Ok....apparently we are going full Forsaken.

[heinrich]

Well, if auspice is what you do and tribe is how you do it, then they are probably discussing what to do and how to do it a lot...

[voidshaper]

Returning to W5, if it's gonna be Forsaken-ed - probably, Garou gonna protect the balance between Umbra and Reality?
I mean, it's still unclear WHAT they going to do.

Depends on just how hostile the Umbra is going to be. If it's Avatar Storm bad, fixing will have to be mostly on this side of the Gauntlet. My guess is it's probably going to be a way to have fast combat encounters on hand without having to shape-change on Time Square. Or maybe it's going to be W5's bus, like the Middle East for V5.

[Ana Mizuki]

Depends on just how hostile the Umbra is going to be. If it's Avatar Storm bad, fixing will have to be mostly on this side of the Gauntlet. My guess is it's probably going to be a way to have fast combat encounters on hand without having to shape-change on Time Square. Or maybe it's going to be W5's bus, like the Middle East for V5.

So anyone going to the umbra would just be lost/in limbo?

As for the shifting in public, if we go by street-level logic, nothing Time Square big would ever come to cause trouble. That would be Elder level, which players cannot reach XD

[Heavy Arms]

As has been noted previously, one of the problems is that a lot of speculation about W5 is assuming a bunch of stuff from the first W5 team is going to be kept by the current W5 team. We have no idea how grounded that assumption is. There are certainly lots of things that point to both teams having similar large scale goals, but that doesn't mean the path towards getting to them is going to look anywhere similar.

The first W5 team implied they were going to be pulling a lot from the BNS WtA metaplot events to handle how the Apocalypse happened, but there's still something to be left playing in a world that resembles the real one (namely that Gaia stepped in, did a thing which either killed her or weakened her to the point of disappearing, and cause the Apocalypse to be more of a whimper than a bang in the physical world as everyone took heavily losses and one war ended only for a new one to start up over what to do in this new spiritual battlefield).

But we haven't seen how the current team is going to handle a lot of that yet. The BNS approach relied heavily on most Cearns (and Hives) getting destroyed, with the few remaining becoming centralized focal points. That doesn't really seem to go with how the current team does things. Keeping the True Caerns with their subordinate Shard Caerns would be very not-Forsaken like in a lot of what it means for how the Umbra works for W5. Forsaken got away from Caerns and the Septs built around them, Forsaken uses Loci, which are smaller, weaker, but much more common than Caerns, and thus a resource packs (and similar scale antagonists) can fight over without upending all local politics (like personal domains in Vampire). This creates something that seems much more in line with how the current W5 team (or at least with Justin at the head) like things to be, but would have wildly different meanings for how the Garou in this new context would interact with the Umbra.

[Ana Mizuki]

Because it's the only words you used in trying to say it's going to be more like Forsaken which one the face of itself is a poor and unnecessary comparison that doesn't meaningfully arrive at a helpful way of describing it. It's just a cheap way of talking about it changing. It does not even acknowledge the substantial lore and fundamental setting differences that Forsaken operates in and under that are simply not present even in whatever 5e is trying to be.

I wanted to give this matter the attention it deserves, because I love both games and how they function.

To begin with, Forsaken from the get-go was already an answer to Apocalypse. So many things in the game are made from the issues that sprung up during Apocalypse play.

For one, while garou change very young and the Rage and the Curse make existing in normal society hard, Uratha change usually in adulthood and they can have jobs and they don't inflict the Curse on humanity. From my years of playing WtA, this is a very clear change to allow a wider diversity of character types. Do you want your Warrior Auspice character to have military training and combat experience pre-change? In Apocalypse you cannot do that while in Forsaken you can.

Next, is Pure Breed and tribes tied to it. Ivory Claws are not exactly a subtle take on Silver Fangs and Predator Kings are clearly a spin on Red Talons. Aka, purebreeding was clearly a bad thing now as there had been notes that it was eugenics pre-Forsaken.

There are many other similarities between Forsaken 1st ed and Apocalypse Revised, and it is not a bad thing. There are many choices made for Forsaken that were clearly from seeing where Apocalypse had stumbled. I like both games and I do not think either is better than the other, I am only pointing out the differences to showcase that one affected the other.

But this also means that any effort to make Apocalypse more 'open', as we saw in the BNS LARP book, has to thread on the same ground as Forsaken 1st ed since it already brought the concept of a WoD werewolf to the street level.

This is why the comparisons are inevitable, despite both being their own games. Forsaken has become more of its own thing thanks to the 2nd edition and the 20th editions took a lot of things from NWoD that worked better.

