Old Sourcebook Review: Clanbook: Baali

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:22 pm

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:I feel very confident in saying that Old World of Darkness is the most extensively detailed setting for a game ever, and that's ignoring the reality subtext and focusing on the published material.

Now you've made me wonder what the other possible contenders are.

Forgotten Realms - between four separate editions each getting their own revamp of the same basic setting, plus each of them getting a bunch of sourcebooks, plus the adventures, plus the novels, plus the video games, this has surely got to be in the top ten.
Middle Earth - Aside from the retarded quantity of JRRT's notebooks that's been published over the years, quite a lot of people forget or just plain do not know that ICE pushed out a fvckton of material for MERP in the '80s. Then they made a whole other Tolkien game that used simplified mechanics. Then Decipher made an entirely separate game.
Star Wars - Not likely to score highly based on RPG-focused stuff alone (although WEG threw out some pretty impressive quantities), but if you count the "Expanded Universe" novels and all that shit it's probably at least in striking distance.
Warhammer - Games Workshop has never been known for their restraint.
Star Trek - need more be said?

But I could still totally see the World of Darkness being more extensively detailed than any of the above. Which, considering that only two of the above actually started as game settings, is pretty impressive.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:28 pm

Koumei wrote:So tell me - and this thread seems vaguely appropriate - what's the obsession guys have with vaginal monsters? It's not even so much a sexual fetish thing (I hope), but you/they seriously seem to love putting fangs inside the same things you like putting your dicks. Or swarms of wasps, or whatever. Next time I'm fingering a girl, I don't want to have to check for hidden blades and things, so seriously, why do guys obsess over it?

Well, Koumei, even though a lot of more squeamish folk use it as a generic vaguely misogynist boogeyman some of us them find it very... erotic.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 7:09 pm

talozin wrote: But I could still totally see the World of Darkness being more extensively detailed than any of the above. Which, considering that only two of the above actually started as game settings, is pretty impressive.

It depends what kind of detail you're looking for, however. Any WW product line is going to vary wildly between 'super detailed' and 'handwaved into inconsequence,' but usually the actual setting falls into the latter while they simultaneously spend 25 pages circle jerking around a bloodline or group that consists of maybe a dozen actual people.

I'm pretty sure spent more ink on the fucking Salubri than what the city of London is actually like in the world of darkness, or how the Camarilla actually functions.

Koumei- I've never actually encountered that as obsession (and please, no one give me links). I encountered it in passing my first year a college during an all night anime fest (specifically during a showing of what they were calling Supernatural Beast City, though it was the early 90s and that name may well bear no relation to the actual title). But for me personally, the demon hooker sprouting vaginal teeth and trying to eat the guy drove all sexual thoughts from my brain for a full week. At 18, I found it fairly impressive that something could kill my sex drive, though still horrifying.

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:29 pm

I've noticed there's a tendency to go "if it features a woman, it has to be about her vagina".

My favorite example of this is Star Trek TNG, where the first two episodes "focused" on Troi were really just about her vagina. The first was how it had been given to this random dude in an arranged marriage, and the second was how she got randomly implanted with alien space Jesus.

Neither of these episodes focus particularly on Troi, they're just "about Troi" because they focus on men intrinsically tied to her vagina.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:34 pm

Hmm, the main thing I remember about Troi were conversations about how her weird-ass jumpsuit made her tits look lopsided.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 9:51 pm

Yes, well Troi was a fucking horrible character.

But then, given this is the series that gave us Wesley Crusher, it shouldn't be a surprise when the writers, when faced with a character they don't know what to do with, decided to go with something boring and annoying.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:23 pm

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Yes, well Troi was a fucking horrible character.

But then, given this is the series that gave us Wesley Crusher, it shouldn't be a surprise when the writers, when faced with a character they don't know what to do with, decided to go with something boring and annoying.

I honestly found her horrifying in a disturbing amount of episodes (and she fits in well in a WoD thread). She was, fundamentally, a professional mind-rapist, and casually violating people was not only expected (and something the Federation was apparently A-OK with), but her actual fucking job. The general bafflement that arose on the rare occasions someone called her on it gave me the creeps.

Of course, her mother was a hundred times worse, but that is traditionally true of mothers of monsters.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:35 pm

You'd be surprised how many people are perfectly ok with mindrape (and torture) if you assure them it's done by good people to stop bad guys. Hell, look at any inquisition, crusade, forced conversion, etc ever.

