W5 auspices and forms

[Knightingale]

"Primordial wolves"... now, I know things worked differently in WoD, but in order to preserve that whole "like the real world, mostly" detail, I think it's still relevant that there have never been wolves anywhere near the size of Hispo. Not even half the bulk of Hispo (which is still larger than the average size of the dire wolf, aka the swole dhole aka this was not actually a wolf).

Did that get changed back to lupus? I'm not seeing it on the blog post now.

No, that was just a joke on my part. It never actually said Canis.

But you bring up an important aspect of the game. With Hispo and Lupus being part of the game, realistic vs fantastical in how you depict that compared to previous editions is a serious question. How much are players supposed to care about realistic wolf-physiology in their roleplaying of a Garou in general? Will there be a section in W5 dedicated to that? I guess, we'll see how W5 will tackle that.

EDIT:
Okay, to me that just seems weird... This is an exchange Justin Achilli had on Twitter:

Justin Achilli:
Bit of a personal victory, but the Gift "Cutting Wind" has been renamed. We'll see if it survives into production, but that one has always been unintentionally comical.

Satyros Brucato:
Nah - it was intentionally comical. I recall discussing "the fart joke Gift" with @bbridges back in the day, and asking if we could change it in Werewolf 2. Bill noted that folks tales are often far less squeamish about bodily functions...

Justin:
Now that you mention it, I remember @bbridges defending either “Cutting Wind” or “Broken Wind” during some Rage CCG planning, as well.

And Satyros and Bill Bridges add:

Satyros Brucato:
...and how such tales often feature farts, shitting, big dicks, and other stuff too "vulgar" for "proper society" to acknowledge.
And so, the fart Gift remained.
I don't recall if it was Rob Hatch or Sam Chupp who created that Gift. I do know it was SUPPOSED to be amusing.
Bill Bridges:
(He posted a link to a spirit from Innu mythology called Matshishkapeu)

[Ana Mizuki]

Knightingale Man, it does say something when people try to match the culture they took stuff from and it is treated as 'too silly.'

The same issue I have with people calling WtA Captain Planet with Furries or freaking out about Furries in the game. This is the nature of the beast, if you don't like it house rule it or play the non-furry WoD games XD

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I wouldn't quite describe W:tA as furry, but only because I usually associate that with a more neutral merging of human and whatever. Garou and Fera have a strong purpose-biased bent to what their "were-forms" are for, which results in things like wolves having among the largest and strongest such forms in spite of wolves being rather small, or Mokole not actually having a strict merging of just two forms, and of course, Ananasi just disrespect the system with every form that isn't human.

No, that was just a joke on my part. It never actually said Canis.

But you bring up an important aspect of the game. With Hispo and Lupus being part of the game, realistic vs fantastical in how you depict that compared to previous editions is a serious question. How much are players supposed to care about realistic wolf-physiology in their roleplaying of a Garou in general? Will there be a section in W5 dedicated to that? I guess, we'll see how W5 will tackle that.

If they're copying Forsaken as rampantly as they have been, they might raise a stink about chocolate consumption across forms, but forget that Garou don't keel over because of just a few non-magical alkaloids, or that Resist Toxin exists. I'm also expecting some... interesting mistakes regarding volumetrics, though hopefully that was just a result of the preview ad copy.

EDIT:
Okay, to me that just seems weird... This is an exchange Justin Achilli had on Twitter:



And Satyros and Bill Bridges add:

Huh. I never associated Cutting Wind with farts, if only because it was described as bitterly cold. Now, if you want scatology, you go for the Warding Mokole Gift: Spew, which explicitly noted that, while the default was drinking fluid and then throwing it back up with slime additives, the users were, ah, not limited to that orifice or system. Guess it doesn't get much press because it's off in a breed book away from the core.

[Heavy Arms]

What worries me most about that whole Twitter thread, is that crowing about finally getting to remove a fart joke should be the absolute last thing on the mind of someone redoing WtA. Gifts have always been a problem for WtA because there's an insane number of them, the consistency of their power/utility is all over the place, and their low XP costs meant players tended to want to grab tons of them which was starkly out line with how the authors seemed to assume character would only learn a small handful of them.

Forsaken 1e made Gifts like Disciplines, which helped in some ways, and hurt in others. Forsaken 2e's approach seemed to have hit a nice balance.of better structure, integration of Renown, and not just being Disciplines with strange extra rules.

If Justin is completely redoing the Gifts in all this, renaming them should be the last of his worries. After all the Tribes aren't going to have cultural ties to human ethnic groups any more, so there shouldn't any Gifts from pre-W5 that are tied to specific mythologies as part of the Tribes cultural links to humans.

Why is there even a reason for Cutting Wind to be in whatever the new Gift setup is, if it basically only existed to give Younger Brother a cultural reference Gift for their cultural linked Tribe?

[Knightingale]

There are three things that bother me about this twitter-thread:

1) I mean, who cares, right? I could understand caring about this for a W20-release. Nostalgia mixed with sort-of trying to be a new edition at the same time could get you to a place where the names of Gifts from previous editions are somehow relevant. But this is a "re-imagination" with a lot of indications of throwing out a ton of lore. So, caring about the name of a Gift from a previous edition doesn't seem that important.

