PDFs went out to backers, and the response has been amazing! Thanks to all of you for your support and accolades. The Errata is being collated and will be sent over to Satyr Phil, and the index is getting finished up.
The third Pugmire poster, Sgt. Leo Bulldog, will be available on Wednesday.
The second poster, Princess Yosha Pug, is available now: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/149750/Princess-Yosha-Pug-Pugmire-Poster-2
And the first poster, Sister Picassa Collie, is here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148516/Sister-Picassa-Collie-Pugmire-Poster-1
Start spreading the Code of Man!
Waiting on PoD proofs of Dread Names, Red List for V20 AGAIN, so it might not hit DTRPG in time to go on sale Wednesday, but keep an eye open for this collection of the most dangerous Kindred ever called Anathema.
We’re also waiting for PoD proofs for The Poison Tree novel by Mike Lee for W20…
Convention News: Our friends at Gamerati are running a Game Day on July 25th, the Saturday before Gen Con, in Eau Claire, WI. I’m told there is one nWoD session scheduled already, but they would love it if anybody in our community wants to run other WW or Onyx Path games. So check it out if you want to doing some playing and give them a yell if you want to do some Storytelling: http://gamerati.com/gamedays/
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And now, new project status updates!:
DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (Projects in bold have changed listings)
First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)
- M20 Book of Secrets (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- M20 Anthology (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Pugmire Gen Con Materials (Be a Good Dog.)
- CtL anthology (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)
- The Realm (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Dragon-Blooded (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Dark Eras Expansions (nWod Dark Eras)
- Pugmire Early Access
- Dark Eras Companion (nWod Dark Eras)
- WtF The Pack (Werewolf: the Forasken 2nd Edition)
- VtM Lore of the Bloodlines (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- WtA Kinfolk (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition
- V20 Ready Made Characters (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
Redlines
- Mummy Fiction Anthology (Mummy: the Curse)
- Wraith: the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition
- Cursed Necropolis: Rio (Mummy: the Curse)
- Beckett’s Jyhad Diary (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition, featuring the Huntsmen Chronicle (Changeling: the Lost 2nd Edition)- In Open Development
Second Draft
- Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)
- Secrets of the Covenants (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)
- Scarred Lands Player’s Guide: Ghelspad (Scarred Lands 2nd Edition)
- W20 Changing Ways (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- W20 Pentex Employee Indoctrination Handbook (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- nWoD Hurt Locker (World of Darkness 2nd Edition)- In Open Development
- VtM Lore of the Clans Expansions (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
Development
- Promethean: the Created 2nd Edition, featuring the Firestorm Chronicle (Promethean: the Created)
- “Sardonyx” System Rules (Base rules set for Scion and the Trinity Continuum) In Open Development
- W20 Shattered Dreams (Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition)
- nWoD 2e core (New World of Darkness)
- Mage: the Awakening 2nd Edition, featuring the Fallen World Chronicle (Mage: the Awakening) – In Open Development
- Demon Storytellers’ Guide (Demon: the Descent)
Editing
- V20 Ghouls (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
- V20 Black Hand: Guide to the Tal’Mahe’Ra (Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition)
Development (post-editing)
- M20 How do you DO that? (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)
ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE
In Art Direction
- Dreams of Avarice – Art Directed.
- NWoD 2 – Need to rattle cages. Half of them missed sketch deadlines
- V20 Ghouls – Got artnotes for it Friday night, so I’ll be looking over those this week and figure out my art buy for it.
In Layout
- Gen Con Stuff – Buttons wrapping up this week. Card promos getting uploaded this week. Vert banner should hopefully go quick if my idea pans out.
- Beast – Working on the layout graphic elements.
- M20 How Do You Do That – Getting files together for Charles now that text is out of editing.
- Pugmire Brochure – Rolling along. Eddy is doing some text tweaks so the layout can flow a little better.
In Proofing
- M20 – Errata time over, Rose compiling for Phil.
- M20 Screen – Still proofing with Phil.
- Ex 3 Anthology – Awaiting updated text file.