So when I'm saying W5 might be going the Forsaken route, what I mean is that a similar thing was already done and has its own fans. Why reinvent the wheel?

[Lashet]

As has been noted previously, one of the problems is that a lot of speculation about W5 is assuming a bunch of stuff from the first W5 team is going to be kept by the current W5 team. We have no idea how grounded that assumption is. There are certainly lots of things that point to both teams having similar large scale goals, but that doesn't mean the path towards getting to them is going to look anywhere similar.

The first W5 team implied they were going to be pulling a lot from the BNS WtA metaplot events to handle how the Apocalypse happened, but there's still something to be left playing in a world that resembles the real one (namely that Gaia stepped in, did a thing which either killed her or weakened her to the point of disappearing, and cause the Apocalypse to be more of a whimper than a bang in the physical world as everyone took heavily losses and one war ended only for a new one to start up over what to do in this new spiritual battlefield).

But we haven't seen how the current team is going to handle a lot of that yet.

Speaking of... how dead is Gaia, actually?
Resurect her could be a good 'main quest' for the gameline.

[Knightingale]

I wanted to give this matter the attention it deserves, because I love both games and how they function.

To begin with, Forsaken from the get-go was already an answer to Apocalypse. So many things in the game are made from the issues that sprung up during Apocalypse play.

For one, while garou change very young and the Rage and the Curse make existing in normal society hard, Uratha change usually in adulthood and they can have jobs and they don't inflict the Curse on humanity. From my years of playing WtA, this is a very clear change to allow a wider diversity of character types. Do you want your Warrior Auspice character to have military training and combat experience pre-change? In Apocalypse you cannot do that while in Forsaken you can.

Next, is Pure Breed and tribes tied to it. Ivory Claws are not exactly a subtle take on Silver Fangs and Predator Kings are clearly a spin on Red Talons. Aka, purebreeding was clearly a bad thing now as there had been notes that it was eugenics pre-Forsaken.

There are many other similarities between Forsaken 1st ed and Apocalypse Revised, and it is not a bad thing. There are many choices made for Forsaken that were clearly from seeing where Apocalypse had stumbled. I like both games and I do not think either is better than the other, I am only pointing out the differences to showcase that one affected the other.

But this also means that any effort to make Apocalypse more 'open', as we saw in the BNS LARP book, has to thread on the same ground as Forsaken 1st ed since it already brought the concept of a WoD werewolf to the street level.

This is why the comparisons are inevitable, despite both being their own games. Forsaken has become more of its own thing thanks to the 2nd edition and the 20th editions took a lot of things from NWoD that worked better.

So when I'm saying W5 might be going the Forsaken route, what I mean is that a similar thing was already done and has its own fans. Why reinvent the wheel?

That's a good point. By going down the road of trying to retcon stuff or change the status-quo of the setting in order to address issues in the lore then this will necessarily invite comparisons to Chronicles Of Darkness. Like, if Tribes are redefined, for example, as just these broad categories with mindsets/codes of behavior attached to them and the lore of the past takes a backseat in how the Tribes are portrayed - what's the difference between doing that and how Vampire the Requiem handled the Clans...? So far we haven't that much concrete information on how exactly "Tribes is what you do" gets handled.

But when H5 removed the Imbued and focused on mortal hunters, the game immediately invited comparisons to Hunter The Vigil. Not only do the CofD-books already exist as reactions/new takes on the old WOD-splats, but most of them also have second editions which means people took those new takes and by giving them a second look refined/expanded their scope/themes/mechanics. So when W5 tries to present a new take on WtA, it's in the uncomfortable position of inviting comparisons to the old WtA because it's still called WtA but it also invites comparisons to WtF by trying to offer a new take on WtA similar to what WtF originally was. W5 needs to knock it out of the park as a game in order to not have a group of people who prefer WtA 20th Anniversary over W5 and another group of people who prefer WtF over W5.

[Ana Mizuki]

That's a good point. By going down the road of trying to retcon stuff or change the status-quo of the setting in order to address issues in the lore then this will necessarily invite comparisons to Chronicles Of Darkness. Like, if Tribes are redefined, for example, as just these broad categories with mindsets/codes of behavior attached to them and the lore of the past takes a backseat in how the Tribes are portrayed - what's the difference between doing that and how Vampire the Requiem handled the Clans...? So far we haven't that much concrete information on how exactly "Tribes is what you do" gets handled.

