W5 QA

[Knightingale]

Any idea who the WoD team are at this point, All but one of the freelancers that worked on the W5 Core are all back writing for WOTC or other studios. Is it just Karim?

No idea. But I think it's already saying something that when Justin Achilli left in January, they not only didn't have a replacement ready but according to Outstar they're also not looking for a replacement right now. So who knows what will happen after the W5 release...

Maybe they dissolve the WOD-team and both supplements and core-books will be written by Renegade from now on. Justin Achilli and the rest of the team did work on outlines for the other splats last year so maybe based on that Renegade will write future corebooks for WOD5E.

[Damian May]

I think that's highly unlikely at this point. At Renegade-Con they talked about how they're already in the process of making the first W5 supplement on the basis of the manuscript that was produced in January. And at the same event, they also talked about how they wanted to do more previews for W5 but they're waiting for the WOD team (minus Justin Achilli) to finish the book (editing, layout etc.). Also, there's the Gen-Con-release-date looming and I can easily imagine that while they're publicly saying it could be a pdf-only-release, behind the scenes they're probably pressuring the WOD-team to hurry up in order to make a physical release happen after all.

Outstar did say in January, though, that this month there would be a third dev-blog-post to give a preview for the new mechanics in W5 and March isn't over yet... I guess we'll see if it happens.

Any idea who the WoD team are at this point, All but one of the freelancers that worked on the W5 Core are all back writing for WOTC or other studios. Is it just Karim?

[Knightingale]

I'm curious if they are remading the game after Achilli left werewolf, are they listening to fans? I've read somewhere in this forum that in this moth they will release a big preview about the game but there's silence. Sudden appear of Hunter and zero marketing of WtA isn't good at all.

I think that's highly unlikely at this point. At Renegade-Con they talked about how they're already in the process of making the first W5 supplement on the basis of the manuscript that was produced in January. And at the same event, they also talked about how they wanted to do more previews for W5 but they're waiting for the WOD team (minus Justin Achilli) to finish the book (editing, layout etc.). Also, there's the Gen-Con-release-date looming and I can easily imagine that while they're publicly saying it could be a pdf-only-release, behind the scenes they're probably pressuring the WOD-team to hurry up in order to make a physical release happen after all.

Outstar did say in January, though, that this month there would be a third dev-blog-post to give a preview for the new mechanics in W5 and March isn't over yet... I guess we'll see if it happens.

[werewolf43]

I'm curious if they are remading the game after Achilli left werewolf, are they listening to fans? I've read somewhere in this forum that in this moth they will release a big preview about the game but there's silence. Sudden appear of Hunter and zero marketing of WtA isn't good at all.

[Knightingale]

Its because the intent of the new lore is to box the game into certain play styles rather than enhance the setting. It's simular to how they imploded the Sabbat and they discouraged tech use in v5

The weird thing with this idea of telling players how they're supposed to play the game is that there's no follow-through on the part of the game-developers. You have a Session Zero between ST and players talking about the game and Chronicle Tenets are one of several things happening that guide this dialogue during Session Zero. But there's a third party here as well - and that's the game-developers.

Assigning difficulties to rolls and when which ability can be used are also tenets impacting a game. It's why Difficulty 4 for Edges in H5 is such a big deal. Something like that will have an impact on the game. And another one of those poorly thought out sections in H5 is where the Edge-section acknowledges that due to the difficulty it might be better to use your Desperation-dice (this group-system where Hunters can add extra dice to their rolls). But the Desperation-dice-section never talks about Edge-rolls and the section about Creed-fields never talks about Edge-rolls either. This is also important because (you might have heard this before reading W5 previews) in the name of opening up character-options for players Edges aren't tied to Creeds. So at the poiint of character-creation there's nothing in the corebook telling you that you should pick Edges in accordance with your Creed/Creed-Field (if anything, the opposite is encouraged in the name of giving more freedom to players who are creatomg a new character).

(Personally, if I were an ST for a H5 game I would ignore Creed-Fields for Edge-rolls but then again, who knows how that would impact the Danger-track... the systems in H5 are all just so badly thought out...)

