W5 QA

[Lashet]

Well, if there are some good changes, they are:
1) Garou now just fight for survival. They never deserved to be heroes, first of all. W5 seems to put them in their place.
2) It seems their hatred toward vampires will be softened. Good change, all tgis furVSfungs crap didn't bring anything to the game.
3)Garou lost anything and everything and not gonna have even a glorious death. Finaly their screwups bite their asses.

[Ragged Robin]

Well, if there are some good changes, they are:
1) Garou now just fight for survival. They never deserved to be heroes, first of all. W5 seems to put them in their place.
2) It seems their hatred toward vampires will be softened. Good change, all tgis furVSfungs crap didn't bring anything to the game.
3)Garou lost anything and everything and not gonna have even a glorious death. Finaly their screwups bite their asses.

1) lol what? Garou were never heroes outside of the tragic sense

2) logical conflict is good in a war game.

3) that was always a thing just less so.

[Knightingale]

Well, if there are some good changes, they are:
1) Garou now just fight for survival. They never deserved to be heroes, first of all. W5 seems to put them in their place.
2) It seems their hatred toward vampires will be softened. Good change, all tgis furVSfungs crap didn't bring anything to the game.
3)Garou lost anything and everything and not gonna have even a glorious death. Finaly their screwups bite their asses.

I think what you outline goes way too far. Stuff like "putting them in their place", calling them "screwups" really comes into conflict with modern-game-maxims like "The ST/GM should be a fan of the player-characters". After all, the player-characters are Garou. Why would you even wanna play this game if the premise is "You play losers and screwups who get what they deserve as they fight for survival without any hope for glory or heroism."...? This isn't Mörk-Borg.

It's also strange that you are so in favor of casting all Garou as screwups who deserve their dark fate while being in favor of easing up on the portrayal of vampires as antagonists. Why should vampires be potential good guys when all Garou are "irredeemable screwups"?

[Ana Mizuki]

I think what you outline goes way too far. Stuff like "putting them in their place", calling them "screwups" really comes into conflict with modern-game-maxims like "The ST/GM should be a fan of the player-characters". After all, the player-characters are Garou. Why would you even wanna play this game if the premise is "You play losers and screwups who get what they deserve as they fight for survival without any hope for glory or heroism."...? This isn't Mörk-Borg.

It's also strange that you are so in favor of casting all Garou as screwups who deserve their dark fate while being in favor of easing up on the portrayal of vampires as antagonists. Why should vampires be potential good guys when all Garou are "irredeemable screwups"?

Most likely Lashet likes vampires a lot and doesn't like that garou kill them on sight.

[Asmodai]

Well, if there are some good changes, they are:
1) Garou now just fight for survival. They never deserved to be heroes, first of all. W5 seems to put them in their place.
2) It seems their hatred toward vampires will be softened. Good change, all tgis furVSfungs crap didn't bring anything to the game.
3)Garou lost anything and everything and not gonna have even a glorious death. Finaly their screwups bite their asses.

Yes, yes. You have already established that you have an axe to grind with Werewolf and have never really gone beyond the memes. Are you here baiting the folks in the thread or the mods?

[Amethyst]

Is W5 still being released at GenCon?

[Asmodai]

Is W5 still being released at GenCon?

Should be. 5 more months unless they change their minds. So the game is set for better or for worse.

They did mention that the physical books might not be ready, but that it will be demoed and preorderable. And I think they are probably trying to break the barriers of production speed to have physical stuff for the biggest event in rpgs.

[TwoDSix]

Most likely Lashet likes vampires a lot and doesn't like that garou kill them on sight.

I mean, that's what comes as a first attempt at making werewolves dangerous unknowable enemies in your vampire game. A reboot toning it down and having werewolves being more willing to let vampires get on with their lives is perfectly valid.

I'm betting that they're also going to be one more of a 'Glass Walker problem' than a 'Garou problem', withe GWs having the best tools to find them and hunt them down. Almost as mmif they were some kind of Master of Iron. At this point what I'm actually flogging is more a pile of bones with a little bit of rotting meat left.

But removing the wolf vs leech conflict doesn't make the game any better or worse. It's actually more of a minor difference if anything, vampires aren't that high on the Garou's list of priorities (they spread Wyrm taint, but not intentionally or in an organised fashion).

