W5 QA

[MyWifeIsScary]

The way he just called them by these off-brand generic "Ravenshifter" and "Spidershifter" names, instead of their proper names (Corax and Ananasi.. and who even knows if this is actually them in their proper pre-W5 forms) is just completely cringeworthy. It just shows how little he cared about Apocalypse before he left.

I'm gonna start swinging wild here because I have the complete opposite opinion: only the Ratkin have a good name, and that's because it's recognizably English in an English language book, so it makes some sense and doesn't come across as pretentious, nonsensical, and the product of a culture without long roots. Deciding on a smattering of half-related foreign words is cringe. Why use a french or greek name when very few of them are french or greek? Nevermind the incessant use of Japanese words for myths that originate from china, which is also a much more populous and influentual place in the grand scheme of things. THAT is cringe. I think there might even be a sense of condescension in that only the RATS get a local name and everyone else is better for being far flung.

WtA always had "late change" as a thing, even if a distinct outlier; though W20 adjusted it to be more impacted by the backstory of the setting to make it more common in modern nights (basically, homid Garou being raised in increasingly Weaver dominated parts of the world is leading to more late changes). This is likely motivated by the fact that having the default starting PCs being teens didn't age well.

Why doesn't it age well? Like it's not fun to play a teen or is using child soldiers bad, because if it's the former, you can skip a little due to "training" or whatever, and if it's the latter, the garou are very much supposed to be a deeply flawed society.

[Ana Mizuki]

Why doesn't it age well? Like it's not fun to play a teen or is using child soldiers bad, because if it's the former, you can skip a little due to "training" or whatever, and if it's the latter, the garou are very much supposed to be a deeply flawed society.

Aside from the moral implications, many people want their characters to have jobs or decrees. Basically, they want their characters to have had a life -before- becoming garou.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Aside from the moral implications, many people want their characters to have jobs or decrees. Basically, they want their characters to have had a life -before- becoming garou.

My gut response is "Play a glasswalker then"
(I could see the CoG doing it too)

There is some room for a character that shifted in a normal time but still continued to have a job/get an education before the curse got too difficult. I think that's usually the better option.

There's undoubtedly a lot of RL use for late-shifters but in-universe it would really suck to have it as more than a few outliers. Werewolves having easy civilian lives is really antithetical to the whole WTA experience. The Garou nation is built on indoctrination and antipathy towards society and you can't really build that up when everyone joined at the age of *25* after having enough time to reasonably mature most of a normal worldview. I can understand that some people have a lot of trouble roleplaying something very different to them or perhaps have the opposite problem of maybe having a few too many similar characters and wanting something different, but I think for most people it's good to try and push them out of their comfort zone and into the shoes of an indoctrinated teen once in a while (Maturation optional)

werewolves well adjusted to modern society feels like... vampires who genuinely make a positive impact in their mortal communities, or humble mages. Also I really gotta question how late they want to shift. Like, what's the difference between someone who changes at 17 compared to someone who changes at 21 or 24? Unless you had a rad business idea or amazing connections it's not really a massive shift because most things you could do at 24 could've been done at 17 in the right circumstances. A master's degree is just more school after all. while if you're changing at 27 or 30 like... why not be 40? I'd be surprised if werewolves didn't heavily stigmatize such later bloomers. It's suspicious.

[Knightingale]

My gut response is "Play a glasswalker then"
(I could see the CoG doing it too)

There is some room for a character that shifted in a normal time but still continued to have a job/get an education before the curse got too difficult. I think that's usually the better option.

There's undoubtedly a lot of RL use for late-shifters but in-universe it would really suck to have it as more than a few outliers. Werewolves having easy civilian lives is really antithetical to the whole WTA experience. The Garou nation is built on indoctrination and antipathy towards society and you can't really build that up when everyone joined at the age of *25* after having enough time to reasonably mature most of a normal worldview. I can understand that some people have a lot of trouble roleplaying something very different to them or perhaps have the opposite problem of maybe having a few too many similar characters and wanting something different, but I think for most people it's good to try and push them out of their comfort zone and into the shoes of an indoctrinated teen once in a while (Maturation optional)

werewolves well adjusted to modern society feels like... vampires who genuinely make a positive impact in their mortal communities, or humble mages. Also I really gotta question how late they want to shift. Like, what's the difference between someone who changes at 17 compared to someone who changes at 21 or 24? Unless you had a rad business idea or amazing connections it's not really a massive shift because most things you could do at 24 could've been done at 17 in the right circumstances. A master's degree is just more school after all. while if you're changing at 27 or 30 like... why not be 40? I'd be surprised if werewolves didn't heavily stigmatize such later bloomers. It's suspicious.