And my biggest fear is that W5 will contain these kinds of mistakes as well.

[Ragged Robin]

For all the lore that has been thrown out, the new things that were added in terms of worldbuilding somehow managed to make this more complicated.

Its because the intent of the new lore is to box the game into certain play styles rather than enhance the setting. It's simular to how they imploded the Sabbat and they discouraged tech use in v5

[Asmodai]

IDK that Get chapter seems pretty bellicose. "Sometimes we went to far but they totally deserved the bulk of it" Note that this is supposed to represent the middle ground or even a more scholarly side of the get: a good chunk of Get are bound to have more radical takes of the war.

I am travelling and don't have the books on me now, but there is at least two editions of the tribe books. Are you sure you're not picking the more optimistic takes?

Well, lucky for you, I do have them at hand in their Litanty of the Tribes variants. The Original Get & Fianna Tribebooks were written before the game decided to reintroduce all the other breeds or go into the War of Rage, so they are non-topics for the old TB's. Not that I'd recommend either of those compared to their Revised versions.

[MyWifeIsScary]

IDK that Get chapter seems pretty bellicose. "Sometimes we went to far but they totally deserved the bulk of it" Note that this is supposed to represent the middle ground or even a more scholarly side of the get: a good chunk of Get are bound to have more radical takes of the war.

I am travelling and don't have the books on me now, but there is at least two editions of the tribe books. Are you sure you're not picking the more optimistic takes?

[Asmodai]

The wars of rage and stuff aren't universally considered a bad idea. I recall in the tribe books of Fianna and/or Get, though there may be others, expressing something along the sound of "well our ancestors couldn't have been anymore violent or stupid than us so they must have had good justification for what they did. Hell, modern bastet are bastards and I can't imagine them being better in a time where they were more powerful. Also we are low-key best pals with the Ravens and if we were really unreasonable I doubt that would happen"

Let's see what the Fianna say about this...



As for the Get, there's a lot of "we're both to blame" apologism, but they sure as hell don't see it as a "good thing".

[MyWifeIsScary]

The wars of rage and stuff aren't universally considered a bad idea. I recall in the tribe books of Fianna and/or Get, though there may be others, expressing something along the sound of "well our ancestors couldn't have been anymore violent or stupid than us so they must have had good justification for what they did. Hell, modern bastet are bastards and I can't imagine them being better in a time where they were more powerful. Also we are low-key best pals with the Ravens and if we were really unreasonable I doubt that would happen"

[Saur Ops Specialist]

The situation of the Garou is a lot like the terrible shit that goes on in Exalted - the worst decisions, carried out with the utmost competence. That's part of the danger of having superhumanly-capable monsters making a society.

[Asmodai]

That might make sense if the War of Rag and War of Tears wasn't universally accepted as a BAD IDEA. All the tribebooks with the POV characters say they fucked up. In general, the Garou tend towards the short term and the violent solutions, but they seem to actually recognise their fuckups along the way. That's what actually gives you some hope that the Nation might do something other than spiral horribly into nothingness. Without that support the people making the changes wouldn't really have much of a chance, be they the Margraves or the PC's.

As for how our views on people, their acts and values change through time, boy, I sure as hell am glad that we still award people for colonialism and genocide.

[11twiggins]

"Emulating the failures who came before you". That doesn't really mesh with what you get renown for.

As for the challenges, they can be tricky considering the experience of the Elders. Except that there are checks and balances to that. You quickly get ostracised and punished if you resolve everything with beating people up and considering how dangerous rage is you are likely to get yourself or someone else killed like that. The whole society is built in such a way to minimise any possible Garou on Garou fights as they will end badly. Ritualized challenge is also benefited by the fact that the person challenged picks the contest (which still favours the elders, but unless they are polymaths it's not insurmountable). The Nation is dysfunctional for a quite a few reasons, but there are solid ways to use its mechanisms to enact change, and not all of its authority figures are idiots. Heck, by the books a minority of the leaders are myopic assholes.

