[Beast]Revisions

Beast: The Primordial, Open Development

Heya, Matt here.

So, first of all, I want to thank all (as of this writing) 1149 folks who have backed Beast. Your support means everything to the project, not just in the form of your hard-earned cash, but also in the form of the comments and discussion here. It’s been a real pleasure to watch people talk about Beast, analyze it in terms of media, discuss what Dark Eras would be cool, and plan out the characters they want to make.

But not all Beast discussion has been quite so positive, and I want to talk about that. Stay with me a minute.

With Beast, we tried doing a bunch of things differently. Some of those things were purely mechanical; the game doesn’t have a “fuel trait” the way our other games do, for instance, nor does its Integrity analogue function the way that other such traits do. Moreover, it was always our intention to take a light touch with Beast “society;” I didn’t want the same kind of structure that, say, Vampire or Changeling uses. The Hero/Beast dynamic, too, came out differently than I was intending.

The result of that is the game has some issues. If you’ve followed discussion of the game on various online forums, you’ve probably seen it. I’m not going to repeat every point, here, mostly in the interests of time (I’ve got a development pass to get started on!), but here’s the gist: We hear you. There are problems with the game as it stands. Some of those problems come from the fact that we did try and break some new ground on the game, and that always carries a chance of something coming out different that one planned. Some of it just the nature of game development; at this stage of the process, things are getting tweaked. The difference is that it’s more public than it’s ever been. And some of it is that, honestly, when you’re as close to the material as I and the other writers have been, it’s easy to lose perspective.

Of course, the game hasn’t been received wholly negatively. I’ve had the pleasure of watching folks who really like the game talk about their inspirations, their character ideas, and the mechanical innovations we’ve made. We’ve heard those voices, too, and as we move forward, we’re listening to the positive feedback as well as the criticism.

What all that means is this: I’m doing another development pass on Beast. I’m going to add about 15,000 words of text (give or take), and do some heavy revision on parts of the game. My plan is to have that done by next Friday, June 19, but if that changes during the week, I’ll let you know. As I revise chapters, I’m going to give them to Rose to link from the Kickstarter, and I’ll be putting them up on Google Drive and doing posts on the Onyx Path blog so you can see what we’re doing.

Here’s a quick list of the overarching things we’re addressing. Note that I’m enumerating specific changes here (that is, I’m saying what we’re changing but not how), because I’m still compiling my notes and making a plan.

Resolving the “are you born a Beast or not?” question.

Defining Beast culture; we’re not adding social splats, but we are giving Beast society some structure and giving Storytellers something more to work with (this is where a lot of the extra word count is going)

Further definition of the Primordial Dream, its relationship to Beasts and Heroes, and what you can do with it in play (this is where a lot of the rest of the word count is going)

Hand in hand with that point, we’re underlining Beast-on-Beast conflict more

Redefining the Beast/Hero relationship, and (more to the point), revising how the text treats Heroes

Looking at the crossover sections and making sure they reflect the other game lines well, and that they get across our intent with making Beast crossover friendly

crossover friendly Making sure that in-character opinions are clearly reflected as such; all of the World of Darkness games include unreliable narrators, but it’s important (especially for a new game) that the reader understands what the game assumes to be true and what a character within the game assumes to be true

Giving Beasts something specific to do. That was definitely the most exciting part of the meeting that we had last night. I think you’ll like it. It addresses one of the biggest points of criticism we’ve had, which is that a Beast sating its Hunger is pretty much just cruel and abusive for the sake of it. I want characters in my game to be monstrous; they’re Beasts, after all. But I want there to be a point.

There are other, minor revisions that’ll happen, too, most of them logical outgrowths of the list above. Stay tuned, watch this space, and thank you for all your feedback. This is going to make for an intense week for me, but I’m excited to do the work.

Watch this space (regardless of what space you’re seeing this on, it’ll at least get linked) for more information, and again, thank you for your support and your feedback. Criticism stings, but it teaches a lesson.

And that’s an appropriate note to end on, I think.