W5 QA

[TwoDSix]

I mean, there's no issue with Hunter not having any inherent punishment for collateral damage or the like. In the right tone it'll be better (but neither edition of Reckoning is pulpy action monster hunting). But I can totally see ways to do it without a humanity/integrity equivalent, being too careless starts adding to pools that generate complications or cause setbacks, and other things like that. The restrictions come from outside, it's not so easy to hunt monsters when the police are looking for a group of terrorists or the like

Although again, I'm not 100% sure that's even needed. Some Hunters don't care, they'll likely have short careers.

EDIT. Removed a paragraph because it was probably too close to the line.

[MrNatas]

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

I think the weirdest thing about these responses has to be in the interview I think of the WotC guys said something along the lines of 'DMs makeup about 20% of the community but make the largest percentage of people that make purchases' and that, 'we are looking into monetization schemes of digital video games.'

Which to mean translates as 'We want to make DND a subscription-expansion based live service to make sure that you continually gives us money' and not 'the audience wants to make more purchases.' To me it seems like he read some sort of headline and used it as a spring board to talk about his own thing then really comment on what WotC is doing ... if these tweets are in reference to WotC at all.

[Ana Mizuki]

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.

I'm a big fan of hunters and humans, in general, being free. However, aside from the lack of morality mechanic, the game sure tut tuts you for trying to join a hunter organization. So not as free as expected.

Having a sort of morality mechanic for the hunters would be good, but I think the progression of a hunter should create more of a punishment for not caring about collateral damage. Because supernaturals don't always look supernatural and at some point, you will end up hurting someone dear to you or even someone your organization values.

I've always held that the biggest question about supernatural hunters is how they differ from a lynch mob. And more importantly, how similar they are to one. Given H5 is SOLELY focusing on hunters with no organization or training, this is even more important.

So the morality tool for hunters, to me, is that one day they kill a regular human in cold blood and it destroys their life. and mechanically that can be achieved by making it harder and harder for the hunter to tell regular humans and human-formed supernaturals apart.

[Knightingale]

I mean, there's no issue with Hunter not having any inherent punishment for collateral damage or the like. In the right tone it'll be better (but neither edition of Reckoning is pulpy action monster hunting). But I can totally see ways to do it without a humanity/integrity equivalent, being too careless starts adding to pools that generate complications or cause setbacks, and other things like that. The restrictions come from outside, it's not so easy to hunt monsters when the police are looking for a group of terrorists or the like

Although again, I'm not 100% sure that's even needed. Some Hunters don't care, they'll likely have short careers.

EDIT. Removed a paragraph because it was probably too close to the line.

Tone is at the heart of this. The reason the lack of morality matters in the case of H5 is because, let's remember, this book makes a huge deal out of the difference between the dastardly "jobbers" who work for hunter-organizations and the virtuous Hunters with Drive that players play. You can only trust Hunters with Drive because those lackluster hunters who work for hunter-organizations have ulterior motives and serve organizations with their own selfish goals. On and on the book went about telling you just how much hunter-organizations (and every person who works for them) suck but the local hunters working in cells are the bee's knees, they know what's up.

And there's nothing in the system reflecting that. And there's also no (at least satisfying) in-world-explanation for this dichotomy.

In regards to the "undermonetized"-discussion, I think, it should be pointed out that the whole thing started with a Bank of America assessment saying Hasbro is running Magic the Gathering into the ground. (From CNBC):

Hasbro is defending its strategy for its popular Magic: The Gathering game.

In a talk hosted by UBS on Thursday, the toy company refuted criticism that it is printing too many card sets for the soon-to-be billion-dollar brand.

The comments come nearly a month after Bank of America downgraded Hasbro to underperform from buy, saying the company was “killing its golden goose” and could see a 34% decline in share price due to its mishandling of the Wizards of the Coast unit that houses Magic.

Jason Haas, who wrote the Bank of America report, said players are getting increasingly turned off by a slew of new releases that flooded the market and decreased the secondary market values of cards.

At the talk Thursday, Cynthia Williams, president of the Wizards of the Coast unit, said Hasbro doesn’t have any indications of broad declines in interest in the game’s products.

“There is no evidence that Magic is overprinted,” she said.

Williams said the company typically spreads out its tentpole releases of Magic: The Gathering card sets in two-month intervals. But in October, she said supply chain issues resulted in two sets releasing at the same time.

She said that the cadence of releases will return to normal in 2023, with major sets being released every two months and micro sets sprinkled in between.

And since D&D is part of WotC, that's why the "Is D&D undermonetized?"-discourse started. After all, since the strategy with Magic the Gathering has been called into question, it's a short leap to wonder if D&D is managed properly by WotC.

[11twiggins]

I agree 100%. W5 might wind up being the last game line I buy for 5th. I don’t see myself really investing in the others if it comes out similar to h5 and is this sorta half done “I look forward to the vault content” kinda attitude.

