W5 QA

[Technoma]

Frankly if I was sitting at a table with the ST enforcing that rigid vision of WtA, I'd leave the table and never look back. It's not a good look when that's the default of W5.


Honestly I feel bad for them. I backed their VTM game and when they first announced their WtA, I figured I'd back it too but with everything that's come out about W5 it's killed a lot of my interest in it. And I imagine I'm not alone in feeling that way.


Don't remind me. With everything that's happened with H5 and W5, I am utterly dreading M5. At this point I fully expect M5 to completely Orphan-centric with all the organized Mage groups being different kinds of assholes. The Technocracy will be WORSE than they were ever depicted in any edition. Complete mask-off Alt-Right Techno-fascists that are killing Wonder and hell bent on creating every Sci-fi/Cyberpunk Dystopia on Earth. The Traditions will be a bunch of fanatical Reality Terrorists that have lost and know they've lost to the Technocracy and now just want to burn everything the Technocracy has built, the fate of the Sleepers be damned. The Crafts/Disparate Alliance are cowards unworthy of their Magic for refusing to fight in the Ascension War.

And the in process make the Nephandi's notion that the world is irredeemably corrupt and it's better to just burn it all down so a new world can be born from the ashes the right idea. Which is really bad thing when you make the one group of Mages that everyone can agree are the Bad Guys right.

Well if that actually was the Nephandi's goal and not BS which only makes it worse.

Yeah, I will stick to M20, I have no hope for M5 nor any other 5th Edition after all the nonsense.

[Shakanaka]

Those same people have not really engaged as much with editions and so might not know how different WoD5 is.

That is why I think Paradox won't address the issues people bring up, either. Casual players won't notice things that we do. THOUGH, with W5 being like it is, it might be enough of an uproar.

It's not as if these "new" (and I put new in quotations because I doubt World of Darkness is seeing any real advent of new players to the franchise at all. Maybe a minutiae amount at best) players will be totally insulated away from the "old" fanbase. Remember, most discourse nowadays, especially in something niche as this franchise, is done so over the internet. Anyone halfway smart will begin to realize the issues between the old editions and this current ongoing one; either from "old" fans informing them, or people taking the time to learn for themselves.

Paradox don't even properly address controversies against their increasingly poor game design choices raised by their own grand strategy game communities... from that alone, expect for oWoD to continue to crash further-and-further no matter what the "old" or "new" fanbase says.

And if Paradox wanted to focus all-in on oWoD at the (clear) expense of CofD, why bring in designers who clearly want to make CofD content but are forced into only making oWoD content? All it does is alienate the "old" fanbase of oWoD and brings no interest from the "old" fanbase of CofD.. and any new players brought in from any of the VtM5 are miniscule compared to the rest of the collective fanbase. And the rest of the "5ths" will practically bring in even a lesser amount of new players.. actually, probably little-to-none..

Everything Paradox is doing with the IP is utterly bizarre.

[TyrannicalRabbit]

When people are seeing the mechanic and world changes in W5, there's quite a bit of stuff that seems very familiar to people who are familiar with Forsaken. "Oh, hey, that element wasn't in Apocalypse, but it did exist in Forsaken," isn't something people are just pulling out of their butts.

Now, whether it's a matter of "copying" I guess that depends on the definition people are using, but it doesn't seem like much of a stretch for people to feel that some of the new elements in W5 were heavily inspired by Forsaken and for people to get a sense of deja vu when they see them.

Somewhat like V5 what I am tending to see is things that vaguely not even point, but more like a slightly crooked finger limply set in the general direction that is then ran with. It's still disconnected to the tone and attitude surrounding such vague comparisons and their negative connotations. It's unnecessary. Wholely unnecessary.

If it's going to come down to, "This is vaguely reminiscent in it's low detail to Forsaken, kind of, so I now must shittalk Forsaken to illustrate my dissatisfaction over W5." Then find better arguments.

[Damian May]

Somewhat like V5 what I am tending to see is things that vaguely not even point, but more like a slightly crooked finger limply set in the general direction that is then ran with. It's still disconnected to the tone and attitude surrounding such vague comparisons and their negative connotations. It's unnecessary. Wholely unnecessary.

If it's going to come down to, "This is vaguely reminiscent in it's low detail to Forsaken, kind of, so I now must shittalk Forsaken to illustrate my dissatisfaction over W5." Then find better arguments.

Ok, I have to ask for examples cos I've gone through this thread twice now and can't find a single negative comment about Forsaken.

[Asmodai]

Ok, I have to ask for examples cos I've gone through this thread twice now and can't find a single negative comment about Forsaken.

