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[Cinder]

Time to spill the beans and tell I've been hired to work on the Heroes in a World of Horror! supplement.

As the Monday Meeting notes said, we are only at the earliest stages and everything is REDACTED, but you can hold me responsible for some of the heroism & wickedness you'll find in there.

[Cinder]

Thanks! Glad you've enjoyed it.

Not to mention if my rants make people check out good comics and books, I consider it a victory already 😉...

[Cinder]

More or less. I've always liked the idea (a fanfic I wrote ages ago is basically about a Beast and a young Hero considering pros and cons of that), so when I read "I Kill Giants" and it aligned well with what I had in mind, it was an happy discovery for me.

And it's a great read indeed!...

[Cinder]

“No Light Without Darkness: A Conclusion and an Alternative”

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“We’re ok. I’m ok. Thank you.”
- Barbara Thornson, at the end of the “I Kill Giants” comic, speaking to a giant.

This one is more for myself than anything.

The mythic cycle subversion where Beast slay the hero and ascend is amazing. I love it, it’s a victory condition Primordial needs, and a triumph where all the themes of the game play in unison. The monster needs to be able to defeat Hero in Beast, because that’s nothing less than the expression of the drive which gives...

[Cinder]

“A Better Class of Champion: Improving Heroes”

“It’s time to take the fight to their side of the battlefield”
- Jake, “Murder Falcon”

Alright, there’s still one narrative point I want to touch, but now I want to put some crunch under the teeth.

Let’s talk about ideas to improve Heroes. Some of these are patches, some are ideas thrown out there just to see what happens, others are things I’d put in the game myself if given the change. A couple depend on the others, some exist in a vacuum.

Ok then. First of all, the obvious...

[Cinder]

“The Slaughter Cycle: Heroes and the Begotten”

“Never trust anyone who goes after monsters with too much enthusiasm”
- Grandma Bridgette, “Once & Future”

Beast is a subversive game by its own very nature. This won’t ever change. It takes the premise of old myths where heroes confront monsters and asks its audience to play as those monsters for once.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but it’s stuff I’ve discussed elsewhere and there’s no point to repeat it all once again. You can find some of it in my signature or around the forum,...

[Cinder]

“Gore-tinted Glasses: The Hero problem”

“The hunt made by heroes did not feed the people. It was a bloody and lonely exercise, done for its own purpose”
- Roberto Calasso, “Celestial Hunter”

The other major issue when talking about Heroes: what Heroes aren’t.

First, there’s an elephant in the room we need to acknowledge. I’ve been thinking about how to talk about this for a while. Deleted and rewritten this section a bunch of times. It was meant to be longer, but I’ve figured this is a part of the conversation I don’t really enjoy to...

[Cinder]

“To Slay Fear Itself: The Nature of Heroes in Beast”

“I find giants. I hunt giants. I kill giants”
- Barbara Thornson, at the beginning of the “I Kill Giants” comic.

There’s a couple of things we need to deal with first in order to have any sort of decent dialogue about Heroes.

The first one is a good ol’ “what are we exactly talking about?”. In short, what Heroes are. Tons of words have been spent on this topic on a wider perspective and they resurface each time there’s a thread about Heroes, but I think in order to make any steps forward we need...

[Cinder]

Ok, this took a while. I suppose I could start a tirade of explanations, some way to make you see why I pretty much left the building and all, but there's no point. It’s 2020, things happened, I’ve disappeared from the scene, this essay took a lot to write and that’s on me. I'm to blame, no way around it.

Alright. The Hero essay.

Before we proceed: why I’m writing this essay in the first place? Well, as anyone around here can attest, heroes are one of the hottest topic when it comes to Beast. I’d go as far as saying nowadays they’re the most discussed one, period,...