- The Avarice Chronicle (Combined Mummy Adventure) – Sending 2nd proof off to CA and CCP.
At Press (on Drivethru… or whatever)
- Red List – Hopefully on sale on Wednesday.
- The Poison Tree/Werewolf 20 Novel – Hopefully PoD and digital on sale Wednesday.
- Beast Within Revised Layout – Also hoping the PoD for this one is ready.
- Gen Con Banners – Looking at the digital proof of the biggun this morning.
- Pugmire Shirt – At Teelaunch. Reaching out to Chris to see if everything is in order.
- OPP Gen Con Staff Shirt – Proof version should be here early this week.
- Cavaliers of Mars QS – PoD should be processing.
- Demon Translation Guide – Digital version ready to up on Wednesday.
- VDA20 – Tweaking names and waiting for other text changes.
- Gen Con Brochure – At Gotprint. Thus far, they have only dropped the ball once since they got the files in.
Special
- Dark Eras – Holding pattern.
- Wraith 20 – Awaiting art notes for the book. All the logos from Cobb are in.
- V20 Lore of the Clans – Holding pattern for appendices.
- Exalted 3rd Edition – RT here: Went over what Maria has labelled as the 4th Layout Proof PDFs, and sent those over to the Devs for their comments. Initial comment was “So beautiful”, with much more in-depth notes to come. While it is so, so great that we at last have the full book to look at in layout, the nature of the way Maria builds her design means that some sections are very close to being finished and others need more polish. But it is satisfying to have the pages so far along that I can send them over to the Devs.
Other Stuff
REASON TO DRINK: “It’s the, eh, the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Is it wrong that a part of me thinks it’d be hilarious to run a Demon: The Descent game using the translation guide with the premise that a group of Unchained have completely hopped universes to the Classic WoD in an attempt to escape the God-Machine?
No it isn’t. It absolutely isn’t.
That sounds pretty damn interesting, actually. Especially if the God-Machine found a way to pursue them there…
That’s like one-half of my plan for the Translation Guide, actually.
🙂
Now the real question: is there a connection between the God-Machine and Autochthon, the Machine God?
For that matter, how does either one relate, if at all, to Autochthon the Great Maker from Exalted? (I suspect that the God-Machine has multiple subsidiary consciousnesses, analogous to the Divine Ministers, and that’s why It often seems to be working at cross-purposes to Itself. If you want to use this in your chronicle, please do.)
I had the same (or at least a similar) revelation when I spotted that the heads of the Wyrm Hydra in Freak Legion from Apocalypse were the Maelijin and had suspiciously similar intents as the nWoD sin-oriented Maelijin. I would assume it slipped the net or most people didn’t read Freak Legion, but ever since even though I disdained mixing Garou and Uratha together I’ve always felt that the Maelijin of nWoD were actually the same Hydra just bereft of the greater Wyrm to guide them, now free to pursue their monstrous ends in their own way. Not everything that survives the end of the world is a thinking person, sometimes it’s an infectious virus of the soul.
You are a bad person.
*brain explodes*
Not until I finish writing what promises to be one of the weirdest slashfics ever.
Only wrong in that it is so right!
YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!! Lores! Earthbound terrors! Horrifying visitations of a vengeful host, hear I come!
Tell us what you think when the Advance PDF hits. It looked pretty meaty to me when I read through the PDF.
It’s great; it’s what I was looking for. I do have another question though on a different game; is there any chance Onyx Path is considering a NWOD conversion guide for Wraith the Oblivion?
Here’s a Beast film noir: The Third Man. Harry Lime as Beast, Holly Martins as Hero. Kinda wanna play that now…
Also yay Demon Translation Guide!!!!
The Equalizer.
Mysterious protagonist with a habit of using morally questionable methods to help people and a knack for scaring the crap out of people? Check.
Obsessive, utterly reprehensible antagonist with delusional sense of social order? Check.
Why not? You just need players who can have fun with the concept too.
Oh definitely. I’m sure if I said “Beast + film noir” my group would have concepts in minutes.
Maybe Beast Noir vs. Mage Noir. I’ve always wanted to run “Cast a Deadly Spell” as a WoD game.
