In my opinion, Requiem 2e was primarily ruined by unnecessary mechanical changes (a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"), but that is just my personal tastes, so feel free to disagree with me on that one. The SJW stuff is most obvious in Beast, but it is seeping into the rest of CofD as a whole and is an issue with the Onyx Path fanbase and staff in general.
Requiem 2e isn't my cup of tea, but I see why other people like it. Beast on the other hand is a blatant propaganda piece disguised as an RPG.
Beast can be summed up by a simple problem: an obsession with Campbell's monomyth and trying to subvert it. It's also very obviously something put out by the B-Team, with the schizoid mechanics and very poor editorial control. Looking at it compared to Requiem 2e (Which did fix quite a few mechanical issues with 1e, and did some fun stuff with the fluff and how disciplines work which makes it feel like it's own thing now compared to VtM) and Werewolf 2e (An absolutely fantastic book that really just hits it out of the park mechanically and theme wise) you can see the lack of editorial oversight and a real feeling from writers that were angry their baby was being questioned after the kickstarter.
The Something Awful Fatal & Friends review is a bit better with explaining it but as I've stated before, Beast runs into a lot of issues because of design goals, mechanics, and writing all having different final destinations they want to reach. Here's a quick rundown of what Beast, at least originally going by what I think the likely design goals wanted to be
- A game about being a devouring monster who feeds on fear and is tied tightly to the idea of the Monomyth
- A crossover focused line that could allow cross-splat interaction in meaningful ways
- Fills a niche in the World of Darkness to give us the sort of Monster from the Black Lagoon as a splat to round out the classic horror monsters
- Done by our B-team to give them work and practice before we let them get cracking on full scale important core line stuff
The second idea is where the real problems start creeping in, especially with the sort of writing/design staff White Wolf/Onyx Path tends to attract. Some of them see a potential way to insert beasts as (*Oppressed Minority Here*) to subvert the monomyth, and provide a good 'sidekick' for the other splats that can share powers and the like with them. If they were writing an actual novel I'd be fine with that but since they
aren't but want to be problems start creeping in, especially since mechanics in games are informed by the themes writers try to assign. So that starts what I like to term the 'clusterfuck feedback loop' that the head designer and editor should have shut the fuck down. But Matt is uh... kind of not the sort of person who you want to be alone with this. Some designers that are perfectly capable of creating interesting content when under someone else just fucking can't produce good content when they're given control of the project. It happens.
Matt's very much one of those designers and it shows.
Now, subverting the Monomyth as your end goal along with turning the 'Beauty and the Beast' on its head by saying that 'No no no, the beast was still a monster, and Gaston had a point' from the perspective of the beast could be really good and a fun experience. Playing the unrepentant monster who knows he's doing bad things but does them anyway because it feels good and natural and right is a great foundation for a roleplaying game - look at the Sabbat. The problem comes when you try and make the beast also a stand in for LGBTQOMGWTF and put your adolescent coming of age style desires into it.
Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes really shows how badly this designer and writer diva'ing and wanting to make a deep statement or whatever the fuck they were thinking fucked up the game overall because it creates a schizophrenic mess where you have to make antagonists be worse than actual 'I eat people and drive people to suicide to get my kicks' and state they can't be moral people just to make the game work. Mechanics doesn't mesh with narrative and neither does design. It's a real pity because there are a few salvageable ideas buried in the shitheap that Beast became, but the writers/designers refuse to acknowledge that they fucked up with their initial delivery.