I could be stoked for it, but already the canon I’d been setting up for werewolf in my v5 games is immediately invalidated before the games even out and that’s incredibly disheartening.

Surely not buying it sends a stronger message? "This is the last one I'll buy" is still "wow sales figures are looking great!" and your money will spend *exactly* the same as it would if you bought with different intentions.

[11twiggins]

Tone is at the heart of this. The reason the lack of morality matters in the case of H5 is because, let's remember, this book makes a huge deal out of the difference between the dastardly "jobbers" who work for hunter-organizations and the virtuous Hunters with Drive that players play. You can only trust Hunters with Drive because those lackluster hunters who work for hunter-organizations have ulterior motives and serve organizations with their own selfish goals. On and on the book went about telling you just how much hunter-organizations (and every person who works for them) suck but the local hunters working in cells are the bee's knees, they know what's up.

And there's nothing in the system reflecting that. And there's also no (at least satisfying) in-world-explanation for this dichotomy.

So I'm not that familiar with H5, but I find that really interesting, and I think it does tie into the W5 Q&A quite interestingly.

Again we see that there is One True Way - you should be a local, small-time, grass-fed, independent Hunter. Which sounds a bit similar to being a local, small-time, friendly neighborhood Werewolf. Have you come from some kind of in-universe upbringing? Do you have a dangerous political faction behind you that expects results from you? Do have you have an unusual outlook?

No. You are a regular human who has stumbled behind the curtain to get involved with the WoD's mysteries.

And that's great - if you want to play Gary the local publican who got attacked by a Vampire and fought back, ashed the monster, and realized he needed to find other people who 'know'. It's also great to be able to play Professor Barnebus Quimby, an Arcanum occultist who is only hunting Vampires to provide fuel for the furnace of his research within the Society, and who hopes to glean magical abilities from the fight.

I mean the three PCs I play most are a Metis who grew up in a secluded Kinfolk-run community which specializes in raising abandoned Kinfolk and Garou, a Hermetic who grew up on Mars (or its Realm in Horizon, more specifically) and whose only human contact until he was 19 was his eccentric elderly Pater, and a Satyr who was already a successful Hollywood writer before he Chrysalized. All three of them are founded in, to varying extents, concepts which are distanced from ordinary people. And W/M/C20 allows you to do that. And to rub shoulders with Average Joe who Awakened/Got Embraced/Chrysalized/Changed last week, and who is just as valid and important to the setting as you, just coming from a different side of it.

A W5 I'd be interested in, and one which the Q&A seems to present the opposite of, is one where you can be anything from the last of a royal bloodline of (self-proclaimed) Garou Kings, or one where you are a homeless teen who happened to stumble into a Werewolf heritage and now might change fate despite having no "place" in the story in the eyes of more royalty and pedigree-minded Garou. That's player agency. That's choice. That gives variety and life, and helps build an immersive and interesting setting. You wind up with a Mage who is learning to be a Human, and a Human who is learning how to be a Mage, being a co-dependent power friendship. You wind up with supernatural weirdos who rely on their in-touch-with-humans allies. I like that a lot. In W5 the closest you can get to that is "until recently I was a wolf - but don't worry, that won't effect anything on my sheet".

[TwoDSix]

I mean, the Average Jane/experienced protagonist part is one of the reasons CofD still has it's mortals-focused core despite most gamelines including the core rules. Most of the templates assume you've been doing this for a while and have picked up the basics (it's why you get a social splat and Disciplines/Gifts/Contracts/ect.), even tier 1 Hunters in CofD have shifted from normal Integrity to their own special version. By my understanding H5 is closer to the blue book than the greenish-grey book.

Also ideally every line would have something like Thousand Years of Night for groups who want to play those at the height of their careers. Vampire probably needs the most advice on how mindsets change, but it's sometimes nice for your Werewolf or Mage to start with some achievements under their belt.

H5 also makes it harder to justify playing a Catholic nun who knows Kung Fu. Which automatically makes it worse.

[Damian May]

H5 also makes it harder to justify playing a Catholic nun who knows Kung Fu. Which automatically makes it worse.

Now I have to go yell at Netflix again for cancelling WN....

[BadFurryFanFic]

Now I have to go yell at Netflix again for cancelling WN....

You have my sword....

[Lyrics Of War]

Surely not buying it sends a stronger message? "This is the last one I'll buy" is still "wow sales figures are looking great!" and your money will spend *exactly* the same as it would if you bought with different intentions.

I don’t disagree, however I’d like to give it a shot before I decide I’m done with it. Can’t decide if I like it if I’ve never looked at it.

[Knightingale]

So I'm not that familiar with H5, but I find that really interesting, and I think it does tie into the W5 Q&A quite interestingly.

