W5 QA

[Damian May]

The Fianna - we're like the Red Talons, but with farms!

Yep, that was my first thought as well. When did crop-rotation become a defining characteristic of Stags Chosen?

[Knightingale]

A part of me simply can't accept that this is what Tribes are gonna look like in W5. It would just be SO bizarre... So, there are no more ethnic ties and background-restrictions. Therefore, the former Native American Tribes are now neutral and have no regional focus. Similarly, Black Furies aren't women-only and Red Talons aren't Lupus-only. So the names of the younger brother and older brother Tribe are changed and their concepts aren't centered on Native Americans. And Black Furies are now about injustice in general. But the Red Talons are still a Lupus Tribe focused on Lupus-issues...? So there are rewrites for those other Tribes but... not for Red Talons?

What was the point of "Tribe is what you do" and all that talk about verbs if despite all those concepts the Tribes somehow still end up clinging to the old versions of the Tribes somehow in a lot of cases? Like, somehow the Silver Fangs still care about lineage, purity and being a kind of nobility... even though in this version it's just random people and wolves becoming Garou... So the Tribes are these muddled concepts where you have these echoes from the past but in the context of the new W5 they don't seem to connect to how the setting works.

[BadFurryFanFic]

Reading that... It seems to me like someone is trying to write about the W5-Tribes with the same amount of knowledge we have gotten through previews thus far. No, actually even less at this point... Because the write-up of the Silver Fangs makes no sense in the context of the Garou/Kin-dynamic.

That can't be what the Tribes in the W5 corebook end up being like.

Yup. I'd say the boardgame developerers have been given the 4 verbs and little else based on the writeups I've seen and they've tried to pad the descriptions with as vague as possible info from previous editions.

If I had to guess they're struggling to get useful information from Paradox for use in the game, because most of it doesn't exist yet.

[BadFurryFanFic]

A part of me simply can't accept that this is what Tribes are gonna look like in W5. It would just be SO bizarre... So, there are no more ethnic ties and background-restrictions. Therefore, the former Native American Tribes are now neutral and have no regional focus. Similarly, Black Furies aren't women-only and Red Talons aren't Lupus-only. So the names of the younger brother and older brother Tribe are changed and their concepts aren't centered on Native Americans. And Black Furies are now about injustice in general. But the Red Talons are still a Lupus Tribe focused on Lupus-issues...? So there are rewrites for those other Tribes but... not for Red Talons?

What was the point of "Tribe is what you do" and all that talk about verbs if despite all those concepts the Tribes somehow still end up clinging to the old versions of the Tribes somehow in a lot of cases? Like, somehow the Silver Fangs still care about lineage, purity and being a kind of nobility... even though in this version it's just random people and wolves becoming Garou... So the Tribes are these muddled concepts where you have these echoes from the past but in the context of the new W5 they don't seem to connect to how the setting works.

It's troubling to me when the response to former depictions being problematic is not to correct the problems but instead simply undertake erasure of the cultures in question.

Was the feedback from the NA and other consultants really " Don't even try, you'll just fuck it up. Better to remove everything."?

[Ragged Robin]

It's troubling to me when the response to former depictions being problematic is not to correct the problems but instead simply undertake erasure of the cultures in question.

Was the feedback from the NA and other consultants really " Don't even try, you'll just fuck it up. Better to remove everything."?

I imagine they're a little gun shy post v5. Obviously some changes and controversies were legit issues but a number were completly hysterical or excessive. With the highly digitised age an angry nerd can wip up a mob to pelt you on twitter with ease.


From their perspective they could take the time to work on the problematic bits while trusting the audience to trust that terf black furies don't represent the sentiments of the writters, but some arse is going to go at them anyway so why bother? It's cowardly and self defeating but their is an internal logic.

Of coarse it never occurs to the writters that twitter or frankly, rpgnet probably don't represent concensus amoung gamers irl. Or that you can log off twitter.

[Ana Mizuki]

I am feeling really sorry for the Flyos team. They have to deal with people expecting a WHOLE other game.

Also, I kind of expected this but hoped they would not do this. Crinos is now Gauru from Forsaken.

Out of all the changes they made, making crinos like Gauru is the stupidest. Because the time limit means that players avoid the form unless they REALLY have to use it. Thus making Dalu (glabro) and Urshul (hispo) forms into the actual tactical combat forms. This means everything that made crinos such a great form to fight in and use is now thrown aside.

[Knightingale]

Yeah, Justin Achilli said something about the Crinos-form already being more than enough of a weapon in the past... whatever that means.

Also, this suggests the Tribe-descriptions depict what W5 is indeed going for which is... not good.