But when H5 removed the Imbued and focused on mortal hunters, the game immediately invited comparisons to Hunter The Vigil. Not only do the CofD-books already exist as reactions/new takes on the old WOD-splats, but most of them also have second editions which means people took those new takes and by giving them a second look refined/expanded their scope/themes/mechanics. So when W5 tries to present a new take on WtA, it's in the uncomfortable position of inviting comparisons to the old WtA because it's still called WtA but it also invites comparisons to WtF by trying to offer a new take on WtA similar to what WtF originally was. W5 needs to knock it out of the park as a game in order to not have a group of people who prefer WtA 20th Anniversary over W5 and another group of people who prefer WtF over W5.

I find it really interesting how it is the same ground that is being trodden, not a new path. There is more than one way to change things, yet the CofD/NWoD direction seems to be the only one chosen. Even if you went for street-level, you aren't locked in to the limited umbra, falling tribes, lack of caerns,etc.

[Asmodai]

This is why the comparisons are inevitable, despite both being their own games. Forsaken has become more of its own thing thanks to the 2nd edition and the 20th editions took a lot of things from NWoD that worked better.

So when I'm saying W5 might be going the Forsaken route, what I mean is that a similar thing was already done and has its own fans. Why reinvent the wheel?

That's a good point. By going down the road of trying to retcon stuff or change the status-quo of the setting in order to address issues in the lore then this will necessarily invite comparisons to Chronicles Of Darkness. Like, if Tribes are redefined, for example, as just these broad categories with mindsets/codes of behavior attached to them and the lore of the past takes a backseat in how the Tribes are portrayed - what's the difference between doing that and how Vampire the Requiem handled the Clans...? So far we haven't that much concrete information on how exactly "Tribes is what you do" gets handled.

But when H5 removed the Imbued and focused on mortal hunters, the game immediately invited comparisons to Hunter The Vigil. Not only do the CofD-books already exist as reactions/new takes on the old WOD-splats, but most of them also have second editions which means people took those new takes and by giving them a second look refined/expanded their scope/themes/mechanics. So when W5 tries to present a new take on WtA, it's in the uncomfortable position of inviting comparisons to the old WtA because it's still called WtA but it also invites comparisons to WtF by trying to offer a new take on WtA similar to what WtF originally was. W5 needs to knock it out of the park as a game in order to not have a group of people who prefer WtA 20th Anniversary over W5 and another group of people who prefer WtF over W5.

This is the reason why I'm worried about the future of CoD. In a limited recognition and sales space like this, I cannot imagine Paradox/Renegade being enamored to the idea to competing with their own license. And that could end badly.

For one, while garou change very young and the Rage and the Curse make existing in normal society hard, Uratha change usually in adulthood and they can have jobs and they don't inflict the Curse on humanity. From my years of playing WtA, this is a very clear change to allow a wider diversity of character types. Do you want your Warrior Auspice character to have military training and combat experience pre-change? In Apocalypse you cannot do that while in Forsaken you can.

Well, this is something that was addressed in later iterations - from the fact that characters can change later to the fact that even some of the pregens and sample characters had obvious professions requiring up to university level training. In general, I don't think I've ever seen a game where all the shifters in a starting party were 13-16.

[heinrich]

Speaking of... how dead is Gaia, actually?
Resurect her could be a good 'main quest' for the gameline.

If she isn't dead yet, healing her would require a couple of Mages with Spirit and Correspondence - best working from the penumbra to avoid Paradox

Having a game with a set goal leads to the problem of achieving it. If "Gaias Resurrection" was the tag line, authors would possibly start to advance the metaplot in that direction but what does that help, if the story doesn't come to a close - for Paradox has a desire to keep the game world going and that is not necessarily satisfactory form a story standpoint.

If the game wasn't "Apocalypse" but "Werewolf: World Defenders" or something, the never-ending struggle would be essential to the game and expected in all narratives. That all plot elements are created with this status quo in mind...

[TyrannicalRabbit]

I find it really interesting how it is the same ground that is being trodden, not a new path. There is more than one way to change things, yet the CofD/NWoD direction seems to be the only one chosen. Even if you went for street-level, you aren't locked in to the limited umbra, falling tribes, lack of caerns,etc.

Street level, or even "Hey you better be playing street level or else!" Hasn't ever really been true of CofD since like a portion early to maybe mid era 1e CofD and even then didn't really hammer it to players except maybe 1e VtR due to some mechanics that were dropped or massively changed in contrast in 2e. And it's indicative of why your reply to me about the irritation over comparisons to CofD falls very flat. The issue is not peoples love or lack there of for CofD in making the comparison. It's that the comparison is at best, bare, and more bluntly it's a poorly constructed comparison based on vaguely presented perceptions of development goals that ignores detail to be made at all.

