W5 QA

[Knightingale]

Having reread the Discord-Q&A, this part gave me pause:

Which playable Tribe has gone through the most changes?
It's less about "changes from" and more about remaining true to its own edition. No event happened in the diegetic world that made the W5 era occur, so it's better to think of it as a clean break that intends to remain consistent with itself rather than legacy editions.

One of my fears for W5 (as a possible scenario for how it could fuck up) is that the old lore has been dumped for... nothing. And with that, I mean that the worldbuilding in W5 will be very broad and vague. Like, "The Garou Nation has been torn apart", "Gaia's dead/dying", "The Apocalypse is happening."... It's all just vibes. It’s the vaguely described status quo and that’s about it. And the same motivation that assumably (according to the previews) turned the Garou/Kin-dynamic, the Tribe-joining-process and the Umbra into mysteries Garou don't understand… following that principle W5 is giving the same treatment to things like "the state of the Garou-Nation" and the "Apocalypse". Because of that there isn’t an event or history explaining why things are so bad. It’s just about things being bad and that the Garou-Nation is partially to blame (which is why you should be against that).

In other words, the reason why Justin kept talking about "Tribes is what you do", "Auspice is how you do it" and verbs (just so many verbs...) are because W5 has no worldbuilding of its own. It's different from old WtA but that's about it. Instead, the new approach demands that people at the table are expected to fill in the blanks for what is specifically going on in the setting of the game. In one sense it gives players/STs more freedom to describe what stuff like First Change or joining a Tribe is like. On the other hand, it robs the game of any specificity. And with the WOD5E Storyteller-system being the way that it is, I don’t think removing evocative worldbuilding/metaplot from the equation is a good move. Without the evocative worldbuilding, though, what’s the appeal? There are tons of games with better premises and/or better systems out there…

[Heavy Arms]

Wait second? Not third? I thought there whas a second edition of HtR and thank you for the warning. You prevented me from buying a disappointment. I looked forward finally getting myself HtR without having to hunt collectors. Turns out I have to continue searching.

The WoD games have had a lot of books with "Hunter" attached to them, but the game-line Hunter the Reckoning was originally released during the Revised era for its first edition. The WoD's original run was then ended. During the 20th anniversary revival, Paradox made if very clear they were not going to approve a 20th book for Hunter the Reckoning. At the time it seemed very strange, but when you look at the timing, it seems to have been around the time that they decided to move H5 up in the order of releases; implying the overt no on H20 being to avoid releasing H20 and H5 too close to each other.

[Asmodai]

Having reread the Discord-Q&A, this part gave me pause:


One of my fears for W5 (as a possible scenario for how it could fuck up) is that the old lore has been dumped for... nothing. And with that, I mean that the worldbuilding in W5 will be very broad and vague. Like, "The Garou Nation has been torn apart", "Gaia's dead/dying", "The Apocalypse is happening."... It's all just vibes. It’s the vaguely described status quo and that’s about it. And the same motivation that assumably (according to the previews) turned the Garou/Kin-dynamic, the Tribe-joining-process and the Umbra into mysteries Garou don't understand… following that principle W5 is giving the same treatment to things like "the state of the Garou-Nation" and the "Apocalypse". Because of that there isn’t an event or history explaining why things are so bad. It’s just about things being bad and that the Garou-Nation is partially to blame (which is why you should be against that).

In other words, the reason why Justin kept talking about "Tribes is what you do", "Auspice is how you do it" and verbs (just so many verbs...) are because W5 has no worldbuilding of its own. It's different from old WtA but that's about it. Instead, the new approach demands that people at the table are expected to fill in the blanks for what is specifically going on in the setting of the game. In one sense it gives players/STs more freedom to describe what stuff like First Change or joining a Tribe is like. On the other hand, it robs the game of any specificity. And with the WOD5E Storyteller-system being the way that it is, I don’t think removing evocative worldbuilding/metaplot from the equation is a good move. Without the evocative worldbuilding, though, what’s the appeal? There are tons of games with better premises and/or better systems out there…

This is pretty much what I expect, especially after HtR5. That's a book without a setting and without world building. The biggest concession it made to the world building was the Orgs, and then it said "BUT YOU NO CAN USE THEM;K?". Evocative worldbuilding is long gone, just look at Sabbat and Second Inquistion.

[TwoDSix]

Yeah, White Wolf, and also Onyx Path, games basically live or die on the strength of their lore. V5 is actually incredibly good by the standards of the industry, but it falls short compared to V20 and Requiem 2e. Hell, even Monte Cook's World of Darkness has pretty dang good lore, as weird a product as it is it's a guilty pleasure of mine and one of the few d20 games I'll call 'actually pretty good'.

Justin seems to have decided he has to rip away that lore and go to, at best, a Apocalypse/Forsaken 1e level, but with 'more uncertainty'. Which is theoretically fine, but it's unclearly what he's replacing it and some of his changes feel like a rephrasing at best. On the arguable plus side he's changed Tribes from having two rough models they follow, but fuck me if I know what a Tribe actually is anymore. Then from a rules perspective even the best Storyteller derivatives aren't great, and instead of trying to fix that Justin seems to be running to the old 'story means I don't have to write rules' excuse.