2) In the context of what Satyros tweets and what Justin says in response, that first tweet is so weird. The first tweet calls the renaming of the Gift a "personal victory" and laments the unintentional humor of the name. Then Satyros explains that this was discussed actually back in the 90s and Bill Bridges wanted it that way. And Justin responds that he remembers Bill Bridges having a similar discussion with Justin in the room while talking about a CCG. So in the 90s Bill Bridges was a colleague of Justin Achilli and they actually discussed the matter of the humorous Gift-names. And now in charge of W5 Justin calls it a "personal victory" to change the name of such a Gift and calls it "unintentional humor". Justin Achilli has insight into why WtA was designed the way it was few people have. So there are only two options here, both not good: Either he cared so little about WtA in the past that he genuinely forgot his discussions with Bill Bridges about WtA - or he didn't actually forget and the "personal victory" is him trying to erase stuff from WtA he never liked but in the 90s he couldn't because of his position in White Wolf and because Bill Bridges didn't agree with him.

3) I'm not super-familiar with RPG-development but Justin Achilli is the Creative Lead of the WOD-team. Why would his decision to rename a Gift not survive production...? Unless the new name is super-lengthy or problematic, how could this even happen? Who would be there to tell the Creative Lead "No, you can't change the name of this Gift."?

[Heavy Arms]

I believe #3 is more that he's not sure the final Gift, regardless of name, will make it into W5. I have no idea why he wouldn't know that by this point in where the game seems to be, but given how many "summon wind," powers were in WtA already, I can see cutting some of them out on general principle.

[Lunar Falcon]

Did anyone else catch the part where it said that if you change forms too often you can lose the wolf? Who do they think the target audience is who believes there should be less shape-shifting in a game about shapeshifters?

[Heavy Arms]

It's hard to say, as the phrasing doesn't state a direct correlation. Shifting is "easy" and tied to Rage, but you have to be careful not to overly on it because losing the wolf might cause problems.

That could be what you're concerned about, or it could be that losing the wolf is a second mechanic that could cause you to lose the ability to shift.

It's very hard to say with how little mechanics they're teasing.

[Damian May]

Either he cared so little about WtA in the past that he genuinely forgot his discussions with Bill Bridges about WtA - or he didn't actually forget and the "personal victory" is him trying to erase stuff from WtA he never liked but in the 90s he couldn't because of his position in White Wolf and because Bill Bridges didn't agree with him.

If they're still on the wayback machine or the like you can go back and see discussions between JA and WtA Developer Ethan Skemp ( and a bunch of other WtA writers and fans) that would indicate that its a mix of both.

He really didn't think much of the game or the people who played it, I see little to convince me that has changed over the last few years.

[Heavy Arms]

OK, so not to get too off topic here, and trying to avoid stepping on toes...

Justin has always, despite his politics and the games he's worked on, been something of an institutionalist. He was deferential to the WW teams that predated his joining the company (like Bill Bridges and Satyros) as the established institution he was trying to prove himself to. He was more competitive with his contemporaries that joined WW in the mid 90s, and esp. the ones that became line devs in Revised (such as Ethan Skemp) as the people he needed to stand out from. And he encouraged those that came after him to engage in the same sort of mentality; which I will personally attest to directly as he was a moderator on the early incarnations of WW's BBS and forums, and would frequently socially reward those he perceived as "winners" of flame wars by giving them little to no moderation while ensuring those they out-debated got harsher sanctions that might seem justified in what was never a one-sided activity.

So, if you're trying to square this stuff, that's the through line. WtA 1e and very early 2e are the original and proper form of WtA, which he felt was diverged from and was vocally opposed to changes he felt weren't in the spirit of the original (keeping in mind the original covered ~3 years out of a 12 year run so he didn't like a lot of the original WtA books).

The Auspices are unchanged because.. they were never changed anyway. Even Forsaken basically kept them the same (the only real changes were that Forsaken acknowledged that Crescent Moon had too big a portfolio and gave some aspects of spirit negotiations to Half Moons, and prophecy to Gibbous Moons).

[Spencer from The Hills]

The Auspices are unchanged because.. they were never changed anyway. Even Forsaken basically kept them the same (the only real changes were that Forsaken acknowledged that Crescent Moon had too big a portfolio and gave some aspects of spirit negotiations to Half Moons, and prophecy to Gibbous Moons).

I say that the difference between the new moon auspices is bigger. Ragabash combine Irraka's stealth with jester's privilege and latter is more prominent than the former in the description on this WOD news page.

[Nicolas Milioni]

I feel like talking about Justin's,or any other writer's, personal life is not a very nice thing to do

[Nicolas Milioni]

And you all seem to fault him a lot for doing things his way. Why wouldn't he do things his way? I mean,if you were the creative lead would you really do what others thought it was best,or would you do what you want to do?
Being a creative lead means you have to follow yourself,your ideas,your opinion
And you have less than zero obligation to follow anyone else.

[Nicolas Milioni]

Ok sorry I got carried away and was rude,I'm sorry for that.
I guess what I want to say is that I think you should be open minded,every change has been very viciously torn down

[TyrannicalRabbit]

I feel like talking about Justin's,or any other writer's, personal life is not a very nice thing to do

One part of discussion was his professional approach which..............isn't his personal life. Another was on his moderation style in a public space, also not personal life.