You've just described how much of a difference the new Garou-Kin-dynamic should make on how Garou-society and the history of the Garou-Nation work. The Q&A on Discord even talks about 50-year-olds experiencing the First Change. But I think with W5 the factors delineating who's good and who's bad are more about what outlook your character has. If you think the Garou-Nation, Rage and the Wyrm are bad, you're a good Garou who's probably one of the PCs. Those who think the Garou-Nation is good are those pesky Elders still trying to browbeat Garou into doing stuff by invoking the Garou-Nation and traditions while history has already proven that this approach doesn't help with the war against the Wyrm. Also, the Garou-Nation is in shambles anyway, so why bother...? Those who think Rage is good are the Get of Fenris who still think that trying to be warriors who try to protect Gaia and defeat the Wyrm but they're acting hasty and overly violently. And of course, those who think the Wyrm is good are the BSD.

Will this outlook/belief-orientation make sense...? We'll see... I'll just add that accoding to H5 a professional vampire hunter catholic priest backed by the Vatican and who's a member of the Society of St. Leopold is called a "Jobber" because they don't have the integrity of a hunter in a local hunter-cell. This kind of catholic priest vampire hunter working for a hunter-org is automatically compromised by the ulterior motives of the org he's working for.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Will this outlook/belief-orientation make sense...? We'll see... I'll just add that accoding to H5 a professional vampire hunter catholic priest backed by the Vatican and who's a member of the Society of St. Leopold is called a "Jobber" because they don't have the integrity of a hunter in a local hunter-cell. This kind of catholic priest vampire hunter working for a hunter-org is automatically compromised by the ulterior motives of the org he's working for.

Is this an in-character coping mechanism or a setting wide consensus? Because if it's the latter... they have like a team for this right? This is a whole process. A writer is hired, chosen even, he gives stuff to an editor, also chosen, and this somehow ends up in the final product?

I recall when the nuWhiteWolf site came up there was a whole ideas page for the tribes and what kind of day jobs members commonly had. And like to me that was a crime against WTA because werewolves are too imbued with Rage (and self-important) and their whole gig was being unable to mesh with the establishment but for some people (larpers) this is all cool and normal... I feel a good W5 is less probable than Epstein's death being suicide.

[Knightingale]

Is this an in-character coping mechanism or a setting wide consensus? Because if it's the latter... they have like a team for this right? This is a whole process. A writer is hired, chosen even, he gives stuff to an editor, also chosen, and this somehow ends up in the final product?

I recall when the nuWhiteWolf site came up there was a whole ideas page for the tribes and what kind of day jobs members commonly had. And like to me that was a crime against WTA because werewolves are too imbued with Rage (and self-important) and their whole gig was being unable to mesh with the establishment but for some people (larpers) this is all cool and normal... I feel a good W5 is less probable than Epstein's death being suicide.

With H5 it's definitely setting-wide consensus. Religious hunter-orgs under the "Complications"-subheader are described like this:

Needless to say, Religious orgs represent a very specific perspective emerging from a very extreme interpretation of religious mores. Not every religion even has (or wants) orgs; not every religious org operates with the same severity as the Entity (see p. 231). Plenty of Religious outlooks stem from a genuine concern for their congregations, but there’s a vast gulf between a group of concerned Talmudic scholars and a detachment of armored, assault rifle-wielding zealots funded by dark-money contributions.

As a result, Religious orgs sometimes end up being the bad apple that spoils the bunch, with an outsized reputation that causes people to look upon faith in general as a tool of authority rather than an instrument of community and betterment. The most dire of Religious org members even conflate their desire for control with that realization of community and betterment, believing that if everyone else would just realize that theirs is the One True Way, everything would be fine.

Power and control often benefit from misdirecting popular perception of who’s wielding them. As a result, more than one organization that positions itself as Faithful is actually Governmental, Corporate, or even Vigilante, simply appropriating the trappings of holy good or moral authority.

And the reason it's written this way is because Religious hunter-orgs are the dark reflection of the Faithful Creed of player-characters with the underlying idea of "local hunter cells=good vs. hunter-orgs=bad". Due to this worldbuilding-dynamic, though, you get a really black-and-white-kind of depiction in terms of what local hunter-cells and hunter-orgs are like.

And it's my speculation has two ways of dealing with the more controversial or complicated elements of WtA: One is removing 90% of the lore and the other is creating similar obvious "good vs. bad"-dichotomies in the game like with H5.

[Ana Mizuki]

My gut response is "Play a glasswalker then"
(I could see the CoG doing it too)

There is some room for a character that shifted in a normal time but still continued to have a job/get an education before the curse got too difficult. I think that's usually the better option.