I love me some Brian LeBlanc art.
Me too, and he’s a great guy to work with.
Glad to see work is still apace with Beast, I’m really glad you’re in a position to be able to make the changes you think you need to make.
Also…Demon Translation guide. &$&*^$)%! yes! I am more excited than a grown man should be…
It comes down to whether we publish a game that a certain number of folks like, even though it really doesn’t read as we intended, simply because we already put the first text out there. Or make it read as intended and accept that that some folks will prefer the original and have some hard feelings. I think Matt did a great job of revising the text so that his original vision for Beast is now clear, and I regret those bad feelings that we caused getting it there.
It’s pretty cool that you basically write an essay every week for the Monday Meetings, Rich.
I’ll bet you’ve got about three of these for when Ex3 gets to backers – and a whole dang BOOK for general release!
Thanks! I’m not a writer by training, so they take me all afternoon, but I do hope folks think they are worth it. I think there’s a fair bit that could be said about how things have gone with EX3, but whether we should go into details is another thing entirely. There’s every chance that actually getting it into people’s hands will be enough: action as statement.
After spending three years of your lives on this thing, I think saying everything you’ve got to say is more than warranted!
As far as backer expectations go, I’m fairly certain vast majority will be very pleased to get the book and no further explanations would be needed. We already know how the project is progressing week by week. In the end the book will be done, we’ll get to read it and play the game. Mission accomplished.
However, beyond that, I would be very interested to read a post-mortem of sorts. Not in terms of explaining what went wrong, wrapping it in apologies and rationale or anything like that. I’m speaking strictly from position of curiosity – after all, Ex3 has become such a massive undertaking that reading about the wild journey that took you guys from Ex2.5 to Ex3 is sure to be a very interesting read.
ill agree with Dawngreeter here. just simply out of curiosity, it would be awesome to read/hear how exalted went from 2.5 to 3 in the point of view of the devs, not only taking in to account the various challenges you faced and how you got through them, but also just how you went from the basic idea to what it is today. a lot can be told, and a lot can be learned from it. both from the players side to also those would be/current game devs working on something equally big.
I’m sure it would, but it won’t be me using this blog to write those things. Sorry. Maybe in a few years once we have the EX3 line back on track and with many additional books and Kickstarters put out successfully.
That’s fair.
VDA20 – Tweaking names and waiting for other text changes.
The second half of that sentence makes me very happy. As a KS backer who got the “final” draft last week I was shocked at how little errata had been done.
Spelling errors missed and vital game mechanics that had not been provided e.g. the Instinct Virtue effects for Road following Kindred.
I was genuinely afraid that the final version of V20DA was going to feel like a half-done book. Guess I should have more faith in you guys at Onyx Path then that.
We made 208 changes to the last proof of this book and then generated the last PDF we sent out, that’s not counting any proofing changes previously we generated ourselves. Editing and proofing did their jobs, but somewhere we lost one chunk of the errata.
Thank you for these updates, I look forward to them every week. Can you share any news on what the next planned KS will be? I may need to rob a few banks in advance 🙂
We’re looking at doing the next W20 book, Shattered Dreams, after Gen Con if it is ready.
Yes, please. Very yes.
I’ve been dying for another W20 book since Changing Breeds.
I can’t wait for this!
I’m very excited this could get a Kickstarter. I love what we’ve already written for it, and wonder what else we could write into this book for stretch goals?
Shattered Dreams is very exciting, I see it as a spiritual child of DA Werewolf and WtWW, basically a historical chronicle setting for WtA. A whole new playground opening up. Nicely advances the WtA line and fills in one of its patchy spots after the updates of classics. Thank you. And the next oWoD KS might also have something to do with dreams…and Continuum is coming too…with sardonyx looking *really* good…oh my! You guys are so spoilin me 🙂
I just want to get this off my chest. I dunno where else to say it. I will note that I’ve given feedback on another blog post, though. I don’t ever want to be the person that’s just complaining.
Beast, even as the revisions move forward, feels less appealing to me. The Devouring remains a major narrative of choice (which really limits the characters to people who would make that choice). I do like that the two narratives have been a bit fused, but it still comes off as weak to me.