TyrannicalRabbit I have to agree. I think everyone has mentioned quite a few times in all the W5 threads that WtF is a great game that stands on its own legs and that it's better for doing it's own thing. A lot of effort was made to differentiate it from WtA and it shows. However, there are concepts and designs that, while suitable for WtF don't really work for WtA. That is the general sentiment in these threads. What's worse yet, JA & Co aren't even trying to work these elements in context or looking at the developments that made WtF unique, they're just cramming WtF elements into W5 without bothering with the context of WtA. In the end, by ignoring what's WtA and WtF we end up with some strange Frankensteineian monstrosity that doesn't lean on either side's strong points.

[Ana Mizuki]

If it's going to come down to, "This is vaguely reminiscent in it's low detail to Forsaken, kind of, so I now must shittalk Forsaken to illustrate my dissatisfaction over W5." Then find better arguments.

I haven't seen that in this thread at all. What I have seen is "This is something that was used to make Forsaken its own thing compared to WtA, what is it doing in W5?"

Because the renown as rank, the first change auspice and other things? They make Forsaken its own thing and are core systems and lore in the setting. Regardless of my opinion on W5, using those exact things as replacements for the things in WtA is baffling as the point of those changes was to distance Forsaken from WtA.

[TwoDSix]

Yeah, Forsaken 1e was by far the best of the original WoD lines. It didn't lean on it's predecessor as much as Requiem 1e did, and sold it's pitch far better than Awakening. Pretty much all of the holdovers were either reworked (the five forms, Auspices, ect.) or just references (e.g. weapon fetishes being known as Klaives). Even the Pure, a dark reflection of the Garou Nation, have a vastly different role than their predecessors.

Hell even Wolf-blooded, who were basically kinfolk but actually respected, got an active role in the hunt in 2e as well as taking on seemingly every other werewolf trope the writers could think of. Forsaken is not the same game as Apocalypse, and it's awesome for it.

There was a post on these forums where somebody listed the W5 changes they liked. As I recall the general consensus was 'Forsaken is awesome, you should really pick it up'. There's not really any bad blood between the oWoD and CofD communities here, even ignoring the fact that they overlap fairly significantly.

Hell, the most common way to treat CofD and oWoD is probably to just mix every gameline the group finds interesting. I'm sure somewhere on this board there's a story of Garou tearing apart Belial's Brood.

[Ana Mizuki]

What's worse yet, JA & Co aren't even trying to work these elements in context or looking at the developments that made WtF unique, they're just cramming WtF elements into W5 without bothering with the context of WtA. In the end, by ignoring what's WtA and WtF we end up with some strange Frankensteineian monstrosity that doesn't lean on either side's strong points.

This is truly the most baffling and worrying aspect of it. Not only is it clumsy, but it ALSO is undoing a lot of the work the W20 and Forsaken 2nd ed teams did to make both games stand out. And then you add the 'personal' limits which put the PCs way below in power to a starting uratha pack, nevermind a garou one. Even nuzul can have resources 5, but in W5 resources 5 is seen as a bad guy.

Are they just rushing to get the game done and so taking stuff from Forsaken to replace, is Paradox telling them to do it? I got no idea.

[Newb95]

Yeah, Forsaken 1e was by far the best of the original WoD lines. It didn't lean on it's predecessor as much as Requiem 1e did, and sold it's pitch far better than Awakening. Pretty much all of the holdovers were either reworked (the five forms, Auspices, ect.) or just references (e.g. weapon fetishes being known as Klaives). Even the Pure, a dark reflection of the Garou Nation, have a vastly different role than their predecessors.

Hell even Wolf-blooded, who were basically kinfolk but actually respected, got an active role in the hunt in 2e as well as taking on seemingly every other werewolf trope the writers could think of. Forsaken is not the same game as Apocalypse, and it's awesome for it.

There was a post on these forums where somebody listed the W5 changes they liked. As I recall the general consensus was 'Forsaken is awesome, you should really pick it up'. There's not really any bad blood between the oWoD and CofD communities here, even ignoring the fact that they overlap fairly significantly.

Hell, the most common way to treat CofD and oWoD is probably to just mix every gameline the group finds interesting. I'm sure somewhere on this board there's a story of Garou tearing apart Belial's Brood.

Forsaken is one of the best things ever to come out of CofD, 1st ed was good but 2nd ed just blow it out of the water, Requiem is still my main game but Forsaken come as a very close second, it is just great which is strange since I could never stand Apocalypse and I met quite a few oWoD people that got into werewolf thans to Forsaken, it is just that good.