[Knightingale]

I think it fits into the broader idea of W5 that Werewolves know actually very little about the world around them. They don't know how or why the First Change happens, they don't know how joining a Tribe works, they don't know how the Umbra works and they can't tell the difference between a Wyld-spirit and a Wyrm-spirit without some investigating. Vampires are just another thing Garou don't understand and so without investigating Garou generally have no opinion on vampires. I still can't quite figure out how this fits with the idea of Garou-PCs following in the footsteps of traditions and culture that supposedly have existed for ages.

(Hmm, makes me wonder if Wyrm-taint is even still a thing considering Garou have no way to sense it or detect it)

The issue here is that it isn't like V5 got the kind of huge changes W5 did. I don't think V5 ever portrayed werewolves as potential allies, right? Of course, nobody who wrote for V5 could know how much W5 would change. With Hunter you at least have the excuse of them being outsiders to the whole supernatural world. But with the other splats they're all part of the supernatural side of the world. So a werewolf might run into a vampire and the same way you play a game where werewolves have a society, vampires have the same. And naturally you would look to V5 for guidance on how to portray vampires. And once again, worldbuilding has been removed here to be replaced by nothing. Before the Garou vs leeches conflict was a default-setting that at least gave you a baseline of what these two supernatural societies generally think of each other. You don't have to do it exactly like that at your table but the game gave you something to orient yourselves by. In W5 the relationship between Garou and vampires is more like "Who knows what's up with that... Have you tried talking to the guy?" which means it's once again the ST's job to make this work while the game just shrugs its shoulders.

[Ragged Robin]

From a purely ecological and spiritual aspect their isn't any reason for them not to be antagonistic to vampires. Their aims are directly in competion with each other and they're a evil dead thing which drinks blood.

On a practical level pretty anyone who isn't a vampire has logical reasons to want them gone. In this way werewolves are actually pretty typical

[Saur Ops Specialist]

From a purely ecological and spiritual aspect their isn't any reason for them not to be antagonistic to vampires. Their aims are directly in competion with each other and they're a evil dead thing which drinks blood.

On a practical level pretty anyone who isn't a vampire has logical reasons to want them gone. In this way werewolves are actually pretty typicaly

It's like the Were-Monster from the X-Files limited revival put it. "I'm an insectivore. No one likes insects, even other insects."

[Ana Mizuki]

I mean, that's what comes as a first attempt at making werewolves dangerous unknowable enemies in your vampire game. A reboot toning it down and having werewolves being more willing to let vampires get on with their lives is perfectly valid.

I'm betting that they're also going to be one more of a 'Glass Walker problem' than a 'Garou problem', withe GWs having the best tools to find them and hunt them down. Almost as mmif they were some kind of Master of Iron. At this point what I'm actually flogging is more a pile of bones with a little bit of rotting meat left.

But removing the wolf vs leech conflict doesn't make the game any better or worse. It's actually more of a minor difference if anything, vampires aren't that high on the Garou's list of priorities (they spread Wyrm taint, but not intentionally or in an organised fashion).

Oh I agree and it HAS been done well, in NWoD.

I was just commenting on Lashet's tendency to bash the garou while elevating the vampires. In the WtA forum.

[Asmodai]

Someone was asking who the WOD team is right now after Justin has left.
This is the credit from the new Vampire Player's Guide.

[ArcaneArts]

Someone was asking who the WOD team is right now after Justin has left.
This is the credit from the new Vampire Player's Guide.

Not sure how meaningful an answer that is, given a lot of that reflects work from months, if not years, ago.

[Nyremne]

Well, if there are some good changes, they are:
1) Garou now just fight for survival. They never deserved to be heroes, first of all. W5 seems to put them in their place.
2) It seems their hatred toward vampires will be softened. Good change, all tgis furVSfungs crap didn't bring anything to the game.
3)Garou lost anything and everything and not gonna have even a glorious death. Finaly their screwups bite their asses.

1/ How is that a good change? Toning down the very nature of the game is counterproductive, and the garou are litterally meant to be heroes in the classical sense, larger than life individuals with both a destiny toward greatness and a tendancy toward tragedy, by making them mere survivors, you kill the very nature of the setting.

2/ Except countless interesting roleplay experiences between vampire players and garou npcs and vice versa, an interesting conundrum for garous existing in the cities, a logical reason for vampires to be as cities bound as they are in the wod, etc///
3/ Except they can have a glorious death if they fight for their caern, which seems to be the scope of W5