K · Post by K » Fri Jun 22, 2012 11:10 pm

All horror intrinsically focuses on The Other. (Caps for that shit because it's important.)

Thus, for men The Other can easily be women. Monstrous vaginas merely emphasizes the Otherness of women.

This also means that vagina-horror is one of the weak-sauce horrors because half the population doesn't even get the full effect (even toothy vaginas don't scare women that much).

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 3:07 am

Voss wrote: I honestly found her horrifying in a disturbing amount of episodes (and she fits in well in a WoD thread). She was, fundamentally, a professional mind-rapist, and casually violating people was not only expected (and something the Federation was apparently A-OK with), but her actual fucking job. The general bafflement that arose on the rare occasions someone called her on it gave me the creeps.

Of course, her mother was a hundred times worse, but that is traditionally true of mothers of monsters.

A similar thing has always bothered me in White Wolf. Mind-controlling someone is pretty extreme personal violation, and a character who does it casually or for personal gain goes straight into Black Hat territory. That works in Vampire because vampires were all supposed to be terrible people, but in the later less grimdark settings the writers forgot.

The intro comic to Changeling 2nd (shut up, don't judge me) started with the local lord Geasing the protagonist against his will to do something he basically would have done anyway. And the lord was supposed to be one of the good guys. Not even like "the good guys" in Exalted where they're really just aristocrat parasites who happen to have gold-colored auras, Changeling actually does run on black and white morality. What the fuck?

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 3:18 am

That's just the ancient Alignment debate all over again. It's actually really hard (if not actually impossible) to create a sophisticated morality system that doesn't completely collapse upon itself eventually. It is usually easier to just assume that good people are doing what they do for good reasons to people who deserve it, and as long as their acts don't get too heinous, people go along with it.

This isn't inherently good or bad, as long as the morality of the situation isn't the focus of the story. Unfortunatly in settings like the World of Darkness, it is supposed to be at least part of the story, and so they really should have put more thought into things.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 3:37 am

Well... that's the thing. A number of pieces of the World of Darkness setting make a lot more sense when you realize that there are no good guys really, just tragic anti heroes to greater and lesser degrees. Even fae, if you look into the source material aren't good guys, some just aren't actively dickish.

The other thing is that Geasing is actually seen as ok by the majority of people, as somehow different from mindrape. They see it as a thing that actually is done as a punitive measure, like Belkar's Mark of Justice in OotS (ignoring, for the moment, that that's not really a Geas), or Angel being told by The Powers That Be that he has to help people to atone for getting some nookie and slipping back into Angelus.

Even the garou, supposedly fairly heroic, given that they fight to save the world are pretty colossal assholes even before you bring in deviant sexual behaviour, just for the fact that, if you told the garou that the Apocalypse could be prevented by killing off billions of innocent humans, those that would object would be drowned out and probably even killed by the others who think it's a great idea and are asking "when do we get to the killing?"

The Fae's metaplot, as I understand it, was to bring wonder into the world because they were being killed by the grimdarkbanality that people were feeling. Somewhat noble, I suppose, but ultimately they're still just trying to save their own asses and are generally pretty ok with anything that achieves that end.

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 6:50 am

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:That's just the ancient Alignment debate all over again. It's actually really hard (if not actually impossible) to create a sophisticated morality system that doesn't completely collapse upon itself eventually. It is usually easier to just assume that good people are doing what they do for good reasons to people who deserve it, and as long as their acts don't get too heinous, people go along with it.

This isn't inherently good or bad, as long as the morality of the situation isn't the focus of the story. Unfortunatly in settings like the World of Darkness, it is supposed to be at least part of the story, and so they really should have put more thought into things.

I'm not too worried about the morality being philosophically incoherent, at least for the mind control issue. The problem for me is when NPCs start throwing around mind control and half the group doesn't understand why the other half wants to murder them. In my experience that conflict pretty much defines the White Wolf group dynamic. That shit came up all the fucking time.

In Vampire where you kill the Prince in his sleep he probably deserves it, and it's more fun than what vampires are theoretically supposed to be doing anyway. (Moping, blood-bonding union leaders, narrating uncomfortable sex scenes to your cheeto-dust-encrusted compatriots.) It was a bigger problem in say Exalted, Changeling, or Aberrant, where non-scumbags get mind control powers and the line between mindrape and acceptable social behavior is a lot blurrier.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:58 pm

There is nothing bad about mind control. It is just how you use it.
I'd say mind controlling the guard of the evil empire to get through the door is less evil than just killing her.