[ArcaneArts]

To be fair on this one, the premise of the hybrid wolf-man is a thing that has conflict either way. It's the form that players coming in are probably going to have the most expectations, particularly given the artwork for, so you want to make it meaningful-but how do you do that in a way that keeps all the other forms relevant? Lock it up too much, and you're keeping players from a reason you want to play the game, make it too available, and it becomes trivial.

In the case of Forsaken, there's a hybridization of forces that makes the time limit approach ideal for that one. The emphasis of werewolves as hunters leads to an increased level of tactical thinking when it comes to conflicts, a lot of skirmishing and carefully delivered harrying and situational manipulation that leads into a climactic moment, at which point the Wolf-Man being the icon of climax being held in reserve really gets to shine, because everything has built up to this moment and it gets to pay out beautifully. it also makes for increased drama when the script has to be deviated away, because your climactic silver bullet (heh) has to be spent on whatever scenario has got you so pushed to your limits, which establishes the dangers and sets precendent for the climax being that much harder fought. Forsaken pays off with that time limit, in many ways it's built around that.

Apocalypse doesn't have that benefit of dramatic structure. The werewolves there are-well, they're more varied than that saying "warriors" implies, particularly contrasted with hunters, but Apocalypse werewolves are warriors. There's all manner of room exploring that, but some of that the expectation you have going in is that, every once in a while, more so that the climax, you need to have moments where you soldier up and get into it, in a way Forsaken doesn't. In that way, having a more readily available Wolf-Man form is going to be cathartically neccesary- but if you're assuming for the grand majority of your scenes that you're going to be in Wolf-Man, then everything becomes flat and boring.

There's no good answer for how to deal with that. At least for the video game, they can make the argument on the grounds of Video Game Logic, but for Apocalypse proper, I dunno how you meaningly keep the Wolf Man form special in a way that works for Apocalypse's themes and moods, particularly since certain kinds of answers will elicit people saying "Oh great, it's Forsaken."

Mind you, in that little clip of conversation, I only see commentary about not being able to use Klaives in Crinos, nothing about the time limit. Is that mentioned elsewhere?

[Ana Mizuki]

Mind you, in that little clip of conversation, I only see commentary about not being able to use Klaives in Crinos, nothing about the time limit. Is that mentioned elsewhere?

Look, given the way things are going, I'm 95% certain there will be a time limit.

[ArcaneArts]

Look, given the way things are going, I'm 95% certain there will be a time limit.

Yer not wrong, but I would still prefer confirmation to speculation.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

And it started off so promising... just change a few names and swap out some stuff...
But then it moved into that "putting on clown makeup and wig" meme.

[Ragged Robin]

And it started off so promising... just change a few names and swap out some stuff...
But then it moved into that "putting on clown makeup and wig" meme.

Their was a quote from a video game reviewer i think applies here regarding games.

"If you're removing stuff from a game rather than adding, go back to the drawing board."

Its such an odd thing you trim from the game. It won't really achieve any acclaim, newbies won't know and its just a pebble in the shoe for people who liked the idea of their pc welding a weapon.

[Knightingale]

So... Justin Achilli has some thoughts on equipment in RPGs and how it should work:

I rarely enjoy the equipment stage of RPGs. Through my other chargen choices I feel like I've made it clear what I want to do (pick locks, fight, use computers, etc.) and the question is less "do you have the gear to do it?" I would generally assume yes, unless circumstances.

I.e. I have the Pick Locks skill, so assume I have lockpicks unless something happens during play and I lose them. Taking the skill and then doing a resource management task or minigame feels like an obstacle. Resource scarcity is fun in certain cases, but not pre-square-one.

Particularly in WoD, money and other Resources are about what you do with them, as opposed to choosing specific items from a list. Example reworking of Resources as of W5:

And his rework is about Resources now being a bonus to your dice-pool that you can use... once per session (!).

I agree with what he says about equipment-management and the expectations that comes with picking skills... but then why is the new Resource-mechanic a once per session-thing? That's exactly the un-fun kind of scarcity he's talking about. Also, the Asset-Edges in H5 as written were precisely about pre-square-one scarcity and that's what made them such a bad mechanic.

[Damian May]

I agree with the general concept but it tends to break down a little bit if every level of skill gives you 'free' equipment; Take Drive get a car, Computer you have a laptop, Firearms you get a rifle, Animal ken you get a puppy, Politics you get a......textbook? intern? Rolodex?

The once per session thing is weird especially if its a planning session where your using your Backgrounds strategically.

[MrNatas]

I don't think anyone cared about mundane equipment, at least when it came to things like "a knife" or "a set of lock picks", unless there was something in that particular game that would make having those things difficult. However, just being like 'resources add to a roll once per session' seems like a copout move and something that a player would have to save for a dicepool they are bad at or use on the last roll of the session just to "maximize" the usefulness of the background.