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So recently Cinder posited that they were gonna reread the Beast books, starting of course with the core. And I thought to myself "Hey, even though I have three books I've been chomping at the bit to read, that sounds like a cool idea, it's been a while since we've read the corebook all the way through" and then I mentally corrected my self and change my royal pronoun to my personal one-and then stopped and said, "Hey, you know what could be cool? Swapping our notes from our reread with each other." And then I thought "You know what would be even better? Sharing those notes in a public forum." So I hit up Cinder and tossed the idea to them, and they were for it, so here we are.
With that said, two points of quick clarification, being 1) So how is this gonna work, and 2) Wait, who the fuck are y'all?
As to the former, well, it's gonna be informal and unorganized, I'll be honest. We're not, like, setting goals to have it all read by so and so time (though I did briefly consider doing that and pitching meetings to try and make a mini-podcast out of ths), it's just read, toss in our notes when we're done. One of us may get ahead of the other, one of us may have really scattered notes, so on and so forth. What probably will happen is that, while we'll undoubtedly respond to people chatting in the thread, you'll probably get a reall sense of what some of the conversations between me and CInder are like, how we check on each other's train of thought.
And this leads to our latter question. You're probably asking this if you're not familiar with this neck of the woods, so I'd like to say Hello, Welcome to the Beast: the Primordial threads, I hope you've had a good time in the forums overall. Cinder and I are both probably the biggest fanboys of Beast active in the forums, and we're also active freelancers who take jobs for Onyx Path when they come along. Cinder is The Beast Guy, and I've drunk a lot of whiskey and gin while putting text down about this game. We aspire to one day have a batch of books to pitch to Richard Thomas for the line, but in the mean time we spend an inordinate amount of time speaking to what we think Beast does well and where it can do better. It would be presumptuous to suggest we are the foremost experts and voices of authority in this forum, but it's not for lack of trying. Point is, we're professionals who are passionate fans of this game even as we're critical of it, and we have some history suggesting people like to listen to us talk about the subject, hence the thread.
Now, ground rules for discussion (and naturally, Cinder and I will be abiding by these rules).
1) If yer gonna chat in this thread, you should probably re-read the corebook right along with us-or read it, if you haven't read it before.
2) Criticisms of and problems with the game are welcome, but we expect these things to be handled in good faith. Give the benefit of the doubt to people making counter arguments, be willing to consider that you might be wrong, and work conversation to either help you better understand the game or at least determine it's not for you. Be willing to let something go if you or the other party just seems to be dedicated to going around in circles. If you come in here to just rag on the game, or worse to make people feel bad for enjoying or even just contemplating the game, you will not be welcomed, you will be reported.
3) This is not a discussion about Matthew McFarland or the things he did. Period. Don't try to make it one.
4) The authors of this work are real people with real lives, real problems, and real emotions. Many had Beast as their first set of jobs, and as such some of Beast's roughness stems from this fact. This is further exacerbated by a very wonky and confusing production cycle. It is one thing to be critical of the writing and the design, but that it should not overlap into attacks on the authors. If you are asked to lighten up or back off, please do so. Be critical of the work and respectful of the authors.
5) Yes, Beast went through a hasty rewrite in the middle of it's Kickstarter. I have various stages of Beast prior to those rewrites in my folders. We are not talking about about any Beast corebook beyond the finished copy that you could now get from DriveThruRPG. While we can accept that some concepts from earlier can factor into the reading (looking at you, Homecoming), please keep commentary on earlier versions to a minimum and focus primarily on the final product.
6) By contrast, you can bring up how later books affect the information in the core book, including cases where it replaces or supercedes this previous information. Also, feel free to discuss how text in other gamelines, so long as it's relevant, similarly matters to Beast.
7)Though, no, let's not labor the point that Changeling: the Lost Second Edition looked different from the time Beast was written to how it is now, nor how Hunter, Geist and Mummy were all still in first edition states and Deviant wasn't public at the time.
8) In general, even if something gets into an argument, try to be polite and keep it fun.