The biggest sticking point for me is the Beast’s inherent knowledge of the fact that they can teach lessons. It gives them too much anchoring, too much purpose. It makes me feel that they are too ‘at home.’ I don’t feel driven to grow when I feel at home.
I really did want to get behind this game. And I suppose the reason I’m talking is that I still do. All the themes I cared about have really been gutted. I don’t think it was intentional and it certainly wasn’t malicious. But just as people read the first pass of Beast in a way that showed they couldn’t connect with the themes the devs were trying to show, I’m reading this pass and finding myself unable to connect.
If I just don’t Buy In to the new vision, that’s fine. I won’t buy it or play it and I’ll get to be a little disappointed that my emotional investment here didn’t pay off. But I want to make sure that I don’t Buy In to the core concept of what Beast is /now/. (Which could be what they were trying to show us all along).
That being said, I’m almost sorry for being disappointed in it. I remain your supporter no matter how the work turns out. Thanks again to Matt and the whole Beast team! You guys have done a lot of work, and really a lot of /great/ work, whether it resonates with me or not.
Keep being awesome!
Thanks for your thoughts. Obviously, it’s not our intention to disappoint folks who really liked the first text we posted, so I’m sorry that adding the teaching through fear motivation to this has disconnected you from the rest of the material. The Devouring is not singly how it as presented in the first text or in the first revised Introduction, but is a combination of both that allows for multiple “origins” of Beasts. Is that “weaker” than either “purer” option? Well, that must ultimately be something you decide for yourself. In terms of gaming, rather than reading, you can now play the Beast as you want to play them, with that emotional core that you related to. It’s just that other people can also play their Beasts with their needed emotional core. Ultimately, though, I’m not trying to talk you out of your feelings on this- so please, walk away from this one if it doesn’t speak to you. Our purpose with the revisions is really so that you and us are able to clearly say that this book, as written, is or is not for you, rather than the misunderstandings the first text engendered.
Might one way to deal with this be to add another short section (like a page sidebar in the storytelling section) that talks about adjusting the knobs? NWoD is by nature a toolbox game, but sometimes I think we forget that. Having a bit that explicitly tells us which tools to select for a desired outcome could broaden the appeal.
Having both models is much better, actually. But something else has spoiled the purity of the game, as it were, for me.
On so many levels this game /did/ speak to me. And parts of it still do. I wrote quite a bit about what themes stood out in the game and about how those could be improved or clarified. I felt themes of Hunger, Fear, Exploration, and Family.
I feel that all those themes are muted with the revision, or at least inaccessible in a dramatic sense. Fear and Hunger now have a “why,” which dulls their teeth for me. As I read the text, which speaks of how Beasts come to understand that the Primordial Dream is about the wisdom of fear, I pulled away from wanting to play a Beast. As I read it, a Beast innately knows this connection, and thus, they know that they have a cosmological purpose. It is much more effective to me when Hunger and Fear simply are, as a product of the Dark Mother.
The “Knowledge of Fear” angle also damages the themes of Exploration and Family. For me, the Homecoming (or even the Devouring as a form of adoption) was about finding /a/ place in the world, but not /the/ place for you. Finding Family and Exploring the WoD as a Beast were echoes of the Homecoming, a process to find a place where the Beast felt at home through Family, Inheritance, or something stranger besides, Now that a Beast knows his or her place, the game feels like it must be about a rejection or acceptance of that. So the narrative is in a smaller box from where I’m standing, not a bigger one.
As a second, slightly related point, the Homecoming did lose a bit of purity in that the Devouring focuses much more on choice. Even (or especially) those who self-devoured made a distinct choice. The Devouring (even if the model is supposed to be a fusion) therefore kills for me most of my Beast concepts. These were people who would never choose it, but who /can’t/ reject something that was a part of themselves. It was intimate, without a purpose outside the self. It was a real Homecoming.
