Here's the next entry on my series of Beast posts that explore the game as a whole. After some days of writing (I'm not that slow, but l use the time I have) this turned out to be longer than expected so I'm gonna start posting it now in order to avoid dropping an obnoxious wall of text on all of you. Makes it a little more manageable. I should be able to end the last part by the 31st. For now, this is the beginning of my discussion.
Some of it covers things I already said elsewhere, but they're compiled here in a more organized way, with some new stuff too. Those few brave ones who follow my rants will be familiar with plenty of this. This is just me talking about Beast, no real mechanics or anything, but it's a perspective I hope you'll find interesting to read, agree or disagree with.
Heresy Rating: 1/5? It's heresy in the sense this is just me stating my opinions on aspects of the game, with me not being a real writer or anything. Beside that, I don't move much away from the book canon here.
This Is Your Life Now
Finding balance between being a monster, a person and the people you care for
Finding balance between being a monster, a person and the people you care for
"I don't aspire to be a good man. I aspire to be a whole man"
- Carl Jung
Second in my series of Beast’s essay, today we’re gonna talk about the struggle that involves a young Begotten coming to terms with its new state of being after the Devouring, specifically when related to its human life, the ensuing change of perspective and human associates. It’s a topic the core only mentioned here and there because space reasons but I’m sure will be further explored in the Player’s and Storyteller’s guides. That said, I still think I might have something decent to say about it.
One of the aspects of Beast I love is that it is built under several aspect to be a more intimate game. Speaking in Tier terms, it lends itself more easily to Tier 1/low Tier 2 stories. Which is not to say you can’t go high Tier with your Begotten and have fun with the Dark Mother calling forth all her children all over the world, the collective noise of thousands of sleeping minds screaming in unison and the walls of the Astral plane breaking down on a global scale: it’s just not the default assumption. It’s merely a matter of the tools the game offers. I believe, strongly, that Beast works at its best on a limited (if not less over the top) scale because many of his themes, like personal choices, self-acceptance, inner conflicts and what’s good and bad about having a Family are innately more intimate.
Then again the last RPGs I ran ended with Iblis cannibalizing the comatose ephemera of the Persian God of Evil and try to end the world, the Changelings of Tokyo making a pact with the spirit of Japan itself to help them against an army of youkai and oni and Mages in the 60s having to to unplug several platonic aspects of Luna, each related to a god/goddess of the Moon and an Arcanum, from what was essentially an Exarch-made lobotomy machine in order to not let the Abyssal reflection of the Sun into our universe. Plus Call Of Cthulhu games of various apocalyptic scale. I clearly have nothing against high-tier games.
It’s just that I feel like Beast shines better when it focuses on a more personal level. It’s an idea further supported by the same reason I feel like I can write something worth reading about this topic: the Begotten as a whole lack a complex and structured society. They do so because each of them is a highly-egotistical monster who embodies a number of fears, myths and lessons, because they’re too primordial for that to work and, no less importantly, because Family does not work that way. But while it fits the theme, it also makes things deceptively more difficult
A young vampire has the Covenants and the Requiem to help it gain a structure and meaning to its undeath. A wolf has the whole spirit world thing that keeps it busy, plus packs, tribes, grudges and many other millenias of spiritually enforced traditions. And so on. Even Sin-Eaters can rely on death traditions and Promethean have the dubious advantage of being made supernatural straight off the bat.
Beasts don’t have that. One day they’re humans and the following they’re monsters, with Heroes on their trail. Best case scenario is the notion, equivalent on a practical level to a suggestion dictated by common sense, that Lessons help to deal with what your Horror and Hunger demand from you. Nothing more.
The ideas, faiths and goals that guided your life before are still there. Odds are that your family (not Family) and friends are still there. Everything is still there because...why not? You might have gained awareness of your monstrous nature (or gained it as a whole with the Devouring, that’s an aspect I don’t think will ever get a definitive answer), but your life is still our own. Some (hell, many) Begotten might come to feel like proximity with ordinary people only risks to hurt them, but the decision to take distance is a personal one and,frankly , the chances it happens are pretty much the same it does not.
So, let’s explore that small-scale,intimate conflict that happens when a Beast has to process its mental and social life framework and make it fit into its new life.
Gonna divide the rest in two posts to avoid walls of texts. See ya below.
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