Beast's Appreciation Thread

[Maitrecorbo]

I really hope i'm not going against the spirit of the thread with this. If i am, please tell me and i'll adjust my post accordingly.

So what i have to say is that although, after reading, i determined Beast wasn't the game for me, i absolutely loved everything involving the lairs. I used this information and mechanics to help me customize and shape the Hedge in a changeling game i was running. The result was fantastic and the hedge felt more vibrant and alive, almost like an npc. My players started talking about things like how the Hedge was feeling today and if it seemed like a good time to travel in or not.
I also 'ported' a lot of elements from Beast that dealt with dreams and nightmare.
And Beast helped me create one of my most terrifying npc ever (as in not only were the pcs terrified of it but my players were too, i was quite proud of that one)

Anyway what i mean to say is that even if there are stuff you don't like, one should always keep an open mind as there are fantastic elements in anything and they can be used to better your games.

[21C Hermit]

Thankyou, but there isn't much more. "Occasionally thought about" was meant literally. I'd probably make them a kind of dream shaman, able to lucidly dream into their Chamber and from there into the dreams of others (theoretically into the Primordial Dream as well, but that would be far more dangerous than most are willing to attempt; and theoretically into the Bright Dream as well, but most of them wouldn't know it exists in the first place). Anything trying to possess them would end up lost in the Chamber.

Dream-walking and possession bait. That's good enough to Sate my curiosity.

Add the ability to impose Lair Traits from their Chamber, and that'd make them much more the primal sorcerer archetype.

Oh, maybe they can add more Chambers, at the cost of one dot of Integrity per Chamber? That, and/or trading one more Chamber for a dot of maximum Integrity.

[Brian888]

Much of what I love about this game has already been said here, so let me just add a somewhat trivial, entirely personal reason.

One of my favorite novels is Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle. It's set in a world inspired by Hermetic magic that is ruled by the Decans, 36 omnipotent god-demons incarnate on the earth in living stone. From the novel comes this description of the 26th Decan, Chnoumen the Destroyer of Hearts (also called other things, as you shall see):

The ledge ran around the inside of a domed round hall, the colour of old blood. Gold veined the red walls. Arched, huge, too vast even for echoes. Her bird vision brought her sight of black line paintings on the dull red: third-six images colouring the walls around the three-hundred-and-sixty degree circle. Too distant for their subjects to be deciphered.
"Chnachoumen! Opener of Hundreds and Thousands of Years!"
The floor of this round hall, blood red and blood dark, ripples: stone becomes liquid. She tilted her head, staring down. The stink of rotting weed dizzied her, Under the surface of the water, dark shapes moved.
"You have no business here."
Translucent suddenly: glowing transparently scarlet as arterial blood, the interior sea ripples with white and gold light. Carved in planes of diamond, the coils of a great kraken fill up the pool. Tentacles curve, sinuous. The Decan of Judgements and Passing incarnate in adamant.

Beast is the only game I can think of that is tailor-made for playing EXACTLY that. You wouldn't have to kludge anything at all; it's a Makara at rest in its Heart Chamber.

[Kokiteno]

I LOVE Beast! It first piqued my interest because I could finally play a sea monster! Reading the actual book made me like it even more, especially in how it framed Beasts as not just mankind's fears but also its enforcers. After all, the word "monster" comes from "monere", which means "to warn or advise" (which is where "demonstration" comes from, too). WoD/CoD had toyed with the idea of monsters as a representation of the "if you do this, bad things will happen" metanarrative with the Lost (who could be taken because they did something) and Slashers (horny teens get killed), but Beast breathes this! Which is why the addition of "Fear as Lessons" didn't bother me at all; I was going to add that myself regardless.

Secondly, save for one, all the big Splats (Vampires, Werewolves, Changelings, Mummies, Sin-Eaters, etc.) were physically altered humans or inhuman to begin with. Mages were the only ones who had some metaphysical thing about them changed (some would say they just became more Human by Awakening to the Supernal Truth) until Beasts. The Begotten are humans, mind and body. It's their soul that has changed into something bigger. Not just a monster but its whole world, too. There was this song a while back on the radio that crooned "How deep is your love? Is it like the ocean?" I would like to think that a Makara would chuckle when listening to those lyrics, knowing their heart is so deep that it swallows light. I don't really know how to explain it but that idea of having a soul that is a vast labyrinth appeals to some romantic part of me.

Thirdly, we have Family. Everyone who plays CoD eventually wants a crossover but the reasons to have a vampire, a mage and a werewolf in the same party can sometimes end up being too zany or contrived. Enter the Beasts with their almost annoying big-brother mentality! I've only managed to play one crossover game but the Beast was the perfect glue that held together a psychic and a Demon together.

Finally, I lover that Beast, like Vampire, is about learning to live with who you are. There is no Humanity to save from the Exarchs or God-Machine to foil. All a Begotten really has to worry about is being fed and avoid dying. Other than that they are free to do as they will. They can range from kind souls searching for a higher purpose a la Lancea et Sanctum by teaching Humanity through fear, to big M Monsters who would make an old school Tzimisce blush.