To be clear, I don’t dislike the Devouring or the “Wisdom through Fear” aspects of the game, I just don’t think they fit /any/ sort of tone that made the material have solid themes. As edge cases (a Devouring being a rare adoption), or philosophies (Beasts come to believe their mission is Wisdom through Fear), they worked wonderfully and emboldened the setting. I think that as the main narrative, they fall short by boxing in the characters/
I’d also like to take a moment to talk to the people who said Beast (before) had no nuance. That is not the same as no room for nuance. When I first passed over the original Beast document, I thought “The Buy In for this game is that you have to find or bring your own purpose, with no (game mechanic) moral compass.” I loved that idea, because the road to good was hard. Now I see Beasts through the lens of teaching and think either “Wow, they were jerks for choosing to teach /this/ way,” or “They were bigger jerks for choosing to be a Beast and not teaching at all.”
I’m not the only one who feels that this diluted interesting themes. Caleb Cushing and Markus Lange both posted on the Kickstarter comments with similar difficulties with the text. What I’d like the echo here is that I don’t think people are saying “Change the vision.” I already have my own vision and will play that game no matter what, as I have supporting documentation from the beginning of the development. What I think people are saying is “Is /this/ really what you were communicating?” We want to see the vision, but we hope that the vision isn’t the one that we think we are reading.
In short, yeah, the Devouring is actually a fairly interesting idea in the right context, but the “Wisdom through Fear” angle puts characters and stories in a very particular box if it is the /innate/ narrative (which it seems to be by many people’s reading).
As always, let me know if this comes off as disrespectful. I am invested in the material, but acting like a human to you, Rose, Matt, and everyone else is more important than a game. Peace be with you, and keep doing wonderful work! Thanks so much for your time!
Yes, it’s entirely intended. The whole thing, including the part where Beasts don’t *have* to teach anything, don’t get any mechanical benefit from doing so, and have an entirely cultural impetus for doing so.
And, as many others seem to feel the way I do, (at least one that has replied to the same post), do you have a response to the idea that both the cultural impetus to teach and the innate knowledge of the need to teach have taken away from the themes listed? Were those four(Hunger, Family, Fear, and Exploration) themes not a strongly intended part of the game as well?
And if you disagree with the analysis/interpretation of those readers who think as I do, then I would ask how our failure to understand the vision of Beast is any different from the same failure to communicate the vision of the game before the revision? It seems that fans on both ends believe that they haven’t understood the text of Beast thus far.
Matt’s revisions are intended to better communicate the themes he always intended with Beast. That you were engaged with the earlier text is fantastic, but it’s Matt’s call as to what he is trying to communicate. All the “solidarity” here or elsewhere doesn’t mean that you folks are wrong or right, just that the earlier words worked great for you, and now, for various reasons, you feel like the new text doesn’t hit you as hard as the original. Well, for some people, no alteration of that original text will ever be acceptable because no second look at the concepts and themes will ever have that initial impact. Which is, kind of the point of initial impact.
Other folks now understand what Matt was going for specifically because of the revisions. And others are good with how Matt has allowed you, in the revised text, to decide whether to heed the intent of the Primordial Dream and use your monstrous urges to teach through fear, or to ignore that whole teaching thing and be a Beast as you first understood the concept. The presence of that aspect of Beast helps a lot of folks grasp what they can do as Beast or what they can reject, and yet you can just excise it right out if you already “got” what you needed from the original text.
Now, this is not a forum, this is my weekly blog. So we’re done grilling the developer.
I feel a lot of the same things you do about the material here.
Cool a question about the translation guide; are there also suggestions as to how someone could incorporate both types of demons in the same setting?
My read through did not hit on that particular take, but it might be in there.
There are eight hybrid settings at the end of the Translation Guide. Five of them leave the door for mixed groups wide open, two make one a major antagonist of the other, and the last basically strips the God-Machine out of Descent (which I know some folks have wanted since Descent’s release). As well, one of those settings is a very clear nod at Inferno (another request I heard here and there on the forums).
These hybrid settings are short – only about 500 words apiece. Word counts were tight (these games have a lot of powers that weren’t as simple to convert as “Use Descent Power A instead of Fallen Power Q”), but hopefully they’ll give you enough to build on.
