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

[Saur Ops Specialist]

As for werewolves, gutting a giant worm while hanging from it's underside as you fill the planes of the apocalypse with gore, or going on a drug filled vision quest you got from a squirrel, or nurturing the monstrous child you obtained from forbidden love... It's not something common people will immediately relate to and may even drive them away. But deffending impressionable youths from drug pushers is something we've seen hundreds of times before on TV so it's fine.

A reminder - the bolded part doesn't apply to W5. Also, I think that tripping by taking drugs and not drinking someone's blood after dosing them with said drugs would make W:tA more relatable than Vampire. You know, the entire "still living, still subsisting on food and drink as normal" thing?

As for the worm on the plains of the apocalypse, that's just fucking metal. I think it'd be a draw for new fans.

[Newb95]

A reminder - the bolded part doesn't apply to W5. Also, I think that tripping by taking drugs and not drinking someone's blood after dosing them with said drugs would make W:tA more relatable than Vampire. You know, the entire "still living, still subsisting on food and drink as normal" thing?

As for the worm on the plains of the apocalypse, that's just fucking metal. I think it'd be a draw for new fans.

Are you really arguing the moral high ground for the garous? Because I think that between monsters who drink blood and furry talibans people are going to prefer the former...

[Asmodai]

The general interpretation is that it's supposed to be the markings made by two Crinos hands grasping.

I always thought it was a New Dawn.

[tasti man LH]

Of course, this makes me ponder how you could do a long-term campaign without losing Personal Horror, keeping things local and not having a larger impact on the setting.

This I feel is the biggest flaw when it comes to PDX’s insistence on having all of WoD5e stick to “grounded, street level, personal horror”.

That kind of scale is only really effective around one-shots or short term chronicles. Where player progression and power scaling is a lot smaller and this more manageable to maintain that tone.

Long-term chronicles are where issues start to crop up. Because you’re giving the PCs enough time and EXP to max out on Abilities and powers, and now suddenly the street gang, corrupt cops, or greedy businessman/politician doesn’t seem as big of a deal if you can melt them with your bevy of rating 4-5 powers. Hard to maintain that gritty and grounded tone if the big fish that is the PCs stay in the small pond.

[Asmodai]

I think the Street level play largely stems from the duality of vampire. Vampire was built from the ground up as a satire where you the player do horrible things for wealth/power/influence. "winning" means either becoming a despicable politician or by regaining your humanity and stepping away from power (IE you don't play anymore). As a satire, it exposed the folly and vices of rulling elites. Unfortunately, to really get the ball rolling, the player needs the maturity to embrace a villainous streak, and not everybody has that or really understands that. Thus street level play is encouraged because it allows for some of the problems of the rulling elites to be somewhat apparent while pulling players away from being villainous politicians who are rewarded for their wrongdoings. It's a twisted way of moralizing the game. A compromise that makes the game more accessible to those who are morally defective and who don't want to challenge themselves.

As for werewolves, gutting a giant worm while hanging from it's underside as you fill the planes of the apocalypse with gore, or going on a drug filled vision quest you got from a squirrel, or nurturing the monstrous child you obtained from forbidden love... It's not something common people will immediately relate to and may even drive them away. But deffending impressionable youths from drug pushers is something we've seen hundreds of times before on TV so it's fine.

I think this is a Vampire problem being pushed onto Werewolf just like it was pushed onto Mage in Revised. This whole obsession with insignificance and depredation in Vampire is its own cross to bear, but some authors keep coming back and shoving in Vampire's hangups into other lines.

Are you really arguing the moral high ground for the garous? Because I think that between monsters who drink blood and furry talibans people are going to prefer the former...

Well yes. The Furry Religious Nuts actually believe in something other than fucking over other people, enslaving them to their will and blood and sucking the life out of humanity while preying on their weakness to exploit the flaws power structures and dynamics of modern human society. In a world beyond fucked up the shifters are at least trying to make a positive change and own up to their fuckups. The Vampires will just suck more blood, humanity and soul out of people as long as they get another night and an inch more power. So yes, Werewolves are the relatable ones for all their flaws.