There are more reasons, but I think four are enough to drive the point home that I love Beast.

[Paradim]

What really snagged me was the concept of Lairs. I love the idea of having a personal pocket dimension that is all yours and a playground to do with as you like. So many games make such a power cost an arm or a leg, or are so far off that you're unlikely to ever reach that point in a game.

But Beast? It's part of the starting premise! It's such a powerful and evocative capability. It's your personal domain, your own Silent Hill. And it's something which is pretty balanced.

There are other features of Beast that I really enjoy, but Lairs are the heart of it for me. The environment has always been what helps make monsters terrifying for me. And I love that there's a fundamental power available that's all about setting the scene.

Edit: An example of what I mean of environment helping... Think of the scene from John Carpenter's The Thing with the Thing being discovered in the dog kennel. Bad lighting, obscuring part of what the monster looks like... Compare with the recently made The Thing prequel, where the Thing gets interrupted while in a brightly lit by florescent lights hallway. You could see everything, which isn't good. Horror is in the unknown.

[Mangaholic13]

There are those who hate this game, some for dumb reasons, others for perfectly understandable reasons; I however am not one of them. I love this game, Beast the Primordial, flaws and all.

I love how this game is designed with Crossovers in mind, so I could play as a Beast charging in alongside a pack of Forsaken, a Cabal of Free Council, a motley of Summer Courtiers, and a krewe of Bound against an evil army made up of Pure, Seers, Loyalists, and God Machine Cultists!
I love that I could build my Inner Horror any way I wish, whether it be as a Beast of ancient legend like Grendel, Thunderbird, Leviathan, or Giant; or instead go with something more resent like a Creepy-Pasta or Cthulhu Mythos.
I love the concept of the Lair, how I can make my own little kingdom unseen, where I can wage climactic battles against foes both monstrous and mundane, while the world at large is left completely unaware.
I love the idea of playing a creature that must do bad things in order to survive, how my characters morality is completely my decision and not bound to game mechanics, how I have to decide what kind of monster I am; be it a depraved reaver of man, or a harsh but compassionate beast of terror. The choice is mine, and I love it!
A large number of this games flaws never turned me off, possible because I already enjoyed stories that deconstruct/reconstruct classic stories and had read enough tales from classic mythology that made me see where the writers were coming from when they first presented Heroes to us. And again, while I understand why some people may have a bone to pick with Beasts, I don't find it a massive problem myself.

Full disclosure, my initial interest in Chronicles of Darkness (then the New World of Darkness) was mostly because Werewolf the Forsaken was the only RPG I knew of where I could play as a Werewolf. As time passed and more splats came out, I got interest in others, such as Changeling and Geist, but I think Beast was the first game that I found myself loving from the moment it was announced (though I am excited for Deviant too. I mean, what other game will let me be a Kamen Rider in CoD?) and I bought the book as soon as it went out on general release.

[Nyrufa]

If there's one thing about Beast I'm not too fond of, it's the metaphorical aspect of having a monster's soul, but a human body. I'm a fan of more classical fantasy settings, and I like monsters and such being actual monsters and such. I was never really a fan of the trope where monsters walk around in human form, or the term 'monster' is more of a metaphor than anything else.

Yeah, the Changelings look human, but that's because they're using magic to disguise themselves from mortal perceptions. Beasts are physically humans, for the most part. Now, I understand that playing a literal giant or a sea monster would have been difficult, to say the least, especially in a game where the mortals are supposed to be largely unaware of the supernatural. But it's just a personal irritation of mine and doesn't ruin what is otherwise an interesting concept.

The idea of playing a creature from humanity's nightmares offers limitless possibilities for character designs, as far as horrors go. Both literal interpretations and metaphorical ones can lead to totally unique monsters, so there's little chance of playing the same type of character as somebody else in the group.

Depicting heroes as glory seeking attention whores is also a fun twist on the cosmology between humanity and monsters. Because let's face it, what's the first thing most people think about when it comes to adventuring? It usually involves grave robbing historical monuments, committing wanton acts of violence, carrying out vigilante justice by murdering the villain in their own home without so much as a trial. And after all that, you free the helpless love interest, who rewards you with sex for a job well done.

Beast the Primordial invites you to take a look from the opposite side of the fence and see these characters for the sociopaths they truly are, and I love it!

[Eternal Darkness]

Since i lack the eloquence of many of the other posters who have said so much better all the amazing things about Beast, i'll be succinct and talk about all the character concepts Beast allows that I could not easily do before in any other game all as starting characters.

-Primordial entity of pure darkness that feeds on hope by drawing victims into its lair and forcing them to fight for survival against impossible odds.
-Charybdis. THE Charybdis, a living abyss that sucks in everything that comes near it.
-A goddamn dragon, complete with fiery lair, fire breath, scales, wings i can actually fly with and claws.

and my personal favorite

-A mad doctor complete with dilapidated nightmare asylum full of tormented patients and a vampire colleague to help him administer treatment to individuals with ...behavioral issues.