Again we see that there is One True Way - you should be a local, small-time, grass-fed, independent Hunter. Which sounds a bit similar to being a local, small-time, friendly neighborhood Werewolf. Have you come from some kind of in-universe upbringing? Do you have a dangerous political faction behind you that expects results from you? Do have you have an unusual outlook?

No. You are a regular human who has stumbled behind the curtain to get involved with the WoD's mysteries.

I think what's so unusual about the setup in H5 is that it's very interested in making a distinction between the local hunter-cell and the hunters working for organizations. And strangely, the game isn't satisfied with just explaining the difference between being a local indepedent hunter-cell and working for a bigger organization. Instead, Drive is presented as something that the hunter-cell-characters have and hunters working for organizations don't (or in the rare case that they do then it's only a matter of time for them to leave the organization). And not only does the book fail in finding a good definition for what Drive even is supposed to be but in order to stress the dichotomy, the book needs to go out of its way time and time again to demonize hunter-organizations. Additionally, as a mechanic, picking Drive for your Hunter-player-character during character-creation is just about saying why your character hunts. That's it. And so the role Drive plays mechanically doesn't reflect what the text outside of it sets it up to be.

The reason H5 is so bad is that it not only has this approach of wanting to enforce "One True Way" to play it but mechanically there are elements like Drive that don't even correspond to what the game claims to be going for.

[TwoDSix]

I mean, to use Vigil terminology, it makes vague sense for Conspiracy-level orgs. As Vigil 2e points out once you're working for an organisation of that level you're going to be spending a lot of your time not actually hunting. The trade-off is the vastly increased resources and potential supernatural boosts* they could provide. So I can see somebody with a strong Drive to hunt monsters not gelling well with them.

Compacts though? They're pretty dang focused on the hunt, they should definitely have people with Drive. Their local structure also makes them relatively good for H5's focus, I could very much see a potential supplement adding such organisations in if Justin wasn't so laser focused

* Less important in WoD20 and I believe earlier editions, as Numina were in the hunter-focused book for anybody.

[Knightingale]

That laserfocus is the issue here. While the local hunter-cell-characters were described as "Hunters with Drive", every other hunter was described as a "hunter" (lower-case h) when they weren't called "jobbers" (this is how the term is described in the Lexicon of the H5 corebook: "An org hunter; someone who simply “does the job” and exhibits no individual Drive"). Ironically, those descriptions come close to reinventing the idea of Imbued in a way. After all, the idea of "Hunter with Drive" vs "hunters" is about creating some sort of special class of hunters that for whatever reason is just superior to other mortal hunters. Only this time there are no supernatural forces involved and the local hunter-cell hunters are "Hunters" and superior because... well, the H5 corebook never really presents a good argument for why that is but it's the implication in the book.

Furthermore, the book talks about how the reason for mortal hunters is to challenge the "status quo" which is supernatural forces dominating the world. But the book also says that hunter-organizations actually don't challenge that "status-quo" and reinforce it - which is yet another reason the book gives for why local hunter-cells are the only true good guys and why hunter-organizations are actually kinda evil.

The reason all this talk about H5 matters is that if you take this approach with its laserfocus and heavyhanded approach to direct potential Sts and players to what they're supposed to play, you can start to see how this could be applied to W5. The broken Garou-Nation, the Get of Fenris relying too much on Rage, said Rage being bad, the players being expected to be stuck managing/protecting a Caern etc. I think it's easy to picture W5 with the same lecturing approach where telling the readers what "good Garou" don't do is just as important as explaining why "good Garou" are simply superior to the "bad Garou". And it might run into the same issues like H5 where local hunter-cells are filled with these "true hunters" who are the best but somehow being only active at the local level is part of what makes them "better hunters".

[TwoDSix]

Hmmm...

Is H5 actually any more focused than H1 was? Both are relatively limited compared to Vigil (essentially limited to one Conspiracy in H1 and to Tier 1 in H5), but I'm nowt sure it's actually that different between them.

I think the issue is that Reckoning was relatively unique in concept, while there's multiple 'nodmsl people hunting monsters' games which are just more versatile. I honestly probably wouldn't have cared that much if Reckoning 2e was really a Hunters Hunted update, but it's missing most of the tools from HH.

[Damian May]

Hmmm...

Is H5 actually any more focused than H1 was? Both are relatively limited compared to Vigil (essentially limited to one Conspiracy in H1 and to Tier 1 in H5), but I'm nowt sure it's actually that different between them.

I think the issue is that Reckoning was relatively unique in concept, while there's multiple 'nodmsl people hunting monsters' games which are just more versatile. I honestly probably wouldn't have cared that much if Reckoning 2e was really a Hunters Hunted update, but it's missing most of the tools from HH.

Well....Hunters Hunted 1st Ed also details organisations that hunters can belong to ( Arcanum, SAD, NSA, Society of Leopold, Children of Osiris etc)...which is BadWrongFun in H5...so thats a fairly major difference.o