Regarding the oWoD and CofD communities, I never saw anything major, I enjoy both of them (Ascension in particular I think is much better than Awakening) and know what to expect when I play one or the other, one thing everyone seem to agree on is that the CofD system is straight up better which is not surprising.

[Knightingale]

I've been thinking about how Justin Achilli is changing the Resources-Background and the whole thing strikes me as odd in addition to me not really being a fan of the change.

The W5 corebook will be the third corebook for WOD5E, the second with Justin as the creative lead. I can understand wanting to do an overhaul of all the general Backgrounds because you want them to work differently for whatever reason - but to get to the third corebook in the franchise and suddenly wanting to change one Background is odd. If you don't know that Justin wants that Background to be changed in general, any fan of V5 and H5 will read the W5 corebook and wonder why the Resources Background is different and worse compared to the version in the previous two books. This also strengthens my belief that Justin isn't just not a big fan of WtA in this instance, he also isn't a fan of the Storyteller-system as it was set up by V5. The change to the Resources-Background means that any general element of the Storyteller-system can be subject to further change. And the Storyteller-system is far from perfect but I don't think it's the approach to randomly pick out tiny elements of it and change them sporadically.

This especially becomes an issue when it comes to setting up a game whose system intersects well. A huge problem of H5 was that it simply gutted big portions of the template set up by V5 and replaced it with nothing. Touchstones, Convictions, Humanity and Chronicle Tenets, for example, simply do not work in how they are applied (or removed) in H5. And if the basis for this is a general scepsis towards the Storyteller-system, then I'm starting to worry. How well will W5's systems like Renown, Touchstones and Rage work when, for example, let's assume Justin approaches it with the belief that simply copying what V5 did isn't acceptable?

The other issue I have is why Justin wants to make these changes. There was no huge issue where people were like "You know what's busted in V5? Resources 4 and 5. It's like a cheat-code!". And it gets even stranger when Justin itself seems to be aware that it isn't an issue. Like, his one interaction on Twitter where somebody asked about what if you have a player-character with high Resources who wants to buy a corporation, for example. And Justin acknowledges that you can settle this without making rolls since narratively you're simply playing a different game. If the ST is fine with it, you could do that. But for whatever reason Justin got it in his head that high Resources is a problem. It reminds me of when he claimed that an issue of old WtA was the difficulty of telling personal stories when player-characters would go on epic adventures to save the world. He corrected himself that maybe you could tell personal stories while having epic stakes for your campaign. But the same as with Resources, the changes are made to address issues that only Justin thinks are there. If all the changes only happen because he personally thinks it's something that needs to happen then that's a problem.

[Technoma]

What's that about Resources? I am a bit out the loop here. What is he planning to change about Resources?

[TwoDSix]

He could probably have changed Resources to being '1/session/dot you may declare you are carrying or have procured some useful or unusually expensive item. This item may not grant bonus dice, but may provide narrative justification' with far less pushback. It would still be gamist and restrictive, but it wouldn't also be a case of too awesome to use and would reasonably cover his stated goals.

Yeah, there would still be weirdness, but now a Resources 4 character can retroactively be carrying a wad of cash, a laptop, an invitation to the fancy party, and a gun. Meanwhile in W5 as is being presented your Silver Fang can bribe the guard at the gates and later remember that she didn't have enough for a good pair of wire cutters.

You'd still need decent guidelines on how skill levels and Resources impact having a basic or Impressive version of normal equipment, but having the background's strict mechanical effect being done kind of 'aha I have X!' rather than just being able to casually acquire 200 smartphones because you took Resources 4. Oh sure, you should be able to do the latter, but you'll have to spend time arranging it all and dealing with distribution. Even offloading to a retainer takes time. At that point PCs who have other Backgrounds can bring them to bare.

Sure, you might have Resources 5, but both the Mayor and the Police Commissioner are Allies of mine.

[Knightingale]

What's that about Resources? I am a bit out the loop here. What is he planning to change about Resources?

Justin Achilli announced on Twitter that he thinks player-characters with 4 or 5 dots in the Ressources Background are a problem and the system needs to help STs "rein them in". And his solution is that starting with W5 (and he thinks that is how Ressources should work in general now) the Ressources Background gives you extra dice for a roll... once per session.

You'd still need decent guidelines on how skill levels and Resources impact having a basic or Impressive version of normal equipment, but having the background's strict mechanical effect being done kind of 'aha I have X!' rather than just being able to casually acquire 200 smartphones because you took Resources 4. Oh sure, you should be able to do the latter, but you'll have to spend time arranging it all and dealing with distribution. Even offloading to a retainer takes time. At that point PCs who have other Backgrounds can bring them to bare.

