W5 QA

[adambeyoncelowe]

Essence started with the old 1e quickstart as its bedrock, IIRC. The QS in question gave each caste of Solar its own single Ability, and had no Attributes, so they were basically adding things on instead of subtracting them. There were also QSs produced for Vampire and Trinity.

I know Quixalted and its spinoffs ook that approach too.

The VTM Revised Quick Start is actually really good. I loved the unique abilities each clan got (Brujah can go into a berserk rage at whim, for example).

It would make a great basis for a rules-lite game. And then you could layer on narrative rules easily without the jankiness of the current approach.

[Helur]

I really don't want to be rude, just very honest.
This whole nihilistic attitude by the developer, killed my entusiasm for w5. The only thing that truly transpires from some comments and tweets, not only from the lead developer, it's a sense of enormous frustration and impotence about something he/they hate in the real world, that can be capitalism, climate change or whatever. This ''In w5 you can at least make them pay'' it's extremely embarassing, and the fact that they heavily push the button on ''at least in the game'' or ''who is responsable can be killed in the game'', express and extremely insecure and frustrating behaviour that, it seems, will be vented in the game. Escapism can be a form of art at best, and a cage for hopeless people at worst.
I know my comment seems rude, but they looks litterally obsessed by some stuff, at the point of embarassing frustration and lack of self control.
I like mature games where I can think about real world things, and even figure out deep moral things, but this level is just laughable. W5 looks like a park where you can kill ''people who need killing'' who litterally killed the world spirit, then, the day after you can go back to your 8 hour work feeling someone because you killed imaginary jeff bezos in your imaginary world the evening before.

This is the pathetic feeling I get from the recent tweets.

[Ana Mizuki]

I really don't want to be rude, just very honest.
This whole nihilistic attitude by the developer, killed my entusiasm for w5. The only thing that truly transpires from some comments and tweets, not only from the lead developer, it's a sense of enormous frustration and impotence about something he/they hate in the real world, that can be capitalism, climate change or whatever. This ''In w5 you can at least make them pay'' it's extremely embarassing, and the fact that they heavily push the button on ''at least in the game'' or ''who is responsable can be killed in the game'', express and extremely insecure and frustrating behaviour that, it seems, will be vented in the game. Escapism can be a form of art at best, and a cage for hopeless people at worst.

I mean, WtA has always been a game that lets you fight societal wrongs through spiritual combat. The reason W5's efforts feel so empty to me is that you are given MASSIVE blinders so you can do the fight ONLY in this certain way.

[Ragged Robin]

I really don't want to be rude, just very honest.
This whole nihilistic attitude by the developer, killed my entusiasm for w5. The only thing that truly transpires from some comments and tweets, not only from the lead developer, it's a sense of enormous frustration and impotence about something he/they hate in the real world, that can be capitalism, climate change or whatever. This ''In w5 you can at least make them pay'' it's extremely embarassing, and the fact that they heavily push the button on ''at least in the game'' or ''who is responsable can be killed in the game'', express and extremely insecure and frustrating behaviour that, it seems, will be vented in the game. Escapism can be a form of art at best, and a cage for hopeless people at worst.
I know my comment seems rude, but they looks litterally obsessed by some stuff, at the point of embarassing frustration and lack of self control.
I like mature games where I can think about real world things, and even figure out deep moral things, but this level is just laughable. W5 looks like a park where you can kill ''people who need killing'' who litterally killed the world spirit, then, the day after you can go back to your 8 hour work feeling someone because you killed imaginary jeff bezos in your imaginary world the evening before.

This is the pathetic feeling I get from the recent tweets.

Its also a bit excessive, the situation irl is bad but that's the spur to action not an excuse for nihilism. We're seeing push back on all fronts. The whole ozone hole developments shows the struggle is far from pointless. Before my current job I spent years working in the motor industry and you can see steps forward coming in like particulate filters and electric cars and if evil corporate bastards can be made to moderate their conduct there's hope.

Justin isn't engaging in irl he's wallowing in twitter doomerism.

[Knightingale]

There really seems to have been a course-correction with W5 from the looks of it. Because Justin Achilli tweeted this:

JA: One of the best things about games is that they let you imagine worlds where the worst people, driven by the most selfish motivations, aren’t in charge of everything.

Then someone replies: Or alternatively, they are, but lasting change is something you and your friends are capable of delivering to those worlds.

And JA responds: Very much so.

Again, this completely contradicts his previous statements about how the World of Darkness isn't our world but darker anymore but because of how bad things are, it's just our world now. And with this, he goes to another strange take "The World of Darkness is our world but nicer.". And how is this gonna work? The Garou-Nation's no more, Gaia's dead/dying, the Apocalypse is going on - and then when the book talks about the young Garou the players are playing, the text suddenly has this hopeful, super-optimistic tone...? And the war against the Wyrm you're fighting is just a fight of good vs evil and the Storyteller-chapter talks about how, of course, the good guys are gonna win and so your story should end with the players saving the world or whatever.

First, W5 suffered from oppressive nihilism and now Justin Achilli seems to be jumping to another extreme where WtA is just a hopeful story of the fight between good and evil and of course, it's a fantasy-world that is a better version of our world.

[TwoDSix]

Its also a bit excessive, the situation irl is bad but that's the spur to action not an excuse for nihilism.

It's not even nihilism, if it was the Garou would be finding something to do. The Get might have fallen to nihilism, it's not certain exactly how their fall will be presented but 'there is no point in anything, so why not bite anything that looks vaguely wyrmish' is one of the more sensible options.


