Jace911
Spider-Dork
- Location
- The Gold-Bricking State
anyone else getting flashbacks to 2014
I know that shit never really ended but between this and the Price firing it feels like it's flaring up again
White Wolf's World of Darkness
anyone else getting flashbacks to 2014
I know that shit never really ended but between this and the Price firing it feels like it's flaring up again
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Hey, this is nothing like 2014. This time it's the game company that's the nazis harassing people off the internet!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yep. And in some of the more "progressive" (air quotes due to lack of actual followthrough if it would be tough) areas of the TRPG hobby the willingness to believe the game company is totally fine so they can go on enjoying their games is... frustratingly pathetic.
Also, White Wolf announced they're doing a Twitch stream on Friday at 11 PM EST to supposedly clear this all up and take community questions. I'm uh... expecting negative amounts from them at this rate. -_-
Jace911
Spider-Dork
- Location
- The Gold-Bricking State
Lord have mercy it's a twitch stream?!
fuck this I'm sealing the bunker, see you bitches in 2163
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Just out.of curiosity, has anyone here heard of th fangame Princess : the Hopeful ?
We have had long discussions about it in this thread.
EarthScorpion was one of the people that worked on it, maybe the most influential one.
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Really? Which version? I prefere the one with the camaraderie system, personally
IIRC the version before it split into multiple versions, and then on the one without TheKingsRaven.
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Huh i thought the argument happened before it got done or do you mean the orginal concept version? I read about it on tvtropes but cant find it
Edit; there was a none grimdark concept that turned into the modern P:tH
Edit; there was a none grimdark concept that turned into the modern P:tH
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Hmm, really interesting though i disagree wht the Queens should be, isnt the whole point that they were just as human as us once?
The keyword there is once, and well would you say that someone that is at least 10thousand years old is as likely to jump onto a modern fad ?
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considering they routinely reincarnate for exactly that reason, yes
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
If it was Mage or Vampire? Sure, but this was suppose to be Magical Girl land, and honestly for magical girl land having the 'elders' be unknowable aliens things is... wrong. That's pretty strong villain coding in such settings.
I always liked the idea of Princess, but felt it did a poor job at reaching it's basic premise.
I mean, like the other splats, it's meant to be a de-/re-construction of the genre. Pointing out that Queen Serenity, realistically speaking, would not be all that human and that Sailor Moon is going to have an uphill battle to keep her humanity is entirely valid space for a White Wolf interpretation.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Eh, I basically disagree. Vampire isn't a "deconstruct/reconstruct." It's honestly pretty straight. Werewolf is it's own weird thing, Wraith draws from many sources but isn't perticularly deconstructive, merely dark, and so on.
It mostly sounds like an excuse to go way too Madoka, which while an excellent series is sort of like having a action movie RPG and then having the main influence, and at times only influence, Ronin. Great movie, but not always a great movie at being an action movie, and only a sliver of a subset of the over all genre.
In the end, I think Princess is actively bad at actually doing Magical Girls. Like, I think you probably could Hack Demon: The Decent, and come up with something better, though you would have to play fast and loose with a few elements.
No, Vampire is absolutely a deconstruct/reconstruct, because it's written in a time where most vampire stories have them be pretty damn cool - sexy and powerful villains, lords of the night. And that is... very, very not what being an actual Kindred is like.
Though perhaps rather than that, it'd be better to just say in general that White Wolf splats don't play their genres/namesakes straight, in basically full generality.
Though perhaps rather than that, it'd be better to just say in general that White Wolf splats don't play their genres/namesakes straight, in basically full generality.
No, actually. Some people might claim that is the point, but that was the very topic of the argument.
As I pushed it, the Queens should be symbolic archetypes who you could be. But they can't save the world, and they can't solve your problems for you. They're memories, not people. All they can do is guide you to solving your own problems. They're distant things you quest to when you have a problem that you and your friends and your magical cat (or whatever) can't handle, a once-a-season thing you do in a time of great need.
You don't casually go chill with them. They don't give you orders or tell you what to do. They're not the protagonists and they're not the ones who are going to have to save the world.
That's you.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
It bears keeping in mind that interacting with them is meant to be like a vision quest (or a particularly trippy sequence where the main character gets all introspective/angsty and is trying to work everything out in their head): traversing the weird landscape that surrounds what's left of them* to get their advice is only possible by learning the lesson they wanted to teach - because the Queens want the new generation of Hopeful to learn how to help themselves and stand on their own rather than being beholden to them.