Prak_Anima wrote:Even the garou, supposedly fairly heroic, given that they fight to save the world are pretty colossal assholes even before you bring in deviant sexual behaviour, just for the fact that, if you told the garou that the Apocalypse could be prevented by killing off billions of innocent humans, those that would object would be drowned out and probably even killed by the others who think it's a great idea and are asking "when do we get to the killing?"

Well if you stave off the apocalypse (which would kill everyone) by killing half the population, then it would be a great idea. Not sure why you'd call them assholes.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 1:09 pm

This is all Jedi mind trick vs. "I'll shit in your soul." The fact is that every single White Wolf RPG has some option like Dominate available, usually to everyone and from character creation.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:31 pm

ishy wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:Even the garou, supposedly fairly heroic, given that they fight to save the world are pretty colossal assholes even before you bring in deviant sexual behaviour, just for the fact that, if you told the garou that the Apocalypse could be prevented by killing off billions of innocent humans, those that would object would be drowned out and probably even killed by the others who think it's a great idea and are asking "when do we get to the killing?"
Well if you stave off the apocalypse (which would kill everyone) by killing half the population, then it would be a great idea. Not sure why you'd call them assholes.

I'm not going to tell you how to form your personal code of ethics, but most people would consider "Kill half of the other group of people to save the world" to be anti-heroic at best, more likely evil when the only reason you haven't done it is because you didn't yet know that there was a point to it beyond pure jollies.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 9:14 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:I'm not going to tell you how to form your personal code of ethics, but most people would consider "Kill half of the other group of people to save the world" to be anti-heroic at best, more likely evil when the only reason you haven't done it is because you didn't yet know that there was a point to it beyond pure jollies.

I am going to tell you how to form your personal code of ethics.

If your choices are:

All the people are dead in the entire world, including me.
or
Half the people are dead.

Then unless you hate most people and really want to be dead you pick the second one.

Any ethics system that tells you to pick option 1 when you personally don't want to be dead is full of shit.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 9:21 pm

Am I seriously seeing pushback on the "Kill half the humans on earth to stop a supernatural apocalypse is an evil plan" thing? I mean, I get the idea of "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" but this is like the US deciding to drop nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 9:25 pm

If we assume that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and ended the war a year or more earlier than it actually did, then yeah, it's like Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively good things for everyone involved because the Japanese government had no chance of winning that war but had no qualms about feeding a quarter of their population into the meatgrinder while they were losing it. If your options actually are "kill a bunch of people" or "kill twice the number of people as in the first option," it is an excruciatingly simple math operation to determine that the first option is better.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 9:30 pm

Someone please tell me that the sourcebooks actually at some point talked about a silver pack or two just going into the Wyrm's realm and tearing through it and so I'm actually wrong that that's a mostly-solution?

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 10:08 pm

Chamomile wrote:If we assume that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and ended the war a year or more earlier than it actually did, then yeah, it's like Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively good things for everyone involved because the Japanese government had no chance of winning that war but had no qualms about feeding a quarter of their population into the meatgrinder while they were losing it. If your options actually are "kill a bunch of people" or "kill twice the number of people as in the first option," it is an excruciatingly simple math operation to determine that the first option is better.

Yeah, shame about that.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

Skip down to A Secret Memorandum, which talks about the surrender overtures the Japanese were making before Yalta, in January of 1945.
Or further overtures in April and May.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:30 pm

Yeah, to be clear, I have no idea what the particulars about Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually were. I just know that in order to be an accurate analogy for the Werewolf situation, it would have to have been the case that Japan had no intention of ever surrendering.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:42 pm

Take it to another thread, please.

All this talk of Vampire almost makes me want to dust off the old MC hat and do a Play-by-Post without all the metaplot baggage. Almost. It would probably still suck, though.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:57 pm

Well THAT was fucked up...

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:59 pm

Ancient History wrote:Take it to another thread, please.

All this talk of Vampire almost makes me want to dust off the old MC hat and do a Play-by-Post without all the metaplot baggage. Almost. It would probably still suck, though.

watching Buffy and realising that their vamps are just fomori did it for me.