If you push too hard on points 2,3,4,5, and 7, you will not be welcome, you will get reported.
So, with that, said, let's have fun, starting with!
Oh my god, the intro is sooooo bad.
(Actual notes require me to read, I just looked at those first two lines and remembered I never really liked the intro.)
With that said, two points of quick clarification, being 1) So how is this gonna work, and 2) Wait, who the fuck are y'all?
As to the former, well, it's gonna be informal and unorganized, I'll be honest. We're not, like, setting goals to have it all read by so and so time (though I did briefly consider doing that and pitching meetings to try and make a mini-podcast out of ths), it's just read, toss in our notes when we're done. One of us may get ahead of the other, one of us may have really scattered notes, so on and so forth. What probably will happen is that, while we'll undoubtedly respond to people chatting in the thread, you'll probably get a reall sense of what some of the conversations between me and CInder are like, how we check on each other's train of thought.
And this leads to our latter question. You're probably asking this if you're not familiar with this neck of the woods, so I'd like to say Hello, Welcome to the Beast: the Primordial threads, I hope you've had a good time in the forums overall. Cinder and I are both probably the biggest fanboys of Beast active in the forums, and we're also active freelancers who take jobs for Onyx Path when they come along. Cinder is The Beast Guy, and I've drunk a lot of whiskey and gin while putting text down about this game. We aspire to one day have a batch of books to pitch to Richard Thomas for the line, but in the mean time we spend an inordinate amount of time speaking to what we think Beast does well and where it can do better. It would be presumptuous to suggest we are the foremost experts and voices of authority in this forum, but it's not for lack of trying. Point is, we're professionals who are passionate fans of this game even as we're critical of it, and we have some history suggesting people like to listen to us talk about the subject, hence the thread.
Now, ground rules for discussion (and naturally, Cinder and I will be abiding by these rules).
1) If yer gonna chat in this thread, you should probably re-read the corebook right along with us-or read it, if you haven't read it before.
2) Criticisms of and problems with the game are welcome, but we expect these things to be handled in good faith. Give the benefit of the doubt to people making counter arguments, be willing to consider that you might be wrong, and work conversation to either help you better understand the game or at least determine it's not for you. Be willing to let something go if you or the other party just seems to be dedicated to going around in circles. If you come in here to just rag on the game, or worse to make people feel bad for enjoying or even just contemplating the game, you will not be welcomed, you will be reported.
3) This is not a discussion about Matthew McFarland or the things he did. Period. Don't try to make it one.
4) The authors of this work are real people with real lives, real problems, and real emotions. Many had Beast as their first set of jobs, and as such some of Beast's roughness stems from this fact. This is further exacerbated by a very wonky and confusing production cycle. It is one thing to be critical of the writing and the design, but that it should not overlap into attacks on the authors. If you are asked to lighten up or back off, please do so. Be critical of the work and respectful of the authors.
5) Yes, Beast went through a hasty rewrite in the middle of it's Kickstarter. I have various stages of Beast prior to those rewrites in my folders. We are not talking about about any Beast corebook beyond the finished copy that you could now get from DriveThruRPG. While we can accept that some concepts from earlier can factor into the reading (looking at you, Homecoming), please keep commentary on earlier versions to a minimum and focus primarily on the final product.
6) By contrast, you can bring up how later books affect the information in the core book, including cases where it replaces or supercedes this previous information. Also, feel free to discuss how text in other gamelines, so long as it's relevant, similarly matters to Beast.
7)Though, no, let's not labor the point that Changeling: the Lost Second Edition looked different from the time Beast was written to how it is now, nor how Hunter, Geist and Mummy were all still in first edition states and Deviant wasn't public at the time.
8) In general, even if something gets into an argument, try to be polite and keep it fun.
If you push too hard on points 2,3,4,5, and 7, you will not be welcome, you will get reported.
So, with that, said, let's have fun, starting with!
Oh my god, the intro is sooooo bad.
(Actual notes require me to read, I just looked at those first two lines and remembered I never really liked the intro.)
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