There's undoubtedly a lot of RL use for late-shifters but in-universe it would really suck to have it as more than a few outliers. Werewolves having easy civilian lives is really antithetical to the whole WTA experience. The Garou nation is built on indoctrination and antipathy towards society and you can't really build that up when everyone joined at the age of *25* after having enough time to reasonably mature most of a normal worldview. I can understand that some people have a lot of trouble roleplaying something very different to them or perhaps have the opposite problem of maybe having a few too many similar characters and wanting something different, but I think for most people it's good to try and push them out of their comfort zone and into the shoes of an indoctrinated teen once in a while (Maturation optional)

I think you are overthinking this. The reason people want their garou to have had a human life is why vampire pcs have had it. They want their ahroun to have been a military officer/police officer, they want their theurges to have been priests etc. Basically the human job is the concept they are after and WtA does not support it.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

My gut response is "Play a glasswalker then"
(I could see the CoG doing it too)

There is some room for a character that shifted in a normal time but still continued to have a job/get an education before the curse got too difficult. I think that's usually the better option.

It's less a matter of tribe and more a matter of what your pack's patron is. Cockroach is going to want you to blend in very well; most jobs are probably on the table, as long as your Rage is not high. Fenris wants you to fight, and moreover, to go out and seek glorious battle and stoke the Rage within. That's... difficult to reconcile, if you have a job with a lot of responsibilities, and most PMCs aren't going to be up to his standards. Honestly, most PCs in Shadowrun are also so ill-adjusted that they technically also shouldn't be capable of this, but most manage, more or less; it's not a huge leap from hooding missions in magic cyberpunk world over to W:tA.

(Garou also have the advantage of not being troll-sized or obviously supernatural all of the time.)

There's undoubtedly a lot of RL use for late-shifters but in-universe it would really suck to have it as more than a few outliers. Werewolves having easy civilian lives is really antithetical to the whole WTA experience. The Garou nation is built on indoctrination and antipathy towards society and you can't really build that up when everyone joined at the age of *25* after having enough time to reasonably mature most of a normal worldview. I can understand that some people have a lot of trouble roleplaying something very different to them or perhaps have the opposite problem of maybe having a few too many similar characters and wanting something different, but I think for most people it's good to try and push them out of their comfort zone and into the shoes of an indoctrinated teen once in a while (Maturation optional)

werewolves well adjusted to modern society feels like... vampires who genuinely make a positive impact in their mortal communities, or humble mages. Also I really gotta question how late they want to shift. Like, what's the difference between someone who changes at 17 compared to someone who changes at 21 or 24? Unless you had a rad business idea or amazing connections it's not really a massive shift because most things you could do at 24 could've been done at 17 in the right circumstances. A master's degree is just more school after all. while if you're changing at 27 or 30 like... why not be 40? I'd be surprised if werewolves didn't heavily stigmatize such later bloomers. It's suspicious.

Counterpoint: having sources of conflict between the two lives can enrich the story. Also, hitting the child soldier thing that much has the potential to go past another moral event horizon for the entire game, even considering that werewolves not being a big part of the human moral community has already sent them past one.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

I think you are overthinking this. The reason people want their garou to have had a human life is why vampire pcs have had it. They want their ahroun to have been a military officer/police officer, they want their theurges to have been priests etc. Basically the human job is the concept they are after and WtA does not support it.

Higher-Rage Garou being soldiers... they'd need to all have pretty high Willpower or pretty short careers capped off by dishonorable discharges.

[Ana Mizuki]

Higher-Rage Garou being soldiers... they'd need to all have pretty high Willpower or pretty short careers capped off by dishonorable discharges.

Absolutely, and that is the core of the problem as seen even in NPCs in some sourcebooks; The way WtA limits the range of PC backgrounds can be stifling for writers and so they ignore it.

[Heavy Arms]

Why doesn't it age well?

1) The average age of the players of the game is older. The WoD is old enough to have generations of players now. People want to play characters they can relate to. The books supporting me playing a character my age when I was a teen was fun, but as I've gotten older, it's gotten harder and harder to relate to the character in the default setup of the game. It's not that older players can't or don't enjoy playing games focused on younger characters, but that either needs to kick on some serious nostalgia notes (ex: Kids on Bikes), or have a much more developed and nuanced approach to onboarding teen character into a brutal war than WtA can currently support.

2) Young players are living in a world of increased radicalized violence. America has a whole generation that refers to themselves as the "mass shooter generation," because it's just that common place. Again, you could write a game about exploring this topic, but WtA is not currently that game. WtA is "the mass shooters are pretty sympathetic folks that can grow up to be champions of justice if you let them," which... isn't really a great thing to pitch to kids that grew up doing active shooter drills.

