08:56 pm - [Gaming, Rant] Ascension, Just Put My Eyes Out Now
OK, so I'm on p102 of Ascension, and I'm already pulling out my own retinas, stapling them to the walls, and running around, screaming at the top of my lungs for the pain, the pain, the PAIN to stop. Oh, the horrid, terrible pain. For fuck's sake, I thought the days of mustachio-twiddling Illuminati bad-guys was over in favour of something more nuanced and more believable in the context of the setting, but no. No, and no, and no.
I'm only on p102, and already I've been treated to the horror which is worse than a Plot on Rails(tm), its a Plot on Rails that the end of requires you to figure out something without even a single clue, and make impossible die rolls in the process. When the best way to end a situation is 14 successes on a Correspondence 3 effect while fighting off hordes of Jhor hobgoblins and twisted Spectres in pursuit of an end there's absolutely no reason to understand --- where did this come from? (This as regards the end of the "Judgment" scenario.) And to suggest the Players are put in a nice train and run back and forth from place to place while the world ends around them is to understate the case in the most excessive way possible. If Voormas is the Big Bad thinking he can end the Wheel and deny death --- Hell, compared to the other folks in play, I'm thinking I might should back him. If he struck a deal to allow Technocratic Science to be the One Truth in the aftermath, he'd probably have some serious help, too --- and with good reason.
Argh. Crap. Sheer crap.
And that just heads in to the next scenario, "The Revolution Will be Televised." And it commits the cardinal sin of Mage: They fucked up the Technocracy.
This has ever been my sticking point. Hell, bitching long, loud, and well about the imbecilic treatment of the Technocracy is what got me the Iteration X gig in the first place. And here's the key fact --- I maintain you really should have held down a 9 to 5 corporate job for over 15min to qualify to write word one about the Technocracy. No academians need apply, no scruffy, can't-hold-a-job freelancers, no artistes, just journeymen corporate sarimen who've put in their time, know a little something about technology, and can write a decent sentence.
The second scenario in Ascension turns the Technocracy which I busted ass into turning into a distributed, complex, nuanced bunch of people who pretty much are worried about making a paycheck and doing the right thing when they can into the 1st Edition's sad, pathetic, wretched, masturbatory, control-fetish conspirators. If they all wear black top-hats and cackle meaningfully as they take the deed to your ranch, so much the better. Oh, yes, except for the token "good guy" faction who's outnumbered, under supplied, and reviled by everybody else. And, of course, the Old Masters who would help but are trapped in the Void and are white hats because they're ancient Daedelans and other mystics who don't want no truck with this whole technology thing. Everybody else? Squidgy evil bastards. Or confused evil bastards.
Aside from the imbecilic repaint of the Technocracy back to primary colours, we get an incredibly lame and cooly foolish rewrite of the entire history of the Union, while we're at it. Because it's not enough to have a recent conspiracy, you've got to have one that fucks itself in the ass with it's own flaccid penis because it's so convoluted and turned in on itself. Why in the Hell would there be a movement in the NWO to be renamed the Ivory Tower? There was no secret of their origin that anyone who cared to dig couldn't find out --- and why would they think they're not engaging in the same noble aim?
So, rather than two groups (the Traditions and the Technocratic Union) who both think they're doing what's best for the world, which is a far more interesting conflict, you get the Big Bads being shaken up by schisms from within over issues it makes no sense to schism over, and the Trads who look like white knight angels --- when any moron can see their tinkering and bullshit has pretty much led humanity to the whole Armageddon state with Consensus breaking down, etc.
Argh! The blood just won't stop flowing from my eyes. Gehenna was "eh," but I'll take "eh" over "argh!" any day.
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