W5 QA

[BadFurryFanFic]

So looking at this and Twitter we're getting the Pure, and Claimed ( admittedly very similar concepts have always existed in WtA but the way its expressed is pretty clearly drawing much harder on WtF).

How is Finding Secrets a culture? Do Bone Gnawers sing songs about secrets? Write epic poems solely about secrets? Express themselves only in riddles and whispers? Not sure what Corax and Bastet think about BGs cribbing from their homework.

They really should have just completely gotten rid of Tribes in this reboot, the only thing distinguishing them is the demands and preferences of the Patron Spirit so why not use that as the Background?

I am very confused on the playtesting and how large their sample size is, they certainly haven't used any of the dozens of playtest groups that I know from the V5 playtest. Is it only internal playtesting of partially written material? And if so we saw how badly that turned out with H5.

Background wise theres not much change except to remove all hope, remove the societal structure, remove real world history and culture, remove the written language of the Garou basically following the pattern already established of removing options = streamlining which we already know lasts about 30 seconds before the options are added back in on STV anyway completely defeating the point.

Looks like 95% of the questions asked on the Discord didn't make the cut and they just went with prepared Qs anyway. About as expected.


Werewolf the Apocalypse: Don't Bother Raging Against The Dying of the Light Its Already Gone Out.

[11twiggins]

Hard not to notice that he stopped the Q&A when he was asked a few difficult questions.

Fianna is just a word, indeed...

[Saur Ops Specialist]

From the 2e player's guide, on taint:

"It doesn't mean that the devil made you do it. It means that you did it... and the devil noticed."

[Asmodai]

From the 2e player's guide, on taint: "It doesn't mean that the devil made you do it. It means that you did it... and the devil noticed."

I lack an emote that furiously waves its hands pointing to your response, saying "see? see?". So I'll just leave that visual here


It's interesting that he doesn't seem to know about Shinzui, and that he thinks it's clever that SAD is now Delta Green. But, then again, the other document does say:

Easiest approach to this is to assume that nothing from the legacy editions is true. Certain concepts or perhaps even individuals may share names, etc. but little of what has gone before remains true.

[AnubisXy]

Q9: How do you become a Werewolf?

• Nobody knows, Werewolves just emerge (which is a huge change for W5)
• Part of Pack-duties is to look for “Kin” (people who have potential to become werewolves but don’t know that yet)
• There are special abilities for that but you can also look for clues like anger-issues
• But there’s no discernible rhyme or reason to this

That's a huge change. No more kinfolk or family groupings. No pre-made human allies for werewolves. Each werewolf is basically on their own and they aren't going to have any family relatives who know what's going on or whom they can work with. In prior editions kinfolk were a big, though somewhat understated part of the werewolf experience. Removing the idea of this large scale human family network is going to have a pretty big effect on the werewolf setting.

[Heavy Arms]

It also feels odd to me because, yet again, they could take from Forsaken here in a place that would actually make sense.

The Wolf-blooded, especially in 2e, had to be developed to make up for the changes to how werewolves work in Forsaken. The Wolf-blooded had to be given the ability to play a real role in Uratha society, because they couldn't just be there to be breeding stock. Clearly it can be done, and clearly they'll take from Forsaken whenever they want so... why nothing?

[11twiggins]

[/LIST]That's a huge change. No more kinfolk or family groupings. No pre-made human allies for werewolves. Each werewolf is basically on their own and they aren't going to have any family relatives who know what's going on or whom they can work with. In prior editions kinfolk were a big, though somewhat understated part of the werewolf experience. Removing the idea of this large scale human family network is going to have a pretty big effect on the werewolf setting.

Yes but that was a breeding element so if you liked it you were into the breeding mechanics of the legacy game. I'm shocked that Achille was able to resist saying that everyone who misses Metis/Kinfolk/Garou having the slightest idea where they come from and why was a debauched sex fiend.

[Ana Mizuki]

What really annoys me with this, is that the apocalypse is happening not because it would make thematic sense or because Justin wanted to explore a post-apocalyptic world. It is happening because the larger-scale story of saving Gaia was too grand and not personal enough.

Yet the end of the world is not happening to anyone else, because that would ruin the 'set very close to our world' feel. So the apocalypse is scaled down to things getting mildly worse for the world.

Yet the focus still remains on the larger scale threat. Only, now you cannot do anything about it and have to protect what is yours. Different people like different things, but the whole thing being just outright hopeless does not help to make the focus personal. Instead, it makes it depressing and pointless.

If you want personal, there should not be some overhanging doomsday clock in the setting. Forsaken is set so the future is unknown and the biggest threats are based on protecting your turf.

And for all of this, many Forsaken elements inserted into W5 are inserted without understanding why they work. The Pure are not just any bad werewolf faction, they have very good reasons for hating Luna and so removing their auspices. The tribes are looser because the ST is expected to fill in the blanks based on what they and their players want. The game is set very street level because the focus is on a single pack.

You take these things out of their context and transplant them to WtA and they fit like a shoe on a hand.

On top of it all, it just feels lazy to copy so much from Forsaken. Even the BNS book had a more WtA feeling setting change.