Maybe I'll have my skepticism changed when I read the book and he brings in some big assumption I'd missed that recontextualises the entire game and meshes mechanics and story to create something that's beautiful. I doubt it, he's clearly not Jenna Moran (who is pretty much the only reason I'm even interested in Exalted), but it technically could happen. If I ever meet alternate universe me I'll ask them about that game.

[Ana Mizuki]

" Deal with the Apocalypse you are partially responsible for" gets me because it goes into the very VERY uncomfortable mentality of guilt-tripping people to be better. Especially given it might be pollution, consumption of certain foods, liking certain products, etc.

Also, there is always the bigger picture. A huge part of WtA has been making amends for things your ancestors did and accepting that even if you aren't directly to blame you should still do your best to fix things.

If the focus is on making up for living in the modern world, that already removes the lupus from the guilt block. And it truly then IS using Captain Planet finger pointing,

[Ragged Robin]

Yeah, White Wolf, and also Onyx Path, games basically live or die on the strength of their lore. V5 is actually incredibly good by the standards of the industry, but it falls short compared to V20 and Requiem 2e. Hell, even Monte Cook's World of Darkness has pretty dang good lore, as weird a product as it is it's a guilty pleasure of mine and one of the few d20 games I'll call 'actually pretty good'.

V5s ultimate failure is it doesn't do anything with the game once the corebook was done rather than building on the soft reboot it deliberately holds at a specific point. Leaving it a rather stagnant underdeveloped setting. W5 seems inclined to follow this trend in that it looks like its going to reduce play options strip a lot out then do nothing with the setting.

[Asmodai]

This comes from the territory that W5 is not a game based on the foundations of WtA and how it has developed through time and gone through its rough patches. It's a game that's a reaction to memes about Werewolf. It's utterly bizzare to watch, but it's not coming from a place of understanding what went wrong and what was fixed, but from reacting to conversations that were based in reductionist and simplistic views.

[Ragged Robin]

V5s ultimate failure is it doesn't do anything with the game once the corebook was done rather than building on the soft reboot it deliberately holds at a specific point. Leaving it a rather stagnant underdeveloped setting. W5 seems inclined to follow this trend in that it looks like its going to reduce play options strip a lot out then do nothing with the setting.

Quoted since the new system flagged it as spam when I tried to edit. I was quoting twidisix about v5

[Ragged Robin]

This comes from the territory that W5 is not a game based on the foundations of WtA and how it has developed through time and gone through its rough patches. It's a game that's a reaction to memes about Werewolf. It's utterly bizzare to watch, but it's not coming from a place of understanding what went wrong and what was fixed, but from reacting to conversations that were based in reductionist and simplistic views.

Pretty much yeah, I've noticed a lot of what's said about the tribes aligned with specific ethnicities disconnects with the nuanced and diverse approaches of Revised. For example fianna are celts rather than a stereotype about Irish people.

[Knightingale]

For me the issue here connects to this idea of "The WOD is just our world now" as in that W5 gets way too literal with what themes it wants to tackle. Climate-change activism, consumerism, the cost of violence, colonialism etc... There are all sorts of things you could associate with old WtA that are layered beneath the fantasy-setting of Garou-society/history as allegories, themes or metaphors. Like with all White Wolf stuff the quality of tackling those subjects in the past varied wildly.

By removing most of the worldbuilding, though, while still wanting to hit similar narrative notes with the game, it all has to become way more literal. Defending Gaia isn't an allegory for environmental activism anymore, Garou-characters are environmental activists now. Justin Achilli talked about hating epic storytelling but what does he think the epic war against the Wyrm was supposed to symbolize...? Now the layer of this fantasy-war needs to be peeled back and you have to make Garou do make uncharacteristic things. That's what Heavy Arms mentioned before with the problem of this being a bad compromise. After all, there's a reason the Crinos-form exists for Garou-characters, why the game talks about a "war against the Wyrm", why things like Klaives are central elements... Trying to maintain a baseline with all that stuff (in order to make it a soft reboot) while wanting to go in a very different direction with the material is just a recipe for disaster*.

Then again, W5 could also just end up going down the same route as H5 again where lots of stuff ends up being vague or unexplained and the book just looks at the ST saying "Okay, here you go, it's up to you to make this game work...".

* Although making a central part of a new edition of Hunter that all big hunter-organizations are fundamentally bad seems very similar in wanting to pick a fight with a premise for no reason.

[Ana Mizuki]

For me the issue here connects to this idea of "The WOD is just our world now" as in that W5 gets way too literal with what themes it wants to tackle. Climate-change activism, consumerism, the cost of violence, colonialism etc... There are all sorts of things you could associate with old WtA that are layered beneath the fantasy-setting of Garou-society/history as allegories, themes or metaphors.