Likewise, if we did want to have them as people you could talk to, they'd realistically be borderline incomprehensible, because they're hyperintelligent sorceresses from a civilization that existed thousands of years before anything we understand. Of course, the guys on the dev team who wanted them to be people you interact with essentially just tried to handle them as various "geek girl" fetish archetypes, which is way cringier and way less compelling. Still, even if we go with them being antediluvian god-queens instead, that still puts a lot of onus on the ST to hammer out how they behave - and it doesn't address the underlying problem of them being people you can talk to.
Namely, that it fucks up the entire theme of finding your own way and trying to figure out how to fix things that Princess has. You don't need to worry about that when you can just dial up one of the Queens' secretaries and have them explain what your position is in the thousand-year plan to fix everything. It undermines one of my favorite parts of the game, where Nobles who want to take orders and follow The Plan end up running with one of the Twilight Queens, because being a good little soldier or a fully enfranchised envoy of an ancient empire or willingly subordinating yourself to a dubious prophecy isn't terribly heroic or smart.
You want to be a good person? First rule: there are no easy answers. Being a good person is difficult, and if you can't handle that, then tough. The Queens can't give you the answers. At best, they can help you find them on your own, with your own two hands.
* Let's remember, the Queens spent the entirety of recorded history metaphysically starving to death inside an illusion. Anyone else would be completely gone, and they only managed to retain their sanity and morality at the cost of being able to easily interact with their chosen.
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Well, that's your interpretation, but I much prefer having the people who actually know what we're doing not be insane. that sounds like a one-way trip to Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! land, and I'd really rather not.
What people who know what "we're" doing?
No one knows what they're doing. There's no one to tell you what to do - and if there was, it'd be completely against the point. There are no quest-givers, no hand-holders, no people with a great plan to fix the world which is for certain going to work and not the plan of power-hungry elders.
And this is the nWoD. There shouldn't be. You've done something wrong if there are.
The funniest thing is?
You want the Queen of Mirrors. You want someone who can tell you the future and tell you you're the chosen one and you're certainly going to save the world for realisies. Or maybe you want the Queen of Tears, who "actually knows what she's doing" and isn't insane. They're the ones who can provide the hand-holding you want.
They're antagonists for a reason.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Honestly that's more an argument for that there shouldn't BE elders, really. You might find the ghost of an ancient Magical Girl, or one whose copied a fragment of her mind into an A.I. stack, or the like. And it can tell you secrets once before finally passing on, or it's only complete enough to talk about one thing, or the like.
But no elder's in the sense that you're talking about here, that you see in Vampire, or even Werewolf.
But incomprehensibility and alieness is pure villain coding if you're staying anywhere near genre. Magical Girls make alien things human by showing up, or they show that those alien things are beyond redemption because they can't humanify them. And then they purify the world of their presence, possibly by throwing love in the form of a giant pink heart at them.
It's a good thing they wouldn't have been "alien", then. The people up there using words like "alien" and "unknowable" are being dumb-dumbs. Just... distant. Hard to find. And more like abstract exemplars than living people.
The Queen of Diamonds could tell you what a perfect Diamonds would do, but she won't tell you what to do. It's not in their nature to tell you what you must do, precisely because they're the good guys. They know they've been dead a long, long time and been trapped in a dream prison. That's why they'd just help you work out what you should do - and why the act of finding them would put problems in your way which have applicable metaphors for your problems in the waking world.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
I get that, I just don't think that's really appropriate. Like, confronting yourself is definitely in theme, from Nova dragging Hikaru down in her own darkness, to Sae Sawanoguchi drowning in her own wonders. But external Queens you can go on vision quests too...
That's a Wizards journey. Dream questing to face abstractions of your own worries and troubles, to find abstract exemplars really REALLY isn't magical girl theme space. It's not bad theme space, but it's a wizard's. The magical girl version is always that you had the answer all along inside your own heart, your enemy is yourself (with a couple different versions for what self we're talking about), and it's basically never a self initiated journey.
And the last one is really the sticking point for me. Because it means that all the work going into these Queens should at most show up, like once in an entire campaign. Because enemies-confronting-you-with-your-own-weakness-and-throwing-you-into-a-spiritual-journey-they-think-will-destroy-you-but-really-strengths-you is specific enough that it should only happen once. And I really don't think the Queens should have any place or purpose outside that one.