People have certainly not been shy in describing their perception of metaplot and fundamental world building changes that came with 5e but regardless of if someone likes or dislikes them, cutting some fat compared to what was done in the past does not really make the worlds CofD and WoD really that similar. At best it's someone looking at early 1e before CofD really broke away more fully from WoD and even that comparison breaks down after you stop talking about Requiem, breaks down further even in regards to WtF and Awakening 1e and begins to not be there at all as Changeling and future 1e lines emerged.

All the stuff that seems to be on the way for W5 does not make it Forsaken, especially Forsaken 2e. It makes it a very different Apocalypse from previous editions of Apocalypse. And it's tiring seeing the constant paper thin comparisons flanderized.

[Ana Mizuki]

All the stuff that seems to be on the way for W5 does not make it Forsaken, especially Forsaken 2e. It makes it a very different Apocalypse from previous editions of Apocalypse. And it's tiring seeing the constant paper thin comparisons flanderized.

What is paper thin about knowing common issues in WtA and seeing very clear solutions to them in WtF? The games are different, but it is clear WtF's developers took lessons from WtA.

Once more, it doesn't make it Forsaken, but it seems to be making it so the gameplay loop would be similar enough.

[monteparnas]

Street level, or even "Hey you better be playing street level or else!" Hasn't ever really been true of CofD since like a portion early to maybe mid era 1e CofD and even then didn't really hammer it to players except maybe 1e VtR due to some mechanics that were dropped or massively changed in contrast in 2e. And it's indicative of why your reply to me about the irritation over comparisons to CofD falls very flat. The issue is not peoples love or lack there of for CofD in making the comparison. It's that the comparison is at best, bare, and more bluntly it's a poorly constructed comparison based on vaguely presented perceptions of development goals that ignores detail to be made at all.

People have certainly not been shy in describing their perception of metaplot and fundamental world building changes that came with 5e but regardless of if someone likes or dislikes them, cutting some fat compared to what was done in the past does not really make the worlds CofD and WoD really that similar. At best it's someone looking at early 1e before CofD really broke away more fully from WoD and even that comparison breaks down after you stop talking about Requiem, breaks down further even in regards to WtF and Awakening 1e and begins to not be there at all as Changeling and future 1e lines emerged.

All the stuff that seems to be on the way for W5 does not make it Forsaken, especially Forsaken 2e. It makes it a very different Apocalypse from previous editions of Apocalypse. And it's tiring seeing the constant paper thin comparisons flanderized.

My only disagreement here is that CofD does make for an easier time with Street-Level game play, better than WoD ever did. It makes a very good work giving players and STs the tools to play street-level games and presenting the setting from a default street-level perspective.

But what CofD doesn't make is to hammer the street-levelness of the game into the reader all the time. It makes a case for street-level being possible and fun, but it also helps you going for any other scope of play, with all the tools you need for that. This is just as much an integral part of CofD since the beginning, even if not so clear in the very early books.

Overall I agree. Obviously WoD was built upon the previous WoD experience, and evidently V5 is using some of the results. But arguing it is "going CofD" is contrived to say the least. There are more elements being reinvented from scratch or just kept from older editions than anything really being copied from CofD.

And yes, it is a paper-thin comparison precisely because the issues are obvious. What is the point of a comparison? Among all their many distinctions, to focus on the fact they both avoid obvious mistakes? Stating a similarity, specially in the way being done, implies a lot more than just that and isn't really being a helpful describer of neither. It is, in fact, unfair with both.

[TyrannicalRabbit]

Probably because learning from past design results, changing things that feel in need of changing for modern audiences, etc is a methodology not world building to make two separate settings actually similar and that the context of such flanderized comparisons is predominately negative in presentation, "They're removing/changing X, Y, Z it's just Requiem/Forsaken/etc with the serial numbers filed off now!!!"

Rather than an actual substantive examination of either. Like how people glanced at words in V5 like "Blood Potency" or "Touchstones" when it came out and didn't bother to look at things like the limitations of Touchstones in V5 compared to Requiem or the whole mechanical infrastructure CofD has for them in contrast or how the functionality of Blood Potency in both games is not similar save a vague notion of "being a stronger vampire." The surface level criticisms that end up dominating so many social media arenas on this particular subject is, again, exhausting. it also tends to drown out voices that actually are looking at details.

[Damian May]

Yeah.....kinda regretting my original title but sometimes you sacrifice accuracy for pithiness.