That’s so damn cool. I’m so happy that’s there; my Descent chronicle had a biiiig plothook about Fallen demons right at the end…
Perfect, thank you
I don’t get it why people have problems with the machine itself. The robot like part was not so my thing but that is optical and can be rectified. And I’m quite interested in the take on lores for descent (and also if earthbound are translateable….they make just quite good antanogists^^). The machine itself as I said I don’t understand why it is problematic……at least for people who read the angel sanctuary mangas
Can you tell us any more info on Shattered Dreams? I am so excited for that book!!
From the Schedule page: “Presents the wars between the Garou and Fera, as well as the time before that. Invaluable for owners of Changing Breeds as well as W20.”
If you could release the Ex3 PDF before my workload bloats up again, that would be super. Otherwise… I’m kinda screwed.
Here’s to hoping for the Dread Names on Wednesday!
Then I will respond to you, Richard Thomas.
I merely asked questions and I have done my best to be both respectful and appreciative of the venue for communication and for the opportunity to see the wonderful work of these artists.
I’ll note that I did not claim my vision was better or right. I spoke about an understanding of the text which was lacking on my part and seemingly on the part of many others. I’m not trying to wield the solidarity as an avenue for attack at all.
I’m not against him or you or anyone else here. I’m also not trying to say I know better than any of you. I’m trying to raise questions to those who do know better.
And if we can’t do that on a blog that is allowing comments… on a blog post that is by the Creative Director… where the post itself has content related to the criticism (and thus the comments aren’t off topic).. then that raises questions that /can’t/ be asked politely.
One that can be asked, however, is “what is this comment section for, if not to comment upon and question the material referenced above?”
You were polite, and then your posts were veering into badgering Matt. I warned you off. I didn’t attack you or your feelings about Beast. Ease down.
Fair enough. I didn’t mean to badger him, I was just curious and I thought that the openness was part of the process. I didn’t see those questions as badgering.
I never said that you attacked my feelings about Beast and I’m still not saying that. I’m beginning to wonder if all the former and surrounding vitriol regarding the game is coloring the perception here.
You see my questions as badgering. I see your calls to “ease down” and to “stop grilling the developer” as unnecessary attacks on my intent of posting. It felt condescending as it didn’t come off as a warning at all. I saw it as a command to be done with communicating.
That being said, I would like to know a good way to communicate these questions and I am still attempting to come to that in good faith, with the idea that we can talk about these things.
I would reiterate “what is this comment section for, if not to comment upon and question the material referenced above?”
None of my posts have had responses to them based around the content in any real way, which is especially troublesome with the questions. They were not manifestos of rightness for my vision, they were calls to understand.
I am a person who is trying to get into the game so he can want it. So he can /back/ it. So he can /buy/ it. I asked genuine questions, hoping that someone would change my mind. Help me to see Beast with new eyes.
Is it so hard to believe that if people misinterpreted the first document and saw themes that Matt never intended, then perhaps the second pass at the material produced similar results in a different way? I’m not saying that the “Wisdom through Fear” wasn’t intended. Of course it was. I acknowledge that and have yet to question it.
What I questioned was whether or not the intention was to dilute other themes in favor of it. I questioned whether those Four themes mattered. Family, Hunger, Exploration, and Fear.
If the above is not acceptable conduct, I welcome different ways to express the ideas. And if the ideas themselves are things which simply have no place here, then I will wish you all well and leave. No matter what, I’ll be watching and hoping for the best. No amount of disagreement could take away my love for these works.
In answer to your question about the four themes and the dilution of them. No, we have no intention that those themes be diluted, yes they still matter, and we do not think they are diluted in the revised manuscript. Hope that helps in ways that my previous answers did not. My answers, much like this blog, are about the big picture, overall topics that concern Onyx Path and our community as a whole. You are far better served asking specific questions about the games on the forums. It’s not that I don’t want to help you find the answers, it’s that I don’t have enough hours in the day to dig as deep as you seem to need to go. Thanks!
I see! Thank ya! I’ll eventually get on the forums now that I know where to talk about these. I appreciate you taking the time that you did. Be well, everyone!