To me, this will also make for a depressing and pointless feeling game. There is a reason why games often use allegories to fix society's wrongs and that is to make it fun to play. Beating up the spirit of a confederate flag is fun, playing out the process of getting it banned is not.

Environmentalism is extremely depressing to deal with IRL as many people are apathetic about the environment. Playing out scenes where your character desperately tries to get someone to sign a petition or donate to a cause is missing the point of why people play games. Most do it to escape IRL stuff and WtA no doubt has attracted many people who would LOVE to just smash pollution.

[Knightingale]

To me, this will also make for a depressing and pointless feeling game. There is a reason why games often use allegories to fix society's wrongs and that is to make it fun to play. Beating up the spirit of a confederate flag is fun, playing out the process of getting it banned is not.

Environmentalism is extremely depressing to deal with IRL as many people are apathetic about the environment. Playing out scenes where your character desperately tries to get someone to sign a petition or donate to a cause is missing the point of why people play games. Most do it to escape IRL stuff and WtA no doubt has attracted many people who would LOVE to just smash pollution.

"Smashing pollution" in old WtA is such a fantasy-thing. You have the Wyrm as an abstract Sauron-like big bad, the evil henchmen are Pentex or associated with them, evil is an actual quantifiable thing with Wyrm-Taint that can be perceived... With all the lore that's been written, there are shades of grey you can introduce as well. But it's fantasy-stuff. You remove all or most of it and Garou are just doing eco-terrorism or murdering people possessed by spirits (which is something only they can see). Now I could see some value in doing some sort of gritty reboot and focus on that... BUT this would require a game that is able to tackle such serious subjects. And WOD5E has already gotten into trouble more than once for writing about a serious subject and delivering bad writing to have serious things interlock with the fantasy of WOD. Presumably this also a game where you being a monster and dealing with that is the core-gameplay. Bringing in very serious real-world-concerns just derails the whole thing. Like, in H5: What is more important, some vampires running a nightclub, drinking blood from some people, manipulating local politics with vampire-powers and occasionally killing people... or the Vatican-financed militia with high-tech military-equipment and whose members are religious fundamentalists and racists? W5 might run into the same issue where the Garou-Nation is bad and it goes into how bad Garou in general are because of their Rage and what they've done in the past and seemingly the only good thing in the setting is doing street-level adventures of low-powered PCs who are clinging to their Touchstones.

[TwoDSix]

It's not like you can't hard reboot, rework the old lore into something just as good, and build on that. Trinity 2e was pretty much entirely that, and darn it if I don't significantly prefer the new lore (and the rules are, actually pretty snzzy and seem to do WoD5's aims better than WoD5). Of course that requires keeping most of the original lore and setup before you start taking it in a different direction.

[Koronus]

"Smashing pollution" in old WtA is such a fantasy-thing. You have the Wyrm as an abstract Sauron-like big bad, the evil henchmen are Pentex or associated with them, evil is an actual quantifiable thing with Wyrm-Taint that can be perceived... With all the lore that's been written, there are shades of grey you can introduce as well. But it's fantasy-stuff. You remove all or most of it and Garou are just doing eco-terrorism or murdering people possessed by spirits (which is something only they can see). Now I could see some value in doing some sort of gritty reboot and focus on that... BUT this would require a game that is able to tackle such serious subjects. And WOD5E has already gotten into trouble more than once for writing about a serious subject and delivering bad writing to have serious things interlock with the fantasy of WOD. Presumably this also a game where you being a monster and dealing with that is the core-gameplay. Bringing in very serious real-world-concerns just derails the whole thing. Like, in H5: What is more important, some vampires running a nightclub, drinking blood from some people, manipulating local politics with vampire-powers and occasionally killing people... or the Vatican-financed militia with high-tech military-equipment and whose members are religious fundamentalists and racists? W5 might run into the same issue where the Garou-Nation is bad and it goes into how bad Garou in general are because of their Rage and what they've done in the past and seemingly the only good thing in the setting is doing street-level adventures of low-powered PCs who are clinging to their Touchstones.

Interesstingly in our round the wyrm where never the evil sauron guy like. For us the wyrm whas like the child that is trapped by both mobbing classmates and a psychotic mother that goes yandere whenever the child does not act like her imagine is and so it is trapped between wanting to die and so end the pain and not wanting to die cause it actually want to live but without pain.
And the weaver where so panic because it turned out Nephandi are servants of outer cthulhu like gods that want to have their deities come faster by making world such a living hell that they would even pray to an evil god in their desperation and the weaver desperately tries to stop this by waving so much that everything is frozen and so things can not even get worse.
And the players role where to wake up wyrm from the neightmare so instead of undiscriminating spreading poisen he poisens only the already corrupt areas so they do not spread the infection and so we can start then slowly the healing.

[Shakanaka]

I'm not even even clear on what any reboot actually achieves, you may as well just play forsaken if you're going to strip everything out and play a game which is'street'.

Branding.

Simple as.

Paradox has been an utterly terrible custodian of the IP.