[LunaLupa]

In the "Apocalypse is Happening" topic.
Two things come to mind:

The first one is that the devs of both werewolf and vampire seem to fundamentally misunderstand why the End of the World was added into the setting at all. Gehenna is always right on the corner in vampire so you always feel that anxiety and discomfort that the idea of an abrupt end causes while, justifying the cultists, mystics and zealots who are screaming "REPENT! THE END IS NIGH" its a very important thematic but also atmospheric element.
The Apocalypse is always right on the corner to push werewolves to try harder and to do better, to hope they can win, to make every victory mean something, it's a reminder both of how bad things are and how much they still have to fight to make things better, it's made to both be something sad but that also motivating.
Making Gehenna cyclical and the apocalypse just slightly worse ruins those concepts completely.

Second thing, me and my friends have thought of a post-apoc werewolf for a long time, how this could provide a good ending and catharsis to the garou's are and how post victory in battle against the wyrm(my favorite idea was the Gurahl healing the Wyrm after the Garou in a show humility apologized to them and asked them to join them in the last battle in the end of the world) how you would have so many different themes to explore and fix a lot of issues.
But Justin and his team seem to use the idea of Apocalypse is Happening/Has Happened as a blunt tool to make it more "personal" instead of trying to use the concept in creative ways, while making the setting even more dark and gloomy.

[Technoma]

So...why call this Werewolf the Apocalypse? It's such a big "reimagining" that it bares surface resemblece at best.
This looks like another H5, only some names and details preserved and nothing else.

[Manfr]

What really annoys me with this, is that the apocalypse is happening not because it would make thematic sense or because Justin wanted to explore a post-apocalyptic world. It is happening because the larger-scale story of saving Gaia was too grand and not personal enough.

Yet the end of the world is not happening to anyone else, because that would ruin the 'set very close to our world' feel. So the apocalypse is scaled down to things getting mildly worse for the world.

As far as we were told in the last years, getting Apocalypse in motion is because we are, climate-change level and not only, in a very dire situation. It's a thematic response to "what it means to fight for Gaia when it appears we have fucked up royally the environment"?

Of course, it may be too grim an evaluation to equate climate change with the death of Gaia, but the way Justin has put it (cycles of ascendancy) could make it work, perhaps.

[11twiggins]

Keep in mind that sometimes things are done just so there's a tagline. The USP. The hook.

- THE GET HAVE FALLEN
- THE APOCALYPSE IS LITERALLY HALFWAY THROUGH HAPPENING GUYS OMGGGGGG
- PENTEX HAVE SMARTENED UP, THEY'RE NOW A SECRETIVE SHADOWY HOLDING COMPANY!

Are these changes needed? Are some of them changes at all? Do they add or improve anything? No. But they form a soundbite you can use to go "here's the new raised stakes guys!"

Pentex were always the way W5 is pretending is brand new. Achille talked about how Pentex *used* to have PENTEX vans which Fomori with PENTEX logo jumpsuits would jump out of. Jesus Christ. Bleak in its disrespect to the writers that came before him. Straight up lying about how Pentex were in W20 to make his version, which is literally just the W20 version by the sound of things, sound new and improved.

"The Apocalypse has already started/happened" was something W20 brought up multiple times. But we have to pretend it is new, for the new and improved W5.

The Get already had this issue of being too into the fight and not enough into the reason behind the fight, they already had this issue of extremists who the Tribe as a whole had rounded up and murdered for being Nazis. But in the new and improved W5... they're the new bad guys! ARE YOU HOOKED YET?!

It's also fun to note that every tribe has had its cultural roots washed away (or so they claim) except for the Get of Fenris. We have a collection of Tribes who are a-cultural (dumb idea, but sure, let's roll with it), save for the Evil Nazi Tribe, who are... Norse. I'm sure Scandinavian fans feel very included!

[Ana Mizuki]

As far as we were told in the last years, getting Apocalypse in motion is because we are, climate-change level and not only, in a very dire situation. It's a thematic response to "what it means to fight for Gaia when it appears we have fucked up royally the environment"?

Of course, it may be too grim an evaluation to equate climate change with the death of Gaia, but the way Justin has put it (cycles of ascendancy) could make it work, perhaps.

Not only do I think it is too grim, but to me it lessens the stakes. The apocalypse is not what we currently are living in, the apocalypse is the end. No veil, all out chaos. Not this.

But I mean, it is rather in poor taste to point at our world as it is and say 'oops, we lost' in a game about undoing that.

As an aside, what exactly is the incentive to keep the game on the street-level? Yes, it would be harder to do things with the Nation in shambles, but there is still a giant dooomsday clock over the characters.

Is the hope that the player characters just give up hope and guard a tiny patch of land and if they don't they get smacked by the Renown stick?

[Asmodai]

As far as we were told in the last years, getting Apocalypse in motion is because we are, climate-change level and not only, in a very dire situation. It's a thematic response to "what it means to fight for Gaia when it appears we have fucked up royally the environment"?

Of course, it may be too grim an evaluation to equate climate change with the death of Gaia, but the way Justin has put it (cycles of ascendancy) could make it work, perhaps.

Except that it lies on faulty assumptions. Any read of Werewolf books was showing quite clearly that they were in a ecologically darker reality than what was ours, in a way the game was prescient about where things were going. Yet there was hope and something to fight for.

[11twiggins]

Except that it lies on faulty assumptions. Any read of Werewolf books was showing quite clearly that they were in a ecologically darker reality than what was ours, in a way the game was prescient about where things were going. Yet there was hope and something to fight for.

Patch notes:

- Removed hope