As to Justin backtracking on the 'it's all hopeless' stuff, well it's a sign that he's either listening to feedback or just saying what he thinks sounds good. But I really don't see how the Garou are meant to create any meaningful change in the setup he's outlined, maybe you're supposed to consider getting a logging company to move to the next town as a victory rather than try to tackle the actual causes. Maybe he thinks that because the Forsaken don't need to organise at an international level that the Garou don't, but the Forsaken generally aren't dealing with the same kind of issues that the Garou are. Stop fracking, but don't worry about the systematic issues that cause it.

[Helur]

It's not even nihilism, if it was the Garou would be finding something to do. The Get might have fallen to nihilism, it's not certain exactly how their fall will be presented but 'there is no point in anything, so why not bite anything that looks vaguely wyrmish' is one of the more sensible options.


As to Justin backtracking on the 'it's all hopeless' stuff, well it's a sign that he's either listening to feedback or just saying what he thinks sounds good. But I really don't see how the Garou are meant to create any meaningful change in the setup he's outlined, maybe you're supposed to consider getting a logging company to move to the next town as a victory rather than try to tackle the actual causes. Maybe he thinks that because the Forsaken don't need to organise at an international level that the Garou don't, but the Forsaken generally aren't dealing with the same kind of issues that the Garou are. Stop fracking, but don't worry about the systematic issues that cause it.

Get falled to nihilism? From the w5 previews they look like the only tribe that understands the fucking assignment.

[TwoDSix]

Get falled to nihilism? From the w5 previews they look like the only tribe that understands the fucking assignment.

Nihilism, by my understanding, boils down to 'there is no ultimate authority judging your actions, therefore take the actions you will be proud of'. Seeing Gaia die, coming to the conclusion that you have no purpose anymore, and deciding the actions you'll be proud to claim as your own are 'die fighting the fucking wyrm' is perfectly consistent with nihilism. Probably more consistent than sitting around mourning Gaia

Nihilism is not incompatible with getting the bloody job done. The Get aren't doing it effectively, but they're doing it the way that the Get would do it.

Nihilism is one of the philosophies that's often misunderstood. The other Garou might be nihilistic, but I'm not sure. I don't think that in 20 years anybody outside the Get will look back on their actions with pride.

[MrNatas]

Ultimately both would be nihilistic actions because the philosophy of nihilism has more to due with the rejection of accepted or fundamental aspects of existence.

So in the Gaian Nihilism, since Gaia is dead then you can A) Go out fighting or B) Hunker-down and see what happens.

The problem is that as a game I think most people are going to like option A because its more fun to fight a last stand instead of going out with whimper.

[Damian May]

Achilli Tweets:

What “the brand is undermonetized” means outside of the company saying it is that they realize the audience wants more ways to do stuff in the world than they currently have available to do. That’s why they posted the position: as an effort to give the audience more to do.

No idea what this is referring to, have Paradox made a statement somewhere I haven't seen?


TTRPGs often navel-gaze in terms of the activity itself but TTRPGs are often huge for defining participatory worlds beyond media format. Little else has the same opportunity for audiences to -do stuff- in the worlds they propose. Games that start digital are limited by logics.

"TTRPGs are better than video games" expressed by a first year philosophy student?


Worlds that start in linear media are non-participatory, consumed rather than experienced. Much is gate-kept; much is curtailed by “lore” and consumable, non-interactive world-state. TTRPGs, by contrast, propose “come tell your story.”


" TTRPGs are better than books and comics" expressed by the same student?



I'm guessing none of this is relevant to W5 but who knows...

[MrNatas]

Damian May

To me those look like tweets in response to the news of WotC saying that DnD is undermonetized but, these responses are bizarre if so.

[Technoma]

Last one also sounds like an insult towards the so called "legacy" editions.

I have to say, he sounds very pretentious.

[Knightingale]

Those tweets Damian May mentioned are from three days ago and... I mean, that's one hell of a naive and pretentious take on what "the brand is undermonetized" means. I don't think there's any value in discussing it. He's wrong in so many ways...

Where it becomes relevant is that you get the same sense of "What the hell is he talking about...?" when stuff like "rules-light" comes up, for example. Justin Achilli loves to present these games with these very abstract frameworks and explain game-dynamics using these abstractions. Like with W5 there's this whole obsession with "Tribes as verbs". But there's the issue no matter how many mental gymnastics you engage in with the game-concept, the endresult might have nothing to do with those gymastics whatsoever.

Take "sober play" in H5. The idea is that monsters have these mechanical representations of their monstrous natures pushing them around (the Beast for Vampires, Rage for Werewolves etc.) but mortal hunters have nothing like it. And Justin Achilli thought that this is about freedom. Whereas a Vampire might have reduced roleplaying-choices due to low Humanity, for example, a mortal Hunter would always only have his own mortal conscience to consider. Sounds like a good concept. In reality, it meant that H5 doesn't care about morality at all. If a Hunter-player-character says "I don't care about collateral damage.", the system has no answer to that.

The issue is that Justin Achilli seems to love taking on games on this meta-game level and he has little love for the idea of designing a game according to a fictional setting. But it's all presented with the assumption that we have to exactly follow Justin Achilli's logic point by point in how it's supposed to work and part of the design seems to be invested in explaining why deviating from that is bad.

[Damian May]

Damian May

To me those look like tweets in response to the news of WotC saying that DnD is undermonetized but, these responses are bizarre if so.

Ah! Ok, weird takes but at least I get the context now.

[RichT]

OK, folks - time to refocus this thread, please. It has devolved into being way too close to the line of making personal attacks on creators, and there's been a lot of assumptions and inference as to character, psychology, and personality of that same creator. Please bring it back to W5 and the official Q&A they did, and refrain from discussing the creator. Thanks!