Any kind of guidelines is completely fine. And when it comes to addressing all sorts of edge-cases that make you wonder "But does Ressources 5 really allow a player to do this...?!"... well, that's why there's a GM/Storyteller at the table. And in this case the so-called solution as you also described creates an issue where previously there wasn't one.

[TwoDSix]

Justin Achilli announced on Twitter that he thinks player-characters with 4 or 5 dots in the Ressources Background are a problem and the system needs to help STs "rein them in". And his solution is that starting with W5 (and he thinks that is how Ressources should work in general now) the Ressources Background gives you extra dice for a roll... once per session.

Oh yeah, I forgot that he was actively trying to remove high Resources from the game.

Any kind of guidelines is completely fine. And when it comes to addressing all sorts of edge-cases that make you wonder "But does Ressources 5 really allow a player to do this..."... well, that's why there's a GM/Storyteller at the table. And in this case the so-called solution as you also described creates an issue where previously there wasn't one.

Reliance on ST adjudication isn't inherently superior to mechanical restriction. It's susceptible to wildly varying interpretations, but has the advantage of avoiding hard limits. Which way to lean is very much a matter of personal taste.

That said, we have two rough 'issues' here. The first is that the relatively cheap Resources is potentially too much of a force multiplier on a personal scale, which my solution aims to cover. It doesn't solve it perfectly, but it's a first draft hashed out in like five minutes, the kind of thing you might have before playtesting. The second is the potential for large scale purchases to disrupt a campaign, on that I'd honestly just suggest having EVERY BLOODY BACKGROUND DOT TREATED IDENTICALLY when it comes to such stuff. You've got Resources 5 but no Allies, Contacts, Mentors, or anything else? Nobody likes you enough to sell you a company.

Yes there will still be adjudication required and cases of 'can a Resources 1 Ronin really afford a heavily modded top end assualt rifle?' But I honestly believe that, given playtesting to hash out the limits and wording, my proposed Resources background is better than Justin's.

[Knightingale]

Reliance on ST adjudication isn't inherently superior to mechanical restriction. It's susceptible to wildly varying interpretations, but has the advantage of avoiding hard limits. Which way to lean is very much a matter of personal taste.

That said, we have two rough 'issues' here. The first is that the relatively cheap Resources is potentially too much of a force multiplier on a personal scale, which my solution aims to cover. It doesn't solve it perfectly, but it's a first draft hashed out in like five minutes, the kind of thing you might have before playtesting. The second is the potential for large scale purchases to disrupt a campaign, on that I'd honestly just suggest having EVERY BLOODY BACKGROUND DOT TREATED IDENTICALLY when it comes to such stuff. You've got Resources 5 but no Allies, Contacts, Mentors, or anything else? Nobody likes you enough to sell you a company.

Yes there will still be adjudication required and cases of 'can a Resources 1 Ronin really afford a heavily modded top end assualt rifle?' But I honestly believe that, given playtesting to hash out the limits and wording, my proposed Resources background is better than Justin's.

Of course, you're right, just leaving it all up to the ST isn't exactly a solution. Ideally the game-mechanics aid and guide the ST in question instead. Justin Achilli certainly favors a more rules-light model and that's how you get away with it: By focusing on what's important. Whatever systems are there adjudicate what matters to the game in terms of themes and mood.

But isn't it striking what you bring up there with "What value is Resources 5 with no Allies, Contacts etc.?" and "Can a a Ronin with Resources 1 buy a cool assault rifle?"? You're talking about the narrative level of the game. How does it impact the fiction of the setting? Something like that. But where does Justin turn to in order to impose a limit? He gives it a "once per session"-limit. A "session" has of course nothing to do with the narrative and the fiction of the gaming-world. It's identifiable to the players but not the player-characters. Personally, I'm not a fan of the idea that a player has to take the in-character perspective all of the time during a game but ideally a game should help players making the transition between the player-perspective and player-character-perspective as seamlessly as possible. A "once per session"-limit is the complete opposite of that. That way you impose a hard limit that only matters to the player. And this out of game limit now has to be explained within the gaming-world.

With the old model of Resources, we're talking about potentially having to manage the power-fantasy of a player. "How far do I allow you to go with this?" is what the ST has to decide. With Justin's version the ST is there to actively curtail a player's ambitions. Here anything beyond a dice-bonus for a single roll in a session is now a subject to debate.