3) As you tend to advocate strongly, the WoD games are at their best when their effective satire. One of the disadvantages many of the WoD games have is that the PCs are mortal. Vampire by the necessity of dealing with immortal beings has to aim its satire at topics that endure (even if they ebb and flow in importance) over decades and centuries. Werewolf's whole premise is built on topics of a much more immediate and pressing concern to public discourse. The topics of WtA aren't built around thing were people can still be debating core topics for centuries while the world is slowly churning along. The immediacy of WtA is a key part of its satirical strengths, but that means it needs to adapt to a changing real world to stay emotionally relevant. In 1995, WtA felt relevant to environmentalist youths wanting to rage against the system that wasn't doing anything. In 2020, it feels pointlessly naive to mix violent extremism with the environmentalist movement to create a satirical statement about society. The culture has moved on.

------------

As well, the whole idea that "well Garou Society is supposed to be flaws," doesn't really matter. It needs to be flawed in a way that continues to resonant with audiences as times change,or it fails to age well.

Like it's not fun to play a teen or is using child soldiers bad, because if it's the former, you can skip a little due to "training" or whatever,...

That's already what the books do. The First Change is supposed to happen in early puberty. That is 13-15 years old is the "default" age here. Four years of indoctrination, training, and at least one active mission before play starts (Tribal initiation), is a very long time for all of that. Modern military training can take as little as a few weeks (for recruits drawn from systems like ROTC that do a lot of the indoctrination aspects of adjusting someone to military life before basic training, or in this context any Garou raised by a family in-the-know), to two years to completely onboard someone that had no interest in the military into someone that will be a lifetime member. It just doesn't take that long to get people into a military-mind set; even less so when you take in the isolation of being a werewolf, and the religious radicalization the Garou use.

But even then, you draw it out, and you have kids that maybe finished middle school, before being sent to religious paramilitary indoctrination for all of high school, and are still 17-19 when they come out. That's stretching the default.

When people say things like "I want my PC to have had a life," it's because the process in the books starts so young these characters never even started the physiological process of becoming independent humans before being shoved into ecoterrorist zealot camp. A high-school senior with dreams of going to college and having a career, but First Changes and tragically kills their prom date before being found and taken in by the Garou is a late change story by the books. Most homid Garou don't even get that far in their human lives before they're removed from the "normal" world.

If your PCs are having their First Changes in their late teens or early 20s, where they had a human life that got ripped away from them? Then you're actually house ruling things because the default First Change ages in the older books didn't actually age well..

Higher-Rage Garou being soldiers... they'd need to all have pretty high Willpower or pretty short careers capped off by dishonorable discharges.

Or just join either of the Garou/Kin owned and operated PMCs in the books so they can keep soldiering, but without having to worry as much about all of that.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Or just join either of the Garou/Kin owned and operated PMCs in the books so they can keep soldiering, but without having to worry as much about all of that.

I don't know how I keep forgetting about the Black Eagles and Dies Ultimae, come to think of it. I might just be assuming that when people mention "soldier" that they mean "official, national military" rather than "mercenary", as a result of reading Project Twilight more often before the other books came out.

[Heavy Arms]

Well, to get back to W5 slightly... I am curious if groups like Camps and Fellowships are going to become more prominent in some fashion; much like Lodges in Forsaken. It seems a natural way to add back in some of the things making the new take on Tribes more generic. I'm not sure we need both, but it feels like something that could ameliorate a lot of the concerns people have had (except for the whole "making it even more like Forsaken" thing).

[Bluecho]

Well, to get back to W5 slightly... I am curious if groups like Camps and Fellowships are going to become more prominent in some fashion; much like Lodges in Forsaken. It seems a natural way to add back in some of the things making the new take on Tribes more generic. I'm not sure we need both, but it feels like something that could ameliorate a lot of the concerns people have had (except for the whole "making it even more like Forsaken" thing).

It does seem like a good way to keep things interesting and complex. Which is why I have no faith W5 will actually do that, or even acknowledge Camps and Fellowships were even a thing. WoD5 is the edition of flattening the game lines in the name of being "newbie friendly" and "street level".

[Bluecho]

On the subject of First Changes potentially starting later in life, I'm all for it. I'm on record saying "all else being equal, more potential stories > fewer potential stories".

It's not like you'd be disallowed from running a traditional "child soldier" Garou PC. No one is suggesting that just disappear. All that's being suggested is maybe players should be allowed to run PCs who lived full lives before being drafted into the Furry Wars, if they want to. Like, they should be allowed to do this, regardless of the reasons why.

Whatever the reasons for keeping First Change to youngsters only, I don't think they're compelling enough compared to giving the players options. It's why none of the other WoD gamelines included such narrow character creation options. Even Changeling: The Dreaming, the poster child for Child PCs, let you play older PCs as a matter of course.