Here's how I look at it. Think of the worst failures of the Garou Nation. Wiping out the werebats, the bears, the boars. Destroying the Bunyip. In the moment they seemed like great ideas, in the moment the Garou were sure they were doing the right thing it seems.

Each of those got someone promoted. Probably quite a few someones. For every horror, for every purge, for every Elder/Younger Brother Cairn stolen, for every potential ally among Mages and Changelings turned to slurry, for every cave full of Bastet cubs put to the claw, someone was lauded as a hero and raised in rank for doing Gaia's will.

Extremists like the Mother's Fundamentalists, for an illustrative example, certainly aren't struggling to gain Renown at the moots where they hold sway - EVERYTHING counts as a Threat to Gaia at their Moots. The more caustic, isolationist and bigoted your Moot, the more opportunities you have to gain Glory. You *are* incentivized to emulate your Elders and Ancestors. If you have forward-thinking Elders, chances are things in your area won't be as bad, and you might not be celebrated for killing a werebear you ran into on sight "because you have to get them before they get you". But most Caerns unfortunately don't have forward-thinking Elders.

Take a Caern where a big problem is Metis and Kinfolk being undervalued by Elders. Are you going to gain Wisdom and Honour for fixing that problem, from the very Elders who perpetuated it? You'd only be promoted if you made *them* see sense. And for most Garou, the passage of wisdom goes one way; from the experienced to the inexperienced. That's what a system built around Elders and Ancestor Worship is going to fall into if it has a Might Makes Right philosophy.

If you look at half of the dark days for the Garou, not the ones where they lost, but the ones where they won and Gaia lost, a Garou will have been lauded as a hero.

[Knightingale]

For all the lore that has been thrown out, the new things that were added in terms of worldbuilding somehow managed to make this more complicated. Because the setting seems really biased when it comes to that question: The Nation is in disarray (so who knows how much communal activity there even is in the game), the apocalypse is happening (but somehow the backdrop is still the world we all know) and Gaia's dead/dying. But the PCs are still Garou who are a part of the Tribe and I guess, what remains of the Garou-Nation and they still care about practicing the old Rituals and trying to earn Renown in the same way as the Elders did. At the same time, the Garou-PCs are also supposed to be critical of the Garou-Nation and stuff like the Litany, especially because things are looking bad.

The only way I could imagine this to make sense is if it's like with the Hunter with Drive vs hunter-org portrayal. Everything the Elders do is bad because they're doing it wrong or have the wrong mindset (even when they're practically doing the same thing as the PCs and Get fall into that category as well, I imagine) and the Garou-PCs are doing good because they're morally superior to everybody else. You just play them in a way that is on the same wavelength as their portrayal in the book. Like how H5 ascribes this sort of integrity and virtue to Hunters with Drive without there being any justification for it both in terms of worldbuilding and mechanics.

[Asmodai]

Yeah part of the tension and horror of Werewolf is that you're rewarded for emulating failures who came before you - if you want to push the needle towards economic justice, saving the climate, righting past wrongs, you need to do it while walking the tightrope of going "I am here to fix Problem. Now, wise elder Created-The-Problem, please promote me." That's an interesting and suitably horrifying premise; if you simply reject those who came before you, publicly and loudly, you'll be ostracized, dead or Ronin. Garou culture is might-makes-right unfortunately. If you're right, why are you within reach of my Grand Klaive? Yeah, thought not.

"Emulating the failures who came before you". That doesn't really mesh with what you get renown for.

As for the challenges, they can be tricky considering the experience of the Elders. Except that there are checks and balances to that. You quickly get ostracised and punished if you resolve everything with beating people up and considering how dangerous rage is you are likely to get yourself or someone else killed like that. The whole society is built in such a way to minimise any possible Garou on Garou fights as they will end badly. Ritualized challenge is also benefited by the fact that the person challenged picks the contest (which still favours the elders, but unless they are polymaths it's not insurmountable). The Nation is dysfunctional for a quite a few reasons, but there are solid ways to use its mechanisms to enact change, and not all of its authority figures are idiots. Heck, by the books a minority of the leaders are myopic assholes.