[Heavy Arms]

Because I think that between monsters who drink blood and furry talibans people are going to prefer the former...

It does not take much paying attention to history or current events to see that people will readily take religious extremists as allies as long as those extremists share the goals of the non-extremist groups pushing in the same direction.

Your own choice of metaphor is a great example of why you're wrong about this. A huge portion of Afghanistan prefers the Taliban over the alternatives because (a) the Taliban has been more stable for them and (b) they're extremely conservative Muslims that aren't significantly impacted by the Taliban's extremism. The Taliban didn't force them at gunpoint to work opium poppy fields so warlords could buy fancy mansions in Kabul. The Taliban didn't divvy up territories between different militias so a family might have to put up with extortion fees from three different groups because one claimed their farm, a different claimed the water source that supplies it, and another controls the bridge they use to get to market. The Taliban didn't trample their fields with tanks, drone strike funerals, or otherwise cause death and chaos in the supposed name of freeing them from themselves.

To many rural Afghanis, the Taliban is the least worst option, and the one that at least shares their morals around daily life and domestic affairs, even if they'd wish the Taliban would stop trying to force itself on people that don't want it, or get involved in international issues that only get everyone bombed/drone strikes.

A lot of people in the real world would absolutely pick the Garou over the vampires. The Garou might be violent religious extremists... but they're fighting things a lot of people consider evil, our current government systems are utterly failing at addressing, and vampires are just parasites that want to keep things the way they are. Lots of people will cling to the idea that the Children of Gaia and the Glass Walkers will keep humans aligned with Gaian ideology safe from the Red Talons, if it meant having the power to actually stop climate change, tear down corrupt government and business, and so on.

-----------------------------------------

On the whole street level thing:

Street-level can be done fine. But you need the game to be built around it. You can do really long street level games in plenty of systems out there. Shadowrun is very similar in its mechanical designs, and approach to metaplot, as the WoD has been. But it stays street because Runners don't really have a way to escape that level of play on purpose. You don't really want to, because being a Runner is cool, and getting into bigger scale stuff means being a sellout to the corps (or worse). You still get lots of cool action powers even though you're forced onto the fringes of society and rarely able to have any real say on large scale issues, and most editions of Shadowrun are pretty good at avoiding making that too deprotagonizing.

"Punk" games naturally orient around street-level play. It should be low hanging fruit for a game that says its "punk" to do so.

The WoD, going way back, was always really bad at actually incentivizing the punk side of things and just wanted people to play it voluntarily while giving so many viable non-street options. It's probably why the WoD got way more popular than many contemporary games that were better at street-level play. V5 is... really the same way. H5 got some of the message, but is rather ham-fisted about it (the whole "organized hunters can't have Drive" thing). We'll see if W5 finally gets decades of RPG design out there that makes keeping things street-level fun, but it doesn't seem like we're going to seem them abandon the idea that's were the WoD "should" be.

[Damian May]

Are you really arguing the moral high ground for the garous? Because I think that between monsters who drink blood and furry talibans people are going to prefer the former...

At the end of the day Garou are living breathing entities with all the issues we have....as well as many of their own.....vampires are cannibalistic rape-corpses whose best intentions involve treating humans as cattle and whose worst involve drowning the entire world in blood.

At the end of the day, endgame for Garou is the world survives, humanity survives ( though, for some Tribes, not in current numbers or tech levels) and things get better even if they need to sacrifice almost everything to get there. Kindred endgame is people in slaughterhouses or slavery serving the needs of their parasite overlords.

[Helur]

Achilli just confirmed in an answer (werewolf development tweet from wod Twitter) that no tribe will have cultural ties. Therefore no Irish stereotypes, no indigenous representations, and most likely no ties to Egypt for the Silent Striders. Anyone can be in every tribe.

https://twitter.com/jachilli/status/1578467660375162880?t=4DwLfZ7-BYn9FIzAHSkuig&s=19

[tasti man LH]

…ok if that’s the case why still have the Fianna name?

[Helur]

…ok if that’s the case why still have the Fianna name?

Why keep Brujah or Nosferatu or Las-ombra ? That was basically Achilli answer in an older tweet. Various names are references from world cultures, but they are going to keep them anyway.

"Some words will remain, like Fianna, but others change, based on cultural consultancy research on them. (Other games have some non-English proper names, like Brujah, Gangrel, etc.). Tribe concepts change to undo dependency on real-world cultures, like we did with V5 Ravnos." Achilli

[Ragged Robin]

…ok if that’s the case why still have the Fianna name?

They want the cake without eating it.


Personally I have no problem with ethnic associated supernatural groups as long as they're tastefully done and non restrictive to play, stuff like that can really embed a faction/class in the world rather being some weird static group disconnected from reality, which is especially bizzare with their enthusiasm for the STREET were ethnicity or cultural identity is major factor.

(As I prepare a meeting with a Coptic asylum seeker whose English is at best poor. This time i got my own coffee, the good shit since i know my guest likes a brew and some biscuits becouse he's dirt poor and i suspect hes sacrificing meals for his kid)

[Helur]

They are just keeping what it's not problematic for the great audience. They changed only wendigo and uktena for obvious reasons. Get are removed because the game must appeal to a new fanbase. You can say multiple time they killed all the nazi withing the tribe. Tribal ideas and attitude would still attract nazi and therefore create internal problems , that's their equation . They want to avoid all of this.
You can argue as much as you want in-lore or about the fact they are not nazi and so on. Doesnt matter. They still COULD be a problem and that's enough for a company who faced multiple controversy issues from the shamefully thing about Chechnya or the stupid chaos that was born from an alt right brujah example.

[ArcaneArts]

They are just keeping what it's not problematic for the great audience. They changed only wendigo and uktena for obvious reasons. Get are removed because the game must appeal to a new fanbase. You can say multiple time they killed all the nazi withing the tribe. Tribal ideas and attitude would still attract nazi and therefore create internal problems , that's their equation . They want to avoid all of this.
You can argue as much as you want in-lore or about the fact they are not nazi and so on. Doesnt matter. They still COULD be a problem and that's enough for a company who faced multiple controversy issues from the shamefully thing about Chechnya or the stupid chaos that was born from an alt right brujah example.

I will legit say I wish I had your optimism.

[Heavy Arms]

…ok if that’s the case why still have the Fianna name?

While I agree with the idea that they should have renamed the Fianna to be in-keeping with the other Tribe's names (and Fianna being alone in W5 makes it stand out in a way that isn't satisfactory when trying to point to thing like the V5 Clan names where being modern English versions of phrases that could have been around for ages is the exception and not the rule)...

This is actually a bigger problem with Tribes like the Black Furies and Red Talons. While I've long argued that the Black Furies being just women isn't actually great from in-universe and design perspectives, their woman-first mentality is still important. If anyone can be a Black Fury, or a Red Talon, they have pretty much no reason to exist. Even if we assume Justin meant "anyone of the right emotional and philosophic persuasion," can be a member of the Tribe that fits that mentality, eleven Tribes is just too many conceptually. The Children of Gaia vs. the Black Furies is just a holistic approach to healing the damage of the patriarchy, vs. angry smashing of the patriarchy. Actual feminists don't sort themselves like that. The Ghost Council and the Silent Striders are both Tribes that... travel to find stuff out. Besides the obvious of wanting to keep all the Tribes to market to the old brand they're not even using anyway, it feels like they're going to either spend a huge amount of word count trying to justify what the difference between the Galestalkers and the Red Talons are now, or they're just going to leave have really overlapping Tribes and tell the reader to pick whichever feel best with no eye to a cohesive world building to put those characters into.

Edit: Also, I want to know what sensitivity consultant said that the best thing to do with the Native American Tribes in WtA was just to erase Native representation in the game.

[Helur]

I will legit say I wish I had your optimism.

Here is not about optimist. I'm just telling what the whole thing looks like to me, not that those things reported by me are necessary good . I am positive toward w5 , but this doesnt mean I'm